i think a body that empowers home loss, the saddam government , we were just talking about it. it should not be so interested with the security of the united states of america. countries we cannot trust right now, and i would love to be able to, but we cannot. we have to take our own security into account, and i agree this is a legitimate threat. amended earth every day. we have things that we have to worry about. we have the right precautions in place. the right precaution is not address the u.n. we might as well neil: i wanted thank you all. this is just something they want to attack and give some thought to. i say have vetted because we don t want to die.ec we don t want to be destroyedin and obliterated.y. the willis report is coming up next. gerri: hello, everybody, i am gerri willis. tonight on the willis report , no urgency in washington as 1 trillion-dollar concussion is just around the corner. and one of the biggest tax in obamacare and it s about to head. thousands of dollars more a year for your health insurance. and gas prices are now up for 32 days straight. there is plenty of supply, but why are prices soaring? the willis report is on the case. gerri: we will have all of that and more coming up. first, our top story tonight. more and more likely that across-the-board spending cuts will happen in washington. ten days away from the so-called sequester. our elected officials are working on the problem, actually, they are not, they are taking time off. they left town with no clear idea on how to fix this mess. even president obama, who spent this weekend working on his golf swing with tiger woods, he even managed the next around today. he is on his way home with no solution. remember, the sequester was his idea. the effects on the economy is clear. the economic recovery is being held back by washington. goldman sachs chief u.s. economist out with a new report, saying that the onomy will ntinue to go well below its potential. most consumers obably weren t aware of the hit to their disposable income until they receive their mid-january paycheck. one republican pollster in a new report rights that we have entered a new phase for the dysfunction and paralysis in washington is having a significant impact on how consumers feel about the overall state of the economy and their personal financial situation. the drop in consumer confidence, he says, is directly related to a lack of competence in our current political leaders. consumer confidence has taken a hit, a big one since post-world war ii history. already there is evidence of a slowdown in consumer spending. reports that wal-mart had its wot start to its month in seven years. the payroll tax hikes may be starting to bite. gas prices are up 51 cents in the last two months. prices are up every single day since the middle of january. it is already over $5 in parts of the country. there is a lot to talk about. the stock market hitting new highs, the dow jones a few points awayfom 14,000, but the federal reserve free money is driving much of that. remember, we have barely made e losses back of the past five years. the solution from the white house is more spending. the president in his state of the union address called for more spending on construction. the same shovel ready jobs en he admitted did not work. influential market busted president obama s policy. saying if we do what the white house wants, we are headed for total economic collapse just like the country of greece. and the u.s., n 22 years could be in worse shape than greece is today. hiking taxes won t get us out of the mess either. washington needs to stop thinking that it is the solution anstart realizing it is a problem. for more on this, i want to bring in my panel. thank you both for being here. what we are talking about at the end of the day is $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years. the administration has been complaining about this for a week now, what it will mean for the middle class. yes, the president is out playing golf. what do you make of that? one thing about the sequester that we should notice is that it s really 2.4% of federal spending this year, $85 billion and 1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. 2.4% is nothing. it will not send the markets down. but the way the sequester to set up, it targets very popular and vital programs, like defense and health safety. gerri: let s turn to stanley for a second. would he make of these cuts? yohave described them as two tenths of our spending cuts over the next five years. yet the president painted as if it were, you know, life and death. woulhe make of it? every single spendinggcuts with obama is one too may. [laughter] they are in charge of choosing how this spending will be allocated. as to the congress being out of town for the next few days, as long as they are back on every 28, i think we will be fine. senator schumer from new york predicted that th gop will join the democrats in closing the loopholes in making spending cuts. i think that democrats have the high ground, especially politically, and i believe just like on the fiscal cliff, republicans will come on board. they have no choice in what you say? well, senator schumer has a little bit off..3 he s right that we want to close the loopholes. but we want to bring certainty into the economy, particularly to the private sector. we want tax reform. what he s really talking about is closing loopholes so that our kantian president can spend more. [talking over each other] gei: so what he s saying is that the gop will bend over once again and what the democrats want. do you agree? will they be forced with president wants? they will be forced to do so if they don t get the story straight and explain to the people while the president is sending us on an uncertain path of out-of-control spending, weakening the dollar. the gop needs to do is explain in context whites making these moves and connect with the american people and how it affects them on a daily basis. gerri: there is a truncation problem. that is for sure. what has been the cost to the economy of what has gone on in washington are they don t talk to leaders in congress, they don t talk to the president. what is it costing the economy? there is a looming fiscal cliff every other week. i think that deferred investment adjusts consumer confidence in a bad way. gerri: can you quantify it in some way? is in their way of saying, oh, the hit has been 1% of gdp, 2% of gdp. mav one or two. one or two percentage points difference. but as long as the president doesn t agree on basically a bunch of tax cuts, this may be the best option. the on the way forward is so hard to see here. it is one fight after another. we will be doing this all year long, and i have to tell you that the american people have precious little patience for it. no, they just don t want to hear it anymore. where does this all week? it means that the gop really have to exain and get its ducks in a row. i don t think a lot of people really understand what sequestration means, what the fiscal cliff means, and everything else and how this will affect them. right now, the president has the higher ground. the crisis and how it affects them, the gop needs to it explain that it is hurting i m. gerri: people don t understand, it hasn t been a lot of talking about it. okay, head start will be decimated, at the fda inspections, a thing of the past, national health institute project will be done. what do you think? they are overplaying their hand. we face a sequester situation and these cuts are up to the agency. trust me, he s trying to make it as bad as possible to make republicans look bad guys. i agree with that. but i do think that that means that politically he will have the upper hand a month from now. gerri: gives him a little power, it s a leverage tool. thank you both for coming on tonight. we really appreciate your help. reason our commander-in-chief is on vacation and it is presidents day. it was put on george washington s birthday to honor presidents. this list of tonight s topfive. number five, george washington with 10% of the vote. john f. kennedy is number two, and number three is bill clinton. number two is abraham lincoln, 14% of america hink that he was the greatest president, which could be reason for the huge success of the steven spielberg film. the number one greatest president is ronald reagan. almost one in five americans think the hero of the republican party is ronad reagan. i agree with that. he scores yet again. that man is always popular. a lot more still to come this hour, including the latest on another huge tax from obamacare that you never saw coming. i will break down how out of touch this president has when it comes to our economy. don t go away. 