we brought you the top line earnings numbers from disney and now we'll do a does the deep dive and take a look at a few other companies with adam mesh of adam they're trading groups and later a saudi shakedown appears to be in the words conservative t.v. and radio commentator steve malzberg helps us understand what's going on or going wrong in the monarchy all that directly ahead but first let's get some headlines let's go. global energy politics lead to a global report today as opec the organization of the petroleum exporting countries moves to formalize they d. facto alliance with russia the secretary general of opec mohamed keno is reportedly eager to extend its strength and strengthen the so-called opec plus arrangement which we've discussed in the past under the agreement opec effectively manages global oil supply in consultation with russia with saudi arabia in a leading position within opec saudis surging sway within opec was among the factors that recently led to qatar to leave the group now the idea seems to have

grown to include nine other non opec energy producing nations in addition to russia the proposed though why it's reportedly will be on the table at a meeting in mid february and holds the possibility restoring some of opec's waning influence over prices which have been sinking in a global oil glut. and turning to the united kingdom online grocer a condo is warning that a massive fire at a warehouse in andover will seriously impact sales the site housed a ten percent of ten percent of a cut of inventory and that supply as well as the robotics and the facility built and in its cost of fifty eight million dollars reportedly have been lost the chief officer at the hampshire fire department told reporters it may be a week before it's even safe to walk amongst the ashes of what remains and as we reported the grosser sector is tech enough to capture online sales and experimenting with robotic to. liveries and ocado which has no physical stores has

been voted best u.k. online supermarket overall while insurance companies will pay for the financial losses o'connell's loss of the latest technology seems to leave them somewhat flat footed for the time while the sector changes rapidly company's stock fell as much as seven percent on the news. with fifty one days on the breaths that countdown clock it's time to check in on where things stand to do so we are once again most pleased to be joined by live get this i'm going to tell you about something that special this is a person who is nestle u.s. citizen and a u.k. citizen we are so pleased to be joined by the c.e.o. of straw mark hillary florida a chill re thanks for being with us we sure appreciate it thank you so last we spoke things were in a hot mess over there but it continues my question to you is one where we are where are we some of the things we talked about in the past have been resolved but where

are we have what are the sticking points at this time in this place and time and that she mentioned haut sticking point you just mentioned the story about the fire going on and now they just seem to have relatives and very dear friends close by the reason the fire is so bad that building was built for bolts no humans can get in so the firemen had to take the roof off you see and that's where they think that exacerbated the flames anyway that they're going to what we usually call segment on a very interested they actually you know you're breaking new roads are being closed down they're being diverted but anyway so just with regard to practice it's a few a few developments today theresa may is in northern ireland she's trying to obviously resolve this and that's the backstop issue what is actually amazing that it's become such an issue is that technology could so will this and the way i've explained it to the american audience is it's like the easy pos lns why it can't be solved by technology is up so they can amazing explain that i mean it has to do with the hard border and whether or not there is an open access to the. you are not

but let's lay it out we've done it before but it's important to recap do it for a boom bust right for a boom bust as if you look at the geography and northern ireland northern ireland is part of the u.k. southern ireland isn't the troubles that occurred before the peace agreement in the eighty's that was all during usually good friday agreement was due to obviously part of it the border the religious conflicts etc but this border presents an obstacle because nobody wants to have a hard border it must be seamless it must be an invisible border it must be like when you're driving down a highway anywhere in the world and the toll is taken automatically from e.z. pass that is what the objective is and that is what the sticking point is interesting the germans are saying that they want to be creative with regard to that backstop whereas obviously there are other people like the e.u. tusk is saying that he will only he will hold exactly a make no concessions so theresa may has said that by february thirteenth she will come back with another deal another agreement but the e.u.

is saying no concessions so it looks like on february fourteenth there will be a debate in parliament after she brings back this new agreement you asked about development some developments business wise the chairman of the air bus has said that he will be removing all of the air bus employees a lot of japanese companies interesting lee sony panasonic they innocent have said that they will be leaving the u.k. are many of them going to amsterdam some of them leaving i think it's sony is in weybridge and others are in bracknell and they're going to the netherlands there's a story we're not doing it today we may get into it later in the week a. green barnes being sold in luxembourg and one of the places they're looking for money is chinese investors who were in the u.k. and are now looking to move someplace else it's interesting story recovery getting their way forward which is that well right now i just and what a positive note to end on the police so that is and that is that reuters came out and said that there actually have only been one thousand nine hundred eighty six financial jobs moved out. of the financial center of london was the prediction had

