ah, so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy even foundation, let it be an arms race is on often very dramatic development. only personally, i'm going to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successfully, very difficult. i'm time to sit down and talk with me. hello and welcome to was

a part of the economist stupid has been the actual off american and western political thinking even before it helped bill clinton. when the 9 to 92 presidential election, the pursuit of money and profits above everything else has guided the u. s. s. development and global expansion since the nation's creation. but with the dollar system now reaching its objective limits. what may possibly come in its place. well, to discuss that i'm now joined by alan freeman, co director of the geopolitical economy, research group at the university of manitoba. mr. freeman's. great pleasure to talk to you. thank you very much for your time. my pleasure. now i was initially intending to discuss with you the warrant in your crane, and i still hope we can touch upon it in the 2nd part. but before we go there, let us, let me look at the recent banking collapses in the united states. and i wonder if

you see any connection between these seemingly isolated and domestic advance with the larger u. s. policy. both monetary and in policy. there is a connection, but it may go in the opposite direction to walk. you your view as my think, which is i don't think that the and banking collapse is cause file ukraine war. i think the ukraine war is caused by the banking collapse. and the reason is that this collapse like this occurs every 10 years it's, it's just last line of 2008 in 2000 was the dot com in 1992 is the so called oil crisis. it is a feature of the way that this economic system works. and the curious thing is, every time it happens, people think there's a new reason for it. so there's always, oh, this was caused by toxic house is. this is goes for. no, it's, it's the system dummy as though clinton might probably would not have said. and the system is one in which the m. assets that should be invested in production

are increasingly being diverted into speculation and finance. the reason for this is the systemic weakness of the economy. if you look at the long term performance of the u. s. economy and those of the global north, japan and europe it's, it's no different. you'll find that there has been a systematic study, what we call a secular decline. really, since 960 s economy received a huge boost from the war from the 2nd world war. and it's gone down ever since. it's now got to the point where it is no longer profitable to invest in production . so people invest in these risky financial assets. and each time in the cycle, the us, it's over valued. and then there is a crash and a credit ukraine, or is it a response to that weakness? now the connection that i see and let me know if i'm wrong here has to do with the

united states. once again, i exceeding its death sailing of over $31.00 trillion dollars. but instead of closing the government as required by the law and the federal reserve for the treasury, and now engaging in various when they call extraordinary operations that allowed the government a certain life land but dry on the liquidity on the market, which may have contributed to the collapse of sand banks and serve as difficulties at other banks. the fact that the american government has to use all these extraordinary measures instead of just printing out the money as they've done before. isn't it a sign of the dollar economy? exhausting itself is very simple. if you can, ford dead, somebody has to buy it. and the solution way, the u. s. has worked well is confronted to crisis. since 1927, the 1997 was very typically asian bell. got you false foreign people to buy your

stuff. that's what you do because america is in this unique position that is, currency is a world currency. what we're now beginning to see is a systemic crisis caused by the difficulty of maintaining a domestic currency, which is also world carts. now there are 2 things happening. first of all, increasingly american days being financed by americans because russia and china and all the people who are forced to pan even who are forced to accept american debt, are no longer accepting or reducing their exposure of the 2nd thing that's happening is that the, the situation when you have an asset, when assets are valued, you have a terrible choice. you either have to increase the federal interest rate in downtown inflation. and you then basically encourage people to speculate in financial assets, or you have to reduce the interest rate in order to downtown, the speculation, but then inflation will go. so it's more of a die. lemme than

a knockdown crisis. i think there's a famous saying that used to be said to marxists that they, they predicted 5 of the last 4 crises. the, you know, we're always sort of those of us who are bit traveling, florida with the american difficulties tend to say it's all terrible really the dilemma. now. what i think is now happening is that the fed is going to decrease interest rates, and that will allow them to dump down speculation. and to some extent, i think it's, it's yet to be seen where the extent of this rich. i don't think we're looking at a lot down crisis. the difficulty will be that there will be inflation. that will promote folks domestic descent because it will affect poor people. and poor people in america have for a long time, increasingly being the target along with the global south under ushered china of american iowa. so i think that the, the, the fact that we can be certain off isn't it will increase domestic discontent

within the united states of america. now i heard you saying that the western elite views on economics have become a sort of and religious system in a sense that everything starts and ends with money and accumulation of profits. but any sustainable religious system requires a some humbling rituals and a certain amount of self discipline, specifically aimed to came the practitioners ego in place. isn't that the main problem with the western driven kind of economic center worldview, that it's simply incapable of limiting its appetites, even that for its own sake, i think they're very disciplined. they discipline people to do stupid things, and people carry out those stupid things in a very discipline boy. and they also are particularly disciplined to perpetuating their teachings. so i'd interesting out of the 2000 and a crash, and greenspan,

