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Bulls & Bears

On Saturday August 1, 2009 Elizabeth MacDonald was in for Brenda Buttner and was joined by Gary B. Smith, Tobin Smith, Kristin Bentz, Eric Bolling and Mark Lamont Hill.

President Says He Helped Stop a Depression: Right or Wrong?

Tobin Smith, Changewave Research: Unless President Obama was Ben Bernanke or Hank Paulson back in September, no! I'm shocked. Look, whether or not you liked TARP, the crunch time of this deal was September 15 to maybe October 15 last year. That's where we could've fallen off into the abyss. That's where we had a run on the banks; we had a run on money market accounts. For Obama to claim this is like me claiming I'm the new Jenny Craig guy!

Kristin Bentz, Talented Blonde LLC: The President can absolutely not take the credit for stopping a depression. I think he had something to do with stepping in and putting in place provisions to alleviate the recession, and that's great. But if he's going to start waving the flag and saying mission accomplished — that just hasn't happened yet.

Eric Bolling, FOX Business Network: We've been talking about this a long time. Recessions last, I don't know, 16, 18, 19 months? We were going to come out of a recession anyway. The real question for next week is what the job numbers are going to be. If the unemployment rate inches toward 10 percent, what's President Obama going to say then? Yes, the stock market is up, but housing isn't necessarily better, and unemployment isn't that much better either.

Mark Lamont Hill, Columbia University: President Obama absolutely rescued the auto industry. He helped save jobs. One of the things that people don't want to give Obama credit for is the idea that he actually prevented the economy from becoming much worse off. He restored confidence. He produced opportunity. He saved jobs. And that has helped the economy from falling into a depression. The whole point Obama was making is that we would have been worse off if we had done nothing.

Gary B. Smith, TheChartMan.com: President Obama didn't say things would be worse, he said there'd be a depression for crying out loud! Are you trying to tell me we'd have 25 percent unemployment without Obama's plans? That's ridiculous.

Anti-Walmart Groups Joining Forces to Unionize Retailer

Gary B. Smith: This just proves how huge a success Walmart has been. They're the biggest wealth creator and one of the biggest employers in the entire global economy. They have done more good for more people than probably any other company or industry in the history of the economy. And I'll tell you what — when you have two unions ganging up on it, that proves how well they're doing because unions are all about destruction.

Mark Lamont Hill: Unions are certainly a key to destruction: the destruction of exploitative labor practices, a lack of access to healthcare, and other things.. When you see two organizations come together, there's a hope that we can actually take down Walmart. It has had a vicious impact on local economies, on small businesses, on unions, on healthcare, etc. The unions are going to win this.

Eric Bolling: I really think Walmart jumped the shark here. They wrote a letter to the Obama administration alongside the SEIU, one of the unions that want to gang up on Walmart, and said "we're for nationalized healthcare reform bill." Here's the problem: Walmart hasn't been for an employer health care mandate in the past. It's been an anti-union Walmart. It grew, it made itself the heartland's retailer, and now it has rolled over for the government.

Kristin Bentz: I think this is a great sign. I think that if two unions are consolidating, that gives Walmart even more power. When is Walmart not winning? I think it's a very bad sign for the unions if they're have to start joining together in solidarity just to stand a chance against Walmart.

Tobin Smith: Let's not forget, Walmart understands that if they don't get on the health care bandwagon, then its competitors may win out. Now they're saying that we're all inclusive and that gold-plated health plans are going to have to be taxed — and their plans definitely won't be. Who has the gold-plated health plans? It's the unions! It's great for Walmart.

Lawmakers Proposing $88 Billion in More Stimulus Spending

Eric Bolling: This is crazy. Out of the total $787 billion stimulus package, we've gone through about 12 percent of it. Now they want to add another $88 billion dollars? Come on, $80 million went to the National Endowment for the Arts and they funded $50 grand to "Thundercrack." It's a horror, artsy, kinky, porno horror flick that features four men, 3 women, and one gorilla. Do you want your taxpayer dollars going to things like that?

