2393 FBF: Bobby Monks - Uninvested, How Wall Street Hijacks Your Money & How to Fight Back

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welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your Financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show, episode number 608608. Thank you so much for joining me. This is your host, Jason Hartman and today we will be talking about Uninvested with Bobby Monks and we're going to talk about Wall street and some interesting stuff there, how they hijack our money and how to fight back. Should be good discussion with him. So that'll be coming up in a moment. But first, gosh, I am back in town here, back to San Diego. Flew from Fort Lauderdale all the way to San Diego last night and it was the longest trip ever. Not that that's such a long trip, mind you. You know, we do this regularly, fly across the country, no big deal. But, but Coco, Coco Hartman, my dog daughter, AKA daughter, came with me and that was her longest flight so far and she did great. So that's good. Gosh, the Tony Robbins event. Just still thinking about that. Still want to talk to you about that a little more after I digest it. But you know what, one of the big takeaways, and this is not new, I remember thinking about this many, many years ago. But what questions are we asking ourselves? And those questions really determine the quality of our life. I remember Tony talking about this many years ago and he talked about Albert Einstein and how Einstein asked himself different questions than other people were asking themselves. And really, you know, I've always taught salespeople over the years when I had a traditional real estate firm, you know, I had a batch of over 60 salespeople that I was training constantly every week. And I always would say, you know, the person asking the questions is the person who is leading the conversation. And I'm sure you would agree that that's true. But think of this in the realm of self talk, right? You know, we're all talking to ourselves all day long. We are talking to ourselves constantly. And this mostly isn't out loud yet. Maybe for some of us it is, but. But when we talk to ourself, we're asking questions of ourself all the time. You know, we're asking questions like, how could they do that? You know, how could someone be so evil? How could someone be so dishonest? How could someone totally lack integrity? How could someone show up late? How could someone not keep their promise? How could someone, you know, take advantage of me like that? How come there's never enough time to do anything? How come the day goes by and I feel like I didn't get anything done? How come I can't get enough sleep? How come I'm not eating right? You know, what do the answers to these questions, what do they cause? What do they lead us to believe in our life? Well, those questions, they determine the direction we go, right? Because we all naturally want to answer the question. And so one of the exercises that Tony had us do is explore what our primary question is, the primary question of our lives. And in so doing that once we discover our primary question, you know, the sort of the. Now we have many questions, of course, and I just gave you an example of some of them. But when we ask, when we figure out, you know, what maybe that number one primary question is that, you know, we're always answering, and the answer to that determines the direction of our lives. And then if we change the primary question and decide on a new primary question. So I just thought of those examples I just gave you off the top of my head. But, you know, we could ask ourselves a different question, and that will determine a whole different attitude. Maybe we can ask ourselves a question that makes us grateful and makes us appreciate things and what we have. Like, one of mine was, you know, I constantly feel like I'm in this battle with time, and certainly a lot of this is my own fault because I'm constantly taking on new things and more things. And I don't know why I do this to myself, but I just. I don't know, I just kind of like it, I guess. And in doing so, you know, it feels like time is always scarce to me. And sometimes I think you know, why am I doing all this stuff? I've already made it financially at least most people would probably consider that I have. It's not like I spend all this money, you know, it's not like I live some lavish lifestyle, going out and, you know, flying epic first class all over the world and going out to the fanciest restaurants and the fanciest nightclubs and getting, you know, bottle service on the prime table and, you know, all of this kind of stuff. I don't even like to drink, okay?

Hardly.

I mean, I. It's amazing how my alcohol consumption is just dramatically reduced in the past several years. And I think that's probably a good thing, lest we get off on a tangent, right? But you know, my question, I think this is like one of my real primary questions in life is why isn't there enough time to get everything done? But, you know, you could also ask yourself another question like, why? Well, gosh, what was mine? I can remember my primary question. I wrote it down. But I don't have my workbook handy. See, you gotta remember this stuff, obviously. But, you know, maybe. Oh, yeah. The primary question, the new primary question that I came up with was something like this. How can I be grateful for and enjoy every moment of life? So you see how different that is. My mind will answer my mind's question. You know, it's like we have two personalities in our head going on and on. And I know I'm not the only one. We all are wired this way. We all have the same thing. So we have this debate committee that is always debating these things. And, you know, one side of the committee is asking the question and another side is answering the question. So if my question to myself, and maybe you have this question or whatever your question is, you know, maybe, maybe for many of us, I mean, look at Gluttonous America, right?

