>> like you have rarely seen him on race and politics. do you think america is more or less racist since the inauguration of the first black president? >> i think what barack obama is going through the race. >> michael jackson. >> i watched him transform himself from the child he was to the figure he became. all those facelifts and distortions. i found it to be a very sad, sad journey. >> this is "piers morgan tonight." good evening, we start with breaking news tonight. a live shot from downtown new york. the clock is ticking. a potential confrontation of the group occupy wall street. they have to clear out by 7:00 tomorrow morning to clean up. they say it's an excuse to get them out. the united autoworkers union is going to show up. my next guest knows more about this than anybody else and why they are so fired up. it's michael lewis. what do you make of all this occupy wall street? are they right? do you know what they are protesting about? do they know what they are protesting about? >> nobody put a fine point on it but it's not hard to see why people might be outraged by wall street. i mean, it is incredible, really, what's happened in society. you have a private sector that the banking system basically went insane. it generated the conditions for the financial crisis. got bailed out by the taxpayers. all the wall street firms out of business. then restored to health. they promptly set about attempts to reform them. against this, there is a backdrop of rising dispair and worse unemployment prospects for young people. it does surprise me. it's hard to see right now where it goes because the minute, of course the minute the demands become specific, some part of the group is probably alienated. i can absolutely understand the outrage. i think the thing has legs because it's justified. it's just a question of how it gets -- how the anger gets directed. >> clearly, i mean your view is one that i share, the anger directed at the way that wall street got away with it and the responsibility of what happened with the financial crisis. that is a real scandal. nobody has been held to account. like you say, i have been reading your book, "boomerang." you look at goldman sachs and it's all right for them, they god bailed out and are giving great big bonuses again. the public is left unemployed and homeless and suffering. >> yes, take it even one step further. that is, these firms were rescued because they were said to be and seemed to be too big to fail. they have gotten bigger and more dangerous to the system since then so that the problem hasn't been sorted out. it's not as if they were a run on goldman sachs tomorrow and they looked like they were going to collapse and the government could let it go. it's a very strange situation. you have socialism for the capitalists. they are backstopped by the government. they can do what they do because the government is there to back them up if something goes wrong. you have social support for elites for the best people in society and at the same time, you have red and tooth and claw capitalism for everyone else. that's the sense of unfairness that gives rise. i mean, i feel it and i'm well off. i can only imagine what it feels like to be 20 years old, lots of student loans and no job prospects and wonder why the world is the way it is. so, to me, it's a very interesting social movement because it isn't half baked. it's fully baked. there are real reasons for people to be on the streets. kind of a question, why now. the answer is, the pain had to accumulate to the point people felt they needed to do something about it. i think for awhile, after the financial crisis, people thought we can go back to normal. it's clear we can't. >> how bad do you think the situation really is. just today, harrisburg in pennsylvania declared themselves bankrupt. when whole towns declare themselves as bankrupt, this is a sign it's pretty serious, isn't it? >> um, yes, but i'm not sure what a bankruptcy of harrisburg means. i say this, if you look at where the united states is vulnerable in the way that europe is vulnerable, vulnerable to a collapse in faith in the financial markets in the united states to the point where people won't loan money to go about their business. it is at the local level. the federal government, you know, in a state of extreme paralysis and declining to raise the debt ceiling suffered a downgrade of its debt. awhile back, standard and poor downgraded from aaa to aa. the financial markets responded to that by saying, rushing into u.s. treasury bonds. it's a strange situation. to some extent, the worse the federal government manages affairs the more people will lend to the treasury because it is relatively less risky. at the local level, with states and municipalities, it's not true. anytime whispers begin about defaults in the municipal bond market, investors flee. it seems to be, the crisis seems to be a financial problem. it's become increasingly social and political. what you see on the ground, i mean in my home state of california, for example, yes, we have a bankrupt city called vallejo but we have bigger cities flirting with bankruptcy. whether or not they declare it is almost immaterial. they can't afford the services they need to provide. you have degrade dags of public