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Published January 26, 2017
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Bulls & Bears | Cavuto on Business | Forbes on Fox | Cashin' In
Bulls & Bears
On Saturday March 6, Brenda Buttner was joined by Gary B. Smith, Tobin Smith, Pat Dorsey, Eric Bolling and Mark Levine.
Government Jobs and Salaries Surge as Private Sector Struggles
Eric Bolling, Fox Business Network: It's costing $108,000 to create a federal job, and $69,000 in the private sector for the exact same, apples to apples, job if you include all benefits. Straight salary comparison shows federal workers make about $7,000 more on average. But it's the huge difference in benefits that's so shocking. The average federal worker gets about $40,000 worth of benefits a year, compared to $9,000 in the private sector. Since President Obama was elected, the economy has shed four million jobs. Every single sector of the jobs market has lost logs, except for federal jobs. That says it all.
Mark Levine, radio talk show host: It's perfectly common for the federal government to stimulate the job market during a recession. The New Deal was the ultimate example of that. These jobs come in the form of say, infrastructure projects, and then those contractors go out and buy goods for their family, etc. The economy was losing 700,000 jobs per month. This expansion of federal jobs helped stabilize the job market, and that can't be looked at as a bad thing.
Tobin Smith, NBT Media: The real issue here is that no private employer can hope to compete with the U.S. Government. The federal government, on average, compensates its workers with a total of $108,000 while a private company can only pay $69,000. There is literally no way a private company can compete with that because they actually have to worry about being profitable. It pushes out private sector jobs. As a result, our economy spirals downward.
Gary B. Smith, TheChartman.com: Government workers live in a different world from the rest of society. You know why? Unemployment in the federal sector is at 4 percent. In construction, it's 12 percent. Now, liberals claim government workers get paid more than their private-sector counterparts because they're doing more and have more complicated responsibilities. But I'll give you an example—a clergy working in the government makes about $70,000 while one in the private sector makes $39,000. And as far as I know, God is God. The Federal Reserve recently came out with a study showing that growth in government stunts general economic growth, and increases in government spending or taxes lead to persistent decreases in job growth. So this is not good news by any means.
Pat Dorsey, Morningstar.com: In this context, government workers have very generous benefits. We can argue they're much too generous because they're promises you can't take back when it comes to benefits. They get paid out over a long period of time. But to put this issue to scale, there are about three million federal jobs in the U.S. out of 130 million total jobs. Eighty-four percent of these federal workers are employed outside the D.C. area. So I'm not sure this is a big a deal as some people are making it to be.
New Report: Deficits Set to Explode Amid $1 Trillion Health Care Push
Tobin Smith: The Congressional Budget Office is constantly wrong in its reports on the budget. If they're saying the deficit is going to be $1.2 trillion in the red, it'll probably end up being more like $3 trillion. The problem is that the CBO makes these assumptions that the government is actually going to reform or cut back the various programs they recommend going after, such as Medicare. But these cuts or reforms, never, ever happen, so the actual deficit numbers end up being much worse.
Mark Levine: We can afford this because it's going to save money in the long-term. The health care bill is not a budget buster; it's a budget jet booster. The CBO says health care reform will save $1 trillion. As the government saves money, consumers will save money, and this will ultimately be good stuff for our economy's bottom line and the federal budget.
Pat Dorsey: We can't afford not to do health care reform. Unfortunately what's being proposed isn't really health care reform. It's health care coverage expansion. These are two very different things. Health care reform means blowing up the fee for service system and paying for results, not procedures. But this would entail a radical reworking of the entire system, and that's unfortunately not on the table.
Eric Bolling: The health care reform proposals will drive the free enterprise of health insurance out the window. You want to effectively nationalize health care, so what's next? If uninsured people get to go into a public option, they get to pay less for coverage. Pretty soon, people that have private insurance are going to want to pay less money too. They'll opt into the public option, and before we know it, private health insurance will cease to exist.
