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tv   Boom Bust  RT  July 30, 2020 12:30am-1:01am EDT

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india says no we claim that belongs to us both of these countries have nuclear weapons capabilities there is reason for concern so that's why we're going to drill down on this story for you today right here on the news with where you know as we always like to say we do believe by golly it's time to do news again. this is true but the one business show you can't afford to mess up their minds are still going to washington coming up tech giant amazon apple facebook and google all
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testified before congress your long probe into that trust and. when you look at some of the damages in the pandemic let's go let's spend one we have a lot to get through so let's get started. on one day 4 of the most powerful men in the united states tech industry they're being questioned on whether their platforms have violated antitrust laws in recent years as they've risen to dominate the internet now artie's rachel blevins joins us with the latest rachel what have we heard so far was there as we saw c.e.o.'s from the 4 largest tech companies in the country testified before the house judiciary antitrust subcommittee as part of an investigation looking at whether they have achieved such a major monopoly that they are no legally stifling their much smaller competitors because of the chrono virus pandemic these testimonies are being carried out virtually and the line up includes the c.e.o.'s of all the. but in google facebook
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apple and amazon now each of these companies have been accused of manipulating their platforms and search results to promote their own products and interests google users know that any time they search for a product the 1st several results are typically advertisements but today the topic of conversation included how google has benefited from those results. what is the value of the part that you do use the google ads for i mean it's a substantial part of your business what's the what's the actual going 2cb3cb. of revenue it's i don't 100100 plus $1000000000.00 but that's a lot of money mr. now facebook was quick to defend its size and its acquisition of instagram and what's up by claiming china is also looking to dominate the social media world with the popular out tick tock but it was facebook's ownership of instagram which it previously acknowledged was a competitor there raised questions about whether it violated federal law. mergers
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and acquisitions that. would ensure compared to threats violate the in. your own words you could just use a gram to neutralize competitive threat if this was an illegal merger at the time of the transaction why shouldn't the now be group you know it was. congressman i think the f.t.c. all of these documents and review this and you know honestly voted at the time not to challenge the acquisition. or rituals is really interesting given the timing of all of this that we're in the middle of a pandemic why did they choose it to have these these hearings now well that's one of the things that was mentioned by the leaders of this committee they noted that during the lockdown that we've seen as a result of this pandemic it has really hit small businesses the hardest you know your mom and pop shops are the ones that are now going out of business and a lot of people are now going online they're going to facebook google amazon all of those sorts of websites which means that the tech companies that are being
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discussed here today are actually getting even more powerful so a lot of them are saying well now is the time to hold them accountable now is the time to push for more oversight especially now as we see a lockdown that we don't see ending anytime a lot of social media presence even more now during the pandemic are to correspondent rachel blevins thank you for that report. from our let's turn to the us co-host and investigative journalist ben swan let's dive deeper into this ben should let's start with the general question right the broader look into this should there even be a line drawn when it comes to internet businesses and how they can they be or how big they can be. really there should be it's not a question of whether or not a company can be big it's whether a company can violate antitrust laws by absorbing and as rachel explained their kind of swallowing up competitors in order to create anti-competitive practices in a free market system if you don't have competition you don't have a free market you have one company that dominates everyone and everything and
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that's what antitrust is there to stop so it's not a question of how big facebook gets it's a question of how big of facebook or google or an amazon gets by essentially devouring anybody who is a competitor and by the way it's almost ironic that facebook complains about the chinese and to talk when facebook actually looked at purchasing to talk at one point and wanted to do so well and they're looking to create something similar a platform of their own on facebook now if that were to be banned here in the united states it's really interesting and mind boggling what we're seeing but there are clearly a number of issues when it comes to these monopolistic structures like being able to freely express various political viewpoints are even something as simple as just knowing you're getting the best deal as a consumer at amazon assures us we're getting the best deal no matter what but are we seeing any of these issues right now when it comes to this online activity. or we're seeing issues across the board right when it comes to tech companies we have
