well i'm sorry washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture one year ago our nation's gulf coast was tarnished by millions of barrels of oil and deadly toxins fast forward to today as b.p. lived up to their promise of repairing the damage to the gulf the natural habitats and even the families affected plus their inconsiderate annoyed downright rude about those pesky debt collectors i'll tell you what extreme measures they're taking to get owed money and how some are even breaking the law and just as america

is trying to crawl out of its debt sinkhole bad news services from standard and poor's the s. and p. could be on the brink of yet another financial meltdown. you need to know this it's going to happen again and it's going to be much worse. this is the warning issued by the s. and p. credit rating agency about the chances of our financial markets melting down again a report released on monday s. and p. analysts said quote we believe the risks from the u.s. financial sector it would be like the banks you know are higher than we considered them to be before two thousand and eight that would be like before the last crash you know in other words things are worse off today than they were before the collapse in two thousand and eight as simply also predicted that should the markets

go by the wayside again the bank bailout could cost taxpayers are more this time as much as five trillion dollars i truly imagine were a bank bailout that largely due to our nation's already have to get problem additionally as some be suggested there's a one in three chance that our nation's credit rating could be downgraded from aaa status and that could send shock waves around the global financial system triggering a wide scale economic catastrophe basically only if another meltdown occurred then our debt would skyrocket and we'd be telling other nations that we can't pay off our debts so why are we letting this happen again less than three years after the banks blew up the economy the first time for an answer on this i'm joined by mark weisbrot economist and co-director of the center for economic and policy research and columnist at the guardian in the u.k. mark welcome back thanks great to be here good to have you with us there's really two issues in the system p. report or at least the five hundred dollars version to the news release deals more

with the government stuff with the the larger version gets into the banks as well. first of all the banks. is our banking system as fragile as they are suggesting that it is where it was a two thousand and eight it seems to me if anything it's more fragile because there's been so much consolidation well i temper this statement a little differently i think what they said was that the risk is greater than what we perceived in two thousand and eight and if you go back through those. they don't perceive very much so. i don't think it's that bad i do think the fundamental problem which you know you've talked about a lot of that they haven't changed they haven't really regulated the financial system so we will have problems again but i don't see if you look at what really caused this recession it was the you know the biggest asset bubble in our history of this housing and real estate bubble and on top of that somewhere between six and

nine hundred trillion dollars worth of bets on bets on bets on those ten but cancel each other out it really was the house you know if you took all that other stuff away in all you had was the over valuation of house prices that we had we'd be looking at a very similar situation would be maybe quite as bad but it would be very very the worst recession we've had was very much like the housing bubble. but will bigger is the biggest housing bill we've ever had but i mean there in terms of use we saw a massive increase in asset prices yet when he thought of the twenty seven really twenty eight back pocket and then everybody moved into the stock market market exploded and then that popped right here and went early other way we had the stock market mobile first and then the housing bubble so that's the main thing you know i don't see any kind of imminent collapse here and of course the the federal that is just a distraction i mean that's not anything that we should be worried about at this time we really should be worried about unemployment that's the big thing at all

that that's something that i want to go back to the federal debt just a moment that something that just mystifies me is why the and i realize you're not a political analyst or economist but why would the democratic president running around the country talking about the republican member of dad when people are really worried about his their jobs well two things one is there is the influence of wall street wall street cares a lot about that. because you know for them even if interest rates go up a little bit in the long term which they have to at some point in their very low historically very low levels or if you know that for sure you know the zero are but they could lose a little bit of money and they could also they also don't like any kind of inflation so they would rather see a recession than a little bit of inflation that's their trade off it's very different from what you or i were in when the recession all they got to do is stop buying long answer

buying short that's right they make and they make this big rig just as much money in fact arguably you know a whole lot more. the s. and p. . told us enron was wonderful as i recall that it was the economy was wonderful i mean these guys don't have it exactly the best record in terms of talking about what the future's going to bring or their bond ratings if you remember that two thousand and eight. congressional hearing where there were instant messages from two of their employees saying that they would rate of a bond issue even if it were structured by carlos. so someone probably worth it seemed like they were they were wrong about them so i think yeah they shouldn't be taken as a credible source and the idea that the united states is going to default on its debt it's it's just really not credible idea for not only the foreseeable future but any kind of future use seriously as has both economist and you know i mean you

live in this town you can't be a little observer and don't think that the report that the tea party republicans are going to play chicken with the debt well not so that was in west and p. was talking with a word while they were they were implicitly talk yeah but if you look at what they made it was talking about why they moved the outlook for us there from stable to negative that was based on the long term picture not. based on the very long term picture being fixed oh as a consequence of democrats or republicans getting together and they said that right there or right but my point is that receptacles they weren't talking about the problem with the debt ceiling limit they were talking about a long term problem there is not a long term problem we owe our debt in dollars and we will always be able to pay that and our debt is you know as a function as a percentage he less than half which pan's as for example yeah and it's not it's really nowhere near being a big problem really is

