though there are i marinate this is boom boston these are the stories that we're tracking for you today. first up former treasury secretary larry summers marked president's day on monday with a warning that the u.s. is headed toward a turn of the century british economic policy i'll tell you all about it coming up and then we have david stockman live on today's show all be asking him about the policy of debt and laissez faire capitalism you won't want to miss that and finally in today's big deal i'm joined by boom bust favored rachel perseus we'll talk about a new book that's making waves in the financial industry a little crafts be where coming up in all starts right now.

mr crabtree news this is my choose to the come to cyclones. maggie smith what a wonderful lady. that was downton abbey and i truly do love that show now downton depicts the lives in a room of in a risk to credit family and their servants and post a war to an error england and before i get started i want to make it very very clear that this is a fictional television show about the lives of upper class crawley family and the british social hierarchy that surrounds them now just yesterday former treasury secretary larry summers wrote an editorial in the financial times a british publication just warning that the u.s.

is headed the way of downton abbey with the economy and social inequalities to match now some are says the solution to avoid this must involve raising incomes of the middle class and the poor and reforming tax codes tax codes that let a big share of the wealthy income escape taxation now summers writes quote a current tax code the current tax code is so badly designed that it is very likely to be having the effect of reducing economic growth and also allows the rich to shield a far greater portion of their income from taxation than the poor for example last year's increase in the stock market represented an increase in wealth of about six trillion dollars of which the lion's share went to the very wealthy now here's the thing if somebody anybody besides larry summers were to write this editorial it probably would have landed better now summers is the guy who pushed for the repeal of glass steagall who deregulated the derivatives market and who sheila bair wrote quote was part of the deregulatory cobol that got us into the two thousand and

eight financial crisis now this is the same financial crisis that increased the gap between the haves and the have nots summers is one of the haves with a fortune estimated to be between seventeen and thirty nine million dollars amassed by consulting for financial firms financial firms like city now summers went on to write that president barack obama is right to be concerned those who condemn him for tearing down the wealthy and engaging in un-american populism are to put it politely lacking in historical perspective. now kind of like the pot calling the kettle black a little bit larry no especially when your historical perspective is based on a fictional t.v. show. try to give me orders you mean she mistook you for so what's the use of them to look at it was a show. former

oh indeed director david stockman joins me now from our new york city studio to discuss yet but us budget deficit fed policy and much much more are now welcome david i want to jump right in and start off by asking you a lot of people that we've talked to recently on our show their concern about the destabilizing effects buoyant assets right now is this something that you're concerned with personally. very much but let me observe first that larry summers should know about fiction he's been dispensing economic fiction his entire career and is behind the policies of unlimited money printing that are behind this huge windfall that has gone to the one percent after all when the fed keeps the money market rate at zero for seven years which is its current policy and yellen is reaffirmed that it is essentially creating free money for the carry

trades to engage in every kind of speculation known to man all over the world planning dangerous time bombs financial time bombs that one of these days will go off anything that can be traded reposed securitized options the fast money and the hedge fund traders are doing all on the back of the free overnight money that is being dispensed to wall street by the fed and which they're gearing guaranteeing to keep in place for several years yet to come this is the cause of the problem we don't need to change taxation we do. need to have more keynesian type you know middle income oriented manipulations we need to get the fed out of the financial markets its fat thumb off the scale let interest rates clear the market based on true supply and demand let traders and speculators be at risk shut down

the fed fueled casino in will solve the problem that he. purports to be addressing you so you obviously think that the fed's accommodative monetary policy is a big reason why the asset markets might be some point right now correct yes of course i mean the fed is fueling massive inflation but it's inflation of financial assets not inflation of goods and services and but it's equally damaging in fact it's even more so because this huge inflation of financial assets take one measure of the russell two thousand which is the index of the most speculative and higher beta stocks so-called main street america small mid-cap companies is now trading at eighty five times trailing earnings that is lunatic that is that surge that's what you get at the peak like we did at the dot com peak in two thousand or

early two thousand or at the peak of the market in two zero zero seven before the big crash so the handwriting is all over the wall there is really extreme speculation everywhere and you have the new fed chairman testified last week that she can see no signs whatsoever of not only any red flashing lights but orange ones as well and i think that's just a major of the fact that the fed today is being run by academic zealots who do not understand that they have fundamentally crippled in disable the financial. markets and created a casino that is dangerous and is nearing the end of this bubble of inflation and then i have to ask you do you believe destabilizing bubbles are one of the principal problems for the u.s. economy right now. absolutely it's the heart of the problem the fed has become a serial bubble machine look at the record from eighty seven and look at the panic

