p.m. dagen: maybe. gentlemen always a pleasure. joe pinion come back more often, mitch roschelle, enjoy florida as my in law grandparents used to say, florida. mitch, joe, pleasure. "varney" & company is up right now. lauren simonetti is in in for stu. lauren? lauren: hi, good morning, dagen. good to see you. hi, everybody. i'm lauren simonetti in for stuary varney. five more classified documents have been found at president biden's residence in wilmington, delaware. that makes it four different occasions that documents have been discovered. one in november, right before the mid-terms. more in december, and now, twice last week, and as stu called it last week, the democrats are starting to turn on the president. some democrats calling it embarrassing and troubling, but what's in these documents? was national security jeopardiz ed and why won't the white house release the visitor's login wilmington,

we're on it. new york cities mayor calling out the administration over the border crisis. adams travel to texas over the weekend to get a first-hand look and let's just say, his visit was a lot more eye opening than president biden's just days prior. the markets are closed today, in honor of martin luther king jr. day. we will pay tribute to his legacy throughout the morning. back on wall street, it's a big week for earnings, and for economic data plus treasury secretary janet yellen warns we could hit the debt ceiling this thursday. it is monday, january 16, 2023. happy martin luther king jr. day "varney" & company about to begin. ♪ lauren: and the song is maybe " you're the problem" as your classified documents have been

found at president biden's home in delaware. its been a, he's laughing charlie hurt, on the set here. he has been this drip of information, making it harder for the public to trust what they're hearing. let's refresh. we have a timeline. one week ago today, monday, january 9, the news of the classified documents found in november at the biden think tank breaks. two days later, wednesday the 11th one more document is found. now at biden's wilmington home and by his personal lawyers. thursday, the 12th, five more documents but we're not done. on saturday, even more documents , the president's lawyer says, "because i have a security clearance, i went to wilmington thursday evening to facilitate providing the document the president's personal counsel found on wednesday to the justice department. while i was transferring it to the doj officials who accompanied me, five additional pages, with classification markings, were discovered among the material with it" for a

total of six pages. the doj with me immediately took possession of them. what's troubling here is why weren't we told sooner and why did the president's team say, i counted, six times back on thursday that the search for the classified documents was complete. >> is the president, you said that the search has been completed but is the president confident there are no additional documents with classified markings that remain in any other additional locations? >> look, i can just refer you to what his team said. the search is complete. he is confident in this process, and i will leave it there, and they have been cooperating very closely with the department of justice. lauren: all right we don't know what's in these documents or if all of the biden lawyers searching for them had security clearances, or why didn't the fbi conduct the searches? but we have answers coming from charlie hurt who has some of those answers but before we get to you, charlie, i want you to look at what the head of the house oversight committee, james comer, has to say about these documents and this was in

a letter to ron klain. "given the serious national security implications, the white house must provide the wilmington residence's visitor log, as chief of staff, you are head of the executive office of the president and bear responsibility to be transparent with the american people on these important issues related to the white house's handling of the matter. aforementioned charlie hurt is here. are we getting answers from the white house? >> i don't know it's hard to say but i mean there's so many questions here. the most important one is the one that you laid out which is who gets to send their lawyer to conduct the search of the premesis? it's by their own admission. it's a crime scene. the only people that should be doing the search is the fbi. now, i get it. you know, we could have a huge discussion about the over classification of documents and how serious all of this is, but the bottom line is the department of justice set the standard for how seriously they take this stuff when they raided the president's house at

mar-a-lago and one of the arguments that biden defenders say is well president immediately returned all of the documents. lauren: cooperating. >> well of course he did. he has no excuse. he had no choice. in the case of president trump, president trump had a constitutional argument to make that he had possession, that he had rightful possession of those documents. joe biden stole the documents from the obama administration and kept them for six years. we don't nowhere they have been and whose seen them. lauren: just quickly now that his own attorneys are facilitat ing this can they claim attorney-client privilege? >> i'm sure. why else do you hire a lawyer? lauren: a shield. msnbc chuck todd thinks merrick garland who could have had a major impact on the 2024 election. i think what in the short-term means that the most powerful person in deciding what our presidential race looks like in

