Ep 350 - Naked Corruption with Bill Black
Do you know what kakistocracy means? You’ll find out in this episode with guest Bill Black. Because, yeah, this is an educational podcast. A lot of us learned the term ‘elite control fraud’ from Bill in past episodes and you’ll hear more about it here.
Bill is a great storyteller. His experience as a regulator trying to enforce laws against the great crooks of the world gives him a lot of material. If you haven’t already heard our first episode with him, check it out: “Exposed: A Serial Whistleblowers Story” He’s the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One – one of our favorite book titles.
At the start of this week’s interview, Bill explains:
“...The absolute paramount form of control fraud is President of the United States of America. And they set about optimizing it as soon as they got in power. Remember all those executive orders and things that Trump would sign?
“... Among their very first acts was to say, we will no longer enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Now this is an act that says, no, it's not okay to bribe public officials in other countries. It's actually a crime. And Trump was saying way back in time, long before he even was talking about the presidency, how we shouldn't have a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. That it was stupid. Of course you should be able to bribe people. It's good for business.
“And if you think that's bad, the New York Bar Association took the same position. Because they were the commercial lawyers for all the firms that were bribing folks all over the world.”
Bill describes a shift to the final stage of elite control fraud. Corrupt actors no longer bother hiding their crimes. They flaunt them. This serves as "free advertising" to attract more bribes and creates a price war among those seeking favors, while simultaneously intimidating opponents.
Bill also talks to Steve about further manipulation of financial regulations and the intersections of elite control fraud within the cryptocurrency market. He goes through the real reasons crypto is useful to the ruling class and how these dynamics affect everyday people.
William K. Black is Distinguished Scholar in Residence for Financial Regulation, University of Minnesota School of Law. He is a white-collar criminologist, a former financial regulator, former banker, and serial whistleblower. He is a co-founder of Bank Whistleblowers United (BWU).
@WilliamKBlack on X
Transcript
Have faith.
Speaker A:Have faith.
Speaker A:Believe in your source.
Speaker B:Have faith.
Speaker A:I refer often to Martin Luther King in the context of the civil rights movement.
Speaker A:He said.
Speaker A:He said, I have no plan for the tranquilizing drugs, for the tranquilizing drum of gradualism and incrementalism.
Speaker A:Have faith.
Speaker A:Believe in the source.
Speaker A:Have faith.
Speaker A:Here's another episode of Macaron Cheese with your host, Steve Grumby.
Speaker B:All right, folks, this is Steve with Macaron Cheese.
Speaker B:Folks, it's been a hot minute.
Speaker B:And when I say a hot minute, I'm talking about maybe more than a year, maybe two years since we have my next guest on.
Speaker B:And my next guest is somebody who I did an awful lot of work with, the New Untouchables and several other podcasts about elite control fraud and the history of some of the insanity that goes into the financial regulations in this country and the history of those regulations.
Speaker B:And, folks, Bill Black is just an absolute gunslinger when it comes to getting things done.
Speaker B:He doesn't mince words, and I'm really, really happy to have him on.
Speaker B:We've talked about the unstable genius act with Bob Hockett here a few episodes ago, and there's still more meat on the bone we got to talk about.
Speaker B:And we're going to really talk about some of the motivations and some of the things that really caught my eye about why in the world will we give a rat's patootie about cryptocurrency in terms of the government backing it and so forth.
Speaker B:And just when you think that it's some great, wonderful win for the LOL bergarians, you realize in the end that there's always a hegemonic reason for it.
Speaker B:We're going to uncover some of those things here.
Speaker B:Bill is a distinguished scholar in residence for Financial regulation at the University of Minnesota School of Law.
Speaker B:And let me just say William K. Black, you probably have heard of him a few times, definitely from us anyway, and I'm very excited to have him back on.
Speaker B:Bill, welcome back to the show, sir.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:It's great to be back.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:And folks, if you guys skip Macro and Chill, shame on you.
Speaker B:We need folks like you out there that are in the know already, that understand modern monetary theory, understand the legal, and so forth.
Speaker B:Folks, we're building community out there, and we need to talk through this stuff with people that maybe are just getting exposed the first time.
Speaker B:Don't assume somebody else is going to show up and do it.
Speaker B:You come, please.
Speaker B:Just like Bill did.
Speaker B:He shows up at Macro and Chill and everybody about dropped the mic, they were like, oh, my goodness, we have a celebrity in house here.
Speaker B:It was really nice.
Speaker B:I mean, only partially joking on that.
Speaker B:It really was wonderful to have you come, man.
Speaker B:I appreciate it immensely.
Speaker A:Oh, it was great.
Speaker A:You had one of our alums doing our thing as well.
Speaker A:So we support you and we support UMKC and everybody in the community that works on these issues.
Speaker B:It was absolutely wonderful, and I'm so glad we have you back on.
Speaker B:Let's get to the meat of the thing here.
Speaker B:This crypto stuff, it fits a very interesting profile.
Speaker B:And remembering how you broke down Gresham's Law and you talked very much about the idea of elite control fraud with the mortgage crisis, here we are once again with another financial kind of black market product.
Speaker B:And once again, we're dealing with fraud and we're dealing with a whole bunch of other things.
Speaker B:And this time, quite frankly, purely state sponsored.
Speaker B:Can you kind of set the stage?
Speaker B:I know you're teaching this stuff at University of Minnesota.
Speaker B:Tell me a little bit about this whole idea of control fraud within the crypto space.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker A:Control fraud includes the government, by the way.
Speaker A:It's both the sectors and they most typically work together.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:In both cases, the people that control a seemingly legitimate either government or business entity.
Speaker A:And by the way, it can be done from nonprofits as well.
Speaker A:They use it as camouflage and a sword and a shield to defraud with very substantial impunity.
Speaker A:And in the case that we're currently looking at, of course, almost total impunity.
Speaker A:Donald Trump was always somewhere between a C minus and a D plus as a control fraud guy.
Speaker A:Not very sophisticated, not particularly successful because he's crushingly stupid.
Speaker A:But that doesn't mean that the grifters around him, the robber barons, are stupid.
Speaker A:They're not.
Speaker A:And so he is the useful idiot and they'll make him rich for the first time.
