>> the public says get your house in order. bickering in congress is at an all-time high in polling. people think there's too much bickering and job approval rating is terrible. >> susie: the latest gallup poll shows voters want a new congress to deliver more results and fewer excuses. >> jeff: what the midterm election says about the economy, and the needs of voters. you're watching "nightly business report" for monday, november 1. this is "nightly business report" with susie gharib and tom hudson. "nightly business report" is made possible by:

this program is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. captioning sponsored by wpbt >> susie: good evening everyone. investors stood still today, waiting for news on three big events this week: tomorrow's

elections, a key fed meeting and the friday jobs report. jeff, the federal reserve kicks off a two-day meeting tomorrow. it's all but certain policymakers will take bold action to prop up the economy. >> jeff: susie, the central bank is expected to announce a program to buy government bonds, similar to what it did during the financial crisis. but even though the fed has signaled its plan, no one really knows the details. >> susie: there are many unknowns. as erika miller explains, once the plan is announced wednesday, it will likely have a big impact on financial markets. >> reporter: buying hundreds of billions of dollars in government bonds is unconventional. and it's risky. but there's no turning back now. the federal reserve is widely expected to announce wednesday a plan to purchase at least $500 billion worth of treasuries, by spending about $100 billion a month for five months. but economist dana saporta says what's likely to move the market is how the fed explains its action. >> i think communications is the main challenge the fed has right now.

i think the fed is going to make it clear its committed to doing whatever is necessary to prevent the u.s. from falling into a deflationary spiral. because that's the concern. >> reporter: the strategy is called quantitative easing. by buying treasuries, the fed hopes to lower long-term interest rates. that, in turn, could encourage consumers and businesses to buy big ticket items, and eventually lead to hiring. the fed used quantitative easing successfully in 2008 and 2009 to get financial markets back on solid footing. but this time, economists warn the strategy is riskier-- because the fed's goal is so broad: reviving the economy and boosting hiring. japan tried to use quantitative easing in the early 2000's to resuscitate its economy, and it failed. >> japan is widely believed not to have been aggressive enough. and also japan was raising tax rates at a time they shouldn't have been, in the late '90s. >> reporter: which is why most wall street strategists are

confident the fed will act boldly this time. even so, j.p. morgan strategist tom lee isn't sure stocks will rally on the wednesday announcement. >> if markets are disappointed, it's probably because the fed may be communicating something about the outlook for the recovery or inflation being better than expected. and that could be a disappointment. >> reporter: plus, much of the benefit of quantitative easing may be already priced into the stock market, which has been rallying since august. to know if the plan is working, economists will monitor the treasury yield curve, hoping rates will start to fall on longer term bonds. another positive sign could come from tips-- treasury inflation protected securities-- if they start pricing in higher inflation. it might seem odd, but some economists will also be watching auto sales as an early indicator of success of quantitative easing. auto sales are extremely sensitive to changes in consumer credit.

and most people don't buy cars unless they're confident about their financial future. erika miller, "nightly business report," new york. >> jeff: here are the stories in tonight's n.b.r. newswheel: investors stayed on the sidelines ahead of the election and the fed meeting. the dow rose just six points, the nasdaq fell 2.5 and the s&p 500 was up a point. trading volume started the week under a billion shares on the n.y.s.e., and at nearly two billion shares on the nasdaq. a milestone for the recovery, as manufacturing posts its 15th straight quarter of growth. the institute of supply management's manufacturing index hit 56.4 in october, any reading over 50 indicates expansion. consumers are holding on to their wallets. the commerce department says spending rose just 0.2% in september. it was held back by the first decline in income in over a year, down 0.1%. a.i.g. is cutting a check to uncle sam. the bailed out insurer has raised $37 billion by selling

two foreign insurance units. that money will go to help pay back the $100 billion a.i.g. still owes the government. still ahead: food truck economics versus a life in high finance, we look at one man's choice. >> susie: 15 points. that's the lead republicans hold over democrats in the midterm election, according to the latest gallup poll. gallup calls the republican lead unprecedented, so large it could result in the biggest g.o.p. margin in the house in several generations. but what does that mean for the economy? to find out, we continue our coverage "midterm 2010: it's the economy." washington bureau chief darren gersh spoke with gallup editor- in-chief frank newport and political analyst stuart sweet. >> new port ed et irin chief of the gallup poll am thank you for your timism want to start out, the economy is the key issue but are we clear on what we want done

