Best Economic Documentary I have Watched " FOUR HORSEMEN "

people are awfully forgiving

or they just don't understand you know

what's been done to them

we are at an epochal shift

we're at a point where the west could

tip

into complacent and quite well off

redundancy

or we could pay a decisive role in the

future

what the banks did was reprehensible

that was why there was the outrage at

the green of the bankers

when we gave them money that was

supposed to

help them lend to others but they

decided to use that money to pay

themselves bonuses

for what for record losses

we are governed by corporations today

often by corporations

that don't have very much interest in

the united states of america

i don't know what happened man what

happened to the united states it was so

far in the ditch

you know what at what moment did it all

go bad was it disco

was it was it donna summer is that what

killed america

we are entering the age of consequence

a rapacious financial system escalating

organized violence

abject poverty for billions and the

looming environmental fallout

are all converging at a time when

governments

religion and mainstream economists have

stalled

war conquest

famine and death

the four horsemen are coming

this is not a film that sees

conspiracies

it's not a film that mongers fear

it's not a film that blames bankers or

politicians

it's a film that questions the systems

we've created

and suggests ways to reform them

over centuries systems have been subtly

modified

manipulated and even corrupted often to

serve the interests of the few

we have continually accepted these

changes

and because man can adjust to living

under virtually any conditions

the trait that's enabled us to survive

is the very trait

that has suppressed us

most societies have an elite and elite

to try the stay in power

and the ways they stay in power is not

really by controlling the means of

production

to be marxist i.e controlling the money

but by controlling the cognitive map

the way we think and what really matters

in that respect is not so much what is

actually said in public

but is what is left undebated unsaid

for centuries gatekeepers have

manipulated our cognitive map

but in 1989 a computer scientist by the

name of tim berners-lee

implemented the first successful

communication between an http client and

server

the world wide web was born it has since

unleashed a tsunami of instantly

accessible

freely available information just as

gutenberg's printing press

wrestled control of the cognitive map

away from an ecclesiastical and royal

elite

today the internet is beginning to

change governments

finance and the media we are at the cusp

of change

but to enact it we must first understand

the things that have been left

unsaid for so long to do that

we need context from people who speak

the truth in the face of collective

delusion

because to understand something is to be

liberated from it

the end of world war ii we had 50

percent of the world's gross domestic

product we were making

54 000 airplanes a year 7 000 ships etc

etc and we were the new rome

and we recognized it and devised a power

management scheme

in the 1947 national security act to we

thought

manage it and it worked fairly well

during the cold war

but we haven't done anything since and i

think that's another sign of our

inability to grasp the new world if you

will

empires do not begin or end on a certain

date

but they do end and the west has not yet

come to terms with its fading supremacy

at the end of every empire under the

guise of renewal

tribes armies and organizations appear

and devour the heritage of the former

superpower

often from within

in his essay the fate of empires the

soldier diplomat

and traveler lieutenant general sir john

glubb analyzed the life cycle of empires

he found remarkable similarities between

them all an empire lasts about 250 years

or 10 generations from the early

pioneers

to the final conspicuous consumers who

become a burden on the state

six ages defined the lifespan of an

empire

the age of pioneers the age of conquests

the age of commerce the age of affluence

the age of intellect ending with bread

and circuses

in the age of decadence

there are common features to every age

of decadence

an undisciplined over-extended military

the conspicuous display of wealth

a massive disparity between rich and

poor

a desire to live off a bloated state

and an obsession with sex

but perhaps the most notorious trait of

all

is the debasement of the currency

the united states and great britain both

began on a gold or silver standard

long since abandoned rome was no

different

so it started on a principle that was

very sound and it was on a silver

standard

but as it corrupted further and further

and further

the roman daenerys got to the point

where it was basically a copper coin and

they learned how to plate and it was

washed in silver and in circulation the

plating came

off and at the end all the senators that

really did at one time represent the

people

only were interested in representing how

much wealth they could steal at the top

great empire wealth always dazzles

but beneath the surface the unbridled

desire for money

power and material possessions means the

duty and public service

are replaced by leaders and citizens who

scramble for the spoils

historically all the signs of of the

demise of empire

are beginning to develop some are more

trenchant than others

this current financial and economic

crisis uh

that sort of thing always accompanies

the demise of empire

the people of rome were constantly being

distracted by the gladiatorial events

and

and the politicians knew that they did

this whenever there was unrest among the

people they had a huge

event going on and they created a new

event with lots and lots of gladiators

and every day

we're doing that that is that is a

common trait of declining empires

and so today in the united states for

example you find a tremendous

emphasis on all kinds of television

programs that distract people from

what's really going on

sports is a big part of that as it was

in gladiator times

in essence we've been lulled into

a lethargy and we've accepted it

just as our sports stars today earn vast

sums

so did roman charioteers in the second

century one by the name of gaia

sapoulayus diocles amassed a fortune of

35 million sisters in prize money

equivalent to several billion dollars

today

strangely perhaps there's another

profession that is disproportionately

hallowed as an empire declines

the romans the ottomans and the spanish

all made celebrities

of their chefs and this again is

typifying the end of an empire

where things were so great we have this

last oomph

of momentum that we used to be great

and we felt great and we don't feel it

anymore

so everyone is out searching for it well

maybe it's in

the best food or the best clothes or the

best

music or the best movies or a reality tv

show or another magazine

but you can never get enough of what you

don't need what you need is a strong

moral conviction that is pervasive

throughout the society and integrity

reigns

there's a vast apathy there's a vast

immoralism even a political

nature to it that is to say there are

vast

numbers of people who don't give a damn

and so there's this

this uh natural i suppose entropy

any living organism which an empire is

of course

over time dies um question is

how does it die does it die in a violent

cascade of events or does it die over a

long period of time

the baby boomer generation were born

into this age of decadence

perhaps unwittingly they've broken the

unspoken intergenerational contract

through unfettered consumerism spiraling

house prices

and a desire for eternal youth the baby

boomers have squandered future

generations inheritance

my generation the generation right after

my generation

um i think we forgot that little phrase

in the preamble to our constitution

which

says and our posterity all of a sudden

it became

us period the baby boom generation which

i'm a part of has

gone and done the biggest misallocation

of capital in the history of mankind

we have had cheap oil or cheap energy is

a better way to phrase it

we've had an abundance of ideas

and we have chosen a system

and perpetuated it that is

probably one of the worst ways to use

the blessings or bestowed upon us

and we are going to pay a price for that

human beings are inconsistent and

paradoxical

we hope for peace and immortality but

continually invent

new ways to destroy each other we're

capable of the kindest most noble acts

and the most horrific atrocities

human beings are complex creatures i

mean for example we're capable right now

at this minute of uh acting

in such a way as to make it

likely if not certain that our

grandchildren

are going to face terrible disasters

and we are consciously acting to

accelerate that likelihood even though

we all love our grandchildren

how can you be more contradictory than

that in spite

of all the um economic activities of

last

uh 50 60 70 years since the world second

world war

and all the industrialization we have

not

yet managed to solve

the problem of poverty deprivation

hunger

malnutrition millions of people

every night go to bed without food

