in my neighborhood never had any problems shows with some of the people they are and i know that the problem i believe is the muslim community there's not enough leaders but a stand in that game and balance and telling young people not to hate white people like a muslim certainly i could go on with this discussion for for a much longer time and forcing we're out of time but as you both said it is important that we are talking about it that's what we're doing here with carol swain professor of political science and law at vanderbilt university and the author of the book be the people and also a moment to all the new stuff and the director of the mustard all islam temple here in washington. a look now at poverty in america new numbers out that paints a bleak picture of just how much and how many people are suffering across the united states the u.s. census bureau published data today that shows that the number of americans living below the poverty line rose to a record forty six point two million people last year you take a look you can see that is the highest number of people since the census bureau

began tracking poverty figures in one thousand fifty nine that's like a line on the bottom is the rate of poverty about fifteen percent now that is one in five americans are one of five and a half americans living under eleven thousand one hundred thirty nine dollars for a single person or less than twenty two thousand three hundred fourteen dollars for a family of four these numbers come out the same day of the first meeting of the group tasked with cutting at least one point two trillion dollars from the budget deficit i'm talking about the super committee made up of twelve members of u.s. congress now the group is supposed to take a look at everything when deciding where to trim but when it comes to the military budget there are some heated opinions and that was certainly apparent at last night's republican presidential debate on candidates were asked if they would decrease defense spending to balance spending. there is no what florida constitution to be the policemen of the world and no nation building just remember george bush won the presidency on that platform in the year two thousand and i

still think it's a good plan for living like senator santorum responders i know you strongly disagree. on your website on nine eleven you had a blog post that said basically blame the united states for nine eleven on your website yesterday and you said that it was our actions that brought about the actions of nine eleven now congressman paul that is irresponsible it present a united states running for someone who's running for the preside states the republican party should not be parroting what are some of it was said on nine eleven. we should have we are we are not. we are not being attacked and we were not attacked because of our actions we were attacked as new talked about because we have a we have a civilization that is antithetical to the civilization of the jots and they want to kill us because of who we are and what we stand for and we stand for american

exceptionalism we stand for freedom and opportunity for everybody around the world and i am not ashamed to do that an exchange for last night's c.n.n. tea party debate of course between congressman ron paul and former pennsylvania senator rick santorum as you are in our last hour i spoke to investigative journalist gareth porter about just what is going on here. put santorum said is the official line of not just the u.s. government but more concretely the national security part of the government because unless you take the position that that the threat of terrorism including nine eleven has nothing to do with u.s. military presence in the middle east or wars that the united states fights on the soil of islamic countries then you're going to have a problem justifying a policy and so what happens here is that within the u.s. government and more broadly as it is essentially spread through news media in this

country to the general population we get the general notion that we can't talk about any link between the wars of the united states fights in islamic lands or against islamic people and the threat of terrorism when in fact you know it's very very well established that there is such a link and in fact in my article i quoted perhaps the most. the most important most significant official document which represented that linkage which which presented in a front form a way that linkage which was the two thousand and six cia national intelligence estimate on global terrorism what it said was that the u.s. invasion and occupation of iraq had in fact been the biggest single force in building up popular support for jihadism and essentially giving them more and more recruits to carry out terrorism and it went on and on and essentially. actually

foreshadowed what has actually happened that we would find out that not only in the islamic countries but in europe in the united states homegrown jihadism would become a serious problem because people respond if they are islamics to this perceived threat to israel and yet when you ask people making the rules when you ask cover. and officials i know you spoke about it was nothing new and useful about that in two thousand and seven one thing that the former state department corner for counterterror terrorism daniel benjamin gave an entire list of things that the u.s. should do to combat al qaeda and the one thing that he didn't say was pledging that the u.s. would pull out of afghanistan and iraq tell me i know you caught him tell me a little bit about his answer when you asked him why didn't i think it's going to bring the coffee break us shouldn't the us pledge to the islamic world never to do this again and to get out of islamic countries with our military forces be the most

important thing that should be done he paused for a moment he said you're right and then he said but we can't do that and then he said the reason is we would have to explain to the families of the people who died in these wars that they dug in very well i said such an important thing to her and i think that's that really really is very important and there are so many people who know someone who was lost in these wars and that is the one thing they fear most yes but that's not the real reason why and by the way mr benjamin then went back to the state department as counterterrorism coordinator and he's been doing that during the obama administration so he was clearly still part of the us when he made that speech and the important thing is that he did not contest my point that there is clearly a cause in the focal length between these u.s. wars on islamic terror tory and continued killing of civilians particularly in the islamic countries and the continued support for jihad is a very very strong support for jihadism throughout the middle east and even in the