Gary B. Smith: Public health insurance is not cheaper than private insurance. It appears to be cheaper because the government is able to hide a lot of the operating costs. They don't have to do marketing, they can share buildings, they don't have to worry about cost controls on administrative procedures, etc. If you like Medicare, you can claim we have this great system, but many of the large government programs like Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare are basically bankrupt. These price controls will have to explode at some point. And the cost of these reforms will rise drastically after the 10-year horizon for costs they're currently using.
Fire Government Workers Not Paying Their Taxes?
Gary B. Smith: We've found over 600 staffers on Capitol Hill owe about $8 million in unpaid taxes. If you're a part of making the laws of the land, you should live by the laws of the land. If you work for the IRS and don't pay your taxes, you get fired! The same rule should apply to everyone on Capitol Hill—from the congressional members to their staffers. That's the bottom line.
Mark Levine: If these staffers are doing this intentionally, these fire them, absolutely. But if forget or fail to declare a tip I may have received or some small interest payment, should I be fired? No. But if it's an egregious action, get rid of them.
Tobin Smith: Charlie Rangel appears to be our leader in all of this. If you do anything worse than Charlie Rangel, then you should get fired. I'll leave it at that.
Eric Bolling: I think they should be fired if it's $.50 or $50,000. It really doesn't matter because they cheated. Who can blame them though, when the Treasury Secretary was delinquent on his taxes too! What do you expect?
Pat Dorsey: There is a difference between mistakes and intentional cheating.
Predictions
Tobin Smith: Fly the "kiddie" skies "UAUA" lands 50 percent gains by September
Gary B. Smith: Starbucks shows its "guns"! "SBUX" jolts 30 percent by December
Pat Dorsey: Invest in your retirement location! "HCN" builds 30 percent in 1 year
Eric Bolling: $75M "Cash for Cluckers" has "TSN" clucking 30 percent profits in 1 year
Bulls & Bears | Cavuto on Business | Forbes on Fox | Cashin' In
Cavuto on Business
On Saturday March 6, Neil Cavuto was joined by Charles Payne, Dagen McDowell, Scott Martin and Adam Lashinsky.
Sen. Scott Brown's "Pay-Go" Tax Cut Plan: Job Creator?
Charles Payne, WStreet.com: I think Senator Brown is right on track with this temporary payroll tax cut plan. This helps provide a direct cash infusion into small businesses. We have to make sure that employers have more money. We've seen wages aren't even keeping up with inflation. So this additional money is critical for small businesses. The Obama administration's idea of giving employers $5,000 to hire someone when it costs them say, $50,000 to do so just won't work.
Dagen McDowell, Fox Business Network: It's hard to go back now, but this was an idea that was floated before the stimulus package was passed. You give businesses and individuals money and let them decide how to spend it best instead of bureaucrats or lawmakers deciding how to dole it out and give it to political allies. Not to say it's too late, but we'd have to figure out where to make cuts to pay for it all.
Scott Martin, Astor Asset Management: The economy used to be a runaway train, but we've fortunately seen things improving. The best thing the government can do is get more cash in the hands of the people. Small business owners that spend money going forward are the one who'll create the final demand. These businesses will have to hire more workers. The more cash in businesses hands, the better. The key is spurring final demand, and this would be a great way to do that.
Adam Lashinsky, editor-at-large, Fortune Magazine: There are bright spots in the economy, to be sure. I think you have to be careful though in saying how many of the job losses we've seen since President Obama took office are actually his fault. It's fair to judge an administration on aggregate job creation and losses. The problem is that it seems to lead people to pointing fingers without any worthwhile results. The problem with this idea of a payroll tax cut or holiday is that they're gimmicks too. Businesses ultimately rely on what they believe the economic climate is going to be like on a longer-term basis. They like to save money, and a temporary payroll tax just perverts their behavior.
