i'm coming to you live from lynn university in boca raton, florida. the city where mitt romney told the world where he thinks of the 47% and home of the third and final presidential debate of the 2012 election. walking around here a little bit, i've seen there's an incredible amount of passion for the press as these people are excited the debate is in their home. tonight could be the turning point in this election. we're going to wait to see am we've said it before about the conventions. the first debate, again for the second debate. tonight could be the thing that decide this is close race with just two weeks to go. our poll shows 47% to 47%.

the real clear politics poll of poll shows it extreme close, and a look at the electoral college projection shows it is razor-thin. with this debate as the last big scheduled event before november 6th, to quote vp joe biden, this is a big f-ing deal. let's start with luke russert. now that his baseball team is waiting until next year, we'll concentrate on this election. >> cheap shot. >> my baseball team is on break, too. we're in the same boat. back in d.c., what are the so-called insiders telling you about what's going on with this race? >> it's interesting, toure. obviously, very close in the battleground states. the importance of this debate tonight, republicans that i've spoken to today have said the following. mitt romney has to try to expose barack obama on the issue of libya. he has to try and raise questions about barack obama's policies in the middle east, and try to implement in voters'

minds perhaps this guy who takes all this creditor killing osama bin laden, though it was honorable and great in american history. what has he done there? he mismanaged it. barack obama is going to say i'm the only person up here to be commander in chief. i've dealt with it for four years. not only did i kill osama bin laden but understand the real risks. my opponents said russia is the number one geo political foe. everyone says the president has to make that argument about russia and bring up mitt romney's trip to london that didn't go so well. the most interesting thing tonight toushgs re, look at the issue of china and their currency manipulation. sthaets something mitt romney has spoken about frequently. interesting enough republicans that i've spoken to and folks close to gop leadership. they acknowledge that mitt romney's china's plan goes

against things they went on the house floor. john boehner is cautious about doing anything like that. it's interesting to see how the president plays that off of romney. going to be a big debate in terms of foreign policy. the president had a huge lead and romney narrowed that gap. we'll see how it ends up. >> luke, the latest nbc/wall street journal poll has a lot of meat in it including the finding more trust president obama than romney. the other thing interesting in that poll was if obama wins re-election 62% say they want to see major changes, 31% say they want minor changes, only 4% want another term to look like the first term. so which begs the question, look, if you want major changes, why don't you vote for the other guy. the other thing is with so few people wanting to see a repeat of the past four years, does the president need to come out and

acknowledge that the past four years have been it terrible, maybe he made some mistakes instead of just sort of reflectively defending his record. it seems as though he needs to connect with some people very disappointed. >> on the issue of foreign policy, if you look at it historically it's never beneficial for a presidential incumbent to say that they have done something wrong. i think what he would probably say tonight is you'll see the president tries to see, look, we had a lot to clean up. i ended the war in iraq. i promised to do that, and i did do that. you'll hear a lot about bin laden. on that point i see major changes in what you see in terms of foreign policy in major changes. there aren't a lot of differences between president obama's foreign policy and mitt romney's foreign policy, at least on paper. both are pretty vague. i would look in that poll that you said, the 62% that want to see the major changes, that's on the economic side. >> right. >> so i don't necessarily think

he needs to speak to that too much this evening. >> talking about that poll, and yes, this is the foreign policy dpee bait. there's an interesting comment on the economy. romney is winning on who would be a better president on the economy. this comes at a time when there's genuinely good economic news the last few weeks. housing starts are up and weekly job claims are going down. we had the unemployment rate down to 7.8%. i can't help but think back to 1992, the last time you had a president who lost for a single term based on the economy, and that was george bush sr. he was dragged down by the recession that seemed to spike in early to mid-1992. at the very end of the campaign, he got some of the best economic news of his presidency. the entire bush message changed for the last week or two. listen, we are through the worst of this. we can see the light right now. stick with me now because we're

almost out of this and the signs are too good. people didn't feel that. there are signs in this poll even though he loses on the economy the people's basic optimism about where the economy is going, seems to be increasing. if they're still judging romney the winner on the economy, it seems there's a lot of room there for people to reach this conclusion of yeah, things are going in the right direction. yeah, bahaobama came in in a to situation. i don't know if this news is soon enough to help obama. >> luke let me ask a question about women and the president still maintains a gender gap over mitt romney about 8 points among women, about that has shrunk. it's smaller than in previous polls. when you look specifically at the issue of who is preferred on women's issues, huge gap for the president. 53 to 25, on abortion issues,

