welcome to the loner show where you get the real headlines with none of the mersey we live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to take talk about the obama administration's revamp of housing programs to help keep more americans in their homes but is that actually enough reasons anthony rand as i was going to join us for that one then join us songes announced that wiki leaks is shutting down its web site for now to fight the financial blockade that companies like these a master card and pay pal have put up against the whistle blowing organization so if the money doesn't start flowing again could it be the end of wiki leaks and one of the dangers here for the freedom of speech then the obama administration reportedly debated launching a cyber offensive in libya before they actually decided to go with the cruise missiles and the drone strikes so how much closer does that make us to having cyber

war become a concert reality where you have all that for you tonight and more including it does have happy hour but first let's take a look what the mainstream media has decided to miss the. rights of the mainstream media which so do to fully report on the arab spring while revolutions are breaking out in tunisia egypt is back on the revolution bandwagon while of course either ignoring or mocking the occupy wall street movement right here at home but now that those revolutions of taking place now they get off he's been killed the next question is of course what comes next and in tunisia elections have actually taken place. officials in tunisia are counting votes on the first free election in the country's history people are now rushing to the polls more than eighty percent of registered voters in the country participated people waited patiently in line suz on some of the more than three hours just to get their chance to vote no violence was reported during voting yesterday it's been ten months since the uprising that overthrew tunisia as president and inspired rebellions in other

arab nations the world is now looking to tunisia as an example of what democracy in the arab world could look like you really felt the emotion yesterday it's hard for me to capture but there were people who started crying as they talked about how wonderful it felt to choose representatives that they wanted rather than somebody who'd been imposed on them. so when you're watching that coverage even see emotions display by the reporters about how wonderful it is to see it that you need people vote in democratic elections and it's great to see a vote but the big question in muslim countries of course is when people get to choose what they want what happens if it's not a choice that america likes in tunisia for example the moderate islamist party has now won the elections and aside from the conservative news outlets the rest of the media kind of likes to gloss over that part but perhaps the best example for this well way we used to support democracy in getting dictators out but now we're not so sure what to say about it anymore that comes from fox news and their reaction to the libyan trans national transitional national council saying that sharia law is

going to be a principle. of giulio that's going to yeah the areas i have an idea on how to rule libya forget about the democracy have a better idea it's to shari'a law. shari'a law good luck women get off your have no more rights no more ability to drive no more ability to go hold jobs you wonder you know if a bank rich people offer a lot of money will be behead them. if that answer is yes you might think that some people would think oh that could actually be a pretty good idea that's not a really good idea but nonetheless shari'a law this is what all that money bought shari'a law. i crack up every time i have to listen to the bumbling threesome but let's think back on what they actually just said so this guy just decided to forget about democracy that's what all the money bought oh wait a minute were you guys really stoked just a couple of days ago when cut off he was killed and now you're bitter about that one billion dollars that was spent there because you realize that maybe could offer

being gone doesn't necessarily mean that libya is going to embrace american style democracy i mean that shows a fundamental misunderstanding which often leads to a lot of hypocrisy about the middle east and north africa because we know how this game goes we've seen it before propping up a dictator when people want them out you support the fight for democracy when they can't step in and put a new leader in themselves well that's what officials get really earth that they've lost control the situation of democracy might not look exactly the way they want it to and the truth is we have a very long way to go to see what a new tunisia and egypt a new libya are going to look like and guess what the results might not exactly be pretty western friendly but he's a muslim countries you have to take those things into account and unfortunately democratic elections aren't guaranteed there either tunisia might be leading the way there but in libya these new rules have basically just been decreed so it's going to be a complicated rough road but you know the mainstream media always cheers first and then thing flater and it's that lack of understanding that leads them to put their

foot in their mouth over and over again i really think of the fox that we're having the hardest time with this one because republican lawmakers are for sure they have to support democratic aspirations of revolutions but then do they have to necessarily support the results too or can they take it back say that hey we were just kidding unfortunately there is no way to have it both ways but that's what the mainstream media is happy to miss. well president obama is making a few stops on the west coast this week to promote his jobs act and get a new slogan of we can't wait so we can't wait goes along with new programs that the obama administration isn't acting don't require any congressional approval. so since they've been stuck in partisan gridlock that doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon i guess that that's not so bad of an idea but one of those programs is announced in las vegas today and it's basically a revamp of the home affordable refinance program started in two thousand and nine at this point has helped less than a million people to this new broader refinancing program it's going to take away

