Investment Philosophy: The podcast emphasizes the importance of defending free enterprise and capital markets as a cornerstone of American prosperity and freedom.
9/11 Economic Impact: The discussion highlights the symbolic targeting of the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks as an assault on America's financial markets, aiming to undermine economic strength.
Resilience of Financial Markets: Despite the attacks, American financial markets demonstrated resilience, with trading resuming shortly after, showcasing the robustness and preparedness of the financial infrastructure.
American Exceptionalism: The podcast underscores the unique success of American financial markets and their role in driving prosperity, emphasizing the need to protect these markets against both external and internal threats.
Role of Capital Markets: It is argued that capital markets are essential for capitalism, facilitating investment, innovation, and economic growth, and should not be demonized despite the presence of bad actors.
Economic Warfare: The podcast discusses the economic motivations behind the 9/11 attacks, highlighting the attackers' intent to weaken America through economic attrition and financial destabilization.
Call to Action: Listeners are encouraged to appreciate and defend the financial markets as vital components of the American way of life, crucial for wealth creation and economic opportunity.
Transcript
Capital Record, where we defend free enterprise and capital markets because we believe in the dignity of the human person. Hello and welcome to David Bonson's Capital Record, brought to you by National Review. I'm going to do something different today, something I actually haven't done before, but uh probably could have done several times in the past. Uh, I've talked in the past about the fact that I have had for many many years a weekly commentary for for my business called Dividend Cafe, dividend cafe.com. And there's a video and a podcast and then I do a written commentary and we've done it every week since September of 2008, literally since the week that Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. and it is an investment and markets commentary. Um, it is not uh ideological and and and philosophical the way I try to make capital record. But the reason I'm going to go ahead and let this week's dividend cafe serve as the sort of redundant message of the capital record is because what I talked about at the dividend cafe this last week was really tailor made for capital record. uh talking about 9/11 and the intent of the bad guys to specifically target America's capital markets, the very thing that this podcast exists to defend and why I believe those who love America must protect our capital markets the same way those who hated America wanted to go after our capital markets. Please listen to this Dividend Cafe and we'll see you back in the Capitol Record in two days. Hello and welcome to this Friday's Dividend Cafe. It is September the 12th and I have intended all week and actually I think I began planning this uh a few weeks ago to do a a 911 themed um dividend cafe today. And that is what I'm going to do. And it's a little different of a twist than than you might be expecting. It's it's not a regular um sort of, you know, uh memor memorialization or or or kind of, you know, eulogy around 911. uh the paying respects of of those who whose lives were lost on 911 is something I hope we all do a lot and it's something I've done over the years and and and I've uh personally talked about 911 in some in some past dividend cafes, but I have a little different plan for today that's more specific to the economic nature of what I believe was intended in that uh horrific terrorist attack. I I hesitated a little bit this week to to go forward with this theme. Um the the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who some of you may not know who he was. I I promise you if you don't, your your kids and grandkids likely do. But um you know it was it is uh regardless of one's political affiliation uh regardless of one's personal opinions it it was a a major event and and there's a lot that can be said about what it's done to sort of my own mood but also I think the mood um and tenor of the country right now what it not only has done for it but what it reflects about it. Um there's also even apart from that that kind of awful tragedy that took place this week. Um there's a lot of other economic news and and things that uh I could do a dividend cafe about in the inflation data and the jobs data, the state of the current economy, updated perspective on tariffs. There there's a lot of moving parts right now. And some of those things, by the way, I will be talking about on Monday in the dividend cafe with some more particular granularity about inflation and so forth. But no, um, as we sit here the day after the 24th anniversary of the 911 moment in our country, I do I do want to go forward with what my plan topic was. And um I think that there is a vital message in better understanding one element of the 9/11 attacks that is very pertinent to investors, very pertinent to economic actors that that gets to a little bit more philosophical understanding, which was a topic of dividend cafe last week. The way we think about our economy itself and our financial markets here in this country. I talked last week about how we as American investors have had a particular American advantage that is rooted to a distinctly uh successful implementation of an ideological framework for free enterprise. And part of the secret sauce of America's economic prosperity has been that framework that commitment to uh economic philosophy of freedom and opportunity to um our also firm and diligent and robust commitment to capital markets to the financial markets that have undergurtded much of our risk-taking and opportunity and success and it's