out the contracts of his vision and that of republicans. >> we don't have to choose between a future of spiralling debt and one where we force our investment and our people and our country. to meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. we will all need to make sacrifices. but we do not have to sacrifice the america we believe in. and as long as i'm president, you don't have to suffer the point. cnn contribute tore cornell belcher. that looks like compromise on all sides. kind of difficult since we're already in a campaign. do we give up leadership for politicking at this point? >> i don't think we are in a campaign. it's two things. one of the things you talked about early on was the president is asking to pay more for government, some people pay more for government. i think what the president is saying is that we have a responsibility to the broader society, and some people right now aren't paying their fair share and to keep our fiscal house in order, we have to ask those who are able to do so to pay their fair share. so i don't think he's in campaign mode at all. i think he's looking at his visions of moving forward. >> steven is an editor for the wall street journal. steven, here's something that's interesting and probably fits into your wheel house. paul ryan's budget plan and president obama's renewed budget plan that he unveiled this week have one thing in common: major tax reform. that's where the similarities end, however, but president obama would increase tax revenue by a trillion dollars. he wants to increase the bush tax kutsz for the wealthy, and he wants to raise tax cuts on individuals making $200,000, couples making $250,000. the tax rate would jump to 359%. it's less clear what the tax breaks for those making less money. let's take a look at the paul ryan budget proposal. it would actually result in less tax revenue. it would bring less money in. the top tax rate for individuals and corporations would be lowered, the bush tax cuts extended by president obama through 2012, they would become permanent. steven, a record number of americans now relying on government health. why do we continue to hear that this is not a revenue issue? it seems like there is lots of cover for north americans on the part of the conservatives. >> well, ali, i think you just answered your own question. the problem isn't too many taxes, too many people are getting government checks. we have to do something about that. i want to correct you on one thing. you said both the president and paul ryan wanted to do tax reform. the president is using the terminology tax reform, but i think the way you and i think about tax reform, and most economists do, is you reduce tax rates, you broaden the base, get rid of the loophole so everybody pays his fair share. that's not what plt obama is talking about, he's talking about raising the tax base and broadening the power range. if you look at the specific statistics, the top 1% already paid 40% of the forecast. the top 2 or 3% paid more than the bottom 90%. one last statistic for you and your viewers to think about. i ran the numbers this week. if we took every single penny of 100 tax rate on people making over $100,000, that still wouldn't raise enough money to balance the budget. so taxing the risk isn't going to get it down. >> jean, what do you think? >> i agree steven moore you can't just tax the rich to balance the budget and you can't rely on taxes to balance the budget. however, you can't show up in these yarsz that. it is just going to be enough to get on the spending side. i didn't hear president obama say he wanted to raise rates in the guys of tax reform. it makes the bush tax cuts a moot point. let's hope they do that because i'm bored talking about bush tax cuts, so there's that to consider. >> here's an important point i think we all can agree on. jean, we hear so much about. let's go to christine to hear exactly what we're talking about. christine? >> what is the difference between a debt and a deficit? when you spend more money than you make, you're running a deficit. it's that easy. you bar row to cover the difference. uncle sam does the same thing and all those deficits year after year add to a huge pile of national debt. how big? 14 billion. the u.s. currently has 14.296, trillions of dollars of debt. if we continue to spend at our current rate, the electricity will be 20.28. even with these reduction plans trimming it, it's slowing the rate of increase but the increase is still going up. >> the best way to reduce the deficit -- john f. kennedy proved it, president clinton approved it, and doing this. here's the problem i have with soaking the rich. i don't see how we're going to get the economy to grow fasters. >> let me jump in here. it would be interesting, i'm glad you brought up bill clinton because guess what? we're asking that we go back to the tax policies of bill clinton. remember peace and prosperity? we had the largest peace time, sort of economic involvement in our country with these tax policies. what's wrong with the wealthy paying a higher share? if all these tax cuts created jobs, we would have jobs coming out our eyeballs. >> answer that, steve. that's interesting. >> president obama wants to take taxes a lot higher than they were in the 1990, about because, remember, he has a 6% surplus on income. china, india, yurp. we're in a globally competitive world if we're raising tax rates at the cut. sdplz hold that thought right there. dealing with our $14 trillion debt is going to hurt one way r the other t. we'll discuss it when we come back. 