The Causey Consulting Podcast

Crossover Episode: "Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve"

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Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

fed, greenspan, people, notes, written, money, economy, told, bailouts, bubble, inflation, documentary, gold standard, central bank, fail, personal, markets, fat cats, happen, interest rates

 

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host Sara Causey. 

Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. Today I will be recording a crossover episode between my daytime broadcast the Causey consulting podcast, and my nighttime personal podcast conspiracy theories, because I feel that the material is relevant to both audiences. And frankly, it's important to me to get it out both places. I recently watched the documentary Money For Nothing inside the Federal Reserve. It was released in 2013. So one can only imagine if they were to make an addendum with 11 additional years of chicanery, lies, Bs, foolishness, crap monetary policies, more and more fiat currency being printed up with nothing behind it, et cetera at all. One imagines that would be one hell of a sequel. So Hint, hint, producers make another one because you sure could. We open up this documentary, that the dollar is a piece of paper that cost nothing to produce and is backed by the goodwill of the Fed and the US Congress. It's the Coca Cola of money, the US dollar, it's all backed by faith. That's the reason why we call it fiat currency because it's not backed by anything real. It's just by government, or central bank, Fiat. It means something it has value as opposed to taking a sheet of typing paper off the printer. The only reason that the dollar has a different value than a plain piece of typing paper is because you're told that it does. It's the world's reserve currency. Meanwhile, trust and confidence plummeted in the fall of 2007, which for those of us that were alive, and well, as I've said, on the air, many times, I was a grown adult with a mortgage, a 401k, you know, not that it really did anything during that time of vehicle insurance payments, et cetera. And that was just a nightmare, really a bleeding nightmare. Plunging interest rates helped trigger the housing boom, and then climbing rates threatened all of that. We're told that the Fed thought this was strictly a subprime mortgage problem. Five and a half trillion dollars could have been pulled out of the system, the US economy would have collapsed, and then within 24 hours, the world economy would have collapsed, it would have been the end of an economic system. One of the commentators Charles Plosser says Congress could not act fast enough. So the Fed felt like it had to act fast and solve the problems. What an excuse. While politicians debated the Fed, acted and used its political independence and unlimited power to create money. Now, I am going to put my own notes in here. And anytime that I do that, when it's my commentary, I'll say I'm going to butt in and offer my own commentary. And in this moment, I thought of the other crossover episode that I did about JFK, his book, Why England slept, and how he makes the argument that Hitler had no oversight, because he was the Fuhrer. He could spend whatever amount of money he wanted on armaments, and there was nobody to question his decision making to say no, we can't afford that. You can't be doing that because he was the fear or he could just spend whatever you wanted to on armaments and research for additional armaments. Same kind of logic is going on here. While Congress is not acting fast enough, so the Fed because it has political independence and unlimited power, it stepped in, they're not beholden to anybody, so they can just create this fiat currency out of thin air. What could possibly go wrong? So the Fed makes trillions of dollars in loans to corporations dwarfing the congressional aid package. We're told that G GM Berkshire Hathaway, Citigroup, Bank of America, all of these businesses would have failed, were it not for this intervention, not for these bailouts. All of these big major corporations would have failed. A commentator John Malden says we came to the brink of the Abyss and it was a long way down. Well, if it was that bad during the Great Recession, how bad do you think it's going to be when they can cannot be kicked down the road any further? I'm just saying old grandma Yellen that's literally I'm gonna know my nose. old grandma Yellen gives us a history lecture that the Fed was set up in 1913 as a way to provide liquidity to the financial system as a whole at a time when you have a financial panic. So that's the official story. That's our official narrative. I will butt in here and say, you might consider reading a book called The Creature from Jekyll Island because there's some history there about these power brokers and elites that go off they have a secret meeting at Jekyll Island and decide they're going to create the central bank. And I really don't think it had a damn thing to do with protecting john and jane Q Public. They do some man on the street interviews during this documentary and no one really knows what the Fed is nobody like in their man on the street interviews can give a coherent answer about what the Fed is and what the Fed does. But I think they like that. They like being in the shadows. They like this nebulous arena where people are aware that a central bank exists. I mean, every time that you pull $1 out of your pocket, you see the Federal Reserve Note. But people aren't truly aware of who they are and what they do. We see a December 2010 interview, where Ben Bernanke is on TV telling people that the Fed is not printing money. Then he also says it's not tax money, it's more akin to borrowing money. So the interviewer says, then you've been printing money, and Bernanke says, well, effectively. You couldn't make that up. I say this a lot. But it's true. If we were writing this as a satire, nobody would publish it. They'd be like, This is so unbelievable. You need to go back to the drawing board and start over because nobody's gonna buy this book. Nobody's gonna watch