a distraction we talk about the future what kind of economy we're going to leave to our children a lot more depends on what kind of unemployment long term unemployment we have put those to p. . were and were those to the economy as well the you know the lack of investment in the things that we need very well said mark thanks so much for drop by for it's. this is all happening again because right wing ideologues want to roll back f.d.r.'s new deal turn social security and medicare into money pots for wall street and doing away with the minimum wage unemployment insurance and other social safety net programs and the big corporate polluters and the wall street billionaires who daily briber republican and some democrats politicians want them to defund unnecessary regulations both wall street and polluting industries as greedy sociopaths are so intent on getting their way when they're willing to destroy our country to do it and they may well banks are in trouble but that's not what's being reported you know s. and p.

just came out of this with you know with this report and he said ok the banks are at a risk level that we didn't see in two thousand and eight as mark pointed out we didn't see much risk but now if the risk is starting to come around and the government is not is in trouble now what we all heard in the media was the government's in trouble and therefore we had to slash and burn our our budget deficit there are spending. why why is the media not talking about what's going on with the banks or could it have something to do with the fact. you know this because here we are. c.b.s. time warner which owns c.n.n. h.b.o. t.b.s. t.n.t. the walt disney company which owns a.b.c. e.s.p.n. general electric which owns n.b.c. am assembly c court t.v. brad bravo anian history channel also part owned by comcast viacom which owns m.t.v. v h one show time nickelodeon comedy central and news corp which owns fox news now

facts on the bottom and on the top bank of new york mellon corp citigroup j.p. morgan chase morgan stanley goldman sachs wells fargo bank of america a.i.g. the big banks of america now these people in between are the interlocking boards of directors stephen hall and martin feldstein and who is on a john chen those goes on and on and on without we don't really need the names but what you see is that there is there are direct links between the boards of each one of these banks and each one of these media companies so you wonder why was it so easy when george w. bush went to the media and said you know the big banks need some help well i'll players these connections it's all about connections and maybe we should be thinking about legislation that says you can only serve on the board of one company .

time for our daily poll your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question s. and p. is warning about a new five trillion dollar big bank meltdown will the u.s. taxpayers with this bill your choices are a yes we'll do it on the back of the new deal dubai's social security unemployment minimum wage or no we will all see the light and start regulating the banks toure's and will throw the banks their guns in jail who broke the law so far over sixty percent of you voted yes log on it's our own dot com and let us know what you think the polls will be open until tomorrow morning. coming up but a year ago it always cvs dark and swept across the gulf coast leaving behind devastation and death and hopelessness so lawmakers done anything to help our neighbors to the south there's b.p. oil spill another crisis in america swept under the wrong.

foot. five. feet. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't i'm sorry because if you.

lose screwed our environment today is the one year anniversary of the explosion of the b.p. oil rig that murdered eleven men and triggered the worst environmental disaster in the history of the united states well as the washing ashore and coastal restoration plans still have not begun and in a year since the explosion count was millions of barrels of crude washed ashore our nation's golf course hundreds of small businesses closed thousands of species of marines life died and hundreds of people felt ill from oil contaminants but not a single piece of legislation not one new law has passed out of congress to address the oil spill after sixty hearings to discuss the causes of the spill over one hundred fifty bills to introduce the safety of oil drilling nothing serious has been done by our legislature to make sure what happened a year ago does not happen again so why is that how can our lawmakers so quickly

forget this environmental catastrophe that we're still feeling the effects of today for more on this i'm joined by doris your mail independent investigative journalist darr welcome dave's time to be with you great to have you with us besides the eleven guys who died on the oil rig have any other humans died as a consequence of what's happened in the gulf of mexico. absolutely i actually have talked to a man named steve and i will not be appearing one of the articles i wrote recently who went swimming with a friend of his name in america lane in july over off the coast of florida a dog in the water they came up with sort of an orange e. . smelling substance all over them a he now knows in retrospect it was dispersed oil he's been extremely sick ever since had his blood tested full of the chemicals one month later to the day exactly after that swim his friend merrick dropped it truck bed. as a consequence of the chemicals i mean what what his doctor had to say about things