been absolutely dire up to two hundred thousand there are four hundred thousand jobs in the financial service sector in london the city of london so i think that's good news will cross your finger and we. appreciate you being positive hillary for does she think you have always bot. i. we've discussed some of the various ways that nations and companies that have considered and runs around those u.s. economic sanctions on iran which were we imposed late last year in november i believe and you may recall the special purpose vehicle the s.p.v. being effort by the european union to allow companies to essentially get around those sanctions well now there's another potential way with more we turn to our two producers saya to have injury. bardwell iran's love hate relationship with cryptic currencies has climax in the creation of yet another natural cryptocurrency the

payment iran's initial mainstream crypto was replaced with a ban by their government only to realize later the potential of the technology to tackle the sanctions imposed on the country u.s. led sanctions have nearly crippled iran financially which has which was exploiting roughly two point one million barrels of oil around twenty twenty twelve and now down to less than one point two million barrels per day in twenty eighteen and even less now so what's really what's really important to point out here bart is that due to sanctions no matter how much oil iran is producing exploiting they still need to get paid which has pushed iran to launch their own digital currency now ok memories hazy hazy there are thousands of crypt those out there so i but iran has tried something like this before well iran has tried something like this before but

what's really important to do a comparison is venezuela which has done something very similar now similar to venezuela where there cryptocurrency of petro was launched in two thousand and eighteen when the both the boat the reason the both countries decided to launch the digital currency is exactly the same an effort to. break free from u.s. sanctions pushing both or oil rich countries into crumblin inflation but bar there is also a few subtle differences between the cryptic currencies while petro is backed by oil the payment is bad pitch was backed by all the payment is actually backed by gold and whereas petro was primarily for the public sector that payment is going to be served for the public and the private sector so there you have lots of similarities and also on like petro which was meant to replace defeat and go in the hands of the citizens immediately he wants payment is going to be released in phases with the primary function being a cost border payment system now here is an overview of the payment pay one was

originally unveiled as a collaborative effort between knows which is the iranian startup focus on tokenization of assets and for banks which is the parsi on bank bank god paying many iran and and bank met a lot and now one billion digital tokens will be issued initially and then the iranian bank is going to distribute their payment to all iranian citizens in the next phase and now the primary focus of launching the payment is to handle the cross border payments by bypassing the international payment system swift which connects more than eleven thousand banks financial institutions and corporations in more than two hundred countries and territories around the world now board think the swift as the central nervous system of the international financial transactions when the country's banks are cut off from swift it cannot pay for imports and exports and also can receive payments for imports and exports two things one is

just a common and i love your charge there because if i were looking and i've looked at a lot of these white papers for crypto assets etc and if i were looking at it it was in iran i think will they have their stuff together so it looks pretty organize . i mean who knows what'll happen but this swift component is really key and the u.s. always acts like they're the eight hundred pound gorilla what happened when they were cut off from swift and twenty twelve well in two thousand and twelve agreed not to forward messages to any iranian bank or individual that's been blacklisted by the e.u. as a result iran's oil exports plunged from around two point five million barrels per day to around one about one billion barrels a day in two thousand and fourteen now in two thousand and twelve ban was widely seen as the instrument in bringing iran to the negotiating table which led to the twenty fifteen iranian nuclear deal but then again swift has again removed iranian banks after their reimposition of the u.s.

sanctions in twenty eighteen which is now in iran is in talks with other countries like switzerland south africa france united kingdom russia austria germany and bosnia to in adapting the payment for a cross-country border payments but u.s. lawmakers immediately barred introduced a bill blocking iran illicit finance act in the us congress last month and the act in the h.r. seven three two one actually says to impose sanctions with respect to iranian friend natural institutions and the development and use of iranian digital currencies and for other purposes however this hasn't stopped iran from developing or issuing a digital currency. so i had to have enjoyed that super interesting thank you so much great reporting appreciate it. and turning to the increasing economic effects of climate change the national oceanic and atmospheric administration or

noah here in the united states today released their findings that extreme weather events cost the u.s. economy ninety one billion dollars in damages and twenty eight thousand alone perhaps most alarming is no as listing a fourteen separate two thousand and eighteen u.s. disasters with more than a billion dollars in record and the economic losses from one nine hundred eighty to two thousand and thirteen the u.s. averaged just over six annual billion dollar disasters since then the average has doubled to twelve per year and another sign of the power of extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent and powerful due to human caused climate change no one says just three events the wildfire season hurricane michael and hurricane florence accounted for seventy three billion dollars of the ninety one billion dollars total losses last year meanwhile president donald trump a climate a climate change denier gave his state of the union speech last night to congress and did not mention a single word about what many say is the most pressing environmental challenge in

human history. and as we take a pause for the promotional cause there is breaking news today that u.s. secretary of treasury stephen new should has said he will travel to beijing next week for continued trade negotiations the secretary appeared moderately optimistic about progress so far and noted the deal being discussed is comprehensive in nature and nature we wish the secretary much luck and stick with us because when we return we do a disney deep dive and take a look at a few other companies with adam match of the adam mesh trading group plus the saudi shakedown appears to be taking place conservative t.v. and radio commentator steve walford help us understand what's going on or perhaps it's what's going wrong as we go to break here the numbers at the closing bell already arrows on the big board to. we'll be right back.

