you mean for the latest developments on the arrest of back head of the he said to be arraigned on sexual assault charges a hotel housekeeper a cue says dominique strauss kahn of attempted rape and with that you have one of the day's biggest stories but why is it taking a sex scandal for anyone to talk about but i am nevermind it's a tax on greece portugal ireland and its history in the developing world. and europe is not alone when it comes to economic struggles the u.s. has officially reached its credit limit so what's next for america and cannibal sam the state seems average americans can't. afford to go for the free.

forty. girls adding insult to injury you just heard debt collectors bullying main street this is wall street and washington get a bailout. and france is looking to ban fracking the reasons health and environmental dangers the evidence to support feed coming from the u.s. so we'll france a profit off and will the u.s. ever follow suit. good evening it's monday may sixteenth at eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm laurin lister in your watching r.t. well it's a scandal of multinational proportions and top news on the u.s. mainstream media outlets take a look. now the head of the international monetary fund just arriving

to new york courtroom he set to be arraigned on sexual assault charges in new york city. in court the latest developments on the arrest of the head of the i.m.f. on charges of rape head of the international monetary fund i.m.f. will be arraigned inside this manhattan courthouse shortly that is going to happen a hotel housekeeper accuses dominique strauss kahn of attempted rape taking a rape scandal for there to be any they've your attention paid to the international monetary fund in the u.s. by the media never mind the bank involvement in the greece ireland portugal bailout of late or its criticism of its policies over the years by scholars like nobel prize winning economist joseph stiglitz and from countries who receive the bank's help and call it crippling they may feel like the real victims of the i.m.f. but for more earlier i spoke with paul craig roberts an economist and former assistant treasury secretary during the reagan administration has yet to say it's not in the media at least a spin on washington's mind for two reasons one. the current director

who's now been arrested strauss kahn was a likely. winner of the next french election at least according to polls and rush so much prefers and sort cozy. it's also a modest it's mind that the i.m.f. recently announced to wash the great consternation that within five years the chinese economy will now will have surpassed the american economy. so even though ordinary people don't pay much attention to the i.m.f. what washington was paying attention and it's early strauss kahn was also paying attention to joseph stiglitz. and his policies were being noticed by the banks because strauss kahn was. advocating a return of regulation to have the banks. more carefully regulated so they

couldn't produce such crises that poor people have to pay for and this was also. getting attention are you know what you're alluding to i mean why what is the connection between a washington post and feelings on top on an apple kind of what i am and that's great dan. well. he is now eliminated as a threat and that always raises questions you know with the prior threat to the barracks was the new york governor eliot spitzer and he was taken out on a sex charge and now we have. the i.m.f. director and he's taken out on a sex charge whether it proves to be true or false he needs now out as a predator and so this is a great relief to washington and troubled banks where i've been and many

new york hotels and hotels. and other cities all over the world and i have never had a maid come in the room unannounced much less while i was in the shower. it sounds like you don't buy this story is that what you're saying well we don't know we will never know we weren't there no one was there there were two people there and so and so he said she said and what generally happens in the american prosecution is that . the defendant is forced into some kind of plea and exchange for. a couple shows i want to ask you real quickly so that we don't run out of time i want to ask you know that analysis that you made that i what washington and everybody you know corporations maybe are breathing easier without strauss kahn you know charge of the i.m.f. at this very moment people have said that he was kind of changing course and living away from some of the neoliberal policies that countries that that had i.m.f.

loans that they complained about. that he was moving away from that do you really have confidence that the i.m.f. was moving away from these policies and really i thought in policies that were better for poor countries and not as good for corporations anymore well i don't know for sure is that the banks were worried about that and washington was worried about that and joseph stiglitz seemed to believe it so the two of them apparently were talking and we know what stiglitz position is on that and so. i would think otherwise i believe strauss kahn would have been protected in this in these charges. nothing much would have would have come up and generally someone who's who's serving well doesn't encounter difficulty since only people who can run it's an accounting office full of people that have been

embroiled in sex scandals and their careers bill clinton that sort of thing i mean and he survived. well he would have a stroke on but i want to talk a little bit about. the the things that have not been covered having to do with i.m.f. possible victims you know some would argue activist that the i.m.f. and if personal of fiscal policies by the rich world has been devastating for poor countries that it has quote unquote helped to ramp that well that's the general yes i think that's generally true and i am a little scared of program always makes the ordinary people pay the cost we just know and. the i.m.f. austerity programs are really despised by the so-called developing world by the people there because they invariably bear the brunt brunt of them and they will be just as they are bearing today in europe and that's something that you know i've

