i think so many times. these cases. sometimes for nothing actually play this. it's not just the story you will be shocked if you see the stage eight will be. but speech was. played.

polo there i marinate it this is boom bust and these are some of the stories that we're tracking for you today. first up the f.c.c. is looking into mutual funds that look like hedge funds and call themselves all funds so what so what are these funds going to look into it ourselves coming right out and then the latest addition to the boom bust team at the office she is on the show today she's bringing us her report from the black cat cyber security conference and in today's big deal redacting tonight host and we can't get thing down with me. talk about the privatization of prison it all starts right now.

you've heard of alternative music alternative culture heck you're even watching alternative media but now we have alternative mutual funds yep welcome the all to new few now while many investors are embracing these illiquid alternative funds the securities and exchange commission isn't so keen about the whole phenomenon the f.c.c. has launched a broad examination of alternative mutual funds in an effort to scrutinize one of the hottest and most controversial investment products offered to small investors today all funds or liquid alternative funds have marketed themselves as

a way to hedge against market risk by employing a hedge fund like strategies such as betting on some stocks and against others trading futures and using derivatives to increase leverage they're also a cheaper way for individual investors to gain access to strategies once only available to sophisticated investors now critics say that all funds are just watered down hedge funds and individual investors might not completely understand what they're getting themselves into quickly finding themselves in over their heads so far this year investors have poured roughly sixteen point eight billion dollars into these types of funds and with their surge in popularity the s.c.c. is focusing their inquiry on the liquidity of the funds their use of leverage and the degree of oversight provided by the funds boards so to give you a better example of how these funds have grown so quickly when a q.r. capital now that's a pioneer in the space launched its first mutual fund in two thousand and nine it may. managed twenty billion dollars by the end of june of this year it was managing

roughly one hundred thirteen billion dollars that's significant jump other firms like goldman sachs blackstone and bank of new york are boosting their offerings in the space as well by launching their own all funds but not all funds are on board and many financial advisors say that they won't offer alternative funds because of the complicated strategies involved in managing them and their lack of long term track record of success we just don't know they're brand new now my take is it looks fishy and it smells fishy it's probably fishy so buyer beware. now our next guest is definitely definitely not afraid to speak his mind i recently

had the chance to speak with peter schiff they've been best favorite and c.e.o. of euro pacific capital now peter believes that the current housing market is a bubble and says if something doesn't give the country could be flooded with homes that no one wants to buy take a look at what he had to say. well i think this eco bubble that the fed has reflate it in the housing market is already beginning to lose air and the main difference between this housing bubble and the last one is the last one was more of a main street bubble and this is more of a wall street bubble because the principal speculators are hedge funds and private equity funds and very high net worth individuals who are paying all cash for properties and buying them on the interest of creation of selling them at a profit or renting them out to all the americans who can no longer afford to buy but i also think this is a bubble i think a lot of the real state that was snapped up in foreclosure auctions i think people overpaid and i think the investors are now just now beginning to realize that they

overpay so i think the speculative buyers are leaving the market and there's nobody to fill the void because the real buyers are absent in fact if you look at the recent almost a to sticks the percentage of homes bought by first time buyers is at a record low and in fact home ownership among individuals is that generational lows so prices have to come down dramatically from here before real buyers can actually afford to buy all the properties that have been bought by speculators and stump like the speculators who own these properties if they can't collect enough rant. to cover the cost of ownership they're going to be selling these properties and look out below because when they put these properties up for sale again there's no buyers anywhere near the current prices so you're saying that speculators overpaid when these homes were in foreclosure and i is that correct yeah well initially in the process they probably got a good prices but then the prices began to run up as the supply of foreclosures was

dwindling and more and more speculators wanted in on the action they started bidding against each other and prices were too high and some people might have looked at prices and compared them to where they were at the peak of the bubble and said well i'm getting a twenty or thirty percent discount so it's still ok you know what you're talking about a discount to an inflated price you could still be paying an inflated price is specially if you look at what the potential is to rent these properties out because you know the rents are not going to be there i think a lot of people misjudge the market regarding how much they could actually read these houses for because it's very difficult to rent a single family home a lot of renters don't want them because there's a lot of other costs associated with it and i think it's going to cost these hedge funds a lot more money than they think to manage all of these single family homes it's going to be very difficult i think they've been off a lot more than they can chew and you know a lot of these investors they paid cash for the properties but that doesn't mean they're not in debt they might have borrowed the money through another source they

