Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Unemployment Rate Falls to 7.0 Percent; Crowds Gather to Mourn Mandela; Mandela to Lie in State Next Week; Ice Storm Paralyzes Multiple States; Colin Powell Remembers Mandela

Aired December 06, 2013 - 13:00   ET

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

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, more Americans are finding work. November job numbers are in and the news is good. You're going to hear why the unemployment rate is so significant and what it says about the strength of the U.S. economic recovery.

Also right now, a treacherous storm is leaving a huge section of the United States under a thick coat of ice. States of emergency are in effect from Texas to Tennessee. Other states are getting hit with heavy snow and bone-chilling temperatures. We'll take you to the storm zone.

And right now, crowds are gathered outside Nelson Mandela's home in South Africa. The country and the world are remembering the champion of equal rights for his courage, his strength and his dignity. We're going live to South Africa. We'll also speak with the former secretary of state, Colin Powell.

Hello. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

Hiring is up, unemployment is down. The jobs numbers for November were released this morning and they're much stronger than many analysts had been expecting. Take a look. The economy added 203,000 jobs last month. That's 20,000 more than many of those economists had predicted. And another surprise, the unemployment rate fell to seven percent from the 7.3 percent a month earlier. That happens to be a five-year low and a real sign the economic recovery may be gaining some momentum.

Our Christine Romans is in New York. She's watching all of these numbers for us. How significant are they, Christine?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's significant, Wolf. I mean, now, you've got a trend in place here. For the year, you've got more than 2 million jobs on track to be created. That's the best since 2005. As you know, it has been pretty miserable since the recession and the bubble burst and to say that you're going to have jobs growth, on track for jobs growth, the best since 2005, is significant. So, you want it see these numbers, 200,000 a month and more and want to see it continue.

That unemployment rate going down to seven percent, Wolf, the White House acknowledges that one of the big reasons -- the big reason why it went down to seven percent is because people newly unemployed were having an easier time finding a job. Those long-term unemployed still having a problem. The underemployment rate, you have heard it sometimes called the real unemployment rate, 13.2 percent. Those are people out of work, want to be working full-time, some of them want to be working full-time but they aren't.

But here's the really good news, broad based. I mean, I saw gains in transportation and warehousing. Retail, leisure, you would expect that for the holiday season, but also in manufacturing. Best manufacturing job growth we've seen in a very long time and that trend has been pretty good. It's all about the trends always, right? You've seen these trends where you've seen slowly building confidence. Add into this, car sales earlier this week were good. GDP with a few caveats was good. New home sales was good. This gives the fed, Wolf, ammunition to start talking about the taper, pulling out -- you know, taking off the training wheels of the American economy sometime next year -- Wolf.

BLITZER: And that would discourage investors but not necessarily on this day. Christine, thanks very much.

ROMANS: Right.

BLITZER: Wall Street is welcoming the positive jobs report. The S&P 500, the Dow, NASDAQ all bounced back today into positive territory after four days of losses. The Dow Jones Industrials you see up 178 points right now. So, we're seeing stock gains, jobs gains, a recovering economy, a decline in the unemployment rate.

Let's discuss what's going on with the president of the policy group American Action Forum. A good Republican economist, right?

DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ACTION FORUM: Yes.

BLITZER: so, you must be thrilled that the economy seems to be turning around. Are you thrilled about that?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: You should be happy. I mean, this is the first time we've had an employment report that got jobs, had the unemployment rate come down for the right reason, not people giving up but instead finding jobs. We saw hours go up. We saw wages go up. We saw part- time work went down. It was the breadth of the strength that made this such a good report. And we hope that we see month after month of this. That's what we've missed.

BLITZER: Who deserves the credit for this? Because there is a president of the United States who has been saying, you know, trust me on the economy.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Give me six months of this and we'll start handing out gold stars. We're not out of the woods yet. We've seen the economy show a couple quarters of good growth and then just go back into a swoon.

