you know and since the company had gone public in the early ninety's you know he had become really a legend on wall street he held over a billion dollars worth of the firm's stock and by far he was the most heavily invested in his own company and he was really kind of the what what bryan burrow in the film called the last of the wall street buccaneers you know he was really an old school guy and i think that's one of the issues that that kind of came back to bite the firm at the end was that jimmy wasn't really down and dirty with the business when. the office hedge funds collapsed in the summer of zero seven he was reported to be in a page one article in the wall street journal on november first of that year it was reported that he was actually playing in a bridge tournament in nashville tennessee just as the for at as these funds were collapsing. and there were rumors that he was a big pot smoker and you know he was out playing golf you know thursday through sunday all summer long while the fires were kind of burning around the firm and

these hedge funds so you know he it really became apparent by the fall of zero seven you know about five months before the firm collapse that you know he really wasn't down and dirty with the business and beyond that the subprime mortgage business he really didn't have a clue about what was happening in that business and it later came out that really nobody did the management style of bear stearns was very siloed so different parts of the company really didn't have a clue what other parts of the company were doing and you know at the end you know everybody kind of thought the guys at the top had some sort of bird's eye view. and in fact they didn't but but beyond that the firm was it was effectively mortgaging itself and refinancing that mortgage every day for many years in the commercial paper market and the reason they did that was because it was it was a lot cheaper to do than taking on long term debt so you know there were a lot of things that were done to maximize profits you know for the executives at the firm and certainly jimmy cayne led that and at the end it ultimately doomed them how much did j.p. morgan. and pick up their sterns for what was that deal ultimately consummated that

well it was ultimately consummated at about ten bucks a share would have originally had come out in the number everybody remembers is that on not on that monday march seventeenth st patrick's day the public learned that the company was going to be sold for two dollars per share and what happened after that was that which effectively meant that j.p. morgan was going to buy this firm for barely more money than in the firm's headquarters building on madison avenue was worth what happened was that there was a shareholder revolt and and at one point jimmy cayne was exploring the possibility of actually blowing up the firm and taking it into bankruptcy again and just effectively said you know i'm going to take everybody down with me so after that revolt it was clear to jamie dimon and everybody j.p. morgan that there was something that was going to have to give some computer contractual problems as well that left morgan exposed so at the end of the day the firm was picked up for ten dollars a share and they got that they'll go on in may a couple of months later you know so. by any such comparison it is one of the

great steals of on wall street probably in history right and then of course j.p. morgan after acquiring those assets for less that pennies on the dollar they turned around and got a multi hundred billion dollars bailout fund that american taxpayer so fantastic for jamie diamond again another legendary scam star clarify some of the points there going back to nine hundred ninety nine and a long time capital management scandal when that has gone collapsed and wall street came together to balad out with this huge multi-billion dollar bailout one firm did not participate and there was a stigma attached to that firm was that bear stearns or lehmann it was actually both bear lehman only every firm on the street was told by the president of the new york fed that they all had to kick in three hundred million dollars per to bail out long-term capital management what ultimately happened was that lehman only kicked in one hundred million and bear pretty. told the fed to take

a hike cain basically saw bear stearns as really a vendor to long term capital they cleared of long term capital trades and you know he didn't see why he needed to kick in money to save this firm and in fact of course he didn't you know and that's really when when long term capital collapsed in ninety eight that was really want to turn too big to fail was coined and it certainly set up a huge moral hazard problem for wall street that we saw it rear its head again and you know weighed on a massive scale and so you know there are certainly a lot of parallels between what happened two thousand and eight and what happened on a much smaller scale in one thousand nine hundred eight with long term capital management all right so let's talk about what's happening now the criminal proceedings the lawsuits that have been launched against bear stearns j.p. morgan sensed a collapse terry bull who we follow on the show says bet a guest on kaiser report you worked on details that are leading to a lawsuit can you give us some details and updates on that i worked with after

