an investigative news website claims to have been blacklisted by british intelligence after exposing government surveillance practices declassified you ok says it is being targeted by g c h q. a hunger and a lawmaker resigned his seat in the european parliament after being caught at a party in brussels that the media are describing as a mostly male orgy to e.u. diplomats were among the guests. and iran ups the ante over the murder of its top nuclear scientist value to hunt down criminals and seek revenge. with your headlines i'm back with another look in just under an hour stay with us this is part 2 international.

to lou and welcome to crossfire all things considered i'm peter lavelle at this point no one knows when the cold crisis will abate however it is undeniable that this health crisis has negatively impacted the economy what does it mean to return to normal is that even possible now and will the divide separating the rich from the poor continue to abate. to discuss the economy and more i'm joined by my guest peter bergen great barrington he is an economist at the american institute for economic research in miami we have made rezko he is in xenos chief investment strategist and we also

have eric townsend he is host of the macro voices podcast original macross liberals . in fact that means you can jump in anytime you want and i was appreciate ok let's go 1st to peter you know in looking at the bury the. broadest picture of what's going on in the economy right now i think we all have to be very honest with ourselves that the election cycle influenced people how they look at the economy how bad it is or how good it is and it's all been kind of tainted now as we move out of that cycle. give me your kind of most sober view of what's going on in the economy because you know we hear about a w. recovery recovery are you and the new one and this time is the k one which you would assume that it's. the recovery is good for some people and also at the same time negative for others where we have going in different trajectory so what's your

cold sober view of what's going on the economy right now. thanks it made my my you know inequality is a feature of just about any society advanced or less advanced developing rather wise we're really characterized as an advanced market economy is that even if there is a gulf between the rich and the core. there's a lot of movement at the top if you look at the forbes $500.00 list every year you tend to see that and also that as the proverb goes a rising tide lifts all boats. the what we call the n.p.r. the non-pharmaceutical interventions to address the covert pandemic and the tickler government lockouts have actually accomplished what some have said was happening all along what they've done is they've widened the gap and they've helped the top by hurting the bottom and they've also caused a resurgence it's a really awful economic and social trends so i don't want to jump too far ahead but my view right now is that while recovery may be underway it

a lot depends upon what happens next few months i think we're looking at the 21st century manifestation of the smoot hawley tariff in terms of policy. a very interesting era kind of how do you look at it because i think the main the bone of contention is here is that there's going to be a recovery but recovery for home and and not only is that an economic question it's a political question is well ahead there. well i think the 1st thing to consider is we don't know where we stand everybody is acting like ok we've got the vaccine it's great wait a minute where is the mainstream news to report that there's never been a corona virus vaccine for human beings that's ever worked before lots of people tried for decades and decades to cure the common cold they couldn't do it we've got this brand new experimental messenger r.n.a. vaccine which is really cool technology it sounds very promising i'm very excited about it i don't mean to naysay have a wait a minute this is brand new on charted territory we've never been here before

there's this mix strain theory where the virus has jumped from human beings to minks and back to human beings the science is beyond my pay grade but the essence of it is when you see these species jumps from one species to another and back it is a very ripe time for the virus to mutate in a ways that would render any vaccine affective on the previous mutation but not on the new mutation so we don't know yet how resilient this virus is going to be or i think the term they use is evasion how well the virus is going to be able to mutate in response to the introduction of a vaccine in order to continue spending you know in defiance of that axiom because a different mutation is able to do that these are all total unknown's the thing that is known is that governments are going to continue to debase the currency by printing money throwing money at the problem and the crazy part is the throwing

money at the problem is mostly to bail out big industry and wall street banks and you know the percentage of it that's going to help people in need is minimal so i think it's really you know the you know and maybe kind of when bert your answer to my question need different way and i think you know along the same lines that at the end of the day you can't have lockdowns are ever ok to me and everybody knows that ok the election cycles over every buy. ok now i'm going to augment here because you know it's how you manage a crisis like this and this is what it gets down to and i really wish it would be much more bipartisan because you know you can score all the political viewpoints you want to ban it but main street is in big big trouble we have bankruptcy if we have people losing their homes and it's dispersed different regionally and all of this and because of again the election cycle here i think in some kind of concerted reaction to it if it means and including a another stimulus package i'd like to talk about later here you know these are the

issues that i think it's just really don't know where we are right now but you know when you take politics out of it i think we have to start thinking about lockdowns and i'm going to be the solution for every chance you need an economy. correct and eric does bring up some valid points as far as sort of the efficacy of the vaccine and over time i have a little bit more confidence in the scientific communities ability to adapt the vaccine as it mutates my bigger concern is with even americans willingness to take the vaccine there was a recent pew research report that came out where almost 49 percent so basically half the population said that they would not take the vaccine right so that really just sort of you know beyond whether it's efficacious or not i think what we have to see whether americans are willing to take it because the quicker they take it on the the quicker we get to the point where a good portion of the population is an ocular lated the quicker we'll be able to return to economic normalcy which let me jump to that point of fiscal transfers

