afghanistan is a war that we have to win we do not have an option. so which option will obama choose tonight bringing the troops home from afghanistan is the subject of the president's speech this evening but how many when and what will it mean for america's longest war. and it's the press conference everyone's been waiting for the federal reserve chairman took to the podium today with more bad news for the u.s. economy this morning he missed reading the economic team leaves we'll bring you the details in just a bit. and get ready for sticker shock at the grocery store food prices are expected to soar over the next decade we're going to break down what's really

fueling that search. that evening it's wednesday june twenty second four pm here in washington d.c. . and watching our t.v. . well it will be a mission accomplished speech for the president will address the country at eight pm this evening where he's expected to announce the start of his long promised wind down of the afghanistan war now by all accounts obama is caught between the pentagon brass and his political base the generals of course want to stick it out but his supporters and not to mention a growing number of republicans say that are you know he can't get out of the country fast enough as for how many troops will come home and over what period of time we can only speculate now reports say anywhere from ten thousand soldiers to as many as thirty thousand or so which keep in mind that if ghana stand is america's longest war when it's claimed more than fifteen hundred lives and cost

taxpayers billions of dollars and while the pentagon definitely wants to keep the surge going americans are saying no more and for the first time in the decades long conflict a majority of them fifty six percent want the troops to come home as soon as possible a fact not lost on a president who is running for a second term so what can we expect then though what does it all mean for the answer let's turn to jake deliberate oh an afghan the veteran himself now an outspoken critic and co-founder of rethink afghanistan and for a more personal perspective we have ours award of an afghan american blogger who's speaking to us from boston welcome both of you great to have you both on the program jake i'll start with you you know it's the beginning of the fighting season in afghanistan the general is certainly made clear that they they want the current levels to continue to really make good on what progress they say they have achieved there is this misguided approach by obama to announce a withdrawal you know at this is the right time it's

a critical time for two reasons one he made a promise when he surged in his west point speech he made a promise that he would begin withdrawal this time he didn't say how much it was producers' to be based on conditions on the ground so it's good to withdraw and secondly the reason is good because the american people have become weary of war and as a result of the most recent washington post poll we've seen seventy. three percent of americans want to get us out of afghanistan significantly by the end of this year so it's a politically winning decision it's a militarily. good decision to get our troops out of there sooner than later so i think that this is the right time but it all depends on how much he says we're going to withdraw i think that's the pushback i mean the generals say that no it's not time to bring back the troops they don't want to lower those levels what makes you say that it's a militarily good decision well two things one generals are decide are have an agenda that it's put forth within the culture of the pentagon that's usually can

comes with more force more trucks more bombs more etc but that's only one side of the battle the other side of the battle is the political battle of the afghan people on the ground and that's the part that the president is the best fit to make a decision for in concordance with his partners inside of pakistan and afghanistan it's clear that we've got problems with pakistani and afghan relations and it's clear that the u.s. needs to improve those and the way to improve those is to have a smaller military footprint so the generals may say why won't want more war but the president knows from dealing with the diplomats and the politicians of the of the other side that we need less troops so that afghans can begin to take over control of their own country and are there turning to you for a moment i mean you know we hear the president as probably at the cost of any indication will also talk about how things are improving and how the afghans are getting more and more ready to take control of their own security we had think that they go there to hear saying the same thing or do you agree i mean is against and stable enough for folks to take care of that country themselves. well i completely

agree with jake i really felt strong leads but we flush on her knees and pakistan actually plays a large role here as a quite honest i question their loyalty to both the u.s. and afghanistan i haven't seen any i haven't seen a real effort here in trying to counter. terrorists chiroptera suffer as it has been to simply got a safe haven for various terrorist networks network and they continue as well as the fantasy they need to say a larger role in preventing that from happening and could you argue as though that that u.s. presence on the ground there has further simply destabilized that whole situation i mean had we not been there perhaps pakistan would not have been as much of a concern who is a nuclear country that we're talking about at the end of the day well i still believe that pakistan but you know what the situation is in fact in india as well but what of a motivation to commit genocide and try to counter india's effort. there is

