two-year, four-year election cycles as to thinking about the long-term future solvency of our country. and i think opinion -- paul ryan is willing to sacrifice that. >> make sure you join us tomorrow. "squawk on the street" is next. good monday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with melissa lee, jim cramer, david faber live at the new york stock exchange. if you're looking to see if futures are reacting to the news about paul ryan over the weekend, not a lot of reaction so far. we've got a lot to handle, a lot of news today from both the united states, of course, and europe. things like the greek economy down another 6% in the second quarter. >> roadmap this morning starts in iowa where paul ryan starts his first week of campaigning. should the markets start discounting some of the policies he's advocated, like an end to

the capital gains tax? we'll break down the policy and the politics. >> speaking of markets, we are up five straight weeks, that's the longest stretch since ok. only 72 points away from a new 2012 high on the dow. can the melt-up continue as we enter a data-heavy week? >> goldman sachs takes coca-cola off the conviction buy list raising the question, are these high multiple defensive names topping out? >> and google upgraded by the same morgan stanley analyst who cut facebook's numbers ahead of that ipo. his argument, social is not the threat that everyone thinking it is. we'll start with politics. republican presidential candidate mitt romney choosing congressman paul ryan at his running mate this weekend. ryan is a vocal critic of the fed and its efforts to stimulate growth. frequently debated with chairman bernanke. this weekend, guys, the market began to look closer at his policies over capital gains and whether or not there should even be a tax on that kind of thing.

market positive or not? >> no. it's something that we can talk about. but i think we're still data-heavy. still earnings related. i think this is the next president of the united states -- excuse me, vice president. i think it's a great talking point. it does call up the divisions in our country. i would make a lot more money under ryan as many people are well compensated. it's back to that world. >> it's not under ryan, it would be under romney. and we don't know whether the ryan plan is the romney plan. i read the ryan plan yesterday. had a very long bus trip in which to read the 99-page ryan plan. but i haven't read the romney plan yet because there isn't one. that will be interesting to see whether he just adopts it.

it was hard to read on my ipad. >> you're not saying the pick is inconsequential to the race? sit, do you think? >> no. i'm not a political figure. but i think that as there was a fabulous piece in "the new york times" by nate silver whose work i love who said it was a desperate move and it won't help. and nate silver's work i think is the best there is in the business. >> a lot of discussion about florida and how the sledding's gotten tougher for the romney camp in florida if in fact ryan and some of his policies are delmde demonized. >> and the nugget on that is seniors in florida don't necessarily want to see their entitlement plans overhauled at this stage in the game. does it make it less likely for romney to win a swing state like florida or even an ohio where

senior votes are important in these kinds of states. >> we who follow the markets know there is a huge trillion-dollar problem coming. i think americans don't vote that way. i don't think they're focused on it. i think the senior citizens are in love with medicare. they don't want to hear about how their kids won't have medicare. i think this is the fiscally responsible guy who most people don't like. we like in the media -- you know why? he's hilarious off-camera. >> very easy to get along with. >> i didn't know he was a congressman. talking about various workouts, he's got like -- he's got abs of steel. pull the shirt up kind of thing. >> really? >> well, not -- what's amazing is that the guy does not carry himself like a fiscal conservative. he carries himself as a guy that says, let's go have a few buds or coors light and settle this

thing. it's different from -- >> paps blue ribbon. >> pbr. >> i was thinking petrobras. >> no. >> but it's dealing with the fiscal cliff and which vision of america, whether it's going to be articulated. and we haven't gotten one articulated by romney or by obama. it's going to affect our market at some point. when you read the ryan plan and their approach to it or the budget -- let's not forget the budget control act which is going to sequester and cut automatically -- >> do you think the voters understand that? to them, a fiscal cliff is something that venezuela -- they don't think about it. we think about the fiscal cliff.

people don't talk about this in real life. >> it's going to be a big number, if everything's reversed. whether capital gains and the dividends and the bush tax cuts and you add it all up, you get into trillions of dollars, even in the u.s., trillions. we start off the week, the s&p in the midst of a six-day winning streak, its longest in two years and 17 points away from a 2012 high. the dow is just 72 points away from its high for the year. if it top that is level, the dow will be at more than a 4 1/2-year high. the criticism on the markets is we're only seeing the defensive stocks move higher. you want to see some of the higher beta stocks move higher as well. financial, technology, more levered to the economy. >> they've been stalled. we had a little housing bump the other day. we also have some of these -- there was a little bit of a moment where we were buying caterpillar again, cummins, rated neutral today. but as important as our streak is, we could get the 11th week

of europe up, 11th week -- david, i know the stock market means zero to you, that you're a bond market maven. but what do you make of this? >> i don't know what to make of it. maybe it's something meaningful. but i prefer to keep an eye more on bond investors whoever day are trying to assess the -- >> the dutch preferreds. >> i can't say -- >> these are preferreds that are on fire. the sprint preferred signaled a bottom. >> it did. >> gentlemen prefer preferreds. >> we got japan's gdp number overnight. the japanese market did trade on it. didn't move very much at all. it was a very low number but off a 5.5% gain in gdp which had been revised up for the first quarter. i guess 3.4% overall people are saying, not so bad.

still all of this a year after the tsunami. >> that strong yen, not helping long-term demographic troubles roiling their economy. we're going to get claims, ppi cpi, philly, empire, makes you wonder if last week's action was a one-off because it was in the absence of any real data points. >> we did have a vacuum. the chinese announced nothing. >> shanghai did get hit today. >> shanghai did get hit. i think the market is so thin that we're going to react wildly to each data point and that is something i think people at home have to recognize. there are very few players right now. >> friday was the lightest of the year. >> that's right. >> the beach was jammed, wasn't it? can you believe it? >> you tell us. we were here working. >> all right. >> incredibly light volume

overall, we continue to talk about the movement out of stocks into bond funds. still that continues. >> john vogel this weekend talking about the danger -- watching index funds, no reporter will call him out on it. i love john. but sometimes you have to say, what have you done? and the answer is not that well. how about picking better stocks? how about taking the bad stocks and buying the good stocks? >> that's not what an index fund would do. >> no. that's what jeremy siegel suggests. and he is very different. he suggests buying for the long run stocks that pay good dividends because dividends have presented the best opportunity. 40% of the appreciation's dividends. this is siegel versus vogel, two philadelphiaens going at it. >> through if you count now. vogel's model is the antithesis of what you do.

>> i think there's something to be said about jeremy siegel over john vogel. >> you love that jeremy siegel guy. >> he was in my dad's building. he lives in pop's building. >> goldman removing coke from the conviction buy list today, cutting the stock to neutral. even though the stock is delivering an above-average fundamental performance, it sees the gap narrowing versus its peers. i thought this sounded a lot like mcdonald's where you have u.s. market share getting a little bit of the outperformance narrowing, underexposed to fast-growing energy drinks -- >> that's been the case for coca-cola for years even through this period of outperformance of the markets. seemed like a call where they wanted to ring the bell before there was -- they wanted to say, take a look at the valuation. near term, it's trading on a historical premium to its own valuation. we are getting worried.

they raised their price target but cut the shares. it was a cautious call, was my interpretation of the whole thing. >> i don't like this call at all, frankly. they're telling you to rotate into campbell's. we had treehouse say the soup category was bad. campbell's has just been a terrible stock. this is not hershey. campbell's and hershey for a long time, campbell's has been such a terrible performer. you want to own coke for the next 40 points. >> and the reasons behind the campbell -- campbell's goes from sell to conviction buy list -- it's skipping a couple of steps because of cost controls and better marketing after their soup category. a little tenuous there. sjm is another part of this call.

premium coffee trends are going in their favor. >> a lot of calls where there were multiple notches, like the jcp call out of piper where they cut the call from 50 to 25. >> gee, 50, that would be, okay -- >> the short squeeze on jcpenney was extraordinary. minus 20% comps. but they introduced some novel things. great stuff about jcpenney and other department stores losing the power to the brands. pvh, coors, struck at how well some of these big brands, timberland, these trade -- they're getting stronger. >> yes. >> you might have visited on saturday with the bad weather. bad weather saturday. >> it was. it was raining. >> cookoors by the way -- i hav

mostly canadian. delicious. >> 12% alcohol? yeah. >> i thought the kors that was michael kors, i didn't like what they had. but they report this week. spent a little time in kors. i went to burberry. i thought it was $79. but it was 179. and i was like, i'm not buying that. >> $179 for a tie is outrageous. >> i used to fight over ties. >> still can. >> let's talk about google this morning. motorola mobility cutting 20% of its workforce. one-third of the jobs being cut are based here in the united states. two-thirds outside of the united states. this was seen long and coming.

google fought motorola mobility for the patents. if you read between the lines, what does it mean? >> i think if they can minimize the losses, google's having a monster good quarter. we got a big upgrade from morgan stanley on google today. and they're talking about a $75 price target. not worried about social network competition. >> it would be the facebook name would be the first that comes to mind. >> not groupon, not zynga? >> not groupon. we'll hear from them after the bell tonight. that will be very exciting. maybe a little too early to --. >> it could be like jcpenney. it's such a crowded short that jcpenney said, things are terrible and people bought the stock. >> on motorola mobility to your point, we were expecting significant job cuts. may be more behind that.

but they're claiming to stay in the device business at this point, paring down their mrukt line to what would be a handful of devices led by a woman who used to be a darpa. >> i saw a piece in "the new york times" about a fashion person who was arrested in brooklyn court -- wow. people should read that piece. >> yeah, that was. she fell fast. >> digital island. remember those days? $79 million, worth $2 million 18 months later. >> because it was only worth $2 million to begin with. when we come back, we'll cover every angle or mitt romney's vp choice. and we'll hear from kent conrad. and the chairman of the rnc joins us. one more look at futures.

s&p up six straight. we'll see if we can keep the streak going when "squawk on the street" comes back.

♪ the gop ticket is set. mitt romney picking the young

congressman from wisconsin, paul ryan, to be his vp running mate. here's a good piece of trivia. the last time a u.s. representative went directly from the house to the u.s. presidency was back in 1933. only two other sitting house members since then have been vp candidates. that brings us to this morning's "squawk on the tweet." romney picking ryan for vp is like investors picking blank for their portfolios. and of course we want to know why. we have your responses throughout the morning. that's a good question. that really leaves it open to our viewers. >> struggling with that. >> struggling to think about that one. >> that would be gold probably. libertarian. i actually read it. i didn't like those books. i believe in a safety net. >> john paul. come on.