because i think that's very important a new fiscal stimulus bill is crucial to not sort of going into a double dip recession and really bridging that gap to the point where the economy is sufficiently not good or the population is sufficiently not ulaby to be able to return to a more economic normal economic landscape you know age peter i mean you know if how much if people. i have confidence in the vaccine how much will they have companies than what other decisions governments made i mean i'm not against the vaccine as a matter of fact i took the sputnik 5 on russian baxi not 2 weeks ago ok so. i'm very friendly towards trying to get this resolved not only the united states but around the world but you know people don't trust it then how can they trust the government's decisions about lockdowns and social distancing and a lot of these crazy things that politicians came up with during this thanksgiving day season sure so i do things about that the 1st to answer your question someone

asked me last week what are 2 positive things i could think could come out of all these lockdowns what i think is the. motivation and greater incentives to view technology not as a luxury but as an essential means of stang employing all that a 2nd is more skepticism about government to be perfectly honest one of these i think is going to be big problem is that you're going to have a whole generation now a both one time business owners who lost their businesses or prospect of hopeful entrepreneurs who are now facing the possibility of an actual special threat that the next time some virus or bacteria comes along and it may be one that doesn't have. as much as a 99 percent survival rate for people who are not elderly and or don't have all abilities as something else may come along and the former drop out from underneath them so there's a whole i think aspiring productive class of people who may have tried one business who are now going to seek you know other forms of employment or or they're going to

sort this all right they're entrepreneurial instinct that's sensient an excellent point here and that and i think you know worldwide and particularly in the industrialized world and i've seen it with my own eyes is that you know small entrepreneurs in just clobbered by this and i want to go back to an issue that eric ronna which really you know it's like don't hear is that if you're too big to fail you can always be ok. ok and i think that's one of the big takeaways from all of this because it just as peter put i mean why don't you know if there's an existential threat that is beyond your control why should you put your life savings and blood sweat and tears into a into a business when you know you know that amazon is going to be fine and all these other companies but no one's going to help you out when something happens it is not your faults they're. well i think we have to put this in context and see the big picture here it's the k. shaped recovery but really it's just the next step in the 4th turning that neal how

wrote about in his famous book from 998 what we're seeing here is social division we've reached a point where science has been compromised there's been widespread agreement among credentialed epidemiologists who happen to be registered republicans that face masks are completely useless but there's also widespread agreement among epidemiologists who are registered democrats that they're absolutely essential so we've gotten to the point where science is undermined by political bias and we've reached the point where even television news there's no news anymore you have to choose do i want republican know i want left leaning news or right leaning news the idea of objectivity is lost because people are getting more and more attached to extremes and they're getting more polarized they don't see any weight and i think you miss a good point but is it because of spear because i think that's what it is people are of are afraid and you have to grab on to some kind of narratives to get you

through this crisis and so the media itself has been a huge disservice to the public i agree with you i mean as it is someone that works to be a look at all of the cable channels you're absolutely right that well c.n.n. has that all's oh big you're down doesn't it ok and then you go over to fox and it's a totally different story i'm not a scientist so i don't know what debate you're well i think the key to this to understanding this is what's really going on is everybody is pissed off with the status quo and if you're upset you know a little bit i'm not smart enough to know exactly the details of how this stuff works but i do know how the system we have is corrupt is hell it's unfair to me and i'm sick of it and i won't take any more that puts people in the mindset where they're looking for an alternative that is the reasons. clinton was so successful with his vote trying what change yes but change to what people really need to have that blank field then i want to know change is coming so why is socialism

suddenly so popular with the entire generations because it sounds like the opposite of what we've got now and what we have now is clearly broken and we've got to go to something else or should something whatever it is if it will do no good but we have been touched by having lived in east europe communist eastern europe for many years when i was a young man ok that's certainly not an alternative but not mitt just that eric's point here i mean if i could quote unquote capitalism doesn't work for you then you are going to look for something else that is that's a completely normal reaction for people young people going into the workforce it is very much in debt and have no prospects why would they think about that go ahead up the last 30 seconds before we go to the break you're like absolutely i sort of agree with that what we're seeing with this pandemic like previous pandemics what they tend to do is that they tend to accelerate the sort of longer term structural trends that are already in place right and we see even now for a couple of years we've seen the the median voter in the in the united states has

