Exposing the Titans of Capital

Political sociologist Peter Phillips talks about his book, Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity.

The titans of capital aren’t just the obscenely wealthy. They are the directors of transnational finance companies; they manage the money of the obscenely wealthy.

Steve’s guest, political sociologist Peter Phillips, is the author of Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity. The titans, he says, have doubled their AUM (assets under management) in the past 5 years.

“There's only 117 of them and they manage $50 trillion of capital. That $50 trillion is the core –– almost half of the free-floating capital in the world. And that is what the US calls a vital interest. So, when the US says we have vital interests in the world, that's what they mean.

“And that's why we have military bases everywhere in the world, because these investors are everywhere. And any rivalries are undermined by our intelligence agencies, by the government, by military whenever possible. So, it just happens that governments work on behalf of capital.”

So, if you’re wondering why the US has military interests in Ukraine or Gaza. Look to the titans, whose firms are investing in the defense industry. They profit off of war.

While the titans are massively increasing the wealth of the top .05 percent of the world’s population, over 20,000 people die each day from starvation and easily curable diseases. 

While the ruling class and their media mouthpieces insist that capitalism is going to save the world and money will trickle down...

“It's not. It's exactly the opposite.  People are dying daily. There are 700 million people who live in extreme poverty in the world. And extreme poverty means you're living on $2.15 a day. That's the UN set level for extreme poverty.”

Steve and Peter discuss ways in which the titans are able to bend policy to their own purposes. They mention the role of groups like the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.

The episode also compares the approaches of the US and China, illustrating China's success in alleviating extreme poverty through state-driven economic strategies and how the US tries to spin China as a threat.

Steve and Peter talk about the need for revolutionary social movements to challenge the entrenched capitalist structures and demand wealth redistribution, using the insights of MMT to spur new thinking about alternative economic possibilities.

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TRANSCRIPT with EXTRAS

[00:00:00] Steve Grumbine: All right, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Folks, we're talking capital today. We're talking titans of capital. We're talking to Peter Phillips, who is a professor of political sociology emeritus at Sonoma State University, former director of Project Censored from 1996 to 2010, and president of Media Freedom Foundation from 2003 to 2017.  

His new book, Titans of Capital is going to be the subject of our conversation today, and I'm extremely excited about it. I just want to basically lay the groundwork for this. We talk nonstop about the state generating its currency. Its unit of account. But, we don't understand the capture. We don't understand the role that capital plays in manufacturing consent that it takes in terms of managing our governments, managing policy, changing the way everyone sees the world. 

And I'm hoping that by the time we're done with this conversation with my guest, that you will have a much, much better understanding of the power elite and the titans of capital, as this book is called, and how they really genuinely run the governments around the world. So without further ado, let me bring on my guest, Mr. Peter Phillips. Welcome to the show, sir.  

[00:02:03] Peter Phillips: Thank you, Steve, very much. I think when we talk about the titans, we're speaking more about how governments work on their behalf than we are, I mean, they're all in policy councils and they're in the Trilateral Commission and they're in the Business Council and they’re in the World Economic Forum. 

They're in all those places. And there's only 117 of them and they manage $50 trillion of capital. That $50 trillion is the core - almost half of the free floating capital in the world. And, that is what the US calls a vital interest. So when the US says we have vital interests in the world, that's what they mean. 

And that's why we have military bases everywhere in the world, because these investors are everywhere. And any rivalries are undermined by our intelligence agencies, by the government, by military whenever possible. So, it just happens that governments work on behalf of capital. And it's not like these Titans are telling the president what to do. Although they may strongly have influence on what's happening. Does that make sense? 

[00:03:09] Steve Grumbine: Yeah, absolutely. I suspect that the moneyed influences that come through the door have tremendous weight. I mean, cause I don't have any military interests in, let's say, Gaza. I don't have any military interests in Ukraine. I don't have any military interests in Taiwan. But somehow or another the US has military interests in those areas. And based on the $50 trillion in investment capital that's floating around, it doesn't take rocket science. 

[00:03:39] Peter Phillips: Well, they do because they're investing in the military companies. They make profits off of war. 

[00:03:45] Steve Grumbine: There you go. It's insane. Do me a favor give us a brief overview of the book. 

[00:03:52] Peter Phillips: The Titans are the 117 individuals, two thirds are men. They're most all Europeans. There's only 16 people of color. They're from 21 different countries. But they are the board of directors of the top 10 investment management companies. Now, that's like BlackRock and Vanguard and UBS in Switzerland and Fidelity - State Street. 

The top 10 have doubled their AUM - assets under management - in the last five years, so I wrote a book called Giants five years ago. And at that time, the top 17, I call them giants if they had over a trillion dollars in AUM, in assets under management. And there were seventeen of them at that time, and they collectively controlled $41 trillion. 

