so join us in the depths. for a made in the shallows. nature of human beings to change nature so i think. this i think is one of those lost there is that there is going to make people uneasy really why should we force a good time just because nature is something that. most of the why don't we just choose that. this is boom bust no one business show you can't afford to miss french born washington here's what we have coming up 6 points unprecedented bull run rages on but just how long can the hot streak last straight ahead we're going to bring you

expert insight into this latest search plus apple has come out on top in a state legislator regarding its app store payments coming up we're going to analyze the bill and what ripple effect this could have and later we take you inside the developments in trade between china and the european union with a packed show today so let's dive right in. and we leave the program with another record for the world's most popular crypto currency because it continues to break new highs eclipsing the $52000.00 mark on wednesday but at its incredible growth rate should there be concern about the crypto currency and whether it is in fact having a quote mainstream moment their analysis analyst who point out that while there is more mainstream acceptance of bitcoin the currency is still far from becoming a widely used form of payment according to harley bassman managing partner at simplify asset management big quote unquote bric quite. presently is not an

efficient manner for high volume transacting and it is certainly not a store of value as its price volatility 80 percent is a dozen times higher than the euro and 7 fold that of the russian ruble joining us now to discuss is will bus co-host and cryptocurrency analyst ben swan ben we've had you on this be pretty much all week so i want to start with the issue of what is happening with other coins besides big corn are they seeing the same kind of growth right now. well know there are a lot of coins that are doing very well right now or watching kind of a surge in the whole crypto space certainly that i think should not be surprising to anyone because when big coin does well you see a surge in other coins and a lot of that comes out of the retail market the difference between what's happening with bitcoin and what's happening with all coins is that the resale market and the crypto market is moving into those all coins but the bitcoin server as it's been called is really being driven by institutional investors who are

jumping in treating it like it's a store of value and some institutional investors who are coming in hoping to essentially flip money here right there hoping that bitcoin will be worth more tomorrow than it's worth today and that's why they're getting involved and watching that that number push up higher i suspect by the way that we're going to see some correction here pretty soon at the rate that that because it is growing and that will also scare retail investors who kind of freak out because they don't know it's falling again is going to follow the all the way back to 3000 should have gotten 850000 we're going to see that happen as well i think but it's not going to fall very far i don't think because it's being you know held up by the fact that you have major institutional investors coming in right now are and what about this issue of big being referred to as an inefficient manner for high volume transactions now i know you've mentioned the answer to this on the air here on boom bust but tell us why that may be true yeah i think it absolutely is true i think that because i listen obviously as you know brant i have long been advocating the cryptocurrency is long before it was popular to do so but yeah i'll be the 1st to

tell you that because it is not a good crypto currency when it comes to retail transaction if you say we want to see mainstream adoption where you walk into a restaurant and you are able to pay with bitcoin because it is not the coin for that now there are a lot of coins out there that can do that because the technology in terms of instant pay or instantaneous payment being made you know a coins i dash or smart cash they can do that coins like picnics they can. do that because it is not one of those in fact because it takes a couple of days for a transaction to go through as opposed to an instantaneous transaction so there are other coins out there that can do that much better and if we're actually talking about a digital economy where a digital currency is being used in that kind of a sense it's not going to be big is because it's actually antiquated in that respect. hester piercer commissioner at the u.s. securities and exchange commission mentioned the urgent need for clear kept cryptocurrency regulations amid the adoption of digital assets by leading companies

like tesla and mastercard that clarity actually coming. i think it is coming and the question is going to be what does it consist of i mean isn't there absolutely needs to be clarity from the f.c.c. on crypto but i would say more than the f.c.c. there needs to be clarity from the i.r.s. on crypto that's a very big deal as well right now you have a lot of investors who are coming in and the question the surrounds big surrounds every crypto currency every digital currency is a question of is it currency the i.r.s. says it's not currency right now iris believes that if you get paid for instance that say that you know your boss over there at r t america says brett we're going to start paying you in because which by the way would be great if you want to do that but if he were to say to you or us are paying you a bit coin right the i.r.s. would say you're not actually being paid in the currency you're being paid in property that's what he's giving you so we're going to tax you at the end of the