with more. on. the south. korea. movie. that is good in. that. country has gone into a nihilistic fever that's why i think we got to hit the road and get out the traveling across america to find what makes america the charlatans the genius of this place especially american hero this is and we've come a point around which alan would have done something we always are on the margins

something. called the culture is really boring. jobs. we're starting last with is begin to headed east into the swamp we're going into the belly of the beast and i think i want to leave now doesn't get any more ground on the left it may be completely different but in the mystery. it's a. very different. voice with arguing this mubarak to have another political system that's. for a social justice. and a spec for human dignity and so on but if you look quite good through what is going on. and in the future but i know most of the people have the feeling that. it was even better to. go but according to you they don't feel indian judicial over the situation.

join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics or business i'm show business i'll see that. welcome back on yesterday's broadcast we got the breaking business numbers on the walt disney companies and we promised to do a deeper dive we do that now and more without a measure of adam ashtray hey adam thank you so much for being with us again it's so great to see you always are so insightful on these things and we're going to talk later if we have time about one of your favorites pay-pal but first i want to get your take on disney disney got a bump to about one hundred thirteen bucks per share on the report which we told

the blue busters about last night beating expectations but they've since lost a couple of bucks since then what do you make of the report in the company overall adam. great to be here the most pressing news on disney was they're going full speed ahead with this new cluster streaming service so they're going to be pulling their content away from competitors like netflix which will cost them hundreds of millions of dollars and then creating new original content such as and the vendors series and the new star wars spin off series but these things cost a lot of money so they're giving up profits to spend their money it's a big risk and we'll see if it pays off interest they will keep watch and there's such a big eight hundred pound gorilla themselves speaking of those sorts of things let's move to the gaming sector it's not one we look at all the time but it's still important to watch electronic arts people know them as a california based video game company which remains the second largest such company

in the world took a dip after they announced a less than stellar earnings report and take two interactive which owns grand theft auto and took a hit i think there was a chart there is we may be able to bring up an hour a little bit later what do you make of these gaming titans does it look like they're going to need a power up to get out of this situation i have one word for this gaming and it's fortnight where free video games they could be the new trend and it puts all these franchise games that they depend so much on in jeopardy it's a big change in the landscape that's been happening for a while but we've seen a company like game stop when they went from brick and mortar games to streaming was never able to rebound it's been falling ever since so these game makers could be in trouble for a while until they find an answer for a rock stars like fortnight which is the free game model and so this is these are

not places where you think investors should be putting any dough. i wouldn't yeah ok now let's get on to one of your favorites there's a fight there between pay pal and amazon pay and pay pal seems to be doing all right as we've talked about but they got downgraded by guggenheim even though i was looking because you're on the show i was looking at their charts adam and it's like i think everything but maybe the last week they're up you look at you look at the five day you look at the month you look at your today you look at six month look at year you look five you look at the max pay pal up up up up up so they have those little snag what do you make of it and do you think they're going to be pulling forward like they've continued to do. yeah as you see it pay pal has been a rock star for quite some time i haven't stopped talking about it but amazon pay is a viable competitor and right now they only have four percent of top with tellers outside

of amazon and pay pal is eighty two percent so it's not an imminent threat but nobody has ever made a living betting against amazon and i wouldn't start now that's the one name you don't want to hear coming into your space and when you hear it it's a scared so i think pay pal's fine if i own that i won't sell but i also want to buy more verses you gotta watch out for amazon because they're amazon. thank you so much add a measure of added measure trading group really great to see you think is always for your always if i have to say that. and the beat goes on in the music business and back in time as some artist from the ages before the internet or even m.t.v. ask your parents about m.t.v. if you don't know it was way cool for a minute but the older artists from back in the day are going to court to demand a new deal on royalties five artists have filed a class action lawsuit against sony music entertainment and universal seeking to

terminate the music labels copyright on works released more than thirty five years ago the artists cited section two zero three of the us copyright act which their lawyers say gives them a second chance to profit from their work and recover some very bad and perhaps exploitive terms from their initial dealings which the music labels had a court finding in support of the reading of section two and three would set a new precedent and open the door for many other artists to recover rights and recoup profits will keep an open ear on this story. and we recently told you about a new saudi initiative announced by crown prince mohammed bin solomon m.b.'s and infrastructure plan dependent upon four hundred twenty seven billion dollars of investment from foreign surface sources we discussed some of the initial issues that may cause companies to think twice about making an investment you know killing

