Next question is from Nathaniel L. Watson. How do you turn your focus on how you feel instead of how you look? Well, okay, there's two ways that this will happen for you. So if you are very, very, very focused on how you look, and that's really your main driver for working out, and that's your main driver for working out, you're not gonna move out of that space unless you're forced to. So what I mean by that is your health suffers. Your looks suffer terribly because your health is suffering. You've got terrible digestive issues or acne or injuries. And I've talked to many people like this where they were just so focused on how they looked and at some point, everything fell apart.  Here's the other way you can do that. If you don't wanna reach that point, okay? The other way you can do that is, yeah, you could definitely change your completely shift your paradigm. Good luck with that. That's definitely the great way to do it. Takes a lot of work. Or you could do this. You could sell yourself a little bit. And this is how I'm gonna sell you right now on why you should change this. If you focus on your looks, if that's what drives you with your workouts and nutrition, you will eventually have health consequences. When your health is poor, your looks suffer. So if you focus on your looks, the end result is you get terrible looks. If you focus on how you feel in your health, the side effect of that is looking great. And if you always focus on your health, then you will always have a greater, a good deal of good health. And because again, because of that, you'll have better looks. So this is how you sell yourself. I want the best looks. I'm gonna focus on how I feel because that produces the best looks. That's the secret. Again, if you don't do that, at some point you will get forced to move in that direction. I think this is a lifelong pursuit. I really do. We talk about it at Nazium on this podcast and I still find myself still to this day being challenged in that area. I don't know if it will ever end for me, especially if it's something that is a deeply rooted insecurity. If it was what drove me into this space in the first place was to train because I felt like I was a skinny guy.  In fact, yesterday I was texting back and forth with Mark Bell. He had reached out to me, just asking me how things are going. That guy really likes you. Yeah, he does. He's a good friend, big fan. Especially your new mustache. He sends me nudes all the time. I don't know if that's, thanks buddy. So he's texting me back and forth. We're talking about fatherhood and then he asked me about my training. How's your training and how's the gym going and stuff? I said, I've reframed my goals right now. I said, by no means am I the impressive men's physique athlete right now at all. And I know that part of that process, I know I'm directly challenging my own insecurities to do that. And I said to him, I said, right now it's about having energy to, when I come home to be able to play with my son to have good rest as much as I possibly can to feel mobile so that I don't get, my back doesn't give out on me when I'm holding him or when I'm down low playing with him. So I've focused on those things right now. So I said on a bad week, I may get one or two strength training sessions, but coupled with two or three days of mobility and tons of long walks right now that I spend with Katrina and Max. And I mean, I can't tell you how good I feel about my overall health right now in my relationship with my partner, my son, all these other aspects that I think are important when you talk about your overall health journey. But when you look at me, I don't look anywhere impressive. In fact, the average person that may have dropped in on my Instagram a couple of years ago, then drops in now would go, oh my God, what's happened Adam or he's fallen off. And it's like, no, I've shifted my focus of a look and it's more about other aspects of my journey. But it doesn't mean that that's not challenging. I mean, it's still something that I have. And part of me doing that is letting go of that and challenging those versus trying to hold on to, oh my God, I used to look this way or throwing back pictures of what I used to look like on posting on Instagram to make myself feel better about myself. It's like, no, instead I'm going to embrace the physique that I have right now because by no means is it bad? It's just that it's my insecurities that make me think that way because it's still as healthy or healthier today than it was five years ago. We've just seen what that mentality does. You know, it ends up being that on the wagon, off the wagon, vicious cycle that you tend to go through because it's really hard to live up to a 20 year old me. I just can't, I would love to go back and have that same physique and those abilities and that strength and all those attributes that I looked back fondly at, but to be able to focus on new things, I mean, it is hard. It's something that you have to constantly just focus on one aspect of that and try to adopt that going forward and make that become something that you do so frequently. It's just, it becomes part of your lifestyle and it's pretty cliche to say that but it has to be that. It has to be something that you incorporate into, this is what I do now forever. It's not something that, you know, I wanna just hustle to get there and then back off and then hustle and then once I get there and look at me, but guess what? You look at me and then what?  So to be able to just incorporate one thing at a time, you know, add on to that with, once you build off of that is so much of a better strategy. Yeah, it's a long-term strategy. Yeah, when you think, when I think of overall health, there are so many things that encompass that and there's gonna be times, and here's the thing too, I don't think that it's fair or right to demonize wanting to look good. You know, if you wanna look good and be ripped and fit, I don't think that- There's some value to that. Right, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that. You just have to be careful. No, you're celebrated. You just have to be careful not to identify with that, right, because it's only one part of the whole big picture. It's also a road to destruction if you're obsessed with that and that becomes your only, and you know what's funny about this, is that, you know, and I remember learning this years ago, I went to my first like physique, you know, bikini competitor competition years ago. I had a friend that was competing in it and he was a natural bodybuilder. And I remember walking in and seeing some of these athletes in real life and they were shredded and dieted and whatever. None of them actually in real life looked attractive. By the way, attractive, the actual real definition of the term where you see somebody like, wow, that's a magnetic individual. They all looked terribly unhealthy.  And here's the thing, healthy people, really healthy people, I mean, inside and out, are attractive to other healthy people. Unhealthy people are the ones that are attractive to other unhealthy people. Like you've got the righted out insecure dude. It tends to attract the plastic surgery, extreme diet person, and their unhealthiness attracts each other. Real attractiveness comes from being truly healthy.  If you're lucky, you're gonna get older one day and it's all gonna fall apart anyway. So either you learn the lesson now or you learn the hard lesson later on, but at some point you're gonna learn this lesson.


