Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 1: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 1: the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent
Speaker 1: coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about,
Speaker 1: it just means the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 1: But enough with that, Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 1: Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 1: What do we have, Crystal, Indeed, we do a lot
Speaker 1: of big stories breaking this morning, a horrific mass shooting
Speaker 1: at a Christian school outside of Nashville. We will bring
Speaker 1: you all the details, at least as much as we
Speaker 1: know at this point. Chaos continuing in the state of Israel,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Netanyahu pausing the judicial reforms that sparked those protests
Speaker 1: at breaking on that as well, We've also gotten new
Speaker 1: hearings into what exactly the hell happened with SVB this
Speaker 1: as former President Trump weighs in with his own hot
Speaker 1: take on both the Federal Reserve and the SVB bailout.
Speaker 1: Really troubling story about front of the show, Matt Tayib,
Speaker 1: who apparently, while he was testifying before Congress had an
Speaker 1: IRS agent show up at his doorstep. We don't really
Speaker 1: know why. And Elon Musk also is basically paywalling Twitter.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you those details. Too excited to talk as
Speaker 1: well to Peter Beinart, who is going to be part
Speaker 1: of covering that story on of Israel. He's been really
Speaker 1: pretty courageous in his views and his analysis and his
Speaker 1: journalism with regard to that nation. So a lot to
Speaker 1: get to you before we get to Nashville. Crystal, do
Speaker 1: you want to address why you're at home today? Yes,
Speaker 1: So I've been a little bit under the weather, nothing
Speaker 1: too bad, but there is a horrific stomach bug that
Speaker 1: is rampaging through my household. So I did not want
Speaker 1: to risk inflicting this plague upon you, Saga, or anyone
Speaker 1: else in the studio, So out of an abundance of caution,
Speaker 1: decided to do the show remotely for today. But I'm
Speaker 1: already feeling better. I was feeling pretty rough yesterday, but
Speaker 1: I'm already feeling a lot better. I'm sure I'll be
Speaker 1: back on Thursday. Well, we thank you for saving our stomachs,
Speaker 1: and we hope that you remain better and all the kids,
Speaker 1: of course get better as well. So it's sad to
Speaker 1: not have you in the studio, but hopefully everything is
Speaker 1: going to be okay. Thursday, all right, let's get to it.
Speaker 1: Terrible news that happened late yesterday Christian School, mass school
Speaker 1: shooting that occurred there. We had an update from Nashville
Speaker 1: Police after the shooting and after the suspect was actually
Speaker 1: killed by police. Here's what the police chief had to say.
Speaker 1: Our investigations tell us that she was a former student
Speaker 1: at the school. I don't know what grade she's attended
Speaker 1: a grades, but we do from Delite she was a
Speaker 1: student there. She identified student she does identify as Trends. Yes.
Speaker 1: So it was five officers that immediately went in and address.
Speaker 1: We have video that we're going to release, but you
Speaker 1: can see in a video, you can hear un fire
Speaker 1: going on as they're in the school. They address the
Speaker 1: threat and take that threat down. We know there were
Speaker 1: two AR style weapons, one a rifle, another was an
Speaker 1: AR style pistol, and the other was a handgoing We
Speaker 1: believe two of those may have been obtained legally locally. Here.
Speaker 1: No we have a manifesto. We have some writings that
Speaker 1: we're going over that pertain to this day, the actual incident.
Speaker 1: We have a map drawn out of how this was
Speaker 1: all going to take place. There's right now a theory
Speaker 1: of that we may be able to talk about later,
Speaker 1: but it's not confirmed, and so we'll put that out
Speaker 1: as soon as we can. A couple of important things
Speaker 1: we could take away from their number one police chief
Speaker 1: saying the suspect is a female to male transgender. Appears
Speaker 1: to have left behind a manifesto. We don't yet know
Speaker 1: what the contents of that manifesto have been. There haven't
Speaker 1: been any leaks or any of anything that was posted. However,
Speaker 1: it appears to be motivated at least in some way
Speaker 1: against this school. The person was previously had attended this
Speaker 1: Christian school. We know a little bit, unfortunately, most about
Speaker 1: the victims, going to put this up there on the screen,
Speaker 1: one of them including a nine year old daughter of
Speaker 1: the pastor. So we have six victims of the Covenant
Speaker 1: School shooting, including the private Christian academy headmistress, a custodian,
Speaker 1: and the young daughter of the school's pastor, and officials
Speaker 1: identified three of the Slange students as Evelyn deek House,
Speaker 1: Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all aged nine years old,
Speaker 1: in addition to three members of the faculty from both
Speaker 1: sixty one and the school head actually Katherine Kohon. So
Speaker 1: obviously it's just a heartbreaking case that's happening here in
Speaker 1: Nashville at Chris Lane. You know, we were talking a
Speaker 1: little bit when the outbreak of the shooting. Unfortunately, it
Speaker 1: almost seems cooked up in a lab to try and
Speaker 1: you know, trigger a culture war here in the United States.
Speaker 1: And you know, I just think it's very upsetting anytime,
Speaker 1: you know, children especially are killed in a school, and
Speaker 1: more so, you know, almost what we saw in Uvaldi
Speaker 1: and elsewhere, like the immediate kind of twisting for political
Speaker 1: purposes that I'm watching a lot of people on the
Speaker 1: right also partake in right now is exactly what they
Speaker 1: decry whenever it happens up on the left. And you know, clearly,
Speaker 1: anybody who shoots up a school and murders innocent children
Speaker 1: is a drained individual. That is the case, regardless of
Speaker 1: whether they're transgender or not. I see a lot of
Speaker 1: these kind of people playing in the same political space
Speaker 1: as a lot of people do whenever it's a you know,
Speaker 1: let's say, a right wing motivated shooting like El Paso
Speaker 1: or something like that, which is obviously, of course not
Speaker 1: seized upon or defended against in similar veins saying why
Speaker 1: are you politicizing it here? Most immediately, I'm curious what
Speaker 1: your takeaways were, you know, beyond just the obvious heartbreak
Speaker 1: for the parents and for the children who were killed here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what the takeaways can be.
Speaker 1: It's horrific, and it speaks to some sort of deep
Speaker 1: sickness at the core of our society, because it's easy
Speaker 1: to forget that, you know, this doesn't happen regularly in
Speaker 1: other countries. And you know, there's a couple ways in
Speaker 1: which we're outliers. One is certainly the level amount of
Speaker 1: guns that we are a wash in and that culture.
Speaker 1: And the other is, I think a lack of access
Speaker 1: to healthcare and a lack of access in particular to
Speaker 1: mental health care. So I'm just at a loss at
Speaker 1: this point. You know, of course there have been calls
Speaker 1: for increased gun control. Those are things that I'm open to,
Speaker 1: but I also have always been sort of realistic and
Speaker 1: pragmatic about I don't know that just banning an ar
Speaker 1: fifteens or you know, banning particular weapons are really gonna
Speaker 1: completely solve the issue. A lot of folks are pointing
Speaker 1: to the fact that the congressman who represents this district,
Speaker 1: let's go and put this up on the screen to
Speaker 1: speak to the culture of being a wash in guns.
Speaker 1: This was the Christmas card that this congressman put out
Speaker 1: last year. I believe he is a freshman member, And
Speaker 1: for those of you who are just listening, it's him
Speaker 1: with his kids and his wife all, you know, holding
Speaker 1: some sort of weapon here. So you know, obviously this
Speaker 1: is someone who has been very much in favor of
Speaker 1: why spread availability and access of firearms. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's just a disgusting occurrence that, again I think, just
Speaker 1: speaks to some sort of deep sickness at the core
Speaker 1: of our society. Yeah, I mean, I just you know,
Speaker 1: I really just wish that it wasn't a grab bag
Speaker 1: of everything. So, you know, from what I look at,
Speaker 1: you know, on my Twitter, in terms of the reaction
Speaker 1: right wing lawmakers elsewhere, everything is about the discussion of
Speaker 1: the transidentity here of the shooter and listen I mean,
Speaker 1: if there were hormones involved, or lack of mental health resources,
Speaker 1: or that was something that was referenced. Look, I mean,
Speaker 1: we can't surmise the actual motive, but it doesn't take
Speaker 1: a genius to figure out that they may have had
Speaker 1: some resentment at the school that they had attended as
Speaker 1: opposed to their current identity. I think that's absolutely worth
Speaker 1: a discussion as well. However, you know, also there's just
Speaker 1: as you said, you know, almost immediately that tweet that
Speaker 1: you've showed, you know, went immediately viral talking about gun access. Well,
Speaker 1: we've had gun access in this country for a long time,
Speaker 1: like you've had ar style weapons, you know, it used
Speaker 1: to actually not be all that uncommon, especially where I'm
Speaker 1: from in Texas, for like kids to have literal guns
Speaker 1: in their trucks like in the nineteen eighties. But there
Speaker 1: were no school shootings. It's something that just like Columbine
Speaker 1: and afterwards, just ignited something I'm not exactly sure what
Speaker 1: it was. On top of that, we of course are
Speaker 1: having a discussion here about mental health resources. It was
Speaker 1: actually a major takeaway from Uvaldi that I think the
Speaker 1: most unfortunate part actually of the entire Uvaldi discourse around
Speaker 1: the mental health resource accessibility and all that was a
Speaker 1: lot of the hypocrisy that I saw in particular that
Speaker 1: really frustrates me. So for example, like Texas Governor Greg
Speaker 1: Abbott talking about the need for mental health resources when
Speaker 1: you literally denied funding for mental health Medicare and federal
Speaker 1: funds that would have funded such facilities, you know, at
Speaker 1: the same time, you know, look, taking away guns is
Speaker 1: not going to solve First of all, it's not going
Speaker 1: to happen. It's just not I'm already on the record
Speaker 1: it literally against gun control specifically for this reason because
Speaker 1: I don't think it would actually solve anything. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: on a non practical level, it's not just guns, as
Speaker 1: I just as laid out. It's multifaceted. I think at
Speaker 1: our show our best, you know, difficult moment like this,
Speaker 1: we just try to show people like, well, there's no
Speaker 1: one size fits all solution. We can be open to it.
Speaker 1: We should just approach each other with compassion that I
Speaker 1: don't think there's any other way to do it, especially
Speaker 1: in a horrific time like they actually know somebody who
Speaker 1: knew some of the people who were killed in the
Speaker 1: shooting and we're close family friends with them, and those
Speaker 1: people are really hurting right now. Yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: is certainly the case. I think it's also just worth
Speaker 1: saying there's a lot we don't know. You know. One
Speaker 1: of the things that I will definitely be looking for is,
Speaker 1: you know, how are the firearms acquired? Yeah? Was this
Speaker 1: person on the radar of law enforcement previously? In that
Speaker 1: press conference that we played a bit of, they said
Speaker 1: that she didn't have any prior record or convictions. Doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that there were no previous interactions with law
Speaker 1: enforcement though, as we know. So those will be some
Speaker 1: of the questions that we have. And not to mention
Speaker 1: whatever is in this manifesto that this killer pend. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that you brought that up because that's also my
Speaker 1: number one you know, everyone also else, Everyone immediately reaches
Speaker 1: for the guns or the trance thing. I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know Parkland Evaldi, we can go on for Charleston,
Speaker 1: all this, every single case known to law enforcement, No
Speaker 1: mass murderer just wakes up one day and commits and
Speaker 1: act like this, from a terrorist to a school shooter,
Speaker 1: there are breadcrumbs that are everywhere. There are always it's
Speaker 1: a drop drop bag. And as you said, looking and
Speaker 1: going to be paying very close attention to, was the
Speaker 1: nine to one to one call ever made? You know
Speaker 1: why exactly? Even in the motivation? What about social media postings?