some of the roadblocks some of the strict requirements borrowers can now refinance regardless of how far their homes have fallen in value their financial situation also isn't taken into regard as long as they've made at least six consecutive monthly mortgage payments and also eliminates legal responsibility for bank and largest mortgage companies if there are problems with the original loan but all of this only applies to loans that are owned or guaranteed by fannie and freddie so what you say about this overhaul is the administration of finally they are weighing in on the housing crisis or is this still kind of a weak attempt to discuss it with me as anthony randolph so director of economic research for the reason anthony thanks so much for being here tonight. this is you love this stuff right you love talking about housing and how utterly. you know it so i'm really curious as to what you think of this of this new revamp because we're constantly hear you and i talking about how the past attempts hamp you know or this program as well how they have just been complete failure is maybe the obama administration really really screwed up on this one out of the other things that

they screwed up with the economy so is this at least a good try. i think it's a really weak attempt from what you're hearing with the key thing is what are we trying to accomplish with this this point even the administration would tell you this is not an attempt to solve the whole housing crisis so anybody that is going to try and frame this plan as you know this is the white house trying to solve it they're not trying to do and it can't and won't what it basically is doing the things that you outlined is going to do two big things. the fact that it's no longer a limit on how far your house is underwater and you have sort of access to this this refinancing program and the fact that banks now have this carrot dangled in front of them if they. participate in this because this is voluntary. the banks may be able to clear away some of their liability and that's the to their sort of itinerary is that because i feel like that i had quite a few carrots dangled in front of them of the last couple of years and they're still sitting on cash and not getting out so not all the details are out just the

broad strokes of the plan were released today we're not going to get the specific details until november fifteenth so the devils are the devil's really in the details in terms of whether or not the banks are going to go for this and the fact is if it's not good enough they're not going to want to jump into this program any more than they did the previous programs because banks and investors oftentimes lose money with refinancings because you're investing over your wanting to get interest over a thirty year time frame and then you prepay loans so you lose money so you need to have a good incentive to want to jump into this now another incentive is that you you know banks don't want people to default and so there there is value in refinancing and what not but what i think is the weakest part of this it's not going to impact that many people there certainly are going to be people that's going to benefit but even the f.h.a. the regulatory agency that's going to overseeing this and is implementing these changes their estimates are between eight hundred thousand and a million people are going to access this at most the original claim was that

a lot of the i know that is not a little more realistic because at this point they say that under a million have already been affected by the program right now they're revamping and they're saying maybe up to a million you know at least they're being more honest this time instead of saying you know blanket five million people here you've got so they're potentially being more honest and some estimates suggest it could be as low as six hundred thousand some say maybe as much as three million but here's the key thing the point here is underwater borrowers look we're not like we're not trying to help out people who are able to pay their mortgage and have equity in their home but all of the about nine hundred thousand people that have participated in this program so far only seventy thousand of those people have been between one. hundred and one hundred twenty five percent. underwater you know it's technically called l.t.v. loan to value ratio but so most of the people that are purchaser in this program are in negative equity so that's an ominous sign that expanding the program basically taking that cap will you would have thought that you know even without

that cap lots of people up to that cap would have taken advantage of this but they didn't so there is an ominous sign going forward that this is going to have much of an impact for people that are underwater why do you think that so many people didn't take advantage of it is it because of some of those barriers that you know that we're talking about that now have been taken away doesn't matter how much the value is fond doesn't matter what because there are some people that say that you know i barely out my financial situation is just too good so i don't even qualify to be part of the program to get some help or is the word not out and nothing i mean there has to be a reason why this failed it was a couple a couple things don't go away with this one of them is the bank backlog so that's one big reason why foreclose why refinancings and modifications haven't gone through at the rate that they might otherwise like good ones people the ones that you're qualified for and that's because there's just so much out there and there's the foreclosure pipeline that's sort of backlog another reason is the fees associated with that with refinancing and that has gone away that is one of the things so that might be one of the things that really might get more some of the

