Dylan Ratigan

Is what we do who we are? Does it matter what title is on your business card? Dylan Ratigan and Minyanville CEO Todd Harrison talk about finding a meaningful life outside of the fast paced world of Wall Street on this episode of Radio Free Dylan. GUEST BIO: Todd Harrison, Founder and CEO of Minyanville.com, author of "The Other Side of Wall Street: In Business it Pays to Be An Animal, in Life it Pays to Be Yourself." Todd has 20 years of experience on Wall Street. He spent 7 years on the worldwide equity derivative desk at Morgan Stanley as Vice President, was Managing Director of Derivatives at The Galleon Group, and was President of the $400 million hedge fund Cramer Berkowitz.

What if there was a two-for-one solution to both our jobs crisis and our energy crisis? What if we could kick our addiction to oil and bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.? Jon Rynn, author of Manufacturing Green Prosperity: The Power to Rebuild the Middle Class, believes it's time to invest in new green infrastructure and manufacturing, and push our country towards a more sustainable energy plan while getting Americans back to work.

This is the first in our series of three podcasts on the Middle East with Reva Bhalla, Director of Analysis at STRATFOR, a global intelligence company. This series focuses on all of the dynamics that are playing out in the Middle East — the balance of power between the Arabs and the Israelis, between Shi’a led Iran and Sunni led Saudi Arabia, and the balance of power between the region and the United States, and our ability to influence what happens in the Middle East — and the ramifications for the U.S., depending on what happens there.

This is the second in our series of three podcasts on the Middle East with Reva Bhalla, Director of Analysis at STRATFOR, a global intelligence company. This episode focuses on the primary vulnerability and anxieties that exist inside of the Saudi royal family, as well as the risk profiles that exists in that country, and the threat of an expanding power base coming out of Iran. What is Iran’s agenda and desired endgame? What is the role of and the ability of those governments Iran and Saudi Arabia to manipulate young protestors, specifically on places like Facebook and Twitter? Is there any one version of a liberal democratic government that could apply to certain countries in the region?

This is the first in our series of three podcasts on the Middle East with Reva Bhalla, Director of Analysis at STRATFOR, a global intelligence company. This series focuses on all of the dynamics that are playing out in the Middle East — the balance of power between the Arabs and the Israelis, between Shi’a led Iran and Sunni led Saudi Arabia, and the balance of power between the region and the United States, and our ability to influence what happens in the Middle East — and the ramifications for the U.S., depending on what happens there.

Open source warfare isn’t the standard form of warfare that we’ve seen in the past -- and with an American military budget that is well into the billions, and our utilization of all sorts of mega-hardware from Tomahawk missiles to aircraft carriers, is our current military matched with the most effective way to counter a distributed network insurgent force? To get answers and learn more about the future of war and open source warfare, we went to one of the world's foremost experts on the topic, John Robb. John writes the blog Global Guerrillas, and is author of Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization.

Stephen Lerner, a veteran union organizer, wants collective bargaining for homeowners that owe money to the big banks. In March 2011, he was caught on tape talking about a "mortgage strike" against the big banks. He suggested that a large number of homeowners stop paying their mortgage until the banks agree to negotiate and modify loans. Steven Lerner is a former director of the Service Employees International Union’s banking and finance campaign. He created the website WheresTheNote.com, a website for homeowners to research which financial institution actually holds their mortgage note after Wall Street banks securitized, repackaged, and sold American's mortgages en masse.

Self-described war nerd Gary Brecher knows he’s not alone. He knows there's a community of large, lonely, mostly basement-dwelling Americans, most of whom are stuck in thankless, TPS-report producing desk jockey jobs, who enjoy reading about war because of their deep dissatisfaction with their own lives. He has been described this way: "Part war commentator, part angry humorist àla Bill Hicks, Brecher inveighs against pieties of all stripes — Liberian generals, Dick Cheney, U.N. peacekeepers, the neo-cons — and the massive incompetence of military powers. A provocative free thinker, he finds much to admire in the most unlikely places, and not always for the most pacifistic reasons: the Tamil Tigers, the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Danes of 1,000 years ago, and so on, across the globe and through the centuries. Crude, scatological, un-P.C., yet deeply informed, Brecher provides a radically different, completely unvarnished perspective on the nature of warfare."

Energy solutions may be our single most pressing problem, but it also might provide the single greatest opportunity for our country to fix our financial problems. But, just how bad is American energy policy, and how out to lunch are we and our government on the issue of climate change? To start to find solutions on the energy and climate crisis, we talked to one of our favorite experts on the topic, Brad Johnson of Think Progress. Brad provides excellent coverage of the behind-the-scenes wrangling in Washington as it pertains to both energy policy and the climate crisis, and is also co-author of the Technomanifesto, a history of the information revolution.

The deficit, obviously, is the big to-do in the world these days, and the question usually is, “What do we do about the deficit?” but the actual question should be, “Why do we have a deficit and what can be done to solve the underlying problems that are creating the deficit?” To get answers, we talked to Jon Walker of FireDogLake.com, who has been producing some excellent coverage of the healthcare crisis and its effect on our nations deficit.

Is the best way to stick it to the banks to refuse to raise the debt ceiling? One of our favorite guests on the subject, and one of the smartest people publishing advocating on the issue is Chris Whalen. Chris is co-founder of Institutional Risk Analytics and a columnist at Reuters.com.

Barry Ritholtz, CEO of FusionIQ, The Big Picture blog and author of Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corruputed Wall and Shook the World Economy. Make sure to check out Barry's blog at http://www.ritholtz.com

Barry is Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and author of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction.

Lee is President of the September 11th Families’ Association and co-founder of Tribute WTC Visitors Center, and a retired FDNY firefighter. He is advocating for more 9/11 history education curricula in schools.

What’s the difference between productive wealth and destructive wealth? What if Gross Domestic Product made a fundamental distinction between the two — between making money by producing real value for others, versus just making money by exploiting others? To get answers, we talk to Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab and blogger at the Harvard Business Review.