Speaker 1: Did somebody ever report what was going on here? So
Speaker 1: let's also not take our eye off the ball of
Speaker 1: this could be a law enforcement failure that we don't
Speaker 1: yet know some of the details of and that we're
Speaker 1: going to be hoping that some local media and maybe
Speaker 1: even mainstream media will dig into. So look, guys, you know,
Speaker 1: that's basically everything that we have here. As Crystal talked
Speaker 1: about the spark for gun control, President Biden in his
Speaker 1: first initial comment and seized upon the shooting to talk
Speaker 1: about this. Here's what he had to say. We're mondering
Speaker 1: this situation really closely, Ben, as you know, and we
Speaker 1: have to do more to stop gun violence. It's ripping
Speaker 1: our communities apart, ripping the soul of this nation, ripping
Speaker 1: it's the very sole of the nation. And we have
Speaker 1: to do more to protect our schools so they aren't
Speaker 1: turned into prisons. You know, a shooter in this situation
Speaker 1: reported we had two assault weapons in a pistol to
Speaker 1: ak forty seven, so I call on Congress again to
Speaker 1: pass my assault weapons ban. So we had the call
Speaker 1: for the assault weapons ban here. However, you know, the
Speaker 1: police chief said that they were legally acquired. We still
Speaker 1: do know need to know some of the details. At
Speaker 1: least two of firearms and another three I believe we're
Speaker 1: involved in this case. So you know, it's not also
Speaker 1: uncommon for any of these guns to be illegally purchased,
Speaker 1: even in the event of increased background check, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So we'll see if there's any you know, red flags
Speaker 1: from psychiatrists, from medical system, from the police chief, law enforcement,
Speaker 1: the details on all that, and we'll continue to stick
Speaker 1: on the story. I know. The Counterpoints also will bring
Speaker 1: you guys an update if needed tomorrow as well as
Speaker 1: on our show on Thursday. However, let's get to Israel,
Speaker 1: which is what we're going to start our show within
Speaker 1: the first place. Before this tragedy occurred, there have been
Speaker 1: really wild and widespread protests in Israel among Israeli Jews
Speaker 1: over proposed plans by Benjamin Netnaho to quote unquote reform
Speaker 1: the judiciary. It's basically a major power grab as he
Speaker 1: himself faces corruption charges and would lead to undermining the
Speaker 1: independent judiciary. So there's been a huge response to this,
Speaker 1: and this really came to a peak over the weekend
Speaker 1: and into Monday morning. Let's ahead and put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen so we can see a little bit
Speaker 1: of what this looked like. These protests, which were truly nationwide,
Speaker 1: followed Netnya who's decision to sack his defense minister. His
Speaker 1: defense minister had actually called for a pause on these
Speaker 1: judicial reforms. Netnaho fired him, and then there was a
Speaker 1: massive up in the protest nationwide, including their largest trade
Speaker 1: union which I think had some like seven hundred thousand members,
Speaker 1: and Israeli embassies being shut down. So this was a
Speaker 1: massive escalation in the level of protest, and we do
Speaker 1: now have a reaction from Netanyahu. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. Because of the pushback,
Speaker 1: he announced a delay in that judicial overhaul plan. He's
Speaker 1: deferring the controversial proposals to next parliamentary session after mass protests.
Speaker 1: So he's not saying we're not doing it, but he
Speaker 1: is saying we're going to press pause. He said he
Speaker 1: would delay those changes because he wants to give time
Speaker 1: to seek a compromise over the contentious package. Speaking in
Speaker 1: a televised address on Monday evening, ten hours after he
Speaker 1: was originally scheduled to give a statement net Yahoo, they say,
Speaker 1: looking tired and striking an unusually flat tone, said he
Speaker 1: was not willing to tear the nation in half, and
Speaker 1: there's a possibility of avoiding fraternal war through dialogue. I
Speaker 1: as Prime Minister, will take a time out for that dialogue.
Speaker 1: There's another piece of this too, Sagur, which is as
Speaker 1: part of this deal to pause the judicial reform. Because
Speaker 1: remember Netanyahu's part of a coalition government with some really
Speaker 1: hard right figures who wanted to press forward with this
Speaker 1: regardless of the public reaction. So in order to secure
Speaker 1: this delay as part of the deal, he announced that
Speaker 1: they would form a civil National Guard, which will be
Speaker 1: led by this Minister of National Security. It'samar Ben Gavier,
Speaker 1: who is i mean effectively an out and out fascist,
Speaker 1: is basically called for Palestin means to be wiped down,
Speaker 1: and a member of the far right Jewish Power Party.
Speaker 1: So this is coming not without a cost. And again
Speaker 1: it's not like the reforms are being completely quashed. They're
Speaker 1: just being pushed off to the next parliamentary session. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a really interesting episode and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: it more with our guest Peter Beinart. But it really
Speaker 1: is a revenge or i guess, a revolt of the
Speaker 1: secular Jewish el inside of Israel, who have been much
Speaker 1: more kind of wedded to Western democratic ideals and are
Speaker 1: very upset at the both religious component of the government,
Speaker 1: the most religious government I think, yeah, in modern Israeli history.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, you know, the judicial reform,
Speaker 1: of which has never been popular amongst them, is one
Speaker 1: which a lot of like mass cultural Israeli society was
Speaker 1: revolting against. This is one of those where kind of
Speaker 1: the secular Jewish elite inside of Israel, the business elite,
Speaker 1: the tech elite, so to speak, in conjunction with a
Speaker 1: lot of the younger people who would agree with them,
Speaker 1: who are also raised secular, were the ones who took
Speaker 1: to the streets. We should, you know, say though there
Speaker 1: was also a protest to support the judicial reform, and
Speaker 1: it's one of those which just just underscores that, Look,
Speaker 1: you know, Netanyahu in the religious government, they do also
Speaker 1: maintain some support inside of Israel, especially amongst kind of
Speaker 1: the Orthodox, the ultra Orthodox Jews who maintain a significant
Speaker 1: portion of Israeli population in society. That's one of the
Speaker 1: major cleavages that exists in israel Is fights over welfare,
Speaker 1: military service, you know what exactly qualifies as what the
Speaker 1: level of support that they would receive from the Israeli state,
Speaker 1: And it's caused quite a bit of tension in their society,
Speaker 1: which is kind of erupting all over this judicial reform.
Speaker 1: But it's much much deeper than that. It's really just
Speaker 1: not about the court. It's both singularly about Netteenyah himself,
Speaker 1: who is obviously, you know, facing serious legal trouble if
Speaker 1: he doesn't get any of this through, but so many
Speaker 1: different coalitions and factions to kind of hitch their wagon
Speaker 1: to him or to the opposing side, that it's all
Speaker 1: kind of coming out in this major protest. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's well said that this was the lightning rod,
Speaker 1: but the schism goes much much deeper. We have one
Speaker 1: other piece we can show you here, which is just
Speaker 1: the extent of the protests among Israeli Jews. It went
Speaker 1: so far. God and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: As Israeli embassies and consulates around the world, closed THEIRS
Speaker 1: on Monday in protests over this judicial overhaul. As I
Speaker 1: mentioned before, the largest labor union instructed all government employees
Speaker 1: to go on strikes. So you truly had a general
Speaker 1: strike among Israeli Jews in the country and even at
Speaker 1: these embassies around the world. I mean, they shut down
Speaker 1: the airport, everything was shut down. And so that level
Speaker 1: of action actually forced Netanyahu's hand to have to do
Speaker 1: something and at least press pause and hope that some
Speaker 1: of the furor over this dies down. We also have
Speaker 1: some breaking news this morning, which is that President Biden
Speaker 1: has now extended an invitation in the wake of this
Speaker 1: pause to netn Yahoo to come visit the White House.
Speaker 1: You know, this is notable because there had been a
Speaker 1: sort of you know, chill you might say, on their
Speaker 1: relationships somewhat at least as this was all unfolding. Now
Speaker 1: there is no specific date set, but it's kind of
Speaker 1: you know, the White House extending in all of branch
Speaker 1: and saying, okay, we appreciate that you paused these judicial
Speaker 1: reforms and to give you a little bit more specifics
Speaker 1: about what was being proposed here effectively, the courts in Israel.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're like pro Palestinian or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but they will occasionally side with Palestinians in land disputes.
Speaker 1: And so that's why the far right politicians that including
Speaker 1: net Nyahu and his allies, feel that the Court has
Speaker 1: too much power and they want to be able to
Speaker 1: overrule the court with the majority vote in the Kanesset.
Speaker 1: So that's effectively. There's some other pieces here, but that's
Speaker 1: effectively what it would do. It also give them more
Speaker 1: power to place judges on the court, so that they
Speaker 1: would have more power that way as well. So this
Speaker 1: is both about nets Yahu trying to escape the corruption
Speaker 1: charges that he's facing, but it's also an ideological battle
Speaker 1: here too. Yep, exactly, and that's why it's so important
Speaker 1: to note. It's like he has a personal angle, but
Speaker 1: also it's one of those very convenient ones where politically
Speaker 1: he's The Biden administration also in a real bind because
Speaker 1: originally they had protested or at least issued a word
Speaker 1: of condemnation about judicial overhaul that frosty relations. The State
Speaker 1: Department didn't have actually any reaction to the protest movement
Speaker 1: inside of Israel, which a lot of people took certain
Speaker 1: notice of, and then also immediately inviting him to the
Speaker 1: White House after he called it off. I will say,
Speaker 1: from what I've seen this morning, the US Ambassador to
Speaker 1: Israel says there's no date yet been set for the
Speaker 1: visit or for the meeting, so it's not like frosty
Speaker 1: relations won't remain. We should remember too, Biden and Obama
Speaker 1: are no heroes amongst the ultra religious coalition inside of Israel.
Speaker 1: They don't forget the UN resolutions that the Obama administration
Speaker 1: allowed to go through in the last days of his presidency,
Speaker 1: condemning It's been a while since I've studied it, but essentially,
Speaker 1: I think around Israel's settlements, they kind of viewed that
Speaker 1: as a quote stab in the back. It caused a
Speaker 1: big thing. Of course, Netanyahu is the one who came
Speaker 1: to America and spoke out against the Iran deal before Congress,
Speaker 1: against the explicit protest of President Obama, so there was
Speaker 1: a lot of bad blood there. And President Biden has
Speaker 1: always been a little bit more staunchly pro Israel than
Speaker 1: President and Obama was has always kind of called himself
Speaker 1: that and was certainly in Israeli ally within Congress, but
Speaker 1: many of the people who work for him, were a
Speaker 1: part of that Obama team, inviting a lot of deep
Speaker 1: suspicion from what I understand inside the Israeli government. So
Speaker 1: he has probably never been more of a frosty relations
Speaker 1: between President Biden and Netaan Yahoo as well within this.
Speaker 1: So we'll see whether that meeting actually does occur anytime
Speaker 1: in this near future, because it wouldn't necessarily be politically
Speaker 1: advantages Netanyahu and then certainly for Biden it would look weak,
Speaker 1: you know, for both criticizing somebody and then inviting them
Speaker 1: over here on top of the fact that there is
Speaker 1: a significant I know there was a poll I think,
Speaker 1: I know you were thinking about covering it can bring
Speaker 1: up here, which is that democratic support for Israel is
Speaker 1: an all time low today that it has been in
Speaker 1: I think like modern American history if you look at
Speaker 1: the that many just rank and filed Democratic voters feel
Speaker 1: about the issue. So Biden himself is a little bit
Speaker 1: of a bind. Yeah, that's interesting that you bring that up.
Speaker 1: There was some new polling that showed positive sentiment and
Speaker 1: sort of like sympathy within the for the Palestinian cause.
Speaker 1: It skyrocketed among Democrats is now majority held position, which
Speaker 1: is you know, quite remarkable, given that I have to
Speaker 1: always be careful about the way you phrased that, but
Speaker 1: given how much more organized and influential the Israel lobby
Speaker 1: is in Washington and in terms of the media. So
Speaker 1: this is another instance of you know, the public is
Speaker 1: being told one thing, but they're making up their mind themselves,
Speaker 1: especially on the Democratic side. And there was a separate
Speaker 1: poll that also gave, you know, expose the lie that
Speaker 1: being critical of the Israeli government is somehow anti Semitic,
Speaker 1: because at the same time you had a lot of
Speaker 1: sympathy for the Palestinian cause among Democratic voters. You also
Speaker 1: have very warm and positive feelings towards Jewish people in general.