>> the pages are great. the same 50 pages every 50 pages. >> a lot of sex, too. you can't beat that. >> did you read that 51 shades -- >> no, no. everybody tells me, though. all the women tell me it's terribly written. straight ahead -- cramer gives you the head start on your trading day. his mad dash is coming up next. let's take a look at futures to help us out of this block here. looking at a lower open. snapping this long winning streak in the markets. much more "squawk" straight ahead. [ male announcer ] when a major hospital

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♪ seven minutes till the bell on what cramer's calling a non-sleepty monday. >> big today. >> let's get the mad dash. start with crm. >> heavily shorted stock. marc benioff goes after gigantic accounts. piper says they won state farm, more than $100 million. this is going to be a short squeeze. and people have to watch out. that's a giant contract. >> very popular short. >> it's been a monster short. and it's been a monster bad short. unlike monster beverage which had a couple of negatives last week. >> you spent the last couple of months telling people to watch the bonds of sprint and now sell side is beginning to come around. >> this is over 5.

i was talking with david faber during the break. and we were talking about how the stock horizontal now doubled. now the analysts -- they're waking up to it. i guess when it triple, we're going to start seeing some real buy interest. >> talking specifically about merrill lynch. >> yeah. merrill lynch is getting on board. it's a little late. but, remember, $5 is the level where institution -- they don't like to be able to buy under $5. the stock goes higher. >> disney earnings last week. now citi's got some advice for them. >> citi did a little bit of navel gazing. they said disney should buy scripps to get that older women demographic -- whatever. i think disney should stick to its knitting. this kind of rumor mongering leaves me cold. >> we talked about groupon tonight. you want to do that quickly. >> here's my problem with groupon.

i keep reading about the turmoiled groupon, the turmoiled zynga. when i read turmoil, it does not make me feel like that you should go buy the stock up. pandora today, not a lot of turmoil there, but downgraded by morgan stanley. this social media cohort is so despised that it's just so 2000-2001. it has social in it. unless it's yelp, people don't seem to want it. i think facebook will put in a short-term bottom until the lock-ups because of reed hastings, a man i have tremendous respect for, from netflix, buying $1 million worth of facebook and he's on the board. it looks like that caused the bottom in the stock. do i like facebook? procter likes it. >> "the new york times" today, big piece. >> yes.

big consumer product group, they seem to want to put money in this thing. only gm has surfaced as someone who didn't want to put money in. >> 1.6 billion shares coming in the next nine months. >> that's what i call supply. now we need demand. >> the first opening bell of the week, minutes away. get ready for another big day of trading on "squawk on the street" in just a moment. ect ph. [ man ] nice!

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trade commission-free for 60 days, and we'll throw in up to $600 when you open an account. as you look at the opening bell about o happen here on the floor of the nyse, there's a woman on the balcony with an infant. baby being very good. here at the big board, take a look at the s&p at the top side of your screen.

so going into a week, there's going to be some land mines. retail sales, ppi, you think the tone after the jobs number we got a couple of weeks ago, is the done of the data going to be better? >> goldman sachs put out a piece saying there's a little bit of an inflection point. the last two weeks of june were bad. july wasn't good. the goldman sachs note is a little bit more of the last few weeks of july and maybe the beginning of august was good. this is so granular that it worries me because you can't really go week to week. but if we saw something good happen in europe and we saw this -- we didn't get it, this weekend, china -- you see this thing is becoming a case that there's a little more growth in the country. and that does matter. >> although if you look at consumer spending around the

world, whether it be japan where it slowed markedly from the first quarter to the second quarter, this country where we saw that significant potential slowdown in june, we also saw gdp numbers that were not overly good. china where they were trying to stimulate, it is not looking great for personal consumption which is such a large part, not in china necessarily, but japan and certainly here, of the overall world economy. >> aluminum spot prices are horrible, copper's come down. the baltic freight down day after day after day. and the suez max rates are between 5,000 -- this is your big oil tankers. you can rent them from $5,000 to -- i'm thinking of having a party to end the summer on the deck of a suez -- >> cramer invites you and a guest -- >> i think i can do it off of staten island or brooklyn

maybe -- for $5,000 i'll have a couple of tents on top and show everybody a good time. >> a couple of interesting market moves so far, google reacting to that morgan stanley upgrade today. morgan stanley upgrading it saying it traded at a 25% discount to the online ad services sector. take a look at the big moves we're seeing in shares of facebook. that's up 2%. groupon up 3%. you mention that had this is a heavily shorted stock. reporting earnings today. we could be seeing some short covering here in this move higher. >> i think this jcpenney really scared the shorts because they got their wish. they got really horrible same-store numbers. they got a series of downgrades -- it didn't matter. >> yahoo! has an interesting call out of stifel today. not waiting that long for marissa mayer to make her first move. the analyst suspects she will ditch the conservative strategy,

go bold, which would mean some margin compression and go to a hold. >> frankly, if the acquisitions aren't dilutive and they can get more social and more mobile, i'm in favor of it. i read that downgrade. and i thought, whatever's been doing there ain't been working. if she can reinvent the place, that's a positive. >> we were talking about this on friday. if you add up best-case scenario and put a multiple that's reasonable on core business and assume the tax after cash proceeds from alibaba, you get about 19 bucks a share. if you say she's going to reinvent this company, who knows? if you are a board member or large shareholder, perhaps

you're willing to go there. i'm fairly certain that dan loeb is in line with the idea of not returning all the proceeds from the alibaba deal. >> this is a company that puts a lot of the screens in the subways and the bus systems for advertising, getting a go private offer, $27 a share. this is a big company. and the market cap on this is $3 billion. the total offer is $3.5 billion. the consortium being led by carlyle and fountain vest. the stock is halted right now. we see where that is -- it's c fmc. >> this was a short name also in the muddy waters, wasn't it? this was one of those -- >> this is a chinese company. if somebody's putting real money on a chinese company --

>> and we have seen some of those go-privates, chinese reverse mergers that got crushed in this market because of association with other names. >> that's true. >> that were fraudulent. >> i believe the example you may be thinking of is the management team took the company private. but these are outside -- >> this is one that -- we were wondering at the time. >> they're developing ways to advertise -- for instance, you're on a bus in china and you're passing by a store like a walmart, they will tell you walmart is coming up, whatever product it is, it will tell you, next stop, get off. it's very targeted advertising. >> it's been a company that people have always felt looked american. financials supposed to be pretty good. obviously was the advertising play there. i haven't trusted a chinese

stock -- >> sounds to me like "minority report" where they read your eyes and you walk into the gap and they're like, welcome back, mr. cramer, how did those khakis work out for you? >> i bought some khaki this is weekend. >> how many khakis do you have? you're always buying khakis. honestly! >> i bought two pair of lucky jeans. i could not believe the prices at lucky brands. and i went over to gap. you're getting really hot quality pants for $23. >> but they're always 20% off. there's always a deal, free shipping, 20% off -- it's crazy. >> j. crew, you won't get a discount. it's incredibly. >> they typically triy not to discount anything. >> that's why i shop at the factory store. they have the nice dress shirts

there. >> coming back before we go to bob, it is a non-binding proposal. it is not a definitive -- we'll see. it's a proposal letter, not to be dismissed, but it is not an actual definitive offer. important to point out. >> let's head over to bob pisani and check in on what is moving on this monday morning. good morning, bob. >> good morning. two topics hot with the traders over the weekend. number one was mr. ryan and health care and number two was china. i have to admit it's a little uncertain. the number one question i got was, what is mr. ryan's nomination for vp mean for health care stocks? i think the answer is it's a little uncertain right now. a lot of perm yentations have gone through over the last 48 hours. sounded like very good news for hmo stocks.

he's been supporting this plan to extend private plans choices for medicare, moving more towards privatization. that means at least medicare advantage. remember, this is that plan that would allow private health insurance plans and medicare, been modest penetration sov far. somewhere between 25% and 30% penetration so far. that has a lot of room to grow right now. so the big players in this space are humana, united health care. they would certainly be beneficiaries of moving towards a privatization plan. i think the problem right now and the reason there's not a lot of enthusiasm is that it's not clear whether mr. romney supports mr. ryan's plan. and number two would be 2022 or after before you get big moves into that. it's a little premature. the other big top sick what's going on in china. that was the hot topic. and much more immediate. the numbers on friday were terrible. and a lot of the discussion this weekend is that cutting the reserve requirements are not going to do it.

even infrastructure is going to be difficult. there's a lot of talk about going back into the real estate area and loosening some of the restrictions that currently exist in the real estate area. "forbes" had a great article, china is running outfit money where they talked about it's going to be difficult to do infrastructure plans because the banks themselves have made a lot of bad loans back in 2008 and they're going to have a lot of trouble coming up with additional money because they haven't collected on those bad loans. i think china right now is the number one topic everybody's facing. back to you. >> thank you very much, bob. >> last night after i'm watching the olympics, i thought for sure -- i kept checking the machines, where's china? where's that stimulus? no. just japan being bad. incredible that we're not down big.

a lot of people felt we were short-squeezed into the weekend because of something china. >> not incredible that we're down big but we've said similar things. many days over the last few weeks, we said it. >> last week's range on the dow, 121 points. we haven't seen that narrow a range for the week in a very, very long time. >> the vix, remember the vix? now it's just richardson vix. they have a new sleep medicine the fda doesn't have to approve. i have to try it soon. >> it closed below 15 on friday and now it's at 14. that's amazing. >> let's check out the latest moves in energy and metals and go to bertha coombs at the nymex. >> the u.s. naval ship collided with a tanker in the strait of hormuz. more talk coming out of israel about a potential strike against iran. brent is really soaring.

and we've got those outages in the north sea that just don't seem to stop. one of the things that people are watching is the brent curve. dennis gartman talked about it boog a ste being a steep backwardation. we're watching gasoline here. andy lipo says between the drought causing ethanol prices up by a nickel and you've also got the california refinery fire, that's adding about 15, 20 cents to the price of gasoline, which is now up 30 cents from a month ago. not bad timing for tesoro to buy. >> thanks very much, bertha coombs. want to take a look at ingersoll rand.