something I study a lot, think about a lot, and frankly maybe obsessed with, but I believe the 9/11 attackers understood this, too. And I don't think that that's talked about a lot. I think their bloodthirstiness, their hatred for America, obviously the political or religious fanaticism that undergurs it, the lack of regard for human life, all all of those things are there. And yes, there's a foreign policy story there and there's a geopolitical story there and and it's it's, you know, major. But I also believe that understanding the reason the World Trade Center here in Manhattan was particularly targeted is very important. What the 911 jihadists saw as symbolic significance matters to us for reasons I want to get to today in the Dividend Cafe. Um, I recently watched an 18-hour documentary series that I had actually not seen before, even though I've been a bit of a New York history buff for a long time. But Rick Burns and PBS had done a a pretty authoritative uh like I said, 18 hour documentary series that ended up being seven episodes on the history of New York City going back to, you know, the 16th century. And then they added an eighth episode all about the trade center. Uh the documentary series initially aired on PBS in 1999, but they ended up adding an eighth episode in the aftermath of the 911 attack on the trade center. And and I learned a bit more on the history of it than I knew before, but I think a lot of people know, you know, that it it it was officially sort of um dedicated and and and opened, you know, 1973. Uh but it began construction in ' 66. But there was a kind of vision for a sort of renaissance downtown um in the heart of our financial district, a kind of urban renewal objective um involved an awful lot of moving parts and there's a a really vast story in the architecture construction, you know, the politics of it, whatever. I won't get into all of that now, but um you know the the aftermath of the trade cent's construction, it did result in a real significant um home for many of our great financial companies and and not just in the two twin towers north and south, but in some of the adjacent buildings that were part of the World Trade Center ecosystem. and from Caner Fitzgerald to Morgan Stanley. Um, I did not do my training into wealth management at Morgan Stanley. I was recruited to Morgan Stanley away from another company, uh, UBS. Um, and so I'm going to talk in a moment about me doing this program at UBS in Wehawk in New Jersey across the Hudson River. But Morgan Stanley did their training program for new advisors in the trade center and and so over the years I've known a lot of people that had actually entered the business literally from Morgan Stanley's former spot in the trade center, but they had a lot of other functions that were done out of their lower Manhattan location. Solomon Smith Barney was down in the trade center ecosystem. AON Corp, major US insurer, uh, American Express, Fiduciary Trust, Credit Swiss, First Boston, Deutsche Bank. I'm doing this from memory, but there there's, you know, a who's who of a lot of American financial giants that had been down in the trade center uh, literally whether the Twin Towers or the the buildings that were part of the the center that were lower um, in elevation. But it doesn't end there because Wall Street um in the literal sense of the word, which nobody ever talks about it literally, sits right beneath where the trade center was. And in the shadows of this this sort of financial district of lower Manhattan, um you had Goldman Sachs, you had Meil Lynch, you had so many different names, but also you had the actual New York Stock Exchange that is still there now. Back then it was still a very functional building. It's really kind of a museum and TV studio now uh because of the electronification of of trading. But, uh, the New York Fed is across the street from there. Um, if I listed every law firm, small, uh, investment bank, you know, what have you that's down there, it would take all day. So, this was kind of a capital of of American financial markets. And this was all very much by design. You know, there's a visualization if you close your eyes of American financial markets that brings one to some form of the trade center or the Twin Towers of lower Manhattan of Wall Street. You know, these imagery images, excuse me, images are powerful. And what we will see from the actual words of the jihadist who perpetrated the 9/11 attack is that they were for that reason. um their symbolic and literal role uh in American financial markets. For those reasons, they were targeted in these terror attacks. Um, I go through quote by quote by quote in the dividend cafe.com today and I'll I'll do a sort of summary of some of these things here on the video and podcast, but Assam Bin Laden said himself in 1996 that they wanted to um kill the Americans and plunder their money. We wanted to make them taste the bitter consequences to drain them of their money as we had drained Russians before them. Um he went on to talk about the collapse of the Soviet Union happening because of this enormous sums they spent uh in in their war that we uh had to drain their wealth and resources and that was used as a parallel multiple times in 1996 and 1998 fatwas from Assam bin Laden where he was calling on jihad against America but it was always a jihad based on calling for murder and death but also a war of economic attrition, the a jihad positioned as an economic affair. Uh we aim to make them pay a heavy price to bleed them to a point of bankruptcy. Just as they plunder our wealth, we shall drain theirs. And and again, I'm just giving a couple highlights or low lightss, you know, as the case is, but but the there is literal quotation from these 1996 and 1998 documents. But um Bin Laden was kind of off the the radar after the 911 attack as he was of course evading capture himself throughout