peter david seaman thank you. well it's an issue the occupy movement has brought a voice to and one we highlight here at r t it's the sad tale of two america as with the income inequality gap growing and the middle class dwindling the american dream for many is dying and perhaps it's a new york city where this tale can best be told just miles away from the wealthy and luxurious lifestyles manhattan offers is the nation's poorest district stasia churkin to takes us to the bronx and gives us a glimpse into the daily struggles americans there face. welcome to the south bronx. where feeding garbage a daily fight for dignity it is the poorest district in america but. just a twenty minute ride from the wealth of manhattan this is the stop for those whose life is largely a struggle a staggering quarter of a million people are living below the poverty line right here for many it's

a tough life from the get go every second child in the area lives in poverty mothers like recently unemployed asia are livid is ridiculous we all need jobs i have a child i need a job i think maybe the government can do a little bit better than what they're doing now rap group live and work in the south bronx. but. they know the district like the back of their hand mike tyson was in here the a max is the names of celebrities but you know hundreds of young people behind bars. this is the infamous spofford prison. rod starr says industrial dumping into heavily secured areas is causing toxic waste sites we're standing in front of a mountain of garbage it's a dump site for the garbage for the waste of the whole dries the area this he says has resulted in a sixty percent spike in among locals and mr bonner probably not the right

largely an immigrant community the south bronx is seeing mom and pop shops go out of business while the social safety net is disappearing we talk about occupy wall street and the global rebellion is their work airing in two thousand and eleven and are continuing now in two thousand and twelve it's a response to these cutbacks in social services in the interests of corporate power instead enormous sums are being pumped into projects that are far from a priority for those who live here here you have an eight million dollar park. that was built. toxic waste stands empty in the nonresidential area billions of dollars are being misplaced you know and into the hands of the corporations of the rich and it is crazy that it's two thousand and twelve and conditions like this in the bronx with countless trucks passing through drugs and

prostitution are rampant. judge here obesity walks hand in hand with hunger both signs of poverty i don't know how many hundreds of flood pantries in the bronx just like this month got you know their food needs to be two hundred people lined up tuesdays and saturdays look the same here for jobless people out on the street in the mainstream media what we see is a lot is is that it's you know it's our individual responsibility and never look at some of the structural reasons behind this poverty while corporations play a major role in america's policy making process people in places like the south bronx are left in the gutter i don't know if it's coming from the senate i don't know if it's the president's i can't say if it's like the chance or the just the district leader just the people i don't know who i can blame directly but i feel like it's a compilation of all of them everyone is just like not doing enough an up to pick

us up. an economically several decades ago almost half of the south bronx was largely burnt or abandoned a result of a downward spiral of economic decline middle class flight and skyrocketing crime so many streets have by now had a facelift just doesn't plastic surgery the exterior look may have somewhat improved but within the forgotten baro of new york remains destroyed. that's the future going to bertie so once. and for more on this i'm joined by u.s. congressional candidate dan o'connor welcome to the show dan so we just saw this circle a different existence for people living just miles apart what does this say about the state of the u.s. today. liz thanks a lot for having me on. i think is a really important topic here in the u.s. i think everyone is quite aware of it and i think that it's something that is

becoming more and more obvious and it's becoming. increasingly worse and i think it tells us that the direction that we've been going in for a long time is a complete failure the us federal government really actively became involved in the redistribution of wealth process about one hundred years ago and throughout that process we've seen the poverty level get greater the more and more people poverty struck in become greater and the concentration of wealth in this country continues to go into the hands of the few. and the bronchus as part of their forty nine percent of children live below the poverty line in the nation it's one in five i mean why don't we hear much discussion about this from our g.o.p. presidential candidates especially today or the primaries are underway where are we hearing more about this from the. it's

a good question and it's certainly something that should be brought up more often the republicans in washington generally they they embrace the system they endorse the system they call it capitalism even though it really isn't it's crony capitalism i'm running for u.s. congress as a democrat here in new york city i'm originally from new york city i can see it firsthand i can see the tremendous amount of poverty that exists in this city and also you know when you talk about the republicans running for office right now. they've even been asked about this a few times mitt romney doesn't even really want to acknowledge it as a serious problem the democrats we do acknowledge as being a serious problem however a lot of democrats in washington d.c. continue think that they can solve the problem i'm running as a democrat i knowledge that this is a serious problem but i don't think that the politicians can solve it well how can we solve it that how can we reverse this trend that is rising here in the u.s.