Speaker 1: So you can critique the Israeli government obviously without being
Speaker 1: anti Semitic, and it's absurd to suggest otherwise. The other
Speaker 1: piece of this I want to get to, and we
Speaker 1: have a wonderful guest, Peter Binart, to talk to us
Speaker 1: about this, is, you know, there's a hypocrisy at the
Speaker 1: core of these protests, which is you have Israeli Jews
Speaker 1: who are fighting so hard and so passionately for their
Speaker 1: own democratic rights, while you have you know, majority Palestinian
Speaker 1: population which has no democracy, no democratic rights, and they're wondering,
Speaker 1: where's your concern for democracy where we are concerned. So
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and bring in Peter and we can
Speaker 1: talk about that aspect of things as well. Really excited
Speaker 1: to be joined this morning by Peter Baynart. He is
Speaker 1: a professor of political science and journalism at the City
Speaker 1: University of New York, and he also is author of
Speaker 1: the bune Art notebook on Substack. Recommend that you all
Speaker 1: to subscribe to that. Great to see you, Peter, You sir,
Speaker 1: nice to be with you. I want to get into
Speaker 1: some of what you've been writing about. But first off
Speaker 1: the top, we've got some breaking news this morning, which
Speaker 1: is that President Biden has extended an invitation to Israeli
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanya, who, after Natya, who decided to
Speaker 1: at least pause these judicial reforms. You know, what do
Speaker 1: you make of the invitation and the timing? You know,
Speaker 1: maybe they saw it as a payoff Jetanya, who for
Speaker 1: having for having delayed this judicial overhall effort. It's not
Speaker 1: surprising that an American president would invite any Israeli prime minister,
Speaker 1: given how close a relationship the US and Israel have
Speaker 1: now whether it's morally justified the fact an apartad state
Speaker 1: by the world's leading human rights organizations, and in fact,
Speaker 1: Israel's leading human rights organization, not to mention Palestinia human
Speaker 1: rights organizations is a different question. But in the political
Speaker 1: reality that exists in Washington, it's not surprising that Menshayakhu
Speaker 1: would get an invitation. Okay, got it, And so Peter.
Speaker 1: If we're digging into the bigger situation here, we've got
Speaker 1: protests all over Israel. Does how should we make sense
Speaker 1: of this in terms of Israeli domestic politics and then
Speaker 1: the way that the US has approached the protest movement.
Speaker 1: So what you have among Jewish Israelis is a kind
Speaker 1: of a culture war that has certain analogs to what
Speaker 1: you see in the United States. First of all, you
Speaker 1: have a corrupt prime minister who's trying to bend the
Speaker 1: judicial system to make sure he doesn't get prosecuted. That
Speaker 1: might sound somewhat familiar to us. Secondly, Israeli Jewish society
Speaker 1: is deeply divided along religious versus secular lines. This is
Speaker 1: the most religious government in Israeli history, and one of
Speaker 1: the things that it wants to do is ensure that
Speaker 1: ultra orthodox Israelis Jews do not have to serve in
Speaker 1: the military, which is a very very divisive issue among
Speaker 1: Israeli Jewish society. You also have an ultranationalist I was
Speaker 1: the even fascist element in the government that wants to
Speaker 1: prevent the Supreme Court from allowing it to go even
Speaker 1: further in seizing land from Palestinians. The street will already
Speaker 1: allows the Israeli government to seize land from Palestinians fairly easily.
Speaker 1: But there are elements in this government that I think
Speaker 1: whose ultimate agenda is the expulsion of Palestinians, and they
Speaker 1: want to ensure the Supreme Court can't get in the
Speaker 1: way of that. So those are the cluster of issues
Speaker 1: that have produced this fight, which is really among Jewish
Speaker 1: Israelis with Palestinians largely as bystanders. Well, let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that, because that's a piece that
Speaker 1: you've been writing about and speaking about on your substack.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: From Peter, you say that in a certain kind of
Speaker 1: bizarre way, it's almost worse more painful to see the
Speaker 1: links that Israeli Jews are willing to go to to
Speaker 1: fight for democracy for themselves, given that most of them
Speaker 1: and most diaspora Jews are so profoundly oblivious or dismissive
Speaker 1: or even hostile to the idea that Palestinian should also
Speaker 1: have democracies themselves. Here in this tweet, you say Jewish
Speaker 1: Israelis truly invited Palestinians to join their democratic struggle and
Speaker 1: made it a struggle for freedom for everyone, not just
Speaker 1: for Jews. That movement wouldn't just defeat Phoebe, it would
Speaker 1: defeat apartheid and change the world. So talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the lens through which Palestinians must be viewing
Speaker 1: these protests right so fresh, and we have to understand
Speaker 1: the reality about eighty percent of the Palestinians who live
Speaker 1: under Israeli control are not citizens, cannot become citizens of
Speaker 1: the state in which they live, and cannot vote for
Speaker 1: the government that controls their lives. These are the Palestinians
Speaker 1: who live under military occupation in the West Bank and
Speaker 1: East Jerusalem, those who live under block Hate, Israeli block
Speaker 1: Hate and Gaza. The twenty percent of Palestinians are Israeli citizens,
Speaker 1: but even they are citizens of a very profoundly second
Speaker 1: class nature. So again to accuse a crude analogy, it's
Speaker 1: almost as if you were in the kind of white
Speaker 1: segregated American South and you had this huge protest movement
Speaker 1: because you saw a white politician who seemed like they
Speaker 1: were going to erode the democratic rights of white Southerners,
Speaker 1: and then you'd have black people looking and say, wait
Speaker 1: a second, here, this is really bizarre that you're kind
Speaker 1: of launching this democracy movement as if we don't even
Speaker 1: exist when we are denied all basic democratic rights. There
Speaker 1: have been some Palestinian politicians inside Israel who have thought, well,
Speaker 1: we should support these protests because what Natanyahu is doing
Speaker 1: would allow the government to abuse us even more. But
Speaker 1: I think the dominant reaction from Palestinian intellectuals and activists
Speaker 1: on the ground and in the diaspora has been that
Speaker 1: there's something really perverse and bizarre and insulting about Israelis
Speaker 1: launching a movement to protect democracy when Palestinians who constitate
Speaker 1: more constitute more than half of the people under is
Speaker 1: really control, don't live in a democracy. And I think
Speaker 1: that was the point I was trying to highlight. Got it, Peter,
Speaker 1: how should you know, people who are looking at this,
Speaker 1: One of the takeaway I've seen is that this actually
Speaker 1: might bring down the Netuayau government. Just for context, because
Speaker 1: I don't know people understand the roiling nature of Israel.
Speaker 1: Israel's like constant shuffling of government. How realistic of a
Speaker 1: possibility is that does the you know, as you said,
Speaker 1: religious kind of ulternationalists coalition is will it remain together?
Speaker 1: And how core is judicial overhaul actually to Nettaya, who's
Speaker 1: tenuous script on power. If I had to guess, I
Speaker 1: would guess the government will not fall because what's happened
Speaker 1: as a result of these protests is that the government
Speaker 1: has actually become pretty unpopular. And so in a parliamentary system,
Speaker 1: if you're unpopular, you don't want to bring down your
Speaker 1: government and go to elections because you're not going to
Speaker 1: do very well. So I think that for that reason,
Speaker 1: I think this coalition is likely to hang together. Coalition.
Speaker 1: There were elements in this coalition that really wanted judicial overhaul,
Speaker 1: but not everyone in this in this coalition wanted judicial overhaul,
Speaker 1: And my guess, My guess would be that they will
Speaker 1: now focus on pursuing other strategies of things they want
Speaker 1: to do that are less not that will not produce
Speaker 1: quite as ferocious a backlash. But I'm not sure they're
Speaker 1: pausing it till May, and I think it'll partly What
Speaker 1: will partly determine it is whether this protest movement continues
Speaker 1: or whether it peters out and they feel like they
Speaker 1: have a little bit more political of kind of runway
Speaker 1: to it to go on. Got it. Part of the
Speaker 1: deal that was struck here involves creating a new civil
Speaker 1: national Guard, which looks like it will be led by
Speaker 1: a far right politician. It'samar Ben Gaviro is the current
Speaker 1: Minister of National Security and member of the Jewish Power Party.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about that development, what it means and
Speaker 1: how it's being received. Yeah, I mean again, I'm searching
Speaker 1: for analogies for America. In some ways, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit kind of like taking some very very far right
Speaker 1: person in the Trump orbit and kind of not turning
Speaker 1: the Proud Boys into some kind of national guard. I mean,
Speaker 1: Ben Gavier is someone who's really been flirted with the
Speaker 1: edges of terrorism. His entire career was actually considered so
Speaker 1: much of a you know, was involved in the group
Speaker 1: of people who assassinated Yitzak Rabin, the Prime Minister, in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen nineties, even though he himself was not
Speaker 1: fingered for that had was a long time devotee and
Speaker 1: follower of rab America Hana, whose entire political identity was
Speaker 1: wrapped up with the idea of expelling Palestinians, and who
Speaker 1: for many years in his home had a poster of
Speaker 1: a man named Beroke Goldstein, a terrorist who walked into
Speaker 1: the Ebra, the Cave, the tomb of the Patriarchs, the
Speaker 1: Ibrahimi Mosque and Pevron in nineteen eighty four and massacred
Speaker 1: I think twenty nine Palestinians while they were in prayer.
Speaker 1: So this is this man's basic agenda is to free
Speaker 1: the Israeli military and police from any restrictions on their
Speaker 1: ability to brutalize Palestinians, I think, with the ultimate aim
Speaker 1: of trying to expel Palestinians, so an utterly lawless of
Speaker 1: human beings. So to put this guy in charge of
Speaker 1: some kind of private security for us, it's not clear, frankly,
Speaker 1: how many people will actually serve in this, but is
Speaker 1: you know, imagine what this means for Palestinians who don't
Speaker 1: have their own police force and army that can protect them,
Speaker 1: who are basically defenseless in the face of the Israeli
Speaker 1: military and police as it stands now. And then you're
Speaker 1: going to give this guy authority of some special unit.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a really terrifying situation. And finally, Peter,
Speaker 1: you know a question that I think is at the
Speaker 1: core of all of this. As you see Israeli Jews
Speaker 1: fighting so hard for their democracy, while as you put it,
Speaker 1: you know, the Palestinian majority is complete, we denied any
Speaker 1: voice or any Democratics say, can you have a democracy
Speaker 1: an ethno state? I think fundamentally no, because I think
Speaker 1: at the core of liberal democracy is the idea of
Speaker 1: equality under the law, irrespective of your race, religion, ethnicity.
Speaker 1: And there is a global struggle we see all around
Speaker 1: the world between this idea of equality under the law
Speaker 1: and the idea that countries should be the property of
Speaker 1: one racial, religious, ethnic tribe. You see it in India
Speaker 1: where Narendramoti is trying to turn India into a Hindu state.
Speaker 1: You see it, of course in the United States, where
Speaker 1: we have powerful forces that want to make this a
Speaker 1: white Christian state. In Europe as well, similar forces like that,
Speaker 1: And so the notion we have gotten so used to
Speaker 1: talking about Israel as a Jewish and democratic state that
Speaker 1: I think people don't think enough about the fundamental contradictions
Speaker 1: of that idea. And the problem is that Israel has
Speaker 1: actually become a model for the kind of ethno state
Speaker 1: that people all around the world who threatened the idea
Speaker 1: of liberal democracy are trying to create, even including in
Speaker 1: our own country. So no, I think what I would
Speaker 1: hope is that one day is rebocomes a state for
Speaker 1: all its citizens, a state that treats everybody the same
Speaker 1: way legally, irrespective of what religion they are. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the fight that you know that we need
Speaker 1: to have all across the world. Yeah, well, we appreciate
Speaker 1: you joining us, Peter. I really appreciate your insight and
Speaker 1: your analysis on this. I know there's a lot going
Speaker 1: on here and we're all trying to make sense of it,
Speaker 1: So thank you. Thank you. A bunch of breaking news
Speaker 1: to talk about with regard to Silicon Valley Bank. They
Speaker 1: are holding their first hearings today in Congress as to
Speaker 1: what the hell happens here. Before we get to that, though,
Speaker 1: there has been at least a partial sale of Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley Bank. Let's put this up on the screen. This
Speaker 1: was brokered by the fd i C. The headline here
Speaker 1: for the New York Times is Silicon Valley Bank sold
Speaker 1: to First Citizens in government back deal. Banking regulators, which
Speaker 1: announced announced the deal late Sunday, had been looking for
Speaker 1: a buyer since seizing control of that failed bank. So
Speaker 1: this includes the purchase of about seventy two billion dollars
Speaker 1: in loans. There was a significant discount here of sixteen
Speaker 1: point five billion dollars. They're also transferring all of the
Speaker 1: bank's deposits worth fifty six billion dollars. Roughly ninety billion
Speaker 1: dollars in Securities and other assets were not included in
Speaker 1: the sale. But the bottom line for depositors now you
Speaker 1: you know, are part of First Citizens Bank shares. They're
Speaker 1: the ones who hold your money. You go to their branches,
Speaker 1: and they own the Silicon Valley Bank branches as well.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and put the FDIC announcement up on
Speaker 1: the screen just so we can get a sense of that.
