america are working really long hours people are chronically sleep deprived also so they're reaching for stimulus to get amid ongoing economic instability u.s. energy drink sales increased more than thirty percent between two thousand and ten and two thousand and eleven. the newest stimulant hitting the market is a slim a plastic inhaler called aero shot each squeeze dispenses around forty milligrams of caffeine in your mouth the whole one country ordering. the caffeinated. degeneration. meanwhile multi-tasker is feeling for the biggest serving are turning to a product called fifty one fifty juice one gallon contains sixty four thousand milligrams of caffeine the equivalent of four hundred red bulls whole objective is to create repeat customers to get people to the product can be clearly an addictive

substance and by creating all these products they're definitely appealing to a wide range of consumers and feeding into the larger problem which is you know happy over consumption of coke in a can because while going after new consumers one u.s. company really did national controversy by packaging caffeine and liquor together there's nothing crazy about ok we took two legal products that americans love and combine them caffeine and a butt load of alcohol heavily marketed among college students it turned out to be a deadly mix one family in florida who say for local killed their son police say dozens of students have been sent to the hospital from these drinks amid lawsuits mounting criticism and eventually a federal ban the company subsequently removed caffeine from the drink but the national demand for the natural stimulant remains on compromise with more and more americans looking for their legal high arena point i r t.

still ahead on r t bridging the gaps in american infrastructure china is making the golden state shine again by helping expand the port of los angeles looks like even america's road to recovery was made in china. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old when she told the truth. i'm a contestant i am a total get over friends that i love driving hip hop music and for. that it was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the world with its place.

in the ambulance. people calling like you said for free and fair elections. and we're still reporting from the clinton you can hear behind me loud explosions. i mean i. got it gave a. well

the vice president of china cheating paying is wrapping up his u.s. tour today in los angeles right now getting ready to go to a basketball game the mayor of l.a. antonio is taking him to see the lakers play but his visit there of course much more than just fun and games she has been to talking some major business in california where leaders have asked china to invest in major infrastructure products there and it turns out is not just happening on the west coast as artie's were among the lender shows us to rebuild america and repair some of the crumbling infrastructure there's a good chance we might have to call on china for more help. los

angeles has rolled out the red carpet for the man who is likely the future leader of china but president xi jinping took a tour of the china shipping terminal where the company just completed a forty seven million dollar expansion at the port of los angeles more than one hundred twenty billion dollars of chinese goods pass through here just last year but trade isn't the only item on the agenda l.a. mayor antonio via rego's is also hoping that the chinese invest in the city's infrastructure they threw the in public transportation and ports we used to be number one and infrastructure spending and the quality of or our infrastructure and now we're down to number thirty two behind barbados behind spain behind lots of different countries. really our infrastructure has been crumbling chinese investment may even help ease some of this l.a. traffic the mayor's certainly hopes that it helps to bring jobs to the city as we

see federal dollars become more scarce for projects such as road improvement and bridge construction it's increasingly likely that we'll be seeing china and other foreign investors fixing our infrastructure how do we sit back and watch china in europe big build the best bridges and high speed rail roads and gleaming new airports the white house has said that infrastructure improvements are a top priority but the u.s. lags behind europe and china when it comes to infrastructure investment yet ministration has said that chinese firms will play a role in financing infrastructure throughout the u.s. i don't think it's an ideal situation i would prefer that the money. go to american corporations but the jobs will go to americans on that sounds terrible boost the economy while some welcome the foreign investors some people in los angeles we spoke to aren't so sure we should be so eager for chinese money i think president

reagan is probably rolling over in his grave somewhere. and it's uncomfortable a lot of people figure america is the you know and all be all you know so to ask him what is bad it will create more jobs i mean potentially but. well this country isn't so much that. it's about a. chinese firms are already working on huge based projects in california new york and alaska political leaders defended the contracts claiming chinese companies would be more efficient but as bird criticism over china's work conditions and the devaluation of their currency we can't compete with that not because they are better engineers or because we don't know how to manufacture but because it's not a level playing field we need to get a level playing field here in the u.s. some blame excessive environmental regulations and political bickering in d.c. for our inability to invest more in infrastructure.

