♪ good morning and welcome to "squawk box" right here on cnbc. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with joe kernen. becky's enjoying some time off today. we do have some breaking news to start the program off, though, this morning. sources telling us that dollar general making a bid for family dollar. it is now offering $78.50 a share in cash. that's about $9.7 billion. sources telling us that that offer being made this morning. we should be hearing about it a little bit later in the day, perhaps crossing the wires in the next hour. you should remember, of course, the dollar tree made a $74.50-a-share cash and stock offer back on july 28th. a lot of people had thought dollar general was going to come in with that bid. dollar tree came in with that bid instead. we should tell you, if a dollar

general/family dollar tie-up goes through, the combined company would have 20,000 stores in 46 states, a total of about $28 billion in revenue. now, here's the important part -- the synergies on this transaction, which contrast to the other one -- and i know we're talking about dollar tree and dollar general and family dollar, it's confusing. >> dollar, dollar, dollar. >> dollar, dollar, dollar. here's what's happening. on the dollar general -- >> dollar general tree. >> on the dollar general proposal, they would have $550 million to $600 million in synergies annually. that would happen three years after the close. that is in contrast to what was $300 million in synergies on the other dollar tree deal. now, the dollar tree is a much smaller company than dollar general, and that's one of the reasons they're not able to have the type of synergies. a lot of analysts had wanted dollar general to come forward with this deal. we're surprised that they haven't. apparently, if you look through some of the filings on the original transaction with dollar

tree -- and i apologize, the dollar tree, dollar general thing can confuse the heck out of you, wha happened is family dollar went to dollar general and said let's have a deal. they said no repeatedly, according to filings, and now have emerged with something here. two other quick points to make. rick dreeling, who is the ceo of dollar general, joe, announced he was going to retire. this fellow here. richard dreiling said he would retire and as part of the transaction would stay on through 2016. that is actually something, one of the reasons people thought maybe he wasn't going to make an offer. then one last piece, because it's always a social issue. howard levine runs family dollar. he was going to take a role in the transaction with dollar tree, and i know it's hard to remember all of the names here. people had thought, well, that explains a little bit of it.

if the dollar general is not necessarily, at least in this proposal, offering him a role. so, there's always these issues, the social issues. does the ceo, the old ceo get a new job in this? are they going to close headquarters? are they going to close stores? in this particular transaction, a lot more stores could be closed because there's a lot more overlap and who knows what would happen to howard levine. anyway, that is the transaction that's on the table that sources are telling us has been made and we do expect that that will cross the tape a little later and we'll have more details for you as they come. joseph, have i confused you to no end? >> no, i had already studied up on the whole deal, because didn't you break it first in "the new york times"? >> no, it was right here. >> no! >> right here on cnbc. >> but it will still be -- >> i imagine they'll be citing cnbc in just a minute. >> these guys go to graduate school, they get an mba from harvard, these investment bankers. >> right.

>> so, some guy thought, dollar tree. he looked around for another dollar -- he brought this to management and they said, you know, we hadn't -- that's a pretty good -- how do you think they figured this one out? how did they come up with this? doesn't this seem kind of -- they're all named dollar, right? >> there's a lot of bankers in here. >> i'm sure. >> citigroup. >> but it's so -- you know, did someone really have to think about this and come up with this? weren't you thinking maybe they would happen, that the other dollar store would come in here and -- >> people thought they might, but actually, the expectation was they wouldn't. nelson peltz is the one who actually bought into family dollar. he was the smart guy. >> where's icahn? he's somewhere -- >> family dollar as well. >> that levine guy's been on, because when i saw him, i remembered him because of the head. >> yes. there he is. >> no, that's not him. >> i'm sorry. there's nelson peltz. but you said did anyone else think of this. it actually started to some degree with john paulsen's firm, actually had gone to family dollar and said you need to sell yourself and they hired some bankers and there you have it. we will see where this goes.

>> when you were -- by the way, i don't think we'll leave from vacation. >> i totally agree. i hadn't shaved, i was great. >> you hadn't shaved. >> actually, my wife -- whether i could come back with the sort of pseudo scruffy beard, but we thought that would be three hours -- >> you're going to need that beard for when billions gets closer to premiering. you will feel very hollywood. i mean, you're going to need the coolness of the -- >> will i wear my tie like that? a little open? >> also, when you get seniority -- >> like that? >> see, when i got back, you weren't here. >> right. >> because i couldn't come back after two weeks vacation and get right into the redistribution, the buzz saw that we go through every day. you don't have the seniority to ask for me not -- in fact, becky's gone today. but it's just the two of us. i mean, that's like, talk about back into the frying pan, into the fire. are we going to be -- we're going to have to hug it out.

>> you're right. two weeks without becky, i think. >> yeah, yeah. all right. there you go. so, it's just two of us. we've got to play that song at some point. >> just the two of us. i missed you. i did. i really did. >> after a week? >> i did. i was telling my wife this on wednesday. >> see, after two weeks, i think you initially miss someone, then you don't miss them. no, it's good to see you. i'm kidding. we're going to have -- you know, it's august. that's the only thing. it's tough in august. >> yep. >> you know, not a whole lot of people around -- >> good stuff in the papers. >> i love the junk bond story, because once again, i feel bad for retail investors. they're selling the junk bonds just as all the smart money is in there grabbing the yield again. so i don't know. did you see the 10-year when you were gone? did you see this 10-year? >> i've seen where the 10-year -- >> it's like 2.30 or something. and then the german 10-year is under 1 right now. we're the same as these horrific european country -- they're never going to pay their money back. we're the same as they are. >> you're complaining? >> no.

i saw mark grant had something out today. >> mark's been saying it's going to go under 2%. >> he says here's why treasury yields will keep on falling. don't bet against the u.s. bond market rally. conflicts in the ukraine and middle east, record-low bonds in europe have unleashed the stampede into treasuries. we don't even have to have him on. i can just read this. knocking benchmark yields to 2.40%. they ended at 2.34% on friday. this ukraine stuff, we talked about it a lot last week and you missed some of my literary jokes. you know that convoy they were sending in, all just aid? i said and they had this beautiful, big sculpture of a horse that they also had given. putin had it made and given to the ukraine to put in like the square in one of the main cities, just as a gift of -- there's nothing in it or anything. just a beautiful -- but then, lo and behold -- >> yeah. >> you know, treasury and yield,

it's totally different. meanwhile, they destroyed the entire convoy! we're up 80 points on friday or something. next thing you know, we hear from ukraine that they -- any idea that maybe ukraine still had harbored some feelings for russia that maybe we do want to go back? i mean, i don't think ukraine likes russia at all. to destroy a convoy? people were driving the convoy. i mean, there were casualties and everything, right? i mean, this is a bad situation, getting worse. >> that's probably right. >> the other ones -- >> there's a lot of other flash points, things going on in this country. what do you make of this ferguson situation? i don't even know what to make of it. >> i think we need -- there's been a push for cameras on, like mounted somewhere on like policemen or something. that way, policemen are on their best behavior, other people that are there see the camera, they're on their best behavior. we know exactly what happened. so. >> i think we'd be in much

better shape. >> we might be. but i read a reason not to do that. i can't remember -- >> police don't want -- >> all i know is, you know, the president's handicap has been -- i mean, he's getting it -- i think it went from a 14 down to an 11 or so. short game getting -- >> going back to work for a couple days, right? >> a low blow. i'm sorry. >> it's okay. >> presidents need vacations, especially in a world like this. anyway, this retail deal is any indication there will be no shortage of market excitement this week. u.s. equity futures. this to me looks like, you know, a snapback from what we saw on friday where we were up nicely, 50 or 60 points. next i know, i look, we were down 180. it wasn't on the wires right away what had happened. the dow's coming off its best weekly gain in more than a month. investors are likely set to focus on the fed in the coming days because the annual gathering of central bank leaders in jackson hole, wyoming. and jackson hole in august, you

wouldn't have to offer too many invitations to too many people to get out there. have you been there in the summer? >> i have been there in the summer. it's fantastic. >> it's spectacular, right? and it's no humidity. although, how great -- what a week for weather. >> i know, weather was great. >> you know, this whole global warming world. it was like 50 in the morning, wasn't it? and it got up to like 75 was the max? what happened to the 80s and 90s and -- >> i don't know. >> they're on hold? >> i'm happy. >> you know why it's been so cool? global warming. anyway, both fed chair janet yellen and ecb president mario draghi are going to speak there, and yellen is expected to focus on unemployment and wage growth. draghi's address is likely to be interesting in the wake of last week's poor european data. we've been discussing, geopolitics is very important to the markets right now and ukraine, kiev says its army advanced into an eastern city yesterday that had been controlled by rebel forces. meantime, a russian aid convoy bound for eastern europe

