Consider oreilly. I will see you january 26th. Ashley next is mony with france france. Melissa im Melissa Francis and here is what is mony tonight. The dropdead date for. Taxpayers are wondering are you kidding aig . It is thanking america for the massive bailout but now it might join a multibilliondollar lawsuit against the u. S. Government. We have the bizarre details on this one coming up. I think i found my next vacation. People across the country are storming florida for a python hunting contest. Sounds great. This might be the most insane competition in america. We have the star of gnat geowilds python hunters, joins us to explain. Even when ey say its not it is always about money. Melissa first lets take a look at the days market headlines. Stocks fell for their second straight session. Investors looked cautious preparing for the start of earnings season the dow shed 55 points. Speaking of earnings, alcoa kicked off the Fourth Quarter earnings season after the bell. It beat expectations on revenue while meeting expectations on the bottom line. Its shares are climbing after hours. Another tough day for boeing, wow a fuel leak forced a Japan Airlines 787 to cancel takeoff and return to the gate in bo done. In that werent bad enough, United Airlines reportedly found a electrical wiring problem on one of the 787 jets. The same electrical issue caused a fire to break out on an empty 787 in boston yesterday. To our top story a debt ceiling disaster could be coming sooner than expected. A new report by the Bipartisan Policy Center says without congressional action the u. S. Will smash into its Borrowing Limit as early as midfebruary. Are we doomed to default or will lawmakers be able to get the ball rolling and solve this crisis . I dont know. We have a money power panel to help us sort it all out. The former tennessee governor, phil bredesen, from the fix the debt committee. Douglas holtzeakin formerly of the cbo and evan bayh, former senator and fox news contributor. Wow what a power panel. I hardly know where to start. Phil, you think it is appalling we gotten this far. Why . I just think play games, the political games with the faith and credit of the United States is a crazy position to be in. Like playing with fireworks and playing with matches in a fireworks factory or something. I understand the need to deal with entitlements and to reduce costs on that but there are other ways of doing that. There is the whole sequester thing coming up down the road. I just think it is crazy for the congress to be messing around with brinkmanship on this particular issue. Melissa doug, how serious is it to hit the debt ceiling . What really happens . Do we suddenly default . Do we stop paying certain parties . What happens . This is. Melissa im sorry. I said that to doug real quick. Okay. I mean i would say two things. First, have to point out there is lot of uncertainty in these projections. I made lots of them. Many turned out to be badly wrong. That is just part of the business but we shouldnt flirt with the debt ceiling at all. To run up against the debt ceiling is to effectively send a default signal to the rest of the world. There is lot of talk you could pay some bills and not others but in effect you could pay interest and Social Security and things like that, but you couldnt pay the troops. You couldnt pay for roads, bridges, basic research, education. Simply nothing to flirt with. You would either scare the International Community to death or deprive people of basic services. We should have an agreement. That we shouldnt do anything but raise the debt ceiling. We should have an agreement we should fix the spending problem. What we dont have agreement is how. They ought to get start on that right away. Melissa speaking how to do that, evan, youre someone in the trenches so many times and got frustrated with the process. What do you think of whats going on right now . I dont think much about it, melissa. Shows the deep political dysfunction we have at the heart of congress right now or at the heart of our political system. My best guess whats going to happen i think both of our other guests are exactly right. At a time when the economy is weak we dont want an added element of uncertainty flirting with a default would add. God forbid if it adds even marginally our longer term borrowing costs that will cost us real money compounded 30 or 40 years. What i think is going to happen, melissa . I think they will go up to the edge and over by a little bit. I think republicans in the house probably say we will not borrow anymore money without spending cuts. We have this thing called the sequester which will cut spending across the board except medicare, Social Security, medicare are excepted. Well let both of those go into effect. Mr. President , thats what you want, that is well have. I think markets will react pretty badly to that. It will force them to come back in few days and kick the can down the road a few months more. We might be back on this very set talking about this in april or may. Melissa, if i could Say Something. Melissa go ahead, doug. I want to point outgoing over the debt ceiling doesnt cut spending. The fact that the treasury doesnt have the money doesnt relief them of the obligation to spend it. It is the law of the land to spend the money. Melissa hang on, guys. Hang on. We have to talk one at a time. What it actually says im not going to extend you anymore credit until you get your books in order. Why should i give you more credit to spend when you havent figured out how youre going to live within your means . Why is that wrong, doug . Thats right. In fact the fact that the you know, your teenager overspent their credit card doesnt mean you dont pay the bill. Melissa you say i will not raise the limit to get your act together. My point if you want to cut spending pass laws to cut spending. Hitting debt ceiling doesnt do it. We have go different issues. One is the