year as if you have a capital gain because it's property it's not currency so the problem right now i think bigger than the f.c.c. issue is the i.r.s. issue how does the i.r.s. treat currency they have not updated their their belief about how they treat it since 2014 and a lot has changed since then so i think that's the bigger issue boom bust co-hosting cryptocurrency analyst ben swan thank you so much for lending your expertise. you got it. and the nasty winter weather hitting the southern portion of the united states could make a global shortage of semiconductors even worst several semi manufacturer plant manufacturing plants near austin texas were forced to shut down after a local energy company asked all large scale manufacturers to reduce capacity or shut down completely amid the storm now the region is home to manufacturing facilities owned by several chip suppliers including samsung flacks applied materials and in finney and samsung actually confirmed that it had shut down its

multibillion dollar plant in austin on tuesday issuing a statement saying due to the recent blackouts in texas samsung austin semiconductor gradually halted its operations around 1 pm on feb 16th as ordered by austin energy with prior notice appropriate measures have been taken for the facilities and wafers in production while production will resume as soon as power supplies are restored we are currently discussing the timing with authorities the semiconductor sector has struggled to meet demand in recent months even slowing automotive production and causing delays in production of other electronics including smartphones. and a bill that would have taken a bite out of apple's profits and losing to the tech companies grip on software developers did not pass the state legislator in north dakota but the battle continues to change the way big tech does business here with more legal analysts molly beer burrowed but arrows molly barrows contributor with american lawyer.

molly this bill is getting a lot of attention from both supporters and opponents why was there such a focus. oh my gosh and by the way brett i answer to most anything you can just call me at all if you're short as well but you know this is such a big bill 6 this is a big deal about this from both you know detractors and this is supported basically because it was going to drastically change the way tech companies like apple even google manage their app stores and that is a big component of their business model makes them so much money and they really don't want to change it so i'm sure they're happy this bill failed in the state senate but it would have barred any company in the software distribution business like apple like google like their app stores that make over $10000000.00 in annual revenue from acquiring their developers to only use their app store like maybe app store for apple or google play store and it also would have stop these companies from dictating that they have to use that app stores preferred payment system because they can take these big tech companies can take up to 30 percent of these

developers sales they're in their purchases so they're basically saying hey we want more control over we want to open this up to other app stores other ways to make money we don't want you taken such a big cut in some cases they call it a tax and apple naturally you know saying that's not a tax but in that sense of this had passed it would have completely changed the way that they do business and a lot of people are still pushing for that and i was apple responded to complaints that have too much control over developers and the money that they're actually able to bake. well you know i thought that was interesting bret in a lot of the arguments in this particular case in north dakota basically they had an engineer for apple testify saying that it was not so much about money they were not going down that route as a way of saying hey wouldn't you know we're not trying to control them this is just a way of controlling the products that come out of our platform we have you know if you pass a law like this it's going to undermine our privacy or safety or security and allow these bad apps out of the app store that are now being blocked from getting out to the public because they would then be required to let them in if there was this

loosening of the power structure so in other words they're just doing it for us brant it's just just for us to make sure we get good apps in a. we know apple and google are always on our side that's for sure we are watching the commercials just like you do north dakota is actually just one of the several states pushing legislation like this who's actually behind this legislation i don't side of hers in north dakota we're really worried about the app store on apple. no you're exactly right and at this lobbying group connected with the coalition for at fairness there link to this bill as well as bills that are similar and arizona and george are all meant to limit the power of the app store owners because again going back to this is a $64000000000.00 a year business for apple alone when it comes to their app store so they're not looking to make it a fundamental changes in their business model but there are a lot of people that do that want to make that extra money that you know take some of that 30 percent back that these app stores are taking and that could group consists of fortnight creator at big games tender parent company match group

