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Growth Slows, Fed Waits; Trapped Miners Send Video; Medical Mission to New Orleans; The Help Desk; What's Hot; Moving on After Katrina

Aired August 27, 2010 - 11:58   ET

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

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Ali, why am I doing this? You're here, man.

ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Let's talk about it.

HARRIS: We've got a market check, right?

VELSHI: That market is up, why, 100 points? Not because of bad GDP, but because of what Ben Bernanke said. I want to know if you feel good about this.

HARRIS: OK.

VELSHI: Bear with me for a sec. Can I go over there?

HARRIS: Please.

VELSHI: Let me take a look. If we can just pull up some pictures, I want to tell you what Ben Bernanke said in some pictures over here, if I can. Basically, he gave a speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming today --

HARRIS: Come back over here real quick. Come on back over here.

VELSHI: Back over here, all right.

HARRIS: Because I don't think anybody -- we're just -- we're freelancing this.

VELSHI: OK, all right. If we got these pictures that I've got, I would like to --

HARRIS: We'll put them up in a second.

VELSHI: -- talk to you about them. Ben Bernanke gave a picture -- he told us about --

HARRIS: He was in Jackson Hole, right?

VELSHI: He was in Jackson Hole.

Here we go, there is your GDP. That's the biggest measure of what we do, all right? Now, you can see at the right end of the wall we were up 1.6 percent in the second quarter. That's January, February, March -- April 1st to June 30th. We thought we were up 2.4 percent. Still up, that ain't a recession. Up 1.6 is not a recession.

HARRIS: Because we remember the negative quarters, right? The negative GDP.

VELSHI: That's right. Those were negative on the left side, you see that.

Now, let me show you what else he said. He talked about consumers, he talked about businesses and he talked about jobs. What did he say about consumers?

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: Let me show you.

He talked about credit. He said, it is still tight, but it's loosening up. Look at that, the piggy bank, 6 percent, that's what American households are saving right now. We were saving nothing. The problem is, we're saving and we're not spending, that's why the economy is not coming back.

But what he says, is all of that saving will lead us to feel stronger in 2011. See the cash register? He thinks we're going to start spending money in 2011.

HARRIS: We have talked about this all week. What's going to be the moment? What's going to happen?

VELSHI: We're collecting it. Well, what's going to be the moment? That's a good question. Here's a problem.

Look at this. Houses -- credit is still hard to come by to buy a house. That's part of the problem, but it's loosening up and home prices are still very affordable.

Mortgage rates are still very low. So something has got to break for that to happen.

Now, what does all of this depend on? It depends on businesses and what they do. Let's take a look at what he said about businesses. All right?

HARRIS: Terrific. Terrific.

VELSHI: Let's just change to the next screen and I'll tell you what it is.

HARRIS: There you go.

VELSHI: All right. Investments in consumers (sic) and business products are going up. In computers and business products are going up. So that's a good sign. HARRIS: Yes. Yes.

VELSHI: Structures -- the only structures that we're building are things that have to do with mining and oil, because those prices are still high. We're not building a lot of other stuff.

Now, these are companies. Big companies on the left, they have access to credit. Their credit -- the credit freeze --

HARRIS: Are you kidding? Yes.

VELSHI: They've got it. Small businesses have to go to banks.

HARRIS: Right.

VELSHI: They are still having a big, big problem. So that's part of the issue. The small business, which is what drives our economic recovery, typically, they're not hiring people right now.

Big businesses, you and I talked about this a couple weeks ago. They've got the cash. See that bag of cash? They're not spending it right now. And that's the problem.

Now, finally, we always talk about this. You can say anything you want about the economy, and doing this and doing that comes down to jobs. Let me show you what he said about jobs. I'll take a look at that third one.

HARRIS: Awesome. Do we have it? Let's do it.

VELSHI: Basically, he says the unemployment rate which edged down just a little bit is not really lower because the unemployment rate is going lower. It's lower because of labor force participation. People are just dropping out of labor force. They've taken unemployment for too long. They're not even counted by the system, so that's that.

