or countless others like them with ah, this is them by for one business show you can't afford to miss. i'm rachel robin and i bridge a boar and washington. here's what we have coming up, sweetest telecom giant ericsson is facing heat birth admission that it may have paid the islamic state or isis for access to business opportunities and areas of iraq. will discussed a bombshell allegations and with oil prices racing towards a $100.00. a barrel, the kingdom of saudi arabia is probably rejecting, called the white house the booth output in an effort to call the spike. we'll take

a look at how the saudi refusal could sway the industry to this as a u. s. and trying to continue to argue over purchase agreement as part of phase one of the trade deal will bring you the latest on the ongoing tension between the world to largest economy where the pack show today. so let's get started with the program with the bomb shell story surrounding the swedish telecom equipment maker, ericsson mobile, the company c o is now admitting that they may have made payments to the tourist organization, isis and iraq. erickson said late on tuesday that an internal investigation from 2019 found series breaches of compliance rules in iraq, including payments for transport routes to evade local customs. and not surprisingly, shares in the stack home based company were down almost 14.5 percent on wednesday, resulting in the biggest drop in a single day since july of 2017. to joining us now discuss is blue bus co host an investigative journalist benz want. and it just seems bizarre when you even kind of

lay out what we just said there. so what can you tell us about as a base station and what was about yeah, so essentially what erickson is admitting to was not much at this point other than to say it might b that we paid isis to be able to get through certain transport route we'll know if we paid isis, but we probably paid isis essentially what they're saying is this, that back in 2018, they have some strange expenditures. apparently they call them unusual expenses. and this is the quote here that the company apparently says that what we are seeing is that transport routes have been purchased through areas that have been controlled by terrorist organizations, including isis. so we paid some one to move to areas that were controlled by isis back in 2018, but were not exactly sure who it was. that's what erickson saying. sounds like they were pain isis at this point. and yeah, and that is what it sounds like. and this actually is not the 1st time that erickson has had some sort of question more run. and now this admission from the

company also comes after they were accused by the department of justice back in october, a greeting a $1000000000.00 agreement that they made with prosecutors in $2192.00 and a long running corruption prob. so was that investigation related to the prob, regarding isis? yes, so apparently it's, it's working with similar types of situations, right? it's not the exact same situation is not necessarily isis, but certainly erickson has this issue before, right? so the idea here is that they were pain, bribery and they were involved in some campaign that had to do with corruption in asia and the middle east in october of last year. this is what was all coming out in the department of justice essentially came to some settlement for a $1000000000.00, but again, we don't know exactly who it was. so, you know, one of the issues here, obviously, if you're a company like ericsson is you're gonna pay the fine and you're going to do everything you can to say we might have been doing something we shouldn't have been doing. but let's not use names, right? nobody name names here, so we don't use the name isis. we don't use

a name al qaeda. we don't use those names and it doesn't sound as bad. were we involved in some of the stop it looks like we probably were. is that the cost of doing business in these places they might make the argument that that's the cost of it. but i think the goal here is whatever there do doing is to not really be clear muddy the waters, much as possible about the specifics of it. because, you know, people walking around with their ericson mobile phone, don't want to be thinking, oh yeah, these guys actually gave money to isis at some point or, or some of these other groups as well. and bad. i mean, again, you know, i, i keep thinking i just go, this is such a shocking sounding situation. but the reality is, sometimes if you want to operate in controlled territories, you, companies may go this route. are there any other companies that we know of that it face kind of a similar scrutiny to having had this situation happen? well, there are some companies actually out there who have done similar types of things.