the caves of Tora Bora. But um uh we we ended up hearing from him for the first time post 911 as he released a video through Al Jazzer in October of 2004 largely in an attempt apparently to sway the mid the elections the presidential election that would be taking place the next week. He basically kind of sent a video for the first time since 911 as a campaign commercial against George W. Bush. But in the course of it he he reiterated the economic nature of these attacks. We continue this policy in bleeding America to a point of bankruptcy. This in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and a war of economic attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers as we alongside the Mahajadin led Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. He he taunted the United States um and and basically referred to their attempt to bait us into wasting money. All that we have to do is send two Mahajin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda to make their generals race to cause America to suffer human economic and political losses without achieving anything of note for it other than benefits to their private companies. had a real disdain for America's private enterprise system. The underlying aim um was connected to a desire to make America squander economic resources. This had been foreshadowed by Osama bin Laden before the attack um and it was reiterated after the attack time and time again. It was bloodthirsty and it was murderous as I have said. But it was not only that. it it was connected to a specifically economic context um of agenda of of warfare. Now uh Khaled Shik Muhammad who was the actual operational mastermind of 911 and for reasons I am unable to personally fathom is still alive. He is imprisoned at Guutano Bay. Um and there's a number of things that he has said in the aftermath of 9/11. Um in in uh the uh 9/11 commission report, uh KSM, I'll say KSM so I don't have to keep repeating Khaled Shik Muhammad. Um KSM had told interrogators, and I quote, they long been interested in striking high-profile American targets, especially those with economic or symbolic significance. He and Bin Laden had identified the World Trade Center as the symbol of US economic power. It was KSM's nephew Ramsey Yousef who my dear friend Andy McCarthy successfully prosecuted who had bombed the trade center in 1993. KSM claimed to be motivated by Yousef's conviction that these spectacular attacks would strike at the economic and symbolic heart of the United States. The rhetoric of the 9/11 perpetrators left no ambiguity around their um attacks as both violent and economic. They wanted to do economic violence to America and they wanted to undermine symbols of American prosperity, American economic strength that the Twin Towers represented. My question is in the course of the loss of human life we suffered on 911, the um economic destruction that was done, the loss of property um and the incalculable tragedy that took place for families, friends, loved ones, fallen heroes. There was significant economic loss for foremented by the attacks. But did they destroy American financial markets? Did they succeed in striking at the heart of our economic system? Did the symbolic value um that was embedded in these lower Manhattan buildings uh undermine did did the loss of those buildings undermine capital markets in America? The answer of course is no. I recall uh I mentioned that I did my time in Waken, New Jersey, which is just you know a very very short ferry ride across the Hudson River from Manhattan. And it happened to be the location um of Payne Weber which UBS had bought where they had a a a kind of whole operational ecosystem. And uh you know I was there for the whole month of January 2002 just a few months after 9/11. And me and and colleagues would would spend many evenings of course at the at the bar at the hotel after a day of meetings and sessions and and whatnot and just talking shop and and all that kind of stuff. Um, you know, we financial guys love getting together and talking finance. And I remember meeting someone at the um hotel bar that was not with with our group, was not part of UBS, but was a a real senior IT executive at a very large financial institution. And and one night he he spent a couple hours. I didn't talk much at all because I was so absorbed into listening. Um, I remember this like it was yesterday. I'm not kidding you. Um him walking through what they had done exactly that literally had them on three days later. ability to trade, ability to transact, ability to function, you know, um the sophistication of preparation uh that took place before the attack without any knowledge of an actual attack, but just the sort of contingency planning and and how the mobility dynamism, you know, um that that word sophistication is important here. It's a technology sophistication in a way, but I mean it's fascinating because while American investors and psyche was incredibly damaged by 9/11, the fact of the matter is that American financial firms and their function in capital markets was not. We kept our stock market closed for three or four basically three and a half days. Um well, you know, really four days because it because if you count the 911 day itself. Um but trading was up and running days later. The need for uh financial institutions to be a liquidity provider and and there was significant need for liquidity provision I should add. Um the ability to make markets in financial instruments, the capacity for advice giving around capital allocation to governments, to corporations, to institutions, to investors, to businesses, absolutely uninterrupted. Asset prices were down, of course. um the the loss of life, property, uh tragedy in every sense of the word, but their attempt to undermine American economic power symbolically failed. And you can call it resilience, but it was not surrender. We