Sen. Bunning's "Pay-Go" Stand: Taxpayer Hero or Villain?
Charles Payne: Anytime a member of Congress acts like a responsible adult, they're evil. I think Senator Bunning is a hero for doing this. I think a lot of people around the country appreciate what he stood up for on this. The money is out there, but it was a relief to finally see someone in Congress taking a stand for fiscal responsibility.
Scott Martin: Senator Bunning was left out in the cold as he took this stand. He absolutely got vilified. Recent employment reports are showing improvements, but we're still losing jobs. If you cut unemployment benefits while we're still losing jobs, that's an incredibly tough platform to stand on, and Senator Bunning certainly found that out.
Dagen McDowell: What this whole issue really shined a light on was the supposed pay-go rules the Democrats say they want to put in place. But we see these pay-go rules only apply for policies they're not in favor of. When it comes to programs they support, then the rules go out the window. Democrats called the extension of these unemployment benefits "emergency spending" in order to push it through. Everyone was treating Senator Bunning like the crazy person, when in reality it was everyone else.
Adam Lashinsky: The fact that Senator Bunning walked away on a procedural measure is a salient point. Bunning objected to the fact that this was a procedural measure in first place and that it required unanimous consent—but he wasn't going to do it. He was acting on principle, and on principle he was actually right. Unfortunately, acting on principle in this case had a lot of potential to hurt a lot of people. My question is whether this was the right time to do it. People would not have gotten their COBRA payments covered, doctors wouldn't have gotten fully reimbursed for Medicare services, etc.
Best Toyota Fix: Give Recall Customers Brand New Cars?
Adam Lashinsky: I remember this old myth about Nordstrom when a customer brought in a tire once, said they wanted to return it, and were able to even though Nordstrom doesn't sell tires. It was one of those things they could do once, but when it comes to Toyota, they could never hope to afford giving new cars to customers. It's a silly suggestion. If I have a serious leak in my house, I'd like to return it to the builder and get a new house. But unfortunately, things just don't work out that way.
Dagen McDowell: The federal government does have the power to make Toyota take those cars back and replace them if they can't prove that they actually fixed them. The key is finding out what the true cause of these accidents was.
Charles Payne: Toyota is taking the cheap way out with this by implying the rug or floor mat is the problem, rather than an electrical issue. They keep insulting their customers over and over again. This goes way beyond a legal issue—we've seen Toyota's lasting legacy horribly damaged as a result of all this.
Scott Martin: I don't know how Toyota can prove what's what—as in what caused one accident versus another. Looking at the state of American car makers, you can't tell me some people in Washington aren't a little happy Toyota is experiencing these major problems. If you don't want a Toyota, then don't buy one. And the thing is that this could be just the beginning of Toyota's problems.
Stock Oscars
Charles Payne: Clean Energy (CLNE)
Adam Lashinsky: Regal Entertainment (RGC)
Scott Martin: ProShares Short 20+ Years U.S. Treasuries (TBF)
Bulls & Bears | Cavuto on Business | Forbes on Fox | Cashin' In
Forbes on Fox
On Saturday, March 6, 2010, David Asman was joined by Rich Karlgaard, Neil Weinberg, Mike Ozanian, Quentin Hardy, Victoria Barret, Elizabeth MacDonald, Evelyn Rusli, and John Rutledge.
In Focus: Will Democrats' Use of Nuclear Option to Pass Health Care Be Nuclear to Economy?
DAVID ASMAN: Democrats are racing towards the nuclear option. Forget health care—why some at Forbes are warning it's what comes after health care that's really going to nuke our economy. But are they right? Hi everybody, I'm David Asman. Welcome to Forbes on Fox. Let's go In Focus with, Rich Karlgaard, Neil Weinberg, Elizabeth MacDonald, Mike Ozanian, Victoria Barret, and Quentin Hardy. Oz, straight to you.
