to get rid of my college loans but alas this is always purchased anonymously so it's all pure luck who gets their debt purchased the important thing about this project is that they're actually doing something against an evil system instead of just blogging about it and although fifteen million dollars is a time a need to drop in the debt bucket it may have really saved the financial lives of many americans but that's just my opinion. right on the scene. first street. and i think you're. on a reporter's twitter. and instagram. to be in the. lead.

hello welcome to sophie and i'm selfish shevardnadze and today we're in paris a city of exquisite luxury living side by side with poverty all of europe in one city. conspicuous overspending together with in paris to stare at a desk and the stereo in the back of thankfulness is worth millions but where is this contradiction leading the society. unions are organized to provide safety and strength. but the weakest link town become a burden so was creating the eurozone even a good idea as crisis still resonates within europe revealing weaknesses can the eurozone stand the test. john clear to share the former head of the european

central bank it's really great to have you on our program today it's a great pleasure right so almost six years on after the crisis when just save the europe out of the worse i would say that the probability of the metal utilization of a tail risk meaning the change of the dimension of the your way here we saw countries or currently leaving the that risk has will be alleviated because of four. they see it first all countries which we are under stress have adjusted and the result of the adjustment are very visible in the eyes of the external observers and markets second governance has been improved quite considerably with the forcing of the stability and growth pact with the creation of a new pillar for surveillance of the competitive indicators with the fiscal compact

and so forth. and the banking union that is the second reason the third reason is that politically it's been decided by all countries concerned that they went to to maintain the integrity of the your you're here and it's been confirmed both increase in germany and in all of the countries and the fourth reason is that the central bank is very credible has said in the past that it could intervene to mentee in a mission of monetary policy in cases countries where behaving properly may and embarking on the appropriate structural reforms and that makes for he's and why we could see very very big improvement in those solidity over the your if i may because you were had one of the most powerful organization and europe and the time

. you must have your opinion that even now you're at madame a great stature everyone asks you for advice do you think it's normal that even if it started in the united states and it triggered in the united states it's normal that no one has been held accountable for so i think that you cannot say that i mean you had a number as you know of fines here and there all over the advanced economies that have been decided upon you had a very large number of c.e.o.'s having to leave and quit those who engage in criminal activity have been prosecuted madoff is a case in point but you have a number a large number of others so you cannot say that i have to say that what has to be done of course is to pursue those who have engaged in criminal activity but the problem is much more generalized i mean they had enormous responsibility because

they were not having a culture which was correct. but practically all the economist we are more or less a company in this very abnormal risk culture and also i have to confess the functional world but on the side of the authorities you know the authorities in general the government's. supervisory authority as we have so confident until the start of the subprime and even after the start of the surprise that they thought that it was not possible that the food fire for system could collapse it was something which was of the order of the unthinkable and we were plain wrong if i may the international community but you see if you are targeting only one. scapegoat that would be responsible for everything say that you

take the banks the commercial banks then what about the non-banks what about the highly leveraged institutions are late nor a responsible role so what about the age old soissons what about all the special vehicles so you see it's more jennifer ised if you don't even banks are the main reason bad banking system is the main reason that triggered the banks are part of the whole and the entire who has responsibility including the way you were computing the account the accounting rules the of course also the rating agencies of course the anti bank and non-banks and the naive belief that we where you know were real there was automatic self correction of the market themselves the theory of efficiency of

markets was also part of this whole so again i trust really that what has happened is absolutely unacceptable the fragility of the founders or system appear to be absolutely dramatic and if we want to never see that again we have to correct the who're because if you target only one scapegoat then the other one are not correcting you have you do not get what you want which is much more solid world fallowfield world i want to read out your quote trust in bank governance have been eroded and it needs urgent repair that means more effective supervision supervision from home supervision from the supervisory authorities. in large number of countries they are close to the central banks now before all this year. was much more let's have supervision out of the central

bank sphere and one of the provisional lesson of the crisis was that it was not necessarily a good thing because banks are very close to the liquidity problem they are very close to a number of very very important issues that are important when you have to exert supervision in an efficient and effective manner so would say that i was addressing of course all of our it is because there is no consensus still at the global level but all authorities whether they are fully independent as a whole. in their own responsibilities or whether they are central banks will prove who sent or banks which are seems to be again an emerging consensus know what i mean within a lot of government bailouts and banks lately is that part of the supervision banking supervision you think but i would sell

a totally different thing because then you involving the taxpayer money and so your involving decisions taken by the public authorities by executive branches and by palin meant if again public money at stake so supervision consists precisely to exert appropriate control in time on a permanent basis to avoid to have at a certain moment in presence of the institution which is collapsing. perhaps calls for taxpayers' money i say perhaps because one of the guru we have now what a global level is that we trust that there should not be institution that would be sought big or so interconnected that it could not fail or we have to to have in mind that any institution should be able to fail if bad