this film, and yet we lived it. So what is the Feds job? At this point, they show the Federal Reserve Note on $1 bill. It does control the money supply, set interest rates, regulate banks, and is supposed to ensure the safety and soundness of the financial system. They should prevent chaos and be a guardian. And I have written in my personal notes all the typical propaganda for the unwashed masses. Yet during the great recession, the Fed itself was at the eye of the storm boil say. The commentators say that the Fed kept interest rates too low for too long and this contributed to the housing bubble. When rates get that low, you always have a boom cycle followed by a bust cycle. One of the other commentators Alice Rivlin, I think I'm reading my handwriting, my handwriting as time has gone on, and I type way more than I actually handwrite it is abysmal. So I think that's Alice Rivlin, we failed to regulate the most important part of our financial system. We also hear phrases like somebody's screwed up and big mistakes were made. When asked if the Fed failed, Alan Greenspan tells a congressional hearing that he fundamentally disagrees. We have Todd Harrison, who's a derivatives trader, and he says people believe things are fixed, but things are not fixed. As in and what he what he meant by that in the documentary is repaired. People think that things have been repaired, the problems have been solved, but no, not really. An economist I think he was David colander says everybody wants to go back and say things are fine. Now we solve the problem. But we're just asking for another crisis. All button again and say that's why I mentioned they could totally do a sequel. And look at 11 additional years of chicanery and nonsense, we are asking for another crisis. Look at the FOMO and the Yolo. And the artificially overheated and artificially manipulated markets that we had during the pandemic, due to poop houses, going for, in some cases, millions of dollars, a place around here in the Midwest that under normal circumstances might go on the market for 225 to 250. Some of those people wanted $800,000, for that crap. It's lunacy. Bill White, a chief economist says rather than looking back and blaming people, we should look at the role of central banks going forward and preventing another crisis. Can the Fed learn from the past? You know, I'm going to butt in here and say we should blame people, not john and jane Q Public. Although Yes, there are people that are financially irresponsible and goofy. There are people that don't know how to handle money, and they have no real interest in trying, they will waste money on nonsense. That's true. We all know somebody like that. Even as I'm saying that in the broadcast, I can bet you money, no pun intended, that you're sitting there thinking of at least one person in your life right now who's frivolous and silly with money? They always seem to be broke. But then at the same time, they can find money to spend on Manny pennies and expensive coffees. I mean, they're like a bad walking stereotype of somebody that is goofy with their money. Yes, there are people like that. However, I think we should point a finger of blame at the fat cats at the top of this crony capitalist pyramid that we're in and say, You made effed up decisions and we all have to live with them. We didn't elect you. We didn't choose you, but you're our overlord. And that's This shouldn't be happening.

So we learn now about the panic of 1907. Before the Fed, we didn't have a government backed bank or a government bank. The banking system was very fragmented and panics would happen, banks would fail, bank runs ensued, but banks would lack enough currency to pay out there, the people that were demanding their money, banks would close. And in my personal note, I've written were told it was like monkey see monkey do, like people would see other people panicking and going to the bank. So they too would panic and the panic would spread. There was no lender of last resort for bailouts. Well, I mean, should there be should you have a lender of last resort for bailouts? If you're doing things in a way that's aboveboard, and rational? Why do you need a central bank as a, quote, lender of last resort for bailouts? I find that very, very suspicious and strange. So another commentator Richard Silla tells us that Americans are saying, gee, other countries with central banks are not having so many financial crises. So why are we? Ah, I don't know about that. I mean, I grant you was not alive in 1907. Sometimes I feel like I'm as old as the clay out here in the soil, but I was not alive and well in 1907. But I'm gonna you know, highly doubt that John and Jane Q Public at that time, were going around clamoring for a central bank and looking at like Bank of England and the Reichsbank in Germany saying, you know, golly, gosh, gee, bang whiz, I wish we had that here. And that's, that's literally his argument. The Brits have Bank of England, Germans have the Reichsbank. Something has to be done. God, of course, we see a headline that reads Mr. Warburg urges government bank advocates plan as a remedy for defects in the present banking system. And then I've written in my personal notes, Paul Warburg, was a member of the First Federal Reserve Board in 1914. He was also vice chairman in 1916. Again, I would really encourage you to check out that book, The Creature from Jekyll Island. Written in my notes, the fat cats go off to Jekyll Island to create an American Central Bank. Wilson provides a compromise that's Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson provides a compromise of a decentralized central bank. What does that even mean? Anyway, a decentralized central bank. So we get this system, the public equals Washington, DC, Federal Reserve Board, and then the private banks are Minneapolis, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas City, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Dallas. And the Fed is reputed to have the best economists in the world. As you can probably guess, in my personal notes, I've written haha, in all caps with a giant exclamation point. The gold standard was on the verge of collapse. So