>> rose: welcome to our program, we begin wewe gipt from cairo, max rodenbeck, the middle east economist. >> in the past when egypt had a revolution in 1952 that brought in the military rule that mubarak basically inherited that was the pattern that was copied across the region and further beyond into africa, ended up with political systems very much like egypt's dom natured by the military. and one wonders if the same thing could happen again, that if egypt takes a more democratic course that this would have a really powerful echo effect. >> rose: and we continue looking at different aspects, especially the american view with david ignatius of the "washington post" and michele dunne with the carnegie endowment for international peace. >> he looks at it through

the lens of that very personal, almost visceral experience as a boy living in a household under a core corrupt dictator, president suharto. if you look at obama's first memoir there is quite searing accounts of his stepfather talking to him about this being a land of cruelty where weak people are killed by strong people. and you can konl imagine the young obama listening to this. >> rose: finally this evening we go from he lipt-- egypt to the american economy with austan goolsbee. we close this evening by looking ahead at sunday's super bowl with boomer. max rodenbeck, david ignatius, miguele dunne, austan goolsbee when we continue. funding for charlie rose was

provided by the following: to have more exposure to the arts. maybe you want to provide meals for the needy. or maybe you want to help when the unexpected happens. whatever you want to do, members project from american express can help you take the first step. vote, volunteer, or donate for the causes you believe in at membersproject.com. take charge of making a difference. additional funding provided by these funders: captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose.

. >> rose: it is the 11th day of the protests in egypt. hundreds of thousands of people rallied in cairo's tehrir square, they called it the day of depar ture. they urged president mubarak to resign immediately. the army increased its presence but stayed on the sidelines following the recent violence. earlier today president obama spoke briefly about the situation in egypt. >> in light of what's happened over the last two weeks, going back to the old ways is not going to work. suppression is to the going to work. engaging in violence is not going to work. attempting to shut down information flows is to the going to work. in order for egypt to have a bright future which i believe it can have, the

only thing that will work is moving a orderly transition process that begins right now that engages all the parties, that leads to democratic practices, fair and free elections, representative government that is responsive to the grievances of the egyptian people. >> rose: joining me on the phone from cairo is max rodenbeck, the economist magazine's long time middle eastern correspondent, knows cairo very, very well. and has been closely watching what is taking place in this city that he knows and writes about. max, thank you very much. late at night for joining us on this particular day. >> it's my pleasure. >> rose: so sum it up for us, what happened on this day of depar ture that brought so many people into the square. >> well, the depar ture, of course s the depar ture of president mubarak that some

of the demonstrators are calling for, that doesn't seem to have happened on the day of detar-- depar dure-- depar ture, at hooes in terms of that objective it wasn't achieved but it was another day of really massive demonstrations and i think it was particularly impressive in cairo because of the attacks on the demonstration of the day before in the central square in cairo's square. there had been an attack by pro mubarak supporters which left several people dead and really frightened people. and there was a worry that this day of depar ture wouldn't-- departure wouldn't draw as many people because they would be frightened of being attacked. so the turnout was actually quite impressive and it seemed it was even larger in other cities in the egypt than ever before and alexandria, there were the biggest crowds we had seen yet. >> rose: does anyone know at what stage the negotiations are to have mubarak leave sooner rather than later?

>> well, there seems to be some question as to whether real negotiations are going on at all. i'm not sure who the negotiations are between, really. today i met with mohamed elbaradei, one of the opposition leaders here. and he said that he hasn't really been in any kind confi negotiations with the government at all despite the fact that the government has claimed that there are negotiations going on with its opposition. i think there are some smaller opposition parties here that are have been more or less tame or have played the government game in this sort of tame parliamentment and they are engaging in some kind of dialogue with the government. but all these forces out in the streets of cairo in the square including the muss him brotherhood, various-- various student groups, various democratic groups, they don't seem to have been addressed very directly by the government at all. something that was significant today was when

mohamed elbaradei said that he and he believed he represented all egyptians, saying that they wanted pew barack to leave with dignity. they're not talking about trying him or humiliating him. and i think that was an important gesture because i think one of the reasons why mr. mubarak and the people around him have been very resistant to this is that they fear that they don't want the prestige of the presidency to be damaged in egypt. they want to preserve the kind of aura around the position of the president. and are worried that if he leaved in a way that is undignified that might be damaging to the state rdz i know there is no easy answer to this. but what is your best guest for a post mubarak egypt and what it are be like and how it's relationships will be with the united states and with israel and with iran and others.