Tobin Smith: Remember, this was never a stimulus plan to begin with. This was essentially an entitlement program that we put lipstick on and called a stimulus program. So of course this is a joke! Of course this sort of stuff is happening. China has enacted a real stimulus plan -- 16 percent of their GDP. Now their GDP growth is at 8 percent. That's a stimulus plan.

Kristin Bentz: I like to watch the puppy-cams on the internet but I don't think I want my tax dollars going to fund that kind of stuff. I mean, what's next? We're going to have Jenna Jameson as the porn czar?

Mark Lamont Hill: The president hasn't been very transparent. I'm not going to defend the indefensible. But the issue here around the arts endowment is something very different. This has actually been one of the more efficient uses of stimulus money. It's created about 6,000 jobs and it's also a drop in the bucket. I'm talking about 6,000 jobs being created. That's a very successful small business right there.

Gary B. Smith: Even if there are jobs out there being created, these jobs are going to be temporary. What we're talking about here are a few jobs created in the art industry. More importantly, why should we be funding the arts? Why don't we give it to athletic teams or something else? We shouldn't be in that business to begin with.

Predictions

Tobin Smith: My own beer summit! "TAP" brews up 30 percent by '10

Gary B. Smith: "Cash for clunkers" ka-ching! "AN" revs up 25 percent by Jan.

Kristin Bentz: Pres should head to Vegas! "WYNN" rolls a 15 percent gain in 1 year

Eric Bolling: H1N1 scare is real! "GILD" coughs up 30 percent by winter

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Cavuto on Business

CBO Issues Favorable Report After Meeting With President: Coincidence?

Ben Stein, author, "How to Ruin the USA": This is really a disgrace. The Congressional Budget Office is supposed to be run by Congress. It is supposed to be a check and balance on the White House. The White House called in this guy and woodshed-ed him. I don't know if this has ever happened before with the Congressional Budget Office, maybe it has. It's extremely rare. I think it's a disgrace to a constitutional government.

Charles Payne, WStreet.com: The timing is weird. Doesn't this smell fishy? I smell a rat! Listen, you know, the president calls the CBO director to the White House and you know they didn't have beers. He probably made him drink whisky out of a dirty glass and said, "Listen, you're going to have to sharpen your pencil on this one." How do you go from $1 trillion only covering one third of the people out there to $900 billion covering everybody? You've got to be kidding me! Something is not right.

Dagen McDowell, FOX Business Network: I think the cat is already out of the bag in terms of what this is going to cost. Any CBO estimates we get are going to be way too low. This is one of the reasons why you see the tide turning in terms of how American's perceive this thing. People are increasingly not in favor of it because they say, "Hey wait, 85 percent of people say they like the health insurance they've got. This is going to maybe reduce the quality of health care, not lower my cost, and tax me or maybe my business's owner to pay for it? Whoa Nelly!"

Adam Lashinsky, editor-at-large, Fortune Magazine: A couple of weeks ago I said I would like to see health care reform happen more slowly because it's important. It is not a good idea for us to rush this. And that's exactly what's happening here right now. We're not going to have a bill until September. We can argue about it and discuss it and that's a good thing. The new CBO estimate brought down reform costs by $100 billion to $900 billion. I think it's reasonable to think something happened there. There was a negotiation and they eliminated some things from it. We don't know what those things were, but it's what knocked some of the costs out.

Dem Leader: Government Does Not Have To Join Government-Run Care

Charles Payne: You've got to be kidding me! Congressional members not joining a new government run health care system is a combination of Marie Antoinette and Nero. It says, "Let them eat cake and we'll play the fiddle while Rome burns." They should be willing to join this if it's so important and supposedly be so great for so many people. The reality is that the government is going to funnel people who already have great plans into a single payer system. That's going to be a disaster, and they don't want to be a part of it. That is the height of hypocrisy.

