the american economy seems to have picked up. the dow jones industrial average is hovering around 13,000, the highest since the financial crisis began in may 2008. the nasdaq is actually at its highest level since the technology bubble burst more than a decade ago. now, stock prices around everything, but data from the economy on the ground is also slowly getting better. jobless claims are down. housing starts are up. things do seem to be getting better, slowly, as i said, but surely. this is all good news for president obama because there is a very strong correlation between economic growth and a president's prospects for re-election. the unemployment numbers are still pretty high, but they are also falling. also, many models suggest that unemployment is not the crucial statistic to determine whether a president will win re-election. most people, after all, are employed. it is the rise in per capita gdp, the average person's income rise, that determines whether they feel things are getting better and thus whether they will vote

that's a centerpiece of concerns we hear about the challenges facing the american economy. and yet profits as a share of gdp are above the levels they were before the crisis. the profitability of industries that are in the public eye in terms of reform and regulation like energy and health care are very high. levels of productivity growths have been improving through the recovery. investment, private investment in equipment and software is up 30%. if you look at any measure of basic health of the business sector outside of construction, which is still way down by the crisis, the basic balance of american business levels or profitability, expected profitability, is very, very strong. the economy, though, is still suffering badly from all the aftereffects of the crisis. you can see it in high unemployment rates and you can see it in high levels of poverty in the weakness in construction. now, we have laid out -- i know they're tough and they are going to be controversial and i know you guys don't like the tax stuff in there but we have laid out a responsible, tough set of fis

the american economy seems to have picked up. the dow jones industrial average is hovering around 13,000. the highest since the financial crisis began in may 2008. things do seem to be getting better. this is good news for president obama because there's a strong co-correlation between economic growth and a president's prospects for re-election. the unemployment numbers are still pretty high, but they are also falling. also, many models issing that unemployment is not the crucial statistic to determine whether a president will win re-election. most people after all are employed. it is the rise in per capita gdp. the average person's income rise that determines whether they feel things are getting better and, thus, whether they will vote for the incumbent or seek a change. so does that mean that the economy and the president are in good shape? well, they're in better shape than they looked six months ago. many of the crisises that people worried about now seem unlikely to completely derail american growth. mario and the european c

quality of education, access to training opportunities so americans come out of college or community college with better skills and the skills the economy most needs today. as you know, there are millions of jobs that go unfilled today because employers cannot find americans with those skills in engineering, for example, very important for us to fix that. the infrastructure investments the president proposes are good economic strategy because they improve the competitiveness of american business but they also have the benefit of creating substantial employment opportunities for americans in construction who are still bearing most of the burden for the cost of the crisis. so those are just some examples. i think you're right, that's a good prism through which you should view these proposals, you should look at these against the alternatives and this package of things is a very strong framework of programs to help improve not just retirement security and health care security, but opportunity for middle class americans. >> i just want to underscore this point. if we don't help the middle class families, the recovery's going to be much long

i cannot tell you what level of risk is acceptable to take with the american economy but there is risk and further stimulus. one reason for caution is that the optimistic estimates seem not to apply to the current situation. for example, economists find that stimulus is in effective when, one, it's operating under an exchange rate, two, free to trade with other nations and, three, highly indebted to another nation. the congress will find that the multipliers are large only when the stimulus is necessary. they also find that it's large only when stimulus measures are modest. this is especially relevant in today's context when government has already undertaken massive stimulus projects. there are real risks. a recent study of 91 countries have found that those governments that use the policy aggressively and that instability in turn diminishes economic growth. one problem is that there's a wide way that it ought objeto b implemented and can be counterproductive. in reality, however, it's very difficult to sometimeimultaneout all criteria. more than half of the money slated for investment

