well i'm john marvin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. this weekend newark mayor cory booker criticized president obama over his attacks on mitt romney's time at bain capital now we've learned that booker has collected tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from bain capital executives so what were the real motives behind booker's attack on the president also as austerity continues to battle to batter the eurozone nations there are new fears that a severe recession is on the horizon are we witnessing the end of capitalism in the global economy and if so what will take its place and the wealthy elite are taking

over america and they're trying their hardest to turn the u.s. into a complete oligarchy how do we stop their destruction of our democracy and protect the values and ideals on which this country was founded. you need to know this you might remember over the weekend when newark mayor cory booker said this about president obama's attacks on mitt romney about bain capital . this kind of stuff is nor is the ating to me on both sides it's noisy to the american public anough is enough stop attacking private equity stop attacking jeremiah wright this stuff has got to stop. republicans seized on those remarks and started an internet campaign asking supporters to sign a petition saying that they too stand with cory booker and the president obama's trying to silence the so-called job creators realize he created

a giant mess for the president booker walked back his comments with this statement later on sunday. let me be clear mitt romney has made his business record a centerpiece of his campaign he's talked about himself as a job creator and therefore it is reasonable and in fact i encourage it for the obama campaign to examine that record and to discuss it i have no problem with that in fact now today we're learning why booker may have been so hesitant initially about attacking bain capital the center for american progress reports going back as far as two thousand and two when booker first ran for mayor he's collected tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from you guessed it bain capital executives he's also received more than a half a million dollars in the wall street and the financial industry during his political career so is this a case of booker being a seventy politician and knowing rule number one of politics in the post citizens united age which is don't bite the hand that feeds you if so that's

a criticism of the book or a man who many consider a leader among progressives will have a difficult time washing up but there are other questions here that need to be answered like what role will the entire private equity industry play in the selection romney's running on his record as a private equity manager and bain so certainly attacks against his tenure there should be on the table whether booker thinks so or not but what are the politics behind him tacking the entire private equity model in general after all president obama himself has received campaign contributions from private equity firms and neither he nor most other democrats have put private equity firms on trial until mitt romney came on the scene for more on all this town and christopher is here the media correspondent and white house reporter at media ite dot com tommy welcome back and thanks for having tom what how politically damaging do you think that booker's statement on meet the press was to the president. initially it was very damaging and i'm going to be the first one to say by the way mary booker if you're

watching that camera up a little bit next time. but yeah initially it was but i think the president took things back in hand a very. well the next day when he's asked in a press conference about america's remarks and you know he managed to reframe the argument and you know i i think on balance the fact that we're still talking about this you know on tuesday and doesn't like we're going to stop talking about this week means that you know even as people here that you know mayor booker said what he said they're also hearing you know what president obama said here make the case over and over again that you being a private equity being a success in private equity doesn't qualify you the president private equity is a business that didn't exist before the reagan administration it was illegal there were not the loopholes in the tax code that made it possible and then when reagan stopped forcing the sherman act and there were changes to our tax code that allowed you to buy a company and then dump debt on that company which had been against the law before

that this whole thing emerged the only back then they were called leveraged buyout artists and the l.b.o. industry exploded in the one nine hundred eighty s. and got such a top horrible reputation that they reinvented themselves and changed their names to private equity this whole process of buying a company borrowing the amount of money that you used to buy the company and hitting the company with that debt not holding the debt yourself and then using that debt to create a tax deduction so that all of a sudden the company looks profitable so you can skim a huge profit off the top whether the company lives or dies. it's all basically scams based on the tax code is it time for us to litigate the value of the existence of private equity firms it might be but it's not going to happen and you know before we go on i do want to say that i don't believe that the mayor booker's remarks were motivated by anything other than his desire to be a good guy i may be biased i'm from jersey he's sort of a you know he sort of walks on water. could it be that he said what he said because

he had spent too much time and maybe it's just a matter of fifteen minutes in the studio hanging out with these media guys who are constantly creating these falls. yeah i think it would look i think was a case of like a knee jerk reaction i think you know mayor booker depends heavily on businesses you know to to revitalize a city and so i think the sort of kneejerk reaction is sort of hey let's not trash all businesses or all private equity which is not actually the president's doing but i think you're right you know the their them in the president's not going to attack the price he's made very clear. to not attack private equity in general which you know that that could be the conversation we're poised to have but it's not going to be the one we're going to have because it's like you said you know i mean even the i talked to jay carney about this today you know about this notion that you know the president shouldn't attack mitt romney because you know he has private equity investors who who donate to him you know and the difference obvious difference is that you know these donors don't want to be president so that's the distinction the president's trying to make which is quite different from what

