but it is in the green. >> we're sending you to the gold miners. >> as gold stays elevated, miners play getting a nice gain today. >> street signs begins right now. have a great afternoon. welcome to street signs. does the dow really predict who will win the presidential election? does the market even care who wins? so many questions. we have got answers. the millionaire/billionaire hockey lockout now slamming the little guy. the story of a pro team who just laid off everybody. plus, two of herb's favorite stars, groupon and jcpenney, both with big new announcements today. mr. g himself here to tell you if you should jump for joy for either. our investigations inc. team has uncovered disturbing times of potentially illegal child

labor. the dow's modest gains today have pushed it past a positive bench mark. it now has its best monthly gain of the year and the best since last october. of course the month still has seven more september sessions after this one. let's take you to the s&p 500 which is on track for the best monthly gain since february. a gain of about 4%. nasdaq has a slightly lower gain for september for the about to end third quarter. it is still in the lead with a rise of about 8.5%. nod bad, guys. oil however moving the other way taking a tumble today. crude down to near $91 after being at $100 just last friday. inventories are rising against last week by more than 2%. so should we put aside all the rumors and or the conspiracy theories about oil? let's bring in the president --

>> i don't think it has anything to do with spr. you buy the rumor as far as qe goes, sell it back whether it happens. crude oil market i felt was overdone on the up side. you have a very well supplied market here. saudi arabia's at the top of their production levels. the world economies have fallen off. a whole combination of things. the 8 1/2 million billed today. >> it is an opportunity to buy at these levels or do you think we have further to go to the downside? >> no, i definitely think we have further to go georgia to the downside. october expires tomorrow. i'm taking that off the board. the november contract settles below $92. that's another bearish signal and we don't see great support until about $87. >> it is shocking to hear that supply and demand might actually be working in this market but hedge funds may also be at play. are you here to tell us that hedge funds may actually be our friend with oil? >> absolutely at this point, i

am. >> oh, brian, never a load question, right? essentially a couple things are going on. he don't think there is a great explanation here. hedge fund traders i talk to say it doesn't make a ton of sense to them these dramatic drops in the last few days. they almost are feeling like there is a bit of a flash crash phenomenon that's going on with brent crude and wti almost like we've seen in the stock market. there have been far bigger moves including this past may. having said all that, couple factors here. they think the idea of and spr drawdown is increasingly unlikely as we get closer to $105 a barrel. the closer we get to that the less likely that is to happen. we blew through a floor in brent today of about 1 $11. a lot of folks i know are longer term bulls and getting to your original question, the fundamentals they'd argue very much argue for a. much higher level in both brent and 'ti. trade embargoes we've imposed

upon iran, an issue. the unrest in the middle east that goes on today a huge issue. >> it is not just the middle east. you've got some serious saber rattling going on between china and japan right now as well. >> that's absolutely true. there are a number of geopolitical hotspots to focus on. when you think of major oil producers, you every time you have an incident in a country that produces 500,000 or 1 million barrels per day that may take their resources offline even for a temporary period you can really get a dislocation in price. >> i know, anthony, there is a question out there with regards to high-speed trading. i know futures regulators are working into that brief but unexplained plunge earlier on this week. is there anything possible they could do about this and are high-speed traders actually to blame? >> i don't know what they can do about it unless they ban it completely or have it where it is at a certain level you can do

high-speed trading. but certainly who ever had that fat finger the other day was completely correct on what they did. seems this was more of a calculated sell-off rather than just a fat finger in the market. somebody look at the fundamentals and said this market is a little bit overdone. >> i guess regulators always have to be seen to be doing something if there is a plunge. they can't just appear to shrug it off. >> i also think the fat finger and the way in which that combines with fundamentals to give you a dramatic move is an interesting point. it seems that the scope and size of these recent moves, this one today and then a couple of days ago as well, indicates that maybe you have some program trades that are getting tripped so you get below a certain level and all of a sudden the move doubles in size and becomes much more significant. i think a lot of people were long position. they took those longs off and now we're seeing the slide downwards. >> you're absolutely right about that. all the programs, they're looking at the same charts i'm looking at. they all have the same numbers to get in and get out. that's exactly what's happening. >> great stuff. thank you very much for joining in on the show as well.