americans who qualify as poor. well, no. the number from the oecd, the association of the world's developed economies, is actually 17.3% of americans poor. and how do we compare with other rich countries? we rank 31st of the 34 countries that make up the oecd. of the 34 member states, only mexico, chile and israel are worse off than we are. the uk has a poverty rate of 11%. germany, 8.9%. and france, 7.2%. they're all much lower. the oecd average is 11%, well lower than ours. let's look at another chart. this one's even more worrying for americans. the percentage of children living in poverty. we come in at 20.6% of our children. again, far worse than other rich countries. japan, australia, the uk, germany and france all have much better numbers. mitt romney spoke about how he would fix the safety net for the poor if it needs repair. well, let me suggest one place it desperately needs repair. and that is in the area of child poverty. now, whatever the causes of poverty, when children grow up in desperate circumstances, circumstances that they had no role in creating, studies show that they will be more likely to drop out of high sc

us correct yep salut i think when we talk about the chinese economy a lot of the anti china stuff that relates to housing you know the americanshave for twenty years lived in a printed money transfer payment military industrial complex economy they just went through a housing bubble so they believe everybody should have a housing bubble what they don't realize here is half of the homes in china have been paid with cash the other half have at least thirty percent downpayment so there is no credit bubble so to speak in housing. china has experienced somewhat of you could slow down if you could call it a slowdown you know eight or nine percent g.d.p. growth but really what the people forget is that this is an engineered slowdown chatto wanted to slow down the economy growing at twelve percent a year it was too fast with the high inflation environment with with all these central banks continually printing money last year a corporate loan now in china is nine percent. there's direct korean laws to stop people from purchasing homes so you can only literally purchased one home right now you can't purchase another one if you already o

the american economy is the best performing economy in the developed world. you have been helping that. and the attack on what the fed has been doing to try to keep you from continuing to encourage the right kinds of things in europe are about as disasterous a prescription to american policy and i hope you continue to ignore them. >> thank you mr. chairman. mr. bernanke, will you tell me if you do your own shopping at the store some. >> yes i do. >> so you are aware of the prices. nobody believes that prices are going up. people on fixed incomes, they are hurting and the middle class is hurting. their inflation rate is very much higher than the government tries to tell them and that is why they lose trust in government. but you know, this whom idea of prices and debasement of currency, if you loan me $100 and two years from now i gave you $90 back, you would be upset. but we are paying that money back and it's worth ten or 15 or 20% less and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. it's upsetting. but it theft, if i do not give you your full hundred d

our budget helps to create an american economy that's built to last by strengthening our nation's healthare, supporting research that will lead to tomorrow's treatments and cures, and promoting opportunity for america's children and families, so everyone has a fair shot to reach their full potential. it makes the investments we need right now to keep our economy going in the right direction, while rueducing the deficit in the long-term, to make sure the programs that millions of americans rely on will be there for generations to come. now, i look forward to our dialogue and answering questions about the budget, but first i want to just share some of the highlights. over the last two years, we've worked diligently to deliver the benefits of the affordable care act to the american people. thanks to that law, more than 2.5 million additional young americans are already getting coverage through their parent's health plans. more than 25 million seniors have taken advantage of free recommended preventative services under medicare. as small business owners are getting tax breaks on their health

to the kaiser a part of downtown are up at the ballot yeah sharecropping plantation known him american economy ok let's go to shanghai and speak with dan collins of the china money report dot com dan collins welcome back to the kaiser report thanks max good to be back all right dan collins you say that americans are sharecroppers in their own country explain yeah this rejuvenated from an article i wrote trying to get my mind around the concept of oh all of these good decades of printed money and trade surpluses are going to get recycled back into the american economy. leave it to us now the many of the politicians and if you thought leaders there believe that we can continue to print money to get our way out of this but what they forget is that debts have owners and you look at china now with three point two trillion in currency reserves japan over a trillion i believe a lot of this money now sitting in asian central banks are going to fight its way back into united states back into europe by you know real companies. we saw on christmas this year two thousand and eleven. japan and china signed