we've talked about a lack of merger and acquisition activity in this market. one area i continue to hear a lot about is shareholder activism. it doesn't show up that often any longer in big proxy fights where everybody has to spent a lot of money and a lot of time. but it doesn't often show itself in the appointment of a board member here, an appointment of a board member there. and things of that nature. and nelson peltz is one of the more active activists out there. it's nice to get to the level where you feel like you bring enough influence to a situation that the board is going to listen, the ceo is going to listen and you can eventually at least get something that you want. in this case, what they wanted was a board seat. they got it although they didn't get it originally back in may because they had actually to agree to a standstill. now they have. ingersoll rand shares down a little bit. they have about a 7% stake there, about 21 million shares. they turned down that seat earlier this year in part

because it came along with a standstill. they didn't like that. this time it doesn't. but it is interesting to know where they have the most board seats and the performance of some of the companies. wendy's, most board seats. heinz, this was one nasty battle. but at the end, everybody's friends. peltz on that board for quite some time. family dollar, they made an offer. that's done well. legg mason and tiffany's, not so much. but it's interesting because so much of activism now takes place behind the scenes. it doesn't start or even end with a proxy fight. it starts with a private conversation and often ends with a simple press release saying, we've added a board member here. they go from 11 to 12 board members at ingersoll rand. one board member can really make a big difference. >> we did a study of if you bought a peltz stock not before -- not the day, but after, how did you do? you beat the s&p 500 by an

average of 7.5%. you were up an average of 10.1%. this is after the news. he's picked his targets wisely. you're absolutely right about heinz. we met with mr. johnson, the ceo. he found that peltz's suggestions worked terrific. and this was someone you want to embrace. >> that helps. did we look at activism in 2012? just to end with those numbers. it is up, the filings. average market cap, invested in new filings, it is all up so far this year. we're moving back into that season where you start to get ready to file a proxy for the next annual. >> i was just looking at this letter that carl icahn issued this morning in response to another letter issued friday afternoon. >> that's been a nasty battle there. and he is still the king when it comes to activism, of course. kent squire has put together those kinds of numbers and finds even if you buy after the filings, you oftentimes outpace

the s&p. >> who has the better average, icahn, ackermann, peltz? >> i think icahn. >> he's made a lot of money. >> got to remember, it's harder because he's more broadly speaking invests in some things he's not active in. but he was up 31% last year. ackman, some hits, some misses. >> got to take a break here. keep the tweets coming. mitt romney picking the young congressman from wisconsin, paul ryan, to be his vp running mate. the last time a u.s. representative went from the house to the vice presidency was back in 1933. we are asking you to fill in this blank. romney picking ryan for vp is like investors picking blank for their portfolios and of course tell us why. our handle is @cnbcsquawk@cnbcs.

time for "squawk on the tweet" on this monday. mitt romney of course picking the young congressman from wisconsin, paul ryan, to be his vp running mate. this morning, we're asking you to fill in the blank. romney picking ryan is like investors picking blank for their portfolios because blank. got a lot of good ones here. gary writes, a blue-chip stock. herman writes, u.s. bonds, thinking they're a safe investment. jeff tweets, mastercard because neither believes in carrying debt on their balance sheets and both monitor credit ratingings. and peter writes, darden because they don't have any international exposure. you wouldn't think that about a gop ticket in this day and age. i said something like whole foods because ryan's well-liked, trajectory's been pretty good.

but there is risk of multiple contraction down the road. >> yes. i like that. >> bold bet. >> the first and only thing you really want to do with a vp is make sure they can be president. we have presidents that unfortunately get sick, die or get impeached and some actually when they're impeached actually leave office, like nixon, not clinton. >> like hbo. >> i don't know. >> my own opinion is that it's going to create a conversation now about policy whereas before we were talking about bain and tax returns and small ball. we were in small ball later in the game than usual. and this is going to change that. >> policy about a vice president instead of the presidential candidate. i can't really remember that ever happening. >> but there's an ideological symbolism to his pick. >> absolutely. >> certainly more than pawlenty or rubio. >> and i think it's wrong to say there's no foreign experience.

palin had that russian experience. i think he's gotten more than that. >> there was some national security, right? >> traveled that country a number of times. >> anyway, markets down 13, off the lows. a lot more "squawk on the street" in a minute. >> the stock market can be quite a circus. and we have the ringmaster. jim cramer and his six stocks in 60 seconds, taking center stage when "squawk on the street" returns. well, i had all the classic symptoms...

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guess who is back? simon hobbs with a look at what's coming up next hour on "squawk on the street." >> it's good to be back. it's amazing to see what the inclusion of paul ryan is doing to both sides of the political spectrum. we're going to talk to senator jim talent who's a romney surrogate. and also kent conrad will give us the democrats' take. and we'll talk about facebook. you get the lock-ups beginning to expire on thursday. we'll talk about exactly where we are now with f.b.

back to you. "six in 60" this morning, we'll talk some cicso. >> stifel says it may not be a good a quarter. a couple of upgrades last week saying it was good. battleground. >> tesoro. >> bp sells the refining. it's very big. >> eog resources. >> favorite fastest growing oil company in the country. it's terrific. >> we talked about peltz earlier on. this is -- >> international paper, the price increases are sticking. another sign the world's economy might be better. >> five below getting some initiation. >> this came at 17. what a home run. >> and kimko realty. >> people are worried about the amazonization -- they're doing fabulously. >> speaking of the jcpenney call

today saying it's a new dawn for retailers because that directed consumer channel is profitable. and you have to decide whou you get that supply, right? >> stop shorting the reits. they've been fantastic. federal realty, the best of all. >> what's coming up tonight? >> we have regeneron. this is a company that was at $5 when they came on to "mad money." this thing's now in the 130s. it's terrific. and charles river, it's a new company. sometimes you have to have ceos on where you don't know them and you want to find out about them. >> last week you said overall about the market, you want to see back and forth. do you feel the same way? >> yeah, we're getting it. we need to re-establish this plateau. merkel's back today from vacation, not a good sign. but she's going to canada and that is a good sign. the canadians have horse sense. >> that's true. >> they have horse sense. >> we'll see you tonight, jim. >> thank you. when we come back, as simon

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welcome back to "squawk on the street." let's get to the roadmap for the next hour. republican presidential candidate mitt romney tapping paul ryan as his running mate. how could the pair shape their economic message? we have an all-star lineup ahead. jim talent, senator kent conrad of north dakota and secretary of health and human services, tommy thompson. plus, 200 million shares of facebook hitting the market in the coming days. >> and speaking of reputations, knight losing 70% of its stocks' value. we'll see if it can buff its business back to a shine. paul ryan is meeting voters at the ohio state fair, campaigning alone for the first time in the same state where

president obama is launching a bus tour of his own. eamon javers is live in des moines with the very latest. eamon? >> reporter: good morning, melissa, from the iowa state fair. they're selling deep-fried mac and cheese here. they're expecting paul ryan just down the road from where we are later on this morning. and they're expecting he's going to give sort of a soapbox-style speech. it's going to be one of his first outings on the campaign trail on his own, but already over the weekend, paul ryan was laying into president barack obama with some pretty tough rhetoric. take a listen. >> no one disputes that president obama inherited a difficult situation. and in his first two years with his party in complete control of washington, he passed nearly every item on his agenda. but that didn't make things better. whatever the explanations, whatever the excuses, this is a record of failure. >> reporter: now, melissa,

rhetoric like that is exactly what you hire a vice presidential candidate to do. the vice president typically in campaign years is the attack dog giving the presidential candidate the ability to float a little bit above the fray here. but paul ryan is also going to shift this race in a very crucial way. seems to me that this has been a race that's been all about jobs and the economy. now we're going to shift and talk about the deficit because, of course, paul ryan as the chirm of the house budget committee was the architecture of a budget plan on the republican side to really change the way america's fiscal future operates. that is going to be the subject of so much discussion over the next couple of days. that's going to shift a campaign that had been about jobs to a campaign that is going to be about deficit. we'll see what mr. ryan has to say later on here today in iowa. >> eamon, it's interesting because already nomura's chief economist has come out saying that ryan's pick will immediately refocus voters and investors' attention on this

fiscal cliff which is going to reach full throttle in the next few weeks or so. >> reporter: that's exactly right. we've been talking about the fiscal cliff on cnbc. but it hasn't really penetrated into the campaign, which has has been so much about the economy, so much about jobs. the romney strategy early on was to really go after obama and say, this is a guy who did not create enough jobs but by bringing paul ryan into this campaign, what they're doing is really shifting fronts here and attacking on a second front and pointing out that the president -- under the president, deficits have gone up and saying this is unsustainable. they think that's going to excite the republican base. and, of course, paul ryan has brought a lot of energy in just a couple of days into this campaign. >> do we know to what extent governor romney is going to adopt the ryan plan as his own or put a specific plan out there or is he going to choose to sort of go with what he has already, which is kind of vague but a lot of generally ity that is we kinf know about? >> reporter: what he's said so

far is he thinks the ryan plan is a good starting point. he's not fully embraced it but saying he's going to put out his own plan at some point, whether before or after the election remains to be seen. politicians don't want to get pinned down ant specifics. there are a lot of specifics in that ryan plan for democrats to attack. they think this might shift the balance in florida where senior citizens represent so much of a percentage of the population down there. and democrats can attack paul ryan's plan as saying, this is a plan to wants to change medicare. that's something that american politicians have been really reluctant to even talk about or even go anywhere near for decades because it's such a politically explosive topic. paul ryan went right to it and said, this is what we need to do to fix this country's fiscal future. that's going to be controversial in florida. the democrats think that might give them an edge down there. we'll wait to see whether romney adopts all, part, some different bits and pieces of the ryan plan. >> eamon, he's not a stranger to our airwaves.

we've had him on so many times. he's guest hosted on "squawk." a lot of us feel like we know him from sitting with him during the commercial breaks. when talking about this flub that romney made over the week introducing him as the next president of the united states. some say that in 2016, he is the future of the party. is that the view you're getting from folks on either side of the aisle? >> reporter: when you're 42 years old and you're campaigning for the president of the united states, you're clearly campaigning for your party. but a lot of people said that sarah palin was the future of the republican party in 2008. that didn't turn out as well as her supporters hoped. but when you get to that national stage, you're subject to so much more intense focus and criticism than ever before. and paul ryan's never run for anything larger than a congressional district. this is a much different stage. there's a lot more at stake here. but he's 42 years old. he's very smart in terms of the economy.

