A powerful government role is proposed for entrepreneur and gadfly Elon Musk.

David Branchetia from Los Angeles today. First there's news this morning that hiring tapered lower than forecast with

142,000 jobs added to payrolls in the month just ended but that is not all

let's bring in Christopher Lowe the chief economist at

FHN financial in New York hey Chris good morning David I got to say weaker than

expected and there were these revisions downward for earlier in the summer?

Yeah, big revisions downward, 86,000 in fact, between June and July.

You know, the result is that the three month average job gain is about

116,000 which is really weak that's on the weak side so it's not just that August wasn't so good. The whole

summer wasn't so good. Interesting. There are two reports that come out today and the other

one, not the payrolls that we're talking about

but the other one is the survey of households showing the unemployment rate

getting better ticking down slightly is that a big deal?

Well, you know, normally that would be great news, but remember Hurricane Barrel, which hit Texas and rolled up through the middle of the country during the week that the survey, the

household survey was conducted in July.

And as a result, probably, the unemployment rate increased two-tenths last month.

You know, when you look back over the course of the cycle, August is the second highest,

July was the highest, the three month average is 4.2.

It really doesn't look great, especially because the Fed figures,

4.2, is neutral.

They don't want it to go any higher than it was in August.

Now a key question on many people's minds is what does the data this morning about the

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