war is a lie and founder of the website david swanson dot org david how are we same as before. almost identical my god i'm glad i don't watch television the newspapers are bad enough i had to sit through that you know it was nuclear weapons weapons of mass destruction was a way of lowering the line between less dangerous weapons and nuclear weapons and the public was convinced in the united states that iraq had nuclear weapons dick cheney would occasionally say it outright condi would warn of mushroom clouds and they would in various other ways imply that iraq was about to hit us with nuclear weapons and was behind nine eleven we even got our buddy over in egypt to torture a man until he said iraq was linked in linked up with al qaeda and behind nine eleven it's the same thing we've recently heard that it rand was actually behind nine eleven iran has nuclear weapons we have the majority of the american public believe me iran has nuclear weapons while in reality they avoid saying so they

fudge they talk about its possible nuclear capabilities and so forth it's almost identical and of course replace dick cheney who as you said a vice president at the time going on and on about the threat now even in the family still his daughter is of course on all the networks saying the same thing it's so interesting we see these pictures pictures of the iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad in a lab coat and all the sudden the case is made you know the i.a.e.a. report said there may be reasons to believe but again no evidence and i want to play something on here's janet napolitano the homeland security secretary testifying last week on capitol hill. right now we have no specific or credible threat against any organization or or target in the united states but this is certainly a situation that bears watching all right so a situation that bears watching from an official you know educated source is

a little bit different to me then you know an attack is imminent what's going on here. and they they all say every single one of them the president the secretary of so-called defense the homeland security secretary that there is no evidence that iran is developing a nuclear weapons program there is only evidence that iran has a nuclear energy program which it iran's says it does there is no evidence that iran is violating the nuclear nonproliferation treaty all of these facts are in contrast with israel and the united states by the way which if these were justifications for war there would be justification for war against us but of course they are not and this crazy media madness leads us down this same path where we all begin to assume that if iran does have a nuclear weapons program then we need to know get it nobody can prove it doesn't the president himself claims not to want war with iran but suggests that it's up to

iran to cease its probably not existence nuclear weapons program and to prove a negative to prove that it does not have what there is no evidence it doesn't have or the blame is on iran and we should have a war whereas of course there is no such thing as a justification for a war based on what weapons a country has a lot of course bring israel and have that israel of course invite are vital part of this discussion being such a close ally with the united states general martin dempsey chairman of the u.s. joint chiefs of staff said over the weekend that you know it was not prudent at this point to attack iran and a strike at this time would be stabilizing but he also admitted that you know israel might not be convinced of the same notion talk about you know the role of israel and. you know why there is such a huge tug of war going on right now will the u.s. government right up to the president cannot continue to give israel billions of

dollars worth of weapons promise israel to veto all measures of accountability for its abuses and crimes at the united nations and pretend. to be trying to persuade israel not to strike iran the united states has the obvious capability to influence influence israel and is choosing not to use it while continuing including through the president's own mouth to push the same propaganda that makes the war more likely it would not be prudent to start the war today it would also not be prudent to continue down this path that allows the momentum to build with threats back and forth between us and iran that makes the war more and more likely as the months go by the only prudent wise moral or decent thing would be to take steps now to talk to iran to negotiate to scale back and to actually threaten israel with something israel cares about and as one final point david i mean. i think it's very easy to

make this iran iraq comparison between you know the leading up to the iraq war based on false premises and what's going on now but we should mention too that this negative talk this fear mongering about iran is not new it's not new in the last few weeks it's not even new under obama it's been going on for decades has to say this is just sort of more of the same well iran was on the list that tony blair said dick cheney had that wesley clark said the pentagon had a decade back it's been on the list of the project for the new american century and the neo cons in this country it's been a target since the one nine hundred fifty s. and since the revolution in the late one nine hundred seventy s. it is not at all new that iran is a target but we have successfully persuaded the american public that it would be another iraq that we were being lied to for many years now and this campaign to get us into iran again has failed in public relations terms for several years now we have to keep up that campaign david swanson author of war as

a lie joining us from charlottesville virginia thanks so much thank you. well it's gone to syria where violence is continuing and in some parts of the country is actually getting worse the international committee of the red cross right now trying to negotiate a humanitarian ceasefire between pro and anti-government forces in syria to bring in supplies like food and medical aid to those in need and to senior members of the u.s. senate armed services committee senators john mccain and lindsey graham have called for u.s. and western help in aiding the syrian rebels to supply those rebels with weapons and other aid we can and grandma are in kabul afghanistan and they said doing so would also help washington in its effort to weaken iran now the situation on the ground in syria right now still very tense and dangerous and as maria for notion are reports violence is expanding far beyond damascus and is taking its toll on entire communities throughout the country there. fifty kilometers northwest of

