Lucifer’s Banker

This was an interview with Brad Birkenfeld, the whistleblower who ended banking secrecy.  He exposed over 19,000 Americans who were hiding money in the Swiss bank UBS to avoid taxes in the US.  The host called it “one of the best corporate crime books ever written.”

The story of how he came to the information and why he exposed it is interesting. But the really riveting part of this one is how deeply corrupt and complicit the US goverment was (after all, a lot of the rich are in goverment, or at least were, so you can be sure they were on the list).  Just a couple examples:

He published the name of one guy who had over $400 million in UBS. He was illegally selling oil to Saddam Hussein, and was living in New York.  He was never prosecuted.  He is a good friend of Rudy Guiliani.

Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, went over (secretly) to Switzerland to negotiate the settlement with UBS. UBS donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation during the negiotiations. After the settlement, they made a $32 million low-interest loan to the Foundation (prior to that they had only donated $60,000), and they hired Bill Clinton for some “fireside chats” with the CEO – to the tune of $1.52 million.  Of the 19,000 names Birkenfeld handed over, 4500 were handed over to the IRS.  It’s not clear who picked those 4500, what methodology was used to select them, or why the other 14,500 were not handed over.

I could go on and on – this was just the beginning of the stories of corruption, lawlessness, and conspiracy this guy uncovered.   It is breathtaking and a little terrifying.

Oh, and by the way – given that in the scandal, tens of billions of tax revenue had been hidden from the government, how many people do you think went to jail?  One – the whistleblower, Brad Birkenfeld.

Doing Time Like A Spy

This fascinating interview with John Kiriakou talks about his experiences as a whistleblower, revealing the CIA torture program.

Interesting facts: in the aftermath of the exposure of the illegal torture program, Kiriakou is the only person that went to jail.  That’s right, the whistleblower is the only person who went to jail; the people who broke the law did not.

He was charged under the Espionage Act.  The Espionage Act was passed during WWI.  It was used 3 times between 1917-2009.  The Obama Administration used it 8 times.

It’s worth listening to this to hear how visciously our government goes after truth-tellers.

Occupational Licensing

Interesting discussion on occupational licensing.  Clark Neely says that occupational licensing is a “massive group delusion” of regulators, that stifles innovation, reduces competition, discourages people from pursuing employment, and imposes massives costs – hundreds of billions of dollars – on the economy.  The real motivation is to provide goverment protection of the profits of politically connected donors – something he points out has been going on for centuries.

When you need a license to be a florist, for goodness sake – what possible public good could that serve?  Protecting the unsuspecting public from ugly floral arrangements?  Or protecting the donations from the Floral Licensing Board to compliant politicians?

Listen to this podcast and find out!

Improve Your Microbiome!

Review of this podcast.

This was a really fascinating discussion about your gut bacteria and how they support health.  When they first sequenced the human genome, they found far fewer genes than they expected.  It turns out that 99% of the genes in our “body” belong to microbes – bacteria, fungi, etc.  To me one of the most amazing discoveries of recent years is that the human genome, the 23 chromosomes, is insufficient to support life! Without the bacteria, we’d all be dead.  The guest on this podcast says that 99% of the biochemical pathways in our bodies involve bacteria.

Gut disbiosys seems to be a contributing cause to almost every major chronic ailment of modern society.  Think about that the next time the doc hands out an antibiotic for a sniffle, or the next time you have a yummy antibiotic-laden burger from your favorite fast food joint!

Must You Obey Government?

Review of this podcast.

You might think “ok, this guy is nuts!”  But I’m not an anarchist – far from it.  And just a few months ago millions of people flocked to airports in the US to defy the government’s order to ban travel from certain countries.  And most people would say that the government of North Korea is not a legitimate government, and the people there have no reason to obey.  So this is a question that deserves some thought.  When is it ok to disobey (and I hope your answer is not “when I don’t like the President” or “when I don’t like the policy”)?

Libertarian thought tries to reason from first priniciples, and this idea comes up again and again over the past 4 or 5 centuries. The point is that “government” is actually a group of individuals – individuals that have an extraordinary power to compel others to do things, or pay money, or even give up their life, things that non-government actors cannot legitimately do.  If you don’t like your neighbor’s plans to expand his house, you cannot compel him to change them. But the city housing inspector can. So the question comes up, from where do they get this authority?

Over the centuries, many theories have been put forth: the social contract, implicit consent, etc etc.  This podcast reviews all those theories and basically shoots them all down, or shows that they are not logically consistent.  What was a little surprising to me was that they did not end with “here’s the only one that actually works.”  They ended with “none of these actually hold water.”

My personal opinion (not included in the podcast) is that while this is philosopically enormously interesting (our basic way of organizing society cannot be justified!), it is of limited practical impact.  There will always be those who are stronger, who decide it is easier to steal stuff from the weaker than produce their own stuff.  We need protection from them.  And, we are primates, wired for hierarchical society, and there will always be those who seek power and control over others. Better to have a recognized, (hopefully) constrained power structure, respected by all, than to let them run wild.