Speaker 1: Their press release says First Citizens Bank and Trust Company
Speaker 1: in Raleigh, North Carolina, to assume all deposits and loans
Speaker 1: of Silicon Valley Bridge Bank that is the sort of
Speaker 1: like temporary holding company for the bank. And you know,
Speaker 1: one thing that was noteworthy here is this bank for
Speaker 1: Citizens Bank and Trust Company based out in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: This purchased it has apparently been making a habit of
Speaker 1: purchasing distressed banks from the FDIC. Their size has grown
Speaker 1: dramatically as they purchased more than twenty different government sees lenders.
Speaker 1: Their assets have grown to more than one hundred billion
Speaker 1: from about twenty billion dollars a decade ago. So that
Speaker 1: sale has been brokeer, which, of course, you know Soccker
Speaker 1: is worth remembering this didn't take that long to unfold.
Speaker 1: You know, the normal process that could have played out
Speaker 1: from the FDIC would have involved a similar sale depositors
Speaker 1: being made, if not completely holed close to whole. It
Speaker 1: just would have taken somewhat more time than what they
Speaker 1: were able to guarantee. But clearly there was a buyer
Speaker 1: for this bank and the assets here. Well, there certainly
Speaker 1: was a buyer. And there's some even more of those
Speaker 1: details which are pretty interesting just about how much the FED,
Speaker 1: the FDIC and regulators screwed this before the actual crisis
Speaker 1: even began. You flag this is going to put it
Speaker 1: up there on the screen that in a February presentation
Speaker 1: before the Federal Reserve, they had specifically brought up before
Speaker 1: the Board of Governors rising interest rates on bank's financial
Speaker 1: conditions and discussed the issues broadly, but highlighted svb's interest
Speaker 1: rate and liquidity risk. In particular, staff relayed. They were
Speaker 1: actively engaged with SVB, but as it turned out, the
Speaker 1: full extent of the bank's vulnerability was not apparent until
Speaker 1: the actual bank run on March ninth, So, in other words,
Speaker 1: they knew exactly what was going on. They had some
Speaker 1: time to try and pressure SVB to try and do
Speaker 1: something about it, to try and head off this crisis.
Speaker 1: They didn't do anything about it, and then the government
Speaker 1: stepped in and guaranteed all of the deposits at SVB
Speaker 1: and effectively at all large banks in the country, while
Speaker 1: also screwing the smaller community banks. So the precedent, we
Speaker 1: really can't let go of what happened. I know, everybody's
Speaker 1: moved on. You know, Oh, nobody lost any money. There
Speaker 1: was no real bank run for normal people, so okay,
Speaker 1: but I mean this still is an extraordinary, most extraordinary
Speaker 1: financial action by the United States government since two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, and the president which has set is still
Speaker 1: not yet being grapple with. And unfortunately, you know, even
Speaker 1: in the two thousand and eight context, at least there
Speaker 1: was some anger about what happened. I'm glad that we
Speaker 1: are having some congressional hearings, but there is no serious
Speaker 1: effort yet to actually grapple with what happened here. And
Speaker 1: I don't think people should underestimate the political vulnerability that
Speaker 1: the Biden administration and really anybody who supported these actions
Speaker 1: could face. Talk a little bit about you know, President Form.
Speaker 1: President Trump definitely seizing on it because he's not an idiot.
Speaker 1: Anybody could see this is a real political vulnerability. When
Speaker 1: you know, big bankers get bailouts even whenever they do
Speaker 1: something where they screw up, and they get to literally
Speaker 1: continue to do business as usual and keep their regular
Speaker 1: amounts of profit. It seems like a little bit of
Speaker 1: special treatment for one people and not special treatment for
Speaker 1: everybody else. Well, and to that point, yes, nobody has
Speaker 1: any sympathy for bankers, the shareholders, et cetera. But I
Speaker 1: got to say, these depositors put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: We're getting some more details about exactly who was bailed out.
Speaker 1: Put this next piece up here. We now know per
Speaker 1: the FDIC chair, that the ten largest deposit accounts at
Speaker 1: SVB held thirteen point three billion dollars in the aggregate. Okay,
Speaker 1: ten accounts had more than thirteen billion dollars combined. What
Speaker 1: is wrong with you that you're holding billions of dollars
Speaker 1: in an account that is only insured up to two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And keep in mind the
Speaker 1: way this was sold to people, all the small businesses
Speaker 1: and the mom and pop food panch bull shit. This
Speaker 1: is the people that you bailed out. So even the
Speaker 1: depositors who were the most sympathetic group here. You know,
Speaker 1: I got some real questions about any company, CEO or
Speaker 1: CFO that's holding over a billion dollars in a bank account.
Speaker 1: You are an idiot ultimately, and you do not deserve
Speaker 1: a bailan. You could wait a couple a week or
Speaker 1: two weeks for a sale to occur to have access
Speaker 1: to all of your billions of dollars here. Yeah, christl,
Speaker 1: that is an average of one point three billion in
Speaker 1: cash sitting in these accounts so let's think about that.
Speaker 1: We all made fun of Roku for keeping half a
Speaker 1: bill in the bank. It turns out they were junior
Speaker 1: players and not even top ten inside the deposits. Inside
Speaker 1: of this, it's also funny to me. You know, these
Speaker 1: people are supposedly the most sophisticated financial minds, and tech
Speaker 1: is the future. And I spoke to some of my
Speaker 1: friends on Wall Street. They were laughing at them, and
Speaker 1: they were like, hey, you think you're the first rich
Speaker 1: person to ever exist. All our high network clients have
Speaker 1: much more spread out assets. Specifically, in cases doesn't happen,
Speaker 1: they buy private insurance on their deposits because this type
Speaker 1: of stuff has happened before. And for somebody who has
Speaker 1: got a net worth of you know, five six billion,
Speaker 1: the interest payment that you'd be making on that is
Speaker 1: well worth it in the case of catastrophic risk, which
Speaker 1: exactly what happened here. They were actually literally laughing at
Speaker 1: many of these tech billionaires and other people who might
Speaker 1: have had assets like this concentrated in their bank accounts,
Speaker 1: just saying that it was amateur hour. And so when
Speaker 1: Wall Street is laughing at you for being irresponsible, I
Speaker 1: don't really know what to say when even they are like,
Speaker 1: you've got you people are a joke. You know, you
Speaker 1: talk about how you're the future, and you don't even
Speaker 1: know the very basics of what it's like to bank
Speaker 1: as a high networth individual or as a high well
Speaker 1: capitalized company. I think you could see that there were
Speaker 1: some serious problems, not just with the bank. And that's
Speaker 1: also why it was important in the first place. Why
Speaker 1: did all these people have so much money in the bank.
Speaker 1: Because this bank specifically catered to this one industry. They
Speaker 1: became fantastically over a period of time. They had exclusive
Speaker 1: lockup deals, they offered very favoring financing, very favorable terms.
Speaker 1: I saw hilarious one from a depositor who talked about
Speaker 1: how they had to move their deposits from Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: Bank to somewhere else and that bank canceled their account
Speaker 1: because they asked for a physical address. And he goes
Speaker 1: that never happened to me and somebody at Silicon Valley Bank,
Speaker 1: and someone replied, You're like, hey, that's actually the law.
Speaker 1: You're supposed to have a physical address. So what are
Speaker 1: you talking about. He's like, Oh, Silicon Valley Bank never
Speaker 1: asked me that. For seven years while I was a
Speaker 1: client in them. It's like, so they were illegal, basically
Speaker 1: illegally banking for seven years while at this one bank.
Speaker 1: Why because they catered to the tech industry, which is
Speaker 1: high moving startup and all that. And look, risky industries
Speaker 1: are going to attract risk. That's something which everybody likes
Speaker 1: on the upside. Nobody seems to like it on the downside,
Speaker 1: except in this case, the downside, the US government is
Speaker 1: the one that steps in and says everybody's going to
Speaker 1: be okay. So I just think it's totally ridiculous. And
Speaker 1: there is, of course still continue to be many questions
Speaker 1: about how the regulators were asleep at the switch here,
Speaker 1: with which I think reflects a deep ideological failing among
Speaker 1: all of our supposed regulators, who have seen their role
Speaker 1: basically postgreens Band and in the quote unquote neoliberal era,
Speaker 1: as rather than actually serving as the cops on the
Speaker 1: beat to make sure that any sort of obvious risk
Speaker 1: is being mitigated and these banks are being dealt with,
Speaker 1: they've seen their role as just providing transparency to the
Speaker 1: market because the market will handle the regulation. I mean,
Speaker 1: it really is like the most classic possible situation because
Speaker 1: not only from Michael Barr's testimony here, but there was
Speaker 1: previous reporting that the FED did know there were issues
Speaker 1: here for not just like a month in advance, for years.
Speaker 1: They knew that there was an interest rate risk exposure.
Speaker 1: They sent their little memos to the bank of like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: you got to do something about this, but they didn't
Speaker 1: actually take any action. And so who ends up on
Speaker 1: the hook at the end of that, Well, it's all
Speaker 1: of us. The last piece about the that I just
Speaker 1: can't get over with the you know, depositors with billions
Speaker 1: of dollars in the bank. We were really sold this
Speaker 1: narrative of we've got to act and take these extraordinary
Speaker 1: actions because this particular bank is special and this is
Speaker 1: going to have huge reverberating impacts on all of these
Speaker 1: small businesses, et cetera. I think we can see now
Speaker 1: that there was perhaps no bank and group of depositors
Speaker 1: better prepared to weather a financial storm than this bank
Speaker 1: and this group of depositors. So, you know, if they
Speaker 1: had to get a bridge loan from their wealthy backers
Speaker 1: until you know, the next week when they'd have access
Speaker 1: to their deposits, most of these people would have been fine.
Speaker 1: So again, this speaks to the core problem and the
Speaker 1: ramifications of these actions, which is, if you're going to
Speaker 1: intervene in this incredibly extraordinary system wide way when it's
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley Bank, a mid size bank with a bunch
Speaker 1: of billionaire depositors, that means that you basically have every
Speaker 1: significant bank in the country, you have deemed them all
Speaker 1: too big to fail. You have put the taxpayers on
Speaker 1: the hook for all of these banks and whatever idiotic
Speaker 1: decisions they're making. And that's the piece of this that
Speaker 1: we really can't lose sight of. Soger. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: And you know we're not the only ones we're talking
Speaker 1: about this. As I alluded to, somebody who's got pretty
Speaker 1: good political spidery senses is immediately going off form. Or
Speaker 1: President Trump weighing in last night after taking a shot
Speaker 1: at Ron DeSantis going after the Silicon Valley Bank bailout.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen to what he said. And would
Speaker 1: you have supported the bailout of Silicon Valley Bank? Okay, ready,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of questions you're asking me. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have supported the bailout. The bank would have to
Speaker 1: get along by itself. And maybe they could have. What
Speaker 1: happened with the bank's interest rates went too high. And
Speaker 1: you know, I had my own situation with Powell, and
Speaker 1: I beat the hell out of them. Was not a
Speaker 1: big fan of pal He was recommended by some people.