united states as we know so i mentioned a little earlier that today was also the first meeting of the super committee on capitol hill. twelve it's going to be bipartisan twelve people charged with cutting spending one point two trillion dollars in the next ten years the military budget is a tough sell for a lot of people i think that. and jon kyl from arizona even said he would quit the committee if this was proposed and this was put on the table talk about some of the challenges when we look you know it's one thing to say the military budget not off the table and it's another thing entirely to actually cut serious money from the point that i would make is that what we saw in play in the republican debate between ron paul and run santorum rick santorum excuse me and the politics of super committee are the same politics essentially it's really a fundamental divide between those people who are. essentially have tied their careers to one of two sets of political forces either the israeli lobby or the

arms lobby in this country these are the two most powerful groups politically in terms of being able to get members of congress to do what they want through the financing of their. now is gareth porter investigative journalist and that's all the time we have for more on the stories we cover and go to r.t. dot com slash usa and christine for sound and so much for watching. well when one deals with war for us to realize that this tremendous amounts of damage that are done not just human damage but damage the physical environment in which the battlefield takes place tremendous amount of damage done by earle bombs by napalm. coming from the cities whether it's our song. or it's the first world fields in iraq or it's strong.

purposes just goes on and on the geneva convention fourteen states that there shall be changed in the war to protect. against widespread long term and severe damage to the united states although it is accepted almost all of the provisions one has taken exception to that. thais are facing herbert basically so let me explain something this alex shaffer before he was an unknown artist now his work is acclaimed and in demand all over

the world this burned chase portrait twenty five thousand two hundred dollars on e bay there's no let up on demand for burning banks. and banks that's because he's exposing that confidence game happening around the world and that's one of our big themes of the show is have a person headline reads goldman head gold trader speculates about authority intervention in gold sees precious metal pushing higher so this is zach. back. and he's the head cold trader for goldman sachs and he's referring to when the swiss intervened in their currency market and the swiss franc of course is the classic safe haven currency so he said the expectation would be of course that gold would rocket on that but in fact in the immediate aftermath was in complete contradiction to prior recent episodes of intervention in what anyone would have expected instead of spurring a further gold price rally on the basis that it was one of the few remaining safe

haven currencies we saw fifty u.s. dollar collapse in minutes the source of this flow seems hard to pin down with some speculating over whether authorities were concerned about the signals of an accelerating gold price and its impact on other fragile markets soon after much of the losses were recovered but the psychological damage had been done well gold did skyrocket against the swiss franc and also this is world war three it's gold versus paper it's authenticity like gold versus any of them to simply like the american paper empire it's about a new century with new values of a country like the us with only paper behind it crumbling yes but it's also part of that confidence game in order to maintain confidence of the u.s. dollar everything else must have no confidence people must lose all confidence and

all of the things including gold which has been a safe haven for five thousand years so america is trying with all its might to try to destroy the entire system as we've known it for five thousand years i want to say nothing by the u.s. but paper people say oh they've got a thousand tons of gold but keep in mind that you've got a bank of j.p. morgan they have sold short the equivalent of many many many times that a thousand tons of gold. and so we're to support the dollar so when all the claims are made whole j.p. morgan goes the way of enron to zero the fed goes out of business the us goes into history and the other interesting thing here is that many gold analysts around the world claim that there is it's a conspiracy theory to think that the u.s. government or the c.m.e. or comix would intervene in the gold market but here is goldman sachs one of the biggest call traders in the world one of the biggest commodity traders in the world know these markets and they're saying they're suggesting that there is government

intervention but sachs is now agreeing with gold antitrust action committee. which for years was in the world and people saw it all it's a conspiracy theory now goldman sachs mainstream online some ottos down there on wall street are saying yes in fact that is correct the price of gold is manipulated by the paper whores and of course in every single war there psyops and that's exactly what this man at goldman sachs and first who is the psychological damage and i want to show you a quick headline in response to you earlier this week when gold fell fifty dollars in a matter of minutes joey's and paul said yes how what could gold just did so that's the psychological impact they're looking for jolie's of all is the propaganda minister over there business insider dot com it's propaganda no it's not you know you look at that look you look at the frank crash you're wrong he if he were putting out propaganda he would be working at the treasury or ha p.

