In this segment, the speakers discuss a scene from a movie where the acronym AUY is humorously claimed to mean nothing, but in reality it represents the initials of a man's three brothers and was the name of a dormant holding company. They explain that Ephraim, at age 17, took over this holding company—originally a label‑printing business that had been mothballed—registered it with the federal government, and used it to qualify for U.S. government contracts shortly after the 2003 Iraq invasion. The conversation then broadens to the massive nation‑building expenditures the U.S. made in Iraq and Afghanistan, estimating that $1‑2 trillion was spent through the government contracting system, linking that spending to the national debt and raising the question of where those trillions actually went.
Chapters
In the movie, there's the famous scene Jonah Hill is asked, what does AUY stand for? And he's like, oh, you mean like morally? And he's like, no, like what do the letters stand for? No, it stands for nothing. Like IBM stands for nothing. And the guy's like, no, it stands for International Business Machines. He's like, get the fuck out of here. You know? You know, so there's that scene in the movie and actually AUY does stand for something. It's, yeah. So that's one of the things they changed in the film. Cause it was funny. It stands for the initials of his dad's three sons. Oh, okay. So, and it was just a holding company that they weren't using.
It was just a holding company.
Originally started it as I think label printing business, and he just never did much with it. So it was just kind of like, you know, mothballed. Yeah. And so Ephraim took it over, registered it with the federal government so he'd be eligible to bid on government contracts. And this was in early 2005, like late 2004 when he started.
Yeah.
By himself. And he was still 17. That's why he's doing everything under his dad's company's name. And this was right after the invasion of Iraq. Right. The Bush administration pretty much destroyed Iraq, and then they were trying to build up the country and turn it into a democracy. That was the idea, right? They did the same thing in Afghanistan, right? Part of that nation-building process was they had to spend a lot of money to build this nation. So the way they spent money is through the government contracting system. I think they spent about $1 or $2 trillion on the entire— the Iraq-Afghanistan combo. Wow. Yeah. So that's some of our national debt. That's where it went.