some of those people who are over the hump and so you might see a few more people now i don't have a particular problem with people that are under way that are underwater in their home that are able to refinance to go through this program. it's you know it's owned by fannie mae freddie mac. they actually technically have the legal right to do it i don't i wish that we were focusing our efforts on something that was helping the debt problem like on a broad scale i think we're just still sort of basically. basically not we're not addressing the coroner wanting things that are here going on but. perhaps in the back and getting yeah right turn to tell everybody have we have a great super committee that i know you're not getting anywhere but what i want to have a. problem with this is people who can refinance that are basically going to have less fees charged to them that are basically healthy borrowers that are going to go to refinance because those less fees are going to take away money from fannie mae and freddie mac. and every quarter fannie mae and freddie mac. take money from the taxpayers because they lose money so then it's

a vicious cycle because i think you know you could say if the government at the same time maybe they're not so worried maybe they just want people to have lower fees so they can then have more disposable income so they can spend it and then you know you get to count that as part of a reinvigorating the economy and consumers are buying again and then we get this impression that things are going just fine but then consumers are. going to take and i mean i i it's overall it's a weak attempt at a huge problem i think that's the biggest thing the takeaway is we need if you're going to take bold actions if you want to make bold proposals to congress you can make you can make bold steps when it comes to dealing with fannie mae freddie mac. this is a weak attempt is but overall if you look at the obama administration's policy and the way they've tried to tackle everything you talk about you look at the stimulus right you can look at obama's jobs plan he's trying to get out there do you think that housing is their weakest spot you know i mean why were they so why weren't they more aggressive when it came if you asked secretary geithner which remember

who the reporter asked him that question last week the at in that he said we underestimated the depth of the problem there were lots of people myself included who were yelling in two thousand and eight two thousand and nine that housing is credibly important part of moving our nation forward it's not only stimulus it's not just ira good to man there's a serious debt problem and secretary geithner admitted we underestimated the problem so now they're yeah and so and so now we've basically dragged out the foreclosure crisis through an ineffective harp an ineffective hand program a sort of sister program that basically just meant that instead of having a lot of foreclosures in two thousand and nine we get them now we get them to doesn't ten eleven and twelve we get this built up shadow inventory where we have. a basis. four times the number of homes that are waiting to be foreclosed there is currently on the foreclosure market and that means that that's going to be another forty or so months of more homes entering the base becoming them getting foreclosed on and turning the housing supplies that's putting downward pressure on prices for

a long time that should have been dealt with in two thousand and nine so a big push now and now the slogan is we can't wait so if we can't wait it's actually takes a lot of bold steps the white house said in february we don't need fannie mae and freddie mac. and they're actually causing a lot of problems because they're keeping the private sector private sector financing out of the housing market so put forward a plan to begin to phase them out over five to seven years couple that with of this refinancing program if you want to take a bold action you're right we can't wait we can't say this is not the time to change things in the housing market because it's too fragile there's never a good time to address housing finance reform it's either we don't want to slow down the building boom or it's too fragile we need to take bold steps this was an incredibly disappointing step i have and i thank you so much for joining us tonight and you know we'll see like you say if the banks actually go for it and letting us see at least a little bit a little bit of result. are there still much more to come tonight hundred thirty occupiers were arrested over the weekend i can tell you where it happened to

continue to bring you the latest on the price movement and then waiting weeks in trouble this time it has to do with their finances we're going to find out exactly why the whistleblowing organization is putting a halt to all publishing which. i. we're going to use them we thank you so you get to the money. if you want to have sex go and have sex.

you believe in something. from. the future harbored. well the second month of the occupy movement is underway with several new cities jumping on board their support and even a few city councils the city of los angeles has released a statement saying that it supports the peaceful and nonviolent exercising of first amendment rights now back on the east coast well known philosopher noam chomsky's showed up at occupy boston to express his support but in chicago things weren't quite as peaceful over the weekend protestors are still attempting to create a headquarters for the dog by chicago who meant so they march to grant park on saturday night but try to make that park their very own psychotic when the park close the rest began. when i was. there.

