beautiful picture of atlanta, georgia. atlanta, the world headquarters of so many important companies, like delta and coca-cola, and other companies, i think. but a beautiful morning there. welcome back. u.s. markets closed for memorial day. traders will have just four days this week to make up for last week s losses. after four straight weeks of gains the dow, s&p and nasdaq all fell. traders are worried that the federal reserve will may start to pull back on the bond buying program known as qe-3. the fed has been pumping $85 billion into the economy every month in an effort to bring down the unemployment rate. that s been driving gains in markets over the past few years. but if the fed can t juice the markets anymore, i don t know, maybe consumers will. we re going to get reports on consumer confidence and personal spending. also get a reading on economic growth. a lot in store for us. just a week after paying $1.1 billion for tumbler, yahoo!
oh, angie? i have her on speed dial. welcome back to early start. live pictures of new york city. the empire state building on monday of this memorial day weekend. we hope you re having a great holiday weekend. we also hope you re taking a moment to remember what this weekend is all about. all those who have given so much for this country. hmm. absolutely. minding your business this morning. markets are closed for the memorial day holiday. that means traders will have just four days to make up for lst week s losses. after four straight weeks of gains, the dow, s&p and nasdaq all fell last week because traders are getting worried that the federal reserve may start to pull back on its bond buying program known as qe-3. the fed has been pumping $85 billion into the economy every single month in an effort to bring down the unemployment rate. that s been driving gains in the markets over the last few years. but if the fed can t juice the markets anymore maybe consumers
markets. our export growth has fallen to about zero at the moment because there isn t demand overseas for our products. so it feels like a little bit of a soft spot, but we ll see. how much of this is consumer confidence, do you think? consumer confidence definitely plays a role. but consumers right now don t have the money to spend. and if they went out and spent, they d be borrowing money. i don t think i think it s a more fundamental problem in a way than consumer confidence. steve, my long wait yesterday trying to get up to new york, in the lounge was tim geithner waiting for the flight, as well. i asked him, we re seeing these good signs in the economy, how much of it is the fed pumping money into the system with qe-3, he said, no, it s real, people are buying things and this is a real signs of good news. so let s just a second on the good news. there s pent up demand. car sales have been very strong, housing is actually quite strong, obviously off a depressed level it
that s one good among many negative. as far as the fed goes i think the big development from the unemployment report is that the fed s probably going to have to stick with qe3 and borrow $85 billion a month, not slice it back for many, many more months to come. in some respects there s not a bad scene area know for the markets, really loose monetary policy and tight fiscal policy. greg there s the markets and everybody else. right. there are the markets and when i say housing is recovering and the fed is propping up the economy and i get all this mail from people who say it doesn t feel any different than ten years ago. that s a real problem. it s maddening and it s glacial. the progress on unemployment is going to take years before we get to 4, 4.5% unemployment. no way to sugar coat that. it will be a slow process. what is the legacy going to be of this, it s early to start talking legacies but you re talking about a glacial process, what is the legacy of this
why should you buy stocks? couple of reasons, fed stimulus. qe-3, the fed prints money, throws it into the economy, the net result is that interest rates are so low there is nothing else to do with your money except buy a house for a low mortgage or put it in the stock market. number two, there is no alternative. connected to number one. what else are you going to do that is going to get you these kinds of returns. prices are at a fair value. a price to earnings ratio, how much is the price of the stock versus what are the earnings. they are lower today than they were five years ago when we hit those records in october of 2007. those are the reasons in favor of investing. you don t know when it is going end to, right? here are the cases against buying stocks right now. you got this issue with europe s recession. the u.s. is going up, the economy is going up, europe is going down. u.s. consumers are strapped. we don t know how much oxygen