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>> two changes. one, a program into what he calls a support program. in the 2020s, once people entered medicare, they would get a cab subsidy to help pay for a private insurance plan, and it would be a medically improved private insurance plan, and that premium would be adjusted for a person's health status, age and income. but it would be capped. and basically what he would do is make the federal health spending costs more fixed, more predictable, and he would help reduce the deficit with that. he would also raise the eligibility age for medicare over time. he would do it gradually, again, starting in the 2020s from 65 today to 67 in the early 2020s. >> they proposed raising the social security eligibility age from 67 to 70 by the year 2032 while lowering payments to upper income retirees. we heard similar proposals by the president's debt commission. when will they start leveling with americans about those cutbacks they're going to have to endure? >> i don't know if we've been criticizing. i would say this. the president has called for both sides to sort of come together around this with the vice president and work this out. what doesn't work is one side shouting across the room at the other side. social security -- the president also understands social security right now is not driving our near term debt and we do have to fix it long term, but both sides have to compromise, it's not one side or the other. another thing, we cannot privatize it. that means social security is probably going to go away when you privatize it because you're gambling. >> i want to show you two cnn opinion polls that go right to the heart of this topic. 68% of americans say spending kutsz do not apply fairly to all groups. just 29% felt they were fair. now, those numbers are basically reversed if you asked if the gop cuts would affect your family. 69% said yes, 28% said no. this would seem, steven, where the rubber meets the road. we're talking about voters here. do republicans have to listen when 7.10 americans say the program isn't fair and affects their families? >> cutting the budget is always tough. people want money from the government and nobody wants cutbacks. that's why we can't have obamacare, because once you get those cuts to 30% more americans, there's no way to take them away. i agree with the republican plan of, look, we have to cut these deficits. let me throw the gauntlet to the three of you. the republicans have been saying, you can't just cut the discretionary programs. all the money is in retirement. they've come up with a deep plan to make cuts to those medicare and medicaid programs. i don't agree with everything in paul's plan but i give him a lot of credit for doing that. what i liked hearing was from the democrats. i dinh hear it from president obama. by the way, why does warren buffett need medicare? why can't we take away -- maybe i'm going to engage some class warfare here, but why do we have to give rich people health care benefits they can afford themselves? >> when you examine the ryan proposals and the obama proposals and their long-term effects, they're not that different, and that thing that christine showed us, ultimately our concern is where our national debt goes as a proportion of our economy, and neither of these really solve the problem. >> except that -- ali, i think that's not fair because the president didn't really say -- all we know that he wants to do is raise taxes on the rich. i didn't really see him be specific like paul ryan did. you talk about the rubber meets the road. where does the rubber meet the road with respect to the president's ideas? there were no specifics. >> i think he actually laid out some specific things. what we will not do is allow medicare or medicaid to become a voucher program, because that will end medicare and taking power away -- >> what do you want to do about it to cut it? >> -- taking power away from the seniors and giving to back to the health care industry so you can give people like us a tax break is not forward. >> jeanne? >> ryan has a point and obama has a point. we can't do it without a cap. president obama is also correct that if we want to keep this program in place and we know the population is aging and medical costs are going up, so our standards are with the cost going up, we need a combination of these two men. >> i think you can solve this whole debt deficit problem with just the four of us here. >> let's do it right now. >> if you don't get it done by sunday night, we're going to have a shutdown. guys, good to see you. cornell, good to see you. steven moore. go to cnnmoney.com. study jeanne's work because she doesn't get out much these days. men simply made more money than women. those days may be over. i'll tell you afterwards. 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[ male announcer ] visit ameriprise.com and put a confident retirement more within reach. personal pricing now on brakes. tell us what you want to pay. we do our best to make that work. deal! my money. my choice. my meineke. i'm joined now by rachel scar, editor at large and fellow canadian. you all remember r. fleisher. he was the press secretary to george bush. he said, i'm glad there was no twitter when i worked with george bush. . this micro play by play is rough. instant feedback, good, bad or just deal with it? christine, rachel, your answers in 140 characters or less. rachel? >> you know what, i'm a big fan of transparency. i feel like ari fleisher was saying i'm glad there was no transparency back in '95 when this was happening. it's ridiculous. he should sh celebrating the fact that the populace is informed. >> we have to decipher through all the contradicting comments and the talking points and the play by play to really kind of boil it down in a traditional way. so i think the more information the measureirrier, and you can more of the trends. >> christine cautioned me to the degree i something on twitter, but now i put it out