financial headlines to report if. if . well money may not grow on trees but the pentagon budget seems to tell a different tale and as the u.s. tries to rein in soaring deficits is it time to put the best dollars on the chopping block. it's interesting for us to believe your mild or spicy well we sure learn a lot about their personal tastes but what about their plans to fix the u.s. economy we'll have more on the g.o.p. presidential debate. to go from the first year's worth of cuts for the regular which are used to bring out the larger the reporters as well

you heard them those the hacker group anonymous and other activists they're all banding together to take on the federal reserve chairman as well as big banks is anyone listening and will it be enough to change the system. now for policy may not be as exciting or easy to grasp of the leaders hollywood scandal or for that matter hot button topics like abortion or gay marriage so it might sort of be understandable why this subject didn't come out of foreign policy until a full hour and forty minutes into last night's republican presidential debate but is it really understandable i mean keep in mind that u.s. forces are fighting wars in four different countries depending on how you count the economy's in the dumps and while everyone's talking about out of control debts and deficits it seems a very few politicians can actually agree on how to rein in spending now one seemingly obvious area that's right for cuts of the u.s.

military budget after all military spending in the united states has almost doubled since two thousand and one americans represent less than five percent of the world's population but spend more on the military than any other country six times and more than five hundred billion dollars more than china the second largest. for now no one not even admiral mike mullen would deny the fact that u.s. debt is a major threat to national security but where to cut and c.n.n.'s john king may have forgotten to ask republican candidates whether the military budget is a good starting point so we here at r.t. decide to step up to the plate and i can think of no better experts on defense spending than our two next guests lawrence korb is a senior fellow at the center for american progress and a senior advisor for the center of defense information and dr james carafano is a senior defense analyst with the heritage foundation gentlemen thank you so much for even trying to speak for me through with you dr karp on i'd like to start with you you know the cold war is over world war two is over the world's military

situation has changed we have one of the most powerful military in the world and we spend quite a bit to ensure that it stays that way what's wrong with cutting the military budget in this time. well you said there's there wars going on the united states is the world's largest economy it's got global responsibilities not so sure why defense brings a problem and store glee the level of defense spending and its percentage economy so actually near historic post world war two los i'm not sure it's inappropriate certainly not because of our fiscal problems so we can take defense spending the cost but we may have contributed take defense spending to zero tomorrow and thirty years the country still goes broke because so security medicare and medicaid those are the big fiscal issues that they have to grab what we could we can't balance the budget over the long term by cutting defense that's just a fact and doctor of course before i guess he had i just just responded this is often the argument i keep on hearing you know you bring up the issue of military spending and you hear back social security domestic spending these are the issues that we really have to tackle but it doesn't have to be an either or case i mean

a few years ago yourself wrote a piece of a title and i think guns versus butter and butter is winning out why can't we cut both guns and butter well you can see would be less safe just a simple i mean nobody nobody saying we should spend money on the concerts because it's done we should spend money on defense to me the u.s. vital national interests will be less a passion curve if we know that if we do it to do it correctly i think secretary gates has already laid the foundation he said any secretary to recommend setting large land armies into asia the middle east or africa should have ascetics now but if you we can't it's like well he said he should've said it but if you take a look at the projected budget right now you going to cut back on the ground forces and i think you would adopt a different different different strategy and i think that's you know one area that you can take a look at the air war college air force is think tank has done a study about nuclear weapons and they said three hundred eleven is all you need for that sarin so you right now the start agreement guesses and fifteen hundred you

might consider going you know for example down to one thousand and i don't think that that would you know jeopardize security we still have eighty thousand troops in europe i after the end of the cold war the. he's interesting enough to say well gee they're here so we can cut our defense you know defense spending so i think you can take you know take a look at you know take a look at that so there are a lot of things that you can do it if you do it smartly we've done it before dick cheney did it when he worked for the first president bush melvin laird did it when he worked for richard you know richard nixon it can be done and it could be done and if you do it right you got to manage the place better in the bush administration and you know even gay so you don't have a strong deputy secretary of defense to keep weapons costs under under control under control but act accordingly as i mentioned in the intro we are fighting three to four wars that as a doctor carano mentioned our military spending didn't cockpit that problem we have proposed cuts by the obama administration so why not just leave it at that and focus on other an opening first of all to what i'm talking about is not war funding

