week. qualcomm preannounced that the forecast is to be cut. union pacific, forecast cut, it's above that. this is the new pattern and it says to me, buy linkedin. like i say, there's always a bull market somewhere, i promise to try to find it just for you here on mad mu"mad money." i ooh. the last ditch attempts to save obama care are in full force. insurance companies ceos called to the white house today, but can they reinstate cancelled policies even if they wanted to? we'll ask one of the head, one of the biggest insurers in the country. the house passing its own bill to let people keep their insurance. fred upton is here where the bill goes from here. what a switch from the epa, making a big move with ethanol that might save you a lot of money. and yet another record high for the dow industrials. that's number 38 this year if you're counting at home. but is this run starting to run on empty? all that next as "the kudlow

report" starts right now. happy friday wherever you are. i'm brian sullivan in for larry and this is "the kudlow report". we're live here 7:00 eastern, 4:00 pacific. let's get right to it. the obama care administrative fix announced yesterday gives the green light to insure towers let people keep the health plans they like. it also let's the president stay true to his promise. >> the bottom line is insurers can extend current plans that would otherwise be cancelled into 2014 and americans whose plans have been cancelled can choose to re-enroll in the same kind of plan. >> here's the problem. it puts the insurers who spent years preparing for the obama care roll out in a tough spot. if they attempt reinstating millions of cancelled policies. >> this is nothing more than the

president throwing the hot potato, the hot political potato about cancellations back to the insurance companies. he puts them in a hell of a mess. >> today ceos from across the health insurance industry met with the president to discuss next steps. cnbc's john harwood joins us now. john, give us the insiders take on what went down at the white house. >> reporter: we're still trying to figure it out. this was a long meeting. it went for two hours. you can tell they were down to some nitty gritty business because neither the white house nor the insurance executives had been willing to talk so far after that meeting. but it was interesting that the president, when he greeted the executives at the outset of the meeting and let photographers in for a few moments indicated the meeting was not only about that fix he outlined but about the broader task of enlisting insurance executives to help the white house surmount the problems of the obama care website which are preventing so many people from learning what their options are and buying

insurance. here's the president. >> because of choice of competition, a whole lot of americans who always seen health insurance out of reach are going to be in a position to purchase it. and because of the law we're also going to be able to provide them help even if they are still having trouble purchasing that insurance but they got to know what those options are. . >> reporter: what that underscores, brian, is this november 30th deadline for trying to get the website more or less fully functional for users is going to be critical. many policies expire at the end of december. people need to sign up by december 15th in order to be covered on january 1st. so that is the bigger issue than the exthe evening of some of these policies. it is yet to be seen how many are actually going to be extended because not only did the president put the burden on insurers, he also put the burden on state insurance commissioners, some of whom have already made plain they don't

want to extend those policies, brian. >> john harwood thank you as always, buddy. have a great weekend. we'll speak more about the problems this creates for insurance companies with the ceo of highmark insurance in a bit. also in the news today the house passing the gop's keep your health plan act which would allow insurance companies to, again, offer health plans which were previously cancelled for not meeting obama care requirements. in a sign of growing democratic jitters, 39 democrats joined with republicans to support the bill. this despite leadership opposition and a formal white house veto threat. here now is the bill's primary sponsor, michigan republican fred upton. fred, welcome. tell us where the bill goes from here. >> well, you know, this afternoon we won by more than 100 votes. a lot of democrats, 39 joined with most of the republicans. but what's the most tragic thing here is the president and administration in that sense

were willing to throw literally millions of americans over the edge, under the bus. they promised for years that if you like your health insurance you could keep it, don't have to do anything, can you keep it, period. of course, we found out otherwise. in michigan almost a quarter of a million policy holders were going to lose their coverage. across the country millions of folks. we introduced a pretty easy bill tell insurance companies they could allow that insurance policy to be sold. as an individual you're not is going penalized. it's good for the next year. we want to pass this as soon as we can to send the signal to the insurance companies and the states that, in fact, it can still be available. and earlier in the week it looked we would get as many as 300 votes in the house and then yesterday afternoon the president act. he issued, in essence, an executive order that indicates they are going to do some regulations to try to do somewhat of the same thing but who is to say they don't change

