Tucker Carlson Show: Every Major War Begins Under False Pretenses w/ Richard Werner (Transcript)

Indeed, indeed.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s incredible.

RICHARD WERNER: And it turns out that in some cities, the big newspapers refused to carry these ads because they were clearly controlled by people that had the same views as the British side in this war and wanted America to join the war. So the ads weren’t always published successfully everywhere, but quite a few were published.

So that’s the situation. Despite that, there were passengers on board. No doubt some efforts were made to make sure certain groups — you would have some people on there for sure. Maybe you pay them to board, even, who knows. We don’t know these details. We know the facts that there were passengers, American passengers on board, American citizens, and the Germans had warned, “We’re going to sink this.”

It’s not quite clear whether there was actually military equipment on there. There seemed to be the indication that there was, because you can imagine that the goal was really to make sure that the Germans will sink it. So the best way then is to actually have military equipment on there and have some visibility when it’s in the dock and something’s loaded.

We do have some indication that this is happening. Of course, later this was denied, but there are various people looking at the sunken wreck. And still, there is a good chance that there was military ammunition and other equipment on there.

Churchill’s Role: Slowing the Ship Into Danger

RICHARD WERNER: Now, the other thing is, well, how would the captain of the ship handle this? As he crosses with his passengers and potentially military load, he must have been aware that it’s listed as an auxiliary military ship as he crosses the Atlantic.

Well, the British at that time had actually broken the secret code for encryption that the German military was using, the Enigma code, and they therefore could read the messages between the U-boat submarines and headquarters and so on. Which of course is another indication that this could not really have been such a big surprise to Britain.

And something like this, of course, must have been the reason why the captain of the ship, of the Lusitania, was happy to go, because of course he has to trust his admiralty and his country’s leadership. They said, “No, it’ll be fine. We’ll make sure you’ll be fine. We know where the U-boats are, the Germans are, and we’ll guide you on the track that will keep you safe.”

So they guided him, as it turns out, straight into one of those German submarines. But the captain didn’t know. He was told this is the safe path.

Now, where I’m sure he started to become suspicious was when the order was suddenly then given, in the vicinity of, or about to approach the vicinity of a German submarine, to slow down the engines. Because that never makes sense.

And there’s a good BBC documentary on this where they didn’t hide the facts, and they have the First Lord of the Admiralty as the key figure. Who was that? None other than Winston Churchill. And they show how he gives the order: “Now instruct the captain to slow down the engines.” And even his underlings saying, “Well, sir, this sort of increases the risk. Should we really do that?” And his response: “This is my order. Give the order.”

And that’s what they did. They slowed down the Lusitania. And of course, it was unavoidable then. The U-boat saw them. It’s on the list. They have to follow the orders and they sank it.

And then, of course, the next day you had all these headlines — the Huns, the butchers are at it again, as the Germans were described in the British First World War propaganda. And it was an important factor in getting America into war.

The False Flag Playbook and the Threat of World War III

RICHARD WERNER: So basically, it was a false flag. And that has been a key mechanism to start or get countries to join a world war. It’s not the only incidence, but it shows you the devious nature of the plotters. And that’s what we have to be aware of today in this day and age, as we are unfortunately on the brink of a third world war.

Again, most people think, surely third world war? Nobody wants a world war. Well, ordinary people don’t, and I don’t want it, and you don’t want it.

TUCKER CARLSON: No.

RICHARD WERNER: But there are people out there who are really doing everything to get there, and a false flag is likely to be the beginning of this. As we talk about peace, as we have peace negotiations, just one vicious and successful cunning false flag, and then magnified with false information by the media, is unfortunately still enough.

9/11 and the Pattern of Engineered Wars

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, 9/11, the details of which are still classified for reasons no one will explain, no one’s attempting to declassify it, which tells you everything, led to 20 years of war and the deaths of millions.

The CIA, Venezuela, and the Road to War

RICHARD WERNER: Yeah. Now, actually, on this topic, I think there is the other important parallel. We’ve been seeing this war on Iran by the US and Israel. And of course, it has major economic consequences, dire consequences. There’s something we can talk about.

But also, this is another reason why we should look back at this era of the First World War and how we got into this, because it was the first great war. In Britain, it’s still called the Great War, where you had full mobilization of entire countries. Previously, you would never mobilize the entire country. Even civilians, even housewives were mobilized to do factory work or other support work, hospital work, all sorts. And so it was really the beginning of this modern era where you have totalitarian control unleashed under the cover of a great war. And of course, that’s a scenario we have to be very much aware of as we speak.

There are preparations for mobilization in Germany, draft, military service, all the rules being revamped and tightened, and the plan clearly is to draft more people into the military. It’s official EU policy to have a huge rearmament drive to get ready for war, and they talk about dates. That tells you that they’re planning for a war. It’s not a secret. They’re saying we are planning for a war against the great powers, Russia. They don’t mention China, but of course their allies, whether not perhaps not formally in a military way, but de facto allies. China is there.

That’s official EU policy to have this war. 2028, 2029, 2030 are the dates that are being mentioned. We have to be ready by that time for a world war, or war against Russia, which would be a world war.

Venezuela and the End of Plausible Deniability

So what’s going on here? What we’ve seen this year has been clearly quite dramatic. First Venezuela, dramatic events, although in a way on the larger scale, sort of quickly done, somewhat contained it seems, but quite a remarkable event. Because before, for decades, US intervention in Latin America took the form of covert operations, which always run under the principle, a very British principle, of plausible deniability. “Oh, we didn’t do that. Oh, this poor president got assassinated of this country. It’s nothing to do with us.” This is how it’s been working for decades in Latin America.

You can list the countries, just country after country, regime change operations by the CIA in fairly brutal ways, and then getting regimes into power that are essentially puppet regimes run by the CIA, presidents, prime ministers assassinated, and so on. But always, “Oh, it wasn’t us,” is denied.

Although we do have whistleblowers like Fletcher Prouty and his great book, The Secret Team, which tells you a lot about how the CIA became so powerful, totally out of bounds and out of control beyond its legal powers. It’s been active beyond its legal powers for decades.

Fletcher Prouty and the CIA’s Unchecked Power

He also describes how they did this. Very simply, basically the institution that’s supposed to rein in the CIA — they exist formally. It’s the committees in the Senate and Congress.

TUCKER CARLSON: The House Intelligence Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee. Exactly.

RICHARD WERNER: And that’s ultimately what’s supposed to provide these checks and balances on the secret services, including of course the CIA. But as Fletcher Prouty explains, once the law was passed that it’s criminal to reveal whether somebody works for the CIA or not, it’s now a secret who’s at the CIA or not.

And then also it was accepted that when you are a congressman, a member of Senate, and you are a member of these committees, you don’t have to disclose that. Potentially a huge conflict of interest, obviously. At that moment, you’re in charge of the country because you make sure — and that’s what the CIA did — that all the committee members who are supposed to oversee the CIA are all CIA agents. And then there’s no more checks and balances. You’ve got the rule by the CIA. And that seems to be what happens.

Now, the book by Fletcher Prouty was unavailable for 20 years. He wrote it in the ’70s. Who was he? He had worked for the CIA. He was a top guy at the CIA. At the end, I think his highest position was head of covert operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the White House. He’s the one who was sent to Antarctica when JFK was assassinated, because deep down he was always a good guy and he wouldn’t be involved in assassinating the president. And his colleagues knew that. So he was sent as far away as you could. And when he returned, he quickly found out it was the CIA. And he started to be a whistleblower.

The book was then unavailable for decades, but with the rise of the internet in the ’90s, late ’90s, of course, it’s now available again. So that shows how these things work. So that’s the background. But now Venezuela.

TUCKER CARLSON: What was that? What was the point of that?

RICHARD WERNER: Well, there are several points, but in terms of the method, the big difference was there’s no plausible deniability. No, actually, it’s official. We’re going to officially move in there and arrange regime change. In a sovereign country. So in other words, America is now at the stage where there’s no longer felt to be a need to deny that America is doing these things and has been doing these things. Well, now we do them.

TUCKER CARLSON: We don’t need a color revolution and pretend it was a popular uprising.

Iran, Oil, and the China Connection

RICHARD WERNER: Exactly. We want this guy to be in power or we don’t want this guy to be in power, we’re going to intervene and do it. So no more reference to the niceties of international law and ethical behavior. Not necessary. So that’s an important turning point.

But of course, the other implications are — and that’s where we move on to Iran and beyond. Why Venezuela? Well, it has the biggest oil resources. Of course, there’s a more detailed story. It’s a particular type of crude oil, very heavy. You need particular refineries to do that. It’s not a cheap and easy process. So it’s not economically the best oil, but it’s the biggest volume. And by the way, who’s been refining most Venezuelan oil and has built up a huge array of refineries is China. And that is an important indication of where all this is heading.

So that was step 1, Venezuela. Step 2 — well, who else is a big oil producer and source of oil and energy for China? Iran. So now Iran is under attack, war is made on Iran, and of course we have the economic fallout that other countries will suffer as trade through the Strait of Hormuz is severely limited, restricted. It’s not fully 100% embargoed — ships are getting through — but clearly not the majority. And it has had an impact.

And of course, it’s not just oil, but also other things that are delivered, like fertilizer. A lot of the Middle Eastern countries are some of the world’s largest producers of fertilizer for the world, even for the US, delivering to the US, to Europe, to many countries. And of course, the shipping of those has been severely restricted. That’ll have consequences next year. That’s not immediate. It’s for the next growing season because of the stocks and so on.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you see Venezuela and Iran as connected in that both of those conflicts are aimed at China?

The Berlin-Baghdad Railway and the Road to World War I

RICHARD WERNER: Indeed. Yeah, that’s exactly it. And that’s where now I think it’s good to go back again to the run-up to the First World War. What was the situation? It was a situation where we had one global hegemon, Britain, running the world. Half the world was formerly part of the British Empire. Of course, not acquired through free and open elections, was it? No. So military force, at times extremely brutal colonial suppression.

For quite a long time, the greater part in the subcontinent in India, run by a for-profit enterprise, the East India Company. So you had colonialism run by a for-profit enterprise. It’s not a good idea. It’s not very nice for people. The estimates vary of how many million Indians were killed under this rule by a for-profit company being in charge of millions and millions of people.

And actually, the ruling elite in the East India Company always had this view, well, it’s too many Indians. We don’t really need that many Indians. Horrible views out there. Too many useless eaters. This is where, by the way, this whole overpopulation agenda that I’d like to talk to you about came from. It goes back to the East India Company because Malthus, who is this famous economist talking about overpopulation — he literally worked for the East India Company. And it’s known, and there’s many quotes of the East India Company people saying, there’s too many people, we don’t need all these Indians.

