 Welcome to economics and beyond. I'm Rob Johnson president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. I'm here today with Paul Jay Who is the founder of analysis.news? He's a filmmaker currently working on a project with Daniel Ellsberg on his book the doomsday machine And he was the founder of the real news network Paul has been an acquaintance of mine for many many years Has a very very vast sensibility awareness ladder lateral packet pattern recognition skills that are outstanding and So I thought it would be important to share with our audience How Paul sees the current situation Paul. Thanks for joining me today. Thank you, Rob And I thank you for that. I don't even think I can pronounce that skill set. You just mentioned So I'm not so sure I haven't Yeah, I I've always known you to be someone who can integrate, you know You have economists and political scientists and historians and Security analysts and you seem to weave them all into a continuum. So that's That's what I'm celebrating here at the outset and we'll just have to prove the point on the fly Any rate so here we are Near the end of June 2020 the pandemic is Unmasking a whole lot of things we're in a presidential election year the Death of George Floyd and I can't breathe and all kinds of tensions has led to a lot of Activity in the streets and it seems as if if you will the What you might call intimidation or grounding of some kind of conventional wisdom has just broken loose So I'm curious. What do you see? What do you see that you find? Haunting or daunting. What would you like to see and where do you see light at the end of the tunnel? Well, I'll save light at the end of the tunnel till the end and I hope I don't Get too pessimistic as we get there Which I kind of wanted to answer You asked how do people regain Any I don't know if the word was respect or belief in the role of government and capitalism and My answer, I guess is they don't I think we've reached a moment in history I actually let me back up from saying they don't I'm saying they shouldn't Because the role of government now Not government as we would like to see it and The role of capitalism now. I think has reached the end of the road Now end of the road could take decades The problem is we don't have decades The climate crisis has created a kind of urgency That's unlike any other time in history. There's never been a time where you could say there's simply no possibility for incremental slow evolutionary change in Fact, you know, the history really has been on the whole that kind of evolutionary change giving rise to revolutionary changes Some of which have kind of worked and some have not but on the whole History, there's a chance to play things out We're at a moment where there's no time to play things out the leading climate scientist in Australia Just a few weeks ago. I think was quoted as Saying that the path we're on is leading us to the end of human society as we know it It's the dissolution of human society and we're talking a time frame of a matter of a decade like by by by 2030 The window is kind of closing. He most of the climate scientists are saying we already are going to pass 1.5 degrees That's a given. It's not that it couldn't be prevented. It's just given today's politics Given the control that finance has over the politics of virtually every almost every country in the world and the such short-sightedness of finance the the Absolute imperative of short-term gain No matter what and it's kind of blind. It's not evil people. It's the way the system works You know, they take BlackRock and Vanguard BlackRock the biggest asset management company and People that follow my stuff. No, I keep going on about these guys BlackRock and Vanguard and State Street the three just by themselves controls something like 14 15 trillion dollars of Assets, it's not their own money It's pension funds and sovereign wealth funds and billionaires, but they get to vote those shares and Essentially control who gets to manage the S&P 500 they control about 90% of the S&P 500 and You know, their business is they need to return on their they need a return on capital and it's it's kind of blind in a way and and That is forcing us over a cliff The concentration of ownership has reached such ridiculous proportions that you know a handful of these finance companies Essentially can determine who runs the economies of Most of the major countries they don't have the same control yet in China perhaps but even in China They're starting to buy Chinese index funds and such But China has to respond to the world economy that these companies do have such Dominance in so China is part of that global system and They're taking us over the cliff on several fronts They're taking us over the cliff on climate and as I say and I'm not saying anything people haven't heard It's this is a matter of just a few years and we're gonna hit two degrees Probably by 2030 2040 maybe at the latest 2050 and the predictions now is once you cross the two degree mark It's very very difficult and maybe impossible Not to get the three and four degrees and you start to getting into three and four degrees by the end of the century We're talking about most of the planet is unlivable. So we're in that moment and it doesn't matter what we're talking about Whether it's what's going on in the streets whether the the mad men in the White House, which obviously contributes to the climate problem Any other issue you talk about you cannot not put it in the context of This tiny window to save you know human civilization But the same forces that are ignoring this crisis when they pay lip service to it like black rock I can get into that more in detail later black rock supposedly Larry Fink the CEO had this big revelation and now they're gonna Supposedly get out of coal, but that's a crock as I say I can get into that more in detail But they just keep going on the road they're on because it is what it is they are who they are They really can't do otherwise as long as the imperative is Maximizing return on investment and they can't have any other imperative if they did they'd lose their pension funds