peter has devoted his career as professor and writer to, helping expose issues and inequities

that threaten our planet. i cannot think of a better for book passage than to promote this book. we are honored to host peter for the titans of capital how concentrated wealth threatens humanity. now, over the past decade, fewer and larger investment companies have taken over the management of wealth owned by the world's super rich. and is to the detriment of everyone else. as well as the global environment. while this concentration benefits a few. it also increases global inequity. starvation and civil unrest threatening. the lives of the hundreds of millions of people. it also exacerbates global warming and the climate crisis. so a lot of bad things. peter phillips is a professor of political at sonoma state university, although he recently retired, is that correct? political, political sociology. all right. yes.

recently retired and president of freedom foundation. from 2023 to 2017. he's been editor and coeditor of 14 editions of censored. he is the author of giant the power elite. that was in 2018. and he did present here a book passage. he was co-host of the weekly project censored show on pacifica radio with mickey huff from 2010 to 2017. is the winner of firecracker alternative book award for the best political the pen censorship award from 2008 and the pillar human award from the national of whistleblowers. got quite a resume. we are to have him on our humble marin county book passage stage. let's give a very warm welcome. a talented speaker, writer, presenter mr. peter phillips. well, thank you very much,

cheryl and book passages. i think i was here john nance. that would have at least five years ago and i i've subset quietly have retired from sonoma state years ago. we lived in albuquerque, which was kind of fun for a couple of years. then my wife and i looked at each other, let's go home. so now we're back in, california and, and happy to be back. titans of capital updates and expands on my earlier book giants and giants identified 199 directors of the world, 17 top asset management companies. they're ones that were trillion dollar companies or 17 of them, and they managed collectively 1 trillion in 2017. now, five years later, in titans of capital capital.

i examine the ongoing rapid of global capital and how fewer and larger companies now manage the excess financial wealth of. the 2.5% 0.05%, 40 million people. the richest people in the world. the number of trillion dollar capital investment companies has nearly doubled since 79. and there are now 31 in 1922 or 22. and they collectively manage. $83 trillion worth of capital wealth wealth. these are the they're the core of global capital wealth. and the top ten, the ones i'm going to talk the most about today, manage $50 trillion of combined assets. so we talk about capital wealth, what we as money. this is essentially excess money that people have when they it over to an investment company to

invest for them so they get a return on it and estimates that right now there's about $100 trillion of excess capital like that that's being by different companies by 5% of that, as is china china's money. but they are small. they're investment levels are much smaller than ours. and capitalism. is protects private ownership, property, busins d personal wealth. western governments control legal and police mechanisms that, ensure wealth remains privately owned, and allows the rich to amass even greater wealth. titans. this book refers to the individuals individuals who serve on the board of directors of the ten largest capital management companies in the world. these directors control, i said

$50 trillion. the concept of titans comes, of course, from the from the family of greek. greek mythology, your gods. but merriam-webster's dictionary defines titan as one that is gigantic in or power and that stands out for greatness and achievement. so under capitalism, privately wealth is admired and protected by governmental intelligence agencies and the military power as a vital interest of the empire. i believe that this is very fitting then to apply the term titans to, these these individuals. there's 117 of them and that are managed managing the money for. the. 40 million people. this next graph shows how each of these top ten companies has doubled or nearly doubled their assumed assets under management and and that's just in five

years. the only that didn't was jpmorgan chase and their exclamation near, as i can tell is that they were just more focused on banking and and bank issues than they were on expanding their aims. but the ten companies together. and this is all in figures nine of 22 black rock was at 9.5 trillion. vanguard at 8.1. ubs in switzerland at 4.3. but bellamy management at 4.5. state street four. morgan stanley at 3.3. jpmorgan chase. they still, you know, almost $3 trillion that they were managing amundi and france at 5 trillion. allianz and allianz owns pimco, which pimco is a u.s. investment

company, but they totally bought out by allianz. and at 4.8 trillion, then capital 2.7 capital group privately held at there. kind of an interesting outlier in of a lot of the elite factions there's on the chart it shows that the um um. was $49 trillion in 22 or 26 trillion of the from these companies. so that's nearly double and and in three i looked up just recently blackrock now at 10.4 and vanguard's at 9.3 so there's an extra trillion you plus right there. so we know growing and expanding quite rapidly. and the global. 0.505% represents 40 million people. this includes.

