rachel martin here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture a. new website with twenty four seven live streaming news towns what to do about the ongoing financial heart unlimited bi-polar the videos for download. and stories you may never find the names you. know the. meet the political. posts in more on aren't. just saying. hey guys welcome to shelling tell me alone

a show we've heard our guests have to say on the topic now i want to hear audio just go on to you tube to video response or to twitter for a plot of the questions that we post on you tube every monday and on thursday the show long responses we let your voice be heard. all right it's time for tonight's tool time award and it goes through a winner from last week on fox news show sean hannity decided that there is a war on easter taking place in america take a listen. it is one of those import holidays for christians and as we are in the midst of holy week so groups like the capital clearly are unhappy about how much disrespect is being shown towards the christian faith for example the always controversial lady gaga has a new song titled judas. now

had to be actually wasted six whole minutes discussing the so-called war on easter with two guests and most of the debate centered on lady gaga as a new song judas and i also mention an article written by about atheist ricky gervais's talking about religion and the afterlife so it is a war on easter i'm just wondering if lady gaga or the commander in chief has received her raise her top general you might be asking yourself how does war on easter and sounds really oddly familiar and you're right at his parents' news just pulling up an old script and changing the word or changing the word christmas to easter. so we're going to put segments and i we can see already forty which

american stores are using christmas and advertising this christmas season and which are not so far here's a list to get our limits this is which operations are using the greeting merry christmas in their advertising and which are enough of a user you can see. just you tell me species what we do is killers here they are. that clip was of bill o'reilly when he said that there was a war on christmas taking place here in the us and he began talking about that several years ago so since o'reilly already cornered the war on christmas market that means that sean hannity must have decided that the only other christian holiday he can possibly create a big controversy around is easter and fox news never misses a chance to make christians think that they are being wrongfully attacked that's the whole problem with the g.o.p. the right wing box news christian crowd they just love to play the victim card over and over and sean hannity is more than happy to give them for him but a screw up by the obama white house is giving these people little bit more ammo

unfortunately someone at the white house forgot to send out the easter statement like they usually do on other major holidays so you know that's going to give fox news in the g.o.p. a chance to say that obama isn't a christian that in fact he is a secret muslim all because the white house forgot to send out an e-mail but of course to prove that he's a good christian the obama's did host the white house easter egg roll today and events are places afternoon on the south lawn of the white house with thousands of little kids who have the chance to hunt for eggs meet the first family and take part in other fun events but i'm sure the fox news is going to find some way to turn that egg roll into an attack on easter the way they can make anything seem scary and that's why fox news and sean hannity you are tonight's tool time winners for helping to create this fake war on easter. now it's like every take big brother nightmare come true except for now it's not just

apple users remember earlier last week we first told you about privacy issues with apple and it turns out that i phone collects location data for everyone who uses their phones and then transfers it back to the company approximately every twelve hours but to make matters worse it was also discovered that this user data was collected in an uncredited database meaning that all that information is on protected and easily accessible to say a police officer or a government official or even just a next oh wait before android smartphone users start laughing and pointing fingers up there i unfortunately have bad news for you too android phones are just as bad about collecting data if not even worse they actually gather your location information your unique phone identifier and any wife i hopped on every few minutes to send back to google headquarters our frankly that news doesn't really surprise me if you remember google's had a history of privacy issues like the street you to buckle that span across the world but back to the smartphones were quick this whole massive gathering of

personal data ties into a bigger market that both apple and google want to capitalize on the market for personal data is huge and compiling massive did databases of consumer information is a two billion dollar industry and speculators are saying that it could even become an eight billion dollar industry in just a few years he's you guys are wondering the executives for the smartphone makers don't have much to say about this issue in fact when a consumer emails steve jobs about privacy issues relating to the smart phones jobs just took a jab at android see if we replied oh yeah they do track we don't track anyone info circulating around is false so absolutely no help there from steve jobs and as for android users bloggers have been a ranting about this issue all week and many are writing it as soon as road users start their phone for the very first time they're asked if they want to enable. location services on their device and other words toward users of essentially allow their phones to be tracked and out the back of the real issue at hand here which is

privacy now that we know why our personal data is at risk because capitalism i think it's time that we amped up our efforts to protect what scraps of our privacy we have left but then again we're all addicted to our smartphones so i really just don't know how we're going to win this one. so how do we now have an exact date for when the age of america is going to end that's what analysts are saying after looking at the i.m.f. the official forecast which predicts that china's economy is going to surpass that of america in real terms in two thousand and sixteen that's not decades from now or sometime in the twenty twenties has been predicted before know now we could only be five years away and that means that whoever is elected president in two thousand and twelve could be the last to preside over the us as we've known it for more than a hundred years as the world's largest economy so should we listen to the i.m.f. and if they are right are we going to be ready to discuss this is brett aaron

