So Thank You, It's Important Again, The

So thank you, It's important again, the

reason I started with Dr. King was that

he gets credit for doing what seems to

be impossible. In reality it was quite

practical. We already had the right to

vote in 1960. We had the right to vote

in 1875. It was not enforced, so the four

civil rights bills of Dr. King were just

enforcement actions. That's all they were.

We don't time for this story, but I mean

there's a long reason, there is a history of

why it was, after Lincoln was killed,

reconstruction came to a grinding halt.

So my point is he just rolled up his

sleeves and got to work trying to create

the environment where he'd get us back

to zero, but it's romanticized today as

it was some some big task that no one

can do. It was actually, he's actually a

great marketer, he was very practical

every problem had a solution, a beginning, middle and end attached to it. He

always left his adversary with his

dignity - very important. So I would say

start with where your staying, create a strategy

that starts on the block you're working

on, and make it measurable. Like credit

scores is one reason, the reason I love that

is that it's a non-emotional, highly

measurable transformational function. I

can now put my Hope Inside locations

inside of a bank branch, and that's my

extension of the Freedmen's Bank by the

way, I have a 105 locations now in the

last three years. I've got a goal of a

thousand locations by the year 2020. I've

got orders for 500 locations and

SunTrust banks has ordered 12% of

their bank branches to be Hope Insides, Regions Bank has ordered 10% of

their bank branches to be Hope Insides,

so this is not some community

Reinvestment program or some nice sweet

to do program. We're in Whole Foods. We're

in Hyatt Hotels. We're going to Delta for

their employees. We're going to UPS for

their employees. So basically we took

something else that was a non issue or not in

a b2b as an important issue, flipped it

and made it a business issue, and said to

banks wouldn't you like to be out of the

No business and back into the Yes

business? B ecause you can't approve a loan at a 580 credit score, but at 720 credit

score you'll approve them all day and all

night.

My mother's credit scores is 840. She's not

even black anymore; she's like green.

So if you want to put a kid to sleep

talk about financial literacy, and

00:02:36,640 --> 00:02:39,580

this is a guy who who create a financial

literacy policy under George Bush -

me - but, but it will just bore

people to death. The unbanked issue - oh

you have a big problem with preparedness

and trying to get people interested in this

topic, but you have something that nobody

else has. Money that flows on an

unscheduled basis. I'm not encouraging

disasters by the way, understand that, but

they're happening whether you ask for it

or not.

Can you turn a negative into a positive?

That's what I'm saying. So I think that

you have and this money is flexible, it's

pliable, and it is and it has almost like

going in a third-world country, it has

enormous bounce effect. And I think if

you connected that with financial

literacy, connected that with some of the

strategies that myself and others are

doing. You can now get people interested

in something they wouldn't otherwise be

interested in. I'll give you one example

the Earned Income Tax Credit - I don't

know if anybody in here knows of this.

Okay if you don't, forget everything else

I said, I just helped you with your

budget. Now I want you to go back to the

community and you hold a community

meeting and you and you say does anybody

here know what a EITC is? They say, no

what's that. You say, I just gave

everybody in here a raise because

anybody makes fifty three thousand

dollars a year, and works, the government

owes you a check. Not a credit, a

check. If you make $35,000 a year, and

have two children anywhere in America

the government owes you four thousand

dollars - cash - and if you've never filed it

is retroactive for three years. And

that's important because if you got a

check you keep filing. So if you haven't

got the check and you never heard about it,

you've never filed that means everybody

in your community who qualifies gets

three times. That's what help me out

here, that's a lot of moolah, twelve

thousand dollars, and you are making

thirty five thousand dollars a year

that's more money you won't ever see it

one time. And you can combine that with

the two thousand dollars in FEMA money,

plus something over here from the Red

Cross. I mean you can actually reset some

one's life.

And get them a bank account because you

can't get the money unless you wire it

back into a bank account. We have 40

percent of this country,

sorry,12 percent of this country is unbanked

or underbanked. So there's a lot of

crisis that can be resolved most

elegantly through emergency management

organizations, and I think FEMA is highly

on the underutilized in this space. I

think this is a major, no federal agency

in the federal portfolio has the

ability to change what I just talked

about more than FEMA. And I think FEMA is

a backdoor to get the Congress to make

financial literacy a requirement for

every child and put a bank account on

the back of it, but that's a whole

another topic.