a lot of campus in afghanistan but yes there are. continuing to we already know that the afghans are opposing which i mean this is a country that has remained was supporting engagement for a very long time to this or a collapse but those are have to go through the cultural aspects here as well but they don't want the american flag and there we was with the afghan people we processing a bit of the political situation yes respect not a problem here but we're not little the afghan people on the ground are about what we want but what they want and if they don't report never was there an occupier then what are we doing there it just doesn't make sense and ours are just to stay with you for a little while longer you know a poll i saw said that eight in ten afghan men did not support u.s. presence there of course of this past year is shaping up to be the most deadly for civilians on the ground there but if the u.s. forces leave what's there to just sort of fill in the void i mean cars election has been marred by fraud charges that the country strong enough to stand strong enough

i don't. well you know i. sure the matter is you have to leave the bunch away and let the academic work that is what was shown but they are getting stronger the longer the us leaves me the president told me that actually a weekend i mean you know if you set the record for the all of us on the top are ready for the people negotiation i want to go over the base and i think this is the time right now engage with them and show that you know what we're serious about you know that it was there it's about publishing for for international peace treaty with you but we need to make sure that you're not responding with any sort of violent act you know. it's all kind of the one you saw there we need but you know there's a negotiation and jake do you agree i mean if the taliban are the key to this political solution this is a group that we the u.s. has been demonizing since the ninety nine hundred ninety s. how is the president going to convince folks that suddenly there they are the key

to success in afghanistan well i've got bad news for anybody that's hopeful that somehow the taliban will ever be. a partner for the afghan people basically what's going to happen in my prediction in the next five years if the u.s. begins a significant drop the taliban will take over control so much of the southeast is that they already have control and human rights abuses will continue to maintain as they are going on now for instance if you saw that woman that was on the cover of time magazine that with her nose cut off her ears cut off that happened while u.s. troops are there that's certainly going to happen while afghan troops are there but some folks will hear you say that and i'll say you know what that's a great excuse to keep us full of soldiers on the ground there well and i would say that they can go ahead and sign up and then they can go ahead and join the military and go to afghanistan for four or five and six deployments had a rate of ten million dollars an hour the bottom line is that the ground in afghanistan faces is not something to americans can fix it's not something that nato or the e.u.

can fix it's something that only afghans can fix and they have to want it more than anybody else the longer we stay in babysit and they have. it provide basically dependency from afghans on the united states that the more corrupt and sick it's going to be and i think this is the most important thing the only reason that the united states has any interest in afghanistan is because of pakistan's nuclear weapons if we have any hope of fixing the pakistani nuclear weapons crisis it will be enquire us to pull back our troops so the diplomatic relations can increase with pakistan not military pressure but i don't know if i agree with you on that point but r.'s zero if i can just talk about the the situation here i mean realistically no matter what the president or now announce says regardless of the size of the withdrawal it's going to take time and in that meanwhile karzai continues to preside over that country he doesn't have according to critics are a lot of support there in your estimation do you think that there's some chance for maybe an overthrow well. karzai u.s.

backed me it wasn't a puppet government but you know the us obviously when i stole the election you know. he was traded to the election and we end up feeling that that if you don't support him for the you know large part because he does work with the majority of regulation i'm not sure if young people are strong enough to want to revolt and overthrow the government but long as we're seeing. and back it's very hard it's important to keep in mind of course and i know we don't know exactly what the president is announcing tonight but optimism aside realistically based on your experience do you think that this is going to be really seen as the beginning or of the end where is it more of a political move to sort of pad obama support going into the twenty twelve election this statement tonight is a political move to win his reelection because the what he's going to propose in

terms of militarily it's not going to make a significant difference what it will be it will be five thousand troops by the end of july twentieth eleven another five thousand troops by the end of december and then twenty two thousand troops by the end of september two thousand and twelve so basically we're looking at a thirty three thousand troop withdrawal by the end of september twentieth well that's what it will be that's exactly what he's going to announce verbatim i just got off the phone with people inside the white house a few minutes ago and of course a lot of them will be engineers and support teams and not necessarily the fighting and who knows if they're going to insert combat contractors civilian contractors to replace those we don't know exactly as can be but that is what he's going to say tonight all right well a lot of uncertainty but one thing's for sure i'm sure not a lot of people will agree that obama's making the right move here everyone will find something to criticize here that's my prediction for the i thank you so much that was a blogger and military analyst take the bear to go and afghan american blogger are

