oh i'm john berman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture it was a weekend of victories for the occupy wall street movement both big and small but the greatest victory the ninety nine percent may be the impact it's having on tomorrow's patriots another week another vote on capitol hill another republican hostage crisis but this round of deja vu is going to cost your family fifteen hundred bucks in the new year and while all of america is going nuts over two dollar waffle irons and holiday deals that are in most cases actually too good to

be true lawmakers in the u.k. are preparing for the end of the world at least in economic terms so what are we missing here. you need to know this when you speak truth to power power backs down over the weekend two major occupy wall street movements were threatened with eviction and neither back down in los angeles mayor antonio bill or hillary goes so that gave occupy l.a. patriots until twelve zero one am this morning to vacate the park across from city hall but they've been camped out in since october first but that deadline came and went with no crackdown why because as a midnight deadline approached thousands of supporters rallied to the occupy l.a. and in solidarity to make it impossible for police to move in face to face with

thousands of peaceful patriots the riot clad police backed off and this patriots then the patriots inside the camp began chanting we won we won so for now occupy l.a. lives on same thing happened in philadelphia where several. patriots remain camped out in dilworth plaza after mary michael nutter his forty eight hour deadline to leave came and went and asked this morning why police have yet to move in on the camp the philadelphia deputy police chief said they were giving people an opportunity to leave on their own or as one patron with occupy philly told reporters i don't think the city wants to do anything to forcibly evict us they don't want to start any trouble with the rest of the city so they won't do that so it appears that strength in numbers and nonviolence is keeping the police crackdowns of bay at least in l.a. and philadelphia maybe after two months of police brutality and suppression of first amendment rights police are finally catching on to the fact that they can't evict an idea and not just police but the mayor's as well which means we may have reached a new phase in the occupy wall street movement they're no longer being ignored and

no longer being ridiculed at least outside the g.o.p. t.v. and with police in both l.a. and philly backing down today they're no longer being fought they're just winning that includes both big victories as we saw in l.a. and philly and small victories as we saw today in the case of eighteen year old emma solomon in kansas sullivan father self in hot water last week after she attended a speech by kansas republican governor sam brownback. a majority of the things that he's trying to pass are like muddying the social seedier tweeted her feelings about the experience and what she wished she could have done it just made me comments to have brownback and tell me south in person hash tag keep blows a lot she said for some reason the governor's office thought it was necessary to use taxpayer dollars to monitor the twitter accounts of teenage girls and after

reading sullivan's tweet someone in brown bags office tattled on her tour principal sullivan was called into the principal's office and in frank violation of her first amendment rights was told she had to write an apology letter to the governor. but sullivan refused she tweeted i've decided not to write the letter but i hope this opens the door for average citizens to voice their opinion and to be heard emma received tremendous support all across the internet for standing by what she said and i believe we can thank occupy wall street for that young people across america are becoming more politically conscience conscious which means whether that means camping out near city hall or just feeling the power to tweet that your governor blows and these people feel many for the first time but there are support networks which give them the power to say no to stand up for what they believe no matter how powerful those who believe the opposite are in the end eighteen year old high school student emma sullivan stared down governor sam brownback and it was governor

brownback who flinched today the governor released a statement saying maher's stuff overreacted to those tweet and for that our apologize freedom of speech is among all our most treasured freedoms for the first time in a really really long time i think the future of america is really looking up now that sounds like you know a bit of a hyperbolic statement but let me lay it out economic crises cause nations typically to flip hard to the left or to the right for example after the the economic crisis of one nine hundred twenty nine germany and italy flipped to the right and spain as well in the us we flip to the left that was franklin roosevelt scandinavia for the left this is the result of the great depression so you can see these economic crises produce