we're told, right, the gold standard was on the verge of collapse, Great Britain's currency was backed by gold. If you tie currency to a precious metal, it helps to stabilize that currency. Which by the way, is why we don't do that anymore. So then we're told that the gold standard goes to hell because of World War One. In order to finance the war, the great powers of Europe abandoned the gold standard. And there you go. Here in my personal notes, I have written I'm yet again thinking of why England slept, Hitler could do what he wanted and arm as much as he wanted, because he was a dictator. It was like, Okay, we've got to get off the gold standard, because we're tying our currency to something stable, and something that's real. But we want to be able to print up a crapload of money so that we can finance this World War. So the gold standard is no longer going to work for us because it's not going to allow us to print up sheet after sheet after sheet of currency with no consequences. So we learned in the documentary that Britain goes bankrupt, and Germany is destroyed by hyperinflation, the US with its Federal Reserve and its gold backed currency emerges preeminent. I've also written in my personal notes, hmm, doesn't seem a coincidence does it? The US becomes the financial leader of the world almost overnight, America goes into a roaring 20s Boom, we're told that monetary policy is how the Fed creates or destroys money to lower or raise interest rates, more money equals low interest rates, and that's a stimulation, less money equals high interest rates. And that's to cool off the economy. In the 1920s, the Fed stepped out of its original purpose and orchestrates the Great Depression via its monetary policy. And I've written in my personal notes, I debated on whether I should say this during the daytime broadcast, but I'm going to I've written it reminds me of how the Charlie India Alpha violated its own charter. I'm not going to get into all the details here because this is about the Fed. But I mean, when we start to get into things like the Church Committee, For example, and the domestic spying that was happening. See we and this is something that I intend to get into further on the nighttime broadcast. But we have this belief that the domestic spy engine really kicked in post 911. That's not true. Go do your research on sin thread. Go take a look at the apparatus that was in place. Oh gosh. I mean, as early as the 1950s, the Charlie in the Alpha was opening mail and listening in on phone calls and conducting burglaries, go check that out and let that blow your mind. These agencies have zero problem with violating their own charter. So the 1920s becomes the Feds first boom and bust cycle. And then I also have in my personal notes, these cycles are totally engineered y'all. Since their first foray was so bad, why were they not abolished? Then, if you give us a boom cycle of the roaring 1920s, and then we go into the Great Depression, where people are starving? Why in the hell would it not be like you're disbanded, you're kicked out of here, Get the eff out now. And that's just crazy to me. The gold standard is yet again blamed because it wouldn't allow the Fed to move fast enough. Notice this narrative, you're going to hear this several times over the course of this documentary, the Fed needs these unbridled unquestioned powers to just move fast, pardon the pun, but turn on a dime. But really, they don't. Because they're the ones engineering this bullshit. Excuse me. I didn't mean to say that on the daytime broadcast, it slipped out and I don't want to go back and bleep but they're the ones engineering this BS in the first place. So the Bretton Woods Agreement takes place in 1944, the US dollar links to gold and then all other currencies tie to the dollar. And, by proxy, the Fed becomes the world's central bank, let that sink in the the world's central bank, the mid 1960s, were told the economy is good. Lots of people are patting themselves on the back in my personal notes, as you could probably imagine. I've written Of course, this is attributed to LBJ with no mention of JFK at all, because that's how it's presented. And then they don't show Kennedy at all mean, even though he was in the White House from 61 until he was murdered in broad daylight and 63 gets no no credit for anything. LBJ kicks off the Great Society and Vietnam War and we get the great inflation. By 1971, Nixon decides to release the dollar from the gold standard $1 becomes just a piece of paper. By 1981, the dollar is worth about 45 cents. I'm just going to stop here because I really want you to think about that for a second by 1981 $1 is worth about 45 cents. That's how bad things got by taking away the gold standard and saying we need to be able to print up reams and reams of fiat currency at will. That's how much devaluation happened just in that span of time. I want you to really think about that. Because whenever you hear these talking heads and social media morons that are drunk on their own toxic positivity or their paid shills or their bots, who knows, oh, and just never happen again. We would never have $1 collapse, we would never have $1 devaluation, we're always going to be the world's reserve currency. Everybody respects American respects the dollar, right? Believe that at your own risk. In the Ford and Carter years, inflation and unemployment both go up. Cost of living goes up by 13% and 1979. According to a news report, you can bet it was probably more than that. Carter is Nam, Carter nominates Paul Volcker to hopefully clean up the mess at the Fed. The outgoing chair Arthur Burns says that central bankers new money growth needed to be reduced since 1964. But they didn't do it. I'm not even gonna go into my conspiracy theories there. Believe me, I have some, but just think about that. They knew as early as 1964, that they needed to change monetary policy because this was going to happen, and they didn't do it. And there wasn't anybody present. That would have stood up to them. And said, if this needs to be changed, then you change it. By that point in time, they had a more sympathetic audience. And I'll just leave it at that.

