hurting middle class americans first let's check today's top stories around business and finance huge. point has hit yet another record high and you're an eight thousand dollars on friday well it did drop to around seventy five hundred it jumped back up to the seventy nine hundred mark by the afternoon this follows quite the week for the cryptocurrency which fell to fifty five hundred just last weekend and the time that's passed that quinn's market cap rose from ninety two billion dollars to one hundred thirty three point five billion dollars and that death can be attributed to a delay in an upgrade to the bitcoin network that was supposed to make transactions faster but that would have caused a horde for another bitcoin spinoff would have been created it's been avoided for now but there's still no guarantee that a hard work won't happen in the future. the federal communications commission just reversed a decade's old rule that will make it easier for media companies to merge the agency voted three to two to eliminate the ban on cross ownership of

a newspaper and a television station in a major market and that's not all the f.c.c. also voted in favor of allowing media companies to buy several stations in the same market and for local stations to jointly sell ad time it will also become easier for companies to buy several radio stations in some markets and the decision is expected to pave the way for sinclair broadcast group to buy tribune media which has been widely criticized no word on how it impacts comcast and rise in the thames at acquiring twenty first century fox though. oil exports from singapore grew faster than expected in october jumping twenty point nine percent year on year but significantly higher than the forecasts compiled by reuters which estimated ten percent growth in back in september exports actually fell one point one percent the biggest chunk of it went to china where shipments increased. over

fifty percent followed by twenty six point one percent to the european union but sells to singapore as other major trade partners like taiwan hong kong and indonesia declined since last year according to the government g.d.p. growth will come in at three point four percent which is greater than the initial forecast but that figure could change next week and the ministry of trade releases new data. as the digital world continues to evolve more and more people are jumping in and that includes investors over one point two billion dollars has been invested in the first three quarters of two thousand and seventeen in the us alone the investments are made and i see those are initial coin operated i suppose are akin to initial public offerings or i.p.o.'s where investors populate a company with capital the i c o's deal with digital quality and related digital technologies like digital currency exchanges and we've we've seen

a lot of government action related to i.c.a.o. in the last few months and to talk more about that sat down with dr nicolette cost to step partner and attorney at the global law firm mayor brown first asked her to set the landscape for what's been going on around the world. here's what she had to say. so the big question right now is are they regulated or not. we have heard a lot of noise about the financial impact the risks but of course for them to be able to go through in a official legal transparent way they have to be seen and addressed by regulators so what we have seen now is as you've mentioned briefly some countries have simply decided to abandon you think of you think of south korea or you think of china those are examples where they have been clearly banned now others for example we've seen recently mentions about russia about single poor and canada australia.

germany just to name a few where regulators have taken a position about addressing the risks so not regulating them as such yet but identifying to risk the us went to a bit further but that's more or less the global status of those. fantastic and you know in some of those countries you mentioned just for our viewers they have also banned in china south korea and in russia they have even banned the trading of digital currencies so nicollette i mean you know global regulations all around the world but you are head of tech and compliance there in france tell us about what's going on in the european union with regard to i.c.a.o. . so that's an interesting question bart this week the big news here in europe is that which is the securities market with thirty which is more or less the umbrella that oversees financial securities regulators here in europe that start

operating two thousand and ten there are more or less the role is to make sure that there's a uniform application of the directives and the regulation having more or less a single european. rulebook but also making sure that they're looking at risks for investors systemic risk and also making sure that there's a convergence between regulators so as has issued this week port addressing both investors and firms identifying the growing number of i see happening around the world and therefore the different things that have to be assessed from the investor side some examples would be assessing you know if there is any money laundering issues if they are clear and transparent if we know who is behind them and from of course the firm side is are there acting in the regulated are they acting. not in contravention to any local rules and regulations so the idea

here is again to to to accept the fact that they are existing that they're happening right now but to make sure that investors know clearly that they might lose all of their investment capital and that is also clearly saying that it's an extremely volatile. product right now. and stephen may or the head injury commission doing on i c o o's so that's interesting as well so yes you see the security exchange commission as you said has has been one of the first regulators in the world to actually address the potential qualification of. i suppose as possible tokens of coins being securities and therefore potentially falling on their federal securities law so they analyzed if you remember bart. o. . related to. a few months ago and what had happened then and the negative.

