oil which currently employs six hundred people a determination on that plant will be made by the end of this year. that's coming up in the u.s. and if you've been investing in crypto currencies plan on budgeting more time for preparing your return that's because the internal revenue service is finally catching up with crypto currencies and block jane technology and coming to claim unpaid taxes on crypto profits last november the i.r.s. issued a summons to the online exchange point base demanding all records for transactions in amounts greater than twenty thousand dollars between two thousand and thirteen and two thousand and fifteen court records indicate that the request wouldn't compass data for fourteen thousand users of the site coin base has nearly six million total users the information would be used by a newly created crypto task force at the i.r.s. is criminal investigation division the i.r.s. officially served notice back in two thousand and fourteen that they claim legal authority to tax crypto currency is that can be exchanged for real currencies.

prior to his run to the white house and during his candidacy donald trump criticize u.s. wars abroad called for troops to come home and attack saudi arabia's atrocious human rights record but as president trump has adopted an aggressive foreign policy and is to mulch of his first year in office has been a windfall for arms manufacturers the top global weapons manufacturers lockheed martin boeing be a systems raytheon and northrop grumman every corded record profits which they credit to president trump raytheon c.e.o. tom kennedy went so far as to brand trump the chief salesperson for u.s. defense as trump verbally sparred with north korean premier kim jong has it ministrations struck arms deals with south korea and he called on japan to buy u.s. made weapons but. at the center of trump's foreign policy is his relationship with

saudi arabian crown prince mohammed bin so mine during his first foreign trip in may twenty seventh teen president trump and the saudi monarchy signed the largest arms deal in u.s. history worth one hundred ten billion dollars as a result stocks of lockheed martin raytheon and boeing reach all time highs that the all came as the saudi arabian led war in yemen has killed ten thousand people led to a massive cholera outbreak and put a million people on the brink of famine and what the u.n. called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world well congress tonight a recent resolution that would have forced the us to end its involvement in the saudi led war on yemen trump is expanding the relationship with saudi arabia while weapons manufacturers cash in and washington damn cohen reporting from boom bust. some of us recall the cold war between the soviet union and its satellites and the democratic nations of the western world primarily of course united states what i

recall most was the increasingly heightened rhetoric and the weapons build up expression of what was then the new frontier dubbed star wars after the original star wars movie from one thousand nine hundred seventy seven in real life back then star wars or what in the us was called the s.d.i. the strategic defense initiative saw the development of ultra advanced weapons systems which included lasers and particle beans that would shoot down the opposing sides nuclear missiles for younger folks and by i was younger then at the time it was a pretty unnerving period while star wars their s.d.i. slowed significantly after the end of the cold war when mikhail gorbachev became the leader of the soviet union recently there's been a lot of talk about north korea and their nuclear missile program and now with president russian president putin who gave a recent state of the nation speech where he discussed cruise missiles that could reach anywhere. in the world it raises the question of what's going on and from

a boom bust perspective on business and finance how much money is being spent on these sorts of things and which companies are profiting from the development of star wars type systems and here to discuss is probably the best person around in the world a former pentagon official michael maloof michael thank you so much for being with us let's time travel you were at the department of defense then when i was out talking about nuclear arms awareness week and things and it was a sort of an unnerving time but take our viewers who don't recall back to what was going on and then which were the companies that were involved in this strategic defense initiative at the time well it was at the beginning of the end of the soviet union and it and reagan and gorbachev are meeting at reykjavik and the proposal was made to that if there wasn't. some kind of a peace settlement of some kind that reagan was prepared to launch this strategic defense

initiative the whole concept was he had the idea before hand he saw he was he was briefed a long time back that missiles were coming in they could track the missiles but there was no way to stop them so this strategic defense initiative idea became part and parcel of his of his new package for incoming missiles to set up an anti missile defense system as a consequence. that was offered as as a. partly partially a bluff if you will to cause the the economically ducange soviet union to have to put in more resources which we knew they could not afford and that that's when gorbachev decided to do what he ultimately did and he could've competed you know and but s. the concept of s.d.i. continued under reagan especially and it got modified over time and it was really

a robust concept to have lasers shooting things out of the sky from from outer space but the technologies had not yet been developed they needed to be developed and that would have been part and parcel of the research and development costs that would have gone into and we had the companies to do that are some many of our companies our major defense companies today were involved like lockheed like martin marietta united technologies are not exact knowledge east. these these are the major major firms that have been and continue to be engaged in this now as part of the missile defense agency today that's what it's called now that i remember in the day it was the s.d.i. oh this day it was it was about then it became the ballistic missile defense

