FED's Shocking Decision Will Affect Your Business in 2024 | Biz To Biz Podcast

You are now watching the Biz to Biz podcast with Allen and Justin. Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Jerry Seinfeld of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. What's up, bro?

Yeah, it's another week. Got a lot of rain going on here every day. Hope— I want the rainy season to be over. There's a hurricane brewing out in the Atlantic somewhere.

But yeah, they were— what I was watching yesterday, it's looking like we're definitely gonna catch some rain bands over the weekend for sure.

That's what it was. They're pretty far away, so we'll see what happens.

I mean, it's on the— we're on the East Coast, so the Atlantic— for those that don't know, like, we're on the East Coast, south, southeast Florida, and the, uh It's in the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, the one in the Gulf of Mexico is going to bother us.

Yeah.

Oh, that one's going to go up to like Louisiana.

Yeah, they're getting killed, getting big. Yeah. So over the weekend, I guess there's possibility of some serious rain bands. And other one that's on in that sun, I don't really— I don't see that coming this way.

So I got a, I got a funny coffee story for you.

Coffee?

Yeah. So my mom need— she said her coffee pot broke, so I need to get her a new coffee pot. So I told her, I said, I can get you a nice one at Costco, Cuisinart. She's like, no, it's black, I want a white coffee maker, and she has a white kitchen. We did— we talked about this, did we, on the podcast? Yeah, I didn't know I talked about it. Did I talk about it?

She's got like 5 coffee pots.

Yeah, now my mom's got all these extra coffee pots and she's bugging me. When am I—

I told you that Justina likes coffee.

I said Samantha drinks coffee, so you know, I gotta go there and get the coffee.

You could Give some coffee pots, get them out of your mom's house. I'm sure it's probably giving her anxiety. Older people hate seeing that type of stuff.

She's driving me crazy with the coffee.

With coffee pots?

Get the coffee pots out of here. Get the coffee pots. So here's like a crazy news story, right? So I'm reading this story and it's about Vincent van Gogh and the Starry Night picture. You know which one that is with the swirls, right?

I mean, So now, uncultured heathen, like, yeah, I do know that one. Okay.

God, that's a famous picture. Everybody knows it.

I mean, probably not everybody.

Okay, so it's one with swirls. It's pretty swirly.

It's a starry night, right, with all these swirls.

So now these new analysis in a church is—

right, it's a church, isn't it? The main, like, structure of church right there.

Yeah, there's like a building.

I think it's a church, whatever.

So now physicists—

physicists, yeah—

based in China and France suggest the artist had a deep intuitive understanding of mathematical structure of turbulent flow.

Yeah.

And there's this whole analysis of that. How, you know, how— I mean, I don't know. It's a phenomenon observed in fluids, moving water, ocean currents, blood flow, billowing storm clouds, plumes of smoke, all this crazy 'And they go into this whole analysis of the picture.' Yeah.

I was reading an article you sent. It's— Why can't art just be art?

Yeah, I know. That's what I said. Why do they have to dig in and go, 'The guy painted it.' Yeah, maybe he was super smart.

I'm sure most people who are artists are pretty smart, right?

I'm just saying it's 1889, right? That's when he painted it. And they said he was in a, he had a tumultuous state of mind at the time.

Yeah, that's what they were, yeah, like it was just chaos.

Right.

Everything was just chaos. Yeah. 'Cause he was high as shit. That's what they, he was drinking absinthe and smoking PCP and drinking.

PCP?

I mean, yeah, what's, isn't PCP?

That's angel dust.

Oh yeah, not angel dust. What I'm thinking of when you dip. The embalming fluid.

What, the paint?

You know, formaldehyde.

Oh, he's sniffing too much formaldehyde.

Yeah, or you smoking. People put cigarettes— whoa, they used to put cigarettes. Used to?

Oh wow, that's great. Whatever. I'm like, no, I mean, I remember, like, no, I'm just saying, that's just like crazy. So they're, you know, that's like the other thing. There's this pattern in the ocean off the coast of Florida where there's these squares in the ocean.

Yeah.

And then they're trying to— one group of people is trying to say it's caused by some secret government thing going on.

Why do people think it's so hard? Yeah, like I was seeing a map the other day of what they thought Florida looked like, like 200, 300 years ago, right? The, the, the land itself was a lot further into the ocean.

Right.

So the ocean is— so a lot of people speculate that there's a lot of like ancient structures off the coast. It could be because, I mean, metal detectors aren't picking up, you know, like stone, right? Built like pyramids.

I don't know. I've been diving before. I didn't see anything.

