well it's money money clearly makes the world go round and round and round and round and right off its axis this week just in time for the annual meeting of our financial masters of the universe at the world economic forum in davos switzerland oxfam international released its latest report on the truly staggering wealth inequality that's gripping our world today crunching the numbers the report found that in 2019 the world's billionaires only 2153 people had more wealth than 4600000000 people this great by it is based on a flawed and sexist economic system essentially my friends that means that the very means that our lives depend on our currently concentrated in the hands of just over 2000 people 2000 people who clearly took gordon gekko's greed is good line from the film wall street way too seriously and apparently must have missed the entire

ending of the movie remember the part where he goes to jail for being too good at greed and contrary to what all those mainstream political and financial pundits want you to believe this inequality is dragging us to the brink the managing director of the international monetary fund to crystalise george. yes that i.m.f. actually declared last week that things are beginning to look a lot like they did back before black tuesday and the great depression back in the 1920 s. she stated the beginning of this decade has been eerily reminiscent of the 1920 s. hi ne quality rapid spread of technology any huge risks and rewards and finance for the analogy to stop right there and go no further acting together in a coordinated manner is absolutely critical. but who wants to team up when there is so much more money to plunder they cried. and in response we cry it's time to start watching the honks. was

a nice city the streets. clear so you could see the rises you always state and see rolls royce graves see displaced systemic deception is complete so which i would be so bold as. welcome we're going to watching the hawks i am tyrone ventura and joining me today the skies these new numbers on wealth inequality and just how close we may be to a 21st century great depression is author and economist richard wolfe the one and only thank you so much for coming on today mr wolf. glad to be here thank you well look the numbers this latest oxfam report that they released are staggering i mean just over 2000 individuals on the planet have more wealth between them than 4600000000 people what are the dangers from that kind of wealth disparity as we move into the 2020 was. a part of me wants to answer by giving you all the

statistics and studies that show how terrible inequality is for economic growth for economic development for the kinds of societies most people want to live in so i'm going to put that aside i assume people know what let me focus on the big one this is not a sustainable arrangement if you look at the 2000 plus billionaires those who control all that wealth 60 percent more wealth than the 60 percent of the rest of us in this world you will see that that wealth that they control allows them to do anything plan a trip to mars by a community by a whole country but the other 60 percent those are the people at the bottom of our society. the majority they are the people who died to early much earlier than the rich there are people who can afford the medical care even though we know how to

cure the diseases they have those of the people who can't get a basic education let alone a college education who therefore can't contribute what they have the capacity to contribute to society if only they were healthy if only they had an education this is not sustainable that mass of people thanks to a t.v. and internet culture so they can see how the others live they will not accept it and even if they do their children for sure won't and we're going to see levels of conflict bitterness and envy that we still have the time may be to prevent but if we don't do something as that i am if official said we are in for the trouble that we can't even imagine and i thank you for speaking right to the heart of this which is you know the plight of the people who don't have that much money who don't have that that's just and all of these discussions because it's

easy to kind of look at the big numbers and who well look at how much jeff bezos has but then you miss what he's actually taking from society not giving back i want to ask is there one specific component of the world's current economic system that has caused this to happen or is this a 'd culmination of the whole you know greed is good mentality that so many grew up with in the eighty's. well you know it is our system i really don't like to point to the particular individual i think this system made this to be zones for example but for more than he made it we have a system in which if you have a lot of money you can do the things that will get you even more money and that's what people do we understand that that's how a system works that is set up like this so the solution has to be system change you know people got angry after 2008 and 9 at the bankers who did terrible things so they wanted to get them you know arrested and put in jail and i remember trying to explain to them the system of rewards and punishments mean that the next group of

bankers the ones that we placing those we put in jail they're going to be subject to the same pressures and they're going to be ending up doing murder left the same thing you've got to change the system in order to get the people who want to be good people to not do the things that the system makes reasonable but that end up with this kind of inequality that is dangerous for us all how much of a role or i guess lack of role the government government oversight has played into this in the you know in the financial sector how much have they played into this disparity because it seems to me the like we mentioned you know 20082009 everyone said hey we've got to put down there we've got to step up and we've got to rein this in but it doesn't really feel like anyone actually has have they say that yes no you're right the government is complicit but again that's a systemic problem you know i mean look at it this way if you're the very wealthy in this society and you've worked real hard to become real wealthy and you've been