Welcome to this week's edition of Flashback Friday. Your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason has hand picked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.

You know, how come I can't lose weight? How come I can't eat? Right? You know, what if you asked yourself a different question? What if you said something? I can't think of this off the top of my head. Look, I'm not Tony, okay? But you know, what if you ask yourself the question of, isn't it amazing? And this is formed as a question, isn't it amazing how plentiful, great, healthy food is? You know, so if you ask yourself that question, what are you gonna find? What are you gonna focus on? Right? You're gonna focus on all of this great healthy food and all these great options out there, rather than why can't I lose weight, you know, or, you know, why am I always struggling with my finances versus why do I have so much compared to two thirds of the world? That, by the way, I'll remind you, we've talked about this before on the show. Lives on only $2 a day. Okay? So that question we. Those questions we ask ourselves determine a heck of a lot about the quality of our lives. So just think today. What question are you asking yourself? And what are some of the answers to that question? And then how about formulating a new question and think of some of the answers to that new question and think of how much better that new question could serve you. Okay? So, you know, that's another one of the lessons I got from the past six days with Tony Robbins. It was really cool. We were fortunate enough to get a picture with Tony and his wife. Actually, Coco is in the picture too, so. So I think that might be the first time someone's dog got a picture with Tony, maybe, you know, so I'll. I'll probably stick that on my Facebook page here soon. And the Facebook page, of course, is Jason Hartman.com. so you go to Facebook.com/Jason Hartman.com for the company page and you'll see that there probably later this week. I'll get it posted anyway. Yeah, a lot of good stuff coming out of that. Boy. We got two more people interested today. They were asking me if they can come as a guest to our soon to be upcoming, awesome Dubai trip. And yes, you can. So think about that. Airfare is incredibly reasonable on Emirates, one of the best airlines on planet Earth. It's amazing. Can't wait to fly it myself. It'll be my first time. So go to venture alliancemastermind.com that's venture alliancemastermind.com. check out some details about the Dubai trip coming up in February. Meet the Masters is totally sold out, so no more tickets available for that. That's in January. But we're looking forward to seeing all of you there. We also decided to do a little charity fundraiser and we sold just a few tickets to the VIP dinner on Friday night. And thank you so much for your support. They sold instantly. I mean, just, I couldn't believe it. You know, we actually oversold them because two people didn't get in fast enough. And they said, well, I don't know, for some reason I had some problem registering. So anyway, we, we, we oversold that by a little bit, but no big deal. Thank you for your support. And that will go to a good cause. I think we're just going to donate that money to the Anthony Robbins Foundation. You know, they're, they're doing some good work and they got a four star rating on charity Nav. Is that what it's called? Or NavStar. Anyway, whatever the website is that, you know, kind of like monitors and publishes the financials and the work the charities are doing. So anyway, that one's as good as any. They do some great work. And we'll donate that money to the Anthony Robbins Foundation. So thank you for your support of that. We look forward to seeing you at the VIP dinner on Friday night. We may have an organized group dinner on Saturday evening as well. We're working on that. More details upcoming on that one. And we're just looking forward to seeing you at Meet the Masters. It's just a few weeks away, so it's going to be, it's going to be great. And, you know, let's get to our guest. Without further ado, I think you're going to enjoy this interview with Bobby Monks. So here we go. It's my pleasure to welcome Bobby Monks to the show. He is the former chairman of Spinnaker Trust and Institutional Shareholder Services. He's author of Uninvested How Wall Street Hijacks your Money and how to Fight Back. You know me, I think Wall Street's the modern version of organized crime. Bobby, welcome. How are you?

