show. thank you for joining us, from the burrell school vineyards and winery we hope you enjoyed your stay in wine country and we'll see you again next time. for more information about today's show log on to our website inwinecountry.com. hi, everybody. welcome to "the wall street journal report." i'm maria bartiromo. the ticking time bomb inside america's economy. one man's fight against what he sees as a disaster waiting to happen, and his solution. my one-on-one with treasury secretary timothy geithner. >> you want to build a fire break around the fire. >> we'll talk financial reform, the state of the economy, and what the government doesn't want to do. plus, the ten lawses of enduring success. a preview of my new book with two men who have important less sons to teach. "the wall street journal report" begins right now .

>> this is what's making news as we head into a new week on wall street. a crucial indicator of the strength of the economic recovery is out. the jobs number released by the labor department on friday. the economy created 162,000 jobs in the month of march. with the unemployment rate holding steady at 9.7%. that number includes 48,000 workers hired by the census bureau, slightly less than what analysts had expected. but the data overwall was positive. the pace of hiring was the fastest in the economy in almost three years. and job creation appears to have turned the corner. >> right down the middle of the road, this is an okay report. we're on track, we're headed in the right direction, but we're not there yet. >> the markets meanwhile perhaps wraped up their strongest first wrapper in more than a decade this past week. best first quarter since 1999. the s&p 500 rising almost 5%, its best first quarter since

1998. and the nasdaq closed up 5.7% for the quarter, the best first quarter since the year 2000. the holiday-shortened week in the markets was mixed. dow up 40 points on monday, the highest level since september 2008, but the dow broke the winning streak midweek. the markets were closed on good friday. signs of life in the housing sector. the s&p case-shiller report showed a slight increase in january over last month. that is the eighth straight increase. and the best annual rate in three years. but analysts are concerned the rebound may be fading. and if you're waiting for an electric car, you can add the nissan leaf to your list. the car will go on sale this december, and with a government tax credit will retail for about $25,000. america's long-term deficit is a hidden and unsustainable danger that not a lot of people are paying attention to or willing to address. but according to david walker, that has to stop. he's the chairman and ceo of the

pete peterson foundation. he's the nation's top auditor. he has a new book out called "comeback america" which talks about the problem and offers solutions. he joins me now to talk all about it. good to have you on the program, david. thanks for being here. so you are clearly concerned about the nation's debt, the deficit, and that is the focus of the book. why does this matter so much? >> it matters because it's going to affect the u.s. position in the world. it's going to affect your standard of living at home. if you can't have a strong economy, if you can't put your financial house in order, then ultimately it will affect your national security, our international standard and our standard of living. >> and do you think that this is an achievable problem? i mean, here we are, we've got mandatory spending taking up a huge chunk of the budget between social security, medicare, medicaid. that's 60% of the budget. that's spoken for. how do you think you get america's politicians to pay attention to the issue and make

hard decisions which are really the only way you're going to make a real dent in this? >> the first thing is, the first three words in the constitution have to come alive. we the people. they're starting to come alive. the people understand that washington is out of touch and out of control. it's grown too large. it's made a lot of promises that it can't afford to keep, and it still wants to make more promises. so we have to reimpose tough statutory budget controls when the economy turns around and unemployment gets down somewhat. reform social security to make it solvent, sustainable, secure savings oriented. curb costs that threaten to bankrupt our future. all of those, and we need to get started soon. >> so president obama has named a bipartisan panel on fiscal responsibility. we had senator simpson on recently. the co-chairs alan simpson and erskine bowles were with us. is this the way to go? is it going to make a dent?

>> congress has extreme difficulty making progress on a single front at a time, much less multiple fronts simultaneously. this commission is not a statutory commission, therefore that means that congress didn't buy in and there's no guaranteed vote. it's got a goal to try to be able to balance the budget without interest by 2015. it also needs to focus on how to stabilize debt to gdp at a sustainable level. and most importantly, it needs to engage the american people with the facts, the truth and the tough choices. and we'll see whether it will do that. >> let me ask you this, david. everybody talks about the tax plan and there's all this debate. you know, few people like to pay taxes, obviously. i mean, but everybody know that we pay taxes for the health of the country, and to create services. but do you believe that the tax revenue that's being spoken about right now in terms of race raizing taxes on the highest earnings is enough money? is that really going to make a big difference?