oil prices lower is not the only bit of good news that we have got today. happy hump day. several new studies out showing signs of hope when it comes to investor confidence. today a sentiment report from the center for audit quality shows that confidence in the u.s. capital markets is on the rise. it rose four percentage points to 65% after dropping or remain static every year since 2008. we had to say that in our special 172.5. also today, a main street investor survey shows increased confidence as well. and to round out the hopium hat trick, in all 64% of americans now believe the economy is either at the bottom and stable or has already bottomed out and is getting better. but confidence in the economy can be a very different thing than confidence in the stock market. we know that. so is confidence in the markets on the rise? should it be?

charlie reinhart, brian siskorowski. charlie, given the huge run off the market bottom in 2009, are you surprised confidence in stocks isn't higher actually than what's being reported? >> not totally surprised because what we went through in 2008 and into 2009 was pretty severe. it often takes time before people and investors return to the prior level of confidence. but now that the market has been up higher, and if we were to close today i believe it would be the highest level since 2007, you should see some firming in cough dense. that said, you look at bull-bear surveys we look at, there are only slightly more bulls and this bears. ordinarily you would expect more after the rally that we've had since late may, early june. >> i was a little surprised by some of these results.

bob pisani's been nailing it on the head saying this is the most hated rally he can remember in a long time. it doesn't feel that bullish out there. there are a lot of people still on the sidelines and not participating. we are far from bubble like dotcom sort of bullish days of the past, aren't we? >> yeah. it's interesting, i've been dubbing this the rodney dangerfield rally. it gets no respect. in that sense i think you're looking at basically -- remember, we have a scarred but maybe somewhat smarter investing public. it's going to take a while to build through that after a decade of going nowhere. generally what you're seeing is not in massive proclivity towards equity. cash balances on individual balance sheets still remain relatively high. look at the fact that risk assets by definition have more volatility. you also have a change in investor perception. that stems from the fact that when you look at the lion's share of baby boomers right now,

they're much closer to retirement or at retirement now than say maybe ten years ago when we had the volatility with long term capital in '98 or the asian contagion in '97. so you'll see a bit of reluctance there. the aaii numbers have been moving well from a investor sentiment perspective. but we're no way to what we saw in the late '90s, early 2000s. >> if this is a rodney dangerfield market, i'll asking to go back to school. what have we learned about this market recently? >> one of the things that we learned was the market was discounting a pretty dim future about 14, 15 weeks ago. a future whereby the disarray in europe would continue. wasn't expecting that ecb and policymakers in europe would make a commitment to do what they felt was necessary. the market back then also didn't anticipate qe3 would begin

whether it did. there is an old saying on wall street, don't bite the fed. in today's global marketplace you don't want to fight the fed, the ecb and people's central bank of china all at the same time. >> brian, quite often when you see a lot of people all getting on one side of a trade -- in other words, if you're getting everyone on the bullish boat, suddenly it sinks. people were wondering if we're getting higher levels of bullishness among investors. would you agree or disagree? >> first, remember, it's taken from 666 low in the s&p in march 2009 to 1,460 for us to start having conversations like this. you look at the size and scale of that event and what needs to be seen in order to start getting people it think more bullishly about equities. that said, look at the longer term performance, longer term perspectives of equities. we still argue there's undervaluation in this time frame. the fact is we have had this stealth rally here this summer. that has raised expectations in

the near term. as we look down at things like fiscal cliff, the election, there is uncertainty there. i think that's ripe to open up potential for pullbacks at this point in time. >> i want to be the angry history teacher here. we had a recent survey out done by invest tech that says of the last 28 presidential elections, 25 times -- almost all -- when the markets rose from labor day to election day, the incumbent won the presidential election. but charlie, that's a powerful stat but does qe throw all the historical comparisons out the window? >> it doesn't throw it totally out the window because elections are determined on how people feel and the economy is a huge driver of the outcome of elections. so historically in years when the incumbent candidate or the incumbent party's candidate has won from the conventions until election day the market has tended to have a modest rally. not so in cases when the incumbent lost. then incidentally, in the first

year of a presidential term, the stock market has done better when the incumbent party standard bearer has won the election. all of that is because the underlying economy was conducive for that to happen. >> we've got to leave it there. but charlie, brian, thank you very much for playing. now let's get out to a market flash. >> bb and t is bullish on bananas. we're looking at chiquita and del monte. while the supply outlook in bananas is more certain than it was, exports continue to decline. seeing a 6% pop in del monte and nearly 10% pop in chiquita. on deck, the first iphone 5 reviews are in and apple's new mobile operating system is out. is it good? is it bad? we'll dig in. and part two of our investigation into child labor right here in america.

