what topics i find interesting when i'm not presenting the news to you you can follow me on twitter at liz wall for now have a great night. if you. are going to take three or four charges. reduced free. free. free. download free broadband video for your media project free real gondar t.v. dot com. good afternoon welcome to capital account i'm lauren lyster here in washington d.c. these are your headlines for thursday december twentieth two thousand and twelve in the u.s. as the fiscal cliff approaches reuters reports republicans are aiming to vote today in the house on a plan which obama promptly says he would veto meanwhile fitch has warned the u.s.

could lose its aaa credit rating if washington doesn't get a deal to treat what we call economy no this may all feel like deja vu and maybe it will all turn out fine maybe it won't though where do you want to place your bets we'll talk to the daily reckonings eric bryant and joe bowman about their choices was a german study finds paying taxes has a positive impact on a person's subjective well being no word on what the findings would bring in the west but if you are counting on taxation to make you feel like your quality of life is on the up and up state side we'll talk about some other economic options and the opec of maple syrup has been robbed millions of dollars worth of the hot commodity has been stolen from canada's maple syrup cartel yes cartel i said maple syrup cartel and those are not my words that's according to the new york times we'll talk about it in loose change let's get to today's capital account.

in the u.s. as we watch this fiscal cliff charade it honestly sounds just so much like what we were hearing during the debt ceiling debate of two thousand and eleven when lawmakers were bickering and another ratings agency was threatening to drop the u.s. is aaa credit rating and then it of course did now that was met with much fanfare in the beginning but then not many direct consequences the dollar has strengthened against other currencies the u.s. has borrowed at record low rates since and maybe this whole fiscal cliff saga will play out in the exact same way and if another ratings agency in this case which downgrades the u.s. so what won't matter and with events that actually do change the contours of the game we don't actually know what these things will even look like until they happen

and until they happen we have a really hard time entertaining the notion that they ever will like this i had a press conference today was represented steve king and louie gohmert we have a bill here from britain no we won't we won't get downgraded of course not that's impossible until it happens and when it comes to preparing for these things the prep or is often seen as a chicken little like people who were buying generators and stocking up on food in the northeast they may have seemed a bit paranoid until this so these effects was to york city causing damage and destruction never seen before in america's largest city. now when it comes to preparing for the fat tail to start wagging it's what one of our next guest compares to waiting for a train that may never come but miss that train and the opportunity is gone while our other guest says that if that train were the state liquor right off that cliff good riddance they are eric fry and joel bowman of the daily reckoning and they are

vote in the flesh in my studio here today thank you guys so much for being here it's a pleasure to have let's start with going over a cliff getting on trains all the things of that story eric you've said that preparing for kind of what did you think you were the ultimate egyptian train ride would be preparing for national adversity so first of all why you got to take on egypt and second of all seriously what is the metaphor with an egyptian train right now what is well being right all about picking on egypt is actually joel's fault oh is he started and said anything yet and it's already all right. the egyptian train is a joyride why there isn't one but he told me that he took over train ride in the. hours and hours and hours longer than expected but the bigger part of that is that they went to the station at the appointed hour and trade in there arrive several hours passed his dad got impatient started rattling cages very uncharacteristic for

my father i just want to say very patient individual we don't need to defend him today dr will want to go and eventually the train arrived but so i just. drew the metaphor that. when opportunities come especially preparing for adversity it's a little bit like that you know something's coming sort of but when you go to actually prepare for it. to be there waiting a long time and a lot of times the thing you expect doesn't arrive when you think it will and so many people just sort of give up on it and that's true of both a positive for toony and also an opportunity to to avoid you know a crisis and we're talking about missing that train if it's gone it's. on you miss that train you know you could have waited for it you didn't you said this is never going to come but you miss that so what are the trains we don't want to miss right now we talk about economic risks either of you. well well you know i would say the old adage it's better you know fifteen minutes too early or fifteen years too

early than fifteen seconds too late on so we're seeing some trends play out in the u.s. right now. unsettling trends that you know maybe don't give cause for a fight or flight. response either or certainly start looking at hedging your bets ok so what do you guys look at that you think seems really alarming because if you look at the day to day news hey we got g.d.p. revisions out today and g.d.p. looks a little better by the way the government calculates that it's three point one percent annualized for last quarter and consumers they look like they're going to spend like they did last year for christmas so what do you look at that picture that has you concerned what's most alarming to me is that it's theater the u.s. is becoming theater and the fiscal cliff discussion as you point out in the beginning is there's a large theatrical performance belongs on broadway not here in washington it it's