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[ ding ] oh, that s helpful! well, our company does that, too. actually, we invented that. it s like a sauna in here. helping you save, even if it s not with us now, that s progressive! call or click today. no mas pantalones! woman: what do you mean, homeowners insurance doesn t cover floods? [ heart rate increases ] man: a few inches of water caused all this? [ heart rate increases ] woman #2: but i don t even live near the water. what you don t know about flood insurance may shock you including the fact that a preferred risk policy starts as low as $129 a year. for an agent, call the number that appears on your screen. it s delicious. so now we ve turned her toffee into a business. my goal was to take an idea and make it happen. i m janet long and i formed my toffee company through legalzoom. never really thought i would make money doing what i love. [ robert ] we created legalzoom to help people start their business and launch their dreams. go to legalzoom.com today and make your business dream a reality. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. gerri: one of the many problem come the one i m thinking of today, the problem with the mainstream media is getting tired of stories and more and move on. take unemployment. this has been the worst recovery jobs on record. the media just can t get all that interested in. usa today ran a story saying that private sector employment topped its prerecession high if housing related industries are taken out exclusively. that s nice, but you can do that because housing is the big kahuna of job creation. you have to include it. that is why want to talk about jobs today. we can t ignore it. the number of jobs in this country has fallen from 139 million at the peak of the labor market in november 2007, 20,133,000,000 today. a drop of nearly 6.5 million jobs from the peak. for 2.5% if you include those that are working part-time because they can t find full-time jobs. the 10 million who are marginally attached to the workforce. signs of distress are everywhere. more people are on food stamps. 15% of the total population. another record that we don t want to talk about. the millions of americans who are collecting social security checks to compensate for disability. 11 million people. these are shocking statistics that should have all of our attention. it should have congress up in arms. but instead, we have accepted it. it s like that embarrassing uncle that nobody wants to claim. and it s pretty easy to hide the problem. unlike the great depression, there are no long lines to get the media s attention and lead the nightly news. it goes unremarked. another able-bodied worker, that s just the way it goes. but it shouldn t be acceptable to the nation that can boast the biggest economy in the world. the president talked about how the growing middle class is essential for a growing economy. but the truth is, it works the other way. we have to have a growing economy to get a rising middle class area that will mean less regulation, lower taxes, and an attitude towards business. large and small, that is encouraging, not discouraging. that is what i think. coming up, a double standard for president obama as he continues to reward his friends. we will tell you about the multibillion-dollar tax that he passed on to you courtesy of obamacare. we have the details next gerri: anot her. gerri: earlier this month we told you how baltimore could be going bust. his major reforms are not enacted, the city could be headed for ruin. what did they do? the mayor had the city spent $585,000 for a consultant from philadelphia to confirm that baltimore is struggling financial. because apparently they don t know it themselves. the finance department apparently lacked manpower to complete a study, and now that it is complete, they are hiring others to implement the findings. get ready for obamacare s most overlooked whopper. as a brand-new tax cost over $100 billion. liz macdonald is here with more. this really surprised me. health reform, it seems like taxes keep popping up every day as we read what is in the bill. i found this one really surprising. what is happening is health reform has enacted a new excise tax on health insurers. for the health insurance premiums and health insurance having to pay the excise tax back to the us government. here s what it s going to cost. it will get passed on to consumers and businesses. so the average american family, they are going to sue their health insurance premiums rise by about $7200 over tha10 year period. were $720 per year. it s really interesting is for the first time that i have seen, this is a group that ballparks these tax bills, both of these government groups said the insurance industry will pass this cost on to consumers and businesses. premiums could go up as much as 2.5% per year. and i thought, who will get hit the hardest? if you look at this map, california, new york, minnesota, pennsylvania, ohio, florida on the list, texas on the list. this is where a lot of small businesses are, this is where the health insurance premiums are sold into these markets, and we do have two congressmen. they have reintroduced the bipartisan bill to repeal the sales tax that health insurers will have to pay. gerri: here is what i don t understand. we were promised at a premiums would go up, we would keep our doctor, and that s not true, we may lose our doctor have to be satisfied with the nurse practitioner. why did we not know about this before? whei read this bill in this section, we see what is going on, when you listen to industry groups and the health insurance industry, they have been saying that this is the excise tax that we re going to get hit with. and he put it together and you see the cbo and joint committee saying, yes, they are going to pass on us. then you have to say to yourself, to the congress know about it when they wrote the law? did they know the consequence that would get passed . in my mind, i would have to say yes. because they have been trying to work on this before the clinton administration. it s the one they have been talking about this forever. after a while, people find out. let me just be clear. this tax is getting passed along, you re not going to see it as a tax. you re going to see it in your health insurance premiums going up. gerri: liz macdonald, thank you so much for coming on tonight. very important story and you did a great job. coming up next, gas prices have risen almost every day this year. cebook making headlines. this time for what the company didn t do instead of what it did. with the spark cash card from capital one. boris earns unlimited rewards for his small business. can i get the smith contract, ease? thank you. that s three new paper shredders. 