terribly well thought out the whole rationale was to prevent another war by putting all the europeans together tying their fate together but in terms of thinking through all of the details you know we've been doing it piecemeal so i just don't know what the e.u. will be in two or three years i think there will be a euro but i'm just not sure if all of twenty five countries in the in the block at that point all right chris well now i don't want to get you in trouble with the f.b.i. but did did go to. dick did going off the gold standard have anything to do with the u.s. going bankrupt and what role could gold play if any in making it solvent again so i kind of percent presume that work they're talking about dollar weakness they are saudi so isn't that just a presumption can you just as gold question as i said in my my book inflated gold is is symbolic is a store of value it has had a great following in the u.s. and you're right in the thirty's after your confiscated all the gold while he was

devaluing the dollar to try and get the economy going. since then or even before then we essentially had the government imposed their monopoly on the definition of money in the u.s. so today gold is considered a collectible it's not even a monetary asset but this goes back to lincoln if you recall how did we finance the civil war with paper money bad money and the little banks fought it the big banks national banks were created to buy the government's debt so the devaluation in the thirty's was really later the refutation if you will of a gold standard starts with lincoln and ever since the government has used paper money to propel growth layers of leverage if you think about it so we create the fed in one nine hundred thirteen you have the collapse in the twenty's and in the early thirty's they confiscate all the gold and we continue you essentially equating the dollar with gold up until today. so all of the leverage we've seen

accumulated since the thirty's housing global lending institutions big banks everything else or all predicated on this use of paper money as a substitute for gold in a monetary sense and we've kind of run full course if you will so if you go back to your point max gold is a haven yeah i think it is but don't be blowing toller opportunities because gold hasn't quite kept up with the inflation of the paper money world all right let's talk about paper money and the u.s. banking system in particular bank of america now i listen to you you have been interviewed a number of times on eric king's king world news and i recommend anyone who wants to catch up on the banking sector very specifically to listen to those interviews because they are actually in but can you speak about the bank of america and where we are now with the bank america story you know there was that when it was down to five or six dollars a share there was i know even i believe i heard you say that it had a lot of risk on the downside of the stock price due to their and their problems etc can you give us an idea of where we are now that bank of america story in the

u.s. banking as a whole your bank america you write went down to four dollars a share late last year largely because of the european troubles in their wisdom the european governments decided to prohibit short selling of bank shares because they're so closely tied with the government so obviously if the bank shares were falling in value so would the political prospects of the various governments in the e.u. so unfortunately when the markets get anxious they still the u.s. financials because those markets are still open and that's i think what drove bank of america down to four dollars now goes to bank you need to be restructured yes in my opinion the preponderance of litigation that they're facing involving mortgage backed securities the state of new york eric schneiderman the attorney general i think is going to be going after bank america for texas because many of these deals were not put together properly so they were not exempt from state. federal taxes

this is going to be a nuclear weapon max nobody is paying attention to and let me just jump in for a second chris because what about obama's latest deal with these banks i mean again they seem to be getting a new unity so. how's a factor into this know about limited immunity this was not a great deal for the banks what happened was the attorneys general around the country many of whom want to be governor that's what a.g. stands for by the way aspiring governor. they needed to get a deal done now because through election year snyderman the california attorney general of delaware attorney general went along with this settlement on foreclosure abuse issues but it didn't get them immunity from more serious prosecution for taxes for securities fraud for other things that they're all facing bank america is facing over one hundred billion dollars in claims for securities fraud contractual issues from investors they're all going to go to trial and i would tell you right now i've been following this stuff pretty closely i think b.

