2445 FBF: A Heist in the Federal Reserve with Matthew Quirk NY Times Best-Selling Author of 'Hacking the Fed', '500' & 'The Directive'

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Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show. This is your host, Jason Hartman. Thank you so much for joining me today. This is episode number 396. It's 396. And today we're going to talk about hacking the Fed. We're going to talk with Matthew Quirk, whose latest project is entitled The Directive. And I think you'll find this to be very interesting and frankly rather scary how something like this could happen or does happen all the time. Maybe we'll see what Matthew says about that and talk about something that affects all of us. It's pervasive. I mean, the Federal Reserve is such an incredibly powerful entity. Literally, it touches almost everybody on Earth. That's how powerful our central bank is. And certainly, if the Fed doesn't touch every single one of the 7 billion people or so on Earth, combined with the cartel of all the other central banks, you've pretty much got the planet covered here, except for a few lost tribes that don't participate in the economy, but there's, there's hardly any of those anymore. And I would, I would argue that it even affects them. No one is unaffected because, uh, you can't be completely isolated anymore in today's interconnected world. It's just not possible. Before we do that though, we're going to talk about 1984. And no, I'm not talking about the Orwellian version of 1984, although it's an auspicious year to pick for what I am going to talk about because as, uh, so much of society has become rather Orwellian. Have you noticed that there's a camera everywhere looking at you nowadays? Have you heard about the NSA? Of course you have. And so we'll talk about 1984, but not Orwell's 1984, in just a moment here. But first, I want to just tell you about some of our upcoming episodes. Next episode, number 397, will be Forbes writer Rich Karlgaard, and he'll be talking about the soft edge and what's going on at Forbes and the economy and so forth. And then 398, Zach Bissonnette, some good advice from bad people. That's an interesting interview. And then 399 will be Bill Cheney with John Hancock Financial, and we're going to talk about the economy and some interesting stuff there and how it impacts investors. And then number 400, our 10th episode, for episode 400 will be Dan Millman, author of The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Such a famous book, millions and millions of copies sold in many, many languages, and a great movie, I must say. It's funny how you always hear intellectual snobs say, well, the book was better, every time a book is turned into a movie. And, uh, with this one, I don't know. Look it up on your Netflix queue and order a copy of the Peaceful Warrior movie because it is excellent, I must say. 401, it'll be just yours truly, uh, with a guest possibly. And then number 402, Christopher Barnett. We're going to talk about the future and how that impacts us, especially about 3D printing and computers. And it's amazing. Tonight I saw the movie Lucy. Have you seen that movie Lucy? I don't think it was any great movie by any means, but I will say that the subject matter was quite interesting. And I'm noticing there's a lot out about increasing the power of the mind and about technology in the future and all of us becoming superheroes. And we had Stephen Kotler on the show, the co-author of Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. I think, the book he co-authored with Peter Diamantis. And he's out with a new book entitled The Rise of Superman that is about the subject of flow. And he documents it pretty well, a subject that really, I don't know if too many people have ever covered. Oh gosh, forgive me, I'm going to butcher this name, but there's a book entitled Flow from, oh, maybe 15 years ago by Csikszentmihalyi. I believe that is a Czech author. And it talks about being in this state where you have superpowers, where you don't think about things, they just come to you. Because of flow. You know, Stephen Kotler's new book is pretty interesting. I invited him back on the show. We didn't schedule a date yet, but that's what that movie Lucy is about. And if you remember, there was another movie, it wasn't too famous. What was it called about that, that super drug? Oh gosh, I'll think of it later. I, you know, one of our listeners, I'm sure, I'm sure you guys have remembered this movie. Anyway, it's on Netflix also, and it's just about becoming superpowered and the power of the mind and the incredible power that is so untapped within us. So So interesting stuff there, and the future is just gonna be, I mean, amazing. And there is amazing stuff going on right now. I think we are at the point of massive, massive amounts of convergence in technology. And as I've said before, I credit a lot of this to the smartphone revolution, of course, originally launched by Apple and the iPhone, but many other great smartphones have come along since then. You know, I think we're gonna be seeing an iWatch here pretty soon and, you know, wearable computers. Google Glass never quite caught on. One of the cars that I'm looking at, thinking of buying a new car here, actually has Google Glass integration. So Google Glass integrates with the car, and of course the car can be turned on and off, and you can set the temperature in the car with your mobile app on your smartphone. The car practically is driving itself now, and I've talked many times about self-driving cars and what I think— just an amazing, amazing revolution. It's going to impact real estate significantly. I've mentioned it before, but you know, when I went to Cleveland recently to meet my mom, uh, before her surgery at the Cleveland Clinic just a few weeks back, I considered driving to Cleveland and I looked it up on Google Maps and it takes 31 hours, which in my opinion is way too long to be driving. But I'll tell you, if I had a self-driving car, I would think quite differently about that. Think about what that means for expensive real estate areas where real estate is really expensive. If transportation becomes becomes automatic. If you can just get in a car and sleep or rest or meditate or do yoga or work on your laptop or read a book or play with your dog, that changes everything. And the only condition— I mean, the self-driving car is upon us nowadays. These cars pretty much drive themselves on the highway with laser-assisted cruise control and braking and lane departure systems that will keep the car in the lane It's amazing. And of course, Google has developed the car that will drive on surface streets. So it's an incredible time.

