around. there's a story sort of movies playing out in real life. there i marinate it this is boom bust in here the stories we're tracking for you today. first up where have all the banks gone well according to statistics from the f.d.i.c the way the dinosaur will tell you about it coming right up and also a columnist and former treasury secretary paul craig roberts joins me today to discuss all things bad policy related and later on tonight is that high net worth practice of her diction shopping her story in today's big deal you won't want to miss any of it and it all starts right now.

they're our lead story today detroit now the insolvent city can now proceed with bankruptcy after a judge ruled on tuesday that the city is eligible to file making detroit the largest missile bankruptcy in u.s. history now u.s. bankruptcy judge steven rhodes read the ninety minute reports from his one hundred forty page ruling before issuing the court's decision in his ruling he listed the city's litany of financial woes including the loss of manufacturing jobs and population in recent decades now the long awaited decision sets up a bitter battle between the city's financial officials and its unions creditors and retirees who are expecting deep. cuts in pensions as part of the chapter nine

process sales of treasured city assets such as its art collection will be up for auction. elsewhere the overall number of banking institutions in the u.s. has dwindled to the lowest levels since the great depression low interest rates a sluggish economy and heightened regulations have all taken their toll on the banking sector now the decline in banking numbers has come entirely in the form of big exiting banks with less than one hundred million dollars in assets left on their books and the bulk of those departures occurred between one thousand nine hundred four and two thousand and eleven now f.d.i.c data shows that more than ten thousand banks left the industry during this period as the result of mergers and consolidations while about seventeen percent of the banks collapsed all together now the number of federally insured institutions nationwide shrank to six thousand eight hundred ninety one in the third quarter now that's falling below the seven thousand number that it was for the first time since the federal regulation began keeping track in one nine hundred thirty four it's

a long time now the number of physical bank branches in the u.s. is also shrinking from the end of two thousand and nine through june thirtieth of this year the total number of branches dropped three point two percent according to a. and root of a big coin there's a new crypto currency on the block and it's slimmer and more supple than ever before welcome light now created by a former google employee an mit graduate charlie levy like coin was built to correct some a big minor flaws and can best be described as silver to big coins gold is more abundant than big coin and like coin has grown by over four hundred percent in value since last week alone just last week now while the total market saturation for only ever be twenty one million coins like coin has a fixed point at eighty four million coins now this keeps the price lower than that of decline but it isn't guaranteed against price inflation down the line like one is also designed to be to generate more by using computer memory rather than

processing power which is what bitcoin uses and this discourages people from the digital arms race to generate. and finally china mobile it's the world's largest wireless carrier and it's taking preorders for the i phone according to fortune's philip elmer de witt this screengrab right here is in i phone preorder now was taken from a website registered as a subsidiary of china mobile in shoes to now shoes it was a city just west of shanghai and has over five million people living there it's also one of the richest cities in china making i phones more appealing to the market there as well and china mobile has over seven hundred million subscribers it's quite a few. well there you have a visitor have for today as always we'll be tracking these stories and keeping you posted on all the latest. joining me now is economist journalist author and former assistant treasury

secretary mr paul craig roberts mr roberts how are you doing today i'm just going to do it and now i want to start off by asking you it was recently announced that timothy geithner former secretary of the treasury and new york fed president he's moving to a lucrative job at private equity firm warburg pincus is this move unexpected to you. know. the bank should always. be sure. now during gardner's time at the treasury he went to great lengths to let people know that he was a life long civil servant. over during the financial crisis do you think that he ultimately serve the interests of the bank more than you know the interests of that would be served being a true civil servant. or sure of course that's the function of the federal reserve which serve the interest of the banks and in recent years that's been the function

of the secretary of the treasury it's now also the function of the financial regulatory agencies they all serve the interests of the banks that's their function now since the beginning of the fed itself there's been a revolving door between wall street and the lender of last resort now even paul warburg advocated for the creation of the fed and he was appointed to to its first board by president wilson my question to how big of a problem is this revolving door and is it something that needs to be prevented. well they wouldn't be able to prevent it. that the federal reserve was for the war to to sort of ranks. that the public is often told that it's there to provide full employment to movement flourish about that's just a cover story service there to make sure that the big banks not all the banks just