war funding as supplemental which is the first time we've ever done that in korea and vietnam we didn't do supplements what you know after the first year of the war so i'm not talking about that those need to be funded by the way the pentagon has snuck a lot of things into the supplements that weren't you know directly you know to the war defensive because of what it contributed back in two thousand you know it's ten years ago bush came up with his tax cuts the second president bush he rejected by two thousand and ten and we were completely eliminate the debt that we didn't get more old people in the interim who are today when you have a deal people are war but if you look at what he projected for defense and you look at what we actually spent we had about two trillion dollars counting the war costs and county increasing the baseline budget so it should be on the table it's not going to solve it but it needs to be on the table right now we've got a freeze on discretionary spending other than defense but you to fix our roads for example driven on our roads lately you know we need to you know our education system we're falling behind the you know

a lot of countries in the world so we need to you know put more money into that and not just cut those and not the fence that's we were talking about how good of. we're fighting these conflicts and she said one of the reasons that we need to keep defense spending at a level that is that is because of the different bachmann and these wars but how can the lesson of osama bin laden's killing taught us that these counterinsurgency type stuff lots of this underground programs are necessarily with and help us i mean maybe we should be focusing on these smaller troops who you know with the backing of a serious intelligence gathering can't help us fight the major natural wars that we're fighting look there's a problem and the problem was with what president obama said is we're going to cut four hundred billion dollars we'll just do less missions and the problem is the enemy gets a vote i mean the enemy gets to decide how your flight and it's a greater plan a strategy and say i'm just going to do this that's what i'm afraid that's how president truman to save tons of money in the cold war we said we're just not going to fund south korea we're just going to stay the way and we just i said we're just

not going to defend south korea will save a lot of money and then what happened in north koreans invaded we wanted defending south korea defense spending went through the roof if we had maintained an adequate defense a vague to begin with maybe the north koreans were never attacked never we were never had to waste a kind of money so this notion that somehow which is kind of what larry seventy four is let's just let's have just enough defense and what we think will get the job done that's great if you have enemies that are always going to cooperate this is like this is like people that say i want insurance i want health insurance but i only want health insurance for the diseases that i'm going to get there's a lot of big enemy that's going to attack us right now meaning libya didn't attack us on our soil and we're involved in that you know that's what people asked me on september tenth to who's the enemy that's going to tackle this do you think that it's worth putting our our nation in physical danger because it absolutely not but that you made the point the best is not what's putting the nation of fiscal trouble it's not percent certain defense spending is it near historical larry knows thirty years ago defense spending was fifty percent of the budget today it's twenty percent of the budget it's not the big ticket item it's not we're causing

a problem we're spending i think a reasonable amount on defense that's not the issue we're spending a lot of money on those things people it's a curtis listen if people want better roads and they want to be less safe say. it's america it's a democracy vote for that that's a quote i think we always hear about the percentage of the g.p.l. as they relate to military spending and as he walked across on a correctly set in the sixty's during the cold war we're spending eight percent of the g.d.p. on the military now it's about four percent that have that answer obviously we're spending less but the problem is g.d.p. is meaningless what we do g.d.p. goes down the track goes up ok that's a measure of what you can do and you can't buy perfect security back in the eisenhower administration we spent my percentage of g.d.p. on defense but watch your tax rate the highest tax rate was ninety percent you want to go back to that ok you know and if you want to spend more on that you're going to have to we're taxed more but you know a lot of folks don't want to you know they say if you increase taxes that's going to slow down the economic economic recovery ok if you can look at what your competitors do you know during the cold war we spent you know eight or nine percent

of soviet us up to forty percent of their g.d.p. and that's what led to they were doing they overspent on defense if you put in constant dollars where we're spending right now it's higher than on average in the cold war and as your you know lead in show you know we account for almost half of the world's military expenditures and so i mean this is what you've got to look at what are your competitors doing ok the cold war the competitor was a other superpower alqaeda is not going to be defeated militarily going to have to win that you know by convincing people in that part of the world that their narrative is not true you go into iraq you wonder do you help the al qaeda narrative so we haven't used our you know power wisely and we spent a lot of money you want to go to war in iraq why don't we raise taxes ok so people would have to feel that there wasn't so not only we're not racial we caught them and that did contribute to part of the deficit in the direct cost of the wars in iraq and afghanistan which were not paid for its one point five trillion right now

