In this episode, we discuss the real causes of inflation and why Australia must decouple from America.

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Welcome back to your listener, the iron fist and the Velva glove podcast is just

a small intimate affair on this occasion.

Just myself and Joe, Joe, how are you?

I'm good.

And you I'm.

Well, Thanks.

So dear listener we're recording this on a Monday night because I've

got family commitments over the next couple of nights, and then

I'm away up in CAIRs for 10 days.

So.

Joe, and I are recording a podcast which will probably be split into two segments.

And so the half that you hear next week, if something astounding

happens in the world and we don't mention it, it's because we

prerecorded it about a week earlier.

So yeah, so bear with us as Joe and I settle into our

chairs and attempt a podcast.

For up to three hours.

I'm missing we a chat already.

Yes, it is.

Yeah, it would be good to have the chat.

We'll old school podcasting without without a chat.

See how we go.

So I'm a little bit worried dear listener, because I fear this episode

could turn into a rant where I just bemoan everything going on in the world.

Could be a little bit negative, but we'll try and intersperse it with some

positive things if we can, but it's just, it can't always be happy times.

Can it, there we go.

I've got some notes here.

What's going on.

I wrote as a headline in my notes and the answer is not

much yet a lot or everything.

The Morrison government was such a shit show.

We became obsessed about his government, which I think was a cross between

a train wreck and a clown car.

It seems to me just had tragedy and comedy and patheticness all rolled into one.

And he's only gotten better since he's got out of office.

That's right.

Yeah.

Hasn't he's been, he was at Margaret courts.

He was

church.

Yes.

Telling everyone not to trust the government.

Yes.

That he was prime minister of and is still.

A member of parliament

of, yeah,

absolutely.

Yeah.

We'll get onto that.

People were, I've been saying for ages that when he stands in lectern, he is

channeling the preachers that he's admired in his song and evangelical churches.

Like he, to me was always channeling a preacher and He's

gonna wanna employ this guy.

There's no self-respecting top Australian company.

That's gonna want it's more Australia.

Apparently they put him on.

No, no, No.

He wanted to get in the NL and other stuff like surely they

won't touch him with a barge pole.

He'd hope it's wrong.

His post politics career.

We'll be trying to be some sort of evangelical preacher.

I reckon that's what he said.

Either that or on the voice on the voice.

Yeah.

One of the, one of the ship posting Facebook, things I follow has said

basically that every winner of the voice of the last, however many

years has been a member Hillsong.

Of course, yeah.

He'll get lots of votes from.

Goes on.

Yeah.

They'll rally the troops and yeah, dodgy up the voting system.

That's a chance.

But yeah, we've been obsessed with the Morrison government over the last

12 months that I have been anyway.

And rightly so, it was terrible.

It's time now, dear listener, to look at the bigger picture.

How is the world going?

How is our society?

Where is our civilization in its lifecycle?

That's why this episode's gonna be depressing.

The answer is not good.

Climate change.

We've got overheated share and property markets propped up by dysfunctional

debt, rising interest rates on that debt falling wages in real terms

are failing capitalist system with no alternative being discussed.

Rampant misinformation, Christian nationalists.

Historic inequality, creating a futile billionaire class, a system that bailed

out wall street in 2008 and 2019.

And one year after record profits now wants to crush workers with

rising interest rates, rising inflation and frozen wages.

We've got an unnecessary and avoidable cold war with Russia and

China brewing into a hot war and.

We've got left wing leadership that is unable to inspire and

activate a working class revolt.

Your friends who are podcast recently were all about the

working class revolt weren't they

. Yeah, but they were unable to inspire

Ideas were crazy.

I'm talking of a revolt.

I'm talking about a revol.

At the voting box, Joe, right?

Not in the streets.

Yeah.

I Labor seemed to have this idea that they won the last election and I have

to say, I don't know that they did.

I think that the liberals lost the last election.

And I saw a big swing towards the green, so I think the

greens won the last election.

They did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think people are going.

You de facto you're better than the liberals, but given a choice,

we wanted a bit more movement

yep.

Yeah, I think that's right.

And it's hard to criticize the labor government at this stage because

they're really just getting there the feet under the table, although

there will be some criticism coming up, but they've gotta have.

Time to work a few things out time to make a few mistakes . But

for all those problems, they're all genuinely where we are at.

We're like, this is a difficult time in, in, in our, in the life cycle

of this particular civilization.