been shifting over to the left similarly by the way we've seen sort of the median voter in europe shifting to the right but that's a different story it's sort of more of a reaction to sort of the policies of the past what eric mentioned right a reaction to the status quo so we've had basically since reagan in the united states we've had 3040 years of sort of laissez faire approach and i jump in here we're going to continue talking about the status quo when we come back we'll continue our discussion on the economy stay. with games become more restrained and which needs to right when this is like breaking norms not necessarily in a good way to become smart and resigns hiring does he mention all transpiring right is that as you strain is like the reality of. thank you all i saw. a 1st. for

if you're born into a poor family if you're born into a minority family if you're born into a family has a single parent that really constrains your life chances people thought i was. born into generational poverty. fight every day. rule your needs and the needs of your family. welcome back to cross up where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing the economy after coping. ok let's go back to peter in the 1st part of the program we talked about the

possibility of a stimulus and i guess we're all kind of an agreement that it's necessary i mean it was very distraught and how it was used as a political football i thought it was just tells you everything about what's broken about politics or scoring points you know the rich and. the at the very top you know they were taking care of they when they got their concierge service and they were taking care of right from the get go ok and then seeing that working people were just essentially shafted here and because of this lame duck session right now. i believe that there needs to be a stimulus i don't know i'm not the type of person we you know like nancy pelosi and chuck schumer they want a stimulus to reinvent the american economy i just want to deal with a pandemic and getting small and medium sized businesses back on their feet is that possible. so 1st i think the stimulus or the term stimulus used in the terms used in the ways that we're used to seeing it such as what the previous 2 ever spot the government this year that's not

a stimulus that's essential redistribution because that's basically not mean it's not the way money and that money is being redistributed i think a real stimulus would be something that would stimulate growth for example lower taxes for example lower regulatory burdens on hiring that sort of thing whether it takes the form of a jubilee of sorts maybe 6 months with lower rates right that or whether something more long term or certain areas. i don't see political incentives aligned towards any sort of. stimulus right now but i also think that what they've been doing is not stimulative. in any jumping on that i mean if the economy needs to be again you know we if it is they came recovery so the they the upper part of the quay they're there they're doing fine they're drinking wine in the shower and having you know brunch again ok let's talk about the majority of people near i mean. are you in

favor of a direct injection of cash or is it peter is just pointed out that isn't regulations there. well i think the corruption that we saw in the 1st a militia it was supposedly a whole lot of political rhetoric about how we're going to help the american small business and that was a that was a bet it faced lie what they did is they set up this ridiculous program which was only available to people who had a stablished credit relationships with major money center banks if that's if everybody who's actually really put the sweat equity into a true small business it's many many years before you get anywhere close to having access to that kind of credit those are mostly and this is the government mentality oh it's a small business only 600 media employees now that's not a small business the guy who's working to create employment for the 10 guys that worked for him in the construction crew that's a small business and those guys got completely totally shafted they got nothing out

of the last stimulus and meanwhile you've got inmates in prisons or that it running scams getting stimulus benefits you've got. hedge funds that are borrowing money on attractive terms because you know their hedge fund guys they know that cheap money as it is a good deal take it if you can get it there's people borrowing money who have absolutely no need to borrow money and there's people who desperately need it in order to keep americans employed who can't get it because the entire system is completely corrupt and i don't see how that changes the next time around i certainly don't think i will with a biden administration it's going to be different it will be corrupt. come on what's going to change this so that the people who need it the most which is the true small businesses that are actually putting you know meal in front of their

employees families how are they going to get the support that they need and the answer is nobody has a plan for that and they're now. really thinking about it because those people don't have enough money to pay k. street lobbyists to get their interest looked after yes 6 words i live by a meeting i never believed in this time it will be different ok i learned that findings by the way meant then i will ask you a very controversial question and if there is going to be no stimulus for the the middle class and working class people it means they don't matter and i think that's true i think that you know they're just written off because it's in a you know in the really weird way isn't it but you know i won't get the numbers exact here but you know libby consumption of the top let's say 5 percent it went down maybe 25 percent and considering their level of well you know it's not a big deal ok and then if you look at the 2nd tier of people that do service for

that people it went down like 50 percent that is a shock to the system but it still works ok it still works it still generates growth maybe not as much but it's the different sectors of the economy that they're disparate in your in they're getting out of joint because there's so many people at the bottom ready and they just don't matter if they don't move the needle one way or another and i think unfortunately that's some kind of political thinking and particularly when you know when to and i can summarize but i consider myself a conservative but i look at the political calculations of the need the same and g.o.p. senators and they say well it's biden's problem now that's a very cynical way of dealing with the go ahead. i think the beauty of the american electoral outcome is that the fiscal stimulus bill when it inevitably does arrive and i think it will arrive because the vast majority of americans do want stimulus know it's going to be more sort of targeted right i think had we had a blue wave scenario it was likely to be in the 3 trillion dollar range right where