MIKE OZANIAN: This procedure is supposed to be used to reduce the budget deficit. It's not supposed to be used to enact massive welfare legislation. In fact, in 1993, Bill Clinton wanted to use reconciliation to pass his health care reform and Senator Byrd of all people talked him out of it, chastised him for it, and said this isn't what this procedure is for. It wasn't until 1999 that reconciliation was used to actually increase the deficit. This started to open the door to abuses and it could lead to massive new spending.
QUENTIN HARDY: I think it's when your party is in power, it's majority rule; when the other party is in power, it's ramming it through in tyranny and it's really the fault of ourselves for electing these people who don't act responsibly. Under Carter, reconciliation was used for reduction. Under Reagan, it was used for reduction and tax increases. Starting in 1991 it was used to increase the deficit. It's been going on for a long time. If you elect the right people, the right thing will happen.
ELIZABETH MacDONALD: Quentin makes some good points but I don't agree with them. Budget reconciliation was enacted in 1974 and used since 1980 and yes, this legislation has been loaded up with all sorts of deficit and spending increases for Medicare and the like, but to use it to change one seventh of the economy is a very big deal, and even Senator Robert Byrd said that's a big abuse of power at a time when stimulus spending is being treated as a rounding error in Washington, D.C.
NEIL WEINBERG: I have to agree with Quentin. This was used in 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006—it doesn't make it right, but to say that this is the time that is going to push us over the edge is like saying an alcoholic's latest sip of whiskey is the one that's going to do it. It's just crazy. Both parties have been doing this for a long time.
VICTORIA BARRET: When you look back at history, at laws of this nature this grand such as Medicare and Medicaid, when they went through in 1965 after 500 amendments, they had bipartisan support and that should be the case here too. The Democrats are going against what the majority of Americans are telling us they want, which is not this health care plan.
RICH KARLGAARD: I hate this health care plan and I want to see it fail even though they try to use reconciliation because that's going to make their failure even worse. It's going to mean the end of Speaker Pelosi and huge sweeps by the Republicans this fall. So let them try it. You know they're going to try it anyway, so let them try it and fail so we can finally get back to some sanity in this country.
Flipside: Send American Tax Dollars Overseas to Help Create Jobs in America
DAVID ASMAN: So where are the stimulus jobs? Overseas! And it's not Republicans saying it—it's several Democratic senators. They claim the President's green stimulus projects are sending jobs and tax dollars to foreign companies, and they want it stopped right now. But Neil Weinberg says, we need to give foreign companies more of our money to get Americans working again.
NEIL WEINBERG: If we are going to spend our tax dollars on the stimulus, we might as well get the best bang for our buck; and the way to do that is to buy from whomever has the best products and services, whether they are American or not. The other thing is, this economy benefits tremendously from free trade. If we start saying, we're just going to buy American, and then the Chinese do the same, and everybody else does then same, the international trade system is going to collapse and that's a really bad thing for our jobs.
ELIZABETH MacDONALD: Stimulus money spent on manufacturers in China to build wind turbines for about 28 wind farms here in the United States creates about 3,000 jobs in China and 330 here in the United States, 300 of which are temporary. I'm not a protectionist, but China does keep its currency dirt cheap against the dollar, it has slapped tariffs on our goods, and it pays about a nickel an hour for labor. So yes, those turbines are cheap but at a time when this country is basically manufacturing sub-prime bonds, we could use a little more help for our manufacturers.
MIKE OZANIAN: This is one of the stupidest things Washington has ever done. But the reason must be this: Obama is funneling money there so they will buy our treasury bonds. He's got to float a lot of treasury bonds to support all that money he is borrowing.
VICTORIA BARRET: It's the inherit conflict in Obama's decision to prioritize so-called green jobs. A lot of the talent and cheap manufacturing is going to come from overseas: China, Japan. It's a conflict—a catch-22 that you can't get around. What we should be looking at is what America needs: better roads, highways, bridges. We have an ailing, old, tired infrastructure system that needs to be improved; those create immediate, temporary jobs. Construction jobs got hit very hard in this recession, so that's what we should be doing.