continues to be held with that big horse at the border awaiting clearance. it's a sculpture. it's a gift. we'll have a live report from ukraine in just a couple minutes. and in iraq, trying to take back that big dam. did you see that they're worried? did you see -- your people, the left, they're worried about we're going to go beyond just helping, humanitarian things, and that it's going to be, i don't know, involve ourselves in iraq again? but we can say that getting this dam back in friendly hands is important. >> yeah. >> if they blew up this dam, it would, like, there would be 8 feet of water in mosul, and it would reach baghdad. so, it's seen as it could be used as a weapon of mass destruction just by blowing up the dam. so, that's the way we're getting around. in iraq, more than a dozen u.s. air strikes carried out in the last 24 hours. what's happening in europe with this friendly action we're seeing today, i figure it's pretty good, and it is. wow! that's a pretty big move in germany. we'll take a 1.4%, over 4% in

france, where they're down to $22 right now. if you want an espresso, it's going to be a $40 bill. >> we should go over there. >> well, it's a little cheaper. you saw that the euro 1.33%, better than 1.39%. then there's the asian markets. not much happening at this point. you're doing this again? you're not doing this again. >> oh, we have corporate news, but we should tell you, we give you the news first and then the news crosses the wire. cnbc, "squawk box" breaks news and then -- >> let me see. >> we give you the news so you know what that is. dollar general with that proposal to buy family dollar, the transaction, the proposal worth at least $78.50 per share. that's $99.7 billion in total, as we discussed just in the past couple months. let's get you through some corporate news. credit suisse reportedly played a role in the espirito

santo collapse. the "wall street journal" reports they helped put together billions in securities issued by offshore investment vehicles of banco espirito. they were then sold to the portuguese bank's retail customers. also, u.s. banks are reportedly thinking about moving some operations to ireland. did you see this story? if the uk exits the eu. the "ft" says bank of america, citigroup and morgan stanley all are preparing preliminary plans. ireland said to be an attractive location for some european businesses because the banks can move out of the uk because the tax issues, also some other things. so, there you have it. by the way, did you see, this is actually the story i wanted to talk about. did you see this? "fed blow to global banks over living wills"? i remember about a week and a half ago, all the banks found out that their living wills were not good enough, and one of the reasons was because all of them expected to be able to get to what's called the discount window, which we know so well in the last financial crisis was so

important. now the fed is saying no discount window, you can't touch it, and a lot of people suggesting that is an unrealistic thing in the context of a financial crisis. what normally happens, you go to the discount window. >> my eyes are glazing over -- >> i can see that. it's a little like "clockwork orange" -- >> i was watching tennis -- i'm starved for content -- but it was in cincinnati. the sponsor of the tournament is a mutual -- i think it's a mutual -- but they've got cris collinsworth, our great nbc announcer on sunday night football. so, there are people talking, like, about something you were just saying, and he walks in and says, listen, this financial gobbledygook, i can explain what he's saying. come into my office. and there's an office set up behind and he explains it simply. i want -- you know, he's an nbc guy. i want him maybe next time you do another discount window living will -- >> discount window, family dollar, dollar tree, dollar general -- >> you said you think it's discussing that corporations are seen as people with that horrible supreme court decision

that you -- what is that, citizens united that you have written about and tried to -- so, but living wills, corporations have living wills like people? >> in the post financial crisis world, they now have living wills. >> do you think it's okay if these corporations are seen as people, they can contribute to financial campaigns and everything? you want to go back on vacation? >> not yet. not yet. >> it's only 15 minutes in. let's talk here. heightened tension -- oh, you know who's coming up? half of the pair of boris and natasha. just boris. heightened tension in ukraine and iraq pressuring the dollar, sending investors to other safe haven currencies. like the swiss, the franc and the yen. boris is managing director. >> he's been back ten minutes. you're torturing him already. >> because i have so much trouble saying boris. it sounds like i introduced you with more importance.

i can't say boris schlasberg very well. >> you've had a lot of practice. >> i just think because, i just think your first name, boris, gives you credibility on all these russian and ukrainian issues, boris. do you understand what's going on? i mean, i think putin at this point sort of is afraid to go too far. it's very strange, this up three, back two, up three. is eventually he just moving in? i mean, is that what we should be afraid of? >> actually, i think you have it dead right. he is afraid to just kind of go all in at this point. he'd love to be able to move in, but he knows that the economic repercussions are kind of very severe, and they're already teetering on the edge of recession here and i think he's getting a lot of pressure from the oligarchs to really not accelerate extensions between ukraine and russia. you're right, i think ultimately he'd love to be able to have full geopolitical control over ukraine, but he can't do it with full military force at this point, because obviously, the recoil is going to be horrible.

meantime, all of this i think is creating a pretty negative over the european economy, especially with the germans who are just have had a lot of economic activity frozen with russia as a result of this, and that's going to be a big problem for the second half of the year. >> yeah, i keep seeing this brought up, that even with our consumers here, that there's just a general unease, a feeling of uneasiness given mostly about russia in the ukraine. i mean, i guess that's -- i mean, we are talking about for the last, if you're looking for one other superpower, it's called russia, right? i guess china, too, but it gets dangerous. we get in dangerous ground here, and it's important, because it eventually will affect our economy here. if europe slows and if, you know, emerging markets and everything else. so, it's something that we've been a little bit complacent about as the market has continued to trade higher with the troops amassing right on, you know, right on the border. and some people think that his

long-term goal is mother russia growing and getting bolder on the world stage. right? that's down the road, right? >> if you just think of him as a czar, you'll get a very good idea of where i think he wants to go. he clearly wants to build an empire. and yes, long term, i think those are all big issues. but in the short term, you're right, the markets are basically assuming that reason will prevail, that economic interest is going to trump political considerations for the time being and that they're somehow going to have a cold peace going into the wintertime and that will keep everything afloat for the time being. >> yeah, it is just -- it's like a scab, you know, on the global economic scene and we keep pulling it all the time, but so far, it hasn't turned into a major wound. >> you probably didn't watch that much -- i don't watch that much when i'm out either, but do you know how tall putin is, andrew and boris? >> he's a tall man. >> he's 5'7". >> yeah, he's short. >> i always thought he was

taller. >> like tom cruise? >> did you see my tweets where i treated shirtless shots of me -- >> i did see that. not where it's safe, either. is that what you said? >> no, last week we were showing side-by-sides -- >> you and putin. >> me and putin. >> wow. >> because i say that he's -- people that do that are compensating for something. he's compensating for his height. >> how do your abs compare? >> i photo-shopped those a little bit. you can do -- no, he's much better. he's much better. >> i thought you looked great, by the way. >> thank you. i thought you -- i was trying to get you to do -- you know. you didn't decide that was something -- did you share anything with anyone on twitter about your vacation at all? >> i sent one picture out. >> one? >> one, me and henry. henry and i. >> what did mack say about that? >> i don't know. >> did you think about that? you've got twins. you send a picture out -- is that your favorite? >> no. it was a good shot. >> i think it would have sent -- i would have quickly taken another. i mean, i have -- what about the

wife? she doesn't get any -- >> we didn't discuss. i'll get a shot -- >> boris, thank you. >> thanks, guys. have a good week. >> does he eventually do it? does he eventually do it? and how long does he wait, or -- >> i think, like i said, i think the market is betting there will be a cold peace and it's probably essentially where we're going to be right now. as the week progresses, they're probably going to start focusing on janet yellen, although i very much agree with the consensus view that she'll do nothing to signal anything going forward. part of this is maybe she's looking at the geopolitical issues, but it all goes back to the fact that, like you said, the u.s. consumer, even though we're all manufacturing jobs, still remains very cautious, and that's going to keep the fed on hold. >> okay. boris, thank you, sir. >> thanks, guys. have a great week. coming up next, the als ice bucket challenge. have you taken this yet, joe? >> are you going to do it? >> nobody's challenged me. showing no signs of fading. in fact, it's made its way all the way to china.

we'll show you that after the break. plus, the battle of the bulge. joe's not having that problem anymore after those pictures. >> a little bit. >> today a third of americans are overweight, but big pharma's not jumping into the water against obesity. why? stick around to figure out. and as we head to break, check out the futures. we have some green arrows across the board. 78 points up. we're back in a moment. it's monday. a brand new start. your chance to rise and shine. with centurylink as your trusted technology partner, you can do just that. with our visionary cloud infrastructure, global broadband network and custom communications solutions, your business is more reliable - secure - agile. and with responsive, dedicated support, we help you shine every day of the week. centurylink your link to what's next.

