is european. but that feeling back and forth, i don't know how, you know, how receptive the europeans would be in their view to take instruction while they're working out their system. our folks are being supportive in concrete ways. by swapping and giving them dollars everybody thinks everybody is generous with his own advice. >> i have noticed that. >> and figures out how lucky the person is to get it. the regyp yent doesn't feel so

lucky. >> in the law business we used to say free advice is worth every penny you pay for it. >> topic for this conference. we heard earlier this morning as i think you know from your group founder and president on this subje subject. in a session that i think everyone here greatly enjoyed. we can probably devote an entire conference this to th subject and i have seen some of your research publications projecting what capital will look like. >> i think the challenges.

demographic pressures remains an issue. >> infrachuckture of the market system not there. >> and ultimately the potential and a large population for social unrest. accountability in the like. what's your outlook? economy historian. if you were shut down there you

would have missed the last 90 years. i can't tell you if this is the chinese year or not. by the way, i feel very positive about the u.s., too. i would rather invest for the kids than invest for the short term myself. i think that every problem you mentioned is also an opportunity population means they will have to go off and use social services. inside china to create securities that the pools of

capital will have. goldman sachs could invest in the extern. that has to be -- a lot of the problems you mentioned are the flip sides of opportunities. there are problems if they don't go well. as they get worked through, it will be big opportunities. they are all going to be a fabulous label for us. i think there are going to be problems. and it's hard to know. we find out about our problems because the market tells us. there are something like 80 airports right away. if you build 80 at once, maybe 40 of them are going to be in

the wrong place. you write them off and fire a million people. >> i thought we just furloughed the faa staff. >> i knew every part except the moving on part. but in china you don't have the mechanism of writing off mistakes. i think when they have mistakes and you finally are forced to face them, they will be bigger than they otherwise would be if you were facing them all along. if you asked me, i would bet along with china that it works and muddles through and works out. new government.

i bet they have reforms on your mind. so that you can achieve the other things that will allow people to finance and fund things. the market doesn't do things like it does here. so we stay invested but we watch how much we have in. once you're out or start to get out or they look like you're going backwards it's hard to get that reputation back. so we're being very careful about how much we have in. but when we invest, we also sell other things. a level of risk that we think we

can support under dire circumstances. >> let's come back closer to home again. >> in recent years. >> that's like hate, right? >> yes. it's like situational crisis. >> that's among policymakers and this is important to note on both the right and the left. there was a 2010 dow jones story that was the focus of anger. actually if you were only grilled, that was a good experience, having testified so many times myself.

i don't want to dwell on the past. but where do you see the temperatures levels now? is the grill still hot? is it cooling down? >> somebody once said how much better does it feel to be boiled in 450 degree oil as opposed to 60 degree oil. the temperature could be down and it doesn't feel that much different. in the present we're having to work through the issues and that's the source of resentment and distrust. you have the grapple with it in the present. it was a very big drama. include regrettable behavior for a lot of things we would regret

hind site. a lot of it was a bubble that captured everybody. there were no brilliant actors. but we have to work ourselves through it. and going to have to live with the legacy issues for a while. i think people are more interested in how we get this economy going than they are with, again, rehashing. you're not abandoning the legacy matters. there will still be things you have to settle. firms like ourselves and firms like yourself to accomplish the purposes we're here for which is to ultimately finance risk

taking. you accumulate capital and make decisions. and we help advise in that process. that's something that we have to do in earnest. i think we have -- i have a lot of regret for not having a lot of dialogue with the public. and so we have to do a better job explaining what it means to have -- be able to have and what a blessing it is to the united states to have good big pools of capital. it is largely regulated very well. that can go out. the capital markets are an envy of the world but what does that

mean for the real person. how am i better off because we have great capital markets? look at the growth and the innovation. i think we have to do a better job of explaining our roll in th that. >> it's a very abstract concept. a lot of complexity to it. and i think it's more complicated by the fact that, you know, financial services industries are different. i think of goldman as being in many different spaces. the investment company institute occupies one.

how do you accommodate within your firm businesses as diverse as you have. activities on the other. what are the challenges on the other. how do you manage them? >> we're not as diverse. we're relatively focused. we didn't merge with big commercial banks and financial super markets. we don't have a retail business. financing and asset management. where we gauge with the same kind of people and infrastructure and intellectual capital.