real lucky because there's always a lot of luck in it too and you want that wealth to be grow and you want to hand it off to your children and all the rest you're not going to sit quietly if a government says well we're going to supervise you we're going to control you we're going to limit you know knows says the rich capitalist. i'm going to use my money to get rid of you in your political office and replace you with the next one we're going to donate to her or not they him to him not to the other guy and show you see the politicians learning that if they block the system they're going to be out so they become. whether they're honest about it or not they can become complicit so that the people begin to realize what are we going to do this system is making a few people rich and they can buy a government that doesn't interfere with the process and we're left holding a bag with very little in it you know as i mentioned and we mentioned before even

you know the known you know even the i.m.f. are now warning that we're potentially walking into a 21st century great depression which isn't that says a lot usually don't hear that coming out of the i.m.f. given their history of you know primary gangsterism have been called out for what do you believe are the warning signs that so many are either are either not seeing or choosing to ignore in the financial sector that's going to push us potentially into reliving the 1930 s. again. well i think you see a number of things you're right about the i.m.f. but we could pick somebody in the hedge fund business here in the united states ray dally oh people like that even warren buffett are beginning to recognize that we are living this inequality this capitalism unchanged goal over the edge we're killing the old the famous story of the goose that lays the golden eggs we're not limiting this so that there is enough of a community sharing that we're not going to blow each other up and i think you see

the signs everywhere the growth in the united states of the young people who are polian in answering questions they don't like capitalism they've turned against the system they're becoming interested in socialism as you can see with bernie sanders or alexander cortez those kinds of people with what they say are attracting more and more i'm a professor i talk to students who say to me the course of a conversation capitalism isn't working for me it works for the rich people but i've got too many debts i can't get married i can't afford a home i can't. here this system tells me it's the greatest system but i can't do what my parents were able to do these are warning signs loads of them even at the top people are recognizing it only the politicians who don't want to face the growing bitterness are acting like it's not there for the rest of us that's

a luxury we cannot afford so i guess ask you the multi-trillion dollar question with a little bit of time left what what are we got to do what sucks this right what what brings us back from the brink is there any one thing that like the average viewer can at home or whatever do right now to help their situation to where we're not falling off the cliff. well i mean i don't think there's a magic bullet i wish i could answer the question might say doing this but here is one thing i would suggest we have not been willing as a society to raise the question about how we organize businesses we allow a tiny group of people the owner of a business the one who starts it or in most corporations the board of directors 10 or 15 people at the top to make all the decisions what gets produced how gets produced or where it's done and what's done with the profits that we all who work there help to create when we do that we give a small number of people that kind of position in every workplace we can really be

surprised if they gather the profits if they gather the bulk of the wealth and the rest of us are wondering how do we pick the pay for our kids' education that we can't have a top down undemocratic workplace and expect to have a sort of community that's held together we really need to rethink the way we organize our businesses i know that's a big order i know that's tough to do but we're facing the consequences of not doing it and that's even tougher and more dangerous you speak a lot of truth sir and i want to thank you always for coming on and so it's indeed not to have you on mr richard wolffe always a pleasure sir thank you good to be here. all right as we go to break court watchers don't forget to let us know what you think of the topics you cover the social media be sure to check out watching the heart of the podcast available at apple music spotify and everywhere you listen to your favorite and as you know not so favorite podcast coming up former congressman alan grayson joins us to discuss

the state of the impeachment of u.s. president donald trump and the television paediatric surrounding it stay tuned. it seems like 2016 all over again bernie sanders is popular in doing well in the polls and the democratic establishment along with the donors are nervous they're centrist politics is fraying now throw in identity politics the problem for bernie this time around apparently is that he's not inclusive enough is a democratic primary being rigged again. but we've also discovered that there are genes in our bodies that protect us from a gene we call these longevity genes and there's

a set of genes that we work on in my lab at harvard called the search and for those to work effectively to slow aging and prevent us from getting diseases they need a molecule called. understand that a cost of doing business is buying and building support in washington d.c. and that includes staffing up with former members of congress put them on your payroll you want to hire a chief of staff from a powerful senator or a committee. member get their chief of staff put them on your payroll as a lobbyist this is what washington does on a bipartisan basis in fact i think it's the only point of true bipartisanship in d.c. is corporate influence over government. by

now unless you've been living under a rock which i can understand why you'd want to be living under a rock these days by now you've probably heard of the impeachment trial of united states president donald trump and that is underway in the u.s. senate and things have been going well as expected in today's circus of cable news coverage and political grandstanding in fact that grandstanding in the halls of congress got so bad this week that supreme court chief justice john g. roberts jr who is presiding over the hearings finally had enough the washington post reports that roberts delivered a sharp rebuke to both house managers and lawyers for president trump for their decorum as the impeachment trial debate past 1 am on wednesday roberts stated i

