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I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Today's a special day, Scott. We take a look at all the chaos and insanity of 2021, and there was a lot from billionaires in space, to hell on earth.
We're looking back at one of the wildest years in recent memory. And at the end, we'll pick the biggest pivot from the last 12 months. This is 2021, the year in review. This year's first news event may also event its biggest, it was its biggest, the insurrection of January 6th.
And the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, a lot of Americans were angry. Scott was among them. The physician for Congress, they have a physician, I guess, sent out a memo, an email saying that there's a chance, you should all get tested, because there's a chance when you are all huddling on top of each other, hiding and barricading yourself that you might have, you might have contracted COVID, because there's a certain member of Congress refused to wear masks. They were being banned by other people.
People huddling are elected officials. And when you think about it, these people, they aren't elected official, they're America. They call the US House of Representatives for a reason. We as a nation had to huddle on top of each other and barricade our doors with furniture, because of these village idiots that showed up in...
Not just villages, we're going to talk about that more, but by the way, the people, it doesn't get up attention. I'm going with villages. The people who, the representatives who refused to wear masks, they can go fuck themselves in this crisis situation. This is, they moved to ridiculous.
They're embarrassment to the United States government. They're embarrassment. They should be voted. They will be, I don't know if they'll be voted in office, but let me just say, fuck them.
After the insurrection, Facebook and Twitter clamped down on Q and on content and accounts, but one platform stood firm, Parler. Cara interviewed then CEO John Mates for the New York Times. He denied any responsibility soon after Google and Apple pulled the on from the stores and Amazon stopped hosting Parler. Let's be clear.
Jack Dorsey did not kick Trump off the platform face. Mark Zuckerberg did not shut his account down. Stacey Apron stood. Yeah.
All of a sudden, these people have woken up. And okay, I want to be clear. Let's give credit where credit is due. Jack Dorsey decided to stop hate, polarization and insurrection, 4,949 days into a 4, 260 day tenure.
Way to go. Way to go, Jack. And just personally, just a little late. Yeah, yeah.
We were talking about this this morning. If I come home after being on vacation for two weeks, and I see my son vacuuming the living room, your first inclination should be, oh, that's great. He cares about the house and wants to be a good guy. No, he's not.
No, he's not. He's thrown a rave and has been selling meth and molly for the last two weeks out of the house and is trying to cover his tracks. Yeah. And that's what these guys do.
There's a lot of tweets about that. Yeah, flushing drugs around the toilet when it's 100. When it's 100. This is Lorraine Brocko trying to like cover up the oven.
They deserve absolutely no credit. So okay, first off, first off, Stacey Abrams kicked Trump off these platforms. And not like that. Amazon.
By winning in Georgia, meaning the Democrats have to control it. Sit back and love this because it's about you. Amazon just based on kick Parler off AWS. Keras Wisher did because that interview with him that you did pointed out, this guy is the newest edition of the Menace economy.
And people have realized, wait, you know, Japan in Europe, they decided that Nazis are a bad thing and they can lead us down and hate speech and lead us down a bad road. So they don't have the same first amendment, quote unquote, protections that we so dearly hold and have been totally perverted, which make absolutely no sense. And guess what? They still have a pretty free, open progressive society where people get most of their viewpoints across and everyone realizes that is just total bullshit.
As we discussed for each and social media, my son, Louie brought up an important point, which is only more relevant today now that Trump's launching his own social network. He's probably going to go over there to other sites. Should there be a fully free speech platform? I mean, doesn't like, eight chain exists?
Yeah. Yeah. Um, like, I think that there's already art places for that. So, um, I think, yes, I think people have the right to, you know, say what they want, but I don't think they have the right to be free of the consequences of what they say.
Um, there's always con, you know, if you threaten someone, there should be consequences. Uh, if you speak ill of someone, you may have to speak to that person or something, but I think Trump is always going to be a slot on Fox News for Donald Trump. So I think he'll find places to go whether it's Fox, OAN, Breitbart, other platforms who will hear what he has to say, um, regardless of, you know, if he's banned from Twitter, but I think being on mainstream platforms and holding a mainstream, you know, standing in a box in the public square and, you know, like a respected box, you know, uh, it gives him an elevated voice that I think he no longer deserves. In the time since the insurrection, Trump has been removed from all social media platforms, prosecutors have charged one of 650 people.
By the way, remember that Jamericoy guy ends up, he lived with his mother. Good news. He's moving out into a fucking cell, you piece of shit. And at least a hundred and five people have pleaded guilty.
A house committee continues to investigate as well. Also, Trump has announced that he will launch his own social network, Truth Social. I'm calling it the big short. Facebook is no more.
Well, kind of Facebook rebranded to meta earlier this year, as it hoped to escape its toxic reputation that's plagued its since well before 2021. But this year saw challenges unlike anything Facebook has ever faced. Facebook's first fumble of 2021 came immediately after the insurrection when Sheryl Sandberg claimed that the stop the steel event was planned on other platforms. The claim was quickly shot down.
Many people think she was inaccurate. Scott care to rant. Go for it. Well, yeah, it's, it's, it's, I need you to tell it.
Yeah, I'm not going to yell. Is Miss Amber is Miss Amber claims that, uh, you know, the patch herself on the back saying that because of her transparency, it wasn't her platform. No sooner does she say that than they are taking ads for military vests and, and basically combat where right above content around the insurrection. So which missing planning, planning to head back.
