>> thanks for watching our coverage from somalia. if you want to do something to help, and i'm not going to tell you how to spend your money, go to cnn.com/impact for a list of of organizations that are doing good work here in somalia and all over the horn of africa. keeping america great. what would it take to turn this around? i'll talk to the people who know what's really going on and what you should do to keep your money safe. plus, hope meets fear. where is leadership? is the president doing enough? his critics say no. >> the american people are pleading for leadership but their pleas are now falling on deaf ears. >> we have to lower those taxes. >> i don't think the president will win it. >> why is congress still on vacation? and a guy who has a lot to say about this economy and this country, trace atkins, tv personality and all-american guy.

this is "piers morgan tonight." good evening. it's been another bad night on wall street. the dow closing 520 points totally erasing all of yesterday's gains. asian markets reacting as i speak to the plunge. europe will follow in a few hours. is market turmoil the new normal and what can you do to keep your money safe? joining us is leigh gallagher, ali velshi and kai ryssdal, and carmen wong ulrich. we've seen record fall, record rises and record falls again. yet again i ask you, what the hell is going on? >> every day i get up very early. every day i think maybe piers can just run my answer from the night before. unfortunately every day it's a different reason. last week it was italy. on monday it was the s&p downgrade. then tuesday the market was up so i did actually go to sleep early and then today it's france of all things. these are catalysts. we're such a jittery market that any little thing sets it off. today it was rumor that france

might get its credit rating downgraded. france is a big economy. bigger than italy. that got nervous invft estors saying i don't want to get caught holding the bag when something really bad happens but irony in getting out of the market to preserve your money, the bad thing is happening. there's a lot of nervousness. selling out of stocks and moving into things that are safe. gold, another record touching $1,800 an ounce and u.s. treasuries yielding the lowest in decades. the fact of the matter is it's a flight to safety. people don't want risk. they want their money safe. the global -- what did i tell you last week? the global equivalent of putting your money in your mattress. >> ali, when i was young to be safe, you would put your money into banks but banks are ones

taking a huge hit at the moment. everyone has specter of lehman brothers hanging over them. can we see the possibility somewhere in europe or america of banks going under of the scale of lehman brothers? >> one of the triggers today was one of europe's largest banks losing 15%. yesterday in the united states for an almost unrelated reason, you saw bank of america losing double digits and today we had the ceo of bank of america come out and say everybody relax. we're okay. this isn't 2008. this isn't lehman brothers. then we had jpmorgan chase's ceo jamie dime on coming out everyone needs to relax. you saw the market move up and down a little bit. this market, look at that chart, that's one day's chart. look at the volatility there. people sell off. then bargain hunters come in and buy and then those who are worried about the market sell out. there's very little confidence in this market right now. as for whether or not banks are likely to fail, it's hard to say. premature right now. what we don't have that we had in 2008 was a credit crisis where banks in trouble couldn't even borrow money from other banks.

we don't have that right now. we have a lot of money. nobody wants to borrow it and use it. different situation, piers. >> leigh gallagher, let's talk politics here. interestingly in britain where riots have been unfolding in the last four nights, all major politicians came back from their vacations, they were demanded back by the public and the media. i'm surprised given the scale of the volatility on wall street following the apparent solving of this debt crisis, which no one knew was going to be a solution if you like, that none of these top politicians are coming back from their vacations here. >> that's a good point. you said apparent solving of the debt problem. we're rioting here. we're rioting in the markets. i really think that this is not from the downgrade. this started as ali pointed out last thursday somewhat out of the blue even though there was turmoil in europe. i think what happened is the debt debate. we got a deal and believe it or not we expected last week a relief rally after they finally came to an agreement, not only

did that never happen, we know what's happened since, but i think that signaled to investors, to wall street, to the general population that we would sooner kind of throw our economy around like a hot potato than enact sensible policy that might help us get us out of this. i think what we have going on is this wall street is kind of catching up to what main street has known for a really long time. the economic news that's out there, the gdp growth slowing down, the jobs numbers, the productivity dropping, that's been out there for weeks now. why suddenly this sharp turn last thursday? i think there's suddenly this realization in the wake of what happened in washington here that we don't quite have any hands on the wheel. >> carmen wong ulrich, gold is reaching record levels. is it still a sensible place to put some money right now or is it now too expensive? >> when they start running in that direction, you want to run in the opposite direction. right now if i had a lot of gold, i would sell it. if it will move anywhere and hit