They'll go to some other fund that will have that imperative So I mean Larry Fink head of black rock may be you know a nice guy may have the best of intentions But it's it's irrelevant what his intentions are That it is a system and we need to break the paradigm change the paradigm of that system They're also taking us over another cliff and this one we don't talk about very much and that's the threat of nuclear war Not only our black rock vanguard and state street The major investors in all the major fossil fuel companies of the world with the exception of total in France Which is owned by the French government and you can add a few other ones that are owned by governments But primarily the big the biggies are all owned by the same asset management companies Controlling interest essentially it's not just the three have controlling interest It's the three allied with other institutional investors wind up being often 70 80% Of the majority ownership of shares so not just fossil fuel companies But they also have control of the companies the 12 major companies that produce nuclear weapons Let's add to that they also have control over Lockheed Martin Boeing Raytheon Let's add to that. They also have control over the companies the biggest ones that own private prisons and Get this they also own Essentially controlling interest of all the major media in the United States with the exception of Bloomberg That's privately owned the Washington Post. It's privately on But everything else see and ends and go on all the major news outlets Including institutional investors own 93% of the New York Times so These things are all converging which is a convergence of a ridiculous level of concentration Of ownership and there's no suggestion any antitrust legislation will be used to try to prevent this in fact black rock even got accept got exempted from being described under Dodd-Frank legislation as Too big to fail as a as a critical Sector of the finance they got exempted from that Kind of ridiculous things. They are the giants the real giants of Wall Street I mean these same three institutional investors along with others They have the controlling interest of Goldman Sachs and the other investment banks that people hear more about Of course, it's also intertwined so and and then the third front is The the the pandemic and there'll be more and of course they everyone Study these things knew this pandemic was coming Why wasn't it prepared for? Because it wasn't prof as profitable to prepare for the pandemic as it was to do other things in pharma and other kinds of areas And there's this pandemic is the beginning of something in all likelihood This is this particular pandemic is going to have a second wave might have a third way And and and more will be coming But part of the pandemic the consequences of which which you've been doing great work on on your podcast Is the economic consequences of this closing down of production? Not only has the closed down production and and Made whole sections of the working class in the United States and and Canada and some extent Europe Thrown into poverty sections of the working class that never imagined they'd ever be poor So a lot of things are converging right in this moment And we we go back to the original Question which you asked and I re-asked myself is The capitalism we know it is done In the sense that it is it is totally out of solutions It can't face up to climate crisis. It cannot deal with the issue of nuclear weapons and the threat of destroying everything alive on the earth it can't even deal with pandemics and Can you trust the future of humanity? To a class to a system that can't even deal with viruses never mind nuclear weapons that's a how we say a Great culminating question with all of the things all the portraits as you painted each one is an evidence of what Mack Hall failed representation failed governance failed balance When you go to the Basic health systems Which had been commodified and privatized in the United States? I Don't know how I don't know how anybody can have any faith in anything right now There is no like pendulum swinging back to the middle. It's as if the fulcrum on the pendulum and broke away and we're just whirling through the sky Well, we are and we're not I would say the The the you know, we live in what what people call mixed economy So there's parts of the economy. They're socialized Publicly owned at various levels whether it's you know federally or state or or city A lot of the economy I don't have the number off the top of my head You might but tremendous amount of the economy actually is government expenditure, whether it's publicly owned or Governments buying services from the private sector, but it's actually public money. That's driving it Finance is completely dependent on public money now. It's just a joke They're the Wall Street would have been done in 0708 and they would have been done now If it wasn't for the Fed and the Treasury Department just shoveling money to shore up the assets of the wealthy So so the kind of social part of the economy Has grown enormously the other thing that's grown is that some of the biggest enterprises are Internally So brilliantly rational. I'm thinking Amazons and Walmart's and FedExpress They work fantastically Internally and our global scale But They they this beauty in a sense and I really do mean it I think Amazon and Walmart all of them just the fact they can keep track of all this stuff in an organized Rational way that's so many people working there and keeping track of all the products Of course, it's a large extent now the product of artificial intelligence Which is opening up tremendous perspective of what society could be But because if you can imagine that kind of structure of an Amazon and a Walmart and a FedEx and such And get rid of the thing. That's the problem. The problem is the private ownership Because it's not at the service of society Whether it's like just imagine a publicly owned Amazon or a publicly owned Walmart And I mean for real not just utopian which would mean there'd still be privately owned Walmart and privately owned Amazon But you have