economic message. >> he said he was the candidate of change, but you still have 25 million people out of work. you still have almost 10% unemployment here in florida. you still have home values down and continuing to go down. you still have record number of foreclosures in florida. you still have median incomes suffering, middle income families suffering. >> florida is an epicenter of the housing crisis that put us into the great recession of 2008 and 2009. cnn senior political analyst david gergen joins us from jacksonville. david, mitt romney is not only focused on president obama, he's got newt gingrich to deal with as well. florida was one of the states that was hardest hit by the housing crisis. its unemployment rate remains above the national average. so is tuesday's primary going to end up as a referendum on whether voters who are focused on the economy can get behind mitt romney as the man to best fix it? >> reporter: probably so, ali, but i must tell you this has become such a personalized race. they've gone -- romney and gingrich have gone mano a mano in the several debates and we've had sort of a boxing match between the two of them that i think is more dominating the way people are thinking about this and whether mitt romney has a better plan than newt gingrich does to fix the economy, it's gotten so personal. having said that, i do believe that the debates have now put romney in a commanding position heading into tuesday. he's very likely now to win the florida primary and trade after the debate with cnn thursday night, put the chances of him winning florida at 90%. he's a heavy favorite to win florida. if he wins florida, he's more likely to win the nomination and then his economic plans and policies are really going to be put to the test. i think most voters haven't sorted out quite what he's going to do yet. >> in these many debates, we really do tend to lack specifics. once in a while somebody comes up with a plan that's highly specific and we in the media world set about to try and test that plan. but generally speaking, the idea of creating jobs, lowering taxes, the idea of tax reform, the generalized idea of health care and immigration is not specific enough. stephen moore is with us. president obama emphasized this notion of fairness or unfairness of our economic system when he talked about taxes during his state of the union address. listen. >> when americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it's not because they envy the rich. it's because they understand that when i get a tax break, i don't need and the country can't afford, it either adds to the deficit or somebody else to make up the difference. >> now, i'm going to presume, stephen, that you don't even agree with the premise if somebody gets a tax break that they don't need that it adds to the deficit because there are people that argue that that creates economic growth or stimulates spending or investment. but you don't need to read too much into what the president was saying to see the connection that he was drawing, particularly to mitt romney who this week revealed that he made close to $43 million over the last two years but paid a tax rate of about 15% because most of that money was investment income and that's what the law says. capital gains is 15%. i'm sure you don't like the president's plan to make sure that millionaires pay at least 30% in taxes. but what's your sense of -- can you acknowledge the fact that there are people that think the current system does seem unfair? >> hey, it seems unfair to me, ali. i've been writing about this for 25 years. i think the tax system is an abomination and needs to be blown up and start over again. here's one problem that i have with the president's message. leaving aside how much millionaires should pay and so on. look, we have an economic crisis on our hand. we still have, as mitt romney has been saying about 20 to 25 million people unemployed. there in florida you've got, you know, so many homes, millions of homes and millions of homeowners underwater on their mortgages. so my point is really shouldn't we be emphasizing economic growth as the first principle rather than fairness. i think that's a vulnerability for the president. i'd like to see the republican candidates, mitt romney and newt gingrich, really hitting harder on that exact theme. look, fairness is fine. but what we need is a rising tide of economic growth that as john f. kennedy said lifts all boats. just to dovetail something david was saying, you know the problem republicans are having right now is that they are slugging at each other and forgetting the adversary here is, of course, the guy they're going to have to face in november. >> whomever the successful candidate is going to be may go into this presidential election limping a little bit. diane swonk, chief economist at mesereau financial, the economy we learned the u.s. economy grew at 2.8% in the fourth quarter, the last three months of 2011, compared to a year ago. it's nothing to sneeze at, 2.8%, nothing to celebrate either. we're looking back all the way into 2010. and what economic growth has done, it's come down, it's leveled out and then it's started to go up again. i guess the theme of this recent recovery is slow and steady and it's a major part of the reason why the federal reserve chairman, ben bernanke, says he's not ready to pop the champagne corks when it comes to people getting back to work. listen to what he said. >> in light at the anticipated modest pace of economic recovery, the committee expects that over coming quarters the unemployment rate will decline only gradually. >> all right. so let's just take stephen's point for a second, diane, and put aside the fairness discussion whether or not you think it's correct and talk about growth. what comes first in the recovery of this economy, economic growth or jobs which put money in people's pockets which then causes economic growth? >> clearly you can't have growth without jobs, that's the bottom line. i think it's really important to understand