Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #25: Wall Street, Media Shakeup, Free Assange, Economic Vulnerability, & More!

Episode Date: March 5, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover Wall Street's protection of Russian oligarchs, the Assange case with Nick from Love is Blind, comments on The View, Jen Psaki's future in media, and Matt Stoller breaks down America's economic vulnerability!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Daily Poster: https://www.dailyposter.com/Matt Stoller: https://mattstoller.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Joining us now for our weekly partnership segment is David Sirota of The Daily Poster. Great to see you, David. Good to see you, David. Good to see both of you. Yeah, absolutely. So you have a very timely piece out right now. Let's go ahead and throw this up on the screen. Talking about how Biden's Ukraine plans face a Wall Street roadblock and how corporate lobbyists have made it more difficult to levy sanctions directly on the sort of financial elite, so the sort of targeted sanctions that would hit just the oligarchs and not cause insane pain and misery for the entire Russian population. Can you just talk us about, take us through this piece, David?

Sure. So for years, law enforcement agencies, financial regulators have said that the U.S. and U.K. financial systems are incredibly opaque, not requiring the kind of basic disclosure that other industrialized nations require. And that has allowed, effectively, oligarchs really from all over the world to make investments in assets, yachts, planes, also ownership assets in private funds like private equity, hedge funds, to make those investments, own those investments, make money off of those investments without allowing law enforcement regulators and the general public to know who actually owns those things. And in 2020, the FBI actually issued an alert saying this has become a problem specifically

for sanctions evasions, that oligarchs were using potentially the opacity of the U.S. financial system to essentially get around sanctions. And here's the thing, is that corporate lobbyists have obviously been pushing to keep the financial system opaque. Wall Street lobbyists, bank lobbyists, but also other forms of corporate lobbyists have been arguing to financial regulators to not do the kinds of things that would bring these investments out into the open. And of course, that becomes a problem when the United States is considering sanctions on Vladimir Putin's personal assets, Russian oligarchs' assets, that they have a problem being able to even track down those assets for the purposes of sanctioning them. In other words, they have a problem sanctioning Russian oligarchs, Putin's network, because Wall Street has been so successful in keeping the U.S. financial

system opaque and in convincing lawmakers to not do what can be done to bring those investments into the sunlight. Yeah, I think it's important that people understand that. I was thinking the same thing, you know, just during the sanctions when they were announced, I saw that Russian bonds went to zero and a huge amount of banks, David, actually had to do a margin call because a lot of them have been borrowing using bonds as assets. Can you go into that piece, just how dependent Wall Street is on so much of Russian cash? Look, there was one estimate by Gabriel Zuckman that about more than half of Russian, the top 1%, top 0.01% of Russia's elite have its assets offshore. Half of those assets are offshore. The US and Britain are known to be the financial systems with the most opacity, among others. I mean, there's smaller countries that are known as tax havens and the like, but in terms of industrialized countries. And here's the thing, Joe Biden has the power right now to start combating this problem. I mean, there is a

rule that the Obama administration had proposed to essentially use the Bank Secrecy Act and subject the private funds industry to that 50 plus year old law. Biden has not done that. Of course, the financial industry doesn't want him to do that. There was also the Corporate Transparency Act, a bill that did pass last year. And that's a good thing. But in the process of pushing that bill forward, and it was a bipartisan bill, various corporate lobbyists, various corporate industries got exemptions to that bill. That bill was designed to make sure that shell companies would have to at least tell regulators or law enforcement officials who the actual owners of shell companies are. I mean, think about that. We're in a situation now, we've been in a situation where shell companies don't even have to tell law enforcement agencies who necessarily owns those companies and where that money flows to. And

here's the other thing, is that now that that law is on the books, they've been pushing forward rules to essentially implement that law. And even in the lead up to the crisis in Ukraine, corporate lobbyists have been pushing to add even more exemptions to the Corporate Transparency Act, trying to water it down. And again, it goes back to the idea that how sanctions can be great. They can sound great on paper. We're going to go after the oligarchs. the basic tools to even know who owns shell companies, to know who is invested in the vast world of private equity and hedge funds, then the oligarchs have plenty of ways to get around those sanctions. That's well said. What was the impetus for these rules? Was this to crack down on money

laundering and just talk about that piece of it? Yes. I mean, that's really what it's been about, is that there's been rising concerns about money laundering. That was the FBI's warning in 2020, that essentially that the U.S. financial system had become a way for all sorts of money laundering, organized crime and the like, to launder money through private funds because the system is so opaque. So it's good. Listen, it's good that the Corporate Transparency Act passed last year. That's good. But as we all know, the devil is in the details. And so when you look at the filings, when you look at these Wall Street trade associations asking for watered down rules, give us an exemption over here, exempt our industry over there, what you see is that Wall Street, it has its own interests. And ultimately, what you see is that Wall Street, it has its own interests. And ultimately, what you

