Max Keiser

Keiser produced 10 short documentary films covering aspects of financial markets for Al Jazeera's series People & Power.[9] The films include Rigged Markets,[10] Money Geyser,[11] Death of the Dollar,[12] Peaked,[13] Extraordinary Antics,[14] Savers vs Speculators,[15] Banking On It,[16] Private Finance or Public Swindle?[17] and Focus on Locusts.[18]

A pilot episode was produced for Al-Jazeera English titled The Oracle. The show was developed into a series for BBC World News.[19] The series first aired on January 9, 2009. Keiser left the BBC after ten episodes. On Twitter, he said he left because he was ordered not to mention Israel in any context.[20]

A weekly half-hour financial commentary show that started in 2009 and is broadcast on Press TV, featuring interviews with well-known alternative economists.[21]

Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert at a Goldmoney talk, Toronto, Canada

Since September 2009, Keiser has hosted The Keiser Report with financial news and analysis, on the RT network.[22] The 30-minute program is produced three times a week. Stacy Herbert (announced on a December 2012 episode as his wife)[23] is the co-host; she banters with Keiser on headlines and commentary.[4] Most episodes are divided into two parts. In the first half, Keiser and Herbert alternately discuss a current financial topic, comment on financial media reports, and provide commentary on the actions of bankers. The second half features a guest interview, either face-to-face in the studio or through video conferencing, conducted by Keiser.

An episode broadcast in September 2011 featured an interview with comedian Roseanne Barr, who satirically stated that her solution to the financial crisis was to "bring back the guillotine".[24]

According to Forbes magazine, the economist Sandeep Jaitly of the Gold Standard Institute was forced to resign following comments made on Keiser's show.[25]

The show's guests regularly include advocates for and entrepreneurs working in the cryptocurrency and blockchain fields.

Since March 2012, The Keiser Report is translated into Spanish as Keiser Report en español].[26]

Keiser has appeared as a financial pundit on a number of news networks. Keiser called for a "fatwā" against Hank Paulson[27] on Al Jazeera in response to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). In a later broadcast Keiser said, "Paulson stinks". Keiser has advised investors to buy bitcoin and precious metals such as gold and silver, in order to undermine "the banksters". In November 2012, he predicted that the UK pound was about to collapse.[4]

Keiser founded the hedge fund Karmabanque, which sought to profit from any decline in equity value of companies that are susceptible to boycott from environmental groups.[28] The hedge fund's progress was followed monthly in The Ecologist magazine.[29] Its targets included Coca-Cola[30] and McDonald's.

The Karmabanque hedge fund project was designed to simultaneously short-sell companies while funneling profits into environmental and ethical-business pressure groups that further act to drive down the companies' stock prices. Describing the project, Keiser stated, "The Internet allows people, activists, from all over the world to gather, or swarm, and hit a company where it hurts most—in their stock price."[31]

The Guardian newspaper described Keiser's Karmabanque hedge fund as a "fantastical scheme" and accused him of trying to exist "beyond the normal forces and controls of society".[32] A spokesman for Ryanair said, "Since they put Ryanair on their list, our share price has gone up by 10 percent. We are always delighted to be part of a list which includes Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Wal-Mart."[33]

In the Al-Jazeera short film Extraordinary Antics,[34] Keiser traveled to Milan and Venice to find out how Central Intelligence Agency station chief Robert Seldon Lady and his fellow CIA agents spent $500,000 on a procedure known as extraordinary rendition, an illegal practice that resulted in an Egyptian citizen, who had been granted asylum in Italy, being abducted and tortured in Cairo.

The CIA was prosecuted for the case and Robert Seldon Lady was found guilty in a Milan court. He was sentenced on November 9, 2009 to nine years in prison, according to The Guardian. This verdict was upheld on appeal, but the US refuses to extradite Lady to Italy.[35]

Keiser has labeled JPMorgan Chase "the biggest financial terrorist on Wall Street" in relation to their alleged manipulation of the price of silver.[36] Keiser created a campaign called "Crash JP Morgan—buy silver",[37][38][39] whereby people buy silver bullion, thus raising its price and leaving JP Morgan with a huge short position to cover, the margin of which are collateralized by JPMorgan's own stock price, bankrupting itself. The campaign was introduced on the Alex Jones Radio show in November 2010.[40] Writing in The Guardian in December 2010,[41] Keiser suggested that the text "crash jp morgan buy silver" should be used as a googlebomb to virally promote the campaign.

Adweek magazine described Keiser as "the most visible character in an underground movement that has spurred hundreds of blog posts and videos, and played some small part in driving up the price of precious metals".[42]

Keiser drew criticism at the 2000 ShowBiz Expo in Las Vegas when he said of media content that "Everything is inescapably going to a price point called free." In response, Kevin Tsujihara, executive vice president of New Media at Warner Bros., commented that "Piracy.com" will be the victor if superior content is available on sites supported by advertisements.[43]

In 2005, Steven Milloy, the "Junk Science" commentator, demanded that Keiser be removed from the panel of the Triple Bottom Line Investing conference, where he was scheduled to appear. Milloy accused Keiser of making threats against his organization[44] and petitioned sponsors Calvert Investments and KLD Research & Analytics to withdraw from the project.[45] Robert Rubenstein, founder of conference organiser Brooklyn Bridge, stated that Keiser's comments "do not constitute a threat to person or property and are not related to the conference or the content that will be presented there".

The Atlantic magazine's The Wire website speculated that a Downfall parody video created to promote Keiser's campaign was implicated in the sacking of Grant Williams, the Asia equity trading head at J.P. Morgan.[46]

Keiser is married to Stacy Herbert, an American television presenter[47] of The Keiser Report on RT,[48] and Double Down on Radio Sputnik.