Very well, and thanks for having me on the show.

Yeah, yeah. It's good to have you. First of all, you have a bit of a unique background coming at this. I mean, are you a Wall street guy or not?

Well, I would say I am, in part. I have been all around the investment process. As you mentioned earlier, I was chairman of a trust company, I've been founder of a bank, and I was chairman of Institutional Shareholder Services. I've also been a, I'm also a real estate developer and an entrepreneur. So I've had private equity invest in me and I've invested in private equity. So I've really looked at this from the perspective of an insider. And that process was very illuminating because as it's evolved over the last 10 to 15 years, it made me more and more concerned for the average investor.

You know, a lot of people have just totally lost faith in Wall Street. First of all, talk to us about the problem. You say that it's a systemic problem. And by the way, I should mention, you know, I have a lot of Wall Street, Wall street people on the show, a lot of Wall street, you know, related people in some way. You know, I constantly say that, you know, Wall Street's the modern version of organized crime and they kind of laugh about it. And, and you know what, Interestingly though, I would, you would think they'd be offended at me saying that, but they actually just agree, or at least they pretend to agree. And you seem to agree too. What's going on systemically here? I mean, I know there are a lot of good individual people that work on Wall street, but the system just. Is it systemically corrupt?

Well, I think it really is. And I think, and let me just tell you a couple of facts. First of all, 90% of financial advisors do have to put the interest of their clients first. So that means they can sell them products that really aren't in their best interest, that are really more in the interest of the person who's selling the product. I'm sure that you've heard about all the fees that are charged. And the problem with those fees is they're multi layered. They're often undisclosed and they're often layered. The average fee for a 401 is over 2.5%. So over a long period of time, say a retirement process of 30 years, that can add up to a tremendous amount of money. One of the principal elements of this is your money manager investing in the same things that they're putting you in. And if they aren't, how come? And it's also the only industry that I know where you get paid even if you lose somebody money. So there are a lot of what I would say forms of legal larceny that are really very, very detrimental to especially retirees and that over a period of time, these retirees are going to end up in a situation where they're not going to have enough money to retire.

That is a sad, sad statement, state of affairs, isn't it? But the systemic problem, did you really say what that is? I mean, did you get to the heart of it when you just spoke about it?

Well, I mean, again, let me just give you a couple of examples of where there's legal larceny. There are fees that are in mutual funds called 12B1 fees. And those fees are about 0.25% that is charged to the mutual fund investors for essentially marketing the mutual fund to brokers. But the mutual fund doesn't have to disclose that fee. So they can say that there are zero fees for a mutual fund, but in fact they're charging the client 0.25%. There's another element called revenue sharing which happens a great deal with 401ks, where the mutual fund actually pays the administrator to get on the menu of the 401k. So the administrator, rather than doing what's good for the employee, is getting paid to do something that's good for the mutual fund, even if that mutual fund isn't appropriate for the employer. Then there's soft dollars, which is essentially just a kickback scheme. So there are multi areas here where the average investor is systematically just taken advantage of.

And this is just unbelievable. So in other words, you know, if you go hire a real estate agent, theoretically, I'm not saying it works in practice, but they have a fiduciary obligation to you as the client. That's the highest level of obligation. It's not just a good faith and fair dealings obligation, it's a fiduciary. Not saying that it doesn't work out and that it works out in practice that way by any means, but at least that's what it's supposed to be. Right. But like in Wall street, in this Wall street related stuff that you were mentioning, they don't even put that window dressing on there. Right.

It's absolutely legal larceny. It's unbelievable, Jason. I mean, I think it's. And unfortunately you have, if you look at your average investor, someone who's contributing with 401k, they work hard all day, they're bringing up a family life can be overwhelming. They don't really have the time to be able to talk to their investor in a way that ultimately would illuminate to them what's going on. So you have a system to the average investor that feels very overwhelming and that feels incredibly complex. And so that a lot of the times Wall street uses that sense of being overwhelmed, that sense of complexity to essentially intimidate the average investor, which is, I think, very, very unfortunate.