was a lot of to say. thank god i was. over all one hundred thirty people were arrested saturday night which marks the fourth week of mass arrests relating to the occupy movement but let's go back to where it all started for a moment let's go to college park over the weekend the demonstrators got a visit from folk music legend pete seeger and the ninety two year old seeger was joined by his grandson and several more protestors for an impromptu performance at symphony space. a. now that wasn't the only action that took place in new york city this weekend this past saturday marked the annual day of protests to stop police brutality so several

members of the occupy movement marched through manhattan to show their support and the call to stop police brutality was also echoed by anonymous the activist organization and open supporter of the occupy movement released the names addresses and social security numbers for members of the international association of chiefs of police and in a press release anonymous and its sub group anti-sex said that they wanted to go after law enforcement for protecting the one percent the hackers went on to say we have no problem targeting police and releasing their information even if it puts them at risk because we want them to experience just a taste of the brutality and misery that they serve us on an everyday basis and i'm not so sure that's the right way to go about it not every police officer out there using sex of excessive violence or gets out of line and remember they're also part of the ninety nine percent they're also losing their jobs they're also losing their homes that's one of the unfortunate result so far of this occupy movement across the country and that it's pitted in many cases the two groups against each other when really they've got the same frustrations with the corporate control of the

country now while the occupy movement continues to grow so do its coffers at last count occupy wall street and received almost five hundred thousand dollars in donations and now becoming a bit of a sore subject for a lot of protesters who feel like they don't have access to that money the groups financial committee is having trouble securing people who are able to handle the donations because as they put it they're afraid of takers the new finances while contentious issue do however show that increasing support for the occupiers what was once a few thousand people who called for an end to corporate greed has become a nationwide even global movement backed by least half a million dollars in donations. and wiki leaks is going broke and it might not survive into the next year thousand messaging julian assange when he announced at a press conference in london that the whistle blowing web site is shutting down its operations until november twenty eighth all in order to focus on finding a financial blockade. raising new funds now if you remember it was in december of two thousand and ten that visa master card and pay pal three the biggest payment

providers that dominate the market cut off funding to wiki leaks western union has also cut off that funding as private companies they have the discretion to do it but it came out that members of congress like joe lieberman were pressuring the companies to do so now it's said that in two thousand and ten wiki leaks donations were running at one hundred thousand euros a month but now they've lost ninety five percent of their revenues so could this financial blockade actually lead to the end of wiki leaks and what are the greater dangers here for free speech joining me to discuss this is trevor tim activists of the electronic frontier foundation and a legal twitter feed where reporting on legal and first amendment issues surrounding wiki leaks trevor i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and i mean are you surprised at all that the financial blockade actually ended up hurting wiki leaks or considering how much paper mastercard and visa all dominate this market has become virtually impossible to get money to the organization yeah i mean this was kind of inevitable because as you said they really dominate the

market distorts the guardian saying that they basically control ninety seven percent of all humans online so when you can't win with. a certain set of its money there's going to be problems especially with all the legal costs there are all the trouble with protecting their servers and just the traffic on the web site it costs a lot of money to run it so i think by. kind of censoring. corporations the government knew it might take you know it would be overnight but eventually we saw for us well exactly how much money do you think that it takes i mean you know are they using the majority of their money to deal with some of these legal troubles that they're having because of julian assange said that they were getting what was it ten million pounds a month in two thousand and ten that's a lot of cash. yes definitely a lot of cash i'm not sure exactly how they spend their money but i do know that

they are losing a lot i think it was a couple months ago when they actually found kind of a loophole in the way fisa processes payments and they ended up having a twenty four hour window where people could donate and that's where we really saw how much donations they're using i think within twenty four forty eight hours for. research up and down again they had raised six figures were money so to say that it damages their fundraising it is an understatement now so what is said basically is that they're putting all their publishing to a halt for now because they're going to try to fight this financial blockade and i know they have a few legal processes in the works in europe but how much can they really do in this case. yeah i don't know about europe but in the u.s. it's really tough because this is essentially kind of a government and a run and run around the first amendment because you know the first about it protects you from government or government speech but essentially what they did was

