>> thank you for being here. and andrew, we'll see you back here soon and we'll see you tomorrow. right now it's time for "squawk on the street." ♪ blue blue you can do anything but lay off of my blue shade shoes ♪ >> ladies and gentlemen, andrew has left the building. ♪ and we have to follow elvis. good wednesday morning welcome to "squawk on the street," i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer back from the bayou and david faber. looking at a weak market for the third day in a row, the fifth day on the nasdaq. a lot of international data is weak. and the ten-year yield has crept down to 274 after hitting 281 last friday and then europe is in the red led by france as industrial production there contracted and missed estimates. the roadmap begins with futures

indicating another tough day for the markets after the first back-to-back losses in five weeks for the s&p and a four-day losing streak for the nasdaq, but as we'll talk about with jim in a moment, could clearing the froth be just what the market needs? general motors set to continue lower after its worst one-day performance in over two years that was yesterday and after a report that the u.s. attorney's office in new york has opened a criminal probe in to the handling or lack of handling of a recall. continuing fallout from the target breach. new data finds that customer traffic fell to a three-year low in january. and we talk to twitter co-founder biz stone about the outsized valuations of some of today's start-ups and whether we're in the midst of another dot-com bubble. the s&p logged its first back-to-back losses in five weeks and the nasdaq posting its first four-day losing streak since august as shares of fuel cell, plug power and tesla took a hit. cramer sounded off on all of this last night on "mad money." take a listen.

>> that's why i'm saying that the losses sustained in tesla, fannie mae, freddie mac while terrible for those that own them and i know it and i feel for you because i know you a lost a lot of money might be the best news. when fever behavior goes away and we return to making money the slow methodical way then the market is a safer, more rational place. >> all right, so the steam is coming out of the kettle, jim. >> i think they're going to bounce today. i don't want to -- frankly, this was the most worrisome bit of froth. i know someone counted i used the word froth 12 times. let's not have the froth cross over. this was really bad. reckless, okay, when you see -- when you see companies like fuel plug, these are companies that have lost money nine years in a row and maybe they are finally near commercialization. i remember trading these stocks as a hedge fund manager, come on. when you see the hundreds of millions of shares. this is exactly -- this is the

type of behavior that i don't want to see. if they cool, if they stay cool, then you could be okay. but this behavior -- >> is it reminiscent of the days i would sit there and talk about k-tel shares going up because they suddenly had an internet? >> i've been saying we're okay as long as it doesn't go really nuts. yesterday just went really nuts and i see ballard trading up. they are trying to recover. come on. >> do you think they are worth 50 cents? are these casino stocks? >> no. but they were worth a dollar just a few weeks ago and that's the kind of parabolic move that marks the top and i don't want to see a top. i obviously would like to see regular stocks come back to the fore and do well, the self-help stocks do well, but this market has been dominated by plug and ballard and fuel cell and been dominated by fannie and tesla. >> also coinciding with corporate bond defaults in

china. copper story is big. and soros said europe is in for a quarter century of stagnation. is there something larger than froth coming off? >> i think our country is surprisingly strong. i had united reynolds on, the largest rental company of equipment and they are looking strong. but none of that matters because this -- when you go, like, look at a twitter, jim, how can you not love ballard, how can you not love plug? because i've been looking at those stocks for a decade. all they know how to do is lose money. maybe this is it. maybe ktel really does have a breakout. >> ktel went up for a long time before the broader market started to come down, it was march 10th, 2000, i think the nasdaq hit its high after many years. are we too focused on some names that may be exciting but let's keep an eye as carl says on the broader picture? everybody wants to blame china and that may not be the case but it seems the likeliest candidate

for saying why we are going down. >> the new corp is a huge consumer of iron. they would love to see it lower, the home builders are users of copper. i keep hoping that people focus on our country again and the news in china is the slowdown. don't want to lose sight i can overdo the fuel cell but i'm saying those are what people -- on an oil rig in the gulf and everyone's, like, fuel cell. like no, no, how about the company who was on and then, of course, the stock goes down big because they make an acquisition. >> they do a fairly large acquisition right after you speak to them. talking about the energy partners. >> they said they were inquisitive, we're inquisitive, that's really inquisitive. you are talking about a 2.3 billion deal to buy a competitor, pay a nice price, 39. there's crosscurrents. i just don't want the crosscurrents to turn out to be equal. i don't want the enthusiasm for these things, fannie and

freddie, we've said the common stock may be worth nothing. >> right. bill ackman made a choice to invest in the common. you got to remember perry capital which i reported on which is suing the federal government over the third amendment so-called where they sweep all the profits which has hemed the budget deficit, reduce the budget deficit, they own the preferred. bruce berkowitz, preferred. ackman made a decision to get into the common. that was hurt yesterday on this new plan. >> the "time" story for ackman. >> one of the things we learn about bill he's more of a genius than we think. he's a super genius. >> tesla the electric company. >> not more than he thinks but more than what you may think. >> i read "the new york times" piece and this is basically here u.s. attorney, here s.e.c., silver platter and instead all i hear is no, herbalife is a

corrupt company. "the new york times" investigation was pulitzer. that's the type of thing if i'm -- if i'm the u.s. attorney, he'll say, well, call him in. i don't like the way this reads. but instead all i heard about was, yeah, herbalife has it coming and the big boxes in the garage and china. >> didn't get much from him on the china. a lot of people were waiting and the stocks started to trade up once they saw it wasn't much of anything on this new presentation. >> is he the judge, is he the jury or the prosecutor or all three? has he replaced the government? has he replaced the senate? senator markey, the lobbyist who used to work there convinced markey about the malfeasance. what can i tell you? god love him. >> all right, so fannie mae and freddie mac coming down and gm down. all these pretty well owned within hedge fund circles after what was the worst one-day performance in over two years after reports saying the u.s. attorney's office in new york

talking about the u.s. attorney opened a criminal probably of gm and its handling of the ignition switch recall. prosecutors are reportedly examining that gm is criminally liable for failing to properly disclose problems with the switches. gm tells cnbc it does not comment on ongoing investigations. stock got badly hit yesterday. this is a real test for the new ceo. barra. what do you do with the stock? >> my charitable owns it, horrible day. gm reserves $500 per vehicle for recall. $3 billion annually, the total reserves are $7.3 billion, the government owned it during part of this denial. no, what happens is that the -- this stock is going to take a long time to recover i think. i think that this -- everything reads so badly that people are freaking out. but if you look at the actual amount, the actual amount really talking about $80 million. >> okay. >> $80 million -- >> in the actual recall. >> what about lawsuits and what

about -- >> toyota's costs on something like this will be a billion dollars. >> it could end up being a lot of money. would i touch the stock? my charitable trust owns it, do we wish we didn't own it? you bet. >> but you aren't going to sell it. >> no, this represents great value, and this will pass. you realize it's gm, herbalife. >> i thought it was power and ballard. >> that's my interpretation of the market. that's my view! >> i thought it's interesting what a rough week it's for companies that make things move. tesla in new jersey and gm with this investigation and boeing with malaysia which is turning out to be an incredible story. >> but a good week for companies that make food that we want to eat. mcdonald's, biggest move in two years yesterday. >> unbelievable. >> on the idea that they might optimize, they could optimize. optimize. >> right. in the meantime there's some more fallout from target's data breach. in january the retailer's customer traffic fell to a

three-year low. 33% of u.s. households were shopping at target stores. it's according to a consulting firm called cantor retail. they said the sharpest decline came from gen-xers. they cite an analyst saying 5% to 10% of their base will never come back. >> that's incredible. the stock was at $56 before they announced and they sounded pretty confident and they fired the chief -- the chief officer leaves. but this was -- these reports this morning were kind of devastating and this is just a traffic go away from traffic. i was in walmart in louisiana. buy a pair of slacks, you know, i'm a slacks buyer. >> i do know that. it used to be jcp. >> where is the pants aisle, it's over this way, over this way. it was so hard to find any pants with a waist below 42 so i don't think that walmart -- >> you are bragging. what is that? >> a lot of hefty -- they're not

going to walmart. >> this is largely a result of the breach i would assume. >> yes. >> beneficiaries of something like this might be a fireeye. >> yes. take a look at verifone, they talk about it. >> saying, hey, you've got to -- these things have breached the wall so to speak around the idea that you don't have to worry that much about your data. >> but do you really think that target will lose that many customers? >> i have no idea. >> nearly half of american households were shopping at this place every month. that was staggering. >> that was when we first learned about the breach itself how many people had been compromised was amazing. >> i couldn't believe it. i don't have a target card. i was turned down for a kohl's card because you get the quick discount, you know, if you buy right then but i am amazed by this because i thought this had already blown over. it hasn't. and that's a lot of customers looking for a place to buy discounted goods and yet costco didn't. that's where i thought people

would ship to. >> the president shopping at the gap in new york city. >> raising numbers, gap. >> yeah. spent 150 bucks. >> did you see that? gross margins are big. if you go to urban outfitters, arr a a aeropostale. have you ever shopped there? >> what will go in my tesla showroom at the short hills mall? what store will move into that, right? >> when we come back what a street, biz stone with the stock up double from its ipo what does biz think about the valuations of new tech companies. also take one more look at futures nasdaq has not had five days down in a row all of last year. it might do it today. more "squawk on the street" live from post nine in a moment. tdd# 1-888-628-2419 searching for trade ideas that spark your curiosity tdd# 1-888-628-2419 n take you in many directions. d# 1-888-628-2419 you read this. watch that. tdd# 1-888-628-2419 you look for what's next.

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twitter and jelly co-founder biz stone speaking at south by southwest where he introduced twitter seven years ago. we sat down with stone and asked him what he thinks about some of today's valuations like whatsapp and whether we're heading into another dot-com bubble. take a listen. >> i think about whether or not

something is bringing value to people. and if something has an incredibly high valuation but it doesn't seem to be bringing value, i think that is dangerous. if something has really high valuation but there's value there, i think that's okay. so, i think we're living in a different time than the, you know, dot-com bubble of 2000 when you saw stratospheric valuations for things that didn't seem to be -- or didn't look like they were of any value. and you also have to remember, you know, aol bought time warner for, like, $140 billion or something. i mean, so even though we're hearing big numbers now, they're nowhere near as big as they were, you know, back then. in terms of twitter, there's just so much more runway for growth ahead that it's just to me it's exciting just to be able

to watch. >> interesting story with these guys. you know, back in '08 zuckerberg offered to buy twitter. the guys at twitter made up a number they thought was unrealistically high that he would never meet $500 million which zuckerberg actually said fine and then they changed their mind and decided no to sell at all. but that gives you a sense of how far we've traveled from $500 million to $16 billion with whatsapp and facebook. >> twitter escapes people. you have to believe that twitter will be your own personal news service. you have to believe that twitter is going to attract a lot of people who don't tweet. if you believe that, maybe you can come up with a 20/20 valuation. and i'm not talking about 20/20 hindsight or foresight but it's hard to value. people don't want to hear that. it's hard to value versus yelp, okay, and it's the most expensive and that's why i picked it in terms of users. it's hard to value. when you say hard to value, it means, do you know what, it's

too dangerous. hard to value to some people means elusive or interesting. >> or it means a great deal of possibility beyond what we know of the service and what it will become given, though, that their problem seems to be user growth and the so-called scaffolding around it, meaning it's a little more difficult not as intuitive to use as perhaps some people would like. my colleagues have figured it out but i'm still working on it. >> we ask him later on, we'll play some sound later about whether or not the product needs to change in a big way to make it more digestible for the masses. >> it is a mobile product. it is a social. it does have cloud. i mean, it has all the buzzwords. it certainly has the money to reinvent itself. remember, we have seen these companies morph into something far more lucrative than we thought initially and it can happen here, but it has to happen. it can't stay up here unless there is something at the end of the rainbow. there has to be something. otherwise it doesn't deserve where it is.

