three. videos for you. and thanks for tuning in this evening i am lucy koslow filling in for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture and all this has shaped up to be the deadliest month for his troops in afghanistan depressing record in the war's ten year history so is the continued bloodshed much needed a warning for president obama to rethink his strategy there and federal reserve chairman ben bernanke he says that his hands are tied when it comes to fixing the unemployment crisis while he's calling on congress to pick up the slack and what that means for those americans who are struggling to pay the bills.

well you need to know this there is still one more day remaining in august but already it has proven to be the deadliest month in the in the decade long war in afghanistan now a record sixty six u.s. soldiers were killed in august with the lion's share of that number of grisly number a result of the chinook helicopter crash that claimed thirty american lives most of them leave navy seals on august sixth now according to the associated press at least one thousand six hundred forty members of the u.s. military have died since the war in afghanistan began now it does seem unfortunately like no one's even the tiles on the number of afghan civilian casualty is not to mention the tens of thousands of americans who came home with visible as well as emotional scars their lives undoubtedly. out altered for ever

and while americans may be increasingly turning against the war at least according to polling the mainstream media is largely missing in action so what if the world's spending has a direct impact on our faltering economy and it does so what if the billions spent on that war alone can provide twenty three million americans with health care and one point four million firefighters or not to mention send twenty eight million american kids to college i guess speculating over the new cast of dancing with the stars makes for better ratings we haven't forgotten we haven't forgotten about stan and if they're not willing to ask the hard questions we are on that note let's turn to our first guest this evening jim miller is the executive director of the brave new foundation and the producer of the documentary rethink afghanistan jim thank you so much for joining us this evening now it is notoriously difficult to see see clearly in the fog of war especially when folks like you and i are in the comfort

of our homes or studios in washington or less angeles but these death tolls in your view do they indicate that the situation on the ground is unraveling. thank you so much for having me on and yes the statement that you made at the beginning of the segment just wraps it all up very clearly sixty six people dead this month that tops sixty five i believe in july of two thousand and ten which was the last total we've had more troops put into the country and as a result more violence so it's not helping at all well of course that's not helping a course nobody wants to see more casualties but what does that say for the president's plan to withdraw all the troops from afghanistan i mean. you know we see the president sort of call for this there were turn of the thirty three thousand additional troops that he this patch to the war if this is ration on the ground doesn't match a situation a we want to see there in terms of stability and does that mean that

this war is going to continue at current levels. well i hope that that's not the conclusion that they come to hopefully that they'll see that putting more troops in to have kind of stand is not going to help the situation i think they need to negotiate better right now the negotiations with the taliban are basically saying ok you know it's violence and surrender and then we'll leave if there's not going to be a real diplomatic talk about what's going on i think on both sides we're going to keep seeing people die and as you said we're going to see the costs go up well and also to play a devil's advocate i have to say i mean if that withdrawal process is sped up right if we do bring home the troops as many have called for and the situation on the ground drastically escalates for the worse i mean wouldn't the americans in some ways be held responsible i mean there's the so-called pottery barn rule apply here . you know it's it's strange to do what ifs in that situation one of

the what if we remove all the troops and then peace prevails or what if we remove all the troops and then the the tribes within the country actually come to some conclusions together why does it have to go to the other side i don't understand well because again just to play devil's advocate we are there are troops are there when a foreign country ships are there and nothing is getting better all of that is correct that is correct so in your view that and worse over the ten years and in your view if we withdraw could the situation improve. if we withdraw i'm not sure what's going to happen what i do know is that we won't sacrifice any more american lives for the quagmire we won't continue spending trillions of dollars we won't have people who are coming back with p.t.s.d. and traumatic brain injury who are affected for the rest of their lives well all

