you don't. are welcome to think if. i'm lauren lyster. to believe the repetition of.

what a test nobody seems to know. that never appropriate to face quite hard the argument that they're being overly dramatic. our guys it's time for tonight's tool time award and tonight we're giving it to one of the big banks capital what you probably know them as the bank that has those really witty ads on t.v. . for. taking the boeing jet. blue research everybody like that. well almost everything. would you like it to present more cash where you got it.

right what's in your wallet what's in your wallet are all capital one might have to commercials but when it comes to dealing with bankruptcy or anything but in fact there are now reports of capital one financial corp going after customers who have filed for bankruptcy customers who have finished their chapter seven bankruptcy cases thought that they've been cut loose from the bank but cern's out the capital one continue to track them down demanding that they pay up in one instance a new jersey waitress filed for chapter seven bankruptcy in two thousand and nine and she was shocked when she got a letter saying that the bank was suing her for forty two hundred dollars in credit card debt something that should've been taken care of years ago and what capital one is doing here is a legal issue the whole point of filing for bankruptcy protection is that you're no longer beholden it to your creditor but it turns out of the bank has pursued over fifteen thousand similar claims where they went looking for money that already been raised by a bankruptcy court judge and the bank was only called out after a court appointed an auditor to investigate when eight hundred bar was filed

lawsuits against capital one for trying to collect the debt that should no longer be there and when confronted a spokesperson for the company said it's our policy and practice not to collect on discharge debt now the bank also revealed in a court filing that when it does go after those who have cleared their debts through bankruptcy it's only because they were unaware of the borrowers financial status now ok i understand maybe a mistake you know by the bank you made for one customer two customers maybe even three but fifteen thousand people that is an entirely different story that is systemic not a fluke so it looks like capital one chose to ignore the financial and legal status of these. customers in the hope they can still recover the money that was lent to the borrowers so why is the bank working so hard to collect money from a handful of borrowers well it's kind of a good question considering that capital one isn't hurting at all it's the tenth largest bank in america and there's something kind of unique about this bank too unlike others out there capital one relies on its own employees to carry out debt

collection from it's far worse because usually banks will hire collection agencies to do that dirty work but the bank has to go about collecting that treasure debt in the right way let me explain here in the time that a bankruptcy proceeding is filed until it's actually completed banks will use that opportunity to get in there and try and collect as much debt as possible which is perfectly legal but after the judge approves it the banks are barred from hunting down the borrowers and that's where capital one is at fault to go after people threaten them with lawsuits after they've already attempted to fix their debt is illegal and the worst part of this is a capital one is even hurting in fact they've been making over two million of profits the past two years talk about a strong recovery from the recession so why are they harassing debtors probably because they think that they can get away with it but thankfully enough borrowers has spoken out against it the big bank is under the microscope and that includes so for trying to take advantage of people who are already filed for bankruptcy by continuing to harass them for money owed capital one is tonight's tool time winner . well looks like congress is currently patting itself on the back for

once again giving everybody a massive headache highlighting just how dysfunctional they really are and that at the end of the day coming up with a deal and this entire payroll tax extension fiasco but how about all that stuff that they haven't take for example if you elements out of dodge frank the other day we mention that for the second time regulations on derivatives are being postponed to the point where it's going to be two years after legislation was passed and yet none of those new rules will take effect so let's get more about it here or let's hear more about it here to discuss it with me is lauren lyster the host of the capital account on our t.v. lauren thanks for coming back on we started reading we having this discussion earlier this week and some on fox news on the program with you too but we kind of ran out of time and i feel like this is a really important element to get into because suddenly when the when the entire economy was crashing this were derivatives popped up that nobody knew what it was and they were i guess you could say pigeonholed as one of the made problems and then still two years later no derivatives regulations true but this is what i think

is the really interesting thing about this ok so this regulation has been delayed and kind of at the crux of this derivatives regulation is moving derivatives from over the counter trading into u.s. regulated exchanges so we're doing it over the counter alone and we're making these trades making these deals between you and me no central exchange on u.s. exchanges it's supposed to mitigate counterparty risk it supposed to eliminate that it's overseen by regulators right this is a six hundred trillion dollar derivatives market they're trying to move in that direction here's the thing global has since happened and the flow bill was all involving u.s. regulated exchanges which they were using for all their futures trading derivatives commodities trading so in that situation where u.s. regulators were overseeing this client money was lost one point two billion dollars which is still missing and which was you know allegedly taken from customer accounts by m.f. global mis used and so if this is all going on on regulate. exchanges which