and the same culture throughout the firm. all of those people who tend to fund those kinds of businesses tend to be similar kinds of people with similar skill sets. and stay in those relatively narrow but brettier than a dedicated asset manager. we are in all of those activities and give us a tremendous advantage in terms of the investment we make in our technology and culture of risk management. the way we can attract people who -- even if people don't intend to stay for 30 years they don't mind getting trained for three years. and just the way some people stay three. great recruiters. and i think those businesses fit together very well. and within our own organization

there is the added advantage of being a business where we could still grow and hoping that the market gets bigger. how much are we going to grow our market share? same thing in the market making. s a st managers that are four times our size and the things i said about the growth and pooling of capital and wealth creation otherseas. i think it's a market that's going to grow. and one that gets a very, very hi percent taj and making sure we do it in a right and sensible way.

>> what is goldman doing not only in terms of your firm but thinking about the industry at large to increase public confidence. customer and client confidence in the firm. >> the first thing that we obviously focused on but i think the industry has to focus on is it would be a good thing not to do anything else that inflames relationships. >> that's fair. obviously, we, to figure out

what we could with be doing and spent a lot of time on this and published things like this. i think people are living their lives and they are not obsessed with watching wh they are doing. it's there for people to see. we're going out and doing the best we can in demonstrating through the things that we do for a living how important that is. we helped j.c. penneys who needed obviously wanted it in other words, in -- what i would like to be able to do is tell

people and i will get to this in a sect the things that we do in the course of our business activity is supportive of the country of the economic system. it is a little bit who are these people. we don't have the dot. we don't have a dialogue with the public the way consumer firms did. and so, i think we are doing some programs like small business programs where we're taking the themes and the work we do on providing advise and education and support in the

small business context and we have put a lot of money and energy and and infrachuckture around the program. if any of you have crossed this you will know it very well. it would take too long to explain. and we recognize the need to do that, to bridge that. >> you started out your career as a lawyer and then became a trader and as head of the firm, most of your focus some kind of tough ones were coming up now. what lessons and leadership has lloyd blankfein learned since

becoming chairman of goldman sachs? >> i'll tell you. in those good years, i didn't necessarily done good and nervous as can be. it's only in hindsight that you could see how nervous. in the toughyears, i didn't exercise a lot of critical faculty. every day you came in and tried to sort things out and get through it. i think when things are going well, you love the hell out of it and when things are difficult you have your sense of duty that really takes over. in terms of leadership, i think one and this is a virtue but it's also a vice. you have to have a thick skin. it has to be thick enough to not

take all of that well intended advice that would have you bend to every breeze. i remember in november '08. september '08 we have the crisis. november '08, i'm getting questioned on whether there will be any investment bank iing our year started december 1. that next year was the all time record year for goldman sacks in our businesses because it needs market. we had a higher profile so we are able to mmod you have to listen and you can't

cross the line into stubborn but you better stay a little bit thick skinned and focused on facts and information. we're lawyers. how can a lawyer be in this business. in a funny way, a lot of different people do well in this business but lawyers don't do so badly and engineers don't do badly and accountants. and you know why? all of those groups have a real respect for facts. as opposed to sentiment and i said that kind of mind set shouldn't be all you are but that's not a bad place to start.

>> i think misplaced. and well, well intended but out of place and potentially harmful to the markets. >> current obsession that needs to be sorted out to maintain the contract that you want to have with the public. >> i think very important sources of excess liquidity would create more credit risk. >> financial transaction taxes.

>> screwy. hard to understand. >> i will kidty is a virtue of the system and to tax liquidity in order to ham per it is going to be a cost that will be realized in a lot of facets of our society that are not anticipated. >> what area? i love books. >> you choose. >> history. >> the churnout book on washington. >> i just finished it. >> i tell you, it was -- it covered a million things. the end of the book. so here is a demagogue washington.

let me tell you. this is his own delegation are writing pamphlets and killing him. it almost gives me some faith that we could survive the bitterness of the current system that these things are all part of a psychle and the fact that we are thinking this is as wor as it can be is only a function that this is the generation we're in and everything else is so in a memory. so i feel better about it. >> who knew there would come a time when washington and jefferson never spoke to each other again. >> and you know something? i am used to every night at about 5:00 i get the incoming e-mails which contain the next day's news stories and i'm thinking these tracts would take about two months to get printed. did he hold his breath?