6 million millionaires, usually multiples millionaires and 2600 billionaires. these are people who turn over their excess investment management firms like blackrock, jpmorgan chase. so these institutions of capitalism are property, business and personal wealth. and western governments control legal and policing mechanisms to ensure that wealth remains privately owned and allows the rich to amass even greater wealth according to money. digest. in january of 24, the era was $3 trillion of capital and we now know that it's closer to 100. the richest 1% grabbed nearly two thirds of all new wealth or, $40 trillion that was created since 2020. so that's twice as much money as the bottom 90%. 99% of the people in the world

gather. so this wealth is the increased concentration of wealth as accelerate weighted and continues to accelerate. it's also it's shocking and most people it's just not talked about. according to oxfam, world's billionaires alone have more. and 4.6 billion people who make up 60% of the planet's population. so the use of the top ten companies is a sociological construct so i can do a comparative analysis of increasingly concentrated global. i could easily have included goldman sachs, which number 11 there. they have 2.7 trillion. they have their a top management company. their people are heavily involved policy planning and all of but using ten is going be a sociological representative sample of elite capital

management worldwide. the titans of delta part of this book are real people for whom capitalism provides a unique opportunity, bring either havoc or human betterment to world. unfortunately its havoc has become a global with global warming, world poverty and threats of war. it is currently being manifested more broadly. the titans are essentially trapped by a structural demands of capitalism that require continued growth and profitable returns on the 50 trillion they manage. so they're constantly looking for new places, invest or hoping to create them politically in some in in some cases. global inequality is never accidental. rather a deliberate circumstance encouraged to maintain owned and controlled by tiny elites via their capital decisions and policy organizations. funded by tightened capital.

the new study in lancet global on global health, reported 2024 that more than half the people in the world suffer from some form malnutrition. they lack sufficient vitamins or minerals in their diets which could lead to health issues stunted growth of children, poor nutrition kills point million children under five annually. oxfam calculates that inequality in the world is rapidly. increasing. 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation exceeds income. oxfam data shows that at least. 21,000 people die daily in world from inequality malnutrition, starvation or inadequate health care for very simple diseases. this is a human. 21,000 a day that.

starvation is mostly the result of people having too little money to purchase food for their families. these families lack resources requiring the nutrition needed to keep their children and healthy. even in the u.s. department of agriculture. shows that in 2021, some 118 million americans lived in food households, with family members skipping meals or eating less or relying on food banks. so this is the mom with kids who says, i'm not hungry tonight, get children. you know, and just skips it. half the world's population lives on $6.85 a day. extreme poverty is listed at 2.5 or $2 or $0.15 a day by the u.n. was, slowly declining over three decades. up to the pandemic by. but this trend was reversed, of course, in 2020.

and at this point inequality has amplified. wealth concentration continues to accelerate. the 1% than the rest of us have declined. 180 million new people were moved into poverty in the last four years. think trying to live on $2.15 a day. the only place that didn't happen was china, which is often shocking to many people. but china now has completely eliminated extreme poverty. they did that deliberately and but they still have 600 million people that live on $5 a day. so they're still pretty poor, but they deliberately got out of the extreme poverty. in fact, as the extreme poverty in china was declining, that's how we saw the decline overall. and the extreme was continued to

grow in the west and in europe europe, crown chronic problem. chronic hunger is mostly a problem. of inadequate food distribution. one third of all food produced in. the world is wasted and lost. there are four global grain companies. cargill. based in delaware. archer daniels midland based in chicago. cargill is as. 165 billion. i throw mentioned in there just to part with what i'm talking about people but and now and and

the other let's see bungie which is incorporated bermuda is st louis. there are 67 billion in grains and dreyfus company based in netherlands is 35 billion. so the guardian in 22 reported that these four companies control 70 to 90% of the global grain trade just so for they they've made windfall profits from rocketing food prices, which increased more than 20% in 2020 to the family. privately controls, their own 40 and their own company, and they have 14 family members listed in the forbes list. the major shareholders of archer daniels midland are the titans. vanguard has 7 billion. their capital group 4.5 state street fight 3 billion and blackrock 2 billion. so they're the major

shareholders and archer daniels midland title and shareholder and also in shareholders and bungee which is vanguard at 2.7 billion. capital has almost 2 billion. blackrock 800 million. fidelity 400 million. state street 300 million. so it's clear that the titans, these ten investment companies have a major impact on the price of food and profit are literally profiting from world starvation, or at least consequences of world starvation. now, these top ten companies are closely invested in each other. across investments among titans amount to over $320 billion a year. so this implies as a practice of

closely monitoring other's policies and a commonality of mutual interests, market maintenance and growth. i saw that in years ago, too. and giants lacrosse investments in the big the big companies and so it's actually increased. now i do not believe or claim that any titan is engaged in illegal activities and i name all hundred 17 of them by name and have short bios on of them in the book only that they have legal control over enormous amounts of private capital. and while actors fulfill fiduciary responsibilities to i strongly believe that should be making decisions that improve quality of life for all human beings.

