how the current turmoil in the middle east is playing out in the markets pretty interesting stuff and in today's big deal i'm joined by the brilliant and the beautiful abby martin now miss martin is sitting down with me to discuss modern women in the workplace like ourselves can we have it all or like to think that it's all coming off so let's get to it. so it is day to day i'm bust with two of these stories we're giving you to the first is the federal open market committee vision for the future of the u.s. economy the second is amazon's. new mobile phone now we'll start off with the fed stuff it's pretty important to the f o m c has decided to continue to taper its

quantitative easing program cutting another ten billion dollars from its monthly bond purchases to thirty five billion dollars officials believe the us economy will expand at a rate of two point two percent in two thousand and fourteen the fed projected the benchmark federal funds rate would be two point two one point two one point two percent on average by the end of two thousand and fifteen and two point five percent by the end of twenty sixteen unemployment has continued to fall and inflation is picking up but it's still unclear when the fed will decide to raise rates. now time to talk about the tech stuff amazon in fact the tech company is getting into the mobile phone market and what a market it is it sure is now wednesday amazon introduced a new smartphone called the fire phone adding yet another tentacle to the sprawling online merchandise business it's available on starting at one hundred ninety nine dollars with a two year contract and six hundred forty nine bucks without a contract. pretty expensive stuff now the phone has competitive hardware that

amazon c.e.o. jeff basis compared to the i phone five s. and the samsung galaxy but it also has additional features as well one is a head tracking tool that allows users to interact with a phone with out directly touching the screen with your finger that's kind of bonkers now users can use the fire phone to easily connect to the whole gigantic amazon ecosystem so of course you can access amazon prime's music and video but also figured out a way to make it easier to buy online stuff as well now one feature called the firefly recognizes various products through pictures and audio offering the user ways to purchase them pretty crafty on amazon's part so while it is all pretty interesting stuff the smartphone market is fraught and i mean fraught with peril currently apple and samsung dominate the market making other options even ones from big companies like google microsoft and facebook left fighting an uphill battle just to survive so question is will the fire phone live up to its hype or of will

it just burn up we're going to have to wait and see. for our first interview today i spoke with economist jim rickards about financial warfare and the impact of iraq stability on the oil markets now his latest book the death of money looks at the various threats to the international monetary system so we asked him what financial warfare is and what impact it could have on the international monetary system here's what he had said. financial warfare is part of what strategists call an asymmetric war on the street you were fair so it's everything other than conventional kinetic weapons so no you know no bombs planes submarines there are a lot of things in asymmetric warfare including cyber warfare weapons of mass destruction but financial warfare is basically using capital markets so those stocks bonds through. it is commodities foreign exchange all the things that

viewers are familiar with as weapons to try to diminish the power of your opponents in the has your own power this is going on right now between russia and the united states run ukraine again no one thinks that we're going to is that ukraine there's no support for that but putting on sanctions freezing assets and there's been a financial were fair there's been sort of the spin financial warfare between the u.s. and iran for years now it's in a kind of truce right now last december the president announced a kind of detente with iran in their nuclear negotiations and some other points of contact actually that detente that we're trying to expand to right now around the crisis in iraq try to enlist iranian aid maybe iran and us work together to suppress what's going on there but so that financial warfare financial war is sort of in a truce right now with the financial war with russia is alive and well that's probably going to get worse because i don't think putin's finished with ukraine so basically

using things you are familiar with capital markets to hurt your enemies you know sectarian strife in iraq has been the growth of crude oil production at risk over the next five years so how do you think this conflict will impact the oil markets. well the low price is going to go up this conflict is nowhere near resolution it's a very complicated chessboard as you know and it's not just. us that's the title offshoot of the sunni muslim extremists who are seen to be sweeping the board in northern iraq and of course there were rand has now come in from the south to protect its interests they don't really want to but they have to the turks are very concerned because kurdistan seems to be declaring an independent kurdish republic turkey didn't mind helping kurdistan achieve autonomy within iraq but they certainly don't want an independent kurdistan that seems to be happening in jordan is in the crosshairs as may go there next but behind the scenes what's going on kind of a higher level is that russia and saudi arabia are financing and promoting the

advance in this not just these terrorists there are a lot of former baptist members there a lot of sunni members of saddam hussein's former army the so-called awakening councils the tribal chiefs these are sunni's who are not muslim extremists but they do want to topple the shiite government so this is an alliance of convenience a lot of it's being financed by saudi arabia the moment also designed to break up the emerging detente between the u.s. and iran and this is going on for a while you mention this and american people just roll their eyes oh wait a second we thought iran was the enemy they call us the great satan what's going on here well the answer is that you know since last year and for a couple years of private talks behind before that obama has so it's a stab in the back to saudi arabia see bodies in the russians using his army squaring off sunni it's complicated it's not going to be over soon it's going to get worse it's going to regionalize and i mean so prices are going