so for instance, you know, the b m z group, which is an oil company that is owned by empowered to is on the board, the son of turkish president. irwin was accused of actually being the middle man for isis oil. remember, isis took over all the oil fields in iraq, it was part of syria, and then they were in iraq in the area they control were largely oil fields. and remember, the united states didn't bond those oil fields, didn't take out any of that infrastructure. and one of the scandals over the last few years has been the fact that isis, one of the things that was funding them and fueling them, and no pun intended, to the fact that they had all access all this oil. and so how are they getting this oil into western markets? well, they were using companies in places like turkey and other places around the world to essentially purchase that oil on their behalf. right. and then pass it along into western markets as if it was coming out of turkey or some other location. and then they were skimming off the top profits for themselves. so listen, it absolutely happens. terrorist organizations are financed in many different ways,

but one of the ways they're financed is by controlling a region. and if you're a company that wants access to that region, you got to pay to be there. i'm not advocating for it. i'm not saying it's okay, but it's a reality. and i think the fact that a mobile phone company would say, yes, somebody in the company without a fish approval was sliding money to isis. somebody in another company was, you know, the middle man for oil, isis control oil shouldn't be that shocking, but it is alarming in terms of what do you do about it. and at this point, i don't think there's a good answer to that other than taking out those organizations, which i think we proven over the last few decades, is much easier said than done. absolutely. and i like that you put it specifically been, i'm not can, don't get, i'm saying that this is happened in that was what i was off to try to get out there and i wouldn't do with ices, but you know, but thank you so much. and oil prices continue to edge higher with west texas intermediate closing in on $95.00 per barrel. while brent crude was near

$96.00 per barrel on wednesday. not only is is the highest price we've seen in the international benchmark since 2014. but it also marks the year over year increase of 63 percent. now, past predictions looked at if and when oil would surpass $100.00 per barrel. some analysts are now looking to when it might hit $125.00 or even $150.00 per barrel. now, of the buying and ministration has spent months trying to appeal to other nations to increase their supply. it's the latest attempt to call on one of his closest allies in the middle east has fallen flat. once again, the world's largest crude export, or saudi arabia has renewed its commitment to stick bias. opec plus allies, which of course includes russia. now this comes days after president biden's phone call with the saudi king in which he called on the kingdom to help ensure the stability of global energy supply. so where do your prices go from here? we're joining us out of the gas or boom and david mckelvey in the ceo of mckelvey

the financial. david, let's start with you here. now, what do you make of the fact that oil prices hitting $100.00 per barrel has quickly become an almost certainty? i mean, how did we get to this point so fast looking to the intermediate term, we've got really good supply and demand dynamics. so the demand dynamics are getting stronger and stronger as we move towards the endemic stage of covered 19, there's still areas where we're not back to normal air travel and jet fuel are still well below pre pandemic levels. so you look on the supply side. opec has kept the markets on more of a drip feed rather than a dilution of new supply. and us production, adding to the supply side has stayed within previous production levels. it's decreased actually since the beginning of the year. the end of 2021 levels and recounts at the same time, are up 8 percent. so they are beginning to drill more. i think it's a problem though, we're not getting to the $13000000.00 barrels per day, but we had at our peak levels not even close. so there will be limited production

from the bright by the ministration, simply because they've had restrictive energy policies limiting pipelines curtailing permits both onshore and offshore. so the prices you're seeing them 1st of the gas, but then there's prices to pay with presidential poles. and then finally, the ballot box. don't forget, you've also got maybe $1520.00 of geopolitical fear, premium in that $90.00 to $95.00 range. absolutely. and, and, you know, it's interesting because that is something that the dividing ministration is going to face because americans look at it the most is how much am i paying for food? how much am i paying for gas because we are. so oil relied here that's going to be a big issue coming up in the mid term for then, of course, in the years to come now, christie, even though opec plus members agreed to pump an additional 400000 barrels per day, some of actually struggled to meet that quote, how much is the overall lack of supply playing a role into storing prices right now? lack of supply as a huge part of the story and someone said the main part of the story, seeing as world oil demand growth is pretty much unchanged. for 2022. demand is

