The $15 Trillion Secret: The Truth About Slavery & Wealth

Added: 2026-04-30

[00:00:00]Hey, hey. It's John Hope Bryant and this is the Money and Wealth podcast series on Black Fact Network on iHeart Radio, season three. And we're about to get popping here with a really important episode that deals with a theoretically taboo issue that I don't think needs to be, which is the legacy of slavery, but not in the way in which you may think.

[00:00:25]I'm not dealing with the ethical issues or the moral issues or, you know, or the responsibility issues. All those things historians have covered um in much much greater degree in accuracy than I ever could. That's not um my focus. My focus is, and I think this is a conservative number, the $15 trillion plus secret uh that was hiding in plain sight. I think she think the number is uh as shockingly high as $40 trillion when you think about missed economic opportunity.

[00:01:04]But this is the $15 trillion secret, the economics of slavery and the wealth gap.

[00:01:10]Imagine it's um 1858.

[00:01:15]A cotton planter in Mississippi has just finished his harvest.

[00:01:21]Bales of cotton, thousands of pounds of it are loaded onto steamboats heading down the Mississippi River.

[00:01:30]That cotton travels south to New Orleans, the busiest cotton port in America.

[00:01:40]But the journey doesn't stop there.

[00:01:44]merchants in New Orleans or New Orleans, depending on how who you're from, where you're from, and how you pronounce it. Um, arrange financing with banks in New York.

[00:01:58]Insurance companies ensure the ship the shipment.

[00:02:04]The cotton is loaded into a transatlantic ship bound for Liverpool, England.

[00:02:12]Weeks later, it arrives in the largest cotton trading market in the world.

[00:02:21]From Liverpool, it travels to textile mills in Manchester, England, where machines spin it into fabric.

[00:02:32]That fabric is sold across Europe and around the world and even back in America and the Americas.

[00:02:46]Now, here's the extraordinary part about this.

[00:02:50]At every step of that journey, from the plantation to the banks to the ships to the factories, money is being made.

[00:03:07]Wealth is being gained.

[00:03:11]Plantation owners profit.

[00:03:14]A little segue here. only 3 to 5%, let's be liberal and say 5% of all whites in the south owned more than 50 slaves. So it was just a small portion of the European population that were slave owners. Uh so I want to give proper context here. It wasn't every white person or even most white people who own slaves. It was the elite class for whom for for whomever that fact is important.

[00:03:50]Plantations owners profited.

[00:03:55]Merchants profited.

[00:04:00]Banks profited. Any bank that's older than 175 years old had a stake in a hand in in all likelihood the slave trade because they took back they put loans on plantations and properties. And part of that security for that loan, part of the collateral was the barn and the land and the machinery. And part unfortunately of the machinery were slaves. So you will find banks that are certainly 200 years old.

[00:04:38]The oldest banks in America who have human beings on their books.

[00:04:46]Don't blame the leadership of the day had nothing to do with it. But it is u a sad fact that everybody was involved in this business. And this only gets deeper and more interesting. And for those who are interested in blame, there's enough to go around. By the way, you had I mean how do you think the slaves got from the central of Africa to the coast, right?

[00:05:07]It was blacks that are capturing other blacks and tribes. They didn't know they were selling them to slavery. But my point is that tribes captured other tribes and they didn't know what they were doing but they some of them sold them unconsciously into slavery. You had Indians and in India slave traders. You had Arab slave traders. You had a I'm sure Asian I don't I don't have that fact handy but I'm sure they were involved in some way. And uh you could put put quotation marks and say that um Asians were uh also related to Indians.

[00:05:38]Uh and certainly um Europeans of course I'm going back to the Asian example for a minute. There was something that hit my brain about why there might be a natural or unnatural connection there.

[00:05:51]But um the point is everybody was in the business so to speak. Uh it was unfortunately rather normal at that time and people just wanted to profit uh from it uh morals aside.

[00:06:07]So, insurance companies profited after banks. Textile manufacturers profited.

[00:06:15]So, my point of the racial thing was it wasn't really racial. It wasn't, as I keep saying, black or white as in race or red or blue as in politics today. It was green. All right? It's always been green. We just need to turn bad capitalism into good capitalism. Right?