And here, companies are not hiring people because they're bringing in part-timers, they're bringing in freelancers, and they're asking people to spend longer on the clock at work. They are not prepared to invest in new people until consumers come back into the fold. They're not doing that yet.

So it's not a lot that we don't know, but he did punctuate it and pepper his speech with the idea that it is happening. He feels that the handoff from government to consumers and business is under way. By 2011, we should feel it more.

HARRIS: I love that. I want to circle back to that.

Did he say enough today so that we can at least for the moment stop all of this talk and all of this analysis on this idea of whether or not we're going to slip into another recession, this idea of a double-dip recession? Can we, based on his comments, put that conversation to bed for at least a moment, Ali? VELSHI: You know these Fed guys never give you that much. I think you're right. I think we talk ourselves into it. I think on TV we do that. I think we've got to just keep it in perspective, and we've got a lot of information here to help with that perspective.

So I leave you with this, Tony -- we dot no have definitive proof that we're headed into a double-dip recession. We do not have definitive proof that the sky is falling. We have definitive proof that we are muddling about in the slow lane.

HARRIS: Right. OK.

So -- and one last thought. If I'm waiting for the comments from the Fed chief, so I have a sense of whether I hang on tighter to everything or I loosen up a little bit because I think, you know, we might be right around the corner from this dam bursting a bit, what's your take? What did he give us?

VELSHI: As I describe it, his speech described the economy as a glass a quarter full, as opposed to three-quarters empty. In other words, I would say that he is saying the recovery will come, it will be further out. So I don't know if it's a double-dip recession like a W. It just might be slower.

HARRIS: Right. But the projection is better times in 2011.

VELSHI: That's what he says.

HARRIS: Come on --

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: And I must say, he got burned for being too positive about the economy back in 2008, so I don't think he's going to overstate the situation.

HARRIS: That is terrific. All right. See you at the top of the hour.

VELSHI: All right, buddy.

HARRIS: Outstanding.

VELSHI: Have a good one, yes.

HARRIS: If you've got questions for Ali, look, you can just send them to us. You can send them to our blog page at CNN.com/Tony. We're trying to gin this up as often as we can here, "Ask Ali" segments. You can also find me at Facebook and Twitter.

Ali back at the top of the hour.

Five years ago Sunday, a massive hurricane that wiped out whole sections of the Gulf Coast, hundreds of people lost their lives in Katrina. As we remember the disaster, we are keeping a close watch on a hurricane and a tropical storm in the Atlantic. (WEATHER REPORT)

HARRIS: Former FEMA director Michael Brown is doing his radio talk show from New Orleans this week, the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Brown, as you know, was ridiculed after President Bush nicknamed him "Brownie" and praised him for doing a heck of a job. He came to symbolize FEMA's slow response to the disaster.

Brown tells CNN he tried to explain the urgency of the catastrophe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL BROWN, FMR. FEMA DIRECTOR: If you look at that videotape closely, as I have tried to explain to people, you see me wince, because I had literally come out of a specific meeting that I had requested with the president to describe to him how bad things were, and that I really need him to help push the cabinet to get things moving. And that meeting was cut short.

We go out. And I knew the minute he said that, that the media and everybody else would see a disconnect between what he was saying and what I was witnessing on the ground.

But that's the president's style. His attitude and his demeanor is always one of being a cheerleader and trying to, you know, encourage people to keep moving. It was just the wrong time and the wrong place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: And later in this hour of CNN NEWSROOM, a slice of life as it is today in New Orleans. I will ask my guests about living and working in the post-Katrina world.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: They are trapped 2,300 feet underground, and now we are getting a detailed look at what life is like for those 33 miners in Chile. What an amazing story. The men used a camera to send messages to their families and to give a tour of their cramped living space.

Karl Penhaul, live now from Chile with details.

And Karl, if you would, walk us through this video, talk us through it, and then gives us an opportunity to hear from the men themselves.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. And I think that's the key thing here, Tony, because, yes, it is a tour of the shelter where 33 men are trapped. But what we're really picking up are details about how these miners are beating the odds and just staying alive.

