Hello im max kaiser this is the kaiser report you know the world is a finite place and yet humanity is capacity to generate garbage seems infinite oh my god how those are going to work how do you square that circle. Says max well the circle is not being squared in fact theres a finite amount of space even in the Financial System where many think you can print an infinite number of dollars well china saying yankee go home to all american toxic waste whether it is actual trash trash garbage trash sort of stuff or trash us Treasury Bonds so they dont want any of them heres the first headline recycling chaos in u. S. As china bans foreign waste and they set out to look at the classical virtue signaling sort of you know Portland Oregon couple and what it means to virtual signaling essentially its going to get a lot more expensive to signal your virtue like many portland residents satch ish and are the. Car are serious recyclers their house is coated with recycled bluish white paint they recycle their rainwater compost their food waste and carefully separate the paper in plastic they toss out but recently after loading up their prius and driving to a sorting facility they got a shock. The fellow said we dont take plastic anymore satish says it should go in the trash so apparently china has said from january first is the official date no more foreign waste will they accept you know all those container ships plastics and cardboard and all sorts of stuff sent to china to recycle well they dont want any of it anymore. You know you are remember the story about an entrepreneur in china this warman who noticed that all of these big cargo ships were going to china return to china empty because of course america. Doesnt export anything to china they only import she said well send us your garbage some of your corrugated cardboard for one thing and she recycled it re fabricated it in china and sold it back to the us essentially and she became a billionaire and there was a huge garbage trade flowing from america to china americas biggest export to china was garbage literally garbage huge tankers full of waste and now china is hit the Maximum Capacity for garbage and toxic sludge and air pollution and people are choking to death on the street and mercury poisoning is killing babies and whatnot so the governments like hey you know maybe we should take less garbage from america so they put the kybosh on the sole garbage export business and now that as you point out these virtual signallers in other words you know weasely types and portlandia which is a great show by the way are on able to exercise their virtue by composting their own banana peels and by growing you know their own organic plants in the backyard and dividing plastic and whatnot in the recycling bin they have to now pay best of bottom line to get the pay well actually part of the problem has been that they do not recycle they do not separate plastics so if in fact in our own community youll see that the recycling section is just you dump it all plastic paper anything so people have been putting their stuff down a mls wool sweaters all sorts of stuff in this thing but and compressing it into a bale and then sending that bale via container to china and then china has to separate them all out its the fact that its all blended together thats causing the toxic sort of environmental disaster there in china and so theyll go into the details you mention that. The u. S. Exports all this garbage to china and were not just talking with u. S. Treasury bonds because they said a lot of that garbage and they send fannie mae and freddie mac. Sort of Housing Mortgage backed securities and stuff like that but on the other end they send those at the higher and lower and they send all this stuff and the data is that the u. S. Exports about one third of its recycling and nearly half goes to china for decades china has used recyclables from around the world to supply its manufacturing boom but this summer it declared that this foreign waste includes too many other nonrecyclable materials that are dirty even hazardous and a filing with the World Trade Organization the country list twenty four kinds of solid wastes it would ban to protect chinas environmental interests and Peoples Health the complete ban takes place from january first but already some chinese importers have not had their licenses renewed this is leaving us recycling companies scrambling to adapt so they look at a Company CalledWaste Systems in Southern Oregon which is you know theyve received all of this recycled stuff they package it and compress it into a bale in which they put it into a container and shipped to china but as china is no longer willing to accept it theyre piling up while they look for somebody else around the world willing to accept it to actually do this job in the u. S. Its too expensive to separate it all out and recycle appropriately so theyre looking for somebody to send it to in the meantime local authorities are just telling them to send it to the local dump so so these people a lot of people are feeling like theyre doing well and im i drive a prius and i recycle but in fact theyre recycling all that work theyre doing to recycle is actually just going into the local landfill you know it all back up and ill just create a toxic environment you know ultimately cause. Operation the super pac into the stuff in plastics of course this would fall in the category of externality you know they dont pay for the environmental cost and they will never be forced to pay for the environmental cost is one of the subsidies that we as human beings give to corporations were willing to compromise our health by having to live in a garbage dump so that these corporations can continue to make. On accounted for profits essentially and avoid this these problems which is their gated cities in fortresses so they have a fortress so since the whole kind of process weve been covering over the past few years and ties report is the de globalization weve lived through very relatively easy times i think in fifty years time people of back and say wow that period of time between like nineteen after the Opec Oil Embargo from that period up until about now was just like everything all the prices were going down and goods were going down shipping everything around the world just in time delivery everything was all perfect and cheap and now i think the cost i think weve hit the bottom there and it looks like costs are starting to rise because as the roadway system says right now all this recycling is