around 1,800 an ounce it may go to 2,000. the bus has left the depot when it comes to buying gold and making a large profit off of it. if you are concerned about security, you don't want to take that risk. that's just one entity, that's one thing to put your money in. treasuries are the only place you know your money will stay there and money market funds. if you're panicking right now, ask yourself if you're a long-term investor. you need to stay and hold and reassess where you are at but not flee into one thing. >> ali velshi, we saw mitch mcconnell announcing this 12-member joint select committee to try to tackle the deficit. is there now massively high pressure on these dirty dozen as some are calling them to do a really spectacular piece of deal making here because i think if there's any more procrastination by washington, the cause is volatility and they'll get hammered. >> we need a solution. i'm concerned about the makeup

of this committee. there are people on the fiscal conservative side who have shown an unwillingness to be compromising on how it is we're going to solve this problem. i'm a little concern. i'm worried that we've become familiar and comfortable in the united states with the idea that we wait until the last second and possibly beyond to solve this problem. we don't have that time. i don't tend to ring a lot of alarm bills. you know that. this is approaching crisis mode. leigh said this is not necessarily an american problem but it may be up to us to solve it. europe at this point has gotten much more serious structural problems than we have. we can actually solve this politically. i think this is what has to be done. i hope they get the same signals with very but nothing has indicated that they get the same

signals that main street does. this has to be solved. it has to be a compromise and bigger than the one they agreed to the other day. >> leigh gallagher, people talk of a double dip recession. there's a view that we never left recession and the economy has continued to slow down with a few little blips up here and there. what's your analysis of double dip stroke recession? >> double dips are rare. we've had three of them in the past 160 years. doesn't mean we won't have one this time. if you look at the deaf significance of a recession, it's two quarters of declining gdp growth. we're not there yet. we could get there. the other deaf significance is whenever the nber, the entity that decides we're in a recession, says we are. that's more subjective. whether or not we get there or not, will it look different than it does today with rising unemployment, declining growth, declining product tift, consumer er confidence in a declining state. it may not look that different once we get there. >> one thing you said is some people think we never left this.

recession in the old days affected everybody a lot more generally than this one did. this is an entirely bifarc ated recession that we came out. there are people that never felt much of the 2008-2009 recession and right now there are some people who have never since seen anything that looks like a recovery. we just could be milling around where everyone down here feels like it never got better and nobody up here understands what's wrong. >> if you have unemployment at 9%, the recession never ended. that's the way it is to american consumers. this did not stop. this did not end. this is not a double dip. this is a worry and concern that it will get worse. what's worse than 9% unemployment? many folks haven't seen that in their lifetime. that's the big concern and big panic. >> thank you all very much. when it comes to the economy, not a lot of people think that president obama is getting it right. joining me now is james fallows, national correspondent for the "atlantic." you wrote a fascinating piece

about president carter and his administration basically surmise surmising that lack of passion in a president and the way he speaks to his people can be a real death nail. >> it's true. there are a few similarities between the carter administration and its constraints and what's happening with president obama right now. passion has been the hallmark of what president obama has done. the problem may be a culmination of a predicament dealing with this affecting the entire world and something that's difficult the president can't do with the snap of his fingers. for the areas that president obama has been able to talk to various parts of the american psyche, economics has not been his natural or strong suit for reasons we can discuss. he's on weaker ground personally than many other areas but structurally it's a difficult situation for him. >> it's interesting you should

say that. let's play a clip from a speech he made following an assassination attempt on congresswoman gabrielle giffords, for example. i'll talk to you after this. >> if as has been discussed in recent days their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple act of civility caused this tragedy, it did not. rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud. >> you see, what was fascinating there to me was you could see the passion in the rhetoric and it really connected with people. when i watched the president last week talking about the

