look at a stock like conway, big trucking company on the surface, earnings were terrible. down 40% compared to last year, but they were well above expectations because cost-cutting has become so effective that the bottom line "j" dramatically and as a result the bulls is indicated they are right. little bits of increases o.j. the top line are clearly going to dramatically affect the bottom line and, melissa, that's the thing that's moving the markets. over to rick santelli. rick, what's happening over there in the bond market? >> you know, i think we have to look at three different areas. steve, we've been talking about them as well as you have and that is supply. all supply is not created equal but there's a lot of it in aggregate. the comply some last week, the long maturity is seven-year outside of tips and hey they are important in the growing of usage and liquidity but it will still have the same impact when we get into the august refunding and get the longer maturities but 205 billion is still a lot when you add it to the t-bills. second thing, out there all day.

the taft is going to be in essence winding down a bit in terms of its side. why would mr. bernanke stay and have such a positive response in stocks in look at it this way. if he's doing that that's kind of a shadowy quasi-early sign of an exit strategy. he must think things are getting better. another school of thought says they are not going to raise rates. maybe this is a token just to see if they can build confidence in the market but no matter how you slice it we're getting farther and farther from the notion of any systemic lingering risk in the credit markets. the last point we want to talk about, if you look at the week, ten-year notes basically run changed. we close at 365 last week but it's been a roller coaster ride, down into the 3.40s and 3.70s, a lot of equity and positive equity environment for the credit market. last point, dollar index, listen, not done much today and not down much on the week, but it's still hovering at the lowest level to equal early june which is equal to december.

we stro keep a very close eye 78 and the dollar index. >> rick santelli, thanks so much. to mike huckman at the nasdaq. mike, are you ruining that winning streak down there at the huckman? >> me. >> i'm going to blame you. >> the dow and the s&p turning positive but i'm sorry to say that the nasdaq hasn't shown up to the party yet. it is off of its interday low as the nasdaq tries to stage a 13-day winning streak, but really, microsoft is just too big of a drag higher. it's still down 9%. if it closes down 10% or more, this would be only the second double-digit percentage loss for microsoft shares this year. the other one occurring way back in january. even yahoo! only up a whole four cents on the reports that its board met and talked about search hookup in microsoft and nasdaq is wobbling from a one-two punch here from microsoft and then on which is down 8% because it reported as well that its revenues came

in light. it had its first profit decline in two years. there are concerns there that the kindle is eating into sales of real books at amazon. also look. amazon and microsoft have both had huge rubups over the past several weeks and months so maybe, melissa, they were due for a day like this. >> okay. it's not your fault. mike huckman, thanks so much. regulating risk on wall street to better protecting the american consumer but who should protect you and how are the critical questions being asked on capitol hill, a one-two punch. treasury secretary tim geithner and fed chairman ben bernanke both in the hot seat today. cnbc's hampton pearson has all the highlights. hi, hampton. >> reporter: hi, melissa. we started off with the first half of the hearing. the treasury secretary tim geithner in effect drawing lines in the sand as far as the administration's regulatory reform proposal saying among other things the fed must take the lead as the systemic risk regulator, but the central bank also needs to be prepared to surrender some of its authority

to perhaps a new consumer finance protection agency. >> they are not enthusiastic about giving up that authority, and i with great respect to the chairman and the other supervisors who are reluctant to do this. they are doing what they should, defend the traditional prerogatives of their agenties. >> and when it was his term, fed chairman ben bernanke wasted little time staking a claim to systemic risk be responsibilities and outlining what he sees as flaws in using a council of regulators to manage systemic risk. >> when it comes to specific regulatory actions or supervisory judgments collective decisi decision-making means nobody can own the decision and the lines of accountability and responsibility are blurred. >> and we should talk about what didn't happen. on that second panel with the fed chairman was fdic chair sheila baifrmt she and the fed chairman have significant differences over systemic risk and the role of the consumer

protection agency and the hearing abruptly ended and can i tell you they both made almost a grand pre-like sprint from the hearing room to the waiting motorcades outside. >> we've all been guilty of it. hampton pearson, thanks so much. a great little color on that story. i like that. back to the markets and bring in our all stars, art cashin and michelle caruso-cabrera and steve liesman as well. the market, can't tell by looking at it because we're up 20 points. the market is on fire if you take out microsoft, a 17-point weight, we would be up obviously a lot more. it's pretty amazing given everything that went on at the end of the day yesterday, the bad earnings that we saw. what do you think, any of you? steve, what do you think? >> well, i think flat is a huge victory for the bullets today. nobody wants to get too excited about what's ultimately a 20-point gain in the dow. >> i'm very excited. >> don't want to pump it up.