>> well, i think that's a very big one there. you know, as we go through these last very tumultuous days it's been a real roller coaster experience. one has kept wondering how the outcome would be. for egypt itself there's the rosy outcome which is to edge towards something a really much more open society and a real democracy. very inclusive and with a new constitution for egypt that would be, that would preserve freedoms for citizens. that's one possibility. another possibility and it's difficult to tell right now which one is more likely but another possibility is for the current constitution to stay more or less in place, which kind of guarantees an author tearian state. and there's some indications that if for example omar suleiman remains as president and keeps very much the privileges and powers that hosni mubarak

now has, that egypt could end up looking something more like vladimir putin's russia, you know with a very strong security system and a lot of the efforts of these democracy protestors might end up being in vain. that's a big worry. and i think a lot of egyptians fear that outcome. and in terms of the rest of the region and the united states, i think that most of the important elements of where egypt fits into the regional puzzle are unlikely to change very quickly. the peace treaty with israel almost whatever outcome there is in egypt, the egyptian military does not want to get into a confrontation with a state that is next door and much better armed than egypt. i mean they have fought three wars with israel already. and it has been a painful experience. and they don't really want to go through it again. four wars, actually. and so i think the military would serve to preserve the

peace with israel even if there were a democratically elected government of egypt, that becomes more hostile to rael verbally at least, you know. and in terms of the united states i think almost whatever outcome there is, there is going to be a certain distancing from the united states. because under the pew barack regime, 30 years, there's been a very solid and very steady relationship with the u.s. despite the fact that there have been growing splits and differences between american and egyptian policy. so i think there may be a bet of a divide there. each will cut a more independent course and it might look as a player in the region a little more like, for example, turkey is now than as an ally to the u.s. that's really sort of under the american wing. i think that may change. >> rose: many people look at egypt as sort of the dominant country in the

region. then came iran asserting its own sort of hedge money. and then there is turkey now. some argue that this will reinvigorate an egypt that was declining in terms of its influence. is that possible? >> i think it is possible. it may take some time. egypt has a relatively weak economy, for example, compared to turkey. and it doesn't have this powerful overriding ideology that it wants to export like iran does. so it doesn't have the kind of impetus to exert influence. in the past when egypt was very dominant among other arab countries the other arab countries were weaker and egypt was-- cairo as a city was the only place in the arab world that was producing films and television. they had an influence because they were a few steps ahead of other arab countries and that is no longer true. there is a tremendous amount of youthful energy and it is just so tangible on, in the

middle of the square with these protestors. there is just a terrific sense of possibility there. and i think egypt could easily be on its way to reclaiming a much more important role in the region. >> in fact your magazine suggests that the west should celebrate the consequences of this more than bemoan it. >> i think that's absolutely true, yes, yea, yea t is very much a cause for a celebration. within the region egypt has a tremendous sort of oak owe influence partly because of its strategic location, very large population and because of its cultural influence on the whole region. in the past when egypt had a revolution in 1952 that brought in the military rule that mubarak basically inherited, that was sort of the pattern that was copied all across the region and further beyond into africa and various other countries,

ended up with political systems very much like egypt's dominated by the military and one wonders if the same thing could happen again, that if egypt takes a more democratic course that this would have a really powerful echo effect. >> what kind of revolution is this? is it a revolution against author tearianism s it a revolution for certain democratic values? is it a revolution about particular issues of corruption and nepotism and cronyism? >> i think it's a little bit of all of the above. i think some people are very mistakenly characterized it as the revolution of the poor, up set about rising prices, unemployment. that's not true. really the essence of this is a political revolution that is very much a middle class revolution. and i think really it's just against the sense of being hum il yated by a stake that

takes you for granted, that doesn't listen to your voice. especially among young people. so it's largely political. and but the issue at play involve all those things that you spoke of. i mean it has to do with the sense that there is corruption that's being unpunished. a lot of social justice issues about the national wealth being distributed very badly, the extremely wealthy, the very poor. and but i think one very important focus is on the high-handedness of the government. the arrogance of officials, the brutality of the police. these are all very important things. and there's also just a sense that president pew barack is 82 years old. he's been in power for 30 years. and half of the egyptian population is under the age of 25. and these are people who have never lived under anyone except mubarak. they want a voice and they want something different. they want something more

dynamic and they want to be part of the world. and they want to be actors on the world scene. >> rose: would you characterize it as a revolution. >> yeah, although it's not quite a complete revolution yet. we haven't seen the end game has yet to be played out. and there is still a fear that the, even should president mubarak leave the scene and he said he wants to leave the scene. and he said he wants to leave in seven months at the end of his term. many people think he probably likely will leave before that. and then some in the protest movement want him to go tomorrow and will keep up the pressure in the coming week to force him out even sooner. even sooner than he pite want to leave. so his depar ture is pretty much i think that's a sure thing. but what is the legacy going to be. what's going to be left behind. will you have the same shape of state with a very ultra powerful president and a really strong security force

