i'm a trial lawyer i've spent countless hours poring through documents to tell the story about the ugly side of calls from the. corporate media everything uses to talk about these conor knighton something i'm going to paint a clear picture about how disturbing council blood corporate conduct is because in ma. these are stories that you no one else can take on my pepto your host of americans would question.

i. see million dollars ario filling in for lindsey france this is boom bust broadcasting around the world from right here in washington d.c. coming up cuba conundrum how the caribbean island could be tied to struggling venezuela and blocked chain unchained we speak to cyber security expert john mcafee about how high bit coins price may go later tax turmoil a little known u.s. law is causing americans living abroad to renounce their citizenship standby boom bust start right now.

russia is continuing its steady dominance of crude oil production this year once again topping saudi arabia in june according to official data released this week as you can see here russia has been ahead of saudi arabia all of twenty seventeen will see a graph in a second hopefully producing ten point three million barrels per day in june and of saudi arabia's ten point zero seven million the u.s. is consistently ranked third now saudi arabia's exports also fell to about six point nine million barrels per day its lowest level of a. oil sold abroad since two thousand and fourteen saudi arabia is leading an effort by the organization of the petroleum exporting countries or opec along with other oil producers around the world to curb output and drain global supply because of that oil inventories in places like saudi arabia and the u.s.

are also falling u.s. reserves are at its lowest point all year and saudi stockpiles in june stood at two hundred fifty seven million barrels its lowest level since january of two thousand and twelve. in south america an oil producer is struggling to meet delivery contracts and because of it it's losing prominence with one of its most important trading partners cuban trade with its ally venezuela has fallen seventy percent since two thousand and fourteen because of venezuela's economic hardships according to the cuban national statistics office report released this week trade with venezuela fell to two point two billion dollars in two thousand and sixteen down from four point two billion the year before and seven point three billion in twenty fourteen the alliance dates back to the days of fidel castro and hugo chavez when cuba imported all of its oil from venezuela in exchange for medical and other professional services and supplies but lately venezuela has been unable to export

as much oil to cuba last year sending just one point six billion dollars to the caribbean island compared with five point one billion a year before the economic crisis began human exports to venezuela have also fallen over venezuela struggles to buy goods as well imported less than half as much as they did the year before. stop me if you've heard this before bitcoin broke another record thursday the digital currency top forty five hundred dollars in trading which means it's doubled in price in the past month alone that's huge and since the concept of crypto currency is still so new many people see growth like this and want to compare it to a theocracy wondering when the bubble might burst cyber security expert john mcafee says this type of thinking is a mistake he joins me now john why do you think the word bubble cannot be applied

to bitcoin. well first and foremost bitcoin is not a currency it costs over a thousand dollars to create a bit coin today and electricity and computing costs second the value of bitcoin is linked to the number of users and the number of transactions it is not a speculative investment even though it is being used as such by many people as the bitcoin network grows the value of bitcoin grows as people move into bit corn for payments and receipts they stop using u.s. dollars euros chinese yuan which in the long term devalued is these currencies so what you're saying is more of a currency devaluation than a bubble in bitcoin as more people use it it has more intrinsic value and again the

cost of producing a bit coin increases with the value of the bitcoin so this is not something that we're pulling out of thin air this is something that's created with massive amounts of electricity and computing power while someone who disagrees with you on the term when it comes to bitcoin is mark cuban by. in june he tweeted i think it's a bubble i just don't know when or how much it corrects when everyone is bragging about how easy they are making money equals about now when he tweeted that bitcoin dipped in price how can one person's random twitter thread have that effect on the price and what does it say about bitcoin stability. what it says nothing about bitcoin is to go it's free after a drop five hundred dollars it's now one hundred forty four so these temporary fluctuations are meaningless are created by speculators people who do not understand the fundamental technology of the block those who do know that in the

