well i'm tom marvin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture in europe preparations are being made for a greek exit from the euro which could rattle markets worldwide but here in the united states republicans are pushing policies that will sink the u.s. economy regardless of what greece does speak with patriotic million or nick hanauer what lawmakers should be doing to reboot our economy and why relying on millionaires and billionaires to create jobs isn't the way to save our economy move over lockheed and boeing big pharma has replaced the defense industry is the biggest criminal do fraud or in the united states coming up how we the people to

flick the switch and make corporations think twice about screwing us in the future and later many americans cringe at the thought of starting a day without a cup of coffee what new research tells us could make that cup of joe more than just a wake up tool. you need to know this europe is now drawing up plans for something that was unthinkable just a few months ago the departure of greece from the euro zone as greece prepares for elections next month which will likely give anti austerity party's control of the government putting further bailouts in jeopardy european nations are quietly drafting plans to mitigate the economic pain from a greek default and exit almost in the planning is on the hosh for fear of leaks reuters is reporting that they have seen memos drawn up by euro zone member states

outlining what each nation should consider doing following a greek departure the memo outlines plans for the e.u. and the i.m.f. for example to give greece a fifty billion dollar lifeline to. what will likely be an economically devastating exit from the euro also included in the memo is a warning that quote markets will definitively distrust the euro and quote after greece leaves which could leave the economic damage for other eurozone members and even the united states but the damage a greek meltdown would have on the united states pales in comparison to the damage we may be inflicting on ourselves if we continue down the road conservatives want to push us down which brings us to mitt romney the man who made millions laying off american workers when he headed up the private equity firm or the pirate equity firm bain capital is predicting that should he be elected president and by the end of his first term the unemployment rate will be at six percent even though the current unemployment rate is eight point one percent romney's prediction is not all

that big a deal the congressional budget office is already predicting that unemployment will be by two thousand and sixteen six percent based on president obama's current economic policies. so you just have to wonder how mitt romney's doing his math here considering that he's given the glowing endorsement of and will model he says his economic plan after the paul ryan budget which slashes government investments in the middle class great economic policy institute the ryan budget will lead to four point one million americans losing their jobs that's not exactly the way to lower unemployment you see there's a common theme here between the ryan budget which gives a trillion dollar tax cut to the super rich mitt romney's i'm an economic vision for america and what the technocrats and banks are doing in europe with their austerity agendas and that theme is this working people are fair game to be targeted for deficit reduction but rich people are off limits because those rich

people who our economy must depend on to create jobs that's at least how the story goes that's why most of the austerity in europe and here in the u.s. has been directed toward working people and not rich people we can't hurt the so called job creators after all right in the united states this theory has been a practice since reagan rolled it out the one nine hundred eighty s. as social welfare programs investments and jobs in the middle class have been dismantled at the same time tax rates for the very very rich have been radically slashed as a result we're staring down wealth inequality levels not seen since before the stock market crash of one nine hundred twenty nine and we're stuck in the middle of a jobless recovery since working people no longer have enough money in their pockets to go shopping and stimulate the economy so isn't it time to ditch this bizarre economic philosophy that only the rich can save the middle class joining me now is one of those very rich people who republicans say we're supposed to rely on they can our venture capitalist co-founder of the true patriot network co-author of

the new book the gardens of democracy a new american story of citizenship the economy of the role of government and a member of the patriotic millionaires who petition congress to raise taxes on the very very wealthy in america nick welcome back to the show. thank you so much for having me thanks for joining us what nikken why can't we only rely on people like yourself to fix the economy. well because well a couple of reasons the first is that this idea that rich people or business people create jobs just don't falls jobs are a consequence of an ecosystem it feedback loop between businesses and customers and only customers only consumers really and middle class consumers can animate that feedback loop of increasing demand and hiring. you know and in that sense an ordinary middle class consumer is much more of a job creator than a capitalist like me and when you know when rich business people like me claim to

have created jobs it's a lot like a squirrel having claimed to have created evolution it's actually the other way around evolution created swirls in the economy creates jobs there's another more obvious point that and that is that you can't power a great national economy with just a few a few incredibly rich people i make in the range of a thousand times as much as the average median wage but i don't buy one thousand times as much stuff my family owns three cars not three thousand i buy a few pairs of pants and shirts a year like most american men and we occasionally go out to eat for dinner like most people i can't make up for the falling demand of the millions of unemployed underemployed americans who can't afford any cars or anything answer to dinner at all. that is so startlingly right nic you recently gave a ted talk on this issue that caused some controversy since ted at first didn't

