i say a policy of peace is free trade stay out of the internal business don't get involved in these wars just bring our troops home is the gospel according to paul and his foreign policy chapter is going mainstream r.t. is there for it in iowa. costs a lot of money because you have to spend a lot of money to send. that's right money spent elsewhere so why is the u.s. empire spending so much money on wars instead of its own citizens. these lame rating agencies have been wrong about nearly everything for the past ten or fifteen years don't pay any attention to them ok so let's raise the rating agencies just

how do they stack up well explain their mood swings and more. good evening it's friday august twelfth i'm lauren lyster here in washington d.c. and you're watching r t well the g.o.p. hopefuls last night bay stopped in iowa in a debate for the most part it was a sea of hawkish conservative foreign policy talking points you'd expect from a g.o.p. debate the threats of nukes in iran and why military spending should not be cut were widespread views that were expressed but on the stage a very different voice emerged to ron paul's and he got a lot of airtime to make his points on mainstream t.v. rick santorum even complained about it so what does this mean are we seeing a new era of politically thought of political thought we'll get to that first

what's that's wrong paul apart from the pack. he is a force to be reckoned with a three time presidential candidate congressman from texas o.b.-g.y.n. doctor and leader of a revolution. ron paul is now in iowa why is the added again campaigning for two thousand and twelve the booms and busts comes from a failed monetary system problem. and once again his fans have come from all corners of the country to hear his message and show support from kansas city missouri and here to support on my cell phone my family of four kids of my wife drove up to las vegas a long time critic of the federal government the constitution has no authority for the federal government to run our educational systems and they should be doing it

his policies are often called radical just think of how many nuclear weapons surround iran good chinese are there the indians or the pakistan is there the israelis are they are you not his face is there all these countries china has nuclear weapons why wouldn't it be natural that they might want to weapon but many of his entire establishment ideas are becoming increasingly mainstream as more and more americans reject the status quo of past decades especially his views on u.s. foreign policy in particular the us role in iraq and afghanistan resonate with voters i don't believe our national security required it i think we're a list say for it the threat of terrorism is related to our foreign policy so i feel less safe because we're over there i never feel safer for the foreign policy that we have today while often doubted by the mainstream media if i was a betting woman i think ron paul doesn't have a chance unfortunately for you but who is there is there

a lack of enthusiasm over some the talk here g.o.p. candidate another question about elected. do you have any sir there's always the question of whether you are a liar looks like they paid more attention to you this time around they're moving my way his fans are some of the most loyal in american political history. perhaps since he was here. first. for thirty years he's not flip flop anything except the death penalty everything else. constitutional robert taft barry goldwater so at least you know what you feel and despite his seventy five years many of his fans look like this is the man you need to be president but i think he's a smart guy and i think he would change things and need to be changed personally wouldn't show myself prior to being seen ron paul in the early elections so it was a liberal democrat you know but i saw him up on stage talking you know against

against the war as against you know these violations or civil liberties and i don't want a democrat saying this or even this we need to fix the country we've maxed out our debt ceiling as it is and then we're in too many countries and this is where it all happens a famous iowa straw poll here at iowa state university now ron paul has reportedly are already sold thousands of tickets this is where he'll be spending most of tomorrow as people cast their votes most people here think he will do exceptionally well the question is can he come in first it's an answer we'll have to wait till tomorrow to find out reporting in ames iowa christine for our team but we don't have to wait until tomorrow to talk to christine what is really going on there get the inside scoop she joins us now from iowa christine now ron paul got a lot of air time last night rick santorum even complain about it you are there is there a sense there ron paul's ideas hold more weight and resonate with this crowd in

a stronger way than ever before. yeah and it's really really interesting where i'm standing now is the press center here at iowa state university where the straw poll will take place tomorrow right behind me actually all the candidates including ron paul will be giving his speech this is also where i was last night for the debate that you were just talking about and it was really really interesting we had the debate on the jumbotron in here and just a sea of media and here and every time a ron paul particularly about iran or q but you can just hear the keyboards going faster people really are not totally shocked but certainly when ron paul speaks from the things he says make waves and there are things that people like to discuss and talk about and write about and not showed itself last night let me get your sense being there do you think they make waves because they make news because they're so different or do you think they make waves because now they're gaining a lot more traction i think there are several i think both of those are correct i

