welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour a bank of america has become the latest big bank to layoff american workers relocating the business operations and call centers to the philippines lawmakers in washington doing anything to stop job outsourcing are they happy to see american jobs lost to foreign countries also with a trillion dollars of student loan debt in america students across the country are finding it impossible to get a higher education without drowning in debt how do we get to this point and what can be done to reform the student loan industry so that every american can afford a college education and the koch brothers have bankrolled conservatives and funded misinformation campaigns because they believe in trying to cause a government shutdown and i'll tell you and i'd still lead to.

the is the new american job killer is bank of america less than three years removed from except in a forty five billion dollars bailout courtesy the american taxpayers bank of america announced plans to layoff thirty. thousand american workers and relocate its business support operations and call centers to the philippines bank of america joins other big american banks that have turned their backs on american workers and set up shop in low wage paradises like the philippines where the average family makes just forty seven hundred dollars a year this exodus of jobs not only hurts our economy but also may compromise the security of account holders in the united states as foreign contractors now have access to secure financial data in the last four years five hundred thousand jobs have been shed from the u.s. call center industry thanks to this same sort of outsourcing it's roughly ten percent of the entire call center workforce so how do we stop this endless leak of american jobs to the developing world joining me now is one man who might have an

answer democratic representative from new york tim bishop the sponsor of house resolution thirty five ninety six the united states call center worker and consumer protection act representative bishop welcome thanks for having me on tom thanks for joining us tell us about your legislation well it's a bipartisan legislation that would. put in place and put in place a great many disincentives for companies to move their call centers offshore it would make any company that moves a call center offshore would be ineligible for any federal grant contract or loan they would have to in effect register with the department of labor that they have done this they would have to notify the department of labor one hundred twenty days in advance of moving offshore and also any business agents offshore would have to identify their location to the u.s. color and the u.s. color could demand that he or she be transferred to a u.s.

call center if they didn't want to talk to a call center overseas but i think the most important thing is rendering companies that do this ineligible for any federal grant contractor alone that's that's a pretty big stick this is called the call center. a worker and consumer protection act how are consumers hurt by this sort of outsourcing while there have been any number of studies that that reveal a great many security breaches with respect to overseas call centers one study showed that at least eighty five percent of call centers in india have had some form of security breach there was another study that was recently published. in which undercover. people were offered credit card numbers medical information and so on by call center employees for a fee and one of the trends that's happening now it's very disturbing is that call centers offshore are our sub sourcing the call center to yet another offshore

location so there's no way you can do security checks there's no way you can do any kind of qualitative assessment of the employees that are that are taking on these calls and so they're being from every vantage point of looking at this issue simply demands that we put in place policies that keep these call centers here in the united states i read a story i believe it was in the financial times it might have been somewhere else but was a couple days ago about how the the speaker of the house or the equivalent of the speaker of the house the speaker of parliament or whatever his title is. of the of the legislature in the philippines has proposed and is promoting legislation to make it illegal for a call center worker to write down your credit card number or your personal information when you call in to ask for help and stick that is pocket and then sell it to somebody later in the day i had no idea that was perfectly legal in the philippines i mean this is mind boggling indeed it is and i'll tell you something else about the philippines when we first introduced our legislation which now has

one hundred thirty one co-sponsors and as i say it's bipartisan the government of the philippines fought back strenuously and you know began a lobbying effort. to see to it that my bill never came up for consideration and so if the call center outsourcing is so important to the filipino economy imagine how important it is to our economy and we ought to be much more concerned about the implications for our economy than we are of the implications for the filipino economy ever since jack welch famously started this brag about it in his biographies autobiography it's just you know which was a couple of decades ago it's just been really exploded in two thousand and ten democrats in the house passed legislation to cut off tax breaks for job outsourcers but that was filibustered by the republican minority in the senate who what makes you think that a the republicans won't do this again and b. how did this ever become a partisan issue well that's the that's the best question how could this possibly

be a partisan issue how is it possible that any person elected to serve the united states congress and represent the people the united states would think it's ok to allow jobs that are perfectly well done by by american citizens to be sent offshore i mean these are our friends and our neighbors and our and our colleagues that are losing forty and fifty thousand dollars a year jobs just so a bank or some other entity can pay have their bottom line i mean this is unconscionable and i simply don't see i don't understand why all four hundred thirty four of my colleagues haven't signed on to this legislation in the house i absolutely agree and very very well said representative tim bishop i wish you the very best of this legislation and thank you for your efforts thank you for having me on thank you call your member of congress and tell them to support this critical piece of legislation for american workers and consumers.