and millions of people are throwing away

their food waste on the one hand

and poverty and deprivation and hunger

on the other hand

uh malnutrition on the one hand and

obesity on the other hand

what kind of system have we created

why with such brilliant knowledge on the

planet are we still struggling to

distribute wealth fairly

how has the human race developed a

flawed system of government and

economics

that serves the few at the expense of

the many

and with such poverty in an age of

plenty why have we not had the will to

change

such a vicious social structure

greed is the fundamental uh

kind of ingredients for the immoral

economy

become the problem is not

that there's not enough in the world

people say

that there's a poverty we have to create

more wealth

to there is enough in the world for

everybody's need

as mahatma gandhi said but not for

anybody's greed

but is it just greed or does it go

deeper than that

is the problem systemic

as a civilization we've obviously we've

obviously had a had a great run

uh we've done very well we've had the

industrial revolution we survived that

we built a lot of modern military

technology we've survived that

so far we've built a banking system um

and we're still struggling with that

part of it but but you know we've had a

good run

it's kind of like when i was working on

washington street for seven years

it had the experience uh some people

would have let's say working at a

meat processing plant they become

vegetarian you know you work on wall

street and you see how

these banks like goldman jp morgan these

other banks make money

when you when you see money it kind of

makes you sick well i think if the

people

knew what the banking system is up to as

henry ford said there would be a

revolution tomorrow morning

the fact is most people think that what

a bank does is

lend you money that someone else has put

in the bank previously

but what a bank actually does what a

commercial bank does

is to create money from nothing and then

lend it to you at interest

if i do that if i manufacture money in

my own home it's called counterfeiting

if an accountant creates money out of

nothing in the company accounts it's

called cooking the books

but if a bank does it it's perfectly

legal

and so long as you allow fraud to be

legalized then all kinds of problems are

going to

pop up in the economic system which you

can't do anything about

private banks create money out of

nothing and limited interest

now that sounds absurd

when i teach sophomores you know about

money and banking and how banks

they never believe it and so you have to

go through it again and again yes banks

really do create money

they really do here's how it happens and

it's absurd and their right to

doubt that that could possibly be what's

really going on

but it is now if the banking lobby is

very

strong they're going to say well we

don't want to change the system we're

making so much money out of it what we

have to do

is a try and convince the people that

it's their fault

that their wage claims are too high and

that's why we're having lots of

inflation

or people are speculating on housing and

that's why house prices are going up

what they're not going to say is that

this is happening because banks are

creating money out of nothing and

pumping it into the system and that's

why prices are going up

but how is it that we've ended up with a

system in which banks have the power to

create money

since 1971 when president nixon took the

united states off what was left of the

gold standard

the world has operated under a system of

money known as

fiat the dollar the pound the euro

are all government fiat currencies fiat

is a latin word meaning let it be so

it is the law that this government

currency b money

indeed without that legal enforcement

and the fact that we must pay taxes with

this money

that dollar bill or that computer digit

that represents a dollar

would be pretty much meaningless only

the government has the power to issue

fiat money

but banks can create it through lending

over the last 40 years since this system

of fiat money became the global norm

the supply of money has grown

exponentially

in fact we've seen the greatest growth

in the supply of money

in history but who benefits

of course those that have the power to

issue money governments and banks

then those companies and individuals

that get this money early

they can spend it before the prices of

the things they want to buy

have risen to reflect the new money in

circulation

in other words they get services

products or assets

cheap but prices soon rise

so holders of assets such as houses or

shares

will then see gains without there

necessarily being any improvements to

the company or house in question

often this can lead to speculative

bubbles

but what about those at the bottom of

the pyramid those on fixed wages or

incomes

those who live in remote areas or those

with savings

by the time this newly created money has

filtered down to them

the prices of the things they want to

buy have increased their savings buy

them less however

and their wages remain largely unchanged

in some cases they have to take on debt

just to be able to afford the things

they were previously able to buy

which means they have to go back to the

banks

in reality this process of creating

money

only redistributes wealth from the

bottom to the top of the pyramid

and thus that ever-increasing gulf

between rich and poor

gets bigger and bigger and bigger

well when when you get off the gold

standard and you go into a fiat money

currency combined with a fractional

reserve banking system

you end up compounding debt faster than

you can ever possibly produce

to support that debt so eventually

you're going to find yourself back into

debt slavery and that's what's happened

in the u.s

for every dollar of gdp for example in

the u.s

it now it also creates something like

5.50

worth of debt because it this is this is

what this is what happens when our

economy flips over and basically

capsizes

and of course the government solution

now to uh

to to address all the problems is

basically to create more debt

you can never get enough of a currency

that doesn't work

you can print it till kingdom comes but

you can't print wealth and you can't get

yourself out of debt by making more debt

if you could print wealth zimbabwe would

be the largest most prosperous country

on the planet

we all know it doesn't work of the money

in the world

today 97 of it is debt

the french philosopher voltaire once

said all paper money eventually returns

to its intrinsic value

zero

for three generations the world watched

the fight between capitalism and

communism

but in the 1980s the russian economy

started to collapse

the soviet union capitulated and

so-called capitalism

reigns supreme

before 1989 we had a battle between

communism and the market

and in that battle there was a sense

of let's not expose the flaws

in the market economy this is too

important of a battle

that you don't criticize our team while

we're fighting

their team and their team

associated with authoritarianism uh with

a failure to deliver

well-being to their society it was very

clear that

if you had to choose between these two

which was better

communism failed first

for various reasons i think it was

inefficient

human rights lack of respect so forth

so capitalist west has been continuing

in a triumphalist mode thinking ah you

know our

adversary has failed that means we're

doing everything right

both systems are trying to do something

which is fundamentally impossible

grow forever and they're both going to

fail

one failed first capitalism is going to

fail

in you know later or it's failing now

america right now is in a very

interesting position because

in the past two three hundred years of

its history

it's a culture and country which has

almost always existed

on the assumption that resources could

be expanded

if there was a problem you always try to

deal with it by expanding the pie

go west young man make the pie bigger so

that everyone's got a bigger piece

now it's facing a world where possibly

resources are beginning to be more

constrained

and where it's going to have to divide

up that pie and inflict pain on people

and that's something which is not well

prepared for

how has the country moved so far from

the intentions of its founding fathers

how has the american dream so distorted

over the last 30 or 40 years capitalism

has taken this extreme

form and a lot of it goes back to the

economist milton friedman from the

chicago school

and ronald reagan and margaret thatcher

and others

buying into these policies that really

encourage people to take on huge amounts

of debt

encourage privatization uh smaller

governments supposedly

although bigger military so actually

government spending goes up

deregulation getting rid of rules

that govern the people who run our

institutions especially our corporations

it's as though we suddenly are supposed

to believe that the human beings

who sit at the top of corporations don't

need to be regulated

they're some sort of gods

milton friedman his proteges the chicago

boys

and the neoclassical ideology beat the

classical approach to economics