>> we'll get more from stone later on in the show. up next cramer's "mad dash" before the opening bell. look at the premarket and we'll get the bell in a few minutes. ♪ i got something to say with fd one-second trade execution, we route your order to up to 75 market centers to look for the best possible price, maybe even better than you expected. it's all part of our goal to execute your trade in one second. i'm derrick chan of fidelity investments. our one-second trade execution is one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. call or click to open your fidelity account today. [ mala body at rest tends to stay at rest... while a body in motion tends to stay in motion. staying active can actually ease arthritis symptoms. but if you have arthritis, staying active can be difficult. prescription celebrex can help relieve arthritis pain so your body can stay in motion. because just one 200mg celebrex a day

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and find an arthritis treatment for you. visit celebrex.com and ask your doctor about celebrex. for a body in motion. ♪ 8:30 to the opening bell here on the hump day. >> okay. david, your breathtaking interview with masa, this was really important for me who like sprint on a fundamental basis only if they can make an acquisition because they have such costs ahead including the

need to finance. after i listened to your interview i felt more emboldened to think the leem of faith of sprint being able to buy t-mobile could happen. >> it could. certainly masa son while not speaking specifically to that deal more or less indicated his devisire and need for more scal if he wants to make the kind of investments that will result in a more level playing field between verizon and at&t and what would be the third competitor that would be created. but the doj and the fcc may have something very different to say about that. they seem very happy with four players right now and his case that he will continue to make is i will bring levels of service to you and price competition that you have no idea about. like the air in beijing he likes to make this reference for chinese people who are there every day in beijing, you may not notice that you're breathing in this awful air but if you see it from afar and go there, same thing here. by the way, japan's about the size of montana. so, you know, comparing and saying we've done so much better

there than we can do here may not be a fair comparison. >> but at the same time it's bold. i'm not saying it's brazen, but it's bold. listen, government, this will happen, so, like, get with the program. that's almost how i feel when i listen to the interview, government listen up! >> and they make an argument that the kind of speeds they can deliver is ten times what you get in your home on your broadband will be a viable competitor to the likes of comcast. >> comcast. >> and that is an interesting idea. of course, it would also help comcast get approval for its deal to acquire time warner but it would introduce this overall idea that competition can come from everywhere, not just from the cable guys but from the wireless guys. >> i went back to my notes about the us airways and american airlines deal and the justice department was won over eventually by the idea that do you know what, we have strong competitors. that's what we really need. this company on its own is not strong, david. >> and masa son was posturing,

what do you do if you don't get the deal? he said it's a long shot. long shot it won't work out or take a long time and he said both. >> it goes to 1112 if they do the deal and they may need to do some financing. you know they have to blanket the country. >> right. >> he's right. to compete they have to spend fortunes. they have fortunes but in order to be able to be viable you got to have a americaner. i really agree with that. >> we'll have more news on the faber report on at&t and vodafone. we got the opening bell a few minutes away. "squawk on the street" is coming right back. right back. ♪

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change in after-market trading. ♪ all the tech stocks with a market cap... of at least 50 billion... are up on the day. 12 low-volume stocks... breaking into 52-week highs. six upcoming earnings plays... that recently gapped up. [ male announcer ] now the world is your trading floor. get real-time market scanning wherever you are with the mobile trader app. from td ameritrade. you're watching cnbc "squawk on the street" live from the financial capital of the world. the opening bell for a wednesday in just about 2 1/2 minutes. a lot of kids on the floor today, guys, from texas christian and university of texas system down in the lone star state, so welcome to them. a busy morning on cnbc. we had frank blake on "squawk box" this morning with andrew ross sorkin talking about to what degree winter weather has affected sales and how important

that spring selling season is, too. take a listen. >> for our fourth quarter we said that definitely had an impact on us. it's not, like, we just were indifferent to it. it hit us by about $100 million. we had our earnings call just a couple weeks ago, and we also called out about $100 million up until that point in february, so definitely the cold weather has an impact on us. we need spring to come. but we think about our spring business in terms of a half a year not a quarter of a year. >> we need spring to come, jim. all retail could be encapsulated in that line. >> they have a big window that shrinks by the week if they don't get that, because planting season is so important. it was a great interview, by the way. you had the masco ceo on and credit suisse downgrades toll, pulte and you need housing to stay strong in order to get to the next leg.

you have to. >> others, the big bulls on real estate say there will be a squeeze on supply when the warmer weather comes, right? that's not exactly what they are saying. >> no. i was talking to david, there's a lot of leap of faith stories. good weather. mortgages come. we get a lot of buying for your house. frank blake believes we're still in this stage where people want to invest in their home because their home is going up in value but not all over the country. the crosscurrents, i think home depot is terrific and my charitable trust owns it but the stock trading dunn befoe ining market opens. >> want to get your take on candy crush. $7.6 billion valuation for a game. >> well, if they can plug it into a hydrogen cell, i'm all on. >> i haven't had a chance to read the s-1. indicative, though, sterling of the willingness of investors to pay for growth in any way, shape

or fun. >> omg pop. zynga did come back. they got new management. i am concerned and i was with a group of students yesterday and china, china, china. look at china. that market seems to go down quite a bit. >> the opening bell and s&p on the top of your screen and wgl holdings hosting their annual meeting at the nasdaq. and you want to take a moment and just talk about your biggest lessons or takeaways from the bayou? >> yeah. this is a different part of the country in terms of the way people think about business. people are looking -- companies are looking for workers. i mean, when you go and you see billboards that say please come to work, big benefits. they're bidding over workers. every company i spoke to -- halliburton says help us get 500 people. we need 500 people right now.

all the rigs are short people. they need more people and so the takeaway there is it's booming. and booming because low costs of natural gas governor jindal talking about sassle, cheniere, they are employing tens of thousands of people and the oil companies we saw energy 21 make a deal trying to revitalize fields that have pumped hundreds of millions of barrels already but with new technology they're able to extract more. feeling of optimism. feeling of job security and feeling of, do you know what, i can make $90,000 a year out of high school and it's a nice feel-good story frankly. >> unbelievable. >> it's a story you've been covering amazingly well and it only continues to grow in its importance one would imagine. not to mention what -- i don't even know but when you talk about ukraine, you talk about europe and the need for natural gas and whether we figure into that in any way once we start exporting. i don't know if they are talking about it at all. >> 2018, 2019.

but nucorp said south korea is dumping steel but they have natural gas prices that are three times ours and they are trying to do a competitive advantage over natural gas and competitive advantage no-how they are using the pallets they get from brazil and we are producing great results. you felt great when you come back and then you come back here and you are looking at the nasdaq being down and tesla, what's the story with the showroom. and down there it's all about we are kicking butt. we are making money for everybody and i felt terrific about it frankly. terrific. >> well, oil's down almost $2 and a lot of the big oil names are to the downside, hess and some of the other halliburton leading the charge lower along with home builders, jim, lennar, home depot. moha mohawk for instance, right? >> no. these companies put up again the fabulous interviews on "squawk" and you felt good and when you

look at the tape people say, oh, yeah, give me a break. we all know things have softened. i'm in the camp which says employment was pretty good. that tends to be a nice indicator of some sort of real job growth which then produces real home buying. but the tape is saying otherwise. i think we have to digest this. hope the froth goes away. i don't see anything dire but obviously when you look at your screen people are saying china is more important than anything right now and china is really getting hurt. europe, by the way, those numbers is that not indicative that china -- remember how much business china does with europe. 25 of their exports, the european numbers were weak. one of the great stories for the last six months was europe coming bang. your point at the beginning aren't there substantive things going on. we don't want to lose europe. >> we don't want to lose what is the stabilization of europe and then how much growth are we using from china is the other question. >> hey, these are real issues and the market was at a high, so

the market's making sense. but we can't wake up and be divorced from china. maybe 18 months away if things get strong to be making it so china doesn't control the opening of our market. but yesterday, last three hours the market was hideous yesterday. just hideous. and we're dealing with the hangover from that and it wasn't broken by japan which has gotten very bad and europe. there's a lot of losses being taken by people right now, a lot of losses and that's quite a difference from ten days ago. >> thailand cutting rates and the industrial production in europe. speaking of things that are stabilizing, tesla is down just, what, 20 cents or so. it's come off $30 the past few days of the highs as the state of new jersey, the department of motor vehicle commission votes unanimously to ban the direct sale of cars to consumers. you got to go through the dealer network. we've had this discussion in multiple states, texas, tennessee, ohio's now thinking about it.

but i think they thought they had a deal in jersey. they were going to delay this thing and that did not happen. >> i was shocked at this. i've got to tell you the reaction, only down four bucks. last night it was not even trading down on the 440 announcement when it was clear they would pull out. be careful, the speculation is still here. because this stock theoretically if you take out a large state like new jersey from the sales base that should theoretically hurt them but people are defaulting, don't forget, they'll reinvent the electric grid. it has nothing to do with new jersey. they have cells. this is what people tell me. listen, don't lose the fact that they've got revolutionary technology. now, of course, the bears tell you the details about the quarters and how it's just all a pack of lies. >> accounting for warranty reserves and everything else, right? >> but i'm going to miss my showroom. it was so much fun to go to that showroom. >> we've been talking a lot about the idea of overvaluation

particularly perhaps in the high-growth names and whether there's value. you heard biz stone talking about it earlier. i spoke to massa son the founder of softbank. they invested in 1,300 companies most of them having to do with the internet. at one point as he pointed out the interview he was the richest man of the world at the height of the dot-com boom, he was wealthier than bill gates for three days. but i asked him if this time is reminiscent of that time in terms of overvaluation. >> the market seems to overshoot, you know, once in a while, you know, overshoot to too high and too low. the fact is internet number of users continue to grow. internet economy continue to grow. just the market price sometimes go off, you know, on and off.

