w leslie hightower, a physician of modest means from mobile, alabama, had trained in new york city in 1929 as a cancer surgeon at the institution that became today's memorial sloan-kettering cancer center. and then in 1930 at cornell university's prestigious new york hospital, heider was introduced to vincent astor, the chief of staff of that hospital. another member of the normal hall gang, a young heiress, helen hooper brown, had been treated by heider, the hospital and became enamored. his competence and demeanor likely the young doctors to the chief of staff, helen hooper, was the wife of lathrop brown, fdr schoolmate at groton and his apartment maid at harvard. fdr had served, at best as best man at the hooper brown wedding, and lathrop had done likewise for franklin and eleanor in 1905. dr. hightower's unknown archive first revealed in fdr in masks, provides rock solid that he began treating fdr. he was governor of new york shortly before that fateful, which likely involved surgical treatment of the president elect. vinson had written dr. heider to tell him, quote, for obvious r

hightower's records are brand new and all things about vincent astor who was indeed his most is closeste friendship of his adult life. also enhance is exactly what we're talking about history historians have pretty well burned into the stone and sometimes it's hard to rewrite history. that's why that's the subtitle of the book. i am confident that with time the truth which is i'm talking about will come out now. always, always, again. like i said, the end. does this make fdr as accomplishments worse or does it does it shine a good on him? and the answer to that is, as i said, that if understand what he had to go through, the time that he was going through it fighting terminal diseases, making up diagnoses, doing anything you can to get what he had done, his fortitude and his determination and his marvelous carried him to be the greatest of the 20th century. and it enhances what he did. it doesn't diminish it from diminish it at all. dr. lemay as we talked your book a couple of times, when it was in progress, what i found most compelling was your analysis of the mole or the or whatever o

means the benefit of the doubt goes to -- >> let's bring in our chief investment strategist with hightower year. michael just laid out the idea that the rally maybe frontloading the presumption that the economy will achieve a soft landing. do you agree with that, and you believe that a soft landing is what is pulling out in front of us?>> there is no question we are seeing a soft landing this moment. what happens 8 to 12 months without is the big question. i think that the surprise all of last year was the resiliency in the economy. last week we got more proof not only in jobs, but we got factory orders and durable good orders. capx numbers were better than expected. wages are sticky but down from the peak in the cpi number will be big this week. to add it up i have three takeaways. the strength of the economy is going to mean that the fed does not cut as much. i think it's starting to get priced in. but also i think the better growth means better earnings. and the better job numbers mean better consumer and consumer is 75% of gdp. maybe we did pull in to mike's point on the soft landing t

>> investors pry eparing for t first trading day of the year and we bring in stephanie link from hightower. stephanie, we talked about how people are feeling about the op. you think this can continue with different leadership taking over? >> yeah. happy new year, becky. >> you, too. >> there's a lot of momentum in the economy headed into 2024. gdp is running at 2.5% to 3% right now. a lot of that is tied to the consumer. we have talked about the strong job market for over a year and a half. we created 2.3 million jobs last year. that is compared to a 2 million average from 2016 to 2020. we know wages are strong. retail sales have been strong. surprisingly so. especially the controlled group from the gdp report. you add on the manufacturing renaissance from the infrastructure bills past sed lt year that will get into the system this year. we were talking about inflation. i think if you have a gdp of 2% to 3%, you can see su upper dig growth. the equal weight s&p oper out performed the equal weight. we have $6 trillion of money in money markets. $1 trillion last year alone came into money ma

joining us now to talk about everything we can expect is stephanie link from hightower.the market is going to be driven by earnings? it may be the time it takes over for the fed again. >> i hope so. i hope we can focus on fundamentals and put the fed on pause for a little bit. i do think that the economy continues to do well, becky. that will propel earnings to be a little bit better than expected. i think the market can continue to be a little sloppy as we figure out what the fed will do six times in terms of cuts or three times or two times, whatever. i think fundamentals will win out. 9% of the companies are beating expectations. >> what do you think the markets are at with record highs? >> i think that we had this pause in the broadening out of the market. we had such a nice rally into the end of last year at 9%. you had many sectors participate. the beginning of the year, we have seen tech takeover again. i think the expectations are quite high for technology. i think there are other values elsewhere. i hope that earnings will kind of just be more of a tailwind for

stephanie link joins us from hightower chief investment strategist and portfolio manager and cnbc contributor stephanie, we're digging through the numbers too with all of them hitting around the same time. jpmorgan chase is trading a little bit higher. what have you seen off the very quick numbers on this and i'll tell you again, net interest income at jpmorgan since it is still hitting, i don't know if you've seen it $24.2 billion. >> so, there was a really tough setup for the banks heading into the print because a lot of these stocks are up 25 to 35% from the lows. and fourth quarter is typically very messy for banks. and we're seeing the mess here today. the fdic assessment, everyone is going to have to do -- see that hit and that's not a surprise at all. but the quarters overall, they're kind of mixed, right? net interest income is -- was expected to be, like, steady to down a couple percent for the group. fees really disappointing on investment banking and trading, offset by strong credit cards. kind of seeing that. but very good expense control. so the bottom line number is coming in be