Dagen McDowell: Why can't Congress be forced to eat what they cook? They're in such a big old rush to put this thing together and push it through, and they should have to join the new system they create. Congressional members should have to go stand in line and should have to use whatever health care system they cook up.

Adam Lashinsky: The fact is that the current proposed legislation doesn't require anybody with private insurance to join the public option. So why would you require Congressional members? They have insurance already and maybe they will join it. I don't know. This is an attempt to embarrass them—to say "you have to join it" by telling them what to do. This is exactly what they're not telling the American people. Why should they be required to do anything?

Ben Stein: I don't see why any person who has a perfectly good insurance policy would have to join the same plan as people without private insurance. I don't think we should have this type of health care reform at all. If we want to expand health care coverage for Americans, it should be handled by private charities and I will be the first to contribute to it. It should not be done by the government. It would be another giant encroachment on people's lives. Let Congress keep its health care plan.

Green Hoax Revealed?

Ben Stein: The green agenda is based on major fiction. Supposedly gasoline price skyrocketed last year because there was a fundamental shortage of energy; this made us have to switch to wind power, solar power, nuclear power, and tide power. That was all a fraud. The price run-up was from speculators. They manipulated the price of oil, natural gas, etc. and pushed them sky-high. But environmentalists made all of us believe we were running out of oil and had to switch to alternative forms of energy. There's no basis now for a massive cap and trade system and forcing the development of new alternative energy sources. Let's go back and rethink this.

Charles Payne: I find a lot of the policies we have now based on the green movement just baffling. I think that this green movement has been a way of destroying personal choice, destroying capitalism, and even to a degree destroying religion. And it has been very successful in this country and around the world. It's just absolutely amazing to me.

Dagen McDowell: We know that the majority of oil we consume is from overseas. We essentially put money in the hands of countries that hate us. I have no problem if the government wants to give incentives at an individual level to buy and use fuels that come from the United States. We give incentives to save for retirement, we give incentives to buy a home, why not do that? I see Ben's point with cap and trade's aggressive extension of government that could ruin small business. However, not all government incentives are a bad thing.

Adam Lashinsky: I'm not as concerned with energy investors and speculators as Ben is. I think that investors had legitimate concerns -— China's and India's rapid growth created a global supply problem. I think that regulators are acting stupidly, and I choose those words carefully, in trying to reign in speculators. Generally though, we want to wean ourselves from foreign oil and not pollute the environment when possible. That's the reason for driving new regulation on energy price speculation.

Hot Stocks for August

Charles Payne: Alpha Natural Resources (ANR)

Ben Stein: Cohen and Steers Realty (RQI)

Adam Lashinsky: Cigna (CI)

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Forbes on FOX

On Saturday, August 1, 2009 David Asman was joined by Steve Forbes, Evelyn Rusli, Jack Gage, Quentin Hardy, John Rutledge, Mike Ozanian, and Mark Tatge.

Flipside: Cut Welfare! That's the Answer to America's Money Problems

David Asman: The fix for America's money "fix"? Cut welfare spending! Now that's a Forbes flipside sure to get you fired up. California is slashing welfare to save money and Jack, you say, all of America should do the same?

Jack Gage: California is going to emerge from this budget crisis stronger in a couple of years' time because they have been forced to make hard decisions. One of those is cutting welfare. Its welfare budget is $10 Billion for 2010. They're going to have to trim that to become solvent. We could all take an example from that. Yes, you need some short term solution for unemployment benefits if people lose their jobs, but after that, encourage them to get back to work… at least have contingencies that encourage looking for a job.

Quentin Hardy: California borrowed from municipalities. They cut $15 Billion from education and at the last minute Arnold made some headlines but cutting against welfare. But what did he cut? He cut $180 Million to kids. He cut $105 Million to the elderly. He cut $65 Million in AIDS prevention. So the sick, the young, and the infirmed are going to learn a lesson and go back to work? This is heartless. This is a political reality because special interests wouldn't give ground. The prison system in this state rules. Education gets very little, relative to what the prison guards get, but they have the political power so they get the money. It's the unions dominating.

