cnbc. i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew sorkin. we're going to get to super tuesday and the results there, but first take a look at the markets. stocks are coming off of their biggest declines of the year. yesterday the dow industrial's down 203 points. in fact, this is the first time in 45 consecutive trading sessions that the dow has seen a triple-digit decline. right now you can see that the futures are indicated higher. they're indicated up by just over 50 points. in the meantime, the naz dax, it shed 40 points. that's the longest streak like that since 2006. at this hour, the futures do indicate that we'll see a little bit of strength this morningful the dows futures up as i mentioned by about 50 points and the s&p up by 5.5 points. >> we've got a few economic tests iffer the market today. at 8:15 a.m. eastern we're going to get the poll by reuters.

they added 216. >> 216? >> that's the number. >> maybe that's the dow jones expectations. >> of course, the big question is how accurate the adp is in predicting friday. two other things of note. at 8:30 a.m. the labor department is going to be releasing the production activity and labor costs and this afternoon the feds are going to are reporting on consumer credit for the month of january. there's going to be a loet to chew on. >> that was a major market story in greece. athens continues to be threatened for default on any of its bondholders who don't take part in the euro debt restructuring. it turns up the heat ahead of the key deadline tomorrow when the debt swap offer closes tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. and our

correspondent michelle caruso cabrera is in grease. she'll be reporting from athens all day tomorrow and friday. was just saying when was it, we had that last selloff in the markets and it was coinciding with the double dip we were talking about. every week we had three or 400-point day swings. it was every weerks 3 or 400. up 200, we say, oh, my gosh, things are up 300 and then they're down. >> you used to think nothing of it. >> it th is so long since we've had a triple digit. >> it's march. >> it finally happened an it had been after a nice gain. so i don't know how much we read into this. but i do wish someone knew what it meant to have all that volatility other that six-month period and have zero over a three-month. >> we're naully going back to somewhere in between.

>> i don't know. >> nothing was happening. we sort of fell into a false sense of complacency. >> we thought europe was resolved. >> even though by the way we thought it wasn't. we sort of pretended it was. >> we thought even if greece wasn't resolved, greece, the far wall had been built in it will i and was okay and maybe the contagion was going to cease. yesterday we looked at the oil selloff and think there's renewed economic worries about us here as well. i guess it has something to do with maybe leading up to this employment report. >> friday's going to be a big day. the expectation is that thursday is the deadline for greece. yesterday the rumor was that that deadline could get pushed to friday. so friday you could have greece and the jobs report. those coming out at the same time. >> we had someone making case yesterday that consumer confidence, when it declines to consumer gas prices, it's a lag.

>> six months. there's generally a six-month lag. he's guessing around june you would see consumer prices take a hit. >> they're snapping back. they're at 12,750. so now we're up 50 on the futures, so if it's 200 and it just brings us back to -- this is all going go normal in a slow steady moving uptrend or, you know, maybe you -- you know, whether you don't know. at this point, you're still on the uptrend. >> what would happen? i would have to see a reverse flag, 200-moving day trend advance decline on the russell 2,000, not confirming a move in the transports for me to change. did you get that? >> no. >> say it again.

>> that was just the point. >> no. i don't -- i don't know when i would say that. i guess you would see it if the uptrend was broken. >> guess who's here. >> are you bore with all this stock talk? >> no. you know what's reassuring to me is you economic pundits don't know one bit damn more than us political pundits. >> can you at least say this about romney? he has won like boardwalk and park place and what are the green ones that are good. pennsylvania -- >> oh, yeah. north carolina? >> these aren't states anyone but on the boardwalk it's some of the good property. >> marvin garpd dens over there? >> ohio, florida, and michigan. >> marvin gardens is the other. >> that's yellow. >> is it yellow? >> arizona is yellow. >> wait a second. what are you calling georgia at

this point? like baltic? >> georgia had a lot of delegates. >> but that was home state and -- yeah. he won 54% of the delegates. 54% in the general election would be land slide obviously. >> but, john, if you look what's happened. e we thought is there a situation where he's cleaning up? this doesn't look like anyone got knocked out of the race. >> that's right. no one has gotten knocked out of the race. i think we've known from the beginning mitt romney is the only guy with the infrastructure, the campaign, the credibility to make it to the nomination that. was true at the beginning, it's true now. he is highly likely to be the republican nominee. however, unless you win convincingly enough to persuade the -- your rivals and to

persuade arrives to get out of the race, rick santorum wins oklahoma and tennessee. now we go to kansas, blaeralaba mississippi. he's got the rationale and ability to raise more money and go fight in those places. he's got to bid a little more before we wrap up this. >> i was reading this. they go through the numbers, the math. it seems like it's almost pock for santorum or gingrich to come back. >> yes, extremely difficult. i was talking yesterday to one of the foremost expert on tracking delegates in these delegate selection procedures, john putnam at davidson college. he projected that the only way that santorum could get a poo a may jortd delegated. if he won 50% of the vote, so

once you get a lead in the deck gates selection process and then yu have both favorable states. romney's got ahead of him, new york, new jersey, california, places where he's going to do exceptionally well, maryland, it's difficult for somebody to grab enough delegates in big chunks to wipe out a lead. that's what hillary clinton found in 2008. once barack obama got ahead by a sufficient margin, it became difficult for her to overtake him. but that's a different thing from persuading the financial backers and the voters who might support them to one way tr o over and put the plug. >> or cover vincing grin gich and santorum. >> i'm sorry. >> i thought you said they were delegat delegates. >> did you see ken dugan on there. he had a cynical conspiracy

theory. whad duh you -- i'm not sure. mentioned our guest host ken. and he suggested -- i don't know what i said. i apologize. he was them to not such port him and support milk rotny. he wants nulg to stay in the ratsz bus rib is solg id of voting on the right. rick santorum has done the best. that's the heart of the republican party and he's also done well. he did last night in the south and be've got southern race coming up. santorum has way of saying,

yeah, mitt romney has may have all the advantages but i'm the guy that gets the "it" of my party right now and i'm animating my people even though i don't have a great resources. it's hard to shut that down. i interviewed santorum last week. so many people in the republican party, if p chal baerks, party leaders, electeds looking to november want this to stop and want mitt romney to get on with thes by of taking on obama. i said are you going to might stop? he said, no i'm not going to make it stop because i'm going to win. as lodge as he has the conviction, he's going to keep going. it's a messy pro sechlts it's taken a toll on romney and the republican party. >> it's tough to give up, a dream you wanted so badly. the old mantras never say die.

even though it's pretty new, it looks like it's going to be unlikely. >> newt fumnctionally has no chance. >> well it does, too, for rick santorum but because they can't say never say die, dream it all, it's possible. >> newt last night in his speech was saying -- it was an interesting speech last night because he talked about all the elites who wanted to crush him. he said the republican elite, they're scared of me and as long as he ease goc that david against goliath, as long as he's infused with that idea and sheldon is willing to write

checks. >> but he himself said when he was with us on monday that the way he sees this kinds of playing out is you a four-way race that continues. this could go all the way to the convention. at that point there'll have to be a decision made among the delegates and they thank that's going to be an issue on monday. that's his best hope. >> i'm glad you made that point because there's a distinction whether san reform and gingrich can get majoritiful they have a mutt peer chance of doing that. ron paul stace in. it is ponl that they could add mitd romgny for the 1174. it's a different onnive. it not a chance of being ready.

>> having a shot at it. >> correct, correct. there are a lot of people making a argument there could be a shot. they wouldn't have to run, would simply get tapped on the shoulder and say, please come save us, mr. white knight. i don't think that's going to happen. but those are the thanks that keep candidates alive who as joe was just saying are infused with ego, ambition, june when iej kol consider eek nom how many delegates are there outstanding? so if we added up everyone's delegates -- >> we're about a third of the ware. >> third of the way. he's got the delegates he's going to need. it's 2,200 delegates, and, you know, rick santorum is all kl hundred behind and newt gingrich

is behind him. >> sos that ee going to be the interesting math is adding up the delegates of the three to sigh which pointses to the 1 121st? yesterday i was watching the different networks. watching the nannal sis of ron paul's campaign in virginia, i thought, this meaningless. this is minutia and i thought, man, i wish it hadn't bnld a leap year. >> ron paul did really well in a couple of states. >> when you know for sure he's not going to be -- >> but you i don't know what kind of power he's going to have late dpz. >> i don't know. that's the question. >> what do you affect -- is it something on the feds? >> the fedding are heres i am.

i'm saying the same a thing. here i'm becoming a rand paul -- >> rand paul will never become a, 578d ron paul won't -- >> right. >> talking about small government and getting government out of our lives to a greater extent, he's advanced that message. it's moved closer to the republican mainstream. he's not made any progress on his foreign policy views but events in the world have sort of pulls both parties a little closer to ron paul in that there is war fee teek among the american public and the candidates. >> all right. john, thank you very much. we know it was a long night. >> have fun with mitt romney in a come hours. >> we will. in fact, if you didn't know, mitt romney will be joining us live at 8:45. it's time for the global

report. our good friend becky meehan is standing by in london. how are you? >> good morning we had a selloff yesterday. as you can see, we're coming back from the do carolinas. 3 ppt 6, 3.4% lower. these moves today should be put into that context. we're up. not by quite 4%. pales in significance. remember we are still in this part of the world seeing the selloff yesterday in the context of a very strong start to 2012. we're doing bait better actually earlier in jaerm but then we got some manufacturing data out for january. this is really the manufacturing hub. it's disappointing. taking the shine off. the cac up by 7%.

let's look around at some of the other markets as well and see what's going on elsewhere, having covered off the national indices. the euro/dollar. the euro took a beating against the dollar as well. it added about 9.6%. the dollar yen is aging and sterling as well. declining in yesterday's session, holding fairly sted today at 157 president 31. now onto the bond markets we've seen interesting moves, particularly in germany where the ben. mark is extremely low. the euro is extremely slow. earlier today we also got the results of an auction of five year german debt. 3.3 billion.

medias are falled further in europe and actually down below 5%. we should be taking it as a good thick. back to you guys. >> coming up we're going to head to chicago if stock can rebeenld. like they would know. ing the indiana colts set to cut ties with their legendary quarterback, peyton manninging, an announcement is today. din is skbenledi release him traeb they bagging a 20,000 dlrsz benews. >> this is a possibility. could be in new york a big man is town. >> that would be amazings. m man oh e mano.

