Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #60: Big Tech, Ticketmaster, Wells Fargo, Saudi Relationship, Live Predictions, & More!

Episode Date: October 23, 2022

Krystal, Saagar, & friends give commentary on the midterms, 2024 possibilities, media landscape, Big Tech, Ticketmaster, Wells Fargo, Saudi Arabia, central bank digital currencies, & more!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/The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/James Li: https://www.youtube.com/c/5149withJamesLiRyan Grim: https://badnews.substack.com/Emily Jashinsky: https://thefederalist.com/author/emilyjashinsky/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. All right, so shall we engage in some totally shameless speculation that you'll be able to instantly hold us against us when we're totally wrong on november 8th your favorite game it's my favorite thing is to make a bunch of predictions that are inevitably going to be proven wrong which we always see in the comments yes i do occasionally read the comments. Yes. I really don't. My ego is too fragile. I'm sorry, guys. It's not because I don't love you. All right. So to set us up, I pulled a few of the latest polls from the key midterm swing states specifically for the Senate. We had a poll from Trafalgar, which is right-leaning,

but to be honest with you, they've been probably more accurate than the mainstream pollsters in the last election. They weren't 100%, but more accurate probably. They had in Ohio, which has been surprisingly competitive, at least in terms of the polling, they had J.D. Vance up three. And in Pennsylvania, they have John Fetterman over Dr. Oz by two. Okay. So that one is tightened up for sure. Down in Georgia, there was just an Atlanta Journal Constitution poll that had Warnock up by three on Herschel Walker. And That's about where that race has been the whole time. I looked at the latest 538 model. This is the like fancy dancy one that has all their, not just the polls, but all their analysis and their fundamental, whatever they do. And they

have right now Democrats slightly favored to keep the Senate 65-35, and they have Republicans strongly favored to win the House 71-29. So that's sort of the latest data that we have, so much as you can, you know, read into that grains of salt all the way around. So Sagar, what do you think is going to happen? All right. At the risk of looking like a complete moron and having to do one of my famous, this is what I got wrong monologues, which I do actually really enjoy. They're very endearing when he does that. I do really enjoy doing them. Okay. Honestly, I think it's going to, by the way, this is descriptive analysis. I think it's going to be a complete red wave. I think the Republicans are going to win every single one of these seats. I'll tell you why. Look, by the way, you may not be happy about

it, but I'll just say, look, at the end of the day, sometimes fundamentals are the fucking fundamentals. You have high inflation. Inflation number just came in high. You have high gas prices. What did I just read, everybody? You have general social malcontent. Is that a nice way of putting it? What exactly is happening across the country? You have high crime. Now, I'm not saying necessarily it's anybody's fault, but it exists, and that we know in the 1970s, certain flashbacks, something I just talked about, the last time that this happened, we had a major Republican victory. And then fifth, you have the party in power almost always loses. What was the data that you said it was like? They would have to outperform 1896?

Like the best midterm result in like 100 years. I don't remember. i think there was something like that i know that they would have to have a historically strong midterm performance in order especially to hold on to the house the house and i think i mean the house that one's pretty obvious like i think that's gone for democrats i um gen you generally agree with your analysis but i don't think it i think it's going to be close though. So I wouldn't call it a red wave. I think it, honestly, I'm going to make a super specific prediction, which is a really dumb thing to do. I think we could be heading back into a situation

where the fate of Senate control comes down to a Georgia runoff. So, you know, I think it's fairly unlikely that either Walker or Warnock gets to 50 percent. That means you're headed to a runoff there. You look at, you know, Nevada. I think I would probably say the Republican is more likely to win there. But I think to counterbalance that, I do think Fetterman hangs on in Pennsylvania. I think, you know, the Ohio polls, I still think are sort of fake. I don't think that one's going to be as close as people think.

Wisconsin, another Democratic hope, you know, with Ron Johnson there, that seems to already have sort of collapsed for them. So I basically think you keep status quo on a lot of these. You win. Fetterman wins in Pennsylvania. The lady Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada loses and then control of the Senate comes down to Georgia runoff once again. So that's kind of what I'm thinking is like a weird election where it's not really a wave. And I'll tell you why I think that. And again, guys, who knows? OK. I also just can't imagine a situation where you have such bad numbers on the economy and right track, wrong track, and then the party in power does affirmatively well. Now, I do think Republicans have handicapped themselves with all sorts of things, like the abortion positions are definitely a detriment for them.

The extremism on that issue has very much damaged their candidates. They picked a bunch of bad candidates. Some of those things weigh them down so they won't have the wave in the Senate that I think they could have absent those things. But I mean, you got to think about this. Like, you're the party in power. People are overwhelmingly telling you the economy is shit. And you don't even have an economic message. Like, they're not even running on an economic message. That is political malpractice. It's insanity. Now, I'm not saying the Republicans are offering solutions. They're not. They're not even talking really about the economy either. They're all in on crime. Democrats are all in on abortion. And meanwhile, the issue

that 80% of the country says is their number one issue, none of these assholes have anything to say about it? This is, it's insane. God bless America. It really is insane. But I mean, if you're the Democrats and you're the party in power, that means you're de facto ceding that issue to the Republicans. I actually just saw there's a Democratic pollster, he's sort of famed, he's like, you know, very famous for his working class polling, in particular his name's Stan Greenberg. And he did a bunch of polling recently. And he's really sounding the alarm. This is a Democrat. And Bernie Sanders said similar things recently. He's like, you have to run on the economy. If you don't, you're going to lose. It's really super basic. So now, like I said, I do think Republicans have sort of like shot themselves in the foot in a few ways. So that's why I don't think it's going to be overwhelmingly red wave, but in general, bad year for Democrats and comes down to a kind of a coin flip in Georgia. That's my prediction today. I mean, and if you put the media could change

tomorrow, but that's how I feel today. I think you're right, Chris. I mean, I take all of that. I just, I just think, and I hate to say it, but not all people are as enlightened as those in this room. And, you know, at the end of the day, for a lot of people, it's just very simple. Like, I'm voting against the trend that I see, even if a guy literally can't speak in Georgia and says some interesting things.

In fact, we had something we were going to play for all of you, and it was so indecipherable. It was so incomprehensible. We were like, we just can't. I'm like, I'm not going to torture them. We just can't. But I mean, look, that's just how it goes sometimes. And again, like, I don't want it to work that way. And if anything, you know, again, just to come back to like the message is that we got to give some people something else to that 80%. If we could actually argue about what to do about inflation, if we could actually argue about how to meaningfully bring down gas without just like dunks against each other we would be in a hell of

a lot better place but instead it's all just you know even the crime thing like i'm not going to deny obviously but like i just came to chicago today and i get these stupid comments you know every time everyone's like oh my god like don't get shot in chicago it's a beautiful city okay it's a beautiful fucking city. Are there problems? Yeah, there are problems. But just because you're somewhere else, you don't need to go dunk on a bunch of people.

We're all living our fucking lives. And the point is that instead of using it as a dunk, just be like, thank God I don't live in this shithole. It's like, well, how about we make it better? How about we make it better for all the people who live here? It's a great city yeah i mean to me it says everything about our political system that you have this election where the economy is so critical so important and neither party has anything to say they're just all in on culture all all in on. And you know what? I care about these. I'm not saying that like abortion and crime aren't important, but there is an issue that

literally everyone is saying, I really care about this. Nothing to say. News of the day. I was like, all right, we've got to find something lighthearted here. Everything's about Ukraine. Nukes, nukes, nukes, nukes, nukes. Digging deeper. I'm like, what can we do? And so this is what we settled on. And it gets very much to this. And look, you know, no disrespect, but the ratings just came out for CNN's Jake Tapper. His brand new show had launched two nights ago to great aplomb. Big prime time move. Prime time move.

9 p.m. slot. This is the coveted slot in all of cable. And this isn't just about Jake. This is about the entire medium. So I thought I would read to you some of the numbers that have come in from this. And just so you guys know that he had an interview with the president of the United States. All right. This used to be one of those flagship things. How many people decided to tune in? Well, OK. So it was more than one million less than Sean Hannity's Fox News. It was half of MSNBC. But my personal favorite is when you actually dig into what the

advertisers over there actually care about. Young people. So actually, shout out if you're between 25 and 54. Go ahead. All right. So a shit ton of the people here. Most of the audience. Shit ton of the people here. No disrespect to anybody over below that. Or below, above, whatever. It's all good good we welcome any and all stripes he got just 211 000 people in that demographic so it means or an interview with the president of the united states in prime time with the president and the crazy thing is he actually beat msnbc which had over two and a half million people watching their show that had only 144,000 people. What's so insane is that, look,

I'm not going to claim that we're bigger than these people, but breaking points, 95% of our audience is in that key demographic, and we get well over a million for every single show that we do. And it's not about us being, look, they are powerful in so many different ways. But the point is, is that this is something to be celebrated, not just as a dunk on Jake, but about the entire medium and artifice, the structure that kept a lot of us down, that covered for a lot of the people who robbed us and what I was talking about earlier.

It's falling apart. I saw a lot of you guys really appreciated what we were talking about late night and again no disrespect trevor noah but that guy lost a million viewers in seven years a million how does something like that even get propped up colbert is the same he's literally he has broadcast tv crystal which is a general genuine government monopoly and is losing to fucking Greg Gutfield on Fox News. I mean, these are zombie outlets with a zombie business model. I mean, that doesn't mean they're not going to continue for a long time.

But CNN and MSNBC in particular, their new executives, and both of them have new executives in charge, they are overtly putting them into a managed decline. I mean, with over at CNN, you know, with the move of Jake Tapper and they put Don Lemon in the morning, they move John Berman somewhere else. Like they're just shift, literally shifting deck chairs on the Titanic. They're not trying anything. Their big play was CNN plus. And we all saw how

that went. Right. So. So ultimately, they've just decided, all right, we're going to try to cut down the budget. We're not going for any big splashy place. We're not trying to do the new, new thing. We're just going to try to hold on to the increasingly small scraps of what we've got left. And you have this legacy model where advertisers and the cable companies still pay them more than what they're actually getting is actually worth. That'll persist for some amount of time. They have, of course, tons of elite cashing, incredibly powerful in terms of all of that. But they're in managed decline. Over at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, you know, the quarterback of the network, right? Whatever you think of her, and we certainly have lots of thoughts on her. She was the only person there who actually could pull in an audience. They didn't even try to replace her.