51/30. those are issues very unlikely to come up tonight. is there any way that erts the president or mitt romney can really make a play to women voters in a foreign policy debate? >> yes. where mitt romney could is try and say that president obama is hiding something on libya. i was reading some polling that indicates that there are questions among women voters, specifically in stwing states, about libya. what president obama can do as run republican operative said is take the strategy that president bush used in 2004, which was look right into the camera and say you're safer with me. i care about the fact that we are going to prevent a terrorist attack here on american soil. i am the person that can prevent bad things from happening to this country because i understand how important our military is. how important foreign policy is. try to make that idea that mitt romney just doesn't get it. that you are safer with me, you're safe we are the

incumbent, you're safer with me with my hand on the striger. is it a stretch to play to women voters in pay foreign policy debate? it's not a traditional landscape, shall we say, that really applies to swing voters, but it's possible. from what i've spoken to on both sides, when it comes to the women's vote the thing i hear is democrats saying we're going for the heart. republicans saying we're going for the head. they acknowledge they can make up a lot of ground on social issues important to women, especially younger women, but they say the economy is most worriso worrisome. democrats say he's not one of us. toughest stand in a foreign policy debate, but you never know. >> let's bring in willie geist. star of the "today" show. >> i'm doing all right. they're still separating us. we're 20 feet away from each

other. >> that's because you're a bigger star than all of the rest of us. willie, what's the vibe on the ground you hear about this debate. this could be the turning point in the election, right? >> that's what we hear. if you look at polls you might believe that. there's real questions about whether or not the issues we talk about tonight for inside that state in lynn university are the ish yous to be voted on. they're important issues. i talked to stephanie cutter and dan senor this morning. they're interested in talking about afghanistan and libya, particularly the romney campaign and talking about iran, this report out of t"the new york time times". will an undecided voter vote on the issue tonight? that remains to be seen, toure. >> it remains to be seen how many watch the debate. the candidates are seated at a table together, so they don't have the physical confront tragss that they had last time it's 90 minutes on foreign

policy. how much of an impact do you think a 90-minute foreign policy debate can make on the election at this point? >> it's a good point, krystal. you have "monday night football" on and game seven of a national league world series. these are huge chunks of american people watching those things. i think people are interested and engaged generally in the race. it does represent the last time we talk about the conventions and the three debates as the only time the whole country sits, stops and watches the campaign. this is the last time we'll have a moment. i think it will be an important poemt for a distinction between two men standing on a stage together. we won't see them again, unless you tune into msnbc all day or sitting at home watching c-span, you're probably not dialed in the way the public will be dialed in toevenday like the pu will dial in tonight. i wonder if they think more

about their pocketbook than what happened in benghazi and tehran. >> part of the problem is we have this irrational separation. foreign policy is over here and the economy is over here. as we've discussed at these table, they're interdependent. i'm going to make a bet because we like to bets. over/under ten minutes makes foreign policy about the economy. i'm going under. what do you think, s.e.? >> i think it will come out in opening statement. whoever goes first is going to try and make the connection. you're watching 90 minutes on foreign policy because it will affect the economy. i think it's going to be one of the first things out of someone's mouth. i'm going to say under two minutes. >> there's a natural connection, too, when you look at obama sort of imperatives in the debate like this. the more that obama can get the discussion resolving around george w. bush and the ways in which romney is or isn't than george w. bush, the better position he's in.

he doesn't want to look like he's blaming the troubles he inherited on bush too much and look like he's whining a little bit. there's a clear connection for obama where you look at romney's policies and the people around him. you can see these are bush policies and holdovers. he's not different here or the economy. he can make the link very naturally. >> another clear connection is if any foreign interventions, any foreign adventures, how do we pay for it? that's a direct tie-in to the domestic economy. >> absolutely. willie, luke, best of luck to your baseball teams next year, guys. >> that's cruel. >> yankees world series 2013. watch out. >> maybe. up next in the spin, the foreign policy topics that make a difference here at home, a and t each candidate needs to watch out for when they're talking about it. throughout the show we show you favorite boca clips.