but it is clear that internet industry, as an industry as a whole, will have a huge scale upside going forward. so i would say, you know, people already got burned once. this time people are more careful, and this time internet companies, you know, developing real profit. >> right. >> so i would say the market is functioning. >> market's functioning he says and he's not as worried as he might have been once. this is a guy that watched 99% of his market value disappear from 2000 to 2001 at softbank. he also told me he thinks it was a good deal whatsapp at $19 billion for facebook. said he's got guts. >> impressive man. this guy's a survivor. i'm mesmerized about he is back. he was actually never away. most people did not survive that year. this man survived it. bezos survived it and very few

people did. and the ones that did have done fabulously. and mark kuchen, remember, he sold at the high. >> broadcast.com and yeahoo! collared the stock. he's seen the highs and lows. >> people talking about the american flag at that backdrop at that presentation yesterday. >> at the chamber of commerce. >> does it send a message about who he'd like to talk to more? >> i don't see him in kansas, in overland park where dan hesse is. l.a. >> silicon valley where they have an office. he's trying to really get a lot of the people there. he doesn't spend a lot of time in kansas. >> it's interesting. because if he has the technology that he's saying, i'll switch. i mean, we'll all switch. >> if i can get ten times what i'm getting in my home i'll switch at the same price or lower. >> if i were the justice department i would say give us that. >> do i want to be in a business where competition is coming down and spending billions upon billions to deliver better

service? the returns don't seem to be that alluring and i asked him that and he said he wants a reasonable return. we'll see. >> in the meantime, we're off 52 on the dow. bob pisani on the floor. >> weaker open. financials and biotech. and you were talking about candy crush and ipo and an ipo is postponed, diamond s-shipping and they postponed the ipo because apparently the price was too low. they were talking about ten -- excuse me $14 to $16, 14 million shares. i was hearing it was going to go in the single digits. ouch. don't extrapolate about what the ipo market is doing here. this is a shipping company that's no a popular sector. ipo is a sector play. i wouldn't make any big conclusions about the ipo business from here. but postponed ipo. the bears gloating overnight about that takedown of some of these fuel cell stocks. they're mostly to the downside today, plug and fuel cell, but a lot of talk about, oh, other

areas of the markets are too frothy. very simple strategy. can't take down the whole market if you are a bear, target so-called frothy sectors. biotech's another obvious one. nice gains this year, biotech/medical area. but these stocks are very different. these groups very different than the last takedown in 2000 and 2002. cloud computing that's another one i constantly hear is too frothy from the bears and there have been nice advances in f5 and vmware and workday but a different kind of company. big data is another one, tableau and all that area. but the problem is none have cracked significantly and they have much better business models than any of the other companies years ago. another surprise today, retailer another one guiding low. express, the 2014 guidance was disappointing. it's been the trend all along. there's a new low for express. did you see michael weiss'

comments not good. and contrary to the other more positive comments start of 2014 very difficult. traffic down significantly. intense promotional environment. material uptick in traffic is not necessarily imminent. the promotional environment will continue. some very, very i think tough words there from the ceo. in terms of gainers and losers, newmont is up and they are selling an interest in paladin energy. and walgreens is up. and urban outfitters were downgraded over at barclay. pulte the home builder was downgraded at credit suisse and toll was also downgraded as well. right now the dow industrials sitting right near the lows of the day. let's head to the bond pits and check in with rick santelli at the cme group in chicago. good morning, rick. >> good morning, carl. big day, mixed trading

treasuries easy. all you have to do is look at the charts. let's look at the dax it was down two -- what was it today? about 1.5%. a year-to-date chart of the nikkei. down much more. double that. let's look at a year-to-date chart of the shanghai only down small today but especially that nikkei it's on a rising channel. if it starts trading much lower it goes into negative momentum. if the markets that have been the recipients of central bank favors start to fall out of favor, that notion that there is no alternative changes digitally because treasuries become the tina and that is and has been a dynamic all year. granted it isn't huge yet, but if you look at how little upside yield momentum or selling of treasuries there were after the breakout which was friday's close, you can understand. so, look at a one-day, two-day chart of tens. you can see they're moving a bit lower and this should be

interesting with a big ten-year and 30-year auction coming up today and tomorrow. but if you look at a chart starting about mid-january you could clearly see. see that middle part of that chart? we weren't above it long but now we're below it. that is going to be crucial. there's going to be a lot of people offsides here. now, let's look at foreign exchange a bit. call it an unintended consequence but the euro continues to be a barn burner as you can see on this chart as it continues to comp to the fall of 2011. and the next chart is also key. and i probably got them out of order. but should you continue to pay attention to interest rates? you have to pay attention to the dollar/yen versus ten-year because that trade has been infallible for the same reasons. it's all tied into the trade regarding kerry, leverage, equities and central banks. david, back to you. >> all right, thank you very much, rick santelli. talking a lot about telecom, of course, given the interview the other day with masa son. but let's turn to a couple of bigger players in that arena, vodafone and at&t.

the developing story if you will there. for quite some time it appeared that those two carriers' forechubs might be moving this way. but now they seem to be moving that way. like the hand signals? sometimes it -- it's tv but you can still do. why? well, let's take a look at recent history and, in fact, some comments that took place last week from the ceo of at&t and this morning as well at another investment conference from the company's cfo john stevens. all of it seems to be pointing to the idea that an at&t/vodafone deal is probably not in the cards anytime soon. of course, you may recall that there was so much speculation about it the two companies were forced to comment and enter a six-month coolingoff period for at&t where it wasn't going to do anything about it. but in recent weeks the signaling from at&t which, by the way, had been conditioning its shareholders for over a year that they might do something in europe has been moving away from that idea. last week in a morgan stanley

conference where the press was not allowed in randall stevenson made comments indicating the window was closing for a potential deal in europe. this morning, though, same comments, there he is, come from the company's cfo at a deutsche bank conference where he said we're seeing the lte story play out in europe as providers invest in lte. with that in mind we see the window of opportunity of owning assets may be closing. that along with our great success with our own vip initiatives and some of the pending transactions such as time warner/comcast, that puts our focus now squarely in the united states says stevens, so many investors saying, hey, maybe that's never going to happen. then there's vodafone. many reports indicate the company is a day away from completing an acquisition of or a deal to acquire spain's cable company ono, a large company that has been considering a public offering but may, in fact, decide to sell to vodafone rather than go public. as i said a number of different

reports out there. i asked the company's ceo about his plans for the future on this very set a few weeks back -- >> continue to do what we have said in our plan. we are investing as i said heavily in 3g, 4g, we have fantastic results of our 4g investment which is not a surprise. we acquired a cable company in germany. we are investing in fiber to the home, fiber to the curb and in portugal and spain and other opportunities arise to create a bigger, the unilever of telecoms or a big company that has fixed, mobile and possibly entertainment and enterprise services, of course, we'll go. >> the unilever of telly come services, so perhaps vodafone, we'll see. much of this could be posturing. you never know about signaling. i certainly want to warn people about that, but it is worth noting after quite some time of softening up their shareholders base at at&t for the idea that

they might storm into europe and vodafone getting bigger. using some of those verizon proceeds much of went directly to the shareholders but some went to vodafone's treasury using the proceeds to get bigger themselves. >> stock going higher. >> they've been suffering lately. >> you're absolutely right. >> the beautiful tax structure on the whole deal was nicely done. >> nicely done report. >> thank you. when we come back, tesla gets zapped by this new rule benefiting car dealers in new jersey. we're going to talk to the president of the group representing them. plus, more of our interview with twitter's co-founder biz stone. as the dow is down 80, no make that 90. back in a minute. ameriprise asked people a simple question: in retirement, will you outlive your money?

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♪ all right. it is time for cramer and "stop trading." jim? >> listen to me, paypal should be called pay pay paypal, verifone are on so many terminals it's a natural to merge them with someone who does payment processing online. i think that if ebay were to split into two, one of the reasons why you would want that if you are carl icahn is a focused paypal would go buy verifone now that they have their act together. >> do a reverse trust with verifone make it tax free. i don't know. >> it's a remarkable situation that verifone has gotten together. but they have a great installed base. what paypal needs to do is operate on an installed base to

be able to take over the register. >> they have an installed register, but it's ebay users. >> don't laugh, verifone works either way. it was a strong quarter and starbucks has an announcement today, well, last night, about trying to do payment processing, again, mobile and being able to tip online. i'm telling you that verifone is the key to anybody whether it be stark bucs or paypal to go to the next level on brick and mortar. you need the installed base. buy verifone. buy. >> last week you say you are in on carl's argument and now you take it a step further. >> carl is right, this is what would happen a liberated paypal would buy this. >> paypal could lose its ebay business. that could hurt. >> that will not happen. >> that will get some people's attention today no doubt about it. >> they should, verifone has had a great quarter. i wouldn't recommend it unless the fundamentals there are, this is what happens a focused

verifone buys paypal and takes over the bricks and mortar. starbucks should buy them, too. we want to draw your attention to a three-alarm fire in new york city near 116th street and park avenue in manhattan. a confirmed incidents of a partial explosion and a partial building collapse. fdny has sent 33 units, 106 firefighters, to this fire. no word yet on injuries. but our local affiliate wnbc has confirmed that all metro north trains out of grand central have been suspended due to the explosion, again, near park avenue and 116. if we get more details on that, that's the chopper en route. if we get more details we'll bring them to you. >> let's hope everyone is okay. what's on "mad money" tonight? >> we've been doing a series of cramer's playbook. i urge that people go on twitter, we're doing personal finance and we got a doubleheader going and i think personal finance at this point where a lot of people new to the market are buying. the key to the market, ballard,

fuel cell. listen, because we'll tell you the other way to do it. the get rich carefully way. signing books at costco on saturday in east hanover. >> yeah. >> nice. >> 12:00 to 2:00. you got to do it carefully. >> great to have you back. >> thank you, guys. love being back. pay pay paypal. when we come back more on the markets and more with twitter co-founder biz stone. nd. so our business can be on at&t's network for $175 a month? yup. all 5 of you for $175. our clients need a lot of attention. there's unlimited talk and text.

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the roadmap begins with the twitter co-founder biz stone speaking out about twitter's valuation and whether we are in middle of another dot-com bubble. and new jersey is kissing good-bye to tesla banning direct sales in its state. it's the third state to make such a move should investors be worried? and the lawmaker calling for an obamacare watchdog, peter rosscom will join us live later on. the dow is down about 67 points. some tech critics have begun to sound the alarm on a coming of another dot-com bubble and we sat down with the co-founder of

twitter of biz stone and we asked him what it was like to be back at south by southwest twitter there for the first time. >> up until that point we'd been hold up in san francisco working on something we thought was fun and in 2007 we realized it was something that could be possibly a new form of communication. and that was a watershed moment for us and then, of course, you know, all this time has passed and now i'm back and i'm sort of talking about, you know, how the world has changed as opposed to, you know, hey, nerd, what's your new thing, you know? >> you're doing this at a time, biz, where valuations are becoming a larger and larger part of the discussion, whether it's whatsapp, whether it's nest which i know you know well. we ask vcs all the time whether they sense bubble territory. do you? >> well, i don't think about it

like that. i think about whether or not something is bringing value to people. and if something has an incredibly high valuation but it doesn't seem to be bringing value, i think that is dangerous. if something has a really high valuation but there's value there, i think that's okay. so, i think we're living in a different time than the, you know, dot-com bubble of 2000 when you saw stratospheric valuations for things that didn't seem to be -- or didn't look like they were of any value. and you also have to remember, you know, aol bought time warner for, like, $140 billion or something. i mean, so even though we're hearing big numbers now, they're nowhere near as big as they were, you know, back then. >> yeah.

we'll always have aol/time warner to compare today's events to. but i'm guessing you can probably think of examples of companies now that provide value and have a commensurate valuation and others that do not. >> yeah. you know, of course, of course. and then -- but then there are also companies in between where, you know, there's a strong potential or an incredible brand or just sort of a faith that they will -- that they fill fulfill that valuation. you know, and i just -- you know, you know, it's my opinion but the way i -- the way i look at things, you know, when you talk about engagement, when services talk about healthy engagement, some services will say, well, people tend to spend eight hours a day looking at our service. other companies will say, people tend to spend 60 times a day

coming to our service and leaving immediately. that to me is a healthier definition of the word engagement. i think that technology needs to get out of people's way so that their life can be made better. and i think, you know, in my aspirational view of the future that's where we're headed. >> finally, you were on a panel on tuesday where you are in austin when twitter went down. it's a much bigger deal now, biz, than it used to be. how did you find out about it? and what do you make of that kind of thing now? >> i just found out about it on the way walking over here and it's hilarious to me they use the same web page that i made so many years ago with the caterpillar and the ice cream cone where the ice cream cone is saying it's cool, i can chill, hurry up. i have no idea what happened. i severely doubt it had anything to do with me. but, you know, i think twitter

over the years has bought enough goodwill from people to be able to be -- to be able to, you know, suffer these types of things. but certainly, you know, people are expecting to get their act together and, of course, they are going to. >> interesting that stone's vision of what valuations are not very rigid obviously. this is a guy who said he didn't necessarily intend for jelly even to become a business. of course, now it is. but we'll see. >> or twitter. >> or twitter for that matter. >> i think it's interesting that he talks about the valuation what aol paid for time warner 14 years ago, $164 billion. facebook's market cap today is $174 billion. so, the ballpark figures are still roughly the same, albeit a decade and a half later. >> i think it's interesting given the fact that everybody is talking about the froth/bubble situation. the dividend play and the yield play has played out they are richly valued and investors are

looking for revenue growth. they are looking for growth stocks so the question is are they going to get it in the form of future earnings for these companies. >> that's a question for twitter. as jim said very hard to value and it's probably why candy crush is going to apparently raise as much money as they are. >> wow. almost $8 billion valuation conceivably at the time it goes public. we'll see. >> i haven't played candy crush. >> nor have i. >> we introduced it to you this morning. >> a lot of talk about candy krawsh. i'll have to hit it up. more now on the situation want to update you on what we told you about moments ago. we've confirmed there's a partial building collapse in upper manhattan which followed reports of an explosion. four people were transperiod to the hospital with unspecified injuries. the building in question is located at 116th street and park avenue. the explosion is near the railroad tracks and all metro north trains out of grand central station have been suspended. a large contingent of new york city firefighters currently on the scene. we're showing you live pictures

and, of course, as we get more details we'll bring them to you. president obama's approval rating has fallen to a new low for his administration according to a new nbc/"wall street journal" poll as the president struggles to overcome pessimism about the economy and frustration with washington. cnbc's chief washington correspondent john harwood joins us now live from d.c. i guess, john, the key question now is whether with the midterms looming the democrats' control of the senate may be at risk. >> it's definitely a risk, simon, and if you look at this poll you can see causes for concern. first of all, let's look at president obama. he's at, as you said, 41% record low for his presidency. two years ago -- or four years ago rather, just before the 2010 midterm election at a similar point he was seven points higher at 48%. if you look at why is that, the american voters are looking around at the economy and saying, what recovery are you talking about?

