warren, on wall street. more than two centuries later, cnbc was first to report live from the floor of the nyse with our colleague maria bartolome and today we're part to be part of the evolution as we welcome you to post 9. >> we'll bring in the men who made this possible. we're expected to be joined

shortly by the head of nyse, duncan neederour. we're joined by the president and ceo of cnbc. congratulations. >> thank you, carl. it's a great, great day for cnbc after 18 years here at the nyse, maria started on the floor in august of 1995. here we are with a new home. it's absolutely fantastic. i'm looking forward to cutting the ribbon. >> talk about the revolution of how this came to be. it's been a couple years in the making. >> it's been -- it's been all of that. it's a -- it's a relationship that's evolved over time, obviously, but this particular project we're standing in eight tons of construction. literally. and it's taken a year and a half to get together. with an amazing team from cnbc and the nyse coming together to put it all together. >> maria, it must take you back to a day when coverage on this floor evolved in a different day with you. >> it really does. it's so unbelievable to think that cnbc now is the -- one of

the major posts at the new york stock exchange. 20 years ago when we first started down here, no one would have believed that the network would actually be housed in one of the major posts. so, it's another step in the revolution. another first, possible. we're i'm so proud to be a part of it. i look forward to be seeing you and bill this afternoon. mark, congratulations. it's been a long time coming. shared vision. for us selfishly it's another example of reinvesting in the floor and this great place and the parter inship with you guys. who's got some scissors? >> i have some very large scissors. i'm going to cut this. here we go. a new era for cnbc and the nyse.

>> congratulations. duncan's going to be back a little later. right now the countdown to the opening bell continues. live from post nine, this is "squawk on the street." >> the new york stock exchange, designed by architect george b. post opened on april 22nd, 1903, a national landmark. cnbc, the first name in financial journalism. oufr the years the two have evolved a powerhouse partners p partnership, from maria first reporting among the traders in 1995 to the first show broadcasting after hours on the floor. >> economists are expecting a pretty strong report. >> and with the first full-time set from the balcony overlooking

the drama of capitalism. and now history will be made once again. cnbc's identify squawk on the street" becomes part of the floor. our new home at post nine directly under the opening bell. new tools, new technology and a new perspective in the center of all the action. and welcome "squawk on the street" live here at the new york stock exchange. obviously welcome, guy, to our new home. we start off an exciting monday morning as you just saw from the ribbon cutting. looking at a little bit of weakness around the globe really. asia down with the exception of shanghai, up for the seventh day in a row. futures down about 50 points and a big vote today in the germ

parliament. >> let's hit the road map for this monday morning. ware buffett says buy american because it's got the best opportunities. he reveals he's bought seven international stocks. he's also forecasting a turn in housing and says banksing is back. >> warm weather also helped the home improvement retailer but margins did fall. >> two major ceos. dell's ceo and ebay's ceo and how mobile is groving his business. >> second round coming up on wednesday, the fed chief ben bernanke delivers his semi-annual testimony to the house. >> mean while we have to start off with becky's historic interview with warren buffett interview.

berkshire's remanning tight lipped about who his successor is. here's what buffett had to say what he views as a deep bench at berkshire. >> at berkshire we've got people like matt rose, they are ceos already. we have a choice of dozens of ceos. it's the luxury that i don't know another company that has it. in the end -- it could be tonight, it could be five years from now. >> i'm curious, kraemer, do you think that berkshire hathaway is trading below book value and the fact that investors do not know who will succeed, there is not a clear plan in place? >> i think that's part of it. but i think what's driving the almost dramaticoned performance, the company is so difficult to analyze. this letter does break done the sectors, tells you what it is. at the conclusion of it i still feel the it's too many different companies for anyone to able to

make a good analysis. he says if the stock is cheap, he says buy it back. he's not buying back stock. he only bought a thimble full. this is the kind of analysis i find is anachronist being as to offering a dividend. he endorses entirely buyback, another method not working in this market. >> difficult to analyze because of the heavy leverage to insurance, the way results are not truly known for years after the fact. >> insurance is a terrible business. then he talks about the regulated business, railroad and pipeline, then the housing business and then he talks about what i want to say are cats and dogs. am i being too critical? i'm trying to analyze why the stock isn't moving. how many times did he use words like "substantially undervalued" and it ain't working. >> bill berkshire, that threw off all that cash he invested

for a lot of years. >> how about the latter point. the first three, four pages are about the float, how insurance generates a lot of float and talks about how people have lessened underwriting standard, doesn't bring in as much money as they should. david, you were talking about the good deals he has. they didn't translate into earnings. goldman sachs, bank of america, no earnings. >> that's true. no earnings to speak of versus the enterprise. >> in terms of the stock picking, we talked about it. they were good deals because he's warren buffett but there was a lot to choose from back then, no doubt about it. many investors chose better in terms of performance, which maybe goes to this idea of a successor. i don't know. >> if you missed what he said to becky, andy and joe this

morning, here's his take specifically on stocks. >> i think it's obvious that owning really first rate productive businesses, and there's hundreds of them, you just -- you get a compound over time. they pay the money out to you, they reinvest in it, they buy in shares so your ownership interest goes up. equities are still cheap relative to any other asset class. >> he said spring may be over but we're not close to winter quite yet, trying to put this into a seasonal -- >> i don't want to be critical, the guy is an unbelievable -- he does trash gold. he wants to put a warning sticker on bonds, i totally agree with that. come back to the notion he's a better company -- his actual buys in the open market other than ibm, nothing to write home

about. >> sparkle is himself favorite stock, though. >> there are two warren bufetts and then there's warren buffett of late, where i think some of them have been all right. he said ibm might be a buyback from him. what is the criticism of apple? no buyback. is this the way of the 2012 period where the buybacks have basically been somewhat discredited. he said buy back when you have intrinsic valuation and he's not buying back his own stock. >> they know the guy. the board has had exposure. why the board should know and investors should not. >> why not give us all a sense of who it, is let the investment community vet this person for their own purposes as well, if they really know.

unless, of course, they are aren't completely sure and it might change, i suppose is the only reason. i understand mr. buffett says he has no intention of stepping down, it may be years. >> he's 81 years old. >> i saw people all weekend nicely -- he's a gentleman that's done a great job. rose from burlington northern. i come back and say do i really want to play this game? give me the man. >> any other publicly traded company where they say i'm here, have i no intention of retiring, my health is good and we do have a successor, would they actually name that person? they probably would not. when have we heard about a publicly trading company say we have a succession plan and that guy is it. >> that's a good point. >> when you think about jack welch, with ge, he knew a number of people might be his successor in this case they seem to have one person already in mind.

it seems a bit different than what many companies would do in terms of. >> i thought it was going to be david sokol. again, i feel like kraemer, you're saying it's a bad stock. but there was someone i thought we had in mind. the man had ethical chal ngss. >> one more listen to beffett, it time talking about prospect of investing in europe. >> at year end, for example, we have an insurance subsidiary -- reinsurance subsidiary in germany. i bought seven international stocks then. in fact, i may have bought -- i put 175 million euros in each i guess of eight stocks and they were all european stocks. i just thought these eight companies were terrific companies that were cheat. >> i still think the best

investment is in america. >> he bought marmon group, a very advantageous company. he said that could make america come back and i feel that's true. again, it's difficult to get a handle on what he's saying. he says housing is somewhat important and then says housing is the ultimate importance. >> if we really want to be nitpicky about this, he said last year housing was on his way. >> he's admitted that and admitted he was wrong. >> the best, single family homes, bought at a distressed situation. is this a man that's been doing some hard math? frw he does that. he talks about a deal he admits was really dumb, which was this texas utility. a lot of this because natural gas comes down cheap. interesting today, a company that's going to be exporting

natural gas, does warren buffett need that idea to work. is he emphasizing natural gas as a surface fuel? no. >> that would be major con investigation on a consider to go from diesel to natural gas. that would be a major overhaul, wouldn't it in. >> true. west point energy said they'll have thattin gin in abundance a year from now, those who want to use it will save a lot of money. it's important that warren buffett has a chance to extricate himself. >> do you think he's right on housing this year, this time? >> i think that he does a lot of analysis that people have done, which is household formations and there's a couple of light notes there, how long can you live with your mother-in-law -- with your in-laws. i think that's very good. he talks about hormones. he's got the lighter touch. >> for all the criticism he's getting this weekend, it's something to look at the

relative table berkshire versus system -- s & p. >> i look at that and say why don't you have apple. too critical? >> maybe. >> thanks. you're supposed to say no. >> thank you. it's your first day here. weep should have a couple days. thank you. i appreciate that. >> any time. >> are you going to be comfortable do you think? you're going to turn around from time to time and work on the screen. >> here's a stock. this is a company that needed -- this company was on my show a couple times. they had a gigantic funding gap. that was answered this morning by blackstone.

$2 billion. wow. this company is going to make it. it was always a binary company or the company goes under. suddenly blackstone salvation. cnq, by the way, a great performer, will probably continue. >> all right. >> you know what the great thing about these plasmas behind us are is that they're roll. they're on a track and they actually move. from time to time you'll see them in different locations. >> our telestrator. a lot of people need stocks to come to live and the way to do that is to have representations. >> take a look. it's moving by itself. >> that's kind of scary. >> i like an old train set. >> warren buffett is the subject of today's squawk on the tweet. who do you think would be a great person to succeed the

omaha ceo? >> and a tech two-fer. up next, the head of ef bay, john donahoe. let's more ahead from post nine here at cnbc. "why did i roll over my i.r.a. to scottrade?"

"for starters, it didn't cost me anything." "and i got a one-hundred dollar cash bonus for rolling over by april 16th." "i like bonuses." "plus at scottrade, there are thousands of commission-free investments." "and if i need help, i can find it online, by phone or at one of over five-hundred scottrade locations." "it's why more investors with i.r.a.s are saying.." "i'm with scottrade." ♪ [music]

take a look at this time lapse we recorded as the set was built. it's about 12 feet high and it actually does occupy space that was once known as post nine. our neighbors behind us, post six over there. >> eight is directly behind us. >> i like it because it does herald a bit of history that this floor is all about. >> happening today because of the weather. i really like that we are now a speedier organization. a lot of what you're going to see is much more realtime than what we saw, much more inventive, too, which i like. using the technology to make things come alive is necessary at the bell. >> not standing still for a moment. >> in real life, my contractor never worked that fast.

