welcome welcome very very much to the conversations now we're having a car conversation as a follow up to one that we did a couple of months ago with margaret board just and we had very very very important feedback from the interest that played such a role in that and her take on that that she had become very familiar with and then she continued to be interested in the human condition and we're going to continue on this series part two darkening about the human condition off that introduction that was done on party one couple months ago and margaret more from so much her conversations again thank you hello again it's is a pleasure to be here it's a pleasure to have you here and you you with their stock market and a real estate market in twenty million fifty two thousand and eight you paid a lot of attention to that did you not and it was also some of your own personal experience out of california that made you aware of the  implications of the internet of the real estate market it marketed so well the crash of two thousand and eight the crash of two thousand and eight came as a surprise to the common man and it and the build up was slow but when everything crashed it only took basically a year and a half two it's almost ten years old yeah yeah time goes by fast but there is a great deal of pain there was a result for a whole lot of people were as it seems to people who may have been responsible for that was outlined in their book you would read that it had been largely the greed if that's the right term or the in the lack of vision of our economic leadership that led to the problem if i'm not mistaken and yet the people who suffered most from that were some of the common people who actually lost their homes there is so important to them harold i don't know if it was what you would call national economic policy because that is something that changes every four years yes well it does true with the new election yeah the goals of the banking industry are their goals we made basically the same a bank is in business not to help people save money but for the banks themselves to make money yeah right ok and if you should have such a thing as a bank interest rate that had no interest you know for gain or for payment to me no interest in terms of a percentage they would like the people to think that they're doing them a favor you know actuality we're doing them a favor by operating in the type of systemic way that banks do set themselves up for for lending for minimizing their own risks for capsulize in our new financial instruments by taking risk when a bank doesn't take a risk it will basically start losing money were yeah that's not how they want to do it yet and they want to know how to be able to get it to reduce risk to the mid to the greatest degree  possible and so are the people who are taking the loan want to read you want to avoid the risk to their greed possible unfortunately often the greatest returns come from the greatest risk very often as a as a model interest rates when this way that way in the other and you had really no place to put your investments i eve in a savings account because interest for so low  they were you know point zero something less than one percent why were they so banks weren't lending and they who weren't they weren't taking any  s they were just sort of in a holding pattern waiting for the debris to clear to clear for the lawsuits for the federal lawsuits and when the federal government took all the big banks in that had caused this crash the big banks caused the crash you say and the political leaders there were in league with the big banks or the stabbers interest in the society in general there was basically but the federal government to sell the lawsuit with that these big banks when they were listed about twenty eight dollars or so banks and they all were charged with pain back each of the people they harmed there were mortgage holders a certain damage amount for the loans i even got a check on my small mortgage and the mortgage was only two hundred thousand dollars so the you know the whole spectrum of the loans because you know billions of dollars to pay back some of the damages but that's not where the damage came the damage came from the interruption of lives in terms of lost property lost jobs the construction industry falling down which means you're going to lay off workers people that had no more money to invest in homes they could get mortgages the requirements for getting a mortgage changed so it wasn't so easy the lenders weren't lending money and things were pretty much of a stop ready for a long time disease periodical you go on in terms history and you can see the cycles of the of the banking industry expanding too far in one direction and then falling on its face you know the or right but you i have to ask myself yes why do they go in such unprecedented we're told callousness last presidential election with mrs clinton versus mr trump the ultimate battle you had a lot of people that were confused about their platforms they weren't really quite sure what hillary's platform was and then you have another a candidate mr trump who is totally inexperienced in public political office right it's a different thing than in the market that d he was used to and so you have a businessman who said he's going to make an america great again he is going to reinstill the faith in our economy we are going to grow put people into work and he he's inaugurated he comes with his agenda and people are sitting in front of their televisions at night shaking their heads a good politician is a version was a good bill businessman is that part of the formula for a good administration is to be a good businessman and make make good bargaining agreement part of it but not the whole when i look at a politician's modus operandi and i look at our c e o s modus operandi or in particular an individual who owns his own company and you know you have the you have two very different ways of approaching the problem solving part about it  and with an individual who has their own business they are used to calling the shots and they don't have to have collective bargaining collective reasoning or even so many departmental heads that have import into a decision that's going to be made by the chief executive you have a person who's going to do the best for his company regardless of anybody else outside his company were as the government particular federal government has to look after the federal government the states and his own country's interest in the global affairs