and a secret police force and backed by an army that's capable of you know, creating fraudulent elections and manipulating politics and manipulating the press in a pretty arbitrary way as they wish in that's a possible outcome. and if that is the outcome than it won't have been a successful revolution. we won't really know that for a little bit longer. >> rose: those who say they fear what's happening, some of them who say that they fear about a kind of contagion, that will sweep across the region and therefore not know what it might have, some fear what was given voice, i think yesterday, by the supreme leader of iran that this is an islamic revolution not unlike their islamic revolution by seems not to be true. some fear, however, that in this process of transition, someone will hijack what has

taken place. speak to those. >> those are very real fears with a lot of egyptian, both those who are with the protestors and those against them. and it is true of course the in irannian revolution it started off not differently from the egyptian revolution as a very broad based revolution including all kinds of parties. one of the most powerful was the communist party in the 1979 islamic revolution in iran. and essentially, the revolution was hijacked in iran. and partly because there was this very charismatic speaker who came flying in on a giant plane from outside with a wonderful big beard, eye followa khamenei and he captured people's imagination in a way that nobody else could. there is a danger of that in egypt, yes. but actually the current process has shown up like a different possibilities.

the danger people speak of from outside of egypt is really rft muslim brotherhood. and the muslim brotherhood, of course historically has given birth to various more extreme strands of islamism. the egyptian, current egyptian sort of incarnation of the muslim broerhood is relatively mild. and what they profess is a real attachment to constitutional rule to democracy. they of course want an islamic flavor. the muslim brotherhood because for so long they've been in opposition, they've always seem themselves as being the real voice of the people. and one of the things that has happened in the square is that you have a million people there and the muslim brothers they are at the forefront of the organization and they've been a spearhead in getting this crowd together. but actually, inside the crowd, they don't represent more than a quarter of the people there. they have to realize that they are actually part of a much bigger mosaic. and i think that is a lesson that's been important for

them as well. and they do profess that they will, you know, repeat until they are blue in the face that they have no intention of hijacking anything. and that's a test that you know, remains to be lived through. but i think ultimately it is better to let the democratic majority express itself whether or not it is with muslim brotherhood or with anything else. i mean this is the only way that nations really evolve historically into something more stable and if that's a phase that egypt has to go through, well it's just something it will have to go through and a much more healthy thing than trying to crush it. >> washington is said today to clearly want forb received as understanding on the side of where the protestors are. and secondly, trying to push this formula, in its head. that the vice president will assume the presidency.

omar suleiman will be the new president that there will be a council and that they will be in a sense caretakers until an election is held. that's not satisfactory to the street, is it? >> no, i would say it's not satisfactory to the street. you know, omar suleiman is a slightly divisive character because he, you know, he's the head of the equivalent of the cia in the united states. and he's not exactly a skilled politician either. and he is associated with some of the darker side of the regime. so i think there would be an absence of trust that he's this order person that would really be interested in a truly democratic tnsition. on the contrary i think he would want to preserve the kind of police state that exists. so i think there would be a lot of mistrust in omar suleiman as the person to

carry out this transition. >> when you get up tomorrow morning what's the question you must want to see answered. >> well, i think that's a very difficult question to answer. we've been living in such a roller coaster. if mubarak is still president, i suppose, are there indication-- indicationses that we are moving towards a democratic transition or are there indications that we're actually slipping back into the police state in egypt. >> rose: max, thank you so much. >> great, thank you. >> rose: max rodenbeck since 2000 has been the chief middle east economist magazine and has written a beautiful called cairo, the city victorious some ten years ago. back in a moment. more on egypt. and the consequences for the region. stay with us.

we continue the conversation about egypt here in washington with two people who have been watching this week's historic events closely, david ignatius of the "washington post", michel eppe sdu, i'm pleased to have both of them here. >> welcome. >> thank you. >> people are asking should tunisia, should egypt, should mubarak known this was coming? >> well look,s there a call for reform and change. they were certainly aware that they have a youth bulge and that youth bull solicitor-general a very important part of what happened here. they have a very large part of the population under 25. people young people growing up with satellite television and the intnet who saw what was going on elsewhere in the world and were growing increasingly dissatisfied with the way things were going in their own countries. both countries had a youth unemployment problem. government corruption, leaders staying in office

