The Great Economic Heist Extracting Trillions From America ft. Dylan Ratigan

0:00Hello again from Newsweek headquarters at the top of the World Trade Center in beautiful spring New York City. I'm Carlo Versano. This is another episode of the 1600. This country was stone cold dead. So guys, I want to get right to my guest today. I've been really excited to talk to this guy. This is somebody who I've long admired, whose career his mind has sort of followed in some weird ways, actually. Dylan Ratigan. He joins the show today. Dylan is, I guess, the definition of a polymath, you might say. He's a financial journalist turned political activist turned entrepreneur. You may remember him as the creator and host of Fast Money on CNBC, where I actually worked with him during the period covering what we now call the Great Recession, the Great Financial Crisis.

0:42He resigned in protest to host a show on MSNBC where he confronted head on some of the topics, some of the sort of political and economic crises that we're still talking about today. And then he resigned that job in protest, too, which we'll get into, but not before unleashing one of the great viral rants ever to grace the cable news airwaves. He also ran for Congress, wrote a New York Times bestseller, founded companies across sustainability, agriculture and footwear. And now he's on Substack. Dylan, sorry for the for the long intro, but I hope that that got to at least some of your bio. And no, it's a it's a it's a pleasure.

1:16It's nice to see you and I appreciate you having me out. No, it's great to have you. You're coming at us from beautiful Milan, Italy today. So look, Dylan, I'm sure you are sick of watching it. You've watched it a million times. But if you would allow it, I would like our audience to watch with us a clip from that rant that I mentioned at the top. And for those listening who might not remember, just to set the table here, this is Dylan Radigan speaking on his show, his show, the Dylan Radigan show on MSNBC in August of 2011. So I think that's important for the framing here. This is the, you know, coming up on the end of Obama's first term.

1:48Shine is starting to sort of wear off a little bit on him, the man and the politician. The recession technically over, but not really, right? Unemployment was 9.1 percent this month. The political discourse was dominated by a debt ceiling showdown, which is what you're actually talking about here. So, yeah, without further ado, let's just show a little bit of this clip. What are you talking about? Four trillion dollars. Four trillion dollars. We owe 70 trillion dollars. I understand that. But it goes to you to walk out a four trillion dollar solution, which is basically just a way for the Democrats to avoid dealing with this until 2017.

2:18I'm not here to talk about plans to deal with this till 2017. I'm saying we've got a real problem and I'm tired of Republicans and Democrats who either want Republicans who want to burn the place to the ground and Democrats with all due respect who want to offer a plan that gets it through the end of their second term of their presidency and then screws me and my kids when it's over. And until we do that, we have to deal with the extraction that is at foot. It is the reason the financial markets are behaving to where they're behaving. That is a mathematical fact. This is not some opinion. This is a mathematical fact.

2:50tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America. Democrats aren't doing it. Republicans are not doing it. An entire integrated system, financial system, trading system, taxing system that was created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now. And we're sitting here arguing about whether we should do the$4 trillion plan that kicks the can down the road for the president for 2017 or burn the place to the ground. both of which are reckless, irresponsible, and stupid. And the fact of the matter is, until we actually, and I'm sorry to lose my temper, but I'll tell you what, I've been coming on TV for three years doing this, and the fact of the matter is that there's a refusal on both the Democratic and the Republican side of the aisle to acknowledge the mathematical problem, which is that the United States of America is being extracted.

3:45It's being extracted through banking, it's being extracted through trade, and it's being extracted through taxation. And there's not a single politician that has stepped forward, Susan, to deal with this. Apologies, Dillard. I know watching old video of yourself is a terrible experience. When you watch that now, I mean, the thing that struck me, you could have said that yesterday. I mean, yeah, that's for sure the only thing that matters about that rant, I guess they call it. I think the emotion that I was expressing, obviously, was a lot of anger and a lot of frustration in the way that I was speaking.

4:26And I was very angry and very frustrated. But I think that the reason it went into the million, it was viral, was because that emotion is something that's shared by millions of people. And I also think that the frustration that existed in 2011, because the other thing is, because I was part of the sort of media ecosystem at that time. So I was at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, which had happened a few months before when Barack Obama spent the whole time making fun of Donald Trump, by the way. So I was in that room as well. And I do think that there's two things that really strike me about that rant.

