and the number one good thing about winning the nba championship series kardashian sister. i think there are still a couple left, aren t there? congratulations to the mavs. we are going to bring in peter king. plus what is really behind the bad poll numbers on the economy. steve rattner is going to explain that to us. you are watching morning joe brewed by starbucks.
economy. and let s put some of those numbers back up. a lot of americans believe that we re headed for another recession. a lot of americans just don t like where we are right now. what is the political impact? and also, more importantly, what is the impact on consumers decision to start spending money and start, you know, kick-start this economy back? it s almost like a vicious cycle, a vicious feedback loop we re in. we are in some kind of a vicious circle, a vicious feedback loop. part of the reason why consumers aren t spending is because they don t have that, have money. we talked about it the other day. i m going to talk about it a little bit more later in this show. and part of it is that there is no confidence in government right now. there is a sense in both businesses and among consumers that when they look at what goes on in washington and we saw the poll about congress if our leaders can t get their act together, can t produce a long-term fiscal plan that makes sense
what are they doing here? right. aren t they rockers? all right. let s take a look at the morning papers. we start with the houston chronicle. congresswoman gabrielle giffords is waking up this morning out of the hospital. she checked out of the he habilitation facility five months after being shot. she continues to receive 24 hour nursing care. european banks exposed to greece s debt unnerved investors, again. it might cut the credit ratings of france s three largest banks because of their holdings. let s go to willie geist. we turn to jim from politico. good morning. good morning. how are you? good.
now, the consumers aren t spending. how about this, guys, extend the bush tax cuts, create certainty for businesses, create certainty for individuals, and then maybe spark some, i don t know, employment, people start to hire and people start to spend some money. he addressed jonas, go ahead, jonas. this is where they aren t going, you can have certainty with the specific tax policy and they don t have to extend the bush ones, they could layout what their tax package would be like and this is where they re leaving it out in the open and that s not a good situation. onif that s it s not going to happen because everybody is not waiting for elections. i think the bigger point here, we can argue this up and down, whether it s going to make a difference. when you use the analogy of 1991, steve, 1991 was a completely different environment. i mean, we re in a post financial depression, and we re climbing out. in 1991, housing rates were down, we had excess demand, not excess supply an
you in this report, you say a premature focus on deficit reduction could slow growth and increase unemployment. why saw this? why is that? well, we start constriction now, we ll put more people off the bork out of work, and that will slow growth. we already have faltering growth. we re in a real trough here, we re in trouble, and we need to take steps to get the economy going. consumers aren t going to do that, they re tightening their belts. businesses respect going to do it as long as there aren t consumers, and we re not going to do it with exports, so we re going to have to do it by having government take action. jenna: we certainly have seen the american public change some of their habits through this crisis. they ve paid down some debt, they ve taken less credit, they re saving more money. so why should the government act different than just a typical american family that s trying to get through this crisis? because as consumers constrict what they re spending,