keep the punch bowl open for everybody to kind of dip into. meaning if the fed continues these easy money policies where the fed keeps spending all that money pushing down interest rates, specially, and really moving investors to really invest in stocks in a big way, what we re seeing happen right now, christi. christine romans, want to bring you back into the conversation. she just made a great point in that piece about how we hit this high back on october 9th. and within months we had bankruptcies and buyouts and everything seemed to crash. what have we learned, if anything, this time around to try to avoid that? reporter: oh, that s a really good question. i mean, basically you ve had a slow healing. we had a real crisis in the economy. for people who were for the people who were brave enough or solvent enough after those days to put money to work in stocks, there were a lot of opportunities. and those people have been rewarded. look at the ascension of the stock market since
we begin with breaking news. the dow is soaring and records are falling. alison kosik will tell us what s happening. christine romans and ali velshi will tell us what it means to each of us. it s not like we didn t expect this would happen, but it s still a big deal when it happens. it is. it s a great milestone if you think about it. the dow is not only surpassed the all-time closing high, it s at an all-time high. meaning we ve never ever seen the dow at this level. what it essentially means as far as today goes is there is plenty of room for to lose ground and still most likely close beyond its all-time high of 14,164. and all the excitement despite the fact that the economy still isn t strong. you look at the spending cuts that happened on friday. there are worries that could cut into economic growth, cut in to jobs growth. there is uncertainty about where the economy is headed at this point. the u.s. has stagnant gdp. economic growth was plat, at
0.1%. that is the minimum positive amount for economic growth. and then don t forget about the instability in europe, as well. so what you re seeing is this run up fueled essentially by the federal reserve which is pumping $85 billion every single month, they re buying up treasuries and mortgage backed securities. that s essentially pushing interest rates lower, it s pushing investors to go into stocks because stocks are the best game, best investment in town. and it s not necessarily the economy that s the driver. but nonetheless, it s a great milestone it talk about. i love the way you say it s the best game in town because ali velshi, if i recall from your business show, you were spraining at length what tina means. i can t make money anywhere else, so why not. you can make money if you have time in housing, if you have good credit, enough money to put down on a house, but you can invest in the sock market with a few hundred bucks. so this becomes the tina economy. interest rate
all right. this hour on wall street the dow opens within striking distance of a new milestone. the closing bell ended yesterday s trading less than 40 points from an all-time high. that record was set in october 2007 when the nation s economy wassi was hitting the skids. alison kosik is at the new york stock exchange. a good day to look at your 401(k) if you want to be in a better mood. it could be that day, the day the dow finally hits that record we ve been watching for weeks now. if futures are any indication, not only will the dow hit it at the oping bell, it will blow right through it. i want to show you the number we are watching for. the dow right now is sitting at 14,127. when that bell rings, the number we re going to be looking for, for the dow to hit 14,164. just remember, if stocks hit it, it doesn t mean it can stay there. anything can happen during the day. what s really going to be key, christi, if it sticks. if it closes at that record high of 14,164.
it s what he had to do in the debate, didn t do, and it s what he has to do every day between now and the next debate. he has to draw the contrast on medicare and straighten out this myth that the president cut $716 million from medicare benefits. he didn t. they re cut from medicare providers like insurance companies that are overcharging. he has to attack on the issue of taxes. there aren t enough tax loopholes or tax deductions to pay for romney s tax cut unless you cut into home interest mortgage deductions, unless you get rid of state and local taxes. that will hit the middle class hard. you have to be honest about this. the debate hurt obama and helped romney, and romney s gotten a bump in the polls, although it seems to be flattening out. you look at the new poll in ohio, the president is at 51%, romney is at 47%. i think the president, the fundamental structure of the race hasn t been changed, but if he doesn t go on the attack, if biden doesn t do a good job against ryan, an