he's good-looking, got a great family. he has all the attributes to make a successful candidate. he's the first gen-exer to run for the office. >> you can raise these questions that including paul ryan in the race raises important questions in the race for america. but you have no guarantee that actually the people are prepared to run with that argument. this could backfire, as you allude to, quite badly, presumably for romney in florida, notably at a time when he's not obviously doing what he might otherwise do with women and latino voters as well. >> reporter: yeah. no, it's clearly a risky strategy bringing paul ryan on board because it opens up that medicare flank for democrats to attack. they are going to attack it in florida. you've seen that already just over the weekend. but i think for mitt romney, this was about bringing on

somebody who had ideological credentials with the base, who had youth, energy, vigor and would really shake up this race. in some ways, a risky gamble but something he felt he might have needed to do to shake up a race where he had not been necessarily able to beat president obama in any of the recent polls. in fact, he was trending significantly below president obama in a lot of the recent polls. for mitt romney, this was something to do to shake up this race, guys. >> eamon javers, thanks so much. eamon joining us from the iowa state fair this morning. quick check on the markets here. the dow and the s&p appearing to break their wing streaks over the past five weeks or so. want to point out the move in the euro. close to session highs right now. some people are saying there is short covering in today's session. angela merkel is back from vacation. so perhaps there's an expectation that the ecb and other parties can actually do something and that you want to get out the way of this move in the euro.

the euro just off the session highs for this morning. let's get to courtney reagan with a market flash here. >> take a look at shares of sears holdings. up about 3.6%, backing off a little bit from the highs of the session. over the weekend, barron's said the stock could really shoot up. if you think about the controlling shares that lambert has. this morning, "the chicago tribune" reporting it plans to spin off more than 1,200 of its hometown outlet and hardware stores. shares getting bid up 3.6%. up next, as facebook's lock-up comes to an end on thursday the stock is seeing some pressure. how to play it ahead of all those shares in the markets. back in two minutes. [ male announcer ] at scottrade,

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welcome back to "squawk on the street." you see the major indices not moving much percentagewise but there are big movers within this session. focus media is up by about 9%. >> it is. >> on its proposal. >> exactly. hovering between 9% and 10% from a proposal from a group of investors, most of them chinese, although carlyle is in there as well. this is a chinese media company,

broadly speaking. important to note, you have a highly confident letter and we said earlier, it is a non-binding proposal. it could result in a definitive agreement down the road. but it is at $27 a share at least, according to the press release put out by the company a little less than an hour ago or so. but we're watching those shares higher. a lot of controversy about chinese stocks listed here in the u.s., in particular some that were reverse mergers, herb greenberg has done a lot of very good work on this. some shown to be frauds, others haven't. harbin electric did go private after the stock fell sharply and is now in private hands. so it's a mixed picture when you look at these. >> and this is one, as you had mentioned, that had fallen into the crosshairs of muddy waters. the firm that has raised so many of these issues broadly, muddy watering asserting that focus

media overstates the valuation of the assets and overpaid for acquisitions. the company's vehemently denied the allegations. but here we are with this proposal on the table, bidding the shares higher by about 10% at this hour. taking a look at coca-cola, the downgrade there, goldman sachs removing it from the conviction buy list cutting to it neutral with a price target of $84. the price target went up, making the case the valuation was a bit too high compared to near-term historical comparisons. but that stock isn't moving too much at this point. it is down by just about .5%. >> there is a discussion on these, whether you maintain your position in these more expensive operators, typically the utilities or whether you should move into more cyclical areas that are cheaper and maybe trading at around ten times or less than ten times earnings. "the journal" did a piece over the weekend about northrop

grumman. shares of knight have been down more than 70% since the snafu on august 1st. knight capital is back to its full capacity but is it safe to invest in the firm. richard repetto joins us now on the phone. >> good morning, melissa. >> would you even tell investors that this would be on the radar for you in terms of potential investments? >> well, obviously anybody that would buy the stock now is going to be highly speculative. the tangible book value of the company is around $3.26. so if there was a takeout, you could potentially get something higher.

but that's very, very speculate zblif who would even be a take-out -- an acquirer, let's say? >> well, the larger investment banks have talked about getting into what knight does, the wholesale or retail market-making, market-making to the people like td ameritrade and scotttrade, some of their other lines of profitability are coming under more pressure with dodd/frank and so forth. but you saw the industry wants them in place and you saw people step up with the capital raise. but i'm not sure anybody -- i don't know exactly who would buy them right at this moment, i guess. >> for a name that was largely held by institutions, we had joyce on last week and he said with all the turnover in shares, he really didn't know who his

shareholder base was now. does that change the nature of holding this stock, even if you believe in the long term? >> absolutely. i think tom brought up a good point. in the days up to that time -- up to around august 1st, knight had traded a little bit over 1 million shares per day. they averaged 1.3 million. the three days afterwards, it was over 100 million. and the whole base could have turned over -- shareholder base could have turned over in those three days. i think that -- >> when you describe it as potentially a speculative play, you're not talking about it getting back to $10 because of this massi iviv ivive share dil that's gone on. >> the book value prior to the dilution was $11 and change. it was trading just below -- now

the book value given the dilution. given the loss, it's $3.26. >> what about the -- i know that a lot of people are floating the idea that parts of the business could be sold, perhaps the currency platform hot spot fx or alternatively it's stake in holdings. >> they have two valuable platforms that everybody points to, hotspot and the holdings in direct edge. i don't know whether it's a boon. i have a feeling that given the new ownership that that would -- they're definitely going to have discussions about those assets. but when you do -- it's a little bit better that they're not trying to sell them over that weekend, that we're not in the buy or sell situation.

but still, it's a little bit more difficult because i think people could still look at knight trying to raise capital through the sales -- some other platforms like fxr, which was bought by reuters, got a premium valuation. i don't know whether knight will get that right at the moment. >> rich, i know sandler advised knight. tom joyce seems universally respected. but the stock went from $13 to below $3. do you think the board should take action here? should he be fired? >> you know, we did advise -- i'm not going to comment on that. it was a trading error. i think the board has -- the board has a responsibility to review it. i'm not going to comment on -- that's up to them. it's something that i really shouldn't weigh in on right now. >> rich, good to speak with you. thanks for your time. much more "squawk on the street" coming up next. [ male announce] to hold a patent

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piper jaffray says based on what they can tell, looks as if the company made its largest axis to date with about $140 million. piper jaffray believes this will raise the company's guidance. they have about a $207 price target on this stock and an overweight. up about 2.4% on that note. >> thanks so much, courtney reagan. governor romney and representative ryan hitting the campaign trail today in iowa. we're joined by jim talent who's a top romney policy adviser. he joins us on the phone today. senator, good to have you. >> great to be here, thanks for arranging it. >> our big discussion this morning has been the degree to which the romney campaign is going to align itself with ryan's either his budgets, the things he's advocated in the past, campaign didn't seem to want to go there directly over the weekend.

any color on that you can give us? >> sure. governor romney's already given a lot of details about what he wants to do with the budget. he'd certainly sign the ryan plan. but he's going to want the freedom to offer his own budget because he's a leader. and paul being on the ticket enables us to talk about those issues and also to highlight what the president's done to medicare in the obama care bill where he cut $700 billion of it to pay for a new program. we're going to be able to talk about all these issues. >> market, of course, will focus specifically on capital gains taxes. representative ryan in the past has advocated doing away with it completely. that's something the governor criticized others about, specifically gingrich in the early part of the primaries. is there any movement on the governor's stance when it comes to capital gains? >> well, no -- governor romney's proposed this tax plan.

it does include cap gains and dividend cuts for middle class americans and a bunch of other really aggressive pro-growth ideas, like corporate tax cuts and the marginal rates. but he's not going to agree with congressman ryan 100% on everything nor vice versa. and that would have been true of anybody he picked. but they're both in the same -- they both believe in the same approach to getting the economy going. reducing the size and the scope and power of the government, which means changing the policies and the direction of the obama administration. >> senator, where do they disagree at this point? you must have a handle on that right now. >> well, you just mentioned, for example, a slightly different emphasis in terms of treatment of cap gains. i think congressman ryan voted for part "d" and governor romney likes the structure of that but didn't like the opening up of new spending. there's a few areas. but overwhelmingly, they agree on the direction the government

ought to go in to reverse the obama era policies and get economy moving again. and it's making the government smaller and reducing taxes and spending. >> senator, as part of the ryan plan, defense spending would not be cut. of course, the sequestration that may go into effect is going to have significant cuts in defense over the next ten years. where do you come down as somebody who's talked about perhaps as being a part of the romney administration on defense spending via the ryan plan staying where it is, no cuts at all? >> well, what's really important where governor romney comes down, he's a strong supporter of rebuilding our military. but as a baseline issue, he's opposed to the sequestration, which everybody is except evidently the president. even the secretary of defense, leon panetta has said the sequestration would be devastation. that's just another word for huge new defense cuts from an administration that's increased spending in other areas. that's the emphasis of the campaign now is to prevent these

new cuts that even the secretary of defense has said would be devastating. again, it's unprecedented for a commander in chief to propose something like that. >> senator, can i ask what swing voters you think the inclusion of paul ryan on the ticket will bring to the romney campaign? do you think it will enable more women, perhaps, to attach themselves to the campaign, particularly young women? do you think more latinos are likely to attach themselves to the romney campaign or is it a risk that you could lose the older white voter where romney was doing so well? >> i think -- i know paul. and he's such a good gooik guy. he's the kind of guy you want in public service. i think that's going to come out in the course of this campaign. for that reason, i think he's going to give us opportunities with voters across the board because he's sincere, he's dedicated. he's opposed to policies -- he gives the president credit for sincerity. but he's opposed these policies

that have led to 8.5% unemployment over the last three years. i think he's going to enable us to present a contrast and a roadmap ahead that's going to be very effective with voters across the country. >> senator, good to have you on an important day as we watch the ticket even more closely. thanks so much. >> thank you. straight ahead, we'll tell you how to play all the action in the markets and how you should put your money to work, perhaps in bonds. later on, the youngest person to ever receive vc funding the age of 19 is going to join us live. back after this break. se to do. you do what you do... because it matters. at hp we don't just believe in the power of technology. we believe in the power of people when technology works for you. to dream. to create. to work.

