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please. welcome back to cross talk were all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing whether the united states is a force for good in the world. ok george i'd like to go to you and we were talking about the financial crisis i mean the financial crisis is not only been a catastrophe for the world but it's been a catastrophe for the united states as well and this is still an economic model

that the united states can control globally yes no that's absolutely right. and so you know what this this particular brand of capitalism that america is championed which is one we call the end of the pyramid scheme capitalism whereby you know you just build up a mountain of debt while your. earning yourself huge fees and then when the whole economy goes belly up you go to the government and the government bails you out while all of the victims of the loans the small borrowers get thrown out of their homes and out onto the street so this kind of pyramid scheme capitalism. has really been championed by the united states and the and this is been very much you know again since the end of the cold war the united states was a very strong advocate when we got to get rid of all of those and not just socialism but the social democracies in europe we got to get rid of that euro sclerosis all of the you know welfare lack of job mobility you know we got to be

like the united states you know this is where we have this really dynamic capitalism well we've seen this dynamic after as we've seen you know we had the collapse of the internet bubble in the in the early two thousand and then we. this is the almighty collapse of the housing bubble we're building up in all the bubble now so you know this this you know non welfare kind of you know primitive pyramid scheme tabel ism is the last thing anyone in the world would want to emulate ok before we sort of the program is not going to if i could get you going and then let's talk about the perceptions of the united states in the middle east but go ahead bruce and i just want to jump in there look i mean george is right if you look at the public opinion surveys we've done in thirty nine countries basically people think the economic system is now unfair they think that inequality has grown over the last five years and they think that inequality is a very big problem so this is a huge indictment of modern capitalism whether you call it american capitalism or

not you know that's said and done the current principle threat to the stability of the world economy is still what is going on in europe and no american forced the speculation in the spanish housing market. no american forced the greeks to lie about their finances. this is. a problem that is in debt make not just to american capitalism but to market based systems in all parts of the world but he's right we have created a winner take all capitalism which has we're now seeing many of the problems created by that well i mean it is alan krueger the outgoing head of the economic advisors to the president said in a speech just this week. as the the. this kind of capitalism has has evolved into something that we bed the textbooks would not.

would not recognize you know but george i think the whole deregulation thing did come out of the united states and forced upon a lot of european countries as well i mean toxic assets and all of that to me. fine they found their way in every single economy in europe yet though there's no question i mean all of this deregulation credit is a movement that started in the united states in the late one nine hundred seventy s. and then it accelerated on the reagan era and then you know where dramatically also still later the under clinton and then under bush so yes that was that originate that the united states and the europeans bought into that i mean the europeans bought into the propaganda that was emanating from washington that somehow they were running these sclerotic backward economies and that they needed jobs mobility that they needed capital needed you know to be free of all the restrictions of from

labor you know you and you know you needed to have somehow to compete in the world you had to emulate the americans well i think this is you know shown that this is a really disastrous road that down which is europeans have gone that that they said of course the europeans are going to do have to share the blame for what has happened but again it does show that the problem with this uni polar moment is that we have the you know one. financial economic system that is powered. economic by the united states that are through the dollar and through its ideology and i think that's why you know this has really been a very disastrous era because the united states has imposed these economic strictures and has brought no economic and financial stability ok bruce lee let's talk about the middle east here what are the perceptions of the united states in

the middle east in what are those which backing up those perceptions because washington in the western world just can't believe that region alone well what we saw was a dramatic fall off in support for the united states for support for the american president support for ask. of american foreign policy during the bush era and it's never recovered. there was a lot of talk when obama was elected in two thousand and eight of an obama bounce and you certainly saw it in places like europe where support for united states skyrocketed but you did not see that in the middle east there has been no obama bounce it continues to be a problem for the united states and if you ask people in the region about specific aspects of american foreign policy we've talked about syria already if you talk about drone strikes for example massive opposition to that. and so there is this sense that the united states acts in a unilateral way especially in that region. and it's

a very. difficult challenge for the united states and it's not at all clear when or how or if the u.s. ever turns this around he you know it's democracy is something the united states always claims to support you know but in so many parts of the middle east it's not democratic but america has friends there and just as what bruce said i mean the american elite knows what people think on the ground but they don't count i guess. that's exactly right i mean who are the u.s. allies in the middle east saudi arabia the various gulf states some of the most primitive backward regimes in the world terrifyingly so who are the u.s. adversaries well you know at the moment it's syria which you know whatever the flaws of the assad regime that it was a still a multicultural multi confessional state tom also who than saudi arabia the the great champions of democracy and freedom same with with libya. on the

gaddafi you know again whatever its flaws was a fairly tolerant it a fairly multicultural state again it was destroyed and now into a kind of a. series of. warring militias so. the united yes it professes democracy but in reality it destroys the very states that tend to. embody suppose that american values then the need allies though and of course there's the the eight hundred pound which is the israel ok bruce that i don't i just want fishes eight hundred pound gorilla very loosely. here i mean that you know as far as the end of the year in the middle east the arabs in the world think this is an absolutely outraged that the united states professes to be an honest broker and you know advocating peace in the middle east reservedly supports israeli

policy ok lott said there bruce go ahead. but i mean i do think we risk here putting the situation us in a situation where it's damned if you do and damned if it don't and other words there was implicit george's implicit suggestion was that the tacit u.s. lack of opposition to assad or to khadafi in the latter years suggested that. that that that was a force for stability in the world the reality is we have unleashed demons in syria we unleashed demons in libya i agree with george. that probably would have happened when ever we decided and the world this well it is i mean to back bruce but i can take i can take it and flip it around again just leave these little loners just leave these people alone leave leave them alone well but

what i'd like to smell or at the reality is. no no we one russia is not leaving syria lone yeah but russia isn't going around the world invading countries at all russia is honoring international law that is transparent ok i don't it's not that it's not to say any thing other it's not the same thing at all not nearly so and and sim city similarly while you know one cannot defend the democratic. sensibilities of the of the syrian of the saudi regime in any by any stretch of the imagination as there is none it's not just our interest it's not just our interest we've pursued there at this point if the saudi regime would descend into some kind of chaos it would be china it would be japan it would be europe who would suffer a mark far more economic damage than we would and so while i'm not

defending what we have done i am saying that. exiting from this situation to a more stable situation is very going to be very very complex and i don't see anybody stepping up to help the united states on that and knows i think we've demonstrated we need help ok well it always sounds like to dictators says you know i'm the one saving you from disaster george you get the last word forty seconds i agree i agree that's what i mean that's absolutely right i mean there were always easy solutions in the case of libya you know america stayed out. the insurrection in libya would have ended enormous number of lives would have been laws. supplies would have continued you know and you know happily same way the same as in syria the conflict could've ended years ago now again you know energy

supplies to europe to wrestle world every would have would have continued before instead america got involved and made things much worse and so all right gentlemen i'm sorry george what everyone else is george bruce we have run out of time fascinating conversation many thanks indeed my guests in washington and new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time remember across topples.

i would rather ask questions for people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t. question more. interview . a feel good film from.

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weapons in the wrong hands president putin slams the u.s. for plans to supply arms to the syrian opposition known terrorist groups the fighting within it. why what brazil more than a million protesters vent their anger at the government of major cities across the country with a teenager now becoming the first fatality of why it showed no sign of abating. and the french are getting increasingly frustrated with the european union with recent polls really over sixty percent believe the blocks going in the wrong direction.