Real money. This is real money. You are the most important part of the show. Join in on the conversation at twitter. Or facebook. Com aj real money. Get ready, the Interest Rates are going up, whether this year of the years to come, to finance a home or car is going to increase. Wu saw that yesterday when fed chair yellen suggested a time line for the rate hike and timed a possible raising of the feds near zero rate to the middle of next year. The fed can say one thing and influences part of the borrowing universe. The fed sets short term rates for what the banks charge each other for the overlight loans and some consumer loans are based on the Feds Fund Rate including those linked to the prime rate and mortgages is a different kettle of fish. It is related to the fed but dictated by the traders and investors and wednesdays reaction trickling the borrowing rating. That happened back in may ben bernanke hinted that the feds would pull back on the bond buying and the fed didnt touch the rates but the Mortgage Rate jumps up to 4. 5 and the fed hasnt touched anything yet. Ultimately the fed did start to taper or pull back on the purchases in december, and it continues to do so. But the Mortgage Markets didnt raise to raise the rates. F we are getting a hint in the u. S. Treasuries chld yields on ten year notes, that is the Interest Rate, and risen yesterday. That is not a lot but in the world of bonds it is big, the part that matters is the yield, the Interest Rate on the ten year note that determines the Mortgage Rate. Not what the feds decide, sometimes the ten year note marches to its own tune and when it does, it could cost you more. Today on twitter and facebook i have been asking you high Interest Rates for the saves or lower rates on the loans. Bryan tweets. Christopher says. Tell me what you think by tweeting me. Or leave us a comment on facebook. Okay. Ma will debate what effect if any that the rising rates have on the American Growth and one worried about the ripple effects of the slow down in china and the affects on the world and the United States. He served of the monetary fund. Hes coauthored a book this time is different, 8 centuries offaling and professor at harvard and sitting on the Economic Advisory council in the Federal Reserve bank in new york. We got this news of, something of a slow down in china and we have had the evidence that things are not solid there and now, yeah this is a slow down. Whoo are we worried about this . China is accounting for half of the world growth and not feeling that directly as much in the u. S. , but brazil and turkey, china is the game as much as the United States, and the place where everyone thought nothing could happen. So china were to slow down marketedly, it would catch a lot of people off guard and shake up the markets. We have seen a t lo of years of growth in a china and we saw that in japan. That does happen. Are you thinking this is the beginning of the end of the massive growth in china or just a slow down . That is hard to say. We saw it in russia and japan and especially the countrys that build the infrastructure, it is looking great, the trains and bridges and you need the other stuff to come in. So china can it continue to grow at this rate, 10 plus and now at 7 , no, it cant. It is going to slow down. Can it engineer a gradual slow down . Well people betting against china have lost. How does this affect americans, if china slows down why does that matter . If it slows down gently, it doesnt. It is fine. Lets understand the new leadership in china that came in a year ago want to slow it down. That is what they are aiming to do. If it is slowing down gently the average american wont notice. But if dramatically it is going to shake up the markets and we export. One thing that we have seen in china is that there are still lots of opportunities for american businesses, it is still growing very quickly, we are just concerned about the impact on the rest of the world . Well, i mean, if it is slowing down quickly, then people arent planning for it, they have paid too much for buildings and overbuilt in some of the places and politically difficult for them, so often times they do end quickly. The slow gradual easing of growth is not easy in these fast growing emerging maukt markets. Here we are a consumer driven market and they are working on that, their government decides too much on what happens in their economy . Yes, theirs is investment driven economy. They are half of gdp. They are way here than anyone historically and you know thats fine as long as you are building stuff that makes you grow. When the government is making the decisions, at some point they are not Market Driven and not going to work and can fold in quickly. Coming back home, boy, some nonsense in the markets yesterday about janet yellen and publicly appears for the first time and i thought she was clear and doing a good job and not surprised about what she said, i am puzzled people are surprised that the feds are going to raise the Interest Rates. Two things, one she was dealt a tough hand by her people at the Federal Reserve. She couldnt hide that, that is right there for everyone to see, and she was having to explain that. That is not an easy job, since being regarded as not in favor of moving too fast. The second thing, so hard to prepare yourself for this job. You know, in some ways it is the second most important job in the United States and getting very huge press conference and a politician goes through campaigning for years and this is her first on this scale and i agree, she did pretty well. If you look back, people forget, they had their mess up early on. If this was hers not so bad good to see you. And you know, in person, and come back. Ken, thank you. Thank you. All right, with america and russia in cold war style tit for tat actions over crimea, who wouldnt want to a fly on the wall. I talk to a man that stood next to president putin and saying that the west is dreaming thinking that sanctions are going to make a difference. Later, the dirty little secret about coal and it is not going any where for a while and keep it here. The west is on the wrong path with putin, coming from a way that knows the russian president personally and serving as a top add provider in the kremlin and saying that the sanctions will do nothing to putin. Today a Parliament Vote approving the annex of ukraine to russia. 