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Imagine a poker table.

At one seat, China's President Xi Jinping studies his cards. At another, Russian President Vladimir Putin is stroking his chin. Asian leaders fill the other seats, each trying to win the pot, which is filled — not with poker chips — but with jobs.

That's the kind of high-stakes game that played out this week in Indonesia, where global leaders got together to discuss trade relations. Their gathering ended Tuesday, and exactly who won what is not yet clear.

But this much is known: President Obama was not at the table.

And his absence, due to budget and debt tensions in Washington, was not good for American workers. Or at least that's the assessment of the president himself, as well as many economists.

'Important To Show Up'

Economists say the president needs to be in the game, but he missed his chances at the three-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

"It's always important to show up" whenever global leaders are talking trade, said Bill Adams, senior international economist for PNC Financial Services Group.

"Sweeping trade agreements are never settled at one meeting, but they are large and complex, so you need to keep working on them," he said. "You need face time with other leaders."

At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Obama concurred.

"I should have been there," Obama said. "It's like me not showing up at my own party."

Many Asian leaders had hoped to end the APEC meeting with an announcement about advances in trade deals, in particular the Trans-Pacific Partnership with the United States. But those hopes fizzled, with some Asian officials saying they fear the TPP lost momentum because Obama was not there to push it.

Obama agreed, telling reporters, "I would characterize it as missed opportunities."

Advancing a megatrade deal is particularly important at this stage of the slow U.S. economic recovery, most economists contend. That's because growth spurts typically come from:

1.) fiscal stimulus (Congress spending money for new roads and bridges)

2.) monetary stimulus (the Federal Reserve making it easy and cheap to borrow) or

3.) favorable trade deals (U.S. companies getting access to new markets).

A Key Economic Ingredient

The Government Shutdown

Without Key Jobs Data, Markets And Economists Left Guessing

Nabisco has released a special edition of its classic sandwich cookie, just in time for Halloween: Oreos with candy corn filling. This beats the July 4 special, the Oreo filled with a live M-80.

Eva: I didn't even know candy corn and Oreos were dating ... now they have a kid?!

Robert: When I eat regular Oreos, I want a glass of milk. When I eat these, I want a glass of poison.

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With J.D. Salinger in the news three years after his death (and the new documentary and biography must have that obsessively private author spinning in his grave), I'm reminded of my conversations in the 1970s about Salinger with the editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn.

For a few years, as host of All Things Considered, I'd phone Mr. Shawn with one question or another, on background (like Salinger, he never spoke to the press). I have no idea why Mr. Shawn took my calls. ATC, then, was heard in maybe three apartment buildings in Manhattan, so I doubt he was a listener (although the magazine did run a cartoon about me in 1978). It was probably just his natural good manners, even though he, too, was a very private, reclusive man.

In 1977, Esquire magazine published, for the first time in its history, an anonymous short story. In an editor's note, Esquire said the story was being run without signature neither because the magazine knew the identity of the author and did not want to reveal it, nor because the author wanted to remain anonymous. Rather, they were not sure who the writer was, but felt the story had such merit they wanted to publish it.

The piece, "For Rupert – With no Promises" smacked of Salinger, who hadn't published since the 1960s. It was full of references to Salinger characters, there was mysticism, Viennese logic – all Salinger absorptions.

I phoned Mr. Shawn to see if he thought Esquire had just published Salinger. When I said, "the only way I think this could be Salinger is if he'd had a hideous breakdown and hasn't written for years," Mr. Shawn laughed and assured me it was not a Salinger story, and that Salinger had indeed been writing (although not publishing) for decades.

It turned out that the Esquire Fiction Editor, Gordon Lish, had written "Rupert." Lish told me on the air that he thought the world needed to be reading Salinger, and if Salinger himself wasn't publishing, why not borrow his voice, and soothe his fans?

A questionable defense, to say the least.

But these days, with much excitement and anticipation of some new Salinger stories to be rolled out in the future, I realize I'd been told decades ago, by the most reliable source, that he was still writing. It's taken 36 years, but we'll soon be able to read some of what he was creating.

The latest House GOP gambit in the fiscal fight is, wait for it...a supercommittee.

But Republicans aren't calling it a supercommittee since that's the term for the failed panel that brought us the the sequester.

Instead, it's called the Bicameral Working Group on Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth. The special panel would have 20 members, evenly divided between the House and Senate, who would recommend a budget for fiscal 2014 (which began Oct 1), and craft details of a new debt-ceiling and spending cuts.

One problem with the idea: The proposal has practically no chance of passing in a Senate led by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev).

President Obama was also dismissive in his Tuesday press conference.

"Now, there is already a process in place called the budget committees that could come together right now — Democrats have been asking for 19 months to bring them together — make a determination how much should the government be spending next year," he said. "And that's a process that's worked reasonably well for the last 50 years. I don't know that we need to set up a new committee for a process like that to move forward."

The legislation is the House Republicans' attempt to codify as much as possible their request for negotiations with President Obama and Senate Democrats.

And when Senate Democrats consign it to the ever-growing pile of House GOP bills they've killed, Republicans can point to that as yet another example of Democratic intransigence.

"A president of the U.S. should provide leadership and that includes negotiating with people, even someone you disagree with. And that is the mark of a leader, And THAT is why we're here today," Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), the House Rules Committee chairman, said at a hearing considering the legislation.

What was odd about that was nothing in the legislation even mentions the president, which Democrats at the hearing noted.

Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York, the committee's top Democrat, captured her colleagues' disdain for the idea.

"I expected better," she said. "Another supercommittee? For crying out loud. Look what happened to the last one. The last one just threw up its hands and said, 'We can't do another thing.' This is leadership?"

Well, yes, as the 14-term congresswoman knows better than most, in Washington, proposing a committee to solve tough problems does often pass for leadership.