From Wall Street to Your Street: What One Voice Can Change

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the host and their guests and not those of W4CY Radio, its employees, or affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implied shall be extended to W4CY Radio or its employees or affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W4CY Radio. Welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast, broadcasting live every Wednesday, 6 p.m. Eastern Time on W4CY Radio at W4CY. com. This week and every week, we will reach for a higher purpose in money and life, as well as a focus on health and wellness. Now, let's join your host, Benita Bell Anderson, as together we start with asking good questions.

1:01 Hello and welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast. I am your host, Benita Bell Anderson, and today we have got a topic that I think you're all going to really be interested in. This is going to have to do with what's going on in the world. It's not really about financial education. It's more about what's happened in the past and what one person has done about it. So with that, I will introduce my guest today. His name is Mark Hoffman. Mark, will you join the podcast stage now? It's nice to be here with you.

1:44 Thank you, Mark. Now remind me, where are you coming from in the world? At the moment, I'm in Florida. Okay. Where my residence is now. I used to live in New York on Long Island. I can kind of tell the New York, a little bit of New York-y accent going on there. Well, it took me a while to reacquire it after living away for seven years between school and the Army. Okay. Okay. Well, let me tell you a little bit about this guy. He spent years investigating the forces behind the 2008 financial crisis. Now, Mark, you don't know about my history with 2008, but it was devastating for me. I was doing some pre-construction real estate.

2:34 It was awful. And it was a big, huge, massive learning experience for me. But in Mark's case, he was tracing oil price manipulation straight to Wall Street's biggest players. We're not reliving 2008 today, but it's about what Mark has learned along the way, that ordinary people armed with persistence and a willingness to speak up can hold powerful institutions accountable. So we're going to be talking about you know, his lived experience, his sharp reasoning, his wit, his moral seriousness about this whole thing.

3:19 So I know I can think, I'm just thinking in my mind of all the people that I know had that that period of time was a huge, huge learning experience for a lot of people. And it was not easy. So he's also written a book about this. But before we get into your book, Tell us a little bit about your background. How in the world does a guy like you come to be talking about things like this? Well, it's not just one thing that did it. It's a bunch of things that all contributed to me being who I am. One is my parents always instilled in me just to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. Right. college, I had some decisions to make when I was about 19 or so. And an instructor I was friendly with said, you're young, you got a lot of years of shaving in front of you.

4:21 It makes life a lot easier if you can look yourself in the mirror when you shave. And then during my time in college in the late 60s, the draft was very heavy and Vietnam was over everybody's head. I was going to draft parties every other week. So I joined ROTC. went into the army as a lieutenant. The leadership training and the leadership experience, I have to say, looking back, had to be a major contributor to things I've accomplished and where I've gone since then. Okay. I came home, my first job was as a construction superintendent on a very large construction site. was 46 high-rise apartment buildings.

5:12 I started out as an assistant superintendent trainee over three of them, then an assistant super over five of them, and a superintendent over 17, and then I was deputy project superintendent over the whole job. I got into commercial real estate a few years later. I was running a 50-man office for a major real estate office in New York. Spent 27 years on Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, a volunteer job. I was doing some entertainment business as a little sideline and spent 16 years on the board of directors of the National Conference of Personal Managers. And it just seems like I've joined a high officer or board of directors on a number of different groups. I was in Fishing Club, Alumni Association, and everything else. And or that it's who I am. And that was always somewhat analytical.

6:12 I always like to see what made things work. And so- I think that's key. That's key. And you start looking back and say, why is it that way? And this doesn't make sense, but this does. So you keep looking at things. Well, you said that the recession actually started around Hurricane Katrina. In 2005. I mean, I remember it was like the mortgage collapse, but you're saying it was before that. It was the oil prices that caused the recession, and the recession caused the mortgage collapse. Okay. And I can give you a little understanding of two separate things that collided.

