This is real money. Youre the most important part of the show so join our live conversation for the next half hour on twitter aj real money, real money, and facebook. Com aj real money. The home price climb is starting to slow down. The s and p come composite index that showed home prices nationwide were 13. 2 higher in january than a year ago. Thats a good jump. But its lower than the even bigger rises that were seeing much through 2013. Take a look at the monthtomonth changes and you see that prices fell in january for the theirs month running runningfor the third month running. The crazy weather is at least partly to blame for the slowdown. We saw the price drops in cities hardest hit by snow. Chicago, detroit, minneapolis and boston, all of these saw monthly drops although they were less than 1 . Februarys weather was no better, and were seeing confirmation of that in fays home sales, they fell 3. 3 compared to january. But spring could see a housing rebound partially because of that pent up demand from home buyers. Todays reading showed Consumer Attitudes surging this month to the highest level in six years. One thing that could moderate home price gangs could be mortgage rates. The National Average currently above 4. 3 is. 2 of a percent lower than january. But most believe that the rates will steam upward. Ultimately that could be a good thing because it will help buyers who might otherwise be priced out of the market to buy a home. Thats good for the Housing Market and the wider economy. But Robert Schiller one of three american economist who is won the 2013 nobel prize for economics and also a professor of economic s at Yale University, bob, thank you for being with us. Hi, ali. This is one ever these stories if you read the headline you may miss the news. More than 13 jump in home prices, that continues to sound like a very, very healthy market. But after a few months of weakening month over month sales does that concern you . Yeah, well, theres always risk. This is a speculative market. Not the government that sets it. Its a market price. Yes, when it starts slowing down you worry that it might continue to slow down. Weve seen this kind of pattern before where its going up and then slows down and then it goes down. The Housing Market is different from the stock market. Its more smooth curves than jagged jumps. I imagine home prices will continue to go up, but there is always a risk that there will be a down turn. You know, you pointed out, you and i discussed this before so much of the strength that weve seen in the last couple of years in the Housing Market has been helped by these Major Companies that have been buying up lowpriced inventory and renting out those houses as opposed to home buyers who are buying its homes. One there are two things happening, one is there are people wanting to rent so it creates a business of owneroccupied rentals. Some of the investors are just in that business. But other investors are in there because of the upward momentum. They see prices going up over 13 a year, they want that. I think that people in the investing community have learned in recent years that there is more momentum in the Housing Market than the stock market. So these people are coming in for a different reason, its speculative. The worry is that this latter kind of investor is unstable. When they see prices leveling off, they dont want to stay in it any more. That means that the market mightit might be evolving to a more speculative in the event of sudden surprises than weve seen in the past. That takes away from your idea that the Housing Market is supposed to be smoother than the stock market. But if investors are driving some part of this market then well see more volatility in it than we otherwise might have. We think its good if markets are efficient. The whole idea is to bring more investors in, and they can bet against a boon or take position against buying a house. We still live in a world where home prices are driven mostly byyou might call them amateur investors. People maybe they never bought aous before, and its their first time. Theyre not professional the way wall street whizzes are. Whats the smooth number over time . What should the american Housing Market overtime return . Well, i can tell you what it has returned over the last century, and in terms of ca Capital Gains in real terms, its about zero. This is a popular misconception that home price gas up. This misconception helps drive the bubble, i believe. I think housing is a great investment if you want a house. You get the dividend in kind. Its a dividend of having a place to live. Right, it is a big part of your spend, housing, so if some how you can make the right decision about when to buy a house and be in it for 10 or 15 years, while not an investment its a good way to spend your money. They used to say reach, reachbuy a bigger house than you need because you wont regret it. This is the story of ten years ago when the market was booming. People thought, yeah, it will just keep going up. Let me put all the money i can put together and put it in the Housing Market, but we learned that that is not a reliable theory because home prices fell sharply after 6 00. When i interview people the smarter the people are, the less likely they are to predict what is going to happen in the future. I always try to get you to tell me what you think is going to happen, but here is the question, and ill try to trick you into it this time. If youre in the market to buy a house, should you be concerned while the the prices may be goig down, they could keep going up, and what about interest rates. Interest rates are important. If you sign a 30year mortgage rate, youre locked in, of course you can refinance but that determines your prices way our out. Mortgage rates are low now by historical standards. I think it looks like its still a good time to buy a house. Even though i worry, but because home prices might fall, they look like theyre going to go up. The future market at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange predicte predicted 2013, stand has 5 a year home price increase. So that sounds like its probably not going to fall, not a lot, like it did the last time. We went through a Real Adventure in home prices with the financial crisis, i dont expect to see that again. Its always a pleasure to see you. Thank you for joining us once again on our show. Robert schiller, professor of economics at Yale University and our favorite nobel laureate. Americas energy boom has uncovered