People working to get themselves out of poverty. Sam from the financial times. Thanks very much. You were talking earlier about the u. S. As a bright spot, among advanced economies. The story of the president ial campaign has not been that American Voters feel this has been a bright spot recovery. Is there a risk the administration is feeling out of touch with public mood about the u. S. Economy at the moment or are we overestimating just how negative people feel about the economy . First of all, i dont know, you know i look at evidence from the measures that economists look at about how people feel about the economy are the Consumer Sentiment index and the Consumer Confidence index from the Conference Board and the university of michigan. When you look at measures like that, you see that confidence has been consistently rising since the recession. And last year reached levels we hadnt seen in over a decade. So i see a number of ways in which people are positive both about their situation today and the outlook. We also certainly hear and understand the frustrations people have in terms of areas like wage growth and so the president s message that you saw, you know, in the state of the union, youve seen consistently was told a really optimistic story about the american economy, how its done, its successes, and also talked about the big challenges and problems that we face and what it is he wants to do about them. You know, hes not Walking Around saying mission accomplished, theres nothing else to be done, everythings perfect. That is not remotely the message. In fact, the message, if anything, is the opposite. Heres all the things that we still need to do. Sure. I mean, one measure of that confidence would be Consumer Spending. It has picked up a little bit this has still been a very, very sluggish consumer recovery. Thats your analysis as to why consumers are still saving so significantly, the big fall in the oil price hasnt given the boost everyone has been waiting for . The cost in terms of spending is quite palpable, still. I mean, Consumer Spending did add 3 . Did grow 3 in 2014 and 2015. And was one of the bright spots that was helping to raise overall gdp growth. So i think you have seen as consumers deleveraged that Savings Rates have risen a little bit in the last year but theyve stabilized more than they had before. And, you know, when we look at the oil shock, we see it as having raised Consumer Spending, cut business investment, and the net of the two of those is still a small positive for the economy. I think when you look at consumers, part of it is having been through a very traumatic economic experience that is only eight years past us. And you look at the Great Depression and the impact that that had on the way people thought about saving or the way people thought about inflation. You know, in other places. That hyperinflations at that time can last for decades and can affect the way you think so i think there may be some of that. Wage growth has only recently picked up and Consumers Want the confidence that that wage growth will continue and that oil prices will stay low as opposed to just being transitory, you dont want to fully adjust your consumption to. I think if you continue to see nominal wage growth rising, becomes clearer that this is more durable then i think you would continue to see strong consumption growth. Again, it is 3 which is not, you know, which is pretty good for Consumer Spending. Ms. Evans from time. My question is, i wanted to circle back to the competition issues and you mentioned set top boxes which is interesting because i think i forget exactly what the statistic is but i think its about 40 of people dont have a choice of what Cable Company is their provider, so if the idea is to address competition, how do you sort of address the front end, not only address, you know, can i buy comcasts box a or comcasts box b and on that same level, theres been a lot of criticism about, from the left about antitrust, a failure to pursue antitrust cases then criticism on the right from the business industry that the Obama Administration has not been friendly in that way. So how do you kind of thread that needle and pursue antitrust, especially at a time when were seeing these massive mergers with, you know, walgreens and rite aid and kraft and heinz and aetna and cigna, whatever. Theres another one. Humana, something else. So were seeing these massive mergers. How do you deal with that . So on your first youre precisely right that theres an intersection between these two issues. If you had a choice of 100 different cable companies, we wouldnt need a rule for one of those set top boxes, because Different Companies would compete for your business letting you have any set top box you want or having a better one. When you dont have competition in terms of the cable wire going into your house, that makes it that much more important to make sure you cant leverage the market power you have in the wire to the house into what is an unrelated product which is the set top box. Theres an intersection between those. Weve tried to take up steps to free up spectrum for mobile broadband which would create more competition in that area. Make sure the rules of those auctions are consistent with you cant just have the biggest player buy all the spectrum to foreclose on the opportunity of others to enter the market. Weve weighed in on municipal broadband as another way to create competition but theres only so many tools that we have. In terms of your second question, you know, we have nothing whatsoever to do with enforcement in the white house. Thats a matter of the enforcement agency, doj, in this case enforcing the law. We dont get involved in