Page 5 - Confidence Numbers News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

People feel less confident about the economy when there's no deal in washington. is that what you guys see? >> yeah. i would say it's more dollars and cents than that, though. chuck, you know, the payroll tax holiday went away in january. everyone got their first paycheck in 2013 and said, it's a lot smaller, what's the heck's going on. and that's reflected in the confidence numbers. no one really likes the back-and-forth and vitriol in washington, it makes people nervous, particularly business people. but for consumers what really matters is the paycheck and the paycheck is smaller and they'r...

Beltway discussions walk around thinking that oh, nobody out there is paying attention to this. it is -- it is an inside baseball thing. i think the -- gridlock, political dysfunction, just your government is not working for you, really has pervaded public consciousness and you see that in the confidence numbers. consumers represent 70% of our gdp consumer spending. if we have -- employment benefits fading, paychecks taking a hit, if you have the tax burden going up, confidence. that hurts this economic recovery. now i do believe that -- this if it is a have quick trip off the cliff, kind of a...

Again. i think people now are very nervous. they take it as a recession. >>gregg: congressman, bad numbers on unemployment claims this are up. secured confidence numbers down. retail sales are down. the president's golf handy cap is down. i bring that up, because i just sort of wonder why romney doesn't make a bigger deal of that. >> i tell you why. we now know what romney's strategy is, which just play it very safe and ride the deteriorating economy to victory in november and not do anything that ticks people off. not do anything controversial. try not to be the issue in the race. now, the pr...

Taxpayers paid for these things and the businesses used to get successful. i paid to do that. fine. >> andrea: the ones you're citing. i'm talking about examples, greg, like the small business owners that doesn't take the handout, the subsidy or the booster, the one that comes to work every day and takes a risk and goes to debt and works every weekend -- nuclear's not what obama cited. >> andrea: that is exactly what he said. no, he's not. >> greg: i forgot what the question was. here is the thing. that clip of obama talking, i think i have officially seen that more times than the infamous cho...

I'm brian sullivan with your cnbc market wrap. and it was, indeed, a good day on wall street. the dow surging 337 points. the s&p and the nasdaq are also rising. some good news out of europe, some higher confidence numbers. but the real beat was because of stronger than expected housing data here in the united states. housing starts rising more than expected. much of that, yes, was for apartment buildings and multi. family homes. but building permits also rose. a little bit of a good news slant to some of the housing data that we have seen recently. that lifted all boats. we had some better th...