3672 - Susan Collins' Duplicity; Alan Greenspan's Lifelessness; AIPAC vs DSA w/ Rick Perlstein

You are listening to a free version of The Majority Report. Support this show at join the Majority Report.com and get an extra hour of content daily. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Tuesday, June 23rd, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Rick Pearlstein, historian, author of Regaland, really an entire trilogy of history from the mid-60s, almost up to the day.

talking or rather joining us to speak ill of Alan Greenspan. Meanwhile, also on the program, Iran connecting its control, or I should say cementing its control of the Strait of Hormuz, as Trump and Iran disagree over whether Iran has agreed to nuclear inspections. It's primary day in New York, Maryland, Utah, runoffs in South Carolina, go out and vote.

France records its hottest night ever. Europe swelters in an early and extreme heat. Trump finds five scapegoats to be charged with tampering with his reflection pool to cover up his corruption and incompetence. Thank God our national nightmare is over. It's still ongoing. There's still more possible tamperers out there. Can't sleep yet.

Leave the pool to free. You have to go through me before you get to that pool. The first National Labor Relations Board post-Semex ruling says Amazon must recognize a San Francisco delivery union. But it appears Amazon is teeing. up a test case to challenge that Samox ruling. Pentagon wants another $80 billion to pay for Republicans' failed war. The number of insured through Medicaid and the ACA marketplace has dropped by $5 million in the last 12 months.

Jesus. Millions more to come. Graham Platner endorsed by Planned Parenthood Trump regime to roll back rules against oil drilling on public lands. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is Newsday Tuesday, Tuesday. And we match today.

We do match today. I mean, I guess I'm in white for the most part. This is some, yeah, it's a white, gray thing. I voted. That's the most important part about my outfit. And there you go, so people can see it there. I vote early. I typically vote early, but I don't know. I'm excited by the energy today with all of these DSA electives.

I wanted to get out there and do it on the day. We've got a great slate in New York City, big races all across the city, specifically the Zohran Mamdani ones that in terms of his endorsements in New York 13, New York 7 and New York 10. Daria Lisa, we'll talk about this later. But, yeah, it's insane how they're campaigning against these DSA candidates. Very important to get out and vote, particularly if you're in those districts, but really anywhere, your election is today. We will get to some of that New York primary stuff in a moment. And first, let me just say one word, because I don't know if people remember the CEMEX ruling from the National Labor Relations. board. I hope they

do. But it occurred to me as I was reading it like, this is exciting. The first post-Samex National Labor Relations Board action. That's why I wore my Semex ruling t-shirt. The Samex ruling, you will recall,

took place in, I think it was late 2003.

And Semex was a case where basically the National Labor Relations Board, one of the problems that unions have is they vote for a union and there's all these stalling techniques that a company will use to keep them from voting, then we'll keep them from negotiating a contract once a union is recognized.

And there was attempt by those who support unions and the Biden administration pretty good about this stuff in terms of the National Labor Relations Board that he appointed particularly their counsel. And the Semex ruling basically says if a company gets petitioned by a union to have a union, and it's basically like card check, if over 50 percent have a signed, a card saying we're interested in pursuing a union, then the company has, I think it's a two-week window in which to respond to that and either provide the National Labor Relations Board a legitimate reason why these people can't unionize. Maybe it's like, well, you've got, you know, they do two different types of jobs or the jobs that they do are so different that we can't have them in one union because we couldn't collectively bargain for them. It would

make sense. They have to address it or they have to basically agree within two weeks. And if they don't, the union is automatically recognized. And there were hopes that in the course of the second by administration, you would have a similar process for getting into contract negotiations. If you don't get into negotiations after a certain period of time, 90 days, or it's not being resolved or whatnot, then a contract could be imposed. That was the sort of like a golden chalice. This is the first ruling since CEMEX and the National Labor Relations Board judge from that agency ruled that Amazon must collectively bargain with its California warehouse workers. Amazon violated federal law by refusing to recognize the Teamsters Union after it obtained

majority support from employees at a San Francisco delivery center. Amazon's going to appeal the ruling. And the hope would be, I think, from Amazon's perspective, that Trump's National Labor Relations Board would undo that precedent. we will see going forward, but that's an important case to keep in mind for union power. All right, let's get to this. Plant Parenthood issued their endorsement of Graham Platner yesterday. And a big issue of Susan Collins is, of course, that she pretends that she's a maverick, that she's not really

a boot-licking Republican and it's the way that she goes about it. Watch this clip here. This is a clip number

two. Sir. You voted with President Trump about 94% of the time, which might sound high, but most people in your party have been with them 100% of the time. Pause for a second.

Even though 100% exists, 95% is quite a bit. Yeah. And so 94% too. Yeah. So her trying to argue that she's independent, four or five percent of the time is the time it doesn't count. Although, to be fair, in terms of the cult that is the Republican Party, that is at best the most independent you're going to get or Trump's going to endorse your. and you're going to be ousted in the primary. Right. Here we go.

Okay. First off, I have no doubt that Susan Collins also voted for the other, Supreme Court justices, the Republicans who helped overturn that. Nevertheless, she's lying. There were two separate rulings in the context of this case. The first was Dobbs, which was an abortion case, and you can scroll up here. Dobbs, which was an abortion case, that came up in terms of a Mississippi law that would ban abortion at 15 weeks.

