Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Civilization #END - The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Civilization #END - The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

Okay, welcome to the very last class, the grand finale. Today we do the American Empire. July 1944, this is the Brennan Woods Hotel in New Hampshire. 40 nations get together and they discuss what the post-war peace will look like. Everyone knows that Nazi Germany will eventually be defeated as well as Japan. So the question now is, how does the world build peace? and prosperity after such a devastating war. And Americans propose the bread and wood system.

The idea is this. The idea is to facilitate global trade, the American currency will become the reserve currency of the world, meaning that everyone can use it to trade. Now, the term we use for this is exorbitant privilege. This is the power of God, because you're basically taking paper turning to gold, right? That's the power of God.

So how can we ensure the Americans won't abuse this power? And the answer is the Americans agree to create a global financial network, as well as peg the currency to gold, which means that the USD is a contract. And at any point, you can choose to exchange U.S. dollars for gold. And so what America does is it transports all the gold from London to Fort Knox. And that becomes the basis for the new global financial system that we still have today. And it is incredibly successful.

This is the Bank of Innational Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. It is the Bank of Banks. It is the central bank of central banks. And the idea here is you need to create a system for risk management for risk management. litigation. So for example, it may be a country goes bankrupt, the other countries need to come in and rescue that country's economy. And so this bank is something you've never heard of, but it's one of the most powerful institutions in the world because it facilitates the entire global financial economy. Brennan Woods also created something called the World Bank, which is based in Washington, D.C., and what it does is that it gives out loans to Third War nations like China.

The IMF, the National Monetary Fund, coordinates global financial policy. Okay, so the Bank of the National Sentiments, the World Bank, the IMF, among other organizations, now becomes the global financial system. And underpin all of this is the US dollar as the global reserve currency. Okay. So, where did the system come from? What comes from 1688, remember this is the year that William Orange of the Netherlands, he goes to England and launches something called the Glorious Revolution, and he takes the throne

from James II. When he goes to England, he also brings with him Dutch wealth, right? Because the Netherlands is now the most prosperous nation in the world because of global trade. They have something called a Dutch West Indies Company that has monopolized a spice trade in East Asia. So it's the Dutch East East East Indies company. And so it's extremely well. Now as we discussed previously, the Dutch are Calvinists. So they believe that there's a religious obligation for them to get wealthy.

Wealth will guarantee their entry into heaven. But for that to happen, they need to ensure their wealth. is protected, right? And at this point in history, the Netherlands is that is being conquered or at war with France, with Spain, with a host of enemies. So it's not, the money isn't safe in the Netherlands, so it's being transferred over to England, because England has a navy that is the most powerful in the world. It's also an island, so it's pretty hard to invade. 1694, this was becomes the basis of the Bank of England, which is considered the second oldest central bank in the world,

but it's really the first central bank in the world. The reason why is this bank, it's a private bank, but it's guaranteed by parliament, which means that the nation state of England promises to always pay back the investors in this bank. So why does this happen? It happens. because it will resolve a huge issue throughout human history. If you're a king, you need financing to go to war. You often need to pay for mercenaries. To get this money, you need to basically borrow from your wealthiest citizens. The problem with this is, as king, you may not want to pay back that money after the war,

or you could get killed in the war. So there's always tremendous risk when you lend money to the king. The Bank of England solves this problem because you're not lending money to the king, you're lending money to England. And the people will always have to pay you back. So maybe they won't pay you back today, but they'll have to pay you back sooner or later, okay? Because it's guaranteed by Parliament. And this system is extremely successful.

In fact, this system is what allows England to defeat Napoleon in the No Planet Wars. In 1815, Napoleon is fighting defeated. So as we discussed previously, Napoleon, he is a military genius, and he conquers most of Europe. And he defeats England many, many times. But because of the Bank of England, the English have infinite financing. So the British are always financing wars against Napoleon until he is finally defeated. And this establishes the British Empire. So after the defeat of Napoleon and France, Britain becomes the global hegemon.

And the Bank of England now becomes an imperial bank. And the power of this is before, when you go and conquer a country or a nation, you're always afraid of rebellion. You're always afraid of local elite, getting together, and overflowing you. But the Bank of England solves this problem. Why? It solves this problem because now the local elite can take their corrupt earnings and put it in the Bank of England. in the Bank of England.

So now the elite have an incentive to work with the British to maintain their empire. And that's how Britain was able to build the world's first truly global empire and able to maintain such harmony and stability with the empire for such a long time. The secret was international finance as embodied by the Bank of England.

So let's summarize the history of central banking. It's complicated, but we need to understand this history, we understand today's world. First, important idea is the Dutch covenists, they have a religious obsession with storing wealth. Remember, we discussed this, right? The Protestant religion demands that you get rich. The Parliament of England guarantees this wealth does give in England infinite financing for wars. This is important because if Parliament is willing to guarantee financing,

Not only can it use all this wealth stored in the Bank of England, but I can also generate new wealth from investors overseas as well. Third idea, this financing, infinite financing, allows Britain to defeat Napoleon. Fourth, the Bank of England stores wealth of corrupt local elites, allowing for stability and harmony within the empire. Now, this is important. What will happen next is America will emulate this model and create something called the Federal Reserve in the year 1914.