expected to rise to pre panoramic levels in the 2nd half the year. so it's not like there's a huge influx of unanticipated demand. the issue really is the supply side and given the lingering uncertainties of the covariance, the oil market was slow to spend money and invest on infrastructure and capital investments. so the big challenge here is under investment, a number of producers in the 23 member opec plus group are increasing the output handily, but others, they're lacking behind and failing to step up production. so they're growing doubts as to whether or not opec plus can deliver on these additional barrels. and even russia, the group, the 2nd largest export, after saudi arabia, they appear to hit a wall at about $9900000.00 barrels a day. which is about 600000 less than it pumped in april 2020, before the big cup. so for russia to increase substantially from here, that will require the development of new fields. so right now the dynamics of oil

markets are working for the benefit of producers like saudi arabia, who's actually kept investing into their energy industry. and now david, obviously go back to the bio ministration calls here for opec plus, or even saudi arabia to pump more. does it benefit the u. s. at all, to continue calling and other countries to wrap up production instead of investing in production here at home or, or is, is all too little too late because of number one, the policies in, as christy just mentioned, everything gotta get ramped down to the pandemic in the 1st place i think also the ramp down has to do with our priority on the carpet station and electrification. so oil executives have struggled to say, how can we ramp up production when we are facing sort of s g scoring, which may take us out of indexes and put us at a difficult place in terms of raising capital. so back to your question on the benefit, if we can use someone else's resources, i suppose there is a benefit to that. but i think this is more about politics and meeting the expectations of

a constituency than it is actually about resource management. that again, fossil fuel expansion, drilling projects, this is not popular with a large part of biden's base to getting someone else to do the dirty work of production and resource extraction that keeps biden with cleaner and greener credentials. and again, that means hopefully we can meet our real world demand dynamics for fossil fuel and domestic growth expectations if we're bringing it in from somewhere else. so i would describe the appeal to opec is increasingly parasitic, which may be why they fall on deaf ears was interesting because it's all fine and good to rely on someone else's resources until they don't give you those resources as much as you with like, no speaking of this or in prices, christy, i know you're there in california, we're average gas prices just hit a new record high of close to $5.00 per gallon given that americans are feeling the pressure of storm prices all around. how much longer does the binding administration have until it will be forced to act?

and is there any easy solution at this point? oh, it is definitely about $5.00 around here, and it's very painful every single time we're filling up the pump. so the administration is under tremendous pressure to try to fix the situation, but unfortunately, there is no easy fix for them. given that the green energy movement is basically the hill that they've chosen to die on. so they aren't going to be walking back their stance at all anytime soon. so high gas prices will be blamed on the party empower, and the administration just continues to reiterate the importance of investing and renewables for the next 3 or 4 years. but unfortunately, that solution is too far down the line for people who are struggling today and need an immediate solution. the other option that they could explore is to lift the sanctions on iran and a potential benefit of the j. c. p. away iran nuclear deal is that it could help reduce american dependence on saudi oil. but that seems to be a long shot as talk seem to have stalled out for now. you know,

certainly be interesting to see what they do, especially $5.00 per gallon, has nothing to take lightly room most. christy i and david mckelvey, macaroni financial, thank you both for your insight. thank you. it's hard to offer a quick break, but when we come back, the harsh trade rhetoric through the day from china is on the right. good. again, the world largest academy is spoken out against the letter coming up short on it for a promise. it has a good break. there are the numbers with this is

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welcome back. the united states trade representative is once again calling for china to be held accountable in meaning it's commitments as part of the phase one trade deal between the 2 side side and her former president. donald trump, the comments from catherine ty came during the u. s. t r's, annual review of china's compliance with the world trade organization. now as part of the deal, china was to buy an additional $200000000000.00 worth of american goods over what was purchased back in 2017. but the nation has only purchased 57 percent of us exports agreed to. that's according to report by the peterson institute for international out economics, which was released last week. the u. s. t r report also said the u. s. wants to avoid quote, building a wall between the 2 sides that would negatively affect the american interests while it will work to maintain its technological edge over china. joining us now to take a deeper look and all of this is professor richard wolf, host of economic update, and author of the thickness is the system when capitalism fails to save us from