right absolutely that steve and i would argue talk to his doctor about it obviously extremely alarmed his doctor told him you have some many of these chemicals from the oil and dispersants in your blood i don't understand how you rock in here and how you're talking to me and he's one of many people that i've spoken with working on the stories of a massive health problem a lot on the gulf coast the former b.p. cleanup workers as well as its residents in so many of them are getting their blood tested by doctors another doctor over in florida doing testing a doctor in dallas texas doing testing and all of them are turning up these same chemicals is there anything that someone in the area who has been exposed to these chemicals can do to get them out of their bloodstream. well those who understand what's going on because there hasn't been a law and sound in there as there should be by local state and federal governments letting people know that there is a health emergency going on but those going to some of these doctors who are we're

treating people as though they have been handed a huge exposures to these toxic chemicals basically a lot of them are having to move out of the area. taking a more holistic health approach of doing detoxes and things of this nature to keep him out of his body major major flush of some kind to get out i guess is that dark is the is the gulf of mexico still one year out. it is actually in one of my recent pieces i interviewed a man named dr ed kate he is a oceanographer and a marine biologist and he said that for example there's areas of louisiana specifically where they've had one hundred percent loss of their populations in he asked them about the long term prognosis for the gulf as a whole especially in light of the recent massive numbers of dead neonatal dolphin deaths in sea turtle this endangered sea turtles that have been washing ashore in help in mississippi and louisiana he said. he told me he said i am i'm seventy

years old i will not live to see the goal of return itself to pre april twenty twenty two in a state of being he said i expect the minimum kid to twenty years before we see real recovery start to happen which is actually right in line with the stock one disaster in the gulf of mexico from one nine hundred seventy nine where we still see huge areas that were off the coast of mexico maybe grows certain fish populations oysters there still have not recovered amazing now my understanding is that b.p. has gotten a ten million dollars or ten billion dollars tax credit from the u.s. government for their expenses associated with cleaning up the gulf that we're basically paying for it and their businesses just fine for them in fact they got half the oil concessions them and the chinese company from the largest oil fields in iraq there are just grown into and fine is that absolutely it's business as

usual and that's one of the shocking things also b.p. almost just made the cut to be awarded a safety award over by a group over in london for their exemplary safety year that they were talking about right now of course this on the heels of trans ocean the operator of the deepwater horizon rig whose c.e.o. was awarded several hundred thousand dollars for a safety award for their exemplary safety award for the. last year b.p. it's business as usual they continue to be awarded u.s. government. continue to be a giant supplier for make up there i don't know if you saw my graph of the interlocking boards between the banks and the media companies we did another one today and you can find these all over they ruled out now you can find the same interlocking boards between the banks and it says maybe tween the oil companies in the media as you can between the banks and the media could that have something to do with why there's basically no public outrage nationwide and we're just not much

seen this in the media any longer well you may know it's our military has everything to do with why we're on to the stories we see in the mainstream media right now on this anniversary of the biggest marine oil disaster in u.s. history the biggest embarrassment incest or for that matter in u.s. history that's why the brunt of the stories are that will see it's ok to call so actually recovery it's not as bad as a lot of the environmental environmentalist expected it to be and i mean that's exactly the explanation clean and simple these of these are the stories that are pretty put out how long well you've already told us how long you think in your opinion you know we've just issued ten new drilling permits for deepwater drilling do you think that this is going to happen again have to have the blog providers for example when examined and fixed. it's guaranteed to happen again in fact not only are they still do the deep water drilling issue more permits they're going even deeper this was a five thousand fluke well but they had no plan to fix it that's why it took them

eighty seven days to finally get a cap because they literally did not have a contingency plan as you said so clearly and so important beginning of this segment that there is no legislation passed whatsoever to prevent this to force more regulations to come up with a better response plan if something like this happens literally nothing has happened while they continue to push for more and more drilling you're actually expanding it as well as pushing it into deeper waters so we are literally kiran t. that this will happen again it's not it will unfortunately tragically and around the world as well daryn thanks so much for being with us tonight thank you tom once again it's like the oil industry and it's billionaires will continue to own the media and pay off our politicians you know it's time we asked serious questions like is our government completely broken if they can't deal with something like this will crisis in the gulf and how can we make illegal the bribery of our politicians this is this is this is

a pretty straightforward process but when you look at how much money is pouring into this town of washington d.c. thirty seven thousand lobbyists starting pay of a couple hundred thousand dollars a year just the banking industry just one industry spending spending spending by a billion dollars to to influence legislation that's really not an expenditure that's really an investment and what you see is that our politicians actually while many of them are the recipients of those never asked for it in fact if anything they forty eight nine hundred seventy roosevelt got passed the telamon act which made it a crime a go to prison crime tom de lay's experience in a down taxes where they still have this is a law to give money to politicians. then it got watered down over the years not part of the legislature but by the supreme court by a series of supreme court decisions that find primary their primary genesis eight