All of that has massively grown after COVID and massive capital increases in the top one percent of the world. There's 31 that are a trillion dollars. So that was too big of a thing to really look at sociologically. So I just took the top 10 and the top 10 or $50 trillion. 

So like BlackRock five years ago was at $5 trillion, they're at $10 trillion today. And Vanguard, the same thing. And some places like Fidelity, they more than doubled. And that wealth concentration is negatively the world. They're invested in all the things. Global warming. 

They're totally invested in gas and oil, and they fund it. They fund the military. They fund, tobacco and alcohol and firearms. And everything that we think of as possibly not so good to have in the world, they're funding it. So they are the central core of global capital. The free flowing money. 

So this is money that somebody has in excess. So if you're a multi billionaire or you're even a multi millionaire, you take your excess capital, your cash, and you give it to one of these investment capital companies and they manage it for you. So they get to choose where you're going to get a return and they're looking for returns in eight percent plus. 

 And they pick where the best places are for return. And so you just allow them to do that. And so you get richer. About 40 million people in the upper one half of 1%. And they massively increase their wealth in the past five years, and the rest of us have declined. So, this capital concentration is somewhat diabolical in the sense that 20,000 plus people die a day from starvation and easily curable diseases. And Oxfam has talked about not only these deaths, but this massive increase in this concentration of wealth. And it's continuing. So that's going, you know, the opposite direction. 

All of these people tend to believe that capitalism is going to save the world and it'll trickle down. Everything's going to be better. It's not. It's exactly the opposite. And people are dying daily. So there's 700 million people who live in extreme poverty in the world. And extreme poverty means you're living on $2.15 a day. 

That's the UN set level for extreme poverty. So you're just barely getting by. And, if that. I mean, it's really an awful form of existence. And, for a couple of decades, extreme poverty in the world was declining. So the Titans were saying, Oh, well, things are getting better. You know, there's less extreme poverty. But in the past five years, extreme poverty went up by over 70 million. 

And the only place in the world that it declined was in China. China decided they were going to eliminate extreme poverty. And they did. They still have several hundred million people live on $5 a day. Which is pretty poor, but it's not extreme poverty. And the Chinese did that deliberately. And that was why there was decline in extreme poverty in the world. 

The Chinese were, creating that trend. And, that's an interesting concept relative to how money in the world works. And so this concentration, these people, continue to capture more of the wealth of the global 1%. Mostly it's one half of 1% - 40 million people. 

 There's 36 million millionaires - are mostly multimillionaires - and there's 2, 600 billionaires in the world. And so these people have extra money. And that's how they invested in these capital investment companies, which are rapidly growing. There's 31 giants today. The ones over a trillion are managing $83 trillion dollars worth of capital, which is well over two thirds of the free floating capital in the world. 

I mean, the Chinese are [one of] the wealthiest nations. They only have $5 trillion of excess capital. So most of this is concentrated in, the West. In the US and in Europe. 

[00:08:41] Steve Grumbine: What is it about the rich here in this case? I mean, it seems like the system is the problem. And yet, at the same time when people try to assign, ah, blame, if you will, to this kind of extreme poverty, they point to the rich and they start going down conspiracy lane. They start digging out, all kinds of, you know - in other news, rich people were conspiring to make more money - kind of, explainers. But this system is really the one driving this. 

It's the one that's allowing this to take place because it doesn't have to be this way. I mean, I think we all know that there are alternatives. And yet at the same time, I can hear Margaret Thatcher from the grave saying there is no alternative. Can you help me understand? I mean, it seemed like you even said when I asked you about how, you know, these rich people are largely 

controlling the way governments function. It's really, kind of, these investment groups that are putting their interests elsewhere. That the US government, for example, an empire, takes its military and defends or works in the interests of these large capital firms. How does that play work? 

[00:09:54] Peter Phillips: I mean, which comes first? the chicken or the egg?Well, capitalism protects private ownership of property. It protects business. It protects personal wealth. Western governments control the legal and policing mechanisms that ensure wealth remains privately owned and allows the rich to amass even greater wealth. So that's the nature of capitalism. 

It's wealth, protecting wealth and the concentration of wealth. That is what capitalism is. There's no other way to say that. I mean, you can take economics 101 and we're going to tell you about supply and demand. And . . . but they're not going to talk about wealth concentration as the primary factor in global inequality. 

