good evening i'm lucy craft now filling in for tom hartman here in washington d.c. and here's a look at what's coming up tonight on the big picture and the british prime minister and the president of france became the first heads of state to visit libya since the nato led invasion began there in the fighting continuing and all his whereabouts still unknown it was a trip just too much too soon and three years ago the collapse of lehman brothers collapsed and eventually broke the very foundations of this country's economy the business is booming again on wall street what if anything have we learned from our

past mistakes. right well you need to know this too has a stage who were instrumental in helping to oust libya's moammar gadhafi from power became the first western leaders to visit the north african country today since that admission began the british prime minister david cameron and french president nicolas sarkozy build their trip some sort of show of support for the national transitional council which is of course the authority that is trying to be in control in libya post-grad off now sarkozy and cameron pledged to keep up the nato support until the last of the gadhafi loyalists surrendered and here is the british prime minister himself speaking earlier today. it is trying to bring in free. i mean really. you know. should see you all she was an inspiration to the

winds as you. should lose your courage i'm proud of the role that we played throughout this was your revolution from your bravery from people see the point trip funny be crazy to be putting. people in misrata you sure you would get rid of it and you would choose freedom. so it seems like the end of writing right everything done well not so much but all of this was going on the national transitional council had announced that its fighters have broken through the last remaining bit off the stronghold in the city of misrata promising to become at least one of the last bloody battles when it perhaps even one of the bloodiest battles and libya's civil war and of course fighting does continue in other areas so the question remains what will the fall of gadhafi and his forces translate to on the ground live means to deliver and reform

and freedom and democracy in libya but we hear some of the things that the british prime minister has talked about actually come to light or are there darker threats lurking around just just around the next corner of the north perhaps some of the euphoria of military victories well i don't have the answer but let's ask my next guests he is a deal is kandor he is a joke professor at the center for contemporary arab studies at georgetown university and joins us here this evening thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me now it does seem to me and i don't get a chance to listen to cameron's words just a few moments ago the western leaders are almost i'm unfurling the program. mission accomplished banner is that what you're saying you're getting. it seems to me that at least to ensure the general impression globally that the international community is aware. that most of the selling it's coming to an end. that libya has

been securely sort of handed over to the rebel forces and the transition is trying to flee in place it's of course you know very little importance to do so to ensure that that the oil wells are all fields that the economy that will be an economy is sport sustained and is back on track to the benefit of those who will who will eventually begin the extradition process so this is a swift transition attempt to illustrate this with transition the. support has been able to shepherd if you are so it's very much a public relations ploy and the fact that he can appear in a public square or at least it was orchestrated as such is meant to showcase that there is a unanimity among the libyan populace of course very different from what we see in the battlefields it's an incredibly difficult incredibly combustible situation but

nevertheless this seems like. a preemptive celebratory. gesture on the part of two very hefty supporters of the rebel movement well on that note it seems like there have been sort of small developments here and there in libya better really quite disturbing in terms of their potential implications that we saw i think it was a nine day fire that is local to gadhafi are killed that seventeen guards at an oil refinery near a rough an open minded not to mention about the country's battle with winning an unsecured rockets and and missiles from gadhafi as weapons depots we've also seen at reports of fighters sort of experimenting with insurgents attacked at that dispersing gap and hiding amongst the population which begs the question how how much of a threat or how concerned should we be about an iraq style insurgency in libya i mean we've seen it before. i think the greatest threat doesn't necessarily come from gadhafi loyalists but as you said the point here is we're talking about

enormous amounts of munitions that have been dispersed among the populace we also have. transients and disorganized. allegiances within the ranks of the rebels this is sort of a makeshift force that came together out of happenstance and in some cases purely out of opportunistic. futuristic sort of expectations and so at the end of the day there is no clear vision as to the direction that libya will take whether or not the rebel groups are able to create a sense of unanimity is yet to be seen but up to up until this point the country remains of truly turbulence and very combustible nation and of course it can handle in any direction the key here is securing national resources which of course is the responsibility of the transitional government. outside of that it's anyone's guess

