（接上）

And if you’re a wealthy depositor, you’re smart enough to know that, — Well, when the banks move into negative equity, they can’t cover the deposits. We’d better pull our deposits out now. And instead of making 0.2%, we want to make 4% also. That’s what the Federal Reserve has done for us.
So the Federal Reserve had painted itself into a corner during quantitative easing. By lowering interest rates to just about zero, the Fed has guaranteed that if you ever move out of this position, if you ever go beyond the Obama policy of saving the banks by inflating the capital markets, then you’re going to drive the capital markets bankrupt, insolvent.
So we’re now finally facing the insolvency that Obama and Trump and Biden early on were able to avoid. And it’s just a seventh-grader, well, maybe an eighth-grader, could have done the arithmetic.
Anybody who compares the market price of bank assets to the acquisition price and realizes, well, banks have lost 30 or 40% of their asset values, their deposits are high, anyone doing this is going to say, let’s take our money out of the banks and make a lot more money by buying government two-year notes or ten-year treasuries and lock in these high interest rates now.

如果你是一个富有的存款人，你应该知道：当银行变成负资产时，他们无法支付存款。我们最好现在把存款取出来。我们想要的不是0.2%而是4%，这就是美联储为我们所做的。
因此，美联储在量化宽松政策期间把自己逼入了死角。通过将利率降低到接近零，美联储已经保证，如果你离开这个位置，如果你超越奥巴马的政策，通过膨胀资本市场来拯救银行，那么你将推动资本市场破产，资不抵债。
所以我们现在终于面临着奥巴马、特朗普和拜登早期能够避免的破产。这所一个连七年级的学生，好吧，也许是一个八年级的学生，都能算出来的结果。
任何将银行资产的市场价格与收购价格进行比较的人都会意识到，银行已经损失了30%到40%的资产价值，他们的存款很高，任何这样做的人都会说，让我们把钱从银行拿出来，通过购买政府两年期票据或十年期国债来赚更多的钱，并锁定现在的高利率。

And that’s exactly what’s happening. And the newspapers say, — Well, this is such a surprise. Who could have guessed?
And of course they’re moving it into banks like Chase Manhattan or Citibank, which indeed, as Pam Martens said, are serial abusers and violators of regulations.
Of course they’re moving there because the government says, — No bank depositor, no financial investor will lose any money. We promise you that the economy will lose money, not the banks, not the financial sector.
We promise you that if we have to pay more money to support the financial sector, we’re willing to cut back Social Security. We’re willing to get rid of Medicaid and Medicaid.
We’re going to get rid of social spending because the economy needs the banks not to lose any money, because that’s, to us politicians, they’re our campaign contributors. They’re who we’re really working for. They’re who we’re protecting. That’s our job as politicians.

这就是正在发生的事情。报纸说，“这真是个惊喜。谁能猜到呢?”
当然，他们将资金转移到像大通银行或花旗银行这样的，正如帕姆·马滕斯所说，这些银行确实是连环滥用者和违法者。
他们当然会转移到那里，因为政府说，没有银行存款人，没有金融投资者会损失一分钱。我们向你们保证，经济会亏损，但银行、金融部门不会。
我们向你们保证，如果我们必须支付更多的钱来支持金融部门，我们愿意削减社会保障。我们愿意取消医疗补助。我们要取消社会支出，因为经济需要银行不亏损，因为对我们政客来说，银行是我们竞选的资助者。他们才是我们真正的服务对象。他们是我们要保护的人。这是我们作为政客的职责。

And it’s just amazing that nobody is just coming right out and saying this except the few people that are carefully avoided by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the usual suspects when it comes to saying there’s no problem at all.
So why do they go to Chase?
Because the government has said, — No matter how much money the banks lose, even if Chase and Citibank are insolvent, because after all, they have long-term mortgages, they have long-term loans, they have long-term securities, but no matter what, we’re going to create enough money to bail them out.
Well how much money are we talking about?
Well what has been pushing up all of the prices of the mortgages and the stocks and the government bonds that the banks hold was this $9 trillion in quantitative easing. To make the banks whole from the loss, the government will have to create suddenly another $9 trillion.