reported on that in other countries and brazil and sinco that sentiment so i'm curious why you don't think any of those stories ever get any play in the united states you know those bigger more important profound stories to much more people then that one sex scandal well because they're not to the americans so they don't experience the coliseum and and because of the. the austerity that's. forced upon these so-called developing countries is in order that the new york banks can be paid off. so you wouldn't you wouldn't find in the american media taking such. elation against wall street in new york so i think those are the two reasons if biology's were to americans and they had to go through one of these programs which they may yet

have to do. they would certainly pay attention to that but it's not their pain it's the pain somewhere else so it's not a media story not a media dory but we're making media story right here thank you so much that with paul craig roberts former reagan administration official sitting in money the united states has reached its credit limit the debt ceiling and what's happening chaos in financial markets the u.s. defaulting on its debt armageddon not exactly and this may be why the treasury department has employed with timothy geitner has labeled quote unquote extraordinary measures so the government can pay its bills until august second now these include in case you're curious borrowing from the civil service retirement and disability fund the spending investment in the federal employees retirement system and short have a lot of borrowing from peter to pay paul pay paul rather and here peter is sounding like your average worker but looking at the bigger picture earlier i spoke

to dean baker he is co-director of the center for economic and policy research now he doesn't see a problem with raising the debt ceiling but he also didn't see the disaster scenario of the fall playing out quite the same way the conventional wisdom would suggest take a listen. i don't see any problem of the united states raising the debt ceiling where i think i've differed with perhaps some of the disaster people so that in a worst case scenario if you actually had a situation where the government had to default on its debt which would be a very bad scenario we have a national crisis worse than we had in two thousand and eight the economy would still be there at the end the day countries go through financial crisis you don't want to do that but we would be there at the end of the day what i've always point out to people is what would not be there as well street j.p. morgan city group goldman sachs they would be out of business which is why it's not going to happen because they if we actually got to the point where this was a conceivably possibility we're well away from that now but if we actually got to

the point where that was a realistic possibility they would be screaming boehner and the other republicans telling them to pass a debt ceiling get to president obama and have it sign so it's not hurting americans like aren't pushing for it but it seems that the g.o.p. wants to get that this bargaining chip and i have a deficit reduction commitment in the works do you think that's just a talking point if you think ultimately they will bow to other well i mean then and the demands of seven asters absolutely absolutely without a doubt which is why if president obama wants he just says give me a clean debt ceiling but i mean some point understand what we're talking about is spending money that's already been authorized so every penny that's going to be spent congress already voted on improves so it's sort of like you know we sign a lease on the apartment and then two months down the road we go that's too much money we're not compared to grant well we already signed the lease so no other country in the world has the sort of issue once you appropriate the money goes out the door and if you don't like it you don't appropriate it and of course congress could vote to retract appropriations it's tiredly within their power so it's trying

to play the sort of weird game where they go oh you can't let the country default so let's you know cut social security let's cut medicare whatever it might be and you know my guess is that president obama certainly if he says give me a clean bill no doubt the republicans will give him a clean build. because their backers on wall street will kill them if they don't if you got into a situation where the government could not pay its bills could not send out medicare checks could not send out so security checks that really would be a disaster but i would expect in your son in a situation you can't pay all the bills we have to stead ceiling that's binding and you know again what doesn't get paid well my guess is that if we really got to that situation i said you know that the faltering it would it's a very very hard situation to imagine just because we do have representatives that have to go back and face your constituents again and everyone sort of abstractly yells about spending they don't know about spending on social security they don't know about spending on medicare this is much of the spending now you can talk about

the defense spending but unfortunately people who are doing the most telling about spending want to spend on the fence so you know it's just the money is not the or at least it's not where they're pretending it is so the programs that take up most of the budget with the exception of the military do enjoy the overwhelming support of the public so if you had a representative in congress saying you're going for your social security check next month we're going to come in congress for your right i'm just looking at history i mean this has been approved ten times in the last ten years raising the debt ceiling is pretty much protocol it seems that the differences there really isn't it as a bargaining chip this time is this an inappropriate way or an appropriate i them to be using as a bargaining chip oh disinfo try and blackmail to say congress appropriated all this money they if they want they can cancel appropriations they could vote you know whatever they like obviously they don't have support for that so it's trying to spare tory tactics or i would certainly think it's inappropriate i mean what if he gets asked if a if the u.s.