in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight when they bailed out long-term capital and created the great moral hazard and the speculative final blow off of dot com and then greenspan panicked again put the interest rates down to zero or one percent said we have your back the so-called greenspan put then we got the housing bubble in the credit bubble in the wall street bubble and then the mill down into i was eight and then they imply that they don't they didn't know where it came from but they were going to do even more when bernanke he opened up the monetary spigots and drove the fed's balance sheet as you know from one hundred billion on the eve of the breakdown or of the lehman bankruptcy to pushing four and a half trillion before they finish tapering and frankly they're likely to keep on going beyond that so that's the heart of the problem when you have these massive

cycles of asset inflation sooner or later they collapse it creates panic go throughout the economy activity freezes up comes to a halt and you start all over again the main street economy since two thousand when this bubble you know pattern really emerged has been growing at the lowest compound rate for thirteen years about you know one point seven percent of any time in the last hundred years that's that's how bad the negative impact is david i think it's fair to say that you think the fed should raise rates then but i want to ask you what should they raise them to know i don't can i can i just jump in there do you think the fed should raise the rates i think the fed should get out of the market get it some off the scale let the market clear where supply of savings and demand for credit. intersect and i don't know whether that's eight percent four percent or

even you know not that much higher than it is today but i do know what's out there today is totally artificial it's set by the fed they say there's a game their rate their fixing their rate and the entire market is now trading against what the fed is doing may do the word clouds that come out of the fed speakers and not doing its job of price discovery and finding balance of supply and demand throughout the money markets and throughout the debt and equity markets now i want to ask you about this fed chair janet yellen she has said that she is concerned about bubbles but she and other fed officials have also said that they feel compelled to keep rates low and even to continue asset purchases because unemployment in the u.s. is elevated while consumer price inflation remains low what can the fed best do to support employment given its dual mandate to support employment and price stability . well the dual mandate is just an excuse the pretense there dual mandate was

adopted in one thousand seventy seven so-called humphrey hawkins that was in place when volcker basically slammed on the brakes and forced the economy to go through a cleansing and ordered to purge the runaway you know inflation of commodities and goods so there is nothing in the statute says the interest rates have to be zero through to fifteen that they need to pay the ten year rate under three percent or whatever they're doing the mandate is so vague elastic and generalized that it provides scope for the fed to run a sound money that allows the market to discover the correct pricing of money and debt and equity securities and options and all the rest of it rather than trying to dictate it and run what i call a monetary central planning system from the eccles building which is totally

impossible look at how wrong they have been in their forecasts going all the way back to the sub prime is contained and there is no recession i mean and and we're now going to have a booming recovery none of that has happened and it proves that their models are no good they ought to be trashed canned and they ought to get out of the business of trying to drive the economy what i say is we need regime change we need to get the money printers out of the eccles building we need to get people on the fed board who understand that you've gotta let markets work you've got to let. you know millions of investors and traders and borrowers and lenders determine what financial prices and values ought to be maybe someone like you on the board president david don't have any. we have to take

a super fast break and you out there in t.v. land please don't go anywhere either because more with david stockman when i return then in today's big deal i'm joined by madonna kurz ears to talk about plutocrats in drag yeah plutocrats in drag true story but as we head to a quick break here's a look at some your closing numbers of the bell stick around.

scott horsley. looks at the finish line of the marathon. let. me.

back now with more from mr david stockman now david i'm going to jump right in and i ask you do you share ben bernanke and janet yellen deflationary years. deflationary fears absolutely not that is just a canard that they constantly try it out when all else fails to justify continuing to run burning pres at these crazy rates even sixty five billion a month after all we're in the fifth year of this so-called recovery look at the last twelve thirteen years the c.p.i. is average two point four percent if you take the one they prefer you know the p.c. eat deflator less food energy assuming no one has had to eat their home or eat for

