what is the greatest symptom of the screwed up banking system on the street? is it the joblessness? what is it? and how do we address it? it is the joblessness, one of them, but there are many other problems that they cause. we have zombie banks in history, we had them in japan, we had them in the u.s. in the 80s. and until we dealt with them the problem is they suck all the money. they suck money. and when we finally address the issue, the taxpayer ends up paying double, three times, four times more. so we end up with the bill, always, and we pay more. but meanwhile, because this is so global, it s european banks, it s u.s. banks, and the world economy is caught in a spiral, which it can t get out of. i mean, we re talking about it can get out of it. it can get out of it. you ve just got to cancel the debt. the mathematical opposite of canceling mon printing money is canceling
debt. if can i print money out of thin air, i can delete a few zeros on the way out. we need serious debt restructuring, in u.s. and europe. in the u.s., we have mortgage debt that needs to be restructured. but we can t do those because we have these zombie banks that are so week that if we did the restructuring, they would fall apart. they would collapse. so yalman, if i take the premise that we have zombie banks. i m sure we have lots of them, not as many as we had two years ago. we have them in europe you can t even tell sometimes. you can t tell. but is the alternative to allow these banks to fail i mean, obviously the alternative is to allow them to fail. the policy is that there would be too much pain in letting banks fail. the reason they re always kept alive is the contagion fear, that you let one fail, like what happened in the case of lehman, there were so many other problems, the credit crunch, et cetera. but especially now, we have in
the way out. we need serious debt restructuring, in u.s. and europe. in the u.s., we have mortgage debt that needs to be restructured. but we can t do those because we have these zombie banks that are so week that if we did the restructuring, they would fall apart. they would collapse. so yalman, if i take the premise that we have zombie banks. i m sure we have lots of them, not as many as we had two years ago. we have them in europe you can t even tell sometimes. you can t tell. but is the alternative to allow these banks to fail i mean, obviously the alternative is to allow them to fail. the policy is that there would be too much pain in letting banks fail. the reason they re always kept alive is the contagion fear, that you let one fail, like what happened in the case of lehman, there were so many other problems, the credit crunch, et cetera. but especially now, we have in the u.s. and in europe, they do
somewhere in the middle east. anyway, go ahead, ari. how did your sources react to the book? most of them are not shocked about the findings. you know, my banking friends, some of them disagree with certain parts of it. but overall, i don t think there s anyone that realizes we really have not fixed the banking issue, the problem. it s got to mean something when mike mayo, who used to mike mayo, who was really, certainly when i was a financial reporter at bloomberg, whatever, i guess it was ten years ago, maybe the most influential banking analyst on wall street, would you not say? certainly two or three of them. one of the smartest, most respected. mike mayo really was the gold standard for the narrative on the financial industry. and when mike mayo comes out with a book, which he has, which has a similar narrative to what you have in zombie banks, a similar narrative to greedy bastard$! and all the other books that are addressing this, it has to mean something.
these specially privileged uniquely endowed zombie banks not only are dead broke, they owe more than they have and they are demanding that we continue to feed their $700 trillion secretly run credit insurance casino. all of this prevents us from having investment in our country and the disease has spread to e other countries, one of them being greece, who s drowning in debt. it threatens to take down the entire euro zone. germany, france, how could this be? the economy in greece is smaller than dallas-ft. worth, it s a joke. joining us now, a man with a plan. financial reporter for bloomberg news and the zombie banks are here. you re on a set which is in the going to give you a lot of pushback as to whether the big banks are helping you. what do you recommend? how do we? what is the greatest symptom of the screwed up banking system on