>> no. the fact of the matter is there's a new four-letter word in washington. it's called math. and there's no way the numbers work by only focussing on people making $250,000 or more. >> so they're going to have to raise taxes on everybody, right? >> there's absolutely no question. we're probably headed for some type of broad-based consumption tax, possibly dedicated to health care among other things. in the end, the numbers have to add up. >> you've been a positive voice on all of this. let's talk solutions, shall we? you touch on solutions in the book, especially your thoughts on social security. give us the solutions. >> social security does not face an immediate crises. it's underfunded $7 trillion, $8 trillion, but we can exceed the expectation of every generation by strengthening the benefit or increasing it for people just above the poverty level. reduce it for peopin the upper income. increase the retirement age to three years over 20 years. you can solve the problems without more taxes, but the politicians will probably want

to raise the taxable wage cap. and last, we need to increase savings, so we need to add an automatic savings "on top so that we have a solvent sustainable secure and more savings oriented social security system. >> how did the first president bush and president clinton manage to keep the deficit under control? what did they do? >> they did three things that this president needs to follow, and that quite frankly george w. bush didn't follow. first, they broke campaign promises on taxes. secondly, they imposed tough statutory budget controls. and thirdly, they did not expand entitlement programs. george w. bush did the opposite. and so far barack obama is on the same path. >> all right. we will leave it there. david, thank you so much for your focus on this very important issue. we appreciate your time today. david walker joining us in washington. up next on "the wall street journal report," i sit down with one of the most visible members of the obama administration,

treasury secretary timothy geithner. is the fear of too big to fail the next fire the president wants to put out? >> we want to make sure the fire can't jump from the failing firm and threaten the rest of the financial system. >> and as we go to break, take a look at how the stock market ended the week. back in a moment.

timothy geithner says the economy is getting better. the treasury secretary believes we're about to give way to a period of growth and that recovery must be reinforced. >> two key things. the first is about basic

protections for consumers and investors. and the second is about ending too big to fail, making sure the country doesn't ever again face a crisis like this which cost 8.5 million americans their jobs, put billions of dollars of taxpayer money at risk. we want to make sure that never happens again. >> there has been some debate about too big to fail and whether or not the dodd proposal really addresses that. you received a less leather from richard shelby saying it does not cure too big to fail. the power could be abused. the fund that banks have to buy into. can you tell us about that? >> the dodd bill talks a lot of republican ideas, ideas from senator shelby and others. it makes the key point. if big banks ever again manage themselves to the edge where they can't survive without government assistance, the government should have the ability to come in and dismember them to unwind them and sell

them off in pieces without putting taxpayer money at risk. that's the key thing. we don't want taxpayers ever again to be exposed to bearing sni of the cost of these large financial crisis. on those issues we're getting close to. >> in terms of resolution or authority, just to clairifclari. you need to be able to shut down the areas of the business that aren't working and keeps those that are. >> you want to be able to draw a fire break around the fire. you want to make sure the fire can't jump from the failing firm and threaten the rest of the financial system. so you need to be able to shut down, dismember and unwind the part that's failing. tragic failure, we had it in place for small banks but not for the ones that dominated the world.

>> if you're i.d.ing the 23 largest institutions as the largest banks, too big to fail, you modely sort of put a cross on their backs saying too big to fail. >> that's an excellent question. what we need to understand is these institutions who play a critical role in our market, they need to be subject to much tougher constraints. you have to know who they are. they present these kinds of risks. the reason you want to identify them is to make sure we subject them to tougher constraints and risk taking. >> you are making final preparations to sell the government stake in citigroup, the 27% stake. why now? ite points out how far we've come. we've had $135 billion of the taxpayers investments come back to the treasury because we forced these institutions to go out and raise private capital to replace the public's investments, and we've earned about $20 billion of profits on those investments. this is just the next stage of

us moving to make sure we're getting out of the financial system as quickly as we can, because we don't want to be in the business of owning a share in a private company a day longer than necessary. it's just a sign of how much progress we've maerd already. >> now, if the bank has paid back the money and the treasury, the taxpayers have made so much money on this, why should they have to go through a further process of paying money into the fund to pay for the mistakes? >> the government is still exposed to risk over a loss for the actions we had to take to put out the financial fire. the taxpayer shouldn't have to bear any of those losses. congress required us to propose ways to make sure we have iways to recoup the losses. so we proposed a straightforward common sense thing. we want those that benefited most from the action wes took to fix the mess to make sure taxpayers aren't paying for the cost of the crisis. we want the largest institutions in the country to pay for those losses.

>> so given the fact that the government is getting out of the citi stake, should we assume that things are are rebounded at citigroup? >> i think you can say generally as the economy is getting stronger and the economy is getting stronger, you know, we're probably just on the verge now of what we think to be a sustained period of job creation, finally. and we're going to continue to reinforce that recovery. the financial system as a whole, as i said, is in a much stronger place today. the critical thing we did was to move quickly, not just to stabilize thing, but to make sure we recapitalize the financial system with private money. >> my thanks to treasury secretary tim geithner. up next on "the wall street journal report," are there secrets to success? how do you get it? how do you keep it? one of the world's most profitable message makers and the business legend who impacted a generation of leaders clue me in. and become a fan on facebook.

