i'm jamie colby. thanks for watching "strange inheritance." and remember -- you can't take it with you. 4:00 p.m. every wek night. >> announcer: from knox business headquarters in new york city. the new "wall street week"." reporter: welcome to "wall street week." the program that analyzes the week that was and helps you position for the week ahead. i'm dagen mcdowell. the u.s. economy adding 156,000 jobs in august with the unemployment rate ticking up to 4.4%. the strong jobs number of is pushing the markets higher. the dow and s & p posting their fifth straight months of gain. 39 nasdaq ending august at an

all-time high. the storms dropped more than 50 inches of rain on the houston area. at least 39 people are dead. more than 30,000 will in shelters across the state of texas. harvey also making its presence known at the pump. gasoline prices spike as one quarter of all refining capacity is still shut down. president trump making his case for tax reform calling it a once in a generation opportunity. the president reiterating his call to slash the corporate tax rate from 35% to 15%. provide tax relief to the middle class and bring back overseas corporate profits. good to see both of you. dom, we are waiting for specific details on this.

steve mnuchin promising details in the coming weeks. but that's 50-50 now that it gets done. dagen: in addition to raising the debt ceiling, keeping the government open, putting a budget in place and getting tax reform. they are going to have to deal with fixing the flood insurance program. >> they had a lot on their plate. they haven't gone the much done so far. the idea that they want to get all these things done and get agreement on a tax structure going forward is hard to believe believe. dagen: i wonder if this doesn't give congress a pass.

if the economy is growing, they don't need to get to it. >> the six people who are going to hammer this out are meeting september 5. but that's just to establish a framework. it's where the starting point is. we know that president trump is talking about this simpler tax system and lower corporate rates but we don't know any of the details. something they all read about and heard about this idea of perhaps taxing the 401k, people's retirement incomes or taking away the mort gaining deductions. >> these are all floaters. floating thing out to see what the consumer will deal with and what we'll accept. i heard no one say 15% is doable. not one person. >> as you mention, 35% is where

the u.s. stand and there are countries, ireland at 15%. so we have seen a lot of tech companies set up shop in dublin. it's an anglo society. there is a young workforce. gateway, or cal. all you do is go into that airport and you see them all there. there is a big push to get the jobs back here. >> i still want equitable treatment for small business owners. it's something donald trump talk about the president early this year. you tax those individual who are normally taxed at the personal. >> they get tacked on the personal level. they get tanked at 39%. so these are really significant issues that could add real value to the economic growth. we saw the job numbers today.

they were okay, they weren't spectacular. dagen: don't go anywhere. more "wall street week" after the break. >> announcer: the biggest names, the most of influential mind. mind. ♪music ♪you fill up my senses ♪like a sleepy blue ocean ♪you fill up my senses ♪come fill me again

dagen: maria bartiromo recently sat down with blackrock chairman and ceo larry financial. here is we had to say on the direction he thinks congress should take on tax reform. >> we are a country with the second or highest corporate thanks rate in the world. it does depress where people want to manufacture and be.

if you extract all the abilities to deduct, we are not as bad. but we are still in the top third of the highest tax right countries in the world. if we had a tax rate that was competitive or even more competitive than most of countries, it would bring businesses back here. it would bring foreign companies that want to be here. we have an advantage most of companies don't have. we have the cheapest energy of any major economy in the world. natural gas is a third of what it costs in europe and japan. it's a third of what it costs in china. so people would love to be here. but when you translate the cost of taxation, and it was some manufactures i'm told, they can't come here because they can't find the labor. here we are, we talk about how we need to create jobs. there is also.

>> the narrative is we can't find enough qualified workers. that's not being discussed enough. so what we need -- and i hope this administration focused on it. we have to have governmental policy for retraining. education has not been discussed enough. maria: we started this conversation talking about the anemic growth we saw in the first quarter. tax policies are something people agree on to move the needle on growth. what's most of important? the rate? is it the corporate rate that's most of important in terms of tax reform? >> i think it's a huge deal to take it to 15%. even 20% would be a big deal. it's hard to see how we get 15% unless we do huge deficit

spending. maria: do you think we'll see tax reform in 2017? that's what i feel is holding up the markets. you said you had a wall of money. do you think that collapses if it doesn't happen in '17? >> i think the u.s. markets are vulnerable for a 10% correction. i don't think that's an issue. but thanks reform is really hard. we found out healthcare is really hard. i'm not sure to suggest whether it will ultimately come in 2017 or '18. what i want to see is a real path. if we could see a real path, if we see a real path having tax reform without massive deficit increases, if we see a path that can help the lower and middle class in their taxation. it can't just be corporate tax

rate reduction. we have to find ways to help people in need. dagen: that was blackrock chairman and ceo, larry financial. allen greenspan was famous for his exuberance moment. he was asked if he saw any difference between today's market and what he saw 20 years ago. >> there is no irrational exuberance that i can see. it's the opposite at this particular stage. but we still have the situation in which risk premiums are not all that out of line. and i would not be surprised to see stock prices rising. but not any pace that could be turned irrationally exuberance

driven. >> that's good to know. but at the same time you looked at so-called wealth effect and what it means for economic growth. in terms of the wealth effect today we were seeing the stock market up 1% since election day. we are seeing a number of technology names at their highs. has that impacted broader economic growth? people feeling richer so they are spending more money? >> interribly it will. whether they like the or not, that's the way they behave. people always behaved this way. when you get stock prices moving up or capital assets moving up, it impacts consumption expenditures. maria: so far the consumption has been weak. you have the retail sector that is totally bifurcated.

