lauren: he won two best actors. stuart: our movie buff. you didn't get the right answer,. >> no. stuart: what is wrong with you? my time is up. don't forget to send in your "friday feedback." email us at varney viewers at foxbusiness.com. we welcome any and all comment. neil cavuto. my time is up. it is now yours. neil: you know i never welcome negative comments so which is why we don't have mail. interesting. i look forward to that. stuart, thank you very, very much. you might notice the dow rebounded as stuart was telling you. maybe reassessing this whole tapering thing. when we talk about the federal reserve and tapering not that would in the worst case scenario abandon buying treasury notes, they would slow it down. by 120 billion a month, treasury securities mortgage-backed

securities, if they pare to 110 billion a month. far bigger world concerns right now we're keeping an eye on for you. not just the collapsing interest rate situation happening not only here but across the globe but what is happening in afghanistan right now. a situation always seems to be going from bad to worse getting americans out and identifying how many americans we have in the first place. some confusion about that we've got team coverage with trey yingst in jerusalem, jennifer griffin monitoring developments at the pentagon, with connell mcshane at the white house. go to jennifer griffin where things stand right now, jennifer. reporter: neil we just competed that pentagon briefing where he learned that the u.s. military is not authorized to leave the airport. their mission is to secure the airport evacuation flights are still trickling out. billions of dollars of u.s. military hardware now in the hands of the taliban we

confirmed. not just the taliban the u.s. military has to worry about as the clock to evacuate winds down. >> isis and al qaeda is absolutely a planning factor. you wouldn't expect it to be otherwise. i will not talk about specific force protection measures against terrorist threats. i think, clearly we're mindful that that threat could persist. reporter: defense secretary lloyd austin made the following frank admission about the limits of rescuing americans stuck behind taliban lines in downtown kabul. >> we don't have the capability to go out to collect up large numbers of people. >> sounds like you're saying this depends on diplomacy with the taliban, that's it that is our only option, getting them to agree to do this? >> well let me add something here. we got entry control points set up. north one, east one and a third

one at abby gate. reporter: the pentagon told us u.s. military evacuated 2000 people in the past 24 hours. of 12 c-17s took off with 180 people per flight. a significant increase from just 85 per flight the day before but far fewer than that heroic air force load master and pilot who packed 640 people on to one c-17. one key bottleneck is the state department only had on the ground a handful of consular officers when this began. there is fingerpointing who did or did not predict the fall of afghanistan and crumbling afghan army which received 85 approximately dollars of american taxpayer money over the years. the president and top military officers said the following. >> july you said taliban takeover was highly unlikely. was the intelligence wrong or did you downplay it. >> there was no consensus. you look at the intelligence reports, more likely to be sometime by the end of the year.

>> following our departure there was nothing that i or anyone else saw that indicate adco laps of this army and this government in 11 days. reporter: but there were intel assessments it could in weeks. the military always knew after they pulled out they would get the 911 call from the state department to help evacuate americans and special immigrant visa holders who the pentagon warned for weeks, if not months needed processing by the state department to leave. they urged the state department to be faster over the past month. now we're in the situation we're in. a lot of frustration from people that i'm talking to. neil? neil: jennifer griffin, thank you very much. back in afghanistan there are sporadic protests throughout the country. the taliban has been responding not the way their pr would suggest they would be responding. trey yingst with the latest from

jerusalem. trey? reporter: neil, good afternoon. the situation on the ground in afghanistan is simply not matching up to what white house officials are describing. while there are ongoing evacuations from this airport there continue to be scenes of chaos just outside. heartwrenching video show people handing their children over walls and barbed-wire, desperate to get them to safety. there is north, south, and east gate in the airport. of the northgate sees clashes as u.s. troops try to push back people with crowd control methods. a group of afghan refugees who arrive in germany, with taliban fighters hitting people with sticks and firing rifles. 12 people have been killed since sunday in and around the airport. protests against the taliban continue. a reported 200 people gathered in kabul to mark afghanistan's independence day. protest was quickly and violently dispersed by the taliban. several people were killed during a similar demonstration in the city of after a taliban

fighters fired into the crowd. one of the most concerning reports indicates taliban fight remembers going door toe door looking for people who worked with nato or u.s. troops in the past. there are major fears on the ground that these people could be killed once u.s. troops evacuate, neil. [. neil: the president has come down the line until we do not leave until americans that want out are out. president says we'll stay as long as we need to evacuate the americans. connell mcshane at the white house that could be considerably amount of time, certainly well past the end of august deadline for to us exit there. reporter: could be. he set that deadline himself, president biden, august 31st, but now saying if americans still need to be evacuated yeah, u.s. troops may be on the ground longer than that. he denied the reports circulating this week the president may have overruled some of his military advisors who were warning him against pulling out of afghanistan.

those comments coming in the abc news interview with george stephanopoulos. >> top military advisors warned against withdrawing timeline. they wanted you to keep 2500 troops. >> no they didn't. they were split. that wasn't true. >> they didn't tell you they wanted troops to stay? >> no, not in terms of whether we were going to get out in a time frame, all troops. they didn't argue against that. >> so no one told, your military advisors did not tell you no, we keep 2500 troops. it is stable situation for last several years, we can continue to do that, we can continue to do that? >> no one said that to me that i can recall. reporter: that interview was done at the white house where the president has not taken questions at large from the situation in afghanistan. we're told he won't do that today either. neither will press secretary jen psaki. there is no briefing on scheduled as now for the white house. no public events for the president. no briefing from the press secretary. you know all we've been told

about the president's day today he is meeting with the national security team behind closed doors managing afghanistan. he will receive covid updates. he will talk to members of congress about his agenda. nothing on his public schedule. meantime as has been reported by both jennifer and trey, we're getting reports of a difficult situation, no doubt the president is as well as on the ground in afghanistan as people try to look to the airport, you look at the numbers, jennifer went through p.m. of them. i won't repeat all the numbers she said. think about the key details we were told in last 24 hours or so, basically you have 7,000 people in the last five days that have been evacuated from afghanistan. that is what the government of the united states is now telling us but there is a long way to go here because we still don't have a clear picture, neil, how many american citizens are on the ground there we were led to believe that number may be 5,000. in the pentagon briefing john kirby said he didn't know how many americans citizens were in the kabul area. and then the president, he said on top of that could be

somewhere between 50 and 65,000 afghan allies and their families that we would like to get out of afghanistan. again we don't know where that number is. only 7,000 have gotten out so far. neil. neil: to your point, what is consistent is the inconsistency on number of americans and friends of americans who we want to get out of there. we don't seem to have a real precise clue as to what that is. connell mcshane, thank you, very, very much. you heard a great deal about the perimeter around the kabul airport. forget about those trying to get outside of that perimeter into the airport. this startled a lot of people when the defense secretary spoke about the difficulty our going to that perimeter to make sure they can. take a look at this. >> doing everything we can to continue to try to deconflict and create passageways for them to get to the airfield. i don't have the capability to go out and extend operations

