I think the most important question with this initial foray is not so much what it leads to next for the United States but whether or not this has an effect of helping the United States to play a leadership role in international negotiations to put in place a post-Kyoto Protocol climate regime…

Two countries in particular will hold huge sway in those negotiations: India and China. In India, the Environment Minister’s office issued a statement in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. bill’s passage that seemed less than promising for future negotiations: “India cannot and will not take emission reduction targets because poverty eradication and social and economic development are first and over-riding priorities.”

In China, which now leads the world in greenhouse gas emissions, news of the U.S. climate effort got a mixed review. The government-backed China Daily ran with the headline, “China Unhappy With U.S. Climate Bill.” A government minister, though, gave a more equivocal response:

We think that we should give a positive evaluation to this bill…. But in the area of tackling climate change, especially on the issue of cutting emissions, if they could take some more positive, effective measures it would give a bigger impetus to the year-end talks.

As Prof. Stavins said today during our hour, little matters if China and India don’t get involved. The math is simple: if China and India fail to take action, it will be impossible to avert reaching the amount of carbon in the atmosphere that many scientists now believe would create dangerous warming.

And just to complicate matters, another of our guests today, John Broder of The New York Times, has written that some tariff provisions in the House bill — which would penalize countries that don’t accept a carbon cap — are generating controversy. Indeed, those provisions could alienate the very allies the U.S. needs in Copenhagen.

In the New Deal era, the Democrats owned the white working class. In the Civil Rights era, they lost them. Not all, of course, but enough to give Republicans win after big win.

This year, with economic challenges front and center again, the math could change. But in West Virginia and North Carolina, in Kentucky and Oregon, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been dividing Democrats from within by race and class.

Can this party get over it?

This hour, On Point: race and class in the Democratic Party, after the Clinton-Obama battle.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Johanna Neuman, reporter for The Los Angeles Times.

Anna Greenberg, pollster and senior vice president at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democratic strategy and consulting firm.

Wilbur Rich, professor of political science at Wellesley College and author of “African American Perspectives on the Political Science Discipline.”

Alan Abramowitz, professor of political science at Emory University and author of the forthcoming book “The Engaged Public.”

Nan Mooney is thirtysomething, well-educated, the child of baby boomers who herself grew up with all the accoutrements of what was very recently thought to be a regular middle-class American life. Nothing fancy, but the full basics: a nice little home with steady income, housing, health insurance, and a summer vacation somewhere.

Now, Nan Mooney and millions of others of her generation have none of those.

And she’s not sure she ever will.

Her new book is “(Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents.” And she’s mad.

This hour, On Point: Nan Mooney, and a generation, not keeping up.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Nan Mooney, author of the new book “(Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class.”

Peter Gosselin, national economics correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and author of the forthcoming book “High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families.”

Hillary Clinton and John McCain say they want to drop federal gas taxes for the summer. Barack Obama says no.

If you’re strapped for cash and struggling with higher food and energy prices, it can sound like a good idea. But step back just half an inch from presidential campaign follies, and the idea can look pretty ridiculous.

Obama calls it pandering and bad policy. But sometimes pandering works, even if it is bad policy.

This hour, On Point: we hear from all three campaigns and an energy economist on our energy future, and why they stand where they stand on the gas tax holiday.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Stephen Power, energy reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

Robert Pindyck, professor of economics and finance at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Nancy Pfotenhauer, econmic advisor to Senator John McCain.

Gary Gensler, senior advisor to Senator Hillary Clinton.

Jason Grumet, senior energy advisor to Senator Barack Obama.

We’ve heard it again and again, but seldom laid out with the clarity Steven Greenhouse brings. The American worker is getting crunched. Corporate profits are up. Productivity is up. CEO pay is way up. But the American worker is getting squeezed.

Greenhouse is labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times. He’s brought home the stories that make the squeeze real — on workloads, job security, pensions, stress, health care. If you’re working, you’ll know these stories.

This hour, On Point: the big squeeze on American workers.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Steven Greenhouse, labor and workplace correspondent for The New York Times and author of the new book “The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker.”

