welcome to the ilona show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mercy we're going to live out of washington d.c. it out tonight we're going to have our financial check up with lauren lyster host of the capital count here on r.t. and today j.p. morgan and their two billion dollar loss are the topic then our corporations being allowed to kill people that's what our guest argues when it comes to what they put in the food that you eat and in georgia a new facility is opening up a county jail that exclusively for veterans so we're going to talk about the extra rehabilitative care that they're going to receive with the sheriff who came up with this plan we're going to all of that and more fit a night including a dose of happy hour but first take

a look at the mainstream media decided to miss. well last night the president had his a record breaking fundraiser at george clooney is house and believe me there was a lot of money flowing into the campaign coffers and so the mainstream media was all over the numbers the hottest ticket in hollywood last night the president joined forces with george clooney and a host of other hollywood celebrities to raise what was a record fifteen million dollars hollywood blockbuster mr obama is out west after a record breaking fundraiser last night at george clooney los angeles mansion george clooney fundraiser starring president obama raised fifteen million dollars in a single guy a lot of a listers turned out in force of barber streisand tobey maguire jack black selma and robert downey jr to name just a few is the most famous man in the world he is the first black president and he's

going to absolutely take the endorsements of really wealthy high profile celebrities that people like more than two hundred thousand americans will not receive unemployment checks as a federal extension of that benefit expires this week to be eligible states must prove their jobless rate is at least ten percent higher now than in one of the last three years but those rates have been falling as the unemployed find new jobs or leave the workforce for good he's more of a celebrity president obama then he is a president a price to join the party a cool forty thousand dollars a plate is president obama really the celebrity in chief. if you can catch that one little clip in the middle there what was that about more than two hundred thousand americans not receiving their unemployment benefits well i can tell you this information comes from a new report from the national employment law project and eight states this week and two hundred thirty thousand americans will lose their unemployment benefits

nearly one hundred thousand of those workers. coming from the state of california alone and why it's happening well thanks to a congressional agreement that's going to reduce the maximum duration of unemployment benefits this year from ninety nine to seventy nine weeks and with the works is that most states provide twenty six weeks of benefits and the federal government provides the rest but how much comes from the federal government is based on certain restrictions so in order to reach that limit the state's unemployment rate has to continue increasing and many states there's been a slight decrease but that does not mean that the problem of incredibly high unemployment and long term unemployment are anywhere near solved in fact more than five million americans have been out of work for at least six months according to labor department and according to the economic policy institute more than thirty percent of the unemployed have been out of work for a year or more and so now a couple of hundred thousand more people are going to have to get by without any help and if you think of things are going to be easy for them think again estimates from the government accountability office show that two million people exhausted

their unemployment benefits in early two thousand and ten and that nearly one in five of those people fell into poverty so this is a big deal this is really bad news for those two hundred thirty thousand americans and their families but somehow that only deserve a tiny little blip from c.n.n. you saw this but maybe thirty seconds on it and then just moved right all the other cable networks didn't even touch it it's just so much more exciting to talk about the millions that the president is raising from celebrities so once again just showing you how out of touch the mainstream media is with the problems of real americans once again a painful reality that they choose to miss. all right so it's time for our weekly financial check up and there is big news this week when it comes to reminding us just how much of a gambling culture is still alive and well on wall street yesterday it was

officially announced that j.p. morgan had lost two billion dollars in one quarter on a bad risky bet now c.e.o. jamie dimon admitted that the bank had quote egg on its face but also insisted that even have the volcker rule been in place this particular bet would have still been allowed so on one hand this is going to up the push for more regulation what do we say when the maid regulation in question is still full of loopholes so let's get started on our financial check up. joining me is lauren lyster host of the capital account here on r.t.e. lauren what it tells two million dollars or two billion excuse me two billion dollars if that were lost how exactly did this happen ok well that is a very good question because the treasury the chief investment office where this trader the london whale who we've been hearing about in the press for a little over a month that's where he worked this is supposed to be an office that manages the

