The Founding Father Who Got Rich in the Revolution

Summary

Business History Podcast: "The Founding Father Who Got Rich in the Revolution"

Host: Jacob Goldstein & Robert Smith (Pushkin Industries)
Date: May 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the life and legacy of Robert Morris, the often-overlooked "financial founding father" who played a pivotal role in funding the American Revolution. Noted for being both one of the richest men in early America and later a debtor imprisoned for his financial overreach, Morris’s story is explored through the lens of business acumen, risk-taking, and the birth of America’s economic system—including the origins of its bankruptcy laws. With the 250th anniversary (semiquincentennial) of the U.S. Declaration of Independence as context, hosts Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith illuminate Morris’s crucial but controversial place in business and national history.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Robert Morris: Businessman Turned Founding Father

• Morris's Motivation: Unlike other Founding Fathers, Robert Morris came to America not for ideals or religious freedom, but to become a merchant (06:32).
  • "He came to make money." – Jacob Goldstein [06:32]
• Early Business Brilliance:
  • Morris showed trading savvy as a teen, betting on price differences abroad—a classic arbitrage (07:06–07:23).
  • "If a thing is selling for two different prices in two different places...buy all that you can in the cheap place and sell all that you can in the expensive place." – Jacob Goldstein [07:23]
  • Modern comparison: "If Robert Morris were alive today, he'd be working for, like, a hedge fund." – Robert Smith [07:41]

2. The Political Awakening: Stamp Act & Reluctant Revolutionary

• Stamp Act Outrage: Taxes on paper products (newspapers, legal docs, etc.) brought him into revolutionary politics, aligning economic self-interest with public action.
  • "There’s one thing a rich guy hates; it’s a tax." – Robert Smith [08:13]
• Ambivalence Towards Independence:
  • Morris abstained from voting for independence, signing only when it was clear war was unavoidable (11:04–12:21).
  • "He’s as close as you could get at this point to a global capitalist...war is very bad for his business." – Robert Smith [11:42]
  • "Classic weaselly move. I neither voted for it nor against it." – Jacob Goldstein [12:15]

3. Smuggling, Supplies & Financing the Revolution

• Role as Revolutionary Financier:
  • Sourced and smuggled vital supplies (gunpowder, tents, food) for the army, often using secret codes and forged documents (13:30–14:00).
  • "A lot of the revolutionaries, I think, were smugglers. Quasi-smugglers." – Jacob Goldstein [13:30]
  • "Commerce ought to be as free as the air. Our traders are remarkable for their spirit..." (citing Morris) – Jacob Goldstein [14:31]
• Profit Motive and Public Good:
  • Morris and peers saw no conflict with profiting from their patriotic efforts, echoing Adam Smith's ideas (15:33).
  • "Their own interest and the public good go hand in hand." – Jacob Goldstein (quoting Morris) [14:31]
  • Hosts note Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was published in 1776 and likely influenced Morris (14:54–15:18).

4. The Currency Crisis: Continental Dollars & Inflation

• Introduction of Paper Money:
  • Congress issued "Continental dollars" (IOUs), causing ramping inflation (18:03–18:35).
  • "Every time they had to pay for something, they just printed more money and said, 'Yeah, yeah, these will definitely be worth something after the war.'" – Robert Smith [18:23–18:30]
• Morris Warns of Ruin:
  • "There is one circumstance more distressing than all the rest...the depreciation of the continental currency." – Jacob Goldstein (quoting Morris) [18:39]
  • Example: inflation = soldiers deserting for lack of pay.
  • Classic economic debate: is it greedy merchants (“greedflation”) or too much money printing (19:23–20:08)?
• Price Controls and Shortages:
  • Pennsylvania tried price controls, but shortages ensued—classic supply-demand economics.
  • "If you want more of a thing, pay more for it and more will appear. It’s the opposite of price controls." – Jacob Goldstein (quoting Morris) [20:34]

5. Banking Innovation: Bank of North America

• Founding America’s First Bank:
  • Morris starts the Bank of North America, issues notes backed by French silver, invents trust-building tricks to reassure the public (22:14–23:37).
  • Notable: public vault displays, psychological manipulation to increase trust.
  • "It would dazzle the public eye by the same piece of coin on multiplied by a thousand reflectors." – Jacob Goldstein [23:11]
  • Issued personal "Morris Notes" (“Long bobs and short bobs”) to guarantee value with his own wealth [24:10–24:41].
• Banking Culture “Clash”:
  • His bankerly behavior was at odds with early American ideals of simplicity and republicanism.

6. After the War: From Land Speculation to Ruin

• Huge Land Holdings:
  • After the revolution, Morris speculates wildly in American land and international trade—at one point, owning more land than anyone else in the U.S. [31:25].
  • Early China trade: ships American ginseng and furs, returns with tea and trousers—“made a 25% profit” [33:19].
  • Cornered the market on tobacco exports to France via shell companies [34:06].
• Debt “Jenga”:
  • Morris’s land deals and speculation depended upon escalating lines of credit—a “giant Jenga set of debt…pulling it out and putting it on top” [37:56].
  • Vulnerable to shocks. When Europe’s banking system seized and a global crisis hit (French Revolution, Panic of 1797), everything collapsed.

