tv Power Lunch CNBC September 18, 2012 1:00pm-2:00pm EDT
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september 21st and 22nd in d.c. for his invest like a monster conference. don't forget, there's more "fast money" at 5 p.m. tonight. you can follow me on twitter, as always, at scott wapner cnbc. power lunch is watching the market which looks like we are mixed that the hour and that show begins right now. [ whistle ] halftime is over. power lunch and the second half of the trading day start right now. an interesting trading day it is likely to be. ford making a big splash today its new fusion automobile. the stock has been flat and there is a rocky road ahead. lots of challenges there we will have a first-on interview with the company ceo alan mulally on where the company and he will go from here. breaking news from the campaign frame. brand-new numbers from the nbc news/"wall street journal" poll and a deeper dive on that secret, supposedly secret video that everyone is talking about from a romney fundraiser some
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months ago. the chicken and the eggs, forget it, prices for both are going to go higher. we are going to tell you why and who it's costing. we begin with sue down at the exchange. hi, sue. >> hi, good to see you. a quick look at the major markets, traded near break even, depending what average you look at. dow jones is up 4 points but a drop in the s & p 500 and nasdaq and the russell 2000 giving back a little bit. joining me here is kenny poll carry, managing yet, i cap. i read your morning note and i tend to agree with you. a lot of the headlines says oil took the market down, stocks are retreating. i would argue that we have had a very good run in this market. >> not even that down .3 of a percent yesterday, nothing when you think about the 16% rise in the s & p. >> all i have to do is start him off, while and him up and he goes. >> so easy to wind me up. .3 of a percent, like the world was falling apart, by no means. i agree with you, i think it is
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consolidation. if we test a little bit here, i don't think you are going to see it fall out of bed. even after this fedex number today, once again talking about what the future looks like, did at the end of last quarter, talked about what the third quarter would look like you can the market continued to go higher, i don't see the market selling off, it is built in and everybody saying what the checkbook is saying, take what you want as long as you want. >> $40 billion a month. >> hminimum. >> do you buy at these levels or wait for a pull back? >> i think if you wait for a pull back, maybe 14.25. maybe what is that down? a percent from here. if you're a long-term investor, just have to be smart about what you're buying. make sure you have done your homework, whatever you buy that you like it, buying it for the right reasons. if you think the market's really going to back off and buy something with a 13 handle on it, probably not happening now. >> we will see you later this afternoon. ty, back to you. >> keeping an eye on ford shares after a product announcement in new york city ongoing talk about
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succession. joining us first is phil lebeau and special gerks the ceo of ford, alan mull lally. welcome, gentlemen. >> thank you, tyler, joined by alan mulally here at their ford of manhattan dealership. talk about succession in a little bit. you guys were doing the launch of the fusion today. you're hitting on the mileage per gallon? it sure is. good to see you. we had a great launch over the fusion. the power of choice for a consumer, get a petro boost version, an ecoboost, hybrid and plug-in hybrid. we shared the hybrid version, 47 miles per gallon. all of our research continues to show that fuel economy is the number one and number two reason. >> that is what is driving sales? >> absolutely. >> talk about the issue surrounding your company and surrounding you. what is your status at ford in terms of how long you plan to
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serve as ceo? have you turned to the board and said here's a date for when i think i would like to step aside as ceo? >> absolutely not. thanks again for asking. i have absolutely loved serving ford and i look forward to continue to serve going forward in the future. no other story besides this, phil. >> is there a succession plan discussed by the board because the reporting that i have done and other report verse done is that the board is at least openly discussing this and mapping out how to make the transition from you to the next ceo. >> well, as we have shared, succession plan is really important in ford and you can see with the quality of you the team that we put together, the positions they are in, wait that everybody is growing. so, we take it very seriously we talk about it absolutely regularly, because it is one of the most important things that the board does is develop the future team and also the succession plan. >> so, why not come out and say this is our plan? why not say here's hot next ceo is going to be whether it is next year, two years or whenever it might be? >> i don't think there is a
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reason to do that now, i'm committed to serve ford, i serve at the pleasure of the board and i love the way ford's going and we all think we are on a really good track. like i said, i'm very honored to continue serving ford. >> i want to switch gears little bit p. >> well, thank you. >> you're tired of answering those questions. you were on capitol hill, you had to testify on behalf of chrysler and general motors on the bailout. you were asked about that today there were a number of questions swirling about whether the government should get out of its stake in general motors. should the government not have a stake in any of the auto companies right now? >> well, i think everybody knows what i think about, you know, businesses leading the economic recovery, being independent. i would just like to go back to where you started. that was a very critical time for the united states and i have thought about that a lot, would we do the same thing, phil that we did originally? we actually, as you well reported, we testified on behalf of our bankrupt competitors. at that time, phil, the country was in very, very tough shape.