the headline here was, "a balding drug," which i would not take, because i don't -- >> you've got gray hair. >> well, who wants to go bald? welcome back to "squawk box." in science news this morning, a study finds -- it's not a balding drug, it's the reverse balding. oh, okay! a study finds a drug that successfully reverses some balding. the drug was tested on patients with an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss that inflicts about 10% of men and women. the drug suppresses immune system activity by blocking certain enzymes and helps bald patients grow hair. it's important to note that the drug was only tested for those with the disease. there's no evidence it would even work on people suffering. see, this is what liesman hates, suffering. >> suffering from hair loss. >> if you lose hair, are you really suffering? suffering from hair loss such as male -- >> people who -- >> do you ever see people with male pattern baldness, letters

are forming, it looks like a map -- >> what are you talking about? >> i'm just kidding. i think that means here, in the back -- >> in the corners. >> so, it's not a drug that causes -- who would take a drug, unless you wanted to look like, you know, bruce willis or howard levine? back to the family dollar -- >> always bring it back to the mergers on monday. let's tell you about the ice bucket challenge, because it is showing no signs of slowing down. since july 29th, the social media-driven craze has raised more than $13 million for the als association. among the business celebrities accepting the challenge this weekend -- >> no ice there. no ice there. >> jeff bezos and bill gates. did you see the bill gates video? >> no. >> that is a hilarious video. it's not just about -- here it is. he actually created this himself, or at least that's the joke. and it was -- it's a pretty funny video. >> it's like a rude goldberg scheme -- you knew he would do that. >> that's on the deck right outside of his home along the

water there outside of seattle -- >> wow, he looks even nerdier soaking wet than he does -- we're also getting word this morning that the ice bucket campaign has hit china. our colleagues in beijing tell us that chinese i.t. entrepreneurs have been dousing themselves with cold water since weekend as well. warren buffett has challenged and is yet to take the challenge. i think we should just keep that out there. obesity is one of the biggest health problems in america and around the world. so, why is big pharma not spending big money to try to create medicines that fight the fat? cnbc's meg tirrell is here with some details this morning. good morning. >> good morning. that's right, big pharma has kind of shied away from this area. first, let's talk about the opportunity and why it's surprising that they're not in it. more than a third of u.s. adults are obese, according to the centers for disease control and prevention. and also, that can lead to heart disease and diabetes. so, obviously, there's some big problems associated with obesity. the american medical association did declare it a disease last year. now let's talk about how you

define obesity. that's actually by a body mass index of 30-plus, according to the cdc. and what that actually means, and it might surprise some people, is that for somebody who's 5'9", that's somebody who weighs 203 pounds or more. so, that is how the cdc says obesity is defined. i know some people take issue with bmi as a measure of obesity, because if you're very muscular, that can kind of skew your weight. so, that is an issue, but that's the way it gets -- >> constantly dealing with that. >> i can imagine. you know, so, there are a couple companies still working in this space, but they're very small companies. two years ago, two new drugs were approved. that was in 2012. from arena and vevis, and sales have really kind of disappointed there. a third company is working the space, under fda review right now for its obesity drug. some of the reasons why the sales haven't met expectations, there's a lot of safety concerns about these drugs. we all remember fen-phen, which was pulled from the market, a couple other drugs, abbott's meridia, sanofi's kpleea.

a lot of safety concerns around these medicines, but those aren't the only reasons sales haven't med expectations. in 2012 when the drugs were appro approved, analysts had billion dollar revenues that that could take in and they have fallen short. also, these are smaller companies and while they have partners in japanese companies, their sale forces have been small. you really need to be reaching a lot of general practitioners to get them to prescribe the drugs, so that's an issue. cost is another issue with the drugs. they don't have a lot of reimbursement yet. they can cost $4 a day, $2,000 a year. that can be a problem if you're not reimbursed for that. and finally, there is a bias against prescribing drugs for obesity and considering it a disease for which you should prescribe drugs. so, there are a lot of moving parts in this space. later today, we'll talk with the ceo of a fourth obesity company that has a new mechanism of action, the drug still in testing. z zapgen is a small market cap company, under $500 million, but another one in the space. >> what would have to change

among insurance companies to decide to pay for drugs like this? >> a lot of folks say we need outcome studies. these drugs were approved under the understanding that they would run these bigger studies to see their effect on cardiovascular. so, whether they have safety issues or whether, you know, they help extend life or prevent heart attacks, prevent diabetes, that kind of thing. so, if we saw those kinds of studies have those positive effects, maybe you'd see better reimbursement, but those are years off. >> you would think that if you do anything cosmetically, maybe that's not covered, but people do all of these procedures for cosmetic and obesity is much more serious and much more important than, like, fixing your wrinkles or whatever. in the past, the diet drugs were from a similar mechanism, where in the fen-phen, i mean, if you're going to have a heart problem or some type of valve problem that you don't want to -- so, we needed a different mode of action. >> right. >> and some of them do have different modes of action -- >> although, the ones that hit

the market in 2012 work on the similar mechanisms in the brain. >> will you do me a favor? i couldn't figure out if i'm fat or not from that. will you do it for someone who's 6 foot or 6'1"? can you get the numbers? >> i will. i can't off the top of my head, but i'll send them to you later in the show. >> and you saw the controversy. some guy on fox said that the first lady could lose a few. then brian stelter, who used to have this stupid website, he's now a big muckedy muck at cnn, he got mad that anyone could question whether -- so, i don't know. >> so, joe, here, i'm on the bmi calculator at the center for disease control and prevention. i'm putting in -- >> 6'1". >> goewz for 6'1". what weight? >> i'm not telling you. just my age. >> we'll determine whether he's obese -- >> we've got to throw in a weight. >> right at -- i'd go above and below -- okay, hold on, i'll just tell you. i won't -- >> do you think people saw that? >> i'm sure nobody noticed. >> whispered to me, but --

>> okay, 6'1", 190. what's it say? overweight. >> 6'1", 190, yes. your bmi's 25.1 -- >> oh, that's just barely overweight! >> if you could just get to 24.9. for your height, a normal weight range would be 140 to 189 pounds -- >> see, 140? >> 189 pounds. there's a big divide. there's 50 pounds -- >> but i won't even be able to eat a cheeseburger? thank you. still to come, are we losing our interest in apps? the answer is yes, according to a new study. the impact this could have on the tech sector when we return. plus, more on the breaking news that dollar general is 25.1? making a bid for family dollar to the tune of nearly $10 billion. first as we head to break, a look at last week's winners and losers. so close. ♪ ♪ just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street ♪ ♪ like a fella once said, ain't

that a kick in the head ♪

♪ ♪ just the two of us ♪ good morning, and welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc. i'm joe kernen. we requested that song. along with andrew ross sorkin. becky is off today. she's doing the vacation, the full on, two-week vacation. >> yes. >> where you can actually finally, when you finish, you're good. you're good with coming back. you're good with -- >> you mean one week's just not enough? >> one week's just not enough. i think you're just getting into

the swing of things. >> all right. >> u.s. equity futures are -- you know, you were out for the last week. we did -- i was worried. >> things came back! >> the week i was out, that 300, 400-point day -- >> tough week. >> and then there was stabilization. and you know, we've got soros putting a big bet on negative and shiller again saying stocks have been -- >> because we've been -- >> soros has had that trade for over a year. >> was that trading a hedge against something else or a true view of the world -- >> officially coming in august of 2013. it's been a 20% move already for soros, but you know, we try to -- you know, whatever we have on any given day, we try to make a big deal of it, and i was just saying, look, he's had this position, and i look back at where the s&p was. it's moved 20% since he had a big bet. so, you know, we'll see. sooner or later he could be right, but. markets looking ahead to economic data on inflation and housing this week. plus, to the big fed gathering in jackson hole. here to set the table for our busy week ahead is mark lieu

sene, danny montgomery scott chief investment strategist and dean zayad. do either one of you, mark or dean, think that we're at early 2015 mark for the first move up or are we mid to late at this point? >> joe, i think we're still in the camp of mid to late. as much as i concur with the viewpoints of richard fisher and charles plosser and jeffrey lacker, who are, you know, members of the federal open market committee meeting, who are i think offering a persuasive argument for why it is the fed should move forward its lift-off date for the fed funds rate through the first quarter of 2015, i don't think there's enough sympathy among janet yellen and others who carry more currency in the fed to suggest they're more likely to be successful -- >> do you agree with that, mark? there are people who say until the rates go up, the economy's

going to stay -- it's counterintuitive, but they say it's hurting savers, it's causing people just, you know, there's a lack of volatility. when we stay at zero with an economy that's going pretty well, it's so disconnected that it's actually counter productive to what we're trying to do. >> i totally agree with your viewpoint on that, joe. i think it is. it's certainly hurting savers, no doubt about that. that's been the case now for five years. but in addition to that, it's deferring the kinds of things that i think would become a by-product of the normalization of interest rates, including buying power that has no incentive to move forward those purchases due to the fact that they know we're going to have a low carry for an extended period of time among other distortions that i think are immeasurable at this point in time, simply because they're being covered under the auspices of zero bound interest rates. >> but dean, you've got below 1% on a 10-year german bund, so how could the fed possibly break with the rest of the world at this point? should they? >> well, they're probably not

going to, but i would focus more on global liquidity. we look at that at brookstone as one of the bigger indicators on trends, even oftentimes more important than technicals or earnings. at this point, global macro liquidity is very, very strong. bank lending is on the rise in the u.s. the ecb and the bank of japan are further committed to their qe. in fact, money supply's showing a recent positive turn in china as well. so, global liquidity is very important to us and we don't see that turning any bearish signs any time soon. >> wow. so, and you think, when is the first rate hike? >> i'd probably say mid-2015. you know, going back to the whole idea about savers, i mean, i find it interesting, because there are ways to earn more income than just focusing on the 10-year treasury, for example. we've focused on asset classes like the mlps, the energy renaissance. munis have been a really great play over the last year. so, of course, there's risk in

everything. we always like to build in risk management with all of our investing strategies, but the 10-year treasury or the german rates are really not in our opinion the only way to measure the amount of income that savers can now get on their cash. >> so we shouldn't be focused on this issue or we should be? >> no, i mean, we should be, of course. you know, oftentimes, by the way, low interest rates could be a symptom of what the market's going to do, not necessarily the cause, right? i mean, if rates start rising, and it's really more of a reflection on the qualitative forward guidance that the fed gives us, that could be a good thing, right? that could mean the economy's strengthening, unemployment, of course, is going down and earnings are on the rise. so, i wouldn't just focus on rates alone as the cause of a potential correction or bear market. >> do either of you gentlemen think that because it does move people out to risk -- i mean, we've seen now the smart money's going back into junk bonds. everybody's forcing out the risk curve to try and get yield.

