jonathan: joining me around the michele, bob michael -- kathy jones and douglas peebles.athy, this doesn't quite compete the picture that everything is ok in the u.s. economy. kathy: first is always a little soft and we had a pretty good fourth quarter in terms of consumer spending, so i think what we are seeing is a normal retrenchment you see, particularly a lot of credit card debt was run of over the past couple of months. there is a tendency to recoup. in general, the economy looks pretty good and that drives it. jonathan: bob, are things maybe not as brilliant as they seem? bob: things are awesome right now. jonathan: welcome me through why. capacity, look at small business optimism. it posted the second highest reading in history. the highest was september, 1983, during the reagan reform years. look at wage gains, they are starting to pick up. and you look at the central banks. they are being slow and gradual and normalizing at a glacial pace that we in the markets can easily absorbed. jonathan: doug? douglas: i think people are looking at the wrong place at inflati

jonathan: doug peebles? douglas: i think people are looking in the wrong place at inflation. we don't have much consumer price inflation or core pce. wherever the fed is. inflation is in asset prices. everybody thinks that is a great thing. if you define goldilocks as a buoyant economy, which i think i agree with bob, we not only have a buoyant economy in the u.s. -- we have a buoyant economy globally. we have very little pressures on consumer prices, but we do have asset prices that are quite robust. jonathan: bob? bob: but this is what is so great. the central banks see the asset price inflation also. why are we fighting this? why don't we embrace the ecb? they have got moderate growth, moderate inflation, they have got asset prices inflating, why change interest rates? why not just leave it there and let us enjoy the asset price inflation until it spills over into the real economy and you see an inflation surge? douglas: how did that work for japan back in the late 1980's and 1990's? bob: they are still figuring it out. douglas: it did not work out. bob: yeah, but they hav