Another Huge Bankruptcy Just Rocked Wall St (What You Need To Know)
Summary
Bankruptcy Alert: The podcast discusses the recent bankruptcy of First Brands, a company involved in auto parts, which has raised concerns due to potential fraudulent activities and off-balance sheet borrowing.
Market Comparison: The situation is compared to past financial crises, suggesting a blend of 2007-2008 financial instability and the 1999 tech bubble, indicating a potential market correction.
Fraud and Risk: The podcast highlights the risk of fraud in the current market environment, exacerbated by high valuations and risk-taking behavior among retail investors.
Shadow Banking Concerns: The role of shadow banks in providing risky loans is scrutinized, with potential impacts on major banks like UBS, which could face balance sheet issues.
Financial Shenanigans: First Brands allegedly used rehypothecation of accounts receivable to secure multiple loans, raising ethical and legal questions about their financial practices.
Systemic Risk: The podcast suggests that the First Brands bankruptcy could be a "canary in the coal mine," indicating broader financial instability and potential systemic risks.
Investment Strategies: In response to the AI bubble and financial instability, contrarian investment strategies are recommended, focusing on opportunities during financial bubbles.
Upcoming Webinar: A free webinar is announced, offering insights into contrarian investment strategies and a $500 coupon for Rebel Capitalist Live, emphasizing the importance of proactive financial planning.
Transcript
Hello fellow Rebel Capitals. Hope you're well. So, we have another huge corporate bankruptcy that rocked Wall Street and there could be some fraud involved. So, we have to ask the question, is this starting to feel a lot like 2007 or maybe even the beginning stages of 2008? And the thing that's crazy right now is it's like we're combining. We have a merger of 2007, maybe 2008 and 1999 with the AI bubble. So, talk about a crazy crazy perfect storm. We're going to talk about that in this video. And make sure you stay to the end because I'm going to be telling you how you can get a free $500 bonus or a bonus worth $500. I'm going to tell you that at the end of this bit, at the end of this video, excuse me. But let's dive right in here. This bankruptcy is all about a company called First Brands. Now, what's bizarre is you would think they're just like a mom and pop type of company. They sell like auto parts, like windshield wipers to AutoZone and but somehow they were borrowing billions and billions and billions of dollars all off balance sheet and they're taking collateral. They're rehypothecating it. And do I think this is potentially a canary in the coal mine? Absolutely I do. But do I think it's a canary in the coal mine? Because this in and of itself is going to have massive systemic risk that's going to bring down the entire system like the GFC. No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't get me wrong. But what I think this shows us is that the water or the tide is starting to go out. And when the tide goes out, you see who's swimming naked, as Warren Buffett says. And I think it shows us that there's a lot more people swimming naked, which you would expect when you have a huge bubble and the stock market has been at these crazy nosebleleed valuations and you have people, retail investors out there chasing risk to the degree to which they have, especially since the survea sickness. This is going to encourage, this is going to incentivize fraud for people who are, let's just say, don't have that moral north star. And I'm not implying that this guy did, but that's it wouldn't shock me uh if there's fraudulent activity or activity that's let's say in the gray area that we see come as a result of this bankruptcy because the DOJ is getting involved as well. And so I think another thing you've you've got to really consider is this hit some big banks like UBS as an example. So all these other banks that have been doing this private credit, right? The the shadow banking industry where the bank itself doesn't want to lend lend to a risky borrower. So they just lend to a shadow bank. uh let's just call it a non-depository lending institution and then they just take the money and then they lend to the super risky guy. And so the bank has kind of an arm length distance from the transaction itself, but it's still their balance sheet. It's still going to blow a hole in their balance sheet, right? So where there's smoke, there's fire, right? I think that's the main thing here. But check out what these guys were doing. I I've gone through this for about 15 20 minutes and I still can't get my head around it. And what's amazing is it's not like this is JP Morgan that are where they're dealing in derivatives and all this crazy uh offbalance sheet on balance sheet stuff. they're in repo and you know the monetary system and I I would understand that their let's just say corporate I don't know you want to call this uh what is this called like a flowchart or something like that their corporate hierarchy would be extremely complex but this is just a company that sells auto parts for heaven's sakes like it shouldn't like they should be doing their accounting on QuickBooks not that they good, but they the my point