all of these different such situations organizations groups and individuals that really do have you know true interest in trying to improve the situation in their country the unfortunate part is that they're manipulating it and some of them are funded by foreign interests particularly the united states that are looking to promote their own agenda and that's what i think has happened in the case of egypt and now we're seeing that play out where they are targeting those u.s. democracy promoters and saying we don't want you here we don't want this kind of foreign intervention and we've seen it also play out over the years with the so-called color revolutions in libya ukraine they had their orange revolution in two thousand and four and now it's backfired i mean the same president they got out of power then is back into power now and the same is happening in the case of georgia it's happening in kyrgyzstan where those so-called colored revolutions were really just astroturf and as the other guest says in in that report and i mean in the case of venezuela which is another country where they've tried to do it they've

taken students from a right wing opposition and each of his opposition trained them in belgrade heavily find them they represent a minute part of the population there that has absolutely no level of support in the country and they're trying to work to overthrow a legitimate democracy to implement one that would not be supported by the majority of the people i mean so that i mean these are cases where it's obvious that this is a strategy that's a big moneymaking effort that is just about promoting u.s. agenda it's a big money making effort but when you think about you know return on their investment it seems like they're not getting what what they want for the money any longer i mean you talk about the revolutions of the effort in egypt being co-opted perhaps that so however when you see the results of the election there the muslim brotherhood and the saudis you know islamists rolly dominating the the winners of the elections i don't think that that's probably what people in washington wanted so i mean it did. do you think there's going to be

a change in terms of spending all this money to try to get this to happen when it's not really happening and frankly just tragedy that they originally thought they had perfected after yugoslavia without war and they repeated it in georgia in ukraine in kyrgyzstan and they tried it in other places around the world where it didn't always succeed including russia and they've tried it but it's only continue to keep trying it in venezuela and then they got excited about the arab spring and thought haven let's do it here as well and so it was after things started to get stirred up there that the u.s. began focusing on and how they could use the same strategy in the case of egypt in the so-called arab spring so i think that it's apparent it's a strategy that's not been perfected and shows again the sort of sloppiness of u.s. intelligence agencies we've seen in other kinds of operations over the past few decades that initially they thought worked like a ties with the it worked in latin america and then all of sudden they gain and work and they try those again and in the twenty first century and we've seen how

they've played out some it works some have it work so i think that yes there's a constant reevaluation of these types of strategies what works best what is most effective what is most cost effective but at the same time there are always individuals organizations and groups that are looking to take advantage of what the u.s. government is putting out there now where it's putting its money and that's why was we've seen a proliferation of these so-called n.g.o.s involved in democracy promotion there really and just to make a big right certainly an interesting and important i think to talk about because so many u.s. taxpayers aren't aware that so many of their tax dollars goes to pay for programs like this attorney and author eva golinger thank you very much. well there seems to be across the country agreement and agreement that is kept hidden and yet most in washington and pakistan at least know all about it i'm talking about drone strikes in pakistan and u.s. leaders don't speak much about it citing security reasons and pakistan while

simultaneously condemning the strikes still allow them to happen for the most part now drone strikes target al qaeda and taliban militants living in some of these tribal areas along the afghan border but for the first time president obama just admitted it's not only the bad guys who are getting killed i want to make sure that people understand actually drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties that for the most part they have been very precise precision strikes against al qaeda and their affiliates and we are very careful in terms of how it's been applied so i think there's this perception somehow that we're just sending in a whole bunch of strikes willy nilly this is a targeted focused effort so for the first time president obama actually talking about these strikes saying not too many people are killed but it goes a little deeper than this and i want to take a look at some actual numbers here that the president didn't mention this is