see is that Wall Street's power over the U.S. financial system and over American politics creates real national security vulnerabilities. I think that is really the key here, is that Wall Street has so much power to buy lawmakers and to buy policy, that ultimately what ends up happening is that the policy ends up being so weak that law enforcement and national security agencies can't do the very basics of their jobs. Well, and as you're saying, this is just one facet of the national security issues that Wall Street has created for us. You could also talk about, you know, the way that oil interests have kept us from moving aggressively into renewables. So that makes us vulnerable when we have a crisis like this. You could talk about the way that Wall Street and corporate pressures pushed so many of our jobs and our manufacturing overseas

so that we don't have our own native capacity. So that when, you know, pandemic hits, we don't have our own PPE. We're dependent on overseas providers. So this is like one really important prism of what is a massive and significant problem for the U.S. economy. And I want to add one very quick thing here, is that we're talking about the difference between being able to sanction in a targeted way the oligarchs and Vladimir Putin, in contrast to broad sanctions that hurt, that can hurt the entire Russian population. So I want to be clear, like, I'm not saying all sanctions are good. But what I am saying is, is that if you're interested in sanctions that are as narrowly targeted as possible to the most powerful people creating this crisis, then that's what we're

talking about here. So we have, in effect, United States regulators have less power than they could have to do that kind of targeted sanctions because of Wall Street's power. Yeah, so they've sort of taken the scalpel away and left us only with blunt instruments that are going to impact all of the millions of Russians. David, always appreciate your reporting. Guys, go subscribe, if you can, to The Daily Poster. Soon to be the—are we going with lever or lever? The lever.

The lever. The lever. They are always doing invaluable work to help us understand what is really going on here in Washington and around the world. David, great to see you. Thanks, David. Thanks to both of you. Our pleasure. Thank you guys for watching. We're going to have more for you later. All right, guys, we just had to update you on how the ladies of The View, with all of this turmoil and war and catastrophe unfolding, that they really have their eyes on the prize of what is most important

in all of this conflict. Joy Behar in particular, let's take a listen. Estimates are 50,000 Ukrainians will be dead or wounded and that this is going to start a humanitarian crisis, a refugee crisis in Europe. We're talking about 5 million people that are going to be displaced. I mean, it's heartbreaking to hear what is going to happen. Well, I'm scared of what's going to happen in Western Europe, too. Yeah. You know, you just plan a trip. You want to go there. I want to go to Italy for four years.

I haven't been able to make it because of the pandemic. And now this, you know, it's like, what's going to happen there? Yeah. I mean, what's really at, what's going to happen there? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what's really at stake here for Joy By Heart is. Joy By Heart's Italian vacation. Heartbreaking. Her long anticipated Italian vacation may not come to fruition, Sagar. Just think about.

It's just devastating. The narcissism you have to have to make a foreign war where people are dying in the streets, where Russia has now been economically destroyed about your Italian vacation. I can't even imagine what it would take for it to say that on national television in front of millions of people. I want to start covering every crisis through the lens of how it personally impacts me in particular. I've always wanted to go to Moscow. That's probably not.

I've always wanted to go. I can't say it. Whatever the Tsar's Palace, Tsar Kosello or whatever. I've always wanted to see it. I probably won't be able to do that now in my lifetime, given what's happening. Should I go expound on that and be like, well, the worst part about what's happening here, I'm never going to be able to go to St. Petersburg and Moscow. It's like, what is wrong with you? Yeah.

With these people. It's callous, though. It goes to your monologue that you gave about how the media can select and care about. The way that framing all of this has a tremendous impact on past crises, current ones. Because in a way, the reason that they would even care at all is because it directly impacts them and people that they know in europe right so this is again is a a similar way in which the past wars iraq and afghanistan were erased from modern memory by that's actually yeah that to to take the analysis a level deeper it is actually very telling because yeah joy behar is not looking to vacation in like kandahar you know, she's unlikely to care as much about things that are happening in part of the world that she considers to be, you know, out of bounds of sort of civilization.

And so, yeah, the way this hits home for her and why they care so much more about the suffering in this conflict versus all others is because, yeah, I've been to Italy. I've been to Europe. These are places that touch me directly. And so it does shape the way, ultimately, that the conflict is covered, and not just by Joy Behar, but by all of the networks. There you go. Good point. All right, guys. Thanks for watching. We're going to have more for you later. Very excited for this one.

