 
welcome friends to another edition of
economic update a weekly program devoted
to the economic dimensions of our lives
our jobs our incomes our debts
those for our children looming down the
road and looming a little bit for us as
well
I'm your host Richard Wolff I've been a
professor of economics all my adult life
and I currently teach at the new school
University in New York City before
jumping into today's economic updates
and the analyses that go with it
I wanted to alert you all to something
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the web sites are available 24/7 and of
course no charge I want to begin with a
story that caught my eye in last week's
Financial Times and it talks about a
French bank I believe it's the largest
bank in France BNP Paribas by name
having been slapped with a 350 million
dollar fine by the New York State
banking regulator that's not the federal
government that's just one out of 50
states whose Bank regulator looking into
what the bank was doing found it was
doing bad things illegal things
inappropriate things and it did a
thorough investigation and it found warm
doing and it assessed a 350 million
dollar fine which the bank has paid what
was the misconduct that it
found it's very important for many
reasons first it found that this
misconduct lasted at least from 2007 to
2015 that's kind of remarkable when you
think about it because it suggests an
ongoing process it's true the article
mentioned that the specific employees of
BNP Paribas who has tens of thousands of
employees around the world it's a global
bank it's true that all the ones
involved in this misconduct have been
fired or let go or don't work in any
case for BNP Paribas that's called
punishing the lower levels for something
that the upper levels could not possibly
have been unaware of although I'm sure
they claim the contrary this is regular
business of these banks in this case it
was the business of managing foreign
exchange activities and you know what
that is or let me explain briefly it's
if you have business in another country
you have to buy something they are
typically you need to acquire the
currency of that country because
everything in that country is priced in
its own currency so for example if you
are interested in buying French wine you
would have to get euros because that's
the currency used in France so you'd
have to go through a procedure of
exchanging the currency you have say the
US dollar for sewing so many French
euros or euros for the whole European
community and typically that is an
exchange that is handled by a bank a
bank has one currency and exchanges it
for the other and here comes the fun
part
it takes a small commission for that
exchange and makes a good deal of money
on it but now imagine that the people
who are supposed to make an exchange at
whatever the going rate is begin to use
their own money
to manipulate the rates to make them a
bit more expensive to get a euro than it
was ten minutes ago or ten days ago and
knowing that their own activity is going
to change the value they can then gamble
in various ways but it's a riskless
gamble because they know what's going to
happen since they are the one who makes
it happen did they do that you bet
did they get caught at it you bet did
the people in the bank get fired yeah
but something that goes on for this many
years reflects the fact that the bank at
the very least rewarded people who
improved the income of the bank in this
way and probably punished people who
didn't reward the bank perhaps because
they didn't engage in this illegal
activity we'll never know but it's a
reasonable guess well is BNP paribas
unique or alone or exceptional in having
done this illegal manipulative work and
having got caught at it not at all
in May 2015 six global banks six of the
biggest banks in the world together paid
the United States Department of Treasury
of Justice excuse me a total of five
point six billion dollars to settle
allegations of rigging the foreign
exchange market in other words this
illegal activity is normal business
normal business for the big banks of the
world and has been for more years than
most of us can remember in other words
it's another example of big private
capitalist enterprises using their
position in the economy to make money
for themselves at the expense of the
whole world let me explain
everything that comes into the United
States and we import hundreds of
billions of dollars worth of goods
everything that comes in to this country
from abroad just about involve some kind
of foreign exchange transaction if the
manipulations go a certain way the
prices of these things are higher than
they would otherwise be
similarly if we're concerned in any
country but we'll take our own as an
example if we're concerned that
foreigners are buying assets here if a
manipulation by banks makes the dollar
cheaper than it would otherwise be they
make an incentive for foreigners to
pounce when the dollar is cheap because
it effectively means they get more
dollars for their currency than they did
before and that cheapens the cost of
buying anything in the United States so
we have all kinds of social effects that
all of us take for granted
when we pay for something in the
supermarket or the department store but
the truth of it is that either that
object or some component inside that
object was imported when through perhaps
one or more foreign exchange
transactions before it got here and
those exchanges affect the price and
affect whether it's affordable to us or
not and if you add that up over many
products over many years this is a
material impact on the wealth and
poverty across the world
a tiny group of banks manipulating
foreign exchanges for their private
profit are thereby costing the world on
calculable amounts of loss of mistaken
preparations of expectations that don't
work out not because of the way the
market works but because of the way they
