let's bring in rick newman with "u.s. news & world report." st time you were on this show, you were saying folks in washington aren't thinking beyond the beltway. my conversation with rick right after this break. that one day on the red hills of georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. i have a dream today! [ male announcer ] chevrolet is honored to celebrate the unveiling of the washington, d.c., martin luther king jr. memorial. take your seat at the table on august 28th. >>> we're waiting for speaker boehner to speak. here we go. speaker boehner. let's take it live. >> good afternoon, everyone. in january, our first week that we were sworn into office, the president asked for an increase in the debt ceiling. and i made clear at that time that there would be no increase in the debt ceiling without significant cuts in spending and changes to the way we spend the american people's money. shortly after that, i was in new york and gave a speech and outline

want to bring in rick newman. let's talk with rick.ou talked with poppy and talked about some things going on that are not terrible. let's talk about some things not going wrong right now. want to put this on the screen just to give you a sense of what it is. number one, stocks are cheap, and i put a maybe around that, because some people think they are priced maybe where they should be. you just talked, brooke, to poppy about record low mortgage rates, home prices low, home affordability and oil prices are down again, lower gas prices than we were several months ago. gold at a new record, for those of you with gold fillings and gold necklaces and things like that, and unlike 2008, rick, we do not have a credit freeze. there is enough on that screen to make some kind of an economic cake. >> well, that's good news for somebody. certainly not glossy about the economy. all these problems are totally real and we could be in another recession right now, but there's a lot of reason to think that it won't be as bad as last time, and it may no

rick newman is the chief business correspondent for "u.s. news and world report." good to talk to you. to what do you attribute such intense nervousness on the part of investors? >> it's worth pointing out there's no big piece of bad news today. i think this is kind of a delayed reaction to a lot of bad news we have been getting over the last few weeks, and you're starting to hear a lot more concern that we may actually be going back into another recession, and some people say we might actually be in one right now. last week we saw numbers for growth so far this year went way down. they were much worse than people were expecting. >> almost stagnant. >> that's right. the phrase that you're hearing now among economists is stall speed. they're saying the u.s. economy is hitting stall speed which means it's not generating any momentum of its own for hiring to pick up, for companies to spend or for consumers to spend. then we've got problems in europe with italy now and there's no good news and there's sort of a continued piling up of bad news. >>he thing is that you ha

i'm joined by rick newman, chief business correspondent for "u.s. news and world report." jobs is going to remain as the chairman but considering significant health problems, his battle with pancreatic cancer, a liver transplant. if he continues to suffer the ill effects of bad health, how effective can he be, even in the chairman role? >> i think a lot of people are asking that question now. some people say steve jobs hasn't been running apple for the last six months. he's been on medical leave. this issue has been popping up for five years. there have been a lot of worries about the so-called succession plan at apple. now we know what the succession plan is. i think there's some relief for apple investors at the moment. >> why is that? >> because we finally know who's taking over after steve jobs. this has been a big toss-up question for five years or so. it's tim cook, who's been at the company for a long time. the real question is apple has a deep bench of talent. they are considered an operationally excellent company in terms of supply chain and all that kind of stuff

rick newman is the chief business correspondent for "u.s. ld report" and joins me in studio to talk about this. rick, what's your reaction, as we watch the breaking news, these markets volatilely reacting to what's taking place, obviously in light of the debt crisis and the fact that we've signed this new deal? >> there's been a lot of bad news piling up over the past few weeks. the economy is growing much more slowly than we thought. we know that practically nobody's hiring in the united states. this debt problem in europe is very serious. we're now talking about italy. italy is a huge economy, and if they start to go under and ruggle to pay their debts, that's a massive bailout, and europe has not martialed the resources for that. so, this is not really all about the u.s. debt crisis. it's not all about us. this has dominated the news for the last couple of weeks, but there are major problems in the global economy right now that have not been dealt with, and that's i think what the markets are reacting to. >> i think we do sometimes lose si