has reportedly invested as much as seven hundred million dollars in trying to tap into the southeastern asian markets the pullout leaves brazil and india as the last major markets in which still battling to compete in india which accounts for ten percent of all over trips the company will have to compete against all up all as advantages over include digital wallet for crypto currencies called money as well as entertainment services for those longer rides the wall street journal reports that both ola are financed by japan's softbank group which owns fifteen and thirty percent of the firms respectively and brazil ninety nine is the name of main rival china's d.d. owns a twenty percent stake in ninety nine and the journal reports that the investment is being upgraded to a majority stake for about six hundred million dollars and back in the us gov doug doocy of arizona has suspended the testing of driving vehicles them on the roads of

the grand canyon state after a pedestrian was struck and killed by an autonomous car last week. on average for twenty seventeen bankers in new york received one hundred eighty four thousand two hundred twenty two dollar bonuses the highest since the great recession back in two thousand and eight and a seventeen percent increase over twenty sixteen as a leading global banking center one in ten jobs in new york are tied in some way or another to wall street one huge covey out to these salary figures and the data is that they do not include stock options or deferred pay which are commonplace among c. street executives compensation packages but it's not just banker bonuses that are of note are to correspond ashley banks has more on c.e.o. pay. the annual earnings for major company c.e.o.'s varies per year reports show the median employee would have to work for sixty or more years and in order to earn

the equivalent of its company's c.e.o. now in twenty seventeen according to bank of america its chief executive officer was compensated two hundred fifty times more than the total pay of the bank's median employee earning twenty one point eight million dollars the company says quote we invest in our employees at all levels in the company by rewarding performance that balances the risk and reward and power in professional growth and development and twenty seventeen bank of america's median employees angle salary was recorded at eighty seven thousand dollars a huge gap between employee's salary and the c.e.o.'s pay according to the wall street journal last year marathon petroleum corporation the second largest oil refinery in the u.s. beat its c.e.o. gary him injure nineteen point seven million dollars that's nine hundred thirty five times more than its median worker although this sounds like

a lot of money and there's quite a huge gap hemminger came up short of making the top one hundred highest pete c.e.o.'s and the nation was even more alarming as marathon petroleum c.e.o. doesn't have the highest c.e.o. to worker pay ratio according to a progressive think take the institute for policy studies at found that eighty percent of del monte employees work in costa rica what amala kenya and the philippines the median pay for company employees is only five thousand eight hundred dollars a year according to money magazine delmonte c.e.o. made a one thousand four hundred and sixty five times more than the company's median worker some people would consider the c.e.o. to median employee pay ratio to be insane however these reports are only the beginning of what's to come as a pertains to earning transparency. starting this year publicly traded firms will be required to share their median employee pay along with c.e.o. pay soon many more americans will see how their earnings stack up to their

companies. and washington actually banks art. the first ever oil futures contract based upon the chinese currency the yuan is now being offered the u.s. dollar and e.u. euro are the most fungible global currencies used in daily commerce but the move by the chinese is seen as an effort to move their currency into more mainstream financial uses and gold prices have risen for four consecutive days marking the highest price in five weeks and that trading around thirteen hundred dollars at the comix the commodity exchange in new york here discuss all of this and more is chris martenson the c.e.o. and co-founder of peak prosperity dot com chris welcome and thanks again for being with us lots to get to today first to you on back to oil futures contract is this is an initial effort to get the yuan into more global commerce chris. well

absolutely it is this is china stepping up and wanting to be and deserving to be a really dominant player financially they've been putting this oil denominated contract for a long time it's been in the works they had a sort of a board of attempt at it a few years back they that pretty sure they were very careful this time got it right and you know what we have a couple of days of trading on it right now volume looks good and so this is really china remember part china is the number one importer of oil at this point in time so for them to be able to set contracts in their own currency could be a big big boon but this is really them saying we're a player now here we are you know they've got such a long term outlook on things chris that it does look like maybe a precursor to more to come from the chinese and like you say they deserve it in that they are such a large an integral part of the global economy all right let's talk gold we have had four consecutive days and and up sessions and trading in the mid thirteen

hundreds and and that's notably even with the good stock day on monday and the two as as our viewers and of course you often know they don't always trade in tandem it's usually other way around where gold goes up when stocks go down but what's going on here do you think chris is this still related to some concerns about trade and potential trade war. well bar we've had you know basically between thirteen forty and thirteen sixty gold's been bouncing there for a number of months right now it's still up constructively you know on the year so that all looks pretty good but really i think gold's most most of its price action can be explained as the dollar when the dollar goes up gold goes down that gives us most of the explanatory power but you noted something really important which was huge up day on the stocks yesterday on monday and gold basically flat to slightly up on the day that's very unusual behavior so listen you know when we see the sixty