So the idea of the Federal Reserve is you have all these provincial banks around America, they get together and decide that we as private banks will convince the government, the Congress, to give us a power to print money. How do you print money? You issue loans. When you issue loans, you're basically printing money into the system. So in 1914, they developed the Federal Reserve. system. And after World War II, America is now able to export this Federal Reserve system all around the world by creating independent central banks in each nation and having

these central banks work together to create more wealth for their investors. So there's something really important you have to understand. Nation states compete against each other, but independent central states, all these nation states work together because that way it's easy easier for them to generate wealth for their investors. To grow capital, private central banks coordinate rather than compete. There are parasites that feed off the nation state. So this is a really important idea that no one understands. The nation state is responsible for protecting this wealth, and the central banks can use

the resources of the nation state to feed its capital growth. And this is the modern financial system that we have today. Central banks basically rule the world. Okay, so this is Carol quickly, and he wrote a book called Tragedy and Hope, which I highly recommend. He was a Georgetown professor. He was Bill Clinton's favorite professor at Georgetown. And in this book, he explains how this financial system works, okay? So let's read it very carefully.

And this is, and he's talking about the 1920s after World War I. The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching age. Nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands, able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world, acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the bank for international settlements in Basel, Switzerland. A private bank owned and controlled by the world's sense. by the world's central banks, which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank, in the hands of men like Montague Norman of the Bank of England,

Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve, Charles Riss of the Bank of France, and Helmelt of the Reds Bank, sought to dominate its government by its ability to control treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world. So in today's world, it's essential banks at a concert that dictate financial, economic, and political policy all around the world. All right.

So how can we understand central banks? Well, the main function of central banks is to control the money supply. So money is just a concept, it's an idea, it's something that we just made up. And the way that central bank controls money is by controlling its scarcity, which creates the illusion that is valuable. Okay, also you're forced to use money to buy things as well as pay taxes, take out loans, all right? And they control the interest rate, which is the cost of boring money. So, no way we're saying this is one mechanism that central bank has to control the economy is by lowering or by lowering or increasing interest rates. But it lowers interest rates, it's just easier cheaper to borrow money, right?

so you can go buy a house or buy a car. They increase the interest rate. It's more expensive, so people spend less money. So through that mechanism, they're able to control the supply of money in the system. All right? So how can we understand what central bankers are? Well, I'll give you three possible metaphors, okay?

And I think these are all legitimate. Central bankers are the ultimate priest. They must control the flow of money to maintain the illusion that money is God. In this way, they are the new Catholic Church. Remember, the Catholic Church in medieval Europe was the dominant power. It was beyond nations.

It represented God on Earth. Well, that's what central bankers are today. But also, you can think of central bankers as the game masters. They must control the flow of money to motivate people to play the game. As we discussed, when we discussed the Americans, today we live not in a civilization, but in the game where all individual players trying to make as much money. as possible. Central bankers are the ones who control the rules of this game.

Last metaphor is central bankers are drug pushers. To expand their dominance, they offer easy money and once a country is addicted or bankrupt, they hijack the financial system, which means to prioritize or make independent the central bank. So how do central bankers work? Well, let's do an experiment, okay? Let's use a thought experiment. Let's just say I'm a central bank, you and I'm trying to get you to become addicted to my power right so what I do is this I say to you hey here's ten thousand dollars and you're like okay and what do you want for ten thousand dollars I'm like nothing just go enjoy yourself so you take that ten thousand dollars and you go on vacation to Hawaii you live in a

five-star hotel you're really happy you come back and it's like that was great can I get more money and I'm like here here's a million dollars go and enjoy yourself and you're like, what do you want for it? And I'm like, nothing. Just go enjoy yourself. So you go, but this time you're smarter. You're like, no, no, no, no. This money is limited.

I need to go invest it if I want to generate more money. Otherwise, I've got to go back to the bank and get more money. So you start opening businesses, you invest in restaurants, and ski resorts. Who knows, okay? But you have all these investments. The problem is, you really don't know what you're doing. And you make these bad investments.

And eventually, what you're is you're in debt now. You had a million dollars, but now you owe $10 million. So you come back to the bank and you say, listen, I need $10 million. I'm like, fine, but now you have to give me your soul. And you're like, you're just stuck, okay? That's how central banks work. I know this sounds terrible, but that's really how they work in the world. All right. So now give you examples. All right. So what central banks do is they have the power of God. They're alchemists, basically, because they can take paper, which we know is worthless. turn it into gold which is what everyone wants um now something to remember and this is really important is that throughout history whenever there's a major power there's always a rising power that challenges it so in our world today there's no nation state that can

challenge the power of central banks but there are these technology companies that are arising that are trying to displace them from gothic okay so um bitcoin it's something they've invented. It is the American military's fail-safe system in case the American government defaults on the debt and the US dollar loses its reserve currency status. So Bitcoin has been controlled by the American military along with certain technology companies and they're trying to displace the USD. All right so there's a conflict going on here. All right also artificial intelligence will be used to create the illusion of God, right? Why is there so much

investment interest in artificial intelligence? Because even though it doesn't really work that well, it can trick people in the believing it is God, that it is omniscient, that is always right, that is the ultimate authority. Last example, sorry, last example is social media, video games, and porn of the drug of the 21st century, okay? So in other words, these technology companies, they're really in the process of creating a matrix in which we just live in a simulation and we're all slaves to the simulation. Okay, so this is something that we have to think about, how the central banks are in

power but there's always powers that are rising and which will challenge the power of the central banks. Okay, so how do we get this system? Go back to the year in 1950, 1960, the world started to do two, right? It's divided between the capitalist West and the Communist East. Now, this is ultimately a war of ideology. It's really a question of which system, capitalism or communism, it's better for humanity. Well, we don't know the answer to that question, but we do know the elite prefer capitalism, because capitalism gives them more power, gives them more wealth.