a political change. now we're in the midst of another economic crisis right now and i've been watching this thing since for president obama was elected and it seemed repeatedly with the tea party can rise in up in the koch brothers all these front groups getting all the press and you know there was constantly in the media somebody from one of koch funded heritage foundation of the koch funded cato institute of the koch funded you know this that or the other thing freedom works and dick armey and all that it looked to me like this nation was going to flip hard right in fact as the result of this economic crisis he had the paul ryan budget for example shredding the social safety nets you have the republicans fighting financial regulation all of this stuff looked to me like a right wing populist but a right wing populist. which is what germany and spain italy saw after the great depression of the one nine hundred thirty s. and one thousand twenty's and thirty's and then along came occupy wall street and

with occupy wall street it's another populists revolt as it were but this time it's not hard right i'd say it's middle left and occupy wall street is people reaching out saying you know we're not going to bail out the banks and we're not going to have any you know basically anybody running our lives anymore and an eighteen year old student can now back down the republican governor of kansas who used to be a very powerful senator frankly i think we might be spared that right wing takeover and we could see so some really good times coming to this country as a consequence of the horrors of this great depression or in right now. and.

time for our daily poll your chance to tell us what you think in los angeles the occupy wall street eviction is on hold after two months of police brutality so here's today's question are police officers finally understanding that they cannot evict an idea your choices are yes thousands of supporters of rallied to and in support and the police officials are listening or no the police and city officials are just waiting until no one is looking and then they'll move it or going to target dot com let us know what you think will be open until tomorrow morning. now to capitol hill where another battle over taxes is looming at the end of december the payroll tax cut passed by congress will expire next month causing taxes to go up on all working americans everybody making up to one hundred eighty thousand dollars a year hitting the middle class the hardest to prevent that from happening democrats will force a vote this week on legislation to extend and expand the payroll tax cut which

could save the average family fifteen hundred dollars a year by reducing their social security tax from six point two to three point one percent and democrats are proposing to pay for this middle class tax cut with a surtax on people who make more than a million dollars a year under the plan millionaires will have to pay an extra three point two percent of any income they earn after their first million dollars a year senate majority leader harry reid sold his plan today on the floor of the. problem saying we can't afford to raise these taxes if they choose to oppose this payroll tax cut you know what they meant to say was we can't afford to raise taxes on rich. and there aren't more currently we cannot afford to raise taxes on rich and we're happy to raise taxes on middle class so the republicans willing to let taxes go up on the middle class just to protect tax cuts for their buddies the millionaires and billionaires if so they may want to consider this little factoid

brought to us by the national priorities project the average bush tax cut in two thousand and eleven for the taxpayers in the richest one percent is greater than the average income of the people in the other ninety nine percent thanks to bush one percenters on average receive sixty six thousand three hundred eighty four bucks each in tax cuts last year the average household income of the ninety nine percent is just fifty eight thousand five hundred dollars and the average individual income is about half that on top of that n.p.r. pointed out that the bush tax cuts cost far more in federal debt than in economic stimulation so how will this latest fight on capitol hill play out and what the democrats need to do to win richard esko drew joins me now he is a progressive strategist and scholar of the campaign for america's future richard welcome. thanks tom good to be here thanks for joining us how do you see this thing playing out you know why if even in

a larger context of fact i think you asked this question in your on your blog or opposed why negotiate with terrorists. well of course i mean at the end of the day if we should be learning by now that if people constantly threaten to blow the place up in order to get what they want it's never going to end it's constant escalation it's constant threat we've had these crises how many times in the past year three or four of these seem to be picking up speed so there are a couple principles here and certainly at least one of them is let's stop the charade of pretending either that we're negotiating not negotiating with terrorists or that this isn't an outcome that somehow both party wants you know this is all very three dimensional but at the end of the day and we've just got to stop this posing and gamesmanship and we're democrats really have to if they want to speak for the majority have to start describing it for what it is which is constant threats constant hostage taking well let's let's run through some of the scenarios

