tv Worldwide Exchange CNBC March 26, 2013 5:00am-6:00am EDT
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profiling the real growth pharmas. i think pharma is a real interesting spot here. why? because the old ones yield great. the new ones are growing so fast and yet they're not that expensive versus even terrific companies like general mills, like kellogg. we are in the sweet spot looking for big stocks in the out years all week. stay tuned. there is always a bull market somewhere. i promise to try to find it just for you. i'm jim cramer. see you tomorrow! welcome to today's "worldwide exchange." details on the cyprus bailout, the finance minister says the tax on deposits above 100,000 euros could be in the region of 40%. he's also vowing banks will reopen on thursday. stockses are trying to recover. the head of the euro group backtracking after his comments
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regarding the cyprus temporary plate. said markets are in something of a tailspin. fresh data out today and u.s. home prices could show the sector continuing to claw its way back from recovery. jay you're watching "worldwide exchange," bringing you business news from around the globe. >> all right. welcome back to the show today. kelly is still in brussels. the finance member sister in cyprus says he anticipates the banks will reopen on thursday. bbc radio was told that controls will probably be two tiered and will only be lifted when conditions appear to return to normal. it was suggested that those with uninsured deposits of over 100,000 euros may have to take a hit of around 40 on%.
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at the same time, ben loskur says he sees no reason for the bailout of cyprus to be a temporary plate for any rescue packages. the banking problems in cyprus were completely unique. he also suggested that the near collapse of the island's banking system highlights the need for better control of eurozone financial institutions. carolin is still there. she joins us again as ever. it's rather windy there. carolin, good to see you again. look, we have been playing around with what sort of figures we might see on deposits take and 40% is a pretty chunky number. you weather whether in laiki bank it might be even more than that. >> it could be even more than that. many have suggested that depositors with more than 100,000 euros in the laiki bank could be wiped out completely. but 40% for the bank of cyprus, that sounds like a tremendous
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number.. just a week ago, the first bailout number suggested a tax of only 10% for those with more than 100,000 euros in the bank. now we're looking at a increase of an 30% and we know this is predominantly going to be hitting the russians. that is a huge, huge hit to those depositors and many people have been very, very angry. now, with regard to the banks, yesterday there was a little bit of confusion. the central bank first said that only the two biggest banks will remain closed until thursday. a couple of hours later, they retracted that statement and said, look, now we're going to keep all the banks closed up until thursday. the feeling on the ground is that they really just want to get a better sense of just how much money is at risk when banks do reopen on thursday. they also want to get an idea of what will be imposed when banks
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reopen. that's what the finance minister told the radio program just a few moments ago. he said we're going to have to work out what these capital controls will actually look like and that the two biggest banks will be facing much tougher capital controls than the rest. ross. >> yes. it goes against the grain of what the eu is supposed to be about. after friday's jittery session prompted by discipline now retracted that the cyprus bailout could form a template of future rescue attempts. kelly, as we know, has been in brussels. >> barely two months into its tenure is quite a name for himself in markets when it comes to the communication, the way in which he's telling people how exactly europe is going to deal with failing banks in cyprus or across the continent going forward, there hasn't been a consistent message. no one knows that better than
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julia chatterly. julia is with me now. she's been chasing him around brussels, around the continent for the past week and getting at times different messages. >> i give him the fact that there has been sleep deprivation thrown in there, but he has had a busy week. >> the situation in cyprus, the banking size and structure has led to this specific package and these instruments. full stop. >> you can't rule out that a deposit levy will be imposed in a subsequent bailout in our countries. >> it's not being discussed at all. there's no reason to even discuss it. so i won't discuss it, i won't speculate on it. >> will you do whatever it takes to keep cyprus in the eurozone? >> yes. >> even if it means extending the program sfp. >> no, because that doesn't help cyprus. extending the program will leave cyprus behind with a debt
