with. bad breaks bad as this is should go and i think as a business. somehow it's the turned into something else. from failing to bailing on the third anniversary of freddie and fannie bailouts should the u.s. just have let the financial system burn one artist and so. far have seven years of school and what are. the you know the story of the bottom or through you know and with the economy so you need a bailout blues president obama aims to hit a high note with his jobs plan including some kind of public works infrastructure projects but will it be music to the unemployed ears. and it's the news that just won't fly in the mainstream media the sentencing of

a russian pilot convicted of drug smuggling but brought to the u.s. under shady circumstances to begin with we'll have a detailed itinerary in a live report from new york. good afternoon it's wednesday september seventh four pm here in washington d.c. i'm lauren lyster you're watching our t.v. well first this afternoon we want to brief you on a tragedy in the sports world at least forty three people have died in a plane crash near the center of euro's level in russia now most of those victims were members of the local ice hockey team players are from countries all over the world though now this is the first ever deadly crash and valving a sports team and modern russia among those feared dead are three former members of the florida panthers now r.t. has a correspondent on the ground there are nice and now we. she's on the scene of the

tragedy and you can go to our web site r t dot com for the very latest coverage of that story and back to the u.s. now where three years ago today the u.s. government took over the mortgage giants fannie mae and freddie mac. it put taxpayers behind a five trillion dollars and home mortgages that they backed now reportedly that made this the largest bailout in u.s. history it was part of the rescue of financial firms and big banks that we saw during the financial crisis but the question that still remains is what it all of this do for taxpayers exactly and did this save the u.s. economy which many fear is teetering on recession or in one big banks for their part today appeared to be more protected than ever despite the mortgage meltdown and still overwhelming evidence of fraud practices authorities haven't gone after any c.e.o.'s in charge during the collapse but police questioning of middle aged artist with a political message well that's fair game arches among glinda found

a painter who is being treated like a terrorist suspect because of his political statement about the banks the big banks they continue to get off easy. i'm not a terrorist i am not fire bombing and banks i never even entertain the notion in anything more than just the good like like this alex shaffer has laid out all his frustration with the financial system our candy is bad bad businesses should fail and banks a business and somehow it's turned into something else the artists are known for catching the spirit of the times cheaper recent pains to create in bank buildings ingolf simply caught the eye of the los angeles police chief or was first approached painting in front of a chase bank three weeks later the police visited his home asking him if he hated

banks and planned to do that it's just bizarre because i don't feel like i've done anything outside of everything i've ever done in my art and yet this is really touched a nerve in recent years it seems like large banks and their bosses have been protected from prosecution for their role in the devastating financial crisis now it appears banks are being protected even from an artist gross roque the chaos depicted in the first painting is just symbolic but the true financial chaos caused by d.p. morgan chase and other big banks is very real to many americans it's a different kind of. of terrorism. causing since two thousand and eight know the bank bosses in charge during the mortgage meltdown have done any jail time instead they were the recipients of bailouts and bonuses well millions of americans

suffered through foreclosure unemployment and financial ruin cheaters flames symbolize bringing the current system down i think we need to reform our banking system. only besides the repeated visits from police chief are also says recent only and visitors to his blog include employees at j.p. morgan chase as was members of the department of justice well that's what my. this morning with a call that you need to get a lawyer and find out for or if you're on the watch list shaffer maintains a good sense of humor about the ordeal and his symbolic bank burning seems to be resonating with the public and i started the bidding off at one hundred twenty bucks and it's at ten thousand one hundred that's the big money statement he plans to take to the bank in los angeles ramon dillon though r t o

lisa is getting some benefit after the attention is gone or his painting as far as the bailouts three years after the largest bailout in u.s. history unemployment is still nine point one percent close to twenty seven percent of homeowners with mortgages are underwater on those according to people who track it and politicians are still looking for a new solutions but here to help us understand if any of those can work for new york studio is andrew schiff of euro pacific capital thanks for being here andrew so three years after the federal government took over fannie mae and freddie mac. the mortgage giants as part of its bailouts what is this done for the u.s. economy exactly. president anything for the u.s. economy and certainly saved save the holders of fannie mae and freddie mac. bonds what it saved i mean basically you had fannie and freddie being completely bankrupt after having made ridiculously foolish loans into the mortgage market now i don't think there's anything criminal about offering. foolish loans or even

