LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Economist types have the most interesting perspectives on the world.  Don’t they?  Although I don’t always agree with everything Max Keiser says on The Keiser Report, having casually followed his work and ideas over the years. At the very least, I trust that he knows his shit.  The guy is a serious financial market investor and analyst, who brings real world financial market experience to bear on his economic analyses. And he has a sense of humor, which is a plus.

Max Keiser and (spouse) Stacey Herbert present decent politics because they seem to ‘fight for the little guy, or little gal‘, instead of simply deifying Wall Street and stock markets without regard for labor. Perhaps, it’s wishful thinking, but one gets a sense of preferential treatment for the poor in the editorial slant. 

At any rate, The Keiser Report, is a useful tool for working class folks, and/or non-economist types, to better understand economics and financial markets.  And it offers cool guests, like Dr. Zeus Yiamouyiannis (yah-meh-yahniss), an economics blogger and educator, who advanced a labor theory of value at one point in the discussion about the current state of the western post-lockdown economies.  Imagine that!  The labor theory of value is still being used in public discourse on major media platforms in 2020.  Of course, Max Keiser played devil’s advocate by suggesting a purely “subjective theory of value”.  But it’s always cool to see Dr. Karl Marx continue to be relevant and useful to understanding our world in the present day.

In the opening segment of The Keiser Report, “Free Money to the People”, E1602 (6 OCT 2020), Stacey brought up the increasing relevance of MMT (modern monetary theory) as the deficit myth becomes ever more exposed to the general public.  They cited their earlier Keiser Report coverage of MMT going back to circa 2009 Steve Keen interviews.  Max and Stacey offered their perspectives on how the evolution of public understanding of MMT will affect public economic wellbeing, as ongoing debates in Congress continue over the size and scope of any further economic cash aid to American families and households in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak and police state response and economic lockdown, which disproportionately harmed working class and poor people. And, of course, the U.S. government doesn’t give preferential treatment to small businesses or small landlords, but is willing to bail out big business and large landlords, such as Blackstone, who would stand to lose from any bans on evictions or foreclosures.

STACEY HERBERT (c. 2:53): “Right. Well, that is what we have been doing here for the past eleven years at The Keiser Report, looking at the sinking of the ‘Central-Bank-Fiat’ Titanic.

“And here is a headline along these same lines, where we’re looking at the threat of a ban on eviction and foreclosures. Well, on the one hand, you’re saying, ‘Well, Blackstone is now one of the largest private landlords in America. So, ha-ha to them! But, you know, on the other hand, the Fed has their back, has Blackstone’s back. They get to dump their bad debts, like all these foreclosures, that aren’t allowed to happen, and Blackstone is the largest private landholder, they’ll be able to dump it on the Fed’s balance sheet.

“So, you know, Schwarzman at Blackstone will never have to pay for this. But the small landlords will pay for that.

“Here, we’re looking at the difference between the big and the small, why we have the rising wealth and income gap. And it looks like the Fed is starting to notice this. And their answer is what the people have been demanding—MMT, modern monetary theory—that, if you could print money for the banks, why not for us?

“And I want to add that one of our first episodes ever, the first five episodes of Keiser Report, we spoke to Steve Keen in 2009. And he said that we should have quantitative easing for the people, rather than for the banks. And this is what it looks like the Fed is gonna get ready to do.

“What’s behind the Fed’s project to send free money to people directly?

So, on September 23rd, the Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester spoke. She, basically, flagged that something called the Central Bank Digital Currency is coming.

Stacey Herbert, The Keiser Report, “Free Money to the People”, E1602

In the second half, Max Keiser and Dr. Zeus discussed notions of economic nihilism manifested as growing inequality and diminishing quality of life for a growing number of people, as an increasingly diminishing number of people capture and horde a growing amount of wealth. Evidently, economic nihilism is diagnosed when diagnoses of economic fraud and financial fraud have gone unheeded for too long, as hamstrung white collar criminologists, such as Prof. William K. Black, and financial regulators have been cut back since President Clinton’s “Reinventing Government” initiatives, which weakened financial regulations leading to the 2007/2008 Global Financial Crisis. The recent case of JP Morgan is cited by Max Keiser, providing evidence substantiating Dr. Zeus’s arguments.