[00:06:30]Bad debt financing slaves into good debt, financing the purchase of companies and growing industries. and uh and and and and us going from being an asset to owning assets and us being African-Americans. My second great-grandfather and second great-grandmother were slaves. My my grandfather on my father's side was a sharecropper, RB Smith. U my my next book, Capitalism for All, lays all of this out about where do we go from here, which was Dr. King's last book um before he was assassinated. So banks profited, insurance companies profited, textile manufacturers profited. An entire global economy was on the move.

[00:07:10]All connected to one shipment of cotton.

[00:07:14]Let that sink in. And almost all of that cotton was picked by enslaved labor.

[00:07:22]By 1860, cotton made up more than half of all American exports. I'll say that again. And I'll say it a little slower so it sticks. By 1860, cotton made up more than half of all American exports.

[00:07:38]And the market value of enslaved people had grown to $3 billion in 1860 money.

[00:07:46]Just for context, that's more valuable than all of the currency of that day, all of the precious metals of that day, all of the railroads of that day, all of the banks of that day, all of the insurance companies of that day. Hold on.

[00:08:05]together.

[00:08:10]The largest financial asset in the United States, enslaved people, free talented labor. I say talented because some would have you believe that slaves were some lazy are blacks are lazy, they would say today, but they would say back then slaves were lazy. They were inhuman. They were untalented. Um, no one goes halfway around the world at enormous expense as an entrepreneur or a business builder to take a risk on useless assets. You do that because you have no choice or you believe is the best choice.

[00:08:48]And we were agricultural geniuses who could take dead soil and bring it back to life. And where was the cotton rooted best?

[00:09:01]Where did it grow best?

[00:09:04]In hot, humid soil, hard to cultivate and bring back to life, the Caribbean, Latin America, but specifically the best area, it appeared, the southern states of the United States of America. and my poor white brothers and sisters then from Europe who were brought here as indentured servants along and put aside along with blacks. By the way, there were white indentured servants as well as there were blacks. The first indigenous service were black and white.

[00:09:35]That's a whole another podcast I did explaining how race is literally made up in America um in the last 400 years. And I'm sorry made race. The racial word white was literally made up in a world that's 5 billion years old. And human existence which goes back you know you know modern human existence a few hundred thousand couple hundred thousand years old and then you know primitive human couple hundred you know let's just say let's just be easy and say a couple million years ago right? Um but but an enlightenment 3,000 years ago right? uh traitor 6,000 years ago, but somehow in the global world, the racial word white was created 400 years ago in America. I it's it's it was for for commercial reasons, by the way. It was to separate blacks and whites who were getting along because they could not have them be friends. Um because they said you can have a race ride, you cannot have a class ride because we're the class. So, you want to know an answer to something, you keep following the money. And nine times out of 10, you take the emotions out of it, by the way, and follow the money, you'll get your answer.

[00:10:50]Um, so the the the blacks could go the blacks African Africans who became African-Americans, 400,000 slaves who turned into 4 million because they cultivated this group because they were so profitable. They were the only group that could take this dead soil and bring it back to life and produce these crops of gold, cotton, tobacco, etc. Anyway, the largest financial asset in the United States was without question um enslaved labor. Um the equivalent of 10 to 15 trillion today. Um some would argue $21 trillion. I'm giving you the conservative number. uh which means that to understand wealth in America today, you first have to understand how wealth was built in America yesterday.

[00:11:37]So today we're going to talk about the economics of slavery from a non-emotional, non-blaming um non-polarizing perspective. Just the math. I like math because it doesn't have an opinion. Again, my quoting my friend Melody Hopson who's at her that's her quote. It's a great quote. very illuminative. And this is a story that Americans were never taught in school, not to assign blame, as I said, but to understand the system because once you understand the system, you can learn how to win in it.

[00:12:13]So, welcome back to Money and Wealth, everybody.

[00:12:16]Um, and today I'm going to talk to you about something that most Americans were never taught. Not because it isn't important, but because it's uncomfortable.

[00:12:26]Today we're going to talk about the economics of slavery. Now, let me be clear before we get into this. This episode is not about blame. I've said this a half dozen times. I want to underscore in case people are clipping the this in se in segments. Is not about blame. That's that's an distraction.

[00:12:43]This is not about making anybody feel guilty even. It's not about victimhood.

[00:12:48]I'm no victim. I'm a victor.

