gary cohn said it, then miraculously when we saw the tax cut, somehow it wasn't in there.we asked on the show, please, any republican who is openly supporting why carried interest should stay in existence, >> come tell us. >> come explain. nobody would. >> zero. >> to your point, stephanie, there is zero political will to do this now. we should point out marco rubio who is making those complaints now, made them before voting for that tax bill. it wasn't enough to cause him to oppose it. this is something that's not going to happen until you get a new election. if a democratic president is elected and you've got a democratic head of steam on capitol hill, then i think you could see the political will to do this. in the meept, as long as you have republicans controlling one haft of the white house, you'll see companies resorting not to do it. probably won't have much effect. general motors, people like amy klobuchar, democratic senators requested that gm not execute a large stock buy back at a time when they announced some plant closing. so there will be a lot of noise about

gary cohn, supported, led the charge on wall street to support him in the first term. the second term after dodd-frank, gary cohn did a 180. goldman didn't support obama against romney. but they look at these, the people, the crew that is now running the democratic party, and bringing schumer into its fold per that article, obama on steroids. this is not just semiprogressive politics. neil: sounds like behind the scenes they're kind of pushing him on, right? >> they're pushing on lloyd to go after -- neil: they can't publicly challenge. >> they're scared to death going after these guys, getting a big target on their back, hauled in front of hearings before maxine waters. you know the whole drill. are you happy? market only down 314. you look more dour now. neil: incredible. charlie gasparino, thank you very much. i want to clarify something i said a little earlier about the gaggle involving larry kudlow who had told our stuart varney not even more than a half an hour ago, that the two sides, china, united states are still far apart. then there was a separate issue, i b

>> by the way, gary cohn didn't write the tax plan larry kudlow and i did in the campaign i don't buye's argument. almost everything we have done economically since trump came into office to reverse the obama policies and, you know, we got 3% growth and 2018 that's something as you know, gene, in 8 years obama wasn't able to do and forecasting we'd get 4%. something big is happening in the economy. there's a difference of a recovery and an economic boom and we are in one of those right now. now, the thing to disrupt this economic boom, the thing that's keeping me up at night is whether he can get this trade deal done with china i think he's almost staked the president sir presidency on getting this done. if they make reasonable concessions, china's a bad actor on the international scene right now and so many ways and steal, they're engaged in industrial espionage right now. i could go down the gambit if china makes concessions, i think the economy's going to go through the roof and see dow 30,000 and can't get that deal down then you could see that 25% tariff to do real damage to the

former economic council director gary cohn will highlight large portions, including his time workingsident trump. according to reports, cohn hasn't finished the book. no deal is in pleas yet. politico says bob barnett an attorneyal legal powerhouse williams and connelly has been shopping the idea to publishers in new york. cohn made comments in the past, he was in the process of writing about his experiences in the trump administration after he left the white house in 2018. >>> let's get a check of the weather with meteorologist bill kierans. i guess spring is nowhere close. >> not even. the first week, first two weeks of march look like a lost cause if you like warm temperatures for much of the country. yeah, bearer of bad news. second half of march looks better, better be. detroit to saginaw, out to grand rand. it will move into areas of western new york. some is not hitting the ground here in pennsylvania. here's the snowfall forecast for today, rochester chest tore syracuse areas. we could see snow you could be plowing and half travel delays there. it looks like it's north of new

as we have this conversation, i can hear gary cohn screaming at his television saying you don't understand how buybacks work. they're great for shareholders and shareholders are everyday people in their 401(k)s. beyond gary's view who helped orchestrate this tax cut, now we're hearing from republicans and democrats, maybe buy babbs are too much. maybe we need to set limits. what's your overall thesis? >> this is not new. we had companies for a long time, 30 years that have bought back stock when they determined they couldn't earn a better return putting money into other projects. it's not virtuous to say corporations shouldn't buy back, not invest. we had a massive cap x bubble in the 1990s into 2000s. they built all this telecom equipment. lots of bankruptcies and layoffs. m & a largely is destructive. think how many layoffs you get when a giant company buys an almost giant company. these are not necessarily better than buybacks and i think buybacks are such a lightning rod because people rightfully see most of that benefit is accruing to the 10% who own 80% of the stock. >> m & a, merger