>> as a way of maintaining a culture and not only some more senior people and younger ones as well. and many of us have children. they are at the age when most people are looking to begin their careers. what advice would you give to young people starting out their careers whether in finance or otherwise? >> i have learned my lesson. i think people shouldn't like -- look, i started out, i was -- i didn't just go to law school. i practiced law. things ended up different from where i thought they would be. i would say go do something that is for the next period of their life and not be so obsessive about where it's going to take you in the longer run.

not only don't you know the situation -- the context you're going to face, you don't even know yourself i think people should take advantage of the fact that in this generation, no one is getting drafted into the army. you can have a few years of experimenting that you can be liberated from the need to make sure that everything is taking you on some straight line to some place. >> and enjoy the ride because you never know where it might take you. >> and also don't worry about learning the content of your business because to succeed you have to know the content of what you're doing and you have to be a complete person.

>> taking about half an hour of questions. he spoke on a wide range of topics. here's what he said right now. the world is muddling through. he is very optimistic about the u.s. there are a number of positives here. the corporations have their leanness and etc. listen in. >> there is uncertainty now. but i don't think spectacularly more than other periods that i have grown into. >> he said he believed the central bank was doing a good

job of balancing near term rifts of inflation. he said that's going to be a problem for a while. he has said more about the euro zone's willingness to succeed. when asked about his own business he said the legacy still continues to haunt them and they need to do a better job of explaining what they need to do. they then took a couple of questions on up front issues including something he called well intentioned but could be potentially harmful. as far as too big to fail, he said it's a current obsession that needs to be dealt with. also talking about financial

taxes, financial transaction taxes he called them screwy. and he said he finished washington. that biography, and he liked it. >> some very interesting comments. thank you very much for wrapping them up. we're going to go for a quick break. we're going to be back. the markets are going gang busters by the way.

>> the s&p 500 hitting a new all time high. but all the action is really in tech today. >> 119,000 on the adp report. if you look at the private sector job creation it's considerably higher. that's a little bit worrisome.

you might ask yourself to put up the industrials. we can add and subtract to them. you will notice that the market intended to go up. this is when the federal reserve conducts its permanent operations. a lot of traders believe that this does have some kind of effect. it's a controversial issue but a lot of traders believe that. health care up. you mentioned tech.

>> rick, thank you very much for being patient and waiting. we have been talking a lot about growing the pie for everyone, right? >> yes. >> and maybe the most important issue is if you're going to be pro growth you need to be pro energy. >> if we want to be a growing expanding economy.

>> big word time, is this good things for tomorrow's april payroll number? >> is it long term good news or just a blip? >> i don't think we're necessarily going to stay at this level but i think the four-week moving average, a little over 340,000 is indicative of where we are. it's really supportive of a

number closer to 175 on average. what that says is that if you had a really weak march, april could be a lot stronger. >> you're a guy who calls it as it is. >> the weak adp number matters. i don't think anybody should really care. it's just not enough. >> how do we make it enough? >> if i had that answer i would be a zillionnary. >> the economy right now is not growing enough to support an accelerated rate of job creation. it's enough to get the stock

market higher. >> joel, what is? >> you really take a look at the key of the economy. the consumer, business investment and the housing market. they have been growing and growing solidly. they seem to be axccelerateacce. today's numbers on vehicles are good. balance sheets are in great shape. everything says to me that this economy is really prepared to turn the corner. what's stopping it? as far as i'm concerned i'm with the fed if they do get out of

the way, then i think there is nothing stopping things. >> thank you very much for your thoughts. big payrolls tomorrow. >> everybody is worried about europe. what do you do. >> sit a precursor to change. now you're seeing renewable energy companies doing well. there is policies for helping

the poor. >> rather than freaking out about china slowing down which the market has been doing for quite some time now, we just get used to the fact that it is going down to a level of growth that is more sustainable for the long term. >> there is a disconnect between the currency and shanghai composite. finance within companies that are on the shanghai composite.

it's trying to control inflation not necessarily interest rates. provides a way to keep inflation low. >> an excellent point and the impact of the market. thank you very much. >> thank you, by the way. it's not the best performing market in the world. guess what is? perhaps the new pope is having an impact on argentina.