and became the framework for what we

today call capitalism

there are two main competing economic

approaches which determine how we humans

manage the world and distribute wealth

these are the classical and neoclassical

schools

the classical school favors less

government interference

more personal autonomy and recognizes

that humans cannot function without

natural resources the neoclassical

school which has a more dismissive view

of natural resources

thinks government should rule the

economy solve social problems

and leave the free market to look after

the distribution of wealth

the neoclassical school emerged around

100 years ago

due to vested interests desire to

protect their assets

this meant that neoclassical

mathematical models and assumptions

were divorced from reality they're based

on what ought to be

instead of the classical models which

are based on what actually is

it's these neo-classical models which

favor large corporations

that have been used to legitimize the

financialization of the global economy

championed by ronald reagan and margaret

thatcher neoclassical economics still

dominates policymaking today

the reagan revolution as we call the

united states obviously the reagan

thatcher revolution think about it more

globally

was a big change in power structure and

a big transfer

of opportunity and wealth uh now it

wasn't it's not it's not that the poor

gave it to the rich it was a transfer

within

the well-to-do so the financial sector

in particular

in the united states for example but

also in the uk and some other places

became vastly more profitable

and sa wages in in that sector went up a

lot and we focus on bonuses but

it's also base salaries went up overall

compensation so there's a transfer from

the non-financial part of the economy

to the financial part of the economy

that actually is unprecedented

as far as we can see in any of the

available data to us i'm talking about

all of recorded human history

in 1932 in the aftermath of america's

great stock market crash a piece of

legislation was passed to protect

society

the glass-steagall act was introduced to

separate ordinary high street banking

from investment banking 67 years later

in 1999

under the influence of treasury

secretary larry summers and his

predecessor robert rubin

president bill clinton repealed the

glass-steagall act

once again banks could take ordinary

depositors money

and speculate with it on virtually

anything they liked

wall street is has become a very

particular

type of casino and it's unfortunately

not the kind of casino

they have in las vegas which is you know

perfectly legitimate

form of entertainment it is a casino

that has

massive negative repercussions on the

rest of society so it's not just losing

your money

on a few wild nights it's about

the way in which those organizations

lose their money

impacting the whole of society leading

to a massive loss of jobs

this unfettered gambling pushed the

entire global financial system to near

collapse

with balances and debt obligations

larger than the gdp of entire countries

the banks had become too big to fail the

west was unprepared

and bankers met their reeling and

disorientated governments

you have to bail us out we need money

if you don't give us the money the whole

thing goes

down and what are you going to do with

millions and tens of millions of people

who have lost

everything in their bank account you

you will have a revolution on your head

so fork over the money

borrow borrow the money

create it out of nothing and give it

back to and give it to us

and and and so that we can face our

our problems and uh not go under

and or otherwise and this is what mr

hank paulson did

in the us congress he went there one day

and he told them well look

we need 700 billion and we need it now

or else is this system we call

capitalism really capitalism

in a capitalist system government is

supposed to be small

but today the state is more bloated and

invasive than it's ever been individuals

and companies are supposed to operate in

a free market

good enterprise is rewarded with profit

and flawed enterprise with failure

but during the 2008 banking crisis the

people saw the western economic system

divided in a way they were told could

never happen

socialism for the rich capitalism for

the poor and in america for example

the banks that got in trouble got bailed

out by the government that's socialism

and they people are arguing against

socialism in america and yet there's

probably the most socialist country in

the world right now

we have a system which isn't even a

proper

capitalist system where rich people make

mistakes that they don't get punished

that poor people

make mistakes or they get punished or

even worse that they don't

make any mistake and they are forced to

you know that

pay for the mistakes of the rich when

the taxpayer is footing the bill for the

misplaced speculation of bankers

then suddenly instead of the economy

serving the human being

the human being is now in perpetual

service to amoral financial

organizations

foreign

it was the head of the federal reserve

bank alan greenspan who after 9 11

slashed interest rates to encourage

lending

bankers needed new participants to keep

cash flowing into a system

that had become a global pyramid scheme

all this newly created money entered the

housing market and created

unprecedented inflation house prices

rose and rose

new mothers were forced back into the

workplace to service huge home loans

and the anglo-american dream became all

about land speculation

the housing market in the west isn't

about ownership

the housing market in the west because

it's the only way ordinary people can

get ahead

and ordinary people can't get ahead but

by wages

what we've created is a mass bubble

economics around housing

as that sucks in a huge amount of

capital takes capital for genuine

innovations in the economy

and puts it into a speculative use that

has no

genuine productive outcome it's

interesting if you talk to people in

germany for example they don't see a

connection between owning a piece of

property

and and being inclined to be towards

being democratic there's lots of people

who rent

their housing there and they're

perfectly comfortable with that

arrangement but it is true that

in somewhat different contexts both mr

reagan and mrs thatcher pushed for more

people

to own housing and actually this is part

of the problem because if you push

people

to buy housing before they're ready and

if so if you push very dubious loans on

them

and they don't understand what they get

themselves into you can have huge

adverse repercussions exactly what led

to

in part the subprime housing crisis in

the united states

that's not anything to do with democracy

that's just a bad economic idea

the breakthrough that occurred around

the year 2000 in the united states

was when bankers found out that the poor

or honest

and they realized that

if you're poor if you're not rich

you have a different set of values and

you think that a debt is a debt

and it's something that has to be paid

and the people will try to pay the debts

that they're stuck with even if the

debts are not valid

even if the debts are much more than

they expected

even if they really can't pay the debts

the lending and banking institutions

when they drew up contracts with

interest rates with flexible interest

rates

i think they knew in the beginning that

these problems were going to come back

later on where folks weren't going to be

able to

afford the mortgages as the interest

rates increased

it put a lot of people in situations

where they were

taking food out of refrigerators taking

kids out of higher education

they're not able to afford college

anymore and

it is making a really really bad

situation worse

the banks engaged in what was a criminal

conspiracy

to charge more to the blacks and

hispanics

the banks got together backed the bush

administration

to block the state prosecutions of uh

racial lending in order to exploit and

charge more to the minorities

these are loans which were made by one

of the major lenders in the city and in

this country wells fargo

in which wells fargo targeted minority

communities in the city

put borrowers into loans that they could

not afford

put borrowers into loans that that were

of the subprime variety

therefore more expensive and less

advantageous to the borrowers

hiding predatory lending practices in

the small print of complex financial

products

was only ever going to enrich one set of

interests

many of the communities in which african

americans live in the city were

establishing momentum there was

development activity that was occurring

we were seeing

signs of vitality in many of these

communities and the results of the wells

fargo foreclosures and the subprime

lending practices

of that lender and others has

significantly impaired that progress and

and brought it to a halt they're not

worrying about they

they don't come in the heart of it like

you in the heart of it so you see

they don't really see the struggle if

they don't come in the heart of it they

stand outside of it

that's like looking at the cover of a

book and saying outside of the

center outside of a book but if you

