well i'm john martin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture like funder rumbling in the distance the warning signs are growing are we heading toward another financial crisis as richard wolffe in just

a moment and is donald trump pushing us closer to victory in afghanistan or to a permanent military occupation the last ten ted goodman and isaiah poole in tonight's politics. mark twain supposedly once said that history never repeats itself but it does rhyme the same could be said about capitalism almost ten years after the last financial crisis the same forces that brought our economy down in two thousand and eight are again rearing their ugly heads but this time instead of subprime housing loans it's subprime auto loans that have some observers talking about the next big banks to meltdown joining me now is richard wolfe visiting professor at the new school co-founder of democracy at work and the author of numerous books including capitalism is crisis deepens essays on the global economic meltdown richard wolffe

professor wolfe welcome back. thank you glad to be here it's great having you with us so as i mentioned there are now real concerns about the subprime auto industry the our auto loan industry which is now worth about twenty six billion dollars and then started to see delinquency rates that we literally have not seen since the housing market crash what do you make of what's going on here. well i think the evidence is mounting as you say indeed on my way to the studio i was reading about the collapse in the last twelve hours of something called providence financial bank in great britain it's a bank that started in one thousand a.d. and it specializes here we go in sub prime loans to personal borrowers for homes cars and a whole lot of other things in great britain this is a very scary sign that bank lost two billion dollars worth of its capital value literally over the last twenty four hours as

a panic as develop there that they made loans to people who couldn't possibly pay them back that the economic condition of the british working people has deteriorated so they cannot repay these loans and then the whole pyramid of of card sitting on top of these loans begins to crack this is so scarily reminiscent of what happened in two thousand and seven and eight that when you put it together with this new number about the ballooning auto loans that are not safe that is the sense that people can pay them back and you really have to shake your head and realize that the lessons that could have been and should have been learned by the collapse in two thousand and eight have all but been a race by the rush of the banks in this country to make a lot of money loaning to people who can be charged high interest rates etc etc and

we're right back to where we where we were and it is very scary and if you're not scared it probably means you're not paying attention you know richard a parent that actually is the is the problem with great britain's middle class. not unlike the problem with america's middle class which doesn't seem so bad in northern europe. but you know the united states had reagan u.k. had batch are and in both countries seems to me are still living under neo fasher ism neo reaganism is that is that the problem or is it simply intrinsic to capitalism itself or both. i think it's both i think that the reality of the numbers tell us that the decline in the standard of living in the pay scales of british workers has been worse significantly worse than the decline in this country where we've been more or less stagnant for large sectors of our working class and the british came later to the game played here in the united states that game being

if you're no longer willing to raise the wages of workers load him up instead with debt at least it gives you a few more years as they borrow and spend before the whole game collapses we did that we went through that in two thousand and eight and now we are gearing up to do it again and the british are discovering like we did that the debt can't be sustained on a declining wages can't borrow more and more if then only a question of when you reach the point where you can't anymore it should never have been allowed the kinds of inequality that deprives the mass of people of the purchasing power they need not to go into debt not to get in over their heads we knew these things we learned the we learned them first after the one nine hundred thirty s. depression we learned them again in the last eight years but there's something about the capitalist system that pressurizes the banks and the corporations to

constantly run like lemmings off the edge of the cliff into the stone wall of their own inability to organize matters so that the mass of people can function in an economically viable way you know i am i had not read about this bank in the u.k. failing is that it is very new because he read the financial times just an hour ago is and is it being downplayed is there concern that this could start basically a bank run or you know. the collapse. well i read about it in a in a an important british newspaper called the telegraph but you're going to find you can really find reports of it but it's only a few hours old and my guess is it's not getting the attention here because like the beginnings of the crash of two thousand and eight when by the way another bank one in germany and one in britain also failed suddenly to everyone's surprise you

know this is a little bit like the famous canary in the coal mine letting us know that the air in this case the financial air is very very bad and that a very dangerous point but we have america i have to say this honestly we are specialists in denial we don't want to see it we don't want to face it we don't want to see what's going on because of the scary implications but like a little child has to learn if you put your fingers in front of your eye when you see something scary it doesn't make the something scary go away you have to learn that and we seem to be having difficulty doing that you know stock buybacks this is the story that i feel i found in the financial times actually yesterday stock buybacks of help companies boost their profits or at least their stock price not their profits but their stock price in this post recession period which is jacked up income for c.e.o.'s and senior executives but another worrying sign they've