publicly owned with a public interest mandate So like you immediately raised the minimum wage to 25 bucks an hour or something like that You really enshrined workers rights, which would put tremendous pressure on privately owned Amazon and Walmart To do the same because they're gonna have trouble hiring anyone because everyone's gonna work Want to work in the publicly owned Now, of course, there is a problem of concentration of ownership even if it's public You know, if you had FedExes and Amazons and I'm gonna go get on to finance because I would like to see You know the federal government next By controlling interest of BlackRock. I think that would give enormous weight to the public interest But if you concentrate that all in the hands of a federal government and whatever party happens to be in control That can be as dangerous and we've seen that Over the 20th century that that kind of concentration of ownership can also be extremely dangerous even if it's in supposedly public hands But we we don't live in the days of the soviet union. We don't live in the days Where you you plan an economy with a pencil and paper It had to become bureaucratized. It had to become overly centralized and it had not to work Because that kind of planned economy that was attempted in the soviet union and china for that matter It was just impossible without becoming Essentially a police state to try to and to deal with the problems That couldn't be dealt with With pencils and papers. I read an article once They were trying to figure out how to give somebody a raise on an assembly line in the soviet union Let's say workers worked on an assembly line better than someone else on an assembly line How do you figure that out and give that person a bonus? But don't give a bonus to the person that didn't doesn't work harder And in the end it was I think when the the final document had something like 1200 signatures on it That's how many bureaucrats had to get their hands on it We don't live there anymore. We live in a day where artificial intelligence computerization Can be we can have very decentralized forms of public ownership and still Have a kind of overall plan In the public interest We can't get there quickly and it's going to be messy without any question But if we don't have starters public ownership of the critical parts of the fossil fuel industry and start to transition it out of business and transition through You know legislation and through more and more democratized Process of creating that legislation, but we got to get fossil fuel out of the picture And create a green sustainable economy that is not going to happen Evolut in an evolutionary way It's not going to happen because of the marketplace It's going to happen because we the people Say our fate of our future is on the line And we got to do it now because there's no time anywhere else We need to do the same thing with the arms industry. We have to get the profit motive out of us forum policy How much how many wars have we gone into how many tens of thousands even millions of lives have been lost Because the of the appetite of the arms industry We all know it but it just goes on and on the Ellsberg makes this great point. He says there's absolutely no rationale For having intercontinental ballistic missiles They're not functional. They don't act as a deterrent because Russia knows where ours are we knows where that where theirs are And the first thing everybody does is try to take out the other person ICBMs So it doesn't make it they'd not really do anything the only thing that's an effective deterrent Are submarines nuclear-armed submarines can move all over the place. It's not so easy to track them And they actually are a deterrent So why do we have ICBMs? Because the industry that makes ICBMs are making a fortune making ICBMs And I have to say that the same's true true in russia. They have the same kind of military industrial complex just for our listeners ICBM is intercontinental ballistic missiles a land launch missile Yeah, the land launch missiles So we need to take the profit motive out of The arms industry, but then the most critical of all in some ways Because of its power in all the other sectors of the economy I think there needs to be public sector banking not just retail like post office banking, which is fine But I mean on a scale That the people can say You guys who are into speculation and all the rest, you know, go do it if that's what you want to do But no more bailouts And the only way we can actually say that in a way that means anything Is if there's a public option a real public sector financing at a scale That it can deal with the flows of global capital because these institutions do play a real role I mean they you know while they speculate and are dangerous They also do facilitate global trade So it's not like they're you know They are parasitical, but they're not completely parasitical There really is a role for big for that kind of banking at that level But it but it needs to be With a public interest mandate Or we get into the kind of situations that we've been in so So to me, that's the light at the end of the tunnel How we get there ain't so easy Yeah Well, what I often refer to Is the which might call the moral legitimacy Of capitalism Comes from being embedded And governed by democracy But when democracy The rules the appointments the enforcement Regulations become things that are bought and sold By lobbyists to politicians for the what you might call to enable their survival When money matters so much to a politician's survival Then it ceases to be representative and the moral legitimacy of the system And not to mention the outcomes of the system Get torn apart And you've talked about the banking sector We uh how we what you might call reserve our contingent fiscal capacity to protect Too big to fail banks, which Some have called the mother of all moral hazards It encourages them to do more it cuts their funding costs and Gives them a competitive advantage relative to smaller banks We talk about the military industrial complex The pharmaceutical industry could be another case study And it just seems