I think I blame Ronald Reagan and Margaret Satcher and Ruper Murdoch

probably should have put Rupert Murdoch first, but I blame all three of them.

So John Howard.

He's a little bit player in the skin.

He followed what they did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I think in terms of the Australian yes.

Following suit, it was John Howard who put Reaganomics into

practice.

Yes.

Although I'm starting to wonder how much to blind the whole

and Keating years as well.

I'm just, I have to examine a bit more closely but.

They struck the accord and they opened up the Australian economy.

But, there was a lot of industry that was just abandoned that in

hindsight, maybe we should have been subsidizing and keeping if possible.

And so I'm just not entirely sure now how I feel about the Keating hockey

and the, and I'm just not sure how much selling offer stuff they did,

then I have to look at it more closely.

Yeah.

But yeah, I would Howard in there with.

Interesting

thing to me about Maggie is I actually heard a minor saying to

me that Margaret Thatcher invented climate change because she wanted to

shut down the minds during the mind worker strike back in the eighties.

Oh,

because she's famously pro sort of climate change action.

Yeah.

She was a chemist.

She actually understood this own

and the minor was saying she was doing that to put pressure on the.

That's interesting

during the mind worker strike back in the eighties.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What do you think of that?

Do you agree with it?

I think it's a conspiracy theory personally,

but yeah.

Could be something in it.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

You wouldn't.

No, I think

there's, I think there's enough evidence out there to prove that humans are causing

climate change by burning fossil fuel.

Yeah.

Whether she latched onto that as a useful thing, that's possible.

I don't know.

Hadn't thought of that.

I

just thought it was interesting to hear it as a conspiracy

theory.

Yeah.

It's one of the better conspiracy theories or better theories going around there.

I don't know that either.

That's that kind of, even if she was, genuinely in favor of taking action

on climate change, she would've loved the fact that it made things

difficult for the minors yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

Okay.

So I think we're gonna kick off talking about inflation and interest rates, and

then we're gonna talk about some foreign policy issues, China Ukraine, and indis

disperse it with a bunch of other stuff.

But before we do that, just briefly Couple of episodes ago.

I mentioned, I really want people to put their hand up, to meet with their

local member, to talk about religious instruction lessons, and particularly

in inner city, Brisbane, electorates, where there's a strong non-religious

vote revealed by the last census.

And we'll help you.

Nobody's put their hand up yet.

So if you're out there and.

You've got nothing to do, or you have lots to do, but you feel

the issue's important reach out.

And particularly if somebody in Anastasia CHES electorate, it would

be really good to have somebody go there and talk to her and find out

where she stands on this issue.

It's hard to gauge what her personal view is.

Myself and others are starting to work out different.

Politicians and where they sit on this issue, but it's

hard to read Anastasia palace.

Show's personal position on this.

So it'd be good if somebody could talk to her and just before we get into

it as well, I enjoyed my discussion with Carl Fitzgerald last week.

He was talking about land banks and developers, drip feeding, or

drip releasing rezoned property.

Keep the market price up.

You mentioned a book.

Yeah.

You haven't read the, you haven't seen the episode yet, but you mentioned

a book we were talking about.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Game of mates written by a UQ and a university of Sydney professor.

And it's about corruption in Australian politics, but a very strong

section around land use and local councils and the coziness between

developers and council planners.

Talking about the revolving door of people, leaving council, going into work

for a developer, and then coming back after five or 10 years and working back

in council and just a level of, without.

Without avert bribes, just a level of friendliness.

And the whole game of mates was not about cash in paper bags as yeah.

Has happened in the past, but more just these people being friends

and doing favors for mates.

Yep.

And those favors are at the cost of the average Australian.

Yeah.

So there's a similar story about a revolving door with coal mining industry.

Operatives working in Canberra.

I think it was Michael West report did something on that showing just

how these people for a few years would be in industry for a few years would

be a ministerial advisor back into an industry back as advising and just.

There was this group of people in and out of government and the mining industry.

So yeah, I can easily imagine a similar thing at council level with developers.

So is that an old book game of mates?

Is it how old is it?

It's gotta be five years old now.

Okay.

Yep.

Anyway.

Story wouldn't have changed.

Yeah,

no I think, look, it's as relevant now.

And there were some interesting suggestions.

The biggest one was a lot of overseas experts, cuz they're talking about, you

need time in industry to understand the industry and you need to become an expert.

But what effectively they were saying was council should be hiring from overseas.

