To discuss this and more im joined by my guest Richard Wolffe in new york he is a Professor Emeritus of economics at the university of massachusetts amherst as well as the author of the recent books understanding socialism and understanding marxism and in chicago or which he has a chief marketing strategist bubba trading all right gentleman rules in effect that means you can jump in time while i was appreciate todd let me go to you as you just heard in my introduction you know that we have an ongoing deep recession i think as of this morning the i. M. F. Came out with their global projections and a contraction of about 5 percent globally the u. S. Doesnt do much better the industrialized world is more or less in the same position but at the same time as i said you know we how the wealthiest among us. Keeping in enormous revenues and profits here and the unemployment depending on who you want to look at it from 13 maybe 17 percent and thats not going to go away any time soon so whats really happening with the the economy or its a recession deep recession for many and its a goldilocks time for some go ahead. I think when you look at the overall picture and i mean this is if you go back to the origination of the Federal Reserve i think this is kind of their plan all along this is part of the Worlds Largest legalized ponzi scheme they can do has allowed the rich to get richer as times get tougher you know for years theyve had access to this cash and capital to borrow its only recently that the average guy can actually brought some money to get in so they threw a fry and bad conditions and actually ive always built well under the toughest conditions because they have the access to capital and others dont they have the ways they get the money others dont so their businesses are allowed to thrive well everybody else is out of business you come by where i am in chicago and almost every Small Business is going to be out of business i had time to selling is over so youve not just wiped out an entire class of people because you allowed the d wealthy to go out and thrive through these tough times getting access that they had all doing all these other things that normal people dont get to do so the class divide will continue and its mostly because we dont really allow the true free markets work anymore we allow the the Upper Echelon they have a better chance and better access Going Forward and i think thats one of the big problems that i see here well so many go to richard so many of the wealthy you know look at socialism as something of a point but i mean this is exactly what they how they how they have socialism for the very very rich Concierge Service and you know the states not supposed to pick winners because thats against the markets but thats exactly what theyre doing theyre picking winners all of the time richard go ahead. Yeah i think i agree that we are in a. Zan state of capitalisms desperate effort to survive where perhaps i disagree a little bit is in looking at the government or the Federal Reserve or the treasury as somehow the place to start understanding whats going wrong i dont see it that way i see capitalism as a system that gets itself periodically into trouble lets remember the National Bureau of Economic Research and many other institutions have traced through the rise and fall of capitalisms instability its Business Cycles if you like every 47 years we have a downturn thats the average and typically if it takes longer than 4 to 7 years which it did since the last crash in 2009 you pay for the longer upswing by either a longer or a sharper downswing we are now in a longer deeper downswing we would have been in any case the pandemic only makes it worse blaming the pandemic is a desperate effort to allay chasing the instability that dream that capitalism has always brought with it adding said that the Federal Reserve like this u. S. Central bank that preceded it was an attempt to manage the very same contradictions of capitalism its Business Cycles its inequality and so nobody should be surprised that an institution brought in to offset the inequality and instability of capitalism hasnt done a really very good job of it because it has been captured like so many other government activity used by those supposedly a subject to regulation its called regulatory capture for a reason so yes i agree the Federal Reserve is making the problem worse. And the recent bombing of corporate ons in the secondary market is an extraordinary crutch for private capitalism provided by the government that should make any traditional conservative about Free Enterprise you know really roll over and is or earnest sleep if you had to do so for me this is capitalism running out of ways to keep itself going. You had time thats the point of the program something i got my Biggest Issue here is that they dont allow the free markets to work the Federal Reserve again what are they doing in the markets you know the whole chains in theory in my opinion is it stinks but i mean doesnt others are not necessary harbors and better read think theres a better blend and i dont think you can always the fan against a recession i think you let them happen and they have they reverse up much faster as they are creating these a longer more ridiculous cycles that now put us and really all theyve really done is inflate capital to nothing so my dollars are worth so much less i mean you go back you know if i go back in 1905 my money i made probably 110th of what i make now but i love the heck of a lot better life i want to earn then that i earned today they keep telling me no inflation no thats yet they keep the flame my dollars basically are his secondary that i carry in my pocket of cash and now what theyve done is they said ok weve grown through enough now lets make everybody go on the stock market because were not give you any other alternative that the investor money so its got to go in the stock market because you get the posit money theres