national out then what if campaign donations were completely secret as in the candidates couldn't even know who was giving the money but make it impossible for them to then serve big money donors and special interests might seem like a long shot but some say it's a concept that we should start trying out at the local level and the opposition against sopa and protect ip continues to mount tonight we're going to show you two new music videos targeting this legislation i will speak to a singer and songwriter about how this would affect us on a more personal internet user level we're going to have all that and more fit and i couldn't get us of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. well the nonstop campaigning continues here in the u.s. and the mainstream media continues to act like nothing else at all is happening except of course the other tit for tat game being played out in congress over the payroll tax extension but at least the payroll tax affects the rest of the country would affect all of our paychecks if it's not extend it some of the campaigning

stuff. so sure take for example the new he said she said high school style war of words that's unfolding between newt gingrich and mitt romney. newt gingrich hitting back your chief rival mitt romney over some new ads on the air in iowa accusing romney and his supporters of running a quote smear campaign after all these negative attacks newt gingrich is still hanging in there within the margin of error mitt romney good almost ten points behind newt gingrich newt gingrich keeps asking mitt romney to stop the negative attacks but mitt romney will not tell the super pacs to stop outside independent group campaign or ripping up gingrich criticism all of the negative attacks all the trouble that he's had in this campaign and the former speaker said he's not backing down. you guys are you know this stuff drives me absolutely crazy and most of the time it's the obsessive election coverage that talks about campaign strategy chuck todd style but while he specifically has

a knack for random historical facts they don't really bear any significance in today's political environment this badmouthing thing is something that they love all the way around and it's not even the candidates calling each other out on their flip flops or their policies or the actions of the past it's mostly just mitt romney and newt gingrich going back and forth talking about who's being mean or who i highly doubt the any of that is going to affect how voters feel about either candidate therefore it will really affect the outcome of the primaries or the general election therefore it's all a bunch of empty shallow talk that doesn't matter and i know these guys have twenty four hours to fill but can't you find anything else out there i have some ideas the u.s. economy is still in dire straits every day as i usually point out we get a new statistic about the number of unemployed americans of homeless americans of homeless children just last week we found out that one in two americans in fact are considered poor or low income and that's where america's headache and yet the mainstream media still chooses to obsess over trash talking going on between you

and mitt because the mainstream media loves living in the tiny little bubble of being completely isolated for real world problems and if they do that on a domestic level when it comes to the. global economy well that's where it just gets really pathetic currently the eurozone is still hanging on a strict sovereign debt crisis is nowhere near being solved by moves by european leaders to try and read a go she treaties or by the e.c.b. to pump more money into the system and the entire world is watching because guess what what happens in europe affects us all and i don't mean to be a fearmonger here i'm not going to do it i'm just going to take a look at what christine lagarde director of the i.m.f. have been has been going around saying recently last week she said that we are one step away from a second great depression this week she said the world economy is at a very dangerous juncture and the european debt crisis posed a risk for all economies of the world and guess what that includes ours but only in our country to the politicians and the media completely ignore all these cautionary calls the warning signs the dire scenarios and i really don't think that it's

because they don't believe them maybe it's because they just don't get it right they live in this bubble the only opens up every now and again when a protest is going on in the distant country and they can cheer that democracy is going to be on its way to dictator will be brought down because that's a simple equation for them that a guy gone democracy in now of course we all know that that's not the way that it turns out just like what's going on in egypt right now but it comes of finance you want to get that far you will get a bleep when the rest of the world has its eyes on europe and the warnings of a second great depression are in the midst the mainstream media talks about high school gossip between mitt romney and newt gingrich so america you can thank them later if something doesn't go wrong and everybody is completely shocked and unprepared because our mainstream media machine decided to miss.

