This is real money, and you are the most important part of the show. So tweet me. Ali velshi, the weather is warming up and so is the mood of american consumers, and the question is how much better theyre feeling. Today, the conference board, a private research group, said its Confidence Index increased 1 to 3 points in may, and they dont bother the real number because its hard to explain. But this is significant. Its the second highest reading since january of 2008, which was roughly the beginning of the Great Recession. 83 looks good when you think of the index average, 53. 7 during the entire recession. And this rebound of confidence is a good sign for the u. S. Economy. Because 2 3 of all activity is driven by Consumer Spending in the united states. Economists expected it. And im going to taub to economists, who say given the job momentum wasnt larger than this. We got data today and other data pointing to the reason that some consumers are feeling more upbeat. Home prices continue to rise, even if the rate at which theyre gaining is cooling off. An index of 20 metropolitan areas, gained 12. 4 in march, compared to the same month in 2013. That beat the forecast. But its down from 12point the percent from february. And by the way, 12. 4 is the smallest annual gain since july. And this makes the consumers more willing to spend on other items. It makes you feel richer, right . And that brings me to another piece of concern about the pace of the recovery. Today we learned that new orders for durable goods rose 8 10 of a percent in april compared to march. This is refrigerators, aircraft equipment. Things expected to last three years or more. The gain was expected, but heres the thing, orders for defense related goods spiked 3. 9 . If you take out the defense goods, which generally speaking you and i dont buy, this number drops to a loss of reduced by 8 10 of a percent. That raises the outlook for consumers. So people buying defense related stuff are doing well, but not everybody else. Lets get the questions from the man i mentioned a minute ago. Mark vitner, senior economist for wells fargy and it raises doubt about the u. S. Growth going forward. Mark joins us now, and mark, you take that 83 number and you dont think thats gangbusters . Well, its okay. And it certainly is in line with what we have seen. But when you look at the jobs number, the unemployment numbers so far this year have been strong. The april numbers showed an increase o of 88,000 jobs, and e have averaged 215,000 jobs a month for the first four months of the year. That would suggest that Economic Growth was accelerating, yet the gdp numbers are close to 0. And Consumer Confidence, it hasnt broken out of the range that it has been in the last couple of years. 83 is closer to the level thats you would see in the depths of a recession, rather than what you would expect five years into recovery. So its better, but its telling me that something is missing, and i put a note in our report. I said make the bond market is more right than people believe. A lot of people think that its crazy because the yields have dropped past 250, and maybe they were right to look on past the employment number. Here are the obvious thins, the shear numbers of job creation that we have been hoping for, but does that mean that were looking at the wrong metric . Were recovering from the recession in not as robust of a fashion as we went into it . Thats certainly the case in the last couple of years. You have a lot of people working parttime that would like to work fulltime. And a lot of people in low wage jobs that arent where they wanted to be. And we havent seen as much growth in really the mid income skill professions. And the thing thats most perplexing to me, over the last four months, january, march and april, the Employment Data have been better, and not only has want overall jobs increased bid a large amount. But the quality of jobs have looked good. In april, 67 of the industries that we attract increased in employment at the end of the month. What do you think . The bond market, what do you think is missing . What do you need to see more of to convince you that the economic recovery is healthy . Well, this may sound a little wacky more than anything else, but the Great Recession was so deep, and the economy fell so hard that it really disported a lot of the seasonal adjustment factors that are done to all of the dat a and one of the net results of that is that in the last five years, the economy has looked like its doing better up to the spring, and then suddenly, unexpectedly, the employment numbers that looked really strong in the first couple of months of the year took a dive. And what im thinking, what im concerned about, after looking at the Consumer Confidence numbers, it may happen again. And we dont have it in our forecast. Were thinking that the growth is going to pick up a little bit in the second half of the year, but im a little concerned. If the economy was truly doing better, i think you would have seen more improvement in the confidence data. Were comparing the 83 we have now to the numbers that we have had in the recession, around 53. The index was running about 53, and you say this is still feeling recessionary to you . The Consumer Confidence number . With the exception of barack obama, no president has been reelecting with the Consumer Confidence number what it is today. So it has been enough to throw about any president out of office. And its pretty disturbing. More than twice as many consumers say that jobs are hard to get today. And more say that the conditions are bad than say its good. So those are the types of reads that you see as we just get out of the recession, and not more than five years into the recovery. So when you look through all of the data, you see that most of the improvement in the Consumer Confidence isnt from more people thinking that things are getting better. Its but its from people saying that things continue to get worse. It could be a lot better if things were getting a lot better. Mark, good to talk to you. I know that that sundayed eth theory. Thats why we have you on here. And we need the analysis that you provide. So thank you forking with us once again. Good ceos make too much money, they topped 10 million. Medium means that half of them made more and half made less. A ceo from a Large Company made 10 and a half Million Dollars last year, thats a 9 increase. And ceo pay is now 7 times the average worker. Anthony petarello. His paycheck was 63 million. And most of it was a 60 million lump sum to buy out his old contract. And you might be surprised to learn that female ceos made more than their male counterparts. 