As if I guess what I would say to you know kind of quote our Research director at Inet Tom Ferguson His book is called the golden rule he who has the gold rules And it I think it's become increasingly transparent particularly as wealth concentration has Accelerated tremendously in the last 40 years That fewer and fewer people Not only don't have any say but are not taken care of Fewer and fewer people are taken care of is what I should have said the but The vast multitude of people have no political influence And You can always talk about lesser or two evils, but I think of it as a systemic problem That poisons the entire process both parties need to raise that kind of money in order to Gain the majority for incumbents to hold their seats, etc and the cost To the body politic of where our tax revenues Are spent Is overpowering Let me ask you a little bit You're working with daniel elsberg And I read his book doomsday machine and I think there were several dimensions to the book You know one is related to the kind of refractory economics of the defense area, but also The What you might call not coming clean with the public about how darn dangerous these Weapon systems are that if they get used the scale of the calamity for human life Is overpowering But tell me where how did you connect with elsberg and Where are you going with that project? Um, I I wanted to interview him. I just thought it'd be interesting I did not have on my mind The Extent of the threat of nuclear war it was way on a back burner for me like it is I think for most people I kind of had the same feeling. I think most people have that after the cold war ended Yeah, there's a chance of something accidental happening, you know, because we know the nuclear silos are not that well maintained and so on but You kind of figure jeez where it's gone on this long and we haven't blown up, you know There's we it's probably not going to blow up and we got to worry more about climate and stuff like that But he agreed to be interviewed and I went out And by the end of the end of the interviews, I did like I think 13 parts with him the first time I interviewed He scared the shit out of me Um It changed the way I looked at the world the the The Threat is not a maybe Not just Ellsberg Including people like Larry Wilkerson, you know, who was calling pals chief of staff and But also any number of senior states people military people who talk about this and have studied it They don't think there's a chance of a nuclear war They think it's inevitable They don't think it's an 80 90 whatever percent They think it's 100 percent That eventually if we keep on this path We will have nuclear war that they just think it's impossible to have so many nuclear weapons at play And to have such an unstable geopolitical situation That this doesn't eventually ignite and ignite is the right word Because there's no limited nuclear war if a nuclear war starts that whatever it is it will be enough to start nuclear winter a nuclear war just between India and Pakistan And now we see there's fighting going on on the border with India and China Just India and Pakistan if they start throwing bombs at each other It's enough to create a nuclear winter nuclear winner essentially is When enough cities burn The ash and smoke goes up into the atmosphere And eventually within a year surrounds the globe and ends agriculture It creates famine So yes, the immediate deaths are radiation In whatever region this war takes place never mind if this was a us russia confrontation It would be more than the whole northern hemisphere But the southern hemisphere within a year would have no food It's it is the end of not just human life. It's the end of as Ellsberg says in his kind of clinical analytical way large mammals It's the end and it's inevitable and it's a hundred percent And and you know, it's we need to internalize that and we can't park it at the back of our minds And so for me after talking to Ellsberg for all those interviews And then I read his book And the I know I guess I read the book for the interviews it was I guess the most important book in a way that I've ever read Because if we don't heed his warning We're done In some ways it's a more imminent threat than climate But they're not at all separate issues because the solution To the issue of the nuclear threat and the solution to climate is the same solution uh We need a progressive people's movement that elect a progressive government that First of all seriously Read negotiates arm nuclear arms treaties instead of what trump's doing getting out of them Instead of a trillion dollars. I guess it is over the next 10 15 years. I can't remember the time frame Uh that the united states is going to spend on nuclear new round of nuclear weapons and that wasn't trump That was obama and and the russians are now doing exactly the same and the chinese apparently are ramping up Chinese policy previously was to keep a fairly limited number of nuclear weapons Around 200 they think Now it looks like the chinese might get in on the uh this nuclear arms race um So we need a progressive people's movement a progressive government and we need to negotiate immediately arms treaties to start Significantly reducing the levels of nuclear arms. We have to stop this insanity Of this trillion dollars being spent on a new A round of nuclear weapons to what trump did to this arms Buildup new build up. He's introducing more tactical nuclear weapons Which is the height of insanity that you're going to have battlefield nuclear weapons and think That that doesn't lead to something else now. Yeah, they they would probably only use it against a non nuclear power Like like iran But you really think you're going to hit iran with a tactical nuclear weapon and they're not going to find some way to respond Like larry wilkerson has talked about, you know, just imagine One little nuclear bomb and whether it's terrorist Whether it's a provoked iran or a provoked north korea and it would be the americans that provoke it I I can't imagine they would ever do what i'm about to describe Other than in some weird defensive way Just put something on a