Speaker A:Trump always wanted to be a billionaire and never was before the corruption.
Speaker A:And this was sort of his gateway drug, right?
Speaker A:Was the sovereign wealth funds.
Speaker A:But he saw his son in law get the billions, Right.
Speaker A:Jared Kushner, who knows nothing about finance, was hired to be the financial advisor of this massive Saudi sovereign wealth fund.
Speaker B:Oh, my.
Speaker A:And they actually have a committee, you know, of experts that is supposed to prevent this.
Speaker A:And they said, no, do not do this.
Speaker A:And of course, it's Saudi Arabia or the, in the modern era, the United States.
Speaker A:What the experts have to say, you know, real experts has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Speaker A:So they just walked right through it, gave Kushner billions of dollars in his portfolio to invest for them and such.
Speaker A:And Trump immediately had son in law envy.
Speaker A:He came back around this time and this time pretty clearly he doesn't run the thing.
Speaker A:You know, it's Stephen Miller and Besant and the folks at OMB and such that do these things.
Speaker A:So the old guard he had the first term actually would say no to him.
Speaker A:No, we will not shoot the protesters.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:That's a wrong and B, a crime.
Speaker A:And you know, they would have resigned instantly and blasted it if he had tried to do so.
Speaker A:But the folks that use Trump as their useful idiot realize that the ultimate, the absolute paramount form of control fraud is President of the United States of America.
Speaker A:And they set about optimizing it as soon as they got in power.
Speaker A:Remember all those executive orders and things that Trump would sign?
Speaker A:He had no idea what was in them.
Speaker A:Oh, yes, he turned to Stephen Miller and say, what's this Stephen?
Speaker A:And Stephen would give some bullshit and Trump would do that signature that looks a whole lot like that, you know, that birthday card, but that must be a mistake and such.
Speaker A:So immediately with the Trump administration, what did they do?
Speaker A:What were their top priorities?
Speaker A:Among their very first acts was to say, we will no longer enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Speaker A:Now this is an act that says, no, it's not okay to bribe public officials in other countries.
Speaker B:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:It's actually a crime.
Speaker A:And Trump is way back in time, long before he even was talking about the presidency, of how we shouldn't have a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Speaker A:That was stupid.
Speaker A:Of course you should be able to bribe people.
Speaker A:It's good for business.
Speaker A:And if you think that's bad, the New York Bar association took the same position.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Because they were the commercial lawyers for all the firms that were bribing folks all over the world.
Speaker A:And in fact, the Foreign Corrupt Practices act has been an amazing success.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:I'm not that it's ended corruption, but it has actually done an enormous amount.
Speaker A:And it wasn't just Trump that made fun of it originally.
Speaker A:It was most everybody liked Trump.
Speaker A:So all the robber barons who controlled, you know, like the German government and such, and they made fun of the US but you know what?
Speaker A:They've all adopted their own version of it.
Speaker A:So we got to get rid of enforcement of that because, well, first they could go after my son in law.
Speaker A:Oh, on his grift.
Speaker B:Kushner Law.
Speaker A:Yes, the Kushner cushion shot the third rail.
Speaker A:But better yet, I'm back in.
Speaker A:I never expected to be back in as president I'm back in.
Speaker A:And this time around, I ain't gonna leave it to my son in law, baby.
Speaker A:They're gonna come and give me the money.
Speaker A:And everybody knows the game plan, except the Democratic leadership pretends it doesn't.
Speaker A:And the mainstream media pretends they don't understand this.
Speaker B:I'm so glad you said pretend, by the way, because it's kayfabe.
Speaker B:It is 100% WWE wrestling.
Speaker B:Yes, keep going.
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker A:Yes, yes, absolutely.
Speaker A:And indeed, I've always talked in the past about how control frauds, the art of it is this camouflage, this seeming respectability, but that's when there's a risk of prosecution, when you are the ultimate version of La Cosa Nostra.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Our thing now is the United States and leveraging its power to make money all over the world and to hurt people that we hate.
Speaker A:And boy, you know, as he says, he hates lots of folks.
Speaker B:Yes, he does.
Speaker A:And he wishes them ill. And he wants to use the government as a weapon to hurt people because they're honest, because they're moral.
Speaker B:Jesus.
Speaker A:Because they stand up to him.
Speaker A:And of course, it also serves the purpose of intimidating folks.
Speaker A:And this is the whole thing about surrendering in advance that people rightly say you need to resist as you descend into a totalitarian government.
Speaker A:So right away, these sovereign wealth funds started doing deals with him and his sons.
Speaker B:Jesus.
Speaker B:God.
Speaker A:And these are huge deals.
Speaker A:So what I've realized is there's like a final stage of elite control fraud, which is where you don't hide it.
Speaker A:And the reason you don't hide it is you want everyone to know that you're corrupt.
Speaker A:And you want it for two reasons.
Speaker A:One, it's free advertising, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:There ain't nobody so stupid that they haven't figured out that they can solve any problem in the United States if they give enough money to the Trump family.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker B:Interesting.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:The ultimate taco trade.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:Second, you create a price war that ratchets up.
Speaker A:Well, you know, the Kuwaitis gave me 2 billion and a hotel site.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:And now he's even going further and extorting other nations.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And says there's got to be something in this off book.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So, you know, you got to create a fund.
Speaker A:You go, what are you talking about?
Speaker A:We're doing trade deals.
Speaker A:We're talking about tariff reduction.
Speaker A:No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker A:I want a fund.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:So he wants sovereign wealth created by other nations.
Speaker A:He wants to use the threat of the US Military to extort the Japans and Koreas.
Speaker A:And Canadas of the world and the EU to give him billions of dollars.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:And he's doing it again in plain sight.
Speaker A:He doesn't hide it, he chortles.
Speaker A:These are his triumphs that he does.
Speaker A:Press conferences.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:He even lies when they don't do it.
Speaker A:He says they didn't because again, it ratchets up the price.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:And he knows he has complete impunity because in the second worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court said, knowing.
Speaker A:Knowing he was a crook, knowing he was a thug.
Speaker A:The Supreme Court said, yeah, you know what you need?
Speaker A:Immunity.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Executive immunity forever.
Speaker A:It isn't just that they can't try you while you're president.
