we have to think about what's required to preserve the american dream for future generations. preserve the american dream with economic inequality and debt skyrocketing it already become a nightmare. and as the u.s. continues to grapple with its decline the brics countries meet to lay a foundation for economic and political change with their rides so will a new world leader emerge. and more drone killings in pakistan today this despite the country's call to end all u.s. attacks so how will the two men there work for

a relationship. being it's wednesday april thirteenth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm lauren lyster and you're watching our t. now the debt clock is ticking as the united states reaches its debt ceiling of fourteen point three trillion dollars next month the debate over raising it has descended upon washington to raise or risk the faulting on the country's debts those are really the questions at play today u.s. president barack obama revealed his plan for deficit and debt reduction issuing this warning our debt has grown so large that we could do real damage to the economy if we don't begin a process now to get our fiscal house in order. and of getting which kind of being the u.s. is main creditor and us debt reaching what the entire economy produces in g.d.p.

our team are in a port in iowa shows how the deaths already taken a major toll. in a city that never sleeps. that continues to tick more than ten thousand dollars per second when it was first installed no one was really aware of what it was nor could most people tell you the difference between a deficit or that so but their collapse spans rejoice keeping track of the national that jordan borrow it's represents the durst organization the new york real estate firm that operates the ticker of america's borrowing the clock was installed back in one thousand nine hundred nine when u.s. debt was under three trillion within weeks that number is expected to reach by debt ceiling of fourteen point one thousand nine hundred twenty only the. government is on too much money. everybody knows that and everybody accepts that it's how you

solve that problem. yet this familiar problem is being met with the worst cycle solution he was leaders are calling for congress to raise the debt limit and warning of an economic armageddon otherwise experts say ongoing financial mismanagement by the richest country in the world is gravely tarnishing america's image as a global financial leader were approaching us and all that on a par with the total g.d.p. of the country this is very serious because most economic research suggests that countries tend to decelerate in their growth and have more and more severe economic problems once the debt to g.d.p. ratio gets above about ninety percent and we're about to go through that level and if the u.s. government reaches its boring capacity it would ultimately default on its debt and stop paying investors whose bonds have come due to japan currently holds roughly eight hundred eighty five billion dollars in u.s. treasury bonds meanwhile china america's main creditor owns one point one trillion

. the economic landscape is. causing many to conclude that washington no longer claims supremacy over global economic issues it can no longer act unilaterally on any number of things you know how so a part of what the united states needs is credibility which can encrease the persuasion with which it can convince other countries to come together with it in moments when it needs to as the guarantor of the global financial system shows no sign of that discipline nobel prize winning economist joseph stiglitz says it's time to replace the once invincible dollar with a new reserve currency china has close to three trillion dollars of reserves. reserves about nine trillion dollars trillion dollars you have some voice and what kind of reserve currency system you want to have and chinese been very clear

that it worries about the. reserve system just last week the dollar fell to nearly a fifteen month low against the euro yet day after day the nation's debt continues to climb higher u.s. congress has increased the national debt ceiling a reported seventy four times since one thousand nine hundred sixty two and it will most likely happen again in the coming weeks but as america continues a growing trillions of dollars in debt question is how much global economic influence does this so-called superpower stand to lose. are to new york we're going to answer that question as you can see president obama trying to make the case for restoring u.s. credibility at a time when the u.s. budget deficit has shot up close to sixteen percent just so far this year compared to last year so he's making the case now for raising taxes on the rich reducing

health care costs those are just a few of his proposals but we're asking. is it just a lot of wishful thinking and is it too little too late joining me now is michael snyder he's founder of the economic collapse clogged you can get that blog on the internet you can i'm a klutz blog dot com and he joins us from washington so michael first i want to touch on this issue of raising the debt ceiling i want to ask you isn't this just political theater because with the u.s. really put itself in a position to default on its debt i mean that would send markets haywire and that's just one of the repercussions it would cause. if we don't. there is going to be a world financial markets we go to are used or else we're going to. go don't it could be worse in two thousand and eight so this is something that. no question it's always going to go. the route you know john boehner saying oh go ahead i was going to say that is the real question i want to ask you if you think that there is

any political will for that because the president came out today he has all these proposals which sound very nice but if we look at just even the recent budget showdown they managed to cut between the democrats and the republicans thirty eight billion dollars and that doesn't even to include accounting gimmicks which many of them appear to be that's one percent of the deficit it essentially does nothing to address the problem so how much faith do you have that they can at all tackle the debt. oh that's a very good point you brought us to the edge of this horrible government shutdown and was over he simply cruelness off of a cookie but you said thirty eight point five billion of us about one percent of the government budget but when you take all the accounting you mix up the real budget cuts when you take out when you send since money when you take out money you don't was left over from previous years things like that it amounts to about four million dollars in real budget cuts now when you look at the he's just screaming at

