good afternoon and welcome to prime interest i'm bob english here in washington d.c. here are the stories we're watching today well times are changing and switzerland is once the safe haven bank country apparently do sure there's no officially a dwindling asset itself and it's not the longer you go to private financial asset pavan according to bloomberg the amount of swiss assets under management shrank by twenty five percent over a five year period apparently the problem is if you're trying to help us clients evade taxes and then you send your client list uncle sam wealthy americans will not want to do business with you big surprise and let's not even get into that pesky euro paid but don't count out the us dollar just yet because argentina has a brand new bond program financed by well the greenback itself central bank reserves are dwindling so the argentine central bank is offering pieces of argentina paper for us paper sounds like the ultimate bait and switch but don't pray for them argentina because our whistleblower in chief is facing heat from our

former get in prison or in chief that would be george w. bush who said snowden is a traitor and that the u.s. has been hurt by the leaks well we're going to talk to mark foley being about these matters and more in a few minutes so here's what's in your prime interest. less and less people are watching television and their homes that traditional way according to a nielsen report there will be more than five million is zero t.v. households. in the u.s. in two thousand and thirteen zero t.v.

household are homes where viewers watch a video content on other devices such as computers smartphones and tablets instead of primarily on t.v. the average american absorbs more than forty one hours per week of video content on all screens from televisions to smartphones that's almost five and a half hours a day so let's profile area is an internet subscription based company that will instant two thousand and twelve some believe it has the potential to become the netflix of the broadcast television and history you ask how does area work according to what we found on the company's web site area has developed an unbelievably small television and tena and small enough to fit on the tip of your finger and receives t.v. reception area has taken their tiny antenna and created a data center which allows users to connect to broadcast television via the internet without the use of cords cables or boxes for

a nominal fee subscribers can stream live and delayed television programs on internet connected devices however the presence of area has not gone unnoticed by a traditional television broadcasters twentieth century fox univision p.b.s. and others have joined to file a lawsuit against the company on copyright infringement broadcasters are using aereo of launching an unlicensed service that streams television programming over the internet to paying subscribers computers mobile phones and tablets without seeking or receiving consent from the television signal owners but earlier this year a federal appear appeals court ruled that area could continue to operate while the broadcasters lawsuit against them proceeded this ruling has upset several broadcasters news corp chief operating officer chase carey has threatened to pull aerial off the airwaves area when's the case. so what's the bottom line

according to variety only ten percent of u.s. homes will an over the air at c.v. but ariel has the potential to change the game of broadcast television areas business model could push broadcasters like p.b.s. c.b.s. n.b.c. and fox to a subscription only channels transforming what have been afraid of public service for millions of homes and change the american broadcasting and history as we know it but the legal uncertainty around areas technology leaves the company's business model vulnerable it will be interesting to see if this small tech company can to win a case against the media conglomerates. i . i.

well that and there's a saga continues with reports over the weekend that the government agency labeled thirty eight embassies as targets and they even installed bugs in the european union's building right here in d.c. now for more on the n.s.a. scandal and the impact of government spying programs we turn to mark levine a former legislative counsel ok to barney frank and host of the inside scoop thank you mark for coming here my pleasure let's talk about snowden let's do that all right so what about him what's your take my take is he didn't tell me anything i didn't already know frankly to form a congressional tourney's like myself if you didn't know this was going on where were you and i'm not talking about top secret information in the bush administration that's exactly right we began it in the u.s.a. patriot act i wrote a small portion of it not the part that's controversial i'm going to hear about it i want to get to that in a minute but yes ok but the point is that this was well known this was done on under the foreign intelligence surveillance act right and we liberals actually opposed it at the time. when george bush did it it was largely unauthorized but in

two thousand and six in two thousand and eight reauthorization for both and the patriot act it's there in statute i still think it's against the constitution ok clearly statutorily authorized so you are a person who believes that if there is legislative content that is opposed to the constitution itself that it should not be enforced or would you just say that it should be overturned by the supreme court at some time i think people should take it to court one of the problems with all of this how do you get to court that's exactly the problem is the a.c.l.u. tried to take it to court but under the state secrets privilege no one could prove they were being spied against even though they were being spied against we know that now and so they can take it to court now i think they can so snowden may have done us a real service he may have been able to take this step let's challenge it under the constitution i love that so absolutely should the united states of america it is in the fourth amendment very clearly you have the right to be secure papers in effect stuff and less you have to have probable cause to believe you've committed a crime and then they seek a warrant i believe all this warrantless spying on us i think it's unconstitutional

