system whether that's the ability to turn and dollarize their oil transactions. you really have to make this heard. it's one thing to target individuals with sanctions. you really have to move against the syrian regime, the government, and deny them access. >> i appreciate your help. we'll stay on top of it. also the big jobs report. we'll see you tomorrow "the arena" starts right now. good evening to you. on a bad day for the u.s. economy. i'm tom foreman. and at this moment, it is morning on the other side of the world. and take a look, the markets are opening in australia and in japan. that's the all important nikkei which is just beginning to tick. it is going to be a rough start there. we're hearing it has opened 3% and may go down much further. some say as much as 5% today.

right now, we're analyzing what's happening overseas. we'll explain how wall street is sending a shock wave around the planet. the dow plunged like an anvil in the ocean today. 512 points. the worst one-day decline since 2008, one of the top ten worst ever. the dow, s&p and nasdaq have each fallen 10% in ten day and in financial circles that has the rumble of double-digit recession growing much louder this evening. what does this mean for your house value? your retirement fund, prices at the supermarket and the mall? we'll tear through all of that and hear some other stories in the arena tonight. only one thing worse than congress in session -- congress on vacation. there's just one man to turn to at a time like this. >> everybody is waiting to be eaten alive by rats and snails and toads.

it's unbelievable. >> yep, alan simpson. whether it's washington or wyoming. he's the wisest guy around. and -- it's mr. obama's birthday. the president gets his aarp card, but does he get what it takes to lead? two reporters who watched him on the rise in chicago say the lessons he learned there won't work in d.c. >> you se >> he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. >> then, the grimmest day on wall street in years, the ones who have the most to lose can't spend it fast enough. the rich may be worried about their portfolios, but you wouldn't know it on fifth avenue and rodeo drive. luxury is in. so much to get to tonight. but our top story is the diving dow. one trader who was on the floor for today's great drop has been buying and selling stocks for 40 years. he's pretty much seen it all, so i thought he was the best person

to put today's tumble into perspective for us. i spoke to him moments ago. >> ted, thank you for joining us. how does today stack up against all of the other bad days you've seen on wall street. >> if you had to rank today's selloff, i would say it was rather orderly. disturbing, but orderly nonetheless. nothing compares with october '87 when the dow in one day was down 22%. that was clearly an emotional kracy day. down 5% is still down 5%, but it's not 22%. >> when this is happening, at one point do you realize this is going to be a bad day? the markets move up, the markets move down. >> it's always with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, but the pieces started to fall into

place monday of after week ago. continued all last week. we closed down better than 4% on the s&p which was the worst down performance of the year on the s&p. but when we got that gdp number on friday, that very bad gdp number and the revisions of previous gdp numbers revised downward, it was sort of masked by the circus going on in washington over the debt ceiling problem. that number to most traders have sent a very, very scary message. >> if that's what you're looking at, what are you going to look for tomorrow? >> well, you know, tomorrow, unfortunately, we can't escape the numbers, tomorrow we're going to get an unemployment number, which we hope that will be better than expected, but in the environment we're in, it's possible that it will be worse than expected. if it comes in, and it's an if, if it comes in worse than

expected, that could reinforce the negative bias. but also the problem of continued problems in the euro zone, and particularly surrounding europe. and so we had a strong dollar today, the weak euro, problems in the euro zone, on top of all the other problem weers dealing with in the u.s. domestically. and clearly today, it was a bad day. whether it was a selling climax, i think it's a little too early to tell. i would sense that the market clearly is probably getting a little oversold, if not very oversold. but the other problem is they don't ring a bell and they don't give us a crystal ball, so you never know where the bottoms are and unfortunately they don't tell us where the tops are either. >> i'm guessing this is something that's very different from the beginning of your career to now. when you talk about a global economy, we hear so much talk about that here, very often, these days when you look at what's happening in our market,

