How to live in a collapsing economy

Summary

In this heartfelt and eye-opening talk, Gary discusses his career journey from a trader in a large bank to a public voice on economic inequality. Initially benefiting from the economic system himself, he realized the pervasive inequality that underpins a collapsing economy. Gary urges individuals to reflect on their life choices and the nature of our economic systems, emphasizing the necessity to recognize and address inequality. Despite confronting a system resistant to change, he advocates for understanding and active participation in preventing economic collapse, even as societal norms encourage selfishness and complacency.

Highlights

• Gary's live recording covers his journey from trading in a bank to understanding economic societal impacts. 🎥
• He sheds light on the shift in arguments around economic inequality over the last 13–14 years. 🕰️
• The realization that economic experts often misjudge market predictions due to intrinsic biases. 🎯
• Explores his personal experiences growing up poor and the inherent drive to escape poverty. 🌱
• Questions the moral and ethical implications of the economic systems and individual choices. ❓
• Shares insights from his book and lectures, focusing on the looming threat of systemic collapse. 📚

Key Takeaways

• Inequality is a profound and growing problem in our economy, pushing us towards collapse if not addressed. 📉
• Gary shares his journey from a privileged position within a bank to realizing the broader consequences of economic disparity. 🏦
• It's crucial to question what it means to be human in a collapsing economy and to challenge ourselves beyond mere survival. 🧠
• Advocates that addressing inequality requires active participation and can no longer be ignored. 🛠️
• The need to balance self-preservation with societal responsibility is more important than ever.⚖️

Overview

Gary, urgent in his message, delves into his unique journey from a high-stakes banking career to one focused on tackling economic inequality. He highlights personal anecdotes and challenges involved in making a switch in mindset from being a beneficiary of the wealth system to becoming a critique, urging for better socioeconomic responsibility.

His candid storytelling reveals the unnoticed societal undercurrents and systemic failures that perpetuate inequality and make economic collapse feel inevitable. By sharing first-hand experiences, Gary exposes the complexities and choices individuals face while living through an unstable economy.

Ultimately, through passion and direct call to action, Gary emphasizes the crucial need for awareness and proactive measures. He stresses the importance of embracing a collective responsibility to counter adverse economic conditions and the moral demand to care not only for individual welfare but also for the broader societal good.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Context In the introduction and context chapter, Gary welcomes the audience back and mentions a change of pace by presenting a live recording of a speech given at Cambridge during a book launch. He humorously notes that the choice to air this recording was due to a lack of new videos, as he is currently on vacation cycling through Japan.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Reflections on a Challenging Year The chapter 'Reflections on a Challenging Year' details the author's experiences over a particularly demanding year. The author discusses their hard work and the growth of their channel, mentioning significant publicity from a book they've been promoting.\n\nDespite the channel's growth and added support from a manager and videographer, the author expresses feelings of creative exhaustion. The burden of creativity is still primarily on the author, despite the team's support. Overall, the chapter highlights the challenges of balancing creative demands and the personal toll it takes.
• 03:00 - 06:00: The Concept of Inequality The Concept of Inequality - This chapter discusses the author's decision to take a break from the current environment and go to Japan, where they previously lived for two years. The author expresses a desire to embark on a longstanding goal of cycling from Tokyo to Southwest Japan. Despite their best efforts to create video content during this time, they acknowledge that not all gaps will be covered. The author shares that this is the last video before their departure.
• 06:00 - 14:30: Personal Journey and Economic Realizations The chapter titled 'Personal Journey and Economic Realizations' features a speech delivered at Robinson College in Cambridge. The speech is described as more personal and emotional compared to previous works by the speaker. It addresses the speaker's experiences and coping mechanisms in dealing with a deteriorating economy and their efforts to combat the decline. The speech holds significance to the speaker, who had previously committed to sharing it publicly with an audience at Waterstones Liverpool.
• 14:30 - 29:00: Moral Choices in a Collapsing Economy The chapter titled 'Moral Choices in a Collapsing Economy' features a video that encounters sound quality issues, yet it's considered informative and is about 45 minutes long. The speaker expresses emotional involvement in the content and signifies a temporary break in video production until September. The speaker hopes viewers will enjoy this final installment before the brief hiatus.
• 29:00 - 40:00: Concluding Thoughts on Humanity and Disaster The speaker expresses gratitude for the past year's growth and contributions, with hopes for increased political impact in the future. Reflecting on an invitation to speak at Robinson College, the speaker identifies the theme of economic inequality as both a personal mission and a timely fit for their book launch.