all right so let's continue on with what's happening in europe right now the european central bank has just rolled out a massive new attempt to keep credit flowing to the economy while european while europe continues to struggle through a sovereign debt crisis and the e.c.b. . awarded four hundred eighty nine billion euros or six hundred forty five billion dollars and three year loans to euro area banks the most ever in a single operation with a total of five hundred and twenty three banks borrowing once again we have to return to the major question will pumping more money into the system really solve what's at heart of the sovereign debt crisis then the federal reserve in the meantime has rolled out proposed new rules to restrain risk taking by the largest banks here in the u.s. with new capital and liquidity requirements idea is to make sure the banks can weather another financial crisis so let's break down some of these actions discuss this with me is lauren lyster host of the capital account on r.t. and from our studio in new york simone foxman reporter for the business insider ladies i want to thank you both for joining me tonight and so mona i'm going to start with you and i want to start with europe this four hundred sixty five four

hundred ninety billion euros excuse me that's been rolled out that was a lot more than people were expecting to happen but do you think it's enough do you think it's a good move. well the problem is that people had silly expectations i think that this might provide a backdoor bailout to the end of the eurozone debt crisis and that was analysts journalists so the most part thought that was false from the from the get go however it is a lot of money this is definitely going to halt the progression the escalation of the crisis because banks have liquidity they can lend money they can buy sovereign bonds but is at the end no absolutely not or one of things that they're really hoping for here lauren is that this is going to make people feel like you know if things have relaxed a little bit a little bit we have more money on our hands now we can invest in in italian and spanish bonds but do you think of actually going to happen well the question you have to ask is it doesn't even matter if it does every day we hear another one of

these efforts and another one of these solutions to address the sovereign debt crisis and each of them are piecemeal alone at the end of the day you either monetize all of the debt or you let things go back to bankrupt you let the chips fall where they lay and none of these solutions are that all of that is just they're just one more thing to kick the can down the road to bail out banks to shore up banks which are insolvent many would argue so you know no i don't see any of these as kind of solutions and i don't really think it matters if you loan a broke bank money to give to a broke country in order to stem the sovereign debt crisis also in your mind is there a specific solution that you would push forward no i wouldn't i would say the fact that we don't know what the solution is the fact that we don't know how to deal with this says something stop trying i want to know why politicians can't take their hands off of the wheel of the car and stop trying to drive it stop trying to steer and you know i propose this to an economist who i thought for sure was going to say you're out of your mind and he said you know what that's a good question why don't they stop trying because that actually has some there are

some fruits to show for that in belgium for example where they haven't had a government and they've done a little better than everybody else but it's you know stop trying stop trying to always address every single thing all right so simone what do you say do you think the politicians should just take their hands off the wheel stop trying to give a get out. i think that was a really good policy maybe a year ago year and a half ago you could have let greece default you could have let a credit event happen it could have happened it is a disorderly fashion the problem is they've already stepped into many times at this point if you're going to step in if you're going to start bailing out sovereign countries then you're going to have to keep doing it or investors are going to lose their faith in the political leadership which they're rapidly doing but losing faith in a sovereign is is different than losing faith in a bank if you lose faith in a bank you know the bank collapses people take haircuts they take losses. perhaps

there's some worse consequences but losing faith in a sovereign is something else it's a political catastrophe it's a variety of different consequences that you don't you can't expect and you can't prepare for and that's really the problem so if they need to do something i think the e.c.b. needs to step in and say either we're not going to let. rise past a certain point this is the price investors or the price countries pay to finance their debt or or you need something else you need euro bonds perhaps really they can't let the crisis just kind of collapse at this point because that would send the entire globe into a very very disorderly recession so that that really i don't think is on the table anymore but if we are we were talking about what christine legarde right director the i.m.f. is going around telling everybody right now that we're one step away from a second great depression is that we're at

a huge economic juncture that is going to affect the rest of the world essentially so it seems like she kind of believes about going to happen well maybe she does there might be good reason to but the reality is we don't know where exactly this is headed in the reason that we don't is because you have central banks you have governments that are papering over everything so you can't tell the reality. this situation yes it's definitely going to be dire yes many people think it's going to be but you also have to ask why is christine legarde going around saying these statements at the same time when the i.m.f. is trying to raise money to bail out europe for its own funds you know we saw it come ashore with one hundred fifty million euro is supposed to be two hundred million euro the u.k. is out cash strapped italy is in so you always have to wonder exactly what politicians are getting out when they say statements like this of course it would be dire but i think that the reality is we don't know the reality of the situation because you have zombie banks that have been propped up you have a central banks that have been so involved so how do you know the reality of the situation so that case let's switch over from the european central bank to the

