many of the victims suffered severe burns the pipeline ruptured in a heavily populated slot now largely reduced to debris firefighters are still trying to battle the blaze while rescue workers are recovering bodies from a nearby river. counting is underway in guatemala as presidential race with former military general otto perez molina thought to be leading leftist groups have warned against a return to the nation's dictatorship past about a high crime rate and poverty in the country has left many voters seeking tough solutions at all the same a leader who's nicknamed the iron fist is seen as the most likely candidate to restore order and stability. japan has a new trade minister a day after the old one was sacked for calling the area around the tsunami damage who could have a nuclear plant the town of death. lost his job after just a week had also joked about having radioactive clothes after visiting the area former government spokesman you were at dano takes over at the post which includes responsibility project has an energy policy. business news next would you stay with

us here on r.t. . loans are very welcome to your business update deals for around four hundred million dollars have been signed cheering the visit of the u.k. prime minister david cameron to russia this indication includes blue chip companies like rolls out shell b.p. and british airways british d.i.y. retailer kingfisher will unveil a plan soap nine stores in russia total investment two hundred fifty million dollars the u.k. is also expected to sign a deal with the russian states and a cheap which would help u.k. companies when contracts in russia thank you replace industry. among other notable deals the russian state nanotechnology corporation is buying forty to fifty percent of the london based pro bono bio going in and just close some financial times is to come. there is

a new medical company launching the world's first lechler scale nanotechnology treatment pro bono bio plans to list in moscow and in london within the next four years. tony hayward just stepping down from and coo russian oil firm team p b p less than a year after joining the board as a non-executive director the former chief executive of b.p. who was fiercely criticized for his handling of the gulf of mexico oil spill is leaving to pursue other interests in the energy sector but departure comes at a sensitive time following the peace bailed attempts to join but also after it's all the arctic alliance was broken by the russian partners and chain p.p.p. who are seeking compensation in the courts from the british parent company. which brings us to the markets oil prices are low investor speed europe's debt crisis will harm economic growth tempering demand for materials rights which is currently trading at eighty five dollars per barrel brant is hovering at one hundred ten dollars. european markets are seeing heavy losses and the dax is losing three and

a half the fruits it is just a bit behind two and a half percent lower shares and hugh k. lenders are under pressure after the independent commission told banks they will have to ring balance their retail arms fully the credit crisis. and european debt warriors are preying on the russian markets as well the indices are extending last week's losses in monday's trade the r.t.s. and the my sense of both slumped four percent and three point two point three percent respectively let's not have a look at some of the individual show moves in the minus six energy majors are losing ground with gazprom shedding almost three percent and local is down one point eight percent banking stocks are also under pressure with russia's largest lender surging under four percent. fears amounting the world is heading rapidly for a second dip all the recession russian finance minister says it's more probable now

than before the summer russia's balanced budget means it is reasonably well placed to ride out the turmoil but troika strategist chris with us says that will offer only limited protection when the mood turns sour. in reality russia is in a much stronger position today than it was in two thousand and eight so you know that russia is in a much better position to be able to withstand global downturn. you know to to to remain if it's could be solvent and stable that's the reality it doesn't matter that perception is that russia is still a high risk environment and most international investors view russia as a derivative of global growth therefore if they become optimistic about global recovery russian asset prices tend to rise higher faster than others and equally when there's a selloff as we saw in august russian asset prices will go down even faster than the rest. russia's preparing to ban small air carriers from running both charter

and local flights routes will be given to the country's major airlines so we'll also get state substitutes from a say this the dirtiest existing passenger traffic by up to forty percent but just a few companies operating in the market the move is aimed as improving brushes for aviation safety record after almost an entire professional ice hockey team was killed in a plane crash last week. thanks for the business bought another business update unless someone has time for your.

culture is that so much of the taxpayer's money i mean was it ever a real mystery that's my fear of a currency in crisis in an unknown future but is there a silver lining. is .

the. middle east so much brighter. than the sun from funniest impressionists. starts on t. dot com. three

thirty pm in moscow these iraqi headlines political differences won't be a sticking point in improving russian and british relations and that's the pledge from leaders of both nations during a meeting in moscow the first official to visit other british prime minister to the russian capital following six years of strained ties. iran officially plugs in its russian built in share nuclear station it's the country's first atomic plant that will reach about how capacity after being connected to the main national grid. and italy's disputed fifty four billion euro austerity package entering our final to debate in the lower house of parliament but open protests have and out of the

unpopular cuts have already started with some parts of the country going as far as trying to seek a tonic. and as more easy countries sink in a mire of debt cross-talk debates whether a financial life week is on its way it's coming your way next stay with us. oh in the welcome across. the euro