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 handpicked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.

But think about what this means. Like, do you really have to live in an expensive place like LA or Orange County or San Diego or San Francisco? It's nice, but the economics change. I mean, are the economics really there if you can just live in an outlying area and jump in your self-driving car and be there in 45 minutes? And if other cars are self-driving, really, that could massively reduce, if not eliminate, traffic. And I remember when I was a little kid reading about how self-driving cars would make it so that you could drive— or the, I should say, the car could drive— 80 miles an hour, 1-foot distance from the car in front of you from that car's bumper, because all the cars would operate together in a network fashion. So, you know, the old rule is— and well, it's the current rule still, folks, it's the current rule— is that you should have 1 car length for every 10 miles per hour of speed. So if you're going 80 miles an hour, you should be 8 cars behind the car in front of you in order to stop quickly enough and react quickly enough. That's the minimum distance. Of course, more distance is even safer. But if, if the cars are all computerized— I don't just mean some cars, you know, maybe your car is a self-driving car, but the other cars aren't self-driving— but when they all get to the point where they're all self-driving and they're all tied into a network and they're networked together, so the cars become incredibly smart where your car is talking to the car in front of it and the car behind it and all the other cars in its area. Wow. I mean, incredible what you could do. You could virtually eliminate the concept of traffic. Look at— the roads are big enough to handle a lot more traffic. Problem is that when one car slows down or changes lanes, it messes everybody else up because the cars aren't acting in a network fashion. And of course, when an accident happens, that really fouls things up. Amazing things. And I know there are spooky and ominous sides to this. I get it completely. You know, cars, like any electronic device, can be hacked. You know, people will hack your car and maybe they'll drive you off a cliff. I don't know. You know, I'm sure we're gonna have some ugly stuff go on. Of course, it has very ominous things when it comes to the government and the disgusting spying that's going on with the NSA and so forth, and how the government will be hacking into our cars and so forth. And hopefully liberty and freedom will win that war, but you know, that remains to be seen. But in either case, when it comes to economics and when it comes to investing, so many things are an absolute disaster. It really looks like the only way out of this mess, only way out, is to inflate our way out of the debt because we are spending so much more than we are taking in as a country. And when you look at the gross domestic product, the GDP, and you look at that compared to population increase and the rate of inflation, we have negative GDP. The economy is getting smaller, not larger, when you look at it in real terms with the proper adjustments. So that's leaving a lot of people out. And what will happen with robotic technology? Now, there are many people who I think, by the way, are very wrong. I, I think they may be right for short bursts of time during transition phases. These people think robotics will cause massive unemployment and massive civil unrest because they will displace many workers. I remember reading predictions back from the early '70s when they talked about how technology and computers and automation would basically make it so people only had to work 3 days a week. Well, you see how wrong that prediction was, right? We're all working more than ever, and the boundary between work and play, or work and rest, it's all been totally blurred because we're so connected now with technology. In fact, most of us, at least yours truly, but I think there's a lot of people here, have become rather addicted to being connected. I mean, I like being connected. I don't know about you. I, I find it pleasurable to be connected, frankly. You know, when I want to know something, I want to just look it up. I want to know about it. If I hear a word, I want to know. If I hear about a concept or an idea or want to look up personality or some, someone who's making news for one reason or another, I want to look it up right then. I don't want to be unconnected. This whole idea of being on a desert island and being disconnected and unplugging, I kind of don't get it. I personally think life is about learning and growing and, and experience. And part of that, a big part of that learning comes from being connected to the most incredible knowledge base we've ever had in human history. And that is, of course, uh, the internet that Al Gore jokingly, of course, invented. Al Gore likes to take credit for that, of course. Uh, Mr. Hypocrite Al Gore, one of the biggest hypocrites I think I know. But anyway, I digress. Okay. So let's look at 1984 before we go to our guest today. 