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[ male announcer ] get the spark business card from capital one and ea unlimited rewards. choose 2% cash back or double miles on every purchase every day. told you i d get half. what s in your walle gerri: gas prices rising rapidly for 32 days straight. jumping 13% and many on the west coast feeling at the worst. los angeles is seeing gas prices past $5 per gallon. the president and chief analyst at omni trading academy joins us now. oscar, why are these prices so high? the factors that we like to look at the most are the technical factors. using technical analysis. the grass to look at what has happened in the past engage what could happen in the future. what s interesting about this gasoline futures market is that if you look back over the past two years, reading into my terminator 2011, gas market shot up from 210 all the way to 348. in 2000 welcome once again the gas prices shoot up again. right now, the futures market is trading much lower than not. i noticed trading up higher than not, it is pushing for dollars higher at the pump in most places. gerri: this is the worst possible time for consumers. we had the effects of higher taxes, folks are facing a terrible jobs market, so many things coming down at one time. you say it s only going to get worse? what was seen in the gas market, the oil market itself, does have a seasonal tendency to rally for the next few weeks. i don t think we conduct it. a lot of times, you will get the price going up a little higher, it uses the prices even further, you will start to hear from iran, and that will probably boost the season more. you have the technical picture. short-term we do need to expect higher prices. gerri: we see these rising ices. does this make us more affordable to problems at refineries? laster besought fires. last year we saw fires. but we are really starting to look good as a nation that produces oil and will be producing it. as time goes by, it is going to be a real benit in our country, the price of gas and crude oil and especially natural gas. but that is in the future. gerri: well, oscar, i wish you had better news to deliver, but thank you so much. my pleasure. gerri: obama has about time and again to end the tax breaksbut here is a dose of reality for you. $10 million was earned last quarter by the oil giant. for 2012, exxon mobil earned $45 billion and paid $102 billion. the tax rate is 31.4%. it doesn t sound like a free ride to me. but that is a monster company out there that has over a billion dollars in profits. they didn t pay a dime in federal or state taxes last year, and it is not an oil company. its it s facebook. not only did they not panicking, they are actually getting a refund of around $420 million. all because of a loophole which let companies treat stock options like cash but it seems like the president has a double standard. we ll companies are bad, tech companies helping them host a town hall, well, that s all good. but now we want to know what you think. log on the brakes. you can vote on our facebook page. should facebook pay for new taxes? gerri: moving on with apple and the iphone. using the new iphone is in store for us? our expert is going to talk to us. well, what apple has done what they have traditionally done is if you look at the ipod, there was an original model, and then they were eventually up to four. apple has had multiple models made. it makes it available to peoople who are new to the platform, expand the platform, hopefully part of the business practices to try to upsell them late on. gerri: to avoid being absorbed, the most recent ipod that i bought is refurbished from apple. that is just fine. i am still perfectly happy with and i ve talked to. it s great if you can find a refurbished. gerri: a-team , the apple ceo, he is acting with david einhorn. they could become what he would like to have apple do is have a perpetual preferred stock. apple said, well, no, this provision prevents apple from doing this. apple said, no, that s not the case. we suggest that the shareholders vote for it. however, he has said that he wouud like to study the proposal. we think it is novel. he is interested in it. gerri: don t they use this money for innovation? speaking of which, tim cook, the face of innovation, is there any reason to worry about this? i do not think so. they know how to manage things really well. the most important thing for apple is consumer experience. whatever works, they will do. they can t do it and guarantee the user experience. gerri: i think it s interesting to watch this company to try to innovate something called i watched. well, tim cook dropped hints last summer. he was wearing a nike device, i think he was dropping a hint that a lot of people overlook the. gerri: the bandit you are talking about has to do with exercise. but he is talking about the watch could have other options? exactly, they have experimented with nike and for instance a dead i forget what it was, but a device are connected to an ipad and such for tracking exercise. there s no reason you can t do that now. who knows, it could be interesting to me on i am sure that there is more to come. it s so good to see you. thank you. when we come back, the bonds that you are holding onto. and is it worth it for the united states to keep making pennies? 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(announcer) scottrade. awarded five-stars from smartmoney magazine. gerri: is it time to pull the plug on pennies? it is no secret that minting the corn cost a pretty penny. more than to cost them $120 million to produce this $50 million in currency. president obama weighing in on this with his tw sons during the google hangout chat last week. this is not going to be huge savings for government. but anytime we are spending more money onomething that people don t actually use, that is an example of something we should probably change. gerri: joining me now to make sense of this is just corps and jeff. tell us what you think? thank you for inviting me to the show. the penny doesn terve its purpose anymore. now, it just doesn t have what it did back in the 40s. which back then, you could have 16 times more of the purchasing power than what it does today. gerri: doesn t mean the round all costs up by a nickel? no, the reformproposal ran into the nearest nickel, half the time the prices go down and other times it goes out. it would neither save the consumer nor the shopkeeper. gerri: if it is important, why have we not done that already? are there people who love the penny and don t want to see it go anywhere? well, i think that there is just a natural sense that if something is not really broken, then there is no point in going to fix it. especially given all of th arguments that we are having. saving money in ways that are not going to hurt anyone. a bunch of countries have voted dropped their version of the penny. can you tell me about that? you re probably referring to canada. the system is quite similar to ours. they are no longer going to be using that coin, they are just rounding t nurse and. gerri: i know that there are many w depend on penni when they are trying to raise money for their causes. this will not be good for them. what is it that? i think important thing to remember is that we can really collect money in many different ways we don t have these pennies, we could use nickels and dimes. we will be able to collect your nickels and we weren t pennies. one well, i don t know. many will say, what about the piggy bank and those trying to save money. you take away an incentive when you take away the penny. i think that we can save money in many different ways. just because we have that coin, it doesn t mean that it s something that we should actually be using. we used to have a halfpenny, but we retired in 1857 because it wasn t worth using. a very similar statement can be made about the penny today. are going to start with the penny and two years later, back to the nickel and having