would result from a cold literally polls are told revering the tone with her intro told mccool. all to stop stories most current members the victims of the terror time going to my head about airport blown so the country's busiest airport killed thirty five people and wounded schools more about one hundred remains in hospital. yesterday just a release of the fund photograph of a suspect wanted in connection with monday's bombing range as retarded as the bhutto of course they say there are things to topple based terrorist group is believed to be a contact to islam who joined a jihadi militants cell in the north. junior egypt and yemen to obtain a course top of the wave of bond and antigovernment protests that started in tunisia and there's a now drawing problems with the color revolutions seen in post soviet countries. now it's over top washington studio because some come and owned insight into us

current affairs stay with us he will tell you in a show coming up. for the feel we've got. the biggest issues good voice seems to face with the news makers. welcome the low to show we look at the real headlines with none of the mercy or can we live out of washington d.c. now today the f c i see report was released which investigated what caused the two thousand and eight financial crisis our chief financial correspondent lauren lyster will join us with all the details on this several hundred page report and while we're on the topic what can be done to prevent another crisis from happening that's a question of this report did not answer so richard as go will be joining me to discuss what options the u.s.

has and whether history may be due to repeat itself next there was a coming out party on capitol hill today as the tea party caucus held its first official meeting in the senate with only three members to me really do anything to make major changes in washington or to speak with sam seeder about the tea party and what effect if any they'll really be able to have then the d.o.j. is working on new legislation that would make internet service providers be forced to keep data on their customers as in they can keep data to then use against you at any point in time so is this the end of privacy as we know it will get riaa rattiest take on this contentious legislation and could video games be the solution for a problem within the department of defense reports are saying of the d.o.d. is using the video games to deal with an inherent bias and its intelligence analysts and think about it there have been some major intelligence blunders like the whole iraq war thing so we're going to speak with former cia analyst jack rice about the role that modern technology could play to change that that's at the end

of the program but now let's move on to our top story. the million dollar question today is who's to blame that's the financial crisis inquiry commission wondered when they investigated the two thousand and eight financial crisis now the commission spoke to seven hundred witnesses and today they released their findings and a report that's more than five hundred pages long so what did they find did they determine who's to blame r.t. financial correspondent lauren lister has more on this inquiry. it wasn't so long ago the world was reeling from a financial crisis and in the financial capital of the world hard hit americans were calling for heads to roll on wall street many blamed irresponsible and illegal actions of big wig bankers for the economy's near collapse if i did that if you got if you get that we've been in jail and in washington oh and did you want my quote

goldman people wanted in fact kept firms to pay for multiple crises only bankers could really explain the mortgage crisis the capital markets crisis a global credit crisis and a severe global recession. it was born from this mess the u.s. president formed a bipartisan commission to get to the bottom of the crisis. it is our hope that together we can rebuild the american people's belief in a financial system the puts americans to work over a year they heard from stewards of the economy the most important lesson of this crisis is we have to end too big to fail they heard from c.e.o.'s of investment banks anyone who says i wouldn't change a thing i think is crazy. now the meltdown panel believes the answers to this outrage can be found here and five hundred plus pages of their findings it gives of enough room to point the finger everywhere for a crisis they say was avoidable we do place special responsibility with the public

leaders who are charged with protecting our financial system those entrusted to run our regulatory. agencies and the chief executives of companies whose failures drove us to crisis but we believe that we must also as a nation accept responsibility for what we permitted to occur dad as far as wall street specifically the dramatic failures of corporate governance and risk management at many systemically significant financial firms were critical causes of the crisis while blame is directed it wall street that's where we are right now the irony is though the new york stock exchange is here that's what you see behind me most of the big banks and investment firms people associate with the financial crisis aren't even here anymore they're spread out all over new york city so just as wall street has become merely a symbol of the american financial industry so too is washington's condemnation of it like we're seeing in this report the reality is we've seen this all before we've

