bring back malt customers this follows the script of the brick and mortar meltdown of retailers that were bought by wall street and subsequently subjected to asset stripping and cost cutting which ruined what little was left of their brands mired down in survival mode those retailers failed to build a vibrant online presence and fulfillment infrastructure as sales withered and losses ravaged the company debts became unmanageable but the bankruptcy of sears holdings as just so much richer and the restructuring in bankruptcy has a zero chance of succeeding where you have a response that i want to show you this chart this is the store count which is on track to zero from two thousand and eleven down down down when eddie lampert did is all sears kmart merger he was worth three to four billion dollars. jeff bezos at the time was worth approximately a billion dollars and i think he made the comment that bezos couldn't possibly compete for us now bezos is worth one hundred fifty two hundred sixty billion

dollars and a lump or its net worth has dropped below a billion dollars. he was loud and in the financial press as the new warren buffett and i remember that i made the comment at the time that this was not going to be the case because warren buffett's empire is based on berkshire hathaway an insurance company which is the nuts way to make a lot of money if you just stay honest which is almost impossible new insurance or banking industry ninety nine percent are dishonest but warren buffett is just managed to stick to the knitting over there berkshire hathaway just crank out lots of money and then he uses those that cash to buy huge stakes in companies like coca-cola and apple computer etc and that's how he built his empire any lamp or try to base his empire on a junk retailer and kmart retailer so fright from the get go i predicted this was would fail and i was correct more than that sears did have a huge. brandname i remember getting the sears catalog growing up and this was so

exciting and i would spend hours as a child going through the sears catalog and it was so magical and well this place with all these washing machines and beds and clothes and shoes and toys and you got to look through it sears itself also was founded in like one thousand before in one thousand nine hundred and it had some me these ing real estate assets and that eddie lampert was after he'd sold those off and you'll find out basically to himself another entity he own so he don't wait for him he paper he might have gone down to a billion dollars and that worth but he has these assets which i'm sure will become worth more soon over the last several years we have worked hard to transform our business and unlock the value of our assets hedge fund owner and sears holdings c.e.o. eddie lampert said with deadpan sarcasm he has hedge fund e.s.l.

and related entities or sears holdings largest shareholders and largest creditors and what they have left the company is secured by the company's best assets so the value of our assets that he has unlocked has already gone or will go to him and e.s.l. you and i were recently in a series in the past year it was bleak it was soviet like it was every all the workers were basically not motivated they were very unmotivated he couldn't find any help we walked around hello hello is anybody here and this was intentional because he already owned the best assets there was no reason for him to invest in any qualified workers for any building any brands here he had the best assets why why do anything more reminds me of serve philip graeme in the u.k. with. arcadia group where he made some acquisitions and then stripped out a billion pounds worth of equity in his wife's name in monaco. and then you know left

the arcadia group enormously and that is causing problems so eddie lampert is similarly of course being the largest owner and creditor at the same time another one of these things that used to be illegal in america but through the lobbying efforts and of wall street over the years it's become legal and what the consequences of being pretty predictable where you end up with acid strippers and their do wells like eddie lampert simply stripping out and pocketing lots of money even though his bill ackman as a businessman is provably quite poor in fact wall street goes into basically how he got around the look back clauses that could deal with fraudulent conveyance so why why obviously sirius is then a dead man walking for years so why did he wait all these years to finally declare bankruptcy right now they're going to go through basically keeping operation to

christmas this is goodwill as opposed to achieve because they're going to keep these jobs through christmas we're going to care about the american population so they're they now have a debtor in possession loan of three hundred million dollars mostly coming from eddie lampert but one of the ways for lampard to get the real estate is to pledge it as collateral for a loan and then have the company default on the loan another way is this serious holding already sold two hundred thirty five of its best stores for two point seven billion dollars in sweetheart deals to ceratin age growth properties when it was still a sears and tittie some of them on a lease back basis ceratin was then spawn off from sears via a rice offering in july two thousand and fifteen lampert is chairman of saratoga and owns a big chunk of it via the rights offering aggrieved investors and sears holdings filed suit and twenty seven thousand sears holdings a lampard settled for forty million dollars so in july twenty fifth. i mean there's