banks the risk that hedges the banks the risks however what j.p. morgan former executives have been coming out since the london whale news broke and saying is that jamie dimon over the past five years according to bloomberg had basically transformed this into a proprietary trading operation j.p. morgan said oh this london whale is nothing to worry about this this threat this risk is you know nothing because they have been rattling debt markets have been making a big splash if you will also then jamie diamond has this kind of surprise bizarre conference call yesterday saying hey this trade has lost two billion dollars this portion of the company will post an eight hundred million dollar loss and there could be a billion dollar loss from this trade again on the way which brings up a lot of questions about what this portion of the bank is doing because it sounds a lot like proprietary trading as opposed to hedging or ok well so that's what i want to get into right because all the discussion is the volcker rule and

a lot of people are saying that this is just the perfect example of why we need things like this in place why we need more regulation but then jamie dimon like you said said that no this is just hedging this is not required for a time proprietary excuse me trading so tell us what the differences are yes ok will hedging is supposed to be hedging of a bank's risk proprietary trading is when a bank takes money customer money because today commercial banks and investment banks are merged so at the end of the day these are customer deposits that it's using to. bet with when it's company money and makes bets for the house this is what some have called to simplify kind of the gambling portion of the bank and this is what is cause this kind of risk has allowed for tons of leverage that when trades go wrong can cause just huge catastrophes can require bailouts because of these kind of risk can put taxpayers on the line can put depositors on the line and so the core of kind of the volcker rule has been that it wanted to separate that function from the commercial banking function which in this day and age just means hey banks can't proprietary trade if you're an investment bank you can't do it but

this brings up the issue of the loopholes because hedging is one of these loopholes and what has become this huge three hundred page rule so far which hasn't been finalized yet that's supposed to be due out this summer but when jamie dimon says that this is it this would be out of the volcker rule he might be right because this one visitor nanjing in this is a loophole a part of it is that it's so complicated and so is it that the two these two practices are just so close together that it's hard to even technically figure out you know when one is it one is one way. or is it the people that are writing this rule three hundred pages in our are leaving a full of loopholes ones that you can have two billion dollars worth of a hole and i think it's the latter and that's what's been substantiated by a lot of critics of the volcker rule because you know he's been lobbying this since the start the banks there are even reports that the banks will go in and lobby for something to be in the volcker rule like for example this whole exemption for foreign bonds where they couldn't buy him. and then they told foreign governments

to log the against the volcker rule because of it so there are some shady things that have gone on there are a lot of loopholes that have been put into this rule that has made it a lot more complicated to where pope volcker who inspired the whole thing isn't a fan there should have been a thirty page rule that should've been much smaller and much simpler and of course it was riddled with all these loopholes that banks have lobbied for it to have making it so confusing and making it difficult to. stay in the spirit of the original role. is obviously played a very vocal role here right i mean if anybody has been a big opponent of the rule it is this man you know and so i do think that it just starts to raise some questions too because a yeah jamie done has been lobbying against it and you start to wonder why because these kinds of practices are going on you know but at the same time j.p. morgan got a lot of applause for being the ones that actually manage their risk well compared to the other banks and so what's not supposed to tell us i think that that should

be a huge red flag and raise the alarm bells because jamie dimon and j.p. morgan not only have they constantly touted how much better they came out of the financial crisis or weathered it than other banks but since then they always talk about and tout the bank's fortress balance sheet and how they have the best risk management on wall street and they're making these kind of huge bets and huge mistakes and taking on this kind of risk if this is the best on wall street then what's the worst and what's the average and what are the controls that are in place in these banks and that's what you have to wonder and worry about you know a really good point but so in that sense it's also about attitude right because these guys are still too big to fail they probably think that they're still too big to fail and so i don't know you know the bailout is over it already happened so you're not going to go back in time or not be able to change that but is there a way to let them know to make them think that in the future you're not going to get bailed out again can the fed do something say something well that's