Welcome back to the Great Outdoors everybody. Today I'm going to be taking you on my saddle hunting saga. So buckle up and hang tight. So spoiler alert already, the saga will be continuing because I don't know about y'all but I've had some bad luck here lately. I've heard this thing called the October Lull. I don't know if it's true or not but man I've just seen some deer disappear here recently. Archery goal number one this year was to get a deer with my trad bow. We accomplished that and now I'm moving on to my compound bow and my second goal was to be able to get a deer out of a saddle. I am late to the saddle hunting game. I think it's awesome. I think it's really something that I want to learn about and get into. So I got a saddle about four or five months ago, started tinkering with it in the backyard with the purpose of doing some public land hunts where I can't leave a blind or a stand just out there. You can just you know shimmy up the tree real quick and also just for hunting at the least just to play around with, to kind of learn, to get used to it, offer some more opportunities with angles and just you know give myself more leeway when I'm hunting out there on the lease. The problem is we don't have many tall trees so you kind of have to be in a specific area that has some semi-tall scrub oak trees. It's not like in north Texas, central and south Texas. It's really hard to find a straight tall tree. So this is the saddle I decided to go with. This is the tethered, it's made by tethered stafantom and I kind of like the idea of ascending with ropes. So I got me a rope ascender and I got a belay device so I'm able to basically just throw up some ropes into these trees and go. The reason I decided to go with that and so the sticks and stuff is because of the scrub oak trees that are just crazy, they're wild and you know shimmying up there with like a lineman rope or just doing the ladder method. A lot of times I could just grab on to the branches in the live oak trees and climb up that way. So that's why I decided to go with just the rope. Now I was at the lease a few weeks ago. It was hot, it was windy, I tried to make it before a cold front and it just disappeared. I finally got to see a 10 point trophy buck that I had seen on camera. You guys saw it in another video. I got to see him put my eyes on him trying to hunt for pigs. He came in for just a little bit where I could film him and he was just a really impressive deer and I'd love to get him with my bow. I'd love to get a doe with a bow as well, just something out of a saddle and I thought a saddle would give me more opportunities for him coming in and out and being skeptical where I could turn around and get some shot opportunities before he even gets to the feed. So I want to take you there first. When it was hot, windy, we had bucks running around and I saw the big 10 point. Absolutely covered up with cows right here. There's a cattle rancher out here. Hopefully he's going to migrate these things over to another pasture, but I doubt it. So another challenge we're going to have to deal with hunting on range. But this is our tree that I'm thinking about right here. So I was thinking about the one behind it here, but now I'm thinking we go into this front one and we have that back cover and we try to set up some sort of stand right there. I don't know. We're going to see how it looks. Really examine it. You ever get that little voice in your head that says like, you're doing some sketchy probably not a good move at your age bracket. Yeah, I just have that voice. I got a setup. I got my my tether already up there. I put a camera mount up there so I can film and I already took down some branches. There were some branches over here that were kind of drooping over there dead. They were getting in the way. There's just one more. So I decided to do one more sketchy thing. I went back and I got me a step ladder. I'm going to put it on top of the ATV. One more sketchy thing to do. Hopefully this all works out tomorrow morning, but if not, I'm excited about my first time to saddle hunt. Shots were good. Shots were good, but I shot the ground. So I didn't get anything on my first hunt, but I didn't die. So that's good news. And when I was scouting, when it was still a cold front, there was there were some great bucks. I mean, the eight points coming in, that's when I decided to break out the saddle to give myself some more opportunities, set up the camera arms, film. And then after that, I'd never got an opportunity to really film and harvest anything. So I didn't take it. So I'm being a little more selective on the bucks because we still got the rut coming up and we could see some crazy stuff coming out. But fast forward a week, that rain starts coming in, it's getting colds dipping down into the mid forties.  No sanders or greys because when the cold fronts hit, the big bucks start moving. All right, we're on our second attempt on the saddle hunt up here. Last time I had a real bad wind, it was a south wind and these dear, these smart deer, they'll do a circle when they come in, checking for scents and they just got me. Just got a little spooky. Today we have perfect wind north, the northwest. We've got a lot of ability. Oh, nice. You've got to be careful moving, but it's nice that we have this wind. I'll be able to sort of look back and check to see what's coming. Usually when I'm sitting here in this other tree stand behind me, I'm just listening for them, but I'll actually be able to see who's coming and maybe get a shot opportunity of some more opportunities at one of these bigger bucks. But your action soon. Now the wind swirled a few times. He got a little spooky. I think the storm might have messed it up. Buck just pretty much ran out on that trip, y'all. It was just, it was cold. We had the right wind, but it was rainy and very windy. And I think with that wind, it just, it made a lot of deer just bad down. I mean, I didn't even get an opportunity at a doe. We could have shot old Bambi and her mom, but who's going to sleep at night doing that? So I might go back there and hunt that same spot if I see some bigger bucks coming back on camera, or I might just totally abandon that area and go set up my saddle somewhere else. Just depending, you know, how it's going during the rut. Maybe do some rattling, hop in there with the saddle. I think that's a great idea. But I really like the opportunities that this can give you. And just in a pinch, if you see a spot you like, you know, just see an activity in an area, you just hop up there, hop up there in the saddle. But I got to tell you, my first few times getting up there, I was sketched out. I was so scared to even lean back. It's just a different feeling.  I mean, it's almost better for me to go put a two by four in a post oak. Like I just stand on that and feel more comfortable. But now that I've spent time in it and really gotten, you know, things dialed and adjusted with it and figured out some things that work for me, I'm going to be hunting in this for a long time, I think, especially going out of state and other areas that have some more tree opportunities. But the hunt will go on, guys. We'll continue to try to get a deer out of a saddle this season. I'm sure it'll happen sooner than later. And then, you know, once the rut fully kicks off, I think things are going to be really fun. So I've actually got some land really close to here that I plan on hunting that I drew a tag for that I'm excited about. And I'm just excited for it to get cold and for the bigger bucks to get all bristled up. And oh, man, it's just so fun filming them in the cold. There's just something about it. And you see the steam coming out of the mouth. Thanks for hanging with me on today's hunting vlog. Leave me a comment down below if you've got some saddle hunting tips for me, some things that'll make my life a little easier that you notice in this video. I'm sure there's some good advice out there from somebody. Colonel Sanders sending it off right here. May God bless you in the great outdoors. And good luck. I'll see y'all in the next one.


But I think let's dive in and get started. And then I'm trusting that we will have a full house by the time we get through the introduction that is sort of good to the introduction point and dive into the conversation. So this panel is Unlocking CDFIs as an Emergency Response System for Communities and People of Color. I'm Tim Freundlich, founder and executive director of Strategic Development at Impact Assets, which is a $1.2 billion donor-advised fund and impact investment complex that just marked its 10th year. Yay. I'll be joined in the discussion, hopefully, by Greg Johnson from Rockefeller Foundation. We're waiting on him. Beth Bafford from Calgary Impact Capital, who I saw pop up on the screen. Michael Liffcott from the City and Investment Partners and Kat Berman from CNOTE. And they'll all each do a short introduction in just a couple of minutes, so I'm going to leave that to them. But it's worth noting up front that our organizations have collectively placed more than $1 billion in CDFIs. I was doing the math, building to that level and revolving in multiples, of course, because it comes in and goes out and comes in and goes out over the years. And this is a great selection of people developing new models to get more and better and faster capital through CDFIs to those most excluded in the system and hit hardest by the pandemic. And that's kind of the framing for this panel. But we wanted to start with just a really quick CDFI 101 because I was remembering last night, back to 1999 when I was still at Calgary Impact Capital, that not everybody knows what CDFIs are, those being community development financial institutions. And in 1999, Microsoft certainly didn't know when Word's spell check helped me send a proposal to an unnamed major foundation with 33 instances of CDFIs replaced with the word codfish. And that did not help our application, needless to say. I can't remember if we got the grant now that I think about it. But let's go to a couple of slides here quick. And thank you, Beth and Calgary Impact Capital for providing these, which saved me having to make stuff up. There you go. I'll click on that. I think you'll see them expand and come kind of front and center for you. I suggest doing that. But just a housekeeping note, if you want throughout, just please feel free to chat into the session tab. Any questions that come up? Obviously comments, posts, link, anything you want. We'll try to bundle those and pull them in a little bit more towards the latter part of the session. And we'll see how that goes. It's kind of trouble multitasking if you see me frantically looking around is because I'm trying to capture that feed. But if you look at CDFIs as an industry, they're, it's pretty amazing. $222 billion across 1,100 institutions. CDFIs were set up as a designation with the CDFI fund in 1994 in the Department of the Treasury. Just