11. 7 million. But there were only 12 female ceos in the survey compared to 325 men. In trouble, why engineers have been forced to dig out the machine thats supposed to be doing all of the digging, and later, we check out the computer lab thats small enough to be hauled in a backpack. Americas aging infrastructure needs repairs and upgrades. And when it comes to transportation upgrades, nothing is bigger than the dig in seattle. Traffic underground, freeing up space above ground to connect to the waterfront. But it has run into a snag. Bertha, the biggest tunnel Boring Machine in the world stopped digging t. It hit a steel object in the dirt, and it has damaged its 2,000ton cutter. Crews are starting to dig a pit into the ground to gain access to the machine, and eventually, they will use cranes to take it out and make repairs, and then lower it again and put it back on the machine. Its so complicated that big birtha wont get back to bigging until march of next year, and it will delay it 15 months. Theres no idea what it will mean to the 3. 1 billion price tag or the city of seattle but the planners chose the most expensive route. This is bertha, the biggest tunnel Boring Machine in the world, for the seattle viaduct replacement project. Its the single biggest that ive been involved with. It will move traffic below the congested street. The tunnel is 9,073 feet long. And when we excavate. 850,000 tons of material, or close to 2 million tons of material. The goal, to make an elevated roy above a tunnel route that sustained damage in an earthquake. You have a structure thats very much at risk. It manages over 100,000 vehicles a day and it has huge economic to the region if it was to fail any further. Seattle had to make decision busy the viaduct. The choice, to make repairs to the roy or replace it. They chose to take the expensive route and dig a tunnel underground and get rid of the viaduct entirely. Despite the delays to the project, bertha cant start digging again until march of next year. And they are confident that it can open to traffic by november of 2016, which was the original date set by planners. As for cost overruns, no word on who pays for that yet. He joins us now on the ground, leslie, good to see you, and this is red meat for people who say that there should not be publicprivate partnerships, and these infrastructure projects. Guess what, theyre always late and always over budgets, so there must be a lot of people licking their chops and saying i told you so. There are a lot of people predicting doom and gloom. Whats the sense of it . Like all projects, it will get done, and do people still believe in this project and think that its the right thing to do . I think that the city is divided but i think that the general feeling is that it was the right decision. If you have the option to start from scratch, you wouldnt build a major highway system right on your waterfront. Theres a debate on who ends up paying for this, and where does it stand . Where it stands right now, you have the tunnel partners that they are the design build contractors. So ultimately, theyre responsible for everything that is being done. But there are other parties involved, including the state. The partners argue that it was the state, left a pipe casing in that that caused the bertha to stop. We dont yet know that. We wont really know what happened, and why the tunnel Boring Machine stopped in october when they pull out the cutters and examine it. So you have the telepartners, and you have the state. And potentially, the project is insured, and you have hitachi, the manufacturer of the borers. Its fantastic that you can have a 15 month delay and expect it to be open by the deadline that they originally planned. I have to assume when the city undertakes Something Like this, the people of that city know that there are cost overruns and delays. They do know. And i dont think anybody anticipated this much of a delay, and of course there could be further delays, and i think one of the things that people worry about is a great deal of uncertainty that we still face. We dont know what caused it, and we dont know if this could happen again. Nobody in any major city enjoys the process of the infrastructuring built. And its all horrible when its going on. In the end though, in your view, seattle had to do something, and the option of not doing something or replacing the viaduct with something similar probably wasnt viable. So seattle had to do something bigger to keep one the growth. Absolutely, we were the Fastest Growing city in the country last year, and traffic of course slowed down during the recession, and its picking up again. Things are pretty bad here. And eventually, well make the transition to being a Public Transit oriented city. And that takes time. And you do need to have the roads. Right now, there are two major arteries going through seattleing it. And if one of those is inapp inoperable, its a huge problem. Whats your sense, is this a big, big advantage to seattle once its done. Thats hard to measure. I think potentially seattle would be one of the two or three most beautiful cities in the world. Once you have that viaduct down and the city open and major park along the waterfront, we get a fair amount of revenues from tourism, and it grows every year. We have huge increases from tourism from china and canada and obviously having more space for tourists to spread out to, and events along the waterfront could be a huge plus for the city. Leslie, thank you for being with us. Leslie helms, the owner of business mags, and hes