economy, he seemed listless and >> when we hear that tucson speech or clips before that, his famous 2004 convention speech in boston or the race speech in early 2008 which really saved his candidacy, we see him talk about areas he spent his entire life experience thinking about, reflecting upon and being able to reach different parts of the american populous with. when it's a matter of how to create more jobs quickly and combine long-term issues with short-term need for stimulus, that's duller as a topic and also it's something that isn't as connected to what he is about and where we've seen him most effective. that may account for understated or passive affect that you describe. >> you wrote speeches for president carter and then when you wrote that memorable article in 1979, you made your feelings

pretty clear, i guess, about the way his lack of passion in the end resonated adversely on his presidency. if you were writing speeches right now for president obama, what advice would you give him now to ramp up the rhetoric in an effective way? >> i think that it's worth recognizes first this economic challenge is more than purely a rhetorical one. even ronald reagan as great as he was, he wasn't able to say the recession was better than it was. if the president could kind faceways to talk about economic challenges and strains on people in a way that seemed less arm length from predicament of order people who haven't been in harvard law school is the challenge and finding ways to use simple story. not the story as government as a

family but why he can have hope measures we're taking now will have better returns next year and in our children's time. >> we need the president to reconnect with his voters really, don't we? >> we do. i think it's a matter that there's among his natural base there's been a sense that he's not been fighting hard enough for them these last six months especially when from their point of view and from my point of view the real narrative is the emergency for america is lack of jobs, lack of demand, possibility of a new recession, as opposed to the emergency being long-term debt issues, which are an issue but in my view not an emergency. so finding some ways to tell that story again and how the challenges of right now can lead to promise later on. that's what all political narratives do and he's capable of doing that so we'll see what we hear. >> we need audacity and hope. james fallows, thank you very much. >> my pleasure, thank you. what's really behind this market turmoil.

jubilant round of applause there for the new york stock exchange for another catastrophic day. i can't get my head around that every night. joined now by kai ryssdal to get perspective on this. we hear all of the experts and all of the washington speak and the economists and so on. put this in layman's speak. why do we see wide fluctuations? >> what we see is a realization that the global economy is stuck. there's a huge amount of debt that we have that we've been talking about for years and the other thing is the no growth. the global economy is slowing almost to a standstill. in the united states the first part of this year, basically zero growth. when you don't have growth, you don't have jobs, you don't have expansion, you don't have rising incomes, you don't have good inflation. >> where is this growth going to come from? this is the great unanswerable question right now. >> let me answer it backwards.

it's not happening because companies in the united states and around the world in fact have discovered a way to make money without spending money. they are getting more out of the workers they have. since they don't have to hire, since workers have higher productivity and number came out a couple days ago, since that's happening, they don't have to hire people. if they don't have to hire people, people don't get bigger paychecks and raises or paychecks at all and that's where it will be stuck. >> americans have a new way of thinking. hang on, why should the american economy have this massive terrible day on wall street because of what happened in france? who cares what happens in france? >> let me tell you exactly what happened in france. in the early morning hours of the east coast our time there was a rumor about a french bank. if you think back to 2007-2008, the bank was the first bank that we knew of that was really going to be in trouble. so today people saw that and said we're in it all over again. american banks got clobbered. >> if a bank will collapse in france, it could happen here. >> you say bad banks and it's 2008 and we're back in it. >> because of lehman brothers they know a big bank can fail. nobody is too big to fail. >> the banks are healthier now. they have more money. they are well capitalized.

more regulations in place. not as many as some say there should be. the rest of the economy looks at the banks and says could they conceivably be in trouble? i got to sell. >> how unnerved are you by what's going on? you have a very expert view of all this. >> unnerved isn't the right word. i'm uneasy. these are trying and difficult times. i think if you look at some of the things that are happening, forgets the forget the dow and the downgrade. think about the structural issues in the european economy. you have the bailout plan. they'll prop up italy and spain and portugal and all those guys. here's the thing. you can prop up the bad debt as long as you want.

they have bad loans all over the place. even if you prop it up, it's still a bad debt and someone has to take the loss. what they have to figure out over there is who is going to take the loss. >> bad as the european situation is, how significant is it that china's economy also appears to be slightly slowing now? >> slightly slowing is a relative phrase. chinese economy goes from 10% to 9%, not a big issue. what they want to engineer in china is that soft landing. get it to six. they would be happy at 6%. >> why? >> because that enables them to have growth. it enables this emto get next billion people into the middle class and lets them keep on competing but not overheating. with inflation comes rising food prices and with rising food prices comes 100 million chinese grandmothers upset about pork prices and that's a bad thing.