is the business should be simple enough as far as from an accounting standpoint to to use QuickBooks. I mean, this business should be they should be able to use Excel for heaven's sakes. And look at how they had this thing set up. So, first brands. Oh, what is it called? Duh, George. It's right in front of me. The organizational structure, the org chart, I think they call this. Okay. So, equity owner, uh, that's 100% and then they own Aztec Corporation, Break Parts Holding, Inc., Viceroy Private Capital LLC. That's that's not too shady because, you know, they might have a division that does financing or or vendor financing. They could be taking a page out of the AI bubble book. But, um, that's not too concerning. But this is where you get into crazy town over here from private or viceroy private capital LLC and then you get into the specialurpose vehicle. Whenever we see special purpose vehicle that's always got to raise an eyebrow and be like what's going on here? Doesn't matter whe the Fed's doing it or First Brands is doing it. So this I assume is kind of the offbalance sheet nonsense where the in the punchline here guys because this gets incredibly confusing. You can't really follow it but they were using their accounts receivable as collateral. But what it looks like is they were using it for collateral multiple times. So they're basically rehypothecating their accounts receivable. So, let's say they had an order from AutoZone and it's an order for whatever $50 million and AutoZone hasn't paid them yet. But what they do is they take that accounts receivable and they use that as collateral to get whatever, let's say a $10 million loan, okay? But then they use that to get another $10 million loan and another $10 million and all the other people that are lending to them because they're lending through all these crazy LLC's. They don't know about each other and they think that they're the only one that's on the title. We think about a lean on a title. They think they're the only one that is a lean holder on the title to, let's just say, this house, but they don't realize that there's a hundred people that are lean holders to the exact same house. And that how are you going to get paid, right? You're you're getting you're giving a loan for $10 million, let's say, on 50 million in collateral that's been rehypothecated whatever 20, 50, 10 times, 100 times. But what that means is that 50 million in collateral has been used to borrow, let's just say, a billion dollars. And so where are they going to come up with a billion dollars? I think what they did, assuming that this was legit, is they used that well, look, the rehypothecation of the collateral, I don't I would highly doubt that's legal, but I'm not a lawyer. We'll have to see how this plays out. But I think ethically I I would highly doubt that they disclosed that information. So, there's also an ethical issue there. But the the punchline is even if they I'm just trying to think this through out loud, looking at it from their standpoint, maybe they're like, "Oh my gosh, we're going to buy all these companies because it's going to be so great and the only way we can do it is if we kind of don't disclose everything about how many times we're using that collateral. But don't worry, this will all pan out because we're going to make so much money on all these companies that we're buying." and then the companies go tits up because the economy sucks and then everything blows up. My my guess is that's probably what happened. Let's keep going here. And by the way, so this and the thing that got the attention of the DOJ is during this bankruptcy process for an auto parts place. They make auto parts for heaven's sakes. Uh they just lost 1.9 like the there's 1.9 billion almost $2 billion that just disappeared. Like no one can even find it. Like they don't even know how it was spent. Like like they're not even saying that they didn't lose the money. They're saying it it's not here and and we don't even know how we lost the money. And and this is where it's maybe maybe there's some shady stuff going on here, but we want to obviously assume people are innocent until proven guilty. But I I think the bigger story is really all these other banks that have been lending to these uh shadow banks and then they're going to start looking at it and scrutinizing it and say, "Wait a minute here. These shadow banks are lending to people that are too risky for us to lend to. We realize that. But now we have to get serious about it because it seems like the chickens are coming home to roost. And if the chickens are coming home to roost, then if you know, I just got a hole blown in my balance sheet because of First Brands and whatever Shadow Bank lent to them. Then I'm going to look at all the other shadow banks that I've lent to. I'm going be like, "Hey, show me your financials. Show me your financials because I want to see what you guys have hiding in the closet there." And maybe I don't want to know about it. But now it's time that it it's going to we're likely going to see what's been happening underneath the hood. No pun intended. And the concern there is if it's happening over here with first brands, it's likely happening not just throughout this industry, but throughout the entire economy and the entire financial economy, let's say. And