is going to lose in court so we there we restructure this company with the help of the bankruptcy court and bring this whole mess to a conclusion or we're going to face years more of headline risk when somebody like m.b.i.a. for example the insurance company wins in court against bank america and ends up with a double digit judgment against them what are we going to do then that's what i've been saying you know we really need to bring this to an end and the way you do that is either with a receiver as we saw in the stanford group or with a bankruptcy as in the case a lehman brothers but to me that would be the good news because if we go down that road then we're going to be near the end are let me describe your situation maybe tell us more about my naivete than anything else but tell me what i am or where my thinking is either on target or off target it seems that every time we hear about a bailout or a rescue package or a multibillion or chilean dollar cash infusion to settle these bank debts banks suddenly from that's. in place called the shadow banking system say oh no we have

another half a trillion dollars in debt that we didn't record last quarter and it isn't ever going to start right number one is there a limitation or are they just playing with us well they are playing in a sense i mean look at the foreclosure settlement the banks have already stolen enough money from investors in terms of raping these mortgage backed securities trusts to pay for all the settlement so i don't feel sorry for them at all now the real question is what else have they not told us and this goes to your point about the off balance sheet vehicles grey market banking everything else that marketplace is shrinking it's running off and we're not creating any new assets and say private mortgage backed securities even fannie and freddie are starving to death because ninety percent of the new originations in the u.s. today are getting a guarantee from the federal housing administration interesting lee enough so yes there's more problems here and you're going to hear more about it in terms of things like litigation and liquidated claims that nobody's heard about yet to give

a good example look at j.p. morgan and the into gesturing they're getting from bear stearns you know jamie dimon told us two years ago the bear stearns would not be material to their results but it's going to be very material because investors of lost more than half their money on the securities that they created so there's still stuff to fall out in this whole mess we kind of know what the numbers are now max i don't think there's anything particularly new in terms of their exposures but the thing is risks that we haven't talked about like eric schneiderman deciding that these people owe him you know billions and billions of dollars for the taxes that's a new factor that nobody's thinking about now. we've got a one minute left i just want to have you comment on something that's a bit on the technical side but i think it's very interesting while ben bernanke is talking about the need for lower rates as a stimulus you haven't quite heard yeah i've heard you talk about this then there's a need for interbank lending to be stimulated by raising rates. it's completely

against what you hear the strain got and we only have about a minute i'm sorry but can you kind of run through that a little bit because i think it's important that people understand this well again going back to the point about extreme swings i mean the fed has had to put interest rates at zero to just trying to keep the u.s. economy moving forward it's like a shark you have to have water going through the gills in order for the creature to survive and yet at the same time by putting rates at zero you're taking only incentive away from banks to lend to one another why would you bother doing reposed for example where you lend treasuries overnight for nothing you're not being paid for the risk and there is risk in that transaction like was the hole in a bank market's going listen the jamie diamond in the most recent conference call he confirmed that they're not doing any and secured lending with other banks this is a disaster so what i've been saying is that the fed should gradually let short rates go up to half a point maybe three quarters of a point so we can again start to see the private short term credit markets revive

because today all you've got is the fed the banks are dealing directly with the fed they don't want to deal with one another if we don't get credit to expand max we're not going to fix jobs we're not going to fix the global economy but it's going to be private credit expansion the central banks doing what they're supposed to do but they've done it for too long and we get out of slowly let rates go up and imagine even if we had half a point fed funds rate that's still historically very low it's probably negative in terms of inflation but at least it would give people a reason to do business again right banks make money lending money so less rates are at a level that they can make some money lending money and you're not going to get any bank growth therefore no no because well that's right you know the great editor of the economist bag host said it well he said don't keep rates at zero for too long. what that we're out of time chris well thanks so much for being on the console report thank you backs look forward to it again adding that's going to do it for this edition of the kaiser report with me max kaiser and stacey arbor. and i thank

my guest first well and you can follow him on twitter at r c whalen course you can follow me on twitter too at max kaiser you can send me an e-mail at kaiser report r t t v are you until next time x. guys are saying by all. the world the. technology innovation all the latest developments around russia we've got the future are covered.