container ship and ship it into new york harbour and blow it up Right now we are on a 10 second hair trick. We're back and not back and we never left the cold war strategic Setting is 10 seconds to decide If a blip on a radar screen or a bomb that goes off in new in new york harbour Is that A real attack by a major power Or is it something else 10 seconds And if and within that 10 seconds someone's supposed to decide whether to counter attack or not And if that bomb goes off in new york and i'm quoting larry wilkerson here I'm not making this stuff up. So i'm talking, you know quoting a guy who who's been at the scene most senior levels of military command Um That how would they know What just blew up in new york And the mentality is such That first strike is the solution And and in the pentagon There is a real belief and i'm quoting ellsberg now There's a serious belief and wilkerson backs him up on this That they can win a first strike And it's insane. They don't believe nuclear winter If a first strike knocked out all the major cities of russia And all their icbms And they had no capacity For a second strike back at the united states Just burning all this major cities of russia is enough for nuclear winter You don't need anything else Just that attack will end life as we know it on the planet So when i internalized that It just gave a different kind of sense of urgency to me about this project working working With ellsberg And then ellsberg said something which linked everything together in terms of the work i'd been doing on finance and black rocks and all the rest He said he's come to the conclusion that the cold war was uh essentially A plan to subsidize the american aerospace industry That the big companies that had been producing the aircrafts and such for world war two when the war ended You know the lockheed martins and others They had built such capacity And the domestic airlines industry simply wasn't enough And so they needed something and the something was a rationale of an existential enemy That would justify this massive expenditure In militarization and and nuclear armaments And if you have time i can tell you a story of an example of this I I interviewed a guy named lester earnest and this is a story I don't think anyone's reported on this but me And and i'm gonna make this part of this film project with ellsberg So lester earnest is a guy He goes into the army around 1947 48 um he's Because he's he's a brilliant guy. He later in life goes on to found The artificial intelligence program at stanford But he goes to the army he learns computers and he comes out. He's a whiz He gets hired by mit to work in something on the sage radar system Now imagine the dr. Strange love movie where you see this big board with all the lights and they can track every aircraft that's coming in And and the scheme was This sage radar system, which at the time was the largest gathering of computer power in the history of the world warehouses and warehouses of computers And they would track and coordinate all these radar stations And then when a soviet bomber comes in to bomb North america canada in the united states They have bowmark missiles all over the place and they would shoot these missiles Also guided by the sage radar system and knock out the airplanes. So lester ghost he goes to mit He's he's joins Actually, I think he's hired to lead the command the group that's going to create the command and control unit Of this program So he's there about a week and he tell I have all this on camera and he tells me He says I sat down and I talked to the scientist next to me. I said How did you guys deal with the radar jamming problem? And the guy said what? He says well, we know the soviet bombers and we know all of ours all have radar jamming equipment now How'd you get around that problem with your radar system? And the guy was quiet for a while and the guy says We don't talk about that The whole thing was a scam A trillion dollars Over 25 years And it didn't work for a day Everyone knew All the scientists knew mit knew in fact mit realized after about seven eight years of this How embarrassing it would be if it came out and they spun the company out of mit Into a separate private company that mit I think had a piece of They all knew it was bullshit, but everybody was making so much money And then it got even more ridiculous so Um lester gets called in to the ceo's office or someone and they say to him we want you to go to washington and persuade the pentagon in congress To put nuclear weapons nuclear tipped weapons on the bowmark missiles And lester says to him You mean we're gonna have a soviet bomber coming in over american territory or canadian With nuclear weapons And then we're gonna fire a bowmark missile with a nuclear weapon And we're gonna blow all these nuclear weapons up over north america And the guy said yeah And Lester said okay And lester went to washington. I said why'd you go? It's insane Of course, it's insane lester said we didn't care anymore at that point We all thought we were gonna blow up and die We were being paid so much money ridiculous We were all getting ridiculous amounts of salaries And I said what the hell So he went to washington the pentagon signed on congress signed on And they did put nuclear weapons on bowmark missiles and in fact brought down a canadian government over it because prime minister defenbaker in canada didn't want bowmark missiles in canada and they brought his government down Kennedy It's another story we can get into at some point But the insanity was driven according to lester simply because of money making and and To reassure the american people Fraudulently that they were safe That that is at the core Of the nuclear america american nuclear strategy. It's it's about commercial interest And a whole system where everybody gets cynical That you know if I don't do it someone else is going to do it I might as well cash in That's just the way things are I mean all the internal rationalizations that go on in every industry. It's no different but you can talk to The guy that used to be the head of Communications for one of the big health