he surrounded himself with gary cohn and wilbur ross and they said let's get rid of dodd/frank and whoment is it would help them but they are seeing it isn't. you can't tell someone i'm helping you and smack them in the face by allowing financial institutions to take advantage of them. it can't go on indefinitely forever. as a certain point there will be a realization. i don't know if that's 2020 or 2022 in the next midterms but people are going to wake up and say, you know what it turns out this rampant laissez-faire philosophy of financial markets and banking institutions, this didn't go my way or work out for me and people will have their minds changed by reality if not by political arguments. >> you bring up the financial crisis. donald trump is an outcome of the financial crisis. his presidency is a reflection of the distress that average americans felt in the wake of that meltdown where they lost homes. they lost their pensions. they lost their children's -- savings for their children's college. and large institutions overlooked them. both parties overlooked them to some extent.

cap x way harder to forecast, way more difficult to get to the nuance we had clues gary cohn got in front of ceos and coos and got no applause when he mentioned that would happen because everyone in the audience said, well cap x is hard and buybacks are easy and both produce rising earnings which one to do more of. >> if you had the view you were already in a late cycle economy to begin with, why would you open your -- >> plus international is not helping you. >> it's already done the tax cut act is already in there. here's the point though. the cap x is the only thing that can lead this higher are you going to get more consumption and employment >> what industry is doing that. >> that's my point the cap x hasn't been there for years and years and years. >> that's not true that's factually not true. >> capital expenditures increased year over year there's been a mistake last year it didn't expand it did it didn't as much as we wanted it was front half loaded because the tariffs knocked everybody off their perch. >> cap x hasn't been there to drives the economy there has been cap x we saw

conflict with unpredictable consequences, president trump's own former national economic counsel gary cohnn warning about that. so there are potential ways you could stumble into a recession, but clearly, we are due for a slowdown. >> john, good to see you, as always, john harwood, cnbc editor at large. >> it's not a favorite cliche of mine, also not a popular one. recession is not always forced. >>> former trump lawyer and fixer, you know who we're talking about, michael cohen, testifying on capitol hill right now, making his first of three appearances this week. >>> and nbc news has learned that tomorrow, michael cohen will go into detail on why he thinks trump is a liar, a racist, and a business cheat. i would like him to answer why he knew all of those things, signed on to it, and helped the president do it for so long. >> and stuck with the guy. coming up next, we'll talk to one congressman who will question cohen. you're watching "velshi & ruhle" live on cnbc. if your adventure keeps turning into unexpected bathroom trips you may have overactive bladder, or oab. ohhhh... enough alrea

i don't know where you are landing on that, but as gary cohn likes to say, if you are a wealthy persons issue on capital gains, nobody is really paying the estate tax. is that somewhere that you can look and say, okay, ki negotiate there, and work on that? >> well, i can surely negotiate anywhere to get things, but in tes state t the estate taxes, you can take that money to go to vegas and gamble and carouse and smoke, and not give it to the children, because they would spend it. that is wrong. and we need taxes for day care and other things. >> flat tax. >> i call it a net tax, but if you want to ul ka call it is a tax, fine. >> can you do it where it is not regressive >> yes. >> i have a naive way to think about it. >> and jerry brown's tax, that idea was mine, and we got rid of all of the taxes. and we went to net sales from the first to the last dollar, and personal adjusted income, and no personal exclusions, and there 13%, and much more than revenue neutral and it would have raised a lot of money, and led to enormous economic expansion and this is jerry brown eighth in the race o

need on infrastructure >> senator, you're up in cambridge about to teach a class, i believe, with gary c n cohnth agree on? >> we don't agree on the tax bill but we definitely agree on those issues that will challenge us into the future. it's going to be an interesting -- what we're doing is leading a discussion and what we hope to hear from students is maybe open up their eyes, not do the sound bite of the day. but give them an opportunity to really understand we have some systemic economic challenges ahead of us. that they are going to inherit as people who, you know, lead the country into the future. and so we're going to lead a discussion i think it's going to be interesting, probably the area that gary and i most agree on is trade. trade is an area he has been very outspoken on. so have i. i don't think this idea that you have to choose between being a patriot and being interested in global economic development and global interaction are in any way in conflict. in fact, i don't think that you can be a patriot looking at north dakota or looking at our nation's economy and not be a globalist