consumers about the products. instead it is a contradiction to establish levels challenging the efficacy of the u.s. government's determination on a wireless device safety. as noted by the fcc, some parties to recommend taking measures to further reduce exposure to this energy. the sec does not endorse the need for this practice. the federal government's jurisdiction over radio communications is predicated on a finding that national regulation is appropriate and essential. supervisor avalos: thank you very much. supervisor mar: thank you for your testimony. let me ask a question to the industry. i know that many local activists appointed clinton to a number of studies. they say that at least five studies in the last four years, the study from the journal of epidemiology a couple of years ago, they are showing that there is a potential link. especially when they look depth the impact had on children that do not know any better. a number of studies are showing that there is potential public health risk. you are sayi

our first witness today is here representing the consumer financial protection bureau. dan sokolov, have i got that right? is that it hideous as it for the research market and regulations. this division is responsible for understanding the consumer financial markets and evaluating whether there is the need for a graduation and the cost and benefit for the existing regulation. prior to joining the cftc, he held positions with the department of the treasury and served as attorney for the federal reserve. mr. sokolov, we look forward to your testimony. >> on the subject of small business in the consumer financial protection bureau. it is the federal agency accountable for establishing clear rules of the road for the consumer financial marketplace and mr. chairman, you mentioned the importance of the vibrant marketplace that is precisely what we are striving for. although the jurisdiction is limited with regard to the small business credit, we take our responsibility in this area very seriously. we recognize that small businesses are critical to the nation's economy and the

and if the market decline is just a blip, consumers may shrug it off. >> in which case, consumers could weather this very well and it's not going to have a significant or prolonged impact. >> reporter: but the wild market ride, combined with the political drama over raising the debt ceiling, could have a greater impact abroad. investors around the world have new doubts about u.s. economic and political leadership, says economist fred bergsten. >> i think many of my foreign friends are a little naive in giving the u.s. the benefit of the doubt and giving us a pretty long leash. all of a sudden, they were shocked to see how dysfunctional the system is and how difficult it was to come up with anything concrete. >> reporter: and once lost, confidence is not easily regained. consumers won't be in a better mood until they see proof there will be more jobs. and investors around the world will need to see progress in washington before they are willing to once again give the united states the benefit of the doubt. darren gersh, "nightly business report," washington. >> susie: our guest tonight s

economy has not rubbed off on consumers lately. the thompson-reuters university of michigan expense index out today plunged again in the month of august. this has now fallen off to its lowest point since late 2008 during the worst of the financial crisis. consumers polled said they felt worse about their finance, didn't expect to get pay raises and thought unemployment would keep climbing. as we continue our series, how the fix the economy, diane estabrook talks with some consumers who say the sour economy is turning them into mindsers. misers. >> reporter: at this chicago target store, heidi pfetcher is checking off the items on her daughter's school supply list. her lesson plan for this year? stick to a budget. >> we're really watching our money and watching our pennies and here buying school supplies and getting ready for the school year. >> reporter: throughout this store we found a lot of penny- pinching consumers. and who can blame them? gasoline prices are still taking a huge bite out of household budgets. and speaking of ho

to spur consumer demand. we have just wasted the last two months talking about the debt ceiling. talking about threatening the economy. if our republican colleagues didn't get their way. we should be looking for ways to encourage greater consumer confidence and consumer spend sngz congressman, i think maybe you missed your colleagues. don't you understand that some of your colleagues in the tea party caucus and some of your colleagues there in the congress feel the way to inspire consumers is to cut the safety net, not generate jobs, threaten social security and throw in threatening mad med cade or medicare. that certainly makes people go out and shop and buy things. >> reverend were you're right. if there was uncertainty generated the last two months, it is exactly what you're talking about. instead of focusing on policies we can take now to try and spur greater demand. for example, the republican transportation plan that they've got under the house of representatives would cut, cut our transportation invest