Now, this whole scenario is lit by a single lamp from a miner's helmet. It gives it an eerie aspect at times. But what we can clearly tell, that the miners are staying strong. They're trying to keep their spirits up, and they're trying to show their families on the surface as well that they have not given up, that they will come back from the bowels of the earth, back to the surface.

But as you say, let's hear what some of them had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I want you guys to know that we're tranquil down here. We want to get out of here. We're not going to stay down here. We're going to get out of here.

Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): This guy doesn't want to get out of here because then he'll have to take a shower. And this one hasn't taken a shower.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Many thanks to the people who are outside working to get us out. We hear you guys working.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PENHAUL: But beyond the high spirits, beyond the optimism that they're clearly showing, also some worrying signs.

Yes, the miners are clearly dirty and unshaven after three weeks underground. But according to their relatives, a lot of them have lost a lot of weight. In some cases, the relatives say maybe 22 pounds or more.

There is a little bit of good news, though. We can see that, yes, they are confined, particularly for their sleeping arrangements to that shelter. They joke at one stage, oh, you're on a box spring mattress, when all, in fact, they're sleeping on is a pile of rocks.

But they do have some more space to stretch their legs. They can move down some of those large mineshafts for exercise. And at one point, we see what looks like a backhoe moving through that mineshaft, so it's a pretty big area that they can go and stretch their legs.

We do also see some of the miners understandably seeming to begin to crack under the strain. When they send messages to their family, their voices begin to tremble.

A number of other messages from families thanking -- from the miners thanking their families and rescue workers for having the courage not to abandon them, they say. Others throw in a message, "Please get us out of here quickly."

We can see the men have been playing dominos and we can see also that they've had an area to play there. But at the end of this 25- minute tour of the underground cabin where these men are living, the lead miner there, Mario Sepulvida (ph), says to them, "OK, boys, on count of three." And then they all break into the Chilean National Anthem -- Tony.

HARRIS: I just love that. I just love that moment.

All right. Karl Penhaul for us.

Karl, terrific reporting. Good to see you.

(NEWSBREAK)

HARRIS: Medical missions to New Orleans. A group that was there after Katrina returns this weekend to conduct another free clinic. We will talk to Stan Brock, the group's founder. There he is, my hero, next in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was a desperate need for medical care. Remote Area Medical was there to help. And this weekend, the organization holds another clinic in New Orleans.

Stan Brock is the founder and volunteer director of operations. He joins me from New Orleans. He's also my doggoned hero.

Stan, good to see you.

What do you remember about your first visit to New Orleans immediately after Katrina? Talk to us about the need at that time. It must have been overwhelming for you and your team.

STAN BROCK, FOUNDER AND VOLUNTEER DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, REMOTE AREA MEDICAL: Well, of course it was, Tony. It was quite horrendous.

And we used the staging area right there at Baton Rouge. We came in there with our fleet of aircraft and ground transportation and spent a couple of months, had several hundred volunteers here. So it was a terrible event. And here we are again, five years later.

HARRIS: Well, but, Stan, you've made more than just a couple of visits. You went there again the following year, and you have been at least a couple of times since.

Describe kind of this arc from the earliest days after Katrina to what you anticipate this weekend to be the need still there on the ground in New Orleans.

BROCK: Well, the indication this morning, which, of course, is a Friday, which is a workday for a lot of people -- and I hope a lot of these people do have jobs, and we're glad to help them in any way we can -- we've had about 600 people come to the two locations. We've got one at Port Sulphur down in Plaquemines Parish, and one here in New Orleans, and we've had about 600 people sign up so far, about 200 of those wanting to see the general medical doctor about diabetes and so forth, and another 200 that need to get their eyes tested and get a brand-new pair of eyeglasses that we make on the spot. And then another couple of hundred that are here to see the dentist. So we're having quite a busy time of it.

HARRIS: So, Stan, look, you started Remote Area Medical how many years ago? Was it 25? More than 25 years ago?

BROCK: Yes. Tony, we have been doing this for 25 years. And the situation 25 years ago here in the United States is pretty much the same as it is today.

