but can we call them a cartel our guest tonight william cohen just does just excuse me does just that advise of a time when the u.s. government actually sued the banks then the supreme court has ruled uphold the ban on foreign spending in u.s. elections some liberals out there are cheering at the news but are they for getting a little something that is united has already made it impossible for us to tell where the money is coming from jake brewer is going to join us to hash it out and get all that morphine i couldn't get out of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. well if it's tuesday then there must be of all going on somewhere right that's definitely going to be a case in this election year and with the republican primaries underway it's going to be all the mainstream media obsesses over every single tuesday from here on out super tuesday and the voters in new hampshire are heading to the polls the final

fight for the g.o.p. in new hampshire a live look here at the londonderry new hampshire voting place elections officials predicting a big turnout for today's vote well for him he's got to come of it at least a very strong third right behind it ron paul if ron paul is second or actually the second place i do gingrich just arrived at this polling place to make a last appeal to voters and you can see the media scrum that is surrounding him right now all of them right now making last minute stops around today except except for rick perry he's in south carolina in the spirit of new hampshire being a very windy day a very new england state huntsman will come in so i could hear him beat paul that's my that's my hunch if romney gets north of thirty five percent he'll be ok but if any rival is within ten percentage points it will not look as though he held the lead that he had all year since one nine hundred fifty two only three candidates have lost new hampshire and gone on to be elected president so there's a huge precedent for winning and the kind of momentum that it can give you. and you

see the thing is that aside from new hampshire there is something else that's a rather big story that's happening today and all of this week in fact treasury secretary tim geithner is in china and that's kind of a big deal especially if you consider the fact that just last week the president laid out a new military strategy for the united states the focus is not on the middle east iraq afghanistan but on the asia pacific region now doesn't take a genius to read through the lines there and know if they're talking about countering china in particular it's also a big deal because geithner is there to put pressure on china to support washington sanctions on iran and china is the largest consumer of iranian oil it's also a huge deal because if you listen to the rhetoric from the majority of the g.o.p. candidates with the exceptions of ron paul or jon huntsman the people that want to be president and when one of which just very well end up being president well they've been criticizing the president on being too easy on china and iran and as a chorus they want to be more tough. i think we're going to have to find ways to

dramatically raise the pain level for the chinese cheating both in the hacking side but also on the stealing and intellectual property side and i don't think anybody today has any particular good strategy for doing that china is stealing our intellectual property our patterns our designs our know how our brand names they're hacking into our computers stealing information from not only corporate computers but from government computers and they're manipulating their currency and for those who don't understand the impact of that i've seen it i've seen it and that is if you hold down the value of your currency artificially you make your products artificially low priced and kill american jobs that's happened here in this country senator santorum we talked about jobs in pennsylvania a competitive agenda of yours would be what i already put forward a plan you know i don't want to go to a trade war i want to beat china i want to go to war with china there's no u.n. evidence of that happening klepper at the. in our national security department he

says there is no evidence it's no different than it was in two zero zero three so the fact that they are surrounded they have a desire and how do we treat people when they have a nuclear weapon with a lot more respect. for it so here we are at what some think is perhaps the brink of war with iran at a turning point in u.s. military strategy which many think is leading up to a new cold war with china and the majority of the g.o.p. presidential candidates are completely on board with it all and this is once again what drives me completely up the wall what the mainstream media is election coverage they will go on and on for hours for days about these candidates and their campaigns and who said what and said who's had on the campaign trail and yet never talk about their policies never talk about what the country would actually look like if one of them were to take office and judging by what we've heard the majority of these candidates say like i said aside from huntsman iran paul the world is not going to be any safer or any more of a peaceful place under their watch specifically. not the santorum is and the