already seen congressional hearings where u.s. lawmakers interrogated bankers we've heard lawmakers threaten those in charge of the economy my final question is why shouldn't we ask for your resignation yet no one on wall street or that was watching over finance has faced criminal charges no one has really been held accountable and by many accounts nothing has changed about financial practices and most of the people who are in power before the crisis are still in power most of the business practices that you know other than a few things are still going on and now nearly three years after the crisis the opportunity for this commission to sway public opinion and make any difference to those practices has seemingly passed it by the chip itself the moments those political moments when everything comes together and you can pass this kind of comprehensive reform legislation are these fanatics and little bubbles and they don't last very

long and we missed ours. so for the american people. who wanted wall street held responsible these guys have looted the american economy the global economy they may not get the justice they're looking for five hundred pages and a year later a world once sent reeling by a financial system on the verge of collapse. maybe no more protected from it happening again i'm not sure that we can prevent it from happening again lauren lyster r.t. new york. well to give us more details on the findings of this more than five hundred page report i'm joined live now from our new york studio by r.t. financial correspondent lauren lyster lauren thanks for being with us now i know this is a lengthy report here but you know did they just kind of they use the five hundred pages to spread the blame on everybody everybody from wall street to government regulators to the federal reserve. alone it seems that's exactly what they did i mean they went down the list of pretty much everybody that could have been involved

in the financial crisis and blame them for playing a pivotal role from the governance of corporate governance on wall street firms to a government that was ill prepared for the collapse and then had an inconsistent response that rattled markets to a bell labs of accountability and ethics at every level to a scathing review of federal regulators and of the regulations that are in place i mean really every single it was it was a wide net that they cast in every single person or party that could have been involved was pretty much held to blame except for the specifics of the people that are still in power today in terms of being stewards of the economy they wouldn't really when pushed say whether they thought people like ben bernanke or timothy geithner should still have their jobs which is kind of you know of no interest well i know you probably haven't had time to list their all five hundred twenty six or whatever pages of this thing but any tidbits that really stuck out you know any examples of just gross negligence. when it was interesting about this was there

wasn't a lot that we didn't know or hadn't. heard i mean these hearings have been going on for a year we've been covering them we've seen a lot of the examples and a lot of the big takeaways that have come out in this report all along the way and we've heard them in reports all along the way you know this is not a new thing for this country and there's just been so much that's been done in terms of analysis and reporting coming out of the financial crisis but i mean a few things that they brought up that i thought were quite interesting that i don't think we always talk about is red flags that were ignored ahead of this you know back in two thousand and four when the f.b.i. released a report issued a report saying that mortgage fraud was becoming a huge rampant problem that could pose pose a major threat and basically having that be ignored so red flags like that that the commission pointed to that were not paid attention to or taken seriously at the time by anybody that had the authority to now i know that there was a partisan divide when it came to this final report and really only the majority of

the democrats on the panel and that are backing it so what do we hear from the dissenting opinion i guess say. the dissenting opinion complained that the democrats' view was too broad that you can't cast that wide of a net and that everybody isn't to blame for the financial crisis now also and this probably won't surprise you they said that the democrats put too much emphasis on regulation as the problem they don't believe in the dissenting opinion that regulation is the problem and that it was the deregulation over time and the lack of enforcement of regulation that caused this crisis so one legal scholar that i interviewed you saw in my story who focuses specifically on securities regulation and who studied the pechora hearing back in one nine hundred thirty three which was another you know lawmaker hearing on at that time the crash of twenty nine it was actually did lead to overwhelming financial regulation what he said was that because of this partisan divide it'll be too easy for this report to be dismissed as politics and then ignored in terms of being incorporated or inspiring policy

that could be needed and reading it. you kind of have to you know see where he makes that argument because you know the democrats are saying regulation is the problem we really need tougher regulation lax regulation was a huge issue in this crisis and then you have republicans of course saying hey no way you can't point the finger at regulation we don't need more regulation and deregulation was not the problem which is you know very clear partisan divide painting two different narratives that pretty much stick with party lines so the same thing that we've been hearing for the same two years essential has now been it reaffirmed for as learned big so much. so while that report by the f c i see explained in over five hundred pages what caused the financial crisis according to some people you can't help but feel like something is missing as in what do we do to prevent another one judging by the partisan divisions of the commission itself it doesn't seem like we're going to see an overwhelming consensus

