the comes out of your retirement. that comes the lump sum that is left at the end of the day. those institutions that do that and those institutions that manage money and the fact there

is this relationship between wall street institutions that gets this access to cheaper rates and get access to federal reserve policy and influence the policy means they are influencing the stock market. from that perspective if they're betting on the stock market and then using the term betting as you use the term gambling, they also have since the weather it's going to go up or down more so than you might for for a numbef reasons for when is they had the volume so they can see how much volume is going in or out. also have the ability when things go down too much to go to the federal reserve and simple, there some problems going on, or look at our books, , or we could have credit issues going forward and ease my little bit and then i goes back into the stock market. the reason the stock market rises so quickly in that manner is because it's easy to chew it money into it and it's these are meant to come out which also makes it a very good -- that's not to say their company senate

have good value and are not producing and hiring people in providing input into the economy and buying shares in the stocks isn't necessarily a gamble. that's actually investing in the growth of that company. where the camera comes in is how they are all ultimately, their stocks are related to money coming in from outside source. it into the atmosphere of idea, so to freehand, the reality is right now and take her in the last financial crisis, it's the sort of external artificial injection of money into the financial system that then gets barred against and leverage into moving stocks ofcom moving real estate for those threat that might at the top that receive the bulk of that wealth back and then reposition into the market and move it up even further. that connotes a lack of transparency and the lack of a full sort of free-market celibate. what it does is it shows their system artificial stimulus to the market which has continued

to drive it. if you look at the relationship between bouts of quantitative easing of the federal other central banks by assets in the countries, you will see those are days in which their stock markets tend to cook up. by just more money coming and artificially and lifts it up. >> host: scott is in your city. you are on with author nomi prins, scott. >> caller: i wanted to talk to you about an idea i had come a set of ideas i've been developing recently. and that is if you were to construct a global wealth tax where 0.1% of the wealthy, the large corporations and the large foundations had to pay 7% a year if they do not pay with bank loans but don't have to pay 3% a year if you do pay with bank loans, then obviously to say 400 basis points on their wealth, all these guys would pay you

with bank loans and the banks would get two sets of fees. first of the able to charge fees to the wealthy for providing the loans, event a second set of these is the banks with package the loans into wealth tax collateralized loan obligation bonds, and the bond buyers would pay a fee for the packaging. so the wealth tax if you constructed it that way, the banks could make 200 billion, $600 billion a year for the $10 trillion a year plus in wealth tax money. and since you were talking earlier about how powerful bank lobby is and since this would be the most profitable event in history of the banking industry, the bank lobby would be the most ferocious proponent for the global wealth tax. >> host: the work in the

financial industry. >> caller: yeah, i'm a retired jp morgan banker and does hedge fund banker. and i'm an alumnus from columbia university. i am a mathematics. >> host: what made you come up with this point formula? what was the impetus? >> caller: cyber think about this a long time. so i have lived with this one for 11 years who graduated second in a classroom columbia. .. >> and, so you know i would

say, if you think the guy with $2 billion can't get a bank loan with low interest, and you have no concept of reality. >> we will have to leave it there. nomi prins, what did you hear? >> that's interesting because the last thing you said. it is true. someone with an extreme amount of wealth should figure out not just how to borrow cheaply in order to pay a tax but also just in general, if there was a tax more related to their actual wealth as opposed to leveraging that wealth. then they could easily figure out how to make extra money to cover their tax anyway point whether their borrowing to do it were that siphoning a portion of what they have and making more. i agree with you that someone that position, the more wealth you have, the less you'll feel a tax. that's true. if attacks were created in such a way that it was connected to

banks being able to manufacture or securitize to aggregate loans. that go to institutions or individuals. that would be something that would be an attractive way to buy into a wealth tax and make money out of it. i agree with that. on the other hand, i think if are going to have a wealth tax, we should look at it as more of a speculation tax. in the issue be related to accumulated wealth. it's hard to find for me forensic accounting perspective. the idea is if we are actually taxing transactions or buying a piece of the clo at a higher level than a capital gains tax bill that would be a way to sort of take some of that money back into the system.