terri who's just been a huge fan of the film for us since day one and done a lot of really great reporting on this subject surrounding bear stearns and these other banks after she wrote an initial article in the atlantic i was contacted by a law firm who is bringing an action on behalf of some of them on a line insurers the biggest thing that's just come out is the f.h.a. phase lawsuit civil suit which was released this past friday which details actually individual defendants at bear stearns all of whom were running their mortgage operations and are now in very high paying jobs at other firms tom moran what ally bank jeffrey hirsch lives are at goldman sachs these guys who have landed in big jobs at other places so and although this is a civil suit not a criminal procedure proceeding the word i hear is that based on the outcome of these proceedings you know some indictments are being bandied about and talked about so you know i think that after you know certainly the justice department lost the case against. me and his cold. manager of the hedge funds at bear stearns where

they were acquitted on nine counts i think they've really been going to school on how exactly to prosecute these people for the malfeasance that they participated in and you know i'm hopeful that some of these people you know pay for what they did because certainly the last e-mail documentation as well as i witnessed information apparently more than thirty whistleblowers have come out and some of these suits that describe incredible level of fraud and malfeasance that was going on both on the factory floor a pair of mortgage operation really went all the way to the top we're going to leave it there and verbinski thanks so much for being on the kaiser report thanks for having me max all right that's going to do it for this edition of the kaiser report with me max kaiser and stacy herbert thank my guests next if you want to send me an e-mail please do so i can report in our teeth are you and the next time this is back i was saying by.

but in the long show we'll get the real headlines with none of them are saying if you live in washington d.c. now and i wouldn't take a look at last night's republican debate i mean tea party debate on c.n.n. we're going to ask if it's proved once and for all that there isn't any difference between the two also the census bureau has released new figures showing the over forty six million people live below the poverty line in the u.s. that is the highest number that it's been since they started measuring so why does the media continue to act like it's had two subjects let's talk about what it really means for america and did fannie mae bail out bank of america last month

that might be the case and had nobody's talking about that either and they ran down those in a philistine with all the details or not all of that and more of a tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look where the mainstream media has decided to me. so it's a the mainstream media continued for once to remember that there's a war going on in afghanistan does the u.s. embassy in kabul came under attack and this one they were all over. but workers at the american embassy in kabul are hunkered down there for an attack and one day in the heart in the heart of what is to be the most secure area callahan launching a series of ordinated attacks against the u.s. embassy and i think the signal in afghanistan is that karzai as we. needed a series of attacks told to the american embassy to headquarters five or six taliban militants went to the roof of this thirty story building that was still

under construction they were carrying many rocket propelled grenades. now while i applaud their efforts you know my feelings on this only covering the longest war in u.s. history where there's a presence of one hundred thousand troops when there's a big event that doesn't mean that you actually cover the war it doesn't make up for the lack of coverage the rest of the year round and this make up for the lack of questions that we hear coming from anchors and pundits about why we're still fighting there or by attacks against u.s. embassies and u.s. and coalition troops continue iraq today we've actually been a perfect day for that to you not to any day isn't the right day but for the mainstream media there has to be some kind of a news or you know some kind of sound bite they can play off of something catchy that justifies. and last night's c.n.n. tea party debate congressman ron paul provided that perfect sound bite when it finally came time to talk about the war in afghanistan and the fence spending our post nine eleven world congressman paul was the only one really thought about the

uncomfortable truth that our actions have consequences but we're under great threat because we occupy so many countries were in hundred thirty countries we have nine hundred bases around the world we're going broke the purpose of real kind of it was to attack us in by this over there where they can target this and they have been doing it they have more attacks against us and the american interest per month than occurred in all the years before nine eleven but we're there occupying their land in. we think we can do there and not have retaliation we're kidding ourselves we have to be honest with ourselves. now that is probably the most illogical thing that anybody said all night at that debate oh americans might not like hearing it we have to be able to be honest with ourselves we have to be able to comprehend that our foreign policy can hurt not only others but us as well that includes our reactions to nine eleven the decade of war that's followed it we have to get our militarism the more than nine hundred bases that we have around the world the drone

strikes that we launch in other countries that they have real life consequences and they can create terror two lives are lost civilians are killed or displaced and caught in the cross-hairs that changes perceptions that makes other people want to react when it's their family their home base that's being occupied or interfered with and as we hear so often people ask if we're safer ten years after nine eleven we have to take a good hard look at why we're not we have to realize that launching wars in drone strikes the military operations in iraq afghanistan pakistan yemen somalia libya and you know that list is going to go on we have to know that we're not the only ones on this earth what gives us the right to treat the entire planet like our military base what gives us the right to torture and detain people indefinitely and ask others to torture for us especially when we claim to hold the banner for freedom and democracy and the rule of law what gives us the right to ignore common sense and yet every single other republican candidate is willing to do just that they just went all out about american exceptionalism or our right to bomb everyone

