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Bulls & Bears
House Democrats Rushing Vote on New $1 Trillion Health Care Bill; Can We Afford It?
Eric Bolling, Fox Business Network: There are about 400,000 words in this bill, which comes out to $2.6 million per word. It's ridiculous. The Democrats have a significant problem here. The Congressional Budget Office came out and said the Senate health care bill was going to cost less than expected, and all the Democrats celebrated. Now the CBO says the House version of the health care bill is going to cost more than expected. Pelosi can't backtrack and say the CBO was right with the Senate bill's cost and not the House's version. Either way, we can't afford this bill—it's going to drive us right into bankruptcy.
Julia Piscitelli, Democratic strategist: We can't afford not to pass this legislation. A lot of Democrats and Republicans want to get this done. Health care reform is going to lower the overall costs for everyone. People aren't going to have to go to the emergency room for relatively minor health ailments because they don't have insurance. Instead, emergency rooms will be freed up to take people with real emergencies.
Tobin Smith, ChangeWave Research: The math doesn't add up here. Every time Congress tries to cut waste or excessive spending from Medicare, doctors complain that they aren't going to get paid, and Congress decides not to pass the reforms. The closest thing to what the Democrats are proposing here is the state health plan in Massachusetts. People choose not to enroll, and pay a fine. But when they get sick, they sign up with the state health plan when costs for care are astronomically higher. This just doesn't make sense.
Gary B. Smith, TheChartman.com: We all know this legislation, if passed, will make the health care sector more inefficient. Think of it like merging your local hospital with the DMV. Down the line this plan is going to drive private insurance companies out of business. One of the proposed mandates in the legislation is that private insurance companies cannot negate coverage based on a person's preexisting condition. As a result, we're going to see premiums skyrocket. This will not be a $1 trillion plan. Long term, this is the sort of program that ends up costing $10 trillion. It will explode in cost, exactly like Medicare.
Pat Dorsey: I think we've missed a giant opportunity to actually reform our nation's health care system. The issue here isn't the cost of the legislation—it's a heck of a lot of money no matter which way you slice it. The health care system is broken. We spend too much and get too little in return. Costs are growing far faster than the country's GDP or inflation. The proposed legislation will not bend the health care cost curve. Reducing costs should have been our main focus.
$173K per Stimulus Job; Good Use or Waste of Tax Dollars?
Tobin Smith: What a waste. The anecdotes coming out of this are incredible. For example, a government agency in Georgia got $28 million. They say they created 4,000 jobs—but they were only five-week jobs! Not to mention there are question about the agency counting the numbers twice. I think when you actually discount these job creation numbers from reality, the cost per job is much higher.
Eric Bolling: Eighty-thousand of these jobs were for construction workers. What's the average construction worker make? $45,000. So it cost the government $173,000 to create a job that pays $45,000. About 325,000 education jobs were saved or created. The average salary is $54,000, and again the government spent $173,000 just to create one of those jobs. Overall, the amount of waste here is in the tens of billions of dollars. And this is the case across the board with jobs supposedly saved and created by the stimulus.
Julia Piscitelli: This was a good investment. If we didn't have the stimulus, we'd be looking at jobs lost, not created or saved. Unemployment would be significantly higher. We all know that some of the stimulus money was not used specifically to create jobs. It went into other projects not specifically designated for job creation.
Gary B. Smith: I guess this was a good use of taxpayer money for the road construction crew that got a government contract. But what happens in three or four months when this adrenaline shot from the government goes away and these guys don't have jobs anymore? Government always allocates funds like this inefficiently. Another example I found is Brook Haven Science Associates. It got a $258 million stimulus check and created 25 jobs with it. The White House's predictions of unemployment topping out at 7.9 percent from the stimulus were obviously way off. You can't believe anything they say—and that extends to this saved or created job number.
Pat Dorsey: I'm not going to defend the size of the stimulus, and there's little doubt there is wasteful spending going on. But there is a good side to the stimulus. We can't forget how low business confidence was early this year. If you're a private investor or business owner, you spend money based on what your confidence is for the future. To a degree, the stimulus helped investors believe the economy wasn't going to go into a death spiral. Was this worth the huge cost of the stimulus? I don't think we know yet.
Paying to "Rat Out" Biz Tax Cheats; Bad for Business?
Eric Bolling: This pits neighbor against neighbor. Why doesn't the IRS just do what it's supposed to do and enforce tax laws? This will be bad for businesses and neighbors.