life. you have them cutting police and fire departments by half, making the world less safe. i think people are feeling that. it's slow. i mean it's a difficult story to perceive moment-to-moment because the pace of change is glacial. >> it sounds like an extraordinary thing to contemplate. isn't america basically bust financially? >> well, america has been living beyond its means for a generation. so, bust is the point where greece is, right? that's the point where people decide you will never pay it back, so they won't lend you more. but, until it gets to that point, until the chinese, for example, won't buy our treasury bonds, we are not bust. we are living on borrowed time. to me, the unsettling thing, what is scary to contemplate is this isn't as some cast it, a sort of dysfunction at the top of society. dysfunction with political elites. this isn't a matter of having elected the wrong people to do our business. the problem is that the american people seem to be getting what they want. the polls show what people want in public services but not to pay for them. i's a matter of public attitudes that need to shift. the only way that happens is that we do actually flirt with being bust. i don't see anything between us in being bust. >> what do you see as politics. clearly, the next election in america is going to be fought on the economy in various ways. when you look at the gop runners it looks like mitt romney and herman cain are pulling away. do you believe barack obama can win a second term or will it literally come down to what are the jobless figures and the credit rating of america? where do you see this politically? >> you have to accept that like everyone else in the world when i answer that question, i'm just guessing. i mean nobody knows. as you know, all sorts of things could happen to change that have nothing to do with the economy. i mean, what if there are terrorist attacks in the united states. there are all kind of factors that may enter into the election that we have yet, we can't major don't imagine. strictly, if the election is fought, strictly on the economy and the economy is the way it is now, i think when it comes to a general debate between barack obama and whoever the republican nominee is that the republican nominee is not going to look good because they don't have anything to say. obama has made, what seems to me, a clearly sensible proposal of a large short term stimulus to create demand in the economy. we are suffering from inadequate demand. it is a classic case where the government steps in. the responsible way is to have a short term stimulus and actually seem to be or actually sorting out our long term entitlements problem. but obama's proposal is in the water in congress. is it because republicans have, they don't like it. the republican nominee isn't going to like it. what is he going to say. they say okay, mitt romney, you disapprove of barack obama's plan to fix the economy, what is yours? his plan is not, i think it's going to sound like awe stairty to people. i'm bullish on obama. it would be unusual for a president to get reelected in this economic climate, but he's going to have a pretty compelling point to make. >> it's been an unusual climate. when we come back after the break, i want to talk about why a bunch of greek monks may be to blame for the mayhem. ♪ [ slap! slap! slap! slap! slap! ] [ male announcer ] your favorite foods fighting you? fight back fast with tums. calcium rich tums goes to work in seconds. nothing works faster. ♪ tum tum tum tum tums h. caltrate delivers 1200 milligrams of calcium and 800 iu of vitamin d plus minerals. women need caltrate. caltrate helps women keep moving because women move the world. my guest, michael lewis. your book, "boomerang" tells your adventures. iceland, ireland to greece and tells horrifying stories of financial collapse in each of those countries. what made you do this? why did you go looking for whatever you found? >> there were a couple reasons. i was working on my previous book about the u.s. financial crisis and realized it was only part of the story. effectively what happened in the run up to the financial crisis is societies had been allowed to tap credit they shouldn't have been allowed to tap. they were left to do what they wanted to do with it. the temptations in the housing bubble and the subprime mortgage bubble. in other places, the story was different. the money was a way into the places. in addition, it was really clear that the financial crisis was more than one act. act one was lehman brothers going down in 2008. that, effectively what happened was the governments around the world stepped in and basically guaranteed their banking system. the banks are too big to fail. when they did that, they accepted the fact they would have to cover the losses of the banks. one of the characters i interviewed was a hedge fund manager in dallas named kyle bass. he said look at it this way. if you add the banking losses on to the existing debts of these countries, there's some countries that can't afford the bill. the countries are going to be what goes down next, like falling dominos. we had bets in place against iceland, greece, ireland, france and when you looked at that scenario, who is what we are in now, you saw that