We're told that the early 80s recession had to happen and thank God the Fed was there because Congress would not have done what was needed. We're also told that vote are in the Fed laid the groundwork for a time of great prosperity. We're told that the Great Moderation took place from the mid 80s to the 2000s. And we're told that this was the golden age of the Fed. Put your faith in markets and not the government. Alan Greenspan is portrayed as an acolyte of iron Rand. Yet he's the chief price fixer of the economy. The chief price fixer of the economy, the chief price fixer of money, and he's supposedly an acolyte of iron Rand. The documentary even shows a clip of Gordon Gekko at the meeting of tilde our paper and the famous scene greed for lack of better word is good. Black Monday happens on October 19 1987. We're told yet again, the Fed says a day. What kind of Stockholm Syndrome nonsense is that? I don't get it. I don't get it. It sets a precedent that the Fed will adjust interest rates based on the stock market. We're told that Alan Greenspan was capable of getting a soft landing in the mid 90s. GREENSPAN becomes this untouchable golden god. Asset inflation stocks, bonds real estate go up, aka we have a bull market. The stock market goes up and up through the mid 90s. GREENSPAN drops the term irrational exuberance in December of 1996. He fears the bull market is actually a bubble when the stock market and real estate bubbles pop disaster. Of course, they talked about Japan's stock market collapse. GREENSPAN is criticized for wanting for warning, Greenspan is criticized for his warning. So he lets the markets go on September 1998, the long term capital management disaster occurs. They are $125 billion in debt. So of course they get a bailout. And we're told that LTCM is too big to fail. Oh, no more things change. This scenario plays out again, of course in 2008 John Sukho, joined Lehman Brothers in 1996. And he ran the derivatives trading until 1998. He tried to blow the whistle on LTCM but was shown the door and alleged libertarian and creates a socialized money system where these companies get bailed out. That's in reference to Alan Greenspan, who is allegedly an acolyte of iron Rand. And then the irony there, right, an alleged libertarian who supposedly would be valuing the free market at every turn actually creates a socialized money system where companies get bailed out, which is the opposite of a free market, there is no such thing as too big to fail in a real free market. Jon Stewart confronts Alan Greenspan and says so we don't have a free market. We have a benevolent hand, and Greenspan tells him not to think of it that way. I mean, yes, but also don't think of it that way. You're saying it the wrong way. The Fed continued to cut interest rates and this exacerbated the boom, in retrospect, and I've written lol. The Greenspan put, if the markets get too far out of hand, I'll rescue you. Traders didn't feel the need for moral hazard because they had a safety net will kill subsidies. In Greenspan's reign, the financial sector doubled its share of the economy. GE and GM essentially both become hedge funds. Rather than a focus on customers and real products, companies make increasingly weirder unregulated financial products. GREENSPAN is called the deregulating regulator. Derivatives keep going even after the 1987 crash and the LTCM bailout. Brooksley Born seeks to regulate derivatives from 1996 to 1999. She was chair of the Commodity Futures Trading committee. Greenspan and our old buddy Phil Gramm. Remember, the recession is all in your head. You're just imagining it. It's not real. Greenspan and Phil Gramm pushed back, Graham says he sees no evidence that derivatives are a troubled market. When asked who she's trying to protect Brooksley Born says the American public and I've written in my personal notes wrong answer. Greenspan's position wins out. Over the next 