>> now the rise of a new kind of consumer, the mobile shopper. call it m-commerce. how is this consumer different than today's slow growing economies? john donahoe is the ceo of ebay, which hit a 52-week high on friday. he joins us from barcelona. mobile is a very important part of ebay's growth strategy. can you give me an idea of where it is in terms of revenue and where it will be in terms of five years. >> first let me say i wish i could be there with you on the set but it's fun here in barcelona as well. what mobile's really -- consumers aren't bracing mobile in big ways. in our case 70 million people have downloaded ebay moment apps. we did $5 billion in volume last year. almost one in every $10 billion is bought through a mobile app.

it grew over 600% last year with almost $4 billion of mobile payments volume. what's happening is consumers, all of us, we've got our mobile phones with us and we're increasingly using them when we shop and when we pay. >> i want to switch gears a bit, john, and talk about pay pal. you had an initial pilot program and now the plan is to have that program be a standard feature at home depots across the country, in all of 2,000 stores by the end of the month. you're also in talks with other retailers. how dominant will this be at some point and what retailers are you actually talking with? >> well, retailers want a better relationship with their consumers across different channels, across online, mobile and in-store channels. so that's why they're bringing home pay pal to retail locations. and so we're live with home depot. as you said, we'll go national, and we're talking with many of the largest retailers and what we said publicly is we

anticipate being in 10 to 15 retailers by the end of this year and then in a multiple of that next year and being able to go global next year. what it enables a consumer to do is you -- >> go ahead. >> i don't mean to interrupt. vip a question about the number of questions you were saying. 20 in an earlier presentation. are you scaling back? >> we tend to underpromise and overdeliver. we're not scaling back at all. the home depot trial is proving technology works because the existing point of sale hardware you can check out just by putting in your mobile telephone number and pin. it's been a big success thus far and we anticipate it rolling out, as i said, in as many retailers as we can handle between now and the end of the year. >> john, i spent the weekend fiddling with x.com, which is the blowout pay pal, could end

up being the itunes of banking. is that overstating the case? >> well, what x. commerce is taking our ebays capabilities, our pay pal and gsi and putting it into an external facing platform. i think what's going to happen there is third party developers, you see, it we've got 850,000 third-party developers developing an x.com that intergreat pay pal and ebay into new applications that we couldn't even emergency. it's accelerating the pace of innovation. if the analogy of what's happened with the iphone where the apps are the restory, we think apps with enhance people's shopping and paying experience. we're excited about it and we see how big it actually becomes. >> john, you're in europe of course. more than 50% of your company's sales are international, europe

important, germany always has been for ebay. what can you tell us now in terms of the reflection of the european consumer given your business? >> well, the interesting this evening, david, is obviously european economies are facing a challenge in time but e-commerce in europe has continued to be strong. double-digit growth throughout europe last year and that continues into this year. so we're seeing reasonably strong growth in all the european economies and part of that is more and more consumers in europe are coming online to stretch their euro, they're finding better prices and better selections. so e-commerce has been one of the bright spots in europe in what is otherwise a challenging environment. >> john, some comments that you made have been expected up in terms of telling some of the mobile handset providers and

subsidizers to open up their system. what are you hoping to see in the mobile handset business? >> i think the story of at least our company has been that when we open up and governor consumers choice, that's when our business takes off. so let's take mobile payments, for instance. i think a closed system, nfc approach, or any closed system is going to be challenging to be adopted across merchants and retailers and to get consumer usage. so i think one of of the thing thags we've had to do i think retailers are learning to do and the mobile ecosystem has to do is to allow consumers to have choice. and to -- whether if they want to use an apple phone or android-based phone or windows-based phone, you can't have different shopping experiences and different payment experiences for each operating system. and so i think we're going in a direction where you'll see more common, open standards because it will increase everyone's business. >> john, i have a 17 and

20-year-old, they are paypal. they don't know what mastercard is or visa is, other than it's something that dad pays for. are you guys the next generation mastercard and visa? is it not a fair thin to say that it's actually bigger than the market company company? >> i agree with your latter statement, jim. paypal is a very contemporary way to give convenience and safety for consumers, whether you payline, on a mobile device or increasingly in a store. i don't view it as zero sum by the way, visa, mastercard. we give consumers choice if you want to fund your paypal with mastercard, visa card or any other way. it's by giving consumers choice that makes it so attractive. . we see the growth in mobile, we

see the growth online. business will double over the next three years and that doesn't include growth coming from off line or point of sale. we're investing a lot in innovation in this business and i think the fun part is just beginning. >> all right, john. a pleasure to speak with you. thanks so much for joining us from barcelona, spain, ceo of ebay. >> couple of minutes here from the opening bell. i wonder if we can take a shot of us relative to where the podium is, the balcony is. it's a celebration of international philanthropy day, sponsored by merck -- >> it's a stone's throw. it's amazing. >> if they wanted to throw water balloon, this ecould probably get cramer.

>> i'm ready. sticks and stones may break my bones but chemical warfare is my strategy. >> sovereigns are not the only one that can kick the can, right sp. >> saturday the talk is g-20 all aboard, talking about a $2 trillion package. i figure the future is sore on this. sunday $2 trillion package evaporates, germany you're on your own and the euro is lower. >> we'll see how many banks ultimately borrow from the program, 500 billion euro, will it be less, will it be more? so important certainly to stabilize in the financial system as it did late last year. >> and the jockeying around, how big is it in terms of the uptake and what the appetite will be after that is tremendous. anything much greater would be risk up because maybe things are much worse than we expected? >> g-20, november turned out to

be a far more dangerous month. [ bell ringing ] >> that was the opening bell on this debut show of our new post nine. the committee encouraging corporate philanthropy. one of the nice things about this new set is we're actually going to get a chance to talk to a lot of the bell ringers as they make their way off the podium. >> they really have no choice. we can just intercept them at this point. >> it's just about tackling them on the way out. >> they can't intercept us. >> so we talked a little about europe and the g-20, a little about buffett, sprint and metro pcs. >> interesting deal or a deal that didn't happen. we reported this late on friday. of course a vacation week, late on friday, you may have missed it. but it is being talked about this morning having impact on

those stocks. sprint was literally hours away from announcing a deal under which it would have acquired metro pcs. about a 30% premium to metro pcs's stock price prior to a big runup on thursday. not that huge a premium. metro shareholders would have owned about a third of the combined company. it would have been largely made up of sprint stock, though it would have been a slug of cash as reported. but what was most interesting was they were so close, parts of the board were well aware of the deal, and then the board backed away and said to the ceo, not going to do it. >> how can dan he isson stay there? he spends months trying to make this okay which signatures. there wasn't as much spectrum as experts hope but if the ceo makes a big deal and the board overrules him, how does the ceo stay? >> that's a key question.

we're hearing that the board, they aren't at loggerheads but i wonder and many others wonder what that means for how long he can stay at the company or at least his leadership position and how it's in question. >> how do you buy a company with $2 stock? a lot of people thought the stock was cheap and now it's expensive. >> analysts saying even though there might have been potential $10 billion in potential synergy, they wonder how sprint had been willing to offer its shares given where they are. it's not going to happen. it does speak to pcs's willingness at least to entertain a deal. there had been speculation way back when with leap wireless, but even with at&t and the like. sprint is willing to try to be aggressive, though its board is not apparently as willing to be aggressive. >> next time a potential telecom deal would happen is your inclination now not to believe

it would happen, given the last two big deals? >> t-mobile clearly falling prey to the s.e.c., to the justice department. but in this case more surprising because this was not a regulatory issue, carl. this was simply an issue of the board after being aware of this deal saying, you know what, we don't want to do it now when they were hours from making an announcement. >> incredible. when you go on twitter, this is a stock that people want. people are way too -- here's what i'll warn you. stocks do not get to $2 because they're doing well. they get there because they're doing badly. everyone says hey, this is a big turn. >> sprint, you talk about it, it's an option in many ways. the debt is the key. they issue another $2 billion worth of notes today, a never ending expansion of their balance sheet and refinancing, as they need to. you've been positive on the bonds. >> the bonds have been working. every time they do one of these

financings, people recognize they can still come to the market. they have to do gigantic funding because they have old technology, it hasn't worked. >> a couple big calls today, disney getting a nice upgrade. >> i think everyone feels in this country, every time we go to a shopping mall, to the movies, go anywhere, a shopping center, it's packed. where is the gasoline issue? this piece this morning says that people are going to the theme park in droves. last i took it took a lot of gasoline to drive to that theme park. what the heck is going on that the gasoline does not hurt the -- >> switch on espn, another part of their big story. >> that was the thing that was singled out. >> people forget -- espn continues to be the key. >> i'll tell you, i was in those parking last weekend i think it was -- >> was it packed? >> it was packed.

packed. >> they have set records for single-day attendance within the past few months where literally they have to shut the gates at the parking lots. >> try getting to harry potter at universal without your cnbc pass. >> without saying i'm jim cramer. >> there were reports a driver on the whitestone ridge found with 300 gallons of stolen gasoline. >> where do you store that? >> in jugs. in the trunk. >> did you see the lines at that costco that offers inexpensive gasoline? 90 cars lined up. those who can produce gasoline and sell it at a lower price, this is on the conscience of the american consumers as they're shopping there. >> remember there was a rash of copper thefts when copper was

very -- >> when you walk into homes in california, they all have been stripped. >> gutted. >> that goes without saying. but to the larger point here, we're going to keep talking about rising gas prices and at some point it may have a significant impact, even though we haven't seen it yet. >> haven't seen it at all. people are saying how can you be so bullish? doesn't it have to happen? red lobster doing pretty darn well. maybe what matters is that we have growth. in 2008 we were tailing off, this year we're turning up. it's a very optimistic warren buffett story, i'll embrace warren on this. >> well, we're actually here here. >> i am fulfilling a 22-year ambition at cnbc. i have finally become the weatherman for the stock market. that's what i've been wanting to do all these years. now we can pull it up with -- not only are we on the floor week have the beautiful new

telestratar here. all the major sectors are to the weak side because of what's going on in europe? the financial stocks are weaker here today, material stocks are weaker, industrial stocks. all of them are to down side. here's our new telestrator. points in different directions. look at this. materials, industrials and technology, which have been the market leaders all throughout the last couple of weeks, all a little bit to the down side. if you look at the european stock, all the financials are noticeably to the weak side. that's because the g-20 over the weekend has basically punted to the european community and said, listen, you want to know what's going on, you're going to have to get your own house in order, expand your own bailout facilities, including the commercial bank over in germany and to the down side, 3%, 4% or 5%. what's happening? right now, guys, we're seeing merkel in parliament speaking trying to convince the german parliament to approve the greek

bailout bill. they're going to approve it but there will be a lot of political rhetoric from lawmakers saying no more money for the greeks for anybody, no more money for the greeks, the imf. move ahead. as we've had the greek bailout bill pass last week, europe has basically moved side ways. the german stock market has topped out last week. this is where we've been all throughout january. we've moved up and moved side ways. pull up france and greece. all of those have basically begun moving side ways as the terms of the greek bailout bill have been announced. pull up france and you'll see the same situation, also moving side ways. the important thing now is what's going to happen next? on wednesday a very important development, the ecb loan facility will be happening.