a lot lot higher and you know what is the escalating violence how does that play out in the future that obviously would be your bathroom. just. one of the things that concerns me a little bit of you seem to be living in a way. the two second attention spans you know look at market professionals in the us and you know three months ago was worried about ukraine and you know kind of goal went up a little bit on the fear trade and there was some volatility and then you know there was a little bit of pushback to the sanctions they were too extreme but putin is not just a good chess player is a good you know sort of comfort to judo expert he was smart enough to back off a little bit he said i pushed too i got some pushback and over on to the next trade well ukraine wasn't over it's not over who is shut down this same putin sat there with a grenade launcher but obviously he has the ability to to influence what's going on there and i heard reports i haven't seen them so badly some artifacts to put this off and so i will go protect russians well that's the reason for war back in

ukraine also he can chew gum at the same time if we're distracted with iraq what better time for him to go into ukraine and he's the one stirring the pot in iraq alone the saudis as they say we've got to work this problem that many dimensions but the bottom line for markets is that you know there's this outrage between complacency on the one hand and a very tumultuous world that's probably it worse and more dangerous on the other that's going to break my my guess is that will break in favor of higher prices higher inflation higher oil and higher gold kind of reminds me of the one nine hundred seventy s. you know is the fed had easy money in seventy one seventy two to promote nixon's reelection and we didn't get a lot of inflation at the time but then there was a geo political spark in one nine hundred seventy three with the yom kippur war then inflation just ran away we had fifty percent five zero inflation between one nine hundred seventy seven one thousand eighty one so what's going on in the middle east now and ukraine could be that kind of geo political spark on top of all this you know dry candling or would that the fed is printing you know people have been

surprised have you to print four trillion dollars which the fed has done and not get inflation or the answer is that printing the money is only half the equation you need a spark or catalyst to a change of behavior to increase the loss of the money you can wait a long time for the spark that this may be it. now as the situation begins to unravel it points to the question of why we got involved in the first place now the markets are already feeling the pain as several international refineries in northern iraq have a back he waited personnel and ron paul an outspoken critic of intervention abroad has said quote because of the government's foolish policy of foreign interventionism the us is faced with two equally stupid choices either poor in resources to prop up an iraqi government that is a close ally with iran or for or throw our support in with al-qaeda in iraq as we did as we have done in syria i say we must follow

a third choice ally with the american people and spend one more dollar or one more life attempting to remake the middle east. now streets around the world in protest of the iraq war but as always we'll be keeping a close eye on how this story shakes out and keeping you updated on the markets reactions. time now for a quick break but stick around because when we return richard heinberg is on the show the senior fellow at the post carbon institute sat down with malt to discuss the practicality of replacing carbon energy with alternative forms of energy plus artes very own abby martin is on the show today the fabulous miss martin is joining me in today's big deal to discuss women in the workplace but before we go here are a look at some other closing numbers of the bell stick around.

economic growth. you're in your. office now right and. what would happen if the republican side. will say to hell with you we're going to follow up brothers in the south are going to follow up others intricate growing up our brothers and grace are going to follow our brothers and sisters all over the world who want to scape it escape hatch and jettison themselves from his awful american a gemini which is based on dollars of curiosity based on money printing from

a bank that's clearly been substantial and on balance. show the united states for once beloved why don't want to be the ramifications of its own policies why should russia or any other country paul break with the united states. because it's in russia's interest to do so not because they want to be nice to to the us but because the the meltdown of the state in iraq. is bad news for all the same. united states do funnily enough have a pretty urgent common interest in stabilizing the situation. welcome

back to the show without the middle east is looking increasingly unstable and that probably means that the price of oil is going to go up to actually way up but given how important carbon based energy is to our economy how realistic are alternative forms of energy to replacing carbon energy to discuss more about this issue and what the future holds i spoke with richard heinberg a senior fellow at the post carbon institute and an expert on energy issues now i first asked him what if we have reached peak oil supplies and what alternative forms of energy are really out there truly here's what he had to say. well there are lots of them. you know there's a long list everything from nuclear to solar and wind and hydro power and geothermal tidal power wave power and i could go on. we've looked at all of those and our analysis suggests that none is likely to replace

fossil fuels specifically oil at least in the transport such a sector any time soon will has a lot of things going for it from just traded. is what yes we could run cars on electricity and in more and more electric cars are coming out all the time. time but you can't run airliners on batteries because the batteries with. the big one never probably never going to have electric airliners are the same problem with eighteen wheel trucks that deliver all the you know food to the supermarkets and products all across the country so are our transport system really is hooked on oil. now do you think the costs are terrible quickly enough to help us perhaps way and. you can actually have to explore or upgrades to the grid when it's very extreme. and. so when wind as