don't need a mortgage but they still have borrowed money that they've brought to the auction house so they still have a lot of debt and if interest rates begin to rise and they have to service this debt but they're not getting enough revenue from the rental income they may be forced to want to put these properties up for sale but again if all the speculators want out who's going to buy nobody. peter treasuries have been doing pretty well with the ten year hovering around two point five zero level so do you see this low yield lasting and if not what impact do you think an uptick in europe would have on the real economy well first of all a big uptick in yields would be devastating for the phony economy because it would predict the bubble in stocks and real stated forced a lot of banks to fail and if we'd have a worse financial crisis than in two thousand and eight but it would liberate the real economy the real economy is being stifled by the low interest rates and what the fed is doing so but if the surface it would be very positive it might be

painful at first but ultimately it would be a you know a pain that would be beneficial because it would lead to some long term gain but i think the main reason that we haven't seen a bigger increase in interest rates since the fed began tapering is because foreigners have come to the fed's rescue if you look at the increase in buying of treasuries from china from emerging markets in general from europe you look at belgium for example you've seen this big increase that has offset the reduction from the fed which again they announced today they tapered back another ten billion and if it wasn't for all these foreign central banks we would have had a more dramatic impact on rates as a result the question is how much longer will the well can we count on this support from our friends especially when we're pissing off so many of them with our foreign

policy. now many believe u.s. shares are priced to perfection right now with the s. and p. five hundred having had twenty seven records highs this year so some american investors are diversifying into cheaper international shares do you recommend that move and why or why not try been recommending that for years and i've been following that advice personally yeah i think that people should be invested in the stock markets to question is which markets which countries which sectors should they be focusing on because they're all not the same so i do believe that there are certain markets that represent a lot of value that where the stock prices are not inflated like they are here where you get a lot more value for your money you pay a lower p. e. get a better dividend yield and you have a better prospects i think here in the united states you're right we're we're there's a bubble going on and in fact beneath the surface if you look beneath the average is a lot of stocks so far in two thousand and fourteen are in bear markets there are plenty

of stocks that are down more than twenty percent on the year there are a lot of stocks that are down ten percent to twenty percent and there are some stocks that are making new highs but it's not that many when you look at the overall market and a lot of it is based on a share buybacks that are financed by cheap money and it's the low interest rates that make possible the valuations and some of the inflated earnings numbers so that if interest rates were to go off that would completely knock the rug out from under these stocks because not only would it reduce their earnings dramatically because they would have to pay more interest cost on all the debt that they've accumulated to buy back all the shares but it would also impact their revenue because their customers who also are levered up they would have to spend more income on interest payments so they would have less to spend. on their products but now higher interest rates means that you have to discount those future earnings by. bigger

numbers so the multiples have to contract so there's a lot of room but needs to market it unless of course the fed comes to the markets rescue with an unprecedented amount of money for it to which i actually believe is what's going to happen. that was peter schiff c.e.o. of europe it's the capital. time now for a quick break but stick around because when we return our cheap producer beyond the sheeting is telling us about staying one step ahead of hackers and how it's a hard thing to do for even the most seasoned cyber security experts and in today's big deal redacted tonight has the lead captain sitting down with me to talk about the privatization of prison on a little wal-mart stuff in there as well plus remember you can see all segments featured in today's show on you tube at youtube dot com slash boom bust r t's and on hulu at hulu dot dot com slash boom dash bus dot com. now before we go here a look at some your fuzzy numbers at the bell come on back with. washington

. to the latest numbers in the media and on perceived going to actually that doesn't do too much for our revenue line tech agriculture giant exxon seventy six year old american studio fallout do you think this is going to the create or the cia do you think this is what's triggering great facilities to the world it's also the largest debtor nation. turning to the status quo i want to give you all those points working toward the american dream the next they were just trying to survive this time for americans and lawmakers are forced to wake up and start talking about the real causes and

probably. read. out. like. crap. like the. like. and then aren't it is a break by a bunch of. like. as in there's more than just the blackness. i'm the read and it is one carefully word. welcome back computers smartphones tablets we use them for everything but just how secure are your electronics last week the boom bust team attended the black hat conference in las vegas and its

a meeting of the best collective security minds on the planet and what we learned there. seemed to always be one step ahead of security which certainly isn't good for any of us need tells us more jago. experts from around the world recently gathered at the black cat conference in las vegas to discuss events months in technology and information security in the post snowden era meetings like this explore some of the most pressing issues of our time like whether or not privacy is at all attainable in the digital age the black phone the first allegedly fully encrypted smart phone was hacked after one expert at the conference found two new flaws in the device and this comes after a recent study released by hewlett packard that claims seventy percent of smart devices ranging from t.v.'s to home thermostats to automatic door locks have security vulnerabilities all this begs the question if the so-called internet of things where essentially any object can have been invented computing system is really for our benefit kimberly price the director of sin x.