insurance companies I mean they knew they were killing people by denying care and the health insurance But if I don't do it someone else will do it. So it's a whole system And and go back to where I was saying earlier. We got to break this paradigm because it's not just about The threat of these things that we're we're on the precipice now Well, there are many public officials Who have been what you might call refuting the pandemic by saying in order to keep the economy low Live we got to let We got to make more people work and be more exposed and have more people die from the covid virus So there's a there's a kind of non humanistic Consciousness or priority where the economy comes before the lives of people Yeah, very much. So uh You know, it wasn't that long ago Or it was 150 years or 200 years, but not that long and that's nothing in human history Were the british it was legal in in in england to have eight and nine year olds working in mines in wales There's a coal mine an iron iron ore mine on the in wales just across the border from england That in fact, there's been continuous iron ore mining there for something like 2000 years the romans used to mine there And I took a tour there and the union does tours. They used to have seven seven and eight year old kids And there would be crevices on the ceiling of the Section of the mine that had opened up. We're talking several thousand feet below the surface And only children could get in these little spaces with their little hammers and chip away And they would go up on ladders and then they would take the ladder away They were not allowed to piss Because the methane fumes from the p. They had no exhaust systems in those days. We're talking mid-18 19, you know mid-19th century, you know 1840 50 60 until they outflow eventually a child labor And and these kids they used to put sharp little stones now these are little white kids from wales, right? This is this is a kind of dehumanization that wasn't based on color. It was based on class These these kids were so dehumanized. They used to put sharp rocks down the backs of their shirts So when they were lying down chipping away, they couldn't fall asleep I mean get the mentality Of the elites that can think of children in that way And then of course these elites with the cross-atlantic slave trade. It's no it's not a big leap to dehumanize people of color If you want to exploit slave labor I mean they only eventually get rid of slave labor and all that because it turned out for england. It wasn't profitable anymore But of course it was for the united states for a long time You know these elites they dehumanize those who they exploit And people they just exploit more they dehumanize more that you know, there's lots of talk now about systemic racism Well, it's not an ideological problem primarily. It's not a cultural problem primarily Of course, it is cultural and ideological But but you know even now like on mainstream news you can hear people talking about systemic racism and how racism began and this racist ideology and white supremacy began during slave society and all this But I don't think I've heard anybody ask why does it continue in 2020 We're a long way away now from slave society Why do we still have the ideology of slavery? because the economic roots Of the slave system, which is exploit this totally unpaid black labor It reproduces that slave Ideology slave white supremacy because the elites are still exploiting black labor as this source of super cheap labor You know, I lived in baltimore for eight years um There's a story of a guy named rodney todd. I've written about So that rodney todd has seven kids He works at a university and on the east shore of maryland Um, he's divorced. So he he's in the house alone with the seven kids He's at the time in 20. This is 2015 because it was just the fifth anniversary of what i'm about to describe um He can't afford electricity. He's making eight dollars and 25 cents an hour seven children full-time job Described as an absolutely wonderful disciplined hard worker He can't he doesn't afford electricity. So it goes out and he gets uh propane heater And apparently in order not to wake up his neighbors with the sound of this generator And the propane heater. He takes it inside it leaks And rodney and his seven children die I wrote this piece who killed the todd family Well, the the electrical company Well, first of all, why the hell is somebody working for eight dollars and 25 cents? That's the first question which nobody asked in the media They were all talking about well, why'd the power company cut off the power? Because you're not supposed to do that in winter and so on and so on and that's not a bad question But the more important question is why the hell couldn't he afford electricity? Why is he working for eight dollars and 25 cents an hour? He's working at that crazy minimum What was then the minimum wage? because There's a pool of desperate people willing to work for anything which is why This kind of poverty that exists in baltimore and many places across the country It continues Because this pool of cheap labor not only are people willing to work for eight 25 But it puts a downward pressure on wages You know all through this kind of service sector and such And then it's interesting. I go to look at well, who's the power company? So I wish I had these things off the tip of my head, but it's something like delmarva Delmarva is the name of the company. It's owned by esalon and who winds up owning the thing Black rock it all goes back to the same institutional investors again I mean it all comes back But the the the reason This kind of systemic racism continues It's it's it is cultural as well There's no doubt if you're born into a family a working class family And we know one of the reasons for the white supremacist ideology is to split white workers from black workers If you grow up steeped in this stuff Yeah, it's going to be hard to break out. It's not that it doesn't isn't a cultural phenomenon But it isn't primarily It's primarily it's it's cheap labor And it continues like in baltimore. I I interviewed a guy He worked he