sensitive documents on libya released by republican leaders. now out in the open, names and all. inside ambassador chris stevens' prophetic warnings about security. well, thanks so much for watching today. i'll see you back here at the top of the hour. >> it's been a pleasure to have you with us. "your bottom line" starts right now. thank you. see you at the top of the hour. good morning, everyone. i'm christine romans. are you better off today than you were four years ago? i'm going to show you three charts that make the case to elect president obama, and three charts that show it's time to now change to gorom any. guess what? one of them is the very same chart. first, the case for obama. household net worth. after being decimated during the depths of the recession it's coming back. it's coming back. net worth is up 22% since the 2009 low. next housing, home building is at a four-year high. up almost 34% since november 2008. home building sustains construction jobs. it moves money throughout the economy, truck sales, home

improvement stores, appliances, the works. add in rising home prices, falling foreclosures and it looks like the housing recovery is real. jobs, unemployment rate 17.8% after being stuck above 8% for nearly four years. the number of jobless americans is the lowest now since the president took office. ah, but it is this very same chart that makes the case for governor romney, too. 7.8% unemployment is still too high, and 23 million americans unemployed and underemployed, as romney likes to say, still too many. romney makes a strong case that this is not where the country should be. he has two more pieces of evidence for this, we're spending borrowed money to do it. four years ago the national debt stood at $10.6 trillion and new it's 16 and counting which brings me to the deficit. the yearly shortfall between how much the government takes in and how much it spends. just one month after taking office the president vowed to cut the deficit in half. it stood then at 1.4 trillion.

this year the congressional budget office puts that number at 1.1 trillion. progress, but, no. the president did not make good on his promise. henry blodgett is the ceo of the online publiccation "business insider" and will cain is a conservative blogger. henry, this is the chart you brought, the chart that says it might get the president fired. shows the current unemployment rate versus the administration's predictions for we we should be, both without and without the stimulus. either way, we're supposed to be closer to 5.5% right now. can obama win with these numbers, and tell me, tell me about this chart. >> the polls suggest he can win. he's been ahead in the polls and looks like he can win. this chart shows the obama administration really underestimated how bad things were before they came into office and how much the stimulus would do and as you mentioned unemployment is still way too

high. >> what surrogates for romney has been saying, false promises all along, underestimated the depth of the crisis. don't give them another chart. >> what the chart highlights is, what do i like to do, christine, premise the question. the question is wrong. are you better off that are four years ago. i don't like the question. conservatives use it to indict president obama and i don't like it when others use it to defend him, picking two different points in time. the truth is are we in a recovery, hope so. recovered from every recession we've had since the great depression. the question is is it as good as it should have been? hard to prove otherwise. that's the right question. is it as rapid and as healthy as it should have been? >> is it the president's fault it isn't more rapid? conservatives bring yes. i want to bring a sound bite here from ken robath who i asked him this week. look, we keep hearing that you should vote for mitt romney because the president made the recovery worse, and this is what ken robath said. >> we look backwards, no, i think romney's advisers have

been wrong to say that this is all his fault, that it would have been much better if he had done something else. when you have a deep financial crisis, you look at u.s. history, you look at other countries, it's very hard to come roaring back. >> the world's leading experts on financial crises and rehko recoveries says mitt romney's advisers are wrong. doesn't he deserve a second term? >> ken is right. it takes seven years to come out of recession from a debt and de-leveraging recession. did president obama make it worse? here's my indictment. my suggestion is by focusing on health care, reforming the health care market in the first year, he caused a huge distraction in the market and that's what set the recovery back. >> well, let's give him credit though for focusing on the stimulus first, which a lot of people argued helped. you put all the charts there together. here's the stimulus, here's the bottom and then there we come up on all the charts. can you say, okay, would have happened anyway, maybe. we'll never be able to prove it. >> economics is maybe. seen it on "business insider."

all the charts are up. that's great. stimulus one thing among plenty like the federal reserve printing tens of trillions of dollars and by the way we run that deficit you showed every year. that is stimulus in itself. what caused the recovery to happen? economics is a big maybe. >> why does mitt romney have a leadership vision that you think is better than the president's on this? i'll be honest, a criticism of the president is we don't know what the second term agenda would be. does mitt romney come in on the coattails of a recovery that might be under way. >> a very valid legitimate criticism of mitt romney is i don't know because he hasn't given you exact specifics. i hope it would be centered around you be certainty. not injecting health care reform into the marketplace and here's where henry and i have a big agreement. who causes a recovery, who creates jobs, do rich people create jobs? i think mitt romney has to focusing on lower taxes would help with jobs. >> do rich people create jobs?