there. the reality is it's out there, anyway. now people are saying it. let's talk about this. there is an app for everything out there. there is now a degree for apps. i thought when i first read this there is an app for getting a degree. computer software engineers are among the fastest growing careers. christine, is this good marketing or is this a good degree? >> well, look, this degree is going to change. it's a four-year degree. everything is going to change in four years. you should be taking computer science classes and computer science courses that are changing and that are fluid because some of those old skills that we think of, old meaning three years ago skills, are a commodity now. you have to be much more innovative in all kinds of computer engineering jobs and you have to be moving fast. >> the iphone itself launched in 2007. that was four years ago. great idea. step up the education but it sounds to me a little bit like a degree in dial-up. >> and look, you should be doing this in high school and junior high. >> you told me there was an app camp for kids. >> app camp for 14 to 17-year-olds. hopefully the universities that are teaching this stuff are moving quickly so the kids have the skills so they can compete. >> i agree with you. >> taking the expensive education out of the mix. i like that. >> more information on the man session. we called it a man session because so many men were employed in construction and factory work. they got employed through the recession. not only are men employed higher than women, but for those under 30, women earn more money. christine? gender bias? >> well, there's been a couple st studies about this that show kids maybe in the x generation in the next 20, 30 years, they're going to be making more than their male counterparts. there could be this trajectory in our lifetime where women have the upper hand, reversing things. but this particular article takes the staff and sort of jer jerrymanders them. i think it's important to note that this was written by the women's council which is a conservative organization, heavy republican, has been called anti-f anti-feminist. it's clearly not coming from the perspective of, let's say, planned parent hood. >> do you believe it's true? w we know half the students in graduate programs are women, half the people in college are women. >> it's very important to zero in on equal work. equal pay for equal work. >> but wouldn't we think as things have changed, if we're taking an average of all working women, those at the older men probably have a bigger gap and those at the smaller end, do you think they have a smaller gap? >> it's very difficult in this situation to compare apples to apples and not bananas to bananas. >> i'm taking a look at the youngest women in the work force, and not just this study that have shown further out that this is the best chance of getting parody. >> this is the first time in the show someone has maligned a fruit bowl. $4 gas is not just ruining your day. it might be threatening your entire economic recovery. ow theh just got more powerful. introducing precise from the makers of tylenol. precise pain relieving heat patch activates sensory receptors. it helps block pain signals for deep penetrating relief you can feel precisely where you need it most. precise. only from the makers of tylenol. with the rising price of fuel, guess which way shipping costs are going? the u.s postal service has no fuel surcharges. combine that with low online pricing... and your shipping costs... ..could head in a whole new direction. it's time to rethink your shipping. home to the lateste depadeal making technology. our highly advanced thingamajigs and whatchamacallits are constantly gathering intelligence on the best deals for you. with name your own price, they're yours for up to 60% off. but we're always looking to improve. for instance, what does this have to do with finding hotel deals? we're not sure. yet. gas prices up about 30% from a year ago. last year the national average for a gallon of unleaded self serve gasoline, $2.86. this year $3.82. the last we have seen is back in 2008. oil is much higher today. gasoline, $4.11 per gallon, national average. we haven't seen started the peak summer driving season. where is your sense on where the gas price go and driving prices? >> my sense is we're in another year of paranoia that we're not going to have enough fuel, there are too many international things happening. in the next few years we're going to peak and then we'll be paying less than we paid on july 4 or what we paid on easter sunday or sing owe did cinco de. >> you're paying more money for the same amount of gas. if these gas prices stay high, you say this could bring on the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country. why is not that petronoia that john was just talking about? >> there's a difference between how high the price of gas will be and what it actually does if it stays high. if it stays high, most economists are predicting 2.8% growth instead of 3.44 for the first half of this year. that translates into a loss of about 500,000 jobs that just don't get created. if they don't stay to buy restaurant meals or get your clothes cleaned, people spend less money on non-necessities. if it goes up past 4, 4 and a quarter, then growth could fall 2.5%. at that point it's hard to sustain the economy and things could come down. >> what's your sense of the effect on the economy? >> the effect on the economy is quite a bit, unfortunately. money in the pockets will more than be sucked out by higher gas prices and it's something you feel every time you fill up the tank. there's also higher commodity prices on fuel, on milk, on wheat, on everything you can imagine when you go to the grocery store. so energy prices in