i think it was, came on, testified to congress. this is challenged, actually, everything. i know, everything we thought was wrong. 3 years later he produces a book in which he says, no, it was all right, we just have to tweak if you think that to me is. this was jesse with, if you want a religious analogy, which circuit is a few problem, but we can pass them out with sophisticated reasoning. and thus, while they do, they don't acknowledge the fundamental things that are on the economy, which is this long term decline. its tendency to decline, processor financials, asian imperialism. the in the unsustainable lity of the imperial will loader, that they, they don't recognize is wrong. my only tweak tweet the edges now and, but in department of the years congress analysed recently that by 2032 within a decade, the american casa servicing its dad will talk to you as defense, expenses which are humongous. i think there are more than 10 other countries,

you know, combine, what do you think it would mean in practical terms, both for the united states or where the larger west and for the world? well as it, i don't want to be rude, but i'm also suits i, i'm very, i used to work some practicing economists to live told me only one thing is in the words of the famous us baseball player. never predict anything, especially the future. so it's very dangerous to say, oh, this is immediately going to lead to a meltdown. i think, or the task of what writing chronicle political economy will do is to analyze the social and political consequences rather than try and call every immediate and major economic happenstance. what will certainly happen is that the burden is full full on everybody that the american elites don't want for my pay for it. they're making the germans pipe. that's why they blew up no. with stream they're making the europeans pay. that's why they're forcing them to actually send weapons to ukraine

. they're not sending their own on the whole camp. so they're finding that increasingly difficult, but they will now try and be forced to take out some of these difficulties on the american people. i mean, the end of the day is to say the debt burden is increasingly falling on the shoulders of americans. less and less other countries excepting that they will hold american to pay for their full more and more. and this is, i think what the leaks in america are really frightened. they will have to confront the anger of their own people. so, so that, that's the consequence that i would draw from, from the, rather than i have no, i don't a bank, right? and i have no idea what the debt burden will. pete. some people have extraordinary debt. japan has an extraordinary debt versus the percentage of g, d, p l in the company just plugs along. so i would be hesitant to say, like maybe you know that this is the ultimate, not down crisis. i don't look at things in that. well,

when i'm asking in this question, i'm not looking for or you know, the collapse of the years dollar system i response. i think the, the most typical answer i heard from russian economist is that the american currency will transition from being the world. the world. main reserve currency to being a regional currency and you know, one of many, but still a stronger once a stronger was supported by the strength of the american industry by the western industry. now, do you think that's a sustainable ass scenario for the western world? because as you pointed out in many of your articles, the western economic dominance has been based over the last couple of centuries on centrally sucking resources from the rest of the world and redistributing it among its own allies. can the western can the western part of the world sustain itself only by its own means without the exploiting the rest of the world and in such

a matter and measure as it's been accustomed to. i think that's a really interesting question. and i, i agree with the analysis that you quoted, that what we're seeing is the end, the beginning of the and, and it's a long drawn out process of the capacity is the us dollars to function is the world's currency. but when you have something that is being dropped, something has to replace it. so the issue is not just whether the us cannot function is the world's currency, what, what is put in its place. now what you're beginning to see is arrangements whereby either through the currency swaps, for example, the relation between russian, the india, they trade in roubles and rupees. they don't have a joint currency or anything like that. but in other places, this proposals a foot to create a bricks, currency, i believe, certainly in latin america now, i think mexico, maybe it was really correct me if i'm wrong,

but the idea is certainly being voted of latin american free trade zone and currency. so, but to put these and trying are, is obviously developing swap arrangement with other countries. but what would be dangerous for, let's say china would be for its currency to become a world currency like than it would be in the same mess. the america has got into so i think one should see it move towards a system of regional currencies without any single hedge. a mom, if you do that, then you have to make defined kind of arrangements. the keynes proposed bretton woods and he was defeated by the americans for a proper system of international settlements in which the priority is to secure the growth of the poorest countries rather than to mountain poorest countries for what the rich countries are doing. and that's the way out, this is a long process. it combines economic, political, and geographical activities, the formation of regional blogs,

the creation of workable trading arrangements. avoiding the over exposure of currencies to the kind of dangers that the u. s. is being exposed to. and so on. ultimately, therefore, it's as much about the way the imperialism is declining, as it is about the specific a reference the termite. and now the 3rd world countries, china, russia, india, has to work together actually to create an alternative to the trade to the u. s dominant, dominant trading sold and i think they already did that and the american sanctions are helping that a great deal. but let me reiterate that question. once again, do you think the west itself can we leave and such an arrangement when everybody is treated more fairly and you know when trade can be done in a way that is mutually beneficial rather than politically or condition? well, of course we must all wish for that i've so until now the prospects have not been

