our brenda buttner, senior correspondent and anchor of bulls and bears, and greece, relatively a small economic country in at that part of the world. why is it when greece has problems, we feel it here and the world feels it. >> that's a great question. you think of greece, a smacounty with gdp of rhode island and turned the world upside down and you have to think of europe as a set of dominoes, greece goes, italy goes, ireland goes, and we have so much at take in europe, and a huge trading partner we export more to europe than to china. u.s. firms invest a trillion dollars there each year. banks have 3.5 billion dollars at stake there. so, there's really a lot that we have, that we have at risk here. >> harris: you know, we have seen the riots in the streets the last few days and people calling for the ouster of this prime minister and he says today he will resign and the unity government set to take over tomorrow and i would think that maybe some of this has been priced into the markets at home, but what will happen when markets open, both here in the united states and already in jus

in new york, brenda buttner, fox news. >>> it's an issue that most people think doesn't hit close to sex trafficking is happening here in the metro area. >> we're going one-on-one with the virginia u.s. attorney on this scary trip. >>> and how this battle could have an impact on you. . >> now a story that a pictures how we report the -- a story how we report the news. >> in recontribute months, flees have shut down the ability to monitor their radio communications, a situation that was brought up before the d.c. city council. bob head more. >> reporter: there are public safety and first amendment issues at play here. a brewing conflict between what news departments consider your right to know what is happening around you and the police department's wishes to keep their on-scene humanications secret. be it a newsworthy violent crime, the halloween night shooting in the heart of georgetown or a traffic- snarling car crash. the kind we see most every day in and under the nation's capitol. >> and 6 everyone in. >> reporter: we get the information and some pictures to you, often t

fox's brenda buttner explains why. reporter: consumers splitting this thanksgiving and black friday shopping weekend into the records books with unemployment stuck at 9% and u.s. debt now at $15 trillion. retail sales weigh heavily on this 2011 economic outlook. >> when retail does well, the economy does well. reporter: according to the national retail federation, numbers were up 16% from last year with shoppers spending more than $52 billion totaling nearly $400 per person. those big numbers come with more people spending this year, 226 million of them hitting stores and online over the weekend. one example, the mall of america in bloomington, minnesota, opening at midnight for the first time for black friday. more than 200,000 visitors shuffling through. >> for the most part, people are in a better position than they were in three or four years ago. they paid down debt, put money into savings and that means they're a little bit comfortable shopping. reporter: nationwide nearly 1/4 of those shoppers getting to the sto

fox 5's brenda buttner has the details of. reporter: forget crowds and lines.ross off your holiday list with the latest shopping apps from your own home. one app called no more socks will help you keep track of who is getting what. >> that one allows you to set a budget, which is very important. you can also put your holiday list on there, take photos of gift items and there's a barcode scanner. if you see something on a shelf, scan it and it saves it to your phone. reporter: shop style is a free app which steele says is like having a department store at your fingertips. >> that's 300 stores. they divide it into women, men, baby and kids and also home. so there's everything on there. reporter: if you do brave the lines at the mall, you'll want to download fast mall before you go. >> it gives you turn by turn navigation in the mall and you can also shake it to find the restroom, places to eat and find your car because it has a voice recorder app. so you can leave a message for yourself. reporter: if you're the person who abandons your online shopping cart when f

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i'm brenda buttner, bulls and bears, let's get to it. gary b smith. tobin smith. jonas max ferris, and the economic policy institute's kristin dorsey. welcome gary k will the triple whammy whack the economy back into recession. >> i'm going to be the the scrooge here, i think so. there's just a lot of things happening all at once that tell me, there's a problem ahead. number one, we're looking at european interest rates to skyrocket and there's no absolutely no confidence there, the numbers out of asia now, particularly china have been headed south and then you add to our 15 trillion of debt, which is, i believe, crowned at the private sec torques i think we've got trouble ahead. just look at the stock market, it's speaking volumes what's going on. >> brenda: volumes, such as? >> you've got commodity stocks getting hit real hard. financials in the toilet right here and i think that measures to the economy. >> brenda: gary k, you've got the one hand and gary b, the other? >> well, and gary k makes a compelling argument for doom and gloom. in fact, the same argument