think that some of ron paul's ideas that he's had it since day one are still are starting to finally resonate with people because of the economy because of the wars things that seemed radical before no longer so radical but still as you saw last night certainly his ideas about iran and cuba to many many people including most of the other candidates do seem very very foreign and so you want to send back the case but not in my report i mean a lot of the people that we talked to came from so far just to see him they like that he's different they really really like that what he says stays consistent i know that seems like it should be a given but when i talked to a lot of the young supporters here yesterday and today got the one thing they say they say this is a guy who gives it to you as it is and he doesn't change his mind and he's real well it's not surprising getting some of the criticisms we've seen of the president in office now which promise a lot of things change course on a lot of things and surprise me that maybe people want them to ability there

another thing that i want to go back to iran because you mentioned that you made some waves with those. and he had a really different viewpoint than the majority of the g.o.p. candidates which all kind of had that talking point that you'd expect from the g.o.p. that iran is the biggest threat to the us that iran might get nukes that's the big concern is better think as i was just speaking with a colonel a retired colonel who is a decorated combat veteran who had a very similar reaction about iran and now says that iran as long called so my question to you is what was the reaction specifically to ron paul the wrong comment in the audience were people receptive or was where they shot well i guess i wasn't in the actual audience where the debate was taking place because there was sponsored by fox the most the other media without i was in here with every single media outlet i mean there must have been five hundred other you know media people in here so you can't really judge the feeling of the country based on how the media particularly the mainstream media is reacting to some of those comments but certainly a lot of people you know and again when you talk about iran it's such an easy way

to scare people it's an easy way to get people to jump on the bandwagon because they're scared of something and so i think that out of all of ron paul's policies that's probably one of the ones that people might have a little bit of a hard time grasping because they're not used to that idea that iran is not a threat because they've always been told that it is so i mean it's a good question hard to get a pulse about right now i want to get the pulse of you spoke to a lot of his supporters and a lot of analysts believe that ron paul would win the straw poll and we'll win the straw poll he has in the past he's got a very dedicated base that if people see him as the republican candidate this time around or do they just see him at the we lost or we will have to we have or christie and i want to go to him as president or fate see him as their best chance for a longer term change. that's a really good question too for his supporters i mean a lot of these supporters are fresh out of college extremely idealistic and a lot of them do believe the wrong call paul can win and will win so you know

whether or not the polls show that i will say this and i think it's important to look at other things other than the polls too as far as raising money ron paul has been able to raise a lot of money here in iowa at least it's pretty outrageous and also when you see his support i mean all of the candidates kind of look to him in awe at least some of the members of their team based on the the amount of support support that he generates i'm here i've been hearing rumors we were at the iowa state fair this morning which is where ron paul was on a radio show pretty earlier this morning and people were talking about he's already sold more than four thousand tickets now i don't know if that's definitely true but we were outside on possibility here so it seems like he's planning to make a splash of some sort right and it makes you wonder why the mainstream still is so dismissive of him as a contender but we want to give it a fair chance and a fair shot and give all sides and christine it's great to see you there and you're

doing great work and we'll hear more from you after the straw poll this weekend certainly interesting getting a taste of what people here in the heartland are feeling absolutely now as ron paul illustrates while the country is desperately searching for ways to cut out of control spending some like him are saying it's time for the u.s. to end its military involvement abroad and swap empire for domestic stability but as the g.o.p. establishment help show and you heard some commentary there from christine and if you watched the debate you certainly thought there's a lot of barriers to that and rain of course and i have more on why that is. the late comedian george carlin always spoke frankly about his nation the only truly lasting american value that's left but i am papers buying things people spend money they don't have on things they don't need to get a country long driven by borrowing and consuming is in desperate need to cut it spending us defense and security spending has remained untouchable soaking up seven