Joining us now is Nick thompson from love is blind some of you might know him from reality tv but this is not a gossip interview nick well you and i initially connected on instagram and i found it really interesting that you have some very core held political beliefs and including um wearing a free assange bracelet while you were on the show just talk to us a little bit about your own politics and how you want to use your new platform in order to raise awareness for what you think is important. Yeah, absolutely. So my politics, I don't like to be called liberal. I think of myself maybe as more of a progressive with a libertarian lean in some areas, but, um, you know, getting into politics,

uh, for me really started back in 2008 and, you know, my views are being molded constantly, but one issue with, um, Julian Assange that really bugs me coming from studying journalism and in high school and colleges, the fact that we have, um, you know, this journalist or public publisher or whatever you want to call him. And despite him bringing key information that the public needed to know and helping release information that the public needed to know, he's being in danger of being extradited to the U.S. for the Espionage Act. And to me, that is despicable. And what's even worse is when you watch our press and our mainstream media sit there and watch one of their own go down and they sit there in silence with their their hands under their legs as opposed to standing up for one of their own.

So freedom of the press to me is the number one issue that we have. We have a press that is bought and paid for over and over by big pharma, by giant corporations, by billionaires that are soon to be trillionaires. And until we have true press freedom, whether that comes from a crowdfunded model or a not-for-profit model, we're never going to solve the big problems that are facing our country and ultimately the world too. That's well said. I think that is very well said. And I have to tell you, I was mentioning this to you, Nick, when Sagar realized you were following him on Instagram, he was like super giddy. That's true. You're not going to believe this, Crystal.

I'm a big fan of the show. Yeah, and it's so rare to find someone in like, you know, public eye or mainstream sort of like entertainment who actually has good politics. So I'd love for you to talk to us a little bit more about, you just mentioned your sort of political awakening started in 2008. What was that about and what has been kind of your trajectory in terms of your beliefs? And I know you mentioned, you know, you're a big consumer of independent media, that you were an original riser with us quickly after we launched, that you

watched Jimmy Dore, that you watched Kyle Kalinsky, TYT, and others. So just talk to us a little bit about your own political trajectory and how you ended up with the politics you have. Yeah, so I grew up in a lower middle class family. We moved around a lot. My parents were working hard. And, you know, looking back, I remember growing up and my dad lost his job in manufacturing, you know, and I saw that happen to other family members as well. And so I kind of had this idea that something wasn't right and that this wasn't the way America was supposed to be. And then I graduated college and lost my job in 2008. And that was, you know, that was a big awakening to me. And I hopped on the Obama train and wrote it for four years. And then in 2012, I was thinking, wait a minute, I still don't have health care. I just took out $60,000 of loans that I have no idea how I'm ever going to pay back for college. And what it continued, I was like, this is this isn't right. And in 2015, the rise of Trump

and Hillary, I was like, this isn't right. Something's not right. And, you know, I just started digging more and more into it. 2016 and 2020, I was a volunteer on Bernie's campaign and, you know, was really disappointed how both of those turned out. But, you know, that's kind of been my journey. And just just looking around me and knowing what it was like to grow up, you know, sometimes not knowing where your next meal was coming from or if you were going to, parents were going to be able to afford rent or what was going to happen. And then being in similar situations without a job in 2008 and then, you know, just all of this snowballs and you look around you and feels like, you know, I'm in Chicago and I see 10 cities popping up. There's more homeless people than

I've ever seen in Chicago. And what are we doing about this? How are we going to fix this? And then I look at the news and all they do, you know, for four years is talk about Trump tweets and nobody's talking about how we have, you know, trillionaires that own the media. It's condensed down to six companies. And as long as that's the issue, like we're never going to get reporting on this. That's really well said, Nick. You know, it's interesting. We were talking, one of the only things that were remained in the show that even alluded a little bit to your politics when you were talking about capitalism. Could you go into that? Give us the context of that discussion and just give us some of your thoughts. I saw that you expanded a little bit

more on Instagram. Yeah. So, you know, when I think about capitalism and its way and it's what I was alluding to a moment ago, it's it's not sustainable the way it is right now. You know, and going back to to, you know, the billionaires and trillionaires that we're about to have owning the media. And as long as they're owning the media, they're not going to report or investigate on why we have almost 600000 homeless people in the country. They're not going to report or investigate on why we have almost 600,000 homeless people in the country. They're not going to report on, you know, how healthcare is profit driven and all the studies and research are sponsored by big pharma and the insurance companies. They're never going to talk about how we spend, you know, what do we spend like 750 billion plus on war. They're never going to talk about how we shouldn't be involved in all

these foreign affairs and the countless, you know, thousand plus war bases we have around the country. They're not going to talk about this because these are these are things that help them make money. This is the way that the media stays profitable. They can't talk about what's actually happening in this country so that people who are middle class, upper middle class can actually see that the world's falling apart around them. Yeah, really well said. Yeah. And Nick, I don't want to get you in any trouble with the show, but I am curious whatever you can say about this. So you come from this sort of, you know, working class upbringing, you have your own struggles, losing your job, struggling to afford health insurance, your student loan debt. And now you're in, you know, the belly of the capitalist beast, as we all have to exist in society.

