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 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

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 realized it was even three or four

>> i think you're right, ezra.e economy is a great predix ter of election outcomes so if you look at the growth rate right now and try to predict what's going to happen looking forward, fourth quarter of this year, to second quarter of next year, you'd have to come away thinking this incumbent party the democrats have their work cut out for them. they need to bring economic growth at the end of this year and into next year. and that's a big challenge. >> how much does a good campaign matter? i mean one hope is that they will be so much better at campaigning or one hope from the white house better campaigning, so much money that the republicans won't be able to compete no matter how weak the economy is can a campaign outweigh the economic numbers we're looking at? >> it's absolutely possible that a fantastic campaign, a great message, and a great strategy, can certainly steal the election away from the party that is favored by the economic conditions. that's happened in history and it certainly could happen for obam

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 m

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, more broadly the downgrade affects our view the effectiveness, s

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

i will keep at it until every single american who wants a job can find one. >> so, ezra, is this toote, 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 get more payroll tax cut and more tax extenders, so it is great to bring up the proposals, but it is important to keep the attention on the issue, but there is not a clear political strategy behind them in the way that the republicans have had a clear political strategy to force the deficit reduction and force spending cuts on to the tab

congress will make them do some hasty decisions to undo the economy. >> thank you, ron insana and ezra klein. >>> and now a national manhunt for three siblings. they shot at a police officer trying to the pull them over for speeding in florida before fleeing to georgia where they robbed a bank. the officer's dash cam catches the trio and later while in pursuit the cop radios back that he has been fired on. >> fired several more shops at me. >> and they have a flat tire, too. >> seems i will not be able to keep up with him, because i can't go much farther. >> cliff van zandt is a former fbi profiler and msnbc contributor. you used to work in the atlanta office so what are they doing right now to actively track down the three fugitive siblings. >> well, a combination of the fbi and the police efforts and using bulletin boards and credit cards and relying on the public. these are the three best known pictures in america right now of fugitives. i would suggest that anyone who sees these people, and you know, simply call 911. i think that the reality is that these are not, thomas, not profe

for expert analysis, i am joined by washington post ezra klein who is also an msnbc policy analyst.ood 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 wat

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

also, opinion writer for "the washington post," ezra klein.nd up next, the race in the al east heats up. red sox and yankees. plus, rex ryan shows off his new tattoo, what? we'll be right back. [ p.a. announcer ] announcing america's favorite cereal is now honey nut cheerios! yup, america's favorite. so we're celebrating the honey sweetness, crunchy oats and... hey! don't forget me!! honey nut cheerios. make it your favorite too! [ 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. our girl's an architect. our boy's a genius. we are awesome parents! biddly-boop. [ male announcer ] if you find a lower rate on a room you've booked, we won't just match it. we'll give you $50 towards your next trip. [ gnome ] it's go time. >>> some big sports news. former giants star plaxico burress is returning to new york to play wi

ask yourself -- and you have this discussion with ezra that i found interesting. i think you were saying they have this paragraph in there where they talk about the predictability of our politics, and it's a good paragraph, but it's not what we look for the ratings agencies to do. they need to tell us am i as a lender making a safe bet when i lend to this institution, and the answer to that is yes. >> okay, what you just described in terms of the debt ceiling is you described it as crazy debt ceiling nonsense, and the nonsense was crazy and nonsense, but we did it on the very last day, so isn't it legitimate for them to say that close to default makes us worry about default? >> if we were to have this discussion two weeks ago, by the way, when s&p and others threatened to downgrade. if we had had this discussion then, i would have said a couple of weeks ago, this is a silly discussion. there's a pin prick of reason in this you kind of circled around. we have prominent republicans, mitch mcconnell, rob porkman, representative paul ryan, some of the most prominent r

ezra, what can you tell me about this deal? >> the deal is big. a lot of your viewers have heard this before, but it's a two-stage deal. the first stage is about 900 billion in cuts. half come from security and half don't. >> you mean the pentagon? >> not just the pentagon. so the theory is a bulk will come from the pentagon, but security includes state, veteran benefits and foreign aid and a couple other things. it's possible that state could get big cuts and the pentagon could be what spared. in the second round when you have them backed by the trigger. the supercommittee, we don't know what it will do. if the trigger goes off it will cut $1.2 trillion out of the budget in ten years. >> to it would be a huge cut in the pentagon if, in fact, this supercommittee does not come with some resolve in terms of where their cuts are going to come from? >> absolutely. if you listen to the white house and the democrats, they're arguing this will force republicans to the table. they cannot abide by cuts in defense spending as significant as what the trigger

it's not just the president. >> true. >> ezra klein. msnbc contributor. and also sitting in for martin bashir this week. >>> coming up, why cozy relationships between rick perry and his donors are something you should be aware of. >>> and why would the americans for prosperity have an interest in cool board elections in wake county, carolina? that's what we wanted to find out. that's later in the show. >>> so earlier today, jon huntsman tweeted about science. just to clear the air. tweet, to be clear, i believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. call me crazy. it is now the most retweeted tweet of any gop 2012 candidate ever. it also means we're going to talk about crazy. coming up. namely, all the other gop candidates who don't believe in evolution. who don't trust scientists on global warming. and who thinks our environmental protection agency wants to kill jobs. one of those candidates is texas governor rick perry. up next, why perry is under fire for seeming to favor his big donors when it comes to big deals. ahh. my breath feels so

