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Published January 26, 2017
DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING "Cost of Freedom Recap" CONTAINS STRONG OPINIONS WHICH ARE NOT A REFLECTION OF THE OPINIONS OF FOX NEWS AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON AS INVESTMENT ADVICE WHEN MAKING PERSONAL INVESTMENT DECISIONS. IT IS FOX NEWS' POLICY THAT CONTRIBUTORS DISCLOSE POSITIONS THEY HOLD IN STOCKS THEY DISCUSS, THOUGH POSITIONS MAY CHANGE. READERS OF "Cost of Freedom Recap" MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN INVESTMENT DECISIONS.
Bulls & Bears
This week Brenda Buttner was joined by Gary B. Smith, Tobin Smith, Eric Bolling, Jonas Max Ferris and Steve Murphy.
Economic Fears Mounting After Senate Democrats Punt Tax Vote
ERIC BOLLING, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK: Why are we waiting at all? We need answers right now, we need solid tax structure and we need to know where taxes are right now. That's why small businesses aren't hiring: they're not sure what's going on and what's going to happen in the future and they need these Bush tax cuts to be extended right now - not later, not after we find out who wins the election. The economy right now is at a very critical point. It could turn around and get better, or we risk a double dip recession which would be terrible, extend them now or all bets are off.
STEVE MURPHY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I agree that Democrats should have taken action now. We need to get rid of the tax cuts for the wealthy right now, to show the country and the world we're on the path to restoring fiscal sanity, getting back to the policies that worked well in the 1990s. I think that we should get rid of the bush tax cuts for the wealthy right now.
TOBIN SMITH, FOX BUSINESS CONTRIBUTOR: The issue always comes back to the small business people make decisions in the long-term segment - particularly when you're making an investment, which is really what we're talking about here. This is about the economic state of entrepreneurism, which I'm afraid the current administration doesn't understand or doesn't respect.
JONAS MAX FERRIS, MAXFUNDS.COM: They had a clue in the sense this has been a ten-year plan. It's a very certain environment; they're going to have their taxes raised next year, if nothing's done. What is uncertain is that there's talk of extended this or that part and that is not helping. They should be clear and say, yes, these tax cuts are expiring as planned. Here is our tax plan for next year, so you can plan ahead and this tax thing is fine; as far as business, it's primarily income taxes and capital gains taxes, and you look at hiring and lowering the cost of hiring employees, which we're alluding to, then you lower the pay roll tax rate for a while during the economy. Let these go and kick in with new taxes.
GARY B. SMITH, THECHARTMAN.COM: Once the marginal tax rates change people think they're going to be there in perpetuity. If you ask the average man on the street "hey, remember ten years ago, didn't you realize these tax cuts were going to expire?", they would have said "huh, what are you talking about?" If the tax cuts are not passed immediately, people are going to see that as a tax hike and that's essentially what it is. And what happens when you see less income coming in, you start to hunker down.
Obama Reselling Health Care Law as 61 Percent Say Repeal It
GARY B. SMITH: I've come to the conclusion when he was giving the speeches on health care, he must have been reading the teleprompters backwards. Everything he says, the opposite happened. Remember, he said your premiums should go down for a family up to $2,500 or so. Guess what? My health care insurance policy went up 20 percent in the last month or so. Remember he talked about bending the cost curve? The CBO already came out and said the Obama administration was only off by $110 Billion. Remember he said you'll get to see your doctor? In Texas mass exodus of doctors leaving the Medicare program. So if you take everything that Obama said and flip it around, then you have the real facts about Obamacare.
STEVE MURPHY: National polling showed that opinions on health care was a little more positive than negative. The health care law is going into effect right now and what we've already done is very popular getting - rid of the donut hole for the pharmaceutical drug benefits for senior citizens under Medicare and the tax credit for small businesses, which everybody has available right now, and that every state now has a plan where the so-called uninsurable can get covered. That's a great step forward.
TOBIN SMITH: It would be a wonderful step forward if the other facts were not happening. If you just go with actual companies - not surveys - about 60 percent of large businesses saying that they're going to be charging a 15 or 20 percent additional premium to their policy, to their employers because they're laying off the extra cost. Where does the extra cost come from? The consumers.