hundred five billion dollars we're twenty percent of federal funds every year since two thousand and one for the one point two trillion dollars have been spent on the wars in iraq and afghanistan but now with fourteen point four trillion in the hold somebody condiment say it's time for the us to compromise world domination for domestic stability also probably have to see significant requestion or questioning and downsizing of the several hundred foreign military bases we have given the size of the budget problems and the growing issues around the national debt and the debt ceiling it is fairly well assured that the budget will be cut for defense and it probably needs to be cut more than is presently proposed for the pentagon priorities may be different it department reportedly spent twenty three billion dollars on global hawk drones alone this year taxpayers are estimated to spend one hundred twenty two billion dollars on the war in afghanistan the same amount that could cover an estimated twenty five million americans with low income health care

an empire costs a lot of money because you have to spend a lot of money to defend that you have to spend a lot of money to promote it you have to have a lot of people working on various aspects of economic support for imperial adventures around the world the consequence is the money is leaving the united states going to other places not to the places in the united states that leave the most needing it most is the country's neglected infrastructure and jobs that come with rebuilding according to the american society of civil engineers. worker of america's six hundred thousand bridges are listed as deficient and nearly half of american households don't have access to public transportation ongoing federal budget cuts are expected to force thousands of this fire departments to close more than forty million americans on food stamps they also make sacrifices we just cut

the food stamp project by twelve billion dollars we have multiple experimental ongoing programs now defense department each of which is large enough to offset the food stamp cuts and i think if we have forty one million people already who are dependent on government aid for food getting food to them is probably a first priority but defense secretary leon panetta is looking further afield for his priorities we are a nation at war we face a broad and growing range of security threats and challenges that our military must be prepared to confront from terrorist networks to rogue nations that are making efforts to have chain a nuclear capability to get with the rising power it's. always look at us to determine whether or not we will in fact maintain a strong defense here and throughout the world eyes on the world while citizens face mounting struggles at home that's what the owners count the fact that americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red white and blue

being jammed up there every day because the owners of this country know the truth it's called the american dream because you have to be asleep to believe it marina courtney our new york. now to help us figure out the reality of the situation i spoke to someone who knows retired u.s. army colonel douglas macgregor he is a decorated combat veteran and he's author of the warriors rage the great tank battle of seventy three easting i want to get to the bottom of what's really at stake with defense cuts and why they should be made and i started our conversation by simply asking if us can afford not to cut defense spending dramatically here's what he had to say. well the answer is absolutely not and it's a strategic imperative for the united states to scale back its investment in defense wants to what extent well the plan that i put together saves two point seven nine trillion dollars over the next ten years and that's what we should aim

for we should look at least two trillion because the idea of my plan was that almost a third of that money would be harvested for investment in new capabilities because in addition to this thing being too expensive that we have been too involved in too many places in the world we're quite frankly we don't need to be we've also got an anachronistic force structure a force structure with its roots in a sort of war and there is no existential military threat to the united states there hasn't been since one thousand nine hundred nine so the argument that there is great risk if we reduce spending and reduce our presence there were scenes simply doesn't hold up closer scrutiny what about iran what about china what about those are those popular names thrown out by the contenders we heard last night as well as the right but i guess that's the u.s. well i think people i think that some of the people that you listen to certainly ron paul isn't one of them but the others that you listen to or well intentioned well meaning people but they're uninformed and there is a tendency that emerged during many decades of the cold war to quite defend

spending with patriotism the notion that if you weren't supportive of defense spending that somehow or another you were sympathetic to communism and it hence unpatriotic and i think many of these people are stuck in a time warp and they're listening to the wrong voices they're listening to advisers who've also being with us for many many years who have personal agendas unconnected to the interests of the american people what agenda do you have why why you might you know you're not left the anti-war activist you are a colonel you're a retired colonel you're a decorated combat veteran i know your thing you know well what am republicans going to take on well i think that's changing and i think that was the point of your previous discussion but i think you're going to see more of that in the future more and more americans are finally beginning to ask. questions but they've lived remote from the realities of war fare war has imposed no cost to no detectable cost the losses of trillions of dollars along with thousands of people not even addressing the hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed who were muslim