you are looking around the world, and the world is looking at us. more so than they would have been 40 years ago. >> there's no question about it. everything is interconnected. and nobody -- there's literally no place to hide anymore. >> i owe one of the things that people have to worry about is you get a wave going where one side reacts badly, the other side reacts badly and they feed off of each other. when you consider all of that and all the numbers you've been talking about, do you see any positive signs out there that are going to stabilize us and move us up other than saying we've bottomed out and it's time to move up. >> i think the u.s. economy has basically stabilize. but as long as we have 9.2% unemployment and a housing market that can't get out of its own way. i would say to you that the u.s. government has a lot more hard work ahead of it to get things stabilize and get growth back in this country. >> i think you may be right. >> ted, thank you very much for joining us. >> and we're talking a shot again now of the nikkei which

just opened in japan about 6 1/2 minutes ago. the numbers there have already dropped, we're told, 3.5%, and it's still developing at the moment. so we'll talk about that more. it's not just what happens here, it's the question of how much it ripples out through this global economy, the very thing we were talking about minutes ago. one point, though, you have to keep in mind as we dig into in financial news. wall street is just one small street in new york. it's important, but it's not the whole economic story. our house economist ben stein stakes a broad view of this no good, very bad day on wall street. ben, thanks for being here. >> my pleasure. >> there's talk from some people. i heard a lot of people saying this is the market reaction to the debt deal. it's 1937 all over again. washington cut spending then and the country spiralled back into the great depression. do you buy that? >> not at all. the 1937 recession was caused by monetary policy and not fiscal policy. part of the reason the markets

lost so much is traders can make money by selling. they see we can sell the cash against the futures, we can sell the future against the cash. and that's technical, but it just means it's a phenomenon confined to wall street and traders. there's front-runners going on. and that's confined to traders. but that being said, there's bad news about the economy, that being said, let me ask you this, my friend, if someone had said to you on march 6, 200, when the market was in the mid 6000s, that by august -- early august of 2011, it would be up almost 80%, you would been a very happy da guy. >> you're totally right. nobody back then thought it could happen. >> even with all the falling in the last ten days or couple of months, it's back to where it was in the winter of 2011. we didn't think we were that badly off. it's a large point drop. it's not a particularly enormous

percentage drop. we've had a fantastic stock market recovery from the lows. we may very well be headed towards a double-dip recession, but so far, things are not that terrible. i mean, the media, with the exception of you, of course, likes to sell panic. the people who make money in the stock market sell, take your long-term perspective, riding these things out and buying when it's low. the media is selling you exactly what you don't want to buy if i my respectfully say so. >> on the other hand, i think one of the things that confuses people out here is the very point you spoke to. the behavior of the market and our economy are not always the same thing. and you sort of buried the lead a minute ago. you said we may very well be headed towards a double dip recession. >> we may very well be, but the stock market is a barometer of corporate profits. it's not a barometer of what some poor family in detroit or some poor family in sacramento

is going through because they're unemployed and they're losing their home, which is very, very sad. it is a barometer of corporate profits. and corporate profits so far are still extremely strong. the corp pratt sector is loaded with cash. they're very liquid. they tier in a very strong balance sheet position. this doesn't look anything like the financial panic that we saw in late '08 and early '09. it doesn't look anything like that. it looks like it's going to be a long, grinding crawl out of the pit. and the fact that the tea partiers has taken away 234i government stimulus is a bad thing, but this doesn't look anything like the financial panic. that being said, i'm often wrong and i could be wrong this time. >> you talked about the notion of politics about all of this. i must say, i'm not sure where it politics fits in sometimes. i think when we talk about the economy and the markets, it's like the weather, everybody talks about it, nobody does anything about it. the markets move their own way,

the economies move their own way and nobody can predict what's going to happen. >> i think it's a little bit worse than that. i think people don't know what to do. i think if you took all the smartest, most highly decorated nobel prize-winning economists in the world, they couldn't point to a solution. there is no solution that's an easy solution at this point. we have roughly, very roughly 150 million americans in the labor force and owning small businesses and shares in large businesses, we rely on their hard work, creative tif, ingenuity, adaptability and flexibility to get the economy moving again. there's not going to be much government stimulus, it's going to have to come from the ingenuity of the american people, and it will come. it might not come tomorrow, it might not come this year or next year but it will come. >> you're right when we say we shouldn't be selling panic, but against a backdrop of so much uncertainty, what do you think normal people should be thinking about their 401(k)s and their