So the elites both in China and the Soviet Union, they basically give up. In 1991, the Soviet Union basically unconditionally surrenders, and this creates the complete dominance of the American system, the Pax Americana. So once America has domination, it now can spread its system. spread its system throughout the world. This is Karl Popper, and he wrote a book called The Open Society. And in it, he questions grand ideologies, because he believes that it's these grand ideologies,

like communism and fascism that have destroyed the world and which have led to World War II. He hates Plato, he hates Marx, he hates Hegel. He thinks these are the three authoritarian philosophers in human history. And so what he proposes is that the height of civilization is the Anglo-American civilization. The Germans and the Russians are bad because they are racist, because they are nationalistic,

because they are grand in their vision. They're always trying to transform humans to shapes and things that are anti-human. But the Americans and the British, they are practical. They are utitarian. They believe in evolution, and that's what called, and so Karl Popper believes, the Anglo-American civilization is really the height of human civilization. But there's actually another way to understand the Paxa Americana. And so the idea is from World War II, we transfer the Pax-Americana.

And there are major differences, right? So World War II was about the nation state. That was the main constituent body of World War II. In the Pax-American, what matters is the international rules-based order, which includes central banks, but it also includes United Nations. World War II is about mercantilism. Mercantilism is that you only trade within your sovereignty. You only trade with your colonies.

But Pax America argues for global free trade. Global free trade will lead to prosperity in the world. World War II argues for a unit of will, and Pax American argues for consumerism. The unit of will is the idea that we must be a whole, that the constituent parts together are less than the whole okay consumerism is just individuals should just go and spend money and enjoy the life and don't worry about big problems like the nation state um and history these ideas all right in other words what's happened in our world is the world's gone from one that focused on civilization to a game in a civilization people are citizens who fight who

sacrifice themselves in order to obtain glory okay so think of achilles Achilles went to Troy because he was a competition among his other Greeks to seek eternal glory. But in the game, we're all individual players who are trying to make as much money as possible. Now in theory, you're taught that, okay, the best way to do that is to work hard, be smart, be talented, create something innovative, right? But in reality, the best way to make money is by cheating. What is cheating? Cheating is basically creating monopoly.

And then you're forced, anyone's forced to pay as much as you want, okay? So John Rockefeller, Bill Gates, these were all monopolists and they were the wealthiest people in human history, okay? All right, so after World War II, America is the only major industrial nation left standing. America uses the opportunity to rebuild both its economy as well as the global economy. And it does so by transferring its wartime economy into a peacetime economy. In a wartime economy, you're a manufacturing goods at NASA, right? When a piece time economy, you're also doing that.

The problem though is now that you have peace, who's going to buy these products? So what America did was, it basically said to Europe, we'll make these things. products these manufactured goods these cars and you will buy them Europe is like we have no money and America is like don't worry about it we'll lend you the money okay and so this worked out really well for America if you were a white high school graduate male in America in 1950s and 60s 70s 70s you had the best life you live better than the ability of Rome okay this is just a guy he could be a salesperson he could be a close

He could be a factory worker, but he had a car. In fact, he probably had two cars. He had his own house. His wife didn't have to work. And he could send his three kids to college. Also, they could take one or two vacations a year to Europe. It was really the best life. And that's what the Pax America kind of created, okay?

Prosperity and peace for the American middle class. But the problem is that over time, the Germans start to catch up. The Germans were destroyed in the American middle class. were destroyed in World War II, so they were incentivized to work together, to work hard, to rebuild their civilization. And German manufacturing became famous throughout the world, as did Japanese manufacturing. So now what's happening is, because of the superiority of German and Japanese manufactured goods, America was transitioning from a creditor nation, where everyone owed it money, to a

debtor nation, where its consumers were buying things that it could really afford from overseas, okay? And again, America could do so because America had the US dollar as a reserve currency. Um, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower is retiring from the presidency and he says to the American people, um, I know we are at war with the Soviet Union, it's a Cold War, but we don't have any real enemies. Our enemies are all internal. There is currently in place something called the Military Industrial Complex. They employ military people, they manufacture weapons, and their intent on war. They are a true enemy.

If we allow the military industrial complex to hijack the American political system, then we'll be constantly fighting these useless wars that will beg up our nation. Be aware! This is our greatest threat to our nation in our history. This is his fair wall address. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced powers exist and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic process. You talk about the military industrial complex.

And it proved present and prophetic because after he retired, America will start engaging in wars around the world that it could neither afford nor could it fight properly and it bankrupted America. The most famous example is the Vietnam War. where America lost about 50,000 soldiers and killed millions and millions of Vietnamese civilians. It was a pointless, brutal war that almost bankrupted America. And it almost caused a civil war in America. At this time, America was also competing with the Soviet Union in a space race. So in 1969, America sent a man to the moon.

And this is a real picture, okay? Now some of you might be like, some of you who might be conspiracy theorists, okay? Not me, but some of you might be conspiracy theorists say, wait a minute here. Why is the lighting perfect on the moon, right? And why are there no stars in space? And why is this flag flooding around, okay? Conspiracy theorists would ask these questions. I don't ask these questions because I'm not conspiracy theorist.