currently into, into kabul. and where do you take that? i mean, how far can you extend into kabul? neil: defense secretary is saying, i don't have the capability to essentially go to that perimeter, go beyond that perimeter, to rescue others trying to get through that perimeter. that is a little unnerving for those on the perimeter who are assuming that american soldiers will be there to help them get out of the country. general anthony tata joins us, retired brigadier general, author of chasing the lion. general, the message seems to be then that we'll take anyone who gets through that perimeter, get them out but we're not going to go to the perimeter to find others who want to get out. that could limit our ability to deal with this. >> yeah. neil, great to be with you again. the breathtaking lack of

compassion and competence here is just staggering and you know for an administration that claims to have planned for every contingency they certainly don't seem to have thought through any of these contingencies. we do have the capability to do whatever we want. we could have set up a staging areas and done a very orderly withdraw over the last seven, eight months as was the plan under the previous administration. and so when we say we're not going to go get americans, that is a very clear abdication, our nation's responsibility, other only vital interests in afghanistan. our people and property, our u.s. vital interests. we abdicated the property piece. let's at least get our people. president biden was presented as a compassionate, caring and

competent individual. so far in my opinion he has failed on all three of those accounts. there is a generation of americans invested right now, neil in afghanistan. those of us who fought there, our families, the people, our friends that care about us and love us. a number of veterans reaching out to me, i'm sure to others who fought there, people are really struggling with this right now. the president, not taking questions, turning his back on the american people in these press conferences and the message that we're not going to go get americans is just breathtakingly shocking to me as a veteran, as a combat, veteran, as afghanistan combat veteran. the message could not be more clear, that this, there is nobody in charge. neil: i guess i'm confused, general, about our role then. that is the u.s. military's role

in expediting and handling this exodus. we'll handle it at the airport. we won't go beyond the perimeter the taliban set up around the airport. the taliban apparently clearly knows that. who is calling the shots on those who get in? is the taliban the checkpoint for that? are we? >> neil, the taliban is in charge, right. so we've got paratroopers from the 82nd airborne doing what we do best there, that is seizing and securing that airfield. what you have got is the taliban that is calling all of the shots there. my point was it didn't have to be that way. when we had the tactical and operational advantage there, you know, just a few weeks ago in afghanistan, we could have kept kabul open, kandahar open, have lists of people that needed to be evacuated and begun the

orderly withdrawal as tactical entry officer basic course 101 kind of thing retrograde, you start out large and collapse and collapse and collapse. then you know, hal moore did in the movie we were soldiers played by mel gibson, the military is the last person to put their foot on the skid of the helicopter as opposed to what we see here, the military left and now all the civilians are holding the bag. it's a really bad message that breaks faith with the american people. this administration has destroyed relationships with allies, has destroyed our relationship with the people that have we served in afghanistan, that we were trying to help. my message to the soldiers though, despite all of that, that you served and you did great things in afghanistan because you denied sanctuary to terrorists for 20 years. we didn't have an attack planned out of afghanistan on this

country and that was because we had soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, fighting on the five yard line of al qaeda and taliban as opposed to them being in america. their service mattered. it just didn't have to indthis way. it is really a shame that we are in this quagmire of having to rely on the taliban to -- you know, i'm surprised that i was, pleasantly surprised there were no suicide bombers, no, on those airplanes, no artillery on the airfield, no machine guns on the airfield, no advanced tactics that the taliban has been known for. and we just got lucky. sometimes it is better to be lucky than good but, you know, i'm sure the president sort of chuckling right now, i would be rather be lucky than good. it is really a shame. we had so much invested there

and we needed to leave but not like this. neil: sometimes luck doesn't last forever, to your point, general. we'll see how all of that unfolds here. we've been focusing on the numbers here in this afghan relief effort and some of them are just not adding up to me. i apologize i'm struck by the inconsistency of it. we were told a little more than 24 hours ago was the goal was to get 5000 to 7,000 out each day. now we discover it is closer to 2,000. still better than some of the more cynical fears but the goal eventually is that we will get up to 65,000 americans and afghan am lies and sympathizers. at the rate we were going that would take a minimum of six to eight weeks, well, well beyond the end of august deadline. in fact well beyond 20th anniversary of 9/11, that got us in afghanistan in the first place. stay with us.

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♪. neil: all right. are you ready for a third shot if you've been fully vaccinated right now? the president proposing that as soon at september 20th, a third booster shot courtesy of some ever the bigger vaccine players, pfizer, moderna, will

be available. it is supposed to be for vulnerable elements in the population, elderly, those with compromised immune systems. the president himself will get the booster shot. usually eight months after the last vaccine shot. jonathan serrie where that is going. jonathan. reporter: the president says he and his wife will roll up the sleeves for proposed vaccine boosters once they're approved by the fda. that is the one thing they're wasting on. but the u.s. effort to provide third doses to fully vaccinated minutes faces criticism from top officials at the world health organization. that vaccine boosters will come at the expense of many people in poor country who can't get their first dose. >> there is enough vaccine around the world. it is not going in the right places to save as many lives, prevent as much severe disease

as possible. reporter: federal health officials says this present as false choice. the u.s. which is biggest vaccine donor will still have plenty of shots to share even while boosters are administered at home. >> do not accept the idea we choose between america and the world. we clearly see our responsibility to both. reporter: as the biden administration ramps up boosters for the fully vaccinated it is still trying to convince skeptics to get their first dose. president biden directed the department of health and human services to require nursing homes to have their employees vaccinated if they're going to continue participating in medicare and medicaid programs. nationally 41% of nursing home staff remain unvaccinated. and neil, as school districts around the country are debates over whether to mandate face masks, there is a school district in southern california that is taking it a step further. the culver city unified school district is mandating vaccines,

not just for employees but also for their eligible students. that is all students 12 and older if they are to attend classes this year. neil? neil: wow. that will be a tempest in a teapot. jonathan serrie, thank you very much. this whole idea of a booster shot, is it necessary and what are the implications. from the johns hopkins school of public health, scholar there. what you do i this doctor, a booster shot, who needs it? >> right now we know immunocompromised people need three doses up front there is good data to support that. that is a decision came out a couple weeks ago. when it comes to the general healthy population i think it is more muddled. we don't have good data we're seeing break through infections landing people in the hospital. that to me is the real threshold. i would like to see a lot more clinical data to support this decision. neil: so the vulnerable part of the population that the president was addressing last

night, those who have compromised immune systems or and/or are elderly, that is a subset obviously of the population, a big one by the way but is it even necessary for them or is it a case-by-case basis? >> definitely if you have had solid organ transplant, high doses of steroids or immunosuppressant, my mother on humira, she got a third dose that is data to support the use of a third dose. when we look at general healthy population, their vaccines are holding up against what matters, serious disease, hospitalization and death. there may come a time, probably longer than eight months from the second dose there may be the need nor a booster. what we want to be done, this driven by clinical data showing that immunity is waning where it matters against severe disease. antibody levels go up and down. that is how the immune system works. the goal has to be remove a threat of covid causing serious