agency office and then clinton changed that to missile defense agency and that still exists today now that's what is being used to develop anti missile systems that's but it's a much more conventional approach of developing technologies that can go faster than the incoming as opposed to having something lingering in outer space with the original concept brilliant pebbles was to have a series of drones spaced drones that could point lasers at missiles that were flying into. base that could not things out of the first thought was i get sure that the timeline right the first thing was it wasn't just the bluff was it i remember that it was you know both the soviet union and the u.s. had all these missiles and it was thought that you know if one shot that had a first strike that the other would shoot and that their essentially be a policy they called mad mutually assured destruction and that was the unnerving

part i talked about in the opening yes so then they came up with s.d.i. and this is going to save us will be able to shoot down the missiles if they come over but then the brilliant pebbles idea that you just had who is was that and that was as you say so that wasn't a missile shooting down a missile that was satellites that would shoot down missiles so things that were already up in space race that w. do you think. that was regina in originated with reagan then and then in then it was george h.w. bush but he's the one who began to scale it back because the system realistically we don't really need that and and the technologies are way out there yet we can't really do it yet although there is a modifications that that that that's when the decision ultimately was made then to do something that came that was more from land based rather than lingering in space and as though these were super expensive technology to develop and in developed it

well and your but your contention is that that mr gorbachev saw the enormous capital that would have been needed to compete with the u.s. at that time and that essentially ended up shutting down the cold war to a large extent so let's fast forward michael to today and we see the north koreans were all about talking about what their weapons kasab capabilities are and president putin in his state of the nation address actually showed a video a sort of a striking video and said it could not be evaded that that that the. could be evaded the missile could be evaded so. where are we today how much money is the soviet union the us spending on these things and are is the same sort of cast of characters with regard to defense contractors who are trying to pile on and make a buck out of these things and response to your last part yes defense contractors see the new golden age again because basically the policy has been changed now to

back more to more strategic systems and we're seen as a reason as a in response to the north korean threat more development of missiles that can shoot down. the incoming missiles if if if we have that technology but it's it's what the it's like a bullet trying to hit a bullet in space however we do not have the technologies yet that can reach out to three hundred miles in space if you're going and the conclusion is if you're going to knock something out and if you know it's. meant to do harm you've got to hit it on the on the in one of the booster in the boosters the booster otherwise it's up in space and you hit it and then it's you know because it's going to close the thing we have right now is ages and that only can go up to one hundred fifty miles that is what well that's that's the land base and ship based missile defense systems we've got those in japan and around the around north korea it would shoot

down for example a north korean missile a missile but here's the problem north korea has exhibited something else for that i don't hear anybody talking about and that has to do with the ability to orbit satellites their ability to orbit a satellite and they've demonstrated this twice or stew up there right now and we have no idea what's on them the fact is that that satellite those satellites could become new miniaturized nuclear weapons orbiting the world and we and then on command they could be detonated anywhere and that is what i. bence crazy nuts that is why some of us think that they're really angling at to have that capability i mean this is it's typical of what a poor less lest defensive country can do against a much larger and capable i mean the david goliath type but a scenario and the problem is that if they were to explode this missile or this

nuclear warhead satellite at three hundred miles we have no defense against that every create a massive e.m.p. or electromagnetic pulse that could knock out vulnerable electronics on the ground given our given our our dependency on technology today that would be catastrophic michael maloof former pentagon official thank you so much for being here it is your . help for a quick break but stay with us because when we return author and economist steve keen joins us to answer the question can we avoid another financial crisis we'll be right.

so far right britain isn't just on the march it's taking violent my daughter's action i know you might need to take that chance you know again i see things when i think she's rich i'll usually split into which we take different names how do you view that. complex web which are basher. the most expensive fish in the world each one selling for tens of thousands of euros it continues to grow its entire life if it was thirty years old you might have a two ton fish out there and yet they don't get that big today because we're way too good to catch it. it's only where millions of

a much larger mission was once there and that was much more widely distributed we have politicians that are in office for a few years they have to get reelected everything is very very short term our system is not suited and is not geared for the long term survival and that's why we have the catastrophes. welcome back lego's new c.e.o. is trying to steer the company through a fall in north american and european sales the danish maker of construction toys suffered a seven point seven percent decline on sales for last year their first in thirteen years and a seventeen percent drop in operating profits c.e.o. knowles christiansen who took over in october warned that there is no quick fix to lego's problems the company still managed to outperform competitors mattel and hasbro in overall annual say sales to take the top title of global oil seller but

