department of agriculture's drought monitor data shows that drought conditions in much of the southwest portion of the country have worsened the southern high plains and oklahoma is the worst well point two percent of the state is experienced sectional drought that the driest drought classification and in related news we oftentimes learn that drought conditions in california mean the water supply is in jeopardy but recently repeated storms have brought lots of persist for tips ation to the state and furthermore there are melt from the sierra snows which actually tripled this month state why water reservoirs it's their storage is up one hundred six percent above the normal cyclical five holes all of that means california should have enough water supply for all of this year. and the eight summit of the americas begins today at lima peru the summit will bring together at least twenty heads of state from the western hemisphere fighting corruption is a theme but the leaders will be hosted by the new peruvian peruvian president

martin this caro who took office after the recent impeachment of his predecessor as reported earlier this week president donald trump will not attend the summit the first time a history that a u.s. president has not attended the event vice president mike pence will represent the united states in ten instead venezuelan president nicolas maduro who was disinvited from the host nation called the summit a waste of time of course he would the summit comes at a time of turmoil in the region with regional power brazil and tumble over the country's most popular politician former president lula da silva having been effectively barred from this year's presidential election by a conviction and jailing subsequent jailing during the appeal that may have been called politically motivated it is called politically motivated by many and zooming in on brazil is a regional powerhouse economy but elephants will be sitting in the room with michael to mir at the summit of the americas that is supposed to. corruption and

good government here discussed the current situation in brazil with us is the greater depth is our leap even thank you so much for the council of hemisphere affairs right got that right right yes well thank you so much for being here with us so we talked about brazil just from this hundred thousand foot level lot of times so first of all tell us about he is in jail now right he is and he turned himself in on saturdays and has being in jail since them so he's very popular still right he is if the elections were to they hear would win and the scenario that with any other candidate so far. he's very popular his remains very popular and i think that despite. the temps from the media and from the opposition on the contrary his jailing has only increased at his popularity it's now. you know

a common perception that he's being just to leave persecuted and jailed a couple i want to get to the economics here but i don't want to leave quite yet so two things that i've read that i find interesting is one the judicial system in brazil which in the article i read it says that it's really more like an inquisition where the actual people that investigate you can also then put on a judge's robe or wig and then try you which in the us we'd say no that needs to be separated is that's what it's like yes we have additional system in brazil that is very out today that we say it's like a moderator power that we have there you know the imperio power of portugal and it's a very complicated and what we're seeing now is that the same people who investigate are also prosecutor and also judge the case so we have for example judge assertion modo who has spent. years of his life investigating law now also sending him to

jail what is the objective there how can he be objective in a case that he you know he basically his whole career in trying to frame lula and now how it is europe huge question yes there is to know in brazil we have a four tears of appealing court. case when just went to the second one but what is most revealing is that life's too week we had the justice of the country and they were ruling his obvious corpus his rights to remain out of jail as brazilian constitution site to remain out of jail until the you know all the appeal process is completed and treaty of those just set i believe this constitution does is unconstitutional but. because it really well but because it's look i've got a rule against it it is it is very notable ok we love talking about that stuff but

we are business of planet show i want to know about the economy in brazil it has not been great in recent years what so you but i doubt we have. since. you know the workers' party government i think it was the only one since the rim democratisation i'm sure it was the only one who really implemented economic policy is that trying to close the gap the social gap in the country lifted out you know thirty eight million people from extremely poor very popular yeah of course and since the first half was ousted two years ago almost fifty million people are now back into extreme poverty and you know little most jailing it's going to have a part of the impact in the economics was and i have you know there's

a lot of. aspects to the economic crisis in brazil but almost jailings one highlights how this institutional krises that has started with for recess almost it's going to know is deepening right now and second thing certainty about the upcoming elections i mean. who is going to invest in a country that doesn't have you know its very well you lections in october and can . actually run from prison yes i mean it's a it's separate it's separate products that it might even you think might even help them right while his popularity is starting on the rise certainly on the rise. with the council for hemispheric affairs thank you so much for being here what a delight. if you come back some time thank you thank you.

