you know full well the decision will cost them billions of dollars in the short term the company believes they'll make more in the long run by banning tobacco sales and by ditching tobacco products c.v.s. can further develop their pharmacies into full fledged health care providers striking more profitable deals with hospitals and health insurers in the process now c.v.s. didn't become a multibillion dollar drug store by being bad at business they did not but there you have it. the u.s. economy has seen an even recovery over the past four years now this despite the economic expansion and the fed's best efforts to put a floor under asset prices many people are feeling the weight of poor wage growth despite all of this now our next guest financial advisor an economic blogger like shylock talked to us about the situation and i started off by asking him why

a lot of people still are saying that they don't see the recovery and believe america is still in a recession today. tell us we're back in a recession now i've accidentally an erroneous flee thought we were on the verge of recession a couple of times well the third came out and through massive q.e. . managed to at least create some sort of business climate where jobs although hiring was not robust didn't expand much and there obamacare came along and actually kind of got lucky if you want to look at it that way we created because of the obamacare artifact we created. millions actually of part time jobs where businesses came by reduced the number of workers reduced the hours that people were working so people want out and took on

a second job so you look at the jobs just you see the jobs were going up something like a hundred eight hundred ninety thousand jobs a month if you actually look at the employment report the employment was only going up one hundred ten one hundred fifteen thousand a month so a difference of sixty five seventy five thousand jobs a month where is that discrepancy i think is people taking extra part time jobs. that's good that they can do that that's good business can can hold on but it creates an illusion here that the job market in the united states is better than what it is now the president has begun signing people up for his signature piece of legislation the affordable healthcare act and the process has not been smooth to say the least do you think obamacare will eventually be a success. government lumina feeling is never success by definition so

no i think we're seeing more and more people come to the realization the unions were actually complaining about obamacare and what it did to them today and they were one of the biggest backers. it did create a different set of winners and losers there are some people who were not insurable before who have insurance now so they turned out big so that was big in their favor but everyone else especially small businesses have to have seen lots of heights in there so we created a bigger pool of of losers a small pool of winners and us have to realize that it's the insurance industry that wrote this ad everything in there was was for them so another group of losers is it is ted and t. heir people and they're not because. people in their early to mid twenty's health

who have no health care problems at all they are subsidizing those with problems is that a good thing or a bad thing i think it's a bad thing because it's another economic distortion mike i want to ask you about minimum wage obama and many in his party they're keen to get it increased do you think this would be a good actor. no i've talked about that on my blog is probably is as you're aware i think it's a very bad idea the argument goes something like this you know why are u.s. taxpayers subsidizing walmart employees if wal-mart and mcdonald's just paid a minimum wage. pick your number twelve eleven fifteen dollars an hour is what many of them are clamoring for then we wouldn't have to see a you know all of this food stamp support and. other

support you know welfare benefits well what did god there's no proposal in congress or anywhere else that i saw hey ok let's lower let's let's cut food stamps if we raise the minimum wage the first thing that's going to happen is a minimum wage it's going to go up and. the cost of the benefits are going to go down the money's already been allocated it's going to be spent perhaps squandered but it's it's certainly going to be spent now look at the on saying ok first first small number of people there retain their jobs. their wages go up but what about everyone else what about the people who shop at wal-mart well prices are going to go up and what about the stores that wal-mart doesn't open because. their costs went up. you have to look at the unseen

the stores that don't go up those are property taxes that won't be collected those are construction jobs they won't happen that is hiring that won't happen so you know the argument is the question that i was asked is. why are we subsidizing shoppers at wal-mart why are we subsidizing people who eat at mcdonald's well that's one of these why is this guy a great guy the glasses well this guy isn't brain we're not really subsidizing these people a lot of these jobs wouldn't exist at all at higher minimum wages wal-mart right out of oakland some of these the way they might like oh yes there are taxes for the workers and i'll fall over elsewhere but i want to tell you about this mike francis coppola from the u.k. she was a recent guest here seizing on boom bust and she suggested that we have no minimum wage but that the government top up working wages below the poverty level doing

