this is boom bust broadcasting around the homework world from washington d.c. i'm part short and thank you for joining us me appreciate it coming up today amid new data details about increased consumer spending last month which has some economists suggesting a much more optimistic gross domestic product for the u.s. this year we talked retail with the c.e.o. of this melissa arm and israel has closed the only kirsch point of entry into the gaza strip some say it's economic warfare archies alex the pilot it's just the details plus we take a look at the twenty eight thousand computer hacks and cyber security with rusty see the senior director of intelligence services at cyber reason all that ahead but first we have some headlines researchers at the international monetary fund i.m.f.

have said that continuing international trade tensions could reduce global economic output by half a percent by twenty twenty at a loss of an estimated four hundred thirty billion dollars the i.m.f. latest update to the world economic outlook warns the last could be that significant if quote current trade policy threats are realized and business confidence falls as a result the new york times estimated last week that the additional cost from trade tensions for average american household will be one hundred twenty seven dollars that i.m.f. also notably warned the united states a heavy export is especially vulnerable to retaliation in such a scenario where other nations can retaliate against broad a broad array of u.s. targets. and sticking with the i.m.f. their world economic outlook it was just released them predicts a three point nine percent growth in the global economy for both twenty eight. and

twenty nineteen but the researchers also warn that the probability of a significant down current has increased related to those trains trade concerns we just spoke about the i.m.f. forecasts differ from what their researchers call at dance economies versus emerging market and developing economies growth in the first category is expected to be two point two percent for this year and the next developing economies as the i.m.f. defines them are projected to grow by four point nine percent in a blog post on the update an i.m.f. researcher forecast china to remain the same although as a note china's q two g.d.p. actually dropped by a tenth of percent to six point seven percent the i.m.f. forecasts do suggest that some latin american nations growth rates have been adjusted downward since the april up late the outlook also predicts the growth in subsaharan africa will increase strongly enough to raise per capita incomes though that growth will not approach the levels seen during the famed commodity boom in

the first decade of this century. and turning to banking the bank of america charlotte north carolina has reported a thirty three percent increase in their profits for the second quarter the q two profit for b. of a was nearly six point eight billion dollars versus five point one billion from a year ago and their earnings per share of shot up to around sixty three cents and goldman sachs the fifteenth largest bank in the united states posted an even greater year over year percentage profit increase of forty four percent with two point three five billion dollars of profits just under six dollars per share versus one point six billion a year ago and the earnings per share beat estimates of four dollars and sixty six cents and a related personnel news goldman sachs c.e.o. lloyd blankfein formally announced in a call with managing directors that he will be replaced by goldman president david solomon mr solomons promotion had been widely expected since he became goldman's only president in march but there is no word yet on when he will form. really take

over. and the retail sales numbers are out for june and they rose by half a percent the figures represent spending in u.s. stores and their websites and restaurants at the same time the maze figures were adjusted upwards by half a percent from point eight percent to one point three percent and here's a look at retail details and what it what it is is well so are most she's the c.e.o. of the stock swoosh welcome melissa we always love having you and just when we thought that things may be looking not so great these new numbers come out and the may numbers were revised upward what's your take melissa yeah i think that was really probably part of the boost you've seen in the last couple days the rally in the market a lot of these stocks have just been a rally rally rally and amazon came out with a prime day this week so there was a lot of reasons for retail to get a lift not just the words momentum from that may numbers but the generous as well. the less i noted on sunday and iconic eighty year old sears store in irving park

neighborhood of chicago closed down for good and the closure which was one of five hundred twenty nine or five hundred thirty remaining sears stores is part of a current closure of about seventy eight stores around the around the nation what does this say about brick and mortar in today's largely online world. i'm telling you bar it's really the future in some ways is bright but in some ways it's bleak what i mean by that i think amazon is going to put a lot of these retailers out of business which you could look at it from one perspective and say it's good for consumers because you can get amazon products so cheap and they offer so many things one stop shopping and it really reasonable prices but on the other side of it it's going to put a lot of people out of business that have jobs at these stores and also it is taking away from the shopping experience i've said this before i think on this show whole foods was bought out by amazon and i love to shop at whole foods it will never be the same experiences of the same anymore the personal touch there's

a lot of things that are not on the shelves anymore the store looks a mess when you go in there and you don't have the same customer service so you're going to see that more and more and more when you go to shop at these places things are going downhill and they're going down how fast look at towards a rush toys r us went out of business and for all you know amazon pushed them out of business as well as on made brand new all time highs again today over one thousand eight hundred fifty one dollars a share it seems like nothing is stopping this and jeff bezos now is the richest man in the world one hundred fifty billion dollars and you say you know is this a good thing for us or is this a bad thing for us they're going to be pushing people out of business not just sears not just toys r us other people too if we have time i want to get back to amazon but i want to get sort of the bigger picture here too on what are the bright spot sort of the areas of retail that are doing well is it restaurants is it you know sporting goods what is the people really going after now where they only have