buying shares in a company that's making foolish loans that is stupid it's not so certain this is solely criminal but as a result of the bailouts these companies that should have gone down the mortgage market should completely disappeared i mean the essential u.s. housing market should have been returned to a cash business which will which it was not but didn't happen but instead all of the losses that should have been borne by fannie and freddie shareholders and bondholders and the banks that bought and sold fannie mae braun's and fannie mae loans those people should have borne the losses i mean i think the banking system would have survived in a much more truncated form in a much more a much smaller more manageable for instead all those losses get socialized and absorbed by the u.s. government and now all of the taxpayers are on the hook for those losses and the mortgage industry has pretty much survived intact and they're still making their loans and they're still artificially pumping up the housing market which has still have has a long way to fall and we haven't even recognized those losses we just push them off into the future and in short hasn't done anything and you mentioned though that

it has added to government debt and you i've heard you be a fierce critic of countries that you called addicted to debt or at least you say that they're facing a recession as a result now it's not just the u.s. i'm guessing that with their debt at one hundred twenty percent of g.d.p. that you would think that italy falls into that category and part of the site let me just let me just get to my question because that part of the austerity package that they're voting on now includes a three percent wealth tax for the richest could this be part of the solution for the u.s. . well i don't i don't think so i mean i believe that progressive taxes quote unquote are actually very regressive for an economy you cannot talk prosperity the way some may think and i think the problem extends from economies that are that are basically having to live beyond their means for many years and that includes united states and that includes most of western europe certainly including italy and these are countries that you know have provided

a very generous social safety net and who haven't provided the means to pay for it and that includes united states. and you know certainly what we're doing is we're by all these measures transferring our debts to the to the government and then printing and trying to print money to pay those debts we're just kicking the can down the road to use an over overly used metaphor and you know someday the piper is going to be paid and it looks like that day of reckoning is moving ever closer based on the volatility we're seeing the marketplace the confusion we're seeing in the markets and some of the more egregious examples of over overly in debt governments around the world and clearly we need solutions and i hear what you're saying that your position is that you can't tax your way to prosperity but can i ask you can i just ask you a personal i stand just to kind of sure see what you can do your do you are you a fan of ferrari like ferrari. love ferrars well i wouldn't necessarily have the myself but i if you want to give me one for free i wouldn't turn it down so you're a fan of ok well the chairman of ferrari which is

a pretty expensive car needless to say this is what he's saying about taxing the rich to solve government debt crisis he told an italian paper this he said you have to begin by asking it of those who have the most because it is scandalous that it should be asked of the middle class so if the c.e.o. of ferrari which is one of the ultimate symbols of wealth is saying that come on and that has to mean something well i can't i can't really talk about italian tax law i'm not really fully up on it unfortunately but i can talk a little bit of united states tax policy and i can say there is a there's a widely held myth that the that the rich now pay as low a percentage of their income as it ever have which is untrue i mean warren buffett got a lot of press because he says he doesn't pay that he his secretary makes pays more taxes than he does which is only true because all of warren buffett's income comes in the form of dividends and capital gains and those are taxed at a fifteen percent rate but the average person who has

a salary makes three hundred thousand or two hundred thousand dollars a year they pay more the than the middle class as a percentage of what they make in fact we have more people in the united states now workers who pay zero income tax then we ever have something like forty seven percent of american workers pay zero income tax they pay they pay some payroll taxes social security stuff like that but even that is very is very progressive so i mean i know i make a decent salary and i get taxed close to fifty percent of what i make when you when you factor in state taxes we have state the state of new york as a tax which you don't see that second level of taxation you don't see in other countries and then we have local taxes as well and sales taxes so i mean we get taxed everywhere and i know you make taxes too much higher you know the incentive to work diminishes and the more productive elements of society stop working and they say well why bother i mean it's very easy for the chairman to ferrari and warren buffett to say yeah i've got enough money but. but though the very the top one percent don't you know the real issue is the the top ten percent and a lot of those people work very hard i can guarantee it but if we do look at that

