he will join us live later this hour. among the guests joining us bill ackman. so stay tuned for that. we'll keep a lot of things coming at you this morning. our top story, though, today is greece. this is the deadline for bondholders to tell athens if they're going to be accepting that deal. our chief correspondent michelle caruso cabrera joins us live with more. d-day is here. what's the latest? >> reporter: we are about nine hours away, 3:00 eastern time is when the deal expires, becky, and throughout the day, just like yesterday we've seen more and more coming forward saying we will agree to this haircut of more than 50% when it comes to face value and 75% when it comes to real value. we still don't know if it's going to be enough and this deal is crucial because if this deal with bondholders doesn't happen,

then the 130 billion euro bailout coming from the rest of the european un yor for greece is conditional on this deal happening today. whatever happens, it looks like the situation is likely to trigger a credit default swap, the cds event that almost a year ago everyone was so terrified of but now the european union seems willing to accept. all of this is going to unfold over the next day, the next 24 hours. i spoke with the energy minister of this country, the energy minister is the former finance minister and the reason he is the energy minister is because he has been put in charge of the privatization process which is extremely crucial to greece's future because it's going to raise a lot of money and it's also going to make some of their biggest institutions here far more efficient and hopefully profitable and lead to a better

economy. he sent the following message to any bondholders who are thinking of holding out. >> we are hopeful. it is a very good offer to private investors. it's the best offer they will ever get. and if it fails the situation will be much worse for private bondholders. >> reporter: if the deal fails. remember, they don't get the bailout package, they don't get the $30 billion, that's the sweeteners on the bonds. it looks like a full-blown default, bankruptcy, and that would be messy and could lead to greece leaving the eurozone. becky, joe, back to you. >> michelle, i'm sorry, at the very top of your report the microphone dropped out and i wasn't sure, did you say what we know so far in terms of how many people -- how many of these hold ers have signed off on this? >> reporter: we know more than

50% have signed up. 50% is the crucial threshold to begin a very arcane process that could lead to the imposition of action clauses that will trigger cds. they're trying to get all the way to 75%. ideal would be 90%. that would mean they wouldn't trigger the cds. it would be a completely voluntary deal. at this point we know from the announcement more than 50% have agreed. there could be a lot of institutions that have tendered but haven't is announced it. >> again, the deadline that we're waiting for, the announcement is going to come at what time? >> reporter: the deal expires at 3:00 eastern time today. we expect an announcement at 1:00 a.m. eastern time, because that would be 8:00 a.m. tomorrow in athens. >> okay, great. >> do you have more? >> i did.

i did want to ask her more. there was an adviser to the german government who was out with some news today, it got picked up on some of the wire services talking about how the market is expecting at this point the credit default swaps to kick in and so they don't think it will be that much of a chaotic event. have you heard otherwise from any of the people you've been talking to? >> reporter: no, absolutely not. i think for several months now they've been trying to come to grips with the fact that they're probably going to have to trigger the credit default swaps in order to get enough bondholders to go along with this to get enough debt forgiveness for greece, and i think maybe members of the european union finally understand how cds works. one example, i know a hedge fund manager who more than a year ago bought credit default swaps on the bonds that are due in march for 10 million euro worth of bond. he's already been paid 9.5 million euros on those credit default swaps. there's only half a million more to give him.

so a lot of this has played out already. >> thank you very much again. >> michelle, speaking of haircuts, your hair is back there somewhere, right? if you turn to the right or the left -- >> i see a ponytail right there. >> and i also want to wish you and becky -- >> what? what, what, what? >> a happy international women's day. >> oh, thank you, joe. >> did you see google? >> i did not. i'll have to check it out. >> judd gregg is here. i'm sure you extend those wishes to becky -- >> absolutely. >> and to michelle and your wife. it's been celebrated every year since the early 1900s. >> i do like google today. >> yeah. >> it sounds like michelle, we may not have her right now. thank you very much. we'll check in with michelle caruso cabrera throughout the day. >> i like it. >> the title international in front of it there's some sort of

territorial effect of that term? it's a throwback is this. >> i wasn't but if -- >> i was just wobdering why you would even bring it up. >> i was searching google. whenever you search google and it has a different -- >> see, here is their logo. i'll show you. so you know it's a special is day. >> oh, really? they change it every day. they change it every day. >> it might be the 300th birthday -- >> that screen is too simple obviously for andrew because all these screens have is too many things on them. >> yeah, they do. >> that's how you nope it's a special day. >> dnc talking points, propaganda. the huffington post is on all four. >> yes, i can see that. >> the daily talk and moveon.org website. if you put your arrow on google it will tell you what it is. it might be some philosopher

from the 16th century, the anniversary of him writing some speech. >> i just looked at the huffington post. >> i've only been on the show for, what, 30 seconds, and learned something is extraordinary. >> and i called you old, out of it. >> that's true. accurate. >> have you seen the story? romney punts on kur yid interest. >> that's good to see. it replaced andrew's story on goldman s is achs. >> why did he punt on carried interest? it should be capital. >> i don't think he punted. what he did was he said if it's -- if your money is at risk and long term it should be long term. >> it was a question joe asked him yesterday at the end of the interview. >> interest by did he haefiniti ordinary income so they definitely positioned themselves so it should be treated as ordinary income. it should be called carried capital if it really is carried capital and, in addition, this isn't about getting carried interest to be tacked it's about

finding revenue to do other things with it. >> wait a second, what's your -- >> that's the purpose of the attack on carried interest. >> carried interest, carried capital, however you want to call this, ling which is six aside, this is taxed as 15% as a long-term investment. how do you think? >> i think in most cases that's what it qualifies as capital. there's going to be some instances where it's ordinary income where it's the person's earnings that should be taxed as ordinary income but i think this broad brush approach which essential isly the goal of which is to get revenue so you can spend it somewhere else, this isn't about the carried interest issue and this is about finding a source of revenue that congress can then use to spend on something else. >> are or the whole idea that we need -- that if we cut taxes anywhere, that it doesn't pay for itself in growth dollar for dollar. i mean, that -- what we're really talking about is really

shrinking government and at the same time putting in growth initiatives that may not be dollar for dollar but we need growth. we're spending 25%. >> you probably need more revenue, too. you need to cut spending. it can't be 25% but it can't be 16%. >> did you know to 20 and then only raise 18. >> right now it's at 15% or 16%. >> why shouldn't it be -- why shouldn't ordinary income be taxed? the idea ordinary income is taxed at 42% if the president gets his way but being taxed at 35%. >> there are too many loopholes. you're not the getting 35% from a lot of people. the ones you are, you get hosed by the system. >> we should do what simpson bowles proposed. which was ignored by the president and eliminate a lot of deductions and exemptions. it was 21%, 9, 15, 21. >> what's 28 or 26?

i've seen all these different -- >> there's been a proposal to take it to 28% by romney. >> 26%. >> 26% was the corporate rate under simpson bowles. >> that was the corporate rate? >> i believe romney is at 28% which was the top rate under reagan and rostenkowski. >> the interest rates, you can set aside, is it deficit neutral? does it bring in revenue? if simpson bowles raises revenue, right? >> the problem is cbo 0. cbo scores everything under a model which says there is no such thing as dynamic scoring and they will not give you any credit tore economic activity that results from reducing tax rates. that's the way they score. so -- >> because you can't predict it. >> well, because they have to have rules or else there's no way they can be consistent. their rules make no accepts at all. let's take for example, repatriation of foreign income. we know we have trillions of dollars sitting overseas. the cbo will score that as a loss of income if if you bring

it back without taxing it. if you bring back a dollar from europe as an american economy and you give the american company a tax holiday they'll score that as a 35-cent loss. a 35-cent loss. you know the dollar is never going to come back. it's never going to come back if you hit it with a 35 cent tax. then those dollars will come back and be invested here and the dollars will flow back out through dividend and economic activity. you could give it a credit for, say, 15%, which would be the dividend tax rate. the simple fact is the cbo rules make no sense at all. make no sense is at all on tax policy because they don't give any credit offer to human nature if you lower taxes people do more things with their money and create more economic activity. >> we have -- we always have things we need to do. i mean, it's like an assignment almost. i have to read this now. >> eat your vegetables. >> we're talking about, i think, important, interesting things.

but there are things that we need to get in here. >> is this going to be peyton manning again? >> no. it's going to be probably no change in interest rates at these places around the world. we are going to see interest rate decisions from the bank of england and the european central bank in the next hour, the boe is expected to stick to its ultra loose monetary policy and the ecb is seen keeping interest rates on hold. but you never know, right, and sometimes the language changes and the markets key off of it doesn't take much to move the markets in a fairly substantial way in this global arena we're in now. central bank watchers say president mario draghi will likely put pressure after the ecb has pumped more than a trillion yors in the last few months. he'll hold a news conference at 8:30 a.m. so you never know. we'll be watching that and sometimes you see moves in the f futures based on these news conferences. in corporate headlines, the

treasury will sell $6 billion worth of aig stock. the sale expected to reduce the government's ownership in aig to about 70% from 77%. the treasury also striking another deal for the insurer to pay down 8$8.5 billion more. paying apple and five others that it plans to sue them. this is all in "the wall street journal" this morning reporting that the doj accuses the company of clueding to raise the prices of electronics books. several have held talks to settle the potential antitrust case. >> super tuesday has come and gone but the republican candidates are still duking it out for the title of nominee. in case you hadn't guessed it already, our guest host today is judd gregg, served as senator of new hampshire. senator, governor, which do you prefer? >> judd. >> all right. well, i have a hard time with

that. senator or governor? you have to pick one. >> well, you know, historically it's supposed to be governor. >> governor you actual ly do something, right? >> that's a good point. for governor -- when you're governor, the difference between governor and senator, twh you're governor for every action there's a reaction. when you're in the senate it's like jell-o. you put your hand in, take it out, it's still there. >> it's the same. >> the issues just come back. >> and you kick things around and argue. >> it's intellectually challenging. >> you get great lunch. >> you can't afford them. >> can't afford them. some senators can. it depends on where you park your yacht. >> why don't we talk about -- >> romney and -- >> and what you think about the race at this point. >> because he has delegates. that's the lead story. delegate wise. >> it's over but nobody is dropping out. >> nobody is going to drop out because the other candidates have points to make and -- >> is that why? there's no pride?

newt still wants some comeuppance. >> if you heard his speech in georgia it was disappointing. i've worked with newt for 30 years, but that was just -- he was a victim. he was a victim and he's been a victim and everybody is treating him unfairly speech. it was disappointing because the guy has great ideas. >> he does. >> he has gotten into this sort of attitude of meanness. >> i list en to newt and get transfixed because he's so smart but sometimes he compares himself to churchill. >> napoleon. >> i mean, he has some -- i don't know whether there are h issues. >> you actually don't get this far. you don't get to be a serious contender for president unless you have a pretty strong sense of yourself. i mean, the president shows that himself. >> or some delusions, serious delusions of grandeur at times. santorum, it's just his dream. he's come this far. you never say die. that's what we say, keep fighting, do it.

pride wise. >> rick was really an excellent senator. i served with him for 12 years. he's speaking to a narrow constituency. it's big within the party. >> what does he want? >> to be a national player, which he obviously is already. >> and the problem, his problem is that where you get the nomination it's self-annihilation for our party. he can't get past that base. he cannot speak to independents. he has this i wear my social positions on my sleeve attitude and if you don't agree with me you're not christian enough. it's not viable and with independent voters it's viable within 0 our party because there are a lot of people who feel strongly on the social issues. most americans today are not wo worried about social issues. they're worried about their jobs, they're worried about tomorrow, for their children. they're worried about prosperity and concerned about international, they're worried about some terrorist coming in and attacking us and we want to make sure they get them before us. >> you bring up the point this is of a large base within the republican party. >> very much. we're a southern and western

party now. no longer a northeastern party. >> so what does that mean for the fate of the republican party when you pick a nominee and go head-to-head with president obama? >> historically that had significant influence in our party but the nominee has never since, in years, carried that message as being their primary message which is rick's primary message. if mitt romney is our nominee, and i think he will be, then that's not his theme. his theme is about restoring the economy, about getting jobs, about confronting the obama administration which wants to take us into the social welfare state and return us to the path of conceptualism. and that's the romney theme and, yes, he has to address the social issues because they're important to a lot of people. they're important to me but they're not the primary thing that will move the vote and cause people to say, hey listen, i want that person to be president. what people are looking for is somebody who can lead back to the dynamism at our core.

we're a vibrant country. that's why the economy is recovering. >> people who say that -- the people who are supporting santorum and looking at this from the outside say that is your problem. if you can't energize your base and get enough of your base to turn out then you will not be able -- >> it's going to energize. >> it will be energized like the president. he's still going to have his very activist environmental group. but it was just a ridiculous decision in my opinion. he will have our base groups. they're going to vote for our candidates. the can question is going to be what's going to happen with the independent vote in the six swing states? there are only six states. >> north carolina -- >> no, no. >> i hadered that this morning that north carolina was a swing. which way is it going? >> you'll have florida, ohio, pennsylvania, colorado, potentially missouri, and new hampshire. >> missouri even went for mccain. >> north carolina went for the president last time.