the only stock that i like that seems to be doing well that's attempting to compete with amazon is target target is still holding very very strong and they came out with their own thing in the last couple days where they're offering a lot of sales to try to compete alongside the amazon prime day you had other retailers doing that. to macy's is doing like a black friday thing but the stuff really doesn't look that great macy's stock is not an uptrend target looks good and they're trying to compete with amazon and go toe to toe because the prices there are good and they do have brick and mortar stores and they're getting people in but i'm telling you it's a problem while mart stock doesn't look that great but wal-mart came out with this new thing they're doing a three d. you can put different furniture pieces and try to play around and see how your furniture looks before you buy it but the stock doesn't look that good wal-mart's going to try to compete with amazon and target too but i don't know if in the end they're going to be able to do it you mentioned back to amazon you mentioned which i guess started yesterday three o'clock eastern today but it didn't go that well

they had a computer problem so what's your take on that was interesting they had some problems but they still had tons of sales people hung in there and because i guess it's thirty six hours it wasn't like just it was a twenty four hour period where they were doing the sale so they ended up fixing the problems but you know for all you know the site could have crashed i mean probably so many people came and wanted to spend and i don't know what the totals are going to be by the time it's all said and done but the stock may continue rising through this whole prime period because people are going and people are signing up and people are buying things and now they're doing this where they're offering special discounts to prime members even to buy food and now they're doing the food delivery services all these cities all of a sudden now you can order food delivery and not just in new york not just in the l.a. chicago dallas i mean all over the place are offering this is that something you know i'm telling you i'm a son is going to dip their toe and put their foot into any single thing that they possibly can to make money there's nothing stopping them and you know i'm telling you that for the little mom and pops it even made mid-range stores i just don't see

how they're going to compete i'll tell you one thing about the amazon delivery and this is a personal anecdote and you know i'm sure they'll get their stuff together but we ordered the other day from a place and we get a call from an eight seven seven number and it says this is amazon. i need to check some of your personal details now you know who knows that they're really called who knows are really from amazon you know i wrote a book about fraudsters puns ammonium and that's one of my red flags never give anybody your information there's just calling you they don't miss it your food we cancel the order and we went to the restaurant directly which wasn't a bad thing for our health but they've got they have are having some growing pains in this stuff but the do the grow hubs they have to watch the door dash is the all those guys are on their target amazon target list right now all of them but this is

i'm telling you anything else amazon we're still looking into health care real estate we talked about this even six months ago trust me when i say they are going to try to dip their toe into being a full service for everything you would ever ever need and i don't know if that's a good thing is what i'm saying if you own the stock it is but as consumers i'm not sure we're going to have less choices and less quality and in the end i don't know if that's really what we want well i think we're going to have a barlow in here to talk about and i trust in the future anyway we thank you for always being with us the clever as ever c.e.o. of the stock melissa arm of thanks melissa. and it's time now for a brief pause for the promotional cause but hang here because when we return alex one pile of it gives us the details about the closure of the only commercial port of entry into the gaza strip as some are saying it's economic warfare plus we take a look at two thousand and eight teams computer tax and cyber security with the last let's see the senior director of intelligence services at cyber reason and as

we go to break here are the digits at the closing bell we'll be right back.

join me every thursday on the alec simon show and i'll be speaking to guest in the world of politics school business i'm showbusiness i'll see that.

welcome back thanks for hanging with us or certainly have been a lot made of historic meeting between us president donald trump and russian president vladimir putin we've covered it here as it does have myriad business and finance angles to it but why is it so very significant and central to the world around us well russia is higher than most other nations and we look at the nation

from a gross to elect domestic product perspective in various rankings they range from number eleven to thirteen but russia is important because to steal it and co-opt the phrase it's all about the nukes there's really no comparison outside the us and russia each with more than sixty five hundred nuclear weapons russia by the way has about three hundred more than the united states when we look at some of the other economic powers around the globe china with less than three hundred nukes in the end pakistan with just over one hundred and change france with three hundred and the u.k. with just over two hundred it makes all the sense in the world to have an ongoing dialogue between russia and the united states but mr trump has reached an unprecedented level of hostility and acrimony from a right white a ray of people regarding his handling of the meeting with russian president putin related to tampering with u.s. elections notably mr trump did not condemn the election tampering and has derided u.s. intelligence reports about the matter that despite mr trump's own director of national

