when and how it's happening. even today kids in laos fall victim to bombs dropped decades ago is the u.s. making amends for that tragedy and what help to the people need in that little land on. max kaiser this is the kaiser report so much to get to world is just going crazy good re a stacy depends on who you ask here is ahead by in that kind of defines the perhaps china's century upon us china gave us diplomats covert tests what weight what one read the whole have line read it china gave us diplomats anal covert tests

and error american officials say they were supposed to there are exactly what so wait a minute hold on hold on hold the presses. chinese officials gave an american in a row he is able coldly test is that what i'm hearing that's what i just said so american diplomats in china receive these coping test by chinese officials and parents instead of putting it in their nose they put the swab somewhere else and i just felt like you know after if you look at what's happened in america over the past few decades is is humiliation right of the ordinary person of the workers of the deplorable is as hillary called them and you saw you know 70000 people die from overdose every year that is part of this humiliation of having all their you know their entire livelihood their entire culture destroyed in former you know rust belt america the former heartland of america the manufacturing centers so they've been

humiliated the american population has been humiliated for a long time and because of that humiliation of course china's risen and as a huge superpower because of all the wealth creation that they do for the world and now we have the diplomats of the last like the last remnants of empire. there are a and they're now being humiliated that's one way i like to look at it it's shoot i know there'd be fallout from that a blue ghraib prison scandal for not too many years ago but now we got our diplomats being able being probed over there in the chinese territory this is really escalating quickly the humiliation factor is for sure and i just saw the documentary series get getting out of my head i forget the name of it as well but it's adam curtis adam he furnished can't get you out of my head you know and he was talking about how china is still sore about the opium wars from britain during the 19th century and all the opiate overdoses and fenton and stuff i mean so the soft

wars going on they're not a hard war going on there's no bullets there's no bombs but there underneath there's a soft war it's not even a cold war it's a soft hard war it's a soft hot war it's a lukewarm war right now between china and america if the diplomats are being a really pro by quote unquote mystic that's a warm war. one could see it as a total honest mistake but even if it is an honest mistake it is still a parable of what of of the entire century of the collapse of america the collapse of empire the humiliation so it doesn't matter to me personally and my own journey of understanding the story whether or not it's a mistake the fact is it's still fitting that these diplomats who oversee you know the the deep state the sort of permanent state these are the elite class that run have run this country into the ground that ran america and the ground that they

should they should be humiliated like this and i'm sure that there are loads of people west virginia that there are loads of people in ohio there are loads of people in idaho that are like laughing at this and thinking well now they know how it feels what goes around comes around exactly wow that's karmic it's karma and so i want to then turn to a story of course you know remember back in 2000 when when the you know at the end of the clinton administration they were hoping to get china into debbie cio and they got to compete you know they got to add tariffs but the u.s. can't and china and joe biden at that time who is a senator what he said was that you know to anybody who said well you know china is going to eat our lunch he said. china's going to eat our alliance come on. now well you know cut to today and here is the headline from i guess it's called cashen and dan collins refers to it china has 70 percent of the world's 5

g. base stations meanwhile in the us are all about billy telecom providers continue to run commercials gaslighting the public that they also have 5 g. so the headline read from cash and says west looks honest china dominates global 5 g. market so no matter how much like sanctions were applying to weigh in the way no matter how many tariffs and and like arresting their executives they're still apparently dominating because there was a building spree in particular in 2020 and by the chinese government putting up a whole bunch of 5 g. stations all over china right remember the space race kicked off when the sputnik moment this is similar in no china's down got what 70 percent of all the land based 5 hours of the movie into 5 g. and 5 g. is a quantum leap technologically and economically ill out for things that were almost inconceivable just a few years ago and the naive it's

a on the part of the u.s. policy makers in the u.s. population that somehow china is still somehow in a backwards country even though it's clear that china is now firmly in the driver's seat in is this is shaping up for only to be the chinese century so that message is slow to get it's a slow boat sort of slow boat to china anymore it's a slow boat to america you know that messages like taken the long way round you know hasn't reached d.c. yet it's still up there on the pony express or something there that they're not getting the message so by the time it gets home men i mean that climb up the hills going to be very very difficult to have in. it's you know as you pointed out the miller has said he's going very very short the us dollar and going very long china and the rest of asia because they their economies have been open they did didn't have to shut down and therefore they didn't have to print a whole bunch of money america went bizerk jump the shark the fed did jump the