in the rest of the rest of the news mitt romney released his so-called plan for educating students in america last week and a no one surprise the plan has very little help students in america for higher education rather than promote policies that reduce the cost of college or help the student loan debt crisis romney has chosen to protect for profit colleges and big businesses in fact romney pledges to undo two essential reforms implemented by president obama's administration student loan reform and holding for profit colleges accountable for waste abuse and fraud right now student loan debt in america is over eight hundred seventy billion dollars and apparently if mitt romney becomes president he's comfortable letting this debt grow larger whether romney wants to admit it or not america is in the midst of a student loan crisis and something needs to be done about it joining me now to discuss how to tackle this issue is mike happen tonio attorney and co-host of ring

of fire radio mike welcome. how is this growing level of student debt in this country crippling our economy. well what's happened now part of the problem is the move the money that should be going towards educating students is going to wall street you might remember the department of justice went after goldman sachs or organization that goldman sachs own where what they had in place tom was what they call a boiler plate a boiler room system they had there'd be these rooms where they call students or would be students marginally qualified in simply tell them come to our college is long as you can get some some financing come to our colleges long as you can get a student loan and they didn't tell that student that probably once you get your degree we're not going to be able to get you a job and second of all you're not going to be able to transfer any of the credits you get from our college anywhere else in the country this is what romney wants to support right now thirty billion dollars is moving away from colleges where our

actual real college is where people get real educations and and they can use that for jobs after they get the education thirty billion dollars is moving away from that for the wall street the new wall street education plan which is simply the move taxpayer money away from taxpayers to wall street yeah it's like vouchers on steroids what role have whistleblowers played in revealing these practices by these companies huge role jones metafile university of phoenix was one of the organizations that were scamming students and they were taking their money and they'd allow a student to stay in college only is only as long as they could get those student loans after they found out that a lot of the times they would they would take that student to two or three years and then fail him out or move them through for some other reason they got the money from the student and business as usual what was so interesting about that about that case that particular case is we learned that what they're doing is setting up

derivatives on wall street with these student loans tom just like they did to this sub prime mortgage scam they're setting up. rivet is where you have wall street trading in these student loans now the reason it's a little safer than subprime is because as student cannot declare bankruptcy they can't claim bankruptcy here and what ends up happening is the student who can't pay anything simply says i'm not going to pay it and in the end taxpayers end up paying that money the derivative loan is traded on wall street wall street's make a lot makes a lot of money in taxpayers lose there's a reason gold goldman sachs is in this business it's because it's turning into a cash cow or they go after the students parents or you know increasingly they're asking for cosigners it's incredible president obama has already tried to institute reforms to help this crisis in your mind pap what else needs to be done in the short and long term there's just needs to be some prosecutions. this is not

something that is this is you have a college that oh no is a fraud that what they're selling is basically it's fraudulent they're selling this this student something with this student believing that they're going to this student going to prove his life by getting this degree truthfully it's not a credit ation anywhere it's not it's not even regarded as a serious college in most places but that student has this dream of going to college so they put a bunch of people in a in this boiler room and they're actually paying people bonuses according to how many students they bring in to that college and until you until somebody prosecuted it doesn't do much good just to find these people it doesn't do much good just to slap them on the wrist people need to go to jail and then they stop this type of conduct because it's increasing it's not getting better mitt romney is indorsing this very kind of guy and it is devastating america my pappa tonio thanks so much for being with us tonight thank you joe if america wants to compete in the global community in the years to come our students need to have access to higher education

and this can only be done if lawmakers in washington work to make the cost of college more affordable and stop the shady practices of the student loan industry. after the break can billionaires like the koch brothers profit from a government shutdown that would destroy the full faith and credit and economy of the united states yes they can all tell you how engine i'd steal you to. give me.

a mission free accreditation free in-store charges free arrangement three. three. two types free. old free broadcast morning videos for your media projects a free media dog our teeth on tom.

