hello i'm tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture streets of gold may be turning to hard concrete for goldman sachs c.e.o. lloyd blankfein and its former executives you have it suggests they lied about cheating their clients out of millions of dollars so how are these banks toure's able to pull off the scheme meanwhile the koch brothers university funding programs are spreading right wingers using their own cash to change clothes staff and ideas

over five. universities billionaire oligarchy succeeding reshaping our country's worldview and could there be a fifty first state i'll tell you why thousands of arizona liberals are pushing for a session from the radical republicans are on the north of the state. yesterday raj rajaratnam a billionaire hedge fund manager was convicted of fraud and insider trading he faced twenty years in prison the jury found him guilty of making more than sixty million dollars based on insider information one of the only cases in the last twenty years where a big time bank was facing the music for high crimes on wall street will rogers crime had little to do with the financial meltdown back in two thousand and eight

and more to do with a culture of corruption that seems excess stensholt on the deregulated politically powerful wall street it does raise a lot of questions like why is this guy going down but the hundreds of banks just who actually did cause the american cause. economy to collapse back in two thousand and eight or skating off scot free still placing dangerous bets and threatening another takedown of our economy rolling stone or border mad is also wondering why banks toure's in particular bankers of goldman sachs are off the hook especially after a damning report coming out of a senate subcommittee chaired by democrat carl levin this this report confirms what we also suspected that high crimes took place on wall street and no one has been the accountable as to a.b. writes in a recent piece in the rolling stone to the people versus goldman sachs there are unusually scathing bipartisan report provides a panoramic portrait of a bubble era that produced the most destructive crime spree in our history

a million fraud cases a year is how one former regulator puts it but the mountain of evidence collected against goldman by love and small fifteen desk office of investigators details a gross bald faced fraud delivered up in such quantities as the homos serve as a kind of sarcastic challenge that to the curiously impassive justice department stands as the world's most important symbol of wall street's heiress aristocratic impunity and prosecutorial immunity produces the crash of two thousand and eight so it's time for this case to commence is it time for goldman sachs to face the american people in a court of law for wrecking our economy that's how you detroit's me now for his insights he's an investigative journalist for rolling stone and author of the book griftopia matt welcome back are you an. great to have you with us osama bin laden is dead should the executives of goldman sachs replace him on the

f.b.i.'s most wanted list. even though. i would say it's unfair to compare osama bin laden to people like lloyd blankfein but certainly there are a lot of executives on wall street who have escaped the attention of the justice department and they they would definitely be natural prosecutorial targets and i don't think there's any reason why we can't move on to guys like that why is it that raj rajaratnam raj rajaratnam walked off with sixty million bucks stole sixty million bucks basically and he has to go out on bail will end up probably doing prison time but treated very very nicely whereas last week a guy walked into a seven eleven was a bag of potato chips put some of that had to cheese stuff you know for the for the corn chips operate they arrest him took him to jail ten thousand dollars bail it's like if things are well i guess the it's

a rhetorical question let me let me get ag in your article as well as your book with topia you outline a number of frauds committed by goldman mostly defrauding investors what are the chances the goldman will ever face the music for these crimes and if not for fraud what else is baldly guilty of it we go after. well the really obvious one that is made very plain by this senate report that just came out last month is perjury you know we just did this article that came out yesterday about this report that was really the work of carl levin and tom coburn of oklahoma. and it's a six hundred fifty page your porch with which details. quite extensively the activities of goldman during the summer of two thousand and seven when they were dumping toxic securities on their clients and betting against them at the same. time and this mountain of evidence that's in this report stands

a very stark contrast to the testimony that was offered by the executives of goldman sachs a year ago when they were dragged into the senate by the same rules be vested gaiters and asked to explain themselves there was a they were guilty or verge or as well as the crimes laid out in the. ads absolutely you know one of the points that we made and and that you know my sources continually made to me is that the kind of fraud that we're talking about you know defrauding investors is very complex and there are very specific legal standards that prosecutors have to meet in order to get convictions on those crimes and that's difficult and hard to explain to ordinary people but lying to congress is not hard to explain this is simple and there are numerous instances where which would seem to me to be fruitful life for prosecute why is it that these revelations are goldman are now coming out as a result of a senate report i mean what happened to the f.c.c. and the other watchdogs during the time or for that matter stockholders and their

