Month: March 2023

An “Invitation” to Trump to Testify Before a Manhattan Grand Jury Will Likely be Followed by the First Indictment of a President in US History

We begin with the looming indictment of Donald Trump, the first time in history for an American president following an invitation from the Manhattan DA for him to testify before a grand jury. Since this is a formality that precedes an indictment, if Trump refuses to testify to avoid lying which he will surely engage in, then an indictment will follow. Joining us is Jennifer Taub, a legal scholar and professor of law at the Western New England School of Law who previously taught at Harvard Law School. Her writing focuses on corporate governance, banking and financial market regulation, white collar crime and corruption. She has testified as a banking law expert before Congress and her latest book is Big Dirty Money: Making White Collar Criminals Pay now out in paperback. She is the host of the new podcast “Booked Up with Jen Taub.”

The Dire Consequences of Defaulting on Our Debt

Then we look into the dire consequences for the United States from the weaponization of our debt by the Republicans that could soon lead to a default which would stiff our allies and be the greatest self-inflicted wound to our national security in history as well as a gift to Russia and China and rogue states since it would take away our ability to freeze assets along with destroying the dollar as the global reserve currency. Joining us is Katheryn Russ, non resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a Professor of Economics at University of California, Davis who worked for the Obama Administration’s Council of Economic Advisers as Senior Economist for International Trade and Finance. She is a faculty research associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research International Trade and Investment Group and has been a visiting scholar at the central banks of Germany, Portugal and France, and the Federal Reserve Banks of St. Louis and San Francisco. We discuss her article with Mary Lovely at CNN, “Republicans are playing with fire.”

Demonstrations in Georgia, Destabilization in Moldova and Russian Pressure on Belarus

Then finally we examine Russian pressure and instability surrounding Ukraine with demonstrations in Georgia, destabilization in Moldova and pressure on the dictator in Belarus to join the war against Ukraine and speak with an expert on the region, Lincoln Mitchell, a professor of Political Science at Columbia University, where he also serves as an associate scholar in the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. He is the author of numerous books on the former Soviet states, baseball, and democracy the latest of which is The Giants and Their City: Major League Baseball in San Francisco, 1976-1992.