here's a pending confrontation between tell of even tehran grow following reports that iranians arrested over recent thailand bombings were targeting israeli diplomats. violence in syria escalates as a high ranking religious leader is assassinated in damascus allegedly for a pro-government stance our correspondent is at the heart of events in the syrian capital. things fulfills the last of the demands but many greeks say the nation won't work cover from austerity measures that harm their health care system and leave the military unscathed.

c.p.m. in moscow i met a good to have you with us here on r t our top story thai police say israeli diplomats were the target of a group of iranians arrested after prematurely setting off explosives in bangkok claims are expected to further fuel and rhetoric that television has a ratcheted up after a bomb attacks targeted israelis in georgia and india are reports. seems like the battle drones are growing louder and louder with israel continuing to this really harsh rhetoric towards iran accusing them essentially of terrorizing the entire world community just today there was a car statement from tel aviv which called to impose paralyzing sanctions on tehran all this while iran has just made it clear that they are indeed ready to sit down for talks to continue talks on its nuclear program but the prime minister off

israel has made a statement saying that iranian aggression should be stopped so there are course that brings forth many fears that the military confrontation with iran is imminent and nowhere are these fears more prominent than in israel the muslim brotherhood said that they are going to they might reconsider a peace accord which they do have with israel in response to u.s. pressure in regards to the ngo scandal so a lot of people in israel primarily are thinking that perhaps israel should stop the rhetoric it does carry on right now and focus on its internal problems and the problems on those borders rather than really push forth with aggressive rhetoric towards iran. and another obstacle for israel could come from egypt as the muslim brotherhood threatens to reconsider kairos peace treaty with television for more aware of this could lead i drove by you live in a reporter for the jerusalem post so how do you understand this reconsider term

what are the steps behind it and do you think it could lead to another confrontation between israel and egypt. well i think ever since the muslim brotherhood came to power through the elections it became quite clear that egyptian israeli relations would not be the same as they were before we have to remember that the muslim brotherhood in its ideology believes that the peace treaty with israel is a bad thing it's a negative thing and in their ideological core they would like to see it one day go away however their restraint by some real politic. fact there is and they're unable to abolish the treaty so they're certainly going to look for ways to downgrade it gradually and perhaps one day abolish it altogether. now israel is acting like a small coin in the latest round of the us egyptian tensions is peace with israel so one important for egypt there were they do just don't believe they have to put its thread into action. so i'm going to have to ask you to repeat the question i'm

having a little bit of trouble hearing you that's ok do you think that the egyptians are willing to use kind of israel in this way is kind of like a bargaining chip in this game to fifteen tensions between egypt and the u.s. . yes definitely i think they will try and do that i think that what we're seeing as well as a game between the egyptian military and the muslim brotherhood led parliament the military is playing towards this is in a phobic anti israeli anti-american sentiment in order to placate the population and the muslim brotherhood is playing up the same line out of ideological reasons so we're seeing both of these forces the military and the muslim brotherhood playing up to this opportunistic xenophobia and each one serving its own interest by doing so now the camp david accord had made egypt the first to arab state to officially recognize israel how do you think it's revision could affect the fragile

opposition of israel in the region. i think that if the peace treaty proves to be something that does not survive the rise of the islamists of power in egypt this will make israelis think twice and three times and four times before opening up negotiations with other arab countries in the future this is one of the pitfalls of reaching peace agreements with countries whose regimes are ultimately unstable and could fall one day in the future so this will have an effect on the entire region and it's certainly not putting most israelis in a mood to take further risks for peace at this stage another possibility of u.s. aid to egypt being scrapped to lead to threats from the muslim brotherhood but at the same time most of the egyptians oppose the aid calling it a humiliation how far do you think that public anger could go. so i once more i'm going to have to ask you to repeat the question that's ok the possibility of u.s. aid being scrapped by egypt led to threats from the muslim muslim brotherhood but