There were two separate rulings here. One was 6.3. That was the Dobbs case. But to overturn Roe v. Wade and Casey, for that matter, which were more than just at a certain point. It was the idea that there is a right in the Constitution to an abortion. And the question as to when the state could abridge it, oh, keep the other one back up there, please, keep the other one back up there.

The question as to when a state could abridge that right was different than Dobbs. Dobbs just said 15 weeks. So the court said, okay, we're going to allow states to abridge that. right at 15 weeks. But then they went further and they overturned Roe v. Wade. And that was 5'4 and John Roberts was the one that dissented from the rest of the conservatives. He wanted to leave part of it existing. So in other words, you could say you have a right to an abortion up to 15 weeks all across the country. But no, they wanted to allow total bans. Yes. In fact, that he was the deciding vote in that instance, in the very key extremist part of the Dobbs decision that removed the right

to an abortion. Right. The Roe v. Wade overturning, the explicit one, was 5'4, and that was Brett Kavanaugh. But aside from her lying about this, it's not just this situation. This is how Susan Susan Collins has skated by her entire career. This is her number one move. is lack of accountability and obscuring her role in the worst of Republican offenses. Let's go back to 2018 and hear what Susan Collins said at that time. This is number one.

He decided he refused to answer. He would only say these cases are entitled to respect. How can you be or are you 100% certain? Without a doubt that Brett Kavanaugh will not overturn Roe v. Wade. I do not believe that Brett Kavanaugh will overturned Roe v. The president are overturned all the time. They aren't overturned all the time. And listen to the standards that he put forth in his conversation with me.

And also in the hearing, he says for a precedent, a long established precedent, like Road, to be overturned. It would have to have been grievously wrong and deeply inconsistent. He noted that Roe had been reaffirmed 19 years later by Planned Parenthood versus Casey and that it was precedent on precedent. He said it should be extremely rare that it be overturned and it should be an example. You have obviously full confidence. I do. One last question. Okay, so there it is. She either is incompetent or she's lying here. And to be fair, though, I want to be generous here. It was extremely rare. They only overturned Roe v. Wade once. Yeah. And they did it with five votes, and that fifth vote was Brett Kavanaugh. Right. And this is her M.O. It's not just Roe v. Wade.

It is her M.O. That five percent of the time that she doesn't vote with Donald Trump are irrelevant. When it counts, whether it's Brett Kavanaugh or anything else, when they need her vote, she will be there for the Republicans. You know what? Yeah. You know what else is irrelevant? That she disagreed with the decision. I don't care if she fully agreed with the decision. And she was, you know, chanting death to Roe v. Wade in the streets with pom-poms. The reality is that it's not about what's in your heart. It's about what you do with your power. And so she, is, as you say, either incompetence, stupid, or is playing a game. And we know she's been playing this game for quite a while.

Here's Graham Platner responding to her comment. The fact is that whether Brett Kavanaugh were confirmed or not, Roe v. Wade would have been overturned given the six to three vote. So either Susan Collins is a... lying or she doesn't remember one of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions of modern answer. It was not six to three. It was five to four. And Brett Kavanaugh was the deciding vote. Susan Collins was the deciding vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh. Now whether or not she's forgotten or whether or not she's lying to us, either way, that's disqualifying for

United States Senator. Now she says she was disappointed. in the ruling of the court. Well, just last week, she said she doesn't regret or vote for Brett Kavanaugh. So clearly, she's not that disappointed. But you know who is disappointed? The voters of men in voting for her, in believing her, when she said she was going to stand up for reproductive rights in this country. She didn't.

But we're going to rectify that this November when we beat Susan Collins and turn the United States Senate blue. She also voted for Lido. I just want to make that clear, too. She voted for Samuel Alito. She voted for Gorsick.

But Brett Kavanaugh was the one that she was really made a big stink about. I got a real ironclad promise from him. And how I'm disappointed. She's so independent that she's openly thirsting for A-PAC money right now. We'll play that clip later. But so independent, such a maverick that she's. just completely in lockstep with the genocidal Zionist foreign policy of basically every other DC elite. The real, the real issue for Maine people, I think, is that Susan Collins is never

who she says she is. She never has been that person. She has always been someone whose entire Senate service has been a function of trying to obscure what function. she serves in this U.S. Senate.

And this is, you know, this is the question as to whether, you know, Mainers will see that about her this time around. She's certainly not going to change now. If there was ever an opportunity to break with Donald Trump, but she won't do it until she's a lame duck. that's another great reason to do it because god knows what donald trump is going to do after the election particularly in the uh if the the democrats take the house never mind the senate so the more former uh the more lame duck republicans you have after a november

essentially the more protection the country has you're worried about don't trump um putting the ice on your streets after the November elections, the best thing you can do is to make sure that there's half a dozen Republican senators who are in there. Right now you have three. Bill Cassidy, John Cornyn, and Thom Tillis who are not coming back. If you get three more in there, the Senate can actually have an impact on Donald Trump. So

but there's uh we've got some time i guess to uh talk more about Susan Collins um in the meantime the the knives are out there is a real i mean apache is freaking out now yep uh there was an item this morning in politico about apac spending and this is just the tip of the iceberg because you know israel money is not just going through apac it's going through other vehicles but uh politico track that they've spent more than $38 million this cycle. They spent $26 million in total in 2022, $46.3 million total in 2024. So they're well on track to exceed their spending from 2024. And they're doing it through this United Democracy Project.

