ask. we want to thank judd gregg. it's been a pleasure having you today. >> i learned a lot. i was interested in the interview with the two congress people because they can't get to the end here unless they take on the big issues and that means taking on simpsl simpson bols. >> and right now it's time for "squawk on the street." good morning. p welcome to "squawk on the street." david faber is on assignment. future rising on optimism. the four week moving average on jobless claims remaining at a four year low. optimism spilling over to the european trade.

the dax up by 1 pp.7%. >> the road map begins with the markets. crude and gold helping fuel the rebound. optimism over greece asth melis said. we'll go to greece for the latest. >> mcdonald's trading sharply lower. same store sales were the best in the u.s. in more than seven years, but international results missed big. how much is the strong dollar to blame? >> and apple watch continues after it launches the new ipad. $730 a share. goldman ups its target to 660. >> and the forbes list of the world's billionaires is out. many notable newcomers including the founder of underarremor and the investor of spanx. >> stocks looking to extend their winning streak to two after yesterday's 78 point gain

in the dow. the watch is on to see about if tuesday's drop of more than 200 points can be erased. they need about 140 points today on the dow to break enfor the week. and of course comes on a day where the cover of "usa today," i know you think a proxy for sentiment in this country, the bull market today turns three years old. >> i'm finding increasingly -- let's say you want to be bullish. what would make you bullish. how about a terrific stock like mcdonald's. and they come out today and say all the things that i fear. commodity costs going up, the idea that labor costs going up. and at the same time, it's sub text of oil. something i keep thinking where do i hide to buy. and it's tougher than usual. >> and how do you balance the concerns over mcdonald's and international growth. and we had results or forecasts from ge yesterday about international growth remaining in the double digits. for every push, we have a pull

in this market. >> and i think that's what's so tough. ge yesterday, you parse what her saying, they like latin america. but then brazil has 2% gdp growth. i keep coming back to the yin and yan. i need to see the transport suv. i think they'll react negatively to what mcdonald's said. when you want to buy an individual stock, you better get your facts straight. >> as you said, plenty to like and plenty to hate in this market. >> i like to play when things are stable, i like to buy merck because it's one of my favorites. doesn't work. i've had t.j. rogers on the show almost every quarter. doesn't work. so you got to -- you want to play the rally, but you you have to foe whatknow what's going on

underneath. >> it could make you bullish about small caps. if you did in to the result, it's u.s. same store sales harp that were the best in 7 1/2 years. >> warm weather here and very bad winter if europe. i wonder how much of it was weather related. >> so maybe you go back to panera where same store sales continue to gain momentum and it's one of the uniquely american companies that there is an article in the paper today about how they're spending more, they have a big cable ad buy. i think you see acceleration there. so maybe you say i want to go domestic restaurant which would also be whichchipotle. >> beg deadline in greece. are we in a holding pattern? >> twitter says we better be. i think 60% sudden sly is good, not bad. there is momentum there thinking

that some of the banks have decided to comply. >> let's get the latest on greece. michelle caruso-cabrera is live in athens for us. >> reporter: hey, there. we're getting the latest numbers on the greek debt deal from an unlikely source, the prime minister of italy, mario monti, during an interview in serbia said he has been told the participation rate so far is above 60% and is approaching 65%. so incrementally throughout the day, the mums are getting better. 66% is yet another key threshold level which allows the imposition of a collective action clause that would treger cds, a credit default swap event. we're waiting to see if they possibly in any way get to 90%. that would avoid a cdsp here are the other details that you need to know. the can deadline if you want to tender your bonds is 3:00 p.m. eastern time today. that is 10:00 pchl here in

athens, 9:00 p.m. central european time. this deal must happen in order for greece to get its 130 billion euro bailout so it can capitalize its banks. at this point because they don't think they're going to hit 90% participation, it's likely to trigger a credit default swap event, they'll have to do things to force bond holders to go along. the results are come out at 1:00 a.m. eastern time. that's because that is 8:00 a.m. here in athens. once testify's gotten the results from the clearing houses overnight. i had a chance to speak with the previous finance minister of this country, pop cvery well regarded, well spoken. he's in charge of the privatization process that happens here. he sent it message to bond holders who were thinking of

holding out. >> we're hopeful. it is a very good offer to private investors. it's the best offer they'll ever get. and if the offer fails, then we're no longer within the confines of the european decisions. at which point the situation will be much worse for private bond holders. >> if and when this all gets done, think about this. two years ago, we heard nearly every european leader saying there will be no defaults in the eurozone. greece will pay its bills. we're going to to find out in the next 24 hours about that of course turned out to be not to be true as this restructuring looks inevitable. back to you. >> and michelle, regardless of how the results come in this afternoon and tomorrow morning, how closely is this being viewed in greece and what's the mood surrounding this incredibly important deadline? >> the population seems unaware

of just how important it is. absolutely no protests scheduled. what started to happen in the last couple of days is the pension funds here locally and the workers who have these pension funds are discovering they'll loose 50% of their value. they had been told somehow they might be protected. they will not be. and that's beginning to cause consternation because, and here's the thing, the greek government for years forced them to invest in greek bonds via the greek central back because her safer. that turned out of course not to be rutrue. michelle, thank you very much. moving on, the justice department is taking legal aim at apple and five of the nation's biggest book publishers. the doj accuses the companies of colluding to raise the price of electronic books. the street is still upbeat after the new ipad launch.

730 bucks a share, the highest of the street. goldman sachs upping its target to 660. what is odd to me about the fbn note up to 730 is that he said that the new e pad has all the specs that he expected. p so if he has all the specs expected, then why wouldn't that have been baked into the price target? >> there is the element of the ipad 2 at $399. >> now you're talking about the idea that everyone else is shut out. a critical piece -- see, a lot of the negative about the other guys' tablets really not hearing anything great about those. like sony today is in the critical piece. i come back to the idea that this is an ipad for every man, woman and child. you get a lower price. those of us who have ipads were always frustrated about the idea of how to get wireless. you have to wi-fi. this answers that question. it seems like a corporate

product to me. so you have corporations coming in and buying the ipad 3, you have individuals buying the ipad 2. seamless transition to the apple ecosystem. so you get a 15 multiple and you get a $55 fiscal year 2012. next thing you know, you have a 750 target. >> even though your advice last night was not to trade apple, but to invest in apple and own apple. >> thank you, carl. everybody wants to trade around every single data point. what did we really learn in the last decade? stop trading. start owning. and i think that's the right thing to do. >> so your target would be the highest on the street. >> i've been using for my charitable trust 550. i don't want to get ahead of it because i want to use this product. i find that these reports of what people like, if you go back to what they liked and didn't like about the s4, they didn't know the power of siri.

the power of siri turned out to be underestimated. i think that unless you work the device, i can't gets a confident about the 750 number. >> interesting anecdote in the "post" this morning. walter issac sson discussing th first time jobs was introduced to siri. she says they have not assigned me gender. and he said yes that's where he was sold on the technology. >> when she woke me up at 4:00 this morning and told me she lived to serve, frankly, if it's a woman -- never mind. let's not go there. >> melissa points out the justice department and the probe over ebooks, and then there's the samsung litigation. why are they somehow immune to concerns over legal risk? >> they don't care really what price -- i don't think they're the right defendant in this.

>> will that change the business model, will it change the earnings for apple if they raise the prices of books? probably not. the margins are in the iphones, the margins are in the macs, in the ipads. >> mac, which they say they don't care. >> they wanted to drive down the price of music. i think they're a drive downer, pot a stabilizer. i think amazon is really struggling here. >> although amazon shares are trading higher. apple effectively by not lowering the price of the ipad 2 too much and pot launching the 7 inch, they're ceding that space to amazon. >> and i think amazon, a lot of people felt they would have a lower price structure. it was so heavily shorted going into this launch. i think they're scrambling. there was a piece of research that came out earlier this week,

it was a hedge fund survey which said puts and shorts in the last five days in amazon. what would you do if you were short amazon betting on a price reduction and you didn't get it? i think you'd have to cover. >> you don't see apple coming down in a big way in terms of -- something that would present a big opportunity to buy some. >> i wish i did because there's so many people who are still not in. >> in terms of the ancillary trades, some people were saying this morning that apple moving the ipad to 4g will spur spending on infrastructure. apple is one that forces the technology to go along with them. and by help saying 4g lte, that will demand infrastructure be built out. >> beware there's a -- crown kass and he will added to the s&p and people raised their

price. and of course american tower being the king. a quick way to be able to help alleviate some of the pressure versus spectrum. put more trance ponders on the towers, they win. >> forbes is out with its billionaire list. carlos slim on top of the list. notable newcomers include spanx founder sarah blakely and kevin blank, underarm arresarres arun. >> you open any woman's drawer, at least one pair of spanx in there. >> and if you open any man's or women's drawer, you see underarmour. they keep inventing new clothes that athletes like. and i really think that company is blowing through the numbers here and will go through 100.

a big push in the last few days. i did not see your name. >> me? don't start looking at me. we all know when somebody said i'm doing this documentary, they said i would love to see you and cramer go to costco guy. >> i'm a two cart guy. here's why i use two carts. i have a nice sized house. and what you do is you're going to be -- in the documentary, you fill up for the money. you go 12 times a year -- well, holiday season maybe add a couple. and of course you go birthday cakes ability t s and the crab . heavenly. >> i third they have good steaks. >> they have fabulous steaks, but i've cut back on meat. >> we'll talk more retail later. william sonoma out and more on mcdonald's.

meantime, coming up, who is looking to change facebook's business model. and taking another look at futures today, is the fight back in the markets. we're off the highs, but futures up 65. 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. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 and the most dreaded fees of all, hidden fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 at charles schwab, you won't pay fees on top of fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 no monthly account service fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 no hidden fees. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 and we rebate every atm fee. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 so talk to chuck tdd# 1-800-345-2550 because when it comes to talking, there is no fee.

