joining me now is geg i and author of "the economist" and jerry webman, chief economist at oppenheimer funds. thanks for joining us. >> hi. >> greg, let me kick this up with you. president obama's pick for treasury secretary, chief of staff, jack lew, will take over for timothy geithner. is this a missed opportunity to be friendly to business, the business community, or is this a new call since it appears that nobody on earth knows this better than mr. lew. >> well, i think jamie dimon would build business between the community which feels a little bit alienated by the administration's first-term policies and mr. obama. but what they got is a guy -- not one of them, but does know the budget really well and the clearly the main challenge on the economic front for the first year is going to be on the fiscal front. insofar as jack lew has the trust of the president is in power to make deals, i would say that is is a positive. you do have to keep in mind he's not exactly the most trusted or liked person among republican on capitol hill. so that might actually make deal making a little bit

see you soon. >>> greg ip, jerry webman.s students think of tomorrow's economy and how we can teach ourselves into the future. the president of harvard university is with me. >>> and then is buzz worth billions? how to build a news company in a digital age. why sharing angry cat pictures may just save journalism. >>> welcome back. as college education's high cost continues to rise, some families are forced to opt out for financial reasons. how does that impact business on campus? joining me right now is drew faust, the first female president of harvard university. president faust, good to have you on the program. >> thank you. great to be here. >> so we had news this week from moody's investor service that demand for four-year college degrees is going down. it is softening, leading to declines in net revenue for many universities. i realize harvard is in a unique position. tell me what you see broadly speaking out there in terms of the demand, in terms of the numbers of students coming into four-year colleges and even higher

. >> joining us now, jerry webman. jerry, good morning. >> good morning. >> what's the mood, jerry, as the fed meets today? we know when we got the minutes a couple of weeks ago, markets read tightening into that. are we at a point still where the fed is going to maybe be talking more about an exit than a sticking to the current course? >> i would be -- we don't know what they're going to talk about behind closed doors. of course, they're not going to do a news conference afterwards this time. so we'll have limited knowledge of what they're really thinking about. but, you know, they've been very clear about what they're looking for, how far away they think it is. i think there may be some growing -- i don't know whether to call it skepticism or optimism that the numbers might get a little better before they expected them to. but we kind of know what to expect. and i don't think the market is holing its breath, waiting for the fed to tell us anything very different from what we've heard now for the last couple of meeting

joining us is chief economist jerry webman at oppenheimer funds. y, you see when you look around, there aren't too many tail winds in terms of the macroeconomic picture. that's not good news. we're looking at slow growth? >> i think we're looking at slow growth. there are some places in the world that growth is picking up. china came out with nebs that were better than we can expected. some of the emerging markets are better than we expected. but this is not going to away market here driven by macroeconomic excitement. it's going to be driven by companies that are able to figure out how to produce some growth and what's going to be an economic and political environment. that's going to be the story for 2013. >> we get a lot of people who come in who it seems to me lately there's a big divergence. there are those who are optimistic about things and think things will go well. others that say, forget it, we've seen all the gains. which camp would you put yourself in? >> i guess i'm not wholistically in either camp. it's more an optimist than a pessimis