quality life. each titan is paid hundreds, thousands of dollars for their board service. they receive fe and discounted shares of stock in the companies quickly exceeding millions of dollars. the fact there were 17 titans who when they before got on the board, they weren't they were just barely millionaires or close to it. immediately. you're a millionaire. if a titan board member just in a year, you'll have stocks for free. that those amounts of the 117 titans, 86% are white, mostly from the u.s. and europe. men are 65% of the titans, 16 are people of color. well, can be determined that there are thousands of people with personal wealth equal to or greater than the individual.

113 titans. what makes significant is responsibility for investment decisions on the $50 trillion of surplus money. the titans come from. 21 countries. two thirds of which are from the united states. france's with 17 members, germany and italy have five each. canada and switzerland, three each. japan has two and there's one. the rest are spread around the world. one person from romania, austria, spain bulgaria, singapore, china, ireland, india, australia, new zealand, sweden, mexico and kuwait. now the titans generally know other personally or know of each other. they do business together. they hold significant personal wealth and share education and lifestyle backgrounds.

they also sit on the boards of directors 133 major in addition to the two, the giant companies, the annual from these 133 corporate issues exceed $5.4 trillion. so these and 33 companies are titans serve on their board of directors have a higher collective revenue than the gdp. gdp of all the nations of the world except the u.s., china and japan. but just just think about that. i mean, it's just, you know, it's kind of mind boggling. titan serve on a number of non governmental policy organizations and form new ones as needs arise. so we see titans represented in the commission, the council on foreign relations, the world economic forum. they're very strong. they're the business council

business roundtable. these are the big ones in. the in the united states. they share a common ideological identity as engineers of global capitalism. they hold the mistaken belief that their way of life and the continuous growth of capital is best for all humankind. they really believe that. or that, you know, will continue and it's going to get better. the typical titan among 170 lists in the book and i kind of made the summary, but there is a married heterosexual man or woman with children, 55 to 70 years of age assets between five and ten and 20 million. the born in the united states, raised in a wealthy families and attended private university. they held master's or law degree. they serve on the board of directors, two or more publicly traded companies and earning more than $400,000 for the service in to the stock options.

and they serve on two or more social policy. so serving as one of the top ten investment companies is as a as as basically a in of a successful career people invited or ceo is high corporate officials who have an ax an awareness of capital investment funds they take seriously. there are a few additional responsibilities. the maximized returns on capital investment under the control. those who bought in the united states likely your members of the republican party or democrats who are strongly pro-business i saw the head donations to both parties quite quite openly. they believe in a capitalist of free enterprise will view socialism communism as abhorrent global threats. they are generally aware of the socio economic threats posed by climate change, but believe that

effective mitigations can be developed without limiting returns on global capital. they support strong u.s. military with justified. to nato allies. they believe in the world economic forum's stakeholder capitalism is a solution to promoting better human global human rights. i have a picture of a corporate jet. they mostly in corporate jets never seen one before larry. i gave an example of a couple here larry. think who's ceo blackrock. he was formerly at first boston. he serves at the museum of modern art is a trustee that is on the board of directors for the world economic forum in davos. he's on international business

council. the business is director. he's a council on the council of foreign relations. he's a trustee at new york university. he grew up in los angeles. his family were, i think his dad, older a store of some sort, but they weren't incredibly. but he you know, he did let's see. he university went to ucla, an mba, then got hired for first boston. his net worth now and he just got added to by forbes this is a billion and he gets 36 billion from blackrock and he 400 and some million dollars in shares from their he donated 50,000 the council of foreign relations a few years back the other the other example is james gorman. he's australian and u.s. he is