complete has for content and nonrenewable. on the premise of this. track you know. when we got to the clinic that. showed a peak in decline in world industrial output that we're going to be on track for production production. yard what new technologies you have lots of new check. and it. turns. shutting shutting down and i think the. crash of two thousand the. forms of a lout in the central bank well that's created kind of zombie growth that the world is feeding on right now and and it can't go on forever i mean these are extraordinary tactics that are that are still being used by the world's

governments and central banks to maintain the the appearance of growth. looking for a plan b. you know what do we do has growth comes to a halt because it's and it's inevitable you can't continue growing an economy on a finite planet and we're. i mean it scares the heck out of me it's very funny i want to bring you brought back the recession and you know the global economy come back after the great recession so does that say that the economy is resilient and that growth is. right well. yeah the economy has come back on a basis again of these extraordinary measures the u.s. . federal reserve has been injecting. many months up to eighty five billion dollars into the national economy just basically creating that money out of nothing in order to keep interest rates low so that people continue to

borrow money and go out and buy stuff. and it's only worked marginally i mean this is the this is the weakest recovery from a major recession in u.s. history. if you look at. the figures it's true that unemployment has gone down new jobs have been created but that's a large. employment you know people who have given up looking for work are simply not counted. in other or other accounting tricks or herb being used also to highlight the situation from so that we don't really see that we're at a historic turning point in the tragedy use there are things we could be doing just you know down to the. big deal time with one of my very first line of business having martin the host of breaking the set. and i mean infuriating cases from the u.s. lou grant white with seven percent of what white men earn and latino women are

mixed the percent now is now i've even break this glass ceiling even though it should be shot or at least been cracked if you will but why i think. i'm a cordon across and because a lot of people respond i like that's a myth of an intense on the dollar that the thing is it's just it's further it's it's getting promoted and i think with all the various option is there sexualized world that have these pay gaps nor are there so that i can go into those factors really glad that you know a lot of people are or point to the fact that really creates this title more for women who want to balance work personal life this stuff and truth to that maternal instinct purchase career now as you point out it doesn't allude so so here we are living in a society where you know you're chastised if you don't want to have children what do you this this is miserly made that that that doesn't have a sale. and you will lose that chance to get higher and i think that we experience here the not a lot of other european do i mean it's truly

a period and it's scary for all young women and even if at all it's very hard to think about but you know studies have also shown that women aren't typically as aggressive as men when it comes to negotiating their salary. do you think this is true and b. why why why women are absent i think every woman that i know that's in a profession has been. completely sexually harassed and this massage mistaken garment of employer employee relationship by their bosses would have gotten to know it's up to all of terror get out and then you tell someone that like hey this is going on they laugh it off and they're like oh well you know that's just you tube comments or whatever i mean all of these things add up and i think it really makes women feel inferior and not have the gumption or ability to really speak out about these things so they kind of just shrink down as shrinking violet and then of course if you are assertive and you're seen as this be the b. word with a capital b. look at this. men and women differ she quote to maintain their lifestyle for women the number one goal is to quote not become

a financial burden to loved ones so of matters you can merge into this whole market where we're still trying to pick our paradigms are never going to give us it to us unless we say. we're also hearing from if we check out our face for having martin livermore is there advice thank you brought in with you next time job. to try to. meet. this. it's not just a story you will be. if you see the stage. we want you to know all this.

it's vulgarize a sheet of darwin science punishment for an uncommitted cross. the feebleminded still today for the few i don't know why. they're still. genetic improvement through forced sterilization the basic. for nazi ideology they don't stop at just their allies. and now go to the point of death hated for years rarely discussed but till now i'd really rather not talk about that right now . some people say that when it happens at some point in time not a very nice one the curtain goes down. and i was scared what i'd done but i punched her but i didn't understand where i could be when a man with. several of his p.t.o.

to also speak to the children's father. came and controllable people that he could do anything and. why you're crying don't cry i know i'm tired of crying too don't cry. well going into the future to show that you can just bend over fifteen billion euros of filth that says to each one hundred three million degrees we can talk a mark north to south from st petersburg to france we travel in search of the sun. knowledge we've got the future covered. offensive in eastern ukraine

a day off the president promises his troops would soon. no light water or medical supplies in the besieged city of slovyansk the city is on the verge of a cometary. thanks to the nonstop government offensive. a cry for help iraq asked the u.s. to use its air power against isis militants who are locked in fierce battles for the country's vital oil reserves. also this hour a golden low from ukraine in exchange for refuge in the red faced by the russian president during a prank phone call.