housing bubble. oh you mean there's a downside to artificially low mortgage rates don't get carried away that's guys report. this is boom bust the one business show you can't afford to miss friendship or in washington coming up to read it if you will game stop stock saga is taking center stage in washington as the key players testify in front of congress want to bring you up to speed on what happened on capitol hill plus a facebook is restricting the sharing of news stories on the social media site in australia we'll tell you why and later saudi arabia is planning to ramp up oil output but how will the move affect prices in these turbulent 'd times well welcome

an expert in the field for a forecast with a packed show today so let's dive right in. and the game stock saga is now moved to the halls of congress thursday the house financial services committee held a hearing to discuss what happened as a group of writers from the wall street bet sub reddit began buying game stops in january sending that stock up over 2000 percent many key players from hedge funds online brokerage firms and read it took part in the hearings here's what happened thursday. first robin hood securities put the restrictions in place in an effort to meet increased regulatory deposit requirements not to help head phones we don't answer to hedge funds we serve the millions of small investors who use our platform every day to. second robinhood immediately secured additional funds despite the unprecedented market conditions in january at the end of the day what happened is unacceptable to us to our customers i'm sorry and i apologize please know that we

are doing everything we can to make sure this won't happen again 2 important factors based entirely on publicly available information gave me confidence that game stop was undervalued 1st the market was underestimating the prospects of game stops legacy business in overestimating the likelihood of bankruptcy i grew up playing video games and shopping the game stop and i plan to continue shopping there game stop stores still provide real value to consumers and reliable revenue for game stop 2nd i believe that game stop has the potential to reinvent itself as the ultimate destination for gamers within the rapidly growing $200000000000.00 gaming industry. so let's break all this down by bringing in blue bus co-host investigative journalist ben swan and michael c.e.o. of pencil portfolio strategies i got to tell you guys it does feel like a congressional hearing can not make anything less fun than the situation those

poor guys having to give testimony today i want to start with you michael what did you take away from these hearings today in this whole situation. oh i think they completely missed the mark you know they're worried about manipulation or more street well who manipulates looks or eat more than the thing and the treasury i mean if you take his rates to 0 percent and leave them there for the better part of the day if the treasury sends fallon's of dollars 7 or checks to people who sit home and wait allo if they pay people more through enhanced women then they would if they were working and then they take all this money and people are sitting home and they're bored and they're watching the snow and they're on lockdown because of code and then they gamble in wall street like a bunch of drunken monkeys all of course that's what happens who was it it's government government to look to regulate itself in my home when i definitely feels like the whole situation here was. and as

a broader topic on the game stop situation is that they're saying hey you're not qualified to do this because you learned about it on reddit in reality only people who are qualified to do this are wall street like you mentioned michael maybe the government those are the only people who are allowed to mess with the economy and gamble with it in some capacity now bad rep correct ones are going or no go ahead like if you want to if you got more. well i mean it just amazes me you know i've been in this business for 30 years and you know if the big boys on wall street collude or you know use a you know supposedly collude deep seated water is like to call them and the market makers they can sure the stock muar and the issued an outstanding shares so you know yes most of borrow a stock before you short you can make sure if you're a market maker sorely legal you're shorting more shares in there are outstanding and you watched little guy ok that's where you know ok we're the little guys get together all the earned income inclusion and

a lot modeling i'm not saying they did but they get together and they burn the deep state of wall street then it's a congressional investigation at sea air. and back to that point you know as we said the whole thing has been painted as retail traders they ganged up on a reddit forum to buy shorted stock such as a game stop in a movie theater chain and see mostly through no commission trading at robin hood and robin hood had been painted as a bit of a villain here but we heard what led to end of the c.e.o. of the company had to say so is that really the case that they were the villain in the situation. i don't think they're the only villain but i don't think what lad said today absolves them of anything look i think what michael said is absolutely true the whole damn system is corrupt from the top down and it's been corrupt for decades the system has been built in a corrupt way it's been structured in order to be corrupt to make you know these wall street hedge funds extremely wealthy what the wall street bets guys did was they unmasked

a lot of that by moving forward does that mean everyone who was part of this wall street bets group was a good person no and this is part of the problem that media plays into is that we try to create a 0 sum game where it's like either you're all good or you're all bad everyone on one side is good and everyone on the other side is bad and it depends on how you view the situation and in the case of robin hood you know when when the c.e.o. sitting there saying we're sorry this happened we're taking steps to make sure it never happens again now you're way too late robin hood as a company should absolutely die it should become a cautionary tale in the future for when you are set up to say we're going to help the little guy and then you screw the little guy you don't deserve to be in business anymore i think that's ultimately what will happen to robin hood but is it should be a cautionary tale for all of these kinds of systems that are being set up to decent realize and take power away from from those who are in authority if you still act as their goon or their hinge when you're going to be out of luck and we heard him say it many many times today they've worked to democracy ties investing and then