QUENTIN HARDY: It would be even more stupid to start a trade war and we don't have to do that. But we are a little behind in this industry. The reason we have to buy from China is we don't have the skills here yet. We might get them, but that will take time. And you do it by seeding startups. You don't give it to big companies. Why is that? Big companies are overseas.
JOHN RUTLEDGE: [Sending money overseas] doesn't create any American jobs, but the money that is spent on American companies also doesn't create any American jobs. The government has thrown $3 trillion against the wall in the last 2 years and this week's job report is down again. We're still losing jobs. The score is 3 trillion to zero so far. Somebody's got to wise-up here. But you can't even tell who's a foreign company these days anyway. Who owns a company is up to the shareholders trading in the stock market, so what's the difference.
Save American Tax Dollars By Reducing Federal Workweek to Four Days
DAVID ASMAN: First it was the Post Office saying it may cut Saturday delivery, but John Rutledge says that's nothing—we should cut all government workers down to four days a week.
JOHN RUTLEDGE: Well forget four, why not three? We need to put the burden of the government budget on the people who collect the money—not only employees but the lobbyists too. And the productivity there obviously is not up to private standards, and the pay is higher. So let's shrink the government with a hammer if we have to.
QUENTIN HARDY: You start out with the idea that government is so bad, but then you want to make some exceptions. You want to cut the FBI agent? The Secret Service worker? How about the IRS guys? They collect taxes. How about the doctors in the VA hospitals? It doesn't work like that. I think government people actually work hard. But I'm a little biased. My wife works for the city of San Francisco in the library. She got laid-off this week. Twenty-thousand people in San Francisco got laid-off. They're going to get rehired and have their pay cut by 6 percent, and the city is going to figure out procedurally how many they got, how many leave, and where to go from there. Government budgets are too big. They have to be cut, but let's do it sensibly.
NEIL WEINBERG: I think that we are living way beyond our means right now and a big way we are doing that is by spending. A big line item on the government is salaries. I don't know that going down to four days a week is such a great idea because everyone gets benefits and right now, benefits are a huge part of government pay. But I do think we should reduce government, whether that's 4 days or 3 days or fewer people.
EVELYN RUSLI: You don't want to reduce productivity and I have to highlight Quentin's point in that a lot of government jobs, like in education and security, are crucial and you want them in the office 5 days a week. I think there should be cuts in the form of salary cuts, but I think that productivity should remain high.
RICH KARLGAARD: Well, I would submit that you can't have real productivity if the jobs are guaranteed. But the other thing is pensions. Pensions are way out of line in the public sector. They need to be brought in to line with what private enterprise pays.
Informer: Stocks That Will Deliver for You Every Day of the Week
DAVID ASMAN: We're back with our Informers and their stock picks that will work for you every day of the week, all year long:
MIKE OZANIAN: Roper Industries (ROP)
NEIL WEINBERG: Joy Global (JOYG)
EVELYN RUSLI: Seaspan (SSW)
Bulls & Bears | Cavuto on Business | Forbes on Fox | Cashin' In
Cashin' In
Dems Pushing to Pass Health Care Bill Before Easter Break to Avoid Another Townhall/Tea Party Rebellion; Does This Prove Tea Partiers Are Right About Health Care?
Tracy Byrnes, Fox Business Network: They're having a huge effect. And they know better. They absolutely know that health care is going to cost more and decrease care. Look, we know what happened the last time these guys we want home. The tea partiers, the local town hall meetings, they went at them like cats hungry for lunch. They were clawing at these guys and don't want to have that happen again. So they are going to ram this through before Easter to avoid the tea partiers who, at the end of the day, are right.
