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Dec. 28, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:46
December 28, 2010, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 Podcast.
Well, that's where I'm from, but it's not where I am.
The Rush Limbaugh program kind of comes from everywhere.
When Rush does the I can reveal where Rush does the show, right?
That's not a secret.
We know that Rush does the show from Florida primarily.
It's not a I'm not Julian Assange here on WikiLeaks, I don't think.
When Rush does the show, he's usually in Florida.
When we guest hosts do the program, we're everywhere.
Some guest hosts do the show from where they are.
Other guest hosts come into command central here in New York, and I'm in New York.
I've been to New York many times, and it's where I always come when I do Russia's program.
It is just weird here right now.
This snowstorm, they they really haven't cleaned much of anything up yet.
For those of you watching the cable channels, yeah, they've opened the airports and all of that.
As a guy who's from the Midwest and used to seeing a lot of snow.
This is this is really a mess, and everybody here is complaining.
The people are ballistic.
Most of the people in the big office buildings in Manhattan, they're not back to work today.
When I was walking into the studio, the streets were not deserted, but nowhere near the kind of foot traffic that you see in the morning.
The roads, the the main arterials in Manhattan, there's cars on them, and they're clogged up, but mostly because everybody's going so slowly, because the roads are still a mess.
You go on the sidewalks.
If the business didn't shovel out their sidewalks, all this ice out in the neighborhoods that turned on the television last night.
Everybody's complaining, my street isn't plowed, my street isn't plowed, and then they go to Bloomberg, the mayor here.
The guy who wants to be president, the guy who's a you know the the intellectual billionaire, and he's looking at the camera, what's the problem?
Everything's working out just fine.
Everything's fine, all is well, oblivious to the whole thing.
It's fascinating stuff.
It just proves again.
The people who think they're really, really smart, aren't can't run anything?
It's the people that are smart, but also know their limitations a little bit.
They're the hard workers, they're the ones that roll up their sleeves and manage stuff.
I do not consider myself an intellectual.
I don't consider myself an egg an egghead.
I'm a Schmo from Milwaukee.
But I kind of understand that when you've got a blizzard, the first thing you've got to do is go out and clean the streets, and you've got to shovel the sidewalks, or you're gonna have chaos.
And this guy Bloomberg, well, we're gonna try to get the buses running by a Wednesday, and we should have all of the cabs out on the road.
In the meantime, here's what I've seen.
This is just bizarre because you're used to Manhattan being the city that's alive 24-7.
On 7th Avenue.
That's the street that runs right by Broadway, 7th Avenue.
Last night, 7 p.m., this is like twelve hours after the snow stopped.
There was a hot dog cart in the middle of the street.
I'm not Seventh Avenue, there was a hut.
It was just sitting there.
The guy the owner of the hot dog cart apparently abandoned.
There's cabs that are stuck everywhere.
You see limos stuck everywhere.
In front of the hotel that I'm staying in.
I mentioned on yesterday's show, there's this bread truck that's been stuck in the snow right on 56th Street, just stuck.
It was stuck all day yesterday.
I leave the hotel this morning.
The bread truck is still there.
It's like the whole city is on kilt.
And this is what happens when you get eggheads that, you know, the Ivy League elite, the people that have studied at the Kennedy School for Government, they know so well.
They're smarter than the rest of us.
It's just like Obama.
You know, he realizes he knows what we need to do because he studied these things.
He's in charge.
Why, America is in good hands if you only sit back and allow me to put in place my theories.
Which brings me to the topic I want to lead the program with, and that is the economy.
It is very, very mixed up right now.
The news peg of the day is, and all the cable channels are on this today, the president is looking for a new chief economic advisor.
Who will he choose?
And you should see the names on the list.
In fact, I've got this one From the associated press.
Will he tap the business world with a figure such as Roger Altman, an investment banker and Clinton administration alumnus who might carry too much baggage from his association with Wall Street?
Or will he turn to academia instead?
