## Around 1:22
1:22 >> I want to learn about how you convince
1:24 some very rich people to cancel 100
1:27 billion of debt.
1:28 >> Right. Yeah.
1:29 >> That's where I want to start.
1:30 >> Okay.
1:31 >> How do you do that?
1:32 >> Well, first of all, you have to identify
1:35 your target. And when I got involved in
1:37 this, I got hired by a bunch of NOS's to
1:39 do this job. and they said, um, we'd
1:42 like you to go to Washington and get the
1:44 debt canled because most of it is
1:46 decided at the IMF and the World Bank
1:48 and the Paris Club and and they all
1:50 gather, all the bankers gather in
1:52 Washington every twice a year. And I
1:54 said, look, I'm a really powerful
1:56 cookie, but even I couldn't do that, you
1:58 know. I said, what you have to do is you
2:00 have to mobilize the public. and they
2:02 say, "Oh, you can't do that because the

## Around 6:50
6:52 going." And then we'd had a big argument
6:53 with Germany, and Germany got massive
6:55 debt relief after the war in 1953,
6:58 but the German uh ambassador in Britain
7:01 said, "No, we didn't." Oh, no, we
7:04 didn't. You don't know what you're
7:06 talking about. You know, so I get
7:08 summoned into the the office,
7:10 international development office, and I
7:13 get told that to take my troops off the
7:15 lawn or something, you know. I mean, it
7:17 was just ridiculous. And I said, "Look,
7:20 go and do the homework. We've done the
7:22 homework. We know a professor who's an
7:24 expert in sovereign debt, and he's he's
7:26 explained to us about the 1952-53
7:29 debt relief deal, negotiated in London,
7:32 by the way. It's called the London
7:33 Agreement for Germany." And we'd started
7:35 talking to the German churches and we'd
7:37 said, "Give German, give African
7:41 children a future in the way that German

## Around 16:42
16:43 borrow 3 million quid to buy a
16:45 one-bedroom flat in London,
16:48 there's no money in the bank.
16:51 What there is is a piece of paper which
16:53 you have to sign which says I promise to
16:55 pay by this date and this is and at this
16:59 interest rate and I'm offering you this
17:01 collateral and with that boom you get
17:04 them 3 million quid no questions asked
17:06 you know
17:07 >> press a button on a computer
17:08 >> sorry
17:09 >> they press a button on a computer
17:10 >> they press button on the computer and
17:11 they try and they do this at the Federal
17:14 Reserve as well and um Bernani gave the
17:18 first ever television interview um ever
17:21 given by a fed governor to this
17:23 wonderful guy Scott P who's just been
17:25 sacked by the new owners of whatever
17:30 uh institution he was part of. But Beni
17:33 gave this interview and they said to

## Around 26:02
26:02 >> and they're they too are sitting on
26:04 their hand saying nothing to do with us.
26:06 You know, it was one I loved the Queen
26:08 of England in in whenever it was 2007 89
26:12 saying to the London School of
26:14 Economics, why did you guys not predict
26:16 this crisis? And they were totally
26:19 annoyed, afronted that you should even
26:21 ask. It's not their business to to
26:23 predict a crisis, you know, they they're
26:25 doing some theoretical stuff that that
26:28 they got their PhD for and that they've
26:30 done very well in. and what don't
26:33 involve me in the messy business and how
26:35 the economy is run but they are the
26:37 architects of that that economy
26:39 >> you predicted it
26:41 >> yes and I predicted it because I'd been
26:43 working on sovereign debt I was in a
26:45 very privileged position you know I was
26:47 like it was an eagle-eyed view of the
26:49 world and and my pals at home were just