disease, not necessarily to stop every common cold like illness that occurs in every vaccinated individual. we have to get clear what the endgame is here. third doses will not put the pandemic in our rear view mirror. it is first and second doses. that is the issue. neil: quickly, doctor, this notion of, delta variant, some others, lambda, other variants, they have proven more stubborn than earlier thought against these vaccines. still larkly effective when it comes to dealing with this but not nearly as effective as we thought in the beginning by one survey of 42% effectivity rate in the case of pfizer for this. should we be concerned those numbers are not going our way? >> you have to assume that as virus mutates there will be some mutations able to evade some of the immunity you get from a vaccine but where it counts, preventing hospitalizations and deaths the vaccines hold up. it is not just antibodies but

t-cells. they seem to be doing well. we have to continue to track this, continue studies on "people." are we seeing up tick on people being hospitalized. that is not happening outside the immunosuppressed population. we want to keep the trick he for the booster at proper thresh healed t may come in 12 months or 18 months. i don't know it is necessarily there at eight months. i doesn't know they made the case to do this. there may be more data to come that may change my position on this but i haven't seen it yet. neil: doctor, thank you very much. amesh adaja. goldman sachs lowered gdp forecast, stumbling, erratic nature coming out of this pandemic, enough to slow things down in the economy and companies ceo's agreeing with that assessment, that it compromises the recovery but it

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♪. neil: all right. markets have really recovered from their taper tantrum if you want to call it that. the federal reserve indicating this goes back to a meeting in july before everything was hitting the fan that they would start scaling back treasury purchases sooner rather than later, like this year. forget about next year but some are putting this in some perspective here. not as if they're selling en masse these securities. probably a little less. they average about 120 billion a month. about 80 billion or so, excuse me, treasury securities and another 35 and 40 billion in mortgage back the securities. they might slice that down to 110, 100 billion a month. still buying more than they're

selling. we have the managing director of gains group. is that what is going on here, michelle? are they reassessing? they're pivoting, indicating they're going to pivot around wall street isn't keen on the pivot but not as big a pivot as some might fear. what do you think? >> like you just said those minutes that came out yesterday came from a couple weeks earlier and things have changed now over the last few days. powell spoke a couple days ago and addressed the fact he is still very concerned about the delta variant and still very concerned about the labor market which is still two very legitimate concerns. so i think the market got a little ahead of itself in terms of believing that the fed would actually taper. like you said it wouldn't even be as severe what people are worried about but anytime you're taking away all the easy money of course the market will have a reaction particularly since we've been slightly overvalued in many of the sectors. here is what i like to do, i like to follow four different

bonds. that really tells me what the market is thinking through the bond market is often very smart. one, the junk bonds. that is companies that have a high debt and pay high yield. it has fallen down a bit but a long-term uptrend unless it breaks down under 1.08. i look at the 2. l 2. s. 20 year treasury bonds. yield low. flight to safety but still a lot of cheap money to borrow. i like to look at the 10-years. they're still holding up firm. finally this is interesting place for the fed folly, high corporate bonds, the bonds with a high grade corporate rating that is through ltd going up. put that all together the fed is still very much there to support this market as it goes through a period of uncertainty now, i still wonder, interesting how you lay it out nicely with the four you're looking at.

i often think once they pull the trigger, it might not be a tough pull of the trigger it, might be a minor adjustment, once we get confirmation of that. i don't know how they announce that. even when they do you will know, smart people that follow the markets will know, what will the market reaction be because then it is no longer a fear event, it is an event, it's happening? >> right. well if you remember in 2018 when there was more definitive at the end of the year they were going to possibly taper or raise rates, the market collapsed 20, 25%. neil: right. >> immediately the fed stepped back, no, don't worry about it. the market then continued to rally. we're so far out of the woods in terms of a real economic recovery other than to get back to normal which of course is skiddish now with the variant. we could see another -- about overall we have to wonder where is the real gross domestic

product going to come from in terms of real growth beyond that? which is why i don't think, i don't see any major sea change at this point. of course anything could happen but again right now all you're seeing is a correction and support in a lot of the areas in particularly in the indices. neil: interesting. michelle, thank you very, very much. let's go to my buddy charlie gasparino on this. i guess it will be a big event when it finally happens, the threat and specker specter is gone, charlie, but i'm wondering if it's a slight a slight paring in the number of securities the fed is buying whether the market will be alarmed by that regardless? >> i wonder if you can judge inflation totally by those interest rates your last guest pointed out. obviously if you look at the 10-year, if you look at corporate bond rates, and junk bond rates we don't see, we don't see like people flying to -- you know, the rates aren't

going through the roof for a reason on the long bond. neil: that might be a reflection of a slowdown, the fear that things are slowing down. >> or it is a reflection of this, the fed is in the market buying bonds, okay? despite the fact that you have higher inflation by cpi, normal measurements, you name it, commodity prices, the fed is in the market buying bonds and mortgage-backed securities. that forces investors essentially to buy high-yield bonds and other securities which artificially keeps the rates low and guess what? it hides the inflation threat. then one day the fed wakes up says, oh, my god, we don't have transitory inflation. we have inflation we have to deal with. we have to ratchet back our bond buying by not just a few billion here and there, trillion, whatever it is, it is monopoly money at this point, we have to ratchet back, taper a bit because we have inflation and you could see a problem in the markets. i wonder all the people look at

10 year, doesn't show inflation, look at, on 30 year doesn't show inflation. the reason why the fed is buying stuff. prices are going up. neil: could it be others are buying stuff, charlie? i raise this, an ft article talked about foreign interest in our treasury securities in light of what is happening with -- more of them are buying these securities, helping the fed out by that scenario and that will keep a lid on rates what do you think? >> yes, yes. there is a flight to quality. always is. doesn't last forever by the way when we're out of afghanistan. afghanistan is not like a hub of commerce. so the flight, the flight to safety is not because people's business interests in afghanistan is blowing up. i mean it could be a terrorist mechanic call, then i get the trade but here is the interesting thing, if you're the fed, buying all sorts of bonds, 10 years, mortgage-backed

securities you force the market to go out there on the risk spectrum to buy high yields even at current rates. so the inflation, the inflation part of the yield curve is being, is being disguised here, okay? the real inflation may come if you just keep getting these prints, then all of sudden the fed has to ratchet back its purchases dramatically. that is a scary thought in the markets. maybe today, maybe tomorrow. we're really in uncharted territory, neil. i know we were supposed to talk about gensler and stuff but this is a big story. neil: no, this is a big story. i do want to ask you one question on that then. they have a balance sheet, trillions of dollars of various treasury securities, mortgage back the security the, municipal bonds, corporate bonds, it is really off the charts, just to unload that would take years. we're fretting over a slowdown in the purchasing of such