a complicated problem. In big cities like new york you have layers of pipelines from water mains, phones, electric that makes for a muddle and expensive process of removing and replacing natural gas line. More on the crumbling infrastructure coming up later, the strategy that changed everything in the american workplace. Laws that still help keep you safe on the job. Al Jazeera America presents a global finacial powerhouse the Roman Catholic church, they have an enormous amount of power accusations of corruption. There is a portion of the budget that takes care of all the clerical abuse issues. Now we follow the money and take you inside the vaticans financial empire. When it comes to money, this is one of the sloppiest organizations on earth. Al Jazeera America presents. Holy money only on al Jazeera America businesses are booming for companies siling natural gas but americas infrastructure is not keeping up. A deadly gas leak made that clear in east harlem when an explosion leveled two Apartment Buildings and killed eight people. The hidden danger just below the surface old Gas Pipelines that are prone to leaks. Fixing the problem will cost tens of billions of dollars and could take decades. Fred donnelly, a real estate executive in manhattan, the choice of whether to convert this Upper East SideApartment Building from using oil to natural gas seemed an obvious one. Lower fuel prices and operating costs along with the promise of cleaning energy sealed the deal. He made the switch at a cost of 3 million. So far this building has achieved approximately 47 savings by converting to natural gas. With the recent energy boon, many city businesses and governments are looking to make the switch. From what weve seen and the requests weve gotten, this seems to be the wave of the future. Theyre bringing more gas online, reducing cost and feeding consumer demand across the northeast. Were it not for the pipeline in a few years we would not be able to meet that demand. The decision to convert the building is largely a financial one. And switching at times can post problems in older cities like boston, philadelphia, and new york where many pipelines date back to the turn of the last century. New york city has hundredyearold cast iron pipes. These pipes are much more likely to leak over newer plastic piping. That is one of the concerns to the conversion of natural gas. One spark is all it takes for an explosion after a leak. And more than 6,000 miles of pipelines carrying natural gas run under new york city. Half of them were installed before 1940 when cast iron and unprotected steel were the order of the day, and that raises questions about how well the nations infrastructure will handle the energy boon. Weve got to reduce the leaks that happen through the pipeline system. Reporter in big cities like new york you have layers of underground pipeline from water mains, phone, electric that all make for a muddled and expensive process of removing and replacing natural gas lines. In manhattan it costs 200,000 per foot. But in rural areas it drops to 300. Con edison said replacing all of its old new york gas mains could take decades and cost opinions of dollars. Efforts to replace all leakprone gas pipes in philadelphia could take as long as 80 years. In baltimore it could take almost twice that time. And yet without those upgrades soon analysts say the nations emphasis on gas may bring more incidents like what happened in east harlem. Investigators say the adjacent gas main was 125 years old. David ariosto, al jazeera, new york. That makes you think. Today on twitter and facebook ive been asking you, americas infrastructure is crumbling, i have to tell you this is probably one of the more popular questions ive asked. So many answers. Brian wrote on facebook we had to shut down one bridge for three weeks and a portion of another bridge for another weeks as we scrambled for funding. And another tweet, i live in michigan and driving the roads is like driving through a bombedout city. Dplus is the grade given to americas infrastructure system by the American Society of Civil Engineers which represent more than 145,000 members of the Civil Engineering profession. The Group Estimates the country needs to spend a hefty 3. 6 trillion on bridges, roads waterways and more by 2020. The senior managing director said the economic benefits are worth the daunting price tag. He joins me from washington. It was your team, casey, that developed this report card which we lean on a lot in this country. Whether its natural gas or its electricity that goes out after a storm or its watermain leaks or its a bridge collapsing, these are all things we as americans expect to be there on a regular basis. This is no awareness of the ongoing maintenance required in these basic infrastructure areas. Well, ali, that could be one of the problems were facing, lack of appreciation for the maintenance, these projects and facilities require. It is something that the profession is looking at more long term. When you build infrastructure its often for 50, 75, 100 years. People are looking at life cycle cost. What will it cost to build something and maintain it over a long period of time. If there are ways to do Something Different on the front end, maybe pay more then dramatically reduce Maintenance Cost on the outyears that is something that we should look at. There tends to be shortterm horizon in the political world. People who are looking two and four years down the road. You mention the economy, and we did these failure to act economic reports. What we found for an additional investment of 157 billion per year which is 1 of the u. S. Gdp, between now and 2020 that would protect 3 trilliondollar in gdp. 3. 5 million jobs and 1. 