malls going out of business. how do you characterize economic growth today and what are the chances we get to 3% in the near term? steven mnuchin is betting on it the next couple years. >> i think the second quarter will show a 3% change but it's a little deceptive because we are having a problem with the seasonal adjustment factors between the first and second quarter. as a general rule i tend to average them. and the average is 1.4 and say 3.0. that's not a terrific number as far as the gdp is concerned. but it in turn is exactly what you would expect at the levels of productivity growth which now have been experienced for a number of years. maria: don't go anywhere. maria: don't go anywhere. more heavy

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dagen: the trump administration will take on the fall agenda with a few fresh faces in the white house. john kelly facing the task of bringing stability to the administration as it tries to get tax reform, infrastructure spending and a budget through congress. maria bartiromo went one-on-one with leon panetta. she asked him for his take on john kelly's role as chief of sta. >> i like john kelly a lot. the best thing to know about john kelly is he is first and foremost a marine.

he dedicated his life to public service. committed to whoever is commander-in-chief. and he believes deeply in disprinciple and a chain of commands and a process for decision making and doesn't toll rate chaos very easily. i think hs the right guy to try to g the whit house back in order. th real question is whher the president gves him the room to make it changes that will be necessary to improve the operations in the white house. >> when you were running the defense department and cia at omb, there was a very different relationship. and the republicans will say we don't have any participation from the democrats, not on healthcare, not on tax reform. how does the country move forward with such divisiveness. >> maria i think i just touched

on one of the fundamental problems we are facing in our democracy. if you ask about national security. one of the big threats to national security is the dysfunction in washington. the inability of democrats and republicans to sit down and work together on issues. the inability of the president and the leadership of the congress to work together on issues. the result is we are operating by crisis. i often tell the students in a democracy you operate by leadership or by crisis. if leadership is there and willing to take the risks associated with leadership. it takes risks. i understand that. but it's leadership. that's what we elect to the congress and to the white house. we hopefully elect people who are leaders who are willing to take those risks. but if that doesn't happen, we

operate by crisis. right now on almost every front we are dealing with things by crisis. the problem is when you do that you lose the trust of the american people and our system of governing and that's dangerous. maria: we are having a debate about healthcare. it's a fight that went on in washington. now they are talking about tax reform. you were president bill clinton's chief of staff. bill clinton was a moderate. he wanted to take the country forward and he wasn't afraid to move across the aisle and get ideas from the right. it feels like the democratic party has been hijacked by bernie sanders, and elizabeth warren. >> i think both parties have been hijacked by the extremes. that's bent problem concerning the parties' ability to work

together. the extremes have taken over the party base. so they feel to survive they have to cater to their extremes as opposed to working to solve problems. dagen: regulatory reform another one of the trump administration's top priorities. maria bartiromo asked ben bernanke about the importance of reevaluating regulations that were put in place during the financial crisis. >> it's always a good idea to look at regulations. there are a lot of regulations out there. it's always a good idea to look at them and say are they accomplishing what they are supposed to accomplish? can we make them smarter? can we repeal those regulations that are not carrying their weight? and that being said, i think that it's very important that we not forget what a bad experience

the financial crisis was and how much damage it did to our economy. so a lot of things in dodd flank have the purpose. making sure we don't have a situation like that. so if we try to reduce the regulatory burden on the small institutions that didn't contribute to the crisis so much. maria: one of the issues bankers say is the fact that dodd-frank, some of the rule making didn't hold as much capital. so they weren't learning. >> i don't see that. capital is the best way to make things safe. if they have enough capital they

can absorb losses without coming close to failing. and incentives are better. if they have capital necessity are investing their own money. they will have incentives to do it bert and be safer. having an adequate level of capital is important. we had our banks get much better capitalized and they are safer and soundser than they were before the crisis. compare us to europe where they had difficulty getting the banks on astounded basis. in terms of lending i don't believe there is any evidence that higher capital impeded lending. lending has been solid. there are a few areas where it's taken some time. mortgage lending was slow to start. but the housing sector is coming back and mort gang lending is coming back. small business lending has always been a problem. large banks don't necessary lire

want to take the effort to make a loan to a corner pizza store or other small business. but generally speaking overall lending has been 23569 forward in the economy. i don't see any signs high capital is choke off the economy. maria: what would you like to see change in dodd-frank? >> i would start with the small and medium-sized institutions. the goal of dodd-frank was to address the risks presented by the smallest institutions. the smallest institutions were hit by as collateral damage. so that's an area to look at. a number of regulators, including outgoing fed governor talked about the volcker rule which is intended to prevent banks from doing proprietary

funding on their own accounts. maybe there is a way to make the stress testing of baingss to assess how much capital they have during a tough period. there are ways to maybe make that less onerous for banks.

dagen: here is a look at some of the biggest market events coming up next week that could impact your wallet. the markets are closed for labor day. but later we'll get the beige book, jobless claims, wholesale trade and consumer credit. we are waiting on numbers from barnes & noble and kroger. on the political front congress back in session tuesday. tax reform expected to be the top agenda item.

that will do it for "wall street week." thanks for watching us. maria bartiromo will be back next week. but first bob massi "property man" tarts right now. >> i'm bob massi. for 35 years, i've been practicing law and living in las vegas, ground zero for the american real-estate crisis. but it wasn't just vegas that was hit hard. lives were destroyed from coast to coast as the economy tanked. now it's a different story. the american dream is back. and nowhere is that more clear than the grand canyon state of arizona. so we headed from the strip to the desert to show you how to explore the new landscape and live the american dream. i'm gonna help real people who are facing some major problems, explain the bold plans that are changing how americans live and take you behind the gates of properties you have to see to believe. at the end of the show,