scott. russian. top stories this hour naughtie the un security council votes to extend the observer mission to syria for thirty days amid escalating violence. meanwhile russian officials deny reports president assad has revealed he's preparing to step down. and police clashed with protesters on the streets of spain as the public rages against the latest wave of austerity. about with another summer and often on the meantime we head to washington d.c. for the show right here. welcome to the lower show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mercy we're

going live to washington d.c. now tonight we're going to take another look at syria spears or stoked about chemical weapons and russia and china blocked a u.n. vote the would have authorized the use of force then a number of economic stories we want to touch upon including soaring corn and soybean prices thanks to the drought here in the u.s. some high ranking officials are saying that all that we have left to do is pray and it's thursday so artie's andrew blake is going to be on to talk tech to me we'll take a look at you tube's new face blurring feature and the rift between wiki leaks and anonymous so have all of that and more for you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media decided to miss. the mainstream media is still in full election mode and so they are still all over the romney tax returns story tack that just won't go away romney in his tax returns has been made has nothing to hide she addressed the controversy over releasing more tax

returns but negative stories on romney's taxes and his time at bain are not going away they still haven't answered some questions and look all those tax returns we saw even more republicans yesterday call for the release of the tax return the house speaker appearing angry yesterday when asked about the need for mitt romney to release more tax returns and capital mitt romney at the helm got help raising a third of its initial investment funds from wealthy foreigners and romney is defending her husband's decision not to release more of his tax returns to bain capital started with help of offshore investors democratic attacks on bain capital romney's old company they've actually decided that they're going to deflect these charges on bain i don't think democrats are going to let this go until he releases more tax returns most of the foreign investors money came through corporations registered in panama this is romney says two years worth of tax returns is quite enough for public consumption the website of the salt lake games listed me. romney is the founder and president c.e.o. of bain capital. now yesterday i pointed out that this is one of those very rare

occasions in fact maybe the only occasion where the mainstream media actually acts like they care about transparency show us the tax returns what are you trying to hide and i also pointed out a number of stories yesterday that involve national security wiki leaks targeted killings and drones things that can be politically polarizing as cable networks always seem to shy away from approaching with any critique if they even touch upon them at all but if we're going to stick on this tax return thing but i just can't understand why they're not picking up on the latest story coming out from mcclatchy see one of the things we've seen a lot of since romney announced that he wouldn't be turning over more of his tax returns is pundits going crazy over it yes but even more so politicians they've been very eager to chime in republican members of congress now for the most part a lot of them have been defending romney's decision the democrats well they've been so giddy they've been jumping all over themselves to take the opportunity to call romney's bluff the only thing is that mcclatchy now he's now called there's or

they've now called there's the for three months the glass you requested the most recent tax returns from all five hundred thirty five members of congress three months later only seventeen members of congress have actually done it nineteen others reply that they are refusing to release this information and apparently everybody else well they just completely ignore the request you see members of congress they have to file financial disclosure reports when they run that list their major sources of income earned and there's a lot of information that's emitted that would be our normal tax return including your spouse's earnings so if you're going to go so crazy over mitt romney's tax returns or why not put your money where your mouth is and release your own now sure some people out there might say that it's not as porton as a presidential candidate releasing that kind of information but guess what congress sets tax policy too it's not just the president in fact congress is the body to actually creates the policy. he and the president just signed off on it so if members of congress are so keen on spending

a large chunks of their time fighting over tax policy like they're doing right now instead of say creating jobs well then we should know how they benefit or how they get hurt by the policies that they will be passing if you ask me it makes perfect sense for the mainstream media apparently does not time to include that in their obsessive coverage of mitt romney's tax returns maybe they don't have the guts to call out the members of congress and they keep inviting on their programs but apparently they do have time for stuff like this chris christie won't confirm it himself but sources tell n.p.r. news that he will be the keynote speaker at this year's republican national convention do you think one of the most important things obviously want to fire up the crowd but you're preaching to the converted do you want to find that little clip that is going to be played over and over and over again in your folks out there. yeah that's right m s n b c actually wasted like ten minutes this morning talking about what they'll be talking about once the keynote address is given at