They brought in Alice Wagner, who actually was at MSNBC back when I was at MSNBC. And she's, she knows, they know that her show there did not perform. There's a reason that she got canceled from the network before. So to fill in for their big primetime quarterback, they put in someone that they know is a proven loser. That's what managed decline looks like. They can pay her a lot less. She doesn't mind being big footed when they can shove Rachel back in or for other, you know, big network coverage events. It's pretty incredible when you realize that even they know their ship is sinking. So this is why we believe so passionately in what we're building here, because we think this is the beginning of something. And if we can have something that is

true and honest and really tries to grapple with the issues that are facing the country and the world in a serious way and have some fun while we're at it, try to every day a little bit, you know, how much of a better place would the country be in if we just came at it from that and not everything corrupted by corporations and profit and fucking big pharma ad every time you turn around? You know, the single like biggest compliment that we get is when I hear from people and they're like, you changed my relationship with my dad, like your show. You changed my relationship with my relatives who I thought differently from, because it was one of those things where they were just glued to Fox, glued to MSNBC. The dining

table would turn into a shouting match. And it's what the acrimony, the bitterness that it would cause in people's households was genuinely ripping and tearing people apart. And you multiply that by millions. And that's how we got here. And the whole point is that, look, it's not just about breaking points. It's about independence. It's about the fact that the country can change for the better. It's just the revolution is literally here. It just doesn't feel like it yet. And it will come.

It will come very, very slowly. It can feel for people like us who are enlightened now. But at a certain point, you know, the zombie, it basically has to fall. Like somebody's got to shoot it in the head with a shotgun. I don't know who that person is going to be. Not literally, guys. Yeah, not literally. Cover our ass here.

Some media matters person is going to clip that and say, oh, that's a good one. So we're experimenting with something new here, guys. So bear with us. But we really wanted to give you guys a chance to help to program the show. So we picked three topics that you can choose from. And I'll let Sagar, I'll let you set it up because I think there's a certain order. This is far more complicated than it should be. However, you have to text BREAKINGPOINTS in all caps, 111, one word, to the number in front of you, 22333.

After you do so and join our session, you can then choose A, B, and C. And I will be narrating the results as they come in. Yes. All right. So first, step one, get out your phone. Yes. Get out your phone. Step two, go to the text thing.

Okay. Step three, this is how I would need it explained to me. That's why I'm doing it this way. Okay. Step three, put this number here, 22333, in the like who it's going to line. Okay. Then what you're going to type in the text is what breaking breaking points all caps one one one no spaces all one word

all right get off your phone all right breaking points one one one all caps to the number in front of you. And then A, B, or C. Okay. Currently, we have B is winning by 67%. Oh, now we're at 50-50. Wait. And let me explain. So, economy, we're going to talk a little bit about the latest numbers. IMF warning. Elon Musk, we're talking about. Starlink, not Twitter. The Starlink thing is what we're thinking about with Musk. We can talk about Twitter too if you want. Yeah, we can, whatever.

If you want us to talk about that, we can do that. Okay, Elon is actually winning right now, 46%, 48%. And number three is just the presidential primary 2024 horse race. Is Biden going to be alive and sentient? Is Trump going to be in prison? If you want to hear a crazy prediction, we can do C. If you want to hear a crazy prediction we can do c if you want to talk about elon we could do b a all right so a is currently 18 b 43 c is inching up 39 he's 41 a is now inching up i feel like an auctioneer okay elon is going up 42 percent

39 percent i'm just impressed 19 for a that the tech is working. C? C is edging out? C is surging. C is edging it out? C is surging it a little. 41-40? People, put your votes in. Last chance, guys. We've got hundreds and hundreds of votes that are coming in.

Okay, okay, okay. 41-40, 40-40. All right. All right, we're going to go with C. C by a very short margin. 42%, 39%, and 19%. Thank you all so much. Yes, I've got to be honest,

I don't really feel like talking about Elon Musk, so again, so thank you. Okay, so here's the little news peg we'll use as an excuse to get into this 2024 situation. Then Sagar, I'll kick it over to you. All right, there were a bunch of debates this week. I don't know if you guys watch any of them for the key Senate races.

And one of them was Tim Ryan versus J.D. Vance this week or last week. I don't remember. Anyway, in that debate, Tim Ryan was actually asked if he wanted Joe Biden to run for president. And he was very clear. He was like, no. I mean, I think for Tim, not to get too much into this, but for him, he sees Ohio, it's more of a red state at this point. He feels like there's political calculation made here to distance himself from Biden. His critique is just like, we need generational change, which I always think is sort of like, sort of bullshit, even though I understand people's concerns with his age, but it contains no content. But anyway, the reason I think this is notable is because he's not the first one. There have been a bunch of Democrats who have, even though Biden's the incumbent and even though he's, you know, supposedly their guy, who have blatantly said they don't want him to run again.

And then you also have polls that routinely say, even if you just are asking Democrats, a overwhelming majority of Democrats say, we don't want him again. And what's interesting is, you know, on the Republican side, there's some discontent with Trump, but overwhelmingly, he still has control of that party. So you have the media that is mostly talking about, oh, is DeSantis going to catch up to Trump and what's going on there? And I'm looking around, I'm like, the one over here on the Democrat side is the one that's actually more vulnerable. So anyway, that's how I'll set up the 2024 debate. What do you think, Sagar, is going to happen? I think the craziest thing is that despite all of that, when 70-some percent of the Dems don't want you to run, who are they going to pick? You listen to the clips that we played. We're going to play fake

Obama, Pete Buttigieg. We're going to pick Kamala. Or fake Obama Beto, or fake Obama Cory Booker. Or... Like how many of these fake people? Why do they all have to speak the same? Have you guys noticed that? It's completely crazy. It's like, just be a real person. No, they can't do that.

That's way too... That's all of an order. They're literally fake. And when you consider the bench, you're like, well, maybe he like, you know, has trouble stringing a sentence together, and so much more, but he at least doesn't seem 100% as full of shit as the rest of these people,

and that's all they can muster. The craziest thing is, okay, on the Republican side, whatever you think of Ron DeSantis, all that, all you have to do is go and look at a poll. It's like 51, 52% people who are for Trump. Every time he gets indicted or closer to indictment, his numbers literally go up in the Republican party. And you're like, well, I think

that we should probably just look at this. And yet Paul Ryan, former speaker of the house, great American, right? He did a lot of good for us. Okay. That tax cut for rich people in corporations. That was wonderful. Thank you, Paul Ryan so paul was just asked this two days ago and he said the 2024 republican nominee will not be donald trump it will either be ron desantis it will either be uh tim scott or it will be newt gingrich and i was like what that's a curveball i did not see that one coming if i see some shit like that i'm like all right it's just gonna be trump like it was like it's like after all this yeah i lived through the same fucking story in 2016 it's a lot of wish casting and look a lot of wish casting

i mean look you know again whatever you think of trump and look maybe he actually will get indicted and that'll change all of this up right now jo, Joe Biden's approval rating in Georgia is 31%. No matter who wins down there. What's his approval rating in Pennsylvania? It's like 35%. Wisconsin, I heard it's an important state. Yeah, nearby. Guess what?

It's like 38%. He's under 40 or 50. But this is the thing that's so crazy is like, we are very likely to end up with the Joe Biden, Donald Trump rematch. There are no guarantees, but it's very likely at this point. And both of them have approval ratings

that look like this. Like you ask the country and they're like, no, we don't want either of these people. And then it's like, well, here you go. Here they are again. Good luck. Enjoy. Enjoy your choices in our great democracy.

So sadly, I think that's what our failed system is going to produce. I think it's going to give us Joe Biden and Donald Trump again. And honestly, look, Joe Biden came, what, 41,000 votes away from even losing? A lot of people don't actually even consider how small the margins in Georgia, in Arizona even were. Like, all it takes is a little roll of the dice and things go completely different. If Trump had actually leaned into getting his people to mail in vote, he probably would have won. A hundred percent. Just that one

change, it almost definitely would have changed the result in Georgia. I used to know the numbers off the top of our head. If you guys have been watching for a while, you probably heard us talk about this a lot, but there were a lot of Republican primary voters who voted in the primary by mail and then just didn't vote in the general election because there had been so much like mail-in ballots and you got to vote in person, whatever. And they just didn't show up. Just that margin alone would have changed the result in the state of Georgia. So, yeah, it was that close. And I guess in terms of what I think, I suspect your prediction is the most likely outcome.

And obviously, this is a real fool's errand because this is an eternity in politics we're talking about. We're facing down some incredibly significant global situations, I'll just say, without bringing up the N-word again. That's definitely going to get clipped out of context. Anyway, it was nice knowing you guys before I got canceled. Anyway, you're going to have all kinds of things happen, but I do think that's the most likely outcome. But if you were going to switch out one of these people, I think Joe Biden is more vulnerable.