7. The Fall: Debtors Prison & the Birth of American Bankruptcy

• Prison and Social Stigma:
  • Fell from richest American to debtor in Philadelphia’s Prune Street prison (30:22–31:53, 41:00–42:39).
  • Visited by George Washington, who recognized Morris’s key role in the revolution [31:53].
  • Colorful anecdotes: creditors camping outside, burning “Morris notes” for fuel; negotiating via a bucket lowered from his second-story window.
• Bankruptcy Law of 1800:
  • Morris’s case helped catalyze America’s first bankruptcy law—a pioneering legal framework for managing massive debt (43:53–47:53).
  • Early bankruptcy was “involuntary”—creditors could declare someone bankrupt, not the debtors themselves [46:42–47:06].
  • "You would have to arrange with a creditor ... who would come to you and say, I declare you bankruptcy." – Robert Smith [47:03]
  • Morris initially resisted the label due to the attached shame.
  • Ultimately, creditors forced his bankruptcy, leading to his release but lifelong financial exile.
• Reflection on Bankruptcy’s Legacy:
  • The episode highlights the concept of bankruptcy as a cornerstone of American entrepreneurial culture: the chance to fail, forgive, and try again (51:54–52:54).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Did he finance the war, or did the war finance him?" – Robert Smith [04:45]
• "Quarter millen. We're going all the way. A thousand years, baby." – Jacob Goldstein [03:57]
• "He came to make money." – Jacob Goldstein [06:32]
• "A lot of the revolutionaries, I think, were smugglers. Quasi smugglers." – Jacob Goldstein [13:30]
• "There’s one thing a rich guy hates; it’s a tax." – Robert Smith [08:13]
• "If Robert Morris were alive today, he'd be working for, like, a hedge fund." – Robert Smith [07:41]
• "Commerce ought to be as free as the air. Our traders are remarkable for their spirit…their own interest and the public good go hand in hand." – Morris (quoted by Jacob Goldstein) [14:31]
• "We need people to take risks in the United States and around the world. We need them to start new businesses, and that's good for everyone...And having a system in place that says...you can dream again and you can try again." – Robert Smith [52:27–52:45]

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Timeline of Important Segments

• 03:21–05:25: Framing the episode around the semiquincentennial and introducing Morris
• 06:32–07:46: Morris’s early ambition and arbitrage mentality
• 08:13–12:21: From Stamp Act to reluctant revolutionary
• 13:30–15:18: Smuggling, supplies, and business ethics of the Revolution
• 18:03–21:42: Hyperinflation, currency crisis, and the founding of the Bank of North America
• 23:11–24:39: Public trust, the spectacle of banking, and the invention of "Morris notes"
• 30:22–32:36: The dramatic fall to debtors prison; aftermath of speculative excess
• 33:47–35:25: Post-war trading successes and ever-expanding debt
• 36:47–39:18: Land speculation mania, the rise of the "Jenga tower" of IOUs
• 41:00–42:39: Life in debtors prison and the social/moral consequences
• 43:53–49:20: The creation of American bankruptcy law, bankruptcy hearings, and the long tail of shame
• 51:54–52:54: Reflections on bankruptcy as a pillar of American business

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Conclusion

The episode captures Robert Morris as both a visionary and a cautionary tale—an early capitalist whose drive and financial innovations made him both hero and pariah. The birth of U.S. bankruptcy law is revealed as an innovative act of national forgiveness that preserves risk-taking, enterprise, and, ultimately, the spirit of the American Revolution. The hosts’ wit and affection for their subject, combined with their clear explanations of economic concepts, make this episode an accessible and memorable look at how America’s financial foundations were built—not just on ideals and battles, but on daring business, spectacular fortune, and epic failure.

Transcript

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[Jacob Goldstein]

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[Robert Smith]

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[Casual Host/Interjector]

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[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[Casual Host/Interjector]

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[Robert Smith]

Pushkin. Too quick?

[Jacob Goldstein]

No, it was perfect.

[Robert Smith]

Pushkit Stop.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You got it,

[Robert Smith]

Jacob. As a history podcast, we are contractually required to observe that our country is about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You gave me the Latin, Robert.

[Robert Smith]

What do we call this, Jacob?

[Jacob Goldstein]

I got the Wikipedia page right here. It's the United States semiquincentennial, AKA the bicequicentennial, AKA the sester centennial. Or my personal favorite, yes, the quarter millennium.

[Robert Smith]

The quarter millennium is the best one. Yeah. Why do we need Latin? This is America.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I did a half marathon. Now it's the quarter millen.

[Robert Smith]

Quarter millen. We're going all the way.

[Jacob Goldstein]

All the way. A thousand years, baby.

[Robert Smith]

So, obviously, like this summer, we're going to be hearing a lot about the classic founding fathers. You got your George Washington, your Thomas Jefferson, your Alexander Hamilton. Since this is business History, we are going to tell the story of the financial founding father, Robert Morris. Morris signed the Declaration of Independence. He signed the Constitution. He was a senator. He was a hero of the revolution in a really important way. He found the money to pay for the guns and soldiers. At one point, he was likely the richest man in the early United States. And then all of a sudden, he was not. He had so many debts, he was thrown into jail.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I'm ready for the musical.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah, no musical, but we do have a podcast called Business History.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I'm Jacob Goldstein.

[Robert Smith]

I'm Robert Smith.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's a show about the history of business.

[Robert Smith]

Today on the show, a Wild side of the American Revolution. Okay, wild for me. Not the battles, but the financing of the battles. The money George Washington needed to to fight the revolution. It's no exaggeration to say that Robert Morris created really this new economy of the United States out of thin air. And the question that everyone asked as he was being hauled off to prison was, did he finance the war or did the war finance him?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Not mutually exclusive. Happy quarter millennium.

[Robert Smith]

Woo.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Who will speak for the bankers?

[Robert Smith]

I am going to speak for the bankers. Okay, I'm just going to admit right here, Robert Morris is not everyone's favorite founding father. He was controversial at the time, he's controversial now. But I have a real soft spot for him. He reminds me of all the people I went to business school with, the MBAs. They're charming, they're super smart, they're organized and they just say out loud, I want to make money. I am here to make money. They ignore things happening in the world. They're not ideological. And Robert Morris sort of feels like this. Even though he's living through the most dramatic times in world history, he's a guy who's like, yeah, whatever, let's just, like, look at the ledger and make some money here. He came to America from England, so he's a British citizen in 1743. He's a teenager. And he didn't come for religious freedom or to start a new society. He came because he wanted to be a merchant. He wanted to do international trade.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He came to make money.

[Robert Smith]

And Philadelphia was the place to be. Like, this was the place where ships were coming and going, and he thought there was money to be made. He started out as a intern, you know, just sweeping the floors. Became a shipping clerk. There's a story about him that captures his style. He's still a teenager and his boss is out of town. You know, he's the shipping clerk. But he hears from a sea captain, probably a crusty old guy with one eye, that the price of flour has jumped in Europe.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Okay, yeah.