Ehpren Taylor, Incoming Inc: I completely disagree. First of all, Tea Partiers, it's kind of like a flea on a dog, they're nothing more than a pest. I think the real thing is that with lawmakers do not pass this, it will keep costs more, we already have to pay for individuals who are showing up at hospitals who don't have proper coverage and it's like the President said, he said if you like your plan, you keep your plan. If you don't, you can go on this plan. But this is for people who don't have insurance and if they do not pass this and go home, it's not the tea partiers they're worried about. It's the people who don't have coverage that are sick, being turned away that are going to be the real threat to lawmakers.
John Layfield, www.nutritionmarket.com CEO/Owner: Look, these fleas on a dog, as he refers to our fellow Americans, are backed by 75 percent of Americans who do not want this. This administration has spent over a quarter of their first term, if they have a second term, on health care and not on jobs. If you add more money to this broken system, you have 60 to $80 billion in Medicaid and Medicaid fraud every year, by adding more money, as Warren Buffet says, talking about who pays is not what we should be doing. Add 30 to 50 million more people to a broken system and look at the waste within this system that is broken completely, your cost will go up exponentially.
Wayne Rogers, Wayne Rogers & Co: There is a whole syndrome in Washington that says we have to do something. Everything has to be done. In other words, they're going to do the same thing with the financial reform bill instead of canceling it and doing nothing, they feel that we have to do something, otherwise we're not — even if it's wrong. Nobody knows what's in this bill, so John, when you say it's going to add all these people, nobody knows. This bill is 2,000 pages long. Nobody has any idea what it's going to cost. There is no way to pin it down until you know what it's going to cost, you can't say these things about it. It's President Bush probably going to be terrible. Any time you increase a bill like that where people don't know where it's going, the Congress doesn't know, they're morons, they don't even know. They don't read it.
Jonathan Hoenig, www.CapitalistPig.com: It's the cost, but also basically the premise. The Democrats' ultimate goal, doesn't matter if the bill is 2 million pages or 2,000 pages. The Democrats' goal is to expand government control of health care. They'll do it through new entitlements through outright control, that's their goal.
Jonas Max Ferris, MaxFunds.com: The cost cutting components of the bill is what was hanging the whole thing up. The majority of the tea parties get Medicare or very close to getting Medicare. I've seen them panning the crowds. They don't like their Medicare getting cut to expand health care to people that don't have health care that are younger. It would increase cost. If you have government health care now, you don't want this to pass 'cause it was going to nip away at it a little bit and it was going to expand it to more people. So to those who have health insurance, private or public, this wasn't the greatest plan. To those who don't have health insurance, this was a quality improvement. They're not going to pay for it. It depends who you're surveying. As far as why they had to do it so fast, they had a whole year.
New Study Shows President Obama's Green Plan Can Lead to $7.50/Gallon Gas; Someone On 'Cashin' In' Says That's Good News
Jonas Max Ferris: Because all this cap and radar gang they're trying to cook up is needlessly complicated and punishes industry for making power for us. Is it their fault I have five giant TVs in my house? A 5,000 square foot mansion? The higher gas prices is good for America, it's a better way to raise money than higher income tax. Higher gas prices leads to less consumption, they save the environment, they stop balance of payment problems where we send all this money to other countries and let's you work for lower taxes. Taxes have to come from somewhere and this government cannot afford to reward us to behave well with tax credits to buy solar panels and they got to punish us for behaving badly.
John Layfield: Seven dollar gas would be a disaster for this economy. Look what happened last year when it got up to $4 a gallon. Look what happens when the oil gets up to $150 a barrel. It shuts down companies. This would be a systemic shock to our economy. You look the systemic shot in the 1970s and it brought us Jimmy Carter's green initiative, which was a billion dollar boondoggle. The government cannot run green energy. If you let private enterprise do it, they will create millions of jobs. They should do it through private enterprise and not government.