5:02One, the most important thing you said. It could be true. It's just as true today. If not, it's actually more true today, actually, than it was when I was speaking 15 years ago. And two, the frustration that I was expressing, which was a reflection of millions of people, is something that both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump seized on in their presidential campaigns. And I believe the primary reason that Donald Trump is the president of the United States today and is the most objectively, openly, rapaciously corrupt president in the history of the United States is entirely because the Obama administration, and it's not fair to blame you.

5:43You want to say, oh, it's Barack Obama's fault, it's Donald Trump's fault. Because the entire government apparatus, which is really jointly controlled by both of these political parties, was so stone cold in resistance to the correct path of reform for the financial crisis in 2009, that it ceded a level of resentment that is exploited to this day and is the primary fuel that perpetuates the current president and propelled him into office, and also, I think, is what really was behind the success, albeit limited, but the success of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns. And I honestly think it's the reason the mayor of New York is who it is right now.

6:25I mean, I think there's a misunderstanding that this comes from one side or the other. There's institutional corruption, and then there are people that at least position themselves as institutional outsiders that exploit the obvious institutional corruption. and that comment that I was making back then was obviously an objection to the institutional corruption. Hey guys, sorry for the interruption. Just going to take a quick ad break here and we'll be right back. Now, it's so refreshing to hear somebody say that because I feel like for a long time I've been trying to just tell other liberals and my family and my friends, like, again, Obama was not the cause of this, but his failure to take the moment that he was given in that period when we were at CNBC in 08 and 09 and then and then after that at MS um his his basically his fit his recapitalization of Wall Street with no reform you had to recap it but you didn't have to recap it without reform exactly at the expense of everybody else and without reform that was the original sin to me for the moment that we're in today um and so that rant is also funny for me watching because I was there for that I was actually just behind your right shoulder because I worked at the I worked on the NBC assignment desk at the time, and I always look forward to you coming on the air because you were always ready to rock and roll.

7:41But I remember physically being there. I remember it like it was yesterday. And it's hard to overstate for a lot of people, I think, how rare it was at that time on a channel like MSNBC for one of its own hosts to come out and basically say, look, the game is rigged, right? Pox on both houses, the banking, the taxation, the trade systems exist to extract wealth from the people, which is what you're essentially saying there. It doesn't matter who's in power, right? Everyone's in on it but you. And I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but that's sort of deep. No, I agree with that. That's a perfect summary.

8:12Right. You were one of the first, frankly, in the U.S. media apparatus to clock that at a time when Obama was still sort of seen as this sort of like savior of democratic norms and not, frankly, the empty suit and triangulator he ultimately was. I don't want to make this like the bash Obama podcast. But, yeah, just speak to that. Well, the thing is you can bash any of the presidents. Right. But in some ways, I feel like it's sort of like the financial crisis itself, which was really a systemic failure going to a series of laws that go back into the late 90s. You know, we'd have to relive that entire thing from the swaps and all this.

8:46But the financial crisis is really sort of used to pin on Bernie Madoff. It's like, oh, Bernie Madoff. Well, Bernie Madoff was a flea on a dog in the context of the damages of the financial crisis. And I think whether it's piling on Barack Obama, piling on Joe Biden, piling on Donald Trump, all of that actually serves the institutional power of the government by creating a scapegoat for the ongoing corruption of the government. full stop by both parties by then saying, oh, well, it was Obama's fault. It is Biden's fault. It is Trump's fault, which then implicitly takes attention away from the institution that is the combined force of the government, which is actually the functioning entity that's perpetrating all of this.

9:37And you need look no further than the budgets of any Republican or Democratic Party government. And the one thing they all have in common is they basically change the funding on the margins for the politically the socially sort of activating things like a more for defense or more for for for minorities and these things but 99 98 percent of the budget of both governments is always the exact same and it always gets bigger right exactly no the made off is a great point because i remember again i remember covering that in the moment being like yeah obviously this guy's like you've you know evil incarnate terrible person but but we he He became the guy to hang the financial crisis on when, like you said perfectly, right?

10:18He was a fully on a dog's s**t. He was a nobody. And he was, I think, one of maybe two people who actually got perp-walked and prosecuted and imprisoned for what happened in 08, right? Yeah. I mean, there's an interesting—I'm going to give you a little Italy anecdote. Please. There are lists of cities inside of Italy that are only published on the Italian language train schedule. because part of the way Italy manages the fact that it's a mega tourism mecca is to try to focus all of the tourists on a few places. So you know all the tourists are going to go to Venice, all the tourists are going to go to Florence, all the tourists are going to go to Rome.