the candy tycoon in the middle of a crisis. What he needs to do to stabilize that troubled nation, and middle class families getting squeezed by property taxes. Im looking at what one family has to face as part of our yearlong look on americas middle class. Tonight on Al Jazeera America, at 8, primetime news, what concerns you the most . Bringing you the latest headlines from around the world you can really feel the tension here. Then at 9, its america tonight in depth reporting from coast to coast would it be dangerous for you go about three blocks that way . I wouldnt go by myself. At at 10, consider this its the latest push for reform. Antonio mora brings you unique perspectives on the news of the day tonight starting at 8, only on Al Jazeera America its going to be made more difficult by whatever support these separatist factions are getting from the russian government. And who are these people . Are these russian incursion into ukraine or russians who who want to be part of russia. Its probably a mix. I think early other, there was direct provocation by russian agents, and i think now theres a certain momentum thats taking effect. Where people in the east who dont see their future associated with the kiev government are distrustful because of past corruption and scandal, do align them was russia, and that takes on a life of its own. Does it represent a new future for ukraine . It has been trouble for sometime. A country rich in resources and important, and can he lead ukraine into prosperity. Well, hes probably the best chance that we have, but leading them into prosperity is a great ambition. Before we had the protests, and before we had this crisis with russia, we had a deepseeded action, and he made it worse. But he has, because of his pragmatism, he has worked on all sides of the political debate, even if hes able to do it, he faces an economy thats profoundly distressed. Lets get back to the brass tacks here. A lot of the energy comes from russia, including the ukraines energy, the natural gas, and they have a big bill to pay. They have to work it out, and putin and bankers saying, how do we fix this . It has to be, ukrainians and russians, sixth around and trying tore sort it out. The gap between what ukraine wants to pay is huge, its going to take a lot of hard work to get to something that is viable and the ukraine can afford. When the imf came in, they made an assumption about the price, which is halfway between the two, and that is something that a lot of parties, including the european union, are trying to aim towards. What we can find the political will to get to that price, i dont know. And again, this whole thing in ukraine started because of a sense of whether ukraine should be facing east or west in terms of its future trade relationships. Ukraine has to get back into that discussion, do they do what started the protests in the first place, deciding as a country if they want to face west europe more than russia . I believe so. The new president has said that he wants to sign an Association Agreement with the west. And certainly the country wants stronger trade and investment ties with the west. And i think that he will try to find a way to make that happen without provoking russia further. But over the next 5, 10 years, the model is more of a poland or hungry, with greater economic success. They have done quite well with that. But one thing that hes going to have to explain to ukrainians, something that other countries have had to do, they need an austerity program. And things will get tighter. I believe that they shouldnt demand too much austerity up front, but theres a lot they have to do in terms of fixing the Energy Sector and the fiscal policy, and dealing with the immense corruption that runs through the economy. He has to explain that to his people and make the case for what is going to be tough austerity measures and why that will bring prosperity in the longterm. If they get that right and if they get a deal with russia and focus on the western trade relations and reduce their budget through austerity, what does the future look like in the economy . Its a bifurcated economy, and western ukraine has begun to go to western europe and small manufacturing and its goods can be competitive in yo europe andt has made that transition. If Eastern Ukraine is the problem, its out of date and tied to the russian supply chain. And theres got to be a major restructuring of the industry for the people who live there. Thank you, robert, the senior fellow for international economics. I bet a lot of americans can relate to this. The feeling you get when you pay your property taxes. It has to be paid and you write it out in disgust. You curse under your breath and it has to be done. More of what hes talking about, and when you get relief if ever. And small packages and how they can help america close the gap with the rest of the world in science and math. As you told you earlier in the show, the latest data shows u. S. Home prices are still rising but at a slower pace. Higher home values make people feel wealthier, but they can also translate into higher property taxes ask when youre struggling to make ends meet, itsa another burden adding to the squeeze. We have been tracking the ups and downs of three families struggling to get ahead. Tonight, heading to long island, new york, to check in with the sabino family to see how their property taxes are influencing their lives. It has to be paid. And you write it out in disgust. You curse under your breath as you do it, but it has to be done. That bill that father of two, phil sabino is cursing, the property tax to his modest family home in long island. We moved here in 1998 and the taxes were 5,500 theyre 12,000 now at the present time. Thats roughly 13 of the sabinos annual income. The average American Household pays just over 3 . Nationwide, property taxes have fallen 8 and a half percent from their peak, and thats well above the drop in home prices since 2006. Many will see higher tax bills. In some communities, property taxes will continue to fall for the next year or so, and in other communities, we will p