hi, everyone, i'm brenda buttner. this is "bulls & bears." let's get right to it. the bulls & bears this week, gary b. smith, jonas max ferris along with john thomas, financial ceo tom belisis, scott martin from accent asset management and democratic media consultant steve murphy. welcome to everybody. tom, no deal, a b. s. deal for jobs? >> i agree. i mean, these cuts that take place in 18 months are a budget b. s. it's a budget crap. you have to make these cuts now and they have to stop messing around and put an end to the uncertainty on america's economic future and the job creators right now. they have to make the cuts. no one is going to be happy but it's their job and responsibility for the future of this country to make the tough decisions even if it's not the right ones. >> i don't know, jonas, you're smiling. that may be because you're in miami or maybe because you're disagreeing with tom. >> some cuts are better than no cuts. i actually like severe, serious cuts which is the penalty for no action and they kick in later as would the tax increases if there'

hi, everyone, i'm brenda buttner, this is bulls and bears. let's get right to it. the bulls and bears this week, gary b smith, tobin smith. jonas max ferris along with today shotodd schoenberger. gary you say as goes ohio, so go the cuts. >> absolutely, brenda. if you're on the super committee and you're on the fiscal austerity side, you're quaking in your boots right now. in an ohio backed union proposal, what they really backed was floated pensions, outrageous salaries, outrageous hiring practices, nonexistent firing practices, all the things that we need, the opposite side of which to turn this country around and show some fiscal soundness. instead, ohio went the other way and i tell you what, if i again, you're on the super committee you just lost a big, a lot of trump cards in your hand. >> susan, what does it mean for the super committee, do you think? >> i think the message from the ohio vote there is solidarity among middle class workers, who, what they're voting for, a lot of middle class workers, in ohio and they're suffering right now and there's a lot o

brenda buttner senior business correspondent and bulls and bears with more. >> harris, for many holidays means layaway. if you don't have enough credit or cash to buy a gift outright. one is to pay bit by bit until you own it, as you just heard, senator schumer says laying away is really giving away. and to the store. he believes your a giving a big present to retailers, one that isn't fair to consumers. and he warns when you pay a layaway fee and a down payment that often acompanies it, you're getting hit with interest charges far beyond those with typical created cards, double and even higher the highest card rates. and he wants major retail organizations to get their members to list the costs in terms more clearly to customers, but at least one industry rep says it's not fair to even compare layaway and credit cards. the retail industry leaders association claims for people who can't get credit, layaway may be a clear option, with simple terms which don't change, unlike credit cards. and senator schumer may go all the way to the federal trade commission if stores don't cooperate and h

here now fox senior business correspondent brenda buttner. thanks for coming back. to underestimate wal-mart. they really have brought down costs for millions of americans and they are the biggest retailer in the world. this model has been tried at many of the big box retailers. >> cvs walgreens. >> but not on this scale. there are pro pros and cons. some of the cons would be wal-mart is located in a lot of rural areas where it is very difficult to find physicians. they are trying to take this -- we don't know. wal-mart says this is not -- that this leaked document is not the basis of a huge bid, plan to do primary health care. but if they were trying to do something like primary health care, diabetes, depression, treat hiv, that type of thing, those are the types of things that are very difficult to treat in a walk-in clinic. you want to see a doctor again and again and again, if you have a chronic condition. it might be cheap, but we don't know that it would necessarily be the most effective method. >> heather: not necessarily the best care although it may be the

senior business correspondent brenda buttner is here live to give us some answers.ere play such a big role here on wall street? because we have a lot at stake not in greece whose gdp is the equivalent of a small u.s. state like, rhode island, but in europe overall. europe p is a bigger market than china for u.s. products. more than a fifth of what we send overseas. and u.s. companies have more than a trillion invested there. trade with europe supports many u.s. jobs. large u.s. financial firms hurt when their european peers are having trouble. that is because international banks lend to one another and to corporations. now if that falls apart you will see even less credit available here at home. plus, in the short-term, hard to believe but our stocks, especially next week may follow the fate of greece and europe. why? the eu is in some ways a bit of a domino game. if greece defaults then perhaps italy falls as you just heard from greg burke. why that matters here. if european countries can't pay their bills, if the protesters in the streets who do not want the draco

brenda buttner joins us. friday it looked pretty good. >> the markets ended up.better than wednesday when we saw a huge, huge market sell-off. that was mainly because there was talk that berlusconi might be out. and the italian bond went below 7%. 7% seems to be this magic ceiling basically, where we saw greece, ireland, portugal, at that level all needing to be bailed out. but, italy is an entirely different animal. it is the third largest economy, after france and germany. and basically, many people think it is too big to bail. there are lots of people who say, this is just, you know the markets will be watching it so carefully. because it is not enough that berlusconi is out. italy is in much bigger trouble than greece, if it defaults. it is in much worse -- it has six times the debt, basically. their problems are far, far greater. there's a lot more that needs to be done. it could have a far greater impact on us, in america. >> what can we do on our end where italy is concerned to bolster them and protect ourselves? >> well, the issue here is that we have --

