italy shuts down production of all non-essential goods as the death toll in the country surges by almost 800 in a single day and russia a plane load of aid to stem the crisis. france police officers spread liquid unless they are provided with a policeman to protect themselves from the virus. becomes the latest card to halt production due to the covert 19 outbreak as a pandemic puts ever more jobs at risk. and u.s. senators are accused of insider trading after they sold off their stocks just before the recent crash. on the stories of the r

t dot com stay with us for the financial news in the car with. kaiser this is the kaiser report i don't know about you but so far this pandemic things working out great in america i say make america transcendental list again you know back in the 1820 states and forty's and the american transcendental as a movement they talked about how to rely on subjective intuition rather than object of empiricism and that's really the heart and soul of america this pandemic is bringing in a whole new era of self-reliance this plays great into the american soul. speaking self-reliance and making sure my wire here is plugged in yes self-reliance ralph

waldo and emerson one of the most famous quotes from that essay called self reliance was a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds adored by little statesman f. loss of furs and divines i would say the philosophers are modern day think tanks and the divine's are celebrity cable news hosts and they have these little minds that focus just on certain numbers the stock price number efficiency globalization making sure everything's just in time and this is what they've been seeking and the think tanks and the cable news has been telling us this is the best thing for basically everything for the american economy and what we found out so far during this crisis caused by the pandemic is that we have 0 self reliance as a nation where basically sitting here waiting for some miracle some you know there is a lot of praying going on in the white house and the vice president's office but they're

waiting for some what some sort of personal protection equipment respirators ventilators all these things to just magically appear out of thin air when we can't make them ourselves we're off waldo emerson consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds you know it it speaks to this idea that specialisation and hyper specialization which is something that is at the root of our goal lobel ization at the root of our reliance on mandarins working as an elected think tanks and global institutions really get to so away from what we know to be true inside of ourselves our subjective intuition we know what's right instinctively but experts in the specialisation and hyper specialization of all knowledge and information has created a class of super technocrats who look at the data and say you know what you think what you instinctively know. to be true is wrong because the data says something else and in the last 10 or 15 years we've moved the era of big data where so much

of our reality of our environment of our society is governed by experts interpreting data and now thanks to coronavirus this is all being stripped away it's all nonsense the coronavirus is now bringing back to america some intuitive sense of self-reliance is going to be a difficult adjustment don't don't get me wrong there's going to be a huge a just print but it is ultimately a hyper amerikana shows like ours and many other people mostly on blogs and in alternative things hanks they're called heterodox thinkers and many of them by the way have been marginalized over the past 3 years since trump was elected because of the whole conspiracy minded ness of the divine class the celebrity thinking class on television the philosophers in our think tanks and they've conspired to basically say you know try to maintain their domain jevon by data and driven by

efficiency and driven by this consistency of globalization they expected to all say the same and people have been saying not just you and us but all the other people put on these lists of russia gaiters that are supposed to be marginalized if we've been saying that this globalization how it's been managed especially in the past 1020 years is it well since china became part of the deputy oh is that we've shipped everything overseas without any sort of thought of the self-reliance of the nation that's left us vulnerable left thousands and thousands tens of thousands of americans dying every year from overdose and deaths and despair that's exactly a result of the situation we have the absence of self-reliance but i want to look at this headline from america mind org and they say make america a tarc again this is by william up to him and he says domestic supply chains not global ones will save us. autarky basically returning an industrial self-reliance

policy autarky for those unfamiliar was an economic and industrial policy of self-reliance wherein a nation need not rely on international trade for its economic survival this is not to say that the nation rejected international trade or isolated itself from the global economic order rather it merely could survive on its own if necessary and i know with the left wing you know hamilton was a huge hit over the past 5 years 6 years and hamilton was one of the big proponents of this notion of our talk yeah and one of the countries that was really the premier autarky in the world before the coronavirus would be friends france was often described as an autocracy to some degree more though probably than the other of the big countries industrialized countries that had a mindset of individual sovereignty farming ourselves you know everything is local if you go to a restaurant france you flip over the cutlery and says made in france right that's a very much the health system is very. kind of supportive of autarky

and now. america's term really to return to its roots of transcendental ism there's a philosophy called american transcendental as a rave emerson writ for rowe read on walden pond read american literature and reefer mill your eyes are software the what makes the american great really from the historical perspective obviously you're seeing that this is necessary for our survival you see it in new york state they've just demonstrated otaki right there with new york state clean this hand sanitizer they had had to make now with that with the fact that we are not self reliant particularly and litle things like pharmaceutical drugs miss china provides up to about 90 percent of it of our pharmaceutical drugs either direct. they are indirectly and here's the headline