John Rutledge: I agree that $100 Thousand prison guards make no sense whatsoever. But look, you've got to pay your bills. These states have got to cut and cut more and cut again until they can pay their bills. Welfare has simply been crowded out by the stimulus programs. Two-trillion dollars worth of money going from one person to another is really a massive welfare program run by the political establishment. Quentin is right. Politics are in the way, but stimulus welfare is crowding out the little kids and the old people. It's a shame that it's happening.

Evelyn Rusli: We know that California is in a crisis situation and they need to make cuts in order to balance their budget. But they have to confront the reality that by doing so they're going to have long term consequences. As Quentin mentioned, we'll see more insured children. Programs to disabled people and other programs to cut children are going to be cut as well. Because of all these cuts, that's going to cause long term consequences and it will hurt these vulnerable segments of the population.

Steve Forbes: What they are doing in California is that they did with prisoners and now that they're doing with this. They want to make sure that the people who are hurt are the people who are supposed to be benefiting from these programs… instead of cutting out bureaucratic bloat. You have a lot of room there. Take Medi-Cal; there is a lot of reforms you could make. You could deliver better service with things like vouchers. Give more power to the people who are supposed to benefit instead of the bureaucracy. Use this as an opportunity not to win headlines and tears but make real reform.

Flipside: Pay U.S. Postal Service Executives Bonuses Even Though the Postal Service Will Be $7 Billion Dollars in the Red This Year!

David Asman: No bonus for you! This week a Senate committee denying Post Office executives their six-figure bonuses. The U.S. mail service losses about $20 Million a day by some estimates and is predicting to be a whopping 7-billion bucks in the red for the year. But Jack Gage says let the good times for those post office executives roll on.

Jack Gage: I don't care if it's Wall Street or a government agency, if there is a contractual agreement or private contract, it holds. We have to stop these compensation cram downs. It is ridiculous to go back and rewrite history. Of course it's a bureaucracy but that doesn't change the rules of contract law. This is something they're entitled to based on a contract that they signed with their employer. It really doesn't matter whether it's Dick Grasso at the NYSE or someone in the Postal Service.

John Rutledge: I believe in contracts like Jack and that boards not politicians should set bonuses, but listen: I have a bonus plan in companies where I'm on the board. First of all you have to achieve the company goal and second of all you have an individual goal. If you don't get the first one I don't care if you can fly like superman. You're not getting a bonus. If this company doesn't hit its targets, you don't get paid.

Mike Ozanian: I agree with Jack that lawful contracts are still very important. If we start tearing up all contracts where does it end? Pretty soon they're going to come after my contract and I don't want Steve to do that. Evelyn Rusli: I think Jack has a point. But when it comes down to it, the Postal Service is essentially a government agency and when the government says you're not performing well and you're racking up about $7 billion in loses per year and about $10 billion in debt over time. That's a problem and perhaps bonuses aren't warranted.

Steve Forbes: Anyone that invents a perpetual stamp so you can have price increases anytime you want and people don't raise a howl about it has got something going for them. But seriously, I'd increase their bonuses a thousand fold if they privatize. There are other countries that have done this like Germany and Britain. Why not privatize? Then you can give bonuses and options for performance.

Quentin Hardy: Hey Jack, a minute ago you were cutting money to poor children and old people and now you're about rewarding top executives. If this was a one hour show you'd be burning witches at the stake. I have a radical idea: Character over contract. You're telling unions that times are tough and they've got to cut their pay and do the right thing. I can support that. A lot of people are taking pay cuts and working harder than ever, but at the top the leadership has to show an example as well. I don't care what the contract says. I care what the character of these people is.

Congressman Barney Frank Telling Banks to Stop More Foreclosures; Will This Stop a Housing Recovery?