intelligence. senator dan coats saying after the joint press conference in helsinki yesterday quote we have been clear in our assessment of russia meddling in the two thousand and sixteen election and there are ongoing pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy house speaker paul ryan a republican had this to say let me try to be as clear as i can to the world of the country we stand by our nato allies and all those countries who are facing russia aggression how many times have i stood up here and told you what i think about vladimir putin vladimir putin does not share our interests but to me putin does not share our values and that's certainly not how russian president vladimir putin sees it he explained his position in an interview with fox's chris wallace saying we get that but still going to dissuade. people talking about the preferred the interference of russia with the election process in the united states and i've mentioned this in twenty sixteen and i want to say that now again and i really wish

for your american listeners to listen to what i say right here at the state first of all russia as a state has never interfered with the internal affairs of the united states let alone it's election. and just before we went to air today after meeting with some members of the u.s. congress mr trump changed his view or he said he did say he now except u.s. intelligence agencies conclusions that russia interfered in the twenty sixteen election stay tuned. and the irish senate has made history by passing a bill to ban products made in illegal jewish only settlements in the occupied territory the bill sponsored by independent senator francis black specifically bans quote trade with an economic support for illegal settlements and territories occupied under international law and passed by a vote of twenty five to twenty with fourteen abstentions the bill has support of several irish political parties despite the support from within the ruling party of

the irish executive branch opposes the bill which says it was yet to pass the lower house senator black held a vote and pointed out that the european union united nations and irish government have all condemned the settlements which are illegal under international law she asked quote how can we condemn the settlements as a legal as theft of land and resources but happily trade in the proceeds of this crime israel has closed the only commercial processing into the gaza strip stopping imports and exports with a pet within the palestinian territory some are calling the move a form of economic warfare and that may provide leet bay proved lethal to a number of gaza businesses are mahela which joins us from toronto with more alex we're glad to have you as always what's the latest from gaza. well we're six of the worst violence since two thousand and fourteen or day three actually of a cease fire but that seems fire still seeing some firing happening across the border there between gaza and israel so what is up with these economic sanctions of

sorts of closing the borders down well today the newest is they do not want to allow any fuel into gaza that would be the israeli government and that is because the weaponization of the type of weapons that hamas is using out of gaza be it in sydney area balloons or kites now these balloons are tried to fly into israeli territory and they've started fires or seventeen fires right now that firefighters are working on as well as just today one of these incendiary balloons landed in a kindergarten playground fortunately nobody was hurt there that said we're looking at a situation that god's a massive population of people in a very small area of this world is being shut down de facto by israel even with just the sporadic things happening with hamas i mean israel has fought back its bomb the areas where these people are but now they're going against it looks for going for all the people of gaza every entry point and gaza has been closed for

years except this one point which is a car on shalom this area itself fifty five percent of anything going into gaza right now is being stopped so we're talking about tons of goods going into that area can't go in any more this is since just yesterday when the president netanyahu made the announcement that the only thing that will be allowed to go in is humanitarian aid and food now all put aside we're talking about medical aid we're talking about we were putting livestock and up till today fuels were allowed but now we're hearing that fuels will not be allowed until at least next sunday for the businesses there was really hurting them here is construction materials furniture wood tronics fabrics all blankets also we're talking about generators all these things are going to be stopped from going in truckloads we're at the border and. they were turned back so this is the situation god of gaza was under siege before you can be sure that it's been up to bit by israel in the past couple of

days alex you know there is always even in conflict ridden areas commerce sends to tends to have some sort of ameliorating effect on the peace process and while i don't think that you know the commercial aspects of this are going to somehow solve the israeli palestinian crisis what does it mean for some of these business as you alluded to a few of them what it means for the people there from businesses and the people living there and the gaza strip. well we're looking to write about eleven years that we've seen gaza basically close down so all the unemployment rates are through the roof and if you just look at the numbers here fifty nine percent of palestinians in gaza are unemployed sixty five percent of youth and seventy five percent or seventy seventy percent i should say rely on humanitarian aid so those numbers are huge and now we're talking about just the past couple days would prices going up thirty percent so when you talk about construction through the roofs of bent spiking as well so these are all things that are

a part of an industry part of business their factories are really shut down the economy in gaza ready really bad so you're going and punching it even more the other thing which is absolutely unbelievable here is that this really government and i mean this is it might be i think some people would think that it's a little bit overkill this in areas for people the gaza strip which is one of the biggest area biggest industries have also been closed and because of what's going on now nobody is saying that you know hamas is a good guy and that sending these that these incendiary balloons and kites over to israel is a positive thing as far from that but as it stands right now we're looking at a situation where people are being hurt and that this is saying since around the world whenever you see sanctions it's not a good thing it's not the governments that are hurt it's people what does hamas want bottom line they're asking that egypt and israel open their borders and that they're going to stop doing what they're doing and hopefully for the people of gaza there could be some discussion here that will move things forward instead of putting them in

