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Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien

Economy Adds 175,000 jobs in May; How Will the Tech World Respond?; Prince Philip Hospitalized; School Bus Overturns in Tampa; Brad Pitt Shows Up at a Movie Preview; Meet CNN's New Late Night Host

Aired June 07, 2013 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The jobless rate has been falling steadily since peaking at 10 percent in 2009. Most states actually have unemployment rates below the national average. You can see them here in green. I think Christine Romans suggesting that perhaps we have some news already?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: I do. I'm looking at a tweet actually from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that says May, the payroll employment increases 175,000. The jobless rate essentially unchanged at 7.6 percent.

That's actually a tweet from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Let me get back on the call with the labor producer. And you talk a little bit about that.

BERMAN: 175,000 jobs added, according to the tweet from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that would be more than we expected. Just a little bit. They're expecting 158,000. However, the unemployment rate, which is a separate and different measurement, actually ticked up slightly. Unemployment had been at 7.5 percent according to numbers we're just seeing now slight uptick to 7.6 percent.

Again, Christine Romans is on the phone right now with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to find out more about what's going on inside that data.

ROMANS: So this is -- so this is what I can tell you when you look inside that data. We're going to get the full press release here in just a minute. You know, a bunch of different cables. But this is essentially better than expected better than. You're seeing a lot of market participants saying this is beating expectations, this is better than we thought.

When you look at 175,000 overall and a 7.6 percent unemployment rate, that's not as soft as some people have thought it would be, 158 was our expectation. So this is -- this is a little bit better. It still shows you overall that you have a labor market that's having trouble kind of chugging forward. It's having trouble getting a lot of traction.

This is in line with what I was telling you before. The recovery average. It is in line with the average of what we've seen for the recovery. So I think this is status quo, not as bad as some had feared. It shows the labor market where the firings have slowed down, the layoffs have slowed. We've seen that again and again in the weekly data. But we haven't just seen robust hiring really kick in.

BERMAN: But this recovery that we've seen, which has been slow, but it has been consistent, this seems to indicate that this slow but consistent recovery is continuing at its slow but consistent pace.

ROMANS: Yes, slow but consistent. I would say 175,000 increases is better than -- it's better than the 158 that we had thought. But you still want to be seeing month after month of something like 200 or 250 to really get going. And remember analysts have been saying that quite frankly at 175 or 173, that's the average of -- of the past year or so, it's going to take another five years to get back to prerecession levels. So you want to see this kind of turn in there.

I'll be looking, digging in to see about manufacturing jobs. I mean, that's something that's been a little bit of a slowdown lately in manufacturing jobs. So we've seen consistent hiring in health care. Consistent hiring, engineering, a lot of technology related fields. That's where we have seen the consistent hiring.

BERMAN: Do me a favor, because we have that on the bottom of our screen right now there. It says economy adds 175,000 jobs, and then just before we showed the unemployment rises to 7.6 percent. Please, we do this just about every month. Explain how we can be adding 175,000 jobs on the one side, but also seeing the unemployment rate tick up a little bit.

ROMANS: Because these are two different surveys -- that the government collects. One is from people, where they find out if people have been hired, and the other is from companies, where they figure out how many people do you have on your payrolls. Two different surveys, sometimes you see them just slightly -- government calls the move from 7.5 to 7.6 percent essentially unchanged. Because those are two different surveys.

One of households, one of companies. 7.6 percent, I will point out, is still too high. In a recovery, especial a recovery this long, four years now, you want to see the jobless rate coming down more, but just in 2010, I think? 2009, we have 10 percent unemployment. So we've come down from 10 percent unemployment.

BERMAN: The Fed has set a target for where it would like to see the unemployment rate before it says it will do some things that a lot of people are talking about. What's that target?

ROMANS: 6.5 percent. This is -- this is the unemployment rate over the past year. It's been slowly trending down. 175,000 jobs overall in May, net new jobs, and unemployment rate -- the government says essentially unchanged at 7.6 percent.

And, you know, just a quick check here. The long-term unemployed, essentially unchanged. 4.4 million, even -- 4.4 million people have been out of work for six months or longer. That is a structural problem in this country. We have got to fix that. The longer you have people that -- out of work that long I mean it really becomes a problem for families and very hard to get back into the labor market.