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position which is simply unsustainable. >> do you recognize that what we've seen over the last week, perhaps, has undermined the credibility of the european projects? >> the trust in the european project and the banking union, i would say that the urgency for the banking union has only been proven from this whole situation. >> yesterday, julia, though, being the most extraordinary detail so far where he had to come out and backtrack on comments he had made suggesting cyprus would be a model for the way the euro would deal with the banks going forward. >> he said he didn't recognize the word template. ultimately, the timing was pretty bad, but he has a point. isn't there a situation we have in the eurozone where the banks are dragging their feet, not addressing their balance sheet issues, hoping for a newly pledged ecb is going to come in there and do the work for them. >> and is even if he's right on substance, it now becomes a point about clarity. what can investors take from this? what are they supposed to keep
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in mind when evaluating banks and whether to invest in them? europe ultimately needs growth and that growth has to come through a functioning banking system. >> but a banking system that's ultimately going to be part of a banking union. we know ultimately, yes, he may have brought the timetable forward, but this idea of bank resolution mechanism, this is on the cards. shouldn't investors be thinking about this? >> there should be an urgency when it comes to moving the piece of this forward. in the meantime, we can only hope the collateral damage on banks isn't too much. julia chatterly and i, here in brussels, will keep an eye on the latest for you. >> for now, we're joined from new york by nathan chiefs. good to see you again early morning. where do we go from here? we've got capital controls on at the moment. it goes against the entire principal of what the eurozone and the eu are supposed to be about, free moment of goods, money and services. what's the risk at some point when they remove these capital
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controls, we get a huge flight of capital out of cyprus that makes the situation worse. >> i think that there enormous risks for cyprus right now, both for cyprus and the euro area more broadly. i would say that markets are just holding their breath, waiting to see the extent to which the euro area authorities are looking at cyprus as being something extraordinary versus the way that they're going to handle problems going forward. and if this is what they play to do if there's disruptions at some point in italy or spain, things in europe will be challenging for a while. >> meanwhile, fed chairman ben bernanke has been defending the easy money policy. he says it's not designed to spark a currency war.
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he was speaking yesterday from the london school of economics. >> stronger growth in each economy confers he been official policies. they are positive some enrich thy neighbor actions. again, the distinction between monetary policy ames domestic objectives and exchange rate valuations is critical. the former can be mutually beneficial, the latter is not. >> at the same time, the u.s. economy is starting to move forward slowly. fisher expects gdp to keep growing at its current 2% to 3% pace out of cyprus. he says the situation is unique but the difficulty with the bailout is what it signals to other depositors around the world since depositors run economy. nathan, bernanke has always sort
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of denied the impact of qe on sort of global asset price ones. he sort of denied the impact on commodity prices. then he says it's okay for the rest of the world. is he backtracking? yes, there is an impact on the rest of the world. >> i think that at his core, chairman bernanke really believes that the very best thing that the federal reserve can do for the u.s. economy, but more broadly for the rest of the world, is to achieve the dual mandate. so how is this an enricher neighbor policy? the basic ideas around the world of the world is much better off when the u.s. economy is approaching full employment and is achieving price stability. and these policies are geared with that objective in mind. and i think to the extent that both the u.s. financial markets
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generate wealth in the u.s. that that likely is spilling over to the rest of the world and be constructive and supportive. and i think that's a very important part of the way the fed frames their asset purchase and quantitative easing programs. >> nathan, what is the chance that fedex is sooner than people think? >> i think wa we're seeing in the u.s. economy is pretty encouraging. and there is now a reasonable chance in the second half of the year that the fed might taper its purchases. which would mean instead of buying at $85 billion a month, maybe they buy at $50 billion a month. and to the extent that the economy is continuing to recover over the next year, i think there's a reasonable chance that during the first half of 2014,
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the fed might phase out its quantitative easing entirely. >> all right. nathan, stay there. more to come from you. meanwhile, let's bring you up to speed with where we are on global asset prices right now. european equities, pretty mixed at the moment. we were up around, what, 10% and a little bit more around this time yesterday. them we went down at the end of the session which brought toous markets down. losses between 0.4%, 0.3% on the dow. the ftse 100 absolutely flat. kingfisher coming up, they're impacting the numbers across europe. xetra dax up 13 points. we're down 0.3% for the ibex. the ftse mib is fairly flat at the moment. keep your eyes on the pret pred here. spanish yield just below 5%. but they are higher than where they were at this time yesterday.