debt ceiling. The second is the sequester. Doug is right, debt ceiling expiring doesnt automatically cut spending but the sequester does. Cuts across the board manner, Social Security, medicare and medicaid are exempted. Deep cuts into the military and Discretionary Spending will go into effect. Those things will happen simultaneously and force people back into the bargaining table to come up with at least a temporary patch. Melissa solving the problem in the long run is the real problem we have. Governor, how do we deal with that . This is fundamental disagreement between two groups of people one side believes the government should get larger and have a bigger role and needs more revenue to do that the other side thinks we need to shrink government. Those are so diametrically opposed points of view. I dont know how even though were at this crisis point how do you resolve that fundamentally different point of view . Well, look that different point of view has been going on since, you know, ham milt ton and hamilton and jefferson argued about these issues almost 2 1 2 centuries ago. It will not go away. Whatever we agree well pay for it. Well not borrow the money. Well not do stupid things like play with the debt ceiling over that issue. Just settle down. You know, this notion that somehow youre sending a signal to the administration, congress ought to be looking in the mirror. The administration is not spending anything that the congress did not appropriate. Part of what is going on is theyre blaming everyone but themselves and they are the people who appropriated money and made these laws. Were paying for what weve done. Melissa governor, youre a democrat. Youre saying we cant spend beyond our means . I think you might get your card revoked for that because a lot of democrats right now that want to keep spending. To live within our means, means massive reform and big cuts into major programs. Are you comfortable with that, governor . Look, we have got to find ways to stablize, in terms of entitlements, social insurance programs, i think, im a democrat. I think it is vitally important these programs are stable, theyre properly funded. Theyre guaranteed to be there when people who are depending on them. Which is almost every american for things like medicare and Social Security they be there. So me only sensible Financial Management and sensible governance as a democrat to make sure these things are balanced. Will we have to compromise how elaborate they are to get buyin from everybody . Sure. Weve got to deal with this issue of these entitlement programs. Theyre on a trajectory to eat us alive. Melissa senator bayh, is that realistic . Oh, i think it is realistic, melissa. As a matter of fact the math, it is mandatory. If you look at the longterm financial obligations of the country, a large chunk of that, majority is in these entitlements. So we need to make very modest adjustments to insure in the long run theyre solvent and we can make those commitments, meet those commitments to the American People. The politics of it is very difficult. The extremes on either sideview compromise as a dirty word and punish people politically for that. Only when alternative to compromise comes even worse the parties are finally forced to stable. It is not the way it ought to be and unfortunately where it is until American People stand up at voting booth insist on Something Better well likely go through with this. Melissa politics is tough but math is tough. There is big gap there. This has to be rooted in reality because we can not grow our way out of these obligations. Theyre too big. We cant tax our way out of them. Theyre still too big. Either were going to reform them now or they will collapse later. So they are going to change either in a bad way or a good way. They ought to get going with it. The other reality of the last 14 times we raised the debt ceiling 11 of them come with something that looks like attacking the deficit. So it is business as usual. Raise the debt ceiling and do the right thing on the deficit. They have to get to it. Melissa i dont know. Fantastic power panel. Thanks to all three of you for spending your time with us, really appreciate it. So heres a twist you might not have expected. We told you about aigs thank you America Ad Campaign for its 182 billion bailout. Well now aigs board of directors is looking into whether it will join a lawsuit against uncle sam over that same bailout. It is in response to a shareholder lawsuit against the government. Claiming that when it took control of aig shareholders were deprived of private property worth billions of dollars without proper compensation. Some are wondering, are they serious . Joining me to make sense of it is seth, founding parter in of the firm. Lets get right to it. People are painting aig as the villain in all this. They arent necessarily because the original lawsuit was brought by Hank Greenberg, who is no longer the ceo of the company. Explain that to us. Sure. So Hank Greenberg, who leads starr international, the plaintiff who is prosecuting this derivative lawsuit now, is prosecuting a lawsuit, one was in new york. That got thrown out. Now there is one left in d. C. Here in federal court, for 25 billion, saying that when the company came in and saved everybodys life and everybodys jobs it did it inadequately without fair due process and adequate compensation. There is a Board Meeting with where starr and Hank Greenberg advocates the board to intervene and jump into the case and some individuals from the government saying dont do that, thats crazy. Melissa do they have a case . Point that he makes as crazy as this whole thing sounds on its face the point that he makes sort of resonates that aig was used as a back door way for the company to bail out kinds of other companies because there were so many other companies that would have gone down if aig went down. That this is sort of their way of doing it and