this in order to maintain a living standards do you think this is a reasonable solution. no solution at all other should mean a government interference in the free market set off the problem here is is prices are going up and wages are going up to match so what's the problem here is the problem that wages are going up where is the problem the prices are going up everyone's screaming here more inflation more inflation cream you know kirkman wants at the monitor is one zero zero my god heaven forbid prices fall five dollars the very thing we need is for prices to fall instead you know they're trying to force prices up and but money doesn't flow and jobs don't flow where central banks want to go. liquidity goes where the return is higher and where the return is highest is in asset bubbles in stocks and bonds didn't benefit any you

know because erin is is we need these things to protect the low wage holders well they're not the ones that have assets so we're spotting asset bubbles at the benefit of those with first access to money who is that well it's the banks and the already wealthy so here rather than fix the problem and the problem is central banks trying to create inflation. we go after a symptom of a problem the symptom of the problem is wages haven't kept up but if they force wages up what are the employers going to do we're going to go out and they're going to hire robots because the fed has forced down the price of interest rates they can go out and borrow money cheaply and invest in hardware and software robots and get rid of more of lloyd's mike i want to thank you so much for your time i'm sorry we were running slim on it here but we will have you back on very

soon hopefully thank you for your and say your time is great pleasure to be on the show or hope to be back again. that was financial adviser and economic blogger mike shylock. coming up documentary film director jim byrnes joins us live from our los angeles studio to discuss all things but you won't want to miss that then in today's big deal ed harris and i look at the payments big currencies and the tape of the original concept that only mr harrison can deliver you definitely won't want to miss it but as we head to a quick break here's a look at some of the closing numbers today at the bell stick around.

the united states has significant technological over the rest of the wild and it is now using that supply on the rest of the wall then there was the deal between the u.s. and england where us spy agencies couldn't spy on people in the u.s. but british a spy agencies could spy on people in the u.s. so the two governments said alright each of us will spy on the other citizens and then we'll trade and that we will be sure veiling our own people so this is what i think of as the scandal. right see. first trip. and i think the trick.

on our reporters with their. instrument. mom. don't think great thing about saatchi is that it see unique city that was most listed here we are at the seashore here it's always really warm but in krasnaya polyana which is just forty six kilometers from here there's plenty of fresh powder to be stupid so the thought of she's going to move out of this is very convenient. plenty of snow think in the end everybody's comfortable. athletes circumglobal fans are comfortable well that's what makes you so choose so unique. because why it's it this perfect at least in the winter olympics the world of the human play but i mean there were else do you have this true.

dramas that can't be ignored to the. stories others the few who still notice. the faces changing the world right now. so picture of today's leaves. home to from around the globe.

look to. the flame. the olympic spirit travels with the sleep from its place to greet. julie james brown in the mental picture of the room russian and beyond. where of are supposed to go or.

give birth as an award winning documentary filmmaker his most recent film money for nothing inside the federal reserve warns of a u.s. central banking system that has lost its way now jim believes that the instability of our nation's economy increased once the fed began taking extreme measures to pump liquidity into the markets be a quantitative easing of course now in his eyes easy credit misguided market intervention were a huge source of what fueled the crisis in the first place now burst believes were trying to solve the problem by doing a lot of the same stuff that caused the problem in the first place never a good solution joining me once again to talk all things that is writer producer director jim burrows thank you so much for being here on the show now since we last spoke a lot a lot has happened at the fed most notably the passing of the torch from bracket to yellen who kicked off her first official week as fed chair woman this very week starting on monday but i want to ask you young has said that she doesn't see risk

in the stock market right now do you think she's misguided in her current belief. you know i think it's typical of officials they never see the problems before hand you know the people that i listen to i think are people with a better track record people who saw the crisis coming last time around they have been worried especially in recent months about overvaluation in the stock market you know i don't necessarily think we have a massive bubble of the kind we had in two thousand but i think stocks are definitely priced at a point where you know certainly when janet came into office they're priced to in some ways to perfection it's going to be very hard for i think for prices to keep heading north now in your film yelling she kind of came across as part of this crew within the fed that's critical of the recent policy employed by the central bank even though she supports the banks current easy money policy now this seems