nowhere to go some banks want to charge you but your money and theyre theres no other investment yet they dont because were not going to be looking at a very small segment of society meaning in the 19 seventies and eighties middle class people did invest in the stock market in my memory in doing ok on my my parents do but you have to i dont think thats that and even richard i dont think its really the know him today i mean people. I mean look at how in after 2008 obama had a chance to save people from losing their homes but of course he didnt do it because he had he had he was in the service of best message interesting bailed out the banks but he wouldnt bail out Middle America if you have the same thing happening all over again you know you need the famous incident with the business ahmar richard for me it seems that it is a real moment i mean i mean how is it possible you have these record gains when how the country is staring into the in bits rich or well i think i think what you can see here is an analog to what we saw in the 1930 s. The last time we had a crash of this magnitude there were many many pictures in those days of farmers pouring milk into the ground while other people were complaining that they could not get milk to feed their children their babies and the country marvel at the absolutely have an Economic System that could have those 2 things happening often a few miles from one another in a country like ours i think the and the allen g. Today is we are watching 40 plus millions of People Struggle with unemployment another 40000000. 00 with the danger of unemployment coming plus the impact of their friends and relatives who are already on employed and then on the other hand a booming stock market lets remember 10 percent of americans own 85 percent of the stocks so we are looking at another one of these milk in the ground versus desperate for milk families this is an impossible situation to sustain it teaches the mass of people in that kind of stark way that capitalism brings them these plagues and im not talking about a virus the plague of inequality and the plague. Of instability of cyclical instability and you have to assure a later confront the reality which i think is coming that you must ask the question no matter how much trouble is attached to it is this the system we have to live under 10 we do better than the capitalist system without getting into the debate would a sure or a free market capitalism work better weve never had in the abstract thats has as a huge token an image as thinking we would defend socialism or communism its only if we had the pure form of money. But i mean i think that hang on im going to conduct there are obviously differences there but i can just say answered richard in that they dont have to worry about that ok because congress has already been bought ok theyre never going to do anything like you know in time one of the thing one of the taboos that has been broken i think over the last few months is that there is the claim there isnt any money ok of course is plenty of money apparently this endless amounts of money ok i mean even bailing out defense contractors with and bailing out consultants they consult congress ok but there isnt enough to help with. Payrolls ok i mean then that is this really drives me up the wall ok and i come from this from im a conservative ok but i think sometimes that emergency the government when it has the tools it should extend them if youre going to bail out the super rich then you can bail out main street and you cant tell me there isnt any money go ahead. And 1st of all and in 2008 my opinion is shared a lot of banks said going to make it go under absolutely again this is the problem that they continue to bail out and the problem when youre issuing new money because not only does a fetish and the money but the banks also wish no money when they use they have a tender one on a reserve and. We know that they never had enough in reserve the cover of time to one of their always because its free money out of that well now they cant reserve limits off theyre only making that capital available so that for the wealthy theyre not making it available so then why why because. Mr obama or what some other president will come to their aid and bail him out again why should they be bailed out when the average guy on a street is never bailed out you or i would be in jail or Bankruptcy Court under the same circumstances versus big taking extra big bonuses because of that and this is where the problem again was back to the entire system of our way of living and it goes back to the government who made all these rotten deals which is why everybody hates President Trump because hes trying to a lemon a matter that is bad deals which is part of the reason is that whats going on in china and would you sing going on with the nafta deal because those are bad deals that were made loud and a top time you know fairness in all fairness you know you know the republican held senate is going on vacation it will come back when theres an emergency when there are 40000000 emergencies going on right now i mean this is that this is just a abdication of responsibility and Everybody Knows who say ok down there were you know gated community gave up their security and theyre all just fine ok i mean its so once again it actually is a complete insult to the democratic process what do you need if you when youre in hell when you desperately need help for the sake of the country they go on vacation i can im going to jump in here or you go to a short break and after that short break well continue our discussion though you say. You know what wall street up to its usual bag of tricks now back in 2008 Global Financial crisis and remember that movie the big short and remember how it was obvious that everything was going to blow up and remember how the wall street people were conspiring and then it all blew up in a few people make billions and billions of dollars because they