off the huge gains of yesterday, when the nasdaq was on the 12-day winning streak and today is friday the 13th for the nasdaq. >> you scared me for a second. >> going for the 13th straight day. flat is a victory because of the huge gains we've had and it shows there's some staying power to the gains we've had. >> art, is that true? is there a larger message buried within that? >> i think flat is a victory, but i do think the bulls would love nothing better than to start to rally the market a little bit going into the close to have the shorts begin to break out in a cold sweat saying oh, my god, the weekend is coming up. i won't have control. do i want to go home with this short position with the market still rallying on? i personally think we'll see a pollback next week, but i do think the bulls really would like to end this week with one more uptick. >> melissa, so much going for us this week, so many companies beat estimates. i know all the caveats, revenue and cost-cutting and blah, blah, blah, but in the end they beat the numbers and i don't think you can understate either, economic data signals a turn and

health care reform. >> right. >> dying a slow death here. it's getting pushed away. gridlock has always been good for the market. >> and i just want to emphasize the 20 points doesn't tell the whole story, looking at stocks like radio shack up 10% and ingersoll-rand up 14%. >> and alcoa also up. let me make one other point of what the market has overcome. chairman bernanke got up there and said we'll be easy for a while but that was not in my upon the most sterling outlook or forecast he's given. he said maybe payroll growth at end of the year but still talking like a guy who didn't see a lot of terrific growth and fisher made the same xhefnt of a faint recovery and hearings on the hill about regulatory reform. the market looked and the economic data, the market looked through a lot of fog. >> we have another guest that will join us right now, the come troller john dugan. i want to ask you because you're just stepping out of the hearing and we heard steve talking about

that on regulatory reform. any sense, and this is going to be an up popular question, that we're fighting about something that happened ten months ago, that this is the last war and we're spending taxpayer dollars fighting about the last war? maybe it's time to move on. >> i still think there are some things that we learned from the last war that we want to address so we don't have another war and so i think there are some real things going on that need to be addressed. it's true that things have calmed down enough that there's a little more time to address these things and i think that's appropriate. >> mr. dugan, good to see you again. i want to just ask you if you are in the words of tim dwightner defending the traditional prerogatives of your agency by arguing against some of these reforms that the administration is proposeing? >> we're speaking our mind on what we think makes the most sense and the points that we made, first of all, on the issue of federal preemption and uniform national standards for national companies providing national products, that's not really an agency issue. in terms of the agency's authority we have a system that

works fine in terms of enforcement and examinationch consumer protection issues for banks. >> but you're also opposing the occ and the o'ts emerged into a single agent. >> i no, i'm not. that's not true. >> i thought i saw this in your testimony? >> we're fine with that and support the way they decided to do that, phase out the thrift charter. >> the spirit of steve's question is whenever you tell an agency to go away they would say no, no, no, we shouldn't and it raises this question of this council getting together and supposedly coming together. look at the situation with cit. nobody came together there. you had lots of different agencies fighting it out. i mean, in the end can you really ever get to these people working together? do you -- is a council aed about idea and inevitably aren't they all going to defend their turf to the very end? >> as bill sideman used to say where you stand is where you sit and there's some truth to that. very a system to work together

to work out a bunch of these things in the last year. it's not always perfect, it's messy. no one would design the system from scratch. having a council would force people to be in the same rooms on a bunch of the issues and i think that part could be a good thing for some things but not others. >> mr. dugan, as i was listening to the testimony today all i could think is i think i've heard all of this before. was there anything that you heard today that was new, that changed your mind, that made it worthwhile? >> well, not really because we gave the testimony. we didn't have much of a hearing from our point of view and get more views of members. i do think there seems to be an openness to thinking differently about exactly what's been proposed here in the area of the consumer financial protection agency to do things a little different >> i mr. dugan, can i ask you. we just had a real life example of how this council would work so people know what they are talking about, some council that includes all the major regulators where they would make decisions about coming in and rescuing a company and that was at cit where they couldn't come