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welcome back. a little bit of a rebound from

that 2 h00-point loss yesterday. it felt like armageddon because we haven't had any down news lately. we'll get a little bit of it back on the open. who knows how it will work out. it depends on a lot of extermties. china is going to boost imports and raw materials this year. chinese officials have promised that they will urge the united states to lift restrictions on high-tech exports to china. bill gates's privately held cores by is expand iing it. is now launch an online service called green light service. it will let customers' license arrange songs for online websites, advertising, and other professional uses including the

new hit from the magnetic fields. users bid on the tracks with the labels negotiating for their final price. you know that. >> i don't know where you're going with that. >> let's get to today's national weather forecast. scott williams is going to join us from the weather channel. >> i'll save you, joe. of course, i have some good news for you guys because yesterday we were right about average as far as the temperatures in new york city. 44 degrees. the average this time of year, 46 degrees central park. today, 60 degrees. yeah, it's going to be nice. look at tomorrow. temperatures near 70 degrees. so warming up for you around new york city. for tomorrow we're looking at those high temperatures topping out in the upper 60s, a little cooler as we move into the upcoming weekend. enjoy the warmth across parts of the midwest as well as the east

in the days to come. it's also going to be windy as well. places like chicago watching out for some potential airport delays. by thursdaying look at the numbers, in the low 70s around washington, d.c. if you do have travel plans today in parts of the plains, midwest, beware of the winds. that's because we're look at 40 miles an hour. dallas, oklahoma city, kansas city, toward chicago, a little bit of turbulence out there. we ool watch for some of those potential airport delays. other-wise fairly quiet on the weather front. guys, back to you. >> scott, thank you very much. let's get over to the markets now. joining us from the cme is michael gurka. michael, we watched what happened yesterday. obviously all bets are off. we do look at the futures. it was a bit of a surprise to see that kind of volatility when things have been moving along so

smoothly all year. at this point, where is the expectation in the market in terms of that volatility. do you think it's going to be more volatile from here on out or is that a one-time event? >> no. it's definitely going to be. i love the lead-in. turbulence, weather. there was a lot of piece mick in the s&p. the big target to watch out. i've been taking my cues from crude oil and silver. they're both showing bottoms in here. silver at the 3270 or 3220, 30 cents lower. right now as you're seeing

global bond markets are look as positive as evidence with lower yields and to me the biggest news of the day is what came out of australia because if you see a slowdown or misses across the board, that starting leading us to watching the bomds get a little tighter. >> you don't think this was technical trading. >> no. >> so europe was the big conc n concern. >> fundamentally right now again you're starting to see there's more of an astuteness and awareness of where things are in greece and what needs to be done next. mine the uncertainty is out of the market in regard to greece and some of the periphery being spain, of course. i think these one of the reasons why germany's major index has taken a lead to show youy the index has been on the market,

that's where it should. thing the currency itself is starting to show support against dollar weakness and for one of those reasons i think that's why you're starting to see that hold in here again. again, it seems after earnings and coming into potentially what would be the next round here, earthqua equity markets are still there. than's one of the reasons why i think on the first quarter you're not going to see the big correction yet. >> today we get the adp report. how much of a trading factor is that going to be? >> it is. think we're getting a little old school which is the surprises will always be to the upside, not the down. the upside has more put into the markets already. i don't see the alarming nature of it. that equates back to where the

vix is. thing that pessimistic nature is already kind of cued into the market. that's why surprises to the upside will lead to vigorous tests of what is old highs. for me at least i think that's why you can cut some of these numbers in half. take look at those revisions. i think that's what people are going to be watching most. >> michael, thank you very much. >> thank you. coming up, apple holding a big event in california today, but will a new ipad be enough to please investors and what's inside that ipad. we're going to to find out next. first, a big congrats to harvard, the men's basketball team winning the ncaa berth since 1926. princeton beat my alma mater last weekend. our guest host this morning a big harvard backer is going to be joining us on set starting at

7:00 eastern. >> do you remember marcy kaptur who's trying to beat out kucinich, he's out, he's done. >> you're kidding me. >> no. i just -- >> he's just reading the papers. >> we're going get to thatnd a lot more as we take a last time around. winners and losers.

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welcome back. making headlines. continue on. >> i'm going to. i'm ready. >> if i want to interject about these headlines. hsbc, that was one of first ones with the housing problems. >> do you know how enough this bank makings $22 bill per year.

one of the best. they're selling their insurance business to a french insurer. also it's not just to axa but australia's kbe insurance green. $19.4 billion. netflix has quietly met with some of the nation's largest cable companies. >> this is fascinating. >> in recent weeks. >> this could be a game change sneer really. >> we thought they were going to be a comb pet tore. >> did they meet with comcast? >> it didn't say. we should just get him on the air right now. >> good idea. this is a reuters report? they're discussing adding it. net flick could be another ondemand process. >> is that because netflix needs

to raise money quickly and look at this as a real quick way to -- it's another way to compete with hbo and showtime. in terms of who has the credit card. this way they bill straight through and they don't have to actually get you as a new subscriber. if you're a comcast subscriber or time warner -- >> good idea. you could get the mail stuff too? >> i think this is a streaming service only. the dvd business -- >> not going to be there very long? >> i will say on demand is mo migra migrating. they're getting it. $2.99. yesterday my son had never seen "the shining" and he was home sick. >> for $2.99.

>> that's scary. >> its was. >> if you do it in hd, it's $4.99. shelly duvall, they cast her. another 4.99 dolla$4.99. caught every day. >> here's a company that may take advantage of the issue. you ever hear about super tuesday. in tech land we might as well call it super wednesday. they're likely to reveal its next ipad. is's expected to have an upgrade. it's great to see you. i have to admit i own the first ip ipad. depending on what i see today i may go out and bay it. what is it going to have in it? >> they moved up to what they call a retina display and the iphone 4 and 4s. they're going to bump up the

resolution. they might call it the hd. it might go on the faster data network that the new phone has but the current iphone does not have. >> i read in the rumor mill yesterday and i have to say i've about been trolling for this stuff for days that we might also see some announcement around an apple tv. not the tv as in a tv screen but maybe a replacement for what was apple tv? >> right. it's a box that plugs into your tv. it's a cool little business. but the current stocks are apparently depleted every wrer. at the end they go here's an updated version of that perhaps in advance of what you were talking about which might come later this year. >> talk to us about pricing. there's a lot of debate about what the pricing for these

things may ultimately be. will they have a separate 3g version? some people are talking about the fact that they may still keep the ipad 2 on shelves at a discounted one. >> what they do every year is make the product a little bit better, add improvements by keep the base price the same. they don't discount or bump up the prices a lot. if they add add 4g version that would run on 3g networks also. me everyone else, we use the wi-fi. even adding that as a knew future wouldn't affect a lot of people. doing face time has not been so great. >> you'd five feel like you want the one facing toward you. >> dan, in terms of thinking

about the stock or the business, how large alg audience do you think there is for ipad 3. is this where all the people with i 3 have bought one, another bought two. how do you look at this? >> i think it's one tablet. one number to keep in mind. am just sold/downloaded their 2525 billionth app. >> but do you really need the none wu. if you have the one and the second one. >> lynn. they very to wap come up with something new each year. nents tie we're on, i want to talking a sear yad. >> all right. if you have any comments or

questions, go ahead and eat us on "squawk"@cnbc.com. it's 5:00. 5:39. you know if it's 5:00, go ahead and imbibe. heineken's chief financial officers will be our next guest right here on swub.

all right. it says time for beer and we started only 40 minutes ago.

it is early and it is -- there are carbs in beer, so i'm not going to be able to do this. >> our next guest makes sure that the beer money keeps flowing through heineken. joining us now from new york rene is joining us. i love those. they're some of my favorites. wi may play one of my most interesting kmeshls. i'm not sure we can do that because of copy right. can i ask you once again spirits are coming back vchl you seen any slowing in growth for beer? >> no. actually the opposite. we see -- if you talk about the u.s., we see that the market is picking up after a couple of difficult years.

>> last year in the u.s. beer was down 2% or your brands were down 2%? >> no. the total markets with down and we were down as well. however, in you look within the year, we see in the second half of the year, the perform was picking up. we have changed in the u.s. we're now fully aligned with with the global cam pans for our heineken and it's interesting to see consumers are responding positively to that. the other brands continue to be on fire. again, 15% growth last year and that continues into this year. >> this was the worst area for beer, wasn't it?

better in athens, greece and other areas. >> it's clear that the emerging markets are benefitting from populatipo population growths, better economist and certainly in areas of afterica, beer is their beerf choice. >> joe mentioned at the top some of his favorite brands are heineken light and an stel light how much of the growth is coming from the light branlds as americans, especially the u.s. >> it's the only market in the world where light beers are in the market. however, if we look at recent developments, we see much more activity in the specialty category and the up-scale regular beers than in the light

category. it looks like especially for the luxury lights, that in difficult economic times, that consumers turn back to the cheaper versions. in the full flavor market we see the opposite. >> you're big in social media. the highest share of voice across twitter. i document know what this any of this means. 5 million facebook fans. how much is now digital and web-based versus tv and other media. >> well, tv and other media are still -- the lion part but we are absolutely taking the lead in new media, social media is in territory, which we feel vl comfortable with. in fact, we always say we have been in social media since 1864

when the company was founded because as you know, beer is a social product. >> very good. rene, we have to end it there. thanks for your time. you didn't stay stop with the most interesting man covers so i'm going to assume it's okay with your time. >> thank you. with pleasure. >> coming up, a new era for peyton manning. that's the big question. the indianapolis colts are port lid set to cut ties with the football legend. we're going to get the full story. that's coming up next. our news maker of the morning rpgs. ro is going to be backham stay tuned for that and a whole lot more. americans believe they should be in charge of their own future. how they'll live tomorrow. for more than 116 years, ameriprise financial has worked for their clients' futures. helping millions of americans retire on their terms. when they want.

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the indianapolis colts reportedly set to cut ties with peyton manning. an announcement is expected today. joining us is darren rovell. weird because the colts had a rough season -- >> yes. >> manning seemed -- >> manning is worth 10 to 12 wins himself. it's unbelievable. >> what was their record? >> like three wins. it's ridiculous. the thing here is, okay, so he's owed a $28 million option tomorrow. this is going to happen at noon.

they are going to cut ties. peyton made $173 million since 1998 when he was signed. since july 30th, 1998, he's made 40 cents a second from the colts. >> you broke it down by the hours. >> by the hour was -- hourly rate of $26,000. and that's not an hourly rate, the standard hourly rate like cutting it down to eight hours a day. it was 24 hours. basically what this is about is the chance to get a new start. they had such a bad record. they're going to bring in andrew luck, the number one pick in the draft and have a new start. people say peyton is like at 90%. there will be a lot of teams salivating over him. >> how old is he? >> 1998 he was 21. so let's start -- >> what is that? >> so 2008 is 31 and another -- so he's almost 35. >> he hasn't been healthy. >> he's had four neck surgeries. now let me just tell you what it means to get peyton manning

whether the redskins or broncos or chiefs or whoever. he calls all the plays. if you are an offensive coordinator, you are really doing nothing. he is the smartest quarterback that has ever lived. he goes up to the line of scrimmage, looks at the defense, calls an audible in seven seconds and says which play he's running. >> is that why it's a good match for the jets who their offensive coordinator will not be around anyway? >> i don't know about the jets. they will be interested in him. the chiefs will be interested. the broncos with the whole tebow thing. it's going to be interesting to see where he goes. >> how much money does he get? >> what do you mean? >> how much money will he get by a new team? >> yes. >> i think probably in the $15 million to $17 million instead of the 23 he's averaged with the colts deal. but as they are saying right now, this will not be that much of a risk. but for the colts, i understand why this is a good financial decision. you paid him $26 million for holding the clipboard last year. you are going to pay him another $28 million as an option alone.

another 23. we're talking about -- >> and you have andrew luck. >> and you have andrew luck who they say is the real deal. >> it sounds like it was an amicable split. >> they were on the plane together. the owner of the colts and peyton manning. it's amicable. this is not stiffing peyton manning. this is from a financial decision, this is a -- probably a good financial decision. but there's going to be a couple of teams that will -- and he will be the number one best-selling jersey in the nfl next year no matter where he goes. >> get one that says manning, you have a good start. >> handicap. what do you think -- >> i think the jets are probably third. i think, you know, i do think the broncos are intriguing. john elway would love to have peyton manning. the -- >> wait a minute. what about tebow. >> it's a little bit uncomfortable. i'm not sure they really believe he's the real deal. but that -- >> really?

after everything that happened and after the national attention and the excitement that it built among the fan base? >> yeah, i don't know. i'm not convinced on that. i think the redskins' dan snyder. that says dan snyder all over. and you have to say steven ross and the dolphins. they'd tlof have peyton manning. >> why not -- >> i'm not sure they're willing to push mark sanchez to the side. it was a bad end to the year but i'm not totally convinced. >> if you take him at his word, he's stick with sanchez. >> but a 90% peyton manning is better than any quarterback in the league. is he at 90%? >> better than eli? >> better than any quarterback in the league. better than eli, yes. >> eli still has something to prove. >> no, eli is proven. eli is proven. >> that's for sure. >> it's a different animal. >> darren, thank you very much. when we come back, we'll be welcoming our guest host tom stenberg.