the r. and c. or whatever the soundbite is that they're going to obsess over hasn't even said yet but they're already talking about it that kind of stuff just blows my mind but hey i guess it should be expected again the hypocrisy involved the bigger picture is a transparency in tax returns and who actually has a right to say anything about it that's just another thing that they choose to miss . well a situation in syria continues to develop after yesterday's suicide bombing in which three of assad's top security chiefs were killed some reports are now saying that assad may have left a mascot's for the coast city of latakia russia and china vetoed a u.n. un security council resolution that could have led to more sanctions against syria but also would have been attached to chapter seven of the u.n. charter which could authorize the use of force and susan rice in the white house have. showered the bow with condemnation and the talk of the use of chemical weapons is also getting louder what could happen next twitter post assad syria be

thrown into even more chaos here this gustus with me is christopher swift fellow at the university of virginia law school's center for national security law christopher thanks for joining us tonight good to be back so overall just what's your take in terms of what we've seen lately where the fighting has ratcheted up where we see damascus really take center stage or you saw the suicide bombing yesterday and now maybe assad isn't in damascus anymore maybe he's fled we will we don't know where assad is we hear all sorts of reports yesterday's bombing is very significant and significant symbolically in that the attack took place inside the national security bureau not just in the heart of the national security apparatus but really inside the building inside the institutions themselves it's also significant politically and so far as it underscores this is a civil war and that it's not going to be resolved anytime soon but militarily it may not be that significant because the tools that you need to run an operation like this one time bombing are very very different from the ability to build

a force mobilize popular support and sustain that force over the long term so the free syrian army has support in some areas of the country it doesn't have support in other areas of the country and it's a very fluid and dynamic situation now one of the things too that everyone was questioning guest today and we had scott horton on from harper's is whether whether that counts is terrorism right if you have a suicide bombing that happens is that terrorism is it fair game because of the situation in the country he said it's very game what's your take you know it depends on whose legal definition you use if i use the state department's definition it's terrorism if i use the justice department's definition it's terrorism if i use the free syrian army as definition it's an act of national liberation against an oppressive regime so look terrorism is a subjective term let's call it what it is it's violence it's war it's unpleasant it's bad and we should bring it to an end as quickly and justly as we possibly can one of the things too that we're hearing now. talk of chemical weapons in syria being used right we saw the ambassador to iraq defect say that he doesn't doubt

that assad would actually use chemical weapons but i mean what do you we have to break this down because these are these are the kind of threats that we hear often right now but if you want to talk about the war in iraq well we partly went there also because of the concern of chemical weapons when the u.n. and invention in libya was happening exact same thing we were listening to hearing about get off these chemical weapons stockpiles so how do we approach that this time never underestimate the capacity of pundits and politicians to engage in hyperbole at the same time there are some facts that we should consider here and those facts are very important first off syria does have an active chemical weapons program it is the largest chemical weapons program in the middle east they have the capacity to deliver it both in a tactical sense on the battlefield and using scud missiles and they have the largest arsenal of scud missiles in the middle east so from a purely material standpoint there is there is an argument for making a threat now whether or not they would use those weapons depends on one on whether

the bunch of the back is up against the wall and to their command control structure they can issue an order to a general who may not execute out of order for personal or ethical or other reasons so we don't know we don't have enough information about what's going on inside the syrian government to draw that conclusion but i can say is that this is a small regime that represents a small minority within a very complex and diverse country that they ruled for about forty years the more their backs get up against the wall the more likely they are to do something extreme to preserve their position because for them this is the nexus to fight it really is a fight to the last bullet but at the same time too wouldn't you say that it would make sense to me to say that there is also a very big risk of let's say that assad. is out right then it's about whose hands are those chemical weapons going to be next if you want to talk about how we don't know who everybody is in the free syrian army to direct their extremist elements. concern over you know securing whatever stockpiles they do have and securing the

borders to make sure that those stockpiles are moving transnationally is going to be absolutely crucial but look we don't know if and when the syrian government is going to fall right my current guess is that this war is going to take a lot longer to work itself out because of the complexities within syrian society and my concern is that this war is going to start spilling over the border into israel and turkey and iraq and other places so we should worry about the chemical weapons problem we should do the diligence and figure out where this stuff is and we should intervene in a very limited sense to make sure it doesn't move to places that we don't want to see it move but we don't know what the end game looks like yet so we shouldn't be talking about an end game until closer i think that you know when people star is going on for seventeen months right away and then suddenly you have a couple of days unfortunately i think the way to describe it is actually right i mean there has been a lot of a lot of violence a lot of events that have gone on but that i think that people start getting ahead of themselves and start jumping to conclusions and we'd already hear from u.s. officials to that it's only a matter of days that assad's days are numbered but you know you mention of course

