alix: u.s. stocks ended slightly higher as optimism of the end of the greek debt crisis faded and they look ahead to tomorrow's jobs report and oil is down in more than three months. joe: the question is, what did you miss? the clock is ticking. we have the key deadlines that you may have missed. alix: and trying to predict tomorrow's big jobs number. it's joe's favorite day of the month. joe: and we'll talk to southern company and how they're transitioning to renewable energy. alix: first, we again, of course, with the markets. stocks are finishing higher in two days. recovering from the terrible slide that we saw earlier in the week as well. and this all after you had the debt financial minister saying there's no ground for further

deep -- greece talks. you had the s&p take a dip and then higher. joe: pretty much green across the board. the airline sector on these reports that justice department is looking into conclusion and price fixing so that's something to keep an eye on. alix: absolutely. and the transportation sector really important. but our count up clock stands at 1366 days since our last correction and this is despite some earnings warnings we were getting. goldman seahawks cutting profits by 6.6%. it's not rose. joe: a start of a new quarter. i'll be interested this quarter, beginning q-3, one of the stories from q-2 we got the first selloff in treasuries in a couple years. i'll be curious if interest rates will creep up. alix: 6.2%, can you see it? joe: conceivable. alix: take a look what i was watching all day and that is oil prices.

pretty fascinating story. you see here around 10:30 we had the inventories come out of the d.o.e. and it was a slide all the way lower. you're looking at a 10-week low. that brought energy stocks down as well. they were the worst performer in the s&p 500. bam. inventory builds first time in nine weeks. nobody was expecting that. there were two big reasons. imports rose 10% and u.s. bought more oil for the strategic petroleum reserve. joe: and it was nostalgic where we had these days where oil would plunge out of nowhere. alix: this is why i love this guy, he thinks oil selloffs are cool. joe: i look in my terminal of the i.s.m. report. the latest look at manufacturing. and, again, continuing the streak of good news. so remember earlier this year -- let me try to mark it up if i can. alix: i'll help you for a second. joe: earlier this year when we

got that sort of surprise slowdown in the first half of the year. and people were like, oh, in year isn't going to be as good. q-1 not looking as hot. well, things starting to improve again. it's not roaring back but saw a nice uptrend in recent months. we felt good going in the second half of the year. things looks better. alix: will the jobs numbers be better? back to the story dominating headlines this week is greece the country remaining in limbo as we go towards sunday's critical memorandum. let's go with us on set and f.x. strategist joining us in london. it is nighttime for him but he gave up some time to join us. thanks for being here. >> thank you. joe: so what are the big questions as we're having all these greece stuff going on, why is the euro as strong as it is? why hasn't it fallen to parody like so many predicted? >> i guess a lot of people ask

that questions a lot of times. firstly, i think, part of it is on your side of the atlantic. why is the market still pricing fed funds at the end of next year barely above 1%? if there's a consensus we'll start to see rate increases this september? so you need the better data to justify the consensus few of the euro going down. i don't think we'll start making a move towards parody until we started seeing fed rate hikes. all of those people you and i know who think at the bottom of their hearts they'll never really raise rates, then they have to stop thinking that. so that's part of it. another part of it i think is that the euro has behaved like a risk off currency. huge current account surplus as japan used to have. a lot of investors who move money overseas when they feel safe. when the world sca scary place, they look at the -- is a scary pricing.ey think 2.5

and the uncertainty by greece is uncertainty. they move money back into bank accounts and in euro, somewhere in frankfurt, and the euro goes down and people like me regularly get egg on our faces because we get shocking headlines and absolutely no move. if you get a payroll number tomorrow, joe, we'll get ourselves through 110 down the way. -- 1.10 down the way. joe: 1.10. what's a big number? what specifically is a big number? kit: i think anything close to 300,000 is a big number. i also think any acceleration in wage growth would be a big number. joe: i want to turn the discussion to greece now because obviously that's what people are focusing on. there was a tweet from simon nixon of "the wall street journal" who said finance minister who in five months turned fastest euro growing