think it is appropriate at this point for me to admonish both the house managers and the president's counsel on equal terms to remember that they are addressing the world's greatest deliberative body. that appears to have gotten so bad in the 1st few days of the impeachment that even former nightly news anchor tom brokaw called it a game show here he is on n.b.c.'s today show discussing the differences between the coverage of nixon's impeachment and mr trump's. everybody to the very serious it was not something it played out like a television game show which we have a lot of that was a president and he comments about everything everybody has access to an opinion of one kind or another. joining me now to discuss the circus atmosphere and the latest ins and outs of the impeachment trial of president donald trump is the former congressman out of florida and author of the new book high crimes the impeachment of donald trump the one and only alan grayson always a pleasure alan thank you sir you've been calling for the impeachment of president trump you wrote

a very fascinating book on it are things playing out as you thought they would in the senate i think it's too narrow i think that there are so many impeachable offenses and i'm not saying that this is a bad one i think it's a good one frankly if you listen to the evidence you realize that we're now beyond beyond a reasonable doubt this events is overwhelming everybody agrees what happens is that some people are unwilling to confront the truth the president and states using taxpayer money to try to get a foreign leader to launch an investigation of his political opponent that's it that's an impeachable offense by any historical standard the book reviews every single federal impeachment every impeaches stake of there is no doubt that that is an impeachable offense it's just that some people for political reasons don't want to see the president impeached or moved from office and they're digging in yeah you know i mean why why would there ever be accountability in washington for one's actions i mean come on alan. if tom brokaw called the coverage gameshow like as

we just heard is today's television news equipped to handle the since you know this a beret in the importance of this impeachment process or is this degrading too quickly into a game show between the democrats and republicans in the you know the cable news shows that are quick to you know wanting to get ratings. well it's in the nature of news reporting that everything is perceived as on the one hand and on the other hand as reporters such i think it was president truman who said i'd love to have a one handed economists that i have to listen to one then and the other hand all the time give me a one handed economist and that's i think what people really want they just want to get to the truth but the president who's emitted 16000 lives in his 3 years in office according to the times list that that president has basically decapitated the troops in washington d.c. it doesn't exist anymore it's been it's been formally put to death and now it's

just a question of can you come up with a plausible lie it's a very sad situation it truly is it truly is one of the one of the interesting twists has been the 2 team was put together by president trump and speaker nancy pelosi to argue this trial in the senate in keeping with the sports the who do you believe put together the better legal team was it that simple as your president trump. well i think nancy pelosi felt heavily constrained because the constitution seems to suggest that her house and beach managers the actual members of congress the president went outside and take people who have defended murderers and the like people like alan dershowitz toadies like the president's white house counsel somebody who definitely ought to be having his law license pulled whether or not that actually happens but he nowhere near a lawyer he simply spouts out rhetoric and on behalf of the president that has no

bearing on reality. these are the people whom the president chose and frankly someone like ken starr is dirtied up by being part of this team the my goodness former federal judge someone who by the way i worked with in one. before $95.00 to see how low he's gone just in order to remain in the spotlight that's disappointing to me it is pretty disappointing and. one of i want to ask you too because this is one of the most important things is what effect so far as this had on government and politics i think in the eyes of the u.s. citizens because my biggest fear is that many right now are watching this and seeing it kind of degrade into nothing more than a partisan mudslinging contest in the election year or at least you know you hear a lot of people complaining about that because i don't think the coverage has been good in the sense of really illustrating why this is important why this needs to

happen is the point of the impeachment getting lost in the american people. well there is a point but it's not the point that people think i have to muller came out it was an impeachment of a fence a day. the book that i wrote lays this out all hell broke loose in terms of impeachable offenses have them all report when it came out of the president thought that he was invulnerable unimpeachable so to speak and what's happened now is that he's realized that it is possible to hold him to account and i don't think he's very happy about the fact that he joins andrew johnson and bill clinton on the list of presidents who've been impeached so i think that this actually has something of restraining effect and thank goodness for that. because when you look at what happened after all report came out it's just shocking and in all sorts of areas personal misconduct. being on the take abuse of power just one thing

after another for weeks after that report came out and now he's not exactly on best behavior but he's on less worst behavior than a before. very true i want to so i guess now the other question we have to ask is you know now 3 days in maybe it's too early to call but you know is it going to go that route is mcconnell never pretty much just going to squash this or do you actually see him being successfully you know impeached and held to account that doesn't mean the democrats should give up that means that they should try harder. the books that i wrote lays out 7 different. articles of impeachment for the president states many of which have multiple parts to them the fact is if you look at this is story plea it's not just the trump is committed an impeachable offense he's literally committed every impeachable offense every single thing that anybody united states ever been impeached for donald trump happens to be guilty of it and

