all bells may still be ringing but the clock is ticking as the debt ceiling tug of war heads into the eleventh hour work but will happen no one seems to know just one month before a possible u.s. debt armageddon. and as everyone awaits the unpredictable answer for the u.s. debt the health care industry is going strong with profits soaring in a numbers that make leave you speechless so why then are health care companies in such good health while americans suffer in sickness. dominic's trashcan it's gone

from a power surge to a great job. and now dominique strauss kahn is jumping right back into that power suit this i've being released from house arrest and that alleged sexual assault case so now that he is aligned for a possible swift political comeback was the mainstream media too quick to fry him. plus trouble in the waters here too this is video from last year when the freedom flotilla hit rough seas on its way to challenge the israeli blockade of gaza and now this year the flotilla has been stopped by the great coast guard we'll have the very latest from the ground. good evening it's friday july first i'm laurin lister here in washington d.c. and you're watching r.t. all right and the countdown began united states now has just one month to agree on raising the fourteen point three trillion dollar debt the. which the us has already

blown through along with it other deadlines now the treasury the reaffirmed that obvious second that deadline they set is the drop dead date they reaffirmed that today before the united states blows past the debt ceiling and defaults on its debts now politicians though they're still playing chicken with the debt ceiling making investors like the chinese nervous getting ratings agencies warning about the u.s. credit rating being threatened all trying to get a deal on deficit cutting done that at the end of the day appears political now obama blasted lawmakers we heard them him say this yesterday malia and sasha. generally finish their homework a day ahead of. the leaders thirteen such as tim it is a person that they don't wait until the night before they're not pulling all nighters . they're thirteen until.

you know congress can do the same thing if you know you've got to do something just do it. meanwhile we've seen lawmakers retorts back i saw some critics today say obama is being hypocritical as he plans to head for a vacation at camp david this weekend now we've also seen some u.s. officials make some rather ironic comments about other economies given the jitters the u.s. is giving some of their own investors this is ben bernanke on the greek debt situation he says if there were a failure to resolve that situation it would pose threats to the european financial systems the global financial system and the european political unity now if you transpose you know the meaning of that could be the same effect of the u.s. debt many would argue now timothy geithner said this he said i think it would be very helpful to have europe speak with a clear unique voice over a strategy it's very hard for people who invest in europe to understand what the strategy is when you have so many voices now you could definitely argue that the

same is likely being said about members of congress who have failed to act in unity on this decision which some economists top lawmakers and obama argue would result in a global financial disaster and armageddon if the debt ceiling isn't raised and if the u.s. does default now others say this is just a scare tactic some argue the united states wouldn't actually really default in reality that wouldn't happen and that they could pay interest payments other save us just need to stop adding to its debt no matter what the cost and in reality all of those views point to the fact that no one really knows what would happen to the world's risk free asset that's u.s. government bonds if the u.s. didn't agree to pay all its creditors and raise the debt ceiling of course there's also the psychological aspect to markets which can move them up or down some also say that ratings agencies who have threatened to lower the credit rating of the u.s. have historically gotten it wrong with these calls so there is a big huge question mark coming at the end of this entire debate that i spent the last few minutes talking about and why the political circus then for something that

is so scary and that it's a note and that it could be so consequential well earlier i spoke with leslie appalled to help me make sense of all of this he's an economist and he's author of this book the looting of america has here is his take on the current financial state of affairs. i kind of doubt it but you know i'm not a fortune teller i spent my trying time trying to figure out how we got into this mess and how it is that the issue of debt has become more important than the issue of putting our people back to work and i think we have to remember is debt is the same thing as wall street wealth wall street hedge funds getting extremely wealthy off of our debt and we have to understand that the way they play with them when you talk about markets getting jittery investors that's half of the investors or more according to the f.b.i.'s website headlines are half the half of the market action they're looking for a way to profit off this they're going to profit if we solve the deficit crisis in