you're saying. but yeah you know the. so the problem with. the private equity model is a lot of the problem and that is sort of in fact that. you know all business which is that this this emphasis on short term gains and the point that i think is being missed even by a lot of liberal commentators i watched a lot of a lot of t.v. and i haven't heard anybody you know really hit home the point that like you said even when these companies lose even when people get laid off you know and you know mitt romney says well you know that's capitalism you know sometimes you win sometimes you lose but even when it's a last thing when that's actually not going to happen it's a private equity is not you know it's not venture capital people under don't understand the difference between the two it's not like the guy who gave fifteen thousand dollars october of mr facebook and then made back three billion when they went public that's venture capitalism that's been an angel investor that is not what private equity is all about private equity is using these three big loopholes in the tax code to make a fortune and then pay

a maximum fifteen percent income tax on it but in trade has president obama's reelection chances. they drop like ten fifteen points in the last couple of weeks. they're still above fifty but should the president be concerned. well i mean get rid large of course i mean you know this is a very it's going to be a very close election i mean if i had to bet money ten thousand dollars i would bet on president obama right now but yeah you know things happen you know you and the media plays such a big part in how things get perceived by the public and so you know. you know one little thing can happen and sort of turn the whole time i mean it's you know mayor booker is a good example because it did completely change the conversation. and you know i think the president's doing a good job trying to wrestle it back in the in that same vein though i had a really interesting piece today about how it's been basically we can have since

mitt romney has talked to the press and and and he doesn't seem to have a counter narrative to this you know he's a job destroyer you have a key finding out is that you know that there that romney campaign cory booker mayor booker for a brief moment and randell you know all these people were criticizing the president's ads i haven't heard a single one of them say you know that he's wrong you know i haven't seen one of them say well no actually you know mitt romney his job was to create jobs at bain capital that was the object of what he was doing even even mitt romney doesn't say that right and so you know unfortunately i feel like you know i said this on twitter that i think a lot of liberals who are attacking mayor booker are sort of keeping the process part of the story alive or you know making this story about president obama's campaign not being able to throw a surrogate instead of being about the fact that. nobody disagrees with him in ten seconds are liberals more likely to create

a circular firing squad than conservatives yes yes sure answer yes christopher thanks a lot of the thanks for everything that was great so cory booker takes money from bain and then defends ban from attacks by president obama this is concerning but here's the bigger picture. while the rich get richer and buy everything from politicians to small companies they can strip of assets and bankrupt the american worker is increasingly screwed only slightly more than half fifty six percent of americans have employer provided health insurance the average american household is carrying seventy five thousand six hundred dollars in debt but the median annual wage in the united states after thirty years of reaganomics is now twenty six thousand dollars a year housing costs reagan came into office are up by more than ninety percent but only the top five percent of households have seen their income keep up with that rise in housing costs when the banks gambled and lost and crashed our economy in december of two thousand and seven the banks toure's let american families are left

american families who over seven trillion dollars poorer the richest four hundred people in america now own more wealth than the bottom fifty percent of us one hundred years ago a german sociologist by the name of robert michel's came up with what he called the iron law. which said that democracies will always devolve into oligarchy s. and plutocracies ruled by the few and ruled by the rich unless the process is interrupted by a revolution in america we've broken up these oligarchy by periodic revolutions revolutions seven hundred seventy six the civil war the new deal everyone about eighty years apart and it's been eighty years since the new deal started and the oligarchy seem like they're now totally in control they've even taken control of the tea party in congress all one hundred percent of the freshman members of the tea party caucus in the house of representatives have taken big bucks from the banks that they ran against in the election of two thousand and ten they've taken

a total of over six hundred thousand dollars. the tea party caucus in congress is now officially a political arm a wall street the oligarchy the oligarchy investment in these republican members of congress is paid big dividends the tea partiers are among the strongest opponents of any regulations that would protect you and me for months unscrupulous practices by the big banks this is in a very real way oligarchy the only way to put a stop to this is to get money out of politics in the united states and learn how to do that go to move to amend or. coming up austerity has left europe on the brink of a severe recession but republicans in congress still think austerity will help solve america's economic woes would be seen as total collapse of corporate capitalism worldwide and if so what will replace it.