don't go inside the book then you'll

never know what the book about

so they not worrying about nobody else

but themselves and i think it's wrong

because if they come in the heart of and

they said they'd be willing to help

what happened in baltimore is just one

example of what is happening

all around the world one way to frame

this injustice

is by branding it a racist you but when

we look really closely

we can see that there is something at

play here that transcends race

profit not an accident for instance that

we had the deregulation in our financial

industry that was such a

disaster uh the lobbyists of the finance

industry

amount to five per congress person

the internet they pay five people for

every congressman to explain to them

persuade them that they should pass

legislation that is favorable to

financial industry

the poor people who are devastated

don't have the money they couldn't hire

five per congressman so

the way our our democracy works it's an

unlevel playing field

the financial sector has acquired

enormous power partly through political

contributions

so buying favors but mostly through

ideological

control convincing people that finance

is good

more finance finances better and

unregulated finance

without limit is best and and that is

really the cornerstone of this

what we call the united states the wall

street washington corridor

i mean if people need any proof as to

who's controlling washington

when the bailout came after lehman

brothers collapsed

80 percent of the population was against

the bailout

notwithstanding that the congress passed

the bailout just showing in my view

anyway

that it's really under the control of

banking interests it's not a reflection

of good democracy when

a company that group of companies and

industry

says our interests are more

important than the national interest how

can that happen

very easy that's the role of campaign

contributions

lobbying in america's political

structure

we have a flawed democracy

is an advanced oligarchy in the sense

that its main

mechanism of control if you like is

through convincing people that

you really need for example the six

biggest banks

in the united states in their particular

in a particular form they exist today

with the very light level of regulation

and if you don't have them if you try to

change that

all kinds of awful things will happen

and this is not really blackmail i mean

it sounds like blackmail but they

convinced you it's not black now it's

just that's the way the world is

there's nothing you can do about it oh

my goodness you just have to cooperate

with them it's very clever

the fed is essentially the lobbyist for

the commercial banking system

when you say you want to turn regulation

over to the fed

you're saying the financial sector and

wall street should be self-regulated

and uh the wall street has veto power

over whoever is going to be

the head of the federal reserve as long

as you give

veto power over the regulators to wall

street as long as you pick the bank

regulators

from the banking industry itself you can

forget

any thought of calling it regulation

it's deregulation and to call it

regulation instead of deregulation

is using orwellian doublethink

democracy is government by the people

plutocracy is government by the rich

in a typical plutocratic state economic

inequality is high

social mobility low and because of

continuous exploitation of the masses

workers find it nearly impossible to

climb out of poverty

the equal voting rights movement in the

early 20th century

abolished a system where rich people had

more votes than poor people

but today lobbying has put pay to that

and reduced the american political

system to a mere clearinghouse for the

concerns of the rich

the goldman sachs machine is one of

using profits to buy influence in

washington to change laws to make it

easier to make money on wall street

to be used to buy influence in

washington so it's a self-reinforcing

malfeasance machine that

is continuing to grow as a parasite in

the economy and continuing to kill the

host

famous for claiming it did god's work

goldman sachs is one of the most

influential investment banks in the

world

its alumni often occupy positions of

great influence in governments and

central banks

in september 2008 barely a month before

the stock market crash

goldman supposedly a pillar of the free

market

changed its banking status from

investment to commercial

this meant it was now eligible for state

protection

socialism for the rich right there

goldman sachs are extremely efficient at

what they do

their task is to make money uh

they make bank robbers like willie

sutton look like

modest amateurs they're huge bank

robbers

but it's legal the system is set up so

that they can do it

in the recent years they've been selling

securities

put together from mortgages that they

knew were worthless

so they're selling these things to

unwitting consumers

making a ton of money on it meanwhile

they're betting

that they're going to fail because they

know that what they're pedaling is

rotten so they placed bets with

credit default swaps and other things

with a huge insurance company

aig and that was insuring goldman sachs

against the failure of the stuff they're

peddling

during america's subprime collapse

goldman traders michael swenson and josh

burnbaum made a four billion dollar

profit by short selling junk mortgages

backed by dan sparks internally goldman

sachs called their position

the big short and bet against their own

clients

senator carl levin called goldman sachs

chief executive lloyd blankfein to a

senate subcommittee to testify under

oath

much has been said about the supposedly

massive short goldman sachs had on the

u.s housing market

the fact is we were not consistently or

significantly net short the market

in residential mortgage related products

in two thousand seven and two thousand

eight

we didn't have a massive short against

the housing market and we certainly did

not bet against our clients

riding the big short in 2007 made

billions of dollars for goldman

and so far they've got away scot-free

with this massive heist

so they're now back bigger than before

richer than before

biggest profits they've had in history

you know huge bonuses

they're doing great uh a lot of what

they're a lot of what they're doing has

in fact probably maybe all of it

has almost nothing to do with the

benefit of the economy

can there be any objection to genuinely

talented people

earning big money if they bring

something new and tangible to the world

if they take great personal risks with

their own money

and actually bring greater prosperity

for all in a free market if i have a

brilliant idea that i can run an

automobile

on grass clippings as an example

and i produce that car my motivation

might be to make money but if the market

says

my goodness this is the greatest

automobile ever invented by mankind and

i make a billion dollars

i've not only served myself but i have

served everyone else that needs a

transportation

and that is the brilliance of a free

market is that paradox that you can

serve yourself and simultaneously

serve others and that's what it's all

about

but how many of the general public have

achieved greater prosperity through a

banker's bonus

it was against the holy backdrop of

saint paul's cathedral in london

that goldman sachs vice chairman and

mouthpiece lord griffiths

gave insight into how certain bankers

really think

the devoted christian defended

extortionate bonuses

i'm not a person of despair i'm a person

of hope

and i think that we have to tolerate

the inequality as a way to achieving

greater prosperity and opportunity for

all

the fundamental christian view and i

would say of islam as well

and certainly of judaism he said wealth

is to be shared

money has to be shared you can't take it

with you and and

from that develops a whole lot of stuff

about justice and the economy and so on

and we've lost that and instead we've

got people accumulating more and more

and i just think it's i just think it's

disgusting

that people have lost their

homes they lost their jobs they can't

pay their mortgages

from bankers who made a big mistake and

then paid enormous bonuses i'm sorry

that is simply wrong and i can't

understand

why we are not more vociferous about

that

uh when rich people tell you that they

specifically have to be rich

through these egregious rip-off

mechanisms

that's just self-serving propaganda and

it should be disregarded it is true

that if you when you organize human

society some people get ahead

and some people struggle that's a

natural mechanism

um but saying oh we've got to have

inequality therefore goldman sachs must

be organized along the following lines

that's a complete non-sequitur at what

juncture what point does morality

enter into economic economic calculus

in a way many people

think that adam smith gave us a free

pass

a way not to think about morality

because what adam smith said was that

individuals in the pursuit of their

self-interest

are led as if by an invisible hand to

the general well-being of

society now let me make it clear anna

smith didn't really say that

that is to say adam smith was very much

aware

that businesses when they got together