at last night's debate but ron paul at least opened the door for that real conversation what happened while he was brushed off treated like some weird for in jena and forgotten about and all of the media coverage today going over last night's debate that wasn't a soundbite that was played over and over and over again when it should have been because it's the mainstream media that's just as guilty of shielding its eyes to that reality because they serve a higher power as they don't want you to think for yourself either so they serve. and i miss but if we keep doing that if we don't talk about it confronts us then we're going to lose. all right so let's talk more about last night's c.n.n. tea party debate with eight of the g.o.p. presidential candidates now mind you there was still no gary johnson over at carter and nobody romer all of whom we've interviewed on this show all of whom continue to

be excluded from all those major bates we have to ask if there is anything particularly tea party about this one i'm not sure i think mostly we heard more of the same rhetoric on immigration obamacare h.p.v. and of course social security there were some actually good questions about the fed and executive orders taken from people in the audience but they weren't even addressed every candidate maybe they ran out of time because c.n.n. did a ten minute long open to resemble an n.b.a. all-star game more than a political debate but ok i'm going to stop i will let somebody else get on the phone with me to talk about yesterday's events and talk about the scary prospect of the fact that one of these people might become the next president of the united states or the best this is me as i can make more santoro reporter and blogger for talking points memo and thanks so much for being here tonight are you started can you just please tell me if you noticed that too with it was this really long ridiculous intro with drums going crazy and like black lights and everybody walked out to their own audience i don't see and you know i'm still i'm sort of maturation you know my home phone you know watches or what channel i watch on t.v.

and you and i just i mean i guess that's just what politics what political debates have become these days they have to be like glamorised and made t.v. ready with the tea party thing right they like that sort of introduction it was a john adams theme i think which is look at john adams theme song so it was very each of you know when the series all around you know the big thinker. why did c.n.n. team up with a tea party that's a little confusing why would they team up with the tea party express why wouldn't they. news do it or you know what gives the tea party express so much power well there's no question about that actually has been criticizing them for cheaper teaming up with what's essentially a large political pac and giving them all their time but you know the tea party is an important part of the public an electorate these days you know in two thousand and ten they led to so many of those primaries that we saw sharon angle christine o'donnell you have the tea party express in part to thank for beating their major republican opponent so if you're in a link with the tea party somewhere you know it's not the worst group to do it with

in terms of their actual power their actual influence on the tea party movement right definitely there's some there's some question as to sort of whether they're giving a big ad the tea party or not just by letting them do this but we have to hear questions from real tea partiers which is i think helpful to the debate yeah i think it was really good the you actually got to hear questions from the audience that's not something that's novel i guess this time they're tea partiers so that makes it different but we're going to get back to this still i don't know confused as to whether is that he really difference between the tea party and just a regular old g.o.p. debate let's go to something obviously the economy is something they haven't talked about because president obama as somebody who is trying to go for reelection faces some really horrible statistics when it comes to the economy when it comes to unemployment the odds are not looking in his favor so you expect this to be the number one attack that republican candidates have on hand but they seem to think that it's a really really easy solution i want you to listen to senator that michele bachmann and newt gingrich said last night. anybody who knows anything about the federal government knows that there's such an enormous volume of waste that if you simply

had a serious all out effort to modernize the federal government you would have hundreds of billions of dollars of savings first peals tax free for people obamacare can't really isn't that tough if you try if you turn around this economy you ask have the backbone to do much. so the sound got a little fuzzy at the end of our coverage and we're going anywhere really you just have to have the backbone to do it and that's how easy it is a turn around this economy if you want to live in some magic magic other place that doesn't exist in the real world and if there's a put in the white house it says fix the economy and if you find the press it and it picks is everything so this is the idiot who doesn't know what a great guy like a planter on top is not like that you will think i don't know what's going on i mean wolf blitzer to actually question them on that when you can bridge says it's so silly anyone who knows anything about washington as you just have to modernize the economy will save hundreds of billions of dollars what the hell it is modernize the economy i mean right i mean far be it for me to defend wolf blitzer and he can defend himself i do you know it one of the hard things about these debates as you

