dollars' worth of the shares the head of a small biotech company turned krypto has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock sales already john or president c.e.o. and chairman of riaa block chain disclosed in a filing with a us securities and exchange commission that he sold thirty thousand three hundred eighty three shares at a weighted average price of twenty eight dollars and sixty one cents remember the stock of this company called riot blog chain it used to be a biotech company they soared by six hundred percent once they changed their name to block chain and their their nasdaq stock symbol to riot from like bio p. but the fact is that this company right lists three block chain investments on its website a canadian digital currency exchange called coin square a crypto currency accounting firm called verity and test pay which is planning to apply block technology to telecom payments so not very big companies in the space and the value of his company is at two hundred seventy million and in december just

because he changed his name to block chain to talk about hooters you could talk about hooters yeah that's a company here in the united states which is as the name suggests it's like a rush it was a restaurant chain it kind of went out of favor because of all this whole hash tag me too and when was the rice becoming a little bit more prominent and hooters was a chain where you go in large breasted women serve you bigger food yes that's the concept of food hers and one of the companies that owns a lot of hooters restaurants that's publicly listed introduced a crypto. same yeah they announced it would start they would have their own krypto or write crypto or something and the stock skyrocketed based on based on the on a lot of you know what happened was the stock kind of went you know reacted a lot of way men to react when they go to hooters yes well i think those sort of things it shows that there's a demand for some sort of investment part of the problem is. that there is the

i.c.a.o. so a lot of the big names the sort of cryptographers and engineers and anybody who could devise a real crypto currency or real block chain you know there's no real incentive for them to go to the public markets they just would rather do in i.c.a.o. because they don't have to give up equity then in a way so i think this is the problem is that for any ordinary investor who doesn't know the world of crypto know how to get an ether wallet and get these tokens they go to the stock market looking for anything and all you have to do is change a name to blotching and a lot of people can get scammed that way because those are not going to harken back to the dot com era where big companies put a dot com in their name and the valuations went up dramatically that's true there seems to be a lot of this plagiarism going on where you just say all the blocks script oh and you have an immediate response in the marketplace and i mean are we talking a lot about gold because in the second half we got jim records in this kind of a sympathy chat about gold just to make gems calls of no gold i'm talking my book

it's called talking my vote talking your book so your book era gold person and silver i would imagine well i actually over the christmas break i spoke to about two i heard of two different. whales who were going along gold as well oh i think really yes i think this is a kind of ok that's fascinating well we got to take a break when we come back as jim rickards don't go away much more coming your way so stay right here at the car is a report on our to. join me every thursday on the alex salmond chill and i'll be speaking to us of the world of politics or business on show business oh so you've. unfortunately it appears that once people learn that you've reported

a sexual assault or may have been involved in an incident that they become scared of you instead of being scared of the perpetrator. in two thousand and sixteen the panama papers show the world with the tax haven secrets two trillion united states dollars passed through most. in the amount of time that we've been in panama papers exposure that's what it shows a lot of money it really is. journalism it's an act of journalism looking at things that people want to keep secret and asking why would they want to keep these things secret. millions of. documents were examined. all the people we basically have tried to get an advantage out of this sort of newspaper. and probably other politician which was the other politician the media

would point to find targets such as the kings of morocco and saudi arabia the president of argentina several prime ministers. and russian president vladimir putin of course. oh my god i've had so i have sued so many newspapers for defamation some things don't just happen by chance it was very striking there were no merits of single special a lot of people from the brics countries specially brazil russia and china that this special project reveals what was missed in the media coverage. of the panama chronicles. welcome back to kaiser report time now to go to the one the only the prolific

author the trends see year the forecasts are unfair allow the gym records to do with emacs welcome to twenty eighteen thank you i have joined us so far so far so good to see how it ends up they could be the year of living dangerously all right so let's get through some question the see there because you are without a doubt got your finger on the paulson terms of trends and the intersection between markets and other things as they are got talked about what we may be seeing in the next year or two now one trend obviously is artificial intelligence you've got a boom you know what driving cars chat bot apps what's happening in ai how big a market is it works going well and is potentially unlimited this is now where what we call third third wave third generation so the first generation is kind of you know big data and simple rhythms a second generation was was deep learning where the machine could teach and its output would become input that would basically span the capability of machine third

