stuck with mortgages worth more than their homes are worth that they currently live in and even though loan modifications would save fannie and freddie and considerable amount of money federal housing regulators to refuse to pursue mortgage write downs for struggling borrowers private equity company mortgage resolutions partners says propose that cities use eminent domain power traditionally reserved for seizing properties for public use to seize mortgage loan this kind of an opposite in reverse there now the amount owed on the loan would then be reduced so that the bar was no longer underwater avoiding foreclosures however systema or the securities industry and financial markets association is having none of it they are now spearheading wall street spite against using eminent domain to mitigate the foreclosure crisis. elsewhere in the latest on the global four x. sixteen investigation say that five times fast fix four x. sixteen investigation h.s.b.c.

has now suspended two currency traders now this is the first time the bank has taken action against employees since regulators began their probe into the market last year a key focus of the global probe which began in april two thousand and thirteen in the u.k. has to do with an electronic shot with known as the cartel now according to investigators the chart room was filled with some of the most influential traders in london and included senior traders from j.p. morgan u.b.s. and barclays the investigation is also prompting six scrutiny into the way prices are set in the currency markets known as the daily fix efforts are now underway to create alternative benchmarks. and finally amazon dot com they know what you want and they're going to give it to you even before you hurt that's right amazon plans to start shipping items you haven't even ordered yet getting that you will amazon recently received a patent for what it calls anticipatory shipping and that's a system that predicts your future. purchases based on things you previously

thought the technique could prods delivery time and discourage consumers from visiting physical stores now the patent document amazon says delays between says that it will put delays between ordering and receiving purchases and need quote dissuade customers from buying items from online merchants now amazon says it may box and shift products it expects consumers in specific areas will want then those packages will wait at the shipping hubs or on trucks until the orders actually arrive at amazon now in deciding what to ship amazon said it may consider products searches previous orders a wish list shopping cart contents returns and even how long an internet users cursor hovered over an item interesting stuff well there you have it as always we'll be tracking these stories and keeping you posted on all the latest.

in the wake of the financial crisis that began in two thousand and seven many have pointed a finger at the monetary system as the ultimate genesis of financial problems which ended in crisis as we know now earlier i spoke with ben steele author of the battle of bretton woods about the last one hundred years of monetary history i started off by asking him to explain the classic world war one gold standard here's what he had to say the pre nine hundred fourteen gold standard was actually created without any international conferences or agreements so there were no fixed rules but there was an important implicit rule that pretty much everybody recognized that is when gold flowed into your country you loosened monetary conditions that is you lowered interest rates and when gold flowed out you tighten monetary conditions you raised interest rates and broadly speaking this cap global imbalances from getting out of

hand it also kept prices reasonably contained inflation in most gold countries gold standard countries during this period was roughly at zero throughout the whole period so pretty simplistic but why did the gold standard break down. well typically countries spend convert ability of their country their currency is when they go to war and that's exactly what happened in one nine hundred fourteen when world war one broke out the the system did reemerge in a different form in the one nine hundred twenty s. as countries went back on the gold standard but there were two problems with it first they stopped obeying the the role that you tighten monetary policy when gold flows in loose and when monetary. gold flowed. out the united states and france in particular were just hoarding gold they sterilize gold inflows that is they did not lower interest rates automatically when gold flowed in also the british made

a key mistaken one nine hundred twenty five pounds sterling was sort of the linchpin of the system when britain reentered the gold standard they kept the same power of the exchange rate parity that they had left the gold standard in one thousand nine hundred fourteen and so the pound sterling was significantly overvalued because of the inflation britain and experience during world war one this caused britain to experience considerable deflation and recession which produced enormous political strife and britain was eventually forced out of the gold exchange standard in one nine hundred thirty one and dozens of countries and mediately followed now can you tell me a little bit about france's gold hording. well basically the if the french. simply stopped following the rules of the gold standard

they did voigt some mistakes that britain had made for example they. had their currency about eighty percent from the pre pre-war parity. which helped enormously to account for the inflation that they'd experience but they were putting enormous pressure on the bank of england for example which was running short of gold stock to start settling their trade balances in gold but there was a lot of political conflict reemerged in the one nine hundred twenty s. over the reestablishment of the cold steel do you think that contributed to that great depression. absolutely the currency and trade wars of the early one nine hundred thirty s. help district spread the a man. great depression globally and really created the environment of misery and anger that pave the path to aggression for hitler and

