washington d.c. i'm part show and thank you for joining us coming up we speak with conservative t.v. and radio commentator steve malzberg about the accounting scandals at the big work counting firms plus earlier i spoke with parties holland host of the big picture about the big business of speakers yes you heard right the speakers and r.t. correspondent trinity charges takes a look at just how much the fashion industry generates each year first however let's get to a few heads if you've been thinking that the pace and size of mega-mergers has that increasing it's been confirmed with some hard and hide numbers figures from thomson reuters show that global mergers and acquisitions are up sixty five percent in the first six months of this year compared to this point last year to a total of two point five trillion dollars this is a new record going back to one such things were originally calculated back in one thousand nine hundred eighty in europe the year over year increase and that metric was ninety six percent up to

a total of seven hundred sixty seven billion dollars in value this happened despite a fall in the total number of mergers by sector media mergers of course were a notable stand up the total in that category was three hundred twenty two billion dollars for the first half of the year six times the figure for admitted twenty seventeen the top track tax cuts has been a big factor in fueling the buying spree and companies seeks trichy chicken profitable uses for the large windfall the trend has been strong despite global trade tensions and a drastic exhalation of the trade war uncertainties may still slow it down going forward. european union officials continue to prepare for the prospect that they will be an able to reach a deal with the u.k. over the terms of its departure from the e.u. the dreaded hard brecht's that scenario the plans informally dubbed the parachute according to the financial times would paper over gaps in law or regulation and process. to ensure that some minimal level of movement of products and capital can

continue perhaps temporarily if the e.u. and u.k. are unable to agree on a new framework to guide their economic and regulatory relationship the worst case scenario looks increasingly likely times marches still concrete singly likely as time marches on and the government approach prime minister theresa may makes little headway ms may has been hobbled by infighting with her own conservative party between bracks and remain factions she has been notably reluctant to engage fully in the negotiations at least publicly for fear of offending one or perhaps both sides losing her narrow governing majority and going into a general election that opposition labor looks well positioned to win the stalled process is high on the agenda at the e.u. summit that started just today and is may is likely to be in the hot seat among her peers. and trover is the latest big name to make a move into delivery in this case driverless delivery the large us grocery chain

will partner with neuro a company founded by former members of google's driverless car development unit to deliver groceries via vehicles resembling a very small van or perhaps even a very large toaster in the near future kroger chief digital officer hailed the partnership pledging that the grocer and their new partner from silicon valley will provide quote access to fast and convenient delivery at a fair price nurul only service business reporting in last january that means that they've only been around for a couple of years and they have raised ninety two million dollars in capital now the company in their technology will have a high profile roll out with will surely be watch for any startup glitches and setbacks notably noro chose to develop a driverless vehicle of their own design rather than trying to make a normal full sized passenger vehicle based upon somebody else's car the design choice significantly lower cost and risk of operating the vehicles and may give kroger a leg up. in the race to capture this new market. britain's financial reporting

council or f r c has started a new investigation into one a u.k. story big four accounting firms that this time it's beloit in the target we've talked about before the f.r.c. investigators are interested in deloitte to work for sigma sig which sells construction materials said in february that they had discovered internal misrepresentations in official accounts the revelations led six shareholders to vote down what is usually a routine vote to retain deloitte as officially designated auditor three months after the revelations the white pledge full cooperation with the f.r.c. investigators that it cooperated statement and the continuing scandal of bong large and previously well regarded accounting firms has already resulted in f.r.c. actions against pick a p.m.g. and pricewaterhouse coopers but some critics of the civil top watchdog have said the f.r.c.s. actions have not been commensurate to the scale of the problem and interestingly in

