through the bell tolls wall street is calling for it big banks want it but will q e three just appease those who cause the most damage. they see i decided to do this project with those issues. one man's project is another man's life so what's it like to walk in the shoes or lack there of a homeless person will take you the big apple where one man does it by choice. the sounds of war but should we be hearing them at all iraq is the us has ended its combat mission there are a year ago today why then have fifty six u.s. soldiers died not to mention more than a thousand iraqis and how can the u.s.

avoid being stuck between a rock and a hard place again i guess may have the answer n.p.r. why why are we going to be doing it again you know why are we why we doing you know and as it was this person's life story those can you imagine collecting cataloguing bagging and boxing the bodies of fallen soldiers and conference that was one marine's call of duty here her chilling story on the real cost of war. that afternoon it's wednesday august thirty first four pm here in washington d.c. i'm lauren lyster your watching r.t. all right well with an increased number of economists saying to us is headed back into recession consumer confidence plunging to the lowest level in more than two

years and new jobs numbers out friday expected to disappoint the president is out talking jobs and investment he's pushing to extend some bills set to expire next month here's what he said about him. that's what we're going to need to do in the short term keep people on the job keep vital projects moving forward fund projects that are already underway in a smarter way. of course if we're honest we also know they're going to come store nation's infrastructure our roads our railways mass transit airports we should just be playing catch up or catch up we should be leading the world our way you can give a speech but in reality obama and congress have failed to deliver so far with two years of around nine percent unemployment likely a bigger deal next month what we could see and september what we're hearing more and more about is that the fed may be the one to act again with another round of quantitative easing now the federal reserve bank of atlanta an official there is

saying the fed should consider it on wall street j.p. morgan is calling for it saying they think it's coming in september goldman sachs thinks it's coming to federal reserve minutes also show that they came this close in august but just who would this help now we know that quantitative easing is help wall street because it's boosted the equity market and created a demand for treasuries already on their books and it's also helped the federal government because it's allowed them to borrow an extremely low price because it pushes down the yields on treasuries but what would this do for everyone else for millions of jobless americans afraid or too broke to spend underwater on their mortgages or first small businesses which ben bernanke he says still can't get loans but here to help us answer that is lew rockwell he is chairman of the lead vivaan nieces institute thank you so much for being here it's nice to see you again mr robert on with absolutely you know we know that quantitative easing in the past

has helped wall street and certainly the federal government in washington but how is that helped everyone else just average folks who are broke and jobless. well it might as well take a hammer and hit them in the head is one of the we're still in a recession there's not been a recovery and one of the reasons is because what the government is doing with the federal reserve is going to hold on interest rates so low as you say developing the federal government the benefit of places like a goldman sachs and j.p. morgan and just like europe is being raked over the coals to the benefit of the big banks so our american so the average joe the average janet is being harmed to the benefit of the you know the power elite so what is quantitative easing it's it's money printing and they print this money and it has a horrendous effect on the economy and we're already starting to see prices increase notice clothing food many other areas prices are going up enough already we stand to face really a hyperinflation worse than what happened in the one nine hundred seventy s.

i don't think they're going to put us in the zimbabwe care of that category but you know we can't really can't know frank is like the mad printer and he's doing it again for wall street for the big banks for the government and to the detriment of the american people and really the people of the whole world this is a criminal act that they're contemplating so just to confirm i know they're rounded human silly three we're just help wall street and just help a government that's right and it puts the boot on the throat of the average person so not only does it just help the well connected but it's a deliberate knock on the head to working people to people who are out of jobs and all the various things they're considering you know infrastructure spending and so it would also be bad i mean it's true that the infrastructure is in bad shape it's all owned by the government and the government has messed up the infrastructure so of course the answer is always when the government has fallen flat on its face we're supposed to give them more power and more money instead of course we have a private the infrastructure private owners take care of their property government