mussolini the us treasury was very concerned about this and indeed the bretton woods conference in one nine hundred forty four was held very much to ensure that in the post-war period this type of currency and trade war would not again reemerge because again the u.s. treasury was convinced that it was the economic problems that ultimately pave the path to war and now i want to talk a little bit about more bretton woods stuff in a little while but first i want to ask you would you consider the gold standard inflexibility also a contributing factor to the depression. well. it's not clear that the gold standard could not have been reestablished successfully for example if britain had really entered the gold standard in one nine hundred twenty five this significant leigh devalued rate a big change it might have been possible to keep the system. functioning at an

acceptable level with out causing recession in gold standard countries for quite a bit longer now under the bretton woods system the us dollar was the anchor currency that you know gold was other pair other currencies were then pegged to in u.s. dollars because the u.s. currency was called would you consider this a kind of watered down gold standard or something entirely different. it was actually something quite similar to the one nine hundred twenty s. that is you didn't have the rule of the classical gold standard that monetary conditions were tightened or loosened as gold flowed in and out you merely had this pledge from the united states to maintain a fixed exchange rate although there was no mechanism to ensure that the united states would have sufficient gold stocks in order to meet this requirement and indeed president richard nixon was forced to close to the gold window in one

thousand nine hundred seventy one and permanently suspend dollar convert ability into gold precisely in order to prevent complete depletion of the u.s. monetary gold stock now the bretton woods system had it definitely had to our ability lasting from the end of the second world war until nine hundred seventy one why do you think the system lasted so long. well i actually wouldn't credit credit bretton woods i would credit first and foremost the marshall plan i should emphasize that the new i.m.f. that was established at bretton woods was mothballed by the truman administration for most of the one nine hundred forty s. in the early one nine hundred fifty s. there were also some innovations on the european side like the european payments union that help to restore some semblance semblance of monetary stability i would emphasize that it was not until one thousand nine hundred sixty one fifteen years

after the i.m.f. was inaugurated that the first nine european countries met they were acquired from and of the i.m.f. articles of agreement that their currencies be convertible into u.s. dollars at a fixed exchange rate so indeed the bretton woods monetary system could not really be said to have started until the one nine hundred sixty one by which point it was already coming under tremendous pressure as the united states was losing gold stocks. now moving to today we are currently in a new system and this is some system has actually endured for a longer than bretton woods system what are its strengths and weaknesses visa v the monetary system that came prior. well you could call it really a system there or no implicit rules that anybody obeys you have some countries in particular the key currencies like u.s.

dollar. the euro for example these countries allowing their currencies to freely float their countries operate a sort of dirty float where they monitor the exchange rate and intervene it can at . key points in time other countries fix their exchange rate some countries have gone as far as to abolish their currency use entirely for example in this hemisphere ecuador and el salvador abolished their currencies twelve years ago and now use the u.s. dollar as their domestic currency ben thank you so much for your time and your insight we have to have you back on very soon. thanks very much erin thanks that was ben steel author of the battle of bretton woods. time now for a quick break but when we return my interview with david

a backward professor of economics at western kentucky university he sat down with me to talk about market monetarism plus in today's big deal battery is it not to include it ed harris and i talk about the days of the disposable battery being numbered yeah no more but is it for the better well that you decide it's all coming up so stick around. wealthy british style. the time to write for. markets why not. 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 into kinds a report on our. player.

play. player. play a. little . little. cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. i would bet that and i think a society that i think corporation kind of can. can do and say. all about money and i was actually sick for a politician breaking the law and with

a tax break right. here in just two. days i ate. what an economic slump hit the global economy after the biggest financial crisis since the great depression support increased for a group of economists called market monetarists now market monetarism is a school that cannot mix which espouses that central banks target a level of nominal income or output instead of inflation and then and employment or unemployment if you will now earlier i sat down with david back worth a center assistant professor of economics at western kentucky university and i

leaving out he is a leading advocate of market monetarism and i asked him to explain what market monetarism is here's what he had to say. well market markers would be defined by first buying pornos that money matters we believe monetary conditions are pivotal to the business cycle any sudden change in the supply of demand and money's going to generate swings in economic activity and we think that happened in two thousand and two thousand and nine but that said we do not think that the central bank the federal reserve should be targeting money you're aiming to grow them i supply money is created by banks and financial firms so the fed really can't control but what we do think is that she created an environment that's conducive to banks producing the optimal amount of money and households and firms you know spending an awful rate as well and we believe that is best accomplished by having a father was a third stabilize the growth of total dollar spending is the total dollar spending