securities. i think this is a glacial problem, is it not? >> look, i have spoken with several wall street ceo's. we have these dinners occasionally. i don't say who they are because i want to have another dinner with them. they all believe -- neil: you never invite me, never. >> next time. next time, neil, we'll get a seat for you. neil: together at an ihop or something. >> everyone of them thinks inflation is not transitory, okay? when this, when, if they have to raise rates, if they have to dramatic, everyone of these wall street ceo's will tell you, if they have to really address inflation, it its going to get real ugly with these markets. it is just going to be a bloodbath, if they have to do that. i'm not saying they will. who knows. i can't tell you what is going on with the delta variant. i will tell you this, my brother runs an icu at a major new york hospital, this is why i'm more, you know, i'm more positive on

the economy than others, despite the variant, and i agree with the last guest, your doctor you had on, he is not seeing an influx of people because a lot of new york remembers vaccinated. the health issue here may be overdrawn because so many people are vaccinated. yes there are pockets of real problems but, you know, this economy probably doesn't have to shut down and probably will be okay. then you got to ask yourself if it is okay, what is the looming economic threat? well the looming economic threat is inflation. the fed having to basically put on the brakes on this stuff and that market will be really nasty. you know what i would do, follow this, follow gold, follow crypto. i think the bond yields have decoupled because of just the fed's interest in the markets. neil: that is very interesting. >> i'm not an economist. i just covered the bond markets for 35 years. neil: i know, i know. then you quote your brother the doctor, the successful

gasparino. >> i know. neil: that was very valuable too. i apologize my friend. i know we were going to talk about other things. >> no problem. huge story. huge story. neil: big inflection point. thank you, charlie gasparino. this seems in the weeds for a lot of you folks, i apologize for that. normally when you face an inflationary threat you try to unwind things, the federal reserve has couple choices. they coraise rates. they don't want to do that. that is dramatic. they can do it in coy, neat undercover way, slowly scaling back treasury securities they have been buying for couple decades unload the balance sheet of trillions of dollars. so doing, the expectation is built as soon as they start it is panic time. it really isn't but that is the worry. we'll have more after this. ♪.

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♪. neil: to the victor go the spoils of war. now we're learning that taliban commanders and senior members already started collecting their military goodies registering arms, ammunition, armored vehicles all left behind by american and nato forces for afghan forces. the talibans now. that stuff. irks a lot of americans when they see it play out. i'm sure the president would like the headlines, images go away but they're not. what is the fallout that you're hearing? >> there will be sort of three venues for the administration to explain themselves. some will be pretty intense and almost hostile. some of them they can kind of avoid but there is one crucial one they can't. that is classified briefings by, to the "gang of eight" or to senior members of the intelligence community on capitol hill. this changed in last sort of 12 to 24 hours is lawmakers will be demanding answers. so it is one thing for there not

to be any briefings like there aren't today. no white house briefing unless something popped up on my phone the last 20 minutes. not hearing from the president at least as of now. correct me if i'm wrong. these things can change. that is the short. in the long term, neil, there will be an accounting and what i picked up in my reporting congressional democrats are almost as angry than congressional republicans what is happening. they control the majorities, calling in people privately for classified briefings but also public to explain to the american people what the plan was, thinking was and what the afterter action reviews said. neil: there is a thing with the president, i don't try to get politics in the show, not my place, people don't care what my opinions are, but i do worry about the president's posture on this, because he is saying there is no problem there he is not even talking about it there. had this opportunity to talk to the american people about this

yesterday. instead he focused on you know, these booster shots, not a word about afghanistan. then in george stephanopoulos interview on abc, you know, nothing unusual. i saw this all coming, et cetera, et cetera. i'm just wondering is that disconnect boomeranging? >> potentially and if it boomerangs we'll know because then they will put the president out again. i don't suspect we'll see the president for some big prime time news conference. i could be wrong, but doesn't seem like that is in the works but if they feel they're getting behind the story on communications front. they have sophisticated communications advisors in the white house. many are veterans of the obama administration. this isn't the first crisis. this might be their most significant crisis. but if they do feel, the white house feels they are getting behind the story and can't weather it, we'll see the president or see briefings again. neil: you know where this

process goes, hans. some fear ever leaking out about generals and other military honchos who say they did warn the president about some of these issues. he insists they did not, that never happened. that kind of stuff happens when some people feel they're being thrown under the bus or their views were ignored and i'm just wondering how far that goes? >> i think that continues for quite some time. this test case for that, neil, two "new york times" stories we've seen in the last 36 hours. the first story there were warnings and within the intelligence community that, that there could be a collapse imminently. i think imminence was the term. the very next day was the story from "the times," people on the record, first was on background, averill haines, office of national intelligence, no, there were no direct warnings given to the president. all this will come out, right? congressional committees have s&p power.

they will get this. may not be satisfying to us in the media. ultimately a lot of this information will come out. members of congress will force members of the administration to raise their hand, take an oath of office to explain what happened. again, biden cannot hold a press conference today. he cannot come to the cameras today, between now and november of 2024, midterm elections joe biden will have to talk about this. they will have to have answers for this. seems like the strategy now is hoping that the facts on the ground change and that the facts on the ground get more defensible. until that happens, doesn't seem like they're overly eager to come to the cameras. neil: that would mean thousands more americans and afghan friends of americans get out of the country, and that would have to happen pretty quickly. we're talking about a goal originally had it as high as 65,000 we wanted out of that country. so far we are a long way from that. stay with us.

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housing market crash, just before it 14 years ago. so what's the real story here? jerry howard is the national association of homebuilders ceo. jerry, the sentiment seems to contrast with the reality home construction going like crazy. >> well you know what i think, neil. we're really at a tipping point right now where things will continue along strongly or we're going to see a decline. how sharp of a decline, how fast of a decline i don't know but you look at the number as you pointed out, right now you have got 689,000 units under construction. that is a lot but you dig a little bit deeper into the numbers you see there is 145,000 single family permits that are out there where construction hasn't started and that is a frightening number because that too is the same level that just before the housing crash 14 years ago. so we're looking at that, we're saying what is the cause? the cause is simple.

the supply chain problems that we're having have led to an incredible inflation in building material costs that are just making things very, very difficult. i will give you the number. building material costs overall have gone up 13% already in 2021. where they only went up about 7% the entire year in 2020. right now policymakers ought to look at our numbers. look what the homebuilders are telling them. that is, we're getting less and less traffic. costs are too high. consumers can't afford it even though they still have big interests. neil: but rates are coming down. real quickly, which wins out? >> yeah, rates are at a decent level right now. they're staying low but countered by increase in costs. i've had builders tell me, neil, they had to go to customers to give back the ernest money

checks. i can't tell you i can build the house at the price we agreed because my costs are going up so fast, so frequently. neil: yikes! jerry howard thanks, i think, my friend. jerry howard, the national association of homebuilders ceo. impact of everything right now on the markets, minimal. the dow up. other averages -- stay with us that's the nature of being the economy. i've observed investors navigating the unexpected, choosing assets to balance risk and reward. and i've seen how one element has secured their portfolios, ...