But anyway, we’ll come back to that. So that’s the picture of the world. So Britain, half the world directly under British control in a colonial regime that clearly benefited Britain. Not the colonial subjects to the same extent. Many suffered and many died.

Britain’s Colonial Record: Ireland and India

That includes actually, of course, one of the first colonies of Britain was Ireland. And there’s the Great Irish Famine, the Potato Famine. Well, did you know that during the Potato Famine, Ireland produced potatoes and exported potatoes? Exported potatoes to England while Irish people were starving. So it wasn’t a lack of potatoes, it was policies that resulted in this famine. But anyway, there are too many Irish people. We have documents of British leaders saying that it’s all these Irish people, we don’t need so many Irish people.

So this is the background. Okay, so Britain in charge of the world.

Prussia: A Model of Prosperous Capitalism

Now, we had this development earlier on of a new economic power and political power in Europe, Prussia. Prussia was the first modern high-growth economy, and it was quite breathtaking. It was high growth and prosperity for the majority of the people. It was capitalism, but it was capitalism of a kind where the idea was, well, we wanted to be sustainable capitalism in the sense that we don’t want to have mass poverty at the same time. We don’t want this K-shaped economy where the elite is doing really well, but the majority of the people are not doing well.

And I think it’s perfectly rational to say that that’s not really a great system because you’re storing up trouble for the future, right? If the majority is actually not benefiting and you have increasingly democratic structures, then at some stage something will change, right? So you want to avoid it, and they did it very early on.

So the first modern sort of social security legislation was done in Prussia. Also, of course, the first investment in public schools, properly public schools and kindergartens and universities, was in Prussia. It was a very modern state, highly successful. The middle class was thriving. It was merit-based. You could move up the ladder. If you put in your energy and your efforts, you will be rewarded. Very successful economy based, of course, also on the system of decentralization, local decision-making, and especially many small local banks lending to small firms.

Imperial Germany’s Rise and British Rivalry

Now, Prussia then morphed into Germany in 1871 — the unification. Which is another, or partial unification, because of course many German states were left out, such as Austria. Under international sort of influence, but also Prussia felt Austria was a rival and so on. I mean, that’s for another show. There’s a lot of interesting stuff happening there.

But the principles were also applied in now Imperial Germany under essentially Prussian leadership. And again, Imperial Germany was highly successful. Economic growth just in the beginning of the 20th century was very high. It was a high-growth economy again, and people benefited, prosperity, the middle class. It was quite impressive. The cities, beautiful, massive public investment, railway network, schools, universities, science.

This is the beginning of science being German-dominated. In the first half of the 20th century, the majority of scientific publications were in German. And all the leading research was in these publications. That was where things were happening. And other countries were following, were looking at this model.

Now, the place that didn’t like that was the hegemon of the world, Britain. That clearly was, from their viewpoint, rivalry, a rival being built up and growing. And it is one thing to start to lose market share because Britain used to be the number one economic power, Industrial Revolution. Mass production really happened first in Britain and then spread from there to other countries. So Britain was in the sequence, chronology of economic development, was number one. But then soon after, Germany came, and of course also at the same time America also rose as an emerging economy, high-growth economy as well. Let’s not forget that.

But of course America is further away, and was for international documents using English. So I suppose the British felt less immediately threatened by America. Germany is very close, and the decision was made, we’ve got to do something about this.

The Naval Blockade and the Famine of 1919

But a key turning point in this, in really resolving the British goals and creating this conviction that war has to be made on Germany was the following development. So British power was projected across the globe through the seas, the oceans, the navy, because it was a global empire, from Britain to Australia and many parts of the world. Shipping was, of course, very important and control of the seas was important. And that was in British hands. So no doubt about that. Nobody could even come close to the numbers of ships and British naval dominance.

But then something else happened that was felt as a huge threat. Germany developed this plan in working on the continent. It’s a continental power, and we have this conflict between the sort of sea power and the continental power now. Germany made plans to improve its access to resources. Germany didn’t really have many resources. It has coal for the steel industry, it had some input, but it still needed other raw materials and inputs from across the globe. So how do you get that? If it’s via the seas, then essentially it’s beholden to the British, can be blackmailed by the British.

As actually happened, demonstrated in 1919. The First World War in Germany was over in 1918 when the armistice was signed. And Germany — German leaders have always been slightly on the naive side, believing, okay, that’s an armistice, that’s that, the First World War has ended, Germany wasn’t defeated, no foreign troops on German territory. Yet. And it disbanded its army and its navy, right? But the British, of course, didn’t disband their army and navy, and they then staged a naval blockade of Germany. Suddenly, shipping was entirely cut off. As a result, it’s estimated around 1 million Germans starved to death in the famine of 1919, which was engineered by the British. Just to illustrate the reality when you’re beholden to a sea power that controls the seas for your inputs.

So on the one hand, Germany had been aware of that risk and it was working on alternatives. And on the other hand, Britain had adopted countermeasures.

TUCKER CARLSON: So around a million Germans starved to death. Yeah, in 1919.

RICHARD WERNER: And of course, Britain continued to fight on British cenotaphs of the First World War. Often in the countryside, you see the First World War defined as 1914 to 1919. Because dead bodies were still arriving in the villages. You couldn’t tell the pastor, no, write 1918 on the cenotaph. We were still at, our fallen coming, and the villages recording the deaths in 1919.

The Berlin-Baghdad-Basra Railway

So, what really changed things was around 1900, the German plan to improve its raw material resource access, to avoid these issues that unfortunately could not be in the end avoided, but not to be beholden. It was trying not to be in a situation where it’s blackmailed by Britain through the seas, namely to have a continental transport system. And this plan was developed by on the investment side and the engineering side, Siemens, major German engineering company, and funded by Deutsche Bank, namely the plan to build the Berlin-Baghdad-Basra Railway.

Via Istanbul, Ottoman Empire was already an ally. And so it’s quite natural to gain access to the Gulf area and oil, which was beginning to be clearly an important resource. And so they started building that railway, the Berlin-Baghdad-Basra Railway. That’s when the British colonial and empire planners decided this really has to be stopped.

Because had that been built in time and completed, then it would have rendered essentially the British naval dominance irrelevant. Because you can transport energy resources, raw materials, you can sell your high value added output to actually the British Empire, Middle East or India. To the rest of the world, you can ship through your own railway network without British interference.

So the British planners decided this cannot be allowed, this has to be stopped by all means, including war. And it was a key factor in the run-up to the First World War.

Germany’s Criticism of British Warfare

Of course, there were other factors. The German government became increasingly internationally critical of British warfare across the globe. For example, in South Africa, Britain made war on the farmers, the German and Low Country Dutch farmers that had settled centuries earlier in South Africa.

TUCKER CARLSON: Created the world’s first concentration camps.

RICHARD WERNER: Indeed, indeed, that was a British invention. There were three farmer wars. Farmer — Bauer in German, in Dutch, boer — the three Bauer Wars, the farmer wars, because literally the world’s number one military power made war on farmers to control this country, this area. Why? Well, it was of strategic relevance, but also gold and diamonds were found there, and London was very keen to have those. Actually, surprisingly, the farmers were so well organized, they won the first farmers’ war and the second Boer War, and then they had to use, Britain had to use the usual devious techniques to win the third one.

TUCKER CARLSON: Murdering women and children in concentration camps.

RICHARD WERNER: Yes. And so the Kaiser, the German leadership criticized the British intervention. And so Britain also — I mean, these are other reasons that—

TUCKER CARLSON: What future British Prime Minister fought in that war?

China’s Belt and Road Initiative: The Modern Berlin-Baghdad Railway

RICHARD WERNER: Yes, well, Churchill had a role there and writes about it in his— I think he even got captured. He did get captured. And was treated well enough to escape alive, which wasn’t really true for people in the concentration camps necessarily.

So yes, now, so there were other factors, no doubt, but it’s clear when you look at the old documents that anti-German sentiments whipped up as soon as there were early plans for this railway. It didn’t come from nowhere. It was discussed already in the late 18th century. 1880s, 1890s, and then became a proper investment project at the end of the 19th century and, you know, 1900s onwards. And of course, the First World War succeeded in stopping that.

Now, also, just another point before we look at what this means for today, what are the lessons for today? The First World War itself was, of course, quite devastating for Germany, also for all the other countries involved. The number of people killed in the war. I mean, it’s just horrendous, huge waste of, yeah, of lives and resources. Very, very sad.

Also Germany then in the Versailles Treaty after the starvation of 1919, this is meant to soften up Germany and then impose the Versailles, you know, strange rules on Germany. Germany would be taken apart, one quarter of Germany would be lost and given to other countries. Lots of Germans, millions of Germans would now live in new countries newly created other British, such as Czechoslovakia and so on. And so, you know, a lot of hardship followed this.

Despite that, they couldn’t essentially change the fact that Germany was still scientifically leader engineering, in terms of engineering and production, was a leader in the world and was still a rival of Britain because the education system also hadn’t really been destroyed. And so, you know, a second round was needed. Another World War was needed.

And for this, interestingly, a lot of investment took place in Germany in the 1920s that allowed a quick revival. And of course, there’s other issues— how Hitler came to power. If we have time, we should talk about how did he actually come to power. When you look at money and banking and central banking, you get some interesting new insights.

So we also had investment in Germany, particularly by America, American companies, ITT, General Motors, Ford, and then also banking, Brown Brothers Harriman, where Prescott Bush from the Bush family was active supporting Germany.

Now something very similar is happening or has been happening in the recent decades. Of course, the post-Second World War global hegemon is America. It’s taken on that leadership role from Britain originally, even with its own colonies. I mean, there’d been American colonies, whether Philippines or other places, and it’s adopted the key policies and policy tools from Britain.

So which country is the new Germany that is a rival to America? Well, it’s China. And China has been working on ensuring its supply of raw material inputs in the last, particularly the last 15 years. So in many ways it’s a sort of new strategy, but it is very much the same situation as Germany was in. It didn’t want to be beholden to shipping under British control, could be blackmailed. Of course, America is dominating the seas, and China doesn’t want to be beholden to America.

And that includes, of course, the Strait of Hormuz. It also includes the Strait of Malacca, where even more Chinese trade goes through. That’s another of these potential choke points, as they call it, where they can choke China. So China’s been working on alternative routes.

The— what is the modern Berlin-Baghdad Railway? Well, it is the Belt and Road Initiative. Which is the Chinese president Xi Jinping’s really landmark milestone foreign policy initiative started 11 years ago. On the one hand, it offers an interesting alternative to participating countries, many developing countries, to the IMF World Bank system that I hope we have time to discuss, because that system has, it’s been designed to keep developing countries from developing, to prevent development and to keep them poor but effective, cheap exporters of raw materials according to the British colonial model.