57% of the american people say that the economy's in recession. obviously that's not a technical judgment, but how the economy feels to them. what is offsetting good news, if any, for democrats in this poll? well, look at the image problems of the two parties. democrats are underwater. 35% say they approve of the democratic party or they have a favorable view. 38% negative. just 3 points. republicans are negative by 18 points. 27% say it's a -- they have a favorable view. 45% have a negative view. now, if you look at factors influencing the election as we get close to the campaign, peace and prosperity, on the positive side you see why we had a budget deal that lifted the sequester caps, 86% of the people say they want a candidate that can work with the other party. and people say they want more spending in their district and they also favor a higher minimum wage. that's good for democrats. on the negative side, you see many people would oppose a candidate who wants to cut medicare and social security for

a budget deficit reduction that's why we don't have a grand bargain. you see a big negative in terms of american involvement overseas and that's why we don't have american troops in syria, for example, but a negative if you are a solid supporter of the barack obama administration that is an anchor on a candidate. that's why democrats are expected to have a difficult election. republicans need to carry six seats to take back control of the senate. most of the key races are in republican red states that mitt romney won so democrats have got a lot of work to do and, of course, they lost, guys, the special election last night in st. petersburg, florida, one democrats had hoped to win. long republican-held seat, they didn't get it done and it was a big win. >> i'm curious what hillary clinton does with this kind of poll. does she have to separate herself from the president and the party? >> i don't think she can separate herself from the president she's too identified with the administration and if you look at her numbers in the

poll she's net positive by ten percentage points. 44% say they have a favorable view and 34% have a negative view. you take the other guy who has been in the news lately on the republican side, chris christie, his numbers have gone way underwater the impact of bridgegate on his fortunes right now. >> before we let you go, it's interesting tomorrow the president is going to double down on the -- on the kind of -- the confrontation with business suggesting that he's going to change the rules on overtime by executive order. do we have any idea how that is likely to play in those crucial senate seats that the democrats are defending in the midwest and the south? >> clearly republicans are going to make the argument that this is more overreach by the administration and it would be negative nfor jobs, but on the other hand when you do things to directly raise the pay of americans especially the many americans whose wages have stagnated, that's pretty popular. in our poll you say if a candidate for congress wants to raise the minimum wage to $10.10

an hour which another thing the chamber and businesses are opposing, republicans are opposing, 58% say, yes, i want a candidate that does that. there's risk for the republicans opposing the president on a measure like this. >> john, thanks for wrapping it all up for us. speaking of the president he did pay the unannounced visit to a gap store in new york city yesterday. he browsed some sweaters. spent about 150 bucks. explained he supports the company's decision to increase wages for their u.s.-based employees. brings us to this morning's squawk on the tweet, whicher to should he stop at and why to turn around his approval rating. tweet us and we'll get your responses later in morning. >> or should he shop at. i have a few ideas on that one. up next more trouble for tesla and elon musk new jersey banning sales of tesla cars in the state. the third state to do so. what does it mean for tesla shares and for revenues? the stock has lost more than 5% so far this month. there you see it. is there more pain ahead? "squawk on the street" will be right back. right back.

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turning dreamers into business owners. female announcer: what will you man:with your new i'm getting a camera!? - i'm getting an espresso maker! - i'm getting a new smart phone! female announcer: during sleep train's big gift event get a $200 best buy gift card with purchase of selected beautyrest, posturepedic or tempur-pedic mattresses. or, get 24-months interest-free financing. - a new tv... - a laptop... - a game console! female announcer: what will you get during the big gift event? ♪ sleep train ♪ ♪ your ticket to a better night's sleep ♪ we want to update you on the situation that we mentioned earlier. we've confirmed that there is a partial building collapse in upper manhattan which followed reports of an explosion. four people were transferred to hospital with unspecified injuries. the building in question is at 116th street and park avenue which is essentially east harlem. the explosion is near the railroad tracks and all metro north trains out of grand

central have been suspended at this point. a large contingent of new york city firefighters is currently on the scene. we were told earlier 33 units were on their way. that's 106 crew. meantime, new jersey's approving a ban on tesla's direct sales model, meaning the company's two showrooms in the state will have to close operations. our phil lebeau is live in chicago with more on that. >> this is a big development for tesla at least in terms of what can the company do in terms of sales around the country. may not have a huge impact in terms of volume at least initially. here's what happened yesterday. the new jersey motor vehicle commission is made up of eight members, four appointed by the governor and three cabinet members for governor christie, it voted to ban direct sales of autos which means tesla will have to stop sales by april 1st. it is the third state to ban the direct sales of automobiles and there are two tesla stores in the state of new jersey that are impacted. here are some of the comments we heard yesterday and one in particular from one person who

supports tesla and her outrage at the decision of the board. >> it is not advantageous to me. it is not advantageous to consumers in the state of new jersey. and it leaves me wondering who's advantage this serves and i think the citizens of new jersey should be very concerned when their governing bodies do not have their best interests in their agenda. >> for some point of reference how many vehicles sold in the state of new jersey, tesla sold approximately 500 vehicles in the state last year. overall, all dealerships in the state of new jersey sold more than a half million last year. so, this is a very small percentage relative to total vehicle sales in the state. take a look at shares of tesla which were under pressure late in the day yesterday. you see today they have come back almost 2%.

looking at the investment of tesla. guys, back to you. >> all right, phil, we want to pick up right where you left off the tesla stock and what it all means for the business. let's bring in colin rush a senior analyst with northland capital markets covering tesla. colin, can you explain why consumers get hurt by tesla's direct sales model? what is chris christie getting at here? >> i think this is just a confused comment to say that consumers getting hurt here. effectively the dealer model, you know, it increases the margin that consumers pay for vehicles. increases the time it takes to buy a vehicle and really doesn't add any sort of increased service for consumers to say it's in the best interest of consumers i think is a complete misnomer. >> why are dealerships so threatened? are they getting businesses stolen by tesla and its direct sales model? what is the big problem that dealers have with this? >> the model is based on being a resellerer for an oem and their business is threatened by the

direct sales model and that's the real concern. over the last few years with the internet and information online what we've seen is competitive bidding across the car buying spectrum. you are also seeing consumers get more informed about pressures facing dealerships and buying at month end and being able to negotiate more aggressively. the only margin left is on the service component for the dealers in a consistent way. there's no real reason for dealers to be able to provide better service than an oem would be. especially for a newer-type technology that tesla has. >> colin, i mean, phil was saying earlier that the volumes that tesla was selling are actually quite low, but i'm not sure in a situation like that or like this that is actually the point. elon musk occupies a very interesting place in popular culture and the headlines will still run and the discussion will be had as to whether consumers to the point you made earlier are actually losing out. do you think that the stranglehold that these dealer networks have in a number of states could ultimately be broken by elon musk responding

by saying, okay, i'm out of here in two weeks? >> yeah. i think it will certainly escalate the debate. it certainly brings an awful lot of attention both nationally and internationally about business practices in the u.s. and i think elon does have a certain amount of sway as, you know, not only a businessman but a cultural icon at this point and as we see this going forward, you know, the evolution of the car-buying experience we do think will rationalize to a direct sales model over time and this is really a teething exercise right now with this new jersey decision and certainly i think elon has an opportunity to make his case now with this decision. >> well, very quickly, colin, you saw the investor reaction as phil pointed out, shares of tesla are higher. what's the bottom line for the stock and the business? can you go to philadelphia or go somewhere else and buy it? >> it certainly seems like chris christie is intent on increasing traffic to new york with this decision. we'll see increased traffic into

pennsylvania and new york. and it's a small number of sales for tesla overall and certainly we do think the benefit will accrue to the other states around new jersey. >> colin rusch thanks for joining us. >> that assumes, of course, they can get across the bridge. up next donald trump jr. is expanding the trump empire in a big way. he'll outline his ambitious plans for the next few years when he joins us live at post nine right after the break. ♪

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stunning pictures coming out of northern manhattan this morning. an explosion and a building collapse at park avenue and

116th street. four people taken to the hospital with injuries. and a three-alarm fire. 33 fdny units have been sent. the pictures show the fire is ongoing and as we get more details we'll bring them to you. in the meantime, simon is down on the floor. >> move over hilton, marriott and starwood the trump hotel brand is growing, since launching in 2007 donald trump's three children have expanded the trump lodging brand. they now have nine hotels around the world with another three projects in the pipeline which includes a luxury hotel in rio. we're delighted to welcome to the program donald trump jr. executive vice president of development and acquisitions for the trump organization. good morning. >> good morning, simon, how are you? >> i'm good. from a standing start that's actually very impressive. how are you finding taking on the big guys in lodging? >> i think it's great. one of the advantages is we are also owners. as we manage for others we understand where they are coming from. we're not purely a brand that says we'll slap our name and

tell you what to do as onowner/developer, because we do it for ourselves i think we can offer a lot to others. >> it is real estate where your father built his business over 30 years. you were quite open, there was a clear learning curve for you guys here. >> 100%. when we started we had one hotel and we had a big pipeline in early 2000 of hotels coming on. why would we be giving it to someone else and we went to the usual consultants and they said you need 45 people, gosh, we have one hotel. what do we need 45 people for? so we hired one coo and we learned all the acronyms that they tried to confuse people with. we've always been about quality and luxury and opulence, always known for design, so we can do that. we just got to focus a little bit more on the service side. >> be proud of this sort of messaging. there are nine hotels in all. you own five of them. >> correct. >> but you'll still manage for others. >> we are managing for others. the pipeline is mostly for others, but we purchased one in

ireland and starting our entry in europe for that, 218 rooms. we're developing in rio and vancouver. we just bought for ourselves doral for $200 million the big resort in miami and we also have and won the bid against all of the big boys and all of the big players for the old post office in washington, d.c., right on pennsylvania avenue. >> to a certain extent you're very lucky because at the moment there's a huge amount of money from high net worth individuals particularly in middle east but asia as well and sovereign wealth funds who are looking for trophy projects around the world and your father and the family name has an interesting position as well. partly it's a result of the empire here but also the huge success of the "apprentice" around the world, i imagine that's a very potent combination to take the foreigners and match up in a different way. >> it certainly is. it's both good and bad, right? there are times when we're bidding on the assets for ourselves because we are an owner/developer on our own. we were going head to head against the others that wanted the assets. it's great to be able to bring