10:56But then that leaves the rest of Italy for Italians. And so when you focus all of the crimes and emotion of the financial crisis on one person, Bernie Madoff, or when you focus the narrative of corruption or policy failure on one president, whether it's Obama, Biden, or Trump, that is the most effective way to relieve all scrutiny on the actual institution that is perpetrating 99 % of the abuse. Right. Which in this case is the Congress, but also just the two-party industrial complex, for lack of a better term. Can I just talk about that for one second? Yes, please. Having run for Congress, you have to understand what the political system is.

11:41The political system is, let's just look at the two parties. The two parties functionally are media companies. The DNC is a media company. The RNC is a media company. They raise money by vilifying the opponent. So you may not like Republicans, but they just tell stories that are offensive about Democrats and activates a certain number of people. And they send money because the Democrats are intolerable for whatever the list of reasons is. Or the opposite. The Democrats raise money by vilifying Republicans. You activate that. Now they have two funded media companies. And what is the media used to do?

12:16The media is used to perpetuate the vilification of the opponent such that both parties perpetuate their permanent control of the government. And there is never a meaningful policy change, regardless of the change in power. And again, if you just look at the policies under Barack Obama, under Trump one, under Biden one, under Trump two, all of the policies outside of the margins are the same. Right. Speaking of the media, just I want to briefly get back to your media career for a little bit. So you left NBC, you left MSNBC about a year after the clip that we just showed. I mean, it wasn't because your show wasn't doing well.

12:56My recollection was it was doing quite well. So you were basically left at the height of your ratings. That does not happen in media, especially does not happen in television news. Why did you walk? I felt like I was being, I was participating, I felt like I was enriching myself by participating in a system that was perpetuating the exact thing that I was claiming to oppose. and on a human level, whatever the external trappings of success were at that time, I have never been more unhappy as a human being than feeling like I was inside of a, that I was not just inside of a system, that I was a dynamic, active participant and protagonist inside of a system that was being used as a device to perpetuate the very thing that I claimed to be opposing.

13:59And in the process, I was enriching myself and really solving no—I was making the problem worse and at the same time really making myself personally unhappy. I mean, again, it's incredible that that kind of thing doesn't happen in this business, or really in many businesses, taking a principled stand like that to your own financial detriment. You remember the Tom Cruise scene in Jerry Maguire? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was basically that. It's a version of that. Right. So, you know, it went about as well. Well, so one of the things in the, you know, I was watching some of your old media appearances, and you were talking about, you know, your big thing when you were on MSNBC was we got to get the money out of politics, right?

14:45That is the root of all political evil, which, again, is hilarious thinking about that now. We've got Jared Kushner flying to Pakistan today to do a deal with the Iranians while he's making billions of dollars negotiating with some of these same countries in the Gulf. I mean, and that's one of like 100 examples I can think of off the top of my head. but till before we get to Kushner and the rest and the war one of the things that you said in the media appearance that I caught is you had a solution that was kind of off the top of your head but I thought it was interesting to bring up you you floated this idea that there should be some sort of like mandatory political participation in this country and I think part of that idea was basically that the government should give the people some amount of money whether it's $200 or$500.

15:31My suggestion was mandatory fund. My suggestion very simply was illegal not to vote, illegal not to contribute,$200 per person. Like imagine, think of it like a gambling account, right? Now that Calci and Polymarket, all these things. Imagine everybody gets$200. You're required to spend the$200. The only potential source of political funding for any candidate is from the$200 of every, all whatever i don't know what the number of voting age americans is probably like 250 million or something um and that basically you force uh small dollar donors to be the only funding source you would obviously eliminate the super PACs and all and all that jazz i mean that that that's not the only reform that i suggested but my logic in all of my reform uh advocacy is to actually create hyper engagement, not disengagement at a, on a small dollar level.

16:28It's another, and then the other biggie is ranked choice voting because right now all of the voting mechanics are, are tied to the degree to which I, if you and I are running against each other, I don't have to run for anything. I just have to raise money and convince everybody that you're worse than me. Right. And so we're the lesser of two evils. Right. And that's why every single administration is worse than the last administration because it's perpetually lesser of two evils. So the combination of forced donors and the transition to ranked choice voting eliminates lesser of two evils and then creates distributed campaign finance.