opinion moving our pharmaceutical factories overseas was a huge mistake the corona virus outbreak is a good time to ask why our leaders sat by as so much of the u.s. pharmaceutical industry was shipped abroad again this is buzz feed news they're very they're part of that hobgoblin of little minds they're part of that beltway sort of elite so they're only thinking to ask this now why did we do this i forget like what was the excuse of course we have been asking this for a very long time for it's the 10 years 10 and a half years now of this program and many of our guests are heterodox thinkers guests have also been asking the same but there is just dawning on them that there is an actual shortage of drugs and pharmaceutical drugs at the moment and personal protection equipment well let's talk about the big lie and using data to push the lie even though instinctively you know that over the past 15 years there's

been rampant inflation in the american economy student loans are tripling in price medical care crippling quadrupling in price the average person is experiencing at the end of the day or at the end of the year 8910 percent inflation and yet the government using statistical. false foods will say well according to the consumer price index number that we manage and we adjust and we calculate in a way that we don't communicate it's hidden it's a black box it goes through the inflation deflator number which is another layer of lies according to our data we're the experts who are the empirical experts your intuition is wrong inflation is actually contract and we need to lower interest rates to help jamie diamond that's always the conclusion every single quarter is

that there you're wrong there's no inflation there's actually deflation so we have to lower interest rates don't you get it the wall street banks the cheaper money to speculate more blow up the economy don't you get your intuitively wrong well that is anti-american if you're an american that believes in transcendental ism and the sanctity of intuition then that's anti-american their banks are not reliance and they should be self-reliant they're reliant on the bailouts of the taxpayer but we'll talk about that later during this ongoing crash over the next few weeks and months back to the self-reliance of what happened with outsourcing all of our ability to manufacture and our ability to produce again this was started long before just this epidemic and the pandemic going on it was a policy created by these little minds that control us these little minds of washington d.c. these little minds on wall street's behind the coronavirus threat a middleman destroying prescription drug markets group purchasing organizations

called g p o s have a german many of the generic drug manufacturers out of business and push those remaining to locate factories in china ground 0 for the epidemic how did this happen how did the world become so reliant on one region i.e. not self-reliant such that any disruption could have a magnified impact and at least one sector the answer appears to. these monopoly middlemen basically these monopoly middlemen have been around for a while but legislation through the eighty's under reagan and able them to basically be exempt from antitrust laws and these guys do what the rest of europe does i.e. they're a single buyer they're supposed to be a large buyer for you know pharmaceutical products for a whole region in europe that works well because they get the best price they seek the best price in america of course there's 4 groups that control almost all of it through entire in the entire country and they've basically formed

a cartel because they're exempt from antitrust laws and they fix the price to get the most for them the most profit so the little minds think of only that profit and whatever as long as you get as much profit as possible no matter what the cost to the rest of the people in your society no matter what that is the only number to look at and they've made us totally reliant on other on the the good will of some of these hospitals for example treating us when the bill is $2000000.00 for you know some stitches you need after tripping on the sidewalk or something like that well what's particularly galling about this is that politically you have a group of politicians who are associated with the left who talk about single payer . and the right wing says that's communism that's socialism and yet the prices in the marketplace are dictated by a single payer a monopolist single payer cartel that's operating as

a monopoly to take all the savings that would have been in joy by americans for themselves and the monopoly they scarf it all out and then once it goes through the monopoly we end up into free market capitalism so-called and skyrocketing prices so simply the solution is if you get rid of the middleman and let americans take advantage of the single payer system that is already in place right now for lower prices. you would have a much healthier health system in the last 30 seconds here i want to point out that exactly this here we see china distributing. urgent medical supplies to italy to spain to france at the moment they are able to provide goods and services here in the united states the food and drug administration keeps had a drug shortage database that currently has one $145.00 medications in it so

there's a shortage of medications and this article asked why market economies are supposed to run shortages but these markets are broken so in terms of the sort of transcendental ism we should reflect a look at ourselves instead of being constantly like trump and say how great we are and filled with hubris and being so insecure about looking at ourselves and you know i think we'll find like why do we have shortages that's a good question we seem to have an answer at the shortages or in the soviet union or in venezuela now like we know what the answer is it's socialism is communism well what are our shortages caused by and how do we fix it while the $22.00 trillion or so american economy g.d.p. to be reflective of our actual economic numbers about the statistical mirage is probably closer to 9 or 10 trillion so keep that mine take we'll take a break when it come back what's more coming your way.

