well the debt war continues to rage here in washington with d.-day whether for defaults ratings or ratings downgrade closer and closer on the horizon but is this really an economic crisis or a political employer some have said to bring down a president. we've always going to be the yeah the q.b. is always going to be a big element well a convicted felon he may be but justice has finally been served for pouri may now police swat raids the death penalty racism and the drugs more all factor into this tragic story stay tuned for our groundbreaking and exclusive report. you're seeing

around the world faces that now being brave murder and received very rare cases in which these are actually from the best prosecution well as crimes like these that earth defense contractors a terrible name and yet business couldn't be better when it comes to mercenary forces coming up what this means for america and the countless wars. it's good evening it's wednesday july twenty seventh four pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy coughing of you watching our t.v. . well we begin today with what else what are ongoing national crisis now less than a one week folks in fact five days seven hours and counting that's how much time is left until the end of the world scary august second apocalyptic deadline which by the way we already moved three times so despite the fact that raising this

arbitrary debt ceiling is something that this country has done like clockwork in fact more than one hundred times since one thousand forty two political parties still seem to not be able to reach any sort of deal so what exactly is the endgame here i mean how is this crisis actually going to affect ordinary americans and there's even a crisis or just a political show now i don't know about you but i tend to follow the money when it comes to the truth about economic issues so let's hear from someone who has a boat load and boat loads of it jim rogers is the co-founder of the quantum fund he's also the author of a gift to my children a father's lessons for life and investing now earlier i had a chance to chat with him about all the crazy frenzy here in washington take a look at what he had to say. may i suggest you stop watching i know you have to record something because you're on t.v. but it's is a charade it's a space a scam they're not going to do anything serious they're going to announce something you the day before the day but that day after and they're going to say everything

is ok but in six months from now a year from now america is going to be in worse shape than it is now they're going to continue to spin and drive us all deeper into debt we've been doing this for forty years it's not going to go anywhere now came to just bolster your point in fact we saw white house officials on thursday evening calling all the top bankers essentially saying guys don't worry there's not going to be an actual default even if that cap cap and raise so that begs the question what's the point of the charade what's the point of you know worrying people i mean i'm glad i got something to cover here as a journalist but come on. they're trying to get publicity for themselves they're posturing that's what politicians do lucy the studies show that the people who are good politicians are the people who are good at playground when they were in grammar school and these guys are at play ground yet again as with our money and it's troubling america deeper into debt america's the largest debtor nation in the history of the world it's just getting worse we had something called the grace

commission twenty five or thirty years ago it said we got to stop this and then they passed a law of congress gramm rudman laws and we're no more deficit spending well they have all forgotten net and ignore that we've been doing this annually for decades ignore them it seems like not only do they have good behavior of toddlers but there certainly seem to have the memory of toddlers to go back to something you said earlier i mean when you say that even if we do reach the deal everything looks great for a little while but six months to a year gets worse what do you mean when you say gets worse i mean it's easy to talk about these abstract terms but if you look at the facts fourteen point one million americans unemployed over half of all american families live from paycheck to faith paycheck more than forty four million are for. i mean what's going to look like for those of us who can't move to singapore we're all going to continue to get deeper and deeper into debt and we see they've been spending a lot of money and the people who've been receiving that money think they're better off and they probably are they've got more money in their pocket but the overall

situation lucy is getting more and more serious america's now the largest debtor nation in the history of the world this cannot go on forever yes of benchley the creditors are going to say listen no more debts the end of the line you think the problems are bad now you wait till we don't have any more credit you wait to learn the currency is collapsing you wait till interest rates are going through the roof and inflation is going through the roof it's not going to be a pretty picture there's going to be social unrest it's going to be a mess but we better deal with the sooner we deal with it the better if we deal with it now or last year or even this year we might have a whole question of some periods of very very painful periods then we can start over but as you said jim you've been around a long time and they've been talking about this a long time and they're not going to they're going to take the massive kind of cuts that they need to take to the spending in order to get the situation under control so i mean what's the future going to look like are we going to go back to agrarian economy and you know i thought of key teaching my kids science in chinese is going

