Section 215 of the Patriot Act expired at midnight on Sunday after a divided Senate failed to reach an agreement to extend the anti-terror law. Since lawmakers were unable to come up with a replacement bill, this now clears the way for the chamber to approve a House-passed measure known as the “Freedom Act” as soon as Tuesday. This would end the NSA’s nine year old practice of seizing and storing telephone records of millions of Americans, regardless of their background or behavior. Erin Ade weighs in.
Then, Boom Bust guest host Ameera David sits down with Steve Keen – Head of the School of Economics, History & Politics at Kingston University. Steve tells us what would happen if the Fed raised rates in June or July despite the underlying weakness in the US economy. Steve also gives us his take on how Greece will affect European and US markets.
After the break, Bianca Facchinei takes a look at Facebook beginning to offer encryption features to their users, who will be able to add their public keys – something that allows them to encrypt messages meant to be seen by only one recipient – to their profiles. She also covers the $16 billion acquisition by Intel of Altera.
Afterwards, Edward Harrison is joined by Scott Sumner – professor of economics at Bentley University. Scott tells us that European interest rates were too low for periphery countries before the financial crisis and are too high now because of the one size fits all policy of the ECB. He is not optimistic about Greece as a result. And Scott gives us his take on how the ECB should handle Greece. Sumner believes Greece has unique structural deficits that make the situation there a separate case which monetary policy alone cannot counteract.
And in The Big Deal, Erin and Edward discuss tons of new US data and Greece.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kBPk21Bz-A