this is a very very complicated place so as opposed to the headlines and the stories that we're hearing out of most western broadcast networks and television stations this is this is far from over there is a complicated scenario you have to unfold in the in the coming months if not years complicated indeed and you mentioned the national transitional council already divisions emerging there but i do want to move on to egypt which has sort of become the symbol of the symbol of the arab spring in their approach awakening a few well it does seem like what we're seeing on the ground there the honeymoon between the muslim brotherhood and the ruling military council or potentially heading towards a better and we've seen now some of the leadership from the muslim brotherhood warning of fresh protests potential violence there over elections there is this democracy growing pains or or a sign of potentially dangerous instability. well i think it's not just the muslim

brotherhood and the islamist parties that have grown increasingly disenchanted and up and sort of aggravated with the supreme council or we can also find that be the liberal voices if you were to use sort of a term that is incredibly clichéd but the sort of left of center groups that are incredibly active in egypt now the two are have lost much of their faith in in the ability of the supreme council for the armed forces to take the country through a transition and to eventually relinquish power so i think to a great extent most political forces in egypt now have come to the bitter realization that the supreme council for un forces is not necessarily acting in the interests in the interest of the revolutionary movement in essence they constitute a counter revolution and so right now the the staff and supreme council for forces are finding themselves alone or with very few friends very few supporters and i

don't think it's it's sort of presumptuous to assume that there is a possibility that the protest movement to me erupt again this time redirecting its energies towards the supreme council as well as the interim government that is feel entirely to accomplish any of the goals i mean we've seen we've witnessed this over the last forty eight hours you know you've heard the resuscitate of the emergency law which was going to keep demands of the revolution on the twenty fifth of january so everything seems to be reconstituted again are all of the institutions that have had represented the repression oppression and the dispossession of the mubarak regime are coming back to life and nearing their are cleared and the revolutionary movements irrespective of their political leaning whether they happen to be left of center or right of center muslim brotherhood or socialist groups where of them are disenchanted and this is exactly what makes your trip. revolution

lively is when the true polarities of the spectrum come together against a common research well lively but a combustible situation indeed not just in libya in egypt and really all across the region i know that you'll be keep tracking this center i do hope to have you back on the program in the future thank you so much for your time. all right. well what began what began as an understandable response to the tragedy of nine eleven has unfortunately morphed into an ideological crusade and i use i don't use that word lightly known as the global war on terror now with this war america's reputation economic might and influence has crumbled all beneath the weight of predator drones tomahawk missiles secret jails extraordinary renditions torture the list goes on about when hope and change replaced the axis of evil america was faced with a brief moment of brief brief opportunity is a chance for a new direction an end to the policies that not only disgraced us the country in

the eyes of the world but a friend of the very very founding principles that we were founded on justice democracy the rule of law the moment came and went and the policies it seem to have continued at the latest scandal to a gulf this is ministration comes to light thanks to spencer ackerman his scoop at wired dot com the f.b.i. may not be known for its cultural sensitivity but he played a story paints a disturbing portrait of an agency that seems to be actively promoting bizarre islamophobia mis information you see when they're not busy tracking down naked celebrity photos of scarlett johannson and whoever else the f.b.i. agents that the training center in quantico appear to be busy listening to the kinds of presentations that one would expect to hear and hearing chaired by congressman peter king presentations that build mainstream american muslims as terrorist sympathizers labeling the prophet muhammad as a quote cult leader and agents were also shown super scientific graphs like the one