to a decision and ultimately they decided not to do anything. did the cit example tell us that this council would work well? >> i'm not sure it's fair to look at that one example. if you're going to do it that way, then look at all of the different decisions we had to make in the last 12 months which involved a bunch of regulators reaching decisions on some very controversial positions where we did come together, so, you know, i work on the fdic board. i was involved in the capital injections. those all involve multiple parties having to come together and it worked. as i said, doesn't always work right and it can be messy, but i think having a formal mechanism would mick it better. >> mr. dugan, s.e.c. nonexistent anywhere in any of the discussions, on vacation again? are they going to survive, should they survive? >> the fcc. >> nowhere to be seen in any of these hearings. >> they testified yesterday i think on the senate side. they -- i think one reason they weren't here today is that a lot

of the hearing was about the corn sumer financial protection agency and that does not apply to the fcc. >> we're well aware of that so they got out of having to be subject to it so there was nothing to ask them about. >> mr. dugan, thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> really appreciate it. i want to check in with art cashin real quick. hear anything that changed your mind? what does everybody think of the regulatory hearings going on today? more of the same? >> so far it is, and that's a concern, and, again, you do want things regulated but you want to make sure that the burden isn't so onerous that you kind of handicap moving things up. don't forget, for good or for ill 75% of lending was through securitization before everything blew up. to get things rolling again we'll have to find some new initiatives. >> art, i want to ask you a quick question. my idea is that it's easy to get back to 10,000 only because i still think we're in the middle of this take away the falling into ate business trade here and we get back to 10 and all we sort of do is get back to not

even where we were before lehman collapsed. what's your thought on that? >> i think that's quite possible and i think the market is trying team bark on yet one more leg up. i still say as i said before there will probably be a pullback next week. i wrote in ply comments for today that we'll look to see if the fed started downsizing some of the concepts tip toeing into an exit strategy. i think you're starting to see that and making the market feel a little bit better. the sigh of relief that the world didn't come to an end as it looked like it was going to when lehman went out there's more sigh of relief than actual economic basis. >> art cashin, thanks so much and steve and michelle, thanks so much for sticking around. up next on "street signs," warren buffett on the economy. where he's putting his money right now, but the big question when the oracle speaks should you listen? we'll ask the trader, plus big ben and the really big elephant in the room. we have exclusive details on why one of his biggest sponsors is choosing to ignore the rape acquisition thrown at this quarterback. we'll be right back here on "street signs."

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okay. we have some news just crossing reuters wires right now. representative mike ross, the leader of the blue dog democrats, saying that there is no possibility of a deal on health care right now. the talks have fallen apart.

so if you believe that gridlock is bullish, you might want to go out there and buy stocks right now. i don't know, just the latest thing we're sees cross the wires right now. earlier today, warren buffett appeared on "squawk box" and during the interview he reiterated his long-term concerns about inflation. >> ten years from now the dollar will buy a lot less than it buys now. that will be the consequence of what we're doing now. that doesn't mean that what we're doing now is wrong at all. we're doing the right things, but what we are doing have consequences, and some of the medicines that we're delivering it will be very hard to deliver a total offset to. >> seems logical. as a result of his belief of a long-term decline in the dollar buffet went on to explain his investing preferences. >> i would much rather own equities at 9,000 on the dow than have a long investment in government bonds or a continuously rolling investment in short-term money. now i don't know, again, i don't know where it's going to go next week or next month. >> all right. the oracle of omaha says he

would be investing in equities but which should you choose? here now to give us plays to work on the current earning season is david lutz and the managing director and also brian stepland, president of step land exquiz. thanks for joining us. david, give me your first trade. >> absolutely. as mr. buffet was talking about the dollar, major commodities like crude oil are priced in dollar so when the dollar goes down it drives crude prices higher. one of the best earning raise is buy pxd, a large acreage position with exposure to international crude and unconventional gas assets. we think the underlying assets are nowhere near properly reflected in the stock. the street has been concerned about leverage in the name. we think the company's free cash flow will work down its debt and reducing the debt will allow them to grow and test untapped resource potential and they are exposed to the eagle ford shale with a resource potential that' significant enough to double