fallen by twenty percent over the past year does this mean that the scam essentially of buying back stock in order to drive up the price of the stock in order to raise the compensation to the senior executives and they c.e.o. that the scam is as has run its course i think so i think it's important to explain to viewers when the crash happened in two thousand and eight in the federal reserve drove down interest rates to virtually nothing corporations were able to borrow at a virtually zero interest rate and they did that in record numbers over the last eight or nine years borrow. huge amounts of money and using it to go into the stock market and buy up their own company's shares why because for many c.e.o.'s their pay package is connected to how well the stock prices do it makes the stock price go up because the company's buying its old shares that makes the c.e.o. earn more money it makes the shareholders feel real good but what's the secret is

it's building up the debts of the corporation and at a certain point the company realizes that the price is sol artificially boosted that they better slow down and then you have that peculiar capitalist problem that as each one slows down the process stops the floor under the share prices is removed and down come the prices and that's when you have the crash which everyone will understand looking back monday morning quarterbacks but the reality is we knew all along we just were not willing or able as a nation to say we have a system that is broken and needs fundamental change while since two thousand and seven two thousand and eight we've had dodd frank i'm not sure what else has has intervened that would cause the economy that we have right now to be fundamentally different from the economy melted down in two thousand and seven is there anything

though i mean the short answer is absolutely not this was not a society that was prepared to look at the economy and say wow this broke damaging millions and millions of people's lives and we have to change it instead they tried with gimmicks pump up the money supply do all kinds of short term adjustments look like you're reforming but don't change anything basic look we had every single major bank bankrupt in this country it couldn't function they had lent to each other they couldn't pay it back. instead of saying ok we have a broken banking system we bailed them all out so that they are now bigger than they were then they are now more and hop to one another than they were then and then we scratch our heads and wonder well why is it happening again and the ends there is we didn't enter in to a debate let alone action to fundamentally change it you know the trump

administration is now pushing quote tax reform in my opinion that's just republican code for tax cuts for the rich this time trickle out style of thinking about the economy has been failing for almost forty years what would real tax reform look like. you have to face the fact that we have a tax system as you put it that is designed to favor above all else the richest people in the united states back in the fifty's and sixty's just to take one example the top rate on individuals for the richest one or two percent of the people was in the neighborhood of ninety per cent nine zero even in the sixty's and seventy's it was in the range of seventy percent today we're talking thirty five percent we have cut the taxes overwhelmingly on the richest people in the united states let me give you another example at the end of world war two for every dollar

raised by the federal government by taxing individuals a dollar fifty was raised by taxing corporations today the relay ration relationship is the following for every dollar we tax individuals we tax corporations at twenty five cents this is a staggering shift in the burden of taxation from corporations to people and from the richest people to the middle and poor people in this country unless you change that you're not serious about a tax reform you are playing around at the edges and when the dust clears my guess is and today's the trump people into that it that they will cut corporate taxes they will give a tax holiday to the people who've been keeping their profits out of the united states for years hoping to get a reduced rate to bring them back it's a kind of extortion of corporations and the rich to force benefits to themselves it's again as we said at the beginning of this conversation not learning that those

behaviors brought us to the crisis in two thousand and eight and simply resuming them has a very threatening future for us and once again or were seen ads on t.v. that are virtually identical to during the reagan era we need to cut taxes in order to rid bring back the middle class and raise your way to it's just it's nonsense richard well in a believable it's a pleasure having you with us richard thank you so much tonight. thank you going out as donald trump prepares for a major escalation of the war will we ever leave afghanistan ted good night isaiah poole and tonight's politics panel right after the break. with. all the fees we don't know. every the world if you do any of these

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just like the real news a good actor bad actor and in the end you could never hear all. the park in the world all the world all the world's a stage and we are definitely a player. you guys and i made a professional is power point to show you how artsy america fits into the greater media landscape. our team is not all right but we are a solid alternative to the bullshit that we don't skew liberal or conservative and as you can see from this bar graph we don't skew the facts either the talking head left these talking head righties oh there you go above it all to look at world r.t. america is in the spotlight now every really i have no idea how to classify as and it actually took me way more time than i care to admit.