morgan in fact he is the person who listens to baghdad bob and it's like oh my god reporting in the guardian and saying baghdad bob says the infidels are peace slaughtered at the walls of dad well it's always involves a lot of propaganda meister over a business insider that has overlord and is so enraged how come you don't come on the show you can't turn away my invitations and go. on. well let's look at some more wars going on could offer you regime sold one billion dollars of gold well these are the allegations of cassim azouz the new central bank governor who said khadafi regime raised more than one billion dollars to pay salaries from trading twenty nine tons of gold with the local traders and able with a metal then possibly being taken out of the country for resale so they pay a certain flavor the soldiers paper because they stole the gold right to raise well

this is what cassim azouz the new central bank governor put in by cozy blair cameron and america so he's their guy in the central bank and he's saying it looks like cut off he sold twenty percent of our gold twenty nine tons now we're taking you at his word that it didn't just go missing because remember we zero hedge others before the and as the invasion was happening we said what's going to happen to libya's gold well it off is still alive and it'll be a lesson for you there are thinking of buying gold number one number two he saw some of those gold for paper in any papers soldiers and paper so those soldiers are complete idiots and they took paper instead of gold the whole history of gold as we learned from our show with david graber he said that gold always comes back into use as a currency because it's used to pay soldiers so america is trying to tell us a society but in fact in this case they don't want all the soldiers didn't want

gold they wanted cash they wanted u.s. dollars. but again you know the article mentions and points out this is from the financial times that could offer it was unique and libya was unique in that there are some troll banks actually held their gold in their country unlike chavez they point out so a lot of this is another theme we're talking about all the time is that many of these nations around the world including germany china and chavez were were holding . they're gold in america and whether or not they'll ever get back much of ours was two hundred tons of gold shipped back to venezuela one hundred dollars of the bank of a loan under tons held by banks like j.p. morgan and if he actually delivered a gold did morgan once again start zero so let's say with libya here tony blair's libya policy fuel power obsession of khadafi son again this theme of the confidence game tony blair snake oil salesman went to tripoli grog in

khadafi and his son to pretend that they were part we're giving you our confidence you're part of this game say fall islam you know as nato is dropping bombs on him who is he shouting at sar cosey not a blair he still is a victim of a confidence game where he still believes the guy who sold him out is somehow star cozy and not tony blair in a tony blair if push comes to shove he should start selling those not choppers on late night t.v. you know the guy vince is a famous seller of chomsky's on late night t.v. if he ever retires tony blair you gonna love my nuts watch this so easy one for you i can do one thing for you guys can do with your home the reason you can slap away every day is because it's so easy to clean so the confidence game sold to the west and to the people financing it the taxpayers of the west who think they're getting something is they're told that khadafi and say follow islam are uniquely crazy madman and dictators and killers and of course information is emerged that we were sending people there to be tortured over the past few months including up to few

days before the regime we decided to topple them that's i mean that's kind of a new revelation is that because we knew about egypt and these other areas where us people had tortured me to know there's actually happening in libya as well. you know america likes to outsource everything all the workers all the work all the jobs and all the torture you know goes toward their jobs to americans by outsourcing people torture jobs inside america so but the story to. the westerners always that were protecting the rebels were protecting the freedom fighters of libya and it has nothing to do with their oil we are pure people here so let's turn to this headline turkey to escort gaza aid ships amid route with israel well this is turkish prime minister and he was saying that his country is now going to escort gaza aid ships and that's why have i chosen here by the b.b.c. but the rest of the story i think reveals the true nature of this religious war

going on speaking to al-jazeera mr erdogan also said turkey had taken steps to prevent israel unilaterally exploiting natural resources in the eastern mediterranean and it appears that israel has decided to recognize. rights to the natural gas reserves that are allegedly have been found in the eastern mediterranean and now there's it's a resource war all throughout the middle east really it's about their oil natural gas and water yeah it's also interesting but the i.m.f. . going away in greece seemingly work contingents of greece shutting down the whole of boats from leaving the port of athens to go to palestine so continuing on with this theme of confidence man especially those guys operating from j.p. morgan one man lobby diamond presses washington to ease bank rules this is bloomberg serious that influential fifty and this article here is just amazing to read

because it's a paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of quotes talking about how fantastic jamie diamond is and they come from people like hank paulson and they come from people like some lawyer dude from a wall street firm that represents wall street bankers and it says things like when treasury secretary henry paulson needed someone to save bear stearns from collapse in march two thousand and eight he turned to diamond. we've got done and we've got diamond by the short and curlies he needs the entire regulatory and infrastructure to change to allow his bank to go even deeper into debt to support his naked silver shorts we've got him a silver prize goes higher jamie diamond is panicking that stock is like enron right before it collapsed mark my words hedge funds out there sell it short make a bundle but also continuing on this piece about how their fluff piece on jamie diamond diamond emerged from the financial crisis

a born again hero his bank took twenty five billion dollars in aid from the u.s. treasury out of patriotic duty not because it needed the money. oh the bailout nation of america please send me a billion and i'll salute your every morning thank you and i was there and then it goes on they then compare him to j.p. morgan's company's namesake john pear point morgan diamond was harold is as the lender of last resort when other institutions faced a run on their assets that's a ridiculous comparison j.p. morgan the big guy he was his money yeah jamie diamond has access to borrowed money he's a he's a full saw that exactly well that he has access to the taxpayers' aaa rating to borrow at zero percent from the u.s. treasury and the federal reserve bank on behalf of the u.s. taxpayer so you need to have a life plus double double a plus all right. thanks so much thank you max don't

go away much more coming away stay right there. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't. charge because the big picture.