quote unquote owners just. say they ruin the property that's in their charge and i want to get to that but i just. want to make sure that people understand and i'm clear on for example just one way to illustrate how can we help small streets if everyone involved street knows that there's going to be more q.e. if i'm goldman sachs or another big bank is calling for that and i know the government is going to be doing here we buying treasuries can't i go buy them ahead of time and then sell that back to the federal reserve and make money on the deal or sure not only that we have for remember that the original q.e. which was the tarp program and probably subsequent. actions of the federal reserve meant hundreds of billions of dollars for the big banks on wall street i mean they got actual payoffs from the government so one of the ways they benefit is it's a reserve principle though and shipped it on pallets in effect over to the big banks and the big wall street firms so it's

a direct payoff to them through producing i mean it's through counterfeiting it's what's called in the private sector counterfeiting and it's a crime where the government does it and it's exactly the same thing as counterfeiting although for more damaging the private kind of thing they call it q.e. and you think counterfeiting the fed says this is what the economy needs in order for banks to have cast to lend but my question to you is if the fed really wanted banks to lend why would they be paying banks not to lend by paying an interest on their reserves. well they're trying to prevent hyperinflation by doing that but you know we actually don't want banks working there's too much debt in this society so much government that there's too much private that people have accumulated vast amounts of debt mortgage debt and so forth part of the problem we have this too much debt we need less lending we need fewer banks we did fewer wall street firms the whole financial structure has been balloon by the federal reserve way out of

proportion to the rest of the economy we need to puncture the balloon so we don't want more lending we want for less lumber and i just want to show our viewers just how much money that banks are keeping at the fed i want to show how much does increase since they started paying interest on reserves there during the financial crisis and if you can see that blue line has just skyrocketed since the financial crisis it's increased about a thousand times if we're doing our math right so that it will get a lot of money and it's one of the rip off for the banks of principle money the banks get it then they get interest payments on it and they this is there a lot of these banks this makes their profit make the difference in profit and loss so this whole program is another another payoff to the big banks we live in some sign of kind of bangkok receive here in western europe the banks are driving the rest of the economy the rest of the people into the ground we need something different terrible that merkel is doing what she's doing in germany terrible what

a bomb is doing in this country that might as well just be employees of the banks but you or her goldman sachs or whatever we need to very different kind of system we don't need the banks running they're running our countries this is what we need to overthrow the banks as a matter and you know there's a new report just out that i want to ask you if you think as a result of exactly what you're talking about it shows that at least twenty five top u.s. companies paid more to their c.e.o.'s in two thousand and ten than they did to federal the federal government in taxes how our c.e.o. is being paid so much more at a time when the economy is this bad. because that actually goes goes back to or earlier government intervention that protected management from stockholders and made it so difficult for so called you know for people to buy up the stock and take over a company in tough bad management that's very very difficult these days because of the big the big companies in the government come together to prevent it so if one

of the results of this is all management of these big companies is paid too much the c.e.o.'s are paying too much way out of way out of the market category what we want to do is make it possible for the michael milken's of the world to have so-called hostile takeovers that is pay stockholders the price they want to pay they want to get for their stock take over the companies toss out the old line management put new and we would hope that are management and and especially not have these rip off salaries for these c.e.o.'s who are going to part of the power elite there like they are the big banks on wall street or the big banks in new york it's over these people are in cahoots with the government running the rest of us ripping the rest of us off so then is this that sense and they just exactly what you're talking about a new system of socialism that just for the rich where the risks are bailed or backed by the federal government that all the rewards are still reached by corporations banks and rich investors so sure and i mean that's right the rest of us live in capitalism which is a good thing to some extent we don't have

a laissez faire economy unfortunately but certainly no bailouts for the average person nobody has bailed out on their mortgage or whatever no matter what they talk about but there are of course bailouts for the big boys for the people who are actually running within the country the power elite the big corporations the government itself the military industrial complex the banks all the rest of the rip off artists so you know we need a very different kind of system this is really not i would argue this is a soft fascism where we have big government and big companies joining together to step on the rest of us it's not a good it's not a good system politically morally economically or in any other way and that in many ways us. all you could argue all financed by by taxpayers and by countries like china but one thing that sticks out to us is that china is now getting a break to their people an income tax and sixty million people will be totally exempt most except for the top earners will have

