the headlines here on are to international emanuel micron welcomes donald trump to paris ahead of the day commemorations with the two leaders attempting to settle their differences following a dispute over proposals for a european army and. white house finds itself in broiled in further controversy after it uses an allegedly doctored video clip to justify its banning of cnn's jim acosta from press briefings. saudi arabia posts a tweet in support of yemeni children where the un warns tens of thousands die every year as a result of the saudi bombing campaign. and of the syrian army rescues over

a dozen hostages from islamic state call us report reveals american aid money is ending up in terrorists. can find those stories and lots more over on our t.v. dot com i'll be back with headlines again in about an hour's time right now though it is. this is the kaiser report on the road with gonzo going to r.t. in december oh it's going to rock it's going to be awesome i got to check about what's happening and like the big bad news cycle all stacy well you remember in the last episode we kind of talked about monopoly power i'm going to get to that in a minute but first i want to talk about that notion of share buybacks because wall street had talked about where the heck our share buybacks in this rotten market so

everybody keeps on saying the markets are going to come back once the you know the blackout period for when. companies are allowed to buy the share buybacks happen well that's not happening like the markets are continuing to decline and where the share buybacks are they going to help us are they going to rescue the markets are going to save investors well hasn't happened but so far over the first ten months companies bought back about three hundred fifty billion dollars of their own shares an average of thirty five billion dollars a month but the really important thing here is he looks at i.b.m. in particular and what i.b.m. has done to the fortunes of their company through share buybacks that share buybacks are pushed on to these companies as investors want them buy shares bought back do it do it do it do it's going to help us well in fact let's take a gander at international business machines i.b.m. one of the biggest share buyback queens since two thousand it blew one hundred

forty six billion dollars on share buybacks the chart below shows the cumulative amount since two thousand and thirteen that i.b.m. wasted on share buybacks forty three billion in six years so as you see it's going up so you had thought that would be good for i.b.m. that they're buying back so many shares because this is what you hear on c n b c and bloomberg that it's. really great for investors if they're buying back their shares well in fact wall street gurus keep hyping that share buybacks unlock shareholder value or return cash to shareholders or some other such thing but here is what i.b.m. share buybacks did to shareholder value as measured by the stock down forty six percent since two thousand and thirteen so in fact it has not helped investors really long term investor it's helped insiders at the company with their stock options and it has destroyed the company right well share buybacks up until recently was illegal it's completely illegal why because it's accounting

fraud and what i mean by that i mean that if a company is making a dollar per share in earnings if in fact they start buying back their shares that dollar is divided over shares and it looks like the company's earning potential and earning power is higher than it actually is and because so many corporations are involved in so much so much of the stock buyback you have a stock market trading on the top line or by c. and b. c. reporting seventeen times earnings but if you adjust for the stock repurchase programs and you eliminate the accounting fraud of stock buybacks the market's trading at the highest multiple of earnings ever probably in one hundred fifty years probably closer to forty times earnings at those nosebleed levels stocks generally crash number one number two. putting money into stocks buybacks is

means you're not investing in the company you're not investing in cap ex you're not investing in marketing you're not investing in hiring people you're not investing in technology so that's a complete waste of money i.b.m. and eventually people say you know what i.b.m. is never going to make any money because they've blown it all. a little stock repurchase program or a bomb was a big b. i'm going to fold up because i realize i'm more involved but i can't even subscribe to this fraud this fraud even though the executives are basically extracting hundreds of millions of dollars billions of dollars from the economy from the stock market putting in their pocket and running to switzerland opening up a big account get a swiss chalet leave americans on the street open definition we don't care we're executives exactly so wall street says something similar in terms of what they could have done with one hundred forty six billion dollars extracted from the company over those years in fact i b m could have spent this money on research and

invented something cool but that would have been too hard far better to farm out much of the work to cheap countries like india shut down us operations waste money on share buybacks in a vain effort to manipulate up its shares and instead watch them go to heck so they're not reinvesting in the company they're not reinvesting in the future a lot of corporations across the world are doing this in fact g.e. is basically on the verge of bankruptcy because they've spent two hundred fifty billion dollars in share buybacks over the past few years propping up their shares the company continues i think it's down over fifty percent this year alone and she and and yet like. part of the reason is g.e. has basically an oligarch with two other companies including siemens in the gas turbine market so they control the market and therefore they don't have to compete look i do like a bakery and every day the guy who's in charge of the bakery opens up the shop it's all the donuts and it's all the bread and then that damn of the day he said look we

