Valuetainment - Ex Goldman Sachs Banker Reveals Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power

00:00:00.000 30 seconds.

00:00:30.000 a lot of these big firms out there and decided last minute, after she made her money to

00:00:34.360 go and be a journalist, and she reveals certain powers that American bankers have, that's

00:00:39.860 probably going to shock you.

00:00:41.100 You are going to enjoy this one if you want to know more about the economy.

00:00:44.400 Nome Prins, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment.

00:00:47.900 Yeah, thanks so much.

00:00:48.920 A pleasure.

00:00:50.140 It's good to have you on.

00:00:51.120 So first question, I'm going to start off with a soft question for you so we can kind of get

00:00:55.480 to know each other.

00:00:56.560 How close are we to civil war?

00:00:58.180 On the streets or in the markets?

00:01:01.840 Give me both.

00:01:03.540 Well, you know, here's the thing.

00:01:05.280 Over the last 10, 11 years since the financial crisis, and then you add on to that this pandemic,

00:01:12.220 we've reawakened the economic instability that's inherent to many, many components of the economy

00:01:18.800 and the population, right?

00:01:20.540 So when you mix economic instability with crisis, with inherent problems that exist, whether

00:01:26.720 it be social tensions, racial tensions, economic inequality, and you mix that all together,

00:01:32.240 you have a very perilous situation.

00:01:35.300 And if you put on top of that the fact that markets and the financial asset side of the

00:01:39.440 equation has been helped by so much compared to the actual people part of this equation,

00:01:44.940 then we are close.

00:01:46.380 We're not even close.

00:01:47.100 We are in the period of civil unrest throughout a lot of the world, including what we've seen

00:01:51.440 recently in the U.S.

00:01:52.580 But we're also at a point, and I call it a sort of permanent distortion between what's

00:01:59.360 happening on the financial economy side in terms of also how it is helped and subsidized

00:02:04.280 versus what's happening on the real or the foundational economy side, the small businesses, the

00:02:09.760 individuals, and the things that they face.

00:02:12.800 So that's where I think the civil element and the economic element are actually very much

00:02:18.360 part of the same thing.

00:02:20.540 Okay.

00:02:21.220 So you're saying we are there.

00:02:23.900 We're not almost there.

00:02:25.880 We are there.

00:02:27.140 But do you think, I mean, maybe the question I'd ask might be slightly different.

00:02:31.380 Have you ever seen America as divisive, as divided as we are today, yourself?

00:02:38.480 I mean, you lived in New York.

00:02:39.480 You lived in different places.

00:02:40.600 You've had a lot of different experience.

00:02:41.700 You worked at some of the most reputable companies worldwide at their peak.

00:02:45.020 People relied on them with the decisions that they made.

00:02:47.900 You ever seen America at a point where people are divided, going at it, the riots, the protesting?

00:02:54.420 You ever seen something like this yourself?

00:02:56.580 No, I mean, I think we're in a very divisive point in America's history, at least in the

00:03:02.020 personal history that I've experienced in my lifetime, because of these kind of conjoining

00:03:08.160 factors, because of the economy, because of finances, because of all the tensions that

00:03:12.140 brings up, and because I think we are in a very polarized part of U.S. history.

00:03:18.140 I think the world, to an extent, is polarized in many places as well.

00:03:21.860 And so there's a sort of feeding between our country and other countries and so forth around

00:03:26.980 the world.

00:03:27.300 But I think the fact that we have as much sort of instability on so many levels of individuals,

00:03:35.680 of the economy, of just races, of social elements, and so forth, I have not seen it this tense.

00:03:42.820 So therefore, I've not seen it this bad.

00:03:45.000 The financial crisis of 2008 definitely opened up more financial instability to a large swath

00:03:51.540 of the population.

00:03:52.640 That's definitely true.

00:03:53.760 But there wasn't as much of a sort of tension and a sort of almost push to completely change

00:04:02.880 out of our situation into something better for a lot of people, and the tension on the

00:04:07.840 other side of others wanting to keep it exactly the way it is.

00:04:11.140 And so that tension, I think, is really much more apparent now in the wake of this pandemic

00:04:16.180 than it had been in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, or anything that I have experienced.

00:04:23.140 And I, you know, that includes the wars that, you know, the U.S. has been in, and the demonstrations

00:04:27.840 against those wars, demonstrations to reduce debt throughout the world, and so forth.

00:04:32.260 This is more visceral.

00:04:33.620 This is more spread out at the foundations of the country.

00:04:37.300 How much of this do you think is the media?

00:04:41.380 How much of it is China trying to take over, meaning of control of power, because there's

00:04:45.880 a lot of moving parts right now.

00:04:47.160 You've got pre-coronavirus, we were talking Brexit, we were talking China, we were talking

00:04:51.260 tariffs, we were talking Venezuela, we were talking Saudi Arabia, oil, Iran, a lot of

00:04:56.600 different things we were talking about pre-coronavirus.

00:04:58.680 So how much of it's media?

00:04:59.980 How much of it's China?

00:05:00.740 How much of it's coronavirus?

00:05:01.540 How much of it do you think is a Trump, or anything else that I may not be saying?

00:05:07.880 But there's got to be something that's the tipping point that's causing this.

00:05:10.900 What would you say it is?

00:05:12.080 I think there's a number of things that you mentioned that kind of come into play in sort

00:05:16.360 of a high type of portion, right?

00:05:18.340 So I'm glad you bring up sort of how the international community and the international sort of globalized

00:05:23.900 world was before the coronavirus and now how it is, because a lot of it's the same, right?

00:05:29.020 There's more tension now, there's more uprising now.

00:05:31.160 But a lot of the issues are still there.

00:05:33.760 For example, trade uncertainties between the U.S. and China, the sort of battle between

00:05:39.140 the U.S. and China in terms of who's going to be the most legitimized superpower going

00:05:45.620 forward that's going to mark the 21st century.

00:05:47.620 We're still in the young part of the century.

00:05:50.100 And a lot of stuff has gone down in terms of money-related crises during this century.

00:05:55.160 But the result has been a lot of isolationism, you know, sort of a new form of populism, a

00:06:01.820 new form of sort of tariff controls and battles from that element of economics.

00:06:07.240 And I think that's going to be ongoing to an extent.

00:06:10.280 China leveraged a lot of what happened in the financial crisis of 2008.

00:06:16.920 I've analyzed this a lot and talked about it a lot and been there and so forth since the

00:06:20.680 financial crisis.

00:06:22.080 But they basically leveraged the situation where our Federal Reserve, the way the U.S.

00:06:27.800 whole monetary system was created and then moved into the new part of this century, and

00:06:33.780 all the sort of cheap money and the asset buying, all the programs that the U.S. began in the

00:06:39.440 wake of the financial crisis.

00:06:41.140 And they physically leveraged this to do a number of things.

00:06:43.580 One is to get the Chinese currency, the rent, into the SDR, the security basket of the IMF,

00:06:51.300 so to become a little more legitimate currency in terms of trade.

00:06:54.700 And they openly use that element.

00:06:56.720 When I say they, I mean the former People's Bank of China head.

00:07:01.620 In conjunction with the IMF.

00:07:03.860 So they were trying to sort of pivot their power from the standpoint of our sort of loose

00:07:09.400 monetary system with their more dedicated, as they saw it, monetary system.

00:07:14.740 So while we were using that money as a country to basically invest ultimately in financial

00:07:20.080 assets, the markets, and so forth, and they did quite well as a result, they were sort of

00:07:24.460 using it to build alliances with countries that had been weakened in the wake of the financial

00:07:30.960 crisis of 2008.

00:07:32.640 And they did this with the BRICS countries.

00:07:34.460 They had the alliance with Brazil grow substantially, such that they became the largest trading partner

00:07:40.060 with Brazil relative to the U.S.

00:07:41.580 And so there was this juxtaposition, this fight that was going on since the financial

00:07:45.120 crisis between these two superpowers.

00:07:47.680 And now you bring in years of that into the coronavirus pandemic.

00:07:52.180 And there's still a lot of obvious tension in that relationship.

00:07:55.540 But we're in a situation now where China had the virus sort of first and sort of got over

00:08:02.240 it.

00:08:02.560 You know, there's still cases.

00:08:03.500 Beijing is still closing in parts, but sort of.

00:08:05.620 And the U.S. is still sort of grappling with what that's going to look like over the number

00:08:08.760 of months.

00:08:09.560 And so China is able to kind of resurrect that sort of power position.

00:08:14.640 But they're also doing it in a way where they're containing Hong Kong and they're sort

00:08:18.240 of annoying a lot of the trade partners that they've developed over these last 12 years.

00:08:22.680 And so that could mean a pendulum switch back to the U.S.

00:08:26.940 But yet we're in a weakened part of our economy.

00:08:29.140 So I think that pendulum swing between those two superpowers and how countries get sort of

00:08:34.900 caught up in between that is actually a major point of general economic tension in the world

00:08:43.240 outside of where it relates to, like, the individual, to the population, to issues that

00:08:48.480 people, small businesses, individuals are dealing with on a day-to-day basis.

00:08:51.640 So I do think that's a big component of where we are here, because all the dominoes sort

00:08:57.220 of fall around that from a large economical standpoint.

00:09:00.460 And then you go down from multinational companies using both countries to middle to smaller to

00:09:04.580 a supply chain to small businesses.

00:09:07.200 And there's a lot going on back and forth behind the scenes of every day life for real

00:09:13.180 people.

00:09:13.520 You know, typically when conflicts happen like this, what we're experiencing, that's global,

00:09:21.400 some relationships obviously deter and there's a falling out.

00:09:27.240 And then an enemy of an enemy becomes a friend.

00:09:30.500 So people that weren't allies, they become allies.

00:09:33.100 And so in this situation, are you seeing Russia, Iran, and China get closer?

00:09:39.780 And are you seeing Iran, US, UK, and India get closer in this?

00:09:45.780 Because, you know, India is coming up.

00:09:48.040 You just heard China's investing a few hundred billion dollars in Iran, which obviously Asia

00:09:53.280 relies on the Middle East for oil.

00:09:55.440 Seventy for 76 percent of oil comes from Iran in the Middle East.

00:09:59.020 Are you seeing alliances being created?

00:10:02.760 And if yes, who got stronger, who got weaker?

00:10:06.200 So that's interesting as well.

00:10:07.260 So the Russia-China connection, I mean, it got stronger in the wake of the financial crisis

00:10:12.740 and into today.

00:10:13.600 And a lot of it was because, and you throw Iran into that more recently, a lot of that

00:10:17.120 was because of the oil relationship.

00:10:19.940 China is a majorly growing population.

00:10:23.260 They have turned to invest in their new sort of five-year plans in green infrastructure,

00:10:28.420 sustainability, fast trains, and so forth.

00:10:30.680 But they are reliant still on wanting to have an independent supply of oil.

00:10:35.960 And that's one of the sort of pivots that they've made to sort of find stronger alliances,

00:10:40.520 create and establish and grow stronger alliances where that can be the case.

00:10:45.760 The relationship between China and Russia into this period has also been one of a currency

00:10:51.080 relationship.

00:10:52.300 They have agreed to effectively transact in each other's currency along the way.

00:10:57.480 And that's a way of kind of moving that from dollar-denominated base trade or the old

00:11:03.960 petrodollar-based trade that sort of evolved out of the 70s and into today.

00:11:08.120 It was a way to sort of combat that.

00:11:10.780 So yes, that has been one element of strength in terms of alliances.

00:11:15.480 China had also strengthened their alliances in sort of the Asian region in the smaller

00:11:19.080 countries.

00:11:19.960 And they had actually had more conversations until kind of recently that went quite well

00:11:24.480 with Japan, who had been an old adversary of China, in order to sort of solidify their

00:11:30.080 alliances and create a lot of sort of commissions and sort of new agreements between China and

00:11:37.320 Japan into this particular period.

00:11:39.880 There hasn't been anything new in the last sort of year-ish.

00:11:44.000 And there's also been more tension because of the South China Sea and other things going

00:11:47.400 on in that area.

00:11:48.260 But so there's been a sort of back and forth.

00:11:50.860 In terms of the U.S. and the U.K. and the U.K. and the E.U. and the E.U. and China,

00:11:57.240 there's a lot of moving parts in that.

00:11:59.840 I think with the U.K., how Brexit will ultimately look in terms of agreements relative to the

00:12:05.600 E.U. is going to give us more clarity on what happens relative to the U.S.

00:12:09.460 Because what's going on in this six-month period, as the U.K. and the U.S. have been dealing with

00:12:16.080 the virus, you know, three to six, however this lasts, the U.K. had for a while kind of forgot

00:12:22.800 about their Brexit conversations because they were dealing with what was on the ground, which was

00:12:28.560 the virus.

00:12:29.340 Same thing with the U.S.

00:12:30.680 So conversations between them had kind of taken a little bit of a back burner in terms of how trade

00:12:35.140 agreements would look.

00:12:36.020 I think that's going to step up.

00:12:37.340 I think that relationship, which is kind of not really gone anywhere very recently, is

00:12:42.380 going to step up.