spotify dozens of others they're part of this lobbying group and they're basically pushing for these changes calling for them because they've been fighting big big tech companies for years on you know basically this 30 percent of app sales and that purchases among other things and you know at epic of course also suing apple and google for removing fortnight from their app stores because they decided to try to do their own in app payment system bucking the big tech system and they weren't having it so they took them right on off and now epic is suing and now from what we understand they're going to be moving to the as well epic is going to be taking on apple but unfortunately we're out of time so we'll be able to cover that today but we'll get to it soon molly barrows contributor with america's lawyer thank you so much. thanks fred. and we are continuing to see new cases of covert 19 trending down let's go ahead take a look at the trends in the spread of the virus with our g.

correspondent science editor sorry where are we when this you know brant finally some good news because in a matter of 5 weeks the number of new covered 900 cases reported around the world have almost halved and with the number of new deaths they're also down 10 percent and all of this just has just suggests that a social distancing measures are working at least for now and i want to viewers take a look at this so these are where we're seeing the most cases around the world and if you take a look everywhere is falling in europe in the us in south america asia and even in the u.k. where that very aggressive new variant is cases are falling but health officials there are also warning to countries around the world that does not the time to let their guards down specially giving the the u.k. variant is expected to become the dominant strain in the u.s. by was early as next month now is staying on the u.s.

here are the cases that we were seeing we went from a peak of almost 260000 cases to below 82000 right now in our hospitalizations there also have declined for $33.00 straight days which is by far the longest stretch of sustained the cline during the pandemic now if you look at where the current hotspots are right now you'll notice that we're seeing a lot less red and instead there are just the hot spots are sky instead now just scattered you know some scattered hot spots are now you'll see in oregon utah colorado a more here in the. tex's tennessee and especially south carolina but still us see that instead of the whole map being read they're scattered and of course we want to take a look at vaccines rollout we're seeing about $1700000.00 vaccines doses being administered in the u.s. an average day which equals to about 12 percent of the country receiving at least

one dose of the vaccine and about 4 percent which have been fully vaccinated now experts say that the goal should be about $3000000.00 shots per day and add that pace about half of adults would receive their 1st shot by april in all adults who want to get a shot we could receive one by june and you know over the next 2 months of modern pfizer their promise to deliver at least $3000000.00 shots per day and to a similar way to pace to about $3300000.00 per day starting in april now johnson and johnson is likely to add to the total as expected it's going to receive the good thing go ahead scuse me to start distributing vaccines in the coming weeks now member of the johnson and johnson vaccine is a ready being used in south africa making them the 1st country to administer the vaccine created by the former giant and what's so significant about this johnson

and johnson vaccine brand is that it has shown to be highly effective at preventing severe illnesses from the very dangerous variant of the virus that's emerged in south africa and has since appeared in at least $32.00 countries meanwhile divine administration they've also just and now a pledge of nearly 200000000 just as a down payment for tracking the various very end viruses now the f.d.a. is also preparing for a potential redesign of a vaccine to better protect against the universe variants brant r.t. correspondent cites ravager so you so much for keeping us up to date. time now for a quick break but. when we return china and the e.u. have taken trade to a new level f.b.i. agent superpower has topped the united states blocks primary partner and. the number that.

