Word Food: Wall Street & Safety

Pushback Talks Season 9 is here with "Word Food"!

This season, Fredrik & Leilani return with their signature bite-sized episodes: sharp, surprising, 15-minute explorations of the words that shape our world. Each week, they pick a single word (or two) and unpack how its simple surface hides deeper social, political, and economic realities.

Think of it as thought-provoking “intellectual snacking” – quick enough for your commute, rich enough to shift how you see power, privilege, and the systems around us.

This week’s episode:

Wall Street: an examination of how Wall Street shareholders use war and the deprivation of human rights as a source of profit.

Safety: a reflection on how capitalism is structured to make us feel insecure and where we can find safety.

New episodes drop every week.

Make this your ritual for keeping your curiosity – and your resistance – alive!

Transcript

Fredrik Gertten 0:03

I'm Fredrik Gertten and I'm the filmmaker.

Leilani Farha 0:05

And I'm Leilani Farha, and I'm the advocate.

Fredrik Gertten 0:09

Hello, advocates. This is Pushback Talk. And this is our, you know, the way of us keeping alive, you know, putting words to each other, and we call it word food. So let's play with words, Leilani. Ready?

Leilani Farha 0:28

Always ready, Frederick.

Fredrik Gertten 0:30

Wall Street.

Leilani Farha 0:33

Oh. I thought you were gonna say walleye, which is a kind of fish.

Fredrik Gertten 0:40

Wall Street. Wall Street.

Leilani Farha 0:42

Wall Street. Well, Wall Street. Um, of course, I've had to become somehow intimate with the actors on Wall Street, especially those that engage in the housing world. And, you know, actors like Black Rock, Black Stone, others as well, Invitation Homes. There's many, many others. Yeah, and for me, a lot of them are not the good guys. Most of them are not the good guys. And that's because they're wreaking havoc with people's lives by making their homes unaffordable, by evicting them from their homes, by buying up homes that they will then rent at really exorbitant prices that no one can afford.

Fredrik Gertten 1:30

So, Wall Street. But it seems like the system of the stock markets that in the beginning was meant to how do we find money to build companies and so on has kind of it's turned around to be something that is more um exploiting companies, taking out wealth from companies and sending it on to shareholders. And and this, especially when we're talking about people's homes, it becomes extra complicated, I would say. So maybe are we seeing the end of this kind of way of capitalism? This extreme. Can you see it coming to an end? Well, because it's there's it's obviously yeah.

Leilani Farha 2:17

Yeah, I think it's mixed. I think, I mean, they continue to play in a huge role, an extractive role is what you were talking about, extracting uh wealth from different places and lining their own bank accounts with more zeros, as you would say. Um, but there's some interesting movement, let's say. So President Trump said a few days ago that he would like to introduce legislation through Congress that would prohibit private equity from purchasing single-family homes anymore in the United States. And I mean, and he said people live in homes, not corporations or something like that.

Fredrik Gertten 3:07

I mean, for someone like me, startling That's your message getting all the way to that we don't like.

Leilani Farha 3:15

Yeah, exactly. Well, what it's very complicated for me. I mean, what you know, and and we wait to see. And if he was a real friend of people and really wanted to curb this, it wouldn't just be single-family homes. He would prohibit their purchase of apartment buildings, their purchase of mobile homes, those, you know, the most affordable homes. So so we'll leave that. But it's a move.

Fredrik Gertten 3:37

But when he said it, it had an impact on Wall Street, didn't it?

Leilani Farha 3:41

Immediately, I think Blackstone's shareholder value went down by, I don't know, six or nine percent, something like that.

Fredrik Gertten 3:49

I think five point six percent.

Leilani Farha 3:51

Five point six percent. There we go.

Fredrik Gertten 3:53

Yeah, sorry, it's a sizable direction. It's kind of interesting that uh because when Blackstone entered into the housing market 2012, after the global financial crisis, they bought packages of homes from the banks. Unfortunately, it was during Obama they found a way to save the banks and they sold like one million houses in one package. So if you were a home homeowner, you couldn't buy your own home, you have to buy one million homes. So they they kind of opened the door for actors like Blackstone who were sitting on a lot of money, and so that's how they propelled into the world of homes. And Jesus, in very short time, they have totally destroyed the living conditions from people in cities all over the world, and not even in cities, because it grows out in wider and wider circles, yeah, where everything is getting more expensive, and it's like an extortion of everybody's work because everybody has to work more to pay them. It's like uh it's the new tax authority, is these guys who invested to buy this, buy bought all our homes. So it's that's why I'm interested in Wall Street because there is something with the value of these homes, the value put on top of the buildings that is not really reflected in the cost of building them or running them. So at some point it must fall.

Leilani Farha 5:37

One would hope, one would hope. I don't know. And then there will be such huge pushback because so much wealth is tied, you know, they say tied to residential real estate in particular, and the value, the fake value that uh now attaches to residential real estate. They say that two-thirds, I think, of all wealth is stored in real estate. So there's a lot at stake for real estate values to come down. A lot at stake.

Fredrik Gertten 6:13

So it's it's not, I mean, we could describe capitalism as something very productive. You gather money so you can produce stuff and make good stuff for you for humanity, but this sector of uh capitalism isn't very productive because it's also cost other businesses a lot. They also have to work harder to pay for the rents and to the interest rate to the people who own their buildings and their facilities, their land. So it is it is kind of um, I mean, in some way that should be like a union of other businesses against these guys.

