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tv   The Kudlow Report  CNBC  October 22, 2013 7:00pm-8:01pm EDT

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panera, as predicted, not that strong. they will get a reset, we can go back to panera. carl icahn sells a big stake in netflix. there's always a bull market somewhere and i try to find it right here you on "mad money." i'm jim cramer and i will see you tomorrow! disastrous obama care web site and call center. tech experts from company like verizon are joining the effort and former omb director is now in charge of the big fix. the focus on the technical problem misses the big picture. obama is a wealth redistribution program and it ain't going to work. and speaking of work, today's tepid job report for september makes it plain the economy is
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slowing. economy may be even softer. and here's a new irs scandal. turns out the government paid out at least $110 billion in bogus tax credits over the past decade. a major culprit, the earned income packocome tax credit. all those reports and more coming up in "kudlow report" right now. good evening, everyone. i'm larry kudlow. this is the "kudlow report." weep are live at 7:00 p.m. eastern and 4:00 p.m. pacific. we want to give you the latest with the problems with the obama care web site. as part of this so-called tech surge, the government is calling on private companies like
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verizon to help fix the mess. it won't be fast, it won't be cheap. the government has already spent $394 some-odd million in the federal exchange and data hub. experts say the clocks is ticking at the whole fix. if the site is not functioning by full strength at thanksgiving, many people won't able to get coverage that will start january 1st. all right, please, for a moment forget about the technical glitches and the enrollment problems just for a moment. i want to make a comment. even if there were no computer glitches, obama care is a massive central planning project that would control nearly 20% of the economy. for that reason it is doomed to fail. as we learned in the soviet union and elsewhere, government control of price, product, profits and distribution can never succeed. only free market competition and true consumer patient choice can work in health care. government planners, the best and the prettiest, frederick
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hyatt calls that the fatal con see the. we can achieve widespread health insurance through tax cuts for consumers and family, an end to frivolous lawsuits, in ordether words, more freedom for the health care history which used to be a job creating power house creating scientific advances beyond our imagination to solve disease. now unfortunately baobama is a step toward complete single payer health care and is the opposite of free capitalism. and now let's go to my guests. >> we have matt welch, editor in chief and peter pitts.
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thank you, gentlemen. may i go to mr. gruber, please. welcome to the program. you heard my little intro. with all due modesty, those are my intro. what say you? >> you're repeating the same uninformed right-wing talking point people say all the time about this law. you're not understanding the law. this law is a private based expanse of health insurance based on ideas developed bit heritage foundation in the early 1990s. >> with all due respect, the heritage foundation never had these elaborate controls and planning and you may have label me a right-winger, i understand, all is fair in love and war, you look where the insurance plans are one size fits all, no distinction between them, i don't see how this is not government run, jonathan. that's all i'm saying. >> how can you say there's no
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difference between them? have you looked at the massachusetts plans all run by private health insurance plans. you really aren't giving a fact based perspective on the law. that's the problem. people need to know the facts of what this law does. >> matt welch, want to hear from you on this. >> i think the main problem here is that obama care tried to do so many different things at once. it attempted to tackle the very real problem of a lot of americans who wanted to have health insurance, particularly catastrophic health insurance and were unable to get it. you try to fix that problem and unfortunately in the process they created a system to where insurance companies are mandated to what kind of care they can give under what kind of condition. when you restrict the market and tell these private companies what they can and can't do in so many details, it going to con strict the market, constrict individual voice, constrict
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price signal, telling people how much things cost and it going to turn out much worse than the president and jonathan gruber and anyone predicted. >> when i talk about controlling prices and production, that's precisely what i mean, peter pitts. again, with all due respect to mr. gruber, and i appreciate we have a disagreement here, i think the reality is gold, silver, bronze plans, the on difference is the fansiinancing. the mandates are feamostly identical and much more expensive. >> you mentioned thanksgiving. the web sites might not be ready for thanksgiving but the law is already a huge turkey in is about a system that is almost