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stock scare. the worst plunge of the year for the major averages has investors on edge. get the smartest analysis on what could be on tap for today's trade only here. >> the votes are in. >> we're counting up the delegates for the convention and it looks good. and we're counting down the days until november and that looks even better. >> but it's far from over. mitt romney squeaking out victories in key states. we've got the breakdown. staples founder tom stemberg is joining us as the guest host. taking the pulse of america's jobs. majority leader eric cantor is getting the house back to work on a bipartisan jobs bill and a

key indicator for the strength of the workforce coming out in just moments. the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc. i'm becky quick with joe kiernan and andrew ross sorkin. republican front-runner mitt romney wins six state contests on super tuesday, including a close victory in ohio. but rick santorum won tennessee, oklahoma and north dakota and that means the fight over the gop presidential nomination is more likely to be drawn out. mitt romney, by the way, will be our guest here on "squawk box" at 8:45 a.m. eastern. apple is set for a major product announcement today in what is widely anticipated to be the next version of the ipad. the san francisco event is set for 1:00 p.m. time. 10:00 a.m. pacific time. and ford ceo alan mulally is

most definitely feeling the difference today. he was awarded shares worth $5.6 million in 2009. according to an s.e.c. filing they've now vested and because of the improvement under mulaley's watch since then they are now worth $34.5 million. the dow down by 203 yesterday. that was the first triple-digit loss we've seen this year. this morning you'll see those futures are looking higher. dow futures indicated up by about 53.5 points. >> the dow's first triple-digit decline of 2012 highlighting the worst day for u.s. stocks, and that was yesterday. we're hoping that won't be the same for today. joining us now from new york with his perspective, alec young, s&p capital iq global equity strategist. great to see you alex this morning. we were talking about this in the 6:00 hour. this idea we had all this anxiety, all this volatility. we thought we had solved the

problem in greece or maybe we pretend weed solved the problem in greece. it was sort of this nice two or three months of complacency or what you call it and now back at it again. how do you explain what's happening? >> first of all to set the context. as you mentioned, we'd had a tremendous run. i think a lot of people were looking for a pullback, an excuse to take profits. and i think early in december, you know, the idea of an improving global economy was a contrarian view. by early march it had become a consensus view. in the last couple of days we've had pretty significant downgrades on global growth expectations. the china news. a miss by china. a recession in europe. so i think a little bit of profit-taking makes sense given that markets rallied on the idea the global economy is improving inspect the last couple of days they've been reminded we still have some challenges. most noteworthy is that we have a significant slowdown in the bric countries. maybe a little greater than what the market expected. i think this raises the stakes for the payrolls on friday.

it's very important that the u.s. leg of this global recovery continue to be strong. >> alec, when you see the volatility and these down days, do you put it on greece or are we overstating the case? doug cass was on kudlow last night and said greece was not the issue. he's looking at some of the technical issues, some of the job issues, some of the political issues going on during the election. and he is saying greece is the least of it. >> no, i think greece is definitely in the mix. we're looking theatpsi, the participation rate in the private sector. if that number isn't high enough, the troica, the eu, the imf may scrap the bailout for greece because they need to be confident that greece can hit some of their long-term deficit reduction target and without private sector participation on a broad-based level there may be questions there. ultimately we think they get the deal done but there's going to be a lot of nail biting over the next 24 hours. and there's a very good chance that we could see cds triggers

and some substantial global volatility to come. so we think it will work out favorably tomorrow, but i wouldn't be quite as complacent as it sound like others are being. >> okay. so just play the technicals for me. given greece on the table, given the jobs number, what's the upside and what's the down side as you see it from here? >> we've been talking about a pullback for a few weeks now. i think our technicians are looking for 3% to 5% on the down side. what i've seen so far in terms of the -- >> 3% to 5% on the down side? >> right from the 1374 peak last week. >> ghat we get a good jobs number on friday? >> i think we probably bottom today or tomorrow and start to move back. that will probably -- that would be the fastest way to put an end to it. but i think we need to get this greek thing worked out tomorrow as well. >> alec, joe, obviously, has this great prediction which we're all very happy and proud of so far. we'll see how proud we are at the end of the year. 30% when it's all over. >> from the october low. >> he's moving the goal post.

>> from october. >> and you saw barron's about a month ago, 15,000 on the dow come christmas. where are you at? >> in december, we put out 1400 on the s&p by the end of the year. we're sticking with that. >> okay. alec, thank you for your perspective. hope what he just said comes true. >> lighten up a little. >> but i'm still in. it just depends. if we get above a certain level i'm bullish. we get below a certain level, i'm bearish. >> we're gearing up for friday's jobs report talking friday's job numbers with tom stemberg, the founder of staples and manager of the highland capital fund. still a young man. i was just looking at -- just thinking. you wrote a business plan in 1986. 1986. for an office superstore. there was no such thing as

staples. >> luckily ran into mitt romney. he invested in our dream and it turned out to be a $25 million company. >> how many jobs? >> about 100,000 jobs. >> and correct me if i'm wrong, but market cap is shared by shareholders. you created wealth? >> more importantly for hundreds of staples associates, store managers and buyers, who were there in the early days, having gotten options and stocks in the company. >> for profit incentives. but you are a good guy. you aren't necessarily a corporate fat cat. you have been a -- i would say you've been a net positive for society? >> i'd vote that way for sure. >> all right. >> i'm biased. >> because we need to get this stuff out of the way in this political environment. the profit incentive can actually be a positive thing for society. >> mitt romney, i mean you go back. people think venture capitalists sit back in their office and write checks.

the night before he opened our first store on may 1st, 1986, mitt romney and my co-funder leo kahn came to the store. we pulled an all-nighter. he shows up that night. served us all pizza. got this messy pizza all over his very nice clothes. and gave a motivational speech to the employees who have been up all night the night before. we're going to be up another night so we open at 7:00 in the morning. >> i hadn't heard that before. he was actively involved? >> he sat on our board for 15 years. >> you aren't going to point out the small mom and pop office stores that were put out of business by staples? >> no, i'm not going there, but -- >> were you fair in all your dealing? >> i have a romney question. oftentimes he gets credit for either creating jobs. in his case he says over 100,000 jobs in large part because of staples or the other side, depending on where you are coming from would say that he has been a net job killer rather

than a creator. and my question to you as a ceo is whether you think of him as somebody who -- whether you give him credit for that job creation or you -- and by the way if you give him credit for job creation, do you give him credit on the other side for the jobs that were lost? this is a very interesting issue. >> andrew, the reality is if you are in the private equity business, which is what bain capital largely evolved to, you take over a lot of pretty -- businesses that are in pretty bad shape inspect some cases you have to shrink them to grow them. so you close inefficient plants and move manufacturing to china and those kinds of things and that creative destruction is important for our economy. >> i've made the argument he should get no credit for jobs that were lost but i would also probably not give him as much credit for jobs created either on the assumption he's a great investor. that's what he does. and he hours a really talented people like you who go and create jobs. >> but i think that's what --

tom is just talking about his involvement. i think that's -- >> i think staples -- people ask, could staples have made it without mitt romney? the answer is probably yes. would staples have gone as big, been as successful without mitt romney? i honestly don't think so. >> that's fair. i wanted to -- i wanted to hear it from the -- >> you want to talk about -- i'm really sad i missed alan on monday. you want to add some things to what -- >> no, alan talked a lot about this great entrepreneurial society that president obama has created. and the facts just argue the other way. i'm part of bernie marcus' job creators alliance. we just did a study of how many economically significant regulations have been passed. we compared the first -- economically significant meaning over $100 million impact on the economy on taxpayers. under the bush administration, you take that as the base line, the first three years, the number under the first three years of the obama administration has grown 30fold,

not three fold. 30 fold. and these regulations come from every branch of government from the labor department, the justice department. if you are a small emerging business, it's difficult. frankly it gives a competitive advantage to the bigger businesses who can fire the hom pliance guys and lawyers to deal with all this nonsense. >> the other thing is and we always talk about what a president gets credit for, what he doesn't get credit for. we're always told if he's in that chair and the stock market goes up, you give him credit. if he is in the chair and job creation gups, he's going to get credit for it. the jobless rate on inauguration day was what 3 1/2 years ago? >> 7.8. we've been above 7.8% for 3 1/2 years. i don't young can ask anyone if we were over that. and the obama administration has successfully somehow changed the entire dialogue. >> to me, three years into his administration, he's announced this great new tax plan.

and i say, if you are a candidate running for president, it's great to have a plan. i like mitt romney's plan a lot. if you have been president for three years. you shouldn't be talking about your plans. you should be talking about your accomplishments. they are not very good. >> if you are above 8% for the entire -- and out in the history of this country, over the last 50 years, we've only been above 8% for how many periods? >> by the way -- >> 10% of the time. >> this is dramatically understating the real rate. the participation rate of the workforce in the economy has shrunk. so as people now get a little more encouraged and go back to the workforce, he's going to have a hard time getting the unemployment rate down because the denominator will keep growing and he's going to have real challenges coming into november. >> the argument from the left. president obama even gets attacked from the left sometimes by saying he didn't do enough. if you read some of the columnists in "the new york times," they say it should have been a bigger stimulus. another guest on argued that yesterday. >> we should have had a stimulus that did things that made sense.