the indirect cost cutting you know caring for the thousands of people wounded and mentally and physically and everything. like that is going to be posix trillion dollars so what about that i mean who is the big enemy of china getting ready to innovate and if china ever wanted to do something negative i mean they have enough of our current then why do you have health insurance what's the big problem you're young you're healthy what's a problem and what have a lot of my problems true with bankrupting me that meant i couldn't pay my bill clinton and her health insurance bankrupting you is that fifty percent of your how many what percentage of your income is it when i was a pretty reasonable percentage your income compared to what you're getting for look and that's what's offensive it's a reasonable part of our expenditures look larry says we're spending a lot more everybody else well you know what we spend a lot more and everybody on almost everything we spend more on pizza we spend on more movies that actually could ok are we going to say going ok this is meaningless to to state the united states is the world's largest economy we spend more than most people on everything what's relevant about that what's what's important is

we're wasting unsustainably have programs that we can't paper over time that's a problem i agree with you were and what was the reason why nato is not contributing is not because nato is free riding on us it's because they've done their economies what we're doing to ours they have unsustainable social programs and they have high tax rates and they have flat growth and that's why they can afford to serve but you know you're talking about unsustainable spending and wasteful spending let's talk about here in the united states i want to bring to your call one program we're talking about the joint strike fighter program right after a five one trillion dollars according to the test pentagon and the cost taxpayers over the next decade to buy and maintain a fleet of f. thirty five joint strike fighters in the long term even mccain as a fan talked by all standards that that was a job dropping number i mean why do we need a joint strike fighters where are they following one trillion dollars are they stupid are they. are they buying that why are they buying that lot of nation tropico with the high cost of the original car i demand will have

a midlife crisis by ferrari and i mean you know from what you know you go back and you get back to that and i think this is a good point ok yes you need new planes the navy does not want to joint strike. right it's been jammed down have throat they would prefer to pry the f.a. eighteen he n.f. which they already already already have because of the high cost of maintaining it so why not let them they would get what they want and you could save some money to do other one of. these are great plains india just said look we don't want these they don't they won't even buy or it's sixteen to eighteen now if we offer him an f. thirty five they'd buy in a heartbeat because it's the world's finest plane i mean this is ridiculous you're saying let's buy second hand equipment ryobi and they didn't need it after it's not africa it had to quit ok tell it to the indians if i tell that to the navy how are u.s. navy warships of the scieno publicly said it's because they don't have enough money to buy real planes they don't have the benefit of a seven year old dollars are without a ridiculous idea of the world they really were you know they can read the world

meeting military i don't know war we said war weapons are aware of anybody idea whatever afterthought that iran are you saying that tina sanity is enough of a reason to build on anything else that is you're going to push them in a million standing but you're going to put your men and women in harm's way and you can afford to abide and equipment they need you should and what about if you don't put the men and women in and harm from women decide we're harm's way the iraq war was there my english needless senseless that had nothing to do with the attacks of nine eleven all the money squandered there you could buy everything that you need and then some that's the problem you do things that you should we did it in vietnam and we did it in iraq and that's where you spend the money when you should you should be very very very careful and by the way it's amazing with you know if you take the side of organ how do we profile in the cold war we have to the nixon cuts ok that have to the eisenhower cuts they were the reagan building we had put reagan built up stopped in eighty five when they tell you he's in the lead and we've been living off it ever since we have you know we have that army general in the back

that well he did that did live off the reagan building and look how well good luck and you know one of the great they don't allow the way they live and money. in the past that doesn't get us in the future if your roof fall down and you don't like the contrary work on your roof you still have to rebuild your real life already your military going to do it we can't live on a ring of military because that's not what is up there where you get only we don't know you may not be able to under the reagan military we may not be able to deliver under very busy time for it's as you are of course what a fight for change we are out of time a very exciting discussion i think we're going to have you back for the full half hour next time thank you so much it was it was up there lawrence korb with the center for american progress and dr james carafano with her foundation now the defense budget may not have been at the top of the agenda at yesterday's presidential debates but that doesn't mean that the candidates got off easy and keep in mind it was a recent c.n.n. poll that showed that forty eight percent of americans believe another great depression may happen next year so what kind of hard hitting questions did c.n.n.