the same time most egyptians oppose u.s. aid to their country calling it a humiliation do you think there are voices will lead to more public anger. if i understood your question correctly we're talking about voices within egypt that are in egypt it was always a pro opposed to american aid to the country. oh that are opposed to the american aid to the country certainly there are many i think it is who are opposed to american aid because they see it as interventionism in an attempt by america to push forward its agenda within egypt and i think that these kinds of anti-american sentiments are once again being encouraged both by the military by the supreme council of the armed forces and by the muslim brotherhood each for their own reason so certainly there are those in egypt who oppose american aid they see it as a threat and i wouldn't be surprised if the united states itself decides to cancel

its one point three one point four billion dollar aid to egypt in the near future especially in light of the fact that some nineteen american nationals are now under egyptian arrest have been barred from leaving the country so i wouldn't be surprised if we see this come to an end in the near future all right yeah a reporter for the jerusalem post thanks for your insight. syrian opposition has accused the government of stepping up attacks on a rebel held areas with the city of daraa the latest target meanwhile a high ranking religious leader was assassinated in the capital damascus reportedly for his political stance this after the president's announcement of a referendum on a new constitution which could create a multi-party system in the country the proposal low doesn't seem to help curb violence there is archy's worry if an ocean or reports from damascus. is akin to moscow's histones it within you so this is a nation the shake of one of the most may done one of the districts of the capital

was killed as far as local me days reported he was short and dad was five scholz this area may dawn is known to be very conservative people even here supporting a very much pro-government prose president but at the same time there's been many offices people living in this neighborhood as well and tensions between these two sides have been very high specially in recent the just last month of this ever is so as to said boehner a type one twenty six people were killed and more than sixty all these speculations appeared as well that they say was killed because of his political views people we have been able to speak to here on the ground have been telling us that this man has been supporting president bashar al assad's policies in the southern politics of the country we are hearing from the opposition activists that the army bashar al assad has attacked a city of targeting free syrian army soldiers he has actually just traveled to the city of daraa on one c.

and we've been able to speak to the governor over these areas on the ground and with many ministry there and they've told us that there is no free syrian army in this region right now and actually in generally they say that it doesn't exist such a thing as well call it an aide to the opposition ministry fulls they've confirmed that this fight scene almost every. day the rum into operation but they're fighting against some fries on grooves which i. think insisted they say. foreign soldiers when you showed out as expected at the u.n. general assembly later on thursday as members are set to vote on a new syria resolution the text sponsored by arab states and supported by a number of western countries could turn up the heat on the syrian regime artie's marina porton iowa has more from new york. it is essentially similar or very much the same to the draft resolution that was circulated within the security council

that russia and china vetoed it basically endorses and backs the arab league plan that calls for syrian president bashar al assad to step aside relinquish his powers it also calls on the syrian government to stop all violence and release all those detained in the past eleven months since the uprising began in syria the reason russia did not support it and will not support the draft in the general assembly is because the russian front of the federation feels that the draft is not balanced it points all fault and responsibility on the syrian government and does not take into account that the opposition in syria has also been participating taking part in inflaming the violence which you wish. to vote on a resolution that only government forces to withdraw from cities and basically hundred armed groups but it's very unclear who these groups there are muslim brotherhood members. as leader has called on everyone to

unite unifying against syrian president assad's regime to whom we would hand syria over if such an approach one russia did propose some amendments similar amendments that were proposed to the security council draft reportedly those amendments have been rejected foreign minister lavrov has also said that the syrian opposition is refusing to participate in dialogue with the syrian government saying that they are being dissuaded by quote external players that do not want to see possibly some kind of a peaceful result in syria there and said inflaming this divide this draft resolution it's nonbinding it means it doesn't have a legal implication such as a draft for such as a resolution adopted by the security council however. it will help put pressure on the assad government but it is nonbinding very much a symbolic move that will be taking place later today the u.s.