that much of the gains that we saw in the third quarter, although it was an acceleration in growth, came from a catch-up in inventories. now that that catch-up from the auto sector, after the japanese earthquake last spring, now that that is sort of playing out, that won't be there to support growth. in fact domestic demand, final domestic demand slowed quite dramatically. over 2% of that 2.8% gain was inventory gains alone that won't be there to support growth in the first quarter. and it's why the fed is so still very concerned about growth in the u.s. economy and trying to provide some level of certainty in terms of providing stimulus for the economy through its communications when there's so much uncertainty and just, you know, a lot of lies and things going on in the political spectrum that i don't even want to address. >> you know, diane, can i just mention something about this. we had an editorial in our paper called the zero decade. we've had close to zero interest rates by the fed now for five, six, almost eight to ten years. and this idea that we can keep stimulating this economy with a free flow of money and record low interest rates, i'm just not so sure, diane, it's a strategy that has worked very well. this has been a lousy decade for growth with the fed holding those rates down. >> who let ron paul into the room? >> let me interrupt you. >> hang on. it's a good point because i don't know -- diane, i want you to answer this, but i'm not sure the fed is saying they can stimulate any further. we're at zero. >> right. >> i think all they're saying is we're not going up. what's your answer to that, diane. >> actually no, i don't think that's true at all. i read your editorial, stephen, and i didn't like it. i didn't agree with it because i don't think it was very informed on what the fed is trying to do. agree or disagree, the fed is using communication strategy, learning from the great depression and learning from the mistakes of japan that you can do more at the zero boundary. that canes was wrong that web he came to that conclusion when you hit zero interest rates there's nothing you can do. in fact the fed has done a lot. they did a lot when they announced the mortgage buy back program and retriggered a program in terms of any kind of mortgage lending in 2009. the announcement effect of that alone was tremendous. so the fed expanding their balance sheet, doing out of the box thinking has had a major effect in terms of stemming the losses and triggering some level of growth. the problem is the head winds. and i believe the greatest head winds we face today are political in nature and political uncertainties from europe, the middle east to the u.s. those are our biggest stumbling blocks and we probably agree at some level on that level. >> david? >> yeah, i just wanted to make a couple of points. i do think this conversation illustrates and underscores what diane was just saying. the conversation in politics does not seem to me to fit very well the nature of the problem, the structural problems that we have. at the center of our political argument now is whether the tax rates out to be raised on the upper income. you can agree or disagree with that. but if you raise them, that's not going to solve some of the structural problems. >> that's right. >> we have a real problem with creation of jobs. with this growth that we've experienced in 2011, the economy today is bigger than it was before the recession hit. and yet we have six million fewer jobs than we did at that time. we have had a real problem creating jobs, and i don't know what the answer is to that. even if you keep interest rates at zero, that is not going to necessarily create the jobs. so where are those jobs going to come from? i think the candidates have to engage at a more macro level and help us understand what their alternative paths are out of this so that you do get a more vibrant economy that creates jobs. >> i know you and i weren't in the same place for the debate but you're taking the words out of my mouth. i feel like throwing pillows at the screen saying come on, guys, give me details. tell me what you're going to do, because that's the conversation we need to have. stephen, you're a big fan of paying the bills. i've got to pay the bills so hold on, we'll come right back stay where you are. the the top man in president obama's economic team says you won't have him to kick around much longer, regardless of who wins the white house in november. there's going to be a change near the top. i'll tell you about it when we come back. ♪ [ smack! ] [ smack! smack! smack! ] [ male announcer ] your favorite foods fighting you? 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>> i'm not sure. i don't read a lot into the timing of this recent statement because he's made it clear before he's only staying on because the president really pressed him and he's now simply saying i don't think the president is going to do that again. the president obviously has come to rely upon tim geithner. he's turned to him to have frequent conversations with the europeans, especially chancellor merkel and others about the euro zone because there's such fear that that could upset the apple cart. the president relies on cabinet secretaries, hillary clinton is another example of someone who is also leaving. but it's also an opportunity. when someone leaves like that, you have an opportunity to find the next person who can send signals about your intentions. if he finds someone who is not only well respected internationally but is a deficit hawk, someone who is really committed to bringing this debt under control, that would help him working on capitol hill, help him politically, help him with the financial community, he's got an opportunity now to reach out to the financial community, the business community in ways that tim geithner for whatever reason hasn't been seen as the bridge that we're looking for. so there are a lot of things you can get that are plusses for you as a president when you have a major job