mark and here in studio is producer of capital account dimitri kofi anna and i am going to moderate a very evenly and diplomatically so that this is really just between dimitri and joe so joe let's just start with you and get right into it why should savers and retirees stop whining that after their hard labor they can't save or earn any money while wall street which brought down the economy gets to speculate with cheap cash . the fundamental problem is complaining about low interest rates is that i mean first of all everyone is annoyed when they can't make money we all want to make money on our investments we all want to get ahead but the fundamental problem is that the economy is lousy there isn't much inflation and the time like this nobody can get any return to it's not just savers it's regular investors it's people vest and treasuries as people who invest in the real economy this is still a pretty depressed market and there's should be nothing special about people who put their money in risk free institutions there's no special reason why they should

get a good rate on their money facts of the matter is the number one thing that investors want right now is security and liquidity and so you see them rushing for bonds in the u.s. and canada and germany basically anywhere that looks risk free and so that's basically what's happening with people who have their money in c.v.s. or other retirement accounts everyone wants what they have which is risk free returns and when everyone wants to you're not going to get very you're not going to get paid very well to hold that hold that what we typically hear is average turn of money rather than return on what everybody is concerned about so demitri just basically saying hey you know nobody can get returns in this investment why are savers special. well joe i didn't actually get to hear the sort of what you're saying i caught it in a way but. i guess what don't you need interest rates to be substantially high in order to create the capital formation that is required in order to spur the kind of

investment that can lead to growth and there's a reason why investors would be demanding higher interest rates because they they want to sit on the sidelines and are ready to invest their capital. capital formation comes about when people see good business opportunities when people see growth for example people or investing or forming capital in china and other emerging markets not because of anything that the central bank is doing or interest rates but because they see real world economic growth they put their money to work they hire employees they build factories because they expect that the economy will give them good returns and then because the real world is offering them potential good returns then financial markets have to compensate so for example so interest rates rise but it doesn't work in reverse you can't create that environment of good businesses or a good climate for capital formation merely by raising rates that gets the cause and effect backwards to me while i'm going to say joe the thing is though that we've had every time we've had a recession and maybe in the early eighty's going to recession we dropped rates as

low as eight and a half percent we had a recession again or greenspan the drop in the three then a drop in again to one and now we're at zero each time we've been dropping them we've been keeping them lower and keeping them lower longer and now we're at zero how much lower can rates go they can't go any lower you can go negative but there's a point i mean the fed is creating credit it's not creating capital right and credit is is just flushing through the pipes of the system and on jarring as much whatever capital is left to use. what do you say to that i mean how do you how do you get an economy going because you've got to differentiate between growth growth and bad grow. i for one am skeptical that the fed the fed has the tools to create growth i think it's doing what it can and i personally my view what i would like to see more fiscal stimulus actual investment into things i think that would probably help i think to some extent the fed is pushing on a string and you look at a lot of the if you look at the effects of q.e. sure they're buying up these assets held by banks but then that money isn't getting

lent out anywhere and it's just sitting in excess reserves held by the banks so it is kind of pointless and there is no. there's only there's pretty marginal effects of all this stuff but it is not the reason why rates are so low it is not the reason investors all around the world are stuck in these risk free investments because throughout europe and the u.s. right now due to the mediocre economy and basically the crisis stage in europe there's just an incredible demand for liquid risk free investment and until that demand eases there's just going to be no way that anyone can make money on a risk free and i question why people think that saving which is i understand that there are good reasons to save as an individual but as the whole benefits society of the least why anyone thinks in this environment people would pay them much for their saved capital of an interesting question but i'm going to bring up the inflation argument that's when they talk about joe you don't think we have inflation right. inflation the government measures very low and i know that there