How to live in a collapsing economy Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 okay guys welcome back to Gary's economics this week we got something a little bit different for you we are going to show you um a live record Another speech I gave at Cambridge to kick off my book launch a couple of months ago um I got to be honest if we've gotten around to this point it means basically we have run out of videos and the reason for that is because I am currently on holiday cycling from Tokyo to kagoshima in Southwestern Japan um listen it's been a
• 00:30 - 01:00 pretty mental year for me I've been working really hard Channel's growing a lot uh I've had a ton of publicity with the book um trying to grow everything trying to push things politically and it's been a lot of work and uh to be honest I'm feeling a little bit creatively exhausted and um you know we get a lot of support for this channel now I've got a manager and we've got Jack here the videographer but but creatively it's still basically me who does the videos and um with all the book and the interviews and the the video for
• 01:00 - 01:30 the channel I'm feeling a bit knackered and and the election all that nonsense um so I've decided to get out of here go back to Japan um those of you who read the book when I lived in Japan for two years and I used to spend a lot of time in there before covid so I've decided to take a little bit of a break go and do this cycle that I've wanted to do for ages from Tokyo to to Southwest Japan and um I've tried my best to film videos to fill the Gap but I'm not sure we're going to be able to cover the whole time and uh We've scheduled this to be the last video before uh before we go blank
• 01:30 - 02:00 for a bit maybe for part of August before I come back for my holiday and this is a speech I gave at Robinson college in Cambridge um it's a little bit more personal a little bit more emotional than a lot of the stuff that I do talking about sort of how I deal with sort of living in this economy which where things get worse and worse and trying to stop it um I think it's a really nice speech and I promised uh a room full of scousers in waterstones Liverpool that I'd put it up on the you
• 02:00 - 02:30 at some point so hopefully they're still watching um unfortunately there's a few problems with the sound quality um but since we've got a gap with no videos I think it's worth watching I think it's really interesting it's about 45 minutes long I hope you like it uh I get a little bit emotional in it but um after this I think we'll probably have a gap of a few weeks before I come back in September and start shooting again so this will be it for me for a few weeks um I'll back and I hope you enjoy this
• 02:30 - 03:00 last video thank you and also thanks for all of your help um this year the growth been been really good and been really mental and and hopefully be able to have a little bit more political impact when I come back thank you when I was contacted to do this lecture they said come to Robinson college talk about economics tell everyone why inequality is a problem and my agent said that's perfect timing for your book launch to go do it
• 03:00 - 03:30 so I said yes and um that's about a year ago now I didn't really think about it much then they reached out to me a couple of months ago and they said what you want the title your lecture to be and um my first thought when they said that was I don't really want to talk about economics anymore
• 03:30 - 04:00 let me explain to you why I've been talking about economics for a long time now 13 years 14 years I've been having arguments about economics trying to tell people inequality is a problem inequality is a problem it's going to get worse it's going to get worse we need to do something and over the course of those 14 years especially in the last year or two what I've noticed is the arguments been having have been
• 04:00 - 04:30 changing and more and more I start to think to myself that actually we're not really arguing about economics at all see when I first started saying inequality was a problem I was working in a bank in Canary wolf in London and I was surrounded by millionaires of Economics degrees and they would say to me you can't tax wealth you can't deal with inequality because we need the rich to invest to grow the economy me the
• 04:30 - 05:00 optimal rate of Taxation in the first best of all possible worlds on capital is zero but nobody really says that to me anymore okay some people do say that sometimes in places like this people say that but nobody without a fancy economics degree says that to me no more what people say to me now is you can't tax the rich you can't tax they're too powerful he attacks the rich
• 05:00 - 05:30 they'll leave and they'll go away and then we'll have nothing and then we'll be poor or they say to me it's impossible trying to deal with inequality inequality is just the way things are and the rich are too powerful why you trying to stop them you're wasting your time what they say to me why are you trying to stop inequality why don't you just trade Bitcoin or foreign exchange on internet
• 05:30 - 06:00 that's the way to make everything better or they say to me you know the economy and Society it's like the cycles of nature sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad sometimes it gets better and sometimes it gets worse so why are you trying to change things you can't fight the cycles of Nature and the more more I heard these
• 06:00 - 06:30 arguments the more I started to think we're not really arguing about the economy increasingly everybody knows it's getting worse and worse really hardly any real people think it's going to get better I think people in their heart of hearts realize that it just gets worse and worse from here and when they're saying to me why are you trying to fix things
• 06:30 - 07:00 often they're really saying to themselves I don't want to have to try to fix things and I started to feel like the real questions that we're asking ourselves and each other it's not really is the economy broken it's what do you do what do you do when you live in a collapsing economy what do you do what should you do