federal reserve and right now they're rolling out these new rules they want to increase capital liquidity for our banks because they say that you need to be ready in case another financial crisis hits but do we even know what would really be necessary for them to be prepared once again no we don't i mean in my view and in the people that i've spoken to i mean it's counter-intuitive but i was interviewing economist steve king yesterday and he was telling me that when he modeled and banks putting in place the basel three capital requirements he actually saw that speeding up a financial crisis which is obviously counterintuitive that you have banks that are moving towards doing the right thing and that that would actually increase the chances of a financial crisis but he was saying that's what you get after decades of you know banking that has gone awry and that hasn't been under the constraints that it maybe should have been aren't so what do you say about these new rules that the federal reserve is rolling out a lot of people actually say that it's not even that new this is what happened with dodd frank this is what's supposed to go into effect and they still are really giving enough detail. well the reality is these rules are actually pretty

reasonable and that's why you saw the financials rallying yesterday after they were announced. there are the same rules that pretty much every global bank is going to have to follow at this point it's not betting against the banks and a lot of this in a in about europe to this is confidence investors see confidence when banks maintain a high capital requirement particularly when you're potentially heading into another recession so i actually think these rules are really positive they weren't some drag conan in form of imposing too much regulation on the banks i actually think this was a good step forward and it's at least something to bring confidence back into the financial sector at a time when when that's still weak and honestly u.s. banks fundamentals are pretty pretty solid right now so you know you see levered every day that think it's so contrary that u.s. banks are basically insolvent and you can't reach too much into the markets because

ok maybe you had stocks rallying yesterday but on monday you had been actual stocks tanking and the reasons everybody would give him was because it came out that the fed was on board with basil three requirements which is something that the big banks of course have been lobbying again so i think a you cannot read too much into what happens with stocks up and down and b. i think you have to ask why do financial stocks plummet when people worry that there's going to be more capital requirements there's a reason for that and if banks are so highly leveraged that they can't handle to have their capital requirements raised because asset prices will go down because they have to sell assets that just shows how fragile the u.s. banking system is and that it's not in great shape lastly we'll see where we have we have ok go ahead go ahead because we got to wrap up in a minute. so the fact is u.s. banks are not highly leveraged right now european banks are are do leveraging they were highly leveraged but u.s. banks are actually in a really solid financial footing so i think of american watches all as an actual fighting when you have a seven hundred trillion dollars derivatives market that nobody knows the reality of i don't know how you can say that's

a sound banking system well i'm happy we have to we have to wrap it up unfortunate but in terms of you know the derivatives market we talk about all these rules and banks want to call them draconian and yet at the same time we rarely ever see them implemented for example dodd frank next to this could be two years since it was passed and yet once again they've decided to just push this regulation that would regulate derivatives down the line and force you out of time so we don't have to talk about but i want to thank you both for joining us tonight. are just ahead of the show to bring you the latest from bradley manning's article thirty two hearing it for me i will ask is it a good idea to keep campaign contributions secret at the break we'll speak with tom hartman host of the big picture about why a no transparency approach likely that they fall. into that only military mechanisms do not work 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 silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm trying hard welcomes a big picture. of

the capitol i'm lauren lyster. you're still believe the roughing it. but what a protester nobody seems to know. but never a pepper sprayed the face but more of the argument that they're being overly dramatic. well tonight we'll continue our coverage of bradley manning's article thirty two pretrial hearing it was the last day of testimony before closing arguments will

begin and despite the fact the prosecution called twenty witnesses to testify over the course of five days the defense presented their case today utilizing only two witnesses and they rested their case after thirty five minutes forget the government blocked the majority of witnesses the defense wanted to take part but their first witnesses they did get to call sergeant daniel padgett was manning superior while stationed in baghdad and he joined the chorus and going into detail about manning's erratic behavior recalled an incident where manning was tardy and was so upset about being confronted about it that he actually flipped the table setting its contents like contents like laptops and radios falling to the ground explained the army private outburst made him feel uncomfortable the sentiment echoed in testimony yesterday from generally a showman or she described being punched in the face during a separate incident with the defend it as you pointed out before show me detailed several instances where she felt unsure about manning's mental stability and said her calls for him to seek medical help were never answered by superiors the other