Yeah. Wow. It's just something else. Well, okay, so is there anything investors can do about this?

Well, yes, I think there's a number of things that investors can do. And I think some of the good news is that you're really looking at fees going down because both institutional and individual investors are starting to wake up and say, well, look, we don't want to be taken advantage of anymore. So what you can do if you and I've outlined it in my book, is essentially contact your investment advisor, whoever that may be, and ask them a series of questions. And those questions are, do you have to put my interest first? What are all the fees that I am charged? And I want the fees that are disclosed and those fees that are undisclosed.

So wouldn't they just. The first thing I would think is, you know, first of all, we got to, we got to make sure people understand that we're only getting past the investment advisor, which is only one layer in peeling back the proverbial onion here, right?

That's correct.

And I'm glad you agree with that. But, you know, wouldn't it be Bobby, though, that why don't they just, don't they just lie to you, you know, when you ask them these questions, you know.

Well, you know, again, I think the important, important thing is to ask the series of questions that I articulated in the book. And if you're not comfortable with that answer, then you can go next door and you should ask the next guy until you are comfortable with the process. It takes a little bit of time, but I tell you, it's the most valuable time that you can spend. Let me just give you a figure here. If you were to invest $25,000 with an average return of 7% over 35 years, 1% would cost you $65,000. Okay. If the average 401 is charging you 2.5%, then think how much money that is over a period of time. So if you're the average employer, it makes sense for you financially to go talk to whoever the company has for a financial advisor and ask them the questions before you Invest in the 401. What are the fees I'm being charged? And if they can't answer that question into a way that you're comfortable, then I wouldn't invest in that 401.

Yeah. Okay, interesting.

Well, and again, I mean, I think you've seen it in the institutional market for a long time. I mean, finally the institutional market is starting to wake up. And you know, CalPERS is a perfect example of that, where they were charged billions of fees that were just totally inappropriate. And so I think that the average investor can take a page out of the institutional investors book and begin to negotiate with their money managers.

Okay, so you're talking about two kind of different things here. Some people that just want to go and find an investment advisor directly, they just walk into Ameriprise or Merrill lynch or one of these companies and others who are working in a company who have a 401k plan. Plan.

Right.

And basically they're both getting Ripped off, probably.

That's correct.

Right, okay. Yeah. So I just want to distinguish between those two. But the 401k manager you talked earlier about how they can just outright do things that are intentionally not in the investor's best interest, right?

That's correct. They can't do that. And again, it's all perfectly legal, but it is a. Just because it's legal doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make it good for investors. Essentially. You know, what the mutual fund industry has done as it relates to 401k is just continually find new ways in which to vacuum up fees from the clients. And this. What is really interesting is, as I think I mentioned to you earlier, is the Department of Labor is. Is now trying to change that, and they're trying to heighten the fiduciary responsibility of anybody who manages a retirement account. And the heightened fiduciary responsibility would be that they had to put the best interest of the clients first. And once you have to put the best interest first, then a lot of this, what I call legal larceny, then goes away.

Mm, yeah. Right. Okay. So what do people do about that, though? I mean, that's not anything anybody can control. You're just talking about the law, right?

Yeah, Right now. Well, what's interesting about this is the only person that has to ultimately makes the decision is the President of the United States. And so it seems like this law is actually going to go through or this ruling is going to go through. There are some shortfalls. You know, the industry lobbied back to try to prevent this from happening and have a series of carve outs which aren't very good. But I think this will make some baby steps in terms of beginning to make it a little bit better for investors. I think one of the things that's very interesting about this is that finra. Are you familiar with finra?

Sure I am, yeah. And tell the listeners all about finra.

Well, FINRA is the organization.

It's supposed to protect the consumer. Right.

Brute protects the consumer from Wall street, and it's actually paid for by Wall Street. So, you know, rather than being a watchdog, it's more of a lapdog. And interestingly, FINRA has come out against this ruling. So here's this organization that's paid for by Wall street, that's supposed to protect consumers, that is coming out against a Department of labor ruling that wants to essentially put the best interest of the client first. It's unbelievable to me.