market opens expectations that american economy created hundred fifty thousand new jobs fall into a gain of joinder thousand back in december a lot of investors will be waiting for that number and we have seen on the sidelines we might see a poison in there ali if we look at the valuations they're still not very demanding and if you look at the russian market for example it is trading at less than six times earnings and just back in june of trade at about a half nine times earnings so there's been a very significant drop in the valuations in the market and in in the indexes and also in the valuations of their of the russian companies. the global banking sector is getting increasingly anxious about its future according to a new survey by consultancy you say it shows concerns about new bank ups is buying king nationalizations have reached the highest level in thirteen years b w c has told bankers from almost sixty come tryst the debt crisis in the euro zone is considered the biggest risk the survey has also shown that russian banks are less prepared to face the economic dangers than the fo

share there is so much uncertainty but financial uncertainty in europe is a need to stimulate american economy which is being done in effect by printing money political instability in syria and iran the only way out of these issues is for one of the window dollar euro to be devalued against real assets and people have learnt about this as a as a trick form problem by the government so they want to protect themselves and go is indeed wealthy people are physically buying small boats and gold as wealth insurance to stop them suffering at the hands of massive devaluation of money probably some somewhere around somewhere around two thousand average for the two thousand and twelve. debt problems in the e.u. have spurred concerns over financial stability and a number of other economies including russia's around half of the country's turnover depends on your eyes and states but the head of russia's biggest underspend bank believes better times around the corner. we do we see that europe is already in recession and it has an impact on russia we see that we currently have relatively low growth rates but

how is it that our economy stopped working for the broad majority of americans? how did our political and financial class shift the benefits of the economy to the very top, while saddling us with greater debt and tearing new holes in the safety net? in other words, how did politics create a winner-take-all economy? well, it didn't happen by accident. this was an inside job, politically engineered by wall street and washington working hand-in-hand, sticky fingers with sticky fingers, to turn the legend of robin hood on its head -- giving to the rich and taking from everybody else. it's all on the record. the richest of the rich was citigroup, at one time the world's largest financial institution. when the 2008 meltdown hit, the bank cut more than 50,000 jobs, and taxpayers shelled out more than $45 billion to save it. so how are citigroup executives doing these days? nicely, thank you. last year, its ceo, vikram pandit, took home almost $2 million in salary, almost $4 million in deferred stock. stock options that may be worth as much as $6.5 million, and a $16 mill

these improvements are signs of the underlying resilience of our economy, resourcefulness of american workers and businesses and they're signs of the importance of the swift and forceful actions we took with the fed to stabilize the financial system and pull the economy out of the worst financial situation. we face significant challenges particularly for the average working family in this country. americans are still living with the acute damage caused by the crisis, the unemployment rate is still very high. millions of americans are living in poverty, still looking for work, suffering from the fall and value of their homes, struggling to save for retirement or pay for college. and for these reasons, the president's budget calls for substantial additional support for economic growth and job creation alongside longer trm reforms to improve economic opportunity, improve long term growth prospect and restore fiscal sustainability. i want to applaud the congressional leadership for the progress they've achieved. they've reached on agreement to extend the payroll tax cut and emergency unem

at the same time, the american economy was on fire. the finance, insurance and real estate economy took off in the united states. i think all of us have heard the term, financial engineering. i'm a graduate of harvard business school. financial engineering was their schtick. that's what they wanted to do. it wasn't over the nuclear engineering or chemical engineering, it was across the river at the business school. and every other business school in america, if you wanted to make it in america, you had to be a financial engineer. and so we saw the fire economy grow. corporate finance, not corporate finance, but wall street finance, insurance, real estate. and throughout the 1990's, it peaked out. and the best and the brightest in america decided they didn't want to be in manufacturing. after all, that was a dirty, greasy job, they wanted to be financial engineers in real estate, insurance and wall street finance. we know where that got us. we got that what that did to us was great us into the great bubble from 2000 to 2007 and the great

