aljazeera.com/considerthis, google+ google+, facebook or twitter. see you next time. >> aljazeera america presents a break through television event borderland... >> are you tellin' me it's ok to just open the border, and let em' all run in? >> the teams live through the hardships that forced mira, omar and claudette into the desert. >> running away is not the answer... >> is a chance at a better life worth leaving loved ones behind? >> did omar get a chance to tell you goodbye before he left? >> which side of the fence are you on? >> sometimes immigration is the only alternative people have. borderland only on al jazeera america america's economy seems to be shaking off the winter chill, but the u.s. is not the only horse in the race.

i'm looking at our global economy with the founder of the biggest public relations firm in the world. and the big banks, and their bottom line. i'll tell you that their erping mean for you. and tax day 2014, i'll tell you what is new and what you might have missed and you plow that last-minute rush. i'm ali velshi. and this is "real money." ♪ this is "real money." you are the most important part of the show. tell me what is on your mind by tweeting and facebook. here comes the sun. got another sign today that the u.s. economy is heating up after a nasty winter that chilled all sorts of economic activity from car sales to manufacturing. retail sales in march, up 1.1% from the previous month.

that is the biggest monthly gain since september of 2012. the february figure, was also revised upward to a gain of .7 of a percent. this all matters because consumers spending accounts for about two-thirds of total u.s. economic activity. so more spending adds to optimism that u.s. businesses will become more willing to invest and hire and expend because the economy is on solid footing. that optimism has been boosted by job growth that average 195,000 jobs a month in february and march. and last week we learned the jobless claims dropped to the lowest level in nearly seven years before the great recession start. but before we get too excited let's consider that america's economy also depends on the strength of the global economy and our trading partners around the world, and that includes economies where growth is slow or slowing down.

the international monetary fund so which we turn for some of these for casts, forecasts growth in the 18 countries that use the euro, to be a really weak 1.2% this year. in japan a barely better uptake of 1.4%. one of the problems is falling prices, deflation. why is that a problem? because when businesses see prices fall they see their profits moten shally shrink and they become less willing to spend and the economy stagnates. it's the developing world that is casting cloud over the brighter prospects in the us. china, has 7.5%ed growth, is way down from double-digit growth that china used to produce. big drops in

imports and exports in march are fuelling concerns. and india this is forecasted to grow 5.4%. that's way down from the 9% we saw in india only three years ago. that includes budget deficits. and brazil, the b in bric is going to stall to 1.8%. low business confidence and weak private investment will keep their economy in quote, low gear. making sense of this is critical for businesses that need to know how and where to invest their money and forecast sales and earnings, and there are few businesses with better feel of the world than wpp. you may not know the name, but you know all of the company it controls. item ploys more than 170,000

people in other 3,000 offices in 110 countries. last year they had revenues of $16.5 billion. joining me now with his very informed view of the world is the founder of wpp, he runs it, and spends a third of the year in the u.s., a third in britain, and a third travelling the globe. sir, martin who founded wpp nearly 30 years ago. >> my mother would have been very proud of that intro. >> very good, right? >> too good. and i don't run wpp, i try to. >> but you do travel and lot and speak to clients. >> yeah. >> so you probably have a pretty good sense -- >> i get a view, yeah. >> and your view for the moment, particularly about the u.s. is -- is that you -- i mean you -- >> i'm bullish. the u.s. has two -- mean never

unestimate america, immigrants, human resources, natural resources, and two big things at the moment. one is energy self-sufficiency, and the second is the advances in manufacturing technology like 3-d printing involve more use of capital than labor. so the high cost economies start to win out over the lower cost economies. china's labor costs have risen if you substitute it with vietnam or bangladesh, these capital input manufacturing techniques will make america relatively stronger, and i see more and more of a g-2 world. america china world. which at the moment america is 16 trillion out of 73 trillion of worldwide gdp. the chinese government says 9.2 trillion now.