JONAS MAX FERRIS: There have been double digit health care increases for the last 20 years and not just Obama care.
ERIC BOLLING: This is what happens when you rush through legislation. The reality is that study shows 14 percent increase in premiums in 2010 from over 2009. Gary B is 100 percent right: they've bent the cost curve up. And now you cannot get a premium policy for a single child. It has to fall under these massive family plans.
Taxpayer Bailed-Out GM Now Making Political Donations
GARY B. SMITH: I tell you what, we should have a special segment on just things that the government is doing that are just totally ludicrous and don't make any mistake. GM is still owned by the government - or run by the government - and still basically owned by you and I, so, why can't they just stick to making cars and returning our money, it is beyond me. Why are they getting into the whole politics game? Just try to make a car better than a Toyota for crying out loud and return our money. No, it's the same stuff as before and it's ludicrous.
JONAS MAX FERRIS: First they came up with the Pontiac Aztec, a disaster. I don't like the whole tax system, but the bottom line the companies get benefits by doing this and look at the benefits gm already got. You want them to have regulations that are favorable to them and all things and you want them to play a role and we're shareholders and we want them manipulating.
ERIC BOLLING: We gave GM $50 billion and are likely lose $30 or $40 billion.. and it spends our money on political campaigns?
STEVE MURPHY: GM is not giving any political contributions; corporate contributions are prohibited by law, this is a political action committee. Do you want the government running GM or not? Do you want the government telling them what to do or not?
TOBIN SMITH: They're having this thing called the Hatch Act they started in the 1930's, and said that a government entity can't provide contributions to somebody running for office. Here is my solution: since the stock price has to get back to $134 before we get our money back. Get the stock price back to 134 bucks then hire some lobbyists.
Predictions
TOBIN SMITH: KFC ads makes "YUM" chow down on 25 percent profits by spring semester
JONAS MAX FERRIS: All you can eat "Frankenfish"! "DRI" swims up 10 percent November
GARY B. SMITH: 'Black Pad' will have "RIMM" soaring 20 percent in 1 month
ERIC BOLLING: Smoke what makes us money back! "MO" lights up 20 percent gains in 1 year
Cavuto on Business
This week, Charles Payne guest hosted and was joined by Ben Stein, Dagen McDowell, Adam Lashinsky and Tom Belesis.
Union Strong Arming Bank to Freeze Home Foreclosures
BEN STEIN, AUTHOR: There was a dictator in Argentina named Juan Peron and he had a system called Peronism which was dictatorial. I'm not saying that President Obama is dictatorial, but a strong-arming government along with unions to control the rest of the country… what we're seeing here is a kind of beginning of Peronism in which the government works with the unions to try to circumvent the law of contract which is by the way circumventing the Constitution and trying to control the country by sheer force of numbers and force of fear. The UAW is essentially part of the government and works together, has enormous control over anything they touch.
DAGEN MCDOWELL, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK: Unions are getting their "mo-jo" back because they have the right people in the White House who were in their favor. Their ranks are growing in the public sector; there are more public sector union workers than there are private sector unions right now. Kudos to JP Morgan Chase if that bank stands up to this extortion tactic. The irony? The Michigan economy would not be in the shape that it's in if the unions hadn't in large part put the auto business on the rocks. Let the unions pay the mortgages if they're worried about the people in Michigan.
TOM BELESIS, JOHN THOMAS FINANCIAL: The UAW is in no position to point fingers, and if those banks are forced to subsidize… how are they going to lend as much money to small businesses which ultimately leads to economic recovery? Right now, the White House has failed the people. And right now, they want the UAW to pull something like this? I mean, it's just not going to work and people are going to be irate about it.
ADAM LASHINSKY, FOX BUSINESS CONTRIBUTOR: I'm certainly not going to get into demonizing the unions which I think is irresponsible, or demonizing banks, which doesn't make any more sense. Money talks, the unions are in control of some hundreds of millions of dollars of deposits in this case. But it is a silly to call this extortion.
