we basically had glass steagall which that's the wall street that existed for that period of time where banks were not allowed to do this proprietary trading and get involved in securities business so you know if we're inching back to ever so slightly in that direction we're certainly not reimposing the glass steagall by any means is that an emasculation i don't think so i mean if anything you see the growth in the proliferation of hedge funds and by the way a lot of these traders who were on prop desks at the major banks now moving over to hedge funds the same type of activity is going down and we see the explosion of high frequency trading which is making the markets crazy more like a casino than ever so i think it's really hard to argue i mean you might get it from some of the top big wigs of wall street who are good you know cry and a little bit about the loss of their propped but i mean if anything i think we're just seeing

a transformation of wall street there's more speculative activity than ever i mean i don't see this as a masculine i mean they're they're they're upset about one year that their bonuses are not going to be a record but come on i mean there's still out there in the rest of the economy there's still a lot of people suffering and if you don't think there's going to be there was some kind of backlash against what we saw and the huge bonuses and really aster cosell the question what does wall street contribute to the real economy i can think about and i'm not talking about traditional firms that raise capital and you know help to start up entrepreneurs i'm talking about all this speculation i mean for most people you know it that's translated into you know higher fuel costs higher food cause higher cost for pretty much everything and i think you could understand the public displeasure with this and the reason that policy may be shifted a little bit but i don't see it as a masculine. and like you said it's this new normal where we're gauging things

based on the worst of times not you know a broader look at things and there's this report too from the new york times that the f.c.c. actually has been giving waivers to all of these big big firms that committed fraud three hundred fifty intense as over the last decade but before we go because i just have a minute left i want to ask you about this ron paul story there's an analysis in bloomberg saying that he could be getting the clout he needs to within the republican party bring a lot more attention to the issue of the fed and possibly push for that bigger audit that he wanted or changing the fed's mandate from a dual mandate to you know just the one issue of price stability do you think that we could and should be looking at these measures from the fed while i have no problem with of fed audit i mean we saw the fed basically handed out twenty nine trillion in low interest stories zero interest loans to the financial sector was that necessary we see the fed doing these massive multi hundred billion forex swaps

with. other foreign central banks i got no problem with that the elimination of the fed i think ron paul stands for that a little bit i don't think that's necessary i think it's good to have it is to to should which you know let's say he sets the interest rate on us of money but basically the fed and the treasury should switch roles i mean the treasury should be the one who credits bank accounts like the fed does now and the fed should be the one that is shoes to control the interest rate was set the interest rate where it was i mean if we if the treasury in the bed or if they consolidated both under the treasury i think we'd have a much better system that's a really interesting idea i'm mad to bring you want to get if you'll come to talk about that more i also love to talk about zero percent money now you can resist the excited we're out of time for now though thanks so much for being on the show that was mike norman chief economist at john thomas financial.

ok before we go dmitri is six so wish him well we can banter back and forth today with shannon and the team but this gives me the opportunity to respond to some feedback which is great because on friday i tweeted one of my concerns about the job numbers that kind of started this firestorm so this is what i said about the jobs numbers i said anyone cheering the jobs numbers please tell me why i should be excited that over five point five million people forty two point nine percent of the unemployed have been out of work six months are more is gives me a pit in my stomach now this part a conversation about what are the solutions to unemployment and more broadly the us economic problems dylan ratigan tweeted capitalism requires capital seven hundred

trillion dollars and dark credit insurance is our current market foundation start there really good point we couldn't agree more hopefully we'll have him on the show soon to talk about that my tweet also spurred some people who disagreed with me vehemently and were very excited about the jobs numbers chad's miss said it was because it's a start and better than nine percent unemployment let's pull up not down robert ma she said it's clearly been a long time since you've been excited about anything provocative in a very boring way sorry to bore you mario and john johns made his point by tweeting to me hopefully you'll lose your job and hopefully you have nowhere to turn and you have to live off unemployment insurance then you'll see it differently wow i mean wanting someone to lose their job is a little bit of a harsh way to disagree with them but. of course if i was one of the people who had

gotten a job in this last month one of those two hundred forty three thousand i'm sure i would be very happy to have a pay check absolutely their plight is important but i sometimes think that the shortsighted media analysis and market reaction to a good job report a bad job report month to month distracts us from the bigger picture and dealing with the structural issues which are still a major problem then i read author and financial advisor john piece posted on business insider and it summed up a lot of what i was trying to point out so i suggest you read it because it's good with a lot of things i can't just reciting here had a lot of interesting things to say about the revisions of these monthly numbers for one of course the broader perspective is this in the numbers it takes about one hundred twenty five thousand new jobs to keep up with population growth each month that means we created roughly one hundred twenty thousand jobs that helped bring down the unemployment number the us has created almost three million jobs in the last two years that means we only need another seven million to get back to where