I mean, you're talking about it could be covered very, very far into the ocean too. A lot further than usual. I don't think it's unusual at all. I don't— I think it's very I think what we're seeing as far as like the tide rising, well, that's the king tide.

Yeah.

But, um, and all this other, the way that the moon is closer, the sun is closer to the earth. I don't, I don't want to say that global warming isn't real, right? Okay. But also, I don't think that humans have had enough time to document or understand like the documentation that is, you know, like this, the, the, the astronomers from our ancestors, right? Like, they don't know how to translate half that shit that they got, right? Exactly. And what they do have is not very reliable. I've— in my— you know what I mean? Like, I'm not the one that believes everything he said.

One of the things, one of the things that I always say that flips me out is that— and a lot of me, if you don't live in Florida, you don't understand this, so You have like the, like in South Florida, you have like the main landmass, right? Yeah. And then there's bridges that go over to the areas like Miami Beach, Hallandale Beach, right? Now all that over there, that's like a, dude, they just like made those, that's like a giant sandbar waiting to get swallowed up by the ocean. So this king tide, right?

I watched a video of that yesterday. That's messed up.

And I'm like, why did they even build over there in those areas? Because— And they're not—

these ain't cheap places. Right.

But what I'm saying is, is like, I don't understand why they built over there because it doesn't make sense. Like, why would you build over there? It's like a little island thing, right? It wasn't really— I don't know. And I remember as a kid, and you'll laugh when I tell you this, I remember there was a few buildings that were actually started tilting and were—

and were like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Yeah, they were like leaning over like this. And then they had to come in emergency, like bring in dredging equipment and dredge, you know, more sand and everything up onto the thing to make the building go up. What cracks me up, that building's— people are living in that place now. That was like in the '70s.

No way. Yeah, a lot of— I've seen a— speaking of that, because remember when that place collapsed last year?

No, that was like 2 years ago, right? In Surfside. Yeah, yeah, that was crazy.

Have you seen like all the, like, the mad dash of the people who own those like older buildings? They're just, they're trying to sell them.

Yeah, though, now that—

because some of the state had—

yeah, there's a 40-year inspection, 50-year inspection, there's huge assessments on these buildings. These people can't afford to live there. A couple of the buildings The people decided they don't want to do the repair, so they sold to like big companies, right? Like, you know, I don't like this when I see a BlackRock owns 44% of single-family homes in America.

Did you see that shit?

Yeah, I don't like that.

That is disgusting.

I think that— and that's crazy scary.

It was something real quick. Yeah, about— so you know how they want to tax unrealized gains.

Yes.

So I was reading and listening to this woman talk about if Kamala theoretically wins presidency and she gives that $25,000 to homeowners, right? Half America can't afford to live as it is, right? Right. So then, okay, say you buy a $100,000 home, right? Next year you go, a house gets assessed, it's now worth $150,000 or $200,000, and now you're— that same family is liable to pay taxes on $100,000.

They don't have the money for that.

So then the IRS is gonna own— so literally the government is gonna own every— everything.

Yeah, because it's basically they're gonna try to get you forfeiture.

—try to, they will.

Well, that's what they're— that's what—

I would be very, very weary about taking that money. Well, not just that.

It doesn't matter weary of take— whether you— if you own a house today, you could be in danger of that. Well, I was watching a video—

taking that money and voting for that in particular, whatever bill they're trying to throw that under, just—

it's too dangerous. Unrealized gains.

That's sick.

I heard Mark Cuban—

sick.

So I was listening to Mark Cuban talk about it, and also the guy Mr. Wonderful. And he's like, if they pass that, he goes, that's going to be a problem. He's like, okay, well, I have, you know, I own all this stuff.

I got, I got shit, some shit crypto that is always up and down and up and down. What, they're going to make me pay that too?

Yeah, but we pay tax on it now, which makes no sense. It makes zero sense. It's an investment and we're not cashing it out and you're paying tax on it. And then if it goes down, you don't get the tax credit back. So it's so dumb. You can't write it off as a loss unless it's —like, unless— what? Unless you sell it, then you could write a loss off. There you go. But what I'm saying is, so Mark Cuban and Mr. Wonderful was saying nobody's gonna— they said if they came and they taxed them on unrealized gains and they go, Mr. Wonderful, you own 10 buildings worth, you know, a billion dollars, and now you owe 20% tax. He's like, well, I don't have the cash. He goes, then I'm gonna have to sell my building, right? Because who am I gonna sell it to? Nobody's gonna want to buy it. Because they're going to have to pay taxes on it. So who's going to buy— who's going to buy this stuff? Because it doesn't make any sense.

And, and even if they— scary to think about.

Well, well, that's why it's like very communism, socialist.

