kevin madden was national press secretary for mitt romney's presidential campaign, and mike santoli is an associate editor for barron's. let me start off with you, richard. shea kline says is it true that the report that some democrats are pressing president obama not to run for re-election in 2012? now, you come to this as a hillary clinton supporter most recently, but is there any truth to that rumor? >> hansly, this is the -- honestly, this is the first time i've heard that suggested. we heard the silliness about switching biden and hillary, i don't think that's going to happen either. look, among democrats and, frankly, among a lot of independents, president obama is seen as having done a very nice job for the country, and i just think politically where would that challenge come from? would it come from the right? we saw there's not probably

mike santoli from "barron's.".hao chair is former secretary of labor and fox news contributor. elaine, when you see the unemployment rate go down to 9.4% but you also see the amount of discouraged workers grow, what does that tell but the state of the economy right now? >> we all want to see the unemployment rate decrease. unfortunately the drop we saw today is primarily due to the number of people who have withdrawn from the workforce. the labor rate participation rate in the workforce dropped from about 64.7% to about 64.3%. that is a significant drop. jenna: what does that mean? >> it means people are discouraged. you couple that with december and they weren't looking for work. what we're also seeing you need to take a look at the other indices that are out there. and the heritage foundation will come out with their index of economic freedom next week. and this index will show --. jenna: let me jump in. we have a couple questions from our viewers. rob, i want to bring you in on this as well. when we look at disc

jenna: peter morici, john challenger and mike santoli, thanks, guys.ou. jon: she was in the national spotlight because of a case nonstop hiccups. now a judge is denying jennifer mead bond. she will stay in jail on a first-degree murder charge. greg jarrett is at the breaking news desk. >> reporter: yeah, we just got word the florida judge refusing to the grant any bail for 19-year-old jennifer mee. she is accused of luring a man, 22-year-old shannon griffin; to a vacant home where two others allegedly robbed and killed him. police say jennifer mee admitted to setting up the robbery. now, under florida's felony murder statute if somebody dies during the course of a felony, everybody involved is equally guilty of murder as if they pulled the trigger themselves. three years ago jen fe mee -- jennifer mee endured that unrelenting case of hiccups. she was eventually diagnosed with tourette's syndrome, and interestingly now, her attorney is advancing a so-called diminished capacity defense to the murder case, claiming that all of this may have been caused by

jon: mike santoli, here's a financial question. angie wants to know, with most private sector industries opting for 401(k) plans, why are we still paying huge pensions to government employees? >> she goes on to say that the taxpayer cannot afford to fund it. >> it's obviously a legacy of many, many years of union tradition, and it used to be this kind of trade-off, right? you took a public sector job, there used to be a give-up in terms of take-home pay. by the way, some very large companies still do maintain traditional pension plans, but it's true that fewer and fewer all the time. so essentially what we have is very expensive retiree health care and pension benefits in the public sector that, she's right, at some point become unsustainable without other budget measures whether it's trying to increase tax revenue or curtail those budgets. i do think we're coming to this reckoning point just in general as a country where states, municipalities and the rest are going to have to, basically, sort of alter that bargain a little bit, a

mike santoli of "barron's." jon.looking to what may be the biggest test of the republican primary race so far, south carolina. since 1980, no republican candidate has won the nomination without winning that state. we'll ask a reporter on the ground who has got the best chance there. plus, a hit tv show, pushes the envelope. new controversy as a toddler gets ready to drop an f-bomb? fallout and what the supreme court is saying about it, next. dry mouth may start off as an irritant. it'll cause cavities, bad breath. patients will try and deal with it by drinking water. water will work for a few seconds but if you're not drinking it, it's going to get dry again. i recommend biotene. all the biotene products like the oral rinse...the sprays have enzymes in them. the whole formulation just works very well. it leaves the mouth feeling fresh. if i'm happy with the results and my patients are happy with the results, i don't need to look any farther. to discover new plumjones, amazins from sunsweet, the amazing alternative to

mike santoli, thank you very much, from barron's. gregg, over to you. gregg: one of egypt's neighbors is not saying very much. a lot of them are not saying much about the unrest. but israel is closely watching the violence unfold on its doorstep. remember, they share a long border in the sinai hanging in the balance of a security and diplomatic nightmare, the first arab country to sign a peace treaty with israel, teters on the edge. gregg: welcome back. we are awaiting a huge ruling on the new health care law. a federal judge in florida will be announcing his decision sometime today. could be any minute now, on the constitutionality or lack thereof of the massive overhaul, some 26 states signed in on that lawsuit against the federal government. we're going to be talking to one of those attorneys general who signed on. we want to hear from you, though. what do you expect from this ruling? and what do you expect if and when the issue ultimately reaches the u.s. supreme court? we want to hear from you. jump on our live chat and weigh in, just click on the