• 07:00 - 07:30 and what does it mean more and more these are the questions that I hear when I argue people about economics what do you do what should you do what does it mean and it got me thinking about my journey in economics I've been an economist for God nearly 20 years now but I lived in an economy my whole life I grew up very poor so really
• 07:30 - 08:00 poverty and a collapse in economy is not new to but I got me thinking what did I do what should I have done differently what does it all mean so I sent a ma back saying I wanted to talk about what it means to be human in a collapsing economy and I'm going to talk a little bit about what I think about my path and when I talk about that I want you to
• 08:00 - 08:30 think about those three main questions what does it mean to live in a collapsing economy what do you do when the economy is collapsing and what should you do and I'm going to stop a points and I'm going to ask those questions and when I do that I would like you to think what would I do if that was me and with regards to the second of those questions what do you do when the economy is collapsing all of you will have a perspective on that because you all live in aoll economy and you're all
• 08:30 - 09:00 doing something but this kind of economic collapse which is in my opinion a collapse caused by inequality it's a collapse which looks very very different depending on which angle you view it from so some of you will have been in the situations I've been there and some of you won't have been but I want you to take it as an opportunity to imagine you're in a different seat to where you are now and ask yourself honestly what would I do if that was me okay so with that I'm going to start I don't like reading from speeches but
• 09:00 - 09:30 I've written a little story when I was writing I wanted to start with my period of BTY which lasted about 20 years and um I wrote a little bit about ilford which is my hometown so I'm going to read it to you I'm going to have to change this first line because there's a swear word in it I grew up in ilford it's a bit of a slump but it's my slump
• 09:30 - 10:00 ORD is kind of a contested Borderland war zone between East London and Essex everyone is from Pakistan or India or Sri Lanka or something but everyone talks in a half cottony accent when I was a teenager I used to sing songs in Punjabi for illegal immigrants working in halal Fried Chicken shops at 2 a.m. in the morning for free chicken what do you want me to tell you I loved it
• 10:00 - 10:30 I still do I miss it ilford is one of the cheapest places to live in all of London I used to live in this tiny narrow Terrace House on A Street full of tiny narrow Terrace houses tucked him behind the High Street it had three bedrooms it used to have two bedrooms but somebody had moved the bathroom downstairs into the kitchen which meant that they could turn the old bathroom upstairs into another bedroom
• 10:30 - 11:00 and that's where I grew up in a bunk bed with my brother in a bunk bed in an old converted bathroom the train trucks that carried Brokers and Traders in fast trains from out in Essex down into the city used to run right through my garden right past my bedroom window and when the fast trains came through the whole house used to shake I never noticed when when you grow up in a house
• 11:00 - 11:30 that gets shaken by a fast train every 4 minutes you don't even notice when a train shakes your house I was 12 or 13 the first time I noticed my friend from school came around and he said damn your whole house is shaking and that was the first time I realized what does that mean so I was in the bottom bunk of that bunk bed when I was a kid and underne my bed there was a single drawer that had
• 11:30 - 12:00 been removed from a chest of drawers which had probably been destroyed long ago and in that single draw I kept all of my worldly possessions I'll be honest it wasn't particularly safe house when I was a kid there was danger and there was violence sometimes but you know I was a kid what do you do and there are a lot of institutions in our society that are supposed to
• 12:00 - 12:30 protect poor kids and kids who are not safe there's the government the welfare state charity philanthropy some religious institutions all I can tell you is I don't remember none of them coming from me so you know what do you do there wasn't any help as far as I can remember it when I was a kid but there was a story a story is something to hold on to
• 12:30 - 13:00 you work hard you kill all of your exams you destroy the competition your friends of course you beat all your friends into the top university this University and then you get a whole load of new friends and you beat those new friends too into the best job and then you get the best job working for a bank in the city I did didn't really know what that meant to be honest but I had an
• 13:00 - 13:30 image it was an image of a large corner office high up in a skyscraper somewhere with carpeted floors and windows for walls and a high blue sky and a warm sun and Views some miles in every direction I don't actually know if offices like that really exist I never worked in one but you know that was a story I got to be honest I didn't really work
• 13:30 - 14:00 hard there wasn't anywhere to work in my house the only desk in the whole house was this little kind of Bureau thing that you had to fold out right next to my dad's bed and when you did a whole load of M flew at you it was so dark and musty there that I don't think anyone could work there but my parents had a solution they got this like plank of wood and if you sat on the armchair you could put the planker with the cross and you could balance your books and you could write there but I didn't really like doing that
• 14:00 - 14:30 because the plank wasn't that long and it would fall and your books would fall on the floor so I just went down to the floor with them and I put the plank down on the floor and I used to work there lying down on my belly in the middle of the front room doing my Math's homework and my French homework as my dad used to watch Coronation Street and my brother and sister used to run around screaming and causing Carnage what do you do you know I didn't work
