A tech CEO admitted to Wall Street analysts that he has been praying for inflation. Then, a new study has confirmed that there are unsafe levels of PFAS chemicals in every single state in this country. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
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Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: A tech CEO admitted to Wall Street analysts that he’s been praying for inflation. I don’t think I could have made this up. This, this, this, the reason the CEO is praying for inflation is because as inflation rises, they get to hide, they get to hide behind this price gouging that they engage in. This guy admitted it. He said, I’m, I’m doing an Indian, what was it, I’m doing an Indian dance.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: To make inflation take place in the United States. And, and, and now he’s jubilant that it’s working.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. This is the CEO of Iron Mountain, which is a data management storage company. So a, a tech CEO and he’s out there bragging to these Wall Street analysts about how they game the system. We watch as inflation goes up and, yes, we have to adjust our costs for the new cost of doing business, but then we’ll tack on a little extra here to pad our bottom line. And he, he admitted that’s where that money goes. We are, are living right now with corporate profits at the highest level they have been since 1950.
Mike Papantonio: 72 years. That’s right. 72 years these profits haven’t been as high, this high for corporations and, and this guy wants more inflation so he can raise them some more. Now you’ve, you’ve, you and I have talked about this idea. Once they get to, to a, a plateau, we’ve reached this plateau, we’ve raised the price to this plateau, whether it’s fuel, food, medicine, whatever, then it’s very difficult to get that plateau to change in a downward position.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: So once they get there, it’s a huge victory, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And so that’s what this guy’s proclaiming. This is, this is a way for us to hide our greedy price gouging and once we get there, we’re gonna be in really good shape because people aren’t gonna mess with it for a very long time. But the truth is, what really bothers me about this story is the lack of effort by the Federal Reserve.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They’re not doing anything to stop price gouging, but what they’re trying to do is put more Americans outta work by saying, we’re gonna increase, we, we’re gonna continue, continue to raise interest rates. And they know what that does to the labor market. Right now you got three, three jobs for every one person applying. They have a choice. They can go, well, who’s gonna pay me the most? The Fed wants it down to one, if that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: So, I mean, this is an ugly.
Farron Cousins: It, it is sick, especially when you hear the comments that men like this make out there bragging about jacking up prices because they can. And then the government says, okay, well we’re gonna stick it to the workers.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: We need to get wages down is what they’re telling us because apparently the, the working class people making $30,000, you’re the problem. Not people like this. That is absolutely insane. Americans have to suffer so that guys like this can pocket more money every year. And we do nothing about it. A couple people, you know, Sanders and Warren of course the usual suspects.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: They’ve called this out. They want to do something, but they can’t get anybody else on board.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. No grounds. I mean, they can’t get any action, there on the ground to action. The Federal Reserve could do something.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: The, the, the president, the, the, the White House could do something where it comes to this price gouging. That’s all it is.
Mike Papantonio: A new study’s confirmed that there are unsafe levels of PFAS chemicals in every single state in this country. Now, all right, let me give you my opinion about this since I, I tried the first PFAS cases tried in America. I tried five of them. We punished DuPont, beat the hell out of them. It’s still going on. Now the, the public’s finally talking about it. Media wouldn’t talk about it because DuPont was such a big advertiser. They kept it quiet. They knew for 50 years that what they were making would cause kidney cancer, testicular cancer, birth defects, gastrointestinal problems that may as well be real, as serious as, as cancer. But when we do this story, nobody pays attention to it.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: I almost say, let’s not even do the story anymore. Let’s put up five I hate Trump’s stories because I hate Trump stories and I hate Republican stories, that will be all over the place. But if you tell somebody, listen, the water you’re drinking, it’s killing your children and they don’t pay attention to the story. What the hell? I mean, you know, it’s, it’s amazing to me that we’ve become so single minded that a story like this is unimportant.
Farron Cousins: Right. I mean, this used to be the kind of stuff that you would see on, on, on 60 Minutes.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Things like that. People would tune in Sunday evenings to be shocked about how they’re being poisoned by corporations. And they’d be furious. But now we, we, we get stories from Truthout on PFAS. We get stories from The Intercept.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Beyond that, you’re not seeing it other than us talking about it.
Mike Papantonio: Give, give me your best analysis because I swear to God, it drives me nuts. We can do, now you do such a, you know, let me just put it all out there. You do such a great job talking about the insanity that surrounds Trump and the people around Trump. But you even have to admit that if you, it’s, it’s, I call it low hanging fruit. If you do that story, it’s gonna get, you know, a hundred thousand, 200,000 views. If you do a story and you say you got a product here that’s killing your children, you know, 25,000, maybe.
Farron Cousins: On, on a very good day.
Mike Papantonio: On a very good day.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: What, tell me what’s happening.
Farron Cousins: I think a lot of times people either think, okay, but I’m not one of the people getting poisoned, probably.
Mike Papantonio: But they are.
Farron Cousins: Well, exactly. And, and then you also have the people who feel completely helpless.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: Who say, well, okay, we’re.
Mike Papantonio: I’m gonna die.
Farron Cousins: We’re all being poisoned. I, I can’t do anything about it. And honestly, that’s a big thing that the climate scientists have been warning about for a very long time when talking about climate change stories. I’ve had some of ’em reach out to me saying, hey, don’t be gloom and doom. You gotta let people know we can fix this.
Mike Papantonio: We can, but they won’t. They don’t, climate, a climate change story, if we wanna go on our site and say, let’s kill this story, do climate change. They won’t show up. If you wanna talk about, hey, there’s a brand new discovery, we’ve cured cancer. That story ain’t going anywhere if it’s right next to we hate Trump. It’s very scary to me and I can’t get my, I can’t get my arms around it.
Farron Cousins: I’ll tell you on that cancer note too, um, a lot of people don’t know this, you and I have talked about this, Cuba has a lung cancer vaccine. And how many people know about that?
Mike Papantonio: Right, right.
Farron Cousins: We’re, we’re legally not even allowed to go down and get it. But they’ve got it.
Mike Papantonio: Don’t they also have an Alzheimer’s, they’re on their.
Farron Cousins: They’re almost there to Alzheimer’s.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Almost.
Mike Papantonio: And when we do, didn’t we do a story on that? What it get 10,000, you know, views. But if you put a story up, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, that story’s gonna do really well.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: It’s a hell of a comment about our culture right now.