令人惊讶的是，除了少数被《纽约时报》和《华盛顿邮报》小心回避的人，以及那些通常认为根本没有问题的人，没有人会直接站出来说这一点。
那他们为什么去找大通银行?
因为政府说，不管银行损失多少钱，即使大通银行和花旗银行破产，因为毕竟，他们有长期抵押贷款，他们有长期贷款，他们有长期证券，但无论如何，我们将创造足够的钱来拯救他们。
我们谈的是多少钱?
推动抵押贷款，股票和银行持有的政府债券价格上涨的是9万亿美元的量化宽松政策。为了让银行从损失中恢复过来，政府将不得不突然再创造9万亿美元。

The entire economy will not only move into what Mr. Powell calls a recession, but a deep depression, a total financial collapse.
And that’s obviously, it’s almost inconceivable that that can happen, but as long as the government says no bank depositor will lose money, the government will pay. Well, somebody has to lose money, and who do you think it’s going to be, whether it’s the Biden administration or the next Republican administration?
The economy will lose money. This is not only the disaster of Fed mismanagement, because the Fed is managing a financial system that has been privatized and financialized and debt leveraged to the point where it is unsustainable.
And the government and the media are not confronting the fact that the existing debt overhead of the banking system and the financial system and the private capital, that all of this is unsustainable, and we’ve reached the point of unsustainability.
Well, if eighth graders can see that the banks are insolvent, even investors and even some economists can do the mathematics and see how insolvent they are and realize that we’d better take our money and run.
So you’re now having the wealthiest 1% of the country taking their money and running, and that’s what’s causing this problem.
You can expect the wealthiest 1% to contribute very heavily to the 2024 presidential campaign.

整个经济不仅会陷入鲍威尔所说的衰退，而且会陷入深度萧条，金融全面崩溃。
很明显，这几乎是不可思议的，但只要政府说没有银行储户会赔钱，政府会赔付。那就总有人要赔钱，你觉得会是谁，是拜登政府还是下一届共和党政府?
经济将会亏损。这不仅是美联储管理不善的灾难，因为美联储管理的金融体系已经私有化、金融化，债务杠杆化到了不可持续的地步。
政府和媒体没有面对这样一个事实，即银行系统、金融系统和私人资本的现有债务，所有这些都是不可持续的，我们已经到了不可持续的地步。
如果投资者和一些经济学家会做数学计算，甚至八年级的学生都能看到银行破产，甚至看到银行破产的程度，那意识到我们最好拿钱逃跑。

BEN NORTON: Very well said. And Michael, I want to emphasize how this highlights regulatory capture.
So you talk about how essentially the so-called regulators are working for the banks.
Now the irony is that, as Wall Street on Parade pointed out, JPMorgan has been rated by regulators to be the riskiest bank in the United States. It’s also the largest bank, and it just swallowed up First Republic Bank.
Now, this also violates antitrust laws. That’s what’s so incredible.
So not only is the US government further empowering and enlarging this risky bank, but antitrust laws say that a financial institution that holds more than 10% of all of the insured deposits in the US cannot expand further and buy up another bank.

本·诺顿：说得很好。迈克尔，我想强调一下这是如何突出监管俘获的。所以你谈到了所谓的监管者本质上是如何为银行工作的。
讽刺的是，正如《华尔街巡游》(Wall Street on Parade)所指出的那样，摩根大通被监管机构评为美国风险最高的银行。它也是（美国）最大的银行，刚刚吞并了第一共和银行。
这也违反了反垄断法。这就是不可思议的地方。因此，不仅美国政府进一步授权和扩大了这家风险银行，而且反垄断法规定，一家持有美国所有保险存款10%以上的金融机构不能进一步扩张，也不能收购另一家银行。

Obviously JPMorgan, as the largest bank, has significantly more than 10% of insured deposits in the US. So now it’s growing even further in violation of the antitrust laws on the books.
And again, I want to highlight this fact, that the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund, according to its filings at the end of 2022, had $128 billion. And in just two months, it’s already spent $35 billion.
So about one quarter of the entire deposit insurance fund to bail out these banks, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic Bank. And now we see this crisis spreading further.
So who is watching the watchmen? Who is regulating the regulators? I mean, they’re working for the banks, clearly.