everything. i think that we should waste of the things that are totally obvious, that includes the penny. over time, this has lost more value. given that used to be worth 16 cents more than toy, you could make an argument. but we should stick with what is obvious. gerri: thank you for coming on. you guys from mit are very smart. thank you for having me. gerri: still to come, i two cents more on hypocrisy in washington. and cheaper bonds with interest rates set to rise. what it means for you on investors out there. we have thanswers next we know a place where tossing and turning have given way to sleeping. where sleepless nights yield to restful sleep. and lunesta®(eszopiclone) can help you get there. like it has for so many people before. when taking lunesta, don t drive or operate machinery until you feel fully awake. walking, eating, driving, or engaging in other activities while asleep, without remembering it the next day, have been reported. lunesta should not be taken together with alcohol. abnormal behaviors may include aggressiveness, agitation, hallucinations, or confusion. in depressed patients, worsening of depression, including risk of suicide, may occur. alcohol may increase these risks. allergic reactions such as tongue or throat swelling occur rarely and may be fatal. side effects may incde unpleasant taste, headache, dizziness, and morning drowsiness. ask your doctor if lunesta is right for you. then find out how to get lunesta for as low as fifteen dollars at lunesta.com. there s a land of stful sleep. we can help you go there on the wings of lunesta. gerri: bonds under press gerri: a fox business alert for you now. the wall street journal reporting officemax and office depot could be ready to merge. terms of the deal are not being released, but it will be a stock-for-stock transaction and an announcement could come as early as this week. meanwhile, bondholders beware. interest rates heading higher. take a look at the 10 year treasury yields. higher interest rates, bond prices will fall, and here with advice f fixed income investors, and should we be. so let s talk about what investors should do, warning about the risk of bonds. when you make of that? two types of people. people that own bonds currently in people that don t own bonds currently. focusing on the folks that have bonds right now. what you need to remember is, people that own yields have been suffering from long time. the feds are buying 40 billion plus dollars worth of bonds every single month. they re holding up the market. a lot of this dinner about bond prices coming down, i just doubt that s going to happen anytime soon. but what you need to start thinking about it here baumholder is start to roll out of your bonds and into something like an emerging market still investing and sob and in sovereign debt. is not the sovereign debt of the u.s. power shares, etf, it s fantastic. what it does is provide you with yields around 4% right now. you don t have to worry about complex transfers, that is one way to sort allocate yourself out of u.s. bonds. i don t think this is going to happen soon. i think that it will be interesting. they are participating in such a big way, i don t see yields skyrocketing anytime soon. the one tell us about berkeley s 20 year treasury bond. okay, here is the deal with that. if you are an investor that currently wants to own bonds and protect yourself against the drawdown or a spike in yields, you buy this. your financial visor can talk to about this. it can help hedge against rising interest rates. jpmorgan in the emeing markets bond, local currency bonds. body like them? they are both sort of the same thing that we talked about earlier. like the power shares, invest instead of buying in u.s. dollars, you are buying in foreign currency. if you felt that the u.s. dollars were just going to fall out and let s just say tt maybe the euro were other emerging markets like that, that would be an etf that he would favor. again, all three of those providing you a little bit of a hedge against the dip in u.s. bonds beyond you say thathey don t need such heavy scrutiny. why that? i think as they stick their nose in the market business, levels of regulation that we had over the years, it is a reason why become so popular. a dark pool is a plce where traders who have a lot of money can go to extremes shows with one another. if you had a million shares of apple that you wanted to sell, you might call me and say, how much are you willing to buy my million apple shares were. and i would say, oh, $460. we would trade it off the market. welcome to the sec they are now looking into these dark dark pools pool to see if they are influencing the market and traders are using or selling power in the openarket to influence this. but the bottom line is that we do not need more regulation. the more you met with markets, the more regulations that you put on the markets, it s just the way markets work. we need to step back and let them be, if you will. i am not surprised by that. i have to talia. what do you make of the large-cap stocks right now? we keep flirting back and forth. who do you see that going to? well, couple of things. if you look at volume, it s been dissipating. s&p 500, the volume has been falling off. traders are getting a little bit weary and not as the firstine. the second thing that you have a market that is overbought. the chances of the market making move is less than 2%. what that means to an advertisement trader is it needs to come back around 1420, the s&p 500 has. i wrote about this and if it comes down, the long-term still looks good. the confidence is still there. it is still strong. the small-cap stocks, is tell tells me that people are confident. that makes me think long-term changes are due. if you are an investor, i m still buying new. gerri: jerry, thank you so much. i appreciate your time. on a stay in usiness history was a sad day for nascar fans back in 2001. legendary driver dale earnhardt was killed at the daytona 500. he collided with another car, crashing into a wall. he had the nickname the intimidator. when a 56 races over the course of his career, he tied for the most all-time wins with richard petty. even after his death, the fans stayed loyal to him. in 2003 until 2010, his merchandise generated millions of dollars. he died this day 12 years ago. this year, there will be a female driver at the daytona 500. danica patrick. thirty-seven male drivers failed to beat her. we will be right back with my two cents more . should they spoke pay no taxes all stations come over to mission a for a final go. this is for real this time. step seven point two one two. rify and lock. command is locked. five seconds. three, two, one. standing by for capture. the most innovative software on the planet. dragon is captured. is connecting today s leading companies to places beyond it. siemens. answers. did you know not all fiber is the same? 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[ electricity zaps ]