>> they are important, but go try to grow a tree in death valley, it's not going to happen. we have plenty of investment capital right now. the problem is not that rich people don't have enough money to invest. the problem is consumers are totally strapped, and they have debt coming out of their ears, and as long as they are working off their debt and they don't have jobs and they don't have good jobs, it is very hard to get the demand in the economy to actually -- >> we agree on that diagnosis. it's the cure i'm not sure about. do you cure that cancer through investment or through creating false demand. >> a billionaire said there aren't enough opportunities. there's plenty of money in america. there aren't enough opportunities and how do you create the atmosphere for people taking a risk for those opportunities and that atmosphere is here. who unlocks that? >> and the reason there aren't opportunities, consumers don't have enough money. if we did, we were able to borrow it through the bush years and the ten years before that, and now it's stopped. people are de-leveraging. the key thing we have to fix in this country that neither candidate has offered a solution for is how to get middle class

wages rising again. >> a galup poll, i want will to weigh in. it shows we're at highest level since late may. confidence, you know, just two weeks and change ahead of an election is now at the highest since may and it's largely driven, gallup said, by democrats and independents. independents are feeling better about the economy. so is that good news for the president? >> you would have to think that's good news for the president but how revealing is it. as i said earlier, we're going to have recovery. we've recovered from every recession. confidence is going to come back. the question is from a political perspective, did you aid it or inhibit? >> this chart could be in the president's favor, individual investors, of course, are pulling out of the market. wall street is going strongly for romney. does the strong performance in stocks help the president, or is it not connected to main street enough? >> oh, i think it definitely helps him. if you line up the polls in the stock market, it's remarkably similar. people are very much affected by it. >> one other chart that's really interested here. are you better off. look at your paycheck.

talk about the premise of over four years are you better off? this is 2000 to 2010. average household income went up a buck and housing and transportation costs went up $1.75 so you've got a middle class that hasn't been feeling the benefits of any kind of rising in the economy for over a decade. is it too ash trar toe say four years? >> too arbitrary saying a decade. happening for 30, 40 years. the question has much more to do about an economic transition, moving away from an economy that had a full spectrum of jobs, manufacturing, to one that is more mature with certain kinds of jobs. has less to do with presidents and more to do with economies and transition. >> i agree with that. i would love to hear mitt romney offer a solution to that. >> i would love president obama to find another solution. >> and this is a nice way to start a saturday morning with all of the charts and you guys to talk about them. thanks, everybody. we'll talk to you soon. american jobs, american skills, american excuses. i'll rant on the skills gap and how to fix t. e, but her... likes 50% more cash.

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corporate chieftans say there are 600,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs, unfilled jobs because they can't find good enough workers. they make it sound like we're a nation of lucy and ethels, can't keep up, shoving candy in their mouths and pockets. anyway, their skills not up to par with the technology at hand. of course, that was for comedy. this is for real. there are 12 million people out of work, and the big jobs discussion in corporate suites is the mismatch of jobs of today and the skills between today's lucys and ethel is. the skills gap an excuse not to hire? this week a consulting group from boston delivered a long overdue dose of skepticism t.estimates the united states is short some 80,000 to 100,000 highly skilled manufacturing workers. that's less than 1% of the nation's 11.5 million

manufacturing workers. the study also concludes that corporate america bears the blame. employers won't pay more for the higher skills and experience they demand. quote, trying to hire highly skilled workers at rock bottom rates is not a skills gap. corporate america has spent 20 years rushing overseas for the cheapest labor they could find, and the current whining about not being able to find skilled labor rings hollow. look, the united states cannot compete if our workers cannot perform these jobs. we all agree on that, and our middle class cannot recover if americans are not hired for these jobs. here's what we need. better k-12 education with a better emphasis on science, math and engineering. we need programs that work and are targeted and efficient, not tangled in bureaucracy, and we need companies to invest. if you can't attract the best candidates, offer a higher wage. if you can't find the workers, then train them. last week four big companies formed a new coalition to train

15,000 of our veterans to work in advanced manufacturing. general will be, often criticized as a major outsorcerer of american jobs, it will invest $6 million in the program. we'll be watching to make sure this is a real effort and not just an exercise in public relations. there are 23 million potential workers for you, corporate america. the unemployed and the underemployed. the workers are there. it's your move. coming up -- >> it's called pincer. >> pinterest. >> do you own a small business? why you must master social media. that's next on "your bottom line." we understand that commitment. so does aarp, serving americans 50 and over for generations. so it's no surprise millions have chosen an aarp dicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like all standardized medicare supplement plans,

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this next story is essential for any small business owner. your customers don't live around the block anymore. they live around the world, and their language is social media. if you don't understand it, you'll be out of business. there's facebook, twitter, pintere pinterest, google plus and instagram just to name a few. the tangled web of social networks leaves small business owners scratching their heads. social media is the new word of mouth. this is how people are talking. >> well, that's what i'm told. i'm embarrassed to say i -- i haven't believed in it. what do you think of this. >> flora's business manufacturers and sells high-end

wigs. the cost, anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000. every wig comes with flora's personal touch and privacy. it's not an item that you walk by and say i'm going to go buy me a wig. >> this is a very different kind of customer/shop owner relationship because this is a very personal thing to buy. >> it's a marriage. >> toyed though she's not giving a customer a makeover, she's getting one from a social media expert gary vaynerchu. >> if you're not on facebook and twitner 2012/2012, you're not a relevant business in our society. 53% of businesses use social media, up 44% from last year and he says few use it effectively. >> everybody thinks about social media as promotions, e-mail, talking. twitter, more than facebook or anybody else is about listening, less pushing the pr that you've got in and opening a store and more searching on twitter to jump into the conversations. facebook is different.