a profit if we don't solve it what they don't want to see happen is that we would actually tax them heavily for it and make them pay for the damage that they've done to the economy they're the reason why the economy crashed ok they're phony you're going to start doing it right let me get in here then and i question if you can you know there are different the jury's out as far as what would happen if the united states in fact didn't raise the debt ceiling and if it did default i think it seems like the conventional wisdom is that this would totally shake global financial markets this would be a disaster on the proportion of some of the other crises that we ain't such as in two thousand and eight but do you think are you saying kind of sounds like you're alluding to that that maybe this wouldn't be as big of a deal as everybody make it and then. when i think of jittery markets i don't think of mom and pop investors i just saw the markets with shudder for a while who cares those markets are basically hedge fund play thinks the

fundamentals that could bring down the global economy are the high levels of unemployment the fact that we have not figured out how to put our people back to work that's the real problem and the fact that we still have a financial system running wild we have people making enormous profits while. all that sort employments going on and they're making you through dubious activities it's hard to speak your out how a hedge fund person can make two point two million dollars an hour which is forty seven times what an average for forty seven years for an average family to make that it's hard to figure out what they do that deserves that kind of income and that's a real problem to we solve the fundamental causes of the high levels of unemployment and that fundamental cause is not debt it's not it's not having a mechanism insufficient demand to put our people back to work we're exactly where we were in the middle of the great depression what keynes called the liquidity trap in other words interest rates are as low as they can go and it's still not stimulating investment so what you needed was nasa the amount of government

investment the last thing in the world you need is debt reduction in the short run an interesting thing for you to point out as yesterday was that the second round of the united states the fed's policy really of quantitative easing that has created some of those low interest rates that you were talking about and all about liquidity that has it spurred the economy though i want to go back to something you said you were talking about you don't really know what would cause a hedge fund manager to deserve so much income i want to as though about kind of the american eat those because right now as we see republicans demanding spending cuts but not tax increases we see this issue of you know a corporate jet tax be made kind of political fodder but the united states really is built on kind of a free market economy obviously and notions of the american dream meaning that americans should be able to get rich and should be able to earn as much money as they can and if they can good for them so air go given that do americans love rich

people and not want to have them have their taxes raised. well look americans have a lot of problems but you know what we're not that stupid it turns out that we can tell the difference between people who contribute to the economy and people who are ripping it off when when a hedge fund person pays an income tax rate below the average american americans i think say hey you know what that's not that's not fair when they see that wall street created phony products and the rating agencies blessed them with aaa ratings that are now worth nothing but yet they got to keep a profit and they're not paying us back and they took all these handouts and guarantees you know we feel like we're being ripped off we could tell the difference between a millionaire who is a movie star and an entertainer and a movie in a millionaire who is basically another sort of a legalized version of a bernie made off and we can tell the difference and right now it's very hard for financial elites to make a case that they're adding to our economy they are milking and they need to be

paying back. for the damage that they've done that is less leopold economist and author of america now as the debt debate debt ceiling debate rages on lori hart finance of the president took to the streets of new york to see how people from around the world are being affected by the economic crisis. all the latest data indicates the global economy is going are you personally affected this week let's talk about that have you felt the fact that a bad economy a better job this economy is not. trying to go to college and i can't car to my car gas is all expensive schools to experience. is really bad but i'm happy because. like for me. so is that kind of

the way it goes when some countries are hurting other countries can prosper more yeah greece is looking bad spain is looking bad i feel like we're on the right. so they're just exaggerating not in greece and spain no no i feel like the reports in the us are i'm actually in the military so i do not feel that at all that's the only perk i. park my job i think in steady paycheck for five years yet i can't see that the american military is going to go out of it if they do any time soon and i guess we have bigger problems to worry about the economy is. back on things that we had back even so we could take cruises to come to new york this. crucial first time in new york city today but it doesn't sound like you're hurting that it sounds like you're doing ok we haven't cut back on a lot of think that we've seen the bottom of this crisis or are we headed for bread lines and even worse things we've seen the bottom the bottom look like. well

