I haven’t done this show before and quite enjoyed the chat, although I did muff words in a couple of places. I’m finding that I seemed to be banned from US TV channels, but the flip side is this was a much more substantive conversation than you’d find on the usual suspects here.
Hope you enjoy the segment.
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It was good. I’m now a follower of NC. Thanks!
Great interview Yves. I’m starting to watch RT on YouTube more and more.
It’s really astonishing that you’ve been “banned” from the US markets. I’m probably not helping, since I’ve canceled my cable and will only watch clips from venues like RT that seem to be interested in a discussion.
At any rate, well done.
cue TS Eliot courtesy of AIG :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At6F0M4bSP8
Great information. I was particularly relieved to see the ‘short termism’ topic discussed a bit. In a world where there is little transparency and the *average* high frequency trade is said to be 11 seconds, this is too little discussed.
“How the US media marginalises dissent”
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/20118164314283633.html
Wow! I take it the colour coordination was fortuitous.
Yes, I didn’t know till I viewed the segment, I didn’t have a remote feed.
Yves,
An excellent interview! I’m sorry to hear that you’re under a blackball from US networks but I’m not surprised. Since the 1980s the business press has been under an agenda that has been relentlessly “jingoistic” if I can apply that term to coverage of commerce as opposed to foreign affairs: pro-business, pro-money, pro-corporation.
I remember fondly the old 1970s/1980s PBS business program hosted by the journalist Adam Smith (your ancestor in the Smith nom de plume, n’est ce pas?) who while a firm believer in private enterprise was no apologist for its excesses or its foibles. That sort of journalism is long gone, even from PBS, let alone such shills as CNBC and the major networks. It’s no small irony that one of the few outlets for people like yourself or Joseph Stiglitz is Russia TV; what a sad state of affairs, and what an indictment of a supposedly “free” press, one that is all too evidently bought and paid for by its corporate owners, underwriters, and/or sponsors.
That said, I’m delighted to see you on any occasion. I trust you’ll keep speaking truth to power.
Phichibe
Very good points, and the long format does allow you to expand on those sufficiently so that everybody can understand what they mean.
Now, if we would hear those as talking points, or have measures along those lines suggested by presidential contenders (or, for that matter, a current president)…
Maybe you’d do more for the UK tvs…
Agreed. Channel 4 would be a very good option. ITV (C4) is happy to do long interviews in the 7pm news and C4 in general has to (they are under legal obligation) to show various view points and documentaries.
Thank you for doing these kinds of shows as they give people like me material online that we can share with others so that every day people can understand whats actually going on.
In my State Senate race down here in GA last election the biggest problem people complained to me about was being able to keep up with whats actually going on because of the bombardment of propaganda and partisan hackdom
I once heard the sentence, in periods of inflation financial favours given to special interest groups are not recognized while in periods of deflation financial favours given out are highly visible and subject to a lot of critisism. On the basis of this context, I assume that we probably are in a deflationary environment overall. In such a situation, the accumulation of savings is an reasonable approach (e.g. 300,000 $ buy you a much bigger house today than 5 years ago). I doubt that government spending per se will solve the problem; it may simply delay the inevitable in the sense that the benefits from the spending will be soaked up by the corporate sector (mainly the 1% richest) and overindebtness will lead to further currency depreciation and the risk of a real hyperinflation event increases (loss of trust in the currency).
At this point in time, I do think the only way is to really suffer until the leverage and debt is reduced to reasonable levels. The top 1% however should have to share in the hardship and the bankers should be made accountable for abusing their privilege of creating money in form of credit. People can endure hardship but it must be shared hardship and not just for 90% of the population.
There is only one reason for business to hire, they need people to do something. Business don’t hire more people than is needed to do what needs to be done, business don’t hire because they have a lot of money. Business invests and hire when the sales and order number say that sales are increasing and they don’t have capacity to fulfill increased production. You don’t buy a new bigger suite when you don’t fill the one you have.
Yves,
Yes, great interview. Out of curiosity, was the interview in the NYC studio of RT, or some place else ?
In NYC.
Good stuff.
RT has a bit of a mixed track record. On the one hand they run great interviews with the likes of Stiglitz, Baker, Krugman (and now you). On the other they occasionally run conspiracy theorists/truthers and, erm, Peter Schiff doing his crystal ball-gazing thing (Peter Schiff makes ‘predictions’ like one of those creepy carnival machines).
There’s also the issue that they’re run by the Russian state and do fluff coverage of anything that goes on in Russia. So, when they get it right they get it right — but when they get it wrong… boy, do they get it wrong.
Why emphasize that they are run by the Russian state? I see newspapers in the US all the time that aren’t run by the state, and they all strike me as rather worse..