Of course, you do have these unusual occurrences such as the Katrina, which aggravate the situation, but we've done 613 of these special operations, most of them here in the United States. And to tell you the truth, the type of medical problems that we run into are just the same if we were in Los Angeles or in Appalachia or here in New Orleans. People simply have a problem getting the care that they need, access to it, or affordability, particularly in the area of dentistry and vision care, and just the being able to see good enough with a pair of glasses to get a job.

HARRIS: Yes. I know the most difficult thing for you is the moment when you have to end the day and you still have people lined up. But let's do this -- you've got two locations I think you mentioned just a moment ago. Just remind folks of where you are, so if there is an opportunity that they could benefit from the services that you're providing, eyeglasses -- I know that there will be some extractions of teeth, as well, and also some screening, as well.

Where are you this weekend?

BROCK: Well, we've got one location down at Port Sulphur in Plaquemines Parish, which is towards the oil spill area, and then we've got another location in an area of New Orleans called Central City area, actually on Simon Bolivar Avenue. And as I say, we're seeing about the same number of people at each event. And this is the place to come if you need your teeth fixed, you need your eyes fixed, and get a pair of eyeglasses, as well as, of course, seeing medical doctors, women's health, the full gamut, really, of all services.

HARRIS: Well, and I certainly hope folks will go to your Web site and make contributions so you can continue to do this amazing work that you have been doing, you and your amazing team of volunteers, many of whom I had an opportunity to meet last weekend when I visited with you in Knoxville.

Stan, again, great to see you, and much success this weekend. And we'll talk soon, my friend. Thanks.

The New Orleans Superdome was the site of so much misery for those who sought shelter during Hurricane Katrina. Five years later, the dome is once again a place of celebration and pride.

CNN's Tom Foreman has details of the dome's rebirth in this "Building up America" report.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, teen Tony, when a town is tries to get over something as enormous as Katrina, symbols become important. And the biggest symbol of New Orleans, of course, is the Superdome. You can see it no matter how you approach the town.

The recovery of the Superdome has been so important here, it is almost beyond comprehension. But it's not been easy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FOREMAN (voice-over): No place is more emblematic of all that went wrong with the evacuation in Katrina than the Superdome. The 10- acre roof ripped open at the height of the storm, packed with people who had nowhere else to go.

The man in charge then and now, Doug Thornton.

DOUG THORNTON, SMG, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT: Debris -- we were very concerned about falling debris from the roof. We had no water pressure. We had no ability to move -- remove trash and debris. And we're taking on more and more and more people, and the Superdome was literally the poster child for misery and suffering.

FOREMAN: It took days for the rescue to be complete. As soon as the last person was out, the hard work began. Teams of laborers swarmed all over the dome trying to restore this crown jewel of the city.

Mountains of debris were cleared. Architects worked out a plan to save the dome, to repair the damage from an ocean of water dumped into two million square feet of walls, electronics and furniture. A new sound system, $7 million, new concessions, $3 million, $8 million more for phones; they did it all while fighting budgets and racing a calendar to reopen.

More than 70,000 seats were soaked and moldy; by cleaning them and wrapping them in plastic and blowing hot air for two months all but 20,000 were saved.

THORNTON: If we would have had to replace 72,000 seats we wouldn't have made it.

Reporter: but they did. Opening for the home game a little more than a year later; they won. The work has continued nonstop for five years and it is going on still. It is the largest restoration project ever attempted in this country on what remains one of the biggest rooms in the world. The final bill will be over $300 million.

For Thornton it is worth every penny.

THORNTON: I didn't think there would be new way I could bam, not to the city, not to the dome, not to my home.

FOREMAN: But the Superdome has come back. The Saints have, too in a very big way. No homecoming for any town has ever been sweeter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOREMAN: And it's not just the Saints. The dome is back in the business of concerts and conventions and Super Bowls and college championships. The simple truth is, many people all across this country will have opportunities to see the restored, truly better than ever, dome in the years to come.

HARRIS: All right.

Stocks chart an upward path today, shrugging off news the recovery is going soft. Look at that, triple-digit gains, up 124 points.

We're following these numbers throughout the day for you in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Let's get you to CNNMoney.com. It's our Web site.

It is the best, smartest, financial news Web site on the Web. Right?

