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 bond holders 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 kirchner his government will in fact a fault in fact kirshner's government has spent months running public campaigns vilifying the holdouts and calling judge greer and the 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 recently settled some sixteen billion dollars in 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. 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. budget or the fiscal year in the nineteenth thirty 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 range i want and they're hoping to the debt balanced budget but that means they need to bring expenses jetted out a billion dollars to 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 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 do 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 comparing her 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 it's sad for us this doesn't work it would move to have the 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 clearing house and others other attorneys in than some of the litigants here that they accept and 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 if 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 pointing to recognize

these public corporations or sensual services in puerto rico the primary one you just question is predator which is the electric going up early and obviously you can't take out electric monopoly or let creditors take it 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 if you know what they have to say under the control of the government or some quite as a regular regulatory for 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 conserve as 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 immigration 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 if 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 tree on a two tier basis 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 playing very actively in this credit now and this. for general gration binds in so big blocks plus five hundred million dollars blocks 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. 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 how 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 yes 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 kilowatt 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 less so 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 it's just unclear and under what legal framework it will happen 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 about thirty and on hulu at hulu dot com slash zoom. now before we go here are a look at some your closing numbers of the bell come on back with us.

you surely know where you. and me. were. playing. it. back.

to sleep. the. whole. over. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy correct albus. role. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and across cynical we've been hijacked why a handful of transnational corporations will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once it's all just my job market and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying the problem

trying to fix rational debate and a real discussion critical issues facing america to find work. you ready to join the movement and walk the earth. with. the. welcome guys now it's a 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 korn 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 decline his company has seen since accepting the cryptocurrency take

a look what he had to say. i think she's really non-student it's a quarter of one percent of sales just the last calculation on a solid twenty four hundreds of one percent of sales so you're a quarter of one percent on a billion other half 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 a big point plunge 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 corn based probably got it down even tighter than not so the integration is very seamless since it's. i mean this isn't 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 one plot 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 coin bath 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 i think they're a fluke a cent from what i understand it so it's a lot on the wallet so they offer a wallet to consumers and i think that they're focusing on that solid 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 because and so we can hedge our risk that way but we're not really looking for anything else from koin bits 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 in 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 big coing 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 laurence merchants like new way like. well dish t.v.

. i like to think that we put it on the map but my expectation was assuming we did it you were 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. with that for philosophical into the return reasons you know but i think now that we've broken now that is broken into the billion dollar vendor 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 a new payment platform retailers or users. well it's a chicken and egg thing on in wall street they have a saying liquidity begets liquidity once you have people coming in and buying or selling at a place you have network effects which made even a take off from 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 chicken egg well once it gets dinning as a spin and now it tends to explode very quickly i think that you may even see the piece 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 her fears that when she heard she said that when she hears the two people collaborated to write a book it always made her sound to her like it's hearing it 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 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 what you don't need other institutions when you've got an institutional it lets humans interact directly there like that that's really all to me we want cryptocurrency so subversive towards authoritarian states sloat 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 big question 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 itto you don't replace it with anything i don't mean it's literally too mertz it's it's it is a metaphor. and. armchair was the second part of the question what it is how it is yes do you think it's really true today that one can check out of the whole system it's seems like that's not possible on some level well not yet you

have to pay your taxes and dollars they cornice at least untender yet not that's one of the ways that governments protect the monopolies is their seniority is what it really is the rhetoric which is they make 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 with bitcoin but as you buy more if speed 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 bit virtual circles spend up that was overstocked theo patrick byrne time now for today's big deal.

time with the wonderful that we're here and then today we are discussing over air b.n. b. corporate expansion and the fundamental value these companies now it was announced tuesday that air b.n. b. and hooper 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 after 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 can get volume out of the consumer definitely you want to go with the business so that's definitely why they're doing it and 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 they want to have their internet you know they wanted to be at a certain. they need to leave at a certain time there's no it's 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. who's going to be with his surge pricing business customers going to be able to 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 are speed a little too creepy so here's the question i would think with business travel there's a heightened. problematics that you the 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's picking you up at your house or they see where you're going and your friend's house or whatever that's more intrusive personal like if you're a business traveler you just go from the airport to your hotel or whatever i mean what could really the accident which could happen if you were. going to the office i think up in the air you see them everywhere. check it out but they're 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 not if you have an eighteen billion dollars but like generally can sue you out of business i would think that would be so. the thing 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 the tray into the regulatory space meaning if you have like these big companies are saying look we using google we're using the regulators we need these companies because 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 who's going to be liable there's money there's good stuff to sell now we've also discussed how playing defense of hardball against other ride sharing outs like lift trying to cut prices in order to defend market share and you've also say that if there is way over valued typically if this is 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 spaces as you can but get that hero effect 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 play that's all for now thank you had really love hearing from you please check out our facebook page facebook dot com slash from just r t please tweet us at our need at edward and h. and all of us here combust thank you we'll see you next time. around. syria has been george very harshly on the. constant sad.

isn't it justify that it's not pursuing the. raising to spectrum of person a government leader one young who. is developing nuclear weapons. they want to see. something being needed for. the story. we would be stupid not to take you to sleep. do we speak your language for. all these programs and documentaries in arabic it's all here. reporting from the world talks about six of the yard p. interviews intriguing stories for you. then try.

to. visit. places. called the tried to. look. like your ancestors. and. not me. know what. it's like but hey. let's take this. risk it's nice to meet let's do some stuff for nothing. it's not just. if you see the p.c.

. he. was. around fifteen people reportedly killed after israeli tanks opened fire on a united nations school in gaza. washington and europe launched another round of sanctions against russia over the ukraine conflict targeting key players in the financial energy sector. the civilian casualty count climbs as the ukrainian army intensifies its offensive in the east of the country moving closer to the russian border moscow's struggling to get children out of the combat zone.