expectations are 4 hoon billion, 500 billion, 600 billion in takeup is going to happen. how much of it is going to happen? we don't know. the bottom loine is there's several ways it can move forward. they're either going to borrow a lot of money and take it up and sit on it and then just hope that the situation gets better or more than likely they're going to take a lot of that money and use it to spend for their short-term funding needs. >> 523 banks that took 589 billion euros on the first time they used the long term refinancing option, ltro. do we think it went to buying long-term bonds? >> no, most went o covering the rolling over of their debt. 400 billion, 500 billion, they don't need all of that money to roll over their debt. they're probably going to play the carry trade. they'll hope to borrow at 1% and

then go out and buy european bonds, 2%, 3%, 4%. >> but to the larger extent than might have been anticipated originally, perhaps this time it happens, yields for italian paper are nowhere near 7% any longer than they were earlier in the year. >> italian yields are dropping dramatically. look at the italian two-year here. this is the lowest level we have seen since going back to april of last year. >> italian funding was supposed to be the big issue for 2012. it is a big issue. italy is going to come in very low on its deficit. >> it will have to come in much lower than now in order for it to be safe. >> put up the spanish, you can see spanish yields again dropping dramatically, going back to levels of 2010 for the spanish yields. if they're going to use that carry trade, they better do it

quickly. >> the banks are down, not up. you see the banks doing fairly well in europe you see this. >> they got to get the short-term bailout mechanism in place for europe and then you'll see it with the imf. that's the important thing for today. >> thanks for stopping by. we'll see you later. >> after bidding it up for many sessions and the big gains that we've seen, we're seeing energies and metals taking a pause because bu the bullish bets will cost the boards, they're at multi-month highs and we've seen 1 million contracts passed here. what we're seeing the stark numbers not a telestrator to show you but the numbers speak for themselves when you look at the pain at the pump, $3.70 a gallon for the national average, a jump of 30 cents just in the

past month, $4.11 the high back in 2008. what's causing the spike in gas prices at the pump is gasoline futures up 18% so far this year. oil prices rising because of the tensions with iran and some thoughts about perhaps improving economic sentiment here. but keep in mind as well wall street has a lot to do with this rise in prices. look at gasoline rise in futures. the amount of money managers betting long on gasoline is at an all-time high and thad is another big factor in the rise that we're seeing, carl, in gas prices at the pump. >> sharon epperson. thank you, sharon. it is international corporate philanthropy day. ellen, good to talk to you. >> very nice to be here. >> this has been going on for a few years now. you're in your ninth year.

what is the point of today and the committee? >> it brings corporations together from all over the world to focus on issues where funding and volunteerism can help make the world a better place. >> bringing companies that might share a common interest together. >> right. putting us together, letting us understand what we're doing, seeing best practices and combining to make a difference. >> at merck what are some of those top priorities? >> health care is our top priority, access to health care, access to medicines. we just launched a signature initiative around the millennium development goals, merck for mothers where we're looking to prevent maternal mortality. no mother should die giving birth. >> is there any sense that wallets are opening a bit more to their philanthropic branches? >> up on the podium today, every single one of the corporations opened their pockets in a greater way, a deeper way. >> that's good news. >> providing more cash to for

people. >> good news and something people should be more aware about. congratulations on your first time ringing the bell, ellen lambert from merck foundation. >> coming up, the world's most valuable company under the microscope. as we head to break, let's take a look at this morning's early movers, micron technology leading the way with a gain of 6.3%.

[ tom ] we invented the turbine business right here in schenectady. without the stuff that we make here, you wouldn't be able to walk in your house and flip on your lights. [ brad ] at ge we build turbines that power the world. they go into power plants which take some form of energy, harness it, and turn it into more efficient electricity. [ ron ] when i was a kid i wanted to work with my hands, that was my thing. i really enjoy building turbines. it's nice to know that what you're building is gonna do something for the world. when people think of ge, they typically don't think about beer. a lot of people may not realize that the power needed to keep their budweiser cold and even to make their beer comes from turbines made right here. wait, so you guys make the beer? no, we make the power that makes the beer. so without you there'd be no bud? that's right. well, we like you. [ laughter ]

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the average price of u.s. gas loon has jumped 18 cents a gallon in the past two weeks to $3.69. and rolex is the most favored brand among british researchers. coca-cola came in second, google came in third. >> there's something jim knows something about, mr. fancy pants. >> i have to tell you, that sounds like a 1% thing. typically the best brand is something that costs $2, $3. maybe the europeans are doing better. >> we're settling into our new home. kind of like trying on a new suit, have to take it in here and there. the anchor desk we're at weighs about a thousand pounds or ten davids i think you could say. >> is that a compliment? >> the entire set 17,000 pounds.

they had to place steel in the floor below us to make sure the floor would stay in tact. an historical landmark as this place is, it took a long time to get permits. >> no wonder it was two years in the making. >> phenomenal people behind the scene, steve fasttook. we have an unbelievable team at cnbc. that sounds promotional, i don't care. i've seen what this has taken. it's monumental. >> some of these lights, for instance, have never been used on a television set. literally their debut performance today. >> and plus it's high definition, which for this 67-year-old is very bad. it's better to be a young looking 67-year-old than an honest and actual 57-year-old who looks old. and now i look really old. being the oldest person on primetime is something i never expected when i got in this business. >> i'm thankful for you, that's all i can say. >> elder statesman.

people always call me an elder statesman. i guess now it's true! >> oh, no. >> time for squawk on the tweet for this monday. we're asking you who do you think would be a great person to succeed buffalo at berkshire and why? tyler writes bill gates, already the second largest shareholder in berkshire hathaway and knows the company. >> people have been saying that was actually floated this week. i read bill gates several times as maybe the next person. >> and ryan writes president obama is his logical successor. who have of what buffett does this way is talk about tax hikes anyway. he had to defend himself from criticism from investors but chris christie said buffett should write a check and shut

up. >> i think this letter is the most honest analysis of securities and how to do them. i washwe hadn't got caught up in the tax stuff. he did say it was important. people have to read this in terms of understanding how a stock is valued because it's very informative. >> there's a lot more "squawk on the street" straight ahead. don't go away. >> coming up, will a new home throw of cramer's game? six stocks in 60 seconds "whwhe "squawk on the street" returns. i look at her, and i just want to give her everything. yeah, you -- you know, everything can cost upwards of...[ whistles ] i did not want to think about that. relax, relax, relax. look at me, look at me. three words, dad -- e-trade financial consultants.

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♪ ♪ so we're introduced to our new set here at post 9. time to introduce simon hobbs this morning. >> a big day for cnbc. we're going to keep rolling out the big guns in the second hour of "squawk on the street." we're going to have the head equity u.s. strategist for j.p. morgan.

david kostin will be here. >> it's time for six in 60 stocks. >> i thought it was amazing. i'd be careful of this one. >> el paso finalizing a deal to sell to apollo global. >> this is another play on kinder morgan. >> nokia unveiling the new less expensive smartphone, the lumia 610. >> trying to figure out why nokia was up friday. rumors micro was going to buy them. untrue. >> dunkin brands -- >> i suggest people play with starbucks. >> i think erestructuring is being undervalued by wall street. >> american tower, price target

goes from 66 to 71. >> i come right back and say city likes the stock. i'm going with citi over raymond james goes higher. >> we've seen a few calls lately where they'll make a move on the rating and go the opposite way with the price target. why is that? >> when siti says amt is the target, the stock is red hot. this is just the stock market -- the stockings are getting ahead of the analysts because anmt isa remarkable company. >> we've had a lot of weakness in the food group. this man has delivered, great yield, great earnings, this stock is terrific. it's pickles! >> i assume energy prices will lead every interview you do for the next few months. >> mr. wenn eor has been able t

figure out how to raise prices. that's a pepsi problem and general mills problems. higher gas means worse earnings. they have to get the euro up to combat that. >> see you tonight, guys. >> meantime, don't go anywhere. another big hour of "squawk on the street" straight ahead. ♪ big time, i've got to make it show, yeah ♪ [ male announcer ] how do you trade? with scottrader streaming quotes,

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welcome back to "squawk on the street." breaking news from the national association of realtors. pending home sales rose 2% in january from a downwardly revised december figure. this is contract signed, not closings. we have to remember that contract cancellations are running abnormally high at 33% in january. that was the last reading. that said, this index level is up 8% from a year ago and is the highest from april of 2010 when buyers were taking advantage of the home buyers tax credit. this implies we are on track for a more meaningful sales began this year. regionally the results were not as positive as the national figure. pending home sales rose 7.6% in

the northeast and 7.7% in the south but fell 3.8% in the midwest and fell 4.4% in the west. movements in this index have been, quote, uneven. >> diana, thanks very much. >> warren buffett saying banking is back from the brink. and apple's meteoric rise about $500 a sure. is trouble ahead for the innovative machine? we'll take a look. >> and we were joined by alan ace greenberg. >> and david kostin swings by the new set in another cnbc exclusive. >> first up, blackstone betting

on natural gas. the firm looking foun vest ne--o invest nearly $2 billion in c n cheniere. >> goldman sachs citing espn as a big driver of earnings momentum. as david said, theme park attendance, to which he has personally added some momentum. >> yes, i have seen it firsthand and experienced it. crowded. >> yes. >> very crowded. >> the price movement on goldman sachs is from 44 up to 51. you got to wonder if they're a little late to the game given disney's run. it was nearing the price target. how much of this is a catch up call as opposed to really forward looking? and back to the man making