>> missouri has always been a back and forth state. >> the show me state. >> a good title, isn't it? i like that. >> north carolina you say is not going to be swing? is. >> i don't think so. >> they voted for president obama the last time. >> they're going to settle out and i think they already have. this is an election really about ohio and florida. >> you say that this is already done in terms of the gop nomination. >> no, it's not done. >> the three candidates staying in it, could they get enough of the delegates to prevent mitt romney from getting -- >> no. these things come together quickly once they come together and i think after a couple more of these multiy state events it's going to come together very quickly. >> he's at 89 or so. 89 or 90. >> on in trade. >> on in trade on futures for romney to be the nominee. >> oh, well good. >> time for our -- we have 0 other things.

>> i have many screens. >> you look like you have a lot over there. >> i though. can you clear -- >> can i take bets off this? >> if you just get rid of the daily cost website, is it coast or costs? >> i don't know. time for the global markets report. ross westgate is standing by in london this morning. and he is literally standing, standing by. i am standing. joe, good morning to you. european stocks near the session high as we broke three days of losses with slim gains at the close of play on wednesday. here on thursday ahead of the u.s. open pretty strong gains. more than 9-1 on the dow jones stoxx 600. we priced out any fear we may have had of an uncontrolled default in greece and it may look now like in the range of collective action klauss. will that trigger a cds. i think people would be happy if it did although it's bizarre to think we've gone through a process to avoid triggering that

and that's now maybe where we're going to end up. the fotse, xetra dax up 2%, cac up over 2%, eads is the standout stock. strong forecasts of profits ahead up 9%. the ftse mib up 1.5%. and we've seen a bit of a tear for a tally in debt. the spread between btps now yielding 4.79% and bunds at the 1.8% below 300 basis points. the first time we've been there since the beginning of september last year. and it contrasts as well to the yield here on spanish debt. 5%. spain is now yielding substantially more than italy. spain has already got 40% of its funding for the year but the market clearly deciding the value is more in spain than italy because a lot of the bond purchases going on are the flushing through of the ltro money although we have substantial amounts on deposit at the ecb as well over $800 billion. ten-year guilt, nothing from the bank of england today from their rate decision. we'll have to wait two weeks for

the minutes for that. certainly a very bullish turn in the market and oil in both euro and sterling terms in brent is now at an all-time high. back to you. >> ross, it's international women's day. is that okay with you. >> yep. >> okay. what about international -- >> good answer. >> what about international persons day? what about -- i said to becky, where is international men's day. >> i said that's every day. >> every day is international men's day. >> what was interesting the day has been used for a number of articles, the head of the confederation of british industry wrote an article saying how it was a time to keep that issue of women and boardroom representation -- >> that's good. >> today has been used to highlight that particular issue. >> okay. i'm good. i'm okay with that. that's still not completely the glass ceiling is still around, i think, and that hurts. you don't see it. >> ow. >> ross, thank you.

appreciate it. you've never had to worry about that. thank you. all right. when we come back, the eu ambassador to the united states, why he says springtime is coming for europe. but, first, the energy from a solar storm is making its way towards earth. si scientists say that a pair of solar flares caused last night's storm that is heading towards us at 4 million miles an hour expected to reach our planet early this morning. in the past solar fares and storms have affected power grids, communication devices, gps systems. i think there's even some trading theories around what happens on the stock exchanges with these solar flares. so look out. right now we're going to head to a break. check out the global market headlines. americans believe they should be in charge of their own future.

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copping up the eu ambassador to the united states, why he says things in europe are better than headlines might lead you to believe. first, though, since slipping from the top spot as the world's largest insurer, striving to reclaim its title but how exact ly do you innovate insurance. the business models don't

have the same velocity of innovation that maybe a technology would. >> reporter: that doesn't mean it's off limits to an insurance giant. after a decade plagued by scandals and losses the firm is trying to re-invent it self by directly measuring in0 ovation investment yield on the balance sheet. >> we look to innovate that as amend or add or create value by adding new elements to the services we provide. >> reporter: just a few weeks ago marsh shares hit a three-week high and earnings beat estimates. but ben allen, the company's first cio, realizes many news services can't carry the company for long. >> globalization has changed the competitive dynamics dramatically for businesses. the half life of competitive advantage has gotten shorter. >> reporter: so investors better stay tuned as marsh app mcclellan tries to get back to the top. 

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despite the debt crisis the lingering kre session, and all the fiscal trouble in greece our next guest says springtime is coming for europe. joining us now from washington is joao vale de almeida, he is eu ambassador to the united states. mr. ambassador, we -- if it was six months ago and we said that about europe, i think we might have said, well, a little whistling past the graveyard but i think we're almost ready to accept that things are turning and we have some positive things happening on the continent but make your case. >> well, good morning, first of all. i think, in fact, spring is coming to europe not only in

calendar terms but, in fact, the last two months have brought very good news. on the political level with very solid agreements and consensus on what to do but also from the markets and the role of the ecb in all this situation and i'm happy to see that elements of optimism, signs of recovery, we should not be complacent with this situation but i think we are in a totally different ball game today as compared to three months ago. >> although it's hard to see that the root causes of all the problems have necessarily been addressed and, ambassador, from the eu, can we be confident that the whole system, the single currency with all the dispariat and fiscal concerns is that long term going to work? >> well, if there is one thing that europe is doing is attacking the root causes of the problem. sometimes people say that we are even too harsh in attacking the

root causes. we are looking at the fiscal imbalances in europe but we are also looking at competitiveness of our economy so we are doing what we need to do to attack very emergent, urgent situations but at the same time, and you look in the case of greece, in the case of portugal but also the case of italy or spain we are addressing the fundamental issues, the reforms that are needed to guarantee that we have conditions for a sustainable growth but not bubbles of growth but sustainable growth on the medium to long term. >> there has been criticism with the austerity measures in greece that it is going to make it very difficult to have a vibrant economy and some is too harsh and the other concerns kerpg the country where you're from and that's portugal that that's where the firewall needs to be drawn after for the gallon and not before portugal. do you expect a renewed problem with portugal akin to greece going back for more?

>> well, on the issue of austerity, i don't think there is an altern tetative to what we doing. there's an issue of confidence we need to address that. the only way to address the issue of can confidence is to restore the public finances but at the same time, and one thing does not exclude the other, at the same time address the root causes of the problem and, again, the countries you mentioned are doing enormous sacrifices in order to address the root causes of this problem, the issue of competitiveness, of liberalizing sectors of the economy, reforming the pension system, reforming law. all of these are conditions for sustainable growth and we are attacking them now. >> will portugal be -- will it be necessary for portugal to revisit the lenders at this point as greece did and will it stop there and do you have confidence that spain and italy will not be affected for a second round? >> i think one of the objectives

in the way we're dealing with the case of greece is exactly to avoid any issue of contagion to other countries and we are hopeful and optimistic about that and the operation today, the voluntary debt exchange, is another element of this construction. in order to create solid conditions for sustainable growth in europe in the long term. >> mr. ambassador we have a major election coming up in france and if prance elects a socialist leader, is france going to continue to be a constructive player in this effort to deliver austerity as you call it to the various economies around -- and countries around europe? >> as we know we are democracies and expect democracy, we can have changes of government, changes of president, we have had that in the past but if i look back to the history of the union there is a constant commitment of 0 our leaders to the european project with new answers here and there and being a french word. >> it's a nuance to have a

socialist replace a conservative. that's a large nuance. >> we have that in europe. we have had that in europe. if you look at the last couple of years, there has been a lot of rotation of political families in europe and you don't see a big change in terms of the guidance, of where we want to go. we will wait and see, of course. we have to respect the will of the french people and we certainly will do so. so the new leader, the present one or a new one, will be involved and committed, i'm sure, to the path that we are taking but there is always in democracy debate and debate is a good thing and in europe we are very fond of political democratic debate. >> all right. mr. ambassador, maybe next time we can talk -- we spent the whole time on this and then we have iran and syria but that's something that you wanted to touch on but we'll do that next time. we appreciate your time this morning. thanks. >> thank you very much. >> all right. if you have any comments or questions about anything we've been talking about here this morning on "squawk" e-mail us.

when we come back, a man who could be the next head of the world bank, jeffrey sachs will join us on set. forty years ago, he wasn't looking for financial advice.

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welcome back. u.s. equity futures this hour up 112 after a nice day yesterday coming back after that first double digit sell-off we've had in quite a while. it happened earlier in the week. fa facebook adding 25 banks to help underwrite the company's ipo. this means that most of wall street will have a role in the share sale and -- >> it's 31 total.

>> right. 31 different banks will be able to tell all their clients, no, we don't have any for you. amended ipo filing facebook says it has secured two new credit if a silts is, one to help satisfy tax obligations related to employees' stock units. did you used to be able to get them, judd? >> no. >> there was a time. >> google came out and they had a dutch auction or something is what they called it and you could send in a name and you might get -- i did that actually for my son. he was just turning 18. i thought that would be nice. i sent it in to wherever you send it and he got 89 shares which was pretty good. >> yeah. that is pretty good. >> does he still have it? >> no, i told him to sell it at $300. he reminds me of this a lot. he went to harvard business and he continues to say, you know, i learned things at harvard business but you clearly didn't learn much. >> the world bank chief robert

zellic is due to step down in june. jeffrey sachs is an adviser to ban ki-moon. jeffrey, welcome. thank you for being here today. there aren't a lot of people who are campaigning for this. you've written a vision for what you would do at the world bank. why don't you explain why you think this bank is so important and what needs to be done now. >> the odd thing i've been doing is working with the poor countries for 30 years so i know the field and i know what's out there. there is actually a lot of progress in reducing poverty. new reports show that in every region of the world in recent years poverty has come down. there's a lot of things i've been pushing i wanted to go faster. that's why i've said and why many countries around the world are nominating me to be the next world bank president. >> how do you beat poverty in these countries? what's the game plan? >> it's a mix of, of course,

getting private business going, improving agricultural productivity and also controlling disease because in the poorest countries you have tremendous burdens of disease. so one of the great breakthroughs in the last ten years has been to get malaria down which was a killer in africa that not only was a tragedy but holding back the economy. helped get started something called the global fund to fight aids and malaria a decade ago. now we've had about a 40% reduction of the malaria burden according to the world health organization and this is giving a lift in the countryside in what is rural economies. >> what needs to happen beyond that? how do you lay out the economies? it do you see it as a capitalist bringing in money and making sure that the free market kind of works this those arenas? >> for the first time africa is now achieving growth of about 5% to 6%. it could be up to 8% to 10% actually if basic infrastructure really gets strengthened. of course roads, power, rail,

connectivity, now wireless broad band is coming into the rural areas. this is a huge breakthrough and at the same time you need to get the public services, public health, disease control, education, access to safe water and sanitation. so it's a mix of things to do. it's both helping private business and it's helping the poorer of investing in people. >> how do you prevent corruption which seems to have been a huge problem in some of these african nations in the past. >> i think information is by far the most important way. now that you know, you can bar code everything. where money goes, you can have much more sophisticated tracking of any kind of program. it's not depending on the goodwill of anybody. you want to do that in washington. you wouldn't do it any place else. you have to have transparent, solid information systems. this really wasn't possible when there wasn't even a telephone five years ago. now there's ubiquitous access to the internet, to mobile phones.