april the government appointed sir john king meant to conduct a detailed examination of the f.r.c.s. record and decide whether the regulator the regulator itself is affected by conflicts of industries what a mess here or discuss a problem including scandals of the accounting world is conservative t.v. and radio commentator steve mauls brick steve thank you so much for being with us and what do you make of this deloitte story it's a little bit nutty to me. well it is but i mean it's an overall problem as you said you've discussed problems overall you know it's been found that the four big accounting firms have deteriorated in the quality of their of their audits and this speaks to business confidence and people being able to rely on the system and just assume that things are on the up and up if a company is audited that's supposed to be separate and apart one of the suggestions have been that these companies branch off their audit in departments from administrative and consulting departments a to avoid

a conflict of interest real or perceived but this speaks to two to confidence right up and down the scale and it's something that needs to be addressed now if you're if you're talking about that the f.r.g. me the f.r.c. rather is is is maybe has a conflict of interest and what do you do know i mean where do you go from there yeah it's way it's one thing when it's a regulator is going after you know a company i've been on that end of the deal but if the regulator itself is having a problem and there are examples of that we're going to be talking about one of those in the coming days actually in the states but i don't little bit about this i didn't do the legislation steve but i was working on capitol hill when the sarbanes oxley law passed in congress in the states and and that was a sensually a bill to do what you were talking about it became law and the deal was it wanted to separate these conflicts by putting up you know fire walls between the

consulting and really the d.c. firms as opposed to just the pure accounting people most of those folks in new york in these accounting firms and there was a people were complaining all over the board about it says too much regulation is too too hard but i mean now we look at what's going on i wonder maybe the u.k. and others need it. yeah well they might they would they found that over all the four biggies there are proper audit's the ones that needed to be revisited and worked on the percentage went from nineteen percent in the latest study it went up to twenty seven per cent and as far as k m p g what you found was that they almost half of the audience looked at by the the f.r.c. they say needed correction and needed revisiting x. a huge percentage obviously and a story that's out today regarding camp e.g. australia back in zero sixteen the australian census got messed up and the bureau

of statistics was involved so p.g. audited the bureau of statistics in a whistleblower now says that that was not on the up and up that they were just caving in to everything that the the bureau of statistics wanted and said and this guy claims that eventually he got fired for not letting the issue go so that's that's a horrific example and there's more as you mentioned with s i g and deloitte and that is of course misrepresenting some say their profits their earnings and deloitte was right caught up in the middle of all that and in general in general again the four big auditing companies have come under great scrutiny and this this speaks to just the confidence that everybody from the average guy in the street to the biggest biggest investors in the world need to have in the system and if the system is broken it's got to be fixed. and not know we're going to sound to people

like we're just piling on but p.m.g. was also we've reported you know kicked out of south africa for problems there and of course we we referred to the problems in the u.k. with regard to karelian we covered that story but i'll tell you one thing i've never really said this publicly but you know i worked at a large law firm and i think there's a. a lot of similarities between the large accounting firms and law firms and the bottom line is you know the people there that they want to get contracts they want to have a relationship with the other big i mean it's a big cabal i mean they're all together they don't want to upset each other because they want to do work with them and even if steve they don't get work this year maybe they'll get work next year and so you know it seems to me that things need to be changed but i know you're not all the way there but can i keep you at least considering it. yeah i mean separation you know is a big word now with immigration here in this country and maybe separation is the word for these accounting firms maybe that will help solve the problem i'm open i

like it when you come to my side once in a while i think if i was very conservative t.v. and radio commentator thanks steve have a great weekend my pleasure bart. and gold futures have had a several down days at this week and have dropped about ninety dollars in the last several months trading for most of the day today was it around twelve fifty area that's one thousand two hundred fifty dollars it has some analysts scratching their heads in light of two recent events one news from the commerce department this week that reduced the first quarter gross domestic product figure from two point three to two percent and second the hawkish comments from u.s. federal reserve chair jay powell who last week said that the jobs picture wasn't particularly rosy and neither of those rallied the precious metals which was odd the gold close yesterday at twelve fifty one was the lowest since december thirteenth of last year as time now for a quick break but hang here because when we return we have

