On Wall Street, we are front stabbers. In Washington, they're backstabbers. So for me to go into politics, that's it. You're going right into the volcano.
But you could fix it. You could run away from that for a second. Let's go down.
He's talking politics and running for re-election. My marriage. Try to stay married, my man.
New York City, the finance capital of the world. It has more ambition than one tiny island can handle. And it's not a bad place to get a bite to eat either. For three decades, we made it here on the markets, calling our shots, and always speaking our minds.
But the best conversations happen across the table.
So pull up a chair while we break bread with founders, CEOs, and creators, all in the iconic spots that define the greatest city on earth. This is Standing Table, presented by Apex FinTech Solutions.
Tonight we're at Hunt and Fish Club talking with Anthony Scaramucci, a personal friend of mine who also happens to co-own the joint. Most people know him for his famous two weeks in the Trump White House, but he's so much more than that. He's the founder of SkyBridge Capital, a fixture on Wall Street and one of New York's most compelling comeback stories. In 2015, he co-founded Hunt and Fish Club, a tribute to 1960s New York and old school hospitality. The vibes are immaculate, making it the perfect place to share a meal and catch up with old friends.
So, take the Negroni that we talk about. All right.
I'll have a great martini up, just a little dirty with olives. Johnny Black on the rocks. Thank you.
Nice. I want the people to know something before we even get started. In our world, a Wall Street world, for a lot of people, if somebody makes $1 more than them, they resent that person. You are somebody in a rarified air, very few people that champion other people's success.
I'm going to like this show, Nathan. Tell me I'm wrong. I think that's the number one thing. No one has ever worked for me. People work with me. Right. We're together. Not to get overly philosophical, but there's only two things you can give your kids. Celebrate the successes of your friends and do something you really love because you're only going to be here visiting. Right? What does Mel Brooks say? Relax. None of us are getting out of here alive.
You got that from your family though. That's how you grew up. So talk about your childhood.
I did get raised like that. So I got raised really by two very strict Italian Catholic women. My grandmother and my mother. My father raised us, but it was more tangential because he was always working. But traditional stuff, you know, share, play nice. You know, did you ever see this as a kid?
Yeah. Southern Italian, you're going to get hit with something. Wooden spoons coming at you. Somebody could throw something at you. You could get hit. But I mean, this was you better cut it out. That was like the warning from your grandmother.
And the very southern Italian, the non-Italians, the Sicilians, it's even worse.
He does all the time. He say you're Italian and half.
I'm half Italian, half Sicilian.
Yeah. Well, see that's correct because my grandmother would say Sicily was an island off the coast of Africa. Okay. Because she was Napoli don. Okay. The Sicilians were like in a whole different world.
He knows that, right? He knows that. It was an old school family and they were dedicated to hard work. And my dad had a lot of integrity. You know, he paid his bills. He had a great line. He's like, 'If you can't afford the price of the ticket, don't go to the movies.' You remember that expression? And so even though when I got to Wall Street it was like a fish out of water. I don't know if that was like that for you or you. I didn't know what the hell was going on. You know there was a lot of hazing in the 80s. A lot of pushing and shoving. But there was also you know my first job interview. I think I've told people this. I was in 100% poly from my first job interview. Okay. So I literally looked like a funeral director.
That's polyester for people not familiar with the fabric.
I was fully flammable from my first job interview. I had a poly suit on and a poly shirt. Well, I kept the poly going in my hair and thank God I still have my hair, the two of you. Okay. But then the partner from Goldman Sachs says, 'Hey, can I see you for a second? You're the worst dressed person that I've ever met in my life.' By the way, you're a smart kid. I can't invite you down at Goldman Sachs dressed like this. I remember calling my mother after. She look great. You look great. No, I didn't look great. I had to go to J. Press, which is like a super WASP place. I got myself one of those student credit cards because I didn't have any money. And I bought myself two cotton shirts, a woolen suit, and then I went down to Goldman and did the interview again.
I don't think people realize how well read you are. Like you watch an interview with Anthony Scaramucci, and there's a very good chance you will quote from some novel that most people never heard of, let alone read.
I think that you have to read. You don't have enough time in life to experience all of life if you're not reading. You need to draw on the intellectual capacity of other people. Goes back to Homer, the Bible, etc. And you can catch the thread of some of the smartest people that have ever lived through literature and it'll make you somebody that can see patterns, patterns in investing, historical patterns politically.
What patterns are you seeing now that sort of you can go back in time in history and say what we're seeing now mirrors X?
