an attack on a prominent hotel in afghanistan reignite fear and speculation so will this change the role of the u.s. and afghan officials taking over. as goes greece so goes the rest of the world it's a real concern these days and just one of many challenges new i.m.f. chief christine lagarde will inherit so how will she chafes the global landscape doesn't shape her first. concert or problem a little. and in the food and nato backfire libyan civilians call for an engine

a dose campaign a quote the bombs of betrayal be drowning out their voices the president does not have the power under the constitution to you know laterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation that's senator there reading a quote though that it is actually senator barack obama so why has the change of heart over libya and went to members of congress to say about it and. it's tuesday june twenty eighth eight pm here in washington d.c. and christine for sound watching our team. well starting off tonight our team is following a cordon aided attack involving multiple suicide bombers and gunman at a western style hotel in kabul afghanistan the hotel intercontinental widely known

as the intercon sits atop a mountain overlooking the city and was seen just a few moments ago engulfed in flames and smoke lots of reports coming out tonight and as far as this hotel the most frequent guests there afghan political leaders and foreign visitors often western journalists and contractors this is considered to be one of the safest places in kabul next to the embassy and the presidential palace there afghan officials tell us already as all suspects in the attack have been killed there are also other reports coming in that an additional ten people have been killed those numbers have yet to be confirmed a lots of speculation of course on just what this means for the u.s. schedule to start withdrawing troops and afghan officials set to take over many security operations there a spokesperson for the taliban has claimed responsibility for this attack. will be gone out of the beginning of a new era in the global financial world french finance minister christine lagarde

has been confirmed as the new head of the international monetary fund she is of course replacing dominique strauss kahn who was charged with sexually assaulting a maid at a new york hotel last month. this of course a prestigious position but let's get to the nitty gritty here and talk about what the world talk about the world that will guard inherit and what it will look like. well here's one view in greece today and for much of the last year riots in the street people fighting and dying and demonstrating against the government many there has failed them unemployment in greece now about sixteen percent i nansen by banks standstill as the debate continues over austerity measures and more worry and more speculation that as goes greece so goes the rest of the world the rest of the

world and of course here in the united states the middle class continue to suffer evidence of that just about everywhere you look and here in washington right now talks going on about the debt ceiling and these talks going nowhere fast and so goes earlier i spoke to charlie mcgrath founder of why don't wake news dot com to get his take on all of this. well i think her greatest challenges will be to make sure that the same masters. controlled kong can that she can keep them satisfied in order to advance her blossoming political career one i don't know you're talking about but i'm talking about the banks of france and germany i mean and simple she is the same old school just like shrugs come on she's going to work diligently to make sure that austerity rain throughout europe so that the banks get they get paid they don't have to take care that we need it isn't it incredibly

ironic that all the burden we're talking about greece right now but it's going to spread you said it as well as greece goes the world all the burden is being shifted to the back of the system nobody is talking about having the banks do anything but make more and more money on people's misery for example the one hundred ten billion euro bailout that happened in may of two thousand and ten this was the end all be all bail if you remember here we are we're years later and they're talking more austerity that hundred ten billion euro bailout is going to cost one hundred thirty one billion euros in inference and refinanced the banks are the ones that are actually reaping this incredible profit so we see one austerity measure we're told at the end all be all just like in the states where we see one bailout this is going to fix our financial problems but it is never going to end and so we see unfortunately hopefully peacefully but more people in the streets like we see

it happen so are you saying then you know that greece should default that you know . this is this is a foregone conclusion the loads are not sustainable they're not that the medically possible to pay that you know if the end of the day default is going to occur. but if the end of this day if we keep going down the i.m.f. we will have a system that's completely and totally own but the banks i mean this is the the crux of why the people are in industry think greece right now they're talking about making the infrastructure of greece and privatizing we're going to see the exact think thing in this country we already see goldman memos coming out talking about the future. in investing is going to be in infrastructure you know in order owning the water the highway system toll roads because you can tax the people indefinitely and it's the guaranteed profit for in perpetuity plus i mean i do want to talk

about the trickle down effect and we will bring it back to the united states but i also want to point to as certainly a lot of countries in europe having financial troubles and we do see chinese prime minister on a european tour right now he has offered to help to buy some of their debt so archie spoke to author an investor jim rogers about what this could mean so i just want to play a little part about what he said you know how do you like. to become the savior they become the largest creditor for europe and they're going to have a very major seat at the table it's going to improve their position in the i.m.f. it's going to produce improved their position with the world bank it's going to improve their position if you win because you know the europeans are going to have to be more and more friendly to china because china saving american i cannot save them. so basically when he seems to be saying is that you know these countries in europe they're going to have to play real really nice with china what do you do first ok i wear my head and i wear my head bowed because i want to look cool like

