third district way is it the i.m.f. now christine legarde is it just a case of sadists. having fun with greece things worse than that might think it's a case of subtle masochism you always need to do with greece is to allow to default to face the truth the it's a bankruptcy. and then to find out what to do about the banks and who got it allows them if they want to do that but of course they're not doing this because they're going to delay zation legally speaking means that. the current owners of these banks will see their holdings their shareholding being simply de looted by the european state and so that about the bankers don't want to hear of this they're receiving free money from these he and from the dark spirits of germany and holland zones of wealth so that germany's leaders of that effectively dug a big hole for themselves and if live fallen in it now of course the people who are

actually suffer in terms of. basic human costs that is hunger and. just genially human heart three other people in the deficit countries greece being the worst but there is no doing much better than in spain portugal ireland. and this whole process this simply is spiraling out of control right and the average person in grace is having their their minimum wage cut by a tornado twenty five percent currently at seven hundred fifty euros per month down to six hundred euros per month so this is just their scapegoating the average person right just to get on the status of fame they. are just basically committing kind of a financial genocide for for far right it's not fun from their perspective. a

benefit for anyone for sure but from a perspective mrs merkel has a very important task ahead to survive until the the federal election and to have her coalitions of life she would need to do to give greece's the government the bailout loans that then the government passed on to the banks. now she has because of the members of parliament in the federal government and she needs to convince them that they must be done but you can't come out and openly say that this is all for the benefit of the banks so she has to kowtow to this in the language of the doubt now the german taxpayer doesn't want this rain is going down it was just so they only will blockading the german. members of parliament and the electorate will be present is basing them look watch those gigs suffer again if they suffer a sufficiently then perhaps we should give them some money so the whole point of reducing the minimum wage from seven hundred to six hundred views and i mean there

is no my group can only rational whatsoever it will this is the only point of blues used to demonstrate to the german members of parliament particular of the ruling coalition the look the greeks are bleeding so no let's give them more loans when of course those loans little bits of the gigs are meant for the banks ok so merkel to play her constituents but is going to continue to believe the greek people and so that they are physical visibly suffering because this world of then. appears sarah local constituents that she's doing all she can to act of horror find out or horror to these people there last week paul thompson head of the i.m.f. mission to greece conceded their social tolerance of political support have their limitations and of course this was before the arm of a great president was here with a molotov cocktail but your thoughts on thompson's statement both thompson is

a tragic figure he's here supposedly represented the muslim wonder from. and his script from which he has to decide his lines was written by germany germany has affected the subcontractor of the half and mr johnson in particular the task of imposing on greece these days the measures the berlin example but the i.m.f. does not believe it is the measures so this is christine lagarde is making some quite notable and interesting speeches that are going against the kind of medicine the greece is applying to the patient and his mrs thompson is caught between those two. places the worse mindsets one is out of it of his bosses in washington and the other is with the german leaders it which is so contracted misses don't do affect policy is

a bit of dom's nose are quite poisonous not only for greece but more generally poor of the global economy ok now this is that are saying they are the bureaucrats in brussels have just found another fifteen billion euro black hole greece. there seems to be a recurring theme how many more black holes do you expect to be found in great financial universe before it's all over it really depends on whether germany is ready to let the eurozone go. germany has not. decided that it wants to reconstitute the dodge martin get out they're going to be blocking the black holes. with no money either. by the e.c. b. or gallon loans from the german taxpayer greece is neither here nor there it is not significant or important enough to worry about the state of its of its micro

counting national accounting or indeed of the real economy. so should greece have ever taken their first i.m.f. loan bailout package alice i made myself in credibly an ocular in this country when in april to may two thousand and ten i was out of a gauging taking the bailout loan was the equivalent of collective suicide and is would constitute one of those instances in world economic history that would be taught and of example to be avoided in economic developments for the next hundred years how about the. oil iran oil embargo going to greece the same is like a really another for us mistake or what are your thoughts alice the prime minister of a year or two years ago mr george papandreou who was responsible for getting us into

the bailout mark one disaster nevertheless it's one thing before the happened which was quite ahead of its time and i think correct he said that if we are ever to fall into the bosom of the i.m.f. and the european union we lose our national sovereignty and this is precisely what has happened greece that is not in control of its fate anymore now through sort of the is a thing of the past until and unless some new government can simply say. i know who the bailout loans that are being on offer to the greek social com right now most germans according to our poll last weekend while gris. gris play of the euro or germany leave the earth where you know if there were no billion paul back in just before the industrial revolution and people were asked whether they want the industrial revolution. most of them would have said no that