MAX KEISER:  “So, in the case of JP Morgan, who we talk about on this show often—Jaime Dimon, who heads […] that bank—they recently agreed to pay a $1 billion dollar fine. They avoided criminal racketeering charges for rigging precious metals markets for over a decade.

“They were reportedly earning $250 million dollars annually in profits on their gold price rigging.  So, it looks like they returned under half the money, that they stole. 

“So, you would put that under the category of existential nihilism.”

DR. ZEUS YIAMOUYIANNIS:  “Absolutely.”

Messina

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[Transcript excerpts by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and The Keiser Report]

THE KEISER REPORT—Hi. I’m Max Keiser. This is The Keiser Report. First of all, a big thank you to RT espanol. All of our shows are dubbed into Spanish.

—snip—

STACEY HERBERT: (c. 2:53) “Right. Well, that is what we have been doing here for the past eleven years at The Keiser Report, looking at the sinking of the ‘Central-Bank-Fiat’ Titanic.

“And here is a headline along these same lines, where we’re looking at the threat of a ban on eviction and foreclosures. Well, on the one hand, you’re saying, ‘Well, Blackstone is now one of the largest private landlords in America. So, ha-ha to them! But, you know, on the other hand, the Fed has their back, has Blackstone’s back. They get to dump their bad debts, like all these foreclosures, that aren’t allowed to happen, and Blackstone is the largest private landholder, they’ll be able to dump it on the Fed’s balance sheet.

“So, you know, Schwarzman at Blackstone will never have to pay for this. But the small landlords will pay for that.

“Here, we’re looking at the difference between the big and the small, why we have the rising wealth and income gap. And it looks like the Fed is starting to notice this. And their answer is what the people have been demanding—MMT, modern monetary theory—that, if you could print money for the banks, why not for us?

“And I want to add that one of our first episodes ever, the first five episodes of Keiser Report, we spoke to Steve Keen in 2009. And he said that we should have quantitative easing for the people, rather than for the banks. And this is what it looks like the Fed is gonna get ready to do.

“What’s behind the Fed’s project to send free money to people directly?”

—snip—

MAX KEISER:  (c. 18:44)  “I believe one of the terms, that you use […] is the term nihilism.  So, you use that term.  And explain how you use that in your essay.”

DR. ZEUS YIAMOUYIANNIS:  “Nihilism simply means to me: If you followed it to its next logical extent, where would it end up?  It would end up in nothing.  Right?  […]

“So, if we’re gonna follow this program of hyperconcentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, what’s gonna happen to our freedom?  What’s gonna happen to our creativity?  What’s gonna happen to our quality of life?  All these things, we truly value and become values.

“So, if you follow where we’re going right  now, we end in nihilism, in economic nihilism, and to a certain extent existential nihilism.  You know, from a philosophic standpoint, it’s like where value simply becomes us becoming slaves to somebody else’s notion of getting another number on their balance sheet.

“That’s not the kind of future I want to have.  I don’t think it’s the future you want to have.  So, the nihilism term, I think, is a bit of a warning as well as a descriptor of where we’re heading, if we continue along this line.” (c. 20:04)

MAX KEISER:  “So, in the case of JP Morgan, who we talk about on this show often—Jaime Dimon, who heads that up, that bank—they recently agreed to pay a $1 billion dollar fine. They avoided criminal racketeering charges for rigging precious metals markets for over a decade.

“They were reportedly earning $250 million dollars annually  in profits on their gold price rigging.  So, it looks like they returned under half the money, that they stole. 

“So, you would put that under the category of existential nihilism.”

DR. ZEUS YIAMOUYIANNIS:  “Absolutely.”

—snip—

[Transcript will be expanded as time and/or resource constraints allow. Cheers. Solidarity.]

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