So it’s like the modern version of the colonial British Empire is this American-dominated IMF World Bank rule. And the Belt and Road Initiative, on the one hand, is an alternative that can be offered to countries, and many countries, including in Africa, have joined this for this reason.

TUCKER CARLSON: Can you describe what it is for people who don’t know?

The Belt and Road Initiative and China’s Dollar Dilemma

RICHARD WERNER: Yes, about Belt and Road. Yes, so there’s actually many different names for this. At one stage it was called the One Belt Initiative, then Belt and Road Initiative. Sometimes it’s called the Modern Silk Road, the New Silk Road. It is about, on the one hand, logistics to ensure stable, effective supply routes between China and the rest of the world, to a large extent on the continent but not entirely. There’s also Shipping Belt and Road across the seas, and it’s also a way for China to switch out of the dollar.

So it is linked to the Nixon shock, what happened there, the dollar becoming the petrodollar in the years afterwards under Henry Kissinger’s interventions. The petrodollar, Saudi Arabia being essentially made part of the United States, only selling dollar, as they say, all against the dollar, but also reinvesting 80% of its foreign exchange reserves in US Treasuries.

That petrodollar system is increasingly being challenged by other countries, and of course by China, the BRICS countries. And the Belt and Road Initiative is a counterparty to that. And likewise, a counterparty to this IMF World Bank system, which is really the continuation of the Bretton Woods system, which is the dollar-dominant system.

China had this problem beforehand that as a successful exporter, it’s earning foreign exchange, but mostly it’s earning dollars. What to do with the dollars? And of course it was investing, like at the time most countries, in US Treasuries, which suited America fine. But China decided, sort of 15 years ago, well, we need an alternative to this. We can’t keep investing in US Treasuries because — and very few people know this — when other countries buy US Treasuries, all they’re actually getting is a promise on a promise.

Because a treasury is an IOU, is a promise, right? But do you know that China doesn’t even get those promises? The US Treasury issues government bonds, treasury bonds, but China doesn’t get those. Why? Well, there’s a rule that they’re held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in custody for foreign governments. So it’s a promise on a promise, so that China can’t go with these papers and sell them somewhere without permission of US entities, the Federal Reserve.

Now, some may say, well, that’s just a technicality. That’s not an issue. Well, we’ve seen that in reality, this can be very, very important.

The Asian Financial Crisis: A Manufactured Collapse

For example, in the so-called Asian crisis, 1997, 1998, which was very much engineered by the system, IMF and central banks. I was sent on an official mission to Thailand in 1998 on this, to analyze this and advise the Thai government from the Asian Development Bank’s perspective. Based on my analysis, I concluded that it was a plot by the local central bank in Thailand against the country, together with the IMF.

It was a situation to create a boom-bust cycle and then bankrupt Thailand and ask the IMF to come in. And then the IMF asked for Thai assets to be sold to foreigners. Thailand was doing well until then, and then it had to sell — well, it was asked to sell its banks and its industry to foreigners very cheaply while the currency had been devalued, right?

Just looking at the big picture outcome, that’s what it was meant to be about. The mechanism is also quite interesting. It’s the same mechanism they put onto Germany in the early 1930s to get Hitler into power.

Thailand had a savings surplus, it had successful exports, and was a reasonably high-growth economy. But it was brought down very badly in this setup. And this started with the central bank saying, “Okay, well, we’ll have a fixed exchange rate against the dollar. Everything’s safe. Never worry about the exchange rate. We have foreign currency reserves. We can maintain this Thai baht dollar exchange rate.”

And at the same time, as I could show in my work on this, they raised the domestic interest rate above the dollar interest rate and allowed companies — current account open, deregulated — allowed companies to raise money in dollars. Well, if there’s a fixed exchange rate, the dollar interest rate is lower than the domestic interest rate, they’re basically — the Thai Central Bank is telling Thai companies, “Borrow in dollars, please,” which doesn’t make sense. It’s not a good idea. Even short-term borrowing in dollars was increased by the central bank in this setup.

And then all you need, as foreign debt increases and increased and increased, all you need is a bit of a setback in the economic growth, in exports, for example, foreign exchange reserve going down a bit. International investors say this is not sustainable, building up this debt pile for no good reason. And that’s what happens then. Of course, speculators attack the Thai baht. And the central bank defended the baht, which meant it was selling foreign exchange reserves, selling dollars, buying the baht. Of course, the dollar pile went smaller and smaller until you run out. They defended the baht, they said, until the last dollar. And then what? Well, then the baht collapses. And this is what happened. So it was a crazy strategy.

I also found out that during the same time, the central bank even imposed loan growth quotas. This is the window guidance, central bank informal guidance of bank credit, which when used properly is part of the high-growth system. You can make sure that bank credit goes to productive business investment, leads to growth, but you can also use it for bad things.

As I show in my book, Princes of the Yen, the Bank of Japan used this mechanism to force banks to increase real estate speculative loans, create a real estate bubble which you can use to bust the system. And so this credit guidance system was also used by the Thai Central Bank to exacerbate this crisis or this impending crisis.

And then once the crisis happened, everyone said, “Oh, we need the IMF to come in.” And what did the IMF demand? Well, you have to restrict credit creation now. You have to tighten everything up. And restrict fiscal policy. Everything has to be restricted. So recession — get a huge recession. Industrial output collapsed by 25%. The Thai baht, now without foreign exchange reserves, just fell and fell. Thailand became very cheap. And the IMF demands, “Well, we’ll help you, but there’s conditionality. You have to now sell your assets to foreign strategic partners.”

I advised them, don’t do that. Get out of the IMF program. Here’s how you can get back on your feet. It took them maybe 2 years, but then they took the advice and they ended the IMF program because it was clearly a system to take down — yeah, it’s a control mechanism to take the country down.

Belt and Road as an Alternative to Western Financial Dominance

So the Belt and Road Initiative offered and continues to offer alternatives to this fairly predatory — predatory, that’s the word I was looking for — system. Run via the IMF and the World Bank and other institutions that has not helped developing countries. And so many countries think, “Well, let’s try that.”

At the same time, it offered China the possibility to diversify its dollar reserves, right? Because as part of this initiative, it would give money to other countries, but for particular projects that build up infrastructure and therefore also helps these countries. So China has spent billions on building really shiny new roads and highways and bridges and railway connections, transport, ports — massive investments in ports.

And of course, all these receiver countries — I’ve been to some — they’re very proud of this, and they look really impressive projects, modern and helping the country. And the countries can use this for their own economic development.

So it’s been attractive and many countries have joined. Although, of course, also countermeasures have been started and some countries were put under pressure to drop out again. It wasn’t popular when Italy wanted to sign up or Hungary wanted to sign up with this, and they were put under pressure by the EU and US parties as well. But it’s been quite successful.

Iran, the Belt and Road, and the Geopolitics of Eurasia

And so of course, a key strategic partner has always been Iran as an oil supplier to China. And we can tell that the war on Iran is part of this countermeasure that’s really in operation against China. Because in these bombing campaigns against Iran, what was also bombed were Belt and Road infrastructure projects — bridges, railway connections, and other parts of this supply structure.

And so, why would America do that? Well, it is to get in the way of the modern Berlin-Baghdad railway. So it goes up through Central Asia. It’s the modern Silk Road. There’s many Silk Roads, of course. There’s one via Russia further north and further south. There’s several.

And it’s the similar viewpoint. There’s actually a British theoretician, Mackinder, who talked about this Heartland Theory — that whoever controls Eurasia controls the world. And that’s really why Britain first was very keen to prevent Germany from collaborating with countries further east — the Ottoman Empire, Russia in particular — and also prevent the buildup of transport infrastructure that of course fosters closer economic and political connections.

And it’s the same — America has adopted that strategy. There’s a famous quote by Stratfor Friedman, saying that the key goal in the 20th century has been to prevent Germany from collaborating with Russia. And America has also pursued that very successfully. Germany is not collaborating with Russia, even though it would be in both countries’ interests. To put it mildly.

And likewise in Asia, of course, the equivalent — he didn’t mention that, but I think I would add that it’s been a key goal of America to prevent Japan and China from collaborating. Because if they did, who needs America in the Pacific? So of course America has always been telling the Japanese, “Oh, don’t trust the Chinese, they hate you.” And it’s been telling China, “Oh, don’t trust the Japanese, they hate you.”

TUCKER CARLSON: And I don’t think the Chinese trust the Japanese for other reasons too.

Japan, China, and the Long Game

RICHARD WERNER: I think actually the two countries get along better than people recognize. And it’s not just the Taiwanese population that has very favorable memories of being part of Japan until 1945. And most Taiwanese people I know speak always very fondly of Japan. It’s also Chinese youth. They think Japan is a cool, fun place and quite exciting.

And of course, there is a whole generation, Deng Xiaoping’s generation of Chinese leaders who know the great things Japan did for China. Because when he traveled to Japan to seek the secret of high economic growth, when Deng Xiaoping came to power, he asked the Japanese for that. And the Japanese didn’t have to tell him, but they did. Not just that, they sent their key guy who was a high-growth 1960s, high-growth planner to China. And he came with another 11 or 12 people, top planners, and they did the Chinese high-growth system for Deng Xiaoping, together with the 300 top Chinese colleagues.

So Japan did some great things for China. China wouldn’t be where it is today without the help of Japan. And people know this on both sides. So I think the two countries actually get along better than people realize. It’s just not politically correct to mention that, because it’s not supposed to be like this.

The War on Iran and the China Question

So this is really the context in which we have to see what’s happening with this war on Iran. I think ultimately the goal is China, because unfortunately America has, or key decision makers, let’s say — it’s not ordinary American people obviously we’re talking about here — but some key decision makers in America, influential people that influence American policy, have decided that there should be antagonism between America and China.

There’s all these military strategic plans and China is in these military plans described as a key threat, even more important than Russia, which explains some of the unfriendly policies towards China in the past. And it is a parallel development because China, when you look back at the British colonial rule and then Germany rising — Germany was identified as the threat and then measures were taken, including a World War, Second World War, which shows you the extent to which these planners would go. China seems to be the modern equivalent.

It really is a challenge economically to America. But if we only think in economic terms, it’s not really something to worry about because economics is about embracing this and competition is fine, is a good thing. And if you have the right economic policies, America can really thrive on working with China, as partly happened in the past.

Building Up the Opponent

But you see also there’s something sinister going on because it wasn’t really necessary for America to transfer most of the manufacturing to China in the first place. This reminds me of the American investment in Germany in the 1920s and ’30s. Of course, massive American investment is taking place in China, and technology has been transferred to China when it was needed and helpful. Now, in many ways, there’s not many areas left where China needs foreign technology because it’s very much ahead of the game in a lot of them, not all, but in quite a lot.