red team strategic operations suggested the internet of things might be spying on all of us. in my refrigerator has invented software in it and they know things about my eating patterns is that really matter i don't know but if we're talking about embedded healthcare systems where you know a couple years ago there was some research done where insulin pump could be remotely hijacked to deliver fetal dose of insulin that's a problem that's a security issue with life and death consequences versus a privacy breach and do we have to be looking at these very realistically in terms of real world impact and not if we overreact to the small things and i'm not saying we shouldn't react but if we overreact to them then we're going to be immune to the things that really do matter. it goes beyond your home car phone and computer though phone or abilities were also found in airport scanning equipment allowing hackers to potentially manipulate their vital functions security researcher billy

rios claimed to have found the flaws in two t.s.a. approved pieces of equipment it's hard to imagine chaos in the airports of hackers could take advantage of these flaws especially for a security system that's undergone so many changes since nine eleven. the stuff about the motive i don't know if anyone can cause right now but getting on to that quickly so that you can be prepared if it does happen is something we need to do rather than through the hard way that we should have. while the list of potential vulnerable items both big and small continues to grow researchers at black hat say prevention is key and should be the plan to focus on going forward in washington because the sheeny are cheap now aside from security and privacy concerns we also made an effort at black hat to get some perspective on the financial markets and tech industry as well now you heard a little from kate pierce a moment ago in bianca's report and she's a security consultant. i sat down in vegas with her to learn

a little more first asked her how well encrypted the new york stock exchange now as jack another massive market exchanges are today here's what she had to say. some of the stuff that encrypt is very very good some of the. optimized for of the things. like easy reconciliation. and it's security is a business is a business cost and it's a business benefit of the comp you think of it becomes everything it's doing what you need to do. so there is that balance but it's such a community at the technical level with it. to an extent the predictions technological. on the in crowd with your prove to be on various networks so if you if you financial who can get on this with network that's a problem but once you're in a nothing to do. you've got a lot more freedom i want to switch gears

a little here and talk about women in the stem industries which is science technology engineering and mathematics now a recent study says that women account for only twenty four percent of those in the stem workforce so you know how do we encourage women into this field to stop discouraging them and i was very lucky in that i missed that discouragement because i transitioned gender a couple of years ago and until that point you know i was one of the dude walking around i was blending in to this sea of men and in my industry is even worse than steam in general. has to around thirty percent i see numbers that are fifteen percent for my industry and when you take out the people who are in management or in the softer jobs that drops even more and it's terrifying. so there's a couple things they don't discourage them with. it doesn't necessarily need explicit encouragement just don't don't suit up as far as the expectations don't

tell them that they're not cool for doing that now the other part though is when they get in often the korea trajectory isn't they're not going to glass ceiling is they need to get on the elevator. so i've seen this what's so my friends who are. in biology and academia where all the postgraduate students coming through are like sixty seven percent female but the faculty is almost exclusively male and when i have a largely jaime and their. board. maybe i'm just being paranoid but something funny there but also all too often i get people saying oh but it's all about me or it's all about me or well remember talk or see i've seen tends to devolve into an oligarchy you just mentioned that you noticed a change when transitioning into a woman so what are some of the more prominent changes that you noticed from the workforce and community i've been very lucky in that i've missed most of the worst ones. most of the differences have been having to justify myself more having to.

deal with not being presumed as an expert if i will can i have to prove myself in a way that i didn't have to previously and that is. frustrating but also a lot of fun when people don't expect that i slam them down and make them feel insufficient it's great you also mention that some people in the industry just presume that you're an h.r. or marketing no depending on how i dress you go out there walk up to any random got man and say so. but then again also if you have social skills i presume your sales and marketing if you know hiding back going then. you must be going to suffer because if you were technical person you wouldn't waste time with it but people also use the lack of social skills as an excuse to be rude or to get away with things they would get away with elsewhere and that is very discouraging that women . i haven't been socialized to put up with that i have been socialized to accept it and so i don't i people find their job but i'm here to live my life i'm not here to

be pushed around by people who are being idiots dr kate clancy an assistant professor at the university of illinois recently published a study and if the statistics basically say that the number of women in the workforce or are being sexually assaulted more that statistic is going up and this is just yet another obstacle for women to have to face in a male dominated workforce and a male dominated vironment like job so does this problem deserve a thoughtful response kind of similar to the way that organizations are trying to encourage young girls to apply themselves in science technology engineering and mathematics so partially it's there but a lot of it is also of the nature of the industry of academia it's all about your networks the people you've worked with you need them particularly early career to build your own credibility and if you that they do something to you you want to a position of power sure you could you could take it you could push something. but when you suddenly lose your collaborators. they can ruin your career even if it

