sources has warned the seven energy companies that operate the sites that they may have been injecting waste water that can include toxic and sometimes radioactive liquid into offers that are used for fresh drinking water because california has been facing a drought crisis many farmers are tapping deeper into underground aquifers to cope the state says it has no direct evidence the drinking water has been affected but the investigation to confirm that could take a year to complete and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our website r t dot com u.s.a. follow me on twitter at amir at david make sure to let me know what you think we should cover for now have a great night thanks for watching i'm happy martin the stories we cover here we're not going to hear any right other big stories that have struck out while some talk there's

a reason they don't want you do not. want to. know let's break the set. little ugly. little her. perch her.

loaf. lol lol. lol lol little. clearer lol. lol lol. lol. crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. a little lift. i'm abby martin the stories we cover here are not going to hear any rights of our big story . talkers a reason they don't want to deny all. that. now let's break the

set. ten i marinate this is boom bust and these are some of the stories that we're tracking for you today. first up is this some prime auto loan and the new subprime home loan well sadly all signs point to yes so what can we do to make sure that this bubble doesn't and like the last one we'll discuss coming right out and dr steve keen is on the show the heterodox economist sat down with me earlier today to talk about the b. i asked report among other things and today's big deal i'm joined by the host of the big picture here on our team mr hartman tom and i are discussing mergers and monopolies i won't want to miss the moment it all starts right now.

with. the prime mortgages those are so two thousand eight but subprime auto loans those those are very in fashion right now now in the five years since the aftermath of the financial crisis although loans to people with tainted credit have risen more than one hundred thirty percent last year roughly one in four new auto loans went to borrowers with subprime credit that's people with credit scores below six forty now much like the subprime mortgage leading up to the crisis many subprime auto loans are bundled into complex bonds and sold as securities by banks to insurance companies mutual funds and public pension funds this process by design creates

a greater demand for these the less than optimal malone's now the silver lining this time around though is that the size of these subprime auto marc. it is a fraction of what the subprime mortgage market was at its peak and its eventual implosion won't have the same consequences as its predecessors however with that said the volume of subprime all of those increases left roughly fifteen percent in only the first quarter of this year to over one hundred forty five billion dollars however this time around lenders insist that the risks aren't as great they claim they've heeded the lessons from the mortgage crisis pointing out that historically losses on securities made up of auto loans have been low even during the crisis and auto loans are very different from home loans a car can be quickly repossessed while a foreclosed home can wended sway through the courts for years and years but in a clear sign of trouble on the horizon auto repossessions have increased nearly seventy eight percent in the first quarter of this year as

a result crow some rating agencies are starting to question the quality of the loans backing those securities and warn of losses that investors could suffer if the bonds start to go bad and if those losses materialize they could affect a wide range of investors from pension funds to insurance companies to mutual funds bottom line subprime is just what it sounds like bolo prime and the good news here if there is any i should mention is that the subprime auto loan trend isn't likely to take as big a bite out of the planet's financial stability as the subprime mortgage trended but let this be a warning if it looks bad smells bad and if the name implies that it is bad it's probably about. the latest bank of international settlements make

a strong case against the current path of monetary policy it basically warns that ultra ultra easy monetary policy can lead to financial instability were. could possibly lead to another crisis so i want to hear from heterodox economist dr steve keen to see what he thinks of the b.a.'s report now in january two thousand and thirteen the b i asked released a paper called the financial cycle and macro economics what have we learnt in which they called for the standard modeling format the d.s. g e model i asked keen to break down what all this means in layman's terms here's what he had thought. to well the dia stream models of the current fad in can mainstream economics and these by the way they continue calling each of the models general equilibrium but if you look back to a model and not in sixty eight there is virtually no resemblance to what they do these days the only thing that is consistent is they continue with the myth that the economy is always either in or very near equilibrium and if it is to go back to

it again the current ones these so-called dynamics to cast in general they could have been models assume that the colony can be represented by forward looking individual and sometimes they are individuals in there but they're all this capacity to look into the future and they know what they expect that income streams are going to be for the indefinite future and they therefore know what they do with that what they consumption should be to maximise the utility of that consumption strained out of that income stream and then so they're on this not smooth pos towards future equilibrium a future point of bliss that was first told in the articles from which this stuff evolved written back in the not in twenty's and then they get new information read some shit they call economists call them shocks that come in from the outside like a shot from the financial sector which of course ninety nine point nine percent the planet regards as part of the economy but you can only theory makes it outside the economy social comes in that changes what your expected future income stream is going to be and you instantly if you're