utterly irrelevant and so increasingly in the united states and the governments both national and local citizenry become obsessed with each other and with discussions about things about shaving one hundred billion dollars when we're facing trillion dollar deficits. about. you know controlling this liberty or struck me down. regulation when we should be figuring out how to how to liberate. top was to get a prize yeah yeah so there is that the same thing that you look at all are there any other specific things that you think are concerning to you when you talk about that long term trajectory the u.s. is on shore well you know eric speaks about the and is quite correct i think to speak of. the theater that is engrossing the american population is they get fed whether c.g. . and unemployment checks i'm a little more insight with what's going on behind that theater the militarization

of the police you know the rise of the police state that those kind of things that you know i mean there are trends that you don't want to see leaving the station so it sounds like it's just as much about certain civil liberties as it is about the economic condition of the u.s. and i mean can you really separate the two because we're talking about preservation of your savings and being able to have the freedom to engage in enterprise right there they're linked absolutely ok with without question so then what is do you think that there are because you both spend time outside of the country i know you guys were just in nicaragua looks pretty nice i know joe i think you live in argentina right it was all business and. we'll get to bounce later helpful back to . work ok we'll get to that later first i want to ask about argentina because argentina is somewhere both of you guys have you know some experience with in the u.s. the u.s. is an empire people in the u.s.

have not experienced the kind of economic turmoil that they have somewhere like argentina where they went through a default is there a difference in people's approach to risk and perceived risk and their desire and willingness to hedge against it somewhere like argentina where they've experienced that kind of thing firsthand versus the u.s. where they can hear about what could possibly go wrong but they haven't experienced that kind of economic turmoil to that extent. yeah. i spent about five months of the year in in argentina and you know the understanding of the cycles that tend to happen there they tend to happen every sort of ten years where you know you get major currency blowups. that. seceded by the kind of breakdowns and civil liberties that that we're talking about possibly. happening here in the u.s. . the people are very very aware of what's going on and so a lot of their enterprises are kind of forced underground into what's so that just

dismissed if we turn the black market. but i think the u.s. can learn a lot by looking at places like argentina black market i don't know what you're saying don't well yeah i would say that but from a from a governmental approach it's more of what you know not to do list if you will and you know i mean i think i think these things happen with predictability and regularity enough that you know you start to see some telltale signs. and in terms of national dominance i mean you don't really have a historical precedent where any one country can really stay on top forever and when you look at it different countries erik you've written about i don't know if we have the chart we may or may not but you did a great chart comparing what's happen to the credit ratings of countries in latin america that had junk ratings and now they have investment grade ratings compared to some of the pigs countries in europe which had investment grade ratings and now they're venturing into junk or they are at junk status so what do you think the

takeaway is about that broadly and for the u.s. because let's remember the u.s. is the reserve currency it does have some different thing going on here well the markets economists are nations follow cycles there they are creatures that follow cycles and when we're in the middle of a of a boom cycle the u.s. enjoyed a hold of two hundred year boom but it's still a cycle. and so we aren't equipped or accustomed to dealing or viewing ourselves as part of a cycle just any more than a twenty year old is used to think in terms of ok well at eighty i'm going to die or whatever you know they don't think that way we think well we're always to be twenty we're always going strong we're always going to great now that we're not and we're already in decline in my opinion one thing that joe mentioned about about argentina when you have a country like argentina where the government. periodically checks off the what not to do list the population the populace many of them anyway are our understand the

what to do list you know how to prepare for these. every ten or twenty years here in the u.s. you know who's prepared that's a great point people don't have that president they don't know what they should be doing what about some of the things that you've been writing about joe which are you're saying hey the state can't go off this cliff i don't care what i'm interested in or are some of these peer to peer solutions we're seeing like kickstarter for investing in and your prize for like big point for currency that stores value so what do you think are the lessons of these things that have started up and what you think the opportunity is there right well actually i do care very much about the state going off the fiscal cliff i hope that. and does it because then the rest of us can get on with creating the kind of things you just mentioned and you know i chose three examples peer to peer examples. in what i kind