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Or will he turn to academia instead, calling on a scholar such as Yale President Richard Levin?
Or will he go with deeply experienced insiders such as deficit hawk Gene Sperling at the Treasury Department or Jason Furman, the council's deputy director?
We can go through the laundry list of democratic economic minds, and he can spin the wheel and choose whomever he wants.
It all misses the point.
The problem with the American economy right now is him.
He's the problem.
Businesses do not trust him.
The biggest single problem in the American economy is that while a lot of the a lot of the numbers have gone up, the stock market's up, retail sales are up, manufacturing output is up, unemployment has not moved in a year.
And when it has moved, it's gotten worse.
The only positive move in unemployment came when we had the census going on and government was doing hiring.
We also had some government hiring from his stimulus, but that of course doesn't help create any economic growth.
That's merely more jobs that have to be carried by taxpayers.
That unemployment rate has been sitting there around 9 to 10% for a year now, and it isn't budging.
The only thing that changes unemployment is businesses hiring people.
And businesses in America are on a hiring strike.
They're not doing it.
And you can take a look at all these other economic numbers as long as you want.
And you can have the president talk about how we're turning the corner on this terrible, terrible recession that he's blaming Bush for.
But you can't have a full economic recovery when one in ten people who want a job is out of work.
And remember, those unemployment numbers are misleading.
The people who've given up and the people who don't want jobs, add them in there, and you're talking about a real jobless rate around nearly 20%.
And it is not moving.
Now I'm looking at the economic reports that are out today, and they are completely mixed.
Retail sales were way up for the Christmas season.
They're talking about as much as a 6% increase in retail sales over last year.
All of the major retailers say they're very happy with what went on.
There was good volume in the stores.
While they did discounting, they didn't have to do as much as they feared that they would have to do in order to get products moving.
Part of that obviously is because you're comparing 2010 to 2009, which was not a good year.
Nonetheless, retail sales were up.
So there, you take some you take from that that the American consumer is feeling good again.
He and she are going out and spending money.
They're pulling out the credit card, they have confidence that things have turned around.
Why else could retail sales be up?
But same day, Reuters, today, consumer confidence in the United States unexpectedly deteriorated in December.
Hurt by increasing worries about the job market.
According to a private report released Tuesday, the conference board and industry group said its index of consumer attitude slipped to 52.5 in December from an upwardly revised 54.3 in November.
The meeting of forecasts and analysis polls by writers was a reading of 56.
So consumer confidence went down the very same month that retail sales went up.
That almost never happens.
Consumers spend more money when they're confident about the future.
That's not rocket science, it's simple common sense, and the numbers usually go hand in hand.
But in December, which is a key month because it's the month the consumers spend because of the Christmas season, you've got this divergence where consumer confidence is Down, and retail sales are up.
My explanation, consumer confidence is down because people are very fearful of what's going on with unemployment.
As for retail sales, what I think you're seeing here is a lot of spending by the people who think that their jobs are safe.
Obama and the liberals like to talk a lot about how Republicans have us in a society of haves and have nots.
John Edwards talked about that all the time.
But it's Obama that's giving us that.
You've got those people that are entrenched in government jobs, and others in areas of the economy where they feel fairly secure about their futures, they're going out and spending money.
But the overall general American public is still very, very worried because they don't see any movement all in unemployment.
Why do I bring that back to Obama?
Jobs can't be created by the Federal Reserve.
You can do all the quantitative easing you want.
Jobs can't be created by the president, and jobs can't be created by stimulus.
Jobs are created when private businesses say, I want to take on five or ten new people.
Jobs are created when somebody who owns a business or the manager of a business decides that they need to have more workers.
When you have a president of the United States constantly ragging on business, constantly looking for the next business to beat up on.
It's not a strong vote of confidence.
These employers look at a president and they see him as hostile to them.
To not put this on, the president misses the point.
He can name whatever egghead he wants.
He can find another tax cheat like Geithner to work in his to work on economic issues.