house value and everything el. -- e -- else. >> they should have liquidity in the form of cash or short-term government bonds. they should not be too heavily leveraged on their houses. they should not be buying things they cannot afford and they should be buckling down and doing their jobs as well as possible so they don't lose their jobs. but a good amount of household liquidity is an extremely vital part. and i think kbieing annuities is an extremely vital part of the world. we all get annuities in the form of social security, but annuities you can buy from insurers it seems to me are a very, very good bet. i'm not employed by them. they don't even know me. . i walked through the door, i'm sure they would think i'm a homeless person, but it's a good thing to have. >> that's usually what i think when i walk through the door. >> yes, exactly. >> the asian markets opened just minutes ago. we told you, you're looking at a

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we're back now with our developing news tonight. today's deep dive on wall street and what's in store tomorrow. you're looking at a live shot of tokyo's stock exchange where trading opened just a short while ago, about 16 minutes ago. already the nikkei is down 4%. the chief correspondent al ali velshi has been following the early morning trading. let me start off wf this question. ben says don't worry, this is just the markets doing what they do. do you think ben is right? >> i think ben is much more right than wrong on this. one of the things i hate is the dow because we have to look at it. lots of things happen in the financial world that you never see. bond yields going up and down. the bond market globally is twice as big as the stock market and the dow is one market of many, but it's got that big sign, that big board that we watch. so we can't -- you know, it's imagining your gas prices going higher and higher. just getting your blood pressure going.

>> so tell me about tokyo this morning. you're watching this closely. >> the the bad news right now is the tokyo nikkei 225 index is off 6.6%. the good news is it was off 4.0%. it didn't go down as much as u.s. markets did, and then it pulled back a little bit. our correspondent in tokyo spoke to a trader who was sort of expressing some of the same confusion some of us in the united states were saying, why did this happen? why did we see this remarkable reaction? as ben stein told you a few minutes ago, what we saw in the dow today is certainly not a reflection of the 30 companies in the dow or the 500 companies in the s&p 500, which did worse. we have record profitability. companies are actually doing very well. they're flush with cash and selling stuff to people in parts of the world that are growing very rapidly. so there's a remarkable disconnect between what happened on the dow today and what's really going on.

>> so talk to me about japan. why do i care? why do i care what the japanese are doing? >> what's happening there is the same thing happening in europe this morning and america today. we don't buy stocks in our own countries anymore the way we used to 15 years ago. now it's one big global market. money moves around. what we want to see is whether or not this is over or it's continuing. i don't want to see more of a drop than we saw in the united states. the dow closed 4.3% lower. the s&p 4.7%. as long as we're not at that point, i think we're seeing a bit of an improvement. we're about 3.6% lower, but i need to see it stop at some point. u.s. bleeds into asian markets and then back into u.s. markets. 2k0 we get some peace before tomorrow morning's unemployment report which is going to cause us more trouble. >> australia is open, too. >> we're also lore there. i don't have the percentage point just yet on there.

but it is -- the nikkei is now trading about 3.6% lower. it's active but not crazy. >> one of the concerns it sounds like you're saying is the psychological action of these markets. if everybody is saying sell, sell, sell. >> then everybody starts selling. sometimes it doesn't have a whole lot to do whether i have a job, job, job. >> ted wiseberg has an expression where he says the stock market is the only place where they hold a sale and people don't come. these stocks are at a remarkable discount. what makes mcdonald's or general electric, microsoft, these companies worth 5% more than they were yesterday? there's been no change to the way they do business. if you thought these were good companies you wanted to invest in, they're a whole lot cheaper today. if you don't think the world is going to grow and you don't think these companies are going to do anything, you shouldn't be in the market in the first place

pip's unclear the connection between what's going on in the global world and your investments. >> when we see these big waves, everybody gets nervous and wonders what's going on. ali, always good talking to you, my friend. . >> my pleasure, tom. >> still ahead, good news in washington. no, that's not an oxymoron. for tens of thousands of furloughed workers it may just be true. keep your firngs crossed and your tray tables up. it has microparticles, enters the bloodstream faster and rushes relief to the site of pain. it's clinically proven to relieve pain twice as fast. new bayer advanced aspirin.