is going to be people who say that there are alternative measures out there but the fact of the matter is that it appears especially in the big ones like housing wages the things that really matter to people closing sued is been volatile but that disinflation and deflation is still very real well this is what a commentary said and i want to read it and let you respond to what they said joe is right there is no inflation my plumber charged me fifteen hundred dollars for a three hour job the second time in as many months i'm willing to pay him with monopoly money in contrast at my local dollar store i can buy a fake al and other made in china junk for five dollars a piece very exciting with the current trend in a few years my plumber will sue me for my house but i will be able to live in my garage and hoard cheap chinese junk what a sick drain i responded like that. it's a funny comment and you know everyone has these anecdotal cases so whenever you

point out that disinflation is the dominant theme oh i paid fifteen hundred dollars for my plumber or oh you know spend all this at the grocery store and everyone can identify certain things i don't see any reason to disbelieve the general numbers if you think that there's a big conspiracy and that the government is lying about solutions to to sticks i suppose that's an issue although it still actually doesn't really change the fact that still people are prioritizing savings in return of capital look i'm sure you could guess all the time who say that the dominant theme right now is safety and return of capital i hear a lot so even if there is inflation even if it is higher than what the government state it doesn't change the fact that with so many people just wanting safety and security you're not going to get paid very much to save right but you know that's the thing though that's that's the whole point that interest rates you have to look at interest rates in terms of what they really are and if the cost of living is higher than what the government reporting then interest rates have to reflect that and give savers a real return so ever shouldn't be getting a negative return and that if you're never going to own you're going. his booms

misallocation of capital are never going to have the recession of the depression that's required and each time the fed has met the recession with lowering interest rates that's why i made the point each time different the lower them lower and longer the fed's actually creating the recessionary environment. well i don't this certainly by the idea that we have to have recessions or i mean i understand the austrian argument about misallocation of capital but the third to the better is when we're in a crisis stand i think because of the basically there's almost no safety safety to be found anywhere in europe between the banks and the sovereigns you're just going to get there's now truth huge glut of people who are not concerned about rates at all all they want is to be sure that they vest they put x. amount of capital into an institution and that at some point they can access it as long as such a huge part of the world economy is operating like that and the long is the really aren't that many great real world opportunities to invest in the u.s. or europe there's nothing i don't believe there's anything the fed can do to

guarantee people money there are just too much demand for safety and savings well joe it seems like they can guarantee wall street money wall street is getting cheap cash courtesy of the fed is zero percent they're able to access that and speculate with that or they're able to park it at the fed and get interest paid on their excess reserves so why should they benefit with getting interest in even though it's low if you have billions of dollars that interest payment is going to get just some more money than if you're you know grandma who's being penalized and not making anything. i was listening is kind of repairing yeah ok. it's not like look contrary to what people say wall street banks are making money hand over fist these days they can even squeeze some water from a stone you're in there but the fact of the matter is wall street earnings have been dismal for a quarter of the quarter now and you just look at the reports of bank of america citigroup j.p. morgan bank of america not much of a penny stock really are just so sick of the matter is all people talk about oh

wall street is having this great free ride at the expense of the fed that doesn't appear to be. actually bearing out and your results the numbers don't bear that out look at goldman sachs that had a horrendous year in two thousand and eleven despite you know q.e. two for much of the year didn't actually help the company because there's no no let me let the banks fail let me get some money because i'm any worse off in the long run to me to go i don't know joe that's just not true the entire region of the banks or even exist because the government stepped in and that's what you want to do is about the entire banking system would collapse because they've been living on the cheap money it's not a coincidence that the money printing that we've seen over the past forty years has coincided with the financial sector growing by leaps and bounds not joe you got ten seconds and i got to wrap it up. i agree the government has done a lot to prop up the banks there's no question about that but the idea that they're having a big bonanza or they're making a fortune on speculation i don't book ok well thank you so much both of you guys for being here and do get it out it's a conversation we will continue to go on and joe as long as you write posts like that we'll want to continue to talk about it with yes that was deputy editor of