shark you could say in spend how much money is spent and apparently it's going to continue to spend trillions of dollars sent to americans they've got 13 percent jump in income but again like look at this china's built 718000 base stations for their cutting edge communication technology 5 g. america spent a lot of money sent you know printed a lot of money sensitive people out their incomes went up by 13 percent but china raced ahead because they're they're not having to print money they're building in o.e. think of what we could have done with those chilean so dollars instead of everybody staying home they could've been outdoors where it's much safer with they could have built 5 space based stations outside they could have built grids like the electric grid falling apart in california falling apart in texas falling apart in new england like we could have been a sense people like in the thirty's sent them outside to do the new deal sort of

building if you're going to give them trillions of dollars like why not build something like we could have and that would have all stayed domestically and said we sent people chileans of dollars as we said in last episode there was a 13 percent increase in income what almost all went to china because we do everything is shut down here so we bought stuff from china we bought washing machines from china we bought refrigerators made in china we bought all that stuff made in china and instead we could've just poured it into building stuff here locally right well what made the 20th century america centuries that america had something to prove to have kind of a chip on its shoulder there was an inferiority complex compared to the european refined cultures and so it really put the shoulder to the wheel and built this magnificent economy and had glow. influence but by the 21st century america is exhausted it's just tired and it doesn't have anything to prove anymore but china after being on the margins for so long does have something to prove and they do have the capacity and they are putting shoulder to the wheel and they are working

it well you need infrastructure to compete the american elite don't feel like we need to compete because they they merican the elites and exclusively print money they can print money for themselves and well we could also send in the air force wherever we want or the navy or the marines and just go take your stuff well out south i mean that's what they can do but the ordinary person they can't so if we had built an infrastructure to compete we're going to recognize that one day probably too late whenever they i.m.f. shows up and tells us ok well we'll give you a loan will bail you out but you have to have a new bretton woods we don't want the dollar anymore or whatever we've already gone over that but here's a story from you know from texas we saw that they agreed went down the other week well texas is grid operator needs to come up with $1300000000.02 pay power plants for energy they supplied during last week's historic blackouts reason the prospects it may require a state bailout everything requires

a state in america everything everything the education all those student loans the housing market entire almost all mortgages are under it by the taxpayer the government student loans the energy grid right now went to great britain lost their empire by the 1970 s. a meter of my must bail out and you the u.s. is giving away their empire to china and looks like they're on their past to getting an i.m.f. bailout the next 5 years and you know where you won't ever see a bell and that isn't decline and that's a final headline because it's bringing back something that we recently talked about which was nigeria where it's the 2nd highest penetration of big queen in the world after america and almost entirely out of necessity. by the way because they are entrepreneurial people by necessity partly because of it's a resource rich country with a lot of oil the elite don't need the people they don't need the consent of the population so the population these to do for themselves so they trade and there's

a huge trade with asia japan and china import importing stuff so especially because of cove and because of the lack of liquidity in the financial system but also because of k.f.c. a mile laws are kind of cut off from the dollar but they can't trade in their own ira like somebody in japan doesn't want a nigerian wire and they want dollars or take big quite so now the f.t. is going after them bent housman says of these 2 financial times headlines these people will do anything to keep you poor and under control financial times headline number one nigeria's inexperienced investors risk losing their meager savings gambling on highly speculative assets such as crypto currency is financial times number 2 because one cannot replace the banks. well they haven't won jared because nigerians can't access the global financial system that's how you this is how imperial powers keep them poor right they're kept poor because they can't access

the banking system so they use the the. as a financial system through which they could trade with japan trade with china yeah this is what i fear is happening to america it's becoming like britain of course financial times coming out of britain they have no power in britain except to wag their finger. no don't do with it don't do it that's the only power they have to stop based on reason stop based on facts to stop a site even a journalism is just finger waving former empire. you know words that come to mind that i can't say unfortunately you know you know wrapping up regarding this nigeria story is yes there are scam cryptocurrency s. but there is only one bitcoin and declining you know they don't they're referring to these other scam cryptocurrency line by trying to lump it quaint in with a pick when is not a scam so these people are being saved for bitcoin able to trade where we're by they wouldn't be able to trade of all they would be like an american sitting home