like so many others manipulate that
market final point the very bankers who
do this
manipulated markets got caught pay fines
have been doing it for years they're the
same bankers who get up and tell you
about the glories of the free market a
free market where every transaction is
transparent where everybody knows who
the buyers and the sellers are and the
price reflects simply what buyers and
sellers negotiate no manipulation for
the private profit by anyone the free
market is a fantasy it's never existed
it doesn't exist now it's a utopia that
some people think will be achieved in
some distant future because lord knows
it's not with us now that wouldn't be so
bad utopias are all around us things
people hope or imagined may someday be
but when you recognize what a non free
market is and they lacks what we have
then you also have to face who's
manipulating who's gaining and who's
losing allowing private banks to manage
something as important as money
something is universally important as
converting one currency to another is to
invite to enable and now we have the
evidence to prove illegal private profit
making at the public's expense the next
update this is an issue that arises
often and so this is a good time to deal
with it when President Trump was running
for office he made a point especially
when speaking to evangelical audiences
that he as president would get rid of
the Johnson amendment I'm assuming that
many of you may have wondered what
exactly that was so let me explain and
for those of you who already know my
apologies but we should all be on the
same page here the Johnson amendment was
passed in the United States
Congress in 1954 that makes it 63 years
old and it basically said that charities
that enjoy a tax exemption in other
words charities that the federal
government allows to earn money without
paying taxes on it to spend money
without paying sales taxes and so on
cannot engage in politics they should
not be involved in supporting one
candidate against another etc tax-exempt
institutions include churches charities
and so on and that means churches have
been barred from explicit political
activity as a condition for enjoying
their tax exemption which saves them an
enormous bundle of money without which
many churches could not survive so mr.
Trump was basically saying I want to
free you to the churches particularly
from the limits of the Johnson amendment
so I'm going to get rid of it and I'm
going to hold back the IRS from
bothering you this left the impression
which of course mr. Trump was pandering
to in that speak speech this left the
impression the churches are somehow
being really restricted in what they can
say do politically by fearing the loss
of their tax exemption because they
could be found to be in violation of the
Johnson amendment to correct that
misunderstanding willful though it is
let me tell you that only once once in
63 years has a charity of any kind
including any church had its tax
exemption taken away because of its
political activity once in 63 years is
the political activity of the churches
being effectively held back by the IRS
the Johnson amendment not if you get one
case in 63 years new that means the IRS
is mostly looking the other way and in
case you're interested what was that one
case it took place because the church
did something in 1992 it was a church in
Binghamton New York and it lost its
tax-exempt status because the church
took out paid newspaper ads urging
Christians to vote against Bill Clinton
for president in 1992 that was so
egregious that the IRS proceeded took
away the tax-exempt status for that
church in Binghamton one time no one
else has had that experience in the 63
years that the Johnson amendment has
been there in other words it was a phony
issue to which mr. Trump and 'red for
votes and may well have helped him I
don't know let's take a look then at
what the IRS does with tax-exempt
organizations in the 1970s according to
one study by the way I'm relying here on
the research of Professor Philip Hackney
he is a professor in the law school at
Louisiana State University and has
written wonderfully about this whole
subject from a legal point of view
according to Professor Hackney in 1970s
there were about 1,000 IRS Internal
Revenue Service agents who were
responsible to look at the study to
review what tax-exempt institutions were
doing to see if they violated any of the
rules including the Johnson amendment in
2013 that number had dropped to 842 that
is a remarkably large drop in the number
of agents the IRS
even looking at what churches and other
tax-exempt institutions do meanwhile as
the number of agents looking at these
tax exempt organizations drops let's see
how many of them there were to have
their situations reviewed in 1980 there
were roughly 320,000 tax-exempt
organizations that the IRS reviewed by
2016 when the number of agents dropped
in the way that I just described the
number of tax-exempt institutions was
1.6 million that's right
between 1980 and 2016 the number of
tax-exempt institutions went up five
times whereas the number of IRS agents
reviewing them dropped significantly and
what's more the new budget proposed last
week by President Trump called for
further cuts in the IRS on top of those
big cuts that have happened since 2010
what is this all about
this is all about deregulation something
that conservatives are pushing all the
time you deregulate among other ways by
having fewer regulators looking at
institutions that may well be doing all
kinds of things that are illegal let me
give you an example of some of the
things that the IRS has caught and again
I'll use professor Hackney's work the
red cross you've certainly heard of that
the red cross is still struggling to
quell concerns because in 2013 the
Center for Investigative Reporting and
the Tampa Bay Times zeroed in on 50
charities that had spent as little as 3
cents on the dollar they raised for