And especially, I mean, this is just according to the numbers. This is is no like political genius this is just based on the numbers of his standing in the Democratic Party versus Trump standing in the Republican Party Joe Biden has a much weaker position even though he is the incumbent now I don't think any established Democratic politician would have the balls to challenge him but I think you could have an outsider challenge him and i think they'd have a shot um especially well bernie bernie has already said he's not gonna run if his friend joe is running which you know we'll see marianne i like that suggestion personally not crystal ball thank you though it's very flattering better things to do when you find people. But let me just say, let me just say this, though. I think a lot depends on how the midterms do go, because Biden's whole thing was the whole reason he romped ultimately in the Democratic primaries, because people were persuaded this was the guy that could beat Trump. Well, if you have an economy

that's shit, an approval rating that's in the tank, and you get shellacked in the midterms, how strong is your case going to be that you're the guy that could beat Trump again? That's where I think a real vulnerability comes in. And then the other thing that I think is a glaring vulnerability is what happens in Ukraine, because there is increasing public dismay and dissatisfaction, unease with the endless direction of the war there. So I think that's a wide open, a wide open potential issue and problem for him as well. So if I had to bet on one side of the Trump Biden equation changing, I think Biden is much more vulnerable. I think you're I mean, look, he's 79 years old and, you know, anything can happen. And

the crazy thing is Trump is like 77 years old. So it's the same thing. Not a spring. By the way, I've met the man. He's a, he's wide. He's a, he's a wide gentleman. That's the best. Those suits really do a lot for him. They do a crazy amount for him. I remember seeing him in the Oval Office. I'm like, this guy's fucking huge. I'm like, does not come across. You see him like on the golf course and you're like, whoa. Yeah, that's when you really see it. Yeah. So I have been following very closely a really interesting new worker-led effort to unionize a bank, specifically Wells Fargo.

Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. This is from The Guardian. They say, well, workers at Wells Fargo, the third largest bank in the U.S., are pushing to organize a union across the bank's workforce with Wells Fargo Workers United, a campaign with the Committee for Better Banks, which successfully won the first union contract in the banking industry in 40 years at Beneficial Bank in 2021. So joining us now to talk about these efforts and why they're so significant and how it's going and all of those good things is Jessie McCool. She is a worker organizer at Wells Fargo and she joins us now. Great to have you, Jessie. Welcome. Good to see you. Good to see you guys too. And thank you for having us on to speak. This is truly a humbling experience that you all are interested in our story at our little big bank over there.

Yeah, well, I mean, we followed a lot of the various Wells Fargo scandals. And one of the things that really intrigued me as part of what you all talked about was, you know, a lot of these scandals came from workers feeling a lot of pressure to do things they really shouldn't be doing in a way that they really didn't want to do, but they had no power to sort of, you know, go up the chain or be a whistleblower because they'd just ultimately be fired. So just talk about some of the genesis of this idea of unionizing in order both to better your working conditions, but also to potentially fight fraud at this bank. Sure.

I mean, the Committee for Better Banks has been around for some time. And if you asked me in 2018 when I just dipped my toe in to see, you know, if this was something worth pursuing, and then becoming fully involved, if you asked me that we would have the success that we currently have, I would have been knocked over with a feather. So part of the reason why I got involved and as well as the reasons of many of my co-workers as to why they've got involved is due to the fact that we see issues around fair and equitable pay, personal safety at work, whether that is related to physical safety or a commitment, you know, post pandemic toandemic to, you know, keep medically vulnerable co-workers safe. We also see issues around compensation when it comes to, Charlie Scharf gets a 20% raise. However, we're fighting for pennies on the dollar. And then underlying all of that is a transparency issue. And this is where I think it kind of connects to the previous scandals that Wells Fargo has had, policies, procedures, processes, whether it relates to compensation, the various isms, racism, sexism, nepotism, things like that, whether it relates to workload reassignment, physical safety, medical safety, there is little to no transparency around those issues.

And what Wells Fargo requires us to do in our training and tells us to do is raise your hand. Raise your hand. Well, during our most publicized scandal, 6,000 people raised their hands and HR ignored it. So how is that a means to an end of getting a better workplace for us as workers and then for our own clients so that we can effectively advocate for them as well. Yeah. So yeah, let's get into that. I think that's important, which is that you want to advocate not only for the clients that overwhelmingly you actually have to deal with, not the executives, but also in order to make sure that you have more of a say at work. So what are some of the steps that you guys are taking in order to make sure that that happens? Well, some of the steps that we're taking is we

learned a lot during the pandemic. We are a large bank. There's four primary divisions. There's the retail bank, the business bank, wealth and investment management, and then our commercial and investment banking division. We have diverse employees over a wide geographic range, and there's almost 300,000 of us now um one of the main issues with previous scandals and then some of the ones that are occurring now like the mortgage one is that like i said they ask us to raise our hand and bring light to um issues that are unfair or have the potential to cause reputational or regulatory risk. And that system is broken. So we've taken to organizing online during the pandemic and using non-traditional methods such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Slack, Discord to connect with our coworkers. And now that we're all re-entering the workplace and see each other face-to-face, we're using some of the more traditional on-the-ground organizing tactics to keep the momentum going. And currently,

what we have seen is we have membership in 29 states. In the past quarter, 600 unique members have taken some sort of action, whether that is to, you know, join one of our organizing channels, attend a training where we educate people about their rights, or attend trainings where, you know, we can help them find their voice that's been historically ignored so that they then can stand up and say, no, I know this is wrong. I'm advocating for me. And as part of my job, we tout doing what's right for the client.

So I'm not just organizing and advocating for me. I'm advocating for the client because, as you guys have seen in our reports, our recent diversity report, we said that we wanted to be reflective of the visions and values of the communities that we serve. Well, we live in those communities and we want to advocate for ourselves and our fellow community members. Right. Well, because you all aren't the one getting the payday when clients are getting screwed over also. So it's put everybody in a horrific position.

And to have just an ability to speak out and be that whistleblower would be crucial in and of itself. I'm curious how management has responded because Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley actually pressed Wells Fargo, I believe this is the CEO, you can tell me on the other side of this clip if this is the CEO of Wells Fargo, on whether or not they would remain neutral in any sort of union organizing and also whether they would commit to not retaliating against workers who are exercising their rights in order

to organize. Let's take a look at that clip. Will you commit to neutrality in the workers organizing effort and ensure that workers who speak out do not face retaliation? And this is, I'm looking for a yes or no response. We believe that we're best having a direct relationship with them. Is that a yes or a no? Will you commit to neutrality in the workers' organizing effort and ensure that workers who speak out do not face retaliation? It's really easy. Yes or no? We will follow the law.

Okay. And so, yeah, that was Charles Scharf, who is the CEO of Wells Fargo, who you mentioned earlier, is getting fabulous pay raises. Isn't that nice for him? So what has the response been to this organizing effort? Well, I will tell you, you are absolutely right. That is Charlie Scharf. I was actually a guest of Maxine Waters at that hearing. So if you an indication about how it's going for us, it's going pretty well. But yes, retaliation rampant. In my own personal situation, I was asked to remove union signage from my Skype headline. Now, this turned into a six-month battle with our legal departments at Wells Fargo. And the culmination of it, because they could not answer the question of how was I

identified? What is the process for say, maybe somebody thought they actually saw something and, but they were wrong. What's the remediation process that couldn't be answered. And our own legal department ended up agreeing with me and stating right at the you know last minute before I was going to file a ULP that I could reinstate my signage. Now that's not the only example of retaliation. My manager was demoted and I now report to a person who promoted a co-worker, began sleeping with them, and then married her. And my direct manager is this person's best friend. So how is that fair? The other thing that is going on, and we've heard this from all divisions across Wells Fargo, managers are actually urging

their direct reportees to join our union, to contact us. They've also informed us of the fact that Wells Fargo is bringing in labor and employment attorneys managers about how to essentially suppress our accounts here. So Charlie Sharf tried to have us removed at that hearing that you saw right there and have us with members of the Bank Policy But we stand strong. We stand invigorated. And if our own managers understand that there needs to be something more in order for us to advocate for ourselves and thereby our clients, that truly says something to me about how our efforts are being received in a positive way. But clearly, we are up against a big force with Wells Fargo bringing in anti-union. I mean, they're incredibly powerful, massive, tons of money. Like, they will do everything they can to make sure that they can keep all of their power in control. I have no doubt about it. Jesse, thank you so much for spending some time with us and breaking down, you know, why you decided to get involved with this effort and how it's going. And, you know, we really wish you all the best and, you know, a lot of luck with what you're trying to pull off.

Keep us updated. Thanks for joining. Oh, thanks for having me. I appreciate you all. Yeah, it's our pleasure. Interesting potential news for you here. A particular monopoly that we have become rather acquainted with recently, which is that of Ticketmaster, which merged a while back, a few years back, with Live Nation, and has created this just massive juggernaut, which is basically a

scam, massive fees, escalating ticket prices, artists getting squeezed, venues getting squeezed, etc. Well, there is a new effort to unwind that merger between Ticketmaster and what was previously, you know, when they're potential rivals, Live Nation. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is actually an effort from our friend Matt Stoller's group, the American Economic Liberties Project. Go ahead and put, here we go, Hollywood reporter up on the screen, activist group, asked the Justice Department to unwind Live Nation and Ticketmaster merger. The 2010 merger has been subject to scrutiny for allegedly leading to higher ticket prices and claims that Live Nation Entertainment is abusing its market power over venues and artists. A Live Nation representative said that the live events

industry has, quote, never been more vibrant and competitive. So basically what happened here is just before they merged, Ticketmaster had the bulk of the ticket sales market, but Live Nation was set to get in the game. So they, you know, they merge, they become this one gigantic company and it gives them incredible market power. Why? Because if you're a venue and you say like, Ticketmaster, you're screwing me over, I'm going in another direction.

What they say is, okay, then fine. All of our artists that we promote as part of Live Nation, they're not going to come to your venue. And so ultimately the venues have no choice. If you're an artist that's going to, you know, perform at that venue, you also have no choice because you're signing the contract.

They are with Ticketmaster and it is what it is. And they are completely screwing over, you know, everybody else involved. It just, think of the insanity of what a massive percentage of the ticket price they are getting when all they're doing is like running a website. You know, it should be pennies on the dollar and instead it's this massive chunk.

And they add all those fees for like online delivery and all this other craziness. We had to deal with this recently. Whenever we do our live tour, you have to sign a contract with the venue. The venue gets to sell tickets. By the way, we're the ones selling the tickets. So why don't we have access to our customer data?