[Robert Smith]

And Morris doesn't really have the authority to do anything, but he's like, screw it. Let's buy up all the flour we can get in Philadelphia. Let's put it on an outbound ship and take advantage of the high prices before anyone figures it out.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Arbitrage.

[Robert Smith]

It's an arbitrage opportunity.

[Jacob Goldstein]

If a thing is selling for two different prices in two different places and the shipping cost is less than the difference, you should buy all that you can in the cheap place and sell all that you can in the expensive place. And that'll make the prices converge. It's actually a useful function.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah. And if Robert Morris were alive today, he'd be working for, like, a hedge fund.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Jane Street.

[Robert Smith]

He would be working for Jane street trading flower futures in India versus Pakistan.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes.

[Robert Smith]

Closing. Closing. The scent difference.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes.

[Robert Smith]

So Morris had the gift, and he ended up running this trading company. And it's fair to say that he loved it. He loved being a rich and powerful guy in an English colony. Right. He had made it in the new world. He was the least likely person to want a revolution because it would mess up all the shipping schedules and his profits.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's bad for business.

[Robert Smith]

So he probably would have stayed out of this whole mess except for the Stamp Act. A tax. A tax. There's one thing a rich guy hates, it's a tax. And the Stamp Act I am still amazed that Britain thought this up as something to put on the colonists. The Stamp act was a fee on anything that involved paper. Anything that had paper you needed to put a stamp on and you had to pay for the stamp.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I mean, this seems maybe reductive, but when I think about it, it's like, well, who's using a lot of paper? It's not like the poor farmers. It's journalists.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And lawyers.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah. There were taxes on newspapers, bonds, court documents, playing cards.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So. Well, playing cards to the side. All those other taxes are on the powerful people. Like, in terms of political economy, who do you want on your side? You want the journalists and the lawyers and the bankers, and you're putting a tax specifically on them.

[Robert Smith]

And, you know, Robert Morris loved to, like, do paperwork, you know, so it was.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He's loading the flour onto the ships himself.

[Robert Smith]

It was really going after the moneyed interests. And. And Robert Morris might have even been able to ignore this, except he was a port warden at the time, so he was kind of running things in the port because he was the biggest customer. And the American colonists decided they were going to boycott anything from Britain just to protest the Stamp Act. And so there he was. He's like, okay, fine, I will help enforce this boycott. He ends up being elected to the Continental Congress because, you know, he's big guy on campus, like, running the whole thing. And he really thought this whole tiff with Britain would be negotiated away. He's like, there's just no way that smart people with money on both sides of the Atlantic would ever go to war. Here's a quote that he wrote about this.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He writes, I recommend constantly a steady, manly, but decent and peaceable opposition as most likely to ensure success.

[Robert Smith]

He thought we should just be manly but not shoot anybody.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, yeah. Why is it manly but decent and peaceful? Why are those at odds?

[Robert Smith]

Robert Morris, he wasn't going to get the peaceful part, I should say. A lot of the stories in this podcast are taken from the book Robert Morris, Financier of the American Revolution. You know, that sold a lot of copies there with the word financier in it, Right. Robert Morris, Financier of the American Revolution by Charles Rapley. And he told this story kind of apocryphal, but I love it. It's April 23, 1775. You can hear the fife drums.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So glad you didn't wave your tricorn hat.

[Robert Smith]

So Robert Morris is at the City Tavern in something called the Long Room, and he's actually at the annual feast of the Society of St. George. So it's a society of Brits celebrating

[Jacob Goldstein]

Britain, which is what he is. Let's just be clear, he is a British citizen and happy to be one

[Robert Smith]

and reveling in it. Right. He's sitting up and a messenger bursts in and announces that the British had fired on American troops at Lexington. The British loyalists in the bar, according to the story, spring up and start running for the exits. They're like, war is on. And the way the story is told later, Robert Morris was left at the head table in mid toast with his glass up, camera pans, the room is

[Jacob Goldstein]

empty and he says to the king,

[Robert Smith]

you know what, he doesn't know what to say at this point. And this is uncomfortable for Robert Morris. Like he is as close as you could get at this point to a global capitalist.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Robert Smith]

And war is very bad for his business, which is to run ships back and forth to Europe. But at this point he is also a member of the Continental Congress, so he wants to do what's best for Pennsylvania and it's hard for him to reconcile. So when the colonists are meeting to vote on the Declaration of Independence, Morris actually argues against it, saying, you know, we should be more conservative about this. We shouldn't take any rash measures. And he doesn't vote for the Declaration of Independence. He abstains.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Uh huh. Classic weaselly move. I neither voted for it nor against it.

[Robert Smith]

That's gonna come in useful in case there's a tribunal later. When it is finally drawn up for a signature though, Morris reluctantly signs his name, which you can see to this day, he's a pragmatist. And at this point, the war had started, there was no way back from this. So he's like, I guess I'm in. So the first shots fired in the revolution, Morris dedicates himself to what he does best. He is a fancy rich man. He is not going to fight, he is not going to hold a gun, but he is going to do trading for the revolution, shipping for the revolution.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I mean, the guns aren't going to buy themselves.

[Robert Smith]

George Washington needs gunpowder and Morris was tasked with figuring out how to get it. And this was not easy because England kind of knew something was up. So for months they had kept Americans from buying guns and ammunition. They're like, maybe we shouldn't be stalking people who might use these against us. The British navy at this point, of course, controls the seas and it's very difficult to, to sneak things past the British. So Morris starts to essentially act as a smuggler.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, a lot of the revolutionaries, I think, were smugglers. Quasi smugglers.

[Robert Smith]

Aren't all shippers kind of dressed up Smugglers? No. All right, that's fine. Okay. So the former clerk, he starts to forge paperwork. Fake sailing orders, fake cargo registers. He's using his agents in the Caribbean and in France to route gunpowder past the British blockades. It's all very exciting. Although of course, he's just writing orders at his desk. They communicated in secret code and invisible ink.