But you have the specific lens into like the money making industry of entertainment. Has that shaped or informed your views or revealed anything else to you about the system that you hadn't quite grasped before? So I'm relatively new into this. And, you know, it's just been the last few weeks of the show airing that people have asked to take a picture with me, you know, or comment on stuff. So it's all very new to me. But one thing is I'm literally a normal guy that grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. I work in software marketing. You know, these are just passions of mine because I've come from it. I've lived through it and I've seen people

that lived through more of it. So it's all new. But just looking around, you know, there is a sense of, you know, being out of touch in a sense in some instances. And when, you know, I Google myself or my other castmates and find the way people are writing articles, it's just – I laugh at it because I'm like this is just like sad that we're more worried about whether Nick and Danielle are together by following Instagram posts than we are about our are about, you know, climate change or any of these other like impending dooms that we have. That's, you know, it's so refreshing to hear somebody in the reality TVI say this and not hawk some health supplement to me on Instagram. So, Meg, I can't thank you enough for joining us, man. I think this is a side of you I wish I personally had seen more on the show. I won't trouble you for spoilers or for anything like that. And we just really appreciate you joining us and for watching us so much over the years.

Yeah, it's awesome to meet you, Nick. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Love talking to you guys. We've had this segment in the bag for a long time. We've been wanting to cover this. But then Russia invaded Ukraine. It didn't feel correct.

It felt a little unserious. We had to get to it. It didn't feel correct. It felt a little unserious, but we had to get to it. It's still important, which is that there has been a report, basically never denied by anybody, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, that CNN and MSNBC have been courting Jen Psaki in order to join their network. And in fact, the title there reflects, is Jen Psaki the next Rachel Maddow? MSNBC producers apparently believe she could be the one to take over the primetime time slot. There's so much to be said about this. Number one, Jen Psaki is not that talented. I do not

like Rachel Maddow, but she's better than this lady. Rachel is talented. Yeah. You have to hand it to her. You can't deny it. Same with Tucker. Many of these people, you may not like them, but they're good at what they do. Yeah. Jet Saki is not that good at what she does. But number two, if we want to talk about state TV, this is as state TV as it gets. And they were all, you did a whole monologue on this about Brian Stelter, wrote that whole book about, oh my God, like the fusion between the Trump White House and Fox News.

By the way, that was really gross. I thought it was disgusting even at the time. And, you know, Kayleigh McEnany immediately going to get a job there. Same with Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Not good for Fox's reputation. Same thing, though, on this side, right? They're all willing, in order to point that out, this is the same deal. The active White House press secretary interviewing and meeting them for a job interview while she is then being asked questions by those people. Is that not as outright corrupt as it gets?

Now, look, she can claim whatever she wants, but she doesn't deny that they've been courting her. And look, she probably does want to be a TV star and get paid millions of dollars. Who doesn't want to have that happen star and get paid millions of dollars. Who doesn't want to have that happen? And this is exactly the issue. She was asked about this during the press briefing. Let's take a listen. I have more than enough on my plate here. And so you can't get rid of me quite yet. Sorry, Peter, for you on that. And so I will see you all on Monday. Thank you, everyone. No denial that she's not meeting with them.

No ruling it out whatsoever. And we know she's planning on leaving. And she is going to leave. Yeah, that's the context is that she said she's going to retire at the end of the year. So, OK, no denial. It's happening while she is working on behalf of the U.S. government. You always bring up that great Simone Sanders quote about how she's like, yes, I will be joining MSNBC, but I'm still going to use my platform to defend the Biden administration after working as Kamala Harris's communications director. So you're state TV now. OK, just say it. Well, to make a connection with the Russia-Ukraine stories that we have been covering, I mean, RT and Sputnik and all the like Russian state-backed media channels have all been banned from all these different platforms.

Like, how is this really any different? You know, I mean, yeah, there's some technical separation, but you're literally talking to the White House spokesperson about a job while she's still in that position trying to court her. She will end up at one of these channels. I mean, it's just like without a doubt that that is definitely going to happen because they imagine in their mind there's some constituency for her, which there's not. And so, yeah, you're going directly from that post into what's supposed to be this independent network. But is there any doubt that you're going to be doing exactly what Simone Sanders admitted to doing, which is towing the line for the, you know, your former boss and the people that you are likely to potentially work with again in the future as well? No, because also, I mean,

and this is the other problem with our media is like, it's all about the access game. So she wants to keep her access to all those people. she didn't want to piss them off and criticize them and have a problem on her hands there so yeah it's uh it's also a sad sign of the total lack of talent um in liberal media that's actually probably the best point and the total yeah because i mean they know that they have no replacement for rachel and while she's been out, her ratings dropped, what was it, by 25%? A third? It was like a catastrophic, immediate drop when they put somebody else in her chair. So they kind of know they don't have anyone internally who can even come close to fill in the shoes.

