u.s. economy? >> having that catastrophe we just talked about, we think the u.s. economy is going to continue to muddle along. we'll see some positive economic data point, some negative economic data point, but at a very high level, for 30 years, the american economy borrowed money to fuel our consumption. now americans are paying down their dekbt, which is a good thing, but we're more limited than we used to. in the next seven years, we're in for a harder adjustment period and, unfortunately, sustained high unemployment. >> neil, during the recent republican debates, we really saw a strong distaste for any bailouts once again. you heard them on the gop presidential debates, whether it be automakers, europe, and america's financial institutions. you were the administrator of the government's $800 billion t.a.r.p. program. how do you defend the program looking back with the perspective that you can give? anything you would have done differently? >> we defend the program -- we were a republican administration that believed in free markets and hated intervening to sta

u.s. economy in the coming months. nevertheless, for every ten nervous nellies, there's at least one investor who still believes. >> i have a lot of faith and optimism about our country, about the european union, about the long-term political stability that will emerge from all this. >> reporter: suzanne pratt, "nightly business report," new york. >> tom: the fourth quarter is off to a slow start for u.s. manufacturers, but activity may pick up before the end of the year. the institute of supply management's index fell slightly in october from september, but any reading over 50 represents a growing manufacturing sector. manufacturing and the economy was the focus of a discussion i hosted today with five of the republican presidential candidates in pella, iowa, a discussion dominated by talk of lower taxes and more trade opportunities. >> now, i want to talk about my jobs plan first, about getting americans back to work on the energy side of things without having to go to congress without asking anything. >> tom: texas

u.s. economy in the coming months. nevertheless, for every ten nervous nellies, there's at least one investor who still believes. optimism about our country about the european union, about the long-term political stability that will emerge from >> tom: the fourth quarter is off to a slow start for u.s. pick up before the end of the year. the institute of supply in october from september, but any reading over 50 represents a growing manufacturing sector. manufacturing and the economy was the focus of a discussion i candidates in pella, iowa, a discussion dominated by talk of perry pointing to energy exploration in north dakota, encouraging domestic energy those energy jobs need highly skilled workers, which are in short supply according to some. former pennsylvania senator rick santorum is among those candidates endorsing the end of u.s. corporate taxes on profits companies make overseas. there's $1.5 trillion potentially sitting in overseas accounts in profits-- you bring in plants and equipment in >> tom: minnesota re

u.s. economy? as erika miller reports, there could be a big impact on the economy here. >> reporter: italy is a relatively small country, about the size of arizona. but make no mistake-- if that country defaults on its debt, there could be serious domino effects around the globe. italy is the third largest economy in the eurozone after germany and france. economist bob brusca says italy's crisis creates doubt about the future of the european union and its common currency. >> suppose you are trading currency. suppose you are trying to make a bet on whether the euro is going to go up or down. it makes a big difference whether the euro is going to be the euro with the same currencies in it, or whether the weak countries like greece and italy, and maybe spain and portugal, are ejected from it. >> reporter: in addition to the currency link, there's a trade link. the u.s. and the european union are each other's biggest trading partners. so, if europe plunges back into recession, expect a big hit to u.s.

exploitation or does it fuel its better an economy driven by consumer spending we'll take a look at it and looking beyond black friday big picture can anything save the u.s. and western economies from leadership failures as european leaders race to save the eurozone and u.s. presidential candidates campaign for a chance to steer the u.s. economy is everyone headed in the wrong direction we'll see let's get to today's capital account. ok unless you're living under a rock you know that today is black friday a tradition in american culture that almost rivals thanksgiving itself it is known is the biggest shopping day of the year this year stores opening even earlier opening last night to customers to get deals but it's known to critics of american consumerism as buy nothing day and this year in addition to occupy wall street we now have occupy black friday or occupy x. missed christmas if as you see there this is the adbusters campaign now when some shoppers hit the malls today they were met some of them by the sound of this. it was a stop shopping choir in new york there now there were also occupy black friday protests or actions reportedly outside of new

