it's a game of musical chairs for obama's national security team so while america's on war the commander in chief shifts the key role of his players. and they say there's a first time for everything and today's that day for the federal reserve this as chairman ben bernanke he needs the press so what's behind this and why now after nearly one hundred years of silence. china definitely a refutation. of. it you know it says with words and. so fastest growing economy and. in the history of the world all right the market

calendar for twenty six scene because that's when the i.m.f. predicts the world's fastest growing economy will surpass the united states so is the free market following. suit really. really. really if you use influential these people are not influential yet somehow they made time magazine's list of most influential people in the world so what exactly is that the definition of influence. it's wednesday april twenty seventh eight pm in washington d.c. and christine for us now and watching our team. one top story today musical chairs and multiple changes in terms of who heads who some of this country's most powerful institutions president barack obama is expected to announce

a major change this week we've known of course for quite some time that secretary of defense robert gates will be leaving all turns out his replacement will most likely be leon panetta currently the director of the central intelligence agency in terms of who will fill his position well it looks like general david petraeus the top american commander in afghanistan is the man for that job so what should we make of this shake up i asked that question to lieutenant colonel tony shaffer senior fellow at the center for advanced defense studies. what we're seeing is a a a dance of political geometry. the problem is and you've mentioned before this is almost like just changing chairs some of according to you know changing moving pictures around the titanic which i don't quite agree with the problem is i think we set up an echo chamber and having people simply move jobs around is not going to be a lot of good but the problem with leon panetta frankly and this is something that i think people tend to overlook is that he is not well known for his military or

intelligence background it was an anomaly that he got sent to cia he was sent over there to reestablish confidence and that's another it's code word in the d.c.u. for keeping the lid on things so i think what we're doing now what we're seeing now is he makes it to the pentagon because of his political connections with the white house rather than his ability to manage department events or more importantly achieve victory not awarded and said any president about leon panetta is ability to shape the pentagon to win the wars we're currently in you know what about petraeus you know on one hand he is highly respected highly we just came to israel lot of people for the work that he did in afghanistan and iraq and yes i don't criticize the cia not only for you know what we've seen in the last few decades not exactly you know obviously the cia and the f.b.i. aren't supposed to work together but there's a lot of holes in organization and strategy i bet have been brought up through general petraeus says things like an organized guy do you think that this move was a good one i do and let me answer that in two parts first i've been in the room with you know general mcchrystal his predecessor in afghanistan receiving

a top secret cia briefing which was totally irrelevant to what we were doing on the ground i mean isn't there mcchrystal doesn't get any higher than this so i know i can only imagine what you're up to trace has been dealing with over the past years too so he as a customer as a consumer of intelligence blunder stand better what is necessary cia has had its own way of doing business with that said the traces coming in out a very difficult time in the history of cia the cia missed some big things recently they did not pick up the instability in the middle east central command did the other thing is that they've had some very big setback. and afghanistan khost camp chapman were apparently mr panetta himself briefed the president on what they expected to come out of that meeting with that so-called double agent which turned out to be you know they had killed the best and brightest analyst in cia so i think the trails are going along a great deal sanity and an understanding of what is needed from cia to be more effective in the current wars do you think though that he betrays that because of

all the work that he's done in iraq and afghanistan do you think at all that there could be sort of it's too close for comfort think going on he knows what intelligence means for the troops on the ground he knows what it means for this country. he's done the best he can with what i believe and i sit here on the show and others that this is a flawed strategy the afghan strategy is flawed he has built a wonderful house let's use the house metaphor he's built a wonderful house but every plank of wood is infested with termites because as soon as he steps away we're talking about a very similar in as well as what i saw of the soviets in the in the in the early eighty's and i think that's part of the problem here the gains he's made are temporary and reversible by his own words so the issue becomes pakistan pakistan has always been a c.i. a war so in some ways it may be better that he can now concentrate on the very issue that you know general of the present obama said is the real issue is pakistan you know i got to ask this because it's on the minds of some certainly not those around the country but definitely inside washington people have spoken about