senior columnist from market watch had a personal finance columnist for the last return of bret thank you so much for joining us tonight be here for starters when we listen to the i.m.f. here they say that china's economy is going to surpass that of the u.s. in real terms by two thousand and sixteen so what does that really mean what are real terms well they measure in terms of what are called purchasing power parity is look when you compare different economies there's always a danger comparing apples and oranges and so forth some people will use just exchange rates are going to say you know in dollars or whatever the problem with that is exchange rates not only do they thought to wait enormously but in the case of china it's not simply manipulated to keep the chinese currency down so that just looks at enormously you can't use that as a role liable sort of you know way to compare one economy to the purchasing power parity is basically. trying to sort of smooth out the different prices you pay for things so you're actually measuring in a real output in goods and services i'm just wondering obviously if forecasts can

be wrong this happens all the time but if the i.m.f. is saying something should we listen well shorten the this is this is serious stuff listen all forecasts are can be wrong forecasting is a dangerous game casey stengel said i don't predict predictions about the future. so sure anything can happen you know that a lot of people say china is currently the economy's overheated it could it could trip and fall it could have a recession that could delay things by a number of years all sorts of things can happen the twenty sixteen is their their latest forecast the important point to really to focus on is that this is coming no matter what you know even if the economy the chinese economy has a recession or something then it might delay it a few years it's not going to change in. the end game china has like for times as many people as we do it's growing much faster it has played catch up extraordinarily quickly in the last ten years or so this is coming and it's coming

much quicker than most people realize and you know that's essentially why it's the big issue here is that no matter what number you give us what year you think that it might happen in china it is going to surpass the u.s. is the number one economy and you actually earlier said that this is where your in your writings that this is the biggest story of our time so let's talk about what that would mean for america how would that change things for us politically and economically. well i mean the biggest having lived in england for many years which went through a similar process i can tell you the biggest difference may be psychological. i knew fellow americans who lived in england at the same time said that the brits sometimes struck them as a defeated people which i thought was kind of ironic but it may feel psychologically different to know you're number one or to be number two more sort of practically you know being you know on topping the world's dominant kaname has all sorts of privileges and responsibilities the privileges include the fact that we can basically issue lots of debts the world has seemingly inexhaustible appetite

for u.s. dollars because it's the world's reserve currency it will not remain the world's reserve currency once we are no longer the sole dominant power or even the dominant economy in the world any more than the pound sterling listen one hundred years ago it was inconceivable to people around the world that a pound sterling will be anything other than the world's reserve currency today it's inconceivable that the dollar will be anything other than the root world's reserve currency but it will probably not remain the reserve currency for you know maybe a couple of decades these things take a while to change but it will go it will lose that politically you know the the question is you know we spend more on defense than in i think the rest of the world put together an attempt to maintain the world's number one empire with the number two economy is again something that great britain tried to do without success so ultimately we're going to have to reevaluate that we have. an absolutely gigantic global set of commitments that are going to be increasingly unmanageable and the

question is you know having pursued a kind of we can go it alone kind of military or strategic role for many decades that's just not going to be feasible once again with my sort of historian and british educated hat on i can tell you that britain went through exactly the same thing in the late victorian era they used to refer to the policy of splendid isolation but they found as they lost. their position you know soul leaving their color in the world they had to reach out to our lives much more but i definitely think you're right that it's going to be something that psychologically a lot of americans are going to have to get used to this although we know that it's coming all of the indicators have been there at the same time we still can't really even tackle our own political issues here domestically in terms of raising our debt ceiling or you know taking after our deficits or like you said our military spending so we'll definitely have to see how americans actually react to this brett thank you so much for joining us my pleasure.

our time for showing talent tonight's program last week we asked for your take on president obama's visit to silicon valley where he rubbed elbows with tech company c.e.o.'s like facebook but is it possible that the government is too close to the tech giants let's go to producer patrice in a century to find out what our viewers think. so was obama's town hall meeting at facebook headquarters just the start to a replay of his two thousand and eight campaign strategy i think so remember facebook has up to five hundred million users and thirty percent of them live in the us personally when it comes to political influence obama's election showed us facebook has the power of all major media outlets and even more since they have access to our personal information so is it ethical for america's first social

