it, or did you think that original expectation number sounded low to begin with? no. i mean, i was surprised by it. i think a lot of economists were. one indication was the adp number which is another jobs indicator earlier in the week which which had missed expectations. but, you know, these often times these numbers are a little bit over the map, and i think this one no question, kristin, surprised a lot of economists despite because of what we talk about the trade war, but also some of those other indicators, for example, like an inverted yield curve. there have been a lot of examples and evidence that a recession had been coming over the last year. this jobs report, i think, put a lot of those fears to bed, and if we could just get this trade war resolved which have made a lot of economists previously concerned about the economy that much more sure that the good times are going to roll on. kristin: i just want to be clear here because there s been so much talk that we could be
thing they do? they raise taxes! yet they say in this case, raising taxes is not going to affect economy. okay. gary, scholar is something we don t hear often on bulls & bears. straight to susan. we need to put some of the recent numbers in context. yes, the percentage ticked up a little bit. but corporate earnings have been strong. the consumer confidence number that was out yesterday from the university of michigan was up. the consumer expectation number from university of michigan for the next six months was also up. so this is not consumers pull back from the economy. it was really more of a blip. when that gets revised, it will get revised upward. but toby, gdp did decline. that was really proof that just talking about tax hikes would hurt things. then consumer confidence plummeted, proof that tax hikes do really kill the economy and kill confidence. right. if tax hikes don t affect behavior, then why is it that these corporations put all these paychecks out, bonuses, be