general petraeus possibly running for president either as a challenger to president obama in twenty twelve or twenty six scene do you think at all that this is you know a move by president obama to keep general petraeus happy to keep him from challenging him in an election that so far seems wide open i believe the initial move of europe a trace to have been the stand was meant to do that and i've talked a lot of my friends about this and we have our little shadow network we talked about this and i think the bottom line is at this point time to trade is has some really good things he can still offer a lot of us thought he would be better suited to be. replacement over at the pentagon is trying to the joint chiefs with that said i think the trace is a bright enough individual who can adapt and actually maybe even bring some much needed change to make c.i. more adaptive more relevant organization to the conflicts we're currently in tonier these promotions prezzies to human well clearly the patris move to c.i. is i think a lateral transfer at best i think that he's already had the ability to do a lot of things especially given the job he's had but at his job promotion i mean

you're talking about a five fold increase in responsibility talking about everything from veterans affairs to strategy to defense acquisition all these things which are clearly you know the huge most and most difficult bureaucracy to control is i think one of the pentagon so yes it's a much larger job and i would argue i'm not sure if his credentials are going to match the responsibilities of that job at this point. that was lieutenant colonel tony shaffer senior fellow at the center for the advanced defense studies. all right well it's been known as the temple of secrets a policy of mystique so what happened today was meant to shed some light on what has been for nearly a hundred years dark impenetrable place i'm speaking of course among the federal reserve bank and today fed chairman ben bernanke he did what has never been done before by anyone in his position he held a press conference earlier i spoke to gerald salon's a publisher of the trans journal and director of the trans research institute he

shared his thoughts on what he saw as the burning he's defacto devaluing of the dollar. and look what happened to gold and silver prices they skyrocketed gold prices went up some twenty dollars silver two dollars what bernanke he said basically without saying it is that it devaluing the dollar by keeping interest rates low so every american should be concerned about this because it's one of the fundamental reasons why gasoline prices is going higher it's not only what's going on in the middle east and in north africa it's because commodities such as food and other things are dollar base so we saw what happened but i think it when it's going to go over the head of most people i think it's interesting that you mentioned gold and silver prices they're old on a lot of people also keeping their eye on the dollar which actually during the speech went to a three year low some reports also that gas prices rose by six cents from before the speech so after the speech what do you make of this well again it's the

devaluation of the dollar and it's the transitory inflation that bernanke he says that we're not going to have i don't want to play though something that ben bernanke he said today regarding the deficit that you know even may even you may agree. we currently have a a fiscal deficit which is simply not sustainable over the longer term and if it's not addressed it will have significant consequences for financial stability for economic growth and for our standard of living it is encouraging that we are seeing efforts on both sides of the r o two to think about this issue from a long run perspective it's not a problem that can be solved by making changes only for the next six months it's really a long run issue. we're still a long way from a solution obviously. all right so there we asked our internet knowledge ing that the deficit is unsustainable is that something that you at least agree with of

course that it's unsustainable what he didn't really address is that we're what where are they not cutting from as the big cuts are not coming from defense and it's the inept working with the invests he calls them the so-called policy makers you know they're not going to come up with any solution so this is just all jobs talk they're not really addressing the big issues and when you listen to predate the speech he said that he sees in the future america read bounding to its former strength oh yeah as in china just displaced america as the world's number one bad you factor of those so this is just really to placate the people when you listen to the questions that were asked christina i mean my god what softball questions by a press corps of preston students all right you know another thing that people were asking about and talking about and also watching for today was sort of what was