It doesn't change the fact that American businesses don't trust the president to support what's going on in the private sector.
The other problem, housing remains miserable.
The story from the Associated Press today.
Home prices are dropping in the nation's largest cities and are expected to fall through next year with the worst declines coming in areas with high numbers of foreclosures.
You cannot have a fully recovering economy when housing stinks and when unemployment is high.
And all the president has done in the past two years is throw money at things that have nothing to do with those issues.
The first stimulus did nothing to deal with unemployment, and it did nothing to create people wanting to go into the housing market.
The tax extension is preventing a disaster from occurring.
The president was saved by the Republicans who demanded that we extend all of the current tax rates.
But that merely makes sure that things don't get any worse than they are right now.
What's the president's plan to get private sector employers to hire more workers?
He doesn't even have one.
There isn't a isn't an Obama supporter out there who could even tell me what it is.
What is the president doing right now to encourage American businesses to hire workers?
Well, he's telling them if they do hire a worker, they're going to have considerable extra costs with regard to health care.
He hasn't given them a single reason to create a job.
And until we make our economic focus, one that is friendlier to the private sector, reaching his hand out toward American businesses and saying, we want you to hire because we're in it with you.
We're going nowhere.
You instead have a guy who's hostile to business, who simply thinks that if he does a little bit of this and a little bit of that, automatically magically things will get better.
Well, they aren't getting any better in Obamaville.
Unemployment's still at 10%, and consumers are more depressed than ever.
I'm Mark Belling, sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling, sitting in for Rush.
1-800-282-2882 is the phone.
I never say the phone number enough, do I?
No, I don't.
1800, two, I'll say it five.
1800 282882.
The staff's always reminding me to mention the phone number.
I know the phone number myself, I guess that's why I don't mention it on the air.
You know what the problem is with President Obama in business?
He doesn't like business.
He doesn't like the people who are in business.
And they know it, which is why they don't trust him.
Does he even know anybody who owns a business?
I don't mean one of these stupid consulting firms in DC.
Does he know anybody that owns a machine shop?
Does he know anybody that owns a bar?
Does he know anybody who owns a print shop?
Does he know any of those people?
Can he relate to them at all?
He's so above the fray, he can't relate to any of this.
We're discussing right now the economy.
Let's go first to Portland, Oregon, and Donna.
Donna, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Mark?
Hi, Donna.
Oh, yeah.
I'm so glad I got to talk to you.
And I've been screaming at the TV because they're all talking about the uh I better take you off speaker.
On the television, they're talking about how the economy's coming up, everybody's spending.
I personally, this Christmas, I realize next Christmas, the dollar is going to be weaker.
Prices are going to be higher.
Everything in any store, grocery store gas, has to be trucked in.
Close, whatever it is.
Trucks, go on diesel and gas.
So your belief is is that people are pushing their Christmas spend their their spending up this year because they see inflation coming.
Next year I won't be able to afford it.
Um possibly.
It's like right after Obama was elected, gun sales went up because all the gun owners were afraid he was going to start banning guns.
I think there's something to that.
I mean, I talked on the program yesterday that we have real inflation going on in our economy, but nobody wants to admit it because the core rate of inflation that they look at doesn't include food and energy, and food and energy are going up all over the place.
The trashing of the dollar, and that's what our policy is.
Not weakening the dollar.
The dollar's been weak for three years.
The trashing of the dollar drives up the cost of absolutely everything.
And this is another thing that has that's creating this reluctance on the part of employers to go out and create new jobs.
While the president and his economic people are saying, well, at least inflation isn't a problem.
These businesses are seeing their costs for their goods and services, the things that they have to buy, going up.
Almost every business has significant energy costs.
Every form of energy is way up.
Oil is now over $90 a barrel again, maybe headed for a hundred or a hundred and ten dollars.
All of the metals are up, silver is up, copper is up, aluminum is up, zinc is up, and every food product that you can think of is up.
Corn prices are well over six dollars a bushel, soybeans are over thirteen dollars.