long term these fluctuations will make no difference the more people who use bitcoin the more valuable it will become this is the only metric we can use now big block change go hand in hand but blocked chains ability to track financial transactions in a way that is incorruptible it gives it infinite amount of uses outside of the original purpose of using it for coins do you see block chains overtaking certain aspects of the financial system as we know it now. it will take over all aspects people think that bitcoin or the blog chain is own by someone by a company or by a consortium no this is strictly a mathematical formula that nobody owns there we are all participating in and we use the block chain for everything from. fixing supply chain problems in corporations to verifying the authenticity of the sender and receiver

in a financial transaction it is the most powerful technology that the world has seen i believe since the invention of agriculture now john we've showed our viewers rise just in the past month and we can show it to them again if it's up there but on july seventeenth one month ago you tweet. that bitcoins low of eight hundred yesterday simply could not be maintained in the long term bitcoin moves above five hundred thousand within three years and bets you ask so i ask you john do you stand by your statement. keep in mind there's bitcoin grows and grows in value other currencies national currencies are going to decline so the advantage to using did coin the advantages are huge if i do a wire transfer it'll it'll take me twenty four hours if i do a bitcoin transfer it takes me thirty seconds it is instantaneous i know people who do not use any other currency now other than bitcoin they buy their houses their

cars everything using bitcoin by connecting to other users who sell the things that they need as more and more people use this what will happen to national currencies they will obviously get the value they have to so that five hundred thousand includes a massive devaluation in the u.s. dollar which absolutely has to come if bitcoin continues to grow at its current rate well it's certainly a community effort and the big community and for other cryptocurrency is it's only growing john mcafee founder of mcafee incorporated thank you so much for your thoughts today. all right cuba's economy has expanded one point one per cent through june of this year but the government warned it's still struggling so austerity measures will be staying in place and may even be broadened joining me to talk about cuba's financial future is john kavanagh president of the u.s. cuba trade and economic council john we wanted to bring this up at our team because

cuba is essentially fallen off the media landscape since trump's promise to enact stricter regulations on the country so i wanted to ask you what is the current situation in cuba. cuba is undergoing again a severe economic crisis primarily brought on by the implosion in venezuela and for the last seventeen years cuba has looked to venezuela to provide much of its energy as well as financing and now that is at risk substantially its decreased fifty to seventy percent in the last three years and so cuba is finding that it's the increase in its tourism revenues decrease in commodity prices decrease in production of commodities is all providing a of a very bad situation well if cuba and venezuela are so closely tied in we've been hearing so much about venezuela why do you think more people have not connected these dots to talk about cuba as own economic crisis. i don't know why people are

connecting the dots but the dots are large and as venezuela goes so does cuba cuba will try to withstand as many commercial economic and political changes as it can and its goal is to find another benefactor and traditionally cuba for the last sixty seven years began with the u.s.s.r. and then in two thousand found venezuela and it generally will allow expansion in its economy allow in this case as we've seen in the last five years the development to redevelopment of the private sector but then this. soon as they can as soon as they find a benefactor they retrench and in this particular case china the russian federation iran brazil they're not going to make up the slack and so cuba is going to have to make some changes and then you add into that the acknowledgment that they need to

make commercial economic changes the trump administration trying to put pressure on the cuban economy and then these outside factors that cuba has no control over and it basically has the cuban government recoiling and you now have less than two hundred days before raul castro retires and is replaced by his vice president so there's all this stuff going on and for the cuban government it means uncertainty in the cuban government hates uncertainty you mentioned changes with the trumpet ministration what do you think is trump's game plan with cuba. well the president doesn't have a particular game plan and the program that's being developed that he announced in june and that's going to be rolled out in september primarily has been driven by the members of congress of cuban descent this six of them in the house and in the senate and the goal is to make an attractive travel to cuba and make an attractive u.s.

companies engaging with cuba and what their plan need to do which is a brilliant strategy is to say we are going to dissuade you from engaging with companies in cuba that are controlled by the cuban military and that puts u.s. companies in a bind because no c.e.o. wants to be on r t defending why they want to have business with a military run company as opposed to a civilian run company so the trump administration is planning to roll this out the good news for u.s. companies is that the regulations and the policy initiatives are going to be far less severe than many had expected but they come at a critical time for cuba because u.s. visitors to cuba have the highest net profit margin of any visitor to cuba and those half a million visitors to cuba mostly of cuban descent primarily from south florida or northern new jersey they spend a lot of money in cuba and so the trump administration is basically trying to grab

as much cash as possible keep it out of the cuban government's hands put it into the cuban private sector hands but ironically some of these changes may do the opposite of that let's talk about what's happening on the islands though because cuba has its own struggles promoting private enterprise from within you know people can work independent of the state as long as they aren't too successful and that results in a lot of professionals choosing to leave the island do you see cuba changing its tune on private enterprise in the future especially with a change in leadership. i'm not certain the change your leaders. shipp the odds are that next february when raul castro retires he's going to retain his position as first secretary of the communist party of cuba and under the cuban constitution that basically controls the country so even though they'll be a new president you're still going to have an almost ninety year old man basically in charge of the commercial economic and political decisions in terms of though

what these new young primarily private sector folks are doing it's difficult because the cuban government can't define success it has a problem with saying to someone how successful can you be before you become so successful that we want you to give back and even everything out so what you have are some very talented people who are electing to drive taxicabs because they can make more that way than they can as being a physician and for the cuban government they've always looked at the private sector as evidenced by two hundred categories that are permitted whereas in never in most countries you'd have thousands and thousands you'd have to try to create some that weren't permitted but in cuba as case those two hundred are always considered an experiment they're not considered policy and they're not considered interim goal to the economy or to the political fabric of the country and until the cuban government grasps and defines how it perceives success you're going to

continue to have this private sector. bump up against cuban government companies because they have their fiefdoms and well and so it's going to continue to be. a developing story and police and will definitely be following those developments john cavil at president of the u.s. cuba trade and economic council thank you so much for sharing your insight with us today. you're welcome. time now for a quick break stick around when we return a stolen are worth more than one hundred million dollars turns up in an unexpected place where no one was looking and i.r.s. has the world wrapped around its finger with a little known law called. as we go to break here the numbers at the closing bell.

and all the world's a stage and all the news companies merely players but what kind of parties are in t. america playing party america are so much more american personal. many ways. just like the real news big. bad actors and in the end you could never hear all. of the parking. worlds of the world all the world's a stage we are. a trial where i've spent countless hours boring through documents that tell the story about. corporate media everything uses to talk about.

i'm not a clear picture about how disturbing. for her. these are stories that no one else. question. would you have for breakfast yesterday why would you put those for. your wife. what's your biggest fear in the little bit on the hay ride when so let's talk a little bit bored you say if you ever met the best quarterback. on the topic so simple. now i may give you due to what more. few americans have heard of something called the foreign account tax compliance act or fatca but outside the u.s.

it's something every financial institution knows all too well the foreign account tax compliance act is america's global tax law it was quietly enacted during former president barack obama's administration and. twenty fourteen it's been counted as a way to track down american tax cheats who hide their money from the i.r.s. in foreign accounts how does it work it requires foreign banks to reveal americans with accounts totaling more than fifty thousand dollars and how does the u.s. and forsett financial institutions that refused to comply face harsh penalties and are frozen out of u.s. markets so everyone is on board including russia china and tax havens around the world never before has an american tax law attempted such a far reach the i.r.s. requires all americans to report and pay tax on income earned anywhere in the world fact not just resident u.s. citizens with foreign holdings but u.s.

citizens living abroad which has caused a number of them to remount citizenship its reach also extends to dual citizens and immigrants with any type of residence status as well as spouses of u.s. persons who have signatory authority. joining me now a man who wants to see fatca gone as a former u.s. diplomat and co-leader of the campaign terrific. jim you call it the worst law that most americans have never heard of what's your issue with cracking down on offshore tax evasion because we always hear about corporations and millionaires that are of aiding taxes right off the shore eyeball for cracking down on offshore tax and all tax evasion just like i'm all for cracking down on terrorism because i'm against terrorism doesn't mean that all of your and everybody else's cell phone e-mail records should be indiscriminately gathered by the government and i don't see why cracking down on tax evasion means not going after people you have a reason to think are tax evaders but gathering the data of absolutely everybody in

order to say well we'll find those bad guys in there somewhere and impose all sorts of horrendous costs on consumers around the world in the effort to do so and it doesn't work on top of all there is targeting corporations and millionaires that we . about that are hiding money off so no just are specifically exempted corporations as far as millionaires go if you are an actual millionaire or somebody really wants to evade taxes you could easily have a factor you put your money in a fine art into bullion and gems also let real estate things it doesn't cover what it really causes a problem for a people of modest means many of them living abroad nine million americans living abroad but even people in united states who have for whatever reason may have an account overseas basically to treat them as presumptive criminals and you'll find especially with americans abroad being denied a credit card or debit card you can't open a checking account they cancel your mortgage that's why a lot of these people renouncing their citizenship so they're treated different and we know how it's in force and we know why the whole world around board it's serious restrictions against foreign institutions that don't comply there's

a thirty percent withholding penalty plus getting cut off the u.s. market nobody wants that but i want to ask is it worth it i mean does the u.s. recover a lot of tax money this way though actually when it was passed back in two thousand and ten was scored a recovering eight hundred million dollars a year who has a lot of money no it's not it's about twenty it's about twenty minutes of the operation of the federal government per year and as professor william burns of the university of texas a and m. university school of law as pointed out it may be recovered a quarter of that you compare that to the cost that for example individuals you know filling out forms paying penalties and they're probably paying that much themselves in addition to what's being recovered by the treasury issuing those estimates are correct and and but that then has to also be weighed against the institutions themselves paying hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide to comply with this is dog and those are cost being passed on to consumers shareholders people who are paying those costs being passed along by those institutions so let

me get this straight it's the treasury at best is getting eight hundred million or a quarter of that to one generally hundred million and you're saying the institutions and their customers and everyone else attached to them or pay. billions of dollars to comply that's right and that even a small bank will be paying over a million dollars into the millions of dollars to comply a large bank like one big thing like bank of nova scotia canada itself paid three hundred million dollars in its compliance with the fact that there was a bank in spain that professor burned on paying eight hundred million dollars it is fact that complies and his money going into the us treasury and hope is coming into the pockets of the great big accounting firms law firms people like this this is the biggest corporate welfare boondoggle the world has ever seen gimme the human aspect of this story of how i mean obviously with taxes in the laws it's hard but what is the human aspect here who is affected well and you know it i think one way or another it effects a lot of people as i mentioned the people especially people living abroad americans

living abroad and as you pointed out in the opening it's not just americans it's spouses of it's americans it's a resident alien or maybe somebody's mother was born in america they're people they call accidental americans some cases that you know they work because under a u.s. law because their mother had been born in the united states or something like that and suddenly find themselves saying well you haven't been paying filing taxes for the last forty years and even though you don't know any taxes we're going to smack you with penalties for non filing that's the kind of thing that goes on but the other thing is look i'm a former diplomat the idea that we threaten saying it's against every country in the world for not following the law over which we don't have any jurisdiction over them and punish them just because we can this is you know this is a fundamental deformation of the principle of sovereignty in international affairs i know that the penalties are harsh but does it surprise you that all of these countries all of these financial institutions do comply with us no that doesn't surprise me at all because let's face it bankers and other lists of the same merchants morals are nest not necessarily the strongest in the world you know