a very broad it's a very big deal since you bring up the fed i'll bring up a major point here which is yes there is still a too big to fail implicit bailout guarantee for these types demichelis big banks that they know if they take a huge risk that really puts him in a bind if they are in a position where they would feel they have a bailout guarantee from the fed and have a bailout guarantee from the treasury because they are too big to fail you could argue that that incentivizes and enables this. kind of risk taking especially in a time when wall street is having a harder time making those record profits that used to have wall street been laying off it's become tougher so they maybe are making these bigger risks in order to try and get these profits try and get better profits then the average on the market or what normally you would get and there you have that backstop from the fed in addition we're in a zero interest rate environment which means that nobody's making money from anything that's risk free interest rates are so low you can argue that people are incentivized to take bigger risks outsize risks an order to chase yield in order to

make a profit so there's a lot of enabling going on in that side as far as the regulation side of it i mean there are so many issues with regulation a lot that we just talked about with the volcker rule but i think what you do need is separating the commercial and the investment bank side something that does capture the essence of glass steagall which we don't have with the volcker rule yet i don't know if it's going to be well i just wonder how this is going to play i mean obviously it's just one scandal out of many out there and where there's going to be some more along the way when we get to november and get to the general election but i wonder how things like this also might change you know some of the dialogue because we hear a lot from especially republican presumptive nominee mitt romney about repealing dodd frank repealing regulations but when stories like this come out support for regulations definitely gets that all right. well not all of a difference or actually to the good that goes we would again. there's still much more to come tonight have you ever stop to think what you're really eating in your

food and i'm going to talk with an author who is warning that too much the regulation in the food industry will kill us we'll be right back. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporation to rule the day.

wealthy british style. that's not on the title of. markets why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with monks cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kaiser report on our.

our guys it's time for tonight's tool time award and tonight the work goes to the republican party for supporting ways to motivate and spending while moaning about the deficit now if you're going to times a single spokesperson this hypocritical policy probably be congressman paul ryan as we've discussed here before on the show he recently sponsored a bill that would cut social spending in order to try and avoid reductions in defense that were demanded by last year's debt ceiling deal and the so-called

sequestration cuts would reduce the pentagon budget by four hundred eighty seven billion over the next ten years but that was just unacceptable for republicans despite their claims to be the vanguards of fiscal responsibility they decide to try to please their war profiteer campaign donors so yesterday the g.o.p. dominated house passed ryan's bill which leaves the pentagon untouched while slashing three hundred ten billion from medicare medicaid food stamps and other welfare programs are you think of the pentagon might actually be pleased by this measure right after all secretary of defense leon panetta warned that sequestration would be devastating he even called it a dooms day mechanism but as it turns out that is assessment may wasn't exactly what republicans had expected take a look. the department of defense and i believe the administration are not going to support the additional funds that come at the expense of other critical national security priorities. and if members try to restore their favorite programs

without regard to an overall strategy. the cuts will have to come from areas that could impact overall readiness. there's no free lunch or there is no free lunch. that's right not only could republican politicking harm america's most vulnerable but is throwing a wrench in carefully crafted pentagon plans and adding to the national debt even panetta pointed out the deficit the deficit could harm national security in the long haul and he was particularly upset by these pet projects things like the modernization of navy cruisers slated for retirement or an east coast missile defense system yeah that save east coast missile defense system that we spoke about a few weeks ago the aim to protect against missiles that iran does not have even fox news couldn't resist pointing out that their favorite fear mongering weapons iran or north korea don't have the missiles capable of reaching the east coast but

it's not just house republicans who cry crocodile tears over deficit spending while giving the pentagon money to burn yesterday at c.n.n. calculated that mitt romney wants to one up his colleagues by proposing a two point one trillion dollar defense spending increase over the next decade that's trillion with a t. and this is the same candidate who said he wants to work towards quote getting our fiscal house in order funny that romney's vision of fiscal responsibility includes trillions more of the most wasteful bloated agency while refusing to raise taxes on his hedge fund buddies but fortunately the american people might actually finally be seeing through this absurd chest thumping posturing a poll conducted by three separate think tanks found that sixty five percent of americans think the defense spending is too high but are publicans and apparently none of this matters right despite all logic all opinion polls statements by the secretary of defense they keep pushing on with their irresponsible policies so while the republicans might not win elections with their wacky defense spending