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designed to fail. the president said failure is not an option. failure is designed in this program because what the president has said he wants is a single payor system and the soft middle and hard left wants it to fail so they can say we tried to work with the private system, it didn't work, we need more government involved, we need a single payor system. should that ever happen, investment goes down the toilet, innovation goes away. look to europe where one. single areas of largest growth is private insurance and private hospitals. if it fails, things will get worse rather than better. >> pete, with all due respect to our disagreement, i want to add another dimension, which you'll probably disagree with. i think the system is going to look like medicaid. the signups are so far in favor of companies leading to medicaid. i believe medicaid is the bridge
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to single payor. what do you think? jonathan, i'm sorry, jonathan gruber. what do you think? >> i think that you really are not at all looking at the facts of this law. and once again, this is unprecedented. we ran the experiment first in massachusetts. we did this law in massachusetts. what happened? employer-sponsored health insurance went up 10%. in the past recession where employer sponsored health insurance went down in virtually every other state, it went up in massachusetts. we have a system that works by expanding private health insurance. and you're just making up a bunch of stuff and not looking at the facts of how the law actually works. >> so matt welch is making it up, peter pitts is making it up, there's no basis in fact? you didn't buy my medicaid point, you didn't buy my mandate point. we appreciate you being on the show. i want to be as fair as i can. you have an informing problem. this is why i think the computer
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glitches have at least partly gone wrong. you have a data hub. the data hub reaches hhs, irs, all the states, all the medicaid programs, the veterans administration, the immigration service. i don't see even the best and the brightest can design consistently a data hub like that that will always work. it is so complex, it is so complex and that's why i say frederick's idea of the con see the -- fatal conceit works here. >> we didn't blow up the previous systems. why are our employers attached to our health care? i would sure get a better deal if i could shop the thing around and a better market that i could
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shop from. we tried to preserve that system with obama care instead of blowing it up and replaces it with a what we need. >> peter pitts, i fear, i fear -- and i may be wrong according to mr. gruber, but i tear that the real option for obama care is going to morph into medicaid and that's the path to lead to government dominated single payor. but you tell me. >> i have to agree with you and with all respect to peter gruber, the story that's being missed is people who are calling the obama care hotline or people who have gotten a letter or phone call from their current insurance companies who are saying i'm sorry, your policy is being cancelled. this is your insurance is going away or it's going to be more expensive. >> just in the "wall street journal" editorial, kaiser health, florida blue terminated 300,000 policies, 80% of its
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individual policies, kaiser permanente sent notices to 16 >> this is not about increasing employer-based insurance. that's a fantasy. >> jonathan gruber, in the spirit of fairness and respect, i'll give you the last word to what peter pitts just said. >> i think that basically what you have to recognize is we've got a broken system today. and it sounds like the other commentators agree that the system's broken. the question is how are you going to fix it? you can't fix it by blowing it up. you have to preserve what people like. people like employer insurance. this law preserves it. but you have to recognize what
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the other commentators don't recognize that if you don't have employer insurance in america, you are screwed today. you can't get insurance on the individual market if you're sick. my wife is a breast cancer survivors. she'd be uninsurable in most states. >> i agree. i say federal and private risk pools, we didn't have to create this massive obama care with all the bells and whistles to deal with it. i agree it a problem but i think there are lots of other ways to solve the problem without taking over the whole system by the government. >> if you create a risk pool, that would be an option. do you realize it would be more expensive -- >> that's not true. >> it's absolutely true. >> a lot of states in indiana
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have been extremely effective in covering high-risk folks. >> in indiana like all the state high risk pools, there are only a certain number of people who can get in there who can afford it. >> i have to disagree. it the opposite. >> i think healthy young people are not going to sign up to for this and what's going to be left is people with prior illnesses and it going to be extremely unbalanced. but we will see. i appreciate the debate. great to see you. folks, it was a big day for stocks, the s&p closed at yet another high. and we have breaking news from carl icahn about netflix. and apple, the company rolled out a bunch of new products. we have another live report on that, too. don't forget, free market
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capitalism is the best way to prosperity. i believe there's much better free market ways to reform our nation's health system. i'm larry kudlow. i'll be right back.
