Everyone gets their first lesson in job creation when they’re a child, whether they realize it or not.
Our Economics Correspondent Christine Romans got hers in Iowa, sitting around the kitchen table with her grandparents on their farm. She remembers them discussing how a slight difference in the price of farm equipment could make the difference between a purchase made or deferred.
With jobs perhaps the number one issue in this election, we turn to Christine Romans, as we have all week in CNN’S special economy coverage, for some clarity on how Barack Obama and Mitt Romney propose to improve the jobs picture in America.
“You’re going to get a slow, steady healing with maybe some hiccups and some pullbacks, no matter who is president. You’re going to start to see jobs created and the longer we see jobs created, the more comfortable people will feel about taking a little bit of a risk.” [26:48]
Christine Romans’ Iowa roots helps her notice things about our economy that others may not. Being a mother of three who has to get to work at 3:30 in the morning might shape her economic perspective too.
“My grandparents were farmers, so I grew up, you know, the conversations around the kitchen table were the price of beans or the price of corn and whether you could get a new truck this year. Well, you could at six-fifty but you couldn’t at six.” [13:00]
But you’d never guess her work hours from the energy in her voice or the clarity of her insights.
Christine Romans has not lost her Iowan optimism.
“Now I like to think in the optimistic Iowa girl part of me that there are people over at the State Department, at the Pentagon and the Treasury who are the career diplomats and the career politicians who have the career ties to the Chinese who really do have a national strategy. I just like to hope that’s true.” [21:15]
But, as you will hear on this CNN Profile, when she thinks about this economy there is one thing that chokes her up.