Speaker 1: I didn't like him. He's too interest rate happy. What
Speaker 1: you do is you get the up prices down. That's
Speaker 1: bigger than interest rates. The only thing. And what happened
Speaker 1: is we took an oil and now we take an
Speaker 1: interest rates. Those banks failed because the interest rates were
Speaker 1: do they stupidly bought long term treasure is ten year treasures, Well,
Speaker 1: they bought a long term longer than that even and
Speaker 1: they bought a long term and those treasuries got crushed
Speaker 1: because palal Key's raising interest rates. Shockingly good answer there
Speaker 1: from for President Trump. He is right, he always was
Speaker 1: against raising interest rates, specifically for this reason. He is
Speaker 1: also correct that one of the best ways to bring
Speaker 1: down inflation costs is by the supply side, not necessarily
Speaker 1: on the demand side through the blood instrument of the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve. And then criticized Silicon Valley Bank specifically for
Speaker 1: the way that they were managing their balance sheet. I
Speaker 1: have to say that is the most substantive policy response
Speaker 1: yet in the twenty twenty four campaign. Crystal, I have
Speaker 1: not heard President Biden say a single word about this,
Speaker 1: simply that the banking system is totally safe and sound. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean on this one. Trump gets a lot of
Speaker 1: things right. It's funny to see the horseshoe of like
Speaker 1: basically like him and Elizabeth Warren having this deep hatred
Speaker 1: for Jerome pal and deep critique of him. But the
Speaker 1: thing that he gets at, you know, it's sort of
Speaker 1: like confused what he says a little bit and not
Speaker 1: like tell you have to like read the tea leaves
Speaker 1: or read between the lines of what he actually means here.
Speaker 1: But to the extent that he raises the issue of hey,
Speaker 1: interest rates are not really getting at the problem that
Speaker 1: you have here with regard to inflation, which is of
Speaker 1: course something we've been talking about the whole time. Okay, inflation, Okay,
Speaker 1: part of it might be dealt with with interest rates,
Speaker 1: which means you're dealing with inflation just by crushing labor
Speaker 1: and trying to spike unemployment. But the bulk of inflation
Speaker 1: is being caused by corporate price gouging, being caused by
Speaker 1: supply chain issues being caused by spiking food and energy
Speaker 1: prices in part because of the war in Ukraine. Those
Speaker 1: aren't the things that the FED can do anything about.
Speaker 1: And lo and behold, even with what has been an
Speaker 1: extraordinary period of interest rate hikes, it hasn't solved the problem.
Speaker 1: There's a reason for that, because it's the wrong tool
Speaker 1: to use. So not only is this instinct correct, I
Speaker 1: think with regard to the FED, but obviously his political
Speaker 1: instinct with regard to Silicon Valley Bank, a critique which
Speaker 1: I you know, which I share in which I agree with,
Speaker 1: is also spot on. It'll be interesting to see if
Speaker 1: he leans into this, though, and I hadn't heard him
Speaker 1: say anything about it before, so he didn't jump right
Speaker 1: on top of it the way, for example, like Vivek
Speaker 1: Ramaswami came out right away and was opposed to and
Speaker 1: put out a Wall Street Journal ont bed. It'll be
Speaker 1: interesting to see if he adds this to the litany
Speaker 1: of issues that he really makes core to his campaign
Speaker 1: in the way that he has, like Medicare and social security,
Speaker 1: the Ukraine war, and then you know his like election
Speaker 1: denial nonsense, So it'll be it would be quite something
Speaker 1: if he had opted this as another core piece of
Speaker 1: his you know, pseudo populist rhetoric at least. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm also interested in that, whether it was a one
Speaker 1: off or whether it's something that he'll pick up on.
Speaker 1: Most likely, if he sees a good response to it,
Speaker 1: he will continue to pick up. So we'll see the
Speaker 1: trial balloon. This one's a trial balloon at the very least.
Speaker 1: It Yeah, at the very least. Let's let's get some interest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we can get Look, maybe this qualifies mister president.
Speaker 1: Please talk more about this and not cat turn poles,
Speaker 1: although you should keep doing that because that is just
Speaker 1: objectively funny. There's just no way of being around entertaining. Indeed,
Speaker 1: absolutely all right, let's talk about this new poll from
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, basically pouring gasoline on the fire of
Speaker 1: the discourse. Absolutely fascinating. I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: yesterday talking about with Andrew Schultz on the Flagrant podcast
Speaker 1: about this. Everybody kind of seems to have a take,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious what yours is as well. So let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and put it up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: And it talks about how America pulls back from the
Speaker 1: value us that once defined it. So let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and actually put D two up there so people can
Speaker 1: see the visual. I'll read it for everybody who is
Speaker 1: just listening. Number one is patriotism. In nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: seventy percent of Americans consider themselves patriotic. Sixty one percent
Speaker 1: said so. In twenty nineteen, only thirty eight percent say
Speaker 1: in thirty thirty eight percent say so in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: For religion, it was sixty two percent in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: forty eight percent in twenty nineteen, thirty nine percent in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. For having children, it's fifty nine percent
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, down to thirty percent in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. Community involvement was at forty seven actually spiked
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen to sixty two percent, but now down
Speaker 1: to a record low of twenty seven percent. And then
Speaker 1: finally money and in terms of what values are quote
Speaker 1: very important to people, money has now gone from thirty
Speaker 1: one percent to forty three percent. So my takeaway, Crystal,
Speaker 1: was that it's easy to be patriotic. In nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: it's unipolar moment, no dot com bubble. You could buy
Speaker 1: a house. You can basically sustain a family of four
Speaker 1: on a single income, So who cares about money because
Speaker 1: money isn't actually all that relevant to your life. You
Speaker 1: actually are becoming basically rich or richer by participating in
Speaker 1: general society. Wage inflation had gone down, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily know even close to how bad it's gotten now. Also,
Speaker 1: my takeaway too was that I think that people are
Speaker 1: viewing this clearly through a left phenomenon, but in reality,
Speaker 1: if you look at where the major drop in patriotism
Speaker 1: comes from, a lot of it also comes from the right.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason why I think that is
Speaker 1: is we have dual narratives of catastrophes that are happening.
Speaker 1: So clearly, you know, while Trump was president, we had
Speaker 1: a decline in patriotism because people said, I can't even
Speaker 1: believe that America would elect somebody like Donald Trump. But
Speaker 1: if you are a Republican, especially a Mago type believer,
Speaker 1: you literally believe that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: So how can you then believe in your country you
Speaker 1: have a dual kind of catastrophizing that is happening, where
Speaker 1: you have lack of faith in the country's most basic
Speaker 1: institutions from both right and left in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: really the only thing you really unites us at all anymore.
Speaker 1: On top of that, religion has been going down now
Speaker 1: for decades. But I think a money piece and the
Speaker 1: increase of money is not just about the rise of individualism.
Speaker 1: It's about how much you actually do have to care
Speaker 1: about money today just to get by, Whereas in the
Speaker 1: past it's not something that would have been very important
Speaker 1: to you, when it would have been something where it
Speaker 1: was more of a foregone conclusion where you'd be able
Speaker 1: to participate and foster all of these other things. We
Speaker 1: already know that the main hindrance to people getting married
Speaker 1: today is money. Also to having children. People are having
Speaker 1: less children than they want to, and the main reason
Speaker 1: that they cite is that it's too expensive. I believe
Speaker 1: the average childbirth is some thirty one thousand dollars or
Speaker 1: something here in the US, on top of the one
Speaker 1: million dollars or so that it costs if you want
Speaker 1: to send a child to college, and I think at
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty thousand dollars just for raising somebody up
Speaker 1: through eighteen years old. I mean, this is not a
Speaker 1: not a small cost that a lot of these families
Speaker 1: are incurring here, and the reality of even trying to
Speaker 1: buy a house or any of the foundational types of
Speaker 1: things are now so out of reach that money has
Speaker 1: to become more important. What do you think, Yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I think on a basic level, our economy is supposed
Speaker 1: to serve the people, and our government is supposed to
Speaker 1: serve the people, and instead both our economy and our
Speaker 1: government serve a handful of elites. So of course, when
Speaker 1: you feel like the societal institutions that are supposed to
Speaker 1: have your back don't, what's that going to lead to
Speaker 1: among a certain group of people, It's going to lead
Speaker 1: to a well, I just got to get mindset. And
Speaker 1: so I think that's where you see the rise in
Speaker 1: money being all important, which of course is a core
Speaker 1: sort of value of neoliberalism anyway, putting profits and cash
Speaker 1: maximization over everything else. And then also it makes sense
Speaker 1: in terms of decline of patriotism if the government doesn't
Speaker 1: reflect you, doesn't serve you, if the institute of the
Speaker 1: economy don't reflect you and don't serve you, which you
Speaker 1: know makes sense. Coming on the heels of the Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley bail out discussion we just had. It's quite relevant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why would you feel patriotic about a country that isn't
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be there for you? And Matt Stoller
Speaker 1: made this point that I thought was pretty profound. Let's
Speaker 1: put his his analysis up on the screen. Here his
Speaker 1: tweet that he put out. Go ahead and throw this
Speaker 1: up on the screen, guys, you can see a chart.
Speaker 1: He says, these two phenomenon are causal. America is in
Speaker 1: a mass die off. So Americans have become much less patriotic.
Speaker 1: When your country's systems end up killing your friends and family,
Speaker 1: you tend to lose your faith. And what he shows is,
Speaker 1: you know the grass we already showed you from this poll.
Speaker 1: But he also has here the decline in life expectancy
Speaker 1: that we have seen in the United States over decades
Speaker 1: and as compared to other nations. So this is a
Speaker 1: US specific phenomenon. Now it was accelerated by COVID, But
Speaker 1: a lot of the underling things we've covered at nauseum
Speaker 1: Sager has to do with a lot of death to despair,
Speaker 1: the fact that you have these mass addiction crises. But
Speaker 1: I think Derek Thompson has also talked about how it's
Speaker 1: a whole range of issues where Americans are more likely
Speaker 1: to die than their compatriots and other nations. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't surprise me to see that people don't feel
Speaker 1: too great about the country when that's the landscape. I'm
Speaker 1: reminded of a book I read a while ago, maybe
Speaker 1: in like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, about the American Dream
Speaker 1: and how it was being interpreted, especially by white working
Speaker 1: class voters in and around Youngstown. Is written by a
Speaker 1: researcher named Justin Guest. It's called I Think the New Minority.
Speaker 1: I really recommend it, and he interviewed a bunch of
Speaker 1: white working class voters about how they felt about the
Speaker 1: American Dream, and they thought it was dead, you know.
Speaker 1: They thought, like this idea that you work hard and
Speaker 1: you get ahead, this is nonsense. This does not reflect
Speaker 1: my life. And these were people, many of whom their
Speaker 1: father or their grandfathers had been able to get solid
Speaker 1: middle class union jobs, been able to have the family,
Speaker 1: been able to have the house, been able to have
Speaker 1: some vacation time every year, and then they had watched
Speaker 1: the standard of living in their area thanks to de industrialization, decline.
Speaker 1: Just over their lifetime, so they weren't able to achieve
Speaker 1: the basics of middle class stability that their father or
Speaker 1: grandfather was able to obtain. So yeah, when I think
Speaker 1: you have that feeling of like, you know, this American
Speaker 1: dream is just a load of croc and this country
Speaker 1: doesn't have my interest at heart, of course you're going
Speaker 1: to see these kind of trends. Yeah, and I also
Speaker 1: think there's just a broader malaise. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you and I were like in the millennial generation. We
Speaker 1: really have not known in a time in our adult
Speaker 1: lives of no war and no financial crisis. Like if
Speaker 1: you lived through like that nineteen ninety eight number, if
Speaker 1: I was my age then so it'd be thirty years
Speaker 1: old and nineteen ninety eight, then the Vietnam War was
Speaker 1: basically over by the time I was like eight years old.
Speaker 1: Then you had the unipolar moment. Yeah, the seventies were
Speaker 1: pretty bad, but the eighties were pretty nice, and then
Speaker 1: the nineties were so awesome in terms of mass culture,
Speaker 1: in terms of money, the economic boom there was, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess like the nineteen eighty two depression, but you know,
Speaker 1: the biggest problem in the nineteen ninety eight was that
Speaker 1: the president got a blowjob in the Oval office and
Speaker 1: lied about it and it was still out of sixty
Speaker 1: two percent approval rating when all of that was happening,
Speaker 1: Just showing like how unserious so much of our politics
Speaker 1: were at that time, Like why wouldn't you have some
Speaker 1: high level of patriotism? Would we would wish for the
Speaker 1: problems of nineteen ninety eight Today we had like a
Speaker 1: budget surplus, right, you know, it's like all these things
Speaker 1: that were happening that you can't even imagine, and so
Speaker 1: compare then to compare now of course, same with the housing.