default that is are you of that camp well it would really be bad news i mean i'm saying it's not a catastrophe in the sense that the economy would recover and example what about the global economy i mean the united states is the reason we currently and it's also consider the risk free asset in most financial models all over the word. we'd be in a qualitatively different global environment if the united states were to form i mean you know again the world economy would recover and go through really rough times go back to the fall of two thousand it would be like that but worse so go through very very tough times but the end of the day the economy depends on the capital stock in infrastructure the skills of the workforce the technical knowledge there will still be there so again i don't ever want to go through this but if the point is you know you either get rid of social security or we're in the default i would say well you know then fine you know we'll go to the fault and again that's not going to happen because that wipes out wall street first where you're saying you would rather and social security than to harm no i would rather default than answer security rather default than answers yet yours will bring sort of security

back ok i seriously i want to ask you something slightly different you know while we're on the the subject of confidence in the u.s. economy and and kind of the global financial system the c.f.a. institute conference which is you know that's a body that controls access to the upper echelons of investing it's also touted you know by the financial times as kind of setting the conventional wisdom in some ways and they seem to be pretty bearish on the. the financial recovery the economic recovery and the united states is role in that and to hedge against that they've advocated you know investing in u.s. farmland and gold in currencies of emerging markets is this becoming the conventional wisdom is that the conventional wisdom i don't really see that i mean the fact that there is a stock market has risen very you know very impressively over the last year or so so obviously people invest in a stock market i know there are gold buyers out there in the gold was doing very well but the bulls are should say but recently i think it has taken a bit of a turn i personally don't think that makes sense i mean the idea that somehow the

u.s. economy is going to be racked by huge amounts of inflation which are the similar fear here there's just really no basis for that in the data so i think this is kind of warped thinking and i realize again some people are following that path my guess is they're going to end up losing a lot of money just as people in the housing bubble last one. building and housing what about those that say that we're already seeing in place in the united states they're just not calling the rising commodity prices food prices oil prices isn't is that inflation well it's inflation in the sectors has little to do with united states because you're seeing that in europe china japan everywhere so the idea that it's a u.s. problem is just misunderstanding the markets you just have to look that's happening everywhere it's something that's it's as dean baker co-director of the center for economic and policy research and all the u.s. government gets to raise the debt ceiling to continue borrowing more money whether the u.s. can pay off that debt are not average americans are not so lucky and wait until you see the lengths that debt collectors are going to in some cases criminal to get americans to pay up our cheeseman

a fortnight that story. imagine a call coming to your home alone you pick up and a stranger demands your money and threatens your life they had said that so you know we live we know your wife is not going to get away with this before the. indoor prions case he was to dealing with the mafia and i called them back to find out exactly who they were they were the voices of debt collectors harassing the fifty year old music producer over a small debt belonging to his son took. it. to the fatah. party. with a record number of americans drowning in unpaid bills losing homes and searching for jobs abuse in the u.s. debt collection industry has reached record high one hundred forty four thousand complaints were filed with the federal government last year among them collectors

resorting to racial slurs anti-semitic remarks and threats of rate certainly any threats of violence or clearly illegal contact with third party means somebody other than the consumer is illegal unless it is on the very specific circumstances however debt collector is routinely violate the third party disclosure rules and contact neighbors and relatives as a means of putting pressure on consumers to pay attorney joseph morrow says most collection agents work on commission only getting paid when the debts can recover a climate of economic desperation intensifying the use of the legal and aggressive tactics just to net a bounty paycheck there are to my knowledge about four or five cases of suicide coming from that collection harassment and that's also been heart attacks and strokes ironically alike one is always extended to the biggest bar of them all the us government with an exceptional debt. a fourteen point three trillion dollars

america keep spending money printing more cash and relying on creditors like china who own one point one trillion dollars in u.s. treasury bonds don't make it perfectly clear that congress will raise the debt ceiling washington gets a safety net wall street gets a bailout and the working americans facing financial hardship gets harassed is it unfair yes it is the economic environment disasters right now yes it is but there's been traditional ways to to work your way out of these situations and those mechanisms are working in a more. worthy a sound on like we should be heard on wall street where the rich and powerful have lost billions in touch years while poor americans on main street continue dealing with all the concept for enough r.t. . now earlier i spoke to alex henderson a journalist who has been investigating this story here's part of our conversation

remember when you have the consumer which is completely tapped out now and that the same time the f.t.c. which regulates the behavior of the collectors they're under-funded this point so they the f.t.c. doesn't really have the resources to as aggressively go after these people as they would like to and that of course falls on the backs of american people that are being harassed now i know that these numbers have increased significantly but obviously debt in this country after the financial collapse in the years preceding that you know has really increased with more people not being able to pay it is that what is behind the increase are more factors behind this increase in abuse. that's live in a nutshell what's happening is the consumer is growing deeper and deeper in debt is facing more and more financial hardships what's happening is these debt collection agencies are growing increasingly aggressive with their tactics they're really the collection agencies are really turning up the heat in my city turning up the we're

seeing everything we're seeing racial slurs at the slurs just really quite a bit of abusive behavior how prevalent is that when i you profiled several stories you know are these kind of just bad seeds were that did the things that you're talking about or is this kind of a big you know broader issue that is really affecting so many of the americans that are and that it's unfortunate i think what's happening is i think you're seeing a print i think you're seeing just a pattern of more and more abusive behavior on the part of these debt collectors whereas i think it exists in the past i think you do seeing a lot more of it now that you were say five or ten years ago which i think is just a reflection of the fact that there's a lot more debt out there giving it unfair for the american people to hear that. yes it most definitely is an old poll say that while i do see the need for good collection i mean certainly if businesses are going to flourish and that's that are owed to them have to be paid it's the sort of abusive tactics that object to. more