to be firewood and field ploughing well i'm glad you've been attentive lucy because of unfortunate is going to be that way in one thousand nine hundred the u.k. was the richest most powerful country in the world within three decades they were bankrupt and they were bailed out by the by the i.m.f. it was not a pretty sight in the u.k. that's three generations later we've had a lost decade in america because we refuse to deal with reality prepare yourself for another lost decade or more depending on how bad things get down there and then when i ask you a little more personal question i know you've talked about the in some ways you're sort of the the all-american golden boy you know you were born next door to us here in maryland bred in alabama what the heck you're doing now in singapore are things that bad here in new. yes but no i'm still remember consider as an american voter an american taxpayer but lucy the twenty first century is going to be the century of asia whether we like it or not i've got two little children want them to grow up speaking mandarin and i want them to know asia make the best skills that i can give

them for their lifetimes is mandarin in asia so i mean parents do a lot of things with their children some people move near sports camps or in your other schools we move here so our children can can grow up speaking mandarin and knowing asia let me ask a minute if you think say that things are so bad here and our politicians certainly can't seem to get their act together why not renounce your citizenship why not wash your hands of this whole economic mess and move on but i haven't done and i mean i will go would consider that if that's what you your suggestion but i don't see you going at it well so that i think is maybe not that bad that we have a chance of turning this whole mess around but i don't see any chance of our turning it around we would have rallies certainly along the way but unfortunately i don't see countries that have gotten themselves into this situation lucy never do anything until there's a crisis or a semi crisis when we have our crisis or our semi crisis and i hope it's years away but it's probably not then maybe we will start taking some serious action or the

market will force us to take seriously this isn't this what we're seeing right now that's not a crisis fourteen point one million unemployed forty four million food stamps that's not that's not even the tip of the iceberg. lou see the new argument the stock in shea's it out you know that goes for leverage is near its all time high what kind of crisis is that when the financial markets are all fat and happy and most people well i mean yes there are people that are better despondent and suffering right now but that's not a crisis way to lose a crisis look around the world what happened in iceland because some of the other serious crises we've had in the past three or four years then you will understand what the word crisis means and i want to get a little more personal and ask you about an old buddy of yours someone used to work for by the name of george soros let him have forced co-founded the quantum fund away he's getting out of the hole had fun business what do you make of it i didn't even know about it i mean i haven't been into quantum plant for over thirty years

you might as well ask me about my first wife lucy or where i went to college or something else this is all far far away in my life well i'm surprised to hear that you don't think it signifies anything as the man must most famous for a hedge fund get out of the business. i just don't know about it i mean you have to as you know i know nothing about it you're telling me something i don't even know. i'm not a rich lady but let's just say when a lot of tomorrow what's your investment advice for me when anything here in this country that weren't worth investing for me. i would not invest in anything lucy unless you know what you're doing i happen to do things i own in the u.s. i own the u.s. dollar at the moment i own commodities in the u.s. but mainly don't listen to me don't listen to people on t.v. listen to yourself why wouldn't i know what to do if i listen to you because jim you're here you're the biggest pessimist want to consider the dollar what are you doing a dollar there. you're right i'm one of the most pessimistic people around about

the dollar but everybody's best just to go on the dollar loosely which is why i own it i've been investing long enough to know that when everybody's on one side of the boat you want to go to the other side of the boat for a while so i own the u.s. thought who knows if i right make plenty of mistakes all right well i'm going to let you go but last question their august second passes and there's no deal should we all try to find the cheapest take it over to the bahamas and get the heck out of this country are we going to be ok ignore it ignore what you could if they default quote appalled that august second i'll go third august fourth they're going to be back playing the same old games go to the playground and play with these guys if that's what you need to do i know you have to report it as i said before but i'm paying no it isn't it has no effect on my investment decisions the market looks ahead to six months or a year from now the market doesn't really care what happens in august it's looking ahead and there have that legendary investor jim rogers saying maybe no armageddon in august but a lot to worry about when it comes to the long term picture. will stay on the