Speaker A:After you leave the presidency, you have immunity, which can include killing people who are your opponents.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So remember the Supreme Court argument where they said, you know, this could mean assassinating your political opponent.
Speaker A:They should have said, you.
Speaker A:You know, this could mean assassinating you Supreme Court Justice.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:If you don't vote the right way.
Speaker A:Because I guarantee you they knew it meant it.
Speaker B:Now, didn't this happen during the Biden administration, though?
Speaker B:Wasn't this part of that?
Speaker B:And then Biden didn't take advantage of the immunity to be able to go do things.
Speaker B:And I'm just trying to place history of this.
Speaker A:Yeah, the decision comes down during the Biden administration because that's the only time you're going to have a case allowed to proceed against Trump.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:He certainly wasn't going to allow cases to proceed.
Speaker A:Okay, so now we have this new world in which we want to scream the corruption and strut like we make our bribes, trophies.
Speaker A:Now you have to come and like a thousand years ago, bring gold, but really tacky gold, know, whorehouse style gold, which is now the Oval Office.
Speaker A:It's a bordello again, to advertise.
Speaker A:You see, this is what the Canadians refused to give me, so I went elsewhere.
Speaker B:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:Here's what.
Speaker A:Look what Italy did.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Look at this one I got from the king.
Speaker A:England.
Speaker A:It's just like trophies of prostitute in chief of the United States of America.
Speaker B:A little like Dexter, huh?
Speaker B:You know, the kill trophies you got, the blood splatter.
Speaker B:And yet.
Speaker B:Anyway, I. I love Dexter.
Speaker B:It just reminded me of the most recent season of resurrection, where all the different serial killers and all their different trophies were on display.
Speaker B:And this just fits right in there, doesn't it?
Speaker B:I mean, just deep different, but the same.
Speaker B:It really is.
Speaker B:That's disgusting and gross and.
Speaker A:Well, but again, it's free advertising.
Speaker A:And it's raising the stakes.
Speaker A:You got to come up with more gold than the last guy.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:You get a favorable mention and favorable treatment for a day or two type of thing.
Speaker A:Okay, so in this world, what would we want to do in addition to getting rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?
Speaker A:Because we want them to come and bribe us.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:You got that one.
Speaker A:That was easy.
Speaker A:We want to gut law enforcement that actually potentially deals with elite white collar crime.
Speaker A:And again, what people need to know is that there are roughly a million Americans employed in the law enforcement nationwide.
Speaker A:Ballparkish right.
Speaker A: those, what used to be about: Speaker A:That's for the entire nation.
Speaker A:We have over a thousand industries in the United States, so we had fewer than one per industry by the pretty much the start of this term.
Speaker A:What's the first thing?
Speaker B:It's good underfund under resource, you name it.
Speaker B:Right, Right.
Speaker A:But now we get rid of all of those folks as well.
Speaker B:Jesus.
Speaker A:Among the first thing he does is bring in this incredible dag, that's a deputy assistant General.
Speaker A:And Kuhn and I, June Carbone, my spouse, were both Justice Department attorneys as part of our career in the Federal programs branch of the Civil Division that defends the constitutionality of federal programs and such.
Speaker A:So the DAG is actually the most powerful person in the Justice Department.
Speaker A:The Attorney General is a more of a figurehead that gives speeches.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:But the DAG is actually does the stuff.
Speaker A:And the dag, of course, is a really distinguished thing until Trump, where it's actually.
Speaker A:It's his personal defense lawyer, Jiminy Christmas, in charge of keeping him out of prison, which it says function.
Speaker A:Now.
Speaker A:So this is the DAG that went over and did that incredible quote unquote interview playing Maxwell, where as to give credit, this was actually pointed out on msnbc.
Speaker A:The transcript isn't a real transcript because it doesn't include laughter and there's a tape recording.
Speaker A:And this moron was repeatedly laughing with her.
Speaker B:Jesus.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:A pedophile ring where she was actually like the person that did much of the dirty work.
Speaker A:And he was just having the jolliest time.
Speaker A:But he was smart enough to realize it wouldn't look good to have bracket laughter close bracket a hundred times.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:So that's our dag.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:Who again is just here.
Speaker A:So he's already dramatically reduced.
Speaker A:The guidance is you really shouldn't be going after elite white collar criminals.
Speaker A:The government has been oppressive.
Speaker A:We've had way too Much prosecution of elite white collar criminals.
Speaker A:And you go, what?
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:We virtually ceased.
Speaker A:We did.
Speaker A:We completely ceased prosecuting them in the great financial crisis, the greatest epidemic of elite by color crime, pre Trump presidency, to be more precise.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:And he says that's not enough.
Speaker A:Somebody occasionally still investigated, God forbid.
Speaker A:So they also, if you noticed, have gutted the FBI.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:And in particular, to get rid of anyone who isn't a complete yes man.
Speaker A:Let me load a foot down, by the way.
Speaker A:And Trump is always raving about the FBI and their terrible leftists and such.
Speaker A:They're all overwhelmingly right wing.
Speaker A:I dealt with the FBI all the time.
Speaker A:They're ex military, they're Latter Day Saints, they're deeply conservative Republicans.
Speaker A:That didn't mean they were bad people or bad investigators.
Speaker A:But the idea that this is a cabal of leftists.
Speaker B:Kind of hilarious.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Okay, so he's already didn't have that much to worry about it, but he's made sure by his appointments, by gutting the Department of Justice, gutting the FBI, and in particular getting rid of anyone unwilling to kiss the ring he has produced.
Speaker A:He has destroyed our ability that was built up over 40 years to prosecute elite crimes, where as bad as we were in many environments, we were still by far the best in the world.
Speaker A:Even under Trump, we were the best in the world.
Speaker A:That's how bad the rest of the world is in all those regards.
Speaker A:Okay, so we're going to gut that kind of enforcement.
Speaker A:What else are we going to do?
Speaker A:Oh, we're going to say when you do in the rare cases, look, you shouldn't really prosecute folks.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You should sign an agreement that says you won't do bad things.
Speaker B:Sternly worded agreement, huh?
Speaker A:No, no.
Speaker A:They wanted to get rid of the sternly worded ones because.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:So it's a gentleman's agreement now.
Speaker A:You're right.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:They used to have a monitor requirement.