chairman, ceo of morgan. he worked for merrill lynch, a visa. he serves on the federal reserve bank of new york. he's he's an institute of international finance. he's a partner in new york city. he serves at the metropolitan of art. these are the business, the council of foreign relations, the world economic forum, business roundtable, mba out of columbia. and he went to the university of melbourne to get his b.a. degree. he is morgan stanley, composer has 10 million and his share values 25 million by third example is as judith missick. she's at morgan. she's also the board of in-q-tel, which is the cia's technology management foundation. so the board of directors of general hewlett packard and she just and she until recently was the ceo of kissinger associates

kissinger of course is past but she's down on a down days on board of of a large for foundation all the american actually foundation which supports us british relationships. she worked at lehman bank barclays but she was the deputy director of the cia. from 1983 cia. from 1983 to 2005. and there was one other woman who was in the cia as well. so they have intelligence connections her morgan's daily compensation was 370,000. she's that stock worth 2.5. she has shares. she gets gm gives her 361,000 b on their board. and she has shares. they're worth a couple, 300,000 in titans. i address consequences of the

investments that negatively impact people around the world. the titans invest heavily in tobacco, alcohol, plastics firearms, gambling and private prisons and. identify each of those areas and the degree to which titans are invested. tobacco alone kills million people a year and the titans invest over $103 billion of the five largest tobacco companies. 24 million americans are alcoholics who drink an average of 74 drinks a week, resulting, of course, in liver cirrhosis cancer, cardiovascular diseases. and that and there's a fact that's kind of revealing a 10% of the american drinkers consume half of the alcohol sold in the country. so half of the alcohol sold is going alcoholics.

now titans have over 60 billion invested in the six alcohol the sixth largest alcohol producers in the world, killing hundreds of thousands of people annually. titans are also invested in top nine oil companies financing the continue expansion of global warming products worldwide in we now are of course unprecedented record temperatures and extreme weather, fire disasters. 24 has been the warmest year on record in human history. appropriate picture. the global greenhoe emissions are set to rise another 10% by 2030 and instead falling by the 45% needed to limit the increase to the 1.5 degrees centigrade. that everyone agreed on a few years ago. the g 20 years are the worst. the most, most responsible, says

oxfam titans. also profit from war. are heavily. investors in the weapons holding over $260 billion of the top ten western military companies. the us policy of building redundant nuclear weapons does little than ensure continue the profits for titans and the capital investors. they'll have to blow more because china's building and if that's a justification but 60 billion this year. the u.s. produces. for the companies that produce weapons for the u.n. in the states and they are highly dependent capital investment from the titans to ensure their share military is and lucrative annual budget. the defense industry spends $126 billion on lobbying that in

2022. that was according to open secrets. and more than 72% of the lobbyists are former government officials. so that's, a, there's a revolving there, so to speak. the titans are closely involved with the world economic forum, which seeks to protect capitalism by the world's environmental problems, climate change, threats of war and global inequality. they want to promote better capitalism that, seeks to address these appalling crises. what they more menu word called appalling crisis through conscious based management called stakeholder capitalism, corporations are encouraged to engage in profit making and wealth consolidation, but are encouraged to keep in mind of environmental, social and governance awareness. that's esg esg, the goal of the

world economic forum. stakeholder capitalism is to protect capitalist growth and wealth concentration by using esg criteria as international propaganda mechanism for to mediate civil unrest. we're trying to do something about it, folks don't get upset. unfortunately e.g. yes, consciousness is having a zero impact on global inequality which is increasing and the environmental crisis is increasing as well. or environmental crises. and i grew up in california don't remember like having 50 fires at once. yeah. i mean it's like this is pretty

serious. yeah. so the upper elites who are 1/20 of 1% of the world's population and they get richer and the rest of us struggle to get by borrowing half of the population lives in some high poverty, tormented by combinations of poor nutrition, homelessness or threat of it, and an inadequate health care sociologically. the current global trends mean even greater concentrations of wealth and increase inequality. and the decisions made the elite economic policies affect thef entire world. and seldom do collective good for everyone. the global consequences. extreme wealth includes sorts of wars, repressive, human, democratic lack of democratic process, environmental devastation. we're in a crisis humanity, says william h.