pandemic or itself. and arthur dog, the professor at georgetown university mcdonough school for business. thank you both for joining us. professor don. i want to start with you here. now, because we've talked about this quite a bit, and we've heard about how the pandemic affected china is ability to meet its commitments. but the nation was also eager to point out how quickly it recovered from the pandemic. so was it, why wasn't china able to meet the terms of disagreement as we see it right now? yes, but that's a very good question. china will explain that that their inability to meet this commitment was due largely as a result of and demick related a reasons whether it is bottlenecks in the supply chain or delivery. but that's probably going to fall on deaf ears once it's report reaches congress. and so, yes, let's give china some credit for largely meeting this, this commitment 2 thirds of the way. but so, you know, the, china's credit,

even if china bought every last grain of corn and soybeans in the united states and every pig and cow in the united states, you can take the entire amounts of agricultural output in the united states. they have china bought it all, it still would not close the $200000000.00 gaps. so on the one hand, it is a stretch goal. china did everything they could to meet their commitments. but a lot of these large purchases are in the hands of chinese government and policy makers. so whether it's the purchase of energy which could have closed the gap or the purchase of boeing, airplanes, which could have made a difference in closing this gap. they are going to be questions as to whether or not china has fully committed itself to meeting its obligations. friendly. of course, there's going to be criticism from the united states. either way, no matter what china had done, especially under the binding ministration note professor wolf in this report to the

w t. o, the us trade representative made no mention of a phase 2 of the deal. so is the u. s. just giving up on the trump error trade policy rather than working to strengthen it under the new administration. yes, i mean, many of us were expecting that the new administration would depart considerably more from the trump administration. then it's done that and i don't know the motives of the chinese, of course. well, i can imagine that the united states decision to hold on to many of the towers and to hold on to the peculiar language that diplomats keep using that they don't just want the chinese to buy this or that. but they want to quarrel with the chinese government, the chinese economic system, and whether that's consistent with the world system of the w t. all and so on.

that sounds an awful lot like warming the chinese regime and system to change and given how far and how fast the chinese had become the world's number 2 economy, asking them to change the system that got them there. that's for sure. not going to work on that has to be incredibly frustrating for every single person who played a role in getting to phase one of the trade deal to not even hear a mention of phase 2 has to be something that they are certainly not happy about. now professor dawn, we just mentioned the overall recovery, we saw that china's producer price index increased 9 point one percent in january on an annual basis. now of course supply chain issues are weighing on production cost. meanwhile, the consumer prices roach is point 9 percent year over year. so what's the take away from this latest economic data? yeah, the takeaway is generally the market so viewed this with a degree of a degree of comfort being that the input prices or the factory gate prices

certainly have risen, but they're off a bit from decembers numbers which was a 10.3. so they see this is the climb in input price inflation and a directionality in terms that shows that there is a degree of softening of price inflation at the factory gate in terms of the consumer price index. you saw that chinese companies did not pass on these additional costs to the consumer. and so therefore you see this gap a very narrow or point 9 percent increase in consumer prices. so chinese consumers have not felt the pain of increased prices. meaning that chinese companies have not tasks along those increased prices, but how the market perceives this is a softening of consumer demand within the chinese economy. and those statistics are certainly, you know, i have been, i have been demonstrated. and professor don,

how much of that has to do with the actual export of so many goods out of china are those, those price is actually being passed on to say the american public who is buying a lot of these goods. and so that's why it's not going to china. you know, we saw certainly during the can demik that we have recorded a record trade deficit with china in the past year as americans point all manner of products that were coming out of chinese factory would be electronics, video, games, computers, furnishings, from our, our homes, as we all both worked and studied from our homes. you know, americans cocoons and as a result, spending a lot of money on home and home related products at, in terms of young americans did see some increases in prices. but we also saw a moderation of those prices and that chinese manufacturers. i tried to keep up with on those prices. i'll be that they were facing higher towers. and so they ate