general are higher. when you talk about its effect on job growth and the economy overall, the fed keeps saying it's not its fault by keeping interest rates so low that all these commodities are going up. and the fed keeps saying -- so-called government experts keep saying this is not going to derail the economy but it's a fragile economy. we've been talking a lot about budgets but jobs are still a problem here. so you've got -- i can't say enough that i feel as though people who have been out of work for six months or longer, you guys, they go to fill up the gas tank and it's really a critical situation. >> maybe i asked you the wrong question, whether you think gas is going higher and oil is going higher. it doesn't matter if it's higher, it's high right now. where do you think oil prices are going? are they going to be substantially lower in the next few years because that's the decision people have to make if they're investing in alternatives. >> we're at a critical juncture right now. i think prices will peak in the short term and drop off at the 80% that they normally do. but there's a larger issue here and it's kind of a great issue for our decade. money is flowing unfettered in the economy, and one of the favorite economies is oil. it's coming from a very passive, massive funds or whatever, but it has an impact. and it has an impact of lifting prices for all commodities. the exchanges, everyone that regu regulates the futures do not want any fettering. but you have people on the margins and people in the middle that are impacted by the high prices. >> what's your point there, peter? >> i think there's more to it than that. global command on commodities, especially oil, is rising very rapidly because of conditions in china and asia. i would point out that the chinese regulate gas prices, so they don't feel the full impact when we had these spikes, and that tends to put a shock on the rest of the global market. i don't think we can get around the fact there is a secular increase on the demand for oil -- >> not in the u.s. >> but we have to pay the global price, though. we have to pay the global price, 1 million barrels a day imported. i believe going forward we're going to see higher oil prices than we have in the last several years, that is, over the next several years. 110, $120 a barrel sustainable, yes. >> tom said something interesting. he said it's not sinister, necessarily. every time i talk about oil and ways to invest in it, i get lots of tweets from people who say, it's spec lartulatorspeculators. speculators should be put out of business. speculator is the same people that value your house when you try to sell it. what do they have to do with the price of oil? >> speculators undershoot and speculators overshoot. speculators, look, they're sort of -- i hate to use the word liquidity, but -- >> if you have a 401(k) or ira, you're a speculator. >> right, but a lot of them are those who see a trend moving and they pile the money on computers, pile the money on a commodity and that can actually make it worse. remember, interest rates are low, so when you have people who have money and they're trying to get returns, more chunks of those portfolios are going into commodities. when it turns, it will turn hard and it will turn ugly, but then, as peter points out, you do have those fundamentals, those big, huge, growing markets around the world that are hungry for gasoline to feed their cars, to feed their factories, to feed their economies and they're competing with the u.s. in the global market for that. >> tom, back to you. >> when you go back eight years, the dmachemand for oil is up. you have fund mentals as a part of this. i would argue this country needs more liquidity like charlie sheen needs another drink. >> nice ending to that. peter, a good friend from the university of maryland school of business. christine, stick around. we have more to talk about. don't move, by the way. s suzy orman is in the house. when suzy speaks, we listen. reinventing the american dream, up next. my next guest needs no introduction. her work speaks for itself. her latest book "the money clash, learn to create your american dream." here she is, suzy orman. suzy, it is such a pleasure for you to be here. we're friends and we've both watched this financial crisis come and sort of leave. but you have something interesting in this book that i want to touch on. it's something we've talked about for a few years, about the absence or death of the old american dream. you're talking about the new american dream. tell me what you mean by that. >> i have to tell you, i think a lot of people who had this dream, truthfully, they were going to own a house, they were going to be retire at 62, they were going to be able to afford to send their children to college. i think that's a dream for many people now sadly, sadly, ali, is gone. many people now who own a home underwater can't afford -- do you know what their new american dream is? they want to rent for the rest of their lives if they could simply get rid of this albatr s albatross. >> i remember you saying once, wouldn't you rather have a little shack that's paid for rather than this albatross, and people have come around to that idea. the old american dream convinced you that you weren't successful if you weren't aspiring to own a house. >> the old american dream was really more, more, more, better, better, better, bigger, bigger, bigger. it wasn't enough to own a $200,000 home, you had to own a a $500,000 home. now the new american dream is where you have integrity, honor, security. the new american dream is where you can sleep at night because you know what's yours can never be taken away from you again. >> you know from talking to people all the time that there is no greater joy than hearing