to consumers on the rate review process. the second important tool that the aca provides to ensure that consumers receive value for their premium dollars are the rate review provisions, which you heard about. senator feinstein indicated and you did, mr. chairman, the rate increases of 10% or more for most plans are required to publicly disclose the proposed increases and provide basic information to consumers for the reasons of the increase. these increases will be reviewed by states with an effective rate review process or by cms as a backstop to determine whether the rates are unreasonable. we recently concluded an evaluation of state review processes and found that almost all states will have an effective rate review process and will be reviews rate increases beginning september 1st. many states, as i said, enhanced their existing processes in order to meet the standards for an effective rate review and drew on grant funds as part of that process. we know effective rate review works. rhode island's commissioner used the a

one, both the consumer electronics association and the n.a.b. are investors in our company so in getting their endorsement about do you like the way i'm doing this, they ended up with becoming an investor in the company or investors in our company. the spectrum we are using is zero because we are embedding our tokens into essentially the null package or the leftover data that isn't filling up that 1939 that he station has. so it is very spectrum efficient to do this and we can move 100% of the households over the web from over the air and over the web with very few bits being used to do it. >> host: jack perry founder and ceo of syncbak showing us some of the new technology on display here at the capitol electronics consumer electronics show on capitol hill. anthony fornito double agent with the geek squad at best buy, what are we looking at? >> guest: basically this is a representation of the product that best buy recycles on every given day of every minute the source go so far to date we have taken in approximately 500,000 tons. hopefully by 2

and when it passes through the internet, it creates a unique consumer id. that id is then set up to the sync box which is here, and then it is sent out over the air. and what's really important and special about our technology is when that happens, there's only one household in the world that knows that broadcast is coming. so we've taken the one-to-many broadcast medium, broadcasting that we know, and we've embedded little kernels of data in there so each individual household has the equivalent of keys to online content sent to them over the air. so then they can watch anything they want over the internet on their smartphone or ipad or laptop because we've sent the rights to them over the air to do so. >> host: now, is this also mobile technology? >> guest: it's absolutely mobile in that it uses, um, any wireless device can now access your home television regardless of where you are to get the content that's going on in your home. what's different about the way we do it is as opposed to, say, a sling box which is a great technology, but it moves content in

mark greene, who began with some bright spots for consumer credit. >> consumers have done a good job actually focus on their credit cards, in fact, they paid down their debt on credit cards and are now running at the lowest default rates on credit cards in 17 years. there's similar health around automobile loans and student loans. so a lot of the credit portfolio that people normally think b consumers have done a pretty good job as they move from a period of dissaving to saving and sort of paying off those balances. so where are the problem spots. problems really in the housing market. the housing market still has easily another 12 or 18 months to go to work through this really large backlog of foreclosed properties and properties that are underwater. in fact, we think these days that about a third of home sales are of foreclosed properties. so long as that remains true, consumers are feeling very nervous about their own home ownership. their home is likely underwad elevatorer -- one out of three homes is underwater. until we see an improving in the house market t is the mortgage tha

the cfpb's is restricted to consumer financial products. while small businesses use products like perm credit cards for business transactions, small business owners need, deserve, and want the same protections on their financial products whether it's personal or business use. thus, the national of small business association advocated for extending truth in lending act protections to small business credit cards. now, there's only two ways the cfpb effects small business lending. first, it requires the cfpb to collect data. this is to ensure against discriminatory lending in the small business space. the data requirement imposes limited cost on lenders, but provides an important protection for small businesses, particularly those owned by women and people of color. more regimely though, there's authority over almost all service providers, large and small. the regulations could effect credit, but i want to emphasize it's premature to judge the impact on financial providers or the impact of the cfpb on small business credit costs and availabili

the other factor is consumer confidence. i'm out every week talking to customers and our stores, and when i'm talking to the customers shopping in the stores i'm not getting a sense of confidence so i measure my own consumer confidence when i am not talking to our consumers and with the situation in the economy with the job situation and other factors facing consumers i think redefault at this time would be devastating and that both reality and perception of consumers. >> i appreciate that. mr. merlo, i want to follow on what my colleague was i think referring to in terms of the repatriation of the profits and they understand that cvs caremark is not necessarily in that category but you do say in your testimony you are paying almost an effective 35% rate, and in essence, by paying a high effective rate it seems to be your company and others is basically paying for the burden of loopholes and avoidance behavior of other companies. so, do you believe that aggressive use of avoidance methods by competitors or the ability of com