people and that now comes word that the government has collected assets worth more than one hundred million dollars from get this the richest and most powerful people in the kingdom who prince m.b.'s has rounded up and locked away back in twenty seventeen as part of his crackdown on purported corruption here with more on who was held and how long and what impact all of this might have on m.b.'s as modernization attempt is our friend steve malzberg hey steve thank you so much for being with us so remind us take us back in the time machine for what happened to these folks back in twenty seventeen and how do we find out about these assets being seized or shook and down from the folks. well here's what happened good to good to be i loved your introduction yeah there's problems there back in twenty seventeen prince have been solomon wanted to many feel consolidate his power make sure that rivals weren't a threat to him and cetera they formed an anti government corruption committee and

once they did that they proceeded early november i think it was november fourth of seventeen they rounded up people they started the eight princes they had government ministers businesspeople rounded up eventual a five hundred people they were kept at the ritz carlton in riyadh they evacuated the hotel turned it into a holding facility or prison if you will and from eighty seven of these prisoners and people that were rounded up the same commission the anti-government corruption commission just announced the end of last month that they're closing down shop they've accomplished their goal they've got one hundred seven million dollars from eighty seven of the people and they're all happy but you know this is the kind of shakedown this is a kind of human rights violations many say that jamal khashoggi actually wrote about he wrote about the rounding up of people in one of the columns that he wrote before he himself was killed for allegedly you know for writing about these kinds of things so this isn't going to sit well and this is just another dark chapter in

what appears to be m.b.'s is a consolidation of power and meanwhile we keep reporting that some banks and other investors continue to put money into the saudi kingdom i guess you know profits above you know morale and morals and everything else how much money has been whatever seized it's not get out of jail free how much of money has been taken by the monarchy right well one hundred seven million know in cash in property in business parts of business is but let's let's look at who are the richest people in in the country the richest person in the country is prince. we'd been. and he coughed up willingly or unwillingly four billion dollars he was the biggest victim of this and now all he has left is about fifteen billion and he stayed in prison there at the hotel for eighty three days and he signed one of these you know

agreements which is kind of like an admission of guilt or a plea bargain it's unclear but he signed that agreement the second richest person in the country is that what i want to get the name straight is muhammad ali how do you we know he's a big businessman he owns the biggest fuel company in switzerland he coughed up one point four billion dollars of his fortune he now cannot leave the country and he's awaiting trial on corruption of bribery charges so it's not just that get paid and you're totally out of jail free and off the hook and his case for instance he still could wind up back in a real prison and that would be a good thing not the ritz it's certainly i just can't imagine this news is good for the infrastructure plan or for anything else for m.b.a.'s or the government and conservative commentator and our friend steve malzberg thank you see appreciate it thank you bar. and we mentioned last night's state of the union address here in

passing a president trump spoke to congress for over an hour according to washington post fact checkers he misspoke more than thirty times and what we don't care to slice and dice the words of the president's we do take note when there are important numbers involved and there were last night for example he said quote we have created five point three million jobs and importantly added six hundred thousand new manufacturing jobs the truth according to the bureau of labor statistics it's four point nine million jobs not five point three and of the four point nine million jobs four hundred thirty six thousand are in manufacturing not six hundred thousand and he also said this. and we are considered far away the hottest economy anywhere in the world not even close to it well the u.s. economy grew at three point four percent in the third quarter the highest quarter we've ever had has been four percent during the administration the top of

ministration but boom busters know that china is growing at a reported six point nine percent maybe it's not exactly six point nine but it's not for it's way above six and india has posted a six point six percent rate and there's many other countries that have that sort of higher rate so is the u.s. the economy the hottest out there suffice it to say not true mr president the numbers do matter. and that's it for this time thanks for being with us you can catch bombast at you tube dot com bust r.t. see you next time for long for now. what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy confrontation let it be an arms race is on offer and spearing dramatic development the only really i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very

political guy time to sit down and talk. later. and there's another machine and not. can and you can vote all of them ok if the. last non-imaginary a little late in the battle they are only going to get a large. margin to be. given to people. who give the nod neither you. assume alice

our. jane me the whole corn dog for. well known asia or so and i think just. as. stand in here from us and. move on with a small. amount of goods that are and are more trouble than they are rather than the profit on the floor for the care of their. own lawyers and nothing but i'm going to catch him then you can keep an eye on what i have to lose each other for truffle not that it. won't work

then i'm all in my machine little subtle. mind the. members of the hay for not doing. good for told bush for sure i'm yours or you have them and they are charming serious said larry he she ought to exhibit. some model for them after the whole front around mr gates approach him and then where the whole thing is are for him and for. the money. triggered by a meeting between the italian deputy pm and yellow press protesters france recall this and went to italy for tolls on need to change waiting relations between paris and rome.