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below that at the moment at 1.2876 is the current price. we'll take a short break. still to come, we're bell be in durban, south africa for the conference. carfirmation. only hertz gives you a carfirmation. hey, this is challenger. i'll be waiting for you in stall 5. it confirms your reservation and the location your car is in, the moment you land. it's just another way you'll be traveling at the speed of hertz. a new ride comes along and changes everything. the powerful gs. get great values on your favorite lexus models during the command performance sales event. this is the pursuit of perfection.
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all right. just ahead of the u.s. open, this is where futures currently stand. right now we are called higher. the dow currently up some 40 points. the fass dak is up, what, about 11 points and the s&p 500 is currently up nearly 5 points. 134 of the other stories we're following today, earnings from galaxy entertainment hit the jackpot. its net profits more than doubled to a record $950 million in 2012 thanks to its latest flagship resort which opened two years ago. galaxy is the second biggest gambling company in macau. its shares underperformed the broader hong kong market. analysts say the stock has little upside in a 5% run up in the last week. chinese container terminal giant costco pacific unloaded a 12% drop in its annual profit, net 2012 earnings flipped to $242 million despite a 23% rise in
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sales. the reason? it earned far less from its major stake in the world's big evidence containermaker. if not for that, profits would be up 15% after a pick up in global demand for chinese goods boosted traffic at its terminal. also in china, the biggest lender managed to beat photographs from a year ago. bank of china's net 2012 net profit climbed 12% to over $22 billion. if banks from wider margins for loans to small domestic businesses. its nonperforming ratio improved marginally last year. and profit grew at its slowest pace going public. agriculture bank of china at $23.3 billion for the year. a 19% gaen. analysts were expecting more. profit will likely flow further in 2013. agbank took in 11% more interest last year while shaving down its
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nonperforming loan ratio. and is leaders of the so-called bric nations, which include russia's vladimir putin and chinese premier xi shingping. what in reality might be achieved? >> definitely what i can tell you now is we have had the opening ceremony attended by the trade ministers of south africa, india, brazil, russia as well as, of course, china. the discussions centered around a number of things. they headed the business organizations of the representative companies. south africa talked about trying to protect its economy. this is africa's biggest economy.
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business representatives making the case that this is the most open economy within the bric block. they were worried about chinese imports coming into south africa and having to compete against those. the government is saying they will put mechanisms in place to make sure trade is fair and south african businesses will be protected. one of the issues that kept cropping up during that discussion was the whole role of africa, everyone recognizing that africa is the next opportunity and is talking about opportunity and is trying to leverage and making sure that they take advantage of those. we know africa is home to seven of the ten fastest growing economies in the world and everybody is looking at that. we're talking about economies like libya, ethiopia, zambia. it's a little mixture of raw materials, nation economies, and those countries that don't solely rely on raw materials.
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brazil did as much as $7 billion for its rail project and $400 billion for its oil and gas pep and it sees that developing banks are playing a crucial role in terms of finding funding for those infrastructure projects. so the discussions, yes, they are getting better and they are beginning to try and put the structures in place to make sure that they actualize some of this is assets behind the brics. >> thanks so much, indeed. meanwhile, a quick reminder of your headlines. bad news for cypriot depositors. those with over 100,000 euros in the banks could see at least 40% of their savings disappear. european stocks have stabilized after taking fright from comments yesterday about the cypriot bailout template. and in the u.s., fresh data out today on home sales and prices could show the sector continuing to claw its way back to recovery. those are the headlines. still to come, the new head of the bank of japan has pledged to hit a 2% inflation target in two years.