00:12:44.380 And I think that China is going to have issues between the U.K. and Hong Kong, Hong Kong and

00:12:50.340 China, China and the E.U., which are going to make that whole arrangement from Stanford

00:12:55.800 to trade, diplomacy, and power a little bit looser than it might otherwise have been, weaker

00:13:02.580 than it otherwise might have been.

00:13:04.140 Do you think China trusts Russia?

00:13:07.380 Well, let me ask it in a different way.

00:13:08.720 Do you think Russia trusts China more than they trust U.S.?

00:13:12.180 I think Russia would be trying to get what they can out of both sides.

00:13:18.500 I agree.

00:13:19.340 I don't know that it's necessarily a trust issue.

00:13:22.260 It's a pragmatic issue, I think, that they would be trying to balance.

00:13:26.320 They are trying to balance.

00:13:27.400 I'm just wondering if they're trying to capitalize off the opportunity right now that there's

00:13:33.280 division between U.S. and China to get in there and say, hey, let's make our power place.

00:13:38.060 Because the one thing China and Russia has in common right now, it seems like they both

00:13:42.320 want to capitalize off of Iran, which is weak right now with the sanctions and the people

00:13:45.620 there.

00:13:45.860 The economy is not good.

00:13:46.660 People are afraid.

00:13:47.380 And the folks of power want to keep the power.

00:13:50.080 That's right.

00:13:50.800 And maybe both China and Russia are saying, let's try to capitalize.

00:13:54.220 We don't care about being good with America, but let's just try to at least take advantage

00:13:57.000 of the oil that's there with the challenges that's taking place.

00:14:00.580 But do you think, are we getting to a point, like, do you remember when China was number

00:14:06.040 seven economy, GDP, and it wasn't like at the top and nobody really looked at China as

00:14:11.180 anything crazy.

00:14:12.820 We just kind of knew China was there.

00:14:15.340 And when I'm saying this, I'm saying 30 years ago, 25 years ago, it's been a couple decades

00:14:19.220 ago, right?

00:14:20.400 And then all of a sudden, they did the Olympics and the opening to the Olympics, which was

00:14:24.420 incredible.

00:14:25.240 I was like, wait a minute.

00:14:26.560 That's the best opening Olympics show I've seen.

00:14:29.800 Do you think India is getting close to the point where they can compete for the top spot?

00:14:35.680 Or do you think they're decades away from being there?

00:14:38.480 That's really interesting because the period that you mentioned in China, how it used to

00:14:42.960 be.

00:14:43.240 So my first big international kind of banking trip was to, well, basically China, Hong Kong,

00:14:52.980 Philippines, Malaysia, that region.

00:14:54.640 We did a kind of central bank trip, me and a couple people from Lehman who were working

00:14:58.540 on some products.

00:14:59.340 And so that was kind of my first international foray because Lehman Brothers wanted to have

00:15:04.440 more treasury government bonds sold into the Chinese central bank at the time.

00:15:09.940 And so relationships was just sort of being created.

00:15:13.800 And there was a power play on Wall Street as to who would basically become the People's

00:15:17.720 Bank of China's, the central bank of China's, you know, partner.

00:15:21.480 And so that was one of the first trips that I went on.

00:15:24.480 And at the time, you know, streets of Beijing were like, obviously it was a long time ago,

00:15:28.740 but the streets of Beijing were just, you know, full of, you know, no outside Westerners,

00:15:36.000 very, very few.

00:15:37.280 I mean, we were, we were, we were very, very unique in that respect.

00:15:41.640 And I remember at the time, the whole, the whole story was, well, this is going to open,

00:15:45.160 like China's going to open.

00:15:46.120 It's going to be a big thing.

00:15:47.840 It's, it's central banks can get involved.

00:15:49.380 It's, it's, it's monetary, you know, sort of authorities are going to get involved and

00:15:53.240 it's going to sort of be the next big thing.

00:15:54.800 And it took decades for it to really become that from an international perspective, but it's

00:16:02.560 not like it wasn't doing it then.

00:16:03.780 It was just on a very sort of back burner, nobody's really paying attention unless you

00:16:07.180 were in it kind of thing.

00:16:08.920 So with respect to, to India, they're, they're ahead of that position because they have been

00:16:14.620 part of the BRICS because they have created, you know, the NDB, the National Development

00:16:18.880 Bank, which is kind of this idea that there would be an IMF or World Bank equivalent to

00:16:23.740 the West that was sort of run by these five major nations.

00:16:27.940 And so they have been, and they have obviously a lot of technological advance.

00:16:33.660 They have a strong population and they're trying to work towards becoming that superpower.

00:16:38.300 I, I don't think yet they're at the level where they're that sort of challenge.

00:16:46.140 I would say maybe they're a decade, decade and a half behind China.

00:16:53.640 Not that they're not growing, but, but to sort of, if you, if you think of the world

00:16:58.040 as having three superpowers, let's say, as opposed to two, which really we have, I think

00:17:05.520 we're, we're about at that trajectory.

00:17:09.460 It could accelerate, but, but that's, that's kind of what's going on.

00:17:12.480 So it's a growing trajectory, but there's a lot of competition, right?

00:17:15.740 From the two big powers and everyone who's trying to stack themselves in between as well,

00:17:19.960 while India is trying to, to, to promote itself, to elevate itself, I should say.

00:17:25.880 Do you think a coronavirus and the stories and the speculation that, you know, whether

00:17:32.640 China released it or not, biowarefare, warfare, whatever you want to call it, some say it

00:17:37.120 came out, some say it's not, let's not debate that because neither one of us are doctors to

00:17:40.480 talk about that.

00:17:41.100 But I'm just saying, do you think that story hurt other countries trusting doing business

00:17:47.640 with China, they kind of distanced themselves a little bit from China, started looking at

00:17:51.240 other places where that could potentially benefit the people of India, where folks may say,

00:17:57.580 look, I, I kind of trust India.

00:17:59.300 They have a university called IIT.

00:18:01.200 They develop incredible engineers.

00:18:03.140 They seem to be better than MIT on a lot of different, you know, scores that I look at.

00:18:07.320 And I remember being in India.

00:18:09.560 I don't know when it was when we went to India and we were there with the chairman of a

00:18:12.920 state bank of, uh, uh, was it 2018 or 2019?

00:18:16.060 We were there at an IIT month, 5,000 engineers, myself and, uh, the chairman of state bank of

00:18:21.500 India, Arundhati Bachari.

00:18:22.960 This woman is a leader amongst leaders.

00:18:25.400 She was on the Forbes top 20 most powerful woman around the world, 240,000 employees.

00:18:29.660 And she said, you know, India writes the most life insurance in the world.

00:18:33.740 I'm like, come on.

00:18:34.840 She says, no, we have the most life insurance policy holder.

00:18:37.180 I said, what's the data?

00:18:39.260 316 million people in India have life in 360.

00:18:43.580 She says, yes.

00:18:44.180 I said, huh, what, what's happening with India?

00:18:46.660 She says, just watch.

00:18:47.700 India is going to come up.

00:18:48.660 So do you think the event of coronavirus hurt others wanting to do business with China and

00:18:55.480 it benefited India to come up because more countries trust India than they do China?

00:19:00.560 I think there's two things on that.

00:19:01.740 I do think that that trust, um, from, from the sort of multinational business community,

00:19:08.020 um, relates into how, where they say is they, where they see stability.

00:19:12.240 So whether or not they trust that China did or didn't, or something happened that we don't

00:19:16.400 know about or, or, or whatever with respect to the virus, um, I think the sort of, uh, result

00:19:22.140 of that, um, would be wanting to do more diversification of their business in, in India, um, for all the

00:19:28.620 reasons you mentioned, and also the fact that it, it has an open society from the standpoint

00:19:32.240 of information flow.

00:19:34.000 Um, so if you look at all of that together, there's, there, there's more of a sort of,

00:19:37.320 um, democratic release of, of, of information, um, within India and then from India to the

00:19:43.620 outside world.

00:19:44.300 And I think that actually, um, is the, is that pivot is, is why India is therefore also more

00:19:51.540 attractive, um, aside from the growth, aside from the technology, aside from the minds,

00:19:56.400 aside from the size, aside from the desire, um, is also that it has more of an openness,

00:20:01.820 um, within itself.

00:20:03.360 And I think that's something that other countries can relate to, um, a lot better.

00:20:07.380 So I think with respect to China, the, the, whatever has gone on or not gone on with respect

00:20:11.780 to the virus, um, it's, it's more indicative of, of the sort of, uh, nature that other countries

00:20:19.520 can have relative to, to be more suspicious of China simply because in general, um, they don't

00:20:25.780 allow the same level of communication flow amongst their people, obviously with what's

00:20:29.980 happening in Hong Kong.

00:20:31.080 Um, and also for international people who are working or, or traveling in and out of

00:20:36.660 China, um, or, or will be once, you know, all the barriers are sort of lifted, um, throughout

00:20:41.020 the world in terms of coronavirus bands.

00:20:42.720 But, but I think that's, that's an issue that is at the core of that transparency issue,

00:20:47.780 that, that freedom of, of communication issue, which is what surrounds whatever happened with

00:20:53.820 the coronavirus.

00:20:54.820 I think that's something that countries and companies, um, do very much consider.

00:20:59.220 Yeah.

00:21:00.220 Because, you know, when you think about, um, uh, uh, superpower military-wise, you don't

00:21:06.160 think India, you don't think about India as somebody that wants to go to war and wants

00:21:10.920 to go, you think about superpower, you think about nuclear, you think about Russia, you think

00:21:14.500 about US, you think about, you know, certain superpower, India doesn't come, India comes across

00:21:19.600 as wanting to be more collaborative to work with.

00:21:22.660 And you're talking about a 1.4 billion, whatever the population is, give or take, I mean, that's

00:21:26.440 not a, and they're focused on education and, you know, it's coming up, uh, their, their

00:21:31.340 prime minister is a strong individual who believes in capitalism and innovation.

00:21:35.420 So it's, it's very interesting to see what's going to happen there with them.

00:21:38.720 But, you know, I sit down with different people and I always watch their reaction on how

00:21:44.180 they feel about China.

00:21:45.260 And I'm curious to know what you're going to say.

00:21:47.320 When I talk to Ray Dalio about China, he has a different angle.

00:21:50.500 When I talk to President Bush about China, different angle.

00:21:52.660 I talk to General Spaulding about China, different angle.

00:21:55.680 Some of them are, we don't trust them at all.

00:21:59.440 Some are very careful on what they say about China.

00:22:02.420 And it's almost like they're uncomfortable because they have business dealings.

00:22:06.060 How do you feel about China and how do you view China yourself?

00:22:09.360 Well, I mean, I don't have business dealings with China myself, so I'll just throw that

00:22:13.000 out there, but, um, I, I studied for the last, um, well, since the financial crisis in particular,

00:22:20.300 I mean, aside from, you know, I mentioned, I've been in China back and forth for decades,

00:22:23.600 but, um, as I have lots of places in the world, but, um, what I, what I specifically look

00:22:30.080 at is the kind of, um, public communication that happens between the U S and China.

00:22:35.620 And, and, and for my, um, angle of expertise, the sort of central bank, the sort of monetary

00:22:40.780 policy, sort of initiatives relative to currency, um, that happened between the two countries.

00:22:46.780 Um, and so with respect to China, um, there was a lot of, um, and there still is talk of

00:22:52.080 whether they, they manipulate their currency or, or what have you to have better sort of

00:22:55.200 trade, um, positions and trade advantages.

00:22:57.420 And I think, um, any country really that, that, that could would, um, to an extent, you

00:23:03.600 know, move their currency up and down to, to help their own, uh, position.

00:23:07.500 Um, and I think we've done that from the standpoint of our 0% monetary policy and the increase of

00:23:15.140 the Fed's balance sheet.

00:23:16.640 China's done it from the standpoint of moving their rates around.

00:23:19.760 Um, and what they consider non QE, which is, um, you know, moving money into their economy

00:23:25.000 or lending money to, to regional alliances so that they become dependent, um, on China.

00:23:31.240 And so I look at more of a standpoint of how money's flowing around and I don't really,

00:23:35.700 um, and, and, and, and you can see from that perspective that there, there are points where

00:23:39.820 China moved its money externally in order to build that strength, build those alliances.

00:23:45.080 And, and then where they've kind of been questioned about over, overplaying that step, overreaching

00:23:51.920 their alliances because of their military might.

00:23:54.160 Um, so from, from the standpoint of monetary policy, um, I think that they have tried to

00:24:00.860 come into the world, but at the same, you know, in terms of the IMF, in terms of trade.

00:24:06.020 Um, but at the same time, I think in terms of their military might, or their sort of, um,

00:24:10.320 suppression of, of what Hong Kong wants to do and, and, and sort of their, their, um, what

00:24:14.440 they've done in the region.

00:24:15.620 Um, I think that's a negative.

00:24:17.040 Um, I think it's a negative for, for the region.

