just were jampacked to get right to it u.s. president donald trump has found a new target for criticism of the federal reserve that we're just mentioning mr trump aired his grievances on thursday in an interview with c.n.n. b.b.c. take a listen i've got a very good man in the fed i don't necessarily agree with it be cause he's raising interest rates i'm not saying that i agree with it and i don't know that i said you know i don't. i'm not thrilled because you know we go up and every time you go up they want to raise rates again and i don't really i am not happy about it but at the same time i'm letting them do what they feel is best. and despite that nod to the fed's independence at the end of mr trump's comments there today he criticized the fed again on twitter complaining that quote the us is raising rates while the dollar gets stronger and stronger with each passing day taking away our big competitive advantage the fed is slowly raised the rate since late two thousand and fifteen higher interest rates tend to support a stronger dollar which makes u.s.

exports relatively less affordable abroad mr trump's critics were upset by him and his lack of deference rather to the unwritten policy of avoiding comment on fed decisions that begin during the clinton administration and federal reserve president from st louis president jim boehlert said the comments would not affect the fed's decisions on interest rates but other still fear that the fed choices will now be second guessed to an even higher degree. we have seen record bank profits some of which we reported here on the program earlier in the week at the same time we see continuing calls for relaxing regulation in the financial sector and even things like stress tests conducted by the federal reserve which are meant to guard against another government big bank bailout here discusses a former banker herself she's also the author of collusion how central bankers rid the world nomi prins know me thank you for being with us again we sure appreciate

it the big banks have never made more money than right now does that surprise you. well no they've had ten years of being subsidized by the federal reserve by the policies that have allowed them to mass a lot of extra capital the quantitative easing policies that even though they have tapered off still have amassed a multi-trillion dollar book of assets from the banks to the fed over the last ten years and as a result they've been able to buy their own stock with the blessing of the fed pay dividends to shareholders to buy their own stock and to invest in complex securities and activities that enable them to extract high fees from their businesses which in turn produce bigger profits for the. u.s. sort of nutty i want to get into some of the details a little bit yes for your help in trying to explain some of it earlier in the week a federal reserve chair jay powell took some heat on the senate side at least from some democrats elizabeth warren i.d.i. some others and sherrod brown the ranking democrat on the committee for rolling

back the so-called stress test and on these supplemental leverage ratio and i know those seem like they may be complicated for folks but they have a lot to do with what you were just talking about and the white the fact that the chairman said to chair a policy that these stress tests were tougher than ever that really doesn't seem to be the case explain what these stress tests are and what the federal reserve has done to relax them. well first of all these stress tests which were part of the requirement by the frank act of twenty ton to require banks to basically pass. a certain level of the amount of capital or reserves that they need to have in their possession or with the fed in order so that if there isn't another emergency we don't have to have a bailout and we don't have to have another ten years of additional fed subsidies to support the liquidity and this sort of operations of the banking system the thing about the stress test of course though is even though chairman powell is

talking about how they are stronger than ever the reality is that banks are involved in helping to create these stress tests and a lot of the things that the stress tests miss are the very things that caused the last financial crisis there the co-dependence sees amongst the banks the leverage or the borrowing the banks provide to each other or at the back of certain securities or transactions in which they are involved and these stress tests don't necessarily really stress. those codependency those links between banks so that means if one particular transaction fails dramatically in one institution if another institution has exposure to it because they're dealing with that first institution say bank of america with j.p. morgan chase then they are also on the hook and those are the types of things that actually these stress tests don't really accommodate in there the biggest pitfalls and dangers that really to a financial crisis potentially so that's really been off the table anyway throughout the most of these stress tests but the fact that they've passed them and

they have enough leverage they've reduced their leverage enough supposedly to pass them is because of the very way that they're constructed and the fact that they've been subsidized by the fed for so long because so there's two things there there's the contagion impact that you say properly calibrated between the banks but then there's also the leverage ratio and it's that leverage ratio that has been reduced and and that has to do with the amount of cap. little that the banks would have on hand should something take place and and how they would go about what we call a what they call a what i used to call a living will that is what happens in the event that the bank has to go under and how do you deal with it without that contagion now that leverage ratio if you can explain a little bit more but it's the relaxation of that leverage ratio that i understand led the fed to approve the disbursement of funds from the banks and dividends and