is kind of a product you know money there isn't often gets spent and if you if you focus on that as opposed to focusing on inflation or some other measure it believe it be much better world we live in now the name that is thrown around what with total dollar spending is nominal g.d.p. targeting but all it is is the central bank targeting the growth of total dollar spending we believe that's the best way to conduct policy if they did things would be much better now why it should we expect nominal output or nominal income targeting to be more successful then targeting unemployment or inflation. well target inflation is a service well for a number of years and decades but it has its limits so if you target target inflation it it's great when inflation is for fucking changes in demand or spending in that case it's to the right job but you could have a situation where there's a supply shock for example there's some destruction to oil that's going to affect

inflation but we would want to respond in the same manner if you would say demand shock if for example oil was to dry up from some war and the middle east and prices started to soar it would push the economy toward a recession and the last and you want to do is to raise interest rates tight monetary policy inflation targeting has the real difficulty of trying to distinguish between changes in inflation arise from demand shocks in those countries supply shocks nominal g.d.p. targeting you don't worry about that all you worry about is stabilizing total total dollar spending unemployment the problems are going to employment is that we really don't know what is the optimal rate of unemployment it's a real variable and ultimately central banks do better when they target what we call a nominal measure a measure that has some kind of dollar priced into it so it could be nominal wages not malenko normal g.d.p. to fail the much more successful because you can you can shape that over the long

run it the fed cannot really shape a real concrete variable measure of economic activity like point and so it's better in the long run focus on something like nominal g.d.p. this actually leads very well to my next question which is won't targeting nominal g.d.p. instead of targeting real g.d.p. just lead to inflation. no it shouldn't if the federal reserve say target five percent nominal g.d.p. growth rate and that's kind of what it was during the great migration years from eighty four to two thousand and seven what we saw it typically happen is that real g.d.p. grew about three percent inflation about two percent you see the same kind of product it was full of it again if you focus on stabilizing total dollar spending you're not going to see any huge run up in inflation or or falling is we target normal g.d.p. you're still a korean long run inflation expectations so you wouldn't see

a big destruction of the bond market you still have the the long run price stability that inflation targeting brings but in the short run it gives you a whole lot more flexibility to respond to economic shocks provide more stability and december two thousand and eleven the economist say there was an article published in there on how the economic crisis triggered a rise in various schools of economic thought in the article said quote the market monetarism is the first economic school of thought to be born in the blogosphere with post counter posts and comments there and comment threads replacing the intramural exchange of more established is so again i ask do you think this is an accurate description of how market monetarism came to be and rose to prominence as it as it is today. i think it's fairly accurate i mean the market monetarist that i know the. right to do so we share the reason we kind of emerged was because of the great recession and the failure of the federal reserve to respond adequately to it

in our view so what we did is we started on blogs first and then from there a success and that led to op eds and article writing opportunities but really the conversation was driven by the blogosphere and really has changed you know the debate where the bait first takes place and there's always a place for more serious discussions and research that is the starting point blogs to really been useful in it not just in this area and in other areas to me tarr and other developments in blog history you get real time feedback from thoughtful people who know these issues deeply and mark and want to present is just one example of that you know the blogosphere opened up the playing field people like me to participate so that it definitely is a unique experience that has been a consequence of the great recession and technology sociedad with blogging ok now the i have recently noted that in twenty thirteen the u.s. government's fiscal balance shift was more austere than that of the euro zone's or

japan's yet the us has done ok in terms of both real g.d.p. and nominal g.d.p. growth what does this say about the effectiveness of monetary policy. well i think it says a lot about monetary policy you know sometimes brass will you believe in fiscal policy will i believe that to the extent this the policy is affective and i believe in certain cases it can be effective but when it is effective it will be offset by what the federal reserve is doing if it's doing a good job so going to your question here the reason that the sequester and the fiscal austerity if you thousand and thirteen did not take as big a buy as many predicted and many were pretty predicting recession or worse and the reason you did not do that is because the fed stepped in with q e three and it began to you know change how much it was purchasing conditional on the data conditional state of the economy so i do think you can work out what happened in the u.s. compared to what happened in europe isn't as evidence that you know the right type

of monetary policy can offset what happens with fiscal policy and the reverse is true if congress were to spend that some big spending plan and it started to generate higher inflation or the federal reserve it was concerned about high inflation if it stepped in to you know to cut that off it with offset that fiscal policy so i think what we're seeing is what scott sort of called the policy upset to the extent the central bank is doing its job it should offset any real effect that comes from fiscal policy and that is always have been but in principle it should and i think two thousand and thirteen is an example of that. that was david back with economics professor at western kentucky university time now for today's big deal.