So you mean unbelievable in a good way, right?

Well, it's unbelievable that FINRA is coming out against the DOL ruling, you know, because.

Oh no. So the Department of Labor, that's the dol, by the way. So wait, what did the Department of Labor say and what did FINRA say? Just.

Well, the Department of Labor, as I mentioned earlier, is putting forth a ruling which says that anybody who manages a retirement account has to put the best interest of their clients first. It's a heightened fiduciary responsibility. The responsibility, the present fiduciary responsibility is that the investment only has to be suitable for the investor. So they move it up and it becomes, it has to be in the best interest. Finra. Right. Which is paid for by Wall street to essentially regulate the financial industry, has come out against the ruling.

Yeah, well, what a surprise, right? Yeah.

So again, rather than being a watchdog for consumers, it's become a lap dog for the industry. And I think that's incredibly sad.

Yeah, it is terribly sad. But you know what, it seems like it's that way pretty much everywhere where the bar association, it's just a club for lawyers, you know, they, they don't, they don't really sanction lawyers. I'm sure they got a couple of cases here and there, you know, to make an example of, but you file a bar complaint and basically nothing's going to happen. You know, it see, it seems like the last recourse really for the consumer in any field is to just go rant online. You know, it's just, it's unfortunate that we've gotten there because these regulatory bodies, they're, I'm just gonna say it, they're bullshit. They just seem like they're really, you know, I mean, when was FINRA created by the way? And how does Wall street pay for FINRA to exist, you know?

Well, FINRA is a self regulatory organization, an sro and it's the biggest one in the country. And it was, I'm not sure exactly when it was created.

Well, I'm looking here in Wikipedia for our listeners. Well, talking, I'm just curious when this

thing was created, but it was originally created in order to, so that the financial services industry would be self regulated.

Oh, July 2007. It's pretty new, right? Yeah. Wow. So how does Wall street fund finra, I wonder?

They pay fees to finra.

Yeah, right.

Directly. So I mean, they are, they are, they are essentially fund finra.

Yeah. See, see what, you know, what happens in these sort of cases is, you know, the governmental, you know, Congress will be saying, look, we're gonna, we're gonna come in and regulate you. And they say, oh no, wait, wait, wait, we'll do it ourselves. We'll form an organization which is basically a shill, right? And they've got this arbitration. And arbitration is like an epic scam, by the way. And so, you know, the aaa, the American Arbitration Association, I think is just a complete scam, just a disgusting organization. Just my opinion, the person who puts the arbitration clause in the contract always seems to somehow win. And the fact that these, these verdicts are not public, it's all hidden like some third world countries kangaroo court. It's just absurd. You know, it's just a completely absurd thing. All of this stuff should be be public record. So, you know, it says FINRA operates the largest arbitration forum in the United States for resolution of disputes between customers and member firms. Well, the customers aren't the member only the firms are. Right.

And of course they're getting paid. But one of the things, Jason, I do want to emphasize, you know, is that the system, you can, you know, the system can be demystified. You know, one of the things that I, that I do in the book is to try to demystify the system for the average investor. And I also believe that there are a number of ways in which you can reduce the cost to yourself of investing. And one of those ways is to invest in an index fund. Another way is to invest yourself. And investing yourself has been pooh, poohed by the financial industry because of course, if someone does that, they don't get any fees. But if you invest in 10 stocks, you know, and hang onto them for a long period of time, then that is a viable way to invest. And the mutual funds and the index funds, when they're selling, they say, well, you have to be diversified. Well, you can invest in any number of global companies that are very diversified and get your diversification there, or you

can just buy the S&P 500. And usually, from what I understand, the S&P 500 index fund beats all these mutual fund managers time and time again.

That's exactly correct. Especially net of fees. And index funds have their problems too.

What are their problems, by the way?

