hour. i'm alexwitt. i'll see you at the top of the hour with what to make of the access michael wolff got in his reporting. could this have happened in any other administration? we'll hear from someone who spent a lot of time in the obama white house and get his take. "velshi & ruhle" starting right now. markets kicking off 2018 with a big bang, while investors yawn as the latest controversy rocks the trump white house. why? one word. deregulation. >> america's jobless rate at its lowest level in 18 years so why aren't workers' wages going up more? it might have something to do with where you live. i am city stephanie ruhle am so happy to be joined by my friend, david gura. my around, ali velshi out this

week. >> great to be here in this first week of the new year and even with most of congress still away for the holiday, it was an eventful week. >> to say the least. a new tell-all book on president trump's first year in office, warts and all, has everyone talking. but nothing this president does can hold back the markets, which is exactly where we're going to start. >> the stock market hit new heights with the dow jones industrial average crossing the 25,000 mark for the first time ever. that's a gain of nearly 25% since president trump first took office. the white house marked the occasion by posting a cnbc news clip on little official website detailing recent gains in share prices and job numbers. nothing investors see coming out of the white house, no matter how lurid or how disturbing seems to worry them. they like the gains trump has made. tax cuts, rolled back regulations, if you put it that way, the market has a lot to celebrate in 2018. >> something i like to look at is the vix index, often known as the fear index. you see the vix go up when

people are concerned about risks facing the market. guess what, it has never been as low for two consecutive days since the vix began 28 years ago. and take out the book out trump, all the lunacy, the idiocy, the circus that is the white house. think about the geopolitical risks. think about what is going on in north korea and iran. the market doesn't seem to care. one main reason, they look at the rhetoric out of the white house as just that, noise and rhetoric. the market actually says listen to what he does, not what he says and what he does is deregulate and the market sure likes it. >> you saw these two ticks up during the course of the year when you look at the fear index and it was around the first news that north korea had militarized a nuclear weapon and so you see the markets getting inurred. i want to return to the data. the white house touting the stock market numbers and the economic numbers. you look at how uneasy this

white house was with numbers and you look at this 2 million number and a job is a job is a job. at the same time if you look at the monthly average, it's the least growth we've seen on an average basis month by month since the year 2010. >> you also have to think about what jobs. the fact that we're seeing more retail jobs leave the system, and that's only going to happen in bigger numbers. we talk so much about the death of the mall, but how about who owns the market? we need to remember the stock market, wall street and main street, they ain't the same block. the top 10% of americans own 84% of stocks out there and only 50% of households own any stocks. i mean stocks, iras, 401(k)s, retirement accounts. so we could be applauding apple stock on the rise. there's a huge portion in this country truly left out in the cold. well, guess what else. something else the president loves, he loves to talk about

rolling back regulations. he is the deregulating president. during a ceremony in which he literally cut a strip of red tape with a pair of giant gold scissors like a true performer, president trump ripped on what he repeatedly called job-killing regulations. >> for many decades an ever-growing maze of regulations, rules, restrictions has cost our country trillions and trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, countless american factories, and devastated many industries. but all that has changed the day i took the oath of office, and it's changed rapidly. you've seen what's happened. >> sure, companies like people want less rules, less regulations their way, but for facts sake, do regulations in and of themselves hurt economic growth? president trump makes no bones about taking down u.s. regulations. in 2017 his administration

revoked 67 rules, withdrew 635 coming down the pipeline, deemed 244 regulations inactive and delayed 700 more. trump officials rolled back rules on everything from climate change strategy to consumer protections. they rebeeld obama's clean power plan which aimed to cut greenhouse glasses and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. they weakened rules to prevent another multi billion barrel oil spill in the gulf of mexico and created new regulations to help consumers in their dealings with the financial industry. the president says regulations like these are job killers and getting rid of them will help spur economic growth. evidence is not so clear cut. a 2009 study from the national bureau of economic research found that regulations can be detrimental to entrepreneurial activity. however, a more recent analysis shows very little evidence of a relationship between regulations and jobs.