the brand and especially the emerging markets and the emerging world they look to trump as the example of entrepreneurship, the example of luxury and opulence and service. >> i thought it was interesting the trump so ho has a program when guests between 30 and 70 get business cards and monochromed robes and they have networking events. is that where the brand develops? is that how the brand develops or is it still the same as all the others at the end of the day? >> we're going to always be different because we always push -- we're on the cutting edge. we push the envelope. we try to integrate everything else. >> what does the cutting edge mean? >> whether it be real estate, whether it be design, we were always the leaders. we were putting amenities into condominium buildings that no one thought of before. because we're a private company we report to one individual. he's a tough boss but we report to one guy. we don't have to apiecepease shareholders. we cannot try to grow

arbitrarily so we can get a bump in our stock price on a given day. it works for us in long run. >> there's a big trophy asset in manhattan that i read in "the journal" is up for sale or at least 75%. the plaza hotel because the indian owner is in trouble at home. did you own the plaza hotel before? >> we know the asset very well. my father owned it a long time ago. we managed it and ran it for a very long period of time. it was a great property. we were on the back side, 58th street side, you don't have the central park views you used to. a lot of the good locations and good apartments and units went to the condominium side. i don't know if it's something that we're that interested in quite frankly. >> that sounds quite negative, it sounds like you might not pay half a billion dollars for it. >> we have a building on central

park west that constantly wins top hotel buildings in new york city. >> it would be convenient for trump tower. >> it would be convenient. it's nice to walk to your work. >> a pleasure to meeting you. >> pleasure to be here. we want to go straight to the nymex because we've got breaking news on crude oil. jackie has the details for us. >> good morning, sara. the number just out from the department of energy a build here in oil supplies for the week ended march 7th. crude supplies up 6.2 million barrels. that is a significantly bigger build than expected. this is going to be very bearish for oil prices. as a matter of fact, you can see them, they are on the downward trend. we were down more than 1%. 9838 right now. keep a couple of things in mind here. the expectations for a 2 million barrel build but also this build is supported by the rally in imports at the moment and refinery maintenance. when the refineries are doing their planned maintenance, they are using less oil for output purposes.

last but not last i want to talk about cushing and people are talking about headlines hitting the tape that the u.s. may be planning to release about 5 million barrels from the spr. they are saying that this would be a test sale to check the operational capabilities of the system and, of course, people think that this might be an advance of any more geopolitical threats that we're seeing across the pond and with russia and the ukraine as well, so we're working to confirm that but a couple of factors impacting oil prices this morning. back over to you. >> a lot of play there and we are watching nymex crude oil prices moving south on the bigger build. jackie, thanks. straight ahead on the show, one lawmaker said it's time for an obamacare watchdog, peter roskam joins us live why he is calling for a special inspector general to oversee the affordable care act. we'll be right back. l be right .

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well, every single day trillions of dollars are being tied up because of our out-of-date banking system. we're talking about trillions of dollars and the federal reserve is trying to do something about that. we go to the senior economics report eer steve liesman with me on what the fed has planned. it's relating to the payment system, right? >> yeah. and getting your money faster, sara. i mean, the issue is, you know, you can use something like this. you can send a message, video, music around the world

instantaneously, your money not so fast. there's sometimes you can get the sweater faster than the merchant gets the money for the sweater that you bought. and so the question is why does it take money so long to travel? sometimes one to three days around the world. a couple reasons. regulations. in fact, money is slowing down because of regulations in the post-dodd/frank era, processing and an antiquated banking system. it's part of the world that we used to write checks but we don't do that anymore. and there are toll takers along the way, people who check the availability of funds and really add a piece on this. and the question is whether or not you can both speed it up and reduce the cost of sending money. there are efforts under way to speed up credit card payments. i'm here at this aci conference one of the leaders out there. every day their software moves something, like, $13 trillion a day and they are trying to move to real time. the federal reserve has an effort under way, a slow effort, to try to get closer to

real-time payment, in fact, your direct deposit, the company can deposit it on day one but essentially it's two or three days days later the money is really available to you. the same thing for merchants, if they can speed it up, they can free up money for investment and gdp and steve forbes is talking about the economic growth that can come from all of this. a lot of companies are moving on this, paypal and biometrics using your numb to authenticate it. but the question is how fast do they really want money to move? that's a big question. first of all, there are people that make money off of it. but if i hand you, simon, this $20 right now, you have it instantaneously, there's no taking it back. with all the concerns about fraud out there right now there's an issue of balancing the technology with the concerns about fraud and safety and security. simon? >> and that's absolutely key. and, i mean, not that bitcoin is about to go and replace what we've got at the moment but paypal and the other payment systems are very rapidly going

to -- the equipment of social media for banking could very quickly undermine the regulatory framework that the fed is operating on at the moment. >> well, that's right. the fed is moving very slowly. they set a goal for 2023. countries like uk have one day payment and sweden is close to real time payment and they are able to do it and with the biometric authentication they're able to do it more quickly. but one of the things i hear, simon, while everything else in this world is getting faster because of regulations, money, in fact, is slowing down. >> all right, steve. steve liesman, interesting and timely. i wonder what it mean for visa and mastercard, another question, we'll certainly be talking about it up to 2027. meanwhile, more than 27,000 square nautical mile of sea are being searched in an unprecedented 12-nation effort as the hunt for the missing malaysian airlines jet enters its fifth day. we're live with the latest. kier, good to see you.

>> reporter: hey there. yeah, we had a tense news conference here today where there were members of the government. there were military officials. the ceo of malaysia airlines all taking questions. tons of reporters in here. many, n many, many questions. what they needed to explain was why the search area was so, so wide and what they explained was that whilst the airplane we know was over the south china sea when it's communications stopped communicating, there's another sign of the airplane or what looked like could be the airplane west of here. that was picked up by the military radar and so that is why they have speculated that it may have changed direction and flown in a different direction. so, that's how they explained it. this is what they had to say at the news conference -- >> searching in two areas. that's why we are deploying all

our resource and also aircrafts and from the neighboring countries in these two areas. if we know for sure that it is there, we would have moved all our assets there. >> reporter: that was the transport minister speaking and explaining why they have this wide search area, but the reality is now we're into day five and there's increasing criticism and questions being targeted at the officials giving news krarnconferences behind me each day. and people asking questions and partly because every day that goes by everything they do means that it could be harder and harder to find out where this plane is. >> for sure. very tense time for everybody, keir, thank you very much, keir

simmons joining us live. gold is climbing again today to its highest level in 5 1/2 months as uncertainty highlights the metal safe haven status. we've got a partner from forum options strategies and he joins us from the new york mercantile exchange. thomas, good morning. >> good morning. >> where is this trade going in your view? >> well, i think the fact that we got above 1355 is important and it's spending some time up there so it didn't just puncture through and then come off, it's spending some time up there. this has been a very interesting rally because it reminds of 2009, 2010, panic creeping higher. i think what is happening because of the safe haven bid you are getting people who would normally sell it here to go short or just stepping back, so it's not a lot of volume but it is making higher lows and higher highs. >> it's almost impossible to say but are you saying that short covering is a substantial part of what we're witnessing at the moment or is it a broad new trade? >> i think it hasn't been driven

by the physical demand. that has waned as the price has gone higher. this is more the investor i think the etf in february were up. ob with viously for 13 months i outflows and you are getting fickle. the investor is much more fickle and it can turn rather quickly. but above 1355 is important, maybe we can get up to the all-important 1425 level and see what happens up there. >> we shall see, sir. thank you very much for your time. the view from the new york merc about bullion. and peter roskam joins us live to talk about obamacare. . life's an adventure when you're with her.

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swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a 30-tablet free trial. welcome back to "squawk on the street." i'd like to welcome representative from illinois peter roskam, welcome, thanks for taking the time out of your

busy schedule, sir. >> thank you, rick. good to be with you. >> and it's great to have uf. congressman affordable care act/obamacare, even with things potentially running smoother, i guess it defines the word mog gulmogul, what are you doing regarding the transparency and the government's activity to one-sixth of the economy? >> i've introduced legislation to have a special inspector general, because it's $1.8 trillion in spending. there's no place, rick, you can go to get all of the information that you need. families are continuing to struggle as the administration is rolling out things on a ad hoc basis. and there's no one place to go, no single inspector general that has jurisdiction over everything. look where we've done this in the past. special inspector general for t.a.r.p. saved billions, and

there was a special inspector general for iraq, a special inspector general for afghanistan -- >> let me interrupt you, congressman. it makes perfect sense. we have an administration whose original platform in the 2008 election was transparency. so, who in their right mind would object to having an ig see if things are going smooth, try to see if there's any waste, maybe if we'd had oversight with the original rollout with all the venders it wouldn't have turned out so poorly. who would object to this? >> well, unfortunately nancy pelosi who just doesn't seem to disappoint. she objects, but i don't think there's a meritorious objection to your point. if it's good for iraq. if it's good for t.a.r.p. and if it's good for afghanistan, it is clearly good for $1.8 trillion in spending that to your point takes over one-sixth of the economy and we should move forward on it. >> very quickly i want to cover one more topic. it seemed like it was little noticed in the general press but

there's been another mandate change in the affordable care act. i'm sorry, i'm no expert on health care but it certainly seems to me that more people who had insurance lives were disrupted versus how many potentially have signed up and it seems politically motivated to change mandates that will affect voters for the upcoming two elections. do you see it any differently, sir? >> no. i think, rick, you said it exactly right and this is part of the reason that we need a special inspector general. so, you've got an administration that is probably the most political administration that we've seen in a generation. making decisions that have an impact on every single american. and every single american business. and they're clearly being political about it. and, look, yesterday's special election in florida shows that it's not working. the american public is going to have the last word on obamacare. >> let me stop you there. we only have a minute left and here's the question. i see all these irs hearings. i see lois lerner taking the

fifth and you are talking about elections because that's the way the citizens of this country can change programs that they're not happy with. but the irs makes it so the voice gets squashed. am i exaggerating? when are we going to see some details from these ongoing committees? >> what you're seeing, first of all, the only reason we're even talking about the irs is because of a house republican majority. can you imagine nancy pelosi as speaker during an irs scandal, it would have been -- >> but the president said there's not a smidgen of negativity going on. is that another pinocchio for him in your opinion? >> it is completely wrong. and, look, so the president says there was confusion. there's no confusion. confused people don't plead the fifth amendment. other kinds of people do. and so i think we need to continue to press forward. and, look, this is a long way from being settled and there is a huge consequence. the administration can make all these claims that, like, look, it's all fine. it's not all fine. and deep down the american public knows it. they have lost the confidence in the internal revenue service.