Let's not get into that.

I know, but I'm just telling you, that kind of stuff where unrealized gains is—

I guess on a positive note, the Dow has like been kicking ass for the past 2 days. That's good. So it's like at an all-time high past 2 days, like it's crazy. And aside, Trump Media stock is trash. Whatever, continues to tank.

I don't think he really cares.

Trump Media is, you know, whatever.

I'm just saying, I don't think any of these people care. Look at Elon Musk, his, his, like, since he like took over Twitter turned it into X, and, and, you know, I think that's going all at plan. His net worth is down. I think this is going all—

well, we'll see how it all plays out.

Warm in here today. It's not freezing like it usually is. It could be that it's, it's kind of cooled off outside too, so it's not—

also the AC hasn't been on.

Yeah, you know, the thing is, this is like, I was watching this, um, show about energy. So, you know, they always thought energy is like, oh, fracking, drilling for oil, this and that. We shouldn't burn coal, blah, blah. So I'm reading this, a few news stories over the last week, and that, and all of a sudden they're talking about they, they want to kick on all these nuclear reactors now that have been off. And people like now are going, okay, yeah, let's do nuclear, nuclear. And then, you know, nuclear, but not just like what we had before, but nuclear fusion, which would be, you know, a little bit different of a technology. Right. And they were talking about nobody's against it because everybody's too old— too young to remember, like, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl. I mean, the most recent meltdown was quite a few years ago, was the last one was in Japan. Yes. And their reactor melted down.

How the hell don't you remember that? They're still pulling, like, weird fish out of the ocean because of that shit.

Yeah, because that's crazy. Next to the ocean. But people don't remember like Three Mile Island. People don't remember Chernobyl.

I mean, Chernobyl and Three Mile— how long ago is that? That was like in the '50s?

No, Three Mile Island was like in the '70s, early '70s. And so was Chernobyl. The early '70s?

Yeah, like in the '70s. Chernobyl's actually— Earth has reclaimed that, right? I'm just in there. They've been— I've seen a documentary about it. They were doing like soil testing is pretty almost like in some spots, right? It's like fine.

Yeah, some spots it's fine. Yeah.

But of course, like at the, you know, the site itself is, you know, still very new.

But people don't even remember there was a time where there was— I'm gonna remember Erie, Lake Erie, right? And the Erie Canal, still very toxic, right? But people who don't remember, that was like glowing in the dark that—

no, right, right, right.

That you wouldn't even go there. But that's just kind of crazy that, you know, now like the green people are not like against all this nuclear and they're talking about bringing back nuclear. China's bringing back nuclear. The US is bringing back nuclear. I mean, when it comes to clean energy, that's pretty much like the cleanest energy. But then after all these meltdowns, It was kind of abandoned. Yeah. Now they were saying, well, whoa, we want clean energy. They're finding out like the solar, the wind, that's not really supplying enough energy. Wind is not it. No. I mean, I was watching this thing about—

unless when you do it like in the ocean and those are— it's even so bad for like the fish and the birds. Like, it's just not a good look.

I was watching this thing about they built all these This is what really made me angry. They built all these windmills out in the ocean, uh, whatever, and it was all done by foreign companies, not even by a U.S. company, right? And now more than half the windmills don't work.

No, right, because the weather, the weather, the weather killed them.

The salt water killed them. They're falling apart. It's too expensive to fix.

I just seen a, I just seen a, um, a video. It probably was a video or something about— no, it was an article actually about tourism in Italy, about how the— because I guess there's a bunch of those. Yeah, turbines. Yeah. And I guess they're all— they're just washing up on the shore, and they're really, you know, their tourism depends on their beaches, right? So like, no one wants to be on the beach and there's just this like 80-foot piece of debris next to you, you're not taking a good selfie next to that. No, I mean, no, it's crazy.

But a lot of them are breaking. Yeah, in Italy where Venice is, they were having all that flooding, and then they built like floodgates like out in the ocean to stop that, the debris to come in, the tide from coming in. But also that problem with those windmills too there. But in the Northeast,, you know, was messing up like all the fishing in Maine and all that. It was messing up the fishing. And now they said more than 50% of these windmills are out of commission.

Yeah, that's nuts. They denied Puff again his bail. Uh-oh. After they found 1,000 bottles of baby oil. Yeah.

What do you need 1,000 bottles of baby oil for? I mean, and there's been pictures popping up of him with like, with all kinds of famous people.

The internet. That is undefeated right now. Obama, Kamala Harris, everyone. And, uh, she's young. You could say whoever you want to say.

It's a long list.

I guarantee you Trump's been to one of these.