显然，作为最大的银行，摩根大通拥有美国10%以上的保险存款。所以现在它的发展甚至进一步违反了书本上的反垄断法。
我想再次强调的是，根据联邦存款保险公司在2022年底提交的文件，它的存款保险基金有1280亿美元。在短短两个月的时间里，它已经花费了350亿美元。
所以大约四分之一的存款保险基金用来救助了这些银行，硅谷银行，签名银行，第一共和国银行。现在我们看到这场危机进一步蔓延。
那么谁在看守守望者呢?谁在监管监管者?我是说，他们显然是为银行工作。

MICHAEL HUDSON: I think you’re missing the point to put the blame on the regulators. The problem’s not that the banks control the regulators and regulatory capture. They’ve captured the government. And it’s the government that appoints the regulators.
So you can’t just blame the regulators, because if the government has been captured by the financial sector, then they’re just going to appoint new regulators who’ve gone to the same business school and have been brainwashed in the same neoliberal “Chicago School” economics that would do exactly the same as the regulators are doing now.
The regulators can only regulate within the existing legal system and the existing political system. They can’t change the political system. And the problem is systemic itself.
The existing financial system cannot survive in the way that it is now structured, because it makes any increase in interest rates drive banks insolvent.
And the government has said, — We’re not going to support the small banks, we’re not going to support the local commercial banks or the smaller revenue banks. They’re not our campaign contributors.

迈克尔·哈德森：我认为你没有抓住把责任归咎于监管机构的重点。问题不在于银行控制了监管机构。他们占领了政府，而监管机构由政府任命。
所以你不能只责怪监管者，因为如果政府已经被金融部门控制了，那么他们就会任命新的监管者，这些监管者毕业于同一所商学院，被同样的新自由主义“芝加哥学派”经济学洗脑，他们会做和监管者现在做的完全一样的事情。
监管者只能在现有的法律体系和政治体系内进行监管。他们不能改变政治制度。但问题是系统性的。现有的金融体系无法以目前的结构方式生存下去，因为利率的任何上升都会导致银行破产。
政府说，我们不会支持小银行，我们不会支持本地商业银行或收入较小的银行。他们不是我们的竞选资助者。

We know who the campaign contributors are. The Citibank, Chase Manhattan, they’re the big financial firms and the private capital firms.
So the government has basically announced, if you want to keep your money safe, move it to one of the five big systemically important banks. “Systemically important” means, it’s a bank that controls government policy of the financial sector in its own favor.
And you want to be part of a system where the banks [in which] you have your deposits are in control of who gets elected in government to appoint who becomes the Federal Reserve regulator and the various bank agency regulators.
That’s what President Biden says is the key to American democracy. Not realizing the semantic terminological distinction between democracy and oligarchy.

我们知道谁是竞选资助者。花旗银行，大通曼哈顿银行，这些都是大型金融公司和私人资本公司。
所以政府基本上已经宣布，如果你想保证你的钱安全，就把它转移到五大系统重要性银行之一。"系统重要性"的意思是，这家银行控制着政府对金融部门的政策，使之对自己有利。
你想成为一个系统的一部分，在这个系统中，你有存款的银行控制着谁在政府中被选举出来，任命谁成为美联储的监管者和各种银行机构的监管者。
这就是拜登总统所说的美国民主的关键。没有意识到民主和寡头政治在语义术语上的区别。

BEN NORTON: Yeah, very well said. And I’ve mentioned, we both have mentioned a few times here, Wall Street on Parade, the amazing financial blog by Pam Martens and Russ Martens.
I highly recommend everyone checking out their website. I’ve invited them on before, but unfortunately they don’t do interviews.
But Michael, they published another article that discussed the $247 trillion in derivatives that 25 U.S. banks are exposed to.
And they speculated that one of the reasons, in March, that these large banks, 11 big banks in the U.S., deposited $30 billion in First Republic Bank to try to save it.
Now, at the time that was portrayed as this great benevolent act by these large banks to try to prevent First Republic Bank from going under.