20 senior government officials to putin and a private bank were added to the list of the u. S. Sanctions and within minutes moscow retaliated on the u. S. Lawmakers and white house official officials, they are banned from travelling to russia. Senator john mccain tweeted that the spring break the off and the gas stock is lost and the secret bank account in moscow is frozen. Individuals targeted by the new american sanctions are barred from doing business here and their assets are frozen in the United States and further president obama raised the threat of further sanctions and the troops in the crimea peninsula could be moving into other regions. The downgrade or the u. S. Sanctions are enough to slow putins ambition to take over the entire of ukraine. That is according to a man that knows him better than most, he sat beside putin as a chief economic adviser and now work, for the unstiet, a think tank. I asked him about the latest approach on the sanctions. I think these new set of sanctions definitely would raise level of punishment for some of the russian persons, never the less i seriously doubt that those sanctions will produce the desirable effect on the russian side. We have seen the russian side retaliate with their sanctions against u. S. Lawmakers. And seems to me that both sides involved in this battle do still have a lot of reserves, so that is why for the time being well see escalation from both sides without any break throughs. So, we cant see escalation to the ultimate point, but where does it become interesting and effective . Russias biggest thing that it can play is its natural gas and the u. S. The ability to trade, the sort of trade sanctions that they are putting on iran and not actually conducting the trades through the Global Banking system and how far will this go . I think that the approaches taken by the u. S. Administration is not very effective. They could certainly attack gas, attack oil, attack different sectors of the russian industry, it is not going to produz the desiring effects. Please remember that russia on the part of the soviet union and 7 decades isolated economic system. And it was able to survive and so that is why u. S. Will try to impose a situation that is similar to what russia was living just a couple of decades ago. It is not going to have a substantial effect on the russian economy. So the point is that the russian economy is familiar with being isolated and can manage that better than other economies can . Exactly. So i wouldnt say it is better, but we have seen such countries like iran, iraq, north korea and sanctions for years and decades and in those cases, none of those countries was forced to change their behavior. So russia is much larger country with much more diversified economy and stronger support from reserves and so on, and that is why we see prolonged battle without any clear results. You were part of the effort to open the russian economy and making it a capitalist economy and how far down the road did russia get . Once again, the question is what exactly u. S. Administration and the west would likely see, if the result is withdrawing the troops from crimea, there needs to be another approach. Playing games without serious results and continueing with the sanctions. What would the actions from the west be that you would recommend could actually move russia to rethink the actions in crimea and ukraine . I would try to avoid recommit anything, but i would remind what kind of actions has been on the taking by the administration during the iranian crisis and during the crisis when iran captured the u. S. Embassy and they froze the assets. I think Something Like that could have much more pronounced effect on the behavior of the aggressor. You were close to putin and know him personally and is he trying to achieve here . Okay, im trying not to does personal habits and features of mr. Putin, but in this particular case it is a mistake of the west i would say the west is not in touch with reality of the world of mr. Putin. Mr. Putin is pretty serious in this particular engagement. Hes not going to give up to economic pressure. Hes very serious to grab crimea and establish control over ukraine and establish control over a some other parts of the poor soviet world and the approach could produce desired effect should be different. Sir, it is a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for being with us and giving insight on a to this. A former chief economic adviser to president putin. Coming up, forget about natural gas and oil, we are talking about the dirty form of energy, coal, mined in the United States and why more is leaving the shores and headed to other countries. Continues. Join us on consider this. President jimmy carter joins antonio mora my administartion has a very strong human rights element. His perspective on the conflicts facing the world in the state of america. On al Jazeera Americari your global news leader. I feel like there are many stories out there that are untold that need to be told. Stories about young people, about minorities or about women or about countries you dont usually hear about. I feel very fortunate as a journalist to have a chance to share those stories. Al