just top one percent of the super rich isn't there a case to be made that they could contribute more. well i don't know i mean if they still pay a lot of taxes they pay a lot of taxes but within twenty or thirty forty percent is enough i'm not sure but you've got to have those top one percent those are the job creators i mean it sounds like a cliche but those are the people in the companies those are the people that are the innovators and those are the people that create jobs the government doesn't create jobs private the private sector creates jobs and you want to make it as easy as those people as easy for those people to continue their job creating efforts as possible yeah i mean any tax on that i didn't need to enter into but you hear that not about job creators yet you don't see them creating jobs in august come on we had no job we're not very good job growth you have c.e.o.'s at some of these biggest companies that are making these huge salaries that are far greater and then like they are companies paying x. i don't think that's at the i think that that's more of

a corporate issue i do think that c.e.o.'s of public companies in the united states are obscenely overpaid unfortunately i do believe in freedom and i do believe that the shareholders of those companies have as their obligation to rein in those absurd executive compensation packages that's a private issue. i'm more concerned about the entrepreneur and as a job creator and yes i mean traditionally that's where the jobs of come from they're not creating jobs now why because our economy is in horrible shape and we're so over regulated to death i mean hiring workers in the united states is not an easy maybe easier here than it is in some places in western europe but it's very very difficult from a from a from a from from a from a compensation a regulatory standpoint and as well as as a as a cause of my brother owns a small company of about a hundred fifty employees and i hear everything about what's going on in our company about trying to hire more workers and it's not easy and certainly the illegal deck is stacked oftentimes in the employees favor so it's empowering some

of the united states is not an easy easy task so the government could make it easier so you're saying that this is more on businesses. smaller businesses not the huge corporations that we normally. yeah yeah i think i think a lot of the small businesses are a lot provide a lot of the job growth and that's where i think the tax policies bite the most. cats in the the public c.e.o. you know i don't know how much innovation in leadership you get from these but from the top the public c.e.o.'s they seem to me you know that you get you get you they get paid millions of dollars for their companies to lose money i don't know how that important that is i don't know so i think it's the punitive taxation of or singling out certain elements to tax makes any sense all i know is that when you look at the models you can tax all american workers at one hundred percent and you still wouldn't make a dent in the kind of debts that we have it's not a taxation probably i would say it's a spending problem well and that's staggering those figures you mentioned i want to keep this conversation going no because it's your belief that the government

doesn't create jobs the private sector does but we this week are going to have a plan from obama there he's set to announce thursday night his plan for jobs and some of those components have come out at least the main components of what people believe will be a three hundred billion dollars plan and one of those infrastructure spending towards roads and bridges transportation projects were at school construction to get people back to work could this be a part of the solution for the country's unemployment problem well a lot of also the spending is going towards a grants to states state and local governments to to maintain their employees there which i think is a mistake because those those a lot of those localities got too large based on a phony c. of real estate taxes which are now gone away so so given cover the federal government bail those governments out as it is not a solution but infrastructure is an interesting interesting question and clearly now live in new york city i can tell you we need a lot of work on infrastructure around here and certainly in the whole northeast

but you know infrastructure is a is a is a decision best left to the to the free markets i mean government. spend a lot of money on a bridge or a road which may or may not be needed and simply to fund a project that is not the best use or the most efficient use of society savings and resources at a particular moment simply to create a job does not mean that the economy will improve as a result because if you miss allocate resources you take resources away from where they're really needed and to spend them on something that really isn't needed you just you just waste wasting your money and you're no better off as a result and also you know these projects are best funded by by countries and governments that have the money we've got to borrow the money from the chinese and the japanese in order to fund these projects so you say it's a matter of resources and from that standpoint i hear your point but what about the issue of just the kinds of people that are unemployed yes a lot of them are construction workers that lost jobs when we saw that earth but