their proved resources, now they have also done a lot of collars in order to protect themselves against the down side of crude prices while still being able to enjoy the up side of crude prices. they report at beginning of august. rolled out on them last week and we reported people to buy going into the numbers. >> how exposed are they to natural gas because that's been a tricky trade? >> absolutely. that's not necessarily as correlated to the dollar and a lot of people need the natural gas price to get up higher above the marginal calls for production so they can start digging into which is the nice thing about pioneer. while natural gas is languishing, you know, they are exposed enough to the oil markets that they can take care of a lot of appreciation that happens in the oil market and that they will be able to see on the revenue stream. >> you are trading starbucks based on buffet. i can't wit to hear you connect those dots. >> one thing that's important about starbucks, they have an international, global and private. listening to warren buffett the underlying theme is the u.s. dollar will get weaker so you need exposure to world areas.

the theory behind long-term investing, one of the risks is that the dollar would suffer as baby boomers near retirement and start to sell assets to provide wealth for themselves during that retirement period. you're needing other countries to come in and buy though those assets and be want investments related to the some of the worldwide exposure. starbucks get you that and they are considering two years from now getting into india and getting into that market and moving their product out into that country so that's why i like starbucks. played it to the long side before their earnings and it paid o.right now i'm using option trading though to get myself long on any kind of pull bark in the market where i'm short options and i can play star ducks to the high side. >> brian, i'm looking at end of the chart, it just looks ridiculous. where is your price target on this? you wouldn't get in right here, would you? >> definitely a little bit of runout but the earnings were fantastic so i'm still very bullish on it. my price target, i can foresee the stock getting to $20 by january 2010 and that's where i've positioned myself option trading ways. the coffee stocks have had a

huge run right now. even if you talk about green mountain coffee or anybody else like that, they have done well. starbucks has underperformed slightly. i think there's some room for the upside but on any kind of pullback you wanted this. >> and we're all highly caffeinated. don't forget the rest of the "options action" gang tonight at 11:30 p.m. eastern time. just ahead on "street signs,sigt is time to smarten up. the new technology that will revolutionize your life and power your portfolio at the same time. it's today's tech effect and maybe money over morals. should sponsors stand by the stars when the star is accused of sexual assault? new details on how this is playing out for super bowl steelers quarterback ben rothelisberger. "street signs" will be back right after this break. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 if i'm breathing, i'm thinking about trading. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 i always have my eye out for a stock on the move.

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all right. take a look at health care stocks as we told you a short time ago. the leader of the blue dog democrats mike ross saying there is no possibility of a health care deal. not sure of the correlation, but we're looking at all the health care stocks trading higher on the day, probably a result.

resilient market but nonetheless. imagine all the appliances in your house in constant conversation with each other and with the electric grid, and with you, too. so that you can figure out how to use your electricity more efficiently. called smart grid technology. cnbc's rebecca jarvis has the story in today's tech effect. >> reporter: imagine a world where your utility meter can tell you how to save money in real time. itron supplies these devices. they are called smart meters. >> imagine the digital grid where this particular technology now is smart enough that our meter will communicate to that dishwasher and it will say, no, don't turn me on until the power is cheap enough at the wee hours in the morning and that will -- that's called smart grid. that's how an in-home devices that will actually change the behavior of consumers. >> reporter: itron president and ceo said his company provides the foundation of the smart

grid. they have 14 million smart meters contracted in north america over the next four years. >> we sell to approximately 8,000 utility, water and electric customers and gas customers throughout the world. >> reporter: currently smart meters take up only 6% of the u.s. energy market, but thanks to president obama's stimulus plan a widespread deployment is on the horizon. >> the president has set out an objective of 40 million smart meters from his stimulus package to be installed. that -- that's an ambitious objective, but having said that there's certainly enough funds in the stimulus package to help both the smart grid and a lot of the clean energy technologies that will get us there. >> reporter: technology giving consumers the smarts to change their energy consumption habits and control their own bills. rebecca jarvis, cnbc business

