guys or this is the kaiser report yeah we're still does oh on the road and we're in new orleans and i woke up feeling dave chapelle eric. everything's been great people down here me doing ok i just. love it. more and dave chapelle impression coming later on the show but first let's check in with stacy and see what stacy. mac's we are in new orleans on our gonzo trip across the united states and do you know what new orleans is not the choice for amazon's h.q. to in fact it was washington d.c. just outside washington d.c. . and i don't believe you know. and it was always going to be washington d.c. he bought a twenty million dollar home there all of this alleged viewing of all the cities across america was all about free publicity and getting everybody to do you

know dance for him and offer all sorts of free stuff and show his power and do nothing actually yeah well you know you want to know how much grovelling these other countries you know cities other towns would do for jeff bezos with a prostitute themselves before lord jeffrey to get that they get that. down in their town jobs but you know what you just are you just a washington. d.c. ok so let's not have so much of the episode ation pill and i believe it's prostrate themselves in the process so let's turn to the first headline here i do actually have a headline and it's from former fed chief volcker warns of u.s. descent into plutocracy former federal reserve chairman paul volcker said in an interview published tuesday that the united states is developing into a plutocracy and suffering from a crisis in good governance volcker ninety one told the new york times that he feared that the. skill and reputation of the u.s.

government has been corroded by self interested elites cheeping long through lobbying and campaign donations he said the country was quote and a hell of a mass in every direction and rip van winkle paul volcker as if he'd just woke up after decades of the drift toward plutocracy a wherever you began paul walker interest rates went negative the economy has gone plutocratic what's been going on for quite some time paul volcker is right it's just you know a little bit too late too little too late you know he's a former federal reserve chairman who actually understood what the role of the central bank was to raise interest rates if there's so much speculation under grace penney ruto only changed the mandate of the federal reserve bank and said oh our job is is to keep the party going and then after there's a crash try to mop it up but every time there's a crash the problems in the system the debt the leverage is bigger and bigger and

bigger so central banks are completely out of control they're gone rogue they've gone you know he calls a plutocracy i call it financial terrorist ok we're quibbling a little bit over terms and bottom line is the same central banks have abdicated their role of managing the economy through the leverage and the use of higher interest rates to make the cost of financial terrorism to hard for jamie diamond make the cost of financial terrorism if you are for lloyd blankfein but they haven't done that they've been cowed showing and the result is massive plutocratic destruction. well he is pushing his book he's talking his book essentially he's ninety one years old and he has a new memoir is called keeping at it the quest for sound money and good government so he's selling his book and in parallel he's actually quite ill now and they've pushed up the publication of the book so it's out now but he says quote respect for government respect for the supreme court respect for the president it's all gone even respect for the federal reserve. i think he really has been asleep if he

hasn't noticed the disrespect for the federal reserve for quite a while he said and this is a question that you and i are seeking to answer on our journey gonzo because he asked how can you run a democracy when nobody believes in the leadership of the country well you know it's a mission point he may have lost control of his vocal faculties as well because america is controlled by the egalitarian forces of the free markets the government is there to merely tweak the regulations on the sidelines to let the markets decide themselves where they want to go as part of the natural law stated in the constitution of the united states based on the work of john locke and others of natural law he is a statist if he thinks that government is somehow going to create a nerve allah where a people are acting in their best interest according to. society no paul volcker

obviously completely lost your marbles. will read your book though he also warns in his memoir that there is no force on earth that can stand up effectively year after year against the thousands of individuals and hundreds of millions of dollars in the washington swamp aimed at influencing the legislative and electoral process but we've covered this over the years i've been studies a various universities looking at the impact of lobbying and millions of dollars and now the supreme court like he says oh the population doesn't have any respect for the supreme court or the recent supreme court allowed for citizens united and unlimited campaign donations so that of course. means these billionaires like jeff bezos who is worth one hundred twenty five billion dollars has way way way way way way more influence than entire populations of states across america so of course he's going to be able to buy legislation legislators and of course he's going to be able to maintain. in his monopoly and he does have