robinson, who wrote the introduction to my book of actors names on the front of book to quoting this one. but he's a professor down at universe california santa barbara. he describes the current to our species and living things. nuclear war become a reality as a threat that would everyone in the world. some of that slower destruction of environmental puzzles, similar dangers of the environment, many of which could occur with will occur the life expectancy of all all people on earth here today. and so the titans are embedded in a system of mandatory growth failure to achieve continuing expansion leads to also can lead to economic stagnation which result in depressions bank failures and currency collapses, mass unemployment and many believe that capitalism is an economic system that invariably inevitably adjusts itself by

contradictions. recessions and depressions. however, the titans are trapped in a web of enforced growth that requires ongoing management and the formation of new and ever expanding capital investment. this puts them into political worldwide in becomes a kind of a manifest destiny to seek total capital domination of the. and now i tend to believe that the resources of the world ought to be belong to or at least shared more openly with all of humanity as a natural right of being alive by allowing inequality to exist in the world. we we deny our collective humanity. we must call for a redistribution of concentrated capital to meet the minimum standard of living for all humans. and this is such a radical idea. even the world economic forum is calling for a living wage as a natural right for for for all

people the difficult it is that inequality cannot be addressed simply raising paying employees a better. we must decide to address the titans. and their 40 million wealthy clients directly by them to reverse the continuing concentration capital and by sharing their wealth more openly. there are people with and addresses. they can all be reached through their corporations and. so identify who they are, where they are. i think we need to ask them to start sharing and. they have to make the necessary changes human suffering and save what left of the environment for all stakeholders of the world with a right to challenge individually and collectively the gross inequalities, wealth distribution, fiduciary wealth management must include the use of assets, human betterment and

i strongly believe that not just the maximization of return on capital, the titans must allow for a certain percentage of their wealth manager to end hunger and extreme poverty in the world. the chinese could do it. we could do it. the management must include assets, human betterment. there must be a certain percent for wealth management capital in hunger and in extreme poverty in the world if they remain unresponsive to us asking that i think we're going to have to ask them in direct ways, which include direct action and whatever creative kinds of message making we want to do. global imperialism a manifestation of concentrated wealth managed. an elite association of just a hundred people on the opposite side are innumerable activists who campaigned for human rights, civil liberties, democratic

governance. we must stand. for human betterment, collective working together, we can use the universal declaratn of human rights and global imperialism and its autocratic governments media and armies of empire. and we do that fully and as nonviolently as possible, allowing the continued concentration of wealth by the titans is a recipe. economic disaster, extreme poverty environmental destruction and global. so our agenda we have to have full resistance to this concentration of capital we must oppose the counter democratic consequence of concentrated wealth by champion democracy, grassroots making processes of

promoting human and protect the world environment. so i will end with that. i'll be happy to accept questions, discussion. i. i had a chapter on russia and a chapter on china in there and basically the us is heavily invested in the titans are heavily invested particularly in china it's like 14 billion russia they they can't do that anymore since the the war started in ukraine but they blackrock they lost about a 1% value of the war they with their investments in russia but they more than offset it by the increased stock of the military companies all went up 2010 20% at the same time so they didn't lose. okay so i'm happy to have conversations of yes, i'm going to come around with the mic. so we are we are being recorded. please speak right into the mic.

yeah. so thank you. that was wonderful of you were involved with censored and i think that ties in with really what you're saying to what extent does wealth control thought in america and the media and well that sort of lesson is in giants i analyzed the titans and they were i didn't call them titans then but allies like capital investment companies role in controlling the media and they're totally, totally invested. i mean they each they control each of the major media organized. so if your board of directors is made up of people who are wealthy, you're not going to be very inclined to be critical or want do a book. a book review on titans. yeah. as former director of project censored can say that our capital media companies are

propaganda pretty one sided and ignore the massive inequalities that are ongoing. and i certainly harp on it. we have other questions. okay, what role do you think taxation has in a solution. well, obama's i mean trump gave them some breaks and and harris is saying they're going to tax the more it's still i don't i don't see the answer as being able to tax them. i think what we have to do is create a movement around the idea of global inequality, starvation. 20,000 people dying daily. the facts of this and shame and

and really push that. i mean i don't have an answer to how to get the money from them. i just think that it has to is going to have to happen. it can't continue to go in the direction it's going and i mean at some point there will be civil unrest and and and repressive military control wherever that's happening and so i don't it's not something that's going to be simple but the message of the book is that we have this inequality and simply we cannot ignore it. we have to we have to it. and these are the people have we can address it to. that have this as well. so being wealthy doesn't mean you're a bad person. it just means that there needs to be some aspects of sharing.