news. >> so who are the other big players in the smart grid sector. >> reporter:? cnbc's jim boldman has more. >> reporter: mel can a, good morning to you. the smart grid sector is interesting since there are just huge players and small players alike looking to score big as the infrastructure gets updated. ibm coming off a rocketship of a quarter has been investing huge in smart grid technology signing a deal just a couple of weeks ago with texas utility encore. the parent of this network general electric along with google are involved in a significant smart grid partnership of their own and civic cisco is working on new high-tech power meets with ge for homes and businesses. a number of small other players trying to stake their claims in smart grid technology. you heard about itron and there's converge,enernoc and intellon. this industry is just getting off the ground and as you've learned you've got to start somewhere. melissa, back to you. >> jim goldman, thank you.

get ready to stop trading. mr. krimm cramer is up next, and it seems like when d.c. slows down wall street picks up. is gridlock good for investors? "street signs" will be back in a moment. so, katy kicked off the conference call... but we missed the first half trying to download the docs. which turned out to be the old-new docs... rather than the new-new docs. then bob dialed in from home and his... dog starts barking. so jen jumped in with her "two cents"... which katy missed because she was buying shoes online. and then i hit mute... to talk timelines with my team. getting lots of dirty looks through the phone in the process. - overall... - a great call. - great call. yeah. introducing a better way. learn more at cisco.com/newways [ dog barks ] [ engine powers down ] gentlemen, you booked your hotels on orbitz.

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ogsz. we want too show you president barack obama stenning out on the white house press conference. let's listen in. >> all sorts of controversy around the incident that happened in cambridge with professor gates and the police department there. i actually just had a conversation with sergeant jim crowley, the officer involved, and i have to tell you that as i said yesterday my impression of him was that he was an outstanding police officer and a good man and that was confirmed in the phone conversation, and i told him that. and i -- because this has been ratcheting up and i obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, i want to make clear that

in my choice of words i think i unfortunately gave an impression that i was maligning the cambridge police department or sergeant crowley specificically, and i could have calibrated those words differently and i told this to sergeant crowley. i continue to believe based on what i have heard that there was an overreaction in pulling professor gates out of his home to the station. i also continue to believe based on what i heard that professor gates probably overreacted as well. my sense is you've got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able

to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved and the way they would have liked it to be resolved. the fact that it has garnered so much attention i think is a testimony to the fact that these are issues that are still very sensitive here in america, and, you know, so to the extent that my choice of words didn't illuminate by rather contributed to more media frenzy i think that was unfortunate. what i would like to do then is make sure that everybody steps back for a moment, recognizes that these are two decent people, not extrapolate too much from the facts but as i said at the press conference be mindful of the fact that because of our history, because of the difficulties of the past, you know, african-americans are sensitive to these issues, and

even when you've got a police officer who has a fine track record on racial sensitivity interactions between police officers and the african-american community can sometimes be fraught with misunderstanding. my hope is that as a consequence of this event this ends up being what's called a teachable moment where all of us instead of pumping up the volume spend a little more time listening to each other and try to focus on how we can generally improve relations between police officers and minority communities and that instead of flinging accusations we can all be a little more reflective in terms of what we can do to contribute to more unity. lord knows we need it right now because over the last two days,

as we've discussed this issue, i don't know if you've noticed but nobody has been paying much attention to health care. i will not use this time to spend more words on health care although i can't guarantee that that won't be true next week, but i just wanted to emphasize that -- one last point i guess i would make. there are some who say that as president i shouldn't have stepped into this at all because it's a local issue. i have to tell you that -- that part of it i disagree with. the fact that this has become such a big issue i think sin dicktive of the fact that, you know, race is still a trouble aspect of our society, whether i were black or white i think that me commenting on this and hopefully contributing to