All these businesses are seeing this, and it's making them very, very wary about taking on additional expenses in hiring new workers.
In the meantime, we've got this policy of trashing the dollar, which is only going to make cause more inflation, make all of those prices go even higher.
Now, if Donna's figured that out in Portland, don't tell me that employers aren't figuring it out.
So your belief is that a lot of people pushed their spending up now when the dollar still has value because they think it's going to be worth less money next year.
Exactly.
Thanks for the call.
That's very interesting.
It would certainly explain why we're coming out of a month in which consumer spending, retail spending was up, but consumer confidence is down.
Windward, Michigan, and Dave.
Dave, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hey, Mark, I got another tale from the trenches here on what's going on with the economy.
Uh my wife and I are in the process of of trying to buy a home.
And there are a lot of people out here that want to buy homes, especially at the bargain prices that that real estate is at around here.
We're we're trying to buy a home that three years ago sold for 330,000.
Trying to pick it up for one eighty-five.
But the new financial rules authored by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank make it so that it is nearly impossible to get an appraisal that a lending institution can use.
That point that you make is powerful.
What we have done with the financial reforms as we try to slap banks down to do so-called more responsible lending is making it very hard for people to access the very credit that they need to go out and aid the real estate market by buying houses.
We went from a period in which Chris Dodd and Barney Frank told Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to underwrite every subprime loan that they could find because we wanted everybody to be able to access the housing market, and now we've created financial reforms that are telling banks not to take any risks at all, and you end up with very few mortgages being issued even when there are willing home buyers.
Again, this is what happens when you have eggheads running things rather than people who can relate to those in the trenches.
Those are two great callers that we had.
Both tails from the trenches.
I think that's what the uh last caller called story from the trenches.
You talk to people, and by the way, I'm from Milwaukee.
There is no place that's more the trenches than Milwaukee.
You talk to people, you talk to people who are in business, and it's very, very easy to figure out what's happening with our economy.
And it is this mixed picture.
There's a person, the last caller, they want to buy a I mean, I talk on my show in Milwaukee all the time to people that are younger who are renting.
What's the matter with you?
Don't you understand?
People like me who bought in the real estate market when it was a lot higher, we would dream to be in your situation right now.
Housing prices have crashed, mortgage rates are down around five percent.
Even if things get a little bit worse, you're still way better off than if you rent.
Will you go out and buy a house?
Are you nuts?
You can get something for half price.
And then you'll hear these messages.
Mark, you're right.
But you know, it's not as easy as you think.
The banks are making it really hard.
The lending restrictions are tougher.
It's not like it was five years ago, where if you breathe, you could get a mortgage.
Now it's just the opposite.
What's going on with the president is we are so overreacting to the problems that occurred in the mortgage market that we're making it very difficult right now for anybody to go out and get a loan unless you or buy a home unless they're coming up with 100% cash as opposed to a more you look at these banks that are out there.
They've got the FDIC lending, you've got to clean up your portfolios.
You still have too many bad loans on the books.
Because they have these bad loans and bad loans are defined as ones in which the individual owes more than the house is worth, and therefore they're at risk of default and may have to be foreclosed upon, because they've got all those bad loans on the books, they're not in a position to be able to make new loans, which would be good loans.
We haven't done anything to address that.
Because, as I said, I think you've got an administration that doesn't even understand that that's the problem.
They think, and Bernanke thinks, well, we'll just ease, we'll print more money, and therefore the banks will have to loan it.
You can print all the money you want, and you can give it to the banks at zero percent interest.
If the banks are under pressure not to make those kinds of loans, they're not going to do it.
And you can only get a feel for stuff like that when you listen to people and their stories.
Let's go to Cincinnati and Bo, it's your turn on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hi, Mark.
I wanted to expand a little bit on the last two callers.
I actually called before they went on the air.
Um almost exactly what they said, but I I have another take on it.
I also believe that the logical people uh are thinking like the last two callers, and they're just doing the math.