10 years US taxpayers would spend over $182 billion to bail out AIG is unregulated derivatives unit. GREENSPAN also failed to enforce the Glass Steagall Act to separate traditional banks from Wall Street. The supervision will take care of itself. Oh, imagine that. How often are we told that the fox will guard the henhouse. It is totally okay. The smart folks who run the markets will take care of everything I've written in my personal notes go to sleep, little peon. Don't worry about it. Let the smart people take care of the world for you. No regulation to prevent risks, but a backstop if your Gamble's fail now, that's if you're a fat cat. Okay, you and I, the two of us, we still have to use moral hazard. Because if we make a bunch of bets in the stock market that go pear shaped, nobody's coming to bail us out. The NASDAQ bubble happens from 1990 to 2000. People would form businesses with no game plan, just set out a shingle just build a website and spend that money. GREENSPAN claims in June 1999, that bubbles are only detectable in hindsight, to spot a bubble in advance requires a judgment that that hundreds of 1000s of informed investors don't have already. I'm gonna pause again, because I just I really, really want you to hear this. I don't want you to gloss over this point because it's too important. GREENSPAN claims that bubbles are only detectable in hindsight, that you cannot know that you're in a bubble while it's happening. You cannot see it happening ahead of time. That's BS. And I've written in all caps underlined in my personal notes, we still see this today. And I want you to think about this. Anytime that you've heard a realtor or a broker, we would love or have another 2008 The loans are just so much more solid now everything is different. We're not in a bubble. Home prices are only gonna go up and up and up. If you don't do it now if you don't buy this house today, there will never be another opportunity to do it. This is the last chance Express want you to think about Greenspan bullshitting. Pardon me? I've already said it once you can hear it again. be asking the American public and telling them you cannot know you're in a bubble ahead of time. Yes, you can. It took until 1999 where the Fed says This won't end well. As one of the Fed officials says when prices and equities are going up the public feels buoyant and optimistic. One might even say delusional. And I've written in my personal notes. He said the quiet part out loud delusional. That's how they think of John and John Q Public a bunch of stupid ignorant little lemmings that get delusional they get high off the markets because they're too stupid to know any better. The role of the Fed is to take away the Punchbowl just when the party gets rolling. Greenspan's attitude was the opposite. He claims that the Fed couldn't see a bubble ahead of time, you let the bubble pop and then clean up the pieces later. The tech bubble collapse in NASDAQ 2000 2000 to the.com collapse and then the 911 attacks, the Fed cut rates to quote soften the blow of the problems. No, we're all buddy Phil Gramm again in July of 2001. He says if this is the bust, the boom was sure as hell worth it. GREENSPAN smiles smugly and agrees with him. I also want you to really think about that, because that's how the fat cat see it. If you're suffering and you are being steamrolled by a bust cycle, who cares? Because for us, the boom cycle was worth it. We made our killing we made our money, we got our pound of flesh. So if you're out there not doing so well, too bad. The easy money gets funneled into the housing market. Like we've got money, so let's put it in housing. April 2002. GREENSPAN goes on TV again, to say that the housing market is okay and not in bubble conditions. Homeowners and buyers Don't speculate like stock traders. I've written in my personal notes ha wanna laugh? Home owners and buyers Don't speculate, like stock traders.