But clearly that was very important. So why did this happen? I think it’s the same reason why it happened in Germany. If you’re planning for world war, you also need to make sure the opponent is built up first to have a proper war. And that tells you about the sort of goals that are at play here.

Do you really think so? It looks like it. I mean, I’m always reluctant to come to these conclusions, but it was a bit much, wasn’t it? The American investment in China, shifting all this production to China for short-term profit. Oh, you’ve got higher margins if we do it that way. Well, you’re losing all these jobs and you’re creating all these problems for America, for ordinary people, for the middle class, for the country, and for the long term. Why are you doing this?

Well, some people were aware of this and still were part of this thrust, and it wasn’t slowed down. So it was intentional, but it was unnecessary. It wasn’t really necessary to do this. So there were considerations to make sure China would be built up.

TUCKER CARLSON: And that actually, you may be getting back to what you said at the outset about a small percentage of the population has goals that are incomprehensible to normal people because they’re so evil.

Mao, Foreign Interests, and the Bolshevik Connection

RICHARD WERNER: Right. And China is actually an interesting case study to come to that conclusion too. If we look at the earlier phase of Chinese post-war development when Mao was in charge — yes, it was more or less a dictatorship, it was a communist, more or less dictatorship. And Mao took very unpleasant policies, clearly, and a lot of people died.

Now, there’s always this historian’s view that, oh, when people died, that clearly wasn’t intentional. But some facts about this are very disturbing. First of all, let’s not forget that Mao indisputably was put in power by foreign interests. That’s not even denied.

TUCKER CARLSON: Russian.

RICHARD WERNER: Well, what does Russian mean? I mean, it was certainly — Soviet. And perhaps Bolshevik would come closer to it because you see a direct lineage there. If you look at the individuals, they go back to the sort of Bolshevik movement, which you could even call anti-Russian at some stage. I mean, it was clearly not —

TUCKER CARLSON: They murdered a lot of Russians, so yeah. I think it’s fair.

Mao’s Famine: An Engineered Catastrophe

RICHARD WERNER: And so there is that link. So he was put in place by foreign interests on the one hand. And at the same time, then you look at the policies he took. And I want to focus— I mean, there are many crazy policies, like Cultural Revolution, which in many ways is being replayed nowadays. This cultural Marxism is a cultural revolution where you mess with people’s heads. It’s like a PSYOP. You know, red is not red and black is not black. You know, you have to denounce yourself and denounce the facts and declare untruths to be true sort of thing. A man is not a man. What is a woman? Doesn’t this sound familiar? It does. That was also a big operation, the so-called Cultural Revolution.

And then we had this Great Leap Forward, which is economically a great leap backward. And then we had this famine, which is quite a mysterious thing. So I want to just briefly talk about this famine. And it’s relevant for us today because, again, ordinary people think, oh, we couldn’t have leaders who plan horrible things for us. That wouldn’t happen. You know, they wouldn’t intentionally do it. They have good intentions. They don’t want— they would never want to starve 80 million people to death, would they?

Well, here’s the counter case. Here’s a case where 80 million people were starved to death. It was covered up for a long time. And the numbers, the more research has been done, have been going up and up and up. We’re around 80 million now. First it was only 2 million, 10 million, 15 million. It got higher and higher. And it seems to be in this order, which is phenomenal. I mean, this is really very, very sad and very tragic.

The Mechanics of a Policy-Induced Famine

What happened? What is this famine in China? It started in a year when there was a bumper crop. So good harvest. Now, if you want to engineer a famine, it’s not a great starting point. But because it happened at this point, it makes clearer that it was an intentional starvation of millions of people, because you had to take a particular combination of very specific policies to get this disastrous outcome. And they’re all policies.

There’s actually no doubt, no historian says it wasn’t policies that led to this famine. They just all, whether Western or Chinese historians, they all say, well, but sure, it was a mistake. They didn’t intend this. Well, when it’s such a very specific combination of highly unusual policies, which are, however, necessary to have this outcome of a famine, then you really have to wonder. And it wasn’t under duress, they were freely taken. So there is no doubt that it was a policy-induced outcome. The debate is, was it intentional or not?

Well, I’ll give you some of the ingredients of this famine. So if you want to start a famine when you have bumper crops, you’ve got to do some things. I mean, otherwise there won’t be a famine. For example, what can you do? Think about it. What can you do? Well, we could actually pass some laws that round up all the harvest workers and transport them from the rural areas to the cities. So let’s do that. Well, that’s what they did.

And I know from growing up in Bavaria, when the harvest comes, that’s when the schoolboys and schoolgirls and students getting asked, can you please help the farmers? You know, we’ve got a big crop, we need helpers, and you earn some money per hour, which is nice. Everyone likes that. That’s the harvest time, right? But if you divert millions of people, forcibly transporting them away from the rural areas at harvest time or just around harvest time, that’s certainly something you can do to disrupt the delivery of food in that year. So that was taken.

Now, it turned out to be not enough because, you know, farmers are resourceful and partly that, you know, they had ways to still farm a lot, harvest a lot of the crops. Now, there is a natural or, you know, seemingly natural way you could reduce a harvest. And if you read the Bible, in bad years, you know, horrible things happened like swarms of locusts come and eat up the crops, which is actually clearly not every year. It’s unusual. It’s so unusual that when it happens, it’s recorded for thousands of years, like in the Bible. Wouldn’t it be nice to arrange for that? Well, in a bumper crop year, right?

The Sparrow Campaign and the Locusts

If your goal is to have a famine, of course, that’s not so easy to arrange, right? Is it? Particularly at a day and age where we did not yet have the insect laboratories where they breed various forms of genetically modified insects that could do all sorts of evil stuff. That wasn’t yet happening. But also, it’s unlikely that it would be swarms and swarms of locusts, millions of locusts eating the harvest, because in China there was a natural enemy of the giant grasshoppers, the locusts, namely the ordinary Asian tree sparrow. Yes.

And in fact, in China, it’s estimated there’s around 700 million of them, the tree sparrows. And they would, you know, in the development of the locusts, they intervene at the right point and they eat them and their larvae and so on. So really, if you wanted to have swarms of locusts, you would need— I mean, nobody would think this up surely— but you would need a very specific policy that would declare the ordinary Asian tree sparrow enemy number one that has to be killed and exterminated. And of course, that’s what Mao did.

And what happened was swarms of locusts destroyed quite a bit of the harvest. That’s increasingly being studied, and it’s quite clear that such a specific policy in this chain, in this natural biological cycle where you intervene and destroy the enemy of the locusts as a specific policy, that surely can’t be by accident. Now, still, it wasn’t quite enough.

Seizing the Harvest

So now you need the usual Soviet-style policies, which is to sequester the harvest. You know, the government moves in and seizes the harvest and it’s taken from the people and it’s not being sold. Or some of it is exported abroad. To Romania. Exactly. And then some farmers have some storage because actually farmers always think of next year’s crop. You want to keep some to plant next year. That’s before genetically modified things were invented to destroy that natural cycle of farmers’ behavior.

So they went after those farmers. Anyone who stored food was declared a bourgeois hoarder and enemy of the people and was severely punished. And of course, the food and the grain and all the storage was taken away. So put all this together, and of course, on top of that, various communist campaigns, the famine took place, and it was such a horrible disaster. And as I said, we’re around 80 million as an estimate of people who starved as a policy result.

So we have to realize that our leaders don’t mind killing us. In fact, they seem quite keen on killing ordinary people.

Deng Xiaoping and the High-Growth Model

And perhaps one more link to China where we learn these things is Deng Xiaoping, and I spoke about him last time we had our discussion, how he introduced the high-growth model. And Japan helped him, as I said. And I think that was great. And he realized, and the Japanese told him, you need many, many banks, you need thousands of small local banks that lend to small firms. It’s decentralized decision-making.

You know, instead of the Soviet, which originally started out with one bank, right? Central bank only, central decision-making doesn’t work well. The Prussian principle of high growth, which all these East Asian high-growth economies adopted, is decentralization, the subsidiarity principle, decisions on the local level. There they can be made flexibly as the situation demands and appropriately. Central planning is not informed enough, can’t react quickly enough and doesn’t work. And also the incentive structure is wrong because, you know, what’s worse than being given an order that is really counterproductive and useless and you still have to do it? It’s so frustrating. And that’s of course why the Soviet system failed and the Prussian decentralization worked.

I mean, there’s studies comparing the German army with the British army in the First World War, and the German army with the American army in the Second World War. And they conclude that the German army was always far more efficient and effective with smaller numbers, better outcome. And they found it’s because decision-making was delegated to the lowest level. The officer in the field had the decision-making power. There was always the goal is given, but how you get there, the officer in the field had to decide. Of course, that meant that you had to train people better, but that’s a good thing if you’ve got better trained people and they make the decisions. That’s the right motivation. Then people are also motivated. They know that they make a difference and their decisions will shape things and they can do the appropriate decision because in the fog of war, things change so quickly. Central planning just cannot work.

Likewise, that was then applied in Prussia and in Germany in the economy through decentralized decision-making. So not one central bank, but thousands of small banks lending to small firms, credit creation, money creation in the banking system for productive investment. For productive business investment, you get job creation, growth, and prosperity. And China did that.

This is the Chinese high-growth system which Deng Xiaoping implemented. And the rest is history. 40 years of high economic growth, lifting more people out of poverty than anywhere in history. 800 million people lifted out of poverty, according to the official definitions. This has never happened before in history in such a short time period, in one generation. That’s what China achieved using the Japanese model, which is essentially the German model of high growth.

The One-Child Policy and Western Influence

And so I was always surprised that Deng Xiaoping, who was behind this and did this really well, and he’s a good manager, very humble. He was always a humble person. Not this narcissistic type that will take policies that are selfish but really bad for ordinary people. He was not like this. He was a good leader in many ways, as far as I can tell.

But he also is the one who took the one-child policy. And we know that that wasn’t a good policy. Also, if you think about it, it’s a sort of policy that you can see Western decision makers, Western leaders liking. I mean, there’s lots of Western leaders in history, starting from Napoleon, talking about, oh, if China wakes up and then they keep growing, population growth, and China will take over the world. And you get this Western sort of paranoia to impose a policy that, oh, only one child is allowed. Sounds very much like a Western idea to me. That’s always the sense I had.

Like, why would a Chinese leader, particularly a high-growth leader— the high-growth model means also you want high population growth. Population growth is good. You want people to have children, you want to educate them well, because that’s what leads to growth. Growth comes from productivity, technology, new ideas. 100% of ideas come from people. We need people. Of course, now they’re trying to replace that with AI, but that has its severe limitations and risks and dangers. So you want more people normally.