Conservatives, people that have sound line.
One other aspect of it I think that's out there that I've actually witnessed and I I heard firsthand over the holidays were that there were some people that are less logical, more reactive, and almost a whole segment of the population that's just given up.
And they just basically have thrown in the town, they figured, which is probably more dangerous because this same people are basically saying, you know, it's going to hell on a handbag, so be it.
I'm this this is my last gasp.
If I lose my job, I'm gonna go ahead and spend.
I heard people saying they were tired of holding back.
I don't care if I put it on credit.
One of those thought processes that there's so many people that have overspent that have been bailed out that they're just chiming in now thinking, you know, hey, other people have done it.
Um I'm not gonna hold back.
Yeah, why not why not go for it?
And I I think that there's probably something to that.
I mean, when you look at the economic figures and all these numbers that are out, as I said, there's just a real divergence.
You see consumer confidence down, but the stock market has been up for a year.
That rarely happens.
You see retail sales up, but consumer confidence remaining down, and there hasn't been a move in unemployment.
Now I do understand the last thing to improve when an economy recovers is the unemployment rate, just as unemployment is usually the last thing to go south when an economy goes in the tank.
But we haven't seen the needle move on this at all.
We can hope that the extension of the tax rates, we can hope that that's going to result in some improvement in unemployment in the first quarter of next year.
Obama was saved by the Republicans.
They're forcing him to continue the current rates, including the capital gains and dividend rates and the income rates on higher income.
They're forcing him to do that is going to aid the economy.
There are a lot of people who are in that category that Obama considers rich, but that the people who are in it don't think they're rich.
The people that are making 200, 250,000 a year and have a couple of kids, the ones that Obama thinks are fat cats, the ones he calls millionaires, they were terrified of what was going to happen with regard to these tax rates.
They own a few stocks so that we're going to be hit by the capital gains and dividend tax increases, and they were going to be hammered by the higher income tax rates.
They now have some breathing room, given the fact that they know the taxes aren't going up in the next year.
So maybe we get some improvement there, but that only occurred because he was forced to do it.
He would have killed this economy had we seen even some of those tax rates go up.
As for the unemployment picture, you've got people out there that have been unemployed for months.
We all know there are a lot of people who would just breath just as soon take the unemployment benefits that we keep extending and pocket them and not try to work.
But there are a lot of others who simply can't find job offers.
Every time you see one of these stories about a company having a job fare or somebody is expanding and they're looking for fifty or sixty people, there's nine thousand people lined up waiting for those jobs.
When you've got that kind of stubborn unemployment rate, it means the economy is not fully recovering and is still very fragile.
And as I said, there isn't one part of Obama's economic plan right now that is geared toward convincing employers to take on the risk of hiring new workers.
You only hire and you know, the president was pounding the table a couple of weeks ago.
He called in some of the CEOs that you've got to start hiring.
They're not gonna hire because he's guilting them into it.
You hire a worker when you think your company will make more money than that worker's salary and benefits combined if you hire that worker.
That's the only reason you do it.
As bloodthirsty as that equation sounds, it's what employers do.
They decide, will I save more money by hiring that person?
Will I make more money by hiring that person than not?
And one of the reasons why the stock market is up and corporate profits have been up, is we've gone through two vicious years of companies slicing right and left.
They've been cutting employees in order to cut expenses so that their revenues reflect are higher than than than the amount of money that they're spending.
That's what's been going on, and those employers are very reluctant after doing all of this trimming to turn around and start fattening up again.
And we haven't done anything with our economic policy to get them to change their way of thinking.
Let's go to uh Plainview Long Island and Frank.
Frank, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
I am on You probably got a lot of snow on Long Island.
Oh, uh eighteen to twenty-two inches, depending on where you are out.
Yeah, I I'm staying in Manhattan and they said twenty inches in Central Park.
It's just it's just an extraordinary thing.
You know, yeah.
Global warming, by the way, there are stories are they're blaming this on global war.
