A fantastic im not sure thats what were talking my head into the ring actually we have elections coming up here in this year 2020 or of course part of our epic new series front running so if you were made treasury secretary in 2020 what would you do this year 2020 so i guess you would come into office 2021 in january 2021 would be the 1st thing you did to fix this economy or let it sit down with the attorney general and say were really going to apply the law and of course if you applied the law a lot of bankers would find themselves in jail yeah apply the law debt westray to the Charles Bronson of economists right i began to underline the quantitative easing but the Interest Rates rise again and that would leave a lot of banks pretty make good and we would have some wonderful public banks a city bank would be a public bank and chase and let Interest Rate rises and public banks. Wouldnt make lent loans for the stock market and speculation and for corporate takeovers wed make loans to actually spend into the economy and i would oversee a rebuilding of americas infrastructure questions im reading some Northern European economists i forget which is its a fan letter sweden but theres a school of thought that believes in a natural rate for the interest which is roughly 4 to 5 percent do you believe that there is a natural rate of interest there was never been a natural rate of interest all rates of interest for the last 5000 years have been administered right any rate isnt administered is there a sweet spot for rates that they would hugh toward if a left alone and not interfere with by Central Banks if you believe in circular reasoning you believe in a natural rate of interest but it falls circular reasoning in that idea that somehow without Government Intervention if the economy could work without a government government somehow the private sector would equalize everything but thats never happened in history so this is all neoliberal Austrian School fantasy you know youve reached your ear your flow in this remaking of death last year the vigilante and im the auster economist and we meet and 42nd street and do you blow me away with your 45 magnum debt equalizer or do we have a discussion about this well i say theres a basic principle of debt that a debt is only valid if you make if the debtor can repay it but as of a lender makes a loan without any idea how the debtor can repay it then the loan is considered a fraudulent loan so i would define fraud and begin of a large debt write down also a secretary of the treasury i would be in charge of techs policy and id minimize housing prices id roll them back down by basically taxing the Capital Gains of land so that when value keynes if you would tax the speculative gains and land the under and incomes. Not the building but the land youd know but it could borrow from the banks to inflate housing prices so id end the asset Price Inflation of real estate and b. S. The Price Inflation of corporations and basically restructure the economy in the way that it could afford to handle good debts and get rid of the bad ok most people actually out there watching now would believe because of propaganda pushed on cable news and by politicians that if you did your 1st order of business as u. S. Treasury secretary of a resting bankers and charging them for their crimes that it would crash the economy and the reason why they think that would happen is because they believe i think youll probably say falsely that bankers lend to businesses and help entrepreneurs and help the startup economy but what they perhaps dont realize is that up to 85 percent of all bank lending is actually property speculation thats right but its the bankers that have already crashed the economy since 2008 thats why the economy has not grown in 12 years because the banks of been bailed out not the real economy so i would put the real economy 1st main street not wall street that simple and applying the law all you would crash would be to roll back the immense amount of Capital Gains stock market and bond market gains that have been made in the in the last 12 years without the bankers doing anything at all its all been created by the government you understand how banks work you understand how the fed works how the treasury works is it possible for a policy to be enacted that selectively raises only the margin rate that is the rate that speculators is to borrow to spec. With in other words you wouldnt change the discount rate it would change the prime rate your only rating the margin rate which would apply to speculators can you selectively just raise that rate as a way to taper speculation this proposal has been made for the last 60 years since i was in school it was being made of course you can have differential rates and differential reserve requirements you want to minimize unproductive lending you want to minimize takeover lending speculative lending derivatives gambles what matt wanted to encourage is consumer you know lending to the real economy to Real Investment but as they say just said thats not what banks do that what the textbooks say happens is not at all what banks do and certainly not what i experienced when i was in but when leon cooperman has found manager or Warren Buffett they go on c. And b. C. And they literally cry their tears flowing every time the suggested that they start to update the law or they start to get rid of their speculative excesses that are undermining the economy why shouldnt the reposed to that from the democrats or whomever be raise the margin rate ok just raise the cost of what are your respect other words if youre at the casino in the casinos going bankrupt a casino dont willfully go bankrupt these gamblers are willfully bankrupting america the casino has the good sense of raising the win ratio on the slot machines they dont willfully go out of business ok we raise the win rate on the speculators by raising just the margin rate of the worst 5 percent or 10 percent very good idea im all for every market is structured and managed every economy is a planned economy the question is whos going to do it or right now instead of the government planning the economy you of wall street planning the economy and thats more centralized than government planning thats the people dont realize when did you get your p. C. In economics 1960. 