[00:12:51]And so are you. This episode and certainly my my forefathers and foremothers, my family who were enslaved themselves, my second great-grandmother left slavery, left escaped slavery and went on to buy a house. Didn't have a mortgage on it. Had a border a renter, which means she was a cap she turned into a capitalist. I it's just such an inspiring story. And my second great-grandfather, George Young, on the my father's side, uh that was my mother's side, the lady on my father's side went on to answer um Abraham Lincoln's call for the Emancipation Proclamation and went on to to protect the people of Memphis, Tennessee, and the Black Regiment, one of 7,000 black officers, he was um protecting people who were not really all that thrilled about protecting him. So there's my social justice bones and my capitalist bones all in one story.

[00:13:45]Um, so this episode's about understanding the economics of America because if you want to understand wealth in America today, you have to understand how wealth was built yesterday. And once you understand this story, we can talk about how to build wealth going forward.

[00:14:02]Let me start with a statistic that shocks me um and will shock you the first time you hear it. In 1860, just before the Civil War, the single largest financial asset in the United States of America was enslaved people.

[00:14:18]And the wealthiest city in America was not Mississippi. I'll repeat that. The wealthiest city in America, and some would say the wealthiest city in the world at that time, was not Mississippi.

[00:14:30]Small footnote, part of Wall Street started in Montgomery, Alabama. That's where uh some very well-known investment houses including names you you would know today began there because that's where the money was being made. So the single largest asset was not railroads.

[00:14:48]It was not banks or land or factories or even even just sort of talented human capital human beings. It was enslaved people. Historians estimate nearly 4 million enslaved people in America had a combined market value of about $3 billion in 1860. Now that number might not sound enormous today. We mentioned a billion. It doesn't sound enormous.

[00:15:13]We're living in strange times by the way. But when economists compare it to the size of the economy at that time, it would have been somewhere between 10 and 15 trillion dollars a day conservatively do. And to give you some context for that, the US economy is about 30 trillion. with the largest economy in the world. Um, uh, the market value of the stock market, let's just say 50 trillion plus, um, yeah, it's a big number, right? And this is, you know, h uh let's just say half of the US GDP. Um so the largest concentration of wealth in America in 1860 was an asset class, if you want to call it that, quotation marks, worth the equivalent of say $15 trillion today. Uh that means enslaved people represented more wealth than all the railroads, all the factories, all the the banks uh in the country combined. And here's a part that most people don't know. Enslaved people were treated not just as labor, but as a capital asset. They could be mortgaged, insured, use as loan collateral, bought and sold in financial markets, basically a form of what we call today securization.

[00:16:31]This is why historians today say something important. Slavery wasn't just a social system. It was an economic system. And I'll go one step further and tell you that the Civil War was an economic dispute.

[00:16:44]It was a the South resisting northern economic domination.

[00:16:49]The North was moving to industrialization, factories and all that stuff. and and and the immigrants of that day, the the left behinds and the th and the thrownaways of that day who came in America, the Polish, the the the the uh the Italians, the Jews, you whoever you want to think about of that day who were not considered sort of the upper class. Um they were coming in and trying to strive and grow and build things, but they were heading north along with industrialization. So those economies were growing and um and the Homestead Act gave land away heading west. And so the west and the north were growing. And the south was stuck in an old model of slavery. Even though it was where half of all millionaires, more than half of all millionaires lived in the south, specifically Mississippi. Do you know Mississippi was the wealthiest state in America before the Civil War?

[00:17:42]It's a poor state in America today. And I've got family there. So I want them to come up from where they are now. And I that's why again written this book capitalism for all that's coming out soon that hopefully is a business plan for all of us. Now let's talk about cotton because cotton was the engine of that economic system.

[00:18:03]By 1860 cotton made up about 60% of all US exports. Think about that. More than half of everything sold to the world came from one product cotton. And almost all of that cotton was grown and processed by enslaved labor.

[00:18:25]In fact, the United States produced roughly 3/4 of the world's cotton supply.

[00:18:31]Which means the global textile industry, the biggest manufacturing industry on earth at that time, depended on American cotton. They call it king cotton.

[00:18:42]Actually, it was the gold of that time, the platinum of that time. the AI of that time, if you want to call it that, artificial intelligence, the capital market, king or queen.