sure well as i originally mentioned i think more and more people are becoming aware of this more and more people are out of jobs more and more people are genuinely concerned about the economy right now given the atrocious economic conditions for many many years more and more people are genuinely concerned the internet is a great source of information in helping to move beyond the mainstream media debate who want to talk about things like you know mitt romney's time spent at bain capital which i personally don't care about i am concerned about the people in this country who are poverty stricken and you know we're in the midst of a revolution in this country it's gradual it's growing and i'm happy to be part of it running for congress here in the in the in new york we just have around the midst of a revolution that's a very strong word there why do you say that and what are the signs that it's happening. well occupy wall street's big i've been engaged in it and i've gone down

there myself my district borders on wall street these people are outraged the even the tea party movement you know they criticize the bailouts the trillions of dollars to the large banks and the corporations the occupy wall street people also criticize this and everyone acknowledges that there's a serious problem out there and it's just it's a system that favors the few that favors the corporations and favors the military industrial complex more and more americans are becoming aware of it and while you are running and hoping to address this problem if elected what would you do. every one of the few democrats in washington d.c. that's willing to admit that we're bankrupt and i would be one of the few democrats in d.c. that is willing to admit that the politicians don't have all the solutions to the problems we need to remove a lot of these functions from the hands of the politicians and the bureaucrats and

allow people to solve their own problems this the example that we see in the bronx . is an exact perfect example of the failed the failed war against drugs and this this is a failed policy that's existed for many decades and it's also a perfect example that the redistribution of wealth that washington d.c. continues to try to solve is essentially an enormous failure. dan thank you so much for coming on the show that was u.s. congressional candidate dan o'connor. and that is going to do for now for more on the stories we covered that are to dot com slash usa and you can also check out our you tube page at youtube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter as well we'll be right back here and a half hour. wealthy

british style sun. sometimes right on. markets 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. morning news today violence is once again flared up the film these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are the day.

good afternoon and welcome to capital account i'm lauren lyster here in washington d.c. and ben bernanke testified on capitol hill again today the big question from the media how would last weeks and good u.s. jobs report affect monetary policy while bernanke he actually said the numbers understate weakness in labor but is the debate over the monthly jobs numbers simply moot ronald reagan's former budget director says the numbers are made up so is the b.l.s. the emperor with no clothes and if so why are markets in the media going along with it and greece has agreed to lay off thousands of public workers as talks are

scheduled to continue over more cuts over meeting more terms to get its next dose of troika money politicians and media are bracing for the market's reaction to any development what about the reaction of greek citizens to more austerity without any light visibility and it is dark tunnel. those protesters were chanting out with the nazis not exactly a sign of european brotherhood we'll look at the bailouts cost to society and the u.s. forty eight states have signed on to a twenty five billion dollars settlement with the five biggest banks guilty of foreclosure abuses such as robo signing but who would this provide relief to exactly homeowners or big banks author and former goldman sachs managing director nomi prins will give us the real scoop let's get to today's capital account.

so federal reserve chairman ben bernanke he testified before the senate today last week remember he testified before the house and the media that i saw today was wanting to hear if the good u.s. jobs numbers that came out since bernanke he had last spoke in would change anything about monetary policy or about what he said now remember the jobs report has been deemed good because the headline unemployment number went down a little bit to eight point three percent now bernanke he actually said this understates the weakness of the labor market in that hearing today but here's the thing do these monthly numbers even matter people who crunched them seem to say maybe not david stockman reagan's former budget director and an e-mail that's come

out says you basically can pick and choose what you want from the reports to support your thesis or the trends that you want to highlight he says in short if you spend a little time with these numbers you'll know that they're being made up and this kind of echoes what others that i've been talking about this week john mauldin a financial expert was writing about saying that these numbers are subject to larger visions up or down so taken with a grain of salt and if that's the case and the bureau of labor statistics who puts them out is then the emperor wearing no clothes coming out with these meaningless numbers each month why are markets in the media hanging on them and speaking of news that the markets and the media hang on greek leaders are still in talks over a debt deal that actually got postponed a little bit but then before that they did agree to some more public cuts to workers there's more to come but forget the market and look at the reaction on the streets of greece

