David Tepper CNBC Interview on Market Valuations [VIDEO]

David Tepper was on CNBC this morning and was not entirely bullish! Below is the transcript and video segments from the interview.

David Tepper, Appaloosa Management president & founder, discusses the impact of the Fed’s QE policy on the markets

look, i mean, they’re not tapering for a long time now,unfortunately, or fortunately depending on — and they have nochoice. is that fortunate or unfortunate? i don’t know. it’s unfortunate what’s going on in washington, d.c. right now.right. that’s kind of forcing their hand. it mean, look, the government’s still shut, things are going to obviously slow down and now they have a short-term — looks like they may have a relatively short-term deal. right. which is going to not create the kind of confidence you would quite like. now, if you can get a big broader budget deal, that’ll be great and markets can fly. in the meantime, to know the uncertainty of three or fourmonths may be a little tough for markets to really fly up. on the other hand, on the other hand, you know, my basic belief has been when you have this large qe, markets go up. markets go up and you have a chance for asset prices to go up. you have a little bit — i think generally speaking, markets will go up. i don’t think you’re going to get, you know, ’99 because i was talking about not tapering in a world where you didn’t have politicians who have nearly lost their minds. i was talking more stableenvironment if they didn’t taper. so you don’t have thatenvironment. but you said the fed, they didn’t taper and they really can’t right now. is that because — there’s no way they can. yeah, because of the washington situation. look, if it wasn’t, you know, the fed, people criticized the fed one way or another. but they basically said what they said they actually kind of did. the economy didn’t pick up. it wasn’t just employment.people have their just one statistic but the economy was just not, you know, growing a lot. you didn’t have great jobsnumbers, you had the employment rate going down but because of participation as much as anything else. so, you know, i — i was a little surprised but not that surprised and understood exactly when they did taper why they didn’t taper. it was because the economy wasn’t at their projections.

about the 14th amendment about what it says or doesn’t say. they should just — pass something in congress to say — i and i know they had something up there. say the debt would be paid always. do it another way. they don’t have to worry about the contracts and other things in question. do that, and that will make things much more stable and let the economy not have these issues. they’re doing it for china, doing it for japan, no. you’re doing it for main street. you’re doing it for the average guy. if you let us default and interest rates go up on average 50 basis points, the treasuries, everybody’s mortgage is more expensive. everybody’s mortgage is more expensive. and that’s what matters. is it if we don’t make payments on social security, on veterans benefits, other things promised. or are you talking default on treasuries. i’m talking technical default on treasuries. it’s really bad if you don’t do social security. it’s a different issue, though, when you don’t make a payment on treasuries. if you don’t make a payment to social security and week delay, it’s a week delay. that doesn’t have any implication on every single american. okay. when you start messing around with the debt of the united states of america, which by the way has not missed debt payments when we were way overleveraged at the time of the revolutionary war. when hamilton made the decision to make the debt payments and didn’t miss a debt payment during the civil war. this is the time you’re going to choose to miss a debt payment?

look, i mean, they’re not tapering for a long time now, unfortunately, or fortunately depending on — and they have no choice. is that fortunate or unfortunate? i don’t know. it’s unfortunate what’s going on in washington, d.c. right now. right. that’s kind of forcing their hand. it mean, look, the government’s still shut, things are going to obviously slow down and now they have a short-term — looks like they may have a relatively short-term deal. right. which is going to not create the kind of confidence you would quite like. now, if you can get a big broader budget deal, that’ll be great and markets can fly. in the meantime, to know the uncertainty of three or four months may be a little tough for markets to really fly up. on the other hand, on the other hand, you know, my basic belief has been when you have this large qe, markets go up. markets go up and you have a chance for asset prices to go up. you have a little bit — i think generally speaking, markets will go up. i don’t think you’re going to get, you know, ’99 because i was talking about not tapering in a world where you didn’t have politicians who have nearly lost their minds. i was talking more stable environment if they didn’t taper. so you don’t have that environment. but you said the fed, they didn’t taper and they really can’t right now. is that because — there’s no way they can. yeah, because of the washington situation. look, if it wasn’t, you know, the fed, people criticized the fed one way or another. but they basically said what they said they actually kind of did. the economy didn’t pick up. it wasn’t just employment. people have their just one statistic but the economy was just not, you know, growing a lot. you didn’t have great jobs numbers, you had the employment rate going down but because of participation as much as anything else. so, you know, i — i was a little surprised but not that surprised and understood exactly when they did taper why they didn’t taper. it was because the economy wasn’t at their projections.

David Saltzman, Robin Hood Foundation executive director, and David Tepper, Appaloosa Management president & founder, discuss how corporate philanthropy is helping the poor.