And because the tag of APAC money has become so toxic, through APAC into United Democracy Project, into other they're funneling it in a two times through other packs and they're doing it so close to the election to that the filings that would report and where this money is coming from in many instances aren't going to come out until after the primary. No, they all right. They do it in the final quarter. They do it in the final quarter.

So you never know. I mean, this was always the argument that Anthony Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would make about. citizens united well they'll be reporting so the uh the the people will know but they're not going to know until afterwards right and so they're saying it's ridiculous to speculate but we know that dmfi is also propping up espiot in new york 13 um it's a little less clear in new york seven because erino so is more progressive than espiat but um both have ds a candidates running in those races and it's in my view, most important to build up the institutional power of DSA right now as a way to, one, advance Maldani's agenda, but two, also to make DSA a national force that the party has to

listen to. And that starts here in New York. So Zohran Mamdani gave a speech. Should we show that speech, the original? Sure. Zohran Mamdani's been going hard for particularly the two candidates that needed most Valdas in the seventh. And Dariol, Lisa in the 13th who has, as I mentioned to start the show, been the brunt of the most insane racist attacks in the 11th hour of this race. So he's rallying here and calls out APAC because of their attacks on these candidates. And we need that because as Gramsci once wrote, the old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time. Now is the time, of monsters. These monsters take many forms today. In those who fund television ads that blanket

the airwaves with misleading in bad faith attacks about Claire, Brad, and Dari, those who would rather spend far more on political contributions than they would ever be made to pay in taxes. In APEC, for whom the only thing more frightening than democracy being allowed to run its course is an end to genocide in Benjamin Netanyahu's wars.

They move millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal to preserve their power so that they can turn us against one another instead of our leaders turning towards the moral change we all know to be necessary. In a politics... And so this guy, uh... whatever was it reported on it said uh... no mention of uh... mayor Zohran Mamdani i'm done he calls a pack a monster that moves dark money and

no mention uh... he does not call a pack uh... well whatever but no mention of russia or the rapid support uh... support forces in sedan i guess they aren't as bad as apk to my uh... i've spent as much money you guys care so much about this is bizarre first off he's not accusing apak of actually uh... committing the genocide, just raising money to make sure that politicians in this country support providing money for that. Were there a Russian super PAC pouring money into, I mean, just imagine if the top three

most expensive congressional races in the history of this country was not because APEC poured money against a progressive candidate, but if Russia, or some Russia pack poured millions of dollars into it, the entire country would be on fire right now. And if they went three for three in taking out those members of Congress. They wouldn't have a chance to do one. Yeah. Because like the FBI would be raiding.

Like it would just be a five alarm fire. So Josh Gottheimer, who is, um, uh, just an incredible corporatist. I mean, this guy is on the far right of the Democratic Party. And you're supposed to as a member of Congress, some of the unwritten rules that they use against progressives, don't endorse challengers against us. Schottheimer has been going after the leftist members of Congress

with some of his pack fundraising as well. Monsters, dark money, a hidden hand turning us against one another. Swapak for Jews, and it's the oldest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. in the books. I mean, that's not criticizing it. First off, you can't switch

A-PAC for Jews. That's the whole point. Why is he playing Madlibs? He didn't say Jews. He said A-PAC. A-PAC is a lobby. Jews are a people. There's that old meme that says, I hate Space Jam 2. Now switch out Space Jam 2

with women. You see? Not so funny anymore. Exactly. Exactly. What's really dangerous is the way that he has absolutely been part, and it's almost done. Like, you can't take real anti-Semitism seriously now because of the way that they have used interchangeably. Israel's desire to have a greater Israel with somehow having something to do with the Jewish people. I'm sorry, it doesn't. Here is Zohran Mamdani stepping up, because here's Josh Gottheimer trying to intimidate Zohran Mamdani.

Zohran Mamdani won't have it. Some members of the Jewish community, including Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer, were alarmed by the language he used at the rally last week, calling A-Pact monsters who move dark money. These are phrases that invoke old anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy theories. What do you say to those who are concerned that the language you used is dangerous? I want to be very clear. We're talking about a status quo where children are being killed on a daily. basis. More than a thousand Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since the so-called

ceasefire. Even an Al Jazeera journalist, Ahmed Weishah, was killed this past Saturday by an Israeli strike. And when I am speaking about APAC, I'm speaking about an organization that has been supportive of the status quo, that has fought any attempt to actually deliver safety to people not just in Palestine, but frankly, through much of the region. And it is a status quo for immorality. It is one that I will not accept. And when it comes to the way in which they defend the status quo, oftentimes they defend it through direct contributions, as we are seeing right now in New York 13. Oftentimes they also support the status quo through dark money by filtering money that would have previously been directly from APAC, now through other shell organizations,

whose identities of their contributors are only made clear after an election. And I think that it is important that when we ask ourselves how such death and destruction is happening overseas, we also name those who allow it to take place. Sorry, we're going to go. That is, I mean, it's effective in two ways. One, it basically says to Josh Gottheimer, I won't be intimidated. You won't be able to intimidate us. You're just some dude from New Jersey that nobody cares about now.

And two, it was also a great opportunity to inform people of these other sort of like second order, third order organizations that APEC is now funneling money through it. So I don't know what to tell you. Poor Josh Gottheimer, less and less relevant with each passing day that did. There was a time where he was really holding things up. And a moment we'll be talking to Rick Perlstein, who's got some. ill things to speak of uh... allen greenspan first uh... just a word from our sponsors

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Thank you, I'm sorry, I'm going to be. Yeah.