among nations so a politician at the top has to take responsibility for the actions of his departmental heads that he votes into office and say a businessman can go around and say you're fired you're fired you're fired if he doesn't like how they're conducting the business within his own business in the federal government yes you can appoint your secretaries your undersecretaries eccentrics have to because they're not voted in they're appointed by the president as you know but in a sense when you are also heading a department say whether it's hud or this state department or whichever department it is it's not easy just to fire somebody here there and the other one you because there's so much involved with opening and judgment positioning your own policy so that your team works for the benefit of the government and the country it's it's not it's it's a joke to go around you know appointing somebody one month and then fire them and then the next month with some sort of excuse they're going to have not even private sector easier then again in the government you know  really able to get him elected into office so it was a very effective for a practitioner of the or use of the media in a very up today kind of way that some of the younger people might represent because social media and he knows how to use it to good advantage or didn't know so that i guess that's part of the political no that is part of the whole game you know one thing i like to have in my government is some stor of stability not only of the goals in mind but the incoming case of the different departments that will work together to make a smooth running government and when you have the chaos of firing this fire and that you're asking yourself who's on st what's on spec and you're right there's a lot of people doing that right now yeah as we talk and let that psychologically own consciousness i'm asking one of my not seen i think a lot of people are is asking that as well don't you think there's really a great deal of discontent general hello hillary clinton's got suspicious e mails we should check into that what's the difference between an e mail and a twitter it was all on a communication machine well that's true it's our communication y can be what you call eavesdropped on yeah right increasingly out so the privacy among the commander in chief to his department heads and to his nations and you worked at united nations so some of these lessons you you had a sense of the mission association with the mission as a novel store part of its formation of the united nations which has milieu for someone you know working with the united nations was of course an eye opening situation to watch countries and their is to allow this information to come forward whether it's acted upon or whether it can be enforced that's different questions yeah but the ability for it to produce documentations of knowledge and open ends from so many different countries it's a real boon to how the world there were relevant to your understanding better the national political context or not or how do they relate the two in your own mind well let us say that the united nations is a group of sovereign nations and observers coming together to express their opinions but they're going out but above all else they are there to serve their country and their country is being and the country is serving its self in all aspects so that those people who are appointed to the government elected or whatever and then they send their representatives they're all there for the and self serving purposes not simply to do the the world as a whole yeah you know they try to for the best for the human rights and for each sovereign nation but self interest gets in the way well what do i have a perfect example  of of this that shows not only the concerns of the nations but the discrepancies of and the power that each nation can bring to the table at the united nations and it's very there they were conferring with nations particularly nations that were not water that were not part of the oceans of the world they're landlocked  now every country has their territorial rights in terms of the oceans you have a coastal amount of distance that you cannot penetrate otherwise you'll be in the coastal waters of the nations but beyond those coastal waters you have open ocean yeah now the ocean has vast ground underneath all water and on the ground there is all sorts of things resources and resources minerals of deposits of such things as oil and in the case of the of the law of the sea they were discussing something called magnesium geos which is a very large stone that has to be gathered and the the maritime pickers there basically which requires large investments in shipping equipment technology in order to what you would call farm minerals from the ocean bottoms and gary that are very deep now in some places shallow and other places but they're in the open ocean we're in the territory territorial boundaries how they work that out and there are there any lessons for the nation state people who are responsible for well of course the question about the question about who owns the  the treasures or the mineral resources of the ocean was very clear to the industrial nations because they had the wherewithal and the money to be able to farm the minerals right right however it's open territory now the big question was although there's only so few nations of maritime ability and technical ability that can farm these geo it's that are very valuable to technology should it should be the profits of them not be shared among all nations because the ocean floor is global boy the and the metaphors for the human condition go come streaming into my mind about so many metaphors about that situation have relevancy to the larger view in condition you know the landlocked countries the these kind of issues are inherent not only nash internationally but also nationally and even and start local level politically well herald and the relationship between the government and the private sector is something that's really important issue in those all came up in two thousand and eight and so forth and they were all interrelated big change you know a small little story or analogy is  about the farmer whose crop came in nicely and his wife is making the pilot the dinner table because they have the wheat and they have the vegetables you know they have a stove they have the fire and they're able to produce this part now his neighbor doesn't have that right ok so should he be obligated to share that pie or should