installed the industrial revolution similarly even if all the germans and all the greeks want greece out of the euro and. let me inform you that most greeks would like to get out of the your analogy with we've had enough we're being treated like the pariahs of the euro zone. is immaterial this is that card is you should never have entered into neither us nor the germans for that matter but tragically it is a galaxy that once you enter you cannot escape. if we get out of it we're not going to return to where we would have been had we not constructed it and instead the way that this currency has blocked our economies together then has created this because of its offices we didn't banks and states if greece pools outlets they were thrown out of the whole edifice will collapse germany is going to end into a huge recession and the rest of europe is going to be. you know an option of the glaciation so i think that we're again we're we're between

a rock and hard place. the only. half of that would minimize somehow the human cost of it all will be one of the xining of the year and then lead back from what i call bank of daugherty and putting it in the service of europe savior saying that despite the crisis in greece are still buying weapons they're still spending on lots of money. it's kind of interesting for two reasons number one. they're really out of money to buy weapons number two if they really want to fight the war they should be buying financial weapons like they should be hiring financial lesson aires to attack germany with credit default swaps if they really wanted to be on a level playing field and try to fight for their survival but isn't this buying of conventional weapons again another huge waste of money by greece is worse than the uses humor of the gringo and this is surprising not to do it is not cool but

germany what to do if you eat if you look at the purchases the procurement of weaponry. it constitutes a very large group or of german exports and in one sense you know germany's saying well give me the money and i'm going to do a little to do with it but that money will cause greece's debt and also to the broken sort of the german industry so it's quite interesting that while cost google's not having to do without them to jesus let alone a more sophisticated instruments to fly to the disease of the minister of defense is not given the opportunity of counseling we all do for german tanks and submarines ok well there are many is going to look like they're going to pick up a lot of nice beach front property on the cape that's all the time we have for dr yanis trafficker's thanks for being on the kaiser report thank you max and that's

going to do it for this edition of the kaiser report with a geyser and stacy herbert and was i guess doctor yet as fair a fake as if you want to send me an e-mail please do so our kaiser report at r t t v are you what i said lax guys are saying.

welcome to the lower show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mercy or you live in washington d.c. now it's not going to take a look at the new foreclosure fraud settlement between forty nine states and the five biggest banks is this really a good deal for america or just an easy out for wall street then lieutenant colonel daniel davis who's on our show the other day well turns out of the pentagon now has launched an investigation into that report that he released about afghanistan and we're going to speak to richard i ask out as well and david sirota about whether

it's time for a national popular vote we have all that and more fit and i couldn't get us happier but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right so as i said big news announced today that after sixteen months of wrangling forty nine states with the exception of oklahoma federal regulators have all agreed to a foreclosure fraud settlement with the five biggest banks and those with the bank of america j.p. morgan chase city wells fargo and ally financial the obama administration is obviously trying to show that they've got the chops and that they've got the will to go after wall street so they're making a big deal of it and the mainstream media is following suit. a legal settlement that could help home homeowners rather who over more than their house is worth to turn a juror recalled are talking about this deal that has been reached officials announcing a deal between the states of the nation's biggest mortgage lenders over foreclosure

of use to a foreclosure abuses on a deal that would mean nearly two million current and former homeowners could get some relief from big mortgage lenders but the deal addresses a more sinister side of the mortgage crisis homes that were wrongfully seized because the banks cut corners government officials and five major banks have worked out this reportedly twenty six billion dollars settlement that we know it's twenty six billion dollars and it breaks down in a variety of different ways and for days we've been reporting the expectation that it would be cash to states some five billion there seventeen billion in consumer relief and three billion dollars for borrowers so they can refinance at lower rates . now we're going to get into more details of what exactly this settlement means in our first interview tonight but first let me point a few things out see once again here we see the classic example of the media just putting the press conferences repeating verbatim the details of this settlement without really putting it on context on its face it seems like

a big deal forty nine states settling with the five biggest banks over what was really a sickening case of fraud and abuse being robo signing forging of backdating of documents in many cases kicking people out of their homes wrongfully but what you really have to get into here are the figures to the government the media would like to paint this as a historic deal but if you put it into perspective how many people does it really help relative to how many people need that help just think of it this way there are eleven million homeowners that are underwater meaning that they owe more than their homes are worth this deal is only going to help about one million of those people so this is a deal for twenty six billion dollars some say could go up to thirty nine billion and that collectively negative equity is currently at seven hundred billion dollars in this. so on average these homeowners are also underwater by fifty thousand dollars each and some estimates of this deal put average aver the homeowners at twenty thousand still a lot of money to make up for and the banks have three years to even make it all

