0 steve murphy. thank you. so, john, should d.c. be heeding these retailers warnings? of course they should be. there s plenty of time since they re all on vacation right now to look at the news. the presidents that have done best lowering taxes have spurred the economy. look at president coolidge, rornld reagan spurred the economy, when he lowered them, he later raised them, but to get the economy going, he lowered taxes. walmart said they re hurt by lower income sales. a 2% payroll tax increase, the payroll tax cut was put in place. it hurts lower income. if you re in the upper middle class, if you re higher, it doesn t affect you at all. with high gas prices, lowest labor participation rate since the 1980s and the economy stagnant, it hurts consumers significantly, yes. it s not just lower economy because we saw macy s, nordstroms, they have to fire their piano player or something, this is really hitting everyone. it s simple, right? you tax me more, there s less money in my
0 needs to take or los angeles, he s the guy who makes it all happen. thank you, mario. let him eat cake! alison will never look at good. that s true. mario, we ll miss you. thanks for being here. thank you, mario. thank you for being here. see you tomorrow. raise your wages pushing the minimum to the max. it s going national. more wage protests planned in more cities this week and democratic leaders in d.c. are showing their support. we have put forth legislation to raise the minimum ge. it s time for the minimum wage to go up! but some job creators warning super sizing the minimum wage will downsize our already shaky job market. are they right? hi, everyone. i m brenda buttner. this is bulls & bears. here they are, gary b. smith tracy burns, jonas max ferris, john layfield along with david mercer. welcome, everybody. gary b., will maximizing the minimum wage minimize or maximize our job growth? well, brenda, it s going to kill job growth, especially when you get
now, to the floor of the new york stock exchange. nicole petallides. nicole: we will get to some of the home builders in a second. right now you have a mixed market. the dow jones pulling back a bit. that 2.2%. last week was a rough week for the dow jones industrials. there is the tech heavy nasdaq. there is a look right now at how we have done so far. obviously, you can see that we have had a nice run this year. i wanted to also take a look at some of the homebuilders. we got in some existing home sales. pound .6% month over month. that is not good news there. the home prices that you saw word. back to you. lori: seasonally strong time of year for home sales. overall, the u.s. economy is running below its historical trend. this is a study done by the index. my next guest says the economy sluggish growth may be the most ideal condition for investors. joining us is now jack. welcome to you. thank you, lori. lori: you see this as a prime opportunity. some new investment dolla
manager arrested this morning by the fbi on insider trading charges. our colleague at the wall street journal catching that arrest of michael steinberg this morning. he is the most senior executive of the hedge fund to be snared in the government probe. he has pled not guilty and will be released on $3 million bail. mike has conducted himself professionally and ethically. we believe him to be a man of integrity. charlie gasparino has been all over this story for us. charlie: they gave us a news story on good friday. nicole: a man of integrity. what do you think? i do not know. he says he wrote an ethical shop. i have gone round and round with sec for years. i always believed that the ultimate target of the investigation, not think he is guilty, but the target of the immigration has been steve cohen. i believe that based on my sources. it is getting closer and closer. everybody thought that matthew martoma actually had a 20 minute phone call with steve cohen before he did
our panel. we got a full house today. steve, you say slam the brakes on this plan, why? because government involved is going to be a waste. you look at other infrastructure fed ex and ups and railroads got out the way, great infrastructure, let s have the private equity involved, public-partnerships private partnerships and you get more for less. you get bloated wages and more bang for the buck by bringing in free market. dave: what is wrong with the free market taking the place of government boondoggles? for one thing it is not happening quickly enough. we have a serious problem that all of us should agree to. there are certain things like roadways that you cannot give a monopoly to a private company. dave: it s a public monopoly? don t you feel better with all of us own the government having control over the roadway than one private company. dave: i ve seen so many of those public projects with guys sitting around. they take five times as long as private project