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. shares of facebook spiking on very heavy volume, that stock now 3.5% for the day. the "wall street journal" reports apple issued an update for its ios. one of the important new features apparently is facebook

integration. we also have a note out from the firm robert w. baird that is favorable on facebook's mobile ad network plans. haven't heard much on that recently. but we'll have more in street talk coming up in 15 minutes. apple is still soaring higher. hitting an all-time closing high yet of $701.91. it is currently sitting at $702.19. it is marginally higher than its record closing high yesterday. with the frenzy surrounding the iphone 5 has really overshadowed another announcement. apple made last week, a big upgrade to its mobile operating system. ios 6. that's what the new iphone will run on and also a big bonus for current iphone users, it is free. it also became available to download about an hour ago. jon fortt joins us now from san francisco. if anyone's left after watching the show an they aren't just racing out to quickly upgrade to the new ios, what is this going to mean in terms of how to will change how i use my phone. >> reporter: well, mandy, this

update ios 6 does have facebook integration. it's also got new features like pass book that allows you to keep loyalty cards. probably the biggest thing that people will notice is the change to maps. apple has ditched google as the back end for its maps app. it is using its own maps. but, hey, i want to give you an update on how the downloading of this is going. the file itself just under 900 megabytes. lots of people seem to be slamming apple servers for what checking i can do and from the heat on twitter. seems like this is taking a very long time for some people to download, which you might expect. we're talking tens of millions of devices out there that are eligible to upgrade to ios 6. i also want to mention the upgrade path on this ios 6 is particularly important for apple. they take great pride in the users ios users tend to upgrade so the majority of people tend to be on the same version of ios.

that's great for developers because they know exactly what tools they need to use in order to enter the apple ecosystem. one sort of interesting thing to track will be, will people wait longer to download ios 6 and to upgrade to it because they're losing google maps? apple's maps don't have certain features like street view and like public transit directions that google's maps have. a couple of the glowing reviews of the iphone 5 that are out today do mention that apple's maps app not quite up to google's standard. we'll see how that affects these downloads. >> let's bring in senior editor at techno buffalo, todd, your thoughts on ios 6. it is free but will the experience drive people to switch from android or whatever else they're using to apple and thus increase iphone sales because that's all we care about on a financial show. >> i think maybe the hardware is what's going to drive people to purchase an iphone itself. maybe not ios 6. a lot of these features are things we've already had in

android for a long time. siri is one outstanding feature i think people will enjoy in ios 6. apple spends a lot of time improving it. you can book a restaurant and actually book your table using open table using only your voice. that's a really compelling feature in ios 6. i think one of the biggest selling points is they didn't change much. right? everybody that already knows how to use it from an ipod or ipad or from previous generation iphones can just jump right in and just enjoy the new features. maps was important but now they have turned to different directions with your voice. that's something android had but apple needed to add. i think missing out on google maps is a big deal, however. but you still get a lot of other upgrades worth while, v.i.p. e-mail, for example, pass book, tons of other things. >> are these upgrades worth while enough for you to ditch your samsung galaxy? >> not for me, no. i'm a big fan of the big screens on samsung's phones. i also think nfc is a great

thing moving foebl, especially for mobile payments. galaxy phones come with that. broad com's talked a lot about how they've spent a lot of time pushing nfc. apple didn't adopt that. i think it would have been a great feature in passbook so people could use their phone for mobile payments wherever they go. but maybe in future generations we'll see that. >> one way that ios 6 could potentially drive upgrades to the iphone 5 is if iphone 4 users download this, they're looking forward to maybe getting 3-d maps. they saw that that's a feature in ios 6. they don't get that unless they upgrade to a newer phone. also the siri features where you can ask about sports scores, iphone 4 still doesn't really work with siri in the same way. so in a way this is a marketing campaign for the iphone 5 going on sale on friday. >> it is a great point, jon. as a mac user of an older mac, google chrome just informed me that they're going to stop supporting my version of the