you can really control a lot of this corruption just simply through systemic management. >> go ahead. >> when i was in the congress, i had the good fortune of serving is the committee and was chairman for a while, jurisdiction of the world bank, and there was always a tremendous amount of reticence about getting money into the world bank and the imf. until bob zellic took it over and has changed the atmosphere on capitol hill where people have confidence he was trying to make the place run a little more efficiently and deliver the money without the corruption skimming and do it to the big picture approach. how would you maintain a positive track record of bob zoellick and his communications with washington? >> hoped to get this started when i had the world adopted millennium development goals very targeted, measurable. you know what's going on.

that's why things like malaria control really work. that's why help for small fa farmers very targeted. you can measure what's happening. you can see the outcomes. that's why things like community health workers that are very effective ways to move forward and i agree with you the bank still is a bit of a sprawl. and it doesn't have all that much money. it's called a world bank. it sounds is grandiose but it's net disbursements are $16 billion a year which in the scheme of things is pretty modest for a whole world economy of poor countries. so in this sense you have to be very, very clear, resolute, and you have to make priorities. and that's basically what i've been saying for a decade and it works when you do that. >> is it a lot more complicated? we've had robert zoellick on the program to talk about it. it's a tougher prospect to get the rich nations to give when they're facing so many of their own problems, particularly in europe. >> yeah, i think this is really the time to make this money they have go as far as possible. it's not really going to be big

fund-raising and that means to get the priorities right. i was in the middle east in the last couple of days for a meeting on using broad band for development because the things you can now do with 3g coming into these countries for mobile banking, mobile business development, mobile health services, mobile education means we can go so much further with these resources so there's great breakthroughs if you know what to do, if you under how the projects work on the ground, how to really make this move forward. >> can you leverage it up by coordinating like the case foundation? >> of course. there are major players. also, we should understand new countries are -- not new countries but new donor countries are coming in and china is everywhere. it's really amazing. when the after rican union had summit last month and it was in the new $200 million china building and there was -- who was the guest of honor of the african union with the 54 countries of africa was, of

course, the chinese representative who said we'll pay for a large part of the budget in the next few years so this is about geo politics, also. there are many countries coming in but i hope the united states continues to play its role. >> you've been outspoken in criticism of the corporate sector, i think, to some extent. do you need the corporate sector onboard in a big way? would that hurt your chances of getting this if you were perceived as being a gadfly? >> i'm not a gadfly. i work with the corporate sector all over the developing world very closely. and i work with ericsson. >> how about u.s. corporations? >> oh, with general electric which made a huge contribution, by the way, to maternal survival all over the villages in africa. why did they do that? because they have great technology. they want that technology to go to work. they want to be helping people. they'll make business down the road, i suppose, as the incomes go up. they know that when it's the

poorest countries, it's not about business. it's about getting their technologies out there. so the thing about the corporates is that's where the technology and the management is for a lot of what needs to be done. you can't really fight poverty and you shouldn't want to fight poverty without that. >> what ails capitalism in this country in your view? >> well, are there was so much recklessness and lawlessness, unfortunately, on wall street leading up to the financial crisis. >> if it would -- if there was the complete capacity to fail, wouldn't that have sort of healed itself? i mean, if you're too reckless and you fail, that's the way capitalism works, right? >> well, i found it interesting that when the crisis hit, "the wall street journal," which has that line every day then had the editorial if you really understand markets, you've got to bail out all these companies. that was "the wall street journa journal". >> what's the answer? >> don't get into such a mess where you're so completely deregulated, you're letting everybody leverage wildly,

selling cds without any backing whatsoever. it was a game that people knew they let go all the way to the cliff, over the cliff and then so-called free market press jumped in and said, oh, free market? no, no, that's not how it jumpe market, that's not the way it works. we've got to bail them out. the moment they were bailed out now they said we have to go back to deregulation. this is a game. that's not capitalism. >> so, what needs -- to fix it what do we need to do? >> proper regulation. >> more regulation. >> and accountability. what do you mean more regulation? regulation and accountability. when people and companies break the law, they're accountable for it, that's all. >> i think you are talking about the symptom and not the disease. i went to columbia, you know. >> good. >> how do i get to be a conservative going to columbia? >> we all believe that markets should work in a lawful way. >> of course, they should. >> it's very painful to see

company after company paying huge fines to the s.e.c. for things that they should not have done. that i think is -- >> the problem, the disease, is driven by the fact that we basically decoupled the lending from the person who was get the money and the underlying asset? you had underwriting basically -- became nonexistent, the concept of responsible underwriting, so you had this massive explosion in real estate and then it all spun off of that, all the desecuritization. >> are you in the league for this post, professor? >> i doubt it, because i'm not a washington insider. >> or a corporate insider. >> what i have is -- and the argument that i'm making is that we actually need someone who understands how to reduce poverty in that position, and that seems obvious because that's the job. but there have been 11 world bank presidents, not one of them has been an expert in

development up until now, so i'm just trying to make a very basic point this is a professional position, not a political position in my view. it should be someone who understands disease control, understands how to grow more food, understands how to help people get out of poverty, and i hope that that's done. we'd all get a better return, not only on the finances, but on the human side and on the peace side by having someone who knows what they're doing in that profession. >> thank you. >> i thought you might bring protest. >> what's the protest? >> yes, maybe they're outside. >> professor, thank you for joining us. >> good to be with you. quick break now. andrew will join us from the big easy coming up next. >> joe, becky, it has been a very long night. we're here in the big easy, talking dealmaking, corporate governance, and, yes, a little bit of a big reveal. we'll do that all after the

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the other office devices? they don't get me. they're all like, "hey, brother, doesn't it bother you that no one notices you?" and i'm like, "doesn't it bother you you're not reliable?" and they say, "shut up!" and i'm like, "you shut up." in business, it's all about reliability. 'cause these guys aren't just hitting "print." they're hitting "dream." so that's what i do. i print dreams, baby. [whispering] big dreams.

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down to the wire mr. bond holders signing on to reshape greek debt. we're following the very latest developments live from athens. the price of speculation, rising tensions in the middle east adding to a wall of worry for energy traders and increasing the pressure on regulators. bart chilton counting up the costs. dealmaking in the big easy. we're talking to peter weinberg the cabout corporate confidence and m & a as the second hour of quarterba "squawk box" begins live from new orleans right now. ♪ good morning, everybody. welcome back to "squawk box" on

cnbc. i'm becky quick along with joe kernen. andrew as you saw is in new orleans covering the tulane 2012 mergers and acquisition conferences. we'll hear from him in a few moments. let's get to the headlines. first up the bank of england up with the rate decision. it left rates unchanged at 0.5 percent. and we're keeping an eye on aig shares this morning, they are called lower. the treasury is selling $6 billion in aig stock. the insurer itself is planning to buy up half of that amount but it still leaves $3 billion of shares coming on market, all of which two reduce the treasury's stakes to 70% from 77%. the justice department is taking legal aim at apple and five of the biggest book companies, they have accused price of e-books. they say that settlement discussions are taking place. if you are watching the futures, yesterday we saw an up day for the dow this comes after the 203-point decline the day

before on tuesday. futures are insidecated up by triple digits, 114 points for the dow, s&p up by 1%. joe? let's get to andrew who is in new orleans at the m. & a conference. you had dollar bills left. why? >> you saw the tease. you saw the tease. >> i did. >> i needed them to buy this, joe. i have a whole plate here of beignets. i don't know if you can see them. >> wow. >> these are fantastic. fried, joe, so i thought you'd enjoy that. and then i got some of these to wear during the show, which i thought would really sort of spice things up a little bit. >> those are some big balls, andrew. >> thank you. we have a big day ahead of us here at tulane. all the dealmakers in the nation converging here talking about m. & a, corporate governance, and bill ackman will be on in the 8:00 hour and peter weinberg

will come on in the 7:00 hour, he's got a lot to talk about. before i send it back to you, i wanted to show this to you, "the times picayune" this is when you know you aren't in new york, ice chest used to hold dead bodies and man 20 shot to death by officer, those are the two big headlines and something else going on about the bp settlement but it's not "the wall street journal" or "the new york times". >> i get that. you got a dead body, put it on ice. i get that. >> well, the story's a little more complicated. the daughter put her father on ice, and then kept him in the freezer until she reported it a couple months later. >> but he was dead. >> he was dead. it's unclear whether he died or how he died. >> okay. so you got down there at what time yesterday? what time did you get down there? >> i got down there at about 4:00, 5:00 in the afternoon --

>> oh, boy. >> i made a beeline to bourbon street. >> you could get in trouble. did you sleep at all? >> you reminded me that now that i'm with "squawk" there's a legal clause so i tried to keep that in the back of my head the whole weekend. >> so you were in disguise. >> you can call it that. you can call it that. the crews here they'll admit we had people on bourbon street come up to us and they are big "squawk" watchers and "squawk" fans. >> your eyes are half closed, bloir blo they're bloodshot, you got dollar bills coming out of your pockets. let's talk about it when you come back. >> that's the better point of valor. we'll be back with you with peter weinberg and later with mr. ackman. >> on international women's day he's down there exploiting women.

anyway, andrew, thank you. right? is that the vibe you are getting? >> absolutely. i'm sitting in his screen and i'm looking at the screens, i wish i could write like he does, but every time you push one of these screens, every one of his books comes up. "too big to fail" flashes up. >> there you go. and every time a bell rings an angel gets his wing -- no, andrew gets $2. bart chilton is commissioner of the commodities futures trading commission and he crunched the numbers and he joins us now and with us is our cnbc contributor judd gregg. do you have steps to rein this in that won't be punitive to the industry? >> yeah, joe, absolutely. there's about $29 billion in annual costs we've computed that to the aviation industry and the trucking industry. it's about $9 billion, a little

over $9 billion for the aviation industry and about $29 billion for the trucking industry. and that's increased costs due to speculative interest. now, we need speculators. everybody who is watching understands we need speculators in these markets. there's no markets without them. it's the excessive speculation that we get concerned about. and we have a rule that would put in place limits to limit the number of contracts that traders can have to 10% of, say, the crude oil market or the silver market, et cetera. we've yet to put those in place. we have some final little nitpicky things to do that hasn't happened. meanwhile we have wall street interests that are taking us to court, joe, trying to stop us from implementing the rule while consumers really are having a big pain at the gas pump. >> right. you know, you got iran, so many things that go into it. it's fungible, it's a global marketplace for oil, so who

knows what's going into it. have you thought about what might happen if it -- what is the downside to this? aren't there -- whenever you get regulation gets too heavy-handed, always something seems to happen somewhere that you weren't expecting? have you thought about what might happen if you were to just go to 10% of the -- >> yeah, absolutely. it's a very good point. and i think what we've done actually, joe, to avoid any of those dreadful unintended consequences is to err on the high side with 10%. we've seen in the crude oil market, in the natural gas market, in the silver market upwards of 30% in the last several years. by one trader. you know, it's one thing to say, well, is 10% the right level, is it 12%, is it 8% of a market. but what we've seen because there aren't any rules in place, we've seen traders with excessive amounts of concentration, and there's really no denying it. they can push prices around, so we're trying to guard against that. hopefully we'll get these limits

in place. right now consumers are paying more at the pump than they should and that's expanding to small businesses, to large businesses, even government. federal, state, and local governments. as the senator knows, you know, the dod spends $17 billion a year on fuel, so this impacts our entire economy at a time when, as you report every day, the economy is inching forward. we finally got some footholds and these high fuel prices can slow that growth if we're not careful. >> hey, bart, in the past people who have tried to corner a market it usually gets stopped because they get burned some way or the other because they misstep, because it's a huge move and it ends up driving them off. one thing just off the cuff when you talk about a rule like this is if it prevents you from owning more than 10% as an individual, what's to say that three or four of the traders get together and take 40% among themselves anyway? would the duke brothers be able to take 20% because there's two of them?

