Why Too Much Is Too Little: Marc Chandler on America’s Surplus

Andrew Keen (0:00)

Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.

Hello, everybody. I don't think there's any doubt that America is a wealthy country, but the question, particularly after the election, is how to distribute or redistribute all that wealth. My guest today on the show has spent the last 40 years as a chief market strategist. He's an analyst of the dollar, so he's a hardcore finance guy and he has a new book out which addresses perhaps some of the key questions now in post midterm America. It's called Surplus, The History of Too Much and The End of Economic Primacy. Marc Chandler is joining us from Ocean Grove, New Jersey, just up the road from Asbury Park, Bruce Springsteen territory. The book came out a few days ago. Marc, congratulations.

Did you time it well, Marc? Did you know that this election would happen before your book came out? So everyone's worrying about how to redistribute American surplus?

Marc Chandler (1:34)

Yeah, I'm not so sure that everybody's on board with the idea of redistributing the American surplus. But I do think that the election was really a key part of really the essence of the argument. Back in 2000, the top 100 Americans accounted for about a quarter of one percent of contributions to the national federal elections.

0.25 percent, a quarter of one percent in 2000 In 2024, they contributed seven and a half percent. They amounted to seven and a half percent of the money that funded the national campaigns.

To me, this is just, it illustrates the issue and what's happened. We've gone so far in favor of liberty, which are property rights. Produce as much as you can, as fast as you can. I'm afraid that this has led to a concentration of wealth that is undermining the essence of what America stands for. When founding fathers were heavily influenced by political philosophy that tried to bring together both freedom and equality, and we've separated them, much to I think to our dismay.

Andrew Keen (2:44)

Yeah, and it's interesting, Marc. I mean, I'm not entirely sure what your politics are, but as I said, you work for Bannockburn Capital. You're the chief market strategist. You've been doing this for 40 years.

So you're hardly a Bolshevik. And when a guy like you is reminding Americans that there's a deep unfairness about the American economy, something is very troubling. Is that what triggered you to write this book, Surplus, the History of Too Much and the End of Economic Privacy? Were you driven by a sense of injustice?

Marc Chandler (3:22)

I think so. I think that this is a...

I think what I'm doing is continuing a dialogue that began middle of the 1800s or so. And I found this guy in the United States who was an advisor to several presidents. And he ended up working for the bank, the same bank I did about 100 years before I did. And he had this idea of about capitalism. And a lot of my friends on the left and the right, they think that there's some problem with capitalism. They think they can reform away.

But with this tradition, this analysis back from the middle of the 19th century is that ultimately the problem with capitalism grows out of its successes. You might know some people like this where we'd say that their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. And that's true, I think, for the economy as a whole. What we've done is we can produce so much more than we can consume. People talk about more plastics in the ocean than fish. I see it, my wife and I, it's just the two of us living together and I see how much garbage we generate. Solid waste, mostly packaging.

I see how we have built in obsolescence. I see when I, not recently, but before when I did buy a cell phone, you had to buy all the new attachments with it, which is one of the reasons why I never liked Apple, because it wasn't so universal the way that Android or PCs are. And so I do think that we live in a society in which we've solved what Keynes thought was the economic problem, scarcity. And now I think in some ways what I'm doing is really retelling the story of King Midas. Remember him from Greek mythology? Everything he touched turned to gold. What a great deal that would be, huh?

Until he tried to hug his daughter or drink some wine. We have a guy who is the CEO of one of the largest companies in the United States. And he said that he was making so much money, he couldn't spend it all on earth.