you say that's not the case michael i want to kind of transitional little bit to one of the big players here roaring kitty or a guy named keith gill is now the target of a lawsuit that claims he manipulated the market to increase game stop stock price the lawsuit claims that he created a fake persona i couldn't have told that by his name being roaring kitty on line of an investment newbie while actually having several financial certifications and working for an insurance company now it seems like this wall street best story is more complicated than just a little guy. against the big guy but i mean look you know we talk about we're a financial news show we don't necessarily have people who give advice and say this is what you should buy but the fact is people sometimes say this is doing well this isn't doing great and it seems like that's what we're in kitty was doing is he was saying this is why i feel like this is strong what do you make of this whole thing michael i'm just wondering why he didn't wear his rowing t. shirt. he did mamet today because i wanted to. get you know you know i don't i

don't know what this guy did or does and i don't care you know i think it's kind of inane to go and brag on social media every time you make money it's not martin case . but anyway i think there's a but i think your listeners would really like to appreciate you know you have game stop which is basically the blockbuster video for gamers ok the stock was on its way to 0 and then there are the red breweries in the robin hood boys came and they blew shorts out of the window and went out and. it's just a few had you know a few stops you know you had the airlines locking games up a couple of shares of stock this is not to be on this is not endemic in wall street was in danger of breaking down the whole system according to some c.e.o.'s of exchanges we almost brought down the whole entire financial institution because of game stop what is going to happen wendy multiple trillions of

dollars in junk bonds have been pushed to the lowest yields to treasuries ever the lowest nominal yields ever blows up the entire junk bond market and indeed the entire fixed income market is about to blow and if that blows which is exponentially bigger then james boyle what you're going to have a lot of programs like about that forget about stacks and game stop and lou you know are chain parts of the market you have an entire fixed income spectrum that is about to blow due to insolvency and the. watch out watch out i might i can't help but appreciate the fact that you're giving us such a broader context to this story and that's much appreciated ben before we go one final word for these hearings change anything and what would change well i don't think they'll change anything but to michael's very important point there is something else that is happening here which is that when there is so much concern over the fact that one read it thread one group on online can get together and they

can is as simply make money on $1.00 stock and as he said game stop of all the stocks in the world of all the places where we could see this happen but it's also because there was a revelation that took place that this is how the system works and this is how the average person can make money doing this and that is a threat to the overall system the bottom line is the overall system is barely hanging by a thread we've talked about this a lot on the show the fact that it's propped up in so many ways if you put just one leg out from underneath that the whole thing can absolutely come crashing no boom bust co-host ben swan of michael pinto c.e.o. of pencil portfolio strategies always appreciate the expertise. thank you thank you . facebook is blocking news sharing on its platform in australia the social media giant made the move into television to a proposed law which would force facebook to pay for the journalism shared on its site news services are still allowed to post news content on facebook but it can

not be viewed or shared by australian audiences it also blocked global users from sharing articles from australian publishers now this may be the most dramatic example of the ongoing tension between tech giants and news outlets who claim facebook and google profit from news content without paying anything back in her church facebook told the associated press that the proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers google has also threatened to remove its search engine from the country earlier this week australian treasury treasure josh frydenberg said talks between facebook google and australian media companies have been very promising. as we continue to see new cases of covert 1000 declining globally some health

experts are saying the decline well it's due to the pace of vaccinations how do we know it's really working so that we go to our correspondent side temperature you know brand that's a great question how do we know if that actually is working right now all right now more than 40000000 people in the u.s. have received their 1st dose of the corona virus vaccine and while there are some early signs of a possible vaccine in fact in falling deaths among people over the age of 80 data on cases and hospitalization on the other hand is not so clear and that's because it's very hard to separate the effect of the vaccine from that of a lockdown let's take a look and see what the data shows so if you take a look here at this chart now cope with deaths are falling faster for vaccinated groups versus on vaccinated groups so on average deaths of over 80 and i chose the age 80 because you want to assume that those are the ones of the 1st in addition to health care workers that have gotten vaccines so the deaths of over the age of 80

fell 53 percent between january 28th and february 11th now compared with 44 percent for those under the age of 80 so while this would indicate that it would imply that there is some effect it's really too early to put a number on that because the thing is we're not seeing a strong vaccine effect in other statistics to contribute just vaccine distribution for that cline because if you take a look here now total admissions for over the age of $85.00 dropped by 45 percent between january 30th. and for every 13 compared with 42 percent for under the age of 85 meanwhile cases for that same timeframe over the people of over 80 and under 80 fell almost the same amount but case numbers might not be