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weerz hoir away from the third and final presidential debate tonight. it's all foreign policy, which is also tried to the economy. obviously, libya and more specifically the embassy attack in benghazi will be a hot topic tonight. but aside from libya, what else will be on the table? it sounds like a perfect question to run through the spin cycle. guys i do wants to see libya re-litigated tonight. i'm sure it will be. i also feel very confident that syria and iran, russia, china, these are topics that will come up, and they're important topics. where romney needs to not get mired down tonight is the specifics of who said what, when and where on issues. he needs to paint a larger picture of a very confusing obama foreign policy. i think that's where he can win on this issue.

if he paints the picture of a confusing foreign policy, one that maybe the president is winging the way that he has been winging it on the economy, he can draw those two issues together. one issue i'd like to see romney bring up and we talked about it before and i will say i don't think it will. i would love for romney to come at obama from the left on his foreign policy. romney the hawk will solidify the base, but to soft obama voters who might be disappointed or undecideds, i think he can talk about the drone strikes and, you know, killing an american citizen without due process. going into libya illegally without congressional approval. all of the things that made bush unpopular to a segment of the left, i think romney should find a way to artfully remind voters that obama is done and maybe failed to deliver on some promises.

>> that's interesting. one thing that strikes me skeptical that he would go at obama on drones or extra judicial assassination or anything like that. if you look at the people around mitt romney, the people whose ideas to the extent he formulated a policy in the plan the influence most felt in that are bush people. you talk about what question i would like to see raised tonight. i see the last debate. my favorite question last debate was a woman said to mitt romney she's worried that his economic policies were too much like george w. bush's, which got us into the mess in 2008. she said can you assure me and tell me how you're different than george w. bush? he really couldn't. i would like a similar question tonight. when you look at the people who are on the record being advisers to mitt romney on foreign policy, 70% of them, more than 70% of them center direct ties to -- they're veterans to the bush administration. they brought the iraq war and

bush's vision of the war on terror. they brought a lot of policies, s.e., that you say obama has continued and more. i would like to see -- i would like to see mitt romney asked, does anybody have your ear who thinks the iraq war was a mistake? do you think the iraq war was a mistake? when you talk about president obama has not done enough on syria or iran, what lessons do you draw from the iraq war about what we should do with a country like that? i would like to see him pressed on that, because i have not heard that happen in this campaign. i'm curious to see how he handles it. >> toure, what do you think? >> steve, you're absolutely right. there's tremendous similarity between bush and romney in terms of foreign policy. he's surrounded by romney foreign policy advisers. the key foreign policy issue in the next four years is iran. china will be there, but iran is a critical issue. whether or not iran gets the bomb, what we do to keep iran from getting the bomb, we see this "new york times" story that

seems to have from the administration at some level. obama is close to getting iran, to forcing iran to sit at the table and negotiate probably because of years of diplomacy and years of sanctions that have crippled them and ruined their economy. obama can really press romney on this issue because romney doesn't have a coherent position on iran. he's surrounded by neocon. s we're close to getting iran not to build a bomb, and he's going to talk us to war with iran. what do you think to do? >> iran will be type pick foent, libya and perhaps the iraq war. one topic that's glaringly absent from fthese debates and that's climate change. that's it is first time we have not had a discussion on climate change as part of the presidential debates. bob schieffer has said it will include israel and iran, changes in the arab world, the new face of terrorism and the rise of china. that last segment is sort of a roundup of things we didn't get to, and it could include things