has criticized the syrian government's promise of a new constitutional vote describing it as a laughable in accusing the regime of making a mockery of the unrest this amid a growing chorus within the u.s. calling on washington to supply end. with weapons and artie's guy on reports it's a move that some believe will make peace impossible. hawks in washington calling for the arming of things surgeons in syria we should start thinking all options including arming the opposition i give them training i give them communications equipment and then ultimately i give them weapons. experts say arming the fighting groups among the opposition is a sure way to drag the country into a protracted civil war it will also further marginalize those in the opposition who have advocated nonviolence or who advance political strategies the more that plied to the to the factions of the syrian opposition the more that happens the less

likely it is that they'll be a negotiated solution leading to a cease to be still settlement they're encouraged i think very much by the united states the civil war in lebanon went on for fifteen years absolutely appalling bloodshed and you can easily see that that could happen in syria like the u.s. all qaida has indorse the rebels fighting in syria under president assad syria has been a secular state some analysts argue that one of the reasons why al qaeda supports the violent uprising in syria is that in a less secular environment it's easier to recruit new terrorists if the government holds we'll be looking forward to just a very long period of complete disintegration and they will be able to attract more and more fanatical recruits look at the civil war in iraq in two thousand and six and seven it was absolutely appalling the calls to arm fighting groups in syria sound even more alarming given the u.s.

history of arming radicals afghanistan one example it was a placing itself in alliance with the mujahideen including osama bin laden and these people who now of course it is lately been deploring as fanatical fanatical enemies of the united states said these these alliances a totally. cynical and totally opportunistic there's not a shred of grounds. but despite the hawks outcry the obama administration is taking a more cautious stance with regards to syria we don't think more arms into syria is the right answer some analysts say arming the very much fractured syrian opposition would contribute to its further radicalization and would make a political solution virtually impossible a number say washington might support arm supplies indirectly through its arab allies as of now the administration denies having such plans but will that position hold. down reporting from washington r.t. . stay with us here on our t.v.

still ahead the arab spring has already run its course in libya but a year on claims of post-revolutionary atrocities cast a dark cloud over anniversary celebrations. but first greece has fulfilled the last conditions demanded by the e.u. in exchange for a second bailout still there is no russian in brussels to release further aid is the decision has been postponed till monday athens pushed through the final cuts one wednesday and committed to a written promise to stick to austerity plan after a lections however frustration is growing among greek and other european politicians the greek president lashed out at the e.u. questioning what right countries like germany holland and finland had to criticize athens british m.e.p. nigel farage says brussels is trying to bring athens to the. what the e.u. is now doing it's trying to influence the outcome of the greek general election i'm not satisfied with getting rid of the last democratically elected prime minister

and putting in a puppet in the form of us to papademos it now says it's now saying to the greek people unless you vote for the right parties not unless you vote for parties that a happy to be subjugated do you control we will not give you the rest of the money and you will go bankrupt i suspect that despite the dissatisfaction that is felt by many german politicians i think the german parliament just as the greek parliament did last sunday will continue to toe the line and continue to say that buy it out so the answer as far as i'm concerned it's rather like saving the cancer and not saving the patients we saw one of the commissioners. commissioners and he cruz said the other day that if greece left it wouldn't be a man overboard situation so even at the top there is now a crack beginning to appear and very interesting really what i've seen in the european parliament is for the first time in years we're hearing real criticism and the socialist criticism is that these austerity cuts are damaging living standards

to such an extent that they now want to acceptable so i'm beginning you know i'm not the lone voice anymore in this place that these policies are mad. measures accepted by greece in the face of the public outrage have hit the health care system pensions and public sector workers while the human cost of the cuts keeps rising nato secretary-general anders fogh rasmussen heads to athens to secure the country's military spending the nation as one of the largest military about budgets relative to its g.d.p. with only the u.k. spending more but as are his jacob green's reports the nato chief visit to greece suggests the military may remain largely immune. from in the athens is be the battleground the recently is. popular stared sunday's events is showing there's little hope for a cease fire one shot being fired by those discontent is a discrepancy in spending when it comes to the military something serving m.p.'s from a defensive on relations or turkey remain for some as ever present a threat.