Speaker A:Oh, my.
Speaker A:That you couldn't just say, yes, I will be pure and wonderful and I will turn over a new leaf.
Speaker A:Someone actually was supposed to kick the tires and was in charge of that and occasionally did.
Speaker A:That's gone.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:All you have to do is say, oh, yes.
Speaker A:And we go, oh.
Speaker A:In the new Trump administration.
Speaker A:Well, thank you.
Speaker A:We're so sorry we bothered you by pointing out that you were committing these crimes.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And they've also rejiggered the whole.
Speaker A:When they do any corruption stuff, it's only if it really hurts your business.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:But of course, the bribes usually help your business, so they're not going to prosecute that kind of stuff.
Speaker A:Okay, what else?
Speaker A:Both parties in the run up to this latest presidential election went enormously in terms of crypto money.
Speaker A:Now, this got masked by musk.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:These famous contributions.
Speaker A:But for the great bulk of the cycle, and all the early money, which is critical in politics, more than half of it, it looks like, to both parties, came from crypto.
Speaker A:Just crypto.
Speaker A:They give far more than the Koch brothers.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:And the Coke brothers are rightfully infamous.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:So this is, again, your metaphor.
Speaker A:It's on steroids.
Speaker A:This is like coke amped.
Speaker A:Gee, that works.
Speaker A:That'd be the other alternative spelling of coke.
Speaker B:Yeah, right.
Speaker B:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:And when Pamela came in, she announced a reappraisal, a rejiggering, and they began heavily taking crypto money as well.
Speaker A:But the crypto folks specifically targeted, Gee, I don't know.
Speaker A:Ohio Senate race and one where Tester was running Montana, I think, at Sherrod, Brown and Tester.
Speaker A:So they found these two vulnerable Democrats in red states and help ensure their demise with their very large contributions.
Speaker A:So it was super targeted.
Speaker A:And I know this will shock you, because I know, like me, when you think of honor and strength and the willingness to speak truth to power, you think of the Democratic congressional leadership.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So Schumer said publicly.
Speaker A:Oh, yes.
Speaker A:We are now all in support of crypto.
Speaker A:Oh, really?
Speaker B:From Zionism to crypto, you can count on the Democrats to be on the right side of things.
Speaker B:You got it?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:The phrase they used to use in reverse, you know, never miss an opportunity.
Speaker A:To miss an opportunity.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:What's that saying?
Speaker B:It's hard to get somebody to do something that their paycheck depends upon not doing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, these guys right here.
Speaker B:Ark, I'll just be honest with you, man.
Speaker B:I am.
Speaker B:I don't call myself a cynic because I don't believe that's the case.
Speaker B:I believe that we are so far beyond the pale of a legitimate people.
Speaker B:Of the people.
Speaker B:We the people, quote, unquote, democracy.
Speaker B:That the oligarchy is outrageously large and in charge and in your face.
Speaker B:And both sides are saying, yeah, you know, we're not even going to hide it anymore.
Speaker B:We're not even going to pretend.
Speaker B:And so when I hear this stuff, I always try to assess it through who's winning.
Speaker B:And it ain't we the people.
Speaker B:It ain't the working class.
Speaker B:It ain't people that depend on a paycheck.
Speaker B:It is definitely the other side of the coin.
Speaker B:People that live a life that I will never Even dream of understanding.
Speaker B:And it is coming at a great price for the average family, the average person, et cetera.
Speaker B:We are watching ICE raid apartment buildings with impunity.
Speaker B:People thrown to the ground, hurt jackbooted thugs taking down people.
Speaker B:People that are selling out their brothers and sisters for a buck.
Speaker A:But that's okay because they self identify as Christians.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, and this is the most.
Speaker A:Christian thing I can imagine.
Speaker B:Let me speak to that momentary because this is very near and dear to my heart.
Speaker B:One of the important things.
Speaker B:I'm a recovering drunk.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Next year will be 20 years without a drink.
Speaker B:So I'm really one day at a time in it and all that good stuff.
Speaker B:But I became a Christian when I started recovering.
Speaker B:Now I didn't become Republican Jesus worshiper.
Speaker B:I was a grace and mercy kind of guy.
Speaker B:I was somebody who didn't feel that I deserved the second chance.
Speaker B:I was trash, street trash, homeless, at times a derelict.
Speaker B:So for me that means something very different.
Speaker B:And to see it bastardized into this immigrant hating kind of just hate mongering.
Speaker B:Let me break out my assault weapon to kill people because they stepped on my.
Speaker B:There's none of that whole tie a millstone around your neck if you mislead one of my little ones.
Speaker B:There's no he without sin cast the first stone.
Speaker B:There's just a whole bunch of weird, bizarre rhetoric masking itself as Jesus that isn't anything to do with the red letters.
Speaker B:And if you're not a Christian, forgive me for speaking this way, but I am not going to give up my faith just so that the right wing can take it.
Speaker B:I'm just saying that out for anybody that's listening.
Speaker B:I that's not the way it is.
Speaker B:That's the way they are, but that's not the way it is.
Speaker B:And it's really brutally gross to see the perversion of that faith twisted this way for us.
Speaker A:And when I say us, I mean June and I.
Speaker A:One of the former Southern Baptist leaders, very conservative guy who's been cast aside because he wasn't willing to pervert Christianity into this hellscape.
Speaker A:But what he's the vignettes that are so telling to us is that he says that pastor after pastor he's spoken to have had members of their congregation come to them in the last two years and say, why are you in the sermon doing all that woke shit.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:I'm quoting Jesus.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:And I said, we don't like that part.
Speaker B:I want to throw this at you, my children.
Speaker B:We used to go to a church I used to live in the Beltway, man.
Speaker B:I was part of the Beltway blitz, right?
Speaker B:And we used to go to a place called McLean Bible Church.
Speaker B:And McLean is a huge mega church.
Speaker B:Joe Gibbs would go there.
Speaker B:I actually sat behind Kenneth Starr at church, if you can imagine.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Literally right during the time where he, you know, had gone after Bill Clinton, I was sitting there in church behind him.
Speaker B:Now you know my story.
Speaker B:I came from a Republican background, so this is not shocking.