BLITZER: 3.6 percent in the last -- in the third quarter. That's pretty good.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Well, again, as Christine mentioned, there's some caveats there. Half of that was inventory growth. If this is just goods piling up on shelves, it's not a strong report. So, I'd like to see the same thing in December, January.

BLITZER: So, if we see --

HOLTZ-EAKIN: But I'm hopeful. I really am.

BLITZER: -- 200,000 jobs a month for the next few months, that would be very encouraging?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: It would be encouraging. But here are the two things to worry about still. I mean, economists are good at finding, you know, the dark cloud for a silver lining. Number one, even at this pace, it's another 19 months until we get the unemployment rate down to six percent. We have a lot of ground to make up still. And the long-term unemployed, that's a tough problem. We're getting people back to work quickly but the long-term unemployed have trouble finding work and there are a lot of them now.

BLITZER: And it's not just the unemployment rate going down. It's not where it should be. Seven percent --

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Absolutely.

BLITZER: -- is lower than nine percent but it should be six, five, four, that would be a lot better. Two hundred thousand jobs is good. In that last few months, we've been seeing those kinds of positive jobs that's been going on. But take a look at Wall Street. They are thrilled right now by what's going on. When President Bush took office, the Dow Jones was about 7,000. Now, it's 16,000. That's pretty impressive.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: That's very impressive. I'm not one who tracks Dow up and down daily as an indicator of the economy.

BLITZER: But if you have a --- if you're an investor, --

HOLTZ-EAKIN: That's good news.

BLITZER: -- people are making money.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: That's good news. And here's the thing. If the fed now starts to taper this policy, investors shouldn't be scared. They're tapering for the right reason. The real economy, that which will give them dividends, that which will give them capital gains is getting better. They should welcome that, not fear it.

BLITZER: At the beginning of the year when the taxes went up on the wealthy, --

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Right.

BLITZER: -- the Republicans were saying, this is going to really undermine the overall growth of the U.S. economy because these are the job creators that you're taxing more. It hasn't necessarily worked out like that at least so far. HOLTZ-EAKIN: Well, you can't applaud what we got through the first nine months of this year. And we are seeing some strength and I don't think that move helped overall growth. He did it will for other reasons, fairness in taxation. I understand that. The thing that we really need to look for is whether these jobs we are now getting will come from new businesses. Historically, real job growth comes from new business creation and this recovery has been very weak on that front.

BLITZER: Give me --

HOLTZ-EAKIN: If we see that change, great.

BLITZER: -- give me your forecast for 2014.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: 2014, I still think we're seeing modest growth. We're going to ramp up from two percent on average to something that looks like 2.4, maybe 2.6. I would like to see us at 3 or 3.5.

BLITZER: 3.6 is pretty good. Like, if we have -- even if it's a little bit distorted, 3.6 is pretty impressive.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: We are also beaten and tired. We like the sound of 2.6. I'd like to see 3 or 3.5.

BLITZER: Yes, I'd like to see five or six percent growth, too. That would be pretty good. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, thanks very much for coming in.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Thanks, Wolf.

BLITZER: Always good to have you here at CNN.

Today, people in South Africa and around the world, they are mourning an iconic leader who went to prison, became a prisoner and then he became president of his country. We're learning new details about funeral plans for the former South African president, Nelson Mandela. He will be buried a week from Sunday and his body will lie in state in Pretoria for three days next week.

Arwa Damon is outside Mandela's home in an areas of Johannesburg. Arwa, we know people have been gathering there since they learned of Mandela's passing. Give us a little sense of the mood. People are celebrating his life right now.

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They are. I mean, this is a nation in mourning but at the same time at least on this day, and this is just the first day where people are trying to grapple with their emotions, it's really translated into something of celebrating the man that he was and remembering exactly what it was that he had done to transform this country. When you think about it, for example, one college student who we met, a young black college student, was telling us that his parents weren't able to go to school. His parents wouldn't have even be able to come to this very neighborhood. And yet, he all of a sudden had these opportunities in his life because of Nelson Mandela. It's been quite interesting here, too. A lot of families have been showing up. A lot of parents with very young children too small to fully grasp what is happening. But at the same time, at least one mother we spoke to felt that it was important to have her children be here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a big event. I mean, it's the passing of someone -- an icon in our land. And I want my children to be in the moment. You know, this is not going to happen again and they must be aware of how the -- you know, South Africa comes together on these things. And I wanted them to experience such an iconic moment that it shouldn't it be, like, where were you on the day that you found out? And it shouldn't where you were. It should be that you were here trying (INAUDIBLE) that's being with people, you know?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DAMON: A lot of people also, Wolf, have been really talking about -- a lot of people, Wolf, have also been really talking about how important Nelson Mandela's own decision process, his own evolution was and transforming him to be the individual that he ended up being. The fact that when he emerged from prison, he chose to reconcile rather than seek revenge. People saying this country could have very easily turned into an Iraq or a Syria. The fact that he was able to pull together all of the peoples of this diverse nation, a diversity that is reflected in the crowds that are behind us right now. And a lot of people also saying that they felt a certain measure of joy and relief when they heard about his passing simply because finally, in the words of a number of individuals we spoke to, he was going to be able to meet his ancestors and rest in peace -- Wolf.

BLITER: I understand we're getting some more details now on funeral arrangements, the funeral plans for Nelson Mandela. What are you learning, Arwa?

DAMON: Well, at this stage, what we do know is that in his final moments, he would have been surrounded by family members and by tribal elders as well. The funeral arrangements, everything happening surrounding it, very much a blend of tribal traditional culture, western cultures as well. His body will not be displayed for the first five days. That is going to be taking place on the 10th of December. And during that initial process where he is in a mortuary, he will continue to be surrounded by tribal elders who will be talking to him, talking to the ancestors to facilitate the passage of his spirit from this world onto the next. There is then going to be a public memorial in the soccer stadium where the world cup was played back in 2010. And that is, in fact, where Nelson made his last public appearance. Eventually, he will be laid to rest in his hometown, his ancestral hometown. A lot of dignitaries expected to arrive quite naturally, to include President Obama himself, as well -- Wolf.

BLITZER: He and the family will be heading over there, the first lady of course as well. Thanks so much, Arwa, for that report.

Remembering the life and the wisdom of Nelson Mandela. My interview with the former president, Bill Clinton. He'll reflect on Nelson Mandela, his friend. The lessons he personally learned from him. My interview with former president Bill Clinton on Nelson Mandela, 5:00 p.m. Eastern in "THE SITUATION ROOM".

Other news we're following including ice, lots of it falling on roads in about a dozen states right now. We're going to show you who's in the bull's eye of this brutal storm right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Heavy snow, ice, and subzero temperatures is a triple weather threat that's affecting millions of people across the U.S. The ice that's coating roads and power lines in the South right now is especially dangerous. Take a look at the frozen tower camera in Dallas right now. Roads have turned into ice rinks there, shutting down entire portions of the city. Now that sleet is moving east, Indra Petersons has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST (voice-over): A potentially catastrophic ice storm blanketed the nation's midsection overnight.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the sixth that I've had to stop and get the ice off of there.

PETERSONS: Treacherous roadways and large scale power outages forced Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee officials to declare a state of emergency. Northeast Arkansas now frozen by up to an inch of ice and wet snow, leaving many without power, an outage officials say that could last for up to a week. Temperatures are expected to stay below freezing for many days.

This icy mixture of snow, sleet and freezing rain caused multiple rollovers in Arkansas, including this seven-car pile-up in Washington County. And in Oklahoma, the driver of this truck lost control on an icy bridge and plummeted into a lake.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's real slick. The roads are -- if you go to stop, you slide and just - I try to get up the hill and couldn't make it up the hill. So the best thing to do is stay home today.

PETERSONS: In Illinois, vehicles slide right off the highways as accumulation of sleet and ice reached as high as a quarter inch in southern counties. In the sky, hundreds of flights canceled Thursday and more expected for Friday as the winter storm warnings span from Texas to eastern Ohio. It could be the worst ice storm to hit the region since 1994, which caused over $3 billion in damage.