start pressuring these companies like amazon started with amazon joe lieberman staff all of amazon said you know you should be hosting these people and then after amazon kind of agreed the next day joe lieberman went on t.v. and said well i hope other companies follow suit and so you saw the piece and mastercard almost immediately cut off all these. processing servers and they didn't really say why they said well they violated terms of service this was a legal but it hasn't actually done anything and i think they're just kind of rushed to judgment thinking that publishing classified information is legal when we know that newspapers do it all the time in this country every day the wall street journal or the new york times the washington post classified information that has nothing to do with x. . and they just assume because the government is using words there could be something legal facts wrong now so clearly pressure must have played

a role here because you know people always mention as well you can still donate to a lot of corporations that have broken the law as numerous times in this country you know that have lawsuit after lawsuit but yet for some reason wiki leaks that hasn't been charged of a crime or convicted of any crime here in the u.s. for some reason you can't really tell an eight to them anymore and so you know i think that that really brings up a bigger issue because wiki leaks clearly has become a very divisive organization right there a lot of people that just fundamentally disagree with what we can fix is doing they think they're putting classified information out there endangering lives but how to get people to realize that this is about a much bigger issue this is about free speech and the fact that if it wants to you know it with pressure from the government private industry can essentially silence that. yeah that's a great point i mean whether you like what you weeks or eight weeks which i understand a lot of people don't like the way view inside and runs we are at this or that he's publishing all these secrets but either way this is something that people should be

worried about because once the government starts this president where they figure out they can pressure these private companies and into doing their bidding essentially then who knows what's going to happen and as you said there are plenty of companies that have the excuse of law breaking or actually broken the law but nothing ever seems to happen is that you know you have you know you had a big scandal in england a couple months ago over news corp in their newspaper news the world where they act were actually involved systematic lawbreaking happening in people's phones and bribing police yet you didn't see the sort of master card trying to. stop processing subscription payments the wall street journal it's just not something they would do if these companies had to. you know shut off service for anybody cues that of breaking the law they would be out of business and weak and if they had to shut off subscriptions or newspapers that published classified information every

newspaper major newspaper in the country would suffer from that too so it's just a very hypocritical stance even though they can technically get away with it under the first amendment because private companies are allowed to do business with whoever they want but it's just disingenuous that recently yeah there's always that double standard of course when it comes to when leaks are allowed especially excuse me when that white house officials they're leaking them you know by choice or whether it's wiki leaks and somebody actually gave them that info and i know that you follow everything that's going on about weekly it's all the time you have any updates in terms of julian assange has appeal or anything on the grand jury here in virginia. well i think the appeal was supposed to be decided at least a month ago and i guess everybody is just kind of waiting to see what happens with that the grand jury to kind of solve right now their loss on their their we prosecutors left the justice department so we're kind of in the dark right now because you know grand juries are after our secret and. we don't really know if the

government is. so pursuing it we assume they are because we're perfect stops but. no information as to whether assad will be charged with espionage and us what we can say is that if he is it would affect. every. country especially criminal i was national security journalist. got it because you talked about time so they don't come out of the new york times this time and they say trust us we're going to wiki leaks it's the next time that everybody's worried about when there's president saying well you post classified information so now you can jail. i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and of course i guess we have to wait and see they say they're halting all publishing until the end of november and that maybe there will not even be any wiki leaks throughout two thousand and twelve they can't get any more cash so off to follow the story thanks so much. thank you. now coming up after the break how to respond to you the viewer

you said it i read it and the obama administration reportedly debated launching a cyber offensive as libya so we're going to take a look at what held them back. again this is a quick check of the headlines. dissenter with the european union and creative but british m.p.'s have rejected almost five to one emotional calling for

a return to the u.k. membership meanwhile you need is that to take the final decision on this tromping greek economy as a car summit on wednesday with the president of the european council hundred one could close a possible corporation with the same. base new rudy's move to dump his ability to a secret location for burial while promising to introduce the shari'a islamic noise . the bases of the country's legal system but at the last executions of gadhafi supporters suggest the provisional government is not in control of rebel gunmen on the ground. no being all the whistleblowing we can meet despite its publication would be open eyes they should make plans to to lack of funds on to american based financial institutions refused to process donations by credit cards or other payment systems president other found injured in asuncion of dollars to apply to hold. as the headlines now let's go back to the.