oh, thank you. the great analysis. i think it went technology like. ai is going to increase this inequality like the way you're describing in a of collection of data from different and analysis of data going to expedite and is going to help people rather than others saying how do you counter all these things you know, they have all the things to button push and you know how do you all these approach us is not going to do anything you know. well. as a scholar of social movements and revolutions revolutions, you know, we understand how that how that happens, how movements can

engage and how change change the world and it's not simple and it's often spontaneous and it's often people who are sort of middle class and they're frustrated that and or see the inequality are the ones that we most have the bandwidth to engage and start to start to engage in making change. but of any kind of creative action that we can do collectively. i'm just trying to set the parameters here. i don't have an answer to how going to work, but we can certainly use the material in this book to talk about the problems more openly. i think. hi, peter. hi. could i really glad to see the book out.

that's really a great thing. just thinking about the state of, the media right now. i know there a couple of court cases moving the supreme court right now about the censorship alluded to in the twitter files and now in missouri, in louisiana and, you know, a large against the biden administration for its censorship over the last few years and it's still in place most people don't even understand what's. could you just speak to the state of the media and this the sense of the reality we're all living in at this particular point it makes it really to know what to trust often. yes, it was kind of the same question that the gentleman right here asked me, but. the media is owned by by by titans or totally influenced by and controlled and and that's that's increasingly more concentrated in terms of ownership. and we see that manifested in, you know, the 6:00 news any

night of terms of what we covered, how it's being covered. i don't have the most recent project update on that count. so you're asking part being. oh no no i was way going to a friend of mine. oh, okay. okay. but this gentleman. yeah, i've noticed it's become kind hard to organize around material policy reforms. we didn't have glass-steagall act reinstated. you you mentioned your the telecommuting act and. and the of media mergers and takeovers. it's hard to organize people around eventually a corporate party will say that they stand with and just co-opt. it was something symbolic or, a catch phrase. so i'm wondering if we are physiologic dependent on these titans, how are we to demand them change without them just, you know, pulling a lever and

tightening their grip? no, we're not we're not ideologically taught dominated. we can think ourselves. i meant physiologically, like like our means of sustenance, our food, like how can we how do you think localization plays a role in. it's really important. it's very, very important. and occupy scared hell out of them which why they quit covering it and and it was repressed occupy groups were infiltrated police departments all over the country and and you know, agent provocateurs. so yeah, it scared them and some sort of something that will emerge again and we have to be armed with the knowledge of where we need to go and what needs to happen and if it happened again within, any group of titans, there's liberals and

there are certainly that would like to see less repression and make concessions. and let's go back to study i did on army civil unrest of the thirties. you know the general here in san francisco was, massive disruption and feared by the elites and. a year later, we got the social security act. we the world, they got the labor labor relations act, both major changes. but we need, you know, some strong those kinds of unrest that do have impacts and but and it could take years for them to try to get back to it, compromise it and get rid of the unions and all that. and they did it. they're persistent but now they're so wealthy and so concentrated that, they can't hide it. and when and we need to expose

that openly, which is why i wrote the book thank you. okay, hold on. i make my way back here and then i'll come up. i thank you. thank you, peter. i'm a greatly admire your work. and mickey have seen projects and surge work over the years. you know, in years it sort of began to dawn me that, you know, life of activism like many of us have lived here doesn't seem to be it doesn't seem to be panning out on the other hand, the heavy lifting seems to be done being done by the efforts to contain us. the coming from russia and china iran plus the bolivarian and cuba and an obvious alignment forming all of them. and it doesn't matter if some are communist democratic socialist summer you know the

islamic republic or barbados as. well yeah yeah. well i and it to me it seems to me if there's any if there's any possibility of containing us even reversing that the processes that that you write about it's coming from them. and yet what see on the left is a ambivalence at best toward all of these countries and the they're taking in the world and if i can formulate a question these seems to be these seem to be sort of national efforts then by peripheral and semi peripheral countries against the countries of the core that are obviously the u.s. and its vassal of of western europe japan and a few other places. and so let's see i guess i have two questions. one, the this seems to be a

national alignment, which is a little bit at odds with the sort of transnational capitalist class analysis. and the other thing is, is how do we explain the the north american left's ambivalence toward these developments. well, in first off, in terms of resistance, china has the philosophy of a fortune, which means that they're to build a moderate society where everybody shares in some of the some of the capacities and. it's actually confucius believes it goes back it's a long term value and they're implementing the chinese communist party as it believes in that as implementing it. they'd to see that happen for the world. now in the four years we've an increase because of propaganda against china of 50% of the

