Headlines. A roughandtumble week for stocks ending a on a quiet note. Better than expected u. S. Third quarter gdp data could knot offset worries about corporate earnings the dow eked out a gain of three points. Good year was one of the biggest losers with shares tumbling more than 10 . The tiremaker missed Third Quarter estimates driven by weakness in europe. One bright spot was expedia. Shares soared 15 . They posted strong Third Quarter earnings fueled by a sharp rise in hotel bookings. Now to our top story. Some people are calling it frankenstorm. Others call it a noreastercane combination hurricane, noreaster snowstorm or nightmare. If you live on the east coast you call it scary. Hurricane sandy is making its way up the eastern seaboard. It may hit critical refineries that process 3. 1 Million Barrels of oil per day. You know what that means. Gas prices could go right back up. Patrick dehaan from gasbuddy. Com joins me with more on this one. Looks like the east coast is in trouble . Just when we see prices starting to go back down unfortunately something has to run amok. Now we see Hurricane Sandy taking aim at 10 refineries in the eastern seaboard. The only news we can take out of this there certainly could be impact on gasoline prices on the east coast of the everybody else in the nation will ask what will happen. This is something that will probably only impact the east coast but it could be significant. Were seeing major gas station chains identify contingency plans, bring in generators so there is not as much disruption, at least to stations. Melissa so if the refineries go down, lets start there. This isnt like the california situation where they have this special boutique cocktail of gasoline only okay for california. So they dont have the gasoline and out of luck. If our refineries dont work we can bring gasoline from elsewhere but that passes along a crunch in the gas hike at least to our neighbors, right . Thats right. Only good news for the east coast, goose lien can come from the gulf coast up the colonial pipeline. About the biggest impact we could expect is flood damage. That is the one sign, Hurricane Sandy doesnt appear to be, you know, stronger than a category 1 at landfall. So it is not necessarily the wind but perhaps flooding will do in some of these refineries. Well have to keep a close eye on it but there is some potential for the east coast to see some sort of price increase. The only thing here the storm will come in over the weekend. We really wont see gasoline prices shoot up until perhaps early next week when we start to see what the damage is that is being left behind. Melissa the huge bummer, we just had a huge decline in futures. We saw 10 days in a row where futures declined for gasoline. This is a record from the time they started trading futures that hadnt happened before. This put a bottom underneath that and sent them back. Really drivers were in for something good and now we sort of traded it away . That seems to be the karma we have all year. Whenever we see a nice downturn we see prices go right back up. It is not too surprising to see the rebound, even without Hurricane Sandy. Weve seen such a tremendous drop in futures. Melissa why . Why was that . Why was that big decline there . Well a lot of it simply the shift to fall. Speculators just getting out of the market. Were seeing cftc numbers show liquidating positions and getting out, perhaps putting money into diesel and heating oil because gasolines peak consumption season is over. You know, there is limited bullish side to gasoline right now. Melissa so could we see, i mean if this is the frankenstorm were all waiting for, i was on the floor of New York Mercantile Exchange when katrina came along and i saw prices explode and that was really tough. Could we see Something Like that again . Just like everybody has been saying at least all the forecasters, we havent seen a storm run this pattern this late, this expected path. It will be very interesting to see what plays out. How much damage there is. The storm may come in during high tide. Well have to see what the implications are. Well be watching the refineries specifically. Melissa yeah. What damage happens. I certainly dont expect that well see the implications we did with Hurricane Katrina because, quite frankly the east coast is not the refining mecca. It is not the Oil Producing mecca that the gulf was but there certainly could still be impacts nonetheless. Melissa here is what i care about. Im driving home from work today. Should i fill up today . Should it get worse over the weekend . Should i wait until next week . What is my play here . Well, you know, playing it before the storm comes would be wise. Not necessarily going to be a huge increase in price. In fact if everybody goes out into thinking like you and puts a run on the pumps that could do more damage. That could be a artificial spike. Melissa right. I would see how it goes. Stations have contingency plans. I dont think it will be the end of the world. We may lose one or two refineries temporarily to flooding. I would get a few gallons, what you need for the timebeing. If everybody does the same thing and fill up it would be much worse than it would be otherwise. Melissa patricc thanks very much. I will go to your website where i get the cheapest gas. Gas buddy. Com. That is awesome. Thanks for coming on. Here is the question of the day. Are you scared of the impending storm as well tell you to be we like to hear what you think. Facebook. Com melissafrancisfox and join me on twitwer, at melissaafrancis. Feel free to tell us were overreacting. Senate majority harry reid in the hospital after a car accident. Robert gray has the details. Thats right. It was a sixcar accident. Harry reid is at umc hospital in las vegas after his caravan in a sixcar accident. The Senate Majority leader, there is no word yet on injuries with him or anyone else traveling in the caravan and his party. He is in the hospital. No word on injuries. Were awaiting details to come to us out of las vegas. He is at the umc hospital in vegas. Car accident. No word on injuries. We know six cars were involved. We dont know if entire caravan or part of six cars. More details as they emerge on this developing story. Melissa robert gray. Thanks so much for that. Turning to the economy Third Quarter gdp came in at 2 today. Not great. Better than the sat 1. 