conspired against the public interest

raised prices he was aware of monopoly

he was aware of the importance of

education that the private sector

couldn't provide

so he himself was aware of all the

limitations

but his latter day descendants have

forgotten

all those caveats

adam smith was the godfather of

classical economics

but since its publication his work has

been used as a political football

financiers twisting his words to suit

them

lord griffiths advocates ruthless

individualism to push this idea

that if bankers get rich then we get

rich too

through a process known as trickle-down

economics

or awesome sparrow theory

if you feed the horse enough oats

some will pass through to the road for

the sparrows

the idea is that extreme wealth

concentrated on a small minority

will eventually trickle down to everyone

else

but it doesn't work because by the time

the money reaches the people at the

bottom of our money pyramid

it's lost its purchasing power

but the public are now confused as to

why our political leaders have allowed

this to happen

and quite naturally now ask why

because our political processes are

badly flawed

they're badly flawed because of the

dependence on lobbyists on campaign

contributions

so that's why you know

my view and a view i think about a lot

of people

is that we have to restructure our

political processes

to give more voice to the ordinary

citizen and less voice

to to the to the interest group to the

money to groups

to to those who who who have taken

such a large role in in shaping our tax

code or regulatory

regulations and so forth

i stood on the front step of colin

powell's house

and i look at him and say what wha what

next boss

and he said what do you mean i said what

next where are you going next when i'm

writing a book i said no i know you're

going to write your book but you're

going to do that for the rest of your

life where are you going next

he said maybe a cabinet position but

first

but first money i said

money he said yeah millions that's the

only way you can be a cabinet officer in

the american government

oh wow

the democrats and the republicans are

beholden to corporate interests

and until they become unbeholden to

those corporate interests we will never

have a well-governed republic

the inherent inequity in our system of

money banking and politics

has not just had consequences

domestically but also

on a massive scale globally

oh

western leaders have presented their

military campaign in iraq afghanistan

and pakistan

as a moral obligation but are there

other reasons for it

the first financial beneficiary of

america's foreign policy

is the military in particular those who

supply it with arms and equipment

the military has won wars but how

successful has it been in its bigger aim

to eradicate terrorism

the drone attacks not only failed but

they've

created extra extremism they've helped

in radicalization

of youth in the northwest frontier and

also in certain parts of punjab and

pakistan

and because time after time and

sometimes you know

there's a feeling that america does this

deliberately

to dece destabilize pakistan i'm not so

sure about that but i

certainly think those people who

actually support this policy

every time you kill 10 the so-called

terrorists you create 500 more because

they see the drone attacks

as a an attack on a sovereign state of

pakistan

if they really wanted to flush them out

there was no need for a huge military

operation in swarth

causing the entire district to become

internally displaced persons

the population of swath is 1.8 million

there are 2.3 million refugees

in the country the whole district has

been emptied

this wouldn't be necessary if they had

carried out

a surgical commando operation

to get the militant leaders

but they allowed them to escape all of

them

after the military the next financial

beneficiary

are those who win the contracts to

conduct the rebuilding process

in the west people might even feel

optimistic when they hear that the us is

pumping tens of billions of newly

created dollars into developing nations

to build infrastructure

but often this too doesn't seem to

achieve the publicized goals

is there another reason we give these

countries aid

we economic hitmen have created the

world's first truly global empire

and we've done it primarily without the

military

we work many different ways but perhaps

the most common is that we'll take a

third world country

that has resources our corporations

covet like oil

and then arrange a huge loan to that

country from the world bank or one of

its sister organizations

however the money never actually goes to

the country instead it goes to our own

corporations

to build infrastructure projects in that

country power plants

highways industrial parks things that

benefit a few wealthy families in that

country

as well as our corporations but don't

help the

majority of people at all they're too

poor to buy electricity or drive cars on

the highways they don't have the skills

to get jobs in industrial parks

but they're left holding a huge debt

infrastructure which is used

heavy loans from the world bank and imf

and made from grants from western

countries

they've all gone into benefiting the

elite

and the feudal classes they have not

benefited

the people

a lot of money goes to these consultants

and

companies from the west who charge huge

amounts of money and actually the real

money

on projects and on ordinary people

is very limited the masses

have very little already so those

landlords who have the infrastructure

and who are going to make money

because of the infrastructure that is

built through their roads

they will prosper but the ones who don't

have any resources

they've not had jobs there isn't an

economic

activity for them in terms of

manufacturing goods

so they can sell and they could also

prosper when you don't have that

what do they do they resort to joining

the taliban

because they see the enemy coming in and

taking away what little bit they have

president obama i understand wants to

invest

seven and a half billion dollars in

pakistan's

infrastructure to elevate poverty

and you know take away all the divisions

and all the anti-american sentiment over

here

whatever his reasons are we can do

without it

in fact it's the worst possible thing he

can do

this kind of help is actually going to

be a hindrance it's just going to make

matters worse

it will bring this contrived war and

terror

into our rural areas

how much of u.s foreign policy is

genuinely altruistic

and how much is it influenced by the

banks and corporations that profit so

tremendously from it

america's evangelism of democracy is

riddled with contradictions not least of

which this idea of

promoting democracy at the point of a

gun or opposing

regimes which are democratic but not in

the way that america wants

so too this idea that america's been

promoting free market capitalism

has also been riddled with

contradictions because the reality is

that american firms tend to make most

money

when countries are at the cusp of change

certainly american financial firms

and in a sense they want markets that

are changing structurally but not too

free

and too transparent because they make

money when markets are

a bit opaque is it any wonder

developed nations are fighting in

underdeveloped countries

when so many are making so much money

out of it

without ever really having to face up to

or even witness the consequences of

their actions

so what if five million kids died in

africa because of debt last year

you know i got a bonus of a million

pounds and if i have that conversation

i've had it with

some uh uh bankers who've you know been

in the business a long time

and um they listen politely they're very

polite

very charming and at the end they say

well turret is lovely meeting you again

and they go back to the office and do

another loan deal for tanzania or

something

i've known a lot of terrorists quote

unquote i've met them i've interviewed

them for books i've known them since i

was an economic hit and i've never met

one who wanted to be a terrorist they

all want to be with their families back

on the farm

they're driven to terrorism because

they've lost the farm

it's been inundated with water from a

hydroelectric project

or with oil from oil derricks their

farms been destroyed

they can't make a living for their kids

or in the case of the somali pirates

their fishing waters have been destroyed

and that's why they've turned to this it

isn't because they want to be pirates or

or terrorists now there may be a few

crazy people there are a few crazy

people people with

their nuts loose they'll always be

serial killers they'll always be crazy

people

maybe osama bin laden's one of them but

they do not get a following

unless there's a terrible injustice

going on and people are starving and

they're deprived

and then they will follow these crazy

people because they seem to offer an

alternative if we want to do away with

terrorism

if we want to have what we in the united

states call homeland security

we've got to recognize that the whole

planet is our homeland

what does the word terrorist actually

mean

many terrorists would sooner describe