ok. so those are some protesters burning the german flag that you just saw chanting out with the nazis so how long will greeks continue to bear the weight of austerity with no end in sight and of policies being pushed by people they don't know working together with politicians they don't trust and these talks that go on with leaders and the true international lenders we wish we could have insight into what goes on behind those closed doors but we can't so we'll just have to imagine help us. are they just talking to themselves making it seem like they're having a fight when really they're working as one to push through these reforms and again at what cost to society well here to talk about it nomi prins author of black

tuesday. the vocal put it right there she's also former managing director at goldman sachs. and we're so happy to have her again on the show know me welcome back to capital count nice to see it thanks for being here i know you were tweeting earlier today about this situation in greece what would be your message to the private sector and to the i.m.f. as we're seeing pain inflicted once again on greek citizens at the mercy of international lenders and a government led not just by a technocrat in charge but by leaders of political parties that become deeply unpopular and are trusted. it's tremendously sad and what i tweeted was something to the effect of if iran greece or someone with any form of true humanity and feeling for the population and the economy of greece was actually running greece then the decision would be to forgo paying bondholders

to forgo making arrangements with the international banking community with specific private means or through the i.m.f. or the e.c.b. and say sorry we're actually going to take care of our citizens the ones that are in the streets the ones that are losing jobs the ones that can't afford homes the ones that have inadequate health care and so forth those are the people we'd actually be trying to boost rather than external foreign lenders bond holders and derivatives players and what is so sad and so unfortunate is that the people in power that includes in greece that includes throughout the central entities these major banks obviously don't care and continue to make the situation worse for the population agrees and what i don't understand me is it seems like the conventional wisdom doesn't even allow that there would be these other options some like what you're talking about i want to play a little bit of what ben bernanke he said on the hill about it today and then i'll

get your reaction countries like greece and portugal have really no option they have they could not borrow. they were experienced excluded from the private market they're relying now already hundred percent on the i.m.f. and european union for funding in. it order to qualify for that funding they've got to show they've got to play to restore fiscal balance. so he acts like you know something like default isn't even an option but yet putting greece into this trajectory they just will continue this depression where any kind of of the money that the country makes is just going to interest payments under the weight of this huge debt that is the best option why isn't default or debt forgiveness even on the table or part of the conversation well ben bernanke of course is one of the bailout architects for the united states banks and he along with treasury secretary tim geithner and the administration here have made it very clear that they want

bailouts to continue because bailouts mean the banks get paid the bondholders get paid that money markets in the united states serve are kept whole that there is no crazy losses going on in the financial community and that's what they know that's where they come from and that's what they support the idea of forgiving debt the idea of even allowing a population to heal itself rather than have from it extracted its future its economic future in order to pay bailouts isn't on the table because that's not in their philosophy because they don't feel the pain they're probably not watching the people in the streets and if they are they're thinking hey you know these people ran up their own death they were like people wanted pensions and they had to be paid in greece was all out of bounds and so now we need to rein it in and that's basically what ben bernanke he was saying in different words in a speech this morning that's what the leaders across europe have been saying that somehow greece needs to restrain itself as opposed to all of the banks the derivatives players the bond holders that bet on greece. and in doing so made the

cost of running greece higher for greece and by coming out and wanting their money back and wanting it extracted from the future or economic livelihoods of the population they feel they'll be made whole or even except a small loss but that's better than than nothing and they want to accept as little a loss as they possibly can and i totally the philosophy yeah i totally hear you know me and because you mentioned money market funds let's bring this to the us because investors have been fretting over how a greek bond default would affect money market funds in recent months reportedly firms have moved to reduce their exposure to european banks but nonetheless the s.e.c. is now reacting and there are reportedly close to a proposal to regulate the money market fund industry a two point seven trillion dollar industry i know know me that it's easy for us to be cynical rightfully so over these kind of regulations and we're not fortune tellers but i'm just curious if you think that this could be a step in the right direction. well this is the one thing one of the things that

the s.n.c. has has said or proposed that actually makes some kind of a sense to make sure that the money market industry that is. not supported by the government although it had to be supported by the federal reserve in the treasury department back when lehman was falling apart and people were extract in their funds quite quickly and there was sort of a run on money market funds and they wanted to stop that run so they basically backstop her or guaranteed for certain losses which they then took away a couple of years after that so what's being proposed in the i.c.c. is a combination of do we ensure that if there is a run on funds if investors want to take money out of funds there's a stop on that i disagree with that i don't i think of want to take their money and investors include you know regular people and people with pension money who is allocated to money market funds and so forth they should not be stopped out of taking their money out if there's a loss on the other hand i believe that there should be restrictions on the types