an investment many see as a key to economic recovery thank you can be us competitive and what it seems the chinese are willing to make in los angeles from delhi in the r t. not just l.a. of course the san francisco bay bridge the one that goes from san francisco to oakland most of that was actually made in china when it was first built back in the thirty's that was a depression era project that put thousands of people to work pretty interesting that now that work is being outsourced to china when it's time to repair it sign of the times i guess coming up next on our t. is the capital account let's check in with barlow star to see what's on today's agenda lauren looks like it's a special birthday party today happy third birthday to the economic stimulus happy birthday to the economic stimulus do you remember when i was born christine i do like it was yesterday so we think this is a good opportunity to talk about and remind everybody how business works in

washington when big money is at stake and we're going to look at the free trade agreements at least they were touted as free trade agreements remember they were passed at the end of the year last year well we're going to speak to someone who's been crunching the numbers and put this all together he says free trade is a huge misnomer these are trade deals that are customized according to the desires of the business interests that contribute a lot of money to campaigns and it influenced this process so we think it's a good reminder on this friday on this friday happy birthday i know another topic you often touch upon and i think you got something on today is banks in this country and the reputation of banks yeah you know we're always talking about risk today we're going to look at that but we're going to look at another component which is refutation this is interesting a firm puts together a reputation quotient based on holding on different companies and the big banks are pulling around where and ron and world com did and as you probably know christine those companies are bunked and we're going to get where this is all headed rights

stay tuned for that it's going to be a good show but for us that's going to do it but for more on the stories we cover go to our t. dot com slash usa or you tube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter i am at christine. any much once lived is bound. to burn for ever more eternal fire is on think about what possible future. do we old wants to see this on forever. culture is that so much different and there is a huge mystery a power to find the mark left syria in the spiral of violence why does the west refuse to describe events being played out in syria's civil war why is there such

resistance. me please leave. me if he feels. elite. kutner. such. an.

idiot. good afternoon and welcome to capital account i'm laurin the store here in washington d.c. and here are your headlines for friday february seventeenth just what is the impact of a bad bad rap the refutation quotient of too big to fail the bank of america and goldman sachs has slipped below the dangerous threshold of now no longer companies like enron and world com so could the big banks be headed in the same direction and u.s. bank risk we know its high well reputations i just told you are low put this together

with other troubles in the u.s. japan and europe not to mention the threat of oil shock pending iran and saudi arabia and don't be fooled by the s. and p. this could have us all headed to economic and political trouble in the second half of two thousand and twelve elise will talk to an economist who certainly thinks so and meanwhile it is the third anniversary of obama signing that seven hundred eighty seven billion dollars economic recovery act better known as the stimulus so how about in honor of the birthday a refresher lesson and just how business gets done in washington when big bucks are at stake we'll look at the so-called free trade deals passed last year by congress with someone who says free trade no way how about a drip tray dealer tailored to the desires of corporate cash donations let's get to today's capital account.

well it is the three year anniversary of u.s. president barack obama signing that stimulus so it's a good time to take a good hard look at an example of how things get done in washington when business interests and money are at stake last year remember congress passed three trade deals we covered here on this show there were south korea panama and colombia they were touted as free trade deals now my next guest says they are anything but they're more like deals tailor made to moneyed business interests here to tell us why and how exactly that all worked out is that july on his communications an outreach coordinator for united republican thanks for being on the show up in the capital account yeah good to be here yeah so free trade agreement it's never that simple as that you say that these are anything but free trade agreements because they didn't reduce trade barriers for everybody evenly they protected certain industries based on certain interests so what is the evidence of the protection of

certain interests in these deals sure so i think a really good way to look at these deals for your audience is to look at it like this you know that we always call them free trade deals because we think oh they're dropping all these trade barriers and we're going to you know access to new markets of rising the trade freely without tariffs or any sort of other protectionism but the case i mean for example for these trade deals the past you can use for example your medicare program if you're a senior citizen to go and use a south korean hospital if it actually was a south korean free trade deal and all trade barriers were dropped then you could you know you could certainly go and use your medicare program a south korean doctor or a colombian doctor parapet any a doctor actually a lot cheaper and would actually save americans a lot of money the taxpayer a lot of money because there wouldn't be any trade barrier there but that barrier was protected because the big you know how sort of industrial complex interest in the united states so we need to keep that barrier up we need to keep prices high up here in the united states well that's an interesting angle you also give some other

