max kaiser this is the kaiser report you know the oceans are full of micro plastics . environment is full of micro plastics during the course of the year you're going to and by ingest half a cup of plastic or more it's growing every year. we will soon be giving birth to plastic babies. but who's to say that's not necessarily an improvement stacie well max indeed people should google that because we do eat an enormous amount of plastic every year and it's because michael plastics are in everything our water supply even up in the alps and tops of mountains it's all there and it's in our rain it's in our water it's all over the place so everybody's trying to do good right they're trying to say well we're going to ban single use plastics you're going to ban plastic bags and we're doing our good for the environment bad in plastic straws well we're going to look at some of this because in the past week or

2 it was big news that china is going to ban single use plastic plastic bags so this is the sort of thing people mock california for now oby policy for over a 1000000000 human plastic bags will be banned in all of china's major cities by the end of 2020 and bans an all cities and towns in 2022 so china is stepping up restrictions on the production sale and use of single use plastic products the state planner said last sunday as it seeks to tackle one of the country's biggest environmental problems and i got to ask you you know look the plastic is a problem it's in a suit supply it's in the oceans we eat plastic and obviously plastic in the human body is going to kill you so life expectancy is down existential angst is up opiate crisis is here people are committing suicide either slowly or quickly either by

eating lots of plastic or by taking opiates and banning plastic is not going to change the equation one iota right because it's too far gone so should we care or just consider that humans had a great right why we did in them shuffle off our mortal coil and that yes well. what kaiser report does is point out the obvious that maybe the media doesn't look at they don't take the time to look at the obvious they'll just print this headline here this guy who is obviously a social justice warrior sort saying like you know we're doing good in california we have bans you know plastic bags line go plastic straws and that's why you know we can tolerate all these homeless people because we're good people and deep down we bend plastics but at the end of the day if you look at the obvious if you drive across america and if you look at investments being and mounts there is no plan to

stop plastics in fact in the united states where expanding and i'm going to look at these headlines here and show you what we've been saying for years we've been pointing this out nobody is saying it they're only hailing these headlines that china is banning plastic bags and therefore the problem is solved well a surge of new plastic is about to hit the planet as public concern about plastic pollution rises consumers are reaching for canvas bags metal straws and re usable water bottles while individuals fret over images of oceanic garbage gyres the fossil fuel and petro chemical industries are pouring billions of dollars into new plants intended to make millions of more tons of plastic then they now pump out companies like exxon mobil shell and saudi aramco are ramping up output of plastic which is made from oil and gas and thereby products to hedge against the

possibility that a serious global response to climate change might reduce demand for their fuel petrochemicals the category that includes plastics now account for 14 percent of oil use and are expected to drive half of oil demand growth between now and. 2050 the international energy agency says the world economic forum predicts plastic production will double in the next 20 years all right so they're going to switch from sinai to howitzers in terms of how they kill us right there like concerned one might be less affected than the other but the fact is that the rate of all let me take a big approach ok let me let me go high level like like all the way to the uppermost regions of the highest of the highest of all levels. the human brain or whether you can do argue where comes from you know but is it is

a design the human brain is designed it's a design it's a it's made up of matter and it's in a day it's in the configuration of that matter is now plastic but it's in a configuration that allows for humans to have a human experience it's a design like you would design a car or design a building the brain is a design it's architecture it doesn't say you could argue or come from or doesn't come from maybe it comes from amoebas maybe it comes from another universe in us but it's got a design flaw the flaw like like a bad tesla or a bad you get from the store it doesn't seem to care whether it's plastic that's a design flaw now it took millions of years to do you vall the brain to where it is today is probably going to be solved in a tent in the 10 years necessary to stop these human brains from ceasing to emit electrical currents over the next 10 years as an extension extinction event. you know so let's just enjoy it matters don't grow over ok in the meantime today i'm

doing the kaiser report so i'm going to report a mess and in fact again like consumers are cheering they feel good about themselves they think using a canvas bag i did not i said no at wal-mart no it's that plastic bag and i'm doing my bit for the economy shell is building a $6000000000.00 petrochemical plant in pennsylvania that will produce $1600000.00 tonnes of plastic annually when it opens so if if they believed that you were going to reduce plastic why would shell and their shareholders want to invest $6000000000.00 into a petrochemical plastics manufacturing plant and pennsylvania why would these headlines exist 31 knew. or expanded petro chemical plants approved in hurricane zone along texas and louisiana gulf coast this is from 2018 the fact is you can