a monopoly over fifty percent of all e-commerce is done through amazon and that does harm small businesses in fact i saw a story recently at diapers dot com which is should have been able to compete with amazon they had a great service everybody loved it they were booming and then basically amazon kept on under selling them on prices and they had to sell out to amazon eventually so there's a great piece on bloomberg news about how monopolies are destroying capitalism in america right in the case of amazon if you go beneath the surface what you find is a retailer that sells products below cost as in the case of diapers dot com and that's subsidized by their work they do for the government a ws amazon web services that they have contracts with the federal government that are extraordinarily overpriced to match their retail business that's under priced and the result is this predatory monopolist jeff bezos who's literally ripping the

guts out of commerce and government at the same time and accumulating hundred twenty hundred sixty or five hundred billion dollars it doesn't really matter at some point is it me alone on an island with all the people who have returned amazon goods would be living in a junkyard by himself having some wild dog you know snapping at his ankles but paul volcker to say we're worried about all this money come from where is all this money plutocracy how did the money become so part of our democracy because you idiots at their central bank never raise interest rates in a timely manner and you profited volcker of course did let you but he's not going to do it he's never spoken out about it he's never said anything he's never said down greenspan or janet yellen or ben bernanke or powell he's never said look do your job raise rates right now to five percent do it now of course no but why because you see there are complicit stupid or both ok well he had he did leave the federal reserve in one thousand nine hundred seven so. spend quite

a few decades since you've been there but we're going to talk about another story now and that is wars over fish increasingly likely as countries began using military force to protect critical commodity so there are similarities between the world's reliance on oil and a comparable dependence on fish oil is a very conflict ridden sector johan burgan us senior director of public policy at the washington d.c. based technology from vulcan he says i believe there are some numbers that say twenty five to fifty percent of all conflicts in one way or another in different by lack of or access to oil they're saying basically the concentration of fish especially tuna is in the pacific it's something like sixty percent of all big fish are in the pacific and that's becoming a hot zone for conflicts between the chinese fishing fleets and other nations fishing fleets and that the the larger nations like china like the u.s. obviously have way more power than the smaller countries like chile or you know any other nation and africa who are having their seas exploited by the larger fishing

nations right you know most of the world gets their protein from fish and when you bring in technology like trolling the bottom just is incredibly like industrial fishing something like eighty percent of the fish for food fish stocks of the world are depleted somali pirates that all became reality because of fishing wars that were going on for fish you have the cod wars with iceland in england there was a huge conflict over a fish that's intensifying now what breaks it and so into the energy business and now you've got people who need to feed themselves and people who are crossing the lines of oil barons and yes it drives conflict it drives war and it is always going to be a precedent oh and i'm a everyone on planet earth and if you deprive them of their food you will have something like the french revolution. hiero what started the revolution recently

against mubarak was that the price of wheat went up to the price of food went up to forty to fifty percent of the one three budget of the average egyptian they therefore revolted if you want to create a revolt if you want people in the streets rioting if you want a global insurrection against banker occupation keep rising raising the price of fish keep raising the price include and you'll get your out you get your insurrection you'll you'll get your torches and your pitch forks you'll get your hundreds of millions of starving people on your front lawn demanding to be fed you'll get it you'll you know you'll get there jeff bezos you'll be running for the rest of your life chased by a hundred thousand starving somalis because you're greedy a little he does not mention somalia and in fact that is a very important story about the fish wars it has never ever been presented in the media in the mainstream media about the fact that not only is there overfishing off the coast of africa primarily by chinese and i believe spanish and portuguese ships

but there's also the italian mafia deals with you know europe has very strict. laws about how you can dispose of things like computers and refrigerators and stuff like that so. it's too expensive to dispose of those sort of products technical pratique knology in europe so they just sell it to the italian mafia who dumps it off somalia so there's like toxic waste all off somalia that was driving that but he was also talking about even the scallop wars that is just happening this summer between france and england i've got to go. because that's all we got time for. on the road doing are done so coast to coast pilgrimage check it out coming in december stay tuned for the second half a lot more coming your way don't go away. when