twelve years but even then it's one point eight percent. the rates do bottle up and down a little bit by a month or quarter depending on what's going on in the world economy commodities oil a lot of other things but on trend there is absolutely no whiff of the flashing in the air and besides that where was that ever written that if you don't make two percent inflation you're failing to help the economy i mean inflation is all for debtors and is a huge negative and harm to savers and the fed has decided to weigh in on the people that want to borrow build up the debt and it's just a doctor and that is erroneous and leads them to what i think are really very dangerous policies they ought to get out of the way let the market work its

will there is so much capacity in the world today that inflation is a risk in my judgment nor is the solution and we've got to somehow liberate the financial system from the domination of this monetary politburo is trying to run the show in the eccles building in washington now in a predictive interview with r.t. you said that in your experience in private equity it really convinced you that debt and leverage were big problems for the u.s. economy can you explain how you came to this conclusion. yeah i mean all you have to do is look all around you the companies in america today are not really investing in the future in to any great extent in terms of new technologies plant need quitman and tangible assets they're essentially borrowing money that is

really cheap because the fed is repressing interest rates and using their borrowings to buy in stock in an effort to pump up stock prices and therefore the value of management options but this is sensually accomplishes nothing for the real economy it's just financial engineering all of it is being fueled by the fed the same is true with all the l.b.o.'s in the leverage recaps and so forth that are going on it is tilting the balance towards massively leveraging up the entire business system now they tell you that there's all kinds of cash on the sidelines and the corporations are unusually liquid well that may be true for the top ten or fifty or one hundred big cap international companies that have a lot of cash broad that they can even use but if you look at the business sector as a whole there is thirteen trillion of debt on incorporated an unincorporated business

in america that compares to less than levan trillion at the time of the crisis so business has a deedle levered business is actually increased by nearly twenty percent or two trillion dollars the amount of debt they're carrying around and the debt is not been used to acquire tangible assets and to invest in productivity and growth and jobs for the long run but simply to fund financial engineering like m. and a. deals based on cash and stock buybacks and one time special dividends and all the rest. and that's part of the negative consequence of what the fed is doing when you couple that with the fact that debt is tax deductible it's a business and equity capital isn't you so tilt the playing field that we're

turning as i have said the entire us economy into some kind of collective leverage buyout and it's dangerous and it's one of the reasons why we have huge problems that we're facing today now i don't know if it's a draw for you but are he your concern with public debt or with private debt. well i'm concerned with both and that's why when we look at the balance sheet you should . measure something the fed itself publishes which is called credit market debt outstanding that includes household debt mortgage and consumer business debt of all kinds short term long term financial institution debt and public sector debt and when you add it all up today it's a startling number fifty eight trillion it is three and a half times our national income that is near in all time high and is dramatically above what it was prior to one nine hundred eighty when the ratio of

total credit market to national income was more like one point five times so that's the nature of the problem we have and it's spread into all sectors of the economy mainly under the doctrines of you know there larry summers in the paul krugman as of the world who insist you can have enough debt whether you're a household or a government and i submit you have so much debt today that it's a clear and present danger to our capitalist economy now we only have about one minute left i want to ask you superfast we spoke with your former regular reagan administration colleague paul craig roberts last week and although he didn't discuss it during the interview i know he wrote a book on what he calls the failure of laissez faire capitalism now his view is that we have a sort of crony capitalism in play dominated by vested interests and large corporations rather than

a real capitalism that can spur growth what is your view we have thirty seconds i'm so sorry there's a long way to you know i agree with that i agree with that i think the problem is overwhelmingly crony capitalism that's what the bailout of all the big banks and wall street of goldman sachs and morgan stanley and a i.g. and all the rest of wasn't two to zero eight in my book the great deformation which i put out. recently i refuted all of the urban legends on which that was based but if you look at washington today it's a money machine where the interest groups come in and try to get their hands on the tax scene or subsidy or regulatory power of the government to get all comes in the economy that they wouldn't. market like you know like the u.a.w. bailing out g.m. so yes capitalism capitalism is being corrupted we don't have on as capitalism we have crony capitalism the fed and keynesian philosophy are the primary source of

that tremendous damage that is being done david thank you so much for your time in your insight come back anytime that was david stockman author of the great defamation time now for today's big deal. and today's big deal rachel is back madame curtis and we're here to talk about wall street secret for turning to a true story a secret fraternity now many of the barons of wall street they come from ivy league fraternities and secret secret societies skull and bones being the most well known among them but journalist kevin roose found his way into an annual black tie induction ceremony for kappa beta fi now a frat with a decidedly older than age group then most dartmouth greenhouses now he detailed his experience in an article one percent jokes and plutocrats in dr what i saw when i crushed a wall street secret society. some wall street's most powerful wearing hard and