So they're grasping for, well, who could we get? And it also just goes to show you like they don't understand what it actually takes to build that audience that Rachel has built. She's one of the few in cable news that has that loyal audience that will show up for her. They really have no idea what it looks like to find someone who can do that. I mean, MSNBC, they stumbled on Rachel. She was they first stumbled on Keith Olbermann, and they were trying to be like neutral network then. And then Keith Olbermann's program in opposition to the Iraq war and Bush, that really takes off because that voice wasn't really being heard anywhere. Rachel is one of his regular guests, and so they sort of stumble on her as

a property as well. But now when they allow basically no dissent over there, there's no one that's really interesting who's going to be able to draw in that audience that isn't already satisfied by the standard issue liberal line in any number of other places. So yeah, I think that's the biggest problem for them. They have no ideological diversity and they've now reduced it to the people who can't. And I just can't help but think about all these former government officials on TV is so disgusting. I was just remembering Josh Earnest, by the way, now the CCO, Chief Communications Officer of United Airlines. Congratulations, Josh. Former White House Press Secretary. He was an NBC News analyst. Ben Rhodes, who used to work for Obama, NBC News

analyst. All these former CIA directors and all these people getting paid by these TV. I mean, that is what state TV is all about. It's just as gross on Fox. It's just, I mean, it's such an artificial and repulsive edifice to watch these people who have clear interests switch between TV and government. You want to talk about the real revolving door that should have bans on it?

We should ban all White House press secretaries and former government officials for five years after their employment from being able to appear as a paid contributor on network television. Let's go ahead and do that. The propaganda would go down by 50% overnight. Yeah. Yeah. So it'll be interesting. I mean, and I look over at CNN where they're betting on like Casey Hunt and who else they got over there. They're already firing people on CNN Plus. They've got the Anderson Cooper like parenting show they're planning.

There's some other, what was it? There's like a Don Lemon. Don Lemon, Jake Tapper's book club. Cooking show or something. Somebody's doing a cooking show. Book club. The Jake Tapper book club. That's what I was trying to think of.

She actually is pretty popular. I don't watch this stuff. Alison Roman, I think. Yeah, see, that seems like I could see some logic to that bet. Right. Yeah, Chris Wallace, these other people. Of course, there's already reports. This is another thing that we've been planning to talk to you about, but never got to because of that bet. Right. Yeah, Chris Wallace, these other people. Of course, there's already reports. This is another thing that we've been planning to talk to you about but never got to because of the war.

Right. That, you know, the CNN Plus streaming service may already be in danger. And the dude that they're bringing in is in line with the, hey, we've got to get back to the hard news thing that some top investors were also looking at. So if the war calms down, we'll bring you more of that. Yeah, many things are afoot here. Yeah. All right. See you guys later. Thanks for watching. Have a good one. We'll see you later. Hi, I'm Matt Stoller and welcome to another Big Breakdown. Today, I'm going to talk about what the Russian invasion of Ukraine has revealed about our own economic vulnerability.

I don't want to frighten anyone, but you should know that this stuff keeps me up at night. I'm a little weird that way. I think about economics and collapse, but it scares me. So if economic doomsday scenarios scare you, then stay away from this video. Also, in the video today, I'm going to have a clip from a Chinese action movie. It's a pretty cool movie, but it's also fairly bloody. So you have been warned about all the scary stuff. All right, so I'm an analyst. I look at corporate power, economics, not usually geopolitics and war. But in reality, the two things are intertwined. And so we've all seen the photos and videos of the war in Ukraine. But in reality, the two things are intertwined. And so we've all seen the photos and videos of the war in Ukraine, but what about what is happening in Russia itself?

Now, the Western response to the invasion of Ukraine has been mostly economic in the form of sanctions. We cut off Russian banks from being able to trade in dollars. We block the imports and exports from or to Russia of things that they want or that they need. And let's take a look at some of the videos coming out of Russia, which are nowhere near as dramatic as what we're seeing in Ukraine, but are still incredibly important, maybe even more important. So this is a video of Russians waiting in line to withdraw money from a bank. The Russian economy is very clearly in trouble, maybe even collapsing, because everyone in every banking system, no matter where they are in the world, relies on

access to dollars. And we've cut off their access to our currency. As a result, Russian banks are having serious problems. The West has caused a Russian bank run. We have destabilized the Russian economy, and we're throwing ordinary Russians into poverty. It's almost impossible for Russian firms to buy from the West to resupply their factories. The goal is to stop the Russian military machine, and it's probably working, all without firing a shot. Now, the sanctions, the economic actions, go far beyond banks, of course. So Maersk is one of the largest ocean carrier firms in the world. I think it's actually the largest. And it just cut off Russia from trade. Most of the other ocean