in fact, some economists believe regulations can actually grow the economy. what we do know is that ceo confidence is way up under this regulation-killing president. a survey by chief executive group founding that ceo confidence is near its highest point since they started measuring it with a significant jump during trump's first year and economists say that matters, because ceos will be more willing to open up their checkbook if they are positive about the future. a survey of ceos by the business roundtable, a lobby group in washington, show plans for investment have risen to their highest level in six years. at the same time, they say regulations are no longer their primary concern. either way, regulations themselves do not hurt or help the economy. and while there are some archaic regulations that should probably go by the wayside, many exist for a reason. slashing regulations just because might make businesses happy in the short term, but at what cost to all of us?

at what cost. we should point out a lot of these regulations that we're talking about that are being killed, they're regulations that have been proposed. they were proposed by the obama administration. it takes a long time to make them law. well, under this new administration, those laws are not going to come. >> i want to highlight the way some of these regulations have come about. you look back over the last few weeks before the holidays. we had announcements about rolling back regulations on fracking. you know, this method of getting minerals out of the ground, a lot of controversy about what they use, how they're used. that's taken away. these were regulations that were designed to protect the health of americans. it's not something the white house has trumpeted. medicare, taking away rules related to if people get injured in nursing homes, what fines those nursing homes will face. those are gone as well. a lot is happening here. >> i also think about the financial industry. many of the regulations that banks have faced in the last eight years was because of predatory lending practices, things that got us into the financial crisis, reasons why

people across america hate the financial industry so much. well, now they're being rolled back. sure, companies like it and companies will say without the threat of regulation, knowing that they're not getting new regulations coming down the pike, they're much more willing to spend. but we have to remember, if you don't have guardrails, if you don't have laws, you are highering your chances you are going to go off the rails and that costs america and the american people a whole lot more money. >> we've been talking about what's been going on or not going on on capitol hill. a huge distraction is, yes, tax cuts were a big deal. but you look at all of these agencies scattered across washington, all the work that's being done there to delay these regulations, to roll them back, this administration is having a profound effect on so many parts of this country just by doing that and i think often we're distracted by what's happening on capitol hill versus elsewhere. >> not here. that's why we join you every saturday to walk you through it. >> absolutely. well, the full congress returns next week to kick off its 2018 session. first and foremost on the

agenda, avoiding a government shutdown before a short-term budget extension runs out on january 19th. at issue are caps on spending for domestic programs in the military. president trump still hopes to insert something for enhanced security on the mexican border and republicans could work with democrats for undocumented immigrants who came to the u.s. as children. >> i don't understand what the shutdown or showdown will beechbe. as it relates to daca or immigrati immigration, he goes back and forth. you talk about the wall. if you take us back to the campaign trail, i thought mexico was going to pay for it. so while we're getting closer and there could be a daca deal, who knows. i'm watching his twitter account. >> i'm struck at how many times we've been at this place where we've had a continuing resolution for a couple of weeks. before that we had a budget process, an appropriations process.

you talk to people in washington who remember the good ole days and how this was supposed to work. when this first started happening, there was so much concern about how the defense department buys weapons or how the other agencies will plan. that's kind of gone away as i talk to people in washington, d.c. they're used to this. >> the shutdown talk is often just a big show. >> that's true. >> but what i think about is wasn't the number one thing on the agenda this year to get infrastructure? how are they going to get to it? president trump touted public/private partnerships. he wants the government to invest $200 billion to i incentivize companies to put in $800 million -- excuse me, $800 billion to create a trillion dollar fund. you've got democrats saying let's get all of that money from the government. remember, if you let public companies invest, you're giving them that power. it could be a positive, because one could say private money, corporate money is more efficient than government money. but once you give away our land, our property, our utilities,