saudi arabia's mohamed bin solomon known like a rapper as m.b.'s has conducted it concluded rather his nearly three week trip to united states what did he do and who did he do it with r t correspondent trinity chavez tells us. it was a jam packed three weeks for thirty two year old crown prince mohammed bin someone who is saudi arabia's deputy prime minister head of the economic development team and also the country's defense minister his press corps was meant to change the country's image he met with top executives from corporate america as well as heads of tech companies in silicon valley all part of his plan to show that saudi arabia is open for business going to. his first stop washington d.c. where he brokered arms deals with president trump thing which we've followed by trips to harvard and mit where he shared his big plans for technology investments

then new york city where he sat down with wall street fight and stares american c.e.o.'s and attended dozens of events one where he even signed a two hundred billion dollars solar agreement with softbank also while in new york the prince met with u.n. secretary general antonio you ted as another senior u.n. officials the meeting focused on the tense situation in several arab countries and saudi arabia's role in establishing stability in the region then it was off to the west coast where you had dinners with hollywood moguls like rupert murdoch bob iger and even oprah not to mention some of the biggest players in the tech industry including tim cook jeff bezos and bill gates to name a few he even got an extremely rare look inside of the five billion dollar apple park campus while in silicon valley the prince also visited google where he met with founders larry page and sergey brin as well as the c.e.o. of the company. he was briefed about google's electronic cloud technology and

automatic learning as well as ways to incorporate cyber security and according to reports the meetings are all part of a bigger plan to transform his kingdom into a tech and logistics hub in the middle east during the trip the saudis signed a cloud computing contract with google however the financial terms were not disclosed reporting in new york trinity chavez r.t. . we're going to squeeze in a quick break here. stay with us because when we return mick mulvaney has not burned down the consumer financial protection bureau but he's got a heck a lot of damage bartlett miller public says and gives us his reaction he was there at the hearings this week mr ball baby steps to testify weiss for the house and the senate plus author and commentator steve keen joys us from london with the latest on the news kate and use trading relationship as we go to break your the numbers at the closing bell for the actions today on the numbers ford with the red arrows for the dow nasdaq and s. and p. oil oil in told her all in the green will be right that.

cranking gave americans a lot of new job opportunities i needed to come up here to make some money i could make twenty five thousand dollars as a teacher or i could make fifty thousand dollars a year trucks or chose to drive trucks people who rush to a small town in north dakota was among the employment rate of zero percent like gold rush is very very similar to a gold rush but this beautiful story ended with pollution and devastation a lot of people have left here i don't know too many people here anymore just slow down so much they lost their jobs got laid off the american dream is changing that's not what it used to be. and that's a tough reality to deal with. it

. exists is hotter than kentucky. overall in this move them places people were very funny using the moon. a ko money since it was almost no coal mines left. the jobs are gone. all the goal was to show. that it was love to see these people the survivors of disappearing before their eyes. i remember thinking when i was younger that if anything ever happened to the coal mines here that it would become a ghost town but i never thought in a million years i would see that and it's happened it's happened. american sanctions would be damaging but i mean day is this justice is a threat is this all. for jews a country like

a dish or bread but i'm going to things that doesn't need any more it just costs the way i think it's very immoral. welcome back wall street journal reports that in twenty seventeen asian venture capital start up money has risen dramatically accounting for forty percent of the

one hundred fifty four billion dollars spent on global venture capital funding u.s. investors long and still the leader invested forty four percent of that hundred fifty four billion and continue to do to do more deals than investors from any single nation the move comes as key technological innovations and artificial tell intelligence autonomous vehicles and other cutting edge technologies are emerging as highly sought after initial investment and a task force has been established as a result of the directed by president trump got to have a task force to examine and make recommendations for reform of the u.s. postal system the news comes after presidential tweets related to amazon getting too good a deal on shipping from the post office according to the president who said the postal services and on an unsustainable financial path and must be restructured to prevent a taxpayer funded bailout. and over the right hailing company whose autonomous self

driving vehicles struck and killed an arizona woman in march says they are absolutely committed to continuing their self driving car program testing had been halted and says that technical modifications are needed thank you. ultimately self driving cars will be safer than those driven by humans and in related news the national transportation safety board n.t.s.b. is in dispute with tesla over another fatal crash related to a self driving test a model exports utility vehicle the feud involves n.t.s.b. excluding tesla from continuing parts of the investigation after it was determined that tesla improperly released data details about the crash before n.t.s.b. investigators had bedded the data. the acting director the consumer financial protection bureau mick mulvaney whose

all through the hole in the director office of management budget director appeared before the house and senate committees this week two days in a row saying that he had not burn the place down and that he was at work almost every day he has previously sought in congress to kill the agency that he leads was criticized by many who supports his mission to protect consumers but not all members agree with that sentiment and here discusses bartlett naylor financial policy advocate at public citizen you're up there on capitol hill for both days house or senate side yes ok so i mean when he said this thing about you know have burned the place down and i know he said it a couple times but that he shows up there almost every day i mean were there any gas or were there too many people on the other side it is so breathtaking the extent to which he is deconstructing dismantling the consumer financial protection bureau is that we gasp at the first one and we can't catch our breath like with another politician we know he has these filed zero inforce meant actions since he