Speaker 1: You know, I think housing is just so foundational to it.
Speaker 1: You and I see it so much in our audience
Speaker 1: as well. Nineteen ninety eight, a starter home was not
Speaker 1: outside of your reach. Starter home that was built in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy You could buy a second hand on the market,
Speaker 1: not for that much money, with a decent interest rate,
Speaker 1: with an income that you could easily pay for. You know,
Speaker 1: I think about somebody like my parents who moved here
Speaker 1: to this country in nineteen ninety eight or nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: very easily, you know, moved from condo to you know,
Speaker 1: modest house, decent neighborhood be able to you know, relatively,
Speaker 1: you know, it was safe. You get to ride the
Speaker 1: school bus, you don't have to worry about anything. You
Speaker 1: go to school, and your schools are pretty good. And
Speaker 1: that was a very common reality of life for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, and that's just gone. This just really
Speaker 1: doesn't exist for people who are my age, or even
Speaker 1: anybody who's coming to this country now today. So it's
Speaker 1: one of those where, yeah, the American dream is alive
Speaker 1: and well for people at the upper echelons of society,
Speaker 1: they've actually gotten richer, literally than ever. But for everybody,
Speaker 1: if you lost your house, in my favorite stat on this,
Speaker 1: you know, for everybody who has any assets or whatever,
Speaker 1: is if you did not sell your house or any
Speaker 1: of your assets in two thousand and eight and you
Speaker 1: waited a decade, you not only made money, you know,
Speaker 1: on that trade by doing nothing, your house dramatically appreciated
Speaker 1: in value. But the people who lost that, who never
Speaker 1: had the ability to hang onto anything, basically had nothing
Speaker 1: already in the system. They became dramatically poor. So the
Speaker 1: why the gap between rich and poor expanded more than
Speaker 1: we can ever really imagine in that decade after two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. That's why President Trump became president, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, for a lot of these reasons. And that's
Speaker 1: why I think it comes to the heart of so
Speaker 1: much our political and some of our political and economic
Speaker 1: problems that we have today. It's really sad. It's sad,
Speaker 1: and it causes a lot of nihilism too. So I
Speaker 1: hope that it can be reversed. But you know, we
Speaker 1: had that discussion with Tim Urban yesterday. I'm not so
Speaker 1: sure I think he was right. I think we are
Speaker 1: in the whirlpool. Like I think Trump is just the
Speaker 1: first part of our problems. It's going to be a
Speaker 1: long way. It's hard to say. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: things can change, dynamics can shift. There's no doubt we're
Speaker 1: in a sort of like chaotic searching period. I think
Speaker 1: that's really clear. You know, in a sense, I feel
Speaker 1: like the declining numbers in patriotism are actually kind of
Speaker 1: a sign of health in terms of the way the
Speaker 1: American people are viewing the betrayal of them by both
Speaker 1: the government and by the you know, economic institutions. Because
Speaker 1: just having blind patriotism, I don't consider that. I don't
Speaker 1: consider that a positive thing. I think it's good that
Speaker 1: there's a recognition that this system has failed in some
Speaker 1: really key and bedrock type of ways. That can be
Speaker 1: a positive impetus for change. So in that way, I
Speaker 1: see a sort of silver lining here, because you're right.
Speaker 1: You know, we talk about inflation in the context of
Speaker 1: just the past year or two, but the reality is
Speaker 1: the basic bedrocks of a middle class life, housing, education,
Speaker 1: and healthcare have dramatically escalated in cost as to be
Speaker 1: wildly unaffordable for so many a majority of Americans, and
Speaker 1: those are kind of the key marks of the a stable,
Speaker 1: non precarious middle class life. So the American people have
Speaker 1: been suffering under brutal escalating costs for decades now that have,
Speaker 1: you know, put stability out of reach for so many.
Speaker 1: And that's why when you dig into these numbers about
Speaker 1: patriotism and community involvement and all these other things, the
Speaker 1: places you see the largest declines are among young people because,
Speaker 1: like you said, Zagar, they've never known another world. But basically,
Speaker 1: people my age and younger have never known a different
Speaker 1: world that wasn't you know, Bush invading a rock on
Speaker 1: a mountain of lies and media betrayals and societal institutional
Speaker 1: institutional failures and financial collapse and escalating crises. You know,
Speaker 1: that's been the world that we've existed in. So it's
Speaker 1: not a surprise that there's been a sort of radicalization.
Speaker 1: It's entirely to me, it's an entirely rational response to
Speaker 1: the set of circumstances that we face. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's very well said. All right, let's get to Matt Tayeb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is a wild story. You all will recall
Speaker 1: that journalist Matt Tayeb who covered a bunch of the
Speaker 1: Twitter files, you know, with regard to the Elon Musk releases,
Speaker 1: and testified in front of Congress recently as part of
Speaker 1: that like weaponization of government hearings. On the day that
Speaker 1: he was testifying, put this up on the screen, This
Speaker 1: from the Wall Street Journal. Apparently an I R S
Speaker 1: agent showed up at his house on that day. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a tweet from Michael Scheltenberger, who's another journalist
Speaker 1: who's been covering the Twitter files. He says, well, Matt
Speaker 1: Taybe and I were testifying before Congress on the weaponization
Speaker 1: of the federal government. An I R S agent showed
Speaker 1: up at his house, and he says what an amazing coincidence,
Speaker 1: you know from the Wall Street Journal report here, and
Speaker 1: I think we have that we can put up on
Speaker 1: the screen. How Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan has now set
Speaker 1: a letter to the I R S on Monday demanding
Speaker 1: answers about why exactly this happened, because listen, I have
Speaker 1: been audited before. This is not the way that it works. Yes,
Speaker 1: IRS agents don't just like show up at your doorstep.
Speaker 1: You get a letter in the mail that says, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to contact us, and then you go through
Speaker 1: a process. But never has have I ever had a
Speaker 1: situation where an IRS agent actually knocks on your door
Speaker 1: demanding answers. So and it was an unannounced visit. So
Speaker 1: it really is a troubling development here well, and some
Speaker 1: of the details relayed directly to his work over at Substacks,
Speaker 1: says the taxman left a note to mister Tayibi to
Speaker 1: call the IRS. Four days later, Taibi was told in
Speaker 1: a call with the agent. In twenty eighteen and twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one tax returns were rejected owing to concerns about
Speaker 1: so called identity theft. Tayib has provided the committee with
Speaker 1: documentation showing that his twenty eighteen return had already been
Speaker 1: electronically accepted, and says that the IRS never notified him
Speaker 1: or his accountants of a problem after he filed that
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen return more than four and a half years ago.
Speaker 1: The IRS initially rejected his twenty twenty one return, which
Speaker 1: he later then refiled. It was rejected again even though
Speaker 1: he was accountants refiled it with an IRS provided pin number,
Speaker 1: notes that in neither case was the issue monetary, and
Speaker 1: that the IRS actually owes him a considerable amount of money.
Speaker 1: So the bigger question is when did the IRS start
Speaker 1: dispassing agents for surprise house calls. By the way, Chrystal,
Speaker 1: you and I are currently could use a call back
Speaker 1: from the IRS. So that would be nice in terms
Speaker 1: of actually getting some service for trying to run a
Speaker 1: small business and do it legally here. You know, it's
Speaker 1: actually much harder than you might imagine. And yet apparently
Speaker 1: whenever you go and you testify before Congress and you
Speaker 1: call out the actions of maybe the National Security State
Speaker 1: and exposed some pretty troubling and some interesting things, Oh
Speaker 1: then the tax man just comes to your house on
Speaker 1: that very same day. Look, as you said, these this
Speaker 1: is unprecedented people don't just show up at your house
Speaker 1: completely unannounced. That's crazy. You know, we can barely get
Speaker 1: a freaking letter back from these people, so to have
Speaker 1: resources to dispatch somebody directly to your personal residence without
Speaker 1: a heads up. Also, you know, from what we can
Speaker 1: see here, you engage a professional accounting firm. They didn't
Speaker 1: even engage with the professional tax professional, so it would
Speaker 1: have been the people to contact in this regardless. So
Speaker 1: all of this just smells so fishy, and I think
Speaker 1: this could be a real problem. I mean, there's to
Speaker 1: the idea that it was not political or so that
Speaker 1: it was not politically motivated, just seems incredibly hard to
Speaker 1: believe such a both incredible coincidence the exact nature of
Speaker 1: what's already happening here in this case. And look, I
Speaker 1: hope that they actually do get to the bottom of it,
Speaker 1: because this is exactly the type of stuff that the
Speaker 1: Nixon administration used to do and threatened, specifically about the
Speaker 1: Washington Post Company and others whenever they were exposing the
Speaker 1: Pentagon papers. You can go back and read it if
Speaker 1: you want to. They also consider doing the same thing
Speaker 1: to Daniel Ellsberg. This is literally all on tape so
Speaker 1: it is not outside the realm of possibility for how
Speaker 1: a White House or for how the executive branch lashes
Speaker 1: out at people that they view as political enemies, and
Speaker 1: specifically at journalists. Yeah, it's really just bizarre and deeply disturbing.
Speaker 1: What did you make of I didn't really understand the
Speaker 1: piece where they said it was related to identity theft
Speaker 1: you what did you make of that? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it could be what it could be one
Speaker 1: of those where somebody had stolen his identity before and
Speaker 1: you provide it to additional documentation. Sometimes people do that,
Speaker 1: I know, whenever they try to steal people's like tax returns,
Speaker 1: or whenever they try to steal people's what do they
Speaker 1: called the whatever, this surplus of whatever that you you
Speaker 1: paid that they'll give you the refund. I try to
Speaker 1: refund right the tax refund that I know that people
Speaker 1: have tried in the past and have done that. That's
Speaker 1: part of the concern about identity that. The crazy part though,
Speaker 1: as he says, is that why are they contesting in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen return from four and a half years ago.
Speaker 1: You know that's from especially at the federal level. And
Speaker 1: again he asked professional tax council that he is engaged here,
Speaker 1: who seemingly, you know, would have been on top of this.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I'm looking at all this fitchy as hell.
Speaker 1: They don't just come to your house. It's complete. Especially
Speaker 1: this is also open sort. It's not just us. Small
Speaker 1: businesses are struggling dramatically and actually getting response time back
Speaker 1: from the IRS on their filings. It was one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that the Biden administration said we needed more
Speaker 1: agents was to process that backlog. Again, You and I
Speaker 1: are literally actually stuck in some of that backlog. But
Speaker 1: he's getting people getting set to his house. So how
Speaker 1: does that work. It's totally crazy. It's such a great
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about it in terms of our context.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we've been waiting for like a response back
Speaker 1: to just the basic like structure of our business for
Speaker 1: over a year. But they've got the resources to send
Speaker 1: some and directly to Matt Diebe's doorstep, right, very very
Speaker 1: eyebrow raising, I will just say that, Yeah, by the way,
Speaker 1: if anybody's watching, we would level response back. It actually
Speaker 1: would clear up a lot of headaches. Come to our
Speaker 1: doorsteps on the audio, Please come to my doorstep and
Speaker 1: resolve problems so that we can run our business anyways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: our own personal problems aside, So there you go. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we stand up here from Matt Tayibi. We'll put a
Speaker 1: link to his substack here in the description so you
Speaker 1: can make his tax problems even more complicated because he's
Speaker 1: making so much money. But look, the clear point here
Speaker 1: is that obviously this seems deeply fishy. There need to
Speaker 1: be a lot of questions that are answered about this,
Speaker 1: and if it was politically motivated in any way, all
Speaker 1: of that needs to come out from a corruption of
Speaker 1: our tax system and if the executive branch was resolved,
Speaker 1: because it would be a genuine scandal. We also wanted
Speaker 1: to mention Elon Musk making some news here with regard
Speaker 1: to the operations of Twitter. So you know, they launched
Speaker 1: the sleigh, the blue check mark thing that you have
Speaker 1: to pay for now the old legacy verified check marks
Speaker 1: like what we have SAGA are about to go away,
Speaker 1: and so he tweeted out starting April fifteenth, only verified
Speaker 1: accounts will be eligible to be in for you recommendations.