I mean, somebody living on two dollars and fifteen cents a day doesn't want to be there. They're only able to have income that reaches that level. Or five dollars a day, I mean, eighty percent of the world lives on less than ten dollars a day. Half the world lives on less than six dollars a day. The wealth concentration is extreme. The inequality for most people in the world, the billions, they literally have nothing. Or, or so very little that they're barely getting by 

[00:11:04] Steve Grumbine: Real quick. The concern I have with this is that I come from an MMT standpoint which says that currency is a creature of law. Currency is a creature of the state. The state spends its currency into the world on whatever it prioritizes based on laws it passes. And then, you know, they spend exorbitant amounts into the military, exorbitant amounts into government contracts to go to these large entities. And then they take their excess money and put it into these capital funds. These titans of capital. These 117 entities, if you will. You know, that's one angle of it. But the other angle of it is that the governments themselves, if they weren't controlled by capital, could, in fact, invest spending directly into the poor to alleviate that poverty directly. 

But instead, they act like their hands are tied because they're defending capital. Is, is that it?  

[00:12:02] Peter Phillips: Well, yeah. They believe this story that, you know, capital has to continue to grow. They need to get that eight percent return every year. So one of the biggest problems that the Titans have is finding adequate and safe investments. All the safe investments are immediately bought up. 

So if you're a company that's turning a profit, then you're going to be, continued to be, invested in by the titans. That they're constantly looking for new and better ways for investment. So that leads to speculative investment like the subprime mortgage crisis that we went through. 

[00:12:38] Steve Grumbine: Um,  

[00:12:38] Peter Phillips: Um, and they should have known better. That it was risky. But they will take these risks in order to get that return that they're anticipating. The other big area of spending, of course, is military. So wars are very profitable. They will encourage, the preparation for war. 

They will emphasize how, Russia and China are a danger to the West. And there's certainly a danger to capitalism in terms of the philosophies of their governments. That is primary in their minds. And they want to prevent that and they want to scare everybody. So in the past five years, there's been a major propaganda agenda in the big media companies, to demonize the Chinese. 

The Chinese are sending spy balloons over the US. The Chinese are expanding their military. It's growing. It's, about 10 percent of what the U. S. is, but they're saying that, they're growing, that they're expanding, they're increasingly a threat. And the biggest thing is that the Chinese Communist Party, which is the ruling, class of China, is communist. And they believe in communism.  

They believe in the sharing of wealth, and they allow capital investment. They allow billionaires. They have as almost as many billionaires, like 500, compared to the US with 600. And their capital, their GDP is on par with, or exceeds, depending what numbers you look at compared to the United States. 

So they're seen as a major economic rival to the capital in the West. And that's true. They've been quite successful in growing and expanding capital. The difference is that the billionaires in China they can't donate money to the Chinese party and then have some say. The Chinese will just tax the money and take it from them and use it. 

Whereas in the US, the billionaires have a great deal of say under Citizens United, which allows almost unlimited spending. And so elections and whoever's running for President is extremely pro capital. 

And, that's the agenda. So they get to use that money for political purposes in the West and the Chinese, they don't. So that's, an important difference. But the US has $14 billion dollars invested in China. Or, actually more than that. They've got $14 billion invested in Taiwan. And China, the total invested, let's see, let me find that number. Titans have $29 billion dollars of investments in the leading 12 non military companies in China.  

So they can't, under law, invest in Chinese military companies, but they can widely invest in everything else there. So there's a Chinese tobacco company, which is just as dangerous as the tobacco companies in the West, feeding tobacco to the people, making them addicted and they're very invested in that company as they are in tobacco. There's a hundred billion dollars 

invested in global tobacco companies by the Titans. Just by these 10 companies that's killing some 8 million people a year from tobacco and smoking. So, I mean, they do the same thing with alcohol. They've got $60 billion in the top alcohol companies in the world. 

And just in the United States, the 20 million or so alcoholics, they drink an average of 76 drinks a week and they are buying up half the booze. So half of the alcohol profits and sales are due to addicted people who are alcoholics. And so they are making a profit off of alcoholism which negative impacts the country. 

I mean, people are dying, they get sick and it has impacts on the family. I mean, it's just an amazingly negative thing. So, that's an ongoing problem with this capital. And so they want to make sure that they can invest anywhere in the world.  

 The Titans want free access to investment everywhere in the world. A number of them are on the Atlantic Council, which is the advisory committee for council for NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization]. Um, so they're calling for regime change in Russia. And Putin knows that they want to put him out. And they helped organize, or the intelligence agencies organized, and supported a coup in Ukraine and ousted the government that was pro Russia. And then was repressing the Russian citizens in the southern part of Ukraine and Russia stepped in. 

It became a civil war and Russia stepped in and supported the ethnic Russians in southern Ukraine and in the Crimea. And our intelligence agencies knew that the Russians were never going to give up the Crimea. That's the only big warm water port where their major fleets are based. And they were not going to give that up. 

So basically they were pushed into a war that continues to drain their resources. And Russia's not in good shape. Their GDP is, lower than it was 20 years ago. So, their threat is of course, they still have 4, 000 nuclear weapons. And, could engage in a nuclear war that would destroy the world. 