and then use it for things that might be more beneficial. >> jamie from north carolina. good afternoon. >> good afternoon. thank you for taking my call. i have a question for your guest. it's a relatively simple question. about these rating agencies like moody. part of when the bottom fell out of the tub in 2008, all of these wall street mouth breather's were taking the so-called mortgage securities to places like moody's stamped every single one of them, aaa. can't lose. any full knows there's only so much commercial paper that will qualify as of that. did any of these people at

these rating agencies that stamped all of this toilet paper aaa, were any of them jailed or prosecuted? >> before we get an answer, were you affected by the 2008 crisis? >> not at all, i was lucky. >> thank you sir. nomi prins. >> thank you for that question and good that you weren't. first of all, the way the rating agencies work as you mentioned is that they get paid based on what their rating. the information they got that goes into securities that they are rating has to come from the institutions that want the securities rated. they should also have independent sources and in some cases they do. but the reality is, the payment relationship has been that a bank who wants a security rated goes to moody's or smp and so forth.

they get paid for that relationship and that staying thing. and it goes into the market. and that was definitely one of the main problems at the crux of the financial crisis. because not only did banks have bad loans coming in already. because we are talking about this, i just want to say, from someone who programmed the smallest details throughout my career at wall street. banks have information coming in all the diaper they know immediately if alone isn't going to pay or fits into liquid see all the fault. they know exactly what to pick. what happened was and what still happens today in creating these collateralized securities. the collateral are the loans. at the time they were mortgage loans. the banks are just picking enough bad loans to add to the good loans to get the good rating on the entire package. but to give them enough money because the bad loans generally are paying a higher interest

before they go bad than the good loans were paying. that's why they are subprime. their rates are higher to the borrower. so they are getting juice out of the entire process of creating a loan. showing it to the rating agency and the rating agency is rating that high. then what happens is, institutions who only are supposed to buy aaa rated securities are like cool. we will buy a aaa rated security. it will give us more return then a treasury bond that's also aaa rated. that's great. we will buy as much as we can. what else happened during the financial crisis which made it worse, they would borrow money from the same banks creating the securities in order to buy them. so now, these institutions that could only buy aaa are buying something labeled aaa that really isn't. there also borrowing money because they have a aaa against the aaa thing they just bought which they also to pay back the you multiply that number of

times. it's like going to vegas every time you lose 100 bucks, someone outlined you 100 bucks. you think you have another hundred bucks to play but ultimately you have to go repay everyone back. that's still the situation today except for the fact that the rating agencies now tend to be rating securities that have corporate loans in them as opposed to more of those mortgage learns or individual borrowers. what's now happened in the years since the financial crisis. the cost of money were so low and the companies are able to leverage themselves so much cheaply. if any of those go bust, it will create default. if there loans are packaged somewhere else and rated high and then they default, then that package is going to decrease in value very quickly again. so we're kind of in that situation again with rating agencies been to your other point, no one in rating agencies went to jail. no ceo running these institutions, despite billions

of dollars they paid in fines have gone to jail for fraud. you have to go back to my first book. people like ken lay at enron were sent to jail but not any of the people running the banking institutions involved in this process. >> steve from anchorage, alaska. hi steve. >> hello. thank you for taking my call. i very much appreciate having the opportunity to hear nomi prins today. my call is to park. i'd like to first of all go back to the point you made about the relationship between the social goods that provide the benefits to the society and the relationship of the economic system. it should be fundamentally a position to provide those services. in that context, i am wondering about the social order in which it is by law and judicial decision the application of

corporations to solely make profit for their shareholders. and the need to fundamentally - - that particular proposition. let me leave that to a second related proposition which is, if you're familiar with the governance of ghana, you may recognize a man named jerry rollins. he was the leader of the - - force who carried off a crew after watching years and years of elite and corporate corruption, deflecting monies away from the basic social goods to the society. he passed a law entitled, economic sabotage. with those laws, he indicted and found guilty those previous owners. why should we not have economic sabotage laws associated with the manner in which our economic institutions function? >> thank you steve. we will leave it there.

nomi prins. >> going back to what i was saying before and i don't know the ins and outs of what happened in ghana from what you're saying and from your question, again, the institutions that were involved in the financial crisis. just a look at our most recent example of massive fraud .2 which some of them admitted or settled. to the tune of multi-billions of dollars and for which the fraud still continues. you look at a bank like wells fargo, after the financial crisis, after paying tens of billions of dollars of - - for other types of misstatements and fraud. they went about creating fake accounts for their real customers and charged customers fees on those fake accounts which ultimately discovered to be fake. in the meantime, those people might just be on the edge of their paycheck for that month. 80 percent of the country is living paycheck to paycheck and it means something to have fees