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a stunning turnaround right there on capitol hill tonight. for days we've been telling you about yet another standoff in congress. this one over funding the faa. the results, tens of thousands of workers shut out of the agency without work or a paycheck for what could be weeks. so what did congress do? believe it or not, they hit the road. they left the capitol for vacation. after days of public outrage, it looks like the steal meat is finally over. look at the reaction of one faa worker who learned of the deal today. she's a safety inspector who has been working on her own dime since the shut down began more than a week ago. take a wln. -- listen. >> i just didn't think most of us expected to it to get this. working for the federal government, you just expect more. >> and your tears?

>> well, nthey're out of relief. >> imagine that relief. tens of thousands of times over. so what exactly is in this deal. chief political analyst gloria borjer joins us from washington. you all know everything, gloria. how did this thing happen and what's in it? >> first of all, as you point out, they were just completely embarrassed by this situation. the public saw it as maddening, how can you possible lay off these 4,000 workers for no particular reason opinion and so they came up with what they usually come up with which is a patch. it's not a long-term solution. it doesn't solve their larger issues, butt it's a patch through september 16 so that when congress returns, they will be able to grapple with the issues, the larger issues that are really underlying all of this. in the short term, the problem was that republicans wanted to cut about $16 million to rural airports.

the democrats said you can't do it. kind of interesting. one of those states affected, nevada, harry reid. >> sure, sure, sure. >> but they said no. but they continued it a stalking horse, if you will, for a larger issue, which is collective bargaining rights for airline workers. and that's the big issue underlying all of this. but short term, tomorrow the senate holds what's called a pro forma session. they'll rubber stamp the house bill. and ray la hood said okay, i'm going to deal with these waivers myself, i have the ability to deal with these rural airports and i'm going to go over them one by one by one to see which gets funded and which doesn't. >> so they're taking the house legislation which included the stuff about this other funding, they're saying okay to that, but then administratively they're basically rolling over that and saying we're going top put that on the burner when we're back in town. >> although the transportation secretary hasn't exactly said

what he's going to do. he said he's going to look at it oen a base by case basis. if i had to bet, what do you think is going to happen to that airport in nevada. >> i guess it's probably going to be okay. >> senator reid said today, the agreement doesn't resolve these key differences over this thing like collective bargaining out there. are we just headed towards another stalemate over this when we come back? >> yes, it's interesting. i didn't know this until i really started looking into it, which is the faa itself has not had a real authorization bill, which is a spending bill. since 2007, they've had all of these stop gap measures. and the reason, tom, is because of this issue of collective bargaining right for airline workers. and the democrats, of course, want to make it easier for workers to unionize and republicans are on the other side of that issue. so that's an issue that remains. it's going to be fought another day. but in the meantime, they were so embarrassed i think by themselves that they had to

figure out a way out of it and ray la hood came up with it. >> all right, good for the worker. glad they got some kind of agreement. that sound you hear, gloria, is the sound of a lot of cans being kicked down the road. >> on this and everything else. >> see you when we're back in town. up next, what is really wrong with congress? where to begin. alan simpson isn't there anymore. but even as far from wyoming, he can see what needs fixing. ♪ [ female announcer ] we're rolling away misperceptions about energy independence. did you know that today about a quarter of all new transit buses use clean, american natural gas? we have more natural gas than saudi arabia has oil. so how come we're not using it even more? start a conversation about using more natural gas vehicles in your community.

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the president is calling for a super committee to determine where the budget cuts will come from in the near future. didn't the bowles simpson committee do the same thing last november? come up with the areas we needed cuts in? we spoke with one of the men who led that committee. i have to tell you, the response from all of you was enormous. i've rarely seen such an outpouring from viewers about an interview and how excited they were about it. we're bringing him back to get his opinion on the compromise made. senator, welcome back from wyoming. glad you could be with us tonight. >> right here from the athens of the west, cody, wyoming. >> it's a beautiful place. >> look, the dow today saw one of the largest point losses in its recent history, and all of