Are you, are you part of the model by this military best? I mean, that's that is, for me, that sort of typified. More than that. There was lots of proof that they organized on Facebook.
Well, of course there is. But the thing I'm uncomfortable with and there's a lot on pack here is that when we have insurrection, when we have a potential coup, the way we need our justice and our society now is that kayak and caviar cancel as a count. That's how we, we, we beg our innovators. We beg our overlaps of position.
We're in an April, a massive trope of Facebook user data landed on the dark web. That same month, a new iPhone feature. Let's use this out of tracking by Facebook and other apps. We're going to talk about this in a minute, but Facebook is at, you know, all time high, right?
That's not all time high. So it doesn't really matter what Tim Cook does or thinks about them because nobody seems to care until the government gets involved, even though they're going to do this, I think it's a T T something transparency thing. Um, nothing's going to happen to them. And so Cook is just going to push ahead with this, this, this thing where you get to click that you're being tracked essentially or not.
Um, and I don't know how much is going to affect Facebook and he said he's not thinking about them at all. He thinks it's, it's a flimsy argument to argue that it's anything but privacy matter, you know, that it's, he doesn't understand why there's so much pushback from them and others. Um, so I, you know, I think they're just, and he also said they're not competitors. He doesn't consider them competitors.
They are sort of like what I said on CNBC is morning weird roommates that don't like each other. They have to sort of coexist because, you know, Facebook's one of the most popular apps on the iPhone and at the same time, and so it's Instagram and all the others. And then at the same time, they need Apple to be popular, right? So it's a weird, bad relationship between them, but they're moving forward on this, on this effort to make people say they want to be tracked, essentially opt into it.
Um, and, you know, let me just press pause there. Sure. My sense is that he's in a, he's in a room saying we're going to put that, the mother fucker out of business and that that's what they're doing. And that to, to decook you whatever it is such that Facebook cannot track people across multiple platforms is basically saying, okay, we're going to go in and we're going to take out your liver and you can function as a human for a little while about a liver, but effectively, I mean, they've gone in, if they accomplish this, they take the most valuable consumer base in the world, which is iOS users and they make them dramatically less valuable to Facebook.
Yes, they do. In July, as coronavirus numbers surge, Facebook was once again accused of spreading misinformation, but this time by the president of the United States, Facebook and President Biden are facing off over vaccine misinformation as past Friday, Biden was asked about the role of social media and influencing vaccinations and his response was unusually strong. They're killing people. I mean, they really look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated and that they're killing people.
Facebook fired back on Saturday in a blog posting the Biden administration was quote finger pointing and that Facebook was not the reason Biden's goal of 70% vaccination was missed on Monday, Biden reverse course, and said Facebook isn't killing people that the president walk past his most aggressive comment. He read it to hopes Facebook does something about the misinformation. It was kind of fascinating. He did push it too far.
It was interesting. Let me just start. I interviewed Ron Kline who started to raise this idea a couple of weeks ago when a podcast I did with him was saying Facebook's always the person the company mentioned when people talk about misinformation when they're doing their polling. Then Jennifer Socky said something and then the surgeon general did.
And then for some reason, Biden went out there and was doing the come on man thing, like, come on man, they're killing people. And so may have been a little much. I read a conference that was probably much. But nonetheless, what do you think?
Like I've said, it's nine times. So I'll say the 10th time and I've been wrong. Anytime I think this is Facebook jumping the shark, Facebook basically said, first off, they found this VP of integrity, they strapped a bomb. He's been a long time.
They strapped a bomb to his chest and said, Hey, you're here. I'll go out there and say that the Biden administration, this is what they said about the Biden administration that they were trying to find scapegoats because of their failed vaccine strategy. He said that. That is basically that is telling the president of the United States and the U.S.
government that on the most important issue they have and will face. They are failing six months into their presidency. I don't think they ever said anything that aggressive about Trump. I don't think they've accused President Xi of finding scapegoats.
So the calculated decision here was they strapped a bomb to this kid's chest or put him in a comic cosy plane and said, go out there and and and clap back really hard at the administration. And for the life of me, Kara, I can't figure out how this was anything, but a ridiculously stupid fucking move on the part of Facebook. Biden eventually walked back those comments in August Facebook released a report showing its most viewed content instead of misinformation, much of it was innocuous. But according to Casey Newton, things weren't quite what they seemed.
I mean, look, I don't want to dunk too hard. I appreciate when Facebook makes data available, but this is not the data that anyone is looking for. Thank you, sir. Can I have some more?
But go ahead. Yeah. What we want to know is what stories are popular on Facebook right now. You can measure a popularity in a bunch of different ways.
They bought a tool called CrowdTangle that lets you see the posts that are getting the most engagement. And but they hate it because they say that the posts that are getting the most engagement are not the most popular in that what you really want to know is what post were viewed the most. And so that was the point of yesterday's report, but whereas CrowdTangle is a real time tool, this is going to be a once every four months report. How much can we really learn by knowing that the most shared domain on Facebook over the past four months was YouTube.com.
They're not telling us individual YouTube videos. It's just sharing YouTube is popular on Facebook, which any of us could have guessed. Right. You look at some of the other most popular links.
They're basically spam. Like people who were sharing popular memes and then changing a URL to in one case, a speaker's bureau of former green backpackers players. This is not helping me understand what is on Facebook. Well, I think it's done very clearly to show look, we're not that we're just silly.
