Regardless of one’s politics, a re-enactment of Glass-Steagall to separate the investment banking institutions from the commercial banking institutions (lending to businesses, infrastructure, the real economy, rather than speculating with Monopoly money) is an existential necessity. Since 2007-2008, the majority of the major Wall Street and City of London banks have only been kept afloat thanks to hyperinflationary policies whose effects we are now only beginning to see. These banks are sitting on a quadrillion dollar derivatives financial bubble. The Wall Street and London banks are effectively zombie banks only being kept alive by the repo-market loans and artificial interest rates. They would have all been vaporized a long time ago with these insane bailouts, which are simply bailouts of worthless financial paper. Farmers, industry, the average home owner, no one got a bailout, but these guys have received tens of trillions of dollars. It’s the biggest fraud in history.
There must be an immediate bankruptcy re-organization of the financial system. There is no way to plug the financial black hole created by these private merchant banking interests. Nothing short of REAL fascism will have to be imposed to keep this system going for much longer. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing now with the surveillance beef up and militarization of the capitol. Those who can’t see the writing on the wall are morally unfit to survive at this point.
Glass-Steagall needs to be brought back immediately.
It's not justhat there's no mechanism to force regulation; there is no WILL to regulate. Because everybody in the game is just giddy at getting away with it. And once they do, they do more, and more, and more. Until their house burns down in a forest fire, or the sea inundates their basement, or their child dies from asthma, or their son kills himself. Yeah, then maybe they find their integrity again.
I enjoyed this interview because it didn't get bogged down in macroeconomics, and because it focused on the character of those making financial decisions. Too often exercises in economic prognostication become technical exercises. I'm not even convinced this is an effective forecasting technique.
It's helpful to explain the economy as not just a collection of numbers balancing out in the end, but as a collection of people, some of whom are wise or foolish, good or bad. You could say that elides a lot, that it is rhetoric. But so does the technocratic explanation, and so it is.
If an institution is inhabited by good people trying to do the right thing, the form that the institution takes doesn't matter much; good things will probably happen. Likewise an institution inhabited by bad people trying to cheat will probably produce bad outcomes no matter how clever the institutional arrangements.
It's refreshing to hear the economy spoken of with such moral clarity and conviction. Some have said that greed cuts through and clarifies. A conscience can do that too.
On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to legendary film director Oliver Stone about his new film ‘JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass’. He discusses JFK’s often overlooked campaigns for peace with the Soviet Union and Cuba prior to his assassination, as well as work furthering civil rights, the details exposing an alleged cover-up of the assassination of JFK, including rapid policy changes from the successor LBJ administration, and alleged CIA involvement in the assassination, why larger powers wanted John F. Kennedy dead, JFK’s preparations to shatter the CIA and his belief that the war in Vietnam was a mistake, how the events leading up to the assassination of JFK were meticulously planned and the CIA’s involvement on the day, Lee Harvey-Oswald’s supervision by the CIA, and much more!
Thank you once again Matt! I followed your coverage of the GFC in Rolling Stone from day one. As someone who was working at GS at the time, I had first-hand knowledge of the veracity of your reporting. It was truly great reporting.
I am one who highly values in-depth investigative reporting that takes time and money to develop; that is why I am a paid subscriber to your substack blog. I do not need to hear from you every day and, frankly, there are some authors who I admire very much, like Caitlin Johnstone, who nonetheless begin to sound like broken records with more or less the same daily lecture on American empire and the narrative matrix. I forward an article from her that I think is particularly good about once every few weeks; like "Society Is Made of Narrative."
Perhaps online authors fear their audience will forget about them if they don't hear from them every day; or that subscribers will wonder what they are paying for if they don't get their daily bread? I don't believe they are best served by behaving like newspaper columnists that need to churn out 1000 words/day.
Keep up the great work, and please continue to take the time to work on investigative reports that readers can really sink their teeth into.