## Around 30:11
30:12 potential second crisis like that
30:13 coming? That's what I'm worried about.
30:15 >> Yeah, it's imminent.
30:16 >> It's imminent.
30:17 >> Yeah.
30:19 I mean I
30:19 >> even it could be a couple of years
30:21 >> and and you know I couldn't get it right
30:23 last time and I can't I mean if you can
30:25 get the timing right then as you know
30:27 you could make loads of money
30:29 >> but if I were if I had a lot of money to
30:31 bet now I would bet on it and people are
30:34 I mean on is it Kelshi and uh
30:37 >> and these other poly market I think it
30:39 is
30:40 >> they're betting on it all um and you
30:42 know lots of people are predicting and
30:44 the thing is persevering and it's been
30:48 persevering mainly because of stock
30:49 market delusionism. I mean, I've never
30:52 understood the stock market and I don't

## Around 33:37
33:39 purpose of which is not understood.
33:41 The aims of which are not a bit like the
33:44 South Sea bubble
33:46 and we know they've been lending not
33:48 huge quantities. I think it's about 3
33:50 trillion 1 to 3 trillion you know huge
33:53 quantities of money relative to the
33:55 whole of the US um economy or the global
33:58 economy but nevertheless we don't know
34:00 where that money has gone and and the
34:03 ability of those borrowers to repay so
34:05 that's one area but there's quite
34:08 there's the shadow banking system as
34:09 well because what's happened is
34:11 >> the banking the banking sector has
34:13 evolved to actually operate beyond the
34:17 reach of government regulators of
34:19 central banks and so on. So they operate
34:21 in what I call the sort of stratosphere
34:24 where we really don't know what they're
34:25 doing basically who they're lending to,
34:28 whether and at what rates and whether or

## Around 37:15
37:15 >> my friend has a website called what the
37:17  happened in 1971. What happened in
37:20 71 is that President Nixon unilaterally
37:23 and without consulting any of his people
37:26 including his foreign policy advisor
37:29 Kissinger, he doesn't tell Kissinger,
37:31 who's his man dealing with all of the
37:33 rest of the world, that I am going to
37:35 tonight on a Sunday night when the
37:37 cowboy show is over, I'm going to
37:39 announce the United States is destroying
37:41 the international financial
37:42 architecture. It's called the Nixon
37:44 shock. And again, it's a story that was
37:47 kind of buried because at the same time
37:49 he tried to do something with the
37:51 British with the American domestic
37:53 economy and I don't know there was all
37:56 kinds of policies that were accompanying
37:58 that. So that this breakdown of the
38:00 international financial system is seldom
38:02 discussed. I think Nixon was more

## Around 43:15
43:16 from it in a sense that and if they do
43:18 make huge losses as they did in 20079
43:22 what happens the taxpayer walks in and
43:24 bails them out
43:25 >> exactly
43:25 >> they don't get disciplined so you know
43:27 what horrified me. I remember watching
43:30 very closely of course in 20078
43:34 um and I thought I watched the bankers
43:36 and the bankers were convinced they were
43:38 going to go to jail. They knew they were
43:40 due due to go to jail
43:43 >> and this was this kind of odd period
43:46 after after
43:48 you know they bailed out Northern Rock
43:50 and they dealt with uh be this is before
43:53 RBS.
43:54 >> I remember the run on Northern Rock.
43:55 >> Yeah. And um
43:58 Gordon Brown says, "Mr. Banker, please
44:00 come into the treasury and help us solve
44:03 this problem, you know, because we know

## Around 49:49
49:51 And the point is we saw this in the
49:53 1930s. You know, we got Hitler in
49:56 Germany in the 1930s because exactly the
49:59 same thing happened then. We had a
50:01 massive debt crisis in 1929. A massive
50:04 crash. Then a deep depression. People
50:07 lost their jobs. They lost their homes.
50:09 They lost hope. And they turned to a
50:11 strong man because the strong man is
50:14 going to defend them. And what does the
50:16 strong man do? He takes them into a
50:18 catastrophic war and millions of them
50:20 die. So you know the problem is what do
50:23 we do with this frustration and this
50:25 anger? In my view it should be channeled
50:27 into how can we fix this problem? How
50:30 can we deal with the financial system?
50:32 How can we deal with the bankers?
50:33 Because the bankers are a lot of the
50:35 problem. How can we begin to manage our
50:37 economies to serve the interests of the
50:39 people and not to serve the interests of