1984. Why did I pick this year? Well, it's somewhat arbitrary, but I think it's kind of interesting. It's the Orwellian year, so it's a good year to pick. In 1984, let's look at a few things that were going on. Let's look at some things that were, uh, making news, and let's look at the prices of things, and let's compare them today, and let's talk about how that impacts you as an investor. Well, in 1984, after 37 weeks Thriller was knocked off the top album list by Footloose. Remember Footloose? That was about my adult hometown of Orange County, California, where fun is almost illegal. The town of Footloose, uh, where you can't dance because dancing is, uh, illegal. That same year, IBM released MS-DOS. Remember DOS? D-O-S stands for Disk Operating System, version 3.0. Kathy Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to walk in space, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was finally completed. Wow, that took a long time, didn't it? Check out some other things here. Great Britain agreed to return Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China under the condition that Hong Kong maintains its capitalist system. Well, China is a pretty capitalist country, so, uh, you know, forget about that communist label. They're pretty capitalistic if you ask me. Okay, so of course Of course, the late great Ronald Reagan was reelected. He defeated Walter Mondale. Mondale, what an unimpressive guy he was, huh? And check this out, in the world of technology, which we all thought was incredible back then, Sony manufactured the world's first portable one-piece CD player. Yes, the CD Walkman. And I remember when I got one of those and I was so excited because it wasn't a tape. The sound was so much better and I could go skateboarding or rollerblading. Rollerblading used to be kind of in back then. Isn't it funny how these sports go in and out of style? That one went away, at least I think it did, I don't know. And I could listen to my CD player. Now of course, uh, it's quite a bit better. You can listen to my podcast on your iPod or your smartphone. Cosby Show was a big deal, Family Ties was a big deal, and Knots Landing was a big deal in 1984. And in sports, U.S. World Series champions the Detroit Tigers, U.S. Open for golf— that was a good old fuzzy Soler, and pro football champion was the LA Raiders. Okay, and now, you know, LA can't even get unified enough to have a football team. Let's look at the money side of this. Okay, let's look at some cost of living stuff from 1984. And I'll bet you most of our listeners remember 1984. Okay, because I'd say our average listener was probably born, I'm gonna say, in the '70s, but I don't really know. I mean, all of you people in 164 countries who are listening to my show, you know, we don't really have much in the way of statistics on you. We would love to have that, you know, when you become clients of ours and you're buying investment properties through us, then we get to know you a little better. But empirical, cold hard stats, boy, we'd love to have more of that. Okay, so check this out. Cost of living in 1984: a new house would cost you $86,730, while the average income— get this— was $21,599 per year. The typical new car would cost you $8,700 The average rent was $350 per month. Now wait a second, you must be thinking, hey Jason, let's apply some of your numbers back to 1984. Okay, the average house was $87,000. We'll round it off. So at a 1% RV ratio, how much should you get every month from that house? Well, you should get $870, right? But the average rent was only $350 per month. So either this survey is, is really weighted by looking at expensive markets, because that's about the same picture you have in Los Angeles today. In fact, it's almost the exact same picture in an overpriced market like LA. And I'm only picking on LA because I grew up there. There are many other overpriced, nonsensical markets around the country, but I'll pick on LA because I grew up there and I remember I remember when my mother bought her first house in Los Angeles that she still owns. It's on Kelton Avenue. I lived in that house for a while, and I remember she paid $62,500 for that 2-bedroom, 1-bath crappy house that was probably built in the '40s or maybe, maybe the '50s, probably the '40s, I think. She bought it from a guy named Jerry for $62,500. And she still owns that house today. And get this, this is going to be really instructive because that house is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $800,000 today. And I don't know exactly what it rents for, but I'm— I think it rents for $3,300 per month. You know, why does mom still own that house? The depreciation schedule has run out completely because she's owned it for more than 27.5 years. The RV ratio is terrible. Well, you know, old dogs, they don't want to learn new tricks, right? And Mom is getting it slowly, and we've talked about Mom many times, and she's been on the show, and this is an ongoing debate that we have. But, you know, again, having a lot of equity in your real estate makes you a bad manager. Why does it do that? Because the debt is not there. It doesn't put the pressure on you to really get the, get the high rents out of your properties and get high good RV ratios. But isn't it that interesting that that house is worth 10 times just about 10 times the 1984 house, and the rent is about 10 times the average rent back in 1984. It's like almost an exact 10x equation, but the equation still doesn't work. The tuition to Harvard University— Harvard, let's park the car in Harvard Yard. I love that Boston accent. Ever go out drinking with a person from New England and get them to say park the car in Harvard Yard? You know, it's, it's really fun. Just try that out sometime. The average tuition to Harvard Harvard was $9,000 per year, and a movie ticket— get this— a movie ticket was only $2.50. Gasoline was $1.10 per gallon, and a first-class postage stamp was 20 cents. That was 1984. Okay, now, at the Creating Wealth Conference, at the Creating Wealth Seminar, which, by the way, we have another one coming up in beautiful— and I'm gonna say it really is very beautiful— Little Rock, Arkansas, at the end of September. And we've got several of you signing up for that. And by the way, many of you have been asking about the hotel. We have an awesome hotel. It's only 1 year old and it is so swanky. I just really like this hotel and you'll get all the hotel information. We got a special room block, $119 per night for the hotel. Breakfast is included, by the way. And so we're going to be having breakfast together, not on Saturday. You'll do breakfast on your own on Saturday and then we'll start the Creating Wealth Bootcamp at 9:00 AM. And what is that, September 27th? I believe it's the last weekend of September. Anyway, on Sunday we'll meet eat for breakfast together before we get on the bus and go tour distressed properties and good investments that you can make. And of course, we'll have lunch together on Saturday and dinner together on Saturday night, and we're picking some nice restaurants for you on that right now. So be sure to join us for that. It'll be a lot of fun and very, very educational. In terms of food, and you know, I don't shop for many of those things, so I can't really give you a metric on the price, but coffee was $2.40 per pound. I pay $2 a cup at Starbucks. Bacon $1.55 per pound, eggs were 58 cents per dozen, and a loaf of bread was 93 cents. So, uh, so that's just totally, totally amazing. In that chart, you know the one that I talk about in the Creating Wealth Boot Camp, right? Well, in that chart that I famously talk about all the time, which is really, really instructive about investing, I'm going to share some numbers since we're talking about 1984. Get this, in that chart I talk about the 1972 dollar, and this is where I talk about how as income property investors we basically get paid to borrow money because we're arbitraging inflation and we're arbitraging debt service. Remember, arbitrage means— in my, uh, simpleton definition, it means exploiting the differences in things. Okay, so we want to arbitrage as much as we can in life because we want to exploit unnatural differences in the marketplace, okay, where things just get out of whack sometimes and don't make much sense, and we can arbitrage things. So we arbitrage inflation when we borrow money against commodities like income property, because that's a commodity. It's made of raw commodity materials that are traded globally, not attached to the dollar. Then in addition to that, we take the debt on that property, and we don't pay our own debts when we're real estate investors. No way. That's, that's not a good plan. We outsource our debts to people called tenants. The tenants pay our debts for us. Okay, so in this example, in 1972, a dollar was worth a dollar. By 1984, that same same dollar was only worth 40 cents. But get this, from 1984 into 2001, that dollar got cut almost in half