significant one is the clear dividing line, it was never going to be about gay marriage, this election. it was always going to be about the economy. and now you have the dividing line. president obama says that mitt romney's record at bain was destructive, it cost jobs, it was profiteering. mitt romney says no, i created jobs. i turned businesses around. i'm proud of it. i can do the same with america. you have a connection. let's establish that. your wife worked at bain. you're a romney supporter. you've said that on the show. but tell me about the argument over private equity in relation to the two stances. >> well, i've worked in private equity the last 12 years also. let me just say this. think were romney, i'd say bring it on, mr. president. i've got three things i want to talk to you about regarding private equity. one is private equity companies don't buy jewels. they buy broken businesses. orphan businesses that big companies don't want. so what do they have to do? they have to deal with the balance sheet, which is often a mess, and they have to deal with the strategy of the broken business. so that's number one. they have to go in and deal with those tough problems. what has america got a problem with right now? a strategy and a balance sheet. great experience. he's done it with hundreds of companies. now, there's a -- >> has he always done the right thing with those companies? >> maybe not. maybe 20% that they say haven't worked out. but you're taking broken companies. take the steel company that they like to advertise about now. that steel company would never have gone ten years in the '90s without an investment to keep it going. this was a dead business. >> what about joe biden's claim that just because you can run a company like bain it doesn't mean you're any more fit than a plumber to run the presidency. >> well, that's an outrageous comment. but he doesn't like plumbers. but that's a different argument. let's make the argument, the second point along with strategy and balance sheet. >> it doesn't mean he doesn't like plumbers, does it? >> let's go to talent, okay? let's go to talent, piers. when you take over a broken company, you've got to put talent in. what does the president have to do in office in he's got to put talent in. he won't have a secretary of energy like we have now that doesn't have any idea about business or how to drill and get things. all he wants to do is raise the price of gasoline. he'll put talent in these jobs. so he'll staff better. >> what about this, jack? i hear what you say -- >> i want you to hear what i say. >> i hear it loud and clear. but here's part of the problem that i think the republicans have. many people blame the policies that were conducted by the republicans for eight years for the financial crisis that engulfed america and the world. how does mitt romney distance himself from what happened before? because he can't blame obama for all that. >> he talks about his qualifications vis-a-vis obama. i just gave you a strategy, balance sheet, and talent. and now what does a private equity company do when it buys these companies? it globalizes them. so he's been dealing with governments. he's been dealing with the nuts and bolts of running companies globally. he ought to be talking about these characteristics that make him a great leader. we want a leader. we want a leader to take over this country, piers. >> what about the problem that they have in terms of perception with the fact that many americans blame wall street, and president obama's fueled this attitude, for a lot of the greed and naked capitalism at its worst, which brought america to its knees? >> well, he doesn't have any association with that. that's just ridiculous. he ought to talk about his qualifications. and private equity gives him incredible breadth of qualifications along with being governor of a state and other things. but i mean, without question, the idea of being embarrassed because you're in private equity is the silliest argument in the world. >> be honest on this one, jack. >> when am i not honest? >> i'm not disputing for a moment your integrity. i'm just saying on this particular question i'm about to ask you i'd be fascinate bd a proper answer. people that criticize mitt romney over the position he takes about it say when he uses bain as an example of job creation, they say that's a load of phooey. that's not why any private equity company buys a company. they don't buy it to create jobs. they buy it to turn it round and make a profit. >> i agree with that. >> so is he wrong to say it was about job creation? >> i think making the job creation was not the smartest case to make. >> right. >> but creating jobs that last, durable jobs, in a forward, quote, economy, that's what private equity does. i've been involved for over 10 years now, 12 years. we have not had a busted company. we've taken broken companies and taken them forward, and they're now flourishing. so you do -- you don't create scads of jobs, but you create good-paying jobs in a continuing industry. >> do you think this will be the key battleground, the ideological dispute we're now seeing over this? >> if it is, romney ought to wipe it out. look -- when you look at those things that i gave you for the qualifications, compare it to somebody who was handing out leaflets as a community organizer, the global experience of doing all this, piers, it's not even close. >> again, i come back to the problem with mitt romney and perception. for whatever reason the public look at him in america and they see a very wealthy guy. they see him as a kind of corporate fat cat, for want of a better phrase. and that may or may not be fair to him. but that's how many americans see him. a lot of it down to his own gaffes and things that he's said. and when i look at this in the totality they'll be like, well, okay, this is all very well, but he's a very rich guy who made himself very rich doing this company. that's not what we want from our president. what we want from the president is for him to help us get jobs, not for him to make himself even richer. >> and that's what private equity