let's talk about m.f. global which is another apparent crime and john corazon is finally being accused by the see have to see in this these are just civil charges but it's been two years in the future is a new industry was shoveled into disarray because of what this guy did he took customer money he used to bet on sovereign and why has it taken this long for him to face any charges whatsoever by the sea of d.c. the problem for all of these things is that these allegations just like bear stearns just like lehman brothers they're making bad bets and stealing customer accounts apparently to do them i don't know if the allegations are true they appear to be but it takes a lot of time to unwind the transaction find out who the guilty party is the real concern that i have is not punishing cords and he should be punished and obviously everyone who did it should go to jail my concern is this is going to happen again and again and again it's going to happen every five years just as it happened every five years in the past unless we get that volcker rule under the dodd frank bill that i've been advocating before on your show that's great let's talk about the volcker rule what about it ok i happen to agree that if you. we're going to have

a federally subsidized banking industry the way we have with the banks ok there's should be limitations on that i don't think we should have been the first place but tell me what's your view on the volcker rule we need the base of the vocal rules and it's not good if you want to gamble gamble on your own money don't gamble using taxpayer subsidized money don't gamble on customer accounts that's the problem of course i did it course i just bet his own funds he's a multimillionaire if you just. maybe not that would have been ok the problem is when he took the segregated customer accounts which are protected by institutions like the f.d.i.c or in this case the us itself well ok let me switch to another earlier today former white house chief of staff erskine bowles talked about reforming the tax code and here is what happened. we can bring down the corporate tax rate the corporations will have more money available to invest and invest in this country to create jobs over here it will make us more competitive it

will keep companies headquartered here in the us rather than see them going on countries we need ok what do you think well you and i had this discussion about apple what about a few weeks ago but the problem is not that the corporate tax rates too high the problem is that if you too few corporations are paying their taxes we have let about maybe a third at best corporations paying their taxes and i'll call slowing the rate and you dishonestly make that apple is actually playing by the rules here it is the law that they're playing but it is the law but if you're going to change the law and you lower corporate tax rates we need to make sure that every corporation pays them i'm all for lowering it to obama's rate of twenty eight percent or something like that as long as we make ninety percent of corporations pay taxes and thirty percent more money comes into the government it's fair to corporations what could be the problem what could be the problem is that the government actually does not spend money very wisely it doesn't have price incentives so i guess if you're a central planner and you believe that the government can spend money wisely yes they should have more money but if you're somebody that believes that the

government actually is not a capable wizard you know spending all this money then maybe it's not such a good thing well with the church i once said that democracy is the worst system in the world except for all the others choose the government and if the government you like the way the government spending your money then by all means vote for somebody else i'm not a big fan of congress right now in particular not a big fan of the house of representatives remember the majority of americans voted for the democrats only because they drew the district lines in funny ways that the republicans are in power at all ok so we have a little bit of gerrymandering going on but not a bit of ok well let's look at the the nature of democracy itself majority rules is this inherently something that's that can protect people's rights well that's why we have the constitution that's why i carry around in my pocket i mean we do have certain protections under the fore. for example to protect us from being spied on and relied on if you don't think government spending is wise i don't think you have a constitutional remedy you haven't used to vote the bums out let's let's talk about the constitution and the supreme court ruling doma the defense of marriage

act what's your take on this well defense of marriage act was clearly unconstitutional of the constitution when they passed in the reason a simple no where in the stock you didn't say anything about the federal government defining marriage that has always been something that's been the province of the states it should actually probably be a private matter of people why should the states be involved at all and in the marriage civil contract it would be really hard to undo hundreds of years of law in the united states and i think every single country on the globe where the government sanctioned marriage marriage provides about two thousand civil benefits and one thousand state level of thousand at the federal level and i don't know the single country on earth that just allows marriages to be private there may be one somewhere but the government whether it's taxes or security or medicare or frankly who raises children marriage laws help order society ok financial implications of doma are there any i mean a lot actually one thing i gave couples can now file joint income tax returns sure they they are going to lower tax receipts for the government you know it's interesting it actually will increase tax receipts in some circumstance in certain

