world speaking of minds but also speaking of nassim taleb he wrote a great tweet eulogizing david graber who was a friend of mine a friend of ours a friend of the show he's been on the show many times he's the author he was the author of debt the 1st 5000 years and i think nassim taleb who is an intellectual himself and a great author and you know thinker who explores ideas and is willing to be challenged just like david graber was wrote david greenberger he was a real intellectual very real not one fake cell in his brain not one fake bone in his body he thought independently he was monstrously original he had intellectual courage the world seems much smaller today than before september 2nd david rest in peace yeah he is a intellectual giant i guess you could say that era and wrote about death it's a point of view which i guess. would some would say would be anti-capitalist in a lot of ways in explored that vigorously i remember a very long walks with him through the city of london and he would reveal his extraordinary sense of humor he's a very very funny guy as most highly intelligent

of big coin you got it and speaking of the passing of david graber that is why and where and why i did promise the audience speaking of truth i did promise that we would not wear white after labor day but here we are and that's for him and actually go watch go to this search function on youtube and look for our interview with david greenberger during labor day for 5 years ago where he explains the history of u.s. leverage day which was created in order to basically distract and take power away from a day he was a very much in the tradition i would say of dr michael hudson yet another left wing economist you could say loosely but deeply intellectual who makes very compelling arguments and really broadens the debate and adds in the credible richness to the debate as you brought up michael hudson i will say that we are going to speak to my thoughts and and steve he we're going to have a kind of memorial here in kaiser report we're going to talk to both of them so that is going to be coming up in the next few weeks now speaking of his book debt the 1st 5000 years here as one of the results

great author and you know thinker who explores ideas and is willing to be challenged just like david graber was wrote david greenberger he was a real intellectual very real not one fake cell in his brain not one fake bone in his body he thought independently he was monstrously and original he had intellectual courage the world seems much smaller today than before september 2nd david rest in peace yeah he is a intellectual giant i guess you could say of this era and wrote about death it's a point of view which i guess would some would say would be anti-capitalist in a lot of ways and he explored that vigorously i remember a very long walks with him through the city of london and he would reveal his extraordinary sense of humor he's a very very funny guy as most highly intelligent people are they do are capable of it it's not always what david graber would want to show because he's known as a public intellectual so you don't want to show that side of yourself too much but privately. and walking in me and we have great fun you know playing around with words and concepts and things like that an

funny guy as most highly intelligent people are they do are capable of it it's not always what david graber would want to show because he's known as a public intellectual so you don't want to show that side of yourself too much but privately and walking in may and we have great fun you know playing around with words and concepts and things like that and just probing these things in a very funny way is the right funny man was well he was boring he was 59 years old born in new york jewish and you know he has a lot of humor he was that was the unique thing about him just how funny he was and how great a listener and you mentioned that he was anti-capitalist before we move on to some of the content of the show because of course he would want us to talk about the world and the economy and the financial fraud and all that stuff is somebody mentioned that in a tweet this guy name rabaul one of the great things about how led and graber one is stridently pro-capitalism the other anti each recognizes real intellect and communes with that so that's what we're trying to do by going orange rather than g

world speaking of minds but also speaking of nassim taleb he wrote a great tweet eulogizing david graber who was a friend of mine a friend of ours a friend of the show he's been on the show many times he's the author he was the author of debt the 1st 5000 years and i think nassim taleb who is an intellectual himself and a great author and you know thinker who explores ideas and is willing to be challenged just like david graber was wrote david greenberger he was a real intellectual very real not one fake cell in his brain not one fake bone in his body.

come back good to be back all right etaoin we're talking about our friend our mutual friend david graber who sadly left us recently and you know one of the other things he was writing about is the kind of the predominance of what he called be ass jobs you know jobs are just busy work that are not really necessary now under this lockdown globally work from home as be taken often but apparently it seems a very few jobs are actually essential a kind of prove his thesis and oh what a lot of ways what do you think. oh certainly that's the case in academic every university that i hear oh say they noticed that the employment by universities the professors fully employed had been going down and down but the bureaucracy the deans and the managers in the some managers and the assistants some managers have all been growing more and more income has been paid to the university presidents that deans their administrative staff. and they're paid for squeezing more incoming work out of the professors so they figured well that we can make more income for ourselves. hiring only part timers who get maybe $3

well let's wait we lost a mutual friend david graber author of debt the 1st 5000 years why did david matter i know you were friends with them what are his contributions to our understanding of money he realized that most money is debt and that money was created not as part of the barter process not by merchants but money was created to pay debts starting with debts that people owed the temples in the palaces of the ancient near east and to buy services and goods from the palaces and temples. the end of every crop year. people had to pay for the beer that they drunk during the year the agricultural inputs and most payments are made only once a year so when you do a transaction money wasn't involved at all because you only had money once a year if you were a cultivator present you'd wait until the harvest and you'd sign a contract and when you would go to the local bar and have some ale and we have a contract they would say well if the end of the year you're going to pay your tab . on the threshing floor and when your grain is all measured out that you harvested we're going to take the

goods and services or money that the palace or the temples consent so that graber emphasized by emphasizing debt issue that money was really for paying debt it wasn't part of the part where assessed it wasn't what the austrians. economists and the creditors said at all it was part of a fiscal policy in that debts were owed to the state and that's why it was possible for the rulers of mesopotamia to cancel the debts because they were cancelling dust of themselves initially owed mainly to the cells and of the palace collectors so it became much harder in rome and equate in the modern times when today debts are owed by the. own to the banks and to the one percent and so david's main emphasis in discussing money was to explain why a debt cancellation which was his main objective was going to work had worked out for many years in mesopotamia and his that debt the 1st 5000 years especially. followed the arguments that i'd been making in an academic setting in my harvard university colloquium and we had long discussions maybe 15 years ago and i didn't think anybody was going to be interested in de

great author and you know thinker who explores ideas and is willing to be challenged just like david graber was wrote david greenberger he was a real intellectual very real not one fake cell in his brain not one fake bone in his body he thought independently he was monstrously original he had intellectual courage the world seems much smaller today than before september 2nd david rest in peace yeah he is a intellectual giant i guess you could say that era and wrote about death it's a point of view which i guess. would some would say would be anti-capitalist in a lot of ways in explored that vigorously i remember a very long walks with him through the city of london and he would reveal his extraordinary sense of humor he's a very very funny guy as most highly intelligent people are they do are capable of it it's not always what david graber would want to show because he's known as a public intellectual so you don't want to show that side of yourself too much but privately and walking in mean we have great fun you know playing around with words and concepts and things like that and just probin

of america stop >> here's a look at some publishing industry news author and anthropologist david grabert the age of 59. he was a political activist involved in the occupy wall street movement and was the author of several books including best-selling "bolshevikchief executive of bertelsmann the parent company of penguin random house expressed his interest in acquiring simon and schuster, currently owned by viacom cbs and is the third largest publisher in the same trailing only penguin random house and harpercollins. in other news, penn america, a nonprofit literary organization that champions free expression of writers around the world has named novelist and pulitzer prize-winning playwright actor as its new president he succeeds novelist jennifer egan who led the organization for the past two years. also in the news, mpd bookscan reports that print book sales were up just over seven percent for the week ending august 29, adult nonfiction sales continue their recent gains up four percent led by john meacham's new book about the late congressman john lewis titled "his truth is marching o