time assistant managing editor, rona fruhar and paul bega begala, democratic strategist and director for superpac democratic action. are president obama s improving poll numbers directly tied to the improving stock market numbers? or are you going to claim it has something to do with leadership? it s not simply the stock market, because that s been booming for quite some time. i think the most important thing to look at in economic data from a political point of view is jobs and income. and more americans this christmas have jobs, they re making a little bit more. we want to see incomes go up. but 20 states have raised the minimum wage had nothing to do with president obama. so it s mostly the economy. but there has also been some of the executive actions, the president has taken since he got pasted in the election just a few weeks ago. particularly on immigration and now opening up to cuba. president believe it or not, even getting shellacked is now
on a roll. you know pocketbook politics dominate at the end of the day. but rona, i m happy for good news, everybody should be happy for good news. but there is a concern that sometimes the politicians will ignore what lies under those numbers. christine is always great at telling us, jobs are being made, but are they the right jobs? is income going up? underemployment. we never talk about that number. what do we see there? and that still creates a need? so the recovery is still bifurcated. there s no question, there s a lot of jobs at the top. there s always been a lot of jobs at the bottom. there aren t enough in the middle. that said. last few moves we ve seen a little bit of a a turn where consumers are opening their wallet. even before oil prices began to fall, were you see the uptick. when there s more spending, companies want to invest more, more jobs are being created. we hope we re getting to the tipping point where you re seeing more middle market jobs,
decline. fuelled by the plummeting price of oil. hovering around $55 a barrel. the drop is wreaking havoc on economies of oil-producing countries, like russia, several countries in the middle east. venezuela that could lead to major economic repercussions, who do we talk about this? rona fruhar, cnn economist and time assistant editor. we should start with that let s start with the good news, a big day on the market. what was going on. what are the highs? tell us about it. yesterday, fed chair janet yellen said the fed is going to be careful about raising rates later in the year. they re going to take their time, they re not going to rock the boat and markets were happy about that. low rates are generally good for the stock market and you can see the buoyancy in the market. there s been a lot of movement, there s been a tremendous amount of movement this year. absolutely. i think you re going to see volatility. volatility is the word for the coming year. i think that the u.s. m
big week of politics big week of politics in the round table, i m joined by jane harmon, former democratic congresswoman of california and now president and ceo of the woodrow wilson center. newt gingrich, house speaker between 95hand 99. rona fruhar assistant managing editor for time magazine and our own chuck todd. i want to talk about edward snowden. it s been such an interesting conversation for the country. and we wanted to know just about how his own words speaking to the public might have changed views, and, chuck, you did some new polling around this to gauge people s attitudes. let s look at some of the findings that you put together. yeah, let s do. new polling we conducted before and after snowden s interview that we are revealing for the first time here shows at least
if in fact irs personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on, and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that s outrageous. and there s no place for it they have to be held fully accountable. that was president obama reacting to reports that irs employees singled out conservative political groups for extra scrutiny prior to the 2012 election. joining the panel now is assistant managing editor for time magazine, rona fruhar. i want to start with you, jay carney spoke to this issue of the irs, local officials in the cincinnati office of the irs, that were looking at groups that were sending in applications to be 501 c 4. he said the irs is an independent enforcement agency with only two political appointees. now when he says these two