mike santoli, thank you for the info. jon: fox news alert and another emergency involving a russian nuclear powered submarine. this time it is a sub called the katerinberg. we're told it was pulled into dry-dock into the submarine service area shipyard and its nuclear missiles, its nuclear reactor pulled off and shut down but a fire broke out on wooden scaffolding that had been built around that submarine. we're told that the fire did not actually get inside the sub. no danger of a nuclear release or a nuclear spill. remember what happened a few years back, when the kursk, a soviet russian nuclear submarine sank and lost its entire crew. anyway this one appears to be not that serious. in the meantime the bp oil spill was one of america's worst environmental disasters ever but was it also a criminal act? word today that the justice department is considering filing charges against bp employees. we have the latest. >>> pregame festivities almost turn to tragedy but one linesman for the oregon ducks uses his eagle scout skill

mike santoli is associatedded today for for baron. that's a loaded yes question. the future for them. >> it doesn't look great for them. it's a symptom of how the downturn is and a drag. it can lead to chronic under employment. we have an economy now that is preufg education and experience. those two things are kind of a mismatch when it comes to youth employment. jenna: when i think about -- i don't want to call them kids, young adults under the age of 25 and i saw the statistics, i said a lot of them are in college but those statistics don't count full time students. >> no, this is a genuine issue. it's definitely worse than in prior recessions. it's hit the youth harder than before. it's become a pretty loaded political and economic issue in the u.k. and across europe, people are seeing this trend and saying are we at risk of a lost generation of sorts here. jenna: say you haven't worked for a year's time out of college you can't collect unemployment. >> you have to have a job. jenna: a lot of these kids could be out there without support. >> living at home. if

mike santoli is associated today tore at barrons magazine. you wrote about the market retesting or relapsing, what is the difference. >> retesting is we go back to the low levels we saw in august which is a few percent below where we are right now, in terms of the dow. that often happens when investors have to see is this going to hold, are we going to have a quart quarter rally. and is there maybe a higher percentage of recession last year. or is it like in 2008 when you had a global run on the banks, obviously the european debt crisis has people reminded of the way 2008 felt when you had these weekend meetings of the officials coming out on monday, maybe they had a deal, maybe the details had to be hammered out. maybe it was big enough for the market, maybe it wasn't maybe it was fast enough for investors maybe not. jenna: we had a meeting this weekend in europe. what is the worst case scenario. >> the worst case follows along the path of 2008 which did worse even significantly which was already a budding recession. europe is very likely i

mike santoli, associate editor of "baron's" magazine. jeffrey frankel, former member of president clinton's coins sieve economic advisors. welcome to you all. a lot of questions from our viewers about the truth. mike wants to know what is the true number, the real unemployment number all americans should know. >> you should know all of them. should know they're also estimates. right now the number for august of 96,000 net new jobs is an estimate based on surveys, obviously the 8% plus unemployment rate is a real number. basically number of people would like a job and are looking and can't find one right now. there are a larger number of underemployed workers or stopped working which is somewhere 15%. all of it kind of feeds into the same thing, a very sluggish and stubbornly unresponsive labor picture. one still showing positive job growth in the private sector. jenna: jeffrey one of reasons why the unemployment rate has come down because labor participation has dropped. the labor force is smaller. lee wants to know, why is labor partici

mike santoli is joining us now.eresting data points to take a look at today when we're also seeing such terrible storms in so many states. is there an economic effect we can look at or consider while -- >> well, definitely a short-term economic effect. clearly, you know, power outages and this destruction kind of interrupts regular economic activity, forestalls hiring and probably puts a damper, initially, on consumer spending in those affected areas. usually, though, these are not long-lasting effects. obviously, you're going to have some funneling of money for reconstruction. typically, it's kind of a stutter step in terms of the economic growth path. it's not something that really persists. jenna: stutter step seems to describe the g with dp reading today. >> clearly we decelerate inside the first warter due to higher gasoline prices, consumer spending was not a bright spot. we also had government pulling back in a dramatic way, obviously, because of budget problems. that was a noticeable kind of headwind on grow