[00:18:59]And that cotton came primarily from places like Mississippi, where my family is from, Alabama, where my family is from, Louisiana, where Ambassador Andrew Young's family is from, and Georgia, where again my family is from. This is why people at the time called cotton again king cotton. Cotton wasn't just agriculture. Cotton was the energy source of the global economy. It was the oil of the 19th century.

[00:19:32]And that cotton economy created enormous wealth. Which leads to another surprising fact.

[00:19:40]Most Americans today think of Mississippi as one of the poorest state states in the south and and really it's the poorest state arguably in America in the country.

[00:19:52]But this fact is worth underscoring again. In 1860, Mississippi was actually the richest state in America per capita. Let that sink in. The richest state. Why? Because the Mississippi Delta produced some of the most profitable cotton plantations in the world.

[00:20:15]Some plantation owners controlled thousands of acres of land and hundreds of enslaved workers. They were even um a town called, as I mentioned earlier, but I'm going to underscore here, Nachas, Mississippi. N A T C H Ez if you'd like to look it up for yourself. At that time, Nachas was one of the highest concentration of milliona millionaires in the United States of America, the richest city in America.

[00:20:43]But there's something important to understand here. That wealth was extremely concentrated.

[00:20:54]Only a small percentage of white southerners actually owned enslaved people, as I mentioned earlier, and an even smaller percentage own large plantations.

[00:21:04]So, it's no different than the the uber wealth you see today. It's just the uber wealth we see today uh I believe is more responsible, more uh authentic, more um I mean for what you ever think about it, it's they're not engaging in in slavery, at least not out not the folks I do business with are not out in public.

[00:21:22]It's not a mainstream industry. Um no legitimate business person of any ilk is doing that today. So, we have made progress from immoral ends to at least neutral ends, if not moral ends. I'm trying to move us into a moral economy, good capitalism. How capitalism can serve all of God's children and take the bottom third and lift them up and put the ladder to the bottom and so you can climb the top so that folks don't resent rich people that want to become one.

[00:21:49]Back to the story.

[00:21:52]So when we talk about southern wealth in 1860, we're really talking about the wealth of a very small elite class. But that elite class controlled massive economic power.

[00:22:03]Now, here's where the story gets even more interesting.

[00:22:07]Because the cotton economy wasn't just southern, it was global.

[00:22:14]Let me explain how the system worked.

[00:22:16]Cotton grown on plantations Mississippi or Alabama would be shipped down the Mississippi River again to New Orleans as an example. From New Orleans, it would be exported to Liverpool, England.

[00:22:28]Liverpool was the financial center of the global cotton trade. If you didn't know that, by the way, did you know that um Birmingham, Alabama was named after Birmingham, England because it was an industrial center um uh in the world of Birmingham, England for cotton and Birmingham, Alabama was an industrial center in America for slavery and cotton and you know, railroads ran through it just like you know in Birmingham, England. Anyway, it how interesting. today. The mayor of Birmingham uh is a black man who uh is doing uh actually Mayor Wolf Wolfin Wooden who's a very good man and doing a very good job. I think he just won his third re-election, which is unprecedented in a very diverse place like Birmingham. and Operation Hope, uh, I don't think he would mind me saying this, is responsible, well, he's responsible for him becoming a a homeowner, but we facilitated it through our hope inside program that mayor Randall Woodin uh uh partnered with in the for the employees of the city of Birmingham full circle and through and and with a mortgage through regions, our partner in that area for hope inside good capitalism doing well by doing good. I think he's the first homeowner homeowner in his family and now a father. So we can have rainbows after storms. In fact, as a scientific fact, you cannot have a rainbow without a storm first.

[00:23:54]So it would be exported to Liverpool, England. Liverpool was the financial center of the global cotton trade. And from Liverpool, cotton went to textile mills in Manchester and other industrial cities in Britain. Those mills turned cotton into fabric. Okay?

[00:24:11]And that fabric was sold all over the world.

[00:24:16]But there was another piece in the system, finance.

[00:24:23]Banks in New York financed the cotton trade. Investment banks in places like Montgomery, Alabama facilitated um portions of that financing uh activity, specifically as it relates to cotton. Banks of New York finance the cotton trade. Insurance companies insured shipments. Shipping companies transported goods. Merchants issued credit.

[00:24:48]Some of the early financial firms that later became part of Wall Street actually began in the cotton economy.