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly

For a long time, American well-being has been measured by GDP. By personal income. By cold, hard numbers. Not anymore.

Now, a field of economic study — the measurement of happiness — is coming of age. It’s providing new insights into who we are, and the roots of what really makes us happy. Money, politics, family, faith, work, our daily routines. All factors in our evolving understanding of national well-being.

It’s real food for thought — for how we might reorder our lives, and truly pursue happiness.

This hour, On Point: Measuring our gross national happiness.

-Jane Clayson

Guests:

Alan Krueger, professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, he is former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor and co-author of a landmark eight-year study on contributors to national well-being

Arthur Brooks, professor at Syracuse University, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of “Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America–and How We Can Get More of It”

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly

The language out of Wall Street today is enough to scare you silly. Crisis. Fire sale. Brink of collapse. Titanic mess.

Late last night the news spread that JPMorgan Chase and the Fed have engineered a takeover of floundering Wall Street bad boy Bear Stearns.

A year ago, when the bonuses and bull were flying high, Bear Stearns was worth $20 billion dollars. Yesterday, JPMorgan bought it for $200 million and change. Two bucks a share.

Where this all unwinds, nobody knows. But it’s not over yet.

This hour, On Point: the crisis on Wall Street and where it goes.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Dennis Berman, global deals editor for The Wall Street Journal.

Peter Coy, economics editor for BusinessWeek magazine.

Douglas Elmendorf, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, economist at the Federal Reserve from 2001-2006 and deputy assistant for economic policy at the Treasury Department from 1999 -2001.

Gillian Tett, capital markets editor for the Financial Times.

Bill Fleckenstein, president of Fleckenstein Capital, which manages a hedge fund based in Seattle, and author of the new book “Greenspan’s Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve.”

A big sister’s nailpolish and eyeshadow. Mom’s high heels. Rites of passage–and good fun–for many young girls.

But these days, girls are digging deep into their piggybanks and hitting the malls. Glitter products, pedicures, mini-makeovers.

These tweens, as they’re called, are now spending $51 billion of their own pocket money. And marketers, sponsoring birthday parties and sleepovers, are eager to know what a girl wants — at age 10 and 8, even as young as 6.

This hour, On Point: When little girls become beauty consumers, and how young is too young.

-Jane Clayson

Guests:

Camille Sweeney, contributor to The New York Times, her article “Never Too Young for That First Pedicure” appeared on February 28.

Samantha Skey, senior vice president of strategic marketing at Alloy Media and Marketing in New York.

Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, professor of child development and education at Columbia University, and director of the National Center for Children and Families.

Joan Jacobs Brumberg, professor emerita at Cornell University and author of “The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls.”

Here’s a little something to chew on while you get your income tax files together this season. Median income in the USA is $48,000. Average annual income of the top four hundred taxpayers? Two hundred and fourteen million dollars. Yep. Two hundred and fourteen million.

Their share of the nation’s income has doubled since 1995. And the tax bill of our happy gazillionaires? Well, it’s fallen by almost half in that same period, from 30 to 18 percent.

Compare that against yours, and the national deficit.

This hour, On Point: billionaires around the world, and who makes what — and pays what — at home.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Robert Frank, wealth reporter for the Wall Street Journal and author of “Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich.”

Michael J. Graetz, professor of law at Yale Law School, former Treasury Department official and author of “100 Million Unnecessary Returns: A Simple, Fair, and Competitive Tax Plan for the United States.”

Matthew Miller, associate editor of Forbes magazine and editor of the Forbes World’s Billionaires list and the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list.

Despite all evidence, for a lot of Americans, the world — or their sense of it — and the American place in it seems frozen in about 1999. The Soviet Union — vanquished. The American economy — number one, of course. American might and influence — unchallenged. The USA — a master superpower.

Scholar Parag Khanna looks around today and sees something very different. Not just China and the EU are challenging U.S. supremacy, but also a raft of rising second-tier nations — Brazil, Turkey, Thailand, and others — coming on strong. They could be a new global swing vote.

