. >> get william safire involved. his weekly column on all that stuff. thank you, jane. so let's talk more about discounters. they were the big winners in the economic recovery -- i mean the economic downturn. who will be the big winners in an economic recovery? we're zeroing in on the american consumer all day today on cnbc. right now we do it with patrick mckee, senior equity analyst at mkm partners. and eric beeder, senior vice president at breen murray caray. discounters did very well. a lot of trade-down going on. but many economists believe that the recession ended in the second quarter and we're going to see growth in the second half of the year. what does that mean for retail stocks in the second half of the year? >> i think that's a good thing. we're going to see the consumer -- we see the consumer come back, they're going to come back to a mall that has less product, less discounting, and really the potential here to generate significant up side to most wall street earnings estimates. no one really is assuming in their estimates that the consumer's coming back.

but we'll see if william safire can get on board with you and get that into the lexicon.ony, what's the ultimate word here when it comes down to this and the fact that on the one hand you really want these banks to succeed because they have taxpayer money and at the same time you don't want to help them out too much because they needed taxpayer money in the first place? >> that's exactly right. washington really is schizophrenic on this because you know the banks are going to beat up. we saw that with goldman today, goldman getting beat up from regular critics because they went out and made money. and you know, we want these banks to be strong and healthy. they're still the best in the world at taking capital and delivering it in the most efficient way to its best uses and that returns value for our economy. we need to back away from that vengeance that we had a few months ago and keep us focused on building a strong financial system. >> but paul, we often see from this white house vengeance, speculators. even the most recent speech it seems constantly president obama lik

that is the light quality reading and the most serious reading i am doing william safire's buck, the great speeches of all time. he is brilliant and that is what i'm reading for real. >> how you select the books that you read? >> in the seconds i have, i am racing, racing to the area, hopefully come out with the wind i went in for. >> thank you. >> to see more summer reading lists and other program information visit our web site at booktv.org. ..