welcome back to the cause report imax keyser time now to go to new york and talk with nick verbinski he's the director of a new film called confidence game a documentary that examines the final week in the life of the investment bank bear stearns let's take a look at a clip as bear was shoving billions in dubious loans through its c.d.o. pipeline minutes meant work hard to cover up any problems along the way something

van leeuwen found out when it was discovered that the firm had illegally sold investors millions in securities holding loans originated in west virginia. sometimes the corners were cut according to west virginia code and licensed by the state in order to service loans secured by property and west which. it was discovered that bear stearns would have been west virginia loans for several years now and were not allowed to service it without reporting the oversight to regulators there in force a mafia style code of silence within its walls to quietly fix the problem ok that was tough as am directed by nick verbinski nick welcome to the kaiser report hi thanks for having me max all right before we get into the substance to tell us a little bit about bear stearns what sort of bank were they had they fit in the wall street matrix and when and how did they collapse just on a timeline well it's

a good question of bear stearns was known for many years as the most brass bald profit powerhouse on wall street and they had a reputation that they really reveled in which was that they did business with whomever and however they pleased. and for many years at work to their great advantage as. profits kept piling up but what eventually happened was half of their fully half of their firms became sunk into the subprime mortgage business and once we saw him in that business you know. seven when the office headphones blew out it was about nine months later where the firm completely collapsed under its own weight a lot of people say it collapsed in the space of a week but when you really look at this story in the minds of this firm was many years in the making when the firm collapsed that had four hundred billion dollars in assets and only twelve billion in tangible equity so really what the firm was doing was they were funding their daily operations in the overnight commercial paper market and what eventually happened was when that dried up they were

refinancing their mortgage on their business just about every day and when that source of funding dried up the firm collapsed ok now the wake of bear stearns collapse i recall that the company was effectively being attacked by naked short sells these war far more shares being shorted then shares existed for the company in other words counterfeiting of shares sold to drag the price down of the stock do you have more information on this and what role did see n.b.c. play and driving this vicious loop of cattle fitting lies i've seen beastie counterfeiting stocks sell the naked this tell me shares down to zero well there's certainly a lot of talk about naked short selling and how it affected bear but really first of all we don't have any information on that at this point the f.c.c. launched a very wide ranging investigation when the firm first collapsed there were the street was rife with rumors about all sorts of conspiracy theories where headphones

had colluded to bring the stock down and bring the company down but really what you started to see was more the naked short selling what you saw was an incredible expansion in credit for it swaps spreads people were buying insurance on bear stearns that that they didn't actually own and once that happened the incredible demand for insurance on bear stearns that riding their credit default swaps and really dried up their sources of funding once the overnight wenders and everybody else started to see these things that. all step back from the firm and said you know we don't know how this turns but you know we want to get out of this before you know we're in tangled in it so it really i think that a critical fault swap part of the equation is a much bigger story than maybe naked short selling although naked short selling i'm sure had an impact. as far as c. and b. c. goes especially with with regard to credit default swaps there was a seminal interview between david faber and alan schwartz then the new newly minted c.e.o. of bear stearns on wednesday march twelfth and really you know the whole purpose of

that interview was for schwartz to calm the fears growing around the firm and before he even had a chance to do that david faber threw a question at him based on a credit default position that was going to be closed out by an investor who later turned out to be carl bass and apparently bass told faber that he couldn't close it out with goldman sachs and want to favor it kind of and mention that on the air everybody on the street started running for the doors immediately and there was really nothing that alan schwartz could have gone about that really troubling thing about something like that is that that trade actually cleared the very next morning there was a point where c.m. d.c. kind of stepped over the line from reporting the news to actually making the newest and it really had a material effect on bear stearns' right on a couple of interesting points there the think c.d.s. market or the credit default swap market it was really borne out by this particular situation the risks involved there when the counter parties involved in that market don't have the where with all the cover those bets famously when a.g.

collapsed everywhere they were they counterparty for many of the c.d.'s contracts and in the trainers on wall street know this and right contracts knowing that they'll never have to make good on them because it kind of party is bankrupt so that's part of the fraud that we see a forest naked short selling goes i know i can tell you personally having looked at the situation myself and knowing having invented a lot of technologies that run these systems that there was massive naked short selling it's not a conspiracy theory it's an absolute stone toll. in fact and it's counterfeiting on a wide scale and it is pervasive on wall street and throughout the u.s. economy but let's move on bear's turn c.e.o. jimmy cayne who was seen golfing while bear stearns collapsed was it just because what was that all about is the jimmy came out he's very famous on wall street for some of his peculiar habits but what was the story there well you know what jimmy cayne was the warm currency your pierced through.