We're just cat videos and sort of the cat video move, essentially. Yeah. And I mean, this sort of is hand in hand with the other big tech company move, which is to only talk in terms of percentages, right? Or say, Facebook can you do?
Well, only three percent of views, you know, were of fascism. I'm like, OK, three percent of views, just, you know, tens of millions of clicks. So again, you know, glad to see a little bit more data, but we need to keep pushing for the data that would actually be useful. We later learned that Facebook show the earlier version of that report because it showed vaccine misinformation was popular on the network.
And if all of that wasn't bad enough, it was bad enough. In October, Facebook became the subject of the year's biggest tech story. What do you know? Again, the Facebook files in a slew of damning stories, the Wall Street Journal reported on Facebook's lax rules for celebrities, its permissive behavior towards drug cartels, its push to get children onto the platform and more, including teen depression and generally just not getting a good goddamn about anything regarding our commonwealths.
But I digress, but one story resonated above all, Facebook's own data reflected that Instagram was harming teen girls. But they have found internal Facebook research that showed that 32% of teen girls said that they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. Facebook knows this. Mark Zuckerberg reported learned it about it in 2020, although we've been talking about it for a long time.
Adam Oseri, the head of Instagram issued a statement saying the story focuses on a limited set of findings and cast them in a negative light. That's right, Adam. That does because it's negative. The comments from him are just appalling as far as I'm concerned.
He made some. Well, he's taking a page out of the Shell Sanbury. I'm proud of the progress. He tried to do this gymnastic move.
Too long to understand this. Scott, I'm going to let you rant here. Please go. Well, a society, Peter Drucker said that an economy exists to create a middle class.
And that's the Dallas of an economy economically, but from an anthropological or from a spiritual or from a instinctual standpoint, the most rewarding things in our lives are ability to provide a safe and loving environment for our children. And when that does not happen, when one in eight UK girls who are contemplating suicide, highlight Instagram as the primary reason they have started contemplating suicide, Facebook hasn't failed. We have all failed. This is what could be what could be more serious than an uptick in teen depression, self-harm and suicide that can be reverse engineered to a corporation.
And we haven't done anything about it. We've let this happen. I mean, we haven't we haven't stopped Facebook is what you're saying. We haven't moved in.
I think at some point you got you got to start holding ourselves responsible and our leaders are responsible. Let's focus on Facebook for a minute. Let's look. This is this is research has been out and a lot of people are suggesting that we everybody knows it.
But here they are just doubling down on it. They were going to they're supposed to put Instagram for kids out. They aren't acknowledging. You believe that?
Yes, I can. You got to admire their gumption. I can't they write everything down because they're proud of it. And 44 states have asked them not to.
And that's where we are. We states ask Facebook not to do something. Right. Right.
So so this obviously could apply to other people, not just teen girls, but teen girls are very vulnerable. Instagram already does warn users who view tags like anorexia and directs them to seek help. But I think one of the things you've talked about a lot is envy and depression or just build into this. There's not fixable.
It's not the way it is. I asked my kids about this last night actually and they're like, I see people on there. It makes me feel bad about myself. Like, you know what I mean?
Like they're pretty confident as people. But it's a third of girls under the age of 22 and 40% of the users under the age of 22 cite that it makes them feel worse about their bodies. Yeah. Yes.
That's what one of my kids was saying that. I just find it. So I agree with you that Mark Zuckerberg is ultimately responsible, but they have deployed Cheryl Samberg around this notion around saying she has incredible gravitas and a lot of this is served around being presented and built by 900 people in the communications department as a real champion for women. And then she talks about personal loss and the common I thought around my mind was, and I like the stuff she said about her kids and dealing with grief as they need a safe space to grieve.
And I thought, where has art children safe space from her and Mark Zuckerberg? The documents behind the journal stories soon made their way to other publishers. Thanks to whistleblower Francis Haugen further reporting showed Facebook struggling to moderate content overseas, employee descent and greater failures around January 6th. As the bad press mounted, Facebook pulled a Hail Mary.
They rebranded to what a coincidence, meta. We're not going to play a clip from that episode because it's a cosmetic change, giving it any more attention is exactly what they'd like. The issues remain unresolved and we're still going to call it Facebook from time to time. That'll show them.
That'll show them. 2021 was a big year for billionaires. We'll talk about Elon Musk later, but in some ways, this was the year of Jeff Bezos. In February, he announced that he was stepping down as Amazon CEO Scott Knight considered his legacy.
So before we even get to that, though, I do think it warrants a moment of recognition that Jeff Bezos, his career, like, no one man in history has taken a company from zero to 1.7 trillion. No, no one person has established a recurring revenue relationship with 82% of households. No one person has had a company hire a half a million people in one year. No one person has revolutionized the commerce revolutionized cloud revolutionized voice.
This is as he stands here today and there is a dignity and discipline to leave in the state of people clapping. He goes out or leaves the CEO role as the bluest, you know, the bluest flame thinker in the history of business. And also I have been very critical. I don't think they can quit themselves well gamifying the commonwealth.
Some of the things you just read about. But the reality is, you know, I've owned stock in Amazon since 2007. They're the largest recruiter of young men and women out of my class. That's given an enormous, a wonderful start to building economic security.
You know, you got it. You just got to recognize what he has done. It's just staggering what he has accomplished now. Now, the most exciting thing, the most exciting thing.
And there's an analogy here or a metaphor, a correlation, whatever it is, a reference to Bill Gates. Bill Gates, when he retired was not that well liked. People saw him as someone who really threw around his elbows in business up until the point he retired. He was not very philanthropic.