Tobin Smith: Think about the guy who's running a cash business, not paying his taxes, maybe even sending his earnings outside of the country. Behavior like this is unacceptable. It's time for people to buck up, and if you're a tax cheat, you have to pay up. Amnesty programs don't really work—creating a program for people to alert authorities and keep a piece of the money collected could help. Why allow people breaking the law to get away with it when there are plenty of people doing the right thing and paying their taxes?
Gary B. Smith: I don't like the idea of a program like this. The real problem here isn't tax cheats. The problem is how unbelievably complicated the tax code is in the United States. No one can figure it out. It's too easy to cheat on your taxes. Reforming the tax code is the real way to get rid of tax cheats.
Pat Dorsey: If a business is dodging taxes, they have a competitive and unfair advantage over businesses that are abiding by the law. That alone is enough reason to crack down on businesses that cheat on tax payments. It makes a lot of sense to me.
Predictions
Gary B. Smith: IBM's health care fix is a win-win! Buy "IBM" at $100 for a 50 percent gain
Pat Dorsey: November surprise leaves market a mess! "CLX" cleans up 20 percent in 1 year
Tobin Smith: Keep out Hollywood 'burglar bunch'! "TCY" secures 30 percent in 1 month
Eric Bolling: $1 trillion health care bill is a trick! "HPQ" prints 50 percent profits in 1 year
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Cavuto on Business
Forget That Harry Can't Hook Up, What Are You Paying Up?
Charles Payne, WStreet.com: There are enough people on both sides of the aisle that do not want a public option. Not only is there a closed door, but they are tone deaf. This bill is belligerent because they are forcing people to take it and like it.
Dagen McDowell, Fox Business Network: Neither party has an argument to fix the central problem: the skyrocketing costs of health care. No one is willing to sacrifice to fix what is broken. For example, nobody is going to raise the retirement age for Medicare or accept the taxation of these "Cadillac plans."
Ben Stein, Author, "How to Ruin the USA": I still don't understand why we need this kind of plan in the first place. 85 percent of people are happy with their health care plan. We should just send the rest of them a check so they can go to Blue Cross to buy insurance. Why turn the entire system upside-down just to help poor people, when we can just send them a check?
Adam Lashinsky, editor-at-large, Fortune Magazine: The only reasonable solution is to buy people health care, but that is socialized medicine—and we cannot do that. Congress is trying to pass the public option because they think it is the best way to cover the most people.
Alarming Taxpayer Exodus From New York: Proof Tax Hikes Don't Work?
Charles Payne: This is absolutely proof that tax hikes do not work. Not only are rich people leaving, but it trickles down the food chain. At the end of the day these rich people create jobs, not higher taxes. I do not know when the government is going to figure that out.
Ben Stein: If there is a 5 percent surtax on the highest income earners to help pay for taxpayers, I am going to move to Israel. We saw California raise taxes on its residents and many of them decided to go to North Idaho like myself.
Dagen McDowell: The real worry is that people—and businesses—are going to start moving. As a nation, can we cannot afford to deal with that. We have to have a competitive tax system that allows individuals and businesses to keep a reasonable amount of what they earn.
Adam Lashinsky: There are a million reasons why people will not move out of the country, although it is relatively easy to move from state to state. There is a problem with income inequality in this country, and we are trying to get taxes right.
Democrats Renaming "Public Option"; Still Government-Run Health Care?
Ben Stein: I do not think the name matters one bit. In the end, we are going to see the public option pass and everyone is going to be running to join it. The private insurers will have to respond by charging more, leading to a slow death-spiral for the insurance industry.
Dagen McDowell: They can call the Post Office "FedEx No. 2," but that does not mean that it will be anything like Federal Express as we know it. Congress does not want to name it the 'pubic option' because they do not want the American people to think they are paying for it; but it will be subsidized. Democrats can call it whatever they like, but everyone knows the truth.
Charles Payne: All you have to know is that if Nancy Pelosi and Air America like it, then it is the public option. If we are going to re-brand it, we should really give it the right name—like, "Driving the Deficit Higher Heath Care" or "Lose Your Doctor and Wait Health Care."
Adam Lashinsky: The important word is not "public," it is "option." There is going to be an option, meaning you can opt out if you do not want to participate. No one will be forced into it.
Halloween Stock Treats
Charles Payne: Symantec (SYMC)
Adam Lashinsky: Hershey (HSY)
Ben Stein: Vanguard Index (VTSMX)
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Forbes on Fox
On Saturday, October 31, David Asman was joined by Steve Forbes, Bill Baldwin, Quentin Hardy, Victoria Barret, Mike Maiello, Evelyn Rusli, Kai Falkenberg, and Elizabeth MacDonald.