publish it saying that it was too political and it would insult business managers apparently their words what's your reaction to that. well i mean the talk i gave it is very controversial because it attacks an economic orthodoxy that a lot of people and in particular a lot of very wealthy and powerful people have a huge stake in it is a fantastic thing to both believe and have other people. believe that you are a job creator the center of the economic universe and in fact you know when when you make this claim and when people like me make this claim when mitt romney makes this claim what it sounds like is that we're describing how the economy works but actually what's going on is something far more interesting what we're doing is we're making the claim on status and privilege the language and metaphor is is very interesting and powerful when you see your job creator your small step to the creator and if you're the creator you're very much at the center of the economic universe and deserve status and privileges and it is those that status and those

privileges that have led us to an economic. basically a political situation in which people like me. pay. vastly less in terms of taxation than people than ordinary americans cannot explain the two hundred thirty three percent difference in the tax rates a fifteen percent tax rate on capital gains dividends and carried interest somebody like me pays in the thirty five percent top marginal rate that ordinary americans pay on work in any other way than by essentially deifying capitalists and rich people which is what we've done and it's ridiculous ludicrous and i would if i if i make continue i would like to say that it's not the patriotism that drives me so much it's just that i think. a more rational view of what drives the economy because of my customers are suffering eventually i will suffer too the more money

the middle class have more opportunity there is for palace like me and i think that's that's the key issue now if you're a venture capitalist in the news lately there's been a lot of talk about private equity firms made a joke calling the pirate equity but there really there's a real big difference between what private equity does. and what venture capitalists do or angel investors do and. whether or not private equity is even good what used to be called leverage buyout artists and they made the industry changes name in the ninety's because they got a bad rap whether out there even good for american capitalism republicans have called president obama's attacks on romney and bain capital attacks on capitalism i'm curious your take on. so we now know with scientific certainty that the economy isn't similar to a natural ecosystem and it actually is a type of ecosystem unlike every ecosystem there's all sorts of stuff that goes on

in it. and some of it from the point of view of it some of it's good some of it's not that great look he years to think from the point of view of a d.n.d. lion everything should be yellow from the point of view of a private equity firm every company in america should be purchased with other people's money levered up with other people's money and sold to a higher bidder or parted out now in the same way that danny lines have a role in an ecosystem that private equity has a role in our in our economic ecosystem but it doesn't follow from that that everything they do is good or useful it's certainly fantastic for the people who are the partners in the private equity firms it's not necessarily fantastic for the economy at large or certainly for the companies that are involved. and bought and sold so i don't have a i don't have

a problem with private equity percent a because there are some good things that are done by private equity firms but to claim is mitt romney does that everything they do by definition is good is absolutely ludicrous he can he can fuses creation with predication when he does that because private equity firms are predators right and you know you need predators but it's not always good for your right to predators are part of the ecosystem nicanor thank you so much for being with us tonight. thank you for having one of the biggest obstacles for the middle class today is our housing market which is still in crisis a new report by zillow shows that nationwide more than thirty one percent of all american homeowners are underwater on their mortgages meaning they own more on their house than what it's worth at slightly higher than the last quarter of two thousand and eleven and major metropolitan areas the numbers are even worse in las vegas the underwater rate is seventy one percent in phoenix it's fifty five percent

in atlanta fifty five percent orlando fifty four percent homeowners all across the nation are in desperate need of help after romney's banks your buddies wrecked our economy unfortunately in the bush years banks lobbied to get laws that make them money foreclosing on a home in fact more money than they make working with the homeowner to refinance a mortgage and so this probably won't end anytime soon and again this all ties right back to europe from the housing crisis in america to the debt crisis in europe the banks there's fingerprints are everywhere in europe this mess was created by goldman sachs more than a decade ago when they cooked the books to make greece eligible to join the euro and then it was a mess that was made worse all around the world by goldman and other banks toure's when they gambled big on derivatives and last created the global financial meltdown of two thousand and seven and the collapse of the housing market that year and since then it's been even worse again by the banks when they made made worse when they demanded austerity in europe and in the united states just to protect their

own economic interests rather than opting for pro growth policies to get out of the recession now here we are on the economic precipice all around the world and the banks are still out of control. after the break i'll share one way we can put the banks and other predatory and industries back under our control it's called the corporate death. download the official ante up location to your i phone or i pod touch from the.