everything is supposed to be moving towards we have a lot larger problems that these exchanges themselves are not safe but at some point you know you have to start somewhere because i think that you have to look at the regulations are they are in place you're going to have to fix them but do you just let the derivatives market continue to be regulated because the regulations aren't working properly do you wait it out until you really have you know the proper rules into place or what's the solution do you think in the meantime well you know that's a really good question we can point to plenty of the problems but what really is the solution it depends on where you think this is really really coming from i think a lot will come out of this m.f. global investigation where we'll see kind of where the problems lie it be easy to say ok you know this is kind of the crony capitalism that we see which poor design former head of goldman sachs and you know head of this having worked with him at goldman sachs it's easy to say that but then i interviewed william black who was a former regulator who regulated during the savings and loans crisis and he actually said this guy was one of the best regulators that he knows of so if that's

the case come on we're really in trouble so far solutions i don't really know i wish i could be more optimistic with acting like i know who out of figure this all out but i don't i try to ask these questions every day on my show to get an answer to that it does seem like anybody out there has a perfect solution unfortunately every time we bring up you know finance or the economy these days it seems like it's bad news and you know it's just one depressing story after another and what do you think of this capital one story that we just did for tool time you know we've seen a lot of fraud amongst the banks when it comes to the robo signing and going after people for closures now it turns out that they're also just going after people for their debt even after they fell for bankruptcy makes you feel like they're all crooks well again i don't think it's very surprising i don't think any of us should be surprised by any of these stories anymore one of the problems that's a recurring theme is that fraud and all of the things associated with too big to fail that were going on part of two thousand and eight are still going on if not worse we see banks further consolidated risks further consolidated we see fraud

this. it is even more criminal an outright with the example of m.f. global where you have actually stealing client funds one point two billion dollars in segregated accounts where people can't get their money i mean this really seems like an escalation of a lot of the practices we saw before two thousand and eight and something that's interesting to me because yesterday we had peter schiff on the show who you know on one hand thinks we were speaking about occupy wall street and i think that a lot of the anger towards wall street and itself towards the finance sector as well as government and this revolving door that you know that goes on is that nothing is regulated fraud is rampant because everything is corrupt and there's just money that goes around and yet peter is part of this one percent that seems to want to fight back and so i wonder what you think about this fact that now we see people like him and we see others saying going after us and we're the producers of this thing is a productive one right with all that saying is peter thinks that government is the problem he wouldn't disagree with you that it's a problem that banks got bailed out or that there's all this except they're going to blame banks either because he thinks that it starts with the government that

it's the government's fault that the government is bailing them out and i'm not going to speak for peter but in the time that i've interviewed him dots kind of the crux of his argument i do think that there is a difference between the peter chefs of the world and the jamie diamonds of the world ok the one percent is defined i think as people making above what i see three hundred fifty thousand dollars according to the i.r.s. maybe give or take a little bit so there are a lot of people that are in that one percent that aren't jamie diamond that aren't getting you know millions of dollars that they're you know j.p. morgan chief executive pay outs so i think that there is a difference and i think there is a difference between people that are trying to make an honest living even if that involves while without having the burden of government and without seeing other people's other banks risk socialized i think there's a difference between those people and the people that are the jamie dimon that are at these wall street firms that are deeply connected with wall street deeply entrenched in the regulatory process and do benefit from and i think that is something that's really important to separate because they i think they are different factions i have learned thanks so much for joining us tonight and that.

something that you know we spoke about this before too when it comes to occupy wall street and their message maybe they need to try to separate that but the ninety nine percent versus one percent just seems so much easier and more attaching point zero zero one but i also can you know you don't i don't even you know they're really after people like that are like the ships of the world thanks so much. i saw the company i had my fireside friday and that happy hour revamp of popular shoe has evolved going absolutely crazy. on her theory that the police broke into the one. woman protest nobody seems to know. her rights so i never appropriate the facebook rights or the 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 something else here sees some other part of it and realize that everything is. hard welcome to the big picture.

welcome to the capital account i'm lauren lyster. to tonight's fireside your. cops. this week we brought you all the information that we could day by day of bradley manning's article thirty two pretrial hearing it for me the process is going to determine whether or not a full court martial be brought against the army private and whether he could if

you combine all of the charges sort of up to one hundred fifty years of a prison sentence there are a lot of relevation as this week revelations this week possible chats between manning in the sun assigned to allegedly helping manning break into government computers thousands of documents found on hard drives and the government came prepared to build a very strong case the defense is of course fighting against the government a government and military whose leader the executive the commander in chief has already determined that he thinks manning broke the law he's already stated his opinion on manning's gild before a trial ever began and of course no one can forget the horrible conditions that manning was confined in four months before being even charged with a crime and the government also blocked all the two witnesses the defense wanted to testify including a request to have the president himself testify on his pretrial judgement of manning that was rejected and apparently out of the question but we did see was the defense trying out a three prong strategy focusing on bradley manning's mental instability the relax