u.s. economy. but the markets were not cheered mostly because of, well, you guessed it, more worries about europe and european debt. the focus now movi to italy and now france and now concerns that american banks could suffer europe's economy slows down. a mixed bagag as we movee to th end of earning season. dell surpassed expectations on profits, but it raised revenue. target came in ahead of expectations. oil pricescreeping back up again, rising past the $100 a barrel mark on wednesday for the firsrst time since july. partly because the u.s. economy is not doing as badly as some had predicted. warren buffe acquired shares of ibm, intel, cbs, caremark and directv. joinining me nowow is managing director and head of global equities at pimco. neil also oversaw the bank government program, t.a.r.p. he bs us a unique perspective. thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> i feel like this is the topic every day on wall street and in the u.s. last week everyone was concerned about italy, its ri

u.s. economy. so what the thought is here when we need some economic stimulus, we could have this money come back here, pump back into the economy at a lower tax rate, say 5 or 10%, and even tie it to jobs or capital investment. and that makes sense because the territorial tax, the higher tax rate together are a deadly arsenal which makes us noncompetitive as a country. >> host: brent done sassow is a technology reporter with "the hill," and he is joining us this week on "the communicators." >> host: thank you. senator levin had a report last month about a similar policy that was enacted in 2004, and according to this report, this didn't actually help much a lot of the companies that took advantage of the policy ended up using the money to increase executive pay rather than investing. so is this, would this be different than what happened in 2004? >> guest: well, brandon, that report is one of many reports and, certainly, the unions are opposing this for reasons that i can't figure out because it c

u.s. economy? >> of course it could hurt the economy because if europe goes badly and falls into recession then there will be less demand for u.s. goods and services. also, u.s. banks have some exposure to europe and so to the extent that you're doing badly, there will be some consequences for u.s. banks. although i would say the direct u.s. exposure of u.s. banks to the countries in europe that we're talking about is actually very very modest. we think the european situation is definitely solvable. their fiscal position is certainly no worse than the u.s. the problem is a political one. >>> there's a lot of concern about u.s. banks. do you think u.s. banks can weather a full-blown european crises. >> define full-blown european crises. what i can say is the u.s. banks their direct exposure is quite modest and they're better equipped to manage any type of crises than they were in 2008. they bolstered their capital significantly. they built their loan loss reserves. they have very large liquidity buff

u.s. economy is following japan's path.nd initially they thought they might have thought that quick policy response may be able to avoid prolonged recession, prolonged stagnation of the u.s. economy. but so far, they have not been successful. i think large balance sheet adjustments will lead to a weak consumption and a weak investment. and the banking crisis as well. through an accumulation of bad loans. >> how long do you think it will take for the u.s. to -- >> well, it may take four more years. for housing loans to decline to the historical trend. >> and europe situation also resembles a lot what japan went through. >> yes, i think so. it seems to me that european banks receive public money and also european governments, stand to force banks to receive public money. but in japan, you know, the banking crisis was resolved after public money was forced to be injected. so i think sooner or later, some kind of tax money is needed to clear up the sky. >> and right now in europe, europe's plan, writing down greece's debt, reca

u.s. economy is underperforming. and so everything that we're

u.s. economy is following japan's path.nd initially they thought they might have thought that quick policy response may be able to avoid prolonged recession, prolonged stagnation of the u.s. economy. but so far, they have not been successful. i think large balance sheet adjustments will lead to a weak consumption and a weak investment. and the banking crisis as well. through an accumulation of bad loans. >> how long do you think it will take for the u.s. to -- >> well, it may take four more years. for housing loans to decline to the historical trend. >> and europe situation also resembles a lot what japan went through. >> yes, i think so. it seems to me that european banks receive public money and also european governments, stand to force banks to receive public money. but in japan, you know, the banking crisis was resolved after public money was forced to be injected. so i think sooner or later, some kind of tax money is needed to clear up the sky. >> and right now in europe, europe's plan, writing down greece's debt, reca