00:24:20.100 I think it's a negative actually for China and for the world.

00:24:24.160 So it's a negative for China and the world.

00:24:26.220 I, I, I, just, just in terms of, I mean, and it's not that, you know, it's, it's that if

00:24:32.060 you have the ability as a country, um, to forge alliances or, or to leverage weaknesses with

00:24:39.760 other countries.

00:24:40.480 And let me talk monetarily, not militarily for a second.

00:24:43.340 And it's, it's, it's one thing to do that, to take advantage of that and to grow and

00:24:46.920 do that.

00:24:47.300 And China has done that over the last 12 years, um, significantly.

00:24:51.340 Um, it's another thing to then overstep, um, your, your sort of military might, um,

00:24:57.920 if U S does this also, I mean, it's a, this is what countries do.

00:25:01.060 They become powerful and there's, there's this like moment, there's multiple moments,

00:25:06.720 but along the way, there are moments where there's a choice to be made, whether sort

00:25:11.680 of maintaining an economic diplomatic, um, alliance is the number one priority or whether

00:25:16.880 they're sort of overstepping from a more, um, yeah, sort of bullying or sort of militaristic,

00:25:22.420 um, pivot.

00:25:23.800 And those things could be back and forth.

00:25:25.540 And I think, I think with respect to China, um, they've had this, this run, um, and now

00:25:32.080 they're in this position where they're overstepping, um, their, the growth in their power effectively.

00:25:39.080 And I think that's going to hurt China.

00:25:43.180 Um, and I think with respect to the U S that then potentially becomes an opportunity to the

00:25:50.400 U S because I think there are lessons to be learned from using.

00:25:53.800 Um, monetary policy, lending investment, um, to push your alliances as opposed to just,

00:26:01.340 let's say investing in markets.

00:26:03.660 Um, so I, so I think, I think both of these superpowers did things in different ways and

00:26:08.380 do things in different ways, but there are lessons on both sides.

00:26:12.440 Before we get into the fed, because I think you were kind of alluding to that, which we'll

00:26:15.580 get to that here in a second is how do you think, uh, uh, president Trump's handled the

00:26:21.360 tariffs, the, the trade, the war with China, how do you, how do you think that's been handled

00:26:25.560 the last 12, 18 months?

00:26:27.920 Well, I think one of the results of the last 12 to 18 months is that, you know, both countries

00:26:34.720 are trading less in general and with each other, you know, so, so, so where, um, we have

00:26:40.700 less of a deficit in trade relative to China because of the tariffs.

00:26:44.260 It hasn't helped our overall trade position in general, um, because the whole overall

00:26:49.420 world, what has been happening as tariffs have been, um, in play, have been sort of the

00:26:54.660 battlefield is that economies have also weakened at the same time.

00:26:59.260 Now, you could argue as, as you could, well, I could argue, um, that economies have, um,

00:27:05.280 been destabilized throughout the world, US and China and every country around and in

00:27:09.560 between, um, because of the uncertainty over tariffs.

00:27:13.200 And I think the uncertainty over tariffs, we have them, we don't have them.

00:27:17.220 They're going to be in a particular part of the industrial chain and a particular part

00:27:20.500 of the supply chain make very difficult for certain businesses.

00:27:23.520 Um, particularly the ones that rely on, um, physical things like steel, like aluminum versus

00:27:29.360 say the technology sectors, which, which don't as much.

00:27:32.360 It's, it's, it's a kind of separate, separate, uh, element of trade relationships, you know, more

00:27:37.760 intellectual property and another thing, but the ones that are more aligned on physical,

00:27:40.740 um, things, soybeans, agriculture, and so forth.

00:27:43.700 Um, it's, it's harder for, uh, countries, but specifically the businesses that are running

00:27:50.620 within those countries to plan, um, as long as there's uncertainty over tariffs.

00:27:55.320 So I, I think that the way in which, um, tariffs have unfolded throughout the world, um, have led

00:28:03.160 trade policy in general to be viewed with just tension.

00:28:07.720 And I think as a result of that, you know, if we just take out the coronavirus for just

00:28:11.600 a second, which is just, you know, smash things right now, uh, further, um, we were looking

00:28:17.440 at slowing GDP growth in the U S, um, that was happening throughout the world as again, not

00:28:22.320 just because of these tariffs or just because of trade, but you know, one is, it's a cycle,

00:28:26.620 you know, one sort of, um, relies on each other, uh, on each.

00:28:30.880 And, um, and I think that that's one of the things that, um, has been the negative of,

00:28:35.560 of this particular, uh, tariff battle is that it's, it's, it seems less planned and more

00:28:44.320 reactive on all sides, really, um, then, then, then sort of a more consistent trade policy

00:28:51.740 could be that farmers that, you know, in, in, in industrial engineers that use steel and

00:28:58.320 aluminum and build bridges or think about infrastructure planning, um, you know, have,

00:29:04.560 have had to deal with.

00:29:05.600 Yeah.

00:29:05.760 I mean, uh, 128 month expansion, whatever the number ones, what, what, whether we hit

00:29:10.240 one 29 or one 28, I mean, that's the all time it's insane to go that many months, assuming

00:29:15.480 it's going to continue.

00:29:16.540 Right.

00:29:17.200 Uh, that's just not sustainable.

00:29:19.160 Right.

00:29:19.380 But, uh, you know, I, I just, what is the alternative though?

00:29:23.080 Meaning when you're saying negotiating with tariffs, uh, when it happened, it hurt a lot

00:29:28.780 of people, both America and other countries.

00:29:30.880 What is the alternative of not pushing China that for decades, none of the presidents, both

00:29:36.340 on the left or the right has pushed China.

00:29:37.960 They're just kind of accepted the fact that a lot of these tariffs have been in place and

00:29:41.560 we've said, we're fine with it.

00:29:42.780 What would be the alternative?

00:29:44.040 Just leave it the way it is.

00:29:45.100 Because whoever, whatever administration that decides to go strong against China, whoever

00:29:50.060 that president is that does it, they're going to have so many opportunities of it backfiring

00:29:57.020 on them.

00:29:57.700 I mean, there's just so many opportunities because you have four years to get it done.

00:30:02.040 And if you take the four years, take one out because one of the years you're going to

00:30:05.700 be campaigning.

00:30:07.120 So you got three years, right?

00:30:08.860 Because that one year, it's so painful.

00:30:11.240 So, and then take the first year out.

00:30:13.400 You really have two years to get it done.

00:30:14.940 Two years is not enough to get something done with China to negotiate the tariffs.

00:30:19.520 And anybody who takes that position, it's going to be disastrous for their reputation.

00:30:24.040 It could be great.

00:30:24.540 It could be bad.

00:30:25.040 So what approach would you have taken if you're sitting, Trump calls you and says,

00:30:31.380 I want you to be one of my advisors when it comes down to the economy on dealing with

00:30:34.760 China.

00:30:35.700 What counsel, what advice would you give when dealing with China on how to handle the tariffs

00:30:40.560 better than the way it was handled?

00:30:42.260 So, first of all, the way it was handled wasn't just about China.

00:30:47.380 There was a lot of tariffs that popped out, you know, to Canada and to Mexico and then

00:30:52.060 to you and then to you and to us.

00:30:53.240 But what happened was just the way of tariffs became very sort of spotty.

00:31:04.020 Shotgun approach.

00:31:04.880 Just kind of like, hey, just put a tariff.

00:31:06.480 I'm going to do this.

00:31:07.260 No, I'm going to do that.

00:31:08.080 No, I'm going to do this.

00:31:09.180 I got it.

00:31:09.600 So it isn't that there weren't certain products that should be protected, you know, on our

00:31:19.200 side and that there are things that we can negotiate in terms of trade policy and in terms

00:31:24.680 of whether we call them tariffs or whether we call them, you know, required, which kind

00:31:28.900 of ultimately happened in the phase one deal, you know, purchases to sort of equate fairness

00:31:34.360 amongst the variety of products that we have.

00:31:36.820 So, you know, you buy a certain amount of our agriculture, we'll do something else in return.

00:31:40.500 That kind of conversation in a more fluid way and around the world, again, because it wasn't

00:31:49.500 just what was happening between the U.S. and China.

00:31:51.120 There was a lot of U.S. and other countries that in which there were these conversations

00:31:55.840 going on as well.

00:31:57.600 And I think that had they been a little more, my suggestion would be to have those conversations

00:32:04.540 be a bit more strategic and sort of fluid from the get go.

00:32:09.380 That isn't to say that everyone does what they say.

00:32:11.780 It's not to say every country's trustworthy.

00:32:14.300 It's not to say everybody will do what they promise to do.

00:32:17.640 However, in the basis of creating an agreement and a trade policy, I would look at what each,

00:32:24.280 you know, what our partners need and what we need from them.

00:32:28.200 I would negotiate on those components mostly.

00:32:31.580 If I am looking at just looking at trade policy with China, I would sort of ring fence that.

00:32:37.140 And I would try to make it phased from the sort of beginning as opposed to, I'm going

00:32:43.480 to do these tariffs till this date.

00:32:45.000 And if you don't do this, this is going to happen.

00:32:46.760 And then this is going to happen.

00:32:48.140 And I understand the nature of the sort of market part of that.

00:32:53.000 But what it creates is a lot of instability in the supply chain all around that as well.

00:32:58.500 And that in general has had, I think, had a deteriorating effect.

00:33:03.660 So it's almost like I, well, almost.

00:33:06.820 It's almost like that deteriorating effect made it harder to have the same impact of the

00:33:12.020 trade policy than it otherwise could have been.

00:33:14.720 So I would have probably sat back, said, take a breath, take 10.

00:33:19.880 What do you actually want to accomplish?

00:33:22.180 Do you actually want to involve, you know, wine from France or whatever?

00:33:26.580 Like, you know, what's the actual focus here?

00:33:29.400 Focus.

00:33:29.680 And then look at a multi-tier, potentially multi-phase agreement that works.

00:33:37.020 That's interesting.

00:33:37.680 And by the way, you know, a part of it is also style, you know, on what his style is.

00:33:42.380 He's got a real estate shotgun approach.

00:33:45.020 You're not giving me that deal.

00:33:45.840 I'm going to take this away from you.

00:33:46.920 I'm going to do this.

00:33:47.500 I'm going to do that.

00:33:48.160 So it's a...

00:33:48.540 Well, that's the classic I walk away, right?

00:33:50.560 It's like, you know, you don't want this deal.

00:33:52.180 I leave the room.

00:33:53.300 You know, deal.

00:33:54.340 Yeah.

00:33:54.580 Absolutely.

00:33:56.340 But on an international arena where people from, you know, the person putting, you know,

00:34:07.660 gas into the tractor of the farmer in some, you know, farm in, you know, Iowa or whatever

00:34:12.060 versus, you know, a multinational executive versus everyone in between, there are different

00:34:19.400 kinds of impacts.

00:34:21.420 So, yes, that is his style.

00:34:24.080 I think history will ultimately look at whether that, you know, was effective or if other

00:34:29.760 styles are more effective with respect to this trade conversation, but I also think

00:34:35.840 that in terms of general diplomacy, there could have been a way to do that walk away, but do

00:34:42.360 it in a, here's our plan, here is kind of what we want to do and actually have it more

00:34:48.680 sort of laid out and discussed as opposed to walking away every time and coming back and

00:34:54.840 walking away and coming back.

00:34:56.240 I think that's where the weakness came into play all around the world from the, from the

00:35:02.800 trade battles, trade tariff battles.

00:35:04.440 Have you read The Art of the Deal?

00:35:05.740 Um, I have not read The Art of the Deal.

00:35:10.000 Oh, you haven't read his book.

00:35:11.000 It's a very good book.

00:35:11.860 If you've not read the book, it's an excellent book.

00:35:13.780 So let me, let me ask another question that has to do with China.

00:35:17.460 Um, so if we're negotiating with China and, um, you know, the president's talking to you and

00:35:26.660 the team is talking and they're saying, look, uh, uh, know me, you just brought up yourself.

00:35:31.800 The currency manipulation is what they do.

00:35:34.160 Okay.

00:35:35.200 And you said that they do currency manipulation, but you also said everybody else does it.

00:35:39.180 Okay, fine.

00:35:39.880 Yeah.

00:35:40.220 Let's just say everybody does it, but we know nothing about what they do because they don't

00:35:43.560 have free press.

00:35:44.780 We have no idea what they're doing.

00:35:46.320 They tell us what their unemployment is.

00:35:47.960 We don't know who's reporting the unemployment.

00:35:50.340 It definitely cannot be 2.8% for the last 20 years.

00:35:53.640 So the reporting of data, there's no integrity in it.

00:35:56.420 You're dealing with one and a half billion people to say you have unemployment of 2.8%.

00:35:59.880 And there's currency manipulation.

00:36:02.860 There is human rights challenges, the data we don't trust, a bunch of other things that

00:36:07.600 we can get.

00:36:08.280 Okay.

00:36:09.280 You think it's fair to negotiate and say, you know, moving forward, this is what we would

00:36:14.640 like.