you are not an institution when you are not a government. you'll force is your voice belongs to you and use it. in your voice so any people accept to do seems they wouldn't accept was a situation we used it would if this is a difference or two between palin diplomacy enjoy official people to see. ministries police forces and city administrations of many countries depend on one corporation that does what mike was hoping the board doesn't run from on the eyes of god i'm just going to going to go through the. woods as that see that you got into this it's just a proprietary software you don't know the source code isn't that such a security risk when you have a black box operating the public id microsoft dependency puts governments under

a cyber threat and not only that. more. softness of the system is selling this is also the one. thing to. all do. with. the ones this is. done with the all business stopping there was a steel mills in front is up and his cards on the find. in twenty forty you know bloody revolution of. the demonstrations going to be relatively peaceful political protests to be creasing the violent revolution is always spontaneous or is it your goal or here crimean your list put a pretty good clue in the neighbor lose out on you pulling a little of the former ukrainian president recalls the events of twenty fourteen and those who took coach. i've invested over five billion dollars to assist ukraine

in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic. welcome back to the kaiser report imax kaiser yeah we're in a hotel room in new orleans still on the road with guns so you may see some lighting changes etc but that's just the way it is linear on the road time now for a super special guest been waiting a while for this one please welcome the vortex vortex welcome to the kaiser report thank you so much for having me max and of course thank you so much for the kind words i'm really glad to be here great now it is the ten year anniversary of the publishing of the big claim white paper by soto she not. and during that time a lot of ups and downs a lot of drama let's talk just briefly about the drama from the recent past the

user activated soft fork which you championed there on a world trip to network along with some other big cleena luminaries for a moment there it was an existential crisis for text walk us through it as it was a little bit scary there no was not a touching go essentially there was some large companies out there some minders and some exchanges that kind of got together and wanted to change the protocol or sort of make it in their own image a bit they wanted to go ahead and sort of strong arm. the repo away from the community away from the original people who were building that and then of course did not sit very well with people like myself you know for a long term investors with with the with the developers out there so we actually you know essentially got together and decided to push this user activity software we all decide as a community we got together and decided this is something that we need to do we need to make sure that the big one cannot be co-opted we need to make sure that because it will achieve its purpose and to do that we again championed this user

activated software which the power back into the user's hands by allowing them to run their own full nodes which allows them to have sovereignty over their own money and over what they believe to be because of our tax you mentioned bitcoins purpose . how would you describe it going to purpose well it's interesting you know that it has had a bit of a storied past of course and carter likes to say that it has an immaculate conception it's a very grassroots organic growth from the beginning that really at this point can't be repeated so you know what is because when it's between the everything you know every be what is so many things to so many people right it's a store of value it's a payment network it's a currency it's all these things it's an application layer to me really you know because when is freedom between represents freedom and the ability to transact freely without any third party this is a censorship resisted un confiscate a bill permission has value transfer decentralized recall and this is un president that in human history this is you know it even comes out to be now and uncorrelated

asset classes what people are are starting to call it now and at this point you know this can't be stopped it is going global it's worldwide and so a big one to me again represents freedom you know this idea of it being uncorrelated asset class this is what fascinated me about bitcoin starting in two thousand and eleven when we first started buying it when it was one dollar and i recognized pretty quickly as a former stockbroker that this did not fall neatly into any asset class like a stock or a bond it was a hybrid it was something original now that you've got institutions recognizing that this is a unique. well that means that the twenty trillion dollars or so that are managed by professional money managers and tradition areas they've got to gain some exposure now almost by law to bitcoin and here's one hundred billion dollar asset exposed to a twenty trillion dollar market that sounds like a recipe for higher prices for techs is this is digital scarcity digital scarcity