you see behind me the sliding scale chart supposedly proves that jews and christians somehow become less violent as they grow more devout all muslims immersed in the koran somehow morphed into a bomb wielding terrorist events on our destruction very scientific indeed and according to f.b.i. manuals the constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of americans is now somehow an indicator of violence islam equals terrorism just like wars peace freedom and slavery and ignorance strength. familiar words if you know where they came from now the main author of these briefings apparently a guy by the name of william gahl thorpe was an f.b.i. intell analyst who once told the birth or champions of world nut daily that quote muhammad mohammed's mindset is a source of terrorism mohammad as in the prophet muhammad so by that logic it's not terrorism they're brought down the twin towers the world trade center and the islamic mindset and if the enemy of the so-called war on terror is islam

a lot come to the modern day religious crusade now reporting outlines how racism against muslim americans is actually being taught at the highest highest levels of our government paid for by our tax dollars but it does also bring to light a more disturbing point for trade by portraying observant americans as terrorists and in a way to be i is playing right into the hands of real terrorists portraying islam as inseparable from the violence is exactly the kind of narrative that al qaeda groups and other organizations preach i focusing on the religious behavior the religious behavior of american citizens instead of actual criminal activity like weapons stockpiling and god knows what else well that makes it all the more likely that we are going to miss the real warning signs of the next attack it is time for this country to pause and take a long hard look at the mirror in the wake of the war on terror what happened

become. now coming up three years ago the collapse of one banking firm called a crippling domino effect across america's economy so their nation is still reeling from the crisis so while the back to business as usual for wall street. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through that sort of been made who can you trust no one who are easy to do with the global machinery city where we had a state controlled capitalism that's called sessions when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

right we'll hold off on the champagne because this anniversary is far from a happy one that's readers ago today one of ensure comerica brought the global economy to its knees it was the day that lehman brothers spell and the banks failure center shockwave across the country across the globe from the high rises on wall street to the deregulated banking paradises of ireland to the far east markets of japan and china thanks to a few multi-billion dollar bailouts not to mention trillions trillions in secret loans to wall street courtesy of the fed the banks are back in business and business is booming which of course would be fine except for the small fact that mainstreet you see remains on life support persistent unemployment and underemployment continues to plague the country with little hope that the well paying jobs will return any time soon meanwhile food gas housing prices continue to

soar using fears of yet another economic meltdown in a way so what have our lawmakers failed to do in the last three years that they need to do now in order to put this whole lehman collapsed behind us in order to get the economy up to strength again is it even possible before the answer let's turn to max credible he's a professor at the new school in new york and a senior analyst with green crest capital max welcome back to the show now it's twenty eleven the too big to fail banks seem to be bigger than ever a financial sector profits exceed their pre-crisis share of corporate profits and executive pay and bonuses are storing has anything at all changed in the last three years. if you think of change when we see employment is way off some of them unfortunately have to win the national scene so the financial sector in new york and writ large employs a lot fewer people than it did in two thousand and eight and it seems to be reducing them bradley maybe led by bank of america but not only bank of america but

our big banks are not in such terrific shape although they have rebounded much better than the the overall. anomie and as much as wall street does seem to be in for some fairly tough times in the last few months when we've seen market sell off and we've seen some job losses which seem to be mounting as we head into the end of the year here we have seen wall street basically double off its lows reached in march and april two thousand and nine i don't foresee and we certainly haven't seen anything like that doubling in the overall economy let alone the unemployment situation has in half so wall street has done better than main street but even wall street is been beset by the problems associated with what is now an aggressively weak macro economy and with a cascade of very alarming numbers that we've been getting over the last several months so you don't think that a lot of the structural problems that led to the financial crisis have three years ago are still an issue is something to be concerned about today i absolutely feel i don't think we've done anything to even really begin the policy side of the