mike santoli is an editor. let's take it bit by bit. we want to look forward to what is ahead. for the average consumer out there, what are you looking for, what are you watching? >> we really have a nervous vigil with every big piece of economic data from here on out to see if the soft patch which has extended into the second half of the year is a fleeting phase or we are in for another slump. i'm looking for retailers reports on back to school spending, that is a good kind of short term indicator. we are at the front end of the back to school section. consumers are looking for bargains, already and sales will start early. car sales, a somewhat disappointing number on car sales yesterday. we should see a rebound, a lot of that is low inventory of japanese-made cars due to the tsunami over there. we are looking for clues that happened last year that the summer was the including i shall period that gave way to a little bit of an up tick in growth afterward. jenna: that causes question. we saw last year an up tick in growth at the end of the year. was that pattern misleading? can

and mike santoli is an associate editor at baron.ve talked a lot about the housing market and the data not being great. if the job market is improving and we are seeing it improve then why isn't housing improving as well? >> as you point out it's barely keeping up with the population growth. that's one issue. even if we went back to the natural unemployment rate today we are still going to see a slow down in housing, and that's a number of factors like you pointed out. part of that is even the employed people today are worried about the longevity of jobs. mortgage rates that could potentially go up by the end of 2011 it looks like and worried about losing the home mortgage deduction. you put all these things together and people are worried about a double-dip in housing. no one wants to go into a $600,000 investment only to lose 20% in the next years. i don't think it's going to affect housing. jenna: because a koft us hold our welts in our home it affects our psychology when it comes to shopping. we talk so much about prices going up

with us, back with us, i should say, peter marici, economist with theup of vairs and mike santoli isfrom us barron's, associate editor from barron's. mike, starting off will you, will extending the bush-era tax cuts create jobs? >> i don't know about creating. i think when you're talking about continuing something that already exists i'm not sure it unleashes job creation. the game here is deciding whether the economy in its current state can withstand just sort of an extra head wind which would be an automatic tax increase. i don't think businesses look at personal income taxes as one of the top three or five things the nation looks at to decide whether to hire or not. jenna: what do they look at? >> they look at demand for the product, confidence in -- competence to meet that demand and whether they think it's sustainable and financing, ability of -- veilibility of capital, things like that to me are more important than a five-point percentage change in a tax rate. jenna: peter, your comment on this because the president says if we do not extend these jobless benefits diblly for ma

mike santoli is the associate editor of a magazine. >> the american economy is more stable at this pointence from the other part of the world. china is having a steep slow down, which is another one of the concerns out there. retail sales have held up relatively well. yes, the jobs report most recently was disappointing. we have 2 million more people working now than a year ago. obviously the underpinnings are okay right now. the housing market looks like it's showing signs, at least had bottomed even if it's not going to surge. jenna: does that still make us like the best kid in detention. >> to some degree. 2% growth, the latest quarter was revised down below 2%. that doesn't feel good, it's not impressive. it doesn't feel like the economy is in anything like a boom but we are unusually -- when i say stable, unlike other parts of the world the united states mostly makes things and does things for its own people. we are not really export-based, we aren't as reliant on everything going on in the rest of the the world as other countries. it's not exactly as if we're in a great economy rig

mike santoli at "barron's" magazine. he has the right words for all this stuff.rt off what happened today, central banks, among others, what did they do to make the markets react this way? >> they're effectively reduce the cost for banks to borrow from central banks on short-term basis. it is credit creation. what it is basically making the sure the system doesn't get gummed up the way it did in 2008 and 2009 so banks can finance their operations there is shortage of dollars in the world for all the banks that want dollar based rates. jenna: i'm going to be the american federal reserve. why not. you come to me. said you need to borrow dollars. i give you dollars for what in exchange for euros or interest rate get paid back? >> it keeps the plumbing working in the system. it is extension of measure in september these same central banks initiated. it is extending that year-end and lowering cost to other banks. jenna: some say the euro will not survive the crisis in europe. if that happens are we out of luck what we lend out? >> the euro as currency will survive. me

mike santoli, associate editor of "barron's" magazine.in, mike, because you wrote a article how the higher gas prices could potentially or you're exploring this what happens in the stock market what effect would it have in the stock market. >> there is price the stock market would be upended yet. i don't think we're there yet. it would take uptick in price globally -- all the instability in the world we're talking about is growing global economy that actually demand more oil almost every day. so it is no the strictly about traders or the iranian situation driving prices higher. if we got a spike like we did in 2008 went from 100 to $150 a barrel really fast, that would be a bigger problem. jenna: some of the democrats, senator schumer suggested have saudis increase their out put. that will be quicker way to affect the market. >> yeah. jenna: when you hear something like that on the business side what goes through your head the effect might be? >> the problem it is not unlimited tap over there, right? you have diminishing returns. there is