we support sound consumer protection regulation that have fraudulent actors and ensure consumers have clear and precise disclosures about financial products. we want to ensure that the bureau takes a targeted approach for regulation and enforcement without making sweeping policies that impose due publictive burdenses on small businesses and prevents them from getting the credit they need to create the jobs we need in this country. i'll lay out our concerns in two general baskets. first, you know, we have concerns of small business that are subject to the cfpb's regulation and other oversight because they engage in one of the ten activities laid out in the law. they could be regulated by the bureau. all these businesses are subject to oversight by the ftc. it's important to point out these are not businesses that have been heretofore unregulated. overlap and duplication is inevitable as the outlines are on responsibility. second, as raised here already today, cfpb makes regulation that may decrease the availability or increase the cost of forms of consumer credit to small businesses. w

consumer spending fell in june and consumer stocks led the losers. tiffany fell more than 8%. hotelier starwood resorts shed 7.5%, and coach dropped 6.5%. earnings were up for coach but the rate of growth slowed down. leading the dow industrials lower was drugmaker pfizer. it was able to beat earnings expectations by one penny per share but key sales figures declined as it faces generic competition against some of its medicines. pfizer stock was off 4.6%. the generic competition threat has been hanging around pfizer for some time. its best-selling anticholesterol drug, lipitor, comes off patent. later on this year. despite that, the stock had been able to rally over plans to spin off one of its business units. and that's tonight's "market focus." >> tom: the stock market has fallen more than 6% in the past two weeks as the debt debate dragged on and we've seen fresh signs of the slow economy. that brings us to tonight's "word on the street," "safety." bryan ashenberg is a portfolio manager at thestreet.com. bryan, nice to see you. the first safety idea you brought along comes

making the choice for them isn't it a violation of consumer rights. we don't think so that we don't think that this is the very least another consumer it's. it's completely opposite we are trying to. to guarantee better security and safety in the end there on the roads for our people for our citizens and. we may discuss the burden for our common affection as in this project because the actual of this is the responsibility of a common affection is to build in these systems in their cars but for consumers it's up to them if they get connected to the service to the system or not if so it's up to their choice so there is the choice is still up to the consumer if you don't want to pay for it you may not pay for it ok now. there is no there twist to the same question as there are speculations are fears that the government may impose additional customs barriers for g.p.s. equipment afterglow ness becomes hundred percent operational if that happens this means that this may mean extreme protectionism can you comment on that there are some initiatives from russ

, but as entities who are being consumed. after all, african americans come to this country largely for slavery. much of what one sees during the 1940's. ebony and the american negro exposition, which i write about in my first chapter. some of the different initiatives to attempt to bring african americans in greater alignment with the market is a puzzling over how to make this term incredible in the face of a much longer history in which black folks were faced with the heritage of their enslavement within the united states. i think to some degree today telling well past the span of this book and thinking about what kind of lessons it brings up in the present-day, the fact that we still see many african-americans are economically dispossessed and put in situations where they really do not have the capacity to exercise initiatives, transform lives. incarcerated, and places in which jobs are very difficult to come by. places in which the wage scale or cost make it difficult for one to realize the kind of viable economic conditi

how consumers benefited from it. the changes we have may have saved consumers money. in the years that followed the standing of our state's review law, we have lowered requests 50% of the time, saving consumers $25 million, or just under $10 per person on a monthly insurance premium. that does not solve the affordability of health insurance. every rate requests matters to us because it matters to consumers. we must control health-care costs. that brings me to the study we are conducting with first-year grant funds. the key to stabilizing health insurance costs is controlling medical costs. considering all insurance markets, a 89 cents of every premium dollar goes to pay health-care costs. to try to tackle health care costs, we contacted an actuarial firm for a study. the study is exploring whether there are opportunities within our current which review -- rate review process to control the growth of health care costs or to improve the health care delivery system. we are applying for a second round of grant money to hire a second actuary and to conduct public hearings