gold sequined skirts and costing way example trying to get that image out of your head sorry going to be hard rachel tell me more about the beta five what's the group's history of what's the deal with them yes so it's essentially these switch the name of five beta kappa which is the name normally for honor groups in the ne there used to be a ton of the. societies now there's just one left it's wall street and it's it's essentially like a friars club they make jokes at one another's expense and sometimes at the expense of politicians and regular old schmoes who are some of the famous members of yes wilbur ross was what was called the grand swipe. somebody who is kind of the master of ceremonies but there are others like michael bloomberg who was an intended it's when kevin roose went but is a member john kors i'm hasn't been back since he kind of embarrassed himself but. greenberg. larry fink these are just a few of the many many members who have been around i mean this organization has

been around since the great depression it's incredible to me all those names you know you asked the question does going to get it wrong to be to find out i think you. do they have any sway over the global financial markets right so not is not as a group because they're essentially together to have a good time essentially through petite ford's apple and others actually something that they do roost makes the point that if there had been something that had happened at the st regis where this event had taken place global financial markets as we know them would have totally melted down because all of the people who comprise women are making these major decisions would then be gone the group has all the powerful people but they're not making decisions there except the one thing would be it's kind of a sign of your success to be inducted into this group of a who's who of wall street and then of what they call. spring street which are kind of the offshoots are that financial centers street is san francisco's the wall

street of the west and. that is a jeopardy factory to. run i have to ask you what were some of the skits that are saw. this roost watch all the members to get inducted have to do a lot of musical skits in particular some of them were doing kind of jokes from the book of mormon but it was kind of a parody skit a lot of them were doing jokes. often at the expense of people like hillary clinton and barney frank barney frank in particular someone who they saw as pushing for financial regulation for a lot of jokes no this was from january two thousand and twelve when he went so there were a lot of jokes at the expense of occupy wall street which was still kind of right occupying physical space at that close to wall street now what was russa's conclusion after these proceedings what do you think what he said that this was kind of an indication to him that these financial titans were very disconnected from the world they surrounded themselves and he made particular mention of the fact that they were making fun of a lot of people when they got

a bailout for instance and mainstream america did not so he said quote the upper ranks of finance are composed of people who have completely divorced themselves from reality he got busted trying to leave and they offered him essentially if you keep your mouth shut we will give you inside scoops on a lot of information he decided to publish the story i think we're all better for it and i'm excited to read the book and hear more rachel as always your fantastic thank you for joining us yeah thanks for having me that's all for now but you can see all segments future today show on you tube at you tube dot com slash boom bust r.t. we also love hearing from you so please check out our facebook page at facebook dot com boom bust our teeth you can also tweet us at. edward n.h. is not nearby and at curious underscore kurt there you go from all of us here boom bust thank you for watching to next time shall.

twenty years america has changed from the producer to show ever. and all consumers know that when the producer names the tune the consumer has got to dance dance pros long dead oh that's right french man can't dance and the directors wielding baxter's in this b. movie don't know if they want to be matt dillon or bob dylan ben bernanke you are man of a thousand elec uppers janet yellen doesn't tapering special effects from abacus two thousand and seven a c one in the failing crazy glue no worries friends follow it won't be too long before the director cuts the same yeah it's all like that in a good movie. as

a pillow when i close my eyes i see people in mosul. you know sometimes i think that you're a model in itself is a face covered by most. people in most on both sides of the barricades if you must . you know sometimes just feels as if all of ukraine is no most. i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough to. say what it's about story. it's just describe what would smear about john stead of working for the people most issues in the mainstream media or working for the german bridegrooms division. it was.

coming up on our t.v. breaking news coming out of ukraine and protesters are once again filling the streets of the nation's capital demonstrators and. police continue to crash and some fatalities have been reported a look at the unrest in ukraine just ahead and today was a day of many champions at the sochi olympics numerous medals were awarded dramatically shifting the current rankings we'll have the latest up ahead. and a new development for a russian man imprisoned in the u.s. american authorities have finally agreed to allow a medical examination of the inmate this after the russian authorities showed concern over is help more on that later in the show.