768. 00 of course thats when we began the process of going off the Gold Standard essentially as near as sending too much gold overseas fine. Thing this war in vietnam and our trade deficit with france u. K. Whatever but the fact is i want to ask you like how radical compared to the rest of economic history that you had learned was that 1971 moment of having all just global there had always been some sort of Gold Standard in or some sort of more solid universal standard like right now it feels like only the usa exclusively knows how much theyre printing what they have how much theyre going to pay back what sort of what the quality of the debt is how radical is that moment and what did the been the consequences well it was radical in the sense that no country had ever said they would go to war over the kind of International Financial system we would have but once the United States went off gold it threatened saudi arabia for instance that we would go to war if so to arabia didnt recycle all of its oil revenues back to the United States. I went to the white house. And had a discussion about that and it was radical in the sense that nobody knew that going off gold would enable america to have an entirely new kind of imperialism without good paying and gold when they were in the balance of payments deficit which was a military deficit there is nothing that we could give other countries but government ious and it was radical because the larger the balance of payments deficit we ram the more these dollars went into foreign Central Banks and they would use that to buy Treasury Bonds to fund the domestic budget deficit is on the question look theres a 20. 00 bill right every 2 every bill theres billions of billions that are printed has a serial number yes why cant the serial numbers be published so the public can see exactly where theyre all going in other words are going to fly it you know pallets of billions into iraq unaccountable completely and no oversight for reasons we have no idea thats thats not acceptable. If you want to have money you dont want gold you just want paper money backed by nonsense ok thats what you want to do but we should be able to see that number at least a big point i know exactly where every transaction is and every single moment of every single day for the rest of eternity but why cant we publish that number so we can see where theyre sending these dollars you have a pretty good idea from the Federal Reserve and the treasury both in publishing the currency to nominations and by far the largest per mass of currency 100. 00 bills held outside of the United States so the 100. 00 bills are the medium of choice for a latin American Drug dealers and cia dirty tricks operations for. The us and if youve been around a long time how come the cia is so bad at cruise these days the cia used to do couzin lot america all the time and they were pretty good at it these days they dont seem to be able to even stage a coup anymore they screwed up in venezuela they can even do a stage in america they cant even do a coup in america and their own turf theyve been trying to do a coup against trump now for a few years they failed how come theyre so bad at coups the cia well you had a doing a coup in honduras that was the last major coup they had you have had the cia cordon it a coup in brazil to put the elect the president in jail and how many times they were fine with fidel castro. I think they tried to kill him 128. 00 times that you have to realize that the cia grew out of sort of the o. S. s the cold also social the cia is run by very rich rich little kids that are playing a game and its very hard to have spoiled rich kids try to run the world when they really had to work in it or ever get buzzed by bizzle palance those are my peeps we were in the cia thats our power base you can have Everything Else so youre going to be treasury secretary of the United States of america perhaps by 2021 next year and its. Time you could be getting ready for office but what they can and they said weve had it even over the last like 2 years many of them dropped out like who would you want to serve under which which candidate had the best policies by well obviously bernie and hed probably put my former Department Chairman stuff on the head of the Federal Reserve and so we had to work a just fund together like we did a u. M. Case a modern monetary theory which is a whole topic unto itself fascinating stuff but weve got to take a break when we come back will pick it up from there all right dont go away. And very well mark until youre watching us inside. In the United States president ial candidates debate the future of the u. S. And the world. Max kaiser and Stacy Herbert dig into the burning questions of this election cycle one topic every week. Tax student debt trade wars corporate money universal basic. And more catch up with whats front running this sunday exclusively on r. T. But im back to the kaiser report 1st show of the new year welcome to 2020 years not the debt wish project the remake of death was with dr Michael Hudson playing the role of Charles Bronson during a break i contacted abel ferrara he was the director of such classics as the bad lieutenant hes agreed to come on hes now attached to the project ive also agreed to appear in the film should be out sometime in early 2021 stacy well ive ive enjoyed spending the 1st few minutes of 2020 with dr Michael Hudson but i really have an idea here that you know your treasury secretary coming up next year which means of course that the hash tag to elect you somehow got through the filters and Silicon Valley and it made me think of california which is the largest economy in the United States thats where any of the i guess innovation happens a lot of crime innovation happens here in new york but out in california. What is wrong with that state its like the most liberal the most socalled