you can feel good about yourself or you can look at what wall street is doing and where they're putting money because what wall street does wall street gets what they want they get and this is the fact is no matter what you think you're doing no matter how you held these like this is a systemic issue it's not an individual issue it's the systemic issue of how our economies are structured that this is going to happen there their plans are a doubling of plastic in the next 20 years well i coca-cola for example they came out a statement because this is a big story you know plastic plastic used and they said well we're going to continue using plastic bottles because our customers want to use plastic bottles yes ok the customers would also like you coca-cola to play their medical expenses because of all the medical damage in the carcinogens that you are putting in your products. or the customers want you to pay our medical expenses ok so coca-cola you do the customers a lot right so who do i give you the address can you send me the check in my

obamacare place 20000 dollars coca-cola hello oh anyone there oh it was their coke 000 you mean you're just selectively selectively deaf i get it why because you in your yacht largest shareholder warren buffet are committing. it's a g. word 3 sobel so i'll let you go see you mention obamacare that was brought in under president barack obama many of the resistance or in social justice worries think he was the greatest president in u.s. history and brought about only good so since 2010 companies have invested more than $200000000000.33 plastic and other chemical projects in the united states including expansions of existing facilities new plants and associated infrastructure pipelines why did they invest so much what is going on uniquely in america that is

seeing them expand into this is called fracking because there's a unique thing about fracking that actually lends itself to cheap plastics and getting a lot of money from this. and because the american fracking boom is an earth thing along with natural gas large amounts of the plastic feedstock called the sane the united states is a big growth area for plastic production with natural gas prices low many fracking operations are losing money so producers have been eager to find a use for the ethan they get as a byproduct of drilling they're looking for a way to monetize it says stephen felt a staff attorney at the center for international environmental law you can think of plastic as a kind of subsidy for fracking so again we have these complex systems a complex environment complex economy complex politics geopolitics

there are cause and effect there are intended perhaps consequences so for example this barack obama and many of the left will say gas natural gas is a bridge fuel to get us to alternative energy solar wind power and all that sort of stuff by here these factories in america we pointed out have been losing money hand over fist they've been losing money for their investors their investors want returns they don't care how they get those returns produced plastic because the consumer is going to get plastic so they've got to make their money back and $200000000000.00 invested since 2010 so if you think you using a canvas bag instead of plastic is going to stop them from finding another way to inject plastic into your environment you know you're just a fool like home builder. processing would go what processing to build homes

and industries in a slump and losing money on all the homes that they've built they find out that when they're processing the wood it's a byproduct of cyanide so they're going to start putting cyanide in people's milk. and because they make money because they sell the cyanide to the dairy in the dairy puts it in the milk it's killing people but the homebuilder to use it as cyanide and they're not going to report a loss for this quarter and the executives are buying back their own stock with the money free from the fed so we've got to applaud because capitalism is groovy man so a lot of what is in the water supply in the united states is fluoride in florida as a byproduct of nuclear power production so that was a way to sell something that is not good to actually be ingested and swallowed and go is into your brain fluoride and might be good for your teeth but it's not good for your body in terms of this fracking again you know another thing another thing that is right in front of your eyes that you can see being invested that americans

refuse to see or like a lot of alice refused to see are all the huge billions and billions of dollars being invested in l. and g. terminals also down in the same gulf what does that mean that means 1st of all you're going to keep their planning on long term production of lots of oil lots of gas but with these l.n.g. terminals yet natural gas. but what that means for the american is higher prices because the prices in asia and europe are $34.00 times more expensive that domestic production but again nobody talks about that nobody reports on that that's like b.p. now saying that the correct that that they put in the gulf to us mop up by the oil is also makes a wonderful condiment for cupcakes so they're going to sell to cupcake benefactress nice correct the top cupcakes we're going to take a break when we come back much more coming wait don't go away.