So there aren't

these vested interests.

Yeah.

Yep.

All right.

Inflation and what's happening with the economy and the responses from different

groups and I'm not sure how much we've mentioned about this in the past.

So maybe a little bit of repetition, not sure, but you.

What we've got.

Dear listener is inflation is which has been dormant for

years, suddenly raised its head.

And in response, the reserve bank has said, gotta raise interest rates,

gotta fix that and gotta deal with this inflation by rising interest rates.

And sure enough, they're all starting to rise.

And is this the appropriate response?

What has caused inflation?

What's really going on.

Do we just to have to accept what these people are telling us or can

we work it out for ourselves in the same way that we became experts on

lockdowns and the effect on the economy?

And we became experts on Ukraine and NATO.

Well, Now experts, I am at least on inflation and interest rates.

I'll

do the best.

Did you see the Chase's comment chases have.

No it was employees tell CEOs that they can't afford a pay rise this

year because of inflation and its CEOs wages causing the inflation.

Yes.

Yes.

They should be.

That's where we're at.

So let's look at some charts and statistics.

If you are watching this on the video, you'll see a chart on your screen,

which this came from Sally McManus, who.

Head of the labor movement in Australia.

And it's a chart showing the labor's share of labor as opposed

to capital L a B O U R share of GDP.

And you will see that it peaked in about 1975 or so, and then has been

on a decline since, that's the share of gross domestic product and more

importantly, or as important is the next slide that'll come up, which basically

shows profits index and a wages index.

Assuming they started at the same point in 2002, and a very slow,

incremental rise for wages and.

And a real strong rise for profits, particularly since 2016.

So this is wasn't that when

Scotty got into

yeah, would've been around, he was with us for a bit over three or four years,

maybe a bit before Scotty, wasn't it.

Just a little bit before Scotty, perhaps.

ES essentially.

What we've got is profits far out stripping wages.

So companies and profits have been doing very well overall compared to wages.

So that's a key sort of,

I was quite shocked.

I saw news.com had reposted or had written an article based on

an Australian Institute report.

As opposed to the IPA.

Yes, which was saying the real cost.

Sorry.

The real effect of inflation, only 5% of inflation was due to labor costs.

Yes.

I've got it in the list here, somewhere.

The Austral Institute.

I'll get to that one.

Okay.

I think it's somewhere list here, but I was just shocked to see it in

news.com.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Slipped in somehow.

So I got a bunch of commentators talking about different things.

First off is Michael Hudson who is talking about America, which is doing

the same thing, inflation fair, raising interest rates, and it exactly the

same scenario happening in the states.

And so Michael Hudson says to wall street and its back as the solution

to any price inflation is to reduce wages and public social spending.

Rising unemployment will oblige labor to compete for jobs that pay

less and less as the economy slows.

This class war doctrine is the prime directive of neoliberal economics.

Public discussion of today's inflation is framed in a way that avoids blaming the

8.2% rise in consumer prices on the Biden.

Administration's new cold war sanctions on Russian oil, gas, and agricul.

Or on oil companies and other sectors using these sanctions as an

excuse to charge monopoly prices.

So your listener, a large component of the inflation is the rising cost of energy,

both directly where people buy energy to heat their homes or drive their vehicles.

But it's used, you know, freight costs in shipping stuff from China.

It's used to create.

Fertilizer it's, there's so many things where you increase the cost of fuel.

It has a an add-on effect in something that you may not

necessarily associate with fuel.

And that's, a big part of that is the sanctions on Russia and fuel companies.

Charging huge profits as a result because of monopoly situations,

Joe Robert Reich was talking about the fact that all these oil companies in

the states have gone, oh we need to open up federal lands for drilling.

And it's not a shortage of oil.

And these oil Wells that they're talking about prospecting for are gonna

take five to 10 years to come online.

By which time who knows what the oil pricer will.

Indeed, but they basically just want an excuse to to open up more oil Wells.

Yes.

And peel back previous restrictions.

And they're using this as an excuse to do that.

Yes.

And it's the workers who are going to end up paying the price.

They don't turn around to the companies and say, stop this monopoly price gouging.

They just say to workers, oh, you have take code.

The UK did on C.

With their price gouging.

Yeah.

Yeah.

With with the type of resourceful profits tax profits.

Yeah.

More of that please.

So still continuing with Michael Hudson COVID shut down of the us

and foreign economies and foreign trade also is not acknowledged as

disrupting supply lines and raising shipping costs and hence import prices.

