February 26 – The 83 Billion a Year Subsidy to the Big Banks; How Austerity Reverses Recovery; A Vulture Capitalist gets Preferential Treatment

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Part 1	We begin with today’s grilling of the Chairman of the Fed by freshman Senator Elizabeth Warren over the extent to which the big banks are too big to fail and whether they deserve an 83 billion dollar subsidy that is about the same as the impending sequester cuts. Jennifer Taub, a professor at the Vermont School of Law and former Associate General Counsel for Fidelity Investments joins us to discuss how the big banks are smashing the little banks, something that Ben Bernanke told Senator Warren he agreed with 100%.
Part 2	Then we speak with economist Richard Wolff about the irony that the politician responsible for the European banks imposing austerity on Italy, has made a comeback as the anti-austerity champion and now threatens to unravel the slow and painful gains Europe has made in stabilizing the Euro. We also discuss a very similar situation here in the United States where the gradual recovery of our economy devastated since 2008 from the Wall Street crash, is likely to be reversed by House Republicans in the next few days.
Part 3	Then finally we examine what is at stake in a Federal Appeals Court case tomorrow in Manhattan where the U.S. Government has joined in the defense of Argentina to prevent vulture capitalists from undoing a settlement between Argentina and its creditors. Eric LeCompte, the director of the Jubilee USA Network joins us to explain how vulture capitalists like Paul Singer, who buy Third World debt for pennies on the dollar, are able to get a Federal judge to give them priority in getting 100% of the debt repaid in full ahead of other lenders and creditors who have agreed to settle for much less.