charitable activity and work tied to
their mission
the Red Cross came into a lot of
criticism for activities in Haiti and so
on in other words the IRS discovered
that these charities were spending very
little money on what they were raising
money for and a great deal of money for
themselves in 2016 the Federal Trade
Commission all 50 states and the
District of Columbia settled with
something called the Cancer Fund of
America and Cancer Support Services Inc
and the leader of both groups a man
named James Reynolds senior barring them
all from operating in the charitable
world again the Federal Trade Commission
alleged that most of their money they
spent most of the money they raised not
on cancer but on families friends and so
forth these are the kinds of things the
IRS is supposed to find and fix
but we're deregulating so we're not
doing that most Americans file automatic
taxes for money that has been withheld
from their paychecks they don't do
hardly anything that a machine can't
pick up if there's something irregular
if it doesn't show up the right way
basically it's richer people and people
engaged in illegal activities that
manipulate and maneuver in such a way
that the IRS needs to look into it
deregulating makes it easier for them
and that's a large reason why we have it
but it as a freedom for churches to be
politically expressive it has not been a
serious obstacle to that and claims to
that are fake might even call them fake
news if you were looking for a phrase
next item on my list of updates have to
do with
data that we now have on what happened
to the pay of CEOs chief executive
officers of major American companies and
what happened to them particularly in
the last full year 2016 so I I got a
very good summary may 23rd in market
watcher good source of these kinds of
documents so I thought I would share
that the best parts of this with you and
the basic group that was examined were
the chief executives of the Standard &
Poor 500 companies those are the 500
biggest enterprises basically in the
United States the chief executive now
let's go through what the statistics
tell us the chief executive on the
average of the Standard & Poor 500
companies received a pay increase in
2016 nearly three times the size of the
increase in average worker got okay
before I even go on and spell it out
let's be clear what I've just said and
what it means people at the top got paid
an increase three times larger than
people who are average you know what
that means that the gap between the
richest and all the rest of us grew
larger in 2016
much larger so we talked a lot in this
country about the gap between the rich
and the poor and something that needs to
be done about it but it's only talk the
reality is inequality deepens like the
beat of a drum that can't stop drumming
okay more what was the average pay
median scuse me pay no 50% got more 50%
got left for these CEOs of the biggest
companies 11.5 million dollars of the
340
six executives who were in their job at
least two years or more
346 women were 21 that's right you heard
me right women were 21 out of 346 for
those of you interested in the glass
ceiling this suggests it's very much in
place and harder and tougher to break
then you might imagine
lastly the average CEO of the S&P 500
companies made 347 times more money than
the average worker the guy at the top
employers it a guy makes 347 times more
the average production and
non-supervisory worker earned thirty
seven thousand six hundred dollars in
2016 the average CEO made eleven point
nine million dollars if you want to
understand inequality in the United
States that's where it starts that's
where it goes and that's what it means
one group of people have extraordinary
wealth including the wealth needed to
donate to the politicians who make sure
that we limit any serious effort to do
something about this inequality and what
it means for average people limits it to
just words of deep concern while the
inequality worsens year after year oK
we've come to the end of the first half
of this program I want to thank you for
being here with us I want to ask you to
stay with us we're going to have very
interesting analyses of major issues in
the second half of this program so
please stay with us we will be right
back
okay
Oh same time next week
well of course put away a few bucks feel
like a million bucks for free tips to
help you save go to feed the food all
right you know this isn't any fun to
talk about but we should okay
so who's gonna do what I'll pack the
dead batteries great I'll only put what
I don't need into a duffle bag perfect
that's totally unhelpful no problem
meanwhile I will try to comfort everyone
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which probably won't work right and who
is going to handle supplies I can forget
to do this for us thanks pal
well I think we couldn't be any less
prepared I'm proud of you guys talk to
your kids about who to call where to
meet what to pack
visit ready.gov slash kids for tips and
information
welcome back friends to the second half
of this edition of economic update as I
sometimes do I want to open by reminding
you that you can now also see as well as
hear this program and the two best
places to direct you if you wish to see
the video version of this program the
first is patreon.com that's patr UN
patreon.com slash economic update that's
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YouTube where economic update is
uploaded in its video form regularly
after each show today in the second half
I want to address several bigger issues
that take a little time for me to treat
properly and so we leave them to the
second half when we don't have an
interview and we put the shorter topics
in the first half so here's the first
for today this has to do with a peculiar
tendency here in the United States and
it's quite strong here stronger that I
have found it in many European countries
for example and this is a tradition of