made a lot of money because we sold out of all of our balance and bread but it wasn't to customers it was to himself so stock buybacks are basically corporate you know circling of money totally in a way that doesn't reflect the business they're not in the business of except for the business of fraud and this is rampant throughout the entire s. and p. five hundred and one stud day of reckoning comes as it seems to be happening now you could see it drop of the market down forty or fifty percent you know in a way it can people like oh my god what happened well it's been building for years because they're engaged in massive open accounting fraud most ordinary americans won't care about that it seems so esoteric and like why would i care about it but it does hollow out the economy over the long term maybe not the short term because it gives a boost the share prices for that day that share buybacks are announced and they all cash out and short termism short termism but also there's monopoly power and

this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue and finally economists from both the left and right are realizing how much it has harmed the u.s. economy because remember so many economists at the federal reserve are stumped by why we have full employment in the u.s. and yet wages are so low and part of it is the monopsony power over labor that all these older gop leaves across america whether it's in telecoms chicken farms in the midwest hollywood industry every industry is basically controlled by two to three meat major corporations in the pharmaceutical industry at c.v.s. and the on. one rite aid or whatever but here's a headline for what twenty twenty what we can look for. there pleading the hill dot com is pleading with progressive progressive can tackle the harm corporate consolidation is doing to our economy there's no exaggerating the role of power in the twenty first century economy from skyrocketing drug costs to the disparities we see today including the digital divide in

a banking sector that excludes entire communities it's clear that our nation's market power problem has created an economic system that is not working for americans so part of the reason is that basically policymakers are not making new policy about antitrust and instead leaving it up to judges to determine antitrust law based on you know mega corporations have all the legal power and activists are trying to take them to court to bust up their monopolies but the judges don't know anything about economies and what what would be good for the economy they just look at whoever gives whoever persuades the judge and it's going to be the corporation who has thirty five lawyers each making two thousand dollars an hour who is going to be able to persuade the judge so the judges keep on deciding and overruling even like when time warner just merged with the actual department of justice was against it but

a federal judge ruled in favor for it because they had the lawyer is to convince them you know i look at a copy of the u.s. constitution and there's a concept in here about separation of powers which is a brilliant innovation in jurisprudence separates the baddest actors in the society from colluding getting together and creating monopolies has broken down so this anti-constitutional anti-american so what you're describing there is just on a failure of regulations it's a it's a it's a constitutional offense. the constitution would require extreme. to be dealt with in the extreme possible way well in fact what has happened is that these powerful corporations who have formed. are able to extract more and more profits up until the one nine hundred eighty s. the basically the profit margin used to be eighteen percent in general across

industry that they were able to the cost of producing the products including all the labor costs blah blah blah and then they would charge eighteen percent more and now it's about sixty seven percent so they're getting more and more money therefore buying more and more politicians politicians don't therefore want to engage in introducing updated legislation the last time we had policymakers do any antitrust law was back during the roosevelt era so we have the sherman act in the clayton act and those are long time ago so there's been no updated ones that you know these huge corporations have provided have given themselves a whole bunch of loopholes they found all the loopholes in the past seventy eighty years to get around all of those have to the democracy was working properly these politicians would put themselves up on e bay so like chuck schumer would just auction them so far off like a hundred thousand dollars or get chuck schumer to do your bidding as a corporation great nancy pelosi just put yourself on e bay be honest about your the now and see. your up for grabs you know you go to

the highest bidder that's the democracy in america it's ruled by dollars and the law that came out recently told to put money into politics to which i can't remember the name of it but it's all happening and i'll go into that monopsony thing in the last minute here because he they mentioned that the increasingly concentrated power that employers use to shape the broader labor market to their own advantage known as labor market monopsony is one major problem that regulators have failed to address the federal trade commission and department of justice have focused so squarely on how anti-competitive behavior affects consumers that they have overlooked how it drives lower wages limited worker mobility and less on cipro . herships so what i'm saying is that these sort of issues are really important for the ordinary voter to look at rather than all these social and cultural issues that become the primary. you know sort of election sort of issues when they don't matter in the long run to the health of your entire family and community yeah you know the opposite of that of course would be

a union pay unions what about unions i mean we've got to take a break much more coming away i know what. it's been seventy years since the united nations of don't to the universal declaration on human rights but in many places it remains a declaration a note a reality how to bridge the divide between practice preaching. popes and. put themselves on the line. to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. i want. to go right to proceed with what will before you the more people. interested in the waters of.