with the economy in this election. >> that is a very, very important question. because it is easy to say yes, the economy is what i am voting on, which is what we find in the data but absolutely more difficult to figure out what to do about it. we have asked various questions. other people have as well. we gave people recently i just know the past weekend before this election a choice and said oncehe new congress is in place regardless of who wins, which should be the priority, and by a slight margin, a new stimulus plan to increase jobs wins out. but there is still only in the 30% rang that pick that. other people pick repeal health care, cut back spending and thing as long those lines clearly if you give them that choice that wins out. but it's still murky. and it still depends on who you talk to so it a complex issue. >> reporter: and you follow both politics and investing. so the poll in the markets on wednesday, does the market rally on relief, you know, we're glad this election is over and we're glad we know who the winner is. >> it is more likely to go down than to go up. certainly the republican takeover of the house has

been predicted for perhaps a month so it is not exactly a surprise. >> reporter: but in the past, a gridlock scenario which is what republican control of at least the house would mean in washington, has been good for investors. is this a sense that maybe this time gridlock will be different. >> well, i want to distinguish between the short run the next 48, 72 hours from the longer run. yes, i think it is likely there will be a bull market in 2011. the third year of a president's term is actually the best year to invest in the stock market. there is no reason to think this will be different. so i actually wall street is wildly bullish about next year. i'm just talking about the rest of this week. you may see weakness in the market after the election. >> reporter: frank, there is a lot of talk this is a wave election. but is this a rea inlooment election where people say we really prefer the republican solutions or is this more a reaction to what has been going on in washington, the kind of fire the team that is in place now. >> the conventional wisdom is the latter it is not so

of the republican party is attractive. when you look at something like party favorables the republican party doesn't do that much better than the democratic party favorable. so that is the conventional wisdom that it is more, particularly on the right side of the political spectrum, conservatives and republicans are real concerned about what they see as problems with democratic control of the white house and the congress. and wanting to do something about it. a lot of it has to do with the role of the federal government. >> reporter: what are you finding there, what do people want the role to be, is it clear. >> it is not clear. we have been analyzing up one day and down the other. we brought experts and did extra polling to figure out what it is, what we do know is it is a pivotal issue. it divides the country dramatically. that those on the right think there is too much federal government it is too large. does too much, too poer withful, needs to cut back, they are scared of it. almost half the americans say it an immediate threat to the rights of other citizens. that is the words we use. 46% will say yes and on the left they are comfortable with it. they think yes, the federal government is there to solve problems and we're

comfortable with what it is doing. that is the big dividing point. what should be done is what our research shows really ends up being in the middle. >> reporter: so frank is saying people aren't decided about the role of government here. when the new tool comes in you have been an vaser to republican leaders in the past. what kind of pan date are they going to have, and where doe they start if it is to the quite clear what role people want the government to play? >> well, i think it's more important to ask where is all this going. where it is going is some kind of compromise. the american people, have spoken fairly clearly. they really want the president and the republicans to work together. and they think that the democrats, overreached. they are not in favor of obamacare. they want relief on health care. they want republicans to come up with alternative answers to obamacare. on the big overhaul on banks they're not satisfied on that bill either. they think the big banks got away with murder. they want the republicans to take on the big banks and to fix too big to fail. this is kind of common sense

solutions they think that republicans need to bring to the table and obama has to agree with. they need to negotiate. >> reporter: you were one of the few people in january who said obama would go forward and pass his health-care bill. go sector by sector. what happened there, what happens, how does this election if it is indeed turns out the way frank is saying and we get the republican house, how does the election turn out and what does it mean for individual sectors that people care about? ness i have a few surprises for you today. i think there are a couple sectors that will be bad if the republicans take over for investors. the first one is managed care. democrats rally -- railed against managed care and pilloried managed care. the irony is republicans do well tomorrow, managed care may be back under the knife only this time republicans will be wielding it. specifically, there is a provision in the law that republicans find very offensive, so you will caed mandate issue. where if you are in new jersey you must buy a cadillac policy under obama care. republicans would say if you

