out to be a much tougher year for it. jack: all right. viewer, you have been warned, carlton of, ben, jack, thanks for the warnings. don't forget to follow us on twitter at barron's online. that's all for us. merry christmas. we'll see you next week on barron's round table. ♪ from the fox studios in new york city, this is maria bartiromo's wall street. maria: hello and merry christmas to all. well come to the program that analyzes the week the that was and helps position you for the week ahead. i'm maria bartiromo. more major market moves in the abbreviated trading week this week, driven by easing fears over the omicron variant and higher consumer confidence. mark matson is here on where we go from here. plus, are you better off now than you were a year ago under president trump? the white house says you are,

especially after they say they have fixed supply chain issues and they saved christmas. house ways and means ranking member, kevin brady, will respond. the biden administration has been accused of abuse at the southern border. i'll speak with texas attorney general ken paxton about a new lawsuit and his fight against the president's vaccine mandate. let's take a look at some the top news makers in maria bartiromo in this edition of the week's talkers. watch. maria: what do you think about crypto? >> look, i want a currency called the dollar. i don't want to have all these others and that could be an explosion some day, the likes of which we've never seen. i think it's a very dangerous thing. maria: what has all of these acquisitions done? tell me about the growth that you are expecting at fat brands in the coming year or two. >> we've grown in the last two years by 600%. we bought johnnie rockets in the middle of the pandemic, before

there was a vaccine. that was a big acquisition. had that doubled the size of the company about 18 months ago. maria: do you think we're going to see this build back better plan reemerge? >> i think the bill that passed the house is dead. there's a good possibility that there's going to be conversations, negotiations, and potentially a new bill. maria: and here's a look at where the markets ended this holiday shortened week. we got better than expected news on consumer confidence, rising to the highest level since july. of course, inflation is looming large. joining me now is matson money founder and ceo, mark matson. great to have you. merry christmas. thank you for being here. what's your take on the markets in 2022? would you put new money to work today? >> well, i always love the markets. i love them long-term. i always instruct investors for the equity part of your

portfolio stay diversified. you've got to have small stocks, you have to have value stocks. maria, what's worrying me really now is inflation, for investors that have fixed income because they're doing things that are very destructive and dangerous. you have people buying long-term bonds which are highly volatile. and the worst of all probably is gold followed up by bitcoin. bitcoin has very low intrinsic value, extremely volatile, it's like going to vegas. you're trying to offset volatility in two or three percent increased inflation with massive 30 or 40% swings in investments, very, very dangerous for investors right now. maria: yeah. it's interesting, because president trump when i asked him about bitcoin he said it's a very dangerous thing. could this be one of the issues that unwinds capital markets in

2022? we've got the federal reserve saying they're going to raise rates three times. we've got the potential of joe biden getting in his high tax plan and then of course the story around bitcoin. >> yeah, you know, it's hard to he predict specific timing on these things but consider when you buy a stock, you actually own a company. when you buy a bond, you actually own a stake on the income from the company and for federal currency for the dollar, you have the taxation of the people that work in the country. in bitcoin, there is no there there. so it's really pt barnum. there's a sucker born every minute and investors should really be weary about putting money in that, especially money they need for their retirement and their american dream and they have to stress test their portfolio. when i say stress test, what i'm saying is if and when there is a crash, based on the standard volatility of your portfolio, the standard deviation, how much could you lose in a two or

three-year period, very critical because investors become somewhat feeling bulletproof over the last 10 years. maria: mark, the economy is not bulletproof. earlier in the year we were talking about 6% growth toward year end. in fact, the gdp for the fourth quarter 2.6%, way down from 26% growth number in the second quarter. what's your take on the mack he crow story in 2022? >> well, dr. art laffer who engineered the reagan recovery, i get to talk with him frequently and he'll tell you this, that we have to get the participation a rate of the economy up. we have 11 million jobs, approximately, that are unfilled where people won't go back to work. so we've got to get this economy going. look, it's not going to be the government. it's not going to be build back better. it's not going to be any of these socialist green programs. it's going to be the

