joining me now is msnbc contributor ezra klein.ave refused to believe this was going to happen. i'm virtually speechless on this. what does it mean to the consumer out there and what does it mean to our politics? there's going to be a blame game played quickly. >> first thing, they did not downgrade our ability to pay. nothing changed, nothing significant. they downgraded our political system. congress just got downgraded is what happened here today and what it means for politics is the rumor is they would mention the resistance to republicans to revenue specifically, their willingness to put the default on the table to keep tax increases on the table. if that happens, people keep saying senate wants an opening to compromise. this would give them that opening. >> this is the one thing that we can see in our landscape that may shake up republican so lidty. >> they listen to markets, friends, and donors in markets. a lot of these guys like mitch mcconnell and john boehner begin hearing from managers of hedge funds and investment bank

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. >> i'm ezra klein in for martin bashir.t the top of the hour, share and share alike and we have forgotten the lessons that we have taught us and we have the unemployment rate to prove it. we will break down how to fix the selfish economy. ♪ >>> that is a clip from the new movie "conan the barbarian "t" last action flick of the summer, and we have jason momoa who is the star of the clip, and courtney hazlett is off. it is violent and gory -- >> sexy and dangerous. >> is this a dream come true for you? >> yes, it is a big fantasy since i was a child. >> it is not a re-make, and it is a re-imaged version of what we saw 30 years ago. >> yes. >> how is that different? >> well, it is honoring the fans who have looked at the material of eight decades and really, and bringing it alive. >> tell me a little bit about the training, because again, half of the movie if not all of the movie, you are shirtless and you have five shirts on now, but -- >> covering up. >> but the training is ridiculous and you ate boiled chickens every two ho

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i'm ezra klein sitting in for martin bashir. 17th, and here's what's happening. first, what president obama could learn from fdr. we're joined which christina romer and one of the president's original economic advisers, and then what rick perry could learn from barack obama. >> got to be more careful about what you say. i'll cut him some slack. only at it for a few days now. >>> and a hard truth the american people need to know about the tea party. >> environmental radicals and not people like me. >> doesn't sound like you're interested in listening. >>> pack in grade school we all learned a story about the great depression. usually the same story. it went something like this. in 1929 a bunch of old-timy looking stock brokers screwed up big time and herbert hoover dame along and made it worse, but then we got fdr and fdr, man, he wasn't afraid of anything. wasn't even afraid of fear, fear itself, so he hired a bunch of people to paint murals and build schools and we mobilized and beat hitler and saved the world and that really w

ezra klein?enough. >> the number is not good enough. >> what do we need? >> a lot more jobs and we need more action in washington to get us there. >> what did you learn, willie? >> this weekend the new york yankees will get their chance to topple the empire. >> that's sweet. >> well, and mike, that's a statistic made even more amazing by the fact that the sox don't pay our players what the yankees pay theirs. >> how truly pathetic and sad it is. >> sad and pathetic. you're excited about watching lackky pitch saturday night. >> can't wait for him to jump up there on the mound and give up seven runs in five innings. >> would you be wearing your running shoes at the game? >> yes. >> did you sleep in those things? >> yes, i did, very comfortable. >> you are guys are slobs. what time is it. >> it's "morning joe." everybody have a great weekend and watch mr. klein own

joining me now, msnbc contributor and "the washington post" columnist ezra klein. thank you for joining me tonight, ezra. >> good evening. >> we started this conversation on friday when i joined you on martin bashir's show that you were guest hosting, and we talked about this payroll tax question, so i'm excited to get to extend this conversation with you. >> we should have a tax hour once a week. >> oh, okay, all right. now, extending the payroll tax will cost the government about $115 billion. there's no doubt republicans are right about this in the sense it will increase deficit, but how do you score it on its stimulative affects versus extending the bush tax rates. >> first, it's nice to see republicans admitting tax cuts cost money, from what mitch mcconnell was saying a year ago, that's an advance. the payroll tax cut is much more stimulative than most. here's why, the payroll tax, as you mentioned in your introduction here, it affects only the first $106,000 of your income. the people it ends up helping out are the people that have to spend their income to ma

