dollar tree has been crushed. mean -- since the summer, this stock is down more than 25%. since august, falling from $52.38 and change. dismal performance, just dismal and you would think with all the cow tales and turkish taffy i buy, i could pull this group out of this funk. maybe because i'm only buying mike and not mike & ike anymore. it's not working. why are dollar stores being crushed? should we expect them to bounce back as in the past, or are they finished? drifters going lower? i think they're drifters. the dollar stores, not a lot of upside. and it's not too late for you to sell, particularly into any strength. the reason? actually more like reasons, a multitude. the trajectory is downright lousy. dollar tree reported that the company beat the street's expectations, same-store sales up 1.6%. 300 basis point deceleration. that's like slamming the brakes on a car going 60. december 11th, dollar general reported, they delivered inline same store sales numbers. gross margins once you got into the conference

and it was a massive superstorm that caused billions of dollars of damage in new york and new jersey before the hundred twelfth congress came to an end the house g.o.p. punted on hurricane sandy relief so what does this mean for the states and residents left in the dark by their own government. and the pentagon has a problem the u.s. relies on drones to conduct warfare around the world now they've launched a sixteen million dollar effort to prevent high tech flying machines from being hacked so how serious of a problem is this for the u.s. drone program. it's wednesday january second happy new year five pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you're watching r.t. . topping the news this hour well they've done it again in literally an eleventh hour deal the u.s. house of representatives passed a fiscal cliff budget deal that president obama is expected to sign into law so that's that crisis averted cue the confetti right well actually not even close the u.s. might have avoided an economic calamity in the short run but the future of the country is still as uncertain as it was before

dollar then killing a lot of people i agree with this and paul craig roberts in that supporting the dollar means committing genocide when you print money that's inflationary when you allow money to be destroyed that's deflationary there's nothing faster to destroy money than bombs and dead bodies that's what that's what it's all about where you actually mentioned the soldiers and a lot of americans will argue we can't cut the budget because we need to support our troops so to combat that argument andrew sullivan does provide this chart which is the real pay of employees as you see that's been going down along with the inflation along with the money printing in order to support the debt load that is supporting the pentagon adventures overseas to secure oil resources and support the dollar but their wages have been going down and remember in terms of this empire of debt the likes of david graber has said eventually these soldiers will demand payment in gold and silver. yes the soldiers will demand payment in gold and silver because a brick are increasingly becoming just pure mercenaries as t

for example should have a stronger dollar. and that the group of twenty in two thousand and nine had met and agreed not to competitively devalue so he's saying that they broke their promise first that the u.s. is devalued because the u.s. dollar has declined by twenty percent since two thousand and nine and i guess he's suggesting that's intentional and therefore all bets are off and you know this was exactly during the great depression what happened is that everybody started to beggar thy neighbor and then what happened after that the hot war right or even more recently you had the plaza accords of the early one nine hundred eighty s. again involving the japanese yen and this was to set the stage for the twenty five year bull market that followed but we're at the end of that now owner answered a new phase because of the distortions that were to follow the plaza and corridor have created this behave with of fraud that is now gutting the global economy requiring yet another global conflict which would at this juncture mean deva

dollar that is what backs the u.s. dollar and if that is under threat then it's important to increase the budget of that pentagon which backs the u.s. dollar but i want to say when andrew sullivan says here regarding this chart he says quote history is replete with examples of great powers who undid themselves by spending on war and empire in the end often with the debt when the glutting the core concerns of the domestic economy had to monaco america is following imperial spain and imperial britain into the same morass but it is a choice not a fate right well how better way to support the u.s. dollar then killing a lot of people i agree with. paul craig roberts and that supporting the dollar means committing genocide when you print money that's inflationary when you allow money to be destroyed that's deflationary there's nothing faster to destroy money than bombs and dead bodies and that's what that's what it's all about where you actually mentioned the soldiers and a lot of americans will argue oh we can't cut the bud