17:05I mean, it sounds commonsensical to me, at least. What do I know about it? It's commonsensical to everybody, but it's how the two political parties would lose all their power if this ever happened. Right, exactly. You're basically socializing the con the conversation around politics i'd say hey dylan where are you you know what are you thinking about doing with your 200 bucks what do you like yeah and then i break your balls i'm like oh you're gonna give bernie sanders 10 bucks what are you crazy like it becomes like a barroom car becomes more of a and it also creates more of a a less of a of a toxic or acidic or a high it becomes more like i like if you like the knicks and i like you know the celtics it doesn't mean we're not going to be friends it's just a way to break balls.

17:48And I think that's really where politics should live as opposed to in this existential sort of psychotic place we are now. No, it really, I mean, it is, it feels psychotic. It really does. Just having covered this for the last 20 years, it's like nothing I can remember. So you spoke to this. I wanted to ask you about, you know, the rant was kind of like a canary in the coal mine for the rise of Bernie Sanders, but also of Trump, right? Four years later, he comes down the escalator, and he's making a sort of similar argument. Not really similar argument, but he's using the anger. He's identifying the same problem and offering different solutions.

18:23Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Better way to put it. He was the first, I think, to really get this as a compelling electoral argument. Maybe Sanders also. Why did the Democrats seed the economic populist narrative back then? Did they just not see which way the wind was blowing after the financial crisis? You did. Yeah, I mean, I really believe when you look at the institutional democratic power at that time, which was, and this is not, again, I hate to identify an individual because then you sort of pile on that individual. But at that point, it was obviously Hillary Clinton was the dominant leader. But I would say the same thing was true in the Republican Party outside of Trump.

18:59So there was the belief, and this is what happened, what I perceive happened on the democratic side was Hillary Clinton knows that it is a political master and a brilliant individual, brilliant politician. And she and her team were of the opinion that if they could get her to run against Donald Trump in a lesser of two evils system, that she would be perceived as the less evil option and she would win. And that's the problem with a lesser of two evil systems. It incentivizes a powerful candidate to actually try to support the most nutbag opponent that they could possibly have as the surest way to ensure their victory.

19:43And I think that there was a staggering arrogance that has prevailed over the leadership of both political parties for most of our lifetimes. Yeah. No, I mean, it's true. And you forget that, right, the Democrats wanted Trump as the nominee in 2016. actively cultivated Trump as Hillary's opponent because they believed it was the highest probability path to her victory. One of the greatest cell phones in American political history, probably, right? And the ultimate indictment of lesser of two evil strategy. Exactly. Exactly. You know, so we're talking corruption. I wanted to hold this up. This is the cover of Newsweek this week, which I happened to write it.

20:23It's called the, what is it called? The Welcome to the Golden Age of Corruption in America. It's got this nice picture of a pig eating$100 bills and an American flag. Needless to say, it's about the various levels of corruption that we're seeing in this administration, both from Trump having Kushner out there and Wyckoff doing these deals that are enriching themselves. Also, we get into the betting markets and all the insider trading happening there, as well as the president's market manipulation, which I'd like to ask you a little bit about. We've seen this a few times during the war now where we will see huge action in the pre-markets, whether it's buying oil futures or shorting the market based on something that Trump then says or tweets 15 minutes before the market opens.

21:07We see it at the close also. Have you ever seen anything like this in your career of covering corruption in politics? I mean, no one has, obviously. I think that's almost a rhetorical question. And the other thing that I'll layer in there is the financing of new defense startups by Trump's family that are then being awarded defense. No, it's amazing. I mean, it's spectacular. You know, I believe, however, that the table has been Trump is a phenomenally prolific and effective leader of corruption. And he's really sophisticated. He can do it through the defense contracts. He can do it through the insider trading.

21:50He can do it through the family relationships. He can do it through security contracts. He can do it through donations to things. I mean, the man is a master. But I believe the reason why it's so tolerated is because Joe Biden was corrupt in his own way. And the way everybody's arguing, oh, Hunter Biden is selling paintings for more than they're worth. Or Hunter Biden is taking 50 grand a month from Burisma. Meanwhile, that's chicken feed compared to the billions that Kushner's pulling down. Or, I mean, it just goes back in time, really, even the Clinton administration. I mean, this has been going on for a long time.