during this lockdown but they can't afford it because they can't print money like their governments not printing money and sending it to that right so they need to trade they can't just stop for british people have to use the british pound ha ha ha ha ha ha it's a scam bank of england are. all right well don't go away much more coming your way after this. is you'll be a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe. tyson nation community. are you going the right way or are you being

led. by. what is true what is. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the debt. or remain in the shallows. since that other days of and. pay them in. other words you might. not get. the types to use a pen in. the in the next tongue mom i'm going to have a. few good.

little. welcome back to the kaiser report imax keyser time not to go to tyson slocum he runs they public citizen's energy program in washington tyson welcome back always great to be here miles so what starts in the air 1st of all what went wrong for the energy grid in texas well the problem is that none of the power generators or the gas infrastructure had any requirements to winterize there a quick minted infrastructure from prolonged exposure to cold weather so when

temperatures dropped and stayed there just after valentine's day. gas couldn't get out of the well have moved their pipelines gas powered power plants couldn't. get the gas and even some wind turbines. froze up and that's because the texas market which is largely not subject to federal oversight it's totally within the jurisdiction of the state of texas relies entirely on market forces to incentivize energy companies and power plant behavior and this complete failure to have any sort of regulations or mandates tied with reliability is the cause for the energy crisis that texans experience last time we had john there was a big crisis in the energy market in california a year or 2 ago and how does this differ it's pretty different i mean they're both

tied to extreme weather events be both involve private grid operators the california independent system operator in california and earth the independent system operator in texas but the difference here is the. in the texas case. it relies exclusively on price signals to incentivize generators to be available in times of need whereas in california there are must run rules and so forth but. the prolonged heat in california spight energy use beyond what was available to generate in the state in texas demand also spiked as people who needed to heat their homes to stay warm and it exceeded available generation capacity because so much of the power plants were thrown off

line because of their failure to winterize the wall street journal recently did a study apparently texans pay 28000000000 more for energy and it has to do with the fact the way you're talking about here that it relies on price signals and private energy suppliers and you know i'm old enough to remember when the energy suppliers energy market were referred to as utilities. basic utility providers and the idea was well you know the energy grid is something that we just want to keep up we don't want to expose it to the vagaries of market forces actually it's a utility but over the years we've now privatized on assad gone hyper financial ised and clearly in texas is what what i'm hearing here what you what we're saying is that they ended up paying more for energy tyson you're actually right as he said

$28000000000.00 more and what you're talking about is that you know for a century utilities had a legal obligation to keep the lights on and serve their customers and in many states like texas they've replaced that with allowing the maher. to try and serve customers and clearly customers are getting ripped off and it's not leading to reliability one of the most notorious. competitive retail suppliers is a company called gritty and texas was the only state in the whole country that allowed a company like gritty to offer retail product to households that would tap or their utility bill to what was going on in real time in the wholesale market and the problem in texas is texas relies on insanely high price signals in the

wholesale market as an incentive to try and get generators to supply the market so they allow prices as high as $9000.00 a megawatt hour. in comparison the average typical price on a normal day is about $20.00 a megawatt hour so $9000.00 a megawatt hour was very high and the problem is is that you had thousands of households that had a contract with gritty that exposed them to these 9000 dollar megawatt hour prices so folks were getting their charges on their credit cards for 10000 dollars 15000 dollars for a day's use of electricity so the problem here is that you know a goldman sachs energy trader in houston wouldn't allow his mother to sign up to a contract like that because the risk reward. ratio is so totally out of whack

the taxes should not have allowed these types of predatory products to be marketed and sold to housel so again taxes the the real lesson here is when you allow the free market to make all the decisions about reliability and prices for an essential service like electricity you're going to get the disaster that we saw just after valentine's day in texas right well matz abs are an extensive play on the derivatives that are stalled by wall street to various men as a pallet a's various countries what the direct. purpose of defrauding those countries and those municipalities and so it happened in texas i mean that's actions i've been defrauded out of 1000000000 right millions of dollars and you just saw we're a very large electorate co-operative which is a not for profit typically rule of law to cooperate or just declared bankruptcy