We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Viglin. It is a pleasure to welcome back to the program, Rick Pearlstein, historian, author of an amazing trilogy, which starts with before the storm. Oh, quadru, quadru. What do I call that? Quadrology, which starts with Before the Storm, which is being reissued in December with a new afterward. Also, he's got another book coming out in, I guess, in about a year from Haymarket Press. And he was just telling us that he blew off some of the bigger publishers that I'm sure they were lining up. You've had some very, very successful books.

Rick Pearlstein, always a pleasure. Thanks for joining us. It's great to join you. Thanks so much. I've been wanting to get you on for a while, but, you know, just to sort of like talk about things more broadly. And this seemed like as good of an excuse as any. Alan Greenspan passed away. You know, I don't even know if I headlined it yesterday because I was like,

eh, F this guy. But there's a, there's so much of what we're going through that he was one of those people who had a big hand in it, but not the level of accountability that like, you know, we typically think of like in terms of politicians. Yeah. Give us, give us the background on Alan Greenspan first and then we'll, we'll take it through what he did. Sure. I mean, the first piece of background is the Federal Reserve itself. which is this colossally important institution that decides basically how the American economy works. And most importantly, how many people work in the American economy, right?

So either loosening money in order to rush the economy or tightening money in order to slow the economy, ostensibly to control inflation, but also almost explicitly to make sure that workers don't get too antsy and kind of demand too much. much. And then you get to, let's just kind of make a quick detour through this guy, Paul Volcker, who was the Federal Reserve chair under Jimmy Carter, who basically decided to induce a massive recession. And that had a huge role in what we're facing now because it changed the balance of power between, you know, to put it bluntly, in a Bolshevik kind of way, labor and capital, right? And cause, you know, a massive recession that caused massive of employment but was great for the stock market.

And comes Paul Volker, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan. And at his kind of ceremony for his appointment in the Oval Office with Rama Reagan and Paul and Alan Greenspan and his wife, Andrea Mitchell, who we should really talk about too, is Ayn Rand. And of course, you know, you guys know Ayn Rand is the philosophy of selfishness who says that showing any compassion for any other human being

is the ruin, you know, of human civilization. So that's who this guy was. He was in Ayn Rand's cult. And as the economy, quote unquote, boomed during the Clinton administration, he received an enormous, amount of the credit. And he became among the media elite, you know, his wife, Andrea Mitchell, being kind of one of the doy ends of that elite as a, you know, NBC News reporter, a god. He was

treated like a god. And that's an important thing to understand. I just actually discovered a piece from the year 2000 when Bob Woodward's book about him came out. Do you remember what the book was called? No. MISRO.

And the great Bill Greeter, who had been a Washington Post reporter, but became a nation. Nation magazine. Populist left winger, wrote a great book about the Federal Reserve called Secrets of the Temple. And it came on the ladies and explained how all this worked. But he wrote this article about Bob Woolworth's book. And do you mind if I read just like a couple paragraphs because it really gets it? No, please do.

reference this guy received. Woodward engages in a literary flourish that resembles a right of apotheosis, which means turning someone into a god. Father Greenspan is portrayed as a strong and trusted parent who supervises the children's interests. He loves us all, notwithstanding the dower expression. Indeed, he has seen as a godlike Olympian who does the hard thinking on our behalf, worries constantly for us, and makes unpleasant decisions for our own good. Although he is seen as a godlike Olympian who does the hard thinking on our behalf, worries constantly for us, and makes unpleasant decisions for our own good. His words are almost unbearably opaque. He appears to be doing something rare. This is a quote from Woodward, telling the truth. And then in an epilogue, Woodward suggests that the Fed chairman even embodies the American spirit. With Greenspan, we find comfort. He helps breathe life into the vision of America as strong, the best, invincible. The fascination with Greenspan has become one of the ways in which the country expresses confidence

in itself and its future. outside the Fed, Woodward observes a Greenspan. Hardly anybody can muster the courage to criticize him anymore. So this is the year 2000, you know, when the stock market is, you know, rocketing up to 10,000, and it's the new Gilded Age. And in this piece, lots of other places, too, he explains that, as I said with Paul Voker, this trick was achieved basically by squeezing the market power of the working class. For the past two decades, the Federal Reserve has been an engine of inequality, right?

And in the case of Greenspan in this book, Woodward, I mean, a reader points out that, what do you say? He paraphrases him saying that the reason we did so well was because workers were, quote, unquote, traumatized. I mean, it's really, this is like looking at the career this. is enough to turn him into a interneur-Marxist because I'm not even getting to the stuff. We're not getting to the worst part. This is just the sort of like, but I just want to add one or two things. One, he famously talked about worker insecurity is what, and the Fed has two mandates. Right. One is to maintain as much employment as possible, but also to keep a lid on inflation.

And he said worker insecurity is helpful because it prevents wages from going. going up and the curtailed inflation. Now, for a long time, and I just want to go back also with Greenspan, because he was involved in the Social Security Committee with Reagan that ended up increasing wage taxes on middle class workers and capped it, which, of course, was a way of basically encouraging wealth inequality because as soon as you get above, I don't remember. I don't know what it was in 1981 when they did this, but, you know, in today's dollars, $160,000, it's off to the races. You don't owe that 6% anymore. And so,

and they talked about a crisis of social security, all they really were saying is by refusing to tax, you know, the income of rich people above a certain amount, we don't get enough money to distribute that money that people have paid into already. Yes. And, and, you know, the rest is history. We traditionally took 90, 92, 91% of the nation's wealth would be touched by that tax. Now it's closer to 85, 86%. But go ahead. So in all the pies. But at least in the 90s, you know, things were, you know, seemed to be working the way they were supposed to.