for not years but decades. lack of political participation. you know, i think these leaders who stayed in for a very long time just weren't listening any more. were not understanding the gap that was growing between them and their population. >> the united states had to know as well. but did we do anything about it in terms of encouragement? we all know of the famous speech that condoleezza rice made in 2004. but did it stop there in terms of trying to get a president of egypt to respond to what many saw as a threat to it. >> well look, this was really hard to do, okay. i think there was some recognition in the u.s. government that it would be best if leaders like mubarak would be carrying out sort of top down, managed, gradual political reforms. and so you know the bush administration tried from 2002 to 2005. i think they made a pretty cede kbl effort to put some pressure on mubarak am they

backed off after the hamas election among the palestinians. and then the obama administration i think was quite timid about this in the beginningment they didn't want to be associated with the bush freedom agenda. increasingly in the last year, year and a half or so they did start to raise some things with mubarak. i mean president obama raised with mubarak lifting the state of emergency, holding free and fair parliamentary elections but pew barack really resisted. the stuff is really hard. what the obama administration didn't do was formulate any kind of a strategy or put anything on the table in terms of incentives or disincentives. it really remained at the level of talks. some private talk and some public statements. >> rose: some also say the president was preoccupied with wars and lots of other issues at the time in his first two years and egypt was not on the front burner. >> absolutely, this was not high on the agenda. >> rose: you wrote a column this morning in "the washington post". as president obama watched events unfold this past week in egypt andhe surrounding arab world, he has said to

have reflect and his own boy hood experiences in indonesia where the country was ruled by a corrupt author tearian leader who was later toppled by a reform movement obama looks at the egyptian drama through an unusual lens. tell me more. >> he looks at it through the lens of that very personal, almost visceral experience as a boy living in a household under a corrupt dictator president suharto. if you look at obama's first memoir there's some quite searing accounts of his stepfather talking to him about this being a land of cruelty where weak people are criminaled by strong people. and you can only imagine the young obama listening to this. i'm told that when obama meets with human rights activists from around the world privately he had sometimes describe his own experiences as a boy. i knows what what it's like to live in a-- he lived in,

i lived there myself. i think that has come up this week. i think another feeling that obama has having lived through this, is that once the process of change really begins to roll, you can't put it back in the box. you can't stop it. i think obama with his natural reticence was reluctant to jump on this, to clamour for mubarak's depar ture. i also think he believes deeply that america has been part of the problem in that part of the world, that one sure way to undermine a reform movement is to embrace it with the american flag, for us to be calling the shots. i think he didn't want to do that. i'm told that at the end of the situation room meetings over the last week the president has turned to his aides and said we need to think about this in the larger complex. what is going on here what is this broad movement for change sweeping the arab world all about. how do we align the united states with that process rather than against it.

and i don't know that he's gotern answers back yet. those are big questions that he is thinking about. >> some speculated he wanted to get this country ahead of that movement. he wants to get in the parade and even lead the parade. >> i think if you go back to the cairo speech of june 2009 which was a seminal document for the president, he went to cairo to say, the united states relationship with the muslim world is broken. it's been broken. it's been getting worse since september 11, 2001. and it was obama's ambition to try to fix it, to try to put it on a different trajectory. and i think everyone including people in the white house would say that he hasn't delivered on the expectations that he raised with that speech. where he really indicated that he was going to have a whole new start on the palestinian issue which people care about deeply. i actually would argue that part of what we are seeing, relatively small part but part of this revolution of rising expectations, which has flown from tunisia

across the arab world, began with obama's raising expectations, telling people this world that you're living in is, needs to change. we need to watch over the next few weeks to see whether president obama can articulate publicly what people closeoim tell me he's thinking as he looks at these events and whether he can, as i said, align the united states with the way the world is now moving. if he can do that, it will be an absolutely achievement of his presidency. but as we see it is really hard. >> rose: you don't think he's done enough in this particular crisis so far to signal what he should see. >> no, and i have to say, i disagree a little bit with what david said about the impact of president obama's speech in cairo in june 2009. i think it was a great speech and a great story. and people were enthusiastic about it for a couple of weeks, you know. but then i don't, i see the demands that are being

articulated by egyptians now as being the very same things i heard five years ago, six years ago. i don't think obama made them think it was possible, you know, in some way. what i do think is that over the last five years these youth movement it's in egypt which let's not foregot in tunisia and in egypt it was movements of young people that started these demonstrations that got people out in the street in large numbers. those movements have been maturing. you know, the youth bulge is getting a little older and these people are to you getting into their early 20s, mid 20s, very active on the internet, extensively using social media to network with each other. that i think was a critical factor. plus these governments, you know, continue to carry out abuses. the egyptian government carried out very corrupt elections a couple months ago which were really the final straw for the egyptians am when they saw what happened in tunis qa, they were ready to of mo. when they saw may hey, maybe it is possible just by getting a lot of people out

