Peter Thiel funded it. Candace Owens promoted it. I had never heard of this GloriFi bank until it collapsed.
It’s whole deal was that it was “anti-woke,” whatever that means. Since it was run by a gang of rabid capitalists who didn’t know what “woke” means, that doesn’t matter. What it really was was an ideologically driven attempt to prove that conservative principles were profitable and practical. They weren’t.
As The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on GloriFi’s shuttering, puts it, the business was “anti-woke.” While GloriFi itself never publicly described itself as anti-woke, the company had no qualms about marketing itself as a service provider for right-wing America. In a July press release, the company described itself as “a pro-freedom, pro-America, pro-capitalism technology company . . . empowering members to put their money where their values are and preserve the Country they believe in.”
In other words, its foundation was built on far-right paranoia and their bizarre obsessions.
Pitching itself as a financial institution that allowed one to be “free to celebrate your love of God and country without fear of cancellation,” GloriFi’s marketing read more like a campaign ad than an enticing APR offer on a new credit card. Highlights from the “about us” page include: “OUR BILL OF RIGHTS IS NON-NEGOTIABLE” and “WE ARE ONE NATION UNDER GOD.”
In its short tenure GloriFi, managed to launch checking and savings accounts as well as credit cards, with plans to offer mortgages and insurance in a future that will no longer take place. Founder and CEO Toby Neugebauer pitched plans to offer gun owners discounts on home insurance, credit cards made of shell casing material, and assistance paying legal bills if customers shot someone in self-defense. Over the summer, GloriFi secured conservative commentator Candace Owens as a co-founder and spokesperson for the brand.
Guys. Guys. GUYS. I know this is news to you, but regular banks won’t cancel your account if you announce that you love god and America. That’s not a sound basis for differentiating yourself from the competition. In fact, it makes you look weird, and especially stuff like the special privileges for gun-owners and people who shoot other people was probably counter to profitability. Having a controversial freak like Candace Owens (what? Laura Loomer was unavailable?) as the face of your company didn’t project seriousness, either.
Predictably, it imploded.
But GloriFi was unable to translate ideological grandstanding into functional corporate management. Even before its public launch, the startup was plagued by reports of chaos amongst staff and financiers. GloriFi missed its planned launch date several times, at one point due to clashes with Texas financial regulators. Reports emerged of unpaid invoices and erratic behavior from Neugebauer, who had converted his home Dallas mansion into the company’s main office.
According to the Journal, the company was eventually forced to hire a law firm to investigate workplace issues, particularly around Neugebauer. In one memo reviewed by the Journal, GloriFi’s former Head of Human Resources Britt Amos described several employees at Neugebaur’s mansion telling him to “make sure I leave around six,” and explaining that “after 5 p.m. Toby starts drinking and things at the house deteriorate quickly.” Amos also described a meeting where a visibly drunk Neugebauer was “drinking Red Bull and putting alcohol in it.”
You know, being “woke” just means you’re aware of the social shortcomings of the existing system, and are concerned about fairness and equality. Declaring yourself “anti-woke” implies that you’re ignorant of reality and want a system that will screw people over, things I do not want in a financial institution.
Conservative, yes. Take us back to those glory days of the 1950s, with 90%+ tax on the top bracket.
Space Karen should buy up their empty offices and hang out there, so he can soak in the anti-woke ambience.
If fate can transmit by osmosis it would hasten his own bankrupcy.
Sounds like the lead-in to an affinity fraud to me…
In other words: “Finally! A bank not controlled by the JOOOOOOOOS.”
One ideology-driven business idea are the various co-ops.
I shop daily in our local Konsum consumer-owned chain, and it is a business idea that is going strong.
The current chain has been going since 1934, and goes back to organisations that started in Sweden 1899.
So this business idea has outlasted the DeLoreans, the Madoffs and whoever was in charge of Enron and the banks.
This just sounds like an online bank.
They issue credit cards and have checking and savings accounts.
There are thousands of online banks in the USA.
Most stock trading companies have a sibling bank company.
Just about every bank with bank buildings also has an online presence.
So what makes Bigots and Haters bank a better choice than Ally Bank, Discover, Etrade, etc..
Nothing that I can see.
You can be a bigot and hate everyone as much as you want for free.
You don’t even have to be a fundie xian or a GOP voter.
Anti-woke is the new states’ rights. Which was the new racism. Bigotry shapeshifts but never goes away.
It has already been done anyway.
Apparently, it is easy to open an online bank which is why there are so many of them.
There are a few xian online banks already.
Anti-woke is the new anti-Social Justice and anti-Social Justice Warrirors.
I’ve been a Social Justice Warrior since the mid 1960s.
It was a good idea then and it is a good idea now.
I have nothing but contempt for people who see social injustice as a good thing.
US Department of Labor announces final rule to remove barriers to considering environmental, social, governance factors in plan investments
There were barriers telling investment plans what they could and could not invest in? Why, those crazy liberals!
Wait, you’re telling me it was “conservatives” who installed those barriers? Because “free-dumb” means telling people how they can spend their money, what they can say, and what they can do with their bodies? Apparently modern-day “conservatism” looks a lot like fascism.
When someone says “anti-woke” I translate it into “insufficiently racist.” It sounds a lot worse, as it should; but it is pretty accurate.
Anti-woke is the new “anti-communist.” Of course, the right’s definition of communism is a lot broader than anything Marx or Engels conceived.
It doesn’t matter what the ideology is, left, right, whatever. It doesn’t matter what the intention is, good, bad, whatever. No ego, no grandiosity, nothing. None of it, ever, will be a substitute for competence.
Will everyone get found out? No, because getting found out takes time, and people can quit, move on, or die. But nothing will sustain any project other than competence.
These chucklefucks lack basic competence.
Louis
I’ll stick with banking with the Co-op. Going ok since 1863 and they answer the phone with a Yorkshire accent. Awesome.
Reginald Selkirk @ #10: I think you’re misreading that. There were restrictions to what factors retirement funds could consider when planning their investments. They were not allowed to look at environmental, social and governance factors as part of their duty to make sound investments for their clients — they could look only at the financial aspects. These restrictions have now been removed, so retirement funds are now allowed to consider these factors too when deciding how to invest and how to use their shareholder votes.
TL;DR the rules that forbade retirement funds to be even a little bit “woke” have been removed.
America is in the midst of a nervous breakdown.
@11
very true and this one seems to have had an active alcoholic right on the ground floor along with a bunch of none reality based political believers. I would want my money in an organization that was cautious and conservative with risk and not following strictly ideological blinders though also taking ethics into consideration at every turn
it also sounds like a scam and could be scammed as well I bet someone made a bundle out of it.
“You know, being “woke” just means you’re aware of the social shortcomings of the existing system, and are concerned about fairness and equality. Declaring yourself ‘anti-woke’ implies that you’re ignorant of reality and want a system that will screw people over, things I do not want in a financial institution.”
Thanks. Best description I’ve seen. Sometimes, my translation software from internal to human doesn’t work very well.
Einstürzende Neugebauer.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun).