all the world's a stage and all the news companies merely players but what kind of parties are into america play r.t. america offers more artsy american offers. many ways of using landscape

just like this you really lose big new good actors bad actors and in the end you could never year or. so the park and all the world's a stage all the world all the world's a stage we are definitely a player. i'm led to francis boom bust broadcasting around the world from washington d.c. tonight wells fargo is shelling out millions to settle lawsuits over its fraudulent practices with customers this comes after years of litigation and crypto currency big coin is going nowhere but people are making millions on their investments is it sustainable going to discuss that also the fall of american retail as we know it is a myth apparently my guest says we are measuring consumer spending all wrong down

by the bus starts right now. all the way back to two thousand and two the san francisco bay bank and lawyers for customers reached the agreement over accounts that wells fargo staff had opened without their permission as they sought to meet unrealistic sales goals set by management in september wells fargo agreed to pay a combined total of one hundred eighty five million dollars in fines just to state and federal regulators the biggest scandal in the bank's history led to the abrupt

retirement of its c.e.o. john stumpf and several other top executives as you might guess lost their jobs bank employees created millions of unwanted accounts in their names based on pressure of losing their jobs and whistleblowers claims they were punished and forced out on the heels of the scandal in a number of west coast cities in washington state oregon and california pulled their money from the bank. and new federal rules state that consumers who have been wronged are now allowed to band together to sue banks and credit card companies just like in the case of wells fargo as it stands arbitration clauses required customers to square away any grievance against banks using a mediator forcing them to give up their right to sue in court this is found in the fine print of many financial products in the united states these policies are used heavily by the banks case in point the culprit i just mentioned wells fargo banned customers from filing class action lawsuits against it during the height of its

sales practice problems until pressure of course from politicians and outside groups led the bank to waive that right earlier this year. i i. i. big coin and other crypto currencies have been on quite a tear in two thousand and seventeen but due to a handful of scandals and mishaps is that success sustainable. has more on that for us now here in the studio bianca mt gox trials kicking off in tokyo just another cell phone with a what not exactly so the former owner of mt gox was implicated in the silk road trial but aside from that alleged connection between the two we're looking at two totally different trials different charges however at the old founder of mt gox is found guilty we could see similar scenting sentencing so officer over three years after mt gox was shut down its former owner is finally getting his day in court on

tuesday mark karr pelisse who round the bitcoin exchange pled not guilty to embezzlement and data manipulation at a news conference in tokyo he maintained his innocence and blamed hackers on the exchanges downfall and he said the proof is in the company records. that although it's a lot of data to look at mt gox his records and the information contained in the block chain were to be analyzed and it would take a long time to do so but just time and processing power the records of the big coins that have been stolen from mt gox could be found that information blocking the. use for nearly eighty percent of the world's bitcoin trading until at last eight hundred fifty thousand bitcoins which was worth about five hundred million dollars at the time and on top of that another twenty eight million dollars disappeared from the exchanges bank accounts leading car pelisse to file for bankruptcy even though the trial didn't come as a surprise it's coincided with

a slump in the crypto currency market after soaring over three thousand dollars in june when tumbled is and is now hovering around the twenty four. mark but it's not as bad as other digital currencies like a theory and ripple both of which have fallen nearly fifteen percent and volatility is nothing new to bitcoin users but the chance of it quickly subsiding is not looking good the block changes more backlog then ever making it longer and sometimes more expensive for transactions to be verified and the crypto community can't agree on how to fix it which means we could end up seeing split into two different currencies both sides have incentive to compromise but if they can't it would undoubtedly hurt its market cap. absolutely let's talk about a theory i'm far behind decline in value and the traitor that just made millions from it what can you tell us about that so this trader remained anonymous we don't

know much about them but they somehow turned fifty five million dollars of their own wealth that they already had into two hundred million dollars through with theory and so you know over a four hundred percent profit here we do not know the identity of this person they announced it via an instagram post but that was dated june eleventh around their young yes yes so we know there are there modern but it was around the time that the area was reaching these all time highs so they're probably feeling pretty good about their selves because we know that the theory along with other cryptocurrency is have since fallen in price but at the same time you know if you look at the therians rise since the beginning of this year it's been over two thousand so it's a dent in the theory i'm bubbled but i mean it's not a total and complete setback yet ok so this guy is clearly a rich kids of instagram guy to have fifty five million to dump and to have to cringe at all right investigation and we know this is coming to see stories about this coin base what's latest on that investigation so the irises scaling back their

investigation of course because they asked initially for coin base to hand over data user information from anyone that bought or sold bitcoin two thousand and thirteen and two thousand and fifteen because at the time bitcoin was reaching lots of high as people were making money off of it but less than a thousand people reported their gains or losses so they wanted coin base to hand over every single person that's ever used the exchange and they were saying well this is ridiculous it's going to take so long and this is going to be incredibly cumbersome so the i.r.s. said fine we just want to know who used it and sold or bought over twenty thousand dollars worth of bitcoins so they're still investigating them but they are much more specific and right all around they're not totally gone but nothing specific this time around they're trying. crack the definition of what crypto is but they're probably around right yeah exactly all right thank you so much been.