is that building another bubble, mark, dean? either one of you. mark? >> well, certainly i think there is a cause for concern there that investors are being chased out of low-yielding, traditional sources of income to other areas. and it begs the question are we in a bubble in the bond market? like the other guest has said, i'm not sure that we are, given the fact that we have 2.4% on the 10-year treasury when the german bond yields 1%. i think there is something that makes treasuries attractive, but it's also chasing investors into dividend-paying stocks, which i don't think is necessary lay a bad thing, but it alters their risk profile differently than owning a money market fund. >> all right. dean, can you get me a deal on a nose hair clipper? what's the name of your company, brookstone? >> brookstone capital management, but it's the other brookstone, of course. >> and i look at how well groomed your facial hair is. do you have like something like that? because andrew, didn't you have one -- a beard? >> i had a little scruff going

on. >> well, you've got -- there is, brookstone does sell something that allows you to stream that so that it's neat, right, dean? or that's a different bookstone, you said. >> but this is the reflection of years of experience, my friend. so, trial and error, but we believe we got it. >> all right. did you just hear in your ear? the new supervising producer is moving us along. >> with the show? >> mark and dean, thank you. >> thanks, joe. >> we've got to run and i have to listen this time. coming up, what happens in vegas apparently still stays in vegas, unless it hits facebook. we've got the details on an app that wants to change that when "squawk box" returns. e financial noise financial noise

financial noise financial noise

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning. our top corporate story of the morning, dollar general making a bid for family dollar. it's offering $78.50 a share in cash. that's about $9.7 billion in total. you'll remember, dollar tree made a $74.50 in a cash and stock offer back on july 28th. dollar general will be holding a conference call at 8:00 eastern. of course, we'll be monitoring that, and we broke that story earlier in the broadcast around 6:00. they've now come out with that news and we will see what happens next. carl icahn, though, very happy, you have to imagine, and mr. pelts pretty happy as well. >> you think carl still gets happy when he makes a couple more million dollars? >> yes. >> really? because he keeps score. >> it's a scorecard. i don't think he actually cares about the dollar itself, just --

>> no. he could send some our way. our next story, did you read this? it's for anyone who's ever had a drunken night in vegas and then lived to tell about it on facebook. recode reports that there's a new social media app called -- i would pronounce it sober, although it could be sob-er, that deletes everything posted to it within a day. that's good. it was produced by bruce yang after he had a raucous vegas bachelor party. the catch phrase "life in the moment." there have been certain times where -- i mean, i don't tweet a lot, but people can be so annoying that sometimes, we shouldn't lower ourselves, right? >> after a drunken evening in vegas? >> no, not after a drunken evening in vegas, but maybe after something on a friday night i'm reading, and then i'll say, you know what, i wouldn't say that in a normal -- >> i heard about a guy building an app. you know these doctors in vegas will come to your hotel room the next day and intravenous you up

so you won't get a hangover? >> give you liquids, yeah. >> and it will be like uber. you press the thing and then they come. anyway. the other question is whether this app could be a tough sell, because our next story is true. the "financial times" reporting that smartphone owners' appetite for new apps is waning. joe, when is the last time you downloaded a new app, do you remember? >> i'm going to think about that. >> might be a while, because -- >> it has been. >> according to a report, it finds almost a third of users don't download any new apps in a typical month. as a result, the firm is predicting that the volume of app store sales is potentially hitting a ceiling. >> something i saw that i wanted to do or was thinking about doing but then i didn't do it, anyway, but i did download a song. i know how to do that. "el dorado." i'll play it for you. maybe you'll get out of here. coming up, lifestyles of the super rich. sales from a weekend car auction in california headed toward $500 million.

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welcome back to "squawk box." record setting auction in california this weekend. robert frank was there. you're back. >> yes, i'm back. the numbers, i'm still just dizzy from these numbers. style compiling numbers so we don't have the full weekend total. so far $352 million of sales, that's as of saturday afternoon.

they're on track for $450 million or $500 million. the average price so far this year over half a million dollars up 40% over last year. we're actually selling fewer cars this year, but 40% up on the total value. now of the top ten cars, you guessed it, they're all ferraris. in fact, all top five cars, ferraris we showed you last week on friday -- thursday night this 1962 gto sold for $38 million. that made it the most expensive car ever sold at auction. that beat the $30 million record that was sold -- that was set last summer. now the number two car was the 275 speciale, $26.4. proving that not all great ferraris have to be red. that was a gray one. number three was a 1961 250 gt -- i got to sit in that car, a $15 million car. and of the top ten cars there were two cars that actually were not ferraris.

one was the 1964 ford gt 40. those are still setting records. that was a $6 million ford. and then another car in the top ten that was not a ferrari was a 1955 aston martin db3s $5.5 million. the thing that struck me after being here for two days talking to wealthy collectors looking at these cars, look, great ferraris are always going to set great prices. >> not like that, though. >> but you look at what's happening with the porsches, the mercedes. they made thousands of these cars, the mercedes 300 sl gull wing doubled in price. >> did you actually -- was janet yellen actually there shopping looking for a car for herself? >> she is the greatest patron saint of ferrari owners. >> right. >> since endo ferrari. >> you didn't see any fed members there? because they got plenty of dough. >> ferrari should make a special yellen edition. >> it should. >> because of all the money --

you talk to the wealthy collectors and they say look there's nowhere else to put your money right now. given where interest rates are. and it's the art market. it's the diamond market. it's the wine market. it's the car market. >> what's the cheapest car that was for sale there? >> we saw -- >> there was only -- if the average is $500,000. >> we found a couple way in the back of the mecum oukz that were $300,000. the american market hasn't come back. it's really the top european cars, the porsches, mercedes, ferraris. those three marks are leading this entire market. but, the one last thing i'll leave you with, toyotas, mazdas, nissans, these are now million dollar collector cars. you were joking on friday about the kia or something. >> yeah. >> jay leno said the frias, the first edition prius in 20 years will be a huge director car. it's now all these -- there it is. that toyota. that's going to be a million dollar toyota. the japanese cars are now becoming what the european -- that's what makes me nervous

about how bubbly this market is. >> you know we all watched robin williams videos. he had some joke about a prius, i don't know volkswagen had sex with -- i can't remember what it was. it was -- yeah, no, really? >> a prius? >> yeah. >> that's what leno said. >> i stand by what i say. give me one 2014 top of the line ferrari, instead of the -- i don't want an old one that doesn't have any of the new technology. it's got a wooden like steering wheel. >> more than one. >> you could by 1,000 of them. >> more than 100. >> more than 100 brand new ferraris. >> i'm with you. i like the new cars. it's a generational thing. the guys in their 50s. they got money. >> any car you're in is a muscle car. coming up a deal worth a dollar or two. the details on the fight for discount retailer family dollar at the top of the hour.

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breaking news this morning. dollar general offering to buy family dollar for nearly $10 billion outbidding rival dollar tree. >> the world's central banks are on center stage. leaders gathering for the annual fed confab in jackson hole. will janet yellen and the company give the markets any hints to future policy moves. >> and the ice bucket challenge showing no signs of slowing down among business celebrities accepting the challenge this weekend jeff bezos, and bill gates. now it's hitting china. as entrepreneurs there join the cause. the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now.

good morning and welcome to "squawk box" on cnbc i'm andrew ross sorkin along with joe kernen. becky is enjoying some time off today. let's get you caught up on some of the headlines this morning. the big breaking news of the morning as we told you first at the top of the last hour, dollar tree now offering to buy family dollar for $78.50 per share. that's an all-cash offer. the total transaction value about $9.7 billion. that could potentially trump the deal that family dollar had already put in place. it had been -- it had solidified a deal with dollar tree for $74.50 per share. joining us now on the "squawk" news line to make some sense out of all of these companies with dollar in their name is joe feldman, the assistant director of research at telsey advisory group. walk us through this. this transaction, dollar general it is, does look to be a better

deal than dollar tree. the question is why didn't they show up earlier if they were coming at this point? >> yeah, i'm a little surprised that it took them this long to get involved publicly. it does seem like it's a better deal. it does seem a little more accretive when we run it through our models, didn't seem like dollar general could top the deal and make a more accretive deal. the big issue to me is that there's a much bigger overlap in terms of the store bases. >> the synergy number that they were providing on this transaction this morning, $55 million to $600 million. the other deal, synergy is only $300 million. >> that's right. i think part of that is more overlap here with dollar general and family dollar. i wonder what the government will make them do. now, in terms of closing stores. today dollar general says they would close around 700 stores versus dollar tree saying they would close around 500. so you would think that there would be even more need than that. i mean when the combined base

would be 20,000 stores or so. >> so the real question is does dollar tree come back and if so what can they afford to pay and what can dollar general afford to pay if we do, in fact, get into a real bidding war here? >> when we stress both versions of the offers, certainly the dollar tree offers in the current structure that they have, could probably get up close to $90. and we thought dollar general could be around the same, a little bit higher, low 90s, probably. but, again, here you have a situation where this is an all-cash offer, versus dollar tree offering stock and cash. so, the structure of the two are a little different. you know dollar tree has less debt on its books so in theory they could take on a little dealt, it would just be less accretive of a deal if they wanted to get it that badly. >> one social issue in all of this the ceo of family dollar was going to stay on in a dollar tree transaction.

