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For more on the markets madness let's bring in the rest of our panel of political and Hayes is the senior writer for the weekly standard.
Ambassador Terry Miller is the director of the center for international trade and economics and a fellow at The Heritage Foundation and James gellert is the chairman and CEO of rapid ratings international.
Welcome mall.
-- REC -- -- -- -- start with you.
You know I know you're no market expert.
But a lot of people out there -- what's going on around the world are saying where's Waldo.
The president seems to be planning a vacation and a little campaigning.
May be some fundraising.
Why isn't He talking about it took him three days to start talking about the S&P downgrade.
Well I think if you look at what happened when He did talk about the S&P downgrade there's a lesson there.
And that might explain at least partially why he's not saying more right now.
I think fundamentally why he's not talking is because the things that he's would be likely to say in the things that are coming out of his white -- I think that would not.
Conference the markets and you had to present.
President's chief spokesman today once again reiterating his call for raising taxes.
And this is a president who in August of 2009 said the worst thing you wanna do an economic downturn the last thing you want to do.
Is raise taxes and yet that seems to be.
The most consistent argument on the US economy coming out of the White House these days raise taxes.
I wanna bring the -- back in here for just a second because.
What was interesting about today that call and I know you saw this yourself first hand.
There was an announcement I think in the middle of the night that Nicholas Sarkozy was gonna come back from vacation.
And talk to his finance ministers about what to do about their debt S&P reaffirm their triple A credit rating how important was that to today's trading.
It was -- important I have to tell you don't let admit much -- our own not a story here at home Jerry.
We heard about the president Nicholas Sarkozy coming off of what does -- -- where He was vacationing.
To come and address their situation there because they work.
The rumors were that France might lose its AAA rating and so He went back to mean that with that some of his cabinet members and talked about the fact that they have to.
I'll cut the spending they may even be raising taxes.
What does this sound familiar.
And so with that that was stuffed French story and then we saw some of those banks -- Societe Generale.
What's really came under fire in the rumor mill really started and that bank was down 21%.
In in today's trading.
-- -- -- To -- French banks really got hit hard and then making a mountain don't know where fine and they tried to.
Issue some has some strong wording about how the fact that they were okay and then they start to come back -- -- Losses there.
Huge losses there ambassador to U.
How is it possible.
That France could have a better credit rating than the US of that.
Well I think they're two different factors at work here for France and for the rest of Europe which are looking at as the debt crisis and the government of president Sarkozy and -- indicated that it's absolutely determined to.
Get their debt problem under control for the United States by contrast yes we have a debt problem but even more important we have a growth problem.
And what you see here is that the steps that the federal government has taken over the past two years and and even those that are being contemplated for the future our growth -- -- measures.
Things like the health care bill the financial reform bill.
The over -- you EPA and the National Labor Relations Board.
But we're strangling our economy with regulations for the US what we need is to get back on a positive growth path.
A positive growth path we got a long way to go.
James I wanna turn to you you have your credit ratings agency.
You do this kind of work all the time.
I couldn't help but notice that France and the US have the same credit rating analysts that to pay tell me how -- they come up with these ratings what's important.
Well there's a lot that goes into it and obviously they don't give -- a lot of transparency into what happens behind closed doors you have the image of the smoky room in the wood paneling.
But you know the the the process is one of analysts from.
The you were covering an individual country.
You've got the head of the sovereign analyst group.
You may have others involved from where covering other countries you hope would hope that you've got.
The analysts recovering the banking sectors for those countries involved as well.
And it's a collaborative process of analyzing you know whole variety of -- and hopefully ultimately coming up with a with a good conclusion.
Sometimes it doesn't always happen well there's a lot of complaining about S and --