2024 is merrick garland. the decisions he's going to be making here, going forward about whether or not to prosecute trump, whether to prosecute hunter biden, things like that, are going to have huge impacts on joe biden. a week ago? he looked like truly not only the leader of the democratic party but the leader the democrats want as leader of their party. lauren: i think he's right. do you? >> yes, and sadly, this is the way washington has worked. politics worked for the last, you know, five years or so. the department of justice inserts itself into politics we now know that the most important thing for doj is inserting themselves into these elections and i think it's very dangerous and it's not the way free politics should be conduct ed. lauren: it's kind of crazy when you think about it though that the potential 2024 contenders, donald trump and potentially biden are both being investigated. >> well somebody suggested that if you put them both in jail, they could have like a prison

fight and we could figure out who our next president is that way. lauren: charlie, thank you very much. >> great to see you. lauren: treasury secretary janet yellen is warning about the u.s. approaching its debt limit. warning that we're going to hit it on friday. she's asking congress to raise it as soon as possible, warning the government could become unable to pay its bills after early june. she wrote a letter to congressional leadership and she warns that failing to raise the limit would mean stopping investment into two retirement funds for federal employees. the rub is part of kevin mccarthy's battle to become house speaker involved only raising the debt ceiling if accompanied by spending cuts. the white house says they're not negotiating on the debt ceiling and that could trigger a motion to vacate speaker mccarthy. jeff sica is here. good to see you. wall street is closed today for the holiday but we have earnings from some of the biggest banks coming tomorrow. especially what did you learn from the past reports from friday and what do you expect for tuesday? >> well, i mean, last week,

everybody was jovial over the bank earnings and i had said a while ago that i anticipated the bank earnings be great and they were okay. they were good, because nobody could deny the fact that banks make more money when they pay you less on deposits than what they charge in interest on loans , so their margins are improving so they were good, but what i look at, what people failed to look at. i found the analysts for the banks were very very lazy, because they were not looking under the surface. they were not looking at the fact that americans are essentially living paycheck-to- paycheck. you look at those credit card numbers up 15% last quarter. you look at the fact that wells fargo, my prior company, wells fargo is -- they wanted 40-50% of the market share in residential mortgages. they are backing off of that now they are saying that they no

longer want, they no longer want to do mortgages for anyone except certain buyers and people who are clients of wells fargo, so they're anticipating a very challenging environment and that's what i heard from the banks last week. they were all warning on recession. their numbers were good, but there was a lot of cautious talk which i will find very concerning. lauren: cautious talk, jamie dimon of jpmorgan was talking about a headwind being auto loans, right? we're constantly doing reports that you're in the market for a new car. you can't get a car with a monthly payment under $1,000. now people, because they are living paycheck-to-paycheck as you say, can't make that $ $1,000 a month payment. >> you look at the savings rate the savings rate now is significantly lower than it was in 2008. about 30% lower, so if we go into a recession with high credit card debt, among the highest in history, with low

savings rates, that means the consumer does not have the ability to sustain themselves through an economic downturn. lauren: but they have a job, jeff. >> the labor market remains strong wages have been stagnant as you know, lauren. wages are not keeping up with inflation but the labor market has been the one shining light in this economy. lauren: brian moinahan says he sees unemployment going 5.5. >> yeah, because that's what the fed wants. jay powell wants higher unemployment so when you see the labor market doing as well as it is, you know that he, if he wants inflation at 2%, he is going to be the petulent two-year-old and hit the economy until it breaks. lauren: because he can't make another bad call. they were late and wrong on the game with inflation being temporary, being transient, and now they have to damage the economy in order to fix it. of all of the economic and earnings reports we're getting this week, what is the most

important to you? >> well, i mean, i think obviously, you know, we're looking at things like the housing market. i mean, i think a lot of those reports now, you know, that are more laggard are being factored in. i would say that we have the producer prices coming in, you know, particularly i'm concerned about that. if you look at what inflation, inflation is not only the fact that prices are going up. there's a lot to do with supply- demand scenario. we are not encouraging demand as much as we should be, so i want to see where we go with that, because again, the fed is anticipating to raise rates 25 basis points twice, so anything that shows any sign of weakness, the dilutional market players are going to say that the fed is going to pivot. i don't believe with all of my heart that the fed is going to

pivot. lauren: i don't either. jeff, thanks for coming in. especially on a holiday. are you going back to work or taking the day off? >> i think i have to work the rest of the day. someone has to do it. lauren: jeff, thank you. coming up the new chair of the house oversight james comer is speaking out about calling from new york congressman george santos to resign. >> he's a bad guy. this is something that, you know , it's really bad. he's not the first politician, unfortunately, to make it to congress to lie. lauren: so why don't they kick him out of congress? we're going to get into that and another round of classified documents were found in biden's possession. so it poses the question. did the president know about these documents? tom fitton will take that on. ♪ ♪