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we were sliding into a very deep recession. we believed in two different administrations believed also that if gm and chrysler would have gone into free fall, could have taken the industry into bankruptcy but the u.s. from a recession into a depression. so i would do it again, testify on behalf of my competitors, also very, very pleased that ford had a plan ahead of that we were support by the banks, investing during the toughest time of the great vehicles and the response we have gotten for ford not using precious taxpayer money has been phenomenal. so in hindsight, i would do it again for the good of the country. >> i know tyler has a question back there. >> yes, tyler? >> mr. mulally you welcome t is good to see u in light of what you have just been talking about, without get nothing too much politics here, we are going to hear from a "wall street journal"/nbc news poll in just a moment about the state of the country, i wonder how you compare the state of america today with the way it was four years ago, as you just were
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talking. are we better off economically than we were four years ago? is your business better off today than it was four years ago? >> well, tyler, i think that's really an important question. and from our ford perspective, you know that based on the strength of our plan to transform ford, both structurally, competitive with the best in the world but in addition to investing in the new products, we were able to go through that very deep recession and be here today, offer these great products. now, having said that the expansion of the united states is very slow. we are down to 1 1/2 to 2% of gdp expansion. that is, like phil and i talked many time, the lowest, slowest expansion we have ever had following a deep recession. clearly, one of the worst recessions we have ever been in. we are very pleased that we are recovering in the automobile industry and in ford's care the pent-up demand is incredible. the average age, phil, is like 11 years old now.
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these new vehicles you can get from ford, you can economically replace your older vehicle. so we are so just gratified that we invested during the toughest time and we have the products now to help lead this economic recovery but it is a slower recovery than we have had in the past, for sure. >> so what did you say? i don't mean to beat this into the ground, yes or no? is america in better shape now than it was four years ago? >> clearly not in the deep recession that we were and we are starting to recover. so, this is a very positive thing. the thing i like about the debate is what can we do to increase the rate of this expansion? and so, looking at business, looking at the business environment, everything ought to be looked through the lens of how do we create an environment where business can expand and provide great jobs and great car sfleers i think that's the most important thing everybody is focused on. >> alan mulally you ceo of ford. >> looking forward to serving more at ford, right? >> there you go sue. i don't know if he can say anything clearer about his plans for the future. >> i think that you are absolutely right you can great to have mr. mum lally on "power lunch."
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he is welcome any time. let's bring in our all-star ford panel to talk about that brian johnson has an overweight on ford with a price target of $13 and veteran auto industry reporter mickey maynard joins us as well. welcome to both of you. brian, i'm going to start with you, because one of your recent reports says "next generation of leadership in place you mr. mulally thinks it is going to be mr. mulally" and he was throwing cold water on the speculation he would be stepping down. does it change your attitude toward the stock and what's your opinion of that? >> anything that gets alan in through 2013 to 2014 i think would be a positive investors. they are clearly positioning the next generation, people like mark fields and even joe hendricks but where investors i talked to would like to see mark, eye deemly through when the new pickup trucks come out 2014 and to steer europe back toward break even, which is probably the biggest overhang on the stock. >> mickey, i do agree?