life on the go. video on demand r.t.s. mine broadcasts and r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. question on t.v. dot com. in

screwed news the pharmaceutical industry is the single biggest de fraud or of american taxpayers in history a public citizen report back in two thousand and ten found that over the last ten years the pharmaceutical industry is accounted for twenty five percent a quarter of all violations of state and federal law when it comes to the false claims act surpassing the defense industry as the biggest fraudster in america the crimes include illegally promoting drugs for purposes not approved by the f.d.a. which is a criminal offense since it can lead to serious illness and death also the pharmaceutical industry routinely over charges federal programs like medicaid for their prescription drugs stealing billions of dollars from you and me and other taxpayers

since nine hundred ninety one over one hundred sixty five pharmaceutical settlements with state and federal governments have led to nineteen point eight billion dollars in penalties according to taxpayers against fraud pharmaceutical companies are expected to pay out another nine billion dollars in fraud settlements just this year and now senator bernie sanders from vermont is taking action this week senator sanders introduced an amendment to the f.d.a. bill that would strip away hundreds of millions of dollars in exclusive contracts for drug companies if those companies are found guilty of the fraud in consumers or the government as senator sanders said companies that are fine for overcharging medicare or medicaid or for dangerous illegal marketing practices should not enjoy government granted monopolies on those same medications good work by senator sanders but i want to take it a step further i think it's time to consider another way to deal with misbehaving

corporations give them the corporate death penalty. here's the bigger picture how do we deal with criminals in the united states the really bad i mean people who are just to reveal they they've committed they've killed people we execute them they're too dangerous there are a menace to society so you know we either lock them up forever we get you know or off them so what should we do about corporations that are menaces to society you know in the old days they got executed to having their what's called the corporate charter and that was their right to do business there basically being dissolved having their corporate charters revoked beginning in seventeen eighty four corporations in pennsylvania were required to carry revocation clauses in eight hundred fifteen massachusetts just as joe joseph story ruled a private corporation created by the legislature may lose its franchises by a misuse or or non-user of them this is the common law of the land it is

a tacit condition and next to the creation of every such corporation eighteen twenty five the pennsylvania legislature passed a law declaring that they had the power to quote revoke alter or an old charter of corporations in the nineteenth century one thousand different states passed similar laws like rhode island's law which was passed in one nine hundred fifty seven and reads the charter of every corporation here after may be repealed at the will of the general assembly in ohio mississippi and pennsylvania banks had their charters revoked they got the corporate death sentence for behaving in quote a financially unsound way in new york in massachusetts corporations that ran turnpikes were given the corporate death penalty for not keeping the roads repaired and eight hundred thirty two pennsylvania gave the death penalty to ten corporations in one year revoking their charters for quote operating contrary to the public interest. in one thousand thirty three president andrew jackson threaten the second bank of the united states for corrupting politicians he actually

campaigned for president on ending that banks life and largely because of his efforts eventually did die oil corporations match manufacturers like kitchen match manufacturers whiskey trust sugar corporations all sentenced to death in several states even standard oil got put to death in new york state in one thousand nine hundred in one thousand nine hundred four although other parts of it survived in other states but today corporations aren't put to death any more even when they do fraud us of billions like the pharmaceutical industry or poison entire cities like energy chemical corporations do or deny care to us like health insurance companies do so they can inflate their c.e.o.'s obscene incomes or steal money from us like the banks on wall street we need to bring back the corporate death penalty and make sure the corporations are acting on behalf of the public interest again now for his take on this issue i want to bring in conservative commentator and pro-business advocate david selig david welcome back. flank you for having me

it's always a pleasure thanks for joining us so why do you hate consumers. i don't take consumers as a matter of fact i believe in the corporate structure and the free market system because it's a great way of keeping consumer costs down what you're advocating essentially makes the market either small or in the case of big pharma will perhaps stop needed in new medications from coming to market why and who would you have run this the government people who are not a criminal thing is you want to put these governments you want to put these businesses out of business because an individual like senator sanders who incidentally i strenuously disagree with everything he says some of the things he said about this seem to me at least so stupid that i am shocked our commander in chief hasn't given joe foot in the mouth biden the boom and replaced him with

sanders and is steve because he seems to be thinking the government is the answer i mean i think we're in sanders would make a great vice president but you still haven't explained to me david why you think that a corporation that commits criminal acts in the criminal code of the united states that lead to the death of multiple people a corporation that is a serial killer shouldn't get the same penalty that that ted bundy got why not oh come on make it a no mention organization using take our advice no no i mean this is a genuine question david you have executives who make these are incisions if you would allow me i will answer that question right first of all we're blowing a lot of things out of proportion i mean how are we going to be idling somebody you have a guy who takes some medication he's a big fat slob he goes jogging and has a heart attack some shyster links that medication to his death and they say you know they didn't do it either quit research and testing or they tried some little fact that is not what happened with mcdonald's and they say mcdonald's killed them