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sound bite, but i will continue what she said. she went on to defend president biden because, and this is the excuse that we're hearing, he's cooperating with authorities unlike president trump, so they're comparing apples-to-oranges and senator ted cruz is calling out the hypocrisy on how president biden's mishapped handling of classified documents is being handled tweeting out "full fbi raid happens when? " tom fitton joins me now. tom good to see you. is there a real reason president biden hasn't been investigated like the former president, president trump was? >> the justice department is partisan and ideological. they change the rules to target trump, and now they're doing their best to protect him from the consequences of the abuse of trump. you know, biden said these records for six years. the irony is that everything that they've used, that the

biden administration has used, all of the arguments they used to justify the targeting and abuse of trump applies to biden and all of the arguments they've used and we're hearing used to defend biden applies to trump, so you just can't have your cake and eat it too, or you know, but i guess it's washington so they will attempt to do it. in the end, both biden and both trump, in my view, under the presidential records act, should be given to what records they take with them. that's what the law says, but they didn't want to apply that to trump. we were back 10-12 years ago making all of the arguments we're hearing about what happened with trump. clinton had these records in his sock drawer after he left office they talk about his communications with foreign leaders. you've got to get a national archives. the national archives and the justice department and the courts told us nope, you can't second guess it. if he has them after he leaves office, they're his, but the rules were changed for trump and now, of course the rules

again are being changed for biden. when was he briefed on these records? did he know he had them? when? early november they found them. white house counsel was told, was biden told? why were they in three different locations? that suggests they were being used, not just stored but used. lauren: but let me ask you this. because now to prevent it from looking like there's a double standard do you think what's now going on with president biden helps president trump? >> well certainly makes it more difficult to target trump further but that's never stopped them before. i mean, they accused trump of being in league with russia and who was doing it? hillary clinton working with a russian agent it looks like. hillary clinton getting money from the russians through her husband and uranium and the smear was to target trump

and try to prosecute him so don't think that because there's a double standard they won't embrace it. in many ways it's a single standard, target trump at all costs. lauren: seems like that. tom congressman chris stuart, a republican from utah, now calling out this excuse that well president biden didn't know he had classified documents. i want you to watch this. >> every one of these documents , they have a cover sheet that's red. it says what the classification is and why it's classified. every single page has a classification marking on it. this isn't the kind of thing you just sit on your desk and think oh, i forgot they are classified it's very clear they are classified and for those who think that well, the president didn't realize that he had those in his possession, it just is nonsense. of course he knew he had them. they are so obvious. lauren: should biden get his eyes checked, tom? >> [laughter] you know, there's a big

presumption here, lauren. we're presuming these records were taken the way the trump records were. they were in trump's office and moved out. why is it we're presuming that here? it's unusual that they showed up in three different places. you know, did someone else take them? and who else had access to his office and was given special access to his office. lauren: over six years. >> yeah, and in the case of one document, one classified record reportedly was about ukraine and of course that just raises the whole hunter question. why were biden's lawyers looking for these records to begin with, or moving these records back in november? there are a lot of unanswered questions here and the biden administration's approach is the modified limited hangout. it's like they will tell you part of the story while withholding other parts of the story and the damage just gets worse and worse. i'll tell you, in the end, you were talking last segment about merrick garland. what a disaster that justice department has been. they broke the rules, changed

