ability payments or medical help even though the registries only been out a few weeks already about ten thousand that haven't been able to register due to technicalities or system glitches but worse than that the v.a.'s website denied that exposure to burn pits can cause long term health problems just like they denied agent orange caused health problems in other words the us government's refusal to care for veterans exposed to burn pits mirrors it's for fusil to care for veterans exposed to agent orange and that's why the google search burn pits and agent orange now return so many hits government officials that are in advocates and journalists all around the globe are all starting to see afghan burn pits being president obama's version of agent orange level disregard for his soldier's health if obama is smart he'll do what he can to right this wrong immediately but chances

are he won't learn from history he'll just repeat it tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the rest of them. i'm happy martin the stories we cover here knocking here in the right story the extreme headlines saying there's a reason they don't want you to know about you know are you going to tell you don't raise that we don't think we know let's break the set. we welcome aaron nate and abby martin to be terrific hosts on the our team network

. it's going to give you a different perspective give you one stock tip never i'll give you the information you make the decision to me about how breaking the set works in the mind it's a revolution of ideas and consciousness and frustrated with the system extremely apologists who would be described as angry i think in a strong enough or single. no there i'm marinating this is boom bust and these are some of the stories that we're tracking for you today. first up the land of polo ponies the tango and many other things is dancing with another default now argentina has until wednesday to pay its bondholders and we're looking into the likelihood of this actually happening then patrick byrne is on the program today the c.e.o. of overstock dot com sat down with me earlier to discuss what's more important in

terms of points except in the retelling or the consumer and in today's big deal edward harris and i are discussing who burned air b.n. b. corporate expansion and the fundamental value of these companies and i'll start right now. with. our lead story today argentina now the land of polo ponies well done carnegie and tango is dancing with another i just love that line now argentina has until wednesday to make an interest payment to bondholders or will officially default for the second time in thirteen years argentina claims it's willing to pay bondholders

who agreed to take less than thirty cents on the dollar in a debt restructuring after its two thousand and one fault but federal judge thomas agree has said that argentina can not pay those bondholders without also paying so-called holdout bondholders who have refused to accept the thirty cents on the dollar offer and have won a series of u.s. court cases against argentina now as of right now when i was there is refusing to pay the holdouts so what's the. worst case and the best case scenario in this whole calamity well the worst case scenario and the most likely outcome president cristina kirshner's government will in fact a false in fact kirshner's government has spent months running public campaigns vilifying the holdouts and calling judge greer andie u.s. judicial system corrupt which takes a lot of nerve especially coming from a country that has no problem trampling on property rights now i'm not saying that the u.s. courts have any real right to force argentina to pay its holdouts but argentina's

argument for failing to negotiate is flimsy at best and i mean very best argentina says that the amount owed is too arduous and that it would have to slash its foreign exchange reserves however the country risks. others and claims with repsol and the paris club of creditors with little impact on reserves by issuing new bonds or stretching out payments so here's the question what's the best case scenario sadly i don't think that there is a best case scenario here but we'll have to wait and see what happens tomorrow. because. puerto rico has been facing some serious fiscal problems to to the point that they've been considering legalizing

marijuana and prostitution yeah that's on the list of possibilities but to get an update on puerto rico's finances and the state of new knee land i spoke to kate long kate is an expert on the municipal bond market and the founder of the puerto rico clearinghouse i first started our conversation by asking her about the macro outlook of puerto rico now i wanted to know how the government was doing in terms of spending and the tax receipts here's what you had to say. the git or the just call your injun gene therapy days were short about four hundred million dollars on a tax hike from what their projections where they juggled the economy a little bit in kind of brought that down but they're still struggling to have a new budget in place for twenty fifteen which i want and they're hoping to debts that balanced budget but that means they need to bring expenses generate a billion dollars about a nine and a half billion dollar base and how is the real economy in puerto rico in terms of

employment and economic growth. there's still palen water struggling they're downsizing the government which is the primary employer in the in the island so as they shed jobs there they're hoping to make it up and they have been making up some of the private sector but it's pretty much a net. and net loss a small net loss for them in terms of jobs and there's not it's not easy for them to attract new business there because you know corporations have to relocate and set up a new business but they're trying very hard to doing everything they can. now kate since we last spoke a big deal in terms of municipal finances is the ring fence that puerto rico put around its public corporation debt jim so can you break down what puerto rico did and what significance it has. absolutely i think i'm the one that came up with the term ringfence. so i'm june twenty eighth in one day the puerto rico legislature

introduced and passed it called the next seventy one or the recovery act in what ted does is it gives a certain legal framework to some of the public corporations of comparator government to restructure its debt to go through two processes first is consentual process with bondholders and other creditors that everyone is supposed to sit down and come to some kind of agreement about how they will restructure their debts or the loans that they've made to the corporation and if that doesn't work we're tricare is basically a very small amount of approval less than forty percent of the creditors to approve it which is very low but if sacrifices doesn't work it would move to a litigation of a court based process where. the public corporation would lay out what their liabilities are and then work with the judge in the court setting to restructure