entrepreneur and the government has to get the boot off the throat of the entrepreneur and the small business person. don't make them into police to protect from covid. they're not police, they're not doctors. they're not qualified to do any of this. allow entrepreneurs to be innovators, that will get us out of this and help inflation go back to normal rates. maria: mark matson joining us you. thank you so much. have a good rest of the year. so are you better off than you were just a year ago? the white house says you are. i'll be asking congressman kevin brady about that when we come back. ♪ ♪ remember when no dream was too big? ♪ ♪ and you could fearlessly face the unknown. (kids playing) you still can. ♪ ♪ (blowing dust) when you have a rock you can depend on for life, you'll be unstoppable. that's why over 5,500 companies rely on prudential's retirement

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at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner with access to financial advice, tools and a personalized plan that helps you build a future for those you love. vanguard. become an owner. maria: welcome back. so are you better off today than you were last year under president trump? the white house says you are. this according to a year-end memo obtained by axios. the biden administration is sending this letter to democrat lawmakers and supporters and it reads this, in part. in spite of unprecedented crises and opposition from congressional republicans,

president biden, vice president harris and congressional democrats got an enormous amount done for the american people in 2021. there was also no mention of issues like the recent increase in the number of covid cases, the botched afghanistan withdrawal which caused 13 service members to lose their lives or soaring inflation. but does the claim -- they do claim that they fixed the supply chain issues and we heard them say had they saved christmas by doing so. joining us now is house ways and means ranking member, kevin brady. great to see you. merry christmas to you. >> thank you. merry christmas. maria: what a do you make of the letter that the white house is sending to supporters that people are better off today than they were a year ago under president trump? >> yeah, in what world are they living in? truth of the matter is, they cited unprecedented crises. by the way, the ones they created, whether it's on the border, on inflation, internationally, in the crime

issues, most americans by the way feel they're worse off this year than last year and their pessimism going forward, whether you're a working family facing 40-year highs in prices or you're a small business, which new surveys show they're about as pessimistic about the next year as they've been in 48 years. the truth of the matter is, americans have lost any confidence that this president is competent to lead this country and heal the economy. maria: yeah, it's a very hard argument to make, particularly as we watch these fox business polls he show an increasing number of people are disapproving of this be president's perform man's. we dill -- performance. we still don't know what kamala harris has been doing either. >> we don't. what we do know is she hasn't bothered to do anything on the border. we saw 100,000 some encounters in november on the border. we're seeing in cities like

houston record levels of homicide as we've seen around the country. certainly on the economic front, this president bungled a very strong economy he inherited from president trump in what you've seen both in inflation and the labor crisis, labor shortage. frankly, these are president biden's policies driving all of this. maria: yeah. it's incredible. let's talk about the year ahead because joe biden says he hasn't given up on the build back better plan, progressives are now putting pressure on biden to act on his own to push through you this far left agenda using executive action. do you think this is what is going to materialize in the year ahead? and walk us through what kind of hefty tax increases americans may face should they get this through. >> i think this really worries me, maria. i know there's a lot of discussion about the spending side of this and joe manchin is rightly worried about this real truly $5 trillion cost of the bill, what it does to inflation,

some of the far left policies that shouldn't become law, he's rightly focused on that but i'm focused too on the tax increases and on the provisions that make the labor shortage worse. certainly when you add $1.2 trillion of tax hikes on america's job creators and do it in a way where you drive u.s. jobs overseas, where you discourage investment here in the united states, where you hammer small businesses with about $400 billion of tax hikes, all as we're trying to recover from this pandemic economy, it just makes no economic sense at all and they've got a couple provisions in there, maria, that will make the labor shortage worse including the child tax credit which is no longer tethered to earnings or work. this is the first time this has happened. experts predict it could drive a million and-a-half workers to exit the workforce and they have of course this new toddler tax