so those are the two big economies. >> and while the world is concerneded that china would be at 7.2% or less, you understand for china and businesses there that you represent, that's still growth. >> yeah, the stop five-year plan, the 11th plan, looked for the same plan but delivered about 11.5, and the third document that we saw a few months ago have a few basic things one is that we switch from savings to consumption, second health care social security safety net and thirdly, the tertiary services. and china has $1.5 billion in revenue out of about $18 billion. the u.s. will be $16 billion. so china still has a lock way to go. >> wow.

russia, you are not -- people are very worried that russia is contracting now, if it's not going to be contracting later this year. >> i think it would be -- it -- it would be inadvisable to be -- to not be worried about events in ukraine, crimea, and rush shoo. but russia's strength is its energy. and sanctions notwithstanding, as long as the oil price stays around the $100 mark, and i saw a russian official ask what is the price that would worry him, he said $80 and below. so there's an insulation to the russian economy, these events notwithstanding that i think gives them strength in the longer term. i hope the current problems will be overcome, but it's not pretty at the moment. >> looking at your world view here, the coup tries in green are the ones you are bullish on. the

countries in red you are still concerned about. >> yeah, spain, france still on the down stroke. italy bumping along the bottom. i think the elevation there is very interesting from a timing point of view, and i hope he gets it right, because italy is an important economy. spain on the upturn, but unacceptable levels of unemployment. having 50% of your youth out of work is socially and politically unacceptable. but the book ends of western europe, germany and the uk are pretty good. uk will probably be between 2.5 and 3% of gdp. and germany is the strongman of europe. and poland and the gorman, polish, russian axis, if i can one.

>> the poles are a little mad at russia right now -- >> yeah, we saw a strong recovery in poland last year. latin america i remain bullish on despite the issues. africa and the middle east still strong. and i see some things still happening, you put opportunity around iran, i think some of the things i'm hearing in this relation to potential developments in iran make me pretty bullish. >> we heard people saying there might be something here. >> yes, i think they are. >> i won't tell me sir martin that you told me before we started that you don't know that much about what is going on around the world. thank you for being here. >> thank you very much. >> after the savings and loan collapse is your money safer now? and last-minute tax returns what you don't know could cost you.

i'm here to help that story and keep it right here. ♪

♪ this is the season when we get what i like to call report cards for american businesses, otherwise known as earnings reports. right now we're getting a look at how companies did in the fourth quarter -- first quarter. and i am paying particular attention to banks. today we got a grade for citigroup that was better than expected. among the reasons for the surprise, citigroup benefited from fewer bad loans. the stock market rewarded citi by sending its shares up 4.4%. you might remember that citi recently got its knuckled smacked by the federal reserve. the federal reserve and other

regulators have stepped up their scrutiny of banks in the wake of the crisis that brought the world's economy to its knees. the stress test bring to mind the reaction of lawmakers and regulators in the wake of the savings and loan crisis. that was 25 years ago today that regulators seized the poster child of that crisis, lincoln savings and loan. patricia sabga has a look back at the lesson learned from the s&l crisis. >> reporter: when charles brought orange county based lincoln savings and loan in the early '80s, new rules allowed him to make investments with federally ensured deposits. the customers savings were being eaten by inflation. >> once we deregulated to allow

them to address that problem was we sort of went over. >> keithing and other thrifts bid big on junk bonds. and bought high-risk unsecured bonds issued by american kobt innocental. as lincoln's assets ballooned he used the spoils to pay for a lavish lifestyle. williams black was a pivotal regulator in the savings and loan scandal. >> it was the most politically powerful of the savings and loans, and was able to get immense political intervention to try to protect the frauds against us, the regulators. >> reporter: but 1987 with commercial real estate prices in free fall, savings and loans started to fail. with regulators closing in, keithing enlisted the help of a handful of senators to call off

the watchdogs. lincoln finally went bust in 1989, the largest of some 1,000 savings and loans failures that would eventually cost taxpayers $124 billion. new restrictions were placed on thrifts, effecttively reregulating them. nevertheless the excesses would be repeated. >> executive compensation along with the reregulation and de-supervision, those were the two biggest causes of the savings and loan debacle and the two biggest causes of the enron era scandal. >> reporter: but have we finally learned our less son? >> we do seem to have learned some of those lessons. the big question is now whether we'll unlearn them.