. >>> joining us us ezra klein from "the washington post" and bloomberg policy analyst. ezra, thanks for your time tonight, appreciate you being here. in terms of what louise was talking about here, obviously the importance of the downgrade and the legitimacy of the downgrade is a subject for debate and some very angry comments already from government officials both in congress and in the executive branch, but now that the downgrade has happened, what do you think happens next? what do you think is the practical effect? >> i think it's hard to say but we need to remember this is coming two days after the market dove by 500 points and almost every investor ran into treasuries. so treasuries have been reaffirmed as the single safest investment in the world. given there's no other options on the table i'm not expecting a huge movement there although we could always be surprised, but rachel, could i make one point on the legitimacy on the downgrade here, if you actually read it, it's not about the numbers, not about our ability to pay. what they say and i'm going to quite, mo

joining us now, ezra klein, columnist for "the washington post" and bloomberg, ezra, i have to tell you you've been doing a great jobs hosting in the afternoon on the martin bashir show. what is the warning to the f.e.d.? >> i'm sort of loving. what was remarkable about the perry clip is he began by saying i'm not going to take a position on the federal reserve, i want to part of it. then he thought for a moment, actually, if i was going to have a position, we should possibly beat him. it's really quite a take, but it is extraordinarily ignorant. even putting aside how much money you print between now and the election, there will be growth in the american population, rick perry knows this, what does he think the money supply's supposed to do, sit there, supposed to have less money as we have more people? that's a bad idea. >> does this come from an idea if you just talk generally about money and generally about spending and generally about debt without actually getting to the specifics of what it is that you're criticizing, just the mention of those things sounds bad to people and makes

we're joined by analyst and "the washington post" columnist ezra klein, and former u.s.essman from texas, chris bell. welcome to you both. chris, you ran against rick perry, i believe, in a race, so you probably have a bead on this whole texas miracle thing. is it a miracle down there, or is it something a bit less? >> he keeps painting a picture of this great utopia, unless he's going to take credit for the state of texas having a great deal of oil and gas. we've seen the economic book has -- and that's been around for a long, long time. we're tied for mississippi. so if people are looking to recruit those people with minimum wage experience, they need to set up shop here in texas. >> i think i heard you talking about -- and apparently since 2008, and correct me if i'm wrong texas has lost 40,000 jobs in the private sector, but they've made up for it by hire in the government sector. 116,000 jobs. is that representative of the texas miracle? >> i don't want to take too much away. if the whole country is doing as well as texas, we would be doing better. part of it is mor

about this part of president obama's task is "washington post" columnist and msnbc contributor ezra klein. thank you for joining me, ezra. >> good evening. >> you have been working hard today. maybe also as hard as the president. >> i don't know about that. >> so a memo by house majority leader eric cantor says, we have to put an end to this policy uncertainty, and that means we have to stop talking about new stimulus because we have no money for it. if the republican house is saying no stimulus money, what is the president going to be able to say that he can actually move through this house? >> well, he can't say much. he can give a speech, but i think we have found in the last couple of years, and political scientists like yourself have found over time, speeches don't do that much. they are great on tv, but they don't do that much to move members of congress. what i think the white house has to become more comfortable in doing, and there have been good reasons they haven't done it thus far, is using leverage in much the way the republicans do. when the republicans decided in 2010 they w

joining us now is msnbc policy analyst ezra klein, columnist for "the washington post" and also for bloomberg. hello, ezra of many new titles. congratulations on all of that. >> good evening. >> how strong of a connection is there between the american economy, american economic policy, and what we saw in the market today? is this mostly international news that is driving this sort of thing? >> this is everything. and this is really the problem with it. you heard in your introthere that we didn't just lose 5% or 4% today. we have lost about 10% over the last 10 days. and the reason is that the market cannot find anything to tell a story of hope, of recovery. it isn't going to be europe. europe is in worse shape than we are. it isn't necessarily going to be china and the emerging markets, which there had been some hope for, because it looks like china is slowing down. and now there's a question of how the government can deal with a slowdown in growth. and as we've seen in the last couple of weeks here, it's not going to be us either, because not only is our economy in much worse shape than we r