• 14:30 - 15:00 hard instead I was out on the streets you know my street was like a little dead end Street tucked in between the High Street and the railway and on one end where there was this old abandoned Factory we used to play in and on the other end there was this recycling center which had these huge 3 meter high piles of old newspapers we used to play on them as well but there was never any traffic on that street and the kids used to just play out every day and when the first Canary War
• 15:00 - 15:30 skyscrapers went up which was happening when I was about 9 or 10 we could see those skyscrapers go up in a distance and so I thought that's it then that's where I'm going to be looks like a lot of corner offices in that building maybe some other kids thought the same but you know I wasn't really studying but you might think that's a problem but to be honest it
• 15:30 - 16:00 weren't cuz even though I Wen never studying I still came first in every exam and I don't know why I don't know what that means and the kids at school would say oh we you know you're studying and I would say I'm not I'm not studying and they would say we know that you are and I don't know what you say to that so I used to take him sometimes back to see my house the house used to shape with the trains and then they knew that I wasn't studying because I
• 16:00 - 16:30 wasn't not long after that I got expelled from school see I managed to get into some fancy grammar school and the kids there knew that I could get drugs and they were right I could get drugs there were drugs on my street there was about 10 houses I could have knocked on at any time and those front doors would open up and they'd sell me drugs and those kids at the grammar school from fancy homes and fancy houses and staircases that split in two in the middle they didn't have doors that opened up
• 16:30 - 17:00 like that on their streets but what they did have was money money so they brought their money that I didn't have and I brought my drugs which they didn't have and we met then in bounous free Commerce and it wasn't them it was me that got expelled wasn't it and I didn't know quite what that meant what would you do
• 17:00 - 17:30 you know when I was very young primary school I had the school trip to the seaside at that time I owned two pairs of shoes one was a pair of black school shoes that were a hand me down for my older brother I wore those to school and to church I also had one pair of black plims also a hand me- down for my brother
• 17:30 - 18:00 I War those for everything else that day on the seaside I took off my PLM sols and I ran into the sea and I played in the waves and when I came back to the shore the pl Souls were gone I guess the waves must have taken them after that I wore the black school shoes for everything PE class everything I wore them until they fell apart
• 18:00 - 18:30 part I don't know you know what would you do and now this brings us to our first moral question at this point we see in sharp moral Focus the meaning of what it is to be poor and to try to be rich so imagine this you are there for the first day of your new life you're 16 you've just been expelled
• 18:30 - 19:00 from school in the night time you were awoken by your mother crying at the foot of your bed but she's gone now everyone's gone now your mom and your dad and your brother are at work your younger sister she's still in school there's no one in the house and there's no school to go to so you get out of bed and you go downstairs to the bathroom which is in the kitchen and you plug a little
• 19:00 - 19:30 plastic hose into the TOs of the bathtub and you sit down on the cold plastic and you shower yourself and you watch the water go down the drain and you say to yourself that's your life that is that's your life and then you get out of the bath and you dry yourself and you're drying your hair on the doorbell rings and it's your friend from the street who you've been smoking with for about 6 months now and he knows that you've been expelled from school and he's really sorry and he says we should go and smoke
• 19:30 - 20:00 up so now what do you do this is the moment when you realize that to be poor and to want to be rich is a walking away it is a walking away from the friends you grew up with it is a walking away from people like you and you know deep within yourself in your heart of hearts these friends won't be okay without you but what about you if you stick around
• 20:00 - 20:30 to save him then who sticks around to save you what does it mean to be selfish what would you do if it were you what would you do I didn't go I worked I worked there by myself in that cold empty house B down in the center of
• 20:30 - 21:00 the front room math homework chemistry homework English homework every day on that small wooden board and I did it I killed my exams I decimated the opposition I outco competed my friends I won then my first taste of blood so what next 3 years later the London School of
• 21:00 - 21:30 Economics money so I'll be honest I thought LC was going to be difficult but to be honest it wasn't that hard millionaires kids Gaddafi's kids paying tens of thousands of pounds to send their kids over to London from all over the world to get beat by me in their exams I don't know why to be honest I don't really know what that means
• 21:30 - 22:00 but I had a desk then not a home there was a desk in library so now you're at LC you're 19 years old you're studying maths and economics which is basically the same as economics because economics is mostly math nowadays your focus now is on smashing the other students killing them in their exams making it clear to everyone that you are the best student in the union and beating everyone to the the top job that will make you a
• 22:00 - 22:30 millionaire everyone else is trying to do the same thing nobody's really that bothered in trying to work out how the economy works why would we be we didn't go there to do that you know we were there to kill to compete to make money it's not about knowledge was that the right thing to do should you spend your time actually trying to understand the economy and let everyone else beat you