Does that seem to be the case to you? Especially after we've, what we've just been through with the FOMO in the Yolo in the housing market? Does it really seem like people Don't speculate in the housing market getting real? By 2002 The fear is deflation, Ben Bernanke says that the Fed will ensure that deflation doesn't occur. If interest rates stay unusually low for too long, you are creating bubble conditions. And they show a clip of a century 21 commercial. And when I started thinking about this, I actually, I believe I remember seeing this on TV. I had just brain dumped it because it's been years ago, but they show a century 21 commercial of a woman. She's got a realtor on speakerphone listening, and she's like goading her husband into trying to buy a house that he's unsure of. And both the wife and the realtor are like we can do this. It's like creepy. And the realtor is on the speakerphone. Like, this is a great property. This is amazing. And the wife's like we can do this, aside from the fact that it's awfully sexist to portray women as being the ones who make these irrational decisions and the man is the one standing there going, Hey, wait a minute, honey. I mean, do you really think I would do that? No, hell no, no, no, no, no, no. The fuel for the subprime mortgage crisis was the accommodative monetary policy by the Fed, Greenspan thought he couldn't fail. We see a chart of household debt to disposable income in 1985. It's 64%, which that's why the hell to high already. In 2001, it's 97%. In 2007, it's 133%. Modern measure of inflation equals you exclude housing, food and energy prices. Whereas the old fashioned measure of inflation was to include the prices of housing, food and energy. It would have been much clearer what kind of inflation was occurring if the inflation had been calculated correctly, and there hadn't been some really funny math going on there. Oh, and then here we go. Oh, W. O, WN is ownership society. It's good for America. If you buy a house Merica. We also see a clip of Timothy Geithner in two December of 2009, saying Americans borrow too much money because they did not understand how to be responsible with money. I've written in my personal notes. Tim's comment is like big food deliberately engineering products to be addictive, and then blaming the consumers. As I said, earlier, in this broadcast, yes, there are people that are irresponsible with money. They're like the proverb of the grasshopper that saying all summer, they don't prep, they don't save. They blow every dime they make and then wonder why they're broke all the time. Yes, there are people like that. In this case, I think to blame the Fed's monetary policy and QE and printing up fiat currency by the wads and really making sure that these corporate raiders and day traders etc, made their killing, blaming that on John and Jane Q Public is so wrong. It's so wrong. So we wind up with the greatest credit bubble in history, the US had a phantom recovery from 2003 to 2006. That was built on debt. I'm gonna butt in here and say I don't remember being in any kind of phantom recovery from Oh 3206 it and clearly must have hit somebody that was in a higher tier than I was because it was a struggle at that point in time. The great coincidence theory, the whole economy went to hell just on a coincidence. Yet, as we're reminded this documentary, The Fed's monetary policy connected everything. So was it really a coincidence that all of these sectors of the economy failed at the same time. And healthy economy should be people earning money and then spending it not borrowing the money and then spending it? I'm thinking now of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street to Money Never Sleeps. I'll drop a link to a blog post that I wrote back in February of 2023. Gordon Gekko tried to tell you, because he did. He totally did. He tried to tell you in the first Wall Street movie, and then he came back again, and trying to tell you in this equal. So in the second Wall Street movie, when he's speaking to a group of like millennial college kids, he says, someone reminded me the other evening that I want said, greed is good. Now, it seems it's legal. But folks, you know, it's greed that makes my bartender buy three houses he cannot afford with no money down. And it is greed that makes your parents refinance their $200,000 house for a 250k. And then they take that extra 50k and then go down to the shopping mall, and they buy a plasma TV, cell phones, computers and an SUV. And hey, why not a second home while we're at it? Because gee whiz, I mean, we all know the prices of houses in America always go up, right? And it's greed that makes the government of this country cut interest rates to 1% after 911. So we can all go shopping again, they got all these fancy names for trillions of dollars of credit CMOS, CDOs s IVs. ABS is, you know, I honestly think there's maybe only 75 people in the world who know what they are. But I'll tell you what they are. They are WMDs weapons of mass destruction and quote, you better know that. Mm hmm. I also wrote in my personal notes, you're allowed to say that the economy fell apart in Oh, eight and oh nine because of stupidity. But you're not allowed to say it was crony capitalism. You're never allowed to say this was done on purpose by people who are evil and brilliant. You're always supposed to say it was morons. They meant well, it was a benevolent cover up. Yeah, of course it was. When you hear in this documentary capitalism has been bastardized by the government. The real borrowing nightmare didn't happen on Main Street. It happened on Wall Street. I've written in my personal notes, but see we have to always blame john and jane Q Public for disasters, borrow money at 0% or 1%, charge 5% to 6% and make a crapload of profit from it, ie mortgage backed securities, because that's what they did. These banks and these mortgage houses, they borrowed the money for almost nothing, or