those we believe. puerto rico clearinghouse and others are attorneys in then some of the litigants here that that x. seventeen when the recovery act is not constitutional and there's the possibility the federal court will strike it down. so this move effectively makes these public corporations stand on their own it forces them to be self-sufficient if you will so the demise of one public corporation doesn't contaminate the finances of others is how i see it or of puerto rico geo bonds is that correct. that's actually ray and jim point to recognize these public corporations or sensual services in puerto rico primary when you just question is predator which is the electric been up early and obviously you can't take out electric monopoly or let creditors take over that's an essential function terrorist of the government and the people another one is the water system process and then a third is the highway in transportation authority which are the roads so these are all essential you know services infrastructure of the government and you know what

they have to stay under the control of the government or some quite as a regular regulatory form now after puerto rico governor always controversy a pretty you signed the ring fence into law s. and p. and moody's both immediately put puerto rico's general obligation bonds on credit watch so why would they do this if the g.a.o. bonds are ringfence from the public corporations i mean do you bonds now have less tax revenue to conservative them after this move by puerto rico no actually they have more because before the signing of the law or more importantly before the decision on the part of the government that they wouldn't subsidize the electric monopoly in the water monopoly they were paying the general fund was paying about eight hundred million dollars a year to subsidize these public corporations and the decision on the part of the government and large part of how they're balancing the budget this year is to say no more money to subsidize the water system electric system the general i'm

a geisha bind have rallied pretty much since the law was passed the immediately went down but they rallied back to the point they were before the lowest put in place now the march madness of a bond deal by puerto rico was the largest high yield muni deal ever anneke puerto rico much needed cash but how do these bonds trading in light of recent how are these bonds trading in light of recent developments. you know it's very interesting i've been watching them some of closely is that they're starting to trade on a two tier basis and what we see is and we had talked about this last time we were together which is that the hedge funds who come in you know are playing very actively in this credit now in this. for general of creation binds in so big blocks plus five hundred million dollar blocks of the bonds are trading at a higher price and the smaller blocks of bonds which is very unusual typically it's

the other way around which is shows you that there's a premium that you have these big players in the general abrogation that they're very interested you know need them so it's there's a lot of moving pieces but i think that the basically the ring fencing is work where we're seeing yield differentials between those bonds that are protected under this legislation in those bonds that are not. now many believe puerto rico's debt crisis is headed for us style bankruptcy resolution making painful losses inevitable for investors of twenty billion dollars in bonds issued by puerto rico's highway water and electric authority so do you think we're going to see default here. well it just definitely i mean it restructures a default and. basically i mean if you don't just look at the electric utility it's not sustainable the electric rates are extremely high we talked about this before too how the electric rates around twenty eight cents a kilowatt in puerto rico and here in the mainland they average around twelve cents

a kilo so it's just crippling really to the economy and even if you wanted to attract business it's very high with these high letter grades so they underline absent the electric monopoly in the water west of the water monopoly in the highways they just have too much debt in they need new investment which you can't do when you have all that debt in this process has to happen one way or another just unclear and under what legal framework it will have. that was municipal bond market expert on. time now for a quick break but stick around because when we return overstock c.e.o. patrick byrne is on the program now his company was one of the first major retailers to accept big point and he's giving us an update on how the big point platform is working at overstock and in today's big deal edward harris and i are talking about hoover air b.n. b.

and corporate expansion plus remember you can see all segments featured in today's show on you tube and you tube dot com plus the bus dirty and on hulu at hulu dot com slash zoom. now before we go here are a look at some air closing numbers of the bell come on back at us. well. it's technology innovation all the least of melanin still around russia we've got the future covered.

i would rather as questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question lol. well forgotten right now it's the classic chicken or egg story if bitcoin has already become a viable currency should the community focus on getting more big questions into the pockets of the people who use it or convincing retailers to accept them to get

a sense of the challenges and issues around accepting decline as payment i spoke to overstock c.e.o. patrick byrne about his company's experience with overstock was one of the first major internet retailers to accept declines and i began our conversation by asking him about what kind of transactional volume and be quite his company has seen since accepting the cryptocurrency take a look what he had to say. i think since really now instead it's a quarter of one percent of sales just the last calculation a solid twenty four hundreds of one percent of sales so you're a quarter one percent on a billion dollar company that bodes well but it is excel or even i mean in general the secular level opens. now in terms of other retailers who want to take big ones what kind of operational hiccups have you had that you think can be avoided in other companies. it's been surprisingly seamless and smooth we integrated with coin because there are other companies i shouldn't like big pay and clone