Just so we're completely sure. Also at this time, Lyndon B. Johnson announced the Great Society, which was this fantastic social program to ensure that each and every American had an opportunity at the American dream. So you had free healthcare for the elderly. You had programs like Head Start. It was fantastic, but it was also really, really expensive.

So if you are a nation like France, you're like, you know what, You know what? America is sending people to the moon. It's fighting all these pointless wars and it's building all these great social programs for its population. Does America have the money to do this? In other words, is it possible that the US currency, the US dollar, is not longer able to repay its obligations? That's why France, under Charles de Gaulle, sent warships to America in the mid-60s to repatriate

its gold. afraid that America will go bankrupt and this proved very very wise and at this and when after France did this there's no of this fear among Americans that every nation will do this and then every nation did this America will go bankrupt right that's why in the year 1971 Richard Nixon announces the US dollar will no longer be tied to gold which means that you can't use US to buy gold anymore which means what which means the US dollar is based on nothing the value of the US dollar is now based primarily primarily on

people's faith in its value okay so this leads to a lot of problems like inflation and oil shock so the South this problem in that's in 1773 Nixon's agreement with Saudi Arabia basically agreement is that from now on Saudi Arabia, which is the world's largest oil exporter, will only take payments in US dollars. And whatever savings that Saudi Arabia has will be invested in US treasuries. So this is what we call the petrol dollar. And the idea here is now the value of the US dollar is tied to the value of oil, okay? You can always exchange US dollars for oil.

But then Nixon did something that was extremely clever. He went to China. So for the longest time, China and the United States were in a cold war. Americans basically isolated China. So in 1972, Nixon visited Mao Zedong. Why? The answer is very simple. Because he needed more consumers to buy US dollars.

Does that make sense? He needed people to want US dollars. He needed to create a US dollar addiction. And to do this, what did America do? America gave China everything. America started to ship its factories overseas to China. America gave all its expertise and technology to China. America started to educate the Chinese elite.

And what's really important is American defense companies start to give military secret technology to China. Now I know that in the United States, people believe that China stole this technology. China didn't have to steal this technology because America gave it to China for free. Why would America do this? To create dependence on America.

Because once dependence is created, then Chinese will want U.S. dollars. The intention has always been to create a market for U.S. dollars in order to prop up the U.S. currency. Does that make sense? So Saudi Arabia gave its own. oil to the United States, and China gave its labor, its most precious commodity, to the United States

in exchange for US dollars. All right, so why is this important? Let's look at the case of Japan. The year is 1985, okay? And this is something called the Placet Accord. The Plac Court was between the central bankers and the finance ministries of different nations, but probably between the United States and Japan.

Japan at this point was an export powerhouse. was the second largest economy in the world, high savings rate, people really didn't want to buy American goods, but Americans love Japanese goods. So it's creating this trade imbalance. And Japan was growing and becoming an economic powerhouse. So America said to Japan, listen, you guys need to restructure your economy because your consumers aren't spending any money. This creates trade imbalance.

And ultimately, this will lead to structural problems in Japan. So what we're going to do is we will revalue the Japanese currency. We will appreciate it against the US dollar. So as Japanese consumers, you're able to buy more from the United States. Now Japanese economists thought this is a terrible idea, but because America has military bases in Japan, depending we have a choice of the matter, right? And so this created the Japanese, uh, the Japanese, uh, exploits. of wealth, okay? So they were by Rockefeller, Placett in New York City, and this created

a fair of Japan in the United States. So to show you, to demonstrate to you to you how ridiculous situation was, in the year 1990, in Kyoto, the Imperial grounds, okay? I'm not talking about the city of Kyoto, I'm talking about the Imperial grounds in Kyoto, okay? That land by itself was worth more than Canada as a country. You could you could sell the imperial grounds of Kyoto and go by Canada for yourself, okay? That's how ridiculous the situation was in Japan. Because of the depreciation of the yen,

cheap money flooded into the nation of Japan, and so people were speculating on real estate and the stock market, which led to ultimately economic collapse in Japan. So as you can see, from the 60s up until about the 90s, Japanese growth was pretty strong, but after the plastic cord, you saw a steep drop.

Okay, the plastic cords, by appreciating the yen, by giving Japanese easy money, it destroyed the Japanese economy. All right? So remember this. If you want to nuke an economy in a nation, if you really destroy an economy in a nation, give them easy money. All right? If I want to destroy you as a person, I'm going to give you a million dollars. Because you're going to take that million dollars and do stupid things with it, okay? Oh, okay, yeah.

What does easy money mean? Easy money just means that you think it's free. You don't have to work for it. You don't have to earn it, okay? And the idea of easy money is central banks have a power to print money. So if you come to me and on bank, I can actually just give you a million dollars. You take it. That's easy money, right?

Okay, that's the idea. So you don't understand this. It's a hard concept to understand. But banks have that power. They can just print money out of nothing. And this is what we call easy money. And what this leads to is disaster. Okay?

So let's go over the list of how easy money destroys. nations. First is that it turns manufacturers and financial speculators. The reason why is maybe your car company, okay? And before you're making good money, making cars and sell it to the Americans. But if the economy is blowing up, the start market is increasing, the real estate market is increasing, you're actually better off taking all your savings, your investments, and put it into the stock market, right? Because you have better returns. And as a corporation, you have to guarantee better returns for your investors, okay? It makes people lazy, selfish, and greedy. That's easy understand, right? It's a lot.