according to a report put together by the bureau of investigative journalism between two and three thousand people have been killed by drones in pakistan and of those as many as seven hundred and eighty are civilians one hundred seventy five have been children and of the three hundred twelve joe drone strikes have taken place president obama has issued two hundred and sixty of them. some important numbers here and discuss this is michael maloof former pentagon official here in studio with me michael talk about what we just heard from president obama i think it's pretty interesting the fact that he actually answered a question about it because this is new but still doesn't seem to want to admit for the most part what we're seeing in these numbers well it's an open secret it's been an open secret the pakistanis sure certainly know about it and it's it's much it actually is beyond the to the plot the policies beyond just afghanistan and pakistan it's also now into yemen they've been using them in yemen a lot of civilians have been killed there as well and it is taking

a terrifying toll even on civilians and that's probably one of the major opposition . points from the pakistanis on how many civilians it has been killing. when you're when you're guiding these these drones from a half a world away even though they take off from afghanistan and have. it's difficult sometimes to identify the target to from that distance and yet i mean if you're think about some of the people that actually are targeted in pakistan. there doesn't seem to be at least for the missions at hand a lot of other options it's not like you can send in boots on the ground or troops to get these people so i guess i want to know from you what you say there's more to the story though i have a lot of friends a lot of people i know intelligent people who say you know drones seem to be a great idea because fewer people fewer civilians fewer troops are killed but what's the rest of the story it's really representing

a new concept in warfare that we're getting into which we might call six generation even the russian military is looking at this where you can fight from a far stand off were fair and not commit a lot of troops and and indeed the fact that we're actually cutting back on troop strengths. indicates that we're not going to be fielding tremendous armies like we used to it's going to be much more unconventional asymmetric and the use of drones and other. means of standoff warfare is going to be the norm and frankly it requires a lot of advanced technologies which even we're still in that are still in the development stage and you see the russian military looking at this very very seriously as well but it seems to me that you know it not only succeeds perhaps in killing some of the people that are targeted it also gives this country kind of

a bad reputation well it's it really is a declaration of war without declaring it as such and when you're surprised and hit it from afar and if you're an innocent target on the ground it's going to cause major repercussions politically let me talk about real quick because this is something that i don't think is talked about very much and that is the legal implications here there are many who suggest that. ok here's what i understand targeted killing is lawful if the suspects are directly participating in hostilities or if there or if the target poses an imminent threat however if people are being killed because they're believed to be associated with terrorist groups i think that violates international law but nobody's kind of speaking up or enforcing it well they've been silent about that and again it gets to whether or not you have a declaration of war and secondly when you hit a compound which has a lot of women and children associated with the target that's there you're going to

have so-called collateral damage and that is and that is something that legally is so they want to be a declaration of war before any sort of you know i mean you need something from the congress if you're really going to go after targets like this and knowing what the implications are going to be with respect to. the the outcome of the devastation namely other innocent innocent women and children especially yeah it seems to me that the this president and many before him don't seem to declare war even though a lot of acts that occur seem to sort of resemble it interesting stuff former pentagon official michael maloof. well that will do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to our t.v. dot com slash usa you should also check out our you tube page will be posting all of our interviews in our segments there that address is you tube dot com slash our team america and you can also follow me on twitter i'm at christine for his hour

and we will be back here at five o'clock with a lot of news stories. wealthy british style sign. is not on my list. market why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our culture is that so much different and there's a huge music to share the power to find the mark with siri on the brink of highlands escalates in the same battle country the calls for strong sanctions and

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good afternoon and welcome to capital account i'm lauren lyster here in washington d.c. mitt romney won the republican florida primaries last night not only did he win he developed magical powers without raising taxes our will finally get america to a balanced budget. while he's away third week han have it all that's amazing does anyone actually believe what these guys say anymore with the economy is such a disaster we have a better idea than just accepting this i'll tell you what it is and as for us president barack obama he has been drawing up plans for an economic house built not