[Jacob Goldstein]

The British didn't yet know you could just put lemon juice on it and read it.

[Robert Smith]

Nobody knew. He was a genius. And during this all, Morris obviously was obtaining needed supplies for the American revolutionaries. And at the same time, he was making a little money. Because it was Morris's point of view that merchants helping to stock the American army should be able to make a profit. His company and other companies provided the ships. And he wrote, I assert boldly that

[Jacob Goldstein]

commerce ought to be as free as the air. Our traders are remarkable for their spirit, Their own interest and the public good go hand in hand. And they need no other prompter or tutorial. Very self serving.

[Robert Smith]

Yes.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Let me ask you. So amazingly, the wealth of nations, you know, the Adam Smith book that started economics, came out in 1776. Incredible coincidence.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Do you know, did he know about Adam Smith, this idea that. This is a very Adam Smith idea.

[Robert Smith]

Yes. I don't know if you said it before Adam Smith, but he definitely had the book, had gifted the book to people after it happened. But like Morris is coming up with this, you know, it was in the air, this idea and. Yeah, self serving. Absolutely. Making money off of a war and tragedies. Terrible.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Robert Smith]

But he understood something that I do think is true, which is if you want people to do work for you, especially people, you know, in France and the Caribbean and sailors who have no loyalty to the United States of America, you need to pay them well.

[Jacob Goldstein]

There's the famous line from wealth of Nations. Right. It's something like, it's not from the benevolence of the baker and the butcher and the brewer that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest. Right. Like that's how we get our dinner. Because those guys are making a profit by baking us bread and getting us meat.

[Robert Smith]

And that's how we got our guns and our gunpowder. And eventually Morris is sourcing tents, sales clothing, even food for the American army. He is like the Pentagon. He's like seeing where all the troops are and getting them what they need. At one point in 1777, the British were threatening Philadelphia and the continental Congress, who are running the colonist efforts at this point. They flee the city except for Robert Morris. And he says he wants. He needs to be by the ships. He needs to, like, follow all the shipping stuff. He needs to stay at his desk. And with everyone else left and George Washington in the field, he's basically running the wartime economy for the colonists. And he's directing the ships and the logistics and the money side and figuring out how to pay for all of this. He's kind of acting as the president or at least the secretary of the treasury. Right. And George Washington at this point is depending on him, writing him constantly begging for more, just saying, we need more, more, more, more, more. When Washington was camped by the Delaware,

[Jacob Goldstein]

he's about to cross on the little rowboat standing up. Don't do that.

[Robert Smith]

George Washington in winter. It's the famous painting. You know what they didn't paint. They didn't paint Robert Morris sitting at a desk figuring out how to get blankets and stockings to keep those men from freezing. It was winter along the Delaware River. At one point, Washington's men threatened to desert him because they hadn't been paid. You know, they were also wanting to make some money, sure, from being soldiers, and there was no way to find money. And Morris went to all the rich people he knew in Philadelphia to have them dig up their coins to go to their stash. And he somehow managed to get $50,000 out of them and got it to General Washington to pay the soldiers. But it was getting harder and harder to find real money, we should say, at this time. So we need to talk about the way the monetary system.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I've been waiting. Are we going to talk about Continentals? I've been waiting to talk about continentals.

[Robert Smith]

So the colonies were operating on gold and silver that came from Britain and France and this sort of thing, classic money. But they also had paper money. And specifically the continental congress had issued these IOUs, we'll say continental dollars, they were called. And they loved issuing continentals.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Robert Smith]

Because every time they had to pay for something, they just printed more money and said, yeah, yeah, these will definitely be worth something after the war.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Robert Smith. What happens if you keep printing paper money?

[Robert Smith]

It's not worth anything.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You get a lot of inflation.

[Robert Smith]

You get inflation. And Morris tried to explain this in his writing.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He wrote, there is one circumstance more distressing than all the rest because it threatens instant and total ruin to the American cause unless some radical cure is applied. And that speedily. I mean, the depreciation of the continental currency. The extravagance that has prevailed in most departments of the public service that have called forth prodigious emissions of paper money.

[Robert Smith]

Prodigious emissions of paper money.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Were they nocturnal? I'll tell you, people always use this word, emissions with paper money at the time. I don't know why, but you see it again and again and it sounds disgusting, which is how they mean it to sound. They are disgusted by it.

[Robert Smith]

I just love that. Of all the things threatening the revolution, right? Everyone's arguing about the cause of democracy or centralization or federalism. And he's like, Robert Morris is the

[Jacob Goldstein]

one more distressing than all the rest? Is it death? Is it freezing? It's inflation.

[Robert Smith]

It's inflation in the currency. And you know what? He's absolutely wrong. Right? Like this is the thing that was threatening George Washington, the army, that, like, the army was just going to give up. They wouldn't be able to obtain anything. And it's funny, because this inflation's going on and people reacted to it back then exactly as they react to it today. So some people in Congress blamed the greedy merchants.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Greedflation.

[Robert Smith]

Greedflation. Taking advantage of this war to raise prices.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Not the fact that we're printing too much money.

[Robert Smith]

No, no, no. They're saying farmers are trying to gouge us, you know, with their increasing prices for food. And then Pennsylvania put some price controls on things like food.

[Jacob Goldstein]

What happens. What happens when you put price controls on Robert Smith?

[Robert Smith]

You get a shortage.

[Jacob Goldstein]

You get a shortage. If you don't, prices rise, then supply will fall.

[Robert Smith]

And that is what happened. There's a quote by Robert Morris that actually reminded me of you, Jacob. It's the kind of thing, you might

[Jacob Goldstein]

say the most effectual way to turn a scarcity into plenty is, is to raise the price for the article wanted. If you want more of a thing, pay more for it and more will appear. It's the opposite of price controls.