It is unclear if a repeat of 2008 is coming or not. Some folks claim that corporate debt will bring down the financial system at some point in the relatively near future. I read claims to this effect with some regularity. Since my work if very far removed from corporate debt markets, I have no idea if this is true or not.
However, a quick glance at the NASDAQ shows a stunning similarity to the 1999-2000 period. Is MSFT really worth $2.128 trillion? Is Apple really worth $2.49 trillion. I have my doubts. Is a NASDAQ crash coming. I will/would never claim to have a crystal ball. However, I would be surprised if the NASDAQ didn't crash.
Discussions such as this are obviously heartfelt. I’ve spoken with Adam Taggart and I respect him a lot. But, for me, this analysis is infuriating.
Imagine a ship is taking on water – worrisome. Top physicists, mathematicians and scientists of all sorts work tirelessly to analyze the flows and eddies of the water in the hull, hull hydrostatics, structural chemistry, propeller physics, historic weather patterns, and dozens of other factors. This is economics today. This is Bloomberg, MarketWatch, Investors Business Daily, blah, blah, blah, working on this enormously complex problem of economics and reporting to us so we can regulate and protect our businesses, investments, homes, IRAs, pensions, etc. The ship is in danger of sinking -- thank God we have the top experts in government and academia working on this impossibly complex problem!
Oh, yes, a few passengers did point out long ago that there was a hole in the hull.
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in 1975 (Money: Whence it Came, Where it Went) that “the study of money, above all other fields in economics, is the one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or evade truth, not to reveal it.”
There is a hole in the ships of sovereign state and world economies. It is called M-O-N-E-Y. To be precise, the hull substance that USED to be there is called money. The hole is, well, a hole, a carefully concealed hole. It was drilled there intentionally by international and central banking. Economists and governments depend on it. Indeed, they say, “how could any ship possibly navigate the high seas without a hole in the hull?”
Sound money does not exist on earth, except, perhaps, in a few primitive cultures. Sound money is a fundamentally simple concept. You and a few others on an island could develop the basic principles of a sound money system and all would go well – unless some clever chap decided it would be best if he defined, created and controlled the “money” on the island. Oh, dear.
Sound money is a civil right, no different from any other civil right. A CIVIL RIGHT! Oh, you don’t think of it that way? Why not?
So, we can complain all we want about inflation/deflation, interest rates, the horrible cancellation of Glass-Steagall (I agree), regulation/deregulation, credit default swaps, the coming boom/collapse, blah, blah, blah: the furiously sloshing water rising in the hull. But understand that most are being fucked over primarily because their lives utterly depend upon this energy manifestation known as money and they don’t have the slightest idea what it really is. If I could control the nutritional content and value of the food you eat, you could have any sort of diet you choose and I could make your body sick or well, fat or skinny, alive or dead, at my discretion. And so is your economic energy and health manipulated – “for your own good”. Using “money”.
The rentier classes are running the world, @ least the western world. They are parasitic in the same way they're been for millennia. They are a load on all of us who build wealth or perform useful services. If financial was reduced to ~10% or less of it's current size the real world would be much better off. Banking in particular should be a public utility; as long as private sector actors conjure up the money supply, they will own us as they do now.
Matt, on the question of what other journalists are doing good work on the financial system and Wall Street, I was hoping you would have mentioned the folks over at "Wall Street On Parade." Their daily newsletter is a must read for me. I'm not sure why they don't have a Twitter feed as it would greatly expand their reach. I would love to see them promoted more.
Regardless of one’s politics, a re-enactment of Glass-Steagall to separate the investment banking institutions from the commercial banking institutions (lending to businesses, infrastructure, the real economy, rather than speculating with Monopoly money) is an existential necessity. Since 2007-2008, the majority of the major Wall Street and City of London banks have only been kept afloat thanks to hyperinflationary policies whose effects we are now only beginning to see. These banks are sitting on a quadrillion dollar derivatives financial bubble. The Wall Street and London banks are effectively zombie banks only being kept alive by the repo-market loans and artificial interest rates. They would have all been vaporized a long time ago with these insane bailouts, which are simply bailouts of worthless financial paper. Farmers, industry, the average home owner, no one got a bailout, but these guys have received tens of trillions of dollars. It’s the biggest fraud in history.