happen so that is a long time for those without a home to wait now for about seven hundred fifty thousand people who lost their homes wrongfully they're going to get a check from the government ranging from eight hundred to two thousand dollars if they choose to sign up because david de in a fire dog lake put it today that's basically the equivalent of saying these people sorry we stole your home here's two months threat so while it's good to acknowledge that a deal has been reached and some homeowners are former homeowners will be held you really have to put it all into context so that people understand what the lawsuits and government programs actually result it that way we can hold them accountable and we don't just let them off the hook and have the mainstream media from what i've seen today has chosen not to dig deeper into the figures they've chosen to repeat the details of the settlement but have chosen to miss on how many americans don't get a piece of the piece of the deal. all

right so let's talk more about this twenty six billion dollars settlement reached between forty nine states government authorities and the five biggest banks and i've just pointed out to you have a twenty six billion won't go too far in helping the millions of americans that need it but what is twenty six billion dollars to the banks is this even a punishment if you look at what the new york times reported today that the banks have already largely set aside the reserves for the expected cost of this and if you think about the fact that over a three year period those are losses that amount of chump change compared to their profits doesn't really sound like all that much so is this a step in the right direction or just another example the big banks get off the hook joining me from our studio in los angeles is richard scouse senior fellow with the campaign for america's future richard thanks so much for joining us tonight. and there are a lot of details to get into name some of them are ready but just overall if you look at the way that this deal panned out or this settlement panned out would you say do you think that the american homeowners won out or that the government won

out on behalf of the homeowners or that it was really wall street that took the lead. well you know i think you actually hit the right note and setting up the story because i think the real story is. it's up to us to stay on everybody involved to make sure we get the maximum for the american homeowners out of this you know i i'm sorry that that this deal trades away the best negotiating power the authorities have which is that the banks were caught dead to rights committing widespread crimes in the robo signing scandal and you know in an ideal world would they would use that we would use that on behalf of the american people that's what these guys and get them for everything we can that didn't happen and that's a big disappointment and dollar for dollar even though the figures are absolutely right they're way way way low for the wrongs that have been done but now what the deal does that it didn't do before that eric schneiderman and new york and some

other attorneys general insisted on putting in was it leaves the door open for indictments investigations lawsuits all sorts of other actions for other types of bank crimes and i think now we've got to make sure they get all the resources they need to do that including federal government resources and you know one of the one of the things that's getting overlooked in this is that some of this money goes for legal aid that will be given to homeowners that have been wronged so if that legal aid can be leveraged to a lot of lawsuits we could be turning this into more money than it is today and if it if the federal government you know reverses course and starts getting serious about bank crime and backs up schneiderman and some of the others and pushes them for some of the other wrongs they've done even though these doors that they've left open could be a big deal but it's up to us to make them a big deal by pressuring the administration and the government and some of the attorneys general to use the tools they've been given and yeah i'm sorry about you

know the crappy aspects of this deal but i'm glad that those tools are there and we should make the most of them. well you know that's a good point you bring up in terms of the fact that people still have this power to pursue litigation and there are still investigations that can be done and that's something that you know definitely attributed to schneiderman from new york but i thought that eve smith brought up an interesting point on her blog in a capitalism today which is looking at this now a task force that's been set up by the obama administration and just the way the order in which things go why do you settle on a deal before you actually do much of the investigating well it's a horrible idea look you know i don't disagree with the ad are you know and i'm really disappointed that they did that you can't settle on i can't pay you for the furniture our broken your house if we don't get to look at the furniture first and that's what this deal because that's one of a number of things that's wrong with it but look let's let's be realistic the administration's been pushing for this kind of deal like a lot of other cushy deals for a long time and you know if i were eric schneiderman i don't know what his thought

process was pretty probably thought this is the best i'm going to get the statute of limitations is running out on a lot of the other frauds they did that created the housing bubble if i can horse trade this make it less of a bad deal leave these guys open to prosecution and get some resources is it best i can get i'm going to go for it so are you understand their thinking but that doesn't mean that any of those criticisms are wrong or that i haven't raised them myself a million times now if you had it your way if you think about the fact that you know what was going on was so much of this fraud was going on with robo signing backdating documents as though a lot of people were kicked out of their homes when they shouldn't have been and you know what we have with the settlement is that they get you know what do we say maybe you eight hundred to two thousand dollars which really is a minuscule amount but it's interesting because now it seems like you put a price on forging documents you put a price on robo signing and you know at the same time there's no criminal