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mr. mulally's shoes would be big to fill. if it is indeed mr. fields' eventually, does it change your opinion and what you think about the company and how it is moving forward? >> sue there are never any guarantees, if you look at the three men ceos in detroit, none were detroit-bred ceos. they have all come from other place. so, i think there's no guarantee, even if mark fields gets to be the cheap operating officer that he get he is the ceos chair. that said, i think it will serve ford well at some point soon if they say we have a chief operating officer and one of his jobs is to fix europe. >> ty? >> how is ford doing right now? and setting aside europe for a moment, how's it doing against its competitors? >> ford's doing great in north america. its market shares wasn't what it was last year but that's when the japanese were on the ropes. its pricing is stroke. its f 150 pickup trucks are gape
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gaining share month over month. margins the records that in 2003 are about four twhims we thought could have been possible before the bankruptcy restrucking of the industry. >> brian, you have written extensively about general motors and ford but also vw and you seem to favor gm on an investment standpoint s that a correct read? >> gm has lower investors expectation. people acknowledge that europe is very difficult for that think people don't recognize ford's got similar, not quite as bad issues in europe. vw plays interesting. the reason we like vw globally, while ford is moving the platforms, saw that with the fusion, vw has been there and moving to the next frontier in
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product develop which is around modular tool kit. >> mickey, give me your thoughts, especially as it pertains to europe. you mentioned the new challenge and ongoing challenge for whoever is in the corner office at ford and gm is fixing europe a lot of people are trying to fix europe with very little success. >> that's right. one of the only advantages general motors has there is that its european crisis happened earlier. it has been about a year now that opal had severe problems in europe and general motors had a chance to get inside opal and see what needs to be done. might not be an easy fix. we have been a waiting for the turn around plan and yet to see the details. ford sort of dropped a bombshell during its second quarter earnings report when it said it will lose $1 billion in europe this year and in fact, losing something like $1100 per vehicle in europe, where it's making close to $3,000 a vehicle in the united states and canada. so the challenge for ford now is
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there's sort of a crisis dropped in its lap it may not have anticipated properly and now has to jump on. >> perhaps that's why mr. mum lally is going to stick around a while. thank you all. appreciate it very much. now to jackie deangeles with a market flash. hi, jackie. >> hi, sue. from cars to the semiconductors, watching shares of amd, the s & p's biggest decliner today, down 9%. with avenue slew of poor views from analysts coming out on this one. mkm staying is a $3 stock cutting its price target to exposure on emerging markets weakness and noting the cfo's departure. you had miller tabak and rbc cutting their views on the semis. as they say when it rains it pours. seeing a lot of fresh shournt stock today down nearly 9%. tyler? >> thank you very much. breaking news from the campaign trail coming up. brand-new numbers from the latest nbc news/"wall street journal" poll. they are coming up right after this short break. also ahead, more evidence of recovery in housinhousing.
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shares under pressure as we have news of a leak in a north sea at a bp oil field is being investigated by the norwegian petroleum safety authority. this leak occurred on september 12th. trade verse known about it. they are saying while it doesn't sound like it is too bad, investors are jittery because of bp's history. watching that stock at 4286. down 1%. tyler? >> thank you very much. bomb ticks now, brand-new numbers from the latest nbc news/"wall street journal" poll. less than 50 days from election day. our chief washington correspondent john harwood has some of the latest numbers. hi, john. >> hi, tyler. we are getting very close to election day and our pollsters tell us some of the concrete is beginning to harden on this race. let's take a look at two pressures significant to the race, one to the romney argument, one to the obama argument. when you ask are you better off than you were four years ago when barack obama became president, you see a split. 38% say yes, i'm better off. 41%, 3% more, say no. they are worse off, 21% say they
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are still the same. but barack obama wants to make it a forward-looking race about the next four years and when you ask who is better prepared to lead the country for the next four, you see president obama ahead 47%, that's distinct. mitt romney talks about americans, 47% who pay no income taxes being dependent on the government, look at these leads it mitt romney has among senior citizens, 15 percentage points, those who say he is better prepared to lead the country, five points among people with incomes of 30,000 to 50,000. why do i cite those two? because senior citizens and working families are among the people in that 47% category that mitt romney was talking b smavgt the tax foundation says, tyler that married couples with two children up to 47,000 dollars in income will generally is no income tax liability. >> john harwood, thanks very much.