mattel and hasbro have also suffered from falling revenues and sales drops leaving lego as the biggest fish in the small pond lego's troubles also come as a toy maker has raised its profile in recent years with lego movies and more licensed toys from brands including star wars. and with all of the efforts by the trumpet ministration to relax and strip away some of the dodd frank financial reform and consumer protection. laws from back in two thousand and ten it's a good time to ask can we avoid another financial crisis and we're fortunate to have with us the author of that book steve kean can we avoid another financial crisis see if thanks for joining us again so is it possible can we avoid another financial crisis well we're avoiding this financial crisis in the same way you might avoid breaking your leg after jumping off

a cliff because you've already come down a substantial hot from a excessive level of profit and climbing back up again to have another journalist fall off that same cliff is a bit harder when you've got a pair of broken legs and that's really the way i'll paraphrase america's situation it had a financial crisis because of a debt bubble private debt bubble that's fallen a bit off of the crossest but you still have a historically high level of private debt and though you want have another cross in terms of a precipitous decline like occurred back in two thousand and seven two thousand and eight you never going to get much of a. wind behind your back any anymore either so in that sense america and the u.k. if avoided across this by having one and not having properly recovered from it but the rest of the world places like china australia canada belgium norway sweden i think they're in for the run version very shortly you know steve you mention in your book and when folks look look at qana missed like minsky you know they they contend that we will revert to forgetting the lessons of the past and and given

what we are seeing in the u.s. and hopefully not too much in other places where they're trying to pull back on some of the responsibilities that were placed upon financial regulators do you think we're headed for what he said that we're going to go bright back to some of these problems again. well we haven't learned the lessons from the process that's certainly true and if you look back to the great depression we could have learned from that process about what to do what to do and how to avoid another one to really avoid letting huge amounts of private data came to light one small but with completely filed to learn the lesson every time and of course the regulators when i saw think everything is ok again from the neo classical mainstream economic perspective they have they start stripping a lie all the all the missions we put in there to prevent that same sort of behavior happening once more so the behavior will recur and we're certainly seeing that right now the same sense of euphoria will come back in again but as i said

it's a bit like having head across us already and not having reduce the debt by anywhere near as much as that still after the great depression the headroom for another boom isn't quite there so i think what's going to happen instead is the regulators will as well as relaxing the laws have also i think we can put interest rates up again we can start cutting government spending and the trade trigger some of the day labor ging that gave us the process in the first place exactly what i want to go back to what there is a thing i know you're aware of it better for viewers it was the financial crisis inquiry commission the f c i see and they came out with the report they were authorized by congress i think it was two thousand and eleven and they talked about two primary culprits now these are different than what you talk about but i used to do this little poem steve about thing one thing too in the first thing was. the regulators and lawmakers were

a problem because they lessened regulation the last time you went through the thing you're talking about and the second thing was that the captains of wall street took advantage of it so i give you my little quick poem light markets dark markets big markets small red green and black markets they traded the malls they were burning up the fiber there was fire on the phones and then what they did they traded bundles of toxic mortgage loans and the risk was so. portable it was so easy to use that sometimes they wondered just whose risk they might lose and they traded and traded it's what kept them alive and they did so this trading twenty four seven three sixty five thing one and thing two what could possibly go wrong now so f c i see talked about those two things but you're really focusing on debt and why why is explained that how death debt is different and why that gets us back into the same old same old structure where we lose sight of the lessons and fall into the trap again steve. well the fundamental reason it matters is that when you borrow money

if you're in an individual purpose if you let's say have an income of one hundred thousand u.s. dollars a year and you you you're maxing out a credit card every year by ten thousand dollars your totals ending at one hundred ten thousand and you're the most popular person on main street of course then you get to the side you've maxed out three credit cards you are thirty thousand dollars and you think oh i've got to stop paying my debt back so rather than spending one hundred ten thousand you spend ninety thousand and you pay ten thousand off a credit card h h e n that means you will spending falls by almost twenty percent now that is the laws at the individual level and conventional economics says all well you know when bill spends he borrows off stave so bill can spend more steve less than the one bill replies he's got less and staves got mole and it all balances out in the wash that is wrong completely categorically wrong because when one person leads to another there's no money created but when a bank creates