security of the work environment and the true impact on national security from these leaks and in fact we've publicly heard officials like former secretary of defense robert gates and state department officials say was minimal if not nonexistent embarrassing but not damaging were some of the exact words that have been reported and have the government wouldn't allow any of the o.c.a. original classification author already to take the stand say any of this on the record so just keeping all of that in mind let me introduce you to another part of the government's argument against manning one that's not only ludicrous but incredibly dangerous to the freedom of speech and of the freedom of the press one of the charges. or the army private faces aiding the enemy and offense that could be punishable by death although the prosecution has stated that they will not be seeking an execution and for a long time we've all been wondering who exactly the enemy is of the government wants to claim he was aiding a wiki leaks is no ally of the u.s. government let's not forget also by no means is an enemy this by the attempts of certain u.s. lawmakers to classify the website as

a terrorist organization let's just admit the obvious wiki leaks is a whistle blowing web site it's one with no allegiance to any government any nation it can be considered an international media organization and the government might not like the classified information that they're willing to publish because it's embarrassing transparency shouldn't make you an enemy of the state newspapers the world over published publish classified materials including the materials provided by wiki leaks so again just who is the enemy turns out it's terrorists as in al qaeda al qaeda in the arabian peninsula and the like now when you think of industrial who's been detailing every bit of the pretrial hearing for firedoglake for helping to point this out in the prosecution's closing argument captain ashton fein claim that manning knowingly gave intelligence through week you leaks to the enemy knowing it would end up in their hands and you want to know how they came to that conclusion because according to them when you publish something on the internet which is what wiki leaks does right then everyone can access it including

al qaeda and in fines words all other enemies with internet access they even played an al qaeda propaganda video in the background which showed a figurehead telling joe has to rely on the wide range of resources on the internet and as anyone else out there has to be completely ludicrous and ridiculous the government basically wants to claim that anything anyone posts on the internet can be used against them because if you post it on the internet and anybody can see it including al qaeda the enemy so any point in time you might be aiding them because according to the law get logic you knew it would be on the internet which everyone can access so that means that you. aiding the enemy knowingly now clearly i'm oversimplifying for the purposes of pointing out just how absurd this kind of logic is but it's not just absurd scene fact it's not funny at all it's dangerous and it's kevin also pointed out one thing has become very clear from the government's argument here that the effect of manning's prosecution has the potential to criminalize national security journalism and that's

a threat that's been hanging over us for a while now this is what we've been trying to warn media organizations out there about oh he's spoken about it many times on the show as we've seen the new york times the guardian turned wiki leaks and julian a songe into their enemy meanwhile of course continuing to publish information received from wiki leaks they've been so caught up in hating wiki leaks they've been blind to what the government is trying to do which is to use things like the as be an object to go after whistleblowers to go after media organizations to take away the freedom of the press to scare that press into submission so the any embarrassing information about the governing powers that is published can be criminalized and there's a lot more to be discussed here the mere notion that it's cables published by wiki leaks and not other information that's already public out publicly out there and acknowledge other actions in our global war on terror that are aiding the enemy at all times well again that shows how shortsighted our government has become how little they want to acknowledge that our actions actually have consequences but that's for another time for now we're going have to wait until january sixteenth

until the decision is made as to whether or not manning will go to a full trial and we should all brace ourselves if that happens for what's coming. our guy has time for a happy hour and joining me this evening is our producer jenny churchill and mike rake this is the editor at reason magazine and reason dot com thanks for joining you guys ok as we all know christmas is this weekend and we thought the black friday was both really crazy shopping day and it was over but apparently not check out what happened at a mall or was this was in austin seattle and people went crazy trying to get the new nike air jordan eleven concords. they're all right

after a. all right so that was in indianapolis sorry but there was also ma shut down in austin seattle so apparently people were going crazy all over the country for that the new era georgia just basically that's horrible if you've got pepper sprayed yet all this is are spread apparently by police and also by other patrons like there was all kinds of craziness going on i mean if you like walsall makers from a black friday there was a huge fight in the wal-mart over the wall film makers and these air jordans they're like the new took me almost so this is not really new americans are always like fighting over really crappy stuff made in china you know it is totally true yeah i have to say i've always been really weirded out by this obsession with air jordans because like when guys are way more into shoes than me i don't know how to think. better about. it was telling us he was directing that like you have to be really good about the ball if you're going to wear it short and that i'm not sure i know i think i know a lot of well actually that you can wear them and just be better about people you

know great about it when you're drunk when you know you're going on although you can always dribble i know if you don't i'm going where jordans who are really bad at basketball ok so earnest theory is wrong and actually is wrong simply by the fact that there are like thousands of people store but you know and they go oh my god we have to give all of us this morning for a very short. i'm going to put them on is that we fair play hoops go shoot hoops ok everybody merry christmas yeah we had the prez have you seen hoops carrying shaq and. i was just me of the obama is now a kid you know if you girl. tall and he's like seven i was just like the craziest next time we're showing our audience a photo this is the craziest thing i've ever seen i don't know how it works but it probably works ok let's move something. and this is just to just listen to fox news and what this commentator tries to say about calling people