in some cases, flat out nothing. And then they charge the consumer so they can make a killing off of it. I've written in my personal notes seems like all of this is connected. Hmm, who comes up with his ownership society crap, and then all of this happens? Hmm, I wonder if that's a coincidence. People follow the incentives set out by the Fed. Some banks were at 2% equity 98% debt. Think about that. Think about the level of insolvency there 98% debt 2002 to 2007. the borrower's ability to pay back a loan or a mortgage became irrelevant. It was all about the ability to sell those loans and mortgages on Wall Street. Now this I remember very well, very, very well. I was targeted for those ninja loans and the payday loans, I would get postcards and like telemarketing calls about those all the time. Thank God, I never did it. But they targeted me hard. And there was that period of time where they wouldn't even check your income. I mean, there was like no verification, you could just go in and get a mortgage on whatever you told them your income was was crazy. Now we see W and Greenspan trying to sell weird ass mortgages. That's literally what I have in my notes trying to sell weird as mortgages and ownership society to the public. I've written in my personal notes, I knew it collusion, we see a clip of Barney Frank in June 2005, saying the housing market was not the.com. And it wouldn't collapse. Hey, housing markets fine. There's not going to be like the.com boom and bust cycle doing very, we're told that Edward cromlech at the Fed was the only one at the Fed who saw the subprime mortgage crisis coming. And then I've written in my notes, I'm skeptical. As events transpired, why didn't the Fed wake up? We see a news clip of Bernanke saying literally, we've never had a decline in house prices nationwide. Also think about that, really. Maybe if you were not an adult, or maybe you're living in another country listening to this broadcast, I'm telling you, when things got really bad during the Great Recession, you there was no street you could drive down where you wouldn't see foreclosure signs. It was everywhere. But housing prices never decline. I'm sure. Jeremy Grantham says it didn't decline when it had been it didn't decline when it hadn't been in a bubble. In other words, when he's saying there is there's no reason for things to decline in such a such a significant way when they haven't been put into bubble conditions in the first place. And then I put in my notes, remember this when you're dealing with Shady realtors and brokers. Same thing as I said before, if somebody is trying to pee pee on your leg and tell you that it's raining, be careful. Oh, house prices literally never go down. You better buy now and this is your last chance. I've written Okay, all right. Hang on Greenspan and Bernanke tried to gaslight people that very very few people spotted the bubble and the coming crisis. This is untrue. Such people were dismissed as alarmists or ignored altogether. And as Jeremy Grantham says, every bubble breaks?

 Sure does.

 We get into a segment of the documentary now called the problem with models. Dave colander says academic economists live in an island unto themselves. Hmm. So think about that, you know, I wrote a blog post. Also, I'll drop a link to it called tragic science, which is from a quote, because there was a book written about the tragic science of economics, the so called economist, they can say anything, it doesn't matter if their predictions are wrong, they can say anything. And they will be held to no account. As he says, you have people trained in mathematics, not markets, and not human emotion, the academic models failed. I've also written in my personal notes, you can buy an economist to say anything you could, I could go on a freelancing site, put an ad out and say I want an economist to say this. And then I could go and run another ad, asking for the opposite. I need an economist to say the opposite of this. You'd be able to buy it, it'd be no problem. The bill from the Great Moderation came due. And I've written also in my personal notes, why do we allow firms like AIG and Lehman to exist? Why would there ever be a too big to fail scenario ever. The Fed gives out billions in emergency loans. Bernanke is bailout does not caused a recovery. So it's time for QE. Let's fire up the old printing press. We see the mainstream media celebrating that celebrating it saying the economy is doing great Hmm, sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it? And investor named David Tepper, who made quite a lot of money says, I went either way, either the economy gets better or the Fed bails me out. We saw a temporary nationalization of the housing market when the Fed bought mortgages from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. There's no free market law of survival of the fittest when you're getting bailouts. Greenspan and Bernanke were appointed by both Republican and Democrat presidents. Even though Greenspan was supposed to represent free market ideals. The two of them created an economy more centrally planned than ever in our history. I've written in my personal notes, this is part of the Republican versus Democrat narrative. The GOP does not does not actually want smaller government or free market capitalism. It is a play act. We see a chart of disasters, the 1987 crash, the savings and loan scandal the.com crash and the 2008 crash. All of these have been within my lifetime. It's like, well, what alive what alive with these jackals? You know, things that I've had to see and lift or the Fed uses debt to fuel fake growth? Hmm. Doesn't that sound familiar again, almost seems like the so called robust and resilient economy that we're in. For one thing, it's gaslighting and complete BS For another thing, it's debt driven. Creating financial transactions is not like producing a real good or service. In a segment titled The illusion of wealth, I have written