not building bridges to nowhere in alaska. they created wind curtains off a highway so there wouldn't be noise. but the problem is there's nobody living there, just forests. this is not a good use of taxpayers money. >> if you wanted to see a tax plan you said you liked mitt romney's tax plan, you also talked about the troubled the small businesses face. if you want to talk about some of the troubles it's the tax code that businesses are faced with. there's too many loopholes. too many ways around it and if you are a big company you can find your way around it. >> the big companies have lobbied for all kinds of exceptions for wind power and this that and the other thing. governor romney points out, we should lower the rates, get rid of all the special deals. say sorry, lobbyists. you can't have that anymore. and let everybody -- even people like jeff immelt who has enjoyed a lot of the benefits of these lower rates has pointed out that he would settle for a lower rate.

and the second big point which is really important is a territorial tax. we're one of the last countries in the world that tries taxing global income. the result of which is big companies are leaving billions of dollars overseas and not bringing them back to the united states to create the investment in jobs because of the double taxation. and our multinationals are being taxed at a far higher rate than their global competitors, putting them at a disadvantage. >> as somebody who grew up and built this business, what was the biggest problem you have with's tax code as an entrepreneur getting staples to be a big company? >> it's too darn complicated. you can't figure it out. just try if -- i have a child care provider. we fill out all the appropriate forms for her and unemployment tax and social security and stuff. filling out that paperwork is mind boggling. and if you are a small business person it is hard to comply even if you want to. and it's time we simplified all

this stuff and made it user friendly. and that's the kind of thing that a businessperson who has been in the real economy like a mitt romney, can solve in my judgment. >> we've talked about -- i don't know whether it was supposed to go this way, but a lot of money has been spent by the romney campaign already. will it be -- it wasn't, i don't think, initially planning to spend it all on defeating gingrich and santorum. is there the coffers will open again if he becomes the nominee, do you think? >> absolutely. if you look at mitt romney's history, every place he has worked, whether it's bain consulting, bain capital, the entrepreneurs he backed in each case, almost a vast majority, almost everyone has continued to support him over the years. and you see where his contributions are coming from. in many cases they're not coming from strangers. they are coming from the people who know him the best. >> did you play basketball for harvard? >> i was an all-austria basketball player. the only state in the world i

could have been all-state in over in europe. i was a big fan and -- >> of ivy league basketball? >> well, i went to harvard. >> there weren't other sports that you could look around and find something? >> i love the game of basketball. and became a harvard fan. >> they were tall enough to be -- >> we had -- senator jay rockefeller played basketball for harvard. glen fein, the inspector general of the united states played basketball for harvard. most recently jeremy lin, a wonderful young man, played basketball for harvard. >> the knicks are in last place. >> i'm thrilled to see people like jeremy lin come out and represent harvard the way they do. >> i'm a product of the new york media. all the hoop la, they lost again. >> he had a tough record he was walking into. >> he was the most underrated player in the nba.

he went to the most overrated player in the nba. he's a very good guard. not the best point guard in the nba. >> you're going to get to the tournament. you aren't predicting huge things in the tournament. should i pick them? >> i don't know who they are playing yet. we'll find out on selection sunday. i think they could pull an upset or two. >> big east tournament this week. some games yesterday. a lot today. cincinnati tomorrow. so -- but, yeah, i don't have harvard on my -- i just -- but i'm going to pick them for one game. >> i bet even president obama picks them. >> okay. we've got a lot more to come from our guest host tom stemberg. up next, house majority leader eric cantor on jobs and super tuesday results. that's all leading up to the big interview of the morning as mitt romney joins us to discuss what's next for his campaign. "squawk box" is coming back right after this. "squawk box" is shooting for

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welcome back, everybody. the house is set to start its

debate over the bipartisan jobs act. joining us right now with a preview is house majority leader eric cantor. good morning. >> becky, good to be back. >> i'm excited to talk about the jobs act. before we get to that, i want to ask what you think about the results from super tuesday. i know that you came out over the weekend and threw your support behind mitt romney. and mitt romney won ohio. that's a key battleground. but santorum picked sm eed up s races, too. by winning oklahoma and tennessee, people say this race will not be over by a long shot yet. >> mitt romney did what he had to do. he put away 6 out of the 10 states last night. obviously, he won my state of virginia. and if you listen to what the folks are saying in the states that he won it was about jobs and the economy. it was about mitt romney's leadership track record on getting results and fixing problems. and i think that's what the electorate is going to want to see. it's going to be a stark choice in november. mitt romney versus barack obama. who can best address the

challenge of the economy facing this country. and without a doubt it is mitt romney. >> it does make for a longer, more drawn out battle. and i guess i'm wondering what you think that that's going to mean for the eventual nominee. >> it is watching our party coalesce around the central issue of this campaign which is jobs and the economy. and mitt romney is the only candidate in the primary contest and versus the president who has an economic plan to get this country and economy back on track. and i think that process in and of itself will be to our benefit as we move towards november. >> let's gauk thtalk about that act. this is something that there is some bipartisan support for. you think it can get passed? >> i do. i'm very excited. there seems to be a window of opportunity around our jobs act. it's jump-start our business start-ups. this bill goes directly to the issue that is confounding small businessmen and women,

entrepreneurs and investors. it's too difficult right now to start up a business. to retain and create jobs. what this bill does is removes some of the red tape to allow entrepreneurial activity to flourish and investment to start so we can see jobs created. >> our guest host today is mr. stemberg. and tom, if you will take a look at this jobs act, what do you think? >> i was proud to be a part of leader cantor's wide g summit to discuss this act. leader cantor is one of the people in washington who actually gets it, who understands things like sarbanes oxley and some of its mandates and the dodd/frank act create impediment to small business. under this act, for example, you'll have to be a billion-dollar company before -- to fully comply with sarbanes/oxley which if you are a small company costs you a couple million dollars. putting an on ramp to that really makes it much easier for companies to go public versus to sell out to some big company. and the companies who go public

typically create more jobs than those sold to an ibm or oracle. this is a wonderful thing that the speak ear the leader is pursuing. >> eric, did you ever know you were one of the elites of the republican -- it's weird suddenly that if you are backing romney you become one of the republican elites. one of the establishment-type republicans. i just was wondering whether you knew you were one and how you felt about it. >> all of a sudden, joe. all of a sudden. look. what romney is doing is beginning to attract those of white house really believe in free enterprise. and he -- mitt romney has got a tremendous track record in the free enterprise economy. i mean, tom, you've had the experience. you've built businesses. so has mitt romney. you've created jobs. so has mitt romney. and that's the kind of coalition that is beginning to get behind mitt romney once he released his economic plan that is pro growth and is bold. and we look to be able to complement that with our work here in congress. >> here's what i mean, though.

santorum has, obviously, appeals to a certain part of the republican party. and newt gingrich appeals to another part of the party. when it's all said and done, and i don't know how long it takes. i don't know who takes people aside if you do assume romney is going to be the nominee because these things die hard for people that have a dream to run. so it's going to take awhile. but do you think that their respective backers will be energized enough when the election comes to -- because it's going to take a lot of energy and a lot of turnout to try to beat president obama. and you wonder if they are mixed about their feelings for romney if they'll be energized. >> i do. i think what we're going to see is a continued building of the romney campaign as a campaign with a leader that is -- stands in stark contrast to this president and his track record on the number one issue this november which is jobs and the

economy. mitt romney's the only one who can stand up to that, who can demonstrate a track record of solving problems as far as the deficit is concerned, the budget and getting this economy back on track so we can grow it again. >> leader, when you talk about the budget and the deficit, i'm curious. romney's tax plan, while getting a lot of points for potentially creating jobs and opening up the business community and also, though, has been scored such that there is a view that it could ultimately cost us $3 trillion in terms of how it gets paid for. and there's a big question of whether it's going to ultimately add to the deficit. what do you make of that? >> let's get the facts straight here. first of all, mitt romney's economic plan reduces tax rates on everybody who pays income taxes. that is a pro-growth policy. and if you look at the analysis that has been thrown out there about the plan, it absolutely disregards any pro-growth aspects of lower tax rates. and we know that lowering

marginal rates will increase growth in our economy. we know that reducing red tape on small businesses and investors will grow our economy. again, getting back to the point of the jobs act, we found a way to work together across the aisle in congress bringing americans together in the same way that i think mitt romney's message is going to do what he needs to do, not only within our party but in the wider electorate come november. >> all right. leader cantor, we want to thank you very much for joining us today. >> thank you, becky. thank you all. >> knicks aren't in last place. they are in last place in the playoff race. >> see? >> they are two or three games below .500. >> but they had a really bad start. it's not lin's fault. >> they were 10-18 or so when he got there. when we come back, we're going to talk about what traders are watching as we come off the year's biggest one-day losses for stocks. keep it right here in the next hour. we have presidential hopeful and former massachusetts governor mitt romney. he'll be our guest.

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welcome back to "squawk

box." among the stories we are following, a key oil pipeline from canada to the united states midwest has been partially restarted. the remainder will be restored to full service tomorrow. you probably remember a fire had forced that pipeline to shut down over the weekend. if you take a look at oil prices this morning, you'll see they're ticking slightly higher after a big drop-off yesterday. right now oil prices back up above $105. also we're watching shares of netflix. the ceo is in talks with major cable companies about trying to offer netflix video streaming as an on-demand service through those set-top boxes. joe, that should make things interesting. >> i already get a bunch of stuff from my cable box. >> you can get a whole lot more. >> this is getting really confusing. >> who competes with who. >> right now on your tv, you can get it streaming on your tv anyway. >> that's what's i mean. >> but you have to sign up. it would be an easier option and

get netflix more companies quickly. >> comcast doesn't need netflix. comcast can do it on its own. >> it's all about content. >> i remember when netflix came around and that huge market cap at one point at its highs. where were the cable companies when this was happening. now we see as it's coming down to earth quickly. now they want to talk. >> they also don't have the content. >> now they -- >> they don't have the movies they used to have. >> yeah, yeah. now they want to be friends. sorry. let's take a quick look at the markets following yesterday's sell-off. joining us now from chicago, the man in the jacket. yep. there it is. knock your socks off. scott, derivatives manager at icap. do you trade cattle, scott? it's just a guess. >> no, we dabble in it from time to time. it's not our number one thing, but, yeah. >> have we hit a near-term top in the equities markets, do you think? >> i think that, you know,

traders down here have been frustrated for the last three months. with bernacy hinting maybe take away the punch bowl for a little while. we've got this idea here that at some point in time this fake fertilizer is going to end. and so i think that with this nonparticipatory rally we've had for the last three months we've kind of came to our senses yesterday and rather being fearful, i think a lot of guys here took it as, maybe we're getting back to our senses. >> if we blame the easy money for the commodities inflation and for what happens in oil, should we also think that some of the equity markets appreciation is also just the fed printing? >> it's absolutely what it is, i think. we've had some good company reports. but i've also think we've seen projections going forward that it may not be as good as it is right now. ultimately at the end of the day you can't fight the tape. this free money is still coming to the table. until that stops, it's fake fertilizer. it's going to end some day. and when that, does you can't keep it with 0% financing for 7

years or keep four years no interest payments. it's going to stop. and i think that that's when the market is going to finally realize that we are -- we're at heavy heights here and it doesn't look very good. >> you would hope it finally makes its way into some demand from, you know, from consumers that actually start building an underpinning of the fundamentals for the stocks that have gone up. you'd think all that free money eventually makes its way into the general economy, not just in the asset prices. no? >> but don't you think -- well, i'd like to see the growth make its way to the economy, not free money. at the end of the day it's all about growth. and is that true growth or just fertilizer? and i think down here, we think it's just fertilizer. we need to see true growth. where are we now? 2% to 3% growth? is that really knocking anybody's socks up? if you have a big blow up in europe and china starts to slow down, we could be at risk again. we're slowly but surely getting better but we need to be getting better faster. 250,000 jobs a month just isn't going to cut it. >> 250 would be -- we'll

certainly take that on friday. >> if you get 250 between now and the end of the election, by some statistics, depending on the participation rate, that could get you back below 8%. >> but like scott would say, 8% is no -- >> yeah, right. >> that's like a good number in europe. it's not a good number here. >> but the trend is important, too, right, scott? >> yeah, i think -- yes it is. i think if you look at our numbers down here, we'd like to see, say 250 for 18 months. we're looking at not 8%. we're looking at trying to get back to where we were before we got into this mess. i'm not getting that great warm feeling out there. but every day the stocks were up 15%, 20 bips in the dow. so we finally had a breath of fresh air yesterday. i don't thing traders down here were scared. they finally thought the market got ahold of itself and came to its senses. >> scott, thank you. we appreciate it. you said fertilizer like eight times, i think. with that jacket. >> you got to with the jacket, right. >> exactly.