posed to the candidates let's take a look. or johnny cash that's really tough coke a pepsi coke leno or conan agree that probably leno blackberry or i phone blackberry blackberry it is deep dish or thin crust. spicy or mild oh spicy guessing what the stores or american idol american idol maybe will have to have an american idol contest. i'm sorry. unemployment just went up to nine point per cent half of all unemployed americans have been out of work for at least six months forty four million americans are in food stamps and they're going home sales dropped six point three trillion that's what the teen dollar since the housing crisis began and if that is printing dollars like twenty paper and we're asking the next potential president of the united states about pizza really things out of whack here but thankfully i know just the man to set a straight gerald celente is the director of the trends at a research institute and the publisher of the trends journal he is with us from new

york thank you so much for being here mr cilento did you hear a single idea from from these candidates during the two hour debate last night that made you feel like you know maybe it will be ok if one of these guys wins office not really so meaty only one that has any credibility at all is ron wall and i'm a political atheist i don't take sides on this and that is that he's the only one talking about we're going home with troops about legalizing marijuana about ending these wars on chair on drugs and other kinds of wars it's disgraceful or c.n.n. and you know it's a cartoon news network only somebody with a child's mind were to ask. questions it's the presidential reality show we just sort of law i none of these candidates again with the exception of paul is indistinguishable from the other so it's quite disgrace. well

what we're on in your head here and what the cost to the news network calls the debate although of course i don't know if it would be necessarily any better than any other network that we're talking about here but you mentioned one of the things that one of the points that ron paul brought up which is ending the military conflicts of this country is involved with that and there are many of them we're talking about afghanistan we're talking about iraq there's the covert wars in yemen there's pakistan and libya of course and one of the interesting developments that we saw last night was the u.s. congress voted to cut off funding for efforts in libya all of this just as a plurality of americans finally say that you know they don't think that it's worth it for the united states to keep on getting militarily involved in libya there so if you have congress seemingly onboard the american people on board what are the chances that we're going to end that war. probably slim and none they're going to keep it going at some extent we believe we're not going to see it and come very soon because then it has to go to the senate and oh and you can never tell whether

it's going to be a false leg or something real that we're riled the american people let's not forget how quickly sentiments changed against obama so for obama when the osama of various obama at the sewed broke back in on may first and how the nation rallied behind him and by the way i want to take exception about what about c.n.n. to ask such childish questions at a time when i get every day i get letters from people they're losing everything people have a job for thirty five years have no work at all they're losing their homes people our soldiers be getting killed the wars are draining the treasury and all the little clown asks what do you like deep dish or what did you cross leno or conan come on you know with what as i said this is the right presidential

reality show america's gone from sinatra to snooki stupid but it's really indicative of where the country is heading and that's the importance of last night's debate well where is the country having that mr steele and says it's going to get worse it's it's heading down that anybody that would believe that the same brilliant minds that created all of these problems whether they are military problems economic problems are now going to miraculously pull us out of this well they're out of their mines because the losers in the incompetence are in the white house it's the beltway incompetence they're not going to fix these problems and where warning people what's going on around the world whether it's. in the european monetary union they're not going to fix the greek problem they're not going to fix the four trickle problem they're not going to fix the problems in spain and ireland

italy coming up u.k. has already had one how are they going to fix the problem or i have an idea you have a second mortgage take out a third take out new debt on top of the old debt that's the only thing they could come up with so we're going through the great collapse the world markets are seeing it even even now the guys that the. good the a roundtable the business roundtable are quote less optimistic than before the response or you've been doing this for a long time and you've been making these predictions a lot of them have panned out and i personally every time you say something like this people say you know what your doom and gloom are your pessimists there are no warmest why is it that we're not hearing these these ideas elsewhere why aren't me carrying us on our mainstream our media channels and from the politicians we elect into office we're not hearing it on the business news networks because you have the wall street barkers out there selling you their line of goods and how about

a credit default swap you know you look just like the kind of woman that needs a synthetic collateralized debt obligation so they're always hawking something it's a big ponzi scheme and i'm not saying this in generalities do you realize that they only didn't always it's always time to buy and only one point five percent that they ever say it's a selling opportunity it's always the thawing opportunity they need to keep the ponzi scheme going and they don't like guys like me that stay don't eat the corporate cool way and don't buy the political junk and who's day whose day is that the answers about the politicians is it was only it is it's it's the corporate media look i know a lot of these people. the corporate media we have dinner and we talk and they say how fortunate i am because i'm not be all that into anyone they have that paycheck

that they have to worry about so they have to watch what they say they go off you or add a line they get the call from the top or from somebody out in the political field that doesn't like them so asking about this guy or that boy or girl but mr clinton before we run out of time you got me pretty upset here i'm pretty depressed after the segment if the republicans don't have it right if obama doesn't have it right if no one has that right is there any sort of hope for some sort of positive development i mean how do we get out it's not that we have to get out of the mess the masses take it take a cue from iceland tiny little iceland i guess that's the only country left with by now they had referendums in italy a referendum let the people vote on these issues but politicians don't represent god they only little kids go lead that the politicians represent the people that stuffs the most money into their people it's in the bronx we call it bribes and

