and matt taibbi, author of, "the scam wall street learned from the mafia: how america's biggest banks took part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy -- until they were caught on tape." and also we will speak about libor. >> their artificially repress in libor as to not pay out as much to any investor who has a libor- based instrument. 350 trillion dollars worth of investments are based on libor. they have been gaining the game, essentially. there's really nothing these guys have not been involved with. >> all of that and more coming up. this is "democracy now!," democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. intense clashes are reported across the syrian capital of damascus in one day after the bombing that killed three members of president bashar al- assad's inner circle, including his defense secretary and brother-in-law. damascus residents say some of the fighting is within sight of the presidential palace and government headquarters. more on syria after the headlines. at least five israeli citizens were killed in bulgaria on wednesday when a bomb detonated on their

matt taibbi, dennis kelleher, great to have you both on the program tonight. >> thanks, eliot. >> my pleasure. >> the supreme court may understand obama care but does the public understand the supreme court? that's coming up. >>we talk a lot about the influence of money in politics. it is the defining issue of this era. the candidate with the most money, does win. hey joe? yeah? is this a bad time? no, i can talk. great -- it's the 9th inning and your hair still looks amazing. well, it starts with a healthy scalp. that's why i use head and shoulders for men. they're four shampoos for game-winning scalp protection and great looking hair... go on, please. with seven benefits in every bottle, head and shoulders for men washes out flakes, itch and dryness. and washes in... confidence. yeah it does. [ male announcer ] up to 100% flake free scalp and hair with head & shoulders for men. of sununu, you're wrong. mitt romney, you're wrong. we need more teachers, not fewer teachers and more cops and more firefighters that support our >> we shouldn't read too much into this but a new study says

we haveher and president and ceo of better markets and matt taibbi, contribute be editor to rolling stoneing me. this memo that tim geithner wrote was nothing more than a sequence of cut and paste from the banks memo. what do you make of all this? >> well, sadly it's hardly news that the new york fed was doing the bidding of the banks. one of the promise that we had to the lead up to the crisis was that all these regulators were captive to wall street generally and they understood their job as serving the banks and being their advocates. it's just another example of one of the fundamental problems that we had that created the crisis. trying to figure out how to put strong teeth in the laws and regulation so that over time we wouldn't revert back to what we see here, which is not even scribes. they just copy it and send it in, and you don't have to follow up unless one of the banks rings you up and say, why don't you do that again. >> eliot: matt, you've written--i don't think this is one of these guys who sees conspiracy behind every event of life. but you've seen the reality of the conve

all this, the always incisive and metaphorical contributing editor for rolling stone magazine, matt taibbi cesspool, this quick stand of a scandal keeps getting wider and filthier. >> we have a trader, who said this goes back to 1992. i spoke to a couple of people at wall street who said this was a poorly held secret dating back several years, every knew there was something wrong with libor back at the start of the oh crisis. for tim geithner sounding the alarm or that he wasn't aware of it really doesn't hold water. >> eliot: at a bear minimum, we feel what geithner did in '08 was almost brushed under the carpet. but the notion of the fed had a sense of what was going on and was responsive to fraud is blown out of the water these days. >> yes, the most startling thing about what geithner said in the hearings when he was testifying before congress was that he didn't inform the department of justice about any of this because it was in the press. there were press reports clearly they could have picked it reading the newspaper. it want his job to go do that. which is an extraordinary mindset

matt taibbi told juan gonzalez and i how it worked. >> it sounds very complicated.gine the of a variable rate mortgage so you're paying a mortgage where the payment rises or falls every month along with interest rates. that is risky. so you may want some certainty in your rates. you go to your bank and say, i will agree to pay you a fee if you take over my variable interest payments and give me six payments. basically, you pay the bank a fee to assume your variable rate risk. you are swapping rates. what happened was, jefferson county had variable interest rates on some of the bond deals it had done and wanted fixed rates, so went to jpmorgan and paid them fees to get their fixed rate. >> so how did it blow up then? >> first of all, it costs you something. every time they went and did a swap, it pushed their debt situation farther into the future. so they did not just a once or twice, but 23 times in jefferson county. these politicians contumely kept pushing the debt in the future, adding more debt because it costs something. by the end, it exploded. of "rollingbi s

know it just needs to fall apart essentially like the soviet union which i fully expected to now matt taibbi recently penned a piece for rolling stone magazine about the decades long rigging of the municipal financial market by a handful of big banks including j.p. morgan goldman sachs bank of america your thoughts yeah i didn't read this article but of course we know about jefferson county and alabama and how they went in there but they didn't know what goldman sachs what it did with greece again it goes back to the same strategy playbook that we discussed earlier which is you go in to a community and in this game is as old as humanity itself as old as civilization or money systems are you go and you load you load your enemy up with that and then you strangle and then you make them do what you want and that war you just buy their assets on the cheap i mean that's that's what's going on and you know i was reading about this few years ago talking about how the u.s. debt is illegitimate right this debt was forced upon us to bail out the banks which caused the crisis in the first place so at so