where their child care area, their provisions in build back better will double the price of child care. but only subsidize a few. so an average family with two kids in child care could pay an extra $27,000 a year. that too will discourage people from reconnecting to work. maria: so in other words, this is going to lead to more people wanting to stay off the job. congressman, nobody knows policy like you. you wrote the tax cuts of 2017 and as a result of those tax cuts, we actually saw the bottom earners see the biggest wage increases over everybody. so what can you tell us about the likelihood that they're going to be able to get this through in some form in the new year? >> yes. so at the end of the day, this bill is as alive or dead as senator joe manchin makes it to be. the question is, are they listening to what he is saying and will they respond to it.

if they do, they face another obstacle can which is will progressives accept this. the truth of the matter is, their obstacle isn't joe manchin, their obstacle is their extreme socialist agenda that america is not buying and joe manchin isn't buying and so i think they face several big barriers here in the new year and frankly every month this lingers i think the better shot we have of defeating it. maria: congressman, real quick. what do you think the motivation for all of this is, socialism, wide open borders, 600,000 got-aways, inflation at a 40 of-year high. what's the motivation? why pushthis downs' people's th? >> part of this is incompetence, the president and the administration doesn't understand the economy, doesn't understand tax code. this -- this is sort of a replay of obama, biden where they bungled the economy as well. on open borders, clearly they

think it helps them politically to pursue this. as we know in texas, as we see hispanic working families turn against democrats because of these policies, i think it will hurt them even more. i think bottom line is, this is about control. democrats in washington right now especially led by the president and nancy pelosi want to have control of every moment of your life, from cradle to grave. they think the government can do this better than you and all these policies reflect it. maria: my thanks to congressman kevin brady. we will take a break. when we come back, remember these pictures, the tens of thousands of haitian migrants that rushed our southern border. now many of them are filing a lawsuit against the u.s. i'll be speaking with texas attorney general ken paxton about this and his fight against the federal vaccine mandate. that's next.

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maria: welcome back. a group of haitian migrants who illegally crossed into texas earlier this year are now suing the country, filing a class action lawsuit against the biden administration over alleged mistreatment. the filing says the administration failed to prepare for the surge of migrants, he despite knowing of their imminent arrival. i spoke with texas attorney general ken paxton. here's how he responded. >> it seems pretty ridiculous that a lawsuit could be filed over illegal immigrants being treated supposedly in a way that they're not satisfied with. it just seems ludicrous. but, look, the entire border situation is ludicrous and yet here we are every day dealing with a crisis that just goes on and on because the biden administration doesn't face reality or doesn't care about reality. maria: well, maybe, you know,

since the administration started floating this idea that they were actually considering paying $450,000 per head to illegals who were separated at the border, maybe that gave these haitians an idea that maybe they could suck some money out of this administration. >> you know, that's not -- that would not surprise me at all, this idea that we're going to give them $450,000 a person, maybe up to a million dollars a family, was clearly floated several months ago. i don't think it went anywhere because people reacted so negatively to it. the reality is, there was an expectation created by that and maybe they're angry about that and they're trying the to get their pound of flesh. maria: so what an incredible situation at the border that you have been fighting. the department of homeland security announced that now it will close unfinished construction gaps along the southern border wall in california, arizona an texas, ag. dhs says it's going to use congressional funding to

complete the building but will not construct any additional parts of the wall. this of course after you and your colleagues, governor abbott, was steadfast in putting state funding behind finishing any walls that were on state property that he could, that of course we saw the pictures of it last weekend. your thoughts on now what dhs is doing? >> well, i think you've seen the wall many times. i've been there with you and you've seen the gaps. it's ridiculous. they built walls and they left gaps. the biden administration refused to close those gaps. i think this is a reaction to the lawsuit that eric schmitt from missouri and i filed about forcing the biden administration to use appropriated funds for what they were appropriated for which was the wall n have not done that. they refused to do it. they wasted money on contractors not building the wall. i think this is their narrative to the court, we are doing