i think a body that empowers home loss, the saddam government , we were just talking about it. it should not be so interested with the security of the united states of america. countries we cannot trust right now, and i would love to be able to, but we cannot. we have to take our own security into account, and i agree this is a legitimate threat. amended earth every day. we have things that we have to worry about. we have the right precautions in place. the right precaution is not address the u.n. we might as well neil: i wanted thank you all. this is just something they want to attack and give some thought to. i say have vetted because we don t want to to post 14.1 billion. sandra: here s what is money tonight. 32 days and counting, soaring gas prices show no signs of slowing down slightest pressure to kill the keystonepipeline ramping up? and can t get a job? why not sue. jobless workers claim they are not getting hired because they are unemployed. should they be able to sue businesses for discrimination? more cities and states across the u.s. are saying yes, will it bring mayhem to the job market? and can facebook start doing my taxes? it is getting a $429 million tax refund. can the growing outrage finally sparked corporate tax reform in the u.s.? even when they say this not come it is always about money. the cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gas surging 32 days straight. the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline is $3.73 national average, up from $3.29 back on january 17. so how much more pain and drivers expect on the road ahead? let s ask senior petroleum analyst with gasbuddy.com. everybody seems confused, it is not the summer driving season. reports are dand is down and supplies are up, so why are we paying these skyrocketing gasoline prices right now? looking at things, we hav seen demand co-op from the data i have seen. a lot of it has to do with positive sentiment surrounding the economy, dow jones has one of the best january in years. if the dow has a great january, oil prices likely will follow. that is what we re seeing. gasoline prices following. not only that, refineries haven t necessarily switched over to summer blend of gasoline but are preparing to do so for the all-out production will bring, not only that, a job in that as well. sandra: i want to challenge you one thing. he said gasoline prices will track the price of oil, but let s throw out the price of oil and gasoline this year. oil prices up year-to-date 4.1% while gasoline prices are up three times that, more than 14%. so gasoline prices are way outpacing the price of oil. that happens from time to time. soline prices didn t necessarily go as low as oil prices. this last november. right now a lot of it is a primary bottleneck why prices haven t followed crude oil so closely. we still have that bottleneck in the way causing a spike in gasoline prices, refineries moving production preparing for summer driving season. sandra: the bottom line, oil prices have gone up, we cannot refine all the oil we haven t a gasoline causing the prices with gasoline prices themselves. this is all hitting consumers at the worst time. we all saw our paychecks shrink at the beginning of the year, paying more for the home heating bills because the weather is still very chilly, how much longer will the spyglass? there s never a good time for rising gas prices and unfortunately they continue to last for several weeks. dropping a little over a dollar per barrel, is this a sign of a slowdown in this rally? i hope so. the bigger question is will we see the second rally weekend to see the more traditional rally in late march and april, that is the biggest concern i have. prices probably will not slow down for a couple of weeks. sandra: it brings about a popular subject right now, one the president of the united states has to face in a big way, that is the approval or not approval of the keystone pipeline. this will bring oil down from canada to the refineries and possibly the midwest and southern united states and oklahoma and would be a great thing for us as far as making it more independent as far as oil production in the world. do you think it will be under more pressure as gas prices are spiking to prove the pipeline? i think you re a bit optimist on the ramifications for opening the pipeline. the number one source of petroleum to the united states, but as we ship the crude oil already destined for the great lakes and the rockies if we ship it to houston where it can be exported, will that drive the price of canadian oil higher, thus hurting united states already utilizing canada s. number one source of crude oil? it is in the president under pressure will resort to prove in the pipeline. i don t think he wants to, but there is a lot of bipartisan pressure. a lot of misinformation. my concern is that we ll drive p the price o canadian crude oil, hurting americans who already rely on canadian crude oil for their source of petroleum. sandra: somebody has to use that oil, as well be us. thank you for having me. the 1000 protested in washington, d.c., against the keystone@pipeline over the weekend urging the president to reject it with fierce opposition growing in a decision looming, this begs the question will buckle under the pressure? what is the potential fallout? joining us now, the mone money panel. a publisher of energy magazine and chief clinical correspondent with the washington examiner and fox news contributor. we re obviously talking about it right now. the stakes are very high, the union loves this thing creating thousands of jobs in the country. but environmentalists are fiercely opposing it. putting them in a peculiar situation as best i can put it at this point. his duct between the constituents. the democratic party in general. just the other day there was a protest in front of the white house, some top officials were arrested. they re all demanding obama killed the pipeline. the same time the building trades division, powerful unit supporter of the president on a conference call with the american petroleum institute calling on the president to approve the pipeline. you can see how he is stuck between the constituents. sandra: i want to take this out to tyson. i want to use the number from the american petroleum institute, they say the ke keyse type one would create 20,000 u.s. jobs. the labor unions are for it, environmentalists are against it, why are you against it? it has nothing to do with approving u.s. national security and nothing to do with lowering energy prices for americans. member, salt process of the pipeline is to divert oil that is currently eating processed in the midwest for domestic consumption to the gulf coast refineries in order to export that product. the largest export in the u.s. economy right now is refined petroleum products. business is booming for the gulf coast refineries but it is increasing energy prices for americans because the more we export, that dilutes the supplies here at end up having upward pressure on prices. second of all, the product of the keystone pipeline is destined for export, how does that improve u.s. national security? it doesn t. particularly you look at the increased levels of chinese national government investment in production, by 2020 under the direct control of the chinese government will be under the control of nearly a million barrels of production every day. sandra: rick, i want you to get in and respond to this. i think those are exceptions, but based on what he said, let s take down a list. oil is going to go to houston, which will refine the level. some of it could be exported, most of it will be used here. it will take several years to build, five thousands and thousands of jobs positive for the economy, just in pennsylvania and north dakota alone. it is huge. obama has given us sort of a true balloon. he did say he was going to, if the oil pipeline is approved, he would give the olive branch to the environmentalist to get energy research and development dollars out of the texas. the oil and gas industry is the second-largest payer behind the federal income tax. sandra: all this being said, we heard from both sides of the argument, does the president approve this? the interesting thing to notice the president has never opposed the pipeline on principle, he put it off last year until after the election on the basis the route that was planned and are very sensitive environmental areas. they decided to reroute the pipeline and the cover of nebraska has not given his blessing to it. will he find some other reason to be against it or wil will hee to prove it in exchange for some other thing like evidence of some other environmental progress, but