Oh, wait, we have literally no... I couldn't tell you a single name of a person who came to our live show except for our Lifetime members because we refunded their tickets. That's craziness. So we sell the tickets. They don't do anything. We put on the performance.

The venue hosts it, but Ticketmaster gets the data, and they get to charge our fans and customers an extra fee. That's bullshit. And, like, look, we'll probably get now retaliated against for doing this. I don't really care. Whatever. Yeah, come at me. Honestly, like, the economics of these shows, because for

exactly this reason, really don't make very much sense. In spite of the fact that, you know, we're lucky to be able to, like, generate a large number of ticket sales. But it really doesn't matter. This part I didn't even know about. They run a secondary, I'm reading for the article now, ticket market called Ticketmaster Resale, where they charge a second, more lucrative fee in addition to the fee that was assessed on the primary ticket market. So what they basically like to do is to allow scalpers to buy up almost, you know, a majority of the tickets on the original sale. Then they resell them on this secondary ticket

market where Ticketmaster gets to charge another, even higher fee. So they're making another cut. And that's the only way that a lot of fans can actually get tickets. So the whole thing is completely disgusting. I mean, again, it's like you dig into any segment of the economy or the market and you find these cartels, inclusion and massive monopolies, things that were allowed through under both the Obama and the Trump administration. I think this was actually an Obama era deal that put these two companies together and allowed this to go through. And what the American Economic Liberties Project is saying is, you know, when this deal was struck that said, okay, you can merge, there were actually some specific provisions to make sure that it remained a competitive marketplace. violating the terms of that settlement by forcing venues to accept their ticketing services as a condition for hosting Live Nation performers and then retaliating against those that refuse. So that's basically the argument here is you're not even following by the rules that you were supposed to in order to allow this merger to go through. So the answer is to unwind the merger.

Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, it's totally nuts. And look, we need to, two companies is bad. I mean, we need a ton more. Right. I actually, I think it was on Andrew Schultz's podcast. Louis CK gave a whole breakdown about how he tried to go around the monopoly and he was at the top of his game. And even he found it very, very difficult. I recommend people go and listen to that because look, these people have a tremendous power over entertainment. You know, I tried to buy tickets for Blink-182 on their new tour that's coming. It's an outrageous amount of money and a huge, so look, no, you know, obviously Blink-182 is the last time I think it's a nostalgia tour. So the tickets are going to be high price, but even with the presale and all that, like a third of the fee was ticketmaster fees. It's just completely insane.

And look, you know, people like me who love the band are like, okay, like you just have to pay it. You have no choice. And, you know, if you had to guess, the artists themselves, they don't like it this way. Oh, no. They just have no other option. There's no other option. It's the only way for them to make a living. Bruce Springsteen, at the time that this merger was being considered, he wrote a letter and said, this is going to be terrible.

It's going to be a disaster. And just recently, I don't know if you saw this in the news, Ticketmaster has this new, they call it dynamic pricing, which is just basically like, we can gouge you as much as we possibly can because if there's a high demand for the tickets, we're just going to keep upping the price, upping the price, upping the price

to squeeze every less penny out of the fans. And this happened with Bruce Springsteen. Yeah, it cost him five grand. They were getting charged like five grand or whatever, and he was stunned by what was ultimately going on because people, of course, were disgusted that, in their view, he was charging these ticket prices. So anyway, it is unconscionable that this monopoly is allowed to continue. And the Biden administration has taken a much different approach on Monod. They've been much better than previous administrations.

Not saying they're perfect, but they brought in some seriously forceful people who have a very different ideological predisposition towards antitrust regulation. And so hopefully this is one that they will ultimately take a look at. Yeah, absolutely. Researchers at Boston University have gotten themselves in the barrel a little bit for some rather shocking research that it turns out their government sponsors did not know that they were even involved in. Essentially, what's going on here is that, and this, I would call this gain of function, not a scientist, I'm going to call this gain of function. But they do like to play it fast and loose with the definition to skirt around regulation. So basically what they've done here is they've taken the spike protein from Omicron, which is the, it is, and it is that spike protein

that has made it kind of the most infectious version, despite the fact that, and probably related to the fact that Omicron itself was less virulent, less, what's the word, less deadly, less dangerous to you. And so they took the spike protein that made it that infectious and they attached it to the more deadly version, the earlier version, because they wanted to then experiment on mice to find out if giving mice this deadly version killed them. A little Frank and COVID. Yeah. And so, eight of the 10 mice that were purposely infected with this engineered virus, this engineered pathogen, in this lab in Boston University, right in Boston, died. And so the headlines come with an 80% mortality rate. That doesn't exactly translate to people,

but they also did experiment with human cells. And so this news was first broken by the Daily Mail. Other right-wing outlets followed up on it. Stat News has since done some additional reporting. We've reached out to Boston University for comment, as well as to NIAID, the NIH branch that funded this research. What they told Stat News, which is the kind of health policy outlet, is that they didn't know that the Boston University researchers were going to do this. Let me see. And AID didn't know? Yeah.

Okay. And that's an important, I think, piece of this puzzle. Because the government sponsoring it is exactly what's in question in Wuhan, right? Right. This is a government, a lab funded by government grants. And so if that's the case here, again, it just shows how little oversight there is with our money. Right. And so Boston University's spokesperson, Rachel Cavallario, who commented to Stat News, is trying to deny that this is gain-of-function research,

saying that it's actually reducing function, basically. Her quote to Stat News was, in fact, this research made the virus replication less dangerous. But it is making it more pathogenic. It's making it more deadly. So what's going on here is they're manipulating these viruses and then stepping back and saying, well, actually, it's not gaining function. Eight of ten mice died, but we're not going to call that gain of function. Right, but if you're manipulating the function, it's actually the semantics over the word gain and the word function, right? So is the function transmission? Is the So, like, is the function transmission?

Is the function death? Like, what is the function? And then what, like, that's why the conversation over gain of function, we've seen the back and forth between Rand Paul and Anthony Fauci in Congress over this. Fauci and other researchers who, by the way, have very legitimate reasons in some cases for wanting to do this research, right? Like, the temptation to do this research, right? Like the temptation to do this research and the sort of theory behind doing this research is one that reasonable people can disagree with. And we've talked to people on both sides of that argument. Both of us are pretty

strongly in the don't enhance the virus camp in a lab. But I do think reasonable people can disagree with it. And it's easy to understand why researchers want to do this. It actually broke into the news cycle this time based on a preprint, right? So, this is not a peer-reviewed study, but they published their research. We have that preprint here. Right, yeah. This is the, yep, there's the element. You can see it up on the screen. This is the preprint study, and then the media kind of picked up on the fact, and I think it was Daily Mail, Fox News, a local Boston paper had it too, that this is happening. So, that's how this, they are actually looking to get this,

this is in the peer review process, but they published the research. They published a study based on the research, and that's how we sort of know that this happened at all. Right. And so here's the comment to Stat News from NIAID. Emily Erbelding, director of NIAID's Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, said, The BU team's original grant application did not specify that the scientists wanted to do this precise work, nor did the group make clear that it was doing experiments that might involve enhancing a pathogen of pandemic potential in the progress reports provided to NIAID. Erbelding told Stat in an interview, I think we're going to have conversations over upcoming days. Asked if the research team should have informed them of its intention to do the work. She said, we wish that they would have.

Yes. Now, this story has since been updated with some pretty angry comments from Boston University related to what I was saying earlier, saying that, no, in fact, this is not what you're saying that it is. You should relax. This is fine. a more virulent pathogen is something that we want being done in the middle of a big population center. Now, what Boston University will say is, we're a BSL-3 lab. They put out a little video that shows doctors putting on their spacesuits and going into the lab to kind of demonstrate just how serious they are. They show their HEPA filters and everything else. It's like, okay, I'm glad that you're taking it seriously because of the extreme risk that's involved here.

I mean, I do think there are labs that probably did take it seriously before COVID. Oh, for sure. Oh, absolutely. And took it like, actually had the security precautions that we now know were in question at the Wuhan lab. But they're not always 100%. Exactly. And your point was that basically the reason that you have to take these precautions extremely seriously is because of the risk involved in the first place. So it's sort of a concession of the point that this is an extremely risky endeavor, period. And I mean, you learned that when you attach a spike protein, it was more infectious. I'm not a virologist, but I could have told you that.

If the government spokesperson's reaction, and that's why I keyed in the word enhancing, if the government spokesperson's reaction is to, they have this study, right? It's not a super long study. You can download the PDF. And again, it hasn't been peer reviewed, but the government presumably overlooked this, looked over that study before they gave comment to the media. If they're using the word enhancing. Well, it was the reporter, but they're responding to it. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right, right. So if the word enhancing is involved, then you know that we're getting into the semantic conversation about what is and what is not gain of function, when what we're actually doing is manipulating the function of the spike protein to see if it can be more X, Y, or Z.

Right. And you don't always know what the result is going to be, which is why you're supposed to get permission ahead of time for all of these different precise experiments. For people who have been living in a cave, the context for this is that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, with funding from US organization EcoHealth Alliance, which itself was getting funding from NIAID, was engaged in what people say was risky research that had the potential to have created COVID-19. And so scientists from across the spectrum still say that that is within the realm of possibility, that the kind of nature versus lab hypotheses are both still possible and neither has been proven without a doubt, which is why there's so much concern when you start to see this – when this paper hit the press and then gets into the – But it's interesting that it first was for a day or two in the conservative press before then Health, you know, the Stat News, which is a well-regarded scientific journal or scientific,

not journal, but newspaper. But on the progressive side and in the mainstream media side, you don't see much concern over this. The Intercept has, I mean, incredible coverage of the entire sort of game and function. Kind of out on a limb there. Yeah, it's just been fantastic. And I've seen conservative media actually cited a good deal. But this, even this news, I mean, it's been in Fox News, it's been in fairly big outlets, the New York Post, the legacy media has not touched it so far that I've seen that could have changed since I last checked. But so far, it hasn't touched the story.