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>> the drawdown is proceeding in a secure and orderly way for our ties in the state of our troops as they depart. the idea that somehow there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, i don't know how that happens. neil: all right, the president is very inconsistent on this issue and not all that long ago a little more than a month ago saying it was orderly and proceeding as schedule that is our drawdown of troops and personnel from afghanistan than anything but afterwards. rich edson on the latest on how this is all going down in afghanistan right now. rich is at the state department. hey, rich. reporter: hey, good afternoon, neil and the state department is detailing awe number of efforts, international statements they say the international community is watching what the taliban is doing though critics say the taliban don't carat all about these statements and these warnings from the west, about watching their behavior. we are hearing from contacts on

the ground, it is another day in kabul of a security perimeter around the airport. difficulty getting to the airport, people getting beaten around the airport, and around kabul. the state department has advised americans who are in afghanistan , who are in kabul, to start heading to the airport, but they mentioned, and they stress, in all caps, in fact, that the u.s. cannot secure their safety. >> the taliban made a commitment to safe passage for american citizens. i don't know of my colleagues may know of an incident where an american got harassed or hustled or wasn't able to get to the airport. i've not heard o of that the yet that's know the to say there aren't any stories like that. reporter: the deputy secretary also says the u.s. has made it clear it will use every diplomatic political and economic tool to ensure safety, though gave mow specifics beyond that. there is growing criticism of the state department's handling of this withdrawal with an

estimated 15,000 americans in the country, and up to 65,000 eligible afghans who largely worked with the u.s. over the past two decades. the pentagon says since saturday , the military has evacuated about 7,000 people. republican congressman dan crenshaw tweeted, "the state department was in charge of civilian evacuations. they failed miserably, and continue to fail. when the dust settles, it's hard to see how secretary blinken should still have a job." the secretary has yet to appear in the briefing room this week, we're supposed to get another press briefing from spokesperson ned price in about an hour. back to you. neil: thank you, rich for that. we told you a little earlier too on this broadcast that the riches of war for the taliban that they are now reviewing even registering all the military hardware that the old government had, that is now taliban but when it comes to money that might have to wait. a lot of funds being frozen,

billions of dollars worth. connell mcshane with the latest from the white house. connell: yeah, neil, that's what you're talking about is maybe $80 billion that the u.s. invest ed over the years in equipment and training. the taliban or the afghan army but in terms of denying the taliban funds and the u.s. is doing it in a couple different ways as far as we understand it. number one the afghan central bank, they had about $9 billion in reserve as of a week ago. we know this because the former governor of the bank said as much and that seven of that nine billion was held in the united states by the federal reserve. as far as we know that's frozen. they can't access that. it's not really day-to-day money you can basically think of it as afghanistan's rainy day fund for the government. that's frozen and then the government was supposed to be able to access some $340 million in imf money by next week, but last night we heard from the imf and what they did is basically put that on hold saying their members still don't have clarity on whether the taliban should be recognized as an official government or not, so no imf money for the time being.

the big question and we just spoke to a former treasury department official is can the taliban makeup for those losses through maybe illicit drug trade profits? take a listen. the question of which taliban are we getting, are we getting the taliban from the 90s that profited handsomely on the drug trade but then actually made a turn to cancel it around 2001 they said they were seizing it and they relatively kept their word but now over the past 20 years they've raised more and more money on the drug trade both heroin and opium as well as methamphetamines which both affects regional neighbors like iran, pakistan and so there should be a larger international consensus, not just of allies, but of some adversaries as well to add dress this drug problem. reporter: the annual revenue for the taliban was between 300 million and 1.6 billion u.s. dollars so it's quite possible they will have enough money, you know, to run a government and most of that be drug money, we'll have to see how this all plays out because it's also still possible the u.s. could move with allies

to cutoff more aid coming in, that be day-to-day money, you know, for the last 20 years, the government in afghanistan basically running with the help of foreign aid and we still don't know what the future will hold in that regard, at least not yet for that day-to-day money. neil? neil: got it, connell mcshane, thank you. so who fills that money void right now for afghanistan particularly the taliban if our dough is out who might be providing the dough? rebeccah heinrich with the hudson institute, senior fellow there, who helps them out >> hi, neil. well, as your reporter just talked about, they've got the drug trade. we'll see there's a couple of big countries of course nearby that are very interested in the taliban maintaining control, and keeping the terrorism from leaking across the borders, of course china is a big one, and the russians have a problem too. they don't want terrorism to be

spilling over the borders into their own country so we're going to have to see what happens here moving forward. obviously, western countries are going to do their best to cutoff this illicit trade that's going to be flowing into this country, run by, i don't have any illusions about what this is going to be like. i mean, i am prepared to be witnessing a taliban more violence or at least as violent as the one that we are also familiar with. neil: i'm just wondering though, we're putting a great deal of stock in the so-called new and improved taliban talk, that it suddenly is a very different creature than it was two decades ago. is it? >> there's all the evidence points to the fact that it's not even big picture i was stunned whenever i saw president biden say that he was surprised that the taliban was providing safe passage and then you had general milley chairman of the joint chief of staff saying so far the taliban has not been

inhibiting their process in evacuating people. meanwhile, i'm getting texts from people saying that's not true. there's americans that have had their backs broken, hands broken , by these taliban war lords at these checkpoints so there's still these violent people, remember they just not only did they cease the afghan national security forces, they just defeated nato, 20 years of fighting, so they believe now it's ideologically driven and a law has given them advice victory. i don't see any reason they be any more moderate than what we witnessed the last 20 years. neil: i'm just wondering they take our cues i guess from us a lot of times and rebecca when i heard the defense secretary say there's no plan for the time being, i'm paraphrasing, to go to the per in iter and try to get americans and also afghan friends and allies of americans in through that perimeter to the airport, in other words, whose

ever is in, whose ever is out, presumably is out, but outside that control, outside that perimeter it's the taliban calling shots on who gets in, not us. >> it's the strangest thing, neil. i mean, it's incredibly frustrating that it appears to me, at the press conference that the pentagon is just being hand strung by these political decisions by president biden. i mean, the fact that they can't expand the perimeter or get these people in, get our own people in, we're talking about thousands of americans that are still on the outside of the taliban checkpoints. if this was true, that the taliban was essentially cooperating, you would see a much smoother process going on, but it hasn't been. it has been chaos, and so, you know, again, it's almost like these statements from our military leaders and political leaders are driving the point home to the american people that this war has been so mishandled and a misunderstanding of who