that they were also charged, you know, unreasonable rate of return that other companies werent Interest Rate. Do either of those things hold water for you . No. They really dont. Melissa really . The revolving loan, the Interest Rate on the loan was about 14 1 2 . Melissa right. The equity rate of return when they got out, their 22, 22 1 2 billion at end of the day was 12 1 2 . That does not exceed the legal interest limitation. So that is not illegal. Look, this lawsuit is like suing your heart surgeon who saved your life and coming back and saying that you didnt have enough negotiating leverage on the cost of the operating room. This will legally be not only very unpopular but probably will not prevail. There really are no damages. If the shareholders were crushed into bankruptcy they would have ended up with about zero. The shareholder return last year alone was over 52 . So they saved the company. They did not harm the company and therefore unless the Justice Department caves in with a settlement i dont thin this case is going anywhere. Hopefully the board will say no. Melissa the board of directors who mostly came on the board after all of this happened, they do have to entertain the idea of joining this lawsuit with Hank Greenberg or else they could face their own lawsuit down the road for not getting involved and taking advantage of it. They do have to sit down and look at it. More likely than not they will not join in, do you think . I think it will be shocking if they do. I think it would not only be a Public Relations nightmare but antagonizing all of their regulators in washington and new york. I think hopefully they will not do that. If they did it would be a huge mistake. I dont think the lawsuit will be successful. I dont see how it legally can stand on its own legs. Melissa just from a pr point of view alone theyre out there with the ads saying thank you for bailing us out. Now were helping so Many Americans and theyre doing so much to try to repair their public image. This would trash all that, right . They would go from thank you, america, to were suing you america. Melissa oh gosh. I thought you were going to Say Something more profane. You were making me nervous. Well keep it pgrated. Melissa thank you. The new york judge already said forget it. An immediate motion to dismiss granted in new york is very unusual in litigation. D. C. Case is alive. It probably wont go anywhere. The board will have a tough decision to make. Hopefully they will hear it. They have a fiduciary duty to listen but hopefully they will say no. Melissa thanks so much, seth. You bet. Melissa turkey thumbs its nose with the use moving forward with a multibilliondollar gas trade with iran. Does this give the regime to have a life line to survive u. N. Sanctions . Not south beach. Python hunting is what i will do on my vacation. A state python hunt. To stop pythons from decimating the everglades. The star of gnat geowild, says the competition goes to far. He joins us. Are you kidding, more money and pythons coming up [ male announcer ] where do you turn for legal matters . At legalzoom, weve created a better place to handle your legal needs. Maybe you have questions about incorporating a business youd like to start. Or questions about protecting your family with a will or living trust. And youd like to find the right attorney to help guide you along, answer any questions and offer advice. With an a rating from the Better Business bureau legalzoom helps you get personalized and affordable legal protection. In most states, a legal plan attorney is available with every personalized document to answer any questions. Get started at legalzoom. Com today. And now youre protected. Melissa despite intense u. S. Led sanctions gold exports from turkey to iran spiked to 6. 5 billion in the first 11 months of 2012. That is according to new reports. Turkey is using the shady practice to pay for iranian natural gas it needs for its economy despite growing u. S. Protests. Mike barrett is the ceo of Digital Solutions and he says this is just one example of how hard it is to make sanctions work. Welcome back to the show, mike. You know, it seems like this is a really tough problem. You know, we want them to stop this trade but how in the world are we going to do it . Well, thats right. Sanctions are always poor rouse at some level. Every time we do this there is crossborder trade. When you have an embargo you try to close down the borders as much as you can. In themodern world the fact is you can move huge amounts very quickly. 6 billion worth of gold that is very heavy but there is ways to do it. This is one of the reasons we ought to understand sanctions are not going to be able to fully achieve the effects were hoping they would. Melissa fully achieve, im not sure how well theyre working at all. I mean if you look at exports of gold from turkey, we mentioned 6. 5 billion basically for most of 2012. That is up from just 54 million in all of 2011. So you see an enormous jump like that. And you realize they just shift it from currency to gold. There is a pipeline that connects the two countries. The natural gas goes through it. Why do we ever think we could stop it . We cant stop it. You can dramatically im pea it. The essentially the way the sanctions work in practice we essentially outlawed use of the banks. So the International Banking system is taken out of the picture. What that means a lot of things happen in the shadows. Until a report like this comes out you dont really know how it is that theyre breaking the sanctions but you know these things are going. I want to say sanctions have apparently reduce Iranian Oil Exports by about half. It has had a pretty significant bite. The question is will it have enough of a bite to make them change their policy . Melissa do you believe that number. I saw that report as well. That was from the Iranian Oil Minister saying profits they made are down 45 over the p