There are more than 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally. In Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest city, one out of 10 residents are undocumented. LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa recently traveled to Washington to push lawmakers to change our immigration system, one that the mayor calls “broken.”

Villaraigosa said his meetings with President Obama and Senators John McCain and Harry Reid left him optimistic that immigration reform would happen this year.

“I think there’s a consensus that we’re probably at the best time we’ve been to at least since 1986 to get comprehensive immigration reform,” Villaraigosa tells The Daily Ticker at the Milken Global Institute Conference 2013. “Things look really good.”

Related: Pres. Obama: 'The Time Has to Come to Pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform'

Villaraigosa says the House could approve the broad reform bill introduced by a bipartisan group of senators (the “Gang of Eight”) if the Senate overwhelming votes for it. An overhaul of the

“Why put off what you've go to do? Let’s get the job done - we need to get a plan to manage down the debt and deficit,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) tells The Daily Ticker on the sidelines of the Milken Institute 2013 Global Conference.

The big debate is about how to do that and when. There's also a question about what the House, Senate, and president can realistically agree to when it comes to a fiscal roadmap for the country (or, arguably, anything other than FAA furloughs).

As we gear up for a budget debate with three competing blueprints and another debt ceiling deadline, Congressman Cantor lays out a couple of cost-saving ideas where he thinks Republican lawmakers could find common ground with the White House. In the accompanying interview, he cites ideas to combine Medicare Parts A and B (hospitals and doctor services) and to reform the federal pension system and bring it more in line with the private sector.

The New York Times reports that Cantor is attempting to

One of the most common numbers you hear if you listen to stock forecasts is the "P/E ratio"--the price of the stock or market relative to the company's earnings.

Sometimes, the P/E ratio can be very useful for getting a sense of whether a stock or market is cheap or expensive.

At other times, however, the number can be highly misleading.

One of the most common ways the P/E ratio can be misused, for example, is when investors cite the P/E of a small, rapidly growing company that currently has a low (or no) profit margin. In these cases, the company will often have an astronomically high P/E on its historical earnings, which can lead some investors to conclude that it is "ridiculously priced."

What these investors often don't realize, however, is that stocks trade based on future earnings expectations, not past earnings, and the company's earnings might be expected to grow extremely rapidly in the future. Investors who are looking at the stock's price relative to possible future

Many market strategists credit the Federal Reserve with the rally that has pushed the Dow and the S&P 500 to record highs.

The near-zero interest rate policy of the U.S. central bank coupled with millions of dollars worth of asset purchases monthly has essentially swelled liquidity in the market, and those funds have to find a home.

With the 10-year Treasury yield well under 2% and an economy in (a sluggish) recovery, investors have been pouring money into the U.S. stock market.

The Fed may have been the catalyst for the start of the stock rally but, according to Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of Pimco which runs the world’s largest mutual fund, “the latest surge is really not on the back of the Fed but the Bank of Japan.”

In early April Japan’s central bank announced a massive program of monetary easing that would double the country’s money supply and target a 2% inflation rate—all in an effort to once and for all slay the deflation dragon that has plagued Japan for at least a decade.

Fed

The U.S. Treasury this week announced plans to retire $35 billion in notes, the first time the government has paid down debt since 2007.

It’s a significant milestone for Treasury and $35 billion is a lot of money for mere mortals, but barely a drop in the $16.7 trillion bucket of our nation’s debt.

Among others, Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies, believes the U.S. Treasury market is a massive bubble destined to pop with devastating consequences.

U.S. Treasuries are “the most overpriced, oversupplied and over-owned market in the history of American markets,” says Pento, citing current Treasury yields as 550 basis points below the 40-year average, the massive inflows into bond funds (nearly $120 billion from 2008-2012) and the 140% increase in issuance since the end of 2007.

Unlike most, Pento is willing to put a timeline on when he believes the bond bubble will burst, which is the theme of his not-so subtly titled new book: The Coming Bond Market Collapse.

Sometime

The Commodity Futures Trading Committee is currently holding a hearing on the market impact of the April 23^rd Twitter attack.

The Twitter hack, which targeted an Associated Press account, sent a false tweet to 1.9 million followers that two bombs had exploded in the White House, injuring President Barack Obama. Markets reacted, losing $136 billion in value in a matter of minutes before quickly rebounding.

“This thing really did put the markets in a tumble,” says Bart Chilton, Commissioner of the CFTC. “As regulators I think we’ve always looked at social media as something that’s outside of our jurisdiction, but last week's hack attack shows we’re in a perilous position in regard to the confluence of social networks and trading so it can have a heavy and quick impact.”

Whether or not the CFTC will take an official position on the issue is up for debate. But Chilton gave The Daily Ticker a preview of some of the issues they might explore during the hearing.

“Social media is more than a

More good news on the housing market. This morning, the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price index posted its biggest annual increase since 2006—just before the housing market crash.

Home prices in all 20 metro areas included in the index rose for the second month running. Phoenix led, with a 23% annual increase followed by San Francisco (18.9%), Las Vegas (17.6%) and Atlanta (16.5%).

Still, Robert Shiller, co-creator of the index, is cautious. “There’s a lot of excitement in the housing market now but it might be just short term,” he tells The Daily Ticker.

Related: The Recovery in Housing is Behind Us: David Rosenberg

Shiller says the housing market is operating in an “abnormal economy” where the Federal Reserve is buying $40 billion worth of mortgage securities and $45 billion worth of Treasury notes each month. This has driven mortgage rates to record lows.

According to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey out last Thursday, the average rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage is a record low 3;4%;

Niall Ferguson has two words for Paul Krugman: you’re wrong.

The Harvard University history professor and author of "The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die" and “Civilization: The West and the Rest” says Krugman’s pro-government spending thesis not only fails to address the core problems facing the U.S. and Europe today but also has dire consequences for individuals living in these economies.

“You can’t borrow trillions of dollars a year for the rest of time,” Ferguson says in an interview with The Daily Ticker at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2013. “Once a government gets to a very very high level of debt, the risk is very small increases in borrowing costs which create a vast ocean of red ink. So that risk is not negligible. Very large debts do not simply disappear by magic.”

Related: The Economic Argument Is Over — And Paul Krugman Won

Ferguson argues that Carmen Reinhart’s and Ken Rogoff’s conclusions about the relationship between high debt and