welcome back to "squawk on the street." rick santelli here live on the floor of the cme group and i'm really fired up today. if you listen to mr. draghi, what he says makes a lot of sense. here's a central banker, even though he's expanded his balance sheet a couple trillion euro, he is worried about inflation and he's going to take appropriate action to consider inflation. but the odd man out today in foreign exchange market without a doubt is the yen. whether you look at the dollar-yen, whether you look at the euro-yen you c, the operati currency is the yen. and the japanese are the culture on the financial side that brought you the notion of extended sterilization. same topic we read about being considered maybe in the "wall street journal" today, how well has that worked out well for the japanese? if you look at interest rate,

they are crawling higher. as a matter of fact, the 198, we're about up changed on the ten year. the bund rate isn't much higher when benchmarked against yesterday. and that shouldn't be surprising considering how many months ago did we have march 20th on our calendar. and here we are march 8th looking at these 3:00 p.m. deadlines. i think they should have cut it a bit closer. back to you. >> apple stunned many by introducing its new tablet as the new ipad. the lack of a new name generating a lot of buzz on twitter this morning. lame name of ipad 3. where is the zen? ipad 3, ipads? ipad retina? so imagine take you are apple ceo tim cook. what's your excuse for not coming up with a better name than the new ipad so? we'll share your responses throughout the morning. a little buzz kill. >> i wanted to tell them to

lighten up. he was critical of the way the crowd looked at apple? i mean, it was a down day. >> marketing response has been we wanted to be unpredictablunp surprise you. >> so new ipad is so surprising. >> if you remember two years ago, there were a lot of jokes about ipad, feminine hygiene, and that turned out to be the greatest product that they've ever had in terms- >> the 4s came out of nowhere. >> and when you take a look at a mac, it's not a mac 7 or whatever the generation is. it's just mac. so ipad. ity waanyway, we want to hear fm you. >> in set is such a kick. i just have to say it. i'm sensing the good assignment as we get to the bell again. it's been so exciting every day. we get here and you have a great

company that's been on fire. and there is -- i've been trying to tweet some behind the scenes. is this electric for us. i still find it a tremendous kick. >> and tremendous to see all the bell ringers walk past on the way up to the balcony before they ring. >> tom with the great interview because he was change talking about the change in demographic. how children may not be being born as much as used to, but adults need depends. >> so both sides. >> a floor broker said you guys are now it, the center of the action. kind of true. >> i would go along with that absolutely. >> of course we're one day before the february employment report. cramer, though, is on the job this morning. his mad dash is next. it does look like we have another bounce here this morning. the dow looking at 62 points at

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we kick off mad dash. >> up sides head. this is johnson & johnson, has a competitive drug, basically saying we can't afford pot to give the patients who have this prostate cancer this new drug. wow. that was unexpected entirely.

no one thought they would unblind the study. >> so down 13%. >> j&j is a powerful company. >> it's cheaper. we hit the ceo on that point. it this will cost a lot more money and he said we're pricing it because this is the way we have to price it. >> game changer because j&j we didn't expect to hear anything until maybe the end of the year. this is just tough stuff. >> a lot more to talk about. meantime, let's head over to carl. >> we'll see how much of yesterday's drubbing we'll get back. back in just a moment. coming up -- hope you're awake now. because there's some trading to do. and it all starts with the opening bell.

>> i'm starving. what's for breakfast? breakfast is overrated. >> we'll be right back. ,

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s&p 500 real time exchange frk over here at the big board, scientific instrument maker, developer of food and beverage flavors. >> instrumentation company very good and a spinoff of hewlett-packard. >> william a kn sonoma up on sa store sales. january picks up and they do 6.6. >> change of the guard there.

william sonoma is the problem. i felt with the house wears getting better, what a terrific pray and then you do the number and you get it wrong and i like pier one as the lower end william sonoma. that might be will tght be the . i was shocked to see people raise numbers for the bank. and net interest margin, they'll actually make more money per loan. that may move the badges very big here along with the fact that they may have a resolution this greece. that group got hit up side the head so badly the last two days. that's what i'm watching. >> morgan stanley's point is that they're not having to cut price to go take share in commercial loans. >> and that's a big deal because that may be the reason why jamie dimon was so enthusiastic when he spoke and they raised numbers for jpmorgan. >> a little filing for i about po action. finger guitars.

>> i've been on an autograph bender guitar, clapton, didn't get it. got to go back. >> they talk about highly fragmented industry, a lot of opportunity in china and overseas. and of course one of the big names in the industry if you are a musician, chances are you have at least one fender in your garage or studio. >> this will be one to watch because it's a re discretionary item and very exciting retail item. so let's hope that works. >> we'll be watching viacom to see how redstone looks. >> i think this is one of those where you'll be on that watch. is he involved, is he stepping pack. kind of like murdoch. you have people that really are running private companies that trade publicly and viacom has been doing a lot of buy backs. but i need to see redstone in there because he's done so many good things. >> arm holdings, morgan stanley takes it to an overweight.

>> there's a company that has separated in its stock price from apple even though it's the driver. remember arm holdings battery technology company, that's the battery life secret, that's what steve jobs wanted, longer battery life. maybe he can play catch up to apple's stock here. >> the worry morgan argues is that intel was taking share. but they say arm still has a two year lead on intel and that some of those worries are overdone. >> i think that's a very good call. arms come down from 30 to 25, intel's creeped up quietly. but i know people who run apple really respect arm. they are scientists, professor, and they're capable of delivering maybe battery life one day that is 100 hours. it could happen. wouldn't you love that? >> that is one of the big sticking points in technology. >> i look for an outlet everywhere i go and it's very frustrating. i like to play the games with my kids. the games with friends kind of thing. and they just eat battery life so badly.

anyone who comes up with a 100 battery life, i think i'll buy that for life. >> steve liesman has breaking news out of the ecb. >> ecb mario draghi just finished with his press conference. and i think what's interesting is he's hinting that the ecb may be done with its long termly liquidity injections, those two long term repo operations that injected about a trillion euros. he says as a result of this that there's more stabilization in the eurozone economy, although the risks are still to the down side. i want to give you the operative quote. this has been out there that they were going to be done. the l it tro had a powerful effect of removing tailarriving. i read that as it's your turn guys. other headlines, they're

lowering their growth forecast for both 2012 and 2013. they're liking for minus 0.5 to positive 0.3. also for '13, looking for 0 to about 2%. they're saying inflation will be above 2% in 2012 because of higher oil prices. and he down played differences between the germans, remember that letter from the bundesbank president of a week ago or so in which they suggested that lrp a lot of risks to what the ecb was doing. he said bundesbank is not isolated when it comes to ecb policy. a hint perhaps 245 draghi himself agrees with some of the points. >> thoughts on the timing of all of this, why would he be saying this now and do you believe him if he has to backtrack, has he painted himself into a corner? >> i don't think so. i think that he has the ability to reverse himself if it's needed. i think they put a lot out whether and there's a lot of

internal dynamic going on at the bundesbank -- sorry, at the ecb in which they've had to bring them along and perhaps reluctantly and draghi has acted very decisively. and i think it's appropriate at this point for him to say we've done an awful lot and one thing trichet was concerned about was that actions by the european central bank would take the governments off the hook and i think draghi having done what he's done is taking a page from trichet's book and saying the ball literally is in your court. the governments need act for reform and raise taxes and do the things that need to be done. >> good to have you back, steve. we'll talk to you later. hop over to melissa and bob somewhere on the floor. >> bob has been watching this press conference, as well. >> i think the important thing, and draghi is so good and so right, the ball is in their court, but draghi has a major problem and that's the inflation. they raised the target and above

2%, remember, their solomon date is inflation. above 2%, they have a problem. they have to start being concerned about inflation. but 2.1 to 2.7 for 2012 with up side risk? you know what up side risk means? means the forecasts we're just giving you is likely wrong. it will likely be higher. now you've got a major problem. you start getting around 3%, he's going to have pressure to raise interest rates in ire rop. everybody's still talking about lowering interest rates in europe because they're in a recession. you see the dilemma? he's getting himself in a box and i guarantee you the bundesbank will be on him about this, about lowering rates and trying to transition and watch the inflation concerns. that's the box that he's in right now. >> the german industrial production figures, do they make the pressure that they should be raising rates? i think germany is the only country doing well there. they have to keep rates low because the issue is growth away

from germany and there isn't in. >> the mandate is not. the mandate is only inflation. if you want to change that, but the bundesbank is going to come done on the side of reining in inflation. >> that's nuts. >> not lowering rates and certainly considering watching the inflation -- >> if they can get oil down -- looking i just think that's the wrong focus. you know that with growth away from germany, we could have a recession ex-determigermany and not good for the world. >> i'm with you you on that. meantime, did you see what happened in greece? everybody's worried about whether the debt deal goes in. did you see unemployment? 21%. and that's the official mum for december. the unif official number, 50% youth, but 21% is a new high for december. just came out today. this talk of all the austerity

will go by the wayside very, very quickly. >> great recession in this country obviously this much higher. great depression in this country, we are talking about 33% unemployment. they're not that far from that. >> and that's why you you'll hear the austerity talk go away. a few of the traders mentioned china is about to sign a deal with all the bric countries, russia, south africa, brazil, other countries to give loans. no dollar loans. last year they were talking about diversifying away from the dollar and they want renminbi to become the world currency. now they're acting on it. it's certainly a rapid evolution that's going on. this renminbi is evolving and it's evolving faster than some anticipated. >> that story was not played up

enough. ft broke. i found that, inthis is the beginning. they're not swapping dollars, just doing it in their own currency. >> how much are these deals worth? >> they haven't announced anything yet, but -- >> how much could they -- >> this is a change in world view. they are now going to do loans in renminbi and not in dollars. so china has $3 trillion in foreign currency reserves. they don't need as many dollars. look at brazil. they have a major problem with exports because the dollar is so weak, their currency is so strong and the brazilians think they're in a currency war with the united states. they think bernanke is trying to keep the dollar artificially low and it's hurting them. they have too many dollars. they don't want dollars. you get the drift here? there are people who don't want dollars right now and they're trying to figure out a way to get out of it. so i'm not making claims that the world is changing tomorrow. but this is evolving very, very