7:04 The mortgage business, the traditional home mortgage failure rate, is one-tenth of 1%. That's one in 1,000. When you take out mortgage insurance, which is usually required, it's generally a quarter of a point. That covers the one-tenth plus the fees and profits to everybody along the line. Your bank sells off the mortgage. They were getting three times the profit on the sale of an adjustable than they were on a fixed price mortgage. And the reason for that is the end buyer would rather have something that went up over a period of time. And the deal was so good and so safe, certain entities like Bear Stearns would buy them up and put them into big bundles.

7:50 And the deal was so safe that the end buyers or hedge funds, investment banks and other investment groups got 40 to one leverage. What that means is they would put down a billion dollars and buy $ 40 billion worth. And they'd finance the other 39 with margin financing, like buying a stock on margin, except they're much more highly leveraged. And they were paying the cheapest rate because they were the biggest users. They were paying 2.5%. The bundles were paying 6.5%, maybe 7% in that range. So they saw a four-point spread. Well, four points on $ 40 billion is $ 1. 6 billion every year. For the billion dollars they put down once.

8:40 Well, I don't want to get too lost in the weeds because some people might be going, that's too much for me. But the point I want to get to is you realize that you couldn't just watch this happen. I mean, most people are not going to act, but you acted differently. So walk us through briefly what that meant for you. It meant a lot of knocking my head against the wall. I was concerned my head was getting a little flat on one side. But it was Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and BP formed the Intercontinental Exchange in 2000. In 2001, they bought a small London-based petroleum exchange, moved it to Atlanta, where The Intercontinental Exchange, ICE, to its friends, was headquartered.

9:40 And they applied to the, I have to call it the Cheney administration, for foreign exchange status. As a foreign exchange, it's kind of like being a foreign embassy. Very few laws applied to you. So they were stealing nickels. A nickel a gallon, no one's going to notice. Gasoline by me at the time was $ 1. 75. Whether it was $ 1. 80 or $ 1. 70 wouldn't have changed anybody's life significantly. And this was great. Then along comes Katrina in 2005. Okay. Late August 2005. And now 19% to of our production offline, they said for 90 days. But I couldn't imagine that all of the facilities had the identical damage that would take 90 days. That was a question mark in my mind.

10:33 Shouldn't some of it take a week or two to fix and some a month, some two months, some three months to be back online? But gasoline by me went up from $ 1. 75 to $ 3. 50 overnight and stayed that price for three months, then started to come down, got down about 252 and a quarter, then all of a sudden took off again. That second taking off was Morgan and Goldman saying, hey, we can play for much bigger dollars. And they were manipulating the oil prices up and down, and they would make long bets and short bets. Long bet is that the price will go up, short bet is betting that the price is.

11:15 Gonna go down, Well, you were, I mean, you were reaching out to senators, the CFTC, which is what? What's the CFTC? Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Okay. The FBI, the Attorney General. And so, what was that like? Well, I started... I guess it was around 2007. I called Carl Lang's office. He was a Senator from Michigan, uh, because he was heading a committee that was investigating why oil prices were going up, what was going on. And all the banks were in front of the Senate saying it's India and China. And I'm saying that doesn't make any sense. You know, uh, All these banks have people following India and China on a moment-by-moment basis, if not living there. And they didn't go poof overnight and nobody noticed.

12:25 That just didn't make any sense to me. When I found out it was Morgan and Goldman manipulating everything, I said, got to do something about it. And I tried calling Senator Lange's office. But the problem was, I don't live in Michigan. So I would call there and the receptionist was very nice. She would take my phone number. I didn't hear back. And a few weeks later, I would call again and take my phone number and take notes. And the third time around, I'm saying, are you only playing with me because I don't live in Michigan? And she would giggle and say, yeah. So that was kind of frustrating. I said, I've got information that can help them, his committee, which has tremendous national and global effects on everybody.