wes clearweather he would stay on in a dollar general transaction. does that matter? >> i think it does matter, to howard levine. i think he wants to be involved. the thought process was that even if he stayed at -- with dollar tree, that, you know, maybe a year or two he would start to step aside anyway. what's interesting is, many of the issues that the company's facing has been under his watch, and i think that the investor community had wanted to see him removed from the plan in the first place to help effect out change. but it's unclear. there will be a call at 8:00 this morning from dollar general and i'm sure that will be addressed at that point. >> joe feldman, thank you for helping us through this breaking news this morning. sure we'll be talking to you in the coming days. >> thanks. >> in other headlines, the situation in ukraine remains volatile and violent. an undetermined number of people were killed when rocket fire hit a convoy of buses carrying refugees from an area controlled

by pro-russian separatists. ukraine's military and the separatists are each blaming the other side for the strike. the other big market story the annual gathering of central bank leaders in jackson hole, wyoming, begins thursday. fed chair janet yellen and ecb president mario draghi will speak there. yellen is expected to focus on unemployment and wage growth while draghi's address is likely to be interesting in the wake of last week's poor european data. our guest host this morning, chairman and ceo of international paper. john, it's great to see you. we'll start with people don't know this, thanks for coming in. great to have you here. and that is that out of all the stuff that's shipped in the u.s., 95% is in corrugated boxes. 95. a third of them ip makes. >> that's right, 55 million a day. >> so that on any given day, in the past week, you can point to really a pretty good indicator of whether the economy is accelerating or decelerating.

>> doesn't feel like 4% gdp growth. corrugated shipments for the industry up 1% year over year. if the economy is truly growing sustainably at four we'd be at 2.5% growth. >> the good news is that all this is highly recyclable. 66%, 45 million tons of all paper in the u.s. is recycled. >> right. >> that's obviously why we do it. that's why we put our garbage out -- you do that in new york? >> we put our garbage out in new york. yes. >> i've seen what happens if it's not collected. with that city. it just becomes, you know -- >> yeah. >> we're the biggest user of that recycled fiber. we have a big stake in that. >> it's not to say that you're not good custodians of paper companies when you do own timber, because the tragedy of the commons is when you own it you replace every tree -- >> it's a sustainable, renewable resource. >> are we using less? i mean, is -- have the forests benefited from all the recycling? >> the forests? oh, absolutely. i mean -- >> we replace it when we --

>> we're growing -- planting more than 3 million trees on average per day. >> 3 million per day. >> 3348 per day. >> that's amazing. here's the next thing that i want to get to because i don't understand what you mean. as far as the economy goes and what's causing it to get better you say it's not confidence, it's demand. because where you have demand, you will invest -- >> absolutely. >> but, if we get back to the chicken and demand thing. say it's not confidence. we've seen recent data that shows consumers are once again, you know, not confident. >> well -- >> who's not confident? corporations that's not confident? >> i'm talking about corporations. 70% of the economy i should point out is consumer spending driven. and you know, consumers not only feel unconfident but i think if you look at their income statements, medium wages are still 8% below prerecession levels. the quality of jobs that we're adding jobs it's not high. so there are a lot of reasons that consumers -- >> that's my point. if you say that it's not a problem with confidence with corporate america, it's not a -- it's a problem with demand, not confidence, the reason that the

corporations aren't seeing the demand is because there's a lack of confidence somewhere else. right? isn't it just a chicken/egg one step removed. >> i think you know the two are related. but it's really not confidence that's driving this. it's consumers don't feel like they've got better balance sheets. their housing prices stop going down. their 401(k)s are better. but their income growth is stagnant. >> then you go on to argue about inversions, and about corporate tax reform from the viewpoint that we've got serious issues that need to be addressed. which would also at least indicate to me that corporations are not operating in the greatest environment that we could have in this country if we'd get our act together there and therefore it's not just demand. there are things in our way, washington generated, that are holding us back from 4% growth. >> the biggest thing in the way is consumer demand. i do believe comprehensive tax reform corporate and individual tax reform will go a long way to

making the tax system one to support growth but we've got to put more money in people's pockets. >> if we had 4% growth and people were expanding and creep eighting more jobs consumers would feel i'm not going to lose my job, my house isn't going to go down in value. it's just one step removed. it's a chicken and egg thing. >> there was a survey the other day that said more than half of the people interviewed, they had an emergency exspend your of $400, would have to borrow or sell something. i mean that's not a confidence issue, that's living day-to-day. the average american feels that way -- >> that's in a crappy economy that hasn't grown for five years. why? >> because consumer spending is stagnant. >> you're back to -- it's circular. >> i think what we've got to do is get more money into people's pockets. >> can i ask a cardboard question for a second? >> yeah. >> i'm looking at this screen over here and it has all the different brands of customers, amazon, coca-cola, tyson, costco, whole foods. when you look at those brands and you think to yourself how

they're all doing i assume amazon is shipping more and more through you than ever before, right? so anything e-commerce. >> ee commerce is up double digits. >> okay. on the other stuff, though, when you think about costco you think about coca-cola or even think about whole foods, it's a different story. >> think of the production of nondurables in the u.s. driving packaging demand and a lot of those food companies, i mean, in the food industry is looking at flat, organic growth. so -- and that really is, again comes back -- >> and e-commerce is not making up for the other guys. >> no. because if you look at the weighting of the segments e-commerce is small but growing at double digits. >> so weight it for us. what does amazon or e-commerce represent for your business in total? >> less than 5%. >> so it really is -- it's really not doing much. >> but if it's growing at 15% or 20% a year it's going to be a significant segment. >> and if you were to look at that screen and say what's the biggest loser, your biggest

loser as a client but in terms of segment? >> i think processed foods is probably on a year over year basis, and that's the biggest segment, is showing the most weakness. >> and that's a function of? >> consumer spending. you know, consumers we talk to our customers and they say people's habits in terms of what they're buying are changing but all that stuff at some point in time in the supply chain is traveling in a corrugated package. >> i wouldn't think processed foods would be the -- i'm surprised that that's the loser. where does tyson come out? you don't put that in the processed foods category. >> tyson is an important customer. generally speaking, beef is down, and poultry, protein is up. >> right. >> all over the place in terms of international operations. 24 different countries. why is your tax rate so high? your effective tax rate is still so high? 32%? in the second quarter of 2014. >> yeah, that's cash taxes. our cash tax rate would be a little lower than that, but

probably 25-plus percent. >> 32 effective tax rate. and i want to talk to you about russia, too. i mean you have huge on rations there, right? you've been there for a long time. >> we do. we've been there since 1998. russia our biggest business is a joint venture in the private sector probably the biggest producer of pulp in russia. russian economy is slowing. it was slowing before the, you know, the crisis in the ukraine emerged. but that's not helping. and the flow are affecting the europe is probably most significant. >> that's part of what we're seeing. >> yeah. >> all right we'll talk more -- we'll continue this conversation in just a moment. coming up when we return, though, oil prices falling this morning, as things on the geopolitical front looking relatively calm. the price from the trading pits. we'll bring you that when we return. plus walmart and target going to a whole new level in the fight for the consumer. the battle lines are drawn for a retail war. we'll talk about that when "squawk" returns.