Democrats Pushing Bill to Give Amnesty to Certain Illegals
DAGEN MCDOWELL: It's astonishing Democrats would be pushing this agenda right here, right now when we have unemployment in this country at close to 10 percent with this so-called Dream Acts that the Congress woman was referring to, that would give legal status to people who go to College here and lets people who came here illegally and are in this country illegally jump potentially ahead of people who aren't, and potentially get higher paying jobs. That doesn't make sense on so many levels.
TOM BELESIS: It's a complicated issue, but I can tell you as a son of immigrants, I'm all for giving an opportunity to immigrants, but if you give that opportunity to illegal immigrants you're taking the same opportunity away from the legal immigrants.
BEN STEIN: The main thing I kept thinking when I was watching Stephen Colbert was two things. One, the great song, "Send in the Clowns" - it's unbelievable they would have a comedy act on Capitol Hill when there's so much serious business going on. Second, was a comment from Richard Nixon: "most congressmen are not fit to be dogcatcher." It's incredible they had this guy there talking about a serious issue in a comedic tone. They don't have a lot of time and they're busy people and don't have time to listen to comedy. He's a brilliant comedian and I love him a lot, but it's a serious issue.
ADAM LASHINSKY: I'll take my time to bring it to a serious issue. President George W. Bush was in favor of an amnesty for illegal aliens, anyone who gives any serious thought to this topic instead of trying to make a lot of noise about it, and scare people about it, knows that we need to do something about the 11 or 12 million or however many illegal immigrants.
"Wall Street" Sequel Attacking "Greed" in America
TOM BELESIS: This movie is strictly for entertainment. It's not a documentary, and you cannot bet against an industry that's helped create America; it's like betting against Google, Apple, Coca-Cola. I mean, that's just not the way it works. Every industry has its bad apples.
DAGEN MCDOWELL: This movie is going to make working on Wall Street cool again. Everybody wanted to be Gekko, but you know what? Forget the slicked back hair, it's about the balding.
BEN STEIN: I do criticize Wall Street all the time and I think a lot of the criticism is merited. The only guys I work with closely on Wall Street are my two brokers at Merrill-Lynch and they're unbelievable nice guys.
ADAM LASHINSKY: Well, I'm not an enemy of Wall Street. I mean, I make my living writing partly about, about Wall Street. I think Wall Street's reputation can't get much worse right now.
Stock Picks: Profits That Never Sleep
ADAM LASHINSKY: Dell Inc. (DELL)
BEN STEIN: Vanguard Total World Stock (VTWSX)
TOM BELESIS: Apple Inc. (AAPL)
Forbes on Fox
On Saturday, September 25, 2010, Stuart Varney was joined by Steve Forbes, Rich Karlgaard, Mike Ozanian, Stephane Fitch, Quentin Hardy, Victoria Barret, and Fox Business Network's Elizabeth MacDonald.
Get Ready for a Spending Tsunami?
STUART VARNEY: A spending tsunami heading directly for your wallet. Some here say that Democrats will get squashed in November and that means taxpayers will get whacked when the lame duck Congress goes on a spending frenzy. Time to batten down the hatches?
ELIZABETH MACDONALD: I expect a spending tsunami in the lame duck. It is an inconvenient truth in the 20 months since the President took office, that we've blown a hole in the U.S. balance sheet the size of Germany. The fiscal dipso maniacs in Congress have gotten out of control. There are constitutional restraints here, that's what the Tea Party has been talking about and everybody has been really dismissive of them. But you know that's the thing that we need. This is a bi-partisan creation, what's going on down there in Washington, we risk a downgrade to our U.S. triple A credit rating that we've had since 1913. If that happens, costs will soar.
STEVE FORBES: You're not going to see any of these spending that these spend-o-crats want to do because of the November elections. The American mood has changed profoundly and the Democrats who have survived, especially in the Senate, people will come up on in 2012, 2014 for re-election are going to be scared out of their wits. They're going to go against the kind of spending thing. Any big spending plan is going to be blocked in the Senate and all of the desire of the administration to get big bailouts for state municipalities? Good luck. Go to Greece, you're not going to get it from Washington.
