gary b smith, tobin smith. jonas max ferris, along with todd and mike, welcome everybody. and the soaring prices lead to soaring layoffs? >> they will, brenda. look, it's a simple lesson in economics 101. when you're spending more money for life's necessities such as food, you said we're up 5% in a year, less more other items. corporate profits will take a hit and that leaves corporations with two options, one, you can pass the rising cost on to consumers which we're seeing or layoff people so we have to be prepared. >> well, gary b. and we've seen that with safeway, a lot of times, in a recession, companies will just, you know, their margins will shrink and they won't pass them along, what do you think? >> exactly. i think that will be the case this time. look, i respect todd's macro views and just kind of confirm or deny that i kind of went back through the history, history tracking unemployment rate versus the cpi index, basically, measuring inflation, and i could find no correlation, in fact. in a couple of instances, in the early 50's and the mid 70's, we had very hig

the bulls and bears this week, gary b smith, tobin smith. jonas max ferris along with bob and steve murphy. bob, focus on lowering gas prices and not how to pay for high gas prices? >> that's the issue. my goodness, we're expending this because we're not addressing the real problem and the real problem is, there's a great psychological impact on the price of gasoline, every consumer understands it. it's not like the trade balance or something like that, they're trying to figure out is this important. it's extremely important because it's in our face every single week, and this is why we don't have a comprehensive energy policy. we have to focus on lowering the price of gasoline, it will have the single greatest influence on our economy, and extending the payroll tax cuts, they do nothing, all they do is sustain where we are now. lower the price of gasoline, are you kidding me? that's what will stimulate the economy. we're absolutely focusing on the wrong thing. >> gary b. don't people need the tax cut all the more because they have to face t

the bulls and bears, gary b smith, tobin smith. jonas max ferris, along with amel amelia and david. and indiana did, made its state right to work. and gary b you say that's the right move for workers, why? >> absolutely, brenda, i'm surprised all 50 states haven't done this, because the facts bear out. let's look at just some of the united states when you compare right to work states to nonright to work states. they have higher gdp growth, higher wage growth. higher pay, higher productivity and higher growth. and more of the population covered by insurance. you have to scratch your head brenda, and say why isn't this the rule in every state in the country. >> brenda: david, you don't agree with that why? >> well, if you look at other facts, that being states that are right to work, like alabama, arkansas, florida, they all have unemployment rates that are way above the national average. in addition to that, a lot of those states that are right to work are also ones that are on the federal dole in returning less tax dollars back to the feds than they received. and so, you know, to sa

tobin smith. jonas max ferris, along with bob froehlich and susan. welcome everybody. bob, the government finally doing nothing, is helping free markets do something? >> i certainly think it is. to think about it, we've had no new stimulus, we haven't had new tax on the rich. so, i think conceptually something is happening here and we finally figured out we need slowly stimulus not growing stimulus. we need to cut tax, not all of a sudden want to hike taxes and most importantly, we have to challenge the regulations, not coming up with new regulations, but i think the most important thing, brenda, we need less government employees, not more government employees, and we do that, we'll have more days like today. where stocks take off and employment takes off. >> well, susan, is it what the government is not doing or what it did? >> well, that's exactly right, brenda, you look at the stimulus that we've put in place in 2009. if you look at the payroll tax cut and everybody kept saying the policies aren't working and they've failed. in fact, they worked. we're seeing it now