>> if they colluded in it, becky, there would be a problem, we'd have to do an investigation. but you're right in general, i thought about this, and i don't have a good solution and i'm not sure it's the right thing to do, but i've talked about this group that i call massive-passives, and they are these pension funds, managed money that's come into the markets, like, $200 billion from 2005 to 2008, and they are going long in the markets. and i wondered about them as a class. one more statistic, they haven't talked about anyplace else yet, i will a little bit later this morning, but the longs in the crude market outweigh the shorts 12-1 now. that's the highest level ever in history. if you go back to 2007, it was about 10.5-1. so, there's something going on in the markets, and joe's absolutely right, of course, we've got iran, we've got the greek debt, we've got all sorts of things, all this goes into the mix, but speculation is part of it. and, again, we need speculators,

but it's excessive speculation that i'm concerned is creating some unfair prices. >> i can't imagine if you heard from the stork market perspective that the longs were 12-1 outfavoring shorts that they'd be complaining about that or saying we needed to put some sort of hold on it to keep prices on the stock market from going too high, too quickly? >> we've seen it in the futures markets where prices have gone pretty much on a roller-coaster ride, becky. if you go back to 2008, prices started at around $60 at the beginning of the year. they went all the way up to near $150, they went down to 30 years, and there were some things going on in the market, but if you look at supply and you look at demand, they were fairly constant. and so there's no reason for that roller-coaster ride that existed. and i'm concerned we're starting to see the same thing again. gas in 2008 was $4.10 a gallon, the highest it's been ever in june of '08. now we're at $3.76 today.

and this is the highest it's been ever for this time of year. so, i'm just concerned that as things go and the speculative role continues, the consumers are going to pay more than they should. again, we're not a price-setting agency. we don't do that. but we are charged with ensuring that consumers are paying a fair price and that markets are devoid of fraud, abuse, and manipulation, that's what we are trying to do. >> in the end you are setting prices, no question. if you start putting a limitation here, you basically artificially affecting the markets. and the market's being driven by a lot of external events. >> 30% of the markets? >> the market is being driven by a lot of external events which you have no control over and america has no control over, and i don't you know, you're a regulatory agency that has a lot of oomph and you are obviously a lot of talented people, and the idea that you can affect the world market on oil, i find that to be a bit of a speculative action on your part. >> bart, you don't have to answer to the administration, if

you did, i mean, at the beginning of the term steven chu said we want high oil prices and high gas prices like europe at eight bucks, but, of course, now it's a re-election and we don't want high gas prices because that will hurt the economy and that will hurt the -- you'd be like this, you would be your mother, sister, do i want them high, do i want them low. you're not answering to the administration, are you? >> no, we're an independent agency. you've herald me be critical of both of the administrations before, that's the nice thing about this job. and financial matters aren't that partisan at times. >> now we want gas prices -- okay, i got it. keep me on the same page with you. you're appointed by the administration, right, bast, rt no? >> i'm appointed by former senator gregg. i'm appointed by -- >> the guy at the consumer finance agency. >> i think i voted for him. >> did you vote for him?

you're over here going, what? >> not on the controlling prices issue. >> it is a fine line, bart. i do love talking about it, though, and you're in "the new york post," a big picture of you. you look good. you look good about all of this. this is a great hot button issue, and high gas prices regardless of what we're trying to do three or four years ago, they're not good for any consumers and they're not good for the economy at all. there's no way. >> for every $10 increase in the price of crude, the gdp slips by a half a percentage point. it's something we need to keep our eye on. >> better energy policy would straighten this all out. it's very simple we don't have an energy policy in this country that produces domestic energy at a reasonable rate. >> you don't do that, too, bart? >> that's not my gig. >> but you're ready to weigh in. >> a big leader on these issues is absolutely right, we need a diversified energy portfolio, we haven't done it, and it's

another political issue, when gas prices are high, everybody talks about it. but when the prices go down, they stop talking about it. judd gregg was out there all the time pushing on the issue, we need more like him in the senate. >> and guys like you, bart. good for coming on today. >> thank you. if you have questions, e-mail us at cnbc.com or follow us on twitter. it says "at" in quotation marks and it's squawk@cnbc is the handle. do you tweet yet? >> no, i don't understand it. i can't even read the screens. you printed it small. for people like me. >> we're in the same boat. >> you got to put pictures on here for me. how the government's data holds enormous financial value. cnbc's eamon javers will have that story right after the

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futures still triple digit gains expected because we're down 14 points or so on fair value, that will be a nice way to open. just under 0.9 of a percent on the dow after a snap-back session yesterday. what was yesterday? was it wednesday? >> yes. >> so, the big selloff was tuesday? >> uh-huh, that's right.

yesterday we came back, and right now looking pretty strong. >> 200 points was tuesday. >> yes. super tuesday. >> your monday, okay, good. if you are struggling to keep up with technological advance advances, the federal government is trying to make sure that no one gets access to market moving data, and our eamon javers has a great report. eamon? >> cnbc has learned as we get ready for tomorrow's job numbers that government officials are concerned about open shall early leaks of the employment data to wall street. the department of labor has commissioned a review of security procedures surrounding the handling and release of the data. and that review has been conducted by sandia national laboratories, the same organization tasked with protecting the nation's nuclear arsenal. separately cnbc has also learned that officials at the energy

information administration which releases market-moving statistics on the natural gas, oil, and electricity markets have blocked the ip addresses of computers they say appear to have a malicious intent to slow down the website's release of data for the general public while speeding up access for themselves, officials would provide few other details but they describe the moves as a new round in the ongoing battle between the government and financial market players armed with large amounts of money and sophisticated high-speed computer technology. back to you guys. >> this is huge. the idea that some traders could get advance information on a number as important as the jobs number which obviously has been a big market mover in some of the recent months. when did they first start suspecting this? >> we know that they asked for this study to be done by sandia last year and they received the report recommending various security upgrades of how they handle and release the data at some point in 2011. and i'm told that they're now considering implementing some of the various recommendations but officials wouldn't tell us what

those recommendations are and what changes to their internal procedures they're going to make. clearly they are concerned about potential leaks of market-moving information in advance. and similar thing going on over at the energy information administration, where they've actually gone as far as blocking some of the ip addresses of computers they say are maliciously trying to slow down that data release on the web for other people, and extract the data for themselves. and in this world of high-speed trading, you get a couple seconds advance notice, that can mean thousands, even millions of dollars. >> it's an amazing prospect, because we've watched some of the numbers as they come out here, wow, the market is moving a little in advance but never thinking that anything could possibly be getting out. the fact that you can slow it down and you get on your computer and hold it there, that's a whole new way of espionage. >> before we did the story, i spoke to jon najarian who you know pretty well, he said that last month when the jobs number

came out he saw some suspicious patterns in options trading a day ahead of the jobs number that gave him the sense that he thought somebody knew what was going on in advance. but, guys, as you know, it's very difficult to tell the difference between insider trading where somebody has real inside information or just lucky speculation in the market and somebody says, you know, i think this number's going to be a big one, i got to get in on it early, that's something you have to do with subpoena power to go in and find the people that are making the trades and find out why they made them. >> obviously, though, this is not the last we'll hear about it. eamon, thanks very much. great scoop. >> thank you. >> and we'll hear more about it throughout the day. >> you bet. when we come back we'll go to the big easy to talk about big banks and the m & as. and right now, though, as we head to a break, take a look at the european markets at this hour. we're less than 30 minutes away from the ecb's big decision on interest rates.

the boe, the bank of england, left rates unchanged and right now you see some of the markets are up pretty significantly. the cac 40 up by better than 2% and the dax up by better than 2%. "squawk" will be back after this quick break. still to come, governor howard dean squares off against guest host judd gregg. politics, taxes, the race for the white house, and your money. "squawk box" is coming right back. [ nadine ] buzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz,

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welcome back, everybody. there is a storm warning in effect for planet earth today. the energy from a solar storm is making its way towards us at about four million miles an hour. expected to reach our planet early this morning. in the past solar flares and storms have affected power grids, communication devices, gps systems. if you talk to art cashin, it affects how traders trade, too, so we'll see what happens this morning. >> 4 million miles an hour. >> headed our way. >> you entered the chopper now.

>> no, i didn't know that. >> but he did not take it -- that's the thing, i think he, you know, the private jet that took him down there, then he actually had to take a car which he's not used to anymore. >> does everybody on the show get one? >> no. >> if i sit here long enough, do i get one? >> no. up next -- he really doesn't, i don't think, does he? we like keep saying he does. the latest read on who is hiring and firing, john challenger will give us some monthly numbers. the whole limousine liberal -- >> limousine chopper. >> limousine chopper. and then politics and the economy and your money, former vermont governor howard dean joins judd gregg next. when presidential candidate mitt romney talks business and

the economy, he turns to "squawk box." >> we are beginning a carbon copy of the -- of the sad european nations that have been struggling with poor economic conditions. we're going to come together because we really believe that he needs to be replaced, that he's over his head, that the debt he's amassed, that the jobs he's not created suggests that this is a guy whose time has come for early retirement. >> "squawk box" the only show to have the front-runner on the morning after super tuesday and it's only on cnbc. americans are always ready to work hard for a better future. helping generations through tough times. good times. never taking a bailout. there when you need them. helping millions of americans over the centuries. the strength of a global financial leader. the heart of a one-to-one relationship. together for your future. ♪

welcome back to "squawk box," among the stories that we are following on this thursday morning, walt disney is responding to criticism from the connecticut state treasurer's office. she's been calling on shareholders to oust board members because of disney's plans to have bob iger serve as chairman when the current chairman john pepper retires. pepper said two-thirds of the top s&p companies have a joint chairman and ceo and that her criticism in his words utterly

disregards the company's performance and the number of independent directors currently serving on the board. also, anheuser-busch sees consumers drinking more beer in the united states and brazil, its two primary markets. they saw fourth quarter profits boosted by price hikes and cost cutting and they say that volume numbers have been encouraging so far this year, joe? now, breaking news on the pace of layoffs. just 60 minutes before the latest jobless claims numbers, here first on cnbc with the challenger report is john challenger, ceo of challenger, gray & christmas, what do you have for us and how does it compare to what we saw yesterday with adp? >> job cuts for the month of february were 51,000 plus, that was down about 3% from what we saw in the month of february.  months of the year, we're up 18% from where we were in 2011 first two months. >> so, job cuts. >> exactly.

layoffs. announced by companies. we're seeing those heaviest in areas like consumer products and transportation. those aren't areas that we've seen heavy cuts in over the last few years which have been dominated by government cuts. >> now, you always break down the numbers for us, so before you do that, the different sectors, does this make us wonder about adp or wonder about friday or it all sort of looks the same to us, it's all with the same trend? >> well, these cuts are relatively consistent with where they've been for the last several months. relatively flat. they're consistent with really where they were last year. so, again, the big story or issue has been companies are cutting jobs, not anywhere near at the levels they were during the recession. are they creating jobs? that story has been positive, the job creation story, for the last nine months. unemployment has been dropping as private sector companies create jobs.