a little factoid there. But 1,100 certified revolving loan funds real estate development corporation, banks, credit unions, all serving low to moderate income populations with an emphasis on those locked out of access to capital from the mainstream. Now, $222 billion. You look at JP Morgan Chase, $2 trillion to drop in the bucket on the one hand, but CDFIs matter far more than their relative side, especially in our conversation right now about reaching communities and people of color with a new wave of capital to enable economic recovery and to increase racial justice. That's really kind of the punchline here. And CDFIs are funded by impact investors all across the country, PRIs from foundations like Rockefeller, donor advice funds like impact assets, often coursing through intermediaries like Calvert Impact Capital and CNOTE and structures organized by groups like Obsidian Investment Partners. So there's like a whole system here and then add to that bank, CRA money and Treasury CDFI fund, which kind of fills out the picture. And that's what we're gonna be talking about today in just a couple of minutes. And if you look at the second slide here, if I can advance them, there you go. You know, there's been studies done. I know that the opportunity finding, I've actually seen this study, Beth, in 2015 kind of the 20th anniversary study of the formation of CDFIs, 1.5 million units of housing have been supported during that period of time. 120,000 small business funded, 10,000 community service organizations. And it's just amazing grassroots impact that CDFIs have done. This is a few years ago, and the CDFI scale has really grown since then, both with new CDFIs being minted, new banks signing on, but also just increased growth. On average, 75% of CDFIs serve low income populations with about roughly half women and half non-white. So pretty important kind of impact footprint, all with 1.5% default rates, roughly equivalent to FDIC-insured banking institutions. So it's not like high-risk stuff. And while banks were recoiling in and after the Great Recession, CDFI's leaned in and actually grew their lending in communities, I think that sort of tells the story that we need to really ground ourselves in. And even more recently, the first round of the CARES Act stimulus wasn't really getting to where it needed to go. Second round kind of also really problematic in a lot of ways, there's been a lot of critique about it. But when CDFIs finally got their $7.5 billion allotment of the PPP money, they got it out like so fast and so much for the core of communities and funded more than 100,000 businesses in like a hot CDFI minute, I like to think of it, of just amazing, amazing deployment. So, you know, CDFI's rock, they've rocked for a long time, but the system is on the rocks to an extent. And the system needs innovation, not just incrementally more of the same, you know, going from 200 to 250 billion to 300 billion, not even multiples maybe at the same. And I think we're gonna hear this from the panelists about, you know, sort of what their version of not the same is, what the kind of call to action and audacity needs to be, but the regulating banking system obviously can't get it done. Even the CDFI banks and credit unions are so deeply constrained on taking on risk. But the problem is these frontline community development corpse and revolving loan funds are woefully undercapitalized. They're mostly stuck in nonprofit structures, which I love nonprofits. It's the impact assets is a nonprofit, nothing wrong with nonprofits, but they can't really raise equity technically, equity investment that being, like they have to build equity through grants, not that scalable. They operate on very thin margins leading to underinvestment in better processes and technologies, automation, they really aren't capitalized in a way that can lean, I feel, can lean into the need that is presented in particular in this time and what we're gonna see over the next years. And it's just not worthy of this amazing system that's been built and that we've actually lent the mandate to do this great work on the front lines of communities and people of color on the country and just throughout society here. The next, so that's, anyway, that's a little bit of just background and framing. That was a bit of a rant, but I get kind of energized by this topic. I wanna do a lightning round with the other panelists, just the who, the what, where you're coming from, not your framing point of view, but just a quick introduction from each of you would be awesome. Greg, why don't we go to Greg, Beth, Michael, Kat, like a minute or so if you could just dive in, Greg. Sure, good afternoon, everyone, and thanks, I'm excited to share this time and this space with such an outstanding group of people. My name is Greg Johnson, I'm Director of Placed Based Grantmaking and Investments at the Rockefeller Foundation on the Equity and Economic Opportunity Team. By way of introduction at the Rockefeller Foundation, we are quite busy fighting for vulnerable families who have been locked out of prosperity at home and around the world, making sure that innovation empowers all people to rise. In the U.S., our work has been focused on building economic stability for America's low-wage workers, using the levers of public policy and private investment to get the job done. Over. Awesome, great, over. My name is Michael Whitcott, I am just honored to be on this panel of friends and to be speaking at SOCAP, which is probably one of the bravest places for capitalists and people that believe in alternative systems for financing and economic justice. Backed out in this franchise for so long, so thank you. I'm one of the founding partners at Obsidian Investment Partners, firms three years old. I don't do a lot of panels. Josie Van Jones, who's our other founding partner, does most of the panels for us, but he's busy trying to make sure that the election comes up the right way, so you guys got me. We are a real asset fund, focused on tax advantage strategies, primarily trying to move capital at scale, so billion dollars plus, specifically to nonprofits and CDFIs. Wonderful, Kat. I noticed we lost Beth. Beth's computer is freaking out when she's trying to get back in, but we'll just let her do her intro when she gets here, but Kat, go ahead. Certainly, certainly. Well, again, thanks, Tim, for asking us to join, and I'm happy to be on such a great group of speakers and thought leaders. My name is Kat Berman. I am co-founder and CEO of CNOTE, so CNOTE is a women-led impact investment platform on a mission to use financial innovation to close the wealth gap, which I would call wealth chasm at this point throughout the United States. For us, it's very important to use the power of technology to really advance this field. We've been bullish on CDFIs for years, and we personally, for over 15 years, understanding what an incredible opportunity for both impact and investment CDFIs are. We are excited to use the power of technology to make it easier for investors of all sizes to identify, underwrite, and invest in this incredible industry called CDFIs. Great. Sara is just trying to figure out how to get Beth back in off to the side there. Okay, well, we will grab her when she arrives and have her break in with an introduction, but why don't we do a bit of a round robin now, and Greg, we're starting with you. The idea of kind of framing how you come to this work and how you come to this system too, and think about it, kind of the big issues that we need to be cognizant of, sort of what gets you up in the morning, but more like what keeps you up at night, perhaps, and kind of just give us a couple minutes each on sort of what your framing is, and you can riff off of anything I said, or just go off in a completely different direction. Totally fine. You may not want to give me such a broad license, Tim. But we'll never get back to where we intended to go. But no, no, no, thank you for the question. I think that the pandemic, I know that the pandemic has triggered and exacerbated multiple crises and catastrophic effects on health, on wealth, and the overall well-being of black and native and Latinx communities across the country. And to be clear, and it's not an understatement, those black and native and Latinx communities and people and places are experiencing an emergency. And I think that it's important to further distinguish that it is not an emergency for black and Latinx and native people, but it is a national emergency that is disproportionately affecting black and native and Latinx people and places. So if we can understand that context and in the context of a national emergency that disproportionately affects black and Latinx and native communities, in the context of a national emergency where nearly half of all Americans would have trouble paying a $250 unexpected expense as of October 2020, in the context of a national emergency where the number of small businesses in the U.S. have declined by more than 2.2 million between February and May, with black-owned businesses being especially hard hit. In a national emergency where black and Latinx and native means that you have a higher chance of contracting the virus because you work in an essential industry, you run an essential business, you live in a housing situation that is more close to people, more closely approximated to people, that you have a higher chance of contracting the virus and a lower chance of receiving care.  So in the context of all those things and a national emergency, I think it's fair to suggest that we should focus the national response on those communities and those places that are disproportionately feeling the impact or the affect of what's happening right now. And right now, there are consumer and small business needs that I just kind of highlighted in black and Latinx and native communities. And I think that CDFIs have demonstrated that they can be a critical element on the front line of providing an emergency response by doing things like restructuring the terms of current financing, providing access to new types of capital. They can serve as a channel to access government support like PPP, which for black and Latinx people was not the most successful, but we saw some examples like ACE, which is a small business lending CDFI in Georgia, who in the wake of the pandemic connected with all of their existing customers and where they needed to, they restructured their financing. They also helped their clients access PPP loans from others and originated PPP loans directly when the SBA opened up the process to CDFIs. I'm using ACE as an example, but ACE is not the only one. In cities across the country, organizations like the Black Business Investment Fund, the Opportunity Fund and others are meeting some of the emergency needs of entrepreneurs and of people of color. So wrapping up here, because you only gave me four minutes. It's important to strengthen CDFIs, Tim, and to build on their good work. And I think that with the right innovations, the right innovations, and that's why I'm so happy to see note and others are here today, CDFIs can be focused on purposefully, on purposeful financial, becoming purposeful financial intermediaries who make a real impact in black and Latinx and native communities and for the boroughs of color. I'll just add this because you know this is my point of view, is that at the same time, while CDFIs are necessary, acknowledging that they are a necessary part of what has to be in place and strengthen to get us from where we are to where we didn't want to be, is that I'm also acknowledging that in their current state, they are not sufficient. So I do believe that in tandem with the good work being done by CDFIs, that we need to accelerate the development and scaling of new financial mechanism and investment models to better meet the needs of people and the places where they live. So that's the path that we've chosen at the Rockefeller Foundation. Our emerging RLC portfolio will focus on strengthening the community of CDFIs who best serve the needs and interests of black Latinx and native communities and supporting the alternative structures as necessary to respond to the national emergency, the national emergency that is disproportionately affecting black, native and Latinx communities. Over.  