13:16 I can help. And she's probably going, who are you? But you don't live in Michigan, so you can't talk to us. Well, what kept you going when officials weren't responding the way that you had hoped that they would? I kept trying to find somebody else to do it. Yeah. You were just persistent. I went to the FBI. and said, well, I went to Commodity Futures Trading Commission in February of 2010, filled out their forms. You can only do things online. Nobody wants to talk to anybody. Right. You got to do it online. And I think when the World Trade Center came down, someone may have called it in and said, this is going to happen, but they didn't fill it out online. They didn't have the right form. But anyway, I want the commodity futures. He called back my contact in April and said, I know you can't discuss an ongoing investigation, but did you find anything worth looking into?

14:22 He said, we're getting a number of calls on it now. It's definitely being looked into. Was I first? They said, who am I? I'm just a little schnook in town. I'm just a small businessman. I'm not a Wall Street guru. And a couple of weeks later, early May, I hear on the radio, there's a rumor on Wall Street that DOJ is looking into Morgan Stanley, probably for commodity futures, probably for delivery. Yeah, I'm saying, good. And I called my contact and he thought it was great and everything was wonderful. I checked back with him in August. Congress was working on some new laws to control the speculators.

15:08 Because the big banks said, it must be the speculators that are manipulating the oil prices. It's their fault. Somebody else did it. And I said, do the new laws that Congress is working so diligently on, are they affecting trading on a foreign exchange? He said, they're in the conference room right now discussing that right down the hall. I said, great. I said, because Morgan and Goldman are trading on a foreign exchange. He said, don't worry about them. We got them. We got them. It's coming. We got them. It's coming. And I'm feeling great. You know, no one's buying me dinner, but when I shave in the morning, it's real easy to look in the mirror. A little extra, you know, kick in my step when I'm walking down the street. Every now and then there's a grin on my face for some unexplained reason. A couple of months go by, I don't hear anything. My friends on Wall Street aren't hearing anything. So I call this guy back.

16:06 Maybe it was November, early December. And I said, so when is it coming? I don't know what to tell you. It's up to the bosses. Nothing more I can do. I check it out. The commissioner is a former Goldman Sachs partner. And I said, he's not going to indict his friends. You know, and then I started... One of the fishing councils in New York, I used to sit, I sat for five years on their advisory commission. One of the guys was a trader at Morgan Stanley. And I asked him, I used the name Ted in the book. I said, I understand that this gentleman quashed the investigation.

16:52 He said, yeah, absolutely, he quashed it. And I said, he quashed the investigation? He said, yep, absolutely. And a friend of mine standing next to me who knew my involvement was just standing there with his jaw on the floor. We just looked at each other. There was nothing to say. And I came back at this guy and said, you're responsible for the world collapsing. You're funding terrorism. You're causing revolutions in the Mideast. 15 million American families are losing their homes. everybody here, all the fishermen here are struggling to stay alive because of your work, and you're here trying to save a fish? I said, where are your priorities?

17:37 And they went running away from me, trying not to look in my direction anymore. But in 2012, I went to New York State AG's office and filled out their forms, a couple of fully written two-page form. And they called me back. We worked it out. It took a couple of months for that to happen. But they got back to me, and we spoke. I told them I had never seen a trade go on, but I can tell you what's going on. And this guy just confirmed everything to me, and they said, well, Ted, cooperate with us.

18:22 I said, well, it depends how you approach him. And they said, well, how would you recommend approaching him? I said, you go up to him, you tell him he's got two options. Option one is to cooperate. He can receive immunity, spend the next several years fishing, golfing, having dinner with the family. Or option two is he can be subject of the investigation. And if any wrongdoing is found, there may be some jail time involved, plus the loss of any proceeds improperly attained. Any assets they bought, like a house, a boat, or a car? You're making me think of the godfather. Well, you know, they said to me, what is it you do for a living? You know, I want to say I watch a lot of Law and Order. Right.