welcome back to the kaiser report max kaiser time now to go to london and speak with ross ashcroft renegade nc ross welcome to the kaiser in port. well thank you guys are all right ross we've been talking about stuff for a long time and comparing notes on a lot of different ashes and it's time now to talk about brags it and looks like what many folks have predicted there would be kind of a mess. give us a bit of an update but it is it's a total mess and what we're seeing is it's

a bit. of any kind of leadership the political leadership whether it be to be able to negotiate probably a little bit worrisome siri an hour early rich reports that silly and now thinking well actually it was the right choice insofar as if i don't know the negotiations have been this badly there's no way other plump for it so we have here or not it is a total impasse total mess and we also see it as a prime minister who doesn't listen ironically home yes or music without an undertone to a script that is determined to do things on her own terms so she's covering your. example not anybody of course she's there and trying to shock the cabinet the cabinet it's amazing very hasty decisions along. the u.k.

and its relationship with your what was interesting there may from the very beginning you had two different schools of thought you had the people who were saying well you know we like to be sovereign and we want to be separate and we want to make our own trade deals and then there was another camp of people that i put myself in that other camp who said wait a minute just look at the economics the economics are trust us and you're going to suffer a catastrophic g.d.p. collapse and by the way that argument doesn't hold any weight with people i spoke to the british people i spoke to i would say are you prepared to suffer a catastrophic e.g.d. collapse and everyone i spoke to said yeah it's worth it it's worth a. it's worth it for self sovereignty but now as you get closer to the precipice and it looks like a catastrophic g.d.p. collapse people are saying wait a minute i don't really vote for that but let's just talk about the economics for a second ross because we like to focus on the numbers here they are a separation from the largest trading block in the world and the no longer able to

have your own currency in that trading block means that suddenly everything gets a lot more expensive and suddenly the economies of scale of being part of the largest trading block collapses and it caught the economics of this are terrible ross what are your thoughts firstly i think that a lot of people who are not there yet if we come right back to the economics of it a lot of people in the u.k. have seen as you know where it's wage stagnation for a long silence so when david cameron who incidentally is now. the monster all this is now sitting in a shop somewhere i don't know those which are trying to write memoirs and spend a minute in the way that gives them an out of this what he called this referendum a lot of people took that as an opportunity to blow the nose of the establishment so when you talk about economics if you're talking about people who go out there lawless ship day in day out there's

a lot this is all going to pitch it see we've been oppressed this solo this all of which is it's a bloody going to those is a record of elites and that's what they chose to do i think it's starting to. come home the new people started to realize that that's true ramifications but again it bizarrely i think emotionally people are thinking well actually i don't track i just want something different and if this is different then so be it let's see what happens. well i remember having a conversation on the heights of ross one on one during a somber exit disaster and he cannot accept. excite one logical example of why this made economic sense he just kept pushing the the amount of argument as you put it and it just looks like one man ego centric drive for attention and he's willing to kill the british economy and destroy britain for his own ego ross you know

or you know go down some people go down as one of the most successful politicians other people believed ours that most are most of our time. if you can't answer the economic argument then your political argument falls apart which is exactly what's happening across the u.k. in fact across many developed economies now so i'm i do think history will judge nigel i think you're judging truthfully but not really very kindly he enjoys publicity as we know whether his economic credentials. about show. east made a very emotive case and a lot of people listen and both said because of the salute chest beating and heart on the sleeve. british won't that he and he's a bloke to be people that doesn't always make good economic sense. all right let's

talk about some of the specifics many big banks are threatened to leave london sense of pranks and thought. is that all takara will they actually leave and one of the what consequences of this for us well are but is always threatened if any economic argument goes against them back is always threatened to leave. the madness if you like and a lot of people say well you can leave us go out i want the book and in a sense maybe we want to do have a case because a small of financial sector in the u.k. it would be a good thing we have a thing nickel of violence curse words since the big bang and i think that. in the eighty's science has basically absolutely consumed on it and apparently trickle down economics works well ask the people tower hamlets which is adjacent to the city are going to trickle down economics works most deprived. article in the

country so a massive blow to financial sector isn't always good for the nation so a smaller financial sector would be a go then if those bankers are going to go there to repay it's such a sign that that's their business choice but overall not many tears and being shot at the bankers who want to leave and get the british economy back from any speculative financial. speculative and financially german economy and also own more manufacturing and in advance of an enemy and it grows the real economy and diminishes the financial side from it is a good. or a well we're talking about h.s.b.c. barclays lloyds royal bank of scotland the big four british banks as long as there's a drop of blood in the corpse these parasites these leeches will suck at dry.