There must be an immediate bankruptcy re-organization of the financial system. There is no way to plug the financial black hole created by these private merchant banking interests. Nothing short of REAL fascism will have to be imposed to keep this system going for much longer. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing now with the surveillance beef up and militarization of the capitol. Those who can’t see the writing on the wall are morally unfit to survive at this point.
Glass-Steagall needs to be brought back immediately.
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/risingtidefoundation.net/2021/02/06/how-to-overcome-todays-crisis-a-lesson-from-fdr/amp/
It's not justhat there's no mechanism to force regulation; there is no WILL to regulate. Because everybody in the game is just giddy at getting away with it. And once they do, they do more, and more, and more. Until their house burns down in a forest fire, or the sea inundates their basement, or their child dies from asthma, or their son kills himself. Yeah, then maybe they find their integrity again.
I enjoyed this interview because it didn't get bogged down in macroeconomics, and because it focused on the character of those making financial decisions. Too often exercises in economic prognostication become technical exercises. I'm not even convinced this is an effective forecasting technique.
It's helpful to explain the economy as not just a collection of numbers balancing out in the end, but as a collection of people, some of whom are wise or foolish, good or bad. You could say that elides a lot, that it is rhetoric. But so does the technocratic explanation, and so it is.
If an institution is inhabited by good people trying to do the right thing, the form that the institution takes doesn't matter much; good things will probably happen. Likewise an institution inhabited by bad people trying to cheat will probably produce bad outcomes no matter how clever the institutional arrangements.
It's refreshing to hear the economy spoken of with such moral clarity and conviction. Some have said that greed cuts through and clarifies. A conscience can do that too.
Thank you -- also this is worth hearing & seeing:
Going Underground: Oliver Stone exposes JFK assassination cover-up -- OUTSTANDING
Oliver Stone Exposes JFK Assassination Cover-Up (JFK Revisited) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVso_wpata4
On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to legendary film director Oliver Stone about his new film ‘JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass’. He discusses JFK’s often overlooked campaigns for peace with the Soviet Union and Cuba prior to his assassination, as well as work furthering civil rights, the details exposing an alleged cover-up of the assassination of JFK, including rapid policy changes from the successor LBJ administration, and alleged CIA involvement in the assassination, why larger powers wanted John F. Kennedy dead, JFK’s preparations to shatter the CIA and his belief that the war in Vietnam was a mistake, how the events leading up to the assassination of JFK were meticulously planned and the CIA’s involvement on the day, Lee Harvey-Oswald’s supervision by the CIA, and much more!
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rt/id1457821689?i=1000528833406
Thank you once again Matt! I followed your coverage of the GFC in Rolling Stone from day one. As someone who was working at GS at the time, I had first-hand knowledge of the veracity of your reporting. It was truly great reporting.
I am one who highly values in-depth investigative reporting that takes time and money to develop; that is why I am a paid subscriber to your substack blog. I do not need to hear from you every day and, frankly, there are some authors who I admire very much, like Caitlin Johnstone, who nonetheless begin to sound like broken records with more or less the same daily lecture on American empire and the narrative matrix. I forward an article from her that I think is particularly good about once every few weeks; like "Society Is Made of Narrative."
Perhaps online authors fear their audience will forget about them if they don't hear from them every day; or that subscribers will wonder what they are paying for if they don't get their daily bread? I don't believe they are best served by behaving like newspaper columnists that need to churn out 1000 words/day.
Keep up the great work, and please continue to take the time to work on investigative reports that readers can really sink their teeth into.
Safest astrological prediction ever: The 2008 global financial crisis didn't change anything and the whole thing is going to repeat.
Riskiest astrological prediction ever: Next global financial crisis will happen at 9:03am on 14 July 2023.