him rog oh wow i think you look cooler without them but. i agree one hundred percent i've read a lot of information on this deal and if you look at it from a political standpoint. we could look at this as trying to drive a wedge between europe and the united states will suddenly they're coming in baylor bailing out all these european nation then they've got an ally in their corner next time they're there any kind of dispute between the united states and china is very very obvious. the chinese are making a play to be the world's number one economy and i think everybody would agree we're on track to see that so but again you know another side of that coin is china needs to prevent its own civil disobedience and civil unrest and push back and they can't do that unless there are an ever expanding economy you know the projection now is they're going to be in single digit growth this year which you

know america and europe europe would be jumping for joy if they had those kind of numbers in a china that's consider starting to go into recession almost you know and they're already seeing some civil unrest by people not having the jobs to go to so i think it behooves them to make sure they have a trading partner that still consuming the products that they're making far cheaper than the west and all right let's bring it back here to the united states i mean we certainly haven't seen quite what we've seen in greece in terms of people taking to the streets but there are a lot of people especially in the middle class there are frustrated and they're voicing their concerns let's talk about you know what this all means in terms of what's next i know you've been very outspoken about this in the past. give us your take on the suffering middle class right now and what you think happens next. but i think. great question i mean i think with the suffering middle class right now is starting to be to forgotten class and what i mean by that is we have three

years now of this bailout nation we see articles like this in march of two thousand and ten saying american back we have a recovery because the money that was handed out the wall street and we were told things are getting better and. we're going to see growth in some ten eleven and on forward and so we have millions and millions of people who are unemployed still starting to fall off the unemployment rolls and they just become basically non-person they don't exist they're not a statistic anymore they they no longer receive any benefit from the government anymore and they just kind of go by the wayside typically i think more more people are truly waking up to this as i travel back and just in new york yesterday. in a random sampling of talking to people in the airport this feeling of something is about to happen in this country as far as the citizens of this nation pushing back because they just can't handle one more. that was charlie mcgrath founder of wide

awake news dot com. president obama now is entrenched in talks with top senate leaders on the debt kicking off a pair of meetings yesterday for trying to resolve the stalemate on raising the country's debt ceiling that now by the way fourteen point three trillion dollars so far nothing's worked and with the looming august second deadline there is worry it won't happen some saying it shouldn't happen and still others who say this is all just a big show designed by politicians who want to play to their bases all pushing the problem to the very last minute when we really are into a corner arches warless or spoke to dean baker about this he's the co-director of the center for economic and policy research and she wanted to start off with his take on what exactly is going on here. we were close to our political theater it certainly meant cancer walk out last week said their campaigns tax increases that clues political theater i'm sure planned their long time in advance the can do it

happened so it was obviously theater and they know there's no way they're going to have an agreement with president obama that doesn't involve some type of tax increase whatever they want to call but it's going to have to involve some some revenue increase in their parts theater and are they actually making progress i guess they will because you know at the end of the day they are going to have to have a deal so you can visualize two two series basically one is that they come to some sort of deal in the not too distant future they'll turn it was you actually get to this deadline on august second and that's a hard and fast deadline but somewhere there are about and at that point secretary geithner presumably make some statement saying look we owe x. tens of billions of dollars have to be paid in three days there's no money in the bank i can't pay that and at that point the financial markets could not so be just like what happened when the charge was voted down the first time it happened to wall street people are scared to death they started calling speaker boehner cantor mcconnell so you better pass something or this is it and my guess is the point they

go running back i would have you on the show august third we're going to see her looking. at in the meantime it does sound like a few things have changed there are some reports there's a report in the washington post today that republican leaders are actually looking at one of their sacred cows that they may look at military spending and that spending is something that can be cut do you think we will actually season significant defense cuts would that be possible well i think it definitely will because the military budget question is how significant so i don't think there's any doubt they will agree to cuts in the military the question is whether they really are or sizable or whether they're primarily for show i mean there's a lot when we saying do you think that this is going to be significant we have a whole lot of debt we have a you know a very large deficit we need to cut more than forty billion dollars here or there to make any difference i'm sure i mean part of the story is you know what's the baseline in terms of the middle. sure the defense cuts so we've increased military spending a huge amount because of the wars in iraq and afghanistan and presumably we are getting our troops out of there whatever pace so that does mean less military

spending so they'll be a lot of so should with the ending or binding down of those wars do we go beyond there i kind of doubt that so we will see some cuts they won't be trivial but they're the sort of cuts that you'd expect from the ending of those wars but the other thing to keep in mind is they're just running the numbers so they can write down any number they want for you know what they think we're going to spend in two thousand and fifteen sixteen seventeen the present time is that so we might get a situation where we get a lot of cuts that are written into law today but it's to some extent are job that everyone knows who want to actually see speaking of projections and what you know as tim it's our first spending this estimate of the debt has added one hundred twenty trillion and when you add up all of the expected unfunded. entitlements when you look at the debt that is code to all of the people that investing u.s. debt that's the chinese government is this really the dire situation we're looking at. this i'm going to see via report here is the hundred twenty trillion is