[00:24:56]Let's give you some examples. U Lehman Brothers. Lehman Brothers started in Montgomery, Alabama as a cotton trading business. Cotton was so valuable that in some cases it actually functioned like currency.

[00:25:12]So when we talk about slavery, we're also talking about global capitalism, cotton plantations, New York finance, British factories, global markets, all connected.

[00:25:27]Now, here's another economic reality that rarely gets discussed. when slavery ended in 1865 and by the way I want to commend the the there's one particular bank I'm thinking about two banks where they acknowledge their history uh where they had some involvement with slavery so the precursor to truest bank um Sunrust the precursor to all those uh I think it was trust I think it was trust company anyway I I don't know the name before Sunrust I can't I can't remember it off the top of my head but the CEO there Bill Rogers owned this uh history and and didn't have to. Uh I'm 99% sure that my friend Jamie Diamond and JP Morgan Chase own their history because there are records of enslaved people in those banks records as well. And um there are many others who would fit this uh criteria um and the leaders have stepped up and acknowledged um in most of those cases.

[00:26:25]Now, here's another economic reality that rarely gets discussed. Also, when slavery ended in 1865, the loss um to the South was um almost complete. The South lost its largest asset class almost overnight.

[00:26:44]The $3 billion slave asset market disappeared.

[00:26:51]If you want to joke about it's not funny, but you wonder why people are upset, you know, in this in the traditional South. Uh you you you lose $15 trillion dollars overnight and see how you're feeling. Whether you're moral or not, right? It's an is. I mean, the children of those people are like, I didn't do anything about this. Why Why am I broke now? Why we Why can't I get my carriage Mercedes? Uh the Mercedes was a carriage was a Mercedes that day.

[00:27:16]Why can't I get my farmhouse mansion? Uh the farmhouse was a mansion of that day and so on and so forth. Why can't I get my horse uh as in horsepower um you know the Ferrari of that day. Um because what my daddy and my granddaddy did ain't nothing to do with that.

[00:27:34]So the economy collapses the that collapse devastated the southern economy.

[00:27:42]But something else happened too. 4 million newly freed people entered the economy with no capital at all.

[00:27:50]In fact, they had no land. They had no financial assets. They had no access to credit. They it was even illegal to teach them to read before the end of slavery. So now you're walking in with no literacy.

[00:28:04]And there was a by extension of course no access to banks. And you may or may not know, but I'm tied in a little bit here. your operation. Hope is tied in a little bit here to this history. We went into um the Treasury Department in 2015 2016. I think it was 2015 we started this conversation. I want to thank Jana Rosco and my team for pointing me in this direction and then black women in the Treasury Department for encouraging me to uh pursue this. But we ultimately got the the United States government to rename the TR US Treasury Annex building that's across from the Treasury Department. across from the White House and across from Lefant Plaza.

[00:28:41]Uh we got them to uh rename that the Freed Men's Bank building in honor of freed slaves who put all their money in a bank chartered to teach freed slaves about money after the Civil War. And I'm the only American citizen ever to trigger the renaming or inspire the renaming of a bank on the White House campus in US history uh through our work at Operation Hope and my instigation and inspiration by Jana Rosco and these black women at Treasury who encouraged me to do it and Secretary Jack Lou made it happen um along with others who were supportive. This was during the Obama administration and it sits to this day. It stands to this day as a tribute and a testimony to unfinished business which we are in our own way at oper trying to finish. And that was the LA that light legislation for the Freeman's Bank was signed into law March 3rd, 1865 on the last day of Abraham Lincoln's first term after he won re-election in part in large part because of the extended history of Atlanta because at the last battle in the war, the Civil War was at the the battle of Atlanta where the the Union Army burned Atlanta to the ground to cut off the infrastructure and the momentum and the confidence of the Confederate army, which worked.

[00:29:57]And the march to the sea that followed that had former slave people, now formerly enslaved people, following Secretary of Wars, General Stanton, and uh into uh freedom. And they went to Savannah, Georgia, and and General um um uh the general who was sent there uh um I believe it was General Sherman, uh negotiated with 20 former black slaves for, you know, what they wanted after slavery. And they said, "We want land.

[00:30:25]we want to do for ourselves. And that led to 40 acres and 40 acres in a mule.