headlines today, warren buffett says he's picked a successor but that person does not know his or her fate. buffett providing commentary on the bank saying banking is back in business. he did say wells fargo is still his favorite stock and he has personally owned shares of jp morg morgan. >> 98% of his net worth is in berkshire stalk, which he pointed out would be given to fiphilanthropic charities upon s death. >> this weekend we had a lot of pressure on the germans clearly over the way in which they're going to fund europe moving down the line. of course we're waiting for two votes to come in, one in greece at the moment. similarly we have to wait for exactly what happens over in berlin with the lower house of parliament there also voting. and of course the big thing this

week is to wait for that huge ltro that comes on wednesday morning. is it going to be half a trillion? that potentially is a game changer. >> i've seen some estimates say a trillion, which raises the question if there's big room for disappointment. >> i think if it's a trillion they'll turn around and say -- >> what's the problem. >> exactly. if you believe they're going to have opportunistic cash in that, it would lock these banks into trades and investment at a cost of capital that is unrealistic. people are edging those estimates down slightly. you want to know the new cash. a lot of it has rolled over, we think perhaps 200 billion. >> in new -- >> in addition to the balance sheet. >> bp reportedly considering a $14 billion settlement over that deepwater horizon spill. bp would finance the settlement using the remaining balance from its $20 billion claims fund,

which of course we have a lot talked about since the spill a couple of years ago as that money continues to be dispersed from people who come to claim money from the company. >> if they don't have the judgment of it's not criminal intent but wrong doing, that's the rolf the dice. that's where the figures can become rapidly affected against bp. so this is potentially good news if you're a bp shareholder. >> we'll see, we'll see. what the cost veal for this spill is still to be determined but this litigation is certainly key. >> meanwhile earlier on squawk box, becky joins us on her one-on-one with barren buffett. everything from success to the housing, to the market, to housing to taxes. he covered it all. >> i think it's the tax debate

that caught a lot of my attention this morning and caught a lot of the viewers' attention. that's what we heard become from a lot of the e-mails. buffett has been front and center in the middle of the debate over taxes and where things should be headed now. he has come up with the opinion that people who are very, very wealthy like him should be paying more in taxes. that's been a fairly controversial call. a lot of pushback from it. last week nooj governor chris christie said he's sick of hearing about all of this. heap said if he thinks buffett is really into this and wants this to be the case, he should should up and write a check. today we got a response to buffett's response to chris christie. >> it's a touching response, that somehow americans will all seasoned in checks and take care it have. the reproblem is we're spending too much money and taking in too

little. >> we always want to ask warren buffett what he thinks about stocks. !úñ stock market is the best place for your money, at least over the long term. back in 2008, in october of 2008, he started talking a look at the stock market and wrote an op-ed the "new york times" that said "buy stocks, i am." he was looking at stocks that were great bargains. if you look back where the market was, it was under 9,000 at that point. less than four years later the market has risen very rapidly to almost 13,000. we got the chance to talk to him about that today. he said he does still believe over the next ten years the stock market is a great place to be, especially when you look at a lot of the other assets could you be investing in but you might be surprised to hear there's another asset class he thinks might be an even better investment. >> if i knew where i was going to live the next five or ten years, would i buy a home and

finance it with a 30-year mortgage. it's a terrific deal. and if i -- literally if i was an investor that was a handy type, which i'm not, and i could buy a couple of them at distressed prices and find renters, i think that's -- and, again, teak a 30-year mortgage, it a leveraged way of owning a very cheap asset now. >> now, carl, he does point out that, you know, last year at this time he was telling us he thought housing would improve by last year and prices might come back. heap sa he says in his annual report he was dead wrong on that point. he said he thinks housing o could turn this year and doesn't think prices will go a whole lot area and it's a great time to jump in on those areas. >> let's get more insight on buffett's one-on-one this morning.

let's welcome in whitney tilson. you said you were buying more shares today. why is that? >> we were blown away by the incredible performance of berkshire hathaway' business. the stock is trading down a couple bucks today last time i looked and that makes no sense to us. >> why do you think the value should be higher and should be 50% higher than today's price? >> well, we value it sort of like we value any company, which is you take the cash and investments and just value that at market prices. that's almost $100,000 per sure. the stock is at 118. you're paying 18,000 a share for a collection of 75 operating beneficials generating about

$8,000 per share of pretax earnings each year. so berkshire is trading at 2.5 times of its operating businesses? that's insane. >> how do you know you're going to close that gap? the underperformance is 10% over the last 12 months relative to the s&p. you're an extremely capable investor. why risk berkshire hathaway when you could buy straight in and buy those companies in the open market? >> well, you can't. only about half of berkshire's investment portfolio is in stocks. we could certainly buy those stocks. that's less of berkshire hathaway's value. we can't by burlington anymore, all of the operating business, all of of the insurance businesses we can't buy. >> but wouldn't that discount overhang until essentially warren buffett goes and they know who the successor is going to be? that could be a very long time.

>> we've owned berkshire hathaway for 13, 14 years. consistently we have seen the discount widen to today's level. we think it's trading about 65 cents on the dollar today. the share repurchase program which wee think puts a floor on the price only 8% down. as investors we like azim metric risk awards. and we have encountered periods where the stock has traded, for whatever reason, there's no obvious catalyst here, we'll concede that for sure but we've always been rewarded if we're just patient. here we think we'll be rewarded sooner than later. >> a lack of a dividend -- >> we don't want a dividend. it doesn't mack sense to dividend out a dollar that i have to pay taxes on it where he can reinvest that dollar. >> caller: new business or existing investments.

>> he is not buying today. >> he is not because he's set a limit. he said the stock is, quote, considerably undervalued at 110% of book value. the stock is at 118. done not much further than right now, he's going to be buying that stock very aggressively. i think that's why he came out in his annual letter he was the most bullish, pound the table, letting investors know this is the most extraordinary collection of businesses. he doesn't want to buy stocks from shareholders -- >> you think he can buy enough stock to put a floor in. you said down eight. if it gets do that, do you think he can maintain a price if he's an aggressive buyer in the okay? >> if you look at $16 billion in short-term cash and bonds. he's got $40 billion to buy back the stock on a the 200 billion

market cap. he can easily buy back 20% of the outstanding shares. this is not a particularly liquid stock. it could fall a little bit below that 110% of book value but -- >> are you frustrated by the anointing of a successor but not telling us who it is? >> if i thought buffett was leaving in the next year, then i would want to know who the person was. >> but you don't know when he's leaving. >> i don't. but i know as long as mentally he's at the top of his game and physically he's able to do it, he loves what he does. his board and shareholders want him there. if you look at an actuarial table, a healthy 81-year-old guy has another 12 years to live, i'd give him the up side on that, i'd say it's very likely he's running berkshire another five years. things can change over çafive, n

years. if he anoints someone today and that person makes a terrible mistakes, could you imagine if he tried to switch horses? the second guessing and it would be a media circus. it's much better for him to have it quietly known. things can change. i think buffett is going to be running berkshire for quite some time. i'm not as worried about the succession issue as everybody else seems to be. >> do you think his call on housing has dinged his credibility when he talks about anything macro? >> he has 50 years of a track record of being a great investor. housing will event aolly turn. many times he's been early on particular investments. i noticed buy america im editorial ho wrote in the "new york times," the stock market

proceeded to fall for four, five months. it turns out buffett was early. >> are there any stocks you actually own in your mutual funds or hedge funds that he owns? >> sure. he added to his wells fargo position last year, as did we. we made a lot of money on american express off the bottom. we have not purchased that recently. we don't own that currently. by and large we look his stock portfolio. he's limited to only the largest companies in the world to buy whereas we can buy a much wider range of companies. >> what about the eight european companies he had bought. when do we get to know what those are? >> interesting. i don't know what the disclosure rules on that are -- >> would you be tempted to follow him? >> we look very hard at any new position he die byes. when he bought ibm, we took a

fresh look at the company and we decided it wasn't quite cheap enough for us. >> did it rankle you the way he disclosed the ibm purchase? >> no. as a berkshire shareholder, i'm glad the s.e.c. gives him latitude to not disclose what he's going to buy. if he decides the stock is cheap, i want to buy as much as possible before it's disclosed and the stock runs up. >> has his willingness to be vocal, even a poster child for some doctrine of tax dogma in this country, does that bother you? is he over his skis in that way? >> i asked him that question once in a public forum. i said why do you need the aggravation? you're already rich and why don't you just folks on investment? i admire him for doing this. so whether you agree or disagree, i think you should applaud what he's doing and others of prominence should be

engaging. s that my general view and i don't think it sucks up too much of his time. he's a man of principle. if he believes strongly of something. i think in this late stage of his life he's trying to use his stach yerp and influence to try and impact the world in a positive way. >> back to berkshiurkerkshire h and you're buying the stocks today, you're very disciplined in that it has to be a certain size, can't exceed a certain perspective. are you bumping up a limit at this point? >> if i going away for five years, i would be perfectly comfortable of having 100% in berkshire -- >> really? 100%? >> just like warren buffett. >> you're a fiduciary. you're saying just you. >> if it was just me and i had to go away for five years. >> something we ought to know about? you heading somewhere? >> so, so, you know, berkshire is already sort of a low

double-digit position. at times in our portfolio berkshire has exceeded a 20% position over the last 13 years. it's getting prities close to it's that cheap but it's also that safe. it's never had a more diverse mix of businesses and just fabulous businesses. if you compare berkshire five years ago to today, it's light years stronger and safer than it was then. the stock's just as cheap. >> just quickly, whitney, we have the ceo of dell on later on. you believed it would be a recovery story, the quarter was a disappointing one. what would you ask michael dell at this point? are you losing faith in this? >> not at all. we got in around 14, we've had a nice gain on it but we're hanging in there on. it's tough for they to grow. they're in very competitive markets we think what they're doing moving out of commodity and higher margin businesses.

my only quarrel with him is why aren't you buying back massive amounts of stock. they've been reducing their share repurchases oaf the last few quarters. in my opinion they should buy back 25% of their stock in the next two years. even if earnings are flat, that's 17% earnings per share gain over the next two years. they have the balance sheet and the cash into flo to do it. why aren't they doing? >> unless they want to make an acquisition. >> they can do both. they've been doing little tuck-in acquisitions. but they're drowning in cash and cash flow right now. >> whitney, great to see up. >> it is all about the big names and continues to be about the big names on "squawk on the street." a live interview with michael dell, you know what one of the questions is now going to be and famed columnist jim stewart will