essentially you know we did see suppose that would pay out everything that people get so security benefits and we don't count the taxes to pay out everything that people are scared to give medicare benefits we don't want the tax receipts it's kind of silly a number of other words if you want to go deeper and scare people you can put together a number like that but it's really not the sort of thing that happens not to take seriously so the cvo you're not supposed to know the studios in los cabos probably asked to do this by members of congress in cabo does what they're told so they think this is political it's political it's nonsense all right well i want to talk a little bit about another item as far as what is the state of the economy i want to bring up what analysis someone recently had the president of u.b.s. america he says this he says since i sat here a year ago we have two million jobs that have been created exports have gone up ten percent and technology is booming agriculture is booming. but when you look at the t.v. you hear what we are not doing well i believe we have built a foundation and are on the right path now i have seen where u.b.s.

is in new york as i work there and saw a cushy street and i'm sure he has a very cushy office and i'm sure new york looks like things are improving from where he set so i'm curious if you know as we're sitting here talking about the debt and the you know possible unfunded liabilities that are even more than what we typically hear on the t.v. that he is talking about what do you think that the situation in the economy really is with it it is not new at the time again this is really kind of a charade and so unfortunately wasting time talking about the real solution rather charade how is this really going to be because the financial markets don't give a damn financial markets are willing to go in the united states money at three percent interest on terms that shows they don't period or little bit when you argue that that is in part because of the federal reserve policy of quantitative easing and on buybacks which have kept interest rates on are scheduled to end on june thirtieth that's maybe lower to twenty thirty basis points or at most because it ends in june thirtieth look at the markets know what it's and you do it's already risen back that there's a yes exactly no about the no june thirtieth comes this week ok so that doesn't

make any difference but how does the dental make any difference i mean you he said he thinks an interesting job in these areas here is a start to sell off treasuries are you saying that you know i'm asking them to sort of treasuries you want them to raise the value of their currency against the dollar how would they do that they would so off their dollar holdings so they were actually doing what we're asking them to do now is dean baker co-director of the center for economic and policy research. turning to libya where many libyans say international criminal court's arrest warrant for moammar gadhafi is all just a cover for nato's attempts to kill colonel gadhafi many also calling for nato leaders to be held accountable for their actions as well as violence and devastation there continue arcee correspondent maria from notion is just one of a few reporters we've got on the ground there in libya and has more on what this all means. the road from the capital tripoli to gregor is lined with the aftermath of war towns abandoned as the population fled the border and. this is

what's left of the airport in the siege of. home to one of the country's key oil refineries the last plane to go on this runway just hours before it was hit. says listen it's only in the targets of military value. telecommunications power to stop . throwing in a time. this is a safe place to strikes and they've also accidentally. killed two civilians since there is no t.v. in this area and as we can see. it has also been disrupted. there is no water and no to. what used to be happen this man says has become hell was once home now feels unfamiliar. i have nine children and i send them all to my relatives abroad i don't want them to see their motherland in such a condition. from the small poor. gas used to flow to europe.

we used to produce field to send it to them and now see they destroy it all this is terrible and ridiculous at the same time. the closer you get to the front line the more you feel it you can hear the war and you can even read it. just to write. this runs as you can see the reason i have it made her believe it and i'll fly zone over the country to protect civilians and the other side there is another side also in arabic saying that nato can attack any place any time. time happened three times over several hours while we were hanging. out is where the front dividing the country into to swear is going to break one flashpoint within the rubble. it's

a very well and a strategic location getting a discount would mean taking control over the country's economy. also seems to be a red target. while it looks like. can hardly scale. they were like my family that had just gone to the shop to buy some foods and this happened six of them died i couldn't believe it and this used to be a restaurant for all companies start where friends gathered after work we were eating with my colleagues and there was a boom we knew what that was we run we try to help those who are strapped and the helicopters came too and started to shoot us as if they didn't want us to say girlfriends. from once to me to another stories are repeated. reconsidered by our problem alone. and in the food related so every man

every being a good one being a big kid our civilians never. this country this is probably. a more frequent is the sound of bombs and warplanes and drowns. we are all right so this decision to go into libya in the first place well it's become the center of conversation here in washington it's become both political issue and a point of contention in the power struggle between the legislative and executive branches just this morning there was a hearing on the matter with senators on both sides of the aisle questioning the state department's top lawyer harold koh here's the deal co is urging u.s. lawmakers to vote for a resolution authorizing the u.s. role in the nato led mission in libya lawmakers say under the war powers resolution president obama should have come to congress for authorization in the first place a long time ago here's one senator who used barack obama's own words during his

questioning i want to give you a quote from then senator obama in december of two thousand and seven and he said quote the president does not have power under the constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation in quote i've heard the discussion of it can you give me a simple answer is that still his position question a lot of people are asking of course regarding libya there's lots of talk about and for more i want to bring in v.j. from hartford connecticut is the director of international studies at trinity college in africa. hey there there you are i want to talk about some of the key arguments the obama administration it made today at this hearing i know a lot of people have been waiting sort of to hear how they would lay this out on the table basically they said the mission in libya is limited the risk of x.