my guest says the international political tip for tat over oil prices may be just a big game that the dollar will fall of oil prices will jump before we know it we're also going to talk about gold and how it affects us here to discuss is peter schiff c.e.o. of euro pacific capital thank you so much for talking about this now let's start with some numbers u.s. crude rose one point four percent settling at. forty five zero four a report shows a drop in european stockpiles opec fails of impact you think it could drop under forty oh look it's been under forty you could certainly go again forty again you know i think regardless i think the oil is in the process of forming a major bottom just like i think the u.s. dollar is in the process of forming a major and you know the dollar today close there are seven months low. but it's

still not too far from a fourteen fifteen year high so it's a long way down the go when it comes to the dollar as the dollar goes down that is going to be very bullish for the price of oil all right well the dollar is going to drop as you say it's great for emerging economies though so how do you how do you think they're going to react to this is as you say you know it's going to draw up sort of a fatalistic approach to this in my opinion but how do you think it's going to affect them. well the emerging markets will benefit from a fall in the dollar i mean number one a lot of the emerging markets are exports of commodities and a lot of commodities not just oil are going to catch a bid for the falling dollar so that's going to help their exports but you know a lot of the emerging market economies have a lot of u.s. dollar denominated debt right and as the dollar loses value that's basically like having a portion of their debt forgiven it becomes a lot easier to repay the debt it becomes a lot easier to service the debt and that frees up resources it frees up purchasing power for emerging markets consumers to spend money know things and so it's

a boom for the rest of the world ok well gold effect on this i know gold's a topic for you how do you think it's going to have an effect on this i mean look we're having a major surge in output opac and scrambling to catch up to those cuts libya nigeria don't have caps right now opec might cap those u.s. we're talking upwards of nine million barrels a day gold's effect on all this. well you know gold is going to trade with oil and i do believe that the oil the diminished demand is a function of the strength of the dollar it's going to be a very different picture in the oil market once the dollar weakens and i think also gold has. been hurt by the perception that the global increase in interest rates is going to be bearish for gold also gold has had a strong correlation with the japanese yen over the last couple of years and the

yen has weakened and that has also dragged down the price of gold but the japanese yen is not really going to determine the value of gold the idea that they're both save havens and for a while they were you know the same type of trade i think that gold is the real safe haven i don't see a lot of safety in the japanese yen so i do think that ultimately goal will be the last safe haven standing and as people start to realize that the u.s. economy is in much worse shape than is generally perceived by the markets or certainly acknowledged by the fed as the u.s. economy continues to weaken as the fed is forced to admit that the tightening cycle is over and a new easing cycle is going to begin as inflation begins to move higher despite the fact that the u.s. economy moves into recession i think you're going to see a perfect storm when it comes to gold and i think you're going to see tremendous buying coming in a lot of people are still short they still don't understand the real predicament that the u.s. economy is in and when this picture becomes clearer to more people the price of

gold is going a lot higher let's talk about this pull of these political cases you know you've got a pac you've got its affiliates there's going to be a meeting in st petersburg in russia coming up in just a couple of weeks opec is trying to head out and find a way to balance out but the u.s. says hey we're going to do fracking we're drilling we're going gangbusters the u.s. is still importing there's a lot that isn't talked about with regard to the output and blots so do you think this political test for tap between the. member countries the united states is is addressed enough or do you think it's just sort of you know smoke and mirrors. well probably more more of the latter but you know i know that a lot of the opec countries there are low cost producers of oil and they certainly want to maintain the fear in the global oil markets that prices are going to fall because they want to discourage more explanation exploration and production coming from other areas like the united states and so to the extent that producers are on

edge that lenders are worried about a potential fall in oil prices then they're not going to want to lend and people are not going to want to make the investments in the sector so all that ultimately benefits bigger you know producers like opec to the extent that you don't have the future supply because people are gun shy about committing resources because they're afraid that the price of oil could collapse at any moment all right thank you so much for weighing in on this very important to keep track of all this thank you so much peter schiff c.e.o. of euro pacific capital. time now for a quick break stick around though because when we get back the e.u. is banding together to tackle bad loans and retail spending a new measurement according to my next guest is needed to go to break here's the numbers at the closing bell.