like climate change or the response to the european debt crisis, which i also think is an important issue that hasn't been covered. i'm not particularly hopeful that climate change will get a large hearing in this debate, which is unfortunate. we've had discussions about iran and libya now in two out of the three debates and are almost going to certainly have those discussions again today. they will be the most discussed topics in the debates. important as they are, they are not at the top of voters' minds in terms of how to make their decisions this year. >> i'll add energy policy to the list as well. we'll see if that comes up towards the end. we're in the final hours before the final debate. this afternoon the candidates did their walk-throughs. up next we go behind the scenes of the debate prep. a world of dark arts and clever gamesmanship according to the next guest. a seinfeld to remember, jerry's

parents doing anything they can to keep george's from moving to boca. >> there's not no kondz doe stra condo available. >> that's right. >> we're moving in loshg, stock and barrel. we're going to be in the pool. we're going to be in the clubhouse. we're going to be all over that shuffleboard court, and i dare you to keep me out! time for your business sfwree preer near of the week. he works renaissance fairs and he sells bones, skulls and other items. he sells through performance and mirroring customer temperaments. for more watch your business

sunday mornings at 7:30 on msnbc:

you said in the rose garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror? it was not a spontaneous demonstration? >> please proceed, governor. >> there's your first clue.

when you feel you're about to spring what you, governor romney, think is the checkmate moment of the debate and your debate opponent says to you, please, proceed, hold are. are you trying to open that door? allow me to open it wider. >> allow me to open it for us. please proceed, governor. there's a debate tip from jon stewart on watching out for an opponent's trap. it was the pivotal moment that cornered romney and allowed obama to score major points. it made a lot of us squirm, even s.e. i think of these debates as the political equivalent of the hunger games. a mental test of wills and gamemanship and a balances act

between the attack. they're on the line with 60 million voters watching. there's a whole team of people coaching the candidates behind the scenes. in the guest spot today robert draper, who talked to it an army of strategists and coaches and goes inside the dark arts trickery and dleclever gamesmanp in presidential debates in his article in "gq." how are you? >> i'm doing fine. >> in a debate about foreign policy, is there a different style you want too use? is there a substantive differen difference? the town hall style isn't about dealing with other world leaders, does it? >> i think in a sense you're right. i think in this debate substance will matter less than in the previous debates. to the exhe not there is substance, it will be a proxy for greater issues. for obama he wants to show himself as a commander

des moinin chief. romney needs to be a reassuring presence, which feds into the narrative of him being more md rate but it assures people, particularly women, that he's not going to be bell coast. that it's going to be difficult for him, since his rhetoric has been that way. the concern is going to be is this guy going to drag us off to another war? he has to find a way to sort of split the difference between criticizing obama for being too soft on extremists while at the same time assuring voters he won't go on a foreign policy adventure. >> obama hasn't been at all frad to attack when he felt the need to. if romney says we need to be tougher, what else is there than actually going to war? >> that's right. that's going to be obama's chief mission tonight and sort of the broader context of this for the president is going to show romney once and for all is a guy

who doesn't mean what he says, who will say whatever it takes to get laekelected. by the way, that has been the narrative of romney. that the democrats and the obama campaign dispensed with early. they made the decision to paint him as a latter day barry goldwater because it poll tested bertd than the focus groups when they talked about romney as a flip-flopper. that may be so. romney is a guy that lacks ate lot of core convictions. now obama comes back to it, and that's what he harps on in the debate. >> do you think we have different expectations for candidates depending on whether they're an incumbent or challenger? in 2008 the president was called no drama obama. one of the things that were appeal about him was he seem, cool, calm and collected in the face of the financial crisis, and that was his demeanor during the debates. when he came out in the first debate, his demeanor similar in that way was judged as aloof and