Probably been.

I guarantee he's been to one of Puff's parties.

Who? I don't know if he's been to a Puff party, but he definitely was lit.

Well, if he was bullshit, if he was, yeah, you know, that's— that's—

no, I'm just saying the pictures are coming out every day.

So It's crazy to me that he— they ended up doubling it. At first he had 50— the $50 million like I talked, and then he did $100 million. They still denied it. So they—

if they must have the dirt, that's not good for him.

They must have the dirt on him. In other rapper news, yeah, Kendrick Lamar, yeah, is gonna be performing at the Super Bowl. I saw that. That's pretty cool, man. Yeah, he did perform last year or the year before with, uh, Oh, with Dr. Dre.

Yeah, with Dr. Dre.

But he didn't have a whole set. So I wonder, it'll be really interesting to see who he brings out, like Kendrick Lamar and friends, or whoever pops out with him. I think that'll be good. A lot of people are asking, the homies been calling me like, "Jay, you think he's going to do the song 'Not Like Us'?" Which is the big diss song to Drake. Right. You know, in my opinion, I think that the platform is way too big for him to say some of the stuff that he wants that was on that record. Right. Do I think he'll perform like bits and pieces? Maybe. I don't know.

I don't know how they're going to do that. But it's funny. People were saying, oh, how much does he get paid? But they don't pay anybody to do that. They do it for free. Yeah, I don't know. No, that's what they did. They said every artist who's ever done that has seen like all their their, like, sales go up, their streaming go up and all that.

Everything, everything. Yeah, it all goes up for sure. That, uh, do you— so with the beef between Kendrick and Drake, right, it's just, it's, it's ironic because Drake and J. Cole put out a song where they're, you know, it's kind of like they were— they not kind of, they said that they were bigger than the Super Bowl. Oh, okay. And So Kendrick is performing there, but then it came out that Drake has said that he's turned down the Super Bowl 4 times. And I call bullshit on that.

That's weird. I don't think anybody would turn the Super Bowl down. How the hell?

Now, maybe if he was requested to be like a guest because he wanted, you know, his ego is so big that he wanted to be the main headliner. I could see that. But Why the hell would you turn down a Super Bowl? I don't, I don't believe you. You need more people, bro. But yeah, yeah, that's too weird.

And then I can't believe we're talking about the Super Bowl.

It's not even— we didn't even— it's like week 2, right?

Yeah, week 2 or 3 in football. And then today, like, they announced the Fed lowered the interest rate half a percent, which they said they were going to do a quarter percent.

Oh, they did more than they said that they were going to.

Right. And they did a half a percent.

Well, it was supposed to be a whole. They were going to take—

Well, no, they were going to do a quarter percent over the last few quarters, but they never did any. Yeah.

It was supposed to be 1 by the end of this year. They said that they— I was listening to NPR.

It was going to be more than 1.

Yeah, actually it was. And NPR was like, we ain't nowhere near that. Yeah. And so the half, we'll take it. I guess.

I don't know. I don't think it's going to help much at this point with inflation.

They need to figure it out.

I mean, it's just way too high. What the hell? I don't know. I don't know. I read this other story that popped out today. Is that instant bank payments? So Walmart partnered with Fiserv, I guess, is their credit card processor, and you're going to be able to instantly pay, you know, using FedNow through some Walmart app.

That's why you can't use Apple Pay. Where? At Walmart.

They don't have Apple Pay? Well, they don't want to pay the 10 or 20 basis points to Apple, that's why.

I don't know, but people be— it is a pain in the ass.

No, no, I'm just saying that's the deal. They don't want to be waiting there.

Yeah, at checkout, and someone be in there, they'll fuck 300 items, and you know what I mean? Yeah. And they're sitting there trying to pay and their money's on Apple Pay.

You're right.

So then you got to wait in line for them to figure out how to— whatever they got to do to move the money around. And that's crazy. I don't know why that's crazy that they're being that scandalous and cheap.

But the— in this— the instant bank payment thing is crazy because you have to— whenever you do that, we just watched a, a, uh, demo, a demo on, on an instant bank payment. Instant bank payment, you got to scan like the QR code, then you got to go to your go to the website, and then you have to log into your— you have to click which bank you want to use, log into your bank again. So you have to remember all your password and everything, and then facilitate the payment, right? No, I don't— I don't see people doing that in Walmart.

That's going to slow that line up even further.

It's crazy. Even more. I went to Walmart the other day. I couldn't believe it. I saw that like 2 cashiers open. I needed one item, some light bulbs, which I haven't been able to figure out.

Oh, I'm sorry. And self-checkout is terrible.