technically garbage but there are now International Regulations about how much you have to recycle so recycling will have to happen and its going to cost more so therefore your products they are cost more they one of the articles about this china story says that you know amazon for example going to get rid of because they buy almost all of a lot of their packaging is provided by the recycled end product that has been until now created in china this the guy who runs away systems that i talked about scott fowler he talks about what americans have been putting in their recycling bins that are technically not recyclable and has always just been put into these one ton bales that gets. To china he points out a roll of linoleum gas cans a briefcase a surprising number of knitted sweaters plus their frozen food cartons and plastic bags that many people think are recyclable but are not well you know these carbon nanotubes are extra credibly strong and apparently you can create a geosynchronous satellite above planet earth on a rope made of carbon nanotubes so you can get into outer space quite quickly like you just take an elevator five minutes up from there at that stage and platform you can load up containers and rockets in carry the garbage to the moon which is our most you know close to satellite and the dark side of the moon is also geosynchronous to planets you dont see the dark side of the moon and turn that into an incredible garbage dump and just to get you know him on moscow or one of these other guys to work this all out and Richard Branson sure Richard Branson and you create a garbage carry on this new technology and just create the dark side of the moon dump i mean thats obviously the answer to this well a lot of people all sorts of not just a lot of people working on private satellites they should maybe they might invent a chute just shoots garbage and garments cannon garbage dad and walk around on you know that you can shoot a projectile into outer space on nucular power rails essentially and you can just shoot garbage satellites and outer space because its already cluttered with various broken satellite parts and what nobody would know the difference if youve got like old diapers and stuff floating around in outer space blanketing planet earth well of course Stephen Hawking is right that one day will come visit us and we should try to avoid them ever coming to visit us but if they keep all our trash heaps and showing up on their planet it might encourage them to come look for us and who the hell is said to us all of these old. You know thats our mark of who we are you know the radio signals from on earth that are still being emitted into outer space are there to. Vision singles i were first broadcast in the one nine hundred forty s. And of course those were all fiddlers speeches that were televised of those waves are the first waves to leave planet earth to travel into outer space so alien if they do intercept rays or you know signals from planet earth from the one nine hundred forty s. Their first introduction to humanity will be at all filler and thatll be their First Impression and no you cant you cant. Make a First Impression twice Something Like that yes so right now by definition they say that material out there is garbage referring to the stack of all these recyclables it has no value there is no demand for it in the marketplace its garbage and in china itself because theyre not accepting any of this stuff there is also a problem a lot of old ladies go around collecting all this sort of garbage and separating and they have no market now finally in this last headline year this is a tweet that came out i think it was via bloomberg and speaking of garbage and china no longer willing to accept it and what that might mean for virtual signal because a lot of our us military is. You know the support via the media is because where such great virtuous people were going to save those women of afghanistan were going to save those people of benghazi were going to save those people and you know various. Oil rich nations around the world were going to help them right well chinas appetite for treasuries it may be about to just as America Needs its biggest foreign creditor to help finance a growing budget deficit of course the budget deficit is not helped by the expanding military budgets which is totally financed by china and if they are no longer have the appetite for treasuries you know this is the thing that weve been looking at for years of course a lot of our guests are always like whenever they start buying up treasuries its going to go all horribly right so thats amazing that these two things are cocoa you know incident. Well that theyre not taking the garbage of the american fi out money either you know you can send them truckloads worth of dollars in hundred dollar bills and they would say no we dont take that garbage anymore and of course that means that the ability to neutralize the effect of all that money printing disappears so that would come back into the economy in the form of inflation so were starting to see some early warnings of inflation on the margins you know the ability to hide that are disappearing rapidly. Weve got to. Snap at the exit so the second have to take a break you know take a break and come back for the second half. When you dont. Get a court to. Make. Said. You know. That. If you speak french. Across europe municipalities are taking their water supply back from private companies who p. M. A. To me to keep out the cells with simple song alone even find company elsewhere though they invite private companies to take over the utilities anybody tell us that. Been pieces of us to quote them out. Of more use than bill bill if bill brought up locals are ready to stand up for the basic human right of access to water its about water but its also over much more and more its about the hurt and the redistribution of. This. Date downwards we want our oil. Well welcome back to the kaiser report im max kaiser time to return to our conversation on marshall are back is a Research Associate at the Levy Institute all around nice guy ex hockey player marshall welcome back not a good hockey player you know you got to the Junior High School level of sickly thats where you ever seen that video on you tube birth of a canadian its you know you see ice theres a hole in the ice and then a man emerges oh yeah ive seen that you know hockey stick in a park well thats true thats so we are thats how you were born thats how i was born incredible yeah im a can see that