i think at this point the president will have to find a way to prove this and try to make his supporters happy. sandra: nebraska was a big speed bump, and the governor for brusque and has signed off on this yet we re still not getting an answer from the white house. we still have to conduct a full environmental impact study and the president has to look at the fact the keystone pipeline is going to increase production of the dirtiest form of oil from a climate perspective and climate change is very real. it is compelling, and we need to start taking that is not true. it is absolutely true. it is the scandal of the century. it really is. you are a complete radical. to deny the science is irresponsible, sir. sandra: wreck now. the apa has already done the steps, the aquifer that was going to nebraska that the governor has now approved, let s look at this. when we talk about you as a person of interest, talk about the soldiers and the families over in iraq against this. this is not going to reduce our reliance on persiagulf oil. the united states in coming. that is why we are having this discussion right now. this has nothing to do with decreasing sandra: there s lot of sound research and evidence that is the approval of the keystone pipeline was put in place, citigroup put out a huge report saying we could become energy independent by the year 2020. it is not energy independent. let s talk about u.s. energy policy in a platform. we haven t had an energy policy for 50 years, it is time all sides of the issue stick to the issue, get an energy policy that we haven t had and let make it work for the future of our country. sandra: it is a fierce debate, healthy debate, the president has a big decision ahead of him. it is a great debate, thank you for joining us tonight. thank you. thank you. sandra: database market moment. the markets were closed for presidents day, but they did not stop dealmaking on wall street. officemax and office depot in advanced talks to merge. it is still possible for the talks to fall apart. involving the exchange of stock according to sources, officemax says the value with office depot worth $1.3 billion. it has been a dark age for the nuclear power industry but a breakthrough nuclear facility may prove a game-changer for the entire industry. the man behind that joins us next. and michigan is a right-to-work state, just don t tell anybody about it. doing everything they possibly can to hide it from an ad campaign to attract businesses. we will explain. more money coming up. [ male announcer ] from the way the bristles move to the way they clean, once you try an oral-b deep sweep power brush, you ll never go back to a regular manual brush. its three cleaning zones with dynamic power bristles reach between teeth with more brush movements to remove up to 100% more plaque than a regular manual brush. and even 76% more plaque than sonicare flexcare in hard to reach areas. oral-b deep sweep 5000 power brush. life opens up when you do. sandra: oregon state university installing a new reactor that could revolutionize the nuclear power industry. the new reactor technology uses helium rather than water at the coolant to allow it to use three times hotter than the reactors that we re using now. researchers say this could make nuclear power safer, more efficient and create less harmful ways. is this the future of nuclear energy? joining us, associate professor of nuclear engineering at oregon state and the director of the project. thank you for joining us. thank you for having me. sandra: currently next generation of power in the united states 54%, natural gas 18%,uclear power the smallest of 16.2%. not very popular. do you think those could change of the new technology are working on is succesul? it is hard to say. ultimately whether or not nuclear power is a larger proportion of our energy portfolio depends on a lot of long-term economics. natural gas is just so cheap it is hard to justify building a whole lot of nuclear plants so that question is a question that will probably be answered over the next 10 to 20 years a little difficult to predict. sandra: break this down for us. what makes the technology that you are working on different from the nuclear technology we know today? big differences that will be cooled by helium as opposed to being cooled by water. that gives a number of advantages, and one is more efficient which officially allows for more efficient and less waste. more importantly, it will open up the industry to a number of different markets that traditionally hasn t seen players with electricity and process steam that can be used for industrial applications like petrochemical plants and also could be used in the future for making hydrogen from water which some people have talked about potentially using as a replacement source for gasoline in the future. sandra: the most important thing is this the technology is safer, cleaner, that is why nuclear energy had such a bad rap. this changes that. the number of different safety aspects in these gas reactors which makes it very difficult to have a meltdown type accident because they re designed to operate at very high temperatures and because they re designed that way, it is hard to get to a point where they have a meltdown which is the traditional accident people are worried about when it comes to nuclear reactors. there is potential for this to change the game, change the way people look at nuclear power. sandra: they will see helium is a pricier alternative. will this payoff in the end? is there an economic benefit to using helium? i don t know the economic benefit to using helium itself because when it comes to nuclear power many costs are locked up inhe structure itself, so going forward economically you want to look to see if you can reduce the capital cost. helium will not be as large as the capital cost. sandra: does this go mainstream, and if so, when, doctor? we still hav started the resr questions to answer. we re doing it at oregon state. we are not building a test reactor, it is just a nonnuclear, nonradioactive community. some other source are looking at these reactors, maybe 20, 25, 2030. that is what i m looking at the earliest. you could see one of these reactors. the economics aren t there, to be later than that. sandra: something the stock market will be watching. you know how the stocks can move. thank you for joining us. thank you for having me, sandra, really appreciate it. sandra: hugo chavez has made an unexpected return to venezuela. he stayed in cuba for 10 weeks following his fourth cancer related surgery. no new information on his condition other than that it remains complex. saudi arabia oil exports hit a seven-year high. exports 5.2% from 2011 rising. shipments to come the state for shortfalls from iran and libya. i m looking at doubling oil deliveries. making china the largest consumer of russian oil and chinese officials are reportedly in talks about joint development of russian offshore oil and gas. next on money, making right to work a secret in michigan? getting that pulled from a big, new ad campaign. should i emplo unemployed workee allowed to sue? they are ready to fight back in court. will it deal a blow at eight dangerous time? when we come back. can you ever have too much money ? my mother made the best toffee in the world. it s delicious. so now we ve turned her toffee into a business. my goal was to take an idea and make it happen. i m janet long and i formed my toffee company through legalzoom. never really thought i would make money doing what i love. [ robert ] we created legalzoom to help people start their business and launch their dreams. go to legalzoom.com today and make your business dream a reality. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. and make your business dream a reality. we asked total strangers to watch it for us. thank you so much. i appreciate it. i ll be right back. they didn t take a dime. how much in fees does your bank take to watch your money? if your bank takes more money than a stranger, you need an ally. ally bank. your money needs an ally. sandra: stop the presses, michigan s economic development group is pulling ads touting the right to work laws attracting corporations to relocate their business into michigan. democrats and unions are viciously attacking the ad campaign saying the pure michigan brand should not promote this controversial issue. so should these ads be booted? with me now, peter, former chair of the national labour relations bureau. welcome back, peter. how are you? sandra: what is the deal? it is state law now, why are we considering this controversial that democrats can get that off the billboard, shouldn t they be touting it if it is agreed this should bring the best workers to the state? absolutely, sandra. antidemocratic, censorship in its worst form. the debate has been had, the union should be taking advantage of it. right-to-work states create more jobs, an employment rate 8.9%, detroit alone under 14%. the more workers you have, the more workers the unions will have to organize. sandra: and more businesses you have. not just promoting people to work there, but businesses to land there may be coming out of chicago or the surrounding city. that iabsolutely right. when indiana passes the right-to-work law, his office was ringing off the hook for businesses considering coming to indiana. the same can happen for michigan and they should take advantage of it, not try to hide it. sandra: are looking at the map, michigan is one of the very few midwest states that actually has rights tright-to-work loss. the unemployment rate in the right-to-work state is much, much lower. 7.3% in the 24 right-to-work states versus 8.1% in the non-right-to-work states. this is proving effective but they re getting their way, had to pull this off the ball boards? i really think the state and the governor should stand up to them, they should run these ads. one of the messages is they don t care about jobs, they only care about union jobs. are they trying to defend it from being the success which it might well be in michigan? sandra: what we re talking about, $144,000. which is pennies when you talk about what this could potentially do for the state. sandra, you are absolutely correct. this is typical left-wing censorship. sandra: i should jump in and get the other side of the story. the critics of the right to work suppresses wages, leaves workers at the mercy of employers so once again i go back to the fax, the unemployment numbers are much better. there are statistics abound, but the fact of the matter is though they often say this is the right to work for less, there is no statistic supporting that. if there was a little bit of differential in salary, wouldn t you want more jobs? once again, they are comparing apples to oranges. you cannot compare the unionized north to the south which is less unionized but has a much lower cost of living. sandra: it is obviously a battle that democrats are winning right now. the state has all the right in the world to run with this, you think they will shy away from it becae of the criticism, peter? i have no inside information. i think i might add to the ad one statement, the state of michigan not only protects the right to choose, but also not to be a member of the union providing a bit of balance to satisfy the opposition. sandra: thank you for joining us tonight. thank you very much. sandra: more cities and states allowing jobless workers to sue. will it bring havoc to workers looking to hire? and it has been a turbulent year for facebook but a $429 million tax refund from the irs will probably ease their pain a bit, don t you think? will this be the wake-up for real corporate tax reforms? piles of money coming up. sandra: can t get hired. should the unemployed be allowed to sue? more jobless orders are alleging discrimination by businesses during the hiring process. new york city may become the latest place to let them take a business to court over it. falling in the footsteps of oregon, new jersey, and washington d.c. morris is looking to adopt similar measures. is this creating a mess for businesses trying to hire? should it allowed to at should it be allowed to happen to begin with? with me now, dan mitchell, richard benjamin. welcome back to the show. i think this might be a little bit of a heated conversation. i will start with you. this sounds a bit absurd. to be able to sue because you don t get a job because you have been out of work. isn t that just you are just out of luck. you are out of luck, but what worries me more about this proposal is that if you have been unemployed for a long time, you probably are a little bit radioactive to employers because they wonder, why has this person than that of work. did not have good work habits, show up on time, steal from the company. you re already starting with all the liabilities and it s unfortunate for the people that are honest and hardworking and just one of fair chance. what happens when the government turns that potential employees it wants to get a job into a legal liability? vendor going to have companies, i think, going out of their way trying to make sure that somehow those people don t even come to the door because nobody wants us look employer tecumseh them on the basis that they hired a person day instead of the. sandra: where do you follow this issue? i totally disagree. and he is making these people south like sandra: you should be allowed to sue if you have been out of work in the field of business did not hire you because of that. has now we re talking about. he is making these people sublet their criminals. it. sandra: no. tsa not allowing the suit could backfire, the unemployed because doesn t would try not to get these people through their doors in the first place. executive mentality that these people are worried about the recall the map radioactive. many people are unemployed because they have been outsourced and downsized. the sole legitimate reasons why they re unemployed in this rough economy. no, when employers say we re not even going to consider you, we re going to toss arrest may have simply because you been employed, they literally say that by you re unemployed. the daughter employed. that s not american. sandra: if you walking with a resin made it shows that you have been out of work for a few years, an employer will look at that and it will be a red flag and say when have you been doing? we re talking a protected class of people who businesses are saying you need not apply. i sort of agree with the other guest. i am not implying that these people a bad. maybe only 5 percent are bad, but employers are looking to hire the best possible people. if your someone has been unemployed for a year and another person who is simply trying to climb the ladder, you probably think it s safer to go with the person is trying to climb the ladder. the thing that really worries me is if you put in some new protective legal class for these unemployed people, then employers are going to, as i said before, do everything they can not to have anything to do with the long-term unemployed. i want to help these people. on a vibrant, growing economy to help these people get back into work. sandra: we can all agree on that. so to his point. the company just wants the best person for the job. that all of lawsuits to get in the way of them picking the best person. and a suing frenzy could be a mess. no one is talking about a suing frenzy. if you want the best people for the job, fine. what these states are talking about is, don t wholesale say these people are not qualified simply because they have been unemployed. so if they are not discriminating what do they have