North and South Korea Skirmish at Border; Where Does Kim Jong Il Get His Money?;
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THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. JACK CAFFERTY, HOST: I’m Jack Cafferty. Welcome to the program on today’s edition of IN THE MONEY. Plus bulls, bears, and wolves. We’ll look at sexual harassment on Wall Street and how women in business are fighting to stamp it out. An update on the boom boom room. And banking on Citigroup with CEO Sandy Weill getting ready to clear out his desk. We’ll look at whether the change could pay off for you as an investor. Our IN THE MONEY regulars all together here on the set today, Susan Lisovicz, financial correspondent for CNN, Andy Serwer, editor- at-large, “Fortune” magazine, and I slept much better last night when I found out that the recession was over. I am so relieved. SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT: And how did you know that the recession was over, Jack? Was it the rising unemployment rate? ANDY SERWER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, “FORTUNE” MAGAZINE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that have this very complicated formula, and they said the — this is what killed me. Not only they say it’s over, they say it ended in November 2001. When did the next one begin, December 2001? CAFFERTY: It’s got to be a job to have. You only get a recession about once every eight or nine years, and your job is to say it started, and then when it’s over, you say it’s over. And then for seven, eight, nine years, I guess you just go… SERWER: So everyone who got laid off after November 2001 — it’s your own fault. You can’t blame it on the economy, right? According to these guys. LISOVICZ: It may be an example of how Washington works. This is an agency based in Washington. CAFFERTY: A prime example of what the taxpayers are paying for down there. All right, well, it’s over anyway, whether you believe that or not. Chalk one up for North Korea. In its campaign to grab U. S. attention, for a while this week, Pyongyang managed to look like even bigger trouble than Baghdad by delivering a nuclear threat and fighting a gun battle, a real one, with troops along the DMZ between North and South Korea. Senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre, is in Washington with more. Those were real bullets, weren’t they, Jamie? JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Yes, but they say they don’t think it was a real serious situation. What happened was — in that border dispute was some shots were heard coming from the North Korean side. The South Korean army responded with a volley of machine gunfire, and then there was no response from the North. It’s very difficult to figure out what’s actually going on in the minds of the North Koreans. But as you said, they did — they have told the United States now that they have reprocessed enough of those fuel rods from their Pyongyang nuclear reactor to produce as many as six new nuclear weapons. That raises the big question for the Bush administration, do you negotiate with North Korea? The administration is not in the mood to give any concessions at all or really do much in the way of negotiation, and that has former defense secretary, William Perry, worried that the United States might be drifting toward war. Now Perry, you might remember, although it was ready to go to war in 1994 with North Korea over the nuclear arsenal that they were developing at that time, and he told CNN this week that North Korea might be willing — ready to test a nuclear weapon as early as this year, and that leaves the U. S., he says with some unpalatable choices. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) WILLIAM PERRY, FORMER U. S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: We can simply accept a nuclear program with many nuclear weapons in North Korea and the possibility they will sell them to other people, and I think that’s unacceptable. Second alternative is to go to war with them to stop this, change the regime. And when you consider how horrible that war could be, that’s unacceptable. That leaves you to the third alternative, the only reason we are willing — we should be willing to negotiate with the North Koreans is because the other two alternatives are so terrible. (END VIDEO CLIP) MCINTYRE: Well, the Bush administration insists there’s another alternative, and that’s real economic pressure on the regime in North Korea, which could be close to collapse, and keeping the emphasize on the diplomatic front, but it’s hard to see exactly where this one is going, Jack. CAFFERTY: Your guest, Jamie, suggested that you negotiate with North Korea because the other two options are unacceptable. To me, that sounds more like blackmail than negotiation. MCINTYRE: Well, Perry’s argument is that you have to first demand a freeze, a verifiable freeze, in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, essentially what he calls “coercive diplomacy.” That would be backed up by essentially an iron fist. And as I said, Perry was ready to go to war in 1994, drawing up war plans to take out that nuclear reactor at Pyongyang and reinforce the United States forces there with tens of thousands of additional troops, so he’s Casper Milquetoast. More : edition.cnn.com |