now it's sixteen seventeen dollars an ounce and we've taken on an audience with us as the most. outstanding performing asset for the decade so let's roll back to what how this cause matthau max causes in case you were not aware this is a film called brown's bottom and in it we made this in two thousand and eight and on march seventeenth two thousand and eight that was a monday max and i had an appointment with the bundesbank with the head of their gold department and what happened on sunday the sixteenth of march two thousand and eight was ben bernanke it slashed interest rates by seventy five basis point unprecedented move to slash interest rates so much and on a sunday and the reason he did this was because of the collapse of bear stearns also gold to just hit the thousand dollar mark the first time ever so here max had an appointment with the bundesbank head of the gold department and the reason for it was we were investigating brown's bottom why he sold their gold at historic lows we wanted to find out why the buddhist bank kept their gold in order to understand the psycholo

million dollars spent on lobbying public libraries just don't get much respect in this town and that might explain why with the fiscal cliff looming a given a few months we hear all about the devastating cuts to defense and health care programs but yet we hear absolutely nothing about the nearly twenty million dollars that will be cut from federal programs that support public libraries across america and we hear nothing about the epidemic of library closings staff layoffs and our cut backs that are already plaguing communities all around the nation. we know there's a huge disconnect between what our lawmakers are doing and what we actually want them to do for example most americans don't want social security and medicare cut yet that's what lawmakers are looking to do most americans want our wars abroad and yet they continue to get funded and most americans want action on climate change our lawmakers do nothing but one of the greatest discontents that no one is talking about is our national attitude toward public libraries and how our lawmakers are treating these institutions a new s

dollar -- a dollar is the same as 100 pennies. quarter -- a quarter is the same as 25 pennies; there are four quarters in one dollar. dime -- a dime is the same as ten pennies; there are ten dimes in one dollar. the dime is the smallest coin. nickel -- a nickel is the same as five pennies; there are 20 nickels in one dollar. so we have: cost, dollar quarter, dime and nickel watch out for them in today's show. ♪ (screaming) gilda! grab a disguise. francine said i'm allowed to help you, but only for a couple of hours. i'll take what i can get. so here's the deal as you know, today is the day of the spooky summer soiree. the coolest costume party ever! last year, i was a ferret. well today, you can be anything you want to be, because i bought all the costumes at haunted hank's discount costume store. annie, didn't that cost a lot of money? yes, it cost quite a bit of money i had some help from my uncle, but this is important. gilda...answer this question. who is the most fabulous dresser in town? you, annie everybody knows that. than

buying of gold that's how we get to ten thousand dollars an ounce of gold and five hundred dollars an ounce of silver now this is a huge political statement as well to ask for your gold back in light of the fact that all our international trade all our international currencies are based on faith in that system so the fact that germany is asking for so much gold as the financial times says the largest ever movement of gold in world history and then so the financial times gives a hint of the reason why germany would make such a grand request boon to spank weighs bully on against public pressure so i want to look back and how did this public pressure come about and indeed i could tell you why it came about here is the man down this warned you about the one that would cause world war three. percent almost don't let us go this is world war three it's a currency war we've been calling us for ten years really since we started on our podcast ten years ago we said this is what this century is going to be defined as a constant war by gold and silver and gold was two hundred fifty dollars an oun

been warning about now for years this is why the euro has been trading relatively well against the dollar because in the euro zone there are twelve thirteen thousand tons of gold versus the u.s. which has maybe eight thousand tons but one of the big problem stacey of course is the central banks of lease their gold out and sold it and it's now sitting in the pockets of hundreds of millions of indians on the continent of india and so when germany goes to collect their gold they find that it's not there it's been sold and that's what this war is all about especially now that the central banking system is collapsing and countries want the only currency without counterparty risk the only currency you can play. more of that would be gold now they mention their partner central banks and this is a remnant of the bretton woods system so post world war two the us dollar was declared the world's reserve currency but for international trade it was backed by gold and because you were having to settle your balance of trade via the central banks it was convenient in one thousand nine hundred five in one

