Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision in global business. The dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism. Right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and six clearing houses around the world. And now welcome Inside the Ice House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
You know, we have a lot of CEOs on this program. They're the people who regularly walk in the doors here at 11 Wall street. But what you may not know is that our exchange is also a thoroughfare for presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, and other elected representatives from the US and abroad. The tradition goes back centuries, literally. President Ronald Reagan rang the opening bell here in 1986 and just last week, many members of the House Ways and Means Committee gathered in our Alexander Hamilton room to talk about growing entrepreneurship in America. When moments like that happen, we like to see if we can offer a forum here, Inside the ICE House, for elected and appointed leaders to share their views, just like we did last year with former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair and Congressman French Hill of Arkansas. Then earlier this year, at the Futures Industry Association conference in Boca Raton, our own chairman and CEO, Jeff Sprecher, interviewed US Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, which we posted as episode 81 in our Inside the ICE house podcast series.
Josh King:
Today, we're honored to have Secretary Perdue's cousin, US Senator David Perdue of Georgia, here with us in the library. As the only member of Congress with service as a Fortune 500 CEO on his resume, with over 40 years of business experience, as the former CEO of Reebok and Dollar General, Senator Perdue is one of the few elected officials who's just as much at home taking interviews on the trading floor as he is in the rotunda of the Russell Senate office building in Washington, DC. Senator Perdue lived overseas in China, so we'll dive into the ongoing trade war and get his take on how it's playing out for our nation's economy. We'll also discuss the state of the nation's fiscal health, from our budget to tackling the debt crisis. That's all right after this.
Speaker 3:
The reception to our sofa launch has been very, very strong. We've seen 70 billion dollars worth of notional trade so far, we've seen strong open interest and we are achieving sufficient liquidity to attract a new set of customers to the sofa market. It's our goal at ICE to create a more modern approach to product design, and we're creating more granular price points for our customers to achieve better execution and better liquidity.
Josh King:
Prior to his election in 2014, Senator David Perdue had never before held public office, but he ran to shake up the status quo in Washington. Born and raised in Georgia. Senator Perdue graduated as an engineer from Georgia Tech and later got his masters in operations research, eventually rising to senior positions for Sarah Lee, Haggar clothing, Reebok, Pillowtex and Dollar General. Upon the retirement of his predecessor in Georgia, Senators Saxby Chambliss, Senator Perdue led his campaign past half a dozen competitors in the GOP primary before defeating Democratic candidate, Michelle Nunn, for the seat back in 2014. Senator, welcome Inside the ICE house.
Senator Perdue:
Josh, thank you for having me. I'm excited about it.
Josh King:
This is certainly not your first visit to the NYSE. Do you remember some of your past times here at 11 Wall Street?
Senator Perdue:
I do actually, the last year I had the privilege of having dinner on the floor, the New York Stock Exchange with the board, and it was fascinating, with all the European members and so forth. Of course, Jeff and Kelly have done a great job, but I was just, it wasn't what I expected. It was very moving for me actually, to be on the floor of the heart of our capital formation throughout our history.
Josh King:
I mean, a lot of companies that you've worked for in the past have had ticker symbols that ran across that screen.
Senator Perdue:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, and we would not have been in existence, had it not been for the ability to raise cash and capital on this floor. So, I mean, this has been the place that sets us apart from much of the rest of the world. To a large degree, it's a reason why the dollar is a reserved currency, frankly.
Josh King:
Last week, Senator Uber that's NYSE ticker symbol, U-B-E-R went public on the largest IPO of a US based firm since Facebook in 2012. The range of tech unicorns going public in this market environment is a sign that many take as a healthy economy. What's your perspective watching events unfold in Washington?
Senator Perdue:
Well, of course it does. I mean, people remember the nineties, we saw things come out where people were willing to invest in companies that had revenue, but didn't really have profits yet. And so they saw things coming. A little company called Amazon was one those, as I recall. And so people are looking at Uber and others and seeing the same sort of potential. This is a healthy capital market where people are willing to take risk and then look for return. And I think that's part of what sets us apart. This free enterprise system is so dependent on a free and open flow of information for investors to invest capital and put it at risk.