of cars but of steel. tonight i want to speak about how we move forward and lay out a blueprint for an economy that's built to last an economy built on american manufacturing. the field a little bit like a pipe dream economists dean baker says the missing piece is a competitive dollar but if that means devaluing the greenback just who benefits from that wealth transfer and who loses it and with not just manufacture and snow globes but there are indian logistics made in china too how can we be sure a single job would come back to the us any time soon dr baker will be here to answer that and save the world unite joe why isn't all a business insider has a message for yet another whining over lousy interest rate it sucks for everyone in the us right now so deal with it really joe wall street speculated with the nation savings during the boom and now during the bust savers and retire really shouldn't

even have the dignity of earning a real return on their hard earned labor will go head to head let's get to today's capital account. all right we have dean baker in studio today but first i have to get this off of my chest because u.s. republican presidential candidate mitt romney won the primary last night in florida reportedly restoring his status as the front runner but here is my favorite line from his victory speech president obama wants to grow government and dramatic trillion dollar deficits i will not just slow the growth of government i will cut the spending of government i will not just freeze government share of the total

economy i will reduce it and without raising taxes our will finally get america to a balanced budget. why how that is amazing that is so fantastic that he's going to be able to do that especially considering the cvo says deficits will remain in the one trillion dollar range for the next several years if bush era tax cuts slated to its expire in december are extended which is what's commonly assumed this is not to mention the government's projections are typically pretty rosy and you know it's really reminds me of someone else we've known of over mine probably most of. that we are going to have to pay burke thirty thousand dollars for every man woman and child that's irresponsible it's unpatriotic. only under that guy we've seen the debt rise by more than four trillion dollars that's after bush added on five trillion dollars now we've been talking about some

way to hold politicians accountable like performance based pay if you fail to do what you say you don't get to run for reelection it shouldn't pay to lie is kind of our point it should pay to do what you say you're going to do or be punished otherwise now my guest yesterday said oh it sounds great but come on lauren that's not very realistic so here's another idea we've been talking about how out of touch leaders seem this is been my latest rant since davos out of touch from a lot of the problems that they're legislating problems that affect people very severely during these tough economic times so this is what i want if you're an elected official you need to at least prove you have tried to understand the possible consequences of what you are voting or not voting for you want to send kids to war in iran or wherever fine but you better have served or have a kid who's served or if not you spend the weekend with a grieving family who has just lost their daughter or son and i'm talking real time

not some you know award ceremony you want to keep spending and spending and ignore the feds printing fine but you better endure some kind of i don't know virtual reality that takes you to y m r germany to understand hyper inflation ok germany still resists easy money and when you look at their history you can see why the last time they let the printing presses roll and roll and roll they ended up with three billion mark bread and ultimately hitler if you want to impose austerity in greece or italy you go spend time with those protesting it you want to use occupy wall street to either criticize class warfare or talk about the problems of inequality fine but you better go spend some time there and actually understand the activists i want to see you want to tent and this goes for bankers too because we know unfortunately. how influential they are in u.s. politics economists and historian niall ferguson talks about when he speaks to groups and financial services how shocked he is by their lack of knowledge of

monetary history and the great depression saying the only history they know seems to be the history of their careers so monetary history of the us rehat niall ferguson says so too and take that knowledge to hearings on capitol hill or the boardroom or to davos so that is my rant let's stick to money though let's talk about the dollar u.s. president barack obama is talking about a plan to bring back manufacturing to the u.s. we know it's been going overseas for forty years a coniston co-director of the center of economic and policy research dean baker says his plans got a missing piece here to talk about what it is he has here and i bet he's read monetary history of the u.s. how do you see here our guy then all right so first i'm sure you're going to want to challenge me on the deficit so i'll just give you the opportunity to do i am i wrong well you're wrong because if we didn't run the deficits that obama around would have much higher unemployment i really can't imagine when the right man would want that so hard very good he ran the deficits you should run bigger ones and the