operating system which maybe forces me to go out an buy a new computer. >> yeah. and that sort of a feature for the companies that do it if they also have hardware skin in the game. they're no longer going to support this particular version that you have. it makes you think is it worth switching to completely different software or just buy a new machine. >> interesting comments this morning saying apple is overbelieved and overbought. of course he's been out there short on apple for some time now. >> because he believes in the capital gains trade where people are going to sell it to lock in capital gains rates at favorable rates because the president has said he would like to raise those rates. so people will dump the winners, the biggest winner of all has been apple. >> that's his argument. check this out, guys. to mark the first anniversary of steve jobs' death, madame tussauds hong kong is going to reveal a new wax figure of the apple founder. the figure will be unveiled on december 27th.

coming up next, why today's sunshine stock is riding the biscuit and gravy train. today's disaster is the nhl lockout. the millionaire/billionaire fight now taking a big toll on the little guy. i've been a superintendent for 30 some years at many

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sunshine biscuits and gravy. cracker barrel is up 7% fourth quarter earnings nearly doubled. the restaurant chain also boosting the difficult den by 25% to 50 cents. today's disaster dujour is now not just fans get burned by the nhl lockout. the florida panthers becoming the second nhl team to cut jobs just three days into the lockout. brian schactman is with us. brian, this story stinks for the little guy. >> and the big guy, too. i just got off the phone with the nhl themselves and they are rolling back salaries 20% for their staff and moving to four-day work weeks. when you talk about what's going to happen down the road, these are just staffs that work for the team. when you get to the arena, when the games -- if they end up getting canceled, this isn't the nfl, eight home games. this is 41 home dates, that's not even including preseason games. we are talking from concessions. florida mascot even got let go,

although if they do start games up, it would be hard to believe mr. panther -- i think it is charles panther -- will probably get his job back. they did it in ottawa. minnesota cut back their salaries. you will hear more and more stories about this as the days continue. training camps are supposed to open next week. >> we've got refs being basically locked out of the nfl. right? we've got an nhl lockout that we haven't heard any updates really on which makes me a little more nervous. do you think the sports world realizes that we're still in pretty tough economic times? are they just completely on their own planet? >> i honestly think they're disrespectful of the average person because they think that we're lem mings because we've been lemmings in the past and when the game starts up again we'll just start drooling for our sports an come right back. that's what i think. it is a tough situation but it's proven itself in the past, brian, that that is the case but listen, when you start -- when training camps are supposed to open next week, then you start

canceling preseason games, then you start cutting not season. if you lose regular season games, a lot of people think the credibility of the season itself is tarnished. i'd be very interested to see if when they do come back if they rebound like in '04 and '05. >> you said the average person. there's nobody average now. remember, in this new america, everybody's special in their own way. >> you get your medal, too. you did a good job, today. >> you did a great job today, brian. hug it out. >> you get a medal just for sitting if the chair. >> everybody's great. up next, we are going to pillage and plunder and loop our way through a skallywag addition of street signs. later on, this is the last thing we need. china and japan going at it. how worried should america be? street signs is back in just a couple of minutes' time.

it is the talk like a pirate today. that's about it. that's about all i can do. i have done my duty.

i talked like a pirate. i've worn the patch. it's all part of the fun. supposed to be fun. apparently not. a bounty of facebook stock though. let's take a look at what facebook is up to. we touched on this very lightly earlier. give us more explanation here. >> robert w. baird analyst highlighting facebook testing a new mobile ad network. it is another step toward a significant opportunity in the network ad space. he has a $37 target and he thinks facebook will launch a broader outpouring across the web, all la google. goldman sachs downgradie ii charles schwab from neutral to buy. they believe that the recent action by the fed especially buying mortgage-backed securities, is going to pressure re-investment yields. they note that 70% of schwab

securities portfolio are in mortgage backed securities. something the fed has been buying. they think that could compress profitability. charles schwab today is up 21% year to date, but down today. upgraded from buy to neutral. positive on their hepc treatment including a potential marth entry for the drug in 2015. they doubled their price target from $7 to $13. $3.60 to the up side. deutsche bank initiated a buy on this stock today, if i am correct. disney shops are also headed for jcpenney. getting a little mini bounce on that. >> gray beard over here. >> i call him no beard.

