and zero profits yet somehow has managed a four point five billion dollar valuation we'll look into some in the right then with the world cup final between germany and argentina happening this sunday in brazil we thought it was only appropriate to bring back sports economist victor thompson victor sat down with me earlier today to discuss what's going to happen to these lower class soccer stadiums post world cup that's the big question and as out today but redacted tonight them sacks in them is sitting down with me in today's big deal to discuss amazon profiting off of your kid in africa is not amazon you want to miss a moment and it all starts right now. with .

no profit no assets no revenue no problem at least it wasn't a problem as of last night for tech start up sync technology but then then the smore name happened now saying stock which is trading on an unregulated over the counter in u.s. exchange captured the attention of market watchers when it soared to an eye popping twenty five thousand percent yes i'm reading that right twenty five thousand percent over the course of a three week period to a peak market cap of more than four billion dollars shares of the bullies based company which is described in filings as a social media enterprise went from ten cents on june seventeenth to a high of twenty one dollars and forty nine cents early thursday morning before falling in the late afternoon and trading at just over thirteen dollars a share by the time markets closed on thursday now sync appears to be presenting itself as a social networking platform associated with the website intro big. dot com

a website that i spent a fair amount of time on today and i still can't quite figure out what exactly it does or it sells but the site says it allows users to both buy and sell the ability to socially connect to individuals such as celebrities business owners and talented professionals and the home page reads quote get a head start on your project or venture by taking advantage of the social connections our social lights have for you now i'm not sure how social views social life are as according to regulatory filings sink posted a one point five million dollars operating loss in two thousand and thirteen and has a single one single employee mr marlin louise sanchez who currently functions as the company's president c.e.o. c.f.o. chief accounting officer director treasure and secretary so spread a little thin now trading was suspended friday morning until july twenty fourth with the securities and exchange commission citing quote concerns regarding the accuracy and adequacy of information in the market place and potentially

manipulative transactions in six common stock. yeah yeah i think that's the same you think maybe possibly now while hearing this story you might have this quick kneejerk reaction to tech bubble but let's be very very clear here this has nothing whatsoever to do with a bubble not this time in my humble opinion this is a classic pump and dump penny stock one with so little volume that only a few trades can scan and send it sky high or plummeting and over the counter stocks have always taken mercurial turns like this and will continue to do so and technically yes all of the shares of this company out up to a multibillion dollar market valuation but in practice that means absolutely nothing if the entire operation proves to be a ghost which i suspect it will prove to be you can bet your bottom dollar that no one is going over four billion bucks but with that said on an otherwise slow summer friday for the markets i do appreciate all the. that sync has opportunities to

think you think. the world cup is wrapping up this weekend germany and argentina face off on sunday in the championship match but we are interested in exploring what might happen to these world class soccer stadiums after the games and victor matheson a sports economist and professor at the college of the holy cross studies the economic impact of mega sporting events now i first asked him how much brazil spent on the world cup and this is what he had to say some pretty interesting stuff and i think you'll find so yourself so that's actually a fairly hard question to answer all of the latest reports suggest that they spent somewhere between eleven and thirteen billion dollars overall and they spent about

four billion dollars on the stadiums alone although there have been reports of the final stadium numbers maybe as high as five or even six billion dollars but you know what you say overall that the social unrest wasn't what we were expecting going into the games well i think there's a real reason for the taxpayers in brazil to be quite upset at some of the spending for example of the stadium in mouse. the stadium in brasilia both of those are stadiums of cost hundreds of millions of dollars in fact the brazilian brazilian stadium is the now the second most expensive soccer stadium in the world of course the problem with that is that there is no team actually to play in brazil you know once the games go so here you have spent nine hundred million dollars in taxpayer money for a stadium that's almost destined to become a litle. it's incredible now can you give me a breakdown of the scholarly research on the long term economic benefits of these