whole point was he walked into the middle of an economic collapse and the deficit in a certain sport the economy because the private sector was going to do it so hard time criticizing him for that one ok but if the private sector isn't spending why aren't they spending isn't that because they want sustainable growth you know there and spend because they don't see demand it's very simple if you have a factory you increase spending you start hiring people and you see demand with the demands out there you don't do it it's very simple but the government can stimulate the economy but how do you know that that's a good growth there's a difference between good growth and bad growth all you have to do is look at the mortgage boom and the crisis a boom that was propped up by the government to see the cost of bad growth first of the boom it wasn't propped up by the government the people making money hand over fist where the wall street investment banks but secondly in this case there's literally nothing so it's not a question good growth or bad growth it's a question you want no growth you want a lot of people unemployed or do you want something governments doing you know the government could do better or worse. things ideally you do things like spending on infrastructure spending on education make us wealthy in the future but the alternative is simply having more people employed why on earth would anyone want

that well let's talk about how to bring some of those jobs back because obama has a plan for manufacturing and you say the problem with that is he lacks touching on the key point in your view i believe which is the competitiveness of the u.s. dollar you think the dollar is overvalued so why is that exactly well basically what determines relative price of imports and domestically produced goods is the value of the dollar and the dollar should be falling we have a large trade deficit and this is exactly what's supposed to happen supply and demand large trade deficit supposed to mean a decline in the value the dollar that makes imports more expensive for us the united states will buy less of them it makes our goods cheaper for people elsewhere in the world so they'll buy more of them that hasn't been happening because in many countries china being the most important but many countries have been deliberately buying up dollars in order to keep the dollar has to stop so president obama asked what that front and center his other measures you know they're generally good ideas you know let's have more training let's have good infrastructures lots of things there make sense hard to argue with but that won't amount to

a hill of beans compared to a dollar that might be overvalued by twenty twenty five percent how do you decide what is the right value of the dollar and who gets to decide that it doesn't matter what the right value is it's too high not whether we get the exact right value who cares we're never going to be exact right value the point is it's clearly too high and we can see that because we have a very large trade deficit sort of like you know it's just the supply and demand service is really think you can one on one all the breads to run on the store well maybe should raise the price one why don't the economy one hundred one cause i'm not an economist so that's a balance of thought well i'm mad i am a financial journalist that when the question becomes for me who benefits from that wealth transfer if you devalue the dollar you'd have a lot of workers in the u.s. would benefit because some of them they would have jobs wouldn't you didn't previously have jobs it's pretty good to me oh ok well let's back up a second ok so to devalue the dollar when you going to do it again print a lot of money or you could i mean you could you could. perhaps persuade china to stop buying dollars if they were to be insistent saying no we're going to keep doing it you could play a little game with them go away you want to buy dollars will buy one and see who

loses that one they would lose because they're paying too much for the dollars ok but but right now during these times wouldn't we expand the money supply wouldn't the fed stimulate the economy and print money and order to devalue the dollar well it could if you didn't get cooperation from trying to get that would be an option so then who benefits from that because we're going to be more competitive it will improve as wall street benefits from wall street be very unhappy wall street wants the high dollar because their money goes further in china and they fear inflation like anything so wall street be very unhappy with it which is probably why we're not doing it right now but what a high dollar mean high interest rates which why would wall street want that they're broke they're using these low interest rates to roll over the debt in the credit markets to finance their speculation road typically typically high dollar it's more of an associate with higher interest rates so they generally don't want lower interest rates we have lower interest rates now to spur the economy and again i can't see why anyone would want higher interest rates but who's benefiting from those low interest rates right now well we're seeing a lot of people refinancing their homes they're benefiting we're having more demand in the economy more jobs so

a lot of workers are benefiting so yes so in general it's a good policy but i mean unemployment is still so high you know behind wall street yet but we've seen wall street take all the cash and zero percent all this easy money market at the fed we've seen reserves go up we've seen them take this money and speculate and chase yield where we haven't seen the kind of returns and then into the housing market or unemployment that you would want their name where they can make money in a high interest rate environment to that's not the issue is so it's really not that you can find lots of ways for them to make money again they're when they're thinking about the dollar overseas they want to high dollar because that means their money goes much further and most of all they fear inflation so printing a lot of money i mean we don't see much inflation but you know if you're concerned first and foremost about inflation you'd rather have a print less money and in fact if you look at the federal reserve board represented the banks who sit on the fed been very opposed to the expansionary monetary policy . let me ask you this then mr baker dr baker respectfully how can you be sure