The entire blame for inflation is placed on wage earners and

the response is to make them the victims of the coming Auster.

As if their wages are responsible for bidding up oil prices, food prices, and

other prices resulting from the crisis.

The reality is that they are too debt strapped to be spend thrifts.

The pretense behind the Fed's recent increase is that raising interest

rates will cure inflation by deterring borrowing to spend on the basic needs

that make up the consumer price.

But banks don't finance much consumption.

Banks lent almost entirely to buy real estate stocks and

bonds, not goods and services.

Some 80% of bank loans are real estate mortgages.

And most of the remained loans are collateralized by stocks and bonds.

So raising interest rates will not lead wage earners to borrow

less, to buy consumer goods.

So that's true.

And he makes a point here, the Democrat party the party's identity politics.

Address, almost every identity except that of wage earners and

debtors his passing aside there.

So that's initial comments on the us situation by Michael Hudson saying

that a lot of the inflation is just increased fuel costs, brought it

out by sanctions and price gouging.

Then we've got crikey had an article and it said that rising profit

levels among the Australian corporate sector has been identified as one

of the key courses for increasing inflation levels across the country.

A new reporter shown so rising profit levels amongst.

The corporate sector research from the Australia Institute has revealed

increasing profit levels amongst companies and not increased wages

for workers had been contributing to rising inflation rates.

The report found wages made no contribution to inflation in

Australia during 2019, 2020, or in the following year 2020.

The most recent financial year.

So wages only make up 0.6 percentage points of the 4.1%.

Richard Dennis from the Australian Institute said, despite concerns from

employers and business groups, increased wages would contribute to rising costs.

The data showed that the increasing profits were a major factor for inflation

it's profits, not rising costs that are driving Australia's inflation.

He said, it's a shortage of competition, not a shortage of skilled labor.

That's driving up the cost of.

Interestingly

I read, I think it was a article about

gas prices.

And they were saying that the Queensland government, because of

its hands off approach where they refused to build a state owned

infrastructure for the L and G pipe.

basically, there were three consortiums that ended up each building their own.

And because of that, they were overextended and therefore couldn't

afford to sell their gas onshore because they had to pay for this infrastructure

that they all independently built.

Rather than sharing the infrastructure.

Yes.

And so that's added costs on, which has basically made gas more.

Okay.

Yeah.

Even if they wanted to, they wouldn't sell it locally at a cheap price.

Yeah.

Basically they were saying that the state should have built the infrastructure

with control with stipulation.

Yeah.

With the stipulation that they could divert gas as needed to the local

market.

Because I think Russia is showing that if you can control

pipelines, it comes in quite handy.

Yes you can put a lot of pressure on it.

Yeah.

Keep control of.

Here's a broad worldview by Yiannis Forfar.

So as dear, listen, I've got a bit of a man crush on Yiannis.

Think he's great.

Okay.

Yiannis says, so what is really going on half century long power play led by

corporations wall street, governments and central banks has gone badly wrong.

As a result.

The west authorities now face an impossible choice.

Push conglomerates and even states into bankruptcies or allow inflation

to go unchecked for 50 years, the us economy has sustained the net exports

of Europe, Japan, South Korea, then China and other emerging economies.

So basically for 50 years, all this stuff's been going into the us

economy while lion share of those foreigners profits rushed to wall

street in search of high returns.

On the back of this tsunami of capital heading for America, the

financiers were building pyramids of private money, such as options and

derivatives to fund the corporations, building up a global labyrinth of

ports, ships, warehouses, et cetera.

When the crash of 2008 burned down these pyramids, the whole financialized

labyrinth of global just in time.

Supply change was imperiled.

To save, not just the bankers, but also the labyrinth itself.

Central bankers stepped in to replace the finance's pyramids with public money.

Might remember quantitative easing.

Meanwhile, governments were cutting public expenditure jobs and services.

So we had socialism for capital and harsher disparity for li not just

constant to be using those bailouts.

Yes.

Money just appeared.

Literally just appeared wages, shrunk and prices and profits are

stagnant, but the price of assets purchased by the rich skyrocketed.

It was a new power game.

The traditional struggle between capital and labor to increase their respective

shares of total income through markups and wage increases continued, but was

no longer the source of most of new wealth after 2008 wealth triumphed in

equity and real estate markets, which had decoupled from the real economy.