a poll among them the integration that our team about eight days make probably of course base probably got it down even tighter than not so the integration is very seamless since it's. i mean it's it hasn't had a hiccup since we started and it's really the we integrated all kinds of different payment systems but this is the first i can think of where there's just been no hiccups at all once once you integrate it it's just it's just beautiful we've even got our customer service agents are now able to issue refunds in bitcoin that was a lot of a month or so ago and then another all give you some breaking news or all give you the first look at some of those in about a month or six weeks we'll be introducing into our international platform so our international viewers including those russia will be able to shop on our site and pay in bitcoin well thank you for that bit of breaking news now like you mentioned you've been working with point but have there been any new innovations implemented

by coyne both in the past couple months that you've benefited from prepayment that overstock. not that i'm aware of or think they're a fluke a cent from what i understand it so it's been a lot on the wall so they offer a wallet to consumers and i think that they're focusing on that side of it as well or they're focusing on that sort of primarily from what i hear but there's really not anything we need from them is no new innovations we're we're looking for someone with some point hope somebody creates a derivatives market recall and so we can hedge our risk that way but we're not really looking for anything else from current basics when we have kind of all we need from them are you at all surprised by the adoption rate of decline by retailers and what do you think accounts for the uptick and big quaint acceptance by merchants. well we like to think that we had that we broke the ice i think the fact the biggest before we announced that we were taking about the biggest merchant was i think about a million dollars that was taken because i mean so by us doing this we see them

going you know finding a ten million dollar one hundred million dollar billion dollar merchants were billion and a half dollar merchant and i think we still like to think we saved them about four or five years of the revolution and then once we did it it kind of forces other people's hands other lawrence merchants like new way like. well dish t.v. . i like to think that we put it on the map but my expectation was assumes we don't you're going to see a lot of other people maybe just out of an attempt to get the p.r. we got to be although we didn't do it for p.r. we're there for philosophical to return reasons you know but now that we've broken another has broken into the billion dollar event or more and i think it's just a matter of time before the other or the other dominoes fall project as a retailer what's more important in terms of platform acceptance for new payment platform retailers or users. well it's

a chicken and egg thing. in wall street they have a saying liquidity begets liquidity once you have people coming in and buy on or selling at a place you have network effects what made even to take off and work so now you can't really have the merchants don't want to sign up that's where the consumers do it consumers don't have any sign of where the merchants to source chicken egg. once it gets spinning as a spin and now it tends to explode very quickly i think that you may even see the pace of adoption in kreutz from here until we get from a quarter of one percent up to a more significant percentage of share of sales across the world and this isn't just us from amman i think this will slow cross the world and we've broken through that tipping point. now in the financial blogosphere there has been some talk about using decline as a test case for government created. so first do you see something like that

happening and second do you think government has a role in encouraging at all. that's a funny question it's a smart question i say reminds me of dorothy parker said when she heard here's the one she heard she said that what you hear is the two people collaborated to write a book it always made her sound to her like it's hearing of three people collaborating to make a baby just don't i don't i don't know what the third person does pull similar if you've got to eat her and see don't know what that's limited by the rules of mathematics like her by you know critical like kirk occurrences are not sure what the role of government it is doesn't you don't it's like needing three people to make a baby what's they don't need the government currency is a mechanism for humans to communicate information to each other price community and prices are little packets of information about scarcity and value and i don't know

what you need that other party for when when we actually hew well you don't need the other institutions when you've got an institutional it lets humans interact directly they like that that's really all to me what crypto currency is so subversive towards authoritarian states slowed frankly like russia and one russia has outlawed it outlawed big calling exchanges because it's ultimately very subversive technology towards all authoritarian regimes and it is now patrick you've been quoted as saying the federal reserve is like a tumor in america you cut it out you don't replace it with anything and that you think decline enables one to simply check out of the whole federal reserve system so here's my question is that really true today though and what i basically mean is are you speaking literally or figuratively when you say that. well. first i should mention i was quoting a great economist thomas soul who described federal reserve as a cancer that should be cut out and somebody said to him well what do you mean well

what do you replace it with then he said that's what it sounds like a tumor when you cut it to you know replace it with and i don't mean it's literally a tumor it's it's a it's it is a metaphor. and. i'm sorry what was the second part of the question what happens how it yes do you think it's really true today that one can check out of the whole thing down it it seems like that's not possible on some level well not yet you have to pay your taxes and dollars big corn isn't leaving tender yet not that's one of the ways that governments protect the monopolies is their seniority is what it really has a right to clutch is they make it their currency the legal tender to pay taxes you can't do that yet but you can pretty much buy everything you need at overstock we're introducing more and more food products. and there's a lot of things you can't buy yet with bitcoin but as you buy more expiate will convert more and more to bitcoin that creates more incentive for people selling other products products such as housing or gasoline to start accepting bitcoin and