the rules to target trump and they should have known that the rules that they were now coming up with target trump applied to vice presidents, former vice presidents and former presidents. i tell you, if i'm clinton, well clinton should be worried, bush, or anyone else, i'm wondering are they going to come after me next because i've got records and they are now telling me i was never allowed to have to begin with. lauren: oh, wow, tom fitton, thank you for the time. >> you're welcome. lauren: some democrats are being asked about a probe being assigned to investigate president biden's mishandling of these documents and they are backing the special counsel appointed robert hur now probing the handling of those records. i want you to watch here. >> i'm glad that there is a special prosecutor that's been appointed. >> you are glad there's a special prosecutor tell me why? >> yes, because any time there is a deviance in regards to security protocols, that should be taken serious, it should be

investigated. >> classified documents are to be taken seriously and they are to be handled with a great deal of care and no one is above the law, so i'm glad to see the justice department doing its work and we'll let that work proceed. lauren: you just heard from senator raphael warnock saying this should be investigated. the difference between joe biden and donald trump's documents is no longer apples and oranges. it is a political department of justice as we've been discussing now investigating what is likely the top 2024 presidential contenders, and when attorney general merrick garland escalat ed the trump documents with a special counsel appointment, he had to do the same with biden or be accused of a double standard. coming up, the nation is honoring martin luther king jr. today and we're celebrating dr. king's legacy. we'll have more, right after this. ♪

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>> likewise. lauren: are you a buyer or if not when are you going to start really buying aggressively again >> well, that's an interesting question. you know, mike tyson has a saying about that. everybody has a plan until you get punched in the mouth, right? so i'm going to hope to buy consistently all the way through the first quarter because i think there's some rough patches in earnings but then i'm going to get on the gas coming into q 2 because that's when the fed is going to realize its been wrong and i want to get ahead o of that. lauren: okay, so aggressively buying in the second quarter is what you just said? >> yeah, that's, again, that's the plan, but you know if the fed pivots i don't think they will, and i think jeff sica , your earlier guest is spot on. i don't think they are going to but if they are backed into a corner and they might then you know what that's something to pay attention to. could change the plan. lauren: as you know a lot of people feel like they have been hit by mike tyson investing in the stock market including tesla investors, keith, but you say doesn't matter. you're going to still buy more? >> i am. you know, at least let me

rephrase that. i hope i'm smart enough to buy more. betting against elon musk today is a lot like betting against steve jobs back in the day. people poo-hoo'd what he wanted to accomplish with the iphone. you've got ai, all kinds of other things. musk is an easy target for social reasons, political reasons, and simply because he's controversial. lauren: tesla is at 122. it was, i believe just last week , maybe the week prior, 103. guests were saying buy it when it goes under 105 and if you did , you made money in the past couple of days. keith i want you to stick around and we'll come back to you in a bit. there is no opening bell today because the market is closed but there is bitcoin to talk about and something happened over the weekend. >> oh, boy. lauren: bitcoin went back above $20,000. it was just stuck between 16 and 17,000 for months. its been on this steady climb for the past week. right now just under 21,000, above 20 for the first time in over two months so basically,

for the first time since the collapse of ftx in november. it's odd because when bitcoin was at the record-near 70,000 levels, 20,000 was seen as a disturbing low for the cryptocurrency but now, that 20,000 number is seen as a sign of revival. is it that ftx helped flush the excess out of the system or are traders just fearing missing out right now? what do you think? is it fomo going on with the cryptos and bitcoin specifically right now, keith? >> big time, because people saw that run once and they want to go after it again, but you know this is one of the situations where lesson learned. you don't want to chase something that you can't control i think personally that the level of manipulation in the involvement of some really big names is going to come out in the ftx wash and the hearings is going to startle a lot of people so i'm not keen to get back into bitcoin or ethererum right now. i want to see that dust settle and then i'll reevaluate.

lauren: so it goes back to 16 instead of upwards of 20? >> i think it's going to be lucky to survive 16. i think it maybe even goes to 10 or 8. lauren: bitcoin at 8,000 dollars says keith fitz-gerald at 9:31 on this monday morning. back to tesla, keith. a lot of owners are angry because tesla announced these price cuts for new buyers, so for instance, if you're in the market for a high end model 3, the price was cut by 14% to just under $54,000. if you're in the market for the model y, it'll start at $53,000 for a cutoff 20%. the point is these cuts put the vehicles below that 55,000 dollars cap, so they are eligible for federal tax credits , right? that's great if you're in the market. >> yup. lauren: but then you have tesla owners who just bought them and they feel like they have been kicked in the mouth. some analysts say long term price cuts are good because it reignites volume.