gingrich is and the romneys of the world who the mainstream media obsess over tirelessly and if the mainstream media and they never bother to mention it they'd rather just live up in the clouds in some magical dreary world where we can just be campaigning and having fun the entire time following the whole circus without ever thinking of the results and the repercussions that's what the mainstream media chooses to miss. all right so let's take a deeper look at where things are heading for china in the u.s. with the words and actions of the recent weeks signal after president obama clearly and publicly laid out the new u.s. military strategy that will rebalance towards asia pacific region out of what they call necessity the chinese ministry of defense fired back chinese ministry defense spokesman jane yang chang said the following we hope that the united states will flow with the tide of the era and deal with china and the chinese military in an

objective and rational way will be careful in its words and actions and do more that is beneficial to the development of relations between the two countries and their militaries so are the actions as far objective and rational or are the two setting up for a new cold war joining me to discuss this is dr thomas pm barnett chief ad less for wiki strat and contributing editor at esquire magazine thomas thanks so much for joining us tonight and you recently wrote a piece where you you basically laid it all out you said welcome to obama's cold war with china so why do you think it's got to that point where you can call it that. well i think the election year dynamics in the united states certainly courage a certain demonization of the chinese if you're having trouble fixing infrastructure health care dealing with education you know it's easier to complain about the economy then to deal with those intractable problems and it's easier to deal with china as a military rising threat than it is to deal china would deal with china more

directly on these trade issues which are very complex and require some sort of quid pro quos on our part so i think it's just an easy target for presidential candidates i think it's an easy target for president obama in a tough reelection bid and i think it's also a certain amount of dynamic inside the pentagon facing reduction in defense spending over the next decade or more basically trying to find the floor on that defense budget as it goes down and the best way to justify things in terms of platforms vehicles major weapon systems is to pick the toughest opponent out there and that's the chinese so the chinese become kind of the default great power war threat that's out there now if you were the chinese and you were to say that the president of the united states the defense secretary of the united states both came out publicly endorsing a brand new military strategy which as you mentioned partly is due to or they claim

is because of certain budget cuts and i think coming in their direction but one that specifically says no more this nation building staff no more focusing on iraq and afghanistan it's all the asia pacific region now how would you react when you start building up your military might. well i think they know they have been building up their military might i don't think it's out of the norm for a rising power in this age to make that kind of effort especially when it relies on raw materials and energy coming from regions distant from it shores it would be odd if the chinese weren't building up their military to a certain extent i think the irony here is you know we are concerned about being shut out of trade and east asia and we're trying to use this kind of military wedge here to make sure that we're going to get a seat at that table over time and i think threatening your banker the country to whom you all so much of your own money i think that's a difficult road to hoe i think it's fairly tricky for us plus i think it it tries

depend in the chinese at a time when frankly if we're trying to manage the mess you're parts of the world we could actually use the help of the chinese which is you know a rising power spending more on the military got a million man plus army i mean this is a natural ally for us long term helping to deal with these unstable regions upon which china increasingly relies in terms of its raw materials and energy i think it's odd press try to pin them down in east asia and really really run a lot of the scary dynamics that happen between the united states and japan in the one nine hundred thirty s. in terms of giving them the sense of being encircled when they're becoming increasingly nervous about their reliance on overseed energy overseas energy minerals and food increasingly well one of the things too that they're becoming reliant on. foreign oil and you know at some point i think it's predicted right now at twenty thirty five they're supposed to overcome the u.s. as the biggest consumer and so if we keep building up our every table and the south

china sea then do you think that it would be fair for china to see some kind of worry as in that signals that we might try to do something that might cut off their oil supply you know if it ever came to something. yeah and here's the conundrum i mean we're actually making an argument for withdrawing from southwest asia not being so involved in the middle east the out of the is that the bulk of persian gulf oil goes east not west so china is already the primary beneficiary of that flow and most interested in securing it we keep talking about china becoming a responsible stakeholder in terms of international affairs and yet if they make any moves along that line trying to create deano basing rights or a replenishing of rights for their ships between china and the middle east we find that suspicious by and large you know and we come out with this strategic guidance that basically says in fairly uncertain terms that we're going to try to pend them