some of the terrorists and didn't show up radically in terms of consumer prices. ready and the consumer price increases here in america. absolutely. and professor, well, before we go last week, a group of economists who focus on the chinese can be said they expect the worst to be over when it comes to china's regulatory crackdown. so the nation can focus on economic expansion. once again, have they met their goal when it comes to raining in tech and property companies over the last year and i have about a minute left for a professor. i say what? i'm sorry, i was surprised wolf. i don't think so. i think that the common prosperity, ideas of using thing are still with them. they have big enough quality issues to deal with. and part of that is by a regulatory regime that i think is going to get harsher for big corporations. are going to have to share the wealth and when the other, your other guests said, quite rightly that the companies are having to eat some of their burdens. that's

part of this process. that's part of making sure that the consumer gets the benefit of the low inflation rate. i mean, let's be honest. the inflation rate in this country for consumers is 7 and a half percent. and the rate in china is less than one percent. this is an extraordinary policy achievement that will have enormous effect on the ability of both countries to succeed or not in their economic policy. absolutely, professor, what would i know? we've talked about that a lot in the show professors richard wolf, and arthur don, thank you so much for you, and i will do it again soon. thank you. and finally, the largest mangan, the u. s. has become the 1st one to stake, is claim in the multiverse, introduce the onyx lounge in the central land this week, which is an odd to the company's theory and be services. now as you can see here from the screen shot which was posted on twitter,

the laundry appears to be pretty simple. and of course that comes complete with a spiral. 2 staircase, and even a tiger because why not? now if you're wondering why j. p morgan did this, well, they say they are open to all clients, both in the real world. and in the matter verse in a statement the bank said, is these virtual real estate continuing to grow? which means they will be, there will be a market for services that include credit, mortgages and rental agreement. that's really all you need in the virtual world is more credit. meanwhile, disney is also getting involved in now i think it is appointed a new leader of metaphors strategy. while the company referred to the block chain based land as quote, the next great storytelling frontier, it didn't give much insight into the strategy for how to take their take on my move for dave, he morgan, but they really need to step up without arms. i was not i but they have a tiger and think about virtual dead is busy and i know our director kevin call is going to be their 1st one to get in for you. and for this time,

you catch both on demand of the possible tv up available on smartphones and tablets . you google play in the apple app store. i search for the tv fordable tv can also be downloaded on samsung smart tv, roku devices, or simply check it out at portable tv. we'll see you next. me the me ah, the these leaders that are bringing big point into the country. they understand big coin and they understand that benefits to society and all of the kind of miss characterization of these leaders come from the deep state in the us that lives trying to push the fee out money world. so want to understand that then you're thinking, adjust accordingly and you, i think see the world a little bit more within the context of how things are actually operating

with these people learn from their own experience, how vulnerable a business is to the bank. so you push my business over, the age, pushes me right to the bankruptcy. now i realize we will group, this isn't just the back that may be involved in this is the counselor at sea. palms is, is the lawyers, these people have got you want other stories and it was kind of whistleblower. tell people's marriages have broken up, lost their family homes. it is spectacularly devastating people's lives. they have committed suicide, but left behind, nor the explicitly state that it was the constant intimidation and billing by bank officers that led them to i took the spear, it's obscene,

these people up nor sold the headlines. and i say russia says it has no intention of invading the train in a written security response to the united states, while also urging nato to pull its military advises, and i felt you try and end joint military trip. meanwhile, the west changes is predicted date of a russian invasion of ukraine off to february. the 16th failed to materialize. moscow says it's a fabrication look as to where deescalate every, the 20th. i don't know because we are not the ones who are escalated. we're not doing this on the canadian prime minister is brandi to dictate a bio position. all make is to secure a mag with american powers against protest.