russian diplomats getting expelled from the united states twenty three countries in total pushing that forward we know the situation in syria is still pretty unsettled there is the chance of an actual war still seemed standing out there at this point time i think that's providing some of the construct here for gold as well russia keeps announcing month after month month that they are their central bank is accumulating more gold twenty more tons last month overtaking officially china's official gold reserves but i think everybody knows china's got more than they're saying that's very interesting analysis chris because somebody i was on the news with with ed schultz yesterday and and he asked about the diplomats being expelled in stocks and i said i didn't think that was really having much impact on stocks i thought it was more the trade war but you raise a great point about why gold might be doing better just because of uncertainty that like you say tied to the dollar i mean inverse of the dollar a lot but certainly uncertainty is something that gets

a lot of people looking to precious metals but let's look at some stocks generally you know they were pretty much driving down the other day thursday friday on these trade work concerns but now seem to be doing better monday was a hot day six hundred eighty points on the dow up because the chinese really did not react in sort of an all out tariff tantrum with with the the you us is that what you think is driving sort of a better stock for the last yesterday and so far today. well we're seeing increasing volatility in stocks both giant up days as well as well giant down days sometimes you see these at turning points at tops and also bottom so i know some people think that we might have put in a w. bottom or ready to go off again you know i'm going to have to see new highs before i'm ready to call that particular piece of news being right stocks are very very

expensive by a lot of measures so we're really looking for something in the story that says hey all clear this looks good i think that really you know as much love technical analysts and even fundamental analysts really bart this holy one thing we have to analyze how fast are the central bank balance sheets growing that has been probably the largest explanatory factor in the rise in stock prices as well we have to watch interest rates i'm still keeping a really close eye on the library or particular library or yes spread which is the amount you have to pay to borrow in dollars on the overnight rate over there in europe and that that is still signaling some sort of tightness some sort of trouble so really honestly in many ways you could be forgiven if you thought the stock market was a liquidity gauge i'm watching the liquidity fate factors really carefully or bond saying it's getting a little tighter we know the fed is on a rate hike in campaign here although they're not really tightening conditions that much in as well the european central bank has committed to begin winding its balance sheet down they haven't really started that yet but that's what that's what

i think people are looking at here yeah it looks like they'll do that in september and then maybe as early as the end of the year but certainly next year start to raise rates over there the european central bank while we have you firm at a time chris let me ask you about facebook stock we're going to be talking about that after the break today some of their real big terrible troubles but the stock has tanked and it is now a good time to buy or or might it go even lower. i think we could have seen the zenith of of the model that facebook has been running here you know people have finally caught on to just not just how intrusive but how really grotesquely intrusive the facebook and even the google model really is both of those those companies they know everything they track everything i think people that sort of let that go for a while but then discovering that that can be used by corporate interests to then do something as powerful as push an election around possibly this is i think

something that we're going to be seeing if not an actual breakup of the model i think a turning away from that model for a while and so i don't think the troubles over yet advertisers are very clearly voting with their dollars at this point in time and i think people are starting to vote by setting their privacy settings more even deleting facebook off their phones yes you know we're in we're learning you know news today that thirty seven states attorney generals are interested in more information from facebook to the federal trade communication product trade commission rather is interested in getting more information and both congressional leaders and parliamentary congressional leaders here in the states and parliamentary leaders in the u.k. are interested in having mr zucker burger his surrogate there so i think you're probably right chris talk could even go lower chris martenson the c.e.o. and co-founder of peak prosperity dot com we thank you as always for joining us and

for your insights thanks chris my pleasure. time now for a quick break but stick around because when we return we'll get into the troubles facing facebook with political commentator eric reimer and as we go to break an update on the numbers stocks actually did turn around for the negative today into correction territory and then all red arrows across the board and. gold rather finished a thirteen forty four still in the thirteen and we'll be right back. join

me every thursday on the alex simon chill and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics school business i'm show business i'll see you then. make this manufacture consent to step into the public well. when the ruling class is protect themselves. with the famous merry go round the sun be the one percent. we can all middle of the room sick. room. is. the most expensive fish in the world each one selling for tens of thousands of euros it continues to grow its entire life if it was thirty years old you might

have a two ton fish out there and yet they don't get that big today because we're way to good catch. it's only women and self a much larger mission was once there and that was much more widely distributed we have politicians that are in office for a few years they have to get reelected everything is very very short term our system is not suited and is not geared for the long term survival and that's why we have the catastrophes. welcome back productivity in the u.k. has declined since the bracks it boded in june of two thousand and sixteen according to data reported by the financial times euro zone labor productivity increased one percent last year and is expected to be one point one percent this year meanwhile u.k.

productivity was only zero point six percent last year and expected to be zero point eight percent this year while all the data indicates an economic recovery is moving ahead the u.k. economic performance has dropped from the top of the group of seven as far. as growth rates in twenty sixteen to the bottom in recent quarterly reports. and spanish police say they have arrested the head of a criminal hacking team that is suspected of stealing more than a billion dollars from a.t.m. but longing to over one hundred banks in more than forty countries since two thousand and thirteen this is spec to crip cyber crime mastermind identified only as dennis k. is a ukrainian national the team that tracked him down hold the european banking federation and police in taiwan romania and bella ruse the cyber criminals allegedly use malware known as carbon ak and cobalt which were deployed via spearfishing emails