again, because by 2001, from 1984, it was only worth 24 cents. And when you look at the things I just shared about 1984 and the prices, you can see how incredibly real inflation is and how incredibly real the debasement of our currency really is. This is the ultimate— it's part of the ultimate investing equation that I talk about frequently, okay? And we'll go into that in detail at the Creating Wealth Boot Camp in Little Rock at the end of September. So please do register for that, JasonHartman.com, click on events. After you register, you will be emailed all the hotel information and stuff like that so you can get in on that great room block. That's the thing we want to do. We want to arbitrage this stuff. Exploit the differences, take advantage of that, and it is a phenomenal, phenomenal strategy. So as we talk about the debasement of currency and we ask ourselves, well, what happens if the currency isn't debased? What happens if inflation doesn't happen? Well, first of all, I think that is highly, highly, highly, highly unlikely, but maybe that unlikely event will be the event that happens. Maybe we will have stagnation, and I don't want to say stagflation, just stagnation, because stagflation means a stagnant economy with inflation. That was the Jimmy Carter doomsday economy. It was, it was pretty rotten. Okay, but stagnation where nothing happens, everything just kind of stays even keel. Or maybe we'll have deflation. Well, it's easy to talk about examples of getting paid to borrow and so forth with inflation inflation. But if we have deflation, literally investors will have almost no place to find yield. They're certainly not likely to find it in the stock market. They are likely to find it in a bank account because your bank account— actually, the value of the dollar will increase during deflation and your money will appreciate. In essence, anything with intrinsic value will more valuable. Okay, intrinsic value things always become more valuable, but not exactly. So, so you could say, well, the dollar has intrinsic value, and then the gold bugs will argue and they'll say, well, the dollar is not backed by anything, don't you know? It's just paper and ink. Yeah, they're kind of right, but they really only understand a part of the argument. They don't get the holistic picture because the dollar is really backed by the military. The dollar is backed by aircraft carriers, battleships, nuclear submarines, fighter jets, The dollar is pretty well backed if you ask me, okay? And it's awfully hard for anybody to steal that stuff. They could steal your gold, but they're not going to steal your whole military. So the dollar is backed by something, and only a fool would think otherwise. If we have the deflationary environment, which again is highly unlikely, but say that it happens, well then, okay, fine. You just get yield, you just get cash flow. That's what you get from your income property investment, and you get tax benefits. Not as good as the inflationary environment will actually create tons of wealth for people following my plan, but, um, I could be wrong. That's the disclaimer I always make. Maybe we will have deflation, but, uh, the investment works either way. It works in an inflationary environment and a deflationary environment, as long as you're investing for cash flow, for income. And that's why we we call it income property. Creating Wealth Boot Camp, register for that at JasonHartman.com, click on events, and you'll also get a property tour thrown in with it and a bunch of great talking and coaching together as we share several meals together as well. And by the way, many of you have been asking, well, when does the tour end? We will conclude the tour by about 4:30, 5 o'clock on Sunday afternoon. So if you're looking to schedule flights. You can come in anytime on Friday. Uh, we don't have any, uh, group event on Friday or anything like that. Come in Friday at your leisure and check into your room and relax for a big day ahead on Saturday from 9 to 6. And then we have dinner together that night as well. And by the way, you won't pull out your wallet for any of this. All the meals are on us, and, and we'll have a great themed lunch for you on Sunday as well. We'll conclude by Sunday at about 4:30 or 5 o'clock. Okay, so that's the information on that. Let's let's talk with Mr. Quirk. Let's talk about the Fed. Let's talk about hacking the Fed. And I think you'll find this very interesting. Here he is. It's my pleasure to welcome Matthew Quirk to the show. He is author of the best-selling book The 500 and also author of the new book entitled The Directive, and that's about our friends at the Federal Reserve. Matthew, welcome. How are you?

