Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees, but I don't really need it.

Infliction is killing me!

But who cares? Big retailers are making record profits!

That's why we support the Durban Marshall Credit Card Bill!

See? Banks and credit unions help small businesses make payroll.

This bill would cut the vital resources they need.

While increasing megastore profits, they deserve it. Don't they?

Tell Congress, stop the Durban Marshall money grab for corporate megastores.

Paid for it by the Electronic Payments Coalition.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Ed Barron's. I'm Andy Surwer. And welcome to our guest, Jonathan Steinberg, founder and CEO of an investment company, Wisdom Tree. Jonathan, great to see you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

So Wisdom Tree is a publicly traded investment company known for its ETFs. How else do you describe the firm, though, Jonathan?

We're an asset manager. We call ourselves an innovator within financial services, but truly, we're in the asset management space. And how did the firm get started? I mean, you've been in business

for many years now. We both have been. You had a company and it sort of morphed. And I think 20 years ago, it was sort of when Wisdom Tree was founded. There's Michael Steinhart was an investor. If you remember him, Jeremy Siegel from Wharton's involved, still involved. Still involved. So tell us about the genesis. So I started the company as individual

investor magazine back in 1988, and our idea was unbiased independent research for the masses.

And we took it from something like 20,000 to a half a million subscribers. And I was, I loved my

journalism. I was editor-in-chief and CEO and the

research department reported into me and we had passionate investors but that's

1988 I think in 1993 Netscape came out and I could sense, you know, free information.

And so I knew that I had an issue, really long-term issue.

I did a story in 1997 on ETFs when the wrapper only had $40 billion worldwide.

And as a research company, I built my own indexes.

And so I went about, I sold my media assets.

...