or a credit score go against you or whatever it might be because a bank is basically committing fraud and stealing from you. these are all things that none of us should be proud of economically and we shouldn't subsidized institutions doing this.we should have individuals made to be responsible and liable but if there's still time for those crimes and they are tried. and it sticks cover they are guilty, that should be done. because the net result, the financial system of having such a way to be able to pay fines so easily. because of the laws to allow them to function the way there currently functioning. without any accountability is ultimately a detriment on multiple levels of society. the things they do to society affect incrementally so many people in our society and in our economy piece i agree. we need to have a better way of

making them legally responsible and enforcing laws and creating laws that don't allow these things to happen or at least to - - the regulars be more attuned to what's going on not just after the damage has been done to individuals. >> it was - - that - - came out. nomi prins was interviewed by this gentleman. >> iv member we had - - a couple years ago and i said, back in my state of vermont. the middle class is in a whole lot of trouble. people struggling and people losing their jobs. their income is going down. what's your sense of the economy, he said, the economy is doing really good. year after year, this is really astounding and a bit aggravating. your after year, we heard from

the bush administration that from their perspective, the economy was doing great. now explain to me how they could be leave the economy was doing great when the middle class was collapsing and we were getting closer and closer and closer to the edge of a major global financial crisis? >> because for them it was great and that's the problem. >> nomi prins, what's your relationship with senator sanders? >> since i was on the show which is one of the first times i met senator sanders. was here at c-span for that interview. i subsequently served on his federal reserve advisory council which was a bipartisan counsel. to take a look or at least talk to the fed at the time to talk about more transparency. in terms of what they were doing. because of that time they were subsidizing the banks in a tremendous way. and trying to influence them - - to think about these matters and where they could lead going forward in a better way. and i also contributed

recently, he had a bill out at the end of last year. where it relates to this too big to fail, with respect to derivatives which have been my expertise particularly when i was on wall street. to ensure banks that have too much of a concentration of two mini derivatives on their books. they are most likely to be at the helm staring at the next financial crisis would have to reduce their size. reduce their footprint by a certain amount. that's a very large bank we are subsidizing. for financial crisis that control most of the not surprising because i think

members on both sides of the aisle tend to think that when bank say we are okay now, we've got this. that it's true. and that's the situation in which we find ourselves today. >> folks on the hill tweets to you, please comment on the trump administration trying to influence fed policy. how much influence does president trump have on the fed? is that a goodor bad thing? by the way, monetary policy set by the treasury department would be overtly political . >> it's interesting because, just going back to the history of the creation of the fed. it was effectively created as a marriage between politics and finance. it really was a wall street working with the senate finance committee to create an institution that could help them in times of trouble. it wasn't like that happen because - - [indiscernible].

if you consider that was the initial sort of - - of the fed. it's done monetary policy and set rates to combat inflation or price activities going forward. since then. that's one element. if we look at what's happening today, there's still a relationship even though it was created as an independent body. where its members are institutions and it lives in washington. it's very hard to really think of it as an independent body but it wasn't created independently. it's supposed to be independent. just from the sheer pragmatics of it, it isn't really. that said, i think when president trump talked about that there should be rate hikes at the end of last year.what he was looking at, i think, was

less the economy and more the markets. as i was talking about before. he doesn't want the markets to go down on his watch anymore then president obama wanted the markets to go down on his watch.it's just that he is a much more public way of tweeting his opinion then happened under the obama administration where rates didn't rise at all. but we have now is in very publicly having talked about there shouldn't be any rate hikes and it turned out that chairman jerome powell and the committee at the fed decided not to raise rates for the rest of this year. so there is that relationship and is it because of trump? i don't know but i think what it's because of is ultimately, they are looking at the same things been looking at data and the markets and looking at not on their watch having another financial crisis. in that respect, no go. when president trump said recently that they should be cutting rates immediately. after larry kudlow and then a week later, president trump

did. that's going further in the same process. you did this before, you should do this again. and i think again, even though the economy is swelling but it's not necessarily because o the economy. it's because of the easier way to look at how money is impacting headlines .which is how it's impacting the stock market. which i think they both look at. >> nomi prins, with your background and your philosophy, what do you think when you see president trump criticize the fed chair? >> from the standpoint he put the fed chair in his position. it's odd. but i mean, he's criticized other people he's appointed. after he's appointed them. if they haven't done what he's wanted them to do. but, having looked at german powell's past votes on interest rates in general. until the she basically voted

with the rest of the committee. he voted with janet yellen. in fact, he only had a couple rate hikes under his time when janet yellen started under her time. he would have seen that before criticizing his actual policy. i think it's interesting on a personal level that you appoint someone that you then criticize because they're not doing what you want them to do. i think he wants them to do what he wants them to do more quickly.as possibly with other entities in washington. but i also think it's just - - out of alignment that he has looking at the markets. and ultimately, they're coming to the thin conclusion point which is that there might possibly be a fed cut in rates by the end of this year. and if it happens, then chairman powell will say it's because of data. and president trump will say

it's because he toldhim so. the net result will be the same . >> - - is in lexington, mississippi and you are on with author nomi prins. >> thank you for taking my call. my name is - - and i'm a primary care physicianwho happen to come to mississippi . my issues are very complicated but i came here to get my own green card which took me almost 3 years to get a green card. because my son is a u.s. citizen. so what i've seen here and i challenge anybody in the united states of america to visit and see the other suffering of the american people in mississippi. as a physician, that's my observation of 25 years. a. d, who is going to safeguard the american people who pick up the garbage, work in the hospital as janitors who takes care. when they can become sick, there's no way they can be

carried upon. if they become sick and need disability, it takes months. if something happens to these people, they barely get something where they have to make a choice between paying for the medicine or their own food. also, all the philanthropic people and government agencies. why don't someone come visit here, i'm available to give them a tour. i'm an outsider looking inside. this is a great country because of the scholastic fairness. i came to america because of the scholastic fairness. if you lose the scholastic fairness and give people the understanding that this it's a free party. it's not a free party. i studied and then i was given an education in america. >> we will live it there. i apologize. >> what you are talking about is again, something that unfortunately is not just the

underbelly of america. which is great as a country on the whole. but it's also prevalent throughout the country. i remember when i was writing my second book, after katrina. that hurricane katrina had happened and i spent time in louisiana and mississippi. of course that was after an actual devastation. but it was apparent then, just living on the edge to begin with and then compounding that with a natural disaster creates devastation that goes past any of the individuals involved. to their families and people that work with them, to companies that rely on those people for their own benefit and so forth. i think what you're talking about for the healthcare perspective that you do. is that as well. people don't understand that if we don't have a way from an

economic perspective. given the massive amount of wealth we have of the country. to support the people that support not just themselves and damaged but others in need of medical care. then on multiple levels, we are hurting ourselves. if someone goes into a hospital and they can be the richest person in the world themselves. they can have access to the best private health insurance that there is out there. but if they're being cared for by people who can't afford their own health care or have to choose between food and that if there's a situation for their families or themselves. then that's a massive hole in our system. i believe there is and primarily because in many ways, we do subsidize so many financial activities. that we have the ability to create a way to help through an

extended medicare for all program or an extended disability program. people have already put in and appropriated in a way that actually looks more at areas such as yours and throughout the country. >> and from her book, jack. nomi prins writes, let's make no mistake about this. insurance companies are middlemen.their sole job is to connect the dots thatstand between you and your medical treatment .more often than not, it seems like their job is actually to create red tape. between you and your wallet and why do we put up with them? >>) that was written, that book came out in 2006 i think. that was before our conversations about whether medicare for all, obamacare. whatever you call it. the reality is, insurance companies are private brokers. and they get paid a lot of money and their shareholders

make a lot of money in the process of separating people from their premiums without a lot of limits. or some states with any limit really. just what the market can bear. ultimately, that means people don't get the healthcare they need in order to sustain not just themselves, but all the levels in the country of individuals who rely on them. >> travis, eagle river, alaska. >> thanks so much for taking my call. it's fascinating listening to nomi prins and your other callers. it's interesting when you look at economic fit i think a lot of what nomi prins is touching on from the free market standpoint. a lot of this has been presented previously by people like - - talking about the effects of money on the economy.the effects of too much easy money in the banking

system. you look at the financial crisis in 2008, i think it's probably a pretty good case study you have too much free currency flying around. i just kind of, trying to figure out where nomi prins sits on these issues. it seems like in some aspects, she's in favor of the free market. not in favor of too much currency but then she has these socialistic tendencies. i guess one of my questions would be, do you think we should tend toward commodity money and perhaps get back to a gold standard or do you think we should continue on with this fiat currency we have. know go i will just - - leave it there.>> he kind of stole my thunder. i was going to close with that when we were done. i didn't associate you with frederick hayek. >> which interesting about your

statements, i think money is very complex. what we do with the tens to get labeled under different sorts of isms. from the standpoint of the free market, i don't think we have free markets. i think it's a theoretical construct by which - - the definition for which would be full transparency and full participation by all actors in the market. and this relates to my theories about the fed or fiat currency or subsidizing the main financial actors in that environment. you by definition, rigged the market. if you're subsidizing one level and that's the one that has the most access and volume and influence over the market. we get away from free markets