dollars for nascar. 430 million dollars for -- [inaudible]. 59 million dollars for algae.h deficit reduction? answer, that's how the system works. you buy votes with taxpayers' money. then there is the 60 billion dollars sandy relief bill, outrage from new york and new jersey politicians when the house failed to schedule a vote on it. but wait, 60 billion dollars? is the relief bill for hurricane andrew was only 7 billion. turns out the sandy package was loaded up like a christmas tree. amtrak needed 30 million for repairs. it got 336 million. alaska fisheries got 150 million. alaska? and by the way, the total budget of the state of new jersey is 30 billion dollars. yet the tab for washington is double that. america's fundamental problem is obvious, politicians buy votes with your money. both sides do it. scene the president, well, he's the master of the art. but we know deep down we just can't keep doing this. can we? i will end this by again quoting margaret thatcher when britain's economy was near ruin, she stood up and said enough, with the following words: the trouble

dollars for next year sixty billion dollars of all of that came next year it won't because this thing is sort of staggered layered out over time but if we even got that sixty billion next year represents about five percent of the deficit so to put this in context we had a or hundred billion dollar deficit back at the start of this crisis and now we've got one that's more than two times larger than that this is an extraordinary event when washington can't even find a way to trim more than five percent of that now the spending cuts if they actually do materialize are anywhere from one percent to maybe as much as nine percent of the deficit so the total range here is going to be in the vicinity of let's average it up maybe ten percent of the existing deficit that's all that could be found at this point in time it just means that we have a dysfunctional process as i mentioned when we were running up these massive deficits years ago i said listen don't be surprised when they turn out to be permanent washington can find ways to spend they have a devil of a time trying to figure out how to s

of the bretton woods system so post world war two the us dollar was declared the world's reserve currency but for international trade it was backed by gold and because you were having to settle your balance of trade via the central banks it was convenient in one thousand nine hundred five in one nine hundred fifty one nine hundred sixty four in germany to store gold in new york at the new york fed because if they had a trade imbalance with america they would just settle there through the bank or settle it with the u.k. via the bag but now since nine hundred seventy one it's really bad there's no point for them to really store so much gold in the central banks so now they say to this end now that they have all the storage they say it's just a storage plan remember the bundesbank is planning a phased relocation of three hundred tons of gold from new york to frankfurt as well as an additional three hundred seventy four tons from paris to frankfurt by twenty twenty this means they're taking their percentage of their gold held in france to zero and they're reducing their holdings in new york b

many many chileans of dollars yeah and euros have been created the top. the supply of gold around the world during the same period of time is a whopping eight percent well again you know that was before the collapse of lehman brothers before the collapse the near collapse of the global financial system and in response to that film gap to the gold antitrust action committee said this kaiser's documentary may be sensational forgetting it and the knowledge of it from the german central bank for the first time that germany's gold reserves are actually in the custody of the united states this is a detail the buddhist bank long has denied to all those who have inquired and it's potentially a matter of great controversy in germany this is what gap to wrote in two thousand and nine august two thousand and nine since then of course there's been l'arche all doggedly pursuing this story emailing the bundesbank every single day for the last four years and this turned into a tabloid story building had just blown all covered in germany and then it got up to the congres

dollar and other currencies.d: plus we have a guest expert who says prices will drop below $3 per gallon even while oil prices are going up. but it may not take us all the way up to 2014. why are gas prices going down when oil prices are going up? we will tell you next. david: well the euro touching a two week high in intraday trading and the u.s. dollar index posting slight gains after lawmakers approved a last minute fiscal cliff deal but the political showdown is far weeks away one of the best ways to make money in the currency market this year. liz: last week we had somebody who said buy the south african rand. we have a senior for ren currency strategist and they have got some ideas. before we get to your favorite picks let me tackle the dollar. every time we do quantitative easing, that tends to be dollar negative, very low rates. we don't have a strong dollar at the moment in trade, but what do you think about the u.s. to rar right now? nick, you first. a bit of a mixed picture. easing will be nech for the

sixteen a dollar twenty four one and not in not one out of our delegation to stand another player for the people that are in the code and are our brothers and sisters in a hurricane only function. but. when i was there one group didn't want any of those this or protect. the all of the. grover norquist people and they just this people are the people they won't raise taxes or. burning slanders. game though. burden examples of the corporations. exaggerate. but not panic i. rewrote and rewrote yeah i think you're absolutely right and point well made thank you very much for calling making an excellent point anthony and willow springs missouri and what's on your mind and they mr herman longtime viewer first time caller this is actually the first of three days of been watching your show on the television very big fan of you tube channel firstly i want to say every single time that i've listened to your show heard your radio show just about every time you mention iceland in comparison of their politics in comparison to where we are handling our we did our show live from there last year for a