1 trillion in trade value. When you look at what it protects and gains, you talk about businesses that get lost, people who are idling their time because of roadways and railways that are not working. Economic study done in this area. Really, nothing is getting done on the federal government side. There are infrastructure bills and projects and publicprivate partnerships going on the state and local level in this country. Yes, there are. The states are stepping up in the transportation sector alone. There is a lot of focus because there are so many investments that have been made and still need to be made and people deal with transportation on a daily basis. Weve seen a number of states raise their gas taxes, user fees, other states have adjusted sales tax and other people have recognized the transportation infrastructure is so ubiquitous in the economy, there are a lot of ways to do this. You mentioned the private sector Going Forward i think the question will be how much more private investment will be part of the solution in the United States. Other parts of the world as you pointed out many times are ahead of the United States in publicprivate partnerships, i think we still have room to go there. Casey, good to talk to you there. Casey, senior managing director of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Another huge acquisition by facebook announcing it will by Virtual Technology oculous, considered to be the next frontier in wearable tech. Its the leader with the head set th the oculous riff. In a press release zuckerberg said that mobile is the platform of today and were getting ready for the platform of tomorrow. It has the the chance to create the most social platform ever. Most americans today have no idea what its like to work in a sweat shop, and there is a reason for that. Al jazeeras Investigative Unit has tonights exclusive report. Stories that have impact. That make a difference. That open your world. This is what we do. America tonight weeknights 9et 6pt only on al Jazeera America these protestors have decided that today they will be arrested these people have chased a president from power, theyve torn down a state. Whats clear is that people dont just need protection, they need assistance. 103 years ago fire broke out in a new york city sweat shop that took 146 lives and ended up changing the history of workers safety laws in america. Im talking about the triangle shirt factory fire that started in the upper floors of a building on march 25, 1911. Firefighters rushed to the scene but were unable to rescue scores of immigrant women and girls. Doors were locked by the factories owners to keep workers from taking breaks or leaving early. The tragic loss of life sparked outrage and mourning throughout the city. The real crime of the triangle fire was that it was entirely preventable. Safety precautions existed at the time but they werent the law and many businesses opposed them. But in the years that followed the fire new york and other states passed laws requiring mandatory fire drills, sprinklers, unlocked doors during work hours and the triangle shirt Waste Strategy led to child labor laws and others reforms that made working in america safer. We live in an age where businesses complain of needless and costly government regulations. Many of those complaints mirror those of 103 years ago. Have we forgotten the lessons from the triangle fire. Were joined now from los angeles, donald, thank you for being with us. Thanks for having me. The women, the workers who died in the triangle factory werehad seen in the two years prior to that a movement to try and get safer working conditions. The triangle factory owners resisted those movements saying it will cripple them financially. Thats exactly right, which is a standard story, unfortunately, disaster is what creates change, and people had to die to do that. But the Real Estate Industry in new york, the factory owners in new york at that time consistently opposed any regulations or standards for basic things as you mentioned, fire escapes, sprinklers, opened doors, and they fought them several years after the fire. But ultimately you and your article really layout very well how pressure was then maintained and laws came into place. What are some of the things that we take for granted now as Workplace Safety laws that evolved from the movement to change things for workers . Well, just starting from building safety first we now have mandatory fire safety codes, sprinklers, things like that. In the cottongarment industry we have outlawed and saved thousands of workers lives who sufferesuffered from cotton dusn dust seize. In our coal mines while many people still die on the job are as far safer than years ago because of a consistent steady stream of newer and stronger laws. There are many things that we take for granted in Workplace Safety and Consumer Protections as well. Yet just a few years ago we had another coal mine incident where it was found that they had broken regulations they ignored regulations, and there tends to still be resistence when companies are making lots of money to say lets create the safest environment we can for our workers. Some that have is political. There are people in congress who are constantly pushing back on regulations to keep people safe. When you say regulation thats an abstraction. Its important to talk about what is going on. If a coal miner dies because of unsafe conditions or explosion in a mine because of coal dust that was fought taken carry off or because it was not up to code thats responsibility for the owner to deal with that, a and the responsibility of the government to set laws so that we make sure that everybody who goes to work comes home safe. As you say, owners of industry say they claim that theyll take care of it, but theyll produce it and its in their interest to have a safe workplace but Historical Records show that too mean die and to create a level Playing Field so good employers are not suffering a disadvantage through the marketplace. I hope everyone reads your article on the huffington post. Thanks. Weve been talking russias annex indicatio annexation of crimea. The u. S. And rush do not trade economically speaking, but there is a place where they do intersect and thats oil. Russia is the third biggest producer in the world after saudi arabia and the United States. And russias main oil cop which run by the company is ran with exxonmobil. Exxon touches new many ways. You may buy gas from an exxonmobil station, and even if you dont there is a good chance that the gas you do buy comes from exxonmobil. The relationship between americas Second Biggest Company and the kremlins own oil company is to say the least cosy. So are american oil titans attempting to influence American Action or inaction in russia . Thats something that my team has been looking into. Well talk more about this tomorrow. Ill ali velshi. Thanks for joining us. Unfortunately we didnt find any signs of life and didnt locate anyone alive. Thats the disappointing part. The death toll climbs as the search effort becomes more bleak. Friends and families affected by one of the deadliest mudslides come together for support. There may be clues in the search for Malaysia Airlines flight mh370. 100 new images from a french satellite. Oh, god. Oh, my d