blaming the poor for their condition and
likewise at the other end over inflating
the celebration of the ridge which is as
serious a mistake in understanding
what's going on as it is to blame the
poor so let's take a look at these two
bizarre extreme kinds of positions that
are found all too often here in the
United States we can begin by discussing
the problem problem or the process of
blaming the poor a wonderful example of
that happened this last week when the
Trump Secretary of Housing and Urban
Development usually referred to as the
HUD
the department a man you know as Ben
Carson made a remarkable public
statement he said that poverty is
largely or mostly a state of mind in
other words the poor are that way
because of the way they think or way
their mind works
there isn't anything social you have to
worry about there isn't anything in the
structure of the economy you have to
worry about it's the mentality of these
poor people this is a polite way of
blaming the poor you've got the wrong
mindset you've got the wrong mentality
it's something you can correct if you
just think properly or analyze things
properly now in the case of secretary
Carson this is probably no more than a
simple way to justify not using
government resources to help the poor
the Trump budget proposal is full of
these with holdings of resources food
stamps now call the SNAP program that is
slated to be cut that's a big support
for middle and lower-income people and
so are many other programs slated for
cuts we'll see what the Congress does
with mr. Trump's proposal but presumably
if they don't give him everything he
wants they'll give him some of it and
that means cutting resources so it may
be important to cover over what you're
doing by focusing public attention not
on withholding supports for poor people
but rather on blaming the poor people
and saying if only they had a different
mindset if only they straightened out
their mental processes why then we
wouldn't have a poverty program and then
that we wouldn't need
to spend scarce monies on it well
there's so many ways to show the
absurdity of this Ike really almost
don't know where to begin
well let's begin with what we left off
at the first half of this program if the
average income in this country of a
worker is $37,000 roughly that means
millions of workers earn considerably
less than that because that's the
average those are the poor the ones who
earn considerably less than that a
family trying to make it with two or
three children and one income earner or
even two at low wages is poor they're
not poor because of their mind that said
they're poor because they aren't paid
enough money meanwhile we pay the CEO of
the very companies paying them next to
nothing eleven and a half million
dollars per year on average the poor
people are poor because the rich don't
pay them this isn't very complicated you
know we could pay the CEO less we could
pay all CEOs less and then there would
be more for other people we could and
that sentence can be finished a thousand
ways we might limit people to only two
homes instead of twelve we might we
might we might do something about
poverty no problem that is it's not a
technical problem and it's not an
economic problem I can assure you of
that it is a political problem the
people with the money don't want to give
it up the people with lots of money not
only don't want to give it up but they
use their lots of money to make sure the
politics doesn't take it from them
poverty has always been a political
problem those who try to say it's a
matter of how poor people think are
really no different from those in my
profession of economics who try to tell
you that poor people are poor because
the productivity they bring to the
market is low or other economic
arguments as if the economic system
dictates how much you get paid let me
drive it home with a simple comparison
back in the 1970s the average CEO got
about valid 50 to 70 times what the
average worker got a big difference the
rich were 50 to 60 times better paid
than the poor today that number is three
hundred and forty seven times that's
what I told you in the last half-hour
somehow the rich got an awful lot richer
they were rich in the 70s plenty rich
gap between rich and poor well known
well documented we didn't have to make
the rich much much much richer relative
to everybody else we could have handled
the growing wealth we produce as a
country in a much less unequal way and
then we might have done something about
poverty you know we've been waging wars
on poverty from my entire lifetime from
the day I was born in Youngstown Ohio to
this minute some major part of the
government has been fighting poverty
well with such a sorry record you might
think that'd be some questioning of what
it is exactly we are doing and not doing
that explains why as the Bible says the
poor will always be with us unless and
until we listen real closely to other
parts of the Bible which tell us to
throw the money changers out of the
temple and to be
concerned about the lowest amongst us
and to raise them up not hard to do
economically and not much to do with
mental processes the line of causality
goes much more from being poor to having
certain mindset than the other way
around
and yes does poverty breed in people
depression resignation is there a mental
part of the problem of poverty of course
there is but to fasten on that and to
blame poverty on that takes a small part
of the story makes it the whole story
and that's done with an ulterior purpose
to leave the poor poor and devote even
fewer resources and all that will do was
increase the misery of the poor and
their number as well this kind of
political leadership is the opposite of
what the problem of poverty needs now
let's turn to the other side of the
extreme the extreme fawning attitude
towards the richest amongst us and I'm
going to pick one just as an
illustration I have no particular