zone country to default to i.m.f. is this fair to him? could we just say the government has been a catastrophe? >> democracy has spoken and they got a new government and they have had a lot of challenges. the economy has not been doing well. they did what they could do. it's clear the whole process here has been derailed quite substantially. so the fear that this will not come together as many markets have been fearing but it's eb and flow with news at the -- ebb and flow with news at the moment. alix: is there a chance that alexis will have a job in one week? >> the greeks have generally put themselves in a very difficult spot so we'll see even today we've been debating will there be a referendum but we will see on monday where it stands and what is the willingness of the greeks to come together with the euro group what is the path forward

here? alix: kit, what do you think? the creditors will have to trust and negotiate with the person who's leading greece and that person sipras? kit: the creditors who have not had an easy relationship with the borrower here. you don't have a process for getting rid of him through the greek people. i can promise you whatever the outcome of the referendum on sunday, there's a ton more uncertainty coming over the next few weeks. what happens if the greek people vote yes, how does -- how does mr. tsipras go back to the negotiating table but how does anybody else get rid of him? if the greek people say yes, they're saying yes to what, a deal that's now expired. if the greek people say no, what then? they're not going to take themselves out of the euro zone just all on their own.

unfortunately while some of us -- there may be people in markets who would like to move on to a different story, we're going to be racked with uncertainty about greece for the rest of the summer. alix: and s&p had a great report out earlier this week and here are three deadlines you didn't know about for greece and what would actually constitute a default, a commercial default to treasury bill payments, interest rates into three-year commercial bonds. does this trigger credit default swap? >> so as you know it's a very technical question what triggers it. generally speaking, of course, it just illustrates how difficult the situation is. it will not go away anytime soon. we will have this debate even if there is a yes on sunday, we will still get a quite complicated situation. we need to renegotiate and move away from here. joe: kit, so real quickly, referendum, yes or no? kit: yes.

joe: torsten? torsten: i can't speculate. what will happen on the different scenarios but the scenarios are of course very important for investors. that's why we are debating this literally every day and night at the moment. alix: he wouldn't give it to us. we'll get him on commercial. joe: thank you. alix: coming tomorrow is joe's favorite day all month. it is job day. tweet us your guesses for une's job growth which joe fpguesses. #n and also #wgum. the winner will get a "what'd you miss?" prize.

♪

alix: "what'd you miss," i'm alix steel. joe: and i'm joe weisenthal. alix: some top stories this afternoon. in the last six months, the u.s. has removed cuba from its list of state sponsor of terrorism and made it easier for americans to travel to the communist country. joe: hillary clinton's presidential campaign has set a record. it raised at least $45 million in the first quarter. breaking president obama's old mark. the clinton campaign says more than 90% of its donations were $100 or less. meanwhile, the government has released 3,000 pages of mrs. clinton's emails from when she was secretary of state. alix: and macy's has cut ties with donald trump. the department store chain is pulling from branded merchandise from its she was. this comes after trump made disparaging remarks of

immigrants from mexico and other countries as he announced his candidacy. but trump said it was his decision to part ways with macy's. and those are your top stories. joe: all right. tomorrow is jobs day and we still have deutsche bank chief economist torsen stok. first, i am excited about this. torsen, you send out these -- torsten, you send out these big p.d.f. of charts and there is this cult thing from twitter about their favorite charts. are you surprised about how much people love your charts? torsten: i do follow you on twirt. i've done many years. i love to see everything you're doing and it's great to have you on bloomberg. the bottom line, yes, i do know i have a following. it's always exciting to debate these things which is i am happy to be here today. joe: great. let's get to the charts. that's why we're here. let's go through three charts