so again the pitch virtual circles spend up. that was overstocked c.e.o. patrick byrne time now for today's big deal. time with the wonderful we're here and today we are discussing air b.n. b. corporate expansion and the fundamental value of these companies now it was announced tuesday that air b.n. b. and are planning to target business travelers and the business community so edward what's going on here what can you tell me about this and why are they going after business consumers well. to your for your second question i think they're going to business consumers because that's where the money is basically you know when it comes to pay more business customers always are going to be able to pay more so

when you want to build your brand in your market unless you get volume out of the consumer definitely you want to go with the business stuff and while they're doing it another thing i think that's really interesting and actually good about the way they're going about this is you know the integration into how expenses are made and so forth if you think about like american express in terms of business consumers the reason american express is so integrated in is because they make it so easy to expense you know they have the reports etc and so forth so they they're working with a third party to make it so that they can have your travel expenses can go directly into your business expense forms and it is this also because you know business travelers they obviously spend more money because on a corporate account and if there's only a small pool of individuals who can fly business on their personal buy or and it just seems like a larger pool to dive in is that where they're doing that they're doing it because again you know like if you have to go somewhere you must do it then you're going to

pay the full price airlines with business customers and so forth or even hotels with business. customers want to have their energy you know they wanted to be at a certain location they need to leave at a certain time there's no if ands or buts and they're willing to pay the price to do that and therefore you're going to get the highest margin from for that reason and the same thing goes with surge pricing if. who's going to pay surge pricing business customers are going to look if you've got to get to a meeting to close a deal you're going to pay whatever it costs to get to that meeting now there is still plenty of skepticism surrounding air b.n. b. expansion specifically when it comes to safety and security both in and out of the country now edward we've talked about some creepy experiences with you and i'm sure there exist with a long left we're not going to throw her under the bus because i'm a big fan of her but you know with drivers coming after passengers or speed

a little too creepy so here's the question i would think with business travel there's a heightened. problematics that you the illegal issues that could come out of you know any sort of harassment any sort of traffic jam and you sort of traffic accident how are they going to combat that in terms of insurance you know the question almost i mean personally i think if it's a personal issue they have someone picking you up at your house or they see where you're going to your friends house or whatever that's more sort of intrusive personal like if you're a business traveler you just traveling from the airport to your hotel or whatever i mean what could really happen in the accident which could happen if you were. going to the office and look up in the air you see everybody. check it out very funny about business travel now on the other side there's clients and you have this security and control that's going on here but you know why cater to business

clients if there are these security control issues you said that you think they're less but could it possibly be that this is going to be much greater because you're dealing with massive corporations that can see you out of business who are well maybe. if you have an eighty billion dollars but like generally can sue you out of business i would think that would be something that you have to add to the equation when they're your they're your customer your client so they're not going to sue you out of business in the sense that they're only going to go to another vendor if necessary but the great thing about it for. perspective is that it gives. into the regulatory space meaning if you have these big companies are saying look we using google we're using the regulators we need these companies because you know we're businesses that's going to. push and so i think that that's part of their plan as well it's not just the monetary aspect it's also from a regulatory perspective you know just think new york if new york businesses are

telling snyderman and whoever else we need their b. and b. that's going to have some some push and it's not just going to be while there's money there's good stuff to sell now we've also discussed how to play in defense of hardball against other ride sharing outs like trying to cut prices in order to defend market share and you've also said that her is where overvalued typically is this a move by air b.n. b. and over to grow and expand in the midst of competition we have ten seconds but i want to get your i think yes you know you know you want to grow as much as possible so get as much into the different space as you can get him a fact and then you can win the war of it i love this topic and i want to talk about again so we're going to that's all for now thank you had really love hearing from you please check out our facebook page facebook dot com slash from buster t. please tweet us at edward and h. for all of us here thank you we'll see you next time.

that's where we've been stu twenty years that's been the progression of derivatives trading is that now they've got the ability not just to move the price of a stock but to move the price of a country and. basic research other countries are ukraine what's america doing in ukraine they want to gas us so it's let's throw them in the bus let's use every frickin derivative trick we can under the bugs let's bring in jill political trick just bring it all.

crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. on larry king now model postpone it girl which brought in a christie deegan jew like model and. no button from the first to say i'm not a great model i don't think should be good model when you're doing that photo and you're doing that like you're channeling something with your eyes and me you're going to get the same boat every time and pretty one know it when it comes to how did you meet john legend was an attraction right away i don't know if i would say it like oh my gosh i love this man because my first sight of him he was ironing in his underwear one tweet becomes so gray and that it's a porous taken out of context and you just next will go but it goes with the dodo right you know i think some people are really just itching to fight sometimes and i think i can say the most harmless.