The last 25 years for Jeff Bezos have been meaningful for our society. But the next 25 years could be profound. And because we're brilliant, we predicted Jeff Bezos in space months before he ever announced he would go. What's really fascinating is the two richest people in the world in this world in history of the world want to get off the planet, like consider it important that we get off the planet in some fashion.
And both are worried about these existential crisis. I don't think they're going. I don't think that's I think they want to be. Oh, I think Elon, that's how he's going to go.
I will never see him again. He's going to get on. I don't know about Bezos, but I think he wants to get to Mars. How's that for prediction?
We almost got it four months later. Jeff Bezos announced that he would fly to space via Blue Origin, his rocket company. Could you be a snow away? Bill Gates.
We should do a go fund me and I get to sit next to Bezos going into space. Oh my God. Can we please? All right.
That would be pretty good. Let's do it. Because if you go into space with Bezos, the two bald guys. I'm scared.
I am so scared. I got on that scene. I can do it. I could raise the money.
I could do it. I would just, you know, I would just inappropriately flirt with him. Like grab his hand. Grab his hand a lot and just stare at him and wink.
Come on, that'd be good. And then in July, Bezos actually flew. I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all this. So Sunday morning or broadcast.
This morning television shows spend more time covering the Blue Origin's Bezos, Dick and Space. Well, it's irresistible for TV. Hold on. It looks like this.
But in one day, in one day, they spent more time, more hours covering the Bezos launch and they did covering climate change in all of 2020. I know. And at some point, the editors or whoever it is that these stations has to go, okay, are we a big part of the problem? And when they send all these reporters and journalists down there to act breathless, I mean, think about this launch.
And by the way, I was on MSNBC yesterday and I felt intimidated, not to get cynical. Yeah. And I just, I just couldn't help it. They went 100 kilometers of the car.
So you said, because I thought it was quite interesting. Okay. It would have been cheaper if Jeff Bezos had crashed his Canary Yellow tea top Corvette into a hairplugs clinic. What is the achievement here?
They went up 60 miles and floated back down 50 years ago. We sent three brave people into orbit. We sent them 400 times as far. No, I'm sorry, 4,000 times as far.
We sent them a quarter of a million miles, had them land on a, basically a big asteroid rotating at tens of thousands of miles an hour. We weren't even sure what was going to happen when we landed on the goddamn thing. Yeah. And this was an era which was the anniversary.
Go ahead. This was an era where the majority of homes in the United States didn't have air conditioning, a third of homes in certain regions didn't have indoor plumbing. And then we brought these men back safely to earth. And now we're pretending this is some sort of achievement.
Other notable space tourists this year, Richard Branson and William Shatner, Blue Origin has since announced plans for a space station. We'll see how that goes. Speaking of sending things into space and January traders on Robin Hood sent shares of GameStop and Ancy Soring in the Red Forum, Wall Street Bats, users framed the run-ups as revenge for the 2008 financial crisis. Yeah, right.
Karen and I didn't think that framing fit. That someone will be left holding this bag. And in a lot of ways, it's the companies because right now GameStop, everyone's like, now they can buy things. I'm like, no one's taking their stock.
No one's taking their stock. Not one person will be taking their stock or they could get bought. And I'm like, no, one will be buying. No way.
They can't. They have frozen this company in a way that is that. It has to be the company. People are putting it like cryptocurrency right now.
It's right. Exactly. And so that's what I'm like. There's people working for this company, including AMC Theaters.
Empty Theaters got to revive as a business, not as a speculative game for people, whoever they are, whether they're hedge fund people hidden as these people or these people, which I think are very dedicated. But it gets that idea of democratization of stock market. And I think, you know, we have issues with Robin Hood and how they do that. But this idea of like, we're not stupid.
You could. It's so interesting when you hear, and I'm not comparing with the capital people, but a lot of people who are disgruntled and want to run to Trump is we're no one's hearing us. We will be heard. And it has the same sort of tone of we're tired of Wall Street screwing us.
And I think this is part of what happened when the banks didn't get. Nobody went to jail and the banking crisis. Nobody went to jail and the mortgage crisis. They're 100% right that this is a silly game.
And they're showing to me what they're showing is what a silly friggin game this is. As prices spiked, Robin Hood restricted the trading of GameStop and other meme stocks, leading to a fierce backlash from its users. Their anger reverberated from Reddit all the way to Congress. So there's a lot of impact.
And let me be clear. I think Robin Hood is a menace that treats their consumers as the product. And ultimately, I think leads to dark places are made up. But but AOC and Senator Warren, in a sense, and the class actions who filed against Robin Hood really missed the mark.
And that is, well, OK, so Robin Hood is guilty of not not envisioning a scenario where 50% of their account holders would own one stock that ran to volatility of 50% up or 50% down, because the people who clear your trades and the people who provide financing for your margin are constantly looking at the likelihood that the market could have some sort of wild wild one day. And then the money that people borrowed on margin, the stock crashed more. Say say you buy $100 with a GameStop stock and someone finances $100 in margin. So you buy $200 worth and it crashes more than 50% in a given day.
What they say is, OK, if GameStop is only 1% of the stock and that a broker is doing, they're not that worried. But when all of a sudden half your account holders own GameStop stock, the clearance guys and people financing your margin just basically call you and say, you can no longer trade in a stock. So the notion that Citadel conspired with Robin Hood to support another hedge fund just isn't true. This has happened before.