damascus lebanon just over the border once relaxed luxury mountain resort the town has recently been the scene of brutal clashes between assad's forces and and to government groups there was a lull in the fighting and as we approach the city we have who's a control at the checkpoint they are happy to see a russian television crew assaulted him to about who's in charge here russia is among the few countries to talking to assad and calling for others to have dialogue with the regime along with china it to be towed to the u.n. security council's resolution and voted against another one at the general assembly which put pressure on assad to leave this town nobody home to around twenty thousand people looks abandoned. the reminders of recent turbulence tell their own tale of what happened here on these walls you can see the story of the conflict how

it was developing here in the city of there by danny initially there were some graffiti is here about president bashar al assad then when the armed groups operating in this area took control of this town new graffiti is a period of course and to government one of the army regained control of his adani they destroyed them or they tried to destroy them all at least but some still remain where we are in town we can hear sounds of shelling some turn a deaf ear to it would always find a shooting but i don't know those who agreed to talk and don't want to show their face. the army intervene and it's killing us they're shelling random houses searching arresting people there's f.s.a. an armored groups on the ground to you. but not everyone here says the situation in the same way was when armed people came here we asked the army to stand up for us now they are controlling the city at dulles shop is an area where much of the

fighting took place. with i was away when i arrived the army told me there's been a big battle here says the army is now here there's no groups anymore no tents most of the caledonia the clashes between security forces and the armed opposition groups here near the town of the dunny have been very severe how it all stopped the locals tell us that their town has a unique story when the violence started the residents decided to intervene and there has allegedly been an agreement between the army and the opposition that both of them leave the town although the military officer we have been able to speak to didn't confirm that and we can still see. many miter and machinery inside the city we had a look around and counted at least thirteen tanks but to tell us they were only used as protection on the way back through the checkpoint and office to keep supporting everyone suspicious in this nation refinish nasty.

syria all right that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to r.t. dot com slash usa or youtube dot com slash r.t. america will be back here in thirty minutes. sure is that so much i'm going which of course you might want to try again so here it is the trials and tribulations of the middle class long considered the failure of the west political and economic order is now the victim of a long term. used today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the world has been

seeing from the streets of canada. showing operations around the day. they're. going to explode things were turning.

fifty. good afternoon and welcome to capital account i'm more in the store here in washington d.c. and here are your headlines for february twentieth two thousand and twelve it is d. dave burglary at least that's the headline and yeah we've certainly heard it before the reader with that cobb euro zone finance ministers though are meeting today to supposedly sign off on the one hundred thirty billion euro bailout as it continues to dominate the news we deconstruct what continues to be missing from this story and there's been an ongoing debate in the u.s. over the volcker well this is the role that supposed to rain and risk on wall

street big time bar the big banks from trading with their own money seventeen thousand letters poured into regulators wall street fighting the new regulations. the nail saying it will threaten the economy is big banks can perform these functions but how many other institutions or even financial startups would be easer to step into this market once the big banks no longer have a stranglehold monopoly over it so is this about the economy or is it after we often see about anti-competitive practices by the big boys on wall street and speaking of innovation and squashing it ryanair has brought a lot of it i'm talking about innovation to flying in your abilities with the combination of super duper low fares and a certain flair when it comes to i catching advertising will some of their latest ads are banned in britain so are you k. regulators unfairly crushing the competitive edge we'll talk about it let's get to today's capital again.

all right the volcker rule has gotten everyone's attention or at least ours along with seventeen thousand other people or groups but i'll get back to that first i want you to remember this is the rule that supposed to write some of the wrongs associated with the repeal of glass steagall which of course separated commercial banking from investment banking and the volcker rule was part of dodd frank legislation now the spirit of the law is meant to prevent proprietary trading by banks which hold as the icy insured deposits basically stop banks from making risky bets with your money now wall street has been lobbying against it ok we've covered that before it's pretty obvious why they would want to do that and there are some

unusual critics though to reportedly like red lobster and macy's but old lot of people have an opinion on this the wall street journal cites logic's data which tracks regulatory disclosures and they say the request for public comment on the volcker rule has drawn close to seventeen thousand letters everybody from banks to asset managers v.c. firms local governments foreign governments exchanges and one three hundred twenty five page letter comes from a financial activist group occupy the f.c.c. which details how and why the volcker rule doesn't go nearly far enough in their view so here to sell to help us sort all of this out and what really is going on here joshua brown he's vice president of investments at fusion analytics and also author of the soon to be released book backstage wall street an insider's guide to knowing who to trust who to run from and how to maximize your investments it's out