on you tube all right lets talk about this move on to some other topics of concern your thoughts on the crypto economy will this take down the Economic System as weve noted it what do you call with crypto crypto economy look. If you look at the history of money anybody can create an iou or conduct a commercial transaction with another person broad both parties are willing to accept payment in the same medium of exchange so in that sense bitcoin or whatever other crypto currency you want to do is fine if thats how they want to settle it but if you really want to ensure crypto currencies long term viability then the easiest way to do that is by allowing you to extinguish your tax liabilities by using the government we were able to do that then you know that would confer a huge immediate additional demand on the currency right now because you would grab those because because you would actually be able to extinguish your Tax Liability so would the government now my guess is that the u. S. Government or for that matter any other sovereign government is not going to lose its monopoly issue of the currency and so they wont allow that but that if you really want. And to have a bible alternative currency that would be the best way to do that if the government decided to more that for example you can pay your taxes and be repelled youd probably get a revival in demand for beaver pelts well the government is clearly not on board with the idea of having citizens create their own currency you know the government likes to be able to control that and so the question is really i dont know if you. Well the government is constitutionally mandated to rule that was a rule that was given to them so its not a its if its if its a dictatorship or a monopolist role it was conferred on them by the. Followers of independence yes and this ability now individuals to create their own sovereignty by creating their own currency my question is you know youre a smart guy in which a leading institute you can sit around and talk about the big issues all day long i mean you know is this a threat to banks in other words banks there theyre nervous theyre a bit nervous about this because it threatens their monopoly how do you see that well and i have to look im in the camp that says its probably a bubble i know you with your but who. Have a different view of this i must admit that when i hear jamie diamond. You know go on against it i it does make me much more sympathetic to the whole is a big point i can certainly understand you know weve talked before about the low the massive political dysfunction because you know rebel and you know you dont want jamie diamond no i dont youre a rebel youre on the side of the crypto sovern movement i can understand the the objectives behind it i certainly feel that they have a legitimate beef against the system which they feel is stitched up against them and so i think they. Can certainly understand why this thing has developed the political context for which is to develop im just trying to say that if you really wanted to be on sound footing thats where you would have to do it and youd have to have some cooperation with the government to do it that way well i mean in the meantime if youre in a community feels. That theyll drain some much capital way from banks Central Banks and government that they will have an alternative well you know look i mean. If you can point to me one historical example of this libertarian fantasy that you know is actually existed somewhere then you know thats great but i mean William Golding i think wrote about this in lord of the flies so its a very to stop and take a bit going marshall out of it im moving on all right the republicans are pushing through tax reform many who watch m. S. M. To see may not know there are actually any domestic matters unrelated to the russias president putin scandal hoax your thoughts on what you see tax reform whats going on there well its pretty regressive meaning that it confers a lot more benefits to the top one percent and the middle class of working class theres a whole lot of goodies in it for corporations as well you know this talk about you know weve got the one of the highest Corporate Tax rates in the world thirty five percent thats thats bogus with the with all the exemptions that are already written into the code the effective tax rate for most large corporations is its more like fifteen so ive seen some estimates as low as twelve General Electric i think i found a seven thousand page tax or yarn and they got a tax rebate yeah thats right and then youve got Companies Like apple that you know domicile a lot of their facilities in places like jersey tax havens like like jersey in the Channel Islands so so mitigate their tax bill so theyre there are its an unnecessary giveaway in a lot of respects there isnt that much done for personal income tax holders and and look my my big. And thats really the grounds on which i think you should object to this bill is that its highly regressive and also it will probably do very very little for employment growth and for rising creating Income Growth which should be the goal behind it and in that regard i think that those are the grounds. For objecting to it course the democrats are being very foolish because they keep on saying well its going to add to the deficit and thats absolutely awful but of course the minute you start taking that argument you are effectively ceding the you are effectively embrace in the paradigm of the publicans use because the next stage of that is going to be that infuse time if the deficit do in fact grow as a result of this tax reform and there are the republicans like paul ryan are going to say see weve got to get hold of entitlements because the deficit so its way too large and were going to tech Social Security medicare and then theyll turn to the democrats and say and you see you guys basically express so concern so much concern about the deficit earlier so lets do something about it so its a trap and the democrats like nancy pelosi for example are falling right into it ok just a quick divers of digressions back to m. M. T. Modern monetary theory we talked a little bit about it you said you know you guys look dont look at Interest Rates as a way to to to manage the economy more on the tax side the fiscal side were talking about it too were talking about taxes now so in your view what would be a more of an ideal tax structure thats a political judgment what do you think would be the like sweet spot for how taxes are levied across the economic