economy for a little bit i want to talk now about why it is that we've gotten to this point in the past three weeks have seen and was shouting matches on the t.v. by various pundits we see press conferences by almost everyone. capitol hill economic plans that frankly don't seem to be worth the political people that they're printed on and what we have to show for it other trench warfare between the two parties with you and i hear american people caught in the crossfire i mean is this any way to run a government run america to take us all to the brink of disaster for what political points i mean it's no wonder that congressional approval ratings stand at six percent a stork low now something's hit the fan i can't say in polite company a exactly what that is but thankfully my next guest has a more appropriate way of phrasing it upon mr richard wolffe is the author of capitalism hits the fan the global economic meltdown and what to do about it richard thank you so much for taking the time to join us today now before we get to

the politics of all this let's start with some economic consequences there's there's a lot of confusing info out there what is the worst case scenario in this debt standoff who's going to feel the pain if we don't get a deal. basically if the government cannot raise the debt ceiling all that it means is that the government cannot borrow the money that it had intended to borrow to do the spending that both parties voted into office last year and so the government will have less money than an end to subpoenaed because it can't borrow and so it'll have to make cutbacks it is very clear that it will not cut back on interest payments to creditors so there's no question of a default the united states cannot to fault and will not what it will do if it's starting to get an agreement by august second is start spending less money and so the pain will be fanned felt by whoever they spend less on they could cut back on war expenditures that would hurt defense contractors they could that cut back on

all kinds of purchases you know the united states government is one of the largest purchases of many commodities in the world and if they cut back in those areas or if they give less money to states and cities they will suffer so it's a question of how the government will cut back if they can't borrow the money they were supposed to be able to borrow when everybody passed this year's budget during the good debates last year and let's be realistic there richard i mean you've been watching our washington and the economy for a long time really defense spending if you're going to make actual genuine cuts there. well if this continues if they really don't have the money they're not going to have much choice if they don't make defense cuts what are they going to do cripple the states and cities who need desperately the financial aid they get from the federal government since they are already facing austerity cutbacks are they going to say no no to old people about their social security checks they're going

to be in an increasingly difficult spot which is why so many people including me imagine that if they don't reach agreement by august second they will by august fourth or ninth or something because it's too much political pressure not to do it and this is a political struggle as you said yourself these are two parties positioning themselves for a presidential election next year trying to create an image getting lots and lots of publicity from you folks that they don't have to pay for and that's exciting for them and if that means that it damages some people for a while it screws up the economy damages the reputation of the united states globally well that's not for them for a big problem they have a political project and that's what they're going to pursue it just seems illogical to me at yeah yeah i understand washington is ruled by politics but this isn't this isn't a game that we're playing and this is the united states of america i mean what if there isn't any country that has a fairly elected into office or i mean if you bring this to the brink of of the end

how can you possibly win our golders really going to fall for that argument. well i think you know if you take a page from history the great empires of the past collapsed most of the time and because their own leadership got cocky with their notion of being forever in that position didn't work out their disagreements didn't take the prudent course of action and there's no reason to believe that the american political system is in mulan to what has brought low so many other empires and i think what you're seeing now is a an economic crisis that hit in two thousand and seven this country cannot get out of that crisis for the mass of people and you are now seeing the affects of an unresolved economic crisis bubbling up into the political structure and hamstringing it from being able to deal with this society i do think for me and

from many observers around the world you're looking at the united states which was the central center of world capitalism for fifty years since the second world war demonstrating to the people a level of inability to solve its economic problems now being come pounded by an inability to function politically and that has enormous ramifications for a system that thought it could always look to the united states as the key sovereign smooth under control leader of the pack and it can't do that anymore and crumbling not only for economic reasons but as you say for politics i want to play you a sound bite something bill maher said. yesterday take a listen. i think a lot of republicans do want to see a calamity this is what will bring down the obama presidency you know that they didn't have a clinton there and obama there was no scandal he has nothing that they could