It does not matter what weather we have, they will attribute it to global warming.
What's on your mind, Frank?
Absolutely Absolutely, and uh I'll blame it all on Obama anyway.
Yeah, why not?
If they're gonna blame global warming and they blame Bush for everything, let's just blame Obama for everything.
Why not?
Listen, uh we should be after the Republicans and the Tea Party politicians to go after him.
He supports the unemployment rate.
Prime example.
Over forty thousand workers in the Gulf on the oil rigs out of work because it is baloney ban he has.
Not only that, what about all the support services?
Where they buy their supplies, where they get their food, all the other businesses that have cut back.
So he likes these people out of work.
He can put them back to work, and we're paying at the gas pump because of what he's doing to those workers in the Gulf.
We should be hopping on that.
Those people should be back to work.
We could bring some of these inflated oil and gas.
Well, they're not back to work because he doesn't like the oil drilling industry, because he doesn't like any industry.
What industry does Barack Obama like?
Look at all of the ones that he's been pounding on.
He's pounded on the insurance industry, he's pounded on the health industry, he's pounded on the pharmaceutical industry, he's pounded on the oil companies, he pounds on all of them.
He doesn't like any of them.
Well, who does he think is going to create all of these jobs?
You can't have one hundred percent government employment.
The whole stimulus program that he had was merely aimed at getting more government jobs out there.
He doesn't like the private sector, so therefore the private sector is responding by not going out and hiring it.
In the case that you cite, yeah, we don't have any jobs going on in the drilling industry because of this moratorium that he's put in place.
You could immediately, particularly with oil prices this high, you could immediately make at least some dent in unemployment by going full scale and allowing the same amount of drilling that was going on before all of these moratoriums and blockages were put were put in place.
The higher oil prices are, the greater incentive there is for drilling jobs.
He could do that instantly if he wanted to create those jobs, but he doesn't.
And you're right, there hasn't been a lot of criticism of it.
And there should be.
I hope there is.
Thank you for the call.
Well, you started it.
Another very good point.
He's right about that.
If we want to create jobs, why are we shutting industries down?
The point that he makes with regard to the support industries is very important also.
Every company that expands operations needs more product and needs more supplies.
Almost nobody makes everything from scratch.
When a company expands, when a company decides to go for it, when a company builds, they end up supporting all sorts of other businesses, and that's when you get a fluid economy that grows.
But right now our economy isn't showing that kind of growth because the private sector doesn't like and doesn't trust this president because they know he doesn't like them.
So you can do all the searching you want for a chief economic advisor.
The problem is the guy at the top.
You don't get any sense at all that he's looking at American business and saying, We're in it together.
What can we do to help you?
Instead, you get this look of hostility and condescension when he calls businesses in when he summons them and oh no, more hiring.
They're not gonna hire because he tells them to do it.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush 1 800-28282 is the phone number.
We have another Mark, another one of the guest hosting Marks that Rush uses in tomorrow, Mark Stein is going to be here.
Is he going to be here in New York, sitting in this very studio?
He's going to be elsewhere.
Like I said, the rush the the rush the rush program comes from absolutely everywhere.
And I happen to be doing it from the place that nobody else has been working for the last two days, New York City.
I've been on this theme, the President Obama doesn't have any idea how to deal with unemployment because all he's ever done is study it.
Study the Keynesian approach toward creating jobs, and that's what this is all meant.
Well, we'll create some stimulus and that will result in hiring.
And Bernanke, his evil twin.
Well, what we need to do is flood the market with money.
We need to trash the dollar, we need to set an inflation target.
These are all theories.
They don't know anybody in business.
I'm sincere about this.
Instead of calling in CEOs to lecture them, why not Call in a few and listen to them.
I'm from Wisconsin.
I can think of a couple of people off the top of my head.
Some of you may have heard of a company called Menards.
They're a home supp home improvement chain, kind of a competitor to Lowe's and Home Depot.