what the shovel ready kind of projects to do first say laid off bureaucrats or laid off and anshul professionals or college graduates who can't find work. and what nothing nothing really i mean the show really mean the whole shovel ready industry for the kids kind of a joke but i mean we have we have a lot of of layoff people in this country in the mortgage industry in the financial services industry that shouldn't be getting jobs in those industries because those industries are too big to begin with we have a we have a incredibly robe of the education and health care and government sectors in this country are far too large those are not productive areas of the economy those are not ways in which you you in richmond economy or great or gain wealth those are industries in which you dispel wealth what we need is a larger manufacturing sector a larger energy sector a lot larger technology sector. those types of jobs that we can we can make things export them around the world and we simply have lost those types of jobs

unfortunately we need to do a lot better it creating the types of industries that put a blue collar worker can get and we haven't spent much time or energy thinking about those types of jobs ok but it sounds like maybe construction jobs could at least make up for a little bit of what you're talking about but we absolutely want results where today farai no i mean certainly not read something outrageous that residential construction we've got plenty of houses yeah everything bridges are construction give me now is andrew stephens characteristic happen a lot to consider this conversation later thanks for going on the show now speaking of government spending one point two trillion dollars of it has gone to iraq and afghanistan since two thousand and one war is that of course began after the attacks of september eleventh and the name of the war on terror but ten years later people feel the money spent post nine eleven on these wars has been worth it and that is the question that lori harshness of the resident dot net asked people on the streets of new york to hear what they think.

this so-called war on terror that launched after the tragic nine eleven attack on the us has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars by some estimates ten years later africa is worth it this week let's talk about that just to get some more secure now these days i think that i believe that yes is it trillions of dollars they first thought i don't know i could say to i don't know the war actually inside north or is it and if that's my opinion but. the european opinion of the speaker as you know the europeans say another is aggressive in the war against terrorism and the americans so the america the u.k. anybody involved in it just just back off. the purple heart you know because if you do come to way they one day and you don't want to let the terrorists win the league says it's not easy to come up with iran and if anybody wants to you know to cause

trouble or to or to provoke some kind of attack they can do so with or without a war so would you categorize the war on terror as a failure. as a necessary do you think the world a safer because of it i don't know i think that we have been there at the founding day i thought waiting for to get in more than three hours and i think i may be addictive it but i don't know though do you think that we're giving up too much liberty in the world in the name of security i think that this is a dangerous very close we have to give more liberties as if the world becomes safer or maybe we can get them back you're ok with giving them up for a while yeah i think so we should probably stop using the word for some for for for starters and the war on terror that using the phrase just it's just a stupid phrase and was coined for political reasons i think we should should stop using that and just just. and what needs to be done whether or not you think it's

been worth the effort the bottom line is the war on terror has been bloody and costly and we still have yet to be any clear plan for it then. and still ahead right here on our t.v. punctuating a sentence u.s. prosecutors are demanding thirty years for a russian pilot convicted of drug smuggling but the case is complicated and it is a story you will not hear on mainstream networks will fill in all the blanks on constant in your life their sentencing and a live report next. if

you don't work to bring justice or. i have a right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i think taxes . well i would characterize obama as a charismatic sort. of american exceptionalism. all right well there is so much going on in the world but what are these big stories happening now that you are not likely to see on u.s. mainstream media well what about four hundred that thirty thousand israelis who took to the streets across the country over the weekend in the biggest protest in the country's history look at this behind me they're demanding social justice a lower cost of living and government solutions for a struggling middle class sounds a little familiar actually also what about the execution of troy davis

a date was set today for that to happen later this month that's after a u.s. supreme court decision cleared the way for this now who is davis well he is a high profile death row inmate who claims he's innocent of killing that savannah police officer you saw there now there is no physical evidence linking davis to the crime and seven out of the ten witnesses in his trial later recanted or changed their testimonies which are just a few reasons why he's become a focal point for anti death penalty activists and critics of the u.s. criminal justice system around the world and also constant in your shame go he's a russian pilot accused of conspiring to smuggle drugs his sentencing is scheduled to be handed down in court today now he was arrested in liberia and secretly taken to the u.s. where he was reportedly put in solitary confinement now russia has protested the way he's been treated in the u.s. and for one the u.s.