this is would be quaint actually created this would be quaint invented with its censorship resistant block chain and yet the like you say max this is being exposed to trillions and trillions of dollars of of the market out there and this has a finite cap this has a limited amount. big quinn is the only asset class out there that we can actually prove with and searching with you know wavering proof mathematically and cryptographically prove that there is a finite amount there will only be so much because you won't be able to find between in space or under the ocean or in anywhere else there will only be twenty one million and so because of this it's going to eventually suck in the liquidity like a black hole of all of the market most of the market into because it's going to take it's going to dip into offshore it's going to dip into you know remittance it's going to dip into financial all the financialization financial markets out there like e.t.f. really at this point because there's nothing that big one can't touch because it is this best form of money that we've ever seen so money touches everything because it

will of course be there because it will touch everything you know you mentioned big coin in cash bitcoin as cash you know part of a user activated soft fork drama was a showdown between those who think of bitcoin as a payment system like visa master card and those who think of it as a store of value like gold and the protocol seems to have rejected the cash actually has the name but going cash the protocol seems to have rejected the big cash like a pathogen in the body like a virus being defeated by the body's own natural anti-viral capabilities so it's not as if anyone really had to do much because like gold it has properties that are indisputable that going to has properties that are indisputable and the protocol ejects the bad actors your thoughts because you know is so many things to so many people but what it's really important to understand is that big question

has this i'm human like system that you sort of describe where all of these people are because of its organic growth are invested both emotionally and financially into bequeath and they will make sure that it succeeds because it has such a huge huge role to play and that role is to be a money a financial. system outside of the state finally an option an exit from the current financial system in the central banking cartel that has been you know going in control of our financial system for hundreds of years if not millennia and this is finally now an ability to compete with that big one will compete at every layer the most important there that it competes and of course is that final set of settlement layer because at its base layer is the absolute world's final settlement there is no other final settlement other than break when it will be the world's final settlement and with that you can of course understand that it is going to be a store of value very very very important because of its limited cap but again there was so much misunderstanding of what the queen was you know like you say max people thought it was a payment system but of course it has these confirmation times and in fact what we

recommend is a minimum of six confirmation times for large transactions which is could can be up to an hour and so for those who really dug in and looked at the system itself they could see that this was just the base layer one layer many layers that will eventually come to pass and of course a couple of those are being worked on right now such as the lighting network which will be this sort of interoperable application layer above be quite still connected to all other block chains and then of course we have the liquid network that will be the intercepted layer that will be competing with things like swift and so on then of course be quick at its final base layer that final settlement layer at this point between you know is building the blocks and the layers building the foundations of this new financial system that exists outside of the power of the state and i guess one of the most misunderstood aspects of bitcoin is really the history and the origins of the cypherpunk movement because of the anonymous creator because i mean not revealing himself or of themselves people kind of believe that it came from some mysterious place that we have no real track record of but in fact

this was an attempt made many times by the cypherpunk movement to create digital scarcity there have been many attempts going back twenty years or more to try and create. digital scarcity is like thomas edison he was trying to create the incandescent light bulb he tried many materials over and over and finally found the one that worked and the light indoor lighting revolution happened outdoor and indoor lighting revolution happened so this is similar in that many attempts were made to create digital scarcity this particular protocol this particular technology solve that seemingly intractable problem unlike the light bulb unlike major inventions over the history of mankind it has fundamentally changed in this case money absolutely i mean at this point you know big question is beautiful because it's a complete rejection of the kensi in economic right it's complete rejection of what

they believe to be true and as as you say you know cypherpunks are was the is really what built this movement so she was of course standing on the shoulders of giants as you say max there was many attempts like a golden and others before this but it was really this. invention that putting the cherry on top by combining things like proof of work that really created this this brand new asset class and again this is like the telegraph almost this is this is a telegraph really introduce this into a brand new sort of system which is which is the telecommunications system at a brand new industry but now big question with its with this proof of work block chain really puts us into another brand new industry this is a whole new industry that will play out over the next hundred fifty years and it's going to change the way we think about money change the way we interact with our with each other with with our governments it's going to sort of sort of turn and the world as we know it inside out and at this point it's available to all people sort of ask me all the time what wins the next facebook or google over because or