launch a crusade about this is it this is what they're launching their crusade about to forever destroy his presidency that couldn't really be that close hearted and political out of it. well i wouldn't put it quite the way bill maher did but i see his point basically i think it's a larger process than anything the republicans invented or that they could control and you have the united states that is suddenly discovering and i'm talking here about a mass of working people that the american dream that they had expected to be there that they had expected to be able to pass to their children is more and more out of reach they can't get the wages that would pay for it they can no longer borrow to get it that way it's slipping away they're shocked there are said no one prepared them for this there's no end in sight of this constriction of their opportunities and they're upset and they're looking around for some one to blame for something to

explain this the republicans have an answer it's the evil government i don't think it makes any sense i don't think it holds water but it is something at a time when nobody else in the society seems to have a clue and the republican see it and they feel it and they're running with that borehole the government is the problem and obama in particular because he's the head of the government now and they're going to ride that as far as they can for and it seems to be working to some extent he has a forty three percent job approval rating for at least a week of july it into the twenty fourth one of the lowest weekly ratings the very very briefly if this is all about politics doesn't do the democrats republicans even need to take that much action to get obama here i mean jeffrey immelt on those on jobs are just they're g.'s exporting all these are high tech x. ray jobs to china doesn't seem like obama needs

a lot of help to get in trouble here no i think that you take a page from obama's own history. people blame george bush for the collapse and that helped obama win it is not surprising that the republicans would now like to play the same game on mr obama blaming him for everything and hoping that in the collapse that follows they wind power and then they will be once again where george bush was it's a political system in which the two sides juggle for power but nobody attends to the underlying economic issues well and at the end of the day it's folks like you and i unfortunately who have to pray pay the price richard thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us thank you for all right well let's bring home our troops or keep putting the contractors to fight america's wars and we've talked a lot about contractors here on this program we've covered some of the terrible terrible violations of human rights the murders the lawsuits the the all kinds of

different ways in which these folks have got in trouble so one would think that in a fair and just system the u.s. would move away from the use of contractors i mean we've had hearing after hearing newspaper after newspaper book after book about the egregious crimes but the lawlessness that takes place by these people fighting in america's name on foreign lands and yet as you'll see in our next piece by our team guy and she can it looks like the contractors are actually getting more and more dollars from washington to keep on fighting their wars take a look. by this iraqi man son nine year old allie khilnani was struck dead by private american war contractors four years ago his brain fell to the ground between life on the same day dozens of other innocent iraqis were shot by trigger happy us professional killers they shot like they were trying to kill everyone they could see no one of blackwater the firm for whom the hired guns work has been punished with a massacre two other private american security companies were contracted to carry

out interrogations at the notorious abu ghraib prison in iraq a name synonymous now with her rethinking on rights violations including porcher rape and murder the us supreme court recently threw out a lawsuit alleging abuse of prisoners by the contractors. in afghanistan it's reported that human rights violations and it was killing so are committed by security firms on a regular basis point expand set to undermine call the horses counterinsurgency efforts they'll start firing at anything that moves in general kill innocent afghans they'll destroy property we're getting fairly consistent complaints about them everybody knows somebody who's been shot by the contract. the lack of accountability has forced the united nations working group on mercenaries to push for specific international measures to regulate their activities especially now as

u.s. military forces withdraw from iraq and afghanistan the number of contractors is set to grow dramatically. so many military and security functions and. companies here are not related and they are not control and this is what we are extremely concerned that what we are calling is for regulation at the national and international level so that. companies are accountable but washington is reluctant to let an international body regulate their achilles saying it will find ways to hold contractors accountable and so far the u.s. justice system has largely failed to do so we're seeing around the world cases of napping rape murder. and we see very very only very rare cases in which case actually a criminal investigation or

a prosecution of. experts say further privatization of war is convenient for the american government because among other reasons it doesn't have to justify the deaths of troops at home the president whoever the president may be can get us involved in conflicts only using uniformed forces to do the official fighting and then thousands and thousands of contractors to do the unofficial fighting that's under the radar screen that isn't covered by the media now here is a quote we cannot win a fight for hearts and minds when we outsource critical missions to an accountable contractors and of quote that's what senator obama said before he became president but apparently as a president now he thinks differently. with a contract has role in america's wars down to an increase and with the victims of their crime still begging for justice i'm going to check our reporting from washington r.t. . and for more on this let's speak with scott horton contributing editor for