19:06 Well, I mean, so, I mean, you're just a regular Joe. And one of the outcomes of this episode is I just want people to realize that if you're concerned about something, you need to speak up. Right? Absolutely. And so let's pivot just a bit. At what point did you decide, I need to write a book? Because if you go to his website, you'll see a little trailer there, and you'll see something that talks about rant. So when was it that you said, I've got to write a book about this? Well, I was always nervous about writing a book. I've got my friend Rocco, who's does nothing but write.

19:51 Sounds like he works for the. Godfather, too. Not quite. But we are very close. We both worked in a blue-collar side job for a while. And he and I were both educated. And we were both Vietnam vets. So we bonded very closely and we're still very dear friends many years later. But anyway, I always tease him that he couldn't write, he couldn't order a hamburger at McDonald's in a thousand words or less. But my big concern was if I was going to write something, it would be, this is what happened. He did at the end, it'd be five or six pages. You know, in the previous 40 years, I hadn't written anything more than a two page business letter. But in 2013, I went to Department of Justice, and I called and said, well, who do I talk to to report a possibly corrupt federal commissioner? And they said, oh, let me put you right through to the criminal division. Young lady answers the phone there very sweetly and says, oh, you have to speak to the fraud department. Fraud department says you have to speak to the FBI. The FBI says you have to speak to justice. I said, justice just transferred me here.

21:04 You've got to speak to the inspector general and The Inspector General's Department says, you have to speak to the criminal division. I said, wait a minute. I'm on the phone five minutes. I've been around the world three times. Yeah. Well, I started out there. They passed me around like a hot potato. He said, I'd like to help you, but we don't do that. They do that. I go back. The same young lady's voice says, well, I don't know who you spoke to before, but it wasn't me. And anyway, she says, just send me an email. I said, well, and maybe somebody will look at it. I said, okay. What do you mean maybe? This is responsible for Europe going bankrupt, revolutions in the Mideast, it's funding terrorism, 15 million American families are losing their homes. Okay, do you have something more important to do? Am I interrupting a pinochle game? I mean, what's going on? And he said, just send in the email. Well, I sent in an email.

21:56 That was in May. I called back after Labor Day. No one got in touch with me. And the gentleman says, oh, we didn't call you back because you didn't offer any proof. I said, nobody asked me for proof. I said, here's the guy's name and phone number at Commodity Futures. Here's the guy's name and phone number who's a trader at Morgan. He said, we don't do that. You have to get the signed statements. I said, they're not giving me signed statements. I don't have a badge. You got the whole FBI. We don't do that. If I did that for you, I'd have to do it for everybody. Well, yeah, that's a great idea. I said, this is responsible for this, that, that, that, and the other thing. And you can't make a phone call?

22:41 Then down the street from you. We don't do that. I mean, so what you're talking about is you are talking about public accountability. Right. Really. And I said, we got into the volume went up a little bit. And finally, I slammed the phone down and started typing. And I said, you know, a number of people had mentioned, oh, it sounds like a book. It sounds like a book. You should write a book. So that was always in my mind. But I was always afraid to write because I get too precise. This is what happened. He did it at the end. And it came out. So real accountability. So, I mean, you know, you're I can just see you saying, you know, I'm just one person, but.

23:29 I can think, I mean, you know, the Erin Brockovich story and about the town and, you know, that all of that, you know, that was made into a movie and she was just one person. But it ended up being made into a movie about that situation. And so what does real accountability look like when you're talking about powerful institutions like what you're trying to go after? Well, Wall Street finances, the people on Wall Street finance a lot of movies. None of them will touch my book.

24:09 None of them. I've cost them billions and billions of dollars. Goldman Sachs was making a profit of a billion to a month. I don't think they're going to finance my movie. Though I do have strong movie interest from a producer with a big track record. He loves my book, and we agree on the format of the book, how the movie would go. But he's got several projects in front of him and no financing. We can do a good movie for probably $ 12, $ 13 million. Right.