in a difficult time in a disparate desperate need of real solutions to get americans back to work to create a sustainable economy the benefits not just the top one percent but all americans and to make the united states competitive once again in the global marketplace we're also here to discuss what ideas won't work and why and i will set the record straight and offer specific and popular policies that congress and president obama can get to work on immediately to get us back on track we're going to focus tonight on three main questions number one why and how we almost plunged into a second great depression a few years ago to what kind of future will americans have if conservatives control the economy and finally three how do we rebuild the american dream luckily we're not alone to find answers to find answers to these questions in fact we're joined by some very very impressive panel alongside me here in the studio robert borsak the co-director of the campaign for america's future and a center for ideas an action that works to build an enduring majority for progressive change campaign for america's future also r

these improvements are signs of the underlying resilience of our economy, resourcefulness of american workers and businesses and they're signs of the importance of the swift and forceful actions we took with the fed to stabilize the financial system and pull the economy out of the worst financial situation. we face significant challenges particularly for the average working family in this country. americans are still living with the acute damage caused by the crisis, the unemployment rate is still very high. millions of americans are living in poverty, still looking for work, suffering from the fall and value of their homes, struggling to save for

. >> postal service is still very vital to the american economy and american society. we realize that. people realize that. we have to stay profitable in order to provide service to the american public. we'll move people from one place to the other. in some cases we move employees for one job to another. we want to work with the people that can retire in order for them to go we'll be here for a long, long time. we have to get our financial house in order right now. >> sheez changes would bring huge cost savings but also lay the foundation for a finally stable future postal service that will continue to serve our customers for many years to come. >> thank you. before i go forward with the presentation i just want to make a couple of kmebts. i think it's important we understand why there are 252 studies going on across the united states there was no facility selected based on any criteria that was specific to performance. the employees are outstanding. this is the network realignment of the postal service. and it's based on looking at the network that changes that we're

now, these improvements are signs of the underlying resilience of our economy, the resourcefulness of americanorkers and companies, and the importance of the swift and forceful actions we took to save the financial system and pull the economy out of the worst economic crisis since the great depression. i want to emphasize this. we still face very significant economic challenges. particularly for households and families across the country. americans are still living with the acute damage caused by the crisis. unemployment rate is still high. millions of americans are living in poverty still looking for work, suffering from the fall in the value of their homes. struggling to save for retirement or to pay for college. and we face as you both said, unsustainable fiscal deficits. in the face of these challenges, the president's budget calls for substantial additional support for economic growth and job creation. alongside longer term reforms to improve economic opportunity and to restore fiscal responsibility. most urgently and i want to start with this as the chairman did, congress must extend the

that is tipecal in the american economy and the deficit is a big over hang. they agree we need to be more nuanced. people working in the f.b.i. and nsa that are going to prevent iran from tacking. >> wait a minute. but the federal work force grew under the wight white by more than 100,000 and deprow more with obama care. >> more growth to come. >> who creates the wealth in the society. it is the private secretarior. not the public. the private sector should get the benefit and not government workers. >> why the president's new budget could hit you in the drug store. that's next. distill all that data. make information instinctual, visual. introducing trade architect, td ameritrade's empowering web-based trading platform. take control of your portfolio today. trade commission-free for 60 days, and we'll throw in up to $600 when you open an account. like a ramen noodle- every-night budget. she thought allstate car insurance was out of her reach. until she heard about the value plan. dollar for dollar, nobody protects you like allstate. dollar for dollar, 2:30 i

go a long way becoming less dependent on oil and diverse mying our supply and we'll help the american economy and the american consumer. >> the energy secretary testifying on capitol hill. the second week of hearings. as members of the president's cabinet, secretary of state hillary clinton discussing respective budgets for cabinet agencies. to talk about issues, included in this case, gas prices. john boehner noting that american families and small businesses are struggling with rising gas prices, we pressed the president to again present specific details for what he called a comprehensive energy plan. here's what the speaker said about gas prices. >> americans understand that we can produce more of our own energy and they don't understand why 35 years since the oil embargo of 1974, that we have never had a natural energy policy. we got a handful of environmental groups, radical economic groups, who stood in the way and it's just about time that we have a national energy policy. enough of it. get out of here. >> a little humor it was a reference to a question that reporters had about the 201