arabs or afghans and it's all being transparent it's invisible to the american public the american public is finally beginning to connect the dots between a commander says loss of revenue overseas on these fool's errands that we've been involved with these nation building exercises and the current economic problems at home so i think it's changing but the president has so much control over foreign policy separately from congress so if you have someone like the people that we thought on that stage last night who think that iran is the biggest threat to the united states and iran getting nuclear weapons how is what you're saying never going to play out well there's a supposition that iran is something more that it is iran is actually a very backward place it's struggling to survive its oil and gas industries it ruins and it's investing in a nuclear weapon at least as much because of iranian nationalism is because they want to ensure that we can't intervene in a country if we choose to do so and i remember that israel which is sitting not very far away from both iran and turkey in the rest of the region has three hundred

nuclear weapons so if you're sitting in tehran right now you can come up with lots of reasons to try and build a nuclear weapon what's a stronger shing to me is that after all these years they have done it they must be monumentally incompetent to be blunt those of us know gregor retired u.s. army colonel and author now all of this talk of government spending terry cutting it comes as the u.s. could lose its ability to borrow at a low rate it hasn't happened yet but that could be the result of the u.s. credit downgrade that we saw but who gets this power to make a downgrade let's look at the ratings agencies they seem to wield immense influence over the global economy i mean are warnings from one of them can rock markets influence the debate by governments with ripple effects that trickle down to individual citizens but what is their track record and who is interested they really serve well it's a twisted web i found out. breaking news the united states has just lost its top

notch triple a credit rating from it with a downgrade heard around the world in a strong reaction to the rating downgrades on the hospital and us well it's that standard and poor's took the u.s. from straight aaa student to one notch below for the first time ever that marks were handed down for the nation's debt and politicians inability to agree on rein it in a two party downgrade a lot of it has to do with the failure of the present united states i think this is a tea party problem a greater in chief says the u.s. has become a bit more unpredictable and. the government a stalwart response from the downgrade or that helped ratchet up that the yeah tricks of the debt ceiling debate with the help of the other ratings agencies of course stealing the show from bickering politicians with their eyes on the debt deal they may be missing really a larger concern because there is growing evidence today that the u.s. credit score is going to get hit now that the u.s.

has gotten hit just how much does s.m.p. is mark actually count well not much according to some like investor jim rogers but it's not because the country isn't broke america is going down the tubes where the largest debtor nation in the history of the world it's because of the source these late rating agencies have been wrong about nearly everything for the past ten or fifteen years don't pay any attention to them so just how does the report card stack up for the major ratings agencies themselves they are s.n.p. moody's and fitch let's assess test one the mortgage crisis of two thousand and eight these are the same agencies that raided the toxic sub prime dead aaa so i mean how do we take them with any level of credibility after that. well let's see if they get any from tess to be too big to fail banks and insurers during the financial crisis could have missed many of the big bankruptcies that gave our investment. gee they gave

a aaa rating to total almost the day of class good grades for firms that collapsed or were bailed out because of bad debt in fact the financial crisis inquiry commission said the three credit ratings agencies were key enablers of the financial meltdown and this brings us to test three ethics ratings agencies are paid by the investment firms they grade and moody's and s. and p. are publicly traded which means they may be more driven to increase profits for shareholders raising this to be right now you have the companies that are being judged paying the bill and they could like bob around saying if they go to berkshire but mr buffett also pointed out the market requires it because these ratings agencies has been around forever so they're in shrine by government regulations which oh yeah they have a stake in test for objectivity. legislation the financial reform has restrictions on rating agencies and the rules that are yet to be written and the

curious huge viewable with those rules wind up looking like sort of it would surprise me if they were trying to curry favor with. in fact they spent a combined total of one point seven six million dollars this year lobbying washington over the regulations which brings us full circle to the downgrade of u.s. credit the u.s. was downgraded by s. and peak of government debt member the government ran up that debt in part because it bailed out the big banks in a id back in two thousand and eight remember the one saddled with all of those bad mortgage bonds which the ratings agencies graded triple a when in reality they were a d. or and which makes me wonder if the ratings agencies themselves deserve a downgrade lauren lyster r.t. washington d.c. . and of course the ratings agencies i don't think can get a downgrade so naturally the u.s. government is investigating as n p a plea as people brace at the same time for a downgrade of france are released wondering if france will be next to be