3 growth rate last quarter but a new survey of economists says there is still no light at the end of the tunnel. If automatic spending cuts kick in it could cost the economy 100 billion. It gets worse though. They say the tax hikes that could come are twice as big of a problem. They would cost 200 billion. My favorite economist peter morici is here to commiserate with me over this one. This report is staggering. I like it though i have to say when somebody goes out and quantify the impact of these things because i dont want emotion. I want to focus in on the numbers. So lets do that. 200 billion out of the private sector if the bush tax cuts go away. 100 billion of Government Spending that would stop under the sequestration. Do those numbers sound about right to you and is there a multiplier at work here . Does it matter more if you take money away from the consumer in forms of evaporating tax cuts or the Government Spending . Well i dont know that it matters more over the period of a couple of years but the immediate effect is that the tax increases will take effect. And people have to pay the tass and spending will go down. I dont know that sequestration will click in as quickly as people say. There will be a reduction in spending over the course of the year but i dont know that it will happen as quickly. There is a real danger the tax increase could throw us right into recession. Melissa right. You yank 200 billion out of the hand of the private sector, what does that immediately do to gdp . Thats what were talking about here today. Were talking about the gdp number. This would be just taking a hammer to that. It would be 350 billion. Good for about 2 . It would happen pretty quickly. As a consequence we would likely see a recession. If mr. Obama gets reelected and theres a stalemate because he wins an electoral majority, Electoral College majority and not electoral majority and stalemate with the republican house, we could see the stalemate cause the mother of all recessions, a recession we dont recover from and that we call in economics depression. Melissa you say it would take two away from gdp if tax cuts expire. We heard gdp is growing at 2 . That would take us to zero. A bunch of economists got together and say if you couple that with sequestration thing that would be 3. 6 to 5. 2 decline in gdp. That would be deep into negative territory, right . Absolutely. And you must remember that if youre at 2 growth and get down to like a half, it is really not sustainable. Melissa no. Because it is like a man riding on a bicycle. It is so slow he falls off. Were growing as slow as we can get away with without tumbling down. Melissa that 2 today that was better than expected is actually horrible because we continued at this rate, it would take us like, seven, eight, nine, years to add back jobs to get to the last administrations low Unemployment Rate of four or 5 , right . It would literally take six or seven, eight years. It would take at least that long, especially longer. I expect people to get off the bench to start looking for work again. Put this in perspective. Ronald reagan inherited a mess too. Doubledigit inflation. Doubledigit interest rates. Ratcheting high oil prices. Unemployment for him peaked at 10. 8 . At this point when he was running for reelection in the Third Quarter, he had his recovery going better than 6 . He had the economy growing three times as fast as mr. Obama. The Important Message here it doesnt have to be this way. It is bad stewardship. It is just lousy leadership and policies that are essentially supportering growth. Melissa yeah, so true. Peter, youre so smart. Thank you for coming on the show. We appreciate it. See you again soon. Melissa time now for todays fuel gauge report breaking down the biggest headlines affecting the Energy Industry and their impact on the economy. Hurricane sandy gave oil price as boost. Crude settled up 23 cents at 86. 28 a barrel. That is still 4 decline on the week. Meanwhile natural gas futures fell in anticipation of the super storm. That is because concerns over power and refinery outables helped lower the outlook for demand. This one is absolutely nuts. German windmills are putting central your peep power grids at risk of blackouts. There is so much electricity being generated, the grids are being pushed to their breaking point. The Czech Republic and poland are threatening to cut off shared power lines in germany if the electricity bottleneck is not resolved. How crazy is that . Breaking news we have update on Senate Majority leader harry reid in a car accident. Back to robert gray with more details. Fox news saying Senior Senate sources, reid, walked into the hospital under his own power and is now being checked out. His caravan was in a six car pileup in las vegas. Was taken to ucm hospital there. Sources telling fox news it is unsure about other injuries that may have occurred. Youre looking at live pictures of the crash there in las vegas courtesy of kvvu. Unsure about the injuries but at least six cars involved in this pileup here. A Senior Senate source telling fox news harry reid walked into the hospital under his own power and is being checked out. Part of a sixcar pileup. His caravan part of this in las vegas. He is in stable