games basically injecting that much money into the economy should have been important and i would think think being the operative word beneficial effect you know well certainly if you've got an economy that's depressed and this is just this would just be normal stimulus spending most economists agree about injecting a bunch of money short term into your economy in a depressed economy can cause increases in the overall output but when you're doing comedy that is growing already what you do is you simply divert resources from one activity to another that doesn't increase your look at your short run economic benefits and stadiums tend to be a very very poor way to get long run economic development they don't tend to be very good neighbors they don't allow you to do other things in the economy this isn't like building an airport that you could use for the world cup with that also used for business afterwards these are stadiums that again in some cases will go almost completely on used and in other cases even the successful stadiums are only

going to be used you know several dozen times a year that's not a very good return on investment and victor you recently wrote an article in a very good article i might add on five thirty eight that discusses some of the problems with the way that brazil actually spent its world cup money ultimately completing only half of the public works projects that had pledged to so you know if you can just touch on but can you give me a more detailed analysis of what happened and what you think the future of those public works projects will be. sure first of all a calmness in general suggests that stadiums are not very good investments however general infrastructure of things like airports communications roads mass transit systems these can all lead to really strong long run economic growth and so originally in the world cup brazil said yes we understand the economic research and we're going to mainly spend our money on other stuff not on stadiums but as all

these stadiums ran behind schedule rather than spend about a fifth of the total money on stadiums they ended up spending about a third of their money on stadiums and they ended up canceling about half of the general infrastructure projects that had been planned so basically what you've got is you've got a games that had half of the long run benefits but at all the costs so again not a very good long run investment for the country i think you said an airport would have been a more beneficial piece of equipment but you know if the economics are so mixed why is there such a fight to host the world cup. well certainly part of the issue is everyone likes to be in the spotlight especially if you're a politician and of course the politicians are the ones making those decisions when the voters get a choice they actually often say you know this is not worth the money and not worth the hassle and this is exactly what we're seeing right now with the winter olympics of the winter olympics in two thousand and twenty two is up for bid and sensually

all of the countries in functioning democracies of all have all withdrawn places like germany and places like sweden norway looks to be the next country to drop out and now we're left with just beijing and cassocks tab places were the voters really don't have much say in whether and where their money is going to go i like how you put that functioning democracies makes it very clear who's interested in his not but now let's move on to the historic last spring hill suffered at the hands of germany that was just i think seven to one so what do you think happened here and statistically did you see this coming so statistically no one saw this coming this is perhaps the most lopsided game and the most unexpected game maybe in the history of the world cup certainly brazil had not lost an important game at home in in nearly fifty years no one had ever lost a semifinal by this amount and no one team playing at home had ever lost

a game by this amount of this was just an epic meltdown you know centrally every possible aspect anyone who saw this coming is either lying or chose to extremely lucky in guessing now i want to ask you how important a role does management style play in steering the team to victory versus raw player telling home was the issue with brazil germany other than what you just said it was in the game was it partially because germany players there actually just better or was it a failure of tactics and strategy on some level as well. well obviously there's a little bit of bad luck there. last fill of up to a a yellow card suspension and a last name are arguably the best player in the world to an injury and injury that probably should have been punished more heavily by the referee in the game of previously but what we really do see here is it's really hard to imagine that brazil the in some in some ways the the heart and soul of soccer in the

world didn't have any better striker after neymar than they did it's it's really quite shocking to believe that resilin all countries in the world was so reliant on just one player that they couldn't find anyone else to fill neymar shoes when he was knocked out of the tournament now ready for we started this interview you mention that you think the smart money is on germany to win and why is that well there's no doubt that that messi almost certainly best player in the world you can argue whether it's him or neymar so argentina's got the best player in the world but the way that germany has played in this tournament it's very hard to see anyone overcoming that again dismantling the host country they opened up the tournament with a four zero win over over christiane or and although and portugal so it's very hard to imagine someone doing better but again at soccer anything can happen on any day

no one expected germany to be brazil seven one so even if the smart money is on germany anything can happen once the referee blows the opening whistle. anything can happen unless you're germany there are sports economist victor madison. time now for a very quick break but stick around because when we return we're bringing you the best of the best from this past week and in today's big deal sam sachs is sitting in for edward harrison sam and i are discussing amazon's lawsuit with the f.t.c. and what it could mean for your digital wallet and he's also telling us about his new show productive tonight plus remember you can see all segments featured in today's show on youtube at youtube dot com plus the best our team and on hulu hulu dot com slash zoom dash but now before we go here are a look at summer closing numbers that the bell seems not included come on back.

