LIVING OFF THE FED'S CREDIT CARD
The Hartmann Report
Thom Hartmann
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2020
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Economist Richard Wolff joins Thom to make the case that the strength of the economy is really a mirage since the underlying wages of most people are stagnant or falling, so why does the stock market appear to be doing so well? If we're in a good economy why is the Federal Reserve creating so much debt, and how dangerous will the next economic downturn be with so much money owed throughout the system?
Other topics in the show- Will it take a billionaire to stop the billionaires?.. Why are minimum wages being increased in certain states and not others?.. Have Trump-supporting farmers figured out they've been conned?.. Was Adam Smith's theory of the 'invisible hand' misunderstood all along anyway?..
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Tom Hartman program. |
| 0:15.0 | And welcome back. |
| 0:18.0 | Tom Hartman here with you on the line with us is our old buddy Professor Richard |
| 0:20.8 | Wolf, economist, co-founder of Democracy and Work, |
| 0:23.7 | his most recent book, Understanding Socialism. |
| 0:26.7 | Democracy at Work. info and R.D. Wolf with 2F's.com |
| 0:30.0 | are his websites. |
| 0:31.3 | Professor Wolf, welcome back. Thank you, Tom. |
| 0:33.7 | Glad to be here. Thank you for joining us. So 7 million people in more than 20 |
| 0:38.5 | states got a substantial raise this week because those states raise their minimum wage. |
| 0:44.2 | In the case of Missouri it went from 725 all the way up to 11, I think it was 1135 an hour. |
| 0:49.8 | That's a really substantial stimulus, an injection at the at the economic bottom which |
| 0:56.3 | according to Keynesian theory is the best way to stimulate an economy it's the |
| 1:01.5 | most lasting way to stimulate economy economy, it's the most lasting way to stimulate an economy, it generates demand. |
| 1:05.4 | We're seeing the economy seeming to be strong and seeming to even strengthen as we continue |
| 1:09.4 | into this year. |
| 1:10.5 | Could it be that this is one of the major factors as to why? |
| 1:14.0 | Well, I think the best way to answer that is to say yes and no. |
| 1:20.0 | What we've had is an economy that really isn't strong. It's an extremely unbalanced economy. |
| 1:27.0 | Since the crash in 2008 and 9, the terror of the people running this economy was that this would become a generalized |
| 1:35.1 | depression like it did after the crash of 1929. |
| 1:39.8 | And so to prevent that, they did two things. |
... |
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