a two year look but back clause for fraudulent conveyance so he basically took this property first he sold it to sears sears holding then took over that sears holding all in his own name so now we're past the two years where he well past the two years for him to basically not have any confrontation with shareholders in court once again property market offering huge ways to ovoid accountability and taxation we cover the story of course with the trump. making hundreds of millions of dollars with real estate scams. real estate scammer but the reason why this keeps going is because the banking industry is the lenders into the scam the market and so they are the top lobbyists in washington they they populate the legislative branch so they constantly either changing the laws or passing new laws to make this type of scam of property nightmarish developers and

court illegal or they can get away with it so until you get rid of those lobbyists and the see there's nothing going to stop the speaking of lobbyists in d.c. saudi arabia spends more than any other nation on earth probably any more than any corporation on earth and lobbying and because of their lobbying they have a lot of goodwill in america despite accidently torturing to death some journalist who they then dismembered accidently and flushed down the toilet so here's the headline speaking of dead man walking endeavor pulling out a four hundred million dollars saudi arabia deal endeavor is a talent agency and in hollywood owned by ari emanuel who is rama manuals brother well endeavor is trying to extricate itself from a deal with the saudi government to invest four hundred million dollars into the company the hollywood reporter has learned the move comes as pressure mounts for hollywood to take a stand against the kingdom in the wake of the disappearance and possible murder of saudi journalist jamal. shogi who wrote for the washington post at the time of this

article written you know basically he was disappeared but here i want to point out that also these companies by the way saudi arabia also finances much of silicon valley they're shooting but they're the number one of the best or actually as outside investors and startups there they basically are huge investors in the atlantic council which then gets to determine whether or not you the ordinary citizen in america whether you're content is allowable to be posted on facebook since since they accidently murdered and dismembered a journalist they are also still in charge of basically eradicating wiping out memory holding thousands of americans activist groups like say they they took down like fifteen hundred. you know basically cop watchdog groups that look at cop murders and misdeeds all those have been eradicated so. by the

atlantic council who are financed partly by saudi arabia the thing about saudi arabia is they use the oil as a weapon you know if they get too close to investigating what's going on over there they push the price of oil up now on the last ten years because of fracking in america america position to self as energy independent and no longer subject to the political pressures that can be borne upon them from opec and the saudis so we're going to see a real test of this because. all of these a litany of horrors coming out of saudi arabia is making people puke him in the fall they would which would you know not known for their cultural sensitivity not known for their you know selectivity when it comes to taking money let's say if they're not taking saudi money that would indicate that saudis

are having trouble finding buyers of their allies anywhere in the in the western hemisphere so they try to push the oil you know if you use the oil as a weapon this would be a real test of america's fractures first of all they did threaten to use oil as a weapon but obviously things are cooling down memories are very short hollywood is better than anybody at propaganda basically they could do not zero dark thirty which was an oscar winning film i think that basically made our our own actions of torture and accidental murder in accidental murder in iraq her roic here they could do dark bull they could create a sort of omagh to m.b.a.'s you know mohammed bin solomon he had already met and fetid in hollywood had dinner at rupert murdoch's house all the big wigs of

hollywood with their. i'm sure he's got plenty of money m.b.'s means rocky i mean what an epic film this would be you know there is the plucky saudi royal. the plump saudi royal fighting the truth for the price of oil not to go up oh i am i'm just waiting for this this is going to be epic but we must wait a little bit longer because a break is happening now and then we'll be back with rocky two very exciting film in development now don't go away. the best out of. the concerts is preparing to

perform i pass myself to die i. don't know so i need what. i'm sorry. as most of. you. in home. time. this country. was if you could with. more depletion. i would prefer to say that. the human space is must become pregnant terry wish

me. instead we have a leaving in the solar system. and for sure we should expand on other on other all this of the solar system i see this as a way all bring game and developing more technologists new technologies so that we can even. say increase in improve the quality of life on earth. welcome back to the kaiser report imax time now to return to al from a collapse in the u.k. talking about his latest report the credit cycle is on the turn out their welcome back i don't max i'm going to quote a little bit from your pace and it says here that the world's total government

nonfinancial corporate consumer debt increase from sixty four trillion in two thousand two hundred five trillion in two thousand and eight you say today is probably one hundred eighty six trillion. you know in one nine hundred seventy one we rolled up our debts into the new all feel dollar and this is set the stage for what you think could be a reversal in the credit cycle interest rates starting to go up this cycle is turning and i would imagine this would have an impact on the gold market out there tell us about it what's interesting about this max is that i have seen this before as a school this when i was a young stockbroker back in the early seventy's and it was to take in the u.k. . at that time the rate of inflation went from something like five to six percent up to a hive twenty four percent at the same time as that was happening the go price went