payoffs in the white shoe boy language they call it campaign contributions and that's what other countries have to vote mr selenski if you ever run for office i hope you let us know first thank you so much that was there in the land said the director of the trends research institute. all right well the political hacking group anonymous is back and this time they're targeting ben bernanke he's saying that the fed chairman has to resign over what they say are economic crimes against the american people but while these so-called hacktivists are talking tough few people it's even for listening now the latest campaign operation empire state rebellion was supposed to turn protesters out in mass today and all our cameras showed up to the event it looks like they may have been alone and few others did now according to some like journalist and author nomi prins america's new the full extent of the ways in which wall street was screwing them while the picture behind me may be a little different take a listen. you know what groups like anonymous and am status and stuff i've been

trying to put forth which is that there was a crime committed against. the united states population and whether whether they are democrats or republicans liberal conservative doesn't matter but basically there was a movement of wealth from. really the people individuals up into the banking institutions and the vigils that run them and sort of the contingent that has the most power and influence from wall street up through washington through the fed through the treasury department and so forth and i think the problem is the connection or the understanding that connection how what happened in washington the decisions that were made during the economic crisis period of the financial crisis period of the fall of two thousand and eight and since then really have impacted and been the actual cause behind a lot of the job loss and the foreclosure issues and the lending problems that have beef on the rest of the population it's there is still

a disconnect and and there are groups that are trying to make that clear but when it comes into getting those people in the streets who then have that clear understanding of what is going on and how it has impacted them how they have the power to perhaps change that or at least make their voices heard against that that's where there's still a growing movement and it isn't the kind of thousands of people you see in the streets for example in certain countries in europe or what we saw in the middle east and you know it's interesting because you talked about some of the decisions that were made when when the financial crisis that happened and of course we all saw the republican debate that took place last night and before they got to their very exciting hot button issues of abortion and gay marriage and pizza crust and i phones they did talk a lot about economics and i found one one interesting point made by a new group gingrich i think we have that sound bite let's see if we can play that right now the congress here. frank pulled in order to sort of enjoy actually bill you know to start. creating jobs right now because for those fourteen

million americans this use a depression now now i mean what's your reaction to that because it seems to me that what we're saying here is the that regulation is responsible for the current dire financial situation and yet wasn't it the lack of regulation that led to this whole mess. yeah absolutely that that's such a twisting of what happened it was it was a lack of regulation it was the repeal initially of the glass steagall act in one thousand nine hundred nine which allow banks to basically play on all sides of the table to take in invest to take an individual deposits to provide loans at egregious conditions to homeowners and to borrowers to basically package up those loans that they've then given out into another part of the back in trade against them and and have hedge funds and private equity funds and other banks throughout the world leverage the assets they created on the back of these loans from individuals all of that happened because of the deregulation of the financial

system and so for for newt gingrich you or anyone and this is still an issue that's not clearly understood by many democrats it's sort of a bipartisan disconnect to say that it's an issue with regulation not being. regulation being too much and not enough and not understanding what exactly the banking system did to the rest of the country will be a point from which you can't really fix anything so it's miscommunications a disconnect you can't fix anything from there he is right there is an economic depression going on in this country that he is correct about but it's certainly not because there's been too much regulation or because the dodd frank bill brings in more regulation because the dodd frank bill is a very very very weak bill that doesn't do anything to really really slap the financial system back into place to bring back last you go to break up the too big to fail banks or to take back from them all of the trillions of dollars that was

given in subsidies in order to have them float while the rest of the economy is sinking yet the investment banks more so as years go by and have more money and more lobbying power and more influence really pick the side that's going to be more that they will be the most powerful so whether it was the democrat side when obama was running for president and when goldman sachs. it was his number two contributor to his candidacy for him from a corporate perspective or what will be happening in the next election period in two thousand and twelve a loss street will do a cola do is figure out where they think they can put the most money to get back the most influence they don't care whether the person is republican or democrat what they care is who's going to win who's going to be in power and how they can influence that power strong words that was no me prince journalist and author of it takes a village all right well unfortunately that's all the time that we have for tonight's show but if you missed any of the stories or want more information on what republic covering these check out our website r.t. dot com slash usa or our you tube channel and if you want to show.