he in his conscience or the morality of the community be obligated to share the pie another magnificent metaphor for the human condition between the political leaders in the bill or should that farmer say i'm sorry i worked hard for my fields and you didn't therefore i'm not going to share my pie a lot of these kind of issues are there and don't you think there's an awful lot of general discontent that hangs loose in the world now about the can deploy their current economic condition in which they find just inordinately high sense again i ask who's on st and what's on nd in the room when i read the newspapers and look at television or look at television  i only see what the producers are giving me but you can read behind the lines from plum years burns and you're reading and so forth are if you've trained yourself or have the curiosity to go beyond just the work that you read you can pick up this thing that the other what's obvious what's not obvious what is mentioned one week and not everything in two thousand and eight there was a gigantic failure of government and the whole process that was very disquieting people thought we may be on the edge of a great depression or something coming out of the  leadership what about now there's a great deal of animosity between the parties political parties and so forth one of the question  one question that came to me over and over and over again as i was exploring the tragedies of the crash of two thousand and eight was to what degree was this concocted all consciously concert yeah right ok well to what degree did they create a fall for instance  you've had years say eight years of easy money being lent to peoples who could not have borrowed money we're going to take advantage of it it's not going to stop go you know the banks are smarter to allow us to borrow money blah blah blah  yourself you know borrow this much money and later you can refinance and borrow some more money based on your property that's getting more valuable more valuable as the years go on and so people begin to anticipate that the good times will continue or where the little girl that takes the drug all of a sudden needs that drug it's no longer a choice house or you can't refinance it could it didn't go up in value and would down in value so you're left hanging with the house that you have a loan for five hundred thousand dollars and it decreased in value because of circumstances down to half it's about does that happen often or the one that can happen ok go on and neighborhoods can be totally destroyed you know if for instance off and you had in california the large air force base called edwards air force base absolutely it was out in the mojave desert the shuttles would come down there and if you've ever been to the mojave desert it's a very large desert and there's a whole lot of nothing there yeah however when you have a big industrial complex like you put up a few roads here you know say this is the new a site for such and such and such and such over here and people were wanting to get in on the ground floor i believe would like to get in on the ground floor and there things are going to be better in the future for them yeah well that's a good investment is about i guess and it was fast and furious yeah yeah and people were buying you know ten acres of land for a couple one hundred dollars yeah and they'd be paying the monthly payment would be four dollars thirty five cents a month at such a low interest rate they'd be paying that but what happened to edwards air force base in clubs i don't know it closed down did it really ok that changes the shuttle program and moved it to a different place and best thing going with the federal government and that can happen everybody can be taken out right an air force a military base anything that is there for the individual to get employment and employment the ability to buy homes bread food clothing right right and schools but when the industry collapses like detroit  locational things that are limitless right in the middle of a country so that if there should be threats from overseas you could they'd have to go way into the country in order to do something so all of these things are part of a national pattern and everything like that and they come and go and they ride with the situation in the various is from around the world and everything so why is it that with all the resources we have and the population now in the world what is it about seven billion people and all kinds of capabilities technological capability information technology why is it that there is this sense it seems to me i may be exhibited and and not can not not not reformed or not made whole or healthy the answer to what happened in two thousand and five and so forth was something that just took care of the overwhelming needs of the very well established interests they were there but did not have anything to serve the interest of the mass of the people in any kind of systemic way to ward off the worst effects of what can happen they didn't come up with the solution that seemed to have legs as they would say in the in the in that it is still lacking some sort of a policy or some sort of an understanding that was relevant to what the future at that from that point required and for that reason there's still anxiety at a deep level in the consciousness of the human population on the planet i mean or maybe i'm wrong in that but it seems to me the confidence of the people there's great distrust between the various political and economic forces between them you know like a democrat republican and all that the in their comparable things the bricks and these kind of things and  disquiet to what's going on and expressions of discontent by the population writ large you know you think maybe it has to do with the failure that came out of two thousand and eight you put such attention upon as a major thing like earlier people of brits such great attention on the great depression of nine hundred and thirty s one thing when i asked to earlier on if you thought perhaps this was all a set up and it the crash of two thousand it was actually purpose filled well some people might have tried to engineer it that way and when they were to benefit when all the when the smoke and the glare and the bad feelings all of a sudden dissipate you see clear for a moment what came out of two thousand and eight there were you you paid a great deal of attention to work how do you see it i saw it as a joke content is legitimate in terms the lack of the quality of the leadership