Josh King:
There's a number of factors creating volatility in the market right now, perhaps the biggest driver being the recent tariff hike of products coming from China. Let's hear a clip from CNBC's Kayla Tausche in Washington.
Tayla Tausche:
There is no set plan for President Trump to receive the vice premier today. His schedule is open, except for a late afternoon event honoring military mothers. And it's unclear whether a call took place between China's president, Xi Jinping and President Trump last night, as Trump suggested. A resolution between the two leaders is seen as necessary for this to move forward. Goldman Sachs suggested the tariff hike creates a soft deadline of another couple of weeks. That's the time it takes products to reach the US from China. Trump has said he's starting that paperwork to look at levying all Chinese goods. We'll see, Joe, whether that creates a little more sense of urgency for China to come around on some of the issues it backtracked on late last week,
Josh King:
Senator, you lived in China for a number of years while working for Sarah Lee, as their Senior Vice President of Asia operations. You were trying to sell the Chinese on the appeal of an American brand, as they were buyers. Give us your take on President Trump's recent decisions, as well as how President Xi and his counterparts probably see the world, from their perspective.
Senator Perdue:
Well, two things, first of all, I think we have a tremendous asset and that's a personal relationship between President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. They have a growing friendship and a growing respect. The second thing is, that the Chinese for thousands of years were the hegemon. They were the rule maker in their world. And in only the last couple hundred years, has that not been the case. So they feel like they're rightful place is on top of the heap. In the meantime, we've done everything we could since the '80s, really, when their economy started to expand, to help them grow. They see themselves as the largest developing economy. We are the largest developed economy. And unfortunately, I think some people there believe that gives them the right to not necessarily comply with the WTO and other points of regulation.
Senator Perdue:
And so what this conversation is, you can't fault the President for trying to create a level playing field. If we're going to continue to grow our economy we have to have equal access to other markets around the world. Tariffs are going to be a difficult issue because they're one reason people come to the table and negotiate. It's one reason, quite frankly, we got a new trade agreement with South Korea, it's one reason why we have Japan in here talking regularly and Europe, as far as that goes. So I'm hopeful that what we'll see is common sense apply. And over the next few weeks, we'll see cooler heads on both sides, actually bring this back into progress, but let, let's be very clear, Josh. This is very common in negotiation with the Chinese, you have fits and starts. I said two years ago that this would be a non-linear exercise. You would go and you would come back. You'd be frustrated. You'd be encouraged. This very normal and there's nothing negative about that. I believe, I still am optimistic we're going to get a good outcome here.
Josh King:
Pinned on the top of your Twitter feed, Senator, is a line that reads this; "Republicans are proving that what we believe in, economic opportunity, fiscal responsibility, limited government and individual liberty, works." As you link to a CNBC article that reports job surge in April unemployment rate falls to lowest level since 1969. One of the key takeaways from that piece, is that the US added 263,000 new hires in April beating expectations of 190,000. You're a champion for growing the economy. What's fueling the growth?
Senator Perdue:
Well, I think it's very clear. If you go back and look at the last administration, they tried it in a little different way. They thought that more government control and more centralized power was the way to go. And so they put a lot of regulations in, it created a lot of uncertainty. And so coming into '17, when President Trump was inaugurated, we had about six trillion, not at work in the economy. We had the largest balance sheet of the Russell 1000, at that time, over two trillion dollars. We had two trillion dollars stuck on the balance sheets of community banks and small banks because of Dodd-Frank. And oh, by the way, we had lost 17,000 banks, small banks, but after the Dodd-Frank bill was passed. And then of course we, I know we had somewhere around two to three trillion dollars of unrepatriated US profits overseas. Well, we worked in, I was in the White House two weeks after president Trump was inaugurated.
Senator Perdue:
And the purpose of that meeting was to lay the agenda out for the first two years. And we agreed to work on regulation, energy taxes, and Dodd-Frank in the first year. And the second year we'd work on immigration trade and infrastructure. And that is a formula for success. So what's happening right now is, we are in fact proving, that if you pull government back to a reasonable level of regulation, to make sure everybody gets a fair share and a fair opportunity to have success, and you have the right taxation process that allows us to be competitive with the rest of the world. And you have a banking system that awards risk taking and yet protects us, in terms of providing liquidity to our markets, you end up with the result we have right now.