that to be. well fine then you really open up the floodgates no i'm just kidding but ok we've seen great reporting on on for example how why i phones are manufactured in china and it's not just because of cheap labor it's because over forty years manufacturing has gone overseas and with it has gone logistics are indeed all of the support over a lot of it for manufacturing so how can you be sure that just affecting the value of the dollar would bring jobs back anytime soon it would not bring back would stop them from flowing over there we continue to see a flow of jobs to china and other countries we're not going to bring them all back just by lowering the dollar the point is it's a really big foot in the door we eventually want to rebuild a lot of those the just sick systems we still have them with autos i mean this is one of the great victories you know of the. things wrong but wanted right bailed out the auto industry and as a result of that we don't just have g.m. and chrysler sitting there that would otherwise be bankrupt we have a whole network of suppliers we need more of that but you have to start somewhere

it's sort of like if you're trying to plant a garden well you need water you need soil if you don't have that you don't have a garden but you also need see you do it take time for the plants to grow but you got to have the ingredients in a lower dollar is really key part of that story ok let me ask about the other maybe ingredients in the mix we heard the c.e.o. of cisco which cisco is a company that has forty three billion dollars parked overseas he says no way is he going to bring that back with the rate that foreign earnings are profits are taxed at he says it's easier right now to do business in canada the u.k. russia china india that it is in the united states so how would you get companies to bring any business back here without dealing with issues like that but he's lobbying for tax cuts of course he's going to say that the labor costs are far and away more important than the tax treatment obviously he maybe doesn't know it but he still has a lot of business in the united states so someone should tell him that he should ask himself for their tax treatment. such that it makes them profitable to be here having a huge effect on the role of prices and they're always going to obviously they

always complain they want you'd rather pay less tax and so of course if you could post story there you know lower my taxes or you know never open another factor in the u.s. or want to say that i hear you there that's a fair point really quickly before we go what happens if you're wrong dr baker if you do all this you devalue the dollar and the jobs don't come back what's the consequence or to see anything really bad from that you know you know so just to push it down further i mean at some point you know we're going to stop buying imports or we're going to buy domestically produced goods at some point we'll have to say about that i really appreciate you being on the show it's always such a pleasure to talk to you and i can't wait to see you friday night debate jeffrey tucker i will be there good to be debating him in washington we'll have him on the show friday to be defending the will be honest here with me and i was very railing against it thanks for being on the show and that was dean baker he is an economist he is also a co-director at the center for economic policy research. and still ahead joe weisenthal thinks savers and retirees should quit whining about lousy interest rates he and capital accounts dimitry kofi anan will battle it out but first your

closing market number as. it were just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old until she told the truth. i'm a confession i am a total ghetto princess i love driving hip hop music loud and pretty. but it was kind of a bit yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without you she has played. oh oh oh oh. oh oh. 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 that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charged welcome is a big issue. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it's already been made who can you trust no one who is human view with the global machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sessions when nobody dares to ask we. do. question morning.

welcome back capital account viewers our friend joe weisenthal a business insider has a message for you let's look at it he says dear savers and retiree's stop whining about those lousy rates are getting from the bank he goes on he says sorry but it's time we took on one of the most sacred cow demographics in the world savers specifically we're going to address the people who whine about how they're getting such paltry rates on their savings accounts including c.d.'s you hear all the time bernanke is zero interest rate policy is screwing over savers and retirees bernanke is even screwing over your grandma while you sure do hear all the time especially if you're watching the show because we talk about that all the time here on capital account so to battle it out we've got joe here deputy editor of business insider joe weisenthal is in new york.