In Focus: New Democratic Health Plan: "Opt Out" or "No Way Out"?
David Asman: It's back and just in time for Halloween: Government-run health care. The Senate Majority Leader says states could "opt out" of a new government-run health agency, but Steve Forbes says that's a trick, not a treat — if this "opt out" plan passes, there's "no way out" for taxpayers.
Steve Forbes: There is no way to mask this. This is like an offer from the "Godfather." Yes, you can "opt out"…right? It's like speed limits and liquor laws – you don't do what the feds do, then you don't get the money. Look at Medicaid. You can opt out of Medicaid, but how many states have done that? And in terms of the government-run company, why people fear it is that it won't be allowed to fail; it's going to have subsidies. Look at Fannie and Freddie. Look what that gave us.
Quentin Hardy: Halloween came much earlier than you're thinking, David. Remember this summer when they talked about death panels and all that misinformation? Well, it wasn't true and the people are smarter than we think. The majority of them still prefer the public option which is why it didn't pass in states. We happen to have a democracy here, and most people want the public option. If there are states where the people don't want it, they will opt out. It is democracy in action.
David Asman: When they're asked if they want the public option, they're for it. When they're asked if they want a new government health agency, they say no. So it depends on how you ask the question.
Elizabeth MacDonald: Depends on the wording. By the way, the idea of the death panel, I never liked that term. It's a fake term. It is still in the house bill, but the "opt out" issue, and Steve is absolutely right, the federal government could say "We're not going to fund you. We're not going to give you your funding." And I always wondered about the "opt out" option anyway, which is what we're talking about. Who would decide it? Legislatures? The Department of Motor Vehicles? Voters? They never really laid out how that would happen. By the way, in the new house bill they're expanding the cost of Medicaid. They're saying only 70 percent of Medicaid costs would be covered by the Federal Government and you the taxpayer would have to pick up the rest; so that means state taxes would rise. If they had an "opt out" option, would two thirds of the states opt out of Medicare in the 1960s? The "opt out" option is a charade.
David Asman: So is the "opt out" option a charade, Mike?
Mike Maiello: No. It's a real choice you can make. I grew up in the weird state of New Mexico where our state did opt out of the federal 55 mile an hour speed limit and drivers in New Mexico were fine forgoing highway funds. We did lose money. We did lose federal grants because they wanted to drive faster. That's democracy. You make that trade. It just kind of happens. People can opt out. I also point out that a lot of Republicans would support this if it was opt in. So is that an OK solution?
David Asman: Victoria, the fact is a lot of states are going broke right now; think of California and New York. If they opt out and lose their funding, they're going to go broke much quicker.
Victoria Barret: David, you read my mind; it's scary. That's exactly right. States are going broke. They are not going to turn this money down, especially because of the "public relations" implications. The subsidies involved would be for low income families. It becomes a PR nightmare if you're essentially turning away what you could say in a PR atmosphere is care for low income families. No state legislator or Department of Motor Vehicles bureaucrat is going to do this. It will backfire. So the reality is this isn't an opt out or an opt in. It becomes a mandatory practice.
Barney Frank's Financial Bailout Plan: Are We Setting Up the Next Financial Crisis?
David Asman: Barney Frank now pushing for money-making banks to "bail out" rivals deep in the red, but Steve worries this will lead to a new financial crisis.
Steve Forbes: Well, they can do it two ways. One is during a panic where they have to bail out a big bank. Doing so would mean people would say "Oh my God. All the banks are going to be bled." So that's not going to solve the crisis. The other way is the FDIC way or some indemnity way where you put aside a reserve fund. They don't run it like a private sector thing. So either way it's a loser, and in a panic the government is going to have to step in. The key is preventing the panic in the first place.
Quentin Hardy: I think the big banks that have to pay to the small banks got billions and billions and billions of dollars last year. They got a massive government handout. The smaller banks didn't get it. It's time to spread that around a little bit now that the big banks are healthy enough to get a profit. Payback the society that kept them alive by helping out the smaller banks now. It's a great idea.
David Asman: So Bill, spread the wealth?
Bill Baldwin: We have big, sick banks bailing out small, sick banks – two drunks helping each other home. Do we need this? It's bad for the economy and completely unnecessary if Congress would only pass my one sentence statute to end all financial crises. It's very simple. Require all banks and bank-like institutions like Freddie Mac to have 20 percent equity. That means when they get into trouble, it's not my money – it's their money.
