From Truthdig
In this week's episode of "Scheer Intelligence," host and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer talks with Nomi Prins about her latest and, in Scheer's words, "most ambitious" book, "Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World."
The two discuss the 2008 financial crisis and the disconnect between governments and the governed, as well as Prins' unique perspective on the financial world, thanks to her time as a banker. Scheer and Prins come to the conclusion that the world's biggest banks "rigged the world," as the author's title suggests, and, what is perhaps more alarming, that the Federal Reserve has allowed financial institutions to continue growing and "screwing over the consumers."
"I think there's an element of what's happened in this past decade since the financial crisis," says Prins, "where yes, the Federal Reserve sort of led the way for the major central banks in the world " to manufacture money in order to save the global financial system, basically global banks."
Listen to the interview in the player above and read the transcript below. Find past episodes of "Scheer Intelligence" here.
Full transcript:
Robert Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence, where the intelligence comes from my guests. Sometimes I say hopefully; today there's no question. We are fortunate in having Nomi Prins in the studio here at KCRW. And I must say, I've written a bit about the financial collapse and economics; I was in graduate school in economics and so forth. But I finished Nomi's -- I know all of her other books, she's been a guest in my class at USC, I assign parts of her books about the banking meltdown and how basically the banks were bailed out, but Main Street was screwed, and the whole thing.
But this book is her most ambitious. It's called Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World. And just by way of preface, you know, there's a whole sort of conspiracy theory industry about the Federal Reserve and so forth, and then the sophisticated response is supposed to be, oh, yes, but all they're doing is regulating interest rates, and keeping inflation down, so there's no there there. And I must say [Laughs], I went along with that, you know, and I've covered the Federal Reserve, and as I say, studied it in graduate school.