24:52 Well, stay tuned for that, right? Yep. In the meantime. You've talked about being able to look yourself in the mirror. I mean, you said that earlier about being able to look yourself in the mirror. Where did that principle come from for you? I mean, just always wanting to be honest about your business dealings? I was always straight in business. And, you know, no one's putting me up for sainthood. I'm not Mr. Perfect. And there's been more than one occasion where I've looked in the mirror and and said, hey, dummy, you handled that situation wrong. You should have done it differently. And I try to do it differently next time. But it's a system that's worked for me. I speak at a high school on occasion. I tell them basically the same thing, where you look in life, and a legitimate person will survive in the end. Go ahead.

25:54 Why do you think so many people stay silent when they see something wrong? They're afraid to, or they tried, they made a phone call and nothing happened. Yeah. You know, someone would give me an idea of who to approach and I'd go attack. I'd grab my lance, mount my steed and charge the windmills. Well, um, Do you think there's a difference between complaining about a problem and actually doing something about it? Oh, yeah. I sit around, have coffee in the morning with a bunch of friends, and for many years I'd go out, especially when I started working from home, I would go out and have coffee. That got my day started.

26:42 Had my breakfast at the local diner and solve all the problems in the world with the regulars at the counter and then come back to the office. which got me going. But, yeah, everybody complains about things. Just who does something about it or even try it? It's only a small percentage of us. So let's fast forward. Let's kind of, you know, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on right now, right? Oh, yeah. So in plain terms, how does what happened in 2008– still show up in people's everyday lives today? Like, you know, and we're talking about the normal people that are grocery bills, gas prices, that sort of thing. How is it showing up?

27:31 You kind of make me wonder if anything's changed at all. It has. Walmart just said they came out with good numbers because people go on Walmart, but they reduced their projections for the following years. And so the stock got hit. You see it in your lower and your middle neighborhoods are very affected by this. People on Wall Street just came out that the amount of money on margin just went up by about 15%. Yeah, I actually saw something about that.

28:15 So if there is a collapse, there's going to be a lot of people getting hurt on margin calls. Right. But the typical worker, one of my friends who read my book came back to me early on when oil prices first started going up. And he said he manages a grocery store, a major grocery store in an average working neighborhood. And he said, The difference, you can see the change right away. The $ 20 and $ 30 items in the seafood counter weren't selling and more chicken and more pasta was selling. So people were searching. I'm sure.

28:58 I'm sure the people that run grocery stores are seeing that sort of thing. Well, let's just, I keep thinking about how are we going to make this appropriate to what some actions are that people could take now? If someone today suspects something isn't right, that could be in their community. That could be their finance. It could be a local institution. What's the first practical step they should take? Check it out as much as you can to verify that it is. There's no sense in going to a police or district attorney. No, it wasn't. It was just something else happened. Yeah, you need to have some particular.

29:40 you have to understand what's going on and then go to your local authorities and they'll pass you on to somebody else if need be they might say it's not a local matter it's a state matter or a federal matter or whatever but we have that here I live in a large condominium complex with various associations and people running the associations aren't used to handling multimillion dollar budgets. Right. And so every now and then someone gets greedy. We just had a contractor that just went to jail. He died in jail. Whoa.

30:22 Well, is there something I mean, you know, so we've been kind of weaving in things that we can think about today as things that pertain to us now. But is there anything that you wish somebody had told you at the start of your journey with looking into institutions? A lot of people told me a lot of things and said, I have a. cousin who's very successful in the financial arena as a tremendous career, uh, basically said, you know, there's always been corruption. Just go with it. Yeah. I said, that's not me. Sorry. I walked away from them. And, uh, uh, a lot of friends said, you know, I'd mentioned something's going on and people say, are you still on that kick?