structural debate so we haven't made the structural policy adjustments we haven't even really been willing present company excluded in most of the mainstream media to even discuss the structural problems we keep pretending and we keep making policies all of this is a normal cyclical downturn which it isn't and that's the sort of normal ameliorative efforts are efforts to make things less bad that we see with an extension of unemployment insurance which while welcomed is insufficient and we don't see any real effort to kick start new industries new jobs new entrepreneurship or shore up what is arguably one of the least generous social safety nets in the developed world and talk a little bit about how the policymakers the folks here in washington know what they've done right what they've done wrong in terms of trying to prevent as similar as the crisis from from happening again and we've seen some regulation that's. we do have a lot of new regulations and unfortunately i don't think the best way to judge this is whether more or less regulation it's about wise regulation so i think what we've

seen is an effort to stomp out some of the worst practices of zero six zero seven zero eight which led to the crisis and there is something good about that what we've seen that's very unfortunate is that the banks are now frightened of the new regulations there's a lack of clarity on the new regulations and the response from major banks which now control an even larger market share and they did three years ago so they're too big to fail are now too bigger to fail we have a situation here where we have not seen the banks become willing again to lend to the us general public because the economy's so we ordered small business people so we have a public that wants to borrow we have small business people that want to borrow there's not much money available to them and that is part and parcel of people stuck in their underwater homes seeing foreclosures rise again and continuing to see a nine point one percent headline unemployment number with a sixteen percent inclusive number that you say it's hard to see the kind of poverty and youth unemployment numbers that have been coming out of the census bureau and the bureau of labor statistics over the last three weeks is actually

truly depressing and concerning about the opportunity environment in the united states for young people going forward and it seems to me that it's not just that the structural issues haven't really been fully adequately addressed but a lot of that base has a lot of the people at the top but the policymakers still remain the same maybe the slightly different jobs that they were calling door between wall street and washington seems to be as much of a concern if not more than before if you have any sense that that's my change or more of a cause for concern in the coming weeks and years. well i certainly would echo your sentiments i absolutely agree with you we haven't seen as much of a shake up as you'd sort of expect in a history would suggest we might need in the wake of a crisis of this depth and this breath i think we're still waiting for that there does seem to be a kind of fundamental lack of creativity from policymakers so we get basically people defending the status quo even though it's not working versus a whole group of policies adjustments which seem to me like a one of seven ship of

a various group of ideas about how we could make a bad situation get worse than it already is so we have the present inadequacies played off against ideas to make the situation even worse going forward and i think that's something appropriate in the exact opposite of the kind of leadership that these tough times call for and as as the public calls out for that kind of leadership they haven't heard a whole lot coming back of leadership of the president president the united states is now making as the world as are americans who are having american jobs act what do you make of that i mean is there anything within that that could resemble the types of policies that maybe we should have seen a few years ago the kinds of issues that were lost when lehman him but imploded or is it just too little too late. well i do think it would have been nice to see a little more bold and aggressive steps a few months ago what we've kind of seen happen in washington and i don't think this is just the president's fault or anything like that where we've seen as we waited until the news was incontrovertibly bad so now it's quite clear that we're

very close to dipping down into a zero growth type scenario so we have to do something would have been nice to head off we didn't there are some good proposals in this sort of grab bag of the raid being made public it's a suggestion with the american jobs act and some of those things i'd like to see made law the question is whether they will be made law whether they're big enough whether the timing is right and a lot of the things i think one example it's not fair there's other things in the program but one example is cutting the payroll tax well it does make a bunch of sense doesn't do a whole lot for the unemployed because one of the few things you don't really need to worry a lot about when you're unemployed is payroll taxes because you're not in a payroll you're not getting paid in the taxes really aren't terribly interesting to you other than maybe from an academic perspective well unfortunately big issues and very few solutions or realistic solutions it seems in the pipeline max thank you so much for speaking with us it's always my pleasure thank you and now three

years after the fall of lehmann not a single banker not a single one has gone to jail for the high crimes committed on wall street really too big to fail is also too big to jail and take a listen to tom's take on the failure of our criminal justice system and how that is being a giant giant issue and how the criminal justice system refuses to hold banks i can't. here's a question what's the difference between bernie made off a guy who's ponzi scheme swindle thousands of investors out of ends of billions of dollars back in two thousand and eight and high powered wall street banks traitors who swindled america americans out of trillions that's thousands of billions of dollars since two thousand and seven answer. now the whole block interview from prison yesterday with the new york times made off accuse the big banks of being complicit in his scheme he said they had to know but the attitude was sort of if you're doing something wrong we don't wanna know that's right bernie made off the