in march and he has a very popular blog reform broker and we're very happy to welcome him to capital account thanks for being on the show. that's that's some build up i hope i live up to it well you know there you are managing expectations like you would expect from someone who does what you do let's talk about that before we get into dissecting it the big banks they don't i mean it's obvious why they would want to lobby against this but what they're saying the threat that they're holding over our heads is that this is going to hurt the economy it's going to hurt the entire financial services sector i'm not sympathetic to the big banks i don't really buy anything that they say but just you know tell me josh sitting here is there any reason why i should be super worried that the economy is going to tank if banks are no longer allowed to engage in proprietary trading as the volcker rule is supposed to do. so not a lot of people are aware of this but the last time all the banks got together and lobbied in concert for something it was for increased ceiling on how much leverage

they were able to trade with and actually funnily enough that law became known as the bear stearns exemption. which we all know we all know how that worked out they basically lobbied for enough rope to hang themselves i think it's very hard to picture how the curtailing of hedge fund like a pivot is within a money center bank would lead to a collapse of financial markets i don't understand how we bridge those two things so really this is about protecting the possibility that these banks are going to be good to trade in and allow for that exciting extra revenue to come in and you know i'm not surprised as a lot of comment on it it's a huge rule change one of the biggest we've seen in decades wow and here's another argument one of the groups that did comment is the occupy the f.c.c. financial activist group here is a. woman talking about a counter to the argument that this is going to hurt the economy i played it for

you earlier in an e-mail i want to play it for our viewers and then i want to get your take on it. the banking industry isn't all agog believe you have these like five bolts racket firms that control everything and this idea that if we all of a sudden regulate these big banks that enjoy the discount window and the sort of implicit government backing that everything will fall apart what about free market capitalism right there are so many people that are so hungry to jump into these highly profitable areas that the banks currently have a stranglehold on it and believe me they will there was you know i thought that was a really really good point i'm just wondering for you you're an investment adviser you advocate fairness do you see this as an opportunity to make it a freer market and for more people to actually benefit from getting into these businesses. you know i think it's a hate to regulate it in order to get people more opportunity or deregulating you know it's always whenever you get congress involved in trying to make things fair

for whatever reason things always end up more unfair so it's hard for me to jump on that bandwagon what i would like to get across and what i think is the most important thing to understand here is that yes we do have these five or six mega banks that are in a lot of control of a lot of things but there are a lot of things that they're really good at as a result of their size so i think there is room for other banks to compete but if you notice the excuse that they've made and the arguments they've put forth when fighting the potential of the volcker rule there's this drifted kind of changes the you know the narrative so originally they said listen if you put these restraints on us we're going to lose all the best talent to foreign banks now fast forward two years later can you imagine soft or any of these big european banks being in any kind of condition take talent from the u.s. so it's always a new excuse why they need to be able to do this i think there's no reason for the positives to touche and that's in gauging in fractional reserve lending to have the

ability to be out there that unlike a hedge fund period end of story you can cop fifty different reasons why they need to but none of them stand up to a logical reason ok and you don't buy the idea that any kind of regulation would add to a freer market but let me ask you this why does there still seem to be this assumption that what's good for the big banks is good for capitalism who's making that assumption i think that there is that assumption when people actually buy the argument that this would be rail the economy if the big banks don't get what they want with this regulation. well the banks will be less profitable and they'll probably have to engage in a lot of spinoff activity let's let's put some numbers here so citigroup is a great example they've got this they've got this capital division where it's basically all the hedge funds they've acquired and all types of you know

independent like asset management businesses that are on denethor citi group umbrella they have to raise one hundred sixty six billion dollars from outside capital in order to keep those the size that they are because they can only be three percent if the volcker rule goes through they're already making preparations to find those outside investors because they know that some sort of volcker rule is likely to finally pass so i think. everyone will get back to business as usual and the banks are just going to have to adjust to the fact that we're not cool allow it goldman and morgan may shed their commercial bank skin and go back to being investment banks and then the others like wells fargo and j.p. morgan and bank of america are just going to have to accept that they had a shot at this we gave them virtually no regulation anough rope to do whatever they wanted to do they made their own mess and this is a consequence of that but do you really believe that because another argument too