in general just from a practicality standpoint by virtue of how our monetary system has been constructed. that said, because you mention in terms of my thoughts about how society should have more of the economic benefits that are produced by that society. to sort of help it whether that's from healthcare standpoint or security, police, firemen, education and so forth. i think that ultimately allows people to be responsible to the economy. from individual, to local and small business and so forth. in a way i think is more secure for everyone involved. in terms of the gold standard. because it is a question that comes up from a lot of people that have read my books particularly , it takes a village, "all the president's bankers" and "collusion: how central bankers rigged the world".

one of the things that happened when the united states was taken off of the gold standard was that all of a sudden banks - - there's no anchor to the financial system.there's no currency anchor to the dollar and by subsequent, just definition. two other currencies outside of the dollar. there was nothing anchoring that money. was pushed primarily by the banks because they knew that. they knew it was much easier to create money if you didn't have to also connect it to some hard asset or other standard. you can just do more.it was a way to - - of deregulating the monetary system. i don't think from the sheer standpoint of pragmatism that

were going back to a gold standard. in fact, been red and i i have a lot of the things he says specifically to congress in collusion about the gold standard. he went on the defense against the gold standard being brought back when no one was asking him that question. when the financial crisis was at its height. which is interesting because it was basically saying, we need to create money right now so this is not the time to be talking about pegging it. that said, there are central banks that do stockpile more gold. not that we will go back to a gold standard but it could be a more global currency or benchmark that would include pieces of the gold standard. to simply create dollars and the money just at will. >> lawrence tweets, can you

explain were the fed gets its initial funding for its balance sheets? does congress appropriated? >> congress appropriates things like how it pays its people and more the logistic types of things. it's created like a corporation and it gives shares like a corporation. so that the members are like shareholders in this corporation. based on that and the reserves they put onto the balance sheet of the federal reserve. it's how the fed ultimately gets the money to utilize that. that said, it's also an electronic process now. used to be there were reserves where there was gold put against federal reserve notes. they would use those as collateral and issue notes on the back of that. now we can be created electronically. through 1941, there were reports from the fed that

talked about how the member banks, how many shares they owned and how much they were worth and how much they were putting in for them. those reports haven't been available since world war ii. for the most part, it's the larger banks who have more of the percentage and also puts in more of the reserves to be able to operate. >> robert. temecula, california. please go ahead. you are on booktv with author nomi prins. >> hello. i am blind so hopefully your book will have an audio subscription. i will be on the devils advocate side. the way i look at california conversely and arguably. they say it has the sixth largest economy in the world. that's silicon valley. sixth largest point yet we have the highest rate of welfare and poverty than any other state. they say silicon valley takes its money and takes it out of

the country but they won't even invest in our banks. that really worries me. i think you're more liberal i would say. i have no problem with that but as long as the money gets distributed right. it seems that silicon valley and the way they run out of our country with the money. you seem to argue the point against wall street but you don't say anything about silicon valley. what would you do about that? >> robert, thank you very much. audio, have you recorded audio versions?>> there are audio versions to all of my books. atleast the last three books that i know of. in fact, the one for collusion , which is the most recent book, i think is phenomenal. >> did you do the audio yourself? >> i didn't.

i know it was done. a lot of names in collusion. a lot of chinese and japanese names. and the woman who actually does the audio spent a lot of time on the language, making sure things were accurate as well as making it what could be considered dry, i'm very entertaining topic. she did a good job on that. hopefully you will be able to listen to those. silicon valley is interesting because, when you talk about the wall street banks and the influences they've had. it's been over a long period of our history. the evolution of our country and political system. our dominance as a superpower. so many other things have happened. a lot of the tech companies are new to that aspect. that said, i think last year

they overtook wall street in terms of lobbying money and what they were pouring in to get what they wanted from a legislative or policy perspective for their countries as they grow. certainly, many of them don't pay any taxes. president trump talked about getting taxes back on shore. president obama talked about getting taxes back on show. president bush talked about getting those taxes back on shore before google was google and facebook was facebook. this has been a problem in general particularly in technology where the work is done - - you're not building a bridge and bringing all of this construction aspect and physical people and everything else. you can actually do these jobs and multiple different places. and it's easy to create different kinds of hubs in different countries and not pay taxes. i do think that's a problem. i think if an individual is basically paying, and this is