something. we're going to do access roads, drainage, we're going to fill gaps and fix fences. it's not fulfilling the purpose that congress appropriated the funds for. i think this is an end run around that court case that we have with the biden administration over actually building the wall. maria: what are we talking about in terms of the cost? is this $100 million worth of equipment that they're not going to use? >> yeah, i think it's hundreds of millions of dollars and they say they're going to throw it out. we would love to have that material for our wall. i'm sure they won't help us. they've done everything had they can to evade actually stopping illegal immigration, they've done everything they can to encourage it. if they're offering money for people to come, you know you're incentivizing it. they've been incentivizing it since day one. it's incredibly frustrating and damaging considering what you saw on the border with ranchers dealing with property damage, fentanyl deaths are up in this country as a result of this and of course covid is being spread at a massive rate because we

don't vaccinate these people and we don't test them. maria: how ridiculous is it that we don't test anybody or vaccinate anybody at the border? meanwhile, yesterday president biden is there trying to make believe he's fighting this. meanwhile, it's wide open at the border. you say you're going to take this fight against the administration's federal vaccine mandate for large businesses right to the supreme court. the president yesterday commented on his vaccine mandates which have been called unconstitutional over and over again. watch this. >> i know vaccination requirements are unpopular for many, they're not even popular for those who are anxious to get them. my administration has put them in place not to control your life, but to save your life. and the lives of others. it is going to save thousands of american lives. maria: ken, your reaction? >> well, if he wants to save thousands of american lives, why don't we start at the border

where it's pretty easy, where we keep people from coming in that have covid, at the very least vaccinate them and test them. so that makes no sense to me that he wants to save american lives. the reality is, we've already applied to the supreme court on this issue. i think we're going to be successful. i don't see how the president can have authority to do this especially when he's letting what is happening at the border happen. how can easy enforce a vacation seen mandate where he forces -- vaccine mandate where he forces people to lose their jobs. maria: the drugs are incredible, the illicit narcotics coming into the country. what is the latest on fentanyl? i know there was one seizure seizing enough fentanyl to kill 200 million americans a couple weeks ago, ag. >> well, this is so sad and so frustrating to me because we already know and the biden administration knows they've empowered the cartels to move drugs across the border and they don't seem to care and as the

numbers have gone up, i think it's over 100,000 overdose, record numbers of people dying and yet we're allowing the border patrol to be pushed aside and their focus is on logistics and moving people around as opposed to preventing illegal drug trade. maria: unbelievable, the amount of fentanyl coming into this country, killing our people. we are certainly going to be watching this development in the year ahead. my thanks to techs as ag, ken packs -- texas we love our new home. lots of windows, great light- but the birds. they're back. yes, i hear them. uh-oh. why are these birds so angry?! at least geico makes bundling our home and car insurance easy. we save a lot. i'm going...i'm going. aaaahh! hurry, hurry! i know, i know! for bundling made easy, go to geico.com.

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maria: welcome back. we've got another big show in the works for next weekend. make sure you tune in next friday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern and big news to share, we have a brand-new time in the new year. wall street will be moving to 7:00 p.m., beginning on january 7th. join us then and every friday night at 7:00 p.m. on maria bartiromo's wall street in the new year. plus, start smart on fox

business every weekday from 6:0r "mornings with maria." we hope you'll start your day with us every weekday, "mornings with maria" is live from 6:00 to 9:00 weekdays. that will do it for us, from all of us to you and your family, have a very merry christmas. thank you so much for joining us. i'll see you again next time. ♪ hello, welcome to the wall street journal at large. merry christmas and festive greetings to one and all. and we certainly need cheer this year. if you'll forgive us, we thought we would take the risk of spoiling your holiday by spending this week's show taking a look back at 2021. it's not exactly a seasonal story of hope and joy. most of the items that joe biden