Then came to pandemic, which changed one big thing.

Western governments were forced to channel some of the new rivers of central make

central bank money to lock down masses.

And as the lockdown multitude spent some of their furlough money on scarce

imports prices began to, and corporations with great paper wealth responded by

exploiting their immense market power.

To push prices higher through the roof.

And after two decades of central bank supported Bonanza of soaring, asset prices

and rising corporate debt, a little price inflation was all it took to end the

power game that shaped the post 2008 world in the image of a revived ruling class.

So what happens.

Probably nothing good to stabilize the economy.

The authorities first need to end the exorbitant power be showed upon

the very few biopolitical process of paper, wealth and cheap debt creation.

What Yiannis is getting out there is that money flooded into the

system that money was used to.

It was so cheap that the top end of town could borrow cheaply buy stuff in the.

And that cheap money caused a bubble of in, of inflated property and equity

prices, because what are you gonna do?

Interest rates are at zero.

You can borrow stuff at 1%.

You may as well be buying equities and property, and that pushed up the price.

And that's where we're at now.

So that's one of the aspects of where we got to.

right then I've got something from the Saturday paper and

let's see, what does it say here?

I'll try and shorten it a little bit.

So profits are now the highest ever share of Australia's GDP while

wage shares are at historic lows.

A recent analysis of Australia's national accounts by Greg Jericho

from the Australia Institute found company profits increased by 25.3%.

Over the past year.

Over the past two years, profit margins increased by 40.3% while

wages increase by just 7.4%.

So they have a dear listener in Australia in the past two years.

Look, forget about your mom and dad, businesses selling coffee and cakes.

Think of big corporations, profit margins increased by 40.3% while

wages increased by just 7.4%.

And now with some inflation they're gonna around it's wages who are

told, oh, I could freeze . Yeah.

Yeah.

I think of some corporations that did very well under lockdown, particularly

those in retail, online retail.

And I can't see that they're bearing any of the blame for this

inflation and yet it is them that.

We don't get enough of this commentary in mainstream media.

So as it says in this article yet the notion that wage growth is the

major driver of inflation continues to persist in the public consciousness.

There was journalist Philip Corey's infamous claim that pecking

wages to inflation would be a one way ticket to the via Republic.

Likewise, Andrew Mackellar chief executive of the Australian chamber

of commerce and industry said small business cannot afford.

Minimum wage rise of more than 5% in such increases would

cruel jobs not create them.

Meanwhile, broadcast a Wallied alley described Waag nation

as the bitter medicine that might keep inflation in check.

So as you just rating stuff the commentary is just talking about, oh,

it's gotta be wages, a bit of inflation sniffing around, crack down on wages.

Couldn't possibly allow wages to keep up with inflation.

And and really Australians have to say, no, that's not how it should work.

Why just have to keep up in real terms, at least with inflation.

And that's what the The railway strike in the UK was all about with that.

Those clips I played a few weeks ago where they were saying they're

just keeping pace with inflation and they're fighting for it.

What else have I got here?

So yeah, it just says here, fact check on aisle, two wages

do not increase inflation.

Unless they increase faster than inflation and productivity combined.

And in reality, wages have been flat or declining in real terms for more

than a decade business commentators and corporate economists pedal the

same tired orthodoxy blaming wages for higher inflation and even evoking

fantasies of wage price spirals.

I'm fairly sure that in fact, I know that at the end of slavery in the us,

the slave owners complained that it would force businesses out of out of business.

Yes.

Because they couldn't afford to run their cotton farms without slaves.

Yes.

I think they still did.

Okay.

Afterwards somehow.

They got huge amounts of reparation.

At the end of the day, if your business is run by stealing from your employees,

should it be running?

Yes.

And the thing is if you are selling coffees and cakes and you're thinking,

ah, I've got these staff and I can't afford to pay him an extra dollar

an hour or whatever it was, you've gotta think of who are your clientele?

If they have an.

Money in their pocket, they're able to buy the coffee.

So you have to think of your clientele as well as your as your employees and costs.

And know, it doesn't matter if inflation goes up five or 10%, if

if you can maintain your sales if people have that money to spend.

This article goes on to say that part of our problem in Australia

as well is that we've got a lot of monopolies and oligopolies.

We've got a lot of industry in Australia where there's only a two, three or

four players in the game and they can easily basically control the pricing.

And really we're talking about inflation.

We've talked about profits increasing well above.

The rest of the of the economy.