that are involved here the democrats want to extend the payroll tax cut by taxing millionaires and billionaires but if the republicans are ok with extending it as long as it's paid for by and the republicans or are at least implying that they're ok with extending as long as it's paid for by cutting social safety net programs like food stamps either way in those two situations the social security trust fund is not compromised but what do you think richard of the possibilities that the republicans will push for and the democrats may cave in and accept a cut in the payroll tax without it being funded in any way which would then actually take a whack out of the social security trust fund. well you know you're exactly right to ask the questions about what happens two or three steps down number one it's the wrong place to pick a fight on the social security payroll tax first of all describing it as a tax and describing this as a tax holiday reinforces the idea that people aren't paying what is really

a premium for benefits they should receive at some other point in life so it's the wrong place to pick a fight this is making as. in fact it's a social insurance policy there are more progressive from a tax point of view ways of stimulating the economy like the way making work pay program so well a couple steps down the road a couple things could happen one is that the republicans might say for example we'll give you two points instead of three and a half or three point two percent which is what the democrats want but in return we want people to be able to invest those points into a private retirement program now that would be the foot in the door for privatizing social security which they've wanted to do all along or as you said they may say well we're not going to fully re stock the social security trust fund which means that for the first time in history that wall between people's savings for social

security and the general federal budget has been breached and the federal government is not going to pay what it owes the trust fund so they're at the anyway it plays out by bringing social security payments into this the democrats have put themselves on very very shaky ground and there are a lot of ways this could play out that don't look good why don't they one of the democrats simply go back to president obama's campaign promise and at that time it was two hundred thousand dollars and a raise of two hundred fifty thousand dollars and now he's talking about a half million or something like that but basically say anybody who is making over a certain amount is going to have to start paying paying for you know the payroll taxes paid so security taxes i frankly i don't think most americans realize that if you make over one hundred six thousand dollars a year you stop paying that tax on all the rest of your income so these guys are making a billion dollars a year are only paying that tax in the first hundred eighty thousand if they paid the tax on the rest of it then you could fund the reduction in the tax rate for

everybody else. well absolutely and you know a bernie sanders among others has proposed this is you pointed out candidate obama proposed it to i guess that answer of your question about democrats is probably one candidate obama support what president obama supports the position of candidate obama then maybe the other democrats will fall in line but he's not doing that right now and that's the thing about this payroll tax too to remember it's because somebody who makes a billion dollars only pays that tax on the first one hundred seven thousand they're getting the maximum benefit of this caught whereas somebody who makes thirty thousand dollars only gets a few hundred dollars so this is not the best way to stimulate the economy and as i said wrong place to pick a fight but but even even at that and i agree i mean there's a lot of much better ways to stimulate the economy but in the last minute here if this tax cut expires and you've got the average family in america you know having

to pay a thousand dollars more in taxes every year and one hundred million families so that much money sucked out of the economy isn't bad going to make the economy that much worse over the next twelve months that the republicans that can then blame on obama oh absolutely it would be a big mistake to let this cut expire altogether so i guess once again we're in the position of hoping the democrats succeed despite themselves and despite our frustrations and i think that's where we are on this one and just very quickly any final thoughts on bernie barney frank's departure well we'll miss him in terms of personality i mean is that if fun guy interesting guy not always right and i can just imagine now that in boardrooms and conference rooms everywhere they're planning their plan of attack on maxine waters who's likely to succeed oh yeah no doubt about it in the banks there are probably a whole high five each other right now richard thank you so much for being with us . you about a pleasure you're ready for another republican hostage scenario to begin this week

in congress. coming up black friday provided a much needed boost to the american economy but the celebration may be short lived especially if you're paying attention to what is unfolding across the palm. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through that sort of being made who can you trust no one who is in view with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more.