quickly. and keep an eye on it. finally one quick thing. all the earnings growth we're expecting are from banks. i think morgan stanley this morning raised the estimates on jpmorg jpmorgan. watch that kind of story. you can see more of that, great news because a good part of the s&p earnings this year are dependent on bank earnings going up. >> all right, bob, good to see you. jim, back over to you. >> let's shift to bonds and the dollar. rick santelli, how are you today? >> very good. thanks. as i look he currencies, and that's a hot topic, i see that the dollar is doing better against the yen, but that's pretty much where it ends. and even the currencies in terms of how they line up. remember, it's relative value argument. and the real issue that the markets will focus on, that the pressurery complex and the bund complex and the gilt complex

aren't showing you much higher rates is the idea that this stabilization that's about to be successful on the swap in some version, what is that going to do? ultimately there's going to have to be a new word we'll use a lot, it's called recalibration. as gjim pointed out, the number of the coffers of numbers generated by business in europe will dip. countries like greece and spain's numbers will deteriorate and it will start all over again. that's at least my assessment. why? we're still at 199 in a ten year and around 108 in t80 in the bu. jim, back to you. >> what rick was saying is what i totally agree with. we have to keep track of our our rates. i want to see our rates go up just to see whether the economy is doing better. but bernanke is keeping them down. at a certain point that will confli conflict. let's check out the latest news

in energy. >> a quandary this afternoon for traders will be whether you go out too long ahead of that deadline on the greek swap. but this morning that certainly has energy prices moving higher. the premium for brent has blown out to nearly $19 as the euro is stronger on those greek debt swap deal hopes. also on signs that iran is having trouble shipping more oil even as its supreme leader says sanctions are what he calls delusional. nat gas, we'll get the inventory numbers in about 5 minu45 minut. we could see a fresh new ten year low. finally, take a look at gold back above $1700 this morning at one point getting a very nice lift as that euro is showing a lot of strength on the optimism. >> apple introduces its newest product as the new ipad. so about you're tim cook, what

is your excuse for pot coming up with a better name that? tweet us and we'll get your answers coming up.

welcome back. the troshry trshry selling $6

billion worth of aig stock. half of that stock is going to aig. sale price $29. keep in mind the government breaks even on its bailout of aig at about $28.74. the share sale will essentially reduce the stake to 70%. once again the treasury selling aig stock. back to you. >> want to hit "squawk on the street" right now. apple stunning many by introducing its new tablet as the new ipad. this morning we're asking to you imagine that you're tim cook. what is your excuse for not coming up with a better name than the new ipad? trisha tweets like ch will er, the ipad doesn't need a last name. and do you have to rename the sunrise just because it's a new day? and then it doesn't matter what

we call it, we'll still sell 10 million a quarter. and chris tweets the teleprompter went blank and he had to wing it. >> those are all very good. >> we were discussing if you read the wall street research like we get every day, every single firm comments on apple, also excited about it. i was saying i think i'd like to see the ipad 3 before i get all jazzed about it, but you come in each morning and you see price target raised and you wonder how does the stock go to 540 and wall street tries to be behind and each tries to catch up with the next one and it builds excitement. >> maybe calling it the 3 would have emphasized to people buying the 2 that they weren't getting the best. maybe they've done some focus group research that suggests you don't want to remind people you're getting the hand me down.

>> i think that i always find myself every time i question them saying who am i to question the greatest company i've ever seen in my lifetime. >> it has not paid off questioning them. >> yes. remember the apple antenna controversy. well, i mean, hello. where was that? the apple name for ipad. what does that really mean. i find -- the samsung was supposed to have a superior product. in the end, i was syncing all my apple devices last night so i can be ready for the apple 3 because i'm an apple guy. >> that says a lot. and you're sitting next to a woman who owns a -- >> i have a mac and an ipad, also. >> a lot more "squawk on the street" still ahead. still to come, jim cramer is on a mission. the goal?

six stocks in 60 seconds. we're going along for the ride when "squawk on the street" returns. ♪ there'll be the usual presentations on research. and development. some new members of the team will be introduced. the chairman emeritus will distribute his usual wisdom. and you? well, you're the chief life officer. you just need the right professional to help you take charge. ♪

i'm for six in 60. we start off with c icht nta subpoena. >> i agree with the call. >> macy's price target raised. >> they can't seem to miss. i think the stock is going to 43 from 36. >> brinker added to the most preferred list. >> you mentioned domestic restaurants. i think it's a good call. >> autozone. another $750 million buy back. >> stock is not reacting. it should. buy, buy, buy. >> american eagle added to the conviction buy list. >> how can you have any conviction about teen apparel? you have no idea what they want. no accounting for taste. >> and wells fargo has started charging customers. >> bank of america was in your

face. wells fargo getting away with it. the stock goes higher. >> he did that quickly. >> third most actively traded stock, a lot said are they going to make it. clearly they will make it. mel will be triumphant. >> is there something that has impressed you more than others? >> i think the term is very low and i think one of the things -- 14.5 million cars and i think that matters tremendously. he's the man take has been able to say we have so many nat gas, let's export it. he's been one of my favorites. the stock has doubled since we recommended. let's see who it says. >> i keep taking back to the i'm when mel was being questioned for how much he was paying howard certain. >> and another good part of the story. but is will i beer i media buying the rest of it?

this that's something i have to ask him, too. >> pandora is a different business model. every time they increase listening hours, they have to pay more money in royalties. >> and how right is that. that's been a killer. and they can't translate the ad prices to the mobile devices. that's something mel has keyed on. he says we're able to maintain price and raise price. they have raised prices this year. most people don't realize it. i didn't know i paid more. >> we haven't touched on nat gas. bertha mentioned we could be looking at fresh ten year lows. >> exxon's around. i want to know why exxon isn't endorsing the fuel. the president thinks it should be a surface fuel. and they're developing really, really good used natural gas at home. if your home is heated with natural gas, you will be able to fill up at home in a couple of years. >> it does take up a long time to fill up a cng tank. >> ge is trying to cut that time.

and chesapeake is working with 3 m. they're working with ge. all to get the objections answered. so something to watch. >> anavistar lowering their guidance. >> and i think it's a share situation. it's not a good executioner of its own business. just a shame. they have 30% of their fleet will be natural gas next year. >> we'll see you tonight. >> thanks, guys. coming up next, mcgodonald' is out with its latest report. also ahead, jim mccaughan, you'll want to hear his s&p target. carfirmation.

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

welcome back. our road map for the next hour, markets in day two of their big snap back. but as today marks did d day for the euro, can we on the verge of a seriously steep correction?

>> and apple commanding attention after unveiling its new 4ipad. is it time to buy? we have your apple trade. >> and are the golden arches not so golden anymore? %. >> privacy concerns continue to playing the social media giant. are there more red flags in store ahead. a couple stories this morning we also paur go drawing consumer criticism after announcing it will start charging customers a monthly checking fee of $7. this on the back of bank of america's debit card fiasco. >> the other story we're watching, the justice department going after apple and five of

the big book publishers for colluding to drive up prices of electronic books. settlement discussions are taking place. if successful, this could lead to cheaper ebooks for consumers. . >> jobless benefits rose last week, so what does it mean for tomorrow's big job number? we've had three weeks of sub 360,000. we're back up to that at 362,000. it does point to what adp did yesterday of not giving you a whole lot of positive vibes. >> what's concerns is that there are so many high expectations going in to this number. people saying that the whisper number was even higher than what the street consensus was, so you wonder how sets up on a day we've had two good days of bounces off of a selloff on tuesday. >> i think the smartest hinge i've heard is people say you want a big fat enough that beats and then you want to go up so people are actually getting back

into the the labor force. >> meantime the morning after apple's new ipad announcement and shares of the stock are trading slightly higher in today's session. so what is the apple trade at this point? matt hoffman joins us now. great to have you with us. in terms of the new ipad, did it live up to your expectations? >> certainly. the new camera, the new display, 4g, it's all the new hardware that you are looking for. the only thing that's missing for us is you still can't do face time, still can't do lt iphone calls on the device. but other than that it's pretty much a home run. >> so are you you maintaining your estimates and price target on apple even though it came up short on that one front? i'm asking because it's interesting to me that a lot of analysts say, yes, it's a great device but didn't necessarily deliver every single thing that we had hoped. >> apple is a tremendous

company. the stock clearly anticipated this new product coming out. i think it will take a breather here in the short term, but as we gauge consumer demand and how the consumer responds to the new hardware, i think at that point that's really the next game, that's the next catalyst for the shares here. and if they start to beat estimates, we have 12. 7 million units in our model for this quarter. if it starts to track ahead of that with a great launch, then you'll see the stock work up again. >> sounds like your biggest disappointment is that you would have liked to have seen face time available over 4 glte. >> right. video communications peer to peer, that's really the next frontier for wireless. we're not quite there yet. we can do it on our coach, but not able to do it in a fully mobile setting. >> do you think they've left room for amazon to operate in

the sub $399 category? >> to the septembextent there's down there, yes. ebooks is still amazon's primary market. whereas apple's going for a different customer, somebody looking to consume media, looking to browse the web. the ipad is still a superior product when it comes to somebody looking for a higher he said experience. >> and carl mentioned the absence of 4g lte face time and that's something that you wanted. because they didn't deliver, it's interesting that you you don't take anything away in terms of estimates or expectations for the stock. why is apple such a company where can launch a product where you're baking in to your price target and expectations certain things from a product launch, but when they don't deliver it, doesn't impact the forecast for the company. >> what we're hoping for is imagination. they really have more

imagination and innovation than anyone else in the space. we hope they can push the ball farther. in this case, we just hoped it would be more but our numbers were predicated on a more conservative base case. and i think that's where the street is. >> matt, han thanks for your ti. >> yesterday we tried to rally back a bit, the dow finishing up nearly 100 points. should investors judith, good morning to you. >> thank you for having me. >> where is the argument for bonds at this point as we continue to grapple with what's going to happen next in europe? >> the argument for bonds, rates are low. returns won't be that great. but we do think that rates will