• 22:30 - 23:00 in your exams then you'll never be able to get a job to actually do anything with that knowledge what would you do I made my decision pretty quickly and I killed everyone in the first two exams I thought that was the right path to getting me a millionaire job but it turns out it wasn't because whilst grades are important to getting the top jobs
• 23:00 - 23:30 nowadays other things are more important the actual way you get a good job nowadays is sending a CV and cover letter so what do you put on your CV and cover letter when you 19 years old you've been expelled from school for selling drugs you did a pay round for six years you spent three years fluffing pillows in a sofa shop in beckon next to a sewage work you spent a year and a half trying to become a Grime MC my friend was the junior United
• 23:30 - 24:00 Nations my other friend played OB at the Royal Al he founded the charity that runs dirt bike tours through the Sahara Desert for some reason why were their CVS so much better than mine they were better because they knew more likely their parents had known they had known that the day would come when the children of this world would be divided based on who and who could not
• 24:00 - 24:30 play the oow so they made sure that their kids had oows and that's how jobs are allocated in this world it's not about exams I see that now what does that mean what do you do okay so you need to find a new route you need to sneak in through the back door despite the fact that your grades are the best in the whole university you look for a back door and you find one competition card game One
• 24:30 - 25:00 Bank runs a card game across five universities in the country the winner of the whole competition gets an internship game sounds nice sounds fair doesn't it sounds like you don't need to play the oow at least but it's risky isn't it it's a game so what you do you do some research and you manage to find out the rules of the game before the competition itself
• 25:00 - 25:30 then when you walk into the competition against the other wealthy economic students you win at least partially because you had an advantage an unfair Advantage you cheated in a sense you cheated to win what does that mean you cheated to win a game that you needed to win in order to get a job despite being one of the top students in the whole
• 25:30 - 26:00 university what does that mean is that fair is that human what would you do okay so now you get the job now you're a Trader the best job in the world there's no Corner offices it's a big room it's the job everybody wanted you get to the trading floor of one of the world's biggest banks and it's full of Genius millionaires except it's it's not really is it it's
• 26:00 - 26:30 full of men with nice shirts expensive haircuts it's kind of full of obvious Psychopaths with emotional problems and people who shout a lot and aren't really that smart and you suppose that that should have been obvious really because it's full of the same people you studied with at LC and they were never really chosen because they were smart they were chosen because their dads were Rich what does that mean so you're there now you're young and
• 26:30 - 27:00 you're hungry and you're there to make money and you want to learn from someone you want to learn how to trade how to make money but everyone there's kind of insane and then suddenly it's October 2008 and the world blows up and Leman goes bankrupt and seven of your friends who studied with you at the London School of economics and had only just started working there lose their jobs and TV cameras go down to their office
• 27:00 - 27:30 which is just down the road from your office and your friends pack all their personal possessions into little green Leman Brothers duffel bags that they' received just a couple weeks earlier as a welcome gift for managing to get one of the best jobs in the entire world and they carry those little green duffel bags and cardboard boxes full of their possessions down into taxis down to the station and TV cameras film them and you see them on TV and you feel bad for them because you
• 27:30 - 28:00 know them because you study with them but you don't feel bad for them really because you know they should have chosen better when they got randomly assigned a bank just like you what does that mean what would you do and everyone around you starts to make money two traders in my team of traders made $100 million in profit the year Li went under so what do you do I know what I did I started to copy them
• 28:00 - 28:30 even though I had no idea what any of them were doing and the next year I made $12 million in profit but that year there was a lot of public discontent about the pay and the bankers bonuses the bankers who in their eyes had ruined the global economy and I sat there on the trading floor and I was still a poor boy sleeping on broken mattresses still showering with a hose in my parents
• 28:30 - 29:00 bathtub only now surrounded by millionaires as golden brown the then prime minister of my country said he would tax the bankers he would tax their bonuses and I looked around and the millionaires around me were laughing and one of them grabbed my shoulder and he said don't worry Gary don't never tax us and I took a big breath in and I breathed it all out what does that mean what would you
• 29:00 - 29:30 do I waited for my first big bonus I was expecting it to be £100,000 at that time in my life 00,000 was the biggest sum of money that I could imagine my dad had worked his whole life for £20,000 a year what I got was 395,000
• 29:30 - 30:00 P what does that mean what would you do you know when I was in sixth form I would skip lunch to save money my friend Assad would sometimes feel bad for me and he'd buy me a burger meal from a shop called Pizza King around the corner from the school and I'd have it with burger sauce know that orange sauce when I was at Uni for lunch I would buy two Scotch eggs from Tesco for