constructive as opposed to negative understandings about the issue is part of my portfolio. so at the end of the conversation there was discussion about -- my conversation with sergeant crowley there was discussion about he and i and professor gates having a beer here in the white house. we don't know if that's scheduled yet, but -- but we may put that together. he also did say he wanted to find out if there was a way of getting the press off his lawn. i informed him that i can't get the press off my lawn. he pointed out that my lawn is bigger than his lawn, but if anybody has any connections to the boston press as well as

national press sergeant crowley would be happy for you to stop trampling his grass. all right. thank you, guys. >> okay. that was president obama making a surprise cameo appearance there in the white house press room obviously talking about the situation in cambridge with professor henry louis gates. as a harvard student, you know, i certainly knew professor gates on sight, they well known through cambridge so that's one of the reasons that makes this something that we have talked about so much. i mean, he is a man who is very, very well known in the area so the thought is, of course, if this could happen to him and he could be mistaken what does that say? >> when i was president of crimson, press run between 2:30 and 4:00 and african-american students walking home near me or with me, very likely in f a police officer would come by they would ask why that person was on the street at that hour. i was hoping in 2009 the same thing wasn't happening as was happening in 1977 to date myself. i think seven happy that he took back the word stupid for those

of us particularly parents who tried to get our kids not to use the word stupid. you know what, i think he defused the situation and i'm a stock guy. grateful for that. i thought that was good >> made some jokes about getting the press off everyone's lawn and lighten the mood and get the conversation on. interesting to see if that happens. let's move our conversation on. the dow, not our topic, but we have it was there for a second. the dow right now is down one point but the bigger message, we obviously had some not great earnings at the end of the day yesterday. >> right. >> microsoft and, you know, the market still hanging in there. >> you know, look, one of these things that we've got to get away from is the notion that the last company that has spoken controls the market. i mean, there's been a plethora of really pretty good earnings, and i don't really care about the top line, by the way, i care about the bottom line, unlike a lot of people i've heard. you can't take it all back because of a company like microsoft. >> but it happens. it's happened. they come out and trash the marked the. >> not working here because this is a different kind of market. a lot of people who are underexposed who wanted to

talk -- a lot of time people who come on with negative things to say maybe we should know what their exposure is to the market. perhaps they don't have enough stock, something i'll talk about on tonight's show. remember, microsoft is no longer the company in the -- in -- microsoft is viewed very much as a once great company. my friend steve balmer, i think he does a great job, i don't think microsoft is a once great but perceived as being not as important in the same way dell is not as person. american expression wasn't as bad and i was surprised why people came out and said that was bad. amazon, yes, some of their product lines were bad but they did zappo's, i would agree there's arbitrage pressure because of the zappo's and i also believe they are the virtual mall. first of all, i didn't think it was bad and, second, i don't think necessarily there has to be pin action and when you're in a bull market you don't get anything other than glancing blows like this, and it is a bull market >> yeah. it's different because maybe people aren't as exposed to

equities. >> look. a lot of people -- hear people come on all day and today was a very interesting day from what i heard people. a lot of people today who were very bearish, who came on today and acted as if they weren't bearish or said, you know what, it's a really good market. i call these people who have no value added and when i hear -- i didn't call them stupid. i'm not going with the stupid thing. nobody on my lawn though except for like four guys cutting it today because it looked really bad after all the rain. here's the way i touch base on this particular market. what i say to people is that there are many people who are looking at the nasdaq up 20% and they are up 10% and there are investors who say, hey, joker, what were you thinking? didn't you see the wear that apple went up, so they are using everything they can to scramble to get in. by the way, apple i maintain goes to 200, winn at 42 yesterday, going to 70, starting to show its true strength, a good nasdaq stock, apple and

winn do not get knocked down by bad nasdaq stocks, microsoft and suddenly amazon. >> dem me about google. >> google i think people are recognizing it has a little cyclicality but i saw something today pretty amazing. google is selling 19 times my estimate for next year, 19 times. i mean, this is still a great growth company. if you get any advertising back and if you read janet robinson's comments for the "new york times" quarter and you read the gwyneth company, two companies up from the dead, advertising is coming back. if advertising comes back, that's great for google. >> home builders? >> i don't -- i'm not comfortable with the home builders after i saw some comments and don't forget there's a lot of empty homes. homes, the businesses have stabilized. housing have stabilized in pricing. they need to see prices go up convincingly. that has not happened so let's not get ahead of it almost. >> were you one of the first guys i remember that said we need to get a bulldozer out there. very unpopular. >> i was using an fdr mode for

what he did with pigs and corn. homes are obviously -- >> more value. all right. jim cramer, thanks so much. more of jim on "mad money" at 6:00 and 12:00 p.m. eastern time right here on cnbc. the dow holding in right now at 9,000. is d.c. gridlock good for wall street? you're watching cnbc. undefeated professional boxer floyd "money" mayweather