well that youre asking me to make an a priori judgment i would say that you cant reward whats the was so whats wrong with the current tax regime is my own personal opinion that i think youll find that i am in tears have as many different views are or are right its a catch up so my own feeling is that the current tax code is too complex has become a political plaything for lobbyists do you support a flat tax in general in favor generally in favor of tax simplification id probably go for some elements of Progress City to help moving right along like two or three to two or three basic level and then get rid of all the polls yeah that would be my im totally for why oh why dont we do that because all the lobbyists who like a lot of our spring thats right. The corporate because the real welfare queens that we have to work on well youre the real welfare queens are corporations corporate and theyve got a right love their corporate welfare they thats socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us yeah thats right we take the risks they take the gains yeah thats right and they get the bailouts when times get tough so youre right through the primary lever of Interest Rates at the central bank but i want to go there lets move on we also have unlike goodies oh. Midterms are coming up do you see any economic ideas coming from any of these democrats. Well Bernie Sanders has a few thats largely because hes got a great economists working for him Stephanie Kelton who go with the morning he she still is affiliated with them still buys them so hes probably one and im sure there are others out there but yeah the the better deal that they introduced didnt have much that was new to it there were some interesting aspects of talking about concentrations of monopolies and any names i would offer my with like member barack obama came out of nowhere you know donald trump was kind of like the heart of where is this guys no no unfortunately. You know the ones who keep getting named. Are unfortunate being in you know a lot of them get ensnared in other kinds of scandals but no one that thats a real problem the democrats say they dont have a lot of bench strength i mean their leadership is basically always saying to me that the Democratic Party relies on charisma or is the republicans have policies that they just keep hammering consistently they dont they dont change that much where is the democrats you have a clean bill clinton or j. F. K. You know who are very charismatic or barack obama i would say roe wade was very charismatic even if you you know you didnt agree with politics but no i love what i what i would say the fundamental difference is that the the democrats go out of their way to insult and ignore their bases aspirations where. The republicans at least in word pay at least i Pay Lip Service and they also arent afraid to introduce crazy quote unquote crazy ideas because that was what happened for example under bush and cheney is that they would you know introduce an idea people to you cant do that thats against the crazy idea but you repeated long enough and eventually you changed the Political Landscape where is the democrats are always trying to be reasonable when the call takes to being reasonable they never will introduce new ideas and they they will stick with the existing paradigms and thats why they keep losing elections and i think thats a very insightful and something lesson perhaps that these guys in the Democratic Party should embrace and they do need new leadership to me as i said you know look. The three leading democrats in the house are all in their late seventys all the people that are being talked about twenty twenty president ial candidates. Sanders war and. Biden theyre all in their mid to late seventys you know youve got a few young names like Camilla Harris being talked about but again not much is known about her background and and and there isnt enough to theres really not enough new bench strength theres a few interesting people of the at the state doesnt really influx of women across the spectrum across america in the wake of these sex scandals so women are getting more political as a friend a year aware of and you see that having an impact in twenty eighteen and twenty twenty seems to have had an impact in the last set of elections we had the special elections in the election we had a virginia look im an obsolete my view was that the levy is such a i dont know me you know theyve got an artificial sperm theyve got Artificial Insemination they dont need us anymore marshall were relics from a previous era theyre setting us up for the big extermination everyones a sex predator or they dont theyre going to throw us off a cliff and its just going to be you know a world run by women thats his view not mine. For the record look what i what. They will hire we do female overlord we need to i think we have to we have spent enough time screwing up the world let women have a turn of yeah sure you know its all intellectual property now you dont need muscles well you know i rather was thinking at a conference i heard Christine Lagarde head of the i. M. F. And she said that she thought the economic invited post two thousand and eight might have been a bit different if that weve had lehman sisters rather than Lehman Brothers marshall have to leave it there thanks for being on the kaiser apart thanks for having me again i think. All right well thats going to do it for this edition of kaiser for with me my skies are safe here and i think our best marshall are back from the Levy Institute is going to reach us on twitter as kaiser for intel next time. The single most important social equalizer of our time the internet is under great threat the decision by the federal Communications Commission essentially gives Internet Service providers the keys to the internet without Net Neutrality the Economic Opportunity divide only widen for all. That. Gives. Us former intelligence chief James Clapper claims President Trump is being handled as an assett by vladimir putin. On the First Anniversary of the deadly Christmas Market attack in berlin germanys chancellor merkel admits the errors in the governments handling of the atrocity are see his from people who lost loved ones on monday. U. K. Parliamentary Committee Talks fake news and russias allegedly meddling given numerous countrys elections but struggles to even get some of its basic facts straight. The same youre not used to say we just would like to offer to alter the whole interview in the same church and still she was holding the