[O'brien:] Welcome back to STARTING POINT, everybody, lots going on this morning, including the last day of the G-20 Summit. In just a few minutes, I'm going to be talking to Matthew Goodman. He is President Obama's former economic adviser on summits about today's talks with China. First though, let's get right to Zoraida. She's got a look at the day's headlines. Hi, Z. Good morning.
[Zoraida Sambolin, Cnn Correspondent:] Good morning to you, Soledad. The government spending millions and still weeping against Roger Clemens. The jury finding him not guilty in all charges in his perjury trial related to alleged use of performance enhancing drugs. The Rocket's first year of eligibility for the baseball hall of fame is next year. His lawyer, famous Texas attorney Rusty Hardin told us he should be a lock.
[Rusty Hardin, Roger Clemens Attorney:] This guy had 13 years of a hall of fame career before anything even suggested anything. So if you look at the 24-year career, there's a three-year period where a guy claimed he did stuff that a jury totally rejected, told us they didn't believe anything of the allegations against him.
[Sambolin:] This is the second time Clemens faced trial. The first one ended in a mistrial. A Picasso vandal caught in the act. This cell phone video taken at the Houston Art Museum is making rounds on the web. You see a man walk up to a 1929 Picasso called "Conquer the Beast" and spray paint the word "conquista," which is Spanish for conquer. The man who shot the video said, he confronted the vandal afterwards. The vandal reportedly told him, he's an up and coming artist who did it to honor Picasso's work. In this morning's "House Call," a can be a life saving procedures, but gastric bypass surgery can also have an unintended side effect, alcoholism. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh say patients faced a higher risk of alcohol dependency in the second year after the operation. For some, the increased risk is as high as 50 percent. The reason, with the stomach size reduced, the body absorbs alcohol more rapidly and as a result can be become more addictive. A new study appears to confirm what many of us already know that we are more stressed out than ever. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon found a 10 to 30 percent jump in self-reported stress levels. That was between 1983 and 2009. So who's the most stressed, young women, people with lower incomes and less education. Men are more susceptible to financial stress. There may be a silver lining though. The study says as you age, your stress levels go down Soledad.
[O'brien:] Well, that's some good news. The good news is your stress level is going down. The bad news is you're closer to death because you're getting old. All right, Z, thank you.
[Sambolin:] You're welcome.
[O'brien:] The G-20 Summit this afternoon. President Obama is going to meet with China's President Hu Jintao. They are expected to talk about Iran's nuclear program and of course, the most pressing issue, the economic crisis. The president has been pressing European leaders to take action and create more stability. But so far, the 17 eurozone nations seem unwilling or unable to do enough to stop the crisis from spreading. Let's get right to Matthew Goodman. He is a former Obama White House adviser on economic summits. He is also a political economist for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It's nice to see you. Thanks for being with us. Tell me how tough this conversation is going to be when you think about how much debt that China holds for the U.S. The market slowdown that's happening in China and obviously is going to affect the United States and is affecting the United States, how ugly potentially could this conversation be?
[Matthew Goodman, Former Obama White House Advisor On Economic Summits:] Well, I think both President Obama and President Hu share a concern about global growth in each of our countries there are challenges in that regard. But the biggest risk at the global growth is right now the eurozone crisis and I think that is going to be the overwhelming topic of conversation between them.
[O'brien:] Crisis averted for the moment, but when we talked to Ken Rogoff yesterday, here's a little bit of what he said sort of for the long haul. Let's play that.
[Ken Rogoff, Professor, Economics And Public Policy, Harvard University:] They haven't really figured out how to solve the deeper problems in the euro where me share a checking account, but they are not married. And they just haven't figured out how to allocate the losses from the problems they have across the banking sector in Europe.
[O'brien:] He describes it in a very calm way, right? But they're not figuring it out is sort of the $64,000 problem. If they cannot figure it out, that could send everything off a cliff.
[Goodman:] I think that's right. I think that the long term challenges remain and it is not clear yet whether the Europeans have the political desire to really move forward towards greater union, which seems to be the inevitable path that they are going to have to take. The alternative is to try to break up these unions and the short term consequences of that could be disastrous. So it seems as though they have to make a commitment to greater union, but that's a very difficult political choice because each member country is going to have to give up sovereignty.
[Margaret Hoover, Cnn Political Contributor:] Matthew, Margaret Hoover here. Question, you know, sure the Greek crisis is impending and the euro is in question. But to what extent at the G-20 meetings is there a reflection on the United States, it's been 300 days almost since we've lost our AAA rating. What about our own impending fiscal cliff and are the Europeans looking at the United States saying you have your own problems just around the corner?
[Goodman:] Well, I'm sure that the U.S. situation will be a topic of conversation as well. We are still the world's largest economy and what happens here really does affect everyone else as well. I think that everyone acknowledges though that in the short term, the real risks are in Europe and I think there's going to be a shared desire to talk about what the Europeans are doing to fix that problem. But no doubt President Obama will be asked to explain how we're going to get through what you as you say, is called the fiscal cliff later this year. And so I think it will be a conversation about all of that, but with a particular focus on the euro issues.
[Marc Lamont Hill, Host, "our World With Black Enterprise":] Could you give us a little insight though on what that may look like? We've been hearing a lot of talk about not just cutting, but also creating spending and increasing consumer confidence. How do you do that in the current market condition?
[Goodman:] You mean, here in the United States?
[Hill:] Here in the United States, yes.
[Goodman:] Well, I mean, I think that's the challenge. I think that there clearly is a need for greater growth. The Obama administration has been arguing that we need to ensure that growth is sustained through possibly a new stimulus, but through actions by the Federal Reserve. But at the same time, in the medium term, we clearly have to deal with our fiscal problems and get our budget deficits and debt down. And getting that balance right is very challenging.
[O'brien:] Matthew Goodman is a former Obama White House adviser on those economic summits. It's nice to see you, sir. Thanks for your insight this morning. We appreciate it.
[Will Cain, Cnn Contributor:] I want to turn something Matthew said and I want to try to see if we can frame this. He talked about what Ken Rogoff said that we can't have a monetary union without a political union. We can't have a joint bank account without being married talking about Germany and Greece and Spain and Italy and France. I want to offer you this. I'm not sure that's even a solution, short term or long term. And of course, those are relative terms, long term and short. But that requires us to accept a really idealistic version of the world in which the Germans are really concerned about the Greek's lifestyle and how they work. And the Greeks in turn expect the Germans to subsidize. That negate thousands of years of different cultures and languages and tradition. And I'm not sure you can just say, let's have a political union and do away with that.
[O'brien:] I think that marriage metaphor kind of works, right? Because what he said was you have to decide at this juncture, do we commit like really commit because the challenges, if you don't commit to the marriage, which is deciding. I care about the Spanish care about the Greeks. The Greeks care about the Italians. If you don't do that, at the same time, you have political problems at home
[Cain:] To extend that metaphor, I would suggest this is a couple that has shown no desire to get along, why should they get married?
[O'brien:] But the only option is they have to stay married at this moment.
[Hoover:] Were you [inaudible] to the EU in the first place?
[Cain:] I was young
[O'brien:] Back when he was 7, yes.
[Cain:] I think the EU is ill fated and always will be.
[O'brien:] All right, still ahead this morning on STARTING POINT, the fastest growing race in the United States is not Latinos anymore. We'll tell you what group it is and what it could mean demographically. Plus this morning, from Chastity to Chaz, Chaz Bono is going to talk us about his transition to the person he always felt he was. He's going to join us right here in the studio. You're watching STARTING POINT. Got to take a break, we're back in a moment.