distant and disconnected. do we have different expectations depending on whether the candidate is a challenger or incumbent? >> first of all, the short answer is yes. as regards obama, i think that's been the fine line that he's had to walk. to appear as this guy with many famous menthe lated cool and then appears engaged. it was the most damning nare tif of obama chshgs an ineffectual president and a record he can't defend. obama was forced in the second debate to agree a great deal more passionate than in the first debate, but more than he's accustomed behaviorally in doing. i think that there are different expectations. romney had to draw blood in the first debate, and he did that. now that romney's major mission is to continue to give undecided voters permissions to stru him as a guy more of a centrist. the way to do na in a form rin

debail is to speak in more moderate and reassuring tones. >> i want to go back to foreign policy for a minute. you mentioned romney's challenges in not coming across like the guy who is going to, quote, drag us into another lead and lead us on a foreign policy adventure. i think that's right. doesn't that open obama up for the criticism that he has, in fact, dragged us into additional wars in libya and yemen and uganda even? wouldn't you expect that to be a easy response from romney in that case tonight? >> well, no, i don't actually. in the case of libya, for example, the tragedy with ambassad ambassador stevens notwithstanding no american troops died in libya when we moved in to help remove "the dictator" gadhafi. >> without congressional

approval i might add. >> if romney wants an argument about the need for a weaker executive, he's permitted to do so. i don't think that's playing where he wants to play. i think that, you know, where obama can be criticized is certainly on libya in terms of the attack on libya and benghazi. i was in libya for a month this summer, including a week in benghazi and the problem in libya is there's no sfablt there at all. there's no police force. there's nothing to prevent someone from an attack on any government facility. the obama administration should have known. they should have had more security there, and he's very vulnerable in that regard. whether or not it matters to voters pondering pocketbook issues remains to be seen, though. >> i'm thinking back a few weeks to the run-up to the first debate in denver. we heard a lot of voices saying, don't get too excited. debates don't matter that much in presidential elections. i took the point. we don't see them changing 20 points worth of votes or

something. something very significant has happened in the weeks since then. all year from april to the end of september, barack obama led in the real clear politics polling average. we might have the graph. i'm not sure. for the first time in the entire campaign mitt romney pulled ahead in that average and kept a small, very small but a lead in that since then. i guess my question is, can we finally put an end to this idea that debates don't matter? >> we should. we should have all along, steve. my view has been if debates aren't dispositive and they're influential. my prediction is they would be that much more influential this year. why? americans are distant from presidential candidates not only do you to the flood of super-pac attack ads but both avoid the national press like the plague. neither has done serious interviews, so this was an opportunity finally for all the clutter to be put aside and the electorate to have a good view. 60, 65 million at a time with these two candidates squaring

off against each other and not hiding behind super-pac ads or the kg rhetoric. yeah, i think that they've been incredibly influential and they could determine the outcome. >> robert draper, thank you very much. >> my pleasure. >> before we goit of here, steve, my compliments to your barber. you're looking good, brother. >> mary is her name. >> coming up, inequality is a global issue. christa freeland explains how the super rich that created them. speaking of the good life, i wonder if i can get a round of golf in in beautiful boca. >> we have fresh air and sunshine. forget ba that [ bleep ]. thank god for golf somedays. >> i'm trying to concentrate here. >> so, did you get any golf in in boca uncle june. >> [ bleep ] manners, please! i don't spend money

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tonight even though the debate is about foreign policy, you can expect close and frequent tie-ins to the economy. the economy is the story not just here but globally. our next guest writes that the so-called superrich are the driving force behind income inequality. she's not talking about the 1% but instead the far more elite .1%. if you want to understand what's happening to middle class and low income households, you need to know what's happening in the house of have. joining us is christa friedland the author of the new book. thanks for stopping by. i guess the first question is we have heard about the top 1%. this is the top 1% of the top 1% or top 10% of the top 1%.