[Robert Smith]

So Robert Morris has to tackle this currency problem. He doesn't know how to do it. He tries to lecture the Congress about we need to be better about spending. We need to, like, be backed more by France and hard money. But in the end, he decides, I'm going to start my own bank and I'm going to print my own paper money.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And let me just say, this sounds like bizarre to us. You're starting a bank and printing your own money. At the time, it was normal, very popular, because as you alluded to before, paper money was an iou, like in people's minds, real Money was gold or silver coins. And banks would start up, people would start banks and they would print paper money and the paper money would actually say on it, like the $5 bill would say, like this is a claim on $5 in silver at whatever the bank of Robert Morris. And then the idea is you could take it and actually get the silver out of the bank, but the paper would trade as money.

[Robert Smith]

And I'm always amazed. People were very, very, very shrewd and smart about this. And they could look at a paper IOU and look at who issued it and determine how trustworthy is this person and how much is the real value of this paper.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, I mean, in fact, a few decades later, people would actually start these sort of like magazines for merchants when there were hundreds of banks or, or thousands of banks printing their own money that told you, for every bank, like, take it, don't take it, apply a discount. It's a really interesting market, right? This idea of a free market in money.

[Robert Smith]

So Robert Morris thinks, all right, everyone's screwing this up, so I'm just gonna take it back to first principles. He starts the bank of North America.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yes. Thinking big.

[Robert Smith]

Starts in Philadelphia with a bunch of money, but mainly a shipment of silver from France.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Okay, Collateral.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah. And the bank issues its own paper notes backed by silver and gold. And he is very vigilant that there should not be too many of these paper notes.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Not too many omissions.

[Robert Smith]

Not too many omissions. No omissions. And he did all these psychological tricks. Cuz it is a psychological game. I mean, a new bank pops up and you're gonna trust them. Here's how he got people to trust them. One thing they did, they had the vault in the basement and the loan office was up above. And they had pulleys to lift chests of silver. Okay, right. You know, just total logistics. But he made sure it was out in the open and people could see it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Oh, they've got a chest of silver.

[Robert Smith]

And he would have people raise and lower the boxes of silver. So if you came into the bank, you would tell them, oh my, you should have seen it. They had boxes and boxes of silver in there. Like they have the money to back the notes. The quote was, it would dazzle the public eye by the same piece of coin on multiplied by a thousand reflectors. I love that.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's like David Copperfield. David Silverfield.

[Robert Smith]

Another wild thing that they would do at the bank of North America, or so I am told, was that if someone wanted to pull silver out of the bank you know, they would arrive there with a note and say, I want the silver. Instead of this note at the bank, they would say, happy to do it, sir. Everything's backed by silver and gold here. And they would pay out the silver, and the customer would leave happy from the bank, and then they would send a clerk after that person, chase him down in the street and say, like, hey, listen, can you give us back the silver and we'll give you some notes? Like, really, it's safer keeping it with us.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Sure you want to be walking out or out here with that silver?

[Robert Smith]

So he's carefully managing this new currency, and at one point, he even issued his own Robert Morris promissory notes, which

[Jacob Goldstein]

was not the bank, the guy.

[Robert Smith]

No, it was just like, personally, you know me, I'm a rich guy. I walk around Philadelphia. I will personally guarantee this paper money. And they were called because they had different durations to them, because his name is Robert. Long bobs and short bobs.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Oh, that's great.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah. Morse said when he issued his own

[Jacob Goldstein]

notes, my personal credit, which, thank heaven I have preserved through all the tempests of war, has been substituted for that which the country had lost. I'm now striving to transfer that credit to the public. It's a very bankerly way to think of the world. It's like you're moving credit around a little bit arrogant.

[Robert Smith]

Also, even at the time, people thought he was arrogant. And remember the United States of America? A lot of people thought that this should be a plain and simple nation.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah. Not the United States of America yet. If I. If I've got the timing right.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah. So they thought the colonists or our new civilization here should be plain and simple. You didn't want to have ostentation. People were not talking like bankers and economists. And one of the things I really do admire about Morris is he was seeing things that no one else could see. Because, of course, everyone's like, oh, there's actual gunfights and battles, and we don't know the future of our nation. And he's like, no, no, no. Focus on the money. Make the money work, and everything else becomes easier. So all of this credit subterfuge personally guaranteeing essentially, currency used by the government, it would not have worked for long, but the war ended. So good news. Morris stayed on for a while as the head of finance of the new country. But there was just so much drama, political drama at this point, about how the states would work together. Would there be taxes? Would there not be federal taxes? And Morris really argued like, no, if we're going to make the system work. He was very Hamiltonian in this that we need a centralized government, centralized debt, centralized currency. And at one point President Washington, who was when he was president, would ask him to be the secretary of treasury. The very first secretary of Treasury. You know, before he asked Alexander Hamilton, he probably said, hey, you could be on the $10 bill, my man. And Morris is like, I already have way too many paper bills out there with my name on it. So he declined and Alexander Hamilton took the job instead. So Morris, at this point, he's like, I'm done with government. I want to go back to my first love, the thing I really believe in, making gobs of money. That's after the break.

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[Robert Smith]

And we are back. Let's jump. Fifteen years after the end of the Revolutionary War, Robert Morris is a resident of the Prune street debtors prison in Philadelphia. He is living in a cell. It's a nice cell, but it's still a cell. He would walk three miles every day in the yard outside the prison in a big circle. 50 times around the yard. Apparently he would keep a pocket full of pebbles and with each circle he made he would drop a pebble just so he could keep count of how

[Jacob Goldstein]

many pensions were entering in the ledger.

[Robert Smith]

Yes, exactly. And as he's walking around he must have thought about how much of a fall this was. How big he was in those 15 years since the revolution. At one point he owned more land in the United States than anyone else. Like he would probably be in the top 10 of landowners today. 6 million acres. 6 million larger than the state of New Jersey is what he owns.

[Jacob Goldstein]

No, I'm double checking that.

[Robert Smith]

You can check it.

[Jacob Goldstein]

How many acres in New Jersey?

[Robert Smith]

It's almost Vermont sized. His land.