One of the answers is you should be doing stuff to break up monopolies

and increasing competition to drive down those profit margins.

That's an anti inflationary step that the government can take.

It was interesting to talking to friends in the UK who are in the supermarket

business and they were talking about.

The percentage of market share that each supermarket has.

And the biggest supermarket in the UK has less than 30

something less than 35% anyway,

market share.

Yep.

So there are so many different supermarkets that there

is sufficient competition.

Yes.

Whereas over here, there's the Coles and wooleys an Aldi is a

very small part of the market.

And IGA is

minuscule.

There's just a number of industries like that.

Alcohol, for example, it's incredibly small number of players in the market

selling beer at the end of the day.

Be surprised how small the market is.

Yep.

Okay.

And there was a, this article goes on quote uh, Sims, who was.

Formally with the uh, a C and he's calling for more work to be done in

terms of dealing with monopolies.

And there's another article here, which will be in the show

notes for people who are patrons talking about the reserve banks.

So part of what's happening here, dear listener is it's the reserve

bank that is raising the cash rates.

In order that this increase will be passed on by the banks in its lending.

And I've had a bit of an argument with off the record.

I think it was with Paul, who was on the podcast a few weeks ago about the

RBA, because I was saying, this is such an important function of our economy.

Why are we outsourcing it to the reserve bank?

Like the politicians should be in charge of this.

I dunno that it actually makes sense to.

To have an outside sort of force involved, but there's a really interesting article

that talks about the people who are on the reserve bank board really are not

qualified in terms of monetary policy.

They're just people who have been in business.

And if labor's in charge, then there might be some union people on there, but

they're not people with actual experience and qualifications as economists.

In monetary policy.

And in fact, the more you know about this stuff, the probably the

least likely you are to actually get on the reserve bank board.

The treasurer trying to think of his name on labor's side he's announced

this is gonna be some inquiry into the reserve bank and how it operates.

And I think that's a good idea because.

At the moment, it's just run by guys who have run businesses or

guys who have run unions and people with real expertise in monetary.

It matters they're not on the reserve bank board.

And it, it seems to me a very crazy situation that we've outsourced

to a group of people who don't necessarily hold any qualifications.

. Yeah.

I I understand outsourcing it, but surely you outsource it to

the experts rather than leave it in the hands of the politicians.

Ultimately like our defense, we say to defense experts, draft up a white paper,

tell us what you think we should do, but at the end of the day, we'll then

make the decision and live or die by it.

At least I, yeah, I still think it should be a role of government rather.

I think they could make a recommendation, but then the government

should be responsible for it.

So anyway, while I have a drink and refresh my throat, they've got a lot

of that was to do with capitalism as part of the problem here.

I've been digging up some of our land and hard bottoms, old stuff, and I thought

I should be replay a bit more of it.

So let's intersperse this with a little bit of land and hard.

What's that my love, what am I doing?

Well, I'm going to write some love poetry.

Well, Of course, I'll let you read it when I'm finished.

Um, O capitalism.

Some say you are a prison, but to them, I do not listen.

Some say you have put millions in the ground, but to that I say Hmm,

they were mostly brown in you.

There is no gloom as people consume and the economy booms profits are maximized

and to no, one's surprise those of us on.

Get to keep the lot.

Well, Landon there's one for the

Thank you, Landon.

Best part of that.

Landon was your little ham as you started off.

That was a good comic timing.

I like that Landon.

That's a little bit about interest rates and inflation and how we're being

hoodwinked, but it just can happen anyway.

Isn't it?

Talk about, we're talking about big picture on this episode, I

promised I would depress you and win and rant and complain.

So let's talk about foreign affairs, foreign policy what's going on in

the world in terms of conflict.

What's America doing China, Ukraine, Australia, Chinese affairs.

let's try and summarize where we're at at the moment.

And Joe, the bits I'm reading in the media is in terms of our

relationship with America, labor seems to be still all the way LBJ.

Yes.

It's just continues the comments and things that you seem to see.

Of course, we are just going to be the laptops of America into the

foreseeable future, and they just don't want to cut loose unhitch the wagon.

We are just tied to them.

There's lots of countries in the Asia Pacific region who you just

have an independent policy who keep themselves separate, and we

just have convinced ourselves.

that America is going to save us from the evil Chinese.

There is the whole Anglo thing.

Isn't there?

English speaking friends will support English, speaking

friends against those Asian.

It's like the five I's.