themselves as freedom fighters

could it be that the charge of terrorism

could just as easily be made against

western corporations speculators and

policy makers

when we talk about terrorism means what

they do to us

not what we do to them and what they do

to us can be pretty ugly

although it's not even a fraction of

what we do to them

i mean take say 9 11. that was pretty

serious act of terrorism maybe the worst

single act of terrorism in history but

it could have been worse

i mean suppose for example that al qaeda

had uh

bombed washington uh bombed the white

house

it killed the president installed a

harsh military dictatorship

that brought in a bunch of economists

who drove the economy into its worst

disaster

in history but that would have been

worse than 9 11

and i'm not making it up it happened

what's called the first 911 in south

america

namely in chile on the 11th of september

1973

the democratically elected chilean

president salvador allende was

overthrown in a coup

a dictatorship under augusto pinochet

was established

that ruled chile until 1990

there was the systematic suppression of

all political dissidents

thousands were imprisoned and murdered

who was involved in that first 911

it's not hard to find them right in

washington and london and so on but

that's

off the agenda it doesn't count there's

a principle of ideology that we must

never look at our own crimes we should

on the other hand

exult in the crimes of others and in our

own nobility and opposing them

the root causes of so-called terrorism

will not be solved by

increasing economic inequality

if governments really are serious about

combating terrorism

then they must start with real

structural reform back home

as long as banking empires chase

infrastructure and debt deals in pursuit

of profit

the west will continue to export

injustice through finance

millions more will be displaced

terrorism will thrive

and neo-colonialism will continue to end

more and more lives around the world

what's happened is that we have moved

from a relatively empty world to a

relatively full world

that is empty of us and all of our stuff

to now full of us and all of our stuff

in my lifetime the world population has

tripled

and the populations of other things of

cars

houses boats all these other things that

put a load on the environment too

just like human bodies those have vastly

more than triple

so the world is very very full of what

we might call

man-made capital and it's becoming

more and more empty of what used to be

there what we might call natural capital

we are the first generation we in the

rich developed world are the first

generation to have got to the end of

the real benefits of economic growth

for hundreds of years the best way of

raising the real quality of human life

has been to raise material living

standards

and that's what's driven the huge rises

in life expectancy and

increases in happiness and other

measures of well-being

but all those have now come detached

from economic growth

and although life expectancy continues

to rise in the rich world

it's no longer related to the amount of

economic growth the country has at all

and the same is true of measures of

happiness and measures of well-being

the paradox is the more we grow the more

poverty we create

our self-interested economic system

seems to be continually missing a trick

so as we keep plundering the earth's

natural capital is it time to rethink

our western definition of progress

when i look at the world i look at it

much the way royal dutch shell looks at

it they have one of the best strategic

entities in the world private or public

and royal dutch shell has posited two

scenarios one is called blueprint and

is obviously a planned corporate uh

structure where world leaders get

together and they think about things

like

energy transformation planetary warming

and dwindling

fossil fuels and so forth the other is

called scramble

and scramble is uh pretty much what it

sounds like too

it's a mess interestingly enough in 2075

the ending year for these scenarios as i

recall

we get to about the same place it's just

that blueprint leaves a lot less blood

on the floor scramble leaves a lot of

blood on the floor as people fight

for these resources and so forth

the reason oil companies are drilling

miles under the sea

is that the world's easily accessible

oil has already been found and largely

consumed

not only are oil supplies dwindling

major new metals discoveries are

becoming increasingly rare

forty percent of the world's

agricultural land is seriously degraded

and ever more volatile yields continue

to be unevenly distributed

it may be that the looming environmental

threat is not global warming

but the exhaustion of the world's

resources

we're going to have struggles for

finding land sufficient to grow the

agricultural products for a what the

united nations says is going to be a 9

billion

earth population we're going to struggle

over

non-renewable fossil fuels as they run

out i think shell posits about 2075

they'll be gone and we're going to

struggle over

things like water and other precious

resources that are necessary to our life

and to our economy

and this could be as shell says a

blueprint

affair with world leaders working

together to share and share

alike or it could be a real mess and

shell incidentally bets on the mess

just like the baby boomers failure to

look to the next generation

our outdated competitive mentality for a

world of depleted resources

could have devastating consequences

our economic setup encourages

one-upmanship competition and comparison

whereas the progress humans have made

over millennia has been largely based on

cooperation

in any species in almost any animal

there is uh always the potential for

huge

conflict because with any any species

all members of that species have the

same needs so they might fight each

other for food and shelter and nest

sites and territory and

sexual partners all that kind of thing

but human beings have always had the

other possibility

we have the possibility to be the best

source of of support and love and

assistance and cooperation much more so

than any other animal

and so other people can be the best or

the worst

you can be my worst rival or my best

source of support

in a progressive society to meet our

common economic social and cultural

needs

we must move from globalization to

localization

the benefits of a communal sense of

fellowship responsibility and purpose

in a life driven by production not

consumption would lead to happiness and

satisfaction

indeed we must ask have our modern

consumerist lifestyles made us happy

i think if one had been living in the

19th century and somebody

told you that a hundred years later

people were going to be

living in this extraordinary wealth and

comforts you know with

central heating and being able to throw

away such a high proportion of our food

as we do

we'd imagine that we'd be living in a

state of extraordinary social harmony

and

everything would be rosy and it's really

quite remarkable the contrast between

if you like the material success of our

societies and

and the social failure the growth

economy demands that we make consumption

a way of life

he who dies with the most toys became

the ambition

and retail replaced spiritual

satisfaction

unsurprisingly sales of antidepressants

skyrocketed the fact is

that the world economy over the last few

years a good share of my lifetime has

been built either on the military

or on producing items that most people

don't need

and really don't even want when you come

right down to it but we all got to have

them

consumerism is driven by our

extraordinary

social nature that we

want to have the stuff so we look good

in other people's eyes it's because i

experience myself through other people's

eyes the feelings of shame and

embarrassment or pride and

maybe feeling envied uh all those things

so

you know it the goods are just a way of

if you like mediating the relationship

between yourself and others in this

extraordinary

alienated hierarchy what's really

suffered

is human relationships family life

the things that really matter to us and

in the end the only thing that makes

human beings happy isn't money

it's very clear that past a certain

level you only get

marginal gains from wealth what really

makes us happy is other people

it's our relationship with other people

that's really been damaged by the last

30 years

we trust them less we have less

interaction with them

we bond less than ever before we marry

less and marriage is

under more threat than ever before and

all the associations that

represent sort of permanent

unconditioned human affection

are being eroded or damaged and that's

the real legacy of the last 30 years

and in some sense we've got to recover

and re-humanize our lives

otherwise not only will they be nasty

brutish and short

but they'll be lonely the west

is coming to the realization that

its human project is failing the west

was so convinced

that if you push people to achieve as

individuals

the accumulated achievement of

individuals

would make for a successful society

and what the west is now beginning to

realize

is that the individual achievement