Take a look at the lead story there: "Stocks spike, falter, resume rally." It is a nice rally for Friday, too.

Jack (ph), let's take everybody to the Big Board, New York Stock Exchange. Let's see, three hours into the trading day, and we are trading with triple-digit gains here, up 122 points. The Nasdaq, good there as well. We're up 22 points.

And, of course, we're following these numbers for you throughout the day right here in the CNN NEWSROOM.

We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Forty-seven years ago tomorrow, Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The seeds of that event were planted years earlier by student-led sit-ins in the South, which in turn gave birth to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

It's what we're talking about in our "What Matters" segment today. Also known as SNCC, the organization played a major role in the civil rights movement with a direct but nonviolent campaign against segregation. In their own words, three former members recall SNCC's mission and their role in the 1963 March on Washington.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They stood for a more democratic society.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nonviolent organizers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We stood for the right of people to be human.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Aggressive justice.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let the people decide.

JOHN LEWIS, FORMER SNCC MEMBER: The letters SNCC stands for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Commonly called SNCC for its initials.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: SNCC was founded in April of 1960 to serve as an effort to bring together all of the young people who had been participating in sit-ins across the South.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: These students were Southern students. They were not going to live like their parents and grandparents lived.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We accepted nonviolence not as a technique, tactic, but as a way of life. As a way of living.

JULIAN BOND, FORMER SNCC MEMBER: If I'm in a picket line and someone strikes me, I'm not going to strike him back. If I'm marching down the street in a protest march and someone spits at me, I'm not going to spit back at him.

LEWIS: People there were prepared and willing to go into hell's fire.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

MARIA VARELA, FORMER SNCC MEMBER:: SNCC's job was to facilitate whatever these students needed. If they went to jail, it was to find a way to get them out of jail. SNCC's job was not to dictate to these communities what the movement was about. The organization really just did the coordination to support all of these student activities that happened from Nashville all through the Carolinas, into Georgia.

I didn't want to go. I was too afraid. But it was like if I'm going around on campuses telling people they should help in the South and I don't do it, what kind of hypocrite am I? So I went up there. And developed a whole literacy project.

LEWIS: It was very hard. Almost impossible for people of color to register to vote. You had to passed a so-called literacy test. Some people had been beaten, shot and killed for attempting to religion register to vote. So we were determined to do all that we could to get people to registered to vote in the South.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

BOND: "The Student Voice" was a four-page little 8 x 10 sheet, four pages fastened together that we printed in our own offices in Atlanta and distributed in the cities and towns. Mostly small rural towns where we were working. I joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. And my role was to be the communication director or sort of the publicist.

LEWIS: From being a part of the national movement, I was already a member, because of the local group that came part of SNCC. Before we even went on a sit-in, we studied, we prepared ourselves, studied philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence.

BOND: A demonstration would be held at a restaurant or some public facility that was closed to black people. We would march in an orderly fashion, occupy those seats.

LEWIS: Waiting to be served, and someone would come up and spit on you or put a lighted cigarette out in your hair. Maybe someone would walk up and pull you off the stool and started beating you.

VARELA: Every state agency could be utilized to enforce segregation. With grave consequences. It was like going into the belly of the beast.

LEWIS: In May of 1963, I became the third chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. I was 23 years old. And so on August 28, 1963, ten of us were scheduled to speak. I spoke number six. Dr. King spoke number ten.

BOND: The Catholic archbishop of Washington threatened not to give the invocation unless John Lewis changed his speech. He objected to some of the language in John Lewis's speech.

VARELA: When I read it, it shocked me, in a way, because I thought, "Gosh, this is an angry John Lewis. And, of course, we were all angry."

The Kennedy administration was worried that it made the United States look terrible. And they didn't want that kind of criticism.

BOND: And finally, only with the request of A Phillip Randolph, the man who really called this march into being --John said later, "I couldn't say no to Dr. Randolph." And so he changed it.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

LEWIS: They have said be patient and wait. We must say that we cannot be patient, we do not want our freedom gradually. We want to be free now.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

LEWIS: There was so much hope. So much optimism after the March on Washington. But that sense of hope, that sense of optimism was shattered. Eighteen days later there was a bombing in a church in Birmingham where four little girls were killed.