in crypto and i'm trying to tell them look we have the interest of money because it is facebook you know google apple amazon all that combined into one it will be the world's store of value and it is available to all so for those that are asking about those questions just by bickering in another criticism we hear curious what your thoughts are. is that well yeah it's digital scarcity sure but there are something like sixteen or seventeen hundred of these crypto currencies that doesn't sound very scarce to me what is your response to that critic sure so you have to sort of dig into the dynamics of what makes make one big when in order to answer that question really the one of the biggest things that makes big win big when it's security and that is powered by this huge hashing network that we call proof of work that we call the miners and the miners create this and it's not really just about this specific code you see that can be copied over and over and for example because it is open source so i can go and copy big win and create vortex big but the thing is that it's not about code it's about physics and proof of work is what really really creates this ability to have this cryptographic cryptographically

verified proof of energy spent and this is there you will be able to find that anywhere else you look and you'll see the at these other coins they have no market depth they have no liquidity they have no security in their proof of work mining in fact most of them have been attacked already and will continue to be attacked in this bear market is people are looking to make profits in some way in some form and so what you'll see is more and more of these chains fall by the wayside as they as they stand up to try to stand the test of time when is really big when because it is beyond government great trust built in and baked in available to all that is one of its big big value propositions the fact it is an confiscated bill and backed by more security than than you could ever imagine higher grade security than we've ever seen higher than military higher than government and this is again accessible to all and the other chains and points they simply don't share those properties yeah i guess what makes the new asset class in therefore makes it very confusing

for mainstream economists like nouriel roubini oh paul krugman is they don't look at two very important elements to this protocol one being hash rate and how that continues to grow and the other one being the difficulty adjustment which is always at making. things more difficult more or less the trend being that way but that has for a trend we now are somewhere in the magnitude of fifty thousand quadrillion calculations per second that has always been going up throughout the entire history of pickling and that's really more of an indicator of the health of this network and where the project is going then price do you agree for tax lee absolutely it's just a showcase of its network effects you know as trace mayor says it has the seven network effects that is just almost become insurmountable over time and then of course you have the fact that every day that big one survives write it is going to guarantee that it's going to survive more the next day and so as time goes on day one becomes more secure and becomes a battle hardened because because it was born on the internet you know as as as.

some of the central bankers like to say it's they like to call it rat poison right but in actual fact of the matter is is that big win because it was born on the internet it was able to sort of have all of this diseases and things thrown at it and it was able to with it secured with the security with its community well with this passion behind trying to create this new money it was able to fix that all the problems that was happening to it was able to secure itself and time and time again you know a big win has proven its resilience every single day that it's still here and between is right now fulfilling and achieving its original purpose right charlie munger and warren buffett famously called the clone rat poison ironically not understanding that yes they are the rats. sank so much for coming on the kaiser report they do so much max we have me really appreciate it hope to come on again soon and that's going to do it for this edition of the kaiser report with me max kaiser and stacy herbert like to thank our guests the vortex if you want to catch us on twitter it's kaiser report until next time.

to. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world. the politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. there's now a building around break here and no one to know why says terrorist. bad memories. twenty four years ago this country song a real look at the end of the world. after the genocide there in the old women in rwanda that man.

it fell to women to fix what the men had broken. and. i think it's important to do something now you're passionate about and even though you know you may not think you can do that and i didn't think there was any chance of me becoming an astronaut but i realize that's what i was passionate about and i wanted to at least try for this if you try whatever it is you're interested in and in general for people if you have that passion if you have something you think is really interesting but you think it might not be possible that doesn't matter just just going to try and you never know where you might end up. both the republicans and democrats claim victory in the wake of the midterm elections but it seems the election settled little if anything now there is a dueling investigation warfare gridlock on steroids is this what the voters voted

for. police in the u.s. identify the gunmen who killed twelve people in a busy california bar on wednesday as a twenty eight year old former marine he is believed to have a committed suicide following the atrocity. hostility towards the media spikes in the west with donald trump parading liberal journalists at a news conference and the far left activists protesting outside the home of a fox news host.