ratings agency fitch says they re going to downgrade america s outlook from stable. stocks soared on wall street. because the markets closed before that action happened. the dow was up by nearly 300 points. the reason was a wow weekend for the american economy. retail sales surged. that s a fair word. they were up 16%. accord together national retail federation. it was the best kickoff to the holiday shopping season ever. topping off, today the federal reserve said household debt in this country fell $60 billion. the outfront strike team called this optimism, 85% of them said they were not going to go into recession. when the pundits were sure of just that. they ended up being right. can this optimism really last? peter, what s your take of this market rally? will it last? especially because after the markets closed, we got the hit from fitch, the ratings agency, which was expected but is another reminder of the failure in washington. it is about the failure in washington.
i m erin burnett. outfront tonight, ratings agency fitch affirms of the united states aaa credit rating but says guess what, we re going to downgrade your outlook to negative from stable. this happened after the markets closed. obviously, something negative and all relate the to the lack of action and the failure of the supercommittee, still stocks is soared on wall street. because the markets closed before that action happened. the dow up by nearly 300 points. the reason was a wow weekend for the american economy. retail sales over thanksgiving surged. that s a fair word. they were up 16%, according to the national retail federation. ibm says it was the best kickoff to the holiday shopping season ever. topping it off today the federal reserve said household debt fell $60 billion. the outfront strike team called this optimism. 85% of them said they were not going to go into recession. when the pundits of america were sure of just that. well, as you can see, they ended up bein
we do think that warner s behavior is worth knowing more about. it s a remarkable new new york times story published about 40 minutes ago, that story alleges within the last year, american intelligence agencies paydays by who s working for the russian government $100,000 in american tax dollars in exchange for unverified and possibly fabricated information aboutru president trump. why would our intelligence agencies use our money to do something like that? why would they do anything like that under any circumstances and what would the information they gathered be used for? none of that is clear. the one thing worth taking away from a dramatic week in washington is this the obama administration spied on p a rivl political campaign.
ken? ron paul certainly has more of an isolationist foreign policy and economic policy. so to the extent that that s what we re talking about, we re talking about free trade and, you know, sort of isolationism, more generally. you ll hear a little bit of an economic populist message from ron paul. that s not really very consistent with the gop orthodox. in fact, that s one of the many ways in which he is outside of the gop mainstream, and probably one of the things that will hurt him, if not in iowa, then certainly as we go forward here in the nominating process. it s interesting, ned, of all the presidential candidates, when it comes to the dysfunction in our economic system, and when it comes to the perception of america as a global military predator, sort of reigning fire from the sky with american tax dollars, ron paul seems to be the only candidate discussing these things. at the same time, why do you think no other candidate wants to deal with those issues? they re complica