history, really. some economists say this is the time to pump money into the economy, not to be talking about cuts at the government. what do you think as you look at the deal that was struck. >> well, i think the deal that struck was disappointing, especially when you had this group of ours, worked for ten months, it took us three months to establish trust. five democrats, five republicans, one independent agreed with it. that's 60%. that would get you anywhere in the senate, at least. i think the think that's disturbing is you haven't come to where the commission came up. we said $4 trillion in ten years. the president then went in and said $4 trillion in 12 and then they come up with a convoluted thing where it's $2.1. then going into $1.2. and then, you know, slicing in half and half to see which -- how you're going to give a bee sting who will hurt the most to one side or the other and then pretending that all republicans

won't cut defense, which is a phony. that all democrats won't touch entitlements. that's a phony. it's a dysfunctional place and now we have what i think the markets see as we didn't do anything. >> when you're talking about the economy, it's just too important, you can't keep delaying it. >> it's like asking for a constitutional amendment. that takes 5 to 10 years. it's too late for that. we kept asking in our commission, where is the tipping point? the tipping point is when the guys that hold our paper say i want some money for my paper and that's happening right now. i really believe it. this is impossible. they labored and gave forth nothing. the stougest part is when the

people who hold all of these marvelous securities are just going to say well, we do do one other thing for you. you've raised your limit now to $17.1 trillion, and now we're going to continue to loan you money, but the interest rate is going to go up. >> i know you support the idea of cuts to defense and entitlements. defense secretary leon panetta said today, across the board defense cuts under the so-called trigger mechanism would be completely unacceptable. i want to play a little tiny bite from him about that. let's listen. >> it would result in a further round, of very dangerous cuts across the board. defense cuts that i believe would do real damage to our security our troops and our families and our military's ability to protect the nation. >> senator, do you buy that? >> let me tell you, leon panetta is a prince. he's one of the greatest guys i've ever worked with and a very

dear friend. he's saying the correct thing because you don't just come along with a hammer after he's trying to get $300 billion or $400 billion out of it. you can't do that. and that's what he's saying. me's not saying he's rejecting defense cuts. he's just rejecting the sense of when it comes to the hammer, and they haven't done it, then bam. half of it goes to defense and half of it somewhere else. that is -- give him a chance go in and pick around. give him a chance to mess with tricare, which is an unbelievable health care system which takes care of 2.2 million military retirees who pay $4707 a year premium. no co-pay and it costs $53 billion a year. let him toy with that stuff, and he will, and he'll do some good things. . >> sounds like you have some concerns about the general notion of saying that because we don't have the political will to wrestle with specific cuts, let's put in a trigger that drops the guillotine on a lot of

things so we can say well, that was the trigger, that wasn't us. >> that's what's going to happen if the super 12 can't make up their minds. and you want to watch that one. if they don't put the gang of six into the super 12, you're watching leaders who are going to juice that thing up so it will fail. unless they take these six wonderful people, three dems and three republicans, all guided by joe biden through the swamps over the last month and leave them off of the super 12, you know they've picked a sewer structure for failure of the super 12. >> without particular names, what kind of congress members do you think need to be on this from the left and from the right. >> welsh the gang of six. and then pick people of goodwill. i like to say they're as ridge ji as a fireplace poker but

without the occasional warmth. they show up and vote no or yes and they're just robots. they usually march with grover norquist, a kind of warriors of the world united. and grover is going to be -- >> he corralled all the gop congressmen with the no taxes. after all is said and done, he's one of the people who comes out golden in this. he said what he wanted to get and we got it. >> sure, i think we need to think of grover as being president. he went and gopt all those signatures when things were roses, 20 years ago, 25, signed this. anybody who would sign this before they go to congress, before they go to a hearing or listen to the evidence, listen to the testimony, have the debate is a robot. and he's got them. and as they say, but he's a phony bologna iah loeloney when

out pums s -- pulls $6 billiont of ethanol and grover calls that a tax increase. >> you mentioned ten months of with. a lot of work. you came up with a comprehensive report. it got pushed aside. how much faith do you have that in three months in this environment, 12 members of congress can come up with a deal by thanksgiving that's going to fly. >> well, i think it will be because they won't have to sit down and say we need to gather evidence, we need to gather testimony, they've got ott bama plan and the ryan plan and they've got the reid plan and they' got the boehner plan and they got the commission plan and the gang of six. everybody is in the game. they don't need to sit down and hash up a bunch -- they got the actuary studies we gave. so it's a different game. i think they can come up.