本·诺顿:是的，说得很好。我提到过，我们都在这里提到过几次，《华尔街巡游》，一个由帕姆·马滕斯和拉斯·马滕斯撰写的令人惊叹的财经博客。
我强烈建议大家去看看他们的网站。我之前邀请过他们，但不幸的是他们不接受采访。
但是迈克尔，他们发表了另一篇文章讨论了美国25家银行面临的247万亿美元衍生品。
他们推测，其中一个原因是，在3月份，这些大银行，美国的11家大银行，向第一共和银行存入了300亿美元，试图拯救它。
当时，这被描绘成这些大银行为了防止第一共和国银行破产而采取的仁慈之举。

But Wall Street on Parade speculates that actually one of the reasons they did that was to try to save themselves over their exposure to $247 trillion in derivatives.
And they pointed out that the four big banks that contributed the most to try to save First Republic Bank, the systemically important banks, have 58% of the $247 trillion in derivatives.
So that means that they have over $140 trillion worth of derivatives. I mean, just saying that number sounds just unfathomable. It sounds like we’re talking about imaginary figures.
But what we’re essentially seeing is that the entire U.S. financial system is a big casino. And there are bets that are several times the size of the entire U.S. GDP in the U.S. banking system.
I mean, what’s going to happen with these derivatives?

但《华尔街巡游》推测，实际上他们这么做的原因之一，是试图从247万亿美元的衍生品敞口中拯救自己。
他们还指出，四大银行为拯救第一共和银行做出了最大的贡献，它们是具有系统重要性的银行，在247万亿美元的衍生品中占58%。这意味着他们有超过140万亿美元的衍生品。我是说，光是说这个数字听起来就深不可测。听起来我们在谈论虚构的数字。
但我们实际上看到的是，整个美国金融体系就是一个大赌场。在美国银行体系中，有几倍于整个美国GDP规模的赌注。
我的意思是，这些导数会发生什么?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I describe what has happened before in Killing The Host. Remember when Greece elected the Syriza party, and it was obvious that Greece could not pay the $50 billion in foreign debt that it had.
And there was a lot of pressure by the incoming government, Varoufakis and others, saying, you’ve got to write down the debts.
And the European Central Bank was all set to write down the debts. The head of the IMF pointed out that the Greek billionaires actually had $50 billion of their own money stashed in Switzerland, of tax avoidance money.
And this $50 billion could have been grabbed by the government and used to repay Greece’s foreign debt.
Well, they were about to write down the debt when President Obama sent his Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, over. Obama made a speech, Geithner made a speech. I quote them in Killing The Host.

迈克尔·哈德森：我在《杀死宿主》中描述了之前发生的事情。还记得当希腊选出激进左翼联盟党(Syriza)时，希腊显然无力偿还其所欠的500亿美元外债吗?
即将上任的政府，瓦鲁法基斯和其他人都施加了很大的压力，他们说，你必须减记债务。
欧洲央行已经准备好减记债务。国际货币基金组织的负责人指出，希腊的亿万富翁们实际上有500亿美元的私人资金存在瑞士，这些钱是用来避税的。
而这500亿美元本可以被政府攫取，用来偿还希腊的外债。当奥巴马总统派他的财政部长蒂姆·盖特纳过来时，他们正准备减记债务。奥巴马做了演讲，盖特纳也做了演讲。我在《杀死宿主》中引用了他们的话。

He said to Europe, — No, no, you can’t let Greece let these bonds go under and default, because the American banks have made such a big bet on derivatives that they would lose money, and you Europeans have to lose the money, not America. That’s how our democracy works.
And so the Europeans said, — Okay, we will make Europe lose money, we’ll make Greece go bankrupt, just so that your American banks, who’ve contributed the most money to Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign, will not have to lose a single penny on their bad derivatives, because now they’re good derivatives because we’ve destroyed the Greek population to help you.
This was probably the most vicious of all of Obama’s actions, apart from the destruction of Libya.
What had happened to Greece under the Syriza government and the bankruptcy is exactly what’s happening on a vastly increased scale today.

他对欧洲说，不，不，你不能让希腊让这些债券破产违约，因为美国银行在衍生品上押下了这么大的赌注，他们会赔钱，赔钱的是你们欧洲人，而不是美国。这就是我们民主的运作方式。
所以欧洲人说，好吧，我们会让欧洲赔钱，我们会让希腊破产，这样你们的美国银行——为奥巴马先生的总统竞选贡献了最多的钱，就不必在他们的不良衍生品上损失一分钱，因为现在他们是好的衍生品，因为我们已经摧毁了希腊人来帮助你。
这可能是奥巴马所有行动中最恶毒的，除了摧毁利比亚。希腊在激进左翼联盟党(Syriza)政府统治下所发生的事情和破产，正在今天以更大的规模发生。