the not only would countries have trouble paying back their debts but the effect on the global financial system could be much worse. the last time we got out of this, we got out because the governments are credible. the banks screwed up. they are bankrupt but we are behind them. you can still invest money in them. what happens when the governments themselves are not credible. that's what we are living through now. that's why. i mean when greece goes down, all of a sudden, it has potentially devastating effect on lots of other places. >> what is amazing in this book is the story of greece. it seems to fall on the shoulders of some monks who are trying to raise money and they end up raising hundreds of millions of dollars and basically bankrupting greece. tell me about this. >> no, it's an amazing story. this is actually the trigger mechanism in greece. two years ago roughly when greece acknowledged that its books weren't what people thought. they had their deficits and debts were greater. the reason it happened is the previous conservative government fell and was replaced bay new government. what caused them to fall was a scandal. monks at the monastery in the north of greece who don't venture off their peninsula much. it's a gorgeous and strange place. mt. athos is a holy place only for men. they don't even let female animals on the island except for cats. they had a monastery to repair. these places are spectacular. they look like italian hill towns. they had a rubble of a monastery. they needed lots and lots of money to fix it up. the way they did it was they went through the vaults and found they had thousand-year-old deeds to the property. they got the government to recognize their rights north of greece. then they went to the government and swapped this for lots of valuable commercial real estate. the scandal is why the government did this. the exact number, i'm not sure. between 100 million and 1 billion. what the monks made on the transactions. that scandal is what caused the government to fall, the new government come in and say oh my god, it's so much worse than anybody knew. >> michael, michael. let me jump in. when you have monks behaving like this, hasn't the whole world lost their entire moral compass? >> well, you probably give monks too much credit to start with. monks have not always been well behaved people. i say it in defense of the monks. i went to the monastery and spent a little time. i became quite fond of them. i think that -- it's not as if they were taking the billion dollars to live high on the hog. all they wanted to do was rebuild their place to set up there. they were living very, very awe stair lives. in fact, the monks, i thought were moral example to the rest of greece. they were well liked like every greece person. they thought it was okay to go in and get what they could out of the government. this is a common greek problem. the greeks treat them like a pinata like goodies and everyone takes a whack at it. the monks, unlike the rest of greeks had a collaborative spirit. they were doing it for the glory of their monastery rather than their greed. i thought, actually very funny, i had an e-mail from a harvard professional saying they want to do a case study on the monks. they look like a well run enterprise. >> maybe we should find some monks and send them down to wall street. after the break, i want to talk to you about baseball, about "money ball." i saw the movie last week. >> three players. >> yeah. 47. >> okay. >> actually 51. i don't know why i lied just now. capital one's new cash rewards card gives you a 50 percent annual bonus. so you earn 50 percent more cash. if you're not satisfied with 50% more cash, send it back! i'll be right here, waiting for it. who wouldn't want more cash? 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[ male announcer ] the new capital one cash rewards card. the card for people who want 50% more cash. what's in your wallet? sorry i'll clean this up. shouldn't have made it rain. i'm not a line item on a budget. and i'm definitely not a pushover. but i am a voter. so washington... before you even think about cutting my medicare and social security benefits... here's a number you should remember. 50 million. we are 50 million seniors who earned our benefits... and you will be hearing from us... today and on election day. ♪ today and on election day. ♪ we're centurylink ... we're committed to improving lives and linking americans to what matters most with honest, personal service... 