carrier firms, not all of them, but most of them have also cut off Russia and Ukraine. Now, whatever you think about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin's goal at this point, his goal is likely to displace the Western system and replace it with one in which there are more authoritarian norms. Now, he made that clear himself late last month in a speech about greater Russia. But sanctions also do some damage to us. Since the beginning of this year, tensions between Russia and Ukraine and just the possibility of sanctions have caused the price of oil to go from about $80 to about $110, $120 a barrel. Now, the U.S. imports 21% of its gasoline from Russia, and Americans have seen the prices at the pump reflect these increasing prices. And this is true even as our sanctions exclude energy, meaning we still want

to continue buying oil and gas from Russia so that the prices don't go up even more. We're not sanctioning their energy sector. Fertilizer prices have also increased since Russia and its ally Belarus make roughly 40% of the global supply of certain types of fertilizer. And that's a really big deal for food prices, which are also up. Still, Russia's economy is smaller than California's, and we don't actually rely on Russia or Ukraine for very much. We imported just $29 billion of goods and services from Russia last year, which is very little in our $20 trillion plus economy. A lot of our companies, from Exxon to General Motors, have pulled out of Russia, but our

companies don't really have to do business there. Shareholders don't care that much. It's just not that big a deal. Now, yeah, Russia drills oil, it makes vodka, rocket engines, and Ukraine produces wheat, corn, barley, sunflower seeds, and so forth. But the U.S. can and does source these goods elsewhere, including from ourselves. We are actually a giant agricultural power. Now, side note, this is not true everywhere. A lot of countries from Egypt

to Israel and across the Middle East and Africa, they do rely on Ukrainian or Russian wheat. The bottom line is that the United States, and more broadly, Europe and the West, can address Vladimir Putin's geopolitical choices relatively uncoerced by Russian economic influence. They just can't hurt us very much economically, at least not in the short term. I don't want to overstate this. It's possible there are, maybe even probable, that there are critical supply chain links going through Russia and Ukraine. You don't always know you'll need a small critical piece of infrastructure until you do. There are shipping problems and other issues that we're experiencing as well. But more to the

point, we aren't very good at tolerating pain. I mentioned that we aren't sanctioning Russian oil. The Russians can take bank runs, maybe even economic collapse, but we can't even take higher gas prices at the pump. Still, our sanctions are working. Russia, however, isn't the only authoritarian country that wants to displace the Western system of international norms. Now, I'm not saying that this system is worth preserving without serious changes. The U.S. launched a war of choice against Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands, and then Europe and the U.S. did so against Syria and Libya as well. I'm not even going to get into Yemen and what's happening there currently. We have not reckoned with these gross violations of the values that we have pretended to uphold, but it's clear or probable that if the Western system falls, something much

more violent, dangerous, and authoritarian is probably what will replace it. Economic sanctions have been the tool that we've been using to hold back Russian aggression without going to war ourselves, without risking troops, without risking nuclear war. And the key to sanctions with Russia, or anywhere else, is that we don't rely on Russia economically, but Russia relies on us. But imagine a different world. Let's say that Russia made all or most of, oh, I don't know, like our iPhones or consumer electronics, critical chemicals. What if Russia had the second largest economy in the world, and one that nearly every large firm needed to commit to in order to make shareholders happy? Would it be so easy to

levy sanctions against that Russia? The answer, of course, is no. And if that Russia chose to invade other countries or throw its weight around, we couldn't impose sanctions on them without hurting ourselves very badly, and it would be much harder to hold together an international coalition. I think you can see where I'm headed next. There is a country that has all these characteristics. China. The Chinese have the second largest economy in the world, and it is the most populous nation in the world. It is also, more importantly, the world's factory. The U.S. alone imports more than half a trillion dollars of goods and services from China. Japan,

Germany, indeed the entire world at this point, is dependent on Chinese exports. Remember how U.S. nurses wore garbage bags when COVID first hit? That's because we couldn't get enough personal protective equipment from China, and frankly, neither could anywhere else. Like Russia, China is pretty much hostile to the United States, the Chinese government. Chinese newspapers, which are state-run, regularly attack America in deeply personal tones. Here, for example, is Hu Shijin, a key voice for China with the Global Times. And he attacks the U.S., blames the U.S. for the war in Ukraine, which is a common line from Chinese spokespeople and Chinese newspapers. And he says that the U.S. is a, quote, gang leader who bluffs a lot but is timid at critical moments. Its allies have seen through

this. China has even built a government-approved film industry in which it regularly shows Americans as villains and America as a land full of evil, malevolent bureaucrats and bad guys. Now, whether this is true or not, and I don't think it is, I think it's cartoonish, this is the propaganda that China is showing to its citizens and actually showing to people all over the world where it can. Now, I'm going to show you a clip of a famous Chinese movie called Wolf Warrior 2, which did incredibly well. It's a pretty violent movie. It's kind of like Lethal Weapon or Rambo. But the movie, it's important because it was so popular in China that it's actually among the top 100 grossing films ever. It is

basically a Chinese version of Rambo with America as the villain. And the production values are really high. It's a cool movie. China imported techniques from Hollywood, and they used them to make movies that are of comparable quality. So in this first clip, here's the way that the filmmakers portray Americans as violent racists who despise non-white people or look down on non-white people, especially the Chinese. The clip is during the final battle when the Chinese hero, who's a special forces warrior, is nearly killed by the American warlord, whose name is Big Daddy. People like you always do it, the fight continues. And finally, the hero. his name is Long Feng, and he's a, again, I said this before, Chinese Special Forces soldier, turns the tables on Big Daddy.