if you were to jump into somebody's conversation on facebook, they would be upset. facebook is much more private, it's your profile. you've had 102 people like this page. they want to receive information. >> the goal, to get people peop online to spread flora's message. but to find those people, she needs to look beyond facebook and twitter. >> if you were lucky enough to be in the women demo and really try to story tell to women, pinterest is becoming almost a must. and then if you're looking for a hipster, younger crowd, that's when you get into tumblr. by you taking pictures of instagram, people will see it 15, 20, 30 people at a time. not in one lump sum, but they'll share it. i think instagram is a must for you as well. >> it may take some time to master the social media web, but flora has mastered one crucial step, posting here her first instagram picture. >> wow. you can't just set up your social media profiles and your accounts and forget about it. some small businesses worry

about the time it takes to turn social media into effective advertising. but gary says you need to compare the time you'll spend with the money you'll save. and you should always be on the lookout for extra time in your day that you can use to build relationships online. best of luck to you, flora. ben stein is known for his role as an economics teacher in "ferris bueller's day off." he also hosted a game show called "win ben stein's money." but before all that, he was a presidential speech writer. did he write for richard nixon, jimmy carter, ronald reagan, or george bush sr.? anyone? anyone? i'll have the answer after the break.

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ben stein is a well-known economist. he was a speech writer for president nixon. and oh yeah, this. >> bueller? bueller? bueller? >> now ben stein is advising all of us to slack off a little like ferris bueller. he writes financial basics are boring, it's much better to be adventurous. i bet he doesn't mean it, considering his new book is titled "how to really ruin your financial life and portfolio." on the list, the how not to list, it runs 49 different ways to ruin the portfolio. number 18 is believe that those people you can see on tv actually tell the future. we'll skip over that one. >> i'm not pretending the tell the future, and neither are you. we don't pretend we know the future. that's for fortune tellers. >> we do know the financial world is full of people who are trying to fleece you. >> we sure do know that. >> why do smart people do dumb

things with their money? >> because we would like to believe that there's some magical way, instead of just doing basic, simple things -- you know, you knee charlie munger, vice chair of berkshire hathaway. he says it is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results with money management. all you have to do is simple things. invest in broad indexes of stock, don't play games with commodities, don't play games with futures and insurance you don't understand, don't play games with foreign exchange, don't trust your money to people who promise certain results, don't go on margin, make a definite plan to match assets with liabilities. incredibly simple, yet the results are breathtaking. >> what about going by your gut? your gut tells you to go with something everybody's talking about? >> don't do it. just buy the indexes, the broadest possible indexes. you can get them for almost no money from fidelity or vanguard.

just go with them and you will make a lot of money over long periods of time. and with minimal risk. >> when you boil down all that advice from charlie munger and from the warren buffetts of the world, boring is better. >> boring is better, especially better the you wind up with more money at the end. we face a catastrophe for the retirees of this country. they're just not going to be prepared. an enormous number have virtually no savings for retirement. quite a large number have literally zero savings for retirement. what are they going to do? their future is bleak. i recently had a conversation with the head of a huge company that sells insurance and annuities, who said the number of people who will be able to retire at the same level of living they had in their mid 50s is below 10%. >> whose fault is that, the market or theirs? >> it's their fault. but it's also the market's fault. no one could have predicted such a bad market we've had the last ten years. no one would have predicted the real estate crash as bad as it was. a lot of people predicted a correction, but as bad as it

was, i don't remember anyone predicting that. >> the whole world thought this time is different. they thought we could live on borrowed money. take the money out of our house to pay for the kids to go to college. didn't think they needed to save for college or retirement because everything was going up. and that was really bad. >> well, isn't it interesting that you say that, and that is exactly what we hear coming out of the government. basically we can keep borrowing, we can keep printing money, we don't need to do anything particularly difficult. the democrats say we'll raise taxes a little bit on people with incomes of 250 and up. the republicans say we'll close some loopholes. nobody's saying we have to make hard choices. in life, we do have to make hard choices. that's a very unfortunate fact of life. >> and the book is called "how to really ruin your financial life and portfolio." you're saying washington is really ruining its financial life and its portfolio. >> unbelievably. total debt more than the gross domestic product. that's never happened before in peacetime. that's a very, very dangerous situation.

it's not going to lead to a happy ending. >> three are three source of prosperity. your house, your job, your investments. we know home values are starting to rise. i think the housing recovery -- it's real. it's very depressed, but real. >> when you live in new york, it's very strong here. it's not so strong in other parts of the country. >> wages are stagnant. investors are pulling out of the market. >> some are. >> take a look at this. over the past four weeks, these are domestic equity mutual funds. flows out of them. >> do you know what the total is? it's out of many trillions. >> so you don't think people are running scared? >> i think everyone's scared. everyone in his right mind except warren buffett should be scared. but the total outlook on the stock market are very small. >> here's 49 ways to ruin your financial life right here. why we do dumb stuff with our money. ben stein, really nice to see you. >> nice to see you. >> do you have enough money to retire? or do you have a plan to get there? i don't know. i don't think i do. find