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big data breach. some supermarket. did you see that? >> afraid to say i did not. >> you didn't read any of the supervalue? and walmart is promising shorter waits in checkout lines during the holiday shopping season. according to the "journal" the world's largest retailer is promising the staff all cash registers during peak shopping hours. long waits in checkout lines are among the most frequent complaints that walmart gets. you don't get "new york times" stuff while you're -- >> when i'm on vacation i try to avoid the news. >> do you find yourself moving to the center when you're not inundated on a daily basis by all your colleagues -- >> i'm sitting right in the middle. i'm on the line in the middle of the center. >> for the middle of manhattan, you probably are right in the middle. >> let's talk about trading this morning. unrest in ukraine and iraq sparking jitters in the equity and energy markets. joining us now to talk oil prices, dan vickry, senior contributor to street.com and independent oil trader and on the markets, jim iuorio is here the director of tjm institution

services and a cnbc contributor. dan, you're here at the desk. tell us what should we make of oil prices? >> i've been shocked. i mean -- >> they should be higher, right? >> absolutely. i mean, if we had these kind of geopolitical problems in 2011, we'd be $15 higher than now. >> does that mean they should be lower then? >> they are lower, in fact. >> that's what i mean. if all this can't move them, if it was pure supply and demand maybe they'd be even lower. >> what's happening is that there still is a big financial interest in oil. and that's really what drives the price. and the truth is everybody is long right now. >> they are. >> and that's the point. the point is when everybody's long, everybody can't be right at once. and all the traders right now are really, they're in the hamptons. they're sunning it till the end of summer. >> and therefore -- >> and therefore prices look like despite the fact that they should be much higher, and the risks are seriously to the upside, they're still going to swoon a little bit and stay under $100 a barrel at least until labor day. even some of the worst headlines -- >> post-labor day world what

happens? when people are paying attention, since i think you're arguing that people aren't. >> what's happened over the last few years is fascinating, because, most of the drive of the speculative bid that i spoken so much about for the last few years is gone. it was driven by the investment banks. they've sold their proprietary interest in the oil trade and in fact have not been doing the marketing to bring in new speculative organizations into oil for the last two years. and right now, there's really nothing to drive the price higher except for some really bad geopolitical incident or, in fact, if you could drive some of these long-term hedge funds out of the trade, that would give you a new impetus to bring fresh longs in. right now i think it's really a very, very flat kind of market, at least for the next several months. >> jim, help us on the equity side, though, real quick? >> well, this is interesting to me. here's what we're supposed to believe today. one is that the weak retail sales number, weak labor data assures the fed isn't going away more quickly than we thought

they would. we're also supposed to believe there's a de-escalation in russia and ukraine. we've seen that go up and down. to me it just seems like, and this goes for junk bonds and for stocks, the first move down that happened last week is met with dip buyers. that's normal in a cycle where i think there's going to be an adjustment. at the end of the day, risk is priced too low in my opinion. and there needs to be an adjustment in the stock market. granted i did think there was going to be a little more follow-through on the down side but i think we've got to get that first wave of dip buyers and flesh them out and i think that will come this week. >> you think the next two weeks are actually going to be a little complicated? >> i do -- >> everyone's in the hamptons, they're going to have to rush back? >> yeah, but remember that people -- that people being in the hamptons, that sometimes can increase volatility when there's not the same sort of volume going through. you know, orders can move the market in a bigger way. so that worries me a little bit over these two weeks. and that's why i think, if it starts to the downside, it could accelerate rather quickly. i'm not predicting the end of

the world sort of thing. i don't think there's a bubble but i think there's needed of a recalculation of risk. >> john, you got a question? >> what do you make of this disconnect we've got between natural gas and oil, and you think that's find more and more natural gas is that going to bring down the price of oil longer-term? >> well, what we haven't done is we haven't made the transition at this country from an oil-based economy into a natural gas based economy which should have happened obviously several years ago. that's the real domestic resource that we haven't really jumped on. the problem is that, as the companies continue to find fresh sources of shale gas, they continue to drive the price lower. because natural gas is a local market. and in fact, if you have a lot of supply here in the united states, that will drive the local united states price lower. whereas oil, despite the fact there's been an amazing increase in shale oil here in the united states, as well, that's more globally based. and because there is i shortage outside the united states, we still tend to see much higher prices in oil here domestically than we do in natural gas.

>> jim on equities real quick, given that you're sort of calling for at least a little bit of a swoon, for those folks who are waking up this morning listening to you who are thinking maybe i should put some money in the market or take money out of the market, what are they supposed to do? >> here's what they're supposed to do, people aren't necessarily traders, they're investors. they've been sitting on this stock market for years and it's tripled. at that point of time you're supposed to assess what amount of risk you had. when you began this journey if you were 60% stocks and 40% bonds. that stock portion of it has screamed higher. you're supposed to rebalance and not leave yourself susceptible to -- >> to bonds which is not exactly what people think they're supposed to be doing. >> bonds is the same as putting it in your mattress. when you look at everything available to you putting it in your mattress is better than facing a 10% to 12% correction. i did that in my longer-term money about two weeks ago. and i'm comfortable with that. i'm making zero money on that retirement money that's in the stable fund or whatever the heck they call it. it's like putting it in a

mattress. it's all about what kind of risk you want to take. you can ride this if you want but that's not ended great in the past. >> okay. we're going to leave the conversation there on that sort of darkish note. dan tepper and jim iuorio thank you for joining us this morning. >> thank you. >> coming up a video you have to see to believe, including a summer swim gone wrong. plus, the end of an era for a famous roller coaster. the details when "squawk box" comes right back.

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a video that will make you look twice this year. this comes from the los angeles area. an elderly man drove right into a backyard pool over the weekend. the driver told authorities that his flip-flops got tangled in the pedals, apparently caused him to lose control of his car, he was able to get out of the car unharmed. i shouldn't laugh. but this is one of those unbleachable stories. no one else was in the car or the pool at the time. the end of an era for roller coaster enthusiasts. the colossus the six flags magic mountain in california was once of the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world now it's retired after taking its final passengers for a ride on saturday.

which was world roller coaster day. the wooden coaster was built in 1978. it goes more than 60 miles an hour. the tallest coaster in the world now is the kingda-ka at six flags great adventures in new jersey. have you been? >> i think i have. i think i have. >> you think you have? >> i've been -- >> going to be right down there again this week, though. right out in new jersey. our wonderful german shepherd has been at boot camp. happens to be down there. trying to get her so that she doesn't hate every other dog and you know. it's funny when a little yapper barks at another dog as you're going by. when a 100 pound shepherd barks -- >> you think they learn that from the owner? >> german shepherds pretty much i think -- start like that. >> you think i'm missing it? >> really? >> more on the corporate deal of

the morning. dollar tree offering to buy -- with $10 billion. plus, four star general stan mcchrystal, his take on the major geopolitical stories of the day. perhaps more importantly his plan to get americans serving their country again. we're going to talk to him in just a little bit, as well. [ woman ] the cadillac summer collection is here. ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] during the cadillac summer's best event, lease this all-new 2014 cts for around $459 a month or purchase with 0% apr. hurry in -- this exceptional offer ends soon.

welcome back to "squawk box" and the headlines this morning, dollar tree is offering to buy family dollar for $78.50 a share in cash about $9.7 billion and that could potentially trump the deal that family dollar already has in place to be bought by dollar tree for $4 less at $74.50 a share. >> breakup fee. >> online home furnishing retailer wayfair wants to go public. it's seeking $350 million in an ipo. and credit suisse is reportedly played a role in the spirit

desanto collapse. they put together billions of dollars in securities that were issued by offshore investment vehicles of banco espirito. they were sold to portuguese to the bank's retail customers. and i don't know just sounds like it might have been part of the unraveling. >> looks like a little bit of a mess. let's talk about a story, a feel-good story and an important story. millennials are volunteering at rates over 50%, which is a testament to their willingness to serve. over the demand for service exceeds the supply of existing opportunities, franklin project is an initiative that intends to bridge that divide and envisions a year of full-time national service for every young american. four star general stan mcchrystal is chair of the leadership council of the franklin project. and we are thrilled to have him on the broadcast this morning. to talk about this. and other things. stan, before we get to that let me just ask you a little bit on just the geopolitical issues of the morning because we're all trying to make sense of where things are. but the question i wanted to ask you is actually about president

obama. president obama has been criticized over the past week or more now for all of the various problems in the world. whether it be what's happening in iraq, in the middle east, or whether it's what's happening in russia, in ukraine, and i wanted to get your just view on how we should think about that. >> well, i think if you try to blame all the problems in the world on one person you oversimplify things absurdly. we live in a complex world that moves really quickly right now. so what we've got to do is try to make sense of things in a holistic way. and i think that president obama's trying to do that. but it's a tough -- it's a tough task ahead of him. and i think we've also got to articulate to ourselves, to americans, what we're trying to do. because i think there's some confusion on our end. >> general, just walk us through the permutations both the middle east and iraq and the israeli picture and the extent you can in russia, sort of where does this go in your mind over the next couple of weeks and months? >> well, in the near-term i

think iraq is suffering from some of the things that happened to it and some of the things it's done to itself. particularly it's sectarian leadership under maliki and his regime. and so, i think this isis is taking the opportunity of a very weak government to create an existential threat to the state. now we're going to see whether the iraqis can stand up to that. i think in the next weeks and months you're going to see an increasing resistance to isis. i think that there will be likely different groups, not just the kurds, but the government of iraq forces, but it remains to be seen whether things like the tribes in al anbar are going to rise up as they did back starting in 2006. it's not anything for sure there. >> and on russia? >> well, i think russia is trying to do whatever it can in the ukraine. and i think they are pushing, testing the west. i think that the west has got to decide just how firm we're going to be. >> and how firm should we be. >> i think we need to be very

