A possible military option if necessary on the home front from promised a new level of protectionism against mexico and china but the usa is increasingly buying more foreign goods and producing less of its own the trade deficit with mexico is up by eleven percent the trade deficit with china is up by seven percent unemployment is low but so are wages there is record amounts of Household Debt in the United States right now and Retail Stores are closing across the country and heres one thing that didnt change between trump and previous administrations during the election trump talked about Getting Along Better with russia and his detractors called him a kremlin puppet but now one year later things which we washington and moscow are about the same as they were before bad their action by the. Congress to put these sanctions in place from the way they do thats the decision they made that made it a very overwhelming way. To accept we may be at an all time low and. Terms of relationship with russia this is built for a long period of time now trump promised to drain the swamp of corruption we are going to drill. Washington d. C. But it looks like that swamp is still here and deeper than ever policy stay the same our Foreign Policy is the same the Monetary Policy in the Federal Reserve is the same spending as the same deficits are still rising so there has not been any significant changes in the direction of our country which i had been hoping for is that he has perpetuated so many of our deeply flawed policies especially in Foreign PolicyForeign Policy is a little bit more confusing im very pleased hes at least made an honest effort and hes reduced the amount of regulations and i think thats one of the reasons weve had an economic boost. And that is that is good and hes made an effort to reduce taxes thats war from perfect but lower taxes less regulation is good and the marketplace is reflecting that oh and dont forget about that wall were going to build the war we have no choice we have no choice. Yeah hows that going to have some wonderful. Prototypes that have been put out now despite the president s ambitious timetable for construction it remains unclear when the wall might actually go up on the surface donald trump looks like a president like no other hes allowed brash he doesnt care about Political Correctness is even turned twitter into an official white house channel but if you look a little bit closer and judge him by his political actions hes a little bit more the rule than the exception. Artsy new york. Meanwhile the growing number of us republican congressman and demanding the release of a top secret intelligence document they believe it to tells the abuse of surveillance powers under the obama administration. I had that same shock feeling i was like wait a minute this actually happened from our Justice Department and this thats how serious this is that there has been a real attempt to undermine this president and its the type of information that we need all americans to see immediately the American People deserve they must they want to know whats in this document sadly much of the Mainstream Media will mark be covering this today but in this house on this day let us know that indeed we are still one nation under god willing to protect life now the content of the secret document is unknown and its still unclear whether it will ever be released but judging from the comments made by the republicans its thought it could potentially outline a political bias within the f. B. I. And department of justice during investigations into the socalled trump russia collusion claims democrats also were quick to react on the memo denouncing its contents they call the document a profoundly misleading set of talking points which attacks the f. B. I. And gives a distorted view of the bureau the issue also made a splash on social media with the hash tag release the memo trending on twitter in the u. S. Late on friday and it wasnt long until russia was added into the mix as well after a group of research is accused alleged kremlin links accounts of pushing for the memos released on twitter they say the use of the hashtag increased hundreds fold among roughly six hundred users there monitoring well lets get the thoughts of independent journalist and commentator martin summers now mr summers good to have you on the program what do you make of the allegations that russia linked to cancer using the memo to sow division in the u. S. Well i think the russian linked account seems to have appeared from nowhere the fact that theres a very partisan situation in the us where the f. B. I. Quite likely would being used to try and undermine trumpeting as a fairly likely thing thats happened but of course both sides in a digging dirt on each other accusing each other of being russian stooge stooges and of course with the world at large what is this and if the commune creasing the bizarre and ridiculous that these allegations are being flung around in the way that they are both sides seem to be playing playing to the gallery frankly i judging by the reaction of the republicans hey do you think the memo is significant. Or think its not unlikely that elements within the f. B. I. And in these secret states in the us who are pretty hostile to the trump administered were probably trying to get involved in politics in a way that were not supposed to in the us to keep from parents and i think whats happened now is that the republicans are turning this. Probe troup on to their enemies by saying were not sure fact it looks like the democrats have been. Playing fast and loose and are not playing by the rules both sides actually probably are cheats thats what i would suggest sitting here in bristol in england thats how it looks to me that both cheats and lawyers either way for both Government Shutdown weve seen in nearly five years isnt it in the two parties just blaming each other as they who do things going to blink first. Its hard to say but of course the danger is i mean the euro contributes really was going on how marvelous the tax cuts have been for the u. S. Economy in the stock market and so on but most people dont seem to realize that while cutting taxes in the way that the administration is doing at boosting military expenditure because of threats from places like russia theyre actually given up on the idea of balancing the budget