Shaped across the uk economic recovery im joined by my guest Benjamin Cohen he is the director of the Free Market Institute professor of economics at Texas Tech University as well as a senior fellow with the independent institute and in los angeles we cross to he is an independent economic and geopolitical analyst as well as a former commodities trader all right gentlemen crossed up rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i was appreciating lets go to los angeles 1st here i said in my introduction i guess probably the most important question there is as we come out of this pandemic and its all going to be about the economy and its everything were going to think about for the next few months if not years is about recovery so infer a very simple question will it be a v. A you or an l go ahead well weve been hit. L. Shaped depression since the 2008 financial crisis i mean only the true Economic Data on unemployment inflation g. D. P. And the like have been warped or hidden outright while the fed pumped up the stock market to give the appearance of a genuine economic recovery and weve been in a structural downturn rather than a typically cyclical recession and those arent easy to get out of all of us since february is essentially marking to market if you will of collective economic mattrick as the fake money pumping charade is being wrapped up in favor of a longer term plan monetary paradigm shift our right and i remember the last time we spoke we were talking about the turbulence in the oil market the oil price that that seems like a kindergarten play to consider considering whats going on now ben let me go to you the same question a you or d an l because that will really dictate what kind of policy is necessary to get out of this lump go ahead ben. Well i think policy has a lot to do with what type of shape it is so right now were in a platinum mine and thats because we have shut down orders that are essentially telling people not to produce so the question is when shutdown orders are lifted what does the normal Economic Activity and recovery look like and i dont think it looks like a of b. Because that wouldnt buy that were going back to the economic role we all lived in at the start of the year but the virus is still going to be with us so opening back up means taking account of that and weighing that in our economic transactions so restaurants working at half capacity or a 3rd capacity whatever customers and entrepreneurs do you say airlines that much less than capacity all of these things dont abide by bouncing back to where we were now i think whats important is that we dont have dumb Government Policies preventing Entrepreneurial Solutions that let us make our recovery as quick as we can and that stick us in how so its somewhere more like a you somewhere in between but thats really got to be for the market process to sort out you know them that seeing that cycle about the market here you know plight we have now as we speak and i think it was as of today 26000000 people over the past 5 weeks have gone on unemployment and the this is massive i mean if someone would have told me this is a scenario what it is i would have been in comprehensible to me a month and a half ago and now. What needs to be done because that these are the people that consume in the get out of a slump you need a lot of consumption and you know i know that theres been a potential aid being sent directly to individuals but it seems to be a pittance because most people will use that allowance from the government to pay off debts more than anything else than consume and ben is absolutely right i mean just because you up. The economy doesnt mean this pandemic has been completely nailed down and vanquished and i still think people will be very very hesitant to go out in public and consume even if they have the money and having the money is a big if right now go ahead by having the money and money i say increasingly in quotes i may have certain banks in the south and southeast outright revolting wanting to get back to work and trying to dilly dallying and flip flopping between supporting them versus not whereas the northeast the northwest the west where i am just diligently by the book following whatever the government mandates i mean i think theres a wider plan afoot because that mega banking and white or corporate conglomerate of stablish and swanton need them all of these Smaller Companies for instance to fail Small Businesses will soon be vacuumed up by banks they owe debt to already merged into the larger corporations under forced. Write monopolies in each industry its a repeat essential of the consolidations which took place 12 years ago only on a larger scale so these banks these mega banks for instance j. P. Morgan wells fargo b. Of a theyre being sued in class action tellingly for funding larger Small Businesses then smaller businesses with this Paycheck Protection Program p. P. P. Before that 350000000000. 00 in federal funds ran out why has the smallest Small Businesses dont pay these banks as much in fees as the larger Small Businesses quote unquote this is yet another unsustainable contradiction in the modern Economic System where clear socialistic government handouts are nonetheless being prioritized through private institutions foremost by their profit motives i mean all this stuff begs deeper questions yeah its a man and you know i hear only a lot about. Democratic socialism and all that and i lived in Eastern Europe during communism i know what thats about ok so i dont really want to go that direction you know but the interesting thing is here banks are picking winners ok i mean it is very socialistic in that way because its not the its not the market picking winners its individuals with their very specific interests in mind that course that is profit here and being the big supporter of entrepreneurship and small and medium sized businesses because as a conservative that is the very raw base of a Civil Society and im terrified to see these unemployment