it wouldn't surprise me because this is what exactly what happens in bubbles. And that's why I think it it kind of rhymes and it feels a little bit like 2007208 because what was happening back then I mean it's the same type of financial shenanigans. It's just look, this stuff happens over and over and over again. It's just how we're hardwired as human beings and then we forget about what happened 15 years ago and we just say, "Oh, well that'll never ever happen again." And this time it's different because X, Y, and Z. This time it's different. So, let's just go ahead and keep lending and lending and lending. Let's keep dancing while the music is playing and the music will just continue to play indefinitely because we've just found the infinite money glitch. I mean, this is the this is what people convince themselves every single time. It doesn't matter whether it's dot com, doesn't matter it's GFC or it doesn't matter now. And I'm not saying this whole thing blows up the same way, but this could be the canary in the coal mine, showing us the types of, let's just say, activities that have been happening in the shadows that if the tide goes out are all going to come to the surface. And that's when the marketplace could have, let's just say, the Biden moment. And you guys know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Joe Biden being mentally sharp. Remember that narrative? And if you questioned it whatsoever, then you were just a wild right-wing conspiracy theorist. And then all of a sudden, we had the debate between Biden and Trump where it was so blatantly obvious that he wasn't running on all eight cylinders. I'm going I'm going with these puns today, aren't I? And it was just so blatantly obvious that even the mainstream media couldn't gaslight you anymore. and they had to admit that yeah, okay, he ain't the sharpest hack in the in he's not the sharpest tool in the shed right now. And of course, they didn't admit that the conspiracy theorists were right, but that was kind of the Biden moment. It's like the O want to keep it kid-friendly, but the OS moment. And this could be the beginning of when the market opens up their eyes and it's like, "Oh, wait. The emperor's not wearing any clothes. Let's keep going here. And like I said, the DOJ, they're going to get into this and it'll be really interesting to see what they come up with. Department of Justice has opened an inquiry into the collapse. Federal prosecutors look to untangle how investors and creditors have been left with billions of dollars in potential losses. And what may very and what may be very bad news for companies bankers like Jeff and and like I said u UBS is in this which is basically credit Swiss let's not forget what they were doing and they went belly up and like they said this really shouldn't come as a big surprise but Jeff stock down uh 30% as of uh a couple days ago when this article came out. So, the FT Financial Times notes that such probes do not necessarily mean wrongdoing uh has occurred and may not lead to charges being filed or cases being brought. But I don't think that's the critical component of this story. Again, I I I think it's that this might be the smelling salts that the the banks and the lenders need to realize that we have to readjust our thinking here. And everything that we are pricing at 100 cents to the dollar might not be priced at 100 cents of the dollar, might be priced at 50 cents on the dollar. And it's the exact same thing that happened in subprime, subprime, excuse me. remember everyone was just uh everyone was just marking those mortgages as though they were 100 cents on the dollar and then all of a sudden they're like, "Oh no, they're actually 50 cents on the dollar and that was the collateral that was used in the monetary system and the whole thing blows up because you just basically eliminate half the pristine collateral that was available for the entire financial plumbing. And so I don't know that this blows up the entire financial system, but again it it's a similar type of thing where we could see this 100 cents on the dollar mark from these banks and lending institutions and shadow banks dropping down to 50 cents and and and that's then liquidity dries up. Then you know what does that mean for the AI bubble? That's another thing to think about because I just saw a story today where OpenAI of course did another deal. I forgot who it was with. You guys probably know in the chat, but their share price went up by like 10% immediately. And it's like, wait a minute, OpenAI doesn't make money. They they lose money. They lose billions and billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars a year. So you're let's just say it was a hundred billion dollar deal. Okay, you're marking that at a hundred billion. The market is marking that at a hundred billion, but it isn't worth a hundred billion. At the end of the day, it might be worth a bill. It might be worth nothing because what is a $100 or hundred billion dollar commitment worth from a company that loses billions of dollars every single year? What are we doing here? This is crazy. Anyway, let's get back to the article. So the uh Zero Hedge says they um reiterate how two billion dollars appears to be definitively missing wrongdo wrongdoing is all but certain. I I don't know. I don't know if I'd go