biden, we'll get jerad's help. we'll also be joined by some of the top economic reporters in the country that have been covering this action today and the controversy that surrounds it. after the markets closed, an abc news report about the possibility of a downgrade frankly sent seven million stomachs lurching into 7 million throats. the u.s. government was bracing for a possible downgrade of the credit rating. but then what started off as an alarming story frankly became a weird story when a third government official told abc s&p had "made a serious mistake in its analysis base ed on flawed math and assumptions and the united states was fighting back against a potential downgrade." john harwood telling us after the s&p notified the administration they were going to downgrade, the treasury department argued to s&p that their math was wrong, that there were errors in the computation of their data, calculations that one source told john harwood were off by trillions of dollars. john harwood will be joining us for mo

more ahead with jerad bernstein, former chief economic advisor with vice president biden. energy is being produced to power our lives. while energy developement comes with some risk, north america's natural gas producers are committed to safely and responsibly providing decades of cleaner burning energy for our country, drilling thousands of feet below fresh water sources within self contained well systems and using state of the art monitoring technologies, rigorous practices help ensure our operations are safe and clean for our communities and the environment we are america's natural gas. >>> america, for my whole life and your whole life, no matter how old you are has had a aaa credit rating, being so trustworthy helps the government borrow money cheaply and in turn ordinary americans can borrow cheaply for homes, cars, student loans, anything else and american businesses can borrow cheaply too in ways that are not obvious always and usually we do not need to think about. in a way our whole life depends on america having a good credit rating. tonight it's been downgraded

jerad, take us to the larger economic impact of this. here we are in a very fragile economy, turns out our economic growth has been worse than we thought it was and the actual recession was deeper than we thought it was. >> true. >> we're going to pull money out of the economy now. one of the good news seems to be only $22 billion is coming out in the first year, when the economy will be the most fragile. but what do you see as the overall impact here? >> first of all on a somewhat positive note, the economic impact of putting the debt ceiling and a potential default behind us is obviously, clearly to the good. that's sort of like saying it feels really good i'm not banging myself in the head with this hammer anymore, because that was self-imposed hysteria, but many of us were getting nervous. you're right about the magnitude of the cuts in 2012, about twice that in 2013 in terms of reduced outlays, and that's -- that's a relatively small part of the story. i think what's much more worrisome, some of the kinds of things bob was starting

the politics are completely upsidedown telling us the opposite. >> jerad bernstein, senior fell low, msnbc contributor, hitting the nail on the head with the last comment there, thank you very much. >>> still ahead, the shutdown of a major government agency for fun and profit. what the heck is still going on with this thing with the faa? we've got details ahead. but i d. they said i couldn't fight above my weight class. but i did. they said i couldn't get elected to congress. but i did. now i'm trying to make it in music. ♪ sometimes when we touch ha ha! millions of hits! [ male announcer ] the new hp touchpad. get it now for $100 off, starting at $399.99. ♪ what if we designed an electric motorcycle? what if we turned trash into surfboards? whatever your what if is, the new sprint biz 360 has custom solutions to make it happen, including mobile payment processing, instant hot spots, and 4g devices like the motorola photon. so let's all keep asking the big what ifs. sprint business specialists can help you find the answers. sprint. america's favorite 4g network. trouble hearing on th

jerad bernstein, thank you for being here. fairly characterize the idea behind the fast infrastructure investment proposal? >> absolutely, and you heard mr. rubio talking about roads and bridges, one of the things that recommends fast, and i was there during the recovery act. i traveled around the country with the vice president and went going to work sites, and we saw lots of great roads and bridge projects, but one of the things we saw there is that work has become considerably more capital intensive. we want to make sure we're creating jobs for people, not for machines. fast, fix america's schools today, which would repair the country's schools, that work is labor intensive, insulation, boilers, windows, maybe even greening up these schools with solar panels. that kind of work puts a lot of folks back on the job. don't tell mark rubio about that part, but it does work. >> the idea this is a scalable problem that you can do this on a small level as one school or a big level as all the schools in the country, depending on wha

the politics are completely upsidedown telling us the opposite. >> jerad bernstein, senior fell low, msnbc contributor, hitting the nail on the head with the last comment there, thank you very much. >>> still ahead, the shutdown of a major government agency for fun and profit. what the heck is still going on with this thing with the faa? we've got details ahead. thank you for calling esurance. man, we give out so many car insurance discounts. safe driver discount, homeowner's discount... multi-car discount. i wish we could get discounts everywhere. body like a greek god discount at the gym. best moves discount at the disco. you guys are so funny. really? best actress discount. uncalled for discount. whatever discount. [ female announcer ] tons of discounts. see for yourself at esurance. technology when you want it. people when you don't. [ male announcer ] these days, even your trash can be a gold mine for identity thieves. ♪ we don't believe your garbage should be used against you. [ alarm blares ] we're lifelock. go to lifelock.com and join the fight against one of the fastest grow