>> biggest problem facing president obama is jobs. how is he going to get americans back to work? >> i've said this before. i said this the last time we were here. the american economy is a huge, intractable beast. there's a case to be made the economy we have today in august of 2011 is the economy we're going to have in november of 2012. the only thing the president can do is nibble around the margins. payroll tax cuts. those things that he already presented. hope there's some kind of budget deal when the supercommittee comes out of congress at christmas. >> as always, you put a great perspective on it. thank you so much. kai ryssdal, a voice of calm in the midst of this absolute chaos. coming next, dave ramsey. [ gnome ] ahh... [ male announcer ] this is what it's like getting an amazing discount on a hotel with travelocity's top secret hotels. the easy way to get unpublished discounts of up to 55% off top hotels. harpist not included. ♪

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dave ramsey is the host of "the dave ramsey show" and the man millions of americans turn to for sound financial advice in turbulent times like this. dave, thank you for joining me again. there's a big tendency when this kind of crisis unfolds for many americans to say i don't trust anybody here, i'm taking my cash out of the bank and putting it under my mattress and taking my money out of my 401(k)s. is this sensible or is that equally crazy? >> it's just emotional which makes it crazy. it doesn't get you where you want to go. if you're dealing with a typical

american and they've got money in the stock market and they are watching these crazy rides. we've had this roller coaster ride in the last while, it scares the crap out of you. it does me with my 401(k). then i have to step back and say the fear is based on the short-term. and the only way you should ever be invested in the stock market in good growth stock mutual funds like i recommended for 20 years is to have that long-term mentality. that's the only thing that can keep you calm in the middle of this. if you're day trading, you're having a heart attack right now. >> are there other things that americans should look to invest in? i have friends who have made a killing in the wine market and art and gold is incredibly expensive and will come down so that safe port isn't there anymore. banks aren't trustworthy. should people look to diversify into more random investments? >> the collectibles category never kept up with real estate

are a stock market category. wine, cars, coins, art, those are things that are fun to invest in and if you are in one of those businesses you can make great returns if you really know your stuff and you fool with it all the time. as far as fundsing ing funding your 401(k) or kids' college or say i'll retire with dignity, that's usually not a painting on the wall for most people. you know, again, you can dabble in those things. i agree with you and i agree with your panel a little bit earlier that gold is a really dangerous thing right now. it's at an all-time high. it's being driven by greed on one side and fear on mainly being driven by fear. it's a fad investment. you'll probably make money in the next six months. i wouldn't be in there as my long-term. the difference in speculator and investor is an investor thinks 5, 10, 20 years out whereas a speculator is worried about this week.

>> how big of a problem is lack of trust in banks. the reason i say that is that i was a victim myself back in britain when aig nearly went under post-lehman brothers. it took me weeks and weeks to get money i thought was completely safe, recommended to me by my bank in an aig premium bond. there was a risk at one stage i would lose 90% of that money. i had never realized that nor had anybody else that was in that bond. people lost trust, i think, through that crisis period post-lehman brothers. that lack of trust adds to the jitters. if you can't trust your bank, who can you trust? >> well, i agree. that's one thing that happened with the 2008 debacle and 2009 debacle that the government did do right. i'm pretty critical of a lot of their moves. the shoring up of the fdic to undergurd the consumer confidence that bank account up to fdic limits would be safe, that made it okay. i think the small local banks, community banks, regional banks, local credit unions are comfortable with them. they are uncomfortable with megabanks not because they are afraid of them but the level of customer service they are

