and mortar, whether it s online. people are buying more stuff. we surpassed, according to morgan there, the trillion dollar mark this year. what s driving this? i think people are feeling better about the economy. therefore, when you see this increase in consumer sentiment, people want to go out there and start spending. call it the trump bump. call it, you know, just years of pent-up demand. people are going up and wanting to spend their money. it s also easier to go shopping now. back in the day, you had to go to the mall, get in the car, pay a lot of money for gasoline. now, you can shop from your computer, your foenl, your ipad. it s a lot easier. up until the 11th hour, even, amazon was delivering items, you know, by 10:00 p.m., all the way i think the last delivery was at 12:00 a.m. christmas eve night for amazon. you mentioned online sales specifically, those sales up 16%, year over year, beating expectations. why do you think that is? is it just because it s easier,
because the kids sort of absorb that stress. out of school. cool, i m going to get a big credit card and start spending. if i didn t get a credit card on campus for goodness sake. you know, credit cards a lot of people are afraid of them. actually i do recommend that new graduates open a credit card. but,. why? a line of credit? exactly. have you got to start establishing your credit history but give yourself a limit. only use the card for paying for gas or paying for groceries something very specific so you don t get carried away. okay. give me another tip. okay. so when it comes to your student loans the other thing that you have got it think about is, it s not all about paying those down. also balance your other financial priorities. so saving for retirement. this is huge as well. you can t just put all your money into your loans. have you got to be funneling money towards your 401 toward your job or roth ira. when you graduate you say i want to live in new york city or
it looks like we don t have the situation under control here. the debt ceiling is what s really scaring the markets right now and it s scaring on the international level, countries look at us, what s happening with the united states when they can t look as if they are paying their bills on time. that s a real problem in terms of our image. we could end up with a credit downgrade and that would be very bad for us when we go to borrow money. we have to pay higher interest. that would make our debt bigger. it spirals out of control. we got to raise that limit and we got to do it in a way, reign in the spending too. this didn t happen overnight. when did the government start spending, you know, and start to spiral out of control and what do we use the money for? right. i think what really set us off was, of course, the wars in afghanistan and iraq which ultimately will cost up to $6 trillion. that s a huge factor in our
right here, i want you to say guys, break out the plastic, spend like drunken sailors, on your mark, get set, go. spend like a drunken you ll look back and call this the dave ramsey recession. laugh while you may. it started with you, i want it to close with you. i want you to say to all americans, you have done enough. start spending, right now. i think that it might have been you. i went to dinner with you and you forgot your wallet. you know what your problem is? for those who don t know dave, he urges spending cash. he carries big wads of bills. if people didn t know they would think you re a drug dealer, walking around with singles.
growing increasingly impatient with leaders who don t understand. we have to marshal resources, including our capital, our household budgets are being hammered, and we don t want the consumer and like fools, start spending without some basis to expect far better things in the future. megyn: lou dobbs, thank you sir. great to be with you. megyn: the window opens for the verdict in 40 minutes from now, crowds are getting bigger by the italian courthouse. author doug preston, he wrote the book, the monster of florence, which in great detail talks about a serial murder case in italy, but the prosecutor behind this case as well, and he s been following this case just as closely as anybody. he will join me live, and he says he s got big news in the case. stay with us. look, every day we re using more and more energy.