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nothing but issues right now on one side you have you know the issue of tech companies censoring speech you and i talk about this quite a bit but it's really a very serious issue and we're seeing it at an absolutely staggering level right now where media companies are essentially deciding what speech is allowed to be heard and what is not facebook and instagram that you know collaborative is essentially some of the worst offenders in terms of removing content that they don't like you tube is doing the same thing on the other side of it you have amazon that's not doing that but they have their own practices for instance amazon as we have talked about in the past has been accused of going and using the data that it collects on merchants on its site to create its own products and essentially underbid merchants on its own site using their data and their information so there's a lot of what you would say say are anti competitive practices that are taking place as these companies get bigger and something else that's very important you know rachel was talking about the timing of this it's important to recognize that
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over the past 4 months as we've been under this coronavirus lockdown tech companies have gotten much bigger much richer and much more influential and powerful in american and global society and that is something you have to take a very close look at as more and more of the population shifts to their thinking their communication their shopping everything moves online and then you mentioned data obviously these companies collect so much data from there are consumers we know that but isn't that an issue and itself when is that a cyber security issue that can be present and then we're going to we see. so it's not just a cyber security issue i believe that this is really at its core a human rights issue the question becomes data collection who does that data actually belong to when this is something that congress actually is shying away from they don't want to address this question because the reality is that amazon facebook google instagram twitter take talk all these companies have one thing in
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common right no matter what business they're in the actual business they're in is the business of harvesting people's data the question becomes who is data who does it belong to whose property is it is my date up my property or is it facebook's property is it instagram's property is it google's property and that is going to become i predict one of the most fundamental questions of our time and it's a question that these tech companies are not answering because if you if congress would look at this and say hey in fact your data actually belongs to you the user and therefore if a company like a facebook or you tube or an amazon uses that data they must compensate you for your data you were completely it would be a complete game changer you flip this whole tech argument on it said but everyone wants to run away from that because they don't want to acknowledge a very simple idea that your data actually belongs to you one much like you're
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saying at this is not human being brought up today which is really interesting but i do want to get to this question of one last question facebook c.e.o. mark zuckerberg he's arguing that if the u.s. health innovation defending facebook obviously the chinese companies will surpass them is there really any validity to this argument or is this kind of a plan to to capitalize on that rising anti chinese sentiment within u.s. government for that push for even more regulatory rollbacks it absolutely is it's absolutely untrue that if facebook is forced to stop sincere in people in the united states that china will take over the world those 2 things have nothing to do with each other the idea that to talk. is big and if tick talk keeps growing facebook has to continue to innovate facebook's not in of innovating at this point in fact facebook's not doing any innovation what they're doing is they're going out and buying up smaller competitors in order to prevent competition and as i mentioned at $1.00 to buy to talk themselves and now facebook is leading the charge
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in trying to plant the seeds that tick talk should be banned in the united states and they're a big part of that argument as well so what they're doing is now trying to use regulatory power to keep out competition the other thing that's not really being discussed today and it's very important is that section 230 protection that's been given to tech companies it's important that congress remembers you cannot get rid of section 230 it creates innovation on the internet you can't allow the abuse of it which is what companies are doing they're abusing it you don't get rid of the law that protects people doing it the right way you would force the law to stop those who are using it the wrong way and it will be interesting to see where we go from here because of law and whether or not the u.s. competition laws will will be changed after this ban stick around here because i have one more story to cover with you today so. as protests continue on a nightly basis across portland more federal officers have been called up to intervene and this is having a huge effect on business owners well after protests for us kicked off they may
