American Express

Uh, we go out looking for the next one to hit, either the Sears Tower, the Hancock Building, or the Amoco Building, and it was a wild time, and I was just left New York.

I used to walk out of the AMEX and look at those wonderful buildings every day.

Um, and to see those...

We were on the phone with our, our main office in New York, and just like your dad said, "Oh, uh, we just had a small commuter plane hit one of the towers." They were very calm.

[laughs]

That American Express.

The plum colored one.

Hey, okay, quiet.

Not only did the United States break $40 trillion worth of national debt, but it's gotten so bad that we've had a tough time finding lenders to keep supporting this national debt, creating chaos in the bond market, that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent just came out with a new emergency plan that, as of September 9th, 2026, the United States is now going to start borrowing money from the United States.

In other words, we are now going to start using a new Amex to start paying off our Visa, except now we can just print money to fund our new Amex.

And this is why people are getting concerned about the United States economy losing its status as the world's superpower, and the United States dollar losing its status as the world's reserve currency.

Like according to Ray Dalio, the founder of the biggest hedge fund in the world, we have now passed a point of no return.

And this is where other investors are saying, "Whoa, whoa, whoa.

We're gonna be creating money to be paying off some of our loans.

That's gonna create more inflation if we're just bor- Creating a new Amex to pay off our Visa, that's a sign of financial problems.

This is where I wanna take a step back and talk about the alternative side now, because we've heard why Ray Dalio believes that the dollar and the United States empire could be collapsing.

So going to be a lot of good stuff.

Fearless816, what questions should I ask or what topics should I discuss at the American Express networking event I'm attending today? Cool.

Is that all American Express people? Is it all people that have the American Express credit card? Is it just a sponsored American Express event? You know, a lot of that is going to come down to who your audience is, who you're going to be meeting with.

Are you meeting with executives? Are you meeting with fellow practitioners? Is it cybersecurity folks? A lot of the time for me, my favorite question usually comes down to um what are some of the wins you've had lately what are some of the challenges you've been facing um but get people getting people to talk about their wins what's been successful uh is always a good thing you know when you go and go hey so what's what's the weather like or sorry no what uh you know where'd you come from and how long you stand for and you know those things if you can get get the conversation about them they will just open right up and a lot of that comes down to so what are some of the challenges you're dealing with in your or what kind of find out what role they have and then see what are the challenges they have what are some of the big wins they've gotten those kind of things so that would be kind of where i'm go i would go with those questions and uh and kind of see from there so um looking up at my um looking up at discord here i got some folks tagging me in some posts there which is always kind of cool which is always nice Referring to something else in the chat.

Oh, I was just saying like him better than that nerd.

I said, well, it's not happening because of this.

But the minute you wanted to start doing something, then the evil inclination is going to attack you and say, what are you talking about? Where are you going? You've been a customer for American Express for 20 years.

Now you want to change? You've been in negativity for 20 years.

Now you want to be positive? So we have to be careful of the beginning.

God! I just want to know what you do when somebody has opened up a credit card that you didn't know nothing about.

An American Express.

The plum color

one.

Who would ever go into the World Trade Center again knowing terrorists might come after it? It was a real problem.

And you know who the hero was, the hero company? American Express.

They were the first ones.

American Express stepped up, took a huge, huge lease.

They agreed to serve as the anchor tenant for the new building.

And that gave Silverstein a guarantee he needed to get his financing.

Cast Away.

The plane crash, the link with Amex.

I really enjoyed it.

Set up the whole film.

bigger financial center.

And I was at Three World Financial, which is to this day still the headquarters of American Express, at least as far as I know.

But that was the big tenant in the building.

And it is so hard to describe for people that had never visited or been there when the World Trade Center was there, but it was a world unto itself in Manhattan.