and we want to bring in msnbc contributor and cnbc columnist ron insana and ezra klein, a msnbc contributor. what can we expect from the president, ron? >> well, given how deeply the dow futures were down about 370 points after yesterday's 600-point sell-off and then markets around the world began to rally back. so it appears they are putting a lot of the pressure on the fed to say something strong, to say there is a qe 3 that the fed will engage in more stimulative efforts to prop up the economy and we don't know the shape lit take, because the fed has bought in excess of $2 billion in treasury bonds and mortgages to keep down the interest rates, and there are other things that they can do, but i'm not sure that is what we will hear when the statement comes at 2:15 eastern time. >> ezra, because president obama has been hit on all sides because he is not showing the leadership as we talked about with the poll numbers with kristen, does he need to stop blaming the bush administration and say what he is going to do the solve this crisis, because we know that president obama takes a calm, coo

ezra klein, thanks so much for coming on. >>> as promised, michele bachmann voted against raising theg, potential economic catastrophe be darned. in here, the planned combination of at&t and t-mobile would deliver our next generation mobile broadband experience to 55 million more americans, many in small towns and rural communities, giving them a new choice. we'll deliver better service, with thousands of new cell sites... for greater access to all the things you want, whenever you want them. it's the at&t network... and what's possible in here is almost impossible to say. and today, we're re-inventing aspirin for pain relief. with new extra-strength bayer advanced aspirin. it has microparticles so it enters the bloodstream faster and rushes relief right to the site of your tough pain. ♪ in fact, it's clinically proven to relieve pain twice as fast. new bayer advanced aspirin. extra strength pain relief, twice as fast. >>> republican leadership in the house was so proud of itself today for reaching a deal on the debt ceiling, it's planning to give itself the rest of the summer off. re

for expert analysis, i am joined by washington post ezra klein who is also an msnbc policy analyst. od afternoon, ezra. >> good afternoon. >> and people are dividing up the political winners and losers, but i'm interested in the economy, because we have had to revise down economic growth for the last quarter, so how is this deal likely to affect the economy? >> poorly. it is a sad commentary on the state of american politics today that our two options here were a debt default to send the economy into a complete unnecessary manufactured crisis and a debt deal that would rip support out from a struggling economy and impede growth going forward. that is pretty much what we got and it is good we won't have a debt default, which is important, but the main things to the economy is what is not in it. in extension of unemployment which takes $60 billion from the jobless, and no extension of the pay tax cut i which takes away $1 trillion in working class family support, and there is nothing here to aid the recovery, but only a beginning to austerity measures. >> even as you speak, we are watc

they don't and they do more harm than good. >> they're going to make chris christie run. >> ezra klein thank you. >> thank you, ezra. >>> coming up, we're going to talk to tom coburn and john thune. >>> up next, correspondent chuck todd and columnist for "the washington post," eugene robinson. but first, bill karins with a check on the forecast. >> hot forecast, 99 in dc, that wasn't close to one of the hottest temperatures in the country. show you the forecast for new england first. a lot of people waking up in the big cities. a nice summerlike day. no problems. maybe a sprinkle or two in northern new england. but what happened yesterday? tulsa, oklahoma was 110. dallas was 107. the middle of the country is baking. this is one of the hottest temperatures we've seen in some areas in 30 year. we're going to see 107 in kansas city? that doesn't happen that often. thunderstorms will roll through the great lakes, detroit, cleveland, and chicago. some showers and the thunderstorms in the southeast. we have tropical storm emily in the caribbean. this could be near florida this upcoming weeke

joining us now, ezra klein, columnist for "the washington post" and bloomberg news.e to see you tonight. >> nice to see you, melissa. >> you say allen kruger is the obvious pick for the president, what makes him so obvious? >> it is the entire history of how the president picks these economic positions, so the thing about allen kruger, he's a labor economist, a guy who studies the job market and he's good at it, one of the best labor economists in the country. he's breathed a lot of new life in the field when it fell a few years ago, but allen kruger is also a long time clinton and obama administration appointee, he served with geithner, summers, all these guys for a long time, so if you look at the way the obama administration has been picking for these positions, goolsbee following roemer, daly following emmanuel, people they know, they pick from inside the administration. when you look for an economist who's a good economist but knew these guys and served there before, that was allen kruger, so the downside of that is you have another economist in there who is par