>> still 11th. not too bad. >> americans don't like to yell that. >> i just mentioned gold. earlier on today and making a bit of a come back. silver and platinum are all on the green with silver being the biggest winner today. none of those metals are positive year to date. >> still ahead, what gm said that shows maybe just how bad things have been run at the company a couple of years ago. talk to fill lebeau about it next. it's as simple as this.

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>> shares of general motors solidly higher following their owners. that's stunning.

>> this company has been around for more than 100 years and they are just now figuring that out. dan made this comment during the conference call and here is the quote. he was asked about their profitability here in the united states. and bha he said is we were not quite sure what some of our products were in terms of profitability. i know that may sound a bit change and he's talking about a couple of years ago but we did not have the clarity and therefore we didn't have that accountability that we do have now. i have heard this story not just about the accountability in terms of profitability but look at the i.t. systems. >> that's a testimony to how poorly things were run. there were probably a few people who heard that and thinking really are you kidding me?

>> do you feel finally with share holers this stock is getting some respect? >> it's definitely getting some respect. the question is whether or not this is an extended run or is this a head fake and it's going to pull back down. you have got a couple of things working in their favor now. many believe that it's going to be added into the s&p 500 index and once that happens you will have a lot of fund managers who will move into buying this stock. perhaps they are starting to get their arms around what is happening. that has long been the bugaboo for ford and gm shares. >> in the meantime, microsoft on

the attack after years of. we will pose that question.

>> welcome to the earnings squad. joining us along for the ride.c thompson. let's start off with the scorecard. three-fourths of the s&p 500 have reported so far. we are keeping our eye on a slew of companies that report today after the bell. we've got to start off with aig. those shares trading higher ahead of its earnings this afternoon. mary, what are you looking for out of this report? >> earnings, 78 cents a share, revenue of 8.64 billion. there are three key things we're watching for. what is the underlied ratio? basically if it's below a hundred, it means they're taking in more than they're paying out. aig says long-term goal is 90 to 95%. also, non-bank is systemly important financial institution.

the reason is, they want some more details on it. how much capital are they going to have to hold? and that's important, because people want to know, are they going to be buying back more stock? what about a dividend for aig. there were four key executive departures recently. there are going to be probably some comments on that. they've failed the positions fairly quickly, or at least some of them. but i think this is going to raise concerns. how deep is your bench? do you have the people to fill it? and raise concerns or questions about the succession to ceo of bob ben moshe. >> and will there be questions about the dividend, any dividend? >> that's something people are watching. and i think they have a lot of capital set aside, right, but they may be holding it until they get an idea from the fed, that as one of these non-bank systemic important financial institutions, how much do we have to hold. >> i'm glad you explained that. >> yet another acronym we have to worry about. take a look at that chart. you can see a nice run in the stock, this has been one of

these hedge fund favorites. they've really cycled into the stock anticipating this dividend. >> and we're focusing on the chart with that combined ratio. it also has a big life operation as well, life insurance operation. >> let's talk tpx, temper pedic after the bell. >> big battleground stock. it has been hit, it has been coming back. i want to point out, you know, sales growth has been negative for several quarters. the coeliac position has been completed. this makes this another mattress company with a tpx on the side. but interestingly enough, in the past quarter, toward the end of last year, big holder in there, kyle bass hemming's capital, that will be interesting to see if he's still there, what role he will play. >> and i'm going to quickly touch on hain. we had a couple of data points from some of its channels, where hain products are sold. last quarter, same-store sales, three-year low. the fresh market, a down bate full-year view. so there's some concerns going in, but we'll see the stock has been at ho one and a battleground stock, if you will, herb, to use your terminology

here. that is the squawk for today. if you want to join the conversation, tweet me @melissa leecnbc #earningssquad. we'll be back tomorrow morning. and in the meantime, "street signs" continues right after this. i'm only in my 60's...