They got caught in a capital squeeze. The more interesting thing here is who's bailing them out. And they're existing investors, including Andrews and Horowitz, Sequoia, I think NEA, have all come in not for one and a half billion. I heard about this piece of paper circulating Thursday night, where they're raising another $3.5 billion.
And it feeds to this bigger narrative around who is making money here. So who is going to make tens of billions of dollars here? We all think they stuck it to them. They stuck it to the man because this hedge fund lost $3 billion.
The people who are going to make tens of billions of dollars are the people who quite think the investors in Reddit. I'm sorry, the investors in Robin Hood. Robin Hood signed up a million new accounts on Thursday. They did more than that.
All of this craziness, oh, they did something wrong. No, they do something wrong every day, but them getting them having their clearance and their margin financiers pull stocks down for not letting them trade in certain stocks. That was Portonario planning, but they didn't. I would argue they really didn't do anything wrong.
Who else is making money here? Who else is making money? OK, what about the Winklevoss twins billionaires from Harvard who say, let's go into silver. All right, that's your movement.
The wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, that's and a guy who made all his money at Facebook, those are William Wallace's around this around this movement. In September, core documents reflected that Citadel executives have been in touch with Robin Hood management as the trade restrictions went into play. Straters claimed that the street had conspiracy between the two firms, both Robin Hood and Citadel deny any wrongdoing, but the stock is off 80% since it's 52 week high, mostly because they're in a dangerous box. All right, the stock traders weren't the only people trying to overturn the finance apple cart in 2021.
Cryptocurrency had a rip roaring year buoyed by the rise of NFTs and US inflation. Bitcoin hit a new high shortly after New Year's a month later, Tesla announced that it would accept payment in Bitcoin and revealed it had $1.5 billion worth on the books. But in May, Tesla did an about face and said that it would no longer accept Bitcoin. Elon Musk cited its environmental cost.
So what's acknowledged? There are environmental issues and there's a really interesting discussion that a worthwhile discussion around the electricity consumption of mining for crypto. But they didn't seem to want to have that conversation in February. The issues were present in February when they purchased one and a half billion and then put in his profile, the term Bitcoin.
And then the 40 earnings when they were going to miss earnings, decided to sell some of those gains that he had catalyzed by being a big promoter of Bitcoin. Beat his earnings and now all of a sudden, after selling and showing a $100 million plus profit, he's decided that he's uncomfortable with the environmental impact of Bitcoin. And what you have here, I think this is a big deal because this is an individual who 18 months ago put out a tweet that said, I have funding secured to take the company private at $420 a share in the stock shot up. It ended up, there was no truth to that.
That is probably the most textbook case of market manipulation I've ever seen. And the SEC decided it's important that we have innovators. He's creating a lot of value. He's doing important work.
Let's slap him on the rest of the $10 million fine and hope that it doesn't happen again. Well, guess what? He is now saying to the moon with Dogecoin and then on SNL saying it's a hustle and it loses a third of its value and then saying putting Bitcoin in his profile and Bitcoin shoots up and then saying, I'm uncomfortable and then putting out thoughtful statements after he sells it. Saying saying, I'm worried about the environment.
You are now talking about thousands and not hundreds of thousands of people who are losing sleep at night wondering what the fuck is this guy going to tweet in the morning? Yeah, this is a gear bone from a verge that our crypto markets to prone to massive multi-million dollar swings in value based on seemingly tiny pressures. Whereas Elon Musk to influential on those markets. Yes.
I think that's right. Another one. Good morning to everyone except Elon Musk, which I thought was funny, but there's all kinds of reaction. It's another person's Elon Musk comment about Bitcoin is like saying a Tesla uses way too much energy rather than just ride a donkey instead.
People are losing their love of minds, but they like they hung on his every word on the way up, you know what I mean? Which is, I think, sort of like two bad boys, you know, you were like going, go Elon and then he just says you shouldn't rely on him and it shouldn't have this much thing because it begins to look like a, so this pump and dump thing, which I think is what you're essentially saying. In September, remarkable first for Bitcoin in Latin America, the government of El Salvador purchased 400 Bitcoin one day after it became official currency in the nation. That's only $21 million at the time of purchase.
So the president's all into the Bitcoin. What's going on? He wants to be the Bitcoin country. So is everyone moving to El Salvador?
I think it's actually really big for Bitcoin and there are a lot of stories about it's kind of the hiccups in the rollout, but I would argue there was less hiccups in the rollout than the rollout of Obamacare or Windows 8, I think Bloomberg article pointed out, but the remittance, it could reduce substantially commissions around remittance. The GDP of Italy is transferred from in between America's from workers back to residents back into country such as El Salvador, which is the poorest country in Central America. And it's just, it's great for Bitcoin. Yeah, it's really interesting.
But people like Bitcoin for different reasons. Investors like it for the volatility. Some people like it for the technology. And then that's why people are worried about the worry about this instability of it.
But ATMs that convert to Bitcoin, Starbucks and McDonald's taking it. It crashed on Tuesday, but I actually argue it's probably a buying opportunity. I think it's fantastic for Bitcoin to have a sovereign nation saying this starting to fall currency. Who the big loser is, exesentially through all of this, is that if the USD gets replaced as the default currency, we're going to lose one of the most powerful armies we've, you know, in the world.
That's a long time away. Correct. I mean, although the Bitcoin people say no, it's a long time right now, the US dollar isn't created the world adopting it as legal currency. I think it's a big deal.