a what they call the freshwater economist or the new classical instantly jump to the new optimal path towards the future or if you're a new kinds you know. or as paul krugman calls them you gradually get to the new optimum with a few adjustments over time and those movements or the how they explain the tried sokal now it is to me absolutely ludicrous that that's what they do because in so doing until this last most recent process they ignored the existence of banks debt and money as well as presuming the economy was in complete equilibrium well with that sort of mindset it's no wonder they didn't see this process coming and they also don't know why it's ended now states that are stand up to be i asked was saying that you know we need a long term holistic perspective than the standard macro economic model of today can offer is that correct. oh yeah i mean what the b. ice of it was very strongly influenced by its research director bill watch until his return. from the the i.s.u. still very active in economic policy around the world but bill was writing papers

on home and minsky's perspective very much like i was writing out i'd read the ice papers and think i could have written this i was quite stunned. that was an awareness of the fact that the economy is driven by its sokal to begin with it's driven by people having euphoric expectations about the future bank state and money integral and that vision is still want to be honest research center is saying we should have a vision like that which sees the economy as the rough and tumble credit driven unstable system we actually live in rather than this mythical world of the conventional near classical columnists now let's fast forward to just this past month maybe i asked cause quite a stir thing basically the same thing but this time they said the fed and other central banks just didn't really get it so what this dustup all about in your view well i think the b. i s. in the bank of england the two organizations in a similar way i think saying we have to think about the world as

a creditor of an system the federal reserve and most other central banks around the world still dominated by mainstream thinkers who believe that you can't model the economy unless you use this to on a mix to cast a general equilibrium framework so that the ice is basically sending out a wake up call very much like the bank of england did with its statement about the money supply being created by banks creating lines again that's something which anybody working in banking and most ordinary people understand implicitly it's only economists you can't see that it matters now i understand the bill why it was a devoted prime in minsky's financial instability hypothesis so can you explain to me how that's relevant to the b i asked argument against fed policy well the some some of the be actually contradictory a bit to get that out of the why straight away the part of the argument i've been putting on a. i think this reflects the different competing strands and saw the boss itself are in favor of austerity now that's exactly the opposite of the argument that holman minsky made about the financial costs like on with being through minsky's

argument was always that the capitalism is inherently sokal the profit did leave us up the cycle and leaves it down as well and he said if you look just at the private sector you could easily collapse into a total debt deflation what the government needs to do is to spend in the opposite direction so when the private sector has got itself into a debt trap the government spends more spends more than a taxes giving a cash flow to firms that lets them repay that debt and then get out of the socket so you still get a saw you get out of the slump you still have the sokal but you don't have a collapse into a black hole so that that's very relevant to what we've been going through right now and it's contradicts what's being done by the european union which has actually turned the downturn the into a great depression for the southern european states it supports what the american government did by default when the cross was first hit of massive spending cash for clunkers and all those sorts of things which were simply injecting money into the economy to make up for the fact that the private sector by delivering was taking

money out of the economy so this was extremely relevant minsky's vision i think is the only one that makes sense and bill why it was a great champion of minsky in the in the face of quite hostile responses from greenspan pushing that you shouldn't even listen to bill watch and you shouldn't listen to minsky well we should if we'd actually being intelligent beings are going to learn from what we've been through we could be but icing on models on minsky now the trouble is because we've got through the crosses a largely because of that government rescue the going back into the old conventional ways of thinking again is a nothing even happened. now my colleague ed harris then has been arguing that monetary policy is wholly inadequate as a vehicle for steering of the macro economy now he says that's because it works through a credit channels and by nature it creates this risk of financial and. what's your view on this well i agree with that completely that the fiscal side of the economy is what matters and again this is where we're stuck with the impact of this

conventional mainstream economic thinking dynamics to casting generally equilibrium models only have a role for monetary policy the the the magic wall that's built into those models is they got them at that the federal reserve can work out what the optimal interest right should be and put the interest right up. there when inflation is going up put it down twice as fast as inflation when inflation is falling and that's all you need to make the the the magic carpet rawdon austin smith and that's the vision they had now that lift the government sector completely out of it and says that fiscal policy only makes things worse wrong and this is what the empirical experience in american chawner is well my own excursion trio when the script process hit the fiscal stimulus that was pumped in by those countries and of course the american was that if you know a huge stimulus that's what stopped the cross' getting any with the fiscal policy which is the way the government creates money that's what you need to balance out

of the cross'. that was dr steve king head of the school of economics and history and politics school economic history and politics not all three i can spin university in london. we love king but nothing is wanted all the time not for a very quick break but stick around because when we return dr barry eichengreen is on the program dr eichengreen is professor of macro economics and political science at berkeley and he sat down with me to discuss the international monetary system you won't want to miss that yet say either that in today's big deal tom hartman is sitting down with me to discuss monopolies and mergers all things the rand and remember you can see all five and featured in today's show on youtube at youtube dot com slash them both starkey and on hulu at hulu dot com slash boom dash but now before we go to break here are some your closing numbers of the bell.