good points and that's what we know for certain right let's look at that moment impact of of all this because i know that war is sort of difficult to grasp especially when it's a foreign land and far away but the economy is on everyone's mind right now with the pentagon itself saying that it's spending about two billion dollars a week a week and ghana's down obviously the pentagon is saying that we hope that the estimates of it probably will be higher that's two billion dollars the u.s. tax dollars that will be spent on i don't know education on health care on i think on that stimulus i mean it seems to me that we haven't made the connection in this country between what we spend on war and how that impacts our lives here in america what's your take on that. i think you're exactly correct we started rethink afghanistan about two years ago and we did focus on the deaths we focused on the injuries we focused on the long term effects of the people that were sacrificing being there it really wasn't until we started talking about the cost of the war that people started to pay attention and i think now more than ever as we continue

to talk about the costs and we've started a new project war cost where we specifically go over everything that you've just spoken about the money that could be saved where could be spent and the fact that this tends to is not create jobs well in yet you have the defense secretary leon panetta saying that defense cuts are off the table and we have a situation where defense spending in this country increased by forty percent since nine eleven not including the wars in iraq and afghanistan we spend more and defense than the rest of the world combined six times the amount of china and meanwhile the pentagon is obsessed with bigger and better war machines like the joint strike fighters what war i mean to protect us against a loosely organized guys with box cutters on an airplane or homemade bombs what in your view is really be working protect their jobs right so it's not likely leon panetta is not going to be making the decisions of the deficit commission likely leon panetta is not the end all when it comes to what we're going to spend it where

we're going to spend it and he's in service of the american people as i see it and the more people who express their opinions then the more power that will have in trying to cut this defense budget down to where it should be but the deficit commission as we think afghanistan robert greenwald recently wrote is getting funding and lobbying contributions from defense contractors so talk a little bit about the cycle between the contractors and our policy is eisenhower's nightmare is actually coming true in terms of the military industrial complex. i think it has come true i think if you if you just look at the last decade what's happened and the decade previous to that the trend that we have within the military and you're right about the lobbyist over a million dollars has been given to the the senators and congress people who serve on the deficit commission and that's not chump change and it is it is

a cycle where the people who have the money are going to be defending whatever whatever procedure is they feel that we should be we should be taking in order really to keep their own jobs they're not thinking about the greater good they're not thinking about the people who go up and actually fight these wars and the people who come back and their families mirror their frankly i feel not really taking the whole economy into consideration when they're spending these trillions of dollars up front and then the studies that i'm sure that you've read and spoken about as well that tell us about the trillions that are going to be spent because of what is happening these last ten years indeed and you know we have to stay. in this economic situation we can't afford not to be making that connection between the economy and the war spending and jim miller thank you so much for your time. thank you all right well at the beginning of his bloody year in afghanistan tom harkin laid out his views on me in family of the u.s.

strategy they're calling for an end to america's longest war and surprisingly president obama didn't listen to tom and here we are with nearly three hundred more american soldiers unfortunately that. since the american media by and large refuses to devote more than four percent of its news coverage of this ongoing conflict now the largest or exceeding the longest war in american history the truth about afghanistan will still be unknown to the majority of the rest of us the truth is this these numbers came from piece the tom hayden show over common dreams. and other sites as well that you know those were his mention we're spending sixteen billion dollars a month sixteen billion dollars a month in afghanistan and what does it bind us the number of soldiers we have rooted since the afghan war started nine thousand nine hundred seventy one including iraq forty one thousand american soldiers wounded. the number of soldiers killed in afghanistan fourteen hundred thirty seven including iraq fifty eight

hundred fifty nine. nurse soldiers killed in afghanistan under george bush this was the entire era from two thousand and one to two thousand and eight six hundred thirty. whatever of soldiers killed in afghanistan under obama in the last two years eight hundred seven tell me this war is going well. and that's the that's the last horse ok so get back to us so we are we're likely now to spend over one trillion dollars one trillion dollars in a country with a pre-invasion g.d.p. of two billion i just think about this for a minute the entire economy of afghanistan before we invaded them was two billion dollars a year average income of the average afghan citizen was three hundred dollars a year two billion was their annual g.d.p. the g.d.p. of the state of wyoming is thirty seven billion dollars the g.d.p. of the city of chicago has five hundred seventy four billion dollars the chicago

