in this situation is we know we have seen in the past and we know we will see in this situation that people pull together in these communities, others come to help from other places, build their skills to bear to to whatever they can. our hearts go out to all of them. we than that you for being with us today, governor to give us your thoughts on this. you ve been down this road and you have good advice. thank you. thank you, martha. martha: we re going to take a few minutes to talk about the economy. numbers that came in on the home front and they are really not looking too good. first you ve got this one that came in a jump in the jobless rate, 25,000 people more are filing for unemployment benefits this week. that brought the total number to 429,000. that is way above where we want to be to start to see this thing get under control r. it s the highest number that we ve seen since late january. you may remember we had a few weeks that the trend looked good, this could be an anomaly
security team. an interesting time to be reading that piece in time maggene. time now for a check on business before the bell. where should we go, joe? to our international superstar, cnbc s erin burnett live at the new york stock exchange. erin what are you looking at today? two big headlines just crossing. they re a little bet blanky. your warning. gdp coming in, how quickly the economy grew. first look, you get a few visions. first look. economy grew 1.8% sort s in line what people were looking for, not a good number. not at number suggesting significant job growth and not a number that would give you confidence that the economy is definitely and surely not going to fall back into something worse. we also, jobless claims came out. look at those every week. the past couple weeks i ve been disappointed. they were disappointing. pretty much significantly so this morning. 429,000. that s been going up, as you know, we immediate it to be
across our state. now, comparatively, we saw 412,000 customers who were without power. so we re making steady progress. as you can imagine there s still a lot of people in the dark. it s still a lot of people who will have to wade through some uncomfortable days. it will be very difficult. keisa sharpe, thank you for giving us the latest. over 400,000 at one point, customers with no power at the moment. we have some new numbers that show the road to recovery that has hit a speedbump and higher gas prices get part of the blame. the government saying that the gross domestic product grew by 1.8% in the first three months of this year. higher gas prices cut into consumer spending. the federal government slashed defense spending by the most in six years and as well there was a setback in the jobs market, first time jobless claims rose by 25,000 to 429,000 new claims.
according to republicans. a bill that s meant to help the economy but which is widely expected to stifle growth and kill more jobs in the middle of a deep recession. reporter: so what does this law mean for you? the creation of a consumer financial protection bureau. the law also creates a new regulatory council within the treasury department. it will allow the government to go into these large failing firms, take them over and wind them down without having to count on the taxpayer to come in with tens of billions of dollars to prop these funds up. reporter: the news is worse in the housing market. a new survey shows in the first half of the year, home foreclosures rose 8%. the research firm says banks could repossess more than 1 million homes this year alone. it s the job market that may offer some relief. the labor department says last week s jobless claims have fallen to 429,000. the lowest in nearly two years. but not fast enough for sonia funicura. the tax agent is so desp
sleep. it s approved a new mandatory set of standards for cribs, they include a ban on drop-sided models. the faulty cribs are blamed for 36 deaths since 2007. 429,000 people filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week, a big drop from the previous week and the lowest level since august of 2008. cnn.com s poppi harlow joins us from new york. the numbers are still high. the headline on this report is, yes, the claims were down from the week before. the bottom line on this report is that it s an awful reading. for two years, tony, since july 2008, we ve had every week these unemployment claims above 400,000. that s a huge number in washington, the debate is going on about extending benefits for people. right now, the most aid that you can get from the government is 99 weeks. almost two years of unemployment benefits.