their mind? who is to know what the senate will do. what we did is pass legislation that i think addresses the problem and tells our constituents who are getting those notices, you're out of luck, our legislation says, you know what? you still may be in luck. you won have to pay that increase. >> what do you believe the senate will do? >> i don't know. earlier in the week there were a couple democrats and republicans apparently were working together. they had a little different version. they had a mandate with the insurance companies that have to offer those plans. it was indefinite. ours was only for a year. they allowed for some more transparency. it's unclear what the senate will do. some wore coming out of the senate is they may not do anything. they may just accept what the president proposed yesterday but, again, as indicated in the multi-hour meeting this afternoon with insurance executives, no one really knows what happened. >> the criticism has been that

the republican party is putting partisan politics ahead of the help of the american people, politicizing the issue. how do you respond to that criticism >> a couple of things. if you want to ask me do i still support the repeal of obama care the president's health care, yes. i do support the repeal. as does every republican. our problem is this we came back last week and i was in michigan for most of the week, every event, a service club, veterans events, going to the grocery store people were coming up to me and showing me their cancellation notice, telling me about these big increase that they are going to have. for some the deductibles went from zero to almost $3,000. often 200%, 300% increases. we're trying to help these people that were led to believe that they could keep their plan. and that's what our -- that's what our bill does in the house. i compliment our leadership, boehner and mccarthy and cantor

for, in essence, in five or six legislative days bringing this bill to the house floor, winning by more than 100 votes so we can send a life jacket to folks otherwise being thrown over the edge. >> were you surprised, congressman, 39 democrats came across the aisle? >> actually before the president did what he did yesterday there were some reports we would have more than 100. so, we actually had a little over, under. i figured we would get exactly about 39, 40. we're pretty much right on the mark. we didn't whip it. we allowed the merits of the argument to go forward. we heard from lost of folks. at the end of the day we won by more than 100 votes. that's not bad in a pretty divided house. >> congressman fred upton. appreciate it. thanks very much. joining us now to talk more about that and straighten our own tie, former obama campaign

aid, a talk show host and member of the "wall street journal" editorial board. we've seen a schism in the gop for a while. are we beginning to see one in the democratic party? >> we don't have to worry about disunity in the democratic party just yet. the democratic party has a lot of patience and confidence in the president and so far public opinion has not really crystallized any way one way or another. two weeks ago most americans whether or not they like obama care or support the president they want this roll out to succeed and what's crucial is the next couple of weeks going forward whether we can keep that public opinion on the side of success. >> the pollsters have gotten crazy. you ask these complex questions. do you want health insurance or no? if people get their plans cancelled they rather have a bad plan than no plan. >> there was no reason to have these plans cancelled. the private-sector, you swore to

everybody up and down for four years you'll be able to keep your policy and it turned out to be absolutely not true. if there were the private-sector you would be indicted by an attorney general somewhere for fraud. the argument against president obama when he ran he was in the legislature, no management experience. i think we've seen there might be something to that theory. >> tough "vanity fair" article on the president which is surprising coming from "vanity fair". joe, what's your take. this is not the private-sector. we can have theoretical debates. health care is a problem vis-a-vis the website. >> that's right. we're not seeing a schism in the democrats quite yet. they are starting to get nervous. we're signing the beginnings of a panic. they are holding off to this november 30th date. >> american people are very patient. democrats are salivating.

>> people are losing their coverage. president comes out and says this is only 5% of the population and current individual market. that's 16 million people. >> when the employer mandate kicks in it's estimated 130 million will lose their insurance. i think the american people are thinking they can't put together a website how will they process my claim. >> there's one news story that's the most important story of the day to somebody. so it's hard to argue well it's just 5 million people. for those 5 million families or people, this is the most important thing to them right now. >> the president acknowledges that. i think he shows a tremendous level of empathy and refreshing amount for politics anyway self-criticism when you saw him yesterday coming out, taking accountability. the right-wing radio hosts are going to say he's losing credibility, it's not matter of bad policy, it's a matter of

credibility and confidence. but he's showing a -- he's restoring that credibility by being as honest -- >> i totally disagree. he holds a press conference i'll make sure you can keep your insurance policy. then he meets the next day to meet with the insurance companies. shouldn't it have been in the reverse order. >> this puts political pressure on insurance companies. it puts them in an awkward position. >> why didn't he meet with them first >> people in the white house have been talking to the insurance industry for a long time. this obama care benefits -- nobody will deny it benefits the insurance industry heavily lie edding i -- by adding 40 million people. >> pharmaceutical companies will profit very handsomely. this isn't a fight between the two. the reality is insurance companies want this thing to work also. to your point, mark. they want customers. >> right.