mission. critical three. four chargers three arrangements three. three. three. three brokers video for your media projects free media. in screwed news the organization for economic cooperation and development issued

a warning seventeen nation euro zone today saying there's a good chance of a severe recession this year if governments in the european central bank don't act quickly to promote economic growth that's the same message the i.m.f. had for the u.k. today calling on the british government to slow down on the austerity and past stimulus measures to boost demand and grow the economy europe is sinking under the weight of vicious austerity measures in places like the u.k. spain and greece that have led to economies contract and unemployment surging deficits growing and suicide rates spike. and the economic collapse blog is reporting on a number of warning signs the signal the european banking crisis is only getting worse for example eight times more money has been pulled out of greek banks than usual in the last few days sixteen spanish banks have just seen their credit downgrade twenty six italian banks have also seen their credit downgraded spain and

italy are now officially in recession civil unrest is spreading in italy and here in the united states the paul ryan republican budget would have similar effects despite ryan arguing that his budget isn't austerity and analysis by the economic policy institute found that that budget would kill four point one million american jobs ryan is half right his budget is in total austerity it's only austerity for working people as the romney level super rich make off like bandits under his plan with a three trillion dollars tax cut and given the unrest in the streets in america now as we just saw in chicago over the over the last few days we can just imagine what another few million americans out of work to give the super rich and the tax cut would do to our social fabric. add all this up and we can be seen a massive once in a lifetime global economic transformation we could be seen the call laps of corporate capitalism itself and if so what do we replace it with ghar ghar alpert

it says here he's a historian and professor of political economy at the university of maryland and author of the book america beyond capitalism are welcome glad to be here great to have you with us is this the between the crisis in europe and the crisis here in the united states are we seen the the real limits of corporate capitalism and might this represent an opportunity for some of the alternatives and changes that you're proposing i think we're at a at a turning point i think there is an era of stagnation crisis decay the political system can't handle the economic system and i think in that context people are rightly aware there's something something profound wrong i mean what really was interesting but occupy was how the response around the american people was something is wrong you know that and that's a big turning point in history and the beginning place of any major political change so what what is the system that you would use to democratize ownership of business democratization is the right term because the the number that i find all

but impossible to understand what we checked it out many times the top four hundred people individuals have more wealth now than the bottom hundred and sixty million americans. that's a medieval ownership pattern i mean literally land ownership was not that concentrated the alternative is some form of democratization work or own companies there are ten thousand of those in the united states the day ten million people involved that's a democratic form co-ops a very american idea very decentralized land trust several hundred of those where the land is owned by nonprofits controlled by community associations municipal electricity twenty five percent of american electricity today is supplied by municipal in the neighborhood and co-ops twenty five percent so these are different very decentralized vision of what can be built up and i think we're seeing a lot more activity of that kind develop at the grassroots level obviously we'll

have to talk about larger scale in different parts but that's the groundwork because that's what give people an idea of what can but it's possible what they can do in their own neighborhoods what they can do in their own state and those are the kind of things in the pre new deal era that kind of established principles for larger scale regional and national development of different forms of democratization and some of these big banks ought to be turned into public utilities at the national level i think well yeah that's a that's an interesting one and in fact let's let's get into that but also it seems that what you're talking about is a radical change from the history to this moment i mean with the t.v. or the hoover dam or you know whatever at the history of america in general motors you know that i mean there were in the one nine hundred teens there were i think one hundred auto companies more than one hundred auto companies america so our history has been build a big build a bigger centralise rather than decentralize you know and you're talking about going in the opposite direction are you not or a different part of i think

a big part of what's happening i do think we're going to have to talk about regional and national structures to support in new directions so we can come back to that issue but what i think is really happening is that the pain levels at the local level with very high on employee. with fear fear of unemployment with families under pressure people are being forced to do something due or things get worse pain is driving a lot of this pain and awareness that something new has to happen so we're seeing this kind of thing all over the country the unions for instance for traditionally were only interested in collective bargaining the steelworkers have now established a whole new strategy of worker union co-ops on long the lines of the famous mandrake on strategy would cost for the workers or owners worker owners which is not part of the american labor movement tradition except way back in the one nine hundred century the knights of labor so that ideas coming up in with labor union support that's a significant change we're seeing some states are doing you know even if you go up