states right well and also if you have for example a couple where one one the husband is high earning and his husband is lowering your put their funds together it's like the marriage penalty and actually pay more in taxes also when it comes to benefits for example to single people get different medicaid benefits or medicare benefits that are married couple might bring more money in that way but it reduces money in things like estate taxes and otherwise so in that it is a beneficial for thing for our financial system i don't know that it's a very large impact one way or the other the main impact of course is treating couples fairly well i think the main impact is that it's just it's civil rights for people and that's what we need i like this document that you keep a likely barrier to all the time really all the time all the time not swimming in the shower but otherwise i do keep my conversation with me ok stay tuned because we'll be right back with mark levine and he is the host of the inside scoop. well there and you don't want to miss my duel with political commentator sam sachs

and we're going to talk to him about the seventy fifth anniversary of wage price fixing that would be the minimum wage. wealthy british style sign. is no time. for. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our.

i would rather ask questions to 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 our t.v. question more. interview . a. good.

all right we're back with mark levine now you actually are one of the only authors of the patriot act that have ever had the privilege to was talked to so why don't you tell me a little bit about why don't overstate my role after about five pages of a two hundred page bill and in fact the part that i draft is no longer in the bill so i don't want to overstate it but what i wrote what's called the frank amendment

barney frank my body sponsored it and it was something that actually protected people civil liberties if you were spied on you could take an action to court and get a nominal damages and this is no longer in the patriot act that's why one part of that you wrote is in a lot of rain through protect all civil liberties that's true but the part that let me let me know what's in the actual had to study the entire act and actually my boss a constant frank opposed the bill when it came to the floor of congress there's something about the patriot act that most people don't know is that republicans and democrats worked together to have a very careful compromise that protected civil liberties and still gave the f.b.i. the cia the tools they need to go after terrorism why did we end up with the bill that we got what happened is we worked on it for about three weeks and george bush was threatening tom daschle the senate majority leader at the time saying if there's another terrorist attack it's your fault i'm going to blame you and what happened is even though the republicans democrats worked together we actually had that here. of the judiciary committee we gave ourselves a standing ovation this is the committee that includes maxine waters and lamar

smith who just applauded and so far some of the far left in the far right ok i have never seen throughout much of greenman in congress on a really difficult bill i mean maybe for naming post offices this was a difficult bill it was carefully negotiated carefully crafted over several weeks i got to give both republicans and democrats really a lot of praise for this what happened george bush rolled over tom daschle they they took it through the senate ninety nine to one and what happened is the senate bill them was introduced in the house was given an hour for people to read and lo and behold that became the usa patriot act not the one we drafted yeah it sounds kind of like tara because paulson hank paulson had drafted some or he was selling congress something and then he pulled a bait and switch i mean he said he was going to help mortgage holders instead what did he do he gave the money to the big banks i mean are there parallels are there any broad pearl is that we can draw between these two events unfortunate it happens all the time in this case and i was there in congress when it happened they ended the legislative day at nine am and what they do is you have to take one day to read a bill they said is that the day it was it was before the day was introduced went

all through the night ended at nine am the next day began at ten am so they had one hour twenty four hours became one hour and lo and behold they didn't have to read the bill that's part of interest to the vast majority members of congress have not did not read the patriot act before it was passed unfortunately i don't think they read a lot of legislation before it's passed i'm afraid that's true and we can talk about that. if you have to ok your opinion of big coins i know what it is but stated for the viewers is a farce it's a ponzi scheme and if i could go and see scape i could short bitcoins see that's the question i want to go short on big points i want to buy a put option i think we're going to go down to zero and so i what i want to do is i want to bet against them let me say don't let me do that you know that's i don't like gold i would say that's why it's a legitimate financial product if you can shorted that means j.p. morgan cannot be in the market for it so which is why it will fail which is ok because. doesn't have the support of the big bankers it doesn't exist unfortunately doesn't exist don't buy that coins they do exist i have one in my pocket very good