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apple solidifying its lead over exxon as the world's biggest company by market cap. here's how apple stacks up compared to exxon. the big question for everybody, can apple stay on top? james stewart in his article in yesterday's "new york times" compared the market company. >> of the last five, four of the five are down in terms of the stock price on market capitalization. the on one that grew is ibm and it had a near death experience before it turned around. >> you focus very much on the law of large numbers. >> yes. >> one stat really stood out to

me. if apple's share price grew even 20% a year for the next decade it, would be worth more than annual output of brazil. >> or france. exactly. >> a number of people, for instance, you closed the article in part with this one man who has been bearish on apple for a long time. it's going to depend on emerging market, is it not? >> i don't see how it could be. i want to say apple has done everything right. it's earned its way to the top, up look say cisco. yes, there's been one bear out there all this year. can you say a broken clock is always going to be right once a year. i'm not saying he's right. this isn't going to turn on a dime. but when you look at the numbers be you look at these incredible growth rates, there's no way mathematically this could go on indefinitely. >> when we look at these other

companies that ran up against that, quote, unquote, wall, was there a reason why they -- were they so big they couldn't innovate? that doesn't seem to be apple's problem at this point. i'm trying to understand how far the comparisons go. >> if you look at tech companies like ibm and cisco, for example, which are somewhat similar, competition is the big thing. apple has very high margin, still relatively low market share penetration but eventually those big margins are going to pull in competitors who are now even frantically doing what they can to get a piece of that big profit pie. >> isn't apple cheaper than the rest of the s&p at the moment? >> it is. by any normal metric, it's like a value stock. the trailing pe is only about 11. you strip out the cash, it goes down to about 9. i mean, it looks cheap on the face of thing, particularly given its phenomenal growth rate. the market is clearly saying, wait a minute, something has to give here. >> i'm guessing the pes and cash

for the other companies when they reached this high water mark were also undervalued? >> cisco had a pe of 120. that dot-com mania. the pes do tend to go down. people are familiar with this law and apart from these euphoric situations, this isn't uncommon. >> so where are you? do you own it? when did you buy it. >> i don't own stocks since i went to the times. i have owned it in the past. i've recommended it many times. i came on the show after steve jobs died and predicted it would hit 500 and now people say it will hit 600. i'm very positive on it. butch i think people should be aware nothing goes on forever. >> but you concede it has some way to run potentially? >> yes, i do. >> in keeping with the excitement here on the floor weeks have a wall street big wig joining us here in a moment.

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we're officially into one hour of trading here at the nyse. shares of retail chain operator tjx hit nug all-time highs. the stock up 41% in the past 12 months.

deutche says a successor will be identified in due course. and pending home sales up 2% in january to levels not seen since april of 2010. that's according to the national association of realtors. >> it's a broad based move to the down side we've had in the first 60 minutes of trade. clearly below dow 13,000 and 24 members of the index are in negative territory. let look at the volume. we're almost 2-1 decliners to advancers. over at the nasdaq this morning, again, just slightly an hour into trade, there it's closer to 3-1. let's head to chicago and see what the view of traders is there as they watch the futures market. kevin ferry is a chief market strategist. he joins us now live on the program. what are people talking about today in a market that's done again? >> good morning, simon. i think the big tell in the market this morning is the

bounce in the yen. so the tone has deteriorated a little bit at the end of last week and into this week but the s&p is only down a few handles and holding. telling the market that starting to pare down big positions. look for people to move to the sideline. >> explain why the big move on the yen today is important for their investments. >> okay. a month-long beatdown in the yen basically has been a big part of the liquidity move that other markets have reacted positively to. so in all honesty, simon, i would have expected the s&p to be a little bit weaker as people moved off of the yen trade, up nearly a penny this morning. we'll see as it develops, maybe a slowly moving day but the last hour of trading could be

exciting. >> kevin ferry joining us live from chicago. >> let's check the latest move in the energy market. let go to sharon epperson. do we have sharon? i guess not. so let's move on here with our guest. >> as melissa said, it's a beneficial day for us on the news set. goldman sachs chief u.s. equity strategist david kostin is out with his quarterly hedge evened reports that tracks the activities of major hedge funds. one of our first guests. it's good to have you today. i'd love to get your elaboration on your 12-month target, which i think pivots somewhere around margin expansion in some cases and contraction in some others with various companies, right? >> we have a price target for the middle of the year at 1325 and forecasting that will fade in the second half of the year to 1250. it based on the expectation

there are significant risks weighing on the economy and the markets. a number of those have receded, the ltro, coming up later this week. we've had increasingly positive macro news and very weak earnings results, sales and earnings forecasts for every sector of the market has been falling for the last 30, 60, 90 days and we've had no money flow. those are the issues positive and negative and balances that out. our forecast is for around 1325 for the middle of the year. >> crude down today. how much of this pivots as what energy is doing and going to do as we get into summer? >> in an aggregate sense it nets out. higher oil prices positive for energy companies and takes positivity to transfer into windfall prochts for energy. >> david, we can't get enough of apple. it's one of the most owned stocks. it's on your vip list.

one in five hedge funds has apple among its position. do you have a sense this stock is underowned in hedge fund land? >> depends how you want to think about that. there's basically three issues in the hedge fund world. every 90 days the hedge fund community is required to report their holdings to the government. we've had three issues this quarter. the first is you've had rising leverage. the second is you've had foreign turnover. and the third is the proverbial smart money, owning the stocks hedge funds owns continue to be a profitable strategy. apple is a significant holding for some the hedge funds. 70% of hedge funds own no apple shares. 30% own some and one out of five has it as their top ten position. you've had a significant run and the lower turnover i made reference to, you see some the consistent positions that remain

in the hedge fund port foal yols, google, microsoft, apple, qualcomm and cvs have been consistent -- >> have those been consistent -- >> those remain the positions that matter most to end hedge funds. >> so the typical hedge fund that you surveyed is up 3% year to date. >> correct. >> 10% of funds are outperforming the s&p 500 year to today. which says 90% with the s&p 500 have underperformed. >> you have the average, typical hedge fund up and 3. the market is up 9%. and the long side, the stocks that are meaningful to portfolio managers in the hedge fund world are up 12% this year. what that suggests is that the

shorts have been unfortunate and the amount of leverage the hedge funds has been a drag on performance. the average hedge fund as taken their next exposure from 35% to 46% in a raising market that has net exposier, that's going to affect performance. >> where you were calling the market down 9% and you believe that the shorts will be proved right longer term, is this a temporary outperformance? >> what it shows is if you own a defensive style portfolio, quality stock, dividend stocks, they have matched the market up 9%. they've outperformed the average fund, which is basically the long/short offset. >> last question. do you see signs of volume returning in a real way and do you care if that happens ?

>> it's a more powerful signal if we had a rises market with more significant volume. if you think about, it you've had falling turnover, you've had increasing leverage. that's an important driver and some of the key stocks continue to add performance on the long side. >> david, thanks for joining us. >> we're going to keep the momentum going with our next wall street legend. you'll see him making his way to the post. former bear stearns charms alan "ace" greenberg joins us next. stick around. ♪ i'm making my money do more. i'm consolidating my assets. i'm not paying hidden fees or high commissions. i'm making the most of my money. and seven-dollar trades are just the start. i'm with scottrade.

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♪ but will you love me tomorrow ♪ we are joined this morning by one of the legends of wall street, former bear stearns ceo ace greenberg, vice president emeritus of jp morgan chase. it's a pleasure and honor to you

have here at ou new home -- >> i'm excited to be here on day one. good luck to all of you. >> you've just been saying at the break you're an optimist at heart. >> correct. >> do you see that continuing? do you see a run in 2012 continuing despite what's going on in europe? >> well, i'd say if the country's going in the right direction. when our president came in three years ago, i don't think any president has really faced as many problems as he had. and i think we've just done a remarkable job of working out of so many problems. you know, the pessimists are right for a short time in this business but in the long run it's the optimists that make the money. >> in terms of the housing market, warren buffett in an interviewed said he believes housing is on the mend. he forecast it last year but maybe was a bit earlier.

he's saying it again now. where do you stand? >> the two people i don't disagree with, jamie donahoe and warren buffett. >> wives are good on that front, too. >> still, ace, a lot of the markets that have been doing well pivot around bank of new england doing more qe, big ltro. a fed here says the window goes on forever. are we carrying on the right things or is this all about easy money? >> well, you know, bernanke for a while was criticized by many people and lately he hasn't been. in fact, some of the foreign bankers have said he's done a marvelous job. i think he has, too, in a very quiet way. it working. that's all can i tell you. i hope it continue. >> you want to see a big move, another ltro on wednesday? you want to see an aggressive move? >> not aggressive. i just think they're doing things. i think everybody's doing good

job and i think it shows in the way the country's reacting. >> ace, some people watching might be concerned there's a paradox. on the one hand you have the central banks pummiping all thi money in so something must be wrong and others say the market is okay. are those things contradictory? >> there are two spheres, one in europe, one in the united states sfwlp they play across the pond now. >> we can do well now, even though europe doesn't do so well. there's a fear now that europe may be having sop problems or more problems and despite that, the united states seems to be going in the right direction. so we're a very big country, you know, very big. >> in terms of jp morgan, you're chairman emeritus and you said jamie diamond is one of the two people you do not disagree with. do you think jp morgan should

use this turmoil in europe, use the position it's in, the cash cushion it has, and actually expand to their advantage elsewhere, outside the u.s.? >> you'd have to ask jamie dimon that question. >> no comment whatsoever? >> no comment. jiem is very capable of talking. he talks to people like you. you should ask him. >> we will. >> we've been down this road with higher energy prices many, many times. this upper looks like it's going to be a tough one, we're givening to seegive beginning to see 4s and 5s around the country. >> people used to say if stock goes down, buyers go down and gas was at $40 then. they've been talking about that forever. was up to $150 i think. i wish it wasn't so high. i think blaming administration for the price of gas, they might

as well blame him for the lack of rain in the southwest part of the country. he has no control over that. you have problems in nigeria, problems in iran, people are afraid, there's not much can you do about it. people in the industry say there's no reason for this to be at this price, it just hysteria. maybe that right. i hope it goes down. so far the public is handling it very well. >> ace, thanks so much for coming by. ace greenberg. >> looking sharp as ever in that bow tie. straight ahead this morning, we'll keep the big names coming. dell ceo michael dell will join us on this inaugural day of our new set, post 9, when cnbc continues. [ tires screech ] [ engine turns over, tires squeal ] introducing the 2013 gs, with the lexus enform app suite --

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surms across the nation are feeling the pain with gas prices but how is the auto industry fares in the face of $5 a gallon gas. phil is joining us here. they've been planning for the possibility of higher gas prices. >> is the auto industry freaking out? they're not freaking out, because cafe standards have

pushed them in this direction. they know gas prices will go up. suppliers have been pushing the technology. >> who are the winners, though? there are clear winners and losers? >> definitely. look at borgwarner. they move into the sweet spot of the market. t turbo chargers. their aggregate sales, the compound growth of sales is up 700% this year. look at that. that's what we're seeing there. >> whenever we hear about high gas prices, are we to the point, phil, where gas prices encourage people to seriously look at and prsh electric vehicles or consider conversion to natural gas? >> i think natural gas is aways off. electric vehicles, people will look at it. people will migrate to hybrids and small vehicles. that's where vistiyan, big player there. we want the cars and engines to be more fuel efficient. when they talk to the engine, as

far as what it's doing, fuel consumption-wise, that's a business part of what they're pushing there. eaton is another one. superchargers are huge in the future. another case where you're getting the car with more torque, more fuel efficient engine on a smaller cylinder base. >> jci, as well? >> jci and don't underestimate the importance of lighter materials in vehicles. >> you have some cars down here for us? >> we're talking with the head of jaguar north america about rebranding jaguar trying to get aa boost to a brand that has name recognition but not the same sales as other luxury auto mashl markets. >> and is now india owned. >> tweet time. we're keeping it on the man making headlines this morning. warren buffett, who do you think is a great person to precede the oracle of omaha and why.

we have your responses straight ahead.

