the headlines take the world on t. day plane wash dog says it will discuss reinstating the russian anti dating agencies the member after it was suspended in twenty fifteen amid claims of state sponsored cheating. more than hoffa french people polled say the u.s. is no longer a trusted ally to us as president micron prepares to cozy up to trump small ahead of an official visit it's. day four of russia's largest military trails in decades seize the focus of the exercises shift from the mountains to see. these

about is a little. u.s. aids empowerment program for women in afghanistan is labeled a total failure by washington's watchdog in the country. you can read the full story so far on our website i'll be back with the headlines in about an hour's time right now though here on our teams national that's going underground if you're watching in the u.k. island stick around for sputnik. time after time through this is going on the ground ten years to the day wall street's lehman brothers went bust and the beginning of the that's all strategy that the british medical journal estimates could lead to two hundred thousand deaths in the u.k. by twenty twenty and the u.n. estimates will push perhaps hundreds of millions into poverty coming up in the show

we speak to pull the former head of regulatory risk. halifax bank of scotland bailed out to the tune of tens of billions of austerity pounds by u.k. new liberal labor prime minister gordon brown after leaving and is leavin bankers in london's royal party to celebrate ten years since the bank went bust we speak to rolling stone journalist in all the time be who famously described goldman sachs as a great find by a squid wrapped around the face of humanity plus she's following through on the crisis was she still thinks she's a ring on the people of this to be the leader of western europe's largest labor movement gets only a blairite accusation of racism in response to his grilling of minority u.k. government leaders are racism a plus for this week's papers it's arrogance with a consolation for the pint at lehman brothers the american war monger john bolton well the simple coming up in today's going underground but first today marks ten

years to the day that the self-styled musters of the universe got that comeuppance or rather the entire western world was crashed by an economic model centered on financial services that were built on sand within days as the financial contagion spread u.k. labor iraq was supporting chancellor gordon brown claim to have saved the world by setting the stage for austerity policies that continue today we not only save the world save the banks the all. right all right. around eight hundred fifty billion dollars or perhaps four times the annual budget of britain's public health care system was poured into the accounts of city of london banks only later was malfeasance identified lloyd blankfein of goldman sachs who used to be the boss of governor of the bank of england makani was accused of misleading congress do you

think more and blankfein was lying or was he telling the truth that. well he was not being straight with the his clients in a lot of ways and we showed that in his bipartisan report and he wasn't being straight with the congress when he said that there was no massive bet against goldman's clients or some wall street down the city of london for what they were long before the fifteenth of september twentieth and it wasn't just socialist politicians like jeremy corbyn who saw it coming those who worked in the banks themselves were coming and when they told their superiors they were sacked joining me now is paul more author of crash bang wallop and the former head of regulatory risk and one of the biggest banks in the world h. boss paul thanks for coming back on they'll be acres of newsprint loads of stories about the ten year anniversary some people saying this isn't an accounting story a political story it's a criminal story it's a tale full of sound and fury but signifying nothing the reality is that although some changes have taken place in the banking world and we talk about those in

a minute if you like the reality was that it was the biggest opportunity that this world had seen for a century to regain some kind of control of the way word capitalistic system that we've got rein it in somewhat and gain control of the corporatocracy because we don't really live in democracies we live in a corporate ocracy where the big companies. control the democratic processes look you can get through every single protagonist i'm happy to do so but they're exactly the same people you've got exactly the same executives the academic evidence proves conclusively that they have very high levels of psychopathic attribute it's very important that you have the same type of executives you're going to get the same situation occurring again you've got the same chief financial officers who do what they're told by the chief executive and keep the orders under control you've got control functions risk compliance internal audit that are not protected whistleblowers are still not properly protected even though people say they are

non-executive directors members of the same cozy. club as the executives themselves you don't control the executives whatsoever shareholders don't exercise any stewardship audit ing you want to talk about order to going to guarantee it will get all the way out as a result is the biggest disgrace in the whole thing regulators what your point exactly the same people say you take the chairman of k p m g. john griffiths joe johns and appoint him as the chairman of the financial conduct authority. well what are you going to get on to that not to have to say the big four say they operate in the strictest standards before we get a hundred bit more into it to those issues you mentioned psychopathy which is a criminal term often using gord's british medical journal says that austerity that ensued after the crash of your birth. lehman brothers maybe by twenty twenty will kill two hundred thousand people we talk about mass murder that's