fueled by black friday total spending over the four day thanksgiving weekend hit a record fifty two point four billion dollars here in the united states but let's not rejoice quite yet or assume that our economy is fixed in fact were screwed while hordes of americans were beating the heck out of each other for two dollar waffle makers and wal-mart the u.k. quietly announced that it is prey preparing for an all out collapse of the global banking system a senior minister within the the u.k. government admitted to the telegraph over the weekend that planning is already under way to deal with the aftermath of

a euro zone collapse and possible subsequent civil unrest created the article u.k. government officials now believe a collapse of the euro is just a matter of time there were and consulates around europe are being prepped to deal with the rioting in other nations and how to help british citizens abroad who may soon be unable to access bank accounts or withdraw cash on top of that news in a new report the organization for economic cooperation and development the o.e.c.d. drastically cut its expectations for economic growth in europe and the united states over the next year according the o.e.c.d. cd europe is stuck in a mild recession and the united states will soon follow so just how bad can it get and what can be done to mitigate the damage when the most brilliant economists in the field that is dr steve keen associate professor of economics and finance at the university of western sydney and the author of debunking economics his blog which

is a must read is that debt deflation dot com professor keane welcome to the program. thank you so i'm going to be here so glad to have you with us in your cambridge speech you talked about the importance of creating a working macro economic model you know larger economic model that would predict a great depression so we could both understand the last one and predict future ones do you think you have such a model or there is such a model and are are we in a depression right now. so no growth from the us that was definitely in a depression if you look at low unemployment in america you know the year three measure comes in the bit i've been non-consent the use six measure comes in it's seventeen percent and that he got you six measures more comparable what happened back in the great depression and you three measure which is being cooked inside many wise so with seventeen percent of the falls out of a job you're talking one in six americans that's a depression in anybody's language consistently on the cause of the depression is de leverage and that's when people who live excessive level of private did get

built up through a speculative bubble people in unwind it positions either by deliberately reducing demand by going bankrupt of course and that causes a china reaction of aggregate demand being lower than aggregate supply that's what really causes a depression and that's happening quite dramatically now in america your daily bridging fos than any time since the great depression so that's a to do in a depression level event in terms of whether they've got a model that actually generates it back in not in ninety five i published my first piper on the for mafia actually thesis which is called finance and economics brought down and that built a model which could give you under some circumstances economy that type of job in the last level equilibrium the economist love to obsess about but another situation excessive level of deficit with could lead to a great depression and all since extended that model now that the sides will have a strictly monetary model of the economy and that model does generate as one of its potential outcomes a great depression with very similar characteristics what we're going through now falling inflation rising unemployment and astronomical debt levels that the real

cause of the whole thing so yeah i've got a model and a long way to go in terms of making it a ciscos of lockett's of a but it certainly captures what's happening right now without a qualified if you talk about the leveraging and you talk he said that the leveraging right now is happening more rapidly than than any time since the one nine hundred thirty s. is the great deal leveraging in the process of slowing down right now or speeding up in other words as i have we seen the worst or is it about to get worse. well it will fluctuate a little downfall on the if you type look at the very the level of private the g.d.p. and that to me is by far the most important because of what's going on but it began back in not in forty five in america about forty five percent of g.d.p. it picked out of three hundred one percent in early two thousand and nine it is now down to about two hundred fifty five percent so you fall in about fifty percent of g.d.p. in terms of debt levels over about a two year period and of course that means money which would otherwise have been

used for investing will stay colliding which unfortunately the major activity in american capitalism is gambling rather than actually investing that that would have that spending has been taken out of the economy and that's why you have this huge slump and turn around. the scale of the government see melissa came in and say thousand and nine really was directed at trying to get americans back to borrowing money again which is great because that's what caused the problem in the first place but that stimulus package plus the fact of the government tenure why did the degree of the downturn by and spending slowdown the right data leverage ring but it still says it is still proceeding and as it fluctuates those fluctuations a lot of causing the apparent and then apparent collapse in the stock market is very sons' and the fact that unemployment is stuck at the high levels it's now and again starting to train back up the double dipping allowed sort of jazz is really just reflecting fluctuations and how fast americans are reducing the debt levels so