know so many candidates on stage and sort of hard to get everybody to a chance specially someone like newt gingrich you literally is not going to win that nomination so really you're giving him more time to explain maybe you would take time away from more prepared talk about texas but i do understand you're saying i mean i think that there is more that needs to be asked of these candidates they talk about this stuff and michele bachmann is the queen of the one liners with this stuff and just you know we're going to you know we're going to repeal obama care we're going to fix gas prices are going to bring them down to two dollars a gallon just make you president she has to really explain why or how she's going to do that why you know why it's not happening now and what she's going to do to make it up right and i mean you know i guess when their field narrows when it's down to two people that we finally start getting some details and actual plans to do question i honestly don't know i mean you could be a t.v. ad election we see so many of those i mean i think that these questions will start getting after i think there are some other topics in the debate happened we. the gardasil stuff that happened this time around that actually are being asked of bachmann more now than before but i do think that she's you know there's one line

to get her if i think that's i think it's interesting that h.p.v. probably got more times than jobs last night on the debate you know that's the tea party message framing that people ask a lot about sort of maybe more esoteric if you mention the top of the show some stuff we don't hear a lot about which is what you know that's important executive order one of those areas are where they didn't even let ron paul answer a question about the federal reserve which is total b.s. i think that's right more education didn't get mentioned i mean a lot of big big topics didn't get mentioned in favor of sort of more tea party stuff like this gardasil thing ok well i was speaking to the gardasil thing became a really big issue and a big point of contention of course and rick perry was being called out and then he had to kind of interesting response to say. this. the company was merck and it was a five thousand dollars contribution that i had received from them i raise about thirty million dollars if you're saying that i can be bought for five thousand. i'm offended. is he admitting that he can't be barred to me now i'm just

so theory is that how much it takes him by rick perry it's more like thirty thousand and it's also a former chief of staff that was yellow yes i mean i know there's a lot of stuff they can do you know there's some big connections there between those two things i dislike the same thing nobody called about it because i guess every other republican candidate out there they can be bought and nobody wants to call him out and say we're just exactly how much does it cost to get you know right well i'm not sure they would say they could be bought but i do think that it's sort of this is a hit on perry that sort of a weakness for him but he's sort of trying to get rid of it by saying this stuff about you know i made the wrong decision making this order and i should have done it but the attack on him was actually more about the morals of what he did and then obviously michele bachmann said this crazy thing about how the. medicine might cause ripple retardation among people which has been widely criticized across the internet today so actually that's the actual attack it's not it's it's less about even though they want to make it about the sort of crony capitalist it's really

more about the morals of the way they're getting whether the government rein mandates something like that on you know if they're going to talk about morals that are something that i've noticed in the last two debates and we're actually going to show clips and it's the things that the audience in these republican debates choose to hear for let's take a look we have one example from last night and one from the previous as well. are you saying that society should just let him. know. your state is executed two hundred thirty four just row inmates more than any other governor in modern times as you. who are these people or you know what's happening in this country why is it ok to cheer for a governor that is executed more people it is time than any other governor governor excuse me on record or for you know ron paul talking about the fact that someone's insured which is just like the guy at that hospital i don't get a chair for that well to be sure ron paul didn't say that he would let somebody die and he said no i would like when i first right here you know so let's just make

sure we're not saying ron paul would do that or the idea what it doesn't look like you know the tea party crowd and the sort of conservative crowd that we have in the republican party right now they're extremely extremely conservative and they like things like this sort of idea of this texas justice you know they sort of think the more executions probably the better whether or not i mean we did a lot of questions about whether or not there are actually all guilty people or not you know be honest and moral questions of execution but that's probably one of things that they think in this thing about the about letting them die you know this is kind of the libertarian influence on the g.o.p. these days we were terri and like to talk about theory i mean theory this is sort of people libertarian dogma the idea is that you don't have the government involved you make your own choices and then you suffer your own consequences so you know i think it's sort of like the chickens that their publican party has kind of gathered around themselves when elections are coming home to roost as they do you think that this debate last night showed us that there is actually a difference between the tea party and i regular republican party when did you notice a difference between the tea party debate and just any of the other g.o.p.