wave is now building these physical exam networks and getting inputs from other sources of checkley i.b.m.'s watson machine which is the it's not the fastest computer because the fastest computer that can read the volume of plain language that it does and a different languages so now it's like having a thousand i was working twenty four hours a day and actually maybe ten thousand i was you can't replicate that with with humans but you can do with machines and can they bring that amount of data and with meaning the machine learning combined with the recent big data the algorithms and very powerful sounds are going to have for a punk band fuzzy cognitive network. yes you play instruments i don't have much older child and i did every. probably wouldn't be able to keep it between us ok let's ask about what this does to the workforce because obviously if you have self arriving cars and. truck drivers for example is a huge work force in america and trucks what happens to the workforce i think there are structural problems with the workforce that have nothing to do with technology

and what we're talking about they do have to do the education and training the opioid crisis there are a lot of protheroe a lot of structural headwinds but as far as this technology is concerned it doesn't displace as many people as a lot of people think for example let's say you're a you're a nurse's aid and there's certain tests that you do and you can automate those it doesn't mean you get rid of the nurse's aid it just means the nurse's aid has more time for sort of you know more personal care or other kinds of observations of cetera so you know the computer keeps getting better in the a keeps getting better so the quality of the care goes up it doesn't mean a person doesn't have a job it just means that they might you know pivotal a little bit or have different skills that the machine can't match so i don't see a display look at an amazon warehouse stand thousand robots those aren't people those are robots well a lot of drivers out there and there are people in those warehouses and they're working pretty hard so you're right about things overstated yes you're right about the robotics and the automation absolutely right about that but it's not displacing as many jobs as you suggest is actually making those jobs more productive there are

however there are structural problems in the workforce but i don't think it comes from robots as a second and education or lack of education lack of opportunity lack of labor mobility bad tax policy and i would not underestimate the impact of the opioid crates and also the second time you've mentioned the opiate crisis what's going on there jim what do you mean the open i think it's been very well covered but but the point is this is diction is very widespread so if you're serious out if you can't hold a job if you're a recovering addict might not be able to get a job or if you're a closet addict you might be on the job and performing dangerously and that affects productivity loss effects in there all these not applying for the opiate crisis the big drug companies and the doctors and the pharmacies that all played along with the tens of billions of dollars of profits have been made i mean i just a really simple example so. you get some you know you get some also look at all these to be found we know we know what so what well then how do you how do you address that what if what he did well we actually have a pretty good civil tort system in this country is this is going to play out like

the back of the crisis is companies going to you know friends with some of the big class action lawyers and they're circling the wagons ok another so you like technology you know sure big technology for our kids i like markets i like markets l.a. technology like technology and markets only above but i'm also wary about some of the some of the downside well what about the these stupid quite futures you know their big coin futures the effects of big oil has popped over the the wall street divide they've got big question answers. you know jamie diamond has come out you know as a fraud you're taking the same position as jamie dimon which i know you must love that well i say it's a fraud a ponzi and a mania all the same time but the futures contracts. what is the time walk us through that and if the wall street hates because some of it does i think so does the wall street likes something that makes money and then futures make my you see the big corning crowd when they saw that the skyward options

exchange and c.m.e. were listed because futures they see this validates a bubble but that's not true they're out to make money but is it off a feeling prophesy in other words it's own it's own prophesied it starts trading because futures people in are now paying their employees and declining you know this so it's becoming a unit of account it's becoming a currency in this way and doesn't it you're in analytics and data meister don't use do you see in your work how old this kid transform the global markets as we know it well i was very privileged to meet the man who came up with the phrase self-fulfilling prophecy where we came urban public really great so shows us of the twentieth century if there if there were a nobel prize in sociology which there isn't he would have won it had the launch on capital management and you were there obviously going to listen. liquidations and i were i met robert. as professor emeritus clubby but his son robert c. merton who did win the nobel prize was one of our partners that's not his father so