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well, as wall street tuning out washington? is the government gridlock bullish for investors? here now is james papakoucous and along with the economics director. thanks for joining us. i'm going to call you jimmy p. because larry always does. >> that's fine. >> what do you think? it feels like maybe gridlock is

back and wall street likes it. >> i'll tell you, i mean, coincidence doesn't necessarily mean causality. an amazing coincidence exactly at the same name that the obama agenda is in full collapse from the health care to the union stuff and cap and trade that the market is having its best rally in nearly two years. maybe it's coincidence, i don't think so. i've had actual real live investors say thank goodness that this health care thing looks like it's muddled and the cap and trade thing looks dead. >> ann, what do you think about that? no matter what you think of the spending, even if you think it's worthwhile, going on something good. spending generally means taxing and less money for investing, no? >> you know what, if wall street thinks gridlock is good they are making a terrible mistake. if there's anything bad for investors in the long run sin stability and uncertainty. and we're going to have huge economic stability in the long run. it's terrible for investors if we do nothing. health care costs are crushing american businesses, no longer competitive and china of all countries is eating our lunch on clean energy technology and

production. we haven't yet set the reforms in place that can prevent another financial meltdown from happening. a vote for gridlock and failure is going to do us to a second rate status. >> i would agree that gridlock over the long term isn't good because we have real long-term policy things that need to be fixed but in the short term, listen, they will take uncertainty over the certainty of higher energy taxes, higher investment taxes. i mean, i'm sure we've gone over them over and over. health care taxes. they did not want that and they are extremely worried about the budget deficits and if you look throughout history one of the best periods for the market is really when there is gridlock and when there's divided game and not same-party government where you're getting a lot more big spending. >> divided government is a little bit different than gridlock. a little bit of delay, breathing room is good to give legislators an actual chance to read the legislation they are putting together and make it stronger and get some bipartisan support but the year-end deadline is the one set is the right one. if it doesn't get done this

forward with real bipartisan solutions to energy and health care. but that's not really what we've gotten. we've gotten very high-tech, very high spending solutions. so it should be no surprise we've seen some of this revulsion on wall street to these policies. >> well, you're seeing the sausage factory in process here. you've got moderate democrats who are in there tinkering, making some pretty substantial changes into it. and i think they'll all be pleased with the end result at the end of the date at -- >> we don't necessarily need sausage factory. i'll tell you real fast, social security, you move back to retirement age, turn a $5 trillion deficit into a $5 trillion surplus. that took me five seconds to describe. >> i think that's a great idea. i'm all for that. >> oh, no, you guys are going to agree? we're going to end this by agreement? >> sometimes we agree on things. >> i don't know what to do with myself. thanks to both of you for joining us. i guess if only washington could be that nice. up next, will big ben's sponsors run away from him? we've got the exclusive details coming up next. this is "street signs."

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all right. the dow has turned negative. probably because we jinxed it. but i'm not even going do say that. right now it's down about eight points. still a magnificent comeback after microsoft last night. pittsburgh steelers quarterback ben roethlisberger has been accused of sexual assault. but he has not lost the support of two very big sponsors.