presidential debates it was all the same issues if you asked me when and if you could point to on the cheering i mean i think it's a hard it's a blurry line these days i mean this is what mitt romney's problem is he's trying to at the one hand say i'm not a tea party or the other hand say you know i believe what they believe it's hard if you're republican right now to decide what you are the tea party so for the forget let's admit they're all just saying the tea party i guess this list a little bit more of a response they like the flashing cameras and it sounded interesting or something i thank so much for joining us for thank you. still ahead tonight we have new details about the impact of the latest unredacted state department cables are released on my good friend from a friend it really that when things are something right out of poverty crisis now that's a shocking new figures out today to look at the growing number of americans that live below the poverty line or discussed those numbers and looked. into it only when there were three mechanisms if you don't work out to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government should

do if you want to know why i pay taxes. but i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for sleep you think you understand it and then you live something else here's some other part of it and realize that everything is all. i'm trying hard look at the big picture. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right now.

i think. even one well. whatever government says they're going to keep him safe get ready because their freedom.

our short while back we reported to you the latest information dump from wiki leaks thousands of it's if i'm not a cables contain the names of several u.s. sources i'll be open for everyone to see and i moved through a lot of criticism from governments around the world including the obama administration us state department spokeswoman victoria nuland declare this move irresponsible reckless and frankly dangerous but after the associated press conducted its own review they found that no sources were threatened as the u.s. government claims now we should note here the a.p. review did manage their investigation based on the sources of the state department deemed to be at the greatest risk to the investigation and look into every single source and they've left it up to each country's embassy to decide for themselves who actually faces and danger because of those leaks but let's take a look at the criteria that the state department uses to identify what's considered a sensitive source it's anybody who's part of a totalitarian society or failed state who could be imprisoned or anyone who might

lose their job or suffer major embarrassment because of leaks information that the u.s. government argues that even leakers who are only sharing friendly information are still offering candid insight to sensitive topics and restricted information this might the argument over whether or not the leak that is truly that sensitive and nature and the a.p. also is bound several people whose personal information was leaked in those unredacted cables and they all took a pretty cast of view on reeky leaks revealing their sources for example frederica bravos meeting with american diplomats in rome seven years ago that provided details on iran's nuclear standoff however she doesn't give out threaten their names out there and in fact she said that she thinks people should be aware she said there is nothing that we said it was not known to our bosses to our ministers to our heads of state we didn't ask there's nothing to protect so thus far it does look like wiki leaks is in the clear when it comes to accusations that they put people in danger of course doesn't answer questions about we can be its own sources

the leakers many are still arguing that this is going to scurry sources from sharing a secret information from wiki leaks in the future but as for taking heat from the u.s. government about exposing sensitive sources and putting lives at risk at this point in time that claim does not hold up. now if you need any more proof that the recovery isn't doing anything for a large swath of americans take a look at these staggering figures that were released today from the census bureau relating to poverty that and two thousand and ten an additional two point six million people slip below the poverty line that makes the overall number of people living in poverty in the u.s. a whopping forty six point two million and that by the way is fifteen point one percent of the country that's also the highest number in the fifty two years of the census bureau has been tracking this now for asking what actually counts is poverty of the line in two thousand and ten was drawn at twenty two thousand one hundred and thirteen dollars for a family of four you add to that more evidence and the middle class is shrinking as

real median household incomes declined by two point three percent in twenty ten to forty nine thousand and four hundred dollars and you'll see what a city group analyst has labeled as an hourglass economy so what we make of all these statistics and what does it mean for the future you and me to discuss this is christopher chambers lecture at georgetown university and author of the blog their bench chris thanks so much for joining me tonight these are this is this is bad news obviously the america has an increasing lower class more people are in poverty more than forty six million of them but if we look at society today if we look at our political culture there is a lot of legislation that's being discussed about reducing our deficit about creating jobs supposedly do you see anything that actually is going to tackle poverty i don't move i don't think so because we hope you have a congress but you could be republicans who are trying to rude not only the city for you know basically not need to see you know that it would present a.