Jaisal Noor — Greg Palast: Potential Fed Chair Summers at Heart of Global Economic Crisis

Video and transcript of interview about the infamous memo and more. It's worse than you probably thought.

How did it end up bringing down the world financial system just 'cause we had a problem with the United States? The answer goes back to this memo. It was an idea in which they said, look, we can't deregulate into the United States alone; we have to deregulate across the planet. Otherwise, money will shift out of the United States into safer money harbors. So the way to change end that would be to eliminate banking regulations in every nation of the world, 156 nations in one shot.

And it was quite brilliant, the scheme, which was--and it succeeded, that is, in an awful way. We have a world financial collapse, but their plan to succeeded, the end game succeeded, which is to require any nation that wants to do trade with the United States in goods to accept our bads. If you want to sell us--if Ecuador wants to sell America bananas--and this is a real example--if Ecuador wants to sell us bananas, they have to accept in return derivatives, subprime mortgages. They have to accept synthetic collateralized debt obligations. So they're being paid for their real assets with toxic assets.

And every nation but one signed on. A hundred and fifty-five nations agreed to a kind of form of blackmail, which is that you want to sell cars to the U.S., you want to sell, you know, orange juice to the U.S., you're going to have to go along with deregulating your banking system, accepting our derivatives junk, our junk bonds and our junk derivatives, and opening up your sectors to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, so that Morgan, Citibank, and others are allowed to operate internationally. The effects, of course, have been disastrous.

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Greg Palast: Potential Fed Chair Summers at Heart of Global Economic Crisis
Jaisal Noor | The Real News Network