defense witness captain barclay he didn't offer up any new information but reaffirm the fact that members of the intelligence unit listen to music when they were reiterating the there was a very loose atmosphere there now we've also discovered that adrian lamo the hacker who shared his chat logs about manning's alleged links to wiki leaks actually became a paid informant after he alerted authorities about what he had learnt will also help to melt the government's case against manning and testify that manning was responsible for leaking the now famous collateral murder video now throughout the five days the prosecution called several computer forensic experts to detail the five hundred thousand reports found on a data card the belong to the army private they also presented an accompanying text explaining that those reports are from significant activities relating to the us wars in iraq and afghanistan between two thousand and four and two thousand and nine so what has become clear here is of the government has built a very strong case well managed. offense seems to be falling apart not only was manning's attorney david combs denied the ability to call forty eight witnesses to

testify but their three prong strategy also seems to have his snag as we told you yesterday lawyers had hoped to focus on manning's mental instability the lack of security in his intelligence office and the actual damage or lack thereof to national security from the leaked diplomatic cables effort appears the defense has now ultimately chosen to focus on iraq behavior and the lax security over topics of the government is deemed classified and of the utmost importance so tomorrow the pretrial hearing will reconvene to allow for closing arguments at expected it's expected lieutenant colonel paul monza will decide by january sixteenth if manning will be court marshaled meanwhile david house supporter of manning and founder of the bradley manning support network has been a boston court after he sued the government for holding his laptop for seven weeks all while they searched through files and copied information off of his computer and distributed it to other agencies of the federal government is now asking the judge dismissed the lawsuit surprise surprise back in maryland we should also mention the songes lawyer jennifer robinson was also present at today's proceedings

and she was very outspoken about the secretive nature of manning's article thirty two hearing she explained to the guardian newspaper that the restrictions on reporting were greater there than of guantanamo bay inmate on the sherry but despite the restrictions we will continue to follow this case as closely as possible and bring you all the latest from fort meade. well these days so much of the anger towards our politicians are political system overall stems from the feeling that we the people no longer really have a say a special interest big money donations to political campaigns or who make or serve and are beholden to and as part of the reason they can question the approval as an all time low it's one of the reasons why people around the country have been protesting and supporting the occupy movement but what if we changed the system to make campaign contributions completely secret now one hand we lose the transparency that is allowed for the public to see plain and clear who the big banks for example are getting behind which unfortunately is candidates from both parties but even if

politicians themselves didn't know who were donating and donors that wouldn't be allowed to tell them then maybe they could pick and choose who to favor right or wrong or discusses me as thom hartmann host of the big picture with tom hartman thanks so much for joining us tonight great to be here i think this is kind of an interesting idea and some people out there have been speaking about it writing about it i guess do you compare it to perhaps the way that we vote privately in a booth and then you could donate completely privately yeah well that's that's actually a very good analogy but there's there's this kind of arc of evolution you know it used to be that we voted in public i lived in vermont in new hampshire for years and we had town meetings i mean they still do where everybody stands up and says hey i vote for those who i vote for that it's all right out there in the open today even and the problem back back in the late nineteenth century when they started going toward. secret the secret ballot was that people would buy off people's votes and you can't do that

a little town of ramallah is only for the people because everybody knows everybody and hey you know how you get that you car but you can do that like in new york city and you know where people don't know each other so that's what led to the secret ballot secret donations would kind of do the same thing you know it's like the the the candidate wouldn't know where the money was coming from here's the upside this is the absolute can't. wouldn't know where the money was coming from so they would know to whom they were holding and somebody told them they wouldn't know whether it was true or not and if you had a back door the money could be given back in fact refunded then somebody could put money in and take money out of the candidate still wouldn't so maybe it's not that bad of an idea right when people say it are also if this were to work perfectly this system as they envision it there would be incentives for the politicians also not you know if somebody decided to whisper in your ear and say guess what you have a big present coming tomorrow there would be incentives for the politicians actually brought them out in the minute because that they get a cash reward but i'm just wondering if in today's society any cash reward can ever