ability to sue for fraud and damages. well you know this is really the remarkable thing about this report is that there is absolutely no reason that this kind of work should be left to a senate subcommittee there are at least five important regulators that should have been doing this work before it got to the point of a senate subcommittee and i would list among those people of the office of thrift supervision the o.t.s. the office of comptroller of the currency o.c.c. the fed the f.c.c. and the justice department that's five major regulatory or law enforcement bodies that should have got to do this before the senate had put the justice work i put the justice moore on the very top of that list the s. and p. recently said standard and poor's recently came out with a report and so that there is more of a risk in the market there is more risk in the market today than there was before two thousand and eight you know obviously these guys are partly responsible for the

crash of the bad credit ratings and so you know taking s. and poor and p. seriously dangerous thing but it seems that they're right in this case are we headed for another great crash or what some refer to as a double dip well you know i hear varying things about that and you know here i should admit i'm not an economist you know what i'm going to let me rephrase that. are there cure him in olds who crashed the economy by their crimes still committing the same crimes which could crash the economy again. i think i think the best way to put this is that all of the incentives that existed before two thousand and eight that led to all this horrible be a year and all these dramatic consequences they're all still in place and i think the most important thing to remember is that all of this stuff happened and nobody got punished and that was that's the single biggest of the set of so all of this happening all over again because people took enormous risks they took criminal

risks on a grand scale and they got away with it and there's no evidence anywhere that they're going to be punished and now they have mansions and private jets and seventy eight homes in switzerland and the islands. the food and gas prices are on the rise right now is the goldman sachs commodity index at work again. well absolutely commodity speculators play an important role in rising food prices i think if you look at the events in libya and egypt and throughout the middle east in the last you know the early part of this year. the rising food prices clearly played a huge role in those uprisings and if you look at what happened. in commodities like cotton we're up seventy five percent over last year or will we soybeans. rice all up seventy five one hundred percent over last year and this is only partly due to real market factors like from what i understand there was a drought. there were also poor harvests in australia but

a lot of this had to do with an enormous influx of speculative money that's flowing into the commodities markets and that is completely independent of real markets. us that we just have a little less than a left is goldman somehow different from all the other companies on wall street. well the key thing that makes goldman different is that they're more politically connected than other companies i think what's the reason there it's important to focus on them is because they kind of become the symbol of impunity and of getting away with it you know they have more friends in government they're the number one private campaign contributor barack obama there are always one or two two congressional candidates overall so they're they're really the symbol of wall street they're like every other bag but more so and for them to kind of have this reporter up on them and to still walk away from it would be a really major moment in the history of this this country will keep our eyes on mad

t.v. thanks for the great work that you're doing thank you. all have more on the high crimes of wall street tonight in our daily take. crazy alert no sex in florida a state to ban bill banning beastie ality basically outline all sexual contact with animals this is the writers of the bill didn't define exactly what an animal is and science tells us that humans are indeed animals and it appears as though sex with animals including humans is now illegal in the sunshine state looks like the republicans might have gone a little too far last week in their ongoing efforts to get into our bedrooms and i guess there won't be any scenes like this unfolding at least in florida for a while we'll or faked.

i'll have what she's having. coming out of higher education already comes at an expensive price but apparently not too high for the koch brothers other generous contributions are screwing the nation's public universities. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right.

i think. even one well. whenever government says there can feel safe get ready because their freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here see some other part of it and realized everything you saw you don't i'm sorry there's a big. so

screwed students at public universities earlier this week it was revealed that american oligarchy charles koch are the billionaire koch brothers as a deal with florida state university where he can and pick the right wing professors for the university's economics department in exchange for a hefty cash donation to the school investigative reporter leif thought he's now

finding out the story only scratches the surface of what the copes are up to as far as polluting universities with their particular far right ideology with florida state university the coax gave for four hundred eighty thousand dollars to west virginia university he gave four hundred twenty thousand dollars to brown university joined up with other right wingers to hand over three and a half million three point six million detroit university and the coast a seven hundred thousand dollars in the state university there are dozens of other universities around the country receive similar donations from these billionaire brothers and just like with florida state university all of these charitable donations come with strings attached. you're talking more about these strains and what they mean for america's higher education system is lee farm reporter and blogger extraordinary think progress lee welcome back to tom thanks for having me at florida state charles koch can pick and choose professors with his donation what other perks of these guys have with other universities or decision making powers