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welcome back to the "kudlow
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report." a bombshell from carl icahn revealing today he sold about half his netflix shares, thanking reed hastings and kevin spacey in a tweet. in a regulatory filing he said he cut his funds stakes to 4.5% from 9.5%, even though his fund managers argue the stock has more up side and is undervalued. he said after a 457% return in 14 months for shares he bought for about $58 a share, he sold them for $350 a share. the pay day, $820 million and still has about $860 million left. he thinks netflix is undervalued but sometimes you have to take a little off the table. >> let move on to apple.
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josh joins us live from san francisco. good evening, josh. >> reporter: here in s.f. at the apple event this morning where they did unveil the new ipad, we're waiting for information about the features and price points. the new ipad is called the ipad air, it's thinner and lighter, it running a chip that can handle more data quickly, ten hours of battery life, start at 499 and launching november 1st. the ipad mini got an upgrade today, upgraded with a high point retina display, meaning the screen is sharper. there were also reports about software today, and free was a word you heard a lot today. maverick free for users and apple really trying to build and
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strengthen that ecosystem. larry? >> did they succeed? a lot of expectations on this. >> reporter: absolutely. i think for apple investors they're going to see the apple has defended its hardware margins. on the software side, the idea being if they can bring in those users and engage those users in their ecosystems, on monday we get apple's earnings and results and you're going to look for what's the supply on the 5s and demand for the 5c. >> the stock market is up to another all-time record high. gold gained $24, the greenback fell. let break down today's market action.
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welcome. ron, you're worried. tell me why. >> i think 2014 you have markets that earnings are at an all-time high compared to gdp. analysts think earnings are going to be up 14% and gdp will be up 2%. i don't think that bodes well for the market, which has been really driven by multiple expansion, not necessarily earnings. >> and what do you do about it? it may be driven for a long time because of easy money and zero interest rates by the fed. that possibility exists. >> it does. what we have to do, larry, this is the first time i've seen fiscal policy undermining both confidence and fiscal policy is driving monetary policy. so, you know, i actually am going to point the finger and say we have to get our act together in washington, tax reform, immigration reform and certainly long-term entitlement reform. >> i like the sound of that.
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i'm going to ask you to react to what ron is saying. are you as worried as he is in. >> no, i'm not. i like to see stocks go up as much as you do. we had softer data on the job front. that's not what i want to see. i want to see better growth move the stock market higher. i think it where the next leg up comes from but i think it's coming. i'm seeing the ism index, a great indicator of forward profits, by the way, which i think will be rebounding in 2014 and other signs of better forward growth. remember, don't count out the consumer here. a lot of ability to borrow and confidence is likely to be bouncing back after the shutdown debt ceiling really hit them over the course of the last few weeks. >> what role is the federal reserve going to play in your strategy, okay? i guess i'm in the school that says for whatever reasons right or wrong, the fed is not going
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to slow down their bond buying, aw, heck, until january or february or march of 2014, we're in the end of october, you got a bunch of months left here. i don't know, a lot can happen. easy money has been a big theme. >> look, larry -- i'm sorry. easy money to the extent that that's all that's driving the market higher is what's got me worried. >> but profits have not collapsed. that's an important point. tell me about profits and easy money. profits and share of gdp, all-time record high. seems like it's staying up there. profits are growing, albeit slowly, but as ron said, you're searing slow growth everywhere. profits grow at, i don't know, 3%, 4%, 5%, in this environment, can stocks continue to rally? >> i think so. stocks are now expensive, though
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they're at all-time highs. earnings are at an all-time high. er that fairly valued. the fed takes some of the risk out of the equation. some of the extraneous risks are put aside and that means pes can lift a little bit. i can name you where gdp was 2% or less and we saw 20% returns on the stock market. it's a misconception gdp has to be 4, 5, 6% -- >> i'd say the opposite. if you had 4, 5, 66% gdp, i thik would you see the opposite. >> you're not going to get 20% returns in the market with gdp at 2% and corporate profits at
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all-all time high. this market is up 21%, two-thirds of it, 70% of its multiple expansion. it's not earnings growth. in 2014, we need -- analysts thinks earnings are going up 14%. that's a big number. >> ron, favorite investment or noninvestment, you want to get out of the market? >> i love financials, i'm cautious on financials, i like tech. >> jeff, favorite investment right now? >> we like the consumer. look for a better than expected back to school season. gasoline prices down quite a bit. >> and we have a segment on that later in the program. you're right, gasoline prices may be very helpful. thanks, gentlemen. much obliged. now let's dig deeper into this whole jobs report, which may be signaling economic slowdown. economic chief adviser will join