government has not been cutting as many jobs in the last few months and you wonder whether that means somehow the pressure of government to cut jobs has slowed down because that's been a real driving force of layoffs over the last two years, but not in the last two months. >> so, that's subsiding -- that's subsiding as well. so, can you tell us anything about the -- anecdotally about whether you are seeing -- i guess we're seeing a pick-up in hiring because the layoff numbers are about the same, so all this good news has to be on the flip side things are -- people are actually hiring at this point. >> i think that is true. i think they're still very cautious, employers are being selective about who they hire. they're not adding loads of people. but they're adding as the business improves to meet those demands. they are adding temporary workers and turning those into full-timers as their businesses solidify. that does seem to be the picture right now. there are some concerns about rising gas prices, rising

material costs and some of the consumer products companies talked about that as a reason to cut some of the jobs and keep their costs down. certainly those rising gas prices will act like a tax on consumer spending and confidence. >> i guess we got no construction layoffs, because we've had those, those already happened, right? and i can't imagine that this weather wasn't a good thing for construction. >> no. there seem to be some signs that construction is seeing if not any kind of significant growth, there are signs that -- from staffing companies that we are seeing some hiring in that area as some of the -- some nascent building begins. >> all right, john, thank you. >> thank you. >> okay. the republican presidential nomination still up for grabs even after super tuesday voting. howard dean is the former governor of vermont, he is also a former presidential candidate. our guest host today judd gregg is a former united states senator as well as the former governor of new hampshire.

by the way, both are cnbc contributors. >> we were both governors at the same time. >> you were both governors at the same time. >> maple syrup wars. >> maple seyrup wars, liquor wa. >> lots snow in vermont and new hampshire. >> are you still buying your liquor in new hampshire because the price is so much better than the vermont prices? >> i don't drink. >> oh. >> i drink maple syrup straight. >> everybody around you has to drink. >> i drink maple syrup in new hampshire because it's like motor oil. >> hey, governor, welcome, thanks for joining us this morning. >> thanks for having me on, becky. >> we've been talking this morning about what to make of the republican nomination battle at this point. governor gregg points out earlier that he think it's a done deal, even though there's still four people in the race the only one he thinks can come out ahead is mitt romney. what do you think? >> i think it's likely that mitt

romney will win. but he had a big problem. he tried to get everybody to get out of the race yesterday, but the problem is the math doesn't work as well as he'd like it to. he's got to win 50% of the delegates from now to the last primary and with three other people in the race that will be difficult. it's not a done deal. i think he'll win. he's the best organized and he's got a lot of money but it's not over by a long shot and next week will not be a good week with four southern primaries. >> if it did go all the way to the convention, though, do you think it's a situation where the convention would pick one of these four who have already been running -- >> i'm in the crowd -- first of all, i think it's unlikely that it will go all the way to the convention people always talk about it about this time, but if it does, i think a fifth person who has not been out campaigning will end up with the nomination. but i'm not the expert on republican politics, you've got somebody who knows a lot about it on the show, so, maybe, judd, you want to weigh in it. >> thank you, howard, i appreciate you giving me some credit there. anyway, i actually agree with you. first, i don't think anybody else is going to win the

nomination than the four people in the race. secondly, i think of the four people in the race, mitt romney, it's his to lose right now and i don't think he's going to. i think he continues to pick up delegates in a manner which will get to a point that it becomes obvious he'll win and at that point it's over. the other folks will stay in because they have messages and they want to deliver the messages and they have purposes. >> oh, wow. >> and governor dean, you are an expert in democrat politics and the lead story in "usa today" it's about how the president has been to 191 fund-raisers at this point and he's running at a pace much faster than any president all the way back to jimmy carter, how he at this point is refusing to give up any of the funds to help the house bolster things up. how much money do you think he needs to raise to take on this race for the next presidency to get renominated? >> look what the money has done in the republican primary. adelson wrote $20 million worth of checks for newt gingrich, if it weren't for adelson spending $20 million from his own pocket, the race would be over because

newt wouldn't have won in south carolina. i think the super pac the supreme court did an enormous dissatisfaction for the voters. and obama will have to raise a lot of money to offset the shelley adelsons who reach into their pockets and write checks. >> it's a lot better if the unions could do it. >> unions could not do that. as a matter of fact, they had to document all that stuff. he said so. >> they gave $80 million to the president. >> and have been knew who it was, we still don't know who is giving money to the super pacs. >> i would like you to explain to me the president's precipitation on thposition on this, when he ran, he would stay with the campaign rules relative to taking public money, he changed his mind and raised a lot of money. this time he said he was against the super pac approach and was

quite pejorative about it and he's changed his position and he's for the super pac approach. where is your party and the president on these issues of disciplining the market by not taking advantage of the various things which you're against? >> we plan to win this race and i think we will win it. >> it's winning at all costs. >> that means we're going to take advantage of the laws that you guys are taking advantage of. we prefer a different law. we prefer the old limits. we prefer mccain/feingold. >> you can stick with them then but why -- >> no, we're play by the same rules you are playing with and we will win. you can opt out if you want. i was the first person ever to opt out of public financing, and i'm not sorry that we did it because we raised millions of dollars in grassroots ordinary people's campaign and there were limits on what people could give and that's the problem.

i don't think money is equal to free speech and i don't think a corporation is a person and the supreme court has debased itself making these ridiculous decisions not based in law. >> but you'll take advantage of all the different things you don't believe in? >> sure, we'll take advantage of all the things we have to do in order to beat the republicans. >> governor dean, i have heard from bigtime democrats who have come in and offered criticism on that as well, that if there's ever a time to be principled it's when you hold the white house and you can take the principled stand, if not now, when? >> there's a lot of talk about that. unfortunately the law is the law and we have to compete within the law. just as ge has to take advantage of a lot of tax exemptions that they have, we have to take advantage of the laws that are -- the law of the land. >> they're only a 49% owner now. and, by the way, you're a contributor, so once again -- >> that's true. >> -- your hand's out and yet you are still biting it, the one that feeds you, that's not good. it's only 49% of that huge paycheck. >> i'm a stockholder in general

electric, i think it's a good company. >> i love to eat, too, i love comcast, i love them all. >> howard, what do you think really happens next? you mentioned that we do have some big states that are coming up in the next week? >> i think romney has a tough week ahead, louisiana, alabama, mississippi, kansas i expect to -- i expect santorum to win kansas, so this is not going to be a nice week. i can understand why he wants to get people out now, that's not going to happen. i think he's going to win, but he's got at very rough road between here and tampa. >> all right, governor dean, thank you. and hope to see you in here in studio very soon. >> thank you. >> okay. all right. let's head to new orleans. andrew has made his way to the big easy for the tulane 2012 m & a conference, andrew? >> hey, joe. we're going to be coming back in just a moment with peter weinberg, the co-founder of peroleaa weinberg, and we've got a lot more to talk about

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introducing gold choice. the freedom you can only get from hertz to keep the car you reserved or simply choose another. and it's free. ya know, for whoever you are that day. it's just another way you'll be traveling at the speed of hertz. we're back this morning, thursday morning.

broadcasting live from new orleans at the tulane m&a conference and i'm joined by peter weinberg, the co-founder of perella weinberg, former partner of goldman sachs, has a lot of views about what's going on in the m&a world, and good morning to you. >> good morning. >> i always think of m&a as the great barometer of confidence in the border and not necessarily the market and you would think and we've had this conversation before that we should have seen a lot more dealmaking given the cash on the balance sheet, given all the different metrics out there and yet m&a activity on the whole does not seem to be moving at all, in fact, i was at a dinner last night and everybody seemed to be quite depressed here. >> yeah, i mean, there are lots of statistics that would suggest that we should have activity and we've all been saying for some time that we would. tons of corporate cash. there's a lot of unspent lbo capital. very low interest rates. i mean, everything would all tell you that it would be very active, but it isn't. so, the question is what's new? we feel pretty strongly that there's going to be a u.s.-led resurgence in m&a activity in

the latter part of this year and early next year. >> would you have said the same thing a year ago? >> no, actually, i've not been very positive, in a number of situationing i've been actually quite negative about m&a activity. but there's a number of things that are different. number one, the whole shareholder texture right now is completely different. shareholders and big institutions are requiring growth, and there's not a lot of growth left in the u.s. based on increased productivity. so, that's really -- that's really an important part of it. also the u.s. is becoming on a relative basis quite strong. the u.s. is not in itself you wouldn't say strong, but rell stiff relative to -- >> by strong, do you mean europe? >> we think there are three areas to purchase. now versus 2008-'9. 2008-'9 people were paralyzed, now there's some very, very strong companies and great companies that we think will

capitalize on their strength. they can do that in europe which they ought to be able to buy at attractive levels. they can buy in the emerging markets which is expensive and yet it gives them growth that i talked about and they can buy in the u.s. to consolidate. >> you are advising the fdic, we're supposed so see the big bank stress test, the results of those next week. how important are those? >> i think that's very, very important. and i'll tell you why. in 2009, when the fed executed the stress tests and then came out and told people what the results were, it gave the market an enormous amount of confidence and the banks were able to raise hundreds of billions of dollars of equity which was really pretty amazing because that happened shortly after the bottom in march of '09. so, it's supposed to be next week when the stress tests are coming out and i think there are a number of different parts of that that are interesting. number one is how transparent will they be? many of the banks don't want transparency, i think the fed is inclined to exercise transparency, i think that's one thing.

and then the other question really is how permissive will they be to the strong banks to pay dividends and buy back stocks? >> right. is there a big loser in this? >> i think some of the stressed banks if they are required, one is that there's a lot of transparency, and so they open up their kimono to the world and they're required to issue equity, i think that will be very difficult. >> right. goldman sachs, you were practically a family member, if you will, john, your name is synonymous with the firm. you look at what's happened to goldman sachs, if you were to run the firm, if anyone asked you, what would you do at this point? >> i'm not sure. i mean -- i'm not sure i'd do anything really differently. i think that that firm is an excellent institution. i think they're taking body blows every day. but i think what they're doing is they're just trying to put forward -- they're trying to keep to their mission and to keep moving forward, both on the client side and the market-making side and doing that in the face of the attacks that they're under from

regulators from shareholders and from everyone else is really quite difficult. >> you are in the boutique business. you are out of the conflict business. you are part of the marketing position of the firm is we're not one of the big banks, we're not goldman sachs in many ways, so i wonder if you are goldman sachs, what you do about that in this environment? >> well, i think -- i think goldman sachs has something very important, which is their culture and their history. and i think that they are, you know, going forward i think that it's important that they bring that together, which i think they're doing. and i think it's -- but it's hard. you know, to sit here on the outside and say, hey, they should do this, you know, that's a tough question. >> big banks. you guys have tried to differentiate yourself from the bigger banks. i'm curious, do you see that as a trend? i mean, we now see that there are so many bankers have left the big banks and are trying to do what you're doing now. >> yeah. i think the -- right now just precisely the way we look at it is that the boutiques have about

a 10% market share which is not really a very large market share, all the boutiques, and when i say that, i mean of revenues, which is really a better measure than deal volume and that includes restructuring and that includes m&a and that includes bespoke private capital market. so, i don't think that's go togitogi 50% but it could certainly go to 20%. so we think the boutique market will double over the next three to five years. >> peter, we'll have to leave it there. before we go, i need to give you this as a present. but i thank you for being here with us this morning. >> thank you. >> becky, it's been fun. back to you. >> all right. andrew, thank you very much. we're going to get back to andrew in just a little bit. in the meantime we should let you know the european central bank as you know it was coming up with the announcement on interest rate decisions. it did leave the interest rates unchanged at 1%. this comes after the bank of england earlier this morning also left rates unchanged at 0.0

percen 0.5 percent. you see the dow futures are up by 0.8 percent. s&p futures up better than eight points and it's coming with this growing sense of optimism that greece will get the debt deal passed one way or the other. whether it triggers credit default swaps or not. you can see the cac-40 in paris is up by almost 2% this morning and the dax in germany is up over 2%. still to come on this thursday morning we have the weekly jobless claim numbers that could move the market ahead of the february jobs report tomorrow. plus, phil ackman is taking time to talk business in the big easy. we'll head back to tulane and speak to the activist investor about where he's putting his money to work. "squawk box" will be right back. 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.