in the streets. >> rose: but what is it you would like to see the president do today that he has not done. >> look, i think the president has been doing a good job of kind of gradually turning up the temperature on the rhetoric and saying, you know, that it's real change is needed here. change now articulating a little bit more that we're looking for a transition here to real democracy and so forth. i understand that the president is reluctant to say president mubarak must leave now. he's done everything but. every word, every day a new word is added. >> rose: should he leave now. >> but every day something happens that sort of signals. there's a compromise proposal that's being discussed in egypt right now that would allow mubarak to sort of remain in a ceremonial capacity but actually formally transfer all his power. >> rose: to. >> to vice president omar suleiman. >> rose: some sense has been expressed erlier among those people that he should leave with a certain amount of.

>> dignity is the word being used, yes. and we see opposition figures starting to use this slightly more conciliatory. we want him to leave but we don't want to human il great him. there are, you know, some of the activists are saying try him, they are hanging him an effigy and that kind of stuff. but i think one of the reasons why the obama administration won't, doesn't want to sort of cross that threshold to say he absolutely must step down right now is if there is a compromise that is acceptable to the opposition that allows him to stay in the ceremonial capacity, why should they block that. they probably just waiting a little bit to see how this plays out before the u.s. gets out in front of the opposition in egypt. >> rose: the army will have something to say about that. >> i think the army has the balance of power now in egypt. i think the protestors did something really smart a week ago when this began which was to embrace the army. to treat the army as our army, as egypts army, not

mubarak's army. to hug the soldiers, to get up on tanks. and i think that that has paid off in the sense that the the army, we can see today really has tried to separate ielf from mubarak. and be part of this process of transition. you know, it's interesting the strong armies if they stay out of politics directly can be a platform, a bridge to, i think, to the kinds of reforms that we like to see. countries that have very weak armies, lebanon is a classic example are just sunk. they can never quite get ahead of their problems because there's just not a sense of order. the useful thing that the united stays has done in many of these arab countries but especially egypt is develop military to military contact. thousands of egyptian officers have been trained in the united states. they have american friends. their wives an children have spent time in the u.s. so i think you know secretary gates, admiral mullen, people up and down the line have been on the

phone talking to their egyptian counterparts and friends. it was telling that the defence minister was out today in the square among the crowd. reassuring them on precisely the issue that michele is talking about. that the army is not trying to bring in these pro mubarak thugs to beat you up. that we are here as protectors of the nation. they were forming a kind of security. i think that is the moment in which a lot of people breathed a sigh of relief. that the army was to you going to be the guarantor of some process. and we're still trying to see exactly what it looks like. >> rose: do you think this stops at egypt or does it go somewhere else? >> look, i do think a process of change is under way in the arab world. i'm not necessarily predicting that domino affect of revolution but these grievances that we saw in tunisia and egypt, these uprisings are widely shared. there were big demonstrations in yem ken just today. there have been demonstrations in algeria, in jordan.

now some of these leaders are trying to kind confi step out smartly. the yemeni president, the jordanian king, the algerian president are trying to step out and announce reform measures to try to get ahead of this and head this off. and we'll see. i hope they'll succeed in that. if they would now start taking seriously, you know, managed reforms but you know w some seriousness, then maybe they can avoid it. some of the governments in the region, i just don't think are goinging to be capable of doing that. they are not going to be cap kbl of reforming and they will be vulnerable to explosions. that doesn't mean they will happen next we can but it could very well happen eventually. >> rose: can you imagine certain senses that we would see an enhancement, an extension of the kind of protest you had in tehran that would -- >> yes. i mean the iranian revolution rocked all of the middle east. you can argue that the tremors are still

shuddering. it was like the-- . >> rose: . >> the french revolution in 1789ment how many decades did it take for europe really to absorb the shock affect of the french revolution. the iranian revolution was the same way. what's happening now, i think, is maybe not quite as big but i can see jordan as a perfect example. the king in jordan has known that he has to reform. he's been known he has to get ahead of this rising population. he had a very ambitious reform agenda. he called it the national agenda. he went down that road and then he just abandoned it. he chickened out because of pressure from his domestic elites. all these countries have particular problems. in jordan, you say okay we're goinging to have democracy. who is going to vote. ba about the palestinian majority, many people think, in jordan, if they are fully enfran chiz-- enfranchised, the east bankers, the traditional jordanians feel they will lose all of their power and privilege. so they will resist it. and that's the kind of trap that he's caught in, that