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about an hour into trading, some of the stories we're squawking about, in tech news, barnes & noble cutting the price on several models of its nook e-reader. slashing the price to $199. japan's gdp growth unexpectedly slumping to 1.4% in the second quarter from 5.5% in q1. and shares of pandora taking it on the chin after receiving a downgrade to equal weight at morgan stanley. morgan stanley, a key underwriter of the ipo, had been wildly bullish on pandora since initiating coverage.

top story this morning, mitt romney's pick of congressman paul ryan as his running mate. take a listen to what ryan had to say last night on "60 minutes" about president obama's track record. >> i have my budget plan that i've put out. that's the budget plan that we're going to run on. at the same time, we have the record of president obama. if people think, by the way, that their utility bill has gone down, they should vote for him. if they think jobs are more plentiful, they should vote for him. >> the president has a terrible record. he didn't moderate his positions throughout his term. he doesn't have much to run on. so he's going to try to divide people, to distract people to try and win this election. >> for more on ryan, let's bring in john harwood who's joined by a special guest, senator kent conrad of north dakota. john? >> thanks very much. good morning from delaware. i'm joined by senator kent

conrad, the chairman of the senate budget committee. it's annual on allusion that i'm more dressed up than him right now at this beachfront live shot. senator, this threshold question about paul ryan, you've served with him. you've done the budgets with him, does he meet the test of being ready to take over as president in a moment's notice? >> well, look, i like paul. paul is a serious person. but the policies that he would put in place, i think, would be a very serious problem for this country. if you think about it, he supported all the policies that brought us to the brink of financial collapse at the end of the bush administration. so i think the policies that paul has put out there, while he is a good person and a serious person, would really be a very serious problem for the united states. >> but in terms of demeanor, experience, knowledge, does he meet the commander in chief test, which is the first test that any potential vice president has to meet? >> well, he doesn't have foreign policy experience. he doesn't have experience obviously being commander in chief.

but no one does before they have that position. he doesn't have a military background. look, he certainly knows the budget of the united states. but his proposals are really pretty rad kl. if you examine the proposals that paul has put forward -- those who are the wealthiest among us was gould a $265,000 tax cut a year under his plan. he doesn't balance the budget for 30 years, if then. at the same time, he drastically cuts non-meshldicare, non-socia security funding by 50% by 20306789 this is radical stuff he's proposed. >> let me ask you, part of the indictment that romney and ryan are making of obama and his party, your party is you haven't passed a budget in three years. you're the chairman of the senate budget committee. that's a shot at you. respond to that charge of lack of leadership.

>> well, they must not have examined what they vote on because last year, we passed the budget control act. it's true, it wasn't a resolution. it was something much stronger. it was a law. anybody that studied civics, i think, knows a law is stronger than a resolution. and that budget control act cut spending $900 billion, plus it said if a special committee doesn't agree on reforming entitlements and revenue, there will be another $1.2 trillion of spending cuts for a total of over $2 trillion of spending cuts. that's the biggest spending cut package in the history of the united states. so when they say this, they're playing a bit of a game with people. they're saying, we didn't pass a resolution. they're not admitting that instead we passed a law, something much stronger. >> you served on the simpson/bowles commission with paul ryan. again, part of the indictment that mitt romney and paul ryan are making is that this

president hasn't stood up to make tough choices. you voted for simpson/bowles. in fact, you introduced it as your budget resolution in committee. he voted against it. tell me what the experience of serving with him taught you about his priorities on taxes, on debt and deficits, on spending, and how the american voter should interpret what he wants to do? >> it's probably the thing that concerns me the most about paul. simpson/bowles, there were 18 of us, evenly divided between republicans and democrats. 11 of the 18 of us supported the plan to get our deficits and debt under control. but at the same time, not risking this recovery. and of the 11 of us who supported it, five democrats, five republicans, one independent, but paul was one of the seven that said, no. because he didn't get just the way he wanted it. unfortunately that's so much of what's wrong with washington. people who are idealogues who

say, if i don't get it my way, i don't support it. he had a chance to reduce the debt $4 trillion, to get us back on track. most independent observers said it was a balanced package with spending cuts, entitlement reform and some additional revenue but not by raising tax rates. and paul ryan said no. said no, walked away. >> if paul ryan supports much deeper spending cuts and a smaller government than you support, doesn't that make him a more aggressive deficit hawk than you are? >> no. that's the curious thing about paul. he's not really a deficit hawk. again, his budget does not balance for about 30 years. and even doubtful that it balances then. what he is in favor of clearly is drastically cutting the domestic spending, drastically cutting medicare over time. in fact, really he turns medicare upside down.

currently medicare beneficiary pays 25% of their medical costs. under the ryan plan, the average beneficiary would pay 68% of their costs. so instead of medicare being there for people, basically he destroys medicare in order to, as he said, save it. >> before i let you go, first of all, you told me last night before coming on the air this morning that you thought ryan's agenda was dangerous for the american economy. how is that? >> because paul endorsed all the policies that brought us to the brink of financial collapse. can we forget that at the end of the bush administration -- this economy was shrinking at a rate of 9%. we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. those are the economic policies that paul ryan supported. i can't believe the american people have a short memory and have forgotten how we got into this deep, deep recession.

>> and finally, a question about the politics. everyone's wondering how this is going to play, what it's going to do in florida. you've got a senate race in north dakota. and i was talking to one of the consultants on your side for your candidate, said the ryan budget is hurting the republican candidate in the red state of north dakota. how do you see voters in your state reacting to his proposal? >> well, he devastates agriculture. and that's a key part of the economy in north dakota. really draconian cuts beyond what we had ever seen. beyond that, his proposal to really shred medicare will not sell well in a state that is increasingly aging. more than that, i really do hope people remember, how did we get here? at the end of the bush administration, we were on the brink of financial collapse. paul ryan and mitt romney supported the policies that put us in that position. >> you're thinking that

president obama's closer to winning after this choice than mitt romney's closer? >> i do. i think the american people have common sense. this president's not been perfect. none of us in public life are. but the fact is he averted a depression. let's never forget that. >> senator, thanks for joining us. guys, back to you. >> john, thank you very much for that. let's send it over to courtney reagan for a market flash. >> take a look at shares of v visteon. their ceo steps down. up next, taking a look at how ryan's budget plan, which includes a major overhaul of medicare and cuts in social programs could impact the election. former governor of wisconsin and former secretary of health and human services under president george w. bush, tommy thompson, will join us next on cnbc.

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medicaid and other safety programs could undergo some changes if mitt romney and paul ryan win the election in november. joining us this morning, the former governor of wisconsin, tommy thompson who served under president george w. bush. also making a bid to represent wisconsin in the u.s. senate as primary voters there head to the polls tomorrow. good to have you back. welcome to the show. i don't know if you heard kent conrad talking to john harwood a moment ago, but for better or worse, the demonization of ryan's policies has happened here. do you think ryan has it in him to defend them? >> carl, thank you for having me on your program. and thank you for having a program about congressman paul ryan. first off, you have to realize that paul ryan is one of the

most unique and intellectual individuals to run for vice president, i think, in the history of our country. secondly, it's a tremendous honor for us here in wisconsin to have him as the nominee for the republican party for vice president. and, third, it's the first time wisconsin has had a major candidate on one of the two major parties in the history of our state. so all of these things make everybody in wisconsin extremely proud. in regards to his policies, i think that paul ryan said it as well as anybody could see. if you are a republican candidate and win this election, you have a moral responsibility to solve the problems of america. democrats have been talking around the edges forever. it took paul ryan and paul ryan alone to come and say, you know, we cannot -- we can no longer just talk about it. we have to solve these problems and came up with a program.

now, democrats are trying to demonize it. but they have never, never put up any kind of a program or a proposal whatsoever to fix medicare or balance the budget. so i really have no time for individuals that all they can do is criticize and never come to the party with anything positive or concrete to solve the problems of america. >> the president, of course, is in iowa today. he is, by all accounts, going to try to use ryan's appointment to make him the face of the house gop, right? we all know those elements of the house that said noted things like the farm bill, that said no to things about simpson/bowles. is there anything to senator ryan's unwillingness to compromise? >> that's a misnomer. paul ryan will compromise. mitt romney will compromise. but you don't go into a poker

game and start compromising or throwing away your chips before anybody puts up anything to offer for a solution. the president and kent conrad, all they do is demonize. not one thing in the last 15 minutes came out of kent conrad that was positive at all. it was all negative. it was all anti-paul ryan, always demonizing his program. i would love to see president obama come up with a program that we could actually look at say, at least there's something on the able to negotiate. paul ryan took the first step. and he says, please, bring something forward, mr. president, i want to solve the deficit problems, i want to solve the medicare problems. here's our proposal. where's yours? and all they have done on the other side is criticize and tear down. to me, that's no way to govern. >> you know electoral math just as good as anyone, governor. florida's 29 votes. it's hard to win without it.

i can't imagine you think it just got easier to win florida. >> i think that paul ryan is going to bring energy to this ticket. i'll tell you why i believe it's going to be easier for mitt romney to get the necessary electoral votes. i have been out campaigning for hard for the last several months. and people are asking me wherever i go, will you please promise you will solve the problems of america? get the deficit under control. solve the problems instead of postponing them. there's a call across america to solve the problems of america so that future generations, our children and grandchildren, are not overloaded with debt and are not going to be able to have the same opportunities, carl that, you and i had. that is a clairian call. it brings it to the forefront. mitt romney said this is not going to be a campaign where we're going to have just empty

platitudes. we're going to come to the american people and give the american people an action agenda to solve the problems and let the people decide. i think it's going to be the best election, the greatest opportunity for america to solve our problems, turn america around and get this country back on the straight and narrow of fiscal sanity and opportunity for all. >> governor, good to talk to you. we'll be watching it closely over the next few weeks and months. tommy thompson joining us from the great town of racine, wisconsin. the dow in negative territory. up next, we'll talk about how you play the markets now as we head into some big data. [ mom ] thanks for picking us up, sweetie. i'll give you money for gas. [ laughing ] not necessary. take the money. i'm not taking your money. besides i get great gas mileage. what's that? it's eassist. helps the engine run really efficiently. it captures energy that assists the engine...

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stockers lowered this morning lowered partly because of a deceleration growth overnight. for more on the markets now let's bring in chief investment strategist at j.d. montgomery stock and for a look at bonds. good morning to you, guys. mark, let's kick off with you. do you think the melttop continues here?