of view as the new frontier going to eric mentioned a two hundred year bull market here in. the united states well. you know. it started out as the frontier you know the united states was the frontier it was when it was where paranoid people came you know for gold. and then they fled here and so no papers no paranoia people are still here but you know it's just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're they're not. so this new frontier of you know peer to peer currency or crowdfunding or you know what have you this is where i think people who are actually going to be making a difference in the future are going to be going to be fleeing to just quickly with something like that coin though when you don't have a government that can force taxation how does something like that have value and you just have thirty seconds to to really expound on that concept well i think its value is very much. is very much rooted in the fact that it is beyond the reach of

government in that it's a largely decentralized or entirely decentralized. currency that is reliant on the integrity of non-governmental individuals and i think you know with we've seen the norm integrity of governmental officials and what they do with the currency so i think this is a pretty good alternative to all right now one thing we haven't talked about is how people in the u.s. could prepare our could diversify or could find some other economic opportunities when we get back we'll talk about nicaragua and some other examples of what people may do or are doing we'll have more of eric fry in joel bowman of the daily reckoning in just a moment also still ahead opec is not the only cartel in town opec of maple syrup has been robbed that's right well discussed later in the exchange but first the closing market numbers.

all right let's go straight back with our guests eric bryant joe bowman of the daily reckoning because we're going to talk about some ways to possibly.

want to talk about government debt in the u.s. it's been an operative very we can bring it up we've got what that looks like with their eyes yeah there you have a government debt as a percent of g.d.p. going straight up. in a few minutes we'll show what's happened in nicaragua where it's been going down but what do you think is the takeaway there well. it's just an example it's just a place it's a place though that is coming off of a very very low base came of the civil war twenty five years ago and it's it is a rapidly growing economy now. it's moving in the constructive direction the u.s. is moving in the other direction so when you look at places around the world where you might possibly diversify not for flight purposes necessarily but but just because here's an opportunity yeah and here is what nicaraguan government debt as

a percentage of g.d.p. has done it's gone down when you look at the two countries do you think there's anything to glean from that trend and one becoming more in debt in one becoming less so in terms of their trajectory if you could just look at one data point i was so you when you parse together a lot of data points between the. very opposite trends unemployment is growth is robust in the garage it is tepid in the united states. crime stats are dramatically improving in the garage there. you know so so here in the u.s. . personal liberties i mean any comparison i look at are improving in the garage where almost everyone and they're not getting here so if you look around you say ok well the world is not static never has been this dynamic and dynamic means that change is sometimes better sometimes worse well i don't want to be on the side of something that's getting worse if i can identify so i mean it's getting better so here's an example and it's getting better but it's

a tiny country right tiny country one of the poorest in the western hemisphere across america to the united states which is one of the wealthiest nation but very different dynamics that can bring up unemployment just so we can see people shop our audience what has happened with us unemployment rolling five year change versus nicaraguan so you know if you look at that tail end there it's been on the ascent in nicaragua and down in the u.s. i know that you're saying this is an example is this just the dynamic though of a developing nation that is going to come in from a very low bar and so it's beginning to grow and and not sort of thing versus a developed country that has had a crisis and already has developed yeah that's exactly correct you know exactly correct and as i observed in something i wrote nicaragua is also too poor to hassle you so person liberty standpoint they don't they don't have the resources to set up exhaustive agencies and invasive agencies and many many different

ways to to control what you do so that's sometimes good sometimes bad that things like that be right up your alley joel you know well that's that's a lot there's a bonus of an important government and this too. i mentioned a little while ago i think on. this show i learned. just an anecdote and i was in pain away you know governmental infrastructure is a really breaking down and. people are finding immediate workarounds to it so much so that. cousin checkpoints for example if the lines too long they rush the line you know there is no standing there you know waiting for your radiation boss and for some moron to you know frisk you and your grandma and your kids right which is the you know hyperactive government that we see here in the u.s. i think that's something to avoid if at all possible right so when you when you talk about the lesson of nicaragua or any other lessons what do you really think

people should take away in terms of what they could or should be doing if they're wanting to prepare for you know economic headwinds and the less well one thing i would say is like i don't want to give the impression that ok nicaragua is some sort of paradise nirvana i know it's a dirt poor country with with a lot of problems. but as a as a template for something that investors should consider or individual should consider it's a small government country with tremendous opportunity tremendous natural resources . tremendous dynamism and in many many areas we are a large government country that whose government is intent on constricting. the ability to feed yourself so put it on a scale i mean i'd rather have the poor country that is liberating its spirits and go ahead you want to do that well i'm going to do the description that eric was

