rattner's assessment correct? do you agree that there simply were no other options available aside from complete liquidation on the path that was taken? we'll start with you, mr. bloom? >> it was our judgment, and i have no reason to question it, and it was based on extensive talking in the market and bliss our collective experience that if the government had not provided the debtor and that general motors would not have been able and would have had to liquidate. mr. feldman? >> i completely agree. we were in touch with the largest financial institutions in the world. they were simply not going to provide capital. we spoke to the largest private equity funds in the world and they were talking about needing nine months to do diligence to make a determination as to whether they'll make an investment. it was simply, the u.s. government unfortunately was a lender of last resort, but it was the only lender in my view. >> mr. wilson. >> that's correct, sir. i talk in my written testimony, and the failure of the companie

rattner pays what -- >> you went in the wrong business. and i are -- he's my boss, i don't want to get into it with him. >> joe, i think you're right. i think in general republicans win on taxes. on this health care thing, however, it is going to be fought out really quite with a great deal of passion on the congressional level. senate and house races, a lot of they may be determined by it. it will be absent in the presidential race because neither candidate wants to bring it up. romney can't bring it up. if he wants to criticize mandate as a tax, okay. what did you do back there? so i think it will be fought out on the congressional level. i also think when it comes to proposal, substantively, i think that obama has a much better argument. every single, whether it is bowles, simpson, everybody says taxes have to be part of it. maybe not the majority, 30% of it. when you go and say anything over 250 ought to be taxed and chuck schumer comes out and says, no, that kind of undercuts your position. >> and, again, i'm talking just the pure pol

i'll talk to steve rattner who ran a large private equity fund and is an obama backer. then, if greece did exit the euro, how in the world would it happen? and just how calamitous would it be? harvard's economic historian niall ferguson will tell us. also, are you worried about global warming that this wacky weather? if your nation was just a few feet above sea level, you would be really worried. we'll talk with a former president of just such a nation. and why am i wiggling my fingers in a mirror here, to try to understand the wonders of the human brain. come along for an amazing tour. but first, here is my take. the attacks and counterattacks in this presidential campaign are, i suppose, inevitable. but let's be honest. they're largely untrue or irrelevant. whatever the paperwork shows, mitt romney was not running bain capital after 1999 and he if he was outsourcing jobs, it is not sleazy, it is how you run a business efficiently. on the other side, romney's recent claim accusing the president of shoveling government grants to his political supporters is so twisted th

steve rattner has charts taking a closer look at all the numbers there. how would you characterize the numbers? bad, dismal? >> certainly worse than what we expected and better than we feared. we had two previous pretty bad months. i think people were hoping for over 100,000 jobs this last month in june and we got 80,000 jobs. it was a disappointment, but i think people are accustomed to the fact we're in a slow growth. >> is there any growth in specific sectors? >> when you break it down by sectors you see a varying pattern that explains why things are sluggish. if you look at this chart, you'll see going back to the beginning of the recovery, sectors like professional and business services, education and health, have grown very significantly and, in fact, are now at or above their pre-recession levels. you hear a lot of talk these days about manufacturing, which is growing again, although not back to where it was before this recession started. but here's a point that we've discussed before that's very important. you've got very, very large sectors like

we have had steve rattner's charts.mer confidence. you're responsible for no consumer confidence and the lack of growth. >> thank you. >> where are we? >> i think we are most but not all of the way through the deleveraging process that follows a financial crisis and the problem is we're getting hit by two major head winds. one is from europe and the other is from this coming fiscal cliff and the right response, by the way, in this kind of scenario is a barbell where we do more stimulus, tax cuts and infrastructure spending coupled with a lot of deficit reduction enacted now takes effect over time. >> i think that's clearly the path forward, but unfortunately we have as you know a somewhat dysfunctional situation in government so the probability of that actually happen something pretty low. i think the probability of a double dip recession is also quite low. i think we bump along at this stall speed for the immediate future. >> isn't it stall speed when the plane crashes. >> it's right before the plane crashes. >> this w

former treasury official and "morning joe" economic analyst steve rattner is with us. rattner. >> good morning, mika. >> still want to call you a financier. >> can you acknowledge one thing? >> yes. >> you did not listen. same tie day. >> i know. >> got the memo. >> democrat thing. >> what's wrong with you two? >> we were e-mailing which tie should we wear? >> difference between the two. >> what is it? >> you paid for yours. >> i didn't. i didn't. mine was a -- mine was a birthday gift. >> he paid a lot of money too, right, barnicle. >> okay. we got a lot to talk about. joe is off. he'll be back this week. where is willie? is he doing "today"? >> summer camp. >> he's on vacation, alex says. he's allowed. a new issue to get to. an old one being revived by democrats and republicans and the president and i hope this time he follows through on it. today the president will push for a one-year extension of the bush-era tax cuts for people making under $250,000 according to the "new york times." the move comes on the heels of friday's disappointing jobs report which we'll get

