Frank Gaffney (00:05):
Welcome back. We're pleased to be able to visit with a man we usually talk to earlier in the week. This week it turned out it was going to be the end of the week, but we're always pleased to catch him whenever it's possible to do so. His name is Bill Walton. He is the host of a terrific television podcast program called the Bill Walton Show. As well as a man who has a wealth of experience that is very much in need at the moment. Notably as a, I call, Master of the Universe, now recovering from Wall Street where he led Allied Capital, a $6 billion operation up there, as well as the Council for National Policy here in Washington, a conservative organization of which I'm proud to be a member. Bill Walton, it's good to have you back, sir, welcome.
Bill Walton (00:51):
Frank, as always, great talking with you.
Frank Gaffney (00:53):
I should have put into the mix that you were a star of our webinar yesterday in which we talked about don't prop up the Chinese Communist Party, which seems to be what we are doing at the moment. I wanted to visit with you a little bit about the program because not only did you make an important contribution to it, but I thought overall it was one of our most important of those webinars. And again, folks, you can find it for free at presentdangerchina.org. It's the most recent of our webinar series. Bill, talk a little bit about this. You've been on both sides of this equation. Wall Street, I think, is on notice that the Chinese Communist Party is economically, financially, and probably politically in dire straits, maybe even extremis, and yet your former colleagues are continuing to put mostly what is described as other people's money, meaning ours into the black hole of China. What's going on?
Bill Walton (02:08):
Well, the problem also, Frank, is they've got a lot of their own money in China. Steve Schwarzman, who runs, I think it's Blackstone, has got something called the Schwarzman Scholars in Beijing. It's their version of the Rhode Scholarship, and he's got hundreds of millions of dollars invested in China. And in the last decade, two decades, of course, Wall Street, all the big multinationals, consumer products firms, biotech companies, pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence, you name it, the entire list of important industries, both real products and services and Wall Street have been all in on China. Remember, it's the world's largest market for consumer luxury goods. It's the world's second-largest market for bio or for pharmaceuticals. I think it's about $166 billion market, and the major companies have all made big bets in China, and they're reluctant to give those up. That's on the one side.
(03:13):
On the other side, as you've been sounding alarm and everybody else involved with the committee for present danger China, has been talking about, Xi's intentions are pretty clear and they're pretty hostile, and he seems to be battening China down to be in war mode, and the signals are all over from beginning to kick Western due diligence companies out of the country to arresting key... Of course, this has been going on... While arresting key executives of big companies that are not playing ball with the Chinese Communist Party, and they seem increasingly to be on a war footing and Wall Street and the big multinationals are in denial. They just want this to pass.
Frank Gaffney (03:58):
Well, they're in denial, but they're also, I think, misleading clients as to the risks associated with their investments in China. It's one thing for Steve Schwarzman to put a couple of hundred million dollars of his own money, if he's doing it better, I think, than guys who are mostly putting other people's money in and profiting handsomely from doing so. But Bill, the question that I guess I've got is it's not just the preparations for war. That's bad, that's really bad, but we're actually watching them wage economic war against us in a very public way, right now, with respect to bricks and this idea of de-dollarization, if not actually supplanting our currency in the near future. To the extent that this is being ignored, as you say, or worse yet obscured from most Americans, it really seems to me as though it's malfeasance in terms of the due diligence and the fiduciary responsibilities that these guys managing other people's monies have.
Bill Walton (05:14):
Well, Frank, I don't want to play for the other side here, but just put yourself in a position of, let's say, you're the CEO of Volkswagen, German company, but it is not too different from the guys here in the United States. China's their biggest market, and I think about 40%, 50% of their sales are in China. They've also got big manufacturing facilities there. If you look at the P and L of a lot of the big companies, in particularly the pharmaceutical companies and the consumer product companies, major, major revenue profit contribution from there.
(05:51):
Starbucks may be larger in China now than it is in the United States. And so it's not a question of, I think deception. The word's out. You mentioned ARM, which is a IPO, that's coming out imminently, and the lawyers have forced them to put a 3,500 word warning in the risk factor in their prospectus, which talks about all the problems of doing business in China and cutting through to 3,500 words and putting it in a couple short ones, which is you shouldn't really be putting your money into this because China's a huge risk.