numbers and im terrified to see these Small Businesses go out of go out when fail and this consolidation here more inequality we dont need to go in this direction what policy would you suggest to avoid that because it may be even too late for so many of these businesses go ahead ben. So lets bring it back i dont think we have a consumption problem what we have is a supply problem where people have been ordered to stop supplying things to the market to cease work and thats where unemployment spike comes from and thats the heart of all of our problems including the Small Businesses because i agree completely its a travesty whats being done to them right now but rather than government bailouts for businesses what we need is to be entrepreneurs including and especially the small entrepreneurs to figure out how they can best serve consumers and who want to do that and then and of course the banks if the banks are avoiding them letting them just. Just fade away i mean how do we take the banks out of this because theyre the ones that are calling the shots go ahead. But we stop borrowing government money through these banks to do it and instead of our banks to get it wares and losers based on profit and loss and the problem is when you socialize losses through or through the government its ceased being a profit and loss estimate reallocates resources efficiently so government i think is gumming up the works in this process now we need to get back to business as usual in order to go hard and that will mean some bankruptcies both the small and large firms the key is that you want to collect the labor and Capital Market to reallocate those assets to where they can best serve consumers as quickly as possible. But i but you know you know in looking at this entire saga over the last few weeks in i think its absolutely shameful that Congress Goes on vacation you know will come back when theres an emergency that theres 26000000 emergencies out there right now ok i mean they were very quick to pad their own pockets and their friends and their special interests here and now theyre still grieve thinking about how to continue dealing with the other parts of the economy what were talking about small and medium sized businesses they dont to seem to feel the fire on their under their feet to deal with that they took care of their friends and themselves right off the bat like in 2008. Yeah i mean its 2008 and in a certain sense it was just kind of like a dry run of sorts for this multiple and all means and forms of what happened then you have to consider since 2008 i mean the money that the fed i mean the fed drove Something Like 93 percent of the stock market run since the 2008 financial crisis meanwhile realign employment was in double digits real inflation was much higher than what they stated that it was real g. D. P. Which is much lower than it was you know its lies damn lies and statistics as the trite phrase at this point goes by do you know just since february again you know flipping the switch off in the living room thats the equivalent of what the. What the powers that be have done essentially to. The economy so theyre no more corporate stock buybacks as of this point after februarys lockdowns so expect further eventual hemorrhaging within the stock market this is all meant to further benefit the ruling transatlantic alit which thinks in terms of app extend plans accordingly its aimed partly to call a portion of the population while conditioning the yearning for the non means tested kweisi universal basic and come via Digital Currencies for the millions of unemployed who fall into destitution. Cashless society is planned which has been sop for for years if you think about it by transnational banks the i. M. F. That b. A. s in switzerland is maggette institutions will be and should theyll be introducing a Cashless Society after the modern dollars reserve status and the currency collapses under aggressive inflation and mass treasury bond dumping globally which is already in procession i mean before this corona virus pandemic hit us private debt was over 150 percent of g. D. P. With corporate debt being like 73 percent and finance generally was like at 350 percent of g. D. P. Completely brittle. Sustainable system we had were most dad at this point will be non serviceable under a depression triggered by stay at home orders so homelessness will spike even further as will infrastructure decay plagues crime and public riots anarchy and Small Businesses again going away near entirely it may sound extreme but if if you were to say that there would be lockdown orders and nobody would be able to go to work let alone to their family members 3 months ago that would have sounded extreme well ok benjamin yeah i saw it made good news were doing it on sky because i can see your expression go ahead and jump in reply go ahead yeah i mean that was a mouthful. I dont share these big pessimistic. Assumptions about how things are going to go hard i mean i do think its policy contingent and i agree with you completely that this this shutdown water was like a light switch shutting off the economy or a large chunks of it thats detrimental to all of us but i think turning the light switch back on doesnt throw the power back on the way it wasnt january but our trip earner is through this process begun small banks big and small will figure out the ways to serve consumers and bring supply to market as long as government doesnt get in the way the market process i think was recovering relatively well post i was the Great Recession i agree completely there was crony bailouts during the Great Recession for those political elites and those connected but thats largely washed out of the system now were going to our other productive way and thats what i expect to happen if we go back to make up you know are going to just if you have to go to a heartbreak and after that heart break will continue our discussion and economic recovery statement. Has changed american lives but pharmaceutical