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many business owners struggled with their businesses suffering from broken windows and even being looted while some business owners there are struggling to deal with protesters calling up of even more federal agents has them even more concerned that violence will only increase well joining us now to discuss is the us co-host and. again and so on welcome back then we know that oregon governor announced that a phased withdrawal of federal agents is going to start this thursday and that will that even help to diffuse this some of the tensions or the situation there. well i would think that it would help to diffuse some of that look the important thing to remember is that when the feds are sending in essentially back up to help put down these protests in theory they're not supposed to be really dealing with protesters who are essentially destroying business is a portland they're really there to protect federal buildings and federal monuments federal installations from being damaged or destroyed by protesters in theory
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that's the idea in reality having federal agents there does seem to agitate people even more it brings about more of a sense of agitation now it's important to know that the governor of oregon has said they will begin a kind of withdrawal of those federal forces from portland beginning on thursday but the compromise that was reached is that local and state police would be used to protect those federal monuments and federal buildings important so it's not that the feds are abandoning it's that the state of oregon has agreed to protect the question is will that appease protesters because you and i both know sarah there are lots of different kinds of people there are people who are legitimately protesting police brutality there are certainly agitators in that crowd there and tea for groups in those crowds there are people who want to sow chaos and there are others who are looking for reform they're not pushing for the same agenda and in portland i think you see a bigger clash of that the just about anyplace else in the congo
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a lot of people taking advantage of the situation and you see the people who are looting banga as we watch these protests continue and there seem to be these new groups joining in now and it just indicates that these really may not be slowing down at all and who else is getting involved yes so apparently you know you not only do you have as i mentioned you know you have the b.l.m. protesters who are out there and certainly you have anti protesters who are out there but there have been new groups that have been joining up over the past couple of weeks and they're actually signifying themselves by wearing matching colored t. shirts so in one case teachers are. i mean out and they're marching wearing red t. shirts we've seen groups of nurses march we've seen mothers and fathers as different groups marching they all were different colors in some cases it's yellow it's up it's orange so what they're doing is they're trying to signify as kind of potential. demographic blocks professional blocks of people who aren't showing solidarity with these marches so we do see certainly growth there what's really
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a surprising about this era is we're talking about somewhat you know 5060 days of that of daily and nightly protests in portland and this keeps going on and it doesn't seem to be slowing down and the other thing is the city of portland in the state of oregon does not seem to have any plan on how to put this down or and when i say put down i don't mean with the with a heavy hand but how do you eventually deal with people to a point where you say you don't need to keep burning the city you don't need to keep destroying businesses we have to come to some kind of agreement here and that's the tough part because it has been going on for so long but i want to get to the macro economic level here ben protesters and they're even angrier now because of these broader structural it issues with the economy and that will provide little to no opportunities especially now and the middle of a pandemic how are these protests going to change that. well that's a really good question how much of these protests can change that there is a legitimate issue here in terms of macro economics and the fact that you have
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a lot of these protesters who are not people who necessarily have a bright economic future in front of them you have a nation that's heavily indebted you have a lot of college students who have gone to college and they have massive amounts of debt can't find work you have a system that's not working for everybody and so i think what we're seeing is kind of a bleed over yes we have the issue of police brutality that's a major kind of cornerstone of these marches but it is larger than that and the people who are there seem to be frustrated with more than that so the question becomes where. do we begin to start to deal with issues to resolve those frustrations i'm not sure but just about anybody to give an answer to that right now because unfortunately the answers go back to systemic problems in the education system in the professional systems in the wall street in banking systems these are deep issues that i don't think leaders necessarily want to tackle right now they'd rather talk about things that are more on the surface because when you get short
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attack those issues they've got to deal with themselves and they don't want to do that it's really truly a you make a great point they're talking about these complex issues going into the roots and the issues of the problem that the economic impacts at these these families and these people are suffering from that star at education they start at such a young age and having these resources for them which which it's going to be a hard one hopefully at some point will will be able to tackle in some way shape or form the west coast on investigative journalist ben swan thank you for being with us today you know that there are things. time now for a quick break but stay here because the return china and the european union are looking to strengthen economic and trade ties but how will the u.s. react that's next as we go to break here the numbers are bad but. i. i.
