to senegal where police are fired tear gas at crowds of protesters who hold stones and set up barricades in response the demonstrations were against the current president. running for a third term as head of state constitution allows for only two stretches in office the court cleared him to run again as he took office before the term limit was put in place these four people have died in the protests since the unrest began last month. pope benedict has appointed twenty two new cardinals at the vatican the main role of the elite club of catholic figureheads is to advise the current pope and choose a successor almost a quarter of cardinals and help from italy decreasing the chance of the next pope could be from another country a situation of israel's accusations of bias sermon has been clouded by embarrassing leaks of internal documents alleging corruption among top clerics. bring you live pictures from newark new jersey where friends and family have gathered to say their last goodbyes to pop icon whitney houston the funeral

services being held at the church where she sang in the choir as a child fans started to pay their respects on friday leaving flowers and balloons on the church steps the six time grammy award winner was found dead in a bath tub of beverly hills hotel last week and you can also see the fear will live on our website at the moment r.t. dot com. there's more learned in russia than in any other country in the world but people especially in big cities struggle to find fresh farm produce however the supremacy of supermarkets and big businesses could soon be over as a growing up tight for organic products means more and more people are taking up farming but there's still a long way to go as a push over reports. the feast for the eyes but not necessarily for your stomach many would be shocked to find out what exactly makes its way onto our plates. if only people knew what their sausage is made of or how they jagow it was bottled

they would be very upset and would stop buying anything at all of the shops but. perhaps that's why there is a growing demand among people in russia's main cities for gannett products unfortunately for them russian shops have little to offer what is sold as eco and bio friendly is often far from it. by abroad as have found a niche in the market i think starboard environment and you fashion for a healthy lifestyle. there are no legal standards are certified labeling schemes for organic produce in russia. so individual farmers define it in their own way but it's really on every farmer's own conscience. alexander is a computer programmer who turned to working the land what started as a hobby is now a mini industry with several farms in the moscow region covering livestock fish vegetables and habs he's even aiming for his first harvest of black caviar from sturgeon as he breeds not far away from us go if you have

a. big business simply can't afford to produce ecologically clean product they'll use pesticides to boost growth and lower the cost of everything i do is pure without a drop of chemicals. this new market in moscow had said and ambitious task to offer its customers and unprecedented range of eco products what started as an attempt to bring organic food to the masses turned out to be almost impossible in reality no russian farmers can produce all this let alone in quantities needed for a large city so anything truly eco and bio friendly remains a luxury only if people. russia can afford despite soaring prices for anything organic individual farmers find it hard to make their businesses profitable beaten by the supermarkets with their cheap processed food by the sec ema founded an online organic store trying to help small pharma survive and at the same time

improve the quality of life while food conscious customers just like him. initially we simply wanted healthy stuff for our families and friends now we hand pick each person involved in the production of meat or bread that we sell so that we know where the food has come from and the business is growing but. some go as far as saying russia with its plenty of land could eventually become an organic food basket for the whole world a very few in one hundred fourteen russia third half of the world and we could easily get back to that but the state needs to start investing in agriculture. and while city dwellers are only starting to go back to their roots milledge is in russia's most organic far away corners are probably unaware of the treasures they could offer every klondike to be discovered gary bush gave up r.t. scary. org site l.t.

dot com is the place where you can find all the latest news and analysis and in blogs section right now online exclusive reflections from iran feels people in tehran how they feel about their country's controversial nuclear program is for students who volunteer to do atomic research. also a lot of the moment i'm not in the strikes again as hacktivists and bring down several u.s. government web sites and the latest active protest against on line censorship dot com. is.