Speaker 1: This is the only realistic way to address advanced AI
Speaker 1: bot swarms taking over it is otherwise a hopeless losing battle.
Speaker 1: Voting in polls will require verification for the same reason. Now,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to remember in terms of his
Speaker 1: claims of like verification, that the new blue check marks
Speaker 1: are do not require a verification. That doesn't actually, you
Speaker 1: know the right. The original idea with check marks was
Speaker 1: that it will you go through an identity verification process
Speaker 1: and so that way, you know, you could look at
Speaker 1: an account and know that this person is who they
Speaker 1: say they are. And I didn't realize this actually came
Speaker 1: out of a lawsuit of someone who's identity and he
Speaker 1: was like stolen and they were slandered and whatever, and
Speaker 1: so this was the solution to that problem. Now I
Speaker 1: had issues with the blue check mark like legacy blue
Speaker 1: check mark system as well. I actually think it should
Speaker 1: have been much more widespread so that you had much
Speaker 1: more identity verification on the platform. But the direction Elon
Speaker 1: is going in as the polar opposite. It makes it
Speaker 1: much more of a wild West where you have no
Speaker 1: idea who is saying what and whether this is real.
Speaker 1: And now those people who are willing to do the
Speaker 1: effectively pay to play are going to get a tremendous
Speaker 1: benefit in terms of their use of this platform. For
Speaker 1: people who don't know, Twitter now has two settings. You
Speaker 1: can either look at just who you're following and what
Speaker 1: they've been tweeting out in order like just a true
Speaker 1: sort of timeline, or they haven't algorithmically generated for you.
Speaker 1: That the app usually defaults too. They were supposed to
Speaker 1: change it, so it defaults to whichever one you choose.
Speaker 1: But that's been sort of like, you know, sketchy, whether
Speaker 1: that's actually been happening. So the four if you're not
Speaker 1: showing up in the for you algorithmically driven tweets like
Speaker 1: you basically have been disappeared on the platform effectively. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's a huge mistake. I'll tell you why,
Speaker 1: which is that the major reason that people follow to
Speaker 1: Most people don't tweet. Most Twitter users don't actually engage
Speaker 1: on the platform beyond like a like or scrolling past something.
Speaker 1: They follow mostly large accounts to try and figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on. So what if those people don't pay
Speaker 1: for their check marks? Are they not going to show
Speaker 1: up in the for you page? Airgo? Are you not
Speaker 1: going to then have the most timely access to information?
Speaker 1: And are you instead going to get a bunch of
Speaker 1: threads from guys talking about intermittent fasting, cold plunges, and
Speaker 1: how to become a multimillionaire, which gotta be the most
Speaker 1: annoying tweets on the entire planet. It honestly reminds me
Speaker 1: of what will happen to happen to Clubhouse. It's like
Speaker 1: you went onto clubhouse. There's alo these scams about how
Speaker 1: to make it it whatever in venture capital, and the
Speaker 1: actual quality discussions weren't there anymore. And so this, as
Speaker 1: you said, is basically a pay to play system for
Speaker 1: all of these people who desire and want engagement. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that many follow accounts don't want that,
Speaker 1: but the reason that a lot of these accounts do
Speaker 1: fundamentally get a lot of followers is because people again
Speaker 1: want to hear what they have to say. So this
Speaker 1: is more of a tiktokification of Twitter. The reason why
Speaker 1: I don't think it will work is that the tiktoication,
Speaker 1: if you will, is surfacing content which they know that
Speaker 1: you will engage with in a video format. This again
Speaker 1: is more timely access to information that you have curated,
Speaker 1: that you know that you want to look at if
Speaker 1: you're an NBA fan, you follow NBA accounts. You're an
Speaker 1: NFL guy, you follow NFL accounts. My account is mostly
Speaker 1: politics because I follow curated news people that I trust.
Speaker 1: Over many years that I've said, these are information that
Speaker 1: I can look at surface and then hopefully either try
Speaker 1: to share it with you or into deeper with my
Speaker 1: own reporting. That is the actual value access of Twitter.
Speaker 1: It always has been for a lot of high like
Speaker 1: high I guess value, elite, perpetrator, whatever you know, cultural
Speaker 1: taste makers, whatever term that you want to use here.
Speaker 1: And I think that this will really destroy it. We'll see, though.
Speaker 1: I mean, as long as I have access to my
Speaker 1: follower page, my following page, which is not the default
Speaker 1: but which you have to click into, I guess it's fine.
Speaker 1: But you know, like you said, legacy accounts like yours
Speaker 1: in mind, I will say, I do think it's a
Speaker 1: problem for anybody starting out in the journalism business. You
Speaker 1: basically now have to you basically have to buy a
Speaker 1: blue check mark. You know, if you want to get
Speaker 1: any amplification. You and I have a combined almost a
Speaker 1: million followers, Like we don't really care, you know, take
Speaker 1: it away, Like what are you, what's it going to
Speaker 1: do to me? I don't care, but you know, if
Speaker 1: you're starting out, I don't think it's really that fair.
Speaker 1: I think I do think it is paid to play.
Speaker 1: I think you make an important point though, about just
Speaker 1: the usefulness of the platform, because I frankly already find
Speaker 1: the platform less useful than I used to and find
Speaker 1: myself for you know, we use it extensively for generating
Speaker 1: stories and finding deciding what we're going to cover in
Speaker 1: the news, and finding elements and whatever. Twitter is really
Speaker 1: central to the way that we operate, and I already
Speaker 1: find myself using it less just because of some of
Speaker 1: the algorithmic changes that have already been made, you know,
Speaker 1: in my day to day usage of it, I find
Speaker 1: it less useful. So I think you're correct in identifying that,
Speaker 1: you know, the really core problem here is that it's
Speaker 1: just going to be a less useful platform for everybody,
Speaker 1: and so people are going to use it less. And
Speaker 1: you know, I also say, just as like a matter
Speaker 1: of principle, I will never pay for I will never
Speaker 1: play pay for the blue jet not having now you
Speaker 1: can like I would rather just be kicked off of Twitter, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then go through the shame of like paying for
Speaker 1: my Twitter access and get my little blue check mark,
Speaker 1: never going to do it. The only way that we
Speaker 1: would ever do it is if it were materially hurt
Speaker 1: the business in some way. But like you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything. Like, Yeah, I guess it's good whenever
Speaker 1: we put out announcements about the show. But we have
Speaker 1: bigger following me here on Instagram and one or on
Speaker 1: YouTube especially or on our podcast feed, which nobody's charging
Speaker 1: me to pay. So it's like, all right, you want
Speaker 1: to take it away. I guess that's fine. Maybe people
Speaker 1: feel similarly. I don't know. I genuinely have no idea
Speaker 1: how this will all play out. Personally, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's gonna work. I don't think it'll work that well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think so either. So well, we shall see.
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing a lot of business genius here right
Speaker 1: at this moment, to be honest with you, there you are,
Speaker 1: all right, sacher? Are you looking at From day one
Speaker 1: of the War of Ukraine and the debate about military
Speaker 1: aid to that country, we have been assured by policymakers
Speaker 1: of one thing at Ukraine is making America stronger. Ukraine
Speaker 1: is fighting our enemy for us, the anti Russian Neo konse,
Speaker 1: So the ammunition that we're setting them, it's just surplus.
Speaker 1: We barely need it, or we have plenty of capacity
Speaker 1: to take care of Ukraine and take care of ourselves
Speaker 1: in our allies. Obviously, the sheer dollar figure size of
Speaker 1: one hundred billion dollars has always exposed that as a farce,
Speaker 1: but they've cling to it nonetheless, And since conflict has
Speaker 1: now been going on for more than a year, some
Speaker 1: truth has begun to actually trickle out, not only about
Speaker 1: the aid to Ukraine and whether it's actually even being
Speaker 1: used in the way that we want to, but whether
Speaker 1: that aid is making us less safe and less prepared
Speaker 1: for a conflict that actually might have a real impact
Speaker 1: on our lives. The very first indication of this publicly
Speaker 1: came from the US Navy Secretary, who accidentally admitted two
Speaker 1: months ago the day may come soon whether we have
Speaker 1: to choose between arming ourselves and arming Ukraine. Ironically, after
Speaker 1: he admitted the truth, the White House called him and
Speaker 1: immediately made him issue a correcting statement where he tried
Speaker 1: to shift the blame to weapons manufacturers instead, of course,
Speaker 1: actually had nothing to do with Ukraine, but they protested
Speaker 1: just a little bit too much. Of course, this has
Speaker 1: always been obvious. The Western nations which supply Ukraine are
Speaker 1: not in a total war footing. Ukraine is blown through
Speaker 1: amals so fast they could expend the entirety of USA
Speaker 1: by summer if they don't husband their resources. The only
Speaker 1: way they could really keep up with their weapons demand
Speaker 1: was if our economies went into overdrive to supply them,
Speaker 1: something not even the idiot most bloodthirsty neocons would ever
Speaker 1: advocate for, because obviously it would make America's population ask
Speaker 1: a lot of questions. A new report from a series
Speaker 1: of inside whistleblowers over US defense readiness shows us not
Speaker 1: only has at Ukraine made us far less safe in
Speaker 1: our ability to prepare for conflict, but that, unsurprisingly, the
Speaker 1: money that we do spend, even on ourselves, is a
Speaker 1: gigantic boondoggle. Some choice examples from this new report quote
Speaker 1: the United States sent Ukraine so many Stinger missiles from
Speaker 1: its own stocks it would take thirteen years worth of
Speaker 1: current production at recent capacity levels to replace them. More,
Speaker 1: America has sent so many Javelin missiles it would take
Speaker 1: five years at last year's rates to replace them. They continue.
Speaker 1: According to our military's own internal figures, should a conflict
Speaker 1: breakout with a major naval power like China, quote, within
Speaker 1: one week, the United States would run out of so
Speaker 1: called long range anti ship missiles. These missiles, for reference,
Speaker 1: are what those war gamers rely on for any chance
Speaker 1: for the US in any naval conflict and in a
Speaker 1: most likely hostile scenario involving Taiwan. But the point of
Speaker 1: this isn't just about to talk about Ukraine. It's to
Speaker 1: illustrate that military resources are a zero sum game that
Speaker 1: we have to prioritize based on strategic importance, and also
Speaker 1: that these weapons manufacturers that we rely on so heavily
Speaker 1: and who are making so much money off this, they
Speaker 1: are not even good at their jobs. As Eric Lipton
Speaker 1: points out, there are only two major rocket companies in
Speaker 1: America that supply all US missile systems. One of them
Speaker 1: had a fire at one of their suppliers. Now the
Speaker 1: entire supply chain is backed up. Should a conflict break out,
Speaker 1: it would take months to split up an alternative. By
Speaker 1: that time, thousands or even millions of people could be dead.
Speaker 1: Throwing money at the problem cannot even fix it. It's
Speaker 1: about decades of lost industrial manufacturing capacity and technical know how.
Speaker 1: In fact, in the so called moment of Need, when
Speaker 1: many NATO countries were increasing the amount of weapons they
Speaker 1: wanted to buy, they could not even buy them from
Speaker 1: US because our industrial capacity was so weak we could
Speaker 1: barely keep up with the modest demand of the Ukraine War.