names. how long do you think sean hannity's show would last four times you know one and one since he made a comment about the president of the united states but he looked like a skinny ghetto crackhead which by the way you might want to say that barack obama does. ok so you missed the first part which was this was in response to chris matthews saying that gingrich looks like a car bomber because he just looks all evil. and that guy is trying to make the comparison like what if somebody said that about the president would be unacceptable or wouldn't be acceptable and he says but then he totally does like the crackhead yeah that's reason at its best i have to say it's like all i'm going to say this totally unacceptable thing and reaffirm that i actually do believe that it's brazil just being an awful human being for your viewers sake that's the side of the media research research center of parents television council all this awful crap he's like america's most notorious censor he's just awful he's

a small family some he's america's most notorious censor and then goes on and says something oh right right no no i mean once yeah like the last thing i think he got really excited about was the janet jackson nipple slip at the super bowl so there's like some sort of convergence between black people and that's like oh it's him worked up you know black people getting worked up and yes really angry. janet jackson there is a black president a skinny crack head all the time and then he took his opportunity to do it right. a lot of really hateful people out there let's move on to chuck schumer who also is hateful but he has a specific hate towards. basically caffeine i think take a little me let me first explain this this is something that's called aero shot it has powder and caffeine it's the size of a chapstick has the same amount of caffeine as a large cup of coffee and the maker says apparently it's safe for people as young as twelve years old but this is what chuck schumer thinks about it. the truth is

every shot is nothing more than a club drug we're reporting in here designed to give the user the ability to drink . went to a drug. store is this and i'm r. i don't understand that are you getting to the point where chuck schumer a band kept straight out of because it sounds like yeah everything can be used as a party and hand and read just trying to stay away which all his wall street buddies like need to do their annual rip offs you know a lot of yellow red bull probably like ok that is wall street but you think what you want and cocaine it's crazy i get it you think illegal but you know i don't even know how we can go about banning this though because with four loko at least he had alcohol mixed with caffeine thing to kind of so word of problem solve on but this doesn't make any sense you can just take a product that's you i mean it's just insane he's got you've got h.h.s. on this side i mean this is look at the four loko thing the refusing to allow

a thirteen year old survive over the counter plan b. i mean like this isn't h.h.s. that is totally fine with these kinds of policies so i actually think she can make this move. i know it sounds and this is really turning into how do you like what you're going to shot like you actually you breathe it in your head like is it just lets me have you want those big things that you. clear your nose that's not going to do that was sold to me because. i don't know how to treat a little uncomfortable i don't know i don't know either but i'm just going to say that once we made seat belts mandatory it was all downhill from there and we should not be surprised that this is happening as we should not be surprised that you didn't agree to this you know caffeine ok if you want to. do other things with it go for it ok so yesterday we had the great headline about the guy who tried to shoot a mouse and instead he shot his roommate and then he got his other roommate arrested for statutory rape all in the process now today we have a guy orders a drink leave the bar to go rob

a bank and then comes back into the exact same bar right after robbing a bank as if nobody would notice that's versus. you tell me the guy who apparently goes to girl's house steals a pair of underwear and then returns the very next day to return the pair of underwear that he stole and then gets the cops called him for it and he used to live in i think it's. over one hundred years and both of these cases i mean one guy wanted to pay his tab or not i don't know how to bring up he had money i realized i mean that's why at around when you order the beer and thought oh no i left my wallet at home i have to go next door and this thing their hearts were in the right place. i don't know that anyone who's stealing women's panties from their home by heart isn't right i don't. think you know you're going to get caught oh no you don't with a little bit in the door and he shoplifts a piece of candy you're going to make him take it back right you want to do you want to feel guilty to have a conscience and go back i just returned the you know you don't have to wrap it up before you know at a time guys but thank you for joining us that's it for tonight joe thanks for

trying to make sure that you come back next year we're not going to be here next week but we have put together some great programs with our best interviews of the best stories of the year we're also going to rear our how we never say what an hour show from is a comedy part so we'll see it then and we have next is the news. you

know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then. something else you hear sees some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom parker welcomes a big picture. of the future new year's wishes on technology updates next generation playthings made from super strong culture lately building materials good health a little help from nuclear isotopes a cleaner planet seems to be the revolutionary way to get rid of or growing landfills and a long list of russian innovators. who used to listen to. the

. hello i'm sorry to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture the big picture team is taking a break tonight to travel home for the holidays we wanted to give you another look at two conversations of the great minds that we think were quite poignant we begin with another look at my interview with axel caballero a true advocate for immigrant rights and a champion of human rights internationally and for the latino community here in the united states actually has put media and technology at the forefront of his efforts .