u.s. economy. >> host: well, recently, a group of technology associations sent a letter to the deficit reduction committee asking for certain measures to help strengthen the u.s. economy. gary tuck -- gary shapiro is president and ceo of the consumer electronics association, and he's our guest on the communicators this week. one of your first recommendations was an update of the tax system, and in your letter to the deficit reduction committee, you write that first and foremost, america's corporate tax system is globally uncompetitive, and you go on to say that we, the u.s., should take immediate steps to encourage u.s. businesses to repatriate the approximate $1 trillion in accumulated foreign earnings locked outside our country. >> guest: absolutely, peter, thank you for having me. as president of the association, we have 2,000 technology company, and many of them do business overseas, and they have money that they just leave there because the united states has this policy, first of all, having t

u.s. economy's in good shape.but would you rather invest in europe, where the parthenon is crumbling and germans must bail china, with its one-child policy? no country has been shielded from the great recession. mbe "captain america" has taken a few hits, but let's decline. i'm todd buchholz. 1. i'm tom hudson.2 susie. >> susie: good night, tom. i'm susie gharib. we hope to see all of you again "nightly business report" is made possible by: this program was made possible by contributions to your pbs thank you. captioned by

u.s. economy, not doing well, still crawling out of the recession but we are crawling out. and we don't need to get kicked in the face again while we're doing it. >> susie: well, the other worry is that we talk about all the political wrangling. people are concerned that are we going have a throwback to what happened last summer, that the credit rating agencies will downgrade u.s. credit. what are the chances of something like that happening? >> i don't think that's the big risk. i mean we really have to go bananas to have that happen. they take a big risk when they do that because the u.s. regulates them. the fact is, the foreign investors are still willing to give us money for next to nothing. the ten-year treasury bill rate went below 2%. who would have thought that. so there isn't any urgency on that front. that's part of the problem that without the urgency from interest rates with the europeans and other places having bigger problems than we are, there isn't the external pressure that will come some day. >> susie: let's talk about europe. we saw even this new conserva

u.s. economy, and the world economy. and what we show is that they are very strong common trends that are very closely related to the way the world economy is governed financially. the debt crisis, the -- going back to the breakdown of bretton woods but particularly in the 1980s to 2000's the period of enormous increases of inequality of the world. so we think we demonstrate that there is a very close relationship between inequality and financial events and, therefore, essentially with the phenomenon that led up to this great financial crackup in 2007 and 2008. >> dr. galbraith, when someone says free trade, what do you think about? >> i think it's an illusion of trade in the modern world -- it is a matter of transnational networks of production. they are managed there is really no such thing as free trade. if there were it would have been disrupted long ago by the emergence of modern china. >> we turn to the gold standard. >> another illusion. gold is an archaic symbol of monetary of world. it's impractical in the moder

u.s. economy and the economies of its trading partners back into recession with the risk of government failures and bank collapses. in the oval office that day, greenspan explain today the ambassador that oil prices had caused so much chaos that the lending flexibility of big banks had vanishes and financial networks around the world were stretched thin. he added that the huge increase in debts taken on after 1973 when oil consumers had tried to borrow their way out of the fiscal hole they found themselves in had badly shaken the confidence of markets, governments and big business. it was essential, he said, that the shah of iran show restraint on oil prices. when i first read that transcript more than four years ago now and a full year and a half before lehman brothers collapsed, i was, frankly, perplexed. in fact, i could not place the conversation with any coherent framework because if what i was reading was right, in late 1976 the president was admitting that the u.s. banking system economy and the economies of its european allies was so fragile and so overextended that even a 15% increase