>> well, listen, thank you for taking the time. these are very large issues affecting the economy. and i cover the economy. thanks for taking the time. congressman peter roskam from illinois. sara, back to you. >> thanks, rick. >> and thank you, rick, for the passion as always. want to update you now on the situation we've been following. live pictures there. we have confirmed that there has been a partial building collapse and now five-alarm fire in upper manhattan which followed reports of an explosion. four people have been transferred to the hospital. unspecified injuries. the building in question, located on 116th street and park avenue. the building is 1646 park avenue just above manhattan's upper east side. 116th street. of course, we'll continue to bring you details. and this just in, members of the joint terrorism task force have responded to the scene. they're interacting with the fire department and the police department. of course, this is just precautionary. there's no indication that this is terrorism. we'll continue to follow the details and bring them you to as we get them. all right.

when we come back, shoe. ers thinking twice about going to target according to some new data. some say they'll never return. can the retailer ever recover from that big data breach? and later on legendary documentarian ken burns here at post 209 talk about his latest project and tell whausz he thinks of netflix and the streaming phenomenon. [ bagpipes play ]

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more trouble for a couple of retailers today. target an express. bob pisani is on the floor with more details on those companies and retail trade in general. >> fallout from that credit breach is accelerating here. i want to put up target. it's on the upside. kantor retail research firm said the traffic at target stores in january dropped to the lowest point in three years. 33% of u.s. households shopped at target in january. sounds like a lot. it's down from 43% last year. the sharpest drops game in the gen-xors, 32 to 49 years of old. target reported disappointing ruts at the end of february. same-store sales were down. they had a data breach and things started to fall apart. elsewhere, look at express here getting crushed here. down 10%. here's the post for express

right behind me. they missed. guided 2014 earnings lower. this is a broken record for retailers guiding lower. express at $16.28. michael weiss, ceo, very pessimistic about the end of the weather and whether or not things. >> reporter: going to pick up. he said, a material uptick in traffic is not necessarily imminent. he said, the promotional environment is going to continue. so this is in contrast to the other retail commentary we heard last week. remember yesterday, the cfo of walmart said the company had seen very good sales since mid february as the weather improved. last week, l brands, cato, all said they thought things were getting better in the second half of february. express is the outliar. they're pessimistic. if the weather improves, i think the business is going to improve. back to you. >> that said, bob, the leader of the free world has been doing his bit. tweet time. president obama paid a visit to a gap store in new york city

yesterday as he browsed sweaters, he explained that he supported the company's decision to increase wages for their u.s.-based employees. we want to know which store should the president shop at and why to turn around his approval ratings, which is now at an administration low. tweet us @squawkstreet. your answers, next.xt. opportunities aren't always obvious. sometimes they just drop in. cme group can help you navigate risks and capture opportunities. we enable you to reach global markets and drive forward with broader possibilities. cme group: how the world advances.

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tweet time. the president paid an unan nowed visit to a gap store in new york city explaining he supports the company's decision to increase wages for u.s.-based employees. we asked you, which store should he stop at and why to turn around the approval rating. george write, shopping gps does nothing to reverse mom pants image sewn by the gop. the president should visit cabe cabella, the new hunting gear might also help to amend the relationship with putin. president obama should swipe a credit card at target to demonstrate the fbi and secret service are on the case. our thanks to simon and sarah who have made their way to the floor. if you are just joining us, here's what you missed earlier on. >> welcome to "squawk on the street." here's what's happened so far.

>> c this top, this is top behavior. i don't want to see that, if they cool, fannie cool, freddie cools, you could be okay. >> i think we're living in a different time than the, you know, the dotcom bubble of 2000 when you saw stratospheric valuations for things that didn't look like they were of any value. >> here's a look at the opening bell. >> the evolution of the car buying experience we do think will rationalize to a directed sales model over time and this is just really a teething exercise right now. >> we don't have to a peappease lot of shareholders. we can do things that make sense for the brand in the long run. not just a bump in the stock price on a given day. it is 11:00 a.m. on the east coast. 8:00 a.m. out west.

here's what we're watching. twitter had a great run since it went public. cofound ebi stone joining us to talk about jelly. one name you need to know when it comes to history and now he's going mobile. legendary filmmaker ken burns talks about his new ipad app and what he's got coming up next. can $230 million bayou a world series title? the l.a. dodgers are hoping the answer is yes. we'll talk to the president and ceo of the dodgers a little bit later on this hour. the big story today, of course, electric car company tesla wants to sell its cars directly to consumers but the state of new jersey says it's not going to happen anymore. phil lebeau is live in chicago to explain what could be a snag or something greater for tesla. phil? >> hard to know how big this is going to be over the long run. initially this is getting more headline attention than it will impact sales in the state of new jersey. here's what's happened, kayla. the new jersey motor vehicles commission voted yesterday unanimously to ban the direct

sales of automobiles in the state of new jersey. that means tesla will have to stop selling their buy april 1st. the vote by the board was unanimous even after hearing from consumers including one person who said i'm wondering if the new jersey board made this decision because of the growing impact of electric vehicles that may require lesser vising from dealerships. >> i realize that a lot of dealers, nissan dealers, don't want to sell the leaf because it doesn't have ni -- it doesn't require much servicing. the only servicing the electric car requires is tires and brakes and that is also after many years. >> what i want to say today is what you guys have done today is without a shadow of a doubt unamerican. you stifle progress and innovation in the state of new jersey. >> so what happens now for new jersey residents who want to buy

a tesla model s? they'll either have to do it through a third party where tesla ships it to a place out of state and that third party delivers it into the state of new jersey or they're going to have to go maybe over to pennsylvania or to new york. keep if mind the new york metropolitan area is one of the top markets in the u.s. for model s sales for tesla. and after the hearing yesterday, the general counsel for tesla said, look, we will likely be going to court in order to be able to sell these vehicles in new jersey. keep in mind even though teslas are not allowed to be sold directly in arizona, new jersey, and texas, texas is one of the largest markets in the country for model s sales and that's because a lot of people down there, they're buying through a third party and then having the model s shipped in to them. and that may be what's going to have to happen in new jersey. >> phil, you know, you mentioned going to court. but obviously we have more than two weeks between now and april 1st when they will have to stop selling the model s in nrnlg. do you get a sense there is anything they can do between now and then? >> no. i get no sense that there is

going to be changed. i get no sense that tesla thinks it's going to be changed. i think the bottom line is they've got two stores in the state of new jersey where they do sales now. they're going tv to decide whether or not they convert those stores into galleries where you can go in, you can see a vehicle but you can't talk to the salesperson about price, delivery, anything like that. and so for tesla, this is one of those situations that they've been trying to avoid where specific state says no direct sales and then they have to either go to court or seek some other rm difficult through the state legislature which is unlikely to happen. >> yeah. we'll see if this is the last state in which this happens, phil. interesting story. thanks a lot. phil lebeau in chicago. with the success of seeing twitter through launch to ipo, biz stone moved on to jelly, a social search company where he's now the ceo. we sat down with stone yesterday and asked him if he's prepared to go all the way again with jelly and whether his experience with twitter has helped redefine the meaning of success. >> i have no a. completely new

bar now nantd has nothing to do with numbers. it has neeverything to do with whether or not i'm working with the people i like, whether or not i'm loving my work, and whether or not i think that the work that i'm doing has value to people. and if it has value to 5,000 people, that's great because if it has value to 5,000 people then it probably has value to 10,000, 100,000, a million, a billion, you me, you know, i dot at the daily numbers. it's like when you tell somebody who is trying to lose weight, don't look every day at the scale. that's not healthy. you look once a month or so, see if you're treni intrending up o. that's the most important thing. for me, it's all about -- especially for jelly, my new venture, it's all about are we helping people, did we help -- did people get help today using theservice. >> let's talk about jelly for a moment. you launch in january. basically weeks after we saw you on the floor of the stock

exchange taking twitter public. how has it been different from the funding standpoint, from the competitive landscape standpoint, from the hunt for talent verses when you started twitter all those years ago? >> oh, well, it's just an absolutely different world launching a service today versus launching twitter. i mean, twitter we had to claw our way, you know, up over years and today we have twitter and we have social networks and we have these feeds. and so when you create something now word spreads so quickly. it's amazing. when we launched jelly, jelly.co we had more than double the accounts that twitter created in its first, i think, year or two. >> oh, my gosh. >> we're living in a totally different age. and then, of course, because twitter has been so successful it's giving me notoriety which

has made it incredibly easy to, you know, get funding and all that sort of stuff. so it really is a much smoother ride, which is great because it allows me to focus more on leadership and product. >> you said it wasn't really necessarily your intention to ever make a company out of jelly. does that mean that you would be okay with it never going public? i know that's a conversation that's probably the last thing you want to think about. but is the trajectory the same as it was for twitter? >> no, that -- my statement of i didn't intend to create company really has nothing to do with my plans for the company now. why meawhat i meant by that was had stepped away from day-to-day work at twitter and i was sort of experimenting. you know, i directed a film with ron howard, a cannon project. i wrote a book, which is now coming out april 1st, and i was giving some lectures.

and i was telling my wife, this is a pretty good life. and i accidentally came up with this idea with my friend ben finkle and i said, my god, we have to do it again. once i made a decision to start a company, you know, all of the -- all of the basic success metrics are still fundamental and i still think we have to adhere to them and make sure that we, you know, build our company with value. >> jon fortt joins us about what stone told us. listening to him talk about valuations and success and mushy terms reminds me of the debate in the early days of twitter where it was, are we a social good or are we a business that will eventually have to monetize? he was obviously in one camp and not the other. >> first of all, making a few dozens of millions of dollars sure relaxes you, doesn't it? >> yes. no worries. >> philosophical. yes, i think contrary to what

he's saying we probably are in the early stages of a social mobile bubble. whether whatsapp represents that or not, i think is up for debate. but facebook isn't paying for what whatsapp actually has but what it might have. and that's kind of spreading out from there. silicon valley entrepreneurs are going to be very hesitant about saying that. you know, because when you just made all that money talking about a bubble seems kind of cruel with everybody coming up behind you. >> things grow faster now. the soil is richer now. glided paths. >> look at zynga. look how fast that grew. but i think you have the weed problem. dand dand lie dand. venture capital has long followed people versus business models thinking if you have a really mart person behind a business the ideas will come in very quick fashion. he said it was my notoriety that made it really easy to get

funding in this case. does that give you pause about the product at hand here? >> i think there's a good reason why a lot of times vcs tend to follow successful entrepreneurs. you look at people like mark pincus who have had a track record of being able to figure out things. being in the game, staying in the game. that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to continue to hit home runs all the time but it does mean you've got a core team of people around you who you can assemble. you've got a brand you can leverage in order to get out ahead of you. >> the whole circular wave of launching twitter at south by southwest seven years ago when it was mostly about hollywood and music now it really is almost exclues ufly about technology. or about how tech relates to those other industries. >> it's been an interesting intersection. with a until there now doing the itunes festival, foursquare lunched there several years back. and several other start-ups that are no longer around. >> as he puts it, my god, we'll have to do it all over xwan.

>> yes, yes, poor baby. >> i'll have what he's having. when we come back, filmmaker ken burns probably best known for his documentaries spanning centuries of american history. but now you can see all of ken's work in a whole new way. ♪ >> and we call it the ipad. >> history was made with the ipad. and now the ipad is bringing history to you with the new ken burns app, you'll see america through his eyes. he joins us to discuss that and much more next on "squawk on the street." [ male announcer ] how could a luminous protein in jellyfish, impact life expectancy in the u.s., real estate in hong kong, and the optics industry in germany? 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.