data from our last. if you look at the number of individuals in the country be what we are paying in terms of multiple taxes. a combination of income taxes, social security taxes and so forth into the country. what corporations pay as a percentage of revenue. the actual money that goes to the treasury and gets appropriated through the budget process and washington been is only - - in the last 10 years, somewhere between 7-eleven percent of all the money that comes into washington. on that basis, individuals are paying a lot more and small business owners a lot more than these corporations are paying which is a small proportion. i believe that's wrong. i think companies that have the benefit of the american population of workers and even the global environment you

should be paying more taxes to the country in which there actually domicile but not the country which they on paper existed. >> nomi prins, a lot of email, tweets and facebook comments along this line. as a retiree with investments, how can i best protect myself? that's from george. several comments like that. and then a follow-up, that's george in maryland and this is george in florida. what do you do with your money? >> those are great questions. on the retiree side, or even if you're younger but looking at the fact you want to live as long into your retirement and as long as possible. you'll need to finance that. i think there's a couple things. one is the older you get, the more secure what you have

should be. it's hard now because rates are so low. if you have retirement money in a savings account with j.p. morgan and chase, you are now getting a quarter percent interest on that. for example, if you put that retirement money into something like an american express - - or an aspiration.com bank. online. and that is getting 2.1-2.2 interest. and i do this. i don't have savings accounts in any of the large banks in this country because they just don't pay enough relative to other places i can put that savings. so that's one example of what i would recommend for secure money for a retiree. in terms of 401(k) plans or pension plans, there's a couple things .1 is i think you should

always be aware of what you have and how it's changing on a regular basis. a lot of people look at their statements when something bad or good happens. you're not monitoring as their changing. i think what you might see as you monitor and they change, is that sometimes your money is managed by companies that make money off of effectively treating your money. and your 401(k) plan or pension plan has to basically pay for the charge of executing each transaction. that they execute against your account. it might not be you individually but when your account lives. it's important to have control of your 401(k) but if you are having an outside manager. have it be someone who is a fiduciary. someone responsible to your money and not necessarily to a major company they might be working for. or a bank that might also have an asset management element that your 401(k) is housed with. so therefore, it trades with what the bank wanted to trade

that even though it's not supposed to. that's kind of what happens and it loses less in that process. i think those are two things. i look at my money religiously in that respect. one thing i will tell you is you make a lot more money on wall street then you make as a journalist. that's just a thing out there. what that means is it's important for me to preserve what i have. i do that by being very careful about not giving it away first off. money that i know i want to keep with me, having it rated as high as it can in terms of interest and make sure i'm not paying fees and extra things along the way. those little adjustments or even looking at your credit cards and getting them down to zero or nothing. or transferring balances but those actually make you money especially when you compounded that. getting rid of your costs is

huge. >> from nomi prins's book, jack. she writes, banks spend hours determining how to use your relationship with them to suck money from you. take sees, there's no reason banks have to charge people to access their own money. yet, what happens if you can't maintain a minimum balance? you pay a fee. don't do direct deposit because you need the cash from your paycheck immediately? pay a fee. next caller, david. hot springs village, arkansas. >> hello. i'm interested in the history of goldman sachs and therefore i read william goldman's book. i'm wondering if you read it. the thing that struck me about it is that - - legendary principal partner there, was able to get on the board of at least a dozen of the fortune 500, maybe even the fortune 100

companies. and then come back and trade on the information heat beginning at the board meetings. i was wondering if you had read that book and what you think of that. my other question is very simple. do you think thomas picketing has nailed it? thank you. >> i think i review that book for the daily beast back when it came out. so yes i did. it's a very well researched. it's a good book. i think his name is william - - anyway. we will get it. sorry about that however, one of the things that happened in the initial goldman sachs. it's a fascinating set of relationships. sidney weinberg who was around at the time of the crash in 1929. he was running goldman sachs as it was participating in a lot

of what were culturalist. now they are called clo's. conglomerations of stocks and other securities that might not be doing that well and need to have stories told about them in order to get people to buy them. which lost all of their value when the market crashed in 1929. the way sidney weinberg thought he could get through this was to become friends with the governor of new york. a man named franklin delano roosevelt who ultimately became the president of the country. why did president roosevelt become president roosevelt? one of the things he had with sydney one burke and a bunch of people in the business community that weinberg aggregated. contributed to his campaign. even though he's considered a traitor to his class. the reality is if you follow the money back to his initial campaign and his initial coming into office. is that sydney one burke and another fellow named joe kennedy. were helping them to create

money. weinberg and juergen kennedy in california. as a result, fdr appointed a business council on which he put the head, sidney weinberg. so he redeemed goldman and wall street in the eyes of fdr and the country in a way. by getting his friend, that he invested with and that invested with him to basically support the incoming president and his other writing on the t lease. that kind of thing has continued throughout time since. there's a tremendous of interlocking board memberships between institutions. and also a vast percentage of people in congress on stocks in companies. it doesn't take a lot of scientist to figure out how they related to policy. that those very, as people might be promoting.