we were in two thousand and seven. excuse me i have to call it's going around then there's the issues of wages in income in getting at the kind of job creation we're seeing he post this chart pointing out take a look at it how real disposable personal income has gone for the last since two thousand after rising in line with inflation for a very long time so disposable income look at that it's below the rise in the c.p.i. and inflation also he points out government transfer payments have been an increasing share of disposable income since the beginning of two thousand and eight and then there's the b.l.s. occupational projections through twenty twenty five job titles with the biggest projected increases in numerical terms let's see them registered nurses retail sales persons home health aides personal care aides and office clerks of those the first requires no more than an associate's degree the last a high school diploma and the middle three less than high school of the top twenty occupations just five

require an associate's degree or more so there's a little food for thought before you go into debt for a college education for one but all of this should be a lot of food for thought when we talk about jobs numbers we believe that was the point of my tweet i hope now you don't hope i lose my job. i hope i don't anyway moving on there is a youtube channel dedicated to i guess going after peter schiff the name is a pun that i can't say on t.v. but i'm sure you can guess it peter schiff they've been positive towards us before here's an example recently they put up one of our videos saying lauren lyster teaches economic whatever peter schiff the word of the day deflation but then they posted a video talking about how we're. saying we're pushing austrian economics as the solution to the problems anyway i don't know exactly what they said because we responded and we actually invited them on the show to tell us you know what their

problem is to talk about it with them and they took down the video there's the e-mail saying they took it down and also evidently their objective is not to attack our team but actually they invest funds looks like in alternative media they see it as an opportunity so that's a little time to think about but we wanted to clarify for anyone who thinks as they think we're not austrians on our show we have austrians keynesians people who subscribe to m. and t. as mike norman does that deflationists we don't endorse a specific ideology we do endorse alternative thought and i just want to leave you with that oh no this kind of funny segment we did oh excuse me i can't go to that we have no time we're going to leave you with that thank you so much for tuning in and i'm sure i'll be able to give you more of that viewer feedback later in the week in the meantime feel free to follow me on twitter at lauren lyster give us feedback on the show a you tube dot com slash capital account you can see that we take it all very seriously and if we don't respond you on the show you can often see our producers

responding right there on the boards stating this week we have a great lineup nomi prins is going to be on tomorrow i'm sure we're going to talk more wall street and in the meantime from everyone here at capital account have a great night.

it's. suitable because should you it is clear that efforts to end violence must be accompanied by a dialogue between all political forces syria's president confirmed that he is ready for such work breaking news this hour syria's opposition signals it welcomes russia's mediating efforts in trying to bring them and the government to the negotiating table this after president assad assured russia's foreign minister of his readiness to talk to all political sides and promise syria's new constitution will be soon put to a vote. and as russia stepping up diplomatic efforts to solve the crisis in syria major european and gulf states recall their ambassadors from damascus. greek

standoff clashes in the athens streets as protesters voice anger and massive new jobs cuts will coalition member struggle to agree to more austerity measures to secure our vital second bailout. and a discovery that could reveal previously unknown forms of life russian scientists drill deep into a subglacial lake in the coldest place on earth exploring the significance of this rarefied ng with our correspondent it had. now you're up to date back with more in about thirty minutes but first the ilona show stay with us. welcome to the ilona show where you get the real headlines with none of the mercy working live in washington d.c. that's not going to take a look at what countries could be planning next in regards to syria as u.s.

lawmakers say that they're working on other options after u.n. security council resolution was vetoed by china and russia over the weekend or scott horton is going to join us but a new report from the bureau of investigative journalism shows damning evidence that u.s. drone strikes in pakistan target those who go to help after an initial strike and even target civilians at funerals so how much longer will the u.s. government allow the cia to keep their data secret we're going to speak to marcy wheeler about the reactions to this report and you know to some very politically tinge as during the super bowl this year we're going to talk about the insane amounts of money that are pouring in from all sides to fuel political debate in this country was we have all that morphy tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. well this monday there is no shortage of big news going on around the world

americans to be tried in egypt the u.s. closing its embassy in damascus and continuing rhetoric heating up over iran now for once it's been one of those days where the mainstream media has actually chosen to give ample airtime to real news rather than just the typical partisan tit for tat i don't mean the campaign stories were completely absent but just for once they weren't the only thing that the mainstream media shone a light on. the u.s. closes its embassy in syria and is recommending that all u.s. citizens leave the country immediately they are all americans not to even consider travel to syria because they say they simply cannot guarantee anybody's security in that country hundreds killed in the streets of syria as the government tries to crush a revolution there this latest deadly bombardment comes on the heels of the weekend strike which killed about two hundred people at the syrian government we're told the state department saying has refused to address its security concerns and one of those major concerns was the possibility of some type of al qaida action