be low for an extended period of time, so we don't see that much down side in bonds over the next couple of years. >> this response to what the ecb said today and draghi suggesting that this ltro will be the last, now it's up to governments to do the tough sledding, are you convinced that not only a crisis scenario has been taken off the table, but that real repair can begin? ? >> i do believe real repair can begin, yes. >> how is that going to happen? >> the european situation, the ltro has given them the time to address their problems longer term and i believe they can do that. >> taking a look at your portfolio, a big portion is in corporate bonds, 46% or so. where are you finding the best values at point, are there certain sectors or certain geographies? >> the corporate bond market is in pretty good shape. we like higher quality

corporates. we think they can do well in what we think will be a fairly slow growth economy. we also like better liquidity, larger names that have better liquidity. >> are you dare to go look at european corporates? >> we own some european corporates. we're not expanding our holdings at the current time. >> a lot of discussion today about what bernanke or what the fed is considering after that journal broke that story yesterday trying to look through the merits of a sterilized qe-3. likelihood of that happening, likelihood of unintended consequences? >>ikelihood of that happening, i don't want to put a probability on it happening. i think if they do do it, it will have limited impact at this point. i think that raises are going to

stay low. and i don't think they necessarily need to do anything additional at this time. >> judith, thank you so much th. steve wynn battle heads back it court. how will it affect operations and what's the trade? we'll talk about wynn in just a few. coming up, trading make you hungry? why not take a bite into some mcdonald's. same store sales are out today. would we deserve a break today so we're taking one. with a new view of the market, you could see an investment opportunity you didn't see before. fidelity's next generation ipad app lets you see what's trending around the world, as well as what over a million fidelity customers

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mcdonald's reporting weaker than expected same store sales. it was short of the 8.3% of the street estimate. shares up merely 30%. managing director senior analyst

has a buy rating on mcdonald's. good to have you back again about. >> thank you. >> what happened in europe? >> weather certainly was an impact there. a couple points or so we're estimating. p the management didn't really call out what was the weather impact or put a mnumber on it, but they also mentioned austerity measures. so withere is a slowing trend i you add the weather adverse hit to it. so probably trending around 2% to 4%. >> could you make the same defense in asia pacific? >> japan seems to be the problem there and there was weather also. the first week this february, you had one of the worst storms, ten feet of though in western japan. so that probably impacted to a degree. maybe not as much as the european countries gots impacted. and also the could i sneeze new year's affect had region as far

as the shift in to january away from february. >> it sounds as if you're giving them a pass in a way for europe and asia pacific. was there anything on an operational standpoint that they did or headwinds that they're now facing when it comes to commodity costs or labor costs or a down turn in the consumer in those regions? >> they've done a lot to the brand to drive the same store sales recently. remodels. and new product introductions. there's always skepticism if they're losing momentum. as we start to see slower numbers. the biggest concern is it was a miss. i'm not giving them a pass on that. and the impact to the earnings is undeniable. and i think will they tried to -- they're trying to temper the consensus estimates. we're a penny or two below consensus in 1 q and i think the street will come down in light of their comments about operating margin pressure in current environment given the

slower top line trends, higher commodity costs and labor pressure, as well. >> we can't dismiss domestic was good. to what degree was weather a factor in that and secondly, are you going to move off of the price target of 108? >> weather i think was a factor. we didn't have a winter basically in the northeast. so that's helped out a lot of brands. i'm not going to move off 108. i think uses a relative conservative multiple. they are taking a ton of share in the u.s. and gaining incremental dining occasion. so they're investing in the brand appropriately and getting a good return off of it. it's a relatively conservative move up. so that's why we have a relatively conservative 10% or so up side in the stock. and and at rack difference 3%

dividend yield. >> the shamrock shake, will that move the needle? the most recent month we saw chicken mcbites, fish promotions. what's going to help in march? >> i think that type of news helps a lot to get them in front of people, but when it comes down to it, people are still getting the core items, the big macs, double cheese burgers, the dollar burgers. so i think it keeps them in the news. it makes them topical. longer term beverages are a major part of their verticals especially in their off peak nonmeal periods. it brings in a snacking customer that's very incremental to their business and i think they'll continue to expand hatheir beverage lineup. >> they made moves trying to move away from the cages that restrain certain livestock. the word pink slime is all over twitter.

have you seen any indication that sales have softened because of concerns about how they source their food? >> no, i think they're always sort of the poster child for that type of attack. i think they've done a great job as far as improving over the last decade hair image. they do offer you a wide range of food, whether it's caloric or the quality of their food. they're moving slowly towards improving how it is raised and the farming practices. but i think there's also an exchange. how much of their demographic is really focused on that. i don't think as much as the press says. >> good point. good to talk to you. >> when he was rattling off the list of producting, i was getting hungry and when you said pink slime, that went away really quickly. stocks to watch, aruba networks upgraded. william sonoma getting a

downgrade to an underperform. and jardin upgraded to a buy from neutral. still to come, breaking news on nat gas inventories and how is this for privacy? several colleges are requiring applicants provide hair facebook passwords as part of the application process. we'll talk facebook's ongoing privacy balgtsd. we've got fashion, yes, we do, we've got fashion, now so can you. and all you have to do is win it. guess friday's nonjobs farm number and you can win a tote bag out graphed by the "squawk on the street" gang. tweet us your guest with the hash tag nail the number and watch bring to see if usual the lucky winner. if you are one of the millions of men

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retail getting a nice boost this year. up about 13%. this morning kohl's announcing they're planning to open new stores. but will the rally hold. michelle clark, great to see you. >> hangs for having me on. >> the warmer weather has helped retailers, but i had think the more fundamental opportunity for the retailers is the fact that jcpenney is in the midst of a turnaround. who is best poised to steal some of that share? is kohl's ready to do that? >> we think the market share whether go to a number of retailers that, frankly, span the various sub sectors of retail. so within the department store space, we actually think that macy e's is likely a bigger beneficiary given they have higher store overlap with jcpenney. may sis's executing from a product standpoint. so we think they're better positioned than kohl's.

within specialty space, we think old navy will peck ick up marke similar. in the discount space, target. it tjx and ross should benefit as the price conscious consumer looks to the off price channel. and we think they'll pick up some of jcpenney's vendors as it looks to narrow down its vendor base. >> what's wrong with kohl's? >> we do a lot of consumer survey work. and we feel that kohl's has not introduced enough new brands into its assortment. at the same time, its peers and most notably macy's has seen significant new introductions where they're rolling out exclusive brands on a continuous basis. so one of the big announcements we've received out of kohl's is

that they will really have to step up on pricing and get more aggressive on price in order to win back market share. >> you talk about the sales can disruption. is that a message that ron johnson is somehow going to underdeliver on his performs? because the attention being paid to how he'll do in the early days is incredible. >> absolutely. this is a name where expectations are exceptionally high. the bulls on this story will point to the fact that ron johnson and the new management team can drive positive comp store sales growth as early as the first year. so the next number we'll get out of jcpenney will be may 14th when they report first quarter sales and earnings. and we think that could serve as a disappointment. we estimate that right now jcpenney's comp store sales are running down low double digits to low to mid teens. so we think sales are underperforming expectations are. >> there have been a lot of very

strong retail performers and a couple you cited and seemed to like. macy's being one of them. seems to be fairly in line with the group, at the same time t.j. maxx could also benefit. are there some areas in the space you think are just sort of great companies, but the valuations are getting a little bit rich compared to peers? >> we're actually recommending macy's. the stock is trading at 11 times versus the department store group up at 13. so i'm 20 creents ahead of consensus. ma mace's market share initiatives are really helping them gain market share and keep in mind macy's is a retail their is transitioning from a debt pay down to now shareholder return story. we think they can buy back north of a billion and a half in

common stock this year. so i like macy's. it's one of the cheapest names and we would put money behind at current levels. >> a pleasure to speak with you. thanks for your time. michelle clark of morgan stanley. when we come being a, breaking news on nat gas even toers and the fed may be looking to implement a new form of qe. a big reason markets were higher yesterday. so what will the new approach entail and is there any truth to the fed's new approach? we'll break down some of the headlines. trs my dad and grandfather spent their whole careers here. [ charlie ] we're the heartbeat of this place, the people on the line. we take pride in what we do. when that refrigerator ships out the door, it's us that work out here. [ michael ] we're on the forefront of revitalizing manufacturing. we're proving that it can be done here, and it can be done well. [ ilona ] i came to ge after the plant i was working at closed after 33 years. ge's giving me the chance to start back over. [ cindy ] there's construction workers everywhere.

so what does that mean? it means work. it means work for more people. [ brian ] there's a bright future here, and there's a chance to get on the ground floor of something big, something that will bring us back. not only this company, but this country. ♪

some of the stories we're squawking about, star bbucks rising to new all-time highs. up 48% if the past year. coca-cola says values last year's compensation for the ceo at $29.1 million. that's up 17.5%. and according to freddie mac, the average rate on a 3 year fixed mortgage dipped to 3.88. slightly above record lows. >> want to take a look at the market internals. it is day two of a bounce off of tuesday's selloff. so far we have the dow up by 31 1/2 points. the nasdaq is at 2946, up 11 points. s s&p, 1358. looking at the internals, we have advancers leading decliners by about an 8 to 5 margin.