so that still happens. >> phil, portland, oregon. please go ahead with your question or comment for nomi prins. >> thank you c-span for taking my call. where to begin after all you said been . can the president get the 10 percent to pay the fare share tax? to reconstruct america's infrastructure? the mercer's, produce, waltons, they all laugh in america's face. americans like you and me that try to keep as much money as they can. can a president get 10 percent from the wealthy without creating a civil war in the house? >> that's an interesting question because under this administration who have kind of gone the opposite way in terms of taxes. the math would work better on

that kind of attacks. a more of a proportion tax throughout the entire country. so that the wealthier pay up to a certain amount. a higher percentage into the tax system and beyond that, a different percentage perhaps. but that is a way to bring money into the treasury department which ultimately is where the money is taken into the budget process that ultimately, that money can get appropriated into things like infrastructure we have a tremendous infrastructure deficit in this country. everyone was in the process trying to get elected last election including president trump talked about paying money into infrastructure. it's a problem we have. bridges we had that are falling apart and ports that are old and railways that are sloping hospitals in need of better equipment or roads to get to them or whatever it might be. again, that's a significant problem for the country.

and retrieving money from companies or the wealthy that use more of those benefits. because they ultimately, depending on what they're running. could be utilizing the infrastructure they need to would actually benefit them as well. back when president eisenhower was president, they had a lot of bankers and people around him that prompt him into that position. he came up with a plan to build our nation's highways. he came up with that plan and he raised taxes and built the highways and he presented it over a number of economic - - not just for the people at the top. but throughout the rest of the country been an anecdote i found going through a lot of files. i spent time a lot of time in kansas looking at president eisenhower's notes and documents from that period of history. there was a person who was a

banker at the morgan bank at the time. one of the most powerful bank still and at that time. was said to president eisenhower in a letter. they said look, if you create a tax system whereby those of us that is and he was rich.the people who have less money can keep more of their money and the people who had more money have to pay a little bit more into the system. ultimately, you have a stronger economy. he was a millionaire working one of the major banks in the country. this was a letter he wrote to eisenhower where he advocated this kind of a more proportionate tax system because he believed the more money that was in people's pockets throughout the country, the better ultimately, the entire economy will be it will lift those people and the wealthy people at the top of that. that was one of the things inside the philosophy for the

highway program. it wasn't the only thing. but what eisenhower did was listen. a lot of people communicated a lot of letters. he took people's opinions very seriously. so this was something that worked for the benefit of the country and something that was postulated by its wealthiest members. >> this is from the preface of all the presidents bankers. you talk about your research. all of the national archives and records administration libraries for fdr through carter have exceedingly assessable and well organized information with consistent classifications. they were a pleasure to peru's and i lost myself for days and all of them. after reagan took office, records became less available. at the clinton library in little rock, i learned some records may never be uncovered without the benefit of a freedom of information act request. not merely for national security reasons, but because the commitment to organize such a vast amount of material is not what it was before the

1980s. as such, the bulk of information that might be revealed by the request that i filed at the reagan, george h.w. bush and clinton library's was not available. >> it's interesting because since that time, i actually, i did file a request with the clinton library. and with the george w. bush library. senior. i wound up ultimately getting some of those requests back to me from the clinton library. and it's interesting it took a number of years. they did respond to some of them but they didn't respond to others. what i had studied or tried to get that at the clinton library is what happened into the repeal of the - - act in 1999. there was a lot of activity going on back and forth between in particular, the citibank.