[00:30:29]And they worked it so hard they said they said, "My god, they're so industrious. Give them a mule." That was January feebruary 1865.

[00:30:37]March 1865.

[00:30:39]Here comes the bank, the Freedom's Bank, chartered to teach free slaves about money.

[00:30:44]Abraham Lincoln promises blacks the right to vote. And Booth said, "That's a bridge too far. You'll never give another fre."

[00:30:51]and he he was assassinated April 1865, a month after he signed the Freeman's Bureau Act, which gave created infrastructure, hospitals, schools, etc. for newly enslaved, newly freed enslaved, formerly enslaved people, including the bank that then Frederick Douglas went on to try to run after Lincoln's assassination.

[00:31:13]And unfortunately, without Lincoln as a protector, it the bank failed in 18 and it failed in total in 1877. Although it was failing for some time after it was gamed by mainstream interest in Washington DC who used it as their own personal piggy bank along with local cashiers in offices throughout the country who were financially illiterate.

[00:31:36]That just proves that good intentions alone doesn't matter.

[00:31:40]So there was no access to land or financial assets or education or credit.

[00:31:45]Now think about what that means economically. For generations, black labor had helped produce enormous wealth.

[00:31:55]But ownership of that wealth belonged to someone else. In fact, even after the 40 acres in mule when general when when President um Johnson, I believe his name is took over after Abraham Lincoln, a southern segregationist, he gave the land, he reversed 40 acres in the mule within two or three years and gave that land back to the segregationist families who owned it before. So, if you wonder why you have this wealth gap today, I'm telling you part of that story. It's not that black people didn't work hard. uh you can run really fast, but if you're on quicksand, it's hard to get traction that matters.

[00:32:36]This is why economic opportunity after the civil war became so important. The rec the first reconstruction, second reconstruction was the civil rights movement. I believe we're in the third reconstruction today. I cover that also in my book that's coming out now, capitalism for all. But many of those opportunities were limited. Limited by black codes, sharecropping systems, segregation, redlinining. Red lining happened in the in earnest. It happened by people think it happened by banks. Nope. It happened um banks discriminated against it for sure, but but it was the federal government that actually created redlinining, the FHA.

[00:33:15]And I can't make this up. And it literally sent a signal to banks that we're not insuring areas that have these red line that are in these red lines um red marked areas. So go invest someplace else. We'll ensure those. So that was the suburbs and other areas. And so they're urban areas where blacks had migrated to um were considered redlinined and had no got no access to capital. So the banks don't like risk and um they were uncomfortable blacks it to begin with, but they certainly weren't going to do it if it weren't incentivized to lend. And so they lent where were where people looked like them where areas where their mortgages were uh guaranteed by the federal government.

[00:33:56]Think about that. It really is common sense why they did what they did and didn't do why they did uh didn't and didn't do what they didn't do. You don't have to be a racist to make that decision, although being a racist probably helped. um make those decisions and back those in those days banks were familyowned and privately uh do you know by the way there was currencies like hundreds of currencies wasn't a US currency to you know a unified US currency that at that time this was in 1800s you had you know the bank of Joe's currency and Jack grocery stores currency it was a mess um anyway all of this affected uh access to capital and ownership for obvious reasons so now let's bring this conversation to today because history only matters if it helps us understand the present. The lesson here is not about victimhood.

[00:34:50]Uh it's not about blame.

[00:34:53]It's about uh ownership. The lesson is about ownership. For centuries, black labor produced wealth but did not control the capital.

[00:35:06]Which is why today I often say something simple. The next civil rights movement in America must be about money and wealth. That financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation.

[00:35:17]If you don't know better, you can't do better. In a blind town, a oneeyed man's king. If you don't if if it is an old southern saying, no matter how much I love you, my son or my daughter, if I don't have wisdom, I can only give you my own ignorance. And so out of love, we pass down bad habits from generation to generation.

[00:35:36]So it's not the agenda today is not just about jobs. It's not just about wages is it's about ownership about credit scores. 700 credit scores plus to be particular to be specific because the computer just says yes at 700 plus when you go to it at midnight to ask for a $30,000 loan with a job.

[00:35:58]It's about entrepreneurship. It's about it's about home ownership. It's about investment.