in as much as possible militarily in east asia and that we find their lack of strategic clarity you know rather odd i don't think there's anything too odd about their military build up i think they have a long history of being dominated by former or by foreign colonial militaries i think they're very nervous but having the us so close to their shores i think if the shoe was on the other foot and chinese carriers were off the coast the united states you know we'd be in a different perspective on this so i think it's hard for us to look at it from their perspective realize how afraid they're becoming on their reliance on overseas sources for energy and food and for minerals and for the united states to come out with a strategic planning guidance that basically says as we draw down our force we're going to plant primarily for the big war threat with china i think that means from the chinese perspective they're going to plan all out for war against us as a as a default principle and i think that's a dangerous bad course for international relations considering how economically

intertwined we are well i mean the thing is if you look at a lot of the rhetoric if you look at some of the. we're also very light at the moment and it's as the theater threats or i guess you could say power at the united states to focus on but clearly it's. very much focused on iran and we're still surrounding iraq and so if the united states wants to try to counter ron they're going to need china and so let's talk about this trip. right now there is you think that they're playing a little bit of good cop bad cop in that sense in that are being the good cop that's going to make friends and try to make deals with obama stays here in washington sure and they play that game with us on a regular basis as well you know but again if you're going to make this u.g.g. guidance for the pentagon you know that we're going to kind of openly go against the chinese and try to hand them in as much militarily in east asia where they're naturally going to seek breakout possibilities anywhere else in the world and that means they're going to find themselves aligned with anti western so-called rogue

states like iran and north korea and other places because they're going to go you know where they can to get the resources that they can they pretty much have to deal with everybody so for the for the united states to expect them to do it here to our desire to sanction so much of the world based on their bad behavior which is a lot of the goal it's just very hard practice to pursue when you have this other power with whom you've become so economically and financially twined basically needing to go out and find you know one another saudi arabia over the next twenty years that means trying to go everywhere and deals with everybody and can't be as picky about who it interacts with as the united states would wish so i think i use on a bit of a fool's errand on this one i think we need to understand that china's interests are rapidly expanding and any attempt to try to hand them in or make them feel scared at home is just going to redouble their efforts to seek alliances and special client relationships with resource providers in parts like africa well i

guess you know maybe the thing that will end up saving everyone at the end of the day is that we ourselves economically intertwined as you said thomas thanks so much for joining us tonight thanks for having me. are still to come tonight. has become a focus for the red a community so tight will explain how the online movement to stop it has forced certain politicians to take their stand on the issue and it's no secret the wall street firms work together have an undue amount of power and influence what do they thanks as a cartel former investment banker william cohen says they come back. into it all their military mechanisms to do the 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 you think you understand it and then you. hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is. i'm trying hard look at the big picture.

i'm laura mr. it is the police corruption. but what is protesting nobody seems to know. that never a pepper sprayed the face but part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic. while congress took a break from working over the holidays the opponents of the stop online piracy act did not for the past two weeks lawmakers have been vacationing anti-social activists have been building up their forces to make sure that this bill never sees

the light of day don't pass shows we've discussed with you the fact that certain members of congress have shown just how little they actually knew about this legislation when the house judiciary committee attempted to debate it and when it became abundantly clear just how clueless they really were they delayed any decisions until this year to save themselves from further humiliation so now that the opponents have had a little more time to form their argument because of this they've been working hard to get politicians to take a stand and those who have in favor of the legislation are probably going to have to face the music you see those that are anti so an anti protect ip have made many public lists featuring those lawmakers that stand behind the broad sweeping internet censorship bills and they've been very successful in organizing petitions on the internet to protest the proposed laws at the end of december we told you about plans on reddit to boycott go daddy for their support of sopa and protect ip by calling on their customers to move their domains to a different location and ultimately the pressure led to go daddy withdrawing its

