April 15 – California Crackup; Most Americans Favor Defense Cuts; The Latest Excess On Wall Street

Full Program

Part 1

Then we examine the disconnect between the American public, a majority of whom want to cut the military budget, and the Republican Congress who refuse to cut it even though they signed off to automatic cuts. Steven Kull, a political psychologist and the Director of the Program for Public Consultation and a Senior Researcher at the Center for International Security Studies joins us. He has done a survey that finds three quarters of the respondents favor cutting defense as a way to reduce the deficit, including two thirds of Republicans as well as nine out of ten Democrats.

Then finally we speak with Roger Lowenstein, the author of “The End of Wall Street”. He is a veteran financial journalist who wrote for the Wall Street Journal for more than a decade and now writes for the New York Times and Smart Money. We will discuss the latest excess on Wall Street and how the Dodd-Frank reforms meant to rein in derivative trading have been watered down since the crash of 2008.