It’s pretty well-known that Russia Today was set up by the Russian state as a ‘soft power’ propaganda tool. That’s not to say it doesn’t run good stuff — it does. But just take a look at it’s coverage of all things Russian. You’d swear the place was a utopia.
In this RT is NOT like Al Jazeera. It’s more like Iran’s Press T.V. Both channels were explicitly set up by the states in question… and not in a ‘public good’ PBS/BBC sort of way.
Again, I’m not saying that RT doesn’t run good stuff. There’s a saying among journalists in war-zones: “If you want to know what’s really going on, watch the adversaries news channels”. This applies to a certain extent here. But I’d watch out for some of the stuff they run — especially the Truthers and the stuff on Chechnya or whatever.
especially the Truthers PP
Oh come on Phil, there is too much evidence that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job for you to dismiss them so cavalierly. It is perhaps unthinkable to you and me that people would do such a thing but history tells us they done similar things in the past (The Reichstag burning, the fake Polish attack on Germany, etc.)
Never seen a 9/11 conspiracy theory argument on Naked Capitalism before. Nor do I want to. I’ll pass.
R U scairt (of losing your PC license)?
I don’t have a lot of interest in conspiracies myself but I don’t dismiss them out-of-hand when there is a reasonable amount of evidence.
You’re either inside with the cool kids or outside with everybody else. That’s part of the punishment when you get “banished,” you get to stand in line with a lot of people who don’t smell so good. Doesn’t mean _you’re_ smelly or crazy, but you get treated that way. Clever system, no?
I was never a cool kid, so this doesn’t bother me much.
At least Russia isn’t commie anymore even though they like taking body shots at us in the media, they’re just kind of a dictatorship of the plutocratariat, sort of like us.
“who while a firm believer in private enterprise was no apologist for its excesses or its foibles. [ … snip … ] a supposedly “free” press, one that is all too evidently bought and paid for by its corporate owners, underwriters, and/or sponsors.”
How can one both support “private enterprise” and prevent the successful of the necessarily cut-throat competition private enterprise is from becoming monopolies and wielding too much power? If we limit success, cap it somehow, we limit private enterprise, a.k.a. free enterprise. We ‘interfere.’ (How, and in whose interest?)
Add to this conundrum the problem of interest-bearing debt-money forcing increasing dependence of the public sphere on the private–since usury is a slow-drip redistribution of wealth to the owners of that wealth–and you have the slow (now accelerating) usurpation of the public by the private. Unless something deep changes, unless we have a profound paradigm change and attendant changes to the system’s make up, being a “firm believer of private enterprise” makes one a firm believer in the current state of affairs. The excess you disparage is baked into the cake, is inevitable.
Furthermore, ‘growth,’ so vital to this usury-based system (usury being exponential growth by another name) must be by definition ever-increasing acceleration of economic activity in ever increasing amounts. How can that not be about excess (in the long run)?
Sorry, I’m having a bad run here (the other day I posted in the wrong thread entirely). This was meant to be a reply to Phichibe.
Yves:
Congrats to you for yet another terrific interview.
American “Tee Vee” ignores those individuals who challenge their agenda and slanted story lines, the most prominent recent example being their coverage of the Iowa straw poll and the “disappearing” of Ron Paul. Jon Stewart’s take-down of their shenanigans is spot on.
Having the perspective of years in the business, it is interesting to see the short term trader time span being attributed by you to market response to increased consumer demand for ripped from the headlines business news. The entry of the day trader, the nano second dot com era sea change of time span, makes the go go EIGHTIES seem like vendors of geologic time span perspectives. Short termism, now becomes the cultural norm from the public when it comes to viewing business performance, as well as being reinforced by the cyber trading strategies of an algorithm driven industry, which is becoming more and more dominated by high frequency traders. That analysis is just so last Thursday!
You’re just too “librul” and fact-oriented. Reality bites.
Here’s my very imperfect list of who is in and who is out on mainstream media regarding progressive/alternative viewpoints:
Acceptable (but rarely if ever discuss systemic control fraud and lawlessness at the heart of the system)
Robert Reich
Krugman
Acceptable (but have relatively limited exposure on mainstream media)
Mark Taibbi
Glen Greenwald
Alan Grayson
Bernie Sanders
Michael Moore
The Black Ball List (you’ll almost never see these folks)
Yves Smith
Nomi Prins
Naomi Klein
William Black
Michael Hudxon
Gerald Celente
Karl Denninger
The Names That Must Never Be Spoken:
Alex Jones
Ron Paul (as much as possible)
Max Keiser
Why not Max Keiser? At the very least for comic relief.
I’m not saying Keiser wouldn’t be a good interview – just that based on my personal observations, these are the people who are and are not allowed face time on mainstream sources.