To understand the solutions the offered, we must first understand the candidates' perceptions of the economy. Clinton and Trump offered drastically different stories about the current state of the United States economy on Monday night. Clinton optimistically said of the economy, "We have come back from that abyss [of a referring to the housing bubble burst and financial crisis], and it has not been easy,” she said. “So we’re now on the precipice of having a potentially much better economy.” Trump, on the other hand, claimed that "we’ve become a third-world country” and are a "serious debtor nation". [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/26/the-first-trump-clinton-presidential-debate-transcript-annotated/] [http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/09/27/presidential-debate-an-economy-about-to-take-off-or-a-bubble-about-to-burst/] He claimed Clinton's claims of economic improvement are nothing more than smoke and mirrors, saying “the only thing that looks good is the stock market, but if you raise interest rates even a little bit, that’s going to come crashing down. We are in a big, fat, ugly bubble.” [http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/09/27/presidential-debate-an-economy-about-to-take-off-or-a-bubble-about-to-burst/]