Mostly in the Midwest, they're expanding.
The guy who runs it and owns it and started his name John Menard.
Strong willed guy.
Ask him, John, what do you need to do in order to expand and open some more stores and hire more people?
Why aren't you doing it?
What would you like us to do to create a better environment for you to expand?
It's a company in Wisconsin called ABC Building Supply.
They're huge, huge, worth billions.
They sell wholesale, they sell supplies to builders and construction companies.
The woman that runs it and owns it is named Diane Hendricks.
Call her in and say Diane, you're right there in the middle of the construction industry.
Your business is based on construction.
We all know there isn't much construction going on in the private sector right now.
What should I do?
He never do that.
He looks down on those people.
And he doesn't relate to them because he doesn't know anybody like them.
Nor does anybody in this cabal.
Even on this list of people that are out there as finalists for economic the private sector guy they're considering, Roger Altman, investment banker.
Great.
That's their idea of the American private sector.
One more Wall Street guy.
How about somebody who runs something that makes something or sells something?
Somebody that's out there actually in the real world.
Or as the earlier caller so brilliantly put it, somebody who is out there in the trenches.
Because I'm telling you, these people are not.
They are a bunch of intellectuals who are following what their textbook says they should do.
And it's not working.
There is a business cycle in this country, and that's why we're seeing some recovery.
When things go down, they naturally do start to rebound.
But this rebound isn't a strong one.
It's improved in some areas.
Consumer spending is good.
Corporate profits are up largely because of cost cutting.
International business is up.
But the housing market's terrible.
Unemployment isn't moving at all.
And consumer confidence is still down.
And unless we address those things, the economy is going to double dip into a second recession.
And you don't get any impression at all that this president has any idea of what to do about it anymore.
Let's go to Port Huron, Michigan, also in the trenches.
Kevin, it's your turn on Russia's program.
Thank you, Mr. Billing.
Thank you.
My thoughts are that it's not as deep as the lady in Oregon said.
I can't think about next Christmas any more than I can think about next month.
To me, it's a day-to-day thing.
I think that's pretty much most retailers are thinking the same way.
That's why you didn't see the deep discounts this Christmas that normally would be there.
Um I think that it was a surge in December because most people waited to the last minute to go buying gifts, thinking there would be big discounts.
You know, Christmas isn't something you can avoid and just say, well, it'll be better next year.
So I think you saw a lot of people wait to the last minute.
The retail sales were short and slow before December.
And I think you're gonna I hate to be pessimistic, but I think you're gonna see January, February.
Well, that would explain it.
If the January, February, and March retail sales are in the dumper, it will be that people had this spurt and they did buy then, and I don't think anybody really knows the answer right now.
That's very very interesting point that he makes.
When you have these two numbers going in opposite directions, consumer confidence down, and the conference board which comes up with they've been doing that number forever.
They're the expert on it.
When you see consumer confidence down and retail sales up, when you get missed mixed messages like that, it is hard to figure it out.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
When you do any walking in New York City, and it's been hard to do any walking in New York City the last two days because none of the streets have been shoveled.
But when you do it, one of the things that strikes you, if you're a guy from the Midwest like me, boy, there really is a Starbucks on every block.
I walk around the block.
If I go on 56th Street, there's a Starbucks.
If I go to 57th Street, there's a Starbucks.
In between on Sixth Avenue, there's a Starbucks, and there's one on Seventh Avenue.
Not making that up.
I could walk around a block and come across four Starbucks.
I'm gonna make a serious point here.
If Barack Obama wasn't the president and he hadn't been elected to the Senate from Illinois, and he was job hunting in the economy because community organizing didn't work out, and he got a job managing one of those four Starbucks.
Which one do you think would be the most screwed up and would have the lowest sales?
I'm dead serious about that.
You know he wouldn't even be able to run a Starbucks well because he has no hands-on experience selling anything, dealing with employees, dealing with business, making a budget, doing the buying, doing the ordering.
He can't relate to any of it.
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