of securities that money markets can invest in they were they were created to supposedly invest in safe securities and what happened in the wake of lehman brothers and leading up to that run was that money market managers were investing in pieces of c.e.o.'s and pieces of other types of securities that might have been rated aaa but as we know clearly didn't have that zero kind of a risk so there can be restrictions on money markets but i think that's going to continue to be debated now between the money market managers and the f.c.c. to see what really comes out of that discussion right of course that's where we really see these things fall apart but you made a really interesting point which is that these money market funds are designed to be safe yet we've seen them take risks why do you think we've seen them take these risks on europe do you think this is an unintended consequence of the fed keeping interest rates so low as zero percent in the u.s. . you have to keep in money of zero percent means that anyone who's in a money market fund that's investing in safe securities treasury and so forth is

getting very little return on it so the money market managers are saying well if we can't return money to our customers we need to go somewhere where it's more risky the interest rate is higher in order to provide them a return so that they will give us their money so it's kind of this catch twenty two rates are low so they look for higher risk that's exactly by the way why the subprime catastrophe started happening because rates were so low in the beginning part of the two thousands of banks looked for other ways and other places to extract high interest rates from and hence we saw what happened from a fourteen trillion dollar toxic asset scheme that was based upon that situation right now if they're looking towards europe for higher rates that's that's the reason but what they're doing is really betting on european countries and they want money markets come out of that that it hurts the countries even further so it's it's a negative catch twenty two in that respect and what about the impact of dollars lines that the fed open for european banks is that kind of

a backdoor bailout for these money market funds. it's more of a bailout for the banks themselves to some extent for the money market funds that are customers of the banks in other words the managers that buy their securities from the banks that are really the bigger players in europe and so forth and it was definitely a backdoor bailout for those banks and a lot of it in the fed even said this is the time when it made the swap loans available went to helping the united states banks who had by their own choice exposure to your up and that exposure was not simply lending money to greece but it was a wanted to privatize contracts an immense amount of speculative risk that should not have been backstop but of course was ok and then i just want to touch on this because of course ben bernanke the big question of him was how is he going to respond to the new jobs numbers that came out on friday for the united states and then there's people coming out saying who cares these jobs numbers are so massaged so subject to revisions up or down don't put

a lot of stock in them do you agree. yeah the reality is on the one hand ben bernanke you wants to play both sides he wants to and will keep interest rates low so the banks will continue to get cheap money so they can continue to look solvent so they can continue to grow their derivatives books and other types of trading and he can ignore that so that's why he's kind of saying you know take these jobless claims these jobless numbers which came out on friday and had the appearance of a lower unemployment rate with a grain of salt playing both sides and i guess those numbers can be interpreted in a lot of different ways and the reality is we still have a tremendous number of people unemployed the participation rate the number of people who are even bothering to keep looking for jobs is at its highest rate in thirty years the nature of the types of jobs and the amount of money that they provide when people can find them is right slower relative to the cost of living so there are so many qualitative measures that still have to write those numbers no

matter how you debate that absolutely such a good. and know me i want to ask you one more follow up on that we have to go to a quick break but when we come back we will have more with author nomi prins. and still ahead relief may soon be on its way to homeowners who have lost their homes to foreclosure fraud but if the settlement that would require banks to provide these billions of dollar is too good to be true look and in your conversation with know me friends first your closing market numbers. because we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old on to tell the truth. i'm a confession i am a total ghetto princess i love driving hip hop music and for. that

he was kind of the guest today. i'm very proud of the role without you she has played. the. odds. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else hears you some other part of it and realize that everything is ok and you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. 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 you know view

with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sessions when nope. he dares to ask we do our t.v. question more. welcome back let's talk about another aspect of the u.s. economy that isn't healing or is having a hard time in the u.s. it's housing and forty states have signed on to a twenty five billion dollars settlement with the five biggest banks that are guilty of foreclosure abuses such as robo signing of documents but who would this really provide relief to homeowners or is this kind of a good deal for the big banks that are part of this settlement will no mean prince is back author of black tuesday to talk more about this no.