If you watched Episode 12, you heard the first hour. This is the second one — the bonus hour, exclusively on Patreon — and it picks up right where the episode left off, going down a rabbit hole that connects money, power, politics, and the financial systems that influence nearly every aspect of our lives.
Who actually owns the New York Fed?
The bonus hour starts with the Danny Jones podcast and Catherine Austin Fitts — investment banker, former Bush administration official, and founder of the Solari Report. Her claim: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is owned by its member banks, and the big ones own most of it. As of the end of 2018, Citibank held 87.9 million shares — about 42.8% — and JPMorgan Chase held 60.6 million. The top two banks hold nearly three-quarters of the New York Fed's capital stock. The stock can't be bought, sold, or traded, and it only pays a fixed dividend capped at 6% — but it does elect part of the board. And the member list includes affiliates of foreign banks, like London-based HSBC and Tokyo-based Mizuho. Fitts asked all twelve reserve banks in 1998 who owns them and who has access to their data. The answer was: that's confidential.
The AI bubble is in your retirement account
Then comes the part that made me the most uncomfortable: bubble economics. You might think your 401(k) is diversified — an S&P 500 index fund, some bond funds, maybe some private equity. But according to Fitts, 35 to 55% of a typical portfolio is sitting in ten to twelve hyperscalers and AI stocks, because AI and data center companies now make up 37 to 50% of the S&P 500. The top eight to ten mega-caps — NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, Broadcom — are a third to nearly half of the whole index. Her line: people are financing their own prison.
It gets worse in the bond funds. The same companies are issuing bonds off their balance sheets through LLCs — the same trick Enron used with its special purpose vehicles — and those bonds get sold into the bond funds you hold. You don't know you're holding Meta debt unless you click down ten levels into what you actually own. And the numbers behind the bubble are stark: 48% of US households now have major money in stocks — higher than the 39% at the peak of the dot-com bubble — and stock market leverage is at a record 4.5% of GDP, up 50% in a year. That pop is going to be loud.
The GENIUS Act and the stablecoin play
So what's the fix the people at the top have in mind? The GENIUS Act — the first major federal crypto law, signed July 18, 2025 — creates a framework for US dollar payment stablecoins, backed one-to-one by cash or short-term Treasury bills. The goal, as Fitts lays it out: reach out through mobile payments and the crypto rails and bring four billion new people around the world into using the dollar instead of their local currency. Treasury Secretary Bessent has talked about bringing another two to four trillion dollars into the Treasury market through payment stablecoins by the end of the decade.
And it doesn't stop at currency. The DTC — the record keeper for ownership of stocks and bonds — is moving to distributed ledger digital tokens. The big banks are moving their deposits onto distributed ledgers. Coinbase's CEO says they'll use digital tokens to bring four billion people into the stock market. And the New York Stock Exchange is going to 24/7 trading. Trading stocks around the clock, like Polymarket and sports betting. That's what we have to look forward to.
The most powerful people in the country
The bonus hour closes with Joe Rogan's episode with Calley Means, naming the most powerful people in the country — and it's not who you'd think. Chief of staff Susie Wiles, whose career was taking money from the pharmaceutical and pesticide industries. Trump's pollster Tony Fabrizio, who takes money from Pepsi and pharma while deciding which policies are politically worth doing. James Blair, Richard Walters, Chris LaCivita. Susie Wiles' daughter went to work for a lobbying firm, Continental Strategies, whose revenue shot up to around $30 million a year. And Ballard Partners — hire them and you get a meeting with Susie — has become the highest-revenue lobbying firm in American history, reporting $98 million in 2026, which Means says is just the down payment.
It's not a managed reality. It's a chaos reality.
That's where I landed on all of this. Eric Weinstein once said 100% of the population has gone insane because we're living in a managed reality. After this bonus hour, I don't think it's managed at all — it's chaos, because everybody is self-interested and greedy, and the money we save for retirement is getting funneled straight into the system that creates the chaos. We're not insane. We're paralyzed.
So what do you do? The same thing Robert Greene was talking about at the end of Episode 12: go outside, touch grass, manage your own reality. And the most practical thing Fitts talks about — be an entrepreneur. Generate your own income instead of relying on corporate money or a stock market that invests in corporations to do whatever they want. That's the American way.
Watch the bonus hour
This one is exclusively on Patreon. Join as a Headphone Addict for $5 a month and get every bonus hour, or unlock this episode on its own — no recurring commitment.
What's inside
- Who owns the New York Fed: Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, and the member banks behind the central bank — and why the ownership details are confidential
- Bubble economics: 35–55% of a typical retirement portfolio in ten to twelve AI stocks; off-balance-sheet bonds through LLCs, Enron-style
- The GENIUS Act: stablecoins, the push to bring four billion new users into the dollar, and the Treasury market
- 24/7 stock market: DTC tokens, the NYSE going around the clock, and Coinbase bringing four billion people into stocks
- The most powerful people in the country: Susie Wiles, Tony Fabrizio, and the lobbying firms cashing in — Ballard Partners' $98 million year
- What you can do: manage your own reality, touch grass, and generate your own income