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welcome back to the kaiser report imax keyser time now out to jason the german guy tetro he's the host of the award winning super awesome science show and curious cast he's the author of the germ code and the bestseller the germ files jason welcome back to the kaiser report it is so good to be with you again max r.i. you love germs obviously so you're the guy to go to hear what can you tell us about this corona virus out of who on china it's a rapidly changing story obviously but from what you've seen so far how bad do you think it is where is it going what are your thoughts jason honestly we are still learning a lot about this corona virus but what i can tell you is that it's kind of like sars but it's not sars it's

a little bit weaker than sars and how it affects the body and as a result of that it might actually spread a little bit faster and a little bit better than sars did because basically when you had symptoms from sars you went to the hospital and sometimes you never came out of here you might still be walking with the pneumonia and be able to spread it as we're starting to see in some of the countries outside of china is this really going to be a pandemic virus probably not but it's definitely going to be something a little bit more troublesome than say the regular flu which is by the way chilling a heck of a lot more people than this virus at the moment all right that's a good point the flu is with us and it is killing a lot of people as well now your thoughts on quarantine quarantining the entire cities or in this many cities trapping millions of people this definitely makes the situation look apocalyptic it is that the right thing to do. well the problem is

that at the moment we really don't understand how this virus can spread and when. you have 2 major factors working against you population density and geographical distance it's going to be troublesome so if you've got a city of levon 1000000 people and you don't know how well this fire is going to spread it's pretty good for you to be able to limit the amount of travel that occurs does that require a follow on corn teen. that's a hard one to say now in a place like china and may not be as difficult as say when we had a bottle where they tried that in west africa which was a complete and utter disaster so what we want to do is start looking at is this going to help reduce the number of cases that are being spread from these areas in china which it seems to be and if so is that going to allow this virus to what we call burnouts so that we don't have to worry about it again right now of course during the sars epidemic in social media was a lot less developed

a lot less present i don't think there was much of it at all and now we have social media so you have videos of people dropping dead in for example is quite dramatic and i want to ask you something and what what exactly how does this is a skill true or. the understanding of folks is that this started with bat soup in a womb hansal an eating bat soup which was later described as a virus reservoir is that true was that word comes from well we know that it comes from an animal it's most likely coming from a back there were some people who thought it might be coming from a snake probably not but when it comes to say bat soup you have to remember something it's a virus and a virus dies at around 65 to 70 degrees celsius and if you're making a good soup you want to get a good boil so the likelihood of that virus coming from a bat was eaten in

a soup is pretty unlikely that being said. if you are going out and you are looking for that bat for your soup it hasn't yet been cooked yet and so there's a chance that while you're butchering it you may end up being exposed to a virus so i think when it comes to something that's coming from an animal a zoo or not a confection you have to remember that there are a number of stages before it comes to you in your soup book or on your dinner plate and that through those stages there is a risk that it may come to you if there's a virus there right that's a lot of food or like that chickens like a summon ella poisoning and things like this happen if you don't properly handle your food and cook your food you can get sick so for those out there thinking of having a bat soup make sure you cook it properly to kill any viruses and now you have talked about something which is quite interesting a health vic's on markets and now i'm assuming the 1st to the vix which

is the volatility index people use to determine what folks risk appetite is in the markets on any given day you're talking about a health vix on markets tell us more so what i'm proposing is that we look at events like the corona virus like the pandemic flu like a bowl of these types of things as extensionally problematic to the markets because that's going to cause some kind of change in the way that the markets behave now for example you take something like a bolo well remember when we had a bowl a treatment that was supposed to come around well that was always not really going to be there all the time but when it came to the stock market only boy did there ever come a push for that particular stock and then it got shorted so what we're seeing is

that when we start to see this health vix come into play we start to look at the markets that are involved in those particular health environments i mean think about it at this moment we are in a short a shortage of masks everywhere all over the world. could you imagine what it would be like if you had bought stocks in those mask making companies a little bit beforehand and now of course you're going to see that rise because there's this huge supply but then when the virus starts to go away you're going to start to see a reduction in the need and therefore the stocks are going to drop so that volatility that's coming from an external source in this particular case a virus or any kind of health condition should be recognized as being something that can have an influence on the markets right while on the other side of the coin there you could say that markets are predictive and that they're extremely sensitive to information and the tend to discount information quicker than any other means of assimilating information and so

a health vix index if it started to move and he started to see a rise in surgical masks stocks or other types of pharmaceutical or medical stocks or options for having some activity in a way that there was not reflected in the news it could help perhaps in this case people all stay healthy and maybe save some lives because you you harness the markets to provide some intelligent price signalling your thoughts on that i think that's a very good idea what it will also do is it will help to avoid the sort of conspiracy theories that are coming in better there's a hedge fund manager who's apparently using an event that happened in canada in one of our level 4 labs as a way of being able to increase the hype and scare people with respect to this coronavirus thus pushing them to want to invest in you know coronavirus vaccine companies etc etc i think that's not necessarily the best approach where you're

