you  see a lot of third world debts that uh if the   third world better countries have to pay uh their  foreign debts under as the world economy slows   down they're going to be subject to austerity to  the world banks and the imf's austerity programs   00:35:01 and they're going to be kept in poverty uh is it  really right that they should be kept in poverty   just to enrich the bondholders of the one percent  the one percent will say yes that's why we're   the one percent so that we can impoverish  other people that's our liberty our liberty   is the right to impoverish other people and reduce  them to dependency uh that will happen if you do   not write down the debts uh it's already happening  in the united states to the student debt uh crisis   00:35:30 where students uh have to pay so much money uh as  they fall behind on their student debts that they   can't afford to take out mortgages to buy homes  uh and you're having the home ownership rates   plunge in the united states that's the result of  leaving the debts in place uh the mortgage steps   uh uh are causing shrinkage so there is no way  to get out of this economic polarization without   00:35:54 a debt write down and that's something that  is too radical and uh uh when we talked about   when i was referring to what china's doing i'm  referring to what it's doing today and tomorrow   about uh the uh real estate company evergreen  uh uh china has a choice is it going to leave   evergreen's real estate debts in place and every  grand uh as a real estate company is two to three   00:36:21 percent of the entire chinese economy if it  pays the foreign creditors and the domestic   one percent of china it's going to impoverish the  uh the employees of evergrand it's going to make   housing prices more and more expensive in china  china has had a debt finance housing boom uh   if you leave the debts in place then uh you're  you're going to impoverish china and obviously   00:36:47 china is going to say i'm we're not going to put  the creditors first we're not going to do what   the west does and say the sanctity of debt service  debts are uh that you owe or sacred uh it's worth   sacrificing the economy it's worth plunging the  economy into poverty just to preserve the wealth   of the one percent i think china's uh is going to  make the opposite decision and say we're not going   00:37:12 to commit political suicide we're going to operate  for it's a socialist economy and when it comes to   debt and credit thank god we have our banking in  the public domain and since the public domain the   people's bank of china is the creditor they can  afford to write down the debt without having any   political backlash because it's cancelling that  so do itself uh which is a great advantage uh and   00:37:38 it's also uh as for the private bond holders uh  it's going to say well sorry bondholders you made   loans to a company that was way over leveraged  uh already uh the american bond rating companies   have reduced their bond rating to chunk so you  knew what you were buying if you continued to hold   bonds that uh fitch and other bond raiders moody's  all say or junk and you lose your money well   00:38:03 you took the risk you got a high rate of  interest now you're you're paying the price   that's how markets work uh and uh that really  uh is the argument and i think uh you have to   uh obviously what i'm suggesting is a radical  step just as you're suggesting of taxing wealth   would require the radical step of closing down  offshore banking centers of simply negating uh if   00:38:28 banks would simply erase all of the deposits  they have from the offshore banking centers from   the cayman islands from from panama from uh from  liberia to all the places that began by to be set   up by the mining companies the oil companies  and then were set up beginning in the 1960s   essentially by the cia to finance  the vietnam war by making america   like england the home for criminal capital  for flight capital all this uh all this flight   00:38:57 capital and the kleptocracy that you mentioned  in russia all this really should be wiped out   and if you leave this capital if you leave this  one percent in place the economy is going to be   sacrificed and shrinking is it worth shrinking  the economy just to leave the one percent in place   and if you challenge them that's pretty radical  that's really what i think marx would say today

i think the reason  your book was praised so much uh in the west is   you didn't come up with a threatening political  solution uh and uh when they said this was the   mark book is the marks for modern time that meant  don't read marx read this book and i suspect that   after you put all of this enormous good work  into the uh statistics that you did on wealth   00:15:30 and income i think the publisher probably said  well what are what are your solutions well you   just came up with uh the solution that you uh said  in the book and that's to tax income and wealth   uh this is not a threatening solution because  there's no way that you're going to tax wealth   as long as you have offshore banking centers to  conceal wealth as long as you have what the oil   00:15:54 industry put in place a hundred years ago the  flags of convenience pretending to make their   uh income abroad the fact is uh the one percent  don't really make much income they're ideal if   you're a billionaire you want to do what uh half  of american corporations do you don't make a penny   of taxable income uh that that's uh the whole  problem