police are as thirteen thousand employees and the d.o.d. the departed defense houses would get thirty four thousand dead civilians in afghanistan you know if we just took that one trillion dollars that we're spending in afghanistan one trillion and we gave it to the twenty eight million people in afghanistan that's thirty five thousand seven hundred dollars per afghan. in a country where the average annual income is three hundred dollars they would all be rich we wouldn't have a war be about the same amount of money but frankly thirty seven thirty five thousand seven hundred dollars you could just take the seven hundred dollars and give it to every single one every single person in afghanistan and you would have two years' worth of income for i mean this is absolutely insane what we're doing. right it is time for our daily poll of your chance to tell us what you think your space question is obamacare working your choices are yes the g.a.o.

says that because the new law will force insurance companies to spend about eighty percent of premiums back on health care insurance costs will go down soon or no it is not good enough now logon to thom hartmann dot com to tell us what you think the poll as always will be open until tomorrow morning. now coming up in just a bit at the head of the federal reserve points the finger at congress demanding that lawmakers boost the economy abroad creating jobs great idea what are washington foot think about more in just a bit. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime.

i think. one well. we never got that shows the keep him safe get ready because you get their freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else or see some other part of it and realize that everything is sort of. a trump card.

from natural disasters turbulence in the economy as well as unrest both here in the states and abroad it hasn't even been a summer of discontent of course a fact that is not lost on president obama whose approval ratings continue to hover at a record low average of just forty percent that at least according to the latest numbers from gallup now with a new jobs report looming at the end of this week and back consumer confidence

numbers out today there are new theories that have been sparked that the nation is in fact sinking into a double dip recession and many and amid all this many economists and investors turn their attention towards that's not whole wyoming the federal reserve chairman ben bernanke he was expected last friday to lay out his economic solution to all of the woes and problems plaguing this country fortunately that wasn't quite the case that moment prices were award winning his plan would be less of shopping on more i don't know something along the lines of sit and wait indeed it seems like the better him and threw his hands up and passed the buck back to congress punt calling in washington this. but up and do something about jobs of course he could just be setting the stage up for the jobs plan his boss is expected to lay out next week but look when you're the nation's top economist passing the buck shouldn't exactly be your policy perhaps you should i don't know maybe come out with some sort of actual approach and do something but if we take him at his word if the fed's hands

are indeed tied and congress is indeed deadlocked what happens next when it comes the economy let's see if my next guest could help us figure that out max red wolf is a professor of economics at the new school and joins us now from new york welcome back to the program max so how do you really do the fed tea leaves here i mean are bringing his hands actually tied or is there more that the fed could and should be doing. i think there are a few more things the fed could do it should be fair ben bernanke is starting to see the fed b.s. politicize this fiscal policy from the obama administration has been for several years in addition to which the fed has done quite a bit and has continued to do quite a bit from historically low interest rates kept now for several years august ninth decision to keep them very low those interest rates at least through two thousand and thirteen rather year and a half or so i've normally large and sustained interventions from the bad that we've seen this sort of fiscal policy response be muted it passed them to some extent but we're doing in fiscal policy adjustments to our tax level and our

spending is actually contractionary or guaranteed to make the economy smaller and i think with heavy political pressure having done a lot of what he can do and having to keep whatever powder he has left dry ben bernanke in the federal reserve is saying hey why doesn't congress do its job why don't we see the federal government the senate the house and the white house get involved in this economic debate as they should have been and should be instead of doing what they have been doing which is having the kind of rancorous and counter productive fights of each other that terrify global markets and spook investors of course and at the same time i mean you know the federal reserve's job essentially is to increase the money supply to keep interest rates low they've done that. and as we've seen that's not doing the trick i mean pumping up the the money supply the stock market but it doesn't improve the situation for the majority of americans who are struggling at the moment so my question to you is when you look at the bigger approach from from washington in general i mean is there a takeaway lesson here about the overall trickle down economics approach. yeah i