tesla is not the only game in town but what do you think, keith? >> well i think there's sort of both sides of the coin here, and given the fact we were just talking about bitcoin from a managerial standpoint it's a smart move because you want to boost sales volume, maintain market share. don't forget tesla just became the number one selling luxury brand in the united states, sold 15 8,000 more units than bmw so that's good, but as an owner, i think there's a disconnect because the moment you buy any new car, you drive off the lot 60 seconds after you do your car loses between 10-22%. lauren: a boat is worse. >> what's that? lauren: a boat is worse after you buy a boat. >> yeah, that's true. that's true. [laughter] lauren: keep going i interrupt. keep going. >> oh, no worries. to me there's a disconnect because could this be the one car that maintains its value? that's what a local of buyers were banking on but i don't think that's the case so i think there's some evening out. if i owned a tesla i certainly

wouldn't be happy, full disclosure. i don't. i own tesla stock because i think that's the play to go. i'm interested in assets that appreciate not depreciate. lauren: well you're talking about the brand and you think the tesla brand has been, can i, would you say has been hurt? because of all of the legal and pr headaches for elon musk? >> i think that the perception of the brand has been hurt but again, go back to steve jobs. this was very similar in apples early days. people just forget the vicious ness of the war between the pc makers and apple jobs stood on his own much like musk is doing today, so i think that there's lots of value. there's trucks, ai, cyber intelligence, charging networks all of which are worth hundreds of millions of dollars overtime, so if that's true and if i'm correct, because i might not be, then that means the stock is still underpriced today, lauren. lauren: and the musk twitter story for you. a legal win for elon musk. a u.s. district judge ruled that five former twitter employees who were laid off in november

and are now pursuing class action lawsuit accusing twitter of failing to give them adequate notice must pursue their claims in private arbitration and individually. keith? that's a win for musk. >> i think it is, because you know, again, he knows what he's doing. the fact is people don't like the fact that he knows exactly what he's doing. he's changing the rules. he's cleaning house. he, i think, is going to turn twitter into something really meaningful and frankly i would love to get my hands-on some twitter stock right now but i can't, so i'm going through tesla. lauren: as many people are. keith fitz-gerald thank you for rolling with all that. we do appreciate it. >> absolutely. thank you. lauren: it is martin luther king jr. day and celebrations to honor dr. king's legacy are happening across the country. charles watson is at the ebenezer baptist church in atlanta, georgia. dr. king served as the pastor of that church where you're standing in front of. how are they celebrating his life today?

reporter: yeah, hey, good morning, lauren. they have a whole list of programs going today to honor the life and legacy of dr. martin luther king jr.. of course today is officially ml k day but if you live in the atlanta area the celebration of dr. king has been ongoing for at least a week now and it culminates today at the ebenezer baptist church behind me with the annual beloved community commemorative service. a list of notable participants this morning include dr. king's daughter dr. bernice king, atlanta mayor andre dickens and gospel singer yolanda adams and of course senior pastor senator ref rented raphael warnock who extended an invitation for president joe biden to address the church on what would have been dr. king's 94th birthday on sunday, it was the first time a sitting president ever delivered a

sermon at ebenezer baptist and biden took that opportunity to not only evoke dr. king's life and legacy but also to touch on how fragile our dome democracy was then and is now. take a listen. >> my message to the nation on this day is we go forward. >> [applause] >> we go together. when we choose democracy over hitocracy, a beloved community over chaos and we choose believers in the dreams to be doers, to be unafraid, always keeping the faith. reporter: yeah, and to further honor dr. king's contribution towards fueling the passage of the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965 the king center will hold a teach-into educate kids about doctor and mrs. king's legacy and also holding a voter registration event to educate folks on their rights of voting,

lauren. lauren: charles watson thank you very much. coming up, dhs secretary mayorkas is facing calls to resign but texas congressman tony gonzalez won't say whether or not he supports it. roll the tape. >> i'll see where the hearings take us and if the hearings take us down that line, then the hear ings take us down that line but i'm waiting to see all the facts come out. lauren: this as sources tell fox that the december migrant encounters number will exceed 250,000, a quarter million, for the first time ever. arizona congressman andy biggs will take that on next and then there's this. the u.s. is set to hit its debt ceiling in three days. treasury secretary janet yellen urging congress to boost the ceiling to prevent default. we have the latest right after this. ♪ oh, what a feeling when we're dancing on the ceiling ♪