worked for johns hopkins The hospital it's it's it's a non-profit, but they run it just like a for profit He was making 13 dollars and 25 cents an hour cleaning surgical rooms He had to take special medicine to ward off hiv and other possible things He's cleaning blood and guts day after day He worked there for 14 years seniorities making 13 dollars and 25 cents and it's unionized It was seiu So so the economic underpinnings here of the racist structures Are this exploitation of cheap labor and and that if you could deal with that part the chronic poverty And the chronic you know the threat of this of falling into chronic poverty Also is terrified workers. So they're you know, they're just just having a job is all they want In fact, if you go into the poorest areas of baltimore And you ask about crime and police and and everything else. Yes, they want the police brutality to end and all the rest They also want safety But mostly they want, you know, they want jobs and they want jobs with some dignity so I think a lot of these atrocities I mean the nuclear one in that damage you early uncovered something With your deep dive with daniel elsberg and the others But we've got distortions malfunctions in finance. We've got the climate Challenge that is daunting dangerous and not being addressed We've got poverty and inequality that seems to be systemically embedded And we have governance that's unresponsive I I think that's a proper diagnosis But the question is where do we go from here? What is it That is necessary To transform Many of these dimensions of society to what you might call a healthier more sustainable place That would reinvigorate hope trust faith in governance and expertise the How would I say, uh, I think it's it's Important to diagnose things properly But we can't just throw up our hands and resign in despondency. Yeah, I agree So where do where do we go from here? In your mind, what what's what are the Things you're calling on Every citizen of this country or this world to do To Catalyze the transformation that we need Well, I I don't have a platform to call on the people of the world But I know what I would say if I did That's good enough. We'll work on amplification. Maybe your wife's good at that stuff We need a broad And let's start with the united states, but I think it's similar in other countries We need a broad popular front A real alliance of different sections of the society Including sections of the elites because I know there are sections of the elites that get how dangerous the moment is and have some rationality the the They're very Unfortunately, so far at least they're very marginalized themselves. It's not like the 1930s where an fdr could develop Who had a long-term vision? You know, it was there to save capitalism and I don't I don't think anything else was possible at that point anyway so But he was looking at the longer term Interest now the people in the elites that look at the longer term interest. They're they're really in the minority But they're there But led by working people particularly people of color There has to be a broad front outside the democratic party It has to I think it should literally have membership like it should have You know people pay five bucks and they they join And all of these kinds of organizations that exist that are dealing on specific issues You know, whatever it is, you know, whether it's black people defending themselves from the police or women fighting for women's rights People fighting against discrimination based on sexual orientation Uh, it doesn't matter which section of the society that rightfully justifiably Organizes to defend themselves because they get oppressed or attacked just because of who they are but Especially the working class in general We need a broad front that takes a position on the things I've been talking about Demand urgent action on climate finance fossil fuels the arms, you know, the the critical sectors We're going to be looking unless something remarkable happens at a biden government um I think biden's history Does not suggest that he will be what he said he wanted to be and this he did this Web cam with sanders. He says he wants to have the most progressive administration since rooseville There's nothing in biden's history that suggests um He will do that He will lean in all likelihood or he will Be under incredible pressure by the corporate democrats the chuck schumers and such Um But if the if the people if the movement in the streets and this incredible shift in public opinion That's happened over the last few weeks On the issues of the police and the issue of racism and it's been remarkable a majority of people Coming out and saying no we want justice It's not about law and order. It's it's I think unbelievable. I wouldn't have expected it That this tactic of having fires as the iconic image of the protest and those fires justify police repression It usually works It hasn't worked public opinion is with the protesters publicist opinions now demanding police reform It's a just a very interesting unusual moment You know, it's kind of a katrina moment, you know for two three weeks during katrina the media actually realized There's such a thing as systemic racism And then after three weeks was over they went back to the same nonsense that they normally report on But this isn't the same this this window Maybe because of the pandemic, I guess in fact, I think the pandemic has done something else than just free people up to be on the streets It's been a dose of reality It's broken this haze this cloud that entertainment culture and bullshit news culture creates All of a sudden people say, oh my god, these predictions came true. We actually we're all vulnerable here And if you get that we're vulnerable from the pandemic I think people are going to get we're vulnerable from climate Nuclear might be a little more of a stretch, but it's okay So we're in a moment now. We had better not lose Because it ain't going to come again. We're going to get Go back down this road You know gorvidal had this He said usa stands for the united states of amnesia. We'll go back there We need to take