Absolutely. I mean, I think for two points, number one is I think most of us on this webinar understand that that communities of color are being disproportionately affected by pandemic, right?  I think what most folks may not know, though, is the funding levels that would be needed to actually address that has not been met. And while many of us are sitting there with some pockets that we can distribute, we've absolutely not seen that adequately addressed. And so I think what we're excited to talk about are what are the opportunities to be blatant, overt and direct about where we put our sources of capital right now. I will share it. We believe it's not enough to fund CDFIs broadly. We're at a time that it is critical that we acknowledge that certain communities are being hit much, much harder and not only funding those communities, but communities. And so we advocate strongly both podium but also through our investments, making sure that there is funding going to CDFIs led specifically by people of color, smaller CDFIs. CDFIs that are hitting the hard way communities that maybe have never received a dollar of CRA funding in their life, but are doing that critical work. We know that's hard to do. We know that over the years there's been plenty of reasons why not. Everything from underwriting so expensive, they can't take enough capital. How do I even identify them? And I'm happy to say, you know, in 2020, we have been able to address most of those pieces of friction. And so whether it's a foundation that wants to double down on their work with racial justice or place-based investing, whether it's a bank that is excited to look at new ways to deploy their CRA, whether it's a family office or other institutions that want to step into CDFIs for the first time. We're more advanced than we've ever been across the country to say, great, I care about this. I care about how communities of color are being affected right now. And I want to invest in them thoughtfully, intentionally, in a way that's strengthening that community, not just to fly by, you know, drop of a grant or drop of an investment that is not really building up the leadership in that community. So I think, you know, we're strong advocates of the CDFI industry as a whole and what they can do and how they continue to step in right now at such a critical time in our economy as economic first responders, but also acknowledging that we cannot fund CDFIs the way they've been funded traditionally over the last 30 plus years. We now is the time to pull back the curtain, recognize that smaller CDFIs, and specifically Black-led, Latinx-led, native-led CDFIs deserve funding, need the funding, and it's time for us to step in. Yeah. Yes. Yes, plus five. Michael, go ahead. Hi, Matt. You're muted. Still muted. Hey, Michael, you're muted. Sorry. Working with CDFI is directly on the ground. We focus on the other end of the spectrum. We focus with the large family offices, institutions. Our clients are top 50 high-network families, ultra-high-network families in the country across both sides of the aisle, who really want to address the fact that we have problems that are growing in scale and the trillions. We've hit hundreds of billions of dollars in terms of need for housing, even hundreds of billions of dollars in terms of the need for economic justice and racial justice equality, and the solutions that we're putting out now are really in the millions of dollars, or sometimes in the thousands of dollars. So when you talk about CDFI, these smaller institutions, when you listen to other talks at SoCAP, you really hear the kinds of numbers people are deploying. The land to be alone by itself is not even nearly big enough on an annual basis to address the problem. So the question is, a low-interest rate environment like we have now where there are plenty of people investing in things on a market-rate basis that are less than 2% return, how do we, and that's in the tens of trillions of dollars, how can we create capital solutions that allow CDFIs and others to access market-rate low-cost capital? And that's fundamentally different, I think, than other approaches that try to take risk capital and ask people to take a discount on that. And we are primarily focusing that lower-cost capital on CDFIs and nonprofits. So in our view, by CDFIs, we can create a more healthy ecosystem that will allow all CDFIs and MDIs and nonprofits to grow the pie. So for us, it's really important that the funding community and others start talking about this problem at the scale at which it exists, which is really hundreds of billions of dollars. And plenty of people are complaining about their people's in capital. We'd like to see more of that come to the people in the work that is so critical. Great, Michael. Yay, Beth. You vanquished your computer and got it in line. First, make sure you take a minute and introduce yourself and kind of where you're coming from. And then the question or the sort of prompt for everybody that we were just going around, it was really just to amplify or inject your point of view and Calvert Impact Capitals into the sort of the state of play in CDFIs and the system, kind of how you approach it, what's keeping you up at night, but any other comments you want to layer in? No, thank you. And hi, everyone. It's Beth Bafford. I work at Calvert Impact Capital. We're in two days. So our 25-year anniversary is in October 25. Tim, you'll probably remember this in 1996-5 when we sold our first note. And we are a global financial institution investing in community and economic development in the U.S. and around the world. So, you know, this conversation is so important. And I think of the threads that I was able to catch at the end of CAD and Michael's talks, I think really come together nicely, because I think what we see is basically how do we better tie the work of CDFIs and the work that has been done for so long with it so much closer to this broader conversation around stakeholder capitalism and investor activism and thinking about the whole economy and the whole planet as consumers and investors. Things are very linked, very often don't, those ecosystems often don't overlap. And so I think that's one of the things that we look to do, because we land across sector, across geography and are really trying to translate the capital markets to understand the needs of communities, really trying to see how we can better position market and show the incredible work that CDFIs are doing as a part of the solution as people think about broader, the next generation of investments and broader stakeholder capitalism movements. And there's no reason why the CDFI industry should not be a front and center in that conversation. I think everybody is looking to activate their dollars, to activate their decisions, to activate their time and their work in pursuit of a more equitable and sustainable world. And I think that the work that CDFIs do on the ground in communities every day is a perfect example of that. And so as Kat mentioned, love the call to action, get more money to these people faster, certainly want to be doing that. As Michael mentioned, think differently about scale and think about how to channel capital. And I think I'll just add wanting to make sure that we look at the full investor universe, we look at the full scale and scope and power of the capital markets and understand how we can create the financial structure as an infrastructure to get a dollar that sits in the savings account or the retirement account of a teacher to support the work of ACE and BBIF and True Fund and communities unlimited and all the other incredible CDFIs across the country. Thank you. Those are really important points. And I think what it makes me want to hear from each of you about, which we talked about a little bit, was what's your, give us a solution. Like give us something that you can inject into the system or that you're working on injecting or you've seen or you've thought about injecting into the system that you think is really going to be a difference maker and name its terms, name its skeleton, like whatever you can about its specificity. I'd love to just see your best thought on that.  