MIKE OZANIAN: I hope Steve is right, but I fear that there is going to be a lot of spending and I think the bigger problem is that the Fed Chairman Bernanke has come out and said he'll support all the spending by supporting the borrowing the government is going to have to do to support this spending. He's basically come out and said ‘I'll buy all of the treasury bonds you guys throw out there. I'll let you spend your way into a bigger mess right now.' Right now, government debt totals 94 percent of our economy. That's a record since WWII. That's got us into this problem, it's not going to get us out of the problem.
RICH KARLGAARD: Steve is right on the politics. This week we got proof that the stimulus was an absolute failure. The NBER declared the recession over in June 2009, by that point only 6 percent of the 800 billion stimulus had been spent. So it had no impact on ending the recession, but it has some terrible impact on keeping the recovery lackluster. So all the arguments that the Obama administration is making, that the stimulus is the only thing that stood between us and the Great Depression, was blown out of the water. The American people know it.
STEPHANIE FITCH: I mean we really could use a lot more spending and a lot more tax cuts. We need airports, we need new runways. I'd like to see dedicated bicycle lanes and high speed rail. And I'd like to see some really smart tax cuts that prompt private businesses to push out the trillion dollars they're sitting on. I'd like to see an end of the corporate income tax for companies that pay out 90 percent of their net income. Save the economy, save the world.
QUENTIN HARDY: Spending isn't good or bad. It's what you spend it on and whether you're paying for it. Now we didn't spend the money in the last couple of years on bridges to nowhere and boondoggles. We spent it on saving the financial system which got broken in 2008. It's a reality. We're not paying for it because we don't have enough taxation, which probably is a good idea right now because people can't afford it. Meanwhile, you've got the Republicans coming out talking about keeping these Bush tax cuts. That's four trillion and they don't see how they're going to make that up with spending cuts. That's the real problem.
Paul Volcker Tells David Asman the President Is Not Anti-Business. Is Volcker Right?
STUART VARNEY: David Asman snagging a FOX Business exclusive this week. With White House economic advisor and former Fed chairman, Paul Volcker. David getting him to tell us if he thinks the President is anti-business. Listen to this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID ASMAN: We just had a poll issued today that 3/4th of all the U.S. investors view President Obama as anti-business and think that we have this sort of bias against business from the government. How do you change that perception?
PAUL VOLCKER: I don't know because I think that the perception is wrong. I simply do not understand what everyone thinks of President Obama and the political situation. He is not wild-eye leftist radical. It's ridiculous. He certainly is a man broadly of the middle. And I'm sure he's done things that I believe and he believes that are of interests to businesses. Now we do have a fact that there have been excesses in the financial world in particular, he's going to criticize that, he's going to point that out. It happens to be accurate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE FORBES: I mean of course he's anti-business. He shows it every time he opens his mouth. Even when he tries to do something for small business, a lot of strings attached, call it more like chains, he still had a feel to take a bash at the greed of business. And the poster boy for all of this is the 1099 provision of the health care bill. In 2012, every business is going to have to file a 1099 with tax id number and everything else for every transaction above $600, or with a vendor all transactions that reach 600. This is going to crush small businesses with thousands of new pieces of paper that they'll have to file with the IRS.
QUENTIN HARDY: He's not an African, he's not a Muslim, he's not a socialist. These are realities. That is disinformation. Your poll cited three quarters of investors, in other words, Wall Street thinks he is anti-business. Not most businessmen, not most Americans. And why do they think that, well gee, he actually had the temerity to criticize them for destroying the world's financial system. They stood him up. They wouldn't even come see him at the White House. How can you treat the President of the United States that way, it is contemptible and he's giving them a little bit of their own medicine. It is fine. Wall Street is up 2700 points, what else do you want?
NEIL WEINBERG: Regardless of where Wall Street is, I don't think the President is anti-business so much as he is just economically clueless. And I mean that. The man is a lawyer, lawyers have never been particularly good at business, and in addition to that, if you look at what he's done, he's pandered to the left, he's pandered the unions, he's pandered to the Democratic base, he bashes business because that is good for them. But he also feels that the way to get this economy going is to spend government money and we all know that doesn't work. That Keynesian economics has failed and what you need to do is unshackle business rather than put all these additional restrictions and laws, regulations, taxes on business, and that's why our economy has stalled. And he doesn't get that.