david blaine the victims and in fact you're be. i mean their appearance was this big come on you know it's. going to have betters that they thought were going to relieve pain and instead it caused them to have heart attacks and that was one of the up in the side of risk you know or there but actually i mean every medication tom is a trade off and you know it but what i'm talking about of companies that are committing fraud companies that are encouraging doctors to prescribe drugs for people for conditions that those drugs are not approved for and then those people end up with side effects and those drugs that cause them to die shouldn't that be like the government when it doesn't the government force people to get various vaccinations or not do certain things there's an awful lot of people in your viewing audience who would love to sit back and smoke a marijuana cigarette legally the government says you can't even though it might help them with their glaucoma or sundry other problems what does that have to do

with with defend. missing your argument david somehow i'm just to completely missing that are you know why it was let me so let me just ask the question a very very simply very straightforward why should a corporation which in gauges in tensional criminal behavior that leads to the death of human bein's not be put out of business and thus create a an opening in the marketplace for a reputable company to step into it. when you're acting is if the big company that inadvertently may and the emphasis is on the word may have been responsible for the death of somebody you're making it sound like somebody else is just going to step in the people let's take it back i mean to tell you those large corporations put an awful lot of money and research and development to make ours of hundreds of life better than r. and d. as they did was to kill us ok well david well i think we'll have to live this debate another day we're out of time david sellers and yes there was the name.

thank you david. of course the behavior the pharmaceutical industry is the consequence of a for profit health care system in america drug companies who are supposed to be manufacturing products to help us live longer and healthier but instead they're actually more focused on screwing us and making big profits than our well being it's frankly time to join the rest of the developed world create a nonprofit health care system and kick the money changers out of our hospitals. it's thursday so it's time to get a geek caffeinated now for many americans it's virtually impossible for them to get out of the house and start the day without a cup of coffee starbucks popping up on virtually any other every other corner in anytown usa our nation's addiction to coffee has never been any stronger than it is today it out of states is the largest consumer of coffee sipping down three billion

pounds of coffee and buying one fifth of the entire world's coffee supply every single year and now a new research suggests that our addiction to coffee may actually be good for our health beginning in one thousand nine hundred five the national cancer institute which is part of the national institutes of health those big government agencies began a study of the health effects of drinking coffee at an older age they surveyed nearly twenty three. hundred thirty thousand men and more than one hundred seventy thousand women between the ages of fifty and seventy one and divided them up based on how much coffee they drank from zero cups a day all the way out to six cups a day study continued all the way up until two thousand and eight or for some people till they died and what researchers found was the men and women who consume three or more cups of coffee a day had a ten percent lower risk of death than those who drank fewer cups of coffee or no coffee at all men or drank six or more cops had a ten percent lower risk of death compared to those who drink didn't drink coffee at all and women who drank six or more cops had

a fifteen percent lower risk researchers said the coffee drinkers were less likely to die from heart disease stroke respiratory illness and diabetes coffee drinkers were even less likely to die from injuries in accidents as the lead researcher dr neil friedman noted there has been a concern the drinking coffee might increase risk of death but i think our findings show evidence against that same study asked whether coffee drinkers consume regular or decaf coffee and for. and it didn't matter which suggests that it's not the caffeine that has health benefits but rather the estimated one thousand different compounds contained in coffee including a variety of antioxidants and dr freeman did warn that we can't draw too many conclusions concerning life and death when it comes to drinking coffee since coffee is prepared in endless number of different ways and different coffee compounds can have different effects on different people but still we can look at the studying conclude the coffee may not be such a terrible thing you have to roll so maybe next time you're walking through town and you see

a starbucks across the street from another starbucks rather than protesting why not grab a cup or better yet skip scott's starbucks and stop at your local independent coffee shop you might live longer and you're supporting a local business in the process. up next what exactly does conservative populism look like now that wall street has hijacked the tea party is there even such a thing as populism on the right anymore. there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before source material is what helps keep journalism honest real world. we want to present. something else.

a mission free accreditation free in-store charges free. range month free risk free studio time free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects a free media dog our teeth on tom. wealthy british style sign some time to write. market why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our.

thanks a. lot about the big picture i'm tom hartman come.