but i tell you, they've got to look now that this is the world. these early reports, i was listening to in your program before, this is not about america. this is about greece and ireland and portugal and spain. and now italy is on the cusp. and berlusconi is not doing anything. he says the foundations in italy are good. well, they're not good. trajectory of interest and debt is chaotic. it's different, we're bigger. but the figures are all the same. >> i kind of feel like we're on a wobbly bicycle, heading down one of the hills there in wyoming. always great to talk to you and get your insights. >> thank you very much. it's a troublesome thing. now we've taken the debt to $17.1 trillion from $14.3 trillion, and meanwhile, the great big bang of the universe started only, let's say 13 billion 600 million years ago and we outstripped that 80

million to 1. so hop aboard. we'll all hop onboard into the universe and find out what jupiter's moons are made of lost airline luggage. i'll talk to two journalists who knew president obama when. they think he might just be wishing he was back in sweet home, chicago. [ woman ] welcome back, jogging stroller. you've been stuck in the garage, while my sneezing and my itchy eyes took refuge from the dust in here

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♪ happy birthday to you happy birthday to you ♪ >> there he is. congratulations, mr. president. but his cake is bittersweet. oh, what a toll this has taken on any president.

take a look at him in the inauguration and earlier this week. you see this in presidents all the time. here's a look at the president's extraordinary trip so far. we're going to be joined by two wonderful chicago natives in washington tonight. scott simon host of npr's "weekend edition." and in chicago, laura washington, columnist for the chicago "chicago sun-times." as you look at this right now, you look at the pictures of the president, do you think chicago really prepared him adequately for this job in washington? >> in many ways, to be a chicago politician is to be prepared for anything. the world comes to chicago and you learn how to deal with it. as i've reflected on it over the past few months, there are two things that might have upgraded against him. there's only one side of the aisle. it's an intense political atmosphere, but it's a hot house from liberal democrats.

i don't think he has the experience in dealing with the other side of the aisle. secondly, in many ways, even more importantly, with the exception of one congressional race he lost, he's lived a charmed political life, he's really been very important in his choice of opponents. he's been elected against great odds, but in the ensd, rather easily. he's never really been electorally in a tough race he lost. and there are lessons that way. and i think we might see in some of the battles he's had, his difficulty in getting hold of that. and of course, absolutely, i think it's fair to point out he has a lack of administrative and practical experience and hasn't been able to get his hands around the unemployment rate. neither has congress for that matter. >> certainly you can say that of anybody who's taken the presidency. no one is really prepared for it it. do you think chicago gave him the preparation he needed in

washington? >> i think why he came to chicago is he earned the art of compromise. chicago is really a wide open town. he knew that there was a political system that he could easily access. he knew there was a civic community. he knew there were community organizations and the business community was -- it was very easy to travel in all those circles at the same time. he worked with republican, he worked with much more regular mainstream democrats. he was a progressive independent democrat and he learned to build bonds and build trust there. and i think that's what he hoped to bring to washington with this change mantra. the problem is washington is not interested in compromise which we just saw. and certainly the republican party is not interested in building bridges with imh, especially going into the next campaign. >> you hit the nail on the head. i often said washington is one of the few cities in this country that has no interest in change generally.

when he's been there long enough, now when you're the president there this long, you're the insider. >> he was elected with that mantra, and i think every public opinion poll will disclose that's what the american people say that they want. the problem is obviously always in picking the kind of change you want when it gets down to the nitty-gritty of policy. and that's where i think not only president obama, but the congress has had a hard time. i'm not sure anybody as we've seen is willing to compromise at this point. so you've got a situation now where when the president, i think, really does demonstrate a willingness to compromise, that's not necessarily seen -- it's often dismissed as a kind of tactic. and it's not understood as being even handed. and i'll go back to what i said. he had a lot of practical experience and reached across the aisle in springfield, but the stakes were entirely different. and illinois even, not as much

