christina romer speaking with me exclusively in a little bit. we'll talk about the employment figures and whether mother nature is masking an economic comeback or a slowdown. you are watching cnbc, first in business worldwide. [ male announcer ] the new new york is open. open to innovation. open to ambition. open to bold ideas. that's why new york has a new plan -- dozens of tax free zones all across the state. move here, expand here, or start a new business here and pay no taxes for ten years... we're new york. if there's something that creates more jobs, and grows more businesses... we're open to it. start a tax-free business at startup-ny.com. bulldog: bulldog: mattress discounters presidents day sale ending? get a queen-size sealy gel memory foam mattress for just $497! and get four years interest-free financing on the entire tempur-pedic cloud collection. ♪ mattress discounters >>> welcome back. a yo-yo week for stocks. dominic chu recapping the ups an downs for us. >> let's talk about this because i have been talking to a number of traders

christina romer thought you needed to do something close to a trillion dollars not 800 billion dollarst out of this recession and malaise. they thought that couldn't be done because a tough political lift but a third side of this debate which is not an insignificant side which said we should have done more stimulus and not backed away from it in 2010 and we might be in a better situation. >> one of the things not talked about how much the white house franch franchised it out to the congress with programs specifically designed among other things to generate and rebuilt the infrastructure. why would you take one of the significant pieces of admission in your legislation and hand it over to the leadership? it didn't make sense then. >> as we think about where we were as a country then and what the american people did and the unified voice and electing president obama into office that time. we saw the backlash come 2010 and how things reversed to be a more divided government. but when it comes to health care and the stimulus and trying those heavy lifts as mika was pointed out, we know hea

madam president, before passage of the stimulus presidential advisor christina romer predicted the stimulus bill would -- stimulus bill would reduce the unemployment rate to 5% by 2014. in fact the employment rate has never come close to falling that low. last month's unemployment rate was 6.6% and if so many people hadn't dropped out of the labor force over the last several years that number would be even higher. if the labor force participation rate were the same as it was when president obama took office, our current unemployment rate would be a staggering 10.5%. despite the fact that the recession technically ended 55 months ago we're still nowhere near where we need to be in terms of economic recovery. cbs news reported on friday that the economy would have to gain an average of 285,000 jobs per month for the next three years just to get us back to where we were before the recession. job creation for the past year hasn't even come close to that. in fact, our economy has averaged just 180,000 new jobs per month approximately over the past year. if we continue at that same rate, it will

. >> we had christina romer on the program and she effectively said in not so many words she thought the taper was a mistake. i wonder how much of a minority view that is. is that just something that people certainly more dovish on the spectrum think or is that view more widely held? >> well, i mean, the tapering is pretty much baked into the cake here and deviating from it is going to cause quite an uphea l upheaval. she know that is. at the same time she cannot possibly be happy with those disinflationary forces taking over with the yields coming back down. she wants to reflinflate the economy. we're coming back from a great bust. monetary policy is pushing against that. when you take the foot off the accelerator, the deflationary forces are taking over. yellen does not like that. that's not in her camp of thought. she will think of something, probably not yet tomorrow, but the market is pricing in a hawkish fed and that's just not going to happen. we're setting ourselves up for a surprise, if not for tomorrow, then in early march. >> when while, david, the markets last week, incre