i'm joined now by a man who has disagreed with some of what regulators have done in the wake of the financial crisis, he wrote the book "guardians of prosperity, why america needs big banks." he joins me now from florida. dick, let's not worry about deregulation from then, but are we safer now? >> no, i don't think we are. i think the banks are safer, but the financial system is at much greater risk. we have now so overregulated the banking industry. that loans are going to, if you will, the shadow banking market. in other words we have created business development corporations, master limited partnerships, we have reits, all of which are unregulated and they are picking up market share dramatically from the banks. >> we

know that mortgage originations are at a 17-year low. they are not going into some shadow banking industry, right? >> right now the cost of originating a mortgage at a bank exceeds the profit. and you can see this in the numbers. basically, banks are not making money originating mortgages so they are pulling back from the market. if you take the total loans in the commercial industrial area, if you go back to 2007 and take a look at the growth of the banking assets. banking assets have grow 13% to the present time. bank loans are down. so the loans are being made by other companies, and those companies are not regulated.

so what the regulators have done is they think by overregulating and putting punitive moves in terms of what the bank is doing they are stop or eliminate risk. they are not doing that. >> but it was the big banks that did the risky things that lead us to the trouble. >> if you took a look at the statistics related to where the worst loans came from, they came from mortgage brokers. and what happened to them? they went bankrupt. and the biggest of all, which was countrywide had the biggest bankruptcy of all. so by driving loans out of the regulated banking system, you are increasing risk in the financial system. that's what the regulators are doing. they are making it absolutely certain that we'll have another financial crisis, and that that one will be worse than 2008, because they have taken away, if you will the safety --

>> let me ask you this, is the answer not to also regulate the mortgage brokers as opposed to not regulating anybody? >> you can go out and regulate group, a, b, c, d, but if the money is there in the system, there are some entities that will develop to provide that money. it could be hedge funds, pension funds, life insurance companies which are regulated, but there will be some source of funds for lending if there is a potential return. and the regulators -- the regulators are not going to get rid of that. they think they can, but they don't. they can't. >> what is your recommendation? >> well, my recommendation is that the regulators should back off. they should allow the banks to leverage their balance sheets to a normal level. because, remember, we have more percentage of assets in the banking industry today than we have had in 80 years.

we have more liquidity in the system. we have $2.6 trillion of bank money sitting at the federal reserve not being loaned to anyone other than the u.s. government because of the regulations. these banks have got together be able to lend that money to drive economic growth. not put it in the u.s. government, which in my view doesn't generate such a huge amount of economic growth. >> dick, always a pleasure to talk to you. thank you for being with us. >> thank you, ali. we're getting a new read on obamacare. the c bo now projects the affordable care act will cost $104 billion less than expected over the next ten years because insurance premiums ended up being about 15% cheaper than expected, which means the federal government is spending less on subsidies. that in turn shrunk the

estimates for the federal budget deficit by $22 billion for this year. libby casey is following the story in washington. libby how did the premiums end forecasted? >> tighter cost controls by the insurance companies has something to do with it. insurance companies are giving their customers narrower options, fewer choices of doctors from which to choose, and so the doctors get paid a little less, that means though that they are still getting patientings in, because the insurance companies are funneling them towards the doctor's offices. as we look at the ten-year projections let's talk about this year. $36 billion is the new an cysted cost of the affordable care act. that sounds like a lot, but it's $5 billion less than expected. and that's not just because of the government helping people with subsidiesubsidies, it is also because they are kicking in money for