punishment here do you think that somebody really should go to jail for this. well i do and i'm sorry you know it's not happening but again you know and it's weird because i'm in the position of kind of defending aspects of video i don't like but but just to be clear i've heard that criticism that it's just two thousand dollars for losing your house and certainly that's insulting but if it's two thousand dollars and a lawyer so i can sue the guy who took my house away it's not quite as insulting because if i can get another fifty thousand or one hundred thousand or whatever through a good lawyer then it's not as bad a deal as it sounded but the trick is will i really get that that's up to the local attorneys general and it's up to the way the justice department handles it and a lot of details we don't know so that's why i'm saying look yeah i hate what's not right about this deal but let's press for getting the maximum out of it that we can and that's a great example of it yeah i'd say getting two thousand dollars is a lot more than just insulting but you know one of the things that this really

brought up and we saw this massive fraud going on is that a lot of people thought there was an opportunity here that maybe this is the perfect chance to really sees on it and create across the board reform of our financial system that hasn't exactly happened with this settlement but do you think about opportunity is still there at that door has been shut. well you know look they arrested al capone for tax evasion right so you know i mean we could have gone that route we didn't i think a huge opportunity has been lost it's tragic i'm disappointed in obama i'm disappointed in eric holder but you know there comes a time to say don't mourn organize as the old saying goes yeah i'm frustrated yeah i'm ticked off but look let's get what we can and in terms of changing the culture and really ending the way business is done that's a political fight we've got to have for years and now because we did lose this opportunity we lost the battle but we didn't lose the war so i'm going to come down

on the side of it's aggravating but let's roll our sleeves up and and get back to work let me just throw more thing at you here too which is that warren buffett leaked to fortune magazine this annual letter that he sends out to the berkshire hathaway shareholders where he gives his advice on what you should invest in and it's kind of interesting you basically told him that instead of going for a treasury bonds and said i'm going for gold you should go towards things that actually produce stuff like maybe real estate maybe farmers maybe businesses do you think that's a good piece of advice. you know it probably is he's a pretty smart guy you know he also said trading in currency is risky which i think is true unless you're george soros who's brilliant at it but yeah sure but i mean the other thing to look at is that if you want to be a good corporate citizen you should invest in things that grow the economy at this point you know our government has a you know treasury bonds show people still trust the u.s. government enormously but that's not getting translated into investment in goods

and services so i think and i hope that what he was really saying to investors and to the banking community was stop investing in things that don't produce stop skimming this system by just using all the free money from the fat if you're a bank to buy treasury bonds and rake off the difference and go to work doing what you're supposed to do which is investing in business is that build the economy that's the way i choose to interpret his letter. and i think that it makes sense to with buffett pushing for some many of the reforms that he has been lately in terms of tax reform and you know the patriotic millionaires record thanks so much for joining us tonight sure always. our just ahead of the show we have another update for you on bradley manning and just a few days ago tenet colonel daniel davis came on the show to discuss his report about the pentagon purposely misleading congress and now he's reportedly being investigated so tonight for have a discussion about the u.s. government's ongoing war against whistleblowers.

people calling what you said for free and fair elections. and we're still reporting from the same as you can hear behind me loud explosions.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

now as promised we've made sure to bring you all the latest on bradley manning just days ago we told you that it was decided that the army private would be court marshaled and now a date has been set for that on february twenty third manning will return to fort meade maryland for his arraignment and according to the a.p. the army private can request a trial by jury or by a military judge if features a jury it would include at least five officers and he has the option to have at least a third of the soldiers on the panel to be in list it has been court martialed on twenty two charges including aiding the enemy which could carry life in prison sentence as well as a dishonorable discharge in the meantime there is some positive news for the army private he's been nominated for the nobel peace prize by members of the icelandic parliament for the movement and the nomination describes how his alleged leaks have shaped uprisings around the world health and combat operations in iraq and exposed corruption within the government so be sure to keep you updated on all the latest

details surrounding many as they commit now on to other whistleblowers. who can i say other than i had a feeling that this would happen the other day we had the tenet colonel gangle davis on the program active duty army officer that it's a bit of a classified report to members of congress and what he thought the real situation was in afghanistan a report that told him that the pentagon has been intentionally misleading congress and the american public about so-called progress or success and there's also a more than eighty page unclassified version of this report that davis wrote the pentagon hasn't cleared for release but we all know the pentagon doesn't like to be criticized and when davis was here on the show he was accompanied by a former state department official matt ho matthew hope and i asked them both just two days ago if there had been any criticisms or attacks waged yet and what they thought the chances were that that might happen and so i'm just wondering if you think that there's going to be backlash from.