us budget he ought national debt up we're not by fifty four billion dollars in just those days. right it's a much bigger issue than just kind of the short term look at a budget stalemate not for i think so i want to know if you think that there's the political will to deal with that long term problem absolutely not what the republicans or democrats know for decades they've been trying to promises that they're going to cut the budget if i don't remember three years ago when ronald reagan was coming into office you talked about the national debt being a horrible crisis but now today the national debt is over fourteen times larger than it was back then and we're politicians still get great speeches but when push comes to shove just like we saw in this recent episode he will tell you they don't want to cut the budget even with these very small budget cuts the budget deficit for this year is going to be the largest it's ever been before and by and speaking of good speeches i want to touch upon president obama's test on the issue of some

of the cuts he wants to make one of them being security now he says hill horton growth and basic care any spending below inflation is that a cat that sounds like growth. you know. it's not really. all those codes he. who has so much he's not serious about the budget at all. we don't. believe we need to be talking about trillions of dollars this project if you're twenty twenty one. we're going to pay me one point one trillion dollars just in interest on the national right and according to the only and that's something that obama actually touched upon you know i have to say i agree with a lot of the things he said in his speech there are things that we've been saying on this station for a long time the impact of china being the u.s. his biggest creditor as you mentioned interest on that debt reaching a trillion dollars in the next ten years. but i want to ask you as far as some of

the proposals are being that are being made. tax reform what is the possibility of that actually being feasible i mean with the power of corporations and big banks in terms of lobbying and campaign contributions which are now essentially unlimited because of the citizens united case how could the u.s. ever really reform taxes. well something needs to be done if you look at the tax system it's very broken for example back in the 1930's corporations only about thirty percent of all the taxes united states but today it's only about seven percent hawaii so it is their operations overseas tax havens things of that nature so whatever that rate is they're going to keep avoiding taxes exactly we don't need if that's a great point and i add one thing that i i've you know really stuck out to me in the president's proposal is that he's talking about what he's talking about extending or excuse me and not extending bush tax cuts for the wealthiest which

obviously is going to be a political hot button issue for him but in the same token he talks about having some savings that will allow to cut the corporate tax rate and let it go down to zero percent what's going to keep companies from moving their profits to bermuda where they don't pay taxes that is a very good point you know we need to totally rethink the way that we do taxes because the people at the top the ultra wealthy and the top corporations they are experts at avoiding taxes in fact it's been estimated that possibly one third of all the wealth in the world is a bell hold about shorthaired statements so obama can try to do things but what people in congress what is the tax forms for these corporations are all exhibits through three steps ahead of everyone else so something dramatic needs to be done just for the current system isn't going to get it fixed what is going public to say what do you think would need to be done in order for the united states to actually restore any kind of control over this skyrocketing debt. well one of them main

things that needs to be done is we need to go away from a debt based currency system which is what the whole federal reserve system is based upon whenever more government or big government wants more money market is actually created because it's borrowed from the federal reserve and the federal reserve auctions those bonds off to investors to china things of that nature so good very creation of money in this country creates more debt so we wanted to wait a no and get these currency i think that would be a gigantic step in the right direction also we need fiscal discipline we simply cannot stand one and we bring you know we've been doing it for so long we think that it's normal and yet the republicans say they actually want to cut taxes for the rich are saying how they're going to pay for those tax cuts the democrats is not going to keep spending around current levels but neither of those solutions is going to work we have to live by normal american families we have to get to the point of saying ok we're going to live within our means but we're not in washington

d.c. you got a lot of talk and not a lot of solutions that was michael to snyder founder of the economic collapse blog dot com now we heard today president obama talk about saving the american dream but nobel prize winning economist joseph stiglitz told our plan an interview the data shows it may already be gone take a listen to what he had to say the increase in the concentration of income in wealth in the united states has been enormous. i said please describe looking at growth of inequality is watching the grass grow having very slowly but it happens over time and before you know it the lawn is overgrown and things have changed. would happen in the last couple decades is twenty thought oh most a quarter of all the income goes to the upper one percent. around forty percent

been how you measure or the wealth goes to the upper one percent americans used to think of themselves as a land of opportunity everybody else thinks of themselves as a land of opportunity and they think of old europe as ossified the data. show that they're beginning to realize that most americans are worse off than they were say a decade ago so it's not just that all this wealth is going to the top if everybody we're getting better off you can say well some are doing little better than the others but actually noosed americans are worse off than they were a decade ago and that is if you include the sense of insecurity the loss of jobs that will it insecurity about health rights that most people in europe take for granted but if you have a very split society there are going to be very different views about what's