we should be watching before tomorrow. let's go through the first one. companies increasing wages on the nfib survey and the consumer price index. what does this chart show you? torsten: the companies are, what are companies' plans with wages? it shows that companies are actually planning to raise worker compensation over the next 12 months. this tells you companies are planning to raise worker wages and that's a very important signal because often as the chart shows when companies say they are planning to do something they actually do it so that's why the correlation works so well going back in time. alix: torsten, you've been calling for higher wages for a few years. why is this important? torsten: we started a couple years ago. that's when wages started going up. we're quite proud to say we called it when wages started ticking higher. many of the other indicators are also showing that same uptrend as predictors of wages. that's why obviously it doesn't target wages but a signal that

economy is getting better and more importantly the labor market is getting better. joe: chart number two, job vacancies and the number of job vacancies are the precrisis -- people quiting their job. basically at the precrisis average. why does this matter? torsten: this chart is important. it shows how many people voluntarily quit their job every month. very few people quit their job because they were worried in the recession losing their jobs and there were no options. today you're basically back at the quit level you had in 2006 and 2005. so that means that people are quiting their jobs voluntarily much higher frequency then they used to. it's a good sign that people are optimistic of the outlook before for themselves and the finances. joe: the third chart is one you rarely see. it shows the number of days that companies take to fill the average job. this is another one. absolutely surging. nearly 27 days to fill a job.

what does this chart tell you? torsten: if you look what it was in 2006. it took 23 jobs to fill a day. now it takes longer time to fill a job than it did in 2006. in 2006 the economy was overheating. so today we have a labor market that at least according to this chart is more difficult to find the right workers. this is a very important signal of how strong the labor market actually is. alix: and i have a special chart i want to bring in. it's my oil chart. it means rig counts actually matter. if you take a look at oil rigs in the u.s., they're down about 60% from that high we saw back in 2014. what does this do to the jobs market? torsten: there is jobs in the energy sector that's been falling. the way i think about that is in the s&p 500 there are 10 seconds sektors. one of those sectors is in energy and that's not doing particularly well. for the other nine sectors it's been doing well. the added issue about this chart is if you look at production of oil, it's been trending up throughout this

period when the number of rigs has been falling. in that sense the number of rigs does not show what's going on. joe: thank you, deutsche bank torsten slok. alix: coming up, we go to aspen to hear from one of c.e.o.'s of the nation's largest utility companies, coming up next. ♪

alix: "what'd you miss," i'm alix steel. joe: and i'm joe weisenthal. bloomberg's betty is speaking to tom fanning in just a moment. here's why you should be paying close attention? while the utility sector has been in focus 10 year inverse correlation. we're interested in southern company because of their exposure of the fast growing

southern region what that says about the economy. alix: tell me more about that. joe: well, utilities, you know, there's not much they can do in terms of their growth because they're regulated but given its location, given the economic growth they have a read on what's going on down there. so that should be fascinating. alix: the other reason i think people should be paying attention to southern company is how its diversified. it's tearing back its coal exposure. as of the first quarter, coal is about 42%. they're trying to reduce that to 21% by 2020 if gas prices stay low and really diversifying into natural gas. that really being the story for most utilities as well as a little bit of solar and hydroenergy as well as a little bit of nuclear. it's really urgent for these companies to do that because a lot of pension funds have to pare back their exposure to coal stock that have 30% of more in coal. we saw norway do that. joe: there's a huge backlash of

any company with coal exposure given the environmental issues and so forth. alix: exactly. there really is a hot issue to make coal less relevant for these utility companies. betty is with southern company's c.e.o. tom fanning. betty, take it away. betty: alix, joe, thank you so much. as you guys were just talking about, southern company, i see tom here nodding his head on various points you were making. one of them joe was saying that you are exposed to the southeast and are you see what's going on, particularly with your business customers. so what are you seeing, tom, in your area? tom: so i chair the atlanta fed. one of the reasons we're associated with the fed, we are a great lens on the economy. very interesting stuff here, especially recently. when you think about what the fed has been doing, they've been overpredicting g.d.p. growth. and we thought we would see the consumer start to lead this kind of recovery and we haven't seen it. what we have seen in the