it was pretty bad during the great depression is a bottom that we can compare it to i don't know if we'll get that bad but i don't think we're there yet so do you think we can fix it i'm a global level or do you think it's time countries started looking at themselves first. i think we have to fix it on the global but i think we reach country have to lower the expectations of the living standard i think we all have to go don't whether or not you've been personally impacted the bottom line is the global economy apparently continues to fall flat. now despite all of the dead to economic woes the united states still has the most expensive health care system in the world yet fewer americans can afford it for reasons you don't need need to explain more people are getting sick and people are getting poorer but health insurance companies are getting richer you don't have to

believe me let's look at some facts about health care costs in the us between two thousand and two thousand and six wages in the us increased by just three point eight percent that green line pretty flat lined almost but health care premiums they increased by eighty seven percent as you can see that stark contrast that we're lying now if u.s. health care system was a country it would be the sixth largest economy in the world the u.s. spends two times per capita more on health care that other industrialized nations and medical bills meanwhile are a major factor in more than sixty percent of the personal bankruptcies in the us and seventy five percent of those people actually have health insurance now in one nine hundred sixty five just one in fifty americans were on medicaid today one in six americans is on medicaid highlighting the lowering of u.s. wealth for average people now u.s. health insurance companies though their profits have increased by fifty six percent i was just in two thousand and nine now earlier i spoke with mike adams he is known

as the health ranger he's actually son of a pfizer contractor and he went under he was a clinical trial tester for some of americans largest pharmaceutical companies now he's one of their toughest critics i asked him why health care costs are so much more expensive in the u.s. than in other countries here's what he said. well at its core health care in america is based on profit not based on the idea of public service in other words the system doesn't really have a motivation to teach people how to be healthy to prevent disease or reverse disease or cure disease even instead it's sort of traps people in a system of dependence of disease treatment or the continuation of disease for example we have millions of americans on diabetes drugs and yet new research just released this week shows that diabetes rates have doubled in the last thirty years so clearly the system is not working and again that gets to the core because it's corporate greed driving it not any kind of motivation to really help people that

are those no debaters not present in other countries i mean you know these companies are multinational companies and what's unique about the u.s. is that the u.s. has really locked up the monopolistic health care system for example the f.d.a. assigns monopolies to drug companies for molecules that normally would exist in nature for example staton drugs are based on a molecule that the drug industry actually sort of stole from red yeast rice it's called bio piracy and the drug companies do it all the time in the f.d.a. gives them a monopoly so that no one else can sell that molecule in a competing drug or even a natural supplement so in the u.s. we have a monopolistic health care system that's designed to generate profits not public health but is that the same in other countries that's not is that the paradigm there till i mean i don't understand why for example. you can have something cost x. amount in the united states but it would be different in another country you know it's interesting other countries are more open to generic drugs which tend to lower the

cost of conventional health care also in other countries they're more open to alternative methods of health treatment or preventing disease but in the u.s. drug companies actually pay competing generic drug companies to keep their products off the market so that the monopolistic pricing can be held up for years longer than it. normally would be so there's a clear example of corporations really betraying the public interest just so they can make more money and the u.s. has mastered that art it seems in the drug industry ok i want to talk a little bit about prescription drugs you mentioned and i want to bring up some facts can we bring up the graphics that we have about some of the facts related ok prescription drugs cost about fifty percent more in the u.s. than in other countries and there prescribe a lot more it appears children for example in the u.s. are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in europe nearly fifty percent of americans now use some kind of prescription drug yet in two thousand and eight the f.d.a. reported four hundred twenty six drug recalls look at two thousand and nine though

there was a gigantic increase from four hundred twenty six to seven thousand nine hundred and forty two per scription drug recalls so why what's going on well another thing that's unique in the u.s. that helps account for that is drug advertising is legal in the united states and has been ever since one thousand nine hundred seven and in ninety eight when you have to legalize that in most other countries around the world drug companies can only advertise to medical professionals through medical journals for example but in the u.s. they can advertise direct to consumers so they run a lot of ads they convince a lot of people that they're sick that they need medication often for things that aren't even diseases like feeling sad from time to time it's not a disease it's a normal human emotion but in the us medical system we've managed to engage in a lot of so-called disease mongering but let's people think they need a drug to control every aspect of their experience ok really quickly i want to keep this is special going for just one more minute because i want to look at that despite all these costs the u.s. is not healthier look at these figures so throw up the graphic that we have about