concern with him mr. Zuckerberg who's
now a multi billionaire because of
Facebook he captured he owns the
Facebook idea did he have something to
do with developing it as a new
phenomenon in our society clearly he did
was he creative in doing that fucking so
let's give him that how came he to be
creative let's see he went to school
there he had teachers some of whom were
extraordinarily successful with him
helping him to learn helping him to see
he had parents who forced it and
sustained his education he had all kinds
of encounters with
fellow students and the media and books
and articles you know Mark Zuckerberg
had to be developed in order to be able
to do what he did that had to be
inventions by lots of other people
modern computers mr. Zuckerberg had
nothing to do with developing modern
computers but the development of
Facebook is unthinkable without the
modern computer so mr. Zuckerberg
achieved really when you think about it
isn't his achievement yes he put a
number of things together in the
creative new way and that deserves
praise
let's give him that but what he put
together other people had created those
many who got together and finally
developed the modern computer those who
taught mr. Zuckerberg how to use that
computer who wrote the books that he
studied with who provided him with the
supports along the way
the reality is that Facebook isn't the
creation of mr. Zuckerberg it's actually
the creation of the whole society and
particularly of the many thousands
perhaps tens of thousands of people who
contributed their creativity to all the
parts of what Facebook became but mr.
Zuckerberg is a multi billionaire and
many of the other people have a hard
time making ends meet
even though without what they
contributed mr. Zuckerberg could not
have done what he did it is a bizarre
society that gives to one person color
the last guy on the chain of creativity
he gets the big bucks and everybody else
nada nothing
it's a strange idea there's only one
thing stranger than the
riding up the wealth created by Facebook
and giving overwhelmingly to one person
the thing that's even worse than that is
then turning that strange behavior
around and justifying it as if the
creation was all mr. Zuckerberg that out
of nothing but his brilliance came this
Facebook invention nothing of the sort
is true to reward and then justify the
reward of in unconscionable
unconscionable wealth to one person at
the expense of all the others who
contributed is as crazy as blaming
poverty on the poor and if we didn't do
that with the rich who knows we might
actually use a modest portion of what we
now give to one man mr. Zuckerberg to
alleviate the poverty of millions a
society that doesn't see that and that
doesn't do that is a strange one to
claim that it takes Christian or any
other morality and ethics seriously the
next topic that demands some of our
attention takes a little time has to do
with this last week's behavior by yes
once again President Trump as I'm sure
many of you know he went visiting to
Europe and while there he had some
fairly explosive things to say to the
Europeans assembled to meet with him and
he singled out the strongest European
economy Germany the issues on which he
expressed disagreement with what the
consensus is among the Europeans namely
the importance of maintaining the Paris
climate agreement not pulling out as mr.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to do
supporting NATO as a alliance that the
United States is part of and helped to
create after World War Two and a variety
of other topics mr. Trump
however singled out Germany and even
after he returned to the United States
continued attacking Germany and coming
close to attacking Angela Merkel the
current leader of Germany and here's
what he attacks Germany for mostly
number one that the United States has a
trade deficit with Germany in other
words Germany exports more of its
products to the United States for sale
than the United States does to Germany
for sale and the second much less
important but the second is that Germany
doesn't contribute as much into the NATO
defense operations as they're supposed
to by the agreements when NATO was set
up and that the United States wants
Germany to do something about that
deficit in other words either to reduce
the number of exports that go to the
United States or to increase the number
of US exports imported into Germany and
to up the amount of money they spend or
give to NATO what's the problem here
well the problem is as old as Methuselah
it goes like this every country in the
world tries to manipulate and use
foreign trade to advantage its
constituents so obviously Germany like
every other country including the United
States is busy supporting encouraging
and helping its comfy
sell more goods some will goods in
Germany sell more goods outside of
Germany the government supports
exporters and likewise the government
helps its own industries defend
themselves when foreign companies ship
stuff into Germany they try to make sure
that the foreign government isn't
helping their own companies too much and
that that would hurt the German company
so company
countries businesses governments they
all get together the businesses are the
big rich power in a capitalist society
so they make sure that the government
here's what they want and helps them get
it and that's how the politicians keep
the donations coming that's how it works
in Germany that's how it works in the
United States who are we kidding
yelling at the Germans because they've
been successful at it yelling at them
because they've been more successful at
it and they have then the United States
has and the reasons for that are many
many many for example the United States
has now for quite a long time put the
squeeze on it's working classes wages
the real wages that is what a worker
gets adjusted for the prices of worker
has to pay the real were each of the