going to happen next with quantitative easing and unemployment q.e. two of course the fed program of buying up assets and you know trying to flood the economy with money this well and on schedule as announced but it seems to me that the unemployment rate has barely moved despite this six hundred billion dollars program and i understand these two are not totally interconnected the q.e. two this program was supposed to do see economy and then jobs were supposed to happen afterwards what's flawed here. go back to the obama stimulus a go back to the bush one when obama passed the stimulus measure they said that by two thousand and ten we'd have unemployment rate at seven percent for every time that they make the stimulus most of quantitative easing whatever you want to call them they always use the big lie that it's going to help on employment this is a story from sunday's new york times easter sunday when no one is reading the paper front page story stimulus by fed is disappointing economists say yeah no

kidding we've been saying that all along the only thing that the stimulus has done is help the too big to fail get bigger for the average american life is gotten much worse. that was gerald celente a publisher of the trends journal and director of the trans research institute. and speaking of the state of the economy there are some theories out there that are starting to lose their footing just two decades ago one theory was that new liberal economies were the only way forward for man behind it francis fukuyama he was regarded as an authority he wrote the end of history in the last man but this week focus and perhaps the rest of the world are forced to reconsider those ideas as the i am a finance china will overtake the us economically in just five years our scale and ford has more. with china waits it will seek the world says sydney two

centuries ago. merican politicians and economists he would have a little more time to this news but twenty years ago francis fukuyama declared that economic and political liberalism was the end of history is really all there is the final and most advanced stage of societal development what i was referring to was really the growth of the kind of universal consensus on the you know the just justice of the rightness of principles of liberal democracy was really remarkable. much different just eight years ago the u.s. economy three times the size of china but new data released by the international monetary fund this month shows the chinese overtaking the u.s. by two thousand and sixteen that's just five years. but you know half capitalist countries growing like gangbusters they do all these big infrastructure

projects a very high speed rail airports set up in comparison to other u.s. and chinese economy use currency as their basis but using purchasing power parity at the i.m.f. says that the chinese economy will grow seven point eight trillion. dollars over the next five years the u.s. economy on the other hand will only grow three point six trillion then leading to the lowest world economic output by the united states in its history just seventeen point seven percent and center economists say twenty six t. is a conservative estimate in real more realistic terms china will pass as or a little bit sooner than that but that's only five years and i think this is huge implications and that it's those new liberal policies such as deregulation and tax breaks for big corporations that have created a huge wealth gap in the u.s. and held american development back. open or been privatized. and they say that china's

rise flies in the face of fukuyama spirit china is definitely a refutation of the idea that you have a broad economics is what we're saying here is an economy where the state controls not only the banking system but most of our corporations the control investment which is you know twice as much as a percentage of g.d.p. as it is in the united states and. so first is a growing economy and in the history of the world. an economy that has lifted three hundred million chinese out of poverty well the number of americans living in poverty increased from thirty one point one million to forty three point six million and just the last ten years it would fukuyama revise this theory it's hard to say i still will bet on a system of checks and balances over you know you don't get all of your for trade system killing for an artsy washington d.c.

. oh i thought the same would you bank on a system of checks and balances or a good quality authoritarian system for some answers i spoke to asia times correspondent pepe escobar. this is not about the knockers the chinese the have the nerve to barely speak used it was susan rice ation five thousand year coach or of course what happened but post-imperial will think then and what official eyes that's the me have a bit of traffic system for say two thousand and thirty new a guy off the street own troops what the chinese society should do their bit of the fillip meant we in the west may say ok this is not problem and through western democracy of course not but if we look at the results and if you ask any head of government in any developing country be interested the chinese more the best results oriented model so of course we can empathise with. you better and.

