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 Brenon Woods Hotel in New Hampshire. 40 nations get together and they discuss what the post-war peace will look like. Um, everyone knows that Nazi Germany will eventually be defeated as well as Japan.

So, the question now is how does the world build peace? um and prosperity after such a devastating uh war. And the 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. Um now the term we use for this is exorbitant privilege. This is like the power of God because you're basically turning taking paper and turning into 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. Um, and at any point you can choose to exchange US 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 uh global financial system that we still have today and um it is incredibly successful. This is the bank of international settlements in Basel, Switzerland.

It is the bank of banks. It is a central bank of central banks and the idea here is um you need to create a system for risk man for risk mitigation. So for example if maybe um a country goes bankrupt the other countries need to come in and uh rescue that country's economy. Okay. And so this bank is some of you never heard of but it's one of the most powerful institutions in the world because it facilitates the entire global financial economy.

Brenon Woods also created something called the World Bank um which is based in Washington DC and what it does is that um it gives out loans to third world nations like China. The IMF the international monetary fund coordinates global financial policy. Okay. So um the the the bank of international settlements, the world bank, the IMF among other organizations now becomes the global financial system and underpinning all of this is the US dollar as the global reserve currency. Okay.

So um where did the system come from? Well, comes from 1688. Remember this is the year that William of Orange of the Netherlands he goes to England and launches something called the Glorious Revolution and he takes a 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 the Dutch um West Indies company that has monopolized the spice trade in um um East Asia.

So it's the Dutch East East East East East Indies Company and so it's extremely wealth. Now as we discussed previously the Dutch are Calvinists. So they that 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 the Netherlands is at is being conquered or at war with France, with uh Spain, with with a host of of enemies. So, it's not the money isn't safe in uh 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 wealth becomes the basis of the Bank of England, which is considered the second um oldest central bank in the world, but it's really the first central bank in the world.

The reason why is um 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 missionaries.

um 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. Okay? 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.

All right? 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 um in a no plank wars. Okay. In 1815, Napoleon is finally defeated. Um 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, Napoleon, 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. Okay. So after the defeat of Napoleon and France, uh Britain becomes the global hedgeimon. And the Bank of England now becomes an imperial bank.

And the power of this is um before when you go when you go and conquer um a um a country or a nation, you're always afraid of rebellion, right? You're always afraid of local elite getting getting together and overthrowing 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.

All right? 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 empire for such a long time. Okay. The secret was international finance as embodied by the bank of England. Okay.

So let's summarize the history of central banking. Okay. It's complicated but we need to understand this history if we understand today's world. First important idea is that those coalists um they have a religious obsession with storing wealth. Okay, remember we discussed this right?

The Protestant religion demands that you get rich. The parliament of England guarantees this wealth does given England infinite financing for wars. This is important because if parliament is willing to guarantee financing um not only can it use all this wealth stored in the bank of England but it can also generate new wealth from investors overseas as well. Okay. Third idea this financing infinite financing allows Britain to defeat Napoleonia.

Fourth, the Bank of England stores wealth of corrupt local elites allowing for stability and and harmony within the 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 if all these provincial banks around America, they get together and decide uh 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. Okay? when you issue loans, you're basically putting money into the system. Okay. So, um in 1914, developed the Federal Reserve system and after World War uh two, 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, this is 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 easier for them to generate wealth for their investors. Okay? To grow capital, private central banks coordinate rather than compete.

There are parasites that feed off the nation state. Okay? 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. Okay.

And this is the modern financial system that we have today. The central banks basically rule the world. All right. Okay. So, um this is Carol Quickley and he wrote a book called Tragedy and Hope, which I highly recommend.

He was a Georgetown professor. He was um Bill Clinton's favorite professor at Georgetown. And um in his book, he explains how this financial system works. Okay, so let's read it very carefully. And this is he's talking about the 1920s after World War I.

The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim. 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 of for international settlements in Bassau, Switzerland. a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations.