The Treasury Secretary’s job is to protect the big banks.
And Ms. Yellen has said, — Just as we’re supporting an unsupportable loser in Ukraine, we’re going to support the unsupportable losers, seemingly, in the American banks.
We will do whatever it takes so that the big banks do not lose money, even though they’ve made a bad bet, a bet that would have lost all the money, a bet that would have left them insolvent, a bet that would have led them to be taken over by the FDIC and turned from a private bank into a government bank.
We’re going to prevent that, because that would be socialism. And that’s what we’re fighting against in America, just as we’re fighting against that in Europe.
So you’re having, I won’t characterize what kind of a political system we’re under, but the Treasury Secretary, the Treasury as a whole, has been just as captured by the financial sector as the Federal Reserve.

财政部长的工作是保护大银行。耶伦说，就像我们在乌克兰支持一个无法忍受的失败者一样，我们似乎也会支持美国银行中那些无法忍受的失败者。
我们会尽一切努力让大银行不赔钱，即使他们赌错了，赌输光了所有的钱，赌破产了，赌被联邦存款保险公司接管从私人银行变成了政府银行。
我们要阻止这种情况的发生，因为那是社会主义。这就是我们在美国所反对的，就像我们在欧洲所反对的一样。
所以，我不会描述我们处于什么样的政治制度下，但是财政部长，整个财政部，就像美联储一样被金融部门所控制。

And you want to look at the Treasury as the bad guys in this. You want to look at the people who are working under Ms. Yellen.
And I think that Pam Martens makes this very clear when she goes through all of the balance sheet maneuverability for this.
When I have a question, I’ve called her to ask for explanations. I mean, you’re right. Her site is the go-to site for this.
So the bottom line is, the whole U.S. economy is being sacrificed to banks that have made bets, and they’ve been bad bets.
Their bets have gone wrong, and they’re bailed out by the Treasury, saying, — Even if you make bad bets, no matter what, we’re going to rescue you, no matter what it takes for the economy at large.
That is the hard iron fist of the financial system controlling the economy as today’s central planner.

你想把财政部看作坏人。你应该看看在耶伦手下工作的人。
我认为帕姆·马滕斯说得很清楚当她讲到资产负债表的可操作性时。当我有问题时，我打电话给她要求解释。我是说，你说得对。她的网站是这方面的首选网站。
因此，最重要的是，整个美国经济都被押注的银行所牺牲，而这些押注都是错误的。
他们的赌注错了，他们被财政部救了出来，财政部说，即使你赌错了，不管怎样，我们都会救你，不管整个经济会付出什么代价。
这是金融体系作为当今中央计划者控制经济的铁腕手段。

BEN NORTON: Yeah, and we now see that this crisis that we’ve seen in the U.S. banking system is spreading, especially to medium-sized banks.
The latest reports show that PacWest is on the verge of collapsing. Also Western Alliance is being targeted and their stocks are falling very rapidly.
And once again, to go back to Wall Street on Parade, they specifically single out short sellers. They say short sellers are targeting these banks because they can see that they could potentially be the next banks to go down.
And they’re trying to make money off of this.
And over at Wall Street on Parade, Pam Martens and Russ Martens argued that the U.S. government is putting its own national security at risk, the stability of the financial system at risk, by not suspending the short selling of federally insured banks.
So what do you think about this argument that short sellers should not be allowed to do this because they’re helping to fuel the collapse of these banks in order to profit from it?

本·诺顿：是的，我们现在看到美国银行系统的危机正在蔓延，尤其是中型银行。
最新的报告显示，西太平洋银行正处于崩溃的边缘。此外，西方联盟也成为了目标，他们的股票正在迅速下跌。再一次，回到《华尔街巡游》，他们特别挑选卖空者。他们说，卖空者之所以把这些银行作为目标，是因为他们看到，这些银行有可能成为下一批倒下的银行。
他们想借此赚钱。
在《华尔街巡游》节目中，帕姆·马滕斯和拉斯·马滕斯认为，美国政府没有暂停卖空联邦保险银行的行为，是在把自己的国家安全置于危险之中，把金融体系的稳定置于危险之中。
那么你怎么看待这样一种观点，即卖空者不应该被允许这样做，因为他们为了从中获利而助长了这些银行的崩溃?
（未完待续）