(06:34):
And so it's out there and they're disclosing it, and yet getting these people to unwind their business models is tough going, and it gets to the heart of the matter where we've had the globalist elite in charge for 20, 30 years. Going back to, remember when Tom Friedman wrote, the World is Flat, and we had all the people thinking, well, borders don't matter. Nation States no longer matter, and we can do business as globalists and be anywhere, anytime.
(07:10):
Well, that's just not true. And it turns out the Nation State is important. Just take a look at what's happening with Russia and Europe and in particular, China doesn't see it. In fact, it doesn't think that any law anywhere else in the world applies to China and that the only law that matters is China's own. And so we're now realizing that that was just a delusion to believe that countries would not look out for their own interest and in fact still continue to go to war with each other. That's just not been the globalist mindset. It's not the mindset of Davos, and this is talk about a clash of visions. We are right in the middle of it.
Frank Gaffney (07:56):
Let me ask you about that because one of the visions that the Chinese now are not just paying lip service to but are throwing a lot of effort behind is something they call Global Governance. And I think to your point, they have no interest in subordinating their sovereignty to some global enterprise. They want to run everything and have everybody else subordinate theirs to what they set up. And the World Health Organization is one example of this, what they're working on at the United Nations as well. So I think your point is very apt that there is a continuing important role for the Nation State, especially ours, and I think taking it down is part and parcel of the Chinese agenda.
Bill Walton (08:52):
Well, when was the Treaty of West Failure? 16, 17, something.
Frank Gaffney (08:54):
1647 or something, yes.
Bill Walton (08:59):
Which basically said about the Nation States. Well, it turns out the Nation States really matter. In one larger sense, it's the way we preserve our culture from one country to the next, and we're now realizing culture matters. Look at how culture is being deconstructed here in the US. It's all sort of the same phenomena, but the China, I think that's important, Frank, they recognized early that if they can get control of these internationalist global organizations like the World Health Organization, the UN, of course, and then for a long time, once they came into the World Trade Organization in 2001, they've been assiduously working to take over the decision making there and succeeding. We had Bob Lighthizer on and he'll tell you stories all day long about how it assiduously works against the US interest and promotes China's.
Frank Gaffney (09:54):
You bet they do. Bill, we're almost out of time. I just wanted to come back to where we began. Should we be having a national debate and some kind of more formal decision about whether we're going once again, and you contributed to the program importantly by talking about a number of other moments in the course of the past 50, 70 years in which we have in fact saved the bacon of the Chinese Communist Party-
Bill Walton (10:27):
True.
Frank Gaffney (10:28):
... And we're not having that debate now, as to doing it again at this very, very important moment, especially against the backdrop of what we've discussed. It's open hostility towards us.
Bill Walton (10:40):
Well, let me plug our seminar, our webinar, we raised all the issues and we need that debate right now. And the problem we've got in our adversary China is we've got a lot of people in the United States and elsewhere playing for the other team. And we can look, it starts right at the top with the President of the United States with the amount of money his family's been taking from the Chinese. Remember, and I made this point yesterday, the Chinese have everything on Joe Biden. They've got the bank accounts, they've got the wire transfers, they've got the text, they've got the emails, they've got everything. They've got all the meetings, they've got all those records. The instant they decide to disclose all that, Joe Biden is toast. I think he may be making decisions based on what he knows China knows about the Biden crime family and-
Frank Gaffney (11:32):
The subject off this book. The Indictment.
Bill Walton (11:34):
Yes, it's a debate we need to have, but we also need-
Frank Gaffney (11:35):
You're absolutely right.
Bill Walton (11:35):
... To draw the multinational CEOs into this conversation and they've got to decide which side they want to play on.
Frank Gaffney (11:42):
Amen. Prosecuting China and friends for Crimes against America. China, and the world is subtitle of The Indictment. Bill, thank you so much for joining us. Come back to us again next week. God bless. We'll be right back with more right after this.