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you will be back with us later this hour as we dig in a little bit deeper on what has turned out tonight buzz of the campaign trail today and that would be governor romney's remarks at a closed-door fund-raiser a couple of months ago. sue? >> thank you very much. time for a realty check and new housing numbers showing more reason for optimism about a growing housing recovery. diana olick is live in washington with the numbers and the details. hi, diana. >> hey, sue, not in the positive yet but home builder confidence is the at its highest level in six years. the monthly survey from the national association of home builders ticked up three points in september. look at the three components, all were up the sales expectations the next months were up, the most most eight points put that one into the pos tivg the only part of the index above 50. now, that is why there's so much optimism in futures sales that is push you can the already on-fire stocks of the home builders into the furnace yet again. the housing sector index up over
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80% from a year ago it has been down the past two day perhaps on a bit of profit taking. goldman sachs today reiterating its bullish stance saying -- putting putty, toll, nbc, kay homes, still top picks, improvii yes, topics. the responses to my post on wnbc.com, build per bullishness. they have not noticed the flood of homes coming on the market from fannie and freddie. i only report the numbers i get. oil slipping again today after that dram mat hillsborough county selloff. yesterday afternoon, the white house saying today that all options are on the table in dealing with the oil market he
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is including release of crude from the spr. jeff killburg with killer capital was with us yesterday at 1:59. you noticed oil falling out of bed. why did it do that? >> i saw the price of oil went from my screen to the floor, dropped off $4. what i heard when i called badge to the war room in chicago, spi picked up an algorithm. >> saw the letters. >> like a bunch of lemmings going off a cliff. >> what does it tell us? >> in the event the spr came out, 3 to $5 knee-jerk reaction. go ahead, administration, we are ready for t. >> if they tap the spr, oil goes down $3 to $5? >> indeed. >> heard it here at 1:589. >> we did. coming up, we are analyzing
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you should see more traction. >> analysts put a $36 price target on the stock. oppenheimer downgrading bed bath and beyond to perform from outperform, saying at least the next few quarters, we view the potential for outside sales and earnings at the chain as limited. >> i think a limb more beyond here.
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i'm not in on this analyst, a little more room to the run side. give them credit a big motto in the chicago pitch, like to say pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered a nice run here. as long as it is above the 20-day moving average, stay to the upside. >> a weak endorsement of this call? >> yes. >> the lumber, stick and boards, lumber liquidators, raymond james underperform from market perform, the stock's current valuation seems to us to be overly optimistic. talk about valuation, up 205% the past year. >> this hitting on all cylinders, like my fightin' irish on saturday night, a smoking situation a prudent thought to book profits here. the end of the day, just a great move. i hope people are in on it. >> pigs get fat, hogs slaughtered. final four trades in the metals markets made now. sharon epperson is watching the action and join us live from the
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traders call it chart consolidation and taking a breather after the $80 run we saw at the end of last week in gold price and is why we are basically in unchanged territory around 17.70 an ounce. but there are those who say the fed action last week means that we will see much higher gold prices in the future as long as the fed continues to print money, gold prices are going to go up that's according to bank of america, mer.lynch analyst francisco blanche, raised his price target for the end of 2014 to $2400 an ounce for gold. that's where he sees gold going. also seeing some gapes in the silver market, where elsewhere pretty much across the board, a risk off trade today in the commodity sector. blanch says look at the $38 to $40 level for silver. that maybe a point we will see selling in the silver market. still, a lot of buying, a lot of interest in the silver etf. slv heavy volume there, again today after trading over 15 million shares in the previous
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session. the biggest percentage decline we are seeing in the metals market is the platinum market, appears the south african miners strikes is coming to an end. the lyman mine, workers agreed to a pay increase and start operations back on thursday. anglo american, the biggest producer in the world, restarted operations today. back to you. >> thank you very much, sharon. the trading action here, mary thompson joins us with the latest. once again, treading water today, mary. >> a little bit, sue. the volume picked up from yesterday the jewish holidays keeping a lid on volume, the average for markets, remain mixed. we see consumer stocks getting a bid today. look at the s & p consumer sector, close to an all-time high, consumer staple, keep in mind. the dow jones trim average has been performing pretty well, lower now, when it does move to the positive territory, these are stocks leading the gains within the dow, the consumer
