hi, everybody. happy springtime. lcome to "the wall street journal repo." i'm mariabartiromo. prictions and surprises for ththe rest of the year. some of th may make you pretty happy, especially when it comes to oil and the market. america's new health caree law goes before the highest court in the land. will it stand up to constitutional scrut scrutiny? graying e educatoreducators. the man who's writing the rules on evaluatating teachers. what really makes a classroom work? "the wall street journal report" bens right now. >> this is america's number one financial news program. "the wall street journal report." now, maria bartiromo. here's a look at what's making news as we headnto a new week on wall street.

the pain at the pump is only getting worse. record highs for this time of the year with the average price north of $3.80 a gallon for self-serve regular across the country. now at least ten states belong to the $4 a gallon club. according to aaa's fuel gauge report. prices are only likely to increase as we begin the heavy driving season in may and they are rising because of high oil prices and tensions in the middle east. the markets fell three days in a row midweek tumbling more than 75 points on thursday closing at the lowest level in more than a week partly because of concerns about the economy of china slowing down. mixed news on housing but signs things may be getting better. sales of previously owned homes declined last month but it was the be winter in five years. meanwhile, housing starts fell in february. but permits for future construction jumped to the highest lel since october of '08. and the hash tag might be happy birthday to us. twitter is celebrating its sixth birthday this week. withth the servi now boasting more than 140 million active monthly users and 330 million

tweets sent every day. when people try to predict the future some are better than others. every year byron wean comes out with a list of surprises for the year, political and economic. every year he nails a lot. just misses a few. byron joins me with a look at what he says will happen for the rest of the year. great to have you on the program. >> always good to be here. >> always good to see you, particularly when you're talking about your surprises. let's look at some of your predictions for 2012. >> okay. >> and some have already happened. right? >> yeah. >> fairly optimistic. but i'm struck by oil at $85 a barrel. surprise. >> right, that's a reach. >> why do you think that oil is going to go down to $85? >> maria, i think this hydraulic tra fracking for oil and gas as game-changing. we've got a lot of oil in reserves, in rock. this is oil we would get out of reservoirs if we could hang around for 10 million more years because the oil would seep

through the rock into reservoirs. by taking it out of the rock we get it early and there's a lot of it. . >> there's a lot of oil in the world. do you think oil where it is right now, comfortably above $100 a barrel, is overpriced? >> i do. i think the's an iranremium in it right now. i think the normal price around $100. but i think if i'm right about this hydraulic fracking, it can go down to $85, as i say. >> you see earnings rising and the s&p above 1,400. >> it's already there. >> it's happened already. the s&p has been so strong. gdp rising and you think unemployment falls. what's behind this prediction? >> you're reporting all the time on economicnews. and the economic news has been better than most people have expected. >> sure. >> so i think it's, you know -- most people, most economists were at 2%. beginning of the year. they're 2.5 now, i think 3 is achievable. the unemployment 8.2, it could

drop below 8 easily. >> you see the democrats taking the house, losing the senate. you expect president obama to get re-elected. is this based on economics because of this improvement? >> yeah, i think it's simple. if the unemployment rate is 9%, the economy is growing at 2, the republican candidate will win. if the unemployment is below 8 obama will win.n. >> eupe, you say europe develops a broad plan to deal with its debt. let talk about that. because already, the european central bank has made rules -- >> they changed their spots totally. they were very restrictive, focused totally on inflation. now expansive, focused on survival. >> you don't think the european problem spills into the u.s. economic story? >> no, with the liquidity being provided i think europe might have a shallow recession but not a deep one. if they had aeep one that would have an impact on us. >> the deficit and debt has been major earn concerns. you think congress reduces the

budget deficit a and medicare a defense are cut that's a 2013 item. i just think that there will be anticipation of it now. you know, it all kicks in, so much happens on january 1st. bush tax cuts expire. obama care starts. payroll tax holiday ends. you have the sequestering of funds for health care and defense as a relt of the super committee not coming up with a budget reduction program. >> this is really interesting. we are going to see a lot of the change come january 1. so, im, does that impact the way you allocate money today? with all of these predictions, how do you translate that into practical applications? >> the market's doing well, the economy's doing well, stock market is doll well. but in anticipation of some of these problems in 2013, market could have a correction. right now, sentiment, which was quite pessimistic at the end of last year, is very positive. and the market is probably due