the fact that i think we always underestimate this if we want to talk about the arab spring and many of the countries that have seen changes over the last year or so that there are complexities within the country itself and so what do you think is there in syria that people need to know that isn't being discussed on the cable networks where people are just thinking all sidle fall in love with the democracy for all and things will be great to say two things about who won the regime and second it's capabilities i know our time is limited first the regime like a lot of regimes of this nature is very strong but it's also very brittle so if you hit it the right way it's going to fragment right and we should be prepared for that possibility but until you hit it the right way you know whether it's the free syrian army that does that or defections that do it the regime is going to be very strong they have the control over the security apparatus of the state now looking at that security apparatus this is not this is not going. right this is the syrian army the thirteenth largest armed forces in the world thirteen thousand two hundred

some odd countries they have a very professional armed forces something cut off never developed because he was afraid of a coup they have a functioning air force that runs very effective you know russian made planes most importantly they have a amazing air defense force if this is attacking syria by the air would be like attacking iraq circa one thousand nine hundred one very very effective capacity to prevent people from intervening from abroad so this is a complicated situation and i think use the absence of calls for direct military intervention of the kind we've seen in libya show how different the situation is on the ground and the importance of doing more diligence having more facts and not letting the hyperbole and the speculation get in the way of developing the state in that sense to me let me just lastly ask you about this u.n. vote that we had right where on one hand it sanctions against syria at the same time there is this. chapter seven u.n. charter which would have authorized the use of force to me to what extent is. chapter seven means that you can use the you can use force right if you include top

to including the use of force but what you are actually legally able to do depends on the actual text of the u.n. resolution itself so when we say that they get a resolution based on sanctions it's also authorizing the use of force legally that's really a stretch unless the authorizations actually written into the resolution itself at the same time at the same time the way things are often you know slippery slope and i think that even with that with libya for example we saw lot of mission creep there right now what he actually was delicious and but there was the agreement that armed force could be used to protect the population of sirte and other cities that were under direct threat so there was that acknowledgement look this tension between chapter six and chapter seven operations between humanitarian intervention and you know imperialism that we've been running this playbook since bosnia it's an old it's an old discussion it's a tired discussion it's a discussion that's not making the world safer and more stable place we've got to come up with new ways of dealing with these sorts of situations and if we don't. when you see the kind of indirect interventions that we're already seeing with

russia and iran moving resources in to bolster the regime and with the gulf states and turkey moving resources into bowl for the free syrian army and that's the kind of proxy war that we don't want to see are christopher thanks so much for joining us tonight my pleasure. all the time for a short break but when we come back and he ran down though and facing very ishmail abou joining us now we're talking the latest economic news including the drought and a rising debt and the consumer financial protection bureau just issued its first find which probably shows us why lobbyists and banks are fighting it in the first place . you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you. are welcome is a big issue. well

there are a number of economic stories that we have to get into today to try to forecast just or and for for starters corn and soybean prices soared to record highs as the u.s. is facing the worst drought in fifty years and tom vilsack the u.s. agriculture secretary basically told reporters that the only thing left to do is get down on your knees and pray not so comforting if you ask me then if we look back at a recent federal reserve report that showed the consumer credit rose by eight percent in may maybe we should exactly be thinking that's a good thing sure it means that people out there are spending but when they're putting it all in plastic how long can that really last and maybe a little bit of good the consumer financial protection bureau slapped capital one with a two hundred ten million dollars fine yesterday for deceptively marketing credit monitoring services to credit card customers so i guess now we know why the banks fought the creation of this bureau so much joining me to discuss it all is anthony

rand director of economic research for the reason foundation and from our new york studio is stacy marie ishmael founder and editor of gallivant media i want to thank you both for joining me tonight and i guess let's just start with this rising soybean and corn cost and we have the worst drought in fifty years and now we might have food inflation and you know states marie if you can just tell me why is this so scary. it's scary for a few reasons the last time we saw these kinds of colon being repeated various other agricultural prices we might think back to two thousand and seven two thousand and eight when there were food related riots in countries ranging from haiti to egypt and of course pleasantly tunisia so there's a lot of concern that we're going to see similar price shocks in more impoverished countries around the world closer to home here in the united states there are concerns that there will be rising food prices well into two thousand and thirteen because the states that have been hit hardest by these droughts also the major