projects for once they are the winners of tonight's trial time award. now tonight we have an update on the brutal killing of kelly thomas on tuesday we showed you this very gruesome surveillance video shown during a preliminary hearing for two of the officers involved in tom's is death. so you can. do to. after a three day preliminary hearing for accused officers manual ramos and corporal jason nally the orange county superior court judge has ordered them to stand trial but that's not all the news from this case this week the district attorney says that he hasn't ruled out filing more charges against the other officers who are clearly seen on the videotape and right now he specifically looking into officer joseph wolf because wolf is clearly seen striking at the homeless victim in this

video but the d.a. says that he's not done with the other officers yet a date hasn't been set persisted nellie and ramos his trial but in the meantime we are also learning a lot more about the fullerton police department cording to an orange county paper called the o.c. weekly the department has a dark history of misconduct that's been brought to light after kelly's death and we're learning more about origins former police chief and current city councilman pat mckinley he has a speckled past over the course of his thirty years with the bullies in blue as a nickname for the force of police and when it comes to kelly thomas' case the kimberley has downplayed the incident repeatedly not only did he tell c.n.n. last september at the victims' groups gruesome facial injuries were connected with his death but also listen to how he talks about eyewitness accounts of the incident . i'm going to guess that there may be true. there are deeply involved. the others i don't think will lead the investigation will show had any culpability

. when people say there were six people beating on one guy you can't get six people around one guy you start hitting each other so witnesses' statements are often very flamboyant very exaggerated and that's why an investigation a complete investigation a girl investigation is so extremely necessary. now there can be problems with witness statements but mckinley's comments here were dead wrong because the surveillance video clearly shows that several officers can surround one person and mckinley is now facing a recall long with two current fourteen cops the election isn't going to happen until june fifth now in the meantime at least kelly thomas' death to shed light on the violent and corrupt behavior that seems to plague so many police departments we're going to continue to bring you all the latest for the upcoming trial for officer officers ramos and sis aneli and any additional charges brought forward. now this week we got some really scary numbers when it comes to obesity in america

a new study published in the american journal of preventive medicine predicts that if obesity stays at its current prevalence in twenty thirty forty two percent of american adults will be obese and about one quarter of that group will be severely obese on the facts and cost of this is going to have on our health care system were discussed at the weight of the nation conference here in washington this week but if we want to talk about what's the cause of our obesity epidemic then we need to talk about our food and what's in it and if we want to talk about with in our food then we need to talk about the massive amounts of money that companies spend on lobbying to keep us in the dark and the words of our guest tonight we have to regulated every single aspect of corporate behavior so that killing people is perfectly legal joining me to discuss this is michelle simon the president of politics and author of appetite for profit how the food industry undermines our health and how to fight back michelle thanks for joining us tonight and so that was a pretty bold statement of yours that i just read right there that they've to

regulate everything so now it's ok to kill people and you specifically blame this on the right wing can you elaborate for me. sure well what we have is an environment where. it is really the name of the game and so any attempt to place reasonable restrictions around corporate behavior is named the nanny state is basically built by the way it went and we've had this going on really since the one nine hundred seventy s. when we had actual consumer protection laws in place back in the days of general motors when we realized that we had to regulate here and the corporations really had a problem on their hands and so ever since then the think tanks and the live in groups have sort of created this nanny state. that has made government scared to go be late for fear of this backlash now i think i would get into this i think if there are some examples out there of sometimes the government going too far and