>> i doubt that we're going to coun continue to see the kind of pace we've seen. i think what we'll need to see before i expect prices to move markedly higher from here is some evidence that the economic fundamentals are catching up. the good news on that front is that the economic surprise indices that i've looked at have begun to hook upwards which means they can advance on the shrinking of the equity premium. >> it's kind of two-edged, though, mark, isn't it? because once you start seeing better economic data, you take the possibility of qe3 from the feds off the table. >> well, it is the preverse situation of the environment. i can't imagine they won't advance on investor enthusiasm for actual outright improvement

and economic fundamentals. there might be a bit of a tug-of-war, but nonetheless i do expect, in fact, the fed to act in some methodology in september, even if it's communicative easing just to throw the market a bone. >> ira, i wonder what you're seeing in the market and specifically i want to bring up this note that was published this morning published by the chi chief economist to the pick of paum ryan as governor rahmomney running mate. that we'll see it impacting markets broadly sooner rather than later and more profoundly sooner rather than later. what's your view on this and are you seeing any oefd f that so far? >> i don't know if the pick itself has anything to do with the fiscal cliff, but it's something we're watching very closely. in administrator, will there be a compromise and can there be soon after the election because not only do we have a fiscal

cliff where if all of the spending cuts that are scheduled to go into effect, you also have the, again, looming debt issue similar to what we had last summer where if the debt ceiling is not raised, come february -- the mid-february auctions, we, again, will be up against that debt ceiling and we could be talking again about a technical default by the treasury department, which is not something anyone really wants to do, but at the same time, if there's enough of a political impasse, that's still a possibility. >> mark, i pose the same question to you and i'm wondering from an equity markets standpoint if this is more of a concern. we've already talked about companies pulling back and being more cautious as we approach this time as we're going to figure this problem out so to speak. do you see an impact on the markets could be greater and sooner because this will cliff all of a sudden today, i can imagine, has been mentioned more today than any other days

because we're specifically discussing paul ryan as a v.p. pick. >> i do thing it can matter. it's hard to imagine that more of the discussion about the fiscal cliff is more that's required because it seems as though the story's gotten plenty of attention, but nonetheless this probably exaggerates the level of attention given to it because of the, you know, ryan pick. and as a consequence, what i think has largely been a possibility may be a probability and given what has been said, if it's all left to go unlegislated or unattended to, i think that would begin to be reflected sooner rather than later. okay, guys. we'll leave it there. mark, thank you for your time. marx luschini and ira jersey. last time a u.s. congressman was elected to the vice presidency, 1933. that's when franklin d.

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mitt romney picked paul ryan to be his running mate. so our twitter question is -- >> she writes it's like picking zynga because it's all fun and games until you lose all your money. picking ryan is like adding real estate to the portfolio because it will fort mitt ryan to get more concrete on his proposals and we do know that that is true. just about everyone we've talked to has attested. >> that then cuts both ways potentially. >> melissa, what's on "fast" tonight? >> we're back on the air.

we have the chief invest microsoft strategist for fixed income fromlackrock who says safe havens may not be safe and we're doing channel checkings. t.j. maxx, coarse, and sachs. and happy birthday simon hobbs. >> i thought i got through the program without that. >> you thought. >> happy birthday, simon. >> thank you. >> well done, well done. >> if you're just joining us, here's what you might have missed earlier. >> welcome to the third hour of "squawk on the street." here's what's happening so far. >> i think it's just a terrific choice for mitt romney. more importantly it's great choice for america. >> i think a lot of people in our generation, especially in my jen region feel that they're more likely to see a ufo rather than a social security. if your office was interviewing two people for

president or vice president and they looked at ryan's budget, it's a serious document that tries to solve our nation's problems. if you look at president obama's budget, it's not even a serious document. i'm not a political figure, but i think as there was a fabulous piece in "the new york times" by nate silver whose work i love and he says it was a desperate thing and it won't hope. i think the market is so thin we're going to act wildly to each data point and i think that's something people at home have to recognize. there really are very few players right now. here's the big board. he's not going to agrees with congressman ryan 100% on everything and that would be visa versa. but they both believe in the statement thing, reducing the size and scope and policy of the government which means changiin

policies under president obama. the policies would really be a very serious problem for the united states. good morning at post 9 at nyc. let's get a check. dow is looking at a 70-point loss after s&p has been up for the past six sessions actually. so we'll see what happens late oren this morning. dow's down 7. s&p down 6 1/2 and naz dan down 16 1/2. it's about 4,000 employees. the cuts a are part of an effort to create a streamlined motorola focusing on the smartphone and r & d projects. for about $2.48 billion, allowing bp to focus on its three northern u.s. refineries. let's get look at the roadmap for the next hour. of course, we kick it off with iowa where vice-presidential candidate paul ryan starts his first week of campaigning. we're going to cover every angle

of romney's v.p. choice and we'll kick it off. reince priebus joins us next. plus groupon out with earnings after the bill but can the company con vin investors it's stable enough to advance into new areas. >> we'll sit down with a 20-year-old who's in the running to get his hands on peter teal's offer to leave college behind as he looks to cash in on his skills in silicon valley. first looking at the romney ticket. i want to get back to cnbc's amy javers who was on the ground. amin, good morning once again. >> good morning, carl. in case you're wondering if they really do sell fried butter here at the iowa state fair, they do. they're selling it down the road. cotton candy. deep fried mac n cheese.

we can see a pretty sizeable crowd starting to develop over there to hear paul ryan. he's a newcomer on the scene as the vice-presidential pick for mitt romney, but in case you were wondering exactly who the financial sector supports in this race, we've got a cup of fabulous graphics for you. take a look at mitt romney's top five donors starting with goldman sachs, jpmorgan, morgan stanley, bank of america, and credit suisse. those are the top five donors to mitt romney. and you look at paul ryan's top contributors and you see a little bit more of a difference, more regional focus. northwestern mute y'all, national beer holders association, at&t, inaugurational auto dlers association and national association of home builders. we're waiting to hear what he says this afternoon from the ten nor. it was focussed on jobs and the

economy to a race that's a lot more about the deficit and america's fiscal future and the outyears. that's a shift in tone and strategy for the romney campaign. we'll wait to hear what paul ryan has to say in a couple of hours. >> thank you so much for that. eamon javers. >> i femt for a while now that our country is in a very perilous position and i did everything i could as chairman of the budget committee to try to make a difference to tackle this economic and fiscal challenge before it tackles us. sunday is when we had this conversation, and it took a little while to cinch in after that, but to see all the -- all americans coming out to these rallies, hungry for solutions, hungry for people that provide leadership to get this country on the right track, i'm very excited about this. i really think we can turn this thing around.

>> for more on the ryan selection as the v.p. candidate we're joined by a wisconsin republican, reince priebus. mr. chairman, it's always good to have you. welcome back. >> thanks. we're going to be heading over to that fair together and i think that fried cheese and -- i know they've got foot-long hot dogs double wrapped in bacon. so we've got our statin pills ready to go and we're going to chow down. >> no. the ticket is set, but the diet is not. hopefully the hotel has a treadmill somewhere. i know you always like to bring the fire, mr. chairman, so so far this morning, we've heard that ryan's blocked the farm bill, that he's responsible for the death of simpson-bowles and that florida is a lost cause. it didn't take very long, did it? >> well, and unfortunately for americans, it's all a bunch of

bunk and lies. the only person in america who has blood on his hands when it comes to medicare is barack obama. i mean one of the things that we're seeing is that either the hosts don't understand the facts or we're -- we need to do our job as well in making sure that people understand a couple of things. number one, any person watching the program right now who is 55 or older, anything paul ryan has proposed has nothing to do with those people. everything stays in place. what we're talking about is what people my age are concerned about. people my age, whether they're republicans or democrats are concerned that medicare is going to go broke, and under this president's plan, medicare will go broke. so the question is what are we going to do about it? and i think it's about time that people in this country -- and i thank appreciate -- are given the opportunity to have a big

debate about big problems, and that's what paul ryan and mitt romney bring to the table. >> a lot of discussion today, reince, about the differences in their platforms when it comes to specific policies. ryan voted for t.a.r.p., he voted for the auto bailout. does the party see that as a negative or would he attract more independents than you think? >> i think it's a sign we've got two people. especially it's a sign that mitt romney has the leadership and the character to do something that america is starving for, which is this. people are tired of empty promises. what people in this country are hungry for are men and women of their word to run for office and most importantly govern like you campaign. the last piece is everything. govern like you campaign. that's a piece that barack obama

can't river up to because while he's very much in love with giving speeches and his reflection through the mirror he's not in love with following through on promises. in the end it's about what he promised and what he delivered but also about the fact that mitt romney and paul ryan are delivering solutions for your the american people to look at and discuss. >> i think your point about ryan looking at solutions is fair because he's put a lot of the table. think ink you would also agree that the governor has not. is there any danger of ryan showing up the governor in his willingness to put it on the table because people are still hungry for policies on a different issue. >> that's just not true. i have to push back hard. that is not true. mitt romney has offered a long and details array of policies in regard to medicare and social security. let me just tick off three of

them since you brought it up. number one, mitt romney across the board has proposed a decrease in spending, meaning spending to gdp from 24% to 20%. if you want to get your debt and deficits under control, that's ooh a detailed policy. he wants to do it across the board, income tax dedugs of 20% for every american. he also believes that small businesses should pay less in the amount of money that they have to give over to the government so they can pay people more money, hire more employees, and take that rate from 35% down to ta%. now, i just rattled off three quick things, but mitt romney has been very detailed in his policies and his proposals, and, you know, if you look at ryan widen, mitt romney's plan is very similar to that. >> mr. chairman, i look forward to seeing what happens in iowa today and, of course, around the country over the next few weeks. thanks so much for being with

us. >> all right. i'm going to go get my fried butter now. >> reince previs, chairman of the unc. increasing competition, will the company surprise to the upside with an earnings beat? does that even matter given some of the short squeezes we've seen lately? back in a moment. polar shifts will reverse the earth's gravitational pull and hurtle us all into space. which would render retirement planning unnecessary. but say the sun rises on december 22nd, and you still need to retire. td ameritrade's investment consultants can help you build a plan that fits your life. we'll even throw in up to $600 when you open a new account or roll over an old 401(k). so who's in control now, mayans?

groupon out with earnings after the bell.

our own julia bore extend has more. good morning, julia. >> good morn, carl. groupon offers a deal but whether the stock is a deal depends on whether andrew mason can convince customers that the company has what it takes for the long haul. wall street analysts expect the company to report earnings of 3 cents per share on $573 million in revenue. that's up slightly from the prior quarter. but perhaps even more important is the company's outlook. some key numbers to watch include new and returning customers and merchants, mobile revenue, and whether the company's marketing expenses continue to decline. we'll also be looking for updates on its new groupon goods business, which are deals on products rather than on services, which has raised some questions about accounting practices. now, questions about groupon's accounting and transparency has contributed to its stocks

roughly 60% decline since its november ipo. other concerns include growing competition from the likes of living social and few barriers to entry in this business and now "the wall street journal" reports one new challenge, saying that facing growing pressure and tighter compensation, some employees want to jump ship. now, groupon beat expectations in the first quarter. we'll have to see if ceo andrew mason is sitting on another upside. but, carl, so much of today's results will depend on the company's outlook for the rest of the year. back over to you. >> that's a good metric to watch. thank you, julia. >> mark may is a senior analyst over at barclays. gentlemen, good monday morning to you. good to have you. >> thanking for having me. >> herman, let me begin with you. when the numbers hit, is it going to be all about the gross billings or some of the other things that julia talked about like the exits in the journal today? how important is that? >> i think the exits are --

there's a lot of salespeople there but exits are not a surprise given the young nature of their sales force but i think the focus after the report tonight will be on obviously billings and revenues. for us i think the real focus would be on gross profit dollars which basically normalize as lot of that stuff. >> so your view is that given the outlook tonight that they will exceed expectations or not? >> well, on the top line we have revenues doing a little bit better. we're actually at the higher end of their guidance range because they're going to contribute more revenue because they represent 100% commissions on that business. so we do think the numbers will probably come in a little bit better, but, you know, thing the devil is in the details, right? >> yeah, yeah, it always is. mark, i'm looking at a report. i know this is back from may,

but i see a target of 27. i wonder if you've gotten more or less bullish since then. >> the company has reported two full quarters since it's been public and has beaten expectations in both quarters. we're expecting another decent quarter this time around. i think it's pretty easy to justify a price market that's over 20 dlurs. there are over 20 analysts on the street. i think the average target for all analysts is 17. you look at a company that's done $300 million and trailing free cash flow, expected to grow revenues around 50% year on year this quarter, i don't think it's a real stretch to look at a price target that's, you know, more than double where the stock is now. obviously the company has to execute though. >> yeah, people who don't follow the name closely don't realize how much of the business does come from europe. are they subject to more mac macro worries too?