And it's not just the ice. The National Weather Service says this massive arctic air mass is dropping temps 10 to 30 degrees below normal, leaving millions of people to battle a dangerously bitter cold into the weekend.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: And Indra is joining us now live from a very cold and icy Memphis, Tennessee.

Indra, the -- is the city starting to shut down?

PETERSONS: You know, Wolf, just in the last hour or so, we've been seeing that freezing rain just starting to come down in the Memphis area. And for that reason, the mayor here in Memphis has actually declared a state of emergency. He's actually shut down all operations that are not related to public safety, starting just a few minutes ago because we know we've been kind of on that trigger point, just on the borderline all morning long of just barely above freezing and just now, like I said, we're starting to see that rain/freezing rain coming down. And we have several hours to go here. We could potentially see over half an inch, which means that power outages could be likely here, Wolf.

BLITZER: Is there another wave sort of behind what we're seeing right now?

PETERSONS: And that's actually the biggest concern. We already know we have the threat for power outages. When you talk about a half an inch of this rain or ice on these power lines, you can be talking about those power lines going down for several days. And these temperatures, they're plummeting. They're going well below freezing. Many places here below average.

And then we have another wave. So things taper off as we go in through tonight, but then as we go in through tomorrow, another wave. A system almost identical to this one is expected to push on through. So we're just hoping people can hang on to the power in this area because the thought of freezing rain, no power and freezing temperatures, never a good combination, Wolf.

BLITZER: I assume I have to be a little worried living here in Washington, D.C. Eventually it's going to make its way towards the eastern seaboard, right?

PETERSONS: That's exactly right. That exactly same wave you were just talking about will make its way. There's a potential even for half an inch of ice out towards D.C. from the second system. So really this is a powerful system that's affecting the entire West Coast all the way to the East Coast before all is said and done.

BLITZER: All politics being local, that's why I'm interested in what you had to say about Washington. All right, Indra, thanks very, very much.

Just ahead, we're going to Dallas, one of the most populated cities in the country. It's now in a deep freeze itself.

And this video is just terrifying. Watch as this plane filled with passengers tries to land at Birmingham International Airport in Britain. Gale force winds batter the plane as the pilot attempted to touch down -- look at this -- finally peeling back up into the sky. Winds as high as 80 miles an hour were blowing in Birmingham. The Emirates flight from Dubai was diverted to another airport. Everyone was just fine. The plane was fine as well. Nelson Mandela is being compared to great leaders from George Washington to Gandhi. We're going to speaking with Colin Powell about his personal memories of spending some time with Nelson Mandela over the years.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Leaders here in the United States and around the world, they are paying tribute to Nelson Mandela. The former secretary of state and former first lady, Hillary Clinton, describes Mandela as a champion for justice and human dignity. In a speech just a little while ago, she spoke about Mandela's legacy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: He will be certainly remembered for the way he led, his dignity, his extraordinary understanding, not just of how to bring democracy and freedom to his beloved South Africa, but how important it was that he first brought freedom to himself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: At 5:00 p.m. Eastern, by the way, I'll bring you my interview with the former president, Bill Clinton. He will reflect on Nelson Mandela, the lessons he learned from the South African leader, 5:00 p.m. Eastern here in "The Situation Room."

It's a remarkable -- it's remarkable how Nelson Mandela touched so many lives around the world. The former secretary of state, Colin Powell, was in South Africa at the swearing in ceremony when Mandela was inaugurated in 1994 as the first black president of the country he gave so much for. General Powell is joining us on the phone right now.

General Powell, thanks very much for coming in and helping us appreciate Nelson Mandela. What did he mean to you?

COLIN POWELL, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE (via telephone): He meant a great deal to me, Wolf. He was an inspiration. And what I so admired about Madiba is that he had a - he had a purpose in life. He had a vision in life. And that simple vision and purpose combined was to free the people of South Africa from the yoke of apartheid governance. And when he succeed in doing that, he not only freed black people, he freed white people, the burden they were caring trying to impose this evil will on all the population, but especially the black population.