world. technology innovation all the developments around russia. the future are covered. welcome back to the show now in the midst of increased risk in the markets both from increasing tensions in ukraine and the recognition the conflict in gaza

financial markets might become destabilized and lead to larger global economic consequences earlier i spoke to dr barry eichengreen professor of macro economics and political science at the university of california berkeley about the role the federal reserve plays in maintaining financial stability we discussed capital controls the eurozone and debt for equity swaps but i first started the conversation by asking him what else needs to happen before china adopts a more important role in the international monetary system here's what he had to say. i think what has to happen is that people have to gain confidence in a. converted billet in the stability of china's currency i think there are real questions about chinese growth going forward there are questions about what problems may be lurking in the shadow banking system in china those problems have to be cleaned up over time china will have to move toward

a more flexible exchange rate so it can open its financial markets to the rest of the world and it will have to do institutional reform like making its central bank the people's bank of china independent from politics so that investors are confident about a political made sure of chinese monetary policy. now former fed official germany's diet is intimately associated with the view that monetary policy could change due to concerns about financial stability so do you believe some troll banks should be any less aggressive in pursuit of full employment when financial stability concerns are so high. we learned from the financial crisis about the greenspan doctrine that you ignore financial and financial problems potential financial instability bubbles and concentrate on cleaning up after the fact simply

doesn't work that the costs of cleaning up are too high so i think central banks have to worry about financial instability and bubbles before the fact and they have to do something about it the question is what to do. i think the worst of the available alternatives is to raise interest rates prematurely and stifle economic recovery and growth better is to use regulatory instruments to do what the . new zealand authorities did for example in clamping down on frothiness in the housing market by raising the regulatory loan to value ratios so janet yellen chair yellen last week pushed back against the idea that the fed should raise interest rates now because the spine actual markets are frothy and i agree with her what the fed should be doing is putting on its hat as

regulator and clamping down on on excesses in financial markets using regulatory instruments so one of the fed or any central banks best tools as a regulator in promoting financial stability. well central banks can adjust capital requirements for banks the own funds that banks have to hold they can adjust liquidity requirements for banks. the amount of liquid funds banks have to hold they can address problems in particular markets housing like i mentioned a moment ago by adjusting rate regulations there i think those are much more subtle and nuanced instruments them simply raising interest rates which is like crying to break an egg on top of a glass table with

a sledgehammer. yet never easy now oh you know what i want to ask you on the financial stability front iceland is removing the capital controls that implemented during the crisis and these controls have been very very helpful but are countries there do you think capital controls will play a larger role in the future in promoting financial stability yes or no well i think they will be part of the regulators toolkit going forward so brazil is another example of a country that without a financial crisis. has tightened and loosened its capital controls in response to surges and then. inflows and outflows of capital i think it is and it's a better example than iceland which had no choice but to slap on controls in response to a major banking and financial crisis but countries like brazil have shown us it can

be done and i think it well that's positive and something to look forward to and a lot of unpleasant times i want to ask you the eurozone crisis has died down but what needs to happen on the monetary front and elsewhere to ensure that the crisis does not return. well the eurozone crisis is now i think in the chronic phase rather than the acute phase the specter of the eurozone collapse is off the table but i think turbulence can be back and will be back in the future. debts where they are unsustainable need to be restructured banks where they are under capitalized need to be forced to raise new capital there has been lip service about doing that in europe but remarkably little action so far most important i think is to get economic growth going again and to sustain that growth europe can

grow out of its problems growth heals a lot of wounds it can solidify political support for the european project so to get growth going i think there has to be more support from the e.c.b. which has signaled that it spread paired to do a little bit more i think it needs to do a lot more quantitative easing. a lot of the united states in other words. the europeans are relaxing their austerity measures a little bit i think that will work if they clear away their inherited debt overhangs and other than in greece where there was a debt restructuring that has yet to be done so basically you think it is that ken rogoff does that further restructuring in the eurozone is inevitable but basically one death for equity swaps the one way to conduct that restructuring in your opinion. i think that for equity swaps are ideally suited for european countries

like greece and portugal where there is a lot of public property that needs to be privatized and a lot of public debt that can be converted into claims on those ports and. airport set in and other. public lands and the like so i've been arguing for that for some time now in greece that what was done in two thousand and twelve was a simple plain vanilla debt swap old bonds for new bonds better than nothing but i think that for equity swaps would be a more creative way and more effective way to proceed. that was dr barry eichengreen professor of macro economics and political science at the university of california berkeley time now for today's big deal.