>> they need customers. the question i got, though, is how does this ♪ does it end with a wimper? joe, do you think that the healthercare.gov starts to work and everybody kind of goes away? >> i think we're going see some improvements in the system but behind the scenes this is much more dysfunctional than even has been revealed to the public. i think eventually the white house will come crawling back to the insurers and say help us, help us fix the website, help us sign people up directly. >> did anybody ask what the heck went wrong. $635 million. you have three kids that were profiled, built something called the health sherpa. not a full healthercare.gov. looks pretty good. they did it over three days. facebook, just get those guys. when do we get this money back? have they been paid? >> i have a web service. two guys in a cubicle did it. >> why don't we focus more on that. what exactly is the problem. i want to know why they can't

get a simple website to work. amazon.com sells millions of things a day. >> the president is just as confused. i wouldn't be comparing this to amazon two days before the launch. >> the president doesn't write code. >> this is the frightening part. i said in that press conference i didn't know anything about this. why. he does surveillance on 35 foreign governments. >> there will be a post mortem when this is said and done but the white house should be all systems go to fix or improve the website and hold accountable those people that got it wrong. >> put six hackers in a room and figure it out in two days. guys stick around. coming up more in this hour we'll look at it from the insurance company point of view. what can they do? could they reinstate these policies like the president is saying they can even if they want to. but first, who said the run was done? stocks up again today. will we end the year with a roar

or with a wimper? we're back after this. ♪

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welcome back to "the kudlow report" and happy friday

everyone. another day where the bulls were in control, another day for record highs. let's start with the dow jones industrial average, up half of a percent. fewer than 40 points from dow's 16,000. s&p 500 closing at a new high shy of 1800. nasdaq not at a new high but very close to 4000 for the first time in more than 13 years. but there doesn't seem to be one big reason here. yes stocks like the easy money and janet yellen's testimony confirming more qe is in store, but there are also a lot of traders who say the market just has a lot of momentum behind it right now. brian. >> please do stake round because we'll be joined by chief investment officer of portfolio llc and head of global strategy at invest net. here's the set up. stocks are soaring. you have tech leading the way. you got companies with no sales being valued in the billions of dollars and this is true, even the back street boys are

touring, should be called the back street men but are touring again. is this 1999 redux. >> wish it was 1999. we would be making more money. the valuation, we might say the s&p is valued higher than its average but we're not looking at a dow jones or s&p valued at 30 pe. it's not yet at that fever pitch. just because we have a few big heavy weights like twitter and other ipos coming out we don't have the same fever pitch like we did a dozen years ago. the other thing to remember even though there's less stocks today participating as far as going up as far as down, the bulk of companies are going up where as you remember a dozen years ago it was just a few of those big things like cisco and yahoo! where most stop, not. we're pretty much on steve ground here. i'm pretty positive.

>> zack, i hear lee's points. they are solid. the fact that everything seems to be going up is actually what worries me. >> well, that, i think in itself is probably an indication we're not in a 1999 period or the kind of bubble you're talking about. such word would be heresy. while it's understandable in the media we talk about the indices making new highs nasdaq is still 20 plus percent below its mark of 2000 high which means for the past 13 years if you were indexed in that you would still be down. it's hard to depict that in my mind as a bubble and the very fact we're so obsessed on finding the looming bubbles and then pricking them is in itself an indication of the fact while the markets are going up there's no particular frothiness. the definition of things getting

exuberant. i'm seeing frustration that people are missing it and skepticism that there's anything fundamental behind it. >> if this market is headed higher which sectors will take us there. when you look at the 10 s&p sectors many are trading at a very expensive valuation. which sectors do you think could reeling help provide this next leg up for the s&p 500? >> i don't think health care which has done awfully well, hard to imagine 2014 will be a banner year for the insurers and hmos. not that they will do badly but hard to see them leading the market. housing has had a great year. housing related stocks. hard to see that be the nature in 2014. technology and industrials are key to that global story. sometimes it's worked over the past years. sometimes it's been terrible. but that's where the change is. it's where i think it will continue to be. >> i'll put on my best larry