but the dollar up across the board. dollar lower, sterling lower, as well. weak services pmi out in the uk. contracted. we came in with a bigger 48.49. now it looks like the uk did re-enter negative territory for growth in the fourth quarter. a triple dip feared. right. as far as all the prices are concerned, oil and gold prices coming back. sprint down to 1.10. spot down a little bit to 1635. so what are investors to do with this news flow? here is a list of thoughts of what some of you our guests watching cnbc have said today. >> if we can buy dollar against the euro above that 1.33 level again, particularly from a uk importer point of view, someone who is buying dollars for a physical delivery rather than a trading perspective, that's a solid hedging rate and a solid buy. i think we'll see the euro/dollar push do know back down as low as 1.27, 1.26 through the course of the year. >> i would go and look at the viewership coming out as i mentioned earlier. next week, a few that are planning to come out. definitely, there's some yield appetite. and i would l

investing a dollar in mitigation can save five dollars in long-term expenses. we need to change the way we budget for disasters. massive storms are no longer unforeseen. we got to get out of the mindset where we toss in a billion dollars in the appropriations committee because it's cheaper for the appropriations committee to fund billions of dollars of unforeseen expenses after the fact, than a few hundred million dollars to prevent those disasters in the long run. and finally, could i not agree more with the testimony that i heard, sitting here, that we need to make sure we're distributing disaster supplemental money in a way that they tax dollars are used efficiently and effectively. i'm offering three amends which i think capture the spirit of doing this appropriately to help the devastated communities rebuild stronger and safer, while protecting the taxpayers. first, congressman campbell and i have submitted amendment number 29 that would clarify the language in the amendment about the nonfederal share for ongoing construction projects unrelated to hurrican

the next six years of taxpayer dollars already been spent. that's an unmitigated failure and to think that they should get any more of the tax dollars from us for putting us in this position? i don't think so. >> brenda: all right. toby, where do you fall on this? >> well, i'm intrigued by the concept if we paid our lawmakers more we would get better lawmakers. >> oh, yeah. >> and by the concept that the idea that you know, the lawmaker, many times, is paid in a lot of other ways. one thing he or she ds quite well, which is to raise money and if they were to maybe raise part of their salaries by raising money, i'd be for that. but the idea somehow we're in a position that lawmakers have earned a higher salary based on the output they've performed is ludicrous. >> brenda: okay, caroline? >> well, i would say that our congress has been the least productive in the last 50 years, so i can understand that a lot of people might be upset about the idea, but i do think we would get better lawmakers if we paid them more and also, they have to maintain

dollar tree basically everything is a dollar whereas general dollar has multiple price points. extent dollar tree is insulated from competition with dollar general and as well as wal-mart and target and some others. liz: is this a buying opportunity? >> i think it really is. another thing i really like his refill the company has much better long-term growth potential. they've only got 45 for 100 or so stars were family dollar over 7500 dollar general over 10,000. dollar tree also just recently bought a company in canada, they can go to 1000. liz: they are lower price poin points, there is competition growing in this space. >> competition has always been the name of the game. one offer is value. very low price point particularly relative to the supermarket, drug store or convenience store and offer convenience, so many of these stores are easy to shop and get in and out. liz: what does it tell you over the past year the dollar stores for outperforming the s&p retail index of all retailers and around mid-september you saw the crossing of the two lines and suddenly the dollar stor

the downside was almost one hundred billion dollars. we're going to get something in the range maybe a little more. it's. probably my. dollar you know we're not talking about. all. right. a lot of. what that lawmaker is and what the deal did manage to do is help lawmakers avert headlines today of markets plunged honor their points on lack of fiscal cliff deal but as you said the actual meeting is really nothing to write home about so let's talk about something more interesting any time these kind of discussions come about about the fiscal cliff or or whatever it may be we're talking about prescription for the economy we hear plenty of ideas about what it takes to stimulate the economy or help the economy improve whether it's that the government needs to spend to make up for what the consumer isn't spending or whether it's the government know we need to cut spending to shore up the budget and get rid of some of these deficits or the magnitude of them or they need tax cuts to stimulate the economy now all of these are driven by economics