If someone just gave you a million dollars, you would not want to work or study ever again in your life. You create too much debt too quickly. You create financial bubbles. Corruption between the politicians and the financial elite. You create massive inequality, right? Because it's usually the wealthy who most benefit from this wealth generation.

You will increase unemployment in bankruptcies. And the last thing, this is really important is, because all this surge in prices, you price up young people. and you destroy the nation's future. You look at the birth rate in Japan. It's about one. And the reason why is Japanese young people do not see a future for themselves.

How's it too expensive? The jobs don't pay that well. Okay? Any questions before I continue? Is this fair? Okay. All right, let's continue. But it's not to Japan.

It's also the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Remember, this is one. South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, their currencies were under attack. And because their currencies were under attack, they became devalued. The problem of this is, before this, Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea had access to easy money provided by central banks. And so they could afford to buy things overseas, invest things overseas. They could, but once the currency was devalued, they now went bankrupt.

And as a result, the National Monetary Fund was able to step in and prioritize the central banks. So that's a playbook. All right, 1989 is important because that's when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union and communism came to an end. Now it's a Paxi Americana. And then the Pax Americana, the system is America would ship its manufacturing overseas. Remember, manufacturing was a source of middle class. of middle class wealth generation. Now it's shipping all these manufacturing overseas

to focus on financialization. So the idea is that Wall Street would take all this money, all this wealth being generated overseas, and then take it back to America and use it to invest in America to basically engage in financial games. Does that make sense? So in other words, before America was manufacturing things like cars,

and washing machines. Now America is a scambling. The entire economy is based on gambling anymore. And this will lead to something called the 2008 great financial crisis where the global economy collapses, basically. 2001, 2011, the World Trade Center, right? The terrorist attacks.

Again, I'm not conspiracy theorists, so I'm not going to go into the conspiracies behind this. But it lets something call the war on terror where America, for no particular reason, went to Iraq, Syria, Libya, and destroyed these countries. Now, if you're conspiracy theorists, you would say, well, they destroyed these countries because these countries didn't have central banks. So that's what some people say. I would not say that. I'm not conspiracy theorist.

2008 is the great financial crisis. Why did it happen? It happened because America had become a gambling economy. And so it had to take money and invest it. The problem though is there's too much money flowing into America and there's not enough good investments. So what Walshu did was it started to invest in really bad investments. It was encouraging people with no money to go and buy like five houses, okay? And eventually they would have to default. And when they default, it would create a cascading effect where the entire global economy would collapse. And that's what was the 2008 great financial crisis.

To solve this problem, what America did was, print money okay look at this guys up until the year 1980 America had about a trillion dollars in debt okay America was found in 1776 by the year 1980 about 20 years later it had a turn dollars in debt today it has now 37 trillion in debt okay this is all money printing starting about 2008 boom you you see a steep curve going all the way up all right the The economy in America right now is really screwed up. The reason why is the stock market is worth twice as much as the real economy.

That makes no sense at all. The total value of the US economy is half of that of the stock market. So this shows you that right now America is living in a fantasy. It's a make-believe economy. The other problem is this massive. wealth inequality okay so as you can see the wealthy people are pretty wealthy but by 2000 but but about 1980 the time of Reagan it shoots all the way up okay so you have this massive wealth inequality being created in the

United States this also shows you how wealthy the top zero zero one percent are relative to everyone else okay so the main beneficiaries of all these reforms of this financing has been the ultra wealthy in America at the same time if you're an average American all you've seen is your debt go up okay your debt has gone way up so you can make the argument that the system is designed to exploit the middle class by forcing into debt so as to enrich the wealthy's investments. That's the American system.

And in fact, you can argue the global system. So 2008, the global economy collapses. So what happens, okay, and I believe this is what happened. I don't think this is conspiracy theory. The central banks basically encourage the Chinese central bank to start printing money, right? And this is important because when you start printing money and you invest in real estate, you need resources.

You need to buy resources from our share. from Brazil and this is what saves the global economy and this all looks very impressive guys like I know when you go outside you see all these big buildings and fancy railways it's all very impressive but remember okay this is really important behind the veneer of this prosperity are three things massive debt right because this money is being printed so someone has to pay this all you guys not not the current people but you guys or your grandchildren or your great guy and short okay but someone has to pay off this debt that's number one number two

is this has created massive inequality in china right so the rich are filthy rich and the poor aren't that much better off the third problem this really important is it's created a lot of political corruption all right so behind all this finare are corruption inequality and debt and this is what okay so a really important lesson for you guys to understand the Chinese relationship with America is this. This is a very famous quote by Charles Baudier, who said, the greatest trick the devil ever polled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

Well, I'm going to paraphrase him, and this is what I think is the relationship between America and China. The greatest trick America played was convincing China it could be rich. This is no different from 1985, the Plaster Quartz, when America basically encouraged the Japanese to increase the benefits.

value of their yen, which led to economic collapse. Well, when the Americans encouraged the Chinese print money into about 2008 and about 2015, it basically created conditions for China's economic collapse. All right, this is what led to the rise of this man, our dear fearless leader. I believe his intentions are good. I think he wants to save China from this global, financial, capitalist,

system. He needs to maintain China's independence and sovereignty. And he's finding very hard to save the Chinese nation. Okay, that's what I believe. And so you can make the argument that what's happening today in China is no different from the Opium Wars. Remember, Britain created an opium epidemic in China in order to enslave the Chinese economy to the global financial system, right? That was the open wars. Well, the same is happening today where the Americans have basically created a Chinese dependency on US dollars, right?