this is the reason why the depression of the one nine hundred thirty s. was so rapid and deep in this one seems to be more shallow but long is because of because of the because of the stimulus package and and because of a different economic response to it by the fed and by the federal government. yeah because the nature of get back in the audience that is if you take a look at the. back and not in thirty's about the jet that was one hundred seventy five percent of g.d.p. when the great depression began it blew out to two hundred thirty thought the same but that was entirely because of deflation and folding output from not in thirty on the aggregate level of debt in america was holding in from a peak of one hundred sixty billion dollars small in numbers that then down to about one hundred twenty one hundred ten by the middle of the not in thirty's that daily verging process was driven mainly by the known financial bank a business sector has been on financial businesses in the shops the manufacturers and so on had a debt to g.d.p. ratio of one hundred twenty five percent so when the crosses hit when the boom came

to an end of the data into the nine hundred twenty s. they were the ones that had the massive they had to service the debt and their response was to cut their process and try to drag customers in through their duels rather than through the neighboring business over the course they hold it so process felt that a dramatic dramatic right and they had. to me had this time around when you look at the proportion of it now you've got a high level of aggregate debt and you had back then are private sector three hundred percent but it's one hundred seventy five that date the business proportion that was only about seventy five percent so that little luxury hafiz did pay less than they had back of the start of the great depression that's why you haven't seen a massive they can be sold back then so that's one factor that another major important factor is we have deposit insurance they respect in the thirty one banks all the deposit has lost their money as well i might add that some of these insane neo classical economists who we still call this think so ridiculously tama saddam's

thomas actually blamed this process on the existence of deposit insurance but reality and reality we could cause the positives haven't lost their money we haven't seen the money supply collapse as much as it did back in the not in thirty's they flush it hasn't been easy. stream then the government stimulus has been joined again and again very very rapid compared to the very slow response during the thirty's stuff rolled out of raisins he says shallow up longer depression because since you're starting from the level of debt the daily regime will take long before i expect you to be facing a situation like that and spouted since so often since not in nadi so now sir we just have a minute or so left here but very quickly i'm a number of conservative pundits have come on the show promoting the idea that what we're seeing now and what we saw in the thirty's were simply normal variations in a normally cyclical business cycle made worse by government interference or regulations or whatever they're talking point of the day was given that here in the us we've seen major economic crashes about every eighty years some say leading to

the american revolution then a years later the civil war than eighty years later war two and then eighty years later today is there a normal business cycle like graham propose for example that includes a depression every eighty years or so there is there is a normal business cycle if you fluctuations are going on to thirteen years that's part of the natural cycle of capitalism this is not that this is a minsky peak because what we what we have been those foxholes is that fluctuating sometimes rausing a bit but fluctuating not not going down and then continuing to go down you have a depression when you get an excessively close by ponzi financed speculation and then deal a bridging off of that which means you just have a continuous process of being reduced that's only happened in depressions the last one being the not in thirty's one look at the debt to g.d.p. ratio in america going back to nine hundred twenty looking at it now this is not a normal cycle this isn't a minsky depression so this is the full blow out so thank you so much for being with us tonight. thank you for the discussion steve kane while raising all debt

seems drastic there may be no other option in times of crisis as we are and now drastic measures need to be taken it's time to steer is seriously start considering a job jubilee or other alternatives here in america and around the world as steve king a suggested time to start over. when we come back democrats in wisconsin are halfway to the finish line and those who are in this one race but governor walker and the state's republicans wish i'd never start. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it through to be made who can you trust no one who is you know in view with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called fascism when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

for. the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour scott walker may want to get the movers of the state capitol on speed dial wisconsin democrats are more than halfway through the recall campaign was the latest from the ground in this week's edition of everything you know is wrong you may be underestimating your true .