00:36:15.000 We would like to see you open up China and allow Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn,

00:36:24.660 all our social media platforms to be there for your users so we can feel more comfortable

00:36:29.940 opening up, you know, a business relationship with you and lift some of these tariffs because

00:36:34.620 through the media, with our media networks being there and our social media networks being

00:36:38.420 there, all these Facebook lives and videos, we can see how people are being treated.

00:36:42.600 Do you think that is a point to put in there for negotiation for us to be able to see a

00:36:49.420 little bit more of transparency with their model and how they're treating their business?

00:36:54.860 Do you think it's a fair point to negotiate?

00:36:57.760 Yes, I do.

00:36:58.540 And as I mentioned before, I think one of the main issues with regarding trust, we talked

00:37:04.820 about, you know, so whether it's a coronavirus or sort of beyond that, is that element of

00:37:10.000 openness, is that element of information share, you know, which is better, for example, obviously

00:37:15.700 in India, is that idea of that transparency?

00:37:19.080 Because whether it allows us to see what's happening from a human perspective, from an

00:37:24.980 individual perspective, from a small business, a small business alliance perspective, say

00:37:28.840 between the U.S. and actual, you know, people running, you know, the same forms of shops or

00:37:33.380 restaurants or whatever in China, I do think that that is important.

00:37:38.600 You may have seen this in your trips there, but I find it, for example, I continue to find

00:37:46.420 this interesting, I just had this conversation recently with someone who goes back and forth

00:37:50.500 a lot, is that in Shanghai, for example, and I can't speak to other areas, the Hilton in

00:37:56.260 Shanghai, in particular, has a sort of, you know, clubby thing at the top, and everybody sort

00:38:03.860 of comes in, whether they're in textiles or equipment or technology or programming or whatever,

00:38:11.100 and they all sort of, like, hang out and they communicate with each other, and then they

00:38:13.600 sort of go their separate ways, and it's a very sort of internationalized element of

00:38:17.220 China, and there, you can actually get on Facebook and you can actually Google things.

00:38:21.940 So it's like there's this, and I don't know if that's still the case, this was just in

00:38:25.660 the recent couple of years, but I did find that odd because it was this, there was a separate

00:38:30.500 anti-firewall sort of situation in a particular area, which was particularly critical, and

00:38:37.020 it was in Shanghai.

00:38:38.040 Did you hear that?

00:38:40.160 Which I would not have known had I not physically been there, and I mean, and so there is a capacity

00:38:51.140 to perhaps do what needs to be done when it has a very particular business-focused outcome,

00:38:58.780 perhaps, than from the standpoint of the overall country, and so this was before tariffs, this

00:39:06.040 was before, actually this was, this was when I was writing Collusion, so I would say this

00:39:12.200 was 2016, 2017, probably 2016, actually, was before the election, but the point, the point

00:39:19.380 being that, you know, if you talk about transparency and the sharing of communication platforms and

00:39:25.260 information from that perspective, I think it is important in today's world period, whether

00:39:31.460 that is for business or for humanity, to have that open policy and to request that open

00:39:37.580 policy, and to have that open policy be a criterion potentially for trade agreements.

00:39:43.600 Exactly.

00:39:44.580 That's, that's the part, and I don't know why administrations in the past haven't negotiated

00:39:50.080 in that manner, both on the left and the right, they've just kind of left China alone, and

00:39:54.880 the way we left China alone, we allow them to be a superpower that they are right now number

00:39:59.460 two.

00:39:59.820 It was with the help of America.

00:40:00.960 You take America out, China wouldn't be number two.

00:40:03.820 China needed America to be number two right now worldwide.

00:40:06.280 You know, I say this to you because yesterday an article came out on Business Insider talking

00:40:11.620 about FBI head, I don't know if you saw this or not, FBI head calls China the greatest

00:40:17.500 long-term threat to the U.S. and alleges China plots to steal U.S. data and forcibly repatriate

00:40:24.000 its citizens, and it goes into talking about the Chinese government is engaged in broad and

00:40:29.120 diverse campaign of theft and malign influence, and it can execute a campaign with authoritarian

00:40:34.680 efficiency.

00:40:36.000 They're calculating, they're persistent, they're patient, and they're not the subject to righteous

00:40:39.220 constraints of an open democratic society or the rule of law.

00:40:42.780 So, for me, you know, I'm kind of glad Pompeo, India shut down TikTok.

00:40:47.600 You saw that.

00:40:48.400 India had TikTok there, and you know, one young girl committed suicide, and she was a big TikTok

00:40:52.700 star.

00:40:53.700 India, they just said, let's shut down TikTok because China was able to get into it and

00:40:57.320 pull up all your data.

00:40:58.160 Like, if you use TikTok on your phone and you leave it on, China can go on your phone and

00:41:02.720 pull up any passwords or anything.

00:41:04.340 They just said, oh, we're sorry, we didn't know we had that.

00:41:06.920 And U.S. has 180 million users on TikTok, and Pompeo just said yesterday that they're considering

00:41:12.280 banning TikTok in U.S., which I believe it's a brilliant strategy because this adds to the

00:41:19.880 point of you want us to do business with China, we'll open up TikTok, but you got to open up

00:41:24.240 Facebook, Twitter, all this other stuff when it comes down to you.

00:41:27.200 So, that was a very good perspective you gave at Shanghai Hilton, but did you have a rebuttal

00:41:32.260 to that or respond to that?

00:41:33.160 No, no, I agree that the idea of having a sort of quid pro quo for the sharing of information

00:41:40.940 platforms, the opening of information platforms, I think it's a necessity today, honestly, to

00:41:47.040 have ultimately trustable trade relationships, agreements, and also for companies doing business.

00:41:54.160 Now, it's not like, you know, international companies will be doing business in and with

00:41:57.660 China, so the more, as they are, right, so the more that there's also this sort of entire

00:42:03.360 atmosphere of openness, or at least a more open atmosphere than there is now from the

00:42:09.220 standpoint of these platforms, I think that just levels that whole field.

00:42:14.460 And I think that with respect to China growing as a superpower relative to the U.S., I do think

00:42:22.700 a lot of that, I mean, it did happen from the standpoint of what hurt us into the financial

00:42:29.320 crisis of 2008, and how they sort of capitalized and leveraged our system, our monetary system,

00:42:35.540 our banking system, in order to grow their alliances, and in retaliation kind of to our,

00:42:44.580 at that point, instability inside at home.

00:42:47.500 What are the chances of Trump and his administration using the crisis that took place with coronavirus

00:42:52.340 and blaming it on them to write off the $1.13 trillion of debt that we owe them and just say,

00:42:58.240 we're just not going to pay you back this debt?

00:43:00.140 What are the chances of debt also being used in the negotiation?

00:43:02.920 What are your thoughts on that?

00:43:04.580 So, my thoughts on that are that over the years, there's been a lot of back and forth on how much

00:43:11.640 the People's Bank of China, how much China owns of our treasury bonds, our debt, and whether

00:43:16.940 they will dump them from their side.

00:43:18.600 You know, so there's always been that question, you know, can they do something to us by dumping

00:43:21.060 treasuries, can we do something by them by refusing to pay, which you bring up.

00:43:24.940 So, both sides of that equation, I think, might be discussed, but the reality of the situation is,

00:43:32.960 it would hurt us to not pay, even if it's China, it doesn't matter.

00:43:38.640 Why is that?

00:43:39.380 Because look at it as a full portfolio of treasuries, right?

00:43:43.700 We have a $27 trillion portfolio of treasuries in the world.

00:43:49.380 Japan owns a piece.

00:43:50.620 China owns a piece.

00:43:52.080 Different central banks throughout the world, including the Fed, own a piece.

00:43:55.460 Individuals own a piece.

00:43:56.420 Pension funds own a piece, right?

00:43:57.800 Everyone has a piece of this portfolio.

00:44:00.040 So, just imagine you take out 5% or 10% of a portfolio like that, right?

00:44:04.940 You all of a sudden basically devalue, and this is a little price devaluation.

00:44:09.320 I mean, I'm not even talking about the implicit guarantee or the government guarantee of our

00:44:12.880 treasury bonds or anything like that.

00:44:14.040 I just mean physical, you know, portfolio math.

00:44:17.220 Then all of a sudden, you have a situation where you devalue yourself, your own debt,

00:44:23.640 by either not repaying debt.

00:44:27.040 And China, that was one of the reasons why they didn't, I think, sell all their treasury bonds.

00:44:32.180 They stopped buying as many.

00:44:33.140 That's true, right?

00:44:34.440 So, they already kind of tried to play that.

00:44:36.540 But what they also tried to do is look at their portfolio of treasury securities and

00:44:39.700 say, you know what, if we just dumped them, like the world was saying we might do, that

00:44:45.520 would devalue their portfolio.

00:44:47.720 It would obviously devalue treasury bonds, but it would also devalue that.

00:44:50.800 And it's the same thing for us.

00:44:52.500 If we decide to do anything that calls into question, even with whichever country owns our

00:44:59.140 treasuries, I personally think that that would be detrimental to our own debt, which would

00:45:05.580 make our debt more expensive because there's so much of it, our public debt, which would

00:45:09.140 make it harder for us to run our budget and so forth.

00:45:11.260 Because it only takes 5% to 10% of a portfolio declining.

00:45:14.700 I mean, to just smash like the rest of it from the standpoint of pricing.

00:45:20.180 It's a very different perspective.

00:45:22.100 It's a very different perspective.

00:45:23.240 And I appreciate that insight because it makes you think about, but is there a way to say,

00:45:28.000 you know, return the shares or write it off versus not even wanting to do it?

00:45:36.220 Because if they do, then on the credit market, our reputation is hurt and it's going to hurt

00:45:40.920 us to deal with other nations when we have money that we need, et cetera, et cetera.

00:45:44.200 Because China is not even the biggest holder of our bonds.

00:45:48.960 It's Japan's first place.

00:45:50.180 I have China by like $100 billion or $200 billion.

00:45:53.720 I'm just curious to know if that's going to be used or not.

00:45:56.020 You know, again, I watch, you know how you negotiate, you have 20 different things on the

00:46:01.760 table and you say these seven things I really want and these three things I'm not willing

00:46:07.220 to touch at all.

00:46:08.700 And they say these eight things we really want and these four things we don't want to touch

00:46:12.240 and you kind of, but you don't know that person's, they don't know yours and you kind of assume

00:46:15.680 it.

00:46:16.060 I wonder if that's being used on the table by either party to use it as a motive.

00:46:23.880 And by the way, China may even use it to say, look, here's what we'll do.

00:46:26.320 You all, have we used this much money?

00:46:27.980 Here's what we're willing to do.

00:46:29.220 I don't know.

00:46:29.660 I'm just thinking if they're the level of creativity that's going to get to when they

00:46:32.860 negotiate.

00:46:34.040 I think that's, that's interesting.

00:46:35.480 I think, you know, whether it's on the table or not, and you know, it might be, but, but

00:46:40.000 the reality is China's effectively lent us money and we either pay them back or don't

00:46:46.500 right.

00:46:46.660 I mean, that's, that's, that's the sort of, you know, scenario we're, we're, we're talking

00:46:49.840 about potentially, but, but they, they can choose not to lend us money.

00:46:55.360 They can let their portfolio run down.

00:46:57.520 And that's actually an, that's actually a position of power in terms of debt holding

00:47:04.780 that they have relative to us.

00:47:06.840 Because if we say we won't pay, it hurts us more than if they run down their portfolio

00:47:11.360 and just don't buy more treasuries, which kind of has been what they're doing.

00:47:14.140 As you say, you know, Japan has jumped ahead of China in terms of who has the biggest book

00:47:17.760 outside of the U S actually the biggest book is, is the fed, you know, so years ago, this

00:47:22.520 wasn't even like a thing.

00:47:24.020 So now basically the fed has the same amount of treasuries as, as China and Japan, which

00:47:27.840 kind of dilutes their shares if you will, the portfolio of treasuries.

00:47:32.020 So I think it could potentially be a tactic and it might even be something that's thrown

00:47:35.960 out and that, you know, financial media or, you know, discusses and that could hurt or

00:47:42.360 help the treasury market depending on what side and what day.

00:47:45.300 But right now I think that it would, it would actually harm us, particularly with how we're

00:47:50.180 increasing our debt load into the Corona virus pandemic after the financial crisis.

00:47:54.760 And with the feds balance sheet, you know, just ballooning, um, then I think it would,

00:47:58.920 um, hurt them.

00:48:01.260 So talking about a president who got the bank to write off $900 million of his debt.

00:48:06.740 So I'm just saying, you know, in his mind, if he treats everything as a business and even

00:48:13.220 his tactics of, you don't want to do this for us.

00:48:15.880 25% tariff Mexico doesn't want to do this.

00:48:18.060 25% tariffs.

00:48:19.100 Oh, I'm going to lift the tariffs.

00:48:20.060 I'm sorry.

00:48:20.480 Three days later.

00:48:21.160 Oh, Canada.

00:48:22.100 Oh, I shouldn't have done that.