the malware then enabled criminal networks to move money between accounts and then get this caused a.t.m.'s at specific locations to spout out cash cool but exceedingly crooked authorities say funds were then laundered using crypto currency is mainly bitcoin and light coin and then they also used gift cards. and golan prosecutors have named the son of a former president as a suspect in a fraud case that the african nation central bank prosecutors say five hundred million dollars was improperly moved abroad from the bank on monday the united kingdom's national crime agency said they had blocked the transfer of a suspicious transaction and would now return the funds to angola of florida the accused is jose film a.o. dos santos son of jose eduardo dos santos who served as president of angola for thirty eight years before stepping down last year. and rounding out today's

headlines some airport news for all of our international business travelers i know there's a lot of them catarrh airways is buying a twenty five percent stake in moscow's the newco. russia's third busiest airport catarrh airways is scrambling to make up for the loss of regional airport destinations due to a blockade that started last june organized by saudi arabia to punish catarrh for being insufficiently supportive of the saudi arabia campaign against iran the airline has also adjusted by purchasing stakes in cathay pacific a hong kong based flyer and more denia of italy the airport deal was announced as the emir of qatar visited moscow for a meeting with president vladimir putin and then the americas the company that runs mexico city's airport says it is sold bonds worth one point six billion dollars to a finance and construction to finance construction of

a new airport in the mexican capital company officials say they now have secured roughly ten billion of the thirteen billion needed for the project but the leading presidential candidate lopez obrador says he would cancel the project in favor of renovating the current one and upgrading a nearby military airport to commercial use were he to become mexican president the general election is on july first. facebook continues to take some knocks on their stock price in relation to the disclosure that they have permitted details of facebook users to be sold to many firms including unscrupulous companies such as cambridge analytics the problems have become so monumental to facebook that c.e.o. mark zuckerberg who had been silent on the ongoing debate about user information

sharing and getting profits from now well now he's come out personally and addressed the issue and he actually apologized to facebook users here discussed public affairs strategist political commentator eric reimer who wrote an opinion editorial on this subject eric thanks for being with us let's take a listen to what mr zuckerberg had to say so this was a major richard trust and i'm really sorry that this happened and we have a basic responsibility to protect people's data and if we can't do that then and we don't deserve to have the opportunity to serve people. eric that being signed up until yesterday when he said that that was a pretty major media culpa do you think it's going to be enough i mean i think they'll find itself in a very difficult situation and so. be a public apology a rare for facebook taking responsibility in announcing the various data reforms so how apps can utilize data the missions they need and whatnot shows how seriously

understand it to be i think this also comes on top of a year of regulatory troubles for facebook and so i think definitely there's a lot of worries both from a user standpoint a investor investor standpoint as well as policymakers on the hill i think the user certainly our job to. this apple's able to collect so much information without their consent because even though two hundred seventy thousand people signed up for the app and gave their information willingly over fifty million people had there are the to harvest the friends of people who use the app and so essentially everyone who actually had information taken did not consent to the app and i think for investors too because the thing is too is that this shows that facebook is not able to properly perhaps control its data because it firstly allowed the present to harvest a lot that data initially they allowed him to do it with permission but a lot of it was then he expanded a lot more and then they. did not warn the able to stop him from transfer the data

to cam which analytical and lastly they had thought for two years they had deleted the data but in fact to be probably did not and so i think for investors because facebook give rise the entirety of its revenue which is very profitable from advertising and the reason advertisers choose to advertise on facebook because they can use data targeting to target people and not waste a lot of money on the people who might not be interested and so the fact that they that facebook has exclusive control over its data is how it draws advertisers in the fact that it's losing control over its data basically is very worrisome because . as people who work the tech field know a lot really relies on the kind of data you're using which is why data is so valuable and so i think for investors investors we're against wall and so if in a regular regulatory front too we see people on the hill getting more worried at a house energy and commerce committee has requested that himself testify about this incident for the first time in person and has agreed and so i think it's

a very complex multifaceted drama and one that's going to have a big impact for facebook's two billion users. let me ask you i want to rewind to because you said a lot there we appreciate it but if you go back to what you're talking about that not everybody consented so certainly you had the people who did consent but then explain sort of the technical attributes eric of of how you know through your friends etc they could facebook could essentially tunnel in and get your data if you had not consent to. and so sensually facebook itself has a vast array of data on its users range from explicit data to more metadata such as location and whatnot for this app power for which the perfessor used to collect data so essentially facebook authorized him to create a personality mapping things based on a person's interest pace of activities or whatnot and so users were paid essentially to take that survey however the app and scanned all of their friends

and collected the same information from their friends and connections as well and so everything that the user themselves could see. connected with their account they then were allowed in the mind to add information as well and so for example for a person who has found her friends on facebook at thousand friends on facebook and from just one person consenting to essentially to harvest over a thousand people like that and they said they found they were able to a collect data extremely fast this way and and all of these friends and what not consenting to it and so it just exploded very very fast yeah that's really important and not something that facebook should be ashamed of it so that apology was certainly worthy let me ask you i know you pay a lot of attention to capitol hill and generally with the republican house and senate you don't think there's going to be a lot more regulations coming down the pike but do you think this might be one area

where even a republican congress you know in favor of free markets etc.