What's the Chinese dream? The Chinese dream is work hard, get into a good school, get rich, move your money and your children to the United States. That's the Chinese dream, all right? And if that's a dream, then eventually the civilization won't last very long. Am I wrong? Is that not the Chinese dream? All right.

All right. So now you have the COVID crisis where China's locked down for three years. Now, I'm not conspiracy theorists, okay, but you can make the argument that some of this was intentional in order to implode the Chinese economy. Why? Because Chinese economy had become a system of transferring wealth from China to the United States. So by imploding economy, you're stopping this drainage, okay? All right, this also led to the rise of this man, Vladimir Putin, who is very much like Joseph Stalin. He understands the grand picture. He understands

strategy, grand strategy. He understands that now it's time to strike. Why? Because America has created this crazy fantastical system, right, where there's a hierarchy of prices. In the American system, the Paxamericana, many resources are the least valuable, okay? The basis of the resources, right? Which is what Russia has a lot of. Up next in this pyramid is manufacturing, which is what China does. Then up next is knowledge economy, so professionals, and that's what Europe and America does really well, okay? Now the very top of this pyramid are the financiers, finance.

And that's what Wall Street dominates, okay? So this is the pyramid of the world that we live in. What Putin said is this. What Putin said is, you know what? If I can control the world's resources, the oil, the food, then I can invert this pyramid so that resource at the top. And that's why Russia invaded Ukraine. Because if Russia were able to dominate Ukraine, Russian and Ukraine together would control

one-third, one-third of the world's carbohydrates. Russian food, Africa and the Middle East would both starve to death. Okay? And so that is the rationale for Putin's invasion of Ukraine. He's a genius. He understands this fundamental weakness in the American system. If you're able to control the resources, you are able to strangle this financial system. Okay?

So by invading Ukraine, Putin shows that America is a paper-time. that America is a paper tiger. Faith in the USD rests on the aura of American military's inevitability and invincibility. This now forces the Americans to invade Iran. Does that make sense to you guys? The logic here is very simple. Why does Saudi Arabia buy US dollars,

even though they know it's not worth anything? What does Japan buy US dollars? What is Germany? The answer is they're afraid that if they don't buy US dollars, America will come invade them. They have no choice in the matter. But now that Putin has showed that actually, what the American military is not as strong as you think it is the American military

now has no choice but to prove it is as strong as people believe it needs to restore faith in the military in order to restore faith in the US dollar okay does that make sense that's why the American military has no choice in the matter but to invade Iran okay why because if they're able to invade Iran they're able to control the entire flow of Middle East oil Also, they're able to control the active trade throughout the world, okay? Iran is really the center of the world in terms of global trade. So these two factors mean that America needs to eventually invade Iran.

All right, once it invades Iran, it creates a huge problem for China and Japan and South Korea. Why? Because guess what? These three nations gets most of this oil from the Middle East, right? Japan imports roughly 89% of its oil from the Middle East. And guess what, guys? Japan is the largest buyer of US dollars. So if Japan ever says, you know what, screw this, we're not buying US dollars, the American economy goes bankrupt.

So when you invade Iran, you control the oil supply, you control the entire Japanese economy. You can charge whatever price you want for oil. All right, this explains the Israel-Potstein conflict because America just can't go invade Iran for no reason. It needs a pretext. needs a pretext. The perfect pretext is Israel comes to conflict with Iran. Iran attacks Israel. The United States must now defend Israel because Israel is its ally.

Right? Does that make sense? So America needs a staple. That's capable of it is Israel. That explains why there's so much conflict right now in the Middle East. Look at this map, okay? This is Iran. It's surrounded by American bases. You have 14,000 troops in Afghanistan. You've got like thousands more. over here. Iran is surrounded. It seems to me that America's been preparing to invade Iran for the past 20 years.

It's just looking for the perfect opportunity. All right. The problem though is that Iran is not an adversary that America can defeat. The reason why is the geography of Iran. Look at this. In 2003, America went to Iraq and destroyed Iraq. Why? Iraq's a desert.

It's flat plains. America has bombs. It has fighter planes, right? It's pretty easy to destroy the desert. But Iran is all mountains. These fighter planes do no good against mountains. You can't bomb a mountain into submission. So if America were to invade Iran,

there's very little chance that America would win this war. In fact, it may be the end of the American Empire. And Putin has a plan. Putin is a genius. He knows exactly what was. happened so Putin is preparing for this possible invasion of Iran so this is a really important picture Putin's an agreement with Kim Jun-un-un the agreement is something called a mutual defense pact which means that if North Korea has ever

ever attacked Putin will come to his aid all right now why would Putin do this this is really strange the answer is this the answer is if America attacks Iran He needs to throw America off balance by creating a conflict somewhere else. The best place to create a conflict would be Southeast Asia. Now you would think, wait a minute here. Putin and China are best friends. If America invades Iran, then China may invade Taiwan. But I already told you this.

China is dependent on the American economy. So I do not believe this will happen. Putin is fairly certain this won't happen either. That's why he's now best friends with Kinjun-U. Because Kin-Jun, if he were to menace South Korea, that would throw the American military off balance. Because now there is war on three fronts, Ukraine, South North Korea, and Iran. That's a grand strategy of Putin.

This is his Trump card. Does that make sense? All right. Now what I'm saying here is. I'm saying like I know there's a conflict now between China and America. There's a trade war going on. But I think this will pass. I think there'll be a rapprochement between China and America because both economies are dependent on each other.