[00:36:04]Um, it's about mastering artificial intelligence uh and upskilling for the jobs of the future which haven't come yet but that's a different podcast for another day because the real power in capitalism is ownership of assets and that asset starts with you. That is why financial literacy matters. This is why credit score literacy matters. This is why entrepreneurship literacy matters.

[00:36:30]This is why AI literacy matters.

[00:36:35]The untapped economic power of you.

[00:36:38]Let me close with this thought.

[00:36:41]In 1860, the most valuable asset in the American economy was enslaved people.

[00:36:48]Human potential that was exploited but not empowered.

[00:36:53]Today, the greatest untapped asset in America is still human potential.

[00:36:59]But now we have an opportunity to do something different to unlock that potential through education, through financial literacy, through access to capital, true capital access, not a program, but a platform for prosperity. Because not because people feel bad or guilty or feel sorry for you. know they see you as a market opportunity and want to benefit from you and fair exchange is no robbery.

[00:37:32]I don't want to hand out. I want a hand up. I want the James Brown version of affirmative action. Open the door. I'll get it my dang self. Can I get an amen?

[00:37:45]This is about ownership, agency, your own.

[00:37:54]This is about how you feel about yourself because we're not human beings. I believe having a spir a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Energy matters. Your view of yourself matters.

[00:38:10]The market brand of you facing the world. How they see you matters. That's why I'm trying to reset the record so people, institutions, companies, individuals see you as an asset waiting to be born, not a liability that to be to be ignored or avoided at all costs.

[00:38:27]Watch your brand, your personal brand, your family brand, your community brand.

[00:38:31]Watch your brand, your reputation.

[00:38:36]I've always said when I leave a room, I don't want anybody to say, "But I like that guy, but I respect that guy, but I'd love to do business with John O'Brien, but you never want a butt of any material substance next to your name.

[00:38:54]you want to end.

[00:38:56]That's why uh I'm all about inclusive economics and that's why inclusive capitalism is important.

[00:39:06]That's why good capitalism is important.

[00:39:08]Doing well and doing good. Doing well by doing good.

[00:39:16]Expanding the ownership society is to quote my friend Stephanie Rule like expanding the table and adding a chair.

[00:39:22]It doesn't hurt anybody. doesn't take anything from anybody. It grows the table. It grows the economy.

[00:39:31]It expands our ownership society.

[00:39:35]We're not tearing down a system. We're making sure everybody has a stake in it so no one wants to tear it up.

[00:39:43]People tell me, "Oh, I hate rich people." No, you don't. You hate rich people until you become rich. What you hate is a game system. What you hate is a system that is rigged. No matter how hard you work, you can't get by or get ahead. People resent that system and that's what we should want to refine and we should want to reset and we have to do that in part by upgrading our own software. So no one has a even at least a good excuse to leave us out of this party called success. So, this is John O'Brien and this has been Money and Wealth of the Black Effect Network on the iHeart Radio platform, season 3.

[00:40:26]Um, I want you to remember something.

[00:40:29]Understanding money is not just about the numbers.

[00:40:34]It's about understanding the systems that create opportunity.

[00:40:38]And once you understand that system, you can learn how to win in it. I want you, all of you, black, white, red, brown, everybody, to win at scale.

[00:40:52]Let's finish Dr. King's unfinished work.

[00:40:54]He was working with poor whites and poor everybody else in the poor people's campaign. He said, "We're here. I'm here to redeem the soul of America from the triple evils of war, racism, and poverty."

[00:41:05]He knew that that if America couldn't be great and sustainable unless everybody had a seat at that table called opportunity. Let's finish that work. Let's um on the 250th anniversary of America, recast the software, upgrade our software as an individual, as institutions, and as a nation to look forward in a way that gives everybody an opportunity to fulfill their god-given potential in this system. It's interesting. Ambassador Andrew Young has a quote. He was in that balcony when Dr. King was assassinated in ' 68. He has a quote. my mentor Andrew Young, our global spokesman at Operation Hope, to live in a system of free enterprise and not to understand the rules of free enterprise must be the very definition of slavery.

[00:41:54]H So let's ungame this system. Let's get you the tools to succeed. Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. So on the 250th anniversary of America is also the 100th anniversary of Black History Month. Thank you, Mr. Woodson. Um, yeah, we're sitting in a moment in history. What are we going to do about it? I'll see you next time.