particularly bright. um, and this is a puzzle, one of the things that exercises me because the me, the issue in understanding what's going on in the west is in a certain sense, oh no understanding how stupidly they're behaving. because that's very obvious. you only have to look at 3 graphs, tell you what that what they're doing wrong. the real problem is why don't i understand it? and i, i am i, i have this little quote that i love from bastere, where he, he says, i'm a great fan of dusty and because we had reactionary the french revolution, he has, when plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society over the course of time like create themselves, a legal system that authorizes an a moral code that glorifies it. now that's what they've done, they've created and i think is a mythological system in which they don't understand that their wealth rests on

robbing the rest of the world. they literally don't understand it. it's not a pleasant thing to admit that you're a band. it, all right, so what they do is they create a mythology in which they say, the reason we're wealthy is because with superior, as long as you think you're superior, you're not going to get your problems, right. it's a superiority complex until you understand why you don't understand. it's almost like friday and, you know, the patient has to confront her with his own neurosis before he or she can put it right. and they're not. they're not doing mr. freeman, i have to confront our own fascination of with, with this conversation in order to take a short break. but we will be back in just a few moments that you, ah

ah ah ah, ah hey, welcome back to well, the part with ella freeman, cool, director of the geopolitical economy, research group at the university of manitoba, now was a freeman. let's now turn our attention to,

to the war in the ukraine, and in one of your recent articles, you posed a question that i think doesn't have the right to exist in the western universe. you ask if nato one in ukraine, and if the russian army was driven back to the border, would the will be a better or worse place. and i'm sure it looks like a no brainer to most of your countrymen. why? even asking a thing like about isn't that anathema to a western ear? i asked a question because of a defect in the western so called left. even the fall, last, even the people you'd expect would be very revolutionary and against nato, because they have fallen prey to, i think, an illusory way of thinking, which is they think that russia is an interior, this town, i think the china listening period is power. that's the day when the united states

is not still right. yeah. i mean, what they get wrong is very simple. imperialism is not what a single country does imperialism system. and, and, and present, put in, put it there way i would agree with. i don't always agree with the patient. i agree with him on this that he says that essentially the colonial attitudes to shape the world. the colonial methods have been in place since 1492 and they're just being continued so they don't understand that. so what i was trying to say is, will look, you say you're against russia, okay. i'm not going to stop you being a construction, probably not going to stop you doing anything because it's very stop it. very difficult to stop stupid people being stupid. but i said, well, think what will happen if nato wins, do you think this will be a good outcome? and the answer is no. and the reason is because the motivation of a, of the night pass is fundamentally racist. now, racism least the genocide 1st straightforward. they believe that they are superior . if you think that you are superior, and that's why you are rich,

why is everybody else poor? you shut out of your mind, the idea that they are poor because you are making them by rubbing numbers, getting to buy your food stamps and all the rest of it. and you think no, it must be because they are inferior people. what do you do with inferior people? get rid of yard that starts the attitude of the americans to black people, thus ever can attitude to russian people and tried to chinese people. and so this is clear in ukraine because of the cause of the war, which is this is a civil absolutely clear. you have a country in which 43 percent of the pay people, their native language is not ukrainian. and you tell them they've got to talk ukrainian or break the law. they can't, they can't do the cost, not just about the telling them to learn the language of a nation. it's actually specifically making russian, this miss city or russian cultural heritage. as you know, being seen as incompatible with the ukrainian civic identity. it's not something

that you should be ashamed of. it's something that you can be killed because of and i heard you say, suggest that it's i came to the united states banning spanish or canada, bending french india seems inconceivable in the western context. and yet, when it comes to the russian language, not only ukraine, but let's say the baltic states, why do you think that practice of you know, explicitly deliberately suppressing the rational language, the russian culture, the russian mentality, why do you think it's been acceptable to the west i think the and in, in 2014, i visited crimea, and we met with people who had just been in the odessa massacre. lo and they were put into a trade in germany, inter trading and billing, which is and center in the life. yeah. learn to like, what struck me was, i mean, cushions, it's horrible thing, but accidents can happen. but at the right wing, ukrainian groups then posted pictures of the child bodies on the social media