this week has been a very special one for me. my new book "the ten laws of enduring success" hit bookstores this past week. in writing the book, i tried to identify what makes success a life long pursuit for some and what we can learn from their journeys. i tried to look at the economic slowdown and the recession and tried to figure out how we can learn from it and survive and more importantly thrive. former general electric ceo jack welch is with me and sir martin

sorrell. i want to thank you for helping me with this book. >> thank you, maria. >> congratulations, on getting the book done. it's a terrific read. >> thank you so much, jack. i appreciate it. so let me ask you. what do you attribute your great success, sglak. >> if one assumes i had success -- >> oh, come on. >> i would say self-awareness. i would say authenticity is another word for that in my view, and an ability to rally a team around a vision and drive it to success. building great teams. around authentic behaviors. >> we're going to talk more about that. but martin, let me get your take on that. it's really an extraordinary story that you told me. you started wpp as sort of a

second career, right? you were 40 years old, and you started with three people, and now it's the largest advertising agency in the world. >> well, i was suffering from male menopause which i think is all called andropause at the age of 40. but i'm a mere minnow in relation to the jack welch whale you have on the other side of the atlantaic. but we started with two people in one room in 1985, but i think the heart of it was having fun in terms of what you do. i don't think there's anything like stress. it's just you're not having fun. that's what you should focus on. it's not about making money. that's the scoreboard or the scorecard. it's about trying to do what you enjoy, clearly having a vision about what you're trying to do, and implementing it is critically important. persistence is important, dealing with the reverse, that's much more important than dealing

with the good times. >> what do you tell college students coming out of school, or mbas coming out of school. they thought there were all these great jobs with great compensati compensation. they're gone. >> well, i tell a lot of them it's a perfect time to take a swing, to get out there, find your -- i always think about things in terms of ah-has. what's a unique competitive advantage. there's so much opportunity today with changing technologies, for people to come out and try to take a swing at new things. we'll have new industry after new industry after new industry. and there's never been a better chance to take a swing at it. >> so that's learning new things? >> yeah, but that's what life is all about. >> i like what you said, jack, in the interview about lose the black cape. you know, we tried that and it didn't work. all the negative attitudes. change your attitude. and martin, i love what you said about the support. you've been very close with your father, and your father was a

real influence in your life. how important is having that support system to enable you to feel like you can take a risk? you can try it? >> well, i think you've got to have somebody that you can talk to who doesn't have an agenda, doesn't have a bias. having somebody neutral that you can bounce ideas off problems, opportunities, challenges, threats. i think that's absolutely critical. but i just want to come back to one other thing, maria. and that is that the qualities that founders have, whatever, however you define that, the qualities that determine a good founder are very different than the qualities that determine a good manager. and getting that balance between starting something and running something i think is critically important. there are very few people that can do that. there are very few people that can start from scratch and build something on scale. i actually find that the

intellectual challenges of scale are really interesting. >> so my ten laws are self-knowledge, vision, initiative, courage, integrity, adaptability, humility, enduran endurance, purpose and resilience. did i miss anything, jack? >> courage is a huge deal. you've got to be able to say i'm taking a swing. and look, self-confidence, self-awareness to take a swing, and if it doesn't work, i'm going to be valuable somewhere else. the thing that boxes people in is they get in there and become victims, locked in a place, locked in a job. security blanket seeking. you've got to have an attitude of i'm going to join this place, i'm going to give it all i got. i'm going to start this venture, i'm going to give it all i got. but in the end, if it doesn't work out, i'm okay. >> gentlemen, it is great to have you on the program. i so appreciate your time for the book, and for joining me today to talk about success. thank you very much.

jack welch and sir martin sorrell. we appreciate jack welch and sir martin sorrell joining me. we'll take a look at news this week that will have an impact on your money. and then women making history when it comes to finance. i sat down for a chat with some of washington's power players. and they were all women.

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wsjr.cnbc.com. find a link to my blog. check it out, investoragenda.cnbc.com. now look at the stories coming up in the week ahead that may move the markets and impact your money this week. monday, the nation's realtors release the pending home sales index. this is an indicator for the activity of existing homes. also monday, the institute for supply management on growth and activity in the services sector during the last month and the minutes of the federal reserve open market committee's last meeting. we will pay close attention to any hints that interest rates may rise and who is looking for rates to go higher and who feels the economy is still too week. finally, i stat sat down with some of the most influential leaders of american finance today. all, by the way, women. i monitored a panel with the heads of the fdic, the sec, congressional oversight panel and the president's council of economic advisers. this great group discussed not only their attitudes towards finance, but their powerful

career paths. >> what kind of tough situations did you face did you think because you were in a boy's club? >> oh, what did you not face? >> my thanks to the treasury department for hosting that symposium on women in finance. that will do it for us today. thanks so much for being with us this weekend. my guest next week, former sekera tear of labor robert reich. keep it right here, where wall street meets main street. have a great weekend.