Each central bank in the hands of men like Montigue Norman of the Bank of England, Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve, Charles Riss of the Bank of France, and Hel of the Ratsburg 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. Okay. So in today's world, it's essential banks act in concert that dictate financial, economic and political policy all around the world. All right. So how can we understand um central banks?

Well, the main function of central banks is to uh control the money supply. Okay. So money is just a concept. It's an idea. It's something that we just made up.

And the way the central bank controls money is by controlling its scarcity which creates the illusion that it's valuable. Okay. Also, you're forced to use money to buy things as well as pay taxes, take out loans. All right. Um, and they control the interest rate, which is the cost of borrowing money.

So, another way of saying this is one mechanism the central bank has to control the economy is by lowering or by lowering or increasing interest rates. If it lowers interest rate, it's just easier, cheaper to borrow money, right? So you can go buy a house or buy a car. They increase the um 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. 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.

Okay? Remember the Catholic Church in medieval Europe was the dominant power. It was uh beyond nations. Um it was 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 civil civilization but in a game where we're all individual players trying to make as much money as possible. Now 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 privatize or make independent the central bank. Okay. So, how do central bankers work? Well, let's let let's let's let's do an experiment, okay? Let's let's use a thought experiment.

Let's just say I'm a central bank and 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 $10,000." And you're like, "Okay, and what do you want for $10,000?" I'm like, "Nothing. Just go enjoy yourself." So, so you take that $10,000 and you go go on vacation to Hawaii. You live in a fivestar hotel.

You're really happy. You come back and he says, "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?" 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. Okay?

Otherwise, I have I have to go back to the bank and get more money." So, you start doing you start um opening businesses. You invest in restaurants and ski resorts. Who knows? Okay. But you 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 recognize 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 like I I know this sounds terrible, but that's really how they work in the world. All right, so I'll 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 uh which we know is worthless and 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 godhood. Okay. So um Bitcoin is something they've invented. It is the American military's failsafe system in case the American government defaults on the debt and the US dollar loses its reserve currency status. So, Bitcoin is being controlled by the American military along with certain technology companies and they're trying to displace the USD.

All right. So, 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 into believing it is God, that it is omniscient, that it is always right, that is the ultimate authority. Last example, sorry, last example is social media, video games, and porn are 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 um um this is something that we have to think about how the central banks are in power but there's always powers that are arising and which will challenge the power of the central banks.

Okay. So how do we get this system? Um go back to year 1950 1960. The world divided into 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 well we don't know the answer to that 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. Okay.

Okay. In 1991, the Soviet Union basically unconditionally surrenders and this creates the complete dominance of the American system, the PAX Americana. Um, so once America has domination, it now can spread its system throughout the world. This is Carl Pauper and he wrote a book called the open society and in it he questions um 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 totitarian philosophers in human history. And so what he proposes is that the height of civilization is the Anglo-American civilization. Okay? 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 um things that hum that that that are anti-human.

But the Americans and the British, they are practical. They are utitarian. they are they believe in evolution. Okay. And he and that's why call and so Carl proper believes the Anglo-American civilization is really the height of human civilization.

But there's actually another way to understand the Pax Americana. And so the idea is from World War II we we transfer to 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 fact of Americana, what matters is the international rulesbased order which includes central banks but also includes United Nations, right?

Um World War II is about mercantalism. Mechanalism is that you only trade within your sovereignty. Okay? You only trade with your colonies. But Pax American argues for global free trade.

Global free trade will lead to prosperity in the world. World War II argues for unit of will and Paxame argues for consumerism. Okay, 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 end of history these ideas. All right.

In other words, what's happened in our world is the world's gone from one that focus on civilization to a game. In a in a civilization, people are citizens who f who sacrifice themselves in order to obtain glory. Okay? So, think of Achilles, right? Achilles went to Troy because he was a competition among the his his other Greeks to uh seek eternal glory.