from a person who has paid off debt. it's lib rating, but it's a feeling a lot of americans have never had. >> and i always say debt is bond aj. you will never feel financial freedom if you are in bondage. people aren't embarrassed any more to say, i can't afford it. i have $30,000 of debt. now the topic of not having money is one that is really acceptable today versus years ago you used to pretend you had money, but your credit cards were maxed out, you leased your cars. not anymore. >> we've often heard people say you don't want to run up credit cards, but home ownership is a good debt, mortgages are a good debt. we have interest rates still at record lows. home prices are low. should you be buying a house if you can afford it and you're going to stay there, if you've got the down payment? >> it depends what you mean by a down payment, it depends what you mean if you can afford it, and it also depends if you're getting a good deal or not. >> on the house, you mean. >> on the house. let's first start with, have we, in my opinion, reached the bottom of the housing market? no. i still think we could have a double dip in housing. why do i think that? you have houses -- let's just take tampa, for instance. tampa, florida, a home in a development, $750,000. today that exact same home is $150,000. >> which is a deal. >> a deal. >> so what's the problem? >> but it's not a deal. and let me tell you why. everybody in america goes to see a home and says, oh, my god, it was 750 and now it's 150. you have to look at every house next to you. if every home is selling for 150, you want to make sure you get that house for a steel of a deal, which is 130, 120. why? you move in and buy it for 150. the house next door to you, older woman dies. leaves it to her child. and now her child can't afford the mortgage payment. they liquidate it for $75,000. your house now is worth $75,000, and that is what's happening across america everywhere. >> let's talk about priorities. one of the things that stood out in this book is it you talk about people obsessing about saving for their child's education, and price starting to increase, but you say, quote, before you start saving one penny for your child's education costs, i insist you have debt taken care of starting with credit card debt. you've stuck to your guns over the years. get rid of your credit card debt before you start paying for any college education. >> here's the thing, i understand mothers, single mothers in particular, that they're only a good parent if they can pay for your child's education. that is not true. children can do this on their own. you have to stand in the truth. and if the truth of the matter is you're in debt, you don't have an eight-month emergency fund, you aren't saving for your own retirement, you're behind on your mortgage payment, you have to show your kids what's true. otherwise they grow up, they repeat your pattern and then we are creating an entire society of liars because we're doing things we can't afford. kids can do this on their own. >> you said class 2. you've done things traditionally called chapters as classes, and you even give people a password to go in there and do it. suzy, it's such a pleasure always to see you. this is your home away from home. come back. >> absolutely. you probably feel like you've heard it all, but leave it to matt tevy to find something shocking. millions who walked away because of the financial crisis. people have all kinds of retirement questions. no problem. td ameritrade has all kinds of answers. call us for quick help opening your new ira. or an in-depth talk with a retirement expert. like me. stop by my branch for a free retirement check-up. retirement hows and how-muches? whens... and what-ifs? bring 'em on. it's free. you're gonna retire. and we're gonna help. retirement answers at td ameritrade. roll over your old 401(k) and get up to $500. when i'm old and gray -- i guess i'm not going to get too gray, but when i'm old, i'm going to remember one thing about the financial crisis, and that was that nobody could get a loan. well, the government and the federal reserve were trying to deal with that problem. it ended up they gave money to people who you would be a little surprised to find out needed the money. matt tevy has a great article in rolling stone. he talks about what this was supposed to be and how it actually turned out. matt, what was sold to the public isn't what necessarily turned out to be the case. you have a story about two women connected to wall street who ended up getting more than $200 million in loans for what? tell us the story. >> for ages there's been this effort to try to open the fed's books to try to find out what's going on there. during the debate of the dodd frank bill, a number of congressmen, alan greyson, bernie paul and some on the senate side got together and ended up getting an amendment passed that would force open the fed's books. unfortunately, not for its entire history but just for a two-year period that covered the bailout, and even that only covered emergency overnight loans and some of the bailout programs. in december they got a list of all these people who had received moneys through received monies through all these various programs. >> some of them are exactly who you would expect them to be. some are major u.s. banks, some are not who you'd expect them to be. non-american companies, non-american banks. that wasn't even the most interesting part. >> i looked through this list. in order to sell this to my editors, i picked out the craziest names i could find on the list. the two i found were christie mac and susan karchez. christie mack was the wife of a ceo of morgan stanley. these two women as far as i can tell have no business experience got a $220 million loan through the talf