Welcome to America, the richest 1% own 42% of US financial wealth, the poorest 80% own only 7% of US financial wealth. Since this was produced in 2013. You can imagine it's only gotten worse. I don't know how many times I've linked to that Oxfam article, where they went to Davos in 2023, and told the fat cats how much money they made off the pandemic while everybody else suffered. Another chart shows us 1981 to 2007, the richest 1% had a 264% increase in wealth, the richest 20%. So 97% Increase the middle 20%. So only a 25 increase. And the poorest 20% only had an 18% increase. It's a redistribution of wealth. That's something else I think is so important. So so very important. And this is something else, I think that that the Oxfam study is is trying to get to. It's not that these fat cats are creating wealth, and their defenders these fanboys that want to get so frothing at the mouth about people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Well, they deserve that wealth, because look at everything they've created, really, really with their tax breaks and their government contracts. Really. Yeah, I don't know about that. And then also you think about these huge companies where the employees have to be on public benefits because they can't afford to buy food. They're not being paid a living wage, we're subsidizing that as taxpayers. It's about a redistribution of wealth. It's like when you have a tube of toothpaste and you're squeezing the toothpaste out of the tube in an upward direction. And the bottom part of the tube just gets flatter and flatter and there's nothing in it. That's when it's about you will not sing and you will be happy. Since 2000, no net jobs have been created in the US. And per capita growth in the private sector has been stuck at zero. Think about that, especially in the next time that you hear all of this nonsense about low unemployment rate, churn and burn and doing great, right. Money got poured into a broken system, and we hope that it will trickle down to the real economy. A rising stock market is touted as a success of quantitative easing. The cost of inflation is disproportionately borne by the poor. We know that I worked hard to save that money. But now in one swoop, the Fed says My money is worthless and I need to bail out the banks. I've written in all caps in my personal notes. Yep. And we keep getting bigger collapses each time. As Jeremy Grantham says quantitative easing is the last desperate Gambit, the Fed should have a greater degree of humility. Mechanically, the Fed cannot really solve problems. The Fed admits that it cannot control unemployment rates with any precision whatsoever. Printing money does not produce goods and services. It doesn't hire people. It's a short term medicine. We see a clip of Ron Paul advocating to abolish the Fed. We also see a clip of old Yellen saying that the Fed should always protect against inflation. In my notes I've written Major ha. How long can $1 based system last zero probability of default. So says Greenspan, he doesn't think that there would ever be $1 default. The commentators in this documentary warn that no nation is too big to fail. A system designed for people to always want more and to always spend more. That's what the American economy has become, you're always supposed to be spending even if you have to go into debt to do it. Keep up with the Joneses, we get a little hopium. At the end, hey, we can still find our way out of this. And all I can think of is Gerald Cilenti, saying when all else fails, they send you to war. And I believe we are going to have to get into a doozy to try to get out of this mess. I also wrote in my personal notes, and this is the last note. It made me think of pretty woman because you know, in that movie, the character, Edward Lewis is a corporate raider. And then Julia Roberts's character, Vivian is like, well, so you don't, you don't make anything. You don't build anything? Like what what do you do? Whenever you have these companies that you've bought? What do you do with them? Well, we take them apart, and we sell them in smaller pieces, because the smaller pieces are worth more than the company as a whole. And she's like, Oh, you mean, like a chop shop was stolen cars? Oh, well, yeah, except it's legal. And then over the course of the film, we get our hopium he has a change of heart. He's decided that he doesn't want to take over this shipbuilding company and break it apart and sell it instead, he wants to go into business and actually start making chips so he can contribute something to society other than shuffling wealth around and in gorging himself. I wish that I had some neat tidy answer here. I wish that I could tell you that things are gonna get better. But I think you know, my opinion, I've talked before on the broadcast about prepping. I think everybody should be a prepper. At this point. I've also written about Yo yo, meaning you're on your own. You and I we don't get bailouts. We're not too big to fail. We're expected to act with moral hazard. And like that Timothy Geithner quote, well, I mean, people who's active irresponsibly with money, they didn't know how to say anything. That will be the narrative again. Well, we sent you STEMI checks. We sent you a $600 STEMI check one time, as the economy was collapsing during the Why didn't you save it? Oh, it would be hilarious if it wasn't so depressing. Educate yourself. I mean, things have only gotten worse since 2013. And I imagine they're not going to get any better in the short run. I know that's pessimistic. I know I should give you something uplifting. I should tell you that the globalists are quaking in their boots and the Fed is really going to turn it around and everything's going to be better. I don't see that happening in the short run. Stay safe, stay sane. Check out this documentary if you have time. And I will see you in the next episode.

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