a gross underestimate. in the year or so after the banking crisis the united nations itself published a figure that proved that over one hundred million people around the world have been driven back into abject poverty by the banking crisis now the mortality statistics that means the number of extra people who died as a result of poverty are somewhere around fifteen percent mark that means that the banking crisis killed more people about fifteen million the exact numbers not quite clear about fifteen million people which is more than any conflict since the second world war so the banking crisis wasn't just about money it was about death and of course it made everybody's life misery and misery and still does the response to it now i want you to remind us what you said to the treasury select committee that secured the resignation of labor problems gordon brown's advisor who was the deputy

chairman of the virtual services authority james crosby i told them that i knew exact cause i was so sick. i was one down below main board level i was the head of risk it. and i i knew what had caused the crisis which was completely inadequate separation and balance of power between the executive on the one hand and everybody else you're supposed to be keeping them under control all those figures that i've described and i said that it doesn't matter what the structures look like you can have the best governance structures and processes in the world but if they carried out in the culture of greed and ethical behavior and in disposition to challenge they will fail because gave b.m.g. one of the big orders richard and the other ones b.w.c. person young deloitte in the news or some would say here because of russian money sloshing around this country could be doing a lot of that other. basically can't be m g contradicted your assessments of

existential risk it was yes i mean it was a cover up and i'm very happy and have been happy and have been demanding a proper investigation into my allegations that they covered it up ever since i went public in two thousand and nine the financial reporting council that regulates accountants does nothing karelian you can you can think of dozens of example you go to was going to a doctor audited by the tax order thing is a crucially important part of the separation of balance of power it is not being done properly and the ordering prior to the banking crisis of the big banks was a fundamental root cause of the failures in the first place they knew i know because i was a partner k p m g and i know how good the people are in terms of their intellect and cognitive ability and finding things you don't get the information from the company walking you do they do get the information from the company they can go anywhere see anything talk to anybody everybody talks to the orders nobody was covering things up for them i told the orders they sit in the group audit committee

meetings they said in the risk control committee meetings they hear what is being said and then management say ok. we'll get another order to you is the order to is because of the way your probing or i'm not saying that there are changes that need to be made to make order to. better protected so that you can't fire an order to when they speak up that needs to be done and there is a review taking place all of the regulation of accounting accounting in order to get corporate governance by suggesting kingman and in fact i'm going to go and see them but let me just tell you one incredible story i spoke up in the group audit committee before i went to the board a date was basically telling me they carried on this where they're going to blow the bank up didn't use those words obviously and the next day the audit partner from k p m g said he thought i had a death wish what does that tell you about his state of mind anybody who speaks up has a death wish so that's their frame of mind and if an order to can't speak up then we're in trouble and we still are in trouble we haven't done what we needed to do

so what did you feel when you heard about the lehman brothers bankruptcy ten years today did you see it as and it was just a few days before then your bank where your worst and had to be paid off by the taxpayer did you think oh maybe they'll be a chance now of a realignment here of capitalism the i am not a radical socialist that we actually could i am a capitalist but we need a different form of kind of community collaborative capitalism we need to rein in the excesses of it adam smith did not describe free market economics in the way that it is currently described he believed that conscience would control things because in those days there was a regulator called the divine judgment authority which controlled people so the revolving door that. it was a little now i think that's a permanent position now well even the former failure to call it authority executive said the people most culpable were let off what's your reaction to the fact that no one's been really sent to jail for this just it's no wonder ordinary

people i spoke to my wife got me down in the car yesterday from yorkshire. and she said well i don't see anything change because nobody was ever held to account but i want to just go back to the previous question is very important the only reason i spoke up and breached my gagging order and went and blew the whistle publicly was because i felt that i was in a unique position of being so senior that i knew exactly what had happened and what could be done to prevent it happening again and what is so sad to me is that we didn't use this as the opportunity to make the changes that needed to be made yes of course i'm in favor of a control free market economics that is the best way to bring people out of poverty but not the way it's currently done when fiduciary duties were invented for limited liability companies nobody dreamt that a company would have a balance sheet the size of a sovereign government and more power than a sovereign government so banks are one thing. and you know there that the tip of the thing but really we should have used the opportunity to make some very serious