support of the copyright protecting laws but now we're seeing it similar momentum with actual lawmakers take paul ryan for example after reading has learned that the republican representative didn't have a clear stance on sopa they actually raised money for ryan's congressional opponent and that pressure alternately caused ryan to release a statement explaining that he is not a co-sponsor of this bill and it even forced him to come out against sopa just yesterday but ryan's four stance is unique to the g.o.p. lawmakers democratic representative bob goodlatte and republican marsha blackburn are also repairing for a backlash in the form of support of their opponents all because of gold. and support for this bill not only does approve it and the topic of internet censorship don't follow any party lines but it also shows you the people are willing to get out there. get active when there's an issue like this the really hits close to home so while the mainstream media has been completely pathetic overall ignored these two pieces of legislation wilders and activists are even forcing the g.o.p.

presidential field to start answering some questions about piracy and censorship but romney was faced with a question just the other day while he didn't give a clear answer he did say of the theory behind it was against his beliefs because bills shouldn't be in place to stop actions if it could potentially hurt business and the economy rick santorum gave the complete opposite response when he was asked about internet censorship during a town hall meeting. there . now romney and santorum are the only two presidential candidates that have said anything on this issue thus far but i strongly suggest that the rest of them read up and take a side because reading there is at opponents in general are going to want to know

what they think of internet censorship and they're running out of time congress plans on hearing from a handful of soap opponents like reddit co-founder alexis ohanian and security researcher dan kaminsky there you can rationalise hearing on january eighteenth so be sure to bring you all the latest news on the hearings start again and one more note here too ron paul actually did get it two words in and he well you know opposes it. well these days it's become a part of the national conversation that wall street has too much power too much influence over our political system you can see it in who the biggest donors are to candidates from both parties president obama himself not being an exception you can also see in the advisers of the president has chosen to surround himself with the chief of staff rahm emanuel to daley and now lou and on the financial end of things if we were concerned about too big to fail banks right when the fragile crisis hit look around today and through banks failing as consolidations the big banks have only got bigger so could we go as far as calling wall street

a cartel our guest tonight reminds of us a lawsuit brought against brought by the u.s. government against seventeen leading wall street investment banks in one nine hundred forty seven where they essentially did just that so how does it apply today joining me from our studio in new york is william cohen former investment banker and author of the recently released paperback edition of money and power how goldman sachs came to rule the world he's also contributing editor to vanity fair and columnist for bloomberg view well you want to think i thank you for joining us tonight if you can start by taking us back to one nine hundred forty seven where the u.s. government filed this anti-trust lawsuit against seventeen largest banks and tell us a little more about it. well you know i was almost alive in one nine hundred forty seven but i was not. the fact of the matter is that back in one hundred forty seven coming out of world war two the justice department put together a serious lawsuit charging these seventeen wall street investment banks with

collusion and trying to prosecute them to break them up to break up that collusion under the antitrust laws. in fact you know five years later when these suit finally wound its way through the court systems and appeared before judge harold medina in new york city. he ruled from the bench actually he threw the case out of court ruled that there was no collusion that they weren't . involved in. any trust restraint of trade action but you know the interesting thing about it is in that obviously goldman sachs figured prominently in this lawsuit and was actually glad to be one of the seventeen firms that were included in the suit because that made them gave them the sense that they were a serious player on wall street which was important to them at the time they were

a small private partnership at that time which basically most people had not heard of but you know as judge medina went through the case and then he issued his ruling which was something like four hundred fifty pages it's just stunning in its detail about how the lengths that wall street firms would go to to try to prevent other firms from getting any investment banking business out of their corporate clients and the detail with which the judge went through it the amount of documents that he released as part of this was just astounding so on that one hand he you know throughout the lawsuit but on the other hand the detail that he released showed that they were in. fact colluding left and right that they were doing everything they could to prevent the firms from getting business the way they had been traditionally goldman sachs's business or morgan stanley's business i mean the judge ultimately decided that this was the form of serious competition and he's not