important if the rich can buy their own parks they don't need to have public parks if the rich can buy their own education we don't have to public education if the rich can buy their own health care we don't have to have good health care for most americans and that's where we're winding up today so the people at the top that one percent. are using their political power to try to preserve their wealth and meanwhile making sure that the government doesn't do what is necessary for the prosperity the functioning of our entire society if you don't make these investments we're going to wind up and it divided society in unproductive economy and even that one percent will suffer and that is the link between what happened in tunisia and mexico. and in egypt and other countries where they divide

has grown and. it's meant that their economies of the engine and the societies have not functioned. so some real cracks in the american dream already and you can catch my entire interview with professor stiglitz on our you tube channel at youtube dot com slash r t america really interesting interview and while the u.s. tries to dig itself out of its decline so it doesn't become the next egypt or tunisia as you heard mr stiglitz say the world's largest developing economies on the rise brazil russia india china and now south africa's in the next known as brics are getting ready for their meeting to talk about how to better leverage their growing economic and political influence in the world artie's arena gluco has more. while the old world order may be pumping money down the drain on war in libya the new world order is fighting battles that can be won on the world's money and trade markets brazil russia india china and this year's new kid on the block south

africa have gathered on the chinese island of hainan to talk business and it's not just about economy it's about politics as well though the brics countries do put a heavy emphasis on economic issues broader political questions such as the situation in northern africa and the middle east are also going to be a hot topic for discussion the recount to stare all. or un resolution amounts on to was very wise in terms of we're not going to get involved in this mess in fact when the french and the british were drafting the resolution there were serious objections from the floor talk with countries brazil russia and china traditionally it was always the u.s. and major western nations like france and germany playing the leading roles in politics and economy but if you take into consideration the ongoing financial crisis and the fact that breaks countries comprise more than half of the world's population and probably almost a quarter of the world's g.d.p.

it becomes obvious it is certainly geopolitical shift in power is in progress or that there are several reasons these are the emerging powers of the twenty first century europe as we all know is absolutely bad economically politically has no leads a lot stickier not even organized the old store policy it's a fearful continent and these are car countries there are have been less affected by the crisis than have the european countries the united states and these are countries that are going to continue to grow if not rapidly at least moderately while the rest of europe and united states seems to be mired in in crisis european leaders them. selves admit to losing steam grounded in recent years everything that we have taken for granted for two centuries american and european dominance to the point at which most of the world's manufacturing goods most of the world's exports

most of the world's investment was done in these countries it is no longer a fact so it seems europe and the us are finally beginning to understand the emerging power of the brics nations i think the western countries is already. strained greeks economy is. expanding with. eight to twenty. it is within the. brics countries have been. struck city which has been very effective i certainly think that there will be changes in the economic architecture i think that's inevitable as these countries grew up while the western powerhouses continue pounding away on regimes they find undesirable a new economic and political architecture is emerging and these five countries are keen to prove they're not just another bricks in the wall it is because corti china

now at that meeting brics leaders are expected to reject the use of force in the middle east and north africa urging dialogue and non intervention earlier i spoke to mark weisbrot co-director of the center for economic and policy research and i asked him what impact if any he thinks this will actually have on the military intervention going on right now in libya. well i think you has a it has it in because it puts pressure on europe in the united states too they don't they're not really looking for a negotiated solution they weren't from the beginning and so the more that you have a big part of the world and you have turkey also playing the mediating role this is something that ever had to deal with before. so i think it will increase the possibility of a negotiated solution which is obviously what it's necessary what do you think it means going forward longer term because brecht obviously had

a much different idea of what interventions should be there more pushing for dialogue and for non intervention so moving forward what do you think that means as far as global cooperation i think it's a very it's a hugely positive development i mean you it would presume a range last me for example the nuclear fuel swap arrangement. with iran yeah but it all didn't call the west and it was supposed you know it didn't but it pushed them back in terms of their march towards military confrontation and i think you know it's a slow process but it's moving much faster no that it ever has in decades do you think that western leaders realize that because i have to say i was at a conference over the weekend it was supposed to be about the rise of brics and incorporating a more into global governance but i have to say that i felt like it was a lot more focused on how to fix the europe and the united states so that they

