i m erin burnett. outfront tonight, stocks tank. the dow plunged 274 points today. it s the biggest drop since november. it was a really bad day and the reason was a terrible jobs report. usually using adjectives like this are sometimes a bit much for the markets but it s the way it was today. american employers added a meager 69,000 jobs which is about half the number needed just to keep up with current population growth. it was the weakest month of hiring for the year and the unemployment rate went up to 8.2%. it was a grim day for the president. today we re still fighting our way back from the worst economic crisis since the great depression. the economy s growing again, but it s not growing as fast as we want it to grow. now, according to bianco research, no president has been re-elected in this country with an unemployment rate this high since the great depression. that was when fdr won and at that time unemployment was 13.7%. what s happening? we went to find out.
i m erin burnett. outfront tonight, saving us from ourselves. a superhero saving america, just like clark kent, the original 1950 superman. faster than a speeding bullet. more powerful than a locomotive. able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. look, up in the sky, it s a bird. it s a plane. it s super bloomberg. he came to new york city with powers and abilities far more than mortal men. super bloomberg has banned smoking in bars and parks. forced restaurants to stop using transfats as his bare hands and he is really fighting for america s health, saying you can t buy a big gulp. it s a shot heard from coast to coast, the mayor planning to ban the sale of all sugary drinks sold in containers larger than 16 ounces. including energy drinks and presweetened iced teas. former president bill clinton weighed in. i know a lot of people think this is an anti-state and he is interfering, but these are very serious problems. and there are a lot of things in our diet th
of may. that s the biggest monthly loss in nearly a year. in case you were thinking that europe s crisis was their problem and your eyes glaze over when you hear about it, this is the wake-up call. america s 401(k)s are losing value thanks to greece and spain. why? well, because if and when greece drops the euro, it s a little domino with a lot of punch. next comes spain, portugal, ireland, maybe even italy. they could all fail. and that means the breakup of the world s biggest economy and america s biggest trading partner. it means at least tens of thousands of american jobs will be lost. this is the scene in greece now. destitution and riots. suicide has surged. just today a 61-year-old man left a suicide note. his name was alexanderos. he hung himself in a park in suburban athens. he said, quote, greece will be wiped off the map and he hoped his grandchildren wouldn t be born there. the personal toll is tragic and it s a terrible fall for something that was supposed to cur
her way to a degree. that s why anybody who feels sorry for pat will find themselves on the receiving end of the receiving glare where she might punch you. she s still getting up every day and doing what she does best which is teaching. the players, she says, are my best medicine. our final honoree is not here. shimon peres, the president of israel, who has done more for the cause of peace in the middle east than just about anybody alive. i ll be hosting president peres for a dinner here at the white house next month and we ll be presenting him with his medal and honoring his incredible contributions to the state of israel and the world at that time. i m looking forward to welcoming him and i ll save my best lines for him for that occasion. so these are the recipients of the 2012 medals of freedom, and just on a personal note, i had a chance to see everybody in the back. what s wonderful about these events for me is so many of these people are my heroes individually. you know
house? outfront tonight, maegan carberry, former communications director of rock the vote. alice stewart is a republican strategist. and michelle goldberg is a senior writer for newsweek and the daily beast. let s start with you. what s your sense of how much of this is coincidence with president obama being president and how much of it he s able to take credit for? i m sure he can take credit for a lot of it. but what s really important is that voters don t hang on every single number that comes out. it s going to be a sense of what they feel, as we get closer to the election. and the fact is that president obama is not just running an economic race against mitt romney. he is running against himself in 2008, which was such a national moment, and he s really got to show people, you know, how we re where we go from here. how do we pick up from that moment. but, alice, not just romney s campaign, but the republican campaign for so long has been about a failed economic