evidence of certain industries influence in these trade deals you look at sell. korea and you look at the influence of the automotive free international trade industry group so how do you believe they impacted how that deal was structured and written sure so when it was first being written it was actually written sort of lopsided for the auto industry south koreans to be able to spend a lot more of sort of their core of the united states than the united states to be able to south korea of our ministration rejected the deal and they sort of allowed a lot more a sort of american automobiles and a south korean market so what happened was the auto dealers started pouring tons and tons of money into congress to get the deal passed and the two thousand and ten election cycle they put six hundred ninety six thousand dollars just from this one group that you mentioned the call they fit pac they put six hundred ninety six thousand dollars and more than two hundred members campaigns and all but three of the people they donated to ended up supporting the deal you know i think that's a fantastic sort of example of how one interesting that was totally self interested into its own profits into how the deal was being shaped donate tons of money and

successfully actually push congress to sort of take its position my question to you i know these deals were in the works for a very long time a few of them and they kind of had been on the back burner to be passed for a while so how do we know that the kind of money that you're talking about that was poured into the campaigns in two thousand and ten from this group actually influence something like member of congress its position on the trade deals was always you know very difficult to make you know sort of the quid pro quo you know from a to b. sort of coral you know causation correlation sort of thing but there were also a bunch of other corporate interests or a lobbying for this bill across the spectrum so it wasn't like it was this one group that did it all but i think you know i think it's an amazing correlation that when you see people doing from two thousand and eight to two thousand and ten to all these members of congress and a lot of them were up in the air at the time and then when it comes to twenty eleven all but three of the hundreds of ones they donated to support their position on the bill you know i think that's an incredible amount of influence peddling this group was able to successfully do and it may not be you know like i said it's not necessarily that this group was the entire reason that they voted for the bill but

it couldn't hurt and what about in the way that the bill you said that. that obama rewrote certain aspects of that bill they change the terms of the south korea trade deal is there evidence to how the industry groups like the one that you focused on influence that process well it's really interesting if you go back to late two thousand and nine big automotive companies like ford voter company were actually taking a big newspaper advertisements talking about how unfair the south korean trade deal where you know so on and so forth and then you know when you saw the bottom of this very start to meet with auto industry people and me with negotiators they changed the deal and then four was putting out press releases talking about how great the deal was for america you know they were never they weren't necessarily talking about their own industry which is what they were really concerned about they were talking about how great the deal was you know for the rest of us but it's fairly clear and apparent now that the a-bomb ministration actually work with several industries to try to get their concerns and then there's industry started pouring money into congress to start lobbying heavily in favor of the deal and eventually what happened was you had the three deals which have been caught in limbo for years and years and more and half

a dozen years in congress sort of passed you know remarkably well in both the republican controlled house and a democratic controlled senate and now whether you agree or disagree with free trade agreements because people fall in all sorts of the political spectrum and certainly those that are watching on this show do the fact of the matter is that politicians have touted them as job creators or as you put it in your piece obama carefully crafted it as job supporters what is the reality of their impact on u.s. jobs and it's really fascinating and obama was actually an opponent of these deals when he ran for the presidency and he campaigned it was to them for them and he campaigned against hillary clinton for example in ohio very heavily against the deals and then when he became president he starts talking about how their jobs supporting he never said job creating because there aren't actually numbers to back up the the idea that they create and that about american jobs you keep saying jobs supporting and the economic policy is it which is sort of a nonpartisan sort of thing take on these issues as i made that just from the south korea deal loan that we have a net loss of one hundred fifty nine thousand american jobs and so to be able to

you know i got to give obama credit i guess on that much and he's not he's not a lie. saying their job supporting and not using your job rating but he's not a member there's of we're going to run i guess you know the argument always with you know certain goods will be cheaper so you know that or benefit certain industries or by the good jobs supporting in that sense it's a very convoluted argument yes convoluted argument but i'm glad that we followed the money and that you helped us to see how those interests actually influenced the deal as it crafted and also the support as it passed thanks so much for being on the show that was the jilani he is the communications and outreach coordinator for united republic. so sticking to this topic kind of u.s. president barack obama was just north of seattle today visiting the commercial aviation hub of boeing to announce his big manufacturing initiatives as part of his

goal to double exports and five years now the plans he talked about in his beach include the reauthorizing of an export import bank to help finance u.s. companies according to him then a new program to ease access to credit for small business acts orders along with matching funds to compete with the funding of foreign companies now that is a whole other part of the story for us to break down another time what exactly he's proposing but boeing this is what i want to focus on a boeing is the biggest u.s. exporter according to business week and remember it was at the center of a big regulatory clash last year the company was targeted by the national labor relations board in a complaint republicans love this they said it was evidence of the administration's hostility to business anyway it was dropped so this is how the obama visit was touted today let's look at a headline obama pushes export a boeing victory lap after n.l.r.b. clash and if you heard a speech all of the networks carried it today and he was touting the manufacturing