in. this break really highlights that our system for global governance is weak and that not only is it. relations which dozens of countries are currently violating but it's just the broader system in which we tackle these challenges and i think. highlights we need to do better in the future i mean for one thing certainly when so many countries are breaking international regulations it makes sense to revisit that instruments after this outbreak is over but also our system more broadly for how we cover those challenges that transcend national borders. as the democrats gear up to officially start their 2020 presidential primary it is

fitting to assess donald trump's performance in office a report card of sorts where is he kept his promises and where has he come up short will any of this really matter. welcome back to the kaiser report i'm max kaiser time at a turkey bruce fenton that early bitcoin adopter very well known on the back like a very brisk walk on to the kaiser report thanks max all right i wanted to ask you about a tweet that you made just a few hours ago i think it's quite interesting you say quote in all this economic crisis and i don't think. seen

a single person scream at bitcoin developers users or miners to quote do something . that's because strong money focuses on being good money money that bends in the wind the 2 a crisis is a week money can you expand on that plays yes salute the unfortunately and we could've predicted this governments tend to overreact. to crisis this and they're doing that in the way that they know best which is to print a bunch of money and that's a real mistake because it weakens the money and it's never a good time for bad economics better ideas or even worse ideas in a crisis a crisis doesn't suddenly make economic swer it makes it worse all right now bruce let's change gears a little bit so i'm going back several weeks if not a month or more you kind of stepped out of your usual role to start talking to people using sulfur media about cove it 19 and he started to warn people about it

and he started to get people to prep for it and a lot of people are still on willing to prep even at this point and we see people on spring break congregating in masses of folks and you know gazing in very risky behavior your thoughts on what to do now to survive as covert 19 i turned to you because you were very early in warning people about it you came up with some great ideas where are we in that cycle yeah i was pretty early i watched this data and i saw that we may have a crisis unfolding it was february early early mid february i was talking about it by february 27th i by 20 the 25th we shifted our whole firm to focus on this we moved to cash but if every 27 they said you know this is a very big alarm and i kept saying that and i'll unfortunately it's not really here yet what some people listen to me and we're thankful that they listen to me especially if they went out and predator moved to cash. but my morning is. just

getting started the morning now he's about the government the government's overreaching printing to mind doing bad economic policies and eroding freedoms so we come to probe and i always think you should prep for the next emergency you know you should be prepping for new concern about being quarantined for a few weeks because that looks more like the norm rather than the emergency prepping you want to prep for the emergency i met you know quite a situation now if you want to prepare for the for the worse you in your business your personal life your family your medicine your your financial plan all of these things it's just good risk management right now you mentioned there the idea that government is overreaching and i've seen this a lot on social media people particularly in the libertarian space talking about how governments are encouraging you know incursion into certain rights and freedoms that are protected and if we look at this coronavirus though in context of what's happening around the world it seems like countries that are more authoritarian or

dictatorial or let's call it an autocracy like singapore or china have been able to get their hands around this cove in $1000.00 virus and it seems to be entering into a phase of manageability here in the u.s. where it's wide open there seems to be no end in sight and the plan to get some control over it doesn't seem to be materializing in any meaningful way so my question is about this government overreach question is there a balance between the public good and what can be done by government or is is this a question of we just need to be more allows a fair and see what happens it's such a complex thing that there's no simple answers and it is no so great solution it's all just a matter of tradeoffs and degrees of trade offs based on estimates but i think that what we should embrace this way. that what we're good at. go to our strengths china

strength is being able to lock things down very easily i still live in so you maybe i know they have to go oh you know look things down quite easily they can block the highways of luck travel very simply united states just isn't set up for that and that's one of our strengths so i think we should build on our strengths which is innovation creativity these kind of things i'd like to see politicians tearing down laws right now and this just isn't as a libertarian free market person this is as a as a humanitarian angle people right now who are able to work should have any law removed that enables them to work if they if they want to you know cook food in the park and handed out to people whatever anything that people can do to make money should be legal right now and as far as dealing with the medical aspects you know hopefully embracing our private industry you know don't trump ride brought some of our companies low greens and wal-mart and c.v.s. to the stage you know there is where we shine these are good executives good people know what they're doing hopefully our strength will be in our private industry i

think each country may solve this and it in a little bit different way with different trade offs regarding effectiveness and freedom are priorities got to be on fighting the virus but hopefully we'll be able to do that in a way that embraces what we're best at what makes us a great country which is freedom entrepreneurship and these kind of things are right and in fact you are part of 2 a project that is crowdsourcing 3 d. printed ventilators a project that speaks to exactly what you're saying there innovation to fight the virus versus authoritarianism and we'll get to that more on that a 2nd but let me just talk at rollback for a hair what the government is seeming to do here in the u.s. is are talking about a $1000.00 per month as a basic income to all americans are talking about more balance for industry and they're talking about banning short selling so they're not pulling they're not going to the innovate. bag of tricks they're going to do the heavy heavy dead

