September 15 - Why Turkey is Not Joining the Anti-Islamic State Coalition; The Economic Consequences of Scottish Independence; Garnishing Wages for Consumer Debt

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with 26 nations meeting in Paris to form a strategy and a military alliance to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and look into the key regional state that is absent from the anti IS coalition, Turkey. Soner Cagaptay, who writes extensively on U.S.-Turkish relations and Turkish domestic politics and is a regular columnist for Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News, joins us to discuss why Turkey is taking a back seat in the regional response to the Islamic State until the fate of the Turkish diplomats and their families being held hostage by the IS in Iraq, is resolved.  

Part 2

Then we get an economic analysis of the impact of Scottish independence on both the economies of a new state that may emerge from Thursday’s vote and on the U.K., where both the ruling Tories and the opposition Labor Party are urging a “No” vote in the referendum. Economist Stephany Griffith Jones, who is Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University and Associate Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in London, joins us to discuss the contradiction of having independence from Britain while Scotland retains the Queen as head of state and the pound sterling as the currency.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Paul Kiel, who covers business and the economy for ProPublica, about his latest study a ProPublica, co-published with NPR, “Unseen Toll: Wages of Millions Seized to Pay Past Debts”. We  discuss how many employees across the U.S. now lose up to a quarter of their paychecks over debts like unpaid credit cards upon which 26% interest rates compound the debt, often doubling or tripling it, or medical bills and student loans, which most states allow creditors to garnish at the highest rate permitted under federal law, one quarter of the after-tax wages.