as the media leave us so we leave them to be. the same person sure. all your party years ago. their shoes that no one is there still with the guests that you deserve answers from it's all on politics only on our t.v. . this is what we do we kill people and break things. we can see something if simple as people playing a soccer game we can see individual players and we can see the ball. you can almost see is facial expression you can see is a mouth open and crying out. maybe cursed us or maybe he asked. for forgiveness for. there must be near certainty that no civilians will be killed

or in. serious serious of a global basis try to. say that people are going to be going to want to get much more efficient preaching everybody. somehow made no dollar last no weapon at my own life but hey. let's make this society all time. squeezes most elite limits. sometimes for nothing which. is so neat and simple. it's

not just give up the story he's giving jobst if he's safe he stayed eight look if he tests but speech was still. stands. this is about making the business survive. corporations to love more parishioners told the corporations have no feeling. corporations to care about your i mean corporations only care about profit. people come to untouched fortunes and leave massive. to say come on.

we're not going to quit we will not stop until it is done what is more precious music more movie. welcome back now it's the end of the week and that means it's time for our best of the very best segment from this past week now first up we have dennis a gartman of the government letter discussing the latest jobs numbers and why he feels optimistic about the future of the u.s. economy then anthony randolph gives us his take on the b.i.l.'s report and why he disagrees with economist paul krugman believes that policymakers are only looking to the short term and to the detriment of the future of the u.s. economy and professor michael hudson explains the relationship between the housing

bubble and the practice of leveraging up a kid a borrowing to buy that economist and author george magnus comes next he's looking at how china can transition from its massive double digit growth to a place of more sustainable development levels then you swore perseid discusses the strange phenomenon of capital flows from emerging markets to develop markets for us to get the other. around and rounding out our best of the week janet young we england talks about the importance of getting retailers to accept decline as a way to spread it use enjoy. it's not just jobs that i pay attention to i pay attention to what's going through our various sports here in the united states i pay very good attention to what's going on with tax revenues there are many things that i have learned to count upon but but i know this people don't pay taxes on profits they think they're going to make they don't pay taxes on jobs they hope they're going to have they don't pay taxes on money they think they might get people pay taxes on profits that are made hours that are worked and taxes are up to

the federal government and to almost every state government by about eight percent a year that's consistent with the same amount of activity that's going through our various ports i watch the port here in norfolk virginia and year over year we're up about eight percent there's more container ships coming through in both directions exports and imports so quite honestly aaron i'm i'm reasonably optimistic about what the economy is doing i understand that there are all sorts of problems incumbent in the in the non-farm payrolls i know that some of the gold bug folks who have decried the strength of the economy for a long period of time will take issue with this but i'm sorry port activity is up rail activity is up tax revenues are up it's hard to believe that the economy isn't doing anything that getting anything but getting better and yes it was terrible this winter and i do actually believe that the weather was an inducement to a a decline in g.d.p. i don't think that we were actually down two point nine percent i think that was

a goofy number i suspect we're probably closer to down two percent not two point nine but i do think the numbers we're seeing right now are indicative of a stronger economy says is that policymakers are looking short term so they don't care about indebtedness and so they are not worried about how that my how massive amounts of debt my completely mis allocate capital throughout the. me crewman thinks that we should just be looking short term and doesn't worry about debt in the same way that b. i asked so that fundamental difference is where he's going to sort of push back i disagree with kirkman i think that sovereign debt does influence economy i think it does influence festers i think it does influence the way capital is allocated and right now we don't have an economy that's allocating capital towards a robust development of new businesses that are going to be for the twenty first century were much more focused on how to grow the economy in two thousand and fifteen then we are in thinking about what's necessary for the economy to grow in