mean there are ample lessons what determines what lessons people see about the trickle down approach has to do with what their ideological agenda is going into it so it's more about what the guy thought before even maybe years before than what he sees now because these folks don't tend to see the world as it is they see the world as they are and i foresee that means certain kinds of solutions even if they're crying needed at certain moments of the economy are simply invisible to them because the ideological blinders that some of these folks wear however in fairness we've seen the fiscal policy response of the u.s. government to the downturn really since two thousand and seven two thousand and eight be a day late a dollar short and that's migrating toward a dollar accent and we've seen real heavy critique of any one of the leading republican presidential candidates actually threaten ben bernanke you with violence so we've also seen a bit of a politicization of monetary policy and it isn't a witch that ben bernanke has two jobs the federal reserve has to mandates in the united states one is price stability prevent inflation or deflation the other is

full employment and the inflation level in the united states is two to three times what it was last year at the jackson hole meeting of the kansas city federal reserve which means his ability to do more monetary stimulus and i think i agree with you that would be of marginal impact is heavily curtailed by the inflation rate he faces today much higher than last year though max to play some revisionist speculation here if president obama had snapped you instead of alan krueger to head has the council of economic said i economic advisers what would you tell the president at the moment you know we see that he isn't as you've explained there's not much that congress has read lots obama's announces jobs plan next week what is your as an economist advice to the president. well i think that president obama has enough trouble enough opponents that a kid suggested me as his economic advisory probably have yet one more problem and seems to have plenty on his plate that being said i think when you have a structural economic downturn which we have not the normal business cycle but a real sign that the structure the basic function of our economy is broken you need

a structural solution the problem with a structural solution is it means a big change it means thinking outside the box i mean some entrenched and special interests have to suffer to make us all better off and if you go into these debates and go into the policy making saying let's make sure that anyone in a privileged position stays there and do as much as we can with that assumption that we hold sacred and there's only so much you can do when we kind of see the limitations of band-aids on bullet wounds which has largely been the big picture approach to economic policy making both before and after january two thousand and nine and fortunately the end of the day given the political realities that are facing i don't really see that kind of a ship shift happening so if that is the case what do you think where do you think we're heading i mean recession depression some other depressing word that we haven't come out with yet. well i'm not sure we'll double dip into an official recession again although that has to do with this season's made by the national

bureau of economic research business cycle beating committee which may or may not really speak to the reality that most americans live i think most americans never got out of the recession that's part of the reason we see the anger and the disconnect between wall street a little bit but really more between washington and main street which i think it's less press and i think going forward we have to hope that winston churchill's old saying about america proved true again which is america always gets it right but not until it's tried everything else that doesn't work and how about fail and then we'll get it right you seem to be have moved through a lot of things that are working and i can only hope you find one that does although i have to be honest with you i do have high hopes for the for jobs response in the big picture but in terms of the september announcement from the administration it's hard to be excited and feel like you'll be likely delighted with what you have to see i mean yeah even if he comes up with something that economists say is brilliant that's the congress to get it through and we've seen how how well that's that turned out i mean later on in this program we talk about how hurricane funds are now trapped in congressional political partisan infighting

but i guess very quickly do you think that. some people have said you know if obama had pushed more somehow somehow we could have gotten past this is there anything relisting clean more that the president can do to sort of force these guys on in congress to i don't know stop being so partisan and actually focus on something tangible on the economy. i'm not sure our problem is purely partisan democrats versus republicans i think that the obama administration and its various economic teams have taken this sort of timid and standard approach is they haven't really worked i'm not sure it would have been enormously different under a different administration i don't think congress in other words is the only problem what i do think however is that we are always best off when the people leading the leaders follow i think the general public needs to make its own voice heard about realistic solutions and i mean they're the silent majority the mass number of people who are in the tea party who are on the far left they are on the far right but there are you know real sick of waiting on their watch their basic