changes to all of these structures that i'm talking about and in particular remove the protagonist who have high levels of psychopathic attribute from the boardrooms of what is or has the impression from watching this that you're implementing of the fact that things do work and because you did come forward you did have a gag order and you did reveal what you knew it but it didn't do any good it didn't help people to account it didn't get me or ok as a human being well i had to be honest i had through that period i had some serious mental health issues which were caused by the trauma and the incredible disappointment the excitement of speaking up and feeling that everybody agreed which they did and then nothing happening because the entire. response to the banking crisis was effectively controlled so it was a disappointment to me i'm afraid it is a very risky business speaking truth to power and it's not just the fact that obviously you you irritate the person who fired you and the people at the top but it's when your friends are like the four winds because of the potential infection

because you almost become part of a leper colony i never got another job after after this. and i am an individual who knows what they're talking about i spend more time helping organizations to take more risk than the other way round because great risk management is like formula one racing it's not about slowing people down it's about making sure that the driver knows the. not to drive into the you know when the brakes a going and that sort of thing will thank you. for the. former lehman brothers bank is a supposed to party in london tonight to mark today's ten year anniversary but what does a tony do you describe the governor of the bank of england's previous employer goldman sachs as a great. on the face of humanity think of the shenanigans and from the headlines of the international criminal court and the european court of human right. coming up a bunch of going underground. still

dollars. thirty seven billion of those are printed every day there's no backing there's no collateral they're iou against the system twenty twenty one twenty two trillion in debt. and the medicare medicaid. social security that would give it a under under fifty trillion. welcome back well in the first part of the show we had from each of us was a blur north pole more was fired for warning of

a twenty year wait to give us some stateside perspective ten years to the day that lehman brothers went bust is rolling stone journalist and author of the american injustice. in the age of the wealth gap mattei view joins me via skype from new jersey matt thanks again for coming on the show you spent seven years covering all of this what is it feel like ten years on it's funny looking back i mean i don't i don't think that people have really learned a lot of lessons from what happened in two thousand and eight a lot of a lot of this really still persists. you know specifically what happened exactly ten years ago today. to deal. with i think there is so a lot of a lot of recess but the age was was a blue is telling us about well i told you about the british medical journal saying two hundred thousand dead estimated in britain because of the ensuing austerity un saying maybe one hundred million thrown into poverty what do you think of the fact they're having a party tonight in london to reunite lehman brothers bank as well you know that

it's a personal thing for me i actually spent quite a lot of long period of my life. said person purchase agreement between lehman and our police in which some of the insiders from women as the ship was sinking arrange to have gigantic bonuses paid to themselves in exchange for negotiating an advantageous deal for part so the idea that a lot of those vets who got paid huge amounts of money on the way out of there or get together and celebrate the good times from when lehman helped nearly destroyed the universe that's that's it's pretty offensive but they've been somebody. just another one because people in the financial press they would accepting what you were saying even when you were writing about it is when you called it fraud by rich people wiping out forty percent of the world's wealth people said it can't be

a scam or a fraud because some of that money the rich invested in property so they would take it into you know it's amazing looking back that no. you know wave a ridge leg earlier the f.b.i. as early as two thousand and four was publicly warning about an epidemic of what they call liar's loans and the financial crisis was really a very crude criminal fraud scheme essentially what was going on was the circle out of more rich companies like countrywide were pouring into low and middle income neighborhoods getting loans out there everybody with a pulse and then they were selling those loans down the line to institutional customers like hedge funds and pension funds with the quality of those poor loans the skies even back then you know after all is blue and everybody knew that this was coming eventually the bubble had to burst but they call it a weather event they said it was about your flood just an accident that happened it wasn't bad it was crime and this was just gravity happening and that that's why the crash took place and anything to suggest that regulation is change you've written