[00:17:20] Steve Grumbine: So, you know, as you mentioned that, you know . . . I look back at the book. Chapter two talks about who controls world capital, which you've dived into quite a bit here. But I'm curious, you started mentioning some of the councils and stuff like that, that they're on. What are these councils and what are their roles and how do they impact society? 

[00:17:39] Peter Phillips: Well, let's, let's take a look at the number one Titan, which is Larry Fink. he's the CEO of BlackRock. He came out of a middle class working family in LA and was hired at First Boston and became one of their stars in terms of investment capital. And he just became a billionaire. According to Forbes, 

he's a new billionaire this year. But he's on the International Business Council. He's on the Business Roundtable. He's on the Council [on] Foreign Relations. And so, like, even the Council [on] Foreign Relations, which he donates money to, is the number one primary advisory group to the government. To the White House. What they say is what the White House will implement. 

So, whether it's policies towards Russia, China, or anywhere else in the world - Cuba, Iran - they're going to follow what the Council on Foreign Relations is advising. The Council on Foreign Relations has been around in the US well before World War Two. In fact, during World War Two, as the British were engaged in a war, the Council on Foreign Relations did a study, privately, to determine if the Germans won, what would the U. S. have to do you know, versus if the British won.  

 And they realized, of course, that if the British lost, they would have greater access to all the nations and the capital investment opportunities that the British Empire had. But then they also realized that they had to emphasize investments in the Pacific. Because if Germany was strong in Europe, then they would have to, invest and, you know, have capital investments greater in the Pacific and in Asia. So, that was a study that was done back in the early '40s that set the policy for what the U. S. was going to do in World War Two. Really, it was Roosevelt that was dragging his feet about getting in the war against the Nazis in Germany until, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Which we knew was going to happen. And we certainly knew that they were going to have to attack them because we cut them off of all oil. We weren't selling oil. The Japanese, they only had 6 months worth of oil, so they had to go get it. 

And the closest oil was in Indonesia, which is 1 of the places they invaded first. And, so, that war was provoked. Or we knew it was inevitable that the Japanese weren't going to allow economic collapse due to US controlling the oil. And so that got us into the war, which was incredibly profitable 

for whoever the, big capital companies at the time, well, General Motors and all the big war companies made huge profits off of that. So, someone like Larry Finks, who is, you know, the number one Titan billionaire,  

UCLA MBA graduate, is on the, uh, major policy groups, including the Council on Foreign Relations in the US. That gives him say on what the policy is going to be in the US government. 

It's not like he's giving orders. It just gives him an important say. Now someone else like Judith Miscik, Jamie Miscik, is on the board of directors of Morgan Stanley. Well, she's straight out of the CIA. I mean, she's still on the board of the CIA technology management foundation. 

She's also [on] the board of directors of General Motors, Hewlett Packard. She was CEO of Kissinger Associates. She worked at Lehman Brothers, Barclay Bank, but she was Deputy Director of Intelligence for the CIA from 1983 to 2005. So that's a very powerful person. And she's on the Council of Foreign Relations, and she's on the UN Association and that. 

So these titans are in policy councils, national and international, that advise governments worldwide as to what the policies and directions should be to support capital. And, governments comply, especially in the US. I mean, you don't become the President without money from the titans and their ilk. 

So, I mean, they encourage families to donate $50 to either party, and that kind of stuff. But it's the big money that was freed up by Citizens United that the Republicans are trying to free up completely. They want money to be able to invest with no limitations in capital. I mean, that's the definition basically of fascism, is the merging of business and government. 

[00:21:35] Steve Grumbine: I mean, isn't that kind of a bipartisan issue? Do we not see the Democrats wooing Wall Street, as well, with Jamie Dimon and others? I mean, it's the same thing, right?  

[00:21:44] Peter Phillips: We're a capitalist country, you know, and that means protecting global capitalism and protecting these titans. The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, basically the Democrats have a little more empathy for working people and are a little more humanitarian relative to people in poverty, but the inequality in the country is still huge. 

I mean, there's a hundred million people in the US, are, who are in families that at some point during the year, there isn't sufficient food for everybody. So, you know, this is when mom says, Oh, the children can eat. And I'll just, I don't, I'm not hungry kind of thing . 

[00:22:17] Steve Grumbine: So what is the World Economic Forum in this space here? What role does it play?  

[00:22:22] Peter Phillips: It started about 30 years ago. The World Economic Forum started holding annual conventions, so to speak, in Davos, Switzerland. And they invited the CEOs of the 1000 largest corporations in the country. Their first year, they had like 400 people there. Now it's like three to four thousand attend. Government officials attend. 

