a debate between two great economists, jeffrey sachs and kenneth rogoff. then, everyone is worried about an islamic takeover in egypt, about the imposition of sharia. well, we got to one of the leaders of the muslim brotherhood to ask what would they do if they did win the elections? >>> next up, germany and switzerland are shutting down their nuclear plants. what is the future of nuclear energy? i'll talk to the brilliant inventor nathan myrhvold about that and why america finds itself losing this race to innovate. we'll do more on innovation tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific in a special report with "time" magazine called "restoring the american dream: how to innovate." set your alarms, your dvrs, maybe even your vcr. but if you have a vcr, you're not being very innovative these days. >>> any ai, here's my take. all the talk in the united states and europe is about deficits and debt. in washington, the battle over the debt ceiling continues. but let me tell you about the real crisis we face in america, and europe has its own version of this, a cri

a debate between two great economists, jeffrey sachs and kenneth rogoff. >>> and then -- everyone is worried about an islamic takeover in egypt, about the impoe significance. we got to the leader of the muslim brotherhood, asking what would they do if they win the elections? >>> germany and switzerland are shutting down their nuclear plants. what is the future of nuclear energy? i'll talk to brilliant inventor nathan myrhvold about that and why america finds itself losing in this race to innovate. tonight we'll have a special report with "time" magazine called "restoring the american dream -- how to innovate" suspect set your alarms, your dvrs, even your vcrs. come to think of it, if you have a vcr, you're not very innovative. >>> all the talk in the united states and europe is about deficit and debt. in washington the battle over debt ceiling continues. let me tell you about the real crisis we face in america and europe has its own version of this. a crisis that could cripple america's economy and its society and would make the debt problem much, much worse. it is america's job cris

. >> joining me now is kenneth rogoff professor of economics at harvard university. thank you for having me here. >> do we need to get our debt under control or hurt our economy in the near term? >> we need to think about the trajectory of our debt. it is at a high level. unfortunately, the economy is very weak and not easy to have quick fixes on that side. not getting a lot of tax revenues. that is the biggest problem. >> what about cutting spending? cutting is aggressively you're hearing cutting deeply. could that hurt the economy more in the near term? >> yeah. working how weak the numbers are recently, jobs weren't as good as people had hoped, i think it's a little hard to rush things and you have to get the trajectory right. it's hard to move a big ship like this quickly. we're going in the wrong direction, no doubt about that. we do have to do something. greece got the lowest credit rating in the world recently. we're not there yet. but in 15 years. if we don't do something, we will be. >> in the meantime, we rely on the thoughtful economic analysis of our elec