strangely to me, but i guess in the spirit of open debate, they invited sheldon whitehouse. but then he started ranting and raving about piercing the inner circle of the illuminati or something. it is all very weird to me. they also asked kamala harris but she said sitting in a room with 2000 lawyers would bring back bad memories of the bar exam. both times she took it. this did not surprise me a lot. despite the devotion to a republican form of government, they even considered inviting true loyalty. but joe manchin was not available either. you are stuck with me. i'm sorry. but i'm still grateful to be here. just as i am grateful for what the federalist society has provided to so many people over the years. scholarship, free inquiry, friends and mentors. that is not all. nine years ago, after i spoke at another federal society event, a pretty girl came up to me afterwards and he gave me her phone number. she is with us here tonight. my wife, and a cotton. -- my wife, anna cotton. [applause] it must've been one how of -- one hell of a speech. and i is herself a former presid

earlier in the program, we mistakenly referred to sheldon whitehouse -- we talked about sherrod brown, the democratic senator from ohio as being lukewarm about jay powell. that is not right. sherrod brown came out with a strong supporting statement for the nomination of jay powell. it was a confusion with sheldon whitehouse, who oppose the nomination, saying we need somebody who will guard the financial system better. no question, sherrod brown strongly supports jay powell's nomination. now we will go to our roundtable of economists. the relatively new bureau chief from washington, as well as our senior market editor, john authers. what do you make of this? >> your combo today was something that a lot of us were waiting for, markets were waiting for, wondering why it was taking so long. it has been taken as a strong sign that there will be consistency at the fed. the duo is important in the sense that the two of them are seen as somewhat similar on monetary policy. brainard is seen as stricter on financial regulation. while she has the vice chair role, as opposed to the vice chair rol

. >> she and her democrats, sheldon whitehouse and jeff merkley, they came out saying that powell hasough on climate change. they don't say what he should be doing. powell has said he will act to make sure the bank is making safe loans. it is not clear exactly what the senate is going to say about either one of these, but perhaps the idea that brainard was leaked as a potential competitor to powell was a trial balloon to get these people to react. >> they certainly have. it has been a fascinating week. a long week, waiting for the final answer. to be over the next couple of days, we will get it. i appreciate the president's focus elsewhere, and maybe tomorrow he will have a birthday, so the beauty of next week would be nice. i am sure you will be keeping abreast of things over the weekend. thank you very much. bloomberg's mike mckee. what do we have next week? let's start with monday. that's ours with appropriate. zoom is up with his numbers. u.s. trade rep katherine tai will be in talks. on tuesday, manufacturing services and compass a pmi data from the ics. also, earnings in optomet

of the process that we have now for registering for an agent and the group includes senator sheldon whitehouse said they agreed the current process is lack of transparency and making it really hard for the government to check on a lot of these things. it really allows a lot of groups and firms and people who use foreign individuals who work on foreign government to kind of slide under the radar. they have been calling for the justice department to fully make this electronic system and standardize it properly. we saw some calls from senator marco rubio and gillibrand who wants to close the loophole as well. this comes after the scoop the other day that there is a new, basically they ruled that you know in referendum elections foreign agents can donate money. a lot of this coming in scrutiny over the work of foreign agents and governments. >> our friend, thank you very much. tomorrow will be friday. thank you all of you for waking up way too early with us on

and i say that because of the exchange back in october, october 18th, between senator sheldon whitehouseneral merrick garland where white house pressed him as to whether there was going to be more than just the trespassers who would be investigated and charged. to paraphrase what garland said, he said, yes, there's no restriction on this and we may be using techniques that are way beyond your knowledge as a former u.s. attorney. so, that was pretty clear that they're looking at this and there is a grand jury somewhere, and federal grand juries have long life. they go 18 to 36 minutes so we're talking january 6th. we're well within the life of a grand jury. >> interesting. i agree that well could be the case. and we have some brand new information about the judge presiding over steve bannon's case tomorrow. it turns out in the george w. bush administration he was the lead department of justice seeking to block congressional subpoenas based on executive privilege. is this good news for bannon, or is it the fact that he was a former official and just an informal adviser? does that leave him

other centers like senator sheldon whitehouse saying they did not think jerome powell should get the top spot because of climate change. but the white house has three other positions to work with as well, so potentially they can lean a little bit to the left these three other positions. but when it comes to monetary policy, brainard and powell everyone pretty much agrees are in lockstep. alix: mike, talk about those other vacant slots. when you think we get that? michael: after these two, i have no idea when we get those. it is a little bit surprising that they have not put them forward, but unsurprising given it is a complicated effort to try typical of those people at once. but the vice chair for supervision is going to be the big when the gets all of the attention because people thought it would be lael brainard. does this mean that the president goes in an even more regulatory hawkish direction, which would satisfy the warren wing of the party, for that seat? how does that play into the other two seats they have to fill, rich clarida's and wendy borrow -- and randy quarles? that

you had three senators as ylan mentioned, warren, merkley, sheldon whitehouse, all have said they would not vote for powell frankly the president had let this become sort of a political circus, where he let his own party dictate what should happen certainly there's a centrist aspects to this. we'll see if it's something different. >> and we look forward to reaction from all corners today. steve, thanks. that's our steve liesman, sort of folds into other news >> i sent him in inquiry, we have all these instant mil milli millionaires how about all the this hand wringing about the stores not having anything, and the big boxes pretty much having everything you need of course the big boxes win. last week, home depot, there's no other hardware stores they kind of wiped them out. it's hard to get funding to expand yes, tractor supply is good. but the home depot -- i follow it for us. >> the home depot traits from do it yourself to professional very easily look at that >> well, listen, we talked about it last week we hear from lowe's, walmart did not respond particular because of concern about