There was a lot of shared prosperity, quite frankly. And. You know, it turned out to be built on this series of bubbles. And, you know, then we... Let me jump in and say one more thing, too. He really pressured. There was all this pressure on Clinton to cut the deficit. And he did.

Right. He did. Yes. But then after the deficit is closed, Greenspan goes and encourages Bush to cut taxes and blow the deficit up again. Yes, exactly. Um, even more

let's go back at the planet. There's so many, there's so many points of indictment for this guy and this whole veneration of him. Oh, we just lost a little bit. I think we just. It's the perfect example. Oh, here we go. I'm sorry. You back.

Of this infernal triangle paradigm I have where you can't look at any can write Democratic Center and incompetent media, right? So one of the things that he had an enormous role in was after people realized that these risky derivatives, right, were causing enormous financial risk. Orange County, California literally went bankrupt because they invested in these kind of hinky derivatives. And then this enormous hedge fund almost went bankrupt and required a $3.6 billion bailout from all the other banks who had invested in it. so the whole system didn't collapse. So there was never a time when the consequences of this weren't quite evident, right? In 1996, this woman who should be familiar to everyone, Brooksley-Born, whose job in the federal government was regulating futures,

which is what derivatives are, said these derivatives aren't regulated at all. Literally, Senator Graham made it illegal to regulate them after this whole tobacco. She said, we need to regulate these things because this is going to keep on happening, and it might actually cause a contagion that, lo and behold, might destroy the entire economy. And he just went ballistic. He, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, I wrote a, I'm, I'm, I'm writing on Substack, Rick Prowtree.com.

And I wrote a post about Greenspan, which I told this whole history. It's called a, speak ill of the dead early and often, please. Alan Greenspan's monstrous legacy. He told her, economics should inform these decisions. You're trying to induce us to do things that will undercut the system. We are beholden to serve. And then he called her to a private lunch. And this is a quote.

He said, well, Brooksly, I guess you and I will never agree about fraud, she asked why he replied, you think there should be laws against it. So this is this, you know, Einran acolyte, this radical free market, quote unquote, avatar, right, who's saying there can't be fraud because that's economically irrational and the market will take care of it. And while all this is happening and they're not going to be regulating derivatives, this is when the dot-com boom happens, right? So I point out that there were 16 commercials for dot-coms, for dot-coms, including dot-com stock companies,

and the Super Bowl in 2000, two weeks before the bubble popped and destroyed $4.5 trillion in wealth, right? And so suddenly this, this, this, this building age was over, and Greenspan's response was to basically lower interest rates to zero to make sure there would be another bubble. And people couldn't invest in stocks because they look really unreliable. So what happens was the investment banks invented this investment vehicle that bundled subprime mortgages. And we all know what happened seven years later. the entire

economy of the world collapsed because of the actions of this guy who remained venerated until in 2008 in one of his usual testimonies before Congress, he'd retired. He said, well, he made a mistake

and it turns out the market won't take care of it. We have that clip. Let's play this. This is number of, 18 and this is Alan Greenspan testifying and like Rick has told us

this is a guy who is in Einrand Milton Friedman was also sort of like an act you know he's sort of a bit of a Milton Freeman acolyte they had some daylight I guess and here he is being questioned by Henry Waxman

and I cannot reme yeah I can't remember what committee this would have been but maybe the government oversight what is it House oversight, right. ...rather than enforcers. Their trust in the wisdom of the markets was infinite.

The mantra became government regulation is wrong. The market is infallible. Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself especially, are in a state of shocked disbelief. Such counterparty surveillance is a central pillar of our financial market state of balance. If it fails, as occurred this year, market stability is undermined. You found a flaw in the reality.

A flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak. In other words, you found that your view of the world, ideology was not right. It was not working. Precisely. No, that's precisely the reason I was shocked because I've been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well. And the point about this is, you know, people are saying exactly that, including, you know, like one of the guys, what's the name, Gramlich, one of the, one of the guys who was actually on the Federal Reserve Board was saying that this bubble, uh,

this asset bubble in represented by subprime mortgages was going to crash the economy. And all while this was happening, every time he'd go before Congress, you remember, you know, one of the things that, you know, crashed the housing market was everyone was refinancing their houses using these, these option arm mortgages that would kind of balloon after a couple of years. And he said that it's literally because then that the, or they were, getting cash out of their houses, using their houses as a peaking bank. And this is all because of financial deregulation. It allowed, you know, basically people to act like speculators using their house as collateral.

And the reason they thought that this was a safe thing to do, both people, consumers and bankers and everyone, right? Because Alan Greenspan told them that a housing bubble was impossible because you can't treat a house like a stop just kind of flipping it, you know, buying it one day and selling with the next. And one of the things I point out in my post is that, you know, him and Andrea must not have had a TV show. They must not have had TV because they'd never seen Flip This House in which the show that made fun of the rogues who were kind of, you know, the first episode of Flip This House was called permits. We don't need no stinking permits, right? And then the FBI in 2005 was saying that there was a record levels of mortgage fraud. You know, he didn't get that memo. But it also turned out that, you know, everything is connected.