took office the last enforcement action you can look on the c.f.p. piece web page is a member twenty first of two thousand and seventeen he takes office november twenty fourth it's now april there have been zero in fact the score should be negative for . because under him they dropped four cases including to one for him who was a contributor when motivating was a south carolina congressman who was a firm that was a contributor to his political campaign and that was one of the matters that he dropped and that's one of the matters that was dropped under his under his oversight that's right ok this person also had the temerity to send him an e-mail applying for the job because he won't be the director indefinitely at least we hope not but she thinks she should be the director that it would have been the person who is with the company of the vegetation is dropped from the c.e.o. of the company also wants to be the director of the c. of p.b.s. sent a letter to middle name and we use the acronym but the hideous stuff of your cat the word is protection consumer financial protection bureau and here's

a person who was who is allegedly had it's nicer corporate financial institution protection bureau it's consumers and that's why we those of us who were actually worked to try and get that thing in place ok now what that means that they haven't filed any enforcement actions essentially that they are not acknowledging because i know from being a regulator you know from watching guys like me and others that they always have in the pipeline various investigations going on so there's been a this is not a coincidence there's been a proactive determination not to go forward with anybody right that's what the data shows so until november twenty first there were two to four enforcement actions a month for the last five or so years that return twelve billion dollars to twenty eight million american victims and since then and if you're not a twelve billion dollars to twenty eight million americans that's right over the last five or six years through to and that money that they're returning or what bartlet credit card scams to sept of lending. over charges all all sorts

of i'll not just putting bad guys in the fining them and then in some cases referring those cases to the f.b.i. the department of justice for criminal prosecution but actually returning money to and. that's right getting money back that was scammed and putting it back in the pocket of the consumers from whom it was taken you know you and i talk we had you on the program before when this was all go going on the whole the change of the guard there that's pretty much over is an additional cases the case is what really leander english in fact the court heard the case this week it's on appeal where in america's public citizen as an amicus a former public citizen attorney is leander anguishes attorney and i would say the judge is ask critical questions this director has to be independent that means he or she can't take orders from the president as the o.m.b. director essentially everything that money does can be vetted can be overturned by

the president because he can just draw him back and the judges were critical of that situation i acknowledge that they weren't necessarily sympathetic to english as casey that's the person that cordray had had put in place but nor were they sympathetic that this true this is a truly independent situation there are lots of things in government don't work and it is a swamp in many regards i'll give the president that having independent financial folks like i was what you're confirmed by the senate you can do and say what you want you can't be fired and i know because it does give you the freedom to say what you want even if people don't want to hear it that's also the case with great consumer organizations and it's a case with you my friend thank you for being here appreciate your work. and the trade deficit for the united kingdom has grown to six point four billion pounds it's about nine point one billion dollars as a result of decreasing sales to nine european union exports the growing u.k.

trade gap was partially offset by increased exports to the e.u. from the u.k. here to join us is steve keen steve we thank you so much for being with us particular when it's late over there in london the u.k. deficit trade deficit is smaller than previously thought what are we to make of it well not a lot it's not a measure of fluctuation and then there are elements of revaluation including profits on financial transactions which went recorded previously which are for jews to try to deficit. substantial margin going back quite a few years since they've backtracked in the data so it's not a major change it's i think we spend far too much time worrying about mana fluctuations around long term trends and the long term trend i think is still for the u.k. to have a much bigger try deficit than it should actually have and it's largely in that situation i think because of the impact on the euro making german manufacturing

exports and the like a lot cheaper than they would be if they had a genuine currency in europe rather than the euro i'm curious that's a great explanation but i'm curious steve if there is to be we think about the whole the whole brics that circumstance and the ongoing sort of tussle and whether or not they'll be individual trade accords and the regulators in the in the e.u. say no you have to have a agreement with all e.u. members but it is correct is that those individual countries many of them still want to trade with london and with the u.k. right. oh yeah i'm in the trade again they're trying to go as i think is something we spend far too much time discussing because conventional economics sees guys coming from specialized and therefore expanding try to is always a good thing and politicians enjoy going across and being in some exotic location except for donald trump and so on in these agreements so they go to a very positive spin on the whole thing in fact what gives you growth is investment