producer priced inflation and consumers are not getting wage hikes. they are unable to pass it on to consumers and that is stagnating everything. it is it a tragic situation. we'll work our way out of it. energy prices are coming down. but it is a head wind when we don't need one. >> if you can't pass the prices on immediately. you have to cut somewhere and that means jobs. >> it starts with the weak dollar and what that is preventing is companies from investing in plant and equipment and factoris and things that create jobs. the high-priced level is a symptom and not a cause. the cause is a weak dollar and that is killing the job growth right now. >> morgan we heard that back to school prices are going up 10 percent across the board. there are increased prices particularly shopping in the grocery store. >> there are increased prices and whether the weak dollar is the cause or not we are seeing the affects in the job's market. mcdonalds and clorox that reported expected earnings this year and campbell's soup that is laying off 10 percent of the world

: from televisions to townhouses, consumer fear of the future is stalling sales. >> the pace of sales is slower than we ordinarily would like to see them. >> reporter: new jersey developer russ luppino could have broken ground on this $12 million housing project more than a year ago. >> if the market sales were better, the rate of the sales we would have been started here already. >> reporter: luppino just turned down financing on another project across town for the same reason. his banker, frank sorrentino, says this lack of consumer confidence is what's contaminating the recovery. >> when you look at the hysteria in the marketplace, people are second guessing decisions they would ordinarily make in a different fashion. >> reporter: look no further than america's changing credit card habits as proof. credit card delinquencies are at their lowest level in 17 years as consumers use cash, not for new purchases but to pay down old debt. >> i haven't borrowed a penny at home. >> reporter: xavier walter paid off his $20,000 in credit card debt. he has a strict cash-only policy now. >> it's

the third wave refers to a new breed of consumer. one far more interested in both what they're drinking and how it's been prepared. >>davies: it's going to be not just a cafe. we want it to be a place where we can share information if customers want it. if they want to come in for a coffee, don't ask us questions and just leave, that's wonderful, but if they want to go downstairs, have a little play on the machine, learn about coffees on the brew bar through different methods, that's wonderful too! >>reporter: and it's not just the cafes. making up nearly 5% of green coffee exports are sales to independent roasters, also riding high on the demand for better beans. >>hoffman: i guess there's two ways to look at a market. you could look at london and say that no one buys nice coffee here so it's pointless to open a good coffee house. or you could look at it and say, we've got millions of people here and there's no good coffee. i could open a coffee house and bevery, very successful. and that's the model lots of places have taken. >>tor

the whole concept of how we are consuming. i'm a consumer of media, news, journalism, movies, television shows, i probably don't want to mention here that i watch religiously. how we are all watching and consuming those things almost incommerce blue has changed without it noticing how quickly it has happened. i haven't bought a newspaper in probably three years. i read probably five newspapers a day. i haven't watched a television ad, a live television ad in probably three or three years. but i know every marketing campaign that's happening. because i'm consuming that content in different places. when you ask about what the future is, it's how we are consuming this content, and how we are being affected by the messaging and the marketing and whether i'm watching television and my ipad on the side of a coffee cup, you know, on a billboard somewhere. that's the fascinating piece, the social fabric of how we consume media, we are not huddled around the tvs. we are consuming this in very individual ways. that to me is a fascinatin

making the choice for them isn't it a violation of consumer rights. we don't think so the we don't thing that this is the relation of the consumer it's. it's completely the opposite we're trying to. to guarantee better security and safety and and they're on their aunts poor people or citizens. we may discuss the snowbird and for common infectious and this project because the actual of this is the possibility of a common factor as to building these systems. but for consumers it's up to them if the get connected to the service to the system or not if it's up to their choice. then the state choice is still up to the consumer if you don't want to pay for it you may not pay for it now. there is no there twist to the same question there are speculations are fears that the government may impose additional customs barriers for g.p.s. equipment have to go now becomes hundred percent operational if that happens this minute this may mean extreme protectionism can you comment on. some initiatives from russia on the borders official borders to increase their custo