condition. Sources say he walked in under his own volition and under his own power. Secret service locked down the Trauma Center at University Medical center in las vegas. Melissa robert gray, thank you so much for that. Youre welcome. Melissa there are new report that is one on one negotiations between the u. S. And iran could begin after the election, despite white house denials now. Would it stop iran from getting a nuclear bomb . We have got details on that coming up next. Plus surprise, surprise. A government audit find half a billion dollars of stimulus for green jobs doesnt pay. One of the programs supporters says it is still worth it. I say hes nuts. He is is here to disagree with me. More money coming up. Snost melissa Irans Nuclear program taking center stage. Word is the u. S. Is to have oneonone meetings with iran after the election. My next guest says we have to negotiate with iran before going to war. Joining us in an exclusive interview, nick burns former undersecretary of state for Political Affairs and professor at Harvard Kennedy school of government. Great to have you back on the show. Lets get right to it. This all stems from a report in the New York Times that talked about the administration saying that they had set up oneonone negotiations or meetings with iran. They then later came back out, they had a spokesman come out and deny it. There has been sort of a back and forth what is going on here. First of all from your own knowledge and your own time in washington does this seem reasonable this could happen . Well, remember that it was the policy of the george w. Bush administration to seek negotiations with iran in the second term and president bush and president obama have had a very, policies very close to each other. We, both administrations wanted to deny iran a Nuclear Weapon. Both have been willing to negotiate with iran but iran hasnt been open to that. Both administrations sanctioned iran and threatened the use of military force should that be necessary. I think that is the proper policy. So i think there is largescale agreement in washington that that should be the construct. If president obama is reelected or if governor romney wins the election, i would think it does make sense for us to have negotiations with iran. We certainly have the time and Space Available to do that. Negotiations dont mean at all that you give away the store. Negotiations mean that you try to stop them from building a Nuclear Weapon but try to do it by peaceful diplomatic means with a threat of force behind you. If negotiations dont succeed you always have that option of force. Melissa yeah. So i think it does make sense we would try to negotiate. Melissa if they promise to sit down oneonone and talk that is always a chance of a stalling tactic. You keep a date and exactly do what youre doing and in essence we lose time, right . Not necessarily, no because the International AtomicEnergy Agency is inspecting the Iranian Nuclear enrichment plants. We have a pretty good idea what is happening in iran and there is really nobody in washington saying we should use force right now. Im not aware of a single politician in the democratic or republican parties who believe we should go to war with iran. If we do have the tile seems to make sense there is way to resolve this through intimidation of iran, effect of the sanctions. Their currency lost eight 80 of its value over the last year. Negotiations would have a credibility and would strengthen the position of the United States. If the iranians seem to be stalling we could lift simply at the table. I dont see the downside. Melissa you say if we have the time, but do we . Benjamin netanyahu standing up there saying we only have until next summer. People have put different time lines and different periods. Seems like weve been talking about it for so long we have to be running out of time at this point . No. I would think most people would say were not running out of time. Not an indefinite amount of time but the iaea reports that are public state that iran is making progress but is not close to a Nuclear Weapon. The israeli government, Prime Minister as you said, announced for the timebeing israel is not going to take action. Melissa yeah. That israels red line will be moved to sometime in mid 201. There is certainly time for president obama or governor romney should he be elected to choose diplomacy. That is in the american tradition of course. We are a country that wants to see if it is possible to resolve problems peacefully but before we resort to war. Melissa nick, let me ask you, if we sit down to make a table and make a deal and theyre willing to stop what are we giving them . Is it just money . Obviously the negotiation will about limiting irans ability to enrich uranium. Making sure iran can not enrich uranium at weaponsgrade and be in a position. Melissa in exchange for what though . What are we giving them . That remains to be seen because we have not had a negative to speak of on this issue. Melissa what would you give them . It is very difficult, until you sit down at the table with the iranians. Knoll you know what the parameters are of the discussion it would be inappropriate or unreal listic to say what you give them. By definition any negotiation will be some type of compromise. That is what negotiations are. President bush was willing to have those negotiations as is president obama but we really cant say what the United States should offer. I would not recommend the United States make unilateral concessions until we know and test whether iran is serious and we dont know that right now. Melissa nick, thank for coming on the show. Have a great weekend. Thank you. Thank you very much. Melissa next on money, a government audit trashes half a billion dollars worth of stimulus for green jobs. I would say our ta