percent correct looked at don't do. listen to their words mean when was the last time you trusted a banker or about anyone who were violence watch what they do. and had also from another going to be a stronger book oh and this might sound trite but it's very difficult if i was a cook very nice set up there are not your kids in school who go home to their wives and so by the way we're off to mumbai unlikely to happen anytime soon so what's the action don't listen to much the word right how about house prices of course they one barometer that every british person checks every morning to see how they're there to judge their own net worth and value in the world prices are falling at the moment well the price at exacerbate that were prices are responsible for lots of things but the best. is that they're made every dinner party or social about in the u.k. basically. because as you say people link their self-worth to their house plus he

does a new level of lauren or mark normal wall if they you know what i actually so because it's not so far as it is ridiculous we've got a total speculative house price mania in this concert and house prices are going down and it's got very little if anything to do with brac said the reason they're going down is that we have a credit to two thousand and eight and then reflate it out to two thousand and eight which is the largest in human history if you think that any credit bubble size that went out is a natural to the market condition you're either a politician a banker or living and lara so the reason house prices go down isn't because it wrecks it it's because we bought that deflation because the reader comments aren't support the process anymore in an actual economy reversed say is taking an absolute pounding and if you want to see that in real time. for instance articles look at

stocks and shares that comes your look. really show that and understand where this is headed but breaks it in this country is the. goal of rescue says and the reason that house prices ago that repeat is because of debt deflation it isn't becomes a proxy all right fair enough now one thing that continues ross breaks that are no brakes that is austerity for those outside him may not know about this policy tell us about it what's going on there at the. very bluntly it is dressed as an academic decision and arguably the worst dancer and this trait of christian history along with their son who was harmless and recent history george osborne and our government speculate a little decided to pick austerity as a political choice and that's it he point because everybody thinks that it's an economic choice that he uses this incredibly traveler terminology which voters go places if you're going to a credit card now then you've got to pay down

a debt and households understand that because that affects them every day and he also says things like you put a man in the roof was the sun shining and later for instance didn't do that and this stuck with services well that gave him license to do is to impose austerity and it as a political choice not an economic choice an austerity really does is when it's nice. for them it takes money out of the economy and as a political choice it really is to prom so i would say that it's all about class war so instead of making people who caused the crisis in the first place the speculation for it what will decide to do was put the economic crisis you know a process at the door of the people who support it now in the working class or the underclass immigrants out of those people who can least afford them. that was

a passport choice and the second second which is also incredibly helpful to the city council sector is that austerity tamiko back to privatization what you do is you start a public asset runs you then show the public how incredibly. solder council is and such does around us for pat and then what you do is you take an asset and threatens of the part of the sector and this is a classic trip when austerity has basically license that basically austerity taking money out of the economy instead of musing money and so it's a growth economy it's got a productive area the economy engineering exception moving again crazy bits of the economy not speculative bets like house. house prices and this is a sending money out of the economy and then. well you know it's inevitable that we

have to do this because they use the household budget analogy say you hate our debt when actually that analogy doesn't hold water right now in the special wrap a tour is going to visit the u.k. to look at the human rights as just running austerity they came to the u.s. and found an appalling situation from san francisco to the deep south and then now they're on the way to the court until the day what they think they can at the same expect to say so us in our rights at the worry about what's going on in the end the . inequality we are paid inequality and the people are going to least support of course see other people exactly the people who have been given austerity it's a great society apart in this country and the press strangely don't cover it nearly enough so the u.n. needs when it's a big it's right what they do is i'll just give you one stat on this that since there's been an eighty percent increase since two thousand a lot. of children in temporary accommodation and that's. one hundred thirty

thousand if you're telling me that that is a son house the economy or a healthy country or a healthy political sonora well you know how raw strata time tax rate on the kaiser report that's going to do it for this episode of the kaiser report with me max kaiser states eric likes i guess ross ashcroft of the renegade bank if you like to get a touch tweet us a kaiser report. in twenty forty you know bloody revolution to the demonstrations going from being relatively peaceful political protests to be creasing the violent revolution is always spontaneous or is it you know here i mean your list put me in the. new school in the middle of the former ukrainian president recalls the events of

twenty forty and. those who took part in this did over five billion dollars to assist ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic. time welcome to worlds apart seventeen years after the united nations passed the universal declaration of human rights in many parts of the world it's still a declaration rather than leave reality and that's not only because upholding human

rights is hard. works for many societies but also because of the hypocrisy and politics associated with the issue to divide between preaching and practicing out of reach to discuss that i'm now joined by peggy takes a director at the un human rights office thank you it's good to talk to thank you very much for your time. now you gave a number of interviews and reach you talked with some alarm about the advent of the post human rights era and before you talk about these new face let me ask you about human rights era which supposedly preceded it how would you define it chronologically and how was it different from what we see around us today right well i think i have to clarify i don't i am not an alarmist about where we're heading on human rights i think what's happened over the course of the seventy year history of the universal declaration is that there's been a global understanding of certain basic rights fundamental rights that all people have and that we've been working together over that period to try to implement them and i think globally.