David Asman: Congressman Barney Frank this week telling banks to stop foreclosures or else! The chair of the House Financial Services Committee says the foreclosures are hurting the housing market. But this week we got word new home sales improved by the most in nearly 9 years and home values increased for the first time in 3 years! Mike Ozanian says if the congressman gets his way we can kiss a housing recovery goodbye.

Mike Ozanian: Barney Frank wants to create a second housing bubble. The first housing bubble was caused by cheap money from the Fed. It allowed people to refinance their mortgages. It kept them in homes they couldn't afford. Barney Frank wants to do the same thing here. We have to allow foreclosures to happen. That will allow supply to meet demand and stabilize home prices. What he wants to do is a recipe for disaster.

Mark Tatge: Michael, that's ridiculous. You've got to start helping homeowners. We have to go out and give homeowners some money to be able to make their payments and stem the tide of foreclosures. That's the only way this economy is going to recover. Right now, all the TARP money is going to the fat cats. It's going to the investment bankers and banks that are turning around and paying big bonuses with it. And the mortgage companies are getting all kinds of service revenue when they get a foreclosure. This is a ridiculous prospect.

John Rutledge: The government is throwing money in every which direction. We don't need more money thrown at this problem. Barney, this is a dumb idea. DUMB! DUMB! DUMB! We need foreclosures to clear the market so prices can begin to trade again. Stopping foreclosures is like taping over a thermometer because you don't like to have a fever. You have to let this thing get finished. You'll delay the recovery and you'll push housing prices lower. And Barney, tuck in your shirt!

Quentin Hardy: Barney has his shirt tucked out and talks like he's finishing his sandwich. I don't care. He's got a radical idea. It's called accountability. These guys got a big government handout and they said they would try to stall 500,000 foreclosures by November. Barney is saying that if you don't get near that target, here is what's going to happen. I am so glad someone in the government is saying "you get the handout big company but you also have to perform in the way you promised." I'm ok with that.

Steve Forbes: You've got to let the markets clear but what they should do is give banks the latitude to renegotiate some of these things like having short sales so a guy gets out of the house and the bank gets more than a foreclosure. They give the guy money to go rent a house. They have to change the law to give them latitude for that because in a lot of cases equity lenders stand in the way of working these things out. So let the markets work instead of gumming them up even more.

Informer: Stocks That Will Go Up No Matter What Happens to the Housing Market

David Asman: Time to make a profit from housing without selling your house. Our informers are here with the stocks that'll pop whether the home market rebounds or not.

Mike Ozanian: Bank of America (BAC)

Jack Gage: Kimco Realty (KIM)

Evelyn Rusli: Toll Brothers (TOL)

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Cashin' In

Fix Broken Medicare Before Cheating National Health Care

Terry Keenan: A huge bust over Medicare fraud. More than 30 people indicted in 4 states this week. Lawmakers and Congress promise to deliver a whole new government ran healthcare program. Proof we need to fix healthcare first?

John Layfield: This is like saying we're going to fix the state rooms on a cruise ship, when the motor doesn't work and there are holes all in the boat. If they can't run Medicare they can't run a national health organization either. You have $60 billion in fraud. You have doctors ordering testing that people don't need because they are scared of being sued. Without tort reform without some sort of medical fraud reform this thing will fall apart.

Rob Stein: Medicare needs to be cleaned up and fixed, but I don't think it's and, or. I think part of the national healthcare plan will include fixing Medicare. In the boat analogy, you do need to paint the boat at one time, if you don't want to put the boat out of service for one period of time. I think these problems need to be fixed together.

Jonathan Hoenig: We should get rid of Medicare. We should get government, finally out of the healthcare game completely. Medicare has been a failure. For those who want a single parent system, hello, Medicare is the biggest single parent system. It is broke. Even now, government counts for 50 percent of all healthcare spent in this country.