amidst all this economic news, we're going to peg off a question asked by ezra klein in "the washington post" this morning, where will the recovery come from? we'd like to hear your thoughts on this. phone lines are open, 202-624-1115 for republicans. 202-624-1111 for democrats. independents, 202-624-0760. you can also send messages by facebook, twitter, and email. we look forward to your discussion on where will a recovery come from. good morning. friday morning. want to show you the full front page of "the washington post" if we can to show you their dramatic picture of what the stock market looked like yesterday with the headline, "markets plummet on global economic fears." neil irwin, who's been at this table many times, is on the phone with us this morning. he has the lead story, the u.s. stocks down 4.8%. american european crises fueling this cycle. mr. irwin, thanks for your time this morning. what do analysts say is behind the market plunge yesterday? guest: on some level, it's pretty simple. there's a loss of confidence that this u.s. economy is on track and going to keep growi

. >> ezra klein, thanks so much. >> thank you. >>> we'll be right back. your watching msnbc on a monday morning. 20 years later, they did the same with hand-painted martini glasses. her "love my martini" collection took off. for more, watch your business at 7:30 on msnbc. [ coughing continues ] [ gasping ] [ elevator bell dings, coughing continues ] [ female announcer ] congress can't ignore the facts: more air pollution means more childhood asthma attacks. [ coughing continues ] log on to lungusa.org and tell washington: don't weaken the clean air act. ♪ ooh baby, (what) can i do for you today? ♪ [ female announcer ] need help keeping your digestive balance? align can help. only align has bifantis, a patented probiotic that naturally helps maintain your digestive balance. try align to help retain a balanced digestive system. try the #1 gastroenterologist recommended probiotic. align. >>> relief groups in kenya are being pushed to the limit as thousands of refugees stream in from somalia, victims of the worst drought in years and some haven't had a decent

joining us is ezra klein, msnbc policy analyst and the man i like to talk to when every sentence i have ends in a question mark. >> hi, chris, how are you? >> i'm genuinely trying to figure out this statutory mechanism here. how does this congress say what spending is in, say, 2017? >> it doesn't, and one thing to always note when you see a bill like this, they keep saying discretionary spending, and the reason they keep saying discretionary spending is nobody knows what discretionary spending is. they don't like to say medicare cuts or social security cuts, everyone knows what those are. they set arbitrary levels of discretionary spending to get them to a goal and put in place what they call a trigger or in this case they call spending caps, works like a trigger. that means if they go over their caps, there's an automatic set of cuts made across the board to discretionary spending. now, the next question, couldn't congress in 2015 or 2018 say we're not going to listen to the trigger, we're going to vote the trigger out of existence, they could. they have before. there was a trigger bac

. >> ezra klein columnist for "the washington post" and bloomberg, you are thinking big thoughts and i appreciate you being here to do it. thanks a lot. >>> again, breaking news this hour amid howls of protests from washington, flawed assumptions and flubed math, the standard and poor's rating agency has downgraded the united states aaa credit rating for the first time ever. we were aaa, now standard and poor's says we are aa-plus. while aa-plus sounds great, it's worse than aaa. more ahead with jerad bernstein, former chief economic advisor with vice president biden. naturals from purina cat chow. delicious, real ingredients with no artificial flavors or preservatives. naturals from purina cat chow. share a better life. two of the most important are energy security and economic growth. north america actually has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. a large part of that is oil sands. this resource has the ability to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. at our kearl project in canada, we'll be able to produce these oil sands with the same emissions as many other oils and tha

ezra klein is a analyst for msnbc, and colleague at the washington post. >> hi, jonathan. >> let me playthe president said on thursday, and get you the respond. take a look. >> over the coming weeks, i will be putting out more proposals week by week to help businesses hire and put people wac to work. bsh people back to work. i will keep at it until every single american who wants a job can find one. >> so, ezra, is this too little too late, and something he should have been focused on a year ago? >> yeah. this is quite a little bit too old too late. the administration has not used the points of leverage to fight for jobs, and now it doesn't have any. so during the debt ceiling talks said, a super committee, we won't do it unless it is charged, forced to offer up recommendation for jobs, and those recommendations have the same protection triggers behind them and immune to filibuster amendments and they didn't do that and fight for it in the shutdown and didn't -- the only time they did is in the tax deal in 2010 when they used the leverage over the republicans with the bush tax cuts to ge