and the clinton administration and congress and so forth. what i was trying to do because it was happening during clinton's administration, was get as much as that as i could. what i found, because the classification systems in general in the presidential library became more difficult to access. and the funding became less so librarians had more difficulty with some of it was classified. it was difficult. ultimately, they got me some material after the book came out. and i used some of the in a paperback version. some of it is actually still coming in. not all of it is exactly what i asked. even though i did get some material back from clinton's library, i haven't got it back from the bush one point even from the clinton library, it's become difficult. i guess is going forward in time, i think i talked about

this at the end of "all the president's bankers". when you get to the obama or trump administration or whoever we have going forward. it becomes harder to really get access to that information because now it's electronic and there's all sorts of national security labels. all sorts of redactions. every piece of every email has to go through analysis as to whether it's a security risk to even get basically the access that a - - would require. it's difficult at times have changed. >> nomi prins, i know this is in your area of writing. but did george washington have a relationship with bankers? >> that is an interesting question. i don't know if he did. i know john adams did have a relationship with bankers. in the adams family in general in terms of financing their own rise. thomas jefferson as well but i'm not entirely sure about george washington. someone had to finance some of those wars.

in a lot of cases, even the initial war that created our country. you had to have financing to do that. often times, it was financiers involved with the army and ultimately, the government who helped to provide some of that. >> and during world war ii, were banks important to fdr? >> banks were very important in world war ii. if we look at the memories of that in terms of war bonds that were issued through the banks to individuals. i looked up documents where you could see at the put out - - ads being put out. thing open up an account, get a war bond certificate. all sorts of deals that were being sort of run by banks as well as providing their own money into the war effort. as well as directing some of that war effort. different banks provided different funds ii, there's a

lot of communication going back-and-forth between the people running these institutions. like tom lamont who was running morgan bank at the time and the presidents staff as well as fdr. >> before we leave collusion, what's the role of the imf and the world bank and the world money situation? >> talking about coming out of world war ii, the idea was in the meeting was held in 1944 where the leaders of the international sort of community came together to talk about how

to fund. ultimately the reparations that needed to be done in the wake of war. so the argument for the international monetary fund and the world bank came out of two things. one to have a currency element that could work throughout the world so we could basically look at financing what were at the time, a lot of devastations and money required for those around the world because of world war ii for the war. by extension, other countries who had suffered as of the economic downturns that were caused by the war. that made - - needed funding. and that's changed having funding based on development in developing countries and helping with anything down to building a waterway from a village to a major river to more complex and larger funded programs. and these monetary system components are also run by

different individuals in different parts of the world the idea there and international pace of development. the world bank was one of the second - - was run by a name man named - -. would go out to the public and they would try to raise money that would go back to the world bank that the bank could then use for projects that they deemed appropriate or necessary. then the world bank would find the tax teams and distribute those money to those particular projects. >> one final character before we run out of time that you spend a lot of time with. david rockefeller. >> david rockefeller is very interesting because he was at the crux of a major shift that happened throughout the relationship between baking and washington and the presidency.

- - banking. he comes from a time where there was a depression and his family owned a significant portion of the rockefeller eldridge the ãabby rockefeller and windsor had children. they became david rockefeller, nelson rockefeller. so that the family itself was fascinating and i'm summarizing but they go through multiple decades of this family being involved. elements of wall street, elements of global policy. nelson rockefeller became the vice president while david rockefeller was running chase, which at the time was a major bank. it was a major power player at chase. but david rockefeller during his time as he was rising to become the chairman of chase, was also working more outwardly

with other foreign policy initiatives. more closely with the middle east and finding ways for middle east money. money that was made out of oil to be used as currency, as collateral for loans that chase could make to latin america or other developing countries and make money off of that. therefore a very symbiotic relationship and influence chain. they threw him, had this ability to access moneycoming from an external place . and linda to another external placement that way to take themselves into a position where they could control what the government was doing as opposed to having to be a team player. because they had this extra pot of money coming from somewhere else. he was also an advocate of going off the gold standard during that period to allow banks to have larger access

and had grown through that relationship ultimately to become the head of the world bank and the head of chase. a lot of individuals that move between politics and global monetary systems and banks and society, all titan somehow to david rockefeller. >> she tells that story in her book called, "all the president's bankers". nomi prins in our last minute, let's bring these pieces together from the last two hours. what interview is the solution to this hundred plus years of banking regulation law and the government? >> it's a couple pieces .1 is

we do have to reinstate - - we do have to separate not just our banking system but globally. from the money that's put in people's deposits and through their loans and the credit they require for themselves and small businesses or what have you. because without doing that, and it's important to make that split. we will have a situation where the federal reserve and other central banks will have no choice in their policies but to continue to subsidize the very risk. so these institutions placed upon society while they are saying everything is okay. they always will say everything is okay, particularly if they're not the ones holding the bag on the other side. i think that's one major thing that needs to be done. from that, everything aligns.