did not surrender in this key component. And I think that this is where it's important for me to get to a incredibly important part of American exceptionalism. I'm all for people having different points of passion and priority when they think about what they love most about America. You know, when we look at what is the uniquely American ideal, um I do believe there is a philosophical uh exceptionalism in our understanding of natural rights, the source of those rights and the relationship of the state to the citizen and how those rights are secured. I do not believe that we are the only free country on earth. But we have been the most prosperous or successful country over the last 250 years. as our execution of our application of some of those key founding principles um has been so phenomenally wondrous in the lives of communities, families, states across our great country. You cannot understand the history of postindustrial revolution life and post and 20th century life without seeing the way that America's financial markets superior to other global financial markets helped and coupled to our free enterprise system drove such a remarkable result in prosperity in value creation in productivity in economic growth. Our robust capital markets are the envy of the world. It is absolutely unquestionably important that we protect our capital markets. No matter what the temptation is to demonize Wall Street, which largely comes from the ancient sin and still modern sin of covetousness, there are bad financial actors that give a bad name. But the wholesale demonization of private equity, of investment banks, of Wall Street, of market making, of the various elements that help bring capital to ideiation, that help bring investment to risktaking. Our financial markets sophisticated as they may be embedded in commercial banking, investment banking, private markets, venture capital, these our sort of financial habitat that the terrorists were after on 911. And I believe that our need to defend our financial markets against internal forces, ideological enemies of capital markets is important. Just as I believe that our need to continue defending ourselves against external enemies who wish to harm us in our way of life is important. There are people who believe you can have capitalism without capital markets and you cannot. The 9/11 terrorists knew this and I believe that they tried and failed. But those of us who create wealth, steward wealth, invest, act purposely for the the purpose of of uh uh producing goods and services. those who has to engage in the commercial society, involved in acts of investment, involves in acts of trade, partnering with others in these types of activities. We function day-to-day as economic actors when we are investors, when we are entrepreneurs, when we are employees, when we are employers. And we do this because we are striving for a better life for ourselves, for our loved ones, all of that. But we can't ever forget that our way of life involves markets and those markets are worthy of being defended. Some people knew this so well they thought our markets were worthy of being attacked. Thank you for listening, watching, reading the dividend cafe. Thank you for bearing with me through a a a very difficult week in a lot of ways. And thank you for your ongoing those of you clients of the Bonso Group, your ongoing support, faith, confidence in the way we steward your affairs utilizing America's robust financial markets as a tool in what we do. It's a great privilege to serve you. Have a wonderful weekend and we'll be back with you. So, I'll be back uh Monday for a dividend cafe.
Love of Country means a Love of Capital Markets
Summary
Transcript
Capital Record, where we defend free enterprise and capital markets because we believe in the dignity of the human person. Hello and welcome to David Bonson's Capital Record, brought to you by National Review. I'm going to do something different today, something I actually haven't done before, but uh probably could have done several times in the past. Uh, I've talked in the past about the fact that I have had for many many years a weekly commentary for for my business called Dividend Cafe, dividend cafe.com. And there's a video and a podcast and then I do a written commentary and we've done it every week since September of 2008, literally since the week that Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. and it is an investment and markets commentary. Um, it is not uh ideological and and and philosophical the way I try to make capital record. But the reason I'm going to go ahead and let this week's dividend cafe serve as the sort of redundant message of the capital record is because what I talked about at the dividend cafe this last week was really tailor made for capital record. uh talking about 9/11 and the intent of the bad guys to specifically target America's capital markets, the very thing that this podcast exists to defend and why I believe those who love America must protect our capital markets the same way those who hated America wanted to go after our capital markets. Please listen to this Dividend Cafe and we'll see you back in the Capitol Record in two days. Hello and welcome to this Friday's Dividend Cafe. It is September the 12th and I have intended all week and actually I think I began planning this uh a few weeks ago to do a a 911 themed um dividend cafe today. And that is what I'm going to do. And it's a little different of a twist than than you might be expecting. It's it's not a regular um sort of, you know, uh memor memorialization or or or kind of, you know, eulogy around 911. uh the paying respects of of those who whose lives were lost on 911 is something I hope we all do a lot and it's something I've done over the years and and and I've uh personally talked about 911 in some in some past dividend cafes, but I have a little different plan for today