• 30:00 - 30:30 75p every day for 2 years and then one day when I just turned 23 someone gave me £395,000 what does that mean what would you do I wanted more the next year 2010 I copied everyone again and it didn't work for the first time ever I lost money I lost $8 million in one single week when the Swiss National Bank
• 30:30 - 31:00 unexpectedly cut its interest rates to 4.5% that was the first time ever that it occurred to me that maybe LSC had done me a disservice maybe memorizing answers and not actually learning anything wasn't really that useful maybe you did need to know about the economy after all who knew but that moment began an obsession for me an obsession that continues to dat an
• 31:00 - 31:30 obsession to understand the economy why did I want to understand the economy because I wanted to make money what does that mean what would you do so around about that time late 2010 early 2011 I was starting to understand that nobody had any idea what they were doing see my job was to predict interest rates to summarize quite aggressively
• 31:30 - 32:00 interest rates go down when the economy is weak and up when the economy is strong by the beginning of 2011 I had witnessed markets predict interest rates completely incorrectly for three years see cutting interest rates to zero is supposed to stimulate the economy that's what we are taught at University due to the massive interest rate Cuts in 2008 economists all expected the economy to bounce back sharply in
• 32:00 - 32:30 2009 it didn't after that economists expected the same thing to happen in 2010 it didn't I didn't know at the time but this pattern would actually continue for 13 years economists in the UK predicted economic and interest rate recovery every single year from 2009 to 2020 in 2020 they finally agreed that interest rates would actually never go up
• 32:30 - 33:00 again what does that mean anyway look I didn't know this at that time what I knew then was that the Traders and the economists had been wrong for three years they were predicting economic recoveries that won't happen why in my opinion the reason those Traders and economists thought the economy would get better every single year from 2008 up till now
• 33:00 - 33:30 is because for them we did get better for the rich life got better and better and better pretty much every single year from 2008 up till now so why did interest rate stay at zero that Whole Decade after 2010 I had an
• 33:30 - 34:00 idea the reason interest rates are supposed to stimulate the economy is because they're supposed to get you spending but people weren't spending and I asked a few of the Traders why and they said you know there's problems with the banking sector which are fixed now there's problems with confidence that are fixed now one time I asked an Oxford economics professor why did you think spending was so weak after
• 34:00 - 34:30 2008 he said there was an exogenous shock to consumption savings [Music] preferences so I decided to do something radical in the world of Economics I went out and I started asking people have you had an exogenous shock to your consumption savings preferences I'm going to read you a passage from my book because my publicist be delighted this is what people
• 34:30 - 35:00 said when I asked them why they weren't spending more money I asked Harry Sami Harry was still just a kid Harry had holes in his shoes and he was jumping over the barriers on the tube to save costs that's why he didn't spend money I asked Assad Assad said his mom had sold the family home to support him and his sisters and now he was sleeping
• 35:00 - 35:30 on the sofa to try and save up a deposit that's why they didn't spend money I asked Aiden Aidan's mom had lost her job and hadn't been able to get a new rate on the mortgage now the monthly payments were Sky High and Aidan was having to pay them himself that's why they didn't spend money they were losing their homes I hadn't even
• 35:30 - 36:00 noticed so you realize that the hundreds of billions of pounds they imported into the economy by governments and central banks aren't doing anything to protect Ordinary People very shortly after that you recognize that basically every government in the world is bankrupt Spain Italy Portugal Greece but also the UK
• 36:00 - 36:30 the US Japan at that time early 2011 all of these governments had massive deficits that were growing they were selling off their assets they were going into debt they were losing their homes but if the government is losing its assets and going into debt and the people are losing their assets and going into debt then where are the assets going and who's on the other side of the
• 36:30 - 37:00 debt then I look to the right of me and I look to the left of me and I realized I was surrounded by millionaires it was us wasn't it we were the balance we were the boys who would be richer than our fathers in a world full of kids who'd be poor it was us we were the ones on the other side of the Italian government de we were the ones on the other side of mom's mortgage we would buy Assad's
• 37:00 - 37:30 mom's house and rent it back to Assad's kids and then we would have the house and the debt too would lend it back to them and it would grow and it would grow and it would compound and it would compound the situation wouldn't get better it would get worse it wasn't confidence it was cancer it was never going to get better what does that mean I knew what it meant it meant I had to
• 37:30 - 38:00 buy a green euro dollar Futures that's a bet on interest rates at that time everybody thought interest rates would go up but they wouldn't I put that bet on a massive size and by the end of the year I was City bank's most profitable Trader in the world and City Bank paid me $2 million and said Well Done mate do it again what does that mean what would you
• 38:00 - 38:30 do I did it one more year I am not going to lie to you the next year I was sitting at my desk and I said to one of the young traders who I worked with do you think we should do something he said to me what do you mean I said you think we should do something about the collapsing economy he said' what do you mean I said do you think we should do
