see without cost. i've got news for you the portrait of uncle sam has been the base for the sort behind the barbarous relic called gold torture them i'll say my dear people just tired and ugly old to the monetary to power tree to school murder empires of dead and banking the reality. polo there i marinated 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 we're going to look into it ourselves coming right out and then the latest addition to the boom bust team at the opera for 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 redacted tonight host we can't seem down with me to 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 to you all to new you 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 all. of 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 hedge fund like strategies such as betting on some stocks and against others trading futures and using derivatives to increase leverage there are 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 f.c.c. is focusing their inquiry on the liquidity of the funds their use of leverage and the degree of over say provided by the fund 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 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 if 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 said 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 patient 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 palms 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 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 he 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 had 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 yields would have on the real economy well first of all a big uptick in heels would be devastating for the phony economy because it would predict the bubble of stocks of 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 i mean 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 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 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 the 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 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 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 up 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 beneath the market in less of course the fed comes to the market's rescue with an unprecedented amount of money printing which i actually believe is what's going to happen. that was peter schiff c.e.o. of europe at 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 expert 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 our tease

and on hulu at hulu dot dot com slash boom dash dot com. now before we go here a look at the mere closing numbers of the bell come on back with us. you've got a lot of sneering and negative press for your engagements here in russia especially for your public appearances with putin even though they weren't explicitly political you were just supporting sports. certain people's regime has become very adept at is controlling the media for example right here c.n.n. do i think c.n.n. is you know completely telling it like it is no i see have an agenda i think through jim is is bought and paid for.

do we speak your language i mean some of the will not of the. news programs and documentaries and spanish what matters to you breaking news a little too in the. stories. you hear. in troy altie spanish find out more visit. but. you did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open process is critical to our democracy. rule. in fact the single biggest threat that you see in our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and across several we've been hijacked right handful of

transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once built that's 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 try rational debate real discussion political issues things that you have done your job ready to join the movement then welcome to the. welcome back now computers smartphones tablets we use them for everything these days but just how secure are your electronics last week the boom bust team attended the blackout conference in las vegas and it's a meeting of the best collective security minds on the planet and what we learn there is that hackers and thieves seem to always be one step ahead of security

which certainly isn't good for any of us need tells us more. experts from around the world recently gathered at the black cat conference in las vegas to discuss events mental technology and information security in the post snowden era and 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 of this begs the question if the so-called internet of things where essentially any object can have an embedded 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. my refrigerator has imbedded 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 fatal dose of insulin that's a problem that's a security issue with life and death consequences of versus a privacy breach and 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 vulnerabilities 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. i don't know if you want to know but. so that you can be prepared if it does happen it's something we need to do rather than to learn the hard way that we should have. while the list of potential vulnerable 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 shiny 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. says 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 encrypts very very good some of it. optimized for other things with speed or. 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 stops you 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 are to go. on the in crowd with your proof to be on various networks so if you if you if you a financial who can get on this with network that's a problem but once you're in enough. you get 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. workforce so you know how do we encourage women into this field and 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 engine real steam engine engine rollers 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 and the softer jobs the drops even more and it's terrifying. so there's a couple of things that don't discourage them when. 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 as they need to get on the elevator. so i've seen this with some 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 largely hired me and the. board. maybe i'm just being paranoid but something funny that all too often i get people saying oh but it's all about me or it's all about me well if we meritocracy 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 by walkin 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. marketing no depending on how i dress you go out there walk up to any random got man and say so you want to. but then you get also if you have social skills they presume your sales and marketing if you don't 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 happy with 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 the stem jobs so does this problem deserve a thoughtful response and 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 boom your own credibility and if you that they do something to you you want in 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 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 to stay in particular the way you 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 sexual assault more than they 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 i don't have 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 and 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 to day to day best 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 live a lot of people away for god knows how many years of their lives and they pressure

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 again 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 still be 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 and. management there they're in real estate they do other 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 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 we didn't because of 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 are for 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 is clear enough but he would you say are stinkers 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 possible 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. it's quite interesting i mean you know prison prison labor in china is the first and i think that i think. you measure to get there they're measuring you know. they're not trying to rehabilitate somebody 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 also if they show hotels don't have. to start using contracts i said 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 about this so quickly give us a heads up and commander show this week to cover room redacted this week wal-mart of goldman sachs so that 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 crappy does their stuff 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 you should this. is an electrical cords that so you it's a full. time when you're 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 group us thirty of these tweet us at aaron a to can from all of us here thank you for watching we'll see you next time.

i stray. in december two thousand and ten. more likely to be raped in college and in the real world. i don't think simple to each other when they knew each other i saw was a stranger in the bushes. complaining about the son of an alumni who's millions of dollars to the school why listen to somebody who's going to lose money at the school of schools that make money based decisions are much more common than they would ever admit.

in a washington d.c. . face. of bone. a pleasure to have you with us here we are today.

tonight the cranes army pounds the center of the n.t. stronghold for the very first time at least seventy people have been killed in the city in the last three days. russia should not cut ties with its global partners but will not tolerate being patronized by the me that that statement from president putin as he addresses senior politicians in crimea also. militarized police forces in missouri unleashed their heaviest crackdown on protesters yet during a fourth night of unrest over the.