The FBI never really looked into it because they were spending so much of their energy looking for fake terrorists after 9-11. Omni shambles of, you know, it's enough to turn a person into a Marxist. I mean, it's amazing. And if I remember correctly, I mean, there was not enough made of the fact that this guy said 40 years of my ideology. It never failed. And we had, you know, a recession after a recession after a recession, of course. The 1991 recession was massive. But his, but the, the, there was nothing as systemic, as systemically threatening as what we had in 2008.

And that was because of all the deregulation that took place really in the mid-90s. And increasingly so. And, and if. If I remember correctly, he sort of like backed off that a year or two later where he said, well, I was, I was not totally incorrect. And started to like try and walk it back a little bit when I think it was during the arguments around Dodd Frank when there was people who wanted to reimpose Glass Steele. And he didn't want that to happen. Yeah, I think his dinner invitations might have tried up. that's possible too um but this is uh this ideology what's fascinating to me too is that like

things have changed and i know obviously you're working on uh on uh you're working on a project right now to deal but things have changed so dramatically like the idea of having a technocrat right be venerated right seems impossible now now. Right. And one with like a libertarian ideology because those people were completely vanquished, it seems to me, when Paul Ryan got booted by this Republican Party. They still have the sort of the underlying principles of it, you know, just like it, they put it on a shelf and they're going to bring it back out when they need to cut, you know, when they need to cut more services. Like, we can't afford this stuff. Meanwhile, $80 billion going to.

out to the military, but there doesn't seem to be the elite sort of mouthpiece for this now. Right. I mean, I think that, yeah, I think there's a lot of kind of a sense, and maybe this is what you're getting at, that the Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton's and Steny Hoyers in the world of the world or, you know, or, you know, Barney Frank on his deathbed, you know, are kind of saying if we can only go back to this time in which we had really smart PhD economists in charge, you know, instead of Peter Navarro, we get this in hand. But there were the ones who lit the fuse, right? And, you know, if the bubble that collapsed with the housing crisis in 2008 was kind of

you know, atomic bomb nuclear fission, right? What we're looking at now with, you know, AI, you know, and, you know, I don't know if you read Corey Doctoro's new book on AI yet, but basically the entire investment bubble in AI is based on this implicit promise that their labor bills are going to go to zero. It's like nuclear fusion, right? It's like a hydrogen bomb. But it's basically the same dynamics in play.

And very little, you know, countervailing power, at least through the 90s and 2000s. And then, of course, with Obama, you know, kind of turning economic policy over to Larry Summers and, you know, his accolite Robert Rubin. The three of them were called in a very famous 1999 Time magazine cover the Committee to Save the World, right? Once that cat was out of the bag, it was almost like, to mix my metaphors of Pandora's box, right? Because what was going to stop them, right? And luckily we have, you know, kind of a grassroots, you know, kind of groundswell of populist candidates, right? Who won yesterday, by the way? I mean, it's today, right?

Today's election. It's today. It's today. What are the, what are the, what are the odds here? I, uh, I mean, you did, uh, almost jigsit just then. I might handle the odds.

Um, I try not to, to say the W word or on, on the day. And it took me to a Knicks championship. So I mean, I must be working a little bit. I went to college with Brad Lander and he was the guy who busted out his, like, guitar and saying Woody Guffrey songs. is it all they? Well, I think that's... Not shocking to me.

Brad's... My hopefully new representative, I think Brad's going to put up Reagan numbers. I'm less... I'm a little bit more reticent to make predictions in the other races because they're closer, but you have New York 7, Claire Valdez, and then you also have New York 13, which is going to be really tough. That's Dary Elisa Ava Chavillier against Adriano Espaillat,

who's the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. but those are the two Zohran Mamdani endorsements that aren't Brad Lander. Brad Lander's a very safe endorsement. Okay, yeah. I mean, so, you know, the institutionalism of, you know, the other wing of the Democratic Party that we just kind of have to put things back in the hands of the grownups, you know, really kind of open the field for, you know, right-wing populists who just wanted to kind of burn it down, right?

Right. And, you know, this is a parable of, you know, that danger. I mean, one more detail about, you know, the way that, you know, someone like Alan Greenspan serves like an aristocrat. I mean, the fact that he had this unaccountable power is, you know, his wife, Andrea Mitchell, I found this quote from her right on the eve of the Iraq war. After the war was authorized, but before the actual invasion began, and remember, the authorization to let America go into Iraq was written by Tom Dashel.

And she said, we've received word that we have actually located some missiles that could be nuclear armed. And what did she say? I kind of tell you this quote because it just really kind of shows how systematic this thing is. She said, if Iraq destroys the missiles, it will be much harder to get support for military action. And she called that a nightmare scenario. Right. Right. In other words, if they do what we want them to do, then we won't have the opportunity to invade Iraq. It's like a science fiction movie.

Rick, just, I mean, this is maybe a weird question, but do you feel like the pace of history as we are living it now is just, much more, been much more rapid in the past two decades? Like, is that something? Is that a, I feel like, you know, it's like a, like, you know, like 1776 to 1792 kind of movement, you know, or, you know, like, you know, like, you know, when the Magna Carta was signed. You know, when stuff is really kind of going down, right? It's almost like this perverse guilty pleasure of being kind of a historian. living in an era in which, you know, genuine seismic changes in, you know, the arrangement of power across the planet, you know, conceivably, you know, ending in, you know, the vanquishing

of human life on the planet, right? Whether through some crazy, you know, nuclear war in the Middle East or a slow burn of climate change. Absolutely true. And it's kind of remember in the 90s, everyone talked about how boring everything was. And it's like longing, you know, for something interesting to happen. And then when 9-11 happened, a lot of these same elites, you know, kind of obviously the neocons, right, because they saw the opportunity to kind of, you know, set the world on fire. But a lot of the so-called liberal pundits were like, wow, now history is happening again. Isn't this great, you know?