I'm doing great. How are you?

Good, good. Well, this is a, this is a fascinating book you've written and really an interesting topic. It's a thriller, it's a novel, but it's based on some facts things that actually went down at the Fed. Why don't you just kind of dive in and tell us about it and tell us how it starts off?

The reporting part came from the fact that I wanted to do a really great heist book, and the heist is really all about the loot. I was casting about for one of the biggest targets, and I thought it would be especially great if I could find a target that not only had a huge scale but affected all of us. So often in a heist, you know, the jewelry's insured, and you say, well, why do I really care about this? And if you're looking at the landscape, pretty easy to come across the Fed, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, because it has about $300 billion of gold in the basement. And what I didn't know until I started researching this was that the $300 billion, even though that's a ton of money, the real money is upstairs because there's the trading desk on the 9th floor that executes the Federal Reserve's policy for the entire government when it wants to speed up or slow down the economy. And they have a balance sheet worth $4 trillion. So as I learned more and more about this, grew to be fascinated by this desk, I realized I had a great target for a heist. And that is what brought me the Fed and made that the subject of the book.

Fascinating. The real money is in the electronic money, right? That's— it's funny, that's such a— if you really think about it, that's such an oxymoron, right? Because everybody says, well, the Fed prints, uh, you know, they make fake money, they create it out of thin air, it's fiat money. And so, but you know, when you're looking to, I guess, hack the Fed and to steal from the Fed, you go to the trading desk rather than the gold in the basement huh?

Absolutely. And it's interesting you talked about printing money, because that's what I thought the government did if it wanted to stimulate the economy. And, you know, in fact, what you have is only about 20 or 30% of the monetary supply is actual paper currency. The rest is digital. And when the government wants to, say, speed up the economy, they'll make a decision. They made a decision today here in Washington and then send a thing called the directive, which is basically the playbook for the American economy, to this desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. New York. It's an actual trading desk. It trades with about 20 major banks, and when people say the government is printing money, really what happens is the guys on that desk will go out into the markets and buy back government IOUs, and then the banks will suddenly have more money on their balance sheet. This is all digital, and then they can loan more. And when we talk about the government printing money, it's really this desk trading back and forth with the big banks and letting them loan more money. The idea, from book is what if you could steal the direction before anyone had them and then get ahead of those traders?

It sounds almost like the high-frequency trading scandal that, you know, was on 60 Minutes so recently. You probably caught that, and that was fascinating. And then I read the book Flash Boys shortly thereafter. It's really similar to that, right? I mean, that's basically how it would be done. Instead, you do it with currency creation, and the money is lent into existence, which may even sound somewhat simple to to say, but that's a really hard thing to get your head around. It took me years to really understand that, and I'm not sure if I still do. It's such a weird idea.

Absolutely. And one funny thing that happens when I tell people about the book, I explain how the desk works and talk about the desk, and that's what they call it on Wall Street. It's really called the system open market account, which isn't as fun, but everyone calls it the desk. And I explain how it works and that that's why the Federal Reserve note, the dollars in their pocket, have value and why your money is worth more or less on a given day. And they think, great conspiracy thriller. And I say, I haven't gotten to the conspiracy part. That's actually how the government works and controls the monetary supply. So it was really fascinating research. And, you know, the plot of this book is related to the high-frequency traders. The HFT guys are trying to— if we all started at the same starting line, sprint faster than everyone else. And the idea of this book is, what if somebody could get a long head start?

What happens when they do? So they can get a long head start, right? That's That's the answer. They can do it.

Yes, and one of the really interesting things— I talk to a lot of people in the financial services industry and people at the Fed, and if you could get this information— and I should talk later, there's evidence that people do actually get these head starts— you would then trade on macroeconomic data. And unlike an insider trading scenario where you bought XYZ Corporation and the next day it went up 50%, in that case the SEC would know you had inside information. If you bet on very broad economic data, It's much easier to hide because everyone has an opinion about interest rates, gold futures. So it would actually, if you could get the data, be a prime target for insider trading because the movements of the markets are so broad that it would be easy to camouflage your actions.

So no one would really know. So what happened? These hackers that really were the, I guess, the inspiration for the book, did they get away with it? How much did they make?

You know, the book, you have to have a dramatic thing. It's a thriller, and it's a really fun cinematic book. As I was doing the research for writing the book, I came across— it's actually a new study where researchers at a business school, they tracked the movement of gold futures around major announcements by the Federal Open Markets Committee, which are the sort of most important announcement the government makes. It's related to stimulus and interest rates and size of the monetary supply. And they found that the markets, of course, factor in those decisions, but they factor them in 15 minutes before they're made. Public. These researchers, looking over the numbers, found that it appears to be that there are leaks from the press facilities. The press gets the information about 20 minutes before the public statement, and looking at the data, it seemed like that information was leaking out early, and they estimated that over the course of their study period, profits as high as $256 million had been made.

Unbelievable. A quarter of a billion dollars. Wow.

Yeah. And there's nothing better when you write a whole book, and then you turn around to do some homework and realize, oh, this appears to be a stranger-than-fiction thing.

Unbelievable.

Wow.

Tell us more about this part about the social engineering and the lockpicking and the hacking that was used for this. That's fascinating.