without incorporating the vulnerable

community

is a myth the idea was make your own

life

be individually aspiring and then you'll

be individually achieving

and then you'll be individually

prosperous and then you'll be

individually happy

uh you end up doing that in a glass jar

and the glass jar has a limited height

and it's encapsulating and in the end

you die of lack of oxygen

human beings are alive because they seek

attachment

and because they're propelled by

affection

so the isolated achieving individual

in the end implodes order to find

a purpose in life it has to be outside

yourself

it matters not how you construct it

outside yourself as long as it's a

positive

value added to society pursuit but it

has to be outside

yourself it can't be yourself if you're

pursuing yourself you're pursuing

you're pursuing the abyss as nietzsche

said you were

you were going to wind up in the abyss

one of the most powerful cultural

frameworks

that shapes the way we think today in

the west is the hollywood

film construction and it

follows a particular cultural pattern in

that there is a beginning there is a

middle and an end

there is drama tension there's

resolution

there's usually a goodie and a baddie

and it's usually a story told from the

medium of human beings

this hollywoodization of the way that

people communicate

and the way they tell stories about

themselves and view their recent history

has very much impacted how we look at

the financial crisis

in that people look at the beginning the

middle and the end they look at the

drama around lehman brothers

and they wanted say a resolution and

they wanted baddies they wanted

sacrificial

victims as well so people have focused

on a few individuals

and the idea that somehow it wasn't just

one or two individuals who were the root

of the problem

it was a systemic problem that actually

almost everyone who

participated was in some way guilty

either of

outright negligence or simply failing to

ask the right questions or simply

failing to ask why money was so cheap

for so many years the idea

that it was a systemic flaw is something

which is very hard people to grasp

and even harder to depict as a good

story

perhaps there is this feeling of

helplessness because we don't understand

what the real problem

actually is cleansing a few bad apples

will not rectify the floors at the heart

of the western economic system

a system that should be protecting

people is in fact the very thing that's

enabling our four horsemen to ride with

such vengeance

the modern day four horsemen a rapacious

financial system

escalating organized violence abject

poverty for billions

and the exhaustion of the earth's

resources a riding roughshod over those

who can least afford it

they gallop unchallenged because the

cognitive map that's been put in place

by our schools universities and our

media

does not encourage us to question

accepted norms

instead there is apathy in a sense i

think we're rather depressed societies

we've got

used to the idea that there's nothing

that can be done there is no alternative

that

you know we're never going to deal with

these environmental problems

and we live in a dog-eat-dog society and

that's it

i think what we have to take away from

this is a recognition that

most of these problems can be very

substantially improved

by making our societies more equal

reducing the income differences

and that also helps us to solve the

environmental problems we can reach a

society

that is qualitatively better for all of

us

well the apathy is sort of engineered

because you don't have any discussion of

this

in the public media hardly by surprise

uh the public media are owned by the

real estate and the financial

interests and uh they're not going to

explain to people

the uh integration between the financial

insurance and real estate sectors the

fire sector there's this

uh disinformation going on uh passing

the buck

denying what the real driving factors

are all of these are common strategies

in fact even in education you can see

that banks have helped to set up

universities

they've funded them they fund think

tanks they have

educational foundations they own

newspapers

all of this stuff is going on as a kind

of propaganda exercise

so that the people don't actually work

out what the problem is you should not

assume

because you know you don't have a

background in economics or in law that

these issues are somehow too complex for

you

they're not complex at all it's very

simple it's about power

and it's it's about democracy and

you understand that just as well as i do

one source of this disinformation

is the neoclassical school of economics

these economists and academics have been

successful in convincing the world that

their models were gospel

but just as gutenberg's printing press

was revolutionary in the 16th century

today we're at the dawn of internet

enlightenment which will remove

the cloud of ignorance upheld by

academic and media gatekeepers

education can be a form of mass mind

control and it's astonishing that today

neoclassical economics continues to be

taught in all ivy league universities

i do get letters from students

in economics departments at other

universities

they're they they're into some graduate

program or something and they say

oh you know i just read such and such

that you wrote

and this is the kind of thing that

interests me i'm stuck in this program

here

in which you know i can't even talk

about any of that

you know what's your advice what should

i do

what they're teaching you is what you're

going to have to oppose

a lot of it i mean some of it's useful

but so some of it's useful go ahead and

learn it

and the other reason for learning the

rest of it is know your enemy

an individual might not be able to

change the system

but they can change themselves if we're

not offered proper education

we must begin our own and a good place

to start

is to become reacquainted with the

classical economists

and with something that so few question

but that affects us all

our system of money if the monetary

system of the world

is not reformed then we

that we are headed towards the end of

industrial civilization i won't say that

we're

going to the end of humanity but it's

just going to be

absolute collapse and

of our world as we have known it because

it cannot

function on fiat money and

none of those who are responsible for

this want to admit it but that

is the fact the fiat system of money

is a man-made law and it's been abused

is there a form of money whose law is

not set by man

when you look at natural law and gold i

sort of

describe gold as being a natural form of

money all of the gold that's been mined

throughout history still exists in its

above ground stock

it's about the size of two and a half

olympic swimming pools if you put all

that gold together

in one place and the key is is that this

above ground stack of gold

grows by about one and three quarters

percent per annum

which is approximately equal to new

world population growth

and is approximately equal to new wealth

creation so

as the net result of this is that

you have this very good consistency in

gold's purchasing power over long

periods of time

because the supply demand equation is

very much in balance

to achieve human liberty you really need

to have

sound money and gold is the only way to

do that because only gold is outside of

the control of politicians

with modern man-made monetary processes

a chronic excess of debt has built up at

every level of society

debt is now regarded as normal it isn't

it's a form of slavery but how much do

we question our debt

and what should we now do about it the

classic example

most recently of a debt cancellation was

the german economic miracle

in 1947 the allies cancelled

all domestic and international german

debts

except for the debts that employers owed

their employees for the previous few

weeks

and except for a basic working balance

that everybody was able to keep

uh in the bank in order to buy food for

the next

few weeks or so essentially you would

follow the

five or six pages that the uh currency

reform of 1947 did in germany

you would start with a clean slate that

means that everybody would own their

property

free and clear and the problem here is

that you'd wipe off

the savings that are the counterparts of

that that actually would not be uh such

a bad thing if you look at the fact that

the

wealthiest 1 percent of americans have

concentrated

an enormous amount of wealth in our own

hands more than at any earlier time

since statistics have been

kept our system of taxation also needs

addressing

currently we're taxed on what we produce

perhaps it would be more progressive to

tax what we

consume how many american people realize

that the founding fathers never intended

americans to be taxed on their labor

in other words they weren't meant to pay

income tax

the tax system that was exported from

britain a relic of colonialism

has duped the world

the most important element of a tax

system

is to do what everybody expected to be

done

in the 19th century and that is to base

the tax system

on land taxation on the free lunch of

land value

and on what john stuart mill called the

unearned increment

the income that landlords made in their