for some sort of correction. >> okay. so we may be able to get into the market at lower levels, then. >> right. >> yeah. >> the market will probably give you an opportunity sometime between now and the fall. >> do you expect that be a sizable decline? >> no, i don't. i just think a normal correction, an ongoing bull trend. >> what do you want to do if you're an investor, how do you want to invest? what should i be exposed to? >> emerging markets are doing well. i definitely think you should have some exposure in emerging markets. if you're looking for something that's corrected, gold is corrected and i'm positive on gold. i woul definitely buy u.s., high-quality, multi-national growth stocks. you can get 2.5% yield at a reasonable price earnings ratio. i like high-yield securities. great to have you on the program. >> always good to be here. >> we so appreciate it, byron joing us. up next on "the wall street journal report," is the law requiring you to buy health insurance constitutional? the supreme court takes up the

affordableare act this week. what it means to your bottom line and your health. the fronont of the classroo. a look at the way teachers are aluated. are changes to come? take a look at how the stock market ended the week. an airline has planes... and people. and the planes can seem the same so, it comes down to the people. because, bad weather the price of oil those are every airlines reality. and solutions won't come from 500 tons of metal and a paint job. they'll come from people. delta people. who made us one of the biggest airlines in the world. and then decided that wasn't enough. how they'll live tomorrow. for more than 116 years, ameriprise financial has worked for their clients' futures.

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on day one i will do everything in my power to getry rid of it and repeal obama care and return health care to you. >> presidential candidate mitt romney mince nothing words about his feelings on the affordable care act signed into law that president obama two yearsago this week. monday the supreme court will hear organ arguments on the constitutionality of the law. my next guest served as key adviser to former governor romney's massachusetts reform, jonathan grube are professor of

economics at m.i. texas. he's tried to explain it all in the thrillingly titled comic book "health care reform." good to have you on the program. >> good to be here. >> is it constitutional for the congress to compel individuals to purchase something? in this case, health insurance? >> i'm not a constitutional lawyer. but when the constitutional lawyers were polled by the bar association, 85% said it were, conservative and liberal justices alike have supported it, one conservative former solicitor general, charles freed from the reagan administraon, went so far as to say he would eat his kangaroo skin hat if it was found nonconstitutional. >> it is compelling individuals to buy something. and if they don't, they broke the law. >> it is absolutely compelling individuals to buy health insurance. if they don't, they have to pay a fine. and this is something which is well within my understanding and

most lawyers' understanding, well wind the power of the commerce clause of the constitution which says the government has the right to regulate interstate commerce. how can 17% of our economy not affect interstate commerce? this is constitutional. this individual mandate will not affect most people. if you already have health insurance you're not affected. many individuals are exempt from the mandate. if you live below the pover line or if you cannot afford to get healthnsurance for less than 8% of your income you're exempt. if you are affected by the individual mandate, then you would have to pay penalalty. either have to have health insurance or pay a penalty. that penalty is the larger of $700 a year or 2.5% of your income. >> the truth is, one of your aims with this legislation was to create a workable system for those without employer-provide health insurance. do you expect more employers to forego offering insurance? roughly 1,0 companies have received waivers from

participating in part of health care reform providing coverage to low-wage workers including companies as large as mcdonald'sr. they say this is too expensive, we're going to not provide health insurance to rkers. that's obviously not what you intended and what the president wanted. >> so two points here. first of all, in terms of waivers, these are waivers of specific early provisions of the law. these firms are not waived from requirements of the law which hits in 2015. second, we have estimates from the correctional budget office, from objective sources, which say there will be a small erosion in employer response insurance, will fall 1% to 2% relative to where it otherwise would have been. that's going away anyway. employee response insurance has fallen by 10%. there's a long trend going on, that trend will be increased a litt bit. it's a small price to pay for the fact that we're now building a safety net. >> you were involved in the development of massachusetts's health care reform.