Mike Maiello: I like the idea of them paying to take care of their own troubles. One of my Republican heroes, Thomas Cooley from NYU, says that the banks should be paying into something like Steve said – an indemnity fund, something way bigger than the FDIC, something run by the banks to keep them all safe and solvent. It's always on their dime. I think this is very close to that. I support it.
Evelyn Rusli: The Barney Frank proposal is simply unfair. In the event that a bank on Wall Street fails, that means that every good bank – even the regional banks that are totally unrelated to this – would also have to pitch in to pay for the mistakes of this bad bank. But on top of that, Steve makes an excellent point here that in the case that we do have a terrible financial disaster like the one we faced recently, so many of these banks would be so unhealthy that they wouldn't have the funds to pay into this fund to help the banks that have collapsed… creating a domino effect.
Elizabeth MacDonald: The issue is – how do you keep these big banks off of the government dole and off of the taxpayer's tin cup? Bank of America has a balance sheet that's 10 times the size of ExxonMobil and if they could manage it on their own, it's not humanly possible for anyone to manage that $2 trillion balance sheet, but if they could do it on their own, they wouldn't be asking for a government handout. So the issue is to get the government regulators to step in sooner. AIG could have been sued by the office of thrift supervision, but they had macaroni noodles for backbones down there. Have a bigger capital cushion – that will stop the problem, not these fake capital cushions that are filled with all sorts of stupid.
Flipside: Government Doing Business With Crooks: Great for the Economy!
David Asman: Our government gave $30 million of your tax dollars to suspected crooks, according to a new report out this week and Bill is just fine with that?
Bill Baldwin: My half-hearted defense of these people is that it's no worse giving taxpayer money to crooks than taxpayer money to honest people. But I have a couple of questions here. The first this is: What did these people supposedly do wrong? What they were doing wrong is they were big companies masquerading as small ones, as if there is something wrong with that. Second question: Why is the government playing favorites? Why are big companies evil and small companies angelic? I don't buy that at all. The third question is this: Why is the economy stimulated when your money is taken out of your wallet and given to anybody – big or small?
Victoria Barret: Well, I agree with Bill on those three points. However, I think if you are lying about one thing, you are probably dishonest about other things too, and therefore you couldn't do the job better, faster, or cheaper. Those should be the metrics we use when doling out government contracts, and you probably aren't fulfilling those promises either so you shouldn't be getting the money.
Quentin Hardy: I'm left with the math corner. This is $30 million out of $787 billion. I'd say this is less than one half of one percent of one percent. In fact, it is less than that. It's nothing. Now we have private health insurance. Anybody ever wonder why that costs twice as much as countries with places that have public health insurance? Maybe the private sector has more crime, waste, fraud, and abuse – home of the $100 glass of pomegranate juice at most hospitals. Maybe that's where the real rip-offs are.
Kai Falkenberg: If the government continues to do business with these people, you're sending a message to crooks all over the country that the American government is happy to do business with you. As Victoria said, people who lie to get government contracts, lie in fulfilling those contracts. These are contracts that involve American soldiers. One of them relates to repairing airfield electrical systems. Do we want people cutting corners on those contracts?
Steve Forbes: Well, if you're going to have stimulus instead of doing it through contracts, we will get some crookedness; that always happens with governments. Why not just go on an airplane, make sure it's repaired, and just throw the money out? That way you'll get instant stimulus.
David Asman: You're saying we're wasting money on this stimulus money?
Steve Forbes: The Japanese did it and we're doing it. But hey, why learn from that?
Informer: World Series Stocks
David Asman: We're back with our World Series winners that'll hit a home run for your wallet!
Evelyn Rusli: Take-Two Interactive (TTWO)
Bill Baldwin: Crown Holdings (CCK)
Mike Maiello: Tiffany & Co. (TIF)
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Cashin' In
Government Plan to Cut Doctor Pay: Death of Quality Care for All of Us?
Tracy Byrnes; Fox Business Network: I hate this notion that they are going to cap pay if a doctor uses too many procedures. Start with the seniors then it's going to trickle down to my children. You make a decision on procedure based on need, not based on money. And unfortunately, they're going to put doctors in awful, awful positions, and the care will be skimped. You know, when Medicare was created back in 1965, it said back then it forbade the federal government for getting involved in making decisions, and now here we are. Now, Medicare is a mess, granted. But when it was created, it was created to keep the government out.