who are they, how much do they have, and what does it mean to those of us not in that stratosphere? >> the real action is at the very, very top. we like to talk about the 1% and the 99%, but really there's a huge disparity within the very, very top. within the 1%. and what i write about is what are the economic forces driving that? and who are these people? what's going on there? what i found is increasingly there's sort of a two-speed world economy with the global super elite occupying one space often knowing each other, often hanging out and doing deals together and being increasingly distant from the middle classes in their own countries. i think we see that reflected in our politics. >> that's an interesting point. if you want to address this, it's a political solution at some level, and i see a potential problem here. we seen it in the last years. obviously, the super rich have

been sheltered from the worst of the recession and there's blame to go around to both parties from them. one thing that protects the super rich is the people in politics that protect them are conservatives and they have rally around this idea of -- they use a populist themes about individualism, the john wayne idea that you pull yourself up by the bootstraps and take personal responsibility. if you talk about too much in too few hands at the top, you're assaulting that great american system. it seems to be very powerful and resonate message with people that should be outraged in what you describe in the book? >> i agree to you. one said it's easy to get funding from think tanks to study poverty and people at the bottom of the income distribution. when you want to study income and equality and what's happening at the top, the think tanks and found dations say no, that will alienate our voters. i think the left bears some of the onus on what i would say the

moratorium, the lack of the real discussion of this in the united states. that's because i don't think you can have the discussion, you can end the discussion by saying, wow, there's income and equality. the guys at the top have too much full stop. i think you have to actually really -- progressives need to embrace capitalism. they have to say a lot of forces driving this are good. the technology revolution is a good thing. globalization is a good thing, but some of the outcomes that we are seeing are not so great. some of the outcomes are leading to huge amounts of income at the up top, the middle class being hollowed out. we need creative solutions. i talk about history in my book, and the period with the most resonance and similarities is the industrial revolution. that was also an age of the huge gap between the people at the top and the people in the middle. people talked about progress and poverty. when you think about the industrial revolution, people say to me, economists, that shows it's all going to turn out

fine because after all the industrial revolution worked out, didn't it? i think that kind of analysis ignores the fact that for us socially and politically to adjust to the economic transformation of the industrial revolution took two world wars, a communist revolution in russia and in china, and in the united states the progressive era, trust busting and the new deal. my concluding sort of call to progressives in particular is where are those innovative and original social and political answers to the economic revolutions we're living through now? just to say, income inequality is bad, that's not enough. people feel that is hallollow. they're quite right to say you know what? just picking on the rich won't do it for me. i think steve jobs is a great guy. >> another hurdle is the fact

the super rich have amassed great wealth and political power. they also are at the same time living in completely different worlds. this is something you've written about. different schools and neighborhoods and different modes of transportation. they're unlikely to feel empathy for the rest of the world when they're not living in the rest of the world. how do we convince the super rich it's in their best interests to narrow the gap between themselves and the rest of the kuncountry and the world? >> i total agree with you. this is a big theme of my book, that income equality in money is being translated into political inequality and into inequality in voice. what i really worry about is, you know, it's not as if there's this ka ball of rich guys in top hats smoking cigars saying how can we screw the pro literates. it doesn't happen like that. human beings automatically equate their own self-interest

with the collective good. on wall street you think light touch regulation. that's great for me, and he you devise ways of assuming that is good for everyone else. what we are seeing now increasingly is as the super rich control more and more of the political discourse, political decisions are being pushed in their direction. what i try to say at the end of the book is is watch out, guys. political systems take political charge and haven't worked out so well. >> before we go, we're running out of time, i want to get this point in. a lot of these super rich it should be said, of course, are incredibly charitable. how do we have this conversation without aligning them as eve people while preserving a lot of good things they do? >> my book is not about maligning the super rich and i write about ideas and fill lant pea. the status symbol is now a fo d

foundation doing creative work. fill lantpy goes so far. he introduced me to the term of self-tax. i talked about taxes on the super rich increase. he said you don't understand how much we self-tax. he meant have our own charitable contributions. >> give money away. >> i think there's a danger that in celebrating the fill lant pea of the super rich, there's a rich it's confused with paying a lot of money into the treasury, which i think they need to do as well. >> all right. thanks so much for joining us. thanks for keeping toure's seat warm for a few minutes for him. up next, a little less pain at the pump these days. will we pay a lesser price? will amerithey talk about ameri energy future? [ male announcer ] it's simple physics...