that's a whole other level. >> interesting that you say this is something that the president wanted. there are a lot of people looking back on the last year, republicans particularly, who say this should have been what they did out of the gate. you talked at the beginning just about what we do know or don't know about the president's take on immigration. the same thing is true of infrastructure as well. that's evolved and eroded over the last year. >> if you want to get infrastructure done, including it and making it involved with tax reform would have changed the game. when it comes time to approving these big dollars for infrastructure, it's not a sexy spending and it's tough to get republicans to sign on the dotted line. all right, we're going to leave it there. coming up, hundreds of false or misleading claims uttered by president trump during his first year in office. but thanks to him, we also have not had any commercial plane crashes. >> 2017 was a gang buster year for the job market with america's jobless rate falling to its lowest level in decades. so why are wages only now starting to tick up? it could have to do with where you live. when i received the diagnosis, i knew,

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unemployment is at a 16-year low. wages are rising. optimism among manufacturers has reached all-time highs. >> welcome back to "velshi & ruhle." president trump never passed up a chance to pat himself on the back for the booming u.s. economy and there is so much to celebrate. the 148,000 jobs added in december brought the 2017 total to more than 2 million, and unemployment is at its lowest level in almost 20 years. those are huge positives. >> but while the president likes to say wages are starting to go up, the fact is they're rising slower or more slowly then they should with job numbers as healthy as they are now. economists are not sure why. unemployment in the united states has dropped in recent years from a high of 10% in 2009 during the recession to a low of

4.1% in 2017. yet wages are not keeping up. >> employment gains continue and wage gains continue, it's just that wage gains are very, very slow given the fact that the united states is now close to full employment. >> historically wages rise when unemployment numbers fall. economists consider a jobless rate below 5% to be akin to full employment. at that level, demand for workers should drive up the amount companies are willing to pay to keep them on their pay rolls, but wages have only risen by 2.5% over the past year. >> this has been a puzzling recovery from the point of view of job market because low unemployment, declining unemployment has not produced the substantial gains in wages that ordinarily we anticipate when it gets harder for employers to fill vacancies. >> and while nationally wages are only growing at a modest

pace, some med ttropolitan area are seeing big wages. unemployment in san jose, california, at just 3% was more than one point lower than the national average and workers there saw their wages increase 3% over one year. it was a similar story in denver and miami. metropolitan jobless rates lower than the national average with wage gains between 3% and 4%. >> in cities that are very blessed by strongly expanding industries, they have had to attract workers from elsewhere. it's necessary for employers to offer better working conditions, higher wages, better fringe benefits. >> the big question, can the wage growth seen in a few cities translate across the country. >> employers have held out a long, long time giving their workers very slow wage gains. and workers do not seem to be walking off the job or beginning labor strikes or anything like that. when workers collectively have

greater bargaining power, maybe then we can anticipate that wages would start growing faster. >> i think what's yet to be seen is how replicatable all of this is. you look at denver, san jose, miami as well, these are places that have established industry, have big tech sector presence, for instance, and are also very close to big academic institutions. when you look at what cities are doing well and growing, largely it's those. >> also cities with great international airports. if you think about other parts of the country, that's where there are these forgotten americans. as far as wages go, it does not matter if it is a high wage job or a low wage job. employers think about their stakeholders and they're not paying people more money out of the goodness of their heart. there's a formula. they will pay the lowest number possible to get the highest skilled performer. that's what the formula is. so the rub is why aren't -- why isn't there a need to pay people more, and that hopelessness, that frustration you see around

the country is why people start to point the finger. it's why in a listless fashion they say it must be immigrants taking my job, it must be regulation where -- that's barring me from being in an industry or globalization. and it's those issues that are making people so frustrated and hopefully we're going to crack that this year. >> no easy answer to this. you listen to gary burtless talk about this. he's a smart guy, studies the labor market, he doesn't know why this is happening. if you listen to the testimony janet yellen gave, she's as flummoxed as anybody about this. >> when it comes to manufacturing, we are part of a global economy. we made the decision we did not want to move forward with a border adjustment tax and that means companies will continue to use cheaper labor elsewhere as consumers want to buy cheap goods here. coming up, forget bitcoin.