This is another number that we look at. It's called the Employment Population Ratio, that's a percentage of population with the jobs. Still too low. I mean, look at where -- we're back to 1980s levels. You've got to see that rise as well. We saw big gains in retail trade, we saw gains in food service and drinking places. That suggests to me that people do have a little money in their pocket, and they're spending a little money and that's creating some of those jobs.

But in general, John, the jobs that we've been creating in this recovery have been jobs that had been at much lower wages than the jobs we lost.

BERMAN: It's a really interesting number where this number is. Because I think maybe there's been some pessimism creeping into the market the last day and a half, two days. I think some people were fearing that the jobs report today would not meet expectations. It did meet them and surpassed them by a very little bit.

So I think there'll be some relief on Wall Street about that today. But there's another side of this, too. It's not so good I think that the Fed will change its course immediately.

ROMANS: Right. And that's what a lot of -- a lot of people in markets are looking at. They watch these numbers to see what does this mean about the Fed's gage? What -- is the Fed going to keep pumping money into the economy? Essentially keeping training wheels on the economy because the bike can't go by itself, or as you start to see some strengthening or at least stability in the economic numbers, will the Fed stop pumping so much money in? And then maybe that could rattle the stock market.

BERMAN: All right. The headline again, in these numbers, how many jobs added?

ROMANS: 175,000, unemployment rate 7.6 percent.

BERMAN: All right. Great. We're going to move on now to some other news. More now on the controversy we're going to be following all morning. The fallout from reports that the National Security Agency is tapping directly into nine major U.S. Internet companies. That's extensive. Stemming from quotes like this in "The Washington Post." They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type.

Many drawing comparisons to big brother. What does this mean in the tech world? Obviously, they've got a perspective on this.

Let's go now to San Francisco. Our correspondent there, Dan Simon.

Dan, you know, what are people in Silicon Valley saying about this?

DAN SIMON, CNN SILICON VALLEY CORRESPONDENT: You know, John, it's really interesting. You know, we've reached out to all these companies and all of the companies that got back to us said the same thing, that they did not allow the government direct access to the servers. There's no ambiguity in their statement. So at this point, we don't know how the government was able to access these servers.

It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a company has lied to us, but there's no wiggle room in their statements. So it's a bit curious at this point.

BERMAN: Let's walk through some of the statements that the companies have been giving that have allegedly been involve. They used the phrase like "direct access" a lot. Google uses the words, security, instead of privacy. How does it all shake up at the end of the day? what are the companies actually saying. If you can lay this out in English, that would be helpful.

SIMON: Sure, well, let's just go right to the worst. This is what Apple is saying, quote-unquote, "We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency customer data must get a court order.

Now Facebook basically says the same thing, maybe a little bit differently. "We do not provide any government with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws and provide information only to the extent required by law. The bottom line here john is we're going to need a fuller account on how information was accessed. Because, you know, you hear those statements and there's seems to be a disconnect.

BERMAN: You know, you hear people complaining about Facebook's privacy settings or Goggle's street cameras and the Apple cloud issues, do you think this will change people's behavior? Even if you turn off your privacy settings. Doesn't that have any impact as what the government can or can't get?

SIMON: Well, all the stories I do involving technology, nothing gets people peeved more than issues regarding privacy. They even get more upset about it when than when there's an outage. For instance.

You know, will this cause some people to change behavior? Perhaps. But I will say that these services and devices are so part of our central lives that I have a hard time believing that people will suddenly shut them up.

But we'll wait to see. People who are skittish about privacy, John, typically don't use some of these services in the first place. Younger Americans typically don't really think about privacy too much, but it will be interesting to see -- John.

BERMAN: That's an important point and important schism between those who use them and those who don't.

All right. Dan Simon, great to see you this morning appreciate it.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, ahead on STARTING POINT, England's Prince Philip admitted to a London Hospital for what Buckingham palace is calling an exploratory operation. We'll bring you're the details in the live reporting jugging up next. BERMAN: And does the name George Stroumboulopoulos ring a bell? You might not be familiar with him now, but you soon will be. He is the latest addition to the CNN family. He will be live in studio with us this morning.