i'm tom hartman and i'll give you what the mainstream media can't go big picture we'll go deeper investigate and debate all so you can get the big picture. called the future we don't need. everyone in the world should experience.

it you'll get it all the old old. the old according to just. look up the modern world come along for the ride. most people just stand out in this is this the do you the first one on top of the story or the person with the loudest voice so the biggest reason. to stand losing this is you just leave there's the right questions to the right answers. for your. morning here opinion union finance ministers the e.u.

had a total stock of bad loans amounting to one point one four trillion dollars at the end of two thousand and sixteen that's equivalent to six point seven percent of the blocks annual g.d.p. or five point one percent of total loans they've outlined policy actions to reduce those bad loans by backing proposals such as structuring debt recovery frameworks changing bank supervision policies and developing markets for distressed assets the scale of the problem varies hugely between even members sweden's bad loans amount to only one percent of total loans while greece is account for a massive forty six percent and then there's italy italian government took control of bank montu day posse under a relaunch plan that includes the disposal of twenty eight point six billion euros in bad loans and by using taxpayer money to shore up the bank something new e.u. rules tried to avoid but it was cleared by e.u.

for a days prior to that. consumer spending accounts for two thirds of u.s. economic activity g.d.p. was up one point two percent in the first quarter of this year while spending rose at a one point one percent pace it was the weakest reading since two thousand and thirteen and my guest says that metrics to use to measure consumer spending are off and that the rise of new forms of retail show us that i spoke with carol speaker men president and c.e.o. speaker in retail to get her take. well i would say that just saying you know these dire predictions that retail is dead and you know all of these stores are just going to you know completely close and retail is going away are just far too simplistic i mean there are a lot of quote complex dynamics at work everyone's talking about digital of course which is changing the game but also there's a lot of capabilities that retailers have these days to where they don't necessarily need to have as many stores in order to drive volume so there are

a lot of different aspects that work that are really making retail different but not necessarily dad ok let's talk about some of these some of these numbers out i find very interesting we're going to talk about retailers the global powers here this is for fiscal year all of twenty fifteen top to fifty we're going to look at look at the top ten wal-mart as you might guess is the king def defined as a hyper market after that cosco although i doubt it ten is amazon that this was a little bit a little while ago but would you say that the brick and mortar is still the big way to go i bought something at wal-mart recently they're attempting to do an amazon sort of thing it didn't seem like they were pulling it off as much but they're trying so do you think that the brick and mortar to online is still going to be something that's more compatible with people. well prick and mortar is is actually

become a critical component to retailers overarching multichannel strategies it's it wasn't that long ago though that retailers were freaking out a little bit and thinking of stores as being you know very cumbersome and and perhaps just feeling burdened by those locations but the sensibility is changed really rapidly to where retailers are looking at their stores and looking at ways that consumer gys that brick and mortar presence with their digital presence and i would put wal-mart at the top of the list of you know what does tend to be called traditional or brick and mortar retailers that's really trying to maximize that opportunity and now they're realizing that stores are actually a big differentiator there a killer advantage and that's why you're seeing so many of these digital darlings that swore they would never open brick and mortar stores doing just that right and left you've got you know been hoboes where we park or even soon and casper mattresses not to mention

a lot of telecoms and other companies that weren't even in the retail business that see brick and mortar locations as a terrific way to showcase their connected solutions so again brick and mortar definitely not just going to be very very different ok let's talk about some habits we're seeing as far as the shopping there is a survey out talking about what people enjoy more right most of us enjoy buying ourselves things aside from this the typical grocery store stuff and it says here the question is which medium do you feel provides the most enjoyable shopping experience and the one we've got on this chart is that online rules the day is forty eight percent desktop laptop stuff a lot of people probably searching for stuff after work in store shopping is twenty five percent mobile apps eleven tablet a mobile web eight percent most of that is technically online with twenty five percent in-store don't you see this trend changing things. well i think sometimes