average American worker hasn't changed
for 30 or 40 years that's a stunning
statistic the real wage hasn't gone up
that means American families are pinched
are always worried about their budgets
are always finding too much month at the
end of the money and that has led them
to be extremely price conscious and in
their price consciousness a consequence
of not getting paid increases even as
they became more productive over the
last thirty
as a result they're looking all the time
for the cheapest goods in that period of
30 years
one company really excelled in bringing
to the American worker the cheapest
goods made on the planet that company is
called
Walmart that's how it became the biggest
single company in the country the
largest single employer in the private
sector and so on
and where did Walmart get these cheap
goods to sell to the pinched American
worker the answer was from wherever in
the world you could get the cheapest
goods and that turned out to be China
India Bangladesh Indonesia Mexico and
you fill in the blank and that meant
America's deficits grew it imported more
than it exported but not because the
German government manipulated but
fundamentally because the United States
his own economy became more import
dependent as a consequence of its own
development there's no way around this
when mr. Crump made headlines early in
his presidency even before he became
president with the carrier corporation
in Indiana where he browbeat them and
got money to be given by the state of
Indiana to that company the whole point
was not to move to Mexico not to begin
importing goods from Mexico he was
trying to manipulate the trade balance
of the United States using subsidies and
so on that's what the Germans do yes the
United States would like to do better at
it nice goal but the way the global
capitalist system works every country
manipulates as best it can to stronger
countries are more able to do that
manipulation the more powerful
governments likewise if you don't like
the results it's fun to blame a
particular player but
the problem isn't this or that player
they're all doing the same thing there's
no evidence to suggest that Germany is
any more aggressive in the way it plays
this game then is the United States the
problem isn't with the players the
problem is with the game we have a
winner-take-all dog-eat-dog global
capitalist system profit is everything
everybody's at everybody else's throats
every business turns to the government
to help them against others this is a
society that works like that and we
don't like some of the results but we
have this charming ability to quarrel
over the results but never question the
basic system out of which all of this
comes the struggle between mr. Trump and
there's Merkel between the United States
and Germany is a falling out if not
among thieves than among capitalists
struggling as they always have with
winners and losers depending on how
cleverly each government can collaborate
and how well the shifting winds of
popular desire preferences and
technologies play out within a system
that's called capitalism last story we
have time for today once again we are
all victims of the manipulation of yet
another market this time it's the oil
market it's remarkable it really is
remarkable meetings are held in which a
tiny number 20 30 40 representatives of
the richest oil producing companies in
the world countries excuse me and some
of the biggest oil companies in the
world get together and decide how to
make the most money for them out of
manipulating the oil markets
what do I mean manipulating deliberately
controlling the quantity of oil you
bring out of the ground so that given
the demand given the fact that an
enormous part of the world's economy
depends at least for the time being on
oil
you know what the demand is because the
societies would come to a stop if they
didn't have the oil that literally the
lights would go out you know what the
demand is so you can get together and
manipulate the quantity available to
drive up or down the price depending on
whatever your strategy at the moment is
I'm not concerned with the strategy I'm
concerned again with the system that
allows a tiny group of profit driven
countries and companies the leaders of
whom are among the richest people on
this planet American and foreign these
tiny institutions governments and big
oil companies and the tiny number of
super-rich people who sit atop them they
decide what the price of oil will be for
their profit we the mass of people the
99% we live with the results which will
determine what the cost of running our
automobile is what the cost of heating
our home is what the cost of the
plastics we use for everything is what
the cost of the fertilizer is it comes
from petroleum that we use to grow our
food the most fundamental qualities of
our lives the price of them and what
that means given the incomes we earn is
being determined by a tiny number of
people whose goal is not what we need
but the profits they wish to maximize
the leaders of Saudi Arabia the leaders
of ExxonMobil these are among the
richest people on this planet we give
them the authority in this system this
capitalist system we give them the
authority to dictate to us the cost and
price of what our lives depend on of
food transport or plastics the heat in
our homes it is the most undemocratic
economic arrangement one could think of
it's like putting your fate in the hands
of an emperor or a czar or a king
I really had thought we had gotten
beyond that as a modern civilization
we've come to the end of this program I
want to thank you all I want to urge you
please to make use of all the
information we've given you the websites
and so on so that you can partner with
us help us to reach people with what we
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years but I want more partners and I
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talking with you again next week