on how to truly reform the practices of our financial sector and add to that the fact that this commission is just a panel that wrote a report that has no legislative authority even if there was a consensus there would be nobody to carry out those actions so does that mean the history will be doomed to repeat itself or joining me from our studio in los angeles to discuss that is richard as consultant writer and senior fellow with the campaign for america's future richard thanks so much for joining us i want to talk about the timing of this report here but aside from the fact that this commission has no legislative authority has it come a little bit too late you know the financial reform bill was already passed obama just gave his state of the union address and all the focus is on the future are people no longer wanting to point the blame you know what happened two years ago. well i think that's a good question but i would argue that there is some value to the timing being where it is right now because a lot of experts feel that the. reform that was passed last year wasn't enough to

protect us. from future danger and if we're not protected from future danger we need more of this kind of information coming out so that we can document why additional reforms are needed to protect us as you say from having the future repeat itself but if nobody can agree on exactly what it was the cause of the financial crisis and we have democrats releasing one report and the republicans on the panel releasing their own report then i mean is anything ever going to get done will future only repeat itself and no one can agree well i think there are a couple different questions in there will the future repeat itself if more isn't done almost certainly i think that's a given and even the major wall street leaders themselves are now claiming that we can expect this sort of thing every five to seven years as jamie dimon of j.p. morgan chase said there's no need for it to happen again but i think if we do see

political gridlock it will happen again as far as they're not being agreement and there being two separate reports and so on that sort of thing was almost inevitable given the kind of money that's being given in political contributions right now so this kind of political division was bound to happen but what's surprising if you look at the poll numbers in this country the vast majority of american people regardless of their political party or regardless of whether they consider themselves liberal or conservative thinks more should be done to regulate wall street and they're absolutely right well one of the things that i think a lot of americans would agree with is that they feel like no one has been held accountable for what happened and so supposedly you know this commission what they did is they did pass on a few names to the department of justice and people and they're recommending for prosecution we don't necessarily know who that is yet but what do you think the chances are that the d.o.j. is actually going to take it up take somebody to court. well the jet well they

they're actually allowed to pass these kinds of investigations on to both the national attorney general and the state authorities and we don't know yet what the mix is between the two of them i would say at the national level the record has not been at all good under previous administrations or frankly under this administration for pursuing the kind of wall street criminality that there's been significant evidence of some of those things seem overwhelming because there are very strict laws governing what the officers of a corporation can say to its shareholders and there's very well documented evidence of what appears to be very misleading information and then we have other sorts of government settlements that don't hold people criminally accountable for what appears to be criminal behavior and just fines of the corporation which means the individuals involved don't even pay the penalty themselves so i think what we're seeing is

a lack of zeal at the national level about the kind of law enforcement we need and remember this isn't about revenge this is about discouraging this kind of behavior in the future and right now we haven't done enough with prosecutions to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again or isn't happening now and you know coincidentally all of the top bankers right now are even in wall street in new york perhaps reading this report there are down those making new business deals they're still on a roll but i do want to now you know i was just speaking with our financial correspondent who is describing if this report really placed the blame all over the board it was on everyone he was on wall street it was on that regulators that was on the federal reserve do you think that you know they tried to do too much and they didn't really pinpoint one specific issue. no i think actually the best way to go at this and again i haven't read all four hundred pages. but i think the best way to go at that says by seeing it as a systemic problem. it involved the wrong kind of idiology about the free market

and deregulation that penetrated both political parties for a long time and i think they did a good job of identifying that i think in terms of wall street misbehavior that's almost inevitable if there are proper laws and regulations and foresman taking place and we'll look at their level of detail about that but i think you have a systemic problem where government and the financial sector got too close and the philosophy got to be too much of a hands off approach that caused a lot of problems i think they're right to talk about that and i think they're going to do something else very useful which is they're going to make a lot of the data publicly available for researchers so that other people with a great interest in this can dive in and get into more specifics about what needs to be done well we'll see if you know it actually leads to to any change or if it actually helps us solve another crisis like this in the future so that we're not in the same position that we're at now or in

a we're not like for example japan who just had their credit rating downgraded today over it i want to thank you very much for joining us on this one. you bet it took quite a ride and we can only hope that's right thanks. well still to come tonight the tea party in congress tonight look at the move that the brought numerous lawmakers to the scene ask if they're ready to take on their own party of sacred cows on strangle social security back in the summer. wealthy british style it's time to explain. the debt. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy cars a report on our. welcome to the.