wrong in the sense that there were all these firms trying very hard to get this business but the fact of the matter is that once you you know wormed your way into a company and got their investment business banking business usually by the way by having one of the partners from these firms serve on their board of directors so they put them in a perfect bizarrely let's say a line of let's get to where we are today right because i want you to compare for us what's happening at this moment why you're saying that you can very much call wall street a cartel these days and i think there that suit you know some of the losses the lack of lawsuits that we see happening the fact that the obama administration has said that they're not even going to pursue any criminal charges against any of the executives from any of the big banks because it's simply too hard to deal. well first of all you go from you know hundreds of best of banks and securities firms in the forty's fifty's sixty's seventy's eighty's and into this crisis comes and we're

down to maybe five or six serious wall street securities firms that are global in reach and so you know if you if it was a potential cartel in nine hundred forty seven with seventeen small firms it's absolutely a cartel today and when i worked on wall street it was a given that prices were set for investment banking services whether it was underwriting a debt or equity offering underwriting initial public offering advice on them in a deal the cartel set the prices the cartel decides if you have a grievance against wall street what kind of what kind of path you have to pursue in arbitration as opposed to the court systems for you to get justice for your grievance so i mean if it was bad in one hundred forty seven it was bad enough for the justice department bring a lawsuit the irony is of course that now there are far fewer firms with much more power all too big to fail all feeding at the trough of the federal reserve system

and they are colluding more than ever and yes their business is down because of the difficulties in the economy but when the business comes back when the economy recovers as it inevitably will because these things are all cyclical then the corporate issuers are really going to be feeling the pressure from wall street to to keep the rates in the prices that they charge exactly where wall street wants business isn't even so down for wall street guy now let's be honest what do you think of this cartel has a firm grip on washington as well even if you look at let's say some of the president's chief of staff like i said yesterday bill daley left and so who did here place him with is jack lew who is a former citi group official you can't get rid of these people and yet at the same time you still have people out there arguing i was on the young turks on current last night and bob sestak said well you know i don't blame the president because if i was in his position i would want somebody to regulate wall street that actually knows wall street and knows how it works i think that we've seen enough of that and

nobody's regulating it. there's no there's no regulation of wall street i mean there's twenty three hundred page laws that dog frank law of which no one can figure out what the regulations are meant to be at this point they're still committees trying to put together and write the regulations but we're sitting here talking and having this nice conversation i can assure you that there are lawyers for wall street firms who are camped out at the f.c.c. or at the c.f.d. see in washington helping to write the regulations so i mean the idea that wall street is getting new regulations is a myth the truth is though there are plenty of regulations already on wall street but you know you see let's just take one example ok one recent example with the bankruptcy of m.f. global that was a firm that was regulated by the see if t.c. last year the see if d.c. wanted to change the rules by which a firm like m.f. global could how it invested its customer accounts it wanted to prevent m.f. global from using its customers money to invest in say the debt of sovereign

nations well john kors on the former c.e.o. of goldman sachs a former governor of new jersey the former senator of new jersey went to the head of the c f.t.c. who used to work for him and goldman sachs and said you know please let's not bring this issue up before the c.f.d. see now this is not a good time for us this is the way we make money please let's don't change the way this. rule is written and so what did gary gensler do he backed off the c f t c backed off they didn't change the rule and m.f. global then was able to use this customer money any way it wanted basically and now a billion two of it is gone and no one can account for m.f. global one into bankruptcy and three you know a month after m.f. global goes into bankruptcy they passed this new rule called the m.f. global rule which restricts you know what firms like m.f. global can do with their customers money i mean it's just every kind of connection yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry but i got to go out because we have to hit a break here but. it all makes very much sense and just too little too late i guess

to start regulating on what was legal and still made everything go around thanks so much for joining us tonight. my pleasure thank you. for taking a break but we will be right back. to the police corruption. like what a protester nobody seems to know. that never a pepper sprayed the face but part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it.