we are now at a point where we can manufacture the basic foundation. of the 21st century economy we are literally taking ourselves out of the game by throwing the keys to the economy to private equity groups wall street. financier and money and now it's to. the british and american governments being accused of destroying lives in their own interests or you see in this these techniques is the state devising methods to. destroy. the individual. this is how one doctor

allegedly used in psychological warfare against prisoners deemed a danger to the state. was the foundation for the method of psychological interrogation psychological torture. within the u.s. . for the next 30 years the victims say they still live with the consequences today. welcome back china became the european union's biggest trading partner in 2020 overtaking the united states according to data released this week from euro stat trade between the e.u. and the world's 2nd largest economy was valued at 709000000000 dollars last year up from 671000000000 the year prior the fast pace of the economic recovery in china

after taking a big hit in the 1st half of the year increase the demand for european goods trade volume between the u.s. and the e.u. well it was down $671000000000.00 from $746000000000.00 in 2019 so for more on all of this let's go ahead and bring in professor richard wolfe host of economic update and author of the sickness is the system when capitalism fails to save us from pandemics or itself hillary for which president of strome our global business development consultant thank you both for joining us today hilary i want to start with you what's the takeaway from the news regarding china becoming the biggest trading partner with the e.u. is this kind of a flash in the pan or should we expect this trend to continue or pleasure to be back with you again brant a couple of things then times of takeaways and i don't think this is going to stop anytime soon there are a number of reasons for it of course the being 5.6 percent increase in imports into china of european actually mostly luxury goods a lot of european cars but b.m.w.

is dom less but european luxury goods in the design of brands that they so crave a lot of the french designer brands but this is being due to basically the chinese have recovered in a sort of a v. shaped and they haven't had a 2nd look like a lot of european countries have and they've actually increased their exports to europe by 2.2 percent on a couple of things in terms of the takeaways don't forget of course that china was able to recover quickly because as we talked about before you know they sent all the planes out of but they locked down inside of china so the recovery was very rapid because a lot of the virus was sent out to the rest of places in the world but importantly in terms of what this actually means. ains it's really interesting to see whether the e.u. will stick by their value based trade negotiations because when they were talking about bracks it with the u.k. of course though those issues kept coming up all the issues about fair human dignity fair human family law etc they wanted

a level playing field that seems to have gone out of the window with china but what will happen when the recent investment pact that was negotiated between the e.u. and china what happens when that goes in front of the $27.00 countries of the e.u. and their parliament ariens because many of those nations really do care about human rights and all that's happening in china now like as the united nations has actually reported on you know over a 1000000 of those that are in the weekends that are imprisoned and the b.b.c. has recently been banned from reporting on the rape of hugo women so the takeaway mainly as is the e.u. going to stick by their values and china recovered in a v. shape of qana me professor wolf in your opinion what's the takeaway from this are are you seeing hillary saying here or something else. no i see a long term trend i suspect we agree about that even if the details are very i think americans particularly have got to understand that the chinese economy is of

our how they handle british coal the way better than the united states they have avoided the economic catastrophe that we had here accompanying that they are moving quickly they already were a growing power they've grown sashed it in the united states for the last 25 years the europeans are dealing with a rising power over there and a declining power here and however on comfortable and upset that makes people it's partly because we haven't been willing to face it before this new agreement is another step. just like this week announced by tesla and general motors that they're building a $5000.00 electric vehicle in china for export to the world or hollywood's announcement that they now depend on the chinese market when deciding how to

financially would sounds i mean how many signs do you need to see before you understand you're observing a major story underway. and i want to go back to this because you both have actually mentioned this about the european union in china reaching this agreement in principle on the comprehensive agreement on investment at the end of the year now according to officials the deal would provide better than ever access to chinese markets for business and the deal would also provide a better level playing field as you also alluded to for companies when it comes to competition with state owned companies and subsidies within the nation the deal still faces approval and some have been highly critical of it so you don't see hillary you don't see this actually coming to fruition or strengthening ties between the e.u. and china is that what i gather from the 1st question there well yes i mean it should it has has strengthened the ties the question is obviously are going to stick by the principles of you know value based trading or are they going to be