nasdaq, almost a one to one ratio. of course bank stocks, one area we're watching, jpmorgan outperforming the group. up by 1.25%. meantime we do have breaking news on nat gas inventories. >> yeah, we're looking for somewhere in the range between 56 at the low end to about 100 billion cubic feet. it's minus 80. the biggest withdrawal coming from the east coast down 60 billion cubic feet. that's more or less in line with the expectation nat gas here, yeah, moving lower. we hit 225 a little bit ago. we're right around in that range or so. the big problem of course is demand. and you have huge amounts of storage of natural gas right now. here on the east coast today, we'll be in the high 60s later on this this afternoon. so this very mild winter, we

haven't seen such a huge demand even as we've seen people switch over in terms of you power generation to natural gas because it is so cheap. as far as the rest of the energy complex, fairly flat. off just below $125 a barrel. we are looking at potentially another record low close, ten year low close you can in-are, m number around 123. >> let's head to chicago at the he rtha was talking about ten year lows. you say there's more risk to the down side. why is that? >> what you've seen recently is

you've seen the market bidding up premiums in the back end of the crude market. so that tells you that end users are saying i don't really want the crude now, i'm going to bid for storage, store it and use it later. that's in the exactry how a bull market acts. i think crude recently is getting a free ride on the s&p's tail, on whiftentimes they'll m will in tandem. but for right now, i think you've got too much premium built in and with -- you're seeing the big carry spreads in there. if end users are saying they would rather store it, that's a market i want to trade the short side of. any weakness in equity, we can drop. >> we have a lot of threof let . this could be an ugly trade. >> another reason that i get more excited about trying to sell it. maybe you're get sharper drops when we do break, they'll be faster and quicker. but right now the s&p is holding us up. >> in terms of the results of the greek participation, greek

bond deal, i'm curious what the reaction do you think will be in the markets. a sell on the news when we do get final word or is it dripping and drabbing out so slowly that it looks like 60% participation at this point that we're seeing it take place already? >> at least the attitude seems to be more of a yawn. but down here for the most most part, i think a lot of that is kind of baked in the cake. what traders down here are talking about, okay, well, greece doesn't really matter, say it's rhode island, traders are more concerned with what happened this some of the other countries, italy, spain. >> and what's the whisper when comes to the jobs report? >> we've been rallying on jobs numbers, so i don't know why things would be any different. >> so you're predicting a rally tomorrow. >> sure. watch the nasdaq. it's been a phenomenal leader. when we did have our sharp

selloff, by the time you got down to the lows of the day, the maz contact had gotten down on about even. and then the nasdaq starts gaining and it pulls us right back out of the hole. so watch the nasdaq for leadership even ahead of the jobs number. >> thanks for your time. >> also of course the fed a big story yesterday and today. for more on the potential move, we bring in steve liesman. can you walk us through what this idea is and how unique or new it is? >> in a sense it's not really new at all. if you think about what operation twist is, it is essentially sterilized quantitative why? because they're selling long term ones. the problem the fed has is the fed is kind of running out of short term securities. you can see the decline coming

down. when tfed gets to june, it will have $200 billion of short term stuff left to sell through an operation twist. so as it heads to june, it has to make a decision to continue operation twist and how does it do so in the absence of short term securities. one thing it would do is buy long term securities and snksly repo back 28 day repos which is essentially like the fed selling a 28 day bill. >> to the degree that they feel comfortable, how high on the list of priorities is this? >> i'm hearing it's not all that high. it's something out there as an idea. there are critical members who are pushing it or have thought about it. i'm not sure about if ben bernanke is on board with it i'm not even sure it will be discussed at next tuesday's meeting. but as june comes along and the fed has decisions to make, my guess is somebody asked somebody who happens in june if we need

new qe and we're running out of short t-bills, what can we do and somebody said, hey, we could do this. it's getting a lot of criticism. >> i was going to ask you what people who watch the fed, what's been their reaction. >> here's steven stanley saying with every step, the fed has upped the degree of complication and sterilized qe would reach a level of con vo of con vow solu would make rube goldberg proud. also pointing out that doing big time rebopos would allow the fe to test the exit strategy. >> any way this was floated as a way to offset how humphrey hawkins because viewas viewed? >> possibly. the origins of the story is always fun any. it's something of a trial

balloon, but i think there's such a thing as a premature trial balloon and i'm thinking this is one of them. a storm is prubrewing. the largest solar storm due to arrive on earth today. promise to go shake up the gleb globe's magnetic field, interrupting gps -- >> possibly trading. >> we'll tell you what you need to know in just a moment. choose control. 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.

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top picks live list. a call you don't see every day. meanwhile facebook's massive ipo an even bigger valuation looms large. investors gathered in santa monica about for the montgomery tech conference. >> the big thing people are talking about here is the facebook effect. companies ranging in size from $100 million in revenues to flight not yet profitable yet, say that face back's ipo is having a halo effect. >> whether the public capital markets or more the private capital markets, does make the availability of capital better and that's super helpful. >> i think it will make brands pay more attention to digital, it will allow people to move more quickly. definitely makes us more bullish. >> james montgomery predicts

growing the number of offerings up from 51 to 75 this year. facebook related start ups tell me they expect the spotlight on facebook to drive big companies to invest in social marketing and analytics. but bc warns even facebook's massive ipo won't make startups eager to go public. >> huge liabilities, there are a whole new rules so you don't have the flexibility to run your business the way you want to run your business. >> draper was talking about an investment called expert financial. coming up on fast money halftime report, i'll take a look at what tim draper and others think is the next big thing in terms of the start suns they a ups they'g

bets on. continuing cwith facebook, they have about 365 million likes. probably pot among them are european regulators pressuring the social network giant to improve privacy practices. a recent audit in ireland provided facebook with recommendations to better comply with irish law and by extension european union law. we should note that the pbi following that audit has recommended that facebook also implement those changes here in the united states. billy hawks is data protection commissioner in ireland. a pleasure to speak with you. >> my pleasure. interest what w . >> what are the concerns exactly? >> i think the main concern is that better transparency that we should all know what's happening behind will the scenes with our information. that facebook should explain better to the many consumers who use the service how exactly it operates. it should give tell more choice

in terms of the privacy settings. and the general approach of giving more control out of the individual which is also the sort of value that the white house has put out in its recent privacy bill of rights. in other words, we should give the individual more control over what happens on their personal da da data. >> i'm assuming that you know exactly whaps with all the day a. consumers may have a glimpse of it or an idea of what may happen that some of the data is used for advertising. but can you explain one way in which data is being used that consumers may for the have any idea it's being used in? >> i think we can't have any major surprises. i think everybody understands that facebook is provided as a free service and in return facebook makes money from advertising. and the more accurate they can target the advertising, the more money makes. so obviously consumers provide a

lot of information when they press alike button. and this is very rich data obviously on which advertisers can better target consumers. so i think the important thing that arose is that people should just understand that is the deal they enter in to with facebook and they should have more control over things like if they wanted to terminate for example their facebook account, they should be able on do it. they should be able to take comple delete everything, access to everything. so that type of consumer control. >> when you apply pressure to a company in this way, how often do will they comply? do they usually wait until they have no other options and do they change their practices only in ireland or do they tend to do it in a standard measure around the globe? >> i think one of the great merits of a company like facebook is when it changes its

practices in response to a regulatory request, tends to apply them uniformly across the board. there is a huge degree of commonalty between for example the u.s. though there are differences. in our experience certainly with facebook, it was quite anxious to cooperate with our audit. the precise requirements of european law satisfy other uhe pe european regulations. we found a satisfactory approach by facebook. we have a clear time table of recommendations to implement within the next six months. they've already implemented some of them and will have a follow up in july. >> very interesting stuff. happy st. patrick's day. >> thank you very much. also to you. >> a great drinking partner i'd have a feeling. >> you wouldn't be so bad yourself, carl. >> i try. when we come back, the impact of

a giant solar storm is on the way. everyone on earth could be impacted they say. so stay tuned. plus the ceo of principal global investors on where the markets are heading next. first rick santelli is working on the next hour of "squawk on the street." what's coming up? >> i'll tell what you we'll be talking about. we'll be talking about inflation. i think there's some myths there we need to debunk. we're also going to talk about supply and demand. seems as though washington 1 is changing the relationship on us. and you can put a man on the moon, that's what i'm going to reference when i take about natural gas. come back at the top of the hour.  today is gonna be an important day for us. you ready? we wanna be our brother's keeper. what's number two we wanna do? bring it up to 90 decatherms.

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♪ yeah. steal my sunshine. here's something else to worry about in addition to everything else. the largest solar storm in several years is headed for us

on planet earth. just about all the space experts say it will shake our magnetic field somehow, anything that depends on satellite technology. satellite technology, flight schedules, gps, phones, blackberries. >> no! >> also expected to have an impact on utility grids and a risk radio transmissions. it all started with a massive solar flare earlier this week and grew racing away from the sun towards us and bringing a cloud of charged particles. the magnetic field keeps harmful radiation out of the atmosphere and will shake that protective layer, won't destroy it but will knock it around. one scientist said it's like a giant expanding soap bubble heading right for us. >> doesn't sound scary. >> expected to hit between 1:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. and the affects to be felt tomorrow

morning. quote, it's going to us right in the nose. >> ew. there is a connection to the markets because tom mcclelland sent me a chart saying that a lot of episodes coincide with giant market turns and i wish we could show you the chart but he sent me a chart with the dow and going back through, you know, 2010 or so, a lot of turns upward and downward coincide with solar episodeepisodes. >> he didn't say up or down? >> we'll see tomorrow. tweet time. apple introducing the newest product as, wait for it, the new ipad. what is your excuse for not coming up with a better name than that? tweet us. we have your answers straight ahead. i had a print out of how many hours

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apple simply introduced the new ipad as the new ipad. no new name other than that. we're asking you to imagine that you're apple ceo tim cook. what is your excuse for not coming up with a better name than the new ipad. victor writes steve jobs didn't leave the name in his notes.

>> good one. >> larry writes because i was too busy thinking about the new dividend. >> wishful thinking. >> coming out with something bigger and better. just wait. probably true. >> they always seem to do it. >> yeah. >> always seem to do it. >> talk about coach today. topper former in the s&p 500. >> rallying here. interesting. launching a lot of new products. maria has the ceo of coach on this afternoon so should be a good interview. man bags is a huge category, carl. >> murse. >> that's what you call yours. >> sure. we'll see what he tells maria tonight but the recent comments centered around the higher level of demographics, employment is strong. >> right. >> if you have a college degree, make a fair amount of money, unemployment rates low and the market touched 13,000 on the dow, it's 1% story in a lot of ways. the coach story.