5-year price-lock guarantees... consistently fast speeds ... and more ways to customize your technology. ♪ >> when i saw him next year, i keep the money. >> okay, so billy says he'll pay for it himself but when he sells him for more money next year, he's keeping the profit. okay, thank you very much. we'll call you back. come on! come on! >> money ball. brad pitt starring in your movie is cool. >> what do you want me to say, it's not cool? it's great. it's great. every now and then, a lottery ticket comes in. >> tell me about the -- when i watched the movie, i'm a big sports fan. i'm more of a cricket chap myself, but the concept, which i know is a real story behind this movie and the book was a force of good and evil. basically, what's happening is a slightly bunch of mediocre players playing. where is the flair? where is the exuberance and the passion that comes with normal sport? what are you doing to baseball? >> the passion that comes with idiot si, that's what you are looking for? >> no, what i'm saying is, it's a fine line. you hit the nail on the head. you want it to be statistical and lodgist cal. a spot from "star trek." i want the big picture. the guy you want to spend $20 million on to win the world series. >> thank god you are not running a professional sports team. here is what i would say to they because this crossed my mind as i was writing the book. it does seem from a distance true that when you are getting more and more precise in the way you measure people and their value that it seems bloodless and without passion. in fact, the story had a great deal of passion in it. the movie has a great deal of passion in it. the question is why? i think it was kind of wonderful what they did. this business of finding value in people that sometimes even the people themselves didn't know was there because the world told them they weren't valuable. it's a story of prejudices falling. so, i don't see why it's any less passionate for the players to be properly evaluated than for them not to be. it's always going to be more or at least as much art as science and predicting how cricket players or baseball players or any athlete is going to perform is going to be this, it's going to be -- it's an essentially unpredictable thing. to get better at it, nothing wrong with that. as you kind of put your finger on it, when you are now managing a sports team and you make a mistake, it's a $20 million mistake. there was a time not that long ago it was a $20,000 mistake. the athletes are so expensive, they demand to be more accurately assessed. >> what is next for you. you conquered almost every sphere of life. what's left? >> i was thinking -- i was toying with the idea of doing a book about cable talk show hosts. >> well, i think you'll find i'm exceptional good value for money. >> that's not what the producers were saying. but the -- the -- so, i don't know. i tell you what's next. i know exactly what i'm going to do when i walk out of here. i'm writing a screen play for my first book, "liars poker." that's what i'm going to do next. i find the books, generally, the minute i find out what it is, the last thing i want to do is talk about it. once i talk about it, i don't want to do it. i'll tell you after i'm done, how about that? >> come back on and talk to me after it's done? >> thanks for having me. >> is that a deal? >> yeah. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. when we come back, harry belafonte, music, race and politics. it gets lively. i couldn't conceive this as a heart attack. the doctor leaned over and said to me, "you just beat the widow-maker." i was put on an aspirin, and it's part of my regimen now. [ male announcer ] be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. go see your doctor now. it's a great day. great day. great day. and there are millions on the way. >> harry belafonte must have one of the most recognizable voices of all time. he entertained the world and changed the world. his memoir is called "my song." welcome. >> good to be here, finally. >> you should have come sooner. i want to know, if you had -- if i said you have five minutes left to live, what is the single moment left in your life that you would live? if i had that power, what would it be? >> the first time i met martin luther king in the basement of a church in harlem. he was two years younger than i am. he was meeting with me, coming to new york and getting a talk before the community. i went to see him speak, quite taken with what he had to say. a host of personal thoughts and objectives. it was an e pifmy. the things he said made he realize my life was a dawning of major change. >> what kind of man was he? >> humble. without false modesty. eloquent. intellectual and highly intelligent. he was hunting for the meaning of his mission. i caught him at that apex, at that cross roads. >> how far do you think america has come in realizing martin luther king's dream? >> there's no question we realize a good portion of it but we have not realized the fullness of it, the largeness of it nor have we touched on all the things yet to be done. had he not been taken away from us, i think the world would be in a very different place. i can say that about a couple people. i can say that about bobby kennedy, as well. i think there's a group of leaders emerging. they had moral vision and were politically very smart. >> what i liked about them, those two names they were fearless. they were people prepared to stand-up to anybody. they didn't care about the consequence of themselves or political consequence. they were driven. do you see that anymore in modern leaders? >> no, i do not. it's what is truly absent. a lot of guys are politically smart. they can play the chess game. they have lost moral compass. it's the absence of that moral vision and the absence of that courage we suffer from. i don't see anyone out there that i can say would be able to pick up that legacy and move forward. >> did you think briefly that barack obama was going to be that person? how did you feel hen he got elected? >> i