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i. was a pandemic knows that you know borders are just lying to nationalities. and some are. saying. judge learned as comedy crisis. we can do better we should do. everyone is contributing. but we also know that this crisis will not go on forever the challenges created the response. so many good people are helping us. it makes us feel very proud that we are in it together.
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every crisis in america has been packaged as a bond and sold into the junk bond market with a longer maturity at a slightly lower coupon rate and they've been doing this now for 40 years to the point where america's indebtedness says. they engineered to the point of an extinction event as have many countries as the global. on wednesday the federal reserve held its 3rd scheduled meeting since the start of the chronic arse pandemic well fed chairman powell noted economic activity in jobs they picked up in recent months they still remain low willpower expects a long road ahead for economic recovery even with the improve economic news in may and june overall activity remains well below its level before the pandemic and the
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contract contraction in real g.d.p. in the 2nd quarter will likely be the largest on record a full recovery is unlikely until people are confident that it's safe to reengage in a broad range of activities. well the agency made no changes to the interest rates and voted to keep rates close to 0 that's until employment recovers and inflation picks up the fed reiterated it commitment to use all emergency tools to support the economy but many are wondering what tools the fed will use if the economy were to shut down again well the next biggest move would be for the fed to pay the 10 year treasury rate essentially using its asset purchases to target interest rate levels at a certain part of the yield curve. this week the european union and china held high level trade and economic dialogue well according to the e.u. the 8th round of talks included a joint response to the coronavirus pandemic and global governance issues bilateral trade and investment concerns and cooperation in the area of financial services and
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even taxation while the e.u.'s executive vice president called these dumb brodsky's said the current crisis gives us no other option but to work hand in hand with our global partners including china by pulling together we can recover more quickly economically and make progress on areas of mutual interest such as trade and investment relations well the meeting allowed the 2 sides to discuss the importance of bilateral and trade relations based on key risk reciprocity and a level playing field well for more on this we're joined by so much christiane and host of the economic data and author of understanding social richard wolffe professor let's start with you today looks like china and the e.u. they're seeking to strengthen these economic and trade ties and this is comes at a time with the deepening feud with the united states but how is this relationship now between china and the e.u. and what do each side really hope to gain from these talks. well i think you're seeing the beginning of
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a reaction that was already underway and will continue. in a way but also it was to charge feel it was. just wrong giving general. all freshly so at a time of global credit that make they have both decided that they need to work more closely together and that will further isolate the united states and that will further slow recovery everywhere and so it is a decision they're made in the face of the united states that is willing to subordinate all of its international interactions to good political expediency whoever is in the white house and i think you're going to see more and more of bad as. well it's interesting for us or because yes we're we know that a lot of european countries do have a strong trading relationship with china and they're not going to cut ties with the 2nd largest economy but kristie the 2 sides are just really trying to accelerate
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these negotiations they want to conclude a china e.u. investment deal by the end of this year we saw the u.s. china trade deal take nearly 2 years is this likely for them to to be able to make this a come to an agreement by the end of this year. as it stands right now it doesn't look that optimistic because this week is the 31st round of talks for this investment deal known as the e.u. china comprehensive agreement on investment and so this comes after many many weeks where nothing really substantial was achieved and this comes as as you mentioned bilateral tensions between china and the e.u. are also escalating over the coronavirus pandemic as well as the national security law over in hong kong so this is likely to be the last round of talks before the e.u. breaks for the summer holiday so progress right out is imperative and this agreement is supposed to cover a wide range of issues weren't even part of china u.s. deals such as eliminating market barriers equi caps and eliminating joint venture