[Jacob Goldstein]

New Jersey has 5 million acres.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Impressive.

[Robert Smith]

Impressive also would lead to his downfall. But at the time, you know, he's in the debtors prison and the former President of the United States. Cause George Washington has voluntarily decided not to become king heroically.

[Jacob Goldstein]

A huge moment in history.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah.

[Robert Smith]

But George Washington's still a celebrity. He came To Philadelphia. He's getting parades. Everyone's celebrating him. And he takes a break to visit Robert Morris in prison because he knew that a lot of the success of the revolution was because of Robert Morris. And I don't know, Robert Morris must have thought, if I just retired after the end of the war, I might be a hero, there might be parades for me as one of the people who made the revolution successful. But he could not retire. When he left the government, he started to trade again. And he started to use the network that he had developed through smuggling, all of that gunpowder and guns, his contacts in France and around the world.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

And.

[Robert Smith]

And he had these big schemes that he was gonna try and pull off with this network. His first genius plan. Got one word for you. China.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Okay, that sounds like a good idea. From what I know so far.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah. Everyone else is restarting trade with Europe after the Revolutionary War, Morris bought a ship and sent it in the other direction. It held 30 tons of American ginseng.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Uh huh. Popular in China.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah. 2,600 animal skins, cotton, lead, and a little pepper.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Pepper I didn't see coming.

[Robert Smith]

The ship returned in 1785 with 800 chests of tea and 20,000 pairs of nankeen trousers, which I guess were a nice cotton trouser popular in the day.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I don't actually know what that is. That's like hammer pants.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah, they're millennials. They were tight, tight trousers. Doesn't matter what was in the ship. The important thing was he made a 25% profit.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He's doing great.

[Robert Smith]

Still had the touch. Next up, the French approach him and they want what the Frenchman always wants.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Cigarettes.

[Robert Smith]

Cigarettes, tobacco. It was actually snuff. I think they were snuff fans. They would later take up the cigarettes. But the war had, you know, put a crimp in the tobacco supply. And prices for tobacco were very high in Europe. So Robert Morris makes a bold deal. He says, I will sell you all of the tobacco you want for the next three years. If we lock in this high price, I will supply it all. And what Morris understands that they don't quite get is that, you know, the industry in America is ramping back up again. The price will fall over the next three years. And he's locked in a high price and he can make huge profits on this. Now, I will say Robert Morris, as a Philadelphia banker, is not the most popular man in the south at this time. So he sets up these sort of shell companies. Whatever it is, he's a secret part of it. They compete against each other the shell companies, they don't even know they have common ownership, and they end up cornering the tobacco market. Okay. Yeah. And so eventually, he's sending 30 ships a year, millions of pounds of tobacco to France. And of course, in order to do this scale of operation, he was going to need a lot of money. So he issues some more of his notes. Now, remember the first time he issues the notes? The first time he issues them, he was doing this to save the colonists, to save the revolutionary army. This time, you know, it's just for himself and just for profit.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So he's borrowing money. It's sort of bond, like.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah, yeah. And he also has this thing that, like, you know, those debts are due, but of course they're due after the tobacco arrives. And there's a long chain of events that happens.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He's a finance guy. That's what finance guys do.

[Robert Smith]

So picture this. He's got the ships sailing to China. He's cornered the tobacco market. Ships in the Atlantic, secret companies, tons of debt. As he would later say, give me. Give me a Robert Morris ism.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I can never do things in the small. I must either be a man or.

[Robert Smith]

Or a mouse. Well, this man is now juggling payments and loans across half the world. But he has a solution, what he calls the ultimate object of human avarice. This is it, the big score. The thing that's gonna pay off all of his debts. It is land, real estate.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So this is a good way to make money going long real estate, a

[Robert Smith]

great way to make money, especially if you believe that you have now created a stable country with a lot of wilderness land. It's very smart. And in fact, a lot of the founding fathers were real estate speculators. Long before they thought about revolution. They were buying and selling wilderness land on the western frontier, which was basically Ohio. And in fact, one of the things that Britain did to kind of piss them off was they passed the Proclamation of 1763, where colonists were forbidden from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. So, you know, among the many things that we went to war for, one of them was the right to speculate in wilderness land inhabited by Native Americans. Yes.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Usa.

[Robert Smith]

So he starts buying wilderness land, Robert Morris does, and like everything else in his life, he goes all in. He starts his, like, first big purchase is a million acres of western New York along the Genesee River. A million.

[Jacob Goldstein]

A million.

[Robert Smith]

Cost him £30,000 in Massachusetts currency. There is no way to know what that is worth.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Now, that's presumably a lot.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah, a lot, but not that much.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Not as much as it would sell for today, yes.

[Robert Smith]

So here's the plan. He wasn't gonna hold this for 200 years, which he should have done. He was gonna send his agents to Europe, and they would find people in small towns around Europe, in Germany or something, who wanted to move to the New World. And he would say, I will sell you this many tracts of my vast land and you can all live together. And it'll be just like Germany. I only it'll be in the wilderness.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's a recurring sort of scheme in the New World. You see it happen again and again.

[Robert Smith]

And I mean, it did happen. It wasn't just a scheme. People came and moved and created these immigrant communities where they could still speak German and have their beer and pretzels

[Jacob Goldstein]

and, and newspapers in German and whole communities. You'll see this happen a lot in the later 1800s.

[Robert Smith]

So this was gonna be the big score. And if he could make it work, he would never have to issue any Morris notes ever again. But first, just a little bit more debt, just a little bit more land, by which I mean millions of acres, and then more land deals. And I think of it as this giant Jenga set of debt, right? And, you know, things are paying off. He's paying off the debt, but then he puts it into new debt. He puts the Jenga stick on top and he keeps pulling it out and pulling it up and pulling it out. And all of a sudden, now it's three feet high, the Jenga Tower filled with debt. And then something shakes the table. Another revolution. Ah, the French Revolution. And really what brought in just years of chaos afterwards. Kind of a, kind of a nice irony that our revolutionary friend should be toppled by another revolution. So after the French Revolution, there's all of these issues. There's a panic of 1797. The bank of England suspends their hard money payments. Businesses go under. European countries start borrowing more money to build their armies to defend against France because Napoleon's coming. So a lot of the credit dries up. And, you know, if you're relying on a cycle of debt and the new debt is hard to get, what happens? Jacob?