you know disparate groups it was going to be sort of money flowing over the economy i think mcconnell's if if the republicans are able to. when one of just one of the georgia runoff elections in january they will control the senate which means up palosi and biden will have to negotiate with mcconnell and i think that that's what's what's going to happen is that the fiscal stimulus at that point will be a lot more targeted and will hopefully go like you mentioned to those sectors of the economy that need it and that makes economic sense because poor people people with lower disposable income tend to spend it so it has more stimulative effect if it's given to people with lower incomes if you give it to people with higher incomes they tend to save it right which is which is not what you want in a recession or potentially a double dip recession so i think it will happen. what are your thoughts on this i mean if it happens what should it look like. well like i said i don't agree that consumption drives growth and savings and investment that drive growth and for that

reason and size redistributing money and then giving it out to people is simply sort of us a form of double spending i think we should do is not only the current meter then there is evidence here with the 1st you know wave of stimulus checks here and that if anything and actually brought on property down now i think i guess what i would differ with you on is that this is an exceptionally exceptional situation and i don't like drake money transfers i mean i personally don't really like it ok however that's and this is where a lot of my conservative friends get angry with me and i say this is what we have government for for an emergency ok and jump through this year to get it would i be and is as i meant said i mean if you give people at the lower end money they do spend it they desperately need it ok they will spend it and then we can just all kind of you know discuss you know the 3 months 6 months 9 months. where you would be very definitive ok because there's plenty of studies there that if you're going

to have money you know flowing to people for her no other reason that you know that they they don't want you don't have to look for work or something like that that's a bad place and i don't like to go their own head here no no i mean so i understand what you're saying and i understand that the view that consumption drives growth is a popular one i'm still not convinced because of my particular views on the role of savings investment but i would say this and that is that we are in trust in government to get money out there and one of the things i thought was just so quick just actually central planning. to get of is that we had the p.p.p. plan the payroll protection plan which basically gave money to people who employed a certain number of employees to try and offset some of their pay what they did was many states the payroll protection plan amounts for employees were less than weekly unemployment and so you could these are these uproars receiving this is an obsession with the try to lure people back for less money and of course who's going

to do that so. if i were to concede a concession that the consumption drives growth that there should be this redistribution. i don't think the government would get it right in terms of who they give it to and how much and on what basis know that i think i think we have a knowledge problem i have here in coordination problem here which is tremendous ok well i think they've always been have to agree on a degree of a fish and see ok because governments are very sloppy and. they're not they're not very good at pinpointing how to resolve problems throwing money at it you know in our lifetimes that's that's been the mantra and has limited success here. and eric i mean you know what would be you know it looks like there's going to be a bite in ministration if you were in the room with him what would you tell him is an economic advisers what to do. oh stop making dirty deals with ukrainian politicians i don't know who are listening with me because of

a crisis in the economy and i've got a 1000000000 other questions to our right well i think i mean the way that we should have handled these these things is look at where the need is in challenge small business challenge american entrepreneurship to do what it's better at than anyone on earth which is delivered to the need if we had said look we have a problem somebody's got to figure out how to make more of these and that the 5 masks that the government screwed up and didn't plan ahead to have on the way and who ever can do 2 things number one meet the design criteria show us that your mask really is and that a 5 and number to prove that you didn't steal it or otherwise you know do do something sleazy in order to take it away from somebody else and the check is yours all you have to do is to live or if they had said that there would be no problem with masks with them i don't know 72 hours there would be entrepreneurs figuring out how to repurpose other manufacturing equipment to solve that need if you turned

out that the government's belief that we needed ventilators was misplaced they weren't really looking at the data and understanding that this is more of a blood borne disease than a respiratory disease but if we had really needed those ventilators the way to do it was not to say who's got the political connection with the you know the right senator but to instead say look here is a specification if you can build a ventilator that meets this specification and deliver it to this address on this day we will write you a check no matter who you are that would have allowed entrepreneurs to jump into action solve the problem meet the requirements of that spec probably improve on it and a lot of cases we don't we don't use the power of entrepreneurs to support government entrepreneurs support the private sector because government is unparalleled and on this is not going to lead agreement with you. here instead of worrying about some of the richest people in the history of mankind and that was their concierge

service for them they forgot about the people who exactly you were talking about and that is a tragedy about the situation or as all the time you have here want to make my guess and errors are what i think our viewers are watching us here are easy unix remember. financialization has its limits the accounting tricks of stock buybacks and money printing have their limits and in saudi arabia we see a brilliant example of what happens when a country decides to go into financialization instead of let's say diversifying into actual productive economic activity.

so we raise the following question what if we could get every kid to follow 3 simple rules graduate from high school get a job and continue work and don't have children so you're 21 and right now we looked out at the entire country and we classified people according to whether they broke all those rules or they followed one or 2.