result of that had happened on some aspects of it they they had investigative report and they'd basically clarify that a token or a coin could not necessarily will but could fall under the definition of a security if the famous how we test which is which comes from of the nine hundred forty six securities i'm sorry a supreme court decision qualified identifies a security so we will see how it evolves will see how there if it is that are being developed right now will be addressed on that aspect as well having the underlying . as as as a bit corn or a if you're any kind of virtual currency or token how it would be addressed but it's interesting to see that because singapore for example and hong kong have even followed that first kind of assessment. yes you see and the importance of trying to

qualify it as security or not if it does fall under the description of what a security is. what are the s.e.c. and sticking with them just briefly here. i know they did something recently about celebrity endorsements of these ice c.e.o.'s and my recollection is that the former basketball player dennis rodman adores a pot calling and i think paris hilton and the actress and cause and even floyd mayweather the boxer of and voiced one of these a coins what was the guidance or the instructions that the f.c.c. gave about celebrity endorsements well that's a that's an interesting point because that's part of the of the the visor we've rolled that regulators are taking very serious seriously right now and in relation to i suppose and interventional currency's they basically. warned about the fact that if a celebrity endorses a n i c o they still have the obligation to disclose the nature of the compensation

to scope and if they do not. abide by for their federal securities laws there could be serious violations if they are doing so so and again this is part of of the f.c.c. saying again be aware and make sure that that you are not just being influenced by subjective. subjective factors and you still have to do your assessment of making sure that that you know that you know what is your expectation of of profits and what are the risks you're taking and again i think what's interesting about it you know it's it's not that it's good there it's bad or there are risks like in any new developments there are cyber security risk there are money laundering risks so it's all about trying to see if we can work it through with a transparent approach a safer approach for investors while always trying to find the right balance between. you know making sure we are protecting the investors and this is them

a christian to find out just the stability of markets but at the same time also not hindering and stopping innovation so i think this is the biggest challenge that regulators will have to face in the coming days weeks and months dr. thank you so much for bringing being with us really appreciate it. thank you very much commission children. time now for a quick break but stick around because when we were turn we'll discuss the evolution of investing and find out how hidden fees are hurting the middle class plus pope francis is it a two hundred thousand dollar lamborghini find out how he's putting it to good use for those of fraud as we go to break here the numbers at the closing bell.

guys are financial survival guide liquid to those that you can convert music as quite easily. to keep in mind though as to me into a place of. four. years ago i traveled across the united states exploring america's deadly love affair with a gun if a bad guy tried to get to one of my family members he would have better a lot better and i think they are inheriting one of my my babies says my book was published in the year two thousand more than whole for a million americans have been killed by the us how does the team yes we did this is a middle school we go through drills and we put ourselves some real scenarios it was interesting to see who actually got hit. and i decided to

return to the subject to track down who i'd met and photograph those years ago. but we're not. cryptocurrency doesn't green. need to replace the us dollar. the euro it just needs to survive while those. collapse under their own weight and when the top and it's going to go. the global economy has changed a lot since the two thousand and eight financial crisis not everyone trusts the markets the way that they once did but not too long ago we learned that there is

a certain luxury product that promises a better return than most stocks and even gold to hear more on this we're joined now by jeff burke founder of breathe a porter hi thank you for joining us jeff you sell this highly coveted item which is the arm as birkin. but it's obviously not something that everyone can afford so for that reason alone is it really that strong of an investment. it's not so much not people can't just only afford it is the difficulty to get it even if you can't afford it and there's a secondary marketplace where people are gladly paying those fifty two hundred percent over the retail if we can get one that's brand new and i've read a lot of these articles about berkman as a as an investment vehicle and they certainly appreciate and price every year as a present priest almost every year and but to say that it's squarely an investment getting out of it is only is reputable is the person selling the bag so if as if

a normal woman is carrying a bag and she thinks everyone's sewing it for twenty thousand dollars if she jumps on e bay and tries to get twenty herself it's there's an authenticity concern great so the people the reason the birkin does so well as you just said is because it is so exclusive even if you have all the money in the world sometimes you can't necessarily get your hands on one so is that the secret to success in this very crazy retail industry right now. just sell something that you don't make. a commitment to quality you know however the demand that they've somehow built by design or not there is still a high commitment to quality in the making of the bag itself the bag that you have in your mind's eye is probably forty to forty dollars to make that thing by hand. so i think that a lot of people are going to were to see not only just beauty but what they're getting for their money and you know. that's what it's so the economy and the job market has have both changed a lot since the recession and not everyone has necessarily felt the recovery so