the official anti application to go on the phone on called touch from the top story . video on demand. and says feed now in the palm of your. question on the dot com. russia and china came under international fall when they refused to take sides in syria's conflict and vetoed a u.n. security council resolution it's just the most recent example of the two standing largely on their own president in new york went to ask people in the big apple whether the two countries should be feared. if you believe the news media you should fear china and russia this week let's talk about why if they wanted to china could wipe out the us in probably three minutes

but anyone with an atomic bomb could true so why china in particular. chinese people are very dangerous why what is made you think bad have you ever been personally threatened by a chinese person no so why do you feel that way. they know kung fu i don't think we were in the good of relationship with them. so should we fear them is that going to make relations better and we should fear of them i think they should fear us i think there's a legitimate concerns about human rights there and i think to need to pay attention to and what are their legitimate human rights issues everywhere don't we have them here in the us sure i think a different scale there but yes we do have another places when there's there was stuff to find out so well that is this stuff to find out so well that will screw nobody's going to give us a mono would be but we're participating in that why is it their fault because they're acting smartly. it's hard to resist last year i was

in china i wasn't scared at all i don't think you'll be doing should be i don't think we should run our country like china or russia but i think there are some ideas and some kind of plans they have that help their economy so maybe we can learn from that that's more amul aiding and looking up to rather than fearing but we're taught to fear them why do you think that is because fear keeps you in control if you are afraid it's easier to be manipulated by somebody telling you to do something rather than questioning what they say everybody's freak scared today because the news and all the media makes people's care then specially in america why china and russia in particular are we made to feel scared because they're very powerful that's what we think ultimately they're going to be a part of the growth picture and they need us as much as we need them so why are people scared of them why are they painted in this more of a picture the unknown so is this and so maybe we should get to know them to be good

invite them over for coffee like that whether or not you believe the world should fear china and russia the bottom line to me is the old adage those who live in glass houses should never throw a stone. exactly . twenty seven his posse are in russian capital but with a recap of our top stories in three minutes now stay with us here on r.t. .

any match one split 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. on. the news.

just seemed. to. come up. wealthy british style. is not on the tightly. market why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our.

motion to be so much brighter if you knew more about song from finest impressions. please for instance on t.v. dot com. if you just joined us for a while marty. top stories now the pressure grows on the regime in syria but there are fears that if damascus falls the nation's key ally iran could be left stranded and propelled into action. without the vote on whether russian the language spoken by a third of its population should official status russian speakers say they're being discriminated against in the baltic states. and the idea of euro unity holds strong despite the reasons crumbling finances some e.u.

schools are accused of brainwashing peoples into believing the project is in fallible. but i'll be back with more of those stories and more developments in half an hour from now in the meantime nor has the nation's economic perspective from washington d.c. capital accounts is next. good afternoon and welcome to capital account i'm lauren in 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 it's high wall 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 we'll 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 drug trade deal or 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 the reach trade deals we covered here on this show there with 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 and 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 raising the trade freely without tariffs or any sort of other protectionism but the case i mean for example after these trade deals are passed 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 of 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 interests 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 south. 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 it was and because south korea of our ministration rejected the deal and they sort of allowed a lot more a sort of american automobiles into 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 backburner 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 there 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 no one 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 in this group was able to successfully do and it may not be you know like i said it's not as 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 motor 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 i meet with south korean negotiators they change the deal and then four was putting out press releases talking about how great the deal was for america you know they were not 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 in apparent now that the bottom ministration actually work with several industries to try to get their concerns met them as 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 it's really fascinating and obama was actually an opponent of these deals when he ran for the presidency and he campaigned to them to 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 to the idea that they create and that about american jobs you kept saying jobs supporting and the economic policy is it was sort of a nonpartisan sort of thing take on these issues as i made that just from the south korea deal loan that we'd 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 lying. saying they're job supporting and not using your job rating but he's not a member there's of we're going to run i guess the argument always is 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 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 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 pay 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 his 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 speaking 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. still ahead what's the impact of a bad rap it seems i'm big banks as live in the dangerous territory when it comes to their rescue based implosion we'll take a look at what this might mean for the rest of the economy economic outlook for two thousand and twelve but first your closing market embers.

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 own original value we've talked

a lot about mark to market on this show so. if this isn't 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 press capital he's 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 the 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 yeah and 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 side 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 banks lete we hear that from people whether they're at occupy wall street or.