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oh dear, i got a flat tire. hmmm. uh... yeah, can you find a take where it's a bit more dramatic on that last line, yeah? yeah i got it right here. someone help me!!! i have a flat tire!!! well it's good... good for me. what do you think? geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. very soft jobs rating today. non-farm payroll up only 148,000, private pay roll up 126,000. does the weakening econonumberl us the numbers are actually stalling? ed lazear, thank you, as always.
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on a three-month moving average basis, which is how many people in the fed look at the world and many economists, jobs are slowing substantially from about 250,000 earlier in the winter to about 150,000 right now. there it is. it's up on the full screen. i want to ask you if jobs are slowing by 100,000 by this measure, does this mean the entire economy is slowing? are we moving now closer to stall speed? >> well, the economy hasn't been particularly strong for the past two quarters anyway, actually three quarters, and the job market is reflecting that. to be honest, i wouldn't want to have my old job right now. this is not a pretty picture and it's not easy to spin. if you look at the numbers today, larry, we're basically seeing the kind of jobs report we've had for three, four years now.
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it's true we had 250,000 jobs for a short period of time, but the reality is that we've been between 150,000, 200,000 jobs and that's not enough to get us back to recovery speed. what we are doing is essentially keeping up with population growth and not much better than that. >> barely. barely. >> and that's the reality. i mean, the number that we always look at is not the unemployment rate but rather the employment rate. we talked about this before. but that's the ratio of the people working to the working age population. and that's just stuck. >> 58%. >> it's been there forever. >> it almost suggests -- it's such a lousy number, it almost suggests we haven't had a recovery at all. i mean, that's really -- i want to ask you something. holding your job now is jason fuhrman, the cea chief under obama. by the way, a guy that i know and respect quite a bit. he is saying, i want to get your take on this. jason fuhrman sends out a little note to all of us.
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he says october is going to be worse than september and the reason is because of the shutdown. so inferring the republicans are causing the softer economy in october. a, do you think october will be worse than september? and, b, if you do, how much? >> i do get the same report. i looked at jason's report, the council of economic adviser's report on the effect of the shutdown and commit. i was kind of surprised because the number they came up with was my back of the envelope calculation as well, which was about a quarter of a percentage point on the growth rate for this quarter. if you annualize that, you're talking about something like 1/20th of a percentage point. it's not a whole lot. with the bounceback, it's not a big deal. you can't really blame the slowing of the economy on the shutdown. the economy has been slow. we've been growing at 2%, 2.1%
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since the turn around in june of 2009. we should be growing at 3% in normal times and in a recovery we should be growing at 4% to 5%. we're way below recovery speed. >> i don't want to sound over live pessimistic because i don't believe we're headed for a double-dip recession. wages only rising about 1.5% last three months, hours worked, which some people think are more important as an economic indicator than jobs, hours work growing at 1.6% at an annual rate. these are really close to stall speed type numbers. they're barely in a recovery zone. >> that's right. wages are not rising, hours of work are level. you know, fortunately they're level at a much higher place than they were than at the
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bottom of the recession. they're know grot grohhing, we're not seeing jobs created, we're not seeing wages grow. this looks like a labor market that is essentially muddling along. that's a word i've been using for a couple of years because i think that's the accurate description of what's happening. we're not crashing but we're not growing. we're basically in a situation where we're just keeping pace with what we have, keeping pace with population growth and not doing any better than that. and that's not where we need to be. >> all right, we'll leave it there. ed lazear, appreciate it. >> i still say the entire obama care policy is wrong. i think it's a path to economic ruin but can team obama at least fix the web site in time? we're going to look at some of the technical races against time to save the program. there is a growing movement on capitol hill to delay the personal mandate penalty. first up, check out how jon stewart of the "daily show" is
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ripping this apart. >> more of the country believes obama care has been repealed than have been able to sign up for obama care. the whole point of web sites is to design them so that it is nearly impossible to not sign up for something. every time i go on amazon, there's a 40% chance i'm mistakenly overnight myself six seasons of "night court." are you sure you want to leave this page? yes, i am. oops, turns out i ordered something.
