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Dow Closes at Record High on Friday After Contentious Week in Washington
Gary B. Smith: Absolutely. At this point, I am surprised that Jessica has any hair. She's probably pulling it out, she thought the markets would collapse, the rivers would overflow, the icebergs would melt and nothing has happened. Look, look what happens during these presidential scandals. During the Clinton-Lewinsky thing, the market went up, it went down during the Nixon impeachment brouhaha but that was because everyone thought the entire democracy was on the cusp. Now, people realize yes, Trump may have been naive, yes, maybe he thought he was dealing with someone that couldn't handle his backslapping and stuff like that and he underestimated Comey but even if the very worst happened, the very, very worst and there's a part that 1 percent chance that Trump got impeached, you know what the market would say, OK fine we've got Pence, we've still got congress and life moves on. This is a big nothing burger out there as much as the liberals want it to be meet that's why the market has responded positively.
John Layfield: This is a nonevent. I went through the last 400 years, 394 years to be exact to the 6023 cash after the 30 year war to today of stock market crashes, bear markets, and also economy crashes. One of three things: It was either some type of economic event like a default, it was a bubble bursting or it was some type of invasion or attack that later a war followed. Then I went through the Presidential scandals, the big ones, not Warren G Harding losing the white house China in a poker game but the presidents being impeached like Andrew Johnson was impeached, during that time the market stalled for only a short time it was up 6 percent in the following months. The same thing happened when President Clinton was impeached, the same thing happened during Iran-Contra, the Watergate scandal had nothing to do with president Nixon as far as the economy they had to do with the Arab oil embargo. This is a nonevent. Presidential scandals have traditionally and historically no effect on the market.
Emily Jashinsky: Investors care about the Trump economic agenda and unless something comes out of the Russian investigation that's going to hamper Trump's economic agenda, then you know, really, it doesn't matter as far as the market are concerned. What's really going to impact that more so than the Russian investigation is divisions within the Republican Party. That's what investors should really be worried about. The Russian investigation just keep hearing things already confirmed that consisting narrative and nothing is game changing. That's what we saw this week, that's what we will continue to see in the markets.
Jonas Max Ferris: I think the stock market has kind of transcended the Trump bump, so to say. It was driven by that early on, the optimism about tax policy changes, regulatory changes which we've seen some of but not getting more which was the expectation. I think the market thanks trump is in a slump and is not going to pass any of this stuff. They don't care anymore than the late '90s market which is if you recall, was extremely hot would care about Clinton policy which may or may not happen because of the scandal he was involved in. It just became its own momentum driven situation where investors are in and included but it won't have anything to do with this other scandal which I don't want to downplay the sensationalism of it but I just think the market is beyond it right now. At the end of the day, does it seem Nixonian? It doesn't have the corruptness of it seems more like Trump treats Comey like he is the head of security at Trump tower, that was his basic mistake. He's not a politician and he's not like Nixon and he doesn't understand how things work at his age and government and it will lead to problems. It could stop the policies from happening and that is going to play a weight. But I think it doesn't matter anymore.
Jessica Tarlov: No, certainly not. We have seen ups and downs but there was that Trump bump and there was that little bump when it looked like Hillary was going to win and that was the Hillary stabilization factor but a special shout out to John with that incredible research who totally put me to shame. All I wanted to add was to say that from what I looked at yes these political scandals are historically overblown and that basically people want to write articles saying, look at this volatility and the next day they say we stabilize because of X or Y issue. And to Emily's point, I completely agree that if the Trump agenda is able to advance and it is republican standing in the way right now for that certainly now that they are discussing doing tax reform and healthcare together which I think is a complete impossibility, we probably should be able to stay pretty stable which I think is a pretty great thing certainly as I think as well that this Russia thing is not a nothing burger as Gary pointed out.
New Concerns About Cost of Airport Security
John Layfield: It certainly should. I fly every single week, sometimes up to four days a week and I see incredible inconsistencies in TSA throughout our country. If you look at how many times they fail security tax they is actually no excuse for this whatsoever. The government also takes about $1.25 billion of TSA security fees that all airlines and passengers pay into in the general fund and that is also inexcusable. The TSA should be privatized and he should take civilian flights that you have. Year to $7.6 billion budget with TSA and simply just add on preflight what you need to fund the TSA, fund the security and but a merit-based system in place and if guys are screwing up, get rid of them. There is no uniform consistency in the TSA and that is inexcusable in this day and age.
