but also there's critical questions about the dollars on both sides of the equation, tyler. >> steve leismanthank you very much. >>> jim iuorio, i want to ask you the same question i just asked steve. if you were talking to secretary geithner at 4:00 p.m. today as steve will be, what would your first question to him be? >> my questions would be about dividends and capital gains as they're market related. with the dividends we've seen a tremendous amount of companies bring them forward in the name of tax avoidance. in both france and england we've seen a tremendous amount of steps taken for tax avoidance when they hire -- >> people leave. >> my only question, there have been studies done on that in the united states to figure out what the effect would be. my second question would be, back in '08 when the president was debating hillary clinton accepted the concept that every time we've raised capital gains tax, the receipts from that have gone down. every time we've lowered it, they've gone up. he accepted that. i want to know if his opinion is modified or is he considering laying off tax and

steve leisman here now with our exclusive results of the cnbc all-america economic survey. icans want, steve? >> what you would expect. free stuff, tyler. actually, no, we'll get into that in a second. first we want to show you results of our december cnbc all-america survey. what we asked about the fiscal cliff. the first thing we wanted to establish is do people know about this thing? we looked at some of the other times we've asked this. what we'll see right here is other situations where they knew it, where other main stories that were out there. for example, the trayvon martin shooting. 91% of americans knew about that. occupy wall street, 80%. going forward what you have here, facebook, 72%. all the way down to 70%. you can look at this a couple ways. here's the greek financial crisis. 30% of the public not really paying attention to. inside that 70% number, 36% have know a lot about it. we'll compare with other stuff we asked last time about when they had a debt -- big deficit debate. we find first, 17% back in november thought congress and the administration could co

steve leisman, you are not just going to give us questions, you're going to give us answers. >> i wish i could. if i had another crack at the chairman, here are the ones i would ask. what happens on the way down the 6.5% unemployment. these are things, by the way, i have been back and forth with steve stanley. more people would work, right. but what happens to fed policy? does it remain the same? when do i get nervous? think about what your investors were saying? when should i sell bonds and buy equities? will there be a fed policy? admitted he bernanke did say that 6.5 -- >> isn't he going to stop buying treasuries and mortgage dash back security -- >> hold that thought. >> okay. >> what happens between 6.5 unemployment and 5.5, which is the natural rate. or where the fed thinks the long run unemployment rate. is when do you do that? and finally, the thing that i would come back with t.to, whate gauges for qe. there are two policies, tyler, and two rules. qe policy is not the -- >> is bond buying. >> it is different from the rate policy, which is tied to 6.5% unemployment. what we nee

and our own senior economics report steve leisman join us with their predictions here., start with you. what are you looking at? especially bear in mind we're going to be still feeling the effects of the fiscal cliff and technically we're going over it tonight. does this affect your thoughts of investing in 2013? >> absolutely it does, bill. and it has the last two months. we've seen a marked retreat from u.s.-based investments after u.s. centric holdings, the s&p 500 showing strong leadership in the first ten months of the year. what we've reason seen is now foreign markets picking up the slack. so i would say when we look into 2013, the opportunities most likely exist outside the united states, not in the u.s. >> outside of the united states is a large geographic area. can you narrow it down for us? like asia, europe, emerging frontier, what is it? >> of course, mandy. and that's part of the asset selection you have to do. for us one of the best areas we've seen has been in emerging market debt. it started out many years ago with the bricks and recently we've moved in

and our colleague steve leisman has been also doing reporting on this. he just spoke to me by phone as i was preparing to go on with a source familiar with the talks who noted a wind energy tax credit is preserved as the president eluded to in his remarks. also depreciation for businesses with spending money on new equipment. all of those things arement wills of the tax deal, but until they get the sequester, the budget elements worked out, the deal's not going to be finished. >> now, the deduction phaseout. this is relatively new. any idea at this point which deductions we're talking about and any timetable for them? >> i have to confess, bill, i don't know how exactly that works. these are provisions that were first initiated in the 1990s as a way of getting more revenue from people at the top without raising their rates. so what you do is you take the same deductions that other people can take and you limit their value over a certain income level. this is in addition to something the president's proposed of making the tax deductions for people above a

steve leisman who's had a very busy week here to talk about the numbers and put it in context for us. >> hi, sue. no substantive sandy in the jobs numbers. the lack of sandy effect has us scratching our heads, what they said. i just got off the phone with the guy who's the head of doing the numbers, labor numbers at the bls. he walked me through the rather extensibilive process they did fine out if there was any sandy effect, including sampling of businesses in a flood tide areas. >> it was very meticulous. >> i'm pretty convinced they did a good job figuring out if there was an effect and there is no effect which brings us to the numbers which you could believe on face value as much as you can. they'll revise this again. they only come forward with 60% to 70% of the sample. unemployment rate falling 7.7% because largely a drop in the labor force. average hourly earnings up 0.2%. despite positive headlines, xwoeld man sax says we interpret this report as one only slightly better than expected overall given downward revisions and weaker labor force and it does not change our assessment

chairman, steve leisman from cnbc. i guess i have a lot of questions but i will just offer up two here. why are there different targets for qe and for the funds rate? what does that achieve? secondly, what good is a target if you have to reference calendar dates in the statement itself which is the thing you got away from. you had to point out that it is not different from october. do you have to keep doing that from now on to make a clear? and just thirdly, i know i said two. but another paragraph after that that said, that said it is not just target. it is something else. so it is not clear to me what good the targets are if you have to reference a calendar date and then say in the next paragraph it is not targets. >> so first, as i said, asset purchases and the rate increases have different objectives. the asset purchases are about creating near term momentum, trying to strengthen growth and job creation in the near term and increases in the federal funds rate target when they occur are about reducing accommodations