is donald trump aiming for a victory in afghanistan or permanent military occupation let's ask tonight's politics panel. with her thoughts panel are ted goodman a reporter for the daily caller and isaiah poor communications director for people's action and editor of our future dot org thank you guys for being with us every both with us so in a big nationally televised speech last night donald trump who called for an escalation of the war in afghanistan already america's longest war by far the new strategy trump said won't be nation building but fighting to win and killing terrorists our troops will fight to win we will fight to win from now on victory will have a plea a definition attacking our enemies oh blitter aiding isis crushing al qaida

preventing the taliban from taking over afghanistan and stopping mass terror attacks against america before they emerge to me that sounds less like a strategy for victory than a justification for a permanent occupation occupations of afghanistan have never ever worked most occupations period never work how could we possibly succeed where the british and the soviets both failed i don't get this either why. and you know donald trump proved last night that he can read a teleprompter. sort of and he can read words that have been said to him but i did not hear any i didn't really straining to figure out with all the criticism that he leveled against the obama administration i don't see the dearth. it's between what he did and what president obama or president bush before him did

except that it's being done with a little more bombast but also with a little less enthusiasm i'm just i just don't get it but i just don't see anything that is the path to peace that he says it is or victory or that what is going to reopen we have a president right during the campaign who wasn't afraid to rail against even the neoconservative stablished right we had a president who wasn't of certainly not become the new establishment so i think i think as he said in the speech last night tom it's different once you become president right once you have all the facts on that and he's he as you said he's been studying the issue for months ever since being elected and he's come to a different conclusion barack obama was right well he he mentioned that he is not in the business of nation building and that we should not be there. forever but at the same time he's kind of defined he's clearly defined our goals and objective over there really where did all kill the enemy to eradicate i thought i was there was king george the third school here in north america killed

a bunch of soldiers but but you know an occupation horrified more the more people you kill in an occupation the more you piss off frankly forgive my french and people get really upset and their families get really upset and you create generations you if you want to be precisely what's going on in afghanistan right now if you read this article of the new york times today which really lays that out crystal clear. the whole i you know our intervention of ghana stand has increased the ranks of the tao of bob the strategy that we have pursued has just created more energy or i don't know under a republican president and a democrat is there is a trump that puts a no i get that but i think you know it is you but we have a president now who is clearly defined our goal and he doesn't plan to be there forever but he has told the men and women who have sex some of them have sacrificed their lives. that we're not just going to pull out and make their sacrifice meaningless we have a really have

a clear goal now and we and that goal is to eradicate those that threaten our peace get around them oh you already said that and so did he but you know what does that look like and know that the only difference i can tell between what he's doing and what president obama was doing and arguably president bush before that i mean keep in mind we won the war after three weeks this isn't an occupation for seventeen years you don't win occupations and you know when the all knowing the enemy when and where you're going to be that's the only difference that i can detect and he's going to have to notify every time he changes troop levels he's going to have to notify twenty nine countries that are our allies with nato in this thing number one and he's going to happen notify the afghan government you know i think it's not going to leak. well we have a bit of problem with leads in this administration but no the president again or you didn't care i jacked him systematic sure you know i think he's listening to the generals he's listening to this not a good one i think is actually i think that's an excellent point because i don't

think you know we overrate this guy when we think that he went in with this grand strategy about how to fix afghanistan what happened was that a bunch of generals walked into the room total bunch of stuff he said. and that's what we got a little ahead of and it will be another sixty billion dollars so the defense contractors and the president's responsibility to be an absolute expert on every single subject matter that it is his or her muslims or the you could be already under his monsoonal commander is. now being i'm sorry ok you know he is responsible for being the commander in chief and the expectation that the american people should have a commander in chief is that he questions to death he listens and of questions and evaluate whom makes rational decisions that he didn't own and what he did when he prison wasn't the more you have it is how do exactly that what proof you have and i didn't i just learned amazingly all these people who for the last two years have