>> sure, absolutely. a lot of companies that are u.s.-based including a lot of the larger internet companies, they do have a lot coming from europe, and that's a risk that unfortunately is mostly known and we think baked into the stock here. >> yeah. of course, we all wonder, h herman, where mason pivots yet. julia mentioned marketing expenses. would you rather see them step on the gas and start spending so money or would you want to see number come down? >> think it definitely -- for a growth company, i think marketing costs coming up, it would not be a surprise. it's actually a surprise they've been coming down for so many quarters and maintaining that type of growth. so that is sort of hitting an inflexion point where i think marketing costs should actually accelerate like a normal growth business to actually make sense of some of the numbers on the business model. >> and, mark, finally before we go. some look at jc penney last week and say there's a company with a

miserable quarter, miserable call, stock ends the day higher because the interest was so large. the like llihood of that happeng tonight? >> yeah. absolutely. we saw a 30% job after the latest short interest numbers came out last week. groupon had the highest increase in short interest of our whole universe. i think it was up over 20% since the month before, so i would not be surprised if the company just has simply an inline quarter that we see a near-term bump. but obviously our recommendation is based on a mh longer term outlook for the business an we steal feel comfortable particularly at these levels recommending the stock. >> we'll see if it happens given the selloff that's accelerating this morning. guys, appreciate it very much. meantime the chorus of paul ryan puts budget and deficits front and center in the presidential race. when we come back we'll try to separate fact from fiction on what you need to know ahead of

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cnbc's scott cohn to separate fact from fiction. good morning, scott. >> ryan is a budget cutter, no question about that. right out of the gate he took aim under the growth of government under president obama. >> we have largest deficits and the biggest federal government since world war ii. >> well, that's a fact assertion, but let's take a look a little bit closer. first a look at the deficit. in constant dollars the deficits under barack obama have been more than twice the peak in 1945. the deficit is actually fallen slightly since then. as a percentage of the overall economy, the deficit stands ought about 8.5% now which is

the largest since the end of the bush administration in 2009. the federal government is the biggest it's ever been, but the projected growth under pennsylvania, about $39 billion is fraction of the $326 billion in president bush's second term. ryan's plan to cut the size of the government is the subject of some of president obama's aggressive campaign. the ryan plan says he would cut funding even though he gives more breaks to the wealthy. we looked at it approved by the house. while some of the plans are still vague, ryan would indeed reduce pell grants though not cut the program entirely. the budget committee report would end what it calls corporate welfare but across all energy sectors and on innovation they plan to preserve the federal government's role as a venue for discoveries and information.

we're on fact checking duty as the race takes on the selection of paul ryan as a gop running mate. we want to hear from you. investigationsinc@cnbc.com. carl? >> you've got a guy with a long record in house and a lot of opportunities for people to distort. i saw one claim that said he only brought two bills to law but that's not mentioning he's up a pretty stiff democratic opposition too. what are you going to be looking at? >> we're going to look at that and his campaign claims that paul ryan has a bipartisan history. there's some interesting nuance there. and we're going to look very closely at medicare and medicaid and the ryan plan on that, the fact and fiction there. of course, there's a lot of effort being made now by both sides to define this man who even though we know him well on cnbc as a frequent guest, the general public is still learning about him and we're going to try and set the course for that. >> yeah.

all right. good stuff. thank you so much, scott. scott cohn back at hq. selloffs here, we were down 86 points a moment ago. currently down 76. obviously the long winning streak for the s&p at risk today. when we come back, the bells will sound across europe. we will get that closed with simon and the details on its impact here in just a moment. ♪ this is the sound of my soul ♪ ♪ this is the sound... you feel that? no. the eassist is working. right now. that's spandau ballet, man. you did this all the way to the restaurant. yeah. we were going up a hill. getting extra horsepower. from a battery-powered generator. ♪ ah, ah ah, ah, ah ♪ it's helping us conserve fuel. this is important. [ male announcer ] the all-new, 37 mpg chevy malibu eco. from new technology to old friends. chevy runs deep. you won't just find us online, you'll also find us in person, with dedicated support teams at over 500 branches nationwide.

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it's kind of like going home again bringing in simon hobbs to

count us down to the closing. it's hard to do without you, i must say. it's not nearly as imformative. >> thank you for the flattery. if you look at the volumes you should try trying to get volumes up higher in the middle of europe. we lost ground but obviously the voluming are very light given the time of year we have. some of these indices are in positive territory, up about a half, maybe a quarter of 1%. but as you can see, we've fallen over. it's a relatively broad base, the likes of nokia extending the losses it had before. it is interesting to see the way in which the results are, what draghi said. you have the short covering cominging through in europe. if you compare the performance of the dow jones industrial average it will move on. with the top 50 blue chips in europe, the euro stoxx 50 you can see the way it's come back

to close the gap or the outperformance you've had here in the united states. quite literally within the last two, the hedge funds here -- there is -- it has been revealed today incidentally a seismic shift as it was put in the support the ecb has for the banks in greece. it has reduced its support for those banks by about 50 billion euros during july and the national central bank in greece has conversely increased its liquidity operations to its banks by $24 billion. mark oswalt is saying, well, that's obviously because they're preparing for greece to exit the eurozone. join kn i don't know if that's true. that's on a quiet summer's day of trading. let me go through one more thing. the effect draghi had when he would come in presumably in september, we assumed if italy

and spain apply formally for support has moved those yields down substantially. to day italy actually auctioned 8 billion euros of one year. this is one year at 2.76% which is obviously much better than -- slightly worse than they would have had a month ago. but it's not as bad as it might have been had you not had the draghi intervention but look how the yields are beginning to rise again as people debate whether or not you are going to see action from the ecb. let's have a quick check with spain. you'll also see the yields. here i'm giving you the two-year. they're going to be willing to actually ask for a bailout to offer it to come in. the prerequisite for ecb bond buying. that's what draghi has laid out. that's the plan. >> jim was joking this morning about merkel coming back from vacation. i wonder if you think yield's

up, merkel back, coincidence or not? >> no. when what does merkel coming back from holiday have to do with anything? >> people are going to search for reasons, for data points. >> one of merkel's right hand people over the weekend that there was no ground going to be given to the greeks, and i think that's very important as we awade the troika going back in september and still the question of whether they kick greece out of the eurozone and what that means for us here. >> welcome back. >> thank you. >> simon hobbs, and happy birthday. i want to check in with bertha coombs. hi, bertha. >> it topped $115 a barrel. that was a four-month high. a lot of the focus, geopolitical tension in the middle east in particular, the strait of hormuz, we had an accident with a naval vessel crashing with a

japanese oil tanker. that heightening where you have a lot of military vessels pat l patropatro patrolling because of the situation with iran and saber rattling out of israel that once again brings up a possible attack by israel on iran and that has a lot of people on edge in terms of shortages because it comes as we're seeing production continuing to be shut in in the north bp saying one of its pipelines were going to be shut in for at least ten days for maintenance and that has cause add pretty steep backwardation. and the folks at merrill lynch and other analysts were talking about it steepening even more. then that north sea outage continue. so the shortages really raising some concerns about supply in europe. contrast that with the crude

curve here which is fairly normal. we've got very light trading here, not that much more movement. a lot of traders actually saying a part of the problem was the fact that the wi-fi was out so they couldn't use their hand helds. but overall people on vacation. not a huge move there. we've been watching the gasoline prices which are up about 30 cents according to aaa over the past month. part of that here fueled again by shortages of that refinery fire in california is going to cause a big accident. and then, of course, the ethanol price move-up over the last month. we're seeing a little bit of an ease-up in terms of grain prices. we had a little bit of rain over the weekend, but nonetheless folks are still watching the corn crop yield continue to fall. back to you. >> yeah, the corn crop report on friday, not good news. bob pisani is on set. we were talking if political tea leaf reading was a sport, we've got go to the hmos for that.