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this morning we ask you aside from insiders at berkshire

hathaway, who is a good person to succeed warren buffett and why? news flash tweets, the replacement should be david ion horn, less filling and investing great. brian tweets the ceo at tao. no one can replace warren buffett. he's one of a kind. that school of a thought is widespread among investors. >> he'll be around for a good five years, if not longer. so it's not immediately an issue now, carl, hopefully. >> what's coming up tonight. don't you wish you could do "fast money" from this set tonight? >> i do, really. we'll work around it. we do it the old-fashioned way, actually. we've got price line earnings we're following and don't forget about the beta launch of windows 9. that happens this week. we've have a preview of windows

9 the beta version and whether this is market moving for the tech giant. >> simon, in the next hour we're going to try the european close post 9 style. >> still a lot going on, carl, and we'll fwauk what's happening with greece and the after market of that g-20 meeting where they gave angela merkel nothing less than a ultimatum. if you listen to the british were doing as we ramp up to a half a trillion euro injection into the european banking system on wednesday. a phenomenal amount of money there. >> people are waking up this morning trying to take stock of what happened in mexico. were you surprised at all? were you disappointed by the g-20 stance, or is that the natural response to what europe should do at this point? >> i think the people are exas operated. i think it's fascinated the brit nations are in effect threatening a rival to the imf,

setting up their own bank to look at themselves, unless the imf toes its line that tells europe to put its own money before it asks everyone else to fund their problems. >> melissa, see you tonight. meanwhile, markets climbing back from their lows today. it is a new day on a new set, and here's what you might have missed. >> sidewa"squawk on the street." >> we're broadcasting live from our new set on the floor of the new york stock exchange. >> here we go. a new era for cnbc and the nyse. >> indeed. >> closer to all the trading action, faster than the ticker with the smartest news team on television. we've got it all, and now so do you. you won't miss a thing, and it all starts right now.

>> good monday morning. welcome to the third hour of "squawk on the street." we'll check on the markets this monday morning, after the dow putting together a nice series of weeks lately. the s&p is down 1.42%. we were talking about what would happen if it took out its intraday 2011 high, that's 1370. we took a bit of a step back. netflix leading lower. amazon, apple, microsoft and amd in the red today, but amd is crossing into the green. micron has the best stock in the s&p after rumors it might buy bankrupt japanese masht lm memory. warren buffett speaking about the markets and his successor. we'll go live to omaha to get the highlights. can dell keep up with the likes of apple and remain successful? luxury carmaker jaguar is

embracing its wild sidearmed with a new campaign, a new logo and several new products in the pipeline. jaguar hitting the road on a u.s. tour and they're here today at the stock exchange. we'll talk with phil lee bow. robert griffin iii setting records at the scouting combine. already getting an endorsement deal from adidas. he's with us live to tell us all about it. we'll begin with the buffett exclusive. the oracle of omaha sitting down this morning saying housing is likely to improve in year and high oil prices will not derail the economic recovery. becky joins us live from omaha with highlights of her interview a few hours ago sitting near printing presses of the omaha world herald. >> that's right. we're here at "the omaha world herald" because this is one of the most recent acquisitions for berkshire. they have 70 different business units, and with a broad

portfolio with everything from the omaha world herald it to insurance companies to machinery tools to railroads, buffett has a good idea what's happening in the american economy at any point in time. obviously, we've watched the numbers coming in from the government, and you can see a lot data points are better numbers. that's what buffett is seeing as well. listen in. >> i see our businesses getting better month by month, and i've seen that since the summer of 2009. the headlines have bounced around. the economists' predictions have bounced around. looking at 70-some businesses leaving out the housing-related business, the quarter by quarter ever since the middle of 2009 regardless of the housing headlines, the businesses kept getting better, and they continue to. >> now, along with those 70 businesses that berkshire owns outright, those 70-plus businesses, they own sizable chunks in a lot of publicly traded companies. some blue chip companies like

ibm, coca-cola, american express, and we got the chance to talk with buffett about a lot of stocks he owns in big companies. there's some stocks he says he really likes and continues to buy more of them. wells fargo, for example, he said he buys this year and he continues to buy more of them. what about some of the stocks he's not buying more of? listen in. >> johnson & johnson is messed up in a lot of ways in the last few years. my friend jim burk used to run that, and it does not have the reputation now that it had a few years back. it's still got a lot of wonderful products and it's got a wonderful balance sheet and all of that, but there have been too many mistakes made at johnson & johnson. >> still, all in all buffett says when he looks around, he still look likes the stock market as the best alternative.

when you can buy a stake in the company, a good american company, that is the best place to do it. the housing he thinks will turn. if you're putting your money in stocks, that's the best place to be over the next ten years. >> one of the great things about this tradition now back where he writes the letter, people have the weekend to digest it. there's still billing news he breaks when he's on with you. i own a little jpmorgan in my personal account. my successor does not know he's been picked. a single family home in a distressed situation is probably the best investment you can make. which of those -- even the steve jobs stuff. which of those surprised you today? >> all of those things surprised me. the idea that his successor doesn't know who he is. i'm assuming it's a he, but he doesn't know who he is. that came as a big surprise to me. i didn't realize if the board had made this decision, they hadn't talked to the people involved with it. the idea that he actually said a house, if you're an individual investor who is at home who is looking for a home and know where you want to live the next

five to ten years, i don't think he's said there's a better place for your money than the stock market. he admitted that housing prices are so low that he could see scenarios where that would be be an even better place for your money than the stock market. that's the first time he's said something like that. >> buy in a distressed situation and get the 30-year mortgage at 4%. he responded to chris christie's criticism in which he said he should write a check and shut up in mhis words. he's not bothered by it. it sounds like he knows that comes with the territory. >> he did. we got a lot of questions from shareholders who wrote in and said, wait a second. why get in the middle of a political argument like this? you automatically tick off half the country essentially. by doing this, is that what you should do as a ceo? when you're sitting in the corner office, it doesn't mean you give up your rights to opinions. if he sees something unfair, he

thinks it's his responsibility to speak out on that. >> becky, always good to see you over there. have a great trip home. get some steak and rest. we'll see you on the "squawk" set soon. >> see you later. >> a special tour of the new digs here from the man who helped design it. plus, michael dell exclusive on "squawk on the street" back in two minutes.

in case you haven't noticed, our new set is here, post 9, the debut today. it's where we work on the floor from here until who knows when. steve is cnbc's vice president of technical operations. i call him the evil genius, but he's a key mastermind of putting this together. congratulations. fantastic work. it's a beautiful thing to look at, and walk flew some of the components that are making their debut today. >> there are two things i'd like to you. first of all, the cameras here, which are really unique. that is a camera, believe it or not. tom, if you don't mind, would you take a nice five and we're going at that back up for a second. swing it up to the bell for us. there you see the agility and nimbleness of these cameras. we can place these cameras everywhere. highly efficient, ultra high picture quality, small footprint. we can hide them anywhere. >> david faber said when he first saw these he didn't

realize this was the camera. >> that's correct. you don't know there are cameras here they're so small. >> we can move them around on the track and position them. the trick to building this set on the floor here, is everything had to stay within the footprint of this it space, so everything had to be ultra compact. we found these cameras. we started the project about two years ago, but only made the technology decisions about early december. so we waited and waited to get the best of the technology. >> to get the best maturation of out of these products. how about the lights? >> this light is a photon, carl. it's l.e.d.s with a phosphorous surface. it's equivalent of a 600-watt light. it's low power. this whole set uses the same electricity as a window air conditioner. >> the entire thing? >> the entire set is the same as a window air conditioner unit you plug into your home. >> that's amazing.