all right. thanks. comments, questions about anything you see here on squawk, e-mail us at squawk@cnbc.com. also follow us on twitter, @squawkcnbc is our handle. up next, there's been nothing sour about lululemon stock performance up more than 40% this year. more than 30-fold over three years. so what has the yoga-inspired retailer been doing to keep investors coming back for more. >> you like those pants, right? you wear them. >> i learned how to wear them but had some rough sledding the first couple of tries because of the boxers. later, mitt romney joins us from the campaign trail with reaction to super tuesday results. with all the opinions about stocks out there, how do you know which ones to follow? the equity summary score consolidates the ratings of up to 10 independent research providers into a single score that's weighted based on how accurate they've been in the past.

i'm howard spielberg of fidelity investments. the equity summary score is one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. get 200 free trades today and explore your next investing idea.

we're back on this wednesday morning. shares of lululemon are up 40% so far this year leaving investors to wonder what the future holds for this popular athletic apparelmaker. joining suschristine day, ceo of lululemon, along with our guest host tom stemberg. great to have you on the program. i need to say in advance, my wife lives and dies by all things lululemon. it's just worth saying.

she's excited about this particular segment. the question, though, i think of the day, of the moment and it's been this question for a very long time is how does this growth story stay on track and, really, where do you see the up side opportunity? this is a company now with a close to a $10 billion market cap. >> well, i think our job is to just keep growing and doing it the way we're doing. we have a great response from our guest. so keeping the quality of the product really high, doing everything we're doing to build the brand authentically in communeities with our ambassadors and building health efit communities is really what it's all about for us. and we believe we have what it takes to take this brand global. >> let's talk about that global brand because you have business here in the u.s. you have business in australia but not elsewhere yet. when we are going to see this really expand internationally? >> we've already announced we'll be going into a little more presence in hong kong with the

second show room and we'll open a showroom in london this year. and the other thing we're doing is really launching our e-commerce with localized pages for hong kong, the uk and potentially one other market this coming year as well as australia. >> you know, christine, everybody sees the product and talks about the product. i'm not sure everybody understands what an important part of lulu's success the people are. how do you create that very special culture and how do you maintain it? >> tom, you are absolutely right. our guest experience in the stores is one of the most critical aspects. it's our secret weapon being vertically integrated. it's education of the product. we take a lot of time training our educators to educate. but most importantly it's freeing them up. we don't send them plan-o grams. we don't dictate things from corporate. we let them create at the stores. so they bring all of their talents to work and it creates this amazing energy. and then we also focus on developing them as leaders.

so we do a lot of leadership development of self, of others, of organization. and so it's that combination of development and freedom. they do all their own facebook pages. they take their pictures. they take the pictures of themselves, their friends. they put those on the facebook. so they are in the process of creating. it's that energy of creating and contribute that creates that amazing guest experience you get at lululemon. >> you threw something out. you are ambassadors. what are ambassadors for lululemon? >> those great local spin, yoga, pilates instructors in the community. and that's who our guest relates to. they see them as their personal trainer/fitness instructor. that's their source of credibility. >> do you give them lululemon product or how do you get them as -- >> you know, we do give them product but that's the smallest. we act as their corporate marketing arm. in this great spin studio in san diego, we close down a street,

put the bikes on it and really promoted their studio. made them studio of the month. brought them guests and it made the difference of them actually making it in the market as small entrepreneurs. that's the type of work that we do with our ambassadors. >> how doch you worry about the nikes of the world, the big giants trying to get into this business or even smaller boutiques, the athleta, now owned by the gap? >> you know, nike has been in the space of women's personal fitness and they even had a yoga line for a while and keep bringing back some pieces. i think what differentiates us is that ability to do the technical, technical product and the fit and the function and the fashion for women. and it's that fit. and we spend a lot of time with fit. >> you said women. can we talk about men? that's becoming a bigger part of the business. it's still considered a women's brand. how do you get over that hump? >> you know, we don't seem to have any problem. once the men particularly try our silver essence seamless

shirts, they don't go back. i think the run response. so same story for us. it's really fit, function, you know, when you wear something and as a guy and the girl tells you you look good and she lets you wear it outside to the gym you have a pretty good winner there. and it doesn't stink when it comes out of your gym bag. that's a pretty big winning combination. and the underwear. men love the underwear. >> the other thing you are doing under the radar. i know my younger stepdaughters would always be envious of their older sisters that could wear lululemon. now you created iviva which is kind of lululemon for the tween set. can you spend a minute talking about that? >> we saw huge demand. for us, we wanted to segment that customer base. for us it's all about movement and encouraging young girls to really move and stay engaged in physical activity. so it's got the same passion around movement but it's around dance. so it's a great concept.

it does have a lot of similar aspects in the high quality, the fit, the function of lululemon but it's really around dance, gymnastics and a little bit of skate. but incredible clothing. we've had -- we've been live since november in the u.s. on e-commerce. we have stores in e-commerce in canada. the response has been terrific from girls everywhere. >> christine, thank you. are you wearing -- you aren't wearing lulu right now? >> i am head to toe lululemon. these are vintage. you can't get them anymore. >> what is that, three years old? >> you know it lasts nine to ten years. so, you know, you've got -- we have people showing up in vintage. it's pretty funny. >> thanks, christine. appreciate it. >> you're welcome. when we come back, we'll talk about stocks on the move. also what you need to watch ahead of the opening bell. the adp jobs number just ahead and our special interview with mitt romney.

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we are talking jobs and politics with tom stemberg. he's the founder of staples. also a managing general partner of the highland consumer fund. we've talked about a lot of issues this morning. we've not talked about what staples is doing right now and where you see that business heading. >> i'm so far out of it, i really have been out of there for seven years. i couldn't say. i think in general, the office products guys, overall, have struggled in that paper usage is going down. with more people using tablet computers. and they are also challenged because they are trying to sell a lot of technology but it's hard to be a technology player without selling the largest technology selling product apple. >> paper alone was 10%, 15% of the business. pretty big. >> we're not going to a paper-free society, though. >> i never thought so but i'm starting to wonder. >> with apple, you look at that

as like one of the huge new innovations. >> if you want to be a winner in this space, it's hard to be a winner without selling apple product. particularly when best buy has got it and walmart's got it and target's got it. and none of the office players have it. that's a problem. >> what do you have to do to get it? >> that's not my problem luckily anymore. you have to beg, i guess is the answer. >> when you look around at new ideas and new places to invest, what excites you? >> well, we just invested in a really neat company called true pannion which is pet health insurance. and they have a great situation to insure your dog. you guys can afford it if your dog needs $4,000 knee replacement. the average american can't. they lous them to pay a fixed price every month and be insured. >> what would be a monthly payment? >> $40 or $50 a month depending on the breed and where you live. veterinary care costs more here

in manhattan than it would in rural idaho. i think the -- >> this would be a $500 a year premium? >> i'm trying to determine whether to do an acl on a 10 1/2-year-old dog. >> please do it before you buy the insurance, though, from us. >> i'd like to buy the insurance now but you have to get a -- is it covered under -- pre-existing conditions? >> 90% coverage of any veterinary bill. it is really cool. this shirt is from jane mclaughlin, the leading preppy -- >> can puppies stay on their parents' insurance until they are 26? >> do you have to look for pre-existing conditions? >> no, you don't. >> you don't? >> this is dogs, not humans. so -- >> i know. but it's like $2500 for an acl, and it happens in a lot of older dogs. >> it's a problem. right. and jane mclaughlin is doing terrific. people are going back to vintage looks.

and that's doing really well. >> that's the shirt. you are twairg right now. >> pink berry is doing great. we're happy how the companies are performing, despied the headwinds of the economy. we'll have more from our guest host tom stemberg, founder of staples. in the next hour of "squawk," mitt romney will join us to discuss the super tuesday results. his campaign and the future of our nation. up next on "squawk box," don't start your day without knowing the names that will make you money. joe has your list of stocks to watch right after the break. optionsxpress, where you can trade your favorite products,

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stocks to watch this morning include pandora. the online music service posted a 71% rise in revenue in the fourth quarter. but that great number, 71%, was still below wall street estimated. and the stock is going to be down a lot. down about 22%. cypress semiconductor. wall street estimates were 17 cents. we'll see where that's going to open. the company does say it's seeing stabilization in customer bookings and january represented the bottom for revenue and bookings. and siena reported a quarterly loss of 17 cents a share compared to estimates for a

5-cent per share loss. so that was a little bit below. andrew? >> still to come in the final hour of "squawk," mitt romney will join us to talk the economy, taxes and much more. it's an interview that you can't afford to miss. but just moments away, some key economic data as adp reports on private sector employment for february. we'll have the number and the instant reaction when "squawk" returns. we're america's natural gas

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the fight for delegates. >> our campaign is on the move and real change is finally on the way. >> gop front-runner mitt romney joins us live. we'll talk about his big wins last night and his plan to get america back to work. >> the big retreat. stocks losing steam. investors preparing for another unpredictable trading day. >> and breaking economic data only minutes away. the adp employment report. plus, productivity and costs. the third hour of "squawk box" begins right now.

welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc. first in business worldwide. i'm joe kiernan along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin. our guest host, tom stemberg. i can't imagine writing a business plan about staples and then doing it and then next thing you know you have a $20 billion company and he's still -- well, you got some brown hair left. still a young guy. checking in sm u.s. equity futures. up about 46 points after a 200-point loss yesterday. the implied open gives us about 3.6% after maybe's biggest percentage loss we've seen all year. making headlines, the adp employment report is set to hit the tape at 8:15 eastern. forecasters polled by reuters say the economy likely added 216,000 private payrolls last month. and this is all leading up to the jobs number on this friday.

