december 2007 one an applicant would have to pay a fine and back taxes an pass a background check. the deal is being putting together by the gang of eight. marco rubio talks more about immigration reform tomorrow morning on state of the union we going at 9:00 eastern. nascar, its sponsor, nra. former congresswoman gabbie giffords was nearly killed two years ago with a man with a gun. today she s trying to change gun laws but she still appreciates the weapon.
total. that s the highest level in a year and a half, since december 2007, five years ago. weekly jobless claims have stayed above 300,000, and economists say weekly claims have to fall consistently below 375,000 shown by this yellow line here to show that the job market is strong enough to actually lower the unemployment rate in any meaningful way. wall street has seen a slow, but relentless selloff in recent days as well, down roughly 700 points since the election ten days ago. more than a thousand points from about a month ago. and there is a long list of reasons for that. stu varney with the fox business network, host of varney varney& company in the mornings. i don t have any stocks, i m not invested in any way, so anybody who has a 401(k) is invested, and that effects this economy. put that in perspective, 700 points in the last week, a
republican team were won in the state of virginia. bill: here we go on a fox news alert. weekly jobless claims. it is thursday morning. number of americans seeking unemployment benefits dropped 8,000. 355 is the number. 355,000 filing for first time unemployment claims. labor department warns the figures were distorted by superstorm sandy. applications declining in one state because the unemployment office lost power during the storm. sandy pushing up applications in other states because those temporarily out of work sought benefits. martha: you may see some people getting jobs as rebuilding begins on the northeast. here is little perspective on the number since december 2007. here is the chart we look at. weekly jobless claims stayed above 300,000. they spiked back in 2009. we re a long way from that number. economists say weekly claims must consistently fall below 375,000. that is shown by yellow line.
street journal s forecasting panel, 45 distinguished economists said we would not go into a recession over the next year. in fact, it turned out we were already in recession by december 2007. it was later revealed through the data. when we re in a recession we don t know it half the time and can t predict the macro economy more than six months in advance. you had all kinds of problems with people expecting housing prices to go up when there wasn t a lot of reason to think they would. in economics you have so much dat data, it s hard to find the install of the meaningful indicator out of the mess of statistics you get. nate, it seems there are some elections where you talk about trying to predict election outcomes and forecast election outcomes. sometimes you don t need a model. ronald reagan with the economy was never going to lose, and bill clinton won t lose in 1996. you can look at other cases where the campaigns matter. do you have a sense what that
have taken off, off to the races on this. this is ben bernanke saying we re all in at the poker table. there s no way we re going to stop doing this until the unemployment rate comes back down. by saying that, it makes it really difficult for anybody in the market to bet against that, to say interest rates will come up soon. stocks a much better place to put your money, 1.8 on the 10-year note or stocks or commodities or something else that might be taking off. that s why yesterday the market was up about 1.5% for the dow, now at its highest levels since december 2007. the nasdaq at their highest levels since november of 2000 because nobody wants to bet against the fed. gold, silver, platinum, too. all the commodities prices up, makes it really difficult to bet against any of this. you re not going to see pullbacks any time soon. go get a mortgage, i guess. chuck, by the way, we ll see you every day on squawk box. i m signing you up for this. i love being on, joe, andrew,