>> the man bag story in the strength in the man bag category goes in to the tablet trade. mark mahaney said he was talking about amazon's 7-inch tablet and the female tablet and fits in purses. >> like umbrellas. >> put it in the purse but the same time if you think about it, if man bags are big also, that might all be another reason for -- >> so i buy an murse and a kindle fire? >> a smaller tablet to fit and depending how big it is. >> watch it. listen to michelle clark of morgan stanley talk about the sales disruption at jc penney and think the may results will be disappointing and likes of macy's are benefiting and old navy and remember we saw gap with a surprising day up and comp store sales of february. >> and the overlap, that's what caught my attention. 75% overlap in terms of store

footprint for macy's and jc penney. macy's up by 1.6%, a fresh 52-peek high for shares of macy's. a nice move here and continued move. a retailer favored since it's possible that they buy up to a billion dollars worth of stock in the near future. >> tonight on fast? >> tonight, the technicals of the market once again. the notion of volume. is it important or not? we'll settle the store there and talking to steve case. so that should be an interesting interview, the founder of aol. >> what a move he's made on small business on the country. >> exactly.ith enterprise. >> markets are higher. here's what you might have missed this morning if you're just tuning in. >> welcome to hour three of "squawk on the street." here's what's happening so far. >> elements of optimism, signs of recovery.

we should not be complacent with the situation but i think we are in a totally different ball game compared to three months ago. >> the bang of england out with the rate decision, left rates unchanged. >> might different yate, a decent chance to outperform expectations. >> initial claims move from a slightly upward advised and up to 362,000. >> it is a global phenomenon that when you want to buy an individual stock to play the rally get your facts straight and a lot of times the facts don't jive with the overlying thesis of the market. >> you don't see apple coming down in a big way in terms of -- something presented big opportunity to buy? >> i wish it did. there's so many people still not in. >> the opening bell. s&p 500. the cnbc realtime exchange. >> in terms of the new ipad, did it live up to your expectations?

>> well, certainly. the new camera, the new display, 4g. it's all the new hardware that you were looking for. >> they're investing inappropriately. it's relatively conservative move up, multiple constraints and why we have a relatively conservative 10% or so in the stock and very attractive 3% dividend yield right now. >> good morning. welcome to third hour of "squawk on the street." the markets trying to continue the rally. they got started yesterday. the dow up almost 45 points. s&p up almost 9 and nasdaq more than 20. a double dose of teen retail winners today. hot topic spiking as much as 10% as beating estimates and american eagle after a conviction uptick. dendreon down on positive results of a prostate drug.

let's get to the road map today. one of the biggest names on wall street jim mccaughan will join us live and plus the business of manufacturing is booming and factories can barely keep up. is it a sign that better times are still to come for the economy? saying it's d-day for greece and the euro. that debt deal and entering the final stretch. the country hopes to win support of private creditors to avoid a default. we'll get the european close in less than 30 minutes. we'll talk to someone who's seen the new ipad, played it and explored the new features. is it a reason for more positivity at apple? that and more in the next hour. first, though, start with "squawk on the beat." the day after wynn called a special shareholder meeting to vote okada out. jane wells is live in the las vegas with the details.

jane? >> reporter: carl, a cold wind is blowing through sin city this morning and i don't think it has altogether to deal with steve wynn but it's a doozy. a judge may decide whether okada has the right to see how hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent and suggested that he does have a reasonable right to reasonable requests as a director, though may not be a director for long. he is pushing for a special meeting to vote him out and the company is counter suing claiming an investigation by former fbi director freeh shows okada breached the duty moving to compete against wynn and secretly allegedly comping this high roller suite to philippine gaming authorities and against u.s. law and could put the gaming licenses at risk and this fight, folks, is really about competition in asia.

wynn runs two casinos, wants to build a third and claims okada broken ground on a resort in manila. spending $2.3 billion on the project. hopes to turn $2 billion in sales in the first year of operation. that could hurt wynn and he doesn't like getting hurt. attorneys for both sides will be here shortly. one thing not in court yet, okada threatened legal action over his massive 20% stake in the resorts taken after the board determined he was quote unsuitable. we have yet to see him actually file a lawsuit over that share redemption. as for a shareholder meeting, okada says, quote, mr. wynn is exerting his control over the board to silence any dissent and to divert attention from the questions surrounding of the company's use of stockholder money. it is ugly, carl.

we will see how much forward we move in the case today. >> i can't tell what's more dramatic, the story or the wind where you're standing, jane. thanks a lot, jane wells. let's hop over to the cme group. rick santelli with the santelli exchange. hey, rick. >> carl, it is like i could have wrote that script for you. they call it the windy sfi because of all the hot air out of our political class. that's really where it comes from. perfect segue. hey, there's an organization called the american institute for economic research. and you know what they have that i like? they have an epi. every day price index and their every day price index doesn't look at things you buy on a grand scale like a house, they look at things that you actually consume on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. you know what their inflation rate is on their epi? 8%. okay. so let's get this straight. they're saying 8%.

most of our leaders, especially in the fed, want us to believe they have a 2% target and want to under it. if you believe that, i guess you're really going to buy in to the supply/demand stuff i hear lately on the news and that is, remember, the election is, what? november. just keep that in mind. they say it doesn't matter if you put more supply in the energy market. it doesn't matter. how can it not matter? let's just look at this. okay? the mideast. the mideast is basically a group of countries that don't like us, they have monopolies called cartels and they get billions and billions and billions of dollars. why? not that that we don't have energy but we have a hypocrisy. we use a lot of energy and very sorry for it. may or may not hurt the planet and other countries more than happy to act on our hypocrisy and sell us the oil. i guess we are not looking at the armies and the deaths because they say supply and demand won't affect price but they're saying it won't affect

anything. forget price a minute. in the mere term. our birthrate should be zero because if young people want to have babies and that argument they'd say why waste the time? it won't happen for nine months or hey don't write a book because you know what? you have to start it with the first chapter before it's done. i'm not buying in to it. in terms of natural gas, i have a good one here. we'll leave it for tomorrow's santelli exchange. a final thought. no matter where i walk in midwest, i'm no more than 35 feet from a natural gas line. back to you. >> thanks, rick santelli. talk to you in a few minutes. it's been a volatile week on wall street. jobs number tomorrow. want insight from a market veteran, one of our favorite. jim mccaughan, 242 billion, only. in assets under management. jim, good morning. >> good morning. good to talk to you. >> you say equities, credit in this country, real estate, too, in your words likely to prove

rewarding unless the european or oil situation deteriorates. that's what everybody's worried about. >> on those two things, i think so far as the european situation's concerned, the most likely turn on greece is they'll get enough acceptance for the debt rescheduling to allow them to trickle the collective action clauses that will lead to cds triggering. i think that's the best outturn. if they don't get enough to trigger the collective action clauses, then you have a default. that's unknown territory. if they can get it through without the cdss you don't get the exposure but uncertainty about default protection the worth it. i think the best outturn is most likely and giving short-term momentum to the market. >> you would argue that the likelihood of a hard default is not ten, maybe 20? >> i think my 20% on a hard default is taking a broad view

of greece and the european banks and the situation in the other countries over the next few years. the next couple of years. i think the chances of a hard default right now are much lower than 20%. but the announcement overnight will tell us quite a lot about that. but i think the market is telling us and what we're hearing from greece suggests that they'll invoke the collective action clauses which i think is a decent outturn for the market at least for the short term. >> you think we've priced that scenario in at these levels? >> yeah, i think so. i think that's the better tone we have had in the last two days is pricing that in. i think attention tomorrow as you will say will turn to the jobs number. >> yes. everything seems to suggest whether it's adp or claims today to continue to muddle through. decent growth and nothing to bring the unemployment rate down in a big way. >> i think that's right and better than muddling through.

what we at principal is seeing from our small, mid-sized business clients is a job creation for five or six months. that's come through in the data. in the last two or three months and i think tomorrow's data is no exception. i'm expecting 200,000 to 250,000 jobs created. now, that is not a lot as you say compared with the 7 million or 8 million lost in the great recession but gets us back on a three or four-year period to the kind of employment level we had in the u.s. i think that's just fine. it's consistent with 2% or 3% growth. again, that's good for u.s. markets. >> yeah. jim, you know, we bumped up against 13,000 and then we had some worries about greece. obviously, energy prices are getting everybody's attention. the chairman seemed to have a more subtle message with regard to easing last week in his testimony. and now we are getting china bringing their growth targets down. now brazil cutting rates to single digits. mcdonald's is missing in europe.

do you think we have topped out for the median term? >> not really. i think that for the rest of the year, on balance, u.s. equities are a good place to be. i would think you might see an s&p up at 1,400, 1,450. a bit above the current level by year end but for the reasons you mentioned it will be a rough next few months. you know, depends what you mean by the medium term but hold on to u.s. equities for the rest of the year. i think, though, that what you mentioned on emerging markets will produce quite a bit of chop in emerging markets. most u.s. invest to recalls are very underweighted. i would use the volatility and the negativity i expect from the factors you mentioned to accumulate emerging markets equities so u.s. and emerge rg the areas i prefer. >> even if the correction was 10%, 15%, 20% in when you say chop, what would that look like? >> 10%, 15%, even 20% is

possible. if that happens in emerging markets, don't lose your nerve because for five or ten years they're a good place to be with the emerging middle class in greater economic freedom and my two themes in equities. i'm more confident short term of the u.s. and longer term accumulating emerging. >> oil prices, you say probably more related to concerns of more qe than anything regarding iran. >> yeah. no. i think that's what pushed the oil price up until last week and weaker this week. i think the run-up up until last week is much more to do with fear over more qe and the qe that's happening in japan and in europe. that money tends to go in to commodities and push them out. i think most observers who really look in carefully are the iran situation, they fear a short-term interruption of supplies but there's a very high inventories of oil. the world economy could weather that short term interruption and

it is likely given the demand for funds that those middle eastern countries including iran have that any interruption would be very short term so i'm actually not a bull of oil. i think on balance over the rest of the year it could decline and i do think that only interruption that happens over the hostilities in the middle east is likely to be short term. i take confidence from the supply and demand position. >> all right. well, that would be good news for the economy, no doubt. jim, always a pleasure. thanks so much. >> thanks for having me. when we come back, apple is heating up the tablet wars. >> coming up -- >> the new ipad. and it is amazing. >> ipads, kindles and nooks, oh my. the tablet war is heating up. will apple reign supreme in this market forever? what can we expect to happen next? we'll discuss the possibilities. l financial consultation