hoped he appeared to be that person. i must say hastily say that i think he can still be that person. i'm not quite sure who is going on in this period, in this time when he is finessing the game. he got so caught up in the game, he's not translated the vision. the rest of us need to know what that vision is. >> do you think america is more or less racist since the inauguration of the first black president? >> certainly not a social activism. we are less racist than appearance. i think in depth, we are as racist as we have been all along. i don't think this country had ever dealt honorably with the whole issue of race. i think we have pushed it aside. we have glorified the things that we have done in the name of ending racism. in the truth of our existence, i think barack obama is more rooted in race more than any other fact. >> i had morgan freeman on the show. you told me you watched that. he came out and said he fears a lot of tea party political leaders and their followers are racist and he said it. he believes their sole intention is to get this black man out of the white house. what did you think when he said that? i subscribed to it. i was pleased that he articulated that point of view. we spent so much time trying to be politically correct as to being politically honest, we sometimes blur the picture. whether it was roosevelt or kennedy or eisenhower, anybody who ruled in difficult times with decisions to make ever had the kind of problems that barack obama is facing. i think a big part of that is the fact he is a man of color and there's a mood in this country that cannot tolerate that. >> let's have a little break and talk to you about the shocking moment a white woman touched you on television and of course deo. ♪ ask me. if you think even the best bed can only lie there. ask me what it's like when my tempur-pedic moves. talk to someone who owns an adjustable version of the most highly recommended bed in america. ask me about my tempurpedic advanced ergo. ask me about having all the right moves. these are real tempur advanced ergo owners. find one for yourself. try your friends on facebook. see what they have to say unedited. ask me what it's like to get a massage any time you want. tempur-pedic brand owners are more satisfied than owners of any traditional mattress brand. ask me why i'm glad i didn't wait until i'm too old to enjoy this. start asking real owners. treat yourself to the ultimate sleep experience and save up to $400-during the tempur ergo savings event. plus, visit tempurpedic.com for full details on our 4 years special financing. don't wait-the tempur ergo savings event ends october 16. visit tempurpedic.com now. temur-pedic the most highly recommended bed in america. ♪ >> a controversial appearance bihby harry belafonte with the blues brothers. harry, i mean, it's controversial. why should that have been controversial. it was. it was in the '60s, you were pushing the envelope and cbs moved in and censored it. what did you feel happened? >> something important was revealed. there was an audience and constituency. make sure you are modified according to what the hierarchy insists on having. daley was the mayor. the whole thing was actually, looked like a carnival. the smothers brothers invited me on the air. they said let's do the carnival song. we will show the fiasco taking place in the streets of chicago. to reveal that in this context really disturbed the network. they said we can't show that. they asked a simple question. it's shown every day on the daily news, why can't it be in the context of this hour. they said it's not what this show is about. this show is about anything we want it to be, the smothers brothe brothers. they said it's not. they took it off the air. there's nothing that abusive about it. they took it off the air. to carry the punishment further, the next morning they fired them at the height of ratings. >> what was more extraordinary, looking back on it now. 1968, you appeared on a prime time special. during a performance of a song, smiled and briefly touched your arm. let's talk about this. this caused a national outrage. white woman touches black man. ♪ >> i mean it seems unfathomable that this would have caused outrage, but it did. apparently nervous, they didn't approve of the interracial touching. they felt southern viewers would be offended by it. >> the executive that represented plymouth, part of the chrysler family. he personally got very upset. once i checked him out some time later to understand why he felt that way. it was a deep southern tradition. he was not pleased with race and equality and all those things. he chose to use that moment to impose a rather silly rep remand on the people engaged. >> utterly ridiculous. yet, at the time, many people in america would have said yeah, that's too much. we can't have that on the air waves. we have come a long way. that was 1968. so, we have come 43 years. >> why don't i touch you and see what happens. there we go. >> we're in the clear. we're in the clear. i'm not hearing advertisers have called in. let's move to music. given the impact you have had for your career, in this incredibly important movement in america, do you sometimes worry when you eventually leave us, i hope it's a long time to come, do you