ackman's outside attorney on mbia.o our guest host today is bill ackman of pershing square capital management. thank you for joining us this morning. >> glad to be here. >> this is something we've been talking about through the course of the morning, what happened with mbia when bill laid out his plan, told people what he thought he was going on at the company and then was attacked by the s.e.c. and attorneys general. what do you do in a situation like that? >> well, we should have had a perfect situation because bill set out, when he took on this -- what turned out to be a crusade, he laid out everything that he had figured out about mbia in a very public document, which he posted on the website, told the whole world he was taking a negative bet. he thought the company was overleveraged, undercapitalized, underreserved. then he said, agree with me or don't agree with me, but here's all my analysis. and he published a very lengthy report, all based on public information. so he should have had a great start. and then wh

. >> guest: since the and ackman of that legislation, the expenditure of a lot of federal money, 18 states have lowered their standards. that's not what this is about. >> host: unique common testing. >> guest: you do need, testing. i think that's perfectly fine. when i was secretary of education, i beefed up the so-called national assessment education progress. and some people react hard to the people i uploaded that i uploaded as chair and co-chair, hillary clinton, wife of the governor of alabama. and lamar alexander, governor of tennessee at the time that they turn out to be too great people for that job. this is one of the best assessments we have formation whether our kids are getting mad. now this issue is i think it's sputnik again. because we now know what it costs us. if we are focus on our fiscal house and economic recovery, we know what it costs us not to have good sound educational. it costs us a a countably. >> host: what you think a president obama's reauthorization of the element and secondary education act, no child left behind law? >> guest: there are things here that i li

also look at what sears did taking out a -- ackman's 17% stake up in sears canada. now sears controls 90% of sears canada. so it is just overall interesting the theme of consumer discretionary m&a. >> let's put our ear to the wall. cnbc contributing editor gary kaminsky joins us on the fast line. you've been watching whirlpool and you think washing machines could help us predict what washington and specifically the fed might do next. why? >> hey, melissa, how are you doing? by the way, we're going to have to maybe have malloy get those out of the box graphics because listening to the show i think i'm going to take a different take in terms of what happened with the financials today. i actually think whirlpool is one of my mentors in the business, mark howell said there are certain companies you can absolutely identify as direct indicators of the economy. whirlpool before the merger with maytag, these are companies you continuity can't fudge the numbers, they are the economy. when the whirlpool numbers came out today you saw this dramatic, dramatic jernlgs of free ca