some of the lights -- i don't know if we take a shot of these rainbow colored panels above us. >> these are multiple l.e.d. panels. you get amazing power consumption drop, but the fringe benefit -- bruce, let's make the set green for me, if you would. >> that didn't take long. >> if you think about that in the old days, we would have to climb ladders and put color gel on lights. we have green, sustainability and a beautiful piece of furniture right here in the center of the stock exchange. >> a lot of work in the past two years all coming to fruition today. congratulations. >> thank you. the team did a terrific job on this. i'm so proud of all of them. >> our thanks to our bob, mark hoffman, we had on it this morning with the ceo of nyse. >> he pushed us to take a big swing and do this. really appreciate it. >> thank you very much. i want to head out west to john

forte in san francisco with an exclusive, ceo michael dell. >> very jealous of that set. michael you're making anounments today on an enterprise of a new power edge servers. you're building in technology from networking and storage acquisitions. why are told's announcements important for dell's growth going forward? >> if you look in the last five or six years, we've more than doubled the size of our enterprise services and solutions business to 18.6 billion. it's about half the profits of the company. today we are the market share leader in the united states for x-86 servers with about 34% share. now we're introducing the next generation of what we call our power edge server lines, which are the most popular servers in the united states. so we're really excited about all the new technology we're bringing together in terms of networking, storage, 10 gigabite

ethernet to enable virtualization, more intense workloads. we're embedding cacheing into the servers. you heard about big data. these servers power the next generation of really exciting applications that exist in the world. >> xlo"cloud" is a huge buzzwor these days. what segment of the cloud is he critical to dell? how do these products play into na? >> we're the leading provider to a number of the public and private cloud companies, because they really intensely stress these systems and they're always looking for the greatest performance. what you hear about in terms of the social companies, the public and private cloud companies often behind them are running our power edge and power vault and compel ant and force 10

networking systems. i think customers today want flexibility in terms of where their systems exist. sometimes they want them to premise. they may want them in the cloud. they may want them in our location, and we provide them all that flexibility. >> so 15 years ago, say, everybody sort of understood what dell was better than everyone else at. i mean, your just in time manufacturing before anybody else was doing that. you were doing it. your profiting were above others working in hardware. now the scene has changed a bit. you're not just about pcs. you're in services and you're investing in software, networking. what's dell best in the world at? >> dell today is an end-to-end solutions provider, so we're not just a pc company. we're competing in a much larger market. in fact, a $3 trillion industry where we have a little over 60 billion of that, so 2%. the real expertise of dell is in identifying those technologies

and those solutions that make a difference for customers, particularly fast-growing customers. small, medium-sized customers but large companies that take advantage of these technologies faster. that really distinguishes us from, let's say, our legacy competitors who have older technologies to protect. we're often the very first to embrace and introduce those technologies that make a big difference. >> cisco and ibm are doing well with the services business selling software into that. what's your differentiator coming up against the big companies that are on the upswing right now? >> well, specifically in servers, of course, we beat the two companies you mentioned quite handily. we're, in fact, the only company in the top three to gain share in all major regions of the world, so we're doing quite well in our earnings per share last year. we're up 34%, cash flow up 39%. so our results are quite strong.

again, i think where dell really distinguishes itself is in the relationship we have with our customers and the ability to understand the requirements particularly for fast-growing companies. most of the growth in the world and in employment is in small and medium-sized business. >> you're doing we will there. talk about consumer. apple, obviously, cleaning up in that area. done very well with smartphones and tablets. dell hasn't had a big impact there up to this point. windows 8 is coming out. is consumer an area where you can grow profitably, or is it more an area to manage your component costs? how do you think of it strategically? >> within the context of $3 trillion industry, consumers 320 million and companies 2.75 trillion. a little more focused on the 2.75 thririllion.

they increase substantially year over year last year, and we're excited about windows 8. we think windows 8 with the ability to utilize the arm processor and the capacity of touch capabilities and met row intraface. we they'll the things are very exciting and we'll be right there with the windows 8 announcement. >> apple has been under a lot of pressure lately about manufacturing in china, specifically with foxcon, but they're not the only ones that build with them. lots of other companies, including dell, do manufacturing over there. are you satisfied with the labor conditions is there? is there anything you're working on as far as labor conditions if in china to improve them? >> we have rigorous standards within dell that our suppliers comply with, and we do rel unaannounced audits of our suppliers and work with others in the industry to create standards around working conditions and environmental safety and sustainability kinds of standards. i think dell has a fantastic

track record here, and we're going to continue to push the envelope in terms of making sure that, you know, no one ever gets hurt working in ayode dell fact or a factory of a supplier partners. >> looking forward to those announcements today. michael dell, thank you for being with us exclusively today on cnbc. >> we should mention dell at the high of the day as we take a break, look at the s&p, also turning positive. as you know the s&p did break above its 2011 peak last week. it would mean 13.70 but at the time being at 13.66. when we come back, we catch you down to the close in europe. about ten minutes to go. bring you all the action live. jaguar is taking a bite out of the luxury car market. we'll talk to an auto giant executives and get a first look at the newest models when "squawk on the street" comes back. are you still sleeping? just wanted to check and make sure that we were on schedule.

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jaguar has a nye campaign called alive. it's a latest attempt to boost sales. we have an exclusive first look with andy goss with our phil

lebow outside the exchange. >> i'm joined with andy goss, the head of jaguar north america. we have your models back here. i want to ask about the new campaign you launch in the u.s. but around the world. it's called "alive," and you think this is critical to basically resetting where jaguar is at, right? >> yeah. we hit the reset button on jaguar. we've done it for a time in the usa in december with jaguar's new usa website. we've seen a level of activity that we've never seen before quite frankly, and today marks the start of jaguar's live campai campaign. >> you consider your core competitors you run a birch mark against the three german luxury brands as well as lexus. when you look at the german luxury brands last year, their sales were up double digits and you were down 8.3%.

why haven't you kept up with the sales growth in the last year? >> the three german brands of lexus are the competition. they're a volume brand these days. we're a premium brand that's sma smaller. we need to increase our footprint in the mark place. we need to look at haul-wheel drive in addition to that. we have a wider proliferation in the marketplace. this is a new sports coupe concept in 2013. >> was the brand adrift to a certain extent over the last couple of years when you had the ford ownership and transition to tata. when you talk about jaguar, instant name recognition. >> very common. under tata we made an enormous difference. it take place from the design director started to design these three products. there's more products to come. we have a lot of investment now. $1.5 billion sterling a year in

r & d. >> you think there's pent-up demand on the luxury market? >> market is over 8%, and we're going to be up aa lot more than that. >> the head of jaguar north he america on a cnbc exclusive as the company relaunches its image here in the u.s. and around the world with "alive." >> i think that's our first segme segment outdoors for the year. thanks very much. trading action overseas is winding down. a few minutes to go until the closing bell in europe, about four and a half, in fact. meanwhile markets have erased close to 1% losses. we'll get more on europe when we come back. ♪

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there was a big vote in the german parliament today. potentially a big deal later in the week. >> absolutely. it's a huge week. for the moment we put prochts on

european markets today, but the important thing to note is they're actually off their lows partly because of what happened in wall street. we were tracking down them towards the end of session as we close out on the three major indices. the banks are a key mover today, but it's a profit taker on on the extraordinary runs we've. commerce bank is up 42%, soft gen is 72%. they reported earnings today and disappointment there. they spend heavily on the wages big and emerging market. they have dloes to $22 billion means that the market took it down. look at the automotive stocks. they were in negative territory today. some have done well, but a huge concern where we're going with growth. we're making way later in the week for this huge amount of money potentially. the unlimited three-year loans that come through, and today we had a very interesting auction over in italy where the cost

right at the shortened of the six-month money came down 2%. a lot of people are suggesting that we are -- this concern about greece, the concern about where we are in the contagion is very much moved to now the edge. >> the european markets are closing now. >> still, obviously, it is a huge concern. they're very much focused on whaelgts the nervousness around the ltro and what exactly do we get through that? we see where we close up around europe. let me mention we still have that very important vote over in the lower house of parliament in germany. merkel was addressing the members of parliament there. she's conflicted over how to it move forward, of course. the indication is still the vote will go through. the question is whether she gets her own ma joert. when push up comes to shove, carl, it doesn't perhaps matter whether we go moving forward. she has to get the lower house to vote through.

>> meanmeanwhile, she has to ma the cabinet officials. one says greece would be better off restructuring outside the euro, and that's not exactly the point of view she's pushing. >> yeah. this is very important. you raise a very important point, which is the open talk within germany that actually greece should have a full-scale default and should be pushed out of the euro zone. that's very, very much now on the agenda. it's why last week we thought that bailout might not come through. >> we'll give you a chance to sit down. we'll talk more about wednesday's ltro. robert, good to talk to you. >> nice talking to you. good morning. >> what is a reasonable number for wednesday and what would be disappointing? >> i think the expectation is around 270. i think that there's many people -- that would be similar to the past one. the past one was a total of 489, so with this one being 470 and in the similar vain, the ecb

would be providing a total amount of liquidity over two months of 1.275 trillion. a tremendous amount of liquidity to the market. if you compare that interestingly to the qe-1 that the fed didn't -- don't get me wrong. this is not qe. they're not printing the money. they provide liquidity through repo. the fed at that time did 1.55 trillion over 1.3 years. so it's pretty significant amount of liquidity that's been provided at around 1.275 -- 1.275 trillion over two months. >> that's a number that will get your attention and incredibly compressed time span. overall you think given the uncertainty in greece and given the uncertainty in the iranian standoff, things are going on sale sometime in march. that's your belief? >> i believe so. there certainly could be a halo effect from this influx of liquidity and month-end and maybe asset allocation.

those people buy stocks and sell some bonds, and this could continue on for a little while. i think all the markets got to levels where the correlation of one that got pretty expensive and at least some setback and a buying opportunity could come about. >> thank you for that. bring in bob and his debut run aat the big board over there. >> stocks have the weatherman. it's a simple idea. i've waited to see this for 22 years. you give a great summary what's going on in germany deal with the nine party that emerged out there. no money for the ecb or helping out with the imf and no more money for greece at this point. she has a tough row to hoe. most people think they will aapprove the greek bailout and they will approve expanding or combining the esf and the esm in europe. i think that will happen. wednesday is is the auction, the three-year auction for the ecb. that's the next important point. what's going on happen here, and

i'll tell you the important thing. let's clear this away here. besides the italians, we get the auction on wednesday. what you see here is a whole bunch of questions about what are they doing exactly with their money? some people are out covering the existing financing needs. that's the primary thing they need to do. the other thing that's very important that's owl there is they're going to neat to play the carry trade. they buy european bonds or euro zone bonds and how much are they going to buy? the italian two years at new lows, that carried trade for them to borrow at 1% and buy european bonds is less compelling than it was just a few months ago. they can also go out and lend money as well. there's the other thing that's happening. here's that italian two-year. we've seen a top-out in the european markets ever since we got that greece deal about a week ago. look at the german market. na topped out. that hasn't gone anywhere. take a look. there you go. that's what you wait for for a while. no move up. same thing as well in the french

market. it's also topped out in the last five or six trading sessions, and that's got traders wondering how much more upside right here? same situation you can see right there. elsewhere, the important thing to point out guys is what's going on in housing in the united states. you saw those pending home sale numbers. they were good. this weren't as strong as some people argue, but 2% increase, we have it up 8% on the year. all the home builders are trading to the upside right now. look at the home builds index. this is a basket of all the big etfs out there topped out two weeks ago, three weeks ago has held steady on the upside today. some wonder whether it will come back. the big thing here that you want to face and deal with is the fact that existing home sales are slowly improving. these are closing. pick up the numbers here. this goes back nine years, and look how we were doing in back in 2005. these are 7 million sales a year.

look what happened here. the complete collapse of this market here in 2009, there were months in 2010 we were doing below 4 million a year on an average. remember, these are seasonally adjusted rates here. the important thing is here slowly if we can get an uptick, even modest, that certainly is a sign of a bottom. as of now let's just say it's slowly getting a little bit better. i think the important thing is january was very much helped by the warm weather. that was a big, big factor. it got people out. foot traffic was up 17% according to the nahb. that was also a major factor in the whole turn-around. >> i talked to realtors who rent the out summer rentals in the harsh tons and they say foot traffic is mazing because of the weather. >> one thing of concern, one-third of all the contracts so far are not coming to closing because the appraisals aren't coming in on target, too low, or they can't get a mortgage. that's still a major problem. >> you look good over there.