00:48:23.040 It's like, it's so shotgun, you know, like, uh, it's, it's, uh, but I'm just saying,

00:48:27.680 assuming his reputation and his method of negotiation in the past, I, I, uh, you know,

00:48:33.700 to him, it's only one additional zero, you know, he's only dealing with a couple of zero

00:48:36.720 additional zeros.

00:48:37.440 He's not dealing.

00:48:37.980 That's the only difference for him.

00:48:39.040 He doesn't see it as anything more than that.

00:48:41.080 I believe I may be wrong.

00:48:42.220 Who knows?

00:48:42.560 So let's talk about fed.

00:48:43.980 Let's talk about the fed.

00:48:44.940 Cause you've spoken about the fed before and I've had Daniel DeMartino Booth here.

00:48:49.100 I don't know if you're aware of her.

00:48:50.420 Is she, uh, uh, okay.

00:48:52.560 And we've had other people that we talked about the fed before, but you know, one question

00:48:56.600 for you is the fed has always got a lot of conspiracies tied to it, right?

00:49:01.060 It's always why it got started.

00:49:03.520 Who started it?

00:49:04.760 What was the motive behind it?

00:49:06.540 You know, the whole, uh, Jekyll Island, you know, the whole Jekyll Island.

00:49:10.340 I don't know if you've read the book or not.

00:49:11.860 Maybe I don't know if that's the book you've read or you haven't read that one.

00:49:14.640 So, so I actually spent time at Jekyll Island.

00:49:17.360 I went through the actual physical part of this whole deal.

00:49:21.200 We finally figured this out.

00:49:22.940 What happened to, to actually see for myself as I do, um, when I do research, um, uh, to,

00:49:28.960 to talk to their archivists and actually look at, uh, one of the books that they had,

00:49:32.940 they had guest books.

00:49:33.580 And this is not conspiratorial.

00:49:35.060 It's just a fact.

00:49:35.560 Um, and who signed them and who signed them around 1910 when, uh, the sort of origins of

00:49:41.240 what became the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 were discussed.

00:49:44.440 Um, and I have read, uh, the Jekyll Island book.

00:49:46.740 In fact, I've also read all of the, um, presidential archive of papers from Woodrow Wilson through

00:49:53.360 Taft, you know, before that, um, and also from the Morgan library, uh, when I wrote all the

00:49:57.920 president's bankers.

00:49:58.800 So, so, and, and part of that, Patrick, part of that was to, um, to see for myself, I didn't,

00:50:06.220 like, I wasn't born an expert on the Fed.

00:50:09.120 Um, you know, I, I, I wasn't banking for, for a long time.

00:50:12.160 The Fed and rates were an Alan Greenspan and waiting for what he said was very important

00:50:15.780 when I was, um, involved specifically working in, in, in investment banking.

00:50:19.620 Um, but, but to see what really happened and, um, whatever is said from a conspiracy, conspiracy

00:50:26.720 or what, conspiracy or not, uh, the reality is that the Fed was created out of necessity

00:50:32.780 because there had been a panic in 1907 in New York.

00:50:37.380 Um, and it was a situation whereby the bankers were called upon Morgan and, and, and a number

00:50:42.580 of, of key bankers were called upon to try and calm things down, um, by Theodore Roosevelt,

00:50:48.060 who, who otherwise was a trust buster, who otherwise didn't trust, you know, big business,

00:50:53.180 um, in general.

00:50:54.660 Um, but that was what was required, um, between the president and the bankers at that time.

00:51:01.040 But what it created was an uncertainty among the bankers as to how they could ultimately

00:51:05.820 save themselves in the next crisis.

00:51:08.080 And, and that was one of the impetuses for figuring out how to have a central bank, a reserve

00:51:13.480 of money somewhere that could ultimately, um, and they didn't use these terms.

00:51:16.900 These are, you know, I'm putting today on yesterday.

00:51:20.280 Um, but, but, but be bailed out if it was needed or have the markets be liquefied, um, if it

00:51:26.340 was needed.

00:51:27.120 And that was one of the ways in which the federal reserve ultimately came into being when it

00:51:33.000 came into being in 1913.

00:51:34.680 It, it didn't happen under Roosevelt, didn't happen under Taft.

00:51:37.360 It happened under Woodrow Wilson.

00:51:39.100 Um, but it was a pretty bipartisan push.

00:51:42.300 So it didn't really matter who was president.

00:51:43.880 It was an issue of timing.

00:51:44.840 Um, and that ultimately, uh, created from a meeting that had happened in, at Jacko Island

00:51:51.540 in 1910, um, to the establishment of the federal reserve through that act in 1913.

00:51:56.520 And, and, and the Fed has most recently, um, in the financial price of 2008, fast forward

00:52:03.520 about a hundred years, um, very much helped the markets, the banking system, um, and expanded

00:52:11.460 its capacity, you know, by trillions and trillions of dollars, uh, most recently, um, in order

00:52:17.040 to do that.

00:52:17.680 So, so, uh, so you went to Jekyll Island and the six names, the Nelson Aldrich, the, uh,

00:52:24.560 the Piot, Andrew, Henry Davis and Arthur Shelton, Frank, uh, Vanderlip, Paul Warburg.

00:52:30.480 Did you see all of those names there or no?

00:52:32.780 No, no, no, no.

00:52:33.380 Let me, let me go back.

00:52:34.020 First of all, there is a picture of all of them there, but that's, that came later and

00:52:36.760 that's in the main hall, uh, the main eating area.

00:52:38.960 But the, no, what I saw was Morgan's actual signature as someone who had been at Jekyll

00:52:46.840 Island as one of the club members.

00:52:48.660 So, so the way Jekyll Island worked, um, and, and this, I also got information from their,

00:52:53.400 their, their, their historian, is the way that Jekyll Island worked, it was a club.

00:52:57.360 It was sort of, well, as he said, it was kind of like the first condominium for like, you

00:53:00.880 know, the equivalent of billionaires at the time where they would go with their families

00:53:05.240 predominantly over the end of the year.

00:53:07.080 So like a Thanksgiving, Christmas kind of a period, um, and there would be a tremendous

00:53:11.540 like count of, um, you know, sort of servants to individuals.

00:53:15.660 They basically had all the comforts that they would have sort of at home, but at Jekyll

00:53:18.760 Island, they would close off the avenues to go to Jekyll Island.

00:53:22.460 Um, now there's a highway kind of overhang, but then there, there wasn't, you had to come

00:53:26.860 by boat.

00:53:27.780 They would put posts throughout the town saying, you know, this is closed.

00:53:31.420 This is the period people are going to be here.

00:53:32.940 It's going to be closed.

00:53:33.960 And you had to have a membership.

00:53:35.220 So Henry Hyde, the Rockefellers, um, you know, Morgan, this is not conspiritual.

00:53:39.820 This, this, this is, this is in their history, um, to, to just come to just physically walk

00:53:46.680 onto that property, um, from your boat at the time.

00:53:50.780 Um, and one of the things that happened at the time was you, you could have guests, but

00:53:57.080 they had to be sponsored by an individual who had a club membership.

00:54:04.160 And so what happened at the time was the, the commonality, um, actually of, of JP Morgan

00:54:09.560 was with Aldrich, um, and Aldrich's son, actually, who was, um, a New York banker at the time,

00:54:16.260 but who wasn't involved in the, in the, in the six people.

00:54:19.500 He just happened to have been in New York.

00:54:20.560 He, he became, Winthrop Aldrich became the head of Chase for decades.

00:54:24.400 Um, but at that time he was not.

00:54:27.180 Um, but the point is there was, there was that relationship and, and it was Morgan that

00:54:30.820 actually just had the past.

00:54:32.280 He wasn't there.

00:54:32.960 He wasn't involved.

00:54:33.600 He was not physically at all, um, at Jekyll Island at that time that the origins of the

00:54:39.860 Fed were being discussed.

00:54:41.240 But he was the name on the book that was associated with these individuals.

00:54:46.780 And so, so that's kind of how it, how it came down.

00:54:50.040 They, they would otherwise not have been able to just get physical access onto the, onto

00:54:55.680 the property.

00:54:56.540 And it's like any now, you know, elite club thing.

00:54:59.160 It's like you invite people in or, or they can't come in.

00:55:02.800 You're talking about six men, apparently that control the quarter of the wealth of the world.

00:55:07.100 That's the data that you hear about, you know?

00:55:09.460 So it's, it's a, you, you read about it, but again, a lot of people said it was a spoof

00:55:15.400 about what the author wrote about him.

00:55:17.260 And he said a lot of other things, but it's a story that picked up a lot of attention on

00:55:21.320 how the world wealth is controlled by a few handful of people.

00:55:26.480 How much do you buy into that?

00:55:28.520 Well, so these six people weren't, weren't necessarily all those people.

00:55:32.840 What happened was like Frank Vanderlip, who was one of the people was, was a sort of VP

00:55:36.640 at National Citibank, which is now Citigroup.

00:55:38.980 So, I mean, there are different people that were involved in the major banks at the time.

00:55:43.060 So yes, there, there was an awful lot of money represented at, at that meeting.

00:55:47.860 And, and Nelson Aldrich was the head of what, what we now consider the Senate Finance Committee.

00:55:53.120 And so he, he was a very established senator and he had been going back and forth to Europe

00:55:59.020 around this time anyway, to collect information for Congress to create a central bank.

00:56:04.100 So it wasn't like that, you know, this was all done at the spur of the moment.

00:56:06.520 And this was something that was sort of being done and sort of being analyzed for a while.

00:56:11.520 But what happened was he, the plans, the blueprint that was created at Jekyll Island, that was

00:56:19.620 then presented to Congress in 1910, and it was debated in Congress under Taft, and then

00:56:25.020 ultimately under Woodrow Wilson, those blueprints were presented to Congress.

00:56:30.420 And this is in the congressional archives.

00:56:32.040 This is not, I mean, this just happened.

00:56:34.000 And yeah, I have the footnotes in my book, but I mean, this was something that's actually

00:56:36.980 occurred.

00:56:38.360 Two of the bankers actually presented the idea to Congress initially, because Nelson Aldrich

00:56:46.700 actually had been ill for, for various reasons at the time, or at least that was said at the

00:56:52.560 time.

00:56:52.800 In fact, and this was in the New York Times at the time, he had been hit by a trolley car.

00:56:56.600 If you can even imagine trolley cars going down Madison Avenue.

00:56:59.480 But before he went to Jekyll Island, according to New York Times, he was actually in a trolley

00:57:05.900 car situation.

00:57:06.780 I don't know how badly he was hit, the article, but the point is, so anyway, he was convalescing

00:57:11.080 throughout this period.

00:57:12.340 He did not, because of that or other reasons, actually initially present the plan to Congress.

00:57:17.680 It was presented by two of the bankers that were involved in those six people.

00:57:22.660 So, you know, whatever is said or not said, the facts of the situation was that there were

00:57:30.380 those people, as we know, historically in that room, and as is currently up at Jekyll Island,

00:57:34.480 which is now, you know, a regular resort.

00:57:36.600 It's been converted over the years.

00:57:38.960 But the presentation of the initial blueprint for what became the Federal Reserve was presented

00:57:45.060 initially by two of those people.

00:57:46.460 And ultimately, it was passed several years later with a lot of back and forth from multiple

00:57:53.180 bankers and multiple senators and multiple House of Representative congresspeople to figure

00:57:58.700 out how they could pass it in such a way that it was palatable to sort of the electorate,

00:58:04.200 to the country.

00:58:05.740 And by the way, yeah, sorry.

00:58:07.280 I'm sorry, go ahead.

00:58:08.580 No, I could go on and on.

00:58:10.260 Well, by the way, it's very interesting.

00:58:12.200 So the audience is going to be curious about this.

00:58:14.600 So how much of what how much of what is written in the creatures of Jekyll Island is accurate

00:58:19.920 and how much of it is conspiracy?

00:58:22.000 Well, I think the accurate parts had to do with the travel down to Jekyll Island and how

00:58:32.920 it was sort of done.

00:58:34.440 I mean, it was done in a way to avoid publicity.

00:58:38.760 Of course, publicity was different then than it is now.

00:58:41.140 It wasn't 24-7.

00:58:42.180 It was newspaper.

00:58:43.000 It was totally different.

00:58:43.720 But so it was easy.

00:58:45.000 It was easier to do that.

00:58:46.420 But but the sort of clandestine way in which, you know, the dead of night and all that kind

00:58:49.980 of stuff, it's dramatic.

00:58:51.040 It's kind of more dramatic in terms of the telling of the story.

00:58:55.080 But that did happen.

00:58:56.280 In fact, in Frank Vanderlip's notes and his family has a foundation established library

00:59:05.440 for basically his records.

00:59:07.820 And he was a prolific writer.

00:59:09.380 He had been a reporter, actually, before he became a banker.

00:59:13.420 I did the opposite, actually.

00:59:14.860 Just I was a banker and now a reporter.

00:59:16.940 But the point is that he he actually, as do a number of those families, have have notes

00:59:22.660 and records that they kept very much for sort of posterity.