So I think this friendship between Putin and China won't last very long. There's also really a lot of geopolitical reasons why this principle won't last very long, right? Because China and Russia have a lot of geopolitical conflict. geopolitical conflicts, right? They share a border, they're trying to vie for influence in the, in Central Asia. There's lots of reasons why in the long-term China and Russia eventually have to break apart, which means that Putin now sees his best friend could be Germany, okay? This is a, this, I think, are going to be the two big geopolitical surprises in the next five years. First of all, America and China become best friends, or not best friends, but they'll have a

reproachment and then Germany and Russia of a rapproachment okay all right so Donald Trump president of the United States he wants a third term okay he's creating everything he's doing right now it's because he wants to be king of the United States he wants a third term okay for a variety of reasons okay I won't go into many reasons okay but he's that narcissistic He has to solve a problem. This problem is the national debt, right? It's not $37,000.

You can't pay this off. You can never pay this off. But the theory is this. The theory is like, as long as you are the greatest military in the world, as long as you can go invade everyone, you don't have to pay this off. You can constantly increase this debt. That's a theory. This explains the US-China trade war.

Everything that we're seeing today is because Donald Trump needs to come to in agreement with China for a variety of reasons. Okay, the first reason is Trump wants to invade Iran and so he needs to be in good terms of China. Another reason is he needs people to buy US dollars, right? And right now there's a lot of financial repression in China, meaning that you can't convert Chinese currency into US currency. American investors aren't allowed to come to China

and buy up the Chinese financial system. Trump wants China open up. Trump needs to create more interdependency between China and the United States. Okay? And that's why for Trump, Chinese citizens and students in America, is the ultimate leverage point in negotiations. Ask yourself why this is happening. Why is it that your visas are being threatened?

You want to go to the United States and spend a lot of money to get American education. But Trump is saying, no, no, no, we get to go to your visa. Why is this happening? It's all part of negotiation, okay? There's no way that America will shut out Chinese students. because America needs that money. Well, without Chinese spending money in America, while Chinese wanting to purchase US dollars,

the American economy will collapse. So there's no way that America will close its door to Chinese students. But it needs trying to open up its economy furthermore to create more interdependency to save the US dollar. Okay? All right, so where am I getting these ideas? Like, am I just making this stuff up?

So in this class, what you're taught is that history tends to repeat itself. And by studying history meticulously and thoroughly, we can get insight into the future. So what I want to show you now is there's a direct analogy between what's happening today and what happened in Greece in about 400 BC, okay? This is Fucydides, and he wrote a very famous book called The History of the Pelopidon, War, which is what we discussed last semester. Now, the Peugemian War is a war between Athens and Sparta for hegemony on the Greek mainland. So in 480, Athens and Sparta were best friends.

They fought against Persia, which was invading the Greek mainland. And at the Battle of Salamis, the Athenians basically destroyed the Persian Navy, and the Persians were forced to retreat. there's always a threat that Persia over here would come back and invade Athens and Sparta. As well, throughout the Aegean Sea are Greek islands and colonies that are afraid of Persian hegemony. So after the feet of the Persians, the Athenians got together with these colonies and created something called the Dalyan League. The Dealing League is like NATO.

It's a defensive alliance. The Persians attack, then this alliance will defend together. defend together against the Persians. Now, the Athenians have the best navy at this time, and the other islands are like, you know, we don't have a navy, but what we'll do is this, we'll give you a gold, okay? So to all these islands,

they put all their wealth on a place called Delos. This is why we have the Dalyan League name, okay? And this money is meant as a mutual defense fund. You're not supposed to touch it until unless the persons invade, in which case you use this money to defend against a person. That's the idea. And this worked out well until the Athenians stole the money. Why? Because they wanted to create something called the Parthenon,

which is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. And within the building, it's the statue of Athena. It's pure gold. So the Athenians stole all its money from Delhi. all this money from Delos, from their allies, and they built this Parthenon, and the wealthy were able to steal from the Parthenon in the construction process. And so the citizens of Athens became really wealthy. It's easy money, right?

And remember, easy money destroys a society. And so this is what led to the Pelican War, because after Athens stole this money, it didn't apologize to its allies. In fact, it forced its allies to continue to pay tribute to Athens. Athens became a mafia state, okay? A protection record. If you don't give us more money, then we'll come invade you. And so these allies started to encourage Sparta to attack Athens, and that's what led to the Pelipitan War, okay? So there are three major incidents from the Peloprian War that I want us to focus on. The first incident is in 428 BCE, a place called Metalin, an island, they were a former Athenian ally who refused to pay tribute.

So Athenians invaded and conquer it. Another question is, what do you do now? How do you teach these guys a lesson? How do you ensure this doesn't happen again? So one faction in Athens said, let's kill all the men. Pretty simple, right? Let's call the man and then we'll spread fear among our allies and no one will rebel against anymore.

So they have a debate and all the students say, Let's kill them all. So they sent a TRIM, a ship to the island and to give the orders to Athenian soldiers to kill everyone. Well, not everyone, but the men, and enslave the woman and the children. But after the debate, the Athenians started to talk amongst themselves, and a lot of them couldn't sleep. And they're like, this is wrong.

We're Athenians. We are a democracy. We fight for freedom and liberty. We can't do this to our allies. So the very next morning, the Athenian citizens get together and says, we're going to have another debate and we're going to discuss what to do. And so they have this huge debate and they say, no, we're Athenians, we're virtuous. We will not do this.