the unfortunately an absence of correct supervisor he has not been observed then those banks should not be. destroying the system as lehman brothers did. they should not necessarily impose a burden on the taxpayer here recently also praised the spanish economic while he has said that spain has become more competitive than france due to its policy of low wages so using lowering wages and salaries is the only way for european governments to get itself out of the crisis nor do i didn't see lowering wages they said lowing unit labor costs so the combination of nominal wages and productivity progress it is true that when you have a big deficit a big trade deficit and a big current account deficit it means that you are not sufficiently competitive so

you cannot convince your own consumers and the consumers of the test of you up and over the test of the world because we are in an open world is that your products and your services were purchased in terms of quality price so it's it was clear that at the time space and it was very very much own competitive with units of a cost to high and the adjustment of this economy has driven the competitiveness of the country in. the right direction and what they see in terms of exports what they see in terms of dynamism of exports demonstrates what i can see also in different years namely that the unit labor cost have diminished quite a lot now competitive and i was reading a recent article in internet this morning where you've said that there is a lack of democracy in europe what exactly do you mean and are they driving

economic engines like france and germany are to blame no i. would say understanding of the present situation of you up of the you where you are and i'm concentrating on governance in the in particular because we have. of course but. we have fiscal compact the new treaty that is dealing precisely with this. we have the your b. and semester again which is a way to look x. and t. to the budget of the values countries in the particular all these is something which is very important and goes in the direction of defacto political union because when you are dealing with a budget or with mccall policies in general you're really at the heart of a democracy the parliament has to vote for the budget so we we are really at the

heart of what our democracy which is the national assembly of commons the force so that there we have a defacto but you could union but we now your opinion at the level of your as a whole but more particularly because it is really the problem in the your way yet have no democratic legitimacy and the reason why seems to me that in certain cases not in all cases in certain cases it would be good to have more involvement of the european parliament i call that activating federation by exception in exceptional cases perhaps we should have more involvement with i take a short break now we're talking to the former head of the european central bank how resilient will the lever stay on

a drop of the ongoing fiscal crisis and what happens to your own when the dollar crashes well they're back. what a wonderful moment a life should be all the face i can see i feel alone. a pleasure to have you with us here on our team today i'm sure.

did you know the prize is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open prize is critical to our democracy albus. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and our crest of a girl we've been hijacked why a handful of transnational corporations they will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once it's all just i'm job market and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying the problem to try to fix rational debate in a real discussion critical issues facing america if i ever feel ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture.

choose your language. of choice we can we know in the financial center today still some of us. choose to use the consensus you can. choose to get to use the degree to. choose to stories that impact your life choose the access to your office or. welcome back to this edition of said think oh we're here in paris talking to john king at the former head of the european central bank when i speak to people they say that friends isn't at the best place right now is there and if things continue

the way they are now it could find itself in place and greece in the future do you think present policies are stimulating or stagnating i think has three problems which i know very clear. but you know. quite a long period of time first there is a problem of public spending as a proportion of g.d.p. the public spending too high the fifty seven percent of the g.d.p. and france is one of the two countries in the european union that at the highest level of public spend use as a proportion of g.d.p. that is no good for the long term goal of competitiveness. which is that the. overhaul. markets including the labor market are not flexible you know when you are in

a world which is changing very rapidly if you adapt rapidly you can save jobs and create new jobs which is the ultimate target and so there is a problem there to push through the structural reforms and then you have a third problem which is the issue of compared to do you need labor cost competitive us there of course discount is not at. in the situation of greece all the countries that we have under stress but it is an issue to oversimplify i would say francis today in the situation of germany at the beginning of the year old so this is. in the beginning come pretty for this which germany did over time year after year he gave the year after year one point five one point two percent of competitiveness each year in terms of unity because the

combination of productively progress labor productivity and. i would say revenue but also examining other products to export that france doesn't no no no no no don't trust that at the beginning of the. french had to come on account surplus in one thousand nine and germany account account deficit so there is nothing in the commas ohm in the d.n.a. which is fixed by definition neither in russia noise in france though in germany what you need is to create the condition for i would say appropriate behavior of your economy and i have to say that france knew that it is possible because in the eighty's and the ninety's we pursued a policy in friends of competent t.v. these inflation which was precisely improving competitiveness through unique labor

cost being moderate year after year after year and if we could make the euro do the whole it was because we had this long term strategy so you see in eighty and ninety appropriate behavior in since the setting up of the euro germany in a bad situation fancied a good situation and then the situation of the verse because because germany was very very consistent in person competitiveness and i close that. it is what my country should do. after all these years and all the problems that european union has experienced do you still trust that it was a good idea to bring all these different countries under the umbrella of course of course i profoundly trust that and it seems to me you can look at the present situation through two different angles so you can look at it. and.

