are we possibly headed into further stagnation? well, you know, the political strategist side of things i ve never had to look so much at politics to figure out where the economy was going. i tell you, it s like watching the keystone cops. it s gotten ridiculous. going forward we do have momentum carrying us into 2012. that s the good news. we hope we don t lose it because of political ineptitude. that s what would kill it. we have a lot of icebergs ahead. we hope politicians are better at navigating turbulent water than the captain of the titanic. that said, where are the positives? the positives are there is a glimmer of hope in the labor market. looks like the situation bottomed out after things fell apart last spring and the summer. we re seeing momentum return to job hiring. not enough momentum, but some is better than none. particularly small business hiring, new business burst, that s very important to the back bone of the u.s. economy and where we re looking for str
stage this is a nation struggling with with a global recession and budget cuts like the united states. the approach to solving it seems different than the one taken in the u.s. here to talk more about that as well as the rise of china, harvard economic historian neil ferguson, author of the assent of money financial history of the world and a columnist at newsweek . thanks for running over. i did run, sprinted. got in your morning exercise. yeah. i want to ask you about this. a lot of questions about the stability of the u.s. economy, a few articles talking about whether the gold price is shooting up to a record have something to do with troubles or fears of trouble for the u.s. economy. what s your take? the u.k. is about a year ahead of the u.s. in dealing with its fiscal problems. we had a huge banking crisis in this country, our deficit exploded in the wake of the crisis. earlier than the u.s. britain has been trying to get the deficit under control. we re at that st