little bit of compromise. >> joining us our guests to uncover how billionaire investor such as pete petersonhave helped reshaped the national debate on the economy, the debt, and social spending. between 2007 and 2011, peterson personally contributed nearly $500 million to his peter g. peterson foundation to push for congress to cut social security, medicare and medicaid while providing tax breaks for corporations and wealthy. peterson served as secretary of commerce under richard nixon and went on to serve as chair and ceo of lehman brothers. he co-founded the private equity firm the blackstone group. joining us is john nichols whose latest piece is, "the austerity agenda: an electoral loser." it is part of a major exposÉ based on a new website called pete peterson pyramid. lisa graves is an editor of the site, which links billionaires like pete peterson to the campaign to fix the debt. john nichols, lay out who pete peterson is and how he fits into this picture of sequester that we look like we're about to see by the end of the week. >> pete peterson is an old school moderate republican. h

meet pete peterson. peterson is a wall street mogul who has spent an estimated half a billion dollars protecting rich investors at the expense of the 99% of americans. you see, peterson is behind the group fix the debt. the group claims spending is way out of control, and we need deep cuts in the entitlement programs. the figureheads for fix the debt are these guys, the austerity brothers, erskine bowles and alan simpson, and believe me, they don't have to worry about their retirement being lost or their pension or their health care. now the current issue of "the nation" magazine reports peter timed the launch of this new $60 million campaign to exploit the wrangling over the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling and the sequester, the misinformation campaign has worked. a bloomberg poll on the size of america's budget deficit shows 62% of americans think the deficit is getting bigger. 28% of americans think that it's staying the same. and get this number, only 6% agree with the truth. my friends, the deficit i