00:59:25.900 There was a real sense back then, in particular in that part of the country and that part of

00:59:30.360 our history, that they felt themselves to be bigger than themselves in that they had to

00:59:36.980 tell their they wrote a lot about what was happening, much more than happens today.

00:59:42.920 And so the story of going down and the people that went down and how it was done in a clandestine

00:59:49.660 manner was from Vanderlip's own records.

00:59:52.540 Now, he could have been embellishing it.

00:59:54.760 That's entirely possible.

00:59:56.040 I don't know.

00:59:56.620 That was like, you know, he's dead.

00:59:59.180 But that I don't know.

01:00:02.960 And in terms of how that book brought it up, again, it was more dramatic than even the

01:00:09.660 dramatic telling of it by someone who was a reporter slash writer before he became a banker.

01:00:14.380 However, the actual mechanics of the story, the sitting down, the number of days that they

01:00:21.920 were there, and he also wrote about what they ate and all kinds of stuff.

01:00:25.640 I mean, he has some very Vanderlip, not in his own notes.

01:00:31.340 That could have been for effect.

01:00:34.440 I don't know.

01:00:36.520 But the actions that like occurred out of it and the documents that came back to Congress

01:00:43.600 and the fights in Congress over the passage or not passage or what it would look like

01:00:49.060 and how it would go down, that all is pretty much, at least from my telling of it, in that

01:00:56.500 I use the records themselves, information that's accessible to the public beyond the sort of

01:01:03.380 more larger story that has kind of grown up around it.

01:01:06.940 Who do you know that knows as much about the creatures of Jekyll Island as much as you do?

01:01:12.760 Anybody?

01:01:13.240 Have you met anybody who knows us?

01:01:15.020 Because you really went in to find out everything about it.

01:01:18.860 Well, so I did this not just on that.

01:01:20.700 I mean, my book, and this is not, but like all the President's Bankers was like my like

01:01:24.960 work for, I lived and breathed these presidents from, you know, library to library of the presidents

01:01:32.180 and also whoever, whatever historical events sort of intersected their presidencies.

01:01:36.820 In this case, it was Wilson.

01:01:38.780 Well, from Roosevelt to Wilson.

01:01:40.540 And I don't know.

01:01:42.240 I do have Bill Greider's book.

01:01:44.940 So the, I think it's the, I'm going to forget the name now, but it's Bill Greider was obviously

01:01:49.540 a major Fed historian as well.

01:01:52.760 And he's, he's written more about the combination of history and current, well, into mostly the

01:02:01.880 Alan Greenspan days.

01:02:03.000 And so I've, he was one of the sources, well, he, his book was one of the non publicly archival

01:02:11.560 available information sources for, for all the President's Bankers.

01:02:15.460 And so I, in terms of the history, those were probably the two main books out there, the

01:02:24.920 two main authors.

01:02:26.240 Secrets of the Temple.

01:02:27.620 Secrets of the Temple.

01:02:28.860 How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country.

01:02:31.320 Right.

01:02:31.940 So he has a section in there that goes into the history and that, that sort of period and

01:02:36.820 how it was created in the conversations that took place.

01:02:40.080 I specifically read all of Woodrow Wilson's papers.

01:02:43.360 So let me ask you this.

01:02:44.440 There's something I read about what Woodrow Wilson wrote.

01:02:46.820 And it's so interesting that you're saying this because I got it right in front of me.

01:02:50.100 Did he say this or did he not say this based on the research that you did?

01:02:54.240 He said this apparently in signing of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, his book, The New Freedom

01:02:58.820 back in 1916.

01:03:00.080 He said, I'm a most unhappy man.

01:03:02.980 I have unwittingly ruined my country.

01:03:05.180 A great industrial nation is controlled by its systems of credit.

01:03:08.360 Our system of credit is concentrated.

01:03:11.220 The growth of the nation, therefore, and all of our activities are in the hands of a few

01:03:15.160 men.

01:03:16.120 We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and

01:03:20.160 dominated governments in the civilized world.

01:03:23.000 No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and a vote

01:03:29.160 of the majority, but a government by the opinion and durst of a small group of dominant

01:03:34.360 men.

01:03:35.320 Did he say this?

01:03:36.600 So I can't verify word for word what he said, but in terms of his papers, what I found is

01:03:47.640 that he said a portion of what you read.

01:03:50.940 And that, and that in terms of the actual, and I could probably turn around and get the

01:03:57.620 quote or send it to you, but in terms of actually what he wrote, or that was compiled in the

01:04:03.900 presidential library of Woodrow Wilson, it's not verified.

01:04:08.140 However, that doesn't mean it didn't happen, that he didn't say all of that as that vote

01:04:14.060 goes, but it means that it isn't necessarily captured in the papers that are in the presidential

01:04:23.160 combination of Woodrow Wilson's...

01:04:27.060 Is it relatively close to what I read, meaning...

01:04:31.380 It is very...

01:04:33.140 Okay.

01:04:34.320 Sorry.

01:04:35.160 No, I'm saying, is it close, is the writing that you have, is it close to what I read,

01:04:39.940 relatively close to the same beliefs?

01:04:41.600 It is relatively close, yes.

01:04:43.700 Wow.

01:04:44.120 So, so he regretted the decision of the Federal Reserve, the Fed being put together.

01:04:50.300 He, he regretted the idea of the Federal Reserve.

01:04:56.360 He didn't regret that it was put together, and I'll tell you why that distinction, just

01:05:01.080 to be sort of historical.

01:05:04.120 In, in the wake of World War I, so World War I begins, he's in a situation where he's running

01:05:12.860 the country, trying to keep the U.S. basically out of World War I, in the beginning of it,

01:05:18.840 right?

01:05:19.620 We're, we're a nascent country, trying to become our own power, but like way, way new

01:05:25.680 in the whole game.

01:05:27.500 He actually relied on the Federal Reserve and the bankers to work together when ultimately

01:05:35.940 he was pushed into or decided, or however you look at it, going into that war.

01:05:42.860 And, and part of that decision was based on the reliance of the bankers on the Fed, right?

01:05:54.140 They did just create this new thing, but they hadn't used it.

01:05:57.740 They hadn't needed to use it.

01:05:58.760 He didn't need to use it, right?

01:06:01.100 And all of a sudden, we have the need to raise money to, to be a part of a war, or at least

01:06:11.480 to fund our allies.

01:06:12.540 The first thing we did was fund our allies, not enter the war.

01:06:15.860 So the UK, France, and, and then we ultimately were involved to a later part of that war.

01:06:21.280 So, so in the beginning part, he relied on actually the, the Morgan relationship just

01:06:27.040 because it happened to have been involved in financing, just, just physical percentage

01:06:31.620 wise, um, of war related, um, activities.

01:06:34.460 And then some other banks because of war related bonds that then people bought to, to finance

01:06:38.780 part of the war.

01:06:39.700 Um, but, but he did rely on it at that point, um, as the backstop for the banks.

01:06:46.080 So, I, I mean, I don't, it, he, it could have been, um, a situation where he definitely

01:06:54.280 talked about being concerned about having an elite group of bankers or a fed running the

01:07:01.340 finances of the country.

01:07:02.800 However, also in a situation where he believed it to be sort of expeditious for policy kind

01:07:13.680 of didn't.

01:07:14.880 Um, so it's, it's, it's just, it's just not entirely black or white in that respect.

01:07:20.280 I think he was a very intelligent president.

01:07:23.100 He did things right and he did things wrong, right.

01:07:24.840 As they all do.

01:07:25.780 Um, but I think, I think he weighed that.

01:07:28.180 I don't know him.

01:07:29.340 This is just from my readings, obviously.

01:07:31.320 Um, I think he weighed the benefits with the negatives, um, as, you know, as the situation

01:07:41.040 kind of like presented itself and war was a big situation.

01:07:44.880 Um, that's kind of like saying Bezos, Buffett, Gates, you know, uh, Ellison, a handful of

01:07:51.340 these guys make all the decisions in the world.

01:07:53.800 You know, it's, it's the Walmart family to be able to do that, but America's in so much

01:07:58.340 debt that America goes to billionaires to bail them out.

01:08:01.060 And, and, and Chase was a powerful man at that time to be able to, you know, can you imagine

01:08:06.980 a person bailing out a country and supporting out that's, that's a weird place to be, to

01:08:12.300 have that kind of wealth.

01:08:13.680 Well, I mean, 1893, 19, you know, you had, you had, you had those families, um, you know,

01:08:19.920 particularly the, you know, the mortgage, you, you had them have more money than the

01:08:24.640 government.

01:08:25.580 And we, even when you talk about basis on those guys today, you still have that balanced

01:08:31.420 to a very large book of treasury bonds and a very large, um, sort of economy.

01:08:39.240 We didn't have that as a nation back then.

01:08:41.580 So the power actually was quite more acute back then, um, because it was concentrated

01:08:49.460 relative to what the government had in, in a much, much greater quantity.

01:08:54.140 I mean, you can't imagine president Trump calling up, well, Jamie Dimon and saying, can

01:08:59.260 you loan me out of like your personal money?

01:09:01.040 Um, you know, something to help me with this whole China negotiation thing, right?

01:09:05.080 I mean, it doesn't happen today.

01:09:07.080 But back then, you know, the, the, the largest trust buster, you know, from a reputational

01:09:13.920 perspective and, you know, he's on Mount Rushmore, Teddy Roosevelt had to, he sent his treasury

01:09:20.220 secretary to do it, but he had to ask Morgan for, for help.

01:09:24.600 So obviously it's a different time.

01:09:26.140 We were not as powerful.

01:09:27.240 We were not as thick.

01:09:28.280 We were not as strong.

01:09:29.280 We didn't have the kind of revenues that we had.

01:09:31.140 We didn't have it even have the tax system yet.

01:09:33.500 When the first taxes was what, what year?

01:09:35.320 1913 wasn't, uh, when we first had our 1913, give or take.

01:09:40.760 So you're talking about, there is no revenues coming in for him to be able to do anything.

01:09:45.200 So it makes sense.

01:09:46.840 It makes sense for the richest people to be the people that you got to go to, to give

01:09:50.340 you the money.

01:09:51.000 Do you think the fed did more good or bad to America?

01:09:57.040 Over history or no history, over history.

01:09:59.720 Um, well, I, I think over history, um, the fed wasn't, though it was powerful, it wasn't

01:10:09.140 as powerful as it's become recently.

01:10:10.680 So it has done a disservice.

01:10:13.380 I think recently, I, the last, really the century, uh, more so because it's been the

01:10:21.120 backstop, um, of what it considers to be liquidity or part of its dual mandate of, of,

01:10:27.780 you know, achieving sort of price and, and, um, unemployment stability and in doing so

01:10:33.980 has created a real financial hazard, um, in terms of the cheaper rates and the buying

01:10:40.120 of right now, every single type of security.

01:10:42.720 Um, and also doing that in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008.

01:10:46.280 So it's, it's taken out, um, you know, we talked about transparency before, um, in a different

01:10:51.340 manner, it's taken out sort of price transparency from the markets and also, um, the drive to

01:10:58.080 use capital, um, for the purposes of, of, of more infrastructure, more production, um, individuals,

01:11:05.260 employment, growth, development, and so forth, because capital by virtue of having been backstopped

01:11:11.180 its risk, um, that the banks had, you know, imbued upon us in financial crisis of 2008, before

01:11:16.940 that, um, going into this period, um, has been backstopped by the Fed. And what that's created

01:11:21.920 is this, um, ultimately, I think unstable environment where the Fed has to either continue to keep

01:11:29.020 doing what it's doing in more magnitude, um, which it did this coronavirus pandemic versus

01:11:33.820 the financial crisis, um, or things are going to collapse. And I think in the history of the

01:11:39.000 Fed, there was more, um, external ups and downs in the economy, but there was more of a sense,

01:11:46.100 if you look at the, you know, post late forties, fifties, sixties, into the seventies, there,

01:11:49.880 there was a, there was a sense of developing the country, whether that was from the standpoint

01:11:53.940 of, you know, highways, um, of, um, infrastructure of bridges, of roads, of highways, of hospitals

01:12:00.340 at the time, a lot of building was done in our country, um, in the middle of the last century.

01:12:04.300 And that's because that's where capital decided it could get a return. It was for other reasons

01:12:08.920 too, right? But, but, but from the standpoint, we just talk about sort of, you know, capitalism

01:12:13.120 and the Fed's risk and how that's destabilized the economy, which ultimately hurts the population,

01:12:18.200 real people and creates this disconnect between the financial markets and the real economy.