Jonas Max Ferris: Do you know people over 65 who decide Medicare and decide to go 100 percent private insurance? I don't know anybody, even the complainers, who don't take their money out of that when they get a chance. There's amazing government healthcare. The problem is not the fraud. What needs to be fixed are the very simple. They need to move the eligibility age out. They need to do that now to cover these additional costs. On the newly extended Medicare plan, you shouldn't be able to get healthcare until you are about 70, because people are older than they were 40 years ago.

Tracy Byrnes: But the money is the issue. I mean $60 billion in fraud, gets us closer to where we are going with all this healthcare reform. You won't need it. You'll have all this extra money. 10 percent of the money we spend in healthcare now goes to fraud. Fix the fraud. If you go to this one payer system where everyone is on it, the scope of it will be even bigger. I think everyone agrees older people and young kids need some kind of access to healthcare. Medicare and Medicaid were created to do just that. I do believe that both systems are a total disaster. Fixing them could be an easier and cheaper solution than this whole healthcare system nonsense.

Wayne Rogers: There is no fixing the system. You can't fix something that the government is involved in. It's going to get worse. The government is inept. They don't know what they're doing. There's not one government program you can put your finger on that has ever come in that has been efficient and has worked. It is not based on incentive. That is why. It is based on more people spending more money for doing bad things. Everything the government does is like that.

States Now Beginning to Hire Their Own Czars

Terry Keenan: A whole new set of czars are popping up across America. Nearly a dozen states are paying six figure salaries to install their very own czars. Just this week Nevada announced they are looking to hire one for $180,000.

John Layfield: This is horrible. If you have employees that aren't motivated, don't try to motivate them. Hire motivated employees. What these guys are looking after are people who are stealing. The problem is the thieves are in public office. If you don't have thieves you don't need czars. The problem is systemic. We need to go after the corrupt politicians.

Tracy Byrnes: Well I'm against czars in general. I think marketing the whole name should be abolished because if you just said we're hiring someone to manage the money; nobody would be talking about this right now. And we're talking about salaries that are like $150,000. If you're dispersing a couple billion dollars to a state, I don't mind paying $150,000 to make sure it gets out there because that's the problem. This money is not being dispersed. The stimulus plan is crashing and burning. Maybe $150,000 might be worth it.

Jonas Max Ferris: Sounds a little too royal for my liking because I'm an American. Look, they're shoveling money at the states so you need people to make sure it gets spent right. This seems to be like a publicity role — a PR type of role where you're talking to the media. They actually need to get consultants in there so that it doesn't get wasted because 1 person is not enough people to spend five to ten billion dollars getting shoved at a state government but I guess they have someone to talk to the press about it so it looks better.

Jonathan Hoenig: But that's the whole point, I mean why give that person the five or ten billion dollars to spend in the first place, right? I don't care if they're working for free, I mean for money to be invested, let the market invest it on its own. This administration seems to think as if free men and free markets are idiots and what you really need is that "centrally planned economy" to make the right investment.

Rob Stein: Jonathan, there are wealthy people that give you money that want to invest it and your job is to find the efficient way to make their investments. You have a set of guidelines of what you do. The title isn't very good, but if the person selected to be the czar has information and education and knowledge of these shovel-ready projects and they can disperse the money more efficiently, I'm for it.

Wayne Rogers: I don't have a problem with this. You've got to have some accountability here. You can't just let this money loose to the states and let the politicians just disperse it. You've got to have somebody there who's going to watch over how this money is going to be spent and also to account for it after the fact. And that's not necessarily a government running a much, Jonathan, that's accountability and that's what we do need because somebody has got to account to the constituents how is this money spent. You're just going to let them just blow it? That's crazy!

House Approves $2 Billion More for 'Cash for Clunkers' Program

Terry Keenan: It's barely a week old and it's a huge hit already so congress is making it even bigger, but not everyone is sold on the new "cash-for-clunkers" program. It turns out that some people are turning in their cars for luxury vehicles, like a Lexus.