hand of government bag of tricks bruce i would imagine this is doesn't truck well with your way of thinking sir yeah i agree absolutely i think that the bailouts are a bit idea i think they're a better idea in a good economy they're bad idea and a bad economy and to make it even worse when they're talking about elizabeth warren today for example she said well if we give a bailout we should for big. purchases and we have to have more representation that the workers we have to. all of those kind of things become a micromanaging nanny state so you have and usually the company is going to bail out of the bad companies who made bad decisions so you make a bet going on a decision to bail out to a bad company because they made bad decisions and then you settle them up with more are. decisions by politicians who don't know how to run companies it's just a recipe for disaster and what we need to go back to was just basic good economics

you know do good economic principles that's what's going to get out of this not not crazy bailouts for hedge funds and banks and failed businesses right it's an interesting equation because you know we all know free markets and deregulation and yet you saw that the airlines have particular american airlines they bought back something like $50000000000.00 worth of their stock which could have been used that cash could've been used to build some innovative products same thing for boeing that cash could have been used to stop their planes from falling out of the sky but instead they stole of a while they did stock buybacks to reward the executives and so now there's been revealed to be a scam a very dangerous scam and in this crisis howard schultz over there at starbucks has just announced a massive stock repurchase plan so the fairly there is no crisis that a company like starbucks won't exploiting even though it's creating misery across the land but i. don't want to dwell on these malcontents and losers our economy

let's talk about your 3 d. printed ventilator project it's being crowd source that's your idea of innovation can beat this thing tell us about it it started because i met a group of folks at a group called the new england complex systems institute which is a group of scientists who study this early on and saw that this risk was coming in predicted that we might end up in the situation of lockdowns and so on and they created a volunteer organization called and coronavirus dot org and that now has over a 1000 volunteers many of them have only led by a lot of people out of harvard and mit a lot of very credential professors so i got into it i try to look for something that i might be able to help with and i came up with this idea that you know you know there's a lot of people talking about these ventilators i said well you know i do know open source i don't i'm not a doctor i don't know ventilators but i do know open source and i think i might be able to help foster a community and so so we've done that and we have quite

a few volunteers all kinds of doctors and medical professionals and other experts who volunteer not just to do 3 d. printing of parts but to try and make compliant i am ventilators modified ventilators ventilators from other equipment and then also working with existing and you factories who are already have the f.d.a. and other approvals to help them increase their capacity by doing creative kind of things helping with the engineer or the rape. or whatever so hopefully we're to get more ventilator capacity because we anticipate that that could be something that is needed based on what some some estimates that we've seen right incense or one of the co-founders of probably the premier bitcoin event of the of the year. it would be this a toshi round table and so you have contact with a lot of topic coiners in the world have you reached out to the big community with this project what kind of feedback are you getting is the big point community rising to the occasion i really reached out but i've had a lot of people reach out to me which is great i've had a couple people talk to me and ask about it and. to contribute and i just say it's

just like any other open source project come on and really sleeves up and start doing things and i'm trying to i think it's actually great that i'm not an expert on ventilators because i don't have a lot of now it's grown so fast i don't have a lot of desire to control it i mean i'd much rather find more qualified people you know somebody who knows distribution or somebody who knows manufacturing or medicine or whatever so i'm trying to delegate and encourage people to take their toll leadership which coincidentally is a great recipe for a good open source project so there's no profit motivation so everybody has incentive to just kind of say ok what can i do that's great where i can have the most value who else can help who can lead go and lead your teams that kind of thing so i think that that's well with the big question ecosystem you know people who are . self sufficient people help others and only people who understand open source can just kind of run with something and go do their own thing there's people now doing all kinds of stuff that i'm not even aware of i haven't really talked to them but

they're kind of sort of part of the the project that and i don't want to take too much you know credit for creating it just sort of people latching on to the same idea which is great that's what open source is all about that's a great thing for a town like this it has the ability to move fast and adjust and we've seen the power of open source through projects like banquet for sure all right bruce sandton thanks for being on the kaiser report thank you max well that's going to do it for this edition of the kaiser report with may max kaiser and stacey herbert want to thank our guest bruce fenton if you want to catch us on twitter it's kaiser report until next time. well actions or a little bit messed up by our d.n.a. in some way over and over the complete i'm not sure it isn't such

a great thing you know i'm sure you look better now than when he had hair come along it's nice of you to say so but i but i went bald when i was 25 and wasn't so great then. is your media a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe. high salacious or community. are you going the right way or are you being. direct. what is true what is faith. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the

depths. or a maybe in the shallows. alone and welcome to worlds apart coming together by staying apart is now a populist slogan in dealing with the corona virus outbreak including among policymakers with just a few weeks ago sworn trammeled bounce and social distancing why has so much of the initial advise on how to handle call that 19 been trained on his chads well to discuss that i'm now joined by stephen hoffman director of the global straw.