egypt plans to send forty four people including some americans to trial meanwhile egypt's military led government plans to put one thousand americans on trial for allegedly using foreign funds to create unrest in the country or iranian regime is never going to come to the negotiating table in good faith and they're not going to stop their nuclear weapons program i think the only answer is some kind of regime change. now in light of these stories and the international ramifications of the actions of state and non-state actors in the case of the americans arrested in egypt there's another really big story today the mainstream media unfortunately has chosen to ignore the in talking about international relationships and perceptions and talking about the deaths of innocent civilians what we see the mainstream media doing today picking and choosing when those civilian deaths matter where to lay down their moral judgments if you this weekend a report was released by the bureau of investigative journalism or british

organization that we've spoken about before on this show and they've been trying to work with human rights activists journalists civilians in pakistan to get more information on how many civilian deaths u.s. drone strikes of really caused let's not forget the cia's drone program is secret therefore they don't release any figures or statistics and it wasn't until last week of the president even acknowledged it existed public. and when he finally did what he was asked a question about it at the google plus hangout there we heard the president say that the u.s. drone campaign in pakistan is a targeted focused effort he also downplayed civilian casualties and told those listening to the drone program has not caused a huge number of them if we can check the figures how are we to know how can we counter his words and so let's get back to this damning report report by the bureau of investigative journalism they have some numbers to offer they found that since obama took office three years ago between two hundred eighty two and five hundred and thirty five civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than

sixty children but it gets even worse than that to where you have to question if civilians were killed by accident or on purpose so what they found is that the cia's drone campaign in pakistan has killed at least fifty civilians who had gone to help rescue victims as an after an initial drone strike those that run to help were hit and a follow up attack investigation also found more than twenty civilians have been killed in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners and one example after a high ranking militant had been killed in a strike his funeral was considered bait to get another done fortunately that funeral was attended by almost five thousand people so in order to get one target the cia chose to put the lives of innocent civilians at risk which resulted in many deaths so this kind of information should make anybody out there sick to their stomach this kind of information should make every journalist in america call for more accountability over the secrecy of the cia's drone program to stop if it's being done in our name then we need a lot more transparency if we choose to cover government crackdowns in other

countries show honest concern for the deaths of civilians we need to also care about the blood that's on our government's hands so while the mainstream media spent the day covering some real news in syria and in egypt we have to ask why they allow the secrecy of our drone program to continue to refuse to ask questions about it especially when an investigation like this comes out but for some reason when it comes to the damage caused by our own government's drone program that's where they chose to miss. all right so let's talk more about this report from the bureau of investigative journalism could it finally put more pressure on the obama administration to force the cia to disclose more details or is the media doing a really good job of making sure that this goes by without much fear i mentioned at the top of the show that this report wasn't even touched by the mainstream cable channels now there was a report in the new york times this morning but the spin put out by an anonymous

u.s. official in that article may show us just what the administration's strategy is going to be the quote reads as follows one must wonder why an effort that is so carefully gone after terrorists who plot to kill civilians has been subjected to so much misinformation let's be under no illusions there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help al qaeda succeed so now if you question the drone program that make you a terrorist sympathizer joining me to discuss this is marcy wheeler blogger and that marcy thanks so much for joining us tonight before we get into the new york times and you know what the officials are saying here let's just go back to the report and this investigation of the details that revealed you know how to how damning and damaging to think that something like that is. but i think one of the things that's most damning about it is that they actually went and they named the civilians that they say have been killed by american strikes so what they've done is really increase the quality of information that's out there about these strikes

as compared to what the cia gives us which is nothing or obama's quote the other day which was you know plus or the cia claiming nobody has died or maybe just a few people have died i mean what they've got is really very specific information and and one of the things that i found really important about the report was when they went to see whether people were being killed if they went to rescue people they said we started with fifteen attacks ten we found credible five we found not to be credible so it's not like they're going in rubber stamping stories of u.s. retaliation against civilians trying to help people who've been hit by a drone i mean they're going in and checking in trying to find evidence for it and as compared to what we get from the government it's much richer in data now when you say credible reports that's one of the interesting things here too is that there have been little tidbits out there right in i guess you can say the new york times or any other newspapers and by other media organizations before they've never put them all together like this. yes actually one of the things that they quote in