Jonas Max Ferris: Look, we spent hundreds of billions on antiterrorist measures and much of it is an ongoing basis that will never go away. You don't double down the spending because someone's casing out an airplane some place. There's a lot of mistakes made and in spending more will only magnify it. If you really stepped back, the airlines is a joke, look it took over ten years from 911 just to get TSA pre- checked off the table and that's an absurd length of time. It still doesn't make any sense. They charge you to do it so no one wants to do it and then you don't have that program and if you're on TSA precheck they'll check my dog for bombs because I don't know why but it's holding up the line. There's so much no federal idea. These are big mistakes that create the illusion of the security and spending more with that kind of bureaucracy is our weakness. The terrorists know it and they can bankrupt us by leading to hundreds of billion dollars of spending.
Emily Jashinsky: Yeah, and to bridge the gap between those two is that were just inefficient. There's bureaucracy and red tape in TSA and was very interesting about this particular story is that we've been talking about lone wolf attacks the past couple of years. That does not appear to be the case in this situation. These men were connected to organized terrorist group Hezbollah and for having this large-scale organized attack on airports, that's incredibly alarming, that's something that absolutely demands extreme measures.
Jessica Tarlov: The consistency across airports is really key here. I was in Atlanta a couple weeks ago and I was surprised I did not take my shoes off. Everything was completely different than at JFK. I do have TSA precheck and it's crazy that it that long. We have a ton of money that were already spending and use it efficiently, reform the system and make sure were cooperating with tech companies. I go over this again and again, we need to do better in terms of monitoring social media and things like that to know what's going on.
Gary B. Smith: I don't think it's a money issue. I agree with what everyone has said here. Before TSA, we're spending 750 million a year and airport security and since then we spent 70 billion. The latest budget is almost 8 billion for the TSA so the cuts you're talking about probably are drop in the bucket. I go back to what john said but maybe in a different way. He talked about incentives. Look, this is a government bureaucracy. Jonas mentioned that. We need to do away with that. You have two options: Either, a) you privatize it. John mentioned the failure rate and the latest TSA the late 95 percent failure rate. If FedEx had a 95 percent failure rate customer. So you privatize it and give them incentives or you probably deal with the best branch of government has the most experience with terrorists, the military but you put the military in charge of TSA. Either way, TSA cannot do it right now.
President Trump: Cut Regulations to Pick Up the Pace on Rebuilding Infrastructure, Boost Jobs
Gary B. Smith: It's the most important thing he can do after tax reform and a couple quick facts. The small business administration estimates that government regulations cost businesses $1.75 trillion a year. The federal register where all these laws is 81000 pages is 50 percent more than during Reagan and finally 10 percent of businesses go out of business is by market forces. How much does government shrink each year? It never does, it grows like barnacles on the titanic. Trump is right to do what he's doing.
Emily Jashinsky: He uses his unique political personality to channel the frustration of the bipartisan working class. That's what he's doing and this is why he was elected. It may look silly but it resonates with the American people. If he's able to focus on this, somehow, the Russian investigation will be relegated to the echo chambers of the leftist media.
John Layfield: The last time we had regulation reform was in 1996 the small business fairness act. And we've had 21 years of regulations stacked upon regulations. This is one of the best things you can do for our country.
Jessica Tarlov: I've heard many rightists talking about Russia and yeah we are overregulated but Donald Trump is being completely inelegant about it and not just about how he held up that binder, this kind of two for one rule and I'll get rid of 2 for every one I create. It shows a lack of focus of what he's going after. Be sensible about it.
Jonas Max Ferris: These projects won't build themselves. It's his strongest area, I'd say stronger than taxes because they can get democrat votes in this area votes without question. That said, if you pull away federal regulations you are leaving a patchwork of even dumber state regulations. They don't let the tesla cars in your state and that leaves over who can fly drones and there's a million examples like that.
Predictions
Gary B. Smith: (CMSA)
John Layfield: (RDS-A)
Jonas Max Ferris: (HACK)
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