a currency and prices in an unknown future but is there a silver lining. ok let's get to the term and if there is a silver lining to the euro crisis and i'm joined by jeffrey summers he's an associate professor at the university of wisconsin milwaukee also we have michael hudson he is president of the institute for the study of long term economic trends and matthew and he's a financial journalist ok gentlemen this is crossed out that means you can jump in anytime you want i'm going to be very contrarian we hears all through the media. the euro is already been written we're waiting for the funeral ok let's turn it all upside down let's take a look at some virtue out of tragedy number one this crisis could actually create a real european central bank that has limited tools now now give it a lot of tools what do you think about that guy's matthew first just empower it

absolutely the next thing is jim you're so right beginning here is in deep deep trouble and i got to do something to try and save it and i think they will i mean that a man of political capital which i generation of european leaders are put into this project means that whatever they can do they will base i mean the next i'm going to do is they're going to come and europeans are going to try to have a single fiscal authority. yeah i'll give. a lot more bones in the market whether that's a good thing is much more debatable whether there's going to work i don't think it will work but it will be it will be a step needs political will to do it but if you're going to keep the euro go all the way because what we've seen over the last two years completely last few months is just half measures we have a lot of political leadership no one really wants to make a political move but that's what is necessary political leadership. there's a false way of looking at the problem so far of course europe should have a central bank that can create credit commercial banks create credit all the time on a computer keyboard the central banks were founded to create credit to fund government

deficits that's why the bank of england was founded that's why the federal reserve was founded but the banking interests in europe crippled the central bank they didn't want to central bank to create credit they say we want governments to come to us and pay us interest and we want to rip off the economy don't have a central bank don't have a public option let us raise your cost of doing business give us the business so of course there should be a central bank unfortunately the way in which you just mentioned the central bank to be perform a function is what it looks like it'll be the central bank is not to create employment not to run the government deficit not to help the people but to give more money to the banks to bail them out that is rotten that is the central bank lobbyist and that shouldn't happen and if that's so they create a central bank then good for the europeans for saying to hell with angela merkel. i have to concur with michael on this i mean i think essentially what we see is

continued rent seeking ever since the lisbon agreement and treaty what we've seen is really going back to maastricht is an attempt to liberalize into privatized pretty creation so we have this rent seeking from the real economy to the financial sector and i don't see things changing now i think. all of this to a certain extent is just full mama water the real problem the underlying structural problem that it's not been fixed is how do you really recycle capital through the system from rich countries the poor countries and how do you do that in a way but. that wasn't the purpose of the euro zone of course it wasn't should he now we need to go back to keynes and we need to understand that in order to have any kind of meaningful either international trade or real european along each trade you need national development or only you guys are jumping ahead of me michael you want to go where you want to have us that is the worry need to have fiscal fiscal unity be have to have one fiscal policy for the entire euro zone that's the only

way that's going to happen should that happen geoff used the word rent seeking and your audience may not be familiar with that because it's a technical term rent seeking means get a free lunch or privilege right now central bank commercial banks can create credit on a keyboard and they say let us the worker responsible but if a government does that they said look at nineteen twenty one one hundred twenty one of the hyperinflation happened because of german reparations and it was international. the europeans have been have let the commercial bank lobbyists shape the discussion into a kind of fake mission fictitious don't work here let us make the whole killing off the government ok so that's a good judge a good job with this i take or not if there's a thing there's a there's a lot in there but i think you're giving it too much for an american perspective you're talking about you're talking about a lot of them but i think the world economy in general has a problem of its financial sector and its banking sector and that's true pretty

much wherever you look at through the year is there a mystery in the u.k. that's very united states but there's particular problems in the in the year as i did which is that the currency has been put together in a dysfunctional way because it does it it doesn't want and it's not particularly a problem about commercial banks ripping off the rest of the population that may be going on as it goes on. the rest of the world i mean it's a poem about a fabric of currency itself is dysfunctional these economies are not convergent and you have too much that in the ethical countries have too great you know but the trade balance is in the development is on equal in the different countries and the money as a journalist will physically. unit is run by the banking sector you will have the most right wing government you will turn your append to a banana republic if you have fiscal unity run like ecuador and like but i really want to empower the central bank shouldn't be isn't it better to have fiscal unity here's the problem the central bankers are brainwashed with tunnel vision to do what's good for the commercial bankers and if you have a simple bank who wants to screw the economy to help the commercial banks then you