Speaker 1: We had to choose between supplying Ukraine and supplying actual
Speaker 1: NATO allies. In the meantime. South Korea, though, of all places,
Speaker 1: stepped up. Why because unlike America, South Korea is not
Speaker 1: a silly country. They have been in an effective state
Speaker 1: of war since their founding and of course have strict
Speaker 1: laws on the books keeping a robust internal supply chain
Speaker 1: in the event of potential conflict with North Korea. When
Speaker 1: the war in Ukraine broke out and the West was
Speaker 1: buying weapons, they were happy to oblige because they have
Speaker 1: the ability to spin up quickly, they had the technical
Speaker 1: know how, they basically are an allied nation already, and
Speaker 1: they had the people to actually do it. More so,
Speaker 1: they don't have to choose between themselves and others because
Speaker 1: they had so much excess at their capacity and at
Speaker 1: their fingertips. The crazy part South Korea spends only a
Speaker 1: relative fifty billion dollars a year on defense, or two
Speaker 1: point seven percent of GDP. The America, meanwhile, spends eight
Speaker 1: hundred and forty two billion, or three point three percent
Speaker 1: of GDP. So we spend orders of magnitude more in
Speaker 1: both absolute and percentage based terms, but we are weaker,
Speaker 1: less nimble, less safe. How does that work because of
Speaker 1: the corruption of the military industrial complex. That's something I've
Speaker 1: always maintained here that the size of the defense budget
Speaker 1: and the debate around it, it misses the picture. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's too big, but why it's too big? Because we
Speaker 1: spend too much and spend it on the wrong stuff.
Speaker 1: US weapons systems come in ridiculously over budget. They are
Speaker 1: designed to keep factories open in different congressional districts than
Speaker 1: they are to actually make functioning weapons and protect our troops.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite examples on this is during the
Speaker 1: Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, while the Pentagon brass resisted spending
Speaker 1: more on mine resistant vehicles to stop our soldiers from
Speaker 1: getting blown up by ID why because doing so would
Speaker 1: pull money from next generation fighter programs and other conceptual
Speaker 1: ideas that were costing billions of dollars they were quite literally,
Speaker 1: would rather have funded things like space lasers than actually
Speaker 1: protect the lives of American boots on the ground who
Speaker 1: are getting killed in day to day combat. Even today,
Speaker 1: the overall dollar amount that we spend on naval assets
Speaker 1: is criminal. Another favorite example the new Zumwalt class destroyers,
Speaker 1: whose main guns fire rounds that cost a million dollars each.
Speaker 1: The rounds are so expensive that we don't buy them,
Speaker 1: meaning that we have guns with no ammunition. But I
Speaker 1: guess it's stealthy. So stealthy it costs a few cool
Speaker 1: four hundred million dollars each. There's so many examples like this,
Speaker 1: the F thirty five program, which is hundreds of billions overdue. Also,
Speaker 1: every weapon system, though has been milked for dollars by
Speaker 1: the US taxpayers, with no evidence that they actually work
Speaker 1: and are mass producible in a time of crisis and
Speaker 1: would even keep America safe. We are at a major
Speaker 1: turning point here as a country. Last time is actually
Speaker 1: were things were this dire. It was nineteen forty. We
Speaker 1: had no financialization, we had a massive untapped industrial capacity.
Speaker 1: I have no doubt that eventually we might be okay.
Speaker 1: Should things go south, but thousands and potentially millions should
Speaker 1: not have to die before we do so. The lessons
Speaker 1: that we have forgotten were forged in blood, and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it looks as if we may have to spill that
Speaker 1: blood again before we ever wake up from whatever the
Speaker 1: hell is going on here. And Chris, I found this
Speaker 1: report just absolutely stunning. I'm curious what you did as well,
Speaker 1: and if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Well, guys,
Speaker 1: there is some absolutely bombshell news coming out of the
Speaker 1: Crypto World Finance, which is the world's largest crypto trading platform,
Speaker 1: which dwarfs FTX even at their peak, Finance is something
Speaker 1: like ten times the size of FTX. They have just
Speaker 1: been dude by the CFTC, that's the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,
Speaker 1: and the complaint here is quite extraordinary. What they allege
Speaker 1: is a wide ranging scheme of illegally selling commodities to
Speaker 1: US customers, something they're not supposed to be doing, of
Speaker 1: covering it up, even of coaching these US customers how
Speaker 1: to cover their own tracks here and additionally, and fairly
Speaker 1: explosive allegations, some insider trading and self dealing. That does
Speaker 1: sort of smack of some of the failures of FTX
Speaker 1: as well. Before I jump into the complaint and some
Speaker 1: of the admittedly juicy details here, because apparently a lot
Speaker 1: of these top execs just directly messaged each other all
Speaker 1: the time about their fraudulent schemes. Before I get to that,
Speaker 1: I want to give you some of the background on
Speaker 1: finance so you can understand what a big deal this is.
Speaker 1: A couple of months back, I did a monologue talking
Speaker 1: about this digital trading platform, how significant it was, and
Speaker 1: how many red flags there were about its operations. Let's
Speaker 1: take a listen to a little bit of that. Here's
Speaker 1: a few things you should know about finance straight away.
Speaker 1: Much as FTX was operated at the seemingly sole discretion
Speaker 1: of SBF, with no corporate oversight and no board, Binance
Speaker 1: is seemingly run at the sole discretion of CZ. There
Speaker 1: is no traditional shareholder structure or board of directors. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's a stretch to even Paul Binance a company it's
Speaker 1: not headquartered anywhere, and CZ himself Hopscotch is the globe
Speaker 1: in search of friend the regulators who will allow them
Speaker 1: to operate schemes which would be illegal in many countries.
Speaker 1: Here is how Bloomberg describes this state of affairs. Quote.
Speaker 1: Legally speaking, a Cayman Islands firm named Binance Holdings Limited
Speaker 1: owns its trademarks. That entity's ownership has never been disclosed.
Speaker 1: JAO that CZ is the sole owner of Finance Capital Management,
Speaker 1: registered in the British Virgin Islands. Many Binance operations are
Speaker 1: also entirely owned by CZ, either directly or through an
Speaker 1: entity he controls. According to corporate filings, most of the
Speaker 1: trades on Finance go through the flagship exchange binance dot Com,
Speaker 1: which is based in who knows where and owned by
Speaker 1: God knows whom. So a whole lot of red flag there.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like CZ was just running around
Speaker 1: the globe to try to escape any sort of regulatory
Speaker 1: scrutiny and avoid getting pinned down by the laws of
Speaker 1: any one country. But now let's take a look at
Speaker 1: what the CFTC is alleging was actually done here, and
Speaker 1: there are some pretty remarkable details in this complaint. Let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and put this first one up on the screen,
Speaker 1: as I said, some of the top level executives seem
Speaker 1: to have a habit of messaging each other about exactly
Speaker 1: what they were doing and the level of contempt and
Speaker 1: disdain that they allegedly had for the laws of this
Speaker 1: country and other countries as well. So here we have
Speaker 1: an exchange with the supposed person response responsible for money
Speaker 1: laundering reporting, and what she says here is that even
Speaker 1: though Binance doesn't have a board of directors, she complains
Speaker 1: about needing to write a quote fake annual money laundering
Speaker 1: report to finance board of directors WTF, to which another
Speaker 1: top executive responds, yet I can get management to sign.
Speaker 1: So this was this part of an external request for
Speaker 1: documentation of how they are dealing with money laundering. Clearly
Speaker 1: they have complete contempt for any ability to deal with
Speaker 1: potential money laundering issues. So she is complaining about having
Speaker 1: to write a fake report to a Binance board of
Speaker 1: directors that does not even exist. Let's put the next
Speaker 1: one up on the screen here, because we've got another
Speaker 1: exchange between these two executives about the ways that some
Speaker 1: of their customers use the platform. You've got Chief compliance
Speaker 1: Officer Samuel Limb saying, quote like, come on, they are
Speaker 1: here for crime. Finance's money laundering officer agrees that quote
Speaker 1: we see the bad, but we close two eyes. So
Speaker 1: these are the people who were supposed to be enforcing
Speaker 1: compliance for Finance, and they are openly admitting that they
Speaker 1: know many of their customers are quote here for crime.
Speaker 1: Let's put another one up on the screen to give
Speaker 1: you a sense of the sort of flippant approach to
Speaker 1: alleged fraud which came directly from the top down. These
Speaker 1: are some interactions involving CZ himself. He explained that Binance
Speaker 1: needed to make sure it's PR messaging was on point.
Speaker 1: Regarding their large US customer base. He told colleagues that quote,
Speaker 1: we need to finesse the message a little bit, and
Speaker 1: the message is never about Binance blocking US users, because
Speaker 1: our public stance is we never had any US users,
Speaker 1: so we never targeted the US. We never had US users. This,
Speaker 1: of course, was directly contradicted by reports. CZ was regularly
Speaker 1: receiving reports that their customer base was twenty to thirty
Speaker 1: percent US. And again, just to remind you, they were
Speaker 1: not supposed to be selling commodities. They are not registered
Speaker 1: in the ussel commodities, so any exchange that they were
Speaker 1: doing with US customers was illegal. So what these findings
Speaker 1: here allegedly prove is that they were aware that their
Speaker 1: customer base was twenty to thirty percent US, and they
Speaker 1: were claiming publicly that of course they had no US users.
Speaker 1: Let's put another one up on the screen that shows
Speaker 1: some of the extent that they would go to to
Speaker 1: help their customers hide that they were in fact US users.
Speaker 1: They apparently actually put an instruction guide up that explained
Speaker 1: how to use VPN, which masks allows you to mask
Speaker 1: your location that you are coming from. Here, we've got
Speaker 1: another quote from Lim. He explained to a subordinate, they
Speaker 1: can use VPN, but we are not supposed to tell
Speaker 1: them that talking about their customers. It cannot come from us,
Speaker 1: but we can always inform our friends third parties to
Speaker 1: post not under the umbrella of binance. Ha ha ha.
Speaker 1: So basically saying like, yeah, we need to tell them
Speaker 1: to use VPN so that no one knows that they're
Speaker 1: actually US people. But you know, we can't directly say that.
Speaker 1: It's got to come from one of our allies. Can't
Speaker 1: come directly from byance lol. So if you take all
Speaker 1: of these alleged comments together, you see pretty clearly they
Speaker 1: knew they were in violation of US law. They went
Speaker 1: to quite some lengths to cover it up, to pretend
Speaker 1: they had no US users when obviously they knew twenty
Speaker 1: to thirty percent of their customer base was US based.
Speaker 1: But maybe the most explosive allegations have to do with
Speaker 1: self dealing and insider trading. So CZ himself is alleged
Speaker 1: to have controlled three hundred different accounts on the platform
Speaker 1: and was using their quant desk and insider information potentially
Speaker 1: about what exactly was going on in that platform to
Speaker 1: make money for himself. I've had a report on this.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up on the screen. This is from
Speaker 1: an outlet called BlockWorks. They wrote the apparent setup reeks
Speaker 1: of a familiar funk control the markets, own the market makers,
Speaker 1: then offer enough special privileges to render profiteering from users
Speaker 1: a sure thing. Now, there was no disclosure around the
Speaker 1: fact that CZ himself controlled three hundred different house accounts
Speaker 1: on the platform. There was a scandal previously that I
Speaker 1: believe we touched on before where it looked like there
Speaker 1: was insider trading going on on the binance platform with
Speaker 1: regard to potentially top executives. These three hundred house accounts
Speaker 1: were exempted from new insider trading rules put in place
Speaker 1: by Finance in response to that report, and according to
Speaker 1: the complaint here had no anti fraud or anti manipulation
Speaker 1: controls put on these accounts. So blatant alleged self dealing,
Speaker 1: blatant alleged insider trading. And it just reminds me, you know,
Speaker 1: for all the like fancy new jargon and tech around
Speaker 1: crypto and the blockchain and all of these things, a
Speaker 1: lot of what this comes down to is good old fashioned,
Speaker 1: well worn white collar crime and with even fewer regulations
Speaker 1: and guardrails than the traditional finance system, which is really
Speaker 1: saying something. And as usual, it will be a small
Speaker 1: handful of elites who gained the benefits of the crimes
Speaker 1: they are able to commit and regular people who are
Speaker 1: left holding the bag and soccer. It was kind of
Speaker 1: a matter of time before this complaint dropped, and before
Speaker 1: you know, and if you want to hear my reaction
Speaker 1: to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints
Speaker 1: dot com. Thanks everybody for watching. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I know it was annoying. You know, I was in
Speaker 1: New York. Now Crystal is unfortunately not feeling well. But
Speaker 1: we always bring sure that we bring the show to
Speaker 1: you everybody here and we will hopefully be back fully
Speaker 1: in the studio on Thursday. We've got a great Counterpoints
Speaker 1: show for everybody tomorrow, so make sure you go ahead
Speaker 1: and tune into that and we will see you all
Speaker 1: then