he came up with a self fulfilling prophecy but the point is it can be good or bad a bank run is a self-fulfilling prophecy the corn prices going up is a self-fulfilling prophecy because of prices going to two hundred dollars can be a self-fulfilling prophecy it's basically crowd behavior cascades and what's called and i think hyper synchronously what sometimes it becomes the new the new reality the new norm you know that the printing press for example was a great little technology at the time and your beloved catholic church was like wiped out and a lot of ways because the printing press the catholic church is stronger than ever but there's then that the printing press is the perfect analogue because this is where because fans let's call them really confuse the public you have to separate the corn the technology the printing presses the technology a printing press can produce a bible or can produce pornography so one's good one's better but there are not the same printing printed paper and the press so i think i'd like the law change and the validation of the chain three of the coin are paris is they are interlinked

they are one is the father son and holy ghost if you will of the movement that is this currency is the coin is a concious agree it's a kind of currency it depends on the block you block chain has a future because it does not bother with regard to the because the future is very uncertain point the other day that the price of the queen for for the because futures are cast there's no actual big question about just people making bets and you get a cash payoff in cases like on the racetrack but the big point future is there is a huge diversions to the becoming price listed on the exchanges that's rare because there's an arbitrage opportunity there is the always trade the book when when that happens you sell the future you buy the physical the fact that that was not converging tells me there's no liquidity in the physical because otherwise you could do the trade yeah it's an efficient market at this time it's a new market and we're certainly saying. some big growth and that my. let's talk a little geopolitics or so north korea. twenty eighteen hot sound was going to a very high probability of war now there's you know probably get past the olympics

there are some channels being opened up between north korea and the united states and that's a good thing but you really only two two well there are three outcomes one is kim jong un gets assassinated this regime change we could probably only do that with the help of the chinese pretty clear the chinese are not on board so i give the maybe a twenty percent probability but you can't make it zero so the other two probably one is kim jong un stands down he verifiably voluntarily gives up his weapons of elma programs invites inspectors a set or i give that maybe a ten percent chance he's not going to do it he might pretend but he's been lying for twenty five years you know this is been dumped in trump's lap it's really the fault of clinton bush and obama how do you rate tillerson. elect or something he's doing a good job under difficult circumstances and how he's gonna you know knock says the president a little bit but personally written very highly i think is that he's the right man for the job and when you're the c.e.o. of exxon you are the secretary of state in some ways i mean he goes around he says that he considers the home so they have their own security intelligence security

apparatus like source of sort of that you are allowed to in size to the u.s. government of adulterous allies right let's talk about gold ok gold of course getting back to you know before big quite people used gold and but it's still around russia's buying a lot of golf right so there's huge geopolitics they're going on you know one of the first guys to come out and say identify that a country like russia by buying lots of coal is giving themselves some strategic advantages going forward cuz if we have a collapse in the current monetary system for the currency system and we go back to something equating to a gold standard russia and other countries china are going to be in good shape what's the update on that well there are no you lynn is the head of the central bank russia's my favorite central banker in the world. things really smart doing things right but was interesting is that beginning in the middle two thousand and fourteen through the beginning of two thousand and seventeen of course the price of war collapsed went from about one hundred dollars

a barrel low of about twenty five now it's you know up around a little bit closer to sixty but still a collapse from where it was russia's reserves in round numbers went from about five hundred billion dollars to three hundred billion dollars so that's a forty percent decline in the reserves during that entire time she kept buying gold she never sold an ounce ago she sold euro she sold dollars she sold treasuries did whatever she had to do but they kept buying also very impressed with smart i met your guy hughes is russia is closing in on two thousand tons us as a thousand tons approximately the us is four times bigger but the but the us economy is twelve times bigger so if you look at the gold to g.d.p. ratio which is how i measure it twice russia is twice as strong as the united states such as russia it's also. gold to g.d.p. and russia is double the united which is a source of strength say china is not there yet because their economy is much larger but they're acquiring gold plated they got rid of a list a lot of trade failing there was you know hand-wringing about all the roubles dying