lead to survive and speak see him good and don't think a lot more regenerative life support seems just from our own ways special exercise equipment fight stuff like in sync a logical prep keeps the strain off the brain during a. one dollar she updates here on r.g.p. we've got the future covered. there are the new kids on the political block the tea party helped elect numerous lawmakers to congress last november and now they're trying to flex their political muscle they claim to have solutions to many of our current economic woes of their ideas have caused some tea party supporters to go into hiding artie's into the sauce he has more. that i have a message a message from the sheeple already was that a message that is loud and clear it is not mince words kentucky may two thousand

and ten when dr rand paul clinch the republican nomination for u.s. senate and this is is now. the tea party is still a force in america. tea party senators and their supporters even braved the washington d.c. snow for this the first ever meeting of the senate tea party caucus what started off as something dubbed a fringe movement of the republican party has now made its presence now not just at marches and rallies but all the way here to the most powerful halls of the u.s. government and that something is the tea party and its leaders de mint today are meeting last night and you know rand paul is talking he said my goal is to make the mint look like a moderate. because. the premise of the united states has been co-opted rather to parity and we among others now in a position of real power the question is what will they do with that power we've

got to start coming up with real solutions about cutting spending and about what we're going to do to change things while speaking of cutting a recent usa today gallup poll actually revealed that a majority of americans oppose cuts to social security medicare and other entitlement programs so that leaves defense spending a lot to talk about excess or wasteful spending in the military budget and not necessarily defense but if the republican senators and congress members only five percent are actually serious about cutting defense so if there's all this talk about austerity. are they ever going to touch the secret coude i don't think the defense budget can be made you know sacrosanct and it can't be touched but experts don't seem too optimistic no president and no congress has ever cut military spending while the country is in the theater or the tea party favorite michele bachmann is optimistic even giving her own tea party rebuttal to barack obama's state of the union address i believe that we're in the very early days of

a history making turn in america they're not going to back down and they're going to continue with this radical thing. radical now maybe mad in the future who knows but perhaps not radical enough to actually touch the pentagon budget a thin line between catering to their austerity demanding base they started paying attention i started waking up instead of just yelling at the t.v. set and losing the support of the establishment by tackling one of the biggest acts that ensures their it so that if these tea partiers ever do implement their policies whatever they may be the american people won't wake up with a hangover deano soft washington d.c. . and so the tea party caucus in the senate held its first official meeting today a coming out party if you will and well let's be honest this thing was an arranger it was more like a small get together between close friends just three senators make up the entire group rand paul jim de mint and mike lee now they extended an invitation to all

g.o.p. senators but there are a lot of excuses floating around out there it's just not the right time though there are so many caucuses you can't join them all or we don't want to disrupt the unity and the republican party and they go on and on and on but i thought the tea party was all about taking on washington changing it standing out so could this be a sign that we're already seeing tea party elected blend in with the washington establishment or should we give them a little bit more time here to discuss with me and sam seder political host of the majority report majority f.m. radio sam nice to have you in the studio rather than new york thank you nice to be here what do you say i mean they only have three measly little members well you know three is not such a small number yes that's a sixty. no mean there are going to and there's you know out of the republican caucus you're talking about you know seventy eight percent but what's really interesting is that they have three as opposed to four because marco rubio as you

know was the tea party darling i mean he actually drove charlie crist out of the republican party down in florida is. and he was the darling of the tea party and what i think he is showing and what i think is manifesting by not joining that caucus is that the tea party it really is toxic in terms of the entire country at large i mean here's a guy marco rubio who i believe thinks he has a national future and he thinks that he can't have a national future if he is that officially associated with the tea party and i guess that's an unfortunate thing for the tea party you know i think it's a good idea to have someone else in there to mix it up a little bit you know so we don't we have two parties all the time but the tea party just they just don't do it for i mean i think they're you know we're playing they're having a lot yeah i mean you look at yourself i mean you know the tea party is is the republican party absolutely and you know to the extent that there is anybody in the tea party that is not a republican. it's very small amount of people we're talking about the mean this is