live in new swrersee you ought to be able to buy a policy anywhere in the united states including a cheap one that can be bought from a company in wyoming. so if nationwide people have freedom of choice on what to buy, the top line of the managed-care industry is going to schriff el under republicans. this surprises some people. second of all, in the financial services, as i mentioned earlier, there is a real reaction against too big to fail. republicans really want to seal that off. they really do not want citigroup or bank of america to get bailed out the next time. they think the democrats went soft on wall street. the tea party especially believes this. and so i think it's going to be very difficult for president obama to oppose a bill by house rep kangs to truly tighten up too big to fail. this would raise the cost of debt for bank of america, citigroup, jpmorgan chase, wells fargo, the biggest banks. currently their yields are artificially suppressed because people still believe

the government will help them. >> reporter: thank you for your time. >> thank you, dan. >> susie: general motors is gearing up for a big day tomorrow. the automaker will file the terms for its initial public offering, according to a report from reuters. g.m. is expected to sell 365 million common shares for $26 to $29 each, along with $3 billion worth of preferred shares. that's expected to reduce the stake held by american taxpayers to 43%, down from nearly 61% right now. g.m. is expected to price its i.p.o. on november 17. and jeff, it'll begin trading here at the n.y.s.e. and the toronto stock exchange the next

day. >> jeff: another red letter day for the month, as tomorrow will be. so today a lot of folks sitting on the sidelines as we look at our market focus. wall street finished mixed-- with investors afraid to make big bets ahead of the midterms and the fed's second round of quantitative easing? so, that made buyouts a big focus of today's trading. shares of exco resources gushed 30% higher. the oil and gas company's chairman, with financial help from t-boone pickens and others, will take exco private in a $4.4 billion deal. that news pushed exco's shares

to a six-month high. but some think the buyout price should be higher. there's already a couple of lawsuits out there alleging exco's board should wait for a better offer. some see a wave of buyouts and takeovers occurring in the nat- gas sector. cabot oil and comstock shares being some possible candidates there. natural-gas prices are in the tank, so the rationale is that private investors have a lot more patience than public markets to wait for a turnaround in the natural gas market. while we're on the subject of oil, let's look at baker hughes. shares jumped over 3%. profits were helped by more drilling activity in north america, and the buyout of b.j. services last spring. pulling up a chart we see the news buoyed the stock to a three-month high. here is another buyout, this one among the regional banks. wilmington trust being bought by m&t bank at a deep discount of $350 million-- or $3.84 per share in stock. that comes as wilmington posted its sixth straight quarterly

loss, due in part to losses in commercial real estate. but the deal values wilmington trust at nearly half its value as of friday's close. the shares were the big loser of the n.y. exchange. for its part, m&t gets wilmington's profitable wealth management division and 50 branches. and there's a third buyout offer to tell you about. mckesson inked a deal to acquire privately held u.s. oncology inc. the price? just under $2.2 billion. cancer medicine is a high-margin business. mckesson sees a modest boost to profits next year. investors like mckesson's news-- the stock now at a 3.5-month high. microsoft shares hit the highest price since may in the wake of last week's earnings report, and also a late friday deal in which microsoft said it would buy canesta-- a maker of 3d image sensing chips. those chips give computers the ability to recognize human faces and gestures.

as we look at microsoft shares, some believe the next version of windows-- windows 8-- will have significant facial and gesture recognition capabilities. the company is already rolling out kinect-- a gesture recognition device for xbox-- for christmas. kinect is shaping up to be a big seller, based on media reports. and speaking of chips, the semiconductor industry association says industry wide chip sales rose 6.1% in the third quarter. that report helped intel and a.m.d. shares today. although the group warns that chip sales might slow somewhat into year-end because of uncertainty about the economy. there's nothing like free to make a product number one-- like google's android operating system. a market research group says 44 out of every 100 consumer smartphones runs on the android operating system. apple's iphone comes in second with 23% of the market. the big loser in all this is research in motion. the market research group n.p.d. says android's market share

growth is coming largely at the expense of rimm. and that's tonight's "market focus." >> susie: ambac financial group may file for bankruptcy protection. the news cut ambac stock in half, to just $0.41 a share. that's dramatically lower than the $95 a share the bond insurer was trading at before the collapse of the housing market three years ago. an s.e.c. filing today shows ambac's board of directors voted against making a regularly scheduled interest payment on a

bond issue. the company now has 30 days to pay or default. a default would let debt holders demand the money they're owed now, which could force ambac into bankruptcy. >> susie: another bankruptcy is in the works. american media plans to file in two weeks. but it will be a quick trip through the courts for the publisher of the "national enquirer"-- just 60 days. american media says 80% of its bondholders have agreed to forgive debt in exchange for an ownership stake. the company did not say how much debt it has. its publications, including "mens fitness," "shape" and "star magazine" will keep publishing during the bankruptcy. >> jeff: here's what we're watching for tomorrow: quarterly results from b.p., mastercard and pfizer. and of course, as we mentioned, the federal reserve's interest rate committee begins a two-day meeting. the decision comes wednesday. and, it's election day. we'll look at how much it costs to get a message out to voters, and voters out to the polls.