Senator Perdue:
So I'm still very bullish on this. I'm not looking at individual monthly numbers, but I think this is the economic turnaround that we've never seen in US history, 5 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment in 50 years, the lowest African American, Asian, and Hispanic unemployment ever the highest median income. I mean, the numbers all indicate that we are having a very strong recovery and frankly, one that's got legs on it because a lot of the benefits from the tax law have yet to have really been felt as it works it way through the system.
Josh King:
That same article says retail, whose fortunes have fluctuated in recent months, saw a loss of 12,000 jobs. So that's one sector that's not doing quite as well. Senator, prior to public office, you spent over 40 years working in business, much of it, retail focused at the helm of Reebok and Dollar General. You mentioned another little company called Amazon. It's often been in the President's crosshairs. How has it altered the retail landscape? And does anything about that company need to change for the good of the US economy?
Senator Perdue:
Well, this is progress that we've seen over the last a 100 years in America, as a growth of consumers after World War II. And we've had the greatest economic boom in America since World War II, that humankind has ever witnessed, but we've seen various evolutions, if you will, of retail. Let me give you an example. We went from specialty stores in small towns to the advent of Walmart. Walmart came to the small towns and brought low prices, had a lot of imports. They globalized the area of retail, particularly in consumer good. Now we have online consumption and the growth of these online retailers is changing the formula again. So you had big box retailers like Sears and Walmart and others now trying to rationalize their footprint and adjusting their models to a smaller footprint, like Walmart is doing today.
Senator Perdue:
So what Amazon, and other online retailers, have done is change the mix, if you will, of how consumers obtain products that they're interested in. Let me give you an example. Women bifurcate their purchases. We studied this at Dollar General. We studied it at Reebok. Their aspirational purchases, they're still willing to go to specialty stores that they could be online or in their neighborhood. But the specialty stores, department stores, are where they go for the aspirational goods. The consumer products, the everyday needs, they'll go to the place with the lowest common denominator on price and convenience. And let's face it, women consume or control the consumption of more than 85% of what's consumed in America. So people should, and do, pay a lot of attention to what's important to them.
Josh King:
A visit to your website, Senator, shows that a real time ticker counting our nation's national debt. It's currently at over 22 trillion dollars. The US fiscal year ends on September 30th and discussions in your committee work have not been smooth, to say the least. I read an article over the weekend, detailing the impending debt crisis with no plan to stop it. Just last week, a fight in Congress brewed over funding for states needing disaster relief for hurricanes, flooding and wildfire. Senator, you've been a part of these ongoing debates alongside your colleague, Rick Scott of Florida. What's the latest in the funding debate?
Senator Perdue:
Well, there are two issues there. I wish we had a lot more time, Josh. I'll come back and talk to you about the debt, because this is one that pulled me in here, honestly. 22 trillion dollars in the growth that we forecast over the next 10 to 20 years is not sustainable. It's largely because of our commitments in social security, Medicare and Medicaid, pension benefits for federal employees and the interest on the debt. We've added, in the last two years, 450 billion dollars of new interest on top of this debt. So it does create an environment. Now we are growing the economy and CBO says we're lowering the debt curve by about three trillion dollars, over the next decade.
Senator Perdue:
This disaster relief is the first example, over the last decade, where Congress has not treated it as a nonpartisan issue. Every single other disaster that we've had, was nonpartisan. It got funded, most of them within a couple of weeks, the longest one was Sandy and that was around two months. This now is over seven months, as of today. And it's nothing but a partisan bickering over other things. I think one party does not want to let the President be seen as being a victor in providing disaster relief. And that's just silly. Rick Scott and I wrote a letter last week to four senators who have, who get big benefits from this disaster relief, asking them to partner with us in a way to get these benefits to their people.