broadly you know looking at it you know more philosophically and big picture you have you know wall street that's been bailed out by the u.s. government as the reporter pointed out to us government that's allowed to raise the debt ceiling and continue borrowing and i've never really have to answer to investors or pay up you know the fourteen trillion dollars that it owes and then you have average americans facing that debt which you know they got themselves into so they have to pay it but they're being harassed and you find an irony here. well that's the thing i mean certainly we've been on the phones to bail out wall street in september of two thousand and eight but unfortunately the funds to bail out americans who flew in upon difficult times you know on this early there and so how better reflects the issue of the collection is a lot of i think a lot of these consumers who are in debt would like to pay that debt but it's difficult for him to do so and a lot of these agencies as opposed to wanting to work with them they simply resort to abusive tactics and coercive tactics he think is similarities to other

industries that have kind of exploded and and you know done corrupt things and projects and things you know during the housing boom there was a lot of mortgage fraud is there that same kind of fraud going on with this industry now is this a growing burgeoning industry for that i mean any signs of that. yeah i think what's happening is there's so much money to be made in this collection that a lot of these companies feel that even if they get fined by the f.t.c. that simply the cost of doing business so so essentially it pays to harass more than it does to follow the regulations in the law. sadly i think that's what these large debt collection agencies have concluded if you like if there's millions and millions of dollars to be made off of consumers who are and then. the threat of the fine of several hundred thousand dollars i really don't think faces a lot of these companies and it ever really add up if they need signs that you

mentioned that that the industry that regulates than or the agency is as severely underfunded. that's it i think that the f.t.c. doesn't have nearly the resources that they need to go after these companies aggressively as they would like to and you have had a few instances of their collection agencies receiving million dollar fines for abusive behavior but i think that unfortunately the fines that are in the million dollar range of been few and far between so i think that in order for these people to really be fearful of conducting themselves in this fashion i think we're going to need to see a lot more flies of this magnitude that was journalist alex henderson and still ahead here on our. fracturing france gets ready to tell natural gas practical so when the u.s. dollar that story. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something

else some other part of it and realize that everything you. are is a big. welcome back the country of france is moving to ban i gas extraction technique known as fracking meanwhile the shale gas industry is booming in the united states but not

without consequence a new duke university study confirms what concerned americans have been claiming but which was dismissive and a global by the gas industry that fracking pollutes groundwater now before we get to all that let me give you a little background on what exactly fracking is if you don't know what it is as in journalism students from new york university have done much better job with a song that i could do in a thirty second intro so take a listen this. is a. tribute. to the. police. there were. two of six zero. zero zero. zero zero zero one of the twin. cities.

so there's a little background to talk more about this i spoke with case in big senior attorney at natural resources defense council i asked her what this means for the u.s. that france is moving to ban fracking if there is this increase in public awareness in the united states around the risks associated with hydraulic fracturing here's what she said. i think what we're seeing is the beginning of a trend where folks are increasingly realizing that there are significant risks associated with fracking so fracking was allowed to move forward and parts of the united states that are perhaps more used to having drilling where the extractive industries are more welcome as it's moved further east and as we've seen increasing accident water or lucian air pollution all the side effects people are becoming increasingly concerned about that and that frankly going across the atlantic and further than that where really there's an international recognition now that this

is not necessarily all it's cracked up to be what about the recognition in the united states that you know just most recently duke university had a study confirming that there were dangerous levels of methane in drinking water where wells were where the drilling was occurring is there any sense there's also been more public information out there more investigations that have shown the consequences of fracking is there any movement in the u.s. to regulate more tightly to move to ban it you know is there a response here. there is a response here i mean when you've seen it in new york state for example we've had a an effective moratorium on any drilling for the last couple of years because the state has said like france we're concerned about the risk we need to understand that there before we can move forward in other states you have seen improved regulation are we where we need to be in this country absolutely not and that.

because of. two things one is the the pressure to develop domestic energy supplies and the feeling that natural gas that provides an alternative to imported foreign oil and economic development pressures a lot of where shelter would be valid in the country is and in economically deprived places and there is a lot of political pressure from the other side to get in and develop as much got that possible that is kate then big senior attorney for the natural resources defense council and that is going to do it for our news eight for more on the stories we covered though in the meantime until tomorrow good r.t. dot com slash usa and check out our youtube page it is youtube dot com slash r t america we are always putting new videos up on there so go check and check out more of my interview from earlier shows today and you can also follow me on twitter at lauren lyster please do have a great night and i will leave you with the rest of that fracking song it's a great one to play us out.