alison kosic live tonight. thanks. more perspective now. mark zandy is the chief analyst for moody's analytics. mark, i want to begin with you. a lot of americans even now, some are still saying why does this brouhaha, this dysfunction in europe affect me? help them understand it. >> well, europe is our largest trading partner. a lot of companies have big ex-poesh tours what goes on in europe and our banks do as well. they do a lot of business with european banks. if europe is struggling, if the european economy is in recession it's going to have a ripple effect on us through trade, through the stock market, through the banking system. you know, we are literally tethered at the hip with europe. i think our economy could digest a mild european recession, but it could not digest a severe recession. it would drag us down, too. >> david, as we watched this play out we know and alison just mentioned there is dysfunction here in washington about the super committee. the u.s. deficit reduction plan. we'll get to that in a moment. we just saw the p