failed to inform russia of his arrest in the first place and the u.s. side of the story all the facts the info to the wrong country those are just a few of the issues going on here but joining us now to talk about so many more of them and the latest about what's going on in this case from new york is archie's own anastasio churkin an associate so nice to see you so while we're waiting for the sentencing to come down because we don't know yet of your chain goes fate exactly let's talk about some of the bizarre curiosities of this case they started right from the beginning didn't they. absolutely lore and this really is the curious case of constantine your son kojo the russian pilot in his forty's was snatched up in. a secret agents operation in liberia by u.s. officials pretending to be international drug dealers they snatched him up last year brought him onto u.s. soil for got to really inform russia that they had basically kidnapped a russian citizen and brought him on to u.s. soil for trial and russia was of course very disappointed they said wait

a minute this really is a grief of international law when you snatch up a citizen of another country from a third country and bring them to the united states or anywhere else the country of their citizenship has to be informed that was not the case and as you mentioned the united states said oh we're sorry we actually pressed the wrong fax number so the notice of this man's being brought to us so i was actually sent to romania and even more shockingly russia didn't know for quite a while where this man was including his family that effectively thought he was missing take a listen to what constantine wife told us a little while ago in liberia he was surrounded by five agents the second he stepped off the plane he was accompanied by court he spent day and night in his room only during the trial did he find out that all he had around him were agents they introduced him to some men who transported drugs that's it nothing else happened they wanted to jail him and they did. so there you go lauren this man

snatched up last year are now facing up to thirty years behind bars here in the united states and we're going to wait and see exactly what his face is fav feet is going to be in a little while and you mentioned he was possibly kidnapped that this could have been a breach of international law so for someone in that circumstance what kind of prison time are we talking about here. well board it really is interesting because we have the prosecution that says they want this man behind bars for as much as thirty years and we have his lawyers who are saying wait this man has never had a criminal background he's never sued any kind of criminal charges in the united states in russia nor anywhere else in the world plus this man has never actually stepped foot on american territory and now he's here facing this much potential prison time and basically this is what we're going to find out really the result today we know that in april a jury of twelve unanimously found this man guilty but curiously was arrested with

three other men from africa one of them was a mastermind found to be the mastermind of this so-called conspiracy he has already been found guilty for thirty years but the other two men who basically admitted to being international drug dealers but said they didn't really have any intention to bring drugs to the united states were found not guilty so this is a man facing a potential thirty year prison term for a crime that you mentioned he hadn't physically committed how is the u.s. making sense of this prosecution well lauren you know this really is seen as part of the bigger scheme of the so-called war on terror and war and international drug smuggling the prosecution has really been showing that they're proud of having conducted this operation of having sent special agents to liberia lure this man and with conversation you know we have to keep in mind that you are never even gave the green light to final and yes to potentially bringing drugs to the united states so the fact that the u.s. was able to conduct this operation jointly with liberian forces is really

a source of pride for the prosecution whether or not this is a source of pride for the u.s. in the eyes of the international community with the way this kind of justice sometimes gets handled is really a big question a big question and one i hope you have a really quick answer for you here but regardless of the sentence what is the significance of this case for u.s. russia relations and i thought i just need a quick answer there. lord this is if this man is sentenced in the united states this is going to set a president this is going to be the first time for the russian federation when a man a russian then is charged and sentenced for an intent of a crime that was fabricated and lured in by special agents as a preventative measure and on the least in an operation by conduct conducted by special services and orchestrated by so special services this is really going to be a huge precedent if this man is sentenced today a huge precedent you will not hear about on the mainstream media but that was our t. correspondent going to bring us the latest. now coming up here in thirty minutes don't

go away because we have a lot more of the hoover dam remember that it's a great project of the one nine hundred thirty s. a creation that changed america and boosted the economy and today the u.s. celebrate seventy five years since the hoover dam started working but seems that's pretty much all americans have to celebrate because calls for another type of project like this haven't exactly been answered so as the nation prepares for president obama's highly anticipated speech on jobs we want to know where did all those damned innovative ideas go we'll get some answers from freedom a radio host a phone molyneux in our next half hour and that's when to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to archie dot com slash us a check out our you tube page you tube dot com slash r t america you can follow me on twitter at lauren lyster as i mentioned we will have more stories coming up at five fresh guests and please go to our website to find out the very latest on.