steven rattner and mort zuckerman.eorge, let me begin with you, how bad is it, how bad is it for president obama? >> it's bad, bad, bad across the board. we're now in a fourth year of a recovery, the workforce participation is way down. we would have 10.9 unemployment and no one would be talking about the economy. it's quite clear that the president got terrible advice early in his administration. first, his advisers said, we'll do this stimulus and it will never reach 8%. 41 months over 8%. but, beyond that, they assured him that this was going to be a v-shaped economy. precip us to downturn but with an upturn. it turned out to be not quite an "l"-shaped, more liike a hockey stick, now we're in a growth recession, we're getting some growth but not enough to accommodate even the growth of the workforce. >> and let's go to our friends in the business sector, steven and mort, mort, is this the new normal, this kind of struggle? >> well, it will certainly continue for a while. i think what has been tried added a huge amou

more recently rattner was, of course, the obama administration's car czar, tasked with fisking the u.s. auto industry in the wake of the financial crisis. so he's somewhat a defender of private equity and somewhat a defender of president obama, a unique position to be in these days. i wanted to ask him about the realities of private equity. welcome back. >> thank you for having me, fareed. >> let's talk about private equity. there are people who say that the attacks on him are legitimate because private equity is quite different from just being engaged in business. jacob wiseburg has a piece in slate about this. this is money made through financial engineering, the companies, private equity companies often buy a company, then load it up with a lot of debt. use that debt to pay themselves fees, maybe the company then does well, maybe it doesn't, but they enrich themselves regardless of whether the company they bought does well. is that fair? >> so, like so many things in life, the truth lies somewhere in between. there are some very commendable aspects of private equity. i think private

of course, we're going to speak to steve rattner today and other guests. thank you, mark murray, for setting the table in our daily fix today. >>> for more on the battle over bain and democratic strategy overall in this very tough election year, democratic political consultant and former lead strategist for president clinton's campaign, james carville and democratic pollster stan greenberg. authors of the you book "it's the middle class, stupid." so great to see you. we got you back from new orleans. got you back from your other many assignments. >> good to be here. >> so let's hit this right out of the box. >> okay. >> let's take a look at this romney ad, this new romney ad about bain capital and outsourcing, hitting back at the obama camp. let's watch. >> when a president doesn't tell the truth, how can we trust him to lead? the obama outsourcing attacks, misleading, unfair, and untrue. there was no evidence that mitt romney shipped jobs overseas. candidate obama lied about hillary clinton. >> so shame on you, barack obama. >> but america expects more fr

i'm going to throw a chair at rattner who is over here reading the paper. >>> last night mike tyson was what happens live" and answered everyone's most pressing question. >> mike tyson, what does an ear taste like? >> it depends on we're did you bite. but since i bit holyfield's ear and didn't have holyfield's hot sauce on it. >> needed the holyfield hot sauce on the ear -- >> that would have been a delicacy. >> oh, man. an amazing survival story when a chinese acrobat fell off his tightrope yesterday. he was walking backwards 657 feet above the ground with his eyes covered. he fell about 130 feet, but since he was close to the platform -- whoa -- the drop was relatively small. he suffered only minor injuries. he got up and walked just after the fall. don't try this at home today, folks. >>> still ahead on "way too early," why are you awake? your high-flying tweets, texts and probably hateful e-mails are next. "morning joe" is just moments away. [ morgan ] right now when you use your visa card, you're entered for a chance to win a trip to the olympic games for life. to cheer the summer

with us former treasury official and "morning joe" economic analyst, steve rattner. news, al hunt and rounding out our michael bloomberg hour morning, columnist for bloomberg, margaret carlson. in new york, a man whose company i'm sure will be owned by michael bloomberg, executive editor at random house,

political analyst john heilemann and former treasury official and "morning joe" economic analyst steve rattnerh willie geist at the olympics in london. willie, good morning. that's a little bit of a better schedule for you there? >> good morning. it is a little better. 10:30 a.m. instead of 5:30 a.m. and the weather is good, although bill karins reports it's going to begin raining in time for the opening ceremony. let's hope he's wrong as usual. >> we look forward to much more from you in the next couple hours. we'll begin with the tragedy in colorado, six hours from now, the suspect, 24-year-old james holmes, is scheduled to make his first court appearance since the friday movie theater shooting that left 12 people dead and 58 injured. officials say the alleged shooter is not cooperating and a motive is still not clear. police say they