to be worried about? sandra: dan? first of all, we all discriminate every single day when you choose a spouse. you are discriminating. anytime an employer hire someone they re discriminating. what we re really talking about is is there a melissa francis and justify discrimination? is a business deliberately passing over a better qualified person and businesses want to make money. they would only do that by accident. not on purpose. sandra: a holder challenge. helene core would you even proved that you were discriminated against because you may not get hired because they did not, you know it that did not like your experience, the last job your raft of your track record. they don t necessarily tell you. there could be a lot of frivolous lawsuits year. that s horrible when you re in that test 22 endo know why you have not got a job. the standard you were talking about, the challenger were talking about his intense. can you find a smoking gun where employers said we have the intent of disqualifying the sober people simply because they have not been employed. on individual cases you don t always know. it s a matter of establishing the intent of the business. sandra: i don t know. i want the best person for the job, whatever company it is, whether it s the one i ve invested in, working for. of what the best person for the job. i don t want companies to be fearful they will get sued and hire the wrong person. that is my concern. i suspect in many cases the long-term unemployed person is the best option because they re hungry to get back on their feet. the don t want to be a merger in the want to work. if you have the government combined with a bunch of trial lawyers making it so that the long-term unemployed are a potential winner less liability for companies that what you going to do? to hire from within. you think the you are going to subcontract. when the government does something theyay be doing for the best of reasons because we all care about the long-term unemployed. you have to think about the unintended consequences of government intervention. sandra: let s give the last word to rich. we have really heard both sides of the story. he said what? we all want the best people in the job. sometimes the best people in the job are those that have been unemployed, sometimes not. we just want to be sure that in this economy that people are getting a fair shake and a whole groups of people aren t just being tossed out. we have seen evidence of this. by the way, if you are a fancy person, unemployed, you get a business card and call yourself a consultant. when you re a forklift operator, manager restaurant, do these kinds of things, they ll have the options like that. so they have been unemployed for a long time. we just want to look out. sandra: all right. thank you and think we heard both sides there. have a good night. thanks. sandra: well, it is no secret, facebook ipo flop but the irs is about to make it feel a whole lot better. foreign and $29 million tax refund finally push congress to overall corporate taxes. he tells next. at the end of the day it is all about money. this is america. we don t let frequent heartburn come between us and what we love. so if you re one of them people who gets heartburn and then treats day afr day. block the acid with prilosec otc and don t get heartburn in the first place! [ male announcer ] e pill eachmorning. 24 hours. zero heartbur sandra: just around the corner. better market calendars. that, of course, means that the tax man is coming, but he is the estimate for everyone. and report shows that despite posting a $1 billion profit last year, facebook is actually getting a tax refund. that s right. it is getting $4,209,000,000 back from the federal government and did not have to dish out a single dime in state or federal taxes. how is that possible? and now many more companies are using this same tactic? ining me now is federal tax practitioner. how do you explain this? we are facing the taxman and we are all dreading writing about these tax checks, hell are they getting over $400 million back? first of all, they re not really getting away with anything. they re following the law. in this case internal revenue code 162 allows corporations, companies to deduct their expenses, including compensation they did deduct their compensation properly. that created this appearance that there not paying taxes, but remember, all of the people receive these proceeds to pay taxes. now, this exact issue was recently raised by barbara lee, representative from san francisco. she called it the income equity act, saying that corporations should not be allowed to make these deductions, but it was so bad for business that the bill was just it died on arrival. sandra: they paid taxes throughout the year, like we all do. so they did paytate and federal taxes. and keep in mind, they are paying an awful lot more in taxes collected lead directly and indirectly than most people. this is one point that i would really like to make clear to all of your viewing audience. if, in fact, it appears that something improper has happened, the government has recourse through a very unlikely source. sandra: i m sure there will be checked out of that the story is out. i am looking at over 1 billion pretax profits for facebook last year. 429 million is how much they get back. and we re talking about, they might be able to reduce there tax liability by another $2 billion. i mean, how do you think there will be any backlash? there is a lot of talk about the oil companies. so big, but they re making all this money and not going anything in all of the end of the year. sandra: again, that is the divisive argument that sounds good, but the reality is committed to pay a lot of texas. as i was saying, there is a provision in obamacare, admittedly facebook has nothing to do with health insurance, but it is an economic substance rule where it is determined that this corporation has not paid its fair share of taxes, this whole camino code they will have to pay what they owed plus 40% penalty. don t hold to breath because, like us said, what date did was entirely proper and legal. sandra: as the facebook team as a tagger practice of tax practitioners would be willing to defend the? that s right. sandra: thank you so much for joining us. a terrifying meteor exposure has to be all that bad. the great leroy rush of 2013 is on. how treasure hunters are scrambling to strike it rich in russia. that s coming up. you can never have too much money. sandra: it is time for a little fun with spare change. we are joined by a great pair. first up we have nypd cops saying he made off with $160,000 in jewelry. the four seasons hotel display case in midtown manhattan is where they got the jewelry. s worse than that. most of the surveillance cameras were not even functional. to watches, i diamond chain, and a pendant around 2:00 a.m. $160,000 or the jewelry stolen, it was right next where you check in. i am intrigued by this. ever since alfred hitchcock s movie to catch a theif. you could be too young to remember that. [laughter] the point is, they left this stuff out at 2:00 a.m., new york city, you leave it out at two in the morning in a display case? it just does not make sense. sandra: it doesn t make sense to me either. people are getting desperate now. these guys went after the low hanging fruit. sandra: if these guys could pull this off, they must be somewhat smart. after the meteorite hit russia last week, scientists and treasure hunters are trying to find fragments. 1 gram of this meteorite could be worth up to $2200. that imore than 40 times the current price of gold. who is up for a trip to russia? [laughter] sandra: that s a lot of money. it is capitalism its best. people are looking for this stuff and it s going to bring in a lot of
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