guy who pulled off the biggest financial ripoff in history basically said the banks were in on the q two now we can take made off at his word i mean he did make his fortune lying to people right to their faces and people behind bars do have a tendency to try and take others down with them would anyone really be surprised if made off was telling the truth of the banks really were in on the ponzi scheme i know i wouldn't one of those banks j.p. morgan chase is involved in a multibillion dollar lawsuit right this minute by victims of bella made off who allege the bank was well aware of made off scam and did nothing to stop it made off as a client of theirs and he was bringing in the big bucks j.p. morgan probably thought hey why ruin it but you know what i'm going to take the bank side on this they didn't know about made off after all how could they juggle me off scam with all the other scams that they were involved in at the time of the

financial meltdown between giving loans to people they knew couldn't afford them and then selling those toxic loans off to other banks toure's who then sold them to other banks just then sold them to other banks who runs all those other banks just who devised in those a loans up into smaller loans and sold them to under other bank stores until finally the loan was default about and giving investment advice to clients and turning around and betting against those very same investments but all street was way too damn busy to keep up with need off small time ponzi scheme on the side. most of these practices by the way came about thanks to deregulation brought to you by george w. bush phil gramm and bill clinton and maybe they weren't as outright illegal as they were right in more but then there were other scams taking place of wall street that were absolutely immoral and illegal for example it was walk over to a bank which looked the other way while mexican drug cartels laundered four hundred billion dollars. you know made off thirty forty billion this is four

hundred billion dollars to their institution the drug cartels need to cover and walk over you needed some money after bad investments when the department of justice has yet to file an indictment in the case and there's citi group which in the height of the financial meltdown lied to investors about how many bad loans the banks still had on its books claiming it only had thirteen billion dollars in outstanding toxic loans when in reality it had another forty billion stashed away a bold face lie yet no criminal charges are being pursued the case in fact citi group actually got billions of bailout money from you and me personally the taxpayer. we screw you you pay oz that's a works right now there's a case in wells fargo bank which illegally reorder transactions by their customers to make a look like they're doing get the customers individual accounts down to zero faster

so that they can charge more into overdraft fees sadly wells fargo wasn't alone in this practice all the banks did it and because of it in two thousand and nine u.s. banks collected nearly forty billion dollars in overdraft fees another scam bigger than made off no criminal charges were pursued in this case either so here we have banks laundering money for drug dealers banks cooking their books banks the fraud in their customers and that's just a taste of the hundreds of scandals they were perpetrated on wall street as our markets were collapsing between two thousand and seven in the end of the bush presidency. so how could wall street have known about made off scam when they were running so many other scams of their own at the same time there in alaska a financial crisis the s. and l. scandal savings loan scandal back in the late one nine hundred eighty s. and it continued into the early ninety's but it really broke at eighty six a couple of thousand banks toure's went to jail you know ronald reagan sent up

there there paul stewart suits and loafers were replaced with prison acton's it was twenty years ago it seems like a different era a bygone time when wall street was held accountable for its actions. bernie madoff stole billions of dollars and is now serving a one hundred fifty year sentence and federal prison as he should be but here's a couple all of wall street banks or us who stole over seventeen trillion seventeen thousand billion from u.s. households between two thousand and seven two thousand and nine and not one damn person is in jail because of that because you of as much as it does me it's time for these crooks to join their old buddy bernie madoff in jail and for the government to confiscate from these banks the hundreds of billions in bonuses they paid themselves with our dollars and that's the big picture for tonight. craving alerts that doesn't that it appears that we've figured out exactly why the rich.