♪ i don't like it when the animals drowned out someone -- >> did you request this one? >> yeah. i did request that we just really let the animals -- let's take a look at the stocks to

watch. like so many artists in hollywood. apple, goldman sachs has raised its price target for apple to $660 from $600, $660 from $600. only $533 on the stock which we know is the most valuable company i don't know if you would say in the world necessarily, but in this country in terms of market cam it is. navistar, the truck and engine maker cutting its 2012 profit forecast to $425 to $525. it had been to $575 citing higher health care costs as well as trouble at a brake supplier. american eagle raised to conviction buy. and i've said this before, goldman sachs ought to change that. you know, goldman sachs should not be giving companies a conviction buy, right? just get rid of the whole conviction -- >> what was the sentence? >> raised its -- no, six months,

six-month price target from 19 to 18. jpmorgan had its earnings estimate raised by morgan stanley. this all smells bad to me, jpmorgan, morgan stanley, how do they raise the price target? though were allowed since they were separated long ago. some people think they should get back together for the signage. and williams-sonoma earned $1.14 a share, on better than expected sales and smithfield food s earned 59 cents a share, that's the world's largest hog and pork producer. >> you said somoa. >> i almost did, sonoma. >> it reminds me of the girl scout cookies. coming up another exclusive interview. ♪ from the tulane m&a conference. i said i liked it when the

animal gets to drown it out not when it gets louder. louder. louder. andrew is going to sit down with -- i still hear her, with pershing square's bill ackman. and we'll talk to both sides of the aisle congresswoman maxine water s congressman scott garret join us when "squawk box" comes back. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 let's talk about fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 there are atm fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 account service fees.

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getting america back to work, the house expected to vote on a house bill to remove barriers to small business investment, we'll talk to democratic congresswoman maxine water and republican congressman scott garrett. and breaking economic data on the jobs front. weekly jobless claims due at 8:30 a.m. eastern, we'll have the data and a preview of tomorrow's employment report. the new face of the corporate raider. we're in new orleans on bourbon street at the old ackman house, we'll talk to bill ackman about the future of activism as the third hour of "squawk box" begins live from new orleans right now. ♪

welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc, first in business worldwide. i'm joe kernen along with becky quick, andrew ross sorkin we'll talk to in a second, he's in new orleans at the 2012 m&a conference and will join us in a moment. our guest host is judd gregg, former senator and governor of new hampshire and an adviser to goldman sachs international. we're going to check u.s. equity futures because -- there they are, up 100. but mcdonald's just is out with its february same-store sales. and for february, global, 7.5%. sounds like a good number, but 8.3% was the number that analysts were looking for, so it's a little low. >> it's because of weakness in the asia-pacific, middle east, and africa and because of europe. and asianb%g

they say that consumers still were responding favorably to the regions, blah blah blah. in the united states, listen to this, they were up 11.1%, part of it was because of filet-o-fish, i haven't seen it mentioned in quite a while. >> 7.7 was the estimate. >> chicken mcbites and file filet-on-fish. >> i'm off it again and i'm back on the wagon. >> i want a filet-o-fish. >> they make a double, like, 900 calories i think. >> what type of fish? >> i think it used to be cod. >> from the ocean. wendy's points that out. wendy's goes to great lengths to say this is what we use and the -- >> i'll look it up. i'll find out. >> it might be fluke or

something. it may be the ones that lies on its side with two eyes. >> flounder? >> i don't know. i don't know. >> fluke is a summer flounder. >> how did you know that? >> i fish. yeah. >> that's great. >> fish, fir. okay, go ahead, you take it away. >> you go. let's get to the other headlines aig shares are lower this morning, the treasury is selling $6 billion in aig stock. the insurer itself is planning to buy up to half of that amount, of course, that leaves still $3 billion in shares coming to the market and all of it would end up cutting the government's stake to 70% from the current 77%. and in europe as we mentioned the bank of england and the ecb both leaving the key interest rates unchanged. that was just what the market was expecting. the ecb president mario draghi is going to be holding a news conference at 8:30 a.m. eastern time. he's expected to put the pressure on european governments to fight the crisis. we'll be monitoring the news conference and bring you any developments as they happen.

and we're watching greece this morning, today, of course, is the deadline for bondholders to tell athens if they will accept the deal for restructuring the debt. major banks and pension funds have supported the deal to cut 100 billion euros which means the losses will come in at around 74% of their investments. the european equities at this hour, take a look right now, you will see that they're indicated higher. of course, the dow indicated up triple digits at this point. in europe you see gains of 2% in germany, similar gains in paris. and right now if you take a look at the euro, it's trading at 132.48. >> it's an unbelievable story. it's alaskan pollack and/or hokey. but back in '62 in a heavily roman catholic area of cincinnati, a franchise owner decided to use it. and he bet ray crock, ray crock said, fine, use two kinds of nonmeat sandwiches on fridays in lent, and came up with some gross pineapple thing.

grilled pineapple called a hula burger and the other guy said, okay, we'll see which is better and the filet-o-fish kicked total butt. >> it was released during lent. >> hokey? >> hokey and alaskan pollack, battered fish on a steamed bun. we got to get back to andrew. all right, let's down to andrew, he's at tulane's 2012 m&a conference, and he joins us with another very special guest. hey, andrew? >> hey, beck, i'm here with bill ackman of pershing square. always great to have you on the show. seeing you here in the big easy is a lot of fun. i have a lot to talk about but you piqued my interest minutes ago when you were talking about mcdonald's same-store sales, you hinted that you liked the fast food business, and when bill ackman said you like something, maybe you are actually looking at something. >> we are big shareholders in wendy's in 2005, we convinced

them to spinl o off tim horton' and we owned mcdonald's over a fairly long period of time. >> you are not in mickey ds now, are you? >> no, we're not. but i like a business when you charge a royalty other people's sales, and 8% or 9% in rent, you are getting 13% or 14% of gross revenues in stores and every time they sell a coke, mcdonald's makes 14 cents. >> but you like the way they're managed. should we be seeing bill ackman's name next to you -- >> i probably wouldn't tell you if i liked something in advance of my buying it because that would be a bad idea. >> in the news this morning, i want to get to this, you used to be the owner of border's -- >> the worst investment. >> i apologize. but you probably saw on "the wall street journal" the anti-trust settlement potentially on the table around

the book sellers that the big publishers and apple in terms of setting the price. and i'm curious as someone who has been in the business and seen how hard that business is to work, does this make a lot of sense to you? >> look, i think the publishers have had a tough go largely because amazon has taken so much share in the business and with the kindle they set a price point of, you know, $999 which they tried to enforce and i think that puts a lot of pressure on the publisher. i don't know what if anything apple has done. but i think it's a good thing that there's an apple and an ipad and people read books. and it's interesting that they're attacking apple which -- >> well, they're attacking apple and the book publishers which are in a horrible position the most part these days because they may get in trouble for colluding trying to prop up the prices they have left. >> if you think of a book, it's an incredible deal, $10, $11, $12, whatever the number is, you get hours and hours of entertain. the price of book x have

basically gone straight down over the last whatever period of time, it seems like an interesting area for the anti-trust authorities to be concerned about. i think it's important that there is competition for amazon otherwise they'll have the whole market and they'll raise prices. >> we'll have christine varmi on later in the day and we'll talk to her about it. formerly with the anti-trust department of the government. ron johnson running jcpenneys and former apple guy, your guy, you brought him in. when are we going to see the real turn in that business? you're now on the board. >> ron started november 1st, january 25th he made this incredible presentation, pier 57 in manhattan, a couple hours -- it was really a great show and something worth seeing. even if you are not interested in jcpenney, if you are interested in retail, he talked a lot about the department store business, from november 1st to january 25th he rolled out new brands, new marketing, new pricing strategy, new strategy

of how the store is going to be laid out, comprised of 100 shops as he talks about it and, you know, that the company will be transformed over a four or five-year period, that's basically what he laid out. >> how much patience will you have? >> enormenormous. >> does that mean we can do losses, we had a fourth quarter loss. >> i wouldn't credit ron with the fourth quarter of jcpenney because he didn't join the company until november 1st and the quarter ends in february. but the company very publicly came out and said we'll earn $2.16 adjusted for the year. i don't think we'll have two years of losses. the question is how quickly is the customer going to understand the new pricing and the promotion, that will take some time when you make that kind of change. the company has said publicly, you know, that sales were down for the first month of february. that's something that's expected when you have customers used to a very promotion-driven strategy. and one thing he can't do yet is new product. all right. it takes time to get new

product. new product is not really coming into the store until really the fall. but the good news is, i'd much rather have a down february without the right product, probably the lowest sales month of the year, the most important part of the year at the end of the year and that's when he'll start to have the new product in store. the customer will have eight, nine, ten months of understanding the message, you know, what i love about these guys is how quickly they respond to experience. >> you have your finger on the pulse of the economy through a lot of these businesses including jinclude including jcpenney, where are you at right now, project out 12 months? >> i'll try to give a differentiated view. i think there's a decent chance that we massively outperform expectations. >> you're with joe. 30% is his number. >> 30% gdp growth? >> no, no, no. 30% on the dow. i think it's the dow, joe, right? 30% on the dow. >> that's on my wish list, andrew. bill remembers this, he was probably in college, but the three days back -- three years

back in the mid-'90s where people just don't think it could ever happen again. i'm just sort of wishful when we had three years in a row, bill, of 30% plus. and when you mentioned that to someone the idea of even one year there's so much disbelief and skepticism that maybe the time is right for that eventually happening. that's my only point. >> yeah, i think it's very possible. and the reason for that is, you know, i think the housing's really the big question mark, right? and i think you started to see and we have the benefit, you know, on the board of the howard hughes corporation we own 7,000 acres of land, you know, residential land in las vegas of all places, probably the worst market in the country, starting to see some glimmers on the part of home builders are putting down deposits and we own land in houston which has been a very, very strong market. and my view is you have housing prices down 30% to 50%. you have interest rates down 30% to 40% from where they were call

it five years ago. so, the effective cost of owning a home is the lowest it's ever. rental rates, the apartment rates are trading at low yields because rates have gone up 7%, 8%, 9% per anum, so it's cheap to own a home versus an apartment you rent. the reason people haven't stepped up to buy homes because they are afraid of losing their jobs. >> warren buffett said you should go out and buy as many homes as you can. have you done that? >> i haven't, but it's a great sort of opportunity. to finish the thesis if i can. once unemployment stabilizes which i think we are headed in the right direction, all of a sudden people feel comfortable buying home and i think once they start buying homes again and the prices start to tick off the bottom as opposed to every time it's cheaper or you look and you miss it and it goes up in value, i think you can see a snapback much as you saw in

march of '09 stocks went down every day and no one was interested and then they turned and there's no liquidity on the way up. i think the housing market can be similar, a lot of the volume and inventory has been taken out and, you know, particularly if you look at this on a market-by-market basis, i wouldn't be surprised by how it would turn. i think it's a great investment. i think a lot of people -- i gave a speech maybe a year ago, maybe 18 months ago saying, look, the best opportunity i can see is to go out and buy homes and rent them. you can earn 9%, 10%, 11% yields in a lot of markets, i think fannie mae should do it, stop selling foreclosed homes. >> you are saying they should buy? >> no, keep the foreclosed assets and fix them up and rent them and become a big residence been reit and own homes. that will immediately stabilize the housing market. >> if fannie and freddie aren't watching, they should be. are you doing anything about it? you said you are not buying single family homes yourself, is