And in October, another first, a Bitcoin futures ETF launched after years of failed attempts at the time of recording, Bitcoin has more than doubled in price since January 1st in 2022. Anything could happen. Lots of bold statement. Anything could happen.
Let's go on a quick break and we come back. We'll look at Elon Musk's here and pick the biggest pivot of 2021. Great news. The federal EV rebate is back.
Eligible customers get up to $5,000 with the federal EV AP rebate on select 2027 volts and 2026 Equinox EV models. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details. I'm Maria Sharapova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with Trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic and the ups and downs that come in the path to achieving greatness.
We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Follow Pretty Tough, wherever you get your podcasts. We're back with our Year in Review 2021 began with a muted hope at the end of the coronavirus pandemic instead of a rock as New Year's parties. Many Americans rang in the year with small gatherings where they wondered how soon they could get a COVID vaccine.
That turned out to be a while. The initial vaccine rollout was plagued with problems. Got and I wondered how to fix it in January. I've been trying to get my mom a vaccine there.
Your system is so screwed in Florida. Now she's going to have to fly to New York where she is on a list that is much more organized. The DC list is really organized. I feel like I can reach them.
I can look at all the information. Florida, it took me like hours. They had shitty websites, shitty information. Awful.
Yeah. Try it was on the phone with them. Let me just say that Governor DeSantis, you suck in terms of well, here's here's where we are. And it speaks to a larger problem.
I don't care if you don't have enough of them. Your system suck. Even if you're telling me, no, you're not explaining how I can get on a list. But this is part of a 40 year screed started by Reagan where government is incompetent.
So let's defund them, which leads to a self-affilling prophecy about ineffective government and this whole notion that we're going to decentralize everything and leave it up to the hospitals is nothing but similar to Facebook, abdicating responsibility. And Governor DeSantis is, you know, this big. We're going to let the hospitals figure out the vaccination website. You know what?
We need scale. We need the federal government. The federal government is really good at something. So they are really good at defending our borders.
They are really good in ensuring that you can't segregate schools. They are. The federal government is outstanding at a lot of things. And guess what?
It needs to be federalized. This needs to be federalized. By June, there were signs of the vaccines were working, COVID rates around the country plunge, but as vaccine availability grew, so too, did vaccine hesitancy case numbers were steeply through July and patients were anti-vaxxers worth. It just struck me that I think all of the nation is dealing with the pain and unnecessary sacrifice being levied on this nation because people have conflated an absence of oppression being an absence of responsibility.
And in the sixties, we asked young men to go to Southeast Asia and fight a war to protect against this theory called the dominant theory of communism. And a lot of them rightly said, I don't want to go. And we either force them to flee to Canada or we put them in jail. If you live in San Francisco or New York and you work your ass off and your partner works their ass off and you make really good money, the government shows up and takes more than half of it in the form of taxes.
And if you say, no, I want to opt out of this responsibility, we find you. And if you still opt out, we put your ass in jail and the notion that we are asking people if and when they go into public places, if they go to the movies, if they go to schools, if they get on a plane, if they work for the government, I mean, for Fox sake, Kara, have you heard that 40% of hospital employees are not vaccinated? 40% of hospital employees are not vaccinated. The nation has had enough.
It is time for our leaders. That's astonishing. That's astonishing. I think don't you like 40% I was I just swallowed my tongue.
I'm like, you're dealing with sick people and you're not vaccinated. Even among those who embrace the vaccine, there were concerns about one possible side effect. Well, I have to go back to the office. I discussed that with guest host Casey Newton.
Do you think one of the things that's interesting is these workplaces, people go back, everyone's been moved back. I know Vox has been moved back to October or something like they're unspecified, actually, but many of the tech workplaces have been moved back. What do you make of what's happening? They were bringing people back and I think wanting to bring people back.
Yeah, I mean, it has been an absolute seesaw. I think employees are really frustrated and so are the employers. I mean, players are desperate to bring everyone back or at least make it available to the people who want it. But now the Delta variant is on the rise and nobody feels like they can safely do it.
I saw a great tweet from a Facebook product manager today who said that they need to analyze the effects of the fact that for the past year and a half, everyone's work life has had to be things that they're comfortable with their families overhearing because it's all there on Zoom. But think about that. That was strange. It's true.
It's absolutely true. So one of the things that's interesting is that tech companies have sort of leaned into no workplace kind of attitude, especially Facebook, right? And others are like, what impact do you think that's going to have? And how do companies like that have benefited from this like Zoom?
And then there's lots of virtual meeting companies like Hop In and all those that whole gang of them that have been funded? What happens to that? What happens to that idea of what a workplace is for at least tech companies or social media companies? I think it's hard to say from the middle of it.
I mean, if you want to look at, you know, are these companies suffering and are they falling apart? Like, no, you know, their profits are all up. They're continuing to grow. I don't think we've seen a credible story about a bigger, even a medium-sized tech company that has really, really struggled with the move, which is to say that it hasn't been super hard.
It's just been that they've mostly been able to muddle through. I mean, I think the last thing lesson is that tech workers and people who have options for where they can work, one more flexibility than they've been given. And this does kind of feel like a one-way door where after they've been told, you don't have to come in two days. They're never going to go in two days a week ever again.
Over the months that followed, more businesses and local governments added or extended their vaccine mandates. And in October, the Biden administration rolled out a pair of mandates that it said would cover 100 million Americans. Those are set to take effect in January 2022. One man's name was on everyone's lips this year from tweets and Teslas to feuds and fuselage's.