coming from i really like in that is if we have a health picks back you give people a perspective not only just on how they can best use their money how to meet but also how to take care of their own health because they're going to see things happen. in advance of what they're going to see in the news because honestly the news and other media tend to be a little bit behind in the 1st stages of something that wag phase but the markets themselves are usually very close to what's happening on the ground and so we may be able to look to the markets as opposed to the media as a way of being able to give us a perspective on what's happening in our health world so creating this health vix index is not a complicated matter you can simply put together an index of sensitive stocks and other securities that would reflect this and that that's an interesting project for sure now speaking of economics chinese markets and supply chains are shut down at

the moment for the most part do you think this is something to expect more of in the globalized future so the question is really a pandemic like this has it takes only 2 or 3 days to go global the concentration of the populations in these towns and cities is incredible and so supply chain so we live in a just in time where all of our supply chains are killed and parts and deliveries are made to within a minute and when they need to get to where they need to go if this is interrupted with a pandemic this is clearly an economic risk and. was was there anything that you do that you've done any work on this that to what degree to what degree is a pandemic threatened are just in time global economy again it's all geographically based i mean think about it we had a boiler in 3 west african countries no one lifted a finger no one cared all right the minute you moved into nigeria or you went crazy . we're now looking at

a situation where something is happening in china well so much of the manufacturing world relies on china so of course this is a huge problem because nothing is coming and nothing is going out and so that means that it's going to really affect the supply oh across the world and as demand increases are you going to see a problem not just necessarily with pricing in other words you're going to see that pricing go up but also are we going to start losing interest in certain types of price in certain types of products as a result of the fact that we just can't get our hands on right now this is an interesting conversation in terms of the interaction between markets and and pandemics and viruses and i want to ask you about the fact that the stock market briefly tumbled on the corona news it's now come back and this is in large part because central banks as they usually do coordinate to print money and the fear of money the central bank money it has no price signal at all because the market is

flooded with more of it whenever they feel like it so there's not a true buyers and sellers creating a market in the market of money this is a controlled. environment where any excuse to print more and to benefit those who are doing the printing is is made in this case this crisis was yet another excuse for money printers to put a lot of money into their pockets and cause a lot of other problems. the question is what's more dangerous the virus the fear of money or a corona virus like a pandemic virus a health fires which is more dangerous and i'm not making this as a glib statement this is a real question because. the virus of money is highly destabilizing and causing mal investments like in china or they might make phantom cities or. cetera and versus

a pandemic and what's as obvious negative impacts when you when you think of this what it really comes down to is the lang time so when you're looking at lag time with respect to endemic such as the crow virus you've got a lag time there could be weeks if not months based on testing and all sorts of other things and come from it from a test when you're looking at the markets you're looking at maybe 6 hours to a day in terms of a lag time i would point to try and balance out or you know keep everything calm because if you go too high on the fixed out of the regular fix by the way then we're going to lose confidence in the markets completely so i think in this case it really has to do with the timing as opposed to which one is worst and depending on what kind of trader or were investor you are probably the fi at is going to be worse than the pandemic right ok well that's going to do it for this edition of the kaiser report with me max kaiser and stacy and i would like to thank our guests jason joining catch us on twitter as kaiser report until next time.

what hall of the hands do. they put themselves on the line when they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. or something i want to be. to the right to due process this is what i'm up for free in the morning can't be good. i'm interested always in the wires in that. area. during the great depression which almost remember there was most of the family were poor working. there wasn't it was bed you know much worse objectively than today. but there was an expectation that things were going to get better. there was

a real sense of hopefulness there isn't today today's america where shaped by the 10 principles of concentration of wealth and power. reduced democracy attack solo duo engineer elections manufacture consent and other principles according to no on. one set of rules for the rich. that's what happens when you put her into the. narrows sector of wilf which will is dedicated to increasing power for chills just as you'd expect one of the most influential intellectuals of our time speaks about the modern civilization of america.

after 47 years the united kingdom marks a historic day cutting ties with the e.u. as brics it officially comes into effect but the road ahead though for britain is still unclear. the us democrats are knocked back in getting the witnesses to stand in it all trying to preach from trial it does mean a final vote on the president's time in the oval office is expected next week. and frauds pledges to send its naval forces across the what is right into cyprus as a matter of dispute brake.