been saying yay trump get out of the stupid wars no more stupid wars what diseases trump says ok i'm going to stand a stupid war everybody's going oh yeah ok we're did you want to say well what did you expect him to say last night lay up at aa going to keep my campaign promise and polina states out of afghanistan well maybe he had information that was brought to his attention and told him otherwise he's putting america first if that means staying in afghanistan a little longer than he said earlier. i have to salute you for that in the lead up to his big rally in phoenix arizona tonight donald trump hinted that he might pardon former maricopa county sheriff joe arpaio joe arpaio ip who famously used to call himself america's toughest sheriff was convicted of criminal content. of court this month after ignored a court ruling actually several court rulings against his racist crackdowns on immigration we're now hearing that trump won't pardon arpaio but even just ten thousand at a pardon is a pretty obvious shout out to trump's white racist and nazi base are they now the

permanent republican base is this you know like the republican party sit around ok this you know this this twelve percent is our nazi base and what is twenty two percent as are white now white races and you know you think i have no idea what happens after that but i was in charlottesville and i'll tell you there were there was a large number of white supremacists in that square that day but even if it was seven hundred nine hundred that still pales in comparison the population of this country and so to inflate these numbers and to assert that any anything over a point one percent of traumas based associate themselves is a nazi or a white nationalist. is ridiculous i don't like that what about white homes i believe i don't remember which poll that was posed was either a.b.c. washington post or one of the top media pollsters that's sixty two percent of the american public. polls is to take you down a confederate statues ok but you can overlook oh i should i want you on this issue

i think as far as removing all confederate statues from public land that however doesn't mean those on the other side of the issue are racists i mean i don't get that is like this is what this is maybe the race is i have at least me this is that they have a fundamental disrespect for the pain that those statues cause to african-american people i respectfully disagree as a i agree with you that that there is that pain and that but it doesn't it doesn't make those on the other side of the statue this is just as it was there were three big bursts when these statues went up the first was right after the eight hundred ninety eight plus plessy. v ferguson case which established basically. apartheid united states the second was right after right after the birth of a nation came out nine hundred fifteen and the third i forget exactly what were some potato the third but it was about a decade later and and you know that other nine hundred twenty s. yeah and all the three of these had to do with the rise of the klan and the

expansion and the statues were put up as as as monument as white supremacy as mine mr wright said resistance to the idea that african-americans in this country deserve equal rights. so in a case we're all in a kind of consensus which is what i'm in you know i'm not we're not in consensus that those who may be defending the presence of confederate statues on public land i don't agree that those people are racists and have like a fundamental disrespect for african-american culture i think some way they some don't do that that's not as much fun issue but also another hit on this issue about what is the fact is racism because racism is not just simply you know the. you know foaming at the mouth kind of stuff or the you don't care and you don't carry tiki torches or whatever you don't put one hundred junkers. but but seriously . but there is also there is also the subliminal.

sort of. security white supremacy that is often unconscious conscious yes the point being unconscious so i would suggest to you the better way to go about this isn't to call those people that are that may you know support these competitors on public land not to be rate them as racist and intolerant that but getting that message out and explaining to them what that symbol means to a lot of us and you know i was surprised we have jefferson davis highway right outside washington d.c. in. drive in arlington you remember people that never did work that's reduce. us i don't know if you know but then we have also we have outside of the city lee highway even though levy wrote a letter to disavow award i just discovered a few days ago that said i don't think that we should have these monuments right there and so that it would it would do would be the. tearing open the source

exactly where exactly so so. so what do we do with this i mean it's it seems to me that waking people up is an important thing particularly white people who who have very little contact with people of other races and are just blissfully ignorant of their white white privilege i think that that you know that's a message that we need to carry across the country and it's i think that's right and i think we can have it is possible to have respect for open and honest dialogue with people who are willing to listen i agree one hundred percent but it's all i think it's also important not to paint all these folks. as racist but if they do maybe fall in on a different dynamic than i do neither one of us are recommending that we do that i mean right just let's acknowledge the racist history of the statues and let's director ira at the statues well nothing wrong with direct your ire at the nazis well of course yeah those ok i got to wrap this up but. i say great having both

with the right thank you and that's the way it is tonight and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport get out there detective tag your. guys i made a professional powerpoint show you how artsy america into the greater media landscape

. after all right we are a solid alternative to the. liberal or conservative and as you can see that is bar graph we don't skew the facts either talking at lefties talking at righties oh there you go above it all look at world r.t. america is in the spotlight now brinkley i have no idea how to classify and actually took me way more time than i care to admit. just low right now and will take a comeback. i did send port from a to show you where you had at one time. stating you know been concert.