VICTORIA BARRET: You know, I don't think that he's anti-business per say, but he is anti-wealth. If you listen to his speeches, there's a common theme that sort of says we have this period of open markets. A lot of wealth was created, now that wealth needs to be redistributed and the government is going to decide who gets wealth and who doesn't get wealth going forward. And that's a fundamental shift and one that has business people nervous. Because it means that you have a heavy handed government involvement and not a free open market.
ELIZABETH MACDONALD: He's an academic who suffers capitalists. By the way the U.S. did not wreck the world financial system. Europe and those Mediterranean countries did it to themselves. But getting back to this, the corporate taxes were at the same level that they were at the height of the boom years that's a problem. Steve brings up a good point about the 1099. That's a tsunami of people working in of itself, and that could be laying the groundwork for a VAT, which would be very harmful to the U.S. economy and that is a very dangerous thing. For Congress, it'd be like handing the keys to a liquor store to an alcoholic.
STEPHANIE FITCH: He's no more anti-business than George Bush was against winning the Iraq War. I mean he voted for the biggest bailout ever of Wall Street, he pushes through the $787 billion economic stimulus. Now all that said, it's fair to judge him on his record. He hasn't produced the results. Wall Street bailout only helped the Wall Street bankers. The stimulus was too small. HAMP for housing? Didn't really help the average Joe. Judge him on his record.
In Focus: New Movie Criticizes Teacher Unions: Are Unions Ruining America?
STUART VARNEY: Whoa. Teacher unions, fighting mad after a new documentary out this week that blames them for our failing school system.
RICH KARLGAARD: I am absolutely thrilled that Hollywood got this right. You know, in my adult lifetime, I have watched American students fall out of the top five, the top 10, and now out of the top 20 on a global basis. Why? Because teachers unions protect incompetent teachers and they make it very difficult for parents to choose the schools that they'd like to send their kids to. So that this is backed by Hollywood and by rich Democrats in the technology world—people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. It's just a thrilling moment, makes you confident that things are finally going to turn.
QUENTIN HARDY: They're probably not helping, but they're also not the whole problem. I think Rich has sort of a math problem here. How many bad teachers are there out there really? I can't recall having one I'd call really bad. Here's a guy who made "An Inconvenient Truth" before he made this, which is fun because it's going to spin both sides now. They don't whether or not to trust him for one or the other. But it's not only about teachers. It's about the parents, it's about student transparency, it's about testing for things that matter. I was in a school in Oakland that really did well in a terrible area. And it was about parental involvement, and yes, teacher flexibility. But it's not just about teachers unions. That's too easy.
NEIL WEINBERG: I would agree. You know, many years ago Forbes did a story called ‘The National Extortion Association' about the national education association which is the big teachers union. And unfortunately nothing has really changed. Teachers unions are against all these pro-children, pro-kids, pro-education things. They're against merit pay, they're against charter school, they're against vouchers. They want to keep the teachers with the longest tenure, not the ones who are good. You look at Newark, where Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook billionaire claimed to give $100 billion this week. They're already spending $22,000 per child, and their graduation rates are an abomination. They have the strongest union in New Jersey.
STEPHANIE FITCH: You know, unions aren't the heroes that's for sure. But I'm with Quentin. I don't think they're the problem. Teachers in Canada and a lot of these top performing education systems are unionized. You know the editors at the Wall Street Journal are unionized. The thing about it here, it's about successful parents that produce successful children. If you want to make schools better maybe we should focus on giving parents a better chance at succeeding.
STEVE FORBES: Well the fact of the matter is our teachers unions have been blocking all of those reforms we've heard about. And the proof of it is in Washington D.C. they had a mayor who was pro reform, teachers unions were outraged. They gunned this man down in the primary. Barack Obama went along with it. He also killed a pro choice program in Washington where thousands of parents tried to sign up to get their kids out of miserable schools. He killed that program while sending his daughters to private school.
Informer: Stocks to Help You Get on Forbes 400
STUART VARNEY: The annual Forbes 400 List is out this week. Want your name on the list someday? Our informers have some suggestions!