Thank you. Dusting off. So yeah, so one of the things, we've been lending to CDFIs for 25 years. So we, we know them, we love them. We have seen their evolution over the last 25 years plus and we know the limitations of the structure that a lot of them sit in. So one of the things that we started to do when COVID hit, basically in close coordination with a bunch of CDFIs that we have been lending to for a long time, we said, you know, we are in a moment where demand for capital from small businesses is going to vastly outpace supply of capital available on CDFI balance sheets. It's just a fact to the slide that Tim put up earlier, that CDFI balance sheets, particularly the loan funds are, you know, are limited in their scale and they require equity in the form of grants to scale their work. And so pulling all of that together very quickly is difficult. And so how do we bridge this divide between supply and demand? So we created in close partnership with our, with friends at community reinvestment fund and LISC and others created this kind of concept of community recovery vehicle, which is essentially, there was just an article that came out this morning and they called it securitization plus blended finance equals impact, which is a good tagline for it. But essentially it's a secondary market vehicle that purchases locally originated assets from CDFIs, a standardized loan product that they are then able to sell to the SPV. It brings centralized source of capital, centralized leads and a support system of technical assistance providers to a network of community development financial institutions across a certain place so that they have everything that they need to lean into this moment and do new lending to small businesses to bridge that divide between supply and demand. So we set up the first step in running now, we're replicating that across California and across 13 states in the South and all in I think working with 35, the local CDFI, local nonprofit loan funds to implement the work. So really just trying to set up structures to support them so they can lean into this moment and think about recovery for communities. Kat, how about you? What are you working on? I'm a huge supporter of what Beth and the team are doing, incredible opportunity for the industry as we think about specifically place-based opportunities for CDFIs to access. Yeah, I think we think again, I would say two main areas that we're really trying to push on to unlock more capital. And again, the theme for us is how do we use technology to unlock a lot more capital for CDFIs? And I'll stress what's important for us at CNOT is it's got to be money CDFIs want, right? Where is the patient capital? Where is the low cost debt? Where is the capital that's serving the needs that community has? Not what we as investors think is important. And that's a real shift in power and trust that we're trying to advocate for that is not about what we think is important, it's about what that community needs right now. And so we do think that by incorporating community voices and using technology to facilitate, we can make it more transparent, more unbiased and faster and cheaper for everybody. So the two ways we do it right now that we're really pushing for, one is unlocking deposits, talk about the importance of shifting large deposits into CDFI banks and credit unions. And so we're doing that through our promise account, which again uses the, you saw that friction of opening up 12 accounts or having to work with the bank that may not even be open for business right now, but it's still open for deposits. How do we get those deposits into where they're needed in the CDFI community? That's on the CDFI deposit. And then on the CDFI loan fund side, again, it's using technology to unlock the friction around getting any investor. So again, whether you're a foundation who has never worked with the CDFI and doesn't even know where to start, whether you've been working with CDFIs for years, but no longer have your team at full capacity to underwrite them or whether you're just trying to figure out how to create towards a certain cause like racial justice, things we can do through the power of technology. So I think we're clearly bullish on, this is an asset class in an industry that deserves to be funded to new levels. And a lot of those reasons why not are no longer. And so we're excited to just introduce more and more of that infrastructure to the industry and to investors to make it happen. Great, Michael. What would you put forward? So before we, we'll do a little under a billion dollars this year lending to CDFIs and nonprofits, mostly because in response to our high net worth clients on separate account, they said, look, we have several billion dollars in aggregate in uni bonds, tax exempt, tax free bonds that are not earning less interest and given the pandemic are pretty risky. How can we think differently into CDFIs, nonprofits and others? Well, there are a number of existing mechanisms that just poorly used to get tax exempt, tax free capital at scale to those organizations. So we have several tools, one of which is the 501C3 bond. So we credit enhance our nonprofits so that on aggregate credit risk to other credit risks for other securities that sit in our clients portfolios. We have to do some things like change of duration, I think, meaning typically our investors will have municipal bonds that have a three to four year duration. We'd like to see the money in there for 12 years or longer, sometimes 15 years, sometimes 30 years, because again, patient capital is so critical. So we work a lot of times with their fixed income advisors to help adjust the duration of the entire portfolio such that we can pool together similar to what NET and CAD are doing, large portfolios of projects and then create a special purpose vehicle which would be a nonprofit, and then give that nonprofit access to capital that's below 2%. And that's really our we're piloting that now with about 30 families. I think next year we're going to bring another 50 or 60 families on board and the idea really is to tap into market based low cost capital. Really using the tools that I think we're all kind of playing with on the edges, securitization less friction, less underwriting, less fees, better use of technology. I think all those tools have to come into play so that we can really reduce the cost. When you're talking about such low cost capital, you need a lot of volume for it to be profitable for intermediaries or other people trying to pull these things together to actually have a business that make it work. So scale, we get scale and I find that our first question which works all the time we sit down with one of our prospective clients is how much are you making in your munis and your treasuries right now? And they're all going to laugh and look at it and believe it or not most people think ultra high net worth families are primarily invested in the stock market, they're not most of their money is in preservation assets like municipal bonds and treasuries and so you'll have 60, 70% of their capital income and so the vast majority of their wealth is really earning a very small return and so the question is if you were concerned about the credit risk, would you rather make more money and have impact?  So that's something I would encourage everyone to do every county basically has the ability to issue a 501c3 bond and other tax exempt structures and so in general that's just one tool we have four or five structures, opportunity zone, equity, very small amounts of that is something that we like to put in the CDFI structures as well, nonprofits as well because it's 10 year capital, it's extremely patient and it provides kind of a recoverable grant or credit support to the primary tax exempt loan product that we have. So every situation has been spoke but we're kind of sophisticated investment bankers really looking to move very large capital into these communities. Great, Greg is there something you've seen or something percolating over there at Rockefeller Foundation or some model that you are enticed by at this point? Yeah I guess I'll just say that in our experience we tend to find that place based approaches to directing capital tend to be successful at driving racial justice outcomes that we're talking about black and Latinx and native and indigenous communities who have been disproportionately affected and how to get them the resources they need. We find that three things need to be true in order to do that successfully. One is that we align that capital with the appropriate and often alternative structure. The second is that we attach it to something that ensures absorption capacity and additionality and the third thing is just that it ensures distributed wealth creation rather than allocation of the current patterns and systems that are currently in place. Where we are making investments in CDFIs and we aren't quite ready to announce the initial grants in the RLC portfolio so I can't talk explicitly about them but where we have put dollars out there it's largely risk capital to support and strengthen the institutions and their balance sheets. Whether they're looking to make direct investments to strengthen balance sheets for existing institutions or whether they're concessionary debt instruments that's how we're putting dollars on the ground. The other thing that I'll just say that where we're really putting our dollars behind CDFIs and the like is behind this urgent need for innovation and products and financial instruments and structures that are actually more responsive to the needs of black and Latinx and other people and communities of color so when we think about the typical loan amounts that they need, when we think about the typical type of loan products or financial products that they need the traditional institutions and in many regards CDFIs don't have the types of products that are necessary to meet their needs so in the CDFI space and in the universe of other options we're really pushing and using our dollars to push for what are the innovative models that really allow banking and financial capital providers to serve better serve black and Latinx wealth communities across the country. That's great. I was just catching a question from Blake what our thoughts are on building equity in CDFIs and actually the thing I was thinking about as far as an interesting model that we've run across impact assets actually this was with Calvert Impact Capital. We embedded in our community investment portfolios that all of our donor advice funds can kind of click into if you will a $15 million special purpose vehicle with Calvert Impact Capital is the GP we're the sole limited partner it's technically an equity vehicle and because the GP has control FASB accounting rules allow them to actually incorporate it as net assets into their balance sheet into their audited statements so it actually reads optically I mean that doesn't in and of itself necessarily do anything optically as equity from a technical standpoint but then the real work is how to allow it to actually enhance the capital stack and what we did was kind of put it in not at first loss but above loss reserves and kind of park a zoo with a tier two capital that Calvert has in its balance sheet and so we were effectively both optically technically accounting wise and functionally able to risk enhance with an equity like capital much more effective than EQ2s from CRI banks I think a pretty significant chunk because not only is that 15 million going out into communities through CFI's press country but it's also leveraging from the capital markets from these QCIP notes that people can hold in the brokerage accounts that are Calvert senior stack senior part of the stack like $100 million because their ratio is 7 to 1 I think that's pretty cool and now there's issues about replicating that you really need to do it at scale because it's a pain in the butt to do all the technical stuff that I was just kind of glossing over like it was all fun and games but I was really excited to be able to leverage donor and buy funds that are kind of left to their own devices somewhat passive mattress money waiting to go out to grants to their favorite charity and we can really activate that which I guess my next question speed dialers lightning round what's the I'm sorry go ahead Beth since I was talking about you know I just