And so he was an inspiration to me. I think he was an inspiration to most people in the world as somebody who not only believed in something but was prepared to go to jail for 27 years, to lose his family, and as he said more than once, to give up his life if that's what it took. You don't see that kind of person around very often. So he's sort of a once in a lifetime experience for me.

And I, as you noted, I was at his inauguration. And it was - it was amazing to stand there in May of 1994 and see the crowds swell and the leaders from all over the world, tens of thousands of South Africans in the park below us. And then finally when he was announced to see the four generals of the South African defense force escort him up as a guard of honor, I said, look what I've lived to see, these owners of the power of the state pledging their allegiance and providing a guard of honor to their new president who happens to be black. A peaceful transfer of power.

And then at that very first moment of the inauguration, he started to show what he was going to do with respect to reconciliation by having his jailers in the front row, and as he said so often, I will not seek retribution and revenge on all these people because if I did that, I would still be in prison. My mind would still be in prison. And so he's gone physically, but his presence is still with us and will be with us for generations to come.

BLITZER: You were a national security advisor to a president, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, secretary of state. Attending that inauguration of Nelson Mandela in South Africa in 1994, where does that rank among the thrills of your career?

POWELL: One of the top. I mean I was retired then. I was just a retired GI and I was privileged to be invited by President Clinton and Vice President Gore and then First Lady Clinton to be part of the delegation. And it rated at one of the top events in my life to see that, to be in front of the union hall of this building where the ceremony was held with leaders from all over the world, some of whom had been my enemies, some of whom had been against the United States, some of them had the worst feelings about the United States, but they had supported Mandela and they were all there, and I had to be a part of that scene. And what Mandela said to us very often, as we sometimes expressed some disapproval of the kinds of company he kept, he simply said, they were with me when I needed them and I will not move away from them now. I will remember their loyalty and their commitment to my cause.

And that's the kind of person he was. He reached across borders. He reached across chasms. He reached across ideological differences, always keeping in mind why he was doing it, to free South Africa from the burden of apartheid.

BLITZER: How awkward was that for you when you had the leaders of Iran or Libya, Gadhafi or Fidel Castro, they were attending that inauguration as well?

POWELL: They were there. I - yes, I was - I made my manners. I was there as a retired official. And I reveled in the moment. I mean these are - these are folks who were always on the other side of the ideological divide from me. Not on this day. On this day, we were all there for one reason, to celebrate the inauguration of this remarkable man who was able to bridge differences. A man who started out to do it not violently. He had to use violence he felt as he went along. But at the end of the day, he came back to a simple expression of love and reconciliation.

And, you know, one of his most important achievements was after he came out of prison and after he became president, there were still some people within the African National Congress and other black groups that wanted to seek retribution against those who had imprisoned him and held him down all those years. And it was Mandela who stood up to the black side now and said, if we do that, we're just creating a new kind of apartheid. So we won't do that. We are now one people, black and white, Afrikaners and Indians (ph), all one people. And that's how he led the country and that's how he turned the country over.

Are they finished with all of their challenges and problems? Of course not. They've got a long way to go economically and in other ways. But without him, I don't know where they would be. I was reflecting earlier this morning that if only Abraham Lincoln had lived longer, maybe he could have been a Mandela-like person in the United States of America. We won't have gone through the terrible period of reconstruction and the imposition of a form of slavery on the American black population.

BLITZER: Colin Powell. General Powell, thank you so much for reflecting on Nelson Mandela on this important day. Appreciate it very much.

POWELL: Thanks, Wolf. Bye-bye.

BLITZER: Thank you.

We're going to continue our coverage Nelson Mandela. Take a closer look at how he viewed Israel and the Middle East. The messages of peace coming in from South African leaders all over the world. There is reaction, including the former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, there you see him with Nelson Mandela. Ehud Barak is here with us. We'll talk about Nelson Mandela and more when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)