twenty twenty five and twenty fifty suppose it used to be that people had a homeowner would have thirty percent of their income and they could borrow seventy percent and that limited. according to you know how much could be paid but now by two thousand and seven two thousand and eight people could buy homes about putting any money down at all and the banks didn't even ask for amortization you have to pay off the mortgage in thirty years so the entire rental value either a rental value or if you're all moan or. rental value of a home do you know you can afford to pay all this money to the bank debt service instead of having to pay down the loan and the banks the same time and that got real estate taxes and of the taxes that are left that will cut real estate taxes that leave homeowners in a better position but every time that the real estate tax that just meant that people get

a buyers. that's what's left to borrow even more money from the banks and go even further into debt so nobody really gained it all except for that but to have this discussion with lots of people in china and out of china to you know how they envisage the evolution of the chinese economy is it transitions from don't. growth you know we've had a decade or more in which china has grown at ten or eleven percent per annum and it's now growing at around seven seven and a half and my guess is over the next three or four years it's going to transition into a growth trend that's closer to around four percent but none of us really know to be honest whether that's going to be john you know well managed you know nobody gets hurt kind of way or whether it's going to be more disruptive it will just drop a more violent and i think the problem is that because construction is such

a high proportion of total investment spending and therefore of economic growth that. the danger is not so much that we get a price collapse in china or a banking collapse which is what we had in the west in two thousand and eight two thousand and nine but that you just get a nasty kind of bump in terms of economic growth and the government of china has to basically provide capital for banks and make sure that interest rates you know reduced to levels which in which people won't go bust too quickly so this is something very strange in principle capital survey flowing from the richer countries to the put allowance but the problem is that the poorer countries don't have enough capacity to absolve all of this money coming in and also they don't want to cut and cease to appreciate because if they couldn't see what a pretty shit were just what would happen if capital flowed in that would make their exports less competitive and many emerging markets feel that and having

exports is going to be very important for their growth strategies so they're trying essentially to export capital which is what china has been doing for instance in order to keep that in mindy from appreciating and this is led to these very strange flows of capital but the additional problem is that any time that is turmoil any of it in the world in the u.s. in the euro zone on an emerging markets people on safety and they want safety where do they come. ultimately they come back to the us dollar price of oil actually doesn't matter what matters is the number of merchants that we're seeing bring on big clane as a payment methods now we have mainstream retailers like one eight hundred flowers words. where you can book your travel from your flights to your hotels completely quiet or you know send your mom flowers or gifts and one hundred flowers and i think as you see more merchants adopt it quite then you're going to see consumer confidence rise and then it solves that chicken and egg problem of ok is that

valuable what it is because we're seeing companies accept. that was the best of the very best from this past week time now for today's big deal. deal to end the week with the wonderful mr sound socks joining me ok however though and today sam and i are discussing amazon and the lawsuit with the federal trade commission parallel amazon figured out a way to nab money from you by using your kids not simple so sam can you give me a breakdown what's happening here how are they doing yeah i think you nailed it right there the f.t.c. is basically suing amazon saying they're using children to extract money out of those children's parents and the way they're doing it is arizona offers these apps on there for everything from there to build a smartphone devices everything right there children's games and we know how modern

parenting works usually you hand your child. your phone or whatever and they play games they play apps on all these free apps amazon offers within the apps kids can buy upgrades in the games and when they buy those upgrades they just press buttons and they don't have there's no notification for the parents that their kid is buying stuff on these apps and some parents have found that their kids of racked up hundreds of dollars in fees without them knowing so that's the kind of nexus of this lawsuit here now i want to ask you do you think this is just a technical glitch and an oversight on the part of developers or do you think that there's something nefarious do you think amazon is a brilliant eureka we're going to we're going to add all these little gummy bears for these kids i seriously doubt this was an oversight this goes back to two thousand and twelve the f.t.c. filed a suit there and amazon said ok will will make users punch in a password for larger purchases than for all purchases the thing about it is once you punch in the password the window stays open for an hour and kids can still use that supply and when it comes down to it amazon employee basically said look we