our enemy is this whole time. neil: you know, rebecca, there are many vulnerable countries in the middle east, you reminded me that many times, and we, obviously, propped up the afghan government, all of the sacrifice notwithstanding and all the afghan soldiers who fought the good fight and the fact of the matter is the government folded fast and i'm just wondering, that's because we were announcing we're leaving, and the taliban took advantage of that, but i'm looking at all the other kingdoms and other governments throughout the middle east that have the support, even the financial support of the united states, that other terrorist groups are reading as vulnerable now and maybe newly-released could be picked off. >> no, i think that that's a good observation, neil. what i worry about what you're talking about is what message did this send to the world over into terrorists. my concern now is that the taliban totally controlling afghanistan, it will be a whole

echosystem of terrorism. there's just an ig report released a couple months ago that showed al qaeda has not only been disassociated with the taliban. it's actually integrated in the command structure of the taliban, so the taliban has continued to lie about the terrorism support they are, i'd call them, the question is how much we see this export of terrorism, and again, to your point too, 50,000-plus afghan national security forces have died because they were doing ground operations since 2014- 2015. what we were providing was moral e, encouragement, guidance, air support. that's what we were providing these young soldiers, or mainly , illiterate when they came to get training from the u.s. forces but ghani, the political leaders of the afghan government, they were corrupt, tribal, and a major part of the problem. u.s. government, as you can see now, we're good at killing

terrorists, we're good at helping these militaries operate when we're there. we can't force a democracy on a people who don't want it, neil. neil: in the end it comes down to the will. if they don't want it they don't want it and if they do they do. they don't. rebeccah heinrichs thank you very very much. we are getting updates on sporadic violence throughout afghanistan, just to outline the reports that we think at least are semi-reliable and that's a bit dicey, protests that have been greeted by gunfire or worse, three of the five largest cities and regions in afghanistan where violence and a very very quick reaction to such protests is ensuing, stay with us.

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already dominating online but amazon wants to get even bigger when it comes to brick-and-mortar. maybe an amazon department store in the future, the wall street journal reporting amazon is eying its first locations in california and ohio, 30,000 square feet, that's smaller than the typical 100,000 square feet department store but that's where amazon is going to sell many of their private label goods. they passed walmart as the country's largest clothing retailer so you'll find retail and clothing and also home goods electronics and more and these amazon department stores will add to amazon's physical footprint, they already have whole foods, amazon bookstores, and they have those cashless stores so the department stores are making a come back, can you believe that? look at the performance of macy's and kohl's today both reinstating dividends and buying back stock as their business seems to have recovered. now for car makers not much relief just yet from the global chip shortage. toyota is the world's biggest car maker and they will cut global production by around 40%

in september, according to these reports, and that's a reduction of 60-90,000 cars in north america alone this month, so toyota joins a long list of global car makers that have been impacted and yes, does include tesla, elon musk running a severe supply chain constraints and lack of chips, if gm, ford, nissan, in fact there isn't a car maker on the planet that hasn't been impacted just yet and let's take a look at robinhood's first report card as a public company, strong spring but robinhood says it's not going to be as great this summer and robinhood still losing money but they doubled their sales in the second quarter at least and half of those sales came from crypto trading, with more than 60% of that coming from dogecoin trading, you know that joke coin , that kind of has a dog on the front, you know that one, right, neil? neil: yeah, just sometimes, you see this and you can't deny the popularity and the whole mission. it's just bizarre. i'm too old for this.

susan, thank you very very much, susan li, following all those developments. by the way we're getting word out of the u.s. treasury secretary janet yellen working with labor secretary walsh that they want to take some of the funds from the american rescue plan and utilize them to prolong unemployment benefit beyond their september deadline. now you might recall a number of states have already cut short those extended benefits. this seems to be an attempt to run around that, mitch roschelle joins us macro trends advisors founding partner. mitch what do you think of this? >> um, just when we thought it was safe to get people back to work, this curve ball. listen, neil, there were three reasons that were widely cited by proponents of that supplement al $300 keeping people out of the workplace. one was perhaps that supplementa l benefit and the second was health concerns in the workplace and the third

was child care concerns. well, child care concerns are thrown, you know, for a wiz right now, because we have schools maybe opening, maybe not opening, and then we have workplaces not fully opened. i couldn't imagine something more disruptive right now to the labor markets that literally was banking on that benefit disappearing, with labor shortages "coast to coast", so i think it's bad policy, which is going to be bad outcome in the long run. neil: it flies in the face of the administration since the recovery is on the boom is back, america's back and then you're saying yeah but we're still going to provide an extensive amount of unemployment benefits. it sends a different message, doesn't it? >> yeah, it does, and it creates a adverse, if not perverse incentive. you're incentivized not to seek work, today's weekly jobless claims number was a great number it looks like people are actually looking at that looming deadline of september 6 and saying maybe i've got to get off

my butt and get back to work and finding jobs because there's 9 million of them out there, so i couldn't imagine doing this. i don't know if it's just posturing, but it's real, again, it's really really bad policy. neil: mitch, you know, the whole afghan thing is blowing up before our eyes here and already , when democrats are calling for hearings into it, you know it's going to gain some traction and investigations and attention for a while, but i'm taking the next leap from that. is he going to delay this infrastructure vote, whether the house taking up the bipartisan $1 trillion plus package or that huge monster, the human infrastructure one nor the 3.5 trillion in other words it pushes them back and potentially the $3.5 trillion one which is of interest to a lot of investors and those who watch the show with the tax increases and all that, is that now more a 2022 event than a

2021 event? >> i think it's likely a 2022 event. look at how thin the margins are there's a vice president voting when there's a tie margin in the senate and there's a handful of vote differential in the house, and i think when the house starts adding their pet projects to that bill, when it gets the first bill that is, i think it's going to be tough s ledding, and i think looking deeply into what happened in afghanistan probably is a bipartisan venture, so i think congress is going to be tied up. this is a major distraction for the administration that had a legislative agenda that could be sliding sideways. neil: all right, mitch, see you in a little bit. thank you for your guidance on this , in the meantime the dow down about 38 points right now. when we come back it's not just president biden is taking heat over the collapse of afghanistan a number of foreign leaders are as well. after this.

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>> when the situation is dire, we have 72 hours and they have been unable to breach the perimeter around the airport and we've had u.s. people in the airport anticipating their arrival, and it is just impossible. neil: all right, that former hostage is correct. it's the taliban calling shots. sometimes with a very real shots at that perimeter setup around the kabul airport, and that is a little distressing to put it mildly because they will decide who gets in but more importantly who stays out, peter doocy with the read from the white house. peter? reporter: well what we're hear ing right now, neil, is that president biden is claiming that these stories that have come out about him ignoring military leaders who are maybe telling him to drawdown differently are

not true. >> they wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops. no they didn't, it was split. that wasn't true. that wasn't true. >> they didn't tell you they wanted troops to stay? >> no, not in terms of whether we were going to get out in a timeframe all troops. they didn't argue against that. reporter: president biden says he's been getting daily briefings about afghanistan before kabul fell and he claims something different than last month. he says he saw this coming. >> go back in hindsight and look, but the idea that somehow there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, i don't know how that happens. i don't know how that happened. >> so for you that was always priced into the decision? >> yes. reporter: that statement is in conflict with what the president told us last month. >> the taliban takeover of afghanistan now inevitable? >> no. it is not. >> why?