wanted to note to the equity question because I think it's a really really important one equity capital is so important for both for-profit CDFI banks and holding companies as well as non-profit loan funds obviously the structure based on what Tim just described has to be different depending on the structure of the entity not enough like that is critical for these organizations scale and Laurie Spangler and George surgeon did some really great work putting out their lessons and raising tier one capital for Southern Bank Corp because they recently did a growth push for Southern so that they could could clean up and infuse new sources of tier one capital so that they could continue to grow but one of the things I think that I'm a little fearful of right in this moment is that so many people are shifting deposits into CDFI banks which is awesome but deposits to them are liabilities that they're not equity and so wanting to make sure that as we think about global solutions to scaling this industry we think about solutions whether that's through the federal government state governments or private investors but make sure we keep that equity need front and center because otherwise none the rest of the family we're doing one of the things that we're doing is we are making to some of our CDFI partners and then our firm is taking over the responsibility to pay those back as recoverable so technically it's a recoverable grant because that's how it functions in our waterfall but we separate the payment obligation from the CDFI and we take that on internally so that it sits on their balance sheet as equity capital but the investor still makes sort of a zero coupon return. Yeah and I was just going to add take away I'd love everyone listening to say is please be open when we have these conversations with you because I think these are all such important points and we can't keep shifting to pocket without balancing it out with equity so as we talk about ways to really bolster CDFI it comes to you with both opportunities not just one not just two but right the entire package sustainability for those CDFI and couple structures we have a vehicle response fund which is a debt instrument it's 1% five-year capital 100% co-created with CDFI for what they thought the communities needed most right now it cannot function at scale without equal equity right and so all of us stepping into that reality and being open to those conversations is my invitation. That's great and I was just reminding myself and I just posted it that we're going to be able to jump over to the impact assets session booth at half past the hour and just really kind of go deep on anywhere that people who want to follow us over there want to go and we'll stay for you know 20 minutes 30 40 minutes if we have the energy so I just posted a link in there but it's just over the event expo things so that's housekeeping what about what's missing not the solution idea the ingredients that you just talked about because obviously you just put those forward but like is there something in the system that we you know I saw questions from I think it was dug around suitability changing suitability requirements so not accredited investors could invest in their local community loan fund legally or whatever it is like what's the missing ingredient from a policy level at a I mean not like the heart of capitalism because that we all know that it's pretty rancid and it's hard in some ways or we'll have a varying opinions about that and some people don't think that's the case at all but what would you change Greg what would you change sure so our tackle these quickly in the interest of time I just think that at a federal level we have to begin to think about centering people rather than profit right so how do we begin to put community interest before self-interest whether that's the Community Reinvestment Act or any other piece of legislation or policy that's going to have a critical impact on the ability to get dollars into the hands or not into the hands of black and Latinx and indigenous populations of people that we really do have to think about that and then I just think that in a more in a less practical sense rather than thinking about the policy ramifications and the definite need for more equity dollars is that we have to I'm going to go back to the urgent need for innovation in the CDFI space right so some of it is that we need to have some policy change or shift some of it is that we need to have practice change and practice shift and that needs to be balanced between the sense of practicality and the breadth of imagination I know that it's possible their CDFIs again that we've referenced on this call there are models innovative models that people have talked about on this call that are representative of what is possible I think that we need more of that we need to incentivize that we need to figure out which parts of it are scalable and get to the job get to the job of getting it done it's great Kat what would you do what would you change where do I start one thing yeah one go just okay two two things I'm going to do one more philosophical one one deeply practical you know so one at large would be just democratization of this right and I think democratization as you alluded to Tim which is how do we make it accessible for everybody to invest in the backyard invest in their communities invest in economic justice not just high net worth institutions and then make sure that democratization rolls out in terms of who those dollars go to because the lion share of dollars are still going to the largest organization and some of the deepest work is happening in smaller organizations so the democratization piece I would say more philosophically and then pragmatically I would say and this is my soapbox moving to action how do we make it insanely easy for every single one of us to do this whether it's through our you know bank account whether it's through our you know foundation whether it's through our endowment whatever pot of money we're sitting on from investment right how do we make it very easy for us to say yes and step into this and not just from the one off right like let's do it now in the middle of the pandemic and feel good but literally invest in the long term make it this part institutionalized part of how we think about investing that to me is a fundamental shift in terms of seeing CDFIs as a potential remedy when we're at our worst and their economic first responders to a viable critical under underpinning of our economy that we have more economic justice that all of us are investing in the long term what do you think I'll be quick I'm going to use my three T's talent tech and talk and I really just talk is because I couldn't think of another T but talent I mean I think one of the things that we don't talk about enough I'm going to scale the CDFI industry if we're going to scale this work in communities we have to drive talent to those organizations and get people paid better and and get the breath best and brightest working in these organizations I think we're seeing that more and more with MBA programs and other grad programs focused on this intersection I think we're seeing awesome people driving real and CDFIs but we've got to focus on talent technology and I think we've we've gone through the really really hard and arduous process the last three years to update all of our systems so that we are much more scalable and efficient organization and we just have to we have to get the money to invest to allow people to invest in technology one of the reasons why small companies struggle more broadly is because the cost of technology and IT systems and all of that is just so expensive and so we got to invest in tech and then is really marketing so the the CDFI industry has done a pretty poor job because they haven't had any money to do it in marketing themselves in the industry who they are what they do how they help and how like Kat mentioned how you can engage and I think you know we need a broad public campaign more awareness more understanding of of the role of this grassroots financial infrastructure so that we see more money moving and more people served that's great Michael what would you change well how everyone sort of spoke to the main things that I would focus on democratization talent technology but primarily I think the key issue is just access and to speak to the point about retail investors getting more activated or high-neighborhood investors just having more broad access and awareness to this product because I think primarily it's a very low risk group of lending and equity and I think it's great I would massively fund the CDFI fund and create some kind of an equity caret vanguard position that all of philanthropy would be sticked in the following like a sort of a trillion dollar mandate to like move all those idle assets in endowments and donor advise funds for that matter there's about a trillion between foundations and if we had it sort of a center of gravity maybe Fran over at US impact investing alliance could work on this inside the Beltway something there something to really go at a national mandate and facilitation of equity like capital because as you've all said quite elegantly that's one of the major major versions so we're going to run out of time in just five minutes or so I know there were some questions about suitability I don't know if we're going to I think we'll take those with us to the after party which I encourage everybody to come join us if you would like we can really take some time and bring people up on screen and talk about it but just in close out for people who aren't coming over and I'd love to hear from each of you a call to action I mean and it could be for any sub-segment of the audience I know socap is a kitchen sink of amazingness in terms of who the heck comes to these things and there's 84 different answers to how many different sorts of folks are eyeballing us right now but what would you say to them or why don't you say it Kat what's the call to action and it could be specific or general but go for it advocate if you don't know the CDFI industry and you're just learning about it please there are so many great resources including OFN opportunity finance network to learn about the industry invest there are so many great ways right now you've heard a couple today and I think Calvert C note and Rockefeller Michael's group there's so many great avenues and then of course through your donor advice fund and I want to stress that I think DAF is a tremendous opportunity to engage the CDFI sector through great DAFs like impact assets and last is advocate if you are hurting and educated around it you're already invested let's advocate for those big wins like Tim's referencing to really make this the sustainable part of our economy not just a small segment that only a few people know about that's great Michael what's your call to action I would add just one one I to what Katja said which is