And the real, I think what makes this worth discussing in the course of the research in Wuhan and providing funding for that research in Wuhan. So, and we know that the medical community was very defensive of that too, in a way that made it, you know, Peter Daszak at EcoHealth Alliance made it difficult to ascertain exactly what was happening and whether it was being done responsibly. And so when you have more government money going, even if it's in a responsible, secure lab in the United States of America, even if that's happening, we just had over a million people die. We have been on lockdowns. The country has been ravaged by COVID over the last couple of years. We need to know. And we need to know if you don't know. Like, if you don't know where your money is going at this point, give me a break.

Right. And obviously, we don't want to shut down scientific research. That's not at all what the critics and the skeptics of this research are saying. They're saying that because of the clear cost, potential cost to the public, you have to be much clearer about the benefits that you're going to bring to the public from this research. It can't just be science for the sake of science. There has to be some public health pursuit that's involved here. You have to show how you could actually get to that, and you have to show how you're following safety protocols and how you're being fully transparent along the way. And when the NIAID is telling the press that they didn't know about this and that they wish they had, that doesn't inspire confidence.

No, and it's the same thing. We're going back to exactly what was happening in the Wuhan lab, and that's the bottom line. We are not doctors or researchers, medical scientists. We're not. We're journalists, and our job is to hold people in powerful positions accountable. But whether you're a member of the public or a journalist or whatever, your job, you have to place some measure of trust in experts. We cannot all be experts in the safety of this kind of research. But what we can do is make sure that people are doing it responsibly, and they're doing it with the utmost security and they're balancing the concerns

of not wanting another pandemic or any pandemic or an accident or whatever it is with the concerns of medical advancement and research, et cetera, et cetera. But they have to prove that they deserve that trust. And this is another example of them failing on that measure within the context of 2020 to 2022. We're still in 2022. We're still in a couple of years of this.

And the country is going to take years to recover. And if Republicans do take the House, this is the kind of thing that I think researchers are going to have to expect that they're going to get investigated over. It could be the one upside of a Republican majority. Because this is, to me, after potential immediate threat of nuclear war, this is one of the most important or maybe the second most important issue in the world. Yeah, the immediate mass threat to millions and millions of people is on the line. And there's been an explosive growth in the number of these labs around the world that are now doing this extraordinarily risky research, even just over the past couple of years. And the tragedy is that some of that has been sparked by the pandemic, which may itself have been sparked by a lab accident. And so if you now have dozens of labs around the world, and a lot of them doing what they call kind of dual use, which is both for military purposes and civilian purposes, the risk of either a purposeful release or an accidental release just goes up by the number of labs that you expand across the world.

Right. Yeah, and they're doing all this with a huge deficit of public trust. Democrats have shown very little curiosity to getting to the bottom of this. It's absolutely true. Whether it's for political reasons or legitimate moral reasons, Republicans will be, if they win the House, they will absolutely be overturning the medical community looking for evidence of what's happening with this. So an important story to follow, certainly. We're joined now by Congressman Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us on CounterPoints. Thank you. It's good to be with you.

Yeah, absolutely. I think some people might wonder why we're always getting into the weeds on antitrust questions. And it's because actually antitrust has become a little bit sexy. There's a lot of political kind of conflict wrapped up in this question. I never thought I'd hear that. It's true, though, because, and Congressman Buck, you've really been at the center of what's become, I think, a reasonable litmus test for people on the right concerned about consolidation and concentration of power in these massive tech companies. If you can get on board with some of the antitrust legislation that you've proposed and pushed for and just passed the House recently, what on earth are you doing as a conservative?

And I want to start by asking you, Congressman, if you think that in a new Congress come January, the package of antitrust legislation that was passed in September, thanks to a lot of work from you, will be taken up by the Senate, by potentially Amy Klobuchar. Do you have any hopes that this goes by the Senate, by potentially Amy Klobuchar. Do you have any hopes that this goes to the Senate actually come January right away? Well, I don't know about January. I think in the lame duck session in November and December, there's a good chance that it will be taken up by the Senate. One of these bills, it's really the one bill we passed in the House was a combination of three bills. One of the bills has already passed the Senate unanimously. Another one has passed through the Judiciary Committee in the Senate unanimously. And the last bill is a Senator Hawley bill that I think has broad bipartisan support. So I think that the bill will pass the Senate in November or December. And in particular with Klobuchar's major competition bill,

it does seem like if it goes to the floor, it has at least the 60 votes needed to pass, but getting it onto the floor has been the major obstacle for its backers. What is your sense of the White House's appetite for this fight at this point? Are they sending signals to the Hill that they want signals to the Hill

that they want this to get done during the lame duck? You know, I have to tell you, I think every group has conflicts within the group. So the House Democrats have conflicts, Zoe Lofgren taking the side against, and I trust we have conflicts within the House Republicans. The White House is in the same situation. I think they have folks in the White House who are very strongly in favor of competition

in the big tech area. I think there are folks in the White House who are sending other signals. So I don't think it is a unified message at this point. Clearly, the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice have sent a very clear signal that they want to see these bills passed. The White House has generally been supportive. Hopefully, they will make sure that the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, gets the message that this is important and has to be done in the last two months of this Congress. Yeah, and of course, Chuck Schumer's daughters both work for tech firms, so it's an uphill battle on the left as well.

And Congressman, I want to play devil's advocate because the argument that was coming from particularly Jim Jordan was sort of saying, why would we want to give more power to someone who is a hard leftist, a progressive like Lena Kahn right now to sort of advance potentially the woke agenda with this package of legislation. Why is it not the case that sort of subverting what's seen as free market dogma, conservative dogma, and giving some muscle and some power to antitrust enforcers is empowering a sort of rogue leftist government. What is it about this package of legislation that you see as worth empowering government? Well, there's a number of counter arguments to that. And frankly, I just think it's an argument

that you throw up to give people cover not to vote for something that's a really good bill. We're talking about the funding portion of the bill that just passed the House. And if we don't fund the FBI or we don't fund the Department of Justice or we don't fund whatever group that conservatives are upset about at the moment, it has ramifications in other areas than just the particular area that they are taking and running to the left with. So, you know, an example, the FTC wouldn't be able to hire staff until this became law, which would be next fiscal year. Then they would go through a hiring process, which takes the FTC to be able to,

you know, increase office supplies and support staff and all the other things they have to do, it's at least a two-year process before they get people on board. There's a very good chance that a Republican president is in office in two years. We have a whole new Federal Trade Commission leadership in two years, and we are doing what Republicans want done. What Republicans wanted in the Trump administration, what the Trump administration directed the FTC and the antitrust division to do was to go after big tech. There were several lawsuits filed with states and by themselves, those two entities. And so the idea that somehow we're empowering Nina Khan tomorrow by passing this bill is just nonsense. And for antitrust advocates on both the

left and the right, one of the things that's been most disappointing to them about the Republican posture here has been the kind of behavior of the Republicans on the FTC, the Republican commissioners there. And one of them, Noah Phillips, just recently retired and has already joined the law firm. He recused from a vote on Amazon because he was already negotiating, apparently, employment with Kravath, a law firm that is representing Amazon in its MGM merger. But what's important here is that that's going to open up a critical position on the FTC. And if kind of Republican populists, you know, who believe in antitrust as a serious issue, can start populating these commissions with like-minded people, then you could end up with a kind of permanent majority on these commissions of people who are skeptical of corporate power.

Is there any movement inside your faction of the Republican Party to make sure that whoever gets sent to replace Phillips is somebody who comes from your camp? Or is the kind of more pro-business wing still dominant when it comes to the pipeline of commissioners and regulators? Well, I tell you, you're asking the wrong person. Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden are the three, or whoever's running the White House, are the three people who are going to be making that decision. I think they're reviewing applications at this point. I hope that the person that is appointed isn't skeptical of corporate power as much as they are pro-competition, as much as they are someone who wants to see of these lawsuits. I hope they are because these lawsuits are really, you know, this bill that passed the House was supported by Mike Lee, was supported by many senators who spoke up vigorously to talk about the benefits that this

antitrust package would have. So I don't think it is just a populist issue. Mike Lee is a very strong advocate for the consumer welfare standard. He supported this bill. I think that we can find someone who is a strong advocate for antitrust as a solution that will be able to move forward with these lawsuits against big tech. Yeah. And in general, do you have a sense of where Republican leadership stands on this? You mentioned Mitch McConnell, and it's sort of harder to know where Mitch McConnell is on antitrust. But over on the House side, if Kevin McCarthy is Speaker of the House and is overseeing some of this legislation and oversight and processes, do you have a stance on whether he's willing to really seriously look at antitrust? I think Kevin sees other possible solutions with Section 230 and with some privacy laws. I've been advocating with Kevin and others in the Republican conference that we need to use antitrust as one of the solutions. Obviously, Kevin voted against, as did Jim Jordan, the antitrust package that was passed. There was sort of an informal whip that was going on where members

were discouraged from voting for this package. And this package was really the sort of minimal package that we have. There's 15 bills. The three that were offered were the least intrusive, the least burdensome in the tech area. And so I think that Kevin is somewhat skeptical, but I hope that as we move forward, he sees what's happening in this election. He sees what's happening in speech generally. He will recognize the threat to our democracy from a few companies controlling information flow in a time of elections. Yeah, it has seemed to me that the concern on the right around big tech censorship was really kind of the opening for this conversation around antitrust. And I'm wondering if that's the beginning and the end of the conversation

on the right. In other words, okay, we're concerned about big tech censorship, so we can either do antitrust or or as you said, Leader McCarthy can look for other solutions like Section 230, which then also says we don't need to look too far beyond big tech. We don't need to follow Lena Kahn at looking at poultry industry consolidation or consolidation in railroads, consolidation all over the economy and the problems that it's creating. So when you talk to your colleagues, what are they more motivated by? A competitive economy or is it just kind of anger at big tech and censorship? And once that issue is kind of off the table, they're okay with corporate concentration? Well, I think big tech is really a unique situation. What we