as well as advisining the white house on this legislation. talk to us about the differences between what mitt romney oversaw in massachusetts and what was signed into federal law as the affordable care act. >> basically the core of both laws is the same. at the core is what i like to think of as a three-legged stool. the first leg is reforming insurance markets so they can't discriminate against the sick. the second leg is individual mandate which makes reforms feasible. the third is subsidies which makes health insurance affo affordable at the base of both the romney care and obama care. the affordable care act is more ambitious in two ways. first of all, in massachusetts the federal government paid for our reform. so we didn't have to raise taxes. the federal government esn't have that luxury. not like space aliens will pay for our reform, we've got to pay for it. the second place is the massachusetts law did not try to control health care costs. whereas the affordable care act takes on cost control in a serious way. >> how come throughout all of e effort to get this law through we heard that it wasn't

going to cost the country anything, it was already paid for, and now we learn it's more than $1 trillion. the federal government plans to pay for some of the benefits by taxing those parts of the medical sector that stand to gain from an infusion of new customers. medical devices, pharmaceutical, insurance companies. nearly half of small business owners who aren't hiring say that's the reason they say they are concerned about the expense of health care. what's your response to those who say this legislation hampers the ability to do business. >> you've raised what's at the heart of a lot of the confusion. separate two things. one is the cost of health care. that's what's hampering hiring, destroying our competitiveness as a nation. what this law does is try to take on in a serious way those costs over the long run. that is nothing to do with what firms doing today. costs of health care are high, it's nothing to do with this law. >> how can you say that? they're looking at 2014 when this is going to -- when many of these changes will be implemented. they're saying, my costs are going to go up.

>> that's not right. that's absolutely not right. according to the congressional budget office estimates, the best nonpartisan estimates, the costs to employers will not change at all. >> how come 1,200 companies got waivers? >> waivers from a specific provision of the law which prestricted the kind of health care they can offer, particular companies can no longer limit individuals' exposures to medical costs. riright now a lot of companies have plans when are mini med plans, they cover the first $1,000, you cover the rest. those are terrible insurance plans which should go away but we give time to phase out and they're getting waivers. >> it's more expensive for some of these companies because of the taxes involved. >> once again, the taxes involved, there will be new taxes on the sectors that benefit. but those same sectors are getting 32 million newl insured companies. the law tries toet a balance for hospitals and insurers and medical providers saying, we're giving you 32 million new

insured customers, a big boon to your business. >> on the other hand, we're charging more money. >> we've got to pay for it and the way to pay for new customers is partly by taxing you. only about one-quarter of the financing of the bill comes from taxing medical sectors. >> why has this been such a difficult issue for the separation to communicate? you wrote a comic book laying outhe legislation so people can understand it. why has health care become the white house's achilles heel? >> it's because it's incredibly complicated. in today's political environment, anything which takes two sentences to explain will be defeated by a one-sentence lie. that's the situation we're in. people lie about this, oppose it with misinformation and disinformation. if americans understand the facts, they'll support it. >> great to have you on the program. we appreciate and it thanks for this health care reform book explaining this in simple language. we'll see you soon. >> okay, thanks. >> jonathan gruber joining us. up next on "the wall street journal report," looking for a new way to measure teacher performance. what makes for success in a profesessiont the heart o a

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laces? really? slip-on's the way to go. more people do that, security would be like -- there's no charge for the bag. thanks. i know a quiet little place where we can get some work done. there's a three-prong plug. i have club passes. [ male announcer ] get the mileage card with special perks on united, like a free checked bag, united club passes, and priority boarding. thanks. ♪ okay. what's your secret? [ male announcer ] the united mileageplus explorer card. get it and you're in. high school districts around the country struggle with educating children and employing those at the front of the classroom. there's increased debate over what makes a good teacher. what can we learn from teachers and students about the art and the job of teaching? tom cain is with me, professor of education and economics at harvard, deputy dirtor for education at the bill and