kudlow economist hat because i don't have his tie collection. here's what we're missing in the conversation. i hear seema's point about valuations. if we grow at 1% gdp next year, valuations are super stretched and prices need come down. if we grow at 3% or 3.5% we might have room for earnings growth. we have to understand the economy before we can one what any market multiples will mean. >> we do. one thing that's very important is that i believe from the evidence that i see is we can hit 2%, maybe even 3% if we get lucky gdp growth next year. we have to remember rates are low and they do give a high earnings yield than fixed income. let's talk about one thing. as we go to our cocktail parties tonight and think about what is the bear case. what is the false evidence appearing real and being confronted with me and people like zack is that the fed will

taper too soon if we get unemployment down next year. if we do start getting 2% or 3% and long rays in the open market start going up we're afraid yellen will start tapering too fast. what's that? larry would say that's japan. >> she said yesterday we're not in a bubble and supports further quantitative easing. >> that's because precisely she's trying to follow the business cycle. it's not about if we're going to taper or not. what she clearly said is she said that she's going to look at what the economic situation is versus something else. as long as she sticks with what's happening in the real economy, we should be okay. it's when the fed goes in and says, you know, we're going to cut this thing off too soon or we're going to try to second guess what the economy is doing and be an arm chair quarterback. >> if that happens guys we'll be

screaming about yellen. zack, we got to go. appreciate it. screaming about yellen. nothing? >> thank you very much. >> you stay with us because you're going to bring us more news. >> oh, yeah. >> that's what we need on this show is more news including nfl trying to put the ugly bullying incident behind it but there's a new ugly violent act this one caught by the cameras. we'll show it to you coming up. [ male announcer ] how can power consumption in china,

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welcome back to "the kudlow report". jonathan martin the alleged victim in the nfl's bullying scandal met with a league investigator for several hours today. it's the first time he's spoken since he walked away from the dolphins two weeks ago. his agent said martin couldn't take any more of the bullying and derogatory comments coming from teammate. an ugly incident during last night's came between the colts and titans. erik walden ripped off walker's helmet and head butted him in the face with his own helmet. the play drew a penalty but walden was not ejected. strange case of toronto mayor rob ford took a new turn today. the city council voting to strip some of his powers but can't force him out of office. ford refuses to resign even

though he admitted to smoking crack, driving drunk and used foul language at a press conference which was carried live on tv. thousands of gamers lining up today to buy the playstation 4. the first new game console from sony in seven years. new for the ps4 increased emphasis on social gaming and a new controller with a touchpad. brian when you're not anchoring do you ever play some video games. >> do i not. i'm too old. if i did, however, they would be old games. >> super mario brothers. >> mario kart with my kid once in a while. >> tetris. >> if you rip somebody's helmet don't head butt. take off your own. or let his put back on. that was chicken. head butting a dude with a helmet on. let's show it again.

there you go. thank you very much. >> the president putting a squeeze on insurance companies to get their help in saving obama care. can they do what he's asking. can they reinstate the cancelled. we'll ask the head of a large insurance company. i'm brian sullivan in for year. kudlow report coming right back. [ imitating engine revving ] that's mine. ♪ that's mine. ♪ that's mine. ♪ come on, kyle. ♪ [ horn honks ] that's mine...kyle. [ male announcer ] revenge is best served with 272 horses. now get the best offers of the season. current lessees with an expiring lease get this 2014 ats for around $299 a month. ♪ they always have. they always will.

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welcome back, everybody. happy friday. i'm brian sullivan in for larry tonight. your top story reset. the president huddling up with health insurance executives at the white house today after announcing his proposed health care fix yesterday which promised to let people keep their currents health plans for a year, even if they do not meet the law's minimum standards. but could the white house proposal cause insurance market chaos? that's the warning from the nation's largest insurance trade group, america's health insurance plans. let's go now directly to an insurer. here now is dr. bill winkenwerder. welcome to "the kudlow report". would this cause chaos. if you cents out cancellation notices can you cancel the cancellation? >> brian, there is already confusion and a bit of chaos in the market right now. so what we have to deal with is

the situation as we have it in front of us. the president has made his remarks and declaration that insurers should be able to continue those groups of individuals who lost their coverage that was terminated. the congress today, obviously, has acted, at least in the house, and i suspect the senate is going to take up some action here in the next few days. i think what we're looking forks at least i'm looking for is clarity about what steps we can take, and that all needs be coordinated with our insurance commissioners here in the state of pennsylvania. i'm working, we're working at highmark with other health insurers to determine what steps we can take address the situation. >> you have, doctor, already mailed out cancellation notices to some whose policies don't meet the minimum standards, correct? >> that's right. that's correct. about 40,000.