mr edward harrison joins me now to talk about power more specifically power that comes in the form of small electro chemical tubes filled with magnesium dioxide and zinc better known as batteries you probably know his daughter is now in the economist recently published an article pretty much saying the like of all stock that you may be holding and her gys are duracell the lot are owned by procter and gamble because the days of the battery powered household torch they are probably numbered now what used to be a lucrative market is now being squeezed by l.e.d.s. or a late emitting diodes television remote controls ones powered by batteries can be controlled via apps on your cell phone and the latest gadgets come with batteries built right into them and i turn to you how does a company that once produced a product so prevalent find a way to innovate its way out of this situation that's a good question because you know it's been it's the it's the ever changing question of technology i actually like the fact the use of the word sports the british system i was. in there but you know if you think about canals and how we went from

canals to railroads and then we went from the horse and buggy to cars and you think about the internet and all these other innovations almost every single time the companies that were dominant in the previous technology and it up getting wiped out in the new technology and then when you had the new technology it was a huge wave of all these different companies just think about the internet in the late ninety's yeah half of these companies don't even exist but you know there were a few big winners of the initial companies that were were part of the first wave amazon being a problem exam. what's crazy is that you know we grew up with batteries and i think of every toy ever received a christmas and the batteries not included it's just such a prevalent thing for so many years but like you said or somebody those were pretty popular until cars came around but china if the largest battery market in the world today however locally made alkaline batteries there they're cheaper and more

ubiquitous than batteries that are made you know foreign foreign producers so how do more costly foreign brands kind of find a waiter survive in an industry where they're only growing market space is no longer interested in their products what do you do we have to innovate around that you have to find ancillary markets that you can hook your product onto and hope that that's a good way to move forward in slowly wean yourself off the dependence of your old model think about i.b.m. as an example you know i.b.m. is nothing like the company. was dominant in personal computers or even mainframe computers a whole generation ago and so that's the kind of thing that you need to build to do right and now they're just a consulting firm is a totally different now with other forms of national power that are becoming increasingly more popular like wind and solar and all these other things is it possible that batteries and like i said before the batteries that we grew up with

are now today they're just going to be a relic something we're going to see the music museum and you know basically we can harness these these newer forms of natural power will definitely one hundred percent just one month ago i bought a new smaller powered. keyboard and apparently this thing you know it only it does it doesn't even need real light it just needs you know even fake light from your desk light in a powered infinitely i mean i come down and i turn the thing on and it's always working because it just gets light from you know from the lights the overhead light yeah they were it warrants it's i think i want to. love it it's about. amazing that's always all the time we have for now but you can see all segments featured in today's show on youtube youtube dot com slash boom bust r.t. we also love hearing from you so please check out our facebook page drop us a line facebook dot com slash boom bust our t. you can also tweet us at aaron ate at edward and age from all of us here at boom of

us thanks for watching c.n.n. . we welcome aaron made in to two of the posts on the our team at work. it's going to give you a different perspective give you one star never i'll give you the information you make the decision don't worry about bringing you the work it's a revolution of the mind it's a revolution of ideas and consciousness. it's very very probably would be described as angry i think i'm a strong. leader single. i think. we're going to go did you know the price is the only industry specifically

mentioned in the constitution because it's right that's because a free and open process is critical to our democracy right allmers. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and our crisis of a girl we've been hijacked lying handful of powerful transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once told class i'm tom are going to get on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world if we go beyond identifying the problem to try to fix rational debate and a real discussion critical issues facing america have on camera go ready to join the movement then walk a little bit but. i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. to stay with substory. let's

give this guy like you would smear the guys that are working for the people both issues the mainstream media and working for each other bridegrooms vision to fight . the good rather.

another restless night in the ukrainian capital protesters of revolution fight it out with police using handmade homemade weapons and. an old to the cheering calls of european and american politicians. the opposition syrian national coalition says. keep peace talks this offer the u.n. to revoke an invitation to iran. want to see. what it meant the diplomatic ping pong. leaders to focus on terrorism plaguing the country. and getting the golden boot. in the u.k. of being promised.