up from so five dollars to one eventually it ended up to a one fixed eight hundred fifty dollars which was a twenty four times multiplication so the important point fars go to is that the idea that rising interest rates is that to go is not right and the reason it's not rise very very simple if you know it says it will go out you're actually comparing it with cash physical cash and if you're looking at futures locations then you're looking at least rates and things like that there is an interest rate on go if you want to lend it. but basically the idea. higher interest rates is that the goat is completely wrong if anything higher interest rates because they reflect increasing price inflation is good for gold the currency a if if if it loses confidence you have a lot of confidence in the current say and interest rates are going up big to try to restore confidence the markets can sometimes react very negatively to that as

we've seen in venezuela argentina and other countries have a full blown currency crisis and so interest rates are immaterial in that in that environment because people want to just have something that's not going wildly into the garbage pail and they turn to gold now as the dollar has been rising elster emerging market currencies especially the argentina's pace and the turkish lira they have been selling off quite heavily do you expect a debt crisis emerging in even more profound ways in these emerging economies could this be i guess the bigger picture here is it could this be the pen that if pulled becomes like the subprime crisis if it becomes the touchpaper of an of the financial crisis that's just coming into the for today elsewhere i think not basically. the emerging markets problem problems are. problems with emoji markets and it's currency mismanagement is economic mismanagement everything

you like i think the point that gets you touched on which is absolutely vital is to understand the relationship between money and prices is to focus first of all we all know those monitors will tell us that if you increase the cost of money then you are going to increase price inflation but there is another thing and that is with us it currency it depends far more on confidence in that concept if people begin to lose confidence in the currency which is what's happened in venezuela. so basically there is no hope for the currency it has done the town and it doesn't matter what interest race war or anyone to us while not situation happens the currency is had it is exactly the same thing that happened to the jewish walk all the sort to the market in one thousand twenty three so i would say that it's the same problem but it's not it's origin if you like as far as the

dollar is concerned will not be from emerging markets where you have this on palatable message going out there that confidence in the u.s. dollar could be. in a critically waning endgame if you will and this is not a message people want to hear and it just seems that it's almost impossible to envision a situation where the fed can come to the rescue you know when it comes to for saying. countries to accept dollars and to accept. being the buyer of first and last resort of american debt you know the u.s. as always relied on the military for that you know when countries try to get out of the dollar what could be iraq could be iran could be a russia could be china you know they start saber rattling south the u.s. still has a huge military doesn't this give them some protection out there not really because

here's the real problem if you like that scale isn't it isn't libya and gadhafi it's not iraq saddam hussein is china and china are also i mean if you look at china p.p.p. basis parity bases it is already larger than the u.s. in terms of this economy. there is actually nothing that the americans can do to stop the if you like the you want suit seeing the dollar as the currency of trade throughout asia and so the dollar effectively has lost that story and this is the problem you know they can't force it anymore there is a parallel that i would like to draw to our attention back and that is if you go back to when the london go pool failed in the late one nine hundred sixty s. the reason it failed was because there were too many dollars abroad outside america

as a result of the vietnam war before that it was the result of the korean will that was all financed by dollars which were just exported and given that it was the old french indochina we have it now was it was from sudan and it up with an awful lot of dollars france said we don't want dollars anymore we're going to redeem them for goat which they were entitled to under the bretton woods agreement that was a major turning point when it came to the dollar i think that we're facing a similar situation today obviously things. circumstances a very different but you go to all these dos i was referring to earlier which are in foreign ownership you have got china which is taking over. the world economy as it were in terms of her age anyway. shutters already got those sub-saharan africa to stalk it is sending money and not intermarriage is spending and money even rogue terabit it's extraordinary how far china's tentacles that go it is doing

exactly what america did in the one nine hundred fifty s. and nine hundred sixty s. and america what's their response their responses make america great by becoming introspective i mean they're trying to sort of. isolate themselves if you like from the rest of the world and so the one way for the dollars to go and a lesson was what happened way back in one nine hundred sixty seven you know we might be kind of isolationist and all that analysts are not trying to bragg's it anyway ouster you know talking about china de dollar rising and i think one of the obvious kind of telltale signs there is that they've been hoarding gold they've been buying gold hundreds of times i think they've been preparing for the day when they need to walk away from the dollar and also they've been encouraging chinese people to hoard gold any consequences that might suffer from