that far, but it it's definitely shady and it could trigger a chain reaction. I get I think that's what I'm trying to say. As reported Wednesday, one of the largest creditors for First Brands alleged that as much as 2.3 billion had simply vanished as part of company's abrupt failure. And that's another thing that's really wild here is let's see I I here you go right here Jeff which is one of the I guess investors quote unquote or the lenders they just back in August a couple months ago they were preparing to do a $6 billion refi of the company of first brands So just back in August, you had a sophisticated investor supposedly coming in and doing an a valuation of the company and they were valuing it at the very least $6 billion. $6 billion. And a month or two later, boom, bankrupt. That's usually what you see happen in in bubbles. It end collapses. We'll have to see how this this plays out. Abrupt failure. Yeah, no kidding. So then they go into kind of some more of these corporate structures and org chart. I I I could not follow this because you've got the special purpose vehicle borrowers which are I think these guys these these entities which is are owned by Viceroy and Viceroy is owned by first Brands and they're I mean I don't know what the hell is going on. They're they're they're getting their collateral from Viceroy and then it's leading into subsidiaries, third party vendors, creation of security interest. Austrian bank is involved. I mean this is completely bananas. Like I said at the beginning, this is a company that you should be able to do their accounting on QuickBooks for. Heaven sakes. You've got caraval facilities overview. So, it looks like you've got special purpose vehicles like within special purpose vehicles or or something. I I don't know what's going on. You guys can go to the article from Zero Hedge. It's fantastic. And see if you can sift through this. But the bottom line is they were taking collateral, accounts receivable, and likely using it to borrow billions of dollars that they completely lost. That that's and then that's going to blow a hole in the balance sheet of the shadow bank, which is going to blow a hole in the bank of the depository bank. And you can see right here, some of the biggest names on Wall Street have been drawn into the debacle, including hedge fund Millennium Management, Swiss banking giant UBS. Shocker. Remember, they absorb credit Swiss, but most notably investment bank Jeff. A I love this quote right here, too. asked at a bankruptcy hearing this month where roughly 2 billion raised by First Brands through factoring, a type of off-balance sheet invoicing financing using receivables and inventories was held. A lawyer for the company said, "We don't have it. There's 12 million in the bank account today. That's it. There's nothing else." Wow. How do you raise $2 billion? You your liabilities are who knows3 4 billion. Just a month ago by Jeff the investment bank you were valued at a minimum $6 billion and today you only got 12 million in the bank with billions and billions and billions of liabilities. Oh my goodness. Wow. Wow. Well, where there's smoke, there's fire. We'll definitely have to keep our eye on this and try color and see how this plays out. My guess is over the next couple months, we're going to see more and more of these things. But, uh, we'll have to see. We'll have to see how it plays out. Okay, now let's get into this bonus for everybody that is valued at $500. What am I talking about? Well, everyone knows we're in a huge AI bubble right now. But the question is, what do you do about it? How do you protect your wealth? Hopefully, how do you grow your wealth? And there's some strategies, some contrarian strategies that the pros I know use to invest in financial bubbles or during times of financial bubbles where they actually can take crisis or potential crisis situations and turn them into opportunities. And I can assure you that it's it's it's usually doing the opposite of what you're told to do. buy and hold, buy the dip, invest in a passive S&P fund. So, I'm going to be doing a a free twohour, or maybe it's not two hours, but it's going to be a free webinar training where I'm going to take you step by step through these contrarian strategies the pros use to invest during times of financial bubbles. And the the huge huge huge huge bonus is for anyone who attends this, it's going to be October 29th. I'm going to give them a a $500 coupon code for next year's Rebel Capitals Live. And the tickets are going to go on sale in November. And the general admission ticket is $599. But with this coupon code that you're going to get just for attending the webinar, it takes the price of the ticket from $599 all the way down to 99. So, this is the no-brainer of all no-brainers. Not only am I going to be giving you the cheat code that the pros use to invest during times of financial bubbles, but I'm also going to be giving this awesome, awesome bonus for Rebel Capitalist Live. So, you can register for free and uh Josh will put a link in the chat and a link in the description below. And hopefully I'll see all you guys October 29th on that bombshell. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon. As always, make sure you're standing up for freedom, liberty, free market, capitalism. See you in the next video.