those numbers can be a little bit misleading because you know folks are buying things online and picking them up in stores so that maybe technically an online purchase but that doesn't mean that it's not being facilitated to regrow brick and mortar location right also i think those numbers are going to continue to shift mobile will be more important to the in the day the operative word is convenience being it has become right right and it's become so much more important even than price yet which presents a tremendous opportunity for retailers because all of a sudden retail was no longer just a race to the bottom it really is a race to the most convenience rather convenient options and again. retailers now the big takeaway there is they know that sometimes shoppers find a store more convenient than online and sometimes they find online or mobile more convenient so now what retailers are having to do is offer this ever proliferating

roster of convenience options and that really is how they're going to win right now it's interesting you point out that the brick and mortar lends itself to online because a lot of people know the shoe size they fit in a certain brand that they tried on it at a certain store their dress size and then they'll take that online it's a sort of habit the order for them free online and have it delivered let's talk about these corporate identities the absorbtion versus the individuality established by the brands you cite and wal-mart snapping up one of us and amazon requiring acquiring these brick and mortar sort of extending these brands and not making them disappear. exactly you know it's a very new model acquisitions are of course are nothing new in retail they've been going on forever for you know decades. arguably you know the activity is certainly accelerated recently but the model has changed the old model used to be buy a brand or buy another retailer and just absorb it as though it never existed.

right and you know whole it's culture and the whole thing well the sense of the lady has changed now to where they look at these brands whether they be online platforms or actual you know apparel brands they look at these brands as separate assets when their own user base is their own fan bases their own unique proposition right there demographics that they appeal to and they want to keep that intact and so we're going to see a lot of these retailers like wal-mart all of a sudden wal-mart become a portfolio company right they have a portfolio of brands now as part of this acquisition activity and they are now a multi format retailer so that's what we're going to see more and more of the retailers that make it are going to become portfolio companies more like holding companies if you well and they're also going to be absolutely multi format and multi channel right in my apartment building is any indication the job of the

delivery man is going to increase as exponentially because you go to any lobby in a city and it is stacked with online retail boxes because it's difficult to get into the suburbs and shop at places like wal-mart so let's talk about a different type of online shopping entertainment subscription services versus things like video on demand price waterhouse coopers has new numbers out it says that on demand services are blowing rental purchased based entertainment on demand out of the water it's a subscription it stands more at more than eight billion dollars in revenue the rental purchase is a little over five and a half case in point i tunes versus netflix what do you think this indicates. well you know about apple just in general and it really again kind of blows up to some larger dynamics that that apple i think has taken

a leadership role and that is. you know being on the leading edge of creating solutions and products that people didn't even know they needed until they did but then i get with the acknowledgement that others will follow quickly so apple you know has that built into their model to continue to be really good at acknowledging that yes they'll be on the leading edge on a lot of solutions a lot of content delivery but then they're also going to be over soon joined up into the fray and the market all of a sudden becomes very competitive and very fragmented so we're seeing two factors at work here. versification on the part of a lot of these companies they don't want to have all their eggs in one basket the i phone and also fragmentation which is lots and lots of players opportunistically jumping into these new businesses or shifting their models and changing the landscape overnight so it really is

a zero sum game to where any one company can hope to just grab all the goodies it's about who gets the most market share at any given time understanding that the competitive field will continue to you know become more collateral if you well i think it's very interesting to look at the specially as much as retail sales and consumer sales play into our g.d.p. reports it's really important to break this new ever lasting new trend down because it's never going to and thank you so much for weighing in on this carol speaker meant president and c.e.o. and. president c.e.o. of speak i'm in retail retail strategy thank you. thank you lizzie. now when you hear about nazis you usually don't think about luxury resort however one german real estate company is taking a physical manifestation of the country's very dark past and trying to turn it into something beautiful poorer is a nazi luxury resort constructed just before the invasion of poland and abandoned

after the outbreak a full fledged war now over three miles long and with the capacity of twenty thousand it was meant as a vacation spot for hardworking members of the reich is now rebranded as a string of luxury summer homes but they full time apartment complex units are already up for sale they will run you anywhere from between four hundred thousand to seven hundred twenty five thousand dollars that's all for now check out the show on youtube youtube dot com slash boom bust r t thanks for watching the next time. here's what people have been saying about rejected in the sixties fool on. the only show i go out of my way to you know what it's really packs a punch. yeah it is the john oliver of our two year marriage is doing the same we

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former congressman ron paul is my guest on this edition of politics. politicking on larry king tom rushy gate syria health care tax reform with all is happening today we want to spend time one on one with former congresswoman. ron paul is never bashful about his opinions and they're always thought provoking ron is the former republican u.s. congressman from texas who made three white house bids twice as a republican and once in one nine hundred eighty eight as the libertarian party's presidential nominee he's an outspoken advocate for limited.