of such a nanny state existing but first let's go back to the corporations and what are some of the things that you think are the most egregious laws that they have tried to at least or keep off the books or put on the books you know to try to keep some of their practices secret. well in the food realm we have this dichotomy going on on one hand the good industry claims that they're being responsive well that they want to help fix this problem on the other hand they're lobbying like hell to stop any policies from going forward so the best example i can give you right now that we've had good investigations around is the issue of junk food marketing to children ok so many advocates have been left in nothing but decades this problem of incessant twenty four seven now thanks to the digital age marketing to children and you know to to get our arms around this the federal government tried to simply untrue bon terry guidelines for the food industry to ok not even trying to pass

a law to restrict how industry market children but to improve voluntary measures for industry to be more responsible in the types of foods that they choose to market to children this caused a huge massive lobbying. onslow in washington d.c. they went to other friends in congress that would insure the obvious and the media lobbyists only go slowly and cetera anyone who would be threatened by this made sure that this process came to a screeching halt and orders recently did a report where they showed during the obama administration forty million dollars has been spent by the food industry lobby more even than in the previous administration because of efforts like this to simply rein in industry practices in this case targeting children now you know i understand there too when it comes to marketing certain thanks to children right obviously there has been a lot of debate about this but sometimes our people just don't they just seem kind of stupid right i mean there is a lawsuit against her role because people thought that there was so much real fruit

in it just because of the name and not just seems like common sense. ok so you're talking about personal responsibility lake and what happens is in this discussion there's a lot of the cut of meat they get set up either it's about people simply reading the label or it's you know the government any state when really corporations have a role to play in their own behavior right now in saying that people shouldn't read labels but just because we should be they both doesn't make it ok for a company to live under a legal right and so the point is that we need collective responsibility here we need cooperation is to behave in at the go ways we need government to help regulate corporations and yes of course we need consumers to do their homework and show and provide good examples for their children and it's really up to all of us were you know either i wonder how much you think things might change because obviously we see a lot of lobbying efforts to just keep things secret keep them in the dark we see

companies fighting against having to label certain foods that are g.m.o. they never want to label anything now places you go and they might have a calorie count you know has there been any change in people's behaviors thanks to the information actually being there. well a couple things their industry tends to say that really they don't want to be maybe late it should all be about education at the same time just as you say they buy the stock information going to the consumer and genetically engineered foods is one example of that all the clothes show that people want to know what ingredients in their food that we engineer in the industry is fighting tooth and nail labeling to tell consumers that information i will say we have had some progress in that it nutrition labeling well in that a law was passed to require calorie counts in chain restaurants however that is now being held in the f.d.a. probably for political reasons but so the law is that now we have to wait for the regulations to actually implement the law and it's probably due to some behind the

scenes you know lobbying by industry to stop the finalization that last simple information just calorie except. now i won with the rights i'm totally with you on this stuff michel when it comes to putting the information out there when it comes to food safety certain regulations we obviously need i think that people would be more than happy to actually accept them but i do have to ask you about a certain product right for they when you take credit for actually trying to ban and this is one of the original four locos that we had that we used on the show before they actually banned it i was the problem with this this is again we go back to the personal responsibility thing for a minute just seems like common sense thing probably shouldn't like ten of them like some people out there did but do you really need to ban it outright so that sponsible adult can have access. let's back up because the original product. in addition to alcohol and the problem there is that there is no information better leave bailable to explain to people that this is

a dangerous combination so the food and drug administration took a look at that and said there is no evidence that this is safe to consume caffeine combined with alcohol and that kind of this to twenty ounce can twenty brothers and it's probably not a good idea. and that's what these products were made on the market with the alcohol at twelve percent twenty browns but without the caffeine now these products are also targeted towards young people ok so well it makes sense to the joke not to chug ten of these cans as we know young people tend to do stupid things and the products are highly sweet marketed in these cocoa packages obviously aimed at you to get them hooked on these products and that's the concern that people have all right well then and this is by the way one of the ones like i said that was the premier pretty ban to have the caffeine and i don't even know if i was to have any more about the round as a prop but yeah i mean it has a lot to do with i guess putting the information out there and how you.