and that's where the u.k. is actually extremely wake and sense of the proportion of the economy is devoted to investment it's down towards the order of ten percent of jay pay where is germany's on the order of twenty percent more of today pay what they need here is more investment rather than focusing upon this obsession about tried when well let's talk about that just a little bit more we talk about growth this year in the in the u.k. how are they going to be not necessarily asking you for the exact g.d.p. numbers that we expect but i mean are they better off than they have been in the last couple of years where do we see the economy in the u.k. given that we see brics it coming forward next year do we see it making progress or the still in the doldrums. still pretty much in the daltons but of course the impact of bricks it was massively overestimated by all the people who are against bricks that if you're a member go back to the bricks that discussions are talking about the next day the economy fall off

a cliff they're predicting something on the scale of the two thousand and eight financial crisis which of course the people making those predictions did not see the funded financial process coming but it was going to cause its acquittal and well the day when it did couldn't went and nothing much happened the sigma mention of the economy continued on what we got for a while out of bricks it was a fairly dramatic devaluation of the pound that now seems to be reversing that should have been a chance to get britain's manufacturing sector back on back into existence again it really hasn't been particularly taken advantage of but overall the impact of the negative impact of bricks and turns of financial corporations talking about leaving and all the panic that is still going on here this obsession with bricks that was largely counteracted by the the current the that the currency gun in the opposite direction and giving a bit of a fillip to the economy so it hasn't been as dramatic as thought but still the u.k. is mine problem is it doesn't invest enough it's still not investing enough. and

that is what's really dragging it backwards rather than the absence of trying to grant's steve let me ask you one quick question before we go with all of this trade tantrum the tariffs the talk and what do they think it over there i mean you speak with people not just in the u.k. but what do they think about this this pretty what seems like a pretty much of a mess at least in the media. well this this is a mrs this is one of the few times that i think what donald trump is doing is actually worthwhile because there's been this conventional belief that we more we deregulate the most globalized the bit of the world is of course we've seen massive protests about people suffering from globalization and they're quite right it goes beyond the complaints that george the statements made some time ago that the benefits of a focus on the wealthy the guys on the poor it's also just simply wrong about the way the economy functions you do want to have firms investing that's that's where the growth really comes from and to some extent by disrupting this may actually

fall some of the manufacturing investment to occur that he's being selling himself to his supporters on so i see it as chaos but really what happened for him was a conventional wisdom which was which was fantastical so this is one time i done model bit of couse being caused by donald trump steve king author of can we avoid another financial crisis he's told us the answer to that before thanks for your time steve. and it's getting warmer here in washington d.c. in the united states unlike most of the world many americans like to cool off with a cold beer however like most things in life sometimes beer can be too much of a good thing after studying the drinking habits of more than six hundred thousand drinkers doctors conducting a study noted that heavy drinkers above the age of forty lost an average of fifteen minutes off their life expectancy that doesn't seem like much but just be careful not to drink too much coming ahead or you could also be a hero by rescuing

a beer from a bottle that's all for now be sure to catch boom bust on you tube you tube dot com slash boom bust party will see again.

pranking gave americans a lot of new job opportunities i needed to come up here to make some money i could make twenty five thousand dollars as a teacher or i could make fifty thousand dollars a year truck so i chose to drive truck people rush to a small town in north dakota was an unemployment rate of zero percent like gold

rush is very very similar to a gold rush but this beautiful story ended with pollution and devastation a lot of people have left here i don't know too many people here anymore just slow down so much they lost their jobs got laid off the american dream is changing that's not what it used to be. and it's a tough reality and you'll. join me every thursday on the alec simon show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sport that's this i'm show business i'll see you then. this is says holland kentucky. boy you can be very funny is. a co money city with almost no coal mines left. the jobs are gone all the coal was

said i'd. love to see these people the survivors of disappearing before their eyes. i remember thinking when i was younger that if anything ever happened to the coal mines here that it would become a ghost town but i never thought in a million years i would see that and it's how it's happened. what. i have.

to cut next. the u.s. the u.k. and france carry out strikes against the syrian government in response to an alleged chemical attack in eastern intervention came just hours before international inspectors were due to arrive to investigate the claims. united nations security council holds an urgent meeting on the attack and rejects a russian draft resolution calling for an end to aggression against syria at that meeting still underway just. on another news. tonight russia's foreign minister claiming the international chemical weapons watchdog may not have correctly identified the nerve agent used to poison the script polls in england. last month.