>> he is more less fun than i am. >> this is ridiculous. i don't know who came up with this thing. i don't even want to go there. >> let's talk about jcpenney. >> i've had that since i was 8 years old, by the way. >> jcpenney announcing 520 disney stores in their -- come on, get with it. >> what's your take on this? is it going to make a difference? >> it is a great brand. let's not forget children's place had disney stores inside of them back in 2008. they were yanked out because they didn't do very well. this is ron johnson, disney, two very interesting marketers and brands getting together. i wouldn't count -- >> does it matter though? just yes or no. >> does it make a big difference to the stock? >> we'll find out if it makes a big difference to the stock over time. we'll see how they perform. let's get real. okay? >> there are other children's stores coming to jcpenney.

carters and i think giggles. questcor is walking the plank today. the stock is down 36%. 39%. that's a big plank. >> aetna dropping some insurance coverage of this drug, their only drug. analysts defending the company a little bit, not helping the stock. herb, your guys over at citron research -- i'm just teasing. what did they say? this is not a change. this is almost an outright denial by aetna of this drug. >> the stock is currently halted. the company is expected to come out with a statement at some point. i will say that reuters actually confirmed -- i had not heard back from them. they did get back to reuters and confirmed that they were dropping majority of the coverage of the achtar applications. it generally means no coverage for the condition is an indication. that's a reuters piece out just about a half-hour ago.

>> i want to ask you about the pop concerning groupon today. he's making a big bet on the future of mobile payments. their ceo told cnbc exclusively about this strategy and julia boorstin is outside in san francisco. what did the ceo tell you about this? >> first he said with groupon stock down more than 70%, he said the company is misunderstood. now he says its new mobile payment offering is desoind to make groupon an attackive partner for small businesses in order to encourage more details. he wouldn't break out its direct impact on the company's profits. >> we're not focused on each of these businesses as boosting our bottom line. they don't need to be wildly profitable on their own. what we're really focused on is using these additional services to strengthen the value proposition that we have for our

merchants. >> mason toll me he is not happy about the stock slide saying he's now focused on growing the business looking to get a piece of the $3 trillion local commerce market saying that he wants groupon to do for local businesses what amazon did for products. >> growth is slowing but we're still growing at very healthy rates. there's a lot of -- i think any time that you're inventing a new business model, it's bound to be misunderstood. >> reporter: i asked mason whether his sometimes controversial management style has been part of his problem with wall street. he laughed and said that investors can rest assured that he has surrounded himself with quite a diverse and very professional management team. we'll have to see if the kind of announcements that the company made today helps stem some of the losses that groupon has seen from some of its executives. mandy and brian, back over to you. let's discuss this further. bring in editor redesign mobile.

herb is still with us here. rocky, groupon wants to be square and be also ebay's paypal. ebay wants to be amazon. amazon with their daily deals wants to be groupon. this is a crowded space. >> yeah. everybody wants to be everybody. i don't know if you can hear me laughing during the andrew mason clips but to say that this doesn't matter, that he doesn't need to focus on what this business is goington to to be stand-alone basis doesn't make any sense. it is a value business for groupon to get into but it is not a great business. i did the math on this this morning. they make more money doing one daily deal from one business than if a business used the product for five years. this is not a lot of money we are talking about. >> we were talking about groupon on april 2nd on the show. you said this stock is going to zero unless there is some fundamental changes. is there anything about the announcement today that groupon made that changes your mind on groupon? >> not at all.

since we last talked, it was about -- down about 66%. so i'm pretty -- getting pretty close to that zero mark. but what i'm not hearing andre mason say is anything that's wrong with their existing business model. they haven't acknowledged that the core daily deals model doesn't work and the economics don't -- aren't going to hold you. that's why their stock is so beat up. >> rocky, he's living in denial, you think? >> absolutely. >> do you think this team that he's put in could actually help turn the thing around? are the guys he's brought in smart enough to make the changes? >> i've talk to some of the folks in various parts of the organization. some of them are very smart. but this is not the size of business that the market has valued it at. if you look at square even, they've got a $3.25 billion valuation but all these smart money i talk to in silicon valley, some of the smart vcs wanted to touch it at that valuation. >> thank you for your input. let's get to the market flash. >> mandy, we are watching shares