>> because you have the afghan troops have 300,000. reporter: president biden also said that day, he does not trust the taliban, but now he is trusting the taliban to ensure americans safe passage, and he only wants troops to stay in afghanistan past his end of august pullout deadline, if it takes that long to evacuate all the stranded americans. >> depends on where we are and whether we can ramp these number s up to five to 7,000 a day coming out. if that's the case, they'll all be out. >> because you've got like 10- 15,000 americans in the country right now, right? and are you committed to making sure that the troops stay until every american who wants to be out is out? >> yes. reporter: and the white house is doing something they don't normally do today, neil. there is no presidential event on the schedule. there's no press briefing on the schedule but they are sending us repeated updates, they are having a briefing at the pentagon, watch it this time

they are having a briefing at the state department, watch it that time, so they want it to seem like there is an administration-wide effort, but all quiet here at 1600, neil neil: that's the commander-in-chief, all right peter doocy thank you very much. if it was a failure of intelligence, did the president chairman of joint chiefs of staff again mall mark milley say it's the fault of the intelligence community? listen to this. >> following our departure, there was nothing that i or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days. neil: all right, john hannah the former national security advisor to vice president dick cheney i think that's called throwing the intelligence community under the bus, but what did you make of that? >> yeah, i think we've gotten into a ridiculous degree of parsing, intelligence at the end

of the day, neil, is not a science, so whether it was 10 days or 100 days, i know that there were people in the intelligence community who followed afghanistan closely, who were saying that a taliban takeover was only a matter of time, probably months, maybe not 10 days, but this was written as they say as soon as biden announced in april that we were getting out and abandoning the afghans to fight this on their own. neil: i can't imagine how there would have been a pretty robust debate on this issue, but you're closer to that in the past than i ever have been, or ever be , but i am curious on about even if it were so that the intelligence was not out there, why con found the insult to a group of people whose job

it is and their office, you know , workers and doing this yo then's work to try to pull together some intelligence on what is a very difficult area to get intelligence on. why not just take the blame and the responsibility if you're going to say the buck stops with you, that means not passing it to others. >> yeah, i hate to call you naive, neil, but this is washington, and the blame game is a blood sport, as most people know, and the stakes here are so high, this is genuinely a world historic event that collapse of american power and the american project in afghanistan, and nobody wants to be left holding this ball. i would have had some hope that president biden at 78 or 79

years old at the end of his career would have been courageous enough as a politician to say hey, the way we went about this was wrong. we've made some mistakes, they belong to me, but from here on in i'm going to get this right and get our people and those who have fought and died alongside of us out of afghanistan safely. that, i can assure you, but unfortunately, president biden hasn't even shown that kind of leadership. neil: i am wondering, the fact that these disagreements and challenges to the president's timeline of events and who said what when they're leaking out for a reason. i think the people are maybe a little annoyed that they have been blamed for this or that none of this ever came up, and that's the kind of stuff that happens, when these leaks appear , people want to get their side out, even if they are staying anonymous.

i'm just wondering, where does this go, because obviously, this is not done, we still got 50-65,000 people we want to get out of there. there's no way that's going to happen the way things stand now, right? >> yeah, with the taliban now in total control of who goes in and out, the united states is essentially at the mercy of whatever negotiation is now going on with the taliban. what is the taliban price for allowing the united states to get out of this mess relatively unscathed? what do they want? how many billions of dollars of pallets of cash do they need flown into the country? how many al qaeda prisoners do they need released from guantanamo? i think all of that, unfortunately, is now on the table because we find ourselves completely at the mercy of this totalitarian

islamic fundamentalist movement whose victory people should have seen coming and should have started planning for on the day, april 14, that president biden announced he was getting out of dodge. neil: you know, john, you were remarkable yesterday when all of this was going down and the president just finished up his talk about booster shots and covid, patients and all of that, and not a word about this , and i'm just wondering, on top of that, we now have word from the president' defense secretary that that perimeter, that's the means by which people will get through to get on planes and get out of afghanistan, but we are not the ones going to that perimeter, in other words there's no plans for the time being for us to try to penetrate that, cross that, go into kabul and get more people, so that, i think, leaves the taliban deciding that, am i right about

that? >> yes, i think you're absolutely right, neil, with whatever force we'd now finally put on the ground to try and pursue this evacuation, five to 6,000 troops is not what it's going to take to secure, to engage the taliban mill militarily, secure a perimeter and secure a safe passage to that airport. i don't know exactly how many troops or how many brigades or a division it would take. i have no doubt the united states military could do this. we're the most powerful nation on earth, and the taliban should have that fear in the back of their minds. if they don't cooperate and make this happen, very quickly, on an american timetable, that they face hell to come from the united states. unfortunately, there's absolutely zero appetite in this administration for that. it's not going to happen, which means the taliban are calling all the shots, and they are essentially naming their price

for allowing the americans to get out with any degree of dignity out of this. neil: so tens of thousands of people potentially, americans and american friends and afghan allies, they're not going to be able to escape and it's likely that a lot of people are going to be killed. >> on the afghan side, there's no question, neil, that we are going to leave tens of thousands of people behind who hitched their lives to american power and credibility and our commitment to afghanistan. that's now gone. they're going to be left strand ed to make due on their own, and we already know that the taliban are drawing up lists of people that they're going to go and if they can't find them to extract punishment, they are going to start going after their families, so we saw this in

vietnam. the people left behind, how much people suffered, how many died, and vietnam, frankly, neil looks like a a plus operation of evacuation and taking care of the locals who helped us compar ed to what's now happening in afghanistan. neil: john hannah, thank you very much, former national security advisor to vice president dick cheney again on that vietnam comparison the president consistently said this is not vietnam, not even close. he appears to be right. it's worse. we'll have more, after this. as someone who resembles someone else... i appreciate that liberty mutual knows everyone's unique. that's why they customize your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. [ nautical horn blows ] i mean just because you look like someone else doesn't mean you eat off the floor, or yell at the vacuum, or need flea medication. oh, yeah. that's the spot.