>> ryan's plan is getting a lot of attention. it would benefit hmos, particularly companies in the medicare advantage area. the important here is what's going on overall with them. let me make sure i've got my microphone on. that's always helpful. the important thing is with the hmo plans, representative ryan's plan would push more into the private care area. in theory, that would be ben foishl the hmos. why are they all down, i guess is the big question, particularly companies in areas like humana and unitedhealth. i think you have to juxtapose this against the president's own plan. moecht would feel that would be more beneficial because 40% of the people who don't have health care plans would immediately get them and this would help hmo stocks. think the preside's one would

more immediately help them and maybe some people feel representative ryan's plan is now coming to the floor a little bit. will it me move on and talk about the big stock only friday and what was going on with manchester united because i got a number of calls from people saying what the heck is going on. we all knew on friday there was a syndicate bid with manchester united. the stock was at $14 and stayed at $14 because the firms that brought them public supported them at 14. they opened $13.97 for a second and then stayed essentially right at $14 until just prior to 10:00 eastern time when all of a sudden, boom, we went as high as $15.20. i got a lot of calls from people saying what the heck is going on? is there any news out? and the answer is, no, there's no news out so, there's a lot of speculation. my thought is this. this stock probably is fairly hard to borrow to short, but some people can short it. this is the most likely

explanation for a sudden move from $14 to 15 pbts $20. some people proposal got hold of it on friday. a few got ahold of it because a lot of people felt it was going to break the syndicate. that's a big issue. but all of a sudden, right here, who knows why, the stock moves up a little. if you're short this and all of a sudden you see that moving $14.50 to $15, you're very likely going to cover quickly. that's most likely the explanation. by this time on friday we had done 20 million shares. you know what it is today? 1.6, 1.7 million shares so bear in mind it's a tiny fraction of what it was on friday. there's a lot fewer people who are involved in trading this thing. that makes it a little bit easier to push the stock around. a little bit of mystery but i'm still sticking to the shortage issue. >> this wednesday, the first of several facebook lockup

expirations will go into effect. could the lockup expiration signal in. joining us today, michaael pachter is manager. michael, good morning to you. >> good morning, carl. >> you think even though lockups are important this is not the most important one. there are bigger ones to come. >> yeah, this is a tiny little fluffy slipper compared to the giant army boot that's going to drop in november. so this is the 91-day lockup. it's 271 million shares which is a lot. it's more than half of the shares outstanding right now. you've got 1.2 billion shares unlocking in november and the lockup date in november is after the elections, so we're going to know if all of those selling shareholders who make more than $250,000 a year are going to see their capital gains rates go up in january. i think that's a much bigger incentive to sell than the one this week. >> yeah. >> say this weren't an election year at all, right, do you think

people would be wanting to sell at these levels or do you think they have enough confidence that they would be better off waiting till it recovers some? >> you know, i don't think that most of the selling shareholders actually know anything about facebook than you or i do. i mean obviously -- i mean obviously there are some officers and executives, and, you know, that's, i think, the bigger signal. if you see sheryl sandberg selling, that would cause concern. i don't think she's a seller. i don't know. i don't know about goldman sachs. they might be sellers just because they're tired of looking at the stock. i doubt it. i agree with you. the stock is actually really cheap relative to where it went public. it's cheap relative to its earning power. it would be nice if management would give us some kind of signal and talk about what they're spending money on, why they're depressing earnings on. their revenues are doing great at this company. they're spending more than people expected which is depressing earnings and keeping

the valuation down, i think. >> yeah. you're quoted in the times today. great quote on a relatively bullish piece about facebook long term. you say the ujds writers and the media did a great job of hyping media and the sell side, including me, did a great job of hyping it after. >> and i want to point out that doesn't include sigh men. that was all the media except simon. >> okay. he's excluded. people talk about management. wonder why they're not talking to you, talking to us. the first decision we've seen them make as a public company was pricing that stock and it was not a good decision. >> yeah. i mean, again, you know, i don't think anybody really knows what facebook is worth. so in defense of management, you know, they listen to the underwriters, the underwriters gauge demand for the stock. the ubds writers concluded, i think, in good faith that there was plenty of demand at 38 and they made a mistake and i think management did what all of us do. you listen to your adviser. you hire a professional to tell you what price the stocks should

go out at. the advisers told them 38 and they go, okay. that was the mistake. i think the advisers overestimated the demand for stock and i think the advisers issued way too many shares. they told the company to issue a lot more shares than the market was ready to absorb. we haven't gotten there but we're ee question lib yum. the stock seems to be resistant in the low 20s. i think it's not going a lot lower unless something happened like november and you get a billion shares thrown on the market all at once. >> thanks so much. we'll talk with you soon. i want to send it over to courtney reagan with a market flash. >> that's right, carl. take a look. trip adviser down 6%. almost on a low that the wall street was reporting that google was buying from john wiley and son so it's a come pet tov. that's a travel brand. that's sending shares of trip adviser down by almost $2 a share. carl? >> talk to you soon.

when we come back, we're going to take a look at some of the highlights of paul ryan's plan. look who's joining us. larry kudlow joining us at post 9. back with you in a moment. this man is about to be the millionth customer.

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coming up at the top of the hour on halftime, how does mitt romney's running mate impact your money. >> if the romney/ryan ticket

goes all the way. and dow 15,000, eric segal explains why we could be on the heels of a big rally. google shares, how can this stock's hot run last? now back to carl and "squawk on the street." and, carl, we'll see you in about 15. scott, thanks. a lot of news in the politics. larry kudlow joins me here at post 9 with a discussion about paul ryan and mitt romney. good to see you, larry. once again, welcome back. you've known ryan for a very long time. >> well, i was on the original board of empower america and we had this young skinny intern named paul ryan who as it turns out to be a pretty smart guy and i'm proud -- he's the first gen xer to be on the running ticket. he's going to take romney's cam

paper and clarify it and embolden it and it's going to be exciting for everybody. >> everybody says the campaign would not endorse the -- they wouldn't on sentenceably back it per se. is he going to adomtd the ryan platform or not. >> look. ryan and romney have been in touch talking every couple of weeks for this whole period. i've actually written about that. i knew about that. so there's not going to be much space between the romney plan and the ryan plan. there might be a little space. their plans on health care are very similar. medicare stays as a key option. there will be a choice component. nobody 55 and older are going to lose any medicare at all. i know democrats are going to try mediscare. it's not going to work farktually. i think we need growth, growth, growth in this economy on spending reform and spending cuts. you're going to see a very strong ticket here. i think this is the most

conservative fiscal message since ronald reagan. i just wrote that up in a column. that was before i saw ryan on ticket. ryan just bolsters this. he's going to embody it. he's going to clarify it. >> capital gains tax, does it go away? does it just get cut? how aggressive can he be? >> i don't know. in an interview i suggested to governor romney he index the capital gains tax for inflation. it's never been done before. i don't think he actually thought about that. he paused for a minute and said, wow, i'll take a look at it. romney wants to get rid of cap gains for middle class and under. middle class and under. the main thing is the corporate tax which romney and ryan have campaigned on, this is get it doubtdown to at least 25% and 35%, this is one of the things holding back, you know, $2 trillion of cash, our businesses. they don't know what to do. get corporate tax rates down, extend the bush tax cuts for a year and then go in to spending to tax reform. and we've got to get the

spending rates back to what they were in 2008 and 2007 and then we'll get to the entitlement reform. the thing is it's a choice. you either believe in the state-centered approach, which is what mr. obama is saying or you believe in the free enterprise approach, which is what, of course, romney is saying and paul ryan reinforces that. ryan has a free market vision. he's the supply sider. let's go. let's get on with it. let the games begin. i want to see the democrats start -- i want to have this conversation. >> yes, yes. >> the country needs this conversation. >> enough small ball. >> i'm sick of small ball. i'm sick of that. let's go for it. let's turn this into a strong growth fiscally disciplined country. no bankruptcy and no 1.5% growth anymore. that's the promise of this election. gets me very excited. >> how are you going to tackle

this tonight? >> we are. we have tim pawlenty, who's actually their number one spokesperson right now on team romney. we're going to have tim pawlenty, senator johnson. we're going to have good debates. i want my favorite democrats like bob shrum to come on and start trashing ryan. dick armey is going to come on. on kudlow, we like to have both sides at least some of the time. >> you have a good time doing it. i can't wait to see shrum's response. >> he'll be great. he already hates it. >> it will be great. larry kudlow. meanwhile it's the controversial contest that officers 20 entrepreneurs 100 grand. all they have to do is drop out of college. we talk to one of the finalists hoping to strike it rich after this break. so we have ongoing webinars and interactive learning, plus, in-branch seminars at over 500 locations, where our dedicated support teams help you know more so your money can do more.

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steve jobs, bill gates and zuckerman dropped out of college to pursue their dreams. legendary investor peter teal is offering them $100,000 to leave college behind but for finalists like colin wick it's a gut-wrenching choice. >> if i drop out i'm missing harvard and everything it has to offer. if i don't drop out, i'm missing all of the amazing things they could be doing if i were out of school and have escaped the confines of what school restricts you from doing. to me that's the biggest issue

is what path do i take and what am i missing out on by taking that path. i'm like i won't be surrounded by a hundred of my closest friends within a mile of where i'm living. >> i think that's one of the hardest parts for the fellows is because we don't have the dorm atmosphere and things like that, they're largely making their own communities. you have to work to get it. it's not just handed to you on a plate, oh, here's your community. >> and connors wick joins us here at post 9. good to have you. >> thanks for having me. >> you were the first student in your high school to get accepted to harvard. >> yeah. >> you do your freshman year. >> correct. >> this offer comes along. it had to have been a difficult choice. >> yeah, when i came down to it it was a simple question of opportunity costs. i had two amazing opportunities in front of and it was just a question of what was better.

i've been in the fellowship for two months. >> it was an ios app that had been on the market since high school. i had been doing it for a couple of years. it was a simple iphone application for studying but it had some cool things you could do with it along those lines. >> and so what's the progress of that? >> i mean it's been chugging along, seeing good growth numbers and it's really cool because everyone is creating these flashcards and now i have millions and millions of these flashcard sets out there. >> i'm told you have a new venture you're announcing today. >> i have one in my pocket. do you have an iphone? >> i always carry one.

>> this is an early prototype. it's a case for your phone. slip it in and you have a full gaming experience. you can play any sort of game with it on your phone. >> it's mechanized meaning the buttons -- >> they work -- there's an audio jack right there that plugs in. it powered through there and it's the price of a normal iphone case. >> so it take gaming to a level -- it's the next -- yeah. thing julia was on the show last week talking about the current gaming industry and how it was struggling. you see these terrible numbers last month. it was like 32% decline in consol sales and 20% in gains. it's pretty bad. the reason is the phone industry is cannibalizing it. everyone is playing the angry bird-type gangs and it's not as fun so there's kind of these two diverging things. this kind of solves that or we like to thing so.

the iphone is powerful enough it can make those games. >> the cocoa controller. >> the cocoa controller. it's on kick start. it's launching today. >> you've got my attention. thanks for coming in. connor zwick. you can log onto facebook. connor is taking your questions live. don't forget to watch our "20 under 20," the finale airing tomorrow at the same time. final thoughts on the market right after this. [ male announcer ] when a major hospital

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if you're going to do something. make it matter. monday morning. mitt romney picking the young congressman paul ryan to be his running mate. so this morning we're asking you to fill in the blank. romney picking ryan is like investors picking blarng for their portfolios because blank. jj writes it's like picking facebook because everybody thinks it's young and cool but it's overrated. kerry rights it's like picking coach because it's pretty. a lot of part-time talking about