the report is job the war of who in his book on the triple agent this was the bombing in khost talked in specific about the the funeral drone targeting that you just mentioned and he had incredible sources for that book so to then say that you know this funeral targeting practice is made up by by the bureau of investigative journalism is nonsense because nobody is at the same time questioning where it's reporting so you know it is credible work has done some of this before we had david wrote it in the new york times who was held captive by the taliban talking about drone strikes but you're right nobody's putting it together in a database with actual dates and numbers and names attached to each attack and i think that's where we really need to get to force the government to give us that same kind of data also in that sense that we do you think of this is finally something that might turn the tide you know or change the tide a little bit that we we hear a bomb of finally acknowledging this publicly which i think you could say was

a big move but now if you have more reports if you have more investigations done by the bureau of this to get of journalism or by others can it finally force them to be more transparent to disclose more details about it. well you know the ministration is sort of kind of saying they're going to release more information about the anwar locky drone strike which was in yemen. so they are beginning to recognize that they're beginning to suffer religion i'm a see issue here i think one of the other things that's going on is david petraeus has actually been less gung ho about targeting then leon panetta ahead of him before him with the cia and so one of the you're beginning to see interesting leaks coming out of the cia as well because david petraeus isn't giving the counterterrorism center kind of carte blanche to go bomb whoever they want to bomb so we're getting leaks anyway and this report i think is an important part of it but i have read the quote that you raised you know were al qaeda sympathizers if we

asked pakistani journalists and locals to help put names to the people who've been nice strikes. you know that they're obviously trying to push back and ensure there won't be any independent checking of their records in you know possibly in anticipation of them becoming slightly more transparent with it so it's really important to have that independent reporting out there i had to read that just seems ludicrous and i was assuming that you probably agree i hope that you agree that now you have anonymous of course officials because they can't come out on the record because the program is supposed to be secret coming out and making this argument the now if you actually want to get the details of what the government is doing that makes you an al qaeda sympathizer when when when will people stop trying to apply this logic or stop trying to use this logic because we saw much of the same thing you know in the buildup to the war with iraq to write that if you by any means question the idea as to whether or not we should go to war there than you

were unpatriotic or you might be sympathizing with you know we saw a lot of reports about the possibility of al qaeda being there or with saddam hussein. well the other thing about it is the perfect metaphor for the drone campaign right so you've got this very powerful government officials going anonymously to attack independent journal. and it's you know it's it's very parallel to the kind of dissociation and distance that we bring to the drone strikes and also kind of the the. designed ignorance about what happens on the ground i mean so i think they're very parallel and you know leon panetta has also been on the record recently about about drone strikes so it's not like officials aren't being allowed to go make on the record comment so you really have to wonder why the new york times let that go in as an anonymous thought do you think that they should or that they should not have but i don't think that you know in glenn greenwald pointed out today that it doesn't it's the new york times policy on

anonymous sourcing which goes back of course there depakote leading up to iraq or basically says you can't make you cannot quote officials making attacks on people. under the veil of anonymity you either paraphrase them if it's so important you need to get it in but you don't allow them to actually quote something at the same time as you're giving them anonymity so court in the new york times rules they should have done it but it's also i mean it's so it's if this is all about information asymmetry right the government knows what they've been doing with from they've got videos of what they've been doing with drones a couple of journalists go in and fact check it and independently research it and all of a sudden you've got the government you know trying to hide behind this villa secrecy again and you know we at the press should not be encouraging that kind of behavior because it just encourages more secrecy. you know i couldn't agree with you more there too and you know as i started the show open here was that for once i actually

see the cable media out there doing some real news it's not all just fluff today and there is a lot of news going on in the world but you know if we're going to be covering syria or if we wanted to cover libya and bahrain anywhere i think we also have to take into account what's happening to innocent civilians by our own government. and i mean to be fair it is really hard to cover this stuff in the pakistani tribal lands and i think that's what the administration is counting on it's you know it's easier it's still very dangerous to being egypt and even more dangerous to be in syria right now but there's almost nobody in the pakistani tribal lands who's been able to cover this a number of pakistani journalists have been killed for doing so and so there are i think really relying on how difficult it is to access these places to ensure that the story doesn't get out our marcell thanks so much for joining us tonight and you know it's a report that definitely i think needs a lot more people to pay attention to but it's good that somebody finally compiled

all that thanks. are there still much more to come tonight occupy d.c. was addicted from the curse and swear this weekend so explain how it happened and what they can get your hold for the accountant also talk about syria gave us announce that it's suspending its embassy operations in the country but alas scott horton what might come next.

move back are the words echoed by d.c. park police on saturday as they finally advanced on the occupy d.c. encampment had been almost a week since word was let out at the occupy branches in d.c. macpherson square and freedom plaza were going to be evicted and early saturday morning cops got the word that february fourth would be the day of starting as early as five am the police came through the camp explaining that the tent.