that's more specific to the economic nature of what I believe was intended in that uh horrific terrorist attack. I I hesitated a little bit this week to to go forward with this theme. Um the the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who some of you may not know who he was. I I promise you if you don't, your your kids and grandkids likely do. But um you know it was it is uh regardless of one's political affiliation uh regardless of one's personal opinions it it was a a major event and and there's a lot that can be said about what it's done to sort of my own mood but also I think the mood um and tenor of the country right now what it not only has done for it but what it reflects about it. Um there's also even apart from that that kind of awful tragedy that took place this week. Um there's a lot of other economic news and and things that uh I could do a dividend cafe about in the inflation data and the jobs data, the state of the current economy, updated perspective on tariffs. There there's a lot of moving parts right now. And some of those things, by the way, I will be talking about on Monday in the dividend cafe with some more particular granularity about inflation and so forth. But no, um, as we sit here the day after the 24th anniversary of the 911 moment in our country, I do I do want to go forward with what my plan topic was. And um I think that there is a vital message in better understanding one element of the 9/11 attacks that is very pertinent to investors, very pertinent to economic actors that that gets to a little bit more philosophical understanding, which was a topic of dividend cafe last week. The way we think about our economy itself and our financial markets here in this country. I talked last week about how we as American investors have had a particular American advantage that is rooted to a distinctly uh successful implementation of an ideological framework for free enterprise. And part of the secret sauce of America's economic prosperity has been that framework that commitment to uh economic philosophy of freedom and opportunity to um our also firm and diligent and robust commitment to capital markets to the financial markets that have undergurtded much of our risk-taking and opportunity and success and it's something I study a lot, think about a lot, and frankly maybe obsessed with, but I believe the 9/11 attackers understood this, too. And I don't think that that's talked about a lot. I think their bloodthirstiness, their hatred for America, obviously the political or religious fanaticism that undergurs it, the lack of regard for human life, all all of those things are there. And yes, there's a foreign policy story there and there's a geopolitical story there and and it's it's, you know, major. But I also believe that understanding the reason the World Trade Center here in Manhattan was particularly targeted is very important. What the 911 jihadists saw as symbolic significance matters to us for reasons I want to get to today in the Dividend Cafe. Um, I recently watched an 18-hour documentary series that I had actually not seen before, even though I've been a bit of a New York history buff for a long time. But Rick Burns and PBS had done a a pretty authoritative uh like I said, 18 hour documentary series that ended up being seven episodes on the history of New York City going back to, you know, the 16th century. And then they added an eighth episode all about the trade center. Uh the documentary series initially aired on PBS in 1999, but they ended up adding an eighth episode in the aftermath of the 911 attack on the trade center. And and I learned a bit more on the history of it than I knew before, but I think a lot of people know, you know, that it it it was officially sort of um dedicated and and and opened, you know, 1973. Uh but it began construction in ' 66. But there was a kind of vision for a sort of renaissance downtown um in the heart of our financial district, a kind of urban renewal objective um involved an awful lot of moving parts and there's a a really vast story in the architecture construction, you know, the politics of it, whatever. I won't get into all of that now, but um you know the the aftermath of the trade cent's construction, it did result in a real significant um home for many of our great financial companies and and not just in the two twin towers north and south, but in some of the adjacent buildings that were part of the World Trade Center ecosystem. and from Caner Fitzgerald to Morgan Stanley. Um, I did not do my training into wealth management at Morgan Stanley. I was recruited to Morgan Stanley away from another company, uh, UBS. Um, and so I'm going to talk in a moment about me doing this program at UBS in Wehawk in New Jersey across the Hudson River. But Morgan Stanley did their training program for new advisors in the trade center and and so over the years I've known a lot of people that had actually entered the business literally from Morgan Stanley's former spot in the trade center, but they had a lot of other functions that were done out of their lower Manhattan location. Solomon Smith Barney was down in the trade center ecosystem. AON Corp, major US insurer, uh, American Express, Fiduciary Trust, Credit Swiss, First Boston, Deutsche Bank. I'm doing this from memory, but there there's, you know, a who's who of a lot of American financial giants that had been down in the trade center uh, literally whether the Twin Towers or the the buildings that were part of the the center that were lower um, in elevation. But it doesn't end there because Wall Street um in the literal sense of the word, which nobody ever talks about it literally, sits right beneath where the trade center was. And in the shadows of this this sort of financial district of lower Manhattan, um you had Goldman Sachs, you had Meil Lynch, you had so many different names, but also you had the actual