This hour, On Point: the “Second World” challenging the “American Way.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Parag Khanna, geopolitical scholar and advisor, and author of the new book “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order.”

Tugba Kalafatoglu, in Istanbul, founder of Tugba Kalafatoglu and Associates, a global management and political consulting firm.

Ricardo Lessa, in Sao Paulo, a journalist with GloboNews.

If you want to see the madness and the grisly aftermath of the U.S. housing boom and bust, look at Florida. It’s not alone. Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, Detroit — they’ve all got horror-story numbers now. But the biggest home price drops in the country were in Miami last year.

Empty condos, collapsing values. The heart of the Florida meltdown — in Miami, the southwest, the Gulf Coast — could be Exhibit A for what went wrong in American real estate.

The condo vultures are out now. And there’s a story to tell.

This hour, On Point: Florida real estate, and the great American meltdown.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Wayne Archer, executive director of the Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies at the University of Florida.

Peter Zalewski, founder of Condo Vultures, a real estate investment consulting firm.

Mike Larson, real estate analyst for Weiss Research.

Susan MacManus, professor of political science at University of South Florida.

It is scary out there in the world of economic indicators.

Inflation is at its highest rate in a quarter century. Home prices are getting low and lower. Factory orders are lousy. The U.S. dollar is plummeting.

It’s no wonder consumer confidence is on the rocks. Never mind recession — some days it sounds like we should be bracing for calamity. And just when we need the Fed, it looks like its bag of tricks may be empty.

So, is it time for bargain hunting? Or time to bar the door?

This hour, On Point: with bad news piling up on the economy, we ask just how low this could go.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Robert Reich, secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, now professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

Robert Samuelson, columnist for Newsweek and The Washington Post.

Howard Davidowitz, retail analyst and chairman of Davidowitz and Associates.

In China, pork has become so expensive they’re stealing pigs by the truckload. In Kansas, it’s wheat. In Mexico, they’ve got tortilla riots over the cost of corn. In American supermarkets, the price of milk and eggs has soared.

All over the world, the price of food is headed up. Sometimes way up. And an era of cheap food is over.

We’re turning corn into fuel, feeding meat to new millions, paying more for oil to farm — and there are consequences.

This hour, On Point: the soaring cost, globally, of what we eat — and where we’re headed with the price of food.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

John Parker, globalization correspondent for The Economist.

Bruce Babcock, professor of economics and director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University.

Abdolreza Abbassian, senior economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and secretary of the Intergovernmental Group for Grains.

Lester Brown, founder and president of Earth Policy Institute and author of “Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.”

In 1758, Benjamin Franklin published a collection of homey aphorisms that Americans may soon be re-reading around their 2008 kitchen tables.

“A penny saved is a penny earned,” wrote Franklin. And “the Borrower is the slave to the Lender.” And “be frugal and be free.”

Truth is, old Ben knew how to live high on the hog, in the salons of Paris and London. But today, as the American economy and credit dry up, his pithy old sayings on thrift and industry and debt may get yet another lease on life.

This hour On Point: Benjamin Franklin’s “The Way to Wealth” at 250 — and catching our ears again.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Michael Mandel, chief economist for BusinessWeek.

Jill Lepore, professor of early American history at Harvard University and author of “New York Burning: Liberty and Slavery in an Eighteenth-Century City.” Her article on Ben Franklin and his book “The Way to Wealth” appeared in the January 28 edition of The New Yorker.

Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economics and the Schwartz Chair in Economic Policy Analysis at the New School.

The travel posters from Kenya are all “Out of Africa” beauty, safari paradise shots and handsome Masai tribesmen with their red robes and spears. And for decades, Kenya was held up as East Africa’s great hope for democracy and development.

But in the last month, after a disputed — observers say stolen — presidential election, the “great hope” has descended into bloody tribal reprisals and ethnic cleansing.

It’s bad for the country, the region, and for U.S. hopes of a bulwark against terrorism in East Africa.