states that wanted to expand the medicaid program. >> the cbo also came out with numbers regarding enrollment. what is that projection? >> the white house has talked about 7.5 million people enrolled in health care before the march 31st deadline. the cbo puts it at more like 6 million people. but they are doing some bean counting. if someone just signed up for health insurance at the end of march, they don't get insurance until may, so the cbo counts them as sort of like half a person and giving a lower number of anticipated coverage, because some people won't pay their premiums so they will get dropped. overall, though, the cbo says 12 million

merps -- americans are getting coverage who wouldn't have otherwise. so 12 million americans is a big number. >> all right. libby, good to talk to you. libby casey joining us from washington. time is running out to file your taxes, but i'm here to help you save money. if you work at home and have a kid in college, you are going to want to pay attention. you are watching "real money." keep it right here.

one of the great things about working at al jazeera is the amount of space you have to do the kind of stories that take a long time to cover. to have the complete editorial freedom to tell these stories and do so with the adequate

resources is amazing. if you have not filed your taxes yet, i can't do that much for you, but i can do something for you. the irs says about 35 million returns will be filed in the week leading up to tomorrow's april 15th deadline. and lots of people will not file their taxes tomorrow. they will file for an extension. that's automatic if you ask for it. but if you owe tax money you have to pay it. you don't get an extension on money. you owe. if you are a procrastinate for, do not worry, i will not shame you. instead i'm going to equip you with tips that could mean the difference of thousands of dollars. here to help me is sandra bloc, the senior associate editor, of personal finance. great to see you. >> thank you for having me. >> we are going to narrow this down to a couple of tips.

and one of them is a new rule for people who are self-employed? >> yeah, this is a rule that the irs adopted last year. and affects people who are eligible for the home office deduction. lots of self-employed people have not taken this in the past, because it is wide-spread belief that it is an audi -- audit trigger. all you really need is a tape measure to claim the home office deduction. you can claim $3 a square foot up to $1,500. so you don't have to figure out the amount of utilities, what percentage that is, all of that stuff. you can just figure out how much square footage your home office is, multiply that by 5 and deduct up to $1,500. and what tax professionals are telling me is because the irs has come up with this streamline system, it is not going to trigger an audit. >> right.

because it's a lot easier than figuring out what percentage of your cell phone or utilities -- the formula is going to make it simpler. so if you are watching this, tell somebody who may be filing their return. let's talk -- about parents with kids in college. >> yeah, the american opportunity tax credit lets you take a tax credit of up to $2,500 per student for the first four years of college. that's a huge amount. and if your tax -- if that is more than you pay in taxes, you might actually get a check. you could get a check for up to a thousand dollars. so this is a really valuable tax credit, and a huge help for parents struggling to pay their college bills, and a lot of people overlook it. it used to be called the hope tax credit, it was only good for

two years, then it looked like ill was going to expire, and then it got extended so i think a lot of people leave this on the table. and this would be a very easy barrier to cross for most families, you can still claim $160,000. even if you make up to $180,000 you can claim a part of it. so people need to get their tuition bills together, look at their expenses and claim this tax credit, and if you don't have time, file for an extension so you can claim it. >> these are two excellent tips known. so thank you for sharing them with my viewers. >> thank you. while we're on the topic of taxes it seems people with an eye for wealth also have a creative way to avoid the tax man. hang your artwork in another state.

this explains that tax breaks for collectors are one of the big reasons why museums in places like oregon are attracting prominent pieces on lone. artwork was displayed just after being sold in new york for $132 million. it turns out collectors can avoid some taxes if they first loan art to museums in certain states before shipping it to their home. those states include oregon, new hampshire, alaska, montana, and delaware, and according to the times the tax breaks can sometimes add up to millions, something not to think about if you find yourself writing a check this week to uncle sam to pay your taxes. that's our show for today. i'm ali velshi. thanks for joining us. ♪

>> for three hundred years the most powerful countries on earth grew richer and stronger on the profits of the slave trade. more than 12 million men, women and children were forcibly transported from africa to the plantations and colonies of north and south america. today slavery is illegal in every country on the planet. yet slavery didn't die in the 19th century. it is alive, thriving - and