business insider joe weisenthal and producer dimitri kofi anan is here a capital account and that's all we have time for that's it for our show please follow me on twitter at lauren letter to get you through until tomorrow remember right here in capital account have a great night. was shot four times in total and i want to use it. three of the boys who are still in my body. people should be allowed to defend themselves wherever they are gone from the law by these people are not sure i've association. basically retired military we

love to shoot holes and i'm sorry if you don't that the bullet comes out here and this makes it go bang and if what's in front of here is going to die and that's all the training you really really need raise your hand there's something been. killing what i want to build up the only one these are the streets. we can live without a gun hopefully we will never have to use the weapons for self defense but we should be prepared for class including the teacher i think was. seventeen students . six and one of seven last july. the official key obligation to go on the phone the i pod touch from the. lights on the. video on demand. will

come. and omissions feed now in the palm of your. most us citizens are unaware of the fact that that's how their money's being spent to meddle and influence and interfere in other nations affairs it seems the us can't stop cutting it especially if it means a bigger slice of the pie for them we'll show you why this so-called democracy promotion is anything but. since i've been traveling the world and teaching people how to get rid of their pesky dictators so you come up with these three easy steps that's right overthrowing a government as easy as one two three what looks like a spontaneous uprising could actually be a carefully planned strategy but who's really behind these how to lessen and

revolution. i want to make sure that people understand actually drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties. the statement by the president doesn't seem to match what many others are saying so it was an exaggeration or a downright lie hundreds of civilians many of them children have died in this drone war so who decides when their lives are less important than the u.s. sense of security. it is wednesday february first five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine here watching our t.v. . let's talk first about egypt where clashes and drama continue to unfold on the streets there and tensions between the egyptian officials and the u.s. government are spiking as you may have heard of gyptian authorities are preventing americans working for u.s. based non-governmental organizations from leaving the country they're talking about

putting them on trial in a dispute over the group's lack of official registration with the government many of those americans including the son of an obama cabinet member have taken refuge at the u.s. embassy in cairo pro-democracy groups have long made it gyptian uncomfortable and we've seen in recent decades the u.s. shifting resources to focus on so-called democracy promotion programs throwing money and political support and forces in line with washington's agenda now critics call this political meddling amelle mellower a more subtle effort to create regime change in the case of egypt we'll take a look at some video from today as you can see this is still very much a country in turmoil the elections there may be over and despite the clear winners of those elections there's a lot that's far from settled there part of that a sign that whatever pro-democracy groups are there now from the u.s. and other western countries doing well their mission might be failing but take

a listen to middle east expert dr walid faris what he told our team yesterday many n.g.o.s are reading in washington they have been pushing for the so-called arab spring or spring going to egypt in the revolt in egypt so-called to do here in the last as a result of that and instead what we see now is that useless networks should be that was the brotherhood or this is the result of the arab spring in egypt is not going to be immediately a secular democracy we're going to begin to go through a an era of islamic fundamentalism well to get a better understanding of this reaction jihad hospice gives us a little history and perspective about groups created under the gras the guise of democracy promotion. this is what u.s. backed regime change used to look like back in the days in a bid to ensure u.s. political and economic interests were safeguarded cia backed coup d'etat was ousted democratically elected leaders from hama knows

a death in iran to salvador allende in chile. in their place all too often brutal dictatorships and governments that committed heinous crimes against their people. by the one nine hundred eighty s. the reign of terror that blazed across latin america by washington tension was too much for most people to stomach to replace the overt support for dictatorships a new concept for regime change was born one that sounds and looks better to democracy promotion the concept of democracy promotion is simple finance training and politically back local opposition forces around the world that support washington's agenda dr william robinson is the foremost expert on regime change to democracy promotion he wrote the book promoting poly arche in latin america. eastern europe with the velvet revolutions in africa in the middle east oil all over all over the world and so the us set up these different mechanisms now for

