be complying secretly with u.s. spy agencies and law enforcement agencies you're going to get bad out there are no good big investment there's only me. with a base for you and hoffa. then

i berlinger. craftwork hey what's up yes well of course you are quoting john f. kennedy when he went to berlin and said bin berliner to the people of berlin right after the wall was erected back and was in one thousand nine hundred sixty s. early one nine hundred sixty s. and he went there to declare that the west berlin you know this is the area of the free world right and basically rejecting the wall there well i want to point out what is going on today in berlin because of the wall of bad debts especially on the

central bank's balance sheet or less a metaphor exactly so i remember at the end of the last episode we mentioned the e.c.b. assets and so that's that wall of bad debt on the central bank balance sheet in the european union that's the e.c.b. balance sheet. all this wall of bad debt this this wall this is the wall that we have to be concerned about because why that wall that wall of forty one percent of g.d.p. is on the balance sheet of the e.c.b. it's all source of junk junk debt corporate that all these bonds on their balance sheet and this is supposedly meant to cause inflation and mario draggy when he's exiting the e.c.b. saying he's still concerned that there's no inflation well of course it depends on where you're looking and he's looking only for his bank or members of this you know closed membership banking system of the central banking system german lawmakers

consider explore operating private apartments to house the poor so there have been massive protests going on in berlin because in berlin rent prices have doubled since two thousand and eleven which is right when e.c.b. began building this wall of bad. that as soon as they did this you could see a connection right there that house prices start to rise but especially rent prices and why rent prices well private equity began buying up thousands of property in germany in america in ireland all over especially in the european union once they lowered rates and started buying all these bonds because these private equity groups who extract equity right and are toll booth operators they also were able to access this free money and dump all their risk. on to that wall that you see be ready to sign a fleshless transmogrification so you can take

a piece of garbage and then you put it through the fed. you know administrative wall and it becomes what the billion dollars is chant transmogrification. that's what the fed has they can to give them garbage to give though a junk bond was worthless has no resale value whatsoever and they'll stick it on their balance sheet and said it's worth one hundred cents on the dollar and they said clea that's what you're saying is that's recycling so that you give them your junk they extract all that toxic risk hided on the citizens of those countries the taxpayers bouncy and give you the private equity dude the private equity bro gives you all the pristine you know asset and and wealth and actually give you pristine uro's the right that have one hundred cents on the dollar right so you give them junk that has no resale value and they'll say that you can go out and buy these properties with and and jack the

price up and start doubling the rent right so that it's not true inflation is transmogrification right and it's not inflation in the sense that there is an inflationary cycle of rising wages and rising prices it's inflation in the sense that the purchasing power of the euro and other fee. currencies is dropping due to the surfeit of currencies that are being thrown into this economy of visa vi their cozy relationship between predatory capitalist like blackstone group and others who buy hundreds of thousands of apartments at a time during periods of disaster capitalism like we saw in two thousand and eight where in america for example it was the way it was the biggest wealth of decimation in african-american community sense slave days and civil war days when the private equity groups came in and bought out hundreds and thousands one hundred thousand apartments using the free money given to them by the feds well we're going to get

to that here in the united states and ireland but remember we're going to in berlin now it is been berliner all berliners now while mario draghi continues to lament the lack of inflation that the e.c.b. is massive balance sheet now forty one percent of europe's g.d.p. has failed to spark and is contemplating even more aggressive measures to create higher prices to one group of people the e.c.b. is reflation ery efforts have been more successful berlin renters who are furious at the median rent has more than doubled since two thousand and eleven soaring past ten year as a square meter meaning that a one thousand square foot apartment cost more than one thousand one hundred a month still a bargain compared to most other cities but the germans you know to not like inflation they don't care they would like their prices cheap they like the basics of life being inexpensive including they're not there they don't have it in their mentality of property speculation but now that the e.c.b. as allowed the private equity groups to offload their risk of owning thousands of

properties on to the balance sheet of the e.c.b. while taking all the rewards from the tolls well last week there were protests of fifty thousand protesters in the streets and i'll show you one of the banners that was there. and this reads protesters with a banner reading expropriate deutsche of won't hand and company and berlin said this company is one of the big conglomerates that owns over three thousand apartments and there is one lawmaker who is suggesting that they do explode pray and nationalize any properties owned by these companies that have more than three thousand apartments they're not targeting mom and pop landlords but they're targeting big corporate private equity sort of groups it's not reflation very rich would do would infer a wage price spiral upwards this is not inflation in that sense this is a monopolization this is an old gospel ization this is