network president to be so close with the major type giants who can make or break an election outcome i don't think so and many of you would greet gandee told us on facebook the government is too close to most corporations and not close enough to the middle class tell me how the field said the government should separate itself from special interests i guess tom is referring to the way things spoke along. other major tech giants are increasing their spending on lobbyist then we heard from some of the internet privacy advocates out there told us they are sticking their nose where they shouldn't be on twitter colleen murphy thinks that obama is sucking so it's easier to violate what little privacy we have left. ok it's interesting i know that president obama's visit to silicon valley was viewed as looking for votes or looking for access to our personal information but after attending a sold out thirty eight thousand five hundred dollars

a plate fundraiser before returning to d.c. there should be no doubt that major tech companies and the president will be friends for a long time to come remember if you've got an opinion we want it right here. all right now we have our next question for you which basically we just want to turn next question guys i lost it i. know that. i want to know what you think in what's requested. do you think america is ready to come to terms with being the number two economy in the world the story that we just spoke about in terms of the i.m.f. prediction that china will take over in twenty sixteen so like our guests are saying psychologically this might have a lot of effects tell us what you think on facebook twitter and you say you and your sponsor just might make it on air now we're taking a break but still to come tonight slots are planning to take to the streets of the u.s. and demand just get on the plane i'm talking about in just

a moment and in light of skyrocketing gas prices president obama has launched an investigation into oil prices return to speculation is what's really driving those costs but this really bring us any results or is just a way to get americans to stop complaining back or off from think progress dot org will join me on the break. i. whenever the brotherhood says we're going to be safe get ready because of the freedom.

hey guys welcome to shelly's hell on the alona show which part of our vests up the sound the topics now i want to hear our audience says go on you tube the video response part of twitter for part of the question that we've hosts on you tube every monday and on thursday when the show long response is going to leave your voice make up. for. the. good ol us some judges see a story and it seems so for likely is it you understand it and then you glimpse

something else and here's some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. well gas prices are currently on the rise for many americans in many parts of the country but those prices already rising over four dollars a gallon and if you look at the markets if you are going to continue unrest in the middle east doesn't look like it's going to get better so i think the natural assumption is to think that when i happens everyone loses right if gas prices are higher that means that people have less disposable income if they have less disposable income that means less consumer spending and that means bad news for the economic recovery except that is unless you're one of the five largest oil

companies in america that's right the wall street journal reported say that the spike in prices expected to increase earnings that exxon mobil five percent this year that's rivaling its record profits from two thousand and eight how about chevron conoco phillips there are expecting an increase of about thirty three percent this year compared to last year now president obama did promise that a new government task force is going to look into speculation as well as manipulation of the oil markets but we'll see if i can really achieve anything and if at the end of the day it's just the corporations that are going to end up winning out now joining me to discuss this is economic policy and there are think part or it thanks so much for joining us tonight thanks but now let's start with obama's announcement that he made it last week where he said he's creating this task force to investigate manipulation speculation see if there's anything illegal going on in the oil markets is it really a question of if the only kind of know that this is going on well we know there's

a lot of speculating that maybe questionable questionable behavior going on illegality is a different thing i think the interesting point is that the bill that congress passed last year the french financial reform act already directed agency called the commodities futures trading commission to set limits on speculation in the oil market they were supposed to start doing that in january they haven't yet been put . down to two thousand and twelve if they were actually doing that goldman sachs has actually estimated that speculation right now is adding about twenty seven dollars a barrel so if the see if you see were simply doing its job and doing what it's allowed to do by law you could actually see gas prices lower than they are today you know makes us feel good so something was created they're just not actually doing their job well then what about this new task force that the president says that he's going to appoint i mean how quickly can they start looking into you and investigating this issue not very easy seems to be why as from now on if they haven't yet and it's not going to affect prices in the short term which is is the

pressing matter you act absolutely right it hurts the economy in the next couple of months and all economies already we are seeing growth that slow sluggish hopefully not going backwards having to put more money into your gas tank and into the pockets of exxon mobil means you're not spending on things that actually help the economy. going to make a lot of americans that are sitting at home i feel really good about that i'm just wondering do we have our clip of president obama from his speech on friday ok i want to listen to when he made this announcement basically about the task force and the reaction that he got let's take a look. at your general to look at any cases of price go up so we can make sure nobody's been taken advantage of that. today i'm with. the attorney generals putting together a team whose job it is to root out any cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices and that includes the role of traders and