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, the people you owe money to come and say, pay up. You're a rich guy. You own more land than anybody. Sells some of that land to give me my money.

[Robert Smith]

Exactly right. His famed Morris notes are becoming more worthless every day. He has this like side deal with someone else who's in the same boat, and they start cross endorsing each other's worthless notes to be like, well, if you don't trust me? Maybe trust the other guy. Anyway, it's all falling apart. People are yelling at him in the streets of Philadelphia because he owes money to everyone. So he retreats to his country home, which he calls Castle Defiance.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Still a little bit arrogant.

[Robert Smith]

And even there, desperate creditors are showing up. Apparently, Morris would lock the door and he would only communicate with people in a bucket that he lowered down from the second floor, not the first floor. Cause someone could shoot you on the second floor. He'd lower down a bucket and they would send notes back and forth.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And his note would just say no.

[Robert Smith]

He was probably filled with more Morris notes.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yahir, Can I offer you some long bombs?

[Robert Smith]

I just printed them, so I have

[Jacob Goldstein]

some emissions for you here.

[Robert Smith]

He is definitely scared at this point. Creditors would come and camp outside his home on his land, and they would burn bonfires all night and I assume yell at him all night, waiting for him to come out. Bon dfires, bonfires. Eventually, yeah, they. They were fueling it with Morris notes. Right now we're burning currency. Eventually, he sends a note to the sheriff. He wants to turn himself in and go to debtors prison. In a note to a friend, he

[Jacob Goldstein]

wrote, my money is gone. My furniture is to be sold. I am to go to prison and my family to starve. Good night.

[Robert Smith]

So debtors prisons had been a thing for hundreds of years. The idea was you would go and have your freedom taken away and you would work or your family would work to figure out how to pay your debts. So it was a way of kind of keeping away the mobs a little bit. Although they could still visit you in the prison and yell at you. And in fact, that happened. The debtors prison that he went to, they actually called it a debtor's apartment because they didn't. It wasn't full prison, but he was definitely confined there. It was a two story brownstone on Prune street in Philadelphia. And even though it was filled with people who had no money, who had sold their furniture, the inmates had to pay for room and board.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Huh.

[Robert Smith]

I don't know. It just felt like the moral thing, I guess. It's not high security inmates could have visitors, but it was right next door to the real jail. And they both like shared a yard and they were separated by a low wall. And I guess hardcore criminals would jump over and basically mug the debtors for whatever they could get.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Negative money that they had.

[Robert Smith]

Robert Morris is like, take more dogs. And also, the debtors prison was getting crowded in 1798, the economy was struggling Robert Morris wasn't the only person who couldn't pay his bills. George Washington did visit him. Famous person in the United States at this time, Thomas Jefferson, said, I would like to hire Robert Morris to help run my economy, if not for the prison and all. And Morris himself was. Was despondent.

[Jacob Goldstein]

He wrote, around this time, I feel myself an intruder. Every place into which I go, I sleep in another person's bed. I occupy other people's rooms. And if I attempt to sit down and write, it is at the interruption and inconvenience of someone who has acquired a prior right to the place. It's the prison diaries from Robert Morris.

[Robert Smith]

So he still has land, he's still trying to work out some things, but apparently when they total it up, he had racked up about $3 million in debts. After that is a lot. And he was probably thinking at this point he was going to spend the rest of his life in the Prune street prison. And then somebody went and invented the bankruptcy court.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I'm looking forward to talking about bankruptcy after the break.

[Robert Smith]

We're back. Let's talk about the concept of bankruptcy, formal legal bankruptcy. And there have been forms of this in Europe, but in the early United States, they had a lot to do. So they hadn't yet passed a federal bankruptcy law. Like, how would it work? And it's a complicated problem when someone

[Jacob Goldstein]

is in debt, especially a financier. Right. They have all these debts, but they also have all these assets. You get the kind of moral thing of like, oh, let's be mad at them, let's throw them in jail or whatever. But I mean, a. It's cruel, but on a certain level, that's not actually financially a good idea. Right. They have assets. There's all these different creditors. And what you fundamentally want is for the creditors, for the people the guy owes money to, to get as much money back as possible.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah. So it's a collective action problem. If somebody owes me money and I want that money back, it is in my best interest to buttonhole them, make them sell the house, make them sell the furniture, and give me back the money first. Like, that's just in my best interest. But there are hundreds of other people who also want their money. So what they need is everyone to get together and say, wait a minute, if we let this person, in an orderly way, sell their assets, get the most forward, or if they're running a business, keep the business running, then we all stand a better chance of being paid something instead of fighting each other.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And you have some. A Neutral party, a bankruptcy judge eventually, who can assess which creditor should be paid first. Right. Or how you should allocate the assets, the proceeds to the different creditors. A complicated problem.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah. And I'll tell you what doesn't help, is locking a guy in a room with a bunch of hardened criminals trying to mug you all the time.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's bad for the creditors. Right. It's bad for the people who are owed money if that guy is locked up.

[Robert Smith]

Okay, so this is clearly a problem that needs to be solved. Morris might have been the most famous man in the debtors prison, but he was joined by many other businessmen of the day. The economy had faltered, currency's unstable. There are lots of unhappy constituents who want their money back. And so Congress, when forced gets to work so they have to hit this balance. They do not want it to be a pleasant process, otherwise everyone will rack up debts. They want it to be orderly. They want to be able to see all the assets and debt of a person and to make some of the creditors whole. And the solution they came up with. It's very interesting, very interesting, the bankruptcy we have today. Today a person or a company declares bankruptcy. They stand up and they say, I declare bankruptcy.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Shout out the office.