be too big banks that nothing really goes wrong for them substantially and that's what it's been doing ever since clin. now i want to talk about yellen for a second do you think that recent fed policy has been beneficial to the economy kind of via yellen what's come up with her everything that she's been saying. no i don't think it has been because it's created a moment's wobble and bonds and stocks and it commits the federal reserve to printing you know huge amounts of new dollars and the huge amount of money printing alternately has to threaten the value of the doll act people's confidence in ns war reserve currency so i think it's really been detrimental to the economy and certainly been detrimental for savers especially retired people who don't like to risk their life savings and stock market

because they don't know they'll live long enough to see a recovery should the market correct and they are dependent on interest income they've had no interest in come now for a number of years so we follow suit that does not serve the american people or the economy it serves the banks that are too big to fail or the whole purpose of the policy is to keep the prices of the debt related securities or derivatives that debt related to remain to. explore high when you buy bonds all debt crisis rise with the treasurer's and they've got a mortgage backed securities this takes some of the toxic assets away from the big banks and it's that it supports the balance sheets of the banks and makes them look

a lot more solvent so that's the real purpose of the policy. now i kind of begs the question is the fed itself experiencing diminishing returns with its ongoing q.e. program and so it sounds like you might actually might think yes well yes i think that the fed can get out of. their own way that if they stop it then we know bond prices will fall interest rates will rise and stock prices will collapse and there are natural crisis and the banks the big that they say that are too big to fail they will be in trouble again so the fed is kind of locked into this policy and really will have to contain or i think it will contain here until something happens to the dollar. because they keep turning more dollars more dollars so if you're someone holding doll of denominated assets you're watching your dollar

holdings be diluted at the tune of a thousand million a year so it's simple. the world may move away from. you know they're already starting to move away from using the doll it's the. currency for settling trade imbalances. the chinese currency has now moved up to number second but of course the dollar is still the major currency choose to settle on a national trade accounts at some point when the demand for the dollar and that role . climb substantially this can break the fed's control bring the whole frame to it yeah now you said that right now is that something happening to the dollar what do you think that something will be. well i think it's what we see happening you know the chinese announced recently that they do not need to

accumulate any more foreign currency reserves which they made dolls so that's an indication that they see us to recycle their trade surpluses with the united states into the purchase treasury debt so that means if they stop doing that that the federal reserve to keep the bottom priced society will have to buy more bottoms. and we say that china has an agreement japan and australia to settle their trade imbalances in their own currency so that new single ball and we have the brics russia china brazil india south africa making a similar agreement that they will settle their trade imbalances between themselves in their own currencies so this means that the demand for doll as a as the world currency as a means of payment fog's and so in the current in market that should mean that the

dollar's exchange rate falls relative to all the currencies. when all these mechanisms are already in place and while the use. of a long triangle for the value of the dall now that since united states is such an important kind of country. it means all that important things coming into the country would would then cost more so the inflation would be imported into the country for all that in dollars loss of exchange. value and so then the american people would be faced with an all or relatively high level of unemployment that they're experiencing and inflation and there's no real economic policy solution for that. now mr roberts i have to go to a quick break but please stick around because after the break we will continue our discussion on q. effed policy or lack thereof and everything else that we could talk about with here

also rachel carson is joins me in today's big deal to talk about jurisdiction shopping just in time for the holidays and as we head to a quick break here's a look at some of today's closing numbers.

crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. i was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of the why it is great things rather that there has to be adequate rigor in a court of wall around. there's

a story sort of movies playing out in real life. welcome back now economist author and all around bad insider paul craig roberts is with me now we're continuing our discussion now mr roberts i want to start off this is this section by talking about former fed official andrew who's are now he published an op ed in the wall street journal and in his piece he claimed that the true purpose of q.e. was to support the banks i want to ask you is there a way to conduct monetary policy without benefiting the banks or is this just in an editable outcome of conducting monetary policy. well yes you could conduct amount to policy with the benefit of the country in mind with the stability of everyone. in job and all but that's not what the thread was created do it was

created by the big banks to serve them and they have control over sense so what and to use our says is exactly what i've been saying it's just that it was the insider who originally implemented the policy quantitative easing and when he saw what it was really for was to support the banks he resigned and that's very rare but it shows that is all principle so i don't think that without some kind of a revolution. that the power of the banks hold or could be broken i think fareed will join us by act. right now it seems that current fed policy that encourages private debt by keeping interest rates so low and for

such a long period of times does it bad policy shifting the power structure here in the u.s. kind of giving more power to the banks in some way. well the financial crisis and the response to it has given a lot more power to the banks because of the consolidations. new order that we get in this program. that they let the small banks big banks private. so big banks get bigger and bigger and bigger and there's no longer an antitrust act and the argument used to be that competition requirement. that you didn't lead firms to get too large to get too big of a share of the market that they had to be able to compete against each other but now what they said is no you can't compete in the local economy unless the banks are here. almost like office so i don't you know i just don't see

how all. the response to the bunch of crisis has done anything except benefit byron's. now larry summers he recently implied during an i.m.f. gathering that it's not enough to merely give big banks interest free money more should be done for the banks and some are suggested instead of being paid interest on bank deposits people should be penalized for keeping their money in banks instead of spending it now i want to this for a long time and you would know if that's possible or not why hasn't the fed somehow come up with a scheme where charges the banks to spend less and opposed to the banks charging people to spend. well but some is this really concocting is an excuse not only to continue or quantitative easing but to increase the sierra and the only way you could have you could get negative interest rates would be if the federal reserve purchased so many bombs that it was paying

a premium for the ball over its face value or. in other words suppose it's one hundred dollars on but at the fair it drives up the prices to one hundred two so it pays more for the ball and then the bond would ever be worth the maturity that's why you drive down the interest rates and the only and only known way that i that i can come up with so what or what this scheme a song is it is a former u.s. treasury secretary and the bomber regime was the scheme is to provide an a policy for you. for the federal reserve to purchase more all of the facts so many melbourne's that they're buying them at a premium over their face value now that would give you a negative interest rate so what would the people do they would take their money

out of the banks and. and do something else so the next part of the scheme is all well we don't let people have cashed in will there's only digital money and that where they can keep their money at home they can only keep it and bank accounts and they are we can turn the last one for safety you see the change in economic policy that dominated the united states until supply siders came along in the 1980's while said that there's a natural right. of interest and that natural rate is the rate that makes savings in investment equal at full employment and what summers are saying is that now the natural rate of interest is negative. wow well if this is an argument for the federal reserve to buy more bombs and to

be such a huge demand in the bond market they'd pay premiums over the face of the bonds so it looks like summers thinks that quantitative easing must contend your must increase and that he has concocted an economic policy argument to justify that that's what that's all about environment and now i want to ask you about savings the personal savings rate in the us today is currently two percentage points below the average long term how of the savings rate change under negative interest rate policy can you explain. well and you know summer's argument which was very well explained by a whole group of them. they actually fail that people are saving more than investors are investing and therefore saving comes

a dilution from spending so that consumers are spending money but if they would just spend everything everything would be fine but they're saving so and so the part they're saving comes away from spending well if the investors don't step in and borrow that saving and put it all back into the economy then the spending stream has shrunk and employment rises so this is the whole change that view and so we associate with john maynard keynes it goes back to before. the second world war so what with with this view savings is bad. because it's reduction from spending and what's good is more spent more the better and so i think. in my home and this argument some reason