speculators we're going to everybody's clocking in there really happy to it sounds really nice not to let the american consumer get screwed but i mean you can say that this is happening if you look at other commodities if you look at food you could say this was happening on the housing market too so is it promising now that the president actually wants to go after it or is this really just a way to kind of make americans feel happy get off his back a little bit because as we were saying gas prices something that everyone can relate to if you look at the two thousand and eight presidential campaign both president obama and senator mccain promised to go after oil speculation here we are talking about the same thing a couple of years later the mechanisms are already there to go after this as we said is just a matter of actually so many in the political will to do it with which when you're going up against an exxon mobil when you're going up against a shell is politically difficult to do now when we talk about speculation too and we talk about these profits right record proper not maybe not record profits but very very close to the record profits that they made in two thousand and eight

exxon mobil what role do they play when it comes to the speculation of the manipulation of the markets or their hands clean or are they somehow involved it's very hard to tell their role is much more the middleman the way they make these profits is first by bouncing oil back and forth between here and europe is actually an interesting disparity between the prices so what they're doing is selling in europe what they've refined in america where it's cheaper to refine and that actually jacks up their profits but what they do is they run the prices up and then even when supply picks up or when demand drops the prices don't come down i mean i'm sure your viewers will notice when you go to the gas station prices are really quick to spiral up but then take days and weeks even months to drift back down that's more the role that the exxon mobil's of the other planes so like i said americans aren't. i don't like the sound of that we're just finding out that companies like exxon mobil the bank of america like g.e. are paying absolutely zero taxes why are gas prices are going up so you would think that there would be the political will to please the american voter right now to

perhaps get rid of subsidies for some of the subsidies it's easy for some of these oil companies but republicans just voted to keep them going last year didn't they how can last week how can they keep that going possibly politically how does that work. i'm not sure that's that's a question those subsidies have been in the budget they actually came into being when the price of a barrel of oil was sixteen or seventeen dollars a justification being oh these companies really need it to get going or they won't be profitable now with oil over one hundred dollars a barrel there's simply no reason to keep pumping these subsidies to these companies but again it's a political will game the way the republicans phrased it is it will kill jobs these are job killing tax increases even for these oil companies and so they get away with preserving these year after year after year and it's the sort of thing that people only notice now for a month in the summer when prices high will get fired up about it but in three months when the prices are back down and suddenly people are fired up about something else meanwhile that budget line just keeps getting perpetuated and over

and over and over somehow everyone seems to forget we definitely know that short term memory is something that a lot of our politicians and our media is plagued with as well i realize you know on the budget has proposed cutting those subsidies and yet here we are and will probably be back here in a couple months talking about something i don't think that we're hearing a lot about from the republican politicians especially right now is they're saying you know that's very fine and grand if you want to go out there and investigate speculation of market manipulation obama but we really should be focusing on is more drilling here at home because they say that's going to bring prices down but if you really look at the numbers is it true we're talking cents over years the energy information administration has looked at this and actually said if we were to use all of the offshore drilling that we possibly could all of the land offshore that they could be drilled prices. come down three cents in the next couple of years even if they're underestimating it and six cents eight cents in the grand scheme of things that doesn't mean anything and it's definitely something that like i said it's going to affect this also you think because those subsidies are here to

say that high prices are here to stay mean is anything going to get achieved now with this task force not in the short term i'm hopeful in the long term if the speculative limits actually get put into place or actually enforced that's a whole other question and one speed limit so they're in the rules are in place if we actually enforce them hopefully something will change but again that's a very long term picture that's not going to help you on your summer vacation in two months while it's very much i guess if you look at the way that our government often conducts his business is asking some of the industries to regulate themselves or if they say if the government in fact is going to do the regulating then we're just really really slow about coming around and actually getting the job done but i want to thank you very much for joining us but looks like the rest of us are going to have a very expensive summer thanks so much now before we go tonight we have our tweet of the day arizona senator john mccain is back in the u.s. after a trip to libya and of eid a weekend of saying that we need to blow away on all the sunday talk shows but while he was being interviewed on n.b.c.'s today show this morning he was asked if

the u.s. should use military action in syria to stop the violence there as well after which mccain said i don't see a scenario right now or any time in the near future where the injection of u.s. or nato military action would in any way beneficially help the situation i'm sorry to say so what would be a lot of show tweet yeah we're really sorry if you can't get us involved in another war to looks like john mccain's going soft night show thanks for tuning in to make sure you get back tomorrow are reaganomics the reason for america's cities david sirota will be on the program to discuss in the meantime don't forget to become a fan of the lower show on facebook and of follow us on twitter and if you missed any of my store or any other night you can always catch knowledge. the flash the light shelf the repos that is as well as the shelling from entirety we have next is added first is the name.

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much music made a lot of people a year in a bucket way five years ago world was coming to grips with the catastrophe unfolding in chernobyl today the same could be said about the sheema what is the future. wealthy british style. not on. the market try not to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into the report. more news today violence is once again flared up to.