Another Huge Bankruptcy Just Rocked Wall St (What You Need To Know)
Summary
Transcript
Hello fellow Rebel Capitals. Hope you're well. So, we have another huge corporate bankruptcy that rocked Wall Street and there could be some fraud involved. So, we have to ask the question, is this starting to feel a lot like 2007 or maybe even the beginning stages of 2008? And the thing that's crazy right now is it's like we're combining. We have a merger of 2007, maybe 2008 and 1999 with the AI bubble. So, talk about a crazy crazy perfect storm. We're going to talk about that in this video. And make sure you stay to the end because I'm going to be telling you how you can get a free $500 bonus or a bonus worth $500. I'm going to tell you that at the end of this bit, at the end of this video, excuse me. But let's dive right in here. This bankruptcy is all about a company called First Brands. Now, what's bizarre is you would think they're just like a mom and pop type of company. They sell like auto parts, like windshield wipers to AutoZone and but somehow they were borrowing billions and billions and billions of dollars all off balance sheet and they're taking collateral. They're rehypothecating it. And do I think this is potentially a canary in the coal mine? Absolutely I do. But do I think it's a canary in the coal mine? Because this in and of itself is going to have massive systemic risk that's going to bring down the entire system like the GFC. No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't get me wrong. But what I think this shows us is that the water or the tide is starting to go out. And when the tide goes out, you see who's swimming naked, as Warren Buffett says. And I think it shows us that there's a lot more people swimming naked, which you would expect when you have a huge bubble and the stock market has been at these crazy nosebleleed valuations and you have people, retail investors out there chasing risk to the degree to which they have, especially since the survea sickness. This is going to encourage, this is going to incentivize fraud for people who are, let's just say, don't have that moral north star. And I'm not implying that this guy did, but that's it wouldn't shock me uh if there's fraudulent activity or activity that's let's say in the gray area that we see come as a result of this bankruptcy because the DOJ is getting involved as well. And so I think another thing you've you've got to really consider is this hit some big banks like UBS as an example. So all these other banks that have been doing this private credit, right? The the shadow banking industry where the bank itself doesn't want to lend lend to a risky borrower. So they just lend to a shadow bank. uh let's just call it a non-depository lending institution and then they just take the money and then they lend to the super risky guy. And so the bank has kind of an arm length distance from the transaction itself, but it's still their balance sheet. It's still going to blow a hole in their balance sheet, right? So where there's smoke, there's fire, right? I think that's the main thing here. But check out what these guys were doing. I I've gone through this for about 15 20 minutes and I still can't get my head around it. And what's amazing is it's not like this is JP Morgan that are where they're dealing in derivatives and all this crazy uh offbalance sheet on balance sheet stuff. they're in repo and you know the monetary system and I I would understand that their let's just say corporate I don't know you want to call this uh what is this called like a flowchart or something like that their corporate hierarchy would be extremely complex but this is just a company that sells auto parts for heaven's sakes like it shouldn't like they should be doing their accounting on QuickBooks not that they good, but they the my point is the business should be simple enough as far as from an accounting standpoint to to use QuickBooks. I mean, this business should be they should be able to use Excel for heaven's sakes. And look at how they had this thing set up. So, first brands. Oh, what is it called? Duh, George. It's right in front of me. The organizational structure, the org chart, I think they call this. Okay. So, equity owner, uh, that's 100% and then they own Aztec Corporation, Break Parts Holding, Inc., Viceroy Private Capital LLC. That's that's not too shady because, you know, they might have a division that does financing or or vendor financing. They could be taking a page out of the AI bubble book. But, um, that's not too concerning. But this is where you get into crazy town over here from private or viceroy private capital LLC and then you get into the specialurpose vehicle. Whenever we see special purpose vehicle that's always got to raise an eyebrow and be like