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welcome back. dow is down 28. the consumer discretionary sector is one of the bigger losers on the s&p this morning. let's head back to dominic chu at hq with more on what's moving this sector. >> it's a bearish day for the consumer discretionary stocks led by cablevision to the downside. retailers also getting hurt as well. check out shares of urban outfitter, gap, and l brands among the specialty retailers. they're the weakest. pulte home is lower. out graded from neutral to out perform heading into the spring. homebuilder, retailer, and cablevision helping to lead them to the downside. >> dom, thank you. to watch all 25 of ken burns' award winning documentaries you would need to set aside 136 hours basically

5 1/2 straight days, but now there is an app for that. the new ken burns ipad app cure rates all of his films into easily digesdigestible play lis. "the address" and ken is here. ken, it is always great to have you. >> great to be here. >> they say apps are content driven. you've done some amazing content. >> this is a great way for people and for me to look at my work in a different way. i've covered many, many topics in american history but this is a way to sort of make -- to be a deejay, to make play lists for you, to say there are themes that recure like art, innovation, hard time like war, like race that are all throughout all the films and this is a great way to do it. we found teachers and kids and citizens playing with it all these little moments in time floating through space. we're thrilled with it. the response has been great. >> it's been over a year since

you've been working on this since it launched in february. what put a light bulb off in your head that said this is the way to go with it. >> we're moving to many new platforms. pbs has kept ahead of the pace and we've been able to download films but this is a way to say as i spoke to people i saw recurring themes. i just finished a film thanks to our corporate underwriter bank of america on the gettysburg address, a group of kids who have learning differences that memorize it and then publicly recite it. that's going to be on pbs on april 15th, tax day. if you need relief from the grief, inspiring kids will give you all of that. but that will be added to the app. and we'll be isolating things from there. as we add the roosevelts and onward on jackie robinson and the hksz of cancer and the war on vietnam and country music and ernest helping way, that's just a 2020. i know what i'm doing every day, every moment until then. >> i asked you during the break, i think i asked you last time you were here, wlorcht this kind of distribution would out-pace

eventually just linear television in general. if that day is coming, how far away is it? >> you know, it's pretty soon. it's right around the bend. that's why you want to be prepared. you don't want to abandon the old forms. pbs has a huge loyal audience that is bigger than hbos. this san amazing institution. we also have to be nimble, we're in schools and have been for decades and decades. we need new ways to reach these kids. i have a huge website at pbs.org sla pbs.org/kenburns. it's scale sod that each new film we can easily add on an economy of scale that makes each new website and film easy to add to this mix. together with the popular app, this website at pbs, you know, we're really covering the water front and anticipating where people are going to get stuff. so we'll have good viewership but then you will see the downloads have also been

terrific. that's the future. >> we joke that it would take 5 1/2 days to watch everything. but the current viewing habits would suggest that people might actually do that. >> when i made "civil war" 24 years ago, no one is going watch this. they're all into an mtv mode. they sat down and watched the whole thing. now because we digest we binge, people will sit down with our big series coming up, theodore, franklin, and el kneanorleanor, known actress of meryl streep to read off the diaries of eleanor and she knocks it out of the park. you could watch the whole 14 hours on one plane flight or whatever you want to do. >> do you worry it would ratchet up the pressure out churn the documentaries faster? >> you're too young to remember but we'll sell no film before it's time. we take our time. we get it right. and only then do we let it go. i'm already working on six films

at once. i couldn't add another one without being the straw that broke the camel's back. but we've got enough stuff in the pipeline i think it will keep that appetite without kind of over-staying our welcome. >> i was going to say, so many people, because we're moving to mobile, print is condensing. >> yes. >> and someone might think ken going to have to alter the way he works or produces. >> i think that things like "house of cards" and "breaking bad" and "true detective" and lots of stuff, the great thing about the roosevelts is this is a real "down dlton abbey." taking that ipad and going and sitting in bed and watching three or four episodes and picking up the next day. >> favorite things you watch right now that you binge on? >> i'm slowing down on the second season of "house of cards." i went through the first eight like i was an addict.

i'm slowing it down. i'm friends with the writer and creator and i'm just been -- he says, well, well, i'm not done yet. i'm not done yet. and then i just, you know, "true detective" was great and i didn't always watch it broadcast. >> for someone who wants to download your app, what will it cost them? >> free for download and you get the whole overview of it and you get one of the play lists for free that will, you know, like the mix tapes. then if you want all the rest, $9.95, then you're in. then the updates and the upgrades and the new films get added on and you can access all of those films and they're easy to link to pbs or to itunes or netflix or whatever you want to get the full films. but you will getting a cess to all these mix tapes that way. >> did you see the pro mow we produced before the break? >> yes. >> do you want to roll it, control room? ♪ >> and we call it the ipad. >> reporter: history was made

with the ipad and now the ipad is bringing history to you. >> it's nice when you can look at something and you know who did it. >> steve started out -- ken burns affect on all of the imac computers and has been there for a decade. that's when i first met him and we became friends. i love the fact that despite all hundreds of spoofs for my work, on "the tonight show," on "conan" on the internet, people still watch. i guess it's the sincerest form of flattery. i hope, i pray. >> ken burns, the latest film is "the address" which premiers on april 15th on pbs. meanwhile, it's good to be the king, candy crush maker expects to be worth over $7 billion when it goes public in coming weeks. but is the company actually worth that much money? first, rick santelli, what are you watching today?

>> i'm watching tesla. i have never before seen a company so innovative and then you look at 23,000, less than 23,000 cars sold for all of 2013. but that isn't the issue, should they be able to kell cars in new jersey? i think so, except for one asterisk, a huge asterisk. do you want to know what it is? come back after the commercial and i'll tell you. ♪

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welcome back to "squawk on the street." today's edition of the "santelli exchange" and i have to tell you, the tesla scenario, it's unbelievable, everybody, i mean everybody i've burmped into, filling up my gas tank, on the trading floor, everybody is talking about tesla. everybody i talk to seems to

agree, that they ought to be able to sell their cars. i agree, they ought to be able to sell their cars. let's stop a minute. let's look at this in an objective fashion. first of all, i want to cover a topic called regulatory capture. let's throw it up on the screen. this was invest investipedia. regulatory capture happens when a regulatory agency formed to act in the public's interest eventually acts in ways that benefit the industry it is supposed to be regulating rather than the public. you think that kind of fits? yes. but, i also think, let's look at it in another way. why is the united states of america the greatest country that ever inhabited this planet? there's a lot of reasons. i picked out one of my favorites, the rule of law. the rule of law. young people love tesla. people that buy the car love it. i'm not going to go on about whether it's a practical vehicle or not because in this instance, it doesn't matter.

so you have a group that was formed with regard to distributing new cars a long time ago. the reasons back then probably were better than they are today but we're not going to argue that. what we're going to argue is simple. if elon musk can design a my o designed in every possible way, maybe the battery power we can debate for another t santelli exchange. he knew this was coming. everything i read shows that new jersey allowed him to do something but he knew there was a ticking clock so the point of this is, in a rule-based society, just because something is a good idea doesn't mean you circumvent the rules to accomplish it. have we not learned whether it was the credit cries sis, whether it's obamacare, that just by changing rules willy-nilly, even if it makes sense to change them, isn't the way to go? if i owned a dealership and i mortgaged my house to build an addition, i was looking at the rules of the road.

and if they changed, everybody needs to have a fair crack at the voice in. there are methods to change these things, elon musk. if you can design that car, you certainly can navigate through the court system. that's the right way to do it. because otherwise, and i've said this before, the government's promoting bad behavior. back to you. >> rick, thanks so much. rick santelli at the cme today chb when we come back, because of that massive data breach late last year at target, a lot of customers will ditching the retailer for good. we're going to tell you just how bad it is in a moment. plus, streaming devices might have some new competition from the likes of amazon. we'll explain that as the dow has now gone positive after being down 91. back in a minute. today's marke, a lot can happen in a second. with fidelity's guaranteed one-second trade execution, we route your order to up to 75 market centers to look for the best possible price, maybe even better than you expected. it's all part of our goal

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target would hurt the company's sales but new estimates claim it could be a lot worse than that. courtney reagan is back at hq to expla explain. >> kantor retail has troubling data for target for the month of january. kantar says 33% of u.s. households reported shopping at target. that is the lowest response rate for three years. what's worse is that the sharpest declines come from target core shopper, adult between the ages of 32 and 49. kantar notes that monthly guests seem more continuing to continue to shop at target but it's the friend shoppers more affected.

5% of all shoppers have stopped shopping at target, at least according to the retail report. earnings release and conference call on february 26th, target acknowledged the data breach did take a toll on holiday quarter, noting fourth quarter transactions fell 5 1/2%. that is the largest quarterly decline since the retail began disclosing in 2002008. but target said sales improved in february and were running nearly flat to the year prior. the kantar report is talking about january. i reached out to target for comment. the company has no new information to share with us beyond what it had said in its earnings report. ceo did say on that earnings call the company plans to lower prices and be more aggressive to keep shoppers coming back. shares did fall sharply after the data breach was disclosed but began to recover after target said that sales had improved. that was in february, remember. separately, specialty retailer express reporting earnings and revenue missing wall street

expectations expresses promotions negatively impacted same-store sales. shares down more than 12%. we wanted to end on that because it's important not to forget that. carl, back to you. >> more than you can shake a stick at. thank you, courtney. as the streaming worries continue to heat up and, seems like eh of commerce giant amazon may beat them to the punch. the company is hard at work on a streaming tv device that could hit shelves as early as march. that's this month. jon fortt joins us at post 9. that far alon long? >> seems to be. they've been working on it. apple is already got kind of a set top box in apple tv. a billion dollar business as tim cook just let slip. amazon's effort look more and more like apple tv which does ship with netflix and hulu plus installed. the amazon box would come with that as well. eco system play it looks like as

we see google with chrome cast, roku with an hdmi stick. apple not calling apple tv a hobby anymore. amazon protecting the eco system here. >> amazon is reportedly building a streaming music system as well but one with a buy button to actually let consumers buy mp3s on this. is this wanting to make amazon prime worth it? >> they've got to include something as part of that to hike it 40 bucks. from billboard and elsewhere they have negotiations to go through before this is solid but it's an advantage that apple, again, has with itunes radio. it's tied in directly to itunes which the music industry knows that they can make money off of. of course, you know, entertainment business news we also have king digital and its ipo. i've been looking through a lot of financial documents. got to tell you -- >> red flag. >> -- red flags for me. one of them, monthly unique payers. people who are actually buying

virtual goods was down in the december quarter from the september quarter. that's because candy crush, their big franchise, already starting to decline. we've seen this movie before with zynga. they've got a number of troubling usage statistics. they say as one of their kind of warning signs in their filing, if smartphone usage decline or tops out, that's bad for them. we know that's happening. we know that their core customers in north america and the uk. those are both markets that are maturing. >> 3/4 of revenue, right? that one gain. >> yeah. >> and they've got another game, what's it called, pet rescue, growing nicely. >> you had to ask that question when you have such a big -- is in itself alarming. >> candy crush has 97 million daily active users. pet rescue has 15 million. farm heroes has 20 million. tiny compared to it and they don't generate the same kind of revenue as we're seeing in those september to december quarter numbers.

>> it's going to have to be a hit to demand that valuation. >> they want a valuation 2 billion above zynga where it is right now and just 2 billion below where electronic arts is. you make up your mind if you're going to jump into that one. when we come back, can money buy a title? l.a. dodgers is hoping the answer is yes because the team has one of the highest payrolls in baseball. estimated $230 million. dodgers president stan kasten is here to weigh in on the upcoming season. season.