Wayne Rogers: Well, i agree with John. It's a killer because trucks run on gasoline. All of them delivering groceries, everything we do runs on hydrocarbons. I'm not saying we should stay on it, we should wean ourselves off of it. Particularly for national security reasons, you do not want to be captive to Middle Eastern oil where you have crazy people blowing themselves up. So we've got to do something.
Jonathan Hoenig: That whole notion, Wayne, that if we stop buying gas from the middle east for some reason, Ahmadinejad is going to be eating crumpets with us is why we need to cap emissions. I don't accept that premise. I don't accept the flawed premise we need to limit emissions.
Tracy Byrnes: $7 a gallon would be killer. Half of us would have to quit our jobs because we couldn't afford to be in the car every day.
Ephren Taylor: Look, Harvard has a study that came out, they've been wrong before. Seven-dollars a gas is far fetched. But I agree that we need to become independent off these countries that can't stand us. I'm biased. I don't think the government should be overly controllable about it, but I can say as a personal benefactor that some of the government incentives are working, that it is encouraging production, but we have to do something.
Hypocrisy Alert: Lawmakers Keep the Change… Literally!
Wayne Rogers: Well, I'll tell you why, this is embezzlement. It's crooked. They start by cheating on expenses, guys like Al Hastings said once, you're concerned about nickels and dimes. I'm not. Yeah, but he was willing to take a bribe for $125,000. That's how it starts. Charles Rangel, he's under investigation. They are all crooks and it all starts by taking pennies and dimes in the beginning and it grows and grows. After a while, they think, oh, there is nothing wrong with taking a million or two.
Ephren Taylor: Oh, first of all, I think this is ridiculous. I have 75 employees, they get $75 per day, per diem. We're sending over our Congressional people. That's they're per diem. Do we want them to make their 80 to $100 a year and what they don't spend they should give it back to the taxpayer? Let's try that in corporate America. It's corporate money, give it back.
Tracy Byrnes: That is exactly what this Congress is all about. A complete and utter disconnect to Main Street. They think they can get away with this stuff. Pennies, nickels, dimes. If I had an extra $50, I'd put it toward my utility bill.
John Layfield: You're talking about a Congress who has an approval rating just barely above bin Laden's right now. They're not accused crooks. They're crooks. Charlie Rangel gets indicted if he's in private enterprise and stealing is stealing. It's very black and white. There is no gray. It's not an amount. You steal something from a store, you don't turn to the storeowner and say, "I just took a little bit."
Jonas Max Ferris: First of all, you lie. Second of all, I heard he used his money for something else. The bottom line is goes on in Corporate America. When you walk out of your office with a pad and use it personally, yeah, that's company money. But it is deducted as an expense, taxpayers are getting hosed out of the value of that. This is widespread. Is Wayne right, that this is symptomatic of a whole ruling class? Yes. This is Mickey Mouse per diem stuff.
Jonathan Hoenig: Some of it is justified. When I travel, the company for sure picks up my cab and my coffee. Okay? And if some Senator wants to spend $200 to buy something to get a photo op, he's probably doing goodwill for America.
What Do I Need to Know?
Tracy Byrnes; Fox Business Network: The census Bureau is wasting billions of dollars asking questions that are useless. How many toilets do you have? How much money do you make? They know this already.
Wayne Rogers; Wayne Rogers & Company: The economy is improving and Americans will buy America. That means that as Toyota sales decline, who will benefit? Buy Ford. Good cars. American cars!
John Layfield; Nutritionmarket.com: The new "Tiger text app" erases text messages 60 seconds after they are read. It's like Mission Impossible. Apple's going to benefit from this "convert texting."
Jonas Max Ferris; Maxfunds.com: America has a lot of assets left before we default on our government debt. That's why I'm buying TLT, the long-term government bond fund.
Jonathan Hoenig; Capitalistpig Asset Management: I love my Apple too. But I think the iPad field is big enough for two. Check out SONY (SNE). It's breaking out here and it's headed higher.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/recap-of-saturday-march-6