well it's different for almost every university i've seen you know at brown university i don't think they have the same power to pick and choose professors ah but they give these big chunks of money and they target that money towards research projects that they like for example around a underwrote study argues that they deregulation how much the poor and if we wanted to help the poor we should regulate banks the same time a brown university that money goes to find right wing makers like amity share host her to come to campus and argue that. f.d.r.'s new deal actually made a great depression works if you go to other universities like it's some folk university of massachusetts based on professors very closely to detour around the country and argue that sweat shops are a good day at the minimum wage hurts the poor so it's not you know why i'm single focused work each grant every grant your university is different and unique but as a sum total they push this larger supply side. kind of he ology and

create a larger intellectual framework leave the universities have been begging for money for years from their long knives from foundations from you know wealthy i'm assuming liberals as well as conservatives. is it is this unusual. you know i mean obviously the cokes are the only all of our disengaged in this kind of intrusion into public universities is it unusual that it be so explicitly political or are liberals are there are there you know has george soros out there passing out money universities and saying you have to do a study showing that franklin roosevelt was the greatest president in history. no sure and this is not a unique not only in a sense you know of my own school university of maryland appliance maker black and decker as a relationship with the engineering department where some of the research and patents that are developed out of it maryland engineering department are then transferred to black and decker for their own for profit use so you know with

budget cuts going on across the country their corporations swooping in and taking advantage of publicly funded and sometimes privately funded research for their own so i'm going to pharmaceutical companies have been doing this for for ever it seems like you know i remember this back in michigan state thirty years ago in the end and the seed companies but. i'm wondering if it's happening on the left to you have any evidence of that. i think that's that would be interesting but you know and i think we're. having examined it but there's an important distinction to make you know. philanthropy is obviously a good thing and if someone wants to give money to a university to help the public good to maybe study what ways to make society healthier stronger cleaner better functioning you know that's great and i think. you know that should not be deterred or you know i'm marginalized in any way but the difference here is that these. these individuals like the koch brothers and

john allison and b.b. and t. bank they're funding very far right ideologies that come back and benefit people like the koch brothers so when they're funding studies that say that more air pollution can help actually improve the lives of people because they block out the sun and it decreased melanoma i mean this is a road i used to assign to the koch brothers of course our oil our oligarchy they funded a university study that pollution was good for us well that was actually cato study but done by a professor at a university that's accepted money i mean what they do is they give these grants universities and usually hire someone that's gone through the kind of coke machine of either studying at some point at george mason or spending some time at a place like cato or the mackay distance to which are fully owned by and then once they've gone through that training then they're excepted

a school like utah state or u.c.l.a. or george washington and then they're giving professorship with coat money extraordinary leaf on thanks so much for the great work we're doing research thanks to keep it up this is. pretty amazing i can see a billionaire is going to have their way with private universities. dropping truckloads of cash on a school like jerry falwell's liberty university and then being able to pick and choose what classes or says are offered students of public universities if public schools are being bought off by the coax or anybody for what choices to students have received in india and in education is not influenced by politics here to offer his take on this as you see it as their last go to win a seat and we're going to see a tom off the back and he's are. parallel you want to play my list versus your list yes ok i think it's here's my list of the universities and the cokes of fun in every single case with strings attached in ways that will produce an outcome that

benefits the koch's financially well it could have benefits the country financially because teaching free markets and i want to i want to begin to say that it's funny i want to i want to begin this segment by saying. i find it hysterical that you think the colleges and universities are being dominated by right wingers i have to say that i have a study for you said by their own description seventy two percent of those teaching in american universities or colleges are self described liberals fifteen percent of conservatism at the elite university your educated people are the ones that are going to feel that at the at the elite schools eighty seven percent are liberal and thirteen percent a conservative and you're concerned because the koch brothers gave one point five million i think florida state the fact that that's what will people be a model educated and smarter they become liberal no is nothing to do with the fact that along with eight years it will lump unease and then oligarchy giving money to schools to specifically do studies that will that will return cash i mean it's very