producers of corn and soybean so basically it's exactly what the world doesn't need right now right if we're still ok we're still reeling from a good global recession of sorts right it's exactly what you don't need not to mention of course the fact that the arab spring is still very much ongoing as we just spent all this time talking about syria and you know and you have rising commodity prices that are going to back that it's a problem but what do you think about this thing that. i can actually give you the real statement he said i get on my knees every day and i'm saying an extra prayer right now if i had rain prayer or a rain dance i could do i would do it and it was really so i was actually caught for the sichuan belly not a senior executive official united states government one thing that i think that to point out with this is this is the the prices that are rising as a result of weather really just building on how commodities prices have been increasingly going up over the past over years as a lot of cheap money has flooded much capital into the commodities market so it's

actually if you look at corn futures over the past couple of years they were much lower two years ago they were today and now we're building on top of sort of several years of rise in food prices some whether that it doesn't just impact corn it doesn't just impact grains those go into feed stocks for for cattle that impacts meat prices it trickles throughout almost the entire food. supply and obviously it's a little bit surprising that you know we've got these these warnings coming out just now a lot of this we've seen coming a lot of this sort of building and it goes back to this consumer reports for maybe the most recent data the fed has available a lot of people are putting money on credit cards because they can't can't meet. me at the well i want to get back to that but just really quickly before we finish up with this one of these thing to say to mary who is there somebody out there that's benefiting from this you know there's always somebody that seems to be at the top echelon that's managing to take part in some kind of speculation and while great

for the rest of us it trickles down it might cause political upheaval it might raise the price of corn and me and everything for those that are actually counting their pennies is the fun times for the top traders and then who else is up there i mean it's definitely not fun times but there are a couple of articles that you could look at this from you could argue for example that global giant companies like monsanto which have a vested interest in promoting so oftentimes controversial forms of agriculture meanwhile benefit from the need to have more drought resilient crops for instance and then if you are an exports of these commodities as their prices go up that means you're getting more money and i have to say that there have been some mitigating factors around comparing this situation to two thousand and seven two thousand and eight which is that rice and wheat prices which are really what are fundamental when you're thinking about the rest of the world the less developed world have not risen as much as corn and soybean and also global inventories have been reasonably stable and this is actually expected to still be the third largest

corn crop on record by current models because we were blessed with pretty reasonable weather in the earlier half of the year which encouraged more planting but it's still early days so but that's how it's looking right now all right so let's get into this consumer credit report then i think that you are talking about you wrote about to basically and by. the fact that americans are resorting to putting more things on their credit card using more plastic i think i'm probably guilty of that i don't know the thread really hard not to but you know why why is that the thing that you decide really needed to be addressed now and light of the recent better part that came out both federal pork comes on this pointing out that borrowing is increasing and one of the things that's been talked about is we need americans borrowing more so they can spend more which sort of antithetical to what really i think the way we should be responding to global finances household finances right now we need to be saving more we need to be paying down debt and be leveraging but if you're borrowing more than consuming more and hopefully that contributes to the economy the problem is this isn't this isn't debt that is going

into sort of household investments it's not good mortgage that it's student loan debt a lot of it is revolving credit lines of credit that's being increasing use and that's piling on to household debt the more the household debt goes up the more you limit economic mobility the harder it is for the housing market to recover and it sort of trickles out throughout the rest of the economy more credit card debt is really bad . but i guess you know how how else would you would you go about it maybe you said that maybe what we should be telling people to do right now is that they should be actually saving their money and not ideal there may not be any other solution because gas prices were up at the beginning of the year they didn't sort of trickle down now but food prices are going up to be able to survive with that sort of income being stagnant and the fact is we are using wages to go up right and we are also making more money would be of such a problem and you can't save money right now because interest rates are at zero because the fed feels that zero interest rate policy is the best sort of response

so all those factors are sort of combining there may not be a better solution but just looking at the most recent report we see a large uptick in revolving credit that's that's problematic looking down the road for the economy i don't say summary what's your take do you think if there's any other option any other way around it. well one of the that what this is correlated with persistently sticky unemployment and people are just running out of unemployment benefits because they've been unemployed for so long you know you could argue that if congress would pass an extension on the length of time that you were allowed to receive benefits if there were more impetuous to a drop job creation that would certainly alleviates that unemployment situation and mean that pure people are relying on benefits that are rapidly running out and therefore having to put household consumption groceries which are going to get more expensive because of rising corn prices on their credit cards. oh well just full of really good news on a daily basis unfortunately somehow this is always a bit of conversations devolve into you and i guess the bad you know that's the