If you've seen any action movie ever, you know how it goes. The hero almost dies, you know, the skin of his teeth, right? But then turns the table and kills the villain. Now, this next scene, when it happens, is kind of, is a little gross, so you've been warned. But what's important is what the Chinese hero Feng says at the end. That's fucking history. That's what he says. And that is a statement from the Chinese government to the Chinese people and people all over the world who watch this movie.

Now, it's a cool fight. I can see why the movie did well. It's Hollywood-level production. But what's important here is that it's not Hollywood. Hollywood is run by and large by private firms whose real goal is just to make a bunch of money. The Chinese government, by contrast, controls everything in its movies. They have a big censorship department and they pay special attention to key geopolitical arguments like how Americans and Chinese soldiers are portrayed or how the Chinese military and the American military are portrayed. China's place in the world is very important in these movies and the Chinese government supervises it very closely. Now, what's important is that the Chinese government actually wants its people to see

the world in racialized terms. They want their people to fear Americans and learn that there is a global conflict of civilizations coming, one that China intends to win. It's not actually that different from some hardliners in the U.S. who also use racist framing to characterize the actions of the Chinese government. The difference is that in China, hardline anti-Americanism is not only spread everywhere through explicit government control and censorship, but it is actually government policy and has been for decades. Chinese Foreign Service members, they are diplomats, are actually now known as wolf warrior diplomats after this movie because of how aggressive and nationalistic they have become. For example, here's a Chinese

foreign ministry spokesman blaming the U.S. for covering up the American origins of COVID. Basically, Chinese diplomats are trained to attack American legitimacy as a strategy for displacing American and Western power. And that is absolutely government policy. The Chinese government feels that for China to become as powerful as it should be, America must lose. Now, putting aside the moral issues of this kind of conflict for a second, here's the problem, the practical problem for us, if you're a realist and a strategist. Unlike Russia, America, we do need China desperately. When Donald Trump put tariffs on a small number of Chinese goods, relatively small number, our own corporations freaked out. And from 2017 to 2019, in a series

of hearings, a lot of companies told the government just how dependent we are on Chinese production. My organization summarized these comments. I've put a link to the spreadsheet in the description of this video. You can download it and look at all of our dependencies. But've put a link to the spreadsheet in the description of this video. You can download it and look at all of our dependencies. Here's a very, very short list of products that we depend on China for. I mean, the list is much longer. I just picked these out. It's somewhat random. Solar panels, printed circuit boards, active pharmaceutical ingredients, prom dresses, fracking fluid inputs, routers, consumer robotics, specialty chemicals, electronic components, tiki torches, point-of-sale terminals, vitamin C, gentry cranes, and the ink that goes into dollar bills. But that's not my favorite one, the ink that goes into the dollar.

My favorite comment in these hearings on Chinese tariffs was from a guy named Stan Jantz from the Bible lobby. Now, I don't mean that he's got, he had some religious agenda here. I mean, he actually represents the Evangelical Publishers Association, which sells Bibles. Here he is explaining to the Trump administration why they shouldn't put tariffs on Bibles that are printed and then imported from China. Chinese printers have developed the technology and the artistry to produce the kind of Bibles people want, which is why over 50% of the Bibles published by ECPA members are printed in China. In fact, more Bibles are printed in China than in any other country on earth.

Now, he went on to say that this is actually a problem for religious freedom because American printers don't, simply don't have the capacity to print enough Bibles for Americans. And the people who, quote unquote, buy and read the Bible would potentially have to pay a much higher price, perhaps higher than they could justify. Christians depend on the Bible for their daily input of spiritual nourishment. Some publishers believe that such a tariff would place a practical limitation on religious freedom. Okay, printing technology is 500 years old. So this is really, really bad in terms of dependency. Now, if you just look at other supply chains, it's bad when Russia and Ukraine go offline. There are problems. We can

manage it, but there are problems. If China shuts down, if we try to sanction China that way, forget it. Just forget it. Let's look at ocean carriers. Seven of the top 10 biggest container ports by volume in the world are in China. You just can't shut it down. The US used to lead the world in shipping. Just to give some context, we had over 60% of the global merchant marine in 1945. Today, we have no major American ocean shipping firms. We basically have no merchant marine, no ships that move stuff in international waters. We are reliant on ships run by, among others, Chinese operators. And they actually own and run port terminals all over the United States. In other words, without China, there just is no global supply chain. And that's not to mention all of our corporations who are