of boeing as a great example of u.s. jobs and how this should be done and remember his manufacturing initiatives are all about creating jobs in the u.s. or bringing them back from overseas and obama i should know was peaking at a plant that houses production lines for the boeing's new seven eight seven airliner and also air force one was assembled here that's something that he played up in his speech quick reality check let me take you to the place where air force one reportedly goes for its tune up. that is wichita kansas and here is a headline coming out of that city let's take a look boeing departure shakes wichita's identity as airplane capital wichita is a major u.s. aviation manufacturing hub long story short last february boeing won one of the largest military contracts in history and it promised thousands of jobs would be coming to wichita fast forward

a year and boeing says never mind actually we're shutting down all of our operations here completely after eight decades as one of the biggest employers in the aviation capital so now like many other manufacturing centers in the u.s. that we've seen over the last several decades there is a fear that this one may no longer be one now that all sounds a little like business as usual for corporations doing what they do we get that that's for another day my point here is that the whole victory lap for manufacturing that whole thing sounds a bit disingenuous the loss of manufacturing over the last forty years is complex it's multifaceted it's probably not going to be fixed with some government initiative certainly not with a photo op or a speech and also will the reality of these government programs amount to creating manufacturing jobs or will it be corporate welfare for the most powerful and connected us corporations helping them do business more cheaply maybe boosting

profits helping exports that they end up delivering to their shareholders not necessarily creating new jobs is this the government then just again picking winners and losers without a smart real deep fundamental look at the deeper issues at work here with what's happened to jobs in manufacturing in this economy we think that's exactly what it sounds like and that doesn't sound like a victory lap to me. what's the impact of a bad rap it seems on big banks the slip in the dangerous territory when it comes to their reputation but then we'll take a look at what this might mean for the rest of the economy economic outlook for two thousand and twelve the first your closing market embers.

you just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old and just you know look true. i have a confession i am a total get of friends that i love driving hip hop music and pretty much. i do is kind of the jester day. i'm very proud of the world without you it's place. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charged welcomes a big picture. of

. 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 the global machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sessions when nobody dares to ask we do our t.v. question more. welcome back so goldman sachs and morgan stanley reportedly have reduced their use of mark to market accounting us an article today in the wall street journal the use cost accounting for some corporate loans now this is where assets are held at their

original value we've talked a lot about mark to market on this show so. if this is the sound sketchy i don't know what does we're going to look at what's really going on here also we know banks have a risk problem ok moody reminded us yesterday when it said they may downgrade grade practically all of investment banking pretty much and look at this they have a reputation problem too this firm puts together a reputation quotient and below fifty is deemed critical this is even below very poor and what do you know look at this bank of america a.i.g. and goldman sachs find themselves in dangerous territory occupying that same space that di funk companies occupied in years past had before expiring now past fifty reputation quotient performers include the now deceased and run adelphia and world com now i should also note that financial services companies suffered four of the

five worst losses in reputation in the last year in fact a quarter of the most visible companies saw significantly lower our q scores compared to the prior year here the top five bank of america berkshire hathaway wells fargo goldman sachs j.p. morgan as i said look that's all financial services and there were a lot more companies too that fell into this decline but what is going to be the toll of the bad rap the high risks to that we're talking about not to mention problems going on all over the world in europe and japan that's one of the oil shock what is all this going to do to the economy for the rest of the year well max rod wolf is here to help us sort it out he's chief economist and senior analyst at green crest capital going to tell us all about it so max thanks for being on the show thanks for turning me on to that reputation quotient that's really interesting my first question to you what impact is a bad rep have on the banks. thanks for having me on the show it's always a pleasure to join you i think your reputation does sort of speak and put stark numbers on

a series of social changes we've seen which is kind of the warship period of the american c.e.o. which was a heyday across the one nine hundred ninety s. is very certainly slipped into the past here and we continue to see like we do with the occupy wall street protests and other social movements we continue to see public anger and rage really tightly focused on financial services so the for a large portion of the american general public banks are to blame for an economic downturn people feel like they got bailed out that they did well better than they deserve to because they got help that's not available for the general public yet in public anger about high unemployment about lack of economic opportunity about indebtedness has kind of all come to focus on these banks and the reputational quotient is giving you an actual measure of just how far these firms have fallen in the last few years and how they continue to fall even though the economy is doing a touch better which is a bad sign about how long it will take for them to redeem themselves if indeed they can that next my question q ok yeah we know people are pissed at the bank three we hear that.