New York Stock Exchange that is still there now. Back then it was still a very functional building. It's really kind of a museum and TV studio now uh because of the electronification of of trading. But, uh, the New York Fed is across the street from there. Um, if I listed every law firm, small, uh, investment bank, you know, what have you that's down there, it would take all day. So, this was kind of a capital of of American financial markets. And this was all very much by design. You know, there's a visualization if you close your eyes of American financial markets that brings one to some form of the trade center or the Twin Towers of lower Manhattan of Wall Street. You know, these imagery images, excuse me, images are powerful. And what we will see from the actual words of the jihadist who perpetrated the 9/11 attack is that they were for that reason. um their symbolic and literal role uh in American financial markets. For those reasons, they were targeted in these terror attacks. Um, I go through quote by quote by quote in the dividend cafe.com today and I'll I'll do a sort of summary of some of these things here on the video and podcast, but Assam Bin Laden said himself in 1996 that they wanted to um kill the Americans and plunder their money. We wanted to make them taste the bitter consequences to drain them of their money as we had drained Russians before them. Um he went on to talk about the collapse of the Soviet Union happening because of this enormous sums they spent uh in in their war that we uh had to drain their wealth and resources and that was used as a parallel multiple times in 1996 and 1998 fatwas from Assam bin Laden where he was calling on jihad against America but it was always a jihad based on calling for murder and death but also a war of economic attrition, the a jihad positioned as an economic affair. Uh we aim to make them pay a heavy price to bleed them to a point of bankruptcy. Just as they plunder our wealth, we shall drain theirs. And and again, I'm just giving a couple highlights or low lightss, you know, as the case is, but but the there is literal quotation from these 1996 and 1998 documents. But um Bin Laden was kind of off the the radar after the 911 attack as he was of course evading capture himself throughout the caves of Tora Bora. But um uh we we ended up hearing from him for the first time post 911 as he released a video through Al Jazzer in October of 2004 largely in an attempt apparently to sway the mid the elections the presidential election that would be taking place the next week. He basically kind of sent a video for the first time since 911 as a campaign commercial against George W. Bush. But in the course of it he he reiterated the economic nature of these attacks. We continue this policy in bleeding America to a point of bankruptcy. This in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and a war of economic attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers as we alongside the Mahajadin led Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. He he taunted the United States um and and basically referred to their attempt to bait us into wasting money. All that we have to do is send two Mahajin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda to make their generals race to cause America to suffer human economic and political losses without achieving anything of note for it other than benefits to their private companies. had a real disdain for America's private enterprise system. The underlying aim um was connected to a desire to make America squander economic resources. This had been foreshadowed by Osama bin Laden before the attack um and it was reiterated after the attack time and time again. It was bloodthirsty and it was murderous as I have said. But it was not only that. it it was connected to a specifically economic context um of agenda of of warfare. Now uh Khaled Shik Muhammad who was the actual operational mastermind of 911 and for reasons I am unable to personally fathom is still alive. He is imprisoned at Guutano Bay. Um and there's a number of things that he has said in the aftermath of 9/11. Um in in uh the uh 9/11 commission report, uh KSM, I'll say KSM so I don't have to keep repeating Khaled Shik Muhammad. Um KSM had told interrogators, and I quote, they long been interested in striking high-profile American targets, especially those with economic or symbolic significance. He and Bin Laden had identified the World Trade Center as the symbol of US economic power. It was KSM's nephew Ramsey Yousef who my dear friend Andy McCarthy successfully prosecuted who had bombed the trade center in 1993. KSM claimed to be motivated by Yousef's conviction that these spectacular attacks would strike at the economic and symbolic heart of the United States. The rhetoric of the 9/11 perpetrators left no ambiguity around their um attacks as both violent and economic. They wanted to do economic violence to America and they wanted to undermine symbols of American prosperity, American economic strength that the Twin Towers represented. My question is in the course of the loss of human life we suffered on 911, the um economic destruction that was done, the loss of property um and the incalculable tragedy that took place for families, friends, loved ones, fallen heroes. There was significant economic loss for foremented by the attacks. But did they destroy American financial markets? Did they succeed in striking at the heart of our economic system? Did the symbolic value um that was embedded in these lower Manhattan buildings uh undermine did did the loss of those buildings undermine capital markets in America? The answer of course is no. I recall uh I mentioned that I did my time in Waken, New Jersey, which is just you know a very very short ferry ride across the Hudson River from Manhattan. And it happened to be the location um of Payne Weber which UBS had bought