>> thanks. >> great technique. >> another familiar face joining us today to break in post 9, joe lavorna. welcome, joe. good to have you on day one. >> thank you. >> picking up on bob's point about housing, good numbers are pending today. comments from buffett, he's doubling down on his bullish bet. even though he admits to being wrong so far. is is that a sign of someone doing hard math saying single family is potentially the best investment you've got. >> the point bob was talking about is it's unseasonably warm. we've seen utility usage collapse this "and last quarter. people don't have to heelt their homes, and that helps housing. the home builders index is at a four and a half year high. it got better before the weather. it will boost the first quarter numbers, but it's more than a

weather story. corporate balance sheets are better. to that extent the general u.s. outlook is better. >> yeah. you took a look at claims, and we know how much they improved. the best in ten years? can that be right? >> what's happened, carl, is we had a massive drop in the last six weeks. it's one of the biggest drops in ten years. this tells us something. it's the one piece of puzzle we shouldn't have overlooked last year. now this big drop in claims signifies a real ramp-up in hires, 250, 300,000 per month. we think there's a good chance to be at the bottom of the forecast within the next month. >> really? that's not seasonal? >> no, that's not seasonal. people argue that everything is seasonal, but i don't think so. this is a thing that takes a while to play out. it's clear that the economy didn't get hit as bad as we thought it might last summer and fall with the debt ceiling crisis in europe. now we're finally recovering and companies have to hire to meet

demand. >> where does that leave you on the fed. not only is qe-3 unlikely, but things like twist? >> yeah. i think the fed is just -- they're effectively easing into a real ramp-up in growth, and i think that's dangerous. the claims say the fed should be hiking, not staying on hold. i think the fed will use every excuse it can can not to raise rates. they'll use the energy shock and weather to down-play the economy. late in the year when they could talk about tightening, they argue that fiscal drag will slow us, which is incorrect. when the fed ultimately does move and we say mid-13, gigts to be ugly. it's 94 on steroids. >> that hasn't stopped caterpillar to banks all over the globe don't be trigger-happy because we're still vulnerable. >> it's the punch bowl, carl. monetary policy works with a lag, and the fed is further spiking the punch bowl in some sense. >> sounds like you spent time

around a punch bowl. >> i don't know what you're taking about. >> joe, thank you very much. >> straight ahead, he won the heisman trophy and expected to be the number two quarterback draft this had yeeshgs robert griffin iii will be with us live to talk about the draft and a couple new endorsements and more. first, a look at winning and losing stocks from the trading day overseas.

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download the new geico app today. welcome back. next up on the halftime report, should jpmorgan be broken up? our traders make that call. plus vivus shares soaring again. should you get in? correction watch. market trading near new bull market high. should you place for a major retracement. that's next. back to skrarl on "squawk on the street." >> look at the market today. we started quite a bit in the red with the markets down almost 1%. they clawed their way back, though. s&p is up almost 3 and at 1368 that's a couple points away from the 2011 high but the intraday high at 1370. when we come back, we could not inaugurate a new set woet him. the one and only art cashen

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one quick mention. headline out of germany just new. the parliament did vote to participate in the greek rescue. once again, the german

parliament as expected approving that second greek bailout. after winning the alamo bowl and a heisman trophy, robert griffin entered the draft and his career is getting started. robert griffin iii joins us this morning live. good morning. >> how are you doing? >> i'm good. i woke up this morning and watching the highlights of combine and watching your run of the 40. i remember thinking what muss it be like to run that fast. how do you think did you? >> i think i did good. not only with the athletic movements but also with the interviews and making sure i was on time and meeting those guys. not only the coaches and the gms but the players and getting along with the players. i think it was overall a great experience. >> experts, obviously, saying you're going to be among let's be honest the top ten in the draft. any idea, any feeling about where you might be playing this fall? >> i have no idea. this is a huge time of uncertainty, but if you go

number one, obviously, you know where you're going. after that there's no telling. i'm just trying to take this experience as its own, and i can try to control what i can and not worry about what i can't. >> down at the baylor campus you're working on a cover shoot down there. you want to tell us about if? >> i'm here working with ea sports on ncaa football 2013. i'm getting a chance to be the cover athlete. i won't be the on only one. there's a heisman trophy winner from the past to be on there with me. the voting starts on march 12th on facebook. it's up to you to decide who is on there with me. >> that's a nice way for viewers and sports fans to get involved in the decision-making process. as you work your way now into the pros and think back on your years in college, what do you think you'll miss most about college ball? >> you know, just the college atmosphere. the fact you play a game and you're in the classroom the next day, two days later, i guess. you get to just be around the

fans right next to them. they have that opportunity to get -- form those relationships with you. other than that, the fans in the nfl are great. it's a great business. i'm looking to have a lot of fun within that business. >> and then finally do you know who you're going to take to the draft ceremony? who's your date? >> my date? my date to the draft, obviously, will be my fiancee and my parents and hopefully my sisters will be able to go as well. after that, i don't know. i'd bring all of baylor nation if i could, but i don't think they have a stadium big enough for all those people. >> it will be an exciting day. all the congratulations. appreciate your time. congratulations again. >> thanks for having me on. >> robert griffin iii out of waco. >> we want more insight on the brand-new set on the floor, art cashin joins us. can you -- this is a big deal, yeah? >> it is.

>> it is. we don't have to worry about it raining anymore. it's an excellent set. it's really quite impressive, and it blends in with the floor right in front of the bell podium. rather prestigious quarters you have. >> back to the famous day in '95 when ma preria were first to re on this floor. thoughts about what happened in mexico over the weekend? look forward ahead for us to the ltro on wednesday? what's this week going to look like? >> the mexican standoff as it were, nothing came out of it. a lot of people talking about it as a terrible waste of airfare and we'll could have stayed home if they were not going to agree that much. the ltro at mid-week is a bit of a puzzlement. we don't know if a big number is good or maybe not. the fear is that if it's a big number on the negative side, people will say, well, you see

they're still desperate and the liquidity is not there. they have to borrow big. otherwise people will look at the other side and say if it's a small number, are they boycotting and what's going on. does if mean the banking system is better? they have the same problem over there that we have over here. that is the banks have been warehousing the money. the ecb got the money into the system, but it's not going yen where. they're housing it with the ecb. they're not lending, and some of the large corporations are thinking of issues bonds because they can't get the lenning moving. >> italian two year today, lowest since april of last year. spanish two-year lowest since november of 2010. a little bit of front running and sign of confidence? how would you explain it way? >> i think it's somewhat of a sign of confidence. an idea that with the ecb and other central banks behaving the way they have, despite getting no agreement in mexico, people

feel i have the fed at my back and the ecb at my back, i can dabble a little bit. i don't know this they're doubling down, but they're nibbling away. >> finally, merkel has it difficult. we know she has a difficult muzzle to undo politically, but now she has members of the own cabinet saying greece should do this on some other playground that doesn't involve the euro. can she thread this needle? >> i think she got past one hurdle already with the vote. >> just now. >> yaecheah. it looks exactly as they suspected the defections were in her party. so that's a lot of politics walking up. but i think it is not going to be an easy deal, and we have the next three weeks that could be important. we have to get past that march 20th greek payment and see where we go from there. >> we've heard some traders say nice rally so far this year, a lot of uncertainty coming to a head around march 20th. expect a correction.

are you in that camp? >> i'm in the skeptical camp. it is dangerous to be short in this market, because they keep coming back after you, witnessed this morning. but the market rally is a little long in the tooth, and if history is any guide they should take a break here. how big a break? a 4% or 5% pullback after this run? that's not too bad. anything more substantial, you have to play it out as they come alone. >> maybe we'll play at the telestrator a little bit? >> we might try that. >> thanks for being with us on day one, art cashin. >> up next, we're talking buffett, he knows who his successor is going to be. we want you to weigh in. aside from the obvious insiders, who would be a good person to replace buffett and why. that's at our twitter handle. [ male announcer ] if you believe the mayan calendar,

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time four "squawk" on the tweet this monday. aside from insiders over at berkshire hathaway, who do you think would be a great person to replace warren buffett if and had athat time comes and why? chris christie this way he can just write a economic and shut up.

nice one. how about the person who knows him best, charlie amomunger, an ken writes, ajit jain. he knows the company having run the insurance business and has been a trusted adviser to buffett. gordon gecko is making a return to wall street. michael douglas is appearing in a public service announcement for the fbi warning investors about the dangers of insider trading. take a look. >> the point is ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. greed is right. >> hello. i'm mikell michael douglas. in the movie "wall street" a greedy investors who cheated for profits. the moovie was fiction, but the problem was real. our economy is dependent on the success and integrity of the

financial market. if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is. for more information on how you can help identify securities fraud, or to report insider trading, contact your local fbi office or submit a tip online at www.fbi.gov. thank you. >> that's a look at the new psa starring michael douglas. like at oil today. got headlines about trans canada re-applying for the keystone pipeline, which has been a huge deal politically not only for the energy markets but the upcoming election as well. trans canada will re-apply. we should mention gasoline getting all kinds of interesting headlines today. nbc 4 here in new york reporting that a driver was found with 300 gallons of stolen gasoline on

the whitestone bridge near manhattan. also, disney getting an upgrade from goldman sachs moving it from neutral. talking about a couple of different issues, one, theme park taensd, as as we talked with cramer earlier this morning, that remains to be seen if it holds up with rising gas prices. one of the key contributors to their revenue on the cable news front. walt disney is up 61 cents to 41.92. keeping a look at lowe's today, 29 cents on earnings by morning beats by 5 cent. revenue beating on the top line and discussion today about whether -- to what degree the weather was a contributor to the housing market with lows coming in with good numbers and currently up 54 cents to 27.70. overall the s&p marketed opened with declined close to 1% but managed to claw their way back. if we take