don't want them to have power you want to take them out in the backyard and very politely say there's nothing personal but we've got the ship and we very first of all jeffrey well just getting back to matthew's point he actually inadvertently return to my point which is that we have this divergent development you're absolutely right between the south and the north for the most part and the only way that you're going to address that is to figure out how you're going to meaningfully develop as you just you just hit the point that i want to go to that it's all about these gold is actually risen on the mediterranean ok they thought they could solve this problem by just ignoring it by looking the other way and have germany and france and the scandinavian countries dump their surpluses into the south maintain reasonable levels of employment and that somehow they would eventually be able to repay the debts that were take it on a platter you know how do you get their message to go to you ok matt saturates i'm on the mediterranean i think we all would agree with that here but i don't know what the time frame would be a decade two decades but you would have the same you would have this is not you

know you would have it's very slow you have you would have a slippery slope right there you would have ok find over the next twenty years you're going to help us clean up our debt our infrastructure issues can you change their cultural attitudes i mean i agree with that it gives the time there's a time frame for the mediterranean countries to get their. act together but should someone be paying for that uni i mean you know it's kind of a fast operating is that because you need the greek economy structural form of course any structural form anyone can see that that's been true for a long time because there are many reasons if you can't you can do it at a time when you have an economy contract to get six or seven years i suppose what i mean i you know i grew up i grew up in the u.k. we had real factories and you know if you know version i think it was a great wasn't that much from a to the economy a lot of good for the economy was a good track you had a couple of years but economy was contracting a bit on the whole the economy was expanding cried i thought you had a had thatcherism under tony blair we carried out we carried out of it we still have it we like. the party kind of white but my point is you can have factories and

you can have that kind of structural reform in the economy was shrinking at sixty six percent said you know i just i just think it's impossible it's too but it's too much to our population you can have a problem having an economy that's growing twenty to thirty percent a year is still a big ask it's tough for people people because their jobs are going to change the kind of work the better way industries have to change it's very very difficult it's easy to sit around a t.v. studio and say you have structural form is actually hard on the ground but to have it in that kind of intense contraction just because it's not going to let the sport is a good one though again about diversion development but the problem is is that unlike england you can't have all of east and southern europe turn into an offshore financial zone which essentially london wasn't london sure of your case economy so it's a fallacy to suggest that you can spread the small where you can it is a beggar thy neighbor policy in the u.k. has been very good at it london has been exceptional at it but not everyone can do it the other problem you have with southern europe is that actually in terms of the percentage of g.d.p. the rates of taxes collected are exceedingly low unlike northern europe so this this is where we actually need to before i mean greece in some respects is far more

democratic and united states and united states only rich people avoid taxes in greece as everyone. did so this is what we have to stop and in spain as well. all these problems greece spain portugal lethal used to be dictatorships and the dictatorships are left a legacy of not. taxing the rich no you made the very good point well look we're in a recession you'd think that for any civilized country not europe but america or latin america or africa for a civilized area they would say with a recession you would want to have the something bank create credit to run a deficit to build infrastructure and have employment but in europe they say no you have a recession give more money to the banks we caused the recession now. you give us the money and by the way we know you don't have a lot so wealth of the parthenon sell off the water systems privatized everything and let us repeal off all over again now it's time for the big rip off and that's what their idea of a something a bank is and this is wrong and it's evil and that european voters see this in

america eighty five percent of the voters oppose the bailout for the banks in two thousand and eight and similarly in europe really do the average american does the average american have a lobbyist in congress no but the republicans in congress knew that the polls were so negative that they couldn't get elected if they ended up in shoals for the bank in europe the population the so deafened by your rotten bankers in europe and your rotten media here that they actually the banks think they can do whatever they want and the voters are smart enough to say well we can have a referendum like they had in iceland over whether to bail out the banks the only way we can do is throw enjoy merkel out and if they had a real election over this and say look if you're going to talk a little bit more about being a glimmer we get after the break after the break we'll continue our discussion on what to do with the euro stay with our team.

well when one deals with war for a customer realize that the tremendous amounts of damage that are done not just human damage but damage the physical environment in which the battlefield takes place tremendous amounts of damage done by aerial bombs by napalm boy chemical slim's whether it's part of the sonic boom say factory or a mammals or it's the burning oil fields seen on the rock or it's destroyed corps reserves in the pacific for grammy purposes the list just goes on and on the geneva conventions of nineteen forty nine states that care shall be saved in war to

protect one's life against widespread long term and severe damage to the united states although it is accepted almost all of the provisions of protocol one has taken exception to that. on.