sleep

as he put it who made

oil in the ground you know coal or iron

ore

these are things which are not the

products of human effort

of course extracting them is but their

existence

is not and so the rents

from natural resources are a wonderful

source of taxation

nobody made them so and when you do tax

them you cause all of us

to use them more efficiently so this

seems like

really the excellent thing to tax

rather than labor and capital

if the government used this land site

value

that's supplied by nature not by human

labor

not by a personal enterprise then uh the

government would not have to

tax wages in the form of income tax

it wouldn't have to imply sales tax that

add to the price of doing business

and it wouldn't have to add the

proliferation of business taxes

this tax system advocated by all the

classical economists

would begin to address global poverty as

it would allow citizens in developing

countries to keep their resource wealth

in developed countries it would begin to

address our housing and debt crisis

and unleash the kind of entrepreneurship

needed to refloat our economies

perhaps we should also resurrect another

timeless principle for workers

that was promoted during the industrial

revolution

well the idea that uh people who work in

a plant ought to own it

it's just deeply built into

working-class culture so right around

here at the early industrial revolution

in the late 19th century

working people simply took for granted

that yes of course the workers should

own

the mills in which they work anything

else is an attack on our fundamental

rights as

free citizens they also took for granted

that wage labor

is hardly different from slavery it's

different only because it's temporary

and then you can be free one of the ways

you'd be free is by owning your own

plants that was not an exotic view that

was abraham lincoln's view

in fact it was a it was a principle of

the republican party

in the in the late 19th century it's

taken a lot of effort to drive those

ideas out of people's heads

but they're still there and they're very

relevant

it was the greek philosopher plato who

said the ratio of earnings between

highest and lowest paid employee in any

organization

should be no more than six to one in

1923

banker j p morgan declared no more than

20 to one was optimum

yet today's salary difference between

top and bottom earners in global

corporations

can be higher than 500 or a thousand to

one

when you're up in the range of 501

inequality the rich and the poor become

almost different species

no longer members of of the same

community

commonality of interest is lost and so

it's it's difficult to form community

and to have good friendly relationships

across

class differences that are that large

when the public do vent their outrage at

inappropriate earnings

the common defense is to move the debate

to the psychological realm

and quote mercurial british economist

herbert spencer

he coined the phrase survival of the

fittest and his words are now used to

justify excess

competition in business is a good thing

but the playing field

must be level monopolists have too much

because the system they game is rigged

under the current economic setup the

fitness of the vast majority of the

world's population

is irrelevant those that are made to pay

for this crisis

are not those that caused it but those

who caused it

for survival will no doubt try to

marginalize this film as socialist

or even marxist

i'm a capitalist i'm a business person

i i believe in the basic principles

that's why i'm completely appalled by

seeing these principles

destroyed by monarchs monopolists

who have totally destroyed the system

from within on wall street

and and this is completely unacceptable

i'm a capitalist

i think capitalism can do it uh it's not

a question of getting rid of capitalism

it's a question of getting rid of this

terrible form of capitalism

capitalism more broadly understood as

market economy not only has a future i

can't see

the future of the world without it but

the question is what kind of capitalism

what kind of market economy

a system of reformed capitalism built on

independent money

a tax system based on consumption not

income

and employee owned businesses would

begin to build an economy that's not

dependent on

constant growth to service its debt

we've endured the so-called free market

for centuries

but far from being free it's led us to

destroy nature

and each other in a vain attempt to

progress

it's absolutely ludicrous to suggest

that

somehow there is a scientifically

defined boundary of the market that we

should never change

and then of course that's what the free

market economy wants you to believe

because once that they convince you of

that

and claim that on top of that claim that

they have the truth

because they are you know phds in

economics then

they can uh tell you whatever they want

yeah and then you'll have to accept it

but that's where we have to that take

these guys on

politics is about drawing the boundary

of the market

you know i mean when you think about it

a lot of things have been taken

out of the market over the last two

three centuries

two three centuries ago you could buy

and sell human beings

child labor a lot of things that you

wouldn't imagine you could

buy and sell today so i mean over time

we have

redrawn this boundary and there is

nothing wrong with redrawing the

boundary again

things that were considered absolutely

reasonable in the 1850s like

selling any chemical on a street corner

and telling you that it's a

pharmaceutical drug that'll make be good

for you

things like that that were absolutely

complex then are now serious criminal

offences well the same thing will be

true of active money management in 100

years

the breakdown we saw in the great

depression and witnessed again at the

beginning of the 21st century

occurred because in the name of growth

much was taken out of the system by

those who contribute very little

multinational corporates and banks will

always want to grow without having to

compensate those people who actually do

the work to produce the surplus

in the past every time too much was

taken by those who contributed little

people rose up to halt the violent

practices

enacted by a tangible enemy today the

question is

with such a formless enemy pervading

every element of our economic and

democratic process

can it be done again of course it can be

done again look it's a cycle i mean

we're not we're not uh peons but maybe

rats running around a little a little

wheel in in some

somebody's big cage somewhere um the

finance rises finance rises

finance becomes organized you make a lot

of money in banking it's easy to go out

and buy politicians

but the essence of democracy the essence

of american democracy

is this this is a repeated confrontation

a repeated showdown and in the 1830s

andrew jackson beat the second bank of

the united states

in the early 1900s teddy roosevelt beat

jp morgan

and john d rockefeller in the 1930s

franklin delano roosevelt fdr

beat everyone from wall street and now

we have to do it again

the one single thing that makes me

optimistic

rather than cynical pessimistic is my

students

first i do not see the desire to go to

wall street

amongst them i see the opposite second

i see a disdain amongst them for

people who are motivated not just they

don't want money

i see a disdain amongst them for people

who do just want money

the crises we face today

are created by humans

and what is created by humans can be

changed by humans

so we are all capable of transforming

our world

revolutions are philosophical getting

organized and preventing the culprits

camouflaging the real problem

means it's possible to embark on a

bloodless revolution

against the violent organizations and

barbaric leaders who've trashed the

economy

central banking rigged capitalism land

speculation

income tax and neo-classical economics

have corporatized democracy

stunted progress perverted the course of

human destiny

and compromised the future of this

planet if these issues aren't addressed

then the next implosion will be on a

scale unimagined

whatever the propaganda at the beginning

of the 21st century

central unregulated cheap money

pumped up land values which created an

unsustainable asset bubble

in a world that once again operates a

rigged tax system

that enriches entrenched privilege

neoclassical economics have ruined life

for the bottom billions

tempted everyone into intergenerational

conflict

and created massive suffering that has

no limits

human beings go mad in crowds and come

to their senses slowly

and individually

history is littered with examples of

people who threw themselves off the yoke

of oppression

to adopt radical change only to end up

with popular new rulers that maintained

the status quo

to really understand something is to be

liberated from it

dedicating oneself to a great cause

taking responsibility

and gaining self-knowledge is the

essence of being human

a predatory capitalist's truest enemy

and humanity's greatest ally is the

self-educated individual

who has read understood delays their

gratification

and walks around with their eyes wide

open

so

so

so

you