Christian Dorsey; Economic Policy Institute: Well, let's look at it realistically. First of all, there's going to be a period of time where doctors are going to have a chance to weigh in on what is the type of care that's appropriate for specific conditions. And what we're talking about are doctors who exceed that level of care. Doctors who exceed that level of services that they order. Those are the doctors who are going to have their pay cut. And remember, the number is 5 percent. So for $1,000 worth of procedures, you're going walk away with $950 instead of 1,000 much this is not the end of the world.
John Layfield: Nutritionmarket.com: That's easy to say if you don't have a 78-year-old dad who just got stents in his heart and probably got a shoulder replacement who probably wouldn't be eligible for this who's a senior under this bill. This is absolutely insane. The realization of this is that we don't have tort reform, and because of no tort reform because the lawyers have such a great lobby and can take so much money in these government pockets, if we don't have tort reform, that's why they're order so many tests. That is the basis of this problem. Do that first, it solves everything else.
Jonas Max Ferris; Maxfunds.com: Well, they might need it — oh, the government healthcare, cutting the Medicare benefit is my second favorite part of the new plans that are being proposed, the first one cutting the Cadillac healthcare break. But these doctors are providing more tests than necessary. And by the way, private insurance cuts them back.
Jonathan Hoenig; Capitalistpig Asset Management: I came in as an unhappy doctor, because this whole program puts more decisions, as and Christian and Jonas alluded to, out of doctors' hands and into government hands. government already accounts for 50 percent of healthcare spending in this country, and this plan, whether it's the Pelosi plan or the Reid plan or the Baucus plan, whatever plan, it puts more of those decisions not into patients' hands, not into doctors' hands not even into insurance hands, when it's Uncle Sam making the decisions you're screwed, and, of course, you're paying for it the whole way.
Wayne Rogers; Wayne Rogers & Co.: At the risk of being late in the conversation as it were, you're all wrong. It's the insurance company — it's the insurance companies who control the pricing of this. By not allowing the insurance to bid across state lines, the insurance companies have a lock on it. The patient doesn't know what it costs. The doctor doesn't know what he's necessarily going to get. The insurance company determines that.
When you've got an insurance company, for example, in New Jersey, you can only get one policy. For example, in the state of Alabama, Blue Cross controls 90 percent of the market. When you don't have competition, then the government has a chance to come in. That's the problem.
Fifty-Two Percent Say America Is on "Wrong Track": Blame D.C.'s War on Wealth?
John Layfield: Nutritionmarket.com: The government is to blame for this. This is the war on wealth. Look, they're trying to make the playing field level out there, but instead of trying to make the poor richer, they're trying to make the rich poorer. That's working very well. Look, Sherwood Forest worked great. Robin Hood was a thief. And the hypocrisy of this government, to turn around and leverage our entire country's future, the biggest deficit in our history, and then turn to the banks and say, by the way, guys, we don't want to you leverage your business. The government is saying do what we say, not what we do, and it's horrible and not working.
Christian Dorsey; Economic Policy Institute: You mean the war on the wealthy to fix the problems that the wealthy created. That seems fair to me. You referenced that prosperity index. What's interesting about it, the nine countries that are ahead of us are countries that provide universal healthcare, provide a social safety net for their workers, and support the balance of work and family. It's no wonder that we're number nine because we don't do any of those things. So clearly the Obama administration is moving us in the right direction to really catch up to the rest of the world.
Jonas Max Ferris; Maxfunds.com: You left the other countries about countries higher up on the list have massively higher tax rates than we do. Our country takes a smaller percentage of taxes. Those countries are way over the top behalf we do. So if you want to go that list — and I question that — that's the way to do, it raise taxes. As for the tax increases, that the best way to get out of a deficit. The reason why we're on the wrong track for this survey is we are running deficits in booms and recessions you need to run surpluses in booms, Why I am critical of the current administration is because there is a lack of planning to have surpluses soon rather than later.
Jonathan Hoenig; Capitalistpig Asset Management: You know, I don't know, Jonas. I don't think it's about this inflation number or that one. I think what it's the root of it, Cheryl, is the philosophy of what guides the country. And lesson, I love this criticism I'm a property owner here. You know, we vote with our feet. We choose to stay here. But there's no question that I think we've moved. Under the Obama administration, yes. But under the Bush administration and others, away from the rugged individualism. Yes, the capitalism. Yes, the private property rights, that have define this had country, that's made us different from eastern Europe or southeast Asia. I'm sorry, Christian, but the rich, who I know you despise, they're here not to serve the public good. I think until that philosophy turns around, we're going to keep heading it further and further down those lists.