NEIL WEINBERG: Luminex Corp (LMNX)
STEPHANE FITCH: AAR Corp (AIR)
VICTORIA BARRET: F5 (FFIV)
MIKE OZANIAN: iPath Dow Jones-UBS Coffee Subindex Total Return (JO)
Cashin' In
Tea Party Surges, Helps Push National Sales Tax
CHERYL CASONE: Forget extending the Bush tax cuts for all as Tea Party candidates surge in the polls, how about a fair-tax for all?
JONATHAN HOENIG: We've been talking about a fair tax. Now it's been championed by the Tea Party movement which really is the dominant political force in the country and thank God it is. I mean this would be a miraculous achievement for the country. It is fair. It treats each person individually; it doesn't have special breaks, special treatments for this group or that group. It's easy to understand. We spend literally billions of dollars every year just trying to figure out how to file our taxes. If Charlie and I go out for dinner, is that a business dinner, is that personal? It's arbitrary. Most importantly, it incentivizes production, not consumption. It will be a revolution and it would majorly benefit this country.
TARA DOWDELL: Well actually Congressman Linder has been introducing this legislation since 1999. And since 1999, he's failed to get the amount of support needed to bring it forward. I'm not here to argue that we don't need to simplify the tax code. I think it was Albert Einstein that famously said the hardest thing to understand is the tax code. The problem with the fair tax is that the devil's in the details: while it may be simpler in terms of how it works, its implementation is extremely complex. You're talking about repealing the 16th amendment in order to make sure that it's not done with the income tax remaining in place. So there are a lot of complexities here. Also there are many economists who believe that this hurts the middle class because it's progressive on the middle class as proposed by the Congressman and regressive on wealthy people. And the last thing we need is more policies to hurt the middle class.
WAYNE ROGERS: I don't know if it works or not. I know that it has worked in Europe. It's certainly a theory that's much better than what we've got in place now. And your right Tara, the devil is in the details, and that's one of the problems that we have in the Congress, when they're writing laws that have 2,500 pages in the reform act, the health care act, and all that. They have no idea what they're voting on. They don't know what the details are.
TRACY BYRNES: You're still going to need an administrative body to do all of this. Tara's right, it's an administrative nightmare. Many people have argued that this will hurt our seniors, which is not very popular in the votes right now. So what are you looking at? First thing you do is you extend the Bush tax rates and keep people happy for the time being. We're making all these decisions where we shoot first, ask questions later. We've got all the Tea Party people signing things up. It's worth considering. The IRS tax code needs to be overhauled—basically thrown out the window. But you cannot dismember the IRS because you're still going to need a governing body to handle a fair tax, a flat tax, or whatever else is introduced out there.
CHARLIE GASPARINO: I think the problem with this discussion is that it's purely theoretical. It's never going to happen and it's a sidetrack. Most economists believe that the Bush tax rates need to be extended and yet, we're sitting here discussing this fair tax. Look I think it's a great theoretical discussion. Jonathan, my heart is with you, but the political reality is that we need to extend Bush tax rates to keep the economy going.
U.S. Government Is Asking China to Buy Stake in Bailed-Out GM
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: We can not and must not, and we will not, let our auto industry simply vanish. This industry is like no other. It's an emblem of the American spirit, the once and future symbol of America's success.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHERYL CASONE: So back then it was bail out GM to keep GM in the United States. Fast forward to this week. Now the U.S. Treasury is reportedly hoping to sell a big stake in GM to foreign investors… like China.
TRACY BYRNES: I don't know why more people aren't flipping out about this. As it is we own 61 percent of this company, right? Now we're going to sell it to China? Do you know what they're going to do? They're going to take our jobs overseas, they're going make the cars overseas as well. China already owns the majority of our debt, you want them in our auto business too? So much for keeping it in the U.S.
CHARLIE GASPARINO: If this was a private company, a private foreign company, who would care. But this is a government. This is a government whose ideology, whether we like it or not, is at odds with us. It's scary from a national security standpoint. GM, I don't believe, builds tanks anymore. But it could. It could be retrofitted. I really have a real problem with this. I have a real problem with the President's speech there too. That clip was unnerving. If it was so great, it wouldn't have failed. It shouldn't have failed. That said, we own it, we shouldn't be selling it to a government that wants to clean our clocks on a daily basis.