No. So, so I, I, so I get in this long line and then I go over there, man. I want to tell you, at least half the people were having problems like paying. And then there was somebody and they tried to pay with Apple Pay and they couldn't pay. So there, after they rung up, like a whole giant cart full of stuff. And I was like, what's going on? I didn't see, but that's what— then I heard them say something about Apple Pay and they couldn't pay with every Saturday morning that me and my wife run to Walmart to get our toiletries and stuff like that, right?

I guarantee it that that happens.

That's crazy. So that— and then I'm watching this, um, podcast that I watch where it's these lawyers talking about credit card processing and people ending up on the match list and all this. Right. And we also get a lot of phone calls about merchants, you know, ending up on the match list. Right. So 99— like a lot of it is excessive chargebacks, right? You get too many chargebacks, you're going to end up on the match list. You're not getting off the match list for that. You owe money to the processor. You're not getting off the match list for that. Violation of terms of service. So the violation of terms of service, I just don't get it. I, I blame this on like Square, Stripe, PayPal. If someone's going over there and boarding a business and they approve it, and then the person's processing for 2, 3, 4 years, right? And then all of a sudden they go, you violated our terms of service because, oh, you're selling adult novel on your website.

Right.

So you have adult novelties on your website, right? Adult novelties on the website. And then, but you process it for 4 years. Now you're going to put the person on the match list. I don't agree with that. That's terrible. Yeah.

And then, I mean, that's because like we've talked about before, they, you know, they acquire portfolios or they get bought by a new bank or whatever.

No, but I'm just saying like they change.

They partner with a new bank. And now the bank is auditing who they're, you know, servicing. But I think they should get a warning. Yeah, no, that's just messed up that they could just totally kill your business in, in a click of a button. That's terrible. Like, I, I can only imagine, like, how many merchants out there, and they're, you know, one day they're, you know, driving a Mercedes-Benz, and then the next morning they go to use their credit card and They look like, oh no, I can't buy it.

But here's a new one. A guy ended up on the match list, of which two things. One, this guy had— somebody tried to get a merchant account and they used his information. So he got put on the match list. So I told him, you got to go get a police report. The guy's fighting with me. Oh, I don't want to get a police report. You got to go get a police report. And then And apparently with all the stolen data and the dark web, it's everywhere. But here's the one that killed me. You know, you have to have on your website, supposed to have that thing, accept the cookies. Yeah. Okay. So apparently there was a merchant and they didn't have the accept the cookies on there. And I don't want to say who the processor is. It starts with an S and ends with an E. Stripe. Oh yeah, them. And they put the guy on the match list for not having the cookie thing on the website.

That's bullshit.

How can you even do that? Apparently you have to have it. It's in the rules.

Well, no, you do have to have it. And it's in the rules. You should have accessibility. Like, that's another thing. Like, people don't understand the rules with having a website either. Like, having that cookies thing, being GDPR compliant. Having it so that people who are disabled can access and view your website. All of these things are written in law, right? Like, by law, you're— if you own a business and have a website that is accessible on the internet, these are the laws. So I think, so I think certain businesses have stricter standards.

Oh yeah, no, for sure.

Like, you know, for with high sensitive information, there's different standards. There's, there's a lot. So like, it's really up to the business owner to do the due diligence and know what the hell they're getting themselves.

I'm just saying, this cookies thing, the guys on the, on the match list, that's messed up.

Like, you couldn't send a guy an email like, hey yo, turn the cookies button on, bro. It's built into like 99— well, whatever. Like, you know, you install a plugin if it's where— whatever platform you're using, I guarantee you there's a little a button that you press or can click, like turn the cookies button on so that they get a notice. Because it's— and once they— the people who, like Wix, uh, what's the shit, Shopify, uh, now BigCommerce, all those things, they know the laws. So they're gonna, you know, they should be educating these merchants.

And then the other thing, I had this merchant that got shut off and they didn't have an SSL certificate. They got a warning, so they had to fix it. But I'm just saying, it's just crazy that they don't get a warning and they just get shut off.

Before we go, man, I just want to shout out the people of New York City for protesting about the guy who got shot in the subway in Brooklyn. Shout out to the people, man. F the PD for sure.

I don't know what happened with that.

Police killed a guy on the subway. Uh-oh. On the train. Not good. Yeah, that was terrible. So it was terrible in Brooklyn. So they were all the people were just hopping the turnstile screaming after me.

I have to look that up on.

Yeah, no, man. Shout out to the people. Hopefully the people, you know, the families, victims get justice. All right.

Peace out. Be to be. Mash the subscribe button. Follow and share with your friends.

Namaste. Namaste.