Well, I mean different categories, right? So on the markets I think Ray Dalio has the best understanding of it. Thank you my brother. If you read what Ray is saying about if we're just going to be open with people. Hey, salute. God bless guys. Congratulations on the show. Good to see you both. So I think Ray's got the best read on the situation. We're overextended as a welfare state. We're overextended in the West. We have a group of politicians that have overpromised the electorate and undertaxed them. And we went from George Washington to George W. Bush $7 trillion of debt and we've racked up about $31 trillion of debt talking Barack Obama into Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Donald Trump. So that's not going to be sustainable. You end up paying for it. And our politicians have chosen that we're going to pay for it in the most pernicious and the most regressive way, and that's through inflation.
So Dalio, he's brilliant. Most of his concerns about everything that you just laid out are just dismissed, right? They're dismissed by academics. They're dismissed by market participants. Why do you think that is? Because we hear.
They're not dismissed by the people I grew up with, though. Because the people I grew up with are hurting. You know, take my father hourly wage, the dollar comes in and now you ruined the dollar. You took it down 30% since January of 2020. You just stole 30% of his life, Dan. So, I understand what the academics are saying. And by the way, if you own assets and you're on Wall Street, you're relatively protected. But if you're a lower middle income family that has no assets, you're getting destroyed. And what happens is you go towards angry populace. You go to the right angry populism and you'll go to the left angry populism because you're trying to send a message to the establishment. Hey man, this is not working for me anymore. Can I give a statistic real quick?
Okay. So, I want everybody to think about this. realtor.com. What is the median price of a house right now? US $432,000.
I was going to say, you know what, I was going to say 460. So, it wasn't that far.
So, 432. So, then you reverse engineer. What do you got to make to afford the house, pay the mortgage, and have a little bit of cash left over so that you're not house rich and cash poor? About $160,000. The median income in the United States is 84,000. So that means half of the people in the United States, they can't afford that house. They're skipping medical payments. They're skipping dentistry. They may miss a prescription drug or maybe the car got dented and they can't bring it to the repair store. You know, you get the point I'm making. This struggle, okay, you're correct. The academics are correct, will survive it. But this pernicious inflation, this regressive tax is hurting those people. And they're angry and they're not eating at the Hunt and Fish Club, by the way. They're eating at McDonald's and they're mad at the people that are eating at the Hunt and Fish Club.
Let me ask a question. The wealth gap, as you just said, in this country is the widest it's ever been and it continues to grow daily. How do you end that cycle? How do you reverse the cycle?
Let's talk about it. But you have to understand how it happened first, then you can fix it. In 1999 July, the World Trade Organization was meeting in Seattle and there were huge protests up there. You and I were young guys on Wall Street and I was like, 'What are these people doing? Why are they protesting? This is so good for our companies. They're going to offshore. They're going to lower their manufacturing costs. Unit production's going to go up. This stuff's going to flow back into the US at lower prices. Going to be good for the shareholder.' But their message was it was not going to be good for the working-class people in the society. They were right, guys. And we on Wall Street got it completely wrong. So that was step number one. Number two, when Ross Perot challenged the establishment in 1992, he got 19.9% of the vote running for president, he scared the daylights out of the two parties. They locked with each other and they created this very tight duopoly. And they've made it impossible for a third party to enter the race. Ask Bobby Kennedy. Donald Trump himself in 2000 wanted to run as a reform party candidate. And then through the gerrymandering, they've even tightened it more. Okay, so now what do these guys do? They only focus on big business, big food, big pharma. They're not focused on the little guy. Look at the legislative agenda for the Congress in the United States now. And you'll see there's where the problems are. So, you need to reform those two aspects. And until you do that, you're not going to recreate that American dream in the country.
So, let's talk about going back to your childhood. You go to Tufts, you graduate from Harvard Law School. You have a job at Goldman Sachs. You beat the game, right?
Right. Yeah. My mother was mad. You ever watch Moonstruck? Of course. My mother has gave me the big knife. Loretta gave me the big knife. My mother has, you know, said she's going to plunge it into her chest maybe 2,000 times since I was born. 2,000. One of them was when I said I was going to work at Goldman. You're not going to be a lawyer? My son's not going to be a lawyer after going to law school. What the hell is wrong with you? One day, true story, I'm in Rosano's Italian deli in Port Washington. And I'm getting the Rosano Supreme, you know, I'm getting everything on it obviously. And Mrs. Kazin, I'm getting the hero and Mrs. Kazin is there and she says, 'Anthony, how's that law firm treating you?' I said, 'Excuse me?' She says, 'The law firm, Goldman Sachs. The law firm that you're working at, Goldman Sachs.' I said, 'The law firm I'm working at?' I said, 'It's going well.' It's going well. I told my mother, 'You told her I'm working at a law firm? I was embarrassed for you.' I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed for you. So that's the family I grew up in. Okay. That's everything you need to know about what they thought of my career.