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purchase program. he hipded at the possibility of buying riskier assets, vowing to hit the 2% inflation target within two years. most expect him to roll out mormon tear easing next week and tried to kick start the debate of the framework. nathan is still with us in new york. nathan, is abe-nomics going to work? >> i think that governor kuroda is going to bring a new style and a new rhetoric to japanese monetary policy. and i do believe that he'll be more aggressive than governor shirakawa has been. but whether he'll go as far as many in the market is expecting, i think it's very much an open issue. i think there will be more constraints on his actions, both inside the boj and worries about side effects, the very aggressive policies. as to whether abe-nomics will be
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successful in raising japanese inflation to 2%, i think that's very much an open issue. and i think it will ultimately depend on whether kuroda is able to unleash animal spirits in japan. if it's going to work, it's going to have to work to an expectations channel where the boj is aggressive and people in japan believe that higher inflation is coming. and whether or not they'll achieve that, i think, is very much a question. >> and how much of that is dependent on them weakening the yen, as well? how much do they have to load up the balance sheets to weaken the yen? >> i think weakening the yen is going to be a key channel of lifting the economy and showing the extend to which the boj is going to be aggressive. my feeling is that weakening the yen and keeping it at a much weaker level is very likely to
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require a substantial increase in the boj's balance sheet. frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if it required as much as a doubling of the boj's balance sheet to get the yen to some number like 100 or 110 and to keep it there permanently. the boj has a lot of work to do if they're going to achieve that. >> all right. nathan, always good to see you. thanks so much indeed for joining us. still to come on today's program, it's 2013, the year of the big m&a fiasco. our next guest disagree, has millions, a new job at yahoo! and has yet to turn 18. more when we come back. >> of course, there's been a trust fund so i can't just go and touch that money. look, i don't really have anything i want to kind of buy immediately.
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hello. i'm ross westgate. this is "worldwide exchange." here are your headlines from around the world. details on the cyprus bailout emerged. the finance minister saying the bank deposits above 100,000 euros could be this the region of 40%. banks will reopen on thursday. stocks try to recover tr being disciplined. the head of the euro group backtracking after his comments regarding the cyprus template sent markets into a tailspin.
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and there's no place like home. fresh data out today on u.s. hope prices could show the sector continue to claw its way back to recovery. >> announcer: you're watching "worldwide exchange," bringing you business news from around the globe. >> if you just joined us stateside, good morning. welcome to your global trading day. we see markets bowing 4% off 3 0.3. you can see it's slightly called higher at the moment. currently called up some 43 points or so. the european stocks, we had gains around 0.75% of the ftse yesterday. 1% for the xetra dax.
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that translates into these kind of prices across the board. not having a good day, weak results. the xetra dax is up 0.3%. the cac 40 up 0.75% in france and the ibex currently down 0.2%. as ever this time of day, we've collated a number of thoughts about what experts have been telling us what investors should do is a recap. >> i think interest rates are a key determinant in australia in terms of the markets pricing out the prospect of additional monetary easing. i think it is somewhat misplaced, but until we get that scenario coming back into play, the aussie will remain relatively well and we've seen that in terms of position, as well. i think that remains to see -- >> just remind me of something. >> i would think that there's
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more down side to call yields. you know, particularly at the short end in germ thee as well as ten-year area. >> in the fixed income space, what i would say is over the last week, one psi is dead and two, the euro is the weaker link. so you put those two things together and as you can still see, currency converts those and improvement in the bond markets. well, then the long peripheral bond markets. >> the report is very concerned about blackstone's proposal buyout would dismantle the pcmaker founded in 1984. reuters reports dell thinks blackstone's plan aren't in line with his strategy to reinvest in the company. dell opened the door for a bidding war on monday, inviting
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blackstone and carl icahn to make firm butte takeover proposals. dell in frankfurt is down 0.75%. yahoo! has snapped up the mobile news app. the app was created by teenager nick delosio and it simplifies news into quick snippet smartphones. the technology will be shut down for now, but back open for business under yahoo!'s new leadership. speaking first on cnbc, louisa sat down with the 17-year-old founder and asked him why yahoo! and not apple or google. >> i'm excited about joining yahoo! because i think it's a classic internet company and it has new leadership under marissa mayer. having spent time on campus and spoken to their team, it's clear that their strategy on mobile and daily habits, news, information, weather, they have all of these assets and all they need to do now is package it up
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in a beautiful user experience from the mobile device. there's a real opportunity there. we see sumly fitting in beautifully to that model. >> schroeders will create an independent private wealth and banking management business. if you thought 2013 was the year of big takeovers, let's think again. the number of deals is actually falling. this is according to the latest report from power watson. let's get more. joining us is steve allen, m&a practice leader. thanks for coming in. >> thank you. >> it's interesting because we seem to be reporting on more deals, we just announced three there. what are the figures, though, saying? >> well, there are deals happening, but fundamentally in this quarter, significantly less.