The presidents of nations are keynote speakers, including China, has been very active. The only government that hasn't been attending recently is Russia because they were uninvited. after the war in Ukraine started. They weren't invited. In fact, Ukraine now occupies the building in Davos that the Russians used for receptions. So the World Economic Forum was set up to address what they call the the multipolar issues in the world: global inequality, the environment and health issues that they are there to try to have capitalism think more about the world.  

ESG, which is Economic, Social, and Government, is a policy that companies should be thinking about the betterment of human beings. And it makes nice propaganda. It protects capitalism in that it's a rationale for we're going to try to make the world better for everybody. 

But it hasn't worked. It hasn't happened. The inequality has increased. Poverty has increased. More people are dying on a daily basis. But they continue to say, well, it's good. Capital can grow, continue to expand. So it's a propaganda economic mechanism to protect private capital in the world.  

[00:24:19] Steve Grumbine: You know, as I look at these different things, you talked about the Council [on] Foreign Affairs [Relations]. I mean, I remember back in the day, many, many moons ago, I was a Ron Paul guy before I swang further Left and, you know, one of the big deals was the Bilderberg Group. They had all these like conspiracies laid out. But there's like real legitimate things here that go beyond the hair on fire. They're legitimate points of view and critique Of things like the Council [on] Foreign Affairs [Relations] and the Bilderberg group. Talk to me a little bit about those in a proper context. 

How do they play into this? 

[00:24:55] Peter Phillips: Well, the Bilderberg Group was based in Europe, originally set up by royalty from the Netherlands, and has been around for a long time. And they get together and hold private sessions and make policy recommendations to governments. 

The same thing that , essentially, the U. N. [Security] Council does. The Atlantic Council has both Europeans and U. S. on it. And they are the advisory group to NATO, which is primarily the world military in support of global capital. NATO always has a U. S. general in charge of it. And now has, of course, expanded throughout Eastern Europe, and all the countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. Poland, in particular, Romania, are now under NATO, which has a kind of a dual effect of advancing Western weaponry further into and closer to Russia. 

And those countries have to spend a certain percentage of their budget on weaponry, in, that is compatible with NATO weapons. And those are all built by a US and European weapons firm. So it's an automatic, weapons expansion mechanism, in terms of undermining and threatening Russia. 

Where Russia drew the line was in Ukraine. Because our intelligence agencies engineered a coup there that, utilized former Nazis, or the sons of Nazis who had fought for Germany during World War II against the Russians. And they took over the government and began repressing the Russian ethnicities in the Southern part of Ukraine. 

And, they had been administratively controlling the Crimea since the early fifties. Khrushchev had actually assigned the Crimea for state government control to the Ukraine government, which, at that time, was under the Russian USSR, and never meant to give up the Crimea to the West at all. 

And so that was a no-go, uh, we're not going to let that happen, situation. So US engineered a war, in Ukraine.  

[00:26:57] Steve Grumbine: So looking at the Global South, one of the things that I brought into this is I looked through the book and read it - very fascinating. But one of the things that I wanted to touch on was the US role. 

Obviously, once World War Two ended, the United States was the lone country that had not been bombed to hell and back. Still had its industrial base. Had a strong currency that the world ended up adopting, kind of like the dollar standard, through the Bretton Woods accord. And, ultimately, things like the IMF, the Peace Corps, and all this stuff are there to counter the "Red Scare." You know, Reds are taking over the world kind of thing. And here we are today. Modern times. The IMF is being used as a way of fleecing the Global South by entrapping them in debt arrangements. Opening up their markets. Taking away protections. And, ultimately, allowing free reign for these corporations. What is the role of these titans of capital? 

[00:27:57] Peter Phillips: To investment capital. 

[00:27:58] Steve Grumbine: Yeah, exactly. So this is what role does these titans of capital have in terms of dealing with the IMF and the global South? how does that relationship play out?  

[00:28:08] Peter Phillips: Well, the IMF is working on behalf of global capital. They're supportive of the free flow of capital investment anywhere in the world. And so, if there's countries that resist, then the intelligence agencies are going to work to undermine those - countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, certainly Iraq, are blocking global capital investment that isn't going to be positive for, for the US. I mean, isn't going to be positive for their people. And they'll accept, uh, investments and development from China. And China's Belt and Road project has put trillions of dollars into investments worldwide. 

That's allowed their exchange of goods and services to be expanded. And so that's one of the reasons that China is so powerful. It's about capital. China controls a lot of capital and money. But it's not controlled by - it's owned privately, but it's not controlled and used for governmental purposes, the way it is in the West.  

[00:29:03] Steve Grumbine: You know, it's funny. I remember going back to Joe Biden's very first state of the union. I was telling my friends, anyone that would listen, watch. They're going to demonize China. Because China's kicking our ass. They're doing all kinds of great things that are expanding and making the living conditions for the people better. 