a cozy in the old feudal is ation this is a cozy relationship between those who print money. and by printing money they're counterfeiting money because there's no backing to that money they're simply put there counterfeiting money the cozy relationship between the money counterfeiters and those who are now in monopolizing in the monopolization of the property market just strong capitalism destroying competition. and yet people who are paying more prices they're not getting a commensurate rise in wages that would be inflation they're getting their lifestyles crushed because of the private equity groups who are seeking to neo feudal i's economy and returning to a medieval model of lords and service clearly in germany they resist that and they resist it all over the world but there's financial illiteracy unfortunately there's an aversion to gold through propaganda from media outlets like propagandist m.s.n.

b.c. and there's a complete misunderstanding a big point which would be a path out of this miasma it was karl marx who predicted all of this this ultimate end of capitalism would be financialization and of course that the capitalists would sell interest rate cut to hang itself because this is what zero hedge concludes on this article in other words far from not sparking inflation the e.c.b. has not only doubled the berlin rents but sparked a historic backlash that may result in the confiscation and the nationalization of big corporate chunks of the how is saying market. you now these interest rate cuts and this huge wall of bad debt on the e.c.b. was balance she allegedly meant to save capitalism is actually destroying capitalism in the end the point of money is to substitute

carnivorous with finance and other words in the wild. there's competition usually resolved through violence and you know one species killing another in society that we live in we substitute blood for money and so you have those animal spirits as keynes call them pursue cash instead of out just right wandering around murdering people now when you debase cash to the point where it's meaningless as the central banks are doing you are inviting savagery as a the book that was just written by matt taibbi the title is something on the order of reinventing savagery or to get back to savagery this is what's happening they're inviting savagery to return to the day to day lives of the ordinary people to repealing the enlightenment repealing civilization repealing western civilization for what for the jollies and oh you know you are up for

a poll i'll tell you why and this next headline because bin ein berliner un accuses blackstone group of contributing to global housing crisis the world's largest corporate residential landlords called out for their practices of inflating rents and aggressive evictions the un's housing adviser has accused private equity firms and one of the world's largest corporate residential landlords blackstone group of exploiting tenants wreaking havoc in communities and helping to fuel a global housing crisis and a stinging critique of the role of private equity in the housing market un rocketeer lani far and the co-author syria devil person of the un working group singled out blackstone's business practices which they claim include massively inflating rents and imposing an array of heavy fees and charges for ordinary repairs as having devastating consequences for many tenants and countries around the world and they sent this letter to the united states ireland spain sweden czech

republic and denmark and that they said and basically they told the leaders of those countries that you're allowing your people to be. you know turned into peasants for blackstone's profit and it's these are human rights it's becoming a human rights issue the money that blackstone uses to acquire this position was gifted to them by the central banks it was a gift they did earn it they didn't compete for it they're not smarter they're not more in doubt in some way that would give them this divine right and who are the ordinary person particularly with timothy geitner at the new york fed too enabled much of what we see blackstone doing not only with the interest rates but all the free money that the new york fed was giving them and then he went to the treasury and he concocted all these basically dodgy plans to allow these private equity to buy up huge sleaze that home and ordered to rescue the housing markets remember it

was some sort of fudge with the tarp funds and all these like weird. you know these weird programs that were gifted to a select few and sold to the american public if it was even talked about at all on the news but sold to the american public as somehow helping them but in fact when what happened would turn what happened actually is that you became you know a serf to these. glasses was a controlled demolition right because the housing crisis was a result of securitizing mortgages that were resold to dozens of times and then like goldman sachs was betting answer on clients and they were engaged in massive fraud again bailed out by timothy geithner and his friends and now the echo of that controlled demolition of the housing market is that all the housing is concentrated in a few hands like blackstone as a gift from their friends at the central banks and the result is medievalism it is