a reliable indicator of whether the vaccine is actually working because you know the vaccine prevents mostly serious infections but the large number of routine covert tests and as settings such as nursing homes will also pick up mild and asymptomatic infections but when the u.s. does eventually see a vaccine having an effect it's going to be very obvious as it is in israel because right now israel is the 1st country to see the impact of the vaccination rollout you know if you take a look. it took a significant population coverage also several weeks for that to happen and israel had to vaccinate 80 percent of its over 60 population before actually seeing an impact of a cold in $1000.00 cases and it was only event that when clear signs of the vaccine help to reduce the number of cases now the biggest fall in hospital in admissions and deaths had been over people over the age of 60 who had been vaccinated 1st and

at that time admissions had still been rising among under 60 so the difference between the 2 groups have been very clear not rely on the u.s. the lockdown has been reducing the number of missions in all age groups and not just the ones vaccinated so it's hard to be sure if any of this is due to vaccinations or if it's due to lock downs front and sarwar on the topic of vaccines how with the rollout going at this point you know actually not good at all you know in fact less than one percent just one percent of coverage 1000 vaccines have. and ministered in the 32 countries currently facing the more severe of the pandemic and i had a un minute meeting on thursday the prime minister of trinidad and tobago made that same point that poorer countries are making big sacrifices to protect themselves

from the virus while most vaccines are going to more privileged countries. we are more than a little bit concerned that. is to be hoarding. as well as preference in some quarters. this being so we at karakorum have recently called upon individual to immediately convene an international convention of. that is to commiserate explain assist and commit to our fair share of the available vaccine resources for the benefit of all humankind and not just the privileged whether he did a few. number in the un has also criticized the unfair distribution of cover and i came back sans because guess what today 75 percent are covered 1000 vaccines have been administered in just 10 countries and nearly 130 countries haven't received

even a single dose so definitely not the direction and globally we want to have to grant r.t. correspondent cites abijah thank you so much for keeping us up today. and time now for a quick break but ahead here because when we return saudi arabia is prepping to ramp up its oil output but how will that move affect prices in these turbulent times straight ahead we welcome an expert in the field for a forecast as we go to break here the numbers of course. measures human beings to change nature so i think. there us i think is what is lost there is that there is going to make people uneasy but really why should we why should we be forced to buy time just because nature. of the brain why don't we get

to choose the. next guy's or financial survival guide like what i said does that you can convert as quite easily. to keep in mind l. as. it took me into a place. or. 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 those you know not much but i thought i put a stop. on things. like american suffered from racism and a complete lack of prospects. of the real. one by else on earth by doing. 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. who were too thrilled you're in the united. around great crowd. the moon few you know going to go along with you and now almost a 100 years later history is repeating itself my great grandfather george time went to russia. probable worst time to go anywhere why not me. when i come here. and welcome back the u.s.

department of justice charging 3 north korean computer programmers with hacking stealing and extorting 1300000000 dollars in cash in crypto currency according to the indictment unsealed this week the 3 men conducted a series of cyber attacks spearfishing campaigns and even developed a fraudulent blah. chain platform of the d.o.j. goes on to say the alleged hackers were working for the korean military when they conducted the attacks officials say they developed and sold the marine china token which allowed investors to purchase interest in marine shipping vessels which allowed the hackers to control interest and skirt around u.s. sanctions d.o.j. also claims the trio were involved in that infamous hacking of sony pictures entertainment back in 2014 when the movie the interview was going to be released featuring a fictional assassination of the north korean leader. and the world's largest oil producer saudi arabia is planning to increase oil production starting in april

according to advisers to the kingdom or oil prices have rebounded in recent weeks as prices are now at or above demick levels both brant crude and i have crossed the $60.00 mark increased demand due to the ongoing recovery and opec plus production cuts have contributed to the steady rise in prices saudi arabia is expected to announce their plan when opec meets in the 1st week of march during an out on line conference hosted by the international energy forum on wednesday the country's energy minister spoke about prices going up ahead of the next meeting saying we are in a much better place than we were a year ago but i must warn once again against complacency the uncertainty is very high and we have to be extremely cautious the scars from the events last year should teach us caution for more on this let's go at a brand david mckelvey any c.e.o. of the mckelvey any financial group david always nice to have you on the show and today we're hitting the oil sector pretty hard brant crude and they both jumped