up next, ezra klein is in for martin bashir. in a timeout because apparently riding the dog like it's a small horse is frowned upon in this establishment! luckily though, ya know, i conceal this bad boy underneath my blanket just so i can get on e-trade and check my investment portfolio, research stocks, and set conditional orders. wait, why are you taking... oh, i see. hey max, would it kill you to throw a guy a warning bark? [ dog barks ] you know i wanted a bird. [ male announcer ] e-trade. investing unleashed. even if you think your mattress is just fine... ask me what it's like to get your best night's sleep every night. why not talk to someone who's sleeping on the most highly recommended bed in america... it's not a sealy... or a simmons... or a serta... ask me about my tempur-pedic. ask me how fast i fall asleep. ask me about staying asleep. these are actual tempur-pedic owners! ask someone you know---check out twitter... try your friends on facebook. you'll hear it all...un-edited. ask me how it feels after 10 years. as

. >> ezra klein, good to see you. >>> a nato helicopter crash-landed in southeastern afghanistan today due to mechanical failure. no casualties but it does, of course, come on the heims els oe deadly chinook crash over the weekend. 30 american troops were killed, including 22 navy s.e.a.l.s from elite s.e.a.l. team 6. that's the same special ops team that took out osama bin laden. >> s.e.a.l. team 6 is around 300 people. this is a huge blow. but they are very tough, determined people. they'll replace rapidly out of the several thousand s.e.a.l.s in the navy, and it won't impact their operations at all. >> aaron was one of the navy s.e.a.l.s who died in saturday's crash in afghanistan. she joins me along with erin's parents, billy and karen vaughn. first, i want to express our condolences to all of you and thanks for talking to us at this difficult time. good morning. >> good morning. >> kimberly, you have an amazing story with aaron that you met. you were on a uso tour as a washington redskins cheerleader. he was stationed in guam. tell us a little about the man you fell in love with.

ezra lein in "the washington post -- ezra klein. lots about the texas government. huntsman targets perry with tweets. also this -- what do you think about this tactic? did you have sex with this governor? help wanted launches attacks on gop's rick perry -- in "the financial times" this morning. governor's claim of miracles. let us talk about our incumbent president who just left for vacation it at martha's vineyard. we have the chief white house europe -- correspondent for "u.s. news and world report." looking back over of the history of this, it seems as though anybody the president takes a vacation it is the cause of discussion and some controversy. guest: you are completely right. this goes back a very long way in our history. many examples. president eisenhower, for example, back in the 1950's, was criticized for going to his gettysburg farm far too much and the chairman of the democratic national committee at the time said he was a part-time president because he was going away so much. this is very, no matter who is present, no matter the ideology or the perso

if you are say whag you are saying and i'm saying what i'm saying, we have ezra klein, a progressive,once. we can raise the revenues, close the loopholes, cut pentagon spending, drawing down in the war. we are doing that on one side. so the world takes note that we are being fiscally responsible. this is going to be sustainable. at the same time, in the short term, we invest in infrastructure, education, r & d, we make the investment that is the chinese are making now that we have to make. not because it makes us feel good about ourselves morally and not because it will create jobs in the short term, but it will ensure we can stay competitive with china. >> one of the positive things out of the debate is we have the power to fix these things. a lot of countries, they run into challenge, whether you agree with s&p or not. they are probably more right than wrong. we can fix the entitlement problem. we can fix our energy dependency problem. we can fix our education challenge. the question i have for governor rendell, how would you answer the question -- i have an answer, i'm interested i

the center on budget and policy priorities has produced a nice chart, reproduced by ezra klein, availablein a hand out outside the room, showing that states, including all the large states but one, have seen reductions in spending compared to levels that prevailed in 2008 before the onset of the recession. the one exception? texas. but texas will join this group shortly because they have budget cuts coming that will make them a contractionary fiscal force as well. fact five is that nearly half of the unemployed, and a slightly growing faction, have been out of work for six months or more. that proportion also is at 70- year highs. fact 6 is that standard and poor's notwithstanding, there is little to no indication in financial markets that investors are seriously concerned that the united states will default on its debt. with a current yield on tax indexed bonds, a maturity of seven years, the yield on those bonds is negative. people are actually paying to invest in them rather than requiring a positive rate of return. now, i say all of this along with the fact that we do in fact face an