much you know this this company has got this their if they're funding research that they're then taking the patents off that was that was that a university that is a university hired are needed part of what they haven't already to protocol there yet it's called was the also what's the why one could but i agree the state universities. taking money from to prove how wonderful f.d.r. was or from drugs that everybody everywhere but it was awful he was living only for i want help with university yes yes we'll i'm talking always strings but there's always crime with people giving money to the lists the macarthur foundation has in four years gave forty six point nine two nine million dollars to forty one universities this is just in ok the norwegians are going here and learning what were the strings attached you want to go through each individual one they want to add to what concerns me frankly is the strength they want they want sustainable development which i know you like which doesn't exist in the real world sustainable sort of or how to say how is that going to how is that going to accrue any profit

to the macarthur foundation. it's every example that it is like there's liberalism every example the least cited is somebody profiting these are going to carry donations and i know this i know you hate profit profit actually fuels this economy the taxes come off of the profits people including the koch brothers and now it's the actual ad no nothing against what i have against is using our public schools to make money for yourself. our public schools are edgy first of all they're not got the government schools are not public schools and second of all if the koch brothers were we are the public we're not the on the government we don't only have you know government those drawers the constitution we have to guess and guess who's going to constitution the is going to get its ration. if the koch brothers want to take their money and fund because let's face it when they set up a research center at a university the students that are going to be some of the next scientists and the next engineers get to avail themselves of those opportunities learn things develop

a pad to make a fortune for their company the students with scripts they get nothing. and this is different from college football well with your liberal examples i still have yet to hear anything where the macarthur foundation is going to make more babies vance liberalism and how does that help in. but does that make them more money because it's a liberal foundation sansa doesn't make the money but it embarrass already also so ok so more kids get health care. because people are in poverty. in a way more to where we have more people i'm going to sort of i'm going through the liberal agenda ok there's forty three million people on health stands under barack obama now an all time high how is that reducing poverty how does that eliminating poverty there's dancing what he would be allowed to just for the foot would you say you remove you reduce resolve as it were increasing property under obama well because there were deucedly we had two hundred forty thousand jobs last month what we did we would up to nine percent unemployment in the scene i understand george

bush did incredible damage to this con how we're suffering from thirty years of reaganomics when he was would he be allah when we were at thirty years of insane when george bush ran for president none of that has a twenty five percent unemployment none of that has to none of the has to do with it was yeah and have reason to go in for which there were a lot of that in two thousand and six with. housing starts that was right it was sort of already made our government disintegrate i just i didn't know there would be immunity relented and let us not digress into a completely different are good idea i've got all these universities where it's where our hearts are given the money in ways that will come back rights of the university or separations or giving them money in ways that are going to come right back to that's fine how does a do the research in the school and but no more i mean her own for example or how does doing research on you know public policy how does that come back to the guys who are funny how does this make it racial is it with me and my heart to various local colleges they're finding liberalism girl is

a way george soros any money that he wants with grants liberalist ok so that's genuine philanthropy he's actually giving something that's actually not even going to benefit him it's just benefit society that's what little he does not use it as a sideline to benefit society do is get on trying to make what you do. it is when people make money it benefits society and that's the fundamental thing how they make it through it's not well i mean it was a robbing a bank the koch brothers are robbing banks they're making money in genuine free market legal ways and you don't like it and that's your problem that's her you know it's not illegal there's no you don't misrepresent me but my concern specifically is that is that these for profit corporations are saying ok you do the research we get that that's why you do the research and remove that f.d.r. was a terrible president and we women of all sizes we pay for the research we get the patent that's just like a researcher develop a department in their company it shows he's

a real source of development part of our brain in the right of the goodness that the students would mourn anything higher students in your in or out of touch with satan thanks for going to see them and i think we've come to all sorts of different politicians think tanks media outlets and educational institutions there's nothing out of reach for the cocoa like ours thomas jefferson who founded the university of virginia as one of the nation's first free public universities must be rolling in his free. time for a daily poll your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question get away with giving millions to universities to promote deregulation and other things that benefit your choices are yes it's already begun in george mason university clubs in west virginia and brown who's next or no they won't get away with buying professors to convince kids right out of college to join the tea party so far the votes were

fifty fifty log on target dot com let us know what you think the poll the open robbery. coming up baja arizona has a nice ring to it up so could it be our its fifty first state. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right near the end. i think the bombings beautiful and funny well. we're never government says there can feel safe get ready for freedom.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like sleep you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. for. fuel.