Picking the Brains of Arianna Huffington and David Barse

This morning's show was one of my favorites. We had a great lineup of guests and talked about a range of issues from health care to the economy to financials to oil. It was what I consider a perfect mix. I had nothing to do with it. My editorial team and booking crew get all of the credit. The issues we discussed were things that I could have discussed for hours. Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post and David Barse, CEO of Third Avenue Management, spent most of the morning with me.

Arianna Huffington has become a household name because of her website and her book “Pigs at the Trough.” To be honest, it was the first time that I personally met Arianna although I have attended many of the same functions with her. She arrived with no entourage and was very, very kind and demure. She told me that she visited my facebook page earlier that morning so she knew that I didn’t get much sleep last night due to my three little boys and asked some personal questions about them and our life. I was very touched. I know she has very strong political positions that don’t always align with every audience and yet I found her analysis this morning on my show very fair and very reasonable. In fact, a couple colleagues of mine made note of the fact that for the most part they agreed with her. She’s very well informed on the most important financial issues of the day. I was impressed! She left a new copy of her book for me with the following note inside, “For Alexis, Hope you can get more sleep! All the best, Arianna.”

Here is our one-on-one.

David Barse is a good friend and great investor. He is an expert on special situation investing and activist investments. He explained why credit markets and the CIT story in particular are so interesting at this time. He also told me why his company is launching a fund dedicated to credit and more specifically debt in the end of August. This guy knows what he’s talking about.

Here is our one-on-one.

Finally Arianna, David and Al Lewis of Dow Jones Newswires joined me after Exxon earnings for our daily roundtable discussion on oil markets, where the economy is headed and why underemployment, productivity gains and regulation are potential headwinds for the economy.