But Deng Xiaoping imposed this one-child policy. Then I looked into how did this happen. And it turns out that it was early on when he was implementing the high-growth system from Japan. The particular person who was asked, who was invited to China as the key helper with this high-growth system was a very able Japanese economic planner, high-growth planner of the 1960s. And in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping came to Japan, he was told by the Japanese, okay, talk to this guy, and he was our man in the ’60s, now retired. He may be able to help you. And Deng Xiaoping asked him, can you please come to China soon? Like now. I need you now. 3 days later, he was in China, with 12 colleagues that he brought along.

Now, who was he? His name is Okita, family name Saburo. Saburo Okita. Now, by that time, he had been recruited by the Club of Rome into the Club of Rome’s executive committee.

The Club of Rome

TUCKER CARLSON: What is the Club of Rome?

RICHARD WERNER: Yeah, that is a very good question. What actually is the Club of Rome? Well, it’s also an institution that— you know, this really big turning point, 1971, that’s when the Club of Rome entered the world stage, so to speak.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the year the US defaulted on its gold obligations.

The Club of Rome and the Limits to Growth

RICHARD WERNER: Yes. With its report, The Limits to Growth. This allegedly limits the growth. Now, of course, haven’t we heard this before? I mean, the whole degrowth movement, climate change, all sorts. Growth is bad and we need to limit that. Limits to growth. We’ve reached the limits to growth. This has basically been the story in the media ever since the Club of Rome came out with this report.

So the Club of Rome was founded by, and it’s not really disputed, by Rockefeller, supported by Rockefeller. Certainly in the early years, that was very clear. They met in the Rockefeller Villa in Italy and all that. And then very early on, this executive committee drafted also Mr. Okita from Japan, which is very ironic because he’s the high growth expert.

But the Club of Rome’s two main messages were: economic growth is bad and we need to reduce it. We’ve reached the limits, we’re going to destroy the planet, blah, blah, blah. We need low growth. And secondly, too many people on this planet. In fact, very much regurgitating the views of the East India Company leadership. And its hired economist Malthus, Thomas Malthus, famous for his prediction: population growth is too high, there’s not enough food, we’re going to starve, we need to reduce the population growth.

Sometimes what you read sounds more like we need to reduce the population. Of course, that’s what they did in India quite clearly by result, but to a large extent intentionally. Again, these policy decisions, famines and other taking people’s livelihoods away, destroying the textile industry in India. Millions of people starving.

TUCKER CARLSON: mRNA shots, you know. Well, that’s the modern version.

RICHARD WERNER: So this is the message of the Club of Rome. And the Club of Rome drafted this high-growth expert. Now, I think he was fairly innocent. He was at this stage retired. And he was called up by this selective sort of international body that has a good reputation to be in the executive committee. And he agrees. Many Japanese people want to be very international and all these nice famous people are there backing this. So I’ll join. I don’t think he was really part of the nefarious activities that are also going on, but it’s clever from the Club of Rome and its backers, Rockefeller Foundation viewpoint, because he’s the high growth guy.

To get him in the executive committee of a club that argues for low growth, low economic growth and low population growth, really is certainly a way of getting a handle on the high growth model and making sure that it can be suppressed in the future. That’s the job of the IMF and the World Bank for developing countries — not allowed to adopt the high growth policies.

The One-Child Policy and the Great Deception

When it comes to China, effectively, I think whether an explicit deal or just an implicit deal happened, namely Deng Xiaoping was allowed to run the high growth model, also attracted American investment. So that was allowed to happen, but there seems to have been a required payoff, and that is to impose the one-child policy. So at least implement half of the Club of Rome agenda, and the other half, well, we’ll come to that later sort of thing. Could have been the attitude.

When I looked into how did Deng Xiaoping adopt this one-child policy, how did it exactly happen? Turns out that he took the advice of a Chinese statistician mathematician who was working for the military doing complicated ballistic calculations. So using mathematics, which is pure logic. And he was then asked to do population growth trajectories. And of course they were scary. And he came to this conclusion: we need to restrict population growth.

Now, the key thing is this, and I call this the great deception. He was using simulations. And if you look at what did this military statistician mathematician use, what sort of approach, what sort of model? He used the Club of Rome model. Now, why was a Chinese military-related mathematician using the Club of Rome model? Of course, it was in the West, it was propagated. It could just be by chance that he just saw the headlines in some Western publications. That’s a leading model, we’ll use that. But, or maybe other channels to do with Rockefeller visiting China and who knows.

But we know the result. That he used as a fact the Club of Rome’s model, which is entirely simulation. And that is a great deception because you can make up any simulation of anything and present it, but it’s used to convince people and give the impression that it’s factual. And this is used in economics, it’s used for growth trajectories, it’s used for population growth trajectories to show that it’s unsustainable, and it’s used, of course, for climate scenarios, and it’s used for declaring pandemics — how the virus grows. It turns out it’s all simulation, made-up stuff.

Fact is, that’s what he used — Club of Rome model simulations — and Deng Xiaoping declaring, “We should listen to this guy, we have no other choice, we have to do this.” So it’s not really clear why on earth he came to this conclusion. Maybe he just fell, like many people, for the simulation approach, or maybe there are other reasons, but that’s a fact.

The Origins of Modern Economics and the Ricardian Vice

And so we see that we do have influential international forces that are anti-population growth, potentially anti-population, and also anti-growth. And it’s not really factually based. This great deception started really again in the British Empire in the 19th century. It’s really the source of modern economics. This is how modern economics was developed. It started with the so-called classical economists in Britain, and the key figure here is David Ricardo.

Who is he? Well, he’s a famous classical economist. He did the theory of free trade, the theory of comparative advantage, which concludes, well, we should have free trade, it gives us prosperity. And at the same time, the argument is, well, the previous economists, the mercantilists, mercantile economists, they were so wrong because they argued, well, we may need some trade policy, we need some intervention, we need to make sure that the benefits from trade are properly equally distributed. That’s what the mercantilists said.

And ever since David Ricardo, this is claimed to have been disproven, and it’s just free trade is best, also unilateral free trade. And that’s exactly what the IMF and the World Bank are preaching and enforcing in their policies on developing countries, their conditionality. You get money, carrot, but here’s the stick: you have to adopt these and these policies. Free trade policies, allow foreign investment, deregulate, liberalize, privatize, which effectively means these countries are stuck in a low-value-added activity, exporting commodities. They’re not allowed to build up their own industries, move up the value-added ladder, and they’re not allowed to prevent foreigners from buying up their industries cheaply.

Now empirically, this model has been proven wrong many times over. Actually, Prebisch and Singer showed already a long time ago that commodities exporters have declining terms of trade. Now, what does that mean? Terms of trade is simply the export price divided by the import price. It’s basically the relative price you get for what you’re selling compared to what you have to buy, what you’re importing. And what they’ve shown is that if you’re exporting commodities and if you’re focusing on that, that means all your high-value goods, manufacturing goods, are imported. And that’s the position developing countries are in.

But if you are in this position, what happens over time? And they looked at around almost half a century, actually more than half a century. You could show that the terms of trade must deteriorate, which means you will ever get less for your exports in relative terms, and you have to pay ever more for your imports. And therefore you’re getting poorer and you’re not getting the benefit from trade. That’s what the IMF and the World Bank are locking developing countries in through their policy regime. And it’s not a coincidence.

Logic Is Not Truth

And even David Ricardo knew this very well. The trick was this. How does he prove that free trade is the best and intervention is always bad? Well, he didn’t actually prove it. All he did is he presented some nice mathematics. Now, mathematics is logic, and the logic is correct. And here’s the trick. Here’s the great deception. We like logic. Men like logic. People like logic. Logic is convincing to us, and so convincing that we forget one small but fundamental issue: logic is not truth.

Well, hang on, why is that? Well, if it’s logical, must be true. No, there’s a difference. Logic can only ever tell us about theoretical possibilities, but never tell us about what is true and what is not true. That’s an empirical question. Logic is not empirical. It’s not evidence-based. Whether something is true or not, whether something happened or not, it’s always evidence-based. You have to check the evidence. That’s the inductive approach. Whereas logic is mathematics. Mathematics is logic, and it usually is used consistently, correctly, consistently, therefore you’ve got consistent logic. That’s why it’s so convincing. But the conclusion doesn’t tell you that you should do this.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s not perfectly predictive.

RICHARD WERNER: It’s not predictive at all. And also it may not describe the world. It may not describe reality because it depends on the assumptions that you’ve used to build this model. And that’s where they cheat you. So the assumptions in Ricardo’s model are highly specific and unrealistic. That’s how economics has worked ever since. In fact, it’s called Ricardo’s vice. So modern economics — and historians of economic thought agree on this — modern economics essentially was invented by David Ricardo. It’s called the Ricardian vice, which is to make such assumptions that you will come to the conclusions that you desire.

And so it’s, of course, not scientific. It’s not scientific at all. It is a way of deceiving people. And you don’t point out that this is only a scenario. It’s a simulation that could be true on some planet. But we are not saying anything about whether this actually applies to this or not. And so in David—

TUCKER CARLSON: So it’s sophistry, really.

RICHARD WERNER: Yes, it is. But also you could say it’s rhetoric or it’s marketing because you’re trying to convince people of something that you’ve concluded you want to do. And you provide the ex post justification and it is impressive. “Oh wow, so much clever mathematics. This is a real clever scientist. Well, it must be true, whatever he’s saying.” This is essentially how economics has been working.

The Mercantilists Were Right

And now David Ricardo doesn’t point out that his conclusion depends crucially on the terms of trade and what is that post-trade price, what is the relative price of things. He has nothing on that, he just leaves that out. But that’s the crucial factor. And the problem is that developing countries have deteriorating terms of trade if they follow his advice.

So David Ricardo essentially proven what everyone already knew, that trade can potentially be beneficial for everyone because we create benefits through trade. That’s not in doubt. The mercantilists knew that. I wonder why they’re called mercantilists. Mercantile, merchant, trade. They favored trade. They said, “Let’s trade. This is where prosperity comes from, from trade.” That’s what the mercantilists said. So why are they so wrong? Well, they’re not wrong. They were not wrong. They actually were a step further than Ricardo. They talked about the distribution of those benefits from trade. They said trade can be beneficial, there will be benefits, but who’s getting those benefits? How is that distributed? That depends on the terms of trade, which is what Ricardo totally and on purpose left out.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think I’m starting to understand how the world works.