stock buybacks do i have that right. that's right so so first of all it's the fed that has the right the job of approving or deciding not to approve when banks come to the fed and say look we want to use the capital that we have or extra capital that we have instead of doing so bank lending activities to buy back our own shares to provide higher dividends incentives to our shareholders and so forth and the fed can either say yes or no and this is historic this is even before the stress tests were created with the advent of the stress test the fed now has a sort of extra measure where they can say oh you passed these stress tests as we've created them and we've reduced the amount of capital you have to hold anyway as part of this new round of stress tests so given those two things yes you have enough capital to buy your own stock and to pay dividends or higher dividends on your own share so it's kind of a circular relationship that these private banks have with the fed who test them but also suggests that they don't necessarily need as much leverage or they passed

their leverage test as the tests have been constructed and therefore they can use that extra capital to buy their own shares it's one of the reasons we've seen in the last week all of the shares of the banks or most of the banks rise first because they've had high profits but second because they are going to or have began to begun to start to buy more and more of their own shares they've already bought millions billions of sort of last week last year and so forth but now they're going to continue into the rest of this year and that's basically providing them additional lift to their prices you know you're right we talked about these bank profits earlier in the week and a couple of them because they were sort of symmetrical i recall b. of a was a thirty three percent growth in q two and you're one of your former employers goldman sachs was forty four percent that's forty four percent just in the second quarter i mean gosh you know we take any of that any part of that for any one of our investments but one of the reasons that people say that they're doing so well

the banks is that we had this large tax cut. two hundred trillion bucks worth an active late last december and the economy seems to be you know bolstered by that purring along at least for the most part but what the fed forecast for the long term growth is now just one point eight percent g.d.p. yet it was the same one point eight percent last year at this time so my question to you would be what do we have to show for the tax cuts nomi. well what you've basically discussed with those numbers is something i've been talking about for a long time which is that quantitative easing or providing extra capital to corporations of particular banking sector doesn't necessarily make its way into the real economy or certainly not in a sustainable long term growth type of type of manner and so what those figures say it's interesting because at first the fed was talking in j. paul was talking as he first came into the position of the chair earlier this year about how growth was high there was predictions of there for a potentially an increased rate of acceleration in hiking rates and so forth and

talk of inflation rising and so forth and now that there's been a few rate increases this year it's all of a sudden been been dialed back and the expectations of growth are now all of a sudden a little bit less than they were to begin with so basically what the fed is saying by that is that their policies haven't really helped by extension they are saying that the tax cuts even though they have talked about them as potentially helping and in addition relative to stimulate the economy as has the administration as has various members of the government media so forth haven't really made their way into sustainable growth at all into the economy they've made their way into shares they've made their way into the stock market into financial assets because there has been extra capital taken off the table by these companies particular ones that have really great accountants and you know stuff that people can figure out how not to just take the corporate tax cuts for their face value but also sort of expand upon them and terms of the capital they can save and then reuse for for their own

shares and so forth and that's exactly what we've seen in the market it's not what we've seen in the real economy because the what happens in the market simply doesn't go into the real economy what happens in the growth strategy of a company and increasing wages for a company in expansions of a company would go into the real economy but simply using that capital to lift share prices or to to back to use this clowder for issuing extra debt and so forth . doesn't go into the real economy and neither has the ten years of the subsidies the feds provided to the banking system i keep repeating that but it's very important to know therefore to have trillion dollars of subsidies for the banking system and that also hasn't created a sustained real growth at the sort of foundational level of the economy and certainly not in wages and so forth what we do know about the tax cuts nomi is that you know our grandkids and it's two trillion dollars that we're not going to dig out of that hole any time soon and while i'm a supporter of you know people investing in capital markets and certainly getting