there a play for pershing? >> we own fortune brand homes and security, this is a spinoff of the fortune brands company. a year and a half ago we encouraged management to separate their spirit business. >> which you also own. >> shareholder. >> from the home products business, and the home products business is probably generating a third of the cash flow it would if the housing market recovered. so, that's a nice -- we'll participate as the market recovers i think. >> do we care about greece at all? and i ask it given what's happening today, we are going to find out at 3:00 p.m. whether a deal is really to be had. but in the larger context of what's going on in the u.s. economy, should we be worried every morning about what's happening across the pond? >> look, i think greece is priced into the world. i think the bigger risk is, you know, if what happens in greece becomes the -- you know, if every big sovereign decides to renegotiate its obligations, it's going to put a lot of pressure on the banking system,

particularly in europe in places where they own a lot of sovereign debt and that's what they are trying to prevent. our approach is it's very difficult to predict what will happen in the world, so let's find businesses that are insulated from what's going on in the world, everything we own has some degree of economic, you know, will be affected by changes in the economy, there are businesses that will be resilient regardless of what is going in greece or portugal. >> judd gregg is our guest host. sitting in our seat to keep it warm. do you have a question for mr. ackman? >> yes, i was wondering in this issue of single family hopes, how do you factor in the demographic shift? we're going from 35 million retired people to 70 million retired people, the baby boom generation, the largest generation, the generation that basically drove the homeowner market in the '70s, '80s, '90s and into the 2000s and the generation has gone through a massive change because it's the first generation retiring without a defined contribution plan which took a huge hit in

2008, so all these folks are trying to retrench and rebuild their asset base and they don't like to buy a home, they would actually like to try to get rid of the home they're in. that means they've been the engine of this economy for three decades. do you factor that at all into this home buying atmosphere? because it seems to me they would not have the same energy to buy homes that we've seen back in the '80s and '90s? >> well, i think on the other end, other side of things, we have, you know, new household formation which is i think, you know, a couple million new households a year, million and a half, something like that, and there's 500,000 new homes being created. there are a lot homes that are being destroyed or effectively being destroyed by the whole, you know, foreclosure process. at a certain point in time, they rip up the plumbing, water gets  to wipe it out. and my sense of supply and demand is household formation is beating out new supply and that's really kind of the big driver. and i also think a lot of

retirees it's a great time to go and, you know, move to arizona or florida and buy an incredibly cheap home. you got to live somewhere. you want to pay rent or do you want to pay tax deductible interest on a mortgage buying a home at a discount to replacement cost in, you know -- if you think about the markets where the housing market got hit the worst, you know, arizona is certainly one of them. las vegas is certainly one of them. those are very nice places to retire. if i were a retiree on a limited income, i would move to places like las vegas and arizona, phoenix. >> that's certainly a good point, because the geographic shift, though, meanwhile that you're going to have large housings not being purchased in places like the midwest where you see the baby boom generation as you move as you say to arizona and florida? >> look, i think it's a function of, you know, where the job growth is in terms of whether people will take their places and whether they can, they can afford to move. i think detroit has a long way to go. you can buy some really cheap housing in detroit, but, you know, i think the -- the seeds of the recovery of the u.s.

economy and the housing market and different markets is, you know, when housing prices become really cheap and land is free, all of a sudden that market becomes a much more competitive place to open a business. >> explain this, though, you used to be an owner and i was just looking through the filings, you used to be an owner of lowe's which you think would be a participant in this great reemer jenls gence of housing. >> sure. >> and you are no longer an owner of lowe's, why? >> the way we run pershing, half of the portfolio are jcpenney, canadian pacific, companies we've taken a big stake we are looking to help make the business more valuable and the other half of our portfolio is cash and sort of passive, cheap, value investments and lowe's became very, very cheap at a point in time last year, we bought it. and then the stock went to 25 or 26, we needed capital for a stake we were building in canadian pacific and we sold it. we use the liquid passive investment as a source of cash

for the active investments that offer more return. we've made 85% of our profits over time investing in big chunky positions and making them more valuable and a relatively smaller amount in the passive places we put capital. >> bill, we'll have to leave it there at the moment. thank you for it. becky, you there? >> andrew, yeah, i am here. thank you, it was a great interview. bill, thank you. >> appreciate it, very, very much. when we come back, we'll get weekly jobs numbers, and we'll bring you the numbers and a preview of tomorrow's employment report. and up next phil lebeau has a manufacturing report from washington. bill? >> reporter: hi, becky, we're sat seattle. here at omek they make water jet precision cutting machines. come over here. we'll show you what they are working on here. when "squawk box" returns we'll talk about the lack of hiring when it comes to manufacturing right after this.

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welcome back to "squawk box." the manufacturing sector is

showing some strong employment growth in a tough job market. cnbc's phil lebeau joins us with more on this story, hey, phil. >> reporter: hey, becky, there is a manufacturing boom going on in this country. we are here at omek, and they make water jet precision cutting machines. they are increasingly complex and high tech. they are making a little something for us here. look inside here. this will show you what the machines do, they sell them to manufacturers, aviation, auto industry, oil services, all of those. and what we're seeing in the manufacturing sector, take a look at this. there is a huge increase in the number of job openings when it comes to manufacturing. 264,000 manufacturing openings in this country. there is only 100,000 2 years ago. manufacturers at omek are frustrated by a lack of skilled applicants and that's why they are not filling out the jobs and they are increasingly looking at

jobs that require technical ability. they are struggling to find these employees. they offer employees here referral bonuses of several hundred dollars to attract workers and the workers say they cannot get enough people in here quick enough because they're forced to work overtime. >> we've brought in new equipment. a lot of cnc machinery, highly skilled people are required to operate it. our business volume has increased about that same amount of overtime, and we're working two full shifts here. five and six days a week. occasionally we'll work on a sunday to try to keep up with the business that we have going on right now. >> reporter: maybeck also looking to hire workers. in fact, it is now offering bounties, bounties, for workers in welding positions, even at that rate, the president of mazak is frustrated right now. >> we can't wait for a long-term

program. we've got to get product out the door, so we've got to move quickly. and offering bounties was one of the fastest ways we could -- we could go in order to attract people into our welding programs. >> reporter: quickly take a look at the s&p industrial machinery index, it is up 23% in the last 5 years. guys, we're back live at mazak in seattle, look what they made for us, guys, a cnbc logo. >> not bad. >> reporter: this gives you an idea what the machines do. obviously they made the logo for us, guys, they make things like gears, special wrenches for different manufacturers. manufacturers buy these machines and, again, it's high-tech and complex machinery. that's what manufacturing is about right now. and that's the reason these companies are struggling to find enough workers to fill all the positions that are needed. >> hey, phil, where's the shortfall? is it that the programs don't exist or is it that they can't find people to get into these programs and how long does it take to train someone like a

welder? >> reporter: the shortfall is that they don't have the technical know-how and to train them costs a lot of money. and then after that, they've got to convince people there's a future in manufacturing. what you're finding right now when you talk with manufacturers, they talk to applicants and people say, well, i'm going to be in a dusty, dirty factory, i don't want to do that. this is not a dusty, dirty factory, this is the new face of manufacturing in the u.s. >> phil, you are not qualified. if you put in an application, they would say, no, there is no one that would pay anything to get you working there probably? >> reporter: if i came in here, i would not know how to work this machine, i guarantee that. i have a college education, you wouldn't be able to do it, joe. >> they would look at me and say, sorry, i might be able to sweep up or something like that. >> how long does it take to go through a program like that, when you think about unemployment at 8.3%, is it a program that takes a year, two years to come out of? >> reporter: it depends on the company. for mazak they are looking for welders right now. they don't have time to be training people.

they need welders who can do specific welding jobs. this is not like you can have a robot come in and do welding. that is not spot welding. it is a skill. it's a skill that people have to have, and that's why they are offering $2,500 bounties. >> thank you, phil. weekly jobless claim numbers in a few minutes, take a look at the data while we go to break. [ male announcer ] what if you had thermal night-vision goggles, like in a special ops mission? you'd spot movement, gather intelligence

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welcome back to "squawk box." seconds away from the release of the continuing claims. initial claims move from a slightly upward revised 354,000 up to 362,000. of course, last week's 354 as it stands originally is at 351. let's look at the continuing claims and all the initials were pulling behind us. they move from a slight le revised to 3.06 million to 3.461 million. still hovering in the zone. and even though 362,000 is higher, you know, we are living in a neighborhood that we haven't lived in in terms of

claims in about four years going back to the spring of '08. i know that we have popped up a bit off of those lower levels. the response in the marketplace, well, not dissimilar to the response of many economic fundamentals of late. the marketplace very little. 2% before data, and 2% after data. dow futures, that's about the same place it now stands. the news of the day, of course, is going to be, you know, reshuffling the deck on greece and hopefully not having to reshuffle the deck for portugal and spain and all the other countries that are in the corner taking notes on this process. back to you. >> yeah, we had the eu ambassador on and i was asking him about that. it is. good.eái)1ç7 springtime in europe. for more on the data let's get to steve liesman and, steve, what do you got? you want to talk to judd? >> yeah.

i got a bunch of things. rick mentioned this issue continuing claims which we say every week is 3.41 million this time around up 10,000, but i want to pay attention to the total number of people that are on claims here. we have -- what we measure every week, the 362, and by the way, that may be a more normal number because we actually had winter the last couple of weeks rather than the last one which were probably affected as were the unemployment numbers by the better-than-expected weather. but there are still 7.5 million americans that are receiving continuing claims in some form or another. and i just brought some charts along. the first one should show you the level. you can see -- that's not the first one. that's the second one. it's the percent change year over year. it's falling at about an 18% clip year over year over having gone up 200%. and less than half the total, still 7.5 million americans.