You're watching STARTING POINT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: To other news out of Buckingham Palace. Prince Philip, the 91-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth, has been admitted to a London hospital for what the palace calls an exploratory operation.

Max Foster live in London with the latest on Prince Philip's condition this morning.

Good morning, Max.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ROYAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Christine, you know, just seeing the press team, the senior press team go into the hospital. So we are expecting some sort of update.

The operation was meant to be taking place today on his abdomen. We don't have much more detail than that. So I suspect the operation has taken place, and we'll get an update from the press team.

All this said so far is it'll be on the general anesthetic which of course is a concern for someone heading towards their 92nd birthday. And he will be in for two weeks which is significant amount of time. That's sort of bracing us for a long period here.

At the same time, the Queen has continued her duties in her -- in her style. But she -- she comes to the hospital, I think the sense is that it's raising alarms, so she's been just down the road, opening the new BBC headquarters and actually had some fun there, and was smiling, so she doesn't seem too concerned at this point, but the palace certainly taking this quite seriously and asking us not to speculate about what is going on. But it's an operation and he is an old man.

ROMANS: All right. Max Foster, thank you so much, Max.

Ahead on CNN starting point. CNN's new late-night host, George Stroumboulopoulos, he is already a huge sensation in Canada, the 51st state, ready to make waves here. Down south. We'll introduce him to you, just after the break. You're watching "starting point."

ROMANS: How many vowels are in Stroumboulopoulos?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: A developing story in Tampa, Florida, where a school bus overturned this morning with two children on board. According to Tampa affiliate WFTS, another vehicle may have cut off the bus. We're told the children on board are ok. But the woman behind the wheel of the bus had to be taken from the scene on a stretcher. Look at that. That's amazing.

ROMANS: Wow.

BERMAN: It's terrifying.

ROMANS: All right, pre-trial hearings continue today in Florida for the man who shot Trayvon Martin. George Zimmerman's defense team has been sparring with prosecutors about potential pieces of evidence in his upcoming murder trial, set to get under way next week.

Yesterday a judge rejected a defense request to protect the identities of three potential witnesses. The defense claims prosecutors have been withholding evidence taken from Trayvon Martin's cell phone.

BERMAN: Some people in Atlanta are probably really glad they went to see a sneak peek of Brad Pitt's new movie. Why?

ROMANS: No way.

BERMAN: Because Brad Pitt showed up. And not only did he show up, he had free T-shirts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRAD PITT, ACTOR: I imagine a few of you cut some classes to be here. We're going to make it worth your while. We've got something that you've never seen before it's the most intense thing you're going to see all summer. It's so fun, so I'm really happy for you guys to see it. I hope you got snacks we got T-shirts for everyone when it's over, and have fun. All right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Wow. Snacks, t-shirts and Brad Pitt. Three of my favorite things, right. "World War Z" opens nationwide.

ROMANS: I think he's done this before. I mean I think he's been saying that people who really deserve you know it's not the big paparazzi at the openings, but the people who are going to the screenings. Those are the people he wants to see at the movie. That's cool.

BERMAN: A question for you. So is it soda or is it pop?

ROMANS: Pop.

BERMAN: It's soda.

ROMANS: Pop.

BERMAN: Where are you from?

ROMANS: Oh my, it's pop.

BERMAN: So the answer according to North Carolina state PhD student Joshua Katz, oh I guess it depends on where you live.

ROMANS: And if you live in the right place it's pop.

BERMAN: It's soda.

ROMANS: According to Katz and his map it's soda if you're from the northeast there you go and I guess from out west it's soda. And it's pop if you are, you know, like me, in the Midwest where it's all blue. That's where it's pop.

BERMAN: There is also some other words apparently that are mispronounced in your part of the country. Including gooey, chewy sticky stuff is it car-mul or ca-ra-mel? According to the map the red states, it's car-mul. That's where you live and mispronounce it.

ROMANS: I say ca-ra-mel.

BERMAN: That covers the Midwest and the west. It's ca- ra-mel, three syllables in the right part of the country in the East Coast.

ROMANS: Finally how do you pronounce those things you snip from the Sunday paper, coo-pon or cyoo-pon. It looks like the red states rule with coo-pon.