penetrating the civil societies and the political systems that have countries that are going to be intervened and to assure that the outcomes would be pleasing to to washington's foreign policy objective we do this through surrogates and we do this through non-governmental organizations and we do it through people who are less suspecting the evil that may lurk behind their actions then perhaps they were before. have we learned some lessons of that guard you bet do we do it better you bet is it still just as heinous as it always was you bet so while the goals remain the same it's no longer the cia but the u.s. agency for international development usa id and its partners spearheading this effort alan. weinstein one of the founders of the national endowment for democracy explained to the washington post in one thousand you one a lot of what we do know was done covertly by the cia twenty five years ago and like the cia usa id the national endowment for democracy and

a slew of similar organizations receive funding from congress millions and millions of us taxpayer dollars go every year into funding for political organizations from campaigns in different countries around the world that promote us agenda and most us citizens are unaware of the fact that that's how their money's being spent to meddle and influence and interfere in other nations affairs the concept of facilitating regime change to democracy promotion has garnered widespread criticism not just abroad but also here at home congressman ron paul once wrote it is particularly orwellian to call u.s. manipulation of foreign elections promoting democracy how would we americans feel if for example the chinese arrived with millions of dollars to support certain kennedy deemed friendly to china and use terrible we use our taxpayers' money to go and use our military and our cia and these programs to say this is what you ought to do and influence and there's no authority for that it doesn't work. and that was

janet hospice reporting from washington so let's talk about these efforts and whether or not there might be some major changes in what these pro-democracy groups are capable of accomplishing and what this could mean let's go now to robert naiman he's director at just foreign policy hey there robert i know this is a subject you're pretty familiar with some of these groups to name a few of the international republican institute the national democratic institute the national endowment for democracy these are groups that do a lot to stir the pot internationally in favor of the u.s. government even if it doesn't favor the majority of the people in this countries what do you think is the most important thing that people in the u.s. should know about these groups. well first of all. then when they're described in the media as democracy promotion organization that covers. a lot of dirty history the international republican institute of was involved in the helped organize

really the who we need that's not promoting democracy the head of the international republican institute praised the coup in venezuela that's not promoting democracy the. national democratic institute in the international publican too went two hundred and two thousand and nine with gin and dated in the election which took place under the new regime election which the organization for american see the organization merits it refused to send observers to the legitimate that election in order to allow us to support the successor government to the coup regime which comes with consequence brodeur's that we will see today terms of the level of violence there that is a direct result of the collapse of the political bruised by the coup so that the call these organizations democracy promotion covers up a lot of dirty history that's just as true that we know where we sort of got the

smoking gun who they were doing the opposite. promoting democracy that is not to say that the egyptian government for example should be cheered for is a crackdown that had been engaged in no crackdown not just against the u.s. flying its groups of but also again. that you can n.g.o.s but it does. say that we should hope you with skepticism shrinks get to the claims that these u.s. funded organization are going to hopefully tomorrow we should understand the. the opposition that some of the opposition to these groups is legit in some. the suspicion is legit and people really question whether in a police like you tip for example where there is so much suspicion of the united states just advice because in the last thirty years or so what do you make of that's what i was that's what i was going to say robert this suspicion has been

going on for decades what do you think is different about this incident now do you think that some of these people that are kind of seeking refuge as we speak in the u.s. embassy in cairo do you think they did something that really made people mad this time or is there just sort of a shift in how egyptian authorities are dealing with them you know i think of course i don't know exactly what the organization needs to do judging from press reports to me what the military. musicians for cynical purpose namely the egyptian military regime is trying to tar the. you know democracy and human rights and you community as an agent of foreign powers and it's the same time that the egyptian military is receiving one point three billion dollars of u.s. military and that is understood by your gyptian military as the price of the

peace through. his rule and security cooperation with the united states so it's really a park on the kind of bar with gyptian military which is the water for one point three billion dollars to complain about you know these small n.g.o.s getting money you know so i think it's important to to get some more perspective on all of this we can talk about egypt because certainly what we're seeing right now is a result of some of this but i want to go back to where it all began talk about yugoslavia and robert we will bring you back into the conversation in just a minute. but ten years ago an uprising in serbia overthrew president slobodan milosevic but the careful guidance and financial support of the united states now today the same activists train opposition groups around the globe exporting how to lessons you could say and revolution but as art is loosely cavanagh reports the game of regime change can sometimes be dangerous. but this is the business of

