Jackson: Economic crisis has caused poverty, violence for some

>>> 47 past the hour, here with us now, assistant editor and columnist for "the financial times ," gillian tett back with us, good to see you. and founder of the rainbow push coalition, reverend jesse jackson . good to have you on board. he brought us some fresh numbers.

>> you're talking about money that u.s. corporations are taking overseas. your push right now is getting it back home.

>> with the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling and trying to get bipartisan, but over here is something called poverty, 50 million americans and racial disparity and cities collapsing and the like. i'm going to make the case we should build america an urban infrastructural bank for the purpose of long-term loans. we do it in europe and japan. and no other country charges people to repatriate their money once they pay taxes in that country. but we do. but if we, in fact, took a portion of that money, part for research and development and part of it for an institutional bank, you could do what banks are not doing, and that's invest in these downtrodden areas of our country.

>> gillian, we've been talking about it for years, trillions of dollars sitting on the sidelines not coming back to america. how do we get it back here?

>> almost $2 trillion. you've got average household earnings down over the past four years, poverty is up. we need this money working in our economy. how do we get it here?

>> absolutely. i think the reverend's idea is very interesting because right now many of the companies are on the list he's got showing the companies that have their money stashed overseas are very aware that this looks very bad politically. their responsibility, their departments want to find a way to look as if they're part of an effort to rebuild america and tackle issues like poverty. politically it's probably quite clever. and it's worth bearing in mind, you were talking about ed koch and his time as mayor and bringing people out of that crisis by getting companies to work with unions, and it's worth remembering that pension funds actually bought city bonds to try and be part of a joint effort to pull together and boost growth. essentially what the reverend is talking about is trying to revive that spirit of pulling together.

>> skyscrapers, airlines, shopping centers . propped up south africa until we disinvested. frankly, the use of pension funds plus this offshore money does not go back to congress -- to the congressional dole again. while they're debating, as i said, the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling, that does not address this vast area of the impact of foreclosed homes. because when you foreclose 100,000 homes in chicago and detroit and people leave, then the local cleaners, the local laundry, the local servicer, the foreclosures drove poverty. the banks got built out. but the people who got drove out are living in poverty and sometimes violence.

>> we want to turn in our final moments here to chicago . and gun control , especially pertaining to the crisis in that city. and one case that just -- if it doesn't crystallize exactly what we're talking about, i don't know what does. and that is the young girl who was performing --

>> little miss pendleton.

>> yeah.

>> rainbow push and reverend sharpton and others, we're going to march this weekend to where she was killed. her mother was on "politics nation" last night. it's a little more complicated. there are no gun shops in chicago , joe. they make guns in barrington and rock island , so guns are in. if you know where guns are manufactured and the trail where they're sold, you'd break up the trail. you see the flow of gun manufacturing, gun shops which turns into -- then drugs are coming in. several drug cartels . guns and drugs and jobs out for perhaps unemployment. that's an urban than the analysis, say, of sandy hook which is a different arrangement, mostly employed people, loss of gun shop , higher than chicago , it's a very different deal.

>> how do you answer, reverend jackson, the argument that you have some of the toughest gun laws in the country, handguns were banned completely until two or three years ago, and yet we still have this epidemic? more than 40 people killed by guns already. i just looked at "the chicago tribune " website. two hours ago a woman was found shot to death in a van on an off-ramp on lake shore drive . how do you answer the fact, you've already got tough gun laws and yet all this violence?

>> it's not just about gun laws , it's gun flow and job flow. we know where they're manufactured. and you cannot stop them. rahm is doing a tremendous job, i think, trying to maneuver police. he's in this box, guns coming in. and when the plants close and the jobs leave, so poverty and drugs and guns and race are factors. if this were the north side of town, it would be a different arrangement. even there, i might add.

>> what do you mean by that?

>> there's a kind of grouping in difference on racial basis. last year 506 were killed, 175 under age 18. all we could get was the people are at fault. in sandy hook , the gunman was at fault. kind of two ways of looking at the same situation. this has been a growing problem for a long time. and chief mccarthy is recovering guns at a faster rate than l.a. we are setting up for an international drug war . we need homeland security because these guns have the power to shoot down airplanes, not just theaters and classrooms. they have the power to shoot down airplanes. they can blow up railroads. these terrorists have the power to destroy in a bigger way than they have done already.

>> it's frightening.

>> reverend jesse jackson , great to have you on the show. gillian, stay with us if you can.

>> you know what he says?

>> what?

>> he says he watches the show every morning.

>> that's nice.

>> thank you.

>> because you provide the substance.

>> the style.

>> i provide the style. nobody's ever accused me of that before. thank you, senator. thanks a lot.

>>> senator richard blumenthal of connecticut's going to be here talking about chuck hagel 's difficulties yesterday,