Okay. But in a 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. Okay, what what what is cheating?

We cheating is basically creating monopoly and then you're forced and everyone's just forced to uh pay as much as you want. Okay. So, John Rockerfeller, um Bill Gates, these were all monopolists and and they were the wealthiest people in human history. Okay. All right.

So, um after uh World War II, America is the only major industrial nation left standing. And America uses opportunity to rebuild both its economy as well as the global economy. And it does so by um trans transferring its wartime economy into a peace time economy. Okay? In a wartime economy, you're m manufacturing goods at mass, right?

When a peace 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 products, these manufactured goods, these cars, and you will buy them. Europe is like we have no money. And America's like, "Don't worry about it.

We'll lend you the money." Okay? And so, uh, this worked out really well for America. If you were a white high school graduate male in America 1950s and 60s,7s, you had the best life. You lived better than the nobility of Rome. Okay, this is just a guy.

He could be a salesperson. He could be a clerk. 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 P american Americana 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 uh were destroyed in World War II.

So they were incentivized to work together to work hard to rebuild their uh civilization and German manufacturing became famous throughout the world as did Japanese manufacturing. Okay. So now what's happening is because of the security of German and Japanese manufactured goods, America was transitioning transitioning from a creditor nation where everyone owed it money to a debtor nation where its consumers were buying things that they couldn't really afford from overseas. Okay. And again, America did 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 millions of people.

They manufacture weapons and are intent on war. They are our true enemy. If we allow the military-industrial complex to hijack the American political system, then we'll be c then we'll be constantly fighting these useless wars that will back up our nation. Be aware. This is our greatest threat to our nation in our history.

Okay. This is his farewell address. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced powers exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. Okay, he's talking about the military-industrial complex and it proved present and prophetic because after he retire 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.

Most famous example is the Vietnam war. Okay. uh 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, right? Um at this time, America was also competing in with the Soviet Union in the space race, right?

So in 1969, America sent um 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 this in space? And why is this flag uh floating around? Okay, conspiracy theorists would would ask these questions. I don't ask these questions because I'm not a conspiracy theorist.

Just just so we're completely sure. Okay. Also at this time, Lynen 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. Okay?

So, you had um um free healthcare for the elderly. You had programs like Head Start. It was fantastic, but it's also really really expensive. So if you are um a nation like France, you're like, you know what, America is sending people to the moon. Um it's fighting all these pointless wars and it's um um 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 no longer able to repay its obligations? That's why France under Charles de Gaul sent warships to America in the mid60s to repatriate its gold. it's afraid that America will uh go bankrupt and this proved very very wise and at this and when after France did this there's now 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 dollars 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 primar primarily on people's faith in its value. Okay. So this leads to a lot of problems like inflation and oil shock. So to solve this problem in 1977 Nixon has agreement with Saudi Arabia.

Basically the 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 sa has will be invested in US treasuries. Okay. 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 all that was extremely clever.

He went to China. Okay, so for the longest time, China and United States were in a cold war. Americans basically isolated China. So 1972, Nixon visited Maong. 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 to educate the Chinese elite.

And what's really important is American defense companies started to give military secret technology to China. Okay. Now I know that in 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. Okay.

Why would why would America do this? To create dependence on America. Because once a dependence is created then Chinese will want US dollars. Okay. The intention has always been to create a market for US dollars in order to prop up the uh US currency.

Okay? Does that make sense? So Saudi Arabia uh gave its oil to United States and China gave its labor okay 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 called the Plaza Court. The Plaza court was between the central bankers um and the finance ministries of different nations, but primary between United States and Japan.

Japan at this point was an export powerhouse. It was the second largest economy in the world. Um high savings rate. Uh people really didn't want to buy American goods. But but Americans love Japanese goods.