crude maybe it's really. a clue or for the continuation increase quantitative easing they want to support the banks even stronger mr roberts that's all the time we have now but as always thank you for your insight and please come back on the show very soon i could ask you a million more questions so after in the near future that was called credit robert's economist and former assistant secretary to the treasury for economic policy under reagan time now for today's big deal. richard curtis is joining me now during the show to talk about a new shopping trend this year shopping trying to check this out and it's actually

specifically for high net worth individuals. and get a christmas shopping my we suggest for you high net worth jurisdiction shopping yeah that's right now if you're part of that high net worth you might want to join the growing number of wealthy folks taking advantage of more favorable tax nations now according to a u.b.s. and well billionaire census told billionaire such as singapore switzerland and hong kong have emerged as favored destinations for the ultra rich due to factors like quality of life good education and low taxes now in these third countries their billionaire populations grew up locally by only thirty six thirty four and twenty five percent respectively and the rest they came from afar now rachel i turn to you let's talk about this growing trend do you think it's fair let alone you know morally ok if you made your money here in the u.s. in america provided that place for you to make it for you to get up and leave balance to greener tax pastures if you would think that everyone has the right to

move where they want and i think it's important we preserve that right but when it comes to the moral question that you ask for people who have benefited from anything in the united states from patent legislation to good roads to lead internet to anything like that certainly would make sense for for them to want to give back to a certain degree but i don't even think the fairness is just from the people who are running around to other countries like it's also for the people like i don't know presidential candidate mitt romney who are putting their money into tax havens so you could stay in the united states. and aspire to the highest office here and still be trying to hide away a lot of your money so to me it's like if you're moving away at least you're admitting like listen i don't want to be this money you know what leo really going to be consistent and i appreciate consistency above all else. like that now check this out numerous high profile ultra high net worth of

americans including facebook co-founder i believe is actually a brazilian by brazilian bribe earth but then he sought refuge in the united states so one could argue that he only got his money but i also like bodily integrity here in the united states of course skipping out to singapore that we're talking out of border sovereign oh yeah we're talking about a guy was. played by andrew garfield in the social network for those who don't know it's true fact. also songwriter and social i did nice rich and twenty year old. friend denise rich yes a close friend of the girl in fact i don't know her husband i believe it was harder to get your ex-husband. help with fact you got it all over the place today so it is about getting. another one to oil or she ditched her passport last year as well all of these people are going to be another all over the place do you think there should be new laws put onto the books to prevent this matter. because what with we can't force people to stay in the united states i mean if you're going to put any sort of measure on the books maybe something like

a financial transaction tax something that gets money from people before they hit the road but even that i think is really controversial the details that have to be worked out a lot of people are saying we just need to make the tax code less complex and they're right if you look at the tax code it's ridiculous there's no way i could ever do my taxes on my own and i don't really have that many assets so i can't imagine those poor rich people in their accountants what they're having to deal with but you know i do think that when you look at so at a country's tax code you can see their priorities in the same way that a total once said you can understand a country by its prison i think you can understand a country by its tax code and the united states right now as a country that's not really sure. it's priorities are we've just been using all these kind of stopgap measures to our analogy of the year did you just hear that is that a big one from rachel herz is only years almost over since i was there and i know i may be united in time always thank you that's all for now but you can see all segments featured in today's show on youtube at youtube dot com slash boom bust r t we also hearing from you subpoenas check out our facebook page at facebook dot com

slash boom bust our t. from all of us here boom bust thank you for watching we'll see you next time. i would rather ask questions to people who 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 or. i

think. mind. you i think. it's all about money and the families that are politicians write the laws and regulations. coming. here just to lead.

coming up on our t.v. a new leak from edward snowden reveals more about the n.s.a. surveillance program the u.s. agency is tracking billions of cell phones around the globe a day tell you more just ahead. and in california police officers face charges over the death of a local homeless man video shows kelly thomas being beaten and tasered by the officers before his death an update on this case and a look at police brutality here in the us ahead. at the airports academy in colorado contends take a pledge to never lie but investigative journalist says he's uncovered information that some are crudes are asked to not only lie but also spy on classmates professors and commanders will speak to that journalist coming up.