that's. our first comments in it comes from pierpont post on the thom hartmann dot com message boards get this question on president obama's response to the financial crisis for the life of me i can't understand why obama didn't break the back of

those wall street criminal banks when he had the chance in one swoop he could have reformed the casino economy and started making these banks productive having these banks make productive investments and he could have destroyed their corrupt political power he's also refused to put any of these sociopathic perps in jail in the process he gave the g.o.p. what it desperately needed the time to divert attention away from their morally and intellectually bankrupt philosophy which brought the nation to its needs what was obama thinking well here's the problem most of those decisions were made by george w. bush and henry paulson the former chairman of goldman sachs who was the secretary of treasury for the united states they it was it was bush who put together tarp it was bush who put together the initial big bank bailout it was bush who set the tone for we've got to hold these banks together we've got to set them forward we've got to keep them going we've got to you know blow some odd air into the system and obama come in and try to take apart what bush had already put together it would have been

a disaster so he was stuck the next comment of the night comes from white shoe princes who had this take on marijuana legalization marijuana is said to have great uses as medicine and i do believe this is true however even if you didn't agree with this you should still agree that it should be good to legalize this plant it would help to stop crimes of violence committed because of the fact that it's illegal and it would make it much less profitable to sell the reason it will create jobs because it will enable farmers to grow up emphasis plant related to the marijuana plant but it's not really used for smoking this is what paper used to be made of we went back to you. seen him for the production of paper it would create jobs manufacturing paper which practically everyone uses and it would help save thousands of trees i mean chop down at the same time it grows fast and there are just literally so many uses for it yes you're absolutely right in fact there's one kind of grand conspiracy theory that pot and hamp were made illegal back in the in

the one nine hundred twenty s. one thousand you know from the oughts through the twenty's and thirty's in large part because henry ford's first car ran on alcohol and there were also several people who were making cars mate with a rant on diesel all of which was made from help not only that the paper manufacturers and the cotton folks were were you know having some rough times economically in the one nine hundred twenty s. and hemp was a major competitor for them so get rid of hemp get rid of pot you know it it gave it just it was competing with alcohol so it seemed like a good idea at least from businesses point of view back then it would be a good idea to decriminalize both. it's the good the bad of the very very pergola man honestly oddly the good they

don't know the democratic candidate congressman sylvestre reyes in the texas democratic primary last night becoming the third outside challenger to beat in a comment this primary season congressman raised has been plagued by corruption scandals specifically over benefits his family we see from this political connections as received thousands of dollars in contributions from the military industry and other big businesses on the other hand over work ran on a platform of cleaning up congress and also supports marijuana legalization and sensible drug policies corrupt lawmakers whether democratic or republican need to be removed from washington of america is going to get back on track. the bad massachusetts senator scott brown locked in a heated battle with elizabeth warren for ted kennedy's former massachusetts senate seat republican brown released a new campaign ad yesterday take a look. they suffered some. the problem with washington as a people there are always battling that's not how i operate for americans first and

i'll work with anyone to get things done and i was the tie breaking vote on wall street reform but the way in a jobs bill for veterans and help pass a strong new ethics law for congress you know it makes me really proud being called one of the most bipartisan senators in the country you deserve another cat i'm scott brown and i approve this message paid for by scott brown for u.s. senate so what's wrong with this picture well despite saying he was the tie breaking vote on wall street reform and i suppose any senator could make that claim brown has taken thousands and donations from wall street and big banks to financial institutions this is just enough. the misinformation campaign coming from the right and the very very ugly florida governor rick scott despite being busy throwing thousands of eligible voters off the state's voting rolls governor scott is still finding time to destroy florida's environment and punish those who are trying to protect. the state's top wetlands expert was suspended last week after she denied

a permit to accompany her controversial and destructive business development project in florida's wetlands course governor scott is all about protecting the interests of big business so bursitis actions had to be punished this war on voting is massive cuts to education and now is a tax on his own state's environment governor scott is single handedly trying to destroy the state of florida and ruin the lives of floridians and that is very very . is it possible that billionaires like the koch brothers who bankroll politicians who are pushing for a debt ceiling confrontation with the president they could shut down the government is it possible possible that they could actually profit hugely if such