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we're down this quarter compared to about 370 last quarter. so it is dropping off. i think it's interesting, you're getting a lot of noise in the media about some of the big deals which are very interesting. certain sort of deals are happening. but generally, if you look across the board, across the world, there's fewer of them happening. and the big hits. the americans prove the deals major. europe is a notable one. we didn't have the spike there. last quarter you had the big uptick in northern america. that simply didn't happen in europe. europe is continuing to be unsurprisingly slow. >> and we had this sort of spike in the fourth quarter. it has in the u.s. why hasn't that followed through? >> the reasons some of these deals were brought forward into fourth quarter value are deals. but to a larger extent, fiscal cliff deals, will it or won't it happen, issues about the new year, taxes, what is the u.s. government going to do? what we really saw is people in
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north america thinking, we're going to do the deal. let's get on with it. but i think the fundamentals you see in europe is uncertainty. deals are difficult and deals are -- you have to get it right. there is risk. you can lose money doing m&a. so i think a lot of european companies i think will just hold off. take a step back. there's no need to rush into things. >> what about acquiring from asia pacific? >> they're doing well. it's been a fair few deals. they had a bit of a spike last quarter. they're still continuing. it's about half the level it was last quarter, but they're still continuing. the asians and the americans are proving m&a does have value. the dealmakers in asia are doing deals. they're being rewarded for that and they're doing well. >> analyze the breakdown between debt finance deals and cash deals. schroeders was a cash deal. they eventually went out and spent it. >> well, i think it's interesting. companies do deals and certainly at the moment, there's a huge
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opportunity. because, of course, interest rates are so low. if you are strong, it's a great time to raise money. corporates have a huge amount of cash on their balance sheets. they're saying, we should use it, we should do something. that's driving a lot of the m&a opportunity. it depends on the deal, the nature of them. it was interesting, those transformational deals where you're buying something, compared to you are actually quite large. >> in the asset management business, it's a business where it's getting harder to make money and, therefore, to make money, you need bigger scale. therefore, you need to be a bigger beast. >> and that's through in a lot of m&a. it's about putting things together and delivered better than you were apart. you can effectively do what you
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were doing before, but more efficiently, you can take out some of the costs. it may simply be about being one company's product versus putting it into another company's sales channel or customer base. that's where it gets hard and that's where we come in. our consulting work is how do you get these people to work together? and that's the challenge. it's great to have a great m&a philosophy and do a great negotiation. >> it's come down to people. >> it's always about people being able to work together. steve allen, m&a practice leader at powers watson. we'll take a short break. still to come, cypriot banks look still to open on thursday. capital controls, it will keep the lid on flight. depositors are warned of a 40% hit to their savings. ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] help brazil reduce its overall reliance on foreign imports
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which is good for business. because planes use less fuel, spend less time on the ground and more time in the air. suddenly, faraway places don't seem so...far away. ♪ let's take a look at some of today's top stories. elsrey communications former ten has been sentenced to prison for selling u.s. secret toes china. the government says he was preparing himself for future employment in china and had given several presentations
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about the technology at chinese universities and conferences. boeing says a test flight as the reworked battery system on the 787 dreamliner went according to planned on monday. the test through in everett, washington, four about two hours. the successful flight means boeing can conduct a second test for the faa which must sign off on the new battery system before the 787 can resume commercial flight. boeing stock just up marginally, pretty flat in frankfurt. and city banking committee chairman tim johnson is expected to announce today he'll retire next year. johnson is the fifth democrat to decide to retire at the end of his term, giving republicans an opportunity to pick up a seat in 2014. the gop must gain six seats next year to win back the senate. johnson suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2006, but later
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returned to the senate and won recollection election in 2008. and the deal has gone bust. atlantic city's rebel casinos filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection less than a year after it opened. it cost $2.4 billion to build. it hopes to emerge from bankruptcy by summer. it owns 24 restaurants, 2400 slot machines and 11 00 table gains, but failed to gain appeal in atlantic city which has seen gambling revenue fall for several years. and the ongoing crisis in the eurozone has hit the bottom line of a lot of businesses such as caterpillar. it cut almost half of its workforce in its belgium plant earlier this year on sluggish growth in the region. but the ceo told cnbc today that he's still positive. >> well, our business has been flat and tough for some time. you know, all the way back to '07 and '08, of course.