a little duplicitous but do you think we're going to see any material changes if yellen at the helm of the fed now i don't think so i mean that's one of the things i worry about is that i wish the fed was rethinking some of its policies i know they're rethinking kiwi and they and they seems like across the board fed officials are saying we're going to taper we're going to keep tapering you know no one's backing off right now so i think that maybe the philosophy behind fed decision making and fed policy making won't change at all under janet yellen and that's one of the things i'm concerned about i think given what we've seen over the last ten or fifteen years the idea that the fed should keep pushing us apart is you know keep promoting you know easy money in the same incentives that led to the two thousand and eight crisis to me it seems like it's time for a change but i don't think that's what we're going to see now you've said that you'd like to see the fed return to a more traditional role of a central bank given your assumption that the fed has veered from its traditional

role how realistic is such a return given the current state of affairs in the u.s. economy. you know i think i think that's the problem is to some degree because their policies haven't worked that well they sort of need to keep going with thinking that the that the sort of irony zero percent rates haven't been a cure all quantitative easing hasn't been a cure all it hasn't created real sustainable economic growth you know in two thousand and nine and ten they said it would happen in two thousand and ten eleven and they each year they've kind of pushed out their forecast for a return to sustainable growth and to some degree because their policies haven't worked they're sticking with them that's the sort of ironic situation we're in and now they've gone from saying promising more q.e. more q.e. now they're promising you know the hold rates at zero for longer than anyone could imagine or you know they keep changing the language but basically they're really trying to convince investors that there's you know even as they withdraw q.e.

because i think they're concerned about their balance sheet. that you know everything will be great times will be good the stock market's going to keep going higher that's a signal they're trying to send i think the big challenge for janet yellen is will she be able to keep this up and you know i think ben bernanke he was able to over the last five years create the expectation that the stock market couldn't fall almost to me have people saying it on financial news repeatedly as long as the fed's in there as long as the feds you know you know pumping money into the system you know prices are going to go up so you have to buy that's that's been you know the last five years and i think right now we're seeing even with the recent pullback i think it has somewhat to do with the fact that there's a new person at the fed ben bernanke is not there anymore and it's really a psychological support the fake created this expectation that the stock market would keep rising no matter what and i think to the extent that that support is broken it's going to be very hard for janet yellen to see really install

a floor under asset prices now in your film the fed it came across as a serial bubble blower that helps wall street at the expense of main street now this concept is infuriating to millions of people but the question is how can we as regular citizens do anything about it. i mean that's you know the strange thing about the fed is these aren't elected officials so it isn't as easy as going to the voting booth you know next fall and saying you know i want somebody new to run the fed you know the fed is a creature of congress and i think the way the average person can impact the fed is by letting their their congressperson know that they're not happy with current policies and and one of the goals of the film is to bring about more awareness at the congressional level of the impacts of fed policies on the average american you know that we point out in the film that it's a very regressive policy if you're if your goal in stimulating the economy is to stimulate stock prices and financial asset prices if that's how you're trying to

stimulate the economy you're really going to benefit by you know by the nature of what you're doing the wealthiest right and the banks is as mish was saying earlier so i think the average person it's they can write their congressman they can e-mail their congressman they can go to our web site money for nothing the movie did or good you know send a copy of the film when they care about it so it's it's all about you know i think creating awareness creating we're trying to with the film generate public opinion and create some awareness at the congressional level that this this organization that congress is charged with overseeing has really kind of wandered off its path now i have one quick question we saw severe market jitters when the fed even mention tapering last spring could rates being raised successfully as they were in the one nine hundred eighty s. or is there something something substantially different this time around thirty seconds i'm sorry we're running out of time. no no problem i mean i think the problem is we've created an economy in a financial system that requires constant intervention from the central bank

massive deficits from the from the government and really can only run on low rates i worry we've become japan we're at the point where the fed really almost can't raise interest rates and it's not going to be a smooth transition to normal policy i think we won't get back to normal i think we'll have another recession before the fed gets anywhere near normal interest rate and i would argue that because once again the fed has waited too long to raise rates jim i'm sorry we don't have more time to thank you again for taking the time out of your day to come on the show and we love having you here is to come back soon there was money for nothing and director of their own director jim bursts. mr harrison joins me now edward to talk about bitcoin for retailers yep that's what we're talking about now everyone is talking about the minimum wage these days u.s.