a big cut to their income taxes begins tomorrow the government is trying to boost poor people spending in their country i wondering if you think this is a sign that china is realizing the cost of subsidizing the american economy outweigh the benefits and are instead trying to promote domestic consumption. well i think i think it's wonderful that they're cutting taxes already trannies taxes were nowhere near as high as american taxes for example on companies or on individuals i feel bad for china they get stuck with all those u.s. treasury debt i don't know what's going to happen to that but i hope china opens up things even more economically the period from the death of the same tone to the president has to be the biggest fastest increase and that's on the prosperity and freedom in the history of the world so far as i know what's happened in china so they've got a ways to go but the trend line is certainly very good it's towards freedom towards capitalism where the united states but with huge resentment of china and huge military envy of china is going in the opposite direction so we're almost out of

time but i'm just curious yes or no should the u.s. take a cue from china on the way they're running their economy for example with that income tax thing though yeah i mean with the more that we can shorthand for taxes wealth structure so we want less wealth destruction in the united states and in every place in the world we do all right we're going to leave it at that but you certainly think that on to anything would be more wealth destruction for average folks across this country lou just not for wall street and for the federal government that was the rockwell chairman of the lead big money says institute and with the government failing to fix a really address many of the economic problems facing average americans which plan they could be in the pipeline don't seem to be helping well unemployment and homelessness are continuing and average americans are taking matters now into their own hands the metropolitan area unemployment report from the government shows the national unemployment rate was nine point three percent in july that's a little better than last year but my colleague in new york anastasio churkin i met

one man who's going to drastic measures to show that a number like that means nothing for most people he knows. new york one of the richest cities in the world rush hour streets abuzz with. business as usual but behind the crowds homeless this has increased. you know in the united in new york and the united states manager you know people that i'd be choppy you fixed and the body. you know because of the economy people lose their job and then they can find another job you know and then you know what you know what happens there what happens there often leads to no place to call home what many people and politicians who are able to avoid an economic knock out don't realize that homelessness is not just a word concept or see it's a social disease that has now spread far and wide and it's not going anywhere and

must sure like many other consequences of a private economy. thirty nine thousand four was packing up see shelters every night and many more are left without a bad. use of from these is living at grand central station i know so many people that you know live paycheck to paycheck the majority of the stories enough that i mean it's not like it's not stories of pot farm on you and me you know and that's what makes it even more steer thirty four year old has no money no cell phone and no change of clothes what separates him from all the other lost souls is that he's homeless by choice this is my area here doing this project. this year i decided to do this project without any shoes every year the graphic designer needs his office job that's just around the corner and those who was born entire week usually during

the muslim holy month of ramadan this leaves them not just homeless but congress during the past years of school raising awareness and. five thousand dollars for those who have nowhere to go. to visit someone notices such change dramatically he could be on the train on the bus and sitting next to someone just this is a fortune in the big apple alone over nine and a half thousand families don't have a pool that means tens of thousands of children too i don't get angry lot of stuff but this definitely makes me angry you know it makes me it's just it's inside you know it's sad that. you know it's sad but when you hear politicians see that you know the big trouble in the subway and and you don't remember the last time going to softball next person you know i mean you know remarks like that makes me really upset you know because that's just not the reality for politicians and most

others turn a blind eye to the less fortunate you so briefly put himself right in their spot in the hope that his empathy if that. is the future are you. and of use of things politicians are turning a blind eye to social problems it also appears they've been overlooking wasteful war spending to sixty billion dollars and u.s. funds have been lost to waste and fraud in iraq and afghanistan over the past decade as was identified in a report to congress from a commission created by congress that was released today that money would go very far for the people use if wants to help now the waste is in part through lax oversight of contractors and also poor planning but we hold on remember isn't the u.s. combat mission in iraq over in fact it's the first anniversary today of ending that combat mission so just what has that meant to look at this for american troops that