advantage of this moment. So what do we need? I think a broad front and I I don't know who can lead this But you know, maybe it's some of these progressive members that are in congress They're certainly activists all over the country But still very siloed and very city by city. There's very little national. There's the poor people's movement Which has some national footprint So I'm hoping and I'm that these kinds of people are getting together But I think it's very very important That the trade unions and and progressive workers in the unions Now's the time they have to make a move On the leadership of the unions that are so wedded to the status quo now not every unions like that. There's exceptions But the majority of the unions the leadership Have given up on any possibility of change They live like rich people, you know, they get two three four hundred thousand dollar salaries They have expense accounts that eat steak at lunches. I mean, I've I've met many of them the Conscious workers and there's lots of them Need to get organized because the unions even though it's a much smaller segment of the society Then it used to be They are a powerful force if they were in progressive hands Just last friday on juneteenth the longshore workers closed down the ports of the entire west coast of the united states and canada for the day In honor of and to support this black lives matter movement and against police repression The power that's in the hands of many unions Even though they're smaller it's still very strategic in telecommunications and transportation and Other sectors including, you know, aircraft airlines and goes on Certainly in the public sector. I mean the unions are still quite strong in the public sector So the fight in the unions is is very very important The need for the broad broad front Don't I would suggest to the working people and others that that help organize While you need sections of the elites Do not let them take it over and and you can see the money that's being thrown At these black organizations right now millions and millions of dollars being rained down On black activist organizations and we saw in fergusson and to some extent in baltimore how corrupting that was And then it starts all kinds of fights amongst the black activists Who's going to get the money and then the people doling out the money get to say Oh, we like you. We're giving you money. No, we don't like you. You're too militant. We're not going to give you money So there needs to be a mature Organization that's very broad very inclusive With a conscious clear leadership that yes If I were in that group, I would say yes vote for biden But have no illusions about who he is and what he represents Do not leave the streets When biden's elected it's time to get even more pressure Demanding, you know, what kind of cabin appointments is he going to have? How's he going to deal with climate? There has to be a feeling within this democratic government democratic party administration That the lid's going to blow off If they don't it really pay attention To what the people are demanding and the urgency of the times And biden and his people will be caught, you know, you know between the pressure They're getting from finance and others which will be enormous And the pressure coming from the people And the urgency of the times Um, do I think this all works out? la di da I doubt it But we'll get you know step by step We I don't see any anything else That points towards a solution And I think globally this is also going to play out in other places As dark as it looks like in brazil I've always had great hopes that brazil would be a place that might lead the way Because they have so much If if a progressive government comes back to power and I think Lula and them Played too much footsie with international capital But they they're hard to push around brazil. It's big They have resources and everything and there's a Very sophisticated working class there And balsun arrow is is looks as even more discredited than trump if that's possible so so We're in a crazy complicated time in global history I I have an underlying faith that we humans have always come through And so what's this quote from grant she it's called A lot of people are quoting it these days a pessimism of the mind and optimism of the will So yeah, I I still have some optimism because we humans have done it before But boy, we don't have much time to do it Yeah, what's the other i'm hopeful but not optimistic I think that that probably captures it Very as almost as well as grumpy that But it's very uh, it's very daunting And like I mentioned at the outset Uh, your lateral pattern recognition skills your ability to see across Different horizons and see how in some sense they're unified in the systemic dysfunction Is very important. It's very helpful to the diagnosis that Uh, we all have to ingest as we fuel our spirits to bring about change What I want to thank you for being here today Thank you. Thank you for Exploring thank you for picking up on jesse Isingers Challenge to In the realm of finance see a way out And and you carried it into many other dimensions. I very much look forward to your project with Daniel Ellsberg. You're an excellent filmmaker and that's a very important Concept and person To elevate at the in these challenging times So let's promise each other that when that film is about to be released We'll come back and we'll make another chapter of our podcast together So you you can uh share with us What you've been able to create And are your interviews still available? You mentioned the 13 interviews with Ellsberg. Are they still online? Yeah, yeah, people can just search for paul j daniel Ellsberg. They'll find them And uh, and i'm gonna be doing some new ones soon Excellent and they can go to the analysis dot news There's a short interview a quick five six minute one with Ellsberg a new one that's there which really lays out the case in about five minutes Okay, excellent. Thank you paul. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye. Bye And check out more from the institute for new economic thinking at inet economics dot org