president barack obama even made it part of his central central part not just part of central part of his state of the union address last week by increasing the minimum wage for government contract workers to over ten dollars an hour believe his ten dollars and ten cents it's a little bit over fast food workers launched a campaign to increase wages in the fast food industry and giant u.s. retailer wal-mart has been a focal point of criticism because of the number of people it employs with wages near the minimum wage level but the minimum wage is a contentious political issue some say higher minimum wages would increase unemployment as demand for workers at higher wages would fall others believe that the increased wages would add demand to an economy burdened by household debt without background our very own ed harrison has an interesting idea on how to deal with the problem that he has written up on his very fabulous i might say fabulous blog credit write downs and tell us the basic outline of your idea because it is

forget about the minimum wage as a contentious issue as you were say and think of wal-mart in terms of a p.r. campaign wal-mart could say look you know what we want to do is make sure that if we use the we our employees that they're going to continue to shop with us and that we're not going to actually have to raise prices or eliminate workers or whatever. so what they could do is use the cooling algorithm to create a crypto currency of their own that's called the wall books or whatever they could . give the money to top up the wades of the workers to say ten dollars and fifty cents and using that coin algorithm to top the wages the customer that is the employees can shop at wal-mart they can buy anything that they want wal-mart but here's the thing the big coin algorithm means that it could be securely transferred to anyone just one of the two million wal-mart workers i have

a question could i exchange my wall box for me you can exchange your wall your your wall box for big but you can exchange them for us dollars so that's the key so the person who employees could actually take the wall box and the cash out of the system and it's almost like having money and then people can come into the system from outside shop at wal-mart except this seems brilliant in the sense that it tackles minimum wage it also helps wal-mart you know not that we're all looking to help wal-mart but it's from a business perspective it's a good model but i ask other big retailers like target or i don't know c.v.s. like we mentioned before what's another one. or any one of us can they employ a similar method definitely without a doubt i mean from my perspective the whole point is look you know we want to workers to be happy we want productivity to be cetera if you could

you're a big employer you have a lot of stuff one on ok ad now list five reasons a crypto currency payment system won't work for a retail chain can you briefly tell us a little bit about each one of these you have five let's say i do ok so the first one is solves the minimum wage issue you know the retailer would no longer be a target of attacks like wal-mart is second reason here is that it's all the lever of cost issue that i was talking about that's because all the extra money that's spent is spent only with that company so costco wegmans whatever you name it then the. third thing is that it solves the credit card processing fee issue so you will remember target wal-mart target that i was actually a victim about to use all of you out there you know million were involved with that goes out the window because bitcoin is a secure payment system and a fourth issue is that it brings competition to the payments think about when you think of the e.p.a. what will you think about exactly i mean there's no one else out there google all

of this starting but i think they felt when he was. in the last thing is it helps the bags if you think about people who work at wal-mart middleweights bank account fees etc people don't actually need to have a bank account they could actually run everything through the payment system and they would have lost fees as a result target and we would all love to not have to deal with our bank anymore and you are fabulous and this idea i think is absolutely fabulous original content right here at harrah's and that's all for now but you can see all segments featured in today's show on you tube you tube dot com slash boom bust r.t. we also hearing from you so please check out our facebook page at facebook dot com slash boom bust r.t. you can also tweet us at aaron aid at edward and h. from all of us here at boom bust thank you for watching the next time shall.

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one day until a world of winter sports wonder the excitement is building and saw show you all the olympic torch are just closer to the games. the snowy peaks. the opinions of the it's only. for the winter. like this on the plane. first to. the american couple who say their draw their kill themselves than be forced back to the united states they tell artsy why they fear being extradited from britain to face u.s. justice. ukraine's v.i.p. visitors from america and europe put the country's constitution at risk and give tips on forming a new government will look at why they're so keen to.