means they're still dying the ones you see here fifty six of them died in iraq since the combat mission and did there and just remind you close to forty five hundred died since the war began and close to fifteen hundred or rocky civilians have been killed during the time since the u.s. ended its combat mission on top of the roughly one hundred thousand who have died since the war began and remember there are forty six thousand u.s. troops still in iraq and both sides are still talking about whether some of those u.s. troops will remain there next year so what lesson should be taking from iraq is the conflict in libya continues for example well author america's failure in iraq michael o'brien is here to help us figure that out thank you so much for being with us now from i know you used to be a contractor why is the u.s. spending so much including waste and fraud thirty one to sixty billion dollars on it on contractors for these wars well i was in iraq for fourteen months from

july to september of zero seven i'm firmly convinced that people like me many of us where they are so that our companies could be profit. you are come my company the one that i work for i will mention it is headed up by a couple of retired army four star generals that can easily get contracts in the halls of the pentagon to send people over and i got over there in i thought i was a subject matter expert in my field and nobody really cared to hear anything i had to say or anything i had offer. but the real real reason why we have so many contractors over there is very simple our country refuses to go back to the draft a compulsive military service we are an all volunteer force have been since the vietnam war because the war demonstrations caused our country's leadership to eliminate the trade off that took it took the easy way out and because we don't have a draft and we have an all volunteer force and we're getting involved in all these

conflicts and also one other thing because our leadership doesn't want to send over the number of troops that really need to be sent over they will admit it with contractors before i want to get to what exactly a draft would do but why is the west on iraq oh simple question we're still in iraq because our national leadership our presidents don't have the courage to just say we're pulling out because they're afraid is like holding a wolf by years one of our report earlier found for our founding fathers of our country so you've got you've got a wolf by the years everything's great actually a little go and they don't want to little rock go because they're afraid it will just blow up and the other reason is because they won't go the other way but all are just all out combat all out warfare we're just tiptoeing down the middle of the street we want to send over the number of soldiers needed to rack the job up whatever that may entail but we won't pull out because we're afraid to so we just tentatively go down the street and we've been doing we've been here now since march

of zero three and we will be there for the forseeable future if everything is going so great and certainly the casualty numbers are dropping no question about that but if everything's going so great why was secretary of defense get gates pleading with the iraqis to ask a strong remain beyond the end of this year exactly why and what what was what the blowing up look like because this has been going on for you know so long and going on for years well we'll find out it's not what would blowing up even look like what would be worse than what we've had it since two thousand and three take out all. american soldiers take out all american contractors many of whom are security contractors which is a fancy name for a mercenary take them all hour and see what happens and i believe that the reason why secretary gates and scenery can generals. we're begging iraq to ask us to stay which was what was required we couldn't stay on our own they had to ask us there has to be a reason i mean logic follows that they know that if we pull out things could

happen in a course who borders iraq to the east iran they fought a ten year war in the one nine hundred eighty s. iran is getting more and more powerful iraq because paul bremer disbanded their army and national police has gotten weaker and weaker the border between iraq and iran is like a sieve because partly because paul bremmer tried to spanning the iraqi national police also totally eliminated their french your border security force will any rock the government now and the country now is more sympathetic to iran than it was under saddam hussein cracked yes absolutely because they're sympathetic for a lot of reasons the relation obviously iraq is right in the middle it is the cradle of civilization it is the militant pot sunni to the west shiite to the east you know saudi arabia to the west iran to the east it really is stuck right in the middle and then of course iran and farther to the east and farther to the west is

obviously israel so you think though that this is really the extended time line that combat mission it is over but isn't it about iran and i hear you right oh not necessarily you know i'm not really sure what it's about but i like you have to say that iran plays a role you have to say iran plays a role in in in everything that goes on in that part of the world and the thing about it isn't and valid point but a valid question that you ask what happens what is iran going to do if everybody pulls out what are we going to do and when but when the gulf war ended ninety one and the first president bush ceased hostilities the i mentioned this in my book america's failure in iraq i start off by just talking about this. everyone was afraid of that power vacuum and well if we eliminate saddam and everything will rand swoop in from the east well then we went back in zero three and then created