a look see at the revenues of the fashion industry with our chief correspondent treaty plus i have a few thoughts about a misstatement earlier today by a top trump in astray should a visual that involves numbers and those numbers to mean something as we go to break here our numbers at the closing bell oil up more than one percent and pushing for seventy five dollars at the closing bell we'll be right back. plate for many flips over the years so i know the game and sorry guys. the ball isn't only about what happens on the pitch for the final school it's about the. passion from the fans it's the age of the superman each kill the narrowness and spending two hundred twenty million on one player. it's an experience like nothing

else on to because i want to share what i think what i know about the beautiful guy a great one more transfer. and thinks this minute. he's very valuable and very competent so so far we go to be something to be competent as a footballer and therefore we know from when we come back to the. roots of this knowledge and and we can perform it's. twenty forty you know bloody revolution of. the demonstrations going from being relatively peaceful political protest to be increasingly violent revolution is always spontaneous or is it you know we're here to put it but i mean you know this

book to do with putting me in the new bill is that i knew pulling me to the former ukrainian president recalls the events of twenty fourteen. those who took. it in this city over five billion dollars to assist ukraine in these and i think it will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic. welcome back the second round of the federal reserve so-called stress test has produced some surprises particularly to me actually as to us mega banks goldman sachs and morgan stanley have been told to halt any planned additional dividend payouts perhaps more seriously the u.s. unit of deutsche bank failed the second round with finding of quote widespread and critical deficiencies in the bank's safeguards and recordkeeping the official fed

findings will similarly keep deutsche bank's banks u.s. unit from shifting profits back to their corporate home office six banks preemptively scaled down their wish list of the stress test process revising down where the dividend plans they submitted to the fed presumably opting for a proverbial bird in the hand and hoping to avoid the stigma of a possible deny. on dividends the fed's vice chairman for supervision summarized the general favorable tone of the second round saying quote the largest banks have strong capital levels and after making their approved capital distributions would retain their ability to lend even in a severe recession. and amazon has finally made their expected move into the prescription drug market and they are going all in the saddle based online retailers buying online prescription delivery service pill pack reportedly for a billion dollars though the terms have not been officially disclosed the acquisition of pill pack reportedly valued at three hundred sixty million dollars just two years ago gives amazon turnkey access to almost the entire u.s.

prescription market that's because pill pack which was founded in only twenty fifteen is already licensed to ship drugs across all states except a y e c a b c reports that amazon outhustled wal-mart for the merger amazon's big move had a big impact on established players pushing stock prices for walgreens and c.v.s. down by nine percent rite aid shares fell thirteen percent and the share market moving massive amazon's new form was enough to exert a gravitational impact on stocks and other sectors delivery services federal express and united parcel service were both down today and trading by three and two point five percent respectively. not since the market phone has any tech device been adopted as quickly as the smart speaker this week or that's

a bottom line from an emaar quarter forecast on the alexa of the virtual assistant developed by amazon and her digital siblings based on survey data a marketer predicts a forty seven point nine percent annual growth rate from sixteen million now to seventy six point five million by twenty twenty only. gosh and they say the number of adult smart speaker users will surpass that of wearable device users for the first time this year unsurprisingly early adopters were fluent males but it's noted that the gap is tightening rapidly as the device increases traction among other demographic groups particularly younger gen x. women with children number one alexa with forty point seven million at least once a month users that's sixty six point six percent of all smart speaker users runner up google home predicted to hit eighteen million users this year and that's a distant second google share is increasing rapidly and rounding out the packets

apple's pricier home pod which has yet caught on and here to give us more on this technology is technology buff khalid cook the host of the big picture with holland cook himself holland thank you for being here appreciate it so you know who is this alexis alexa and what is she doing to our house and how many products have an annual forty seven point nine percent growth rate imagine raising crazy numbers what she's doing is accommodating us because if you look at the way technology has evolved we used to type computer equals keyboard then along came wearables maybe you have fit to keep track of how many steps you're taking apple watch there are sensors in clothing etc now you don't have to lift a finger literally you can just bark at the smart speaker and she will accommodate you so the new word now the new buzzword is voice shopping so using using what you say doesn't say what you want what are we asking alexa to get for and how much of