firm. i think that we don't need to pick a fight or a war but i think that if you start to give, particularly to someone like putin, that you're going to have a very bad outcome. >> finally israel and then i want to talk about national service. since we're going around the horn, what happens there at this point? >> yeah, i think there's a long road ahead to try to get a political solution. which is where it must go. i think we're almost distracted by the fact that hamas used their ability to shoot rockets and dig tunnels to cause israel to react. that was a cynical way to get israel to operate inside gaza, and i think that it really causes people somewhat to forget the fact that the wider issue of palestine is the one that's got to be dealt with. it's got to be a political solution. >> okay. general mcchrystal, thank you for that. let's talk about the issue we wanted to have you on this morning about which is national service. you have a big idea. which is that we should create a

year of national service in this country. are we ready for that? >> well, i think we certainly have the need to be ready for it. if you go back in history to america, there was a sense of citizenship where people had a pretty wide concept of their responsibility. not just to the nation, but to fellow americans. and i think that's weakened. and you see it in our rates of voting. you see it in some of the schisms politically and economically and i think we've got to get back to it. and one way we can do that is to give every young american an opportunity to serve. because the opportunity to serve and the experience of it changes a person fundamentally. you vote at higher rates. you're involved in your community at higher rates. there's a lower unemployment rate for people who've done some kind of service, and so if we're not ready for the big idea then i think we are saying we're ready to live with some of the deterioration that we've seen. and i'm not. >> most of our viewers think about business and economics. what's the cost of doing this? >> well, up front, if you're talking about a million opportunities a year for young

people, it's about $23 billion a year in direct costs. but studies have shown that you get about a two for one return on that investment. and there are lots of other indirect returns. so in reality, i think it's an investment that would pay off many times over. >> general, i have a question going back to the middle east. the seeds of the turmoil we're seeing know were sown a number of years ago, maybe 100 years ago after the first world war. what's, practically speaking, given where we're at, what's the longer-term solution? and how does this play out? >> well, you're right. the seeds of some of what we're seeing go back more than 100 years but certainly to the psychs pico agreement. i think one of the problems we have in the mideast right now is it's like a piece of ground that's eroding and there's very little in the way of a narrative to cause that erosion to stop. and so you see the movements everywhere from libya, across to iraq. even afghanistan. there doesn't seem to be something that the people can grab onto. and so they're looking for things like extremist islam.

groups like isis, and in some cases hypernationalism. i think we're going to have to find some statesmen to arise. i think some boundaries are going to change. i think some national boundaries are likely to adjust. but i don't think there's any central narrative that people believe in right now. there's no pan arab nationalism, there's nothing else that seems to unify different groups. >> i want to go back to the unify issue. not to bop around but to go back to the national service issue just for a second which is to understand this. how are these million people going to be selected? are they going to volunteer? how would it work? >> in the near-term the idea is because we have such demand, we had 580,000 applicants for americorps and only 80,000 slots, the demand is there. we would use existing programs, everything from the peace corps, americorps, city year and others as places to start to both offer current opportunities and to expand those. we could have city and state,

things like fema corps and individuals would join those and they'd have a year, of service year of paid national service of modest compensation, and then those organizations would operate in concert with local governments, and in some cases with nonprofits to provide meaningful work. >> general, very first question about i mean when you ask a question like do you think the president is responsible for everything that's happening in the world, i don't know, obviously there was no other way to answer that other than no. obviously. and "the new york times" peter baker already had a huge sort of a piece to counteract some of the criticism from hillary clinton and others. but in peter baker's piece, he talks about what both democrats and republicans have said. number one, in the view of his critics, the president's critics, he failed to staunch the rise of isis when he rejected a proposal to arm more moderate elements. he left a vacuum in iraq by not leaving a more residual force

behind in 2011. he signaled a weakness to vladimir putin of russia encouraging the kremlin to think it could intervene in ukraine without fear of significant consequences. did he do anything that may have added to some of the problems we're having now or he's just being unfairly criticized by both sides? >> well, i think we can go back to all these problems and find somebody we can hold responsible. but you don't navigate from where you want to be, you navigate from where you are. and that's what we've got to do now. we have to decide what our strategy is in that region. we got to decide what's most important to us. and we've got to articulate that clearly to the american people, and to that region. >> i mean, the article goes on to say that he's tried to actually, because previous presidents have been blamed, you know, for what's going on in the world. and he's tried to say, look, the united states is no longer going to be you know, sort of the enforcer of all of good and evil around the world. and that has been sort of characteristic of the presidency. is that -- of the current one. is that the way we should be?

we're not, america is not here to lead in certain ways, and fill a vacuum -- certainly with humanitarian stuff we were going to help those people get off of that mountain. we probably should have done something in rwanda. certainly we can lead, and prevent genocide, can't we? or is that too much for us to do because it's a village? >> well, america's going to lead in the world. it's going to have to lead. >> really? >> it's the one nation that is always going to play an indispensable role. the point is we can't do everything. and so we have got to balance national interests with values and morality and sometimes we're going to leave things undone we wish we could do. sometimes we're going to do things that people will criticize and we'll never get it completely right. but we're going to be engaged. if we try to pretent that we won't i think we'll pay the price. >> i think it might be more than a coincidence that there's so many hot spots in so many different areas. >> it's tough world right now. >> general, you know, we always want to talk to you about geopolitical issues. before you go, tell us this,

because we keep trying to come back to it. on this year of national service, what has to happen to make it a reality? >> well in the near-term what we need is people to buy into the idea. young people already do. but we need my generation, our generation, to accept the idea. ultimately, we are going to need funding. both private funding and public funding to expand to help do this to make it a reality. and create an expectation. the ideas that it would be voluntary but we're trying to make it culturally expected. so that young people start to ask each other not if you served, but where you served. and i think that's what we can do. >> okay. general mcchrystal i think it's a brilliant idea and we appreciate you being on the program this morning. >> thanks so much. >> thanks so much. >> i'm -- i can't believe you didn't see "the new york times." >> i read the peter baker piece. >> oh, you did? because drudge put it like as the world boils, fingers point, obama's way. >> i saw the piece. >> the entire piece was saying, most, it's wrong to blame him. so it was the tps sort of, you know, saying this is what people

are saying, here's why it's not true. and yet they had a on and when i first saw it it was like wow this is really "the new york times" wrote this. then when i read it it was you know basically excusing. anyway coming up, bourbon makers but then so you're not -- so you did read it. >> i did read it. >> so you did see the thinking at the "times" on this. that's where that first question came from. >> no. >> really. bourbon makers see a bright future which could pay off for both consumers and companies. details after the break. and news from dollar general looking to buy family dollar for $78.50 a share. more on this developing story in just a bit. "squawk box" will be right back. i make a lot of purchases for my business. and i get a lot in return with ink plus from chase. like 50,000 bonus points when i spent $5,000

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comes back in vogue, beer comes back in vogue. wine comes back in vogue. i don't know. did you drink at all on the last week? >> no, i'm not a big drinker. >> yeah? >> a couple beers. >> yeah. >> let's tell you what's coming up next, the host of hgtv's "income property" and "flipping the block" is here and we want to know how scared should we be that the flipping fad seems to be coming back big time? "squawk box" returns with that story when we return. tomorrow on "squawk box," the pitch man that for one reason or another you're mesmerized by. >> trivago 0 finds it easy to. >> is it his cool sexy dad persona? >> makes it easy [ bleep ], [ bleep ] -- >> is it his walk and talk? >> did you notice that there's so many prices out there for the exact same room? >> or his shirt and scruff? >> you can adjust the price so it fits in with your driving range. or [ bleep ] [ bleep ] cut. >> nevertheless, he's amassed a

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real estate flipping is back in a big way. how worried should we be this time around? here is scott mcgillivray. >> mcgillivray. >> i got one extra syllable there? mcgillivray, there's an extra

one, is the host of hgtv's "income property" and his latest show is "flipping the block." we were talking off camera about why housing isn't even stronger. i can't imagine we've got a bubble in flipping yet, do we? >> no. i would say it's very early to say we would have a bubble. i think there's some opportunities. and flipping is always attractive to investors because it's one of the fastest ways to make money in real estate. it's also one of the riskiest ways to make money in real estate. we're seeing it come back in some markets. not all markets have a lot of success with flipping. but it hasn't come back the way we saw sort of post-recession -- or pre-recession. >> you actually have to be good at it at this point? and you have to be in the right areas. you could i guess in the heyday everything worked? >> all boats float in a rising tide, right? here's the thing with flipping the true format to flipping is to do value-added renovations. which means when you put money in to fix it up it's worth more than the total cost you've

invested. but what happens is, that's a lot of work. and people prefer to just buy something and then let the values increase with the market. which is called real estate speculating. and i think there's a clear difference between the two. real estate speculating you buy something, you hope the value goes up and you make a profit. flipping is supposed to be a lot of work invested in to generate what's called forced appreciation. right? and so people kind of confuse the two and they think i just buy it and if the market's going up it's going to be a good flip. >> when you first sat down i said how many flips have you done. >> yeah. >> successfully. you thought somewhere between like 60? >> i would say 80% to 85% of my flips were successful. >> what went wrong with the ones that didn't work? >> you know what? i would say that either -- >> was it a timing issue? >> it was a bit of both. underpredicting the amount of work that needed to be done. i'm one of those people when you find a hidden problem, i'm not the person to bury it in the