• 38:30 - 39:00 something he said we brought we bought the green Euro dollars what do you want I've said people I don't think this is about the green Euro dollars you know do you think we should do something about the collapsing economy he said to me sorry I don't understand what do you mean I tried to explain to him that maybe we as wealthy people with an understanding of the problematic economy should do something to make it about he said to me Gary that's
• 39:00 - 39:30 impossible and I knew of course that he was right but for some reason I quit my job anyway and I would love to tell you it's because I'm a good person because I'm a nice guy but the truth is is because I was sick I wanted to sit there and make more money but I was losing weight every single day I'd bought a new luxury apartment and I'd ripped all of the Furnishings out for some reason I couldn't buy more and I used to sleep on a mattress on a
• 39:30 - 40:00 bare concrete floor with white plaster walls and every day I trade a trillion dollars and be City bank's most profitable Trader in the world what does that mean I'll quit that job and if you want to hear the story of that it's in the book but I want to talk about what happened afterwards because first I tried to work for a think tank and I made a website called wealth economics it's still up you can look it if you want explaining
• 40:00 - 40:30 that if you don't fix wealth inequality the economy will collapse this Theory made me millions of dollars nobody looked at the website you can still look it if you want but of course nobody's going to look at the website nobody knows who you are so what do you do so you go back to University you go back to University you go to Oxford best university in the world contentious and you go to your first lecture on interest rates and at this point you've
• 40:30 - 41:00 just stopped being the world's most profitable interest rates Trader and you go to the lecture and you say hey can we talk about why we've been so wrong about interest rates for the past 10 years and he says to you oh we always knew interest rates would stay zero what does that mean and you say to him no you didn't you predicted it wrong for 10 years in a row and he says no we knew we knew and you say to him okay well I'll go home and I'll send you the data and he says oh yeah you're right you were wrong for 10 years and it don't go
• 41:00 - 41:30 no further what does that mean and you go to your midyear review and you sit there with your college professors and they ask you what you think of a course you told them it's not very good maybe use some stronger words I've been asked not to swear in lecture um and they say why don't you like it and I say why don't you talk about people's economic problems and they turn around to you and they say what do you mean the economy is good and you sit there with these three men in
• 41:30 - 42:00 CES in this wood panel Hall and you hear these two unspoken words reverberate back from the walls it's good for us what does that mean so you decide you had to leave University and you have to try and do something more active you have to go out and you have to speak to people directly you have to tell them if things don't get better if there's no action on inequality that their lives are going to get worse and
• 42:00 - 42:30 worse then immediately there's a pandemic and the government gives out 800 billion pounds and you can see from the analysis right at the beginning that that money will be accumulated by the rich and nobody at the universities in the opposition party in the government in the Civil Service in the central banks even ask the question of who's going to accuse this $800
• 42:30 - 43:00 billion so you put a massive bet on increasing asset prices and you make 3,000 what does that mean but you also make a YouTube channel when you try and tell people this is going to happen you write in the guardian that there's going to be a massive crisis of inequality falling living standards at the same time Larry Elliot Chief economics correspondent of the Guardian predicts that house prices will collapse 3 years later you were right
• 43:00 - 43:30 and larel was wrong obviously nobody remembers what does that mean and you work and you work and eventually you manag to build up a following you put up videos every week people turn around to you and say there's no point there's nothing you can do there's no way to stop it so what do you do I want to speak to you about an event I spoke at it was at Sai I probably can't
• 43:30 - 44:00 mention it was that fancy uh advertising company you can edit that out right and I sat on the stage and I told him in a much shorter version what I just told you that the economy will collapse and it will get worse and worse I'm not just saying I'm betting on it I make hundreds of thousands pounds on it every year I made millions of pounds on it in my life and the woman next to you who account seems like a very nice woman says what gives me hope is that
• 44:00 - 44:30 the economy is like nature sometimes it gets better and sometimes it gets worse and what I heard when she said that was my life's comfortable I ain't going to do nothing and you start thinking it's impossible isn't it because the poor are struggling to put food on the table you expect them to stand up and defend themselves and the rich have got kitchen renovations to worry about so they're
• 44:30 - 45:00 too busy to help the problem is people are inherently selfish right maybe there's no way out maybe this is just inevitable it's the way they work in society and then I got sent to do a story in colan which is in noran Yorkshire it was about how Rishi sunak is the richest MP ever and I was going to go to
• 45:00 - 45:30 a food bank and I was going to ask them how do you feel about having the richest ever MP in history and just coincidentally it happened that Russia invaded Ukraine the previous weekend before I went up there and the food bank that I was visiting had been converted into a place to sort the donations that were going to be sent to Ukraine and it was full of people sorting clothes and medicine and food into different bin bags and there were