what's going on here? Doesn't matter whe the Fed's doing it or First Brands is doing it. So this I assume is kind of the offbalance sheet nonsense where the in the punchline here guys because this gets incredibly confusing. You can't really follow it but they were using their accounts receivable as collateral. But what it looks like is they were using it for collateral multiple times. So they're basically rehypothecating their accounts receivable. So, let's say they had an order from AutoZone and it's an order for whatever $50 million and AutoZone hasn't paid them yet. But what they do is they take that accounts receivable and they use that as collateral to get whatever, let's say a $10 million loan, okay? But then they use that to get another $10 million loan and another $10 million and all the other people that are lending to them because they're lending through all these crazy LLC's. They don't know about each other and they think that they're the only one that's on the title. We think about a lean on a title. They think they're the only one that is a lean holder on the title to, let's just say, this house, but they don't realize that there's a hundred people that are lean holders to the exact same house. And that how are you going to get paid, right? You're you're getting you're giving a loan for $10 million, let's say, on 50 million in collateral that's been rehypothecated whatever 20, 50, 10 times, 100 times. But what that means is that 50 million in collateral has been used to borrow, let's just say, a billion dollars. And so where are they going to come up with a billion dollars? I think what they did, assuming that this was legit, is they used that well, look, the rehypothecation of the collateral, I don't I would highly doubt that's legal, but I'm not a lawyer. We'll have to see how this plays out. But I think ethically I I would highly doubt that they disclosed that information. So, there's also an ethical issue there. But the the punchline is even if they I'm just trying to think this through out loud, looking at it from their standpoint, maybe they're like, "Oh my gosh, we're going to buy all these companies because it's going to be so great and the only way we can do it is if we kind of don't disclose everything about how many times we're using that collateral. But don't worry, this will all pan out because we're going to make so much money on all these companies that we're buying." and then the companies go tits up because the economy sucks and then everything blows up. My my guess is that's probably what happened. Let's keep going here. And by the way, so this and the thing that got the attention of the DOJ is during this bankruptcy process for an auto parts place. They make auto parts for heaven's sakes. Uh they just lost 1.9 like the there's 1.9 billion almost $2 billion that just disappeared. Like no one can even find it. Like they don't even know how it was spent. Like like they're not even saying that they didn't lose the money. They're saying it it's not here and and we don't even know how we lost the money. And and this is where it's maybe maybe there's some shady stuff going on here, but we want to obviously assume people are innocent until proven guilty. But I I think the bigger story is really all these other banks that have been lending to these uh shadow banks and then they're going to start looking at it and scrutinizing it and say, "Wait a minute here. These shadow banks are lending to people that are too risky for us to lend to. We realize that. But now we have to get serious about it because it seems like the chickens are coming home to roost. And if the chickens are coming home to roost, then if you know, I just got a hole blown in my balance sheet because of First Brands and whatever Shadow Bank lent to them. Then I'm going to look at all the other shadow banks that I've lent to. I'm going be like, "Hey, show me your financials. Show me your financials because I want to see what you guys have hiding in the closet there." And maybe I don't want to know about it. But now it's time that it it's going to we're likely going to see what's been happening underneath the hood. No pun intended. And the concern there is if it's happening over here with first brands, it's likely happening not just throughout this industry, but throughout the entire economy and the entire financial economy, let's say. And it wouldn't surprise me because this is what exactly what happens in bubbles. And that's why I think it it kind of rhymes and it feels a little bit like 2007208 because what was happening back then I mean it's the same type of financial shenanigans. It's just look, this stuff happens over and over and over again. It's just how we're hardwired as human beings and then we forget about what happened 15 years