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welcome back to the "kudlow report." tonight florida senator marco rube yio and others are pushingw legislation that will delay the health law's mandate fees back. let me get this right. rubio and all are not calling for a delay of the entire mandate, just the tax penalty? >> yes, only until the web site is operational. >> and what if that never
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happens? >> i guess the penalty would never go into effect, right? >> i guess "operational" is a scri descriptive, mysterious word. we could be talking months to months to months, which is the position many had that the whole bloody mandate should have been delayed in the first place, the whole thing. >> it's unlikely to be embraced by the democrats because, first of all, they've rejected any attempts to delay this. also, there would take away any incentive for people who are healthy and young to sign up, which would potentially put this market into the kind of death spiral they're talking about. >> but it is true, technically if i get this right, you can enroll by mid-february but you'll miss a deadline and you're going to have to pay a tax because of that enrollment. they ought to change all that. >> yeah. it doesn't make any sense to levy this fine on people when
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they try 20 times in a row to sign up and they can't do it. i think what the gop is going to want to do here is lay down the marker that obama should go through congress in order to change it. they're already hinting they're going to change it. they should put it out there that he's got to go through congress. that's how you change laws in this country. >> i'm going to make a bet, jonathan, i'm going to make a bet that he won't change anything. >> okay. >> that's my own view. he will absolutely, you know, stonewall anything that will change this thing. that's what i think he's going to do. last one real quick. liberals jumping ship on obama care, i noticed a couple people, dana millhouse, "washington post," if obama care fails, obama's entire presidency fails, are you hearing that kind of
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thing? >> it's not the hard left liberals, it's people in the mainstream, it starting to dawn on media figures in the mainstream that this could turn into a slow moving disaster that slowly drains away all the political credibility that president obama has. >> all right, many thanks, jonathan strong, "national review." >> the white house has tapped jeff zients to address the issues with the web site. even comedian jon stewart ripping into the failures again. take another listen. >> do you at least have health insurance now? >> no, i don't, jon. apparently i'm still being processed. but like the president says, the product is good, jon. it's just that there is a small risk that applicants might get
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sucked into a bureaucratic ni t nightmare with no escape. >> let me go to our new guests. thank you for coming on. what is it, in your opinion, if such a thing is possible, where is the absolute glitch pinpoint in this whole story? is there one piece that they can go after that they didn't? >> you know, i don't think anybody knows yet. this is an administration that has been very successful in delivering complex technology before on frankly controversial programs. the work they've done with the consumer financial protection bureau. i think they sort of went with business as usual, a traditional contracting process where they ended up letting out different pieces of this technology to eight different major contracting groups with the
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assumption they were going to be able to bring these all back together at the end. the problem with that old school approach to technology, it puts a tremendous amount of complexity and risk right before you launch. i think what's going on is they're trying to understand where are the choke points, how do they get this fixed quickly? >> betsy mccoy, a lot of people are fingering cgi, the u.s./canadian company -- i don't care if they're from canada, i'm a free trader. but they had screwed things up in canada, including a gun registry and health care web site and they were hide anyway. as i understand it, the bidding was so low bidding, and we're paying them $340 million. it's a gigantic number. why shouldn't they be fired? >> you can blame them but the