So it's a really interesting insight. But interesting makes it sound like this kind of armchair thing, right? because, you know, chaos often is a fount of opportunity. And since the institutions that got us here are, you know, have so little legitimacy, you know, like radical, strange things can happen. Like, you know, Israel losing its, you know, sanction, you know, from, you know, the majority of the country, you know. I mean, it's like a once in a, one of many once in a generation things that represent,

you know, I mean, the old, what's the old cliche, you know, crisis? tried the word for crisis, word for opportunity in Chinese is a famous opportunity or something like that. Yes, it's the word, the Chinese character for crisis includes the word opportunity, I guess. So get out and knock on doors, I'll you, a New York, a populace. This is the time. I mean, it is also, I also wonder if it's something that you've observed in the context of writing about, about, you know, our fairly recent history, much of it I was alive for, maybe all of it, actually, but not necessarily conscious of what was going on. But it seems to me, when I look at like in growing up the idea of democratic socialism or people identifying within the political

fear, a sphere, even like in college, like, I, you know, I knew. And I would show up with his guitar and there would be like three people there. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I, I knew people who I think we, well, without a doubt today would identify as socialist. But then during the, you know, the 80s really in college, like, no. Does the sort of like, the fall of the Soviet Union open up opportunities for, um both the financial havoc that we had because in many ways the united states is like unconstrained it doesn't feel like it has a arrival and so the idea of like banking controls

is so you know cold war thinking but also simultaneously 1993 20 years later you get um you know 18 years later you get occupy wall street and out of that like the ability, I mean, even in Occupy Wall Street, people weren't saying that they were, the way, people were talking about being socialist there. And, I mean, a little bit, but not, not, not in the way that. They're out there out. Because I just got an invitation from the New York Times magazine to like join a panel of historians for the 170th anniversary of the New York Times.

They haven't read my book yet. Then the New York Times will know what me inside of that. But to name the five most consequential days. days in the last 175 years. And yeah, I mean, the fall of the Soviet Union, whatever you thought about the Soviet Union, you know, did have these profound consequences because, you know, historians who write about the civil rights movement will say one of the reasons that the elites in the country were so adamant about, you know, pushing for civil rights was because we look really bad. 100%. You know, and, you know, like when, when the, you know, when the, you know, when the

same token, without the Soviet Union as an albatross for some kind of alternative to go-go capitalism, you know, showing only failure, right, and only misery and privation and lack of freedom, you know, it really opens up the imagination for people who say, no, there's a different way to do this. You know, let's try more to look, you know, like we don't need to look like Vladivostok, we can look like, you know, a mole most weeded, you know. Right. And compare that impulse to say. the U.S. and bipartisanly

not seeming to see any contradiction in our support and the validity of our support for Ukrainian sovereignty as we help commit genocide in Gaza, for example. Well, these contradictions are coming to a head, right? Yeah. It was a lot easier to yoke ourselves

to very bad regimes when you saw the world in these maddiki in terms as, you know, the good guys and the evil empire, right? So let's support Jonas Savimbi, you know. And that's just harder to get away with. So like, yeah, I mean, and let's end on a note of those, there's lots of exciting opportunities out there for progressive social change. But also, you know, it's like, it's like they would say, you know, the socialists in the

1920s, Germany would say socialism or barbarism. You know, this is the choice. We have a choice for kind of economic democracy. I mean, the way the way ordinary. people with, you know, no previous political consciousness at all are going berserk about, you know, the AI data farms, you know, showing up in their backyard. And only the mayor is only be, only the mayor of their town has any knowledge of how much electricity they're going to use, right? There was a great piece, I think, just dropped just a day or two in the New Republic website. It's an oral history all over the country of what happened in all these towns when anthropic and all the rest, who unfortunately as the endorsement of the Pope, decided that they're going to, you know, suck up all their water and electricity. Yeah, it's an interesting time. Our kids are living interesting times. Yes, indeed.

It cuts both ways, doesn't it? You say it when you're bored, but then when you get there, you're like, you know what? That's also the good. I miss the boring part. Yeah, that's also the go-to from like when I tell people what I do, they're like, Oh, interesting times. They don't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole. But, yeah, interesting times for your work.

You could say that. You could say that. For sure. 2008 that Sarah Palin bought my trip to Mexico. You know, I wanted to hear all this craziness went down. But, you know, now I got a gray beard and I look like Santa Claus. And I'm kind of looking back and just trying to hike and fish as much as comfortable.

Well, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. time. So hit that. Grilstein.substack.com. We will put a link to your substack. Really fascinating stuff and encourage people to read it regularly. Rick, looking forward to the new book. And we will hopefully talk to you many times before that comes out.

Appreciate your time. Always a pleasure, guys. Cheers. Thanks so much. All right, folks. Before we go, Yes. Let me just, here we go. So if you're watching this at the last minute, are we good? Oh, what were you looking at?