mike santoli is editor at barron's, university of maryland economist, peter marici has served as chiefinternational trade commission and former u.s. secretary of labor elaine chao is a fox news contributor. welcome to our panel and welcome to your brady bunch boxes for the day, nice to have you with us. peter, we have seen private sector job growth. isn't that a good thing? >> but how much? we had 71,000 jobs. the private sector has to generate 300,000 jobs a month, ever month, until the end of 2013 for unemployment to get down to 6 percent if the government can manage not to shed any more jobs. at the pace we're making progress, president obama's great grandchild will be in the white house before we're out of this mess. jenna: elaine, how does the government step in and try to increase the pace of recovery? >> i think that's the whole problem with this administration, they think the government controls everything, and the government does not. the government's role is to create the environment in which the private sector can create jobs,ba that is the main problem with this economy. we

joining us now, mike santoli, associate editor with baron's magazine. payne, a stocks news contributor. steve moore, back with us senior economics writer at "wall street journal" expectations is everything and we look at the jobs report and wonder did they meet expectations or not? mike, president said throughout history it takes countries up to 10 years for countries to recover from a financial crisis of this magnitude. is 10 years realistic? >> i don't know if 10 years is realistic. when you talk about a credit crunch fair yo it takes awhile. this is the way unfortunately a mature advanced economy these days seems to recover. the rate of annual job growth over the last 12 months is not really that much lower than it was in the mid 2000s and early '90's coming out of those recessions even though they are shallower recessions. i think this is unsatisfying reality we have relatively slow growth. we don't have private businesses that see the impetus to getting a aggressive on the job front. i'm not really sure it is a matter of tweaks in policy that will

mike santoli is joining us on our panel, he's from barron's magazine, steve moore is also with us, he'sor "the wall street journal," jeffrey frankel, a harvard professor who was also economic adviser for bill clinton is joining us as well. mike, let me just start with you. if you could give a grade to the unemployment report, what grade would you give it today? is. >> well, it's probably in the c +/b -range, the the same grade you would have been giving it. it's better than fear, we didn't want to see a further deterioration in the labor force. we didn't see that. it stopped a string of more disappointing numbers. but really this is right on the 12-month average of net job gains somewhere around 160,000. so it's unsatisfying, but it's still steady, if uninspiring growth. jenna: jeff, one of the ways this was described this morning and the many commentators it's not bad enough to cause a panic, but not good enough to reaffirm all the policies that have been in place over the last couple years. how do you see it? >> well, i think 163,000 jobs created is a good number, it's better than exp

mike santoli associate editor for "barron's" magazine. welcome to you both. mike, what does it mean for our money. >> bottom line, it doesn't change very much in the average person's deposits loans, things like that. it means a recognition, by the way this was months in coming, we were sort of expecting this. a recognition that that economic conditions and regulatory conditions have worked against banks. they're going to be less profitable. they may have higher borrowing costs. it might be one more thing a bit of a headwind to the economy. i don't think though a real big surprise or a big change in behavior just in the short term for the banks. jenna: charlies is our financial system safe? >> that's one of those very loaded questions. i can't tell you what is going to happen in europe. part of this is a reaction what is going in europe. we know all the banks have deals with european banks. they underwrite insurance policies on bank debt over there. so this could be foretelling something bad if europe, if the financial crisis in europe doesn't stop i will disa

shapiro served as the undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs under president clinton, and mike santoli associate editor at barron's all joining us to discuss this topic, what would reagan do. welcome, gentlemen. you say reaganomics is the way forward, what makes you believe it would work now? >> well, when president reagan took office, he faced a large recession. right now we're in a much worse recession. we're in the worst job loss creation, job loss situation that we've had since world war ii. in 2007 6 3 americans of 18 and over -- the only time we've recovered that many jobs going back increasing the employment by 5% of americans 16 and over was during the reagan era, and what he did was cut taxes, deregulate and, most important, give moral support to private sector workers and let them know that industrialists and finance ears and workers were respected, honored and that the value of their investments were going to be greater in the future than they would be in a situation where those investments were not respected. jenna: sure. so, rob, cut taxes, deregulate, what do you think ab