Okay? Right? So was 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 with we will appreciate it against the US dollar. Okay? So, as Japanese um consumers, you're able to buy more from the United States. Now, Japanese uh economists thought this was a terrible idea, but because America has military bases in Japan, Japan didn't really have a choice in the matter, right?

And so, this created um the Japanese uh explosion of wealth. Okay. So they were by Rockefeller um plaza in New York City and this created uh affair of Japan in uh in the United States. So to show you to demonstrate you to you how ridiculous situation was in the year 1990 uh 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 Ko and go buy Canada for yourself. Okay, that's how ridiculous the situation was in Japan. Because of the appreciation of the yen, cheap money flooded into the nation of Japan and so people were speculating on real estate and the stock market. Okay, which led to ultimately economic collapse in Japan. So as you can see um from the 60s up until about the 90s Japanese growth was pretty strong but after the plastic accord 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 and a nation you really want to destroy an economy in a nation give them easy money. All right. If I want to destroy you as a person, I'm gonna give you a million dollars because you're gonna take that million dollars and do stupid things with it.

Okay. Can you clarify a bit of easy money? Oh, okay. Yeah. Um, what does easy money mean?

Easy money just means that you think it's free. You don't have to you have to work for it. You don't have to um earn it. Okay? And the idea of easy money is central banks have the power to print money.

So, if you come to me, I'm a bank. I can actually just give you a million dollars and you take it. That's easy money, right? Okay, that that's the idea. Okay, so you don't understand this.

It's a hard concept to understand, but banks have that power. They can just put money out of nothing. Okay, and this what I 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 into financial speculators. The reason why is maybe you're a car company, okay? Right? And before you make you you're making good money uh making cars and selling to the Americans. But if the economy is is blowing up, the stock market is increasing, the real estate market is increasing, you're actually better off taking all your savings, your investments, and putting into the stock market, right?

Because you 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 that's easy to understand, right?

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

And the last thing, this is really important, is because all all this surge in um um 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. Okay? And the reason why is Japanese young people do not see a future for themselves. Houses are too expensive.

The um um jobs don't pay that well. Okay. Um any questions before I continue? Is this fair? Okay.

All right. Let's continue. But it's not just Japan. It's also the 1997 Asian financial crisis. remember uh this is when South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia um their currencies were under attack and because their currencies were under attack um they became devalued.

The problem with this is um they before this Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea had access to easy money provided by central banks and so so they could afford to buy things overseas in investments overseas. They could uh but once the value was was de once the currency was devalued they now went bankrupt. Okay? And as a result the national moni 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 PAX Americana. Okay, and in the Pax Americana the system is America would ship its manufacturing overseas. Remember manufacturing was a source of middle class wealth generation. Now it's shipping all all its manufacturing overseas to focus on financialization.

All right. So the idea is that Wall Street would take all its money, all its wealth being generated overseas and then take it back to America and use it to um invest in America to basically engage in financial games. Okay, does that make sense? So in other words, before America was manufacturing things like cars and and washing machines. Now America is a scambling.

Okay, 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 um 2001 911 um the world trade center right uh the terrorist attacks again I'm not conspiracy theorist so I'm not going to go into the conspiracies behind this but it lead it alleged something called a war on terror where America for no particular reason went to Iraq Syria Libya and destroyed destroyed these countries. Now, if you're a conspiracy theorist, you would say, well, they destroyed these countries because these countries didn't have central banks, right? 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 Wall Street did was it started to invest in really bad investments. It was encouraging people with no money to go and buy out 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 the what'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 signed in 1776. By the year 1980, about 20 years later, it had a trillion dollars in debt.

Today, it has now $37 trillion in debt. Okay, this is all money printing. Starting about 2008, boom, you you see the steep curve going all the way up. All right. Um, the economy in America right now is really screwed up.

The reason why is the stock market is is worth twice as much as the real economy. Okay, that makes no sense at all. The total value of the US economy is half of that of the stock market. Okay. So, this shows you that right now America is living in a fantasy.