imagination once you sort of advocate to the point of advocacy really imagine new ways and tools for people like myself and others to push more capital and more intentionality Greg Sure so what the expert said and a little bit investigate educate negotiate and demonstrate there's a very real need for patient capital we have to deal with the equity issue and ultimately this won't get done unless we do it intentionally and specifically to the benefit of the express communities that we've called out for this afternoon's panel so let's get to the work of doing it that's great I mean I think I think that that covers like all the best things you could do other than I mean I guess I would say our sphere of concern you know our sphere of influence it is so easy to forget how relationships drive capital and there's a lot of bad in that and there's but there's also a lot of power in that and so don't underestimate you and your sphere of concern and relationships and how you can activate people by not just walking the talk and having your own story straight but really really challenge and push your family and you know and your organizations to find the way to step into this you know this incredibly important gap and also this opportunity to I think take what is bones of a great system and turning it into one that can really scale into the kind of recovery and resilience we're going to need over the next it's not months, years, years and also firmly and focus in on communities of people of color that have been frozen out of the system that we're all in our ways maybe it's still supporting so get aligned, get out there get out the vote and also don't forget to vote by the way so we're going to pop over to I think to our our after party booth which I just posted again and the I think that it would be great if people can come over there and we'll keep talking for a bit I want to think I'm sorry that we lost Beth again to technical difficulties I think her computer acted up I'm not sure what her call to action would have been but I bet it was well represented somewhere in something that you just heard and thank you so much for being here and listening and thinking about CDFIs they really are an amazing system that we have I think really not yet activated fully at all and we really can oh Beth what's your last call to action that we've just gotten in time I'll let you close this out what what do you want people to do invest every dollar you have invest in C note invest in invest in our community investment and invest in your local CDFIs and then move your money take your bank account wherever it's sitting move it into your local CDFI bank we did it we are all of our business and checking accounts are with city first bank in DC and we love them so just I think your assets at your disposal and do something about it thanks okay bye everybody thank you for watching and maybe we'll see you over at the other room if we can find our way there you just go to expo and then click on impact assets and you'll probably run right into us see you soon see you around the so cap


So today there was a fascinating article published in Pirate Wires. I like Pirate Wires quite a bit. It is a sub-stack, an alternative. They are positioning themselves as another alternative media source. They have reporters, they have opinion writers. They're positioning themselves as a media source coming out of Silicon Valley. So Pirate Wires is written by somebody who is a, I think, a partner, but a senior guy, a partner's fund, founder's fund, sorry, founder's fund, which is Peter Teal's venture capital arm. But they are building out, if you will, a media source and they're quite good. I don't agree with all the opinions. I don't agree with all the way in which they spin certain articles. But overall, another valuable alternative media source, together with Barry Weisers, together with a dispatch, together with a bunch of others that I follow out there. Pirate Wire is the most interesting one when it comes to tech and crypto banking and AI and other tech issues I highly recommend it. So if you're interested, PirateWires.com, you can find it, PirateWires.com, you can find it there. As to the name, it has a certain anarchist implication. I don't think that's what they're going for. Okay, so I just posted a link to the latest article. The latest article, this is the title and this is why I wanted to talk about it in post. The title of the article is, Did the government start a global financial crisis in an attempt to destroy crypto? And the author, Nick Carter, is trying to make the case that it is regulators and politicians like Elizabeth Warren who basically created this banking crisis as an unintended consequence of their attempts to shut down the crypto space and to shut down the relationship between banks and crypto. I, in a previous episode, I can't remember when, a month ago, a few weeks ago, I can't even remember, time anymore. I told you about Operation Choke Point 2.0, which is basically what this is being called and that was also from an article from Nick Carter from back then, six weeks ago. He posted that six weeks ago and I talked about it about then. That six weeks ago, I reported on a bunch of different things that the feds were doing in order to try to separate banking from crypto. First of all, they were not approving any kind of new crypto banks. It was actually a new bank that had asked for a charter and tried to get a charter, which part of its business plan was to have 100% reserve requirement. So 100% reserve so they could beat all bank runs, no problem, and yet their charter was denied. A number of banks, a number of institutions that had done any kind of financial transactions for crypto were being pressured, shut down, and heavily influenced. As part of that, you probably know, we talked about it at the time, but it became even more acute. There was heavy pressure on Silvergate and there was a lot of talk and Elizabeth Warren's office was involved in attempts to try, Silvergate is a bank that banked crypto and was known as the crypto bank. It was a small community bank from Southern California that started to get into crypto in 2014 and had a lot of crypto deposits. Now again, when you have deposits, that doesn't mean you're not investing in crypto, you're not buying crypto, you're not holding crypto. Those would be pretty unstable assets for bank to hold. They were just banking. It was just a banking relationship. If you started a crypto company, you would typically open a bank account with Silvergate. They were open to that, they also provided a platform for exchange of crypto into US dollars, so they provided services to crypto companies and they provided an easy way to get in and out. Anyway, starting in January, there was heavy pressure on Silvergate to shut down its crypto relationships, of course, shutting down the crypto relationships. Or there was heavy pressure that these relationship would gonna be investigated, that these relationship was somehow not kosher, that these relationship was somehow bad. Now remember, crypto in the United States today is a legal business. Technically, there's nothing wrong with me having a relationship with a crypto company. And as a bank, there's no reason in the world it's a legal business for me to have a banking relationship with a legal business in the United States. It's not illegal. It's not even questionable like, let's say marijuana dispensary or marijuana growers where it's legal in a state level and not legal at the federal level. No, no, crypto is legal at every level. And yet, the political class put pressure and the regulatory class put pressure on Silvergate, put pressure on the crypto community. And what happened was crypto was leaving Silvergate. Not that they have an alternative but leaving Silvergate. Ultimately leading, and I spoke about this on a previous episode, ultimately leading to Silvergate voluntarily closing in the first week of March, which is the first bank in the series now of banks that are being shuttered. But this is all an issue of, I mean, Silvergate was not bankrupt. Silvergate was not insolvent.   Now there were all kinds of issues with Silvergate relating to FTX and so on, but nobody accused Silvergate of fraud. Silvergate took a hit because of FTX. FTX is the fraudulent crypto exchange. But Silvergate was not, its business model was not threatened or put it this way, the business model survived the FTX threat. And yet it was still forced ultimately to shut down. Now what is interesting is in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank being shuttered Friday morning, which again almost never happens, it's usually they wait until Friday afternoon to shutter it, thus doing it in the morning, creating panic in the market.  Now what stands out with signature bank? Well two things, one is that it had uninsured deposits similar to what Silicon Valley Bank last, but similar to what Silicon Valley Bank had. But from all accounts, signature had withstood the one on the bank, was in okay liquidity position, given that the Federal Reserve ultimately guaranteed all its deposits. It looked like it could open Monday morning and would probably survive. What is the other thing that stands out about signature? Well, the other thing that stands out about signature is that 20% of its deposits were crypto deposits. And there is a real case to be made and Nick Carter makes this article and Bonnie Frank, a politician I despised, but who was on the board of signature bank makes in interviews that he's had since the closure of signature bank, he's made the same case. The case is that signature bank was not closed because it was bankrupt. It was not closed because of the one on the bank. Although all these things, the one on the bank gave them the excuse. It was closed indeed to send a clear additional signal to the world out there that crypto and banking did not belong together, that the feds, the regulators would not tolerate crypto even as a deposit base, would not tolerate crypto as part of the deposit base. 4.3 billion dollars of shareholder value was evaporated just puff went into smoke as a result of this. Shareholders will get zero. The bank was later sold to a newer community bank without the crypto deposits. Again, emphasizing that you cannot have crypto deposits. Why? This is money, legal business, legal enterprise. One wonders what New York regulators and the feds were thinking when they shut it signature. And I mean, the bank was not, it's over. And it clearly looks like the government overreacted, but probably overreacted on purpose to inspire the fact that they're denying it to send a signal. That here's the bottom line is because I want you to get the magnitude of this. And this happens, it happens not just in banking, it happens in other industries, certainly happening in the auto industry, the auto industry by the Obama administration in 2009. This is a complete negation of the rule of law. This is saying that