dividends when they can about a third of the stock investment the u.s. is actually from folks outside of the u.s. so it's not it's not just not making it into the u.s. real economy it's not making the you a current u.s. economy at all so my question is when you talk about real economy how about wages we don't see much improvement on wages despite the good economy and workers shares of income are getting smaller over the years what about that all of that that's a direct extension really of of this phenomenon that capital is going into the financial markets whether it's coming from domestically or whether it's coming from internationally. and that capital is being is to elevate a certain perception of the books of corporations but it's not being used to give to the employees and therefore the wages are not increasing excellent nomi prins author of collusion how central banks rigged the world thanks for joining us appreciate it nomi. thank you. time now for

a quick break but stay with us because when we get back to holland cook and steve help us sort out what all the media merger madness means and we have to the question is local media on its deathbed plus danielle be more to you know the c.e.o. of google intelligence help us look at the better jobs and why of a meeting at the white house with business leaders as we go to break here are the daily doses of the closing bell already arrows on the stock as we go into the weekend we'll be right back. after the war a nazi don't tell was still active. in the nineteen seventies croteau had as the chair of its board a man convicted of mass murder and slavery at ash was a german company developed thalidomide a drug that was promoted as completely safe even during pregnancy it turned out to

have terrible side effects what has happened to my baby is anything but. you know she said she's just got choked up mimics a little mind victims have to this day received no compensation they never apologized for the suffering that not only want the money i want the revenge. to prepare the program i had to look at a lot of material to listen to a lot of material and also read a lot of material that. was appalling. and not only that when you get these images into your head and of course the images that i was you know far more graphic than anything i could include in a in a television. for a man or sitting in a car when the fifth good shot of the. four

different versions of what happened one of them is on the death row there's no way you could have done it there's no possible way because the list did not shoot around a corner. the world of media is changing as we've reported on the giant media merger madness that seems to be going on almost a daily basis and one question is if too much is being paid for some of these companies and will that make them on viable and what about local content is it gone forever for more we turn to the host of the big picture here in r t america veteran media consultant holland cook and our friend conservative t.v. and radio commentator steve wallace thank you both for joining guys holland i heart media is one media venture that hasn't worked out like plan perhaps there was too

much money paid invested there give us the background on how this giant conglomerate even took place the original sin was committed late at night in one nine hundred ninety six attack down to an otherwise unrelated telecom act was radio deregulation and the simple story is that one company had a ration of stations they were allowed to own a dozen and no more than four in one city now one company could own as many stations as they want they can now have as many as eight in one city so it became a seller's market and local radio the beloved mom and pop independent operators that made radio so delightfully local probably had no intention of selling their all down in west palm now because along came clear channel now called i heart and some of the other big groups. who wildly overpaid in this feeding

frenzy and ever since they've been burning their furniture to keep the lights on because the mortgage is just untenable and that's why it's hard to find local news or local d.j.'s on a lot of am f.m. stations and steve we always talk about you conservative t.v. and radio commentator you've hosted programs on some of these stations and and even where you are we look at the background there in our studio in new york i mean a lot of local content been lost there right oh yeah absolutely i mean i was on the w. a.b.c. at one point rush limbaugh sean hannity mark levin john bachelor all now some of the biggest syndicated shows that go all over the country and occupy radio slots all over the country at the expense of local programming they were all local shows at w a b c at one point and that's just one example plus i had an overnight show you don't get live overnight on stations anymore either you have syndicate couple of syndicated shows that take up all the air time over night and steve speak to

this whole overbidding and what's going on we see the the bids first sky the high sky prices for sky and other media then use bring us up to speed on what's going on between five and comcast and does the and and try to untangle that weird web for us well comcast of course finally just recently dropped out of the bidding for fox does they will be buying the assets of fox so that's clear and done for a lot of reasons comcast couldn't afford it after a while also they were afraid and so was rupert murdoch that it wouldn't pass the f.c.c. i should say antitrust muster here in the in the united states with the regulators so they wanted the disney deal they got the disney deal now the new g.m. here is sky sky is a pay per view content provider throughout europe five countries twenty five million subscribers and fox owns thirty nine percent of sky so does is. good to acquire thirty nine percent of sky disney would like the rest of it comcast would