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a little good news and a little bad news for you. gas prices are on the decline. you might have noticed the price of a gallon of regular has dropped nearly 9 cents over the past two weeks to $3.75. experts expect it to stay lower through election day. now for the bad news. don't get used to it. our next guest says the end of cheap oil is nearly upon us, and that it's going to affect the entire global economy. but guess what? he also says that's not necessarily good or bad. here to explain now is jeff reuben, energy expert and former chief economist and strategist at cibc world markets.

author of "the big flatline: oil and the no-growth economy." jeff, thanks for being with us. >> my pleasure. >> you argue we are nearly at the end of the cheap oil and cheap energy and that's going to lead to flatlining growth, but that that's not necessarily a bad thing and you say tomorrow's kids won't live in as many square feet of space, own as many flat screen televisions, or have as many cars in the driveway, but for all the material things they give up, they may be compensated in other ways. what do you mean by that? >> well, i mean, i think that we're going to find that triple digit oil prices and triple digit thermal coal prices are going to lead us to some very green places. that we're going to see carbon emissions halt in their tracks as they did in 2009 without any sort of expensive and cumbersome cap and trade policies or any punitive carbon taxes and the environment is going to be a natural beneficiary of oil

collaring global growth. >> toure, did you have a question? >> yeah. jeff, how much power does the president have to shape gas prices? do people overestimate that link? >> i mean, i think very limited power. you can release oil from the strategic reserve but then you have to build it back. i mean, the problem with today's oil prices, quite unlike the past where there was a supply shock is we need these triple digit oil prices to get oil out of the places that we're expecting to get it out of like the oil shales in the balkans or the oil sands in alberta or deep water oil under the gulf of mexico or heavy oil from venezuela. there's lots of oil in these places, but they're not going to flow at the kind of prices that u.s. motorists want to fill up at. >> jeff, i think i agree with you that there's very little that the president can do about gas prices. it's simple supply and demand, so then isn't the only thing

that an american president should say about gas prices is that he promises to release as much u.s. oil into the population as he possibly can as we can possibly sustain to keep demand low and supply high? >> well, as i say, the strategic reserve a finite amount and you can artificially depress oil prices temporarily. >> right. >> but you're going to have to rebuild that. let's hear what the market a telling us. brent today is $110 a barrel. that's telling us that oil is getting scarce and dear. the message should be to consume less, not to override it with artificial government policies like releasing strategic reserves or cutting gasoline taxes because really what we're doing is overriding the market's message and that's going to make it more difficult, not easier, down the road. >> you know, jeff, we always hear we have a demand problem in the economy right now. consumers don't have the money,

they're not spending money, not putting it into the economy. i wonder how much high gas prices tie into that, the idea that the average consumer who has a lot of do et to start with is paying sky high gas bills. has that exacerbated the recession, made the recovery that much harder to come by? >> well, i think the problem is that we haven't yet prouzed that when you change the price of oil as dramatically as we've seen over the last decade from $20 to over $100, you just don't change the speed at which you drive your car. you change the speed at which your economy can grow. what we're trying to do is substitute for that with, you know, quantitative easing, with huge fiscal deficits, and it's not really addressing the root of the problem. the problem isn't that there's a credit crunch and money costs too much or that there's a lack of government spending. the problem is that the fuel that the economy is most dependent on is increasingly getting out of the economy's reach. >> jeff, thomas mallthus did no

account for progress in his apocalyptic predictions. >> you know, i mean one day we may discover an alternative to oil as a transit fuel and that's what with we really use oil for. technology is accessing new supplies. the balkans, the alberta oil sands. that's technological innovation but our problem is in the here and now, oil is already costing nearly triple digit range. while we may one day find a substitute for it, the solution right now if we're going to immunize our economy from this triple digit oil price shock is really to learn to consume less. and that's exactly what triple digit oil prices will get us to do. >> all right. jeff rubin, thanks for joining us today. before we get out of here, just a tiny bit of reporting before we get out of here, guys. behind me in the crowd there's a woman holing be a obama sign and

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