They're creating win-win solutions for the countries they do business with. They're not doing predatory arrangements. Not, at least, like the US is doing. I'm sure they're not perfect little angels. I'm sure they have their own, you know, problems, but nothing like what you see over here. Within that space, sure enough, as soon as Joe Biden opened his mouth, just about the entirety of the State of the Union was defecating on Russia and, you know, basically fueling every vote blue sycophant out there to say, Oh, you're a Putin puppet or you're this. 

And Biden fed right into that red-baiting. And then he turned around immediately and demonized and immediately raised the rhetoric up with China. I saw it coming because China's doing good things. I don't see China, you know, bringing ships out around the US trying to threaten us with nuclear weapons or creating coups in the United States. I don't see anything like that. But the US, our M.O. is to do those sorts of things.  

I'm curious as to how far back, if you will, China was on the radar? Because I saw expanding economic relationships. Yes, there's the rise of the BRICS, but the BRICS don't have the free flow of capital. They don't have that huge amount of Chinese currency flowing through to allow for investments, et cetera. They're still neophytes. 

Even though, yes, this is a multipolar world, US hegemony is still very much intact, even if it's declining. What really was the tipping point for bringing China into this mix as opposed to just Russia? It had been Russia through the very first Bernie Sanders run. There's Russia in the second one, and now it's China and Russia. 

Is this the rise of the BRICS? What is causing this focus? Is it that the US has allowed its own infrastructure to fall apart to the point where they're watching China lap us and now we've got to put some brakes on them so we can catch up? I mean, what's going on there?  

[00:31:21] Peter Phillips: The primary impulse is to provide increased investment opportunities for Western capital. And so, that can happen economically. It can happen by threats of war. It can happen by trade and expansion, investments in other countries. So if there's any resistance to capital investment, then the U. S. policy is going to be opposed to that government's positions. And China, as a communist country, and still is government-wise, is one that they feel most threatened by. Of course, private capital ownership and private ownership of wealth is very threatened by any humanitarian or socialist global view or agenda. 

So, I tend to believe that, you know, the world belongs to humanity as a natural right of being alive. The resources of the world. So allowing extreme inequality to exist denies our collective humanity. That's my position. One of the reasons I wrote the book, we needed to identify who these people are. All 117 people are identified by name. And we also show how much stock they hold in their net wealth.  

One of the titans has 5 to $20 trillion dollars of stock ownership. If you're on the board of directors of one of these companies, you get free stock. So even if you were a millionaire, after you join, you become a millionaire immediately. Within a year. So, these people are highly rewarded. Many had experiences in terms of capital investment. Experiences that are on these boards of directors. They're very prestigious, uh, positions and they control an immense amount of money. And they get to decide where that money's invested. 

And some of those, of course, are negative. Alcohol, tobacco, firearms, private prisons, plastics. Where they invest and it has detrimental impacts on the world. So, this is not good for most human beings. And, it needs to be addressed very openly. And so I'm saying, look, okay, here's these 1 17 people, they could do something about it. They could contribute 1 to 5 percent of their wealth to eliminate starvation in the world. That would be easy. They could contribute one to 5 percent to not only feed everybody, house everybody. But they could create a standard of living. that was better and supportive to all human beings. 

That's not profitable for them. So we have to pressure them to do that. And so that's one of the reasons I identified 117 people. You can write a letter to - care of their companies - and say, you need to share. You need to stop doing this. The wealth of the world needs to be more openly shared and we need to eliminate global poverty.  

[00:34:01] Steve Grumbine: So can I jump in real quick? To me, this is super important. This plays into what this podcast is all about. 

 From my vantage point, you know, understanding the way federal finance works? I mean, we are on a fiat currency. A fiat currency is just simply by decree. Meaning that the government itself, when it decrees it - via article one, section eight of the Constitution - it's able to spend money.  

 Congress, alone, has the power of the purse. It says spend and it spends. It creates money when it spends. It does not ever re-spend tax dollars, interestingly enough, because the US Government, the way it works is the tax is there to drive your need, you have to have US dollars. You can't buy bonds with Chinese Yuan. You can't buy US bonds with Rubles. You can't buy them with Bitcoin. You can only buy US bonds with US dollars. And so, within that space, if you understand that, you understand the nation state could, in fact, render the rich irrelevant and make all those things happen by spending that money on the poor, directly.  

Like taxes, literally, do not finance spending. They do not pay for spending. And this concept of a fiat currency has been lost because most folks have it in their mind that there's like, gold, and we're backed by this, and we're backed by that, we're backed by oil. What we're backed by is the tax and we're defended by, if you will, they defend this tax, by having weaponized military, weaponized police officers. And with the threat of force and the threat of the tax - the tax itself is used to maintain the dollar's hegemony - and then they spend that around the world through IMF debt arrangements, et cetera, to ensure the rest of the world is tethered to the dollar. And obviously, there's some groups that are breaking away from that tether.  