but the latest survey on consumer sentiment revealed how pessimistic american consumers are feeling about the future. the university of michigan index showed accept theiment dipped in august to its lowest . in 30 years. now here's how things looked by the closing bell. the dow add 125 points, the nasdaq knand 15, the s & p 500 notched up six. the pace of trading settled to a more normal range with 1 billion shares trading here on the big board, two billion on the nasdaq. the major averages almost finished positive for the week but were down slightly when you add up all the numbers. the dow, for example, down 175 points or 1.5%, the nasdaq off 24 points, or 1%, and the s & p 500 one of the hardest hit off almost 2%. so will this intense volatility return next week? and what's behind the massive swings? erica miller reports. >> weeks like this one are extreme, but for the rest of us, the market's wild swings are confusing and often distressing. that even goes for veteran stock strategist bill cow. >> this is not a normal period. this is abnormal volatility. i had dinner with retail clients

and for consumers i've seen is that high right you know if for consumers that means two hundred forty dollars a month which is a lot more than they were paying if they signed up for a five dollars plan or a fifty dollars mother plan right and i think two hundred forty year two hundred forty year or so and i think a lot of consumers as they they adopt smartphones are beginning to make text messaging obsolete there are things like google talk like instant messaging technology things that are stand ins for text messaging really and that are free eighteen thousand knows this they're scared of it they want to kind of try to suck that last amount of monopoly profit out of consumers before this kind of tax credit revolution happens and hence the price the price hike well speaking of scared of the. couple of articles in the york times over the last eight or nine months here just some real quick quotes one in france and this is uncharacteristic of the rest of the countries that just use france's example hundred megabyte download internet speed which we would consider commercial grade high spee

we all use consumer application clout services. twitter, facebook, ebay, google, amazon, etc., you are using consumer application clout services. just so we realize how far we have transition, i was with a stanford did about two months ago, and i'm giving her the lecture on what is cloud computing, and i start that way. i say once upon a time, consumer applications used to get installed on your pc and update and all that, as she looks at me and said, "i've heard of this thing. isn't it called a floppy disk?" [laughter] what many of you guys probably do not know is on the business application front, this has similarly happen in a very different way. nearly every business application -- when i talk about business applications, and talking about financial customer relationships systems, purchasing, hr, web analytics, all the software business is used to automate their businesses. what you may not know is in the past 10 years, every business application software company which has gone public has been delivered as a cloud service. nobod

tomorrow, this has taken a major toll on consumer confidence. americans paying more, and fewer people are buying homes. >> in a nation powered by spending, 70% of the country powered by consumer spending this comes down to jobs. jobs is the bottom line. and that is something that there is no silver bullet for. >> during the first 10 days of august, americans collectively pulled out 23 and a half billion dollars out of their 401(k)s, fearful of how much further their retirement funds could drop. >> and people are worried. what are experts saying whether you should be buying or selling at this point? >> well, not surprising, experts saying unless you consider this current scenario to be a major market melt down, a recession, which typically takes about five years for stocks to bounce back from, then you're better off buying than bailing. >> and. >> i hear what you're saying, thank you, tj. >> uc berkeley economist says the nation shouldn't be so focused on debt if we want to get the economy going again. he says the government needs to spend to get

consumer confidence cascading. take what you can get and threw a 500-point swing that does anyone proud the traders make a rally out of it with the dow februarying up -- finishing up for the day but off for the week. and, still, well into correction territory and not that far from their market territory. though wonder why donald trump ain't doing a jig and donald, this was heartly a convincing rally. i guess calming. >>guest: well, no one knows what is happening. i have never seen volatility like that. it has to be a record. down 250 and then up 150 and up 250. i have never seen anything like it. so, basically, people are saying they do not know what is happening. >>neil: you say it is a crisis of leadership not just here but everywhere. explain that. >>guest: we are leading it, but that is the only thing we are leading in. we have a tremendous crisis in leadership. no confidence in our leadership. and it will have to change or this country will not be great again. we are going through a tremendous crisis and it al