we get people from. the frequent minority or not so called minority china us especially if there weren't democracy reforms but standard movement according to their what it's working it's over property i think that's a really important point to pay i mean let's take a look for example on what's going on in these two countries right now the u.s. still working to jumpstart the economy the u.s. is involved in three wars where the war is over over who's going to be where our president was born but then isiah and i think billions of projects including many and africa you know hydroelectric dam and ethiopia talk to me amount of sort of the strategies and what's going on especially you know back to the three wars that we're involved in here we're fighting as a country is and then you have a china just investing in investing talk about the differences there. oh ok if you

aspire example. iraq may have cost more going to trillion dollars perhaps two trillion dollars what if the us accomplish except a string of pieces all over you rock absolutely massive because the most difficulty acts will be exploited by russian chinese well each and japanese companies only back some level huge chunk of a contract in iraq will be china do you want to the many stunt government big built upright i guess pipeline from a stunt western china. without spending a single penny for good sense you know where we get it going to get at least thirty percent over because the meat that actually so this proves to you the difference between a first spectrum problem and spent on oriented crude world mentality model and the statement. by the chinese that you know in this announcement by the i.m.f. came out of this twenty sixteen day i think

a lot of people were pretty skeptical even people who know that today will eventually come that china you know will surpass the u.s. they were saying you know this is decades if not you know fifty years away what do you say to those people who really think that it's much longer than twenty sixteen . no it's infected so if you look at the numbers and the i.m.f. it's crazy because the i.m.f. after the released the week where they said no so we put the numbers it's going to be later oh no in fact. you want to really mean beat you so undervalue that it could happen even before two thousand and sixteen so what we're seeing is there too curbs you know per relative decline of the american empire absolutely irrelevant better to surpassing of china for the american economy right because it's a morning clues if as much as we disagree with the political system china the.

less control the internal migration their job so far it's really anybody if your birthright a job in your presence your ability to plan not approach but it's subsidies right you know there is a campaign for twelve years now in china bill you can move last and. you pick repo man is the best they're going to have no distinction roberts and. he's from the eastern provinces oh my ass that's one of the reasons why we have the circle ashes in. there and steve inclusion is the fellow not let's watch out in at the same time china's building alliances all over the alliances in sausage speech or we went to africa they struck deals with more than thirty countries that's one of the reasons i left but i don't have an african comment you know africa to counter act china but the militarized way so destructors is there so different one strategy in china is economic development first and then. years we're

going to have some political. stances. and the statement through better national security agency is the sixteen of them the cia the pentagon state department will. help you many which i rather expect is not. anybody would want to rickles themselves that was have ask of our correspondent at the age of time. over the top economies in the world to the most influential people in the world there's another theory out now about that time magazine that is and its choices for the one hundred most influential people out this week talked this includes talk show host comedian that even teen heartthrob justin bieber but is this really a list of some of the most important people in the world or a good or popularity contests whether you agree with the top one hundred or not it all comes down to how you define influential correspondent on a stasi charkha has more. top one hundred influential people in the world time

magazine annually mixes matches and puts together an eclectic group of folk and annoyance them with the word influence this year's group has been announced with great fanfare but how prominent are these figures and what is this list for anyway . so stupid it meanwhile really interesting to use that would actually sell more magazines it's not getting sold. the ground lady of the list remains media mogul oprah winfrey this is her ninth her peer in some way ahead of the u.s. president who trails are just six so this must make her the world's most consistently influential person right well he would argue that the american president has far reaching impact with some of the other pixie out right bizarre of a three time winner south korean pop star and actor rainn.

along with teenage pop sensation justin bieber this faith. and fresh faced hollywood gossip girl blake lively while their influence on world affairs is a bit early to speak of making the list but have a great influence on their own careers the most important thing is for the people who are on the list to be celebrating like he was a little sorry to promote themselves no doubt there are many many angry people probably a larger group who are angry about their place in the west the problem it's not worse for absence from the west particularly if they were in the last the last few years this now includes their appeal and kicked off the pedestal by pailin number two michele bachmann. justin bieber really. really michele bachmann really the thing is influential people are not influential you know i mean i mean is there going to be a musical movement launched by justin bieber you know how to pronounce his name you know michele bachmann is a weirdo she's next. could influence anyone world influence also requires somewhat