22:26And I think what—so the thing that I think about, Harvard did a study, I don't know, at some point decades ago, on what's called the ultimatum game, which is a psychological—it's a behavioral economics test, basically, in which they have one person is the king and then the other person is the slave, let's say. So you're the king and I'm the slave in the game. And you get 10 cookies. And the king gets to decide how many cookies that the slave gets. And the slave's only choice is to either accept the deal or the slave has the option to say nobody gets any cookies. And so they ran the test where they go, if the king keeps five cookies and gives the slave five cookies, obviously the slave says, no problem.

23:05If the king keeps six and the slave gets four, the slave still doesn't blow up the game. Takes the four cookies, king keeps six cookies. King keeps seven, slave keeps three. Very disgruntled slave, but still the slaves like three cookies is more than zero cookies. Better than none. At eight cookies to two cookies, because two cookies is still more than zero cookies, so it's economically irrational, right? Because two is more than zero. There's a behavioral economic dynamic where there's a universal rejection of the game where then the slave says, no, no, no cookies for me, no cookies for you. And I believe where we got to after the cover up of the failure to reform the banking system after 2009 is basically a behavioral economic response in voting to that is that is reflected in the ultimatum game.

24:03Or it's like if nobody can have anything, I won't let Jeb Bush, I won't let Hillary Clinton, I won't let whoever's institutional candidate burn it all down. And no one has exploited that more brilliantly than the Trump administration. I want to get to something that you did on Subsec recently about sort of what comes next. But put a pin in that for two seconds. I wanted to ask you about sort of a question that I get a lot from readers when I will make a similar point that you've been making your whole career, which is that the system is rigged and that both of these parties are sort of corrupt to varying degrees and, to your point, exist essentially now as media companies.

24:43I get a lot of pushback from our mostly liberal audience, which is like you're letting Trump off the hook, right? The point that they will make is that both parties are corrupt framing. Maybe it's true in parts, but it functionally advantages whatever party is more willing to break the norms, which in this case is the Republican Party under Donald Trump. Do you ever hear that, and do you think that's fair criticism that Trump is so abjectly worse than even the worst and most feckless Democrat that it's not fair to almost lump them together? Yeah, I mean I reject that wholeheartedly. In fact, I would go so far as to say America has so many wonderful attributes culturally, intellectually, creatively, financially.

25:30There is absolutely no reason why the United States of America should not have the most creative, the most intelligent, the most dynamic, the most spiritually evolved, financially evolved, emotionally evolved leader on earth. America is the only country in the history of the world founded on a concept, not on a racial identity. America is the only—I've moved to Italy. I'll never be Italian. I will always be an American living in Italy. But an Italian can move to America, and they're an American. Just as my grandparents did. I lived in Japan. I never became Japanese. But a Japanese man or woman can move to America.

26:08They become American. America is a very, very special place because it's the only country in the history of the world founded on a philosophical concept or an ideological concept, not on a racial concept. And so the fact that America isn't putting forth leadership that is not just adequate, but that is raising the bar on what is possible in the form of leadership, but in terms of intellect, in terms of emotion, in terms of spirit, all these things, should be rejected wholeheartedly. And it's such a low bar to say, well, you know, at least we're not Donald Trump. Well, yeah, OK. Right. I mean, you know.

26:50Can we shoot a little bit higher here? I mean, you know, we should not just shoot a little bit higher than not being Donald Trump. We should think about how competitive these little microcosms of America are in a good way. The creativity that exists in the entertainment business, the creativity that exists in finance to create whatever sort of undertakings and schemes, the creativity that exists in science. I mean, we have so much brilliant creativity. We have the world's deepest capital markets. We have the world's dominant currency. We're the only country in the world that provides basically almost unlimited capital to create new ideas, to conduct new experiments.

27:29So shame on all of us for not putting forth a politician that reflects that. Now, I want to be careful about the shaming because shame then creates all this sort of triangulated negative sort of side effects. I actually believe that America is hostage to a corrupt government. So it's like looking at the Saudi Arabian people or the Russian people or the North Korean people and saying, well, what kind of people live in North Korea that you would have a government like this in North Korea? Or what kind of people live in Russia that you would have Vladimir Putin as your leader? What kind of people live in Saudi Arabia that you would have beheadings?