hypocrites who knows who knows which they're going to choose the problem is most countries go down to their pocketbook at the end of markel obviously it's way by those german manufacturers we talked a lot about that with regard to bracks that she's had pressure from b.m.w. dhamma and volkswagen in terms of the trade deal because of course the as i just mentioned china imports 5.655.6 percent of their imports increased and a lot of that with these german cars so i think that there should there is a growing closeness between the e.u. and china what is really sad is that this was pushed through the investment agreement was pushed through before the bought by. the ministration was actually inaugurated in january why because they wanted to make sure that they had this done and yet unfortunately the u.s. and the e.u. could actually pressure china if those human rights do the use the u.n. the u.s. could be a force to have the chinese come to some kind of. a level playing field in terms of

human rights a professor wolf is right china is this burgeoning global power house that it seems that the european leaders are tone deaf about and in the u.s. people are being really reluctant to recognize what the choice china is becoming it i figure it's going to take some time to see what that by that administration is going to do on china we haven't really seen him make any steps obviously they said they're going to review the trade deal here with the united states but we haven't really seen them go too deep into that professor up before we go i do want to get to one last point we've watched in this kind of more broad on the trade portion we've watched used trade deficit with china grow to 201000000000000 dollars last year with the way the economy works and the reliance on china for manufacturing and we've seen this in the same thing in the united states is there actually any way for western nations to pare down that gap with such a reliance on china for manufactured. no i don't think so i think that time has

passed it might have been possible some years ago but at this point you have to understand that the biggest and most powerful large corporations in america and in many european countries have made hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in china they don't want to lose those investments they are counting on the growth of the chinese markets to make those investments profitable in a crucial way for their futures what you have an effect is a lobby for better relations with china coming out of the biggest businesses in the west and don't think the political leadership will be able to withstand that professor richard walsh host of economic update and hilary forde which would group with stronger goble business development consultants thank you so much for your time. thank you. and as the private space industry heats up space x. has raised nearly a $1000000000.00 in the rain a recent round of funding this extra $850000000.00 much of the company's value to

an estimated 70 $4000000000.00 shares were reportedly offered to private investors at $419.99 that's just below the $420.00 mark must be made infamous when he tweeted in 2018 they would take tesla private at that price currently space x. is burning through cash with its star link and starship programs and that's it for this time of on boom bust you can catch us on the ban on the brand new portable t.v. app on smartphones and tablets through the google play or apple app store by searching portable t.v. can also be found on newer models same sex parties and roku devices check it out portable about t.v. . those 0.

what. sort of the beach. when you go to the movie. is. that still. to that. we're more politicized than ever or more polarized than ever the 21st century when speed is measured in megabytes per 2nd. visit. him at a tronic mail electronic money electronic media infinite possibilities for exchanging information i mean. freedom of speech and social media bents

censorship and double standards who should judge what can be said online. the internet audience know totals almost 4500000000 almost all of them are active social network users put one wrong move on their pages deleted digital annihilation don't exist anymore. not who runs the show on the web how can anyone stand up to the tech giants if even heads of state face the threat of being banned is there any limits to hold that virtual. pose for a movie but i will reason will weigh. in the 1920 s. and thirty's several 100. african-americans moved to the soviet union and many of

their descendants still live in russia. looking at the risk because no no rush but i thought it was tough yes it got me sick on things and your woes at richard. back home black american suffered from racism and a complete lack of prospects. in the real deal losing show one by else a store on. so they decided to leave everything behind and start a new life in a country about which they knew almost nothing at all some of the characters who were to through during the night. around the crowd. to the moon if you were going to call you. know almost a 100 years later history is repeating itself my great grandfather george time went to russia. probably the worst time to go anywhere why not me.

when i come here. and i had lines today all nazi international stuff poles that grow up but know that sounds last bags and spain is walked by and rest over the jailing of cattle out a route that problem has out after he was handed a 9 month sentence the slander and glorifying terrorism. leaders held back seem deals with my done that i'm fine is that the block attempts to get its vaccine campaign off the ground and. open the can of food all that is the that's the choice facing many of its leaves most vulnerable as the pandemic takes the.