Oh, oh, you just looked. I thought you were startled by something. Sorry, I just was thrown off. I'm trying to find this link. Forget it. So 3 p.m. today. I was trying to show urgency. When you said at the last minute, I did the. I mean, you certainly demonstrated it. Okay. So. Um, urgency. Today is the election. Okay. And if you want to get the word out, I mean, Hassan last night on his stream, 90,000 calls were made because I think he had 30,000 people watching him live and he encouraged everybody to phone bank. And he was able to do so. So Hassan is just, I mean, he's, he's helping change the country. Not to not to suck up to him too much, but it's,

it's incredible. I'm trying to, uh, I'm trying to do my part a little bit. I'm phone banking for Claire Valdez at 3 p.m. today. You can check that out. But also if you just want a phone bank in general and you know you can't wait till three or you want to do it now or I guess this starts at 4pm,

forget it. So this is a different length than I had. But this is a national phone bank starting at 4 p.m. With Mayor Mom Donny, he's going to be joining. So you can join me at 3 p.m. if you want a phone bank for Claire Valdez. But Daria Lisa really needs it here. So the link

will be down below in the video and episode descriptions. I mean, the bottom line is these type of primaries are all about turnout. Yep. And there are people undoubtedly sitting at home who are like, you know what? I was supposed to go after work. It's raining. And I didn't go and it's raining and this and that. And you calling them, you're not going to have to convince.

convince them of anything except for it's worth their while to get up and go vote. These numbers are undoubtedly going to be people that are the campaigns of our identified as, you know, lean supportive at least. And these are people now who just need your motivation, how important it is. And it's both important in terms of representation for the state. state, but it really is going to implicate how Democrats run across the country. They're not necessarily going to run like they would from New York's 12th or 10th or 7th or whatever, but they're going to run to the left of where they would run in their district.

Yeah. And so you can really have some genuine impact. And I would not be surprised. I mean, these primaries are going to come down to, you know, it's not going to be a difference of tens of thousands of votes. You know, it's going to be a difference of. Yeah. A couple thousand, maybe.

And turnouts unfortunately down, as compared to last year. So I'm not sure how, you know, we don't know the full picture yet. That could be in districts where there aren't competitive primaries, for example. So I don't want to overstate the case. but youth turnout and left-wing turnout is essential, particularly in the seventh for Valdez and in the 13th for Chabayay. All right. Just a reminder, it's your support that makes this show possible.

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Actually, I am only, you know, am I, whatever. Excuse me. I'm only like 600 away from 10,000. So, yeah, check it out. I got back from London and have some photo. photos that you can check out. Are you about to say photage?

After you follow me. No, I'm having an allergic reaction to something so I can barely speak. Okay. Well, after you follow me, you can follow Matt. But I'm just like Twitter. And then me. But you don't post anything. I do.

I do now. On your stories. Sam's been posting. Wait, what do I do? That's the other thing. I don't know what I'm doing, but people are responding going like you're posting stuff. There's three different kinds of posting. It's ridiculous.

They should have just mainstreamed some of this, but there's your story. Then you can repost posts, and then there's a grid post, which you have never done. You've never done a grid post. He's got one grid post with Molly Jong Fad. Well, that's because she sent it to me, right? Yeah, it was a collaboration. Yeah, I didn't have to do that. Collaboration.

So he said, so Gino sends me stuff, and then I hit Accept, and what does that put it on? Yeah, no, he's got his grid's full now. Oh, oh, that's okay. My grid is full? You've got about 10 posts on your grid. Very nice. So you have been doing grid posts. There's just been done for you and all you have to do is accept.

So I'm just telling you the machinery here. I guess I haven't been on your page. Whoa, okay. Well, that's all right. I wouldn't worry about it. But point being, like, I'm not on TikTok because I don't want that Zionists. Like, I haven't signed that updated terms of service. Instagram is, like, really the best place right now for politics because Twitter is dead.

Everything is a bot. Everything is bots on Twitter now. Well, it's like, it's also Elon Musk sort of promoting Zionist to the page, which also are like, that's just an invitation for me to like quote tweet them disparagingly. Oh, yes. It's kind of a bad cycle. Twitter is just a place for Matt to work out his issues.

It's just like T-ball for like hatred. They have these, they have this playground on Roosevelt Island, which is just all junk. And kids go in there and they just take like a bat or like a hammer and just start banging stuff. And that's what Twitter is. This old plasma TV. That's what did. Also just coffee.coop, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate, use the coupon code majority, get 10% off. You can buy the Majority Report blend.

Matt. I have a great episode on a book, one of my favorite books of the year. The Vail Profit, look at the Secret Society that's been running. St. Louis since the Gilded Age. It came up during the Ku Klux period, and you can see a lot of the crossover with the sort of secret white supremacist threat of violence in case workers, like in 1877, rail strike,

or black folks trying to get their civil rights, try to rise up. So a fascinating book with a look into, like, the Truman administration, the Manhattan Project, recent Ferguson stuff. Like, it's crazy. And also Ellie Kemper from the Unbreakable Kimby Schmidt, who was the 1999 bell of a queen of love and beauty.

And it has since blown up in her face. And it's going to be hard to get bankers' daughters to want to be that in the future, I think, going forward. So, yeah, a really great book coming up right after the show today. Quick break. Fun half. You are in for it. 646257.

39, 20. See you in the fun. Oh, no. Oh, no. Are you ready? Oh, yeah.

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