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staples, coca comb la, procter & gamb gamble, a four-year high, kraft foods and walmart higher earlier, just turned lower. also very strong today, health care stocks. these two hitting intraday all-time high today, within the dow components. once again, health care stock, drug companies, merck, pfizer, both of these performing well along with johnson & johnson in today's session. the laggard, as was the case yesterday the dow transports, despite the fact we have a little bit of a pull back in crude prices, not helping there as we take a look. of course, federal express, played here, company warning on the current quarter around full year but also seeing a lot of weakness in the air lines in today's session. i want to leave with you storied stocks, these companies are hiring or firing, alpha natural resources firing 1200 workers. energizer holdings saying it is going to cut between 175 to $200 million in expenses, some of that will include undies closed job cuts. lastly, kohl's plans to hire
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almost 53,000 holiday workers for the holiday season. that's 10% increase from last year. sue, back to you. >> thank you very much, mary. all right. kenny poll carvey back with us, managing director with i cap. the market may be holding kind of stead dirk treading water. the 30-jeer up above 3% now on the 330-year bond. >> people remain nervous. they are another views. what do they do? put their money where they feel safe. >> if you are a long-term investor, i want to pick up on this so many viewers are you can pick up companies the pretty reasonable valuations now, if you do your homework and you're careful. there's always opportunity in this market. >> i agree and i think if you do that people -- people that have a long-term focus should be
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doing that. i think we have had this conversation, you still have got people that are really licking their wounds, quite honestly, from what's gone on the last four or five years, they don't understand it they are nervous, lost a lot of money. just starting to come back. listen, there's a group of people in our generation, maybe the upper end of our generation that were 65 or 66 five years ago that are now in their 70s, saying, listen, a, i don't have that much time left to regroup or b, not going to put my money in a place i no longer understand that group we have lost forever, people at the younger end of that age, the generation behind us, a matter of educating them around getting them to next actually that that you can still find opportunity you huge opportunity in equity market, but you have to do your homework. >> dividend players? a big, big debate on the street though about whether dividends was last year's play or whether give than environment they should be this year's play? >> i think they might be this year's play, too i got to be honest with us, conservative with my money, the money that i
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invests my long-term money, sang cred money. i'm not one that just throw it is around, much more thoughtful how you do it. in this environment, i think dividend plays continue to be a strong play, even going into next year. >> kenny, thank you very much. now to jackie deangeles, back with market flash. hi, jackie. >> hi, sue. a day we are seeing red, i have one stock moving to the upside by more than 9% that is american science and engineering, it is jumping on contract hopes this is a company that provides x-ray inspection systems, snagged a $245 million contract with the department of homeland security. sounds small but it is big for this company. as you can see from the chart there investors definitely liking this one. back to you. >> jackie, thank you very much. to the nasdaq, bertha comes is on her post there. >> fractionally lower, not two down days back to back since august 20 and 21st. going to bear watching. a couple of the stocks hedge the other direction, research in
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motion, r.i.m. striking a deal with microsoft for folks who still use this some of us considered l eed lud -- luddite. 715 a share. each forward pe about 16, as is apple, apple flirting with that $700 mark, need to watch it going into the close. yesterday, struck it just after the closing bell, see if that continues to be the trend today. as far as chips, mixed picture, apple components, broad com and qualcomm higher today. broad com an upgrade at rbc, did can you cut intel and nvidia and dragging. to rick santelli at the cme. we were talking a second ago, rib, the 30-year above the 3% mark. shout ten-year doing? >> i would say the equivalent of that 3% is the 180. ten year, t2%, easier.