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lauren: well, the u.s. is getting close once again to hitting the debt limit. the treasury secretary says it could happen as soon as this thursday. edward lawrence is at the white house. edward, you know, what happens if congress doesn't vote to raise the debt ceiling? reporter: well, right now, the u.s. government won't run out of money as of yet. the treasury department is taking extraordinary measures that can stretch out that money so the date is actually sometime in the summer when we will actually run out of money, but this is going to be the first real test for the new house speaker kevin mccarthy and the first real challenge for president joe biden from this first congress or this new congress in becoming speaker. mccarthy pledged to stop the seemingly unlimited spending president biden has enjoyed. here he is on "sunday morning futures", listen. >> if you look just in the last four years the democrats were in

the majority. they increased discretionary spending by 30%, when republican s were in the majority for the eight years prior they didn't increase it by $1. reporter: so, yeah, there's no doom right away. again the money won't actually run out until possibly june at some point. mccarthy believes democrats will agree to a spending cap as they did the last time we hit the debt ceiling. white house press secretary saying it's up to congress so far the president is not weigh ing in. >> the sooner congress abouts, the better since even the prospect of not raising the debt ceiling will have damage, the full faith and the credit of our nation and again, we are going to continue to encourage congress to act. reporter: the house speaker has spoken with president biden a few times over the telephone. they have not negotiated anything about the debt limit or spending, house speaker mccarthy says that he is open to negotiating with the president about limiting spending or

cutting spending back to you, lauren. lauren: and where it comes from is the interesting part if we do have spending cuts. edward lawrence, thank you. good to see you. as edward noted, speaker mccarthy says he would cut spending before raising the debt ceiling. watch exactly what he said. >> the first thing i would say is, why don't you make the house and the senate both produce a budget? they don't produce a budget so you know they are wasting money. why don't you say the house and senate both have to do appropriation bills? the senate didn't even do appropriation bills and then two senators wrote a $1.7 trillion bill right before christmas that no one could read. are you going to tell me there's no waste in that? why don't we look at, this is hard working taxpayers money. lauren: it seems like common sense. steve moore joins us now. steve? is now the time though, i mean, yes, this seems like common sense, but is now the right time for the speaker to be playing hard ball as we approach the debt ceiling? >> yeah, absolutely, lauren.

look, the financial crisis of the country is not that we're not going to pass the debt ceiling. it is we will pass a debt ceiling and continue to allow this debt to explode. obviously at some point we do need to raise our debt ceiling because we're borrowing, ready for this , lauren? $1.5 trillion a year. it is as i said, the ticking time bomb in the american economy, and for the white house , i mean, i thought it was pretty rich you played that clip from the white house press secretary saying oh, we're so concerned about the credit of the united states government, when they're the ones who have added over $4.1 trillion to our debt. what do you think that does to the full faith in credit of our debt? so i think there is a crisis, and it has to be dealt with right now. no more, you know, putting this off for another year or two or three because we're just running out of time. lauren: but would the white house be okay with spending cuts let's say to the military or ukraine. >> so lauren, you know, i've been in washington for 30-some

years so i've lived through a lot of these fiscal crisis. by the way all of this mellow drama about oh, my god we're going to default on the debt is ridiculous. let's just put that aside. there's not a default on the debt so shame on the treasury for even suggesting that could happen, but there will be a showdown sometime either later this summer or into the fall, lauren, i guarantee this is going to happen. republicans are basically saying look, we're not going to raise the debt ceiling until we have a budget in place that gets us to a balanced budget. that's what any business would do if you go into the bank to try and get a loan. they want to see your plan for getting out of debt. right now the biden administration has no such plan. lauren: no, i hear you. that's why i came into you saying it seems like common sense but yes it's washington. steve, there's this new "wall street journal" survey that shows that economists see a 61% chance we'll have a recession within the next year. i'm saying this with a smile because everyone is saying that i actually thought the number be above 61%. do you agree?

