---
title: "The Great Reset | Tuomas Malinen | Negotiator 54"
titleOriginal: "The Great Reset | Tuomas Malinen | Neuvottelija 54"
episodeNumber: "54"
guest: "Tuomas Malinen"
datePublished: 2020-12-23
duration: "43:00"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0"
captionsVtt: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep54-the-great-reset-tuomas-malinen/captions.en.vtt
captionsSrt: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep54-the-great-reset-tuomas-malinen/captions.en.srt
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["geopolitics","free_speech_society"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from the MacWhisper SRT transcript, YouTube metadata and the neuvottelija.fi episode record. Chapter timecodes are taken from the transcript; no caption files are published with this page."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/60-the-great-reset-tuomas-malinen-neuvottelija-54"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep54-the-great-reset-tuomas-malinen/
---
# The Great Reset | Tuomas Malinen | Negotiator 54

## Chapters

- [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=0s) The audience picks the year's closing episode
- [02:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=124s) Why the V-curve is artificial
- [04:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=253s) Debt moratoria and the zombie problem
- [06:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=390s) Schwab, Davos and the three pillars
- [08:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=512s) The recovery fund and the green revolution
- [10:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=634s) China's Belt and Road as the analogy
- [12:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=760s) Central bank digital currency, step by step
- [14:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=881s) A hundred years of economic freedom
- [16:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=1004s) The narrow corridor
- [18:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=1130s) You will own nothing
- [20:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=1252s) Debt forgiveness and what is taken in exchange
- [22:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=1373s) Malinen's definition of fascism
- [24:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=1496s) Fear as the mechanism
- [26:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=1619s) The digital euro consultation, and China
- [29:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=1752s) Why global Japanification cannot work
- [31:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=1877s) Two options, and the report's three scenarios
- [33:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=2000s) Islands of freedom: gold, crypto, sound banks
- [35:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=2121s) The nation state and what the EU should be
- [37:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=2241s) The small steps to watch
- [39:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=2362s) What actually produces the recovery
- [41:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0&t=2486s) A year of struggle

## Summary

The channel's audience voted for the year's closing episode and chose Tuomas Malinen on the Great Reset. He argues the V-shaped recovery is artificial — built on record global debt and debt moratoria that suspend normal bankruptcy law — and reads the World Economic Forum's programme as a path towards greater state control sold on attractive language. The episode covers central bank digital currency and why it makes the central bank a competitor to the banks it supervises, Acemoglu and Robinson's narrow corridor, and Malinen's own recipe: take the economic hit, keep the freedoms.

## What is discussed

- **Voted in by the audience.** Over half of the channel's YouTube poll asked for Malinen again as the year's closing episode. He notes that a search for an economist to debate him on this subject has so far failed — one agreed and then withdrew on hearing the topic.
- **The recovery is a construction.** Global debt is heading past 350 per cent of GDP with an unprecedented single-year jump, and moratoria have stopped creditors filing for bankruptcy — the European Banking Authority's first report found French, Spanish and Italian banks making heavy use of them.
- **Zombies multiply.** A zombie company cannot service its debt costs from operating profit, and suspending bankruptcy law manufactures them. What happens when the moratoria end is the open question.
- **Malinen's reading of the WEF.** The stated goals — reducing inequality, environmental values — he considers entirely worth supporting; his objection is to what he sees underneath them, a consistent increase in state control, with the EU recovery fund as the clearest instance.
- **The green revolution argument.** In zero-rate conditions companies have already made the green investments they consider profitable, so directed public money supports the ones that would not otherwise happen.
- **Belt and Road as the parallel.** Countries deep in debt to China are now being offered forgiveness in exchange for the financed projects themselves — debt forgiveness always has a price.
- **Central bank digital currency.** Simply an account for everyone at the central bank — which makes it the commercial banks' competitor while remaining their supervisor and lender of last resort, and in a banking crisis could sweep every account into it.
- **A hundred years of freedom.** Slavery ended technically in the 1860s, a middle class arose from the 1910s, and human societies are five thousand years old — the freedoms to own, move, try and take risks are very recent.
- **The narrow corridor.** Acemoglu and Robinson's corridor runs between anarchy and despotism, and stays open only while citizens keep the state in their grip; Miettinen ties it back to *Why Nations Fail* and an episode with Mika Maliranta.
- **You will own nothing.** The 2030 vision Malinen objects to most is renting everything from an unnamed entity — his question is simply who that entity is and from whom you would be renting.
- **His definition of fascism.** Not camps but the complete union of corporate power and the state, power concentrated in an elite, and individual freedom sacrificed to the common good — which is what he considers the forum to be advancing.
- **Fear is the mechanism.** People are frightened of the virus, of an economic crisis, of losing their jobs — understandably; but if the answer is to ask the state for protection, the scenario follows on its own.
- **China, already there.** Reports in autumn 2020 of the accounts of Chinese critics of the party being frozen — not credit scoring but political scoring, with housing, food and employment as the levers.
- **Islands of freedom.** Gold-backed banking and crypto as counterweights to central bank dominance, plus well-capitalised banks that cannot be absorbed — and, at national level, a local currency; Malinen says he would not have said this a year ago.
- **What Europe should be.** A union of independent states with a common trading area and payment systems, without the concentration of power in Brussels.
- **Where the recovery actually comes from.** Technology. Malinen has studied two hundred years of growth and reads physics as a hobby; he expects large breakthroughs in energy, movement and flight, and notes that private companies already invest heavily in green technology without the state directing it.
- **The closing warning.** Miettinen's summary — social justice yes, investment yes, a fourth industrial revolution yes, but not on those terms — and Malinen's: next year will be a year of struggle, and much of where the world goes after the pandemic gets decided in it.

## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: [The Great Reset | Tuomas Malinen | Neuvottelija 54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGHFQ1HImc0).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at [www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/60-the-great-reset-tuomas-malinen-neuvottelija-54).

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — The Great Reset | Tuomas Malinen | Negotiator 54, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep54-the-great-reset-tuomas-malinen/, 2020-12-23. For quotes include episode 54 and timestamp.