Speaker B:But what is shocking is many, many years later, Lon Solomon, who was the pastor there, you know, he retired and the new guy that took over, quote, unquote, was doing the woke shit.
Speaker B:And so there was this huge legal battle and fight about Lon Solomon, who was very much a Zionist and much a MAGA kind of guy.
Speaker B:And the entire rupture in that church and that church had 30,000 plus members.
Speaker B:I really found it to be great.
Speaker B:For the longest time, it was very, very not political.
Speaker B:You didn't feel the politics.
Speaker B:You didn't see the politics.
Speaker B:It was very, very beginner friendly.
Speaker B:You know, for a guy in recovery, it was great, Right?
Speaker B:But it has totally.
Speaker B:I mean, like, somebody can look it up.
Speaker B:But this whole rupture at McLean Bible Church was wild.
Speaker B:It was in the news.
Speaker A:Huge deal.
Speaker B:Anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there because this whole woke thing is exactly what's killing it.
Speaker A:Two things about Ken Starr.
Speaker A:Two stories.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:One, his dad was a minister and he infamously used a sermon to denounce a parishioner, a woman, a married woman, who in the backyard, which was not visible from the street, was so brazen that she was cutting the grass in shorts.
Speaker A:Yes, I knew you would understand.
Speaker B:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker A:And second, when Ken Starr eventually ended up top guy at a major Texas university and people came and said, we're violating the consent decree with the NCAA and continuing to pay off the people to lie and such.
Speaker A:And that blew up again.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:You are listening to Macro N Cheese, a podcast by Real Progressives.
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Speaker A:Please consider becoming a monthly donor on Patreon Substack or our website, realprogressives.org now back to the podcast.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:With those things in mind, back to the tale of how they're really going to optimize this time and how it's going to have multiple macro implications.
Speaker A:So, one, what I've always struggled with to get people to understand is it ain't just when the bubble collapses that there's an economic problem.
Speaker A:There's an economic problem the entire time a bubble is expanding because assets, particularly investments, are being systematically misallocated from any societal standpoint.
Speaker A:Afterwards, you get the systemic shock, and that causes all kinds of incredible stuff as well.
Speaker A:But remember that title, perhaps, the Unbearable Likeness.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:That's what a bubble is.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:It's just wonderful.
Speaker A:Everything works.
Speaker A:You do stupid things, they work.
Speaker A:You do more stupid things, it works brilliantly.
Speaker A:You think you're a genius, and so you do more and more and more stupid things more and more rapidly.
Speaker A:On top of that, when bubbles crash, for reasons that I'll defer to other talks, but systemic risk is a really big deal in terms of how terrible it is.
Speaker A:And it isn't just terrible in a macro sense.
Speaker A:It redistributes income horrifically, and it reduces growth enormously.
Speaker A:The best estimate of the great financial crisis, of the growth reduction because of that episode of epidemic fraud, the present value is $41.7 trillion.
Speaker A:That's actually the present value about seven years ago.
Speaker A:So it would be bigger now.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Oh, my.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:So staggering.
Speaker A:These things are staggeringly big.
Speaker A:You don't leave stuff.
Speaker A:So this is where I diverge maybe a little from at least how some of the people are interpreting some of the things Randy Ray says.
Speaker A:I get it, that if Trump does something as a policy that isn't necessarily stupid under macro, if it's under mmt, if it's done intelligently, we should still criticize it because it's not being done intelligently and it will cause enormous harm.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Whether or not Trump is right about the interest rate in any given time, he will produce evil.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:And he is doing it to produce evil.
Speaker A:And so it may be perfectly appropriate in this context to say, no, he's about to do terrible things with that fiscal capacity that is going to destroy democracy.
Speaker A:And, you know, he now uses the government openly as a weapon.
Speaker A:Indeed, as of five, four days ago or whatever, three days, I guess it is, he is now openly saying that he is delighted with the government shutdown so that he can use the government as a weapon and that he will selectively go against any state that had the temerity, a majority of its voters to vote against him.
Speaker A:Wow, they should be punished.
Speaker A:I mean, think of how outrageous that is, and think of whatever percentage it is of Americans that are going, yeah, that's a great idea.
Speaker A:Hot damn.
Speaker A:Screw those folks.
Speaker A:Especially right after, you know, the Kirk stuff and such about how one should never glory in the evil done to others.
Speaker A:Okay, so that's what's coming.
Speaker A:They're going to produce all kinds of bubbles.
Speaker A:So, very briefly, the cryptocurrencies have no basis for value.
Speaker A:That doesn't mean that they won't trade at times for value or that they won't have substantial price appreciation.
Speaker A:But it does mean that they are some variant of pump, certainly.
Speaker A:And most of them end up in dumps.
Speaker A:That's what rug pulls are and such.
Speaker A:You know, that's Argentina.
Speaker A:Which, by the way, we are bailing.
Speaker B:I know.
Speaker B:Isn't that insane?
Speaker A:Taking somebody because he likes chiefs of state who are corrupt Milie and who defraud people through crypto because that's his plan for America.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:Jesus, Flip.
Speaker A:So how do you get the price of crypto to surge?
Speaker A:And how do you work the timing?
Speaker A:This is simplicity itself under having the presidency and using it as he is in this term to time these events.
Speaker A:You want two things to make the price surge.
Speaker A:One, you want to dramatically reduce sales.
Speaker A:You don't want people to sell when crypto is falling because that will exacerbate the fall.
Speaker A:Do you know hodl?
Speaker A:Is that familiar?
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:It's screwed up for Hold Hold, Hold Hold.
Speaker A:Literally just a mistyping of somebody.
Speaker A:But it's become their slogan.
Speaker A:They do hats and shirts and such, and they've even created a phrase, hold on for dear life.
Speaker A:But that's after the fact.
Speaker A:As you say, it was just a typing error.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:And this is where economists are so blind.
Speaker A:They never study anthropology or psychology.
Speaker B:Can I just jump in there for a minute?
Speaker B:I want to make clear what you just said is so important.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:We have led for almost a decade now and being activist level, MMT oriented organization, and we have strived to be targeted towards that.
Speaker B:But many of the MMT people that are learning it today didn't learn the intersectional interdisciplinary approach that the UMKC crew learned and taught.
Speaker B:And the things that I cut my teeth on were far more than just ledgers.