particular cases and dont get involved in the broader policy issues. I would note that antitrust enforcement under this administration is up. The number of criminal prosecutions is up. Criminal penalties. Prison time. And in noncriminal cases there have been a number of quite important Enforcement Actions theyve taken to preserve competition in different areas. It is the case when it comes to the law, though, its not illegal to have a monopoly. Its illegal to take your monopoly and build it on by merging or extend it into another area and set top boxes is similar to the thats not illegal but its similar economic principle of you have market power in one area, make sure you cant extend that into market power in another area. Jackie from the new york times. Jason, as you get to the end of the administration, youve been in from the beginning, could you address what many see as was a missed opportunity not for lack of some trying but maybe not trying hard enough in getting infrastructure more Infrastructure Spending. You had all these years when it was next to zero Interest Rates. One of the hardest hit labor sectors was construction. What could you have done . You had the 2011 american jobs act that didnt no anywhere, the transportation bill that was linked to construction, again, didnt go anywhere. What more could you have done and is there any do you see any opening between now and january 20th to cut a deal to get more done . Right. Now, weve certainly got things done on infrastructure. The recovery act we got a substantial upfront investment in infrastructure and then just this last december we got a fiveyear highway bill thats a roughly 5 inflation adjusted increase in Infrastructure Spending as well as more certainty associated with it. But it certainly has been disappointing we havent done even more than that and not for lack of effort of the president s part. He proposed year after year really substantial ambitious plans for infrastructure. He had one way to pay for it related to International Tax win which it was something that you actually saw chairman camp adopt in his plan. And then this past year weve proposed another way in terms of an oil fee which is an idea you hear from economists and other experts from both political parties. You know, i think in some sense your question is one better addressed to congress than to us because we certainly agree that economically both to help demand today, to help expand our productive capacity in the future, given the low rates of interest, the economic argument is completely clear and would like to see, you know, congress doing more. Why didnt the republicans meet you i dont have any great, you know, insight into that, but on the negotiations or was i dont know. A number of republicans would privately tell you how much they wanted to do it and then when it came down to it at the end of the day they did come through and did do a fiveyear bill, did do an increase and that was good but it took way too long, seven years to get to that point, and it wasnt big enough. It created a base to build on. When you have an idea like an Infrastructure Bank that the chamber of commerce and the aflcio are both behind, i think it stands to reason thats probably quite a good idea and is disappointing you havent seen Congress Take it up and do it. Do you see an opening before january 20th . We will look for whatever openings we can on any issue. I havent seen Congress Moving further on this one. Before i weigh in with another, anybody who hasnt had one that wants one . Let me ask you briefly then about the wall street pay regulation that were much in the news yesterday. I wanted to see, a. , if you support them, and how you respond to critics, some who say that it will drive people out of the industry or sort of another perverse effect might be that banks and other affected institutions will have to pay people more because of their fear that money will be clawed back. What is your take on the wall street pay regs . Right. The goal of dod frank was to strengthen the Financial System and deal with a range of different problems that led to the last crisis. One of those problems was the perverse incentive that can be created by pay packages that give you an incentive to undertake a risky action knowing that, heads, you get your bonus and tails, you walk away, so on average you come out ahead. That type of option is a extremely valuable option and i think people on wall street, if they understand anything, it is option value. So the legislation rightly asked the regulators to do something about that. We have been encouraging the independent regulators to come out with regulations and did that most recently in the meeting that the president had with the regulators in march. So we were very pleased to see that theyve come out and would encourage them to move as quickly as possible to complete the rulemaking process so this could be put into effect. I havent studied the details of what theyve come out with. Theyre independent regulators that will design the details independently and serve input in terms of the rules and im sure there is all sorts of ways that one can handle any of the different issues that have been raised but ultimately, the goal that is trying to be accomplished here is an important one, which is to reduce overly risky behavior that comes at the expense of taxpayers and the economy more broadly. We havent asked you about the single biggest economic story of the week which will affect the pocket books of every american and that is Harriet Tubman on the 20 bill. If you want to weigh in on that. And im curious if you have any thoughts on i guess micro economic Monetary Policy, if that is a real thing. The way we change