Repeeled. Its really hard to see how the democrat goes along with that. What that does is it is as in the future if you dont like a law, even if it passed, survived a president ial election, the supreme court, you can threatone shut down the government in order to get rid of it. So its really hard to see how the democrats agree to getting rid of this law. And at this point its hard to see how republicans fold on their insis taens that it must be delayed. I think we are likely looking at at least a short shutdown. Rose that is an interesting question, what do you think in terms of time. I think its hard to find the shortterm solution. I think youve got tond wither about the republicans. Al is right, i think theyre looking for a shut don and not really worried about having one, for some reason. But when you ask a president , any president , right or left to give away the one thing that put him in the history books, his major legislative accomplishment before he even had a chance to reall
Pursue a plutonium use not for use but for bombs. Iran is going through this route of enormous sanctions by taking the iran economy to get a bomb. Theyre pretty close. Rose how close. Well, they are close to the point where they want to be in a situation where they have enough in rich uranium at lower levels but to be able to punch through and enrich it very rapidly within a matter of weeks to get high rich uranium they can use for a bomb. Rose are they close. They are getting close. They didnt go for high enrichment. Instead they built a lot of piles of rich union annual but added centrifuge to high enrichment just like that. Weve been working today the United States and israel and other countries have put place very forceful sanctions saying if you continue in this path those sanctions will collapse your economy. And theres been a credible military option by the u. S. Perhaps by israel even if the sanctions dont work, there will be ways to take out your program. The combination of St
That would be a permanent slowing of the growth of the Social Security spending. Rose what do you think of that . Not going happen. Rose why not . First of all t would be desirable if it would but its not going to. Because i think at this point the white house has made it clear that they view thises a repeated game or repeated thing that, you know, every year or so were going to have these kinds of issues. And that if they said they werent going to negotiate and start negotiating what happens next year or the year thereafter or the year thereafter. So i think the way out of this is likely to be a relatively clean spending bill and clean debt limit, perhaps coupled with a figure leaf of a process. So you know, a tax reform process. Or an entitlement reform process but no actual legislation that does anything today. Rose okay, but you assume that therefore the speaker of the house will bring to the floor something that will put together enough republican votes and democratic votes to pas
Like and how she might be different from ben bernanke. Well i think shell be fantastic. I think key to the fed gracefully exiting out of its quantitating policy and normalizing Interest Rates, the ability to communicate clearly to the marketplace. And thats what shes been working on at the fed. Shes been working really hard on communication strategy and key to communication is building consensus. You need to have the consensus view around the committee. And i dont think theres anyone better than her at doing that so i think shes going to be very good fed chairman and transition very nicely away from the bernanke fed. So i think were in good hands. I think well be in georgia shape. Rose transition away means what . Well, it should be a seamless transition so that its not disruptive to the Financial Markets, particularly in a very uncertain time given whats going on with fiscal policy and whats going on with washington. We need to have a seamless transition between chairman bernanke and
And seniors are very hostile and the chairman of the Republican National committee attacked him the fix day for this assault on seniors. So i mean both sides do this. They say we want these cuts in general but when you get specific about it its very, very hard to do. Rose because of bad politics. Its bad politics to do something that people dont like. And they like medicare. People like medicare and they like Social Security. Right. One of the interesting intellectual things occurring is that the opponents of the Affordable Care act use the eye didnt call argument that was used against medicare and Social Security. Its socialism, its socialized medicine. And yet not one of the o uponants certainly in the congress would ever dare to stand up and say lets repeal Social Security. Lets repeal medicare. So i think one of the fears is that the Affordable Care act might work. And then enter the same hollowed status as both Social Security and medicare have in the american but there is an alte