Speaker B:Okay?
Speaker B:It was a lot more than just freaking ledgers.
Speaker B:And so when we talk about these things, there's a new crop of quote unquote, MMT ers out there.
Speaker B:They're like, I don't want to hear nothing about no class and I don't want to hear nothing about them.
Speaker B:That crypto stuff, I don't see how it's relevant to mmt.
Speaker B:And I'm like, what are you doing?
Speaker B:Did you think that I didn't learn?
Speaker B:I talked to Warren Mosler and I talked to everyone.
Speaker B:Randall Ray, Bill Mitchell.
Speaker B:I had Stephanie, on.
Speaker B:I've talked to all the second tiers with Fotl, Ava, Pavlina, all of them.
Speaker B:I mean, like, inside and out.
Speaker A:Call them Younger Generation, Next Generation.
Speaker B:I don't mean secondaries, unlike their.
Speaker B:Like the first, the OGs.
Speaker A:I know exactly what you mean.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker B:The Next Generation.
Speaker B:They're Star Trek, the Next Generation.
Speaker A:It was a friendly amendment, Steve.
Speaker B:Yes, but the idea that somehow or another people don't realize that if you're going to tell me that MMT matters, and MMT is a lens, you use a lens to analyze, and you analyze these things through an understanding of history, through an understanding of law, because money is a creature of law.
Speaker B:And you understand it through a whole host of other things.
Speaker B:The things I learned from Ron Gray, specifically the idea of law as the core component.
Speaker B:And when you think about hyperinflation and things like that, these are not things of.
Speaker B:Oh, they're just printing money.
Speaker B:This is stuff from elite corruption that causes hyperinflation.
Speaker B:This is stuff for supply sharks.
Speaker B:You've got to know more than ledgers for MMT to matter.
Speaker B:And I'm telling you right now, there's a new crop out there that doesn't think those things matter.
Speaker B:And it is deeply disturbing.
Speaker B:And there's a rift.
Speaker B:I ain't gonna lie.
Speaker B:There's a rift.
Speaker B:Anyway, Go ahead.
Speaker B:I'm sorry, I just had to throw that in there.
Speaker A:Well, not at all, but that's exactly.
Speaker A:I'm building on your point.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Or illustrating your point.
Speaker A:And that is it does matter.
Speaker A:And you have to have a culture arise to keep something like this alive.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:But now, one of the things that was destabilizing for bitcoin prices, of course, was the federal government, and not in the ways that MMT thinks about, typically, and certainly the people you talked about as, you know, third generation MMT folks, but for the following reason, which has to do with crime.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:One of the things Trump did immediately, again, or almost immediately upon resuming his presidency, was to say that we were no longer going to sell the crypto that we seized from Criminal Operations.
Speaker A:Do you know this?
Speaker B:I did not know this.
Speaker A:And guess who the biggest governmental holder of crypto is as a result?
Speaker B:Jared Kushner.
Speaker A:No, government holder.
Speaker A:Direct government.
Speaker A:You.
Speaker A:The US Government is now, as a result, we have created a reserve like Fort Knox.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:Where we're just going to sit on the bitcoins.
Speaker A:And all the other crypto that we see is from Criminal Operations.
Speaker A:Normally we sold it.
Speaker A:And because these were huge fraud and corruption Schemes.
Speaker A:Our sales were big enough to potentially prompt a significant drop in bitcoin prices, for example, repeatedly.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:Their dream is to end that.
Speaker A:And Trump gave it to him within days.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:He also gave a pardon right at the beginning of his term to their great hero.
Speaker A:And you should be done by your heroes.
Speaker A:Do you know their great hero that they lobbied intensely to get this pardon is.
Speaker A:Who's that Silk Road guy?
Speaker B:Oh, the young guy that went to the Virgin Islands or whatever.
Speaker B:Oh, I know you're talking about Sam or something like that.
Speaker A:No, not Sam.
Speaker A:Bankman.
Speaker A:Fried.
Speaker A:No, Silk Road.
Speaker A:Silk Road was a predecessor.
Speaker A:Silk Road was the dark web.
Speaker A:Silk Road was the one that was doing the heroin and fentanyl sales.
Speaker B:Oh, my.
Speaker A:It was doing the child porn.
Speaker A:It was doing Hitman.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:The guy they pardoned tried to hire somebody using his service to kill a rival.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:And he was sentenced to an enormous term because it was, you know, he ended up killing lots of folks.
Speaker A:And just the worst in terms of pedophiles and such.
Speaker A:Just an utterly disgusting person.
Speaker A:And you know what Trump did after he.
Speaker A:Immediately upon freeing him, Trump denounced the, and I quote, scum who prosecuted and convicted him.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Not Trump, but this guy.
Speaker B:Isn't it time to release the Epstein files?
Speaker B:By the way?
Speaker A:Anyone who took him on was, quote, unquote, scum.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So again, these folks are the worst of the worst.
Speaker A:You know, in the fancy Greek word is cachistocracy, ruled by the worst.
Speaker A:And we saw with musk.
Speaker A:They're not even technically competent, all this cultivated genius crap.
Speaker A:They're not only non geniuses, they're, you know, moral degenerates and they're nasty people, but they just lie.
Speaker A:So let me give that a moment.
Speaker A:You run a business, You've run businesses, right?
Speaker B:Kinda, yes, you could say that.
Speaker A:You run one now, right?
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Very small, right?
Speaker A:Lots of businesses are small.
Speaker B:Fair enough.
Speaker A:As you get bigger in particular, though, you have to hire people that you haven't known for many years.
Speaker A:Maybe worked as a volunteer before you could actually pay them.
Speaker A:Maybe you're still working as a volunteers, you can't pay them.
Speaker A:In any event, it's hard to screen out people that are going to do bad things, because people are going to do bad things, know that they need to hide it.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:But it is super, super simple to screen effectively for pond scum.
Speaker A:And one of the easiest is you can't work at any meaningful position in my administration unless you agree that Jan6 was a scandal and an outrage where my rightful reelection was stolen and, you know, whatever, the FBI or something created this fake riot.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Some absolutely blatant lie.
Speaker A:Well, no honest person is going to sign on to that unless they're, you know, like a spy, a foreign intelligence person.