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in the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp. don't wait. call now. microsoft seems to be getting its mojo back, or at least the marketing version of it. earlier this week, we showed you a windows mobile ad taking direct aim at apple and samsung.

microsoft also has supposedly been going after google. >> i just got a top pick on google shopping. >> how do you know you didn't get skroogelled. >> while they look like honest search results, they're really paid ads. >> you don't even know which stores they've left out. >> and with the stock outperforming both google and apple this year, is this just a piece of fluff or real change? joining us, ed maguire, software analyst at clsa. what say you, a real turn for microsoft or a lot of bluster? >> i think the ad itself is a little bit of cheeky. microsoft's been investing a lot in bing search and it's great technology that extends across the portfolio. but what i think investors may be waking up to is the underlying value of the enterprise business, which has really been outgrowing many of its peers and has a huge amount of momentum. >> do you think they need to split off the enterprise business, because there are other parts of this business that are clearly not doing so well. >> they could certainly de-emphasize some of the investments on the consumer

side. i don't know that it makes a lot of sense to split it off, but certainly, it's this combination of software and services that's really powerful that's leading their larger customers to commit for longer term deals, and that's showing up on the balance sheet and driving momentum. >> okay. well, on the cnbc newsline now, let's also bring in roy choi, managing editor of the tech know buffalo. as we were showing a moment ago, the stock seems to be getting its mojo back, but do you feel this new aggressive campaign is more bark than bite, roy? >> definitely. you look at how much windows 8 was a promise to consumers and to the shareholders, and they're falling flat. in fact, pc makers are blaming windows 8 for the weak sales. and you look at how much in terms of losses the pc market has taken overall, and it's just a huge loss. and windows phone 8 still has not caught on as much as they want. they're still fighting for the third place spot against blackberry. and it's nowhere near what the industry's expecting from microsoft.

>> yeah, but ed, isn't microsoft, like, you've sort of hinted on and written about a lot, we don't see the big part of their business. it's all in the servers and the companies and they're actually now a giant cloud company. >> they are. they've been -- they've just announced over the last couple of weeks they've got two billion-dollar businesses, office 365 and windows adjure. and their failures to gain traction right now in the mobile side with windows phone, just bear in mind that microsoft, in some sense, is like the energizer bunny, and i'm going to use two monty python references. on one hand, they're sort of like the killer rabbit from the holy grail, they're small, but they keep getting you, but they're also not dead yet. they keep coming and coming and coming again and i think investors may underestimate that. >> you know, you're obviously quite the bear on microsoft, roy. but if you had to pick something that is going to be able to keep this come back going, what is it? >> you know, i do agree here with the fact that the cloud computing and the enterprise platforms are doing

significantly well. i think that part of them doing well is they've hedged their bets here. i think the fact that people have used tablet devices more and more, they're reliant on this infrastructure. and i kind of feel like microsoft lucked into this vision. you look at where the industry's headed in terms of gaming, in terms of mobile, and microsoft is making sure that windows 8 is a long-term investment. you see them look for xbox to be a core part of windows 8 in branching out and being that glue to go into the living room space. >> ed, roy, thank you very much for joining us today. let's take a look at what those markets are doing. we're talking of tech. that's certainly the outperformer of the markets today. the nasdaq has been up by over 1% all day and partly thanks to apple as well as microsoft. as for the nasdaq, it's up by 1.3% right now. dow up by 129 points. good gain there. but the s&p 500 today, by the

way, second time this week it has hit an all-time high. >> and i know investors are hoping microsoft can stay above 30 this time. it's done it a bunch, and it's never been able to hang out there. >> yeah! >> we'll see. have a good time heading out tomorrow. i'm off to do this. >> off to do a little racing. >> big jobs day tomorrow. >> mother of all data, as they call it. thanks for watching "street signs." hi, everybody. er the final stretch. welcome to the closing bell. i'm maria bartiromo at the new york stock exchange. what the difference a day makes for the markets today, bill. >> we have right now gained back what we lost yesterday. dow was down 128, up 129 today. i'm bill griffeth, by the way, just in case you're keeping score. if you thought yesterday was the beginning of sell in may and go away, think again. stocks have recouped those losses and oil, by the way, wti crude oil has had its best up day of the year today, up about 3%. so energy has been