Progressive Social justice warriors they love to run it like think of ideas to control the rest of the world how they should lead and yet when you look at that economy which is the biggest in the us its a disaster zone you have mass homelessness their infrastructure is collapsing they have like half the state incarcerated for a life for stealing pizzas so like what would you do what is wrong with california are your the biggest state in your economy you control right now what would you do to fix that californias problems stem basically from proposition 13 which was passed almost half a century ago to say we will not raise taxes on any property owned by anybody here will only raise taxes once they sell so. Texas remain very minimal on masses of property there the pretense was that this was to help homeowners stay in their homes. And not be forced out as they reached retirement age with a house inflation going up and the tax inflation going up the reality was this was all propaganda by the large commercial Real Estate Interest so commercial real estate obviously the same corporations have owned them for the last 50 years and the commercial real estate doesnt have to pay a tax well almost all states municipalities in the United States base their local spending on the Real Estate Tax thats how americans function for 200 years but california doesnt have that tax so the californians voted if you look at revealed what economists call revealed preference what do they prefer california want to be poor they want to be homeless that this is their democratic choice they want the real estate people to run the state they want the rich people to be to be untaxed and only the employees pay the tax. They dont want Free Education they voted against them they want a very expensive education so that they have to go out of state they think that that will encourage the children to have another experience in the more civilized part of the country so california really voted for suicide and its because largely of the of the real estate and proposition 13 the enormous amount of propaganda that went into electing Ronald Reagan who basically wanted to make wealth the Old Fashioned way to take the Public Sector and give it to the campaign contributors. To loot so california spent looted steadily its like of the gold rush. All over again who spend the result of neoliberal policies in california playing describing there is a cognitive dissonance right people dont assess a prop 13 with the fact that they have no money to supply adequate infrastructure and to combat homelessness and provide basic services where economics does one a factor in cognitive dissonance being another words in the last 1015 years weve had the growth of behavioral economics and this is an attempt to somehow quantify and monetize our past behavior and to understand how that impacts the economy and then to enact policies to mitigate that risk is that do you follow that school at all do you have any thoughts on that is it something that needs to be put more aggressively into the policy mix in a state like California Well the role of Economic Education is to create positive dissonance it is it really should be taught in the Literature Department as part of Science Fiction because it teaches about a parallel universe of how a universe would run if austrians of the 19th century had designed it or if Milton Friedman the shah go school designed an economy without a government without Regulation Without crime where everybody be. Rationally in a way to create wealth of course this is what the romans believed in their legal system and we all know how they havent though me another example cognitive dissonance is baked into the cake you know you have this disassociation they prop 13 i dont understand why the somebody almost people here while their government is bankrupt but what about you know heres al am in the movie industry would exist in the Technology Industry what is exist without government you know without taxes and none of those billionaires would exist but they dont they once they acquire that well if they become they have always to call on wall street a god complex but nevertheless mexia wealth addiction we were just in detroit and in detroit a wealthy company in the lending business plunked down billions bought 100 buildings in downtown detroit an completely fixed it up and theres not Homeless People on the street and theyve made it into a model city because one company one corporation thought you know what we actually want to do something for our community theyre from that area they ploughed back into the community how come detroit is not held up as a model for other cities to follow in other words get corporations to clean up their own backyard trump is right when he criticizes nancy pelosi and says youre here in washington harassing maybe you should be back in San Francisco cleaning up the physical matter from the streets well if most of the wealth in the United States is from real estate doesnt sound like detroit is a way to make billionaires who make runs in their sleep as they do and california so this is exactly what the california spent fighting against ever since the 1930s when there was the great president ial Governor Campaign with Upton Sinclair who ran for governor on a basically a real estate ticket he was a follower of henry george he realize. Is that the precondition for a governor being governor of california was not understanding how the economy worked author of the jungle up to claire came up with the phrase you never trust a guy whose salary depends on him being lying to paraphrase he was like the Jimmy Mcmillan of the age that the rent is too dang high r. T. Los angeles basically exists and is so wealthy at the hollywood industry thanks to the u. S. State department enforcing intellectual property law around the world and forcing other nations to respect perpetual copyright Silicon ValleySan Francisco has similar Silicon Valley also has the added benefit of massive amounts of darpa money the department of defense poor is money in there for them to develop technology for the