ROMANS: Once again.

ROMANS: Do you say ruf or roof?

BERMAN: Roof.

ROMANS: Do you say creek or creek?

BERMAN: I didn't even know what that is, I say stream or river. What's a crook, with a creek?

ROMANS: A creek.

BERMAN: I say river or stream.

ROMANS: All right that's enough. Let's -- we're going to continue.

BERMAN: (inaudible) all day.

ROMANS: We're going to have this fight for the next couple of weeks.

All right next, she's been a lifeline for homeless female veterans. In this edition of "CNN Heroes," we want to salute Jaspen Boothe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JASPEN BOOTHE, COMMUNITY CRUSADER: When Americans think of veterans, they are only thinking about the men.

CHICKITA: My name is Chickita and I'm an Operation: Enduring Freedom Veteran.

SANDRA: My name is Sandra and I'm an army veteran.

BOOTHE: Women veterans are the forgotten heroes of America. A lot of them have fallen on hard times.

ANN MARIE: My name is Ann Marie and I'm a reservist in the Air Force and I was homeless.

BOOTHE: My name is Jaspen Booth. I am a captain in the Army National Guard and it's my mission to get homeless female veterans and their children back on their feet.

In 2005 I was called up to serve in Iraq. During my mobilization, I lost everything to Hurricane Katrina and the very next month, I was diagnosed with breast stage three cancer. I was a single mother and 28 at the time.

The VA, they didn't have any programs available. And when I left the VA I went to social services. You are not a soldier, you're treated basically as a baby's mama or a crack head. It wasn't until I relocated to D.C. that I started to hear about homeless female veterans. That's when I decided to found an organization that would house them and their children.

Let us know what you need. I am like a procurement whisperer. We also do offer wrap around support services. Child care assistance, employment placement.

I see the Marine.

We are not pity party environment; we give you all the tools that you need. But your success in this program is up to you.

This little piggy goes to the market?

CHICKITA: I have a job now, this is my space to prepare myself to be better. Jas set me up for success.

BOOTHE: Why do I do what I do? It's the right thing to do as an American and it's the right thing to do as a soldier.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Wow. Good for her.

BERMAN: That's a nice story.

All right. We've got something special for you here. It's something of a television miracle. He has arrived on set. The gods have brought him here.

ROMANS: It's a miracle.

BERMAN: George Stroumboulopoulos sneaking in under the wire. When we come back, you will explain to us what happened to his watch.

ROMANS: Nice to meet you. GEORGE STROUMBOULOPOULOS, CNN HOST: Great to see you. How are you?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: Ok we have an exciting new addition to the CNN family all the way from Canada, George Stroumboulopoulos. Now he's a massive, massive star. His show a massive success in Canada and he's bringing that magic --

BERMAN: Apparently he's trying to conquer all of North America.

STROMBOULOPOULOS: No.

ROMANS: -- to CNN. He's got a talk show that premieres this Sunday at 10:00 p.m. Eastern, right after "ANTHONY BOURDAIN: PARTS UNKNOWN". Welcome to the family.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Thank you for having me. This is fun.

ROMANS: It's so cool to have you.

So what do you want Americans -- the one thing you want Americans to know about you?

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Look, I love having good conversations and that's what I want to do on this program. That's all I really think about to be honest with you. I think an interviewer is kind of like an emotional archaeologist. So if we can dig up and find some bones, and then over time, you kind of recreate the skeleton and maybe understand something that happened in the past and look towards the future. That's how I look at it.

I grew up wanting to -- you know, Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Chuck D and Joe Strummer from "The Clash". Those are the people that I really look to -- and Patti Smyth. So I want to do that --

BERMAN: Interesting, No Gordon Lightfoot. That seems like a slight.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Well, because -- no it's not a slight. It's just that Gordon Lightfoot was unachievable. That's like saying can you become a deity, we can't. With Gordon, you admire, you bask in his glow, but you can't become him.

ROMANS: Tell us who we're going to see on the show?

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Let's see we've got everybody from Martin Short to Whiz Khalifa to Eckhart T'Ole to Keanu Reeves.