how people are so not healthy so according to the cia world factbook the united states had a higher infant mortality rate than forty five other nations in two thousand and nine that's from the country that spends the most on health care the united states currently ranks forty ninth and world. old life expectancy now compare that to one thousand nine hundred nine when the world health organization ranks us twenty four so it's jumped considerably and researchers attribute this to america's deteriorating health care system so i'm slow mike you know from your perspective why for the country that spends the most on health care are people considerably sicker than in other developed countries where there's so much waste and fraud in the system it really accounts for that for example many hospitals have been caught double billing for c.t. scans which are high radiation scans to generate as much radiation as up to four hundred chest x. rays and those scan patients two or three times so they can bill medicare for those scans it's a profit fraud system and much the same is true in pharmaceuticals many medical

procedures are really unnecessary but they're used to generate revenue so we're spending more money as you say but we're not getting the results something's broken we can't just fix this around the edges we need wholesale reform of the health care system with a focus on preventing disease not just treating disease reform that health ranger mike adams does not see happening any time soon. big news today i mean free media don't expect the former head of the international monetary fund was released from house arrest this because news has come out that sexual assault charges levied by a accuser they're not looking so good the accuser is looking so credible and his case may actually collapse a different you know from the mainstream press today than they were thinking about the s.k. when the story of the alleged sexual assault originally broke take a look. dominique strauss kahn has gone from a power suit to a great jump suit more details emerge about her husband's numerous past

transgressions and got him in the position to run the i know they need someone who's not sitting in jail so it right. out in france sometimes things are looked differently that is what's allowed him to have this lifestyle that he's had sort of having these transgressions and there's a dual strategy of blaming the victim they're going to spend tons of money on investigators experts whatever they have to do to impugn her credibility when he already guilty and the eyes of the mainstream press and what now may have been a mistake and at what price joining me now is chris chambers he is a journalism professor at georgetown university and resell it for us your analysis so you know we thought all of this report that's a big story when this broke it was the s.k. already convicted and i thought public opinion in a court of public opinion well i would say convicted i mean he fits this paradigm of you know villain victim you know the victim being the victim with the villain

being you know in the old pepe le pew cartoon figure was based on the stereotypes in memes and you've got the shady looks or you know european french guy who you can you mold into this kind of creature and then all at the same time i mean this coincides with the whole white men behaving badly thing with you know arnold and john edwards so i mean it's not really a convicting kind of thing it's just it's like out of soap opera reality show when so much attention is paid to done the extra cond really being vilified by the mainstream media paraded out and handcuffed then right you know that famous kind of iconic image as the perp walk which gets more so up in arms about right and press when not all happens is the damage already done cannot be undone well even if these . you know really yes it can because because here's what happens reality sets in the complexities of our legal system so i was for his junior there's complexities

make it though they don't and that's so then the damage is done well here's the thing they don't care about that and in this situation i mean this this guy is he's a citizen of france he's going to he's been. convicted accused of i don't know i know i hate this crime here in the united states however i mean we're in terms of how our particular television media and so the blogosphere and internet pundits work that doesn't matter it's all fear it's all ratings it's all you know machinations and bringing opinion into it doesn't matter what happens this guy has fulfilled his role and then on the other hand you have the victim now who was the slaughtered lamb kind of victim you know fulfilling that role in the opera and now she comes into as you know the third world ethnic typical kind of illegal alien type so we can play to that stereotype and mean but you know

that. because we're almost out of power they can the mainstream media essentially runs and i'm tired of life oh yes they can they can but this isn't the situation i mean i might be for the victim ironically but for different reasons than we're speculating on when this case first broke all right well we're going to leave it at that time but we want to have reined in our way i just want to point out you're talking about why people didn't know what i am learning and that was christian bristol is a professor at georgetown university with that analysis now to athens now where the protests we've been covering this up another story from developing the u.s. both in the freedom flotilla to what was headed to gaza reportedly set sail that was stopped by the greek coast guard and turned back twenty minutes off the coast. now this comes after a year just one year after israeli commandos killed nine turkish activists on a patella challenging the naval blockade of gaza on open field now this

