thanks so much. >> thank you, maria. >> my thanks to ed lazear. up next "on the money," what the reform means for you, your doctors' appointments and medical bills. >> jimmy choos have adorned the feet of celebrities an fashion neat stas for years. i'll bring you the story of the woman behind the brand stepping out on her own. we'll take a look at how the stock market ended the week. back in a moment. we went out and asked people a simple question: how old is the oldest person you've known? we gave people a sticker and had them show us. we learned a lot of us have known someone who's lived well into their 90s. and that's a great thing. but even though we're living longer, one thing that hasn't changed much is the official retirement age. ♪ the question is how do you make sure you have the money you need to enjoy all of these years. ♪ >>> welcome back. the big story of this october, the other big story, the affordable care act. exchange are finally here, starting in 2014 millions of newly insured americans will flood the health care system. is the

joining me is ed lazear. good to see you again. thanks for joining us. >> nigh ce to be here. >> the treasury saying we'll hit the limit of what the government can spend on thursday. now the white house is talking to senate and house republican leaders and trying to come to an agreement, it sounds. there's been a shift in tone. how do you think this ends? would serious would a breech be, by the way? >> a breech would be quite serious. i don't think we're going to default on our debt. this is a different story from the government shutdown. we're talking about something like 5% of gdp or 20% of the government expenditure has to be financed borrowing. shutting that amount of expenditure down is a big deal. it's also a big deal in terms of what it implies for the future of the budget because we really, this is no longer about just thinking about obama care or whether we want to play partisan politics on that. in some sense that's a distraction. what we're talking about is the size of the government. these discussions are pretty serious

ed lazear, thank you, as always. on a three-month moving average basis, which is how many people in the fed look at the world and many economists, jobs are slowing substantially from about 250,000 earlier in the winter to about 150,000 right now. there it is. it's up on the full screen. i want to ask you if jobs are slowing by 100,000 by this measure, does this mean the entire economy is slowing? are we moving now closer to stall speed? >> well, the economy hasn't been particularly strong for the past two quarters anyway, actually three quarters, and the job market is reflecting that. to be honest, i wouldn't want to have my old job right now. this is not a pretty picture and it's not easy to spin. if you look at the numbers today, larry, we're basically seeing the kind of jobs report we've had for three, four years now. it's true we had 250,000 jobs for a short period of time, but the reality is that we've been between 150,000, 200,000 jobs and that's not enough to get us back to recovery speed. what we are doing is

powerful voices within the white house including our economic advisers, larry lindsey was one and and lazear -- they beat the drum and said, this is dangerous. the size of the balance sheet of these operations is really getting out of control. yet, the system kept rolling on. house prices kept going up. fannie mae stock keeps going up. intertwining of public- sector appointees to the private board for private gain was producing good news for everybody as well as good pay for everybody. it was kind of a situation where nobody had a strong interest in blowing the whistle. we tried to blow the whistle. we had proposals. but not just fannie mae and freddie mac but the whole concept of government support of the mortgage finance system was so popular on capitol hill that even today it is hard to break. >> a couple of things that i have never heard anybody answer, larry lindsey who was in the white house predicted that the iraq war was going to cost a couple hundred million -- billion dollars. others were saying 60 billion. all of a sudden, larry lindsey was gone. was he fired? larry -- first of al

. >> when we come back, former chairman of the council of economic advisers ed lazear will weigh in onw is up 46. bny mellon combines investment management & investment servicing, giving us unique insights which help us attract the industry's brightest minds who create powerful strategies for a country's investments which are used to build new schools to build more bright minds. invested in the world. bny mellon. ♪ running on empty, running into the sun but i'm running behind ♪ >>> well, going back one hour into trade here, the stories we're talking about, it's 7:33 on the west coast this morning, 10:33 down here on wall street. the ism manufacturing index posting a better than expected reading of 56.2. it is the highest level since april 2011. merck is the biggest gainer on the dow, up almost 2%, the drug company announcing that it's looking to cut 8,500 jobs. and walgreens is up today 3%. >> the question now is how long will the government shutdown last? john harwood is live with more on that. >> reporter: no definitive answer to the question. it's so far been playing out exactly as