our money is she spending do we know about it now make sure that you say that with tremendous nonchalance at dinner parties voice shopping it's already to be billion dollars annually by twenty twenty two it's forecast to hit forty billion dollars. and all along the way it's established so far six percent of the e-commerce spend so this is not insignificant what we're buying with it is commodities groceries number one bout twenty percent of users buy groceries entertainment and electronics not surprisingly but the sweet spot for who's ever selling stuff online is subscriptions and this friction free way to say order me some more of those paper towels is gold if you're selling the paper towels if you done this by the way if you ordered things online yourself i have to have a lexus or i haven't yet but i do have

a lexus and i got lured into amazon prime because the shipping alone cost justifies it so now suddenly i can say play crosby stills and nash and she'll start shuffling those songs now i have dibs on this vast video library so amazon just wants to get you into their walled garden and they've made it so easy because you can ask her what is the cube root of sixteen eighty four she knows it yeah right stuff is all out there so it's another way to interact and since amazon is selling everything this is great news for them it this is the new store front and do you think i mean when e-commerce came on it really you know sort of rocked and then rolled the retailers around it is this you know voice commerce really going to sort of fuel inject that make it even more troubling for the brick and mortar stores you've got to think so although the day that jeff bezos bought whole foods i happened to be

going into one and right there at the entrance was a big poster for selling alexa she got there instantly they have the first mover advantage and smart speakers because they're all over the place it's the world's biggest retailer amazon prime is the walled garden they've got whole foods they're going to use some of those. toys r us stores as depot so we've read from some of the survey data eighty five percent of consumers will select the products that alexa recommends so if you're amazon magine that's a huge deal forty five percent of grocery orders replace existing store online purchases so you talk a lot about disruption on the show and what's cool about amazon recently we talked about netflix they lead by disrupting themselves he bought whole foods. you know it's crazy and it sounds sort of fun and i can see you know add to my

grocery list alexa this this that another thing talk about a time saver really could be helpful before we go on to talk about radio a little bit you're a radio guy anybody who listens to you knows you're a radio guy but in the competition for advertising dollars does the broadcasting industry view alexa and some of the others out there as a friend or as a foe of both and we hear the word audio a lot we used to think of radio as am and f.m. broadcasters but the advent of pod casting and now the way music has been commodity is from the cloud think audio advertising dollars are going there smart stations are enabling what they call skills so you just have to say play k t v and the radio station comes on the good news is this brings radio back in the home it's kind of become an in-car a thing we used to have a clock radio now the smartphone does it the kitchen radio has been replaced by

a t.v. but a lot of people who own these smart speakers own multiple of them and this does put radio back in all of those rooms if stations have given you a reason to use it otherwise you just say play crosby stills and nash and there is your rock block is the quality pretty good it's great so i mean. you used to be where you're going to build a home or say i'm going to put a speaker system in and have speakers in all the room now you really could just get intellects in a few major rooms that you're in it would take care of it to this trained ear it's as good as what dr bones was doing and you realize that during this conversation we've had we've said alexa enough that we're probably the matter of aging them all over the house where people are watching us. turn to our to america that's holland cook the host of the big picture here at r t america thank you my friend. and now we take a look at the business of fashion artistry charges has the story. now of the u.s.

economy continues to grow one of the main factors that is driving it is the fashion industry now we are here on fifth avenue which is one of the most iconic places in the world to shop for a high quality fashion but we're going to take a closer look to see exactly how much fashion pop i don't at least once a week or maybe twice a week with a growing number of high value jobs that pay homage wages and commissions fashion is now having a big impact on not only fashion centers from coast to coast but also around the world in fact according to a recent industry analysis by the u.s. consensus bureau fashion is a three trillion dollar industry that's two percent of the world's gross domestic product everyone or one month or every two weeks i see something new i buy it according to fashion united luxury goods brought in almost three hundred forty billion dollars men's wear a total of four hundred two billion and women's wear generating a whopping six hundred twenty one billion dollars not to mention bridles where