so. now the cost of war not just human lives but the livelihoods as well and the direction of the u.s. economy since the war in afghanistan began has been decidedly trending downwards into a hole that many call a recession and some even say is a depression so where is this country going on a constant solutions for our financial boat was reportedly the answer may not be all that positive but let's take a look at the report that our correspondent christiane purrs out for today. two hundred years after the collapse of this nation's economy. the dust is still settling. and decisions on how best to rebuild are still in the works that the economy needs to grow to create jobs our basic challenge is trying to figure out how to make growth faster more sustainable translate to more jobs the lack of jobs has led to widespread homelessness many of this nation's cities and a foreclosure rate still too high to give most americans any hope jordi of

americans are understanding that this is not the recession that they've experienced in the past this is the second great depression the unemployment rate still hovering above nine percent it is a grim picture painted even grimmer by some economists in the united states it's nine point one percent but then when you add in the underemployed part time workers who want full time work and can't find discouraged workers. people who have dropped out of the labor market it's probably more like one out of five americans proposed solution to this thirty billion dollars small business lending bill signed into law in september i president obama less than nine hundred applications have been filed and so far zero dollars have been given out the majority of small banks haven't even applied we do not have the capacity in the program does not give us the ability to force banks to lend money solutions proposed by the obama admin.

continue to ignite anger mr secretary i would just like to close by saying that on behalf of the business owners in north carolina and across this country you are wrong also happening and with no apparent progress vice president biden and lawmakers continue their struggle to find an agreement to raise the debt ceiling as the deadline looms closer there is increasing talk of a short term agreement kicking the can further down the road as well as reports of lawmakers resorting to creative accounting and gimmicks to exaggerate the size of spending cuts finally with q e two the six hundred billion dollars bond buying program expected to end in a week many worry about what lies ahead and if it will feel anything like this. or like this. what the implosion looks like in greece where austerity measures have

already been put into place the unpopular solution that's angered the people that. leaving many to wonder if the similar scenes becoming to these shores i don't know what the end result will be but maybe there will be a night where americans get fed up with this and will be storming the gates of washington d.c. with pitchforks over the last few years the u.s. has had to borrow trillions of dollars to keep this country and of building operational the federal reserve bank has also printed hundreds of billions of dollars and confidence of the economy to try to help the frustrating part for so many americans that they haven't felt those results yet and they're starting to wonder when and if things will ever get better in washington christine frizz out our team. all right a lot of economic news discussed today the debt ceiling negotiations are continuing under a tight deadline the greek crisis of course a still threatening global economy and all the federal reserve chairman joined the

ranks of those pessimistic outlook for the u.s. economy lowering a cut the economic outlook outlook for the rest of the year pardon me but when he also said today that the causes of the downturn are temporary and he brushed off the risk that greek banks pose that the greek crisis poses to u.s. banks so is he on point or is he missing the bigger picture here well let's turn now to michael t. snyder he is the founder of the economic collapse blog dot com michael let's start with the greek news here i was a little bit surprised that he said it in the q. and a he was asked whether the crisis could really affect u.s. banks and he said it would be a very small hit do you agree or completely disagree big recross sometimes that seems to be another lehman brothers moment because what you have in greece is a situation where there are just kicking between and on the route if greece defaults it's not going to just affect rhesus going to search all of your. banks all over europe or very much exposed to greece and beings from europe are very

highly leveraged for example when lehman brothers collapsed they were leveraged thirty one to one which was absolutely horrible you know german banks are actually a whole lot of greek debt and there are liberals thirty to one at this point so greece goes don't it's going to ripple effects across the entire world and there are experts all throughout the financial industry not a warning that this could set off the other two thousand and eight so crisis and michael another interesting thing that came out of this press conference of course he was not as a beat as he was the last time that he spoke but a brain he was talking in revising the economic outlook he said that you know what the problems that are causing the current crisis for temporary they'll get better we'll get pulled out of this hole that we're in or is that something you agree with . i totally disagree of course grinning he was totally wrong about the housing crash in recession he said those things would never happen when you look at the economy today two years ago there were two point six million long term unemployment