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take a look at coach today, up better than 6%. topper former on the s&p 500. the ceo lew frankfort on "closing bell" this afternoon. their customers continue to be strong. looking for that interview at 4:10 p.m. eastern time. apple's looking to widen the

lead in the tablet market with the introduction of the new ipad. amazon is number two in the tablet sales. apple cut the price of the ipad by 100 bucks. should amazon investors be worried about the potential impact on those sales? jason healthstein is at oppenheimer. good to see you. >> hi. how are you? >> good. sounds like you don't think it's a game changer in that it does allow amazon some room to operate in the way it's been operating. >> correct. if you think about amazon is basically offering a low-end priced tablet because it's about their echo system play and if you think about what apple did, they lowered their low price to $399, you're still talking about an ipad2 at $400 versus a kindle fire that's significantly lower. at $250. so i mean, really, we think the

companies have two totally different views. apple wants to make money on you the day you buy that advice and buy one every 12 or 24 months. amazon's goal to get you as part of the echo system and get you to be a prime customer, buy consumer products, to get you to purchase videos, music, use the cloud services and the view is once you get on the echo system you are a customer for life and looking at a customer lifetime value and apple looking at make money from you from day one. >> right. sounds like what might be a bigger game changer is an upcoming google tablet we don't know a lot about yet. >> correct. google is buying motorola mobility and most consumers think of as motorola. because of the relationship with the operating system, they have talked about a chinese wall between the operating system android and motorola mobility but there's not been, you know,

an android device in the market that's either been feature focused enough to get people from apple devices or a low enough price to get the value conscious consumer away let's say from a kindle device. ultimately why the fire did so well was because on a value consumer, they said this fulfills most of my needs and what i will buy. interesting to see, you know, with respect to that chinese wall what happens with motto to ro la's devices once it's owned for google. >> if you have a menu of options before you, go long google or amazon or apple, is there an easy answer? >> we don't cover apple. i'll leave it to the apple analyst. we have outperform ratings on google and amazon. google we like for the mobile reason. there's a lot of things happening in the space. mobile social video. we think well positioned to

participate with that. from amazon's standpoint, they have issues pointed out in the fourth quarter results and third party sales and channel issues they had and ultimately if you have a view on the tablet, i wouldn't play amazon for that right now. i think, you know, you need to wait another probably at least six to 12 months to see what the next version of the fire looks like. when they release it internationally. and can they ultimately make a device to let's say is more feature focused but still value prices to see if it competitive? i think ultimately if you don't play apple for, you know, for tablets, play google as a tablet mobile play. >> interesting. really quickly, are you not spooked at all by amazon's unwillingness to give guidance beyond a quarterer owe metrics on things like the fire? >> you know, the bigger companies, google, amazon, we're used to a limited amount of

disclosure, makes our job more interesting, i guess. but ultimately, i think that, you know, there was some misconceptions out there about kind of the number of members and updated that guidance. so i think when ultimately the street has a view that's too far out they will put out a data point and rein it back but amazon issues with respect to how we calculate how much money they're making, how much revenue they're generating from a customer is not kindle driven and for now probably not going to give more information. i think that's fine. you also have plenty of third party data out there and tracking the sales of these devices. not like we're in a total vacuum. >> good stuff. good to talk to you. >> thank you. when we come back, the big boom in manufacturing. machine makers are running full tilt. no sign of a slowdown. how you can profit and what that says about the u.s. economy.

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♪ some interesting times in the banking business. mary thompson at the citi financial's conference today and bank of america was speaking, a protester interrupted by yelling "bust up bank of america." we're told that mr. moynihan since continued the speech but

we'll bring you more details as we learn more about that. bank of america presentation at the citi conference interrupted by a protester. u.s. manufacturing running on all cylinders. experiencing an expansion unlike the last three decades. phil lebeau is live in washington at a plant reaping that expansion. >> reporter: we are seeing a manufacturing boom in the united states and a perfect example here at omax in kent, washington. they have added 50 workers where they build the water jet metal cutting machines. seven to nine of these sent out a week and added 50 employees over 2 years and not the only manufacturer hiring in this country. take a look at growth in manufacturing jobs over the last couple of jobs. 400,000 have been added and where is that growth coming from? what's driving it? manufacturing sector has been growing for 31 straight months.

in fact, they're seeing growth not only in the united states but global orders. the ceo here says about 40% of the business is outside the u.s. >> in the two years we talk about where we almost doubled the revenue, manpower grown by 40-some percent and also obviously as we sell more, we -- the emphasis to bring in more manufacturing people in terms of machine shops and assembly areas and we basically always have openings in those earrings. >> reporter: and in fact, here at omax, an expansion. durable growth orders have grown steadily and in kentucky, they're seeing demand, automakers, aviation companies, heavy equipment manufacturers and expect to extend at least through this year. >> when they say that manufacturing is down around the country, it's hard to believe that. you know? being as busy as we are.

>> reporter: and back here at omax. one of the things we talked about earlier is the lack of skilled applicants. since doing the first report we have seen a number of people who have gone to the website for omax saying i'm looking for work and i have the skills you're looking for. people are looking for jobs and increasingly looking to the manufacturers. carl? >> good stuff. phil lebeau today. european close in a couple of minutes. don't go away. [ male announcer ] lately, there's been a seismic shift in what passes for common sense. used to be we socked money away and expected it to grow. then the world changed... and the common sense of retirement planning became anything but common. fortunately, td ameritrade's investment consultants can help you build a plan that fits your life.

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a lock for the european markets to digest. standing pat on rates. got the deadline for the greece dead swap deal. about 3 1/2 hours away and seeing what happens later tonight with the markets tonight. >> the european markets are closing now. >> so we have the hopes for a successful deal sparking a rally in europe. you see green across the continent. in london and paris, germany, italy and athens which is up better than 3% today. among the biggest gainers in the banking sector, national bank of greece. that's right. france, deutsche banc and bbva. we have the yoeuro hit session highs and the italian 10-year bond yield falling to the lowest levels since june of last year, 4.807. a yield on the spanish 10-year,

as well. not as well as that. sitting about 5% at 5.09. chief international correspondent michelle cabrera live. early east coast time tomorrow, right, michelle? >> reporter: yeah. 3:00 eastern time today the deal expires and then we expect to know at 1:00 a.m. new york time what the results are. that's because that's 8:00 a.m. athens time. in the meantime, just the last five minutes, reuters says the participation rate is above 70%. dow jones says above 75%. in that's true, it looks like this deal will go through. it's still remains to be seen is can they get above 90%? if they do that, you will not see a triggering of default swaps. we're not sure if these two headlines are true. we'll have to find out sometime in the next 24 hours.

in the meantime, carl, once this deal gets done, this reduces greece's private sector debt by about 100 billion euros if it's done and brings on another 130 billion euros of debt from their european partners and greece still has so many hurdles. one of them is shrinking the size of the greek state which is large for the gdp and also extremely inefficient and crushes a lot of entrepreneurs. we spent a lot of time with a bookstore owner who just in this environment about a year ago has started a bookstore where she would like to sell coffee. she had to go to 17 different public agencies to get permission to sell cough feign 'not received it yet. so the tables sit empty. at the same time, what do you think you can sell? she says, i have no idea. i can't even handicap it. she went on and on about the different rules and regulations to open up the shop from conception to actually opening the doors after getting permission was nearly a year.

it's really incredible. we have read many, many reports of how thick the bureaucracy is here in greece. a former finance minister here in greece, he started a new party. his main mission and his main message is to reduce bureaucracy in greece because it is so frustrating. listen to the way he described bureaucracy to me. how horrendous is the level of bureaucracy in greece? >> it's -- unbelievable. it's an elephant that sits on your shoulder and crushes you. crushes you to the ground. >> reporter: kills the entrepreneurial spirit? >> not just that. every -- i mean, imagine the elephant that tramples on the garden. nothing's left after that. >> reporter: so he's running on a campaign of reducing government workers by 400,000. carl, you'd be shocked to hear he doesn't get a lot of support

because of one of his goals, even though it might actually help out the private sector if the public sector for smaller. back to you. >> that's great color. one quick question. getting the percentages and trying to get to the 90, it is like waiting for poll returns on election night. is there any way to read in to the likelihood of hitting 90 based on the numbers we are getting right now? >> reporter: no. i can tell you, going in to this, they were pretty confident of 70 -- between 70 and 80, probably 75 to 80. very hopeful and getting a certain level they could trigger the credit -- they can trigger the collective action clause and the minute they do they get to 86%. that's just the greek jurisdiction bonds. excuse me if i get complicated. next they want to really see the foreign jurisdiction bonds come in, as well. all they need is 4% of those getting them to the 90% but you

have triggered the credit default swaps at that point and almost becomes irrelevant. you see what i'm saying? purely voluntarily, i think it's going to be extremely tough. >> yeah. we'll see how close we get if at all later on tonight and again tomorrow morning. michelle, thank you so much. working a long day in athens today. luckily, she is in athens which is still gorgeous as you saw from that shot. bob pisani, you were nodding your head. >> elephant on your head, a terrific interview with that fellow of how difficult it is to start a business. an elephant on the head here. but nonetheless, traders are betting that the deal will go through, maybe not -- maybe the cap will get kicked in or not. 86% on the greek law side. that's ambitious. >> sure. >> maybe they can get it, i hope so. regardless. remember when's happening, the markets are betting that the greek deal will go through that the psi will get done.

with the cap or without the cap. and next ber two, u.s. economy will continue to improve. looking for numbers up of 200,000. what's changed? why is this stock market holding up so well? why doesn't it keep going down? get a tight shot on the assumptions under which the stock market is going up. u.s. economy slowly improve and outperform. most of the world including europe, europe is in a mild recession, everybody knows that but not a massive breakdown of the euro. china, they talk about 7.5% growth and likely too low on that. probably around 8%. that's the scenario that people are betting on right now, carl. i think so far, so far, much of this is actually coming to pass. if this doesn't happen, you are going to see the stock market -- we get 1% gdp in the u.s. economy and not at least 2%, that's going to change things a lot. so far that's not happening. meantime, carl, everybody's talking about tomorrow. third-year anniversary of the lows on the stock market.