violent so they've invited the savagery ok i'm not yeah but i don't like to talk about that sort of violence but in terms of like that is not attractive but what is real is what is happening and what is real is that we have a wall of debt and we have this what this is a wall of fraud that is now a human rights issue that the u.s. and is discussing and talking about and warning many major nations that this is a problem and that if you don't do something about it if you don't address the top one percent well james grant of the interested observer just came out with a major piece saying the central banks having big age and criminal activity yes not activity of the sun just fine anyway it's pure crim its critics it's a racket so they all sit there and you know like jamie dimon will go on the news and say i'm really worried about all these sort of a o c in this plan for social socialism well tear down that wall and you don't have to worry right on ok we're

going to tear down. we're going to come back go and stay right there. all of. the presidential contest wasn't even close saying ukrainians voted for change is an understatement change is what ukraine needs and this political novice deliver what is next. because i live. here.

and we have. this is. why some peoples also take our things all the power just for themselves since that is the. international memorial awards twenty nine now open for. the media professionals are eligible whether you are a freelance journalist. media or part of a global news conference to participate in published works and video.

welcome back to the kaiser report imax keyser time now to turn to rick ackerman of rick ackerman dot com rick it's been two years since we last heard from rick he's now living in florida welcome back thanks for inviting me on max it's been a an interesting couple of years right well we're going to have to get into some economics and market tock but you know the air inside have always been appreciated and rick ackerman dot com is a great resource for folks looking for some insight into the economics of the last time we spoke rick two years ago you were talking about de flay ssion today stock markets are up near all time highs it does this make any difference is this is a factor desist are you revising your scenario where are we on the great deflation

inflation debate rick ackerman well i haven't changed my mind max i think maybe i seemed a little premature because i've been writing about deflation for about twenty five years and it all comes from something that c.v. moyers wrote in his meyers energy and finance letter years ago very simply ota mclean every penny of every day it has to be paid if not by the borrower than by the lender so that when you for instance. aggregate one point six trillion dollars worth of student debt and it's become sort of a wink wink item oh the students are never going to have to pay those loans fact is that somebody will some other words assistant point there so all that's must be paid if not by the borrower than by the lender and so the lender in some cases they are paying back those dates in the form of a default and that is highly deflationary especially when government start to

default on their debts. and so are we going to be in a situation soon where we're going to see some governments defaulting on debts wreck at the soonest difficult you know we've kind of sustained a bubble for a long time and a lot of that comes out of the bubble that we have in stocks as long as the stock market is within shooting distance of new highs. investors and people in general get the idea that things can't possibly be that wrong if stocks are trading so well but the fact is the stock market is really the last thing in the world you should be looking at for signs of economic health but eventually when the stock market gives gives it up when we go into a bear market which is it habitable the things all the problems particularly in the pension system that we're dealing with now are going to look a lot more difficult what's interesting of course is that stock markets are near

all time highs and so are the quote assets on the books of the various central banks and other words if you were to suddenly mark to market the so-called assets on the balance sheets of the central banks everything that they say is worth one hundred cents on the dollar if you actually put a market price on those assets what would that moral market price be a and i have a feeling the answer would be close to zero and if that's the case then you'd have to mark down the value of the stock markets to their true market price as well right it's a bit of a con game going on here because they are that the stock prices are a reflection of a con of a ponzi scheme of collusion going down the wrong path record help me you have to concede that the market is trading at a market price right now but i think there's a little bit too much exuberance priced into the market and ultimately all those

debts all those assets kind of net out. other and probably the most pernicious way that they've been settling over time is the the parent and the decline in the standard of living of what used to be called the middle class we have a lot of things to distract us from the the deterioration of the middle class living standards but it has happened just the same you know we have amazing electronic gizmos in and you know people go exotic places for vacation and it seems like we're living the good life but some of the really important things have been lost and one of those would be the option let's say of having a stay at home spouse to raise the kids that doesn't exist anymore at least not hardly because the working life for the working spouse is really. it's

it's universal and even with two professional incomes in a household you find that they're still having to borrow to put the kids through college and we didn't used to have a situation where. someone a child would come out of college and there be fifty to one hundred thousand dollars or more of debt associated with the degree. another area where the decline of living has the the standard of living has declined in an important way. is that. medical care it has become more or less an affordable for most people and we certainly don't we have again a lot of gizmos these huge shoes things like. a proton x. ray machine it weighs hundreds of tons but if it were at the level of doctor visits house calls and things like that they don't exist anymore and so in important ways