Yeah, there, there seems to be very much a we trust English speaking countries more

than we trust those bloody foreigners.

Yes.

And yeah, because we have a shared heritage of British colonialism.

Yes.

At some point, please labor grow up and recognize as Keating like you all

general fact at the alter of poor Keating.

He's been telling.

Australians for the last 30 years, we've got to be an independent,

strong, an independent voice is actually where we'll get security, not

from being this lap dog of America.

It's just gonna get us into trouble.

But they the comments that are coming out have us still hitch to the wagon.

And, I've got such an issue with this because.

The Americans are such freaks and oh, they've gotta protect

us from the evil Chinese.

I was talking to my sister-in-law just before the podcast and little

bit on this, just talking about, oh what, if they invite invade Taiwan

or whatever, I was like, if China invaded Taiwan full on invasion.

it still wouldn't add up to what America's been doing around

the world in the last 70 years.

Like they're just doing what normal superpowers do and you can't look at

the Americans actions over the last 70 years and and applaud it in any way.

Like they've been interfering and throwing overthrowing

governments left, and center for.

Since their inception, it's not just the last seven years.

It's since their inception.

That is what they are about the American empire.

And to just be continually saying, oh, we need America to save us from

imperialism from these other groups.

What if you think these guys have been doing all this time.

So that's part of it.

And the other part is they are in the decline.

They are not.

Going to be the hegemonic force into the future that they have been.

And so start thinking about how the power play will work out

over the next 20 or 30 years.

The American empire is in the decline.

Its only strength is military this stage.

Actually I'll go into their strengths.

No.

I was gonna say their theocracy is a great strong

point indeed.

In terms of exporting Christianity is one of their greatest exports.

Yeah.

It's particular branch of it.

Yeah.

So look, I dunno if I've ever said this before.

I've found in my notes.

Maybe I have, but America won the cold war, relying on three power bases,

financial military, and propaganda power.

It does seem the

Chinese are gonna be there though.

It says now there are chinks appearing in these three

power bases.

did I say that?

Yeah.

Now there, yeah.

Financial military and propaganda power.

So let's look at those powers.

So militarily it bullied smaller states.

Obvious invasions include Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, but

less obvious are the hundreds of interventions where the us supplied

covert or overt military assistance to governments or rebels that it favored.

And it is propaganda power to convince the world that these were necessary

actions to promote freedom and democracy.

And they're really about promoting the interests of Theo financially,

the USA bullet everywhere.

So through us dollar hedge of money and cheap money for us C.

It enabled us multinationals to buy industrial companies

and developed countries.

And through the IMF and the world bank, it forced smaller countries to sell their

commons on the cheap to us companies.

And if they didn't agree, it resorted backwards.

Military power to engineer, regime, change and installed,

friendly us friendly regimes.

And then it used more propaganda power to convince the rest of the world

that its actions were legitimate.

It propagandized everybody.

So through cultural Hege money in the English speaking world, it has

controlled the flow of information through mainstream, Western media, powerful

American multinational companies benefit from aggressive us foreign policy and

the mainstream media could not afford to criticize the program, even if it wanted

to the fear of losing advertising revenue.

The public has been propaganda to believe that the USA is the home of the brave

and the land of the free and will not accept fair criticism of us actions.

So you're right, Joe.

I did say now there are three cheek.

Now there are cheeks appearing in these three th faces.

So militarily Ukraine invasion shows that there's a limit to USA, military power.

Russia has nuclear weapons and the USA can't respond as it would.

China has built enough military capacity that it could defend

itself from a us invasion.

North Korea remains off limits, or as nukes, these countries have

tightly controlled their societies.

So it's difficult for the USA to engineer co attempts.

So that's a chin in the military power financially.

The us dollar is losing its Hege money.

So China, Russia, Iran, India, Venezuela, and other C.

Are looking to replace the us dollar with a combination of their own

currencies in gold and the theft of central bank assets, thinking

Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Russia will accelerate the need to ditch us bonds.

So the USA does not produce anything of importance to Russia and China.

They don't need to import us goods.

They can survive without them.

They can cut themselves from the USA without too much.

Russia used to buy grain from the us.

I dunno if that's still a thing yeah.

With what happened when they imposed restrictions on Russia?

Actually I think was Putin who.

It was an advantage for them.

They, a lot of industries have actually been revitalized because

they weren't able to import stuff.

So they started making their own cheese and all sorts of things.