It's a makebelieve economy. Um um the other problem is this massive wealth inequality. Okay. So, as you can see um the wealth wealthy people are pretty wealthy but by by 2000 uh but but but by 1980 the time of Reagan it shoots all the way up. Okay.

Okay, so you have this massive wealth inequality being um um created in the United States. Th this also shows you how wealthy the top 0001% are relative to everyone else. Okay. So the main beneficiaries of all these reforms of this financation has been the ultra wealthy in America. Um, 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 this system is designed to exploit the middle class by forcing into debt so as to to enrich the wealthy's investments. Okay, 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 encouraged 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 Australia 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 um fancy um 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 off. You guys, not not the current people, but you guys or your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren. 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 that's really important is it's created a lot of political corruption.

All right, so behind all this veneer 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. There's this very famous quote by Charles Bier who said, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." Okay? Well, I'm I'm going I'm going to paraphrase him, okay? And 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. All right? This is no different from 1985 the plaster cords when America basically encouraged the Japanese to increase the value of their yen which led to economic collapse. Well, but when when the Americans encouraged the Chinese to print money in about 2008 and about um 2015, it basically created conditions for China's economic collapse. Okay.

All right. This is what led to the rise of this man, our dear fearless leader. Okay. Um, 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 fighting very hard to um save the Chinese nation. Okay, that's what I believe. Um, and so you can make the argument that what's happening today in China is no different from the open wars. Remember Britain um created an opium epidemic in China in order to enslave the Chinese economy to the global financial system. Right?

That's that was the opium wars. Well, the same is happening today where the Americans have basically created a Chinese dependency on US dollars, right? What is the Chinese dream? The Chinese dream is work hard, get into a good school, get rich, move your money and your children to United States. That's a 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 Is that not the Chinese dream? All right.

All right. So now you have the COVID uh 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 United States. So by imploding the 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 tax americana man 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. And at the very top of this pyramid are the financeers 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 you uh Russia invaded Ukraine because if Russia were able to dominate Ukraine Russia and Ukraine together would control onethird onethird of the world's carbohydrates without Russian food Africa and the ities would both starve to death. Okay?

And so that is the rationale for Putin's invasion of Ukraine. He's a genius. He understands there's fundamental weakness in the American system. Okay? 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 tiger. faith in the USD rests on the aura of the American military's inability and invincibility. This now forces the Americans to invade Iran. Okay, 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 it's not worth anything? Why what does Japan buy US dollars? What does Germany? The answer is they're afraid that if they don't buy US dollars, America will come invade them.

Okay? They have no choice in the matter. But now that Putin has showed that actually you know 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 this in the military in order to restore faith in the US dollar.

Okay, does that make sense? [Music] 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 Palestine conflict because America just can't go invade Iran for no reason. It needs a pretext. The perfect pretext is Israel comes to conflict with Iran. Iran attacks Israel.

United States must now defend Israel because Israel is its ally. Right? Does that make sense? So, America needs a scapeold. That scapeold 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. Okay, Iran. 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. Problem though is that Iran is not an adversary that America can defeat. The reason why is the geography of Iraq. 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 it has fighter planes, right?

It's pretty easy to destroy a desert. But I Iran Iran is all mountains. These fighter planes do no good against mountains. You can't bomb a mountain into submission. Okay?

So if America were to invade Iran, there's very little ch very little chance that um America would win this war. In fact, it may be the end of the American Empire. And Putin has a plan. Okay, Putin is a genius. He knows exactly what will happen.

So Putin is preparing for this possible invasion um of Iran. So this is a really important picture. Putin signed an agreement with Kim Jun. The agreement is something called a mutual defense pact which means that if North Korea ever is ever attacked, Putin would 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.

Right 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. Okay?

And Putin is fairly certain this won't happen either. That's why he's f he's now best friends with Kim Jun because Kim 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 Korea and Iran. Okay, that's a grand strategy of Putin. This is his trump card.