does. it creates jobs -- it creates jobs in companies that would have gone under. these companies, you don't get a great jewel and then invest in it. you get a broken company. you invest in it and make it alive. you keep a -- you take a dead carcass and put oxygen into it and keep it alive. that's what private equity does. now, is it st. a big job creator? no. but does it keep jobs, piers? yes. >> let's play something i did with howard schultz from starbucks on this show. very interesting concept he came up with which i want to ask you about. >> i don't believe you can build a sustainable enterprise with a singular goal just on profit. it's a shallow goal. i don't think you can endure. i don't think you can attract great people. and i think the best part of business right now is trying to create the balance between profitability and a social conscience. >> i found that really fascinating. he called it moral capitalism. and to illustrate this he said look, we're bringing a factory he's opening in georgia, we could source it out. people said afterwards there's no comparison between him and you can't do the right thing, the moral thing from a broken so again, the argument applies equally to a lot of american companies. when he talks about moral capitalism, what is your instinctive reaction to that? >> i like what he says because guess what he starts with. he starts with starbucks, a highly successful, profitable company. you can't do the right thing, the moral thing from a broken wagon. you can't do it. and so the idea of not having successful, highly profitable companies who can give back -- when i retired from ge, we had 50,000 of our employees mentoring students in the inner cities in new york, kentucky, all those things. we could do that. do you think general motors could have done that at that time? not that they weren't just as good people as we were. they were broke. so you want your company to be profitable so you can give back. you can't give back from an empty wagon. >> what about the concept which i've pushed a lot and some businessmen freak out when i say it, about companies like apple who outsource a lot of their work now to places like china deliberately bringing it back at a financial cost to them in the short term but actually for the benefit of america as a -- >> i'm not sure it might be. you want apple to be as successful as they can be. then apple can take those resources that it gets and give it out as it sees fit. it can pay taxes. it can donate to great charities. when i ran united ways for years, when i went around to busted companies and knocked on their door for money, the ceo would say i'm sorry, i can't help you out this year. come back next year. when i went to companies that were winning -- that's why winning is good. >> talking about winning, facebook, obviously launched this week to huge hysteria. and taken a huge fall since it opened. we saw mark zuckerberg in a prearranged deal made a billion dollars, cashing in some shares. there are issues about morgan stanley and about their role in all this. what is your opinion of the whole ipo launch of facebook this week? >> ugly. it turned out that greed overtook rational behavior. and they had it priced right, it looks like, and they had the right amount of stock being put out, it looks like. the way the stock has leveled out today it looks like that was right. and what happened was at the last minute they jumped in and went for too much stock at too high a price. and as a result of that there's a black eye all over the place. >> is that just pure naked greed? >> one from a distance might think so. >> which leads me to the situation at jpmorgan. massive losses there. we know it's going to be well in excess of 2 billion. we don't know quite how big. you talked about leadership. the leader of jpmorgan jamie dimon is renowned as one of the great business leaders of america. what has gone wrong there? how after everything we've been through in the last few years could a company make that kind of loss without apparently some of the top people having any idea? >> some people made a mistake. how did the gsa guys go to hawaii and have themselves a party? why didn't barack obama stop that right away? no, but barack obama dealt with it once he learned of it. >> has jamie dimon dealt with this problem? >> right up to now, absolutely right. and now he's got to shift his emphasis from taking care of all the schadenfreude people up there and all the people trying to capitalize on regulation in reuters, we're talking about his challenge now is to galvanize the internal people. >> hasn't there got to be regulation to -- >> of course there has to be something. >> he's always railed against it. >> he hasn't railed against all regulation. >> he railed against the particular regulation which ironically would have stopped this -- >> most people say no, that's not the same regulation that would have stopped this. the argument -- that argument's not -- >> if you're an average american watching this and they're saying how can a company lose over 2 billion, maybe 3 billion -- >> of its own money. >> -- and it's put down as a mistake, a bad day at the office. >> of its own money. of its own money. they're going to make several billion dollars this quarter. mistakes occur all over the world every day. >> does it help the american financial system for jpmorgan to take a -- >> it would have been a lot better if it never happened, of course. >> had that have been a smaller bank, they could have gone under with a hit like that. so they were lucky that their balance sheet were so heavily in profit. >> they were a very small company. >> yet they still made this catastrophic mistake. >> no, catastrophic would mean it would be over. they made a large mistake which they're handling. they've handle td well to now. now they've got to get their people on board. >> but one way, jack, for confidence to be restored to the american financial system -- >> is to do everything perfectly. >> no. but not to make such massive mistake through what appears to be just a naked attempt to make a greedy fast buck. >> we don't know that. >> do you