higher due to what we just talked about but as well as the texas freeze that has slashed total u.s. oil production by as much as 40 percent but now this is turning into a global problem how will opec benefit from this texas deep freeze. yeah the impact is pretty short term i think it does illustrate how interconnected and interdependent our system is and that includes the electric grid our energy supply is even data services everything now if any energy speaking broadly about oil and gas infrastructure is damaged in supply takes longer to bring back on stream then you've got saudi sort of the self described guardians of the industry who will bring back their capacity sooner rather than later he mentions that that's scheduled for april after the surprise cuts of a 1000000 barrels per day in january but i think one of the things that underscores even more than opec in underscores the power of saudi arabia and now many analysts they're predicting that the commodity bull run across the board led by

a 50 percent jump in oil prices over the past 3 months is it finished running some of the biggest investment banks have even started to call this the start of a new commodities supercycle which tech typically takes about a decade can we expect the price of oil to get back up to $100.00 per barrel anytime soon or the term super cycle way too optimistic this early. i think yes you can expect it but i would say pretty soon saudi wants to bring supply back to the market it is scheduled to do that right end of march beginning of april iran is also planning to bring supplies back on so oversupply might be an issue if the code remains a constraint to global economic activity i think that's a big deal so as for a commodity supercycle that is not too optimistic i mean look we run a hard asset funds for this reason we think natural resources precious metals infrastructure other real assets are position to do very well over the next decade and this is driven by

a number of factors fiscal policy driving record deficit spending monetary policy driving record central bank monetization and attempted price controls in the bond market continued demographic growth i mean if you look inflation is here and it's not just a domestic issue it's a global issue and central banks are totally unprepared for this they're trapped they're trying to sustain the economies you know whether it's a full employment or frankly central banks want to expand their mandates to fixing the environment total equality all of these efforts are going to drive inflation and i think that he is one of the reasons why real things will do very well so again commodity supercycle you're right i think we're at the front edge of that we're coming through a period of massive under investment in commodities and now i think you begin to see prices respond to that long period of under-investment hence your last point there are a growing number of western countries including the united states they're aiming for a net 0 emissions by 2050 which would be a major shift in the u.s.

oil policy quickly could this play into the hands of russia russian and saudi oil. well if you mean granting them more of a monopoly on production sure i think these countries are quite comfortable with us net 0 goals texas doesn't freeze very often but it's worth remembering what happens when you don't control your own energy supplies either because you no longer produce them or in this week mother nature is not cooperating 2050 is a long way off that could be sort of 6 different political administrations from now so a lot changes in a week as we've seen this week in texas on their case so i think turn intentions may face a few challenges along the way but yes i think it would actually pay to sort of the monopoly benefits that saudi arabia and russia would have to have a makeover with c.e.o. of mcavennie financial group excellent insight thank you so much thank you greg.

and finally thursday was another landmark day in the world of space exploration as nasa's perseverance rover touched down on the surface of mars just before 4 pm eastern time now it has taken the rover 7 months to travel the 470000000 kilometers to the red planet the 6 wheeled robot will sift and drill into the surface of mars looking for traces of anti-microbial activity and packaged samples for return to the earth well at a later date landing on the surface of mars has been proven to be a tough endeavor there have been 14 now 15 attempts to land on the planet but only 8 well now 9 have been successful nasa was the only failure back there nasa had only one failure back in 1909 and that's it for this time you can catch boom bust on demand on the brand new portable t.v. epic battle on smartphones and tablets through play in the apple app store by searching portable t.v. which you can also be download on newer model samsung smart t.v.'s as well as roku devices or simply check it out. the t.v. we'll see you next time i bust.

the post has begun or has it what's wrong with the former president played within the republican party by all accounts trump intends to remain relevant if this is the case what is the future of the populist wing of the party and fourthly if indeed the g.o.p. is now the party working with the party leadership in trace this dreck. but the pandemic no certainly no borders and is blind to nationalities. has emerged we don't have the territory we don't have the facts in the whole world beat's to be the chief. judge of this commentary

crisis please mr times we can do better we should know. everyone is contributing to each of our own way but we also know that this crisis will not go on forever the challenge is creating the response has been masked so many good people are helping us. it makes us feel very proud that we are in it together. is your media a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe from. the isolation of the whole community. are you going the right way or are you being

led so. direct. what is true what is free. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the depths. aura made in the shallows. blur the euros in your. good with the new machine the sort of the beach world storm of the lower street view our lives. when you go to the movie way of feeling good in the video is a beautiful denim dialect. that still has the soul of the d.c.m.

how many to choose to keep them. in today's headlines moscow accuses brussels of politicizing the fight against the pandemic as the problem hit back at controversial comments from indian chief 1st off on the line casting doubt on russia's comeback see. they discussed the e.u.'s ongoing criticism of sputnik v. with russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman. how can a great accident of the world not without a tie to making it too expensive of blackmailing with it. and the campaign to boycott facebook gains momentum in australia after the tech giant blocked news posts in the country something called an abuse.