the reason is because there were four, five, six different programs out there by which americans receive continuing claims. tier one, two, three, four are extended, programs for veterans that come home. i want to know your opinion about these things. is it perhaps to wean some americans from unemployment claims? >> yes. and the problem is that we've created instead of a safety net, we've created a disincentive net. basically we're seeing to people, especially people who are single and sort of foot loose, you know, you can stay on unemployment for 99 weeks and we're going to pay you and there's really not a whole lot incentive for you to get off because the job you go into probably won't pay you much more than you're getting on unemployment. what we need to do is have a track here where we slowly like a waterfall say to these folks, listen, at 50 weeks you're going to have to start going through training. at, you know, 60 weeks you got to prove that the training -- you got to certify that you've done the training. and then if you can't find a job in the economy because the training you received there's no job out there, then you get the

opportunity to stay on, but you don't stay on simply because you're physically there, not able to find a job. >> there's talk among economists that the amount of unemployment claims is keeping the unemployment rate higher than it should be. >> people want to talk about what it means for tomorrow, it's the survey week, and we had an incredibly low reading in jobless claims, it won't change the message that we'll get a pretty positive report tomorrow. there have been a lot of research studies done in to whether the exist edges of these claims for so long for 99 weeks in some cases is raising the unemployment rate. most studies point to maybe half a percent, less than a full percentage point increasing, so it's not a factor. it may be put been upward pressure on it, not a game changer, though. >> rick, how would you do it? would you end them all tomorrow, or is that just a dumb question? >> listen, you heard phil say that they can't find people that want to put in the effort at those companies. i tell you what, no one will have the intestinal fortitude to

attack this issue if they have safety nets all around them. listen, steve, it's a weird question, and i know it probably means little, have you ever -- to some extent when you work for somebody, you pay in for these benefits. have you ever taken jobless benefits ever? >> i never have. >> i never have. i don't know anybody who has until very recently, which means this crisis is worse -- >> on the other hand -- >> wait, let me finish. you know, all theems stthese studies that are done, just like the studies that identify quantitative easing, okay, i think it's the same analogy that many in politics say, well, ignore this study about energy because it's sponsored by exxon, or ignore this study, you know, on health benefits or negatives of smoking because it's done by the cigarette companies. >> right. >> do you know what, i guess i suspect all research has a bisass,b bias -- my daughter lives on the west coast. young people pool their

resources. i know you will. young people pool their resources and they rent things and they can live like that for years that way. >> there's an excellent conservative argument about government programs and it goes as follows, senator gregg, tell me if i'm wrong. not that you shouldn't start a government program because it's not needed now, you shouldn't start a government program because once the need is done for it, you will never end it. and i wonder if that's where we are right now. >> i thought that was pretty much with regard to jobless claims. >> jobless claims, that's the point. >> the 99 weeks extended unemployment. >> i think you can make a case in the very difficult job market that we spend some of our wealth to help people that couldn't find jobs. the question is when do you get to the point, how do you get to that point to end it in the right way? >> and the other part of the problem is it's not a solution to a structural problem with people who have lost jobs that are not coming back. it is happening, though, we've already moved from 99 weeks and the latest extension pulled it

down. it is happening as we see improvement in the labor markets, the programs are starting to contract a little bit. is it in uf? there's an argument they should be doing more for people. >> let's put the chart back up, guys. the second chart you put up, and tell me if you think that decline is steep enough. look at that. and if i showed you the jobless claims, the actuals, it's coming down. you would think in a better job market putting up 200,000 that decline of continuing claims should be faster. i am not saying that things are enough, we're paying people too much money. i'm not saying that. >> watch this tomorrow morning, even if we're adding more payrolls, if you look at long-term unemployment, the share of the long-term unemployed in the labor force, those figures are not moving. and these are the people who are collecting some of those benefits. >> the bottom line you cannot have a market-oryeiented econom if you have a structurally unemployed economy which is running around 6% or 7%, you can't run that economy because

you're going to have to move too aggressively through a social welfare state. so, you've got to create an atmosphere where that 7% or 6% comes down and what we have is a government now that basically creates an atmosphere where we are trying to create a structurally unemployed economy and it's not going to work. >> can i mention by the way, the mcdonald's global sales figures, this might be related. i'm not sure it is. mcdonald's put out february numbers, what did it show, 11% year on year of same-store sales in the u.s. only 4% in europe. the real story is, yeah, the u.s. is holding in there okay, this is consistent with this jobs message, but we're starting to see less and less support from abroad and that reverses the story that has been the case in this recovery so far. >> they blamed the weakness in asia pacific and the middle east on the chinese lunar new year. i didn't quite understand. >> when china reports its indicators like -- tonight our time, they combined january and february to try and account and smooth some of this out.

so that may have something to do with it. but it's consistent with the acceleration we saw at the end of last year. >> the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource and stimulating more force in government and then in crisis and then once a cry sis is passed a state power rece a little but it never goes back to where it was. the ratchet effect. >> the argument you don't start the programs is you never end them. >> but do you think we shouldn't have any jobless benefits? >> no, but now is an interesting time when we're creating 200,000 jobs a month, when the unemployment rate seems to be declining that we should have a debate about the appropriate way to end the things. >> all government moves left incrementally and impressively in the last four years it moves left. >> we got to go.

>> you basically have to -- >> we'll do it in the santelli exchange. we'll have something fun about these interpretations. make sure you tune in about 11:30. >> 11:30. i do. i do. i wait for that. >> did you tease 8:30 at 11:30? is there a symmetry, joe, are you upset about this? >> no. >> doesn't it make you angry, joe? >> when rick goes off without any sensors, that's why i tune in at 11:00. it's what i want to see. >> okay. when we come back, the house expected to vote on a jobs bill today that would remove some of the barriers to small business investment. this is actually bipartisan legislation, we'll talk to representatives maxine waters and scott garrett, they'll be joining united states right after this.

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welcome back, everyone. this morning the house will wrap up its debate and vote on the much anticipated jobs act. joining us with more on this is representative scott garrett, the chairman of the capital subcommittee and maxine waters the ranking mej of the subcommittee, and representatives, welcome to both of you this morning. representative garrett, why don't you start off and talk a little bit about what's in the jobs act and what you hope it will accomplish. >> okay, the bill that we started yesterday and hopefully we'll finish this today is essentially pretty bipartisan piece of legislation. it's the jobs act, jump-start our business sector now.

has a number of pieces to it. in essence what it does is to try to help that start-up company to be able to grow to the point that they need to and then go public. right now it's extremely burdensome for a company to get over that leap if you will, over that edge, of going from a private company to a public company because there's so many regulations, and if you look at the statistics on this in saying that a few years ago you had almost 600 companies doing ipos every year and it dropped down to well under 200 all because of regulations and impediments, what have you, we tried to get together on this and tried to do it in a way to encourage the companies to go public with the jobs act. >> representative waters, this is something that the white house has said has real opportunity. it's also gotten steve case to sign off on it and mr. case, of course, is the former aol founder who is now heading up a panel for the president. what do you think about this plan? >> well, i think it's good. as you know, it's bipartisan.

there are some things that worry me a bit and i tried to make an amendment or so. nrd to make su in order to make sure we could protect the investors. but the whole idea of job creation and capital formation is something we're all focused on. we want to create jobs. we want to stimulate this economy and so the bills include funding and ways that ipos can start up without certain regulations, registering with the s.e.c. these are ideas that we've all decided to move forward with, even if we have a few reservations about this, and i hope the senate will join with us and help to close a few of the loopholes like i've been focused on making sure that there is the proper separation of the research with the ipo start-ups and from those who are underwriting for the ipos. so, i think that we've come together around good ideas, and i think it will help this

economy. i think it's a good bipartisan effort. >> let me ask you this, is this the beginning of a new era in washington where there's going to be lots of bipartisan activity coming up, representative waters? >> well, actually, there are a few of us who work quite well together. it's not always as contentious as the press would have you believe. we'll be able to accomplish more if we can come together around these kinds of ideas. and because we're all so focused on job creation and assistance to small business, this is an area that i think we can work better together on. >> okay. what are some of the other areas that you think there are some real seeds? actually, i'd like to hear from both of you on that. >> well, don't forget, we just came together around the payroll tax exemption. >> after a lot of prodding and a lot of waiting. as. but we did it. >> congressman garrett? >> well, first of all, within our committee and our subcommittee, i think we work fairly well together. we're 14 months into this term right now and we've moved a

number of different bills that we've had general agreement on as maxine has said, some areas around the edge that you won't have unanimous consent on, but we're able to move the bills through the subcommittee and the full committee and even further. i guess the bigger area that we'll need to address in general going forward is the outside the financial services side on the budgetary issues and that sort of thing. payroll tax is one that did get through in a bipartisan manner over some of our objections, but the bigger issue that we'll have to deal with is how do we come to grips with the debt this country is facing in the long term. >> can i follow-up on that? >> sure. >> simpson/bowles was a bipartisan package, it had people who were liberal, people who were progressive signed on in order to serve on the commission. is there any chance, maxine and yourself, could come together and support the commission's proposals and get that moving again so we can get something done on the deficit? >> well, actually, you're talking about a huge effort. >> yeah.

>> there's so much involved in that. and so that's not easy. that's very complicated. if you take a look at simpson/bowles you will find that some of us agree with some of the things. some of us disagreed with some of those things. you really do have to work at a comprehensive response to something like that. so, it's not ever going to be just signed off automatically by either side -- >> but isn't that the point? if i went to a congressional vote at least, an up/down vote, there's something that irritates everybody, because the only way you find something that is truly moving across both party lines and trying to actually address a very difficult problem is probably to tick off just about everybody involved. >> well, of course, that happens. and as you know, when i talk about how huge this is, you're talking about undoing some real safety net programs that people have depended on, and we have to figure out what do we do about that. how do we offer some measure of protection to -- that have had

something to look forward to for a long time and just get rid of it and move on to something else and that's not easy. >> you two have been getting closer always the interview is going on. it is working. it is. at first i thought, you guys had cooties or something, but in "the journal" today, representative waters, it talks about now small is beautiful, this is the best we can hope for in this politically charged environment. but then "the journal" as you can imagine does take a shot at the end that there's literally dozens of bills in the senate that house republicans have passed that would do a lot of these similar things, but they are all stonewalled because they don't include tax increases. is that part of the problem, too? either -- i'd like an answer from either maxine or scott. >> i'll just chime in here first. i think that is part of the problem that goes back to the -- your first question on this. and you saw this actually in the -- in the supercommittee, right? the supercommittee tried to address these issues and

republicans on that committee actually said, went beyond anybody's anticipation on this and said, okay, the republicans in the supercommittee at least, were willing to concede on the issue of taxes to the tune of $250 billion to $260 billion, >> i'll chime in first. i think that is part of the problem. it goes back to your first question on this. and you actually in the super committee. because the super committee tried to address these issues and the republicans on that committee actually said -- went

beyond anybody's anticipation and said republicans at least were willing to concede on the issue of taxes to the tune of $250 billion or $350 billion and tried to reach an accommodation in the senate. and the senate would not be agreeable. the senate failed to even come to the table if you will on the issue of entitlements. the super committee said well give if you help out here and they never came out with a specific plan whicisomhi >> anycoen, ngssma >> as we ae lkg outh, this tratoniliserf1 we need it to get that transportation bill up and out. it will create millions of jobs. and we've never had this this kind of problem before. always, you know, some difficulty, but we come oghef1 opportunities to create jobs dealing with the infrastructure, repairing our schools, constructing new schools, highways, et cetera. so we have to keep moving to see if there's anything we should come together on, it is these real ideas about how to create jobs. yes, they can say this is small. but this is an effort. and i'm very pleased to be a part of it. and as you heard steny hoyer say on the floor yesterday, when some complained about we've heard these bills before, he said there's nothing wrong with a second time around. so we're trying to do job creation and assistance to small business. they have to have the capital. capital formation is extremely important. and i think we should be given at credit for this. >> representatives water and garrett, thank you both very

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let's get down to the new

york stock exchange. carl, melissa and jim join us. i was just going through -- there's a million draghi comments. i haven't had a chance to really pick out the most important one. but for whatever reason, the market is indicated in bounce back mode again from that awful day on tuesday. >> he's not saying whether or not this ltro will be the last ltro. you wouldn't expect him to announce on that one. >> it's amazing to see how the markets react, as if tuesday fefr happ never happened. >> there was a time i felt 60% would be better. now we think it's good. but bernanke, again yesterday. he said we're not going to let this go down the drain. this guy, he is giving will this economy nine lives. weren't you surprised? that was pretty amazing. >> definitely leaning into the wind. we'll talk about some of the fed policy today with liesman, but then again, you look at brazil, rates down to single digits. mcdonald's missing big in europe

today. >> very important. >> and you begin to wonder if we have to start recomputing global growth stories. >> i'm wondering about earnings. mcdonald's is down badly. >> and also asia pacific and middle east. and that's a problem. that fuels tuesday's concerns, although we're not seeing it today. >> does it worry to you see the weakness or can it be written off by stuff like the lunar new year? >> every time you write things off as something that's just a calend calendar shift, we tend to get hit. mcdonald's talking about austerity and commodity costs and labor. you want to see those under control. don't have them. >> how come on this -- how come cramer only has a and i low? can you see that? >> oh, my gosh, you do. >> how perfect is that p. >> you're no angel. >> come on, tell i'm an an

gel. >> do we have devil horns for you, joe? >> that's right. that's work. all right. >> when we come back, final thoughts from our guest host, judd gregg.