how about cryptoruble. they think it's a neat idea for skirting u.s. sanctions. >> that's a whole other level. and president trump just cannot help himself, taking credit for almost everything, jobs, markets, and airline safety. that's one i've got to get into. a tally of president trump's exaggerationing and mischaracterizations is coming up next. i didn't know where i was from ethnically. so we sent that sample off to ancestry. my ancestry dna results are that i am 26% nigerian. i am just trying to learn as much as i can about my culture. i put the gele on my head and i looked into the mirror and i was trying not to cry. because it's a hat, but it's like the most important hat i've ever owned. discover the story only your dna can tell. order your kit now at ancestrydna.com. if yor crohn's symptoms are holding you back, and your current treatment hasn't worked well enough,

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welcome back to "velshi & ruhle." we know that president trump likes to take credit for anything he can, starting off 2018 in the same vein, he's now taking credit for the safest year on record in commercial aviation. he tweeted, quote, since taking office i have been very strict on commercial aviation. good news, it was just reported that there were zero deaths in 2017. the best and safest year on record, end quote and tweet. hmm. according to the national transportation safety board, in

the past ten years there have been zero deaths. every year except one. in fact "the washington post" took a deeper look at the president's record of misleading claims. let's just say it, they're not misleading claims, they're lies. they're lies the president uttered during his first year in office. its tally founding that that h nearly 2,000 false claims, averaging out to five untrue, that's lies, a day since he entered the white house. and that's the thing, people often say why aren't you talking more about the accomplishments? it's the president's own tweeting and spouting falsehoods that pushes that to the side. when you think about tax reform, people didn't get to talk about how it might help different parts of the country because the president was consistently lying about how it wouldn't help him or his business. to talk about commercial aviation, the only thing we have on record is when the president met with ceos of airlines and he

said you guys, you are so regulated, one of the most regulated, we're going to roll that back. well, rolling back regulations doesn't keep people more safe. 18 states and 19 cities have raised their minimum wage. washington has the highest statewide minimum wage at $11.50 an hour. other localities will enact $15 an hour and the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. that's the same it's been for like a decade now, steph. i'm struck how we're seeing this movement from the federal government to the states. you're seeing states and cities do more as the federal government doesn't. i think this is a trend more likely to continue, more states and cities taking this on. >> the states and cities know the people who live here cannot afford to survive, so the burden falls back on those states because people need support. it leads to crime. and they're saying we have to help our people who want to have jobs at least make a living wage. >> can't do that on $7.25 an

hour for sure. now to some news on the crypto currency front. with bitcoin all the craze now, officials, wait for it, in russia and venezuela are said to be looking at their own crypto currencies as ways to evade u.s. financial sanctions. venezuelan president, nicolas maduro, is proposing a state-sponsored currency known as petro backed by the oil reserves while officials in the russian government are floating the idea of a crypto ruble. >> crypto currency was born out of the dark web and darker side of the internet. now being seen as a way that these governments can, yes, evade sanctions but also keep track of these transactions. i think it's fascinating. i saw china is interested in this as well. >> bitcoin, block chain came out into the light, widely accepted, and now they're getting drawn back into the dark. all right, that does it for us. david, thank you for joining me. great to be back with you. i got to work with david before, thrilled to have him here again.

i hope to see my partner, ali vels velshi, this week. you can catch the two of us every morning at 11:00 a.m. and me at 9:00 a.m. eastern right here on miscellaneous nbc. have a great weekend.

good day, everybody, i'm alex witt here in new york at msnbc world headquarters. it is 1:00 in the east, 10:00 a.m. out west and here's what's happening. we begin with breaking news and new reaction from the president, this at camp david for a gop retreat. also breaking his silence amid allegations of mental instability outlined in the bombshell book "fire and fury." here's what he told reporters when asked about an early morning tweet disputing the allegations. >> i consider it a work of fiction. i think it's a disgrace that somebody is able to have something, do something like that. the libel laws are very weak in this