economic situation continually deteriorate for many years now and they're pretty fed up and they need to be channeled in a creative direction where they need to demand accountable solutions from a government that's actively involved and from a political system that's really sensitive to what the general public needs and puts its own reelection second to what the country is really in desperate need of now and not to mention i given a voice perhaps by the mainstream press now i know you are a little shy there but perhaps the president should consider tapping you first then i devise that thank you so much for your take. thank you for having me all right well a few months ago tom took on the fed's efforts to stimulate the economy and pointed out how there really isn't all that much of the public can do to try to fix the underlying structural problems. this week the federal reserve is expected to announce that it's winding down its efforts to jumpstart our economy and despite trillions of dollars of cash that the fed has secretly lent out and hundreds of billions of dollars of debt purchased economic growth is still painfully slow jobs

is still nowhere to be found and more and more economists are starting to worry that america will slide back into another recession as an article yesterday the new york times headlined stimulus by fed is disappointing so why didn't the fed strategy work. it didn't work because there's really not much the federal reserve and do they could lower interest rates but right now interest rates are close to zero so that's off the table they could buy up here huge amounts of debt this is known as quantitative easing which basically unleashes a tidal wave of money into the economy in the last few years the fed has done this twice most recently dumping six hundred billion dollars into our money supply at the end of last year the problem is this helps the banks on wall street if you notice stock prices are higher than ever but doesn't do jack for people on main street if you noticed unemployment and finally the fed can open up a secret lending window and give away trillions of dollars with practically no

interest this is what they've been doing for years now giving away nassif piles of cash to the biggest transnational corporations in the world foreign banks rich people in the united states even ruthless dictators like moammar gadhafi that's right the fed gave doppies bank three point two billion dollars in two thousand and three years later we're bombing the guy don't ask me how that stimulate our economy i don't know if you doubt the military industrial complex the fed also gave out a quarter of a billion dollars to the wives of some morgan stanley banks toure's as matt taibbi pointed out in a recent rolling stone article christine neck the wife of a high profile banks are on wall street john mack was given two hundred twenty million dollars by the fed to prop up an investment firm that she and her friend susan at start up now the two women had any experience and finance but preferred

figure they were a safe investment through a boatload of essentially free cash it. free and interest free cash and all of this all the secret lending to major for the corporations dictators wall street wives all of that would have gone down in complete secrecy had not been for the efforts of senators bernie sanders and franklin i was ron paul to make the fed open up their books and let us the taxpayers take a look so you still wondering why the fed's actions aren't fixing our economy. let's imagine for a second that this wall right here is keeping our economy from collapsing think of it as a giant game. but this dam is starting to crack and holes are starting to form due to all the pressure behind pressure joblessness massive student loan credit card debt student loan debt by the way just exceeded credit card debt over trillion

dollars for the first time in the history of america millions of home foreclosures rising health care costs and norma's trade deficits all the things that are pushing our economy to the breaking point i think of ben bernanke he is the little dutch boy with his finger in the dike all i can do is plug up some of these holes the only thing he has to do them with is money that's all the fed can do is manipulate money that's it. plug a few holes buy it up depth for example. a few holes by giving a few trillion dollars away to banks trees on wall street. clog up the hole by giving a few billion to gadhafi. by giving a quarter billion a christie macking or buddy susan feel like gambling with our money in an upstart investment firm. with each hole the bernanke he

plugs up. the pressure is growing and growing because it's not changing the structural problems underneath it all. and sooner or later ben bernanke he's fingers. work with paper won't be able to prevent the dam from collapsing. we can't keep plugging the holes. we need to either do something about the pressure behind the dam who are rebuild the dam back to where it was before reaganomics started drilling these holes into it. the fed can't do that stuff they can only mess with an innocent money supply to fix the structural problems to address why the dam is cracking to begin with and how we can go about building a new stronger dam congress needs to stop aid to start helping people on main street and try to relieve some of the pressure on our dam. help people.