01:12:24.080 I think it's been a negative. It looks good when there's a real crisis at that moment to throw money

01:12:29.920 at the problem, but it doesn't actually sustain the economy beneath that problem. And it doesn't

01:12:39.460 fix the economy, not that it's a job, but it doesn't allow for the fixing or the sustainable

01:12:45.580 planning of the economy, um, because of that. So I think it's done more harm than good in this

01:12:51.960 century. And I think it's a toss up, um, in parts of last century, simply because other things were

01:12:59.420 going on from an economic growth perspective that kind of competed with what the Fed was doing with

01:13:06.600 respect to at that point, mostly interest rates. I think a lot of people are going to agree with

01:13:12.200 you on that. I think many people would agree with you on that, no matter what side of the aisle they're

01:13:16.620 on. And, uh, but we're at a point of no return. What can you do at this point? Meaning if we wanted

01:13:22.400 to, we're in too deep to do anything about it, to make a change right now. You know, sometimes you

01:13:28.600 talk to these bigger companies and you say, AIG, your technology sucks. You got to change it. Take us four

01:13:33.080 years to change it. Oh my God. I can't wait four years, but we're too big. We're so big. It's not

01:13:37.520 like a smaller nimble company. Like when America was smaller, a little bit more nimble to make

01:13:41.580 changes. We're at a point of no return, but who, who would hate the most? If America were to go back

01:13:51.760 to gold standard, who would hate it the most? Who would say absolutely not? Who would be against it?

01:13:56.840 Uh, wall street, the banking community would be against it. And here's why. Um,

01:14:03.500 and, and I don't see us for the record going back to a gold standard or, um, yeah, just,

01:14:11.440 I just don't see that because of this or among other because of this, because the banking community

01:14:16.580 having established a reliance on the ability to have our currency created when it's needed,

01:14:24.820 fed can grow its books, fed can move the level of our currency up and down. Um, so there is that

01:14:30.940 symbiotic relationship between wall street, the major bankers, major financial institutions and

01:14:35.200 the fed it's most tight between those two groups than it is between, you know, Facebook and the fed

01:14:43.200 or Google and the fed, you know, there's a very, there's a very strong relationship between those

01:14:46.900 two. And the reason, um, that in the seventies, there was such a push to get off of the gold

01:14:53.740 standard, uh, among other things. And this, you know, this, this is something that was building

01:14:59.220 from, um, when it happened in 1933, but then we went back on, we went back off is that the banking

01:15:04.140 community back then, I also have this in the book, uh, the banking community back then really

01:15:09.400 pushed Nixon to ultimately did it. Um, but really pushed him to reconsider having a gold standard.

01:15:18.880 And one of the reasons, in other words, to get off it. Um, and one of the reasons for that was

01:15:23.180 that they couldn't really, um, grow and expand from their own capital perspectives with their own

01:15:29.780 backstop, the fed, or just the idea of moving money in general, if it was tied down, if it was tied

01:15:35.880 to something physical, if it was tied to something that other nations, other actors had more or as

01:15:43.300 much control of as they did. And so the idea of floating off of it, and the idea of having solely

01:15:50.420 a currency based on sort of a fiat nature to a currency is actually very palatable. If as a bank, you

01:15:58.040 have a call on that currency. And with gold, it would be gold was more constraining. Um, and I think

01:16:05.600 that's something that actually presidents have said on, on both sides since then. Ben Bernanke, as, as

01:16:15.600 the head of the Fed, was very much against the concept, even though it was brought up in the wake of the

01:16:19.760 financial crisis, because gold was going up, the dollar was sort of hobbling along, things were sort of

01:16:24.440 crippled. Um, he, he went on record in front of Congress and, and, and defended even the possibility of

01:16:31.600 returning, uh, to a gold standard. I mean, so did, so did, um, the Obama administration. I mean, this was

01:16:37.020 some, but it's more because of the banking community, um, that would hate it the most.

01:16:41.600 Let me ask you, if we are on the gold standard, is quantitative easing possible?

01:16:49.300 It's much harder for that same reason. Is it possible? It's possible if we're not a hundred percent

01:16:55.300 on the gold standard, right? Because you have that leeway. Let's just say if we are a hundred

01:16:59.640 percent, it's not possible, right? It's not possible. You can't create gold, right? So you

01:17:04.460 can't, you can't elasticize gold or the relationship of gold to your currency because you can't,

01:17:11.720 you can't create it. Yeah. It keeps a nation disciplined though. I mean, it's a,

01:17:19.120 do you think the right thing is to be on gold standard? Is that the responsible right thing for

01:17:24.120 the future of a nation? I think simply being on the gold standard today, given the sort of

01:17:31.980 globalized nature of today and currencies and sort of where they interact, um, I think would be,

01:17:37.640 it would just be difficult to actually achieve. I do think a portion, if we looked at sort of composite

01:17:43.460 currencies, I think a portion of gold, um, is useful in, in restraining that sort of, we can grow

01:17:49.740 a balance sheet as much as we want. We will be here to buy all your mortgage-backed security

01:17:54.100 securities, your asset-backed securities, your commercial. Yeah. We, we will, we, we can't

01:17:57.820 have that. Um, it, it would act, I think, as, as a way to contain that sort of balance sheet blow up

01:18:06.360 and QE, which I think would ultimately be better because it would force, um, sort of economic

01:18:13.920 decisions that are based on real capital being available right now, as opposed to manufactured

01:18:19.860 capital being available for markets whenever. Are you, are you someone who studied the, uh,

01:18:28.060 Jay, you sound like when you go into topics and you're obsessed about it, you fully go study

01:18:32.420 everything. Are you someone that ever got any, uh, interest in the JFK assassination or not at all?

01:18:38.080 That wasn't something that intrigued you much? Um, it's interesting. I do, I do cover, um, in,

01:18:43.920 in all the president's bankers, his, his assassination, but not from this, not, not in a sort of deep dive.

01:18:48.960 I, I more looked at, um, his relationships to, to the banking community, um, to, to what he said

01:18:55.460 with respect to Latin Americans who are opening the country and borders and everything else. And so I,

01:18:59.940 I didn't, um, I, I don't, it's, it's not my area. Okay. Yeah. I just curious, you know, if you went into,

01:19:06.640 um, the, the people who were not happy about the direction he wanted to go with fed and gold and

01:19:12.200 all that, and there were not, I did look at the one, um, comment about, um, that because there was

01:19:19.620 such a, cause there's so much out there. There's so much sort of inquiry over, over the concept of,

01:19:25.520 you know, was it the fed was the goal was that he wanted to direction. Um, but, but sort of in a,

01:19:30.480 in a, an unlimited, um, way. Um, so I, I, again, I can't really,

01:19:36.260 um, fair enough. So we're not going to fit. I thought we were going to figure that out today.

01:19:41.080 No, I was, I was hoping the world, I was on the grass, you know, though I, I got it. I was there

01:19:47.820 cause I was looking up, you know, sort of the possibility of, but it just didn't fit into the

01:19:52.280 overall structure of, and it was a black hole. It would have been a very deep black hole. I would

01:19:56.820 have never, I agree with you. Yeah. I've probably interviewed 15. Mario, how many people have

01:20:03.920 been interviewed on the topic of JFK assassination? I don't, I mean, from people who held the brain

01:20:09.660 in the autopsy room to Clint Hill, his secret service to, you know, agent, but it, it's a black

01:20:17.360 hole that'll last a lifetime. And when we had Robert F. Kennedy is, uh, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

01:20:22.860 on, and I asked him about how much investigation he did. He said he wrote a book about it. And he

01:20:26.820 really went down the rabbit hole. If you've not seen that interview, the last 30 minutes is very

01:20:31.200 interesting. So final thing, your topic to touch on before we go into the speed round is Europe,

01:20:37.600 yourself, do you consider yourself a capitalist? Would you say you're a capitalist? You believe

01:20:43.080 in capitalism? I believe in, uh, fair capitalism. Do you believe in socialism? I also believe in

01:20:52.220 democratic socialism. So what do you think is too much taxes to? So, so I asked the question more

01:20:59.160 with numbers. So you're a data person and, and I've, uh, looked at this a lot. I'm curious to know

01:21:04.200 what you're going to say. Let's take aside capitalism and let's take aside socialism. Let's

01:21:08.960 not give it any labels. Let me ask this question. I make a hundred thousand dollars a year. How much

01:21:16.940 money is too much for me to pay the government in taxes?

01:21:20.300 What should, what should the ban be? I, I think that depends on where you live making that money,

01:21:27.720 um, for one thing. So you're a hundred thousand dollars in New York versus your hundred thousand

01:21:32.040 dollars. Um, federal taxes, just look at it from a federal tax standpoint. Don't, don't break it out

01:21:37.400 with state. So a state, California, 13, three, uh, if I'm in Tennessee, zero, if I'm in Texas, zero,

01:21:43.060 Florida, zero, just assume federal, I make a hundred thousand dollars a year. How much is too much

01:21:48.920 taxes for me to hand over to the government for the hard work that I put in? How much is too much?

01:21:53.960 Of that full hundred? Um, again, it depends what you get back for, given what we get back for it.

01:21:58.640 Um, here, um, I think the 33, 40% level is, is fair. Okay. But so $1,000, that's on a hundred

01:22:08.940 thousand dollars. So, so that's on a hundred thousand. Okay. How about a million dollars?

01:22:13.240 I think, uh, I think on a million dollars, I think there could be, I, I, I agree with the sort of

01:22:18.560 proportional, um, tax percentage on that. Um, so if I say 33 and a third or 40% is a max for a

01:22:27.820 hundred thousand dollars, um, I could see that as like the first hundred thousand dollars. Um,

01:22:33.080 and then sort of a gradient in a slightly lower direction, get up to the million, but, but still

01:22:38.240 taxing, you know, that is a proportional amount. So up to a hundred thousand dollars, 33 and a half

01:22:45.760 percent. Okay. Up to a quarter million dollars. Let's just say you're saying 40%. If I'm making

01:22:51.560 million up, uh, what should be my taxes a million up? Well, again, I think you should do that same

01:22:57.440 40% or whatever, whatever the grid is. Okay. Fair enough. Got it. So 33 and a half all the way up to

01:23:04.000 40. Right. Fair. Okay. So, okay. So then the states, the state you're in, the state I used to be in,

01:23:13.840 you're in California. I'm in Texas now. Your state is 13, three. Do you think that's too much to be

01:23:19.880 living in a state of California? Um, well, there are certainly taxes in California. I, um, I, I,

01:23:27.760 I do pay them a lot of them. Um, but I also think, um, one of the things California does,

01:23:36.480 um, which other states don't do quite as much as it, it sort of does referendum out the things that

01:23:41.760 people have to spend their taxes, the things that, um, are, are, are voting and people can vote on to

01:23:48.000 basically decide where their taxes go. Yeah. This referendum is on the ballot, right? It's,

01:23:52.400 it's kind of the equivalent of, so it's like, if I'm getting stuff for my marginal proportion or

01:23:59.280 additional proportion of, of taxes, um, I think that's, and a state does that well or a nation does

01:24:06.560 that well, if you sort of move out of California, um, I, I think that's a good thing. Um, and so

01:24:12.640 at a certain level of, of, of earning, um, it's not as necessary, but for sort of individuals on the

01:24:20.320 ground where, you know, there's, there's health concerns, there's education concerns, there's,

01:24:24.000 there's, you know, safety concerns, all of that. I think money needs to come into the system to be

01:24:29.540 able to sort of make it, um, run. California is taking that to a whole different level and they're

01:24:36.940 losing a lot of people, especially the younger hungry people, not the people that already made

01:24:41.500 their money because there's a different story between your money making years versus you deciding

01:24:47.360 you take your money to a place. For instance, I was in Monaco for our 10 year anniversary, my wife

01:24:51.160 and I, we went there and you know, they, they're the popular, the city is smaller than Central Park,

01:24:57.540 right? And the life expectancy in Monaco is the highest in the world. People live 89 years. Yeah. This

01:25:03.100 is after they made their a hundred million dollars and they moved, moved to Monaco. That's different.

01:25:06.980 You don't see a 22 year old saying, I'm going to go make my money in Monaco, right? They're going

01:25:10.660 to go to a different place as a money making years of your life, 25 to whatever the number is going

01:25:17.820 to be 55. Let's just say where you're willing to play offense and go out and work the 12, 16 hour

01:25:22.600 days. Um, do you think it's fair, the kind of taxes a state like California is passing down to its

01:25:29.380 people? Um, again, I think for the people just starting out and the people making less, um, that I would

01:25:38.740 equate, you know, sort of lower that tax relative to people making more of the people you're talking

01:25:42.960 about who have more, um, who, um, who have more to be taxed, um, than someone just coming in. I mean,

01:25:50.740 I started out in New York city, um, where like my entire paycheck went, I mean, I said, obviously,

01:25:58.640 you know, I started out at Chase as an analyst. I mean, my paycheck basically went to taxes and my rent

01:26:02.520 and that was, that was like it. Um, so, so, so I do think that it does matter. Like you say,

01:26:08.120 you know, whether you're coming in early, um, in your, in your life and your career and your

01:26:11.800 money-making situation, or if you're someone who works on tips, or if you're someone who works

01:26:15.920 multiple jobs, or if you're someone who works gig jobs, um, that, that I do think, um, it's,

01:26:21.760 it's better to have a lower tax rate for, for those people to get them into the economy and to help

01:26:26.500 them build that sort of stability relative to people who, who have made more or, or have more.