military weaponry and in fact in the 2020 budget that was significantly increased as we pivot towards more cyber war ai war and outer space war when 2020 Election Year youre not yet treasury secretary but remember what happened right after world war 2 in los angeles General Motors and the car company has bought up the Public Transportation system and close them down so everybody would have to have cars and move to the suburbs so it was like it was created it was a planned economy planned by the Oil Companies by the banks and by the Real Estate Interests and you should think of california as being centrally planned by the but what terry Industrial Complex the Real Estate Interests of the intellectual Property Rights interests that walt disney m i all that is the of course lets ask about this you know global insurrection of banker occupation that we talk about here and theres uprisings in chile lebannon all over the world against corruption the basically against neoliberal policies so its like reagan at bats or was introduced to that era in the early eightys is that oh is it now come to the end of that era are we at the end of the. Reagan fats are near a liberal era that was started in the early eightys i would love to believe that thats what im trying to bring about and thats what your show is trying to bring about were trying to get over the cognitive dissonance and pierce the this shell of a pretense that a free market is not a free market for criminals not a free market for fraud not the kind of free market that Alan Greenspan believed in until suddenly he woke up much to a surprise and said good heavens theres datable and going on here thats amazing it had that foxhole conversion saying the mess is created but isnt aside from the outright criminality and fraud there it is essentially neo liberalism has worked for large part of the population i would say the boomers it essentially weve had a pyramid scheme and its mostly based on property but they were 1st then so isnt it naturally going and even if its not outright fraud by the new population of younger people who are like dudes like i have to like i cant live like ray and like i can afford Education Health anything nothing what you describe is happening to the young people in america is whats happened to young people in greece they emigrate but americans dont have anywhere to emigrate to because they dont speak Foreign Languages that dont fit but theyre not allowed to because you cant because of the new laws whereby banks overseas wont open any Bank Accounts for u. S. Citizens otherwise the owners of the banks and the executives at the bank face like 30 years in prison here do you agree of stacey though that this pyramid scheme needs news that i can leverage and work out of the new sucker of the everyone in the us and jens either dont have enough even to get on the pyramid scheme ladder thats right and they can emigrate youre saying thats right itself i just wanted to say here and do what state rising up is theres no other solution but how do you do that if you only have 2 parties that are the same party with the same donor class there has to be a political revolution. And in order to have an economic revolution here how are you going to have that thats what really were talking about and what i guess your shows throughout 2020 are going to be about economists moodys e. L. University Economics Department they all said the Economic Data suggest that in fact you know when again based on the data i dont have the data but i can see the trends going to win again because the the Democratic Party have a problem who can they nominate the desoto week that hes guaranteed to lose to trump because the democratic candidate really is from hes there policy and the advantage of having trump and is that not only does he follow the democratic new liberal policy but the democrats can say thats not us so they can say its not not our homicide of the economy will Clinton Tony Blair in the u. K. Invented the 3rd way to leave left wing policies to be in the middle are centrists but weve learned that actually centrism is right wing trying to be a centrist means you dont change the system you dont change the dynamic and if the economy is polarizing and every economy polarized this between debtors and creditors a senator mean a Senate Centrist position means you let the credit the creditors control the economy and the poverty of the debtors and thats basically the policy of both parties so i would anticipate the next 4 years are going to be another 4 years of pro wall street trumped up policy because thats what the democrat the democrats are throwing the election its like throwing a fight because theyve made their bets on the other side i mean a lot of people like to quote ben franklin as being all what kind of government you have of a republic if you can keep it i like to think of Ben Franklins famous quote a penny saved is a penny earned but thats not how you make savings these days you dont earn your mom cutting you off right there and thats it thanks for being on this special happy new year show dr Michael Hudson and. Thats going to do for this edition of the kaiser report episode 12020. 00 and so next time. What politicians do something to. Put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. So when you want to be president or injury. Or somehow want to. Have to go on to the press its like the 43 in the morning cant be good. Im interested always in the waters in the. First super bowl. The world is driven by a dream shaped by one person of those. Who dares thinks. We dare to ask. Join me every thursday on the alec simon show and ill be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business im show business ill see you then. Turkeys Parliament Approves a bill to deploy troops to libya in order to be embattled the un recognized government in tripoli weve got live reaction coming up. Top u. N. Rights experts say the United States jailing whistleblower Chelsea Manning for refusing to testify against wiki leaks founder Julian Assange is tantamount to torture. Police in hong kong make hundreds of a wrestler