everyone in these countries you find particular-- particular circumstances that make reforms very, very difficult. >> rose: israel, what are the option for israel here? >> well, i mean there isn't a lot israel can do in this situation. i mean you know, i think that and the israelis have been sort of buffeted different ways by this crisis. i mean egyptian television has been reporting ridiculously that this is an american slash zyonist/iranian plot against the egyptian regime. and at the same time, you know, the israelies were announcing a week ago that or not announcing but leaking that they were asking people to save mubarakment so they are kind of suffering, whether they seem to be for this or against this they are kind of taking the brunt of it. but i mean obviously, you know, they want to maintain the peace treaty with egypt. and you know, there isn't a lot they can do except try to maintain good relations and maybe you know look more

seriously at resolving the palestinian issue. although i don't think that is their instinct. >> but that s the opportunity is to look at what happened to mubarak and say done miss an opportunity to take-- to make change when you have it, when you have all the things working for you. and israel is in. the things that you know, the things that you know you have to deal with and you true i to put off, and reform the arab world is an example we have been talking about, resolving the palestinian issue for the israelis is another example. you have to do them. you can't keep suppressing these issues forever. i hope israelies will look at this and say we have to, somehow we have to think how in five or ten years are we going to be in a better place than we are now on these issues. even with all the things thatake us nervous. you know, if president mubarak had done that five years ago, he wouldn't have this humiliating end of his career. >> but those are not going to be the instincts that the current israeli government. >> but that is where american power and leadership is really important, to brace this and

say people, we're strong, we're here to help you but you've got to move. you have to take action on the things that you know and we know have to be resolved. >> rose: thank you for coming. we move finally this friday evening from egypt to the economy. the latest jobs report released today showed mixed numbers. unemployment fell to 9% in january. its lowest level since 2009ment but growth was slower than many had hoped. the economy added 36,000 jobs in january. the smallest gain in four months. the congressional budget office predicts that unemployment will stay above 9% for the rest of 2011. joining me now from the white house, austan goolsbee, he is the chairman of the president's council of economic advisors. i am pleased to have him back on this program. welcome. >> great to see you again, charlie. >> rose: help me understand these numbers. are you disappointed in part? 36,000. >> well, i think the only

thing that happened here is we had to go one level more into detail about where the job numbers come from. they come from two different surveys. so there is a survey of people and that's where the unemployment rate comes from. and then there's a survey of businesses and that's where the payroll job numbers come from. and we had a weird moment last month when the week they did the business survey was the week of a huge snowstorm. so they ask you how many people are working there this week, and it appears that a whole lot of people were not because of the weather and we're still trying to unpack that a little. so the unemployment rates side was very positive. sharp reduction, not due to reduction in the labor force pansion rate but due to creation of new jobs. but then on the payroll side, it was well below what people expected. and so you got a slightly two different stories coming from the two different

surveys. >> they are at least a couple of surveys that i know about in terms of where the unemployment rate is going to be in say 2012. you know, and most of them seem to believe it will be around 8%. do you accept that? both private and public. >> you know, we have an official-- i agree that's what a lot of the private forecasters have. there is an official government forecast and we update it every six months. it will come out in a little over a week with the budget but in the last official forecast in the fourth quarter of 2012 it was right around that same range i see some of the same people making forecasts that we will not get back to 5 or 6% which is considered full employment i assume by economists like you or most economists until like 2016. is that also reasonable to say. >> well, you know, we tend not to make forecasts that far in the future and i try

to stay out of the forecasting business as much as i can. what i will say is. this is clearly a good start. what we have had the past 12 months, we've added more than a million jobs in the private sector. and the president is the first to say we have to go faster. and we have to add substantially more than that. but that's clearly the way you begin these things is you finally start turning it around. if we get to the growth rate up quicker, a more rapid growth rate of the economy than we have been seeing. and that faster growth rate is now starting to be expected by a number of the private sector folks for 2011 and 2012. if we start getting a robust growth rate, we can get unemployment rates down. we can get lots of jobs up on the board. and that's the way that we got to do these things is one step at a time. >> would a robust growth rate be five%? >> oh, yeah. i mean five percent would be

extremely high. if we are in the three and a half, four percent range those would be strong numbers. what we have had is moderate growth rates, one and a half, two percent. something like that when productivity's growing faster than that, it's hard to get a lot of job creation on the board. we've started to see that turn around as we have moved from a phase of the economy which was really private sector and freefall government trying to prop up the economy and prevent a depression as we've shifted to this next phase which is get in the growth rate up, private sector coming back, encouraging business investment, we started to see employment growth. we started to see the economy overall growing faster than productivity. and that's the circumstances you need for them to start hiring people. >> there was a piece in the "washington post" post that i saw this morning basically saying that quote timothy geithner can't seem to talk enough these days from