Leilani Farha 6:51

That's really interesting, actually. I hadn't thought of that before and hadn't heard of that before, but absolutely, and they're yeah, interesting. I I wonder how you think the movement against billionaires attaches or doesn't attach to Wall Street. So I heard this morning that someone in California is proposing a billionaires' tax, and it would be a one-time tax, five percent of billionaires' um assets, I guess. And of course, there's major pushback from the governor of California, Newsom, saying, Oh, this is, I think this is so interesting. He said, it's going to squelch or you know, dampen entrepreneurial enterprise, like, and it will drive people from California. Then they had a billionaire come on, I forget his name, I forget which company, and he was like, this isn't even on my radar. Like, I don't care. I chose to put my business in Silicon Valley, and if I'm asked to pay a tax, I'll pay the tax. So I thought it was interesting. So there you have billionaire creeping toward at least showing some understanding of value of taxation, that kind of thing. But then you have the governor saying, I don't want to actually tax these guys.

Fredrik Gertten 8:09

No, because he needs to fund his campaigns and he needs that money. You know, it's it's they they are all trapped in this hellhole, you know. But I think it's interesting. I mean, the the wealth tax, it's something that the whole world is talking about. We talked about it for quite a many years now, but you can see it's really popping up. I think Scotland is about to have some kind of wealth tax coming up now. It's a big thing in Spain, and it's a big thing in France. I mean, it's it's talked about everywhere. And in the US, you have something called the patriotic millionaires who also propose uh, and that's Abigail Disney, who is then also proposing yes, we want to pay tax, you know. Please tax us more than you taxed the bus drivers. I think that's that's kind of cool, and I think it's that language is breaking through. And you see now with Mamdani, that's what he says every day, you know. So there is some hope, but how will Wall Street handle this? Because they are so much into they need the growth, the growth, the growth. And the growth they have right now is guns and ships, you know. It's like it's war. War is the only thing that makes the the stock market roll right now. And we don't want more wars, you know. We want them to we don't want them to make that kind of money. It's crazy.

Leilani Farha 9:40

All right. So, my friend, that was Wall Street. Are you ready for a word from my side? Okay. How about safety?

Fredrik Gertten 9:52

Safety. I know when we talked about when we made push, safety was also safe home. You know, a place where you could lock the door and and breathe. So that's kind of one basic safety we all need. And then, of course, we need safety on our streets. Uh if you're a bicyclist, you want safe and protected bike lines, you want people to be able to walk in a city without getting killed by some aggressive car driver. And we want the world to be safe. And and of course, the world isn't safe. When we start to fight crime, we also makes sometimes makes the world even less safe. So it's uh it's kind of complicated. What do you think about it well?

Leilani Farha 10:44

I mean, maybe I should have given the word insecurity because in fact, wait why I gave you the word safety was because I've just read a book by a woman named Astra Taylor, and it's called The Age of Insecurity. It's an excellent book. I recommend people to read it. And it's so it was it's really interesting. I mean, she talks about the various ways in which people feel insecure. Of course, housing is one of them, and um, but she talks about other things as well, the rise of populism, for example, and how that makes people feel insecure. What I found a big takeaway, and I was surprised that I hadn't thought of it myself. But anyway, that's why we read books to learn from other people and their wisdom. She said that insecurity or a lack of safety is part of the neoliberal model. It's intentional. And I mean, it goes to our conversation about what drives Wall Street and how war drives Wall Street and big wealth and big capital accumulation. And it's not different to say, well, all of this creation of lack of safety actually benefits a whole sector of people, including the billionaires and Wall Street. So that's what I was thinking about, how awful it is to have the recognition that we live in a world where those in positions of power are purposefully making us feel insecure and unsafe. I I mean, there's a lot to reckon with in this world right now, right? The idea that that that I just said, that we live in a world structured to make us feel insecure. We live in a world where international law, human rights has been abandoned, also that makes us feel insecure. I don't know. There's a lot, there's a lot right there.

Fredrik Gertten 12:40

Where do we find safety? And then we have to go back and look it around just to our community. And what we see now in the US is like the communities rising up, you know, and working together. And and I think that's the feeling of, and I can also think in Iran, the feeling of walking together with thousands of people on the streets, even if it's really dangerous, the feeling is also with my friends, I'm safe, you know. It's like a the emotional thing of okay, this is horrible. We're up against some really dangerous bastards, but with my friends, with my community, I feel safe. And I think that's again what we you talked about the donut economy last week, but and this is again the community. It's a good starting point to create safety.

Leilani Farha 13:33

I think that's right. I think also about what happened recently in Minneapolis with ice going into this neighborhood. I don't know if you saw the images, but it was just like a could have been my neighborhood. I mean, except I live in Canada, but um, you know, just regular homes. Well, they were actually quite nice homes. Um, looked to me like there was some affluence there. I don't know. And then this young woman, mother, partner, daughter, etc., was killed by ICE as she tried to drive away from where they were. And there were a group of people who were protesting ICE, and I wondered if she felt sort of secure, safe in pushing, I mean, exercising her democratic right to protest against them with others, and then to just be so unsafe in that moment, in any event. I do I do take your point. I mean, I when I start feeling like I'm floating around and uh feeling a little insecure and unsafe, I do look to my friends, my neighbors, my allies. You even call me sometimes. I do.

Fredrik Gertten 14:50

So let's let's be friends and let's fight the the evil forces together.

unknown 14:57

Okay.

Fredrik Gertten 14:57

Hand in hand. You and me. Okay, let's do that. Leilani. I mean, your husband doesn't care because he only loves donuts anyway.

Leilani Farha 15:05

So he's being maligned. Poor David, being maligned.

Fredrik Gertten 15:13

See you next week, Frederick. See you, Leilani. And to friends, if you want to support the podcast, send us some money on Patreon. It's not bad. Patreon.com pushback talks. See you.

Kirsten McRae 15:26

See you.com slash pushback talks. Follow us on social media at make underscore the shift and push underscore the film. Or check out our websites makeshift.org, pushthefilm.com, or breaking social film.com.