>> susie: this thanksgiving, you may feel stuffed before you ever get to the dinner table. planes that are usually full during the holidays will be even more so this year. the air transport association expects about 24 million people to travel by air during the 12 days around thanksgiving. that's up 3.5% from last year. >> jeff: regulators are reportedly taking a closer look at disclosures surrounding a billion-dollar package of subprime mortgages put together by j.p. morgan chase. the non-profit news outlet propublica reports the s.e.c. is looking into whether the bank let hedge fund firm magnetar capital choose the assets in the offering, while betting against the mortgage market. earlier this year, the s.e.c. sued goldman sachs over a similar transaction.

>> susie: with the recovery struggling and unemployment stubbornly high, more and more people are thinking about starting a business. the reasons are many. perhaps you've lost your job. you're looking for side income. or maybe, as jamila trindle explains, you've always wanted to run off and join the circus.

>> reporter: to the untrained eye, it's a food truck. but to the owners, the fojol brothers, it's a traveling culinary carnival from merlindia. >> it's between india and little rock, arkansas. >> reporter: that's a made-up country. >> we're out there, we're quirky, but i think people kind of connect with us on some level. >> reporter: to create atmosphere, they bring music and blankets for customers to sit on, along with their inexpensive indian food. and it seems to be working. >> i bring my lunch a lot more than i have in the past, but i'm definitely willing to pay $6 for lunch with these guys, because it's a lot of food and it's really tasty. >> this is just fun, with the music and the food. i think it's a good hour away from whatever you're doing in your life. >> reporter: before starting the food truck last year, peter korbel worked in private equity. he was more likely to be ordering from a food truck than running one, but he says finance wasn't for him. >> that industry is all about making money, and that to me is

not what i'm about. if you can make money and do it the way you want to do it, i think that's the goal. that's the dream that's what all of us are trying to work toward. >> reporter: that's the same dream that omar soliman and nick friedman started chasing five years ago. >> we have 33 franchises all across the country. this is what we call the junkhouse. >> reporter: their business blossomed out of a truck-- a van, really. >> it all started with this old relic right here. >> reporter: it started as a summer job in college with a few flyers and a name, college hunks hauling junk. >> that's when the lightbulb went off. "wow, there's actually a need here for people that need stuff hauled away." >> reporter: from there, soliman and friedman got more serious, put together a business plan-- a vision of their trucks in cities all over the country. >> from the very beginning, at that point we decided we wanted to be a national brand. we had this lofty vision, we didn't want to just be two local guys hauling junk every day in a cargo van. we wanted to create a national household name. >> reporter: it's that vision that they say is vital to getting the business off the ground. roughly half of small businesses will fail within the first five

years, according to the small business administration, and start-up capital is even harder to come by during the recession. but these guys say capital is not the key. >> so i think there's a myth that you need all this knowledge and money and capital to start a business, but the truth of the matter is all you need is passion and a vision and hunger to make it happen. we didn't have a lot of money. we just had one truck, but we we just had one truck, but we figured out ways to make it happen, and we were just really passionate. >> reporter: which is important, because, as peter korbel has discovered, starting a business is not always a picnic. >> sometimes you need to be a little obsessive compulsive, and you need to just not want to sleep sometimes, because things need to get done and no one's going to do them, and you need to do them. so that's about it. that's all i got for you. i'm just a guy who sells curry on the street. that's it. i'm a curry guy. >> reporter: jamila trindle, "nightly business report," washington.

>> jeff: that's "nightly business report" for monday, november 1. i'm jeff yastine. good night everyone, and good night to you too, susie. >> susie: good night jeff. i'm susie gharib. good night everyone. we hope to see all of you again tomorrow night. "nightly business report" is made possible by:

this program was made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. captioning sponsored by wpbt captioned by captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> more information about investing is available in "nightly business report's" video. to order this dvd, call 1-800- play-pbs or visit online at shoppbs.org. >> be more. pbs.