hundred eighty six in santa clara county versus other pacific railroad decision but from there they went to things like in the one nine hundred seventy s. and one nine hundred eighty s. a buckley versus well a whole act and the first national bank versus the lobby act of finally culminated in citizens united so we've had attempts to regulate mccain feingold for example in two thousand we've had cities that have said and communities states maine arizona portland oregon that have said you know we're going to get the money out of politics we're going to public financing of elections in arizona it's being contested by a lot in portland a got voted out when the billionaires came in and so the port of iowa money into it and so the bottom line is we have to amend our constitution because even though our presidents don't want this even though our legislatures don't want this frankly it much rather be legislating the dialing for dollars the supreme court keeps giving it to us so let's amend the constitution move to amend it already has the information my book on equal protection has the information we need to change the

core and say no sorry corporations are not people money is not speech and that's it . as our economy comes on glued more and more people are going into debt just to make ends meet with afraid social safety net for some families that credit card is the only thing keeping gas in the car and putting food on the table. but as that rises in america the industry of debt collection also rises and today debt collectors are resorting to extreme measures to collect their bounties including threatening

violence encouraging suicide and posing as law enforcement the federal trade commission reported last month that in two thousand and ten there were one hundred forty four thousand complaints filed against threatening debt collectors only identity theft had more complaints than debt collectors to top it all off but these debt collectors are doing is completely illegal according to the fair debt practices collection practices act of one thousand nine hundred eighty seven it is illegal for pet collectors to use deceitful or threatening tactics to collect payments yet that's exactly what they're doing in every city in america all across this country every single day every single evening so why is this a lot of the happening here offer some answers as joseph morrow e.s.q. as as in attorney and consumer rights attorney in new york state joseph welcome to the program the loco or i should say s.y.s. . this is against the law well in fact even before i get to how are they getting

away with this stuff. you you have represented a couple of these clients who have been the victims of some of the most egregious of these debt collection practices can you give us some examples. oh yeah sure i mean the tactics that you hear about want a normal day in and day out basis are things like contacting neighbors illegally contacting relatives or threats of erast. things like threats of violence it's more rare but unfortunately it's not a it's not an anomaly these days than sure i've had i've represented clients who have been the victim of horrendous racial and ethnic slurs threats of violence as you said threats of immediate arrest for threats of rape threats threats rape.

threats to the people's children the most outrageous stuff you've heard about and obviously not only is that a violation of the federal law that you just referenced but it's also a crime so when it reaches that level i usually advise consumers to to call the police department this is a this is really quite remarkable in this story that i'm looking at an alternate alexandersson wrote references your work as well. talks about how this fellow bryant he debt collector called started screaming obscenities to him about his wife and then began you know calling him a trial girl is extreme case. you know awful offering to food to satisfy the. for sexual favors again that is safe pretty much a you know a pretty extreme case you know things like that are unfortunately happening more and more because of the just the sheer volume of people that unfortunately find

themselves in the debt collection world these days i guess it is more likely that you're going to start hearing stories like that more often how are these guys getting away with this let alone having this industry actually be a i understood my understanding is the debt collection history now is not only thriving it's growing and its profits are increasing how is this possible. well i mean i think it's they think it's a numbers game you know we do catch them so to speak and you know the f.t.c. regulates them from the public perspective and then there are the private attorneys like myself who sort of regulate them as congress referred to as private attorney generals and we regulate them to some degree as well however there's only so much that we can do there are millions of clerks that are made day in and day out from debt collectors to consume is and there are only

a certain amount of consumers who make their way to an attorney or make their way to the f.t.c. and then there is only a certain amount of cases that attorneys and the f.t.c. attorneys are able to handle so you know even when you do catch these these collect is doing that sort of stuff it's not generally going to put the companies out of business and it is just you know it's just cost effective for them to continue those sort of practices and take the occasional hit when they get caught amazing we have just a little less than a minute left what advice in this short moment here would you give people who are being harassed by jet collectors russian media i think the most important thing is to find a local consumer attorney to help you with the circumstances you know it is very easy to use days to find a consumer attorney because of the internet you should find somebody who specializes in debt collection harassment who is in your area to try to help you

through your situation again if it reaches the point that it is threats of physical violence or anything like the stuff that i've already described via the nation also called the police remarkable remarkable thank you so much joseph the great work you're doing thank you to only the lowest of the low prey on people who have hit rock bottom and. these debt collectors are nothing more than criminals and maybe it's time we throw some of these guys into a modern debtors prison. coming up experts recommend that you never use the same password for all your personal accounts early to bed after activity so why are officials at the white house pushing a single logon password balls.