even if it wasn't explicitly because of that people just think you're making a fuss and that's not ok but we do see that in other places too but instead particularly the way you don't publish on your own you do work on your own it's always a group of people whether it's the people you work with directly or the people across the country or across the globe and you need to keep them on side. and maybe admin started getting sexually assaulted more then would actually start to see some change but until then we have to work out how do we deal with that in the same way that a lot of women publish with a first initial rather than a first name because then they don't hit the gender bias in the same way that. that shouldn't happen but you see the same thing with resumes and studies where people see that a resume with mr or a first initial instead of a name and suddenly they get more coolpix you can't prove anything but the correlation is suspicious. that was security consultant kate pierce time now for

today's big deal. big deal time and i'm joined today by the wonderful mr and i'm a big deal you are the big deal you are a big deal now today we're talking about private prisons here's the deal three major companies scope be a capital d.s.m. and a communal insurance have made headlines for denouncing their moment i million dollar investment in the private prison industry now the move comes after an effort made by color of change a nonprofit organization pressured companies today to divest from private prisons in light of exploiting men and women of color so we should corporations that you know operate in the public sphere like public prison systems be allowed to trade on public markets or is there a conflict of interest there i mean yeah i think it's going it's gross i think it's

because of because they're deciding on people's lives these prisons put people out of a lock people away for god knows how many years of their lives and they press for politicians to lock them up longer to keep them in jail longer i mean the number of we've three thousand nonviolent prisoners serving life in prison in this country we have five percent of the world's population and twenty five percent of the world's prisoners i mean if we keep locking people up at this rate who's going to be left to wear the snuggies and play the video games no one who's going to wear the snow and do this kind of wear and i guess i don't know maybe the companies that are getting paid for each prisoner they have it that's it i mean it's terrible but it scope i want to talk about them because they're an alternative asset management firm and they're based in new york city or billion under management and they have other other assets under management there they're in real estate they do a. there are things but one of the most profitable sectors is this private prison industry so why do you think it's such a successful business model does it have to do with the fact that you know it's kind of like a recession proof industry when you think yeah there's stocks are doing great the

corrections corp's are doing great but it depends on how you measure success right right now we're only measuring success with profit what if we measured success with the number of prisoners rehabilitated or the number of prisoners that didn't get you know didn't because there's more violence apparently in these privatized prisons and less rehabilitation in these privatized prisons so it depends on how you measure success maybe we should measure it on how the groups are by the president so there you go you want to know that we're talking about this because in singapore they still of punishment where they're going to have cane and it's kind of funny i mean from a western perspective you're reading this in the paper you know so and so about six lashings but the recidivism rate on that is extremely low so for us to say it's barbaric to do this but at the same time we actually we. are not so we have everything to school or nothing but he has cost wise it's very cost effective and you have the option to go to prison you don't have to but i hear what you're saying in the sense that like we find that so barbaric right locking someone up for their

lives for certainly all drug crimes is saying yeah. yeah it's depending on where you stand it can go either way now private prison companies they're more operationally efficient than public prisons and furthermore why is that and should they be more operationally efficient is it because they have the luxury of not caring they don't have a public they're not sponsible they're not they're not public servants so they're not responsible for the public's opinion do you think that's all right you know efficiency well dexter is efficient. is quite interesting i mean you know prison prison labor in journalism and i think that i think. you measure but yeah they're they're measuring you know they're not trying to rehabilitate. they don't they just want to retain them like the number of prisoners a lot of states several states i think it's maybe nine have signed contracts to these private prisons saying they will have like ninety percent fill these prisons all at all times and also if they show hotels don't have. access to the source or

use in time travel saying we're going to lock people up for you that's incredible now finally i've two seconds left well thirty but i want to talk about wal-mart can you tell me what's going on there there was a leaked memo from goldman sachs you know all about this so quickly give us a heads up and commander share this week tell you a government acted this week wal-mart goldman sachs or the wal-mart is on the decline and should continue to be on the decline apparently they're losing out to two smaller more convenient stores and they listed dollar stores as one of them and do you know how crap it is just to be to loosen up the dollar store like most other stores they have like repurpose ramen noodles and like stolen shampoo bottles you know that's what they haven't really pregnant. because an electrical cords that so you it's a full on them really i would hope having your eye on it is really fun you have to come back more often that is leaking out posted every almost every doctor's night every friday eight pm check it out it is truly awesome here on r.t. that's all for now but please check us out on facebook facebook dot com slash

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to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure. coming up on our t.v. ferguson on the edge of the city has seen rioting for several days after police killed an unarmed teenager over the weekend r.t. has a crew in missouri following the latest developments. a humanitarian crisis continues in the eastern part of ukraine people caught in the crossfire are leaving the area as the death toll rises more from the embattled country coming up. plus a news network for team a sixteen year old says he can do it and he has supporters backing him online.