a situation that just seems to be getting worse all the time always interesting insightful r.t. correspondent allison hella bench thank you alex thank you. and the first half of the twenty eight team has been plagued by some of the worst cyber attacks and hacks we've seen millions of user data has been exposed due to the efforts of cyber thieves even major cities have been held ransom after just one employee open. a bad email from an unknown source it seems like twenty eight hundred problem is cyberattacks may only be getting started to help make sense of what we're seeing and has the worst already have impacted us worker tart turn to the senior director of intelligence services at cyber reason t.c. ross welcome to the show thank you for being with us twenty eight has seen a lot of these major companies saks fifth avenue slash lord taylor losing more than five million credit and debit card numbers under armor one hundred fifty million

users data exposed the city of atlanta held hostage by ransomware my heritage dot com had ninety two million passwords and e-mails expose quine rail the south korean crypto exchange we've talked about on the program was act with the get away with more than thirty seven million dollars but one that has kind of flown under the radar at least here in the states or to those not in the know is the hacking of india's national biometric system odd har what exactly happened there ross. yes there with this particular system there are a lot of vulnerabilities playing it and the details are still emerging quite a bit even though the hack took place in january of this year but over a billion records were accessed and soon after the hack took place you're actually seeing the hackers try to ransom the data for a ten dollars a pop on whatsapp it's one of those cases that really shows the dangers of trying to build these massive databases of consumer information especially in instances

where they don't necessarily have the ability to opt out we saw it with the o.p.m. breach we saw with the echo fat's breach and now india is going through the same type of pain with their own national database system and as we see more and more data colocated without necessarily giving people the option to remove their information or have it segmented out to have more protections we're really seeing the hackers go after these types of things because of the large database you know ross i was in government when when o.p.m. was hacked and it's like regardless of what you do on your you know protecting your personal passwords and everything i mean once they get into something like o.p.m. i mean heck they got you know so security numbers date of birth all that stuff that they got they even got it at my former agency the financial regulatory agency would think those guys would have their stuff together and then what i got is a letter that says hey there is credit protection service we're giving you not much comfort but are we seeing any types of connections between the attacks in terms of

how companies are being attacked and how hackers are circumventing the current defenses that are in place at these companies or governments. yes so this year's really been plagued by two large trends one is the trend of human error and unfortunately that's one that we're probably never going to get away from but when you're looking at a lot of the consumer based tax it was a lot of unsecured amazon web service buckets and a lot of things where you just had somebody you miss configured something in the data was just hanging out on the web for anybody to access and then the other big trend is going after third parties as technology becomes more specialized as people . start doing more trusted connections we saw a lot of chat bot compromises the beginning of this year and that's what took down ticketmaster best buy dell to see years it wasn't that they had bad security practices themselves but through enter gratian they ended up getting own by

somebody who happened to mess up that they had a trust connection with the wrong let me let me ask you just go running out of time what about crypto exchanges i mean because because crypto is decentralized are somehow they more prone to potential hacks yes or this is part of the emerging industry it's a very valuable target obviously for hackers to go after this is because there's a lot of money just sitting out there and it's brand new so everybody's trying to feel their way through the process of how to secure this thing and build best practices and it's also relatively unregulated despite the amount of money that could be had and so i don't think it's going to get better before it gets worse but eventually we will see more regulations and we will see an increase in security capabilities as people figure out what they did wrong and how to do things better because it's in nobody's interest to have these exchanges get knocked over at the rate that they have been ross we barely scratched the surface we hope you'll come

back that's the senior director of intelligence services at cyber reason russ russ t.c. thanks for being with us ross thanks for having me. and before we go tying up a loose end of a story we covered before u.s. commerce secretary wilbur ross has responded to a letter from the office of government ethics sent last week which said mr ross had failed to comply with required divestments of stock the secretary has now acknowledge what he called inadvertent errors in the divestment process and will now act to comply with the law a mere eighteen months after he made the pledge 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. that's the free t.v. app channel one thirty two or as always you can get us at youtube dot com slash boom bust r t we'll catch you next time. welcome to max kaiser it is

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a bit but. the very idea of a trump to the summit was controversial from the start they met in helsinki and essentially agreed the u.s. and russia should at least dialogue to start a process of mending a very damaged relationship much of the media in the form policy swamp reacted with an apocalyptic meltdown as the established it's much. about. that. but let's not. forget. that the. light.

from two arrangements and drum taps for the us president says critics are suffering from a phrase huge backlash by mainstream media and democrats for the whole thank you summit but the russian president. an investigation reveals that facebook moderators do not remove the page of far right activists as it generated revenue. the top u.s. commander in afghanistan walks back on his word hours after suggesting washington is willing to engage in peace talks with the taliban even though they're considered a terrorist group. very warm welcome to the program from all of us here at our to here in my.