Well, first of all, not all index funds are the same. There are some index funds that actually charge fairly high fees. And then there's one of the things that is, I think, an unfortunate scam is that trading costs are not part of the cost ratios of either index funds or mutual funds. So every time they trade, that costs the investor a fee, but that fee is never disclosed. Another Downside of index funds is you don't really know what you own. And so you may end up owning a stock which is abhorrent to you, a company that does something that you don't like. And one of the problems with index funds is there are so many index funds. How do you decide which one to invest in? And so, you know, at the end of the day, a lot of the people don't know which index fund to invest in, so they have to hire a financial advisor, which then defeats the purpose of the low fees. And you know, if you want to try, if you want to have an exercise in frustration, try to find someone to talk to at an index fund about your account. That's next to impossible. And also, index funds don't vote, they're proxies. They tend to vote for management. And voting for management isn't always a good thing for investors. And that passivity, I believe, costs investor money.

Yeah, it's a tough world out there. So you've done some real estate investing, it sounds like.

Yes, I have. I've been a real estate developer for almost my entire career.

How come you're talking about stock stuff when you're a real estate developer? What kind of real estate do you develop?

Well, I do, I do a variety of different kinds of real estate. I do industrial properties, I do market rate apartments, I do a lot of affordable housing. And I also do office buildings and other commercial properties. And I feel, and I would totally admit to your audience that I am biased here, but one of the things about real estate developers is they tend to invest in their own projects. They don't get paid unless they're successful.

On Wall street you get paid either way, right?

In Wall street you get paid either way. And at the end of the day, you, through the dint of your own skills can cure the investment so that, you know, you have some capacity to be able to make change. You know, if a big tenant moves out, well then if you hustle enough, you can get another tenant. And you know, if there's a, if the taxes are too high, well, you can go back and negotiate with the municipality and try to lower your taxes. So there are ways in which as a developer that you can actually infect the investment, whereas a money manager has no capacity to infect their investment. 1 Now they're completely passive. And so I believe because of those reasons, it's better to invest in real estate or in actively manages private equity.

So is the actively managed private equity though, open to the small investor?

You know, unfortunately, it is not, you know, you have to be a qualified investor in order to be able to do that. And there are certain financial standards. And I think that's too bad. I also think that even the qualified investors or the wealthy investors have to be careful because that particular industry also charges way too many fees. They charge usually 2% of assets under management and then 20% after that as a bonus to themselves to either the

2 and 20 or now I'm hearing the 2 and 22, right?

Exactly. Exactly.

It's 2 and 22. And then on real estate deals, a lot of these syndicators, you know, because that's really private equity, too, you know, they're charging to be the general manager. Some of them will take 50% of the deal. No cash in the deal, you know.

Yeah. And I think that's why that it's better to, you know, to see if you can direct invest with the developer and because you cut out the middleman, you know, a lot of these funds.

Yeah, but a lot of times, that's what I'm saying. The developer is the. The syndicator and, you know, they'll take a big part. I mean, you know, it's. You got to shop that, too, and be careful, you know, like anything.

Yeah, I think that that is true. Yeah, that is true. That can happen sometimes. So, you know, there's no investment that's

completely safe, including the bank, that's for sure.

And. But at the end of the day, what I'm trying to emphasize to investors is spend a little bit of time trying to understand the system and then engage with the folks that are doing them and ask them the tough questions. If enough people ask these tough questions, then potentially it can change. Remember, these guys work for us, you know, the money managers. We pay them to work for us. They should do a good job for us, and they shouldn't get paid if they don't. And remember, the CEOs of corporations also work for us. We're the shareholders. So we need to stand up and start taking back the power that we do have.

Yeah. Well, I hope that someday happens. I hope there are better tools to be a watchdog developed eventually. Because, you know, we talked about the, you know, parts of this equation. But again, you know, maybe all of this goes well if someone follows your advice and is really careful who they choose, what they choose. But then they've still got the C suite at the company. You know, they've still got the execs that the board of directors, and they've all got their hand in the cookie jar, too. It was really a shame during the financial crisis when we saw these giant bonuses and the shareholders were losing their shirt. And still everybody at Goldman Sachs gets 660,000 a year bonus.