because they've got like a $2000000000.00 bill from their exposure to the wholesale market the city of debt in texas which is a municipally owned utility is it is on the brink of bankruptcy because it's got. hundreds of millions of dollars in in electricity bills that it paid or so this is this is a complete disaster that the chairwoman of the texas public utility commission just resigned after her disastrous testimony before the texas legislature where she said oh we didn't have. the regulatory ability to order utilities and power generators to winterized and then lawmakers pointed her to the section of the code that explicitly gave her that authority and she goes well maybe i did have that authority so you've got this sort of incompetent

government style of folks that have bought into this rhetoric that the free market needs to decide everything that regulators are no longer regulate right they're just sitting in a seat allowing market participants to do with they want and people suffer i mean people dot right we're not just talking about bankruptcies here we're not just talking about huge power bills we're term of people died from their lack of access to reliable fordable electricity you know one of the reasons i like avignon is that we you know you're definitely in washington and and you're and you're pro government and i'm come through wall street and i'm pro market but where we kind of overlap as a society have price signals so you you take on price signals and i take on price signals and we do have a thing called a government it doesn't exist it is pay for through our taxes and i'm just sitting

here wondering why pay taxes if in fact we'll let a utility in texas gallons and defraud the population and you know tyson this is going to end up in just another bad. paid for by guessing my taxes so this is the worst of all possible scenarios. absolutely yeah we turned essential services into a casino where a couple of aggressive financial and energy companies are able to exploit these types of situations and make enormous amounts of money for example there's this australian financial conglomerate called mcquery that actually owns this retail provider gritty but they also own a network of gas pipelines in texas that that hook up natural gas production and serve power plants through much of. territory this company

just recently boasted that they earned $215000000.00 off the texas crisis through their financial trading. probably based upon their knowledge and operation of this the natural gas pipeline and so they were able to have an insider speak i get it and those who are pro capitalism will say well it's great because we love companies making money but what'll happen with the utility because it's the essential service is that all end up getting a government bailout which means i gotta pay more taxes so it's not capitalism it's it's larceny glorified larceny. taken public on the various exchanges and supported by kleptocrats now is there anywhere in the world tyson that. you could point to and say you know they're doing it right there's aspects of energy markets that are very productive. and the best case is what's been going on with renewables as large

scale renewables that aren't freezing up because they fail to winterized large scale renewables are the least cost energy option in most markets and if you've got 8 a properly run market you're able to rely on those try signals to dispatch the least cost resource and those savings will result in lower prices that is the model that works some of the time in some of the other markets some of the time in texas it also has delivered. good results for folks the problem here is that texas relied on the market for reliability and that's where it clearly failed where the whole texas model said well we'll just allow an entity to charge up to 9000 dollars

a megawatt hour and that is so insanely profitable that that will provide all the financial incentives we need to ensure that will have impulse supplies of generation and what that approach failed to recognize was. but there was no financial incentive for these generators or pipeline operators to prepare for winter conditions and so just a colossal failure if you're going to have a market system in energy it has to be supplemented with significant regulatory oversight and regulatory mandates and protections texas featured none of those protections so it was all risk and not enough reward for consumers glad to have you back on and a seems like a becoming a more frequently because ron tested pairing more energy grid failures tyson thanks for being on the kaiser report always my pleasure all right that's going to do it for this edition of kaiser report with me max kaiser and stays there but want to

thank our guest tyson slocum until next time by all. all morning get it up. in the little going on in james olmos read those you don't consume don't just leave them in the can do the whole job there on the stand on the most room in that other

equal distances also means what he calls this tells me going on a condolence don't leave then suddenly i'm doing the live up to those all putting me in as a zone as this is also the answer to all to the sitting on. the world is driven by a dream shaped by one person of those. who dares thinks. we dare to ask.

slovakia's prime minister rejects calls to not use russia's sputnik reback seen as the country's vaccinate. vaccine program gets out bogged down by politics. medical workers are outraged after the government offers them a pay rise of only one per cent. and the dream holiday turned nightmare we heard we hear from a passenger who was trapped on an italian cruise ship during the colbert outbreak which resulted in the deaths of 3 people. you know they refused to inform us. aboard the ship the day it tested positive there was no suspicion.