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it's not just the president. >> true. >> ezra klein. msnbc contributor. and also sitting in for martin bashir this week. thanks for joining me. >>> coming up, why cozy relationships between rick perry and his donors are something you should be aware of. >>> and why would the americans for prosperity have an interest in school board elections in wake county, carolina? that's what we wanted to find out. that's later in the show. one log in lets you monitor all of your balances and transfer between accounts, so your money can move as fast as you do. check out your portfolio, track the market with live updates. and execute trades anywhere and anytime the inspiration hits you. even deposit checks right from your phone. just take a picture, hit deposit and you're done. open an account today and put schwab mobile to work for you. >>> so earlier today, jon huntsman tweeted about science. just to clear the air. tweet, to be clear, i believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. call me crazy. it is now the most retweeted tweet of any gop 2012 candid

it's not just the president. >> true. >> ezra klein. msnbc contributor. and also sitting in for martin bashir this week. >>> coming up, why cozy relationships between rick perry and his donors are something you should be aware of. >>> and why would the americans for prosperity have an interest in cool board elections in wake county, carolina? that's what we wanted to find out. that's later in the show. [ male announcer ] get ready for the left lane. the volkswagen autobahn for all event is back. right now, get a great deal on new volkswagen models, including the cc. and every volkswagen includes scheduled carefree maintenance. that's the power of german engineering. right now lease the volkswagen cc sport for just $289 a month. ♪ visit vwdealer.com today. a network of possibilities. 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

. >> 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

good morning, ezra. >> good morning. >> s&p's basis, and steve talked about this, their reason for the downgrade was economic as well as political. let me read part of what they said. we see america's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective and less predictable than what we previously believed. the statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips. are they right? >> i think there's no doubt they're right. which is not to say s&p is a particularly good analytical shop. it's not to say, and this is very important, it is not to say what's going on in the markets today is a function of s&p as other people pointed out. for instance, what s&p did is downgraded treasuries, downgraded government debt. government debt is doing great today because everywhere else in the world is doing terrible. people are terrified what's happening in europe, italy and spain. people are very, very worried about growth in america. they're worried about a slowdown in china. there's a tendency to sort of take the big political economic news and then ex

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

as an msnbc policy analyst and the kcolumnist for "the washington post," ezra, good to see you. >> i think it is hard to know. by the time we vote, people are not going to think about how hard it was to reach a debt ceil willing deal. i would push it back to what you are talking about at the beginning of the segment. if you have a debt sealiceiling, if you are going to suck $170 billion out of the economy in an election deal and another 20 or so billion dollars out, you could see a substantial drag in growth. the president will be a political casualty. >> did he get anything? >> he got the debt ceiling. basically, they managed to punt a lot for it. if you talk to the white house and republicans therks both hold a position that cannot be true at the same time. the white house and the democrats think that when this big commission reports near thanksgiving, which will bring it into an election year, it is going to look great for them. they will be trying to cut medicare to not raise taxes on rich people. republicans think it will be great because democrats will try to raise taxes as opp

joining me now is ezra kline.started this kvshgs in ernest on friday when i joined you on martin bashir's shoem you were guest hosting and we talked about this payroll tax question. i'm excited to extend this conversation with you. there's no doubt that republicans are right about this in the sense they will increase deficit, but how do you score it on its stim laifb at a time rates. >> it's nice to see them say it costs money. the payroll tax cut is much more stimulant. the payroll taxes affects only the first $106,000 of your income. the people it helps out are people that spend their income to make ends meet. if you try to get money into the economy right now, what you want and the reason tax cuts don't work is a tax cut will be spent and not saved. a tax cut targeted to people that need to spend the money they earn as opposed to having a fair amount of money sxok away. it's more stim laifb. >> mitt romney said he did not flatly rule out an extra year for the payroll tax cut, but that he prefers to see it happe

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

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

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

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

but we heard ezra kline say you need more job growth than that to sustain a recovery. what other concerns do you have about gdp and what other signs that might indicate our growth is slowing where economists are going to look at this and say maybe we are in recession? >> this is an example of the age of diminished expectations. people on wall street were exalting over this 117,000 payroll jobs. that's not going to cut it. all that is is saying we were prepared for a worse outcome. it was better than the may and june numbers. nothing to write home about. nothing that's going to put americans back to work in large numbers. we are in this position of diminished expectations. we have a situation where all the numbers in the last few weeks have been pretty weak. we saw bad gdp numbers. we saw weak numbers on consumer spending. it would be nice to see some more bright spots and real growth not just treading water. >> good to talk to you. i appreciate your time. >> thanks. >> obviously this is one rocky roller coaster ride. my big question today are we going to see a change i

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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