RICHARD WERNER: And this deception has been used consistently in economics, but has been used in other disciplines. So this is how they persuade, this is how the Club of Rome operates. So their model of, “Oh, there’s too much growth and growth is bad and we need to suppress growth,” is based on the same approach, assumptions. It’s a simulation. It’s not truth. And it’s turned out to be wrong. We’re more than halfway through their 100-year forecast and they’ve been proven incorrect.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not where they said we’d be.

RICHARD WERNER: Exactly. It’s true for the population growth scenarios. We don’t have too much population growth. That’s quite clear if you look at the facts. So it’s been disproven there because it’s just been simulations. And it’s been true for the pandemic simulations. It’s been true for the climate simulations, which are also just simulations. And just recently we hear that the IPCC is admitting and people at the UN admitting, “Well, these were extreme scenarios and yes, they’re implausible.” It’s increasingly being acknowledged because that’s what it was, just always an extreme scenario.

TUCKER CARLSON: Too late for the German economy.

RICHARD WERNER: A simulation, yes, of course. Well, people need to be aware that policymakers, when they impose bad policies, they use this clever sophistry of simulations. The deductive approach is presented as very logical, and it is logical, but logic is not truth. That’s the key point. Truth is based on evidence and facts, and very often you can quickly debunk all of these models.

The Coming World Order: China, One-World Government, and the Lessons of History

TUCKER CARLSON: So, given that, and part of what you’re saying is it is hard to project into the future. It’s just hard to know because of the number of variables, but I’m going to ask you to do it anyway. So given everything you’ve just said, your understanding of what this conflict with Iran is really about, what the conflict with Venezuela is really about, it’s really about China and the contest for global hegemony between the United States and China. That is likely to flower into a world war.

I think it’s hard to imagine the United States wins in any conclusive way, given that it’s a smaller country, population, economy, smaller, less technologically advanced in some ways than China. So what happens then? So let’s just jump right ahead. So let’s say there’s some kind of conflict. Hopefully it’s limited in scale, but whatever it is, but China remains after that, all the systems that you’re talking about, which have been in place for hundreds of years, first under the British, now under us, the Americans, they’re replaced by what? What are the systems that govern the world when China’s in charge?

RICHARD WERNER: You’ve said it already. “Systems that govern the world.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Not countries. Exactly.

RICHARD WERNER: So that’s what it seems to be about. To entrench a new system, a more effective system from the viewpoint of the central planners to govern the world. Exactly. Because these crises, whether it’s economic crisis—

TUCKER CARLSON: You can feel that. It’s very obvious, right?

RICHARD WERNER: Yeah, exactly. And clearly wars have always been used. You shake up the old structure, you’ve got your ready new structure that you want to implement. Yes. And that’s what it seems to be about.

The International Monetary System and the Architecture of World Power

Now, structure, as in past wars, includes, of course, as a core pillar, the international monetary system. There’s no doubt about that. Yes. The monetary system. First World War, the result of the First World War was the creation of the League of Nations. Yes. And the League of Nations had particular views. The problem was America never joined the League of Nations because America was still, you know, a bit more sort of, you know, representatives of elected representatives would represent what their constituents wanted and people didn’t want it. Why? You know, and in fact, the First World War just proved the point that it’s not a great idea to get involved in these international conflicts. Right. So America didn’t join the League of Nations and that was another reason why another round was considered necessary.

And so towards the end of the Second World War, the United Nations were created. In fact, did you know that — what is the United Nations? It’s the renamed Allied countries. They simply renamed them. That’s the Security Council, yeah. You know, so the Second World War Allied countries were renamed United Nations. Sounds nicer, which is why Germany, you know, and Japan are still enemy countries in the United Nations Charter.

And they created in ’44 the Bretton Woods system based on the dollar. So it was a clear transfer from the British Empire as a dominant force to America. There was a bit of an internal battle between America and Britain. Keynes was negotiating for Britain. You know, he was already director of the Bank of England, shareholder in the Bank of England. He died unfortunately sort of at the time of these negotiations. Anyway, one way or another, America won the argument, it seems, and it was the dollar that was going to be used in this system.

And of course, this is the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire, in the — what was it? The Washington Hotel in New Hampshire, in Bretton Woods, is meant to be a global conference of all the representatives. It was basically Britain and America and their colonial subjects being represented by somebody, but they had to say whatever Britain and America wanted to say. So it wasn’t the world. The Soviet Union was there, but then quickly after that dropped out and thought, no, we don’t want to be part of this. China was represented by some people that, you know, America was supporting in China, who later, of course, were not really in power and had nothing to do with China really.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, they went to Formosa.

RICHARD WERNER: Yes, for instance. That’s right. So it was really America and Britain calling the shots and deciding things. And it was very much about the monetary system. And the structure, United Nations and the organizations, IMF, World Bank, to run the world.

The Case for One-World Government and America as the Obstacle

So that’s also, I think, what this is about. And I think, you see, if the goal, just for sake of argument, is to have a one-world government, a proper one-world government that controls the world — and I don’t think it’s a good idea, by the way, just want to make that clear.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay.

RICHARD WERNER: Because — thank you. Because decentralization is the best. We have already too much centralization, and this is going to be quite a nightmare, totalitarian nightmare, unfortunately. But there are people, power hungry, you know, psychopaths who want more power. And, you know, over time in history, we see their footsteps. And that’s clearly where, you know, that’s at least one red thread going through history that forces are being aimed at this for one reason or another.

So I think as a working hypothesis, we can put it on the table that there are some people out there who want to create a one-world government. And if that’s the goal, you know what your obstacle is? I think it’s just like with the League of Nations. It’s America from their viewpoint. I mean, I’m not saying America is the obstacle or America is bad if it’s opposing this. I think that’s a good thing. America should oppose this. But from their viewpoint, America is an obstacle. So America has to be taken down. The dollar has to be taken down.

Now, a lot of the people fighting for this may be in the American government. Who knows? It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily outside America.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right.

RICHARD WERNER: But there are people who are working, seem to be working for this goal. At least that’s the evidence we get when we use the evidence-based approach, not simulations and scenarios.

TUCKER CARLSON: Where would the capital of this world government be, do you think?

RICHARD WERNER: Oh, that’s a good question. Clearly a political question, and there will be debates, but perhaps they already have a preferred location. So I don’t want to be drawn into speculation because, of course, from my viewpoint, it doesn’t actually matter. But once we see it, I think it will tell us a lot. But it doesn’t really matter for this argument. So maybe we’ll get —

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I wouldn’t speculate either. I would just think logic suggests it would not be east or west, but in the middle.

Historical Mechanisms of Control: War, Economic Crises, and Central Banking

RICHARD WERNER: Yes, that could be, that could be. That would be an argument because of course if it’s like the United Nations again, you see, and always they move it, you see, First World War, League of Nations after First World War was in Geneva, Switzerland, you know, some arguments for that, a sort of international territory, but Europe. Well then United Nations because America didn’t join, so you needed to be in America. United Nations, of course Rockefeller gave the land, and helped a lot in building up the UN. Institutions was very much involved, you know. So, you know, we see the Rockefellers there, Rockefeller Foundation, quite active.

But if you move to the next step and you realize just by logic that America is now the obstacle, because why would America subordinate itself to an outside body?

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

RICHARD WERNER: Why would America give up the dollar dominance? No. And actually, you know, have an international currency that is not the dollar. Which would be necessary for this new one-world government. So America becomes the obstacle. So then you can’t have it in America, right? Or to make it clear that America is no longer the dominant force, it’s now a new thing. It’s a world government that is different, which you would want to use to motivate other people, right, outside America. So then it wouldn’t be in America. And then where could it be?

So then, yeah, a few things, a few places come to mind, but also how do you go about this? And what we learn from history is it’s always the same mechanisms. Warfare is an important one, at least for big changes. There are many changes you could do without war, and that is through economic — you could say economic war, but economic cycles, boom-bust cycles, long, deep recessions, downturns. Shake up society. High inflation is also part of that. It’s also economic warfare on the people. Shakes up society like the high inflation in Germany in the 1920s clearly was one way to get Hitler into power. It was the beginning.

Hjalmar Schacht and the Foreign Control of the Reichsbank

And by the way, we may not have time to go there, but the person who was put in charge at the peak of this high inflation became head of the German central bank, Reichsbank.

TUCKER CARLSON: In Weimar.

RICHARD WERNER: Yes. Hjalmar Schacht was his name. He was appointed by foreigners, not by Germans. So there’s no doubt about that because they call themselves now victorious powers of the First World War, although it was an armistice, allegedly. But they decided that, no, we are going to occupy Germany. Germany then became occupied by foreign troops, you know, the Rhine —

TUCKER CARLSON: Including African troops.

RICHARD WERNER: Yes, indeed, indeed. And yeah, it wasn’t too pleasant. And so also its central bank was taken under foreign control formally. There was a new Central Bank Act, and it stated that half of the board members have to be foreigners. They couldn’t be German. And in total, because also the president was effectively appointed by the foreigners —

TUCKER CARLSON: Which foreigners are we talking about?

RICHARD WERNER: Was mainly in practice, it’s not really in dispute, it was the J.P. Morgan-led reparations committee. Because the story was that during the First World War, Britain funded its war effort by borrowing money from J.P. Morgan. That was already the first step of transferring power from Britain to America. Yes. And because you didn’t have to do that, there were alternatives, but Britain chose, it seems, you know, chose to do this. And so J.P. Morgan then was the one that money was owed to by Britain. It was more than 10% of American GDP, so it was not a small sum. And therefore, after the First World War, Britain had to do what J.P. Morgan was recommending, really.

And J.P. Morgan was thinking, well, Britain is not going to really repay this money. We better get it from Germany. And so the reparation committee was all about Germany paying Britain to pay J.P. Morgan. So really it was from Germany to J.P. Morgan.

And this started to become entrenched in — if you look at the German central banks, the first step was this new law that made the German central bank totally independent from government and from any democratic assemblies in Germany. The Reichsbank was made unaccountable to anyone. It was the most independent central bank in the world. While also at the same time being 100% privately owned, by the way. Reichsbank was privately owned.

So, and this Reichsbank, then as soon as the ink had dried on this new statutory independence, but of course dependence on J.P. Morgan’s wishes, the reparations committee was appointing these foreigners, you see, the hyperinflation started in Germany. And they then put Hjalmar Schacht in power at the helm of the Reichsbank.

Schacht, Hitler, and the Credit Magician

And it was the same Hjalmar Schacht who then took the steps — I mean, we need another session on the details — but he took the steps that brought Hitler into power. And even approached the Nazi Party and said, well, you guys have some interesting ideas, but you don’t have a really good economic program. I’ll give you how to get out of the Great Depression that he helped to export to Germany through his policies at the Reichsbank. So that’s how the plot thickens.