ago and we just say, "Oh, well that'll never ever happen again." And this time it's different because X, Y, and Z. This time it's different. So, let's just go ahead and keep lending and lending and lending. Let's keep dancing while the music is playing and the music will just continue to play indefinitely because we've just found the infinite money glitch. I mean, this is the this is what people convince themselves every single time. It doesn't matter whether it's dot com, doesn't matter it's GFC or it doesn't matter now. And I'm not saying this whole thing blows up the same way, but this could be the canary in the coal mine, showing us the types of, let's just say, activities that have been happening in the shadows that if the tide goes out are all going to come to the surface. And that's when the marketplace could have, let's just say, the Biden moment. And you guys know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Joe Biden being mentally sharp. Remember that narrative? And if you questioned it whatsoever, then you were just a wild right-wing conspiracy theorist. And then all of a sudden, we had the debate between Biden and Trump where it was so blatantly obvious that he wasn't running on all eight cylinders. I'm going I'm going with these puns today, aren't I? And it was just so blatantly obvious that even the mainstream media couldn't gaslight you anymore. and they had to admit that yeah, okay, he ain't the sharpest hack in the in he's not the sharpest tool in the shed right now. And of course, they didn't admit that the conspiracy theorists were right, but that was kind of the Biden moment. It's like the O want to keep it kid-friendly, but the OS moment. And this could be the beginning of when the market opens up their eyes and it's like, "Oh, wait. The emperor's not wearing any clothes. Let's keep going here. And like I said, the DOJ, they're going to get into this and it'll be really interesting to see what they come up with. Department of Justice has opened an inquiry into the collapse. Federal prosecutors look to untangle how investors and creditors have been left with billions of dollars in potential losses. And what may very and what may be very bad news for companies bankers like Jeff and and like I said u UBS is in this which is basically credit Swiss let's not forget what they were doing and they went belly up and like they said this really shouldn't come as a big surprise but Jeff stock down uh 30% as of uh a couple days ago when this article came out. So, the FT Financial Times notes that such probes do not necessarily mean wrongdoing uh has occurred and may not lead to charges being filed or cases being brought. But I don't think that's the critical component of this story. Again, I I I think it's that this might be the smelling salts that the the banks and the lenders need to realize that we have to readjust our thinking here. And everything that we are pricing at 100 cents to the dollar might not be priced at 100 cents of the dollar, might be priced at 50 cents on the dollar. And it's the exact same thing that happened in subprime, subprime, excuse me. remember everyone was just uh everyone was just marking those mortgages as though they were 100 cents on the dollar and then all of a sudden they're like, "Oh no, they're actually 50 cents on the dollar and that was the collateral that was used in the monetary system and the whole thing blows up because you just basically eliminate half the pristine collateral that was available for the entire financial plumbing. And so I don't know that this blows up the entire financial system, but again it it's a similar type of thing where we could see this 100 cents on the dollar mark from these banks and lending institutions and shadow banks dropping down to 50 cents and and and that's then liquidity dries up. Then you know what does that mean for the AI bubble? That's another thing to think about because I just saw a story today where OpenAI of course did another deal. I forgot who it was with. You guys probably know in the chat, but their share price went up by like 10% immediately. And it's like, wait a minute, OpenAI doesn't make money. They they lose money. They lose billions and billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars a year. So you're let's just say it was a hundred billion dollar deal. Okay, you're marking that at a hundred billion. The market is marking that at a hundred billion, but it isn't worth a hundred billion. At the end of the day, it might be worth a bill. It might be worth nothing because what is a $100 or hundred billion dollar commitment worth from a company that loses billions of dollars every single year? What are we doing here? This is crazy. Anyway, let's get back to the article. So the uh Zero Hedge says they um reiterate