we're really struggling. to pay for the things that matter while we're sort of seduced by bread and circuses i don't think there's any argument that the middle class has been destroyed in america and in another countries around the world i mean i just look at life expectancy in the us as going down into more talent is going up there's where past i think the conversation about can the middle class be saved it's finished we're now in the we're in a phase now of a post-mortem i think now we're in a phase are saying well how did the middle class get destroyed and when trump for example says that if it weren't for the fed raising rates race and they stock markets or be five thousand a ten thousand points higher so he's saying that the middle class is dead and the amount of embalming fluid that we inject into the corpse needs to be accelerated

it's going to start to smell really bad rick it's amazing to me that's so stupid an idea should it. achieve universal acceptance and that's the idea that we can simply borrow our way to prosperity so when trump talks about gunning the the monetary engines he wants to get the federal on board all that means really is that he's going to. expand the credit system we're going to do more borrowing to pump the economy but we pumped it pretty much already and there isn't a day of reckoning you know will all of those debts the probably the biggest piece of it were the one that's most immediate and is going to hurt the worst will be just the pension system. that represent shit one more debt that we owe ourselves that's unpayable and we talk about some of these state pensions like illinois i think will probably be the first to go because it's got to chicago to help pull it

down and. you know the even the editorialist say we'll. we're going to have to do something but we there is no real way other than the taxpayers and you find it even though the fed the central banks are really good at inflating financial assets stocks and bonds you really keep you can't inflate the real costs the ongoing costs of the system so and in other words you can't have a bail out of the pension system because number one where do you start you start with illinois and kentucky and pennsylvania new jersey and a whole bunch of other states will want their hand outs as well so i think that's it and if you were to bail out the pension system that would be the same as hyper inflating it would be helicopter money and the the catch twenty two is that all the pension checks that would keep going out would be they would be hyper inflate slated to have zero value you get your check for eleven hundred dollars but that

wouldn't buy groceries you know larry kudlow trumps economic advisor and he might be reading your stuff over there rick ackerman dot com because he seems to think that deflation is that now systemic and hard cover in the system he doesn't think an interest rates are going to ever rise again in his lifetime so apparently thrown in the towel he doesn't think we'll ever see anything but the flash in rank yeah and i think the easiest way to see that i've i've had arguments with inflation is in the past and at times they got so ugly that i said ok ok we'll have hyperinflation but a lot of the hyperinflation is argue that the mechanism will be something like the why more hyperinflation of nineteen twenty one twenty three we don't have the same mechanisms in place you know there was a collusion between the government and the major employers in germany that allowed for shipping boxcars of money out to these companies so that they could make

payroll on friday and now. it was a big concern of germany and in fact germany had full employment after the war whereas the allies britain and others were were struggling just to keep people working so we don't have any of that in place and in fact that the dollar is the currency the global reserve you can hyper inflated but the easy easiest way i can i think bring bring people around to the argument is do you think that your mortgage lender is going to allow you to skip skip free and that was what would be implied in a hyperinflation you've got a say you have a two hundred thousand dollar mortgage and were hyper inflating so that your settlement of that mortgage is just a few bills that you could pull pull out of your wallet somehow i don't think that will happen and that the big piece of our debt that we owe in mortgages is going to

be settled socially by rewriting mortgage contracts so that they more closely resemble leases or a setting how things are structured in the economy and that's a lesson that could be applied to the macro global picture as well as countries sit down and figure out how to maybe really architect the global economy in a way where are you who are now moving away from the reliance on the central banks to manage the economy and get to maybe get back to more capitalistic competitive environment and we're going to hold yama for a second segment wreckage that's ok but thanks for being on this part of the kaiser report sure. i queue back yet 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 guest rick ackerman of rick ackerman dot com if you want to catch us on twitter it's kaiser report and bio.

seem wrong. just don't. get to shape out these days. and in. the trail. find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. but.

i. must go confirms talks between kim jong un will take place in russia's far east on thursday the details of the first ever meeting are being kept top secret. state ability for sunday's bomb attacks in sri lanka which took more than three hundred lives. between the us government and facebook because the social media giant introduces its new general counsel a legal adviser at the u.s. state department. for the use and. cuts and if they have it they're ready to shoot and kill.