yeah it's a cyber coin ok what's a future with snowden what's going to happen with this guy well right now he's apparently no where he's technically lim brush but he's not in russia because we took away his passport so he's sitting i guess i imagine sort of crawled across the kind of like the movie yeah you know kind of strike trying to sleep there in the intercontinental. snowden i think. i don't think it's as bad as a lot of people are saying i know george w. bush called him a traitor i consider dick cheney a traitor because dick cheney what he did is he took a real life spy valerie plame wilson he exposed her to me that's a traitor sack exposing an operative he says the american way of life is non-negotiable is that. you know i'm going to defend him i'm just cliches like that don't matter to me what matters to me is exposed frankly what i and many others already knew it was taking place so i'm glad we're having this discussion because i think it should be challenging the surety challenge why did we have this discussion before why is this so new to this discussion we staffers did back when the usa

patriot act was formed there was a little bit discussion two thousand and six in two thousand and eight but it time the republicans all supported president bush and it was we liberals who are fighting against this surveillance oh now you know you find that president obama is doing the exact same thing that president bush has done and now the republicans are complaining maybe now we'll have both sides complaining and actually protected under the fourth amendment because democracy works very you know it's imperfect but the best system that that we have according to winston churchill in fact and what about google is google you know what's interesting is that stone expose the government is once all this information about us everyone we have recalled how long our calls lasted and so forth and i think to myself tino's who i called google knows who i'm e-mailing yahoo i mean all these companies know much more about me than the government and like the government they don't have a fourth amendment to restrict them from snooping and doing whatever they want i can tell you that i don't trust the government but i trust google even less because they don't have oversight i think the problem is when you don't have oversight of we have these public private partnerships and

a lot of times there are there are no bid contracts or i think it's disingenuous to say that we have a march towards a free market when we have prisons being outsource i mean what would you say about the i am against outsourcing i mean you look at actually the war in iraq you find that the people who had the military were doing an excellent job a lot of times it was our contractors are getting us in trouble i wonder exactly right i mean we because for blackwater people we're not where they were supposed to be they're paid far more than our military they do a much worse job let's stick to the government employees that do a better job than the people they outsource it interesting comments this is been mark levine thank you so much for joining me here and a pleasure. welcome

to the daily dool joining me as political commentator sam sachs let's talk about corporate taxes i mean this week wholefoods co c.e.o. john mackey defended apple's tax strategy and he said that we would use tax havens if you could so what about that if he could well unfortunately i guess he doesn't have much more foreign profits he's making i suppose the deal he wants to be more like apple which came to stash most of its profits all over the world and also with us what's wrong with it is that you have no allegiance to any sort of country you want to call home i mean the fact that apple is an american company no that's not the case anymore apple have is an international is an international company yeah that's right i mean we live in an international world these companies pay no allegiance is to any sovereign governments any country they might call home they only have allegiance to profit and that's it but let's look at the hurdles that apple faces in the u.s. ok we have osho we have incredible settlements to profitability all those hurdles

those are things that you need to have in place so it will end up like bangladesh you have to deal with factory closures are not of bangladesh is poor ok when people in a civilization ok in a country when they're developing the poverty level rises above a certain amount and the country becomes economically viable that solves the poverty problem in and over in and of itself although we people are making more money when workers are making more money they can join in form unions they can take risks with their jobs and they can demand better working conditions and that's what's happened in the united states with the ladder of wages whether or not they do not need to you learn to use in that from the 1930's the ninety's now. it's being rolled back and we want to we want to repeal all these things that working people have got together like ocean and everything which is paid for in part by tax dollars that companies don't want to pay in the united states all right well let's get to minimum wage that's last week the federal minimum wage celebrated its seventy fifth birthday birthday reigniting the age old arguments over how effective these policies have been what's your i know your take on the minimum wage is just