how two billion dollars appears to be definitively missing wrongdo wrongdoing is all but certain. I I don't know. I don't know if I'd go that far, but it it's definitely shady and it could trigger a chain reaction. I get I think that's what I'm trying to say. As reported Wednesday, one of the largest creditors for First Brands alleged that as much as 2.3 billion had simply vanished as part of company's abrupt failure. And that's another thing that's really wild here is let's see I I here you go right here Jeff which is one of the I guess investors quote unquote or the lenders they just back in August a couple months ago they were preparing to do a $6 billion refi of the company of first brands So just back in August, you had a sophisticated investor supposedly coming in and doing an a valuation of the company and they were valuing it at the very least $6 billion. $6 billion. And a month or two later, boom, bankrupt. That's usually what you see happen in in bubbles. It end collapses. We'll have to see how this this plays out. Abrupt failure. Yeah, no kidding. So then they go into kind of some more of these corporate structures and org chart. I I I could not follow this because you've got the special purpose vehicle borrowers which are I think these guys these these entities which is are owned by Viceroy and Viceroy is owned by first Brands and they're I mean I don't know what the hell is going on. They're they're they're getting their collateral from Viceroy and then it's leading into subsidiaries, third party vendors, creation of security interest. Austrian bank is involved. I mean this is completely bananas. Like I said at the beginning, this is a company that you should be able to do their accounting on QuickBooks for. Heaven sakes. You've got caraval facilities overview. So, it looks like you've got special purpose vehicles like within special purpose vehicles or or something. I I don't know what's going on. You guys can go to the article from Zero Hedge. It's fantastic. And see if you can sift through this. But the bottom line is they were taking collateral, accounts receivable, and likely using it to borrow billions of dollars that they completely lost. That that's and then that's going to blow a hole in the balance sheet of the shadow bank, which is going to blow a hole in the bank of the depository bank. And you can see right here, some of the biggest names on Wall Street have been drawn into the debacle, including hedge fund Millennium Management, Swiss banking giant UBS. Shocker. Remember, they absorb credit Swiss, but most notably investment bank Jeff. A I love this quote right here, too. asked at a bankruptcy hearing this month where roughly 2 billion raised by First Brands through factoring, a type of off-balance sheet invoicing financing using receivables and inventories was held. A lawyer for the company said, "We don't have it. There's 12 million in the bank account today. That's it. There's nothing else." Wow. How do you raise $2 billion? You your liabilities are who knows3 4 billion. Just a month ago by Jeff the investment bank you were valued at a minimum $6 billion and today you only got 12 million in the bank with billions and billions and billions of liabilities. Oh my goodness. Wow. Wow. Well, where there's smoke, there's fire. We'll definitely have to keep our eye on this and try color and see how this plays out. My guess is over the next couple months, we're going to see more and more of these things. But, uh, we'll have to see. We'll have to see how it plays out. Okay, now let's get into this bonus for everybody that is valued at $500. What am I talking about? Well, everyone knows we're in a huge AI bubble right now. But the question is, what do you do about it? How do you protect your wealth? Hopefully, how do you grow your wealth? And there's some strategies, some contrarian strategies that the pros I know use to invest in financial bubbles or during times of financial bubbles where they actually can take crisis or potential crisis situations and turn them into opportunities. And I can assure you that it's it's it's usually doing the opposite of what you're told to do. buy and hold, buy the dip, invest in a passive S&P fund. So, I'm going to be doing a a free twohour, or maybe it's not two hours, but it's going to be a free webinar training where I'm going to take you step by step through these contrarian strategies the pros use to invest during times of financial bubbles. And the the huge huge huge huge bonus is for anyone who attends this, it's going to be October 29th. I'm going to give them a a $500 coupon code for next year's Rebel Capitals Live. And the tickets are going to go on sale in November. And the general admission ticket is $599. 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