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we are down a handful of basis point it is you look at the interdate chart. look at one-year chart. from the center of this chart to the left, you see all those bottoms around 180 yield, about where we are hovering now? those will prove to be resistance points i f we look overseas, the pattern is similar but 17 basis points missing, hovering around 163. they also to the left side of that chart have lots of bottoms at the 180 yield. so i would look for that in both markets to be very important to monitor. if you look at the ten-year minus two year in the spanish yield curve, july 24th, mario draghi, definitely looking at, going the wrong way, started out at 100 basis points. after draghi's comments, it steepened to 350, now back at 250. need to watch this last chart, everybody is looking at the euro, something strange is going on down north, a dollar versus
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canada, we are at a 13-month low on the green back. just to refresh your memory, when they had their last jobs report, one tenth the population of the u.s., created just shy of 35,000 jobs. tyler, back to you. >> rick santelli you thank you very much. four fed members speaking out today. presidents of federal reserve bank steve liesman, what does it mean? >> you have dualing fed reports, about whether the central bank should have acted. what you find the past hour, president bill dudley laying out his challenges face the u.s. economy. he says access to credit you balance sheet repair going on, the fiscal drag from declining government spending, the european crisis and of course, the u.s. fiscal crisis. dudley says the consistent to askts consistent with maximum employment and price stability. charlie evans in chicago said given the list of economic woes, time for the fed to act with the problems we face and the
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potential dangers like ahead it is seention to do as much as we can to bolster the resiliency and vibrancy of the economy. we cannot be complacent and assume that the economy is not going to be damaged if no action is taken. but on "squawk box," dallas fed president richard fisher disagreed that, sake the fed can't fix what ails the economy. >> the real uncertainty stems from what my taxes going to be? what kind of spending patterns come out of the federal government? how i do deem with the explosion of regulatory morass we have coming out of washington? how do you make a decision, how do you budget, whether you're exxon or a limb, bitty 20-person company? >> the fisher view of the world, it rests on that u.s. fiscal uncertainty, he acknowledged he was in the minority, conceded there has been some decline in mortgage rates from the fed's new policy. >> steve, you will rejoin us after the break as we take a look at the 46.4% of dish >> thank you very much. it is -- >> not 47 who pay no federal income taxes. >> going to give you details
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that the other folks aren't giving you can the kind of stuff that we are best at here. >> see you in just a minute. check out today's yahoo! finance poll. do governor romney's remarks at a recent fund-raiser regarding the 46.6% of americans, not 47, being dependent on government make you more or less likely to support his candidacy? wom we will have the results coming up. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 this morning, i'm going to trade in hong kong. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 after that, it's on to germany. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 then tonight, i'm trading 9500 miles away in japan. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 with the new global account from schwab, tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 i hunt down opportunities around the world tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 as if i'm right there. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 and i'm in total control because i can trade tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 directly online in 12 markets in their local currencies. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 i use their global research to get an edge. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 their equity ratings show me how schwab tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 rates specific foreign stocks
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back to politics now, mitt romney facing another blow to his campaign after a secret video surfaced and went viral. it was from a closed-door fund-raiser back in may the video was recorded surreptitiously and provided to the liberal magazine "mother jones," which released it listen to how romney characterized some of president obama's supporters.
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>> republican president a.m. candidate had this response to the release of that tape yesterday. >> is not elegantly stated, let me put it that way, i'm speaking off the cuff in response to a question and i'm sure i could state it more clearly in a more effective way, but it's a message which i'm going to car
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rained ton carry which is, look, the president's approach is attractive to people who are not paying taxes because, frankly, my discussion about lowering taxes isn't as attractive to them. >> so what is the fallout for the romney campaign and who are the 47% that mr. romney is freshing to here? with us is cnbc's john harwood, steve liesman and john carney, before we talk about the politics and is certainly dominating some of the conversation today, steve, who are these 47%? >> he mixed up the two groups voting for mitt romney and the other is the 47% don't pay tax or don't pay income taxes. we are going to break this down finely. 53.6 do pay income taxes.
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2837 pay payroll taxes. 18% pay neither payroll nor income taxes. i think this is interesting. interested to hear our political people, analysts later talk about this group right here, which i think are both romney and obama supporters and that's where i think it gets interesting. take a look at the next screen here and break down this 18%. what you find here is that 10.3% of those who pay no payroll or income tax are elderly you 6.9 are nonelderly but incomes below 20,000. one analyst said the people don't pay taxes generally are very poor and 1% being others. let's look at the history of this number which comes from the tax policy institute and what you find is it peaked out in '08, stayed there obama's first year and generally come down a couple things behind it clearly have been the bush tax cuts brought 8 million people off the tax rolls. of course, bad economic times brought down people's incomes. there's a lot of things behind.