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into weather crisis literally close to coast, particularly in north carolina and fires still out of control out in california , and much of the west let's first go to north carolina , steve harrigan on looking for those who are still

missing in serious flooding there. steve? reporter: that's right, neil. many of these people missing since tuesday, at least 20 people still missing, and officials say they hope to find many of those , right now the confirmed death is at two and carried out 100 rescues already some of those recuses by helicopter, others by high water vehicle and the problem is in the wake of this tropical storm fred it dumped about 12 inches of rain here, in three days. many people tried to reach higher ground by their vehicles, the problem was the water rose so fast, in some cases those vehicles were swept away and other problem created by the flooding here is that roads and bridges were washed out, and that's really left some people stranded. >> how am i going to get home, what about the people stuck on the other side? the school bus, with children on it, and they had to bring the fire trucks out here and the buckets to bring the children back over, and

their parent, and you have to worry about what they're thinking and how they're focusing and functioning and whose lost homes, loss of lives, understand 30 people are missing , and we're fortunate, we're fortunate. reporter: while the suns out now trying to clean-up what they can here, many of these houses will simply have to be gutted. we talked to one owner over there. he said he had fish in his house , he's getting ready to cut the drywall this afternoon. neil, back to you. neil: incredible steve harrigan thank you very much, let's hop across the other side of the country, claudia cowen taking a look right now at some fires still burning out of control. claudia? reporter: neil, northern california's wildfire season is just relentless, with three big fires burning down dozens of homes in just the last 48 hours. we're at the staging area for the fast moving calder fire

which started on tuesday and quickly has grown to more than 62000-acres. it tore through the mountain community of grizzly flats taking out 86 structures including a school and the post office, and injuring at least two people. fire crews are now working to protect the towns of pollach pines half way between sacramento and lake tahoe, 23,000 residents in the fire zone are under evacuation orders. meantime the cash fire in lake county broke out yesterday, burned 80-acres and basically leveled two mobile home parks, 1,300 people had to pack up and go there, while to the north, the massive dixie fire has now grown to more than 66 5,000 acre s, an area almost the size of rhode island, fueled by high winds and extremely dry vegitation, but after burning for more than a month, contain ment on this stubborn wildfire is slowly increasing, it is now 35% contained. back here at the calder fire

some 600 firefighters are getting a much needed break from mother nature, for days thick brown smoke hampered the firefight from the air but visibility is improving and a massive era sexual assault is underway, helicopters are dropping as much water as possible to try to stop the forward progress of this fire and get some contain ment on it. neil, the calder fire is 0% contained and continues to threaten thousands of homes. back to you. neil: just surreal, even looks surreal. claudia thank you very very much , claudia cowen on that. the latest reminder from some prominent democrats, relax, we are only going after the rich. you've heard that on tax hikes, now a separate plan to target ir a', what they say only target those with a whole lot of money in them. really? after this. that spin class was brutal. well, you can try using the buick's massaging seat.

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it's wireless so good, it keeps one upping itself. neil: all right, we're only going after the rich. that has been the montra of democrats saying only those earning more than $400,000 a year are going to be targeted with tax hikes to pay for a whole bunch of goodies but now that is extending apparently to those who have big ira accounts north of $5 million or

something like that gerri willis has been following this very very closely almost gone unnoticed but you don't get past gerri without her catching this sort of stuff. what are they talking about here , gerri? gerri: a lot. they're talking about dipping in , possibly, to your irs. look, democrat neil, are looking to limit ira accounts as they search for funding for that $3.5 trillion budget bill, right experts say the middle class could get stung right in the retirement account. listen. >> the money the employer puts in the money and if something that you have saved and earned, it is a lateral transfer because it's taking money from 401 (k) and then recycling that through government to pay for other programs. gerri: data the 2019 tax year shows that 497 taxpayers have 25 million or more in aggregate ira balances, most notably, pala ntier and pay pal

founder peter thiel at 5 billion his roth ira coming to light recently and democrats say wealthy americans are abusing a vehicle intended for regular americans who have retirement savings but their prescription would hurt the very hard working americans who have ira's of just 5 million. not 5 billion, 5 million so how would this work? currently roth owners are not required to take minimum distributions, that's taxes on roth are currently paid upfront, not when the money is withdrawn, so the government takes the taxes right away and your money is allowed to grow tax- free for decades, but in the new proposal, congress could impose required minimum distributions on roths', roth ira's or include roth ira distributions and modified adjusted gross income with calculating taxes on social security benefits, or the medicare premium sur tax, ouch, targeting ira's is unfair because it leaves one class of

worker out of the conversation, some public sector workers, the value, for example, of a retiring police chief's pension can easily amount to $10 million now, changes in the roth would likely reverberate through 401 (k) and other retirement vehicles, that is, forcing some folks possibly out of stocks and bonds, this could ultimately destabilize markets. he says look if the value of your account is pushing that 5 million threshold, you need to pull it all back. back to you, neil. neil: incredible. looking for money, anyway they can, gerri willis thank you very much, mitch roschelle, that's what's going on here, it seems this is the latest attempt to say all right, we got to get money from somewhere, this seems an ample target what do you think? i think we're having some audio difficulty. if we can fix that, just want to outline some of the other things

mitch are you okay right now? go ahead, mitch. >> i think it's fixed, yup. i said gerri nailed it. the problem has been policy makers look at the mega rich. they often see the peter thiel's that put their investment in a startup in their ira and potentially make all that money tax-free. the reality is when they try to pull that money out they pay taxes on it so it's not like it's tax free forever and they create a policy that ends up hurting the police chiefs who has a pension that has a value of $10 million. i think if they looked at their own government pensions, they probably realize that they all fall, all 435 members of congress would fall into every category that they're looking to penalize. neil: nevertheless, you hear more of this creative stuff going on with trying to get money without directly raising taxes on those who earn, you know, less than 400 grand a year. they obviously have sized up the numbers especially on a

$3.5 trillion plan and they know the math doesn't cut it. >> no, that's the problem, and president biden, you know, routinely said only the rich will pay more taxes and if you make more than $400,000 you're not going to pay a penny more in taxes and when they started doing the math they realize they are going to come nowhere close to paying for a trillion dollars or $4.5 trillion so they are looking, literally, looking for coins in sofa cushions, and none of these policies when you think about them, that trickle down effect, they are going to end up hurting the very people that the president swore he wouldn't tax. neil: all right, still early in the going but we're going to follow it mitch thank you very much, mitch roschelle, there is growing talk as well of us getting to that $3.5 trillion infrastructure package, the big one, the human infrastructure package might be pushed back now because of things like afghanistan and special hearings and the rest, so you might delay the tax man, but that does not mean you cancel him.

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stocks are getting hit. oil down again today, sixth straight day now at its lowest price since back in may. again the markets seem to be reading a slowdown in the economy, the rough you know, coming out of this pandemic and one step forward, another step back, openings delayed, restrictions that are increasing be that as it may the demand for precious crude not as much as it was. now to charles payne. hey, charles. charles: neil, wasn't long ago we were talking about 80-dollar oil. remember how that changes? neil: yeah. charles: i'm charles payne. this is making morning any, breaking at this moment, folks, taper tantrum was loud crescendo of wall street whining and goldman dramatically lowered third quarter estimates sighting delta variant and those cases. this is a conundrum for the fed but allows them to keep the punch