think there will be the words deo, deo in everyone's minds. let's play it. this is what i'm talking about. ♪ ♪ daylight come and you want to come home". >> can you sing it still? >> a note or two. >> do you wish you wouldn't have sang it in. >> are you kidding me? every time i go to a yankee ball game and all of a sudden they sing it and 60,000 voices sing it, i say i made it. >> that was obviously off the banana boat. released in 1956. the but the album ka lips sew became the first to sell a million copies isn't that amazing. >> yes, it is. >> that can never be taken away from you. it was huge in those days. >> very much so. in those days we didn't have internet and facebook and all of those things it was almost mouth to mouth, border to border. >> what are other great songs. >> great ballads. a lot of the calypsos i did are filled with metaphor. classic tradition. a lot of irish songs, "danny boy." >> of course. >> i remember i was an african, i missed the we are the world campaign during that great devastation and i found a group of irish nuns and they were with out there feeding the hungry and doing ingroocredible work and of the nuns said hey, harry could you give us a little song and i said gladly. and they said could you lead us in your version of danny boy and i'm in africa with nuns singing danny boy. it was a touching moment. >> fabulous song. i'm irish but when i sing it is not as magical. when i come back i want to talk to you about michael jackson who i know you knew and the demons you have fought in your life and overcome. that he, for whatever reason, wasn't able to. ♪ ♪ ♪ go back to the mountain ♪ ♪ go back 0 the mountain turn the world around ♪ >> that is harry belafonte on the muppet show performing "turn the world around" that was reportedly jim henson's favorite show. >> one of the best moments of my life. jim said i'd like to do something out of the african mythology and we'd like to make these puppets and we wrote the song for that show and when we performed it, not only did it turn out quite well but the most repeated segment of all of the muppet shows and they sang it at his eulogy at church and it was a fulfilling moment. >> one of the extraordinary things you took part in is the we are the world song with michael jackson. funny enough, when we talked about calypso before the break, it wasn't until michael jackson's "thriller that an album stayed longer on the charts. >> i remember they said michael jackson's just broke the record. >> were you happy or furious? >> happy. >> i would have been furious. >> unless you are smitten with extreme greed, to be on for the charts over 137 weeks. >> that's amazing. >> 137 weeks. >> tell me about michael jackson. what was your view of him? >> like many, i was certainly in awe of his great gift and his talent. i always looked at him with a great sense of sadness because i knew a lot about his background, his family. and for children to have been manipulated, in a way manipulated not only by the family and their father, what happened to them, but the way in which they were exploited by all of those who earned livings off of their lives, i think led them to a path that i don't know that celebrities worth all of that. >> obviously michael had real problems and this trial is telling us more and more about what those problems were. a lot of it relating to addictions to pain skillers, sleeping pills, fame. all sorts of addictive things in his life. you have battled some of these demons, gambling and so on. what's the trick to surviving this stuff? can anybody help you or do you have to do it yourself? >> along the way there are individuals that help you to see a brighter side to things and you can trust their view of what they say about you and the distortions that you may be living through, but in the final analysis, i think it is luck and something inside of the individual that is awakened all of a sudden that you can then begin to nurture because the gambling addiction for me was quite severe. i got out of it without any scars, but it was a hell of a struggle. >> it's a remarkable book and remarkable life as i said in the interview. how would you like to be remembered? two things that define me. one is that so many branded me as a social and political misfit. they branded me a communist because of the things that i did on behalf of liberation and although i saw and met many communists who i thought were people of great value and had great wisdoms and things to say, although i did not like the practice of many things that came out of the ideology, i'd like to be remembered as somebody who deeply cared about america, cared where it was going and for us, as people of color, it's the best place in which our game could be played. i don't think anywhere on earth, at this moment, offers us the opportunities we have here in america, if we will seize them and make the devil do our dance. >> well, it's been a great pleasure. the book is called "my song." there is an hbo documentary, sing your song. it has been a delight. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. harry belafonte an impressive man. breaking news live shot from the wall street area where the clock is ticking on possible confrontation in the city and the protest group ok pie wall street. they say