melinda gates foundation. great to have you on the program. teacher performance is a major iss issue. we're talking about it in so many school districts and so many districts are grappling with it. tell me about your work supported by the bill and melinda gates foundation. you are studying teacher effectiveness. >> yes. so it's important for your viewers to take a step back and remember why there is this focus on teacher effectiveness these days. for 40 years, we've known that there are huge differences in student achievement gains in different teachers' classrooms. yett we've nev sort of taken a serious look at it. the test scores are just the tip of the iceberg. they indicate there are huge differences in practicess out there. and we've never gotten serious about providing feedback to teachers on the work that they're doing. so in this project, there are 3,000 teacher volunteers that are working with us in six different school districts. to develop some additioional measures based on classroom

observations, based on student edba feedback. i'm a college professor, so you know, that's the way i get evaluated every semester is from my students. we wanted to see if we could try that in classrooms as well. and the goal is to see how, if you combine these things, could you provide rich ever feedback that's not just based on the test scores but the test scores ought to be part of it. >> right. and of course technology is enabling so much. making this possible. you spent two school years in seven d different districts. you're analyzing thedata, video, student perception, student achievement gains. so tell us, how did the teachers respond when the video observation was introduced? >> one thing we heard from them afterwards, after they got over the initial discomfort, was that they reallyoved it. they loved being able to see themselves teach. for many of them, they'd never had that experience before.

and we'd trained a large 900 folks to watch these videos and look for best practices and provide feedback. and those 900 observers, many of them were teachers and they had, look, i've never had a chance to watch 40, 50 other teachers teaching similar material, and it made me better to be able to watch. >> i bet. i'm sure that's true. so the discussion of the teaching profession, unions, pay, job security. all of this has become so politically charged. how do americans generally think of people doing this job today? >> i think people have -- i think a tremendous amount of respect. i know i do, as a parent. >> absolutely. >> have tremendous amount of respect for the folks doing the job. >> do teachers knonow that? >> you know -- i think teachers know that. the problem is, though, in the

debate, there's almost sort of a natural defensiveness that comes up the minute you start to talk about differences in student achievement gains. >> sure. >> the point is not about accountability or playing gotcha. the point should be about -- >> the students. >> the student, but also managing performance, raising everybody's game. teachers need to embrace this as an opportunity to improve the effectiveness of the profession. >> so is that the long view of your work? are you hoping that this leads to more active policy recommendations in that regard from the foundation? where do you go from here? >> you know, so i think we're in a very interesting time right now. as many places, including new york city, try to improve the kind of feedback we give to teachers. there's going to be the temptation to move backwards. because this seems too hard, it

seems too controversial. what i hope is that people will say, hey, okay. we've released -- there are these test scores but we've got to get some additional data. we've got to be able to do classroom observations in a much more careful, much higher-quality way. we've got to see if we can get some student feedback and make that helpful to teachers to improve their practice. >> so important, and really just terrific effort. thank you so much, totom. greato have you on the program. we so appreciate it. tom cain joining us. up next on "the wall street journal report" we'll take a look at the news this upcoming week that will have an impact on your money. then back to school for one of washington's best-known former professors. the central banker's view from the head of the class, stay with us.

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for more on our show and guests check out wsjr.cnbc.com. follow me on twitter and google, plus look for @mariabartiromo. a look at stories coming up. tuesday the latest reading on consumer confidence. typically a market mover. and also tuesday, the monthly s&p case shiller index tracks home prices in 20 cies across the united states. also thursday the third and final estimate othe oss domest product for the fourth quarter of 2011. that is typically a market mover as well. friday the latest numbers on personal income and spending will be out. as will be the university of michigan's survey of consumer sentiment. finally, ben bernanke gets

schooled. the former head of princeton's economic department became the first sitting chairman of the federal reserve to teach a college course he diver the first two of four planned lectures at george washington university on economic history. 30 undergraduates are taking the course and no, the chairman will not be grading any papers. that's the s show for today. thank you for being with me. my guests next ek, chef and rest ra daughter daniel ba lieu. keep it right here where wall street meets main street. have a great weekend everybody, i'll see you next weekend. how did this small colorado town get through tough economic times? freight rail. it attracted large companies, like vestas. we built four factories to make turbine blades, towers, and generators. companies, like vestas. we built four factories creating over seventeen hundred .bs. then suppliers, stores, more companies followed, creating more jobs. economists call that the ripple effect. i call it the freight rail effect. freight rail connects every corner of america, bringing jobs and economic growth along for the ride.

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