cooked the books grabbed all that cash and were causing reports that you know what this same thing is going to happen again in 10 or 12 years and guess what here we are 12 years later and. Secret prisons are not usually what comes to mind when thinking about europe however he even the most prosperous can be deceived weve been busy was all there were to view houses were. Prison was located and the only. Access to the story for investigators l. Z. Uncovered the darkest dealings of the secret services but i mean. You great ignore. Me for. Trying for justice on our. Welcome back to crossed out where all the things we considered im hearing about mine we were discussing what kind of recovery can you expect. When richard lets go to you ok i would like to explain one of the reasons why you should see the big 8 year of the Federal Reserve and not the government yelling out the banks. Let me preface it by explaining i have no interest in protecting or defending what the banks do but i want to point out that the problem is a bit more severe than some policy choice of the federal government about to go either way theyre under enormous pressures and we have to face that or else we will misunderstand the situation had we let add to your Federal Reserve let the big banks go under back in 2008 in those last 4 months of that year when literally that was on the table as an option they would have had the following consequence in a globalized economy which we are now and we were even more so that there is an immense Competition Among the worlds 25. 00 biggest banks not all of which are american many of them are european some are japanese now the chinese are injury and so on how did you let the american banks collapse all out the lehmann brothers failure you would have not thought that was your intent but you would have given them then warmest competitive advantage to not only youll s. Banks that are global and that were not at that time threatened with such an option in washington where the american big banks have a lot of influence you can be sure that argument was made over and over again in the not you know you said the moral hazard or thats moral hazard ok thats blackmail or absolutely no limits im sorry leverage youre going to have no matter who actually is that theyre going to grab salute lete it is blackmail youre absolutely right but that doesnt mean that it isnt correct you have to understand for me its a sign that capitalism not only just organizes the world into a minority of rich and a mass of. Sure and all the other criticisms but that it creates this kind of Competition Among a handful of monster banks that then handcuffs every society every government into having to be the handmaid or else presided over the decline of their own economy in yet another way. And i have one good reason jim and i dont ever get the stars about how do they decide to choose women brothers vs bears arent they both are in because of trouble but it does i got a flush why is that. The connections between lehman and the policy makers were different than the connections between the other banks and their holy policy a measure of would do the right thing and thought of always the manipulative thing and continued to play when we wouldnt have these problems that we see now because youve got is guys that make decisions they make regulations they do things that put certain banks better than others they put some out of business and thats a destroyer all those who are all Regional Community bankers ok but then im going to agree with both of you so let me see if i understand this all right and you know speak slowly so i can understand so we have an economy that exists to support these banks thats what this economy is about what about everybody else ok actually thats the problem we have an economy that is now so structured so pyramid dies with the with the power at the top the wealth concentrated at the top that those people understand as all rich minorities have always understood in history before and during capitalism the more you concentrate wealth in the hands of a relatively small number in a society that has universal suffrage that small number understands that the problem for them is that the majority when the vote can undo that way the effect so much capitalist economy that concentrate wealth at the top so they have to buy the political system otherwise they put their own achievements economically at risk and if that seems to dysfunctional for the mass of people i agree thats why im a critic of capitalism you know tom i mean one of the beings that i really worry so much about are we entering the a new normal of a permanent underclass is it seems to me thats where its happening in in what some of the stuff that ive read in the last few weeks is really quite fascinating was that you had. At the very very rich during this pandemics last lockdown they did consume less but the percentage less had a major impact on the people that are serving the very very rich so im just going to pull some numbers out of their their consumption goes down 3 percent the impact is like 25 percent for people that are in that its in the mode of servicing of the very very rich here and in this is just going to be perpetuated because you know the rich will be fine again but theres going to be competition for whos going to be in the Service Class now in the. South can even drive down wages so the question is is the new normal that we havent earned it and underclass of people that will never really get ahead in time. And they gave economy and this think about all of the millennia as if they just graduated from High School Graduate from university and they have this this wasteland and go ahead i dont agree i think that we will be able to come out of this as we have come out of money i think in the past i think one of the Biggest Issues that were looking at today versus other periods in history is that theres going to the Industrial Age where it was easy to train people and take