program that allowed them to buy student loans and commercial mortgages. this is kind of typical of what you'll find in this list. this very esoteric list of people who you would not seemingly not designate for government assistance. john paulson, wayne high singer, the former miami dolphins owner. >> christine, this was not meant to give people loans to buy their cars and go to school. it was meant to get loans into the financial system so that ultimately those end consumers could get access to credit. let's go back to this time. remember credit was frozen. >> if you give investors the -- loan investors the money so they can buy those other loans, those student loans, debts, other things, it gets a frozen secondary market system going again so more loans can be made and get credit. there was a $700 million t.a.r.p. bailout. there was talf. it gets bigger and others. what i'm saying is on wall street there were a lot of people trying to figure out how they could get a piece. but the government wanted them to do that. that was the whole point of the exercise. in the end, i'm sure we're going to go back with a microscope and find a lot of instances that don't look pretty good. >> matt, you're a reporter, you talked to these women? >> no. neither of them would -- christy mack flatly refused to comment. and susan, i approached everyone to get a comment out of her and was unable to. i called them and they declined comment. i wasn't able to give -- >> they borrowed taxpayer dollars, but it isn't clear that taxpayers lost money in this. >> let me just tell you, did the fed give you a response? >> no, they did not. they gave you a response. >> they gave me a response. the fed told me any u.s. firm could borrow from talf. small businesses, large firms, pension funds, minority-owned firms, new firms and private individuals all participated in talf. the objective was to encourage lending to u.s. businesses and families at a time when credit was frozen for tens of millions of americans. t.a.l.f. supported nearly three million auto loans, nearly 900,000 to small businesses, 150,000 other business loans and millions of credit card loans. we've suffered no credit losses on talf loans and expect no credit losses. the considerable excess interest we earn on talf loans is passed on to the u.s. treasury to the benefit of taxpayers. would that have helped? >> maybe. you know what my answer to that, basically what bernie sanders asked ben bernanke when he was asking him about this a couple years ago, where do i sign up? where do i call -- where's the -- >> in truth, you may not be able to have distributed that money as effectively. we don't know how well these two women -- >> why would the wife of a morgan stanley executive -- >> is the implication that they're well connected and that's why they got this money? >> clearly. it's not like they advertised this everywhere. the methodology on how they gave out the loans was not clear. bernie sanders was not able to discover what their methodology was for accepting or rejecting -- >> the fed told me they met all criteria. christine, you sort of have a larger point about how people who are around money figure out ways to -- >> well, this is a whole industry that's in the know. right? when the government is opening up a big fire hose full of money and gushing it out the door because it's worried the economy is burning, that's what wall street was there to do, to figure out ways to get that money and make money from money. that is what wall street has done. the way he ends his piece is pretty good. look, there's no belt-tightening on the other side of the tracks. this is what you're saying this story shows to you. there's no belt tightening on the other side of the tracks while the rest of the world was trying to figure out if they were going to survive the great recession. >> it's eerie that the solution to the economic problems is let's throw $1 trillion at a problem and let all the millionaires on wall street get in the middle. >> the banks got us into this problem and the banks profited remarkably. >> not only were they not punished, but got reward phd the end. >> matt, good reach. thanks very much. thank you to the federal reserve for giving us feedback on that as well. high gas prices can be a good thing. if you don't believe me, i'll explain next in my xyz. time now for the xyz of it. oil prices hovering around 110 bucks a barrel. the national average for a gallon of self-serve unleaded gasoline approaching an all-time record. we've discussed the reasons for this. what may come as a surprise is the solution. i think the best solution to high oil prices is high oil prices. they spur us to conserve, compel us to buy and drive more fuel efficient cars. i think most importantly they lend viability to money-intensive alternative energy projects, the kind that get moth-balled when oil prices are low. i'm of the view that high oil and gas prices are going to be with us for a while. it's true there's no actual shortage of oil. it's true that speculators are driving the prices of oil higher. speculators are the ones who will buy the house you're trying to sell. without speculators, the people who buy on the hopes that the value will increase, we'd have no market for anything. what the market for oil is doing is making it more viable to get our energy from less traditional sources. that's a good thing in the long term, despite the economic pain that it causes in the short term. so what do you do about it? claim your own stake. on this show we continue to outline a number of ways that you can make money from rising energy prices through investing. time for you to get on board. that's my xyz. thanks for joining the conversation this week on "your money." we're here every saturday 1:00 p.m. eastern. sunday at p