feel that this is a decision that the parents don't need to. you're part of when it comes down to it also apple was busted for doing the same thing by the f.t.c. earlier this year kids using apps to buy stuff without notifying their parents and they paid thirty million dollars back as a result of it so this is a pretty lucrative business model is long as you don't get caught and they got caught and now actually amazon is saying that they'll refund everyone entirely so it's kind of a dumb business model i think of you know then do the right thing just enter the first place they want to draw on with the f.t.c. they're in every business targets kids now to bring to money as little rug rats to kids for me yet now coming home on marketplace seems to be designed to get you to spend as much money as possible big data analysis easy check out suggestive items it all just winds up on your credit card and while this might be great for the company it isn't great for the consumer like we're just discussing but you know what do you think about online marketplace in general do you think all online marketplaces are designed like this you mentioned i tunes and a big fan of guilt and what i like about this sometimes as an exercise i see

something i like i put in the basket and i don't buy it and then i forget that i i wanted it and i feel great it's just a brilliant way but they don't make you buy it so if you like to save money gets in the works for you yeah well look i mean every business models is to separate their consumers from their money i mean that's the way it works and you know it's just the nature of using credit cards and just typing in numbers in the computer if you don't see the money you tend to go easy like you said easy check out things like that makes it all these years and now there's big data analysis which amazon has mastered which gets consumers to buy stuff that they didn't even know that they wanted i mean amazon used to recommend books by human reviewers saying hey you want this book but they realize that if they use big data they got much much higher sales so all of this stuff adds up to. consumers more likely to spend money does that harm the consumer i guess it depends to the consumers if you're some rich guy that can have tons of buy tons of junk on amazon it probably doesn't affect you to marry if you're buying christmas stuff in the west it's on your computer you're

also negatively affect it's a i think it's about idea no matter who you are now. i want to turn right now present have a minute left but i want to talk about productive night which is your new show so tell me what is with action aid what do you cover what are you doing with a giving a lead on what's kind of. political news satire showed every friday watch out. it's you know we got we got much sharper teeth than jon stewart battle where they go. tonight we're going to talk about a range of issues marijuana goes on sale in washington state this week just like it went on colorado at the end of last year going to look at what might happen there and some of the real reasons why marijuana still remains legal in most of the country will take a look at the latest n.s.a. stories from this week and that's the host committee is going to tackle that issue in the other team member john f. o'donnell's looking into drones domestic drones and drones overseas and actually we unleashed him on the streets of washington d.c. to ask people what they thought about drones and you're going to definitely want to

see you want to see it and i have personal norseman it's hysterical it's very funny and you're also minutes but one final question do you think that marijuana is going to go the way of same sex marriage we have a hard rap after this but same sex marriage or do you think big pharma is going to end the way i think big pharma is got a lot of money they're going to make sure to you know all these industries are going to try and make sure that they want to stay is illegal because they make a lot of money off of doing it is just getting the business of marijuana that's another option that's all for now but we love hearing from you so please check out our facebook page facebook dot com slash been star team please tweet us at erin aid at sam sachs that's your that's the handle great having them on as always thank you for watching have an awesome weekend see you next time. israel. rained down on goals a killing civilians including children we hear from those right in the midst of the shelling his family relations between the u.s. and germany reach a new low over spying is kicks out

a top cia official relationship as kim says it's ready for a cease fire meets the families devastated by all me every. one of the media turns a blind eye to get its own not see. yes. people. is the one to level the banks or the other way what currency to. put the people have spoken. of the. toxic games krypto boyan is the one to put before you start. right. first street. and i think the true. reformers. instrument.

the. international pressure to continue its strikes on gaza meanwhile the death also passes one hundred twenty palestinians mostly civilians. jadis militants in syria and iraq recruit a fresh army of volunteers. reportedly collects a million dollars a day from selling captured oil and. supplies extra stop on his tour of latin america showing up in the. for a fruitful day of talks with the castro brothers in havana.