And that's a beautiful thing. But the point I'm making is, is that in a fiat system our government is complicit because it could render the rich irrelevant, It could spend money directly on the people and alleviate poverty without the rich's permission. But the rich won't allow it. And as a result of that weird perversion of capital protecting capital, we don't get any of the benefit of public money. 

Years ago, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher said: There is no such thing as public money. There is only taxpayer dollars. And they had it completely backwards. There is no such thing as taxpayer dollars, there's only public money. Because when the government spends, it doesn't re-spend tax. Taxes literally come home and are deleted and purged from the system. 

The government, every time it spends, it spends new dollars into the economy and taxes old dollars out of the economy. Deletes 'em. Shreds them. They're gone. They don't exist anymore. And so within that space, they keep a lie going on. And this is how capitalism has grown so massive. Because they tell us that they don't have money for us while simultaneously spending billions and trillions into Boeing and the Halliburton into all these major defense contractors. And then like a cocaine dealer, they step on that drug. They step on that dollar. And they basically give fractions of that to those contractors that they work with, and so on and so forth. And then when that dollar circulates through the economy, then it comes home to roost and it's purged. 

The reason why I bring this up is I believe it's even more nefarious. Because when you understand what the government could do, and understand that it's pretending to be held captive by the whims and wiles of the rich who are just hoarding the money. They give rise to the belief that there is no alternative. That we can't do better for ourselves. 

And I believe that they hide behind this while the rich that, you know, this is what free market does, but where did the rich get that money? The money is created constantly when the government spends it into the economy. If they don't tax it back, it allows for massive capital accumulation. 

And this is how these big wigs are able to dominate the world that we're living in.  

[00:38:10] Peter Phillips: You're absolutely correct. 

[00:38:11] Steve Grumbine: Yes, anyway, I just wanted to spit that out. That's all. 

[00:38:14] Peter Phillips: No, you're absolutely correct. I think what my book, Titans [of Capital], does lay out, though, is who are the people, by name, that are engaged in this, benefit from it, and continue to make it happen. And they have control over massive amounts of wealth. Yes, it could be taxed by the government. But they also have control of the government spending and that, and anybody who's in government is working on their behalf. 

[00:38:39] Steve Grumbine: So, what do we do? How do we take these fuckers on, excuse my French? How do we take them on because we want to live, right? I mean we want to survive.  

[00:38:48] Peter Phillips: There will be inevitable social movements that arise, like Occupy, and that scared the hell out of them. They use the police forces to infiltrate every Occupy group in the country to repress it. When people's get together and start mobilizing and asking for shares of the wealth of the world, they're going to try to repress that. 

Sooner or later their inequality was going to get the best of them. And they will either become a total totalitarian fascist world government, or there will be civil unrest to the point that a revolution occurs, either violently or non violently. And revolutions can be non-cooperation, and be extremely upsetting to capital and force concessions. 

So, we need to know who the people are that could make concessions, and by identifying them by name - I'd hope that we could do that with the next social movement - we'll know who that they're opposed. Who they have to go after to encourage change and adjustments. 

[00:39:47] Steve Grumbine: I think that's well said. I keep trying to teach people about the economic side of it. But that economic side . . . This is my gripe with my own activism. Okay? I've been doing Modern Monetary Theory now for about 15 years and on this podcast for over five. And the one thing that we never hear about, or rarely hear about, but I try to suss out in each of my interviews is yes, this is how it works. 

Yes. You you've identified the plumbing exactly. You understand the mechanisms down to the core. You know how money flows. You understand all of it, but, we have zero agency within these governments because we don't compare to those 117 people. And we don't compare to all the global capital organizations like BlackRock and the power that they have over every aspect. 

I mean, look at what they're doing to housing in America alone. Just housing. I mean, people cannot afford to even rent a tiny little room, much less buy a house nowadays. And as we're handing over the world to our children and to our grandchildren, this is nothing like the world that our parents gave us. 

Our parents had a world where you could buy a house for 10 to 15 thousand a house. And then shortly thereafter, maybe it would appreciate. And then they would sell it or remodel it, or whatever, and there'll be new economic activity to bring jobs, and so forth. And everybody - all ships rose. But that isn't the way it is anymore. 

Now it's literally cutting the throat of every single working class American. And we're wondering why guys like Donald Trump rise to the top? And why there is massive anti-immigrant sentiment, which is misplaced, for sure. But what we end up with is, we don't have the answers. We don't have the facts. And so we end up looking for scapegoats. Which is another core tenet of fascism: scapegoating. 