a shutdown could destroy the full faith and credit of the united states. tragically the answer is yes here's how right now nobody doubts that the united states is going to repay its debts and because the way we borrow money is by issuing i.o.u.'s called treasury bonds and treasury bills there's really very little risk in invest in investing in them and because there's very little risk there's a lot of confidence that we're pay our debts and therefore we're able to borrow at a very low rate ten year u.s. treasury notes are right now paying one point seven five percent interest which means that on ten trillion dollars of debt we pay an annual interest payment to holders of the treasuries of around one hundred seventy five billion dollars a lot of money but not so much in the grand scheme of things it's affordable to us as a nation people also have a lot of confidence that germany will repay their debts for example so german bonds right now only pay one point three six percent and the reason germany pays an even

lower rate than we do is because last year when the republicans threaten to shut down the government over raising the borrowing cap on our national debt foreseen president obama to go along with slashing unemployment benefits our national debts bond rating was downgraded by one grade which pushed up the interest rates we pay the republicans bragged about this on their website a g.o.p. dot com pointing out last august right after it right after it happened that quote the downgrade hours after markets closed on friday is a first for the united states since it was granted a aaa rating in one nine hundred seventeen republicans also crowed on their website that obama's downgrade could push interest rates higher and further on subtle the economy. republicans forced a crisis and it hurt the american economy and they're bragging about it on their website and their talking points and now they're talking about foreseen another

crisis republican speaker of the house john boehner has promised that he's going to revisit the exact same threat to shut down the government and refuse to let the treasury department pay the interest payments to bondholders which of course will raise our interest rates even more for example germany's economy is strong after all during the economic downturn of two thousand and seven to two thousand and nine germany actually subsidize workers' wages when there wasn't enough demand for the factories to run full time and therefore they only pay one point three six percent spain was pain fairly low rates but when the greeks started talking about poland out of the year owes spain which is a little weak get killed the confidence of the weaker nations like spain that they could repay all their debt as a result last week the interest rate that spain has to pay to borrow money went all the way up to six point four seven percent. if the republicans forced a similar crisis here in the united states we could see something similar which

would mean that our interest payments on ten trillion dollars of debt would rise from one hundred seventy five billion a year to six hundred forty seven billion a year that added half a trillion dollars would wipe us out it would equal about thirteen percent of our entire it is a discretionary budget and would mean we'd have to do away with all of our spending on transportation infrastructure three percent of our budget do away with all of our spending on education two percent of our budget do away with all of our spending on scientific and medical research two percent of the discretionary budget and all of that's just halfway to making up the added expense do away with food stamps radically cut back medical services of the poor and yours still not there this is the koch brothers wet dream american billionaires and even people worth nearly hundreds of millions of dollars like mitt romney or just average millionaires like paul ryan and dick armey they won't notice a thing after all their kids don't go to public schools they don't fly through public airports they have concierge doctors and private hospitals and if we kill

off medical research they can always fly to germany to get the most advanced medical care german companies like siemens already make much of the medical equipment in our hospitals in germany company german companies like by air america bearer of merck already make many of the drugs we take and as a special bonus for them most of these millionaires and billionaires have a lot of their millions and billions parked in treasuries which means if their republican surrogates are successful in creating a crisis in congress the jacks up interest rates to the federal government the rates that are paid in treasuries these millionaires and billionaires will make more money in interest payments from taxpayers like you and me to the billionaire bond holders. they will win politically and they will make money in the process plus they have the perfect excuse to kill off programs that help those pesky working people and unemployed people probably ninety nine percent of americans don't realize that every time republicans provoke

a crisis it causes the rating agencies to downgrade our debt like they did last year their billionaire benefactors make more profits from their investments in treasuries and that in the meantime while the rich are getting richer our nation is getting poorer and weaker the ultimate republican dream seems to be to turn america into greece total disaster capitalism so the working people can be stripped of their very last pennies and the rich can end up owning pretty much everything and pain virtually no taxes and they'll do it by screaming about the debt ceiling something by the way that you'll find nowhere in the constitution it's instead an obscure law passed by republicans back during the eisenhower administration to limit borrowing in the us prevent any future f.d.r. from behaving like f.d.r. keep an eye out for this if john boehner is good to his word the dismantling of america's credit rating will begin

a new this summer and along with it will go more things that benefit the middle class like taking down unemployment benefits and aid to public schools the republicans want us to know that they've only just begun. that's it for the big picture tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website the thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org and our team to get also check out our two you tube channels there are lots of thom hartmann dot com also there you can check out all the different ways you can send us your feedback and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there and get active today your it sort of. wealthy british style. sometimes.

markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on our.