It is unclear if a repeat of 2008 is coming or not. Some folks claim that corporate debt will bring down the financial system at some point in the relatively near future. I read claims to this effect with some regularity. Since my work if very far removed from corporate debt markets, I have no idea if this is true or not.
However, a quick glance at the NASDAQ shows a stunning similarity to the 1999-2000 period. Is MSFT really worth $2.128 trillion? Is Apple really worth $2.49 trillion. I have my doubts. Is a NASDAQ crash coming. I will/would never claim to have a crystal ball. However, I would be surprised if the NASDAQ didn't crash.
"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.” -Charlie Munger
Discussions such as this are obviously heartfelt. I’ve spoken with Adam Taggart and I respect him a lot. But, for me, this analysis is infuriating.
Imagine a ship is taking on water – worrisome. Top physicists, mathematicians and scientists of all sorts work tirelessly to analyze the flows and eddies of the water in the hull, hull hydrostatics, structural chemistry, propeller physics, historic weather patterns, and dozens of other factors. This is economics today. This is Bloomberg, MarketWatch, Investors Business Daily, blah, blah, blah, working on this enormously complex problem of economics and reporting to us so we can regulate and protect our businesses, investments, homes, IRAs, pensions, etc. The ship is in danger of sinking -- thank God we have the top experts in government and academia working on this impossibly complex problem!
Oh, yes, a few passengers did point out long ago that there was a hole in the hull.
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in 1975 (Money: Whence it Came, Where it Went) that “the study of money, above all other fields in economics, is the one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or evade truth, not to reveal it.”
There is a hole in the ships of sovereign state and world economies. It is called M-O-N-E-Y. To be precise, the hull substance that USED to be there is called money. The hole is, well, a hole, a carefully concealed hole. It was drilled there intentionally by international and central banking. Economists and governments depend on it. Indeed, they say, “how could any ship possibly navigate the high seas without a hole in the hull?”
Sound money does not exist on earth, except, perhaps, in a few primitive cultures. Sound money is a fundamentally simple concept. You and a few others on an island could develop the basic principles of a sound money system and all would go well – unless some clever chap decided it would be best if he defined, created and controlled the “money” on the island. Oh, dear.
Sound money is a civil right, no different from any other civil right. A CIVIL RIGHT! Oh, you don’t think of it that way? Why not?
So, we can complain all we want about inflation/deflation, interest rates, the horrible cancellation of Glass-Steagall (I agree), regulation/deregulation, credit default swaps, the coming boom/collapse, blah, blah, blah: the furiously sloshing water rising in the hull. But understand that most are being fucked over primarily because their lives utterly depend upon this energy manifestation known as money and they don’t have the slightest idea what it really is. If I could control the nutritional content and value of the food you eat, you could have any sort of diet you choose and I could make your body sick or well, fat or skinny, alive or dead, at my discretion. And so is your economic energy and health manipulated – “for your own good”. Using “money”.
The rentier classes are running the world, @ least the western world. They are parasitic in the same way they're been for millennia. They are a load on all of us who build wealth or perform useful services. If financial was reduced to ~10% or less of it's current size the real world would be much better off. Banking in particular should be a public utility; as long as private sector actors conjure up the money supply, they will own us as they do now.
Should lobbying be considered bribery? Corruption? Should lobbyists be publicly known? Who are they? What's their background? Who do they work for?
Thanks Matt!
great interview, liked the first 1 back in Jan 2020 as well.
big fan of you supporting other alt media to raise their profiles!
hopefully looking forward to more of your analysis on the the fed & financial services/banking
Matt, on the question of what other journalists are doing good work on the financial system and Wall Street, I was hoping you would have mentioned the folks over at "Wall Street On Parade." Their daily newsletter is a must read for me. I'm not sure why they don't have a Twitter feed as it would greatly expand their reach. I would love to see them promoted more.
Great watch. Enjoy details on the similarities of past financial crisis with the current pig-out going down.
Yes, the villains won and continue winning.