that is asserting itself when two thousand and eight yards when two thousand and eight hit you had banks crashing was concentrate the financial banking power into fewer hands and decrease the need for them to have good good paperwork or something that would support their ownership stake or their position even if they protect the introduced interest of the already well to do so but you see it with a smaller number of dangers that are even wealthier than ever before yeah there's a few you have fewer people making the and so you have to ask yourself is this just an accident or what yeah this contrived you know now when you see the systematic tearing down of one thing for the success of another you have to ask yourself where are the powers that be that allow this to happen for instance or words intellectually or even the political leadership when i was here with an altered situation that calls for new and creative thinking that is lacking when i walk around the city of manhattan new york we're just where i live and i've lived here in manhattan thirty seven years  and i've watched this retail stores come and go the restaurants and then go yeah and the drones are coming now with the exception of when i in one thousand nine hundred and seventy s when i st came here and new york was in such a bad situation i hadn't seen so many empty stores i mean it loan when you see it's a phenomenon that happened and it's it's extraordinary the changes it's made d in the way people operate and that is to your retail how do i describe the tension again it's more concentration in the hands of a few you think it's becoming more concentrated in the hands very much so when you look at amazon and its extraordinary gro know and how it was taken out in retail yeah you know the joke here in new york was you know every block had a bookstore in new york and then all the bookstores went out and everything was being its last store you know we all were crying and now amazon who barnes and noble's is now building its st book store here in one of the places was ability to have all those things done by extension robots and things like that is growing exponentially all over the place so that's part of and in x or movement within the society is going to bring even more  way the retailers they can't compete so what's the what's the reason for maybe it's not maybe there's always been discontent among some and everything but at least idea of an ordinary really deep and widespread sense of general and large ranging discontent among so many people of all political persuasions what is the source of it and what is the implication of it and what is the like the outcome over the next five hundred and ten years or so if this is the case personally for myself yeah i just watch all this change coming  as i was talking about how somebody would go into the city for a big day of shopping you know and go home exhausted except work such as they're walking and they're sharing their smelling they're bumping they're arguing buying their  and they go home with their prizes at the night now with going into the computer on e commerce they say oh it's so easy you just this is this app put in your credit card and they'll ship it to you now they ship things for free to the so competitor and i still don't know how many times you have to ship something back because you don't want it out now that she was seen about for the other issue yeah yeah there in new jersey right across from new york city and she said everything is here you have your gym there's restaurants downstairs the dry cleaners  outside says no everything is right here so i'm asking myself well particularly myself who is adventurous so many places in the world are going all over the world i know and and i see myself you would want to stay in one place and just have everything spoon fed to you and not go out and you know it was change with the world you know explore and it's gotten so easy where you really don't have to leave your house unless you have a job and then if you have a job you could have it at home the jobs are being threatened by all the robot zation that's coming the jobs are going to be done by robots and people are not going to be needed as workers in a productive process in seriously large term i was another major thing that's confronting the plan but not yet part of the reason why people are upset the future is not the pattern for the future is not adequately able to say it's going to be ok because it could be very very disruptive like two thousand and five over and over and over again and maybe people sense that why there is this sense of disquietude that they don't have they don't have the system down yet for their work in order to be able to be able to buy the things that can be produced harold how many people do you think are knocked off when macy's shut down hundreds of stores many hundreds hundreds thousands you know the whole vertical challenging  what's the stationer that we go to around the corner i don't know you mean oh well you buy paper supplies and things like staples staples it's challenging staples in a traditional terms and that's why there's such a degree of upset and you read some of that in your book when you looked at what happened in two thousand and five it might be results in an eighty two thousand and eight particularly  harold now economics are not in order for what's needed but now it's like smoke and mirrors on a bowl of jell o smoke and mirrors the world actually i don't know at this stage they're powerful country to have somebody who doesn't know what they're doing and that maybe they know what they're doing they claim they know what they're doing and we just don't understand that would be some people thinking that or they'll confuse us so much and do wrote a book what book would you recommend to understand what's going on here in one city are now two thousand and seven or two thousand and seventeen what we're do we go to get some understanding to make this transition a little bit easier personally or collectively or maybe within the realm of our community and that sort of thing who's who's making some sense out of this best either in the written or electronic media or academia for that matter something and long short i mean a lot of that was read by many and then there were other people who were writing on that subject to who are the writers that are writing in a major way now do you think i want to get a minute left so i got  thank you for doing will come back tomorrow thanks a lot josie ok that's it you know ok so we do get i