those of you who don't remember, i don't want to remember particularly, s&p, take a close shot here. this is that sickening drop. remember that? everybody. we dropped all the way down. 57%. the s&p 500 dropped when it hit the bottom. there's the bottom. march 9th, 2009. 670. look at this. carl, we are exactly, exactly twice the value of the march 9th bottom. stock prices doubled since that march 9th bottom. that's the good news. bad news, carl, look. we are essentially where we were about 2007. going further, take a look at what happened. put up a 15-year chart. we are essentially where we were way back in to 2001. >> where we were. i'll tell you what's not back to '07 levels is unemployment. >> that's right. that's definitely way, way -- i don't remember exactly what the number was back then but certainly wasn't 8.5%. >> that's for sure. yeah. thank you very much.

more than doubling consumer discretionary and financials. >> those are all the risk on. >> that's right. thank you very much. >> okay. let's hop over to rick santelli in chicago joined by a guest. >> what bob said, 17 agencies, opening up a coffee shop, that cradle-grave experiment, all you end up with is inefficiencies in debt and taking care of you supposedly the less liberty you have. perfect segue for bill hur, trader, wealth management is his organization. hey, we are talking about hedge funds. any different in a way from what's going on with greece trying to open up a coffee shop? >> well, in the united states, if you want to invest in a hedge fund, you have to be a credited investor. bottom line, most don't allow it and you have to have 200,000 or a million dollars of net worth not counting your home. i don't understand why having money, making a lot of money or having a lot of money makes you

smart or if you're not, say for example you're a teacher, social worker, you can't make that decision. you're not educated enough to make that decision. >> basically, in the end, let's summarize quickly. a mutual fund over the last three years, just average, how many do you think made more than 10% return? >> if you count 2008, a little more than three or none. very few. >> how many hedge funds in the last three years made more than a 10% return? >> more than a few. >> okay. what was the a.c.t. score your brother got? >> 34, 35. >> the government tells him as taking a liberty away that you're not smart enough to join a hedge fund because maybe if things don't work out well the government's going to have to try to claw back the money they did for entities and derivatives. >> basically. entered social work. he is not smart enough or doesn't make enough money in the field to be a credit and take the liberty away from him. >> make rules about what you can do with your life when really the issue here is education.

by the way, we spend more per pupil than i think any other country. what you put in isn't what you get out. take a quick test. certified to make your own decision about the financial wherewithal and give up rights to call a regulator saying i want my money back. what about what? >> makes sense to me. >> that's bill herr. we'll have him on once a week. he makes a lot of common sense. carl, back to you. >> thanks very much. thanks, bill. straight ahead, some of the biggest names in m & an is in one place. but first, a few winners and lose earls from the trading day in europe just ending now. with scottrader streaming quotes,

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and it can be done well. [ ilona ] i came to ge after the plant i was working at closed after 33 years. ge's giving me the chance to start back over. [ cindy ] there's construction workers everywhere. so what does that mean? it means work. it means work for more people. [ brian ] there's a bright future here, and there's a chance to get on the ground floor of something big, something that will bring us back. not only this company, but this country. ♪ all right. welcome back. next on the halftime report, are we in for a housing snapback? see how our own is playing it now. will the department of justice derail apple's historic run? mcdonald's, dow's biggest loser. see if the golden arches lost the luster. that's next. now back to carl. >> thanks. hundreds of top lawyers and

dealmakers coming together in new orleans talking all things m&a. conference in new orleans. with the details, good to see both of you. what are some of the takeaways, andrew? >> go for it. >> every year you hear them beating their chest at the beginning of the year saying this is a huge year for m&a. this is the first year we're not hearing that. this is 100 billion of deal volume yesterday. i think which is a really, really late start and saying it takes until the end of the year or two years to see something meaningful. >> sort of two sides to this. glass half empty or full. i was at dinner last night with bankers and lawyers and a group that was like a pity party and depressing. >> that's why you see them here, not working. >> not working. peter wineburg this morning on "squawk" and he was remarkably

upbeat. there's a survey of 49% of the bankers think a better year of 2012 than 2011. >> 42% say it's the same. >> right. >> so pretty optimistic. >> is it? i don't know. >> 8% of people surveyed saying it's worse than before, i don't know. last year is underwhelming. >> the reason it's important at all, a greater barometer of confidence in the board room about the businesses and i think when you don't see deal making and people think they should give the metrics, the cash on the balance sheets says there's something larger. >> there's something of a lagging indicator. it takes let's call it six months for a deal done from when you first sow the seeds of confidence and something announced and as far as the market in the fourth quarter, no confidence in the fourth quarter. if you think about the rally in the stock market and maybe confidence is coming back now, it's mid yore. >> should we tell carl about

goldman sachs? >> i was going to tell you. after your column this week and relatively critical of goldman, can you walk through the halls over there? are people patting you on the back or shooting you dirty looks? >> mostly patting on the back. not so many folks here from goldman. the delaware chancellor that wrote the opinion against goldman is here and getting pats on the back and just a panel we were both at talking about this particular case, about goldman sachs and in particular the idea now that you can have a conflicted bank advising a firm, that's somehow okay as long as you hire a second firm to be the quote unquote cleansing bank. for my mind, seemed bogus and the quote unquote technology. the new technology in banking and legal mma work. >> you have the examples. playing both sides of the coin there but the bigger the deal the more conflicts you have and

so many moving parts that need an adviser. you could argue. >> you could argue. i don't know if i would but -- >> the ownership structure of that particular case. hopefully that's not always the case. sounds fascinating, guys. look forward to hearing more from you later on today. >> you bet. see you back in new york, carl. maybe going to scott kohn, perhaps? >> the new york madame case with wall street abuzz. morgan stanley placed the broker who was meeting with her on leave. the company says that this is just normal policy. and we're told that the employee maintains he had no vomit with criminal activity and that there's been no finding of any anything to the contrary as far as morgan stanley is concerned but policy while the criminal investigation is going on. we can't confirm he is under investigation, that he's been placed on leave. so that's the latest in this

story. again, we're not saying the broker's name. we have calls in to him. he's not yet responded to our request for a comment. >> it's broken across the new york tabloids for a couple of days. thank you very much. scott cohen from the breaking news desk. when we come back, a firsthand look at the new ipad from someone that played with the new features. his opinion and see if it's worth buying.

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welcome back to "squawk on

the street." breaking news desk. bank of america ceo brian moynih moynihan, his presentation was interrupted twice. a protester shouting and then another time and he made comments about the stress test. of course, the banks expected to receive the results of that next week. moynihan declining comment on it but he did point out that progress that the bank has made. other than that, he went on to emphasize the progress of the company on reducing expenses, noting that the company cut head count by 7,000 in the fourth quarter. all of this part of the new b of a plan they have because in this environment, cutting expenses is one way that the company will make money and how the company grows ownings is a key question that investors want to know. back to you. >> a lot of news from this conference and not the kind they planned on but an interesting story nonetheless. thank you. consumers may have to wait

until march 16th for the new ipad but john phillips of gadget lab log was able to test it out after yesterday's launch and joins us now with the reaction. good to talk to you this morning. >> good to talk to you. >> how long is the waiver? you have to sign it to hold it before it actually gets released to the public. >> i didn't have to sign any waiver whatsoever. the way it works is file in to the big hall. you hear tim cook speak. that's fascinating and then they lead you to a breakout room where you get anywhere between 15, 45 minutes to test the new device. >> you write although it's a model of inspired industrial design you talk about an overwhelming sense of sameness. you weren't blown away. >> no. i wasn't completely blown away. i i think i've become sort of a nerd to apple's charmed and so much that i have an iphone 4s and i know what a display looks like. fantastic. the best out there. and now it's simply coming to the ipad. it's going to be the best

display on a tablet which is fantastic but for me, a hard core gadget enthusiast to some degree it's old hat. >> part is that it's simply thicker and heavier, right? >> you know, it's marginally thicker and heavier. and i wouldn't say that's a negative. it's one thing i noticed during my short time with the tablet but the big story is the display. it's four times the resolution of the previous ipad display and, you know, it is fantastic. it's the best out there right now. >> how about the a-5x processor and functionality? will it perform with the speed that people are satisfied with? >> you know, i think so. it's always good to show a speed bump to tick that off on the spec sheet but they need it for the display so when you have four times the pixels to drive, i'm getting geeky here but you need much more processing power so, you know, in my limited time at the demo, i found that

applications were running smoothly. >> it's interesting. you make the point that they have sort of like you said a nerd, become accustomed to the beauty of their design and just tough to keep climbing that wall to the same degree. >> yeah. i mean, there's a mass hysteria with apple and anyone who's an apple enthusiast, i'm one of them, you know, to some degree we buy in to it but there's always a little bit of letdown when you actually hold the device. there's so much build-up, there's been four months build-up for the latest ipad eni think at the end of the day when you finally get to hold it, there's a little bit of an ugh kind of reaction to it. >> we'll see if that has any affect whatsoever on sales, john. thanks so much. good stuff. >> thank you. don't forget to tweet us today. apple's causing chatter by calling it simply the new ipad. we want to know if you were tim cook, what's your excuse for not coming up with a better name? we'll get some of your responses

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people introducing the ipad as the new ipad and asking you if you were tim cook, what's your excuse for not coming up with a better name than "the i new ipad." there was none left by the time naming came around. patent trolls took the other names. be happy the new ipad wasn't called the cook book. get it, for imcook. rick santelli, we have hit 62 in manhattan and going to 68 or 70 today. >> yeah, no. another very nice month in terms of weather and the joke in chicago is, february the score was 7-2, umbrellas 7, shovels 2. i think that pretty much sums it up. with greece, we always talk about these things and i'm not really that optimistic on the big picture but it could be. you know? if the greek people embraced this,