of viacom because they're spiking today. we have the ceo speaking at the goldman sachs conference. i'm looking on twitter to get some color here. one person saying that he's saying there is a big opportunity to create content design for platforms other than linear tv. another twitter person saying that the ceo said no one can argue that netflix and amazon prime are a substitute for cable. sounds like they're talking about competing things there and how they're going to step up into that game. watching shares of viacom up 3% at this point. >> jackie, thank you. quickly, guys, could we bring up shares of netflix? what it sounds like -- could we get a check on netflix? if you listen to the viacom comments, watch netflix stocks today. kind of unclear as to what they just said but it sounded like other content vehicles online -- we even got herb to run, which is a rarity. >> what do you think, herb? >> this is on questcor, we just

had comments from the company. company's continuing to review the clinical policy. both related to the aetna decision. they currently do not believe it represents a material change in its insurance coverage for achtar. >> questcor's out now officially defending itself saying they are examining it but they don't see it as material. >> that's what i am looking at right now. what's happening with the oil trades, we've got the final trades from the nymex. sharon? >> oil prices closing below $92 a barrel here on the floor. a lot of factors contributing to the slide but namely the fact that we got that huge build in u.s. crude supplies in the past week as well as demand is down sharply. high prices last week, nearly $100 a barrel, a lot of folks can't handle prices that high. we're headed towards $90, looks like. up next, china going at it with japan.

protests getting heated. why we all need to start paying more attention to this story. plus, new child labor problems are popping up here, right here, in the united states on american farms. our investigations inc. team discovered some disturbing and questionable practices down in the south. comes with 8 airbags, a crash management system and the world's only tridion safety cell which can withstand over three and a half tons. small in size. big on safety. on december 21st 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?

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coming up on closing bell, apple's new operating system is now available for download. we'll gauge demand and look at whether or not apple has reached a high water mark now with that and the iphone 5, or can it continue to set the standard in mobile space? plus, ben bernanke hasn't exactly made it a secret that he feels the congress needs to act to prevent the fiscal cliff. we'll look at the divides between monetary and fiscal policy and is more stimulus by the fed spurring hiring. we'll tell you about some of the surprising results in a new hiring survey just out. we'll see you at the top of the hour for closing bell. more now on our investigation into child labor on america's farms. last hour on "power lunch" we

learned how common it is to see children working in the fruit and vegetable fields of california. senior correspondent scott cohn is here with a look at another element of this underground, underaged labor force. >> we're talking about tobacco, a particularly labor intensive crop that can be hazardous to harvest, tough economically as well which has some growers turning a blind eye to children in their fields. to learn more we went undercover. >> reporter: 6:00 a.m. in north carolina. the tobacco leaves are wet with the morning dew and dripping with nicotine. this is what's known as topping. hand harvesting the rich top part of the plant. soon after we begin we get a quick lesson from a young girl we'll call paula. [ speaking foreign language ] >> you do it without gloves? >> yes. >> how old are you? >> 14.

>> even adults are supposed to wear gloves and long sleeves when harvesting tobacco because of the risk of nicotine poisoning. paula admits she wasn't entirely truthful about her age. are you going to be in eighth grade or ninth? >> i could. i just need to cover my face. i have to hide it. >> reporter: this is the contractor who supplies workers for the farm. he told us he requires them to be over 18. but paula is one of many children who told us they're working here to help their families. we're hiding their identities because their parents fear retaliation. >> to buy school supplies and everything and to help my mom. >> my mom didn't have enough money to pay the bills. >> may family needs money. >> reporter: this child labor is legal, as long as the parents consent. b but is it right? we showed our undercover video to philip morris international in switzerland, one of three tobacco companies the farm

contracts with. the company's minimum age for farm workers in developed countries is 15. >> i'm not aware of the specifics. i mean what is absolutely clear is that this should not happen under any circumstances. clearly something that we need to look into as a matter of urgency because this is completely unacceptable. >> reporter: lee wicker of the north carolina grower's association is not as quick to judge. >> it's not for me to pass judgment. i understand what families wanting to come together an help each other to survive. >> but wicker says what we found is not typical. his association is a co-op that supplies farms with guest workers under the federal h2a visa program. they get $9.70 an hour, free housing and meals. the contract with alliance one tobacco told us it, too, prohibits child labor and is launching an investigation, as well as u.s. tobacco which according to a spokesman condemns strongly any violations of state and federal labor laws. >> it is certainly murky and sad