then of course you see as i said that the a.p. center of the crisis crossed the atlantic and came from the us to the you were here to give up the general of the u.n. here in particular and that of course creates a lot of problems and you had to adjust in a number of countries so that that is absolutely obvious and when you are the epicenter of the crisis you have a lot of things to do that's your responsibility not only for you but also for the rest of the world because we are all interdependent interdependent now you can look at it for a different angle which would be more positive if i may you could say first it was the worst crisis of the advanced economy since world war two. so two thirds of a century we had the worst crisis and the you as a currency proved his illions which was totally totally impossible to

foresee the external observers whether in asia or perhaps in most schools perhaps a new low would have said it's impossible this currency is the new currency you are by construction in the best in the worst crazy ever that currency cannot behave properly and you knew that it behaved property so that that is something which is a fact the currency has been resilient the you were it has been resilient there was no departure of any country so in the worst crazy's of the advanced economy since two thirds of a century you had zillions of the u.a.e. not only resilient but do you know that we were fifteen countries when lehman brothers collapsed and next january we will be eighteen so three new countries and the yahoo area slovakia estonia and latvia

and do you even knew that we have created since the setting up of the you hole a little bit more net jobs than even the us the united states of america so you should not be entirely negative. but the question is because you keep speaking about the crisis that came from over the ocean the crisis there isn't over there america is going through a very deep fiscal crisis in the your area going to be going to continue and be resilient because they keep printing money and raising their debt ceiling how's that going after that player and i think that again we have to be absolutely clear in my own under-study we experienced. seeing the crisis of the advanced economy you're head. of the latino america you had crisis of the asian countries you had crises of soviet union you had crisis in many many places of the world

for the first time since world war two we had a crisis which was specific to the advanced economy exactly like twenty night was also a crisis on the industrialized economy of the time and in that crisis we are all in a situation which is difficult and calls for very very i would say active. improvement. the european themselves they have two challenges one is the challenges of japan challenges of the u.k. challenges of the u.s. they are of course a very large advanced economy on the one hand on the other hand on top of that they had bishops enough to create a single market with a single currency which had never been tried in the world so all the governance of

a single market with a single currency in the worst crisis since world war two is also part of the challenge of the you wary of the old brain injured all and the you were here in particular so that makes two challenges when the other the second eleven you won and that's the reason why it is extremely important that we improve the governance of the your area but like in simple words just tell me if the dollar crashes you can exclude that possibility well the euro still stands strong no i totally exclude that the dollar could crush personally because i don't think it. it would be justified by the fundamentals from time to time as he united states is posturing in a strange way threatening the us itself and the rest of the world of

a default but i don't post for one segment that this is credible and i would say that again the who has proved as a currency his illions which is remarkable remarkable it was not expected to fall i would say the external observers i was myself very convinced of course that we had a currency which was backed by good fundamentals and still is backed of course by good for them in. towards but it was not the perception including you know this simple reasoning you are no the a.p. settle the question is how can your currency can be so lead and credible but the bad ox is that we are in the epicenter of the crisis but a part of the oil the you will be as a whole as good for the man toast and the come and see if he presents the as a whole. but the fact that phrase number here has been rising relative to the us

dollars everyone's like yeah here i was doing great in this really good news for the euro zone. not necessarily but one has to choose the you say the you who with his appeal to you of all we have operate the you always include done they do that to save the euro all you choose the other way. which consists in saying the you who is too credible b. you will. be always to the and so the fact is that we are living in a world where i would say both true we of course in the world of routine currencies it's certainly normal. appears as being credible but it is not welcome of course that it would be a scale getting that's absolutely obvious but again we depend on the decisions

of would say the best as in savers the world over something that the former head of the european central bank thank you very much for this interview thank you very much madam. if you. you know. they don't want. to. be we can see.

i don't want to i really do not want to die young. that diplomacy that seems to be coming from washington it appears to be. falling short of the expectations of the united states as a superior negotiator as a superior diplomatic player but we see what happened in egypt after the arab spring and the election of morsi if there was a space there where the united states could have played a critical role just assuring more on a path that would have maybe brought advancement jobs economic

development in that period of time the united states faltered in its diplomacy like the u.s. coming in and telling them how they should understand that in any case on the more . there's not much more the u.s. could have done now in iran the u.s. is trying to start with the iranian government and yet it's getting clobbered in the middle east by the saudis who don't want to do or. don't want to so they were very good friends with good friends i want to. do we speak your language or not a day in. the music programs in documentaries and spanish what matters to you breaking news a little turn into the anglos kidney's stories. are you here. to try to alter the spanish find out more visit.

i'll see up take seriously video sharing the deadly plane crash in talks with the job was diving and busting into play. also this hour british bedbugs you came to reveal to have been monitoring the hotel trips up top diplomats around the globe. and. on the mistreated migrants honesty international calls out of the severe abuse towards foreign construction was. under while.