have is a change in our economy to e-commerce, to social media interaction that we haven't seen before. And the last really major change was the Industrial Revolution. And the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act were enacted during that time period because of the shift in the economy and how some people, very smart people, look, I give these Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, all the credit in the world. They are incredibly bright and they saw what was coming and they took advantage of it. So I think big tech is unique. I also think that competition in the marketplace is healthy. And we need to look at competition in the marketplace, but we need to look at it with a view

towards what's best for consumers. Big tech is clearly not consumer-friendly, especially in the long-term, consumer-friendly businesses. And so we have to address big tech separately in how we look at the economy overall. So I think the Republicans generally don't want to punish success. We want to celebrate success. We want to make sure that we are staying ahead of our international competitors, both nation states and businesses. But at the same time,

we want a competitive economy. So I think Republicans and Democrats may balance a little bit differently when we come to antitrust. I don't think we have that difference in balance when it comes to big tech. And a broader question, actually, along those same lines, I was just thinking as you were talking, I wondered if seeing and witnessing up close as somebody who's working on antitrust issues related to big tech, the kind of corporate capture of so many officials in Washington, D.C., whether they're on the FTC, whether they're congressional staff that are behind the scenes and, you know, influencing votes for their members. Has that changed the way that you see the sort of concentration and consolidation of power more generally as a Republican or as a conservative looking at, for instance, what types of mergers Republican appointed people on the FTC have historically allowed and Democratic appointed people on the FTC have historically allowed, things that even happened under President Obama. Has it opened up your eyes to any new

issues as it pertains to antitrust or as it pertains to the way that corporations actually really do block competition in the marketplace, maybe more than conservatives have historically been worried about? I just want to make sure I understand your question. Are you talking about the influence that they exert in the legislative process or the influence they exert in the executive branch side? Kind of in Washington in general, because it is in all of those different spaces and you see it really clearly in big tech. And as you say, Congressman, it is sort of a different, you know, trying to apply a comet carrier to big tech is an interesting idea and sort of highlights how different it is. But has it opened up your eyes to maybe broader problems in this

question of competition and consolidation? Well, I wrote a book called Drain the Swamp several years ago. So I think my eyes were opened to just how business conducts itself in the legislative process and on the administrative side over in the executive branch. But I think that these companies, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, have a huge amount of resources. They spend a ton of money lobbying Congress. And by lobbying, I mean giving checks to members for their reelection campaign or giving checks to candidates who are running. They run commercials. They ran over $30 million of commercials in members' districts in one month. So absolutely, they are fighting what they believe is a battle that is somewhat existential to their monopoly status.

And they're going to use every resource, every trick that they can to fight this battle. Yeah, it's opened my eyes even more to just how intense an issue like this can get when we're facing the four largest companies really in the history of the world. These companies, their net worth is larger than all but something like 20 countries in the world, the gross national product of 20 countries in the world. We're talking about absolutely huge companies. And I don't suggest that huge is bad. I do suggest that when you have a monopoly, you can, one, use the resources from the money, the revenue that you make in that monopoly. But also, when you have a monopoly on information, you can use your search engine to impact politics. You can use your social media influence to impact politics. And I think that's what's going on that's even more important

than what we see in federal election commission reports. And you had mentioned that there's some disagreement within the administration over how far to push, how hard to push on antitrust. Obviously, both the FTC and the DOJ are strong on this, but I'm wondering from your perspective where the weakest spots are coming from. Are you thinking Commerce Department or is there anybody that you can point to or any kind of power center within the White House that you think is playing a particularly kind of slow-walking role here? Yeah, I don't really know the White House politics well enough. I just know that when requests have been made for support, it has been slow-walked at times. And I know that there are differences of opinion in the White House as to how to proceed in this. I think that the FTC and the antitrust division have been very strong

and very consistent in how they want to approach the work with big tech. And one last question for you, Congressman. This antitrust fight over the package passed last month got a little rocky just among Freedom Caucus members. We've talked about Congressman Jordan. And obviously, if Republicans win back the House in the Freedom Caucus, or if it's sort of gotten to a point where the Freedom Caucus will be less effective because of these disagreements or because it shifted the internal dynamics, or is it something where it's sort of like, agree to disagree and move on? Well, I have to tell you, I was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus back in 2015, and the whole idea of the Freedom Caucus was to get a group of people, a group of members together one night a week during the time we're in session to debate the issues that we were going to be facing. And that's exactly what the Freedom Caucus does, is disagree. And by disagreeing, we listen to each other and we end up with a stronger position. Sometimes a position that

the Freedom Caucus takes and sometimes a position that individual members take. I was encouraged that a dozen Freedom Caucus members, and I think it was seven members of the Judiciary Committee, went against leadership, both of the Judiciary Committee and in the House Republican Conference, to vote for these bills. So I don't think there's a rift in the sense that there's some sort of personal animus out there. I think that there is a strong disagreement and a strong discussion that's taking place, and it will help us in creating better laws down the road. Do you expect that any of the other bills that the House has worked on have a shot at getting through this cycle? Or are you mostly consolidating now and just

pushing forward on the ones that have gotten through and trying to get them onto Biden's desk? Well, the House has done its job in terms of the three bills that were combined into one vote. And so now that's up to the Senate. I think the Senate will pass that. I think that will get to President Biden's desk. I think the other bills, we've passed a number out of Senate Judiciary Committee, and there have been some other bills that pass out of, I'm sorry, we passed a number out of House Judiciary Committee. There have been other bills that have passed out of Senate Judiciary Committee. So I think that there will be a close look at some of those bills. We'll try to get them to the House floor.

Leadership in the Senate and the House may decide to put some of those into the omnibus package that always passes on Christmas Eve. And I expect an omnibus to pass again on Christmas Eve. And so there may be some more legislation that passes. I think people realize that the clock is running out. It's much less likely that the Republican conference under Kevin McCarthy's leadership as speaker will move antitrust bills. And so there is a sense of urgency to get things done in the next two months. I mean, why is that? Because we talk a lot about this populist moment, but then at the same time,

everybody understands that if McCarthy becomes speaker, that these big companies are in better shape and less likely to see antitrust legislation get passed. So why is that? And what can people on the outside do to kind of change that dynamic? Well, I'll tell you, I blame myself. I haven't done a good enough job of working with Kevin McCarthy, working with Kevin McCarthy's staff and making sure they understand the significance of

antitrust laws, the great history that we have in the Republican Party with antitrust laws, how antitrust has evolved with Republican conservative thinkers like Milton Freeman and Judge Bork. And so I need to do a better job of working with some of the skeptics that we have in the House and getting things passed. I think Kevin McCarthy really is a mathematician. He looks at the number of votes that something needs to get to 218. If a majority of those Republicans are going to vote for that, he will consider it. And that's my job to make sure that I present that to the new speaker in a way that we can get antitrust bills passed. We'll be following that very, very closely. We'll send him this video.

That's right. That's right. I actually have a piece coming out about it this week, too. So Congressman Ken Buck, we really, really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining CounterPoints. Thank you. Absolutely. Hey, everyone. This is Ken Klippenstein with Breaking Points, the Intercept Edition. I'm joined today by Khalid Al-Jabri, an expert on Saudi Arabia. He has been spitting truth on this subject for a number of years now. Realities that you don't often hear from the Washington media that in reality is a wash in Saudi money and Saudi influence. This guy doesn't care about any of that.

He tells you how it is. And the reason he knows so much in part is because you know he is himself from Saudi Arabia his father is the former intelligence chief and he's a medical doctor by trade I think that's part of why he's able to be so candid about these things he doesn't depend on the think-tank circuit for money but I'm having him here today to talk about the nature of the US-S.-Saudi relationship. If you guys can play a video right now of a Saudi prince that I caught wind of the other day,

I think it'll give you a sense of where the relationship is at right now. Anybody that challenges the existence of this country and this kingdom, all of us, we are projects of jihad and martyrdom. That's my message to anybody that thinks that he can threaten us. All right, Khalid, thanks for joining us. Can you explain to everyone, who was that in the video we just saw? What is the significance of what he said? So thanks for having me. Just the fact, he is a prince in terms of being a leader of a tribe that historically ruled the northwestern part of Saudi Arabia before, you know, the founding king, King Ablaziz founded the kingdom. So he's not in line for the throne, but he is related by blood and marriage to the current ruling family. But that's beside the points. For him to have the audacity to issue these threats

in the context of a police state in Saudi Arabia where people are being locked up for mild tweets is indicative and symptomatic of the rock bottom that the U.S.-Saudi relationships has hit. For him to say that, it means only two things. Either he felt comfortable saying it and feared no repercussions or reprisals, or there might have been an element of endorsement for that kind of messaging

that honestly, as I scroll through Saudi social media, is kind of consistent top down. Yeah, that's a really important context to understand. This isn't like in the United States where it's just some guy, you know, is on the freeway filming himself in his car, doing some tirade about, you know, whatever it is. This is a totalitarian regime that not only has punished people very harshly for speech, but is doing so right now. And just yesterday, there was a case of a U.S. citizen from Florida who I believe was detained in a Saudi airport when he went back to Saudi Arabia. He's a dual citizen visiting his family.

Can you talk about that a little bit and what that says about what we were just talking about? Yeah, so Saad al-Mahdi, he's a 72-year-old American Saudi who lives in Florida, and he returned to the kingdom in November 2021. And only on October 3rd, so a couple of weeks ago, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for tweeting. And I went through his Twitter account yesterday. You know, there were mild tweets. I really don't know why he was sentenced.