getting and level of inkpetens and people are worried about that. that's one of the reasons. banking is part of the thing. thing people are losing trust in more than anything else in this compromise in washington and i think the markets have lost trust in that. they don't see that this is really going to be a fix. if we can see there's really a fix, americans will step in and sacrifice together to get the thing fixed but if it's hammering one segment of the economy or another segment of the economy and nobody else is toeing the line, they won't be involved in that. >> is it ostrich time in the sense that when these big things start exploding in this volatile way, is sometimes the best thing to do stick your head straight in the sand keep it there until it all blows over? >> in a sense that's true. i have a friend i was laughing economy or another segment of the economy and nobody else is toeing the line, they won't be involved in that. >> is it ostrich time in the sense that when these big things

start exploding in this volatile way, is sometimes the best thing to do stick your head straight in the sand keep it there until it all blows over? >> in a sense that's true. i have a friend i was laughing other day who spends all his time watching fox and cnn, we'll have to you the pim him in a rubber room. >> we want people to watch the news between 9:00 and 10:00 every night. that's the key thing. >> right now is when we want them watching. that's a good point to that. we don't want to be an ostrich from an ignorant standpoint but we want to keep things in perspective. it's not the dips and rides. the roller coaster will come to a stop. it has gone up and it has gone down. >> dave ramsey, thank you very much. >> thank you. good to be with you. >> and you. coming up, a man with strong

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gives you more ways to earn points. what's your story? citi can help you write it. >> quite honestly, it isn't that difficult to turn the economy around. the solutions quite honestly

aren't that tough to figure out. what we've been missing from both parties is the political will to just get it done and do it. >> that was michele bachmann giving her prescription for the economy. joining me now is man who has a lot to say about the direction of this country, trace atkins, country music star and all-american guy. good to see you. proud to be here. name of your new album. one thing i learned about you, many things i learned about you in our month of incarceration with donald trump, a living hell, an interesting time to talk to someone like you who is a very proud american and who had been watching what happened post- 9/11 to your country and everything else. when you see what's going on now with america, do you feel proud to be an american still or is that pride getting dented? >> well, i'm certainly proud to

be an american but can i be proud of what's going on right now? no. and there's a song on this new album called more of us. the point i'm trying to make in that song is we need to remember there are more of us than there are of them and any time we get sick enough of what's going on up there, we getting too in that ballot box every two years and pull the lever and we can change the whole thing. >> it was interesting to me watching what's happening in washington, i actually thought of you a few stages of that because there's a total disconnect it seems to me between the kind of political chatter that goes on up there and the way they behave and the way that someone like you, a genuine heartland american, would actually view reality. that gap is getting wider, i think. >> and somebody like me that i'm speaking for myself. just becoming more intensely frustrated by the whole situation and it just -- everybody is just talking past each other. the lines have been so clearly

drawn now and everyone is es consed in their political ideals and they are toeing the party line and nobody is getting anything done. >> when you hear michelle gak e bachmann bachmann, are you a tea party fan? i know you're a republican. do you find yourself nodding when they speak. >> not her particularly. there are a few people that i heard that claim they are from the tea party or whatever that i can see the way they look at things. you know, i don't know michele bachmann. i don't know here. >> what do you think is going on with the business model of america? why does it find itself in such

appalling debt? >> i guess it started in '62. is that what i keep hearing someone say? since '62 the debt limit has been raised 78 times or something like that. why have we waited until 2011 for someone to raise their hand and say, excuse me, should we keep doing this? i mean, it makes no sense to me. and it doesn't to anybody else out there either. if you called -- if your credit card company called and said you are over your limit on your card and then i call them back and say, my wife and i and our kids, we all voted and we voted that you should raise your debt limit and, you know, oh, in that case. >> do you think the reputation of america is getting damaged badly in all this? >> sure. it has to be. any time the chinese are saying, you know what, you should start doing things -- they don't have