offended. ok this goes back this goes back to what we were talking about bangladesh i mean we could have a race to the bottom in wages we can try to compete with look at how people are a lot of metal currency i don't know about what you don't switch this up on currency. we need there's no reason to have working people making a penny wages who can't make enough money to provide for their families to to for health care to ford education and they have to they have i believe all to go to their stuff but a rising tide lifts all boats i mean if we have a successful economy that means you don't arise in tide lifts all boats it means that if you have a successful economy everybody participates in it even the poorest so it is the successful economy look like an economy where wealth is in the hands of very few and working people don't have enough money to spend that money no i agree there is a tremendous amount of wealth disparity but that's because of the government policies right now despite it you don't think it has anything to do with the fact that you need rates of decline the fact that the minimum wage doesn't have anywhere

close to the same purchasing power as it had in the one nine hundred sixty s. that it should be upwards of fifteen dollars and if you count for worker productivity we should be upwards of twenty dollars that's the reason why our economy so my central planning friend what is the ideal minimum wage rate because obviously you have it all figured out twenty two dollars ok one hundred million dollars well that's a little absurd i'm not going to believe certainly i think i think with corporate profits higher than they've ever been as a percentage of g.d.p. and workers' wages are lower than they ever been as a percentage of g.d.p. i think twenty twenty dollars is good ok my central solar unfriend but my point is if it's not going to be a million dollars and it's not going to be twenty two or. twenty three how does the government determine what the right amount is without sapping productivity there is no the problem with setting a minimum wage is you don't know what the ideal level is i don't think we're stopping productivity productivity is higher than it's ever been it keeps climbing steadily workers you can american workers are very productive they're just not getting paid or in the late seventy's they're became

a divergence between wages and productivity it's never closed you need to close that gap in the reason why it's never closes all the corporate executives have all the money that's what's with the wealth inequality we can get some of that i want is a tied up in the hands of people will never spend all their lifetimes and get it funneled back down to the hands of working people who will spend it that's how you get a better economy there is too much money in the corporate executives when it comes to the financial sector but when it comes to companies like apple and google and i don't necessarily agree with everything they're doing right now and especially don't appreciate the the snooping business but that is a much more free market sector than the financial sector and i think you would have to agree that isn't necessarily wrong that a google executive makes four hundred million dollars a year versus jamie dimon who makes thirty million dollars a year. well i mean i don't i don't know comparing executive to executives i don't know that there's a problem. will sector sector look i want to compare c.e.o. talk to workers you know when you used to be thirty to one now it's over four hundred you are screwed if you want to live in this role for your scrooge and you

can't pay the workers anything tiny tim. thank you so much for that that's lovely that's perfect well it's a nice hat if you want to weigh in on the today show be sure to like us on facebook at facebook dot com slash interest and don't forget to follow sam on twitter at saks you can follow me on english so sam thank you so much for thinking about the do all this i. i . it was a surreptitious day here at prime interest more snowden stuff ok all under the table we know but hold out that john cords and story were told all the headlines on the cause i banker who might actually have at the answer for his crimes we're still

waiting for the m.s.m. on that one mark levine was not afraid to weigh in on the patriot act in corporate taxes and. the guys know short of opinions we all know that but sam sachs brought the wage issue come out of its minimal cover and that's just the kind of issue we like to cover here at prime interest so thank you for watching to make sure to come back tomorrow from everyone here a prime interest have a great night. they all told me my language as well but i will only react to situations i have read the reports so i'm lucky i'm pleased to know i will lead them to the state department comment on your play. list or carry out

a car it's all good job. that was going to. take you no more weasel. when you think you did the right question and the prepared for a change when you have to. be ready for a. freedom of speech. down to fit into chaos. when the greats spain blind to what is happening in their country. the american dream is disappearing. the houses with gardens are laid out the poor are left hopeless the streets are full of angry crowds that are fighting against. high school who stole the american dream.

i would rather ask questions to 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.

breaking news for you this hour here on our. three satellites crashes are the baikonur cosmodrome. blast off. could lead to an evacuation of the area. and wiki leaks files. on behalf of edward snowden. leaks has left many nations either fearful or reluctant to get involved. and president obama deals with european or american. politicians on citizens saying the tactic is nothing new and everybody. on egypt's president mohamed morsi takes all directions.