So I started to write the book, and I think we've all seen the same movies. When you start to write a heist book, you have a guy in a turtleneck, you have James Caan with a big thermal lens, you do all kinds of clichéd Hollywood, right? And I used to be a reporter for The Atlantic Monthly. I'm actually borrowing a friend's office of the Atlantic right now. And I started reporting how you would actually break into the Fed and pull this kind of job. And it was really fascinating because there's a group of people— now they're mainly called red team security experts— and they are hired by the government or corporation to break into their facility. They're given a letter, it's called a get-out-of-jail-free card, from the CEO or the agency head. They're told, come get us, and then they try to get in. And they actually know how you would break into a building in this day and age. And it was really fascinating because I had so many clichés in my mind of what a heist would look like. And a large part of their repertoire is social engineering and hacking tricks, which are— the social engineering is basically a version of a con game. And my main character comes from a family of con men. So it was this really terrific finding that a real 21st century heist would be right in the wheelhouse of my main character. So I had a lot of fun learning about those techniques, and I learned to pick locks myself. And I even went to the Fed and cased it myself, and I was able to get up to a high floor. I was a little blown away by how well the techniques work.

You cased the Fed? Did you pick a lock at the Fed?

I did not, no. I really didn't want to get arrested. It was one of those lucky things. They have a tour which I recommend for anyone who's interested in anything about gold or money or the Fed, because the tour is fascinating. They let you into the gold vault, and it has the coolest vault. The vault door weighs, I think, 90 tons, and it's just a huge disc, and you walk through the middle of it. And at night they turn the whole thing. It has sort of a hallway tunnel through it. But when I first got there, they waved me through their very, very impressive security out front. And then once I was inside, they have these things called mantrap, and they're basically a higher security version of a turnstile. So I said, okay, you know, this is a very tough place place to crack. And I was in the frame of mind of my main character, which is always really fun to get out from behind the computer and then pretend you're your main guy, right? You're breaking into a place. After the X-ray machines and the metal detectors, I get inside and one of the guards— the Federal Reserve has its own police force— just waves me through the mantraps with a group of employees. And then I was on the elevator. The elevator doesn't have a key like a lot of regular office buildings have. And an employee turned to me and said, what floor? And I said, oh, 9, the one that I knew the ask was on. And then they said sure, and all of a sudden the employees got off and I was rising towards my target. It was one of those moments where at first I said, "Oh wow, this is so cool. These techniques work." And then I said, "Oh goodness, you know, I could go to jail for this." So I just stuck my head out and then went back to where I was supposed to be. But it was really fun to case it in person and to see that the main premise of these social engineering tricks, looking like you belong and getting people to sort of trust that you should be there, is actually quite effective.

Kevin Mitnick is probably the guy who popularized that whole idea of social engineering. That's where I first heard of it. It's just unbelievable what these guys do. You know, they do these, uh, you know, and now after their prison time, I mean, there's a whole, like, a little cottage industry, these people out there. I guess after their stint in prison for getting busted for doing their stuff, they become security consultants. They become the good guys, and then they go out and they do this for companies who want to be penetrated or broken into. It's just amazing. Amazing how easy it is, really, when you hear these stories. I mean, you know, for these high-security companies to be just totally hacked— even the Federal Reserve, you would think that's the most powerful central bank on the planet, that, you know, the most powerful entity really the human race has ever known. And, you know, it's, it's even vulnerable. Unbelievable.

Yeah, their tricks are amazing. Kevin Mitnick is the godfather of it, and I love his books.

I'd love to interview him. I got to get him on the show. Yeah.

And these guys You know, it's their job and it's really fun because they have one foot in the hacker world. One guy who I know who is one of the best lockpickers out there, his name is Deviant, and he gave me all this great advice for the book. And, you know, they all have— they go to DEF CON and they do their hacker stuff, and then they all also, many of them have security companies. And it's just great that there's someone you can call who actually knows how to break into stuff. It's so fun for a book to get the real-world reporting in there. And for me, as a former journalist, to go back and pick up the phone and talk to people.

Do you have any revelations that you want people to hear just about the Fed, like philosophy on the Fed, or, you know, what do you think of what they do? You know, we kind of— at the beginning of the talk today, we talked about how, you know, money is lent into existence and this type of stuff. That's probably not really your focus in the book, but sure, you have some thoughts about it. And most people say it's a big scam, but do you think Do you think it has its place in society, or is it a big scam perpetrated by the Rothschilds and the other banking families for the last couple hundred years?