be big enough compared to the amount of money that people and corporations and banks want to dump into campaigns possibly i mean you know the solution that's been offered for that is let's have a system that breaks it up in other words have a have an intermediary where they're going to privatized that make it a bank or whether you're going to make it the fed or some agency and all the donations go into that same million dollars here three hundred thousand dollars there it gets chopped down to ten thousand dollars pieces that you know so it's impossible to figure it out sort which font you know like the banks the mortgages you know have no idea where it all came from you know that's a that's a possibility the downside problem the suggestion is that which also has its own upside is that if politicians can know where the money is coming from then the people giving the money are going to say why am i giving money and suddenly there will be more money and suddenly the politicians or i think don't grow every what we hear these days from acquires a rating of take the money out of politics right and so maybe we wouldn't need to have billion dollar presidential campaigns absolutely and that would be

a positive thing except that we don't have another mechanism for that in the u.k. for example it's illegal to run commercial ads on television or radio you can't run a broadcast ad for a politician period so there's other ways that politicians get their message out that are institutionalized and we would have to do that in fact i would suggest that we have to do that legislatively at the same time and that would be you know one way to move forward how do you see. you know super pacs and the citizens united decision really playing into this idea here because yes you can have shady donors that are disclosed but at the end of the day they can easily tell the politician who it came from right they just don't have to sell it publicly it's one of two problems one this is a problem that the group the supreme court created to the whole doctrine of corporate personhood this was invented by the supreme court no no congress has ever voted on it no president has ever proposed it in fact they've been decrying it literally since jefferson and you know we need to deal with that at the level of amending the constitution or something but the well i think that's the largest this

year or the other issue is what do you do with the fact that so many politicians know right now. if they can just be in office for a couple of years and get to know all the other politicians that when they leave whether they win or lose but when they leave they've got a job and k.-street for three hundred thousand dollars a year for five hundred thousand of their congressmen a million dollars a year if their senator starting out they can make big bucks that's you know for a lot of these people it's if you can solve the problem of come campaign finance and the whole corruption of the political process that gets them into office now we've got to deal with the corruption of getting them out of office is a whole other and of course the other involving our i guess this is part of the problem too that you know when i was reading about this idea it sounded very nice but it sounded very utopian and i guess maybe i'm just a doubter these days but i just feel like our system is so fundamentally corrupt that no matter what you know donors politicians everyone is going to find a way around it there's always some kind of a loophole and so while it sounds nice the secretive donations system i just don't

know if it would function and let's talk about the value of transparency as well right i mean i think that in the last year or i guess in the last six months especially since occupy wall street has been around we have seen people or three months spent three months we really have seen an awakening and you know people are realizing because the information is out there for them to find about how great the system. and so do we want to say goodbye to something like that yeah i think i frankly and i think americans really like transparency there's something fundamentally american about transparency and there's not something fundamentally american about secrecy so while we can say you know this whole black box slice and dice you know systems are kind of a great idea i don't think it's going to ring with the american people i think transparency is absolute the way to go it was the attempt of mccain feingold you know make keep the donations smaller and make them completely transparent and again the supreme court blew it up we've got a real serious problem this country right now with nine on elected people who think that they're kings of this country and you know that's that's the biggest problem

in the arizona made a really sincere attempt and you had people who were you know literally had been housewives or who had been you know painters just average you know average people and running for political office and winning because they have a system of work comes along blows it up. we had one in portland i wouldn't portland we had very good public financing of campaigns system and basically the big interest money groups came in ran ads saying do you really want your tax dollars being spent by politicians to real what them so and everybody kind of you know caught that mean minute and it got blown up so it's i think that transparency is the key even even in that. you know i agree on that sense i think that transparency is important and we need more of it would be nice if our government actually remembered that transparency is something that's very american in our overclassified days thank you so much tom thank you. are coming up next in the

sound doctrine you said i read it and we've told you about our stance on anti-piracy bills but today we're going to hear from a singer and songwriter who personally and by fred slater back in the. they there still believe the option of. what a protest that nobody seems to know. that never appropriate the face but hardly argument that they're being overly dramatic. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something

else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.