europe, the french banks, italian banks hitting multi-year lows. this problem is not only here but overseas so it makes people skittish and why would you buy? alisyn: looking to your point, the number now, down 212 points. so what can the government or the fed, treasury department, do today, if anything? is there talk of another stimulus? at this point, you know, the honest answer out of my mouth would be to just stay out of it. we need the free markets to work here, and to think that the president or congress or the federal reserve or anybody can step into this picture and try to fix it, that s just false. we ve seen and tried to do many things in the past that may be temporarily fixing things but longer term puts us in more trouble. so at this point we need to let the free markets work, we need to stop trying to stimulate our economy. what we need is organic growth. we need businesses. we need less regulation. we need businesses to be able to grow on their own, because alisyn, at
i m not evading responsibility. i m also saying congress has not acted well, but the fact is, the president leads, the president is responsible, and we never got a specific plan from the president of the united states. that s not an opinion. that s just facts. bill: more now from ed henry, ed, good morning to you. how is this latest financial crisis playing out now there? good morning, bill. they obviously realize the urgency of the situation, the fed action that you mentioned certainly lifted the markets yesterday because they needed to add certainty that interest rates would stay low for the next two years. the flipside, until 2012 at least, the fed believes there s going to be slow growth, a weak recovery, much like we ve seen in recent months. that s bad news for the president. you add that to the gallup poll that said 51 percent of americans believe he does not deserve reelection, only 47 percent believe that he does deserve a second term. i spoke to independent political analys
bill: here we goarks fox news alert now, awaiting action from the white house on this economic slump. markets reacting now to the announcement from federal reserve from yesterday, and that s where we are. down 317, holding interest rates, the fed is, at next to nothing for at least two years. that s 2013. the president is going to meet with the treasury secretary, tim geithner. what will they talk about? that, brand new hour, i m bill hemmer. good morning. alisyn: remember you and i made a wager about what would happen to the markets and were wildly wrong? that s happening again today! good morning, i m alisyn camarota, in for martha maccallum. americans are looking for a boost from the oval office for the recovery. bill: and republicans already criticizing the white house for this: it means the president will have to go before the voters. the president is the president. he s responsible.
wish we had better news. hires the retirement, america. there is your 401k, now a 201k, we were down 400, now 376, this coming one day after the federal reserve said it will keep interest rates at record lows for the next two years. 2013 is the first time eyes ever donit s ever done anything similar to that. how much is that promise truly worth? here is an economist that says not very much. if the fed can t tell us specifically what it s going to do, it doesn t no exactly what is going to happen. the more promises made, the more liable the fed will have to come back later and change it because it has promised something it can t deliver on. bill: let s talk about this. liz clammer is with us. why did the fed do what it did for the first time ever. for the first time ever the
fed did that because the fed is almost, not quite, throwing its hands up we tried big asset purchases to float this market up. you probably have heard of qe2. bill: you print money with qe t. alisyn: in essence. some would disagree with it. you re inflating something to have people take more in the stock phabgt. today we have the problem that is of course not only the issue of getting the don t tree downgrading and the fed looking and saying what else are we going to do. can we really ask the country to deal with more printing of money, but also europe is a huge headline problem here, bill. if you re looking at the markets and all the gains yesterday it s actually not our fault today. the markets rallied on what the feds announced yesterday. bill: i thought the issue was in italy, now it s not italy it s france? franceess banks have exposure to italy and expose you are to