what's patriotism worth to the bottom line what's their client's privacy worth to them really with a look at it and say i'd rather crack down and do it whatever they want is a shakedown but we'll do it and especially we're going to pass the cost of a. long anyway and besides who's advising him on this stuff the very same compliance firms that are pulling in all the money so they're being told by their advisors oh real factors here has to say there's really no other choice than there rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of all the money they're going to make so is fact here to stay there's been quiet rumblings of a repeal but that's been happening since it was quietly enacted so we're talking about seven years ago and it was enacted under the obama administration seven years later i haven't seen any news of a strong repeal isn't going anywhere i think it is rand paul in the side of freedom caucus chairman mark meadows in the house of repair it produced repeal bills it's in the republican platform that it should be repealed you know as you know the tax bill if we can get anything done in this town is hopefully going to go through this

year we do have groups like americans of tax before national taxpayers union that are supportive of this this effort so i think there's a real shot at it plus there are some things the treasury department itself can can do not to go into all the details are there things the obama administration did that would just strictly illegal to try to implement sadhu because it would collapse under its own weight if they didn't have treasury fixes those things this thing's a dead duck knowing what you know about the trumpet ministration do you think that this is something that helps get onboard with i don't know because unfortunately because it's wreaking havoc and costing so much money abroad inside the united states because the impact is largely not felt here and it's really kind of an also ran issue of fact look i think if you asked eighty percent eighty percent of congressmen and senators what you think about fact that it's a fact of what's that exactly and even though foreigners they assume this is all some big huge priority of the united states to impose this law and get all this information what in fact it's you know how the thing got it back in the first place it was simply a paid for another bill oh this will raise

a hundred million dollars let's put that in nobody examined there were no hearings on it there was no cost benefit analysis it's absurd to this former u.s. diplomat co-leader of the campaign to reveal repeal fact at repeal fatca dot com. thank you so much for enlightening us today was very interesting. all right tech giant apple is looking to throw its hat into the already crowded digital streaming ring sources claim apple is looking to acquire ten original t.v. series and the various company executives are already scouting prospects through different agencies the move comes just after apple hired two longtime sony pictures television presidents they've been behind some of the biggest shows on television such as the blacklist breaking bad well to do it will be responsible for overseeing the build up of world class content for apple now this isn't apple's first foray into streaming original content the company released both planet of the apes and carpal karaoke spin off of c.b.s. late late show with james corden on its apple music subscription service but

neither of those was met with credible claim and while the company plans on spending more than one billion dollars it wouldn't be enough to catch up with streaming giants like netflix and amazon this year alone netflix spent over seven billion dollars on original content amazon budget has reportedly been about four point five billion dollars for the entire year and for more news on video streaming and the fight for video views catch a special encore episode of unplugged airing tomorrow at the same time. while one point we've all dreamed about finding lost treasure some people search sunken ships others go to ancient ruins like indiana jones but one lucky person found an enormously valuable lost treasure behind a door this discovery happened in town i used to live in thirty two years ago someone still willing to famous painting women ochre from the university of arizona museum of art authorities searched high and low for the piece of art that is said to now be worth as much as one hundred sixty million dollars but they never had any luck fast forward to twenty seventeen where furniture and antiques dealer and

silver city new mexico bought in a state just up the road in a town called cliff where i went to high school behind that door was the painting he didn't keep it he didn't get any money it is now in its rightful place thanks for watching today we'll see you next time. here's what people have been saying about rejected in the us actually just full on awesome the only show i go out of my way to lunch you know a lot of the really packs a punch. yam is the john oliver of marty americans do the same we are apparently better than that and see people you never heard of love went back to the night i'm president of the world bank so hate. me seriously send us an e-mail.

for decades the american middle class has been railroaded by washington politics. big money public interest test got a lot of voices that's how it is in the news pulse or in this country now that's where i come in. i mean it's still on our t. america i'll make sure you don't get railroaded if you'll get the straight talk in the straight news. to me.

coming up on r.t. america tragedy in barcelona as at least twelve were killed and over eighty injured when a van slams into pedestrians along a very crowded walkway authorities say it is terror. and solidarity and troll its bill has four thousand people gathered on the return of the university of virginia to pay respects to have their higher. and u.s. allies in syria say the united states presence in the country will remain past their mission completion but is that a good thing those stories and more coming up right now.