This hour, On Point: we go to a shaken Kenya, and the roots of the crisis.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jonathan Ledgard, Nairobi-based Africa correspondent for The Economist magazine.

Kenda Mutongi, associate professor of history and chair of the Africana Studies department at Williams College, she grew up in the village of Maragoli, near Kisumu, Kenya. She is the author of “Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya” (2007).

Steve Morrison, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.

From the misty, half-attuned, still-in-the-American-Century shores of the United States, China and India can look like peas in a pod: two rising Asian giants with screaming growth rates and lots of what used to be American jobs.

Look closer, and these are very different cats. China is the factory floor and India the back-office, software shop. China is top-down party driven. India is a messy, vibrant democracy. And the two, one-time enemies.

Look closer again, and this may be the complementary duo that changes the world. Including your world.

This hour, On Point: China, India and all that is to come.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Tarun Khanna, professor at Harvard Business School and author of “Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their Futures–and Yours.”

If you were off planet the past few days and returned to Wall Street this morning, you might be forgiven for thinking that all was well this week. The market tanked just a few days ago but by yesterday it had all but recovered.

So what happened? That’s among the big stories under our microscope today.

Also, in the race for the White House, the Republicans debate; Giuliani hopes for a Hail Mary in Florida, and Fred Thompson is out. Among the Democrats, it’s all Hillary and Obama — with little oxygen left for John Edwards.

This hour, On Point: our weekly news roundtable.

-Anthony Brooks

Guests:

Steven Pearlstein, business columnist for The Washington Post.

Kenneth Walsh, senior White House correspondent for U.S. News & World Report.

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

In the world’s hyper-ventilating global stock markets, the bleeding has slowed, for the moment.

After two days of outright panic on markets in Bombay and Hong Kong and across Europe, the US Federal Reserve Bank jammed through a huge rate cut. President Bush and Henry Paulson and Congressional leaders hustled to a big photo op, talked big stimulus, and caught a break.

But this isn’t over. The Dow Jones just had its worst 14 trading days ever. The Asian economies people hoped would take up the slack haven’t yet.

This hour, On Point: global market mayhem and how and where the meltdown ends.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jeffrey Frankel, professor of capital formation and growth at Harvard’s Kennedy School, director of the Program in International Finance and Macroeconomics at the National Bureau of Economic Research, former member Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton.

Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, co-founder of the Economic Policy Institute.

Philip Coggan, capital markets editor at The Economist, former investments editor at the Financial Times.

Amit Seru, Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

OK, here’s the blue economy scenario for 2008. Housing prices keep falling. Credit stays tight. Consumers choke. In retailing, restaurants, travel and more, jobs vanish. In real estate, construction and banking, investment seizes up. Money retreats. Growth is gone. And we’ve got a recession on our hands.

For months, economists have debated whether it’s here already. “Slow motion train wreck,” is a phrase that sticks. Now, Goldman Sachs says we’re going down, and even the president is talking “challenges.”

This hour, On Point: talking recession — who gets hurt and how we get out.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Greg Ip, chief economic correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and lead writer for the blog “Real Time Economics.”

Robert Gordon, professor of economics and social sciences at Northwestern University and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Allen Sinai, chief global economist, strategist, and president of Decision Economics, Inc.

Steve Liesman, senior economics reporter at CNBC.

Lucky you, if you rode the red-hot Chinese stock market over the last few years. Between 2003 and last fall, the Shanghai index was up 300 percent. Domestic A shares were up 500 percent in two years. We’re talking epochal money here.

Now, with money pros wondering if it’s about to go bust, super-investor Jim Rogers says “don’t stop.” One way or another, he says, figure out your way into China’s future. And do it now. Learn Chinese, take tai chi, take a trip, make an investment.

This hour, On Point: red-hot China, and new thoughts on a Chinese century.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jim Rogers, global investor and author of “A Bull in China: Investing Profitably in the World’s Greatest Market.”

Jonathan Woetzel, Director in McKinsey & Company’s Greater China office and author of “Operation China: From Strategy to Execution.”