>> how do you reverse that? are the plans already cancelled? we probably have some listeners and viewers who had cancelled plans thinking now what do i do? >> well, they can contact us and they can seek to enroll off of the exchange, not using the exchange, the government website and that process. that's a possibility for some people. they would not get the subsidy if they were to do that but they can enroll in what's known as off exchange products that might be similar to what was on the exchange. but solutions that would allow for the provision of a subsidy needs, that needs coordination with our insurance commissioner, and it has to ultimately be trued up with the government. >> well, doctor, the spin that came when the cancelations came

well these were junk plans. they were garbage. they didn't meet minimum standards. it's better that they are gone because they didn't do enough to bring people to health care they need. i'm taking you disagree. >> i think that's an unfair characterization. there were many very good plans. they met the needs of the people that had them. and i think that's clear, we've seen that reaction from the public. and let's be clear. we've been doing business here with highmark with over 75 years. we meet the needs of the people of our part of the country, and these plans were meeting people's needs and i think my concern is that we deal quickly, promptly with the situation so that there are options for people who have lost their coverage who starting january 1st, especially if they have serious health conditions would not have health care coverage

and that's just a situation that i think is not acceptable. >> to wrap it up here, looking at numbers, delaware, federal state with a federal plan, healthercare.gov, not a state exchange, 126 people have signed up with you through delaware. 126. >> yes. it's a very low number. very disappointing, obviously. if you look at the state of pennsylvania, there are more. we have approximately a couple thousand individuals but, again, the numbers are very small. i think we know that from what the report that was released yesterday. and the website -- they are still working on. so it's really -- it's a bit of a mess, right. and we're working to address the situation. we're doing the best we can with what's a difficult situation for a lot of people. >> the question is, doctor, before we let you go and we got our panel here, is there a number at which the health care plans become uneconomic. right. where if you get the folks with

pre-existing conditions, elderly, higher medical cost but don't get those to fund the pool how long -- everyone says give it time, give it time they will sign up and they will balance out. is there a point where you say can't do it? >> you can't make that determination in just a few weeks or even a few months. you have to look at what happens with your pool, your population of people. right now i will say that from what we've seen early on that it is skewed towards older individuals 50 and above, a lot fewer under 30. and so i'm concerned about that. and over time it's clear we need to have young people, healthier people in the pool to balance the mix and so that's one of the fundamental problems we're going to need to make sure gets addressed. as we go forward here. >> first you need to heal. thank you very much for joining us. we do appreciate that. let's bring back our free market panel friday.

all right, guys. anybody want to jump in on that. i thought he was pretty straightforward. he wasn't slamming the president. we need the young people. we know that. if the young doesn't sign up it doesn't work. >> if we look at massachusetts my home state. there were only 127 some-odd people in delaware and that was a problem. we only had 123 in the state of massachusetts in the first month. it's deemed a success. it depends on the young people. are they enrolling in numbers that the president would like. absolutely not. >> in my home state you had very high numbered insured, fairly wealthy state. and it was much more competently managed than the 36 federal exchanges. it's not a one to one comparison. >> 123 in massachusetts. this is 50 states.

should be at least 50 times -- >> the doctor was talking about just delaware. massachusetts has a larger percentage of population. the roll out in massachusetts was lower than people expected. this is a long game. >> i'm not going to pile on the healthercare.gov website yet. low numbers. how can there be big numbers if the website doesn't work. it's obvious you'll have low numbers because if you can't log in and sign up you won't have anybody signed up. mark, how long do we give it, i guess, is the question? >> i think we're only in the top of the first inning, obviously. but if you can't get the website -- this is the easy part. taking names and addresses. it was so calamitous we had to shut the whole thing down. but when you find occupant you can't keep your doctor you'll hear -- >> you know what else bothers