Two points: one that's mostly for

third-world countries and it is

extremely effective particularly for when it

comes to giving dignity to women -

giving women the dignity they deserve

because most of that microcredit is leant

through women and they have an

incredible repayment ratio among about

above 97%. But third world countries

operate differently than first world

countries that's the first point. The

second point is, I don't like it, and I

don't like it because it encourages a

differentiation between the microcredit

recipient and you and me. Notice I said

you and me even though we're supposedly

different

I think we're completely profile wise

that same. I don't want somebody getting

a microcredit.

I want them get a dang gone bank loan. I

want them to get a bank account.

I want them vertically integrated in the

same system that we are. So what

I've done is not create another system

for poor people,

I've created a vertically integrated

system where you just simply migrate in

steps from here and you feel like a big

boy or a big girl every step of the way

and have the dignity associated with

that. I applaud them. I just

think is a different, a different model

This is a full-blown American crisis

with a largest economy in the world and

we're winging it. I want that just to

like set in with everybody. Don't hear

the hype about China's big, no, no, no, you

can take China, Italy, Russia, that's why

Russia is all upset and making a lot of

noise - they're broke. Take all of

those countries and put them inside of

America, and we still have room. We are

huge, and we're winging. It's amazing

that this experiment is still working

because GDP is driven by you and me, and

no one's teaching us the rules of free

enterprise. So I don't think, here's a

problem the urgent continues to crowd

out the important down the street. That's

the problem. Congress, Senate, the White

House, doesn't matter who's there, I've

served three presidents, I've known, I've

been honored by five. I've known seven.

Every time they mean well, but the urgent

crowds out the important. Guess what you

folks have at your disposal - the urgent.

And I think you just need to create an

agenda and a framework, because what's

happening is everybody realizes you can't

keep writing these checks to fund all

these crises. And I'm just talking about

the nationally, the presidentially

declared disasters. Forget about all the

the countless county, city, state, local

non proclaimed disasters that keep

eating away at precious resources. And so

there's not enough money to just write

the check. We have to find other ways of

solving it, and I'll just leave you with

this statistic. After Hurricane Katrina

New Orleans had a rate of police

officers that was four times per capita

Los Angeles, but it was twice as less

safe. So it wasn't just about more law

enforcement and more tanks, by the way,

there's not enough tanks to save you

if people have lost hope.

I think Los Angeles works, as screwed up

as my home city is, I think Los Angeles

works as the

12th largest economy in the entire world

because basically people believe if you

work hard, play by the rules, do the right

thing, keep your nose clean, pay your

taxes, and respectful your elders and

follow the law, it'll pay off at a

reasonable shot a success or failure on

your own merit. Did you guys follow all that?

Did somebody say no? Basically if you do

the right thing, you'll get a shot at the

American dream; not a guarantee but a

shot, and when that contract is broke,

when you don't believe you're gonna get

a shot anymore, there's not enough police

to save you. That's essentially my

argument. So the way you got it sort of

hope really is the equalizer ,and

education is the only poverty

eradication tool. When you know better,

you do better. We don't have to, we don't

have the time to go into how many

billions of dollars a city's missing

because of leakage - property taxes not

being paid, utility bills being cut off -

all this leakage because people are always in a ready, fire, aim

mentality. And how many people are not

getting the disaster recovery dollars

because they don't fill out the

paperwork,

there's missed information, they're stressed out,

they never get around to it,

or they just don't know what to ask for.

No matter how many ways you come at it

this is the cheapest fix on

the planet. And I think when you do this

GDP goes through the roof, as I said

earlier, and crime and all of the

negative things go down. I mean nobody

wakes up in the morning and said, "ooh let

me be a bum, oh let me be a thief, well

let me be a prostitute." They're doing

these things because it's like it seems

like a good choice based on what they're

looking at. I'm not rationalizing it.

I'm telling you that everybody wants to

be aspirational but you model what you

see. So this is a, that's why I walked up

to the stage and I said this is really

not just a change in history, I think

it's a change in how you fundamentally

see the world as managers, because

everything's economic. And it by the way

don't take my word for that, I'm gonna

leave get my business card, challenge

everything I've said to you today. And if

I'm wrong, send me a note, and I will send

you a 5000 dollar check to the charity

of your choice.

And if every one of you would write that

note to me, I'll have a bad day, but I'm

giving you that challenge because I

believe so strongly in how much common

sense is embedded in what I've shared

with you. This is not rocket science. It's

just that no one's done it. And my mother

always said, you never wannabe the old

guy in the club, so before you kick me

out I'm gonna leave. Bye