people not liking china in the world years ago and 80% today. so they've been quite successful corporate media wise of, you know, demeaning china and the same thing goes with venezuela. you know, there's a media still saying that that they didn't win the election there, but maduro lost. you know it's like, huh, i you know, it was fully monitored election. it was it was a free election. so the overt lies are quite, quite sincere i mean, quite severe. and. the same way with russia. russia is no longer the islam economic threat like china is. russia's gdp is lower. it was 20 years ago. i mean, they're in dire straits they're at a war is really

costing them and the atlantic council which the advisory group to nato's i mean calling for regime change both china and in russia and that's the that's the agenda for the global elite and capital elite they would like see those changes made. they'd like to see russia open up to capital investment again and. they would like to see a regime change china so that capital was dominant here. i mean china has like 600 billionaires. the difference with being a billionaire in china is you don't get any say in the government unless you're the chinese communist party you can't buy influence here you can buy all the influence you want. so but i we have to locally organize engage with you know the capital in the global issues

and oxfam is one of the best places to look for those. and continue to talk about and to rally around it and it in a very ways i don't know if i answered your question not, but that's a tried. you mentioned the an example from the 1930s and i think we have to remember that you know that was only possible because there were two extraordinary people in the white house that time. and it reminded of a book that the harvard economist ben friedman wrote called the moral consequences growth, in which he said that a liberal democracy is only possible when you've got an expanding economy, it starts contracting, that it shifts strongly to the right. and the only exception the only major exception he could find

was franklin roosevelt. and the new deal. what do you think about that. it wasn't i mean, roosevelt was still an upper class elite and but adding was faced with dire, dire times. i if anything of the the there eleanor was the radical and because she's the one that put together along with scholars the universal declaration of human and deliberately just i think i kind of knew you were going to bring that question up and tell me tell me the name of your book again it was the imperial san francisco imperial san francisco. greg has is one of the scholars that has looked at at these kind of elites and san francisco and. so i, i don't think i mean roosevelt resisted the call for. you know violent repression.

he didn't believe that it was all communism. speier and they never they they tried for years to try to prove harry bridges was a communist. and and claim to have actually discovered some papers in the pentagon when was opened up that said that it was his this was his name. it was his code name or something. but i mean, so whatever was i mean, it was it was an incredible time and a movement that scared the heck out of elites. in fact, i did a paper on the bohemian grove elites and and and the other general strike. i interviewed three of them at the time who were young, young men and. how the club reacted and stuff. i the summer camp year the head the national guard for for california went up and they they all assembled to find out how they how the repression was going to happen in san

francisco. they they were pretty freaked out so. occupy type type organizations anything where people are collectively getting together and challenging elites. i encourage and fully i want to that's going to continue to happen and the more we make it happen, the better the better chance we could get to address some of these things seriously. yeah, one more question. i i thank you. i just wanted to mention of all i think we're all heartened by increasing union participation. that seems to be something that we can also focus on and say yay, i can help change things. but i wanted to just quickly say you mentioned we should shame the titans and i think that there has long been a study of how to do adverse to try to

control corporate malfeasance since the results show that it doesn't seem to have the intended deterrent effect would like to shame corporations even though pge indian wells fargo had to take out you know newspaper, ads and everything about things that they did, the corporate crimes that they did, that left the loss of life. but at the same time, now have social media, the mainstream is controlled, concentrated as your book as we as we all know. but with social media, i think we have the ability to the truth gets out more quickly depending of course, on where you're looking for your changes. so maybe that kind of the ground shaming can be part of the organizing that could. i'm sure it'll be a great part. yeah, that'll be a major that maybe that can be like a good use of whether it's air or. yeah. if that, that gives me some. anyway i haven't thought through the a of that but certainly that

that is a tool for we can use. yeah. okay. we're going to, we're going to end here. questions do not need to stop because peter's going to up here he's going to sign and personalize all the copies of titans of capital that you purchased today they are for sale our register we have multiple in the store so feel to buy multiple copies and we ship all over the country and send them off to your friends and family who are not here today, who would really like this book and. just a very hearty thank you for all of you for showing up and supporting very important authors. and again voices that you may not hear everywhere. titans of capital peter phillips. thank you very much for coming. go by the book. he's going to be up here. so go get your book. he'll sign and you can continue to ask your questions. thank you so much for supporting book passage. thankwelcome to