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this the politics of. this the key i think, tyler there are two overlapping groups, the supporter of obama and those who do not pay taxes, those are different groups, i think. >> i think john harwood, mr. romney was responding or speaking generally about the political predicament he finds himself in trying to appeal to people for whom when he says my job is not to worry about those people. that sounds pretty cold. >> he is describing a theoretical predicament not bourn out in reality and i say that as an extension of steve's remarks. you look at who is supporting these candidate, obama and romney, romney has been doing very, very well among senior citizens. senior citizens represent a big chunk of those not paying taxes. secondly, romney is doing very
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well with white working class voters, those are some of the people who don't pay income taxes. if you look at the income thresholds, a married couple with two children doesn't pay tax it is 47,000. mitt romney is doing well people who make around 47,000. this is a way in which his description is a little bit incoherent and odds with his own base, not to mention the fact, as steve mentioned, the bush tax cuts took 8 million people off the rolls and mitt romney spores and wants to extend the tax cuts. >> john carney what does mr. romney have to do to right the ship a or does he have to do anything to right the ship or does very to shake up his crew? >> i think he needs to re-examine his own message, his message should be about how tax cuts help everybody, going to grow the economy, how to is going to create more jobs. if he is just looking at that time very narrowly and saying that only people whose taxes i'm going to cut directly are going to be beneficiaries of my
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policies that is a losing stance, not a ray gay i'm going to help fix the economy by slashing taxes stance. something that appeals rather than broader interests. elderly people could be in favor of tax cuts even if they aren't paying taxes because they want their children or grandchildren to do well. saying we are going to look at the narrow percentage of people directly benefit i think is very strange for republican candidate. >> sue and tyler, i want to make one other point and that is that barack obama and his team have been charging that because of the tax rate cuts that mitt romney wants for people across-the-board, including high income, that he is necessarily going to have to raise taxes by people in the middle. saying 47% of the people are dependent, not responsible, not caring for themselves, he fuels the democratic arguments that, in rate -- [ overlapping speakers ] >> can i jump in with a question for you because i looked at some other numbers from the same tax
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policy center and it indicates that in the top quintile of american wage earns who bring in 52% of the income in this country, that group pays 83% of the federal income tax. the substance of what mr. romney says, isn't he on to something when he says there's something wrong in denmark here when nearly half of american households pay absolutely nothing to support the operations of the government when and on the other handing the top quintile is paying 80% of that. >> this was like a vulcan mind meld, exactly the point i was going to make, tyler. i don't think there are many economists that believe we get to where we need to go on the fiscal side of the equation without broadening the base. the deal that should be on the table is that we broaden the base in return for somewhat higher tax on the wealthy. that would be both sides giving
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politically, neither side is giving anything. that's why one of the main reasons we are approaching the fiscal cliff. that's the deal that ought to be there. that's the deal that isn't there right now. >> with to have leave it there i have a feeling we are going to come back to this and discuss it more over the coming weeks. thank you, guys. sue? >> as a matter of fact, we are going to talk more about it now with the yahoo! finance poll, ty. we have the results. do governor romney's remarks at a recent fund-raiser regarding the 46 to 47% of americans being dependent on government make you more or less likely to support his candidacy? 48 said more likely. we had 28% at less likely and 24% it has no impact. still ahead on ""power lunch"", the skinny on how high feed prices are affecting the chicken and the egg. jane wells is in los angeles hatching that story for us. >> whether or not you pay tax better start saving for the super bowl party now aft the break, we look at wing price and production costs and ask why did
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a chicken in every pot, maybe no the usd a. what released its latest poultry outlook and jane wells has the skinny on the impact of high feed praises. >> chicken wing prices are flying, doubling in a year to $1.84 are a pound. david mall tony of the american restaurant association says they traded at their third highest level ever, $1.95. the whole bird is going higher. this is $1.49 a pound. so, why are poultry producers cutting production? even though corn is below 7.50, chicken prices are not high enough to cover that >> we expect those cuts to accelerate late near the year and that should translate into price increases on the order of 10% plus in 2013. >> costco says many poultry vendors begging for a break on their contracts and asking 7% more for chicken. company's willing to help up to a point it has yet to pass those costs through to customers but "come january when new contracts are due, it will be challenging.
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"and then there's this exciting news. eggs in august averaged 17 cents more a dozen. part because eggs went to next keys huge market where they have been hit with a bird flu epidemic. at js west, they are getting paid the same ago for eggs, how much have feed costs gone up? >> a year ago, our average feed price or feed cost about was 48 cents a dozen. this year, it's over 58 cents a dozen. that correspondents to about an increase about $4 million total to our company. >> okay. it's not all bad for your football feasts, wings and tortilla clips cost more but tomatoes for salsa are down 7% in a year. avocados for the guacamole, down 14%. sue, frankly and tyler, could i live on this. >> bringing it home to my football-watching weekend. jane, thank you. a lot more ahead on cnbcr don't
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