the second friday of march because of the reporting period. but we are -- it's an important number we're all going to be focused on. general electric is saying it will continue to target dividend growth in line with earnings. and apple is holding an event in san francisco today. analysts say the company is likely to reveal its next ipad. it's expected to have some modest upgrades. 63% of the tablets shipped last year were ipadded. and the only competitor with more than 5% market share were amazon and samsung. we talked, andrew, it's higher resolution and ready for 4g. >> i'm going to go get one. >> you are? i think i am. but i'm almost -- >> do you have an ipad at all? >> i have the first one. >> you have a one and a two? you'll not get every single upgrade cycle. >> one, three, that's my -- >> you like siri, right? >> i don't have siri.

i have the iphone 4, not the 4s. >> cramer talks about siri all the time. >> the cool thing is not siri but you can dictate e-mails? >> that's what you doon through siri. >> he talks about how great it is. >> it doesn't come out sort of trying to -- >> supposed to come out properly. i've played with siri. >> that sounds dangerous. if you said something that sounded like something else and it's sent out on an e-mail to someone. >> i saw something on twitter. one of the guys from politico sent out a note where he called them ohioans and it changed them to onions. i don't know if it was siri or word check. greece facing a crucial deadline. the troubled nation facing default if investors don't accept a debt restructuring deal. michelle caruso-cabrera is in athens waiting for tomorrow's deadline. she's on the squawk newsline. i thought this was all supposed to be wrapped up, but here we are again all over again. >> yes.

it was looking dicey for a while because we weren't sure how many bond holders were going to participate. but just a half an hour ago we got a new data point which gets us a long way toward getting the deal done. but not without having to trigger credit default swaps and bring on a credit event. just a half an hour ago, the institute for international finance, which is the group that negotiated on behalf of private bond holders with the greek government about reducing greece's debt, they came up with this agreement. they're going to agree to less than half of what they were originally going to get paid. all throughout this period, we had no idea how many bonds they represented. they represent -- they've told us now $81 billion out of $206 billion. that gets us, once they understand the decision tree about how all of this works it gets us a long way toward the deal getting done. however, it still looks like they are going to have to do something like impose a collective action cause

retroactively. not pay certain bondholders. threaten certain bondholders without payment if they don't participate. all of those would trigger cdf. so they're not going to get necessarily the voluntary agreement but it looks like we're getting close to actually having an agreement done. tomorrow, 3:00 p.m. new york time is when the offer expires. we may know then or they may wait to tell us until the next day. >> okay. michelle, we will keep our fingers crossed. we'll see you tomorrow with that news. appreciate it very, very much. >> that will make for an interesting last hour of trading tomorrow. we're asking whether stocks can bounce back after yesterday's rough session. howard ward is here. he's the portfolio manager of the gamco growth fund. what do you think? it was a volatile day yesterday. we haven't seen a day like that all year. >> no, but it was really due. the market low in early october, from that point on, five months we had a 25% move without much of a pullback. so the market was definitely stretched. was due for a correction.

i actually would be surprised if that didn't continue today. >> i was going to say. i'm positively impressed the market looks like we might get a lift here this morning. so there's definite demand for stocks here. and i think for good reason. >> michelle brings up a good point. there's this uncertainty about what happens with this deal in greece. we'll find out either thursday or friday whether that went through or whether they'll have to call in something that could lead to a little more disorderly closing down of that offer. and you get the jobs number. with those two big things happening thursday into friday, could that lead to some increased volatility? >> no question about it. although i personally don't think the situation in greece is a do or die situation. i don't even think it's an economic event at this point. i think it would be a bit of a financial shock. sure the markets would sell off if they didn't get the money but i don't think it's a game changer. i'm much more interested in the payroll number. as long as payrolls are growing here in the u, our economy is growing forward. we've had 32 months of

expansion. data for the last 22 weeks on balance has been better than expected. so things are okay. ism services number we got on monday. that was the best services number we had in a year. i'm encouraged by that. i'm more focused on what's happening here. i'm hard pressed. tom, i'm hard pressed if there's a single spending decision to be made here in the united states that has anything to do with the outcome in greece. >> that's probably a fair point. but the ism services number was the strongest we've seen in a year. the employment component of the ism services number was a little weaker. not disappointing by a big shot but we've now ratcheted up our expectations for what to look for with those jobless numbers. economists are looking 23r inin 210,000. >> if we get above 150,000 i'm going to be happy. we need to see the continuation of people being added to the payrolls. and so i'm encouraged by that. auto sales in february, 15 million. >> very strong. >> i think you are seeing a turn in housing in terms of pending

deals. activity. you didn't see that in the pricing numbers. the prices are based on closings and the closings were deals negotiated months ago. i think there's a lot of positive things that are happening. it's far from a perfect recovery. but we do seem to have some momentum. and i think that momentum is going to keep us going. >> tom, how about you? do you think this is for real? >> a long drawn out recovery. and we're going to take two steps forward and one step back. but it is a very gradual recovery. the problem is it's been so long and so drawn out. we almost need a recovery from this recovery. >> i'd like to point out, what i'd be focused on when i'm trying to look ahead, i fully expect the bush tax cuts to expire for everybody. i think that's the white house game plan. >> why? >> i don't think there's going to be a deal with this congress on taxes before the year is out. >> so i think they are going to expire for everybody. and that's going to create a

$427 billion fiscal hole going into next year. and that's going to be -- that's almost 3% of gdp. >> do wonders for the deficit. >> if you are the white house, you've got a deficit control. if they look in ten-year numbers. times ten. that's a $4 trillion improvement on the deficit. they can blame the republicans for the taxes that will be raised on the 99%. it's their fault, not our fault. >> i think that's the game plan but i think it's going to be a headwind to the economy and for the stock market. when the stock market starts to focus on 2013 and another four or five months, you have to think about that. >> but all that -- that entire narrative depends on november. i mean, it's all dependent on what happens in november. >> well, yes and no because regardless of what happens in november, we're going to run through the end of the year and those tax cuts are going to expire. so it's going to -- >> you don't think somebody -- they would vote temporarily to extend them until the new

administration -- >> for extending things a month or a couple of weeks at a time? >> i hope that's the case. and that's not including those sequestered cuts that was part of the deal last august. so that is on top of the $427 billion fiscal roll. >> what does that do to your economic growth forecast for 2013? >> it raises a real question about how much conviction you want to have about 2013. now, nobody is expecting that to be a terrific year right now, but the market is sort of looking for a 7% growth in earnings at the moment. gdp growth, you know, let's call it 2 plus or minus. not a great year. but that's my whole point. if you take not a great year and throw a big fiscal headwind into it, all of a sudden, things get a little bit less pleasant. doesn't mean the stock market has to go down. i think stocks are demonstrably undervalued relative to fixed income. >> the surprising thing has been watching the russell 2000. it was down 2% yesterday, a bigger decline than you saw in any of the indices.

it's been leading the downward draft. so is that shifting away from the small companies back into big companies? >> let's point out. the russell 2000 didn't have a lost decade. they powered right through the last ten years. so probably overdue for a little more of a pullback than those large cap stocks which have been dead money. >> is this the shift back to big cap stocks, back to blue chips? >> personally, i hope so because that's the area i'm involved in. but i don't know that at this point. look. i think the key point is this. the ten-year treasury is selling at 50 times its coupon. there's no growth in the coupon. it's 1.9% or 2%. 50 times coupon. with no growth in principle and no growth in the coupon why would you want to buy that when you can buy at 13 times earnings, stocks that are going to have principle appreciation as well as a dividend of 2%. and that's going to grow. it's a disparity. the likes of which we've never seen in this country. equity risk premium has never been higher. and that's why even with a

muddied outlook for earnings, stocks should do well. and individuals and institutions are under owned. the underowned stocks. it's going to be the asset of choice for the next ten years. because cash is zero and bonds could be negative. will be negative. >> howard, thanks for joining us. stick around. we'll get the february adp employment report. that's next. how do you know which ones to follow? the equity summary score consolidates the ratings of up to 10 independent research providers into a single score that's weighted based on how accurate they've been in the past. i'm howard spielberg of fidelity investments. the equity summary score is one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. get 200 free trades today and explore your next investing idea. oh there's tons. french presses, espresso tampers, filters. it can get really complicated. not nearly as complicated as shipping it though.

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tomorrow, let's make a deal. "squawk box" is live from one of the m&a industry's most exclusive events. with special guest bill ackman. plus, peter weinberg of pirella weinberg. "squawk box" tomorrow, starting at 6:00 a.m. eastern. all right. welcome back to "squawk box." the futures indicating the dow could open up by about 50 points. we have a few economic tests for the markets. in just a few seconds the adp employment report forecasters polled by reuters say the economy very likely added 216,000 private payrolls last month. two other reports of note today coming up at 8:30 eastern, the

labor department will release fourth quarter productivity and unit labor costs. and this afternoon the fed reports the consumer credit for january. >> we're just seconds away from the release of the adp employment report for february. steve liesman back from russia with the numbers in two seconds. go for it. >> adp reporting that private payrolls added 216,000 jobs in the month of february. that's the third of the past four months above -- >> when have they ever hit exactly? >> that was the estimate. i don't know that that's ever happened. i don't track how well they do. actually forecasting this number is a new thing. they've gotten on board with how well it's doing. and it's about the best forecast we've ever seen. let's go through the numbers. january revised up by 3,000 to 170,000. the nonfarm payroll estimate, 213. you were askinging earlier whether or not that 200,000 mark is an important one. this number today suggests that the nonfarm payroll come below 200,000 because i think we're

still subtracting government workers. so the private payrolls could still be strong. but the total number could be down below 200,000 if you take off 20,000 or 30,000 government workers. joining us from st. louis is the chairman of macro economic advisers. >> steve, how are you? >> doing just great. let me go back. i want to take a look at your record before we get into the details of this. >> fair enough. >> this is not the way i planned it. what i find interesting here. becky noticed the forecasters came on right with your number there. but i was also noticing your number has been right on top of the last three months. some insignificant 16,000, 30,000 difference. so it seems like you are doing a good job of tracking what's going on with the bls here. >> been doing a good job. when i'm asked about this either by the media or our clients i say once i get the adp number, the wednesday before the government's publication, i consider that to be the best point estimate of what i'm likely to see on friday.