It felt like there wasn't a week in 2021 that didn't involve Elon Musk or his companies. His new streak started in January when he became the world's richest man. Elon Musk is now the richest in the world. That call continues to suck.
He's passed Jeff Bezos last week with a whopping $190 billion. When are we going to see the world's first? If he becomes the world's first trillionaire, I don't know what you should do, Scott. Yeah, I'll always sum.
Yeah, I don't know. Return my Tesla. In the spring, SpaceX won a NASA contract and almost instantly got into a legal argument with Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, Musk also got in a Twitter spat with Senator Bernie Sanders. It wouldn't be his last.
In one corner, Bernie Sanders used Elon Musk's outside wealth along with Jeff Bezos. And there's a highlight well inequality in the US, which is pretty easy to do for Mr. Sanders. Sanders.
On the other hand, Elon Musk said he's using his fortune for good that he's going to bring it to move us to other planets. Honestly. And the bros went... First he's going to invest in edibles.
Yeah. Anyways, I'm sorry, go ahead, Karen. What do you think? I think it's ridiculous.
Bernie Sanders is making a very good point. And like, and he's like, no, my money will be used for good. He's like, what is the Andrew Carnegie? He's giving me a real library.
I don't know. Okay. Yeah. I mean, okay.
He's right. A capitalism is just not about having someone worth $170 billion in paying a list tax rate. Somehow in between tweets, Musk found time to host Saturday at live in May. His appearance was expected to get a bump in Dogecoin, one of his favorite cryptocurrencies, that didn't go quite as expected.
And the internet watched as Elon Musk's host get SNL and his beloved cryptocurrency Dogecoin took a tumble among the moments on the show Elon called the cryptocurrency a hustle. My question is, what is Dogecoin? Congratulations. It's a good question.
Well, it's a future of currency. It's an unstoppable financial vehicle. It's going to take over the world. I get that.
What is it, man? I keep telling you, it's a cryptocurrency you can trade for conventional money. Oh, so it's a hustle. Yeah, it's a hustle.
That's why I decided, man. That's why the steadily climbing stopped tumbling crashing by 30%. Although the crypto token is still at more than 10,000% price this year. Almost immediately after Elon Musk made his first appearance, Robin Hood was forced to pause all crypto trading order updates as a reminder.
Robin Hood didn't make a similar pause back during the GameStop frenzy. But then the next morning, Elon tweeted that his space exploration company, SpaceX, which has contracts with NASA is still launching a satellite called Doge 1 on a mission paid for with Dogecoin. By the way, this month, the House passed a bill, which is backed by crypto lobbyists to create a working group to regulate digital assets, which they should be doing. I don't really care who backs it.
So what do you think, Scott? He was somewhat funny. Correct. You were expecting disaster as we can go to our tape.
No, I wasn't expecting a disaster. Like, I think it's a huge win for him. Yeah. Talk about why you think this because you were critical of this.
Appearance. You were. Look, if you had any leave of its photograph, your daughter's bot, Mitzvah, little Rachel is going to look gorgeous. It's going to be great for the family and any leave of its reputation goes down.
So in this instance, Rachel is Elon Musk. Elon might not have been laughing in June. That month, the SEC announced that two of his older tweets have violated a 2018 settlement. So after a year of lawsuits and rockets and the SEC, I sat down with Elon at code in the fall.
Here's what he had to say about Blue Origin's challenge to his NASA contract. I think you should put more of his energy into getting it. Then lawsuits. You can't see all the way to the book.
OK. You know what? I'll be below that. Yeah.
Elon didn't slow down after that in the last quarter of the year. He sowed confusion over an alleged deal between Tesla and Hertz. Asked his Twitter followers to vote on his selling Tesla shares. Tweeted outrageous things at US senators, including Bernie Sanders again, and he called Scott a nump skull.
That's not true. He called me an insufferable nump skull. Let's drill down on that last part. And it's his stock.
He's entitled to sell it. OK. But instead of taking responsibility for saying I want to diversify, I need to pay some taxes. And he has said this.
The stock is fully valued. Yeah, he said he's going to pay taxes. He says, Twitter, you tell me what to do. Yeah, I know.
Over the weekend, he put out a Twitter poll asking me to sell 10% of his Tesla stock. Scott, you tweeted. He's using the Twitter results as a cloud cover to monetize Tesla prices that he knows aren't sustainable without telling the market he's lost faith in its valuation. Although he has said that somewhat.
And then he is that then he did you. This happened before. I've seen it happen before many times. So Lara pointed out and let's just call out the elephant in the room.
The sexual tension between the two of us is palpable. It's palpable. I got to be honest. Last night I did have a section about Elon.
I was running my hands through his chest hair. We were in a hermetically sealed container 30 feet below the Martian surface, recognizing that we were about to die horrific death, either from asteroids or crease radiation or gravitational pull that was melting our bones and neurons. But you know what? We had each other, Kara.
And to cap it all off in December, Time Magazine named Elon its person of the year. It's a safe bet that in 2022, Elon will continue to be one of the most influential men in the world unless he leaves for Mars. We didn't mention Elon moving to Texas because that happened before this year, but the Lone Star state had its own share of news in 2021. In February, the state was hit by a deep freeze as its power grid failed millions of Texans fought the better cold with blankets and fires.