u.s. economy the u.s. empire it took forty fifty sixty years to build that up and a few months for the bankers to take it down less than a few months one day really in two thousand and eight well it's a good point you know the u.s. economy is built on the back of massive expansion and then once it becomes clear that that can't be serviced it evaporates like a whole a gram in the wind and that's exactly what we're seeing now because people understand that the u.s. economy wall street is just one big enron and once confidence about rates so does all the equity and it's goodnight marie now it was the images of them steven j. baum dressed as the homeless that they had made homeless that really resulted in them the firm going out of business and i want to turn to this image here that i saw on the occupy wall street news dot org and it's an image of some cyborgs or policeman i can't tell but they're protecting j.p. morgan chase and with that in mind i want to look at these next headlines most of them involving j

u.s. economy showing -- the u.s. economy showing improviement. it was the first positive improvement in the last three months. economists had hoped for more growth. recovery is not strong enough to impact the brutal levels of joblessness. 40 million americans remain looking for work. >> stock markets closed lower, and getting up early gains with the italian banks. steep losses for the third quarter. we wrap the day in frankfurt. >> there was a lot of involvement in greece, and it is expensive. it incurred a quarterly loss because of that, a surprisingly big one. and that is the tough luck, also, going down because people were disappointed of the outcome of the g-20 summit in cannes. the result of fearing for greece referendum, yes, no, the fate of the government up in the air at the end of this week. the only big swing this week was the central bank in europe, the >> let's get a look at the numbers in frankfurt, the blue- chip closed down. the u.s. also deep in negative territory. euro trading at $1.7771. >> of unusual experiment in simulating a

u.s. economy? >>guest: you are right. the economy is feeling better., part of that is related to the decline in oil and gasoline prices, aary pump and part of it is because the japanese economy is coming back on line helping our manufacturing and vehicle industry, and that is temporary and early next year, the sources of growth fade and we have a tax increase if we do not have any legislation, and emergency benefits expire, and they do not get the money they don't spend and, now, the confusion with regard to how we will address our fiscal problems and is congress and the administration going to follow-through on the automatic spending cuts? and, then, of course, europe. so my point is, 2012 is ship up to be a very, very tough year and in large part because the super committee decided to punt. at least at this point it appears they decided to punt. >>chris: thank you, mr. zanzi, always good to talk to you. coming up, newt's prospects rise as frontrunners falter. stay tuned. anel on whether speaker gingrich can hang on to the lead. stay tuned. [ courier

u.s. economy right now? do you think we're still at risk for a double dip recession. >> well, the last quarter was better than the ones before, but that was primarily because the househol cut their saving in order to spend more. i don't think we're going to see them continuing to cut their saving, and, therefore, i think we're going to limp along with a relatively new low, gay parade for the next year, 2% or so, with the risk that if there was some negative shock, we could actually turn into a double dip. >> meanwhile, we're getting close to this congressional deadline for the super, they've got that sded line of november 23rd oochlt i can talked to members on both sides of the aisle in that competent ke. but frankly, i think they're so far apart that what i would say is they're engaged in a place that would pay off during the localization. and it involves the and think and the government observing part of the under watering georges. toe me if it works and do you think you'll find fibls positivesier, caster,

u.s. economy shows weaker than expected growth. but economists say there's a silver lining. >> we think the underlying trajectory of the economy is healthier than i think many people expect, and i also think there's resiliency here. >> tom: with the economy in question, the federal reserve will conduct a new round of stress tests, testing the health of the nation's biggest banks. it's "nightly business report" for tuesday, november 22. this is "nightly business report" with susie gharib and tom hudson. "nightly business report" is made possible by: this program is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by wpbt >> tom: good evening and thanks for joining us. it's test time again for the nation's biggest banks. late today, the federal reserve revealed plans to conduct another round of stress tests. it will be the fourth since the credit crisis. the central bank wants to make sure banks can hold up during a "deep recession". the fed says a recession is unlikely, but it