[Robert Smith]

Shout out to the office. No, no. They file for bankruptcy. It's all very orderly, But Congress in 1800 decided that bankruptcy should be involuntary. So if you owe me money and can't pay it back, I can declare you bankrupt. You're bankrupt.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's not up to me. I can't go to court and say I want to file for bankruptcy.

[Robert Smith]

No, you would have to arrange with a creditor.

[Jacob Goldstein]

That's interesting.

[Robert Smith]

Who would come to you and say, I declare you bankruptcy.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Does make sense in a way. It's sort of leaving it up to the creditor.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah, you know, it's not the way we do it today. But this is how they did it. The way they designed it was a panel of three commissioners would get to see all the assets and debts. They would decide what would happen Next. And then 2/3 of the people who lent the money had to agree, maybe based on how much they lent. And then maybe the debt would be discharged. So this was the plan. It was hard to get through Congress passed by one vote. And you might think at this point, Robert Morris would have been thrilled. Like this is what he needed. It was what he needed, but it wasn't what he wanted. He kept saying, I don't want to be declared bankrupt. Like that seems shameful. I'm not bankrupt. There's money somewhere I can make this work.

[Jacob Goldstein]

It's also classic. It's just a liquidity crunch.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah. And much like the process today, there is a stigma. It is saying you are bankrupt. And he didn't want that stigma.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Well, and especially, I guess, if his whole thing, his whole life is he's the guy who wanted to make money, then being bankrupt is saying he has failed at his main thing, the thing he loved money.

[Robert Smith]

But it's becoming obvious that there is no choice. He heard that one of his estates, worth $100,000, he estimated was being sold for $800 because he hadn't paid the taxes.

[Jacob Goldstein]

So this is actually why you want bankruptcy is because that's bad for everybody except the guy who managed to get the really cheap estate.

[Robert Smith]

Yeah. Somebody got a deal. Finally, one of the people he owed money to did the official thing. A Philadelphia merchant named John Houston held $284,000 in overdue notes. He formally petitioned to have Robert Morris declared bankrupt. The panel is assembled. A judge ordered Morris released, but not free of obligations because he had to spend three months in a hearing before the panel of bankruptcy commissioners going through the process. He owed money to 90 people. The list included fellow merchants, tailors, a bookseller, blacksmith, bricklayer, an apothecary, even a

[Jacob Goldstein]

Senator Richard scarry book from 1805, garbage man, librarian.

[Robert Smith]

And they're fired.

[Jacob Goldstein]

And they all.

[Robert Smith]

And they all have the Morris notes. They required Morris to write out his account of property, which is a very detailed list of everything he'd bought and sold. How he got it, what happened to it. Afterwards, he begins this account of property. I'll let you read it. It's pretty good.

[Jacob Goldstein]

I shall begin.

[Robert Smith]

You could just begin.

[Jacob Goldstein]

But he says he's going to begin. I shall begin with the lands purchased in the Genesee country. Acknowledging that if I had contented myself with those purchases and employed my time and attention in disposing of the lands to the best advantage, I have every reason to believe that this day I should have been the wealthiest citizen of the States. They're like, bro, this is just supposed to be a list of all the stuff you bought. And you're still arrogant, but sort of. He's like, if I hadn't screwed up in this one way, if I had just stopped with the Genesee country.

[Robert Smith]

There is a note of regret in there, covered in a brag.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Yeah, that's right. It's a weird. It's weird.

[Robert Smith]

He never really admitted that a lot had gone wrong, except he did say he issued too many of those Morris notes, and just kind of lost track of exactly how many emissions. Emissions had been emitted. A judge finally discharges the debt, lets the creditors sort out whatever remains among themselves. It's not like a satisfying ending to the story, but it's kind of the ending that always comes with bankruptcy. Right? It's like everyone kind of gets something, and the person who is bankrupt gets to start over, sort of, in a way, but without their reputation and often without credit. And Morris tried, like, he had a few more schemes. There was a new bank somewhere, and they were gonna have him be the president. But it all fell apart. He had talked about starting a wine business. He was. I know this is like the sad. The saddest part of a bankrupt man. He was starting to look at land deals in Florida. There's one place you could go to make a quick buck. It's Florida. But nothing took. He died five years after he was released. Not a rich man anymore. Definitely not the richest man in the United States. The bankruptcy law, interestingly enough, would be repealed soon after it was passed. There was problems with having the who got to declare. And then a series of new ones would come. Whenever there was a financial crisis, Congress would pass a new set of bankruptcy laws. And it just started to evolve over the years into what we have today, which is this really formal, but I kind of think, beautiful notion of a fresh start. We need people to take risks in the United States and around the world. We need them to start new businesses, and that's good for everyone. For jobs, for technological innovation, for everything. And having a system in place that says, listen, if you take a risk and it goes bad, we're not gonna throw you in prison. We are not gonna take your freedom away. You may have to spend three months in bankruptcy court. You may have to pay everything back. You may have bad credit, but you can dream again and you can try again. You could even argue that of the many great things that have come out of the American Revolution, one of them was the Bankruptcy Law of 1800. This concept of forgiveness and orderly bankruptcy. So we're gonna be back in 24 years for the Semi Queen.

[Jacob Goldstein]

The quarter millennium bankruptcy in America.

[Robert Smith]

Exactly. We kind of like this anniversary thing. If there's any other notable business anniversaries, we can celebrate here.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Semi Hemi, whatever it is.

[Robert Smith]

We'll figure out the Latin. But let us know what it is and we can do a show about it. We are Business HistoryUshkin FM.

[Jacob Goldstein]

We're on X at Jacob Goldstein and at Radiosmith. I'm on LinkedIn you, Robert, impressively, are not on LinkedIn.

[Robert Smith]

It's a Flex.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Our show is run and edited by Mr. Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. The video is produced by Matt Nielsen. Come make a comment on YouTube. That's another way you can tell us what to do.

[Robert Smith]

Sure.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Our engineer is Sarah Bruguer and my name is Jacob Goldstein.

[Robert Smith]

I'm Robert Smith. Thanks for listening.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Arrivederci.

[Robert Smith]

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