me. i'm going to go crazy on friday night because of too much coffee. why aren't we talking about why america is so sick. why do we consume so much more health care than any other nation? why are in one or three or four americans on prescription drugs. why is obesity an epidemic. why are we not having that discussion. >> you want to talk about free market friday the reason health care costs are so high because there's not enough competition in the marketplace and that's essentially what the obama care does by saying -- >> you try to do. >> the vast majority of people don't buy their own health insurance. as a result of that they are not scrutinizing -- >> you don't know what things cost. if i go to the store i know what a gallon of milk costs. i have no idea, joe, if i go get an x-ray what that doctor is being charged. not a concept. why wouldn't i get x-rays all the time if i felt like fit my co-pay is low. we need be more attached to the

price of things. my dad broke his arm when he was kid. my grandfather paid cash. if he couldn't afford it he did a payment plan with the doctor. >> nobody ever explained why it's $4,000 a night in the hotel room. the biggest suite at the four seasons is only $1,000. if you want more competition just allow you to purchase your insurance from across state lines. >> i want manitoba state plan. >> more competition tends to drive down costs in health care. the affordable care act does the opposite. proit mosts consolidation. you're seeing much larger hospital systems. hospital mergers. hospitals buying doctor groups. much larger insurers squeezing their smaller competitors out. >> we got to go, guys. i got bad news. the discussion of a single payer system will not end in our lifetime gentlemen and i hope those are long life times

assuming we can get quality heart at an affordable price. up next it's only the middle of november which means it's officially start timing to panicking about you guessed it christmas shopping. courtney regan will bring the candy and the cold coming up. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ [ female announcer ] with five perfectly sweetened whole grains... you can't help but see the good.

39 days and counting until christmas. i know, don't panic. there's still time. the question, though, is what kind of holiday will it be for the retailers. courtney regan joining us now with that. >> that's right. every holiday comes with its own set of economic issues that will impact consumers budgets for gift giving. this season is no different. we have higher payroll tax, lack of confidence in washington lawmakers, and higher health care costs all of that eating in to budget. adding into it confidence from continued uneaseiness about the job market and sluggish job growth. competition for consumer dollars is so intense that retailers are offering the best promotions in years and online shopping options have grown in number and ease. plus, home values are rising. the stock market continues to

hit fresh highs. weather trends are favorable. and the lowest holiday season gas prices in four years make the nice lift quite jolly. consumers plan to spend $82 less. that marks the lowest spending expectation in four years. consumers sometimes say one thing and do another. so far retailers have issued mixed forecasts about the holiday season. a number say sales and traffic have been improving and there's a chance for a christmas miracle. >> courtney regan, stick around because here now to give us his take for his hopes on the holiday is paul tribble, the co-founder and ceo of ledberry. paul, it's beginning to look a lot like christmas but is it beginning to look like a good christmas for you? >> it is. i think we would say we're cautiously optimistic.

you know, we think that it was somewhat of a third quarter but we think it will pick up and rebound. we feel consumer confidence is shaky. in our business people have more money to spend. willing to put more on credit. we think they will come out this year and spoil themselves and others a little bit. been a slow four years. everybody is hoping for a recovery. >> love the optimism. tell us more why you feel confident. i know the stock market is up. listen most people now aren't necessarily in the market. not day trading any more. what gives you the confidence, paul. >> we think people have more disposable income in their pocket right now. we think people paid off a lot of debt burden. more money to put back in the market. the stock market for us we're in the luxury shirt business. so we do trade on the stock market. there's glimmer of hope for us. we also think in general there's more money to put back in the market and after four years of people not spend being like they

have been it's time for them to come back opinion there's a few reasons. retailers, what you're going to see, you mentioned in your report, discounting what you've never seen before. that's the reality we live in particularly with ecommerce. your brick-and-mortar stores competing against the ecommerce guys and ecommerce guys like us are competing against each other. great deals for consumers. you'll see a long discounted holiday season. >> what is your strategy for the holiday season? there's so much noise out there with all of those different advertisers, advertisements that the retailers are putting out there for consumers. how do you break through? >> yes. noise is the perfect term. for us, we're a luxury shirt maker. we price our shirts at accessible price points. we're not as reliant on discounts. our strategy is how will we engage new customers in a new way. for example, we're based in