corporate tax reform, the treasury secretary chatted up chief executives, hab groups, republicans, democrat its all in the name of fixing a tax code that most everyone agrees could use a major overhaul. is this going to be part of the o kbama's big idea proposals for the next two years? >> yeah, i think it is definitely part. i mean you heard the president talking about that quite specifically in state of the union. i think it's important and we've got the most cockamamie tax system that we could have on the corporate side f you look at it we've got the highest rate in the world, effectively highest rate in the world. and yet we don't collect very much more money than any other country. you say well how is that possible. and the answer is because we have the narrowest base, the most exemptions, the most deductions. we have the greatest var yat in tax rates across companies within the united states of anybody. where some people are paying the full freight rate and

some people paying very little it makes sense to broaden the base and lower the rate to a more competitive rate and so i think you'll hear secretary geithner talk about that more. you'll hear the president talk about that more. feels to me like an area we ought to be able to get some broad consensus on. because i think business, republicans, democrats, a lot of folk kos agree on that. >> what are you going to do to get business to spend more money, to bill more factories, to bill their inventory and therefore to hire new people. >> well, i would say the president outlined two to three specific steps but i would start by saying that's not all bad. usually when you come out of a recession there's no money anywhere to fund the kind of investment lead growth that we need. and this time is a little different. so corporations have come back. there's money sitting on the sidelines. what the president did is number one, give them a direct tax incentive to go

invest the money right away. number two, try to reform the tax code, the regulatory code, give some certainty to the business community that we're going to be a favorable place for u.s. investment. and encouraging r & d as well. and the third is, we have overtime in the u.s. always saying that when we're growing people want to invest here because they want to be where their customers are. and so everything that the president is doing to get the economy growing again is fundamentally going to be con dicive to getting that money is off the sidelines. i think you have already started to see that begin. the closer you are to the front line of recovery let's call it, the more cyclical the industry, those guys are some of the most optimistic of all. they've really upped their forecast for 2011 of the prospects for the year. >> on that optimistic note thank you very much, austan, great to you have on the

program. >> great to see you again, charlie. super bowl 45 is upon us on sunday night, two of the nfl's legendary teams will face off in texas. the pittsburgh steelers have won a record six how many bardee trophies and led by ben roethlisberger. the green pay packers march into the stadium. joining me is boomer esiason. i'm very pleased to have him on the program. peter king was to join us but there were traffic issues in dallas and i know how that can be. so i am pleased to have boomer esiason, welcome. >> thank you, charlie. thanks for havingee back. great to see you. >> rose: this going to be a game determined by quarterbacks or defense? >> that's the question. i think it's which quarterback handles the opposing degg fence the best. the reason i say that, charlie, is both of these defences are foremidable foes.

and the fact that they play similar defences because the defense coordinator of green bay worked with pittsburgh defensive coordinator bac when bill cowher was the head coach of the pittsburgh steelers. so they know each other really well. they create a lot of problems, a lot of confusion. to me it is the quarterback that can handle the confusion the best. we're all human beings so when you wake up on sunday morning and are you super bowl quarterback, you are praying that you are seeing the field as good as you've ever seen it before and you are praying that when you throw that football that your guys are going to catch it, not the other guys. >> so is ben in a better place because he's been there before? >> i think so. you know the last time we were on we were talking about ben roethlisberger against the new york jets in the play-offs and how we would do. and whether or not the experience fact wear play itself out. and low and behold it did. he only completed ten passes in that game against the new york jets. two, however, came in the fourth period on the last

drive of the game where he had to make the play in order to keep the ball away from the new york jets. that's where experience starts to show itself. he didn't have a particularly good game statistically, but he has been a play their has been able to overcome bad play after bad play after bad play and then all of a sudden make the spectacular play. we saw that in the sur bowl the last time he was on the field against the arizona cardinals in which they came all the way back, took the lead late in the game and then he lead his team down and threw a gorgeous pass to san ton onhold ams to seal the victory for the steelers. that is an advantage without question on the side of the pittsburgh steelers. >> rose: clearly the packers have been watching the tapes of the jets game and saw him come out of the pocket so many times and escape. can they stop that? >> they're going to have to stop it. that is where clay mathews comes in, he is one of the bestious linebackers in football. he's a tenacious football