is crashing but that they're out of a good. well they they've allowed the river to trade pretty freely but they are doing it with a good central banker this is in the ninety's is in the yeltsin when you know the ruble collapse they're actually much better central bank management today as a saver and much stronger go position but we talked earlier. in one of our interviews about russia and china and others working on it just to be legit technology basically a coin not decline but but some token some digital coin with every encryption cetera that they could use to make payments between among themselves so about subpoenas bypass the i.m.f. bypass the switch i call your existence car rental ok ripple as they're calling is in the banks right now the value all across the world it's a it's a pretty mind coin they're likely they're likely to develop their own coin but be that as of now using this to realize their knowledge but the point is. combining the old in the new gold is one of the oldest forms of money if not the oldest form of money digital cryptocurrency is the newest form of money the lushly be using both gold for source the source of strength digital cryptocurrency is for

convenience and these are payment and then you know i wore my colleagues who were always i used our sanctions used our sanctions to be careful to wish where they do work i'm sure i'm going to force people to write an essay and that's happened ok but you'll spot quickly. forgot all the twenty eighteen words at it it's had to hire a lawyer think for sure they are. going higher and twenty we got to go back i thank you all right what i was going to do it for this edition of the kaiser is part of me my skies are safe here and i think i get general eckert's he's a smart guy he's got books he reads books you should read books you can find us on twitter accounts report and i stand by off. it's being called an olympic truce after months of over the top rhetoric the two careers are talking again the first time in two years is this

a serious diplomatic opening or merely. south korea appears to welcome this is the same apply to washington. i had a great education a good job and a family that loved me. i never had to worry about how i would eat and where i would sleep. i'm facing christmas alone out on the streets of london. well you look to be honest i'm a cut above the bully like you got to you know to simulate those still give up food for the whole of the see. that you don't really feel like me in the big you know. and then. the guy just came over to me saw me and gave me a change of this book. ecuador

grants citizenship to wiki leaks a chief or join a song who has been unable to leave the country's embassy in london for more than five years. under cover reports suggest twitter prevents users from seeing certain kinds of political content through a technique known as shadow bending. president putin says that the north korean leader kim jong un has one the latest round in the ongoing nuclear standoff with western powers.

are broadcasting live there from our studios in moscow this is our two international incheon thomas certainly glad to have you. julian assange has been granted citizenship by ecuador a country that has been hosting him at its embassy in london since two thousand and twelve after he requested political asylum and associates or can explain what the move could mean for the wiki leaks chief unfortunately for julian assange continues to be quite complicated as this long winded saga continues if you remember the rumors were spread last night following him tweeting a picture of himself wearing a t. shirt with the ecuadorian national colors stirring lots and lots of rumors online and in the press about the possibility of him potentially having received ecuadorian citizenship now what tonight we have got a confirmation of this here is what the ecuadorian foreign minister had to say. this naturalization was granted on the twelfth of december twenty seventeen the

ecuadorian government is empowered to crunch nationality status to the protected person the big question remains what happens in terms of the british. reactions who have been clear over and over again that if he does walk out of the embassy they would still arrest him because of him having breached his bail conditions at the time of when he initially went into the embassy obviously the biggest fear for julian assange continues to be possible extradition to the u.s. where of course he is wanted for all the work that we can leaks have been doing in terms of exposing the actions of the american government we do know that ecuadorian officials have requested that britain allow for julian assange to have diplomatic immunity or diplomatic status and this has been a big no from the u.k. who said they're not going to go ahead with this kind of plan we did hear from the officials of ecuador that they're going to continue and have been negotiating with britain still to try to find a solution as we know also the foreign minister has said that the situation with julian assange has become unsustainable and it's time to move his case along now we

here at r.t. have spoken to the people in ecuador about what they think of his case let's take a look from within the political he does need human rights and i think that's what the government will give him there is also a health issue because we know he's enclosed in a very small space there are many things that cross my mind is he healthy enough to stay there is of a supermodel in the level of the best is to use a refugee policy and support him in this way. all of this of course despite the fact that the initial case carried out by sweden and followed by sweden in terms of sexual allegations made against him has been dropped so the reaction there would be that that would potentially open the gate for him to have more freedom ability in this whole case but that hasn't happened obviously of course we saw bodies such as the united nations say that has been holed up inside the ecuadorian embassy here in london could be seen as arbitrary detention so certainly it's