since two thousand and eight how do you think since you work in the industry how do you think the luxury goods market has fared. this comeback in a big way i would have to say the biggest thing they've done is really down on just in time manufacturing you know when the plane crashed it gave birth to this whole industry called flash sale which is gilt common rule dot com and through a period of time you were able to go on and get why is selling gucci and told the purple label at fifty dollars for a three day period. but then people got conditioned so if i'm a pole customer and i roll into a wall in a way for gilt sacks calls polo they say killed and now the fly steel industry is really going away ok well i want to ask you about amazon quickly because it's hard to talk about online retail without talking about amazon and they just announced that they're going to cooperate with calvin klein for an exclusive exclusive products but the one criticism of amazon is that it doesn't really have the cool factor that some of the other hand online retailers have so do you think there this

new project with calvin klein is going to do well i'm sure it's going to do well but you know underwear is really much more a mass market product right then appear valentino pumps or an arm as burke and his brain will something we talk a lot about on the show is how the internet has just for up to the retail industry every. in particular retail but you were lying lot on instagram for yourself which i think is so interesting so what was it like creating a company and relying on instagram in this very tough environment you know my way if i had been tinkering with the perkins on e bay and she was studying the few other people there doing this and she just came into me in two thousand and twelve she's like no one's on instagram i could figure out the d.n.a. of this the hashtag bird can hash tag thirty five centimeter and we just built a organic community that's like eighty thousand people now and she was very awesome about taking pictures in our house on the couch for the wall she just had this

theory that if i'm successful people are going to know my house and they're going to know that i have that bag and that's a real bag so we have a community now eighty thousand people will do probably eighty million this year in over fifty countries thirty five percent of our business is the middle east so what is the difference between uploading pictures from your home on instagram versus e-bay or amazon. for our level of game on we do have an e bay store and then all in all honesty people know who we are so if there's a bag on e bay that's thirty thousand bucks they're probably going to pick up the phone and calls directly on that you know this very sophisticated customer that's a woman who knows that hey maybe i can get a deal or hey if i water them the money at least i could save maybe three percent on the credit card for them to charge me so since you're you know pretty reliant on social media and instagram is so big for your company what is what are your security concerns because obviously everything is done online so how do you assure people that you're not just a thief if i don't wire you hundred thousand dollars on the street or on the street

it's really it's just just like there's a huge community of guys that are motorheads and they just follow these nine hundred sixty seven mustangs they talk about it all the time there's a parallel universe where there's hundreds of thousands of women thing like purse blog and they're constantly do you would you think a preview porters i want to use them or they would just and. we're down the street constantly delivering stuff on time and it sounds like you've gotten up there a time jeff burk founder of pre-date porter thank you so much for joining us. but really stagnant wages a higher cost of living and expensive college degrees it's no secret that the american middle class has felt squeezed financially but there could be another factor we've been overlooking that's having an even bigger influence here more on that we're joined now by devon fergus author of land of the feet hidden costs and

the decline of the american middle class. devin i want to start out by talking about your book land of the fee which you say the explosion of fees has been overlooked when we talk about wealth inequality so what i mean by that sure. have risen both in the public and private sector of the last generation and those fees are increasingly. rosy in the areas of mobility housing education employment and in transportation and so it becomes a barrier to the middle class and so i know you just mentioned a few of them but the four main areas in your book are housing work transportation and schooling out of the four that's a great question i would probably say that people face consumers or for home mortgage in order to buy a car or whatever consumer product you want to want to purchase a so supposedly a student loan s'posed last ten years but the average person who takes out of the loan as two or three graduated seniors takes twenty one years to pay off their

student loan and it's going to continue to increase over time so how and when did this buildup of fees begin i mean did it start with one particularly industry. in part to start with started both of the public and private sector ramy start to the private sector first in the baking industry first. in things like. fees things like that you know sort of spread to other industries in other fields also to the private sector and for those for the for the public's private sector fees or were we to raise revenue and also to obscure the true price of of a product but for the proposed fees became a way to sort of to close revenue gaps this was a profit for the private sector in a revenue stream for the for the public ok i want to ask you quickly about telecom because according to the consumer federation of america eighteen fries and com.