international hotel is trying to set out again to challenge the blockade but it's looking less likely to happen with these reports now we didn't all developing but we're going to go try to get the very latest on the ground there in africa and on the phone with us adam shapiro who is one of the activists and thanks so much for being with us so obviously there's been a lot of reports about exactly what happened with the clip tell of which was supposed to set bail with this american boat you're an activist you've been organizing that your wife without their support what happened. well first. one of the boats of the flotilla we had ten all together that started this mission one of them the u.s. so try to make it clear today out in terms of national waters where we do to meet with the other ships which we continue to depart. about fifteen twenty minutes out toward the waters be closed or it came up to stop the ship from

in front with a couple of larger cutters and then. coast guard. wearing matching carrying automatic weapons down into it and pulled up alongside the ship. threatening to use tear gas britney to board the ship there was a standoff for some time as. the carpenters tried to challenge the coast guard to leave the car do with threatened with arrest and ultimately to put the squirted back into a port where pulled in a couple of hours ago and now our passengers are certain to make their way back we don't know yet the status of the ship whether it's confiscated or not we still have . several other ships that are in courts ready to leave getting ready to leave and two of our ships earlier this week. have been sabotaged so in a way the flotilla has already begun and together actually last saturday when one ship left. with the attacks on our ships. last year israel

is really you know already. you know it's beyond that we are giving interviews we are doing a lot of work the media is here with us watching what's going on and already it's quite causing quite a stir around the world including israel not just about the political more importantly about the blockade of gaza and i want to get in here because you mentioned you know israel is already taking action that the greek government keeping a little about from setting sail or turning around in the greek government has reportedly voted to stop all boats from setting sail so i think what activists have quoted as saying it's like they move the blockade from gaza to agree why this reaction from the greek government. actually being the outsourcing of the blockade to greece we know we saw we heard prime minister netanyahu comments yesterday where he thanked. prime minister papandreou for basically doing israel's work for it and

what we know behind the scenes that israel has been putting as well as the united states has been putting a ton of pressure on the greek government and i'm sure look your viewers know the greek government is very weak position because of its economic problems but are very popular government and it. can certainly fall prey to such pressure and we believe although we don't have concrete evidence of that we do believe that both the united states and israel were putting economic pressure on greece as well ok well what is next i mean what are you guys going to do at this point obviously they're getting threats and setback you have a clear statement from the greek government what are you going to do identity theft yes we will continue to challenge we're going to challenge the cabinet decision which our lawyers here believe is in the. illegal order we will be challenging it in court we will be showing. it it's open especially when there is

no or understand never before a little bit better what it would be like to be a postman. get out into open free which is right in front of us. court were your. to play coaster knew no other with how to. access it well it's certainly an ironic parallel that you draw we certainly appreciate you giving us that on the ground eg you know account at exactly what is happening that was adam shapiro with the free gaza movement on the phone with us from athens greece now we reported moammar gadhafi and his son face charges from the international criminal court the u.s. welcomed those charges but now we hear from the libyan leader's accused son r.t. spoke one on one with saif al islam gadhafi in his first interview since those charges he denies that either he or his father ordered the killing of civilian protesters in libya he said nato has offered the regime an under the table deal that would see charges dropped he described libya as

a piece of cake for the west with gas oil and money that nato is in a hurry to eat take a listen little girl. i know you want information. because they are hungry. coyote they want the cake. it's like for them leave like fast food. the most fast because if you fast fast fast. fast when it's positive to the say get off he also said in a stable again made was being too tolerant of their enemies other countries told them this. this is your mistake in libya you give up your weapons of mass destruction you start developing a long great new style as you became very friendly with the west and this that is. so what does it mean it means this is a message to everybody that you have you strong.