a very sterling record either and for them to be pointing the finger at us and telling us we need to get our house in order. >> donald trump, our mutual friend, said of the chinese that chinese are eating our lunch and thinks they're the enemy. do you think that's right? >> i don't know they're the enemy. over the last year -- i don't know why it took me so long to do this. i'm ashamed of myself. all of the t-shirts and baseball caps and all of the merchandise that i sell on the road, and and on my website, i finally last year found all american manufacturing companies to supply me with all that stuff. american vendors. i'm thinking, why did i wait so long to do that. let me tell you something, it was hard to do. it was very difficult to find somebody to make all that stuff. >> most of it gets done in china. >> baseball caps especially. the chinese make all our

baseball caps. >> do you think more american business people should be doing that? should be looking more internalally now. >> i'm taking the hit. i told my merchandise guy, i said, carl, i'll take the hit on my end. i know it's going to cost more for these products and i'll take the cut out of my end. >> to actually take a hit in the way you're describing is not really the american way, is it? >> i don't know that it's the american way but it's my way. it's going to be -- it's me doing at least a little something to make me feel like i'm helping somehow. i'm doing something. if it maybe just gives one more american a job, you know. i'm trying to do something. >> your friends, many of them are average joe americans. they work hard to get the money to buy your albums and to watch you in concert and so on. what do you think they're really concerned about right now? what's the number one concern for them?

>> paying their bills and keeping their job. yeah. i think that's number one right now. >> if you're the president, is that where you want to see the focus now, getting americans back to work? >> yeah, i think so. do i have any answers? absolutely not. i do know that -- i know a few things we could do that would solve a lot of problems we could get into more depth if you wanted to but if they just let go the reigns and let the energy developers in this country go to work, it would solve a lot of problems. it would solve a lot of problems. >> we're going to take a break. we'll talk about your extraordinary life where almost every single affliction that affects a celebrity has hammered you at some stage. you've been shot, stabbed, into alcohol, substance abuse, houses have burned down. there's very little that hasn't happened to you. >> indestructible. >> you're still alive. >> you don't have any wood to knock on.

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you'll get this free information kit... and guide to understanding medicare, to help you choose the plan that's right for you. as with all medicare supplement plans, you can keep your own doctor and hospital that accepts medicare, get help paying for what medicare doesn't... and save up to thousands of dollars. call this toll-free number now. >> so the most heterosexual cowboy on the planet and three-time heavy weight champion of the world go to buy fingernail polish. not a woman. not for our wives. for a man.

>> that was from "celebrity apprentice." trace was the runner-up. i can't remember who beat you. i know. it just come back to me. >> you know what i was afraid of and honestly, we were on the very first "celebrity apprentice." i thought what if you win and then you have to be like miss america and follow trump around all year. did you have to do that all year? >> i didn't thinkfully ankfully. he's proud of his "apprentice" winners. >> every time something good has happened in my career, he's always quick to call and congratulate. >> he does call. a lot of admiration for him. i got to put this to you as a charge sheet of things that have happened to you in your life. i have lots of celebrities on this show who have had a few bad things happen to them. nobody has quite gone through this. let's go through this. at the age of 17 you punctured

both of your lungs, cracked your ribs, severed your nose and had it reattached after a car crash. you dislodged a 400 pound boulder that rolled over you crushing your fingers. you had an accident with a bulldozer. in '83 an oil tank exploded while you were trying to repair a leak crushing your left leg. in '89 you cut off your finger trying to open a can. in '94 your second wife of three years, judy curtis, shot you with a .38 pistol. in 2002, a small tractor fell on you after a portion of a road collapsed sustaining injuries to your chest and rib sternum separation. >> i have told people that my house burned down probably is not in my top ten. of course, i love -- there's been such an outpouring of sympathy and empty and empathy and generosity because our house burned. >> your family home recently burned down. >> i've told people, thank you

so much. but really -- >> in perspective. >> it's not in the top ten really of bad things that have happened to me. but once, i knew that my children and my wife and everybody was okay and the dogs and everything, then it really was like, whew, you know, house burned down. >> of all of those things, what was the worst? would you say? >> well, my first divorce is not on there. i think that -- >> you mean to say -- >> i think that hurt worse than any others. >> you mean your first divorce was worse than the sengd wife shooting you in the chest, was it? >> it's easier to deal with somebody trying to kill you than somebody saying they don't love you anymore. just been my experience. >> when you were shot -- what's it like being shot? >> you just go into shock, you know? i did, anyway. i mean because i didn't really feel anything.