BERMAN: Keanu Reeves, you have some fun there. You go riding with him.

STROUBOULOPOULOS: There he is right there. So I am the one with the full face helmet on, I'm about to get my gears for not wearing full face. That's Cano's Norton that I'm on, which by the way is a British bike, so all the gears on the other side. So I had to relearn how to ride a motorcycle. He is so passionate about bikes. He's building his own motorcycle; his own kind of bike. so we went out there and I wanted to test ride it.

BERMAN: Did you -- when you talk to someone like Keanu Reeves about motorcycles, someone who cares that deeply about it, do you think you have to prove yourself to him? You have to kind of measure up?

STROUBOULOPOULOS: You know, I don't think so because one of the great -- it's like being a sports fan in that it's the great equalizer. It's just you meet them at their presence. I love motorcycles and I love the idea of being really passionate about a second project, where you kind of throw yourself into.

So with him, it just two guys talking about bikes and how we love it and what it means to us and the greater context. So you never worry about having to prove yourself because it's just two guys talking about bikes where all three of us we're talking about basketball before we went to air, right?

BERMAN: Well, let's talk about that. You're a big sports fan.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Huge sports fan. I used to be a sports reporter. I covered the NBA for a long time, big hockey fan obviously. Watching the playoffs like wild and any time Miami loses, I'm other. Sorry, Miami.

BERMAN: You know let's talk about that because you were up late last night, which may explain perhaps why, you know, standing here under the wire here.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Wolf Blitzer and I went out late.

BERMAN: Blitzer and Stroumbo, out late last night. Let's show Tony Parkers last-second shot, this (inaudible) shot. Because I've been watching it all morning; I cannot get enough. Walk me through this.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: So here he goes right now -- what's incredible about that is think tony knows what's happening on the shot block, look at the release, just before the light comes on. And it's perfect high board. That's almost like a gym teacher rebound. Like he knows what he's doing with that.

BERMAN: You know, he's not a big guy. This little Frenchman comes over and he lights it up in the U.S.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: They have unbelievable coaching. That's an example of a team who knows, they've had veteran leadership. Great coaching and they know how to let Lebron be Lebron. You can't stop him. Tony can't even contain him.

BERMAN: Beat everyone else.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Beat everyone else. That's what they do.

ROMANS: Tell me a little about who you have interviewed on your show. You've interviewed the biggest names -- Oprah, Bono, Hillary Clinton. I mean if they are big in this country, they sit down with you.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Yes and you know, we're the only late night talk show in the country, in Canada.

BERMAN: Is that right.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Yes.

BERMAN: They can only afford one.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: That's right. That's all we got. I really don't have that kind of agenda. I'm like you guys, I get on TV and enjoy the process, but I don't have to prove anything. I'm not that kind of a guy.

BERMAN: I have a lot to prove.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: No, you're good.

You have a Marvel comic drawn after you, you have nothing to prove, you win. So I just kind of sit down and want to learn what makes people do it. They do it overtime more and more guests agreed to come on.

In the very beginning, I can only music guests to kind of pop on. And then we were very luck. We have Tom Cruise early in the run, and Tom was so lovely, started to tell other people about our show, including other Canadian celebrities and that's how we started to get more people. So we're kind of like an Indie van and word of mouth drove what it is we do.

BERMAN: Welcome. We are so glad you are here, so good to meet you. So happy to have you on board.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: You too. Thanks for having me.

BERMAN: The show looks awesome of course. It's called "Stroumboulopoulos," I don't know how you came up with the name, but I think it's going to catch on.

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Super catchy, isn't it. It's sort of ridiculous.

ROMANS: It doesn't -- George, it doesn't fit a line in the teleprompter. You have to break it in half (inaudible)

(CROSSTALK)

STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Even in the title it's three lines.

BERMAN: In addition to Stroumboulopoulos, make sure to check out Sunday night on CNN. It is the season finale of "ANTHONY BOURDAIN PARTS UNKNOWN", that's an 9:00 p.m. Eastern. He has an incredible adventure in the Congo.

"CNN NEWSROOM" with Christi Paul begins right now. Have a great weekend. CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the "NEWSROOM," liberty versus security. The government is not so secretly now mining your data from Yahoo!