. >> and another french stock up today, bnp paribas. nearly 3%. an increase in net income. revenue down on weak trading and it's fixed income unit. stephane has been speaking to the ceo and joins us now from paris. how does he seem when he spoke to him, stephane? >> well, the numbers are quite strong. we were expecting a full decline of the net profit on the quarter. bnp announced a 2.4% increase in the net profit for this quarter. ways the first french bank to report for this quarter. the division posted almost an 11% decline of its revenue. it is in line with the rest of the banking sector in europe. >> our belief is that the result with income for that type of activity is very much in line as far as we can see. the results that are being communicated since last week, of course, were not giving, i would say, guidance for the months to come. >> the ceo of the bnp paribas says that the bank will not require additional capital as a result of the stress test in europe, which it believes also will improve the confidence across the european banking sector. market reaction was v

chief economist for north america at bnp paribas. good to stick around.re you dealing with this withdrawal from the jobs? >> it's not easy, ross. it's not easy. this is the highlight of our month. so it will be a very quiet friday. >> we don't quite know what to do. just give us some thoughts, your view on the actual strength of the u.s. economy. how much more strength is there to come in housing and where is job creation coming from? >> well, so on the housing front, it's been disappointing how quickly housing demand rolled over as mortgage rates rose. you can look at a 4.5% mortgage rate and say that's extremely low by historical standards and yet consumers backed away pretty quickly. so that's been a big disappointment. we'd like to see if it doesn't bounce back some. but it does seem to be less of a driver of momentum going into 2014. who is driving job growth? it's been premly driven by the service sector. there is a notion of a manufacturing renaissance in the u.s. and the manufacturing sector is doing fine. but it's not really a job creator in the