networks. and i spoke to the people there and it was absolutely clear that what was in process was the general final process was a violent assault on people at the ukrainian fascist group. far right. and there is a left in ukraine, it's deeply suppressed. but there is a left on it and you know, i think that the opposition party admitted chic was, was 2nd in the pulse before he was suppressed them later. prisoner right. ok. so they think that the russian people don't belong there. when zalinski says he wants to take back crimea, he doesn't mean he wants. the crimean people you can't take over a place in which 90 percent of the population hates you and is of the different civilization and culture because they kind of fight. right. so what do you do? kill him. it's intrinsically genocidal. this attitude that the only way that you can live in the territory which you crying claims for itself is to be a ukrainian leads to the conclusion that the people are not ukrainian should be eliminated. so is

a deadly racist and it's entrenched in it. the question of why america supports it . i think in 2014, when victorian newland was caught by the finish. and it was the finish intelligence authorities, telephoning and saying to ukraine, exactly who they could have in their government. right. in other words it's, this was a gum construct. one can debate whether it was a co or not. okay. but what is indisputable is that that gahan was appointed by the united states of america know by the people of ukraine. and i think that was the decision of the new kong. we are can politics, that it was not possible to pursue american ends by so called democratic liberal means they would need to make alliances with fascists. to do so, and i think there is now a very conscious awareness among certain sections that the american a lease, not all of them that they actually have to be alliance with explicitly,

racist genocidal and fresh forces. if america is to prevail in the world which know that as they're in st. jude now are on that specific point, according to the russian view, or what the kremlin essentially did with the launch of the military operation in ukraine is to bring that proxy war that the west has been waging against russia for at least the past 15 years into the open and that was made not only for strategic, but for tactical reasons, because like in put in supposedly calculated that it clash with native was inevitable that a, waiting for a longer or trying to solve it diplomatically would not avert the confrontation. i wonder if that was your view as well. prior to the launch of the russian offensive . did you think before that, that russia and the west inevitably would confront each other in some way or another? it kinetic lee. i don't like to get engaged in conversations about internal politics

of other countries. so i don't like to speculate too much about what my motivated putin. i will so this i think that both sides were probably aware the from 2014 onwards, the good a confrontation was in it of some kind. and there was a gearing up. i think that what seems to have been the belief in russia was that there was a peaceful way out. and they thought that there was a peaceful way out because they thought european civilization would accept them. and i think this was a profound error because european civilization is not settlers, asian, it's an empire. and they would never allowed russia, and they could never have allowed russia to become an influential part as a sphere of european politics. and i thought what was very interesting about the speech that are running a tutoring gave at the found i club was that he specifically spoke what is europe and, and he spoke of the 2 europe's, and i think the vision of your,

of the house is the correct vision, which is that there is a eurasia, and within that europe could play as part. so at fun some future time. i think that it should be a general come coming together of the, your ation nations. let's say, in a polity which might include europe. but the idea that this could be achieved, and i have been a long time in turkey, turkey many years thought that they would be accepted as the european union. there was no why the european union could accept a country that has a bigger army than anybody else. in europe or they couldn't have accepted it. so this illusion that european civilization will let you in was a danger. and i think that was the problem. europe is a fortress, that's what it dr. freeman. and when you talk about european civilization that way, when i think about this term, it includes spirituality of english culture. it includes very diverse history,

includes certain diplomatic tradition, like for example, the european cancer, the it's a, it's a massive heritage. the both russia and turkey have benefited from and the some could argue that they had actually the 2 preservers of that heritage. and i think put him in his about a speech underline that despite this current conflict with the western financial and political and military elites, russia remains a truly european culture or country by persuasion. and i like some european nations . we're not going to bound european coltrane. i see a lot of investments now going into the ancient greek art into a various european cultural tradition. so hopefully this war, or this existential crisis that we are facing right now will allow, at least some of us to preserve certain amount of european heritage. anyway, we have to leave it there, but it's been a great delight for me to talk to you. so thank you so much. and thanks for

watching hope to syria again. well, the part i'm with for ah,

march 20th 2003, the u. s. army and its allies invaded iraq, iowa, especially, i hate to say that to day. let me know. kind of was it anybody else? 77 out of something guys in the hobby may the 1st 2003 us president george bush declared victory in the iraq war id. the project are, you know, up i would put up for a bit french, ohio to december. the 30th 2006. saddam hussein was executed and we'll shut down them from december, the 15th 2011. a ceremony was held in baghdad to mom, the end of the u. s. military mission. in reality, the u. s. army is still in iraq. a. she had the

ability to destroy a couple of football. but there was a headlines on all the international right now as eugene pings trip to moscow directly off to his re election is an indication that russia china relations have entered a new era. that is the message from the russian prime minister during his tuesday meeting with china's progressive also ahead for you this hour. ah, and ever on turn the tables on frown. so choose the country of violating democratic principles as if practise, downs on protests in paris. while the french president has condemned it wrong.