31:08 I said, absolutely. Absolutely. And I keep talking about what new thing came up, what new adventure I'm seeking, what I'm up to in doing this. Finally, it was New York State. It took commodity futures three and a half months to do their investigation. It took New York State three and a half years. But the other ones in September of 14 pulled Morgan and Goldman into the office. And I've often fantasized about being there at that time. In fact, if not emceeing that that discussion. I would have had downstairs in their building, they have the holding cells.

31:50 I would have had the two biggest, toughest-meaning-looking guards come up and stand outside the conference room door as these gentlemen approached and had them look out the window and say, hey, you see that view? If you're not out of the oil business the next 20 minutes, you'll never see that view again. And I would have put some significant fines on them I would have gone for at least a billion dollars for a corporation and then $ 10 million personally. As it was, they got a million or $ 2 million fines, which were nothing for guys who were making a billion dollars a month in profits. Right. But they stopped. And oil prices came straight down. And world economies came straight up.

32:35 That was September of 14. September of 16... Janet Yellen came out of an FOMC meeting saying, household spending is driving the economy. You know, everything is wonderful. I looked back at the TV and said, you're welcome. You got to understand, you know, say the prices went up. Here in Florida, nobody heats with oil. But north of here, they do. Yeah. I used to be warm for $ 120 to $ 130 a month. 150 in the worst month of the year, and now I'm cold for 650. My electric bill went from 100 to 300. In a two-car household, you had $ 150 a month per car. Forget what ethanol was doing to food prices, because ethanol, which was a very valiant experiment that didn't work, but corn was going to ethanol production. wheat fields were being converted to ethanol.

33:38 So the price of bread, pizza, pasta, bagels, all that went up. Also, we export 250 million metric tons of wheat every year. If we cut that in half, okay, only 125. Well, the other 125 would have fed a whole lot of people. Right. This is what caused Egypt to go into revolt. Their blue-collar workers, was making $ 2 a day. He had a 20% increase in the cost of food. He couldn't absorb that. So the Muslim Brotherhood stepped in and said, follow us, and we'll get you everything you want. And they overthrew Mubarak.

34:19 And then the Egyptians said, hey, wait a minute. We don't want your fundamentalist nonsense either. They called back their generals and overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood. And that's when ISIS took over for the Muslim Brotherhood and some of the other countries. Yeah, it's an interesting world out there. Definitely. You throw a couple of pebbles in the water and a lot of ripples. What? So, Mark, I want to get to some action steps for listeners. What role does persistence play when you hit a roadblock? Persistence plays a very big role. You know, just because you got stopped someplace, you know, find another approach and attack.

35:05 Yeah. And I think your own belief system, your persistence is driven because of your sense of right and wrong. That's kind of just in listening to you. That's kind of what I'm thinking. Absolutely. Absolutely. Do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. Yeah. It's one thing you want to maximize some profits and increase your profits in a business. But it's another thing is what is that causing you? And I used to sit on the fisheries and they would do things and not understand the causation. If they overmanage some species, well, what does that species eat? Who eats that species? So it changes a lot of things.

35:59 So it's a very delicate job managing that. So what was the end result of Rant? So if there's one thing, you know, when I've written a book, and so I'm like thinking about, you know, you can set things up. What do you want readers to walk away understanding after they read Rant? Well, I want them to understand that they can be a factor. You can do it. And it does take some persistence. You can't just stand up and say, hey, I don't like that. And you got to sometimes got to repeat that. Right. And then you have to go after some authorities who might be responsible for that.

36:44 So what has happened since writing Rant? I mean, have you given copies of the books out? What have you done with it? Well, of course, it's almost impossible to get a traditional publisher. So I self-published it. And I've got some great reviews. I had six out of six major review agencies gave me five stars. And I'm saying to my publisher, I said, well, come on, guys. What are you doing with this? How many other books like this do you have? I said, where are you marketing this? He said, well, we don't know what to do. We've never had a book like that. So I started marketing it, which is one of the reasons you and I are talking. And I did a TV show and a couple other podcasts. And all of a sudden, I got 56 reviews. reviews on Goodreads averaging 4.9 out of 5, which is an incredible score.