suspect that? >> no, we don't suspect that. >> what do you suspect was going on? >> they were trying to hedge the thing and it slid into something else. i don't actually know enough to comment on that. but i do know they came clean right away. they've been very forthright about it. and they're going to make mistakes. the challenge for jamie dimon is you're knocked off the horse, how do you get back on again? and get on -- >> is he the right guy to do that? >> absolutely. >> finally, what is the state of the american economy now? should people be feeling generally more confident? >> pretty good. it's not great. it's nowheres near what we need. but we're going to grow in the 2% to 2 1/2% range over the next couple of quarters. we're going to add over 150,000 plus or minus jobs. >> but a lot better than it was, say three years ago? >> a lot better than it was three years ago. >> so obama's done a pretty good job then. >> well, he's done a job of rah bringing it back in the cycle. >> do you give him credit for that? >> no, he hasn't brought it back anywhere near fast enough. this is the weakest recovery we've ever had. >> what do you give him credit for in terms of the economy? >> that's a tough one for me. that's a tough one. >> i tell you what. come back another time when you've thought of an answer. >> i will. >> jack, as always, great to have you. >> always a pleasure. thanks. >> jack welch, president of the jack welch management institute and the founder of ge. next a man with an appetite for destruction. my interview with the immortal slash, talking music, mayhem, axl rose, and probably the night i had with him in copenhagen once. 12 hours of drunken marauding. and i lived to tell the tale. jack, you want to stick around for this? ♪ kiwi. soy milk. impulse buy. gift horse. king crab. rhubarb pie. lettuce shower. made by bees. toucan sam. that's not cheese. grass fed. curry. gingersnaps. soup can tower. 5% cash back. right now, get 5% cash back at grocery stores. it pays to discover. who have used androgel 1%, there's big news. presenting androgel 1.62%. both are used to treat men with low testosterone. androgel 1.62% is from the makers of the number one prescribed testosterone replacement therapy. it raises your testosterone levels, and... is concentrated, so you could use less gel. and with androgel 1.62%, you can save on your monthly prescription. 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[ male announcer ] want great taste and whole grain oats that can help lower cholesterol? honey nut cheerios. six-string superstar slash in downtown new york last night. the guitar god from guns n' roses now in the rock and roll hall of fame. he's battled addictions, even axl rose. he's achieved iconic status with a style all of his own. he now joins me for a primetime exclusive. welcome, slash. >> hi. >> people want to know this, but copenhagen, the early '90s, guns n' roses at the height of their powers, you and i conducted our first interview together. and at the end of it you said would you like a jack daniel's? which i'd never experienced before. i tasted the jack daniel's and 12 hours later you and i were in a piano bar in some god forsaken hellhole hotel still drinking jack daniel's and you walked off into the sunset with my favorite jacket which i never got back. >> yeah, i'm not sure -- >> i thought it was the price of pain. >> i would love to find that jacket and give it back to you. >> it was blue. it fitted me. it was everything i wanted in a jacket. you just took it. you had about 1,000 jackets. i've said this many times on the show. it was the single greatest rock performance i've ever seen. by anybody. it was just incredible. secondly, it was one of the most outrageous spectacles, the whole 24 hours, i've ever been party to. fighting at press conferences. drunken, rampaging. it was all everything i ever imagined and hope rock and roll could be about. thirdly, the interview, when i then played it back, was one of the most lucid, smart, intelligent interviews i'd done with anyone for a long time. and it wasn't supposed to be that way. >> probably not. all things considered, as much partying and all that stuff that went on in those days, i always stride to be somewhat intelligent when it came to having a discussion with somebody or an interview or whatever. i did my best. i had my moments but there were times i was really out to lunch. >> talking about out to lunch-i interviewed gregg allman last night, another rock legend. but he obviously had a lot of problems with drugs. and i got the feeling he slightly jumped the shark. whereas when i reinterviewed you for "gq" magazine you'd clearly come through, the whole process, the whole rock and roll destructive process, and you'd come out the other end apparently with no damage. do you feel lucky? >> i was very fortunate. because the kind of addiction that i had was something that was a long-term kind of a thing. and getting out of that is really a struggle for a lot of people. and some people don't make it out of it. so i was very fortunate that i could finally get it together and prioritize and come out the other end in one piece, so to speak. >> we're going to discuss the new album, new slash album soon. but i can't not discuss guns n' roses. i know you sort of hailed this because although it was fantastic and you sold millions of records and it was so iconic, because of the way it ended you don't want to sit here banging on about axl rose for the rest of your life. >> right. >> do you? >> no. yeah. it's a lot of attention put on a lot of negative stuff. and granted, the negative stuff existed and might still exist, or whatever. but you know, dwelling on that stuff, all things considered, i left the band in 1996. so we're talking, you know, a pretty long amount of time -- >> when was the last time you actually spoke? >> it was 1996. >> do you remember the last words? are they repeatable? >> no, no, it wasn't like that. i think the last words -- basically, it was just that i'm done. i think that was -- >> who said that? >> i did. >> "i'm done"? >> yeah. and it wasn't even me necessarily leaving the band. i