Speaker A:Which is one of the advantages of being a foreign intelligence person is I.
Speaker A:So Trump screens through these actions and then he does these deliberately outrageous actions super publicly so that anyone who literally rolls their eyes, there's a picture of them rolling their eyes, covering their face in embarrassment.
Speaker A:Those people will be targeted and removed.
Speaker B:Like the generals.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:That's why probably they had the meeting.
Speaker A:There's doubtless a videotape of the crowd.
Speaker A:We've all seen a number of tape from the crowd where you can see people obviously being distressed.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:They're going to be gone and they're going to be hurt on the way out as a lesson for the others to make sure that we get rid not just of competent people, but courageous people.
Speaker A:The whole thing, you know, about the warrior mentality.
Speaker A:They hate warriors.
Speaker A:They're not warriors.
Speaker A:There is.
Speaker A:You said they're the ICE guy.
Speaker A:They're the scum of the police department on their third job.
Speaker A:Who are they literally advertising for, by the way?
Speaker A:ICE has a programmed thing that it's showing in blue states of you hate your governor.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Basically come and work for us.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:They want to select for evil and then they want to send you out.
Speaker A:And if you body slam a 65 year old woman into the pavement, that is a plus, a big plus.
Speaker A:You are our kind of guy.
Speaker A:So this selection process combined with this grievance culture is going to make things massively worse over the course of the next three plus years.
Speaker A:Okay, so back to the close the loop on the financials part of the crypto.
Speaker A:But what we could really, really do is two more things to absolutely supercharge this.
Speaker A:Like the big thing on the front of the hood that brings in an incredible amount of oxygen into our V8.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So first we're going to create our own thing, the Cosa Nostra.
Speaker A:It's going to be a stablecoin, which is an oxymoron created by regular morons.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:The last one, which was famous, lost its peg within two months and thereupon there were four months of ever increasing fraud to hide the fact and then the collapse.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:So real good idea.
Speaker A:Why do we want this?
Speaker A:What benefit Back to economics, what efficiency gain is there?
Speaker A:They're all more inefficient and they're going to put them in uninsured, virtually unregulated entities.
Speaker A:And there's going to be a Gresham's dynamic, a race to the bottom, a nail, and they're not going to actually be stable because, you know, the whole alleged safety is that they'll be collateralized with Treasuries.
Speaker A:But those Treasuries can be three plus months immaturity.
Speaker A:What happens to the market value of those when inflation rises or interest rate rises?
Speaker B:Just real quick, does this look like Silicon Valley Bank?
Speaker A:No, it looks like the moron child of Silicon Valley Bank.
Speaker A:This is stupider than stupid, which is why they named it the Genius act, because it is in all caps, mind you.
Speaker A:Really?
Speaker A:Newsom has to do trolling on this?
Speaker A:This is just made for a creative person to do the trolling.
Speaker A:But here's the final one.
Speaker A:On top of all this insanity, that's not insane.
Speaker A:Not from Trump's perspective.
Speaker B:Right on.
Speaker A:It's what's going to make him finally a true multi, multi billionaire.
Speaker A:We're going to add a sovereign wealth fund.
Speaker A:A sovereign wealth fund, slush fund.
Speaker A:Well, corruption fund, right?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:All over the world, with one big exception, which is Norway.
Speaker A:Very Nordic, very Lutheran type of stuff, this.
Speaker A:You say sovereign wealth and that means corruption.
Speaker A:Everybody understands that it means corruption.
Speaker A:By the way, Charles Keating used the Kuwaiti sovereign wealth fund to do his scams in the United States of America.
Speaker A:And then the Kuwaitis bought this hotel, or half the hotel interest at massively above market value so that he could massively overstate the value of all of this.
Speaker A:And then the law firm began urgently researching to tie together the loop, the Foreign Corrupt Practices act, because there was a $21.5 million fee to get this investment from the Kuwaiti Investment office.
Speaker A:That's the size of the bribes in this world.
Speaker A:Okay, so now we have a way to dramatically reduce sales of bitcoins and other crypto because the US Government is going to stop selling what would otherwise be large stuff and it's going to stop seizing the bitcoins and other things used in the course of crimes, because we don't do that kind of enforcement anymore, especially if it's used as bribes.
Speaker B:Jesus Christ.
Speaker A:Now we're going to have the sovereign wealth fund buy a ton of crypto because after all, we've already created a strategic reserve under the grounds that this is an enormous way to create wealth.
Speaker A:Well, if it is, what should our sovereign wealth fund invest in?
Speaker A:Crypto.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:And then since crypto is very thin market, what will happen to the price of crypto?
Speaker B:It's going to shoot Straight up.
Speaker A:It will shoot straight up.
Speaker A:Next point, timing.
Speaker A:Who will know it's about to do so?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, you got it.
Speaker A:Front run that puppy.
Speaker A:People will make a ton of money for every billion dollars that Trump gets, the smart guys, you know, the robber barons will get 10 to 20 billion.
Speaker A:He's a bad thief, he's a terrible negotiator, as we all know.
Speaker A:So once you've done that, you'll purchase the crypto at say, 8 billion.
Speaker A:Let's say they went in and bought 8 billion of crypto, which would be enough, by the way, to cause an enormous surge in bitcoin prices.
Speaker A:But we might be using an accounting regime in which it's still on the books for 8 billion.
Speaker A:But now the market price, quote, unquote, has risen to 200 billion.
Speaker A:So we're going to have to obviously go to mark to market accounting and whatever the budget deficit, if he finds it embarrassing politically, he can use massive purchases of bitcoins, producing this bubble of all history in bitcoins, and then Mark to market accounting to make even the most conservative Republican thrilled that he's made the budget deficit disappear.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:And then this will all end catastrophically.
Speaker A:But not on his watch, because he can keep on buying.
Speaker B:With immunity.
Speaker A:With immunity because he's got the frigging U.S. treasury.
Speaker A:And he can, of course, borrow as well, because the US can borrow like crazy.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Again, back to MMT being right.
Speaker A:Have you noticed how our credit rating, you know, we can no longer borrow in the United States.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:U.S. government can't borrow anymore.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:It's clown show.
Speaker B:I mean, why do.
Speaker B:Anyway, yeah.