were changing the way we spend money moving from Paper Currency to electronic. What are the consequences of that and moving forward in the economy and as a policy matter what should we be thinking about in terms of those kind of issues. I know these are more treasury issues but if you could broaden our scope on this. On the first question, i was completely thrilled to see what secretary lew decided. He didnt consult me or my children. If he had, one of them strongly supported Harriet Tubman and the other was in favor of rosa parks an they had a big debate between them yesterday about it, but i cast the tiebreaking vote in support of the secretarys decision so i think that was really exciting to see. On your second, the shift from cash to credit cards has had some impact on the conduct of Monetary Policy. It is one reason why the velocity of money has become less stable which is one reason why the monetary authorities dont target the money supply, but instead target Interest Rates. And that shift has happened over the course of many decades. And once you do that, i think it doesnt complicate your Monetary Policy at all and doesnt actually have major changes in the way the economy functions. It just the fed sets Interest Rates, the money supply and velocity sort themselves out and it is the Interest Rates that have an impact on the economy. I think that there are some other questions of to the degree you have easier access to borrowing. There is some evidence that has led to some smoothing of shocks, that you get a shock and you could borrow your way through it so it doesnt propagate as largely through the economy and there is evidence, most notably the financial crisis that it could amplify shocks because it could lead to overborrowing and a larger correction. And how to get some of the benefits of consumption smoothing without getting the benefits of creditfueled cycles and what the role of Public Policy in that is, i think it is important and not fully answered question. Going back to the is there a link between this and the competition policy. Should we be thinking of more ways to think of paying for things, for example, bitcoin, should we encourage that, or discourage that or neutral. I think well leave that to our agencies that have 60 days to report back to us. Teddy davis from cnn. Thank you. If secretary clinton is nominated and then elected and asked you to out line what you thought were the three most effective economic policies of obama and the three most disappointing economic policies, what would you tell them . The recovery act, but hopefully shes not going to need to do Something Like that. The Affordable Care act, and there is a lot left to do to implement that, both encouraging states to take up medicaid using the extraordinary number of tool it gives the secretary for Delivery System reforms and the high premium excise tax. And third would be cutting taxes for lowincome households which was done over the course of a number of pieces of legislation and made permanent in december and reducing poverty for 16 Million People a year out of poverty. In terms of the other three, it is disappointing we didnt get more done on the infrastructure. That disappointment the biggest thing that you could do for the economy and probably disappointment that we didnt do Business Tax Reform which is one of the more obvious steps that we could take as a country given that every other country in the world has done it. You have two minutes. Jackie and then alex, if we could get to it. Since headwinds from abroad have regularly frustrated the recovery in your time what head winds are you looking at now that worry you most between now and the end of the administration . Growth in europe has picked up a little bit. But it is still way too slow. The Unemployment Rate in the euro zone is above 10 . China has seen its growth slow. Japan has seen its growth slow. Growth in a number of major emerging markets like brazil and russia is negative. So were not in the year 2009. This is not a Global Financial crisis, but most anywhere you look in the world outside of the United States growth is coming in in a decent amount below what people were expecting and by just about any measure is disappointing. It is pretty much just the lowincome economies that have seen their growth rates pick up in recent years, just about everyone else has not. Last question, real quickly, alexis. Just in transition planning, can you describe what the Economic Team is doing collectively, how far along you are on thinking about transition planning, coordination, informationgathering . I could just tell you for the council of economic advisers that weve had a longstanding tradition that we hire our staff for one year at a time and they work from summer to summer. So i am right now hiring the staff that will work for me for six months and work for the next president , whoever he or she is, for the First Six Months of their term. Certainly in my experience, in this administration, president bush, as a whole, had an extremely effective transition and one that we would like to emulate. And i know at the council of economic advisers it has always worked well and wont be an exception this time. Is there one person for the Economic Team who is coordinated as the designated i dont have anything for you on that process. You cant say . I could tell you what were doing at cea, which is were hiring people to work in our administration and the next administration. Thanks so much for doing this, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. [ hearing concluded ] cspan washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up on wednesday morning, washington journal will spotlight real clear politics, a