Senator Perdue:
California was one of those, those two senators, one of them actually voted for a bill that Johnny Isaacson and I put in on this several weeks ago, and yet minority leader, Schumer, asked her to change her vote. She changed her vote on the floor of the Senate. So we see the politics abounding in this. It's ridiculous. Our farmers in the south, the fire victims in California, earthquake victims in Alaska. The flood victims in the Midwest are all being held hostage right now. And it's just not right.
Josh King:
Prior to running for Senate in 2014, you had never held public office before. Upon arriving in Washington, did you ever feel like Jefferson Smith in the Senate chamber? Let's take a listen.
Speaker 6:
Just get up off the ground. That's all I ask. Get up there with that lady. That's up on top of this capital Dawn, that lady that stands for Liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes. If you really want to see something and you won't just see scenery, you'll see the whole parade of what man's carved out for himself after centuries of fighting. And fighting for something better than just jungle law. Fighting so's he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter what his race, color or Creed. That's what you see. There's no place out there for graft or greed or lies or compromise with human liberties. And if that's what the grown ups have done with this world that was given to them, then we better get those boys camps started fast and see what the kids can do. And it's not too late because this country is bigger than the Taylors or you or me or anything else.
Josh King:
Any of Jimmy Stewart's passion get put into the letter to those four senators from you and Senator Scott?
Senator Perdue:
Well, it's the passion that I went to my wife with and she came back to me a few weeks later when we decided to run for the Senate, I felt like that we were headed in the wrong direction. This was not the destiny of the United States. Just to be another member of the community of nations. And without America, this would be a very dark world. We have reduced global poverty in the last 60 years by 60%, Josh. That's America, our military, our philanthropy, our markets, our heart, has lowered global poverty. While here at home, because of our domestic bickering over big government programs or whatever, we have not moved the dial on serious poverty in America. It's the same today as it was in 1965, when the great society was signed. So we've got a lot of work to do, but this passion that you hear in that speech, I wish I could give a speech like that, Josh, but I got to tell you, we've got to face up to the reality that we are over promising and under delivering as a country right now. And that's the problem in Washington.
Senator Perdue:
The 22 trillion dollars is a manifestation of irresponsibility. We're borrowing, even this year, because of our obligations to the mandatory side of our budget, we're going to borrow over 25%. That means that pretty much every dime we spent on our military and our veterans and all domestic discretionary programs, is borrowed money. That is no way to run a business, let alone a country.
Josh King:
But you're only one man among 535 men and women down there. So many people call it intractable, go back to four years ago, looking at your wife and saying, should we do this with everything that's challenging about Washington? Why make that decision then to do it and why decide to do it again and run for reelection?
Senator Perdue:
Well, because we have made a difference. And we can talk about the Joint Select Committee, on working on the budget, where we got bipartisan agreement on four or five things that actually will get into law. We will eventually get those in law and change the way we do this. This budget is so silly. It's ridiculous. It's only funded the government four times on time, by the end of fiscal year in the last 45 years, since that law was put into place. We wrote a letter last year and in August of 2016 as well or 17 and said, "Look, we need to stay here in August. We don't have our work done. The fiscal year's coming to an end." We did that in 17 and we got 74 confirmations in one day.
Senator Perdue:
Prior to that time, for the entire year, we'd only gotten 42. Last year, we wrote a letter and said, "Look, we've only gotten 12% of the government funded. This is as of July 31, we need to stay here in August and get the rest of it appropriated." Well, we didn't get a 100%. We stayed here. Mitch McConnell did a good thing and allowed us to stay here. And we got 75% of the federal government funded, first time in 22 years, Josh, that's how ridiculous this is.
Senator Perdue:
So yeah, one person can make a difference. We've got a lot to work to do. We've got to solve this debt crisis. I think we've got to rebuild our military, but as important as both those are, we've got to rebuild our relationships with our allies around the world. Get a fair trade relationship with them so we have equal access, but also have them spending a rational amount for their own self defense. So we can take care of the things we need to do here at home.