The answer is both, really.

Both at the same time?

It's really fascinating doing the reporting for it because the Fed on its own website has a Q&A section and it says, "Is it true that a secretive coterie of bankers founded the Fed?" And they say, "Not really, but..." So going back and learning the history was fascinating, where J.P. Morgan had to personally bail out the country, and then he decided that maybe that be formalized and we should have a Federal Reserve System. And you and your readers, I'm sure, know all the Jekyll Island stuff.

Yep. Had G. Edward Griffin on the show twice now. Oh, okay.

Yeah. And it was absolutely fascinating. And then you see how the Fed actually works. And I have a lot of respect for those guys because they aren't dictating interest rates. They're actually going and buying and selling back and forth to keep the economy where they want it to be. It was just fascinating to learn how much of it, because of the origins of the Fed had to be done through the private banking system. And then also when I was reporting to find out how closely the Fed has to work with those banks to sort of keep the economy on an even keel.

I would argue that free market can do that job. I mean, one of the stated goals is to sell our government on the Fed back in, what, 1915, was that would end these ups and downs, this roller coasters in the economy, this roller coaster pattern. And we've had nothing but boom and been bust since then. You know, it's just, uh, I guess really neither of us could argue the point if we were on opposite sides because nobody really knows. You know, it's kind of like that old idea in economics is, you know, you can't hear the dogs that don't get to bark. And so, you know, it's only speculative what would have happened otherwise.

I love the novel writing because I get to get out into the real world and bring up real issues. And if you read the book, obviously there's some skullduggery And if you look at everything that's happened since the 2008 crash, I think most people now agree there hasn't been a lot of culpability. And we can all find different things that should have been done differently. So it's nice to reach out to real-world issues in the book. But also, at the end of the day, it's a thriller novel.

Mm-hmm.

So it's nice to bring that reality in and also just bring it into this really fast-paced story. I try to bring the politics in, but not soapbox too much. Too much in the book, right?

Anything else you want to share? Thoughts on the future of the Fed? Anything more about the hacking of the Fed? One thing I would say is, does the threat of another attack— I mean, we don't even know if one is going on right now, you know, because like it's a macro game, so it's very hard to track. As you mentioned, it's not like insider trading in the stock market where you can probably just watch the transactions and figure it out that someone's doing something wrong and then investigate. When you do the macro stuff, it's really hard I want to know, does this pose a threat to the economy, to the listeners?

If you look at what the Fed has done as far as security, last fall there was some suspicious trading in gold, timed to, I think the, I can't remember now if it was the September or October statement, and then the Fed finally tightened its lockup, which is where the press gets that advance information. And, you know, going back to earlier in our conversation, that may be the source of these leaks that appear to be moving markets before the Fed. The news becomes public. So it was really fascinating for me to learn about those things, and the government has actually, it seems, been doing a bit of a cat and mouse with people who are trying to get that data early, because there have been investigations at the Department of Labor, at the Energy Information Administration. So the Fed has tightened up its procedures in the lockup, but if you look at the record, I'm not 100% confident that the government IT guys can outpace the banks or whoever is trying to get the information faster. Master. There's just too much at stake and it's too lucrative. So I'm a really boring guy and I, I don't try to, on breaking news or anything, get ahead of the investors who are above me in the food chain.

Matthew, give out your website and tell people where they can find the book.

My website is www.matthewquirk.com. It's just my name. And the book is The Directive. It's in stores and Barnes Noble and Amazon and IndieBound. Anywhere you can buy books, you can find it. It's a fun thriller about my character who's a former con man gone honest. And it's also about all these neat inside information about the Fed we've been talking about.

Well, Matthew Quirk, thank you so much for joining us today. This is really fascinating and definitely somewhat scary. Not that we just have to be concerned now about inflation and all the stuff the Fed does to manipulate the money supply and so forth, which we've alluded to, but also the threat of that system being hacked and maybe it affecting all of us. So it's quite fascinating, quite a fascinating topic. Fantastic. Thank you for enlightening us today.

Oh, thanks for having me. And, uh, you know, thrills, that's my job. So hopefully I could keep people on the edge of their seat.

Most definitely.

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