selling a lot of sky high heels barely there clothes revolutionary styles exported in the fashion capitals of the world hello i'm moderately evil on my rich and this is the business of selling well revolution is fresh exporting how to lessons and revolution aided by the democracy capital of the world democracies after all aren't born knowing how to run themselves a decade ago marriage launched the serbian student movement that helped oust president slobodan milosevic. the group was called out for resistance and adore the now familiar symbol of the clenched fist but behind the spontaneity of the uprisings was a carefully researched strategy guided by the west no boy somalia is a balkans columnist who's been chronicling the events in serbia since one nine hundred ninety nine the or poor movement itself was just

a tiny student organization that it got subverted taken over the operatives then expanded it turned it into a branding empire and ended up basically one ing the ground the grassroots level of the revolution thus turning it into an astro turf where they were run by the needy which very openly goes in and says our goal is to more promote democracy a new york times investigation documented the extent of u.s. assistance according to journalist roger cohen poor was no ramshackle students group but a well oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the u.s. but the objective is regime change the objective is to install a government that will execute orders the worst thing about all this is that it's undermining a concept that enabled the united states to claim moral leadership in the world in the first place with milosevic gone ivan marriage now spends his time advice ing activists abroad. ever since i've been traveling the world and teaching people how

to get rid of their pesky dictators so you come up with these three easy steps so you too can get in on the action and laugh your way to freedom the video was made by students at the school of authentic journalism in mexico for narco news t.v. but ivan has helped develop a video game called a force more powerful in which players can practice scenarios like organizing mass protests and overthrowing dictators today outdoors called canvas and with the help of the internet their methods and symbols are exploited the world over from the color revolutions in georgia and ukraine to venezuela and the arab spring uprisings in egypt william engdahl has written for over thirty years about washington secret geopolitics he's convinced that canvas is not acting alone the instigators of those so-called spontaneous protest was twitter revolts in cairo and tunisia and so forth have all been pretty organized and should you assume some of the people leaders of

the protests have been trained in belgrade in serbia by all poor activists financed by the state department. this thing has the state department and u.s. intelligence all over it three easy steps and that's all it takes to overthrow your very own government so this revolution become a commodity a product that could be branded popish to mass produce an export out all across the globe well just like ivan's video this too of course is a spoof but the game of regime change is quite real and it's unintended consequences can be downright dangerous. altimetry the american taxpayer i think is getting. the short end of the bargain because there are there bankrolling people that are going around the world fomenting astroturf revolutions that are eventually backfiring and they're backfiring all over the place and once the people find out who was behind this their anger to. to the american government can people once you are by service you can be over.

an easy recipe but the aftermath may be the hardest. of washington. all right robert i want to bring you back into this conversation let's talk here about this connection between the egyptian arab spring and what we saw happen a decade before and serbia former yugoslavia. well i think the connection presented is a little bit overstated we don't know nobody knows every thing that went behind every group that participated in the january twenty fifth uprising in egypt and i don't. know been reported that some of these people you know intended workshops in the day to attribute everything that happened to dark conspiracy by washington i think it's a mistake and it doesn't really do just doesn't do justice to sacrifice is made by

people in egypt to overthrow what most people recognize was brutal dictatorship. and also i think it gives too much credit for being an unseen hand and also the good the fact that the u.s. for encouraging this beginning was opposed. at least you know if you look at the initial statements of visual secretary of state clinton was president biden who are these are friends of ours not a dictator bargains with the senses through the the u.s. was a major obstacle. and it was perceived this touched by the people in the street in january twenty fifth open that they saw the u.s. is behind the bar pretty low what about i mean i agree like i can definitely see your point it's giving the u.s. a little too much credit to say.