critically of the security exchange commission over there was a regulator is have just been changing names actually every few years though so obviously they're visiting some big changes. that you're going to be wiping out lives were pretty soon which is a major change to financial system but it was a fraudulent that was the interest rates being set here in london exactly but still have how we set interest rates low interest rates and there was a major scandal involving that process but really in terms of the roots of the financial crisis the major problems had to do with the size of the banks they were too big to fail when they screwed up and they over gambled on this overheated real estate market we couldn't let them collapse and that problem has not gotten better it's gotten worse but we did it responsibly crashes we heard all of those companies together and made them bigger and more dangerous so we're actually more susceptible

now to another crash than we ever were prior to two thousand and eight it was that twenty zero eight one was what twenty trillion in the household debt. so there like forty times you know twenty fifteen medicaid budget sixty thousand dollars for every american you saying it could be bigger the next time around if things are a full well they had to basically scrape together every. real and imaginary dollar that they could possibly muster from the treasury and the central banking systems of the world to catch the breach a get a gaping suckhole debt these companies the constant the fabric of the universe they're not going to have money the next time the next time we have a gigantic bowl berth only solution they're going to be able to have to bail everybody out is to circumvent the money out of thin air through central banking process there isn't going to be enough there there just fix the problem the next time so there is a lot of talk last time that we were just far away from like

a mad max and their hero where you know the entire economy collapsed and i think you know if they don't fix things that would be the future next time and just finally it's not only the ten year anniversary this week month colony is had his contract renewed as the governor of the bank of england haven't heard him say that the ensuing austerity welfare health education law enforcement cuts run justified to pay off those banks what do you think a book on because one of the things that was most of offensive about this entire episode is that you saw when this happened he banks who are the critical actors who helped cause a crisis like goldman when we looked up to see you were managing the crisis response we saw but it was all people like hank paulson and mario draghi and now you know mark carney and in britain who are veterans from those banks and so we actually have career civil servants manning the regulatory positions we're never going to have a situation where there is going to be too cozy

a relationship between the financial services sector and the regulatory bodies. thank you well now to go through some weeks. as is the u.k. prime minister dreams of maize old home of his colleague norman baker who's david cameron as a minister of state building thanks for coming back on we're going to go to lehman brothers in a second but obviously with more of a liberal democrat all of them conference i got to ask you as i asked members of the other week will you be becoming the next leader of the democrats and sits where lloyd george and william to had since that i was in when liechtenstein wins the world cup opposite all forward and also the prime minister your old colleague at the home office was we going to be covering it later in the show said parliamentarians should not be appearing on this channel because you risk becoming a propaganda asset for vladimir putin and no one's propaganda i've always put my own mind not considered to do so and i believe in an open free democracy and one could snoop in for you press people to switch off or you can just agree that we

shouldn't be stifling people's voices are very dangerous even the scottish liberal democrats they all the right in emergency motion saying that immediately this channel license should be revoked they're wrong. but i think i should also ask you what you thought of the exclusive interview the suspects the screwball suspects that if you have it this year well that's an extraordinary story isn't it i mean it's obvious a very serious one but the fact of the matter is it is difficult to believe that two people call away from moscow to see souls perspire wonderful though it is ok i guess we'll have to hear more from you from the police inquiry later on but one thing there's been no police inquiry about as far as i can tell is the ramifications of this let's go through this was story than the yes from the independent lehman brothers stuff to hold sickening toast ten years after bank collapse sparks economic crisis is the party tonight you're going to but i wouldn't be going if i were invited to be honest with you i think it's just sickening that's the correct tactic to do this this is attitude of bankers which goes back to the

one nine hundred eighty s. just arrogance about the rest of the population and arrogance about the huge economic and social. catastrophe that followed the banking crisis ten years will give our economy financial services will be all but they should behave in a proper way be regulated probably by the government on the ship he was somewhat ality and he should have some humble views i think about what happened ten years ago rather than celebrating it with a party use of the government the poor billions in bailout of these insults the bailouts were necessary to complete collapse of the economy had gordon brown initially as prime minister alistair darling not acted to save one of two of the banks at the time in two thousand and eight but the attitude of these bankers shows a complete disregard for the consequences of their actions back in two thousand and eight and the suffering that's been enjoyed by many of the population ever since let's go to the next story which are kind of involves you you are the home office when millions is going on you came a surveillance regime violates human rights top european court rules and none model