BOND: And while it didn't produce instant change, and I don't think anybody expected that to happen, the United States had never seen anything like this. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee got people to get together to march, to protest, to do all of the things that human beings need to do if they want to improve their condition.

LEWIS: This group of determined, brave and courageous young people gave everything that we had to make America better. VARELA: The SNCC and its philosophy of not trying to build one charismatic leader to lead some movement, but actually to build leadership across the board in young women, young men of all different colors, classes and educational backgrounds. I think that's SNCC's legacy.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: And you can read other stories of SNCC's legacy in this new book. Here it is. "Hands on The Freedom Plow." See it? There you go. It hits stores in October. But you can preorder it online at amazon.com.

And to read more of "What Matters" to all of us, pick up the latest issue of "Essence" magazine on newsstands right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: More than 1,700 people lost their lives when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. One survivor of the storm who also reported on the intense rebuilding of New Orleans is Peter Covax. He is managing editor of "The Times-Picayune." And he joins me now from New Orleans.

Peter, great to see you. So five years after the storm, is the recovery of New Orleans as positive a story as I hear on our air, elsewhere? If you're focusing on the positive, what real progress do you see five years after the storm?

PETER COVAX, MANAGING EDITOR, "THE TIMES-PICAYUNE": Well, I think New Orleans is on its way to being the great American comeback story of this century. And New Orleans is already in some respects better than it was before the storm. And in other respects, it's a work in progress. But more and more, I think it's on the right track.

HARRIS: And Peter, talk to us about the aspects in which it is a better city than before Katrina.

COVAX: Well, I think one example that is commonly cited is the educational system. Most big urban school districts are run by sore of a centralized bureaucracy and a teacher union, with, like, a little archipelago of charter schools. And New Orleans is a large archipelago of charter schools, with a small centralized bureaucracy and no teacher union.

And scores are up. And parent satisfaction with schools is up. And New Orleans is the only urban school district in America where most of the students go to charter schools.

HARRIS: Yes.

COVAX: And by most people's reckoning, that puts us ahead of the trend in the nation.

HARRIS: Wow. All right. What are the biggest remaining challenges? COVAX: Well, there are still a lot of people who haven't come back. The population of the city is down by about a quarter. And, you know, some of them probably aren't coming back.

But there are also a lot of people who took grants to rebuild and have not been able to rebuild. Often through no fault of their own. For one thing, the grants -- for poorer people, the grants generally didn't cover the cost. They were based on the value of your house, so they didn't cover the cost of building a new house and putting new stuff in your kitchen. And a lot of those people haven't really had enough money to rebuild and still want to rebuild.

HARRIS: And the value in some of the poorer neighborhoods just -- you know, the homes just weren't as valuable as they were in other neighborhoods. It wasn't sheetrock for sheetrock; it was, you know, your home in this particular neighborhood is just simply more valuable, correct?

COVAX: Yes. I mean, if you had a home that was -- if you lived in a home that was worth $100,000 and your payments were $100,000, you really can't rebuild a home in the same way that, you know, if you wreck a five-year-old car, you can't really replace it with a new car for the money they give you.

But home building doesn't work like cars, because the way these grants worked, they gave you money to rebuild your home.

HARRIS: Yes, yes. And you talk about the volunteer effort. And maybe spend a moment on that for us. I'm wondering, what the city would look like today with what you describe as New Orleans, the Peace Corps city of the '60s.

COVAX: Well, New Orleans, you know -- I've said this before. I think New Orleans is to young people of this generation what the Peace Corps was when I was young.

HARRIS: Yes.

KOVACS: And, you know, young people, you know, impressive people from all over the country are coming here. And they're not just volunteering. They're -- you know, they're teaching in our schools and they're working in our -- they're working on urban planning. And the number of people who you meet from out of town or people who came to New Orleans to participate in the rebuilding is very impressive. And that goes beyond the volunteers. That's people who've moved here.

HARRIS: Got one more for you. You know it's been suggested, Peter, that Katrina has been used, and I don't necessarily mean that in the pejorative, to remake the city into a smaller less black, less poor, more expensive, and more affluent city. Is that true?