01:26:32.200 That's what I was talking about in terms of a proportional, uh, sort of taxing because,

01:26:36.460 because that, that, that makes them stay. Um, and it also brings a foundational kind of economic

01:26:43.280 stability to those, those people. And therefore ultimately it, it goes forward into the revenues

01:26:48.960 of a state of a city like LA. Um, if you have the people at the bottom, you know, able to move.

01:27:00.280 Well, I mean, I, you know, uh, it's, it's interesting you say that. And I agree with that. When I lived

01:27:04.420 in LA and I would go down that four or five every day, I would sit, I'm like, okay, let

01:27:09.360 me get this here. What the hell am I doing? Spending two hours a day on the fricking four

01:27:13.060 or five freeway. I landed one night, one day at three 30. I wanted to go from LAX to Rafi's

01:27:18.780 place to eat. It's 18 miles. It took two and a half hours to go there. I would not, what

01:27:23.420 am I doing to go two and a half hours in 18, 20 miles to go to a restaurant? So, and I moved

01:27:29.600 to Texas and I had a guy sitting next to me who was a socialist. He's not a capitalist

01:27:33.900 and we were driving and he says, man, I don't like the fact that we have to pay the toll

01:27:38.900 here in Texas. I said, well, the way Texas works is you don't pay state taxes. If you

01:27:44.220 don't want to use the toll, then don't use it. Take the streets. You don't have to pay

01:27:47.600 the tax. But in Texas, you pay taxes for things you use in California. You pay for things you'll

01:27:53.500 never use. Like they had an express road here in Texas, Dallas. And I would pay the money

01:27:58.800 to go through this express, but there's only two cars. And I'm like, I'll pay this. No

01:28:02.360 problem. I'm able to go past 300 cars. I never saw that in California. So when you're talking

01:28:07.320 about, and by the way, this is a man that left California at 37 years old, prime money

01:28:11.960 making years. And I'm going to be making money for another 20, 30 years. And that could, they

01:28:15.880 could have gotten a lot of those taxes, but they, they abused it. And I'm seeing a massive

01:28:19.700 exodus with a lot of younger other people that relate to what I'm saying. So going back to

01:28:23.700 you said you're, you're, you're believing fair capitalism. I think that's the word

01:28:26.980 you use. I don't want to put words in your mouth. I think you said fair capitalism and

01:28:31.020 you believe in democratic socialism, socialist, socialism, which is an element of what Bernie

01:28:36.600 talks about. But Bernie also talks about 70%. And you were supportive of Bernie. I think

01:28:41.940 you guys did some work together. He relied on you on some of the economic stuff. What are

01:28:46.640 your thoughts when we're talking about 70% of taxes and just bashing rich people, the top

01:28:52.540 1% of America, they're just so this, and they're doing this and they're doing, oh my gosh,

01:28:57.640 you feel guilty to talk about the fact that you make some money. There used to be a time

01:29:01.160 people admired successful people. I mean, you're somebody that's made millions of dollars. You're

01:29:05.680 somebody that's very successful. You're somebody that essentially is top 1%. If you worked at Goldman

01:29:10.780 Sachs as a top person, you are 1%. What's wrong with going to the 1%? And here's the thing.

01:29:16.520 I don't want to be in a Bernie bash moment because I truly believe a Bernie against the Trump

01:29:20.340 stood a better chance than a Biden against the Trump. Because at least you know what Bernie

01:29:24.020 stands. And that's one of the things I respect about Bernie. Bernie's Bernie. You don't know

01:29:27.800 where Biden's at. When I looked at Bernie, I'm like, you know what? It doesn't matter if I disagree

01:29:31.640 with this guy. And I respect the guy that has his own ways of fixing things. And he doesn't flip

01:29:37.400 flop. And I would have loved to see those two guys going at it. But unfortunately, I don't think

01:29:42.200 we're ever going to see that, although it would have been incredible debates people would have tuned

01:29:46.240 into. So going back to it, I watch you. I've watched your videos. And I've watched your interview

01:29:51.960 with Bernie that you guys did, I think, in 2013 or 2016. I don't know what it was. It was many,

01:29:56.240 many years. 2009. 2009. I watched that as well. I watched a lot of your work. You seem very reasonable.

01:30:02.220 You seem fair. You seem like you're able to stay in the middle and kind of hear both sides of the

01:30:07.760 argument out. How does someone like you, as reasonable you are, get behind 70% for rich people?

01:30:16.240 So the work I did with Bernie was mostly on the Fed and the idea of, and on Wall Street. So the idea

01:30:23.460 of basically creating, going back to fairness, you know, sort of an auditing path, a transparency

01:30:29.140 path, seeing what the Fed was doing, where it went, who was getting the most benefit. And this ties in.

01:30:34.120 And also from the standpoint of Wall Street banks, to what extent were they basically creating

01:30:39.280 securities and, you know, that was hiding the risk that ultimately we had all seen in the economy

01:30:45.300 and the financial system, which I believe still exists. It's been papered over. The Fed's thrown

01:30:50.120 money at it. So it's deeper in the system, but it's there. And I think that, you know, so that's

01:30:54.840 what I'm talking about when I talk about a fair environment. From the standpoint of 70% for all of

01:31:02.880 rich people, you know, if you take someone and, you know, wherever you calibrate that number,

01:31:09.640 and you say 70% of all of your income is gone, I do think from an income standpoint, not a wealth

01:31:17.780 standpoint, I think that's very high. From a gradient, which is where I would disagree with

01:31:24.620 an absolute level like that. What I'm saying is that there should be some sort of a gradient

01:31:30.320 between someone more wealthy paying more of the initial part of their income relative to,

01:31:38.600 you know, sort of a number that is that high. So it becomes proportional. You're not paying 70%.

01:31:43.920 I don't believe it's necessary to pay 70% of your income. But I'll say this too. I think companies

01:31:50.800 should pay more in taxes to avoid some of these situations in terms of getting money into

01:31:56.500 the budget of our country, into reducing the deficit of our country, which of course now

01:32:00.780 has grown because of the virus. And it does grow because of different crises. I think that

01:32:05.700 rather than not paying taxes into the revenue of the Treasury Department, which right now companies

01:32:12.160 pay about 10 to 13% of the full amount of revenue that goes into the into our coffers as a nation,

01:32:18.680 it used to be much higher than that. There's maybe a happy medium. But because they're not paying as

01:32:24.740 much just mathematically, there's there's a greater amount to be covered in order to run

01:32:30.500 the country. And if there's a greater amount to be covered in order to run the country, and it's not

01:32:34.920 coming from growth, which I think would be the better way to do it, you know, talk about economic growth

01:32:40.860 earlier, then having a proportional tax system allows some of that to be retrieved, not not not all

01:32:51.740 of it, not making up for companies not putting as much in, and not necessarily going to that absolute

01:32:56.960 level for everyone who is wealthy in terms of their income. But I do think there's there's there's

01:33:04.980 there's a give and take there. I think that's a high number. I don't I don't. But but I also think that we

01:33:12.580 have to, as a nation use that money, whatever it is, for things that actually sustain economic growth,

01:33:20.880 and companies and individuals and rich people could be doing that. It's not to say that that's

01:33:25.440 not happening. But but to the extent that taxes are taken out, they should give benefit to the

01:33:33.220 overall country, and the overall growth of our country. And I think that helps both the people at

01:33:37.820 the bottom, as well as those who are wealthier, because you just you just have better roads,

01:33:43.820 like it doesn't take it might take you two and a half hours to go anywhere. Once Coronavirus is over

01:33:48.200 out of LA to anywhere else that could still happen. But but the idea is that you have a more efficient

01:33:52.460 system, whether it's technological or infrastructure wise, because money is going into things that

01:33:57.320 everyone can use, not just rich, not just poor, but all of us.

01:34:02.720 And you think governments are being efficient right now with what our taxes?

01:34:06.960 No, no, no. So why would why would taxpayers? Why would taxpayers feel confident constantly

01:34:14.960 paying more taxes, while the government can go out there and print money and quantitative easing

01:34:20.520 give it to whoever they want. And I'm sitting here working my ass off, making 80 grand a year 100 to

01:34:27.360 whoever it is $150,000 a year and barely seeing my kids. And I'm seeing them being bailed out. But I have

01:34:33.120 to pay 50% of my taxes to you and I'm not seeing the roads getting better. I'm not seeing streets getting

01:34:38.120 better. I have a very hard time.

01:34:41.120 That's exactly the point. That's exactly the point. The the fact is, we shouldn't pay taxes into

01:34:47.680 this massive quantitative easing money creation into just sort of a market perspective rather than

01:34:54.160 building the roads or, or having faster trains or whatever it might be or having better hospitals or

01:35:00.060 more efficient, you know, testing system now or whatever it might be. Yeah, I absolutely I totally agree

01:35:06.480 with that. We we have mismanaged the the creation of money, let alone our taxes, because of well,

01:35:15.760 because we mismanaged both effectively. But but throwing the QE into it, throwing the Federal

01:35:21.040 Reserve's balance sheet into throwing that massive inflation of just the availability of cheap money

01:35:28.240 that doesn't go into doing anything. I mean, you know, I don't even have I don't even see lines on

01:35:33.600 the 101 when I get out of LA and they're they don't paint them. They're old. You can't you just

01:35:38.800 make up your own legs. That's the point, though. Why? Why are they paying 13.3? And here's the thing,

01:35:46.240 though, because look, I was telling you earlier, I lived there 24 years, and we're looking at four

01:35:52.080 other places to go live. And we were looking to go back to, you know, somewhere around the what is

01:35:58.080 that the place right by Gora Hills. It's right outside of a Gore Hills. It's a nice area. We're

01:36:03.840 looking at there. We're looking at Malibu. We're looking at Newport, right? We want to go back to

01:36:08.240 LA. I'm LA. My friends are there. Everything I know is like 24 years from 12 years old to 37. I'm

01:36:13.440 LA minus me being a military. We looked at Greenwich. We looked at Florida. We looked at Texas.

01:36:19.760 California went from first place to last place in no time because they keep saying pay more taxes,

01:36:27.840 gas tax, this tax, and California's like, okay, how many more things you're going to keep raising

01:36:34.320 and nothing is getting better? So a question for you. Who are you comfortable having more power,

01:36:41.360 people, government, or companies? In order, if you were to say one, two, three, what would you say?

01:36:46.560 I would say people, companies, and government. We're on the same page. Okay. We're on the same

01:36:53.720 page. So we, you know, I feel like I can talk to you for hours. I'm really enjoying this. You know,

01:36:58.080 I thought this was going to be an hour interview and we're already, I told you, I said, this is

01:37:01.640 going to be an hour because I have meetings. I'm like, I'm already an hour and 45 minutes. We've

01:37:05.960 been together because I'm having a blast with you. I respect the way you reason and process issues.

01:37:11.240 It's very, uh, it's very trusting the way you process issues. You know, I, uh, I can't say

01:37:17.460 that about everybody, but I can say that definitely about you. And I, I, I appreciate that. Let's do a

01:37:22.100 quick speed round. I'll give you a name. Tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. And if you

01:37:27.060 don't have anything to say about it, just say, I have nothing to say about it. We'll be fine as well.

01:37:30.380 Uh, Bernie Sanders. Better against Trump. Uh, Milton Friedman. Uh, we don't have free markets

01:37:38.700 anymore. Biden. Um, kind of not clear on his policies. Fair enough. Karl Marx. Uh, not great

01:37:49.340 for women, but had some good. All right. Barack Obama. Diplomatic. I agree. Trump.

01:38:01.060 Knee jerk. I think that's a fair assessment. Uh, Richard Wolff.

01:38:07.500 Um, academic. Safe. Safe. Arthur Laffer. I know he's a Marxist, but he is, he's also an

01:38:18.140 academic. That just came to my mind. Arthur Laffer. Don't know. Okay. Uh, Alan Greenspan.

01:38:25.880 Out of his league. Um, hurt the, hurt wrist because of derivatives.

01:38:31.780 Frederick Hayek. Don't know. Okay. Ludwig von Mises.

01:38:37.500 Libertarian. Interesting. I'll finish with that one. Um, first of all, I really enjoyed

01:38:48.320 our time together. Thank you so much for making the time to be a guest and took all the questions

01:38:54.060 that we went together with. Very, very good perspective. I'm certain the audience enjoyed

01:38:59.200 the interviews just as much as I did. And, uh, once again, thank you for taking the time

01:39:03.520 and being a guest on Valuetainment. Thank you so much for having me on Patrick. Be well.

01:39:07.820 Thanks everybody for listening. And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment

01:39:11.380 on iTunes, please do so. Give us a five star, write a review if you haven't already. And if you have

01:39:17.000 any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook,

01:39:21.760 or YouTube. Just search my name, Patrick MidDavid. And I actually do respond back when you snap

01:39:27.060 me or send me a message on Instagram. With that being said, have a great day today. Take care

01:39:31.380 everybody. Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - September 13, 2020

Ex Goldman Sachs Banker Reveals Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power

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