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buck should stop with secretary sebelius. she lied to congress saying this system would be functional by october 1st. >> let me rephrase. didn't the cgi people -- didn't they say they had to test and they were coming in september and the roll-out is october 1st and the testing started so late as to be irrelevant? isn't that part of this story? >> yes. and in fact, the testing of the federal data hub, which you rightly pointed out earlier in the program links date why from homeland security, the irs, department of health and human services and state agencies was tested the night before the, september 30th. imagine running a business like that. i believe all these technological problems should not divert our attention from the much more fundamental problem. the president said in his rose
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guard i don't know speech just yesterday "this is a good product." well, it isn't a good product. eig it's a product that denies people any choice, same size fits all -- >> i said that in the first segment and got blasted by the m.i.t. professor and he called me a right-winger. i've been called worse. >> they are all the same ef sense benefit package. the premiums are 99% higher for men, 62% higher for women. the deductibles alone give you shock, $3,000 for the silver plan, $5,000 for the bronze plan. when you're young, you never make it past the deductible and you can't even use the doctors and hospitals you currently prefer because these plans pay doctors and hospitals so little that only the dregs will accept the payment. >> i want to stay on this cgi
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story. they're not the only ones involved, just for the record. you read the newspapers and there's a maryland-based company called quality software services and booze allen, one of the trainers of the nsa leaks and whatnot. given, why don't we have new people or who are the new people? who is the new team that's going to, you know, the best and the brightest that's supposed to figure this out? >> i think they're bringing in obviously todd park, the federal cto has been more involved, is getting more involved. todd's got a very strong background in the private sector and a number of health care startups and bringing in the innovation people, where they bring in private people for six-month stints. obviously there's a lot of emphasis on the contractors and
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making sure they're bringing in the best people. >> can i ask a question? why is this so hard? tell me. i'm a novice. why is this bloody thing -- i don't like obama care for a hundred different reasons. but in terms of this darn web site, why is it so hard? >> the challenge is that -- and i think what's hard for a lot of people to get their heads around is that in the greater scheme of most federal technology projects, this is actually probably a b-plus. i believe they'll get it fixed in the next couple of weeks, it going to be painful, going to be nasty but this will be two, three months delayed until it's really fungal. that's not a big failure in terms of the i.t. project zpts bigger failure is what you're going to be able to see and be forced to buy once you get on the web site. solving the web site problem is only the beginning. >> i'm not buying it. even a couple of weeks or
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months, that's going to be seen as a victory for obama. >> a new outrage from the irs. $110 billion least in tax credits paid out to scammers or just by mistake over the decade. guess which program is the number one culprit in this mess. we have the answers from washington coming up next on kud loaf. -- kudlow. ♪
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the irs is giving out billions and billions of dollars in bogus tax credits over the last decade. eamon javers joins us with the latest. >> it inspector general of the irs said the irs is still having major problems cutting down on improper payments to individuals. tigta estimated that 20 to 25% of 2012 payments were improper and that the irs makes over $11 billion in improper payments each year. they say no significant improvement has been made in the eitc area and the irs is not in complains with high dollar eitc reporting. they said the irs will continue
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to work on the problem and try to seek improvements. larry, this particular inspector general agency is the same agency that set off a furor earlier last year about improper alleged irs political targeting of political entities and nonprofits. so this agency has a history of beefs with the irs. >> thank you, eamon. america's new energy boom has one effect we all like, lower gasoline prices. we'll show you how low they could go in the next month next on the "kudlow report" .