we hit recession in the next year? >> i've been saying on fox business for the last three months or so, lauren, that i don't think a recession is inevitable. i think if we could actually do some of the things we're just talking about getting control of this government spending. if we could start drilling again for american oil & gas. if we do pro-growth things there's no reason this american economy couldn't grow but you asked the important question. would the biden administration go along with any of these reforms that would prevent a recession? i mean, remember this administration has done everything they can to shutdown our energy production which is a key element of our economy, so i still think there's hope but we need some real reforms in washington and hopefully, you know, now that we've got a republican speaker, don't forget , lauren. when we have divided power in washington, that tends to be a good thing for the stock market and for the economy. lauren: all right well i appreciate the optimism and we will take it, steve moore, good to see you. >> thanks lauren. lauren: let's stay on this topic of recession, because the big

banks also see one coming. if you take comments from the ceo's of the three major banks, jpmorgan, b of a, and citigroup all three said on friday they are planning for a " mild recession happening this year" so jpmorgan's jamie dimon said mild recession that's his base case. he's concerned about weakness in auto loans that he is starting to see at his bank. bank of america brian moynihan expects a rapid rise in joblessness, peak unemployment, 5.5% is what he predicts. overall customers are spending more on their credit cards that's how we're weathering inflation, but stopped paying off the balances as quickly. credit card balances rose a collective 17% in the quarter and that's the impact of higher rates of the federal reserve really crimping the american consumer. coming up, take a look at this op-ed. the big problem with the joe biden document story.

byron york wrote that and he's here to break it down. goldman sachs says oil could jump to $110 a barrel later this year. it's at 79 now, so are the days of low oil prices over? jeff flock has got the report next. ♪ ♪ before we begin, i'd like to thank our sponsor, liberty mutual. they customize your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. and by switching, you could even save $652. thank you, liberty mutual. now, contestants ready? go! why? why? only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty.♪

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and your anxiety, everything is gone. it's definitely worth trying. it is an amazing product. lauren: oil prices can move up a lot higher if china's economy fully reopens. jeff flock is in philadelphia. you know, jeff, i was checking gas prices, 3:30 today nationally and exactly 3.30 one year ago so if you were complaining a year ago, jeff, you're still complaining today. reporter: [laughter] well that is true. that's one thing that hasn't gone up. other things have gone up. other, you know, other stuff that we do with oil, but first, to the forecast about how high oil can go. you mentioned that forecast from jpmorgan about 110 for brent sometime in this year. well take a look at the average for the year for the forecast

for wti. all over the board a little bit, but some less than we are right now. city bank says it's going to average wti $75 a barrel this year. jpmorgan says $83, eia says 87, goldman says wti will average $ 92 but yeah, what's the impact of china going to be? as you point out, gas prices have not gone up, well, they've gone up and then they've come down, but whatever, same as they were a year ago, but if you look at jet fuel, what was that compared to a year ago? that's up 42% compared to one year ago, and home heating oil which of course is big here in the northeast, in pennsylvania alone, up 36% from a year ago. so, you know, the economy giveth and the economy taketh away. in terms of oil, you know the thing is, eia says we will produce more oil this year than we ever have before, despite what we talk about in terms of being able to do more.

that said though, oil producers say they could do a lot more even than they are doing right now. we'll see where the price goes. i don't know if i want to be in that market. i just buy the gas that i buy at the gas station and be done with it. lauren: and pump it yourself, right? no, no, you're by jersey so sometimes you don't pump it yourself. reporter: i do. no i'm in pennsylvania, still, so but if i go into new jersey, yeah, and i always tip the guy. you should tip the guy that pumps your gas by the way. lauren: i know especially in the cold weather jeff flock a nice man. thank you very much still ahead dr. marc siegel, andy biggs, joe concha, david webb. 10:00 hour of "varney" is next. ♪

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♪. lauren: phil collins, beautiful song, beautiful shot, of the american flag right in front of fox news headquarters in midtown manhattan. good morning, everybody. it is 10:00 eastern on the east coast. i'm lauren simonetti in for stuart varney today. the markets are closed in honor of martin luther king, jr. today. you can bet we'r