the same thirty percent that gave george w. bush approval rating when he left the last sort of the dead enders of the republican party and this is you know there are a combination of people who've been floating around twenty years ago they would have supported pat buchanan and now today they have a whole new set of people that they that they support now what if we compare the senate you know. to the house because in the house michele bachmann started a tea party caucus last year this year they may have fifty two members compared to the three so does that also just kind of show that it's hard to be the big guy it's hard to be you know in the senate seat and go along with the french whereas it's much easier to do it if your house you know of course i mean and you know there's a lot more people who have think national. national ambitions in the senate then in the house in the house you know these people there once you're in the house maybe maybe you make it to the to the senate but so i am not terribly surprised by

that i mean it's more localized but you know this is the tea party is essentially the base of the republican party and so. to have only three representatives in the senate i think probably will see in the future that they're going to have more those people who are willing to say this is where you know this is it's bars i'm going to rise i'm not going to go national i think rand paul knows that i think jim de mint knows that i think lee knows that and so the tea party is a way that which they can sort of magnify their their power in the senate what are the chances of them actually standing firm when it comes to what they promise right they say that everything is on the table when it comes to these cuts and then you look at polling and they realize that while the american people like the sound of cuts they don't want you to dare touch their social security or their medicare but they might be ok with defense spending but then since the tea party is the republicans and they can't really cut defense spending i mean it just ends up being a huge financial mess well i mean in terms of social security the biggest thing that we have to worry about from my perspective is somebody who wants to see no

cuts in social security is frankly the democrats allowing it to happen allowing there to be you know a rising of the retirement age or cuts in the cost of living increases and that really in my estimation should be completely off the table but you've got a good point here i don't think the tea party guys really are hoping that they're that their proposals goes through i think a lot of it is theater and you know rand paul very early on when he was asked would you vote for the debt ceiling to be raised he said absolutely not and he was asked will this could lead to complete financial meltdown he goes well it's not really going to happen i mean with the debt ceiling is going to be raised i'm not going to vote for it but we know that i feel comfortable voting against it because i know it's going to happen anyways that's i think the tea party formula you know we're going to support certain proposals that we know are going to go anywhere because we're just basically you know preening and it's the same thing we're seeing right now with this attempt by the republicans to to repeal health care reform they know

it's not going to go anywhere but they want to show like they're trying to do something and if they thought it was going to go anywhere i mean for instance if they thought they could repeal. the individual mandate and they actually had the ability to do it they'd never do it because the insurance industry doesn't want the repeal of the individual mandate and that's what i and they still kowtow to those same interests so i think what we're seeing is a lot of sort of like posturing in a lot of posing a lot of theater a lot of acting like i said which i just find so annoying because i don't want people pretending to be doing something i want them to actually do but well very quickly since you mentioned theater how big how badly do you think that michele bachmann really just blew it for the d.v.d. with that state of the union pigtail you know i'll tell you something i don't know i'm over here by that over and over again. carol williams you know the. it was it was sort of poetry in a way first of all i think just having two bottles made the republicans look weak i mean why do they need to rebuttals and obviously the notion that she was i think

was a perfect metaphor because what she was actually doing she was looking at the web camera that was going to the tea party organization that sponsored her and that's the thing is that i think you really do have a problem speaking to the tea party and the rest of america simultaneously and if you speak to the tea party you're going to look crazy like she did and so that's the problem they have this really could be the way that we look at that that's right i right there because that is a good one fan thanks so much for joining us my pleasure well just ahead tonight while he's in davos for an economic forum an american banker makes comments that win him next time for war after return and it's yet another power grab by the obama white house and they go ok i'll tell you why they want internet service providers to hold on to customer data just in case they need it later for investigative purposes but behind that we're going to turn.