Speaker A:Mmt again, started as sort of simply empirical.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:The money system doesn't work in the way that the economic fables purport.
Speaker B:That's correct.
Speaker A:So that's what's coming, ladies and gents.
Speaker B:Now, how does this impact to quote, unquote, world reserve currency?
Speaker B:Because this is what these freakazoids on the libertarian side, the crypto folks, talk about, oh, wait till the end of the reserve currency.
Speaker B:What does this do to our reserves?
Speaker B:What is the intent behind this in regards to reserve?
Speaker A:To make money for Trump has nothing to do with anything else.
Speaker A:And more precisely, it's not to make money for Trump, it's to make money for the donors.
Speaker A:The huge donors.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:They are, of course, happy to make Trump finally a true multi billionaire.
Speaker A:It's chump change from their perspective.
Speaker A:So what it means is, that's why I wanted to emphasize bubbles are bad, not just when they collapse, they're terrible when they're hyperinflating.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:They systematically distort investment.
Speaker A:And here they will also systematically reward the worst, most unethical robber barons who want to destroy democracy, who want to destroy the rule of law, and who literally could care less if hundreds of thousands of people starved to death in the United States and millions die of preventable diseases that USAID might have prevented.
Speaker A:Yeah, these people do literally qualify for OR the dark Tetrad, which is a psychology concept we also use in white collar criminology.
Speaker A:It's when you have the big four scummy things, right?
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:You're a sadist and you're a psychopath, a Machiavellian.
Speaker A:And what's that thing?
Speaker A:I can't remember.
Speaker A:But when everything is about me.
Speaker A:Oh, Trumpism.
Speaker A:I think I'm going to rename it narcissism.
Speaker B:Narcissism, right?
Speaker A:Yeah, Narcissism.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I think Trumpism works better.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:All right, Bill, on that happy note.
Speaker B:Yeah, we're in for a ride, aren't we?
Speaker A:Oh, baby, you're in for a ride.
Speaker B:It's very depressing.
Speaker A:Just.
Speaker A:I'll leave you folks with two things.
Speaker A:One, we can fight back about this.
Speaker A:Most human beings hate corruption.
Speaker A:And the United States has a unique corruption thing in the world.
Speaker A:We have more whistleblowers at high levels who have access to the critical inside information than the rest of the world combined.
Speaker A:Every state legislature with a Democratic majority in any of its legislative branches should be subpoenaing.
Speaker A:The whistleblowers work with us and the head of the America's leading whistleblower organization, that'll get you out of the NDAs and non disclosure agreements.
Speaker A:And then instead of these talking politicians, we have over a thousand whistleblowers who've come forward already.
Speaker A:And that's a figure from six weeks ago out of the government about Trump.
Speaker A:Have them in every congressional district, in public meetings, not talking into some stuffed heads, but actually explaining to people in English what's being done to them from a firsthand perspective and what happened when they tried to tell the truth.
Speaker A:We have a hell of a story to tell.
Speaker A:And by the way, the state AGs can also subpoena the testimony and defeat the NDAs.
Speaker A:And I see none of that happening.
Speaker A:And we've been urging this for now three months.
Speaker B:I have a suspicion I know why they're not doing anything with that, but.
Speaker A:Well, it's sort of a test, right?
Speaker A:Sort of a test.
Speaker B:It is a test.
Speaker B:I'm just going to tell you, like, I hope we learn the lesson.
Speaker B:When the test goes as I think it will go, right, I really believe we're experiencing the veneer of democracy falling off.
Speaker B:And we are looking at the wizard behind the curtain.
Speaker B:Now, we aren't seeing the great and powerful Oz.
Speaker B:We are seeing behind the curtain.
Speaker B:And I think a lot of people, it's kind of like the Matrix when they realize it's a post nuclear wasteland.
Speaker B:You're like, man, put me back in the Matrix, man.
Speaker B:I want to believe I can just put an I voted sticker on my forehead and everything will be okay.
Speaker B:And I am.
Speaker B:I'm way past that, Bill.
Speaker B:I'm way past that.
Speaker B:I don't see the same kind of hope in a system that does not produce any kind of outcomes for people, for regular people.
Speaker A:I'll do as I send off the two mottos that we followed in the savings and loan debacle when it was objectively impossible to succeed.
Speaker A:First is never chase mice while lions roam the campsite.
Speaker A:And the second is it is not necessary to hope in order to persevere.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:I'm 100% with you on that, brother.
Speaker B:Bill, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker B:Where can we find more?
Speaker B:I mean, you're now kind of retired, retired from umkc.
Speaker A:Although I'm an excellent person, highly supportive of the UMKC faculty and the students and their work, of course.
Speaker A:And I do most of my stuff with folks that you've worked with as well in the past.
Speaker B:Very good.
Speaker A:So we're going to keep on keeping on.
Speaker B:All right, brother, well, listen, thank you so much, Bill.
Speaker B:Folks, my name is Steve Grumbine.
Speaker B:I am the host of Macro, and she's also the founder of the nonprofit Real Progressives.
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Speaker B:We also have, as I started the show, on Tuesday nights, we do something called Macro and Chill.
Speaker B:A Macro and Chill is an opportunity for all of us to get together to discuss the episodes in a different format where we as people can ask questions and we can voice our opinions and we can discuss where things are heading.
Speaker B:And it's all about giving us a little bit of power, a little bit of voice, a little bit of an opportunity to network with one another and learn something maybe we didn't know before.
Speaker B:And if nothing else, I believe the podcasts produce information that many people are not covering anywhere else.
Speaker B:So if you find value in it, please consider supporting us either in showing up and being part of things.
Speaker B:Or you can donate or you can volunteer as well.
Speaker B:Bill Black, thank you so much, sir.
Speaker B:I appreciate you coming back on.
Speaker B:It's been too long.
Speaker B:I hope I can have you back on again soon.
Speaker A:Look forward to it.
Speaker A:Thank you, Steve.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:All right, folks, well, with that, on behalf of Bill Black, macro and cheese, Real progressives and of course myself, we are outta here.
Speaker A: with the working class since: Speaker B:To become a donor, please go to.
Speaker A:Patreon.Com realprogressives realprogressives.substack.com or realprogressives.org.
Speaker B:That.