of a global reach and that's another obstacle time magazine's chosen ones are overwhelmingly american u.s. mayors school chancellors comedians and t.v. personalities some of whom might not be recognized by many americans let alone people throughout the rest of the world and they used to go out and actually generate original stories from now they just make lists these people are influential to do what and how you know the sheriff in l.a. is as important as the president of the united states created an echo chamber for current and want to be celebrities being famous has become a full time job and a serious obsession for a lot of people around the world the united states for a certain. way you get on t.v. in the way you get noticed and seen as important by getting on t.v. and giving notice and seen as important as we all fast pace and recyclable culture some of the people listed are likely to come and go in the blink of an eye while the tendency to generate lists not stories could be here to stay we're seeing more

and more of this you know even on on the left you know mother jones the top you know bad landlords or whatever it's sort of is part of the whole celebrity cation of our culture of smell right now who's in who's out in fact it's eminently forgettable with some of the magazine's top staff admitting to having to google some of the nominees in order to figure out their significance like times are bound to lose the interest of the reader who wants to think and not just memorize names after light frothy and gone the next day and they say target our party new york all right so who are the ones who get to decide these influential people and are those decision makers really in touch with the rest of america and the world for that matter or are they just made up of a group of media elites and what's really the purpose of this time magazine list well earlier i pose these questions to filmmaker and very shocked. there goes the

so magazines and you do that by selecting a range of different names or celebrities or people who are famous for being same as when you play them you hope that readers will be curious to know more about them and hence will buy the list the list really his not journalism the list actually is something quite different the list is an effort to try to commodify journalism by turning it into. something quite different careful than i think justin bieber might be calling you right now you know i write exactly imagine you know i just think about influential people people you know who are going to ability to infight change to influence policy to bring people together and you know i think of this as a no brainer as somebody that's not in this magazine as one of the top most influential people no brainer but i suppose jon stewart i mean two hundred thousand people came out for his rally to restore sanity then nine eleven first responders

go was passed after jon stewart called out several republican congressmen who praised the first responders but didn't vote for the bill the first time around i mean why not jon stewart who you know yes he's a comedian but certainly what he does influences things. well i'm all for jon stewart myself i'm a i'm a viewer but you know i think again all of this is is part of an effort at a time when magazine sales are down the newspaper circulation is getting lower and lower to try to titillate the audience to try to find some device gimmick tool to get people paying attention to you and so in a sense it's influencing you know our selection of what's important to talk about and you know that's what is happening and that's the purpose of it all unfortunately you know it doesn't really elevate the discourse in america doesn't really inform people it doesn't educate us it in fact helps done most down i want

to try to elevate the discourse just a little bit right now and look at this in sort of a bigger picture manner i want to talk about the people behind the glass i mean how much to the executives you know at time magazine those who write for this magazine and you know what for all of mainstream media for that matter how much do they have their pulls on regular people. well i think clearly they don't i mean that's why when you look at the evening newscast they all are pretty much the same sometimes it's the same story in the same order the newscast after newscast you know the selection of stories tends to reflect a pro-american by as it tends to be about partisan politics it tends to often avoid more substantive issues like wall street crime you know this is a pattern of coverage which is actually been designed to what they say in the media is kiss keep it simple and keep it stupid and that's what they're able to do time and time again but that time and time again i don't think the world really exists

you know there's a phrase called age you all about us and you know the iraq war it's all about us afghanistan it's all about americans dying or americans winning or americans losing it's not really about the people of afghanistan and this is really systematic across the board in coverage we don't really tell people much about who makes decisions in other countries or what their interests are what their concerns are and the rest of it hence when americans are asked more in-depth questions about what's going on around the world they really can't respond they can't answer they have an impression of events not real knowledge and that's really part of the way in which they can be manipulated we're all manipulated because the people in the know try to keep us basically out of the know uninformed and they do it in many different ways including with lists now as any actor filmmaker and blogger.