Solyndra Executives Won't Testify; Jaycee Dugard Sues Feds
ROMANS: Good morning. It's Friday, September 23rd. Did I say it's Friday? It's Friday, September 23rd. This is your A.M. WAKE-UP CALL. I'm Christine Romans in for Carol Costello. I join you live this morning from New York. It's about 31 minutes past the hour. The big story right now, the markets. Wow! It was a rough ride on Wall Street yesterday, a really bad couple of days. Let's go to Carter Evans live at the NASDAQ MarketSite for the latest. Futures stabilizing a little bit, though, this morning.</s>CARTER EVANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Looking a little bit better. I remember, yesterday, we were both in the newsroom kind of shaking our heads looking at the market.</s>ROMANS: Yes.</s>EVANS: It was a rough day yesterday, you know, not just here, but all around the world. We are seeing some recovery today. European markets are slightly higher right now. We don't really have any big economic reports here today. So, investors are going to be on their own, but it looks like they're going to spend the day breathing a sigh of relief, maybe, recovering a little bit.</s>ROMANS: Yes. Couple of bad. Those two days -- the two-day loss on the Dow was the worst since 2008. You don't like to compare anything to 2008. Meanwhile, over at HP, some big changes over there this morning.</s>EVANS: Very big changes. There's a new CEO over there. Her name is Meg Whitman. You might recognize that. She was the CEO of eBay before. Now, listen, HP stock is down more than 46 percent this year. The board was not happy with its current -- with its CEO, Leo Apotheker. Basically, they decided to let him go yesterday. He made some big changes at HP. He ditched his tablet just months after it went to market. He suggested that HP get out of the PC business altogether. Basically, a lot of people weren't happy with that. And the chairman said on the conference call yesterday that the board considered many candidates and decided that, together, Whitman was the right fit. I don't feel too bad for Apotheker, though. He's taking home a $25 million severance check.</s>ROMANS: $25 million severance check. All right. Carter Evans, we'll check with you again in a few minutes. Thank you, sir.</s>EVANS: Sure.</s>ROMANS: When the Republican candidates weren't treating frontrunner, Rick Perry, like a political pinata at last night's debate, they offered up ideas on how to fix the economy and deal with taxes. Listen.</s>REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You should get to keep every dollar that you earn. That's your money. That's not the government's money.</s>MITT ROMNEY, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The people that have been hurt most by the president's economy, the Obama economy, is the middle class. That's why I cut taxes for the middle class.</s>GOV. RICK PERRY, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: To lower that tax burden on the small businessmen and women.</s>HERMAN CAIN, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Nine percent business flat tax, nine percent personal income tax, and then nine percent national sales tax.</s>JON HUNTSMAN, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're not going to raise taxes. This is the worst time to be raising taxes, and everybody knows that. We need to grow.</s>GARY JOHNSON, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The fair tax which would absolutely reboot the American economy because it does away with the corporate tax to create tens of millions of jobs.</s>NEWT GINGRICH, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Obama's socialist policies, class warfare, and bureaucratic socialism, we created zero in August. I believe, with leadership, we can balance the budget.</s>RICK SANTORUM, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We've seen these battles on the state level where unions have really bankrupted states from pension plans to here on the federal level.</s>REP. RON PAUL, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You have to deal with the Federal Reserve system, you have to deal with free markets, and you have to deal with the tax program and the regulatory system.</s>ROMANS: That was the third Republican presidential debate in as many weeks. The next one is set for October 11th in New Hampshire. Top executives of the failed solar power company, Solyndra, will not be testifying before Congress today. They plan to plead the fifth. The justice department is investigating the government's backing of this failed company. Solyndra declared bankruptcy last month after it received a $535 million federal loan guarantee back in 2009. Kidnap victim, Jaycee Dugard, is suing the U.S. government, blasting what she calls an inexcusable lack of supervision of her captor, a convicted rapist who was out on parole. Phillip Garrido abducted Dugard in 1991 in front of her home, holding her captive in a California backyard then for 18 years. The complaint accuses the government of gross neglect in failing to properly track Garrido. He was under the federal government's watch until 1999 when California took over. California has already settled with Dugard for $20 million. We may learn more today about that deadly air race crash in Reno, Nevada last Friday. The National Transportation Safety Board is expected to release a preliminary report into that dramatic crash which was caught on tape. Eleven people died when the plane nosedived into the crowd. 28,000 students in Washington state head back to class today. Their teachers have voted to end an eight-day strike. They were picketing over class size, teacher pay, and educator transfers, but they've reached a tentative agreement with the Tacoma School District, one that leaves class size and teacher pay alone and will let a joint committee decide which educators end up at which schools. President Obama is offering up ways for states to work around no child left behind. Today, he's expected to announce opt-out for some of the toughest parts of the federal education law, but in return, states have to adopt some of the president's own education agenda and show that they're committed to closing achievement gaps in American public schools. Yemen's president returns from Saudi Arabia to a cheering crowd of thousands, but protesters have been working for months to oust him. We'll get the latest developments just ahead.