KOVACS: Well, some of those things have happened. And there are some people who think that it was deliberate. And I'm not sure it was deliberate, but I think it -- you know, I think it did happen. And some of those people -- the people who want to come back generally are poor people who can't afford to come back. And I think they're going to need some form of additional government aid if they're going to be able to come back because the money they got, you know, three and four years ago isn't going to be sufficient for them to rebuild.

HARRIS: Peter Kovacs is the managing editor of the "The Times- Picayune."

Peter, good to see you. Thanks for your time.

KOVACS: OK. Well, thank you very much for having me. We appreciate all CNN has been in New Orleans for like the whole year for our good news and our bad news and I think you ought to buy houses and come here and be Saints fans.

HARRIS: I think a lot of our folks are.

All right, Peter, have a great weekend. Thank you.

Your money questions answered. CNN's Stephanie Elam is at "The Help Desk" in New York City.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNNMONEY.COM: Time now for "The Help Desk," where we get answers to your financial questions. Joining me this hour, Carmen Wong Ulrich, she's a personal finance author, and Ryan Mack is the president of Optimum Capital Management.

Thanks so much for being here, Carmen and Ryan.

All right, let's go for our first question. It's an anonymous writer. They write, "I've fallen behind on my car payment and tried to explain my situation to my bank, but they don't want to hear it. They call my house every half hour, seven days a week until 9:00 p.m. and are very nasty on phone. Is there anything I can do?"

Ryan?

RYAN MACK, PRES., OPTIMUM CAPITAL MANAGEMENT: Well, definitely. You can go to ftc.gov and look up the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and know your rights. They cannot call you before 9:00 a.m. or after 8:00 p.m. They can't call you on your job unless you give them prior permission to do so. They cannot call third parties unless they have permission to do so.

What you can also do is send a letter, a do not caller letter to them, a certified letter, make sure you get a return receipt in the mail to make sure they know exactly when they received it. And when they get that letter, they cannot contact you any longer. They have to phone under two stipulations, whether or not they can call you and contact you one more time to say, hey, you know what, we're going to sue you, or, two, we cannot contact you any longer. So those are the two times they can contact you. So just make sure you do that. Or if you have an attorney, they can only contact the attorney and say, look, you can only talk to my attorney and then they can't contact you directly unless they go through the attorney.

ELAM: That's pretty funny, I'm calming to tell you that I can't call you -- you can't call me. MACK: Exactly.

ELAM: All right. Our next question comes from Niquie. "I'm having a difficult time establishing credit. When I apply for credit cards, I'm denied because of, quote, 'insufficient credit history.' I had a credit card eight years ago and the account went into collections but then paid off the settlement amount with a collection agency. I've also taken out a secure loan to show record of payment on my credit report. What else can I do now?

Carmen?

CARMEN WONG ULRICH, PERSONAL FINANCE AUTHOR: Niquie is in a position a lot of especially young people, even with full-time jobs are in right now in terms of getting credit. What you've got to do is look for a secured card. Now a secured card is very different from any other credit card. It's basically a card where you put money on it. It's not a prepaid card. You put your cash money on and draw off of it like a debit card. Now, use it responsibly and over a period of time they'll start extending you credit.

Now you can shop around for secured cards at like bankrate.com, but you want to make sure that they are reporting your activity to the credit reporting agencies. Not all secured cards do. If you're trying to build your credit, of course you need them to report to the agencies. So make sure they do that and that's how you build your credit.

ELAM: And get back into the system.

ULRICH: Absolutely.

ELAM: Good stuff. Thanks for the good information today, guys.

And "The Help Desk," it's all about getting answers to the questions you have. So send us an e-mail, cnnhelpdesk@cnn.com is where you want to go or log on to cnn.com/helpdesk to see some more of our financial solutions that we've had here. You can also pick up the latest issue of "Money" magazine. It's on newsstands right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And we're back in the NEWSROOM. I'm Josh Levs, telling you about two of the hot stories on cnn.com right now, including this little tiger cub that was found in an airport stuffed into someone's oversized bag, along with a couple of stuffed animals. A little two-month-old tiger cub. Now there are more and more questions about whether there should be stiffer penalties for people who are trying to smuggle in animals.