player much like his old man was back when i was playing. i remember playing against his ol man. he was all over me when we would play the cleveland browns an that's the kind of player his son is. when you play against ben roethlisberger, you have to make sure you are going to wrap it up. the one thing that benn will do, he will throw an interception and he will fumble the ball in the pocket because he holds on to the ball and he's willing tollow the defense to get close to imhad. he's not intimidated physically at all. so those are the things that you want to do if you are a defensive player. the other thing you have to make sure if you are a green bay defensive play certificate not to allow these young receivers mike wallace, sanders, brown, those guys to get behind them because ben roethlisberger certainly has the arm to throw it 65 yards or farther in a game like this. and that's the kind of game it's going to be for the packer defense. >> rose: what i like about aaron rogers just as a human story is he sat on the bench and waited for his opportunity to come. and now he's had a

remarkable year. assess his abilities for me. >> well, the amazing thing is remember who he is replacing. he's replacing a legend of mythical proportions in brett favre. and all the things that brett favre accomplished as the quarterback of the green bay packers. now miami, buffalo, denver, are all still trying to replace iconic quarterbacks of the '80s and '90s and they still haven't done testimony. this guy not only has done it but he has thrown for 4,000 yards literally three years in a row and he has basically shown everybody that his abilities, his quick release, his studying of the offense and opposing team's defense, his accuracy with the ball and ability to run with the football wile keeps his eyes up looking for players down the field, he throws just as good out of the pocket as running to his right or left. he is a tremendous football player and i'm telling you right now, if you asked 32 nfl head coaches anonymously who they would want to start their new team with, i'm

telling you, almost all of them would tell you aaron rogers. that is how impressive he has been over the last three years. >> rose: does very the intelligence of all the great quarterbacks. >> without question. and i compare parts of his game to a lot of great ones. he has the quick release like dan marino, the accuracy of joe mona. the arm strength of randall cunningham and jim kelly and the iq of steve young. i'm to the going to tell you he turn out to be as good as all of those players but those are the attributes that he certainly has. if he wins this super bowl, he will be right there at the conversation with some of great quarterbacks this era. >> peter king without has a cover story on "sports illustrated", as you know called roger goodell's moment, the nfl commissioner most powerfulman in sports, his job right now is to stop it from falling part that is what peter says in his cover story. this is what he says are the three major questions which will decide the super bowl, in his words has written on si.com.

can pittsburgh's battered offensive line with yet another starter stand out rookie center injured can they hold off the formidable packers blitz. can they? >> i think for the most part they will, simply because they're goinging to try to run the ball and try to slow the game down. richard the running back for the steelers showed us something in the afc championship game against the jets is he controlled almost the entire first half and then ben did what ben loves to do and that's extend plays and make mays that are not in the play book and that are almost impossible to defend. i think they will do a pretty good job on the defensive lines in terms of the passing game. the question is can they control bj, the nose tackle of the packers. if tycan' it is going to be a longay for the pittsburgh offense. >> second point. will aaron rogers postseason hot streak continue? you've answered that, i think. >> i think it will. i really think it will, charlie. the reason being is it is indoors. it's going to be a fast

track. and i do believe that the green bay packers feel like they need to be aggressive in the passing game in order to beat the steelers. you'll hear mike mccarthy talk about balance because every coach really wants to try to be 50/50 running pads but i think he will recognize pretty quickly that they are not going to be able to run efctively against pittsburgh and that means four wide receivers, that means down the field and that means today's nfl with one of the best quarterbacks pulling the thinkinger. >> finally he says, the third most important question to ask is who's whose special teams will win. >> that's a good question. i would probably say that mason crosbie is the best kicker of the two. sean-- is kind of a replacement player. he came in middle of the season, replacing an injured kicker for the pittsburgh steelers. crosby can kick a 60 yard field goal. you'll probably kick off into the end zone almost every time so the hidden yardage will probably fall on the side of the green bay packers. not a lot of great return

players. right now there is no devon in this gamement punters are pretty even. i think from that standpoint f there's a fumble or turnover in this game on special teams, that also could be the game decider. both have been kind of maligned and not great special teams but they've been good enough to obviously get their teams where they are now. >> this is really a special super bowl s it not because you've got two great quarterbacks and you've got two legendary teams and you've got it coming out of a place which has seen great nfl football. >> without question. and really you have the malling in your face physical steelers against what you would like to think is a real high-powered offense that is based on intricacy and passing routes and a great quarterback in its own right who likes to deliver the ball from the pocket. so you have kind of like diametrically opposing types of teams here that are playing but nonetheless, should be a very exciting game and i would suspect nce it is t pittsbuh steelers, that it's going to

be tight and physical without question. >> boomer, thank you so much. a pleasure to have you on the program. >> always my pleasure, charlie, thanks for having me on. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.g

within funding for charlie rose has been provided by coca-cola company supporting this program since 2002. >> and american express. additional funding provided by these funders.