verdict and of course join the coalition years it was a can constant battle between the tories and lib dems it's always wanted every single lever they could pull as far as you could pull it to monitor and survey people and we were saying how in a minute yes there's a problem we recognize the value of surveillance but you've got to go hand in hand with safeguards to protect privacy in an up whole democratic values you know because the european court of human rights which presumably leaving anyway says that whatever would snowden revealed it's fine to do well in deception of all data i have no problem with dodging well i phones i have no problem with data being collected and stored the issue then becomes who can access it for what purposes someone can always access it if they have everything we all do and everyone want to and there is a but there is a balance as to who can access it what safeguards are in place is used judicially involved there is a politician deciding it and so on these are the matters we need to be sorted out and haven't been by the conservatives in government let's go on to the next story

the great national security advisor of donald trump yes this man's terrible john bolton by. was to punish i.c.c. after a court announces probe of alleged u.s. ball crimes in afghanistan last washington and conforming to a more muscular maging of long said and indeed to raise a may as refused to sign off their crime of aggression b. i.c.c. is dying but well i don't think it is dying and remember the i.c.c. although it's not adhere to the latest suggestion aggression should be brought into the i.c.c. remit in the way that the courts suggested but you don't you see it's important body it's an international body that's all done some good work already but it's not just frankly for bringing black african dictators to the court it was just well it shouldn't be you should be about any country in the world which violates the international norms of behavior should be held to account and to john bolton who is a warmonger par excellence to start telling us that the u.s.

is exempt from those on the high pay no attention to it and even start prosecuting judges i think is parts i can understand others of the i wasn't going to say he has no point in saying was running as an international court to trump the will of the american people who vote for politicians by trump and appoint people like because then appoint bolton because international standards of morality trumps use of trump national laws and it's an important safeguards in our world today to be sure we don't have to teachers and governments running out of control and john bolton's attitude is american to do with it hell it wants and nobody else can just live with it that's not the way america should behave is demeaning for america and is dangerous for the world when baker former minister of state thank you well tourism may seem doggedly to try and use the last pm keys before another recess to stop politicians as we've been hearing appearing on this t.v. channel we all have doubts about the objectivity of the reporting on russian russia today which does remain a tool of propaganda for the russian state now decisions about appearing on russia

today is a matter of judgement for each individual but they should be clear they risk being used as propaganda tools by them. i should state we'll going underground categorically deny that any of our guests on this show risk any such thing we are regulated by a u.k. agency and some may speculate a statement is merely symptomatic of a fear of real journalism certainly elites doubted this politician when he appeared on going underground to launch his leadership of the u.k. labor party everywhere you look mr speaker this government is failing one million families using food banks a million workers on zero hours contracts for money and children in poverty wages now it's a tiny thing ten years ago i don't talk of that there's the food and failing universal credit disabled people risk losing their homes and vital supports children forced to use food banks called been slammed

a litany of post lehman austerity policies he accused the pm who seeks to malign journalists as a t. of burning britain down the prime minister is not easy not challenging the putin justice is in our society sees pouring through on the crisis when will she start in thank you very want to think of this kind of the prime minister replied by way of identity politics before slamming t.v. journalists and then using blairite war supporting impeach to imply corbin was racist what have we seen from labor over the past few days everybody on state t.v. broadcasting no comment was thanks investigating anonymous and threatening letters about the diesel section of labor m.p. thanks guys shamefully of all the on her own then the press are saying that none labor party is now i don't think you said i'm

a racist you are saying that it was done child labor just thank god he didn't have these cards. would call been turned britain into a racist country or is a media blaming theresa may not just terrified about her own political survival you decide that's it for the show on monday we cover what used to be called the nuclear standoff in kashmir and when i was going to brixton in south london to investigate the nine hundred eighty s. legacy behind to raise a maze with drugs scandal till then keep in touch by social media with your mother the anniversary of the creation of the occupy wall street movement in zuccotti park new york which will spread all around the world. join me every thursday on the alec simon show and i'll be speaking to us from the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see it end.