harper's magazine from new york city new york scott looking back on the program now at a time when the u.s. is in what four or five i've lost count covert and overt war operations abroad there is less of an appetite by the us public to see our men and women on the ground fighting in foreign countries what's wrong with relying on mercenary forces folks that have signed up to make a profit to do your bidding for us but the question is accountability i think of several of your speakers in the in the lead up segment pointed out we have in the united states has a rigorous system of accountability for uniformed personnel there's a court martial system there's a there are less formal disciplinary systems but there's been a complete failure of accountability with respect to these contractors they go out on operations in iraq and afghanistan and use procedures are referred to by

a professional soldiers as spray and pray they shoot areas up in the hope they get a legitimate target and nothing happens even in the most egregious cases but i can this were square incident in two thousand and seven where seventeen iraqis lost their lives there still has been no effective accountability for those who were in paul and it took tremendous public pressure to get the american justice department to take any action in that case but it could be argued also as horrific as those instances were there are a few bad apples and in light of the fact that you know we've had works like yours countless pieces you've written about this issue a lot of sort of i want to make this a left or right issue but the mercenary problem has been really discussed a lot of both in print and. t.v. media we had the black water but by jeremy scahill don't you think that maybe the increase in public attention to this has somewhat eliminated the frequency of the

horrific murders and forces that's the sort of get their act together in short no you know we have a promise of barack obama when he was running for president made this one of his issues his principal opponent in the democratic primaries a worry question articulate almost exactly the same criticisms and now we see there in office hillary clinton running the state department and the state department is proposing to field a private army private mercenary army of five thousand five hundred armed men under arms in a rat and is refusing even to allow the u.s. inspector general examined what's going on there so you know we really have a failure of promises and a failure of oversight here it's astonishing right and i think that's going to five thousand one hundred ninety actually sorry anything right there but you know a lot of times it seems like it takes a financial. examples financial incentive for the country to actually change its

behaviors do you think that there's any way that maybe the current deficit situation the current financial problem could and lead the u.s. to spend less on on on on these contractors is a cheaper to use our own forces or that there really there's a strong public consensus right now and it's a it in fact it goes across the base of both parties republicans and democrats not the leadership of either party but the base of both parties there's a strong sense that too much money is being spent on these military maneuvers and there's been too many soldiers deployed for too long the pokus has been a law on the uniform military but i think what we're seeing now from the obama administration is we're going to see a loud lee county public announcement. the drawdown uniform soldiers and we may see on the back end of that a replacement of those soldiers with contractors with the with private security

contractors and the key thing for america right now given our budget crisis is this is not going to mean any savings in fact contractors it was claimed by the pentagon for many years they were less expensive than soldiers quite clear now that's not true and in fact they may well be more expensive so this substitution will not bring down our costs in connection with the operations in afghanistan iraq for instance and of course assume that say it's safe to say that much less visible i mean i don't envision a z. or a blackwater and betting journalist with any time soon whether that's exactly right and i think the media nature of media in the united states has chosen by and large not to do stories on these units there are just a few exceptions but in fact i spent a lot of time working with c.b.s. out in iraq and i asked the baghdad bureau chief why we weren't covering mercenaries and he told me point right well they defend us you know we we don't

want to make it their wives anymore difficult. i hope to see more stories from you as the sun freshman trend continues in harper's magazine i really can appreciate you taking time to join us great to be with you right now please stay tuned i have a whole new show in just half an hour surviving death row and justice has finally been served in the case of corey may this is a story that involves police a lot raise the death penalty racism and the drug war all of this factors into this incredible piece stay tuned for our exclusive report by artie's killen forward on law and disorder. and unfortunately that does it for this half hour here in r.t. america the news does not end with those broadcasters plenty more stories and details on about site r.t. dot com slash usa and if you want to watch us on your i phone or a laptop hey go to youtube dot com slash r t america and check out all of the episodes and of course don't forget about me if you want to get in touch or see what stories i'm checking out follow me on.