don't decline and there was a lot less focus paid i felt to the role of the developing nations like france. no i don't think the united states has recognized any of this i mean it's most extreme in this hemisphere where they've lost you know south america and they still don't even realize it and they still think they're going to get it back so no. i think they're a little bit more pragmatic in other parts of the world in sewin starting to sink in that they don't own the place. but i don't think. that they've really they haven't changed their attitude they don't look at. they don't look at foreign policy from primarily a diplomatic point of view it's much more trying to muscle other countries to do it they were at what point will they be forced to change course as a result of the rise in sentiment that we're seeing with the brics well i think

they already are i mean first of all the fact that the creditors courteau they used to have with the i.m.f. the world bank i mean dozens of middle income countries russia included. are not going to pay any attention to that anymore ok so that's a huge change in the world that's to me the biggest change in the international financial system that you've had the past thirty years and just to piggyback on that we hear a lot about a question of whether the u.s. dollar should be ever there currency by both that western academics people like us and stieglitz george soros and also from countries like china i want to ask you what role you think the brics getting together making deals to trade and invest in their own currencies circumventing the dollar has on that issue well i think that has an impact more building trade and investment between these countries and that's very important because it's another form of economic integration that

isn't depended on the u.s. and europe and so trade. in their own currencies they're promoting it terms are requesting the dollars reserve currency i think that's still going to a long way to go you know sixty one percent of reserves in two thousand and ten were in dollars it was the same as the year before it's you know it's not going to change anytime soon but do more and more of these agreements push that issue more in the direction away from the dollar here there's definitely a move that's a it's a long term thing. it's certainly possible but there are a lot of reasons or nobody or china doesn't want their currency to be a major reserve currency that was my quote mark rather co-director of the center for economic and policy research. now as nato airstrikes over libya worry the brics countries as we just heard american drones strikes in pakistan are the cause of

unraveling tensions i raveling relations rather fresh u.s. drone strikes this morning prompted strong condemnation by pakistani officials now the strikes are the first since a march seventeenth attack that reportedly killed dozens of civilians and all of this on the heels of the controversy a release of cia contractor raymond davis now the former blackwater employee was accused of murdering two copyist on it's on me to be released from prison after a payment of more than two million dollars by the u.s. joining me now is a man who has covered the davis case extensively scott horton is a contributing editor of harper's magazine mr and thanks so much for joining us now before i get to the raymond davis case i want to ask you about these most recent drone strikes that is obviously been a huge sticking point between washington and islamabad what told you think this recent strike is going to take on those relations. but i think there's no doubt that this is one of the hottest issues between america and pakistan and more

specifically between their two intelligence communities but i think we should step back and say it's not that the pakistanis are per se opposed to the use of drones in fact they're covetous of this technology they'd like to have them they'd like to be able to use them themselves the question is control of the drone strikes and pakistani intelligence has been making clear all along that they want to code determine the strikes they want to pick out where they're out of the bronze are being used to gather intelligence and what strikes are used so in fact we hear this combination of criticism and of praise praise when the strike hits a target that the i.s.i. pakistan's intelligence service has approved in criticism when it doesn't and when there are a lot of civilian casualties but we've got to go back to what happened on march seventeenth that those twenty four hours after raymond davis was released and that strike including to reliable sources i've spoken with in pakistan killed at least

forty one then maybe as many as forty people and there's a real doubt as to whether it killed any terrorists right and that's been a sticking point between the two countries for a lot longer than these recent months when everything kind of came to a head with the raymond davis case now that's something that you've covered extensively it involves one american man accused of killing two pakistani men but it is ignited protests on the street of pakistan it seemed to initiate this great counting u.s. pakistani relations but you've argued it's a smokescreen and i'm curious what you think is the biggest reason why this is created a great down between the countries. well i think you know raymond davis lit a bonfire effectively because we see tied up in mr davis in his person almost all the issues that upset the pakistani military establishment i mean just start with the fact that he he was hit by all reports he was the head the acting

head of the cia's station and well who are but he was not a cia agent he was a contractor that's point number one the pakistanis have been very upset about the heavy reliance on then use by the americans of contractors they say these contractors are unprofessional untrained they just don't know how to behave and certainly they argue that the his conduct in this case a shooting two pakistanis who by the way and pakistan are widely reported to have been i.s.i. agents not people who were out to kill him so you've got those two points and then we come to the drone war when he was arrested the pakistani police found on him g.p.s. tracking devices which in their memory card showed that they had been used to establish targets that were used in north waziristan so he was clearly involved and that is well. so you can get

a longer version of that interview at eight pm really interesting discussion that was scott horton contributing editor of harper's magazine that's going to do it for now though for more on the stories we covered go to our t. dot com slash usa and check out our you tube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america very interesting video of the recording artist moby right now singing against budget cuts and you can also follow me on twitter and please do at lauren lyster and till i see you at eight stay tuned for the alone a show and a half hour. we're sorry . the world.