a dollar collapse will be made up for locally in the chinese community in china by the fact that they own lots and lots of gold i want to skip ahead to for the first time saudi arabia has threatened to use oil as a weapon ok this harkens back to the one nine hundred seventy s. now this after they accidentally tortured a journalist to death quote unquote and then chopped him into pieces by accident apparently does this threat mean anything should we monitor this saudi back in the new. alister well obviously we. we do have to monitor it but at the moment everybody's trying to get into damage limitation i think it's going to be very difficult so this one to be brushed off in the same way as you know the traditional oh the spies or the you know the intelligent part and followed up i mean that basically is the story that they're trying to push every time that you know an intelligence department is caught. murdering someone you know that is a story that the state produces is not believable is the short answer and it seems

to me that there is even more evidence to come out of the turkish government hands because just killed a bug that the concert which incidentally is a vet it is an invasion of diplomatic premises but. that i think is a story that is going to get worse before it gets better and it has enormous consequences i think for. m.b.a.'s moment in some and i don't know how they get out of that because saudi arabia is such a controlled place i mean you know the leadership control everything and the idea that the leadership was not aware of what was going on in the consulate in. istanbul i mean it just doesn't wash until they are control freaks in that country let me ask you this question then go off script for a second because i know you're over there in the u.k. and therefore would be watching the b.b.c. . is the b.b.c.

covering what's happening and what the saudi scandal what the same vigor that they've been covering russia the so-called russia gate phenomenon out there i think that probably giving it less attention but that is probably because perhaps it is dominating the news here what i would say is that in front garden is their middle east correspondent and security correspondent they have gotten extremely good man and his group. it's of critical and worth listening to and it is absolutely fair for more he says that this is a story which is extremely unfortunate extremely difficult for everybody concerned and we haven't hit the end to getting back to come out of saudi and the us and the petrodollar and you know trump said something to the effect of we're going to give the saudis the benefit of the doubt because after all we sell them one hundred

twenty billion dollars at the farms every heir and so he and those that means a lot of jobs and you know trump has been very good so far in couching everything in terms of jobs and growth and stock market growth do you think that that dog will hunt as they say in the south do you think that all that will go over is do want to know i mean he comes in a bit of a difficult position here because he's got elections coming up i think he's got his eye on that wall than anything else so anything he says i think is with you to not jeopardizing the republicans prospects in the midterms are let me let me just jump in because i've got about less than a minute so i just want to summarize kind of your report here let's draw people's attention to it they should look this the credit cycle is on the turn out so macleod is the author it's a major piece in my view because he may out there may be the only economist in the world to actually call the turn in the bond market after almost everyone else has

failed in doing so interest rates are on the rise and that the reason being that inflation which has been hidden through donek adjustments and bad financial reporting can't be hidden anymore and once the inflation genie is out of the bottle then you're entering a new cycle of higher rates do agree with i agree with ups yes i mean it's so i'm more complex than that but that's the essence of it if they want a complex version they can listen to the whole frickin interview anyway we got to go right thanks for being on the kaiser report. that was my question that's going to do it for this edition of the kaiser report with me max kaiser in space eric like to thank our guest alister macleod of gold money dot com if you want to reach us on twitter you can do a report or download the arctic app and watch our show on your phone not a great idea until next time.

prosecution will need to become almost. equal where you. just read you'll find. somebody going to see do i mean yeah i mean political pressure on the. security industry news with. business models used by american corporations. to see to. see. the dissociation. i knew click when he saw it is just somebody who's going to lead to. an investigative documentary.

traum has been coming up with a lot of statements seem to be are states of the gulf should take care of the middle east or other we're still committed to the middle east so there's there's a lot of incoherence there but i think saudi arabia is hugely important to the united states and i think trump understands that and this is this is exactly what was driving his kind of commentary on the. killing i think that's the end of the day it's not going to change the status quo of america's policy you see if you go. while give easy vows find this us. and. the union. rational.

design of the thief. on the zimmer. fortune for the automobile a lot of. more than a financial. if

you think it. was. the leaders of russia turkey germany and france need to lay the groundwork the peace the inferior and serious differences remain over how to tackle extremists groups in the north west of the war torn country if radical militants oppose this if they make provocations from inside the it live zone but russia will reserve the right to help the syrian government eliminate this threat of a military offensive by the regime syrian.