And here we are right now, we've got another Donald Trump, uh, potential presidency. We've got an anointed, installed Democratic candidate who is, you know, taking the role of Biden. And she wasn't popular the first time she ran. There's a whole lot going on there that tells you we don't really have agency within this political system. 

We are not voting our way out of this. There's too much captures. Too much control via financial control. And when you look at a little person, like myself . . . And let's say me and you go to Wall Street, or go to Capitol Hill, or whatever, and say, Hey, listen. We want Medicare for All. They look at industry and they said y'all want Medicare for All? And they say, no way. We want to be able to gouge at every level. 

It's: Okay. Yep, no Medicare for All for you. No Healthcare for All for you. No student debt relief for you. No this for you. And it's like, who are you interviewing? Because i'm looking around at regular people. Main street. And they're saying, god, i'm drowning. i'm dying. Help me. And they're literally bending over backwards to provide absolutely everything that Capital asks of them. 

You really envision this social movements being the thing that leads us to the problem? We got a climate crisis on our hands too, by the way. I mean, a genocide. On and on and on. 

[00:43:02] Peter Phillips: Any civil unrest creates social change in some capacity. Now, certainly the labor movement in the 30s brought about adjustments under Roosevelt, but it would have happened probably either way. We got the Social Security Act. We got the National Labor Relations Act. Which were both anti-communist measures. And I went back and I read the transcripts for those bills. In '34, they had tried the same legislation. I mean, in '33 and '34 the transcripts all were citing massive fear of communism.  

And, of course, the general strike in San Francisco. It happened in '34. So there was a real desire by elites, especially those that are willing to make concessions, to pass legislation that would undermine civil unrest by the working class.  

And that's an ongoing effort. So if they are feeling really threatened, certain ones of them are willing to make concessions. On the other hand, there's people like Trump who won't make a concession. They're going to privatize and expand the military and the police force and repress us even more openly. 

So there's always that danger of overt fascism when civil movements arise. And repression. And that could - that, that can, of course, lead to ultimately to civil war and social collapse. 

[00:44:21] Steve Grumbine: Unbelievable. Yeah, I hear you. So let me give you the final word. If someone was to pick up your book, what would you want them to take from this book? And what's the follow up for that? Help me tell our listeners what to derive from the book.  

[00:44:37] Peter Phillips: Number one message that inequality is continuing to increase. And that, especially the last 5 years, the rich have gotten incredibly richer. Trillions of dollars richer. That wealth is concentrated in the one half of one %. The 40 million billionaires and millionaires, multi millionaires in the world. And, for the rest of us, uh, we're seeing a decline. 

So this is the decline that you're seeing relative to be able to afford housing and have a job that you can have an income that'll meet needs of a middle class family. That's being undermined. And of course, Trump and Republicans utilize that fear. Blame the Democrats for their spending. Blame immigrants for coming in and trying to survive, themselves, by taking jobs at a lower rate. 

And that has to be reversed. That's my main message. The wealth continues to concentrate. These are the people that are doing it. Who they are. Here are their names. This is where they work. But you can reach them. And I'm hoping that social movements will identify elites in that way. 

And some of them are going to be willing to make concessions if they feel really threatened. And that, I think, is one way that we can see social change that will have some improvement for people. 

[00:45:51] Steve Grumbine: Very, very well said. Thank you so much. Peter Phillips is my guest. I want to thank you, Peter, for joining me today. Where can we find more of your work? 

[00:46:01] Peter Phillips: Well, I'm former director of Project Censored, so projectcensored.org has all my books. You can order them there. And, of course, bookstores and the big companies have my books as well. The two books that most recent are the Titans [of Capital] book, which is just coming out and then five years ago, the book Giants. And they're complementary to each other. 

The two together explains how corporate media is a propaganda machine for capitalism. They explain the concentration of wealth in terms of military might. And then, the five year comparison between wealth concentration back five years ago and then today is amazing how much more wealth is concentrated. 

[00:46:41] Steve Grumbine: Oh, my goodness. We will put them on our bookshelf. We have a Real Progressives bookshelf. We've interviewed quite a few of the Project Censored folks. This has been remarkable. You guys do such great work. Have done such great work. And it's been a pleasure to work with each of you all. 

Peter, I just want to thank you again, on behalf of the non-profit Real Progressives, and this podcast, Macro N Cheese. Folks, as we're parting, remember: Real Progressives is a 501c3 not for profit. We survive on your donations. They are tax free, so there's a little benefit to helping the little guy trying to get this information out. 

Please, get Peter's book. And with that, on behalf of my guest and myself, Macro N Cheese, we are out of here.  

Books 

Phillips, Peter, Titans of Capital 

_______, Giants