states today there are six point two million long term unemployed overall there are twenty five million americans that are either unemployed or underemployed and average duration of unemployment at united states three is approaching forty weeks two years ago i'm sorry back in two thousand and seven we had twenty six million americans on food stamps today we have an all time record forty four million americans on food stamps so things are getting worse and bernanke is and the model and he said of course very hinted at least that q.e. three the controversial and quantitative easing program is not going to be continued it's the first the current the current round of of pumping dollars into the economy is set to expire soon do you think that they'll stick to that promise already think that the fed will continue printing. i don't think there's any way to stick to this promise because the truth is that around the world people are getting turned on us that there's been headlines about china and there are holdings of short term government bonds. a top official in the russian government came out

recently and so they're going to continue to cut back on u.s. government debt in coke the largest bond fund in the world and. they're going to reduce their buildings the u.s. government debt over the long term and so on but there's not that many partners in the marketplace and yet u.s. government has to continue if you must quantities of debt so the federal reserve is not for you know who's going to vote so we're going to call quantitative easing three or not someone is going to help the boy oh and it's probably going to be the federal reserve and you know one interesting thing that we talked about this program yesterday as the president came out saying sort of that one solution to the economic crisis is to get for investors to to spend money here in america and invest and more companies here and you know we hear so much outrage and any time a you know someone who is seen as sort of a political enemy like the chinese or the arabs coming here and offering to buy up a pork torah an energy company and yet writing you think there hasn't really been

any outrage whatsoever of the fact that the chinese have been buying up our debt over the over the years the japanese have been a why is there such a disparity in terms of are outraged. well look all titians in the media taught the american people that globalization is a good thing but in the end of what every single month now the united states is running trade deficits that are somewhere in the neighborhood of between forty billion dollars hugely and over the course of the year that's how trillion dollars are we in this country they could've gone to support american businesses and american jobs and then that money comes back and boy start one hand of course up physical assets for example what china recently bought a thirty percent stake in a company you know texas or oil and gas fields and that is doing huge energy down in texas and so you know what we're seeing is the united states rep is going from the number one economic power in the world to the point where we're dependent on

foreign money coming into the acropolis so well our practice if we lost our politicians are very briefly back to the greek crisis separating he was also asked about a whether he thought that that a ferry here in the u.s.s.r. production spending would be a good idea he said that is not the case of course if it weren't for the us terry measures we would not see people on the street like we did increase what it takes for americans to come out in similar terms. well we are already starting to see some unrest the economy has been really down for a couple of years and we're starting to see frustration boil over for example there is the phenomenon of robberies that have been happening all over the united states the courts he has reported on we've seen it in washington chicago minnesota all across the united states were to use our argentinosaurus grew up in whatever they want and running out in fact it's gone beyond where we've seen groups that used to people out of cars in chicago or bicycles the route the first version of the

american people starting to boil over and eventually exactly what is certain in greece is going to happen here as well and what what's your prediction on what the tipping point by that would be obviously this is a trend but what will really set it over the edge if anything well that's when the american people totally lose hope right now but you've had faith that things are going to get better but they're starting at least for example recently in north carolina an elderly man dressed up you know i mean well behaved and he handed the bank teller a note demanding some money not was not an unusual it's a bank robbery but he only demanded one dollar why because he got a dollar he sat down he waited for the police to write he wanted to be arrested so that he could go to jail and get free health care because he knew he couldn't make it any other way that's how desperate people in the states are starting to come up but what do you think is going to be actual cuts to social security medicare medicaid actual spending reductions here that will get people to wake up or something that's outside of our hands for example getting too close to the debt

default and an economic crisis that's a more cause from global issues and policies here but then. you know one big thing is going to be the last jobs lost there are programs are starting to be implemented on the street local levels throughout the united states in fact u.b.s. investment research predicts that four hundred fifty thousand. local government jobs are going to be cut next year so the american people can't the documents that you know people mortgage they're going to get. are going to hear more cutbacks but it will grow so on and so forth as we try to do something about this horrible budget crisis and people are going to get really. it's most promising future we're looking for extra let's hope it doesn't come to that michael thank you so much for your time as michael t. snyder founder of the economic collapse blog dot com well it's one thing to cut back on how much you eat if you're watching your waistline but what if you couldn't afford the cost of food according to some experts that could soon be