it's a matter of public record everything from personal misconduct with women. to tax evasion all of those minute picchu offenses and it's all a matter of public record that don't trump guilty of them and therefore he has to be able to count and in particular album to account for his abuse of power and i got to say thank you always for coming on always a pleasure and keep up the great work out there and look forward to having you on again thank you very much. i've said it before and i'll say it again next to the air that we breathe. the fresh water we drink my friends is one of the most vital of our resources on this small blue planet yet a new report has now revealed that the number of u.s. citizens exposed to toxic yes toxic chemicals in their drinking water has been quote dramatically underestimated. prepare to get angry. or to emerge of course but in the toughness we this story from los angeles. scientists

reveal it's nearly impossible to avoid drinking contaminated water from toxic fluorinated chemicals a new report reveals tap water in the u.s. is contaminated at a much higher rate than previously thought i mean report claims were sourced from the environmental protection agency and the environmental working group has been dramatically underestimated gavan andrews a senior scientist at the environmental working group himself says despite all this information nationwide standards still have not been made according to the report. substances known as effects some 110000000 americans some of these chemicals are known to cause cancer liver damage low birthweight among other problems in the study water samples were taken from 44 places in 31 states meridian mississippi was the only place with no traceable amounts of the chemicals the highest levels of p.f.a. s. were in miami philadelphia new orleans or the new jersey and new york city suburbs those chemicals were also used in products like scotchgard teflon and firefighting

foam and speaking of contaminated water it was announced today the nation's highest court is clearing the way allowing flint michigan residents to pursue a civil rights lawsuit against the city and government officials the basis of the lawsuit alleges these officials knowingly allowed the city's water to be contaminated with lead as you may recall flint switched its public water source from lake iran to the flint river during a financial crisis it was thought as a means of cutting costs but the river water led to extract from the pipes of the city switch back the next year the bacteria in the water led to a legendary outbreak killing 12 people now as far as flint goes health officials say no amount of lead is considered to be safe as for the p.f.a. s found in tap water throughout the country since it isn't regulated the e.p.a. has it over. the contamination in los angeles and not just sleep our team just when you think that our crazy engineers and mad scientists of reach their limit on

making creepy but fascinating robots look at you darpa in steps the latest cyber marvel of our time pigeon bot yes what you're seeing right there my friends is a pigeon bot it comes to you courtesy of the awesome engineers at stanford university you see in seeking a way to create robot drones who can better mimic the nimble quick turn and cut ability of birds researchers utilize new insights into just how the joints of the pigeon wings control the spread of their wing feathers yes they did that they recreated these joints in pigeon bot you see in using more bird like witness future flying machines could potentially make tighter more controlled turns at higher speeds in crowded airspace is like you're seeing the robot do right there on screen right now that's some serious turning a regular drone cannot make as tight a cuts that's why they did this whole experiment just to get to what you're seeing

there yes yes my friends. it actually took men into the early 21st century to finally figure out what nature already did thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years ago feathers and wings we just now figured out that that helps things fly out. where to go. well we've done that is our show for you today remember everyone in this world we are told you're not alone. but the quiet tell you what i love. i robot for people watching all of this great.

this is a story about what happens auster a stray bullet kills a young girl in the streets. what happens to her family and daughters in florida you know the mother daughter is buried in a cemetery in healing this is with your head what happens to the community the public was screaming for a scapegoat the police needed a scapegoat so why not choose a 19 year old black kid with a criminal record who better to pin this on than him and what happens in court b b b b. shot after shot this far off society we feel. we don't know chills just for the. end of this trial unfortunately you truly will still not know all children.

you know one of the best charts greatest charts i've really been studying for years now i don't know exactly how we're going to get into this but i just want to mention right here at the top it's the money velocity chart. the money velocity chart and we're going to be getting into that. one of the for something beyond what because a lot of us around. just mean what i mean i was me and i don't know but that's mostly. what i was was a. dumb move to move. a little. ole

in the spirit in that even enjoyed it and see the need for watch musical. comedy it's been in the. winter is it and there have none removed can you. if you mean.

board winning journalist to glenn greenwald is charged with cyber crimes in brazil over his reporting on a high profile corruption scandal has drawn condemnation worldwide. going to call for an investigation into claims that the saudi crown prince was involved in the phone of the billionaire jeff bezos. the washington post journalist who worked before he was killed. and the psychologist who designed the cia torture techniques in the wake of $911.00 justifies his actions during a testimony in guantanamo bay. i believe there was a genuine.