brenda buttner senior business correspondent and bulls and bears with more. >> harris, for many holidays don't have enough credit or cash to buy a gift outright. one is to pay bit by bit until you own it, as you just heard, senator schumer says laying away is really giving away. and to the store. he believes your a giving a big present to retailers, one that isn't fair to consumers. and he warns when you pay a layaway fee and a down payment that often acompanies it, you're getting hit with interest charges far beyond those with typical created cards, double and even higher the highest card rates. and he wants major retail organizations to get their members to list the costs in terms more clearly to customers, but at least one industry rep says it's not fair to even compare layaway and credit cards. the retail industry leaders association claims for people who can't get credit, layaway may be a clear option, with simple terms which don't change, unlike credit cards. and senator schumer may go all the way to the federal trade commission if stores don't cooperate and he'll ask that watch do

here is our senior business correspondent brendaç buttner. 78 million baby boomers born in the two decades >> problem is, there's this huge number that is going to be entering into the social security and medicare age. waiting for benefits. and this smaller group that isç going to be paying into it. that's part of the problem. but, unless i think it is such a politically unpopular thing to do, to cut benefits, that i don't think we are going to see them cut for sometime to come. >> gregg: i see the aarp ads seniors saying you are going to hear from usç congress if you cut our benefits. you have to feel for these folks. their wealth and savings have diminished over the last several years. they indebtedness has exploded. and give event the housing bust, their hopes are no longer a nest egg. >> it is a sad story. basically, their wages have stayed stagnant do$ two decades. stocks went up. their houses went up. they counted on those. then stocks crashed. houses crashed. their indebtedness went up like this now the only answer is they gotta work longer. >> gregg: that is the solution, i gues

joining us is brenda buttner, arrange chore of bul-- anchor o bears. , i don't understand what is going on, if he resigns and they don't come to an agreement, they go kaput and the stock market tanks or if they do come to agreement does it help us? >> they need to come to agreement, if they don't they'll default on their debt and could possibly just abandon the euro, and in that case, it is hard to believe that the country that has a gdp basically the size of rhode island would have any impact on us. but, what it does is, it is kind of like domino's in europe, and, if they go down, italy could go down and ireland can go down and portugal could go down and we have a lot at stake in europe, we have $400 billion of our imports, exports, go each year, to europe. american investors firms have a trillion dollars last year, alone. invested in europe, so, it is very important to us. and, next week, there's very little economic numbers that are going on. so you can expect that this drama, that this greek tragedy, so to speak, will be at center stage on wall stre

let's bring in brenda buttner. say it ain't so. is that wha could happen? >> it's possible.ly difficult conditions in washington last summer to downgrade for the first time in history, america's debt. so it's very possible that this might be the second time that they choose to do it. >> jamie: so say they do, there's no question that the u.s. markets are very responsive to what has happened overseas with all the uncertainty. what could our potential downgrade do to, let's say, european or asian markets? >> yeah, you'll remember that stocks sank like a rock when this happened. basically, what happens is when a wngrade happens, we have a huge debt. and people have to come in and buy that debt. they have to -- they have to pay for that debt. but they want a bigger payoff when it's riskier because right now, s&p is saying it's riskier to borrow that debt. if they downgrade it. so they're going to want more of a payoff. they're going to want a higher interest rate. that means higher borrowing costs so that could mean, you know, stocks again fall. but you also will remember that s

bring in senior business correspondent and anchor of bulls and bears brenda buttner. >> not just thet a thumbs down if it fails, so, too, could the nation's credit rating and that would be less than super for us as americans. downgraded debt for the first time in history for much less. back in august when it said that difficult political decisions in d.c. were enough to call for the political decision to do so. many analysts believe the failure to do is deal with almost certainly trigger at least one of the ratings agencies to take our debt from double a plus to double a. insidey's placed the u.s. on negative credit watch. perhaps the supercommittee is exactly what it is watching. the last agency still has the top rating for the u.s. but with some concerns. remember the impact of the first and only other downgrade ever? stocks sank around the world. here in the u.s., the largest one day selloff since the credit crisis in 2008 with the dow down 600 points in one day. it wasn't the only casualty. consumer confidence also sharply declined. you would expect that a lower credit rating wou