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hour, copper has been in free-fall. oil is dropping. even soybeans are getting slammed. commodities get crushed and china is to blame. how worried should you be? the fight orphan knee and freddie is heating up. shareholder ralph nader who says that's a bad idea. and five years after madoff we've learned a lot about financial fraud. scott cohn with the red flags you should be looking out for. >> scott, thanks so much. we want to update you on that building collapse and fire in northern manhattan. nbc's ron allen is on the cnbc news line with us. ron, good morning. what can you tell us? >> at this point the utility here con edison is investigating reports of a gas leak that

appears to be b what happened here. the calls to the utility about a gas leak from some residents moments before this explosion happened, just after 9:00 this morning local time eastern time. now there are a number of buildings in the area that are evacuated. there are residents out on the streets trying to understand exactly what happened and making sure that the area is safe. there are still dozens upon dozens of firefighters and police here as well as there's a huge square block area that is cordoned off. this is a very, very densely populated neighborhood. and we think the building that exploded was -- where the explosion occurred was a residential building where people live. perhaps some commercial space, a church on the ground floor. so still a very -- very intense scene here as the fire officials and others try to figure out exactly where this gas leak may have come from and they're trying to make sure that it is not a problem that's going to continue in some way here. still an area that's cordoned off.

police trying to make sure it's secure and safe before everybody is allowed to get anywhere near the explosion scene. back to you guys. >> ron, thank you for that as we learn a little bit more now about that explosion and fire in northern manhattan. we'll keep you posted on any further developments, too. dow for the time being relatively flat. let's head over to dominic chu for a quick market flash. >> it's been a roller coaster couple of days for zogenix. it was moving ahead with an abuse resistant rival to zogenix much criticized painkiller. zohydro faced bash from physicians who said it could be lethal to new patients. it has a market cap of half a million dollars. it's up 100% or double, carl, over the past year. but weak today. back over the you. >> thanks. a t. los angeles dodd jersz are heading down under. the dodgers will face-off in sydney, australia, for major league baseball's 2014 season opener. the first regular season game in

australia for major league baseball. jane wells is there with an exclusive with the president and ceo. good morning, jane. >> hey, carl. yeah, from bankruptcy court to the highest payroll in baseball in two years with me the kasten who promised to play nice today. look, on paper, you guys should go all of the way this year but this is baseball. so much can go wrong. kemp's not 100% yet. what are you going to do about second base. emotional wild card. what are you feelings going into this season? >> i feel good. sure, we have question marks but as i look at around everything baseball, everything has question marks. yet, every team during spring training feels this could be the year. we feel that way what. we led baseball in attendance lastier. we're going again this year. >> are ticket prices going up? >> ticket prices went up in some categories. not all. most of them, a little bit. again, we're going to lead baseball in attendance this year and maybe have the highested a

tend dance we've ever had. >> you spent over $2 billion to buy the team. poring more money in. making more now. time warner paying you perhaps $8 billion oifr the length of this contract. only fans who are time warner customers can now see this new dodgers channel. >> everyone can see the new dodger channel you just have took with the right provider. right now time warner has it on their systems. it's been offered to every system. >> they don't want to buy it yet. >> all you have to do if you want to see the dodgers is let your provider know. some providers say, gee, our customers don't want the dodgers. those customers are on the right system. if you want the dodgers, let your provider know and a deal will be made. that's how it works in city after city after city. >> are you expecting it to happen? they're saying it's going to cost as much as $4 a subscriber, directv, i don't get it. i can't get it. i have a directv customer. do you think that's going to -- >> you can't yet today but the season hasn't opened and historically these deals get done much closer to opening day. sometimes a little before,

sometimes a little after. the history, the overwhelming history, in city after city after city is that the deals get done because everyone has the same interest. everybody wants high-quality entertainment, high-quality product. we think we provide that with the dodgers. we know our customers want it. the system providers want their customers to be happy. at the end of the day there's almost always what a way to get it done. >> you're going to have to give $1.9 billion of that $8 billion to major league baseball subpoena that true? >> it's not true that it's much more than we thought. it's exactly after what we thought because it was after months and months of talking and dissecting. >> that's a lot. >> we're happy about the revenue sharing system in baseball. we think it's a good thing for baseball. we think it keeps every team competitive. i'm not going to tell you the numbers were right but i will say we're very pleased with the outcome. >> there's a lot of construction going on around here. what's your plan with the stadium? you know people would fall down in front of a bulldoze fer you tried to tear it down. what are you doing?

>> well, most important thing we're doing is making it a 21st century stadium, which is not easy to do with a stadium that was designed in the '50s but this year -- well, you know, last year as a customer you know we spent a lot of time making the facility more modern, making the concourses better and concessions and bathrooms. this year we're adding more concession space and retail space and just hanging out space. the most important thing we're doing is keeping the look, keeping that familiar quality that fans have loved here more than any other city for the last 50 years. >> i'm going to throw you a curveball real quick. we're going to get our first perhaps openly gay nfl player, one in the nba. it's going to happen in baseball. this time hired jackie robinson to break that barrier. what is the financial considerations? the guy have to be a superstar? >> i don't think it would be a factor that anyone would care about. we build this team on the basis of what's going to make our team win the most. and if that player was gay or

not gay, i can't even see it being a question or a consideration. wouldn't matter at all. >> stan kasten, thank you very much. good luck this season. guys, back to you. >> all right, thanks for that, jane. as always, great interview and great to have stan with us on "squawk on the street." up next, today's squawk is trying to make health care more efficient by going mobile. we'll explain when we come right back. ck. (announcer) scottrade knows our clients trade and invest their own way. with scottrade's smart text, i can quickly understand my charts, and spend more time trading. their quick trade bar lets my account follow me online so i can react in real-time. plus, my local scottrade office is there to help. because they know i don't trade like everybody. i trade like me. i'm with scottrade. (announcer) ranked highest in investor satisfaction with self-directed services by j.d. power and associates.

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being instantly connected to our information or friends through oir devrys has become second day chnature. next guest is on a mission to make health care more mobile. airstrip helps them monitor a patient's vital signs remotely. jon fortt is here with the ceo of airstrip. we've been talking about technology disrupting health care for quite some time. how would you identify this specific market as a place you could instantly impact? >> first, i think it's very important to look at the moment in time that we are living today in health care. if you look at the shortage of caregivers, primarily physicians, the fact that through affordable care act we're bringing more patients into the system, approximately 40 million patients, the fact that we had reimbursement rates

going down and also because of care going up, what we need to do right now is virtualize the caregivers and now we're moving more into a patient centric, we have to follow patients whatever they go. so the importance of really monitoring patients remotely is more important than ever. >> so costs are going down in general but what has the uptick of your product been like so far? >> so what happens is in general the cost of health care are going up because we're adding more patients to this system. if you have now in the challenge of monitoring patients outside of the four walls of the hospital, what you really need to the is take the information to the caregivers, whatever they are, regardless of the device. >> what's interesting to me about this is you showed it to me several weeks a, go i'm kind of blown away by the precision of the technology that you're bringing here. it needs fda approval, right? how is this different from the

fit bit, you know, all the wearable technology that people see out there now and the consumer might associate with health tech? >> i always like to use the example of one of our applications, airstrip, cardiologist, where basically are monitoring now the patient is coming in an ambulance with a heart attack potentially, full blockage of the artery, and now a physician has to look at that information a near a. near realtime basis and make a decision. if this patient coming in has that heart attack with full blockage and make a decision to clear that artery immediately. so the standard today is 100 minutes that it takes to clear an artery from the time the patient gets picked up from the blan ambulance until they go to the hospital. today it's 30 minutes which makes a significant impact on the quality of care. >> what about the security and privacy of a device like this? if my doctor is sitting at

dinner with someone and gets a push about my blood pressure miles and miles away. >> yes. so this is a huge issue, as you know. the first thing that you need to do to deal with the security issue is never store any data on the device. then the next thing that you need to do is make sure that you encrypt the data as you are transmitting that from a server as that data goes into the device. and also, the transmission. and, of course, keeping the right audit trails on both the application and the operating system. >> you've got backing from sequoia, from qualcomm, from others. what's the road map to perhaps going public? how far are you from make that next step as a company? >> also, you mentioned partners and investors. i think that the first step that we took is making a significant impact for us is the ability to redefine mobile health care. it's no longer about the mobile

devices. it's about the mobile don super. that is why we partner with microsoft, to be able to take the same user experience on the phone, a tablet, to be able to take that on a laptop and desktop computer. obviously as we are starting -- we were always a silent partner to the patient, always providing the data to the caregivers. as we get closer now to more activities on the area of home monitoring with body sensors, bringing algorithms to be more proactive than reactive, of course, the company is now gaining a lot of momentum in the industry as the leader, not just medical device mobility but as a full integrator throughout the mobile device. so definitely all options are open for us. we're just enjoying this growth. >> you work with a lot of corporate partners. would you consider being acquired by one of them? >> i think that i like the fact that we are an agnostic tool,

that provides integration to all of those companies or devices. i think that one of the key strenghts of the company is to maintain that neutrality. >> all right. allen portela, we'll have you back, ceo of airstrip. as you've been speaking we've got another letter from carl icahn on ebay. quote, he says, he believes strongly that stockholders should vote for our e bay board nominees. what he calls the skype affair was a complete and utter breakdown in the checks and balances. asks once again for the companies to release all rofrds, not just some records relating to skype. a message to ebay's board. these type of shenanigans may tli in countries. i'm a little bit later than usual, jon. he tends to do it around qu9d a.m. but making waves none the less. >> he's got a tough battle on his hands here. i think tougher than he expected

in a sense that the folks in silicon valley, they're coming back at him with the same tactics he's using on them. he digs into their personal affairs. they're bringing back and there are plenty of them, archived stories about deals that he's done that don't necessarily smell like roses. >> special websites? >> yes. they both got their special websites. you know, e bey performed well over the past two, three years. it's topped out stockwise a bit recently. but he's going to have a tough fight to try to get a big shake-up there. >> clearly the stock moved as a result of this ping-pong action back and forth. tweet time this morning. the president paid a visit to a gap store in new york last night as he browsed some sweaters he explained he supported the company's decision to boostz wages for employees in this country. we want to know what store should the president stop by and why to turn around his approval rating? tweet us @squawkstreet street. your answers are next. .

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unannounced visit to a gap store yesterday. as hes browsed sweaters he explained that he supported the decision. we are asking you which store should the president go to and why to turn around his approval rating? emily writes, he should fearlessly go into a hot topic. the president should visit 7-eleven to encourage college grads that student loan also, in fact, get paid off. i have the mental image of the president in hot topic. >> hot topic. >> yes. >> strange for everybody. we want to hit on another topic today, apple going on the aubszive in music. reports the company is pressuring major record companies to offer new releases excusively through itunes. call it the beyonce effect because she did this in december and had unbelievable time with sales of her latest album. five-time grammy winner celino dion sat down and here she's on the music industry's with apple.

>> there are different ways to buy a song. you don't have to buy a whole album if you don't like the 13 songs. say you like two songs, you can buy those two songs. the idea is to give opportunities for the fans to -- you want to get to them in as easy way as possible and you want to reach them, you want them to reach to you as well. but nothing, no technology whatsoever, whether you call the fridge, the ipad, the ipad, the itune, the i tech, whatever you call it, nothing will ever take away the live performances and when i go on and i see them in front of me, what a -- we are so -- it's a team work. >> of course, live performance still incredibly profitable for those performers even if the a la carte music model is here to stay. >> yeah. well, itunes music festival is coming after her, monetize that, too. >> i thought that conversation was the crystallization of an artist who really does haven't to think too hard about these things but obviously as a team

of people who actually do. worry about distribution, you know? >> yes. must be nice to have someone else to worry about having a clel phone, having an e-mail address so you don't have to dali in technology. meantime, dow is back down 24, 25. squ scott wapner is coming up here with another hour. >> another icahn letter, carl. and then the commodity story is one worth paying attention to. i'm sure you guys have noticed what's going on this week in copper, oil, even soybeans for that matter are being impacted because of concerns about china. >> oil, down almost 2 1/2 bucks on some of these -- both the data and some of the reports that are still unsubstantiated. welcome to the "halftime" show. roleover, are some of the markets highest fliers finally starting to show cracks? we're going to tell you which stocks are likely to keep falling and why. the fight over fannie and fredd freddie. ralph nader on the futur t