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at a ford dealer with a little q and a for fiona. tell me fiona, who's having a big tire event? your ford dealer. who has 11 major brands to choose from? your ford dealer. who's offering a rebate? your ford dealer. who has the low price tire guarantee, affording peace of mind to anyone who might be in the market for a new set of tires? your ford dealer. i'm beginning to sense a pattern. get up to $140 in mail-in rebates when you buy four select tires with the ford service credit card. where'd you get that sweater vest? your ford dealer.
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welcome back. now for some really good news. have you seen the prices at the pump lately? they continue to creep lower. $3.34 if i'm right, triple a nationwide. that's pretty cheap gas relative to the last couple years. >> it certainly is. there's a potential for it to go even lower. the sort of this time last year crude prices were much lower, we're getting around to $85 a barrel wti and wholesale gasoline futures trading about 18 cents below where they are now, which puts them looking at the board here at about 2.46. we've got the potential for
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maybe another 5% to 10% down. >> i was going to ask you a couple things on crude. crude has broken below $100, okay, so that's a good thing and that's going to help gasoline. is that a sign of economic weakness? first question right there. is that a sign of economic weakness in the usa or maybe the globe? >> not really, larry. i think it really is tied much more into just the sort of divergence between the production situation we have here in the u.s. and what's going on in the north sea. also, you know, our refineries are running at a very high level, which you wouldn't expect if we were experiencing economic weakness. we are above normal for this time of year on refinery utilization. there's good demand for our exports and refined products and i don't think it's a sign of weakness at all. it's also somewhat tied into the dollar. as you know, the dollar has been chopping around and doesn't really have much of a direction right now. >> yeah, it does.
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no, no, you preempted. it's an important time. the dollar has been falling. the dollar has been falling. i don't like that. i don't like the falling dollar. i call it the janet yellen dollar. maybe that's unfair. >> she hasn't even started yet. >> the fed is very dovish and she is very dovish. you can't bet on the dollar rising, you bet on the dollar falling. usually, maybe not now, a falling dollar drives up commodity prices, including oil. >> that's right. that's right. that's the one thing we have to watch out for on the horizon. we should take advantage and join this boom in our production and take advantage as we go into a seasonal slump in demand for crude. consumers need to be aware that at some point we will see prices move higher but for now things are pretty good. >> is there enough drop in gasoline prices to really boost
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consumer spending, for example, give them extra disposable income? >> we really haven't seen that come through in the numbers, have we? consumer confidence is really not anything to write home about and it's very worrying as we're heading into the holiday shopping season. if we don't have a confident consumer, where is this growth going to come from that's going to drive our economy higher. as you know, the recent government shutdown has had somewhat of an effect on fourth quarter growth and certainly if the consumer didn't feel better about what's going on and today's unemployment figures certainly didn't help that, you know, it's a real question where we're going to get sort of the 2.5% to 3% growth we've been experiencing. >> we're not going to get it. we're not going to get it. i'm interested to hear you say that the refiners are pretty much running oil out. that's a great signal. you're right. if it weren't for that, i would say signs of economic weakness are creeping up everywhere, including today's jobs report. the refiners must see some
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demand. so we're not going to hell in a handbag. i'll give you 20 seconds. >> most of that demand is export driven. it's a situation where we have a lot of refineries in europe and demand in asia. >> that's it for this evening's show. thanks for watching. i'm larry kudlow, still a devotee of economics and not of obama care. sorry. what you wear to bed is your business.
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>> tonight on the car chasers... you wanna hop in my ride? it's all hands on deck... >> yeah, there's something wrong. >> as we prepare for the oklahoma city car auction. i mean, if this was a person, it'd need life support. look how much it's bleedin'. but will a freak storm freeze us in our tracks? >> the roads are so icy. holy smokes. oh, [bleep]! >> [gasps] oh! >> and when bidding grinds to a halt... 11 grand? this is hurtin' me, bubba. i've gotta act fast... now we gotta make money, 'cause so far we're in the hole. or we'll be coming home empty-handed. >> tell jeff to lift the reserve. let me sell the car. let me sell the automobile. my name is jeff allen. i buy, fix, and flip cars.

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