So they send another trirem to catch up to the first trirem. And remember, the first trirem is way ahead, right? They have a day's journey ahead. So the other trirem, they work their astrol to catch up the first trium and at the very last minute they catch up and they tell the soldiers not to kill the men okay and so this is the conflict between democracy and the empire right now let's fast forward to 416 and now another thing happens where the athenians are losing this war against sparta it's costing them a lot of money they're forced to melt down the satchew of athena the goddess and used to go

to pay for this war. And so, their attitude changes. And now they're completely a mafia state. They don't care about democracy, don't care about virtue, all they want is for the allies to pay tribute, okay? So they go invade an island called Melos. And Melos is not part of this war.

They're not part of Sparta, they're not part of Athens. They're just neutral. And then the Athenians said, we don't care, you pay tribute to us. They're basically like a mafia, right? bracket now. And the millennials say, we're neutral. You have to respect our neutrality. And they didn't say in response, right as the world goes is only in question between equals and power while they're strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

All right? So 12 years later, they think it's like, screw virtue, screw democracy, screw liberty, just give us money. All right? So remember this idea. Athenians wanted the trappings of empire, they also want to feel virtuous. And over time, as Athens became more poor, they were like, screw virtue, let's have an empire. And that's why in 415, Alcabaiades, who basically is the trump of Athens at this time, okay? He says to Athenian people, hey guys, we're losing this war against Sparta, but don't worry, let's go invade more territory. So they decided to go invade Sicily, which was very wealthy.

The problem though is that Sicily is pretty far away, okay? Remember this is Athens, they're fighting this huge war in the agency against the Spartans, and they're going to go and invade Sicily for its money, okay? And it's pretty far away. And it's not really well thought out. They don't really think about how to resupply their soldiers, and eventually their expedition gets wiped out at Syracuse, okay? So it's a disaster for the Athenians, and it turns...

the war in favor of the Spartans. Athens is so bad that everyone get together, the entire war gets together to destroy Athens. The Persians, remember the Persians were the enemies of both Sparta and Athens, right? The Persians start to finance the Spartans. And the Spartans eventually laid siege to Athens and defeat the Athenians, okay?

So, why is this important? Well, because history is going to repeat itself, okay? There's going to be a lot of similarities between between the Pelopetian War and American Empire today. First similarity is NATO. Remember, the Athenians have the Dalian League, and the Americans have NATO. And NATO is meant to be a defensive alliance.

But if that's the case, then why is it that the North Stream pipeline got destroyed? Remember, the North Stream pipeline, it sends cheap gas from Russia to Germany. The Germany economy is use cheap Russian resources, primarily gas, manufacturing the best cars in the world, and sell to China. But because of this war in Ukraine, America not only limited, basically embargoed Russian gas to Germany,

which destroyed the Russian economy, but some people even say that the Americans destroy the pipeline. So the Americans are attacking their own allies. Trump has said that Americans take over Greenland, and Canada. Why? Because they're wealthy, they have lots of resources, and also they don't have really strong militaries, right? Trump, he's like a mafia godfather. America's behaving

like a mafia system today. Now, what America is doing is forcing Europe to rearm itself. So this is Germany, and Germany, Britain, France, they've all announced this huge military budgets. And so you're like, okay, does this mean that we have World War III? Well, America doesn't think like that. America isn't like, you know, like let's fight Russia. America is like, how can we exploit our allies further, right? And so you can make the argument that this is not really about fighting the Russians, it's really about getting their allies, France, Germany, and Britain, Dubai, expense and crappy American weapons. Remember the military and industrial complex, The entire point is not to fight the Russians.

The Russians are just a pretext and excuse. The real purpose is get the Europeans to buy expensive American weapons. It's really a shakedown. All right, so all around the world, there's protests about what's happening in the Middle East. These are huge protests protesting what's happening in Gaza today. But ultimately, it's not going to matter. Why? Because America's an empire. It's a mafia state. It needs to destroy Iran in order to maintain its power.

So Americans want the trappence of empire. They also want to feel virtues. That's why there's conflict right now. Over time, as American becomes poor and poorer, more and more desperate, this virtue will go away. And the raw, brutal power of America will express itself throughout the world. And this will eventually lead to us, lead us to the final conflict. The war between Iran and the United States.

Iran has been preparing for a long time, okay? Ever since 1979, America's been preparing for a long time. This conflict is World War III. I cannot overstate how brutal this conflict will be. will lead to fundamental changes in the world. Our lives will never be the same again. Everything that we've known in the past is now gone forever. And we have to prepare for a new future. So I leave you with a message, okay? I know that this class has been depressing. You've been with me for a year now. It's been very depressing, okay? Because we've

gone into the heart of darkness of humanity. And I know this that the world looks more and more terrible. But remember this, okay, and this is my final message to you. Remember this. The greatest minds of humanity, in which include Homer, Dante, Emmanuel Kant, they've all told of this, they've all told us one secret of the universe,

one message, which is this. The imagination is the animating force of the universe. Love is a unifying force of the universe. Okay? What this means is this, what this means is that in the darkest times, when all hope has been lost, when there's only despair, any of us, you, me, you, any one of us, can rise up, stand up, and be the light to lead humanity forward. And that's the task ahead of us if we are to save humanity in this darkest of times. So, remember this.

We all have the capacity to imagine. We all have the capacity to love. That's what makes us human. In the worst times, we must defend our own humanity. So that is it. Thank you so much.