And then of course, when Hitler was appointed on strong recommendation from Hjalmar Schacht, who was highly respected by that time because he was actually known as dictator, the monetary and credit dictator, because he decided over life and death of German companies in the 1920s. When the Reichsbank said no, then the company wouldn’t get credit from the banks and would be finished. So this guy recommended Hitler, and then he was appointed, even though he didn’t have the absolute majority in parliament, he was appointed chancellor and then immediately appointed Hjalmar Schacht as head of the central bank again, who then very quickly did the right policies, sort of early versions of my QE, quantitative easing, to rev up the German economy.

And so by 1936, so only after 3 years, Germany was also in the Great Depression, you have to understand. I mean, there was large-scale unemployment, 20-25% unemployment. And then Hjalmar Schacht, who had created those policies that created this and exported the Great Depression from America to Germany, knew how to get out of it quickly and adopted these policies.

So Germany, by 1936, just when Keynes in Britain was publishing his analysis of what could be behind this Great Depression, and what could be done to get out of it, which is this recommendation fiscal policy. Well, Schacht had already led Germany to full employment and shortage of labor. That’s how the economy was booming in 1936. And it wasn’t through fiscal policy, as often said, oh, that was military spending. Oh no, no, no. German military spending only picked up much later. It was monetary policy, credit creation for productive business investment in many industries, high technology industries. That’s what led Germany out of that bank credit creation. And Schacht knew that. Because he was also known as the credit magician, the wizard of credit creation.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it turns out there was just one lever in the German economy and it was monetary policy. And when you cranked it in one direction, people thrived. When you cranked it in the other direction, they starved to death.

RICHARD WERNER: Yes, that’s right.

The Deception of Equilibrium Economics

RICHARD WERNER: But it’s always the same everywhere. It’s not just Germany. It’s always bank credit. That’s what shows you what’s going on. That’s why they’re hiding it. That’s why even today in leading economics textbooks, there are no banks, there’s no bank credit creation. Central banks still use their equilibrium models, dynamic stochastic equilibrium models, general equilibrium models, where there’s no banks, there’s no need for banks.

Well, this is what David Ricardo started. In his fake economics, based on all these assumptions, this axiomatic, hypothetical, very logical, and therefore convincing economics, there are no banks, there’s no bank credit creation. Who was David Ricardo? Well, he was a banker. He retired at the age of 42. Was he British? He was British. He made a fortune in the city working with a very rich banking dynasty, making a fortune so that he’s known as the second richest person in Britain.

TUCKER CARLSON: Second banking dynasty.

RICHARD WERNER: Well, exactly. And why second richest? Who was the richest? Well, that was Rothschilds. And that’s where he was most likely making his money, because he was in the bond market. In 1815, Rothschild made a fortune in the bond market through inside knowledge of what’s going on. If you fund wars, you know slightly earlier what’s going to happen. That episode is quite well documented.

But Ricardo was a bond trader. He was likely one of those who, as agents, bought the bonds when they were at the rock bottom and you could get them for, I don’t know, 20 pennies in the pound for Australia without people realizing, you know, Australia is actually buying them very cheaply and then owned the entire national debt and then could say to the Bank of England, well, actually, your assets are mostly bonds. I’m the biggest bond owner. I’m buying the shares cheaply and could dictate anything to the government or the royal house, it seems.

But this David Ricardo, having made his fortune, then retired at the age of 42 and built himself a nice little country house. Princess Royal, Princess Anne, lives in it today. So it’s probably quite impressive. I think 700 acres of land. And anyway, he was seriously wealthy.

What did he do with the rest of his time? He decided to create modern economics, which is based on assumptions, this hypothetical, axiomatic, deductive simulation. Now, you can make any assumption in logic. Why not? But when certain assumptions become compulsory, like you have to assume perfect information, complete markets, rational agents, and all that stuff, then it’s an ideology. That’s the definition of an ideology. It’s a religion at that point. That’s what economics becomes.

And the trick is this: once you have these assumptions, then you can show that in equilibrium, demand equals supply. Prices move to give us equilibrium. It’s prices that dominate. Never look at quantities. And this is what’s being pushed. Modern economics is equilibrium economics. And the irony is there is no equilibrium. That’s made up because this scenario is so hypothetical.

What is the probability of having equilibrium? You need at least 8 assumptions to hold at the same time, but each assumption has a probability of probably less than 1% of being true. But let’s say for sake of argument, each assumption, like perfect information, complete markets, zero transaction cost, if each assumption had a probability of being more likely to be true than not, more than 50%, 55%. Okay, but you’ve got 8 of these assumptions. They all need to be true at the same time to get equilibrium.

What is the probability of getting equilibrium when each assumption is more likely to be true than not? 55%. Well, it’s 0.55, 55% to the power of 8. You need all of them to hold at the same time. Conditional probability. So while they love to use logic and maths, that’s the calculation they don’t want you to make.

TUCKER CARLSON: Maths reveals it as a lie.

RICHARD WERNER: Exactly. Because what is the result? Even if each is more likely to be true than not with 55% probability, the joint probability is less than 1%. But of course, each assumption has a probability closer to zero, less than 1%.

TUCKER CARLSON: So in other words, when Americans say — non-economists say — “this doesn’t look like a free market economy to me,” they’re right.

RICHARD WERNER: Of course. There is not even equilibrium. It doesn’t exist. It’s so unlikely to ever be true that we know for sure there’s no equilibrium in any market. But central banks are using general equilibrium models. That means equilibrium not just in one market, but in all markets at the same time. That’s even less likely. That’s like the probability is 0.000 whatever percent.

TUCKER CARLSON: So the real power is with the governors of the central bank.

RICHARD WERNER: Exactly.

Power, Markets, and the Short Side Principle

RICHARD WERNER: But also what you’re hiding with this equilibrium economics is the power of — is actually power, you could say. Power. Economists would say, well, let’s not talk about power. We’re about economics. Power doesn’t enter the equation. Why? Because it’s equilibrium economics. Prices move, you get this outcome, you’re unemployed. I’m sorry, that’s the markets. There’s no power.

But the moment you realize that actually all markets are rationed, then the so-called short side principle applies, which is whichever quantity of demand or supply is smaller determines the outcome and has power to pick and choose with who to trade. That’s the power that we realize is there all the time, and that’s the reality of markets. So that means the short side, whatever that may be in any market, has power. That’s totally ignored by economists.

So this is why equilibrium, this deductive equilibrium approach, this deception is so useful. You never think of looking for the power players, the power holders. Of course, when it comes to money, is the equilibrium demand and supply equal? Well, no, because the demand for money is essentially infinite. And of course, the short side is the supply of money. So whoever supplies money has power to pick and choose who to give it to, how much to give it to, for what purposes.

Now, who is creating the money? That is the banks. And of course, that’s why we need many small banks, local banks, because then you’re giving this power — which is then power over the whole economy really, because it’s the power over money creation and availability of money, purchasing power — you give it back to the people, to the local areas. And that’s why the central planners have been setting out on a campaign to destroy small banks, local banks.

So in the background, it’s this deception that is equilibrium when actually all markets are rationed and there’s power players. It’s the short side. And when it comes to money, it’s the suppliers of money. But it’s really the big banks and the central banks that have usurped that. That’s why we need to decentralize and have many small banks.

There is actually a person at the Federal Reserve now who’s Vice Chair of Supervision, Michelle Bowman. She is an advocate of small banks and local banks. So there is hope. She should be the next, really, chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. But of course, we have somebody else starting in the interim, but hopefully she will still be there and continue to fight for small banks. We need some other changes to make it easier to create new banks. That should be deregulated. There was an era in America of high growth when you could very easily set up a bank. Well, why don’t we have that?

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s virtually impossible to set up a bank.

RICHARD WERNER: Well, they certainly make it very hard.

Centralization vs. Decentralization

TUCKER CARLSON: So it doesn’t sound like the political environment that we’re in, which is clearly accelerating. We’re moving towards something. Its outlines are not clear, but we’re moving at high speed. It doesn’t sound like we’re moving toward decentralization of anything, right?

RICHARD WERNER: The trend continues to be centralization. They’re reducing the number of banks. The ECB has overseen the disappearance of 6,000 banks in Europe. That’s very sad. They continue to drop their numbers also in America. That needs to be reversed because as the number of banks goes down, there’s less economic growth, there’s less prosperity for the middle class. It is really a war on the middle class if you destroy the small banks. But that continues to take place and is even official ECB policy.

Of course, the background to that is that the ECB is the revived Reichsbank. I’ve told you about how powerful this foreign-controlled Reichsbank was. So once Germany was defeated in the Second World War, post-war Germany thinkers there were given some leeway to think about, okay, how to do the monetary system, the central bank. And they concluded, well, the problem was the central bank was too powerful. It’s no good being privately owned, so it should be state-owned. But more importantly, it should be made accountable to democratic assemblies, to parliament, which the Reichsbank was not, due to being controlled by the Reparations Committee, which was later, by the way, renamed the BIS, Bank for International Settlement. That is the continuation effectively of the J.P. Morgan Reparations Committee, you see.

But the Bundesbank was then made accountable to parliament and its independence was reduced. That’s the big insight. And as a result, we had a very successful central bank in Germany. Throughout the existence of an independent Bundesbank — independent from the government but dependent on parliament — laws were made for it by parliament, that for example, it also needs to look at growth and employment. You know, you can’t have huge unemployment. It’s no good having low inflation but a huge recession, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

RICHARD WERNER: So that was the law. It performed very well. So it made other central banks look bad. It also never created these asset bubbles because if you allow banks or encourage banks to lend for asset purchases, you get — because it’s money creation — you get asset bubbles which lead to banking crises. And that’s the system played in many countries, certainly in England, boom-bust cycles all the time.

But many countries, the central banks have been playing this game, which then can be used to rearrange ownership and all sorts of things. As a World Bank report pointed out, noticed about the Asian crisis — “oh, the Asian crisis, window of opportunity to rearrange ownership.” Oh, interesting. World Bank report.

The Destruction of the Bundesbank and the Rise of the ECB

RICHARD WERNER: So the Bundesbank was a good central bank, probably one of the best in history, I would say. And because it made other central banks look bad, its days were unfortunately numbered. Germany allowed itself to give up the Bundesbank and give up its currency, the D-Mark. Now, the D-Mark had become the European currency.

TUCKER CARLSON: I remember. That’s right. It was by market forces and voluntary decisions. Other countries decided to peg themselves to the D-Mark voluntarily. Nobody was forced to do that.

RICHARD WERNER: And so what really was marketed as the introduction of the European currency, the euro, was actually the destruction of the European currency, the D-Mark, and also the destruction of this good central bank.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, really the destruction of Germany itself.