Josh King:
Talking about the military, talking about self defense, Senator. You were born in Macon, Georgia, raised in Warner Robins, named on behalf of Brigadier General, Augustine Warner Robins. Who's known as the father of logistics of the modern air force. It's adjacent to Robin's air force base nearby, military bases are intertwined with the social and economic life of the towns that support them. Did serving them play a role in your decision to get into politics?
Senator Perdue:
Well, growing up in a military town saw that we have a responsibility and it helped me identify that we had a global security crisis. At the same time, we had a debt crisis. As the then General Madders said, 'The biggest danger to our national security is our own debt." And that made sense to me. And that's why I ran. I ran on those two crises. And then, it's one thing to claim about, or complain about what's going wrong in Washington, but you have to offer up solutions and coming through the performance pyramid of business, that's what we did. We ran on, four or five things that you can do to fix this debt crisis. And therefore put us on stronger footing to deal with whatever adversaries are out there.
Senator Perdue:
But I will tell you this, the world's never been more dangerous than it is right now, Josh. We have five threats. I put them in this order. I put China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and then terrorism, across five domains, air, land and sea, is what it always was, well, we've added now, in the last 20 years, cyber and space, all of a sudden. So it's a very complicated matrix of threats. And it's one where we have a lot of nefarious activity going on around the world and we need our allies to step up and help play their part in doing this. We don't want another arms race, certainly one-on-one with China and the United States. But if it comes to that, we've got 65 trillion dollars of uranium power on our side, with our allies. They've got about 15. So I'll take on that fight any day, but we have to take care of our business here at home first. And that's really why I'm going to run again.
Josh King:
You've lived and worked all over the world. And part of that, I'm sure informs a lot of the views that you bring to this campaign. But I want to go into the Perdue household as a child to sort of see how it was shaped. Both of your parents were school teachers, the importance of a quality education, no doubt hit home for you. What was the biggest lessons that they taught you?
Senator Perdue:
Oh gosh, love for the kids. I mean, my dad was a school teacher. He did the GI bill. He worked his way through college. He served in Korea and in World War II. And later he became a principal and a coach and then a superintendent. My mother was a teacher, fifth grade teacher, and then later in high school in a gifted program, but she started the first gifted program in the state. But, but they taught me a full focus on what's important. You're a teacher because you teach kids whatever age. And so that was the focus. It's not the administration, it's not the funding. It's not all the other thing. It's that one person to person interaction that causes someone to learn. It's one reason why I got involved in literacy as an adult. I was chairman of the National Commission on Adult Literacy for a while.
Senator Perdue:
And actually at Dollar General, I was so proud, that even prior to my getting there, we had the largest philanthropy for literacy of any major US corporation. So in our household, we talked at every dinner table at every breakfast table, what was going on in school. And my mom just, I remember over and over and over said the best decision is the one made between the teacher and the parent and the local administrator. And then we went through 40 years of trying to do it a different way and we haven't made much progress. My mother, if she was sitting here today, we lost her two years ago, but she would remind us that, in 1975, before the Department of Education was formed, we had the top position in reading, math and science. Our kids were number one in the world in reading, math and science. Today we're 24, 25th and 38th, respectively, in those three disciplines.
Senator Perdue:
And that's after spending millions and billions of dollars in the Department of Education from a top down format. So we know that doesn't work. We should be about trying to change that, but that education I got sitting around the dinner table every night was about one thing. And that is the student and where the focus should be
Josh King:
From the dinner table at Perdue household, it's off to Georgia Tech, earning a degree in Industrial Engineering and then your masters in operations, while at the same time working at construction and warehouse jobs. You like being a hands on guy, I'll guess, but how did you go from engineering and operations to international consulting and then your business roles later on?
Senator Perdue:
It was kind of an accident. I mean, I needed a job and I got an offer to go with a consulting firm, right out of school. Did that a few years, went back and got a Master's in Operations Research. And then rejoined that firm as a partner. You know, I lived all over the world, lived in France, lived in Asia a couple times and really have had business interest outside the US all of my career. It is a blessing because that dimension now serves me so well in this seat because I see America through a lens that a lot of the rest of the world sees as well. And back in the sixties, the joke around the world was, when Americans, affluent Americans were showing up, they didn't understand other languages or other cultures. And so the Ugly American arose as a descriptor for people traveling around the world.
