hoping to reel in buyers and confiden consumer confidence at a low. does that mean that the economy is already scrooged? hi, everyone, i m he brenna buttner, this is bulls and bears, and we ve got gary b smith, tobin smith. jonas max ferris and susan and larry. okay, larry, no deal on taxes and debt scrooging holiday sales and the economy? that s right, brenda, you know, i don t want to be the grinch here, but in a word we are scrooged. the grinch! very, very optimistic expectations and an outlook for retail sales that was very rosie and those optimistic expectations have faded as we ve gotten closer and closer to the end of the year with no fiscal cliff deal in sight. and as a result, consumer sentiment is falling off a cliff, just like the fiscal cliff we re going to fall off so we ve got a problem on our hands and couldn t happen at a worse time and today, super saturday, the second busiest day of the year. brenda: well, a lot of retailers are saving the big discou
0 agency that republicans and democrats agree to be the ultimate authority is the congressional budget office. they looked at this question and they found that raising the top, the rates on the top 2% will have virtually no impact on gdp and virtually no impact on job formation, the republicans in congress didn t like that study. so they asked the crs. congressional research service to review the data and come up with conclusions and guess what, they looked at this and said the same thing, almost no impact on job creation, no impact on gdp formation, almost all of the economists seem to be unanimous about this, that the obama plan. let me finish the point. the obama plan finishes the rate on the top 2% will have virtually no impact on job formation. i resemble your remark about facts and opinions, we have both on this show. let s hear the data. brenda: gary b, you go right to it. you know, julian has his study and you know, the other side has another study, ernst & young n
this for the past four years and seen government expand over and over again and now the same composition in the congress as well as the white house, what are we looking at. obamacare, dodd frank and heavy costs, companies will not hire. okay, stephan, do you agree? i agree partially. we should be concerned about government growing out of control. first of all, government through quite a lot during the bush years and we had pretty robust private employment expansion and the government has some down significantly, the tax policy center took a look at this. pops up to 30%, i acknowledge that at the beginning of the obama term and come down since. i think we are going to see that drop in the next three, four years, i don t think he s an anti-government guy don t get me wrong or the government expander he s been described as. a lot of jobs at the state and local level, but jonas, what do you think it means for the labor market? i think for the the labor markets, if you def
0 expander he s been described as. a lot of jobs at the state and local level, but jonas, what do you think it means for the labor market? i think for the the labor markets, if you define success as a low unemployment rate, the government actually can deliver that in some cases and i don t think it is a good measure of success. we are going to come back and four years, now that unemployment is 6% then big government works well. that s not a conclusion you should draw. if you look at japanese they ve been running some sort of fiscal stimulus for 20 years now and unemployment rate under 5%, but a terrible economy and a terrible stock market. so, you want a natural unemployment rate to grow not with artificial constant perpetual government deficit spending and again, i think your our government can lower it over the next four years, that s not necessarily good for the country and the economy and the stock market. gary b. the question, does government drop and they grow or the privat
lawyers for sandusky say they plan to appeal. now for an extreme weather alert for you because the gulf coast is bracing for heavy wind and rain as the tropical storm system is swirling in the gulf of mexico. debbie is her name. and she ll be the fourth named storm of the atlantic hurricane season. for more on that, let s go to maria in the extreme weather center. what do we know? good morning. good to see you. it s not named debbie just yet. it s an area of low pressure, showers and thunderstorms across the gulf of mexico so the center of the storm system is still over open water but the issue here is that winds are very conducive for this storm to continue to develop and intensify. and the warm water of the gulf will help it intensify as well. you can see the center of the storm system or what appears to be the center of it basically slowly spinning across the gulf of mexico blowing up a lot of showers and thunderstorms across western portions of cuba and also to the west