cnbc's michelle caruso-cabrera joins me now from frankfurt. michelle, what is going on over there that is causing so much trouble? >> reporter: well, lester, many americans will remember the terrible financial crisis in the united states in the fall of 2008. what could potentially happen in europe is of the same size and scale. our crisis was caused by too many banks writing too many bad mortgages. here in europe, it is caused by the government's having made way too many promises to their people that they just don't have the money to pay for anymore. the reason it matters to the united states. when you add up all the countries in europe, collectively, this economy is even bigger than the united states. and if it goes into full scale crisis, it is going to have ripple effects all over the world because the global economy is so connected. back to you, lester. >> michelle caruso-cabrera in frankfurt this evening, thank you. >>> before the stock market opened this morning, we got the job numbers for july. there was a lot riding on them and they cam

cnbc's michelle caruso-cabrera joins us from cnbc global headquarters. michelle, what are the monday overseas market openings telling us so far. >> well, lester, 45 minutes ago new zealand opened slightly higher. looks like australia is going to open higher in about 15 minutes. gold is lower. u.s. futures are higher. right now it suggests that at least for now the markets are calmer than they were last week. still, there are a lot of key events coming up next week which could roil the markets. >> and so many concerns about europe. i understand european union officials are going to get together earlier in the week. how might that affect the markets? >> angela merkel, the leader of germany is meeting with the leader of france, nicolas sarkozy in paris. the state of the european union right now, the situation is very grave. there's discussions about whether or not they should kick out greece, the weakest member of the euro. that would be akin to us talking about kicking out one of the states in the u.s. and telling them they couldn't use the dollar anymore.

i'm joined by michelle caruso-cabrera, fitch's rating said the u.s. will keep its aaa rating. what impact will that have? >> probably just psychological, if anything. actually a lot of the turmoil after the s&p downgrade had very little to do with that. when they made that move, people actually bought a lot more u.s. government debt than they had before, because they still see it as a very safe place. what investors are focused on today is the situation in europe. the leaders in france and germany are having a big meeting. for decades they have been promising the members of europeanian society much bigger benefits than they have been able to pay for, and now really the bill is coming due. they have to figure out what exactly they are going to do. kind of like if you look fast forward to what we are discussing now in the united states. >> michelle caruso-cabrera, thank you so much. >>> a man charged with breaking into a home in australia and terrorizing a teenage girl has been arrested in this country. police believe is the man. peters was busted in louisville. joining mess is

. >>> for more on the global impact of all of this, we're joined by cnbc's michelle caruso cabrera in rome. what happens to markets where you are could well set the tone for the dow here tomorrow. >> reporter: yeah. absolutely, carl. and countries around the world seem rattled by the u.s. downgrade as well. markets in the middle east sunday, today, were opened and they tumbled badly. new zealand just opened. it's down as well. as for here in europe, ironically enough, they have even bigger debt problems. there are three countries here, portugal, ireland, and greece that cannot pay their bills without the help offa bailout. and the situation has grown so bad that just an hour ago, new measures were announced to help this country, italy, stem off any more problems. we'll see if that has an effect on worldwide markets as well tomorrow. carl, back to you. >> problems on both sides of the atlantic tonight. steve, does this downgrade from s&p hit americans' pocketbooks at home or not? >> there's plenty of confusion and concern about that, carl. we've never been in a situation where the worl

let's bring in cnbc's michelle caruso-cabrera. what are the markets looking for from bernanke's speech? >> they want to hear if he's going to offer up any more kind of stimulus. and when we talk about stimulus when it comes to the federal reserve, it's very different than when we talk about stimulus from the federal government. when the federal government talks about stimulus, we want to hear if there's going to be monetary stimulus, which would mean lower interest rates, or promises of much lower interest rates for a very long time. things to keep money pumping through the system. that speech is going to happen at 10:00 eastern time. we're going to get through that. and then we'll really see how trading is going to go. the other thing that we're watching very closely is what is going on in europe. the german market is down sharply again. down more than 24% in the month of august alone. and we're not done with august yet. so there's increasing concerns that maybe the situation in europe is worsening, and could that spill over to he

will soon be ringing on wall street, which means it's time for a market preview with cnbc's michelle caruso-cabrera. thanks so much, michelle. >> hi good, to see you. >> good to see you. >> weekly jobless claims. nancy pelosi says she is now focused on job creation. we learned this morning the number of people filing for unemployment last week was 400,000. that is now 17 weeks in a row that we see 400,000 or more people filing for unemployment. and that is generally too high for economists. they say that means that we're not going to move the unemployment numbers any time soon if we keep seeing those weekly numbers. right now it looks like the markets are going to open lower, sharply lower. that's because we had all this distraction in washington about what was going on related to the debt ceiling, they have real problems, really actually paying their bills over in europe and this morning a couple of european officials have raised their hands, said uncle and said things are worse than what we thought and we're going to have to do a lot more emergency measures to actually get things done. so we're g

. >>> michelle caruso-cabrera, thank you. >>> many people are looking to washington for solutions but apparently not many of us have much confidence in what d.c. could actually do. according to a brand-new "washington post" poll, nearly eight in ten of us are dissatisfied with the way the political system in washington is working. who's to blame for all of this, the answer is everyone. wendy schiler is an professor of political science at brown university. hello, wendy, thank you so much for joining us. >> my pleasure. >> clearly there's a lack of confidence in this country n wall street and it's ability to stabilize and also wanting washington to come up with a solution in dealing with this crisis. how do we as a nation get past all of this? >> we need leadership and we need leadership from both the president and the leaders of congress. people are calling on the president to bring back the congress early, because a lot of americans don't have the luxury of taking a vacation. they need to start working on a solution now. the committee they have appointed is a good start. you can't ha

cnbc's michelle caruso cabrera is here with the first word on wall veet. of chaos in the world at the moment. how does that affect the markets? >> uncertainty always affects the markets, usually negatively. this morning, we are seeing oil prices in europe move sharply down 3%. that's a pretty sharp move. now it appears the libyan rebels are in control, that maybe we will see libyan production of oil get back online sometimes in the next six months. there's a lot of uncertainty about that spill. there's been concerned about whether or not some of the actual facilities have been compromised in some way, how quickly they'll be able to get them up and running. but bottom line is, we expect that crude to come back online. libya supplied about 500,000 barrels a day to super. we haven't seen the same subsequent fall in prices here in oil in the u.s. that may be because we just saw oil prices fall dramatically over the last couple of weeks ago we got more and more data pointing to the possibility of another recession here in the united states. all that being said,

rings on wall street as investors hope to build on yesterday's gains and so we turn to cnbc's michelle caruso-cabrera for a market preview. a good day yesterday, some people joked because of washington clearing out because of the earthquake, a good day on wall street. what do we expect today? >> right now we're looking for a pretty flat open. it looked like things be negative and we would sell off a little bit, but we got good economic data, durable goods came in better than expected, durable goods, stuff that you're ordering that lasts longer than two years, so things like washing machines and cars and tough like that. so, that gave a little bit of ease to people who were worried about whether or not we are going into a recession in the united states. so, that's going to help us lift off the bottom. the question still is, though, what is ben bernanke, the head of the federal reserve, going to say on friday. there's a big event out in jackson hole, wyoming, it was a year ago that he announced a program of quantitative easing or hinting at it, and there are people who are wondering if he'll do it this