the insurgency which i believe we did singlehandedly primarily by paul bremer by the spending iraq's own security infrastructure we created that very power back vacuum we were trying to avoid in ninety one for the united thank you they created the situation that it is you think the draft will get us out of that the draft would give us the manpower and the report that you mentioned about all the waste it taught that same report talks about the one to one relation right ratio of sort of men in uniform men and women in uniform to contractors there were as many as two hundred sixty two thousand contractors in iraq imagine if all of them were wearing a uniform you'd have half a million men and women in uniform in iraq. but i would venture to say things would have been wrapped up rather quickly and now we would just be keeping a lid on it is that because you think that americans would be aware of the actual toll that this is taking on the lives exhibit. i think of that but americans would go half

a million soldiers in uniform in iraq what's going on is there's some other viet-nam so we soon go for a fraction of the number soldiers and send over at least that many contractors in the american people who are clueless and don't know what's going on and it's something to keep in mind as we see people comparing libya to iraq in two thousand and three there is no draft so logic and your logic would say that there would be nothing to keep libya from turning into iraq but we're going to have to leave it at that ok it's ok with that you know that's possible ok well thank you so much that was my alibi and author of america's failure in iraq now america's long standing wars have required in total we've been talking about iraq but looking at both of them iraq and afghanistan roughly two million u.s. soldiers have risked their lives my last guest said it would have been many more if we had mercenaries actually being u.s. soldiers and when you look at the lives lost together it's been more than six thousand but behind the numbers and statistics of war is

a tragic reality that most americans are kept from hearing and from seeing a reality that only certain soldiers are required to face and then struggle their ends higher lives to forget our t's correspondent rampart i am my colleague in new york she saw this reality firsthand watch this. you think you should be very much into the infinite world of literature and here's this twenty eight year old ex marine an american who abandoned her weapon four written words to tell a story she says is kept censored from u.s. citizens even though people may know that it affects us i don't think that they understand the weight. and the toll that it takes on us and seeing the effects of war. the literal facts and the dead bodies that were made i couldn't figure out why are we already are we doing again you know why are we why are we doing this you

know and this was this person's life worth both just a good sales memoir shade it black details a traumatic and human account of war in two thousand and four gudel spent eight months in iraq collecting cataloging bagging and boxing the bodies of dead marines at the mortuary affairs unit and experience no u.s. president who's declared war has ever endured if it was a result of or an explosion there could be several body pieces so sometimes that would require us to you know crawl under a truck or crawl into trucks or just as you mentioned. you know you want to. watch this that you can get back to the family goodell pieced fallen soldiers back together after receiving body that filled with limbs on one occasion a back she process was carrying only the heads of her comrades we didn't know what we were seeing when we had opened up the bag we didn't what was in the bag. when we

had gotten that particular body back so when we had unsub to you know soon as you call that a flap and you see that's had to mediately not look away i mean it's difficult to look at but you have to look at that because you have to you know put them in their respective body bags or send them to their. back to the family nearly four thousand five hundred u.s. soldiers have returned from iraq in caskets more than fifteen hundred flown in from america's other war in afghanistan that was a marine and i think that there for the millions who do make it home alive many i could tell are tormented by memories whose traumatic stress disorder depression and substance abuse i couldn't leave my apartment you know i didn't have friends and talk to anybody. and a lot of it you can't deal with. you don't deal with and i suffer from flashbacks and nightmares and i i couldn't process that i had a really hard to kind of make sense of it more than six years later could tell says

she's still searching for reasons to justify the damage and death caused by the u.s. war in iraq as a marine she did what she was told as a civilian she questions why you must leaders glorify soldiers as heroes but neglect to speak about the consequences of their service i don't know that the government respects my friends because there is a fact that i don't think that they would send us to these places. to carry out what they're asking of us so i don't think that their respect is there from the get go. declaring war is the prerogative of politicians over the decades us wars have resulted in a reported twenty three million american veterans and many left struggling to adjust to life following the battle a shift.