politicians and regulators at their own discretion at their own whim can decide that a particular industry is unacceptable to them without going through a legislative process of banning this industry or increasing regulations in the industry or doing anything. At their own whim, whim, they can destroy, they can eliminate this industry. In this case, they've attempted crypto. I mean, the whole crypto thing is interesting because Bitcoin and a lot of other crypto stocks are way up in spite of the fact that they're clearly under assault here. I wonder if the crypto investors are fully cognizant of what is going on and the implications of it. But this is a funnel assault on what they're doing and it's a funnel assault that nobody seems to care about other than private wires. Where else are you hearing about this? But this is a complete negation of the rule of law one by going after crypto, legal industry, and not through increased regulation of crypto. You know, re-evaluating, I don't know, crypto as a security, although they're doing that again, unilaterally, without Congress, after crypto is being defined as a security and therefore falling under the SEC regulations versus being an asset or versus being something else. So massive, and you know me, I'm not exactly a crypto gung-ho about Bitcoin and crypto, but you know, again, legal industry. People are putting billions of dollars into it. There's a lot of innovation. There's a lot of stuff going on. Who knows what will come of it? And politicians and regulators unilaterally crushing this. So that's one aspect of rule of law, which is just horrific. A second aspect of the rule of law here is they can go into a bank that is solvent, but they don't like something about it. In this case, they have crypto deposits, or they didn't like the managers, and they could just shut it down with almost no repercussions. Now, I assume there's gonna be a lawsuit, Bonnie Frank implied that there would be a lawsuit, but if you read Bonnie Frank, who was on the board, I mean, he's very clear that the bank was doing the right things, that the bank was not a crypto bank. The bank, indeed, most of its bank's clients were real estate companies. The bank was primarily banking, multifamily, real estate in New York. And the reason it had an intro deposit was because these were big real estate companies holding massive deposits at the bank, and holding them liquid so they could make investments, and they could in and out, and they held more than $250,000 because they were big. And in normal times, these are stable businesses, these are big businesses, these are businesses that are unlikely to panic, unlikely to run on the bank. And there was someone on the bank on Friday before they were closed, but that had slowed down, and there was no indication that Monday was gonna be a disaster for them. And I've said this before, but the fact that signature was closed on a Sunday created unbelievable panic, and I think created the bloodbath that was Monday. Black Monday, as I think in the banking sector, at least it'll come to be known. So we have a situation where we've given unelected bureaucrats the power to, based on, really, ultimately, based on their whim, based on their preferences, shut down financial institutions, and we've given politicians and regulators the power to shut down or attempt to shut down whole industries. And this is devastating for this country. It's devastating for what we are, any kind of freedom and any kind of hope for true liberty in this country. I mean, this is a slap in the face, and it only gets worse, because if you don't deal with it, this negation of the rule of law, they'll only double up on it. They'll only take on more and more power for themselves. So I think very, very, very bad what's going on in the banking space and in the crypto space for everybody, even those of you who might not be, as you know, I do invest in this space and I have not done well in the last 10 years. It's been pretty nasty, but beyond that, anybody should be concerned about what's going on in this space given the way the government is behaving, because this is just an indication of the kind of power, just a senator like Elizabeth Warren has, by sending out letters, by threatening, by talking about this stuff, she has the power to drive markets. And that is super dangerous, particularly given her views and given her perspectives and given her viciousness and a willingness to go after people she dislikes, even at the expense of, quote, the economy. All right, I highly recommend reading if you wanna get the juicy details, reading. Did the government start a global financial crisis in an attempt to destroy crypto? I don't think it's a full story. I think we will get the full story in the months and maybe years to come. I think we'll get a much better story and signature if there's a lawsuit and as that lawsuit goes through the process, Bonnie Frank suggested there might be a lawsuit and he as a director had to be careful of what he was gonna say because of the potential lawsuit. Said might take years before we really know what happened but whatever happened, it doesn't look good and it doesn't look good for the rule of law in America, that's what I can say. Okay, so I've already posted the link to the Pirate Wire article. I will post it again in the chat and feel free and again, it's a substack that's probably worth subscribing to. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live and for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you, I very much appreciate it.


Hey there friends thanks for checking in today. We're looking at a Taurus 692 Multi caliber revolver. This is new for 2019 it was introduced at Shacho in 2018. It's out and available now MSRP 692 average price I checked up and down gun broker as well as a few other sites right around 520 will get you this Multi caliber revolver with a three inch barrel now It also comes in a larger model with a six and a half inch barrel This is the three inch barrel, and I like this Because it's short. It's stocky. It's overbuilt Which is nice, especially with the 357 Magnum and It feels very tough and in the best thing one of the best things anyways is that it's a seven shot in both 357 38 special and multi-caliber. That also means 9 millimeter So we're gonna talk about that, but let's first take a look at what this offers now Clearly two two different cylinders all right unflued it now I like the looks of a fluted cylinder, but I think on this model that just works for me I like to I like the way that looks I'm sure if it was fluted it would be fine, too This is the stainless steel model. It's got a matte finish. It's about 50 bucks more It also comes in a blackened model or a blued model that looks very nice You know a blued but it's it's a little bit less and it's the exact same thing now It does say tracker right there. All right, so it is a torus tracker 692 and another thing that I really like is that it is ported Okay, there are four ports right there on each side and that will keep the muzzle rise to a minimum I'm hoping with with the weight of this and The Overbuiltness that I spoke about and the ports. I think it's going to be just fine full under lug Seven rounds and the grip is kind of a spongy rubber there All right, so that'll take up some of the recoil. I'll be interested to see What aftermarket grips are available, but you can see that you know It's got the the length of rubber that gives it a little spongy feel to it and that will Certainly help out with the 357 Magnum. It does have adjustable rear sights right there All right Okay, you can see the adjustments right there And what I think is cool is that ships it with with this cap that goes over the sites And I'm just gonna hold on to that, you know that that's so that the site doesn't pop out the cardboard box But it also protects that site When throwing in the range bag or whenever you transport it, so I like that piece I think that's a nice touch and then it has an orange insert with a ramped up pinned front sight All right and seven rounds of 357 Magnum There it is eight point one inches overall length Very sturdy now it is a Double-action right heavy trigger pull not too bad, but I will mention the single-action pull all right now we know that the Overall pull is going to be short, but it's not a feather trigger It's not one of those that you got you have to put some pressure on there So it's not one of those, you know just just touch the trigger and it's going to drop that hammer Not at all and I meant I'm measuring it right around between six and seven pounds With that say single-action trigger and I'm fine with it you know Spurred hammer and it also has a A transfer bar right there so that hammer is hitting the transfer bar hits the firing pin and Well, let me go ahead and drop this and then there we go. There's the the firing pin Here's the timing hand All right, and over here. We got the bolt lock when I when I Lube up a revolver. I don't do much guys I put a drop right here at the yoke and then I put the shaft on the ejector I put it right there and then that allows for a nice smooth spin not that you need to spin it But it just know that you just know that it's it's properly lubed But I know many of you are wondering how difficult is it to change this? 357 into the 9mm. So I'm going to show you that right now All right this right here that button Just push on that button pull forward and off comes that cylinder and then you want to go 9mm Just align That right there push the button and there you go shoot 9mm How about that? It also comes with moonclips All right comes with five moonclips that it could also be used as speed loaders now here. I have some speed loaders or a speed loader that or shall I say a moon clip with Seven rounds of 9mm. So let's go ahead and see that I put it right in there because it is a Unrimmed case it needs those moonclips and there you go. Let's go ahead and weigh it with the 9mm loaded up This is a heavy-duty revolver And I think its Capabilities are are pretty cool. So load it with seven rounds of 9mm two pounds four and three eight ounces All you guys that are into ounces what just happened? I pushed the wrong one I reset the scale and the torus 692 is weighing in at 36 and 5 8 ounces. So it's got some weight behind it It's got some girth built into it It offers Seven loads in each of the cylinders and I'll go ahead and switch them out once again To show you how simple that is And I'm looking forward to this guys. I'm going to take this to the range I'm going to shoot 357 38 special and 9mm to check out the capabilities of this it offers a lot And I think it's a nice Revolver with many options And I I think you guys are going to like how it performs at the range I'm hoping I like how it performs at the range because I think torus has a winner here If you like videos like this, please subscribe and share I always appreciate thumbs up button. Thanks for watching and you guys be safe