southeast, traditionally the southeast is stronger than the rest of the united states. we have a my gravings people, good constructive business climate. the industrial growth in the southeast has been terrific. i mean, it's been really good. so last year we saw 3.3% growth in sales to a g.d.p. equivalent, that's like 6% g.d.p. growth in the industrial sector but we haven't seen anything in terms of residential or commercial consumption. betty: so why is that? tom: we've been in the traditional, the classic jobless recovery. but here's the turn that we've just seen that's interesting and that is the industrial sector is moving back a little bit. we think that's currency related. we think all the malaysia, europe, middle east, lack of transparency in china. but we are seeing pick up now is consumption in the residential sector. to me, betty, that is a real green chute as an economic indicator. betty: that's a strong pillar

of the economy. greece, are you worried as a c.e.o. of a public company? tom: i'm worried for the economy. in order for big businesses like ours, our budget this year is $6.8 billion. for big companies to make big commitments to long-term capital they don't like volatility. events like greece or russia or the middle east or china. and to volatility and cause to make c.e.o.'s reluctant to commit, that will stymie long-term growth. remember, investing capital creates jobs. betty: are you reluctant to commit? tom: we're leading the renaissance of nuclear in america. building a new coal plant that's better than natural gas. one of the biggest investors in photo-voltaic. betty: you see reports on it over and over again about the delay of the vogual plant. tom: betty, thank you for asking me that. what they never report -- when you think -- there have been

scheduled changes and increased costs related to schedule changes. the benefits have been overwhelming to the cost increases. betty, when that project was approved in georgia over 10 years ago, we thought it would cost customers 12% price increase. because the benefits have exceeded the costs, the cost increase to customers have come down from 12 to between 6 to 8. betty: but it's a three-year delay though, tom. tom: costs are coming down. remember we want to build it right. nuclear must be safe. and we believe it will be and so building it right is the right thing to do. betty: at some point, though, does it become not cost-effective any more the more there are delays? there are analysts out there who say that the more that's delayed then it erases those benefits that you're talking about. tom: even with the delays -- you talk about a three-year delay from the original schedule which was approved 10 years ago, for heaven's sakes, it's still a significant benefit to customers way beyond what we originally thought. when you compare to not doing

nuclear and doing something else, when you think about the volatility of natural gas and some of these other energy resources, nuclear has the cleanest, safest, less volatile energy resource and cost in the nation. betty: are you concerned or do you worry, not that it's your worry, per se, but people look at this plant. i mean, this is a pivotal, this is a pivotal project for the country, no doubt about it. tom: for the world. betty: for the world a nuclear energy. it's an extra burden in the sense people look at it and say it has to be successful to get americans to accept nuclear energy in the united states. if it is not and it is three years delayed then does it make it harder then for other nuclear projects to get off the ground? tom: ultimately what we want is a clean, safe, reliable plant that will serve our customers for decades to come. i believe looking back, vogual 3 and 4 will be known as one of the most successful

megaprojects in american industrial history. i'm convicted with that. betty: before we go, i know you just did a panel with senator mark warner and you just heard paul ryan speak. where are you in 2016? who do you want in the white house, tom? tom: i want anyone i can work with to get good policy. you know what southern company does is we work on both sides of the aisle relentlessly to get good policy for the ultimate benefit of our customers. betty: all right. tom, thank you so much. great to see you. tom fanning, the c.e.o. of southern company. guys, joe, alix, back to you here from aspen. alix: thank you so much. that was betty liu speaking with southern company tom fanning. joe: we'll be right back. ♪

cory: a new day at twitter as they enter a post dick costolo era. ♪ cory: i am cory johnson. is this coming your way? also, robots. even cool robots. a machine economy continues. and the