at all and of course thats actually quite good in the short run for the u. S. Stock markets the stock buybacks and so on the money thats going to the pockets of the three of the wealthiest in the society are just being used to goose up the stock market but that way that way lies a crash David Stockman who used to be reagans Economic Policy advisor is pretty clear on this and follow his stuff pretty closely the danger is that the u. S. Is basically going for broke here because they presume they print will reserve currency but as we know the petro units being developed in china the russians have got a different kind of policy on what the world financial architecture should look like you know this could all come very unstuck for the ruling class in the United States has been talked the democrats were ready to fund the wall in return for idea one illegal immigrant is not something you see likely. I think probably they will come to some kind of deal i imagine you know the Stock Brokers and hide from traders and so on presume that somebody will blink on a deal will be done in the end. I think the partisanship thats going on is very palpable. What is dismaying really is bringing the rush into this is a call of evil demon behind the scenes and thats really bad for world peace and stability you want you want the broom in class in the u. S. To have get their act together to be able to negotiate in good faith and so on but youve got a very very partisan set up in the u. S. Where neither of the two main parties are willing to compromise about basic things and you know its a train wreck happening in front of our eyes basically independent journalist and commentator martin summers thank you for joining us on r. T. And were back after this short break do you stay with us. The winner take all bent out of its a lottery mentality in america you know where are your dead and the Pharmacy Companies of course lobbies are going to washington to change the laws of a possible to all cost in america and nobody cares because it ever learned a lot as a walmart to. Get. Something that is really important. Not to be. As we say to be a community that. Was. As if you. Had power that from moscow writes dont mean to. Tell me to be unsettled communities hes. Welcome back a british student has been making headlines off to appearing on a radio show and confessing her support of communism twenty four year old fiona lolly told a b. B. C. Programme she felt communism was never given a chance to develop in the soviet union and therefore didnt actually fail the story whipped up a storm of debate over how universities are leering students to the left with one professor repeatedly quoted saying shes downplaying the crimes of stalin we spoke to her also about the story. I think its completely hypocritical and very typical of academics like him to kind of passionately you know talk about the deaths under the savior but i think this is you know very much selective outrage the media in general obviously dont paint marxism or socialism or really any kind of left wing politics in a positive light and thats because obviously in you know the media is owned by a Certain Group of people in the media is owned by a billionaire class have certain interests they want to protect i think people can think for themselves and i wouldnt take their headlines general opinion of the british population. Or perhaps its not surprising the story was seized upon it seems red alerts have been flashing in the british media more of late much was made of the Prime Minister wearing a bracelet featuring frida kahlo a communist known for her concerns about the poor and the buzz feeds finds that its felt compelled to lock down her social media account over the abuse she got after writing this she wanted communism for christmas but does the public share the red fear of the media while according to a new opinion poll nine percent of young adults view communism and the danger to the world compared that to Global Business which nearly a quarter think actually poses the biggest threat but its a cool activist george barda shared his view on the story. What one needs to remember is that anybody of my age and older in this country and certainly in the us and of course much of the west identifies communism in the soviet union and anytime like hard last or extreme left i was pretty much different aspects of the same thing in the one nine hundred fifty s. When when the soviet union was showing very significant great significant rates of Economic Growth and the mainstream Foreign Policy journalists were very much kind of writing these defensive narratives to try and explain away why the demonized system was apparently doing so well i think one needs to distinguish between the propaganda and the historical reality. Over to france now where riot police have moved in on europes largest prison firing tear gas not inmates but guards and arrest fled while the prison staff were taking part in a weeklong nationwide strike over what they say are dangerous working conditions including escalating attacks on guards elsewhere in the country the Justice Minister attempting to solve the crisis with the if the hostile welcome from angry prison workers. All employees of the prison are in a state of shock were angry because its been a week since we created a National Movement following the question right now were waiting for the measures the bosses and the Penitentiary Administration will take with respect to the management of inmates. Well a number of attacks on guards have been recorded in french prisons of late the latest incident was on friday when two guards were injured in a stabbing attack by an inmate who had reportedly been radicalized while in another jail on monday seven security staff were attacked by. And inmates according to officials the perpetrator had also been radicalized and a week ago another three guards were injured when a prisoner assaulted them with scissors and a razor blade following the incident the Prison Guards union issued a list of demands aimed at improving their working conditions theyre asking officials to create more than a thousand new jobs in french prisons as well as to fully isolate radicalised inmates theyre also calling for more Security Forces to protect the workers just mentioned the growing discontent has led to a nationwide strike on violent clashes with