• 45:30 - 46:00 three guys there with vans that were going to drive the stuff all the way there to Ukraine and I started asking the people you know like who are these people doing this and you find out it's the users of the food bank maybe people are inherently selfish after all there's a story in the Bible it's called the widows might and it talks about all the people who give money
• 46:00 - 46:30 extravagantly to charity to religion and it talks about one Widow who just put two small couple CS in the box and apparently I never met him Jesus said she's given more than everybody else for all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God but she of her penury have casting all the living that she
• 46:30 - 47:00 had maybe people are inherently selfish I don't know what do you do I wanted to read a little bit from a book that I like spinal for called C this book is called the play and he talks about what people do in society that's collapsing apparently it's about the Nazis but I didn't know because it's a metaphor or something and what he says is that basically when
• 47:00 - 47:30 Society collapses most people go crazy but some people don't and there's a group of people that that started trying to fight the plague Camu says T started work the very next day and must the first team that was to be followed by many others however it is not the narrator's intention to attribute more significance to these Health groups than they actually had it is true that nowadays many of our fellow citizens would in his
• 47:30 - 48:00 place succumb to the temptation to exaggerate their role but the narrator is rather inclined to believe that by giving too much importance to fine actions one may end by paying an indirect but powerful tribute to evil because in so doing one implies that such fine actions are only valuable because they are rare and that malice or indifference are far more common motives in the actions of men the narrator does not share this
• 48:00 - 48:30 Fe the evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance and Good Will can cause as much damage as ill will if it is not enlightened C thinks that when you are in a society that is collapsing your job is to stop it from collapsing kamu thinks that's how you be human but there a lot of people in this town that don't agree and he speaks about this as
• 48:30 - 49:00 well in C's words a lot of new moralists appeared in the town at this moment saying that nothing was any use and that we should go down on our knees taru Ryu and their friends could answer this or that but the conclusion was always what they knew it would be one must fight in one way or another and not go down on one's knees I found that very movie when I read that now in K's story most people when
• 49:00 - 49:30 Society collapses go crazy they become extremely religious or they become extremely hedonistic or they become extremely greedy and they try to make money they become really angry and try to find people to hate and I think this is natural you know I think this is what happens when societies collapse and I don't think we can blame people for doing this you disaster is a hard hard thing to face and look I see I see the madness if
• 49:30 - 50:00 you got a social media platform getting a th comments every day you see the madness in society I don't blame people for falling into madness some of you will fall into madness too maybe you already have done into selfishness into greed into nihilism but I can't blame you it's very human and Society will tell you you have a choice in the face of disaster to turn away to tell yourself a
• 50:00 - 50:30 story that it's not real that it's not going to happen that it's only natural the changing of the seasons and if you do that you can probably do what you wanted to do all along you can be selfish you can ignore it you can get that kitchen renovation and you can tell yourself that the poverty that is growing in society that the that is infecting everybody else may never darken your
• 50:30 - 51:00 door and you don't have to do what the biblical Widow did you don't have to give everything in the face of chaos you have a choice to make right you have to choose either yourself or others you know I worked in Japan for a couple of years and at that time I lost my mind I fell into a deep depression depression and I spoke to my Japanese Junior and I told him how watching these
• 51:00 - 51:30 millionaires obsess about money as the world collapsed around them made me sick and how I couldn't eat and how I couldn't sleep that kid his name was Kos and his English wasn't good he said to me yes yes I understand the problem is these men have very small Hearts you know sometimes I wonder sometimes I wonder why it's me up
• 51:30 - 52:00 here from a broken home broken family from poverty struggling often with my mental health sometimes struggling to get out of bed every day sometimes I wonder where all the good kids are all the nice kids with the nice families that go home to lovely big houses and have lovely meals and lovely dining tables where are they why is it
• 52:00 - 52:30 me what are we what are we as humans are we people who have to choose between ourself and others do our hearts have only room for one of these ideas or can we be something more can we be bigger can we be people who care not only for ourselves our immediate families us as
• 52:30 - 53:00 individuals but those around us society as well can we fit both of these things into our hearts can we take what we need but also more than that after that find something left to to give even if it's only two copper coins I believe that we can no I don't believe that I believe that
• 53:00 - 53:30 we have to if we don't the thing will collapse but to finish I would like to answer the question for me and you will have your own opinions what does it mean to be human in a time of disaster what does it mean to be human in a collapsing economy and me personally I agree with C the job of a human in face of a disaster is to try to prevent that
• 53:30 - 54:00 disaster that's what I'll be trying to do and I hope you'll try to Good Luck thank you well Gary that was sensational