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but we found a way to really skinny down our costs. our market now is stable. some countries are better than others. we've seen some nice things in france and germany, of course. italy is -- has been depressed for a long time, but all in all, there's hope that we're sizing it right and at some point the tide is going to rise and we'll do well again. >> a reminder of the headlines today, bad news for cypriot depositors. those are over 100,000 euros in the bank could see at least 40% of their savings disappear. european stocks stabilizes after taking -- on comments from jerome, discipline about the cypriot bailout seeing a possible template. dmroo and in the united states, fresh data out today on home sales and prices could show the sector continuing to claw its way back to recovery. and we'll have more on that. home sweet home, yes, the u.s. housing market undergoing a big rebound, but the recovery is far from over. we'll get a pulse check on the sector with the chief economist
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at the national association of home builders, next. switchgrass in argentina,r ] hd change engineering in dubai, aluminum production in south africa, and the aerospace industry in the u.s.? at t. rowe price, we understand the connections of a complex, global economy. it's just one reason over 75% of our mutual funds beat their 10-year lipper average. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. request a prospectus or summary prospectus with investment information, risks, fees and expenses to read and consider carefully before investing.
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with the, we've got a bit of news out on china and the news is that they're going to cut gasoline and diesel prices from wednesday. they're going to cut diesel prices by 3.4%. gasoline prices by 3.2%. and they're going to scrap the 4% trigger point for the oil price adjustment, as well. they're going to adjust fuel prices, apparently, every ten working days. now, let's remind you of what's on the agenda in the u.s. today. we've got february durable goods. they're due out at 8:30 eastern the. demand for big ticket items is forecast to rise around 4%. then at 9:00 a.m., we've got the january home shiller price
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index, priced for markets. and at 10:00, it's february new home sales. they're forecast to drop 5% to an annual rate of 415,000. at the same time, recent sales in pricing data suggests u.s. housing market is on the mend elsewhere. the latest evidence comes from the british plumbing supplier woosley. the supplier said says trading in its business is up 29% in the first half of its fiscal year. but the stock has been trading a little lower because it talked about lots of weakness in europe. so there was t stock is down 2%. but what it had to say about the u.s. is fairly indicative. joining us for more is david crow, chief economiest at the national association of home builders. david, good to see you. i remember, you know, we were in davos, speaking to home experts and said look, we still have to be cautious on u.s. housing. six or seven months of good u.s. data doesn't mean we've finally
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turned a corner. can we be more confident now? >> yes, i think we can. i think we've definitely turned the corner. what we could still see, those, are some ups and downs. i think the trajectory will be forward, but we have a lot of stumbling blocks still in the way. we're trying to rebuild an industry that's been almost nonexistent for several years and it's going to take a while to bring that back. >> and how spotty is it? i know here in london, you can have a different housing market from about three streets away and, of course, the u.s. is about 20 times the size. >> but the same analogy holds true. there are spots in some markets that are doing it very well and yet there are other places, typically at the edge of the metropolitan area is where they're still struggling. where they're still demand yet to be found. and there's also different states that are doing better than others.
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the energy states are doing the best because they had a solid foundation in the overall economy for several years now. those states that took the biggest dive, like california and florida and nevada, are still struggling to come back. >> what sort of -- what are you predicting in terms of total housing starts this year and how will it compare to 2012? >> well, we should get about the same gain this year as we had last year. we had about a 25% increase in total production in '12 and i'm expecting roughly the same percentage increase in '13. that should bring us by the end of the year that should bring us over a million units per year. >> okay. and compare that to -- i -- wa a normal mark up should be. and i don't know what a normal market should be because, obviously, we had a boom before the bust. so how does that compare to what you think the normal should be?
