michael thomasky is in studio and we'll be joined soon by angela kelly.t of wisconsin, a medical clinic in wisconsin little egg on the face had to notify 2400 of their patients that they could become victims of identity theft because an outside cleaning company in the facility stole a lot of documents which had private information on it oops. social security, bank accounts and all of that good stuff, and those 2400 people had better be looking for protection. my suggestion is lifelock ultimate. it's what i have got, and encourage you to look into it. lifelock can't protect you or your bank account if you are not a member. call now and mention press 60 for 60 risk-free days. if you are not happy, call lifelock again within 60 days to cancel and you get a full refund. make the call to 1-800-356-5967 again for lifelock ultimate. congress out on president's day recess -- they not only get president's day off, they get the whole week off. the house has had two full weeks off. but there is a lot of activity on -- the white house released its outline of its plan

so, kelly, it's not going to be that bad, but sequestration is five days away. >> mark and angela, the american people want to know, is there a way to avert this crisis that we're now experiencing and many people are saying that it's a manufactured crisis, but the president, if you were paying attention to molly henneberg's story before we came to you. the president went on to say, we need to take a balanced approach on cuts on programs and close some tax loopholes that are taking advantage of. but house speaker john boehner as you know, says that the president needs to get the democrats acting in congress and we've got the back and forth going on. are you at all optimistic that a last minute deal could be done to avert the sequester? >> and i don't think that the-- >> mark, go ahead. >> yeah, go ahead, mark. >> i don't think that democrats are very optimistic, unfortunately, because we've had republican senators and congressman say out loud and publicly that they want the sequestration to happen. this is sort of, you know, they don't know what the real world consequences of this seque

kelly. we don't know what the middle class is today because the middle class continues to shrink. >> christy, what i hear angela saying and i don't want to put words in her mouth, but when you point an accusing finger at someone you've got four fingers pointed back at you. is it the american people's fault we're in the state that we're in. >> if the economy were a person, someone who had a life threatening ailment, made a miraculous recovery and still has a little bit after nagging cough. i absolutely agree that the economy, the growth is by historical perspectives, but at the same time a ton of positive signs all around. one is that the stock market is at its highest levels or near highest levels in five years and consumer confidence is still fairly high and we've yet again revised the jobs numbers in the last few months which means that we're basically creating about 150,000, $200,000 jobs a month and that's actually pretty good. >> what types of jobs are those? the bottom line is, you have college students graduating today, they can't obtain gainful employment so they can't pay back their student loans and w

kelly: thank you. >> congress can figure out a responsible way to deal with the looming financial crisis. angela mcglowan, and penny lee, joining me for this beautiful afternoon, ladies. >> thank you. >> we're not hearing any talk of compromise for a 11th hour deal being worked out. what are the consequences here and who will face the brunt of this, penny? >> well, unfortunately right now we're at a time in washington they don't face the crisis until it's absolutely the 11th hour. we see this time and time again and sequestration has been known. this has been out there the last part. better part of nine months and in part because the super committee failed to come up with an alternative to this plan and unfortunately, the cuts would be delayed and over a decade and we won't feel the immediate cause of it, so, congress is going to probably do what they usually do, which is kick it down the can and unfortunately deal with the next crisis which is potentially shutting down the government the end of march. >> we were just hearing from steve centanni about the cuts possibly to the military and who wi

kelly. this was in response to something berlusconi said about the possibility that mario monti had already signed an agreement with the democratic left party, the democracy party mr. bersani with the agreement with angela merkel. i don't think mario monti has hidden the fact that he's concerned about the influence, particularly the power of the union on the democratic party. if we look on the german side, the foreign minister said what they want ultimately is a party that's going to continue with the reforms, that's going to continue with the fiscal consolidation. i'm not sure there's anything new here. perhaps an argument, too, where angela merkel is concerned, the power she would least like to see in power is the -- in a few months time. we've talked a lot about politics. i want to get a sense of, too, the voice of the business in terms of what they need to see after this election. and i spoke to the ceo of the largest retail bank here in san paolo and we talked about this idea of reforms and a mandate for change. germany arguably had schroeder. i asked whether perhaps the most influential and important italian doesn't actually sit in this cup, but he sits at the head of the ecb. listen to what was s