welcome back to cross talk i'm peter lavelle remind you we're talking about the fate of the euro all right gentlemen we've talked a lot about finance and banking let's talk about the political angle of this how is this euro crisis affecting political discourse do the extremes and those look at the left first i mean it is the leftist party a lot of the steam been taken out of their wins because of what austerity is supposed to mean or does it even energize them do you think that. you know to keep political problem is that is that what happened what needs to happen economically is to have a much more european central bank and

a common fiscal policy but there's no there's no political support for its leaders are absolutely stuck that you know you can see that your economic advisor let me say so you do think it's necessary but it's politically impossible it's very it's really it's not that it completely politically desirable because this may have little control there's no common you know european political culture you know it's the united states you have you know a common country have a common language a common media i mean people vote on issues i'm sure i'm sure i'm sure i'm sure americans will make notes of criticisms as i would have the u.k. the political system but it's you know it's roughly speaking. a functioning democracy whereas europe just just just isn't there is no mechanism by which for example the european central bank or european treasury ministry of finance basically said incoming fiscal and tax policies can have any kind of any kind of democratic leaders and yet it's kind of thought that there needs to be more consensus here but is this crisis continues there's less consensus because the germans will say hey we've done enough more than our fair share but what is really

necessary is for some kind of political consensus i'm going to stay away from the union right now with get there later but there has to be a political consensus different possible right now because it seems that the the. inclination is to go in reverse the problem is even worse yet i mean unfortunately the social democrats whether it's in germany or in any other european union country operate under thatcher's maxim that there is no alternative they are not acting as social democrats and are not imagining any different policy moreover when the public actually does begin to engage these issues they're charged with acting in populist ways and they're just absolutely dismissed the level of arrogance by policymakers this particular issue is extreme and it's not even permitting any kind of meaningful debate to take away the discourse that very well when you think about it this is exactly the problem. in one hundred years ago nobody could imagine that the social democratic and the labor party are now to the right and the conservatives the left wing is now the right wing it's the left wing parties that have led the fight for privatization and to turn over power to the banks and if

they've somehow been taken over by the banking sector is in their socialist the name only we have to call them fascists in america if i can just interject with one more point what it's resulted in both in the united states and in much of europe is to confuse the electorate massively so for instance the united states president barack obama who i actually voted for and gave money to has acted a very center right even right wing fashion when it comes to finance what's happened with the electorate is because he's often charged with being a leftist by murdoch media and they assume that he's very leftist and now they need to go very far right and that's why i think you see this oscillation back and forth with an european union countries between social democratic governments and conservative governments the electorate is just terribly confused and they just don't see and often you know you know i remember watching a report about a woman in iceland a wonderful small business of her own she made designer clothes specifically

tailored clothing and then she would during the crisis in iceland she suddenly woke up and found out she was bankrupt and she didn't do anything wrong at all. all she did everything that she was told to do well what i'm getting at here is that they're understanding this crisis and how it how we got to it because i think with michael's getting right here is that it's more like banking fascism here but it's been taken completely out of the economy we don't this is not an economic crisis it is a banking crisis it's a financial crisis and how we the european currency the euro fits into. so i disagree with the perspective here but i think confuses people if you had you know the financial crash of two thousand day you had the credit crunch and all that all that stuff which was a global problem and then you have the euro came along soon off with about two thousand and nine because they happen to happen at the same time people sort of figure out the same problem but they're not really i think i think god is very you have the financial the credit crunch the financial pressure to fascinate i think the euro because it's a dysfunctional currency because it was badly designed would it would have would

have created a with all of these problems i just i don't really agree that it's a problem the only way they were really needed was because you got a massive increase in budget deficits to deal with financial crash which kind of exaggerated problems of yours i but i really think i think that different problems i think i've realized and lived separately just on a political point and i think you know one of the big worries about the year a crisis is that it opens up to really quite unpleasant far right parties because they really made because here i was here because it's so dysfunctional because it's a bit like the gold standard in the one hundred thirty s. it was created massive deflationary forces of austerity which opened up which opened up a lot of a lot of a property for the right and in some degree the same thing is happening in finland with the true finns i mean that although not a fascist party they are nationalist party they're in the paid influence is the only mainstream voice that one has that mainstream guy with a street may not be what you think they are babies on twenty two twenty three percent of what you know it's ready to be said about who would evolve and change would be made she's not mainstream in the sense of a set. but the crises he's making very right wing parties you know allowing them

into into the mainstream and that's priority and it's one of the aspects which is a bad idea if you want to go for your point about iceland is absolutely correct. look at the situation with the social democratic government of iceland the prime minister wanted to repay all the bank that making iceland bankrupt for fifty years turning iceland into what ireland became the president who only has a function of signing off that if you're going to bankrupt the country for fifty years there should be a vote ninety percent of the people of opposed to what the social democratic government is doing because they didn't want to all be plunged into the bankruptcy that you've just described she tried to do it all over again and again was rejected now this is in a nutshell what happens with the a central bank because you're told in europe the big lie that a central independent central bank is the hallmark of democracy but independent something bank nobody votes for him it's controlled by the.