Tracy Byrnes; Fox Business Network: It was people who aren't rich. That's why we got in the problem in the first place because they didn't have the money to own the homes they
Did. and they are getting us in trouble. We all can take blame from this, but to point to the rich now as the way to bail us out of this is crazy. People came to this country, worked with nothing, built businesses, that's the beauty of the United States, and you're saying what they did is bad and they have to give it all back to bail out the people that made mistakes. It's wrong. And Cheryl, that list was created based on blonds and blonds only. There is not one brunette nation on that list. I'm taking offense to it.
Wayne Rogers; Wayne Rogers & Co.: No, no, no, the problem is — and Christian, all due respect to what you said, the problem everything is got too big. When you let the banks get too big to bail, then the federal government bails them out. You let big auto too big to bail, so you're bailing them out. The only way it can be dealt with is for the government to come in and have more regulation than it had before because they've eliminated all the competition. What we're headed for in this country is not socialism. We're headed for fascism. We're headed for fascism where the government is in big cahoots to prop them up over a period of time, and that's exactly where this country is going.
GMAC Asks for 3rd Bailout: Proof All Bailouts Are "Clunkers"?
Jonathan Hoenig; Capitalistpig Asset Management: Sure, I say pull the plug on all these bailouts. I mean, they are impractical. They're also immoral. I mean, they're built on the belief that free markets are distrustful... what we really need is government to do our spending and investment for us, and he yes the lights are still on, yes, the A.T.M. Still works, but, you know, you got 12 billion to GMAC, $100 billion to A.I.G. What we've found is giving out this money, means the government is now taking control. Bailouts have meant control. And you've got Uncle Sam controlling a wide spectrum of the American economy. That's the real damage.
Jonas Max Ferris; Maxfunds.com: Separate it from bailing out the financial institutions... The clunker bailout worked. I don't believe that 24,000 dollar figure, but the G.D.P. Figure we just saw this week was strong in part due to people buying cars they would have bought in the future. Bailing out all these financial companies, especially now that the economy is strong enough, I question it.
John Layfield: Nutritionmarket.com: There were 690,000 cars bought during this time, and 125,000 was the result of cash for clunkers, so they would already have been bought anyway. We spent $2.5 Billion borrowing money from China, telling consumer borrow money from the government, get everybody in debt to buy cars that they would have already bought is a typical government program, and it was a disaster.
Tracy Byrnes; Fox Business Network: And it puts people in debt they might not have taken on. Same thing with the first-time home buyers tax credit. Goldman Sachs put a report out saying that it might potentially cost the tax payers $80,000 a house. We're spending more money just to get a little economic bump? And Jonas, to your point, almost half of that G.D.P. bump came from the cash from clunkers. It's a false number at the end of the day.
Wayne Rogers; Wayne Rogers & Co.: I don't think it has anything to do with cash for clunkers. This has to do with the fact that the FDIC has guaranteed GMAC's debt. Therefore, GMAC, this is a payback for all of the votes that Obama got from the automobile workers union and from trying to save something that's too big to fail. Once again, GMAC was allowed to become a bank. They were given that credit. They became a bank. Therefore, they can come under the ages of the FDIC, issue debt, get into other things they shouldn't be doing, all to provide financing for automobiles. That isn't all it was for, and by becoming a bank, that allows them to get into all these other things. This is outrageous.
What You Need to Know for Next Week
Tracy Byrnes: We got two big elections on Tuesday, New Jersey and Virginia. This is a chance to get the bad ones out. If you're worried about health care reform, vote them out. Get the new guys in.
Jonathan Hoenig: Well, the unions came to town last week, not protesting bank bailouts as many of us have, but asking for their own. The entitlement state is growing, and the cattle industry could be next in line. Check out (COW). It's an ETF that follows cattle and pork prices. It could head higher if our tax dollars shuffle to the pork.
John Layfield: Yankees will win the World Series. Mariano Rivera will be the difference. It will probably be a classic series. Goldman Sachs owns YES network. GS is a good buy.
Jonas Max Ferris: Indonesia is moving to ban tight jeans. VFC, a jean maker, will rise because people are looking to buy more "loose" jeans.
Wayne Rogers: The housing credit will be renewed, but that's a head fake. Don't bet on housing, or housing stocks yet. Stay away!
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