opening like that. >> stephen, what's your take on this? >> i don't dislike tim geithner personally. i think he's a good man, and in fact i think the fact that he understands financial markets has been pretty critical for this administration. but i'd also have to give him pretty close to failing grades. the statistics that you just rattled off about how half of americans still think we're in a recession, obviously we've had a very mediocre at best recovery. and so i think that, you know, one guy i'd like to see brought in just as some food for thought here would be something like paul volcker, somebody who was very involved in the big recovery in the 1980s. we need a big, robust expansion. the big problem for the president right now is even though the economic signals are suggesting a pickup, a lot of americans aren't feeling it at home. >> which leads a lot of people to the question we started with about fairness. diane, i want to get back to this idea that we have an economic system that is unfair to millions of americans. we continue to say that it now appears that capitalism itself might be on trial. so forget the politics for a second. as an economist, do the numbers tell you when you look at all the economic indicators out there, do or can the numbers tell you that america has an unfair economic system? >> absolutely. i mean we have neglected education in this country. we hit a peak in educational attainment in the 1970s as other countries continue to educate people in the 1970s moving to the 1980s. at the very moment the information age and ideas were being rewarded more than manual labor. the bottom 50% of income earners in the united states has stagnated or lost ground in terms of income since that period of time with the top 90th percentile or top 10% who have graduate degrees and more education were beneficiaries, because there was a shortage of them. that gap between the 50 and 90th percent was filled with debt. that was more expedient for us in our capitalist economy with deep and liquid capital markets at the time than educating our people and sending them to educate themselves. we had the gi bill and all kinds of things. we took people from the farms and brought them into the factories. we educated them, made them literate. we did things that were pushing education for much of the 20th century. at the end of the 20th century, gave up on that. that's a structural problem that is absolutely relevant in the numbers and it gets to the broader issues that we were talking about earlier that, you know, the candidates are not dealing with the real structural problems in the u.s. economy. you know, dealing with these sound bites of unfairness in income and equality. they do exist but they are rooted in very decade-long problems. >> are we going to get to that point, stephen, where we're all listening to these debates or whatever candidates are doing an saying, hey, we've got some real options, one versus the other on the table, that would be real solutions for our economy? >> well, look, i think this big issue, just to frame this whole debate, it's going to be a debate between fairness being pushed by president obama and hopefully a growth platform by the republicans, probably mitt romney. and i think that's really the decision americans are going to make. do they put fairness ahead of growth. i reject this idea that if the economy grows, it only helps rich people. diane, if you look at the data from 1980 through -- >> i didn't say that it only helps rich people. i just said the income inequalities are there. >> it's also true that the middle class did pretty well over that period, a 30% increase in real incomes. the problem has been the recession has just crushed people and we've had no recovery in incomes, wages or jobs. >> all right, good conversation, folks. we'll hope that the conversation does get more specific as the campaign goes on so we can actually start to evaluate where those choices should lie. david gergen from jacksonville, steven moore and diane swonk, chief economist at messer are so financial. housing continues to be missing in action during this economic recovery. florida has been particularly hard-hit and it just happens to be holding a primary on tuesday. that's why our own christine romans is there. she'll be with us next to break it down on "your money." in louisiana. they came to see us in florida... nice try, they came to hang out with us in alabama... once folks heard mississippi had the welcome sign out, they couldn't wait to get here. this year was great but next year's gonna be even better. and anyone who knows the gulf knows that winter is primetime fun time. the sun's out and the water's beautiful. you can go deep sea fishing for amberjack, grouper and mackerel. our golf courses are open. our bed and breakfast have special rates. and migrating waterfowl from all over make this a bird watcher's paradise. so if you missed it earlier this year, come on down. if you've already been here come on back... to mississippi... florida... louisiana... alabama. the gulf's america's get-a-way spot no matter where you go. so come on down and help make 2012 an even better year for tourism on the gulf. brought to you by bp and all of us who call the gulf home. florida is big in the news with that upcoming primary, so let's take a look at florida's housing market. it's been particularly hard hit. if you look back to 2006, you'll see that florida's home value, which is the line in red, were actually higher than the national average. this is typical, by the way, of the states that were hardest hit, in some cases arizona, nevada. in the green you see the national average over the past year. you can see while the national average has declined somewhat, florida has been in steep decline and the prices there have now fallen below the national average. at the same time, foreclosures in the state of florida have skyrocketed. this is typical when you see a continued decline in home values, because people stuck in those homes who have lost their jobs cannot sell th