really know what's going on with them they've been described by very smart people i think i've heard matt taibbi describe that as a black box and you don't know what's inside the that is so much risk that if anything was to really go wrong that would cause systemic risk which would mean that the government come on they would step in they would step in with a bailout so that enables the banks to take outsized risk that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do the too big to fail banks yeah absolutely i guess we got to talk to you about one of those things that the sunshine just keeps on shining over wells fargo they posted their second quarter earnings as well four point six billion for the second quarter that's ten straight months of growth for them i think they're up seventeen percent this year from last time this year. what's the takeaway from all this. you know this is interesting christine because wells fargo unlike some of the other banks that maybe have gotten mired in these in these derivatives and in these kind of complex trading debacle as wells fargo on the other hand reportedly has stuck

at the fulcrum of the libor scandal something we just talked about with the always fascinating matt taibbikelleher. it might be the biggest of them all. libor rates sit at the foundation of the $800 trillion debt market. simply put, this is huge. second, chase is now accused by its own brokers of selling its home-grown mutual fund products to investors as opposed to those of other companies even if they knew the other products were better. why? of course. chase would make more money on the fees and the commissions with its own products. if true, this would be a straight forward violation of fiduciary duty. something we call fraud. finally, of course, the london derivatives trade that diamond dismissed as a tempest in the teapot ballooned to $2 billion in losses and now may be $9 billion. diamond is alleged to have been in direct contact with the very brokers who handled the high-risk trades. if he was, what did he ask? what was he told? and when? and what follow-up did he, as a manager, demand? simply, did he know more than has been presented to us? of course, diamond still refuses to admi

matt taibbi is bursting out of his skin waiting to be outraged. tell us exactly what's going on during that. one of my favorite members of congress talking to us about healthcare, the constitution, supreme court justice roberts is going to be a fascinating show. >> sounds terrific as usual. thank you, eliot. >> thank you. >> when we come back, we've got a congressman who specially gift wraps from the same brother from another mother guise. i don't want to give it away. it is the defining issue of this era. the candidate with the most money, does win. this is a national crisis. >>we talk a lot about the influence of money in politics. >> if there's one thing congressman mick mulvaney from south carolina does not like, it is earmarks. here he is talking to conservative freedom works and making fun of them. watch. >>they didn't just decide a couple of years ago that maybe the earmarks are a bad thing. they looked at what was happening back home and said you know it used to be if i got money for that banjo museum, it would be -- it would make it more

taibbi. >> reporter: they're being laid to rest. rebecca, a local mother of two in her own hometown. >> rebecca was full of life and light. >> reporter: matt mcquinn buried in ohio, john larry more iowa. jonathan blunk to be buried in reno. jessica ghawi in san antonio. >> you don't know how long you have here ro. >> reporter: these are days spent healing. >> i was holding on to my neck. to staunch the bleeding. >> reporter: and reflecting on what brought them to this theater at just the wrong time. a theater whose owners are now offering to pay funeral expenses for those killed. for barton and boyhood pal, it was a bicycle trip to discover america. 3,000 miles so far east to west, stopping on day 44 for just one day in aurora. movie tickets for themselves and a local pal, and then madness. >> what happened kind of is the worst part, you know, of humanity. >> reporter: as for the suspect, james holmes, his lawyer revealed he had been in contact with a university psychiatrist while his academic career fell apart, and while police say he assembled an arsenal. meanwhile, greg, the crossmaker after oklahoma city, after columbine, has been aske

taibbi, centennial, colorado, for us. thanks. >>> still ahead, as we continue along the way on a saturday night, before that stunning finish here today, we get to listen to what michael phelps said to matt lauer about some rough personal struggles about being on top of the world, possible clues to what happened in the pool here today. >>> and then later, the queen's show-stopping entrance. just the latest big surprise in what has been the re-branding of the royal family. before copd... i took my son fishing every year. we had a great spot, not easy to find, but worth it. but with copd making it hard to breathe, i thought those days might be over. so my doctor prescribed symbicort. it helps significantly improve my lung function starting within five minutes. symbicort doesn't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden symptoms. with symbicort, today i'm breathing better. and that means...fish on! symbicort is for copd including chronic bronchitis and emphysema. it should not be taken more than twice a day. symbicort may increase your risk of lung infections, osteoporosis, and some eye problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. with copd, i

matt. thank you. back at home, the investigation into the friday's colorado shooting is moving forward, this as survivors got a special visit from "the dark knight rises" star christian bale. mike taibbi is in colorado again for us this morning. mike, good morning to you. >> reporter: good morning, savannah. one sign of how much people return the country are hurting for aurora, the state victims' fund that's been set up has reached $2 million with warner brothers, the studio that produced the film the victims were watching making its own sizable contribution. gun sales here are surging even as the investigation continues into how the lone suspect could have caused so much misery. batman star christian bale came to counsel unannounced to visit injured victims, victims' families and first responders. it was the posted cell phone photos that got the story out. >> he was very nice, very sincere. he wasn't there about himself. he was just there to show his support and that people cared. >> the theater where "the dark knight rises" may never open again. there and at the apartment home of suspect james holmes, front-runners and fbi agents continued the collection of evidence. they will also