like to buy sky comcast is probably going to get the sixty one percent that disney isn't going to get so they're going to have two companies that are going to have to work together or or here's a solution that's being bandied about hulu an o t t of course you know hulu that provides programming as well through streaming and webs and internet etc this thing already owns thirty percent approximately comcast own thirty percent fox owns the rest so this is going to wind up owning over sixty percent of hulu so comcast will keep their thirty how about comcast gives their rest of hulu to disney disney owns all of hullo and the thirty nine percent of sky goes to comcast comcast will own all of sky now that sounds complicated that ain't nothing because it was much worse and more complicated before they did for comcast right out of fox yeah hello they

are but you know you did a great job of untangling it for us and it to us you know when you talk about all these companies and you mention hulu you know holland when we look at satellite radio and streaming and and all the consolidation taking place i mean are we simply is it inevitable we're going down this road to bigger is supposedly better have we lost local content forever holland well the timing couldn't have been worse for big corporate radio to dumb down the local programming it was the perfect storm i pod was the shiny object back then and now we have sirius x.m. what you mentioned pandora streaming downloads there was never a more important time for broadcasters to do something unique to be local for years we have seen warren buffett buying up small town newspapers a lot of that's driven by high school sports he has content you can't get anywhere else. i b leave that as these big companies begin to deal lever they're going to sell the

smallest markets first and things have a way of working out and that there will be a new generation of mom and pop independent broadcasters who resumed the local programming that made am f.m. radio so special i sort of hope that happens i mean i love free enterprise but i sort of hope it happens and hala just real quick we've only got a little bit of time but sinclair broadcasting group which operates in the neighborhood two hundred t.v. station the us is still smarting from that embarrassing script where they asked the anchors to all say a certain thing but they're trying to buy tribune media but the f.c.c. chairman pai is sort of throwing up roadblocks what's going on with that well that viral video of all the local anchors parroting the same script from headquarters really was an embarrassment because with all the talk about fake news and the trump bluster the media has lost respect in that last bastion of respectable media

is local content so sinclair has got some got some trio to do and chairman piii himself has been under investigation for perhaps improper contact with the sinclair people as he was opening the door by deregulating various aspects that would have made that tribune merger possible so he's now backing away and he wants an administrative law judge to decide whether or not the sinclair tribune deal happens steve real quick what's your take they were a big supporter of. sinclair of trump what about it well what they're objecting to now what the f.c.c. is objecting to at the sale of three stations in chicago dallas and used in all going to an owner of that has that have ties to each other that you know it's kind of different owners but they all have a common interest and that's really what's what's holding it up so if they could. defy that and with the help of the large judge as to how it alluded to i think this

could still get done well i think we've untangled about as much as we can in our time allotted we thank you both conservative t.v. and radio commentator steve walford and the host of the big picture our t.v.'s holland cook thank you both guys you're back i'm actually. and we've spoken about the skills gap in the united states on the program before that's the gap between the the jobs that are available and the people who possess the skills and the aptitude to do those jobs well yesterday business leaders from bunch of fortune five hundred companies met with us president donald trump at the white house and pledged to train three point eight million workers over the next five years and the president also signed an executive order on job creation that established something called the american workforce policy advisory board which is charged with bringing together governors business executives and educators to tackle this problem and good for the president in this regard to be focusing on the issues are important to continuing economic growth and the only coffee out to my praise and i do praise the

president in this regard is that the new advisory board is not funded no dinero for it and speaking of not funding things the president's budget request to congress called for a forty percent cut in skin programs that train and retrain workers from two point seven billion dollars to one point six billion and look to me the problem requires all stakeholders doing their part and that includes the federal government should be honest about it and hear talk about jobs the economy and the federal reserve which is that in the news this week is danielle de martino both the author of fed up why the federal reserve is bad for america and the c.e.o. of quill intelligence and that daily feather that we love to read danielle thanks for being with us we are at an almost fifty year low on unemployment in fact last week was the lowest level of americans seeking unemployment benefits it's nine hundred sixty nine all excellent news but we are not at full employment and some