## Around 57:05
57:05 appoint a new Bank of England governor
57:08 and I would say look your mandate is not
57:10 sufficient. Your mandate is inflation.
57:14 Who is hurt by inflation? You might be
57:16 in hurt when your the prices of goods in
57:19 this in the supermarkets go up and so
57:21 on. But the people who are most hurt by
57:24 inflation are creditors because if you
57:26 own a debt, if you if you if you've lent
57:29 you know a million pounds to somebody
57:31 and prices rise and incomes rise and
57:34 like this and the value of money rises,
57:37 the value of your debt falls. So the
57:39 creditors hate inflation. They would
57:42 rather have a situation in which prices
57:45 fall, incomes fall, investment falls,
57:48 and the value of the debt goes up, you
57:51 know, and because that's how the system
57:53 works. So, we have a a monetary policy
57:57 aimed at looking after the interests of
57:59 creditors only.
58:00 >> You mean we have a system that benefits

## Around 1:03:00
1:03:00 >> oh GPS.
1:03:01 >> GPS that was invented by the by the
1:03:04 public sector taxpayerbacked investor
1:03:06 which was the American state, right? And
1:03:09 the same applies to the British state.
1:03:11 There's lots goes on, you know, the
1:03:13 invention of new medicines, the the
1:03:15 inventions of new procedures within
1:03:17 within the NHS
1:03:18 >> of Concord, the British state working
1:03:20 with the British.
1:03:21 >> Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying that the
1:03:23 British state can run the all of the can
1:03:25 do things.
1:03:26 >> It can, but you see it. What I'm trying
1:03:28 to say is that Mariana Matsucatu is an a
1:03:32 a professor of economics who has argued
1:03:35 that the state is like an entrep can be
1:03:37 entrepreneurial and was in the case of
1:03:39 the Apple iPhone and the internet. All
1:03:42 of that came out of public spending and
1:03:45 she's I don't think that she uh is

## Around 1:09:22
1:09:23 proud. I'm a South African that's become
1:09:25 a Britain. I'm very proud to be a
1:09:27 British person and and and but that's
1:09:30 not nationalism if you think I mean when
1:09:32 I grew up
1:09:34 under Africana nationalists in South
1:09:36 Africa
1:09:37 >> and they had this sense that they were
1:09:40 superior to everybody else you know to
1:09:43 English people to other white people but
1:09:45 particularly to black people and they
1:09:48 were extraordinarily racist um you know
1:09:50 the Hitler was anti-semite he would
1:09:53 blame all the Jews for something and was
1:09:56 terribly unfair and and and the and the
1:09:58 South Africans treated black people as
1:10:01 if they weren't human beings, you know,
1:10:03 and when you go to South Africa today,
1:10:05 it's a very very different story and you
1:10:07 see how wonderful these human beings are
1:10:09 just as we all are. So there is a
1:10:12 problem with the kind of nationalism

## Around 1:13:16
1:13:16 >> yeah I have hope because you I I didn't
1:13:19 just run a global debt campaign for the
1:13:23 sake of it. I wanted to see some real
1:13:25 change and I was and everybody says to
1:13:27 me, "You can't do to people." This was
1:13:29 the the age of loads of money, you know,
1:13:32 and and all of that. And people aren't
1:13:35 interested in poor people in African
1:13:37 countries. And anyway, they'll all blame
1:13:39 the Africans because, you know, after
1:13:41 all, those people don't know how to
1:13:42 manage their finances and they're all
1:13:44 corrupt, aren't they? And they said
1:13:46 that's therefore you you won't you won't
1:13:48 succeed. And we said no, we're going to
1:13:50 go and do that. And then we found and
1:13:52 when the government woke up and there
1:13:54 were hundreds of thousands of people
1:13:56 standing up and saying, I think you
1:13:58 should cancel those debts because I
1:14:00 could see they were rotten. The
1:14:02 government was astounded. Blair couldn't