>> let's look at the growth by industry and goods producing up 48,000. service producing up a strong 170. perhaps what was in the ism. there's manufacturing ticking along. but there's construction again. 16,000. joe, a couple of months of better than expected weather, or abnormally warm temperatures how such that a factor? >> it could be a factor. if the weather this year has been on average the way it's been the last five, seasonal factors shouldn't be a consideration. but in some parts of the country, the weather has been drier and warmer than normal. so there could be a slight boost here. but in our forecast, housing starts have been running a little bit ahead of our earlier expectations. and builders' expectations for the next six months going forward have moved up very, very sharply. i do have a sense there's gaining momentum here in residential construction. >> another sign is what's happen with small business. and large businesses, this is sort of more normal.

up just 20,000. are we seeing here a definitive turn now in small business hiring? >> my sense is that we have shifted to a higher gear in employment growth across the board from what we were seeing seven or eight months ago. i think solidly now over 200,000 per month with a distribution across that 200,000 consistently there. but as i've said in many of our past conversations, steve, this isn't really enough. i mean, i would feel much more comfortable saying that we're breaking out of the doldrums here in this recovery if we saw these monthly numbers move up closer to 300,000. maybe a little more than that for a few months. >> given the slack in the labor force it wouldn't be that unusual. >> if the participation rate is going to rebound, it's going to take growth faster than this to put a lot of downward pressure on the unemployment rate. >> that's the next thing i want to get to. a lot depends on what you think the right number is needed to take care of entrance into the

workforce. what does 216 tell you about what's going to happen to the unemployment rate? >> our calculation is that for an unchanged participation rate, a monthly increase in employment of about 125,000 would keep the unemployment rate constant faster than that would push it down. so if there's no big change in the participation rate, today the employment number should correlate -- i think what we're going to see on friday is an unemployment rate that is about unchanged and maybe down a tick. >> joe if you could take a step back, i don't think there's any more political number than the jobs number. it's going to be taken by both sides and used to their particular ends and they're going to use it -- >> it's good news for one side and not for the other. what's the real story beyond the politics of what's goi on with the jobs market now? >> the real story the employment hole we dug for ourselves is

absolutely huge. and we have to add 6 million, 7 million, 8 million more jobs over the next few years to get back to full employment with a growing labor force. we have a long way to go. i'm encouraged by this upshift to the next higher gear. it's not enough. we need to have more and we need faster -- it's a slow recovery. i like the line from your previous -- from your previous spot. we could use a recovery from the recovery. >> you know, it's an interesting y to think about it in terms of gears. if the u.s. economy has five years and let's say 100,000 was the first gear and not reverse, what gear is this right now? >> it's second. >> just in second gear? >> all right. >> let's bring in rick santelli and get more insight into this conversation. you were watching reaction there in the market. you want to tell us about that first? >> i guess if we're going to talk about market reaction we'll have a very brief discussion. if all i was doing was looking at yields, preopen equities in terms of the futures market,

very, very little rotation on any of the data, which means that the landscape after is no different than before. so we walk away and our guest really nailed it very well. this is expected. you know it doesn't matter who is in the white house, who is in the cabinet. the u.s. economy by default you can get a red dropper in the phone book and have whoever those drops are run the government and these numbers wouldn't be different. we have the biggest economy in the world. of course it's going to grow 200,000 jobs four years after a crisis. i don't think it's a political issue. and i don't think it's a market-moving issue. our guest said 7 million more jobs. then give me a call. i agree with that. >> let me ask you this. tomorrow when we get the number, we're going to be looking for -- or on friday when we get the number, we're looking for 210,000 jobs created. net jobs created. less the government louse lsses. and it can be anybody's guess

because we don't know what the participation will be. >> i think all numbers will be important to the market because the general person out there that's going to flip on the tv or get the weekend newspaper is going to get a headline number on the unemployment rate. they're not going to get the kind of inside baseball. they don't probably understand labor force participation rate so, of course, the political jargon is going to sway them one way or another. i think for traders, it's going to be the number of jobs created. and i think somebody mentioned in the last conversation, a very long look, three to six years over the total amount of employed people. that's -- we need people to work, participate in the system and pay taxes. and that's the benefits of jobs, jobs, jobs. >> tom, you were quoted about joel in your last commentary about how we need a recovery from this recovery. what's the best case scenario? >> the best case scenario is that the economy picks up because we fix a lot of our

economic problems. we address our huge trillion-dollar deficit issues. what you have to focus on is the fact that, forget what the unemployment rate is stated is. the effective unemployment rate when you include those no longer looking for work is around 16%. that means 1 out of 6 americans are out of work who could have a job. and that means 1 out of 6 people are not taking advantage of the american dream. >> that's not 100% accurate. it's a full-time job because people working -- the number close to 15%. it's come down. >> still about 1 in 6. >> most economists don't think that number adds very much to the conversation because it moves right in line with the unemployment rate. joe, very, very quickly, i need to ask you. your growth rates. what does this number say about growth? >> employment is a lagging indicator of growth. but we're wrapping up our forecast today. so i can tell you we're looking for 2% gdp growth in the first

quarter around 2.5% in the second. 2.25% in the first half of the year. that's a little slower than we enjoyed last year and not enough to generate really fast here. >> more data. joe, thank you. more data at 8:30. we have to hit a break. steve liesman, thanks. coming up -- hope he set you straight on that. more breaking news, productivity and costs. coming up, gop presidential hopeful mitt romney. how can you just stand there?

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coming up. the adp was just the start. more breaking economic news ahead. productivity and costs. and then the race for the white house. gop presidential hopeful mitt romney will join us live at 8:45 a.m. eastern. ♪ oh! [ baby crying ] ♪ what started as a whisper ♪

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welcome back to "squawk box." momentarily we're going to have fourth quarterfinal productivity in unit labor cost numbers. an as expected adp employment number. 216,000. here we go up 0.9% on fourth quarterfinal nonfarm productivity which translates into a unit labor cost a bit higher. more than double higher our last look. 2.8. our last look was 1.2. our expectations were 1.2. so we see an incrementally better nonfarm productivity with a significant rise in unit labor costs. the market really not moving much on that one as well. although, well, pretty much 309.31. up about 50 in preopening dow. market seems pretty much anchored which leaves me to think we'll be looking over the

pond to europe to see what's happening in greece. back to you andrew ross sorkin. >> thank you, sir. still to come on "squawk," too 2 well-known strategists square off on the political issues that matter to you most and your money. bob shrum and fill muster coming up. then the conversation we've been talking about all morning. gop presidential candidate mitt romney will join us live. stay tuned.

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than any other gop candidate yesterday, including that tight race in ohio. but there are still three other men in this nominating contest. joining us, democratic strategist and former presidential campaign manager bob shrum. also phil muzzer. a senior adviser to mitt romney's last presidential campaign and is the president of new frontier strategy. phil, let's talk about last night. mitt romney walked away with the most delegates from this, but it didn't knock anybody out of the race. >> in a base line, i think gingrich did what he said he needed to do. santorum, you know, had some success in the south. but, look. we've had 22 contests in this race. mitt has won 14 of them. the mathematics of this situation are daunting for these guys. and what people should be focusing on next, the next turn in this corner is really the fight between santorum and gingrich is likely to emerge here. these guys have to reconcile who is going to be the alternative to mitt. mitt is on a clear pathway in terms of solidifying the intensity of support in the base of the republican party. a lot of polling reflected that.

mathematically he's moving forward and winning. winning matters in politics. these guys have to continue to win in tough places. places like alabama, gingrich and santorum will have to duke it out. last night santorum's chief strategist was calling for newt to exit the race. look for some fisticuffs there. >> you expect it to get more heated between the two of them? >> i think it's going to be more heated, yes. >> bob, you look at this race. at this point still having four candidates in it, i guess that makes you happy about the prospects for the race as we get into picking an actual nominee and then heading towards the president? >> sure. i thing process is ultimately helping president obama. i tend to agree with phil that as you look at the delegate numbers and you look at what's happening here, romney will be the nominee. but he's going to be the nominee of a recalcitrant party. he's having a hard time getting conservatives and evangelicals. he has to go south next week. i assume he's going to compete in alabama and mississippi. and not just in hawaii. and it's not clear to me that

when he does that, that romney super pac is going to be able to do that much damage to santorum. it didn't work in tennessee. and the reason this is all helping the president is because if you look at the new nbc/"wall street journal" numbers, there's a 16-point negative gap now in romney's favorability. obviously, phil is going to say that's going to get better once he has the nomination but this thing could go on for several more months. >> phil? >> bob, this thing is going to get better once mitt gets the nomination. >> i knew you would say that. that's why i tried to preempt you. >> by the time we come out of tamp athe republican party is going to be unified. there's a lot of imperical data that all elements of the republican coalition are starting to get behind romney in a significant, severe way. romney, unlike the others, has a smart plan. look just the next couple of days. some unheard of contests in places like american samoa, guam. those are little things. those are like nine delegates a pop. click, click, click. then when we get to illinois,

the next big definitive contest, santorum is missing on the ballot in 4 of 18 of the congressional districts. romney can make a strong play there. and, look. the bottom line is the guy wins. and winning matters, okay? so a week ago, romney was 10 points down in ohio. last night, he won, okay? this is a validation of a strategy and a campaign that's working. and this is where this race is going. >> phil, we talked about this a little earlier this morning. it looks as if it would be incredibly difficult for any of the other three candidates to possibly come up with the 1144 that you need to win. but the other three could combined take enough votes to keep mitt romney from getting to 1144. is that the question at this point? >> look, i think the mathematics are unlikely because the reality is that you need three things to be successful in politics. you need to have a good message. in the last week, romney sharpened his message on the economy with a pro-growth tax plan. a plan to cut the budget and americanize american energy.

and you need a message. you need that leads to momentum which romney now has. you could argue in some degree the others have a little bit of momentum, but he has momentum and that leads to more money. the last thing is really important. to sustain this process you'll need additional resources. people are going to be flying off the shelves to continue to help romney. i don't think it's a proven thesis the other two will be able to have the financial resources unless we have this super pac palooza that continues into the spring. it's a possibility but an unlikely one. >> when you get to the general election, mitt romney is the candidate the white house most fears, correct? >> i'd say they fear him less and less as time goes on. i tend to agree with phil and he doesn't want me to agree. i think romney will be the nominee. i thing process works that way. i think he's ahead in delegates. it's going to be very hard for anybody else to catch up. especially given the way the process works. but i certainly wouldn't call it a significant consolidation of the base when you look at though exit poll numbers in ohio, which is a critical state for

republicans in the fall. where nom romny lost conservatives decisively. he lost evangelicals decisively. that state is a state where right now, president obama has a pretty decent lead. i think that lead is likely to have been consolidated by what's gone on in the last week. phil wants to skip to illinois. we're going to have a bunch of events next week. romney will take some hits. it's going to hurt him for the general. he's ultimately going to be the nominee. >> bob, thank you for joining us. phil, thanks for coming into the studio. appreciate it. >> quick break now. and gop presidential candidate mitt romney will join us live when "squawk box" comes right back.

welcome back to "squawk box." joining us now, former massachusetts governor and preside mitt romney. you won more states last night. more delegates last night. a nice lead in delegates. 89.9 for you to be the nominee. what's your level of confidence today. is it 90 or -- up or down from 89.9%? >> after last night, i feel pretty darn good.

we had a very strong response across the country. everywhere from alaska to vermont. and we got terrific support from some of the most conservative leaders in our party like john ashcroft, eric cantor, tom coburn. we're getting the kind of support across the party that i need to become the nominee. so i'm encouraged. >> you are hearing all the murmuring. what's your plan to energize the whole party, all them different factions of the party if you do become the nominee? >> we do, of course, have some other candidates in the race that have great qualities and are out appealing to their respective constituencies. and ron paul, for instance, has a very strong team of people that support him. and newt gingrich. and, of course, rick santorum. but when we have a nominee, we will come together because barack obama has organized a conservative community. let's put it that way. the community organizer has organized us in a big way. we're going to come together because we really believe he needs to be replaced. that he's over his head.