And there are some mild critique of the Yemen war, which would have been interpreted as basically going against the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But what's really troubling is the timing of that sentences. And basically they're happening after the Biden MBS fist bump, which tells us that that trip failed. And MBS, after receiving Biden and Jeddah, is totally unhinged. Something I'm hearing from a lot of people in the human rights community is that after that meeting, there was a sea change in terms of how Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi government treated not just dissidents, but even, again, Americans in prison, you know, essentially hostage situations,

and that there was a shift towards him acting as though the sense is that he's getting a green light from Washington to go ahead and do these things. Is that the impression that you've gotten as well? Yeah. And this is supported by facts. So like, I think president Biden was right to acknowledge the presence of Saudi American hostages in his op-ed before the trip. He, he promised and pledged to free them and remove the remaining restrictions on their travel and to bring them home to the United States. But since that trip,

MBS has taken more American hostages and it's not working. And if you were MBS sitting in a room right now and despite all your misbehaviors, you're not receiving any consequences, you're basically being rewarded with the prestige of a presidential visit by President Biden and fist bumps, you have zero incentives to change your behavior. If

anything, that reinforces your bad behavior. And so maybe that's how we get to a situation where we have a Saudi prince saying that we are, what was it, projects of jihad in English, which is a very interesting choice. And French. And French. And French, that you would choose to say this in these Western languages. What is the significance of that? Because again, you're saying, to be clear, he's not an official. He's not in the line of succession.

That said, he is a grandson of the founding king. He's a cousin of Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler right now. So what does that say about where we're at with this country that, as you said before, Biden said, you know, we're going to meet with them. I'm going to, you know, and that's very valuable to somebody like MBS who's still trying to shore up his authority. He's not yet king to have the American president meet with you. What does that say about what that meeting accomplished? It basically failed on blood with an accelerated repression campaign by MBS, including against more American citizens,

and it failed on oil with what we just saw recently. I think one of the reasoning and rationale behind that visit is to try and relieve Americans at the gas pump on the short term and the long term to try and squeeze Putin and Russia. And I think both objectives fail miserably. And again, there's a lot of debate before the visit, well, does realism prevail over values and I think it failed on both. And you see this term in DC and I studied international relations as well, but real politik is not just a term thrown around to justify an amoral foreign policy, especially in the absence of any real wins.

And I think, you know, now we have a lot of people thought that the trip was not going to be successful. I actually wrote an op-ed despite the plight that me and my family are facing. And I urged Biden to fix the relationship. Yeah, please talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So a lot of like, you know, I'd like to create a clear differentiation between the insulated ruling family and the Saudi public. I speak for myself, for a lot of Saudi exiles and for a lot of Saudis inside Saudi Arabia. We are proponents of a healthy U.S.-Saudi relationship.

And this is why I urge President Biden to fix it. Because as the adult in the room, you can't abdicate the future of the U.S.-Saudi relationship to a vindictive, volatile psychopath. It's only going to go downhill from there. And I urge President Biden to fix the relationship, albeit with conditions and demands of Saudi reciprocity. And that didn't happen. Unfortunately, the trip was lopsided. It was one-way concessions, and that only emboldened MBS to pursue more domestic and transnational oppression, but also reckless foreign policy. And you can argue that President Biden's policy towards Saudi Arabia has undermined his policy in Ukraine and his policy to kind of curb inflation at home as well.

Yeah. So the interesting thing about Khalid is, unlike a lot of folks in Washington, he's a pretty humble guy. And so he doesn't always talk about the kind of extensive education and training that he's had in international relations. So, you know, having that background, what can you tell us about the shift by Saudi Arabia towards a closer relationship with the Russians, how that relates to MBS, and what do you think the Biden administration can do about that? Yeah, so I remember back in March, I had the pleasure of co-authoring a piece in one of the magazines in foreign policy. And basically, the whole theme was Biden should be tough on MBS for siding with Russia.

And yes, this is not written in a contract. But historically, the arrangement between Saudi Arabia and the United States was the U.S. would protect Saudi Arabia, including oil facilities. And in return, Saudi Arabia would manipulate its oil policy to be aligned with U.S. interests. And that has lasted more than seven decades right now. And I think right now, MBS no longer believes that the U.S. is actually protecting Saudi Arabia, which is not true. But that's understood on his part.

And this is why he stopped basically paying his end of the bargain. And it's really, for Saudi Arabia, the threat, this is one of the kind of outdated expired arguments in DC that no longer holds any water, which is we need to be nice to Saudi Arabia so they don't go to Russia and China. Well, guess what? Nobody on his sane mind would be betting on Russia today. I mean, Which can't handle a small government government on its border that they've poured all of these resources and probably decades of intelligence that they've been developing.

Absolutely. And there are multiple reasons. We'll take them simply. So first of all, it takes time and money to change your military that is dependent on U.S. That's such an important point. You talk to military officers, what they tell you, they give you a much different picture than the arguments, than the excuses, frankly, that you hear in Washington about why we need to tolerate what MBS is doing. Oh, we might switch to the Russians. Oh, we might switch to the Chinese.

Talk to any military officer. They say, that's a decades-long project. And then you end up getting worse weapon systems because the Americans have far superior ones. Absolutely. But imagine this. Like, I'm just going to try to simplify it. So Saudi Arabia's grievances with the Biden administration

and honestly, Trump and Obama, is that you're not doing enough to protect us from Iran. So let's establish one thing. Saudi Arabia is afraid of Iran, and Iran is a very bad actor in that region. So because you're not confident in U.S. protection against Iran, you want to pivot to two countries, Russia and China, that are actively in bed with Iran.

I mean that's the logic. Like I tried to do so many mental somersaults and I can't even get it. And actually right now, like imagine Saudi pivoting to Russia to protect it from Iran, while Iran is supplying Russia with like drones for their hostile attacks on Ukraine. It's just a bluff and it needs to be called. It's a bluff. Yeah. I mean,

in some sense, it's not leverage that should be considered by the Saudis. I think MBS is, is now has a track record of pursuing dumb policies that would boomerang toward the kingdom. So like, yeah, he would probably pursue Chinese and Russian weapons,

but that's not going to be a benefit for his benefit or for Saudi Arabia's benefit. I mean, it's almost like trying to scratch the United States face by bringing yourself down to the knees. Right, right. It's an important point because, again, people look at this, they say, oil, we need this oil. It's going to be off the market. The Russians and the Chinese are going to get it. And it's like, there's very little candor or even, you know, just honesty generally about how much leverage we have as the United States. We're the global superpower militarily, economically to, to, to, to, to see the same guys that throw their weight around in the UN security council and, and, you know, just dictate how things have to go. And then suddenly, Oh, what can we do? Yeah. MBS, he's got, he's gonna, you know,

he's, he's, there he goes again. We've got to just... So nobody should be surprised, you know, today. I mean, in 2015, yes, MBS was an unknown commodity. He was new to the scene. People were still, the verdict wasn't out. But for the Biden administration, they have now the benefit of hindsight. Seven years of witnessing blunder after blunder by MBS

and also knowing what exactly works with him and what doesn't work. Talk about the Trump administration because that's such an important point in how he was able to manage a relationship. So there are multiple examples and precedents and facts to show that MBS only understands language of power. Appeasement, including fist bumps and presidential visit, would only embolden him and verify his delusional sense of superiority

in this relationship. And has shown to have done that in his behavior. Yeah, absolutely. But like, a bit bit of different context, but like in April 2020, MBS basically raised an oil price war that hurt American shale gas producers. And you can recall a future contracts

when even like sub-zero. And what the sitting US president at that time did is he decided to act as the senior partner in this relationship and exercise US leverage. So he didn't need to take a plane to Jeddah and fist bump MBS. He picked up the phone and literally said, I'm not going to be able to stop Congress from going after you. And he threatened cutting, you know, arm support.

What did they say? They were going to pull the US military out. Yes. Nobody. So it's simple. Listen, you're hurting the U.S. with your oil policy. Same, exactly what's happening today. I'm going to cut military support. And you know what happened? And I remember that because it was an official Saudi, you know, press release right after that call.

And it says, Saudi Arabia, in response to the request of the U.S. president and our colleagues and our friends in Congress, we are calling for an OPEC Plus meeting. They did that, and OPEC Plus made the biggest swing in its production output in history. They cut production by 10 barrels to help lift prices. So we totally complied with what President Trump, I guess, asked is maybe a light word, what he mandated that they do.

The reporting on that phone call was funny. It says that it was an ultimatum and MBS was so embarrassed that he had to kick out his advisors from the room because the sitting U.S. president was tough and exercised his leverage. And that's how you deal with a bully. And, you know, honestly, credit to President Trump for doing that. Not someone that I'm often giving credit to, but I think he had the idea right in the nature of how you're going to execute that relationship. I'm not in the place of giving political endorsements, but when it comes to dealing with MBS, I think that's the way to go forward.

The U.S., it's high time that the Biden administration start acting like the senior partner in this relationship, reassert U.S. leverage, and basically make demands and ultimatums. It's, you know, like I'm trying to, let me simplify it. The Biden administration should not allow itself to figuratively and literally be held over a Saudi oil barrel that is still dependent on U.S. protection. And by the way, U.S. security guarantees include guarantees of oil facilities. There's an example where in 2019, Iran attacked Abqaiq, which is one of the biggest refineries in the world. And if you can't protect your oil facilities, you're not even going to have oil to ship and produce. And that would hurt your revenues.

What did they do? Like, second day, MBS's brother, who's now the Minister of Defense, flew to D.C. and asked for more Patriot batteries. And by the way, there's an interesting story here. President Trump didn't care about human rights. There was no rhetoric. He didn't even pretend to care about human rights. No pretense, yeah. But with that request for more additional military support,

he included the release of a Saudi U.S. citizen in Saudi Arabia. And he was released as part of that transaction. Wow. So not only getting the oil production that you wanted, but getting a more favorable disposition with regards to human rights issues by flexing that muscle that we have. By the way, this is a unique situation in which this country depends on us for billions in weapons support to defend themselves against the Houthis and the Iranians and so on and so forth.