is that even with this volcker rule if it goes there there's plenty of loopholes ok there's a dubious interpretation of what it means to be a market maker which basically allows them to engage in proprietary trading just do it a different way but essential to do the same thing that they were doing before this regulation came around so do you think that wall street will really reform or this will just be another way for them to need to be more creative in order to get around it. but i mean creativity is part of the d.n.a. you know people people have to understand we wake up every morning everyone in the country has money and stocks the four a one k.'s that wasn't a thing until the very recent history but wall street is always found the way to do what they wanted to do to attain deposits from main street and then things blow up every once in a while people understand the reason why they call these firms why are houses stems back from before there was bloomberg terminals of the internet will you the only way you could find out how your investments were doing if you were across the

country is via a wire if you look at the great depression the wall street firms had access to the information first yeah it took people in california days to realize that things were melting down because it was put out over the wire so would the wall street firms are able to do is have information before everyone else and then find ways to monetize that and that's ok that's what it is but let's not assume that they're not going to find new ways to make money that's actually a good thing that's an american virtue i just think they need to find another way to make money that's not quite as potentially destructive to the rest of the economy and just to really hammer home because for some of our audience who maybe don't understand what proprietary trading as i want to break down how and not bad it was written about that they were talking about trades using leverage and they said this strategy maximizes profits but also means entire banks can be wiped out by a single bad investment we're still an addition to the destructive market bubbles caused

by their profit seeking these banks are protected by the government both explicitly through the f.d.i.c and implicitly through too big to fail guarantees so isn't this kind of that a sense of the thing that i know you've written about it so many of our guests hate which is privatized gains and socialize losses does this get right to that lord of the the best thing i saw happen in the last six months. was the m.f. global bankruptcy this was a thing of beauty not that i'm happy that people lost their jobs or that money was lost but this was a thing of beauty here is a brokerage firm that's got a proprietary trading division within it there are no taxpayers on the hook for this because it's not a commercial bank it's a brokerage firm now there's some missing money and there might be some illegality but on the on the surface this is a basically a financial firm that made wrong headed bets they used too much leverage they committed some cardinal sins and ultimately they wiped out that's what's supposed

to happen to investors who speculate and get it wrong and you know what the banking system wasn't threatened congress didn't have to convene this is a firm that made a bad decision now the problem is you can't have that when it's bank of america or morgan stanley or a systemic bank doing that so really this is about the heart and soul of american capitalism are we going to have a system where some companies are so important that we have to overlook and subsidize their losses or are we actually going to be capitalists and say hey you bet the wrong way you bet too much and you've gone and you know it's one of the other that's why i want i want to talk to you that is out what if that's how it's supposed to work yeah that's not supposed to work and so then i want to get to the conversation about breaking up those big think that you mentioned we got to go to break but we will be right back with more with joshua brown. and still ahead ryanair may have red hot fares but the u.k. advertising standards authority does not approve will give you our three cents on

the lawlessness of law here a the first happy president's day the markets are closed the numbers for you. and me the ambulance. people calling what you said for free and fair elections. and we're still reporting from the winter if you can hear behind me loud explosions. please i need. a. break let's just burn gerard's right right i mean it's like

a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essential. this is much stronger than anything you buy obsolete used thousands of times i'm stronger than any one of the you ever put you know. all right welcome back before the break we were talking about how bankruptcy is

a beautiful thing as my guest put it so what does that mean for the too big to fail banks that could bring down the economy if they go bankrupt what happens if they do bad stuff well let's bring joshua brown back and he's vice president of investments at fusion analytics and author of backstage wall street an insider's guide to knowing who to trust who to run from and how to maximize your investments it's out in march go grab it preorder it now before the break josh we were talking about the too big to fail banks that propose a systemic risk if they go bankrupt so they can't go bankrupt so then maybe when jamie dimon is talking about how the volcker rule isn't the solution he's on to something in this sense that complex government regulation is masking over the fact that you still have these too big to fail banks that either needed need to be broken up or have a plan to let them fail do you think that is what really there needs to be a plan for failure or breaking them up. let me tell you something i think they're going to break up anyway i think you're going to see in the next five years and undoing of

a lot of what on in the ninety's and the last decade i think we're calling it the oughts really what what what's what's at issue here is the fact that this supermarket concept is just not working the profits aren't kicking in from brokers cross selling bad products and bankers selling insurance all of the things that sandy weill thought would happen in the late ninety's when he put together cities traveler and spent party they're really not happening it's not working out very well so i think there's a higher likelihood that you see bank of america merrill lynch split up and you see some divestitures because if the volcker rule is going to stop these guys from being investment banks well at a certain point the talent within these internal investment banks is going to look to make a break for it and i really wouldn't be surprised to see that happen before the government ever gets around to mandating that it happen interesting so you think the bank to really get a break up on their own now one of the issues here though is it kind of essential to argue.