cnbc's darren rovell is here with the details. he's pretty -- it's pretty amazing. we were talking about this during the commercial. >> it's interesting. and this is the risk of having athlete endorsers. but we'll see. this is an evolving story. yeah, ben roethlisberger yesterday strongly denying charges brought against him by a woman in a civil suit. and the charges alone have not stopped dick's sporting goods from running this ad, which actually came out this week. >> hey. >> ben roethlisberger. >> those nike marauder ds you've got right there show your team colors. they're also lightweight and help you be agile. which is crucial when you're moving around in the pocket. got it? >> yeah, man. >> the nike air marauder d cleat, only at dick's sporting goods. better athlete, better team. >> okay. so why is this ad still running? well, dick's sporting goods chief marketing officer jeff

henning telling cnbc "our view is that this is a judicial process and we'll let this play out. ben has always been a great spokesman for us and until something in the legal arena has changed we will continue with this campaign." he's pitching a nike cleat there that n. that spot. nike spokesman had this to say. "ben roethlisberger has been a long-time nike athlete and continues to be a part of our roster. as has been our policy we decline to comment on pending legal matters." this is where it's interesting. many people are paralleling this to the accusation of kobe bryant, who also had a sexual assault charge brought against him six years ago. one thing to note here, unlike briebt whose criminal case was eventually dropped there is no criminal case against roethlisberger at this time. by the way, dick's sporting goods enjoying a very nice run. up 41% year to date and about 1 1/2% today. >> that's a really fine line. i guess it's important, but that's the same thing i asked you about during the commercial break, sort of what is the difference between this and kobe bryant? they could have gone through the same thing with kobe saying we're going to wait -- >> but it wasn't -- am i wrong? was it pulled when he was charged?

>> so sprite stopped commercials immediately. >> immediately. >> phased it out. and they did not renew. coca-cola, which owns sprite, did not renew. nutella did not renew. nike, which had signed him a month before to a $45 million endorsement deal, didn't bring out a signature shoe for two or three years later, after everything was settled. >> and this is civil. no idea if it -- can it go higher from there in. >> right now there doesn't seem to be an investigation which would lead to a criminal case. but we'll see what happens. each case is its own individual situation. there's a positive endorsement, there's a negative endorsement. but right now ben roethlisberger still positive for dick's sportsing goods. >> darren rovell, thank you so much. coming up next, we're going to have a final check on the markets. we'll be right back.

final check on the markets. you can see the dow is trying to be break even on the day. down by about four points. microsoft, amex and amazon were the big drags across the board today but trying to the baa'll its way back. this would have been the 13th positive day for the nasdaq. doesn't look like we're going to make it but i don't know there's still time left. merck pfizer and caterpillar among the winners. thanks for watching "street signs." i'm melissa francis in for erin burnett today. "the closing bell's" up next with maria bartiromo. >> announcer: this is cnbc.com "news now." the e.u. says it welcomes proposal by microsoft that lets users choose their own web browser. microsoft is trying to resolve eu antitrust charges. an h1n1 virus diagnostic test made by qwest diagnostics

has received fda approval for emergency use. it's the third such test that's received an fda nod. and amazon shares are down about 8% after disappointing wall street with the latest sales numbers. i'm rebecca jarvis. and there's a live picture of the floor of the new york stock exchange on wall street. modest moves for stock prices today. a quiet way to cap off a nice run for the s&p 500, which is up better than 8% in the last two weeks as we enter the final and most important hour of the trading day. hi, everybody. welcome to "the closing bell." i'm maria bartiromo. today coming to you from federal hall in lower manhattan, right across from the new york stock exchange. beautiful friday afternoon on wall street today. and we continue our series "summer on the street." the markets, you have to call this a victory after the huge run-up that we've been seeing. you do not want to get in front of this train. momentum certainly on the side of the bulls. more gains today. broadly speaking even though the

dow jones industrial average is fractionally lower here by about one point or so sitting still above that 9,000 mark. nasdaq also almost as similar a gain, or move, rather, for the nasdaq. we are looking at weakness here. but don't forget the nasdaq is up 23% year to date, had a huge week last week, and of course on the heels of weaker than expected numbers from microsoft last night that certainly is setting the tone for the nasdaq. s&p 500 also a bit weaker here. as you can see, 976. despite the fact that it too has been seeing huge gains year to date. let's get a closer look at today's trading. we're joined right now by bob pisani, our eye on the floor of the nyse with all the background on today's move. >> it doesn't look like much, we're flat on the dow, but we were down 60 points and there was disappointment in tech land about microsoft and a few others. by all rights the market should be down today given the leadership of tech. but it's not. that's important. that's res'll yebsy.