That's the kind of leverage that means you don't have to go to war. We don't have to invade Iraq or invade Afghanistan to change our policy. You just need to withdraw what you're giving them. Yeah, and it's pretty interesting because with MBS, he is simultaneously the perpetrator of egregious human rights violations and also the orchestrator of disastrous foreign policy that has hurt U.S. interests regionally and what we just saw with the OPEC plus cut. So to expect him all of a sudden to mature on foreign policy but remain the authoritarian he is

on egregious human rights values, it's just like wishful naivety, to be honest. And that's why it's so intertwined. And you need to combine realism with defending values at the same time. So this seems like a good place to close on. What's your sense of how the administration is going to respond to this and how rational it will be?

Because we are seeing a fairly unprecedented response to the part of Congress, but my impression in the course of my reporting is that there's a split between the Congress and the White House. These oil production cuts having the effect that they do on economies, you know, where a fossil fuel economy that depends on it for all sorts of things is much more complicated than just the

gas prices. I think that frontline members in Congress that are facing re-election are very worried about it and have the sense that the White House doesn't have that same sense of urgency that they think is necessary. So how do you think the White House and National Security Council are going to respond to all this? Oh, I mean, so far, the way they've acted doesn't give me a lot of optimism. I'm afraid, you know, like there are promising consequences, but this is the same admin that during the campaign trail

promised to keep Saudi Arabia or MBS, sorry, a pariah. And then it ended up with a fist bump. So I'm just afraid that the kind of rage right now and the promises of consequences are going to probably end up with a wrist slap

instead of a fist bump. But it's fine for like Congress and the admin to have different views. And maybe that is a dynamic that should be exploited. Create a good cop, bad cop scenario, have Congress go at MBS and then pick up the phone and tell him, listen, I'm not going to be able to veto anything that comes out of Congress. I'm not going to be able to protect you from Congress unless you give me something to work with. And that would include concessions on foreign policy and oil policy, but also resolving human rights cases, starting with American citizens that up until two weeks ago are being tortured and sentenced to draconian sentences in court for tweeting tweets on U.S. soil. Nonviolent tweet, just satire or whatever. So, and, and, and, you know, it can't be stressed enough. We have a proof of concept for how to get MBS to, to, you know, comply with these things in the form of, you know, what the Trump administration successfully did.

So it's not like we're talking about this in the abstract. No, no, there, there are facts, there are precedents. Just look at what works. It doesn't work. Appeasement doesn't work. It's time to change the policy. You need to bully MBS into concessions because that's the only language that bullies understand. Good to talk to you, Khalid. Likewise. Hi there. My name is James Lee. Welcome to another segment of 5149 on Breaking Points, where we dive into different topics at the intersection of business, politics, and society. And today we're going to talk about central bank digital currencies, aka a digital dollar, specifically one that could be issued by the

U.S. government. Is the Fed working on a digital dollar? We are actually evaluating that. Most major countries are now looking at the possibility of having a digital currency and really asking the question, in our very modern advanced economy with a fast, efficient, full-blown payment system, would adding a digital currency, a form of digital currency, would it actually benefit the public that we serve? That's the question that we're asking. We're working very hard on that. Chairman of the Fed Jerome Powell says the issuance of a central bank digital currency hinges on whether or not it would benefit the public. So let's look into that today. But also, let's look into other reasons why the US government along with many other governments

is seriously exploring the creation and implementation of a central bank digital currency abbreviated CBDC. Now this is just recent news as of last week, October 12 2022 US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, in a conversation at the International Monetary Fund's annual meeting, stressed the need for more central bank digital currency work, citing that a CBDC has many advantages and the potential to solve numerous problems. We'll talk about some of those touted advantages in a minute here, but first, let's define what a CBDC is exactly. A central bank digital currency, or CBDC,

is a digital form of a country's currency operated by the central bank. Similar to cash, the central bank would issue its digital currency to allow people to make everyday transactions. Many governments, including the UK, Sweden, Hong Kong, Australia, and the US are all exploring ways digital currency could work. So CBDCs are digital forms of sovereign currencies issued by the central bank and the concept has been gaining steam all over the world. According to the Atlantic Council,

109 countries representing about 95% of the world's GDP are currently exploring a CBDC, with some countries in the advanced stages of development, with almost a quarter of us to explore a potential or perhaps even probable future where most if not all transactions are facilitated via a central bank digital currency. Huang Dan just paid with a new type of money at this pharmacy. That's because China's paper cash is going digital. The digital yuan is meant to be faster than using credit or debit cards on digital wallets like Apple Pay. Plus, there are other incentives,

like zero transaction fees for merchants, and one day it'll even work offline. So the one thing I need to stress for those of you who may not be super well-versed in this topic is that proponents of a central bank digital currency, like the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, who recently touted CBDCs as, quote, the future of money will often emphasize benefits like the potential to offer consumers

a form of digital currency with more resilience, more safety, greater availability and lower costs compared to other forms of digital currencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, but conveniently will at the same time de-emphasize the inherent dangers of a CBDC, like the fact that a government-issued digital dollar would come with significant trade-offs in regards to personal privacy and trust. The digital yuan is meant to be faster than using credit or debit cards on digital wallets like Apple Pay. But one major difference is that the digital yuan is 100% trackable by China's central bank.

The central bank will know who's paying, how much they're paying, when they're paying, where they're paying. And then to analyze the patterns of payment it means that the chinese government could set up a whole lot of things to have your currency maybe valid or invalid based on its own priorities this is almost like handing over the keys to your business or to your finance department in some ways because you really can't control what at the end of the day may happen with the the funds that you're holding. Now, I'm not a crypto bro or anything like that.

So by no means am I here to show for Bitcoin, Ethereum or any other crypto. And I'm also not under any false pretense that we aren't already being monitored to some degree through other means like smartphones, credit cards and CCTV cameras by centralized government agencies or corporate entities. But I also do think that it's important to highlight that unlike private cryptocurrencies, which are decentralized by design, a CBDC like the digital yuan is very centralized and will by design hand over more power to just a few individuals or institutions by giving them the ability to potentially control and socially engineer behavior at a societal level. I don't know about you, but the dystopian social credit score episode from the Black Mirror a few years back comes to

mind for me. But of course, the examples we've covered today have been mostly from China. And China has a very different culture, both politically and socially compared to the U.S. So this type of control couldn't possibly be implemented in the U.S., could it? This is reporting from The Hill. In a 2021 question and answer session about the development of a digital dollar, David Anofato, a senior vice president and economist in the St. Louis Fed's research division, was asked whether the Fed could quote, assure us the public that these digital currencies won't ever be used to tell us when, how, or where our money can be spent. He responded, quote, in life, one can't give absolute

assurances of anything before suggesting that the best we can hope for is for Congress to respond to the electorate's concerns about privacy. Not exactly reassuring, if only we voted harder, everything would be all good kind of answer. And I think this is even more alarming. Just last week, October 18th, 2022, Roll Call reported that the Fed could potentially issue a digital dollar without congressional legislation. Aaron Klein, a Brookings Institution Senior Fellow of Economic Studies, warned that at one point, Chairman of the Fed Jerome Powell

said legislation was needed. He then changed his tune to say that the Fed wouldn't act first without consulting with Congress and having congressional buy-in. Very different. So it's entirely possible that our surveillance state could expand

without any democratic intervention. For early digital yuan winners like Huang, he says the trial went smoothly, and if the currency does go mainstream, he expects the surveillance aspect will matter less to him. Because I think my consumption habits have been cultivated, it's actually hard for me to get rid of this more convenient way of paying. There's an old Sun Tzu quote from The Art of War that goes something like, the greatest victory is that which requires no battle. You see what I'm getting at, the convenience factor. People don't want to have their privacy invaded, but by creating just the right conditions, skyrocketing inflation and economic recession, suppression of labor rights and widening wealth inequality, people could easily be persuaded to opt into something like a digital currency. their financial data to the government, just like that, right? With many people living paycheck to

paycheck, just trying to make ends meet, sometimes working multiple jobs, any extra added bit of convenience in any aspect of life sounds like a much needed positive relief. So naturally, we may willingly just give up control, give up our privacy, because it might be the only logical choice that we have. So central bankers belatedly admit, oh, now that you've mentioned it, yes, banks create the money supply. So let's abolish that now. And also, by the way, let's abolish cash.

So what should we do? Well, introduce digital cyber currency that central banks issue in control and thereby gain total control over all economic transactions, decisions, and the whole lot you've just heard from the CEO of the GDI. So the greatest concentration of central banking power in history is really the bid they're aiming at.

That's the central bank's goal. And of course, digital accounts of dissenters and regime critics could be switched off, be very difficult to even purchase necessities. And why is the sudden discussion about universal basic income from all the grassroots and inverted commas movements and billionaires? Oh, universal basic income is the bribe for you to accept the microchip. The overarching trend of the 20th century is concentration of power in the hands of the few.

That's what we have to keep in mind. We have to work against this. We don't want to have these unaccountable central planners making decisions. We need decentralization. And the solution, therefore, is to maintain public money in the hands of local community banks, decentralize decision making, give local people the power in the form of local public banks and local not-for-profit community banks. That was Professor Richard Warner, who wrote a best-selling book called The Princes of Yen, where he explored the role and power of central banks and how they can be used to change a country's economic, political, and social structures. It was actually recommended to me by a fellow viewer, and it's a fascinating deep dive into the rise and fall of the Japanese

economy. Anyway, my warning, a CBDC could never achieve such lofty goals, such as inclusion and equity, because it necessarily concentrates power and control into the hands of a few. And to Professor Warner's point, the solution isn't necessarily about more or less government regulation, but about creating and enforcing rules and regulations that decentralize power and resources. That is how we foster a society that protects individual liberties while also incentivizing competition and opportunities for everyone. Those are my thoughts about the rapid rise of central bank digital currencies. I hope you found this video to be helpful. If so, I have many others like it

on my YouTube channel. So please head on over there and check out and subscribe to my channel 5149 with James Lee. The link will be in the description below. Thank you so much for tuning in to Breaking Points. And as always, I appreciate your time today. This is an iHeart Podcast.