37:39 It's just like making people aware, really. Yeah, and it's an easy read. It's not a technical book. I'm not a very technical guy. I like to analyze things into simple terms. You're just passionate. I used to do that in the real estate business. I'd look at contract causes and all their legalese, and you just break them down and say, well, this means if he does this, I can do that, or vice versa, and break it down into simple understanding. And once I can understand it, then I can manipulate it, move it, and utilize it as best be.

38:20 Well, so with that, what would you say to somebody who's tried once, Gets discouraged and wants to give up. Get back on your horse and try again. Says the godfather. So where can people find rant? You can find rant on Amazon and look for rant by Hoffman. Here's my book. Oh, there it is. It is. Rant by Hoffman because there are a few other rants out there. We're totally non-related. I have a website, mkhoffman.com, which is very interesting. And the links to buy the book are on the website as well. And there's an excellent trailer on there, the video that people may enjoy.

39:16 So what do you think? So we're coming close to having to wrap this up. How would you characterize what's going on today? Well, whether it's the individual corruption that's doing it, I think it's more a global situation here of a situation that's been mishandled and having major effects. Something that was going to happen over a weekend and now it's six months. It's having a major effect on everybody around the world. And, you know, what can we do? We can vote. Yes.

40:02 I say that a lot, too. Just get out there. Yeah, I have seen, you know, like I have stood up and had been part of homeowners associations and things like that. I think that you just have to get involved and you have to like, I think it's that sense of right and wrong that you just have to do the right thing and you have to speak up because you care. I think underneath all of this, it's like you care. You do. You have to care. And you have to have some idea of what you're talking about. Yeah. If it takes doing a little homework, do your homework. And I was lucky. I went for lunch one day to my local pizzeria down the street from my home. And on the counter, there was a pile of advertising newspapers.

41:03 And the cover story was about Morgan Stanley manipulating oil prices. And that gave me a whole lot of background and answered a whole lot of questions. And I had a bunch of friends at Wall Street. and elsewhere look at the article. I made copies of it, and they all came back to me saying, everybody knows about it, but nothing's being done about it. Well, I think you just have to keep on keeping on. Yeah. Also, at what point do you put yourself at risk? Yeah. I guess everyone has to make that decision for themselves. But I think the point of this episode is just to let people know, you know, there's a lot of crazy things going on, but I want you to care.

41:54 I want you to be involved where you think it's appropriate for you to be asking questions. The title of this podcast is Ask Good Questions. I think you have been asking a lot of good questions for a very long time. Well, thank you. I've been trying. Yeah. So with that, we're going to have to wrap this up because the time always goes so fast. But I'm hoping that you will go check out Mark Hoffman's book, Rant, and find out what is it that you can do to get out there and make the world a better place.

42:38 Any final thoughts, Mark? You've said it all. I think it's great. And the subtitle is The True Story of One Individual's Campaign Against the Big Banks in an Attempt to Save the World's Economy. And we did. That's a big ask. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for everything you've done. Thank you for your service in getting out there and asking a lot of good questions. Thank you. Have a good show. You bet. With that, we need to wrap this up today. So thank you so much for joining us on the Ask Good Questions podcast. Go check out Mark's book. Go find out more about what you can do to get yourself involved to make a difference out in the world. And with that, we'll say goodbye for now. We'll see you next time.

43:36 Today's episode is over, but we did ask good questions again, didn't we? Don't miss out as we broadcast live every Wednesday, 6 p.m. Eastern Time on W4CY Radio at W4CY. com. Join Benita Bell Anderson next week for more conversations with experts on finances, retirement, behavioral finance issues, health and wellness, and more. Until then, remember to ask good questions.