as well but i understand it is a economicness i for some of these families. why do these farms have to resort to child labor? >> it is economics for them as well. to get guest workers, immigrants legally, that's $9.70 an hour. thes a big expense. a child presumably can do this work for a lot less and there just aren't the locals particularly in north carolina that are willing or interested or applying to do the work. >> very interesting. thank you so much, scott. coming up, the world's second and third largest economies are in each other's throats. >> we're talking about the violent anti-japan protests sweeping across china and the testy situation around some disputed islands. public pension reform has been a hot button issue during the economic crisis. workers are concerned that states might have to cut future benefits. the concern is with good cause. less than half of all states legally protect past and future

benefits. is your public pension protected? the states that do when we return. of three. it was soccer, and ballet, and cheerleading, and baseball. those years were crazy. so, as we go into this next phase, you know, a big part of it for us is that there isn't anything on the schedule. monarch of marketing analysis. with the ability to improve roi through seo all by cob. and you...rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle... and go. you can even take a full-size or above, and still pay the mid-size price. i'm going b-i-g. [ male announcer ] good choice business pro. good choice.

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here are the 21 states that legally protect workers' past and future public pension benefits. for more on retirement, go to retirement.cnbc.com. strong urgings today from the white house for china and japan to get their act together and reso the territorial dispute peacefully. a resolution is far from over. what are the implications for the united states? let's ask ann lee and peter navarro with the university of california irvine and a cnbc contributor. thank you very much for joining us today. the u.s. has already stated it does not take a position of sovereignty with regards to the islands. nonetheless, i think there's an understanding here that if there was a military escalation it would probably side with japan. so what are the implications for us at this juncture?

>> i believe that, yes, we have a treaty with japan. however, this is really not in u.s. interests, given that this whole area is a very powerful economic region. we don't want to have these two nations go to war. so the u.s. stance, i believe, will be let's try to negotiate this and keep it peaceful. >> and i guess, peter, china has an extraordinarily powerful tool if we're talking about economic retaliation here. if the u.s. tried anything, wouldn't china be able to dump our bonds? >> they would. let's look at the bigger story here. the are small islands,ut they hava eclaring the south chi sea essentially a china lake. it's not just japan they're dealing with. they're having the same kind of conflict with vietnam, brunai, and the philippines.

i disagree strongly with ann. of course it's in the interest of the united states to support japan in this matter. we have a moral, legal, military and strategic obligation to do so. by the way, as we go here into the stores and buy made in china, we're essentially funding the aircraft carrier fleet china is funding so it can bully japan and push the u.s. pacific fleet out of china. this is a big story. yeah, they hold our money. yeah, they might threatn to dump it. but this is the time we must realize that china is not our friend. it's not a peaceful rise. we have to stand up for japan and ourselves. >> i'm afraid that your other guest hasn't had any history -- understand history of asia pacific because -- >> of course i have. i've studied this. i've written two books about it. >> let's let ann respond. >> if you look at history, this whole area has been in different

hands over many different times. so what has happened is that both sides can point to historical claims and therefore, it is actually quite mightied in terms of who they belong to, and the u.s. have said such. when they withdrew from okinawa, they basically said to japan, you have administrative rights, but they didn't say you have ownership rights. this is something that needs to be resolved today because -- >> but ann, should we choose a side? >> i think it's in the interest of the u.s. to be neutral because that has been our global role, to be a global police and not necessarily choose sides. >> can i just quickly ask you, peter -- sorry, jump in. >> sure. ann is suggesting appeasement. the reason she's dead wrong about this is this is not just about the japanese islands. it's also about the ones that

are offshore of vietnam. china is making a territorial claim to having the whole south china sea in its own domain. the u.s. is perceived by china as weak. when hillary clinton first became secretary of state, she basically said she's not going to get involved with these matters. this is the time to stand up. >> of course, there are a lot of countries in the region staking a claim. what are the implications here for automakers, chinese, japanese, and the united states? >> this is an interesting thing because this can be part of a gambit china has been using to push the japanese automakers out of china so that they can gain a bigger market share. one of the things they've done is they've allowed strikes only at foreign plants so that wages go thereupup there so the chine automakers are more receptive. >> thank you very much for weighing in.

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