And speaking of animals, we're going out on this YouTube video. Take a look at this guy. The ultimate bulldog shot. Take a look at Bullet sitting on the sofa there enjoying him some television.

HARRIS: Dude.

LEVS: Tony, every man in America is going to make this dog the favorite (INAUDIBLE).

HARRIS: That's my man!

LEVS: I'm telling you. And apparently he's watching a show -- the show "Family Guy," one of his favorite shows. And his owner says, dude does not like to be disturbed when it's on.

Be right back in the NEWSROOM.

HARRIS: Oh, too good.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: You know, five years ago, Hurricane Katrina roared up the Gulf Coast wiping entire neighborhoods away and ripping families apart, quite literally. CNN's Anderson Cooper finds out what happened to one of those families.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Katrina. In its wake, untold, personal tragedies, lives lost, lives turned upside down. From the waters of Lake Pontchartrain, to the streets of Biloxi, Mississippi, residents are struggling to rebuild.

HARDY JACKSON, KATRINA SURVIVOR: Everything is different down here. But it feel like home. It don't.

COOPER: This is what Hardy Jackson has returned home to.

HARDY JACKSON: It don't make sense. It's too much. I was trying to save.

COOPER: It's here, five years ago, his own life was torn apart. His grief captured by our CNN affiliate, WKRG, hours after the hurricane waters receded.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Who was at your house with you?

HARDY JACKSON: My wife.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where is she now?

HARDY JACKSON: They found her body. She's gone. I'm lost. That's all I had. That's all I had.

COOPER: Hardy and his wife rode out Katrina and were first forced into their attic. He managed to climb onto this tree when their home imploded.

HARDY JACKSON: When she came up from the big wave, I reached and I grabbed her hand. I looked at her, and I told her and I said, please hold on Tinet (ph), please hold.

COOPER: But she couldn't hold on. In their last moments together, they prayed, and Hardy agreed to one final promise. HARDY JACKSON: She said, you can't hold -- she said, take care of the kids and grandkids. I begged God, please don't take my wife. Please don't.

COOPER: Five years have not eased Hardy Jackson's sorrow.

HARDY JACKSON: To see my wife's body going to the bay, nothing I can do, makes me feel less than a man. It does make me feel less than a man. Many times I woke up, I said, I wish it was a dream.

COOPER: Since the storm, Hardy Jackson has had some good fortune. Frankie Beverly of the R&B group Maze purchased this home for him. Hardy, along with two of his kids and three grandchildren now live in Palmetto, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.

HARDY JACKSON JR., SON: God, I just thank you for everything you did for our family and keeping us together. Lord, thank you. Amen.

COOPER: For Hardy's daughter, Tonie, the pain is still overwhelming.

TONIE JACKSON, DAUGHTER: I'm just glad that we still have our dad with us, even though we don't have our mom. He makes sure that anything we need, no matter what it is, he tries his best and his hardest to make sure that we get it.

COOPER: Beyond the emotional toll, Tinet Jackson's death has also been a huge financial hardship. Hardy has been on disability for more than a decade. And without the wife's income, the family is struggling. He talked to CNN's Don Lemon.

HARDY JACKSON: I use my whole -- most of my whole Social Security check to get my water back on and stuff.

DON LEMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No lights and no water?

HARDY JACKSON: I (INAUDIBLE) lights (INAUDIBLE) like two days. They need clothes sometimes. Sometimes I get them shoes. It's just hard without -- without Tinet (ph).

LEMON: Are you going to be OK?

HARDY JACKSON: Yes, I'm going to have to be OK. I'm going to have to. Look around. This is what I've got.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: Join Anderson Cooper for a special hour-long documentary, "Sudden Furry." He follows the storm's progression, the destruction and the impact on people like Hardy Jackson. That is tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. You can also catch "Sudden Fury" this weekend. It airs at 9:00 Eastern tomorrow right here on CNN.

And CNN NEWSROOM continues right now with Ali Velshi.