Jazeera America. During the crisis in ukraine, we have talked about the dependence on oil and natural gas. Now to coal. The u. S. Is a major supplier of coal to europe. Mary snow has a snapshot of the coal industry. To get a sense of what is stoking the coal industry, look to the ports. That is because u. S. Coal exports hit records as Mining Companies seize on the demand from abroad and providing 40 of the worlds electricity and in the u. S. , it is used to create 37 of the countrys electricity. Wyoming, West Virginia and kentucky are the top u. S. Coal producers. But the industry is facing challenges. A major one is Environmental Concerns and restrictions. Coal emits more Green House Gases than natural gas, the competing source of gas and exports are becoming a big factor for the bottom line. 50 of the exports going to europe and uk and italy are top customers and 26 ebbing ports going to asia. Analysts covering the industry say a big challenge is having the ability to ship the coal out at u. S. Ports, particularly on the west coast. In 2011, when you saw stronger prices a number of projects developments out there for new ports for coal exported to asia and now the coal prices have fallen and the economics of the projects is changing and so you see that a lot of the projects that actually been called off. There is resistence from the communitys that dont want the coal trains rolling through their neighborhoods and that infrastructure is needed to expand. Mary snow al jazeera. Well, with more than a third of the electricity in the United States powered by coal, the fate has significant implications, here to explain is francisco and joining us now. Thank you for being with us. Hi. What are the implications of coal right now . Well the coal market is on a bear trend for a while now and a number of factors that are driving and the pressure on the prices. We have, the Worlds Largest coal consumer china making up 50 of the worlds they are mel coal outputs and experiencing some slow down in the economic activity. Also coal is not a favored fuel because of the environmental restrictions and limited supply responses on the producer side. Not a major cutback in the output despite the slide in the prices. Is the bear market have to do with the relationship between supply and demand versus the growth of coal as a fuel . Coal supplies have grown at 4 and a half to 5 percent. Compared to natural gas is supply of natural gas growing an yuly at 3 . The energy for oil, a growth rate in the last few years of 1. 2 . So again, coal has been by far the Fastest Growing fuel from the supply side. But coal is by far the cheapest fuel. The problem is that the supply side is we have seen the currencies of coal exporters actually providing down quickly since bernanke. So we have not seen yet a supply response to a lower prices and of course, emerging markets are not having their best time from the growth per spective and that is driving the prices lower. Things have really changed in the last five years and now when we talk about Energy Output for use as an electricity or for heating, we are talking about the growth of natural gas. Here in the United States, obviously. Is that affecting or off setting the production in the United States . Well, in the United States specifically, as you pointed out, we have substitution between coal and natural gas. We have a huge capacity at the Power Generational level. Around 9 bcf a day of coal to gas switching and capacity exists in the Power Generation market and that in context of a 70 billion cubic feet of market tells you you can replace 13 of natural gas consumption on a given day using thermal coal and vice sa versa. And so the shale is freeing up a lot of coal consumption in the u. S. And now being exported and remember the other driver is Environmental Concerns. We are trying to move towards cleaner fuels and trying to replace dirty coal, which makes up almost 40 of the power base with cleaner fuels and that is very important driver and trying to use wind, solar and hydro electric power and definitely natural gas as well. I remember riding in the subway here in new york city and seeing ads for clean coal, i remember in the president ial elections and talking about cleaner coal, is that a reality . Clean technologies can reduce emissions meaningfully. But the issue is price at the end of the day. If you have coal prices streaming at 80, 90 aston, certainly in that range, 3, 4, dollars per btu. Natural gas at 4 bucks per million btu it is a bit a tough choice because natural gas is a cleaner fuel. As long as looking at the same price pretty much why take it out. Thanks for shedding the light on this. Thank you for talking with us. We end tonight on some things about coal you might know about, this is a speck of the billion dollars produced in the United States each year. It takes a million years to produce it. It is known as buried sunshine. The ingredient is carbon. Half of the state es mine this, 90 of what is mined is used for electricity. 48 states use it. Vermont and rhode island are the exexceptions. It is dirty and controversial and plays a major role as one the countrys and Worlds Energy sources. That is the show for today. See you tomorrow. Thanks for joining us. Al Jazeera America presents extraordinary documentaries. Ive seen nothing like this before in my entire life. The amazon rainforest is going up in smoke. Hundreds of kilometers square are disappearing in a day here. Indigenous communities at risk. If their forest continues to disappear, then eventually these people will disappear. This british firefighter joins a group of brave men. The most surprising thing for me is the size of the fires that come through. Absolutely brutal. Toughest place to be a firefighter. Sunday at 9 eastern, on al Jazeera America<