as chicago is a different atmosphere that didn't prepare him for this stij. look, in many ways he's beautifully prepared for the international stage. >> laura, tell me just a memory that you have on this 50th birthday of barack obama back before he was president that you think of often now with him being the in the. >> well, i think that he learned -- he's a really quick study. i'm not too worried about the fact that it's taken him a little while to implement this change. he even said last night, this has been a lot tougher than i thought it would be. when he was on the campaign trail he was often seen especially early on, before he's became a u.s. senator, is an elitist. he came from harvard. he has a law degree. people particularly from his own community, african-american community didn't really understand that. they saw him as an elitist. my uncle saw him on the campaign trail and said he's wearing this

$1,000 cashmere coat, who does he think he is? i talked to him about that, and he said well, the coat wasn't $1,000. but he got the point. he changed his style and he realized he needed to be able to relate to chicagoans and the voters. i think that's what he's going to try to do in this election. he's going to try to go around the politics of washington again. try to go around the republicans and reach out directly to voters with that change message. >> scott, i love the picture we had on a minute ago. that looks like a million years ago. what about you? do you have any moments before he became president that you look back on now? >> i remember meeting h ining h improbably enough, he was a state senator and he had to listen to me give a speech. i would like to think when he addressed the democratic

national convention that he stole my or itorical style. i think it's safe to say people in chicago knew, if there was a chicagoan you would no, ma'am snat with a really good chance to be president, it would be him. he was seen with premium material, even before the moment he was elected to the state senate. i think there were big-name law firms and muddied interests and political interests in chicago who always viewed him as a national candidate and somebody who would arrive on the national scene because of his intelligence. because of his oratorical skills, because of his political skills. he's operated under national scrutiny, even before he was elected to the senate. and i think that's something that he wears very comfortably. and anybody who comes within his aura, even much earlier is amazed at how poised and comfortable he was with the level of attention that he's given for years now. >> laura, let me ask you

something. put aside all the politics. the man turned 50 years old. he's in an extraordinary position in this country, what would you wish barack obama on his 50th birthday? >> i would wish that he would step back for a moment, catch his breath and think about, you know what he needs to do to lead. being a compromiser is one thing, but in that shark infested washington scene, he needs to try to figure out a way to politically maneuver around his enemies. because those enemies aren't going anywhere. they're out for blood. last night, he didn't even mention the word republican. and i think that's a good strategy. you need to go directly to the voter, the same people who put you in office before and remind you why they put you there. >> scott simon, last thought to you. it is shark week, by the way. when you talk about the shark tank in washington. what do you wish for the president as a man on his 50th birthday?

>> i think tonight, he's entitled to be entirely personal. he's got a wonderful family. i'm the father twof daughters myself. you can't but look at that family. he was born in a state not longer after it became a state. and he went from there, he grew up single mother, family of not terrific means, interracial family and winds up being president of the united states. 3 people will be naming grammar schools for him for a century afterwards. i think he wants a presidency that deserves the kind of national reputation that he has and the kind of historical prominence it will have. and i guess that would be my wish for all of us, that he's able to marshall those extraordinary political skills in a way that will give 30 million more americans jobs. >> scott simon, laura washington, appreciate you both being here with us tonight. the market tanks, the recovery stalls. what are the people with money doing? well, they're spending it like

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panic on wall street. that's the story we've been following all day. as we reported, the market plunged today with investors afraid for our economic future. it's a scary picture, but not everyone is living it, as is so often the case, this is the story of the haves and the have notes. those doing business with the haves, business is still pretty good. sales of luxury goods shot up by more than 11% in july. that's the largest inees in more than a year. sales are up for brands like tiffanys and louis vitton.

take a look at the car industry. bmw sales up 16%. porsche first half profits up 59%. per said deez be mercedes-benz saw an increase in its s-class vehicle. $prices can be up to $200,000. that's for a car, not a house. walmart and price club won't raise prices more than a few pennies becauses they're afraid of losing customers, but the high-priced stores are raising prices. you can buy these hoot boots f $2,500. and you can buy this bottle of kras facial cream for $1,600, $300 more than it cost in 2008. i know you're thinking these pe