police. Said. The government representatives are to blame they didnt want to discuss the problem but to find a solution to our poor working conditions we demand an increase in the number of Prison Guards and also the creation of a special high security wing radicalise prisoners. We are really determined to make ourselves heard and to ensure that our demands are met and we really want work conditions to be changed especially in terms of security. While a clean up operations underway in germany after the country and other parts of europe were battered by storm frederick fine and cross winds meant the skills of pilots were tested to the max videos emerged online of what can only be described as something of an extreme landing and doff as you can see the plane takes a pummeling from the wind lurching from side to side and looking at times like you might even flip over the pilot battles against the elements every step of the way before finally touching down on the runway a safe flight although perhaps not all that enjoyable for those on board. And well be back at the top of the hour the latest headlines do join us then. Join me every thursday on the alec simon show and ill be speaking to us in the world of politics sports business and show business ill see you then. In order to overthrow a regime it does take popular discontent and Popular Mobilization but it also requires actors with in the leadership of the regime who feel that the regime is no longer serving the National Interest you need people in the military or the bureaucracy or both who are willing to see the regime change otherwise they would be able to put down a popular revolt that did not have some point at higher levels. This is boom bust broadcasting around the world from washington d. C. Im bart chilton. Coming up the north American Point conference started today in miami well head there for a report from arties Nicholas Donovan and then talk live with Jeffrey Tucker of the American Institute for economics was there. And we go to tucson not far from the border wall and talk with todd miller author of storming the wall plus well discuss the Economic Impact of Sexual Harassment in the Hospitality Industry thats all coming up but first lets get to a few headlines. The Intercontinental Exchange ice which owns the New York Stock Exchange has announced that they will join with the start up block stream to launch a data feed that will acquire information from more than fifteen Digital Currencies from around the world and deliver that data to Financial Firms the ice decision related to this Digital Currency space once considered fully on the fringe of Financial Systems shows that more mainstream financial analysts could be looking to invest in Digital Currencies and the underlying block Jane Technology which runs it in december the Chicago Board Options Exchange cboe and c. M. E. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange group started offering regulated Bitcoin Futures products. In a rare joint statement by my former agency the u. S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the securities and Exchange Commission and forstmann directors have put out a potentially statement that says potential bad actors should be on notice regarding Digital Currencies yesterday reported on Digital Currencies it would be a focus of financial regulators but today we have this joint statement and it says quote when Market Participants engage in fraud under the guise of offering Digital Instruments whether characterized as Virtual Currencies coins tokens or the like the f. C. C. And see if the city will look beyond form examine the substance of activity and prosecute violations of the federal securities and commodities laws and will continue to address violations and bring actions to stop and prevent fraud in the offer and sale of. Digital is judgment it reminds me of that scene in meet the parents with Robert De Niro and ben stiller watching you. And now we go to miami where are two years Nicholas Odonovan is at the north american coin conference nicholas whats going on there however miami has become ground zero for the Crypto Community hundreds of investors and through c. S. And experts have gathered here for the north american. Conference everything from technology. And regulation is being discussed here actually future regulation is a big topic within the crypto world some say in that regulation is necessary in order to avoid extreme volatility others say that any sort of regulation would kill the idea of a crypto currency then theres the issue of countries such as china and south korea coming down hard on pick point but this is a very new order and many investors are approaching bitcoin perma lets say romantic point of view hoping to hit a big jackpot in a very short period of time experts say the education is the case lets take a listen to cryptocurrency is something that i know is going to be here for a while its going to evolve watching is the Current Technology might be an evolution of that technology over time im sure theres people here that are possibly even working on it it all comes down to like the education piece people need to learn what theyre doing and its going to continuously evolve so theyre getting continuously need to be learning whats happening how its happening and. Learn from the people that are involved so on the one hand we have the debates around in the u. K. Going what could we eventually buy with it should we read. To later on not how could bitcoin or other cryptocurrency help start a company then theres a more immediate approach hows that coin behaving in the markets obviously twenty seventeen was then an amazing year for the big call and it went from nine hundred u. S. Dollars per bitcoin in january to about twenty thousand dollars per bitcoin in december twenty seventh pain right now we more or less in the middle around the eleven thousand dollar mark but this is a very volatile own new world but despite this bumpy ride many here a very optimistic lets take a look. You know you get a lot of people that are selling. The smart investors the ones that have been doing this for a while im listening to them there and theyre not panicking so im in it for the long were going to look at other you know all coins other technology i think this is the last year of like crazy volatility were going to have we have these big players