i just -- >> did you think you were going to die? >> yeah, i do remember thinking that. i mean, getting loaded up and life flighted to vanderbilt and the whole thing. >> i mean there are two ways of looking at this charge list. one is you're very unlucky. >> yes. >> the other way is you're very lucky. >> yeah, i've had some things happen to me that i didn't feel like i really deserve, you know? >> your wife, who i had the pleasure of meeting a few times on "apprentice." >> she said hello. >> she what? >> she remembers you hitting on her when she was up at -- and that's cool. i was -- she was very proud. >> did you think i'd hit on your wife given the size of your arms. five girls a house full of women. pretty traumatic the whole house, they were they there about you weren't. you get off a plane and found out it happened. >> when i have somebody ask me

what kind of father are you, i'm very quick to say, you know, i never going to be father of the year and this is another example of why. it seemed like every time something like this just some kind of trauma befalls my family somehow, i'm gone, i'm not there, you know? and it really makes me feel bad, makes me feel terrible about myself, that i'm not there in those times. >> is that -- is that the nature of the beast? >> yeah, it's part of the gig. >> a country star? >> part of the big, you know? but still i really -- i get -- i'm hard on myself about stuff like that. >> tell me about the album, because it's a very personal album album, as all your albums are. it's out now. what's motivation for "proud to be here"? >> you know what? i -- this one is just a little -- it cuts closer to the bone, i think. every -- every album i do is auto biographical in one degree or another. but this one, i think, hit a

little closer to home than some that i've done in the past few years, just -- i don't know, it just reflects -- every record i do, too, always reflects my head space at the time, where i'm at, you know, emotionally, mentally, where i'm at. >> you said i lost everything i owned, i went through a divorce a kept chasing women, chasing the dream, staying in trouble but i learned everything you're not supposed to do. i already made all of those mistakes before i got my break. do you still feel that? >> yeah. >> you got it all out of your system? >> yeah. all of those years that i spent paying my dues, so to speak, what everybody calls it, it really starvens. but i did learn what you're not supposed to do, and i think that's as -- if not more important than the lessons you learn about the things to do to be successful. you need to learn the things

you're not supposed to do and stay away from that. >> you went through a very sad time when your brother scott died in a car accident at able 21. you dedicated your debut album and you said they was a great, great, kid, he was my first fan. does he still act as kind of a quiet motivating factor it you in your career, in your life? >> you know i would like to be able to say yes but i've moved now 17, 18 years past that. it's hard for me to visualize it. >> what would he have made of what's happened to you, do you think? >> oh, he'd be so proud. he'd be so proud because he was ardent fan. he thought i could do no wrong, you know? he was very strong about that but i loved him for that t. >> i remember donald trump falling for the same misapprehension of you, saying trace can do no wrong. >> you know what? this is not "the apprentice" i will slap the british out of you on this show because this is -- i'm not having to win anything

here. >> lisp, understand one thing, i was in a competition against tito ortiz, lennox lewis, heavyweight boxing champion, and you, the biggest meatball in the history of country music, and i took you all down. so the words you're looking for are, good to see you again, champ. >> good to see you again, champ. >> trace, it's been a great pleasure. good luck with the album. >> good to see you. >> trace adkins's album "proud to be here" in stores now. coming up, cnn's ali velshi, what to expect from the markets tomorrow.

now i want to bring back cnn's ali velshi with the opening bell hours awaying i barely know how to ask you this, but have you got any idea what's going to happen in the marks tomorrow? >> what you should do before the markets open pick up pepto-bismol on your way in. it's going to be volatile. i spend my day looking at numbers and spend my evening looking at futures, forget it. futures aren't going to tell you what u.s. stocks are going to do tomorrow because this is a such a volatile market triggered by events we can't go what's going to happen. every day we're seeing more and more volume and velocity going into very, very safe investments, like the ten-year note against which mortgages are priced in the united states. these are historic lows now. they are -- the interest rate that the u.s. government pays to borrow money is lower today than it was on monday and monday was