Senator Perdue:
Well, I hope to change that. And I think it has changed, but for my kids and grandkids, I want the world to be at peace. To be there though, we've got to find a way to help. Today we've got 65 million refugees roaming the face of the earth. And nobody has developed a solution for that. We see it in the Middle East. We see it in Africa, even in Asia. And so there's some tremendous problems that we have. We need China and America to lead the world through the next phase of its development. And to do that, I think we need to be in a peace war, not an arms race war. And so if we could figure out how to compete with each other, without having to be adversaries, the world would be much better off.
Josh King:
As you leave us here at the New York stock exchange, embark on running for your second term, Senator Perdue, you've pledged to limit yourself to only two terms. Why? Should more members embrace term limits?
Senator Perdue:
Well, I certainly believe so. President Trump ran on it. I did too. And here's why. If you look at the history, I'm the 37th person in my seat. That's since 1789. I'm very proud of that. That means that the average tenure in my seat is about six years. And so I looked at this development of the number one problem in Washington, I believe, is the development of the career politician. The drive to get reelected, outweighs everything else. And that's just a real problem. And so I put a bill in the first day I was in the Senate, in 2015, that would limit the Senate to two terms. That'd be 12 years and six terms in the house. That's 12 years and no double dipping. So 12 max, that's a third of anybody's career. That's enough.
Senator Perdue:
And by the way, prior to 1913, Congress and Senate only met up here for around 45 days a year. These were not professional career politicians. They were citizen legislators, which is what the founders talked about in the Federalist papers, in letters to each other. They just never saw the rise of the career politician. And I believe that if we had a faster turnover of politicians, that you get more sense of urgency, a more honest train of thought and less obstructionism when you change power in the White House and in the Congress. So I believe that putting national interest first gets seconded sometimes to the self-interest of getting reelected. And that's why I believe in term limits.
Josh King:
As I let you head back up town, to get the Acela back to Washington, and last question, you have two sons, I think at this point and three grandsons, whom you've said are your inspiration for coming to the Senate. As you walk down the halls of Congress, when you get back tonight, what kind of country do you hope to leave for them?
Senator Perdue:
Well, first of all, my children are the first generation in history of America that has a lower economic prospect than the prior generation. That's unacceptable. I don't care what your political aspirations are or political leanings are. That's unacceptable. This is America. We've been so blessed with assets. We're nowhere near bankrupt today, by the way. I mean, we got plenty of assets to deal with these liabilities. We have about 130 trillion dollars of liabilities over the next 30 years alone by anybody's measure. But we have over 200 trillion of assets, if we would just use them. I hope the world will be at peace for my grandchildren. I hope that they will have access to the same things I have. The American dream is alive and well. You have to work for it. There are no guarantees.
Senator Perdue:
And so when I hear people talking about a world where a government is going to offer stipends to people who are either unwilling or unable to work. I'm worried about losing the pressure, if you will. Not all stress is bad. Some stress actually causes you to get out of bed in the morning, go do your job. I've worked my entire career worried about the job that I had, and didn't worry about what came next, because my dad taught me to do that, but I did worry about failure. Every day of my life I was afraid I wasn't going to do what needed to be done. And so that pressure's there. I hope my kids will have the same opportunity that I've been blessed with and live in a country that loves freedom, that controls the size of its own government, and then comes fiscally responsible. So we can do the things that we should do. Disaster relief, philanthropy, all the things that we need to do to have a safety net in our own country and help, don't develop and protect the rest of the world.
Josh King:
Will Senator, here's to that. Thank you very much for taking a few minutes on your whirlwind trip up to New York to hang out with us for a few minutes here Inside the ICE house.
Senator Perdue:
Thanks Josh. It's fun as always.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was us Senator David Perdue of Georgia. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or question, you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us at IcehousePodcast. Our show is produced by Theresa De Luca and Pete Asch, with production assistance from Ken Abel and Ian Wolf. I'm Josh King, your host signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified, neither ICE, nor is affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein. All of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose clarity.