Jonathan Hoenig: Oh God, they can't run a rebate program, God help us if they try to run Healthcare! Why am I subsidizing any car? Okay a Lexus, a Honda, a Pinto! I mean this is an auto bailout. It's another auto bailout. I know they dressed it as some green initiative but this is the worst type of blatant favoritism for the auto industry-- hello GM already bankrupt -- they wouldn't pass out subsidies to buy jeans or toothpaste or tennis racquets, so why do we have to shovel more spare dollars to the auto companies? I just think it's a terrible waste.

Tracy Byrnes: Well look, out of all the nonsense that they've dished out there thus far, this could have the potential to be one of the better things they had going and they still screwed it up because the Mickey Mouse Club is down in congress and they haven't figure out that they were probably going to need more money for this deal and of course the thing will probably continue to go forward. But look--$45,000 is not a luxury vehicle. You can pimp out my minivan for $45,000, that's no luxury vehicle and if it's going to get traffic going, which anecdotally we've seen it has, not to mention it actually will help GDP towards the end of the year because you will get people out there purchasing again. It is a short term thing. It is what it is.

Wayne Rogers: To Jonathan's point, why not bailout the appliance industry? You could get new stoves, you could get new refrigerators, they would have green complications to them. Why not bailout every other industry? This is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. This is a blatant under riding of the automobile industry and that's all it has to do with. They were too big to fail -- they should've failed!

Jonas Max Ferris: First of all, they're bailing out all those things you said. They buy receivables in credit so they can keep making loans to sell all of those things he just talked about, and they keep interest rates low so you can finance all those things that Wayne just talked about. And the credit card companies got money to pay for all of those things you just talked about. They also bailout house purchases with a lot more money than this. Now let's straighten this thing out a little. Philosophically it's stupid, yes, but if you have to give the auto companies money because no one is buying cars, or give people money to buy their cars, I would prefer the latter. I wish they would do more of this and less of the loans to GM, etcetera. And as far as this Lexus thing, it's such BS. I've talked to a friend at BMW; they've sold no cars with this deal because there are no luxury cars for $45,000 in America! Wake up! This thing is set up to give money to the American auto industry, not Lexus. That's a BS lead we just did. People who drive those cars don't have clunkers!

John Layfield: I think there's something wrong with a country where you bailout the auto makers and then pay people to go buy cars from the automakers you just bailed out! I've got some redneck buddies in Texas that have four cars in their backyards. Maybe this will clean up my neighborhood but I really don't think those guys should be getting $45,000 per car.

What Do I Need to Know?

Tracy Byrnes: So the cosmetic/plastic surgery business has been relatively unscathed through all of this- obviously bothering the Democrats. They want to impose a 10 percent tax on Botox, boob jobs, you name it. They're loony! It's not going to happen. Be safe out there; go get your boob jobs.

Jonas Max Ferris: They just had another study that tanning booths cause cancer and are as good for you as arsenic so the industry is going to be regulated heavily very shortly, I'm sure. As it is, people that young will not be able to do that anymore, or smoke. I'm recommending Sharing Plough once again which has done well lately because they make Coppertone, and Bain de Soleil. People are back on the beach, they're out of the tanning salon. That's the way to play this one.

John Lanefiled: Delaware getting sports betting kills Atlantic City. All of these states with their low tax rates right now, they're going to increase betting. They're going to kill the casinos. Something that makes gaming equipment (MPEL) –- they benefit.

Jonathan Hoenig: A lot of speculation this week passed on whether Israel will shut down Iran's capability to manufacture nuclear weapons. I know it sounds a little counter intuitive to invest in what could be a war zone, but we've talked about Israeli stocks and EIS, which is the i-Shares Israel which tracks a lot of Israeli stocks, is doing better than all of the brick countries that everyone is so enthusiastic about (Brazil and Russia and India.) Israel is a real top performer.

Wayne Rogers: What we need to know is that this bump in the prices and the absorption rate of houses is not something that's going to last very long. We just saw a recent bump-up but don't count on it.