they're the biggest export or us of the biggest consumer yeah absolutely what happens basically is a chinese factory you're a company will export something to your example walmart the company here in china will receive u.s. dollars those dollars then go back to the bank in china in or converted back into rim and be a trader then takes the u.s. dollars and in the past few years past decade really has been buying u.s. treasuries with it. and that's really as you're exactly right china has to print renminbi to soak up those dollars and that's what's really led to the high inflation here in china you know official inflation region china are five to six percent but most people here would tell you they're they're closer to ten percent own so when it is rising remember he is going to help the inflation problem in china and i think the central bank here in china finally is coming to a conclusion as well i mean a lot of the biggest crowd with the u.s. dollar of course is that the u.s. instead of dealing with their banker corruption problem they're simply printing more dollars in the hopes tha

the next ten twenty years we're going to see massive inflation in consumer as a renminbi rises. need to reason living standards here they know they're in an increase stronger remember he is going to do that right so people who shop at walmart again stock of a lot of chinese made goods it's a bit of a poisoned chalice because people in the u.s. and cutting their own wage negotiate their own wage growth the and their ability to collectively bargain for increased wages in seoul such time as price. we're all engaged with now. so. is there this type of talk inside china here in shanghai to people see this as an emerging currency war to the is this type of language at all you're right there in shanghai is this what's going on i don't see it many people talking of the currency wars is actually the political it's becoming more of a political issue here to keep the renminbi lol into keep shipping did you notice steeds than have them print them let's let's finally catching people's notice here is it why are we why are we working twelve hours a day in the factories and should be shipping p

consumer risk strategies that is trying to get the consumer engaged and understanding that they too have to work to control utilization and control costs. then attention to health improvement. employers began seeing about five years ago -- they began to realize if you have a fundamentally unhealthy employee or family member in terms of problems like obesity and diabetes and smokers and a whole range of problems that, in fact, there's almost no way you can really control costs because they will cost more and more as they get older. so we see the best companies are doing cost management, consumer risk strategies and attention to health improvement simultaneously. in addition as you all know the affordable care act has been taking an affect and it affects employers that we survey in difficulty ways. so there's two big changes. one the mandate that the government requires of employers, for example, covering the adult children up to age 26. and also the benefit mandates that are beginning to come in so they're saying you have to cover certain things or you can't have limits. those will drive

behalf of consumers. they used to the funding to hire an actuary and has been providing detailed analyses focused on the statute. unlike many states, oregon has a competitive health insurance market. we of seven insurers to compete in this market. because of our competitive process, we review 40 rate requests a year. the the first round of grants enabled us to add an actuary to our staff and we are proposing to add another in our next cycle. and this will allow us to dig deeper and address issues brought up by the consumer advocacy group and to hold public hearings so that those who want to participate can see the scrutiny firsthand that we provide with regard to these requests. grande dollars have also allowed us to communicate better with consumers about rate filings. we created a web page to help with a search engine that allows consumers to more easily find a filing as well as information about how we review filings. we used a grant dollars to create a story about health insurance costs. we also used

and make $300 and the consumer makes nothing. there's also -- >> the consumer side. other thoughts on facebook? you sure? >> only that facebook has a big new competitor in the marketplace. interesting to see with google's approach to the social network, the ability to do what you seem to have found it easy to segment out your profile and associate with people you only want to associate seems to be the big thrust behind their product. you start running the numbers also touches a significant number of people and while it might not have the elegance of an apple product yet, they seem to do really well with technology so interesting to see what happens a year from now where facebook stands if google's attempt takes off. >> more artist than scientists. >> the new offering from google reflects more the way we live which is there are certain things we talk about in the office and other things we talk about with our families and other things we talk about with our friends. one of the tricks with facebook is we're talking to everybody the same way. that doesn't really mirror