RICHARD WERNER: That’s right. That’s when it started. And I was a fierce opponent in the 1990s, but it was like a taboo to say, “oh, giving up the D-Mark is a bad thing.” In public debates, I was chief economist of a British investment bank and so invited to various events in Germany also, and other German bank, Deutsche Bank chief economists were there. And I would say, well, we can’t give up the D-Mark. There’s no good economic rationale. And silence. And some would say — they wouldn’t engage on that point because it’s true. They would then say, “oh, but there’s a good political rationale. There’s a moral rationale.”

TUCKER CARLSON: And moral. I want to hear that one because that is an even worse argument.

RICHARD WERNER: No, but you know when a society is collapsing when every argument becomes a moral argument.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right.

RICHARD WERNER: But we’re fighting Russia, so we’re good.

TUCKER CARLSON: So then they introduced, they abolished the European currency, the D-Mark, and they introduced the Euro with its own central bank, the ECB. Now they marketed this as, “oh, the ECB will be like the Bundesbank. It’s going to be in Frankfurt. It’s going to be the same, as independent as the Bundesbank.” Well, hang on. The lesson from the Reichsbank and the Bundesbank was to make the central bank less independent.

RICHARD WERNER: It turns out, as I show actually in my book Princes of the Yen, quantumpublishers.com is the place to get it. Amazon is not really the place to get it. It was a book that was impossible to get.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s like $500 on eBay, but you’ve reissued it.

RICHARD WERNER: Yes, quantumpublishers.com. So there’s a chapter here on this. The ECB is the revived Reichsbank. It was modeled on the worst central bank in history, which is of course why I predicted that the ECB was likely to create bank credit-driven asset bubbles, banking crises, and big recessions in the Eurozone. And that’s exactly what they did. Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece.

The U.S. Asset Bubble and What Comes Next

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, and not just in the Eurozone, but in the United States. So here’s my last question. I am going to ask you to predict and project. So go out on a limb. The United States has been experiencing, I think what’s fair to call an asset bubble. Certainly you see it in real estate markets, but not just real estate, cryptocurrency, et cetera. What happens to assets in the United States as this war progresses and as the global system changes?

The Coming Digital Control System

RICHARD WERNER: Well, I mean, in principle, of course, in real estate markets, we have big cycles. They’re slow moving. And the cycles are a function of, in real estate, of interest rates and the quantity of credit for, more importantly, for real estate transactions. Assets are somewhat overpriced, I dare say, in the US. But particularly when you look at stock markets, it doesn’t necessarily mean there will be an immediate crash, but I do think we are heading towards a crisis.

And again, if you look at the big game that’s being played, then it’s quite clear this has to happen. If the working hypothesis is that there are forces out there that want to dethrone America. Yes. And they may be active in America, even these forces. No question about it. And that means also dethroning the dollar. And that would explain why China actually had been strengthened with American investment in the past. Because you’re building up this opponent that can help take down America if you make sure America stays aggressive and adopts anti-China policies, which also seems to be happening to some extent.

So then what are the scenarios here? What’s the way? Well, as we said, whenever you have these big wars, they lead to currency system changes. The global financial system changes. So we moved from first the British pound, which was on and off the gold standard, then we moved to the Bretton Woods dollar standard, which was a gold standard. And of course, gold standard, some people think, oh, that means it’s one-to-one to gold and you can’t create money. No, that never happened. Such a gold standard never existed. There’s always been bank credit creation, and that’s how the real game is played. But it’s some kind of limit because as soon as— and it turns out America was creating too many dollars, buying up assets in Europe.

The French were not yet part of NATO, therefore not part of the command structure. It was the French that called out America. “We’d like our gold, please.” And they said, “Okay, you’re printing all these dollars and you’re buying us up. What we can do is we can change these dollars now into gold. We want to see gold.” So that’s— but so then we moved from the ’71 Nixon shock, US default on its international gold obligations. Then we move to the petrodollar, which of course is very closely intertwined to actions in the Middle East and all the wars in the Middle East. Oil was only allowed to be sold against the US dollar. Anyone who did otherwise, whether it’s in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, or in Libya, Gaddafi, that was a big no-no and led to severe consequences, warfare, and—

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, you get killed for that.

RICHARD WERNER: You get killed for it, exactly.

Inflation, the Petrodollar, and the Next Monetary Rearrangement

So what’s next? Because also when the Nixon shock happened and we moved from the gold dollar to the petrodollar, there was also inflation. Inflation is a good camouflage that sort of makes it easier to rearrange the monetary system. It was entirely monetary inflation, by the way, not energy driven. It was the central bank creating a lot of money, but we had the same. In 2020 with the COVID psyop, money creation by central banks, no economic rationale for this whatsoever. It was clear 18 months later we get inflation as a result. That’s what happened.

So it looks like we’re— and now we could be— it looks like we’re heading into the second run of inflation. Still early stages, not entirely clear, but that would be my guess without having yet the necessary data. But I think there will be a second bout of inflation. And that indicates that we are in this phase of running up towards the next rearrangement of the monetary system.

What is it going to be? Well, that seems to be increasingly clear. It’s going to be digital, based on digital identity. And I think we therefore should oppose digital ID on all fronts. We’re humans. We’re not digits. We have digits, 10 digits, okay? But we should not subject ourselves to this regime where if you don’t provide the right digital ID credentials, you’re not accepted as a human and you don’t have the human rights in reality. I mean, that’s dehumanizing. We should reject just on that principle. But there’s many other reasons why we should reject it.

CBDC: Central Bank Digital Control

It is the beginning of this control regime of a digital currency. Now, digital currency as such is not a bad thing because for half a century we’ve been using bank digital currency, BDC we could call it. Because the bank has just been digital and most money is created by banks, it’s digital money. We have been using decentralized bank digital money and it has actually worked quite well. And the banks have never sold our personal transactions data to anyone. So actually we should laud the banks because the new regime is all about our information about our transactions being sold freely. The government is now Facebook. And yes, being used to manipulate us, whether it’s in elections or to sell products and services that we don’t really need.

So it’s going to be a digital currency. It is marketed as CBDC, Central Bank Digital Currency. I call it Central Bank Digital Control. Because that’s what it is. It’s not really a currency, it’s more control, as Catherine Austin Fitts always points out quite correctly.

And so because we’ve been using BDC, bank digital currency, what is the difference? It’s the central. They tell us this justification, Christine Lagarde, that we need this because there’s Bitcoin, we need digital central bank currency now as well. Well, the digital is not the new aspect. We have digital money. It’s the central aspect that this is about.

And particularly if there’s now another bout of inflation, and in some countries with the boom-bust cycles being arranged such that in Germany we are heading— we’re in a property bust now. There was the bubble arranged by the ECB from 2009 to 2022. Now property prices are steadily declining, putting banks slowly under more and more pressure. They were forced to do this by the ECB. It’s the same game as Bank of Japan’s game in Japan. And so banking crisis, of course, is ideal, and inflation to launch your CBDC. That’s for Europe. In other countries, there may be slightly other rationales and justifications for introducing it.

But a crisis, one way or another, is always good. A war, of course, is even better because then it’s just wartime direct diktats. You can’t do anything, it’s wartime, you have to accept whatever you’re told. And as a wartime measure, of course, that’s the ultimate— if everything else fails, then definitely wartime measures will be used to introduce these measures.

The Totalitarian Endgame

So we’re heading towards digital control systems where we have no more control over our liquid assets. It will be, of course, programmable, permission-based. So only what the central planners allow you to use your money for, at what time and place and location will be permitted. And if you’re in the wrong place, it’s not going to work. And if you’re buying the wrong book title, it’s not going to work, and so on. I mean, there’s no limit to how much you can fine-tune and control.

Oh, but they don’t have so much power. They can’t control millions of people. Well, this is what the drive to build all these hundreds, in fact thousands of data centers is about. It is an organizational challenge to micromanage the world’s population through the new financial world order. Yes, but they’re working on solving that. AI is really about that.

If AI was about helping us to be more productive, the principle of decentralization would be applied because any human organization and any use and anything where humans are involved— if you introduce the principle of decentralization, subsidiarity, it will be more productive, no doubt, more efficient, more productive. That’s been demonstrated in many contexts. I mentioned the warfare, military, and businesses and so on. It’s true for everything. But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re creating highly centralized structures, which proves that it’s not about actual productivity. It’s about control, controlling us. That’s why they need these huge resources.

Then you can control inflation easily because people can’t buy when the central banks don’t allow you to buy. Yes. So then prices can’t be driven up. And also you control movement of people. You can’t buy a ticket, you can’t go here and there because your money won’t work outside a certain zone, whether it’s a 15-minute prison zone or whatever it may be. It is the totalitarian dictator’s dream come true.

And that is the scary thing. Most people are still not aware that we are so close to the scariest, most dystopian system where we’re giving so much control and power into the hands of ever fewer people over our lives and billions of people. Again, if everyone is good, like the majority of people, and the controllers, the elites, the central planners are good, it’s not an issue. But that’s not what human history teaches us, and human nature, we know, is different.

Most people actually, once they’re given a lot of power, that comes with temptations of power, and most can’t handle those temptations and they give in. And then that’s when power gets abused. That’s why Lord Acton, a British political observer and advisor to prime ministers, concluded power corrupts. Most people get corrupted by power. They can’t handle power. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We’re talking about absolute power in the hands of central planners if we allow the central bank digital currency to be imposed. And the central planners will have this absolute power, including, of course, they have already monetary power. But they will have the tools to deploy this in every detail to micromanage us. That is a new dimension of power and effectively includes fiscal policy, because ultimately everything becomes controlled by the central bank.

So now you could still say, well, we have some politicians, they meet for parliamentary votes and they decide budgets. Well, all that will become obsolete because everything will be controlled by the central bank. This is what the politicians don’t realize, that the central bank digital currency is the first step by the central planners, the monetary central planners, to take over everything.

So the dangers are just so manifold that it’s quite clear that we have to stop this. This is really the big scenario, and that’s where we see forces pushing as internationally power gets ever more centralized. Despite this being the biggest lesson of the 20th century, that it’s not a good idea to constantly have more power in the hands of fewer and fewer people, that’s actually being accelerated in the 21st century.

TUCKER CARLSON: On the basis of lies about the 20th century.

RICHARD WERNER: Indeed. Indeed. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Richard, thank you. And I hope this won’t be your last trip here.

RICHARD WERNER: It’d be a pleasure. It’s a pleasure to be here and I hope I can come again.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, there’s— Literally anytime. I will be thinking about this for the next month.

RICHARD WERNER: Fantastic. Thanks very much. Thank you.

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