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>> we're still about two-thirds of the way back to normal. a normal market should be about 1.7 million houses a year. that's the underlying demographic demand. we went as high as 2.2 million at the boom. but that was more than we needed. that was driven by more rosy expectations than should have been. 11.7 is the right number. we should get to 1 million by the end of the year. so that is still almost two-thirds of the way back to normal. it's probably going to take several more years to get back to that normal level. and presumably, to get to normal, we have to get a recovery in the employment market and also how important, you know, is -- what is the availability of credit like right now? >> credit is tough. unfortunately we have very low mortgage rates, but that really isn't the issue right now. the driver behind borrowers is their ability to get a mortgage. and that is still weak. there's still a very tight
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credit standards, high down payment. many people still feel uncomfortable about their job positions. so all of those things have to cure themselves before we can really take off. >> okay. david, good to see you this morning. thanks for joining us. good insight, david crow, chief economist at the national association of home builders. all week long, cnbc is going local, taking a closer look at housing markets around the u.s. and how they're faring in our realty recovery watch. check on your area with our interactive map at recoverywatch.cnbc.com. well worth looking at, actually. real estate is incredibly local. that will help point out some of the trends. back to europe in the cypriot finance minister says he anticipates the island banks will reopen on thursday. he told bbc radio that controls will probably be two tiered, will only be lifted when
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conditions appear to return to normal. it's also suggested that those with uninsured deposits of over 100,000 euros may have to take a hit of around 40%. this as ben from the ecb says he sees no reason for the banking problems in cyprus to be a template for any other issue. he suggested the near collapse of the banking system highlights a better control of eurozone financial institutions. carolyn has been with nick and joins us for more. carolin, we're looking at this 40% level. that being applied to bank of china, which has sort of taken over the good bank from laiki, what might depositors in likeky be wiped out by?
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well, depositors in laiki bank with over 100,000 euros could be completely wiped out. those in cyprus could be looking at a haircut of more than 30%. he said it could be 40%, but he himself said he could not confirm this number at this point in time. look, we still don't have any clarity what the end game will be for many of these depositors and we know that the two biggest banks, laiki bank and bank of cyprus will remain closed up until thursday. yesterday, we saw that some of the other banks here would open today, but no, that has been postponed to thursday. we're getting a sense that officials here to the ground want to get a better idea of what flows could be looking like once banks do reopen on thursday and they want to get a better idea of which exact capital controls will be in place once they do reopen. >> yeah. and very briefly, carolin, very briefly, capital control webs he
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says until they return to normal, right? it could be a long time before we get back to normal. >> it could be a long time. in the case of iceland, five years after the bailout, they are still in place. but here in cyprus, we're hearing that they could in place for at least a couple of weeks. >> carolin, thanks for that. plenty more to come on "squawk box." just a recap of where we stand with european markets ahead of the open right now, the ftse 1100 is fairly flat. the cac 40 up 0.6%. the ibex down 0.4% as you can see. how is that feeding through into u.s. futures? after the declines we saw yesterday, dow down 0.4%, we are called a little firmer this morning. so we're currently called up, wa, about 44 points for the dow. the nasdaq is currently up around 12 points and the s&p 500 at the moment is currently trading, what, nearly six points
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above fair value. as far as the bond markets are concerned, we just see yields lift a little bit in spain. today, they actually are lower on the session. spanish yields, 4.9%. italian yields, 4.52%. we are looking at a ten-year auction coming out in italy in the next couple of days. ten-year bund yields still pretty low, yielding 1.357. on the currency markets, euro/dollar this time yesterday was 1 is.30. you can see yesterday afternoon we took a dip below, currently picking up slightly, but still below 1.2831. dollar/yen, 94.20. and sterling/dollar, cable, steady at 1.55180. we are coming into the easter weekend. much will shop on friday. trading will be getting thinner, as well. that's about it for today's show. coming up next, of course, three hours of "squawk box." they'll take you through the
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