They can get away with, they don't need they don't need America.

They can survive without them.

It's friend in

Russia was saying that he can still get his Guinness, although it sounds like.

He's now drinking the Russian equivalent of Guinness.

And I'm sure whatever they really need, they can get via China if

it's something in particular.

So unfortunately the propaganda power is as strong as ever.

So America's prosperity has come from bullying, brown people

and white people don't care.

However, us demands that Europe stopped buying Russian energy will

cause grief and resentment in.

They will object to being cold and hungry.

They will try to understand what is happening.

And despite the propaganda, their faith in America may be dented.

So the benefits of us Hemani has flowed to a small elite within America.

There are signs that us employees are finally revolting.

The Amazon union case is an example, hunger and pain may cause some Americans

to look beyond the propaganda and see the corruption in their society.

But Americans have been brainwashed for so long.

I don't think they're capable of pulling themselves outta the mere.

The Chinese state has restricted us propaganda in China.

The average Chinese is supportive of the Chinese government and is

suspicious of us foreign policy.

And the Ukraine situation simply reinforces that China needs to

be independent wherever possible.

So the whole American style capital.

needs growth.

And since its inception has relied on conquest and acquisition, they, they

basically had to conquer the west.

Then they were basically conquering and acquiring.

If not, if not in the, the case of installing governments

and having their own C.

In Latin America, United fruit and all the rest of it.

The they've basically run out of countries to exploit at this point.

And Trump exposed internal dysfunction.

Ukraine is exposed in the limits of military power and Putin is now

exposed in the loss of financial power.

So what does this all mean for Australia?

Those guys are going downhill.

The empire is in decline.

And if we think hitching our wagon to them is the answer.

We're just kidding ourselves.

And I'm really worried that labor seems committed to this all the way with LBJ.

Oh, if somebody sees something in the media where labor

starts to make noises about.

Being more independent of the USA.

Please show it to me.

I can't wait to see it, but I'm not gonna hold a breath.

They did

mend fences with the French.

Yes, that's true.

Yep.

Surely the French should be whispering.

Surely McConn should have whispered into Albania's ear

and said, what are you doing?

You can't rely on those guys.

Iran loves Macon's probably, I don't know what sort of Frenchman he is.

Is

he's not a what it who's the, he's not a go list.

Okay.

Who believe in an independent France?

No.

Which is why?

Yeah, that, that was why they got outta NATO.

Was they didn't trust NATO to protect them.

They got back in 10 years ago

now.

Okay.

But

I certainly remember yeah.

As a child with the cold war still in full flight, that France was not part of NATO.

France was independent.

Yeah, probably Maran is us friendly.

Probably.

I would've thought so.

I saw this tweet which said.

This final season of America has been absolutely amazing.

It starts with an attack on the capital and ends with a new Supreme court that

is actively dismantling democracy.

That's some topnotch writing and it perfectly sets up the civil

war miniseries that will follow.

I think at what wrote this, didn't she

that yes.

Ted in that way.

Isn't it?

Who's that?

There's a politician there.

MTG Marjorie Taylor, green.

Green.

Yes.

She openly came out on this thing saying I believe temple fruit loop.

I believe, we should openly aim to, we are, we should be a Christian

nationalist country and it's just openly.

Saying just some crazy shit.

And she was challenged in her primary, but got like record support and survived.

And so she's just a complete Nutter.

That is gonna be fine for another term.

Didn't

follow up to find out whether that Marial candidate won the

Jesus gun's baby's candidate.

I don't know.

Just you remember the sign.

What did the sign say?

It was on the side of the coach.

She was driving around and it was literally Jesus guns, babies,

right?

Not necessarily in that order.

There's one politician who said I would kill my BA I would kill my

grandchildren in order to make sure that this legislation got through

this antiabortion legislation.

Like I said, some crazy statement about literally willing to kill

her grandchildren to make sure.

If it meant that this legislation would get through oh, elected politicians.

Yeah.

Where are we up to?

It is getting depressing.

Isn't it?

I'm mindful of that.

We're 55 minutes in.

Yeah, maybe I should end.

Maybe should end this one.

Yeah.

Dear listener.

Because of technical issues.

I'm gonna keep this one under an hour.

And and next week you'll hear from Joe and I we'll really be talking

about the second part of our conversation, which we 25th of July.

Yeah.

Continuing our rant.

All right, we'll finish this one here.

Talk to you next week.

Bye.