mike barnicle, john heilemann, steve rattner, richard hoss, catty kay with us today.ing thing about the olympics is, you remember this, you remember the civil war. >> yeah. >> i don't need to explain this to you. you can go back through time and you remember these events that used to unite us as a country where everybody would stop and whether it was the jfk assassination or the beatles on ed sullivan or neil armstrong walking on the moon, or just about every political convention you could go house by house by house and it seemed like everybody was watching. that doesn't happen anymore, but it does happen every four years still. i can't believe it. even though we're cynical, everybody seems to stop, watch these olympic games, and whether you're going out to the restaurants or grocery stores or seeing your friends, they're talking about, you know, phelps coming in fourth place and -- >> yeah. >> you know. this does unite us every four years. it's pretty crazy that it still does in 2012. >> i think you're right, joe. in an age when all we talk about is polarization in o

>> i bet our good friend steve rattner will be there as well. >> i can't believe rattner. >> that's interesting. >> what do you mean? he loves america too. >> they're wrong. >> if he can't believe -- if you can't believe somebody, can't believe that mitt romney would go to london and decide to start criticizing how they're run the olympic games, i mean what's he going to do in israel? look around and go, you know what -- >> i'm a tad bit worried about the trip to israel. >> i think the palestinians probably should have all of jerusalem. i mean then what's he going to do in poland, hitler was right? you don't do this! >> polish jokes. >> what's he doing? polish jokes and -- in poland. what a stumble yesterday. >> that was a big stumble. that's our lead story this morning. obviously it has an olympic connection so we'll go to willie geist in london for that. willie? >> mika, i have to show you a couple papers this morning. the covers are about the opening ceremony but inside "the daily mail" who invited party-pooper romney. that's the headline there. >> it's a little over the top. >> the other ne

rattner's this is that correct? do you agree that there simply were no other options available aside from complete liquidation on the path the was taken? >> we will start with you. smith it was our judgment, and i have no reason to question it coming and it was based on extensive talking in the market plus our own collective experience that if the government hadn't provided the financing that general motors went have been able and would have to liquidate. >> mr. feldman? >> i completely agree. we were in touch with the largest financial institutions in the world. they were not going to provide capital. we spoke to the largest funds in the world. they were talking about needing nine months to do diligence to make a determination as to whether they would make an investment. it was simply the u.s. government unfortunately was a lender of last resort, but it was the only lender in my view. >> that's correct. my written testimony the confluence of events of the failure of the company at the time of the complete freeze in

i'll talk to steve rattner who ran a large private equity fund and is an obama backer.id exit the euro, how in the world would it happen? and just how calamitous would it be? harvard's economic historian niall ferguson will tell us. also, are you worried about global warming that this wacky weather? if your nation was just a few feet above sea level, you would be really worried. we'll talk with a former president of just such a nation. and why am i wiggling my fingers in a mirror here, to try to understand the wonders of the human brain. come along for an amazing tour. but first, here is my take. the attacks and counterattacks in this presidential campaign are, i suppose, inevitable. but let's be honest. they're largely untrue or irrelevant. whatever the paperwork shows, mitt romney was not running bain capital after 1999 and he if he was outsourcing jobs, it is not sleazy, it is how you run a business efficiently. on the other side, romney's recent claim accusing the president of shoveling government grants to his political supporters is so

. >> steve rattner, pleasure to have you on. >> thanks for having me. >>> up next, what is going to happen next in europe? don't forget, there's a big crisis there, as well. some historical perspective from the great historian, neil ferguson. [ male announcer ] citi turns 200 this year. in that time there've been some good days. and some difficult ones. but, through it all, we've persevered, supporting some of the biggest ideas in modern history. so why should our anniversary matter to you? because for 200 years, we've been helping ideas move from ambition to achievement. and the next great idea could be yours. ♪ and the next great idea could be yours. so what i'm saying is, people like options. when you take geico, you can call them anytime you feel like saving money. it don't matter, day or night. use your computer, your smartphone, your tablet, whatever. the point is, you have options. oh, how convenient. hey. crab cakes, what are you looking at? geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. begins with back pain and a choice. take advil, and maybe have