but there are pockets of the american economy where credit is tighter than it needs to be, including in the mortgage finance, and for many small businesses. and as you know, we have a broad array of programs in place to help improve access to credit and capital for small businesses and small banks. just to give you one example, banks participating in the small business lending fund have increased their small business lending by $3.5 million. just in the last several months, which is a 10% increase over the base line level. just to give you another example, there's a small business lending survey that thompson reuters puts out, the most recent in november of 2011, which showed the volume of small business lending loans is up nearly 20%. from a year ago. now, there are also promising bipartisan efforts in congress designed to improve the ability of small banks to access -- or small businesses to access small capital in both the private and public financial markets. earlier this week the president sent congress his startup america legislative agenda to help move this process along. even

turning in major deficits toward the path of prosperity, we should be in the golden age of the american economy right now. let me ask you this question. how does this recovery tract with the reagan recovery? senator phil graham has estimated that if the economy tracked under the obama administration as it did under the reagan administration, as you recall reagan inherited double digit unemployment, double digit inflation, mile long lines around gas stations, interest rates at 21.5%. graham estimates that if the economy tracked today as it did under the reagan years, at this point of the administration, there should be 16 million more americans working with per capita income, $4,000 higher than it is today. do you have a comment on that? >> no doubt, congressman, this recovery has been very unusually weak by u.s. historical experience and we've shown chunks like that. >> one final quick question, and that, is last year we had a number of experts, including yourself, of warn that we were about five years away at best from a sovereign debt crisis. >> your time is expired. >> where are we today? >>

europe is going to its own financial problems, the american economy is looking to edge out of a difficultmand for chinese goods. that edges the economyç down ad would lead the government to put more money. that could have an and -- in effect in inflation. there will stay in a holding pattern and see what happens before taking any decisive major çaction. >> thank you for that update. russian scientists have been drilling for decades. >> i know a man who can. there have been drilling down to a leak buried 4, bears under the league. it is believed to contain living organisms that have been hidden for 20 years -- 20 million years. >> on the surface it is the coldest place on earth. beneath that are to cut their more than 300 sub-glacial lakes. most have not frozen thanks to heat from the center of the years. but to delay, the russians have had to pierce through 3,000 meters a vice. the scientists said they have made a breakthrough. reaching a lake six times the size of luxembourg. we do not know what the climate was all that time ago. what sort of bacteria existed then. how the genesis of w

it is not a bridge issue, it's a jobs issue. [ applause [ applause ] one-third of the north american economy can be found by circling chicago to montreal. we're right in the middle. let's not let special interests hold back job creation, especially since the project can be done without any michigan taxpayer dollars. [ applause ] second, a number of our cities and schools are suffering major financial distress. this problem is not a new one, but it's an important topic we should fully address in 2012. when i came into office, we had six cities or school districts under emergency financial management. last year, one more joined the list. there is a lot of speculation as to why jurisdiction got in trouble. the overriding feature is they lost population without a cost structure. the long-term answer is not just about cutting costs. it is how to create a financially solid foundation so that growth can occur again. [ applause ] the state's role is to help jurisdiction solve their own problems. in that regard, we passed the fiscal accountability act. often known as pa 4. first, it helps communities

the case that given how well the he is at this particular time with what has happened in the american economy, while we do not necessarily paid at folk who are rich, might it be the wrong time for -- not necessarily hate folks who are rich, might it be the wrong time for someone like him to run for office? >> priuquite possibly. you have a broad sense in the economy, not only in the minority community, which has suffered enormous losses of wild and as you have covered in the housing bubble. not only in the upper wide class community, bobby middle class. -- but also in and middle class. there is a sense that wall street has behaved irresponsibly. everything that they have done to fix the economy since to dominate have disproportionately done what broke the economy before 2008. if the democrats can tighten romney to the idea of manipulating and pushing paper and getting rich -- i'm surprised that break santorum has not made more of that argument with his manufacturing focus. but that the bigger vulnerability than the sheer size of his bank account. tavis: if mr. romney as expected pulls off flo