giving of nicaragua. admittedly is is one of. come full circle back to the egyptian they're a go egyptian train you may be waiting for a long time but hey if you miss that thing you have missed your opportunity gentlemen thank you so much for being on there i really appreciate all of your insights. are going to try and figure out a way to hit nicaragua at some point my lifetime it looks beautiful if you haven't been patient both in the country and enjoy life you know we can you know fashion

a makeshift studio down a not too much trouble i like it i like it alright alright thanks so much you guys that you. are let's wrap up with loose change dimitri laura with a preschool cliff negotiations continuing one thing that we hear about relentlessly is taxing the rich. the rich pay as a percentage of their income less than the middle class does we have a tax system that needs entire over a home and he made clear that the rich must pay their fair share meeting taxes will go up to the top two percent who would talk about no one talked about reform just tax the rich more ok well

a new study is being written about today it came out of germany some economists found that there is a correlation between higher taxes and higher life satisfaction or subjective wellbeing from what i understand the dimitris a kind of try to way trying to find a way to make an income. not a factor so just generally like taxation was correlated with better wellbeing but some of the things within a study that i was reading where that the lower percentage on the lower scale of income they were happier paying taxes because they get more out of their taxes in terms of services so what it was the people in the middle lower the lower income it leaves a lot of people in the middle of the most unhappy that were. they tried to figure out a way to kind of make it unusual for those things so that that wasn't a factor but then when you read through the report it has like kind of little anecdotes that are hard to totally understand because it's in terrible research and it's very you know economics amounting to but it's a waste this is a waste of money was this science was this government funded by know you know what

i'm not what we're going to get the money i mean why do we need this but it's good to know this so that people can paraded around and say see look people do want to kind of march they're happier with the dumbest thing that we're obviously no one likes think that there's nobody no matter how much they make no one likes paying taxes and people are particularly satisfied with the services that they're getting for it too so yes go this study is a waste of money i hope it was a tax funded i don't know if it probably was it was like a self it was a derivative study it was a study that was drive the value from its own its own results and i'm a little biased body ever thought this is not it was done in germany and not in the u.s. the world together by the germans it's not looking at is getting are going to yeah it's getting a lot of play in the u.s. where there is a tax of a going on but very different it was terrible than it was terrible and it was a soon as may be let's leave it there because the story i really want to get to cartels like opec make news but here is one you would never expect. billion dollar heist of maple syrup over twenty million dollars worth of maple syrup was stolen

from canada strategic reserves and back last summer. did you catch that she's talking about this strategic maple syrup reserves of course it is strategic reserves of maple syrup well they do you want to know why because this actually is a legit cartel so can it actually does control most of the market for maple syrup so in order to influence the price so that it doesn't get too low they actually hoard the syrup that gets it to the price that they want to be and so it's a cartel and they from within like eighty million dollars worth of. would be the knowledge of like a an energy crisis in the u.s. where like you need to tap the strategic reserves yes well yes well you have a spike in maple syrup again aren't going to. know what to do. what they're worried about is that the prices would be too low so the producers couldn't get as much money for maple syrup that they would want to get what is the strategic reserve there so they have a supply to throw into the market in the event of a price spike i think it's perhaps but what from what i was reading it was seeming

like more they were storing more of it there when there was a glut of it so that prices didn't get too low well they're constantly keeping prices high then they're creating a huge glut of maple syrup and eventually we're going to have is going to be feeding animals medical service out of corn and we're going to another another health crisis because we're going to matter you know if it would be a health crisis i think maple syrup is oftentimes part of those cleanses that people do part of it's true as part of the lemon so maybe those things are amazing i've heard i haven't done i couldn't eat the maple syrup reserve could be tapped into by the u.s. to actually the u.s. is you're overweight when i look on i want to marijuana in this country very problem legalizing marijuana i have a hard time seeing them telling people go on healthy clones don't stop using pharmaceutical drugs and the thing is if they. did but immediately but i think that the fact that they got robbed i think they kind of had it coming because if they're really controlling the price in the market from a. i think that they kind of deserve to be robbed well i'd like to see what happened i mean did they really did was there or is there a spike in attendance so i hop could be exploited i think i think i just well i

don't want to leave it there are out of time so thank you so much for watching be sure to come back tomorrow and in the meantime you know you can follow me on twitter at lauren lyster you can like our facebook page there. you can watch us on you tube or you can watch us on hulu and from everyone here thank you so much for watching come back tomorrow and have yourself a very great night. 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 that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harkin welcomes the big picture.

news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to corporations to rule today. the book.