to alaska and you see sarah sarah's alaska has got public distribution of the resources from oil as a matter of right in texas they don't do it that way it goes just of the oil companies don't do it anywhere else and states that we do not that way so there you have a pattern that democratizes the distribution of the oil revenues rather than putting it all there are lots of examples like that around the country that people are looking at and saying you know why can't we do something different in our own state or our own city that would draw on these principles and it was paul krugman who said or maybe it was elizabeth warren we need to very quickly go back to the era when banking was predictable and boring right how does that speak to your concept of banks as utilities will be the traditional model of banking was you know boring indeed because they make investment at the local level looking at the kind of the what that store needs a small factory the small farm you knew the you know the person they used to say it

was three three three you're going to work for three hours and then go out and play golf for three hours because it's such a boring business but now these big big banks are basically speculators at the national level i mean they have hamburgers gamblers their investments. it is considered boring and if you want to make really a career you do speculation and vestment and derivatives and so forth but it is gambling and we've seen the results of that what can happen to the economy so at the national level we're going to you know the choices have been regulation and we know we can't regulate them they can get around the regulators i used to work on capitol hill in the senate and house to the lobbyists warm and get those regulations the way they want to if you break them up which i think the next stage when the next crisis happens the big fish are going to eat the little fish you know that as they've always done they'll be back at the trough so it's some point i think the american people are going to be angry enough to say let's turn some of them into kind of boring public utilities or that's down the line quite

a ways but i suspect that's that's the end of the line here because they're not controllable reagan stopped and forcing the sherman act in eighty two which led to this explosion of mergers and acquisitions no president since then has begun seriously enforcing jimmy carter i think was the last one breaking up eighty is that something that should be really high on our priority list it should be high but i take a historian's view of that the the power behind that strategy was liberal power of the traditional kind and it depended on strong labor movement that's what gave it muscle and i think that's over the labor movement is gone from thirty three thirty four percent of the labor force down to seven percent six point nine eleven percent total six point nine in the private sector so i think the muscle to enforce the old regulation or break them up strategy i think is the cline sadly i come out of that tradition but that may mean things are going to get worse and people get really angry and say hey we've got to do something really bold and i suspect at the

national level that kind of thing is going to happen over the next decades even though at the local level we're seeing this other development which is very rich and explodes and expanding and cooperative and work our own firms so there's a couple different things going on which i think are positive but long term. and developmental in some sense i think we're living the groundwork maybe for the next progressive era but there's a lot of groundwork to lay there and all and apparently a lot of a bit of rough time to go through garth thank you so make you for it was me good you're a wealth of information but. in greece democracy could put an end to the bankers austerity experiment on monday leftist sarees a party leader alexis severe as travel to france where anti austerity socialist francois whole long was recently elected and called on european allies to join together to fight back against austerity speaking to the news conference appear as it was arguably the most important politician in greece today said greece gave humanity democracy and today the greek people will bring democracy back to europe

the war we're fighting in europe he said is not between people or nations it is between the forces of work and the invisible forces of finance and banks greece is headed for another round of elections in june and sapir is serious or is a party expected to win big at the polls mean austerity might be breathing its last gasps in greece let's hope so and let's hope democracy prevails over corporate capitalism elsewhere around the world including right here in the united states of america. crazy alert good looks can only take us so far a woman in manhattan is claiming that she was fired from her job at a lingerie distribution store for being too hot. when i was first told that i liz. and quot are and that my breasts were too large i was shocked i did not feel any employer has the right to impose their religious beliefs

i meet when i was working in a business that is not any god but if things telling sons with hard place in the female of genital area and we short. for women thing in the buttocks area. lauren odes is the two days after she was hired the owners of the store so they were not happy with her attire and that her breasts were quote a dangerous distraction odes changed her appearance the day after but she was again told she was too sexy for the job the owners of the store allegedly gave odes an ultimatum on our third day of employment trying to continue to be employed at the store she had me there were a sweater that went down to her ankles or cover up with a bathrobe odes where the baby bathrobe was fired later that day rumor has it herman cain personally called yesterday to offer her a new job. after the break be increasing levels of dysfunction and partisanship in washington have left america with

a broken political system what are some ways to rebuild our system and ensure that lawmakers are capable of addressing this nation's most pressing issues. no. more news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule the day.

back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour while lawmakers bicker over legislation a washington voter i.d. laws across america kicking thousands of citizens off the voter rolls clear our political system is broken so for some ways to rebuild washington and make sure the vote of every american is for also the jury in the john edwards case is now deliberated for three days without reaching a verdict and if convicted edwards could face thirty or so.