a reality for more and more people across the globe a decade of high food prices i was the warning from the united nations as well as the o.e.c.d. last week and prices could soar by as much as thirty percent and not to mention that's already on top of a forty percent spike in global prices of the past year now with figures like that it's no surprise that food security is at the top of the g. twenty agenda agriculture ministers are meeting in paris right now to figure out just how to tackle the price hikes solutions of course demands an understanding of the problem and unfortunately it's unclear whether global officials fully get what's behind the spike in food costs for us our next guest might have a clue his name is daniel daniel decker and he's a senior contributor of the street dot com he's also the author of this book here the oils and lisbeth taming the on reliable price of oil to secure our economy general thank you so much for speaking with us now when you look at the problem of hunger and food inflation in your view is this a production problem where we're not making enough of the stuff or

a political problem. well it's partially a production problem lou see but what is not really well understood is that it's also become a financial problem in that hard assets greens and so forth it's been most seen with oil have become tools for speculators tools for investments of many different classes of investors to get involved in and that besides making the price go up over the course of a very short period of time has added to a lot of the volatility that we've seen in prices you mentioned the forty percent of grain prices that we've seen and we've also seen obviously how destabilizing this kind of volatility can be in terms of what we've seen in unrest in the middle east and north africa so this is a problem that the g twenty in paris is going to try to get a handle on although it's just the agricultural ministers that are meeting and not really the financial ministers which are the ones who have any power whatsoever to try and tackle this secular to the problem so why is it that in so many discussions

about the food price issue we see folks emphasizing our you know whether advanced and production and failed agriculture policies you don't really see anyone talking about the commodity of the commoditization and financialization of it in the speculation that some talk here. explain that if you could just do that in a really simple way to our viewers who are into financial experts could really understand how this works. right and two reasons that happens is one obviously there is a fear again going on on wall street trying to dissuade people now remember that there have been all sorts of geological and environmental issues we've had this year we've had droughts in russia we've had flooding in australia and other things but these things have happened through time it's been sort of a way to alibi what's been going on in food prices as a clue to people not here in the united states who don't spend a significant portion of their incomes on food but particularly in those countries

that we've seen if had such on the rest where fifty sixty s sometimes eighty percent of the money that they have goes into just basic food stuffs so there has been or are a need for a sort of a disconnect from what has been going on in the financial markets particularly over the last five years the up and down spiking we've seen in corn and wheat prices we saw in zero eight and we're seeing it again this year and what is actually going on what people can grab and understand which is maybe a flood or some sort of other or a drought problem but it's really not much of a production issue it's much more of a financial one and talk about the role of oil and that price uncertainty because after all when it well the price at cost of oil goes up that's what hurts us many factors that's what helps us refrigerator process food and it's all really entered trying to explain that price. indeed it is the most important input costs to food not only for the farming but as you say for processing literally and in the

financial markets nothing is more important than energy costs in terms of corporate growth and profitability so this is the most important single input cost that anyone needs to look at when they're looking at food costs and the poverty and the hunger that is going around globally and in this respect there has been an unbelievable financial rush to get involved in the oil fully seventy five percent of indexing of commodities is directed towards oil and that amounts to in the united states alone close to three hundred fifty billion dollars of our buying money money that goes in to buy oil and specifically drives prices we've seen for example prices at the pumps but even on the financial markets oil go well above one hundred ten dollars in the government cia and almost one hundred thirty five

dollars in the european benchmark which is the brant market before coming down just a couple of weeks ago but even coming down people are saying we're getting some relief from these oil prices and yet we're still hovering very close to one hundred dollars here in the united states and in europe closer to one hundred fifteen dollars so while is really one of the major catalysts along with what we talk about biofuels that has been charging the commodity trading we warn in rice and other grains are right well a lot of a lot of interesting details there really get appreciate your time and i was daniel decker senior contributor of the street dot com. please be sure to tune in to our next newscast in about thirty minutes from now we're going to talking about the raiders at the last privacy we just got this video in-house take a look at footage of the court site the data center right outside of d.c. in reston virginia and miss ames where f.b.i. agents raided computers web servers other materials knocking a series of sites offline that i'm still not up and running so what's going on.