children's wear and sports but where that bring in a combined total of over three hundred thirty three billion dollars. generating around twenty four point eight million fashion industry jobs and that's not including the textile industry in fact to give an example of exactly how fruitful the fashion industry is for the first time in a hundred and eight years chanel house released its earnings for two thousand and seventeen and reportedly made a whopping nine point four billion dollars that's a lot of percent increase from the previous year meantime louie baton a best seller in the fashion industry brought in about nine point three billion dollars in sales last year according to reuters report although other reports do suggest that the fashion powerhouse brought in more than ten billion meanwhile here in the u.s. the market share of the fashion industry is worth nearly four hundred billion dollars which is about four percent of the divestiture markets. are you creating

a workforce of about one point eight million jobs meanwhile new york city is considered to be one of the biggest fashion as in the world so it's no wonder why over one hundred eighty five thousand people work here and the fashion industry reporting in new york trinity john that's our take. and before we go if you're a regular boom buster you've heard me say the numbers matter they mean something i say it all the time on the air and off well earlier today president trump's top economic adviser larry kudlow made a big mess of the numbers he was being interviewed on fox business and he falsely claimed that the federal deficit was actually coming down he said quote the deficit which is one of the other criticism is coming down and it's coming down rapidly the only problem is it's not coming down the deficit for the fiscal year twenty sixteen

two years ago was five hundred eighty seven billion dollars for last year twenty seventeen it was six hundred sixty five billion that went up guys even if you were talking about this year the current fiscal year twenty eight team which ends in september the congressional budget office cvo says the deficit is already five hundred thirty billion dollars through may which is up more than ninety seven billion for the same time last year but wait there's more c b o also says the trillion dollar tax the trillion dollar plus tax cuts that were passed last december will be even more to the federal deficit will add to it including any growth from tax cuts to the hot and tasty tune of wait for it. one trillion dollars per year that's per year an additional one trillion dollars by two thousand and twenty justin two short years i mean tax cuts can certainly help reduce the deficit i understand that you bring in more revenue they can help reduce they can add more

to the add more to the government coffers and therefore the debt deficit may not look as big but to say that it's going down would be a mistake i mean perhaps it's not rising as fast but it's still rising and look the final thing is look we all make mistakes i make a lot i mean i make one when i'm talking to you now if we make a mistake on a number we try to correct it as soon as possible but when your job as the top economic adviser for the present the united states for gosh sakes you make a false claim correct it mr kudlow nor his representatives have chosen to comment on the air and that's it for this time you can catch boom bust on direct t.v. channel three twenty one dish network channel two eighty or streaming twenty four seven on pluto t.v. the free t.v. channel one thirty two or as always hit us up at youtube dot com slash boom bust our to catch a next time. three

brags that it was all about the british might to bring back five hundred factories we're going to export our way back into a g.d.p. rocketship and take on the world cool britannia. well it turns out they're all going to be picking fruit out there it can be very shy or. do they just toss this cross-checked in. taken care of or because it shows. you to punish you. most of them are from a completely different cards i would just. as static. the problem is that we kind of how they stayed within the state they corner nicely with this

non parked office we don't. want to look at some piece of land. no no that's ok stop stop stop stop stop. no good my culture is crisp country and we don't do things like x. and we tell you if you do then we hate you and some the hopefully you can do something about this stuff. we can not be naive about this to not attract more gangsters rapists and these words actually that are tearing down this city we want sleazy to be faced with this county and we want to know the people who live here to go back.

to. president trump refuses to rule out recognizing crimea as part of russia head of a summit with a lot of reports and. new leaders to reach a non not binding agreement on the migrant crisis but more that there is still a long way to go to solve the problem. the u.s. and child abuse and campaigner and a nobel peace prize nominee is arrested by the f.b.i. over allegations of pedophilia. or broadcast live direct from our studios in moscow this is our international sean thomas really good to have you with us now president donald.