Rob Kall: Alright wait,
we're going to get to this in a second, let me just do a quick station ID. This is the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show ( WNJC 1360 AM), sponsored by OpEdNews.com. Just remember,
Google the words liberal news or progressive opinion and OpEdNews pops up at
the top of the Google search results.
I'm talking with Greg Palast, he's the author of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, co-authored with Ted Rall and
Bobby Kennedy, Jr. The subtitle is How to Steal an Election in Nine Easy
Steps, and we've been talking about the billionaires and how there's a war
going on between the banker billionaires, and the hedge fund billionaires. This is really interesting stuff. I like the
idea of a war between the bad guys at the top.
Greg Palast: For those of you
who don't know Greg Palast, I'm an investigative reporter for BBC and Rolling
Stone, and Nation, and for an investigative reporter, a war between elites is
always wonderful, because you get information you would never get otherwise as
they, you know, slice each other up, usually in the background, but sometimes
there's enough info, especially within their own industry chatter press. They're willing to whisper to me about each
other, which is a whole new thing. So
you have a lot of fun in Billionaires and
Ballot Bandits because these guys are exposing some of the things they do,
and how they're making their money, but also what we have is the nine ways they
are actually stealing the election. Like I've mentioned the purges, the
knocking out the absentee ballots, you know, and electronic, we call that
prestidigitizing, like, presto! And that's three. So you know, in a way, it's a lot of
fun. I know it's crazy to talk about
billionaires"
Rob Kall: I interrupted
you, when you were going to tell me more about how there's this battle between
hedge fund billionaires and the banker billionaires. What is the main difference in what they are
trying to do, and why do the banker billionaires think that the hedge fund
billionaires are going to destroy the world economy?
Greg Palast: Well, two things,
because they've threatened to do so.
First of all, some of it's very direct.
"The Vulture" Singer, Romney's number one guy, has actually sued
Citibank and JP Morgan for billions of dollars, because he is trying to bring
down the economy of Argentina. He says that he has old bonds. He's like a repo-man and finds old supposed debts
of these countries, which were actually canceled years ago. He finds these old debts and sues to get a
hundred times what he pays for. So he'll
put up ten million dollars and then sue for twenty billion, you know two
hundred times of what he's paid. He has
used Citibank. He has sued JP Morgan
saying all the money they've received over decades from the country of
Argentina belongs to him, and he's demanded that U.S. courts give Argentina,
that the entire Argentine Central Bank, be emptied out and handed to him. I kid you not. So that Hilary Clinton"I do know that Hilary
Clinton freaked out, because she saw the collapse of Argentina, an ally of
America, as creating basically a terrorist state. As you know, Hezbollah has kind of moved into
Argentina. They are very worried about
creating a terrorist base in South America, which would happen with the
collapse of the Argentine economy.
Rob Kall: Now, my
understanding is that after Argentina collapsed, and they developed
horizontalism, and their solidarity movement, that was the inspiration for many
of the ideas of Occupy Wall Street. So"I
see Argentina as a model that I would like to see happen in the U.S.
Greg Palast: Oh absolutely,
one hundred percent. And in fact, the
Nestor family has been a big supporter of my work, the President of Argentina.
And in fact, you'll see in Billionaires
and Ballot Bandits that the Argentine Embassy contacted me to say what the
heck's going on Palast, because we don't expect Obama to be on our side? So they actually flew to New York, the
ambassador's people flew to New York to find out from me, what was going
on. I said okay"they go look at the
political lineup. Because what happened
is that Clinton went into court; unusual.
Obama sent his guys into court; very unusual. Under unusual provisions of the U.S.
Constitution, after all, Obama's a constitutional law professor, that allows
the President of the United States to step into court actions and say that
basically someone is actually impeding the conduct of the foreign policy of the
United States. And so he accused, in these court filings, Obama and Clinton, as
Secretary of State in their official capacities, said that Singer is
threatening the foreign policy of the United States by bringing down
Argentina. One thing that you have to
understand about Argentina, the Argentines told the IMF and the big banks of
New York to go to hell. We're not paying
your usurious bond fees. Which is one of
the most extraordinary and inspiring actions to happen in our hemisphere, as
you correctly point out. They are the
model to me of resistance to the New World Order. Fantastic.
What people don't know is that while they did tell the banks, we're not
going to pay these terrible bonds, but we'll give you stock in our nation
instead. If we don't pay you, and we
recover, we'll give you a piece of our economy.
We'll pay you back based on how our economy does. Because Argentina told the banks to go to
hell, Argentina's economy has roared and they've been making massive payments
to these banks, which they don't mind. Their
economy's roaring; they give them a little bit.
They say okay, here you go. Singer says, "That's my money!" And so, in
other words, the big banks are, you know, one thing about the big banks is that
they always look forward. They don't
care if you told them to go to hell before and they lost sixty-five
billion. They see themselves making one
hundred billion in the future from Argentina, and Singer wants to stop the
whole game. Singer, and the vultures,
and the Romney crew want to stop it.
They want to seize the money. So there's this war.
Rob Kall: I'm hearing from
you that Singer has this strategy where he buys up debt and then tries to
collect it at huge multiples of that. But, I'm not clear about, still, the
hedge fund manager billionaires versus the bank billionaires"what the war".
Greg Palast: Okay, remember
the banksters.. Okay, I'll give you another example. Paul "The Vulture" Singer, the number one
Romney guy, bought Greek government bonds when it collapsed. When the government of Greece and it's
economy collapsed, Singer bought a bunch of Greek debt for about fifteen cents
on the dollar, on the euro, right. Then
the bailout, then the European Central Bank said okay we're going to bale out
Greece and we'll give all the bondholders twenty cents on the dollar on your
bonds. So Singer would have made a nice
thirty percent [30%] profit for holding his bonds for a couple weeks. Thirty percent is a nice rate of return after
a couple of weeks, right? Singer said no way.
There are eight thousand bondholders, eight thousand, and only Singer
and another Republican billionaire, one of the Bass brothers said no. Eight thousand bondholders agreed, two said
no, but under the law they needed unanimity.
Now, they said to Singer, if you do not agree to these terms and take
your one-third profit, you're going to bring down the entire banking system of
Europe. And he said "Yeah I will, won't
I? Hehehe (evil laugh) It's nothing to me."
Singer's worth many billionaires of dollars and he only have had a couple
of bucks in the game. He makes money
when things go bad, that's what happens.
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