state of the economy that's kind of the end of the world right now there so even have to say and i mean do we see any positive ray of hope here if we look at the consumer financial protection bureau it was a really long battle a really long hard slog to actually get this bureau established to get people to be able to sit on it you know there wasn't republican opposition to you and so here we have this very first fine two hundred eleven million dollars towards capital one and what do you think well you want to have a spirit of optimism you can try and find your i got your i hear you i probably draw the matter is that this is a fine that was levied with power that existed before dodd frank it just sort of concentrated in the sea of p.p. part of this fund was issued by the o.c.c. which also existed ahead of time and this is a fine for fraudulent activities the government had the power to do this before the financial crisis a lot of regulators didn't really act on it it's been concentrated in the see if p.p. and so it's not as if there's been this ushered in a new era of capacity people are sort of acting on regulatory power right now but i

think that we need to be a little bit cautious this is a two hundred ten million dollars fine on a company that makes a lot more money but that this is a read somewhere today it's like putting a parking ticket on a rolls royce it's actually not going to matter capital one has been fined for these kinds of behaviors in the past this isn't going to change their behavior the yes unfortunately two hundred ten one little bit less cynical go ahead go ahead. and say i little bit less cynical about that i think yes it is true that some of these polish did exist before but the o.c.c. has never exactly covered itself in glory as a regulator that hasn't really stood up in the past and said ok guys you're being noticed he has you know if they have build anything out it has been a smack on the wrist and the other thing that's interesting about this capital one fine is the new bureau recently released data for the very first time. which banks consumers were complaining about particularly which credit card companies and guess who came out of the top of the list capital one accounted for nearly twenty five percent of all consumer complaints since june which is when the first batch of

these were made available so i do think we're going to see more in force and i do think we have a long way to go but at the very least there you know the fact that they were able to do this and it was heavily publicized i think we can draw some comfort from that in that you know we're in an environment where there's going to be and there has to be a greaser regulatory scrutiny agrees the regulatory enforcement which is crucial i think in that they're going to step it up though i think they need to focus on individuals continuing to find organizations isn't the solution the critique is not that we need to we shouldn't have regulators and we should look for are brought about it's my argument is that it's continuing to throw minimal fines at organizations that allow the individuals to continue to perpetuate the behavior down the road is not actually talking responsibility were needs to be right so like you you find capital one two hundred million dollars and then all the c.e.o.'s still get to stay put and still continue on living their lovely lives i have a capital one credit card and it sucks you know like i. got a flat with fees that very unfair to me before and so i understand but you know if

you want to put it into perspective so on one hand this is great because these are things that consumers are directly complaining about in terms of well hey they scanned us in this sense but it's still so small fries in comparison to what they like to live or scandal you know and so in that sense to do you think that that's a place where you should go after c.e.o.'s or is that these are the sixteen big banks that are setting the rates that are all you know taking part in it. well i mean there's been there have been a few media reports that the department of justice which does have the power to make criminal prosecutions against individuals is looking out which is not to say they've opened an investigation but they are at least looking at individuals who may have been responsible or substantially responsible for manipulation our own libel the challenge that's faced by the department of justice is that legally the barrier to get a conviction particularly when some of these cases are tried before a jury who may or may not have a sophisticated understanding of concepts like libel and what really constitutes

fraud that is so high but there has been an aversion to try to take any of these cases to court until there's been a slam dunk a couple of the cases that have been gone before juries like insider trading as it related to. things like that haven't done very well partly because of the jury situation people have been like oh well you know they're all moving money around they were pushing paper maybe that's not so bad so while i do agree that we should see more individual prosecutions i think it'll take a while as these cases get built because the paperwork and just the level of evidence that will be required is. going to wrap it up guys i want to thank you both for joining me tonight. thank you. i had time for another short break but when we come back andrew blake talks tech to me we'll be talking about anonymous his attempts to mimic wiki leaks and a little spat between the two then patrick leahy is closer to the entertainment industry than spandex on one nine hundred sixty s. batman and he was tonight's top final word after this.

scarlet. russian lines.