a loan it also creates a matching amount of money which the recipient then spends so bank boosts the money supply and it boost demand at the same time so a rising period of deadlock you had private deadlock you had from about ninety two through to two thousand and seven gives you apparently prosperous economy but as soon as people find they have to stop paying the debt down all the banks not wanting to extend that dead the right to growth of credit credit right across the debt stops credit disappears it can go from positive to negative and that's what happened in two thousand and seven so you went from having credit being equivalent to fifteen percent of jay paid him on a six percent now the economics the discipline says that doesn't matter because it's the see saw they completely wrong the central banks are telling that these now the bank of england and the bundesbank and you have a twenty percent fall in aggregate demand which is the by anybody's definition across us that's what matters but it's still acknowledged by mentioning economists like paul krugman larry summers and all that crowd. now steve when you look at some

of the numbers coming out some of the figure is in the u.s. and about debt that is accumulating and people failing to pay their mortgages on time more than they have and i don't know if it's six or seven years do you think we're beginning to see some of the indications that we are headed down this rough road yet again. possibly i mean you if you look at the pig level of private debt that america accumulated during the bubble it was about one hundred seventy percent of j.j. pay through the daily verging off to the process of people going bankrupt a debt ridden written off and so on it fell by about twenty percent of g.d.p. to want one point five times a day pay it's now rising again it's rising in the right of about seven percent of g.d.p. every year now what i think is going to happen is that as that starts to occur and you have the federal reserve believing everything's fine again because they completely ignore this issue they'll stop putting interest rates up trying to head

towards that right of at least say three percent they used to get four percent as their right of interest in the gold saga three percent this time and the b. publications and in the congress may not they might go with trump on the infrastructure spending which will boost the economy through the government spending more than it takes back in taxes but in the poll rons of the world have their way they'll stop cutting government spending cutting spending on the poor of course and continuing spending on the rich and what that will most likely do the rising cost of debt and the deck michigan out of money being created by the government will trigger what happened back in not in thirty seven and that is the private sector will go back into reducing its debt levels again that was called the roosevelt recession when it happened because unemployment which had fallen radically from twenty five percent of the population in thirty two down to eleven percent by thirty six rose again to twenty percent everyone see the same ra's but i think what you're going to see is a bit of a boom the regular the policymakers will get comfortable thinking everything's back

to normal again put the rights up reduce government spending and bang the private sector will start cutting its spending once more to pay back that debt and will go back into another slump and that's really a wash and repeat that shapin has been doing now for twenty five years. yeah well it looks to me like a lot that you say may happen is going to start happening i don't know pretty pretty soon here i mean the the us federal reserve looks like they're going to go ahead and boost interest rates not just now in march but in the next several months and the e.c.b. looks like sometime later this year so we could be well down that path hey steve anybody wants to read your book can we avoid another financial crisis i should do so it's very interesting but you've also written a comic book about economics as well tell us about that a little bit of that that's an economic. and well and less about idle. taking the calling out of economics and in

a funny sort of way i was had to fly out to give a conference speech in in kent kind of a couple of years ago and i was reading larry summers that's larry on the cover there and he invented this concert be called the feria which stands for the full employment real interest right and this is never beaned uses a term in economics have a patrol and it's one paper it was there twenty one times and i was reading this thing in flight thinking a lot of bollix it was frankly and thinking it's almost like some particular excel abida or quantum physicist this is covered some new fundamental particle and i realize that was a great lawn to send up the whole idea so i wrote a satire on that buys this and then that's what's been illustrated by fabulous cartoonist and then going across to a similar conference in france i was reading about these two french economists called council can. who write a book talking about non-orthodox economists being what they called economic the nihilists now in france to novelists is pretty much accusing of being

a holocaust denier. and i thought well he got up but frankly populous and i wrote a satire about them as well saying they were part of the. warning about the outbreak of a dangerous new virus called reality which was a take on economists in the in the midwest of america and the only way to avoid the virus was to complete avoidance of reality was the only technique that it worked to keep you as a mainstream economists and i finished up with a recession on david ricardo who that we know him as the father of the author of comparative advantage he was also a swindler and this is actually historically true and i had a fair bit of fun blending his actual role swindling his fellow stockbrokers over who won the battle of waterloo with swindling the world i was the author of comparative advantage and this is all basically to take the take the mickey out of economics because it desperately deserves to be taken less seriously take the mickey in the pill not in the mickey mouse because it is still a cartoon but anyway we look forward to reading it we thank you for your

contribution to the dialogue and particularly in your contribution to boom bust steve came the author of can we avoid another financial crisis thanks for being with us. thank you. that's all for this time thanks for watching be sure to catch boom bust on you tube at you tube dot com slash boom bust archie we'll see you next time. desperate for a single purpose. they have a super. playstyle training very young. take months of intensive schooling. rats. and they save lives.

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