. >> we're back with mark mckinnon, along with steve rattner.porter and associate editor of "the washington post" and msnbc police call analyst eugene robinson. joe on joe biden, the campaigns now fairly effective with joe biden. >> he's a fairly effective campaigner. of course we have the don't criticize joe zone. but that's blatant demagoguery. it goes against mathematical realities. he's saying, hey, seniors, we're not only going to keep your social security and medicare, which none of us course want to do, but we're not going to touch future generations of social security either despite the fact that joe biden knows social security is going bankrupt, medicare is going bankrupt. willie geist, you and i were joking about the simpson-bowles plan. my older kid will not be affected by the simpson-bowles plan but my 4-year-old boy -- how old is george geist? >> just turned 3 now, george geist. >> george w. just turned three. they love calling him that out in the hamptons. just turned 3. and seriously is joe biden trying to defend the honor of jack

steve rattner comes out of that world.i think they don't want to go over further on disclosures than they've done so far. we'll see whether they can hold that. >> if they do it, my prediction is during the opening ceremony of the olympic games, when the u.s. team hits the field entering, when i'm going to have my blackberry and waiting for some document dump. >> exactly. it will be a big one. >> i don't think they're going to do it. ann romney actually got drawn into it yesterday which i think is a big mistake, saying we've given you all, everything you're going to get. >> it's a whole 1% thing that i think people will not respond well to. coming up, john, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> bring you the latest details on the shooting in colorado. the death toll up to 15. police are interviewing the suspect who was taken into custody at the scene. so far there is no immediate word of any motive here. we'll be back with much more information on the situation in aurora, colorado. stay with us. do you see it ? there it is

i think in terms of the gun control debate, steve rattner, one of the arguments mayor bloomberg has, is that -- and joe's point is well taken, it's always right after these events that everyone seizes the moment to jump on the debate. but the argument bloomberg has is that obama hasn't had this debate, that he has not taken this on. if not now, when? >> well, it's not an issue at the moment, but look, i agree with joe that there is a period of mourning, if you will, where it's probably not exactly the right time. i agree with joe and others who are saying it's not just a gun problem, it's a social problem, problem of identifying in the young kids those that may be problematic. there are 150 million guns out there, but i don't for the life of me understand what legitimate purpose anyone has for carrying an assault weapon, what legitimate purpose anyone has for carrying a semiautomatic pistol and the idea that we don't have laws about that i find remarkable. i do agree with you that when you look back after the tragic shooting of ronald reagan and jim brady campaign and the progress th

i'm steven rattner. i think i guess i am the wall street represented here, having spent, i hope that's okay still, having spent -- [laughter] having spent most of last 30 years on wall street let me say couple things from the point of view. there's then i think to, i got a more references to arithmetic everybody on wall street into arithmetic. something to calculus and business analyst of the wall street is a diverse place. with people from every end of the spectrum in many in the middle. i cannot think, i've been trying to think and i've not been successful, of a single person i know or to work with on wall street who does not see this as a major threat, a life-threatening problem for our economy. there are different views about what to do about it. about urgent is that everybody on wall street can do math and everybody understands how big a problem it is a the second able to say about the financial markets is that you can like or not like them. certainly the trend is in the latter direction at the mome

. >> i was hearing on one of the shows steve rattner was talking about how his firm had -- i don't know, i haven't confirmed it -- his firm was more ethical than bain. >> the firm that took an hour and 15 minutes away from my life because i had to watch a movie that i spent a penny for. >> this was the movie -- >> have you ever seen "chooyh"? >> no. >> don't bother. >> he implied romney was less ethical. >> barclays. >> i don't remember bain ever settling for, how much was that settlement? >> over a movie named "chooch." one of the pays he was going to fund this really crappie italian mob movie. >> i was about to tell you during the break we'll pull the tape. >> we sometimes play other networks sunday programs. >> not a good time to do that. >> it's time to go across the fond get the global markets report. kelly evans is standing by in london. and kelly, tell joe how well he'll do on that vacation? he's using pounds. >> yes. yes. your dollars will go further in europe than britain. if you're on this side of the atlantic pop by the studio, say hi, hang out here a little bit. >> i'll wave

[shouting] >> alisyn: i remember the last time allen rattner was on. very similar. yeah. can you see the lawmaker throwing his shoe and then pulling a gun during a debate over jordan's policy on syria. there is now a chance he will be charged with attempted murder. >> clayton: do we have a bun policy in our studio. >> alisyn: we should. >> clayton: gusts aren't allowed to pack heat? >> dave: check out some of our crew? if in fact you celebrated vigorously the fourth of july this past week. if you don't like a large overbearing government centralized government, you could be labeled a terrorist by our own department of homeland security according to a new study. >> alisyn: right. apparently they looked at the department of homeland security commissioned a study by an outfit called study of terrorism and responses to terrorism. they paid $3.6 million for this study. what they looked at were basically homegrown terrorists, where the biggest potential threat is in the united states for terror. and one of their conclusions they found is that people who believe that their