take your time with the wonderful mr tom hartman joining us today very excited to have your tom thank you host of the big picture here on r.t. and today we are discussing mergers and monopolies of telecom and what that means for net neutrality now two mega-mergers are currently under review the first is between comcast and time warner cable and the other is between eighteen t. and direc t.v. now time reports that a senate hearing last week quote comcast nine hundred eighty argued that massive consolidation in the telecom industry is good for consumers good for innovation and good for the free market they warn that if the government does not allow the mergers to go through incumbent telecom companies would no longer be able to invest in basic internet infrastructure leaving consumers to pay more for fewer internet and t.v. options so tom what do you think about this argument of consolidation is it is it

good for consumers and good for innovation or is this just kind of a cyclical argument here that argument is the exact opposite i mean it's just it's it's just of a fundamental blatant lie if if you live in canada right now whether you have a piece of copper coming in your house or telephone wires with you have a cable coming in your house for the fiber coming to your house you can choose from one hundred different companies to be there and service providers because because they you know the consolidations were not allowed and and these companies can all compete you know they get that whoever has the pipe has to run it out to the right areas competitors we've chosen not to do that the united states this is a thirty four year trend ever since in eighty two reagan stopped in force in the sherman act and our companies have just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and in the process they've crowded out in semblance of calm to. it's sad to think that there's absolutely no efficiencies to be gained in all these mergers you know that all this kind of integration that you see there's nothing to gain from it or there's prompt profound efficiency for the company there's profound efficiency for

the c.e.o.'s and a moderate efficiency for the stockholders but the question you have to ask is why do we allow business why do we have business in the united states why did we start the laws in the first place to give people live in a limited liability if they incorporate all these other things the reason why is because presumably that behavior is going to be good for society it's going to be good for our country and back in one thousand nine hundred one we you know senator sherman for a while said hey wait a minute you know what john rockefeller is doing what in oil what the what carnegie is doing in steel these guys create these giant trusts these you know this is not good for the society for it's not good for america they passed the sherman antitrust law and we now we've had a thirty four year of experiment of going back to the eight hundred seventy s. the eight hundred eighty s. to see well gee how does that work and guess what we're really living in the gilded age perhaps the sherman antitrust law was so bad first time around yeah now bloomberg reports that jeff at bukit the c.e.o. of time warner cable would reap upwards of seventy nine million dollars if there

was any change in control of time warner cable so if that it's in the he isn't necessarily you know disinterested in this whole merger he's going to get a huge payout so what's your take on incentive based seen the heads of these companies i mean they seem structured as though yes take the company with murdoch i'd like to think to make eighty million this year oh yeah they always are and once again the big winners and in mega-mergers are the banks that are doing them brace typically that they're done huge debt which in the over the long run hurts the stockholders and the c.e.o.'s. i hate to go back to reagan so frequently but it prior to eighty four i think it was eighty five it was against the law to compensate c.e.o.'s of anything other than a paycheck which was subject to full regular income tax and the and because everybody understood that a c.e.o. is responsible to the. unity to the stockholders to the company itself is an institution right and to the employees there are four constituencies in addition to himself. the theory that was put forward by steve forbes and others like him was

that the c.e.o.'s really should just be representing the stockholders so let's make it so that they can be paid with stuff and it'll cause them to behave in a way that only works for stockholders which we've been seeing now for thirty years and it's and it doesn't even work well for stockholders only works well for short term stockholders it works for gamblers it's a failed experiment so you know media consolidation has been getting more and more prominent we've seen more of it in recent years do you think that there's no turning back we're only going to see bear conglomerates now we only have thirty seconds but i must take until or unless the economy really genuinely crashes really you know i think that what we're creating is this giant tower that's getting heavier and heavier at the top and. i expect a really significant crash i think coming out of that will go will say well what's worked in the past and right now senator sherman wasn't so crazy twenty sixteen like your book check out the great book by the way tom thank you as always that's all for now and we love hearing from you here on boom bust and please check out our facebook page facebook dot com flashman best our team and please tweet out us at

any rate at thom hartmann from all of us here at the best thank you for watching with you next time bright. but. i would like to do if you did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy albus. role. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the quote for the takeover of our government and across several that we've been a hydrogen ally handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers. i'm tom market and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on on wall we go beyond identifying the problem. rational debate real discussion critical issues facing define

ready to join the movement then walk. on larry king the dalai lama the spiritual leader on his recent meeting with president obama she. very much of the sort of support my view of approach to seeking separation but remains to be seen to be with china discussing global issues i think you do senshi like essential why didn't you use force even speak now and. plus do you think we will ever see those female dalai lama yes. there's a lot of wasn't all next on larry king now.