companies have a miraculous solution. Based drugs the people who are chronic pain and believe that their opiate prescription is working for them and the remedy be said to. Price at the. Worse or dependency and addiction to opiates the long term use that really isnt scientifically justified and ill study actually suggest that. The long term effects may not just be the absence of benefit but actually that they may because they want to. Be friends with his size is that once youve got infected then you get a nice one with any mean response and so that. The softly protects you against me infection or not was fine with this new coronavirus is that its a very calm case to trading in many patients who get mild disease any antibodies. Welcome at the cross where all beings are considered im Peter Lavelle were discussing the recovery of the economy. Ok im going to go back to you because i think you know done a number of programs on this particular topic just looking at it from different trajectories and i think one of the most the probably the most common denominator in all of these programs ive been doing on this topic is that it is the government doing too little or is it doing too much. Ok the end it seems to me that everybody has a very strong opinion about that we can all use the same numbers and we can you know look at unemployment we can look at debt but then its always not you know that tool box that the government has only doing enough are they doing too little go ahead. Thats an excellent question a really. Points to other questions over the role of government and you know these these pillars ideological pillars over the past 200 years of communism socialism and corporate capitalism market fundamentalism what is the meaning there of you know the february shutdown. Is just a rapid bringing up to pace of you know really these questions over the role of government because that government more or less hand in hand with that with private institutions like blackrock or pimco. You know married to the treasury and the fed are essentially dictating everything not just geo economics but politics domestically than geopolitics if you think about it but under the auspices of this of this pandemic of this massive crisis or as its just you know really piecemealing of its role prior crisis not again and prior to the 2008 financial crisis crisis the 2000 dot com burst you know and greenspans role and hike you know dropping Interest Rates artificially and aggressively you know void deflation its like what is socialism versus a genuine market fundamentalism in genuine free market capitalism when you have this quote unquote free hand free hand in the market not being so free and basically dictating so much if anything february showed overtly the very you know socialistic direct involvement of central banking and hybrid public and Private Banking and dictating the mors of our existence to our i dont care how efficient you run your company youre only 20 people i mean youre literally being put to the back of the line versus she you know shake shack for instance which you know is still making money is still bringing in revenue whether takeout or otherwise and yet you know they get pushed to the front of the line because a relationships column crony esther otherwise but its like wheres free market versus where its not its you know its all met to synthesise towards further hybridisation of what we would know classically as market fundamentalism versus just straight up you know giving 2000. 00 a month to folks that are destitute and or sick and not putting in them into poverty traps where the same time questionably limiting them from all of a sudden wanting to become entrepreneurial wanting to become elon musk wanting to learn. In advance these are bigger questions that are just being brushed to the sidelines because again you dont want to get sick and ill and die so those its like theres purposeful confusion so that people arent able to think lucidly and rely further and further emotionally and psychically on government which transcends issues involving classical ideological definitions. Yeah i mean in the at me in said yes it makes you kind of request question again so many assumptions here you know ben you know the thought of just sending out checks to individuals you know 1500 dollars and you know 2500. 00 for a family i mean if someone suggested that to me to with a 2 or 3 months ago my instinct would be in no i mean use the tax code ok giving money is something i dont really like doing now ive had a conversion because i see all of these people massive number of people a growing number of people they need cash in their pocket just to reboot even if its a one time thing which i still think is very small here i mean im just trying to point out how i have changed during this crisis because something that i would have not would have been very not agreeable with now im thinking you need to do more of it because you know we improve getting revoked when we have to get on the right foot instead of having an elbow or him probably be a you but its certainly not going to be a v. Its certainly not going to be a be a people cant consume go ahead ben well its certainly not going to be if they cant produce so this cash handouts youve got to remember its government has ordered people not to work so big sound out of your your on this might be changing from before just giving a cash handout when the governments actually doing the harm to the people but of course the government has no money of its own it has to take it from somebody else somewhere else either through inflation taxing or borrowing and were seeing with this happening with borrowing now i think your question of is the government doing too much or too little it has been doing too much and for too on in too many important sectors particularly as it relates to this crisis the Health Care Sector is one of the least market oriented sectors in the us economy is heavily regulated and weve seen regulatory failures on that. Whether it