And someone said they said the problem is that if Ted Cruz went to Cancun in the middle of a Texas weather crisis, energy crisis and weather crisis, it's only the second worst thing he's done this year, which is, of course, backing the insurrection, which was a nice move. They're refusing to certify the vote. Does he not want to get elected again? They don't work as busy like calling seniors and bringing seniors warm soup.
Like that's what he's been doing the whole time. Jose Andres is making food for everybody. Like, do they want to turn Texas blue? Is that what their goal is here?
What is the deal in Abbott, like blaming wind energy like these friggin Donald Trump? What is going on? Continuing on a theme of systemic failures, Texas Governor Greg Abbott positioned himself as one of the country's greatest combatants against pandemic measures. In May, he issued an executive order banning government mask mandates by August.
He lost. In October, he pulled the same move again. This time banning vaccine mandates be executive order. Big business was quick to fire back.
Southwest American Airlines said this week that they'll comply with the federal government's vaccine mandate for large companies. This puts them in conflict with the Texas governor who tried to ban vaccine mandates via executive order. Both airlines have said federal law supersede state law and they are correct. So there will be lots of lawsuits all over the place, but I love, I think they're right.
These are forward facing companies with customers and that's how they have to think about the public health. Greg Abbott is going to lose this one, correct? I mean, he's using it as a political thing. I fucking love this.
The cruise lines. Yeah. These are not liberal. These are not bastions of progressive people.
The cruise lines and the airlines are saying, Hey, Governor, while you're over there, you know, absolutely prostrating yourself to the far right old white evangelicals in Iowa. Lot of stereotypes. There are a lot of identity politics in that statement. We're going to focus on what's good for the economy.
And our business. And our businesses and stop applying politics with our businesses. And after year of arguing that governments and businesses can't tell people what to do with their bodies. Governor Abbott took his hypocrisy to new heights when he signed the most restrictive abortion law in the nation.
I was lucky to have guest host George Han with me to discuss it. The Supreme Court, as I understand it, felt that Texas's laws or whatever regarding abortion violated a woman's constitutional right to privacy. This is not privacy. So what is it about this new situation that is also not a violation of privacy?
Is it the state saying, well, we can't legally do it, but you citizens. We're going to empower you. Listen, do a little dirty work for us. Violate a woman's privacy for us.
We'll give you 10 K and we'll cover your legal expenses. Am I wrong? Well, you know, I think it's just this constant chipping away of Roe versus way for over the years. And it's been for whatever you think about what they're doing.
It's rather clever way to sort of chip away and chip away and chip away. It's way without overturning it because that was not possible. And so they make it difficult for these places to operate. They make it difficult to get there.
They make it difficult. They make them smaller and smaller. And so they keep continuing to sort of chip away at the ability to do this. And now this new law or anyone in the United States can sue these abortion providers or anyone who helps them.
You don't know who to attack. You know, you can't, like before it was between government and these abortion clinics. Now anybody can sue them. So it creates legal liability here that's really, you could start to do this on a lot of things.
And from what I understand, but it's really this way to violate this right established under Roe versus Wade. And then not. Like there's, if you're willing to do anything, and I think a lot of people said this, that the right has come to play. And the left is sort of the liberal side is like letting, letting this happen over and over again.
It doesn't have a lot of good tools to stop it. Governor Abbott will run for reelection next year if he defeats primary challengers who likely face off against Beto O'Rourke. A few other stories from 2021. We should mention Netflix came under fire for airing a Dave Chappelle special that many viewers found misogynistic and transphobic.
Netflix employees walked out in protest. The closer remains on Netflix. 2021 was a good year for labor. 10,000 John Deere workers won better paying conditions after going on strike.
Workers in other industries from healthcare to transit went on strike as well. And wages for workers in industries including dining entertainment were up as labor shortages continued. And speaking of shortages, supply chain interruptions rattled commerce, a chip shortage caused disruptions in auto manufacturing and consumer goods like the Nintendo Switch. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned after being accused of sexual harassment.
His brother Chris Cuomo was far from CNN later in the year when his role in the scandal came to light. Also, that big boat got stuck in the canal. Remember that? Yeah, I do.
Alright Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for the years biggest pivot. So we are 250 years into this American experiment, and I'm saying it's going OK. I give us like a C plus.
There is no perfect past, but there is also no exclusively negative past because humans are going to human. That's what we do. I think the story of America is the struggle of people who have not been included in the promise of America to expand those principles to include more people. Let's go determine the next 250 years of America.
And how do we write a new social contract that can give us the democracy we deserve? OK, so I'm just going to be a jerk here because I'm a historian. So we have to have a prologue explaining, you know, we the people. OK, you know, I just don't remember it from schoolhouse rock.
We the people in the former moor for a few years. Yeah, and established justice. What is it? Insert domestic tranquility.
So you're talking about a foundational document. So I'm building a document that will protect American democracy. That's this week on America, actually. This week on Network In Shell, I'm joined by Tanksin Atra, the meme king with over 50 million followers across Tanks Good News, influencers in the wild, and his personal account.
Tank is breaking down what the meme economy really is, how much a single sponsored post pays, why major brands are throwing serious money at jokes and how meme culture thinks preparation age, starter packs, and a perfectly timed screenshot is actually reshaping how we think about money and value. Get ready for a conversation that'll change the way you scroll, make your rethink what's going viral is really worth and prove that sometimes the most serious money moves are wrapped in the silliest of jokes. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash your rich BFF. OK, Scott, we're back.