a very complicated case of course that has been going on for years and years but it seems that this is a step forward so we're going to have to wait and see whether this particular latest step ends up leading anywhere we discuss the options for songs with george barda political activist and social justice campaigner he thinks the political stakes for the u.k. will outweigh legal concerns. the basis on which the the u.k. authorities would arrest him apparently is for breaking bad conditions so the charges in terms of the case in sweden has now been dropped but absolutely maybe there will be an extradition attempt and as various kind of international bodies have found when they've looked into it the chance of getting a free and fair trial in the u.s. . minimal with the robert miller investigation and the allegations about collusion between the trunk campaign and wiki leaks there's obviously. a sort of politicize

ation element potentially around this case with bricks it looming in the u.k. obviously once. positive treatment from the u.s. as it leaves europe and in terms of potential trade deal you know so there are concerns obviously this will this will be treated politically rather than legally. nobody is retreating you on twitter that could be because the social network is censoring you by imposing a so-called shadow ban the move has come to light in the latest undercover investigation by project veritas one. shouted to him that someone. should. know what she should. think that they want to. know what. the group behind the revelations has a mixed reputation has been accused of getting information and infiltrating

organizations under false pretenses project very tired has also been criticized for heavily editing material to deliver its point group's founder james o'keefe is a conservative political activist and some say he has a strong political agenda samir khan has more on the revelations. well the social media giant has presented itself as politically neutral but project veritas seems to revealed otherwise according to several employees who've been caught on camera twitter regulates its content by controlling what its users can see on their feet now one of twitter's policy managers says that the company is currently developing a system that down ranks controversial users and another employee says twitter is trying to ban a certain way of talking online so they're going to go with the simply the user the things that. we've seen and you know. it's good to see them in the mindset to. believe twitter can also apparently dig into its users profiles and conversation history to figure out their political leanings and then determine whether or not

they should be banned and another issue that came up was julian assange just twitter account and the fact that it was deleted without explanation a couple weeks ago but an employee was asked about it and he did hint at one possible reason. why. we can't verify if these are real twitter employees or not and if they are they definitely could be lying but we've requested twitter's comments on all of this but we haven't heard from them as yet but regardless the whole issue is definitely something to investigate further the executive director of project very tosser russell verney spoke to our t. about these twitter revelations. it is true overstepping it well if they're sharing information with the federal government bone terribly think they would be overstepping however whenever you're ready as goes onto a website they agree to the policies of the website and if you look through the

per se policies of twitter it gives them the right to every bit of information you have opposed you deleted and they have the right to sell that information given away so we're giving away article one to these companies when they come out and publicly say they want to be the public forum for free speech yet they're censoring free speech. and doing what free speech can or can't be heard then there's a problem. the us army is looking for programmers to create sophisticated bots on social media that can understand and use slang and respond to emotive cons and an ad was posted on a site for federal can tractors and has details for us. now the ad was posted on the website of government opportunities and it calls for people to work at the request of the u.s. army intelligence and security command and the task they're asking for would be the

creation of software that can read social media posts and determine and distinguish the positive from the negative now they're looking for the software to go from there and create replies in the same tone as the original now the software actually is requested to include a number of languages among them farsi korean and russian now this is quite interesting in light of the fact that all throughout media allegations have been made that in russia there are troll farms or armies of bots being deployed to influence the united states of the a social media that but this advertisement talking about hiring someone on behalf of the not. at the request of intelligence in the united states it essentially calls and appears as if the u.s. army is looking to do the same thing the very same thing that russia is accused of doing now we have actually reached out to the pentagon for information about this and clarification about what activities this potential software would be deployed

for what kinds of operations and such we have not received a reply. former m i five officer an emotional and told my colleague mickey aaron that she's not surprised the u.s. is seeking to develop such software. the most obvious interpretation would be that this is a pushback against the allegations that have been made consistently for the last eighteen months about so-called russian troll farms influencing elections across the west and it's interesting to see that the language is that i was hoping for the blank which is iran and of course north korea and russia so that would be a bit of a sort of give away about which countries they want to be targeting having said that though the timing to me is interesting because for sure the west has been running the so-called against the other countries as well for a long time and so are they to.