absolutely desperate to do business there. Apple CEO Tim Cook, who regularly scoffs in the U.S. when asked for his company to pay its fair share of taxes, pledged to the Chinese government years ago that his firm would spend hundreds of billions of dollars building up Chinese tech infrastructure and transferring technology to the country, which he did. It's not just Apple. It's virtually everyone. So I picked a corporation at random. I've been reading investor calls. I like to do this. I'm kind of weird that way. But here's Unilever. It's a large consumer packaged products company. Unilever sees China is so important that it actually gives separate briefings to its investors on its subsidiary to China. Now,

in the slide, it says the key message to investors is that winning in China is a strategic priority for Unilever. And it talks about how it's their third biggest market and how it's absolutely important for them to keep growing it there. It's fast growing. So with all of these companies, all of that muscle, lobbying muscle in the U.S. that wants to have deep-seated relationships in China, both as a market and as an exporter, would it be so easy to levy sanctions against China? The answer, of course, is no. That may not be such a problem if we could manage to avoid conflict with China. But China has made it clear that it wants to take over Taiwan with military force, if necessary. And Taiwan is where we get 80% of our high-end semiconductors, which we desperately

need. Semiconductors go into everything from computers to farm equipment to phones to toys to cars. 40% of our manufacturing capacity is dependent on semiconductor inputs. Taiwan is also a long-standing security partner with the United States, and we've been transferring technology to Taiwan for decades. China regularly sends fighter jets to penetrate Taiwanese defenses. They're constantly talking about war. The problem is that if this happens without Taiwan, the U.S. economy also comes to a halt. So it's a really dangerous situation. Now, as Russia bombs Ukraine, as they invade Ukraine,

we have the luxury of sitting back and choosing to engage in sanctions or not. We can cheer for the Ukrainians. Don't have to send soldiers. We can affect Russia. There's definitely going to be blowback against us for what we're doing. Maybe a horrific blowback, depending on what we do, depending on whether we start to use military force. But Russia, at least economically, cannot hurt us that badly. China, however, isn't vulnerable to economic sanctions the way that Russia is. In fact, it might just be the opposite scenario. China right now is preparing to engage in sanctions itself, and actually has. It just put out its first export control law. And China is actually levying

sanctions over the Taiwan issue already. Take Lithuania. They say they're not, but they are. So take Lithuania, a small country in Eastern Europe which allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy, which is kind of one of the red lines for the Chinese government. What happened next? China turned Lithuania, quietly, into a pariah state. The Chinese government not only cut off imports from Lithuania, but said that any item with any Lithuanian components could not come into China. And remember, Lithuania is a member of the European unions. We have globalized supply chains, so Lithuanian stuff goes into a lot of different things. Now, rather than standing up for this small country, Lithuania, and its geopolitical choices,

the rest of the European Union buckled. European factories may start moving out of Lithuania, or investors are going to stop investing there and put their factories elsewhere. And this is creating a crisis for the government. The message from China is very clear. Now, you might say, well, that's Lithuania. They are small and we're not. But China does this to our American firms and celebrities, from LeBron James and the NBA to Marriott and Starbucks. Last May, it was John Cena's turn. Now, Cena had accidentally referred to Taiwan as a country in one interview promoting his latest movie. He issued a groveling apology in Chinese, which was roundly and rightfully mocked. But still, it's not going to change Hollywood, the fact that someone made fun of John Cena. Hollywood executives are very aware of what they can and can't say. So while China produces excellent action movies and

television with Americans as the villains and distributes them worldwide, it also controls Hollywood through its economic power and ensures that China is portrayed in a favorable light to Americans and to a global audience. Now our corporate sector and our supply chains are so intertwined with Chinese power and economic influence that these kinds of apologies are common. The only reason it was weird in Sina's case is because he usually doesn't do the heel turn. Regardless, the point is that we've allowed so much of our industry to go to China that if we were to ever try to sanction that country, it could simply block us from getting iPhones and thousands of other critical products we need,

from medicine to electronics to chemical inputs to inputs for food. It could cut us off from, it could cut off our corporations from access to their markets, blow a giant crater in our own stock market. Right now, we can still do something to move our supply chains back from China and reorient our corporate sector so that our executives have some recognition of an obligation to America, to democracy. And one aspect of that involves breaking up monopolies so that we aren't reliant on any one firm for a key product or to distribute something, like Apple. But it will require a lot of work at every level of our society. In many ways, the Trump administration started it, the Biden administration is continuing this work, but it's not enough yet. Regardless, we have to act

quickly to protect ourselves. If we do not, during the next major geopolitical upheaval, it may not be Russians experiencing bank runs and economic chaos as a result of sanctions. It might be all of us. Now, thanks for watching. If you'd like to know more about big business and how our economy really works, you can sign up below for my market power focus newsletter, BIG. Have a good one. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there.

Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I always had to be so good, no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through

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