and he found a couple of dollars. when i got out and went around the back of my car he ran up to me and he pushed me against my car with one hand he held my collar and with the other hand he was digging in for money in my jacket pocket and took a couple bucks. >> roxie started barking from inside the car. >> when he heard her barking he said, i'm going to kill your f----ing dog. >> reporter: then, he ran over to the drivers side to go after the dog. her owner tried to keep him from opening the door. i was holding the door closed and he was pulling it open and punching my right arm and i was screaming for help. he managed to get the door open and he took a coin purse and then he grabbed roxie by her coller and i was yelling for help then he put her over his head. it happened so fast and he threw her into oncoming traffic. the suspect ran away. roxie was hit and badly wounded. i had to pull roxie out from underneith the tire and she was on her side, screaming and crying and her right eye was falling out. >> reporter: ro

work trillion dollars the united states in one year and you think two hundred forty billion dollars is going to me it's just ludicrous i mean you can rob it amy and you can rob the rich and and employ a lot more people and have more people in poverty and that's what's going to happen with your plan richard but the question here what's wrong with dwight eisenhower in the republic i mean i think the question here is that these people who are so rich they continue to get richer every year that get the wealth gap increased in this country and yet still we haven't seen the jobs where the jobs of these people are creating because i missed them when i will be and this is the barack obama administration where unemployment is increasing along with the death and the deficit let's not worry about it i got a compromise deal let's not snatch all the money for the rich folks like snatch it from the rich foundations like oh i dunno harvard forward they've got too much money you could take some of that too and redistribute what percentage you want you guys you nice progress if you want ten percent

into nature really dollar bloat in the less than one year slot derivatives positions of j.p. morgan good point i mean jamie dimon and j.p. morgan are the biggest terrorists and you know a couple things on the nomenclature side first of all it's funny because on wall street or in the finance business you use the word execute to talk about a trade the trade was executed and but you know there's a double meaning to that obviously because they're executing individuals or and this war of terrorism i want to be clear i mean in the literal sense it's not a figurative expression in that they are literally terrorists they are any law that applies to anyone who blows people up and commits mass murder should be applied ten times to a jamie diamond as a terrorist full stop the fact that he's not prosecuted in any way means that obama means that david cameron are complicit with terrorism they're ok with terrorism they encourage terrorism and that for these populations and in america or the u.k. if you don't want a terrorist running your country you need to get you need to regime change th

than one sixth of the four trillion dollar deficits this c.b.s. says this deal is also likely to create because it makes most bush tax cuts permanent so much for curbing our national debt just a quick reality check for you. all right let's wrap up at least change dimitri. let's we get from cliff let's talk about one more because there was another clip that lawmakers worried about this week the dairy cliff one provision of the measure passed by the senate avoids the so-called dairy cliff it extends portions of an expired farm bill through september so that will prevent milk price increases without the legislation mentioned this yesterday milk prices were expected to double up to eight dollars. why is the government involved in subsidizing the price of milk milk is not even good for you we are the only mammals that drink our own milk this is not a good thing to be involved in not that the government should be involved in the prices of anything you mean we're the only mammals that drink other mammals milk yes that's it i'm. sorry it's ridiculous i ra

an hour instead of the seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour currently is and all the state in jersey's senate wanted to do is modestly raise that state's minimum wage to eight dollars and fifty cents an hour still well below the ten dollars plus where it needs to be for minimum wage workers to get by but governor christie vetoed it arguing the pain working people in his state more money will hurt the economic recovery in new jersey where the unemployment rate is nine point six percent well above the national unemployment rate but governor christie is still hypnotized by trickle down economics or the sort of economics that says if you give a bunch you're rich people tax cuts and all that extra money they keep will eventually trickle down on to the rest of us and it will do more than just create a nation of it's after thirty years of trickle down economics we know what really happens here go down economics just makes us a nation of peons of peons working for a minimum wage is lost half its value since the nine hundred sixty s. if christie and the rest of the conservative movemen