big banks that are getting involved in you know regulation but the future of bitcoin itself is so volatile so up in the air that one many here are already preparing for the next years Conference Many say that by this Time Next Year they will be no big going Nicolas Odonovan r. T. For more from ly m e were joined by one of the attendees and the editorial director for the American Institute for Economic ResearchJeffrey Tucker jeffrey welcome back thanks for joining us again whats your take on the happenings there has so Toshi Nakamoto the mystery man appeared or won it would anybody even know. I dont know he he might be here i think and ill be able to you know. Now were not going to talk that way. Hows it going what are you going to wear there its been an amazing conference you know i know from the organizers they expected maybe six hundred forty two hundred people registered and at the last minute they released thirty takeouts which they sold for twenty five hundred dollars each so thats thats a level were talking about here and its been an interesting crowd because you do have intellectuals you do have old world wall street people who are trying to figure out the sector and find out whether what the actions of weve got regular regular investors i had a guy come up to me and say listen you know i used to drive a truck because of you i watched one of your speeches and i moved into the because space now he said im a very rich man and he had tears in as i was when he was talking to me so you know youve got people from from all kinds actually most of the presenters have been merchants of course floating new ideas new i c o os all over the place so that was most of the presentations by own talk i went back to economic fundamentals i tried to explain what is the source of value. Because of all these Crypto Assets what is the purpose and what is the biggest threat they face thats what that was what my talk was and what did you tell them jeffrey about the biggest the biggest threat. I think you talked about earlier on the show its i think the biggest threat is the regulators going after peoples property what jeffrey between you know Market Regulation where youre you know making sure somebody doesnt mean to pilate a market and then forwarding innovation i mean i mean well that you know writing code and stuff yeah thats thats the problem i think the sector is capable of regulating itself in fact i know it is i think the other day we talked about the mt gox thing thats never going to happen again its decentralize theres theres Due Diligence being done by all the top investors in the space there are a lot of scams theres a lot of scams in every sector you know but i think the sector is capable of regulating itself and the regulators have been an annoyance now for years in this space are not actually achieving anything what the what the typically trying to do is to get this new Cutting Edge Technology to behave as if its some Old World Technology and its and its been very costly for for business its made the sector less competitive is driven out this is true its driven a lot of innovation assets outside of the United States ive talked to so many people at this event who want nothing whatsoever to do with any u. S. Bank or any of us and to take anything to do with any us jurisdiction because they assume that i could be favorable to crypto and to me that is crazy thats crazy i mean if the u. S. Regulators had any brains that would be celebrating not issuing these annoying endless press releases dont do bad things dont engage in front right we know we get it right this is these are just weird weird threats that are just chilling the investor climate for a crypto in the u. S. Years ago i mean America Thing was two years ago i did a op ed for c n b c and it it i wrote it perhaps the digital revolution. Should take a key from the development of the the internet where really government was a clinton years of course sort of pulled back and didnt institute all these regulations to try to fuel inject innovation is that something you think should be sort of adhere to here listen i think that is an outstanding point the reason it wasnt regulator you talk about basically the early ninetys up to the end of ninety nine maybe early two thousand the reason it wasnt regulated because nobody to talk at that seriously the thought of this is these are nice pictures you can you can look at on a computer screen thats all and most people thought about nobody was worried about a well a chat room right no and no and i guess the first time anybody got really involved in this was the whole microsoft the ridiculous you know wars over the bread the browser wars you know that if you trust decision which is what went on for ten years by which time you know windows that are lost its monopoly and move regulators are not smart enough to move as quickly as you markets move and we saw we think a move quickly in the in the ninetys of the internet i mean the crypt the world is crazy i mean ive been coming to this conference in north america become a conference now for i guess four years. Most of the vendors that are exhibiting here are gone by the next year and theres all new technologies there are things going on today that would have been on the bill last year last year and thats how fast its moving jeffrey thank you for spending time with us i know its a big ask as youve got some distillery a dinner at a mansion but we really appreciate you spending the time with Jeffrey Tucker thanks for being here and enjoy your rest youre tied down in florida my pleasure thank you. Time now for a brief pause for the promotional cause but stick around because when we get back we go live just north of the border to tucson arizona where well speak with todd miller the author of storming the wall plus well discuss the Economic Impact of Sexual Harassment in the workplace with diana with mirrors as we go to break here are the numbers at the closing bell. You have a winner take all mentality its a lottery mentality in america you know what are are your dead and the pharmaceutical companies of course a lobbyist going to washington to change the laws of a possible to settle all cost in america and nobody cares because it ever learned a lot as a walmart today they said lets do it again. And. Something to these green bulletin for. Not to be. As we say to be a community