that the debt he's amassed, the jobs he has not created suggest that this is a guy whose time has come for early retirement. >> what do you think the president and his people are going to say about you with that billion dollars they have, and how do you plan to count ter? >> they'll go after me on a personal basis and try to make me into something i'm not. we're going to talk about the president's record. we're going to ask people, your happy with what's happened in terms of job creation in this country, how long it's taken for us to recover. are you happy with the trillion dollars of additional debt every year? are you concerned about the size of government? your happy with the intrusiveness of government in your life? are you happy with high gasoline prices in part because this administration has not been willing to take in energy from other places across america? you go through the list of the president's policies and you recognize the american people are not happy with him. i'll be talking about his policies and, of course, they'll be talking about personalities. >> mitt, i believe that you should look at what people do and less at what they say. you took over the state of

massachusetts. it was in a similar quandary the country is in today. you took a $2 billion deficit. turned it into a surplus and a rainy day fund. what were the steps you took and how will that translate to what you do as president? >> with regards to balancing the budget, i have three major approaches. i've applied them before. first, look at all the programs that exist in the federal government. and you ask a simple question. is this program so critical it's worth borrowing money from china to pay for it? and on that basis, we're going to get rid of a lot of programs, some people like, some people don't like. i don't like obama care. we'll get rid of that. that's easy. number two, subsidies for amtrak. funding for planned parenthood. national endowment for the arts and humanities. some of these things are going to eliminate federal spending. you take other programs like medicaid and food stamps and housing vouchers. you give them back to the states. you grow them at the rate of inflation, no faster. that saves about $100 billion a year.

and number three, shrink the size of the government that's left, combining agencies through, a triciattrition. and you link the pay of federal workers with the pay in the private sector. those things save about $47 billion a year. so we can take out about $500 billion out of the government and get it down -- streamlined back to 20% of the gdp level. >> how about energy? you mentioned gas prices. what would you be doing differently? >> well, you know, i think people recognize that the president can't precisely set the price at the pump but he can decide how much of the money that's being paid for oil and gas is coming -- is going to other nations. and to get that money staying here and to create jobs here and to stabilize prices here, he ought to be taking advantage of all of our offshore and anwar and north dakota and oklahoma and texas oil and gas resources instead of trying to hold them off. natural gas is a huge win for us. and through the epa, he's been trying to hold that off. coal is, of course, a major

source of our electric power. he's made it more difficult to get the coal. more difficult to use the coal. and, of course, the keystone pipeline bringing energy in from canada, that was a no-brainer. he failed that test. if we want to get america energy secure you have to take advantage of the energy resources we have. with recent discoveries from pennsylvania, north dakota, oklahoma, texas, ohio, there's a lot of energy in this country. let's take advantage of it. >> governor, on your tax plan, there has been -- some people who have scored it and suggested that it could cost us $3 trillion ultimately. how do you respond to that? >> well, they don't look at the full plan. what i say is we're going to cut the top marginal rate across the board by 20%. and at the same time, we're going to limit the deductions and exemptions to pay for most of that. and then additional growth will pay for the rest of that such that our plan does not increase the deficit.

and then combine that with the savings i just described with tom in terms of cutting back several government programs or eliminating some of those programs and we finally get america to a balanced budget. so all totaled, it's a very strong pro-growth policy that gets the economy going and cuts back on the scale of government. that's the course we have to have. by the way, the reason i i think did so well last night, across the country is that people understand we've got a pro-growth plan that will put people back to work and scale back the size of government. >> governor, you won the majority of the states and the majority of the delegates who were out there last night. but it was not decisive enough to knock anyone out of the race. gingrich was saying that he is the tortoise in this race. he's going to be sticking around. santorum sure looks like he's going to be staying in this race for some time to come. how long of a race are you prepared to fight, and what happens if this goes all the way to the convention? >> well, i am prepared to fight all the way to become the nominee. and, you know, i was pleased with our success last night. obviously, we've got a very

strong lead in delegates. a very strong lead in terms of the number of people who have actually voted for our campaign. we've organized a very effective team. i'm really proud of the folks across the country that have been making the calls, knocking on doors, turning out voters. this is the nature of a campaign that you have to have to take on the obama machine. so i'm pleased it's working. and we've got the time and resources and a plan to get all the delegates. we think that will get done before the convention. but one thing i can tell you for sure is there's not going to be a brokered convention where some new person comes in and becomes the nominee. it's going to be one of the four people that are still running. >> governor, we just were talking about how many jobs we need to get back to where we were before the crisis. that's like 6 million or 7 million. given that some of those construction jobs and housing jobs maybe were not necessarily real in the first place, what do you think full employment is in

this country right now, and how do we get the jobs to get there and what can the government do? >> well, what the government can do is make america the most attractive place in the world for small in the world for smal business and midsize business and big business. what it's been doing over the last three years is exactly the opposite of that. obamacare certainly did not encourage a business to hire more people. change in the national labor relations board and the relationship between management and labor, that also did not encourage people to hire more folks. talking about raising the tax rate, the marginal tax rate from 35% to 40%, you realize small business is largely taxed at that individual rate. again, that discouraging hiring, it does not encourage it. almost every single policy the president put in place, dodd/frank makes it harder for small banks to make loans.

you change those policies, you get our tax rates competitive with other nations, you get regulators seeing their job is not just catching the bad guys but encouraging the good guys, you take advantage of our energy resources, you crack down on china where they don't play by fair trade rules, you do those things and america once again gets the economic engine -- >> we get the feeling we're not a 5% unemployment country anymore. with outsourcing and with all these structural problems that maybe we should be -- well, we're happy to be approaching 8% -- from above 8%. no one's satisfied. but you hear that's some type of victory in the unemployment picture. can we get back to 5% or are those days gone? >> we could of course get back to 4% or 5%. this new 8% is an effort on the part of the administration to try and declare victory. don't forget, back in january when the president had just been

reelected -- or elected for the first time, he said if we let him borrow $787 billion, he would hold unemployment below 8%. 8% was a frightening number. it's not been below 8% ever since. 8% was his boelg bogey. the european scale of unemployment figures, if you adopt european policies, it's not surprising you're going to have european unemployment. he has adopted european policies with health care, can taxation, with regulation, with energy policies. we are becoming a carbon copy of the sad european nations that have been struggling with poor economic conditions. and that's the result of what's happening. we want to go back to being america with the kind of principles that made us an attractive place for entrepreneurs and innovators and get this president out of the

way so we can get back to the kind of job-creating machine we're expecting. >> we've had a lot of executives around this time that were in support of the simpson-bowles plan. if you were the president and you had to sign it, would you? >> well, i want to make it real clear that my plan is the plan i prefer. so i'm not going to sign up for some other plan when the one i've proposed is in essence based on the flossie of simpson-bowles. i've lowered the marginal rates across the board and i cap and limit various deductions. we can choose which ones are limited for high-income people, people in middle income are going to continue to have a preference for home mortgage interest deduction and charity and so forth. but by virtue of the bowles-simpson model which in many respects is the same model

i have in my plan, why we're able to create growth and not add to the deficit. so that's the heart of our plan. get the growth but don't add to the deficit. >> you've also had the courage to, like simpson-bowles, tackle entitlement. >> i've been really surprised, tom, that you have a president who's been in office for three years who from the very beginning said that medicare and social security were in financial dristress and yet he' not proposed any alternatives to those issues. i find it extraordinary. i have put out my own plans. i know that some people have told me, you can't talk about these issues without them becoming demagogue and killing your campaign. but the time's come, we have to tell the american people the truth. and the plan that i've put out says that for people who are in their 20s, 30s, 40s and early 50s, if you will, the seniors of

tomorrow, the retirement age is probably going to be a little higher. and higher income beneficiaries are going to get lower benefits than lower income beneficiaries. and by virtue of those two adjustments, you can save medicare and social security on a permanent basis. and by the way, let's not let the president forget, that's only one president that i know of in history that cut medicare by $500 billion and that's president obama. if he tries to demagogue our reasonable ideas to save these programs, we'll have to remind people that his unreasonable plan to take $500 billion out of the program for current seniors. >> governor, the premise behind simpson-bowles is that there needs to be something that's done on both sides of the ledger book. that we bring in higher revenue and cut spending from the government. if you take a look at your tax plan, obviously there are a lot of different ways it could be scored. but for a family of over $700,000 -- making over $700,000

f they apply your tax plan to it, that family would end up paying a little more than $50,000 in taxes. does your plan assume that we can get to tackling the budget deficit by cutting some of those expenditures and by raising growth and that alone, or is there a need to actually raise more tax revenue? >> what i put out in my plan is a series of principles that allow our economy to grow and at the same time maintain a neutral budget impact. and so i have it laid out all the details of how we're going to deal with each one of the deductions and exemptions. i think it's interesting for the groups to try and score it because it can't be scored because those kind of details have to be worked out with congress and we have a wide array of options. one more principle that i mentioned and i want to mention it here is that it is essential to me that we not place a larger

share of the tax burden on middle income taxpayers. so that means that we're not going to end up with very high income taxpayers taking a smaller share. we're going to have to limit the exemptions in such a way, limiting them toward more high-income folks so they don't pay a smaller share of the total. they continue to pay the same share they're paying now. i'm not looking for a way to change the progressivity of the code. i'm looking for a way to lower the marginal rates which is the most powerful way to encourage the economy to grow and to get investment in jobs again. that, of course, puts more people into paying taxes and helps recover the tax revenues we so badly need. >> what's your definition of "wealthy"? $250,000 gets thrown around, $1 million gets thrown around. what would you put that cap at?

>> what i'll look at is the various cohorts, the top 5%, the to top 10%, the top 25%, we'll look at the various categories and see if they're continuing to pay the approximate share that they've paid in the past under the current system. it's important that the great majority of americans don't see an increase in their tax share. i want everyone to have a reduction at the top rate. that has a very powerful growth incentive and hours worked incentive. but i don't want to change the orientation saying, okay, this group or that group is going to benefit by the plan. that's why we want to adjust the exemptions with that in mind. >> what should we do with carried interest, governor? would bain have been less successful if there weren't those inducements or benefits from carried interest? it's such an inflammatory issue. i just wonder whether it's

essential to maintain that business, the private equity business, it's one of our bright spots in this country. but is it necessary to keep carried interest with the optics that it has? >> well, i think you have to look at each dimension of our income scream. is this a true capital gain or is it ordinary income? and you look to either the courts or to the irs to look at the various structures of investment vehicles and say, gosh, is this a true capital investment with the risk of loss or is it instead ordinary income with no particular risk of loss? if it's ordinary income, you should treat it as ordinary income. if it's capital gain, you should treat it as capital gain. i don't believe that it's congress' job or an administration's job to go through and say, hey, these people here are making too much money. let's change their tax rate to make them less able to be financially successful. i think you do, however, have