richmond, we're an ecommerce business but we're doing a one month pop up in the store georgetown. we get through black friday, let us have face to face interaction. we're a men's clothing brand but catering towards women through november and december. our advertising goes there and women's purchase go from 10% to 30%, 35%. we expect a lot of shirts and ties under the christmas tree. >> you guys, fighting the big boys out there paul, i like it. how are you holding up? they got scale, they got distribution, they got discounting. how does led bury not only survive but thrive. >> that's a good question. there's a lot of competition out there. people always want something new and people always are looking for quality and value and i think that's two things we provide. what we're finding we're bringing a lot of customers down from traditional luxury brands looking for more value and we're

bringing up a lot of brooks brothers customers that want something that fits better, lasts longer and willing to pay that $30 or $40 premium. there's people that will put money back in the market and a good holiday season for led bury and others. >> paul being a virginian, being a hockey a-- a hokie -- >> we got something four. >> don't know that other w you spoke of. i'm kidding. we love the cavalier viewers. >> thanks for having me. >> thank you as well. on deck, the epa makes a big change that could have big implications for what you pay at the gas pump. we'll call it oil up, farmers down. the story ahead.

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some big news out of the oil industry today. the epa wants to cut, yes cut the amount of ethanol in your gas. this could be a big win for big oil and maybe a big blow for corn farmers and ethanol producers. here now to talk about it andy. is this a big win for big oil? >> absolutely. the oil industry is convinced the epa that we've hit the ethanol blend wall and it's really impractical to increase

the required amount of ethanol above what we're blending today. >> what's teeth knoll blend wall. >> for all intents and purpose we can only blend 10% of ethanol into the gasoline that consumers buy for a variety of reasons not with standing we got a lot of states that don't permit you to blend more. >> i assume you produce x amount of corn to use it. now you won't use that corn. you'll have too much corn we know from larry very smart economic mind when you have too much of something prices tend to go down. does this mean prices at the pump at least in the near term should go down because the corn blend in ethanol will be cheaper? >> well, i am expecting there's going be pressure on ethanol prices because that industry is plagued by over capacity and as the ethanol prices go down that should benefit the consumer. but it's still fair to say that the majority of the gasoline price comes from oil. >> all right. so, what do you think is going

the impact here across the industry? let's think about, andy, from an investing point of view. we just talked about big oil. what other sectors could benefit economically? >> the big beneficiary, of course, the independent oil refiners like valero, marathon or phillips. they are the big winners. i mean, unfortunately there are a number of losers on the renewable fuel side, those publicly traded producers like green plains renewable fuels or pacific ethanol, they are going to see the demand for their product go down. on the other hand the consumer is going to be a big winner because their food costs are liable to go down if we use less corn that's a good thing for the cereal producers or dairy farmer. >> it's a different corn generally, those right? feed corn. i know it's the same ground, andy but we're not eating ethanol corn. >> that's true.

look at corn futures, prices are not making a distinction where that corn goes. >> who else do you think might be a winner and who else might be a lowers. farmers want to see price stay stable. anybody else on the loser listing your mind, andy? >> those companies that were planning to benefit from the advance biofuel and the cellulose. these companies are seeing demand for their product being decreased by fiancee. >> give us your take in 45 seconds left in the show and a lot of our listeners driving home after a long week. how low are gas prices going? >> the bad news is that in the near term i think they are going up five to seven cents a gallon to $3.25. >> going up? >> prices have risen over the last week or two. but then by christmas i'm expecting prices to drop back

down to $3.15 as refiners kick back runs and given this change with fiancee they are going to kick up runs and run full out since they don't have to worry about the mandate. >> andy we got to go. lower prices is a giant tax break heading into the holidays. thank you very much. thank you all for watching tonight's show. larry should be back on monday. i'm brian sullivan. have a great weekend. thanks for watching. that helps me, and my guys, make better decisions. i don't like guesses with my business, and definitely not with our health. innovations that work for you. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare.

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>> narrator: in this episode of "american greed: the fugitives," flying high with jack utsick. this former pilot's living a $300-million dream. he's one of the top concert promoters in the world. >> jack utsick presents the rolling stones, jack utsick presents madonna, jack utsick presents elton john. it looked legitimate. it looked profitable. >> narrator: but when the securities and exchange commission investigates, utsick dumps his partners and disappears. >> it seemed like we got stuck holding the ball, and he goes off and escapes. >> narrator: and later, don't let his youth deceive you. david kaup is only in his 20s, but he's no child when it comes to running devastating loan and real-estate scams. >> i think he just believes he's supe t