think well we can never get there but can we or can we get closer at least considering what the available jobs are and the current makeup of our workforce. no i don't think we can get there bart and i think that is why a lot of these larger companies have finally begun to recognize the economies in which in which they are doing business in the main economy in which these american companies are doing business is the united states i think they're beginning to realize that they're going to have to go hand in hand with the federal government that it is low on cash as you just mentioned and begin to help through public private partnerships retrain a lot of these american workers who are just too young to even contemplate retiring but don't have the skills necessary to fill the open positions so i'm actually very gratified by some of the steps that are being taken here where i am in dallas for example where toyota corporation is headquartered they take bright promising high school seniors who might not have this the opportunity to attend

a four year college they put them through a two and a half year mechanical training program and they come out at the other end of the pipeline with a full time job a toilet and job security and skills that can transfer into the future we need to see more of this bart i'm happy that we're starting to see more partnerships emerging i'm with you and i know a lot of these exist but the more focus we can put on it so i do give the president kudos for that as well make sure it really happens that the money is there for it and maybe it'll come with this partnership danielle from the from the private sector and maybe congress will go ahead and fund all the all the money for these programs let's shift a little bit to something that i just love that you talk about that quick rate where you know there's so many jobs out there that some people i think you're saying are just quit explain it to us well i call it the take this job and shove it right as if it's workers feel that they're really i mean well i'm going

back to a country song from the one nine hundred seventy zero and i remember i we were in the same. there you go so you know if workers feel and powered such that they're able to quit their jobs and right now we're seeing some of the highest quit rates we've seen for the entire economic recovery that is a sign that they feel that they can hopscotch from one job to another and get higher pay and this is vis is good news for the american worker who has as we just talked about the requisite skills that it's not good news for employers because that means that they're going to have to pay up in order to either retain these employees who are threatening to quit or they're going to have to pay up to get new employees but again the solution here is really easy it's to train the millions of workers who are willing to do jobs but don't have the skills then you know we so much appreciate you being here we don't even get too much into the fed but we'll hope to have you back soon that's danielle de martino both the c.e.o.

of quill intelligence danielle thanks have a great weekend. thank you you're too. and that's it for this time thanks for being with us you can catch boom bust or you tube dot com slash boom bust artie we'll see you later. the new global economic war is unfolding in the realm of education the right to education being supplanted by the right to access education low it's high education is becoming just another product that can be bought and sold but it's not just about education anymore it's also about running a business and what you're good. luck with is also the kind of fellow we couldn't we. want is the place of students in this business model before college i was born

now and i am extremely more higher education the new global economic war. it's hard to imagine decades after the war a nazi doctor was still active rich in the nineteen seventies tryna tell had as the chair of its board a man convicted of mass murder and slavery at ash was a german company granted to him develop thalidomide a drug that was promoted as completely safe even during pregnancy it turned out to have terrible side effects what has happened to my baby is anything but. you know she said is just good choice minix a little mind victims i have to this day received no compensation they never apologized for the suffering that not only want the money i want the revenge. independence means that you're not going to take instruction from any of the four

and we know that in the situation of syria they have agenda. the mandate that was given to us is bold it's not targeting one i took a side to this conflict it is broad it is focusing on identifying investigating earth and building flies on some of the more serious. that it is not to see if you let.

a year after islamic state is run out of the iraqi city of mosul we'll look at what's changed since the liberation and hear from a local resident. still down there and there are bodies in that house behind us still inside stench coming from them is very strong children are getting sick because of this. a shaky cease fire is restored between hamas militants and israel after violent clashes on the gaza border raising fears of a full blown conflict in the region. and students at a university in england have removed a poem by british writer writer kipling from a campus wall claiming his writings were racist we asked people in london what they think. is a man of his time. and you've got to accept that that was his time.