Okay, does that make sense? All right. Now, what I'm saying here is this. I'm saying like I know there's a lot of conflict now between China and America. There's a trade war going on.

Um but I think this will pass. I think there'll be a reproachment between China and America because both economies are dependent on each other. Right? So I think this friendship between Putin and China won't last very long. Um there's also really a lot of geopolitical reasons why this friendship won't last very long, right?

Because China and Russia have a lot of geopolitical conflicts, right? They share a border. They're trying to vive for influence in the um 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 this I think are going to be the two big geopolitical surprises 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 will have a reproachment. Okay. All right. So, um, Donald Trump, president of the United States, he wants a third term.

Okay. He's creating everything he's doing right now is because he wants to be king of the United States. He wants a third term, okay? for a variety of reasons. Okay, I I won't go into many reasons, okay?

But he's that narcissistic. Um, he has he has to solve a problem. His problem is the national debt, right, is now $37 trillion. You can't pay this off. You can never pay this off.

But the theory is 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 you can you can constantly increase this debt. Okay, that's a theory. Um, this explains the US China trade war. Everything that we're seeing today is because Donald Trump needs to come to an agreement with China for a variety of reasons.

Okay. The first reason is uh Trump wants to invade Iran and so he needs to be on good terms with China. Okay. 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 uh Chinese currency into US currency.

uh American investors aren't allowed to come to China and buy up um ch the Chinese financial system. Trump wants China to open up China 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 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 of negotiation.

Okay? There's no way that America will shut out Chinese students because America needs that needs that money. Okay? Well, without without Chinese spending money in America, without Chinese wanting to purchase US dollars, the American company will collapse. So there's no way that America will close its b its door to Chinese students, but it needs China open up its economy further more to create more interdependency to save the dollar.

Okay. All right. So where am I getting these ideas? Like like am I just making this stuff up? Um so in this class, what you're taught is that history tends to repeat itself.

And by studying history meticulously and thoroughly, we can gain 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 um in about 400 BC. Okay, this is um fusidities and he wrote a very famous book called the history of the pelipian war which is what we discussed last semester. Now the pesian war is a war between Athens and Sparta for hedgemony. It um on the Greek mainland.

Okay. Um so in 480 Athens and Sparta were best friends. They fought against Persia which was invading the Greek mainland. And at the battle of Salamus the Athenians basically destroy the Persian navy and the Persians were forced to retreat. But there's always a threat that Persia over here would would come back and invade uh Athens and Sparta.

Okay. As well throughout the Aian Sea are Greek islands and colonies that are afraid of Persian hijgemony. So after the defeat of the Persians, the Athenians got together with these colonies and create something called the Dian league. The Dian league is like NATO. It's a defensive line alliance.

the Persians attack then this alliance will um will defend together against the 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 our gold okay so to all these um um islands they put all their wealth on a place called Delos. This is why why we have the Delian League name. Okay. And this money is meant as a mutual defense fund.

You're not supposed to touch it until unless the Persians invade, in which case you use this money to uh defend against a person. Okay, that's the idea. And this worked out well until the Athenians stole the money, right? Uh why? Because they want to create something called the Parthonon.

Okay, which is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. And within the building is the statue of Athena. It's pure gold. Okay. So the Athenian stole all this money from Delos from their allies and they built this Parthonon and the wealthy were able to steal from the Parthonon in the construction process.

And so the citizens of of 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 Pelvision war because after Athens stole this money, it didn't it 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 racket. If you don't give us 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 P pelpian war.

Okay. So there are three major incidents from the pelpian war that I want us to focus on. The first incident is in 428 B.CE um a place called Metalin um an island. They were a former um Athenian ally who refused to pay tribute. So Athenians invaded and conquer it.

And now the 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, um, one faction in Athens said, "Let's kill all the men." Okay, pretty simple, right? Let's kill all the men and then we'll we'll, um, spread fear among our allies and no one will rebel against anymore.