sixty billion dollars annually. which is just outrageous to think about when i first saw that number i couldn't believe it but i mean how do we let them get away with this why does this keep happening sure it keeps happening. and i've actually written about this previously with telecom industry in ways. sort of consumers. to keep part because of lax oversight my concern is actually down the road with the current administration. boasting about the rule back of regulations that's going to have an impact probably down the road where you move the financial regulatory cops off the beat but to happen is great offense for predation and so that's what you will have in the future and that brings me to my next question about richard cordray who obviously just stepped down from the consumer financial protection bureau he'd be out by the end of the month and he was really looked at as a very tough regulator especially when it comes to things like payday loans and mortgages

and so on but obviously he did not come into the picture until after the crisis so how do you think he and his predecessors that were in his role temporarily beforehand did they make any progress oh no absolutely. pity loans to the ways in which to sort of try to aggressively roll back into force payday loan abuses the also had some impact in terms of student loans as well and so i think he had a solid start. to great concern that with the due addition of congress they might be rollbacks and dodd frank maybe is one reason is that the court is sort of stepped. in so the concern is what comes in the aftermath of richard cordray from great so it sounds like you might be concerned about who could replace and precisely who replace him is really the big question though the though of also also heard that because he has to there's going to be less of a of a will a push to roll back the influence of powers of c.f.p.

be so maybe the cause. in the white house my focus on things like like tax reform or other financial issues ok so back to the u.s. economy for a second if in a perfect world we found a way to get rid of all these hidden what would the u.s. economy look like in these countries are making billions of dollars a year it sounds like achieve a few g.d.p. percentage points off sure we would be. looking at the micro level or some level you mean to individual u.s. households and so would maybe fifteen to twenty percent back to the pocketbooks of the american consumer that would in turn mean more money in their pocket to spend on more goods and services as well so and we're also through the fees is also a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the one percent and so i said to be less of a transfer of wealth as consumers use the use of money in their pockets to buy goods and services that sounds like it could have a pretty big impact it could absolutely so obviously it's

a pretty significant situation in the u.s. how does it compare to other countries i mean is this a problem anywhere else in the world. i mean also in the broader sense the rise of fees and is certainly a problem to clean the u.k. there's a dead on our doorstep which was created really in the middle of the two thousands of on the eve of the financial crisis so deftly the question of fees and more broadly has an impact has an impact everywhere we could almost think of the us is some kind of canary in the mine things my started the us were even more specifically within within africa acutely didn't protest to the nation it goes goes abroad. some people talk about the be the fugly american the financially ugly american as as these american products start at home and go abroad to create abusive financial practices ok thank you so much for joining us our guest author of land of the faith thank you.

earlier this week pope francis was gifted a two hundred thousand dollar lamborghini that share the same color scheme of the vatican flag but he won't be riding it around the holy see is promises instead he signed it before it's auction doppler charity according to the vatican proceeds from the auction will go toward projects helping christians return to their homes in iraq that were destroyed by isis the funds will also help female victims of human trafficking and medical groups that provide services in central africa it was definitely a sight to see considering the pope's dread of the traditional papal limousines on a normal day the only vehicle you'll see him in is in one thousand nine hundred four for. that's all for now be sure to catch boom bust on direct t.v. in the united states you can find us on the r t channel three two one and if you miss us on direct t.v. catch boom bust on you tube at youtube dot com slash boom bust archie thanks for

watching next time. please everybody i'm stephen ball. hollywood. every proud american and george bush in our view this is my buddy financial guru just a little bit different. going to the well you know what with all the drama happening in our country and. every day americans. look to the store to bridge the gap this is the great american.

tom the. fact. that. kids. are and. commanding can. be those who don't consume don't tell you then doesn't do it on jay field the first thing i'm done was wrong in that are equal distances wasn't what he calls a stance move. don't be dense or tell him to. move with that

to those wooden missiles this is a downside acetone. in america a college degree requires a great deal. paying a decades long teds for. studying so hard it requires trying to shift. going through humiliation to enter an elite society. and paci dead sometimes quite literally. wants other true colors of universities in the us.

whenever you buy. russian product. you're not just going to get closer. to the little bit of his work. key decisions are put on the fold as marathon talks to form a ruling coalition in germany and said day three missing the deadline set by angela merkel. lebanon's prime minister whose surprise resignation announcement has raised fears of fresh regional turmoil meets with president prawn in crime rates we discuss what the latest developments mean for love and exclusively with one of the country's top diplomat in the on the mend today we're facing another ten degrees in

four grades of chaos and instability which in turn lead to terrorism. also this hour of political science or risk carries out to startle experiments at berkeley california waving the u.s. and islamic.