products the move will cost the chain an estimated two billion dollars per year however that loss of sale actually accounts for just a small fraction of the company's total revenue which topped one hundred twenty three billion dollars last year now c.v.s. is the first major pharmacy to ban tobacco sales though many smaller independently owned pharmacies have already done so c.v.s. medical officer dr troy brennan said quote this action may not need many people to stop smoking smokers world probably simply go elsewhere to buy cigarettes but if other retailers follow this lead to back up products will become much more difficult to obtain so how do smokers feel about all this we hit the streets to find out. like me who want to stop smoking we have to go a little bit further to get the pack of cigarettes you know if we're going to get up at midnight or some way that over ten o'clock at night to go to c.v.s. when they're only have twenty four hours i can run in packs of cigarettes but if i

can get them so easily it'll make me think twice before i go out and buy that pack i think tobacco is on its way out and it's going to become more of a niche market and not something that you're going to find in every corner store i think it's good for their image i think they're going to sleep on their like market share whatever but i think overall it's a good choice for them for their if they want to be considered to the pharmacy it's more now while c.b.s. executives 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 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 what we're back in a recession now i've accidentally an erroneous lee thought we were on the verge of recession a couple of times well the spread 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 then 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 dues the number of workers reduced the hours that people were working so people want out and took on a second job so if you look at the job subsistence you see the jobs were going up something like a hundred and 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 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 permitted 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 you also have to realize there'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 idea. i know 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 it's going to be spent perhaps squandered but it is certainly going to be spent now look at the on saying you know ok first

for a 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 there were a they might like oh yes there are taxes the workers and i fall over elsewhere but i want to tell you about this mike frances couple of 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. it's 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 it 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 the 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 they're going to go out and they're going to hire robots but 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 employees 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 it's a great pleasure to be on the show or hope to be back again. that was financial adviser and economic blogger mike luck. coming up documentary film director jim byrnes joins us live from our los angeles studio to discuss all things you won't want to miss that then in today's big deal ed harris and i look at the payments big corning cryptocurrency is and the type of original content 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 sticker of. the united states has significant technological edge over the rest while that it is now using that spy on the rest of the wall there was the deal between the u.s. and england where u.s. 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 surveilling our own people so this is what i think of as the scandal.

new york london. the whole world is on the. scene of the original one a further one down the end there are further up the courts building at the end of the street another one the more transparent society gets the money or the puppet tears become we see really. and false is mobilized against people who blend into the city the city the more people trust electronic devices the more defenseless they are. to look.

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 bruce believes we're 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 it 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 bernanke you 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 yellen 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 we for. 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 yellen 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 depressing to us but do you think we're going to see any material changes with 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 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 that right now so i think that maybe that's a good thing but i think the general 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 the 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 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 it 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 the 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 if your goal in stimulating the economy is the 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 email their congressman they can go to our web site money for nothing the movie 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 be raised excessively 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 so 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 gentlemen 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 so come back

soon that was money for nothing and director of their own director jim verse. mr harrison joins me now edward to talk about bitcoin for retailers 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 would say and think of wal-mart in terms of a p.r. campaign you 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. rythm to create

a crypto currency of their own let's call them wall bucks or whatever and they could give that money to top up the waves of the workers to say ten dollars and fifty cents and using that 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 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. you can exchange or wall your your wall books for big but you can exchange them for u.s. 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 out 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 out of 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. it's solves the minimum wage issue you know the retailer would no longer be the target of attacks like wal-mart is the second reason here is that it's always the libor cost issue that i was talking about that's because all the extra money that sped 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 all my a target that i was actually a victim about to use all of you out there you know millions were involved with that goes out the window because bitcoin is a secure payment system and fourth issue is that it brings competition to payments think about when you think of the payments will you think about. i mean there's no one else out there google all of this starting but i think when you say yes. and the last thing is it helps the bags if you think about people who work at wal-mart minimum wage bank account fees et cetera 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're fabulous and this idea i think is absolutely fabulous original content right

here 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. 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 erin aid at edward and age from all of us here thank you for watching the next time shall.

this is obviously more for the latest because it's pink. women wanted to avoid rate they really needed to buy guns environ how to use them. this is the one that i want to go with someone suggest the field. when the definitely the target of the gun loving someone you don't want to kill but not one to killing not even if somebody would he would piss with her. i've noticed that more and more and that's really scary marketing tactics which implies that women have some sort of moral obligation to protect their family and young girls shoot out here too so we do have a pink or. more kids young kids choke on food than are killed by firearms if being armed made us safer in america we should be the safest nation on earth

were clearly not the safest. right on the scene. and i think the jury. on our reporters twitter and. instagram. be in the know. twenty fourteen promises we call to make an exhilarating winter in our team a team join me and it's now a i'm a kevin zero in on the rest of our lives take news team for sochi twenty four take . on oxy.

olympic fever sweeps saatchi as the game's countdown reaches one day to go the torch relay is now on its final leg to launch the twenty second a winter olympic games. and amid the snowy peaks and swaying palms we get the opinions of the only she need. for the winter games. a british couple accused of money laundering go to court to buy their extradition to the u.s. they tell r.t. being forced from poland will be too much for them to bear. on the plane. and. the west recoiled as a syrian war reaches the u.s. and the u.k. with returning extremists openly making terror threats against their.