where they had a a a kind of whole operational ecosystem. And uh you know I was there for the whole month of January 2002 just a few months after 9/11. And me and and colleagues would would spend many evenings of course at the at the bar at the hotel after a day of meetings and sessions and and whatnot and just talking shop and and all that kind of stuff. Um, you know, we financial guys love getting together and talking finance. And I remember meeting someone at the um hotel bar that was not with with our group, was not part of UBS, but was a a real senior IT executive at a very large financial institution. And and one night he he spent a couple hours. I didn't talk much at all because I was so absorbed into listening. Um, I remember this like it was yesterday. I'm not kidding you. Um him walking through what they had done exactly that literally had them on three days later. ability to trade, ability to transact, ability to function, you know, um the sophistication of preparation uh that took place before the attack without any knowledge of an actual attack, but just the sort of contingency planning and and how the mobility dynamism, you know, um that that word sophistication is important here. It's a technology sophistication in a way, but I mean it's fascinating because while American investors and psyche was incredibly damaged by 9/11, the fact of the matter is that American financial firms and their function in capital markets was not. We kept our stock market closed for three or four basically three and a half days. Um well, you know, really four days because it because if you count the 911 day itself. Um but trading was up and running days later. The need for uh financial institutions to be a liquidity provider and and there was significant need for liquidity provision I should add. Um the ability to make markets in financial instruments, the capacity for advice giving around capital allocation to governments, to corporations, to institutions, to investors, to businesses, absolutely uninterrupted. Asset prices were down, of course. um the the loss of life, property, uh tragedy in every sense of the word, but their attempt to undermine American economic power symbolically failed. And you can call it resilience, but it was not surrender. We did not surrender in this key component. And I think that this is where it's important for me to get to a incredibly important part of American exceptionalism. I'm all for people having different points of passion and priority when they think about what they love most about America. You know, when we look at what is the uniquely American ideal, um I do believe there is a philosophical uh exceptionalism in our understanding of natural rights, the source of those rights and the relationship of the state to the citizen and how those rights are secured. I do not believe that we are the only free country on earth. But we have been the most prosperous or successful country over the last 250 years. as our execution of our application of some of those key founding principles um has been so phenomenally wondrous in the lives of communities, families, states across our great country. You cannot understand the history of postindustrial revolution life and post and 20th century life without seeing the way that America's financial markets superior to other global financial markets helped and coupled to our free enterprise system drove such a remarkable result in prosperity in value creation in productivity in economic growth. Our robust capital markets are the envy of the world. It is absolutely unquestionably important that we protect our capital markets. No matter what the temptation is to demonize Wall Street, which largely comes from the ancient sin and still modern sin of covetousness, there are bad financial actors that give a bad name. But the wholesale demonization of private equity, of investment banks, of Wall Street, of market making, of the various elements that help bring capital to ideiation, that help bring investment to risktaking. Our financial markets sophisticated as they may be embedded in commercial banking, investment banking, private markets, venture capital, these our sort of financial habitat that the terrorists were after on 911. And I believe that our need to defend our financial markets against internal forces, ideological enemies of capital markets is important. Just as I believe that our need to continue defending ourselves against external enemies who wish to harm us in our way of life is important. There are people who believe you can have capitalism without capital markets and you cannot. The 9/11 terrorists knew this and I believe that they tried and failed. But those of us who create wealth, steward wealth, invest, act purposely for the the purpose of of uh uh producing goods and services. those who has to engage in the commercial society, involved in acts of investment, involves in acts of trade, partnering with others in these types of activities. We function day-to-day as economic actors when we are investors, when we are entrepreneurs, when we are employees, when we are employers. And we do this because we are striving for a better life for ourselves, for our loved ones, all of that. But we can't ever forget that our way of life involves markets and those markets are worthy of being defended. Some people knew this so well they thought our markets were worthy of being attacked. Thank you for listening, watching, reading the dividend cafe. Thank you for bearing with me through a a a very difficult week in a lot of ways. And thank you for your ongoing those of you clients of the Bonso Group, your ongoing support, faith, confidence in the way we steward your affairs utilizing America's robust financial markets as a tool in what we do. It's a great privilege to serve you. Have a wonderful weekend and we'll be back with you. So, I'll be back uh Monday for a dividend cafe.