JONATHAN HOENIG: Market shares are already at an all-time low and honestly, people get worried about foreign countries. The problem with this whole mechanism, this whole scheme, is the fact that it was theft. The President in that clip said we have to save this industry, we have to save U.S. jobs. He invoked that old U.S. patriotism. As Tracy pointed out, the company still went bankrupt, the jobs still were lost, foreclosures still occurred. Everything that the intervention tried to prevent happened anyways. We just would've checked with the unions.
WAYNE ROGERS: You can go out and buy Chinese stocks today, they can buy our stocks, it's a world market. We own Chinese stocks, they own our stocks. I don't think it matters and Tracy made a good point. They already own most of our debt, what difference does it make that they're going to buy some GM? Do we really care? I mean, they're making cars over here and now we're making cars over there. It doesn't really matter. It's a world market and you're going to have to proceed in a world market and compete.
TARA DOWDELL: The Treasury department is not marketing specifically to China. They're part of this IPO and I thought this was a good thing. I thought we wanted to reduce the government's stake in GM so that the government no longer owns 61 percent of GM. This is what this IPO is about. Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sacks are involved. But they market to foreign investors all the time. Every time we do an IPO in this country, there's a road show that goes on that the banks perform. And that road show includes foreign investors. This is nothing new.
White House Sending Tax Dollars Overseas to Fight Global Warming
CHERYL CASONE: To the UN and the new plan to spend millions of American taxpayer dollars on stoves for the world.
TRACY BYRNES: $50 million for stoves for foreign countries when we have 4.5 million people on unemployment benefits, 7 million homes in foreclosure since this recession started, and we've got to go China to invest in a GM IPO? We need the money at home!
JONATHAN HOENIG: You may have noticed that the starving third world countries are always the non-capitalist countries. I mean the poor in this country are obese. I think the UN is disgusting. The fact that they'd host Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who's saying that the U.S. was in on 9/11, and we're sending $50 million? I don't care what it's for. The fact that is going to buy clean stoves in emerging economies is farcical. This is a joke. We should get out of the U.N. and shut this hoard institution for good.
TARA DOWDELL: First of all, this is about clean energy. And we are the second largest producer right now of clean energy. We're only second to China. And China is also doing some of the same things in some of the African countries. This is also about diplomacy .We're in an environment that's increasingly hostile. We need to continue to maintain positive relations. Also, some of these stoves are being made by American companies so it's not as if we're just sending jobs away with money.
CHARLIE GASPARINO: We have famine in the third world, we have civil war, strife. And our solution, the Obama's administration solution, is to give them stoves??
WAYNE ROGERS: I like the idea of spending the $50 million right here in the United States and give a contract to a stove company here. Let's makes the stoves right here. Nothing the matter with that if you want to do it, but make the stoves in the good old USA. That's where it will work.
What Do I Need to Know?
TRACY BYRNES: You saw the video. It was an upset father, his 13 year old daughter with cerebral palsy being abused on the bus. He did everything he could to correct it, talked to all the right people. And the bureaucratic B.S. in the country prevented it from being corrected. I'm a parent, I would have gone postal on those people. The nanny state is hurting our children.
CHARLIE GASPARINO: Wall Street misses Larry Summers and let me tell you, the White House is going to have a hard time finding a business person to replace him. It's going to be real difficult.
WAYNE ROGERS: What you need to know is that there is a 3.8 percent tax on home sales that's going to take place in 2012. It was hidden in the health care bill. Why it was there nobody knows. Will it stop people from selling their house? Maybe, because the tax on a $300,000 house is going to be $11,400 out of your pocket.
JONATHAN HOENIG: A few weeks ago Wayne mentioned "Start-Up Nation," a best selling book about Israel's thriving economy. One Israeli company that I own that's actually doing very well is called Blue Square (BSI). It's a chain of grocery stores in Israel. It's doing well on the charts and I own it in my fund.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/cost-of-freedom-profits-that-never-sleep-consumers-chow-down