Um, so they have have a debate and all say, "Let's kill them all." So, they send a tri, 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 women and the children. Okay. But after after the debate, um 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 um we are a democrat. We're 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 says, "No, we're Athenians.

we're virtuous. We will not do this. So they send another tri to catch up to the first tri. And remember the first triim is way ahead, right? They they they have a day's um um um journey ahead.

So the other triim, they work their their asses off to catch up to the first triim 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 constant between democracy and empire. Right? Now let's fast forward um to um 416.

And now another thing happens where the Athenians are losing this war against Sparta. It's cost them a lot of money. Um they're forced to melt down the statue of Athena, the goddess, and use the gold to pay for this this war. Okay. And so um at 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." Okay?

They're basically like a mafia racket now. And the and the the millennials say we we we're neutral. Uh you have to respect our neutrality. And the Athenian say in response, right, as the world goes is only in question between equals in power while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. All right.

So, so 12 years later, the Athenian like screw virtue, screw democracy, screw liberty, just give us money. All right. So remember this idea Athenians wanted the tropics of empire they also wanted to feel virtuous and over time as a Athens became more poor they were like screw virtue let's have an empire and that's why um in 415 alabades who who basically is a 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 okay so they decide 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 the soldiers and eventually their expedition gets wiped out um at Syracuse. Okay. So, it's a disaster for the Athenians and it turns the war in favor of the Spartans. Um, Athen is so bad that that everyone gets together.

The entire world 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 lay siege to Athens and defeat the Athenians. Okay, so why is this important? Well, because history history is going to repeat itself.

Okay, there there's going to be a lot of similarities between the pelpian war and and American empire today. First similarity is NATO. Remember the Athenians have the daily league and um the Americans have NATO, okay? And NATO is meant to be a def defensive alliance. But if that's the case, then why is it that the Nordstream pipeline got destroyed?

Remember the Nordstream pipeline it sends cheap gas from Russia to Germany. The German economy is use cheap Russian resources primarily gas uh manufacturing the best cars in the world and sell to China. Okay. But because of this war in Ukraine, um America not only limited um basically embargoled uh Russian gas to Germany which destroyed the Russian economy, but some people even say that the Americans destroy the pipeline. Okay, so the Americans are attacking their own allies.

Um Trump has said that Americans should 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 he's like a mafia godfather. America's behaving like a mafia system today.

Um, now what America is doing is it's forcing Europe to rearm itself. So, 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'll have World War II?" Well, America doesn't think like that. America isn't like, you know, like, "Let's fight Russia." America is like, "How can we um 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 to buy expensive and crappy American weapons. Remember the military industrial complex, right? 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 shakeddown. Okay. All right. So, um all around the world there's protests about what's happening in the Middle East, right? Uh these are huge protests protesting what's happening in Gaza today.

But ultimately it's not going to matter. All right? Why? Because America is an empire. It's a mafia state.

It needs to destroy Iran in order to maintain its power. Okay? So Americans want the trap of empire. They also want to feel virtues. That's why there's conflict right now.

Over time, as America becomes poorer and poorer and more and more desperate, this virtue will go away and the raw brutal power of America will express itself throughout the world. Um, and this will eventually lead to us lead us to the final conflict, the war between Iran and the United States. Um, Iran has been has been preparing for a long time. Okay? Ever since 1979, um, America's been preparing for a long time.

This conflict is World War III. I can't I cannot um overstate how brutal this conflict will be. It 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, um, 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 we've gone into the heart of darkness of humanity. Um, and I know 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 which include Homer, Dante, Emanuel Kant, they've all told us this. They've all told us one secret of the universe, one message, which is this. The imagination is the animating animating force of the universe. Love is a unifying force of the universe.

Okay. What this means is this, which 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. Okay? And that's the task ahead of us if we are to save humanity in this darkest of times. Okay.

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.

Okay. So that is it. Thank you so much.