downgraded by us and karl denninger from the markets or is here to help us figure out just get to the bottom of what's at stake for these ratings agencies and who's benefiting from these downgrades thank you for being here. no problem at all thank you for having me on so you know i for classes at these the is now investigating s. and p. over insider trading i had a big u.s. downgrade on the senate banking committee is looking into it as well do you think this is a legitimate investigation or is this political punishment for the downgrade there's clearly an element of legitimacy to investigating insider trading there was an awful lot of rumor mongering that was going on for the downgrade in this case the rumor turned out to be correct and there was a huge swing in the market on friday prior to the downgrade being issued so clearly some people knew in advance and the question is who are those people and how did they get that information because it is clearly improper under u.s. law to trade on material nonpublic information if you have it so to that extent the

inquiry is legitimate. but if it's legitimate and it's not politically driven at all why didn't the government say go after s. and p. when they raided all the mortgage backed securities aaa when those investments were not and nearly brought down the banking system. there's a good question in regards to why hasn't insider trading been investigated in the general sense lehmann brothers for example was known by some of their card counter parties to be functionally bankrupt for some time prior to when they went under and nobody at the federal reserve or the new york fed or anyone else bothered to say anything to anybody we had the c.e.o. that was on the air so there we thing was fine and the same kind of thing happened with bear stearns. there is clearly a political element to this but i would like to see more investigations of insider trading rather than fewer i think of the government bailed out all of those things that had all those mortgage backed securities that you could argue it paid a much higher price for that in dollars and cents because right now you know the

debt has been downgraded but yields are still really low on treasuries but if the government gets a downgrade and now they're investigating is it because it has huge slap to the u.s. reputation. i'm sure that's part of it but if the path itself probably doesn't begin or end with an s. and p. my guess is that the investigation is going to find if it's not just an arm waving show that there were some extra parties that had nothing to do with s. and p. made a great deal of money on friday and that is a serious concern if we get weeks within the system so i know who benefits from a downgrade of the u.s. rule are these investors that are benefiting. if you know a downgrade coming in you short the market prior to that you could make a great deal of money. in terms of who benefits from a downgrade the answer is nobody but the united states had several warnings let's

let's remember that that's and p. did tell the united states and did say it publicly that we needed to take four trillion dollars off the deficit over ten years that the four hundred billion dollars a year heart rate of actual cuts and the bill that was passed was less than half of that so they had made it clear several months prior to the event that this was what was going to have to happen or they were going to issue the downgrade i don't understand why i think it was a surprise ok i guess because it actually happened and many thought that it wouldn't my question is what price is the u.s. going to pay have right now we haven't seen it pass. well the immediate impact was essentially no aside by the fact of the stock market at the same time so when you have the stock market collapse like this what happens is people go into what they perceive to be safer assets and that regardless of the downgrade is still u.s. treasuries because there has been and will be a default the united states is always capable of making those payments even if they

do it by printing money so as a result the idea that there's actually going to be a reputed default on the interest due on those that will spawn ludicrous which is another question and to many economists a phrase which is they don't understand this whole issue of default because unless there were something like that that feeling of being raised the u.s. can't afford that it can print dollars it just realistically can't pay its debts so why do you think that such a big deal with made about the ratings agencies worrying about that when they put out these warnings and ultimately get a downgrade there more to ultimately there is more to it ultimately you cannot increase at a greater rate than you increase productive output if you do so you end up having to devalue the currency or you will default and if you devalue the currency in order to pay those debts and people get back the same dollars but they don't purchase anything so if the price of a barrel of oil for example goes from forty dollars to eighty dollars then you get your hundred dollars in your bond back and only bias half of what it did before

that would be considered by most people to loan you money a default even though you technically got the money back i just underpricing you think there's any political interest or benefit press and be in this default are there anything you come with a vested maybe they are trying to curry favor with particular politicians influence over regulation that affect them do you see any political motivation here. if anything i think s. and p. is going to get in more trouble politically by. page dating elbow to conceal the way around. s. and p. appears to have been trying to rehabilitate its reputation they missed the entire subprime mess they missed lehman brothers they missed their sterns they reaffirmed the layman if i remember correctly just a day or two before they actually filed for bankruptcy so i don't feel you know if anything it's an attempt to reestablish their credibility is as meaning something in the marketplace because i don't know anybody that's actually taking them seriously the last three years.