Yeah, I know. And it's unbelievable, you know, I mean, God didn't descend down from heaven and say that people at Goldman Sachs had to be paid that much.

Yeah, or anywhere else, for that matter. All these companies, you know, they're all. It's really, you know, the interests just aren't aligned, are they, Bobby? There's this, this misalignment of interest.

I think that that's exactly right, but I think the, the only way we're going to be able to take that back if it is, if shareholders actually stand up. And when I was chairman of Institutional Shareholder Services firsthand, I understand the power of shareholders. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that company, but, but what ISS did is it essentially voted proxies for institutional investors. So they would subcontract to us to electronically vote their proxies, also physically vote their proxies, and to make a recommendation on how they should vote their proxies. So in any given proxy contest, we were sometimes voting a very large percentage of the stock. So the CEOs had to come into our office and say, well, will you pass our outrageous compensation plans? And many times we said, no, we won't. So in that case, because of the collective power of shareholders, we were able to counteract the hegemonic power of corporations. And that is being done to some degree with activist investors right now. And ISS still exists and still does that. And it's much, much easier for individuals to vote their proxies. It's not.

That's, that's probably the way. That's probably the real watchdog organization. It's not finra. It's. It's this private organization. What's it called again?

Institutional Shareholder Services.

Yeah. And, and they're probably the real watchdog until they get bought off by Wall street. Because what do you want to bet that there's, there's something going on there too? You know, these, these execs are probably saying, oh, well, look, we'll, we'll hire some people from there to do some consulting work for us and make sure we, you know, send them some nice checks or maybe we'll advertise on their website or who the heck knows what they're doing, you know?

Well, any system can be corrupted, but if you look at the average investor now, you know, for many, many Years, people would get their proxies and then throw it in the trash can because nobody wanted to wade through this. And, you know, there's impossible, you know, verbiage that was what a proxy was. So either people just checked off for management or they threw it in the trash can. Now you can get a proxy electronically and they can identify the two or three issues in each proxy in simple language that says, and you can vote for those two issues for each company that make a difference, like executive compensation, who the auditor is, or whether they should merge with another particular company. So individual investors now have the tools because of the Internet that they didn't have to be able to be more engaged. And if enough investors stand up and do that, then I think that will make a real difference.

Yeah, yeah, good points. Hey, give out your website, Bobby. Tell people where they can find out more.

They, they can go to invested the book.com and they can go to my website or they can go to bobby monks.com either one.

Bobby monks.com as well. Okay. Good stuff. Bobby Monks, thank you so much for joining us.

Well, thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed it.

I've never really thought of Jason as subversive, but I just found out that's what Wall street considers him to be.

Really? Now how is that possible at all?

Simple. Wall street believes that real estate investors are dangerous to their schemes because the dirty truth about income property is that it actually works in real life.

I know. I mean, how many people do you know, not including insiders who created wealth with stocks, bonds and mutual funds? Those options are for people who only want to pretend they're getting ahead.

Stocks and other non direct traded assets are a losing game for most people. The typical scenario is you make a little, you lose a little and spin your wheels for decades.

That's because the corporate crooks running the stock and bond investing game will always see to it that they win. This means unless you're one of them, you will not win.

And unluckily for Wall Street, Jason has a unique ability to make the everyday person understand investing the way it should be. He shows them a world where anything less than a 26% annual return is disappointing.

Yep. And that's why Jason offers a one book set on creating wealth that comes with 20 digital download audios. He shows us how we can be excited about these scary times and exploit the incredible opportunities this present economy has afforded us.

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To get your Creating Wealth Encyclopedia Book 1, complete with over 20 hours of audio, go to jasonhartman.com store if you

want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month, just like a banker, Jason's Creating Wealth Encyclopedia series is for you. This show is produced by by the Hartman Media Company. All rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews. Please visit www.hartmanmedia.com or email mediaartmanmedia.com Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own and the host is acting on behalf of hartmanmedia. Com exclusively.