as collation is limited the exposure of the armed forces is limited and so without full military engagement the war powers resolution has not been violated attorney at the training harold koh are arguing also the word hostilities should be defined by congress a by the president and of course in the historical context so my question to you is do these arguments hold any water. but it's not a goal that actually goes the idea of being do german is rather absurd to me you know the always going to begin based on a un resolution within a few hours of the war beginning with the french and american striking libya they had already violated the narrow terms of the un resolution and now it looks like libya is simply being played they've been a hundred days about decks twenty four thousand sorties you know there's a very gradual and painful bleeding of libya to the extent where that these ally

and then most of. libya is being made into what we call it giants so while you know this idea limited i think egypt and you know this nominal game of the films like hostilities you know that this actually is making sense. this is in fact a benefit discussion hearing but this is nothing to do with what is actually happening in libya hostility is certainly an ambiguous word to some but probably there on the ground in libya not business as the word i want to talk about sort of how this is being defined how this is being discussed let's take in obama's action a step further i want to listen to a statement made by u.s. congressman last week and i'll get your take. congress has nothing to do with a change in about whether to go to war or not and the president is becoming an absolute monarch. we don't even the status of my going alone without authorization

by congress the president is acting as if he himself is a king. but there is a habit well making exceeds obama i mean this goes back to. even you know the korean conflict but really the place you see it most is in the last twenty years the united states president has not over the last twenty years come to congress to speak authorization for the war they've been very poorly defined statements brought before congress the same thing in the punished if the united states had probably gone to war but it's done then it may not have been so i feel about the legality for instance of killing osama bin laden so you know better a great deal of ambiguity over the last fifteen years in most of the what the united states is going to need to do so i thought this is the obama problem i see this is a problem that the united states has gotten into over the last few decades i think

that's an important point but i got it seems to me you know what's kind of happening here is that the administration is bringing up this historical precedent and using it almost as an argument well you know you want to crack down on me well look busted look what reagan did. i think that's what's going on a lot of the time and the more it goes on the more it's going to be used as well he's got to do it why can't i do it when he is in you know this is where you see twenty twenty hindsight is actually something that we should have at our benefit if bush did this and it didn't work so well it may not be a bad idea to take some lessons from that clinton did this and it didn't work out so impose some idea well maybe it's a good idea to look into that as well so i would say that yes fine other presidents have done the same kind of thing but there is that's demonstrated for us quite clearly that you're going to break countries building to intensify hatreds and this

is particularly when there are very very well laid out and reasonable. wants. i think at a place like south africa coming out of. russia or india or china or if we don't experience any of these alternative. thinking that the only solution is war making interesting figure is arguing that you should look at history and say this is a reason not to do it again i want to look i think some important points you brought up let's take a look at what's actually going on on the ground in libya now you know former cia asset who covered libya back during lockerbie that she's coming forward with a few observations and i want to just put a few of them up on the screen and we can talk about them she says nato has been grossly deceived and should seize at once for protecting these rebels u.s. tax dollars or training a new taliban to intimidate the libyan people into submission of the west plunders libya's wealth susan lindauer a former cia asset she also says cia operatives working side by side rebel forces

driving around trucks is proof that u.s. forces are already on the ground and active participants in the atrocities she says video shows several dead libyan soldiers with their throats cut lying in the back of a truck these killings violate the geneva conventions of war which protect anomie soldiers after capture some pretty interesting things there these are things that no one really seems to be talking about i guess i want to get your comment on this. well i would say that you know done a filler a bit of the chemistry international spent three months investigating the claims picked a good idea to jeanne was using flagger with its troops then she came back and said that is absolutely untrue there is no evidence for that and what she did was she spent three months investigating these claims so far night that amnesty international no human rights watch every investigated gleams the west has

conducted a systematic killing of civilians so you know what i would say is that i was the pm she is making a significant and the need to be investigated and i frankly don't understand how the great organizations like amnesty and human rights watch spent a lot of their resources investigating walk by the other side but that's why it's. a comprehensive report about war crimes from me to and from the united states and much the same goes to the campos office at the hague. will use this fact team that's why i was being given the creeps a claim though completely you know at least from amnesty international opinion that has been debunked even by ok nothing about need to a crime all right certainly a lot of things to talk about here i'm sure we can go on around the time we did respond director of international studies at trinity college and we're out of time here for more on the stories we covered.