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requirements for companies wishing to go into china basically in order to ensure that come companies can can compete on the same grounds and equal footing with chinese companies so right now china has responded that they have reduced its investment barriers. but they have yet to make enough substantial progress in reforming state firms but right now they are warning the e.u. that it should keep it the expectation of all expectations reasonable and at this time this investment deal should not overhaul china's entire state owned enterprise system nor should they risk changing the entire political system right there looking at more of an open playing level feel like they said in some reza prosody the professor wolf the u.s. appears to be watching this obviously from the sidelines very closely how will the u.s. react if the e.u. manages to actually extract some of these major concessions from china especially in these upcoming investment talks. or i think the temptation is going to be to cut a deal with the europeans that gives the europeans
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a bit of an advantage over the united states and none too subtle way to make sure that there are many many large american companies within norm is investments in china will exert much more pressure than they already have on the drunkard ministration to change its ways you know the chinese are now you know all the american companies that have gone there over the 30 where the last 30 years conventional evilly on the whole premise that they could produce in china and ship it back into the rest of the world including the u.s. they're not happy with what mr trump is being duly and they are becoming his political enemies and that may yet change american policy specially if the chinese can work a deal with the europeans both of them at the expense of the united states really will be interesting to see how this plays out but kristie over in the u.s. the fiction moratorium it expired last friday i want to turn things over to this
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now more than 12000000 renters are actually at imminent risk of getting booted out essential what's the situation like here yes so the moratorium has expired nearly 4 months after this complete. nationwide shutdown and these $12000000.00 americans are all behind on their rent payments and also this friday some $25000000.00 americans they will no longer receive the $600.00 veteran unemployment checks and given the current discussions this week benefits could actually get slashed from $600.00 down to $200.00 per week or even nothing at all if no deal is reached in congress so this would be absolutely devastating for the entire american middle class as we would see more households unable to pay rent and the months ahead so back in 2016 there were about $2300000.00 evictions and analysts estimate that we could see that many just in august so states where renters are pressured the most right now are states such as florida texas tennessee and many more in urban areas such as new york and manhattan there are to see an exodus from the cities where
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people have been forced to downsize already so the coming weeks are going to be crucial on whether or not there is another extension of the red moratorium which a lot of landlords they are protesting they definitely are there a lot of people hoping for this extension because jobs millions of them are still not coming back especially any time soon because of the spike you must co-host christine professor richard wolffe thank you so much for your time today. for this time but you can catch boom bust on demand on the branded portable t.v. we'll see you next time. i.
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drifted for drugs at more than 1300 military personnel are headed to air force base in alaska where is that you should come on i'll show you what's the real . for any type of enhanced u.s. military presence in this area rush up. what is it suddenly about the south china sea that makes it so that it 11000000000 barrels of oil. take a look at this map who really owns what kind of says no it belongs to us india says no we claim that that belongs to us both of these countries have nuclear weapons capabilities there is reason for concern so that's why we're going to drill down on this story for you today right here on the news with rick sanchez where you know as we always like to say we do believe by golly it's time to do news again.
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a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe. isolation community. are you going the right way or are you being. what is true what is faith. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the depths. or inmate in the shallows. a dark industry comes to life in los angeles every night. dozens of women sells their bodies on the streets many of them under age. police reveal
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a taste of their daily challenge if you're going to exploit a child here in los angeles we're going to. see officers going undercover as 6 workers and custom. to fight the 6 trade. and illegal takeover of the government by a small group. rather than revolutionaries also just conduct small group the corporations when you have a tiny group of people who have all the power you have to have some means to make sure the rest of us don't get together and take it back. these are sacrificing. places that capitalism exploited and destroyed for profit and left behind misery poverty environmental devastation and so you see things
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like voter suppression building more prisons you seem gerrymandering all sorts of undemocratic practices. in the world are well into. question the. max kaiser this is the kaiser report well gold new all time high against the u.s. dollar the last currency that it failed to make a new all time high against falling dollar has fallen quick quick oh hell the dollar has fallen well there is no help. well you know what when life imitates art has made it to the front cover.

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