walls and pass that on to the next buyer. so some things you kind of get in over your head. you do the right thing and hope not to lose money. but i would consider a successful flip one where i make a significant amount of money. enough to justify -- >> what's significant? 10, 20, 30 -- what? what is your threshold? >> well, i mean if you're going to be doing ten or let's say ten in a year and you want to be making over $100,000 a year you have to be profiting after all costs at least $10,000 or more per property. i've had some properties where i've had profits in the six digits. i've had some properties where i've broken even. i would consider breaking even a fail. because now all your time and energy has been wasted months, of investment. >> so the difference between redoing a house that you're going to stay in, and redoing a house to flip, is like -- it's like night and day? because we're redoing a house but we're going to live there. and i was reading you were saying like don't spend a lot of money. i think you want to buy a bunch

of cheap crap to make it look okay like it's totally redone. you don't do that if you're going to live there, do you? you've got to spend a lot of money and invest in the quality. >> when you're renovating your own home it's nice to know the value of what you're putting in. but it's not a necessity. because, in your own home you're making emotional decisions. you may want a beautiful sunroom off the back of your place because it suits your lifestyle, and this is what you want to do every morning. >> if you're flipping totally different. >> that's a zero. you've invested your money into the wrong place. so you have to decide, i think a lot of people don't realize they're actually flipping their own homes a lot of the time. people move around. >> yeah, right. >> and you're investing typically in the home you live in. so you should be savvy enough to say to yourself, you know, if i'm going to put a second office in my house for instance, which is pretty much the worst value add you could do, is renovating, and putting addition on your home to put a second office in your house. >> or even the first office -- >> even the first office -- >> we had a study, and instead of a bedroom takes money away from what your house is worth.

>> exactly. but if you're going to plan on living there for 15 years, and you know, the both people in the house need to have -- >> are you from canada? >> i am. >> because we're talking about houses, instead of -- >> but that's why he's invested both in the u.s. and in canada. >> that's right. >> the house -- >> there you go. well i live in florida and i live in toronto. i do part-time in each. i have a home in both. and it's interesting, because i invest in florida, and i invest in canada. and i invest actually in many different states. and you see huge differences. huge, huge differences in terms of values, in terms of whether flipping is working, or buy and hold -- >> i think you're right about what happened. the first time around, we didn't know we were going to sell and everything that we did -- we barely got our money back i would say based on everything that we did. so that's what you have to think about. >> you have to think about how long you're going to be there and what value it is to you to what you're putting in. but if you are planning on selling in the short-term, five years or less -- >> are you saying put a bunch of

crappy materials? >> absolutely not. absolutely not. and that's i think a big misconception with flipping. >> do the right improvements. >> do a lipstick job -- today's buyers are going to be a little savvier. they're looking a little deeper than the surface. i think people have been burnt and we learn from our mistakes. and they're doing home inspections. when you're not in a rush, it used to be you buy a house, you're competing offers, you have no time for inspection. it's like highest bidder wins, and now it's -- you've got time. so you can go and see the property a couple times. you're opening up the electrical panel. you're checking for mold. you're having a home inspection done. so if you're going to put lipstick on a pig over there, people are going to be able to see through that. today's buyers, i would hope. >> so scott, how is your business? talking about short-term, longer-term what's holding housing back? why hasn't the demographic with mortgage rates still at lows?

>> i think fear is still a big part of it. one of the hardest things for us to measure in this business, the impact of emotion, the impact of fear on the actual prices. realistically prices should be higher. >> so hgtv couldn't find like a telegenic guy to do this job? they had to settle for someone who -- >> that's said. >> the other guy we had on that handyman once that looked like he was a chippendale. >> yep. >> what do they -- how many people do they interview? did you actually know anything or did they teach you after they found you. >> that's a fair question. that's a fair question. >> lucky for business news it has nothing -- >> obviously in this business it's not about looks, right? >> exactly. >> honestly, the show for me was born out of what i actually did for a living. out of college i bought a rental property -- >> you were flipping? >> no i started with buy and hold. i bought a place because i needed somewhere to live as a student and there was so much competition for student rentals in the city i was living in i

was better off buying than i was renting. as a business student, we sort of analyzed this as a small project, and noticed the profitability. >> you know 20 hard means so we got to go. scott we got 20 sends to get to break. got the -- >> the whole thing. >> i'm throwing you off. >> when we come back a big hour of "squawk" still to come. the big gathering of the fed heads in jackson hole. we'll talk about that and a lot more when "squawk box" returns. ♪ [ dog barks ] ♪ [ male announcer ] imagine the cars we drive... being able to see so clearly... to respond so intelligently and so quickly, they can help protect us from a world of unseen danger. it's the stuff of science fiction... minus the fiction. and it is mercedes-benz... today. see your authorized dealer for exceptional offers through mercedes-benz financial services.

dollar dilemma. dollar general cutting down dollar tree in its bid to buy family dollar. a look at what the deal means for the dollar retail space. big, beautiful, burgers. >> you missed a spot. >> the ceo of cke joining us to talk about the fast food glut and gives us his outlook for the economy. and china embraces the ice bucket challenge. as the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now. welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc first in business worldwide i'm joe kernen along

with andrew ross sorkin, becky's off today. our guest khost is chairman and ceo of international paper. it's good to have you here. you have your pulse on the absolute finger -- >> i wouldn't say absolute. it doesn't feel like a 4% growing economy right now. >> the other one is counting trucks on i-75. one that we used to use. the corrugated boxes. when we have the krafts on from new england we talk about boxes, too. because things move, commerce moves through boxes. >> 95% of what 3406s around the country at some point in time in the supply chain is in a corrugated box and we make one-third of them. >> have you seen -- on our network it's great. did you see the woman who designed the box that you can just like pick it up and it turns in to a box? it's more expensive than the ones you have to fold and be very careful with. will people ever pay more since it's such a tough place to make

any margins at all, do you think there's room for that product? because no one invested in it i don't think. someone might have invested a little but the sharks did not like it. >> it's interesting. people think of the box business as a kwhodty business but it really isn't. we sell 55 million boxes a day. and rarely do -- >> what if each one was two cents more. >> we'd be a lot more profitable. we'd make a lot -- >> but if you had to buy it and it cost you two cents more to make it it would be difficult? >> usually relative to the value of the product, the boxes are relatively small piece. and if the box doesn't function to protect the product the contents are impacted. two cents more, but it's a very competitive business. if you're not competitive you're not going to get the business. >> if you can occasionally we are the fastest growing network in prime-time on cable. if you could mention that along with me. >> no one told me to do that. >> just a little shark tank promo. that's at 8:00 eastern time also at 10:00.

followed -- >> and the restaurant start-up. >> yeah. >> coming up -- or not coming up making headlines, we do have some big news. dollar general conference call that is just beginning at the top of this hour as we first broke the story at the start of the show. the company making a $78.50 per share cash bid for family dollar. dollar tree made its own offer for $74.50 a share. that deal was a cash and stock last month. we now perhaps have a bidding war at hand. also in global news this morning. china says mercedes is guilty of price abuses improperly using its control over supplies of replacement parts, this is just the latest company coming under fire from chinese investigators, under the country's anti-monopoly law. and tesla is boosting the warranty coverage on its model-s sedan just a week after consumers reports highlighted problems with the electric car. among the changes, the drive unit warranty is now increased

to match that of the battery pack. it covers eight years. that's a long, long time. and what it calls infinite miles which i'm surprised about. tesla says the change will have a moderately negative effect on its earnings in the short-term. joe? >> let's get a check on the markets. u.s. equity futures at this point were looking really strong earlier today, when you see them up 90 points premarket some of that is maybe a little bit of a snapback from that sell-off on friday. because we were supposed to be up 16. next thing we knew we were down 80 after that convoy was destroyed by ukraine. and so this is a little bit of a snapback. although we closed down only 50 or so on friday? on the docket this week economic data on inflation and housing and the fed's annual jackson hole conference where janet yellen and ecb president mario draghi will be joining us now with more on what to expect ann greenhouse is chief global strategist for btid and lindsay, we ask everyone, dan, when's the

first rate hike in your view? >> we're in the middle of the year. >> middle '15. >> a solid, people are there for a reason. that's a solid. >> do you wish it was sooner or is that too soon? >> well, my personal view is we could probably do a little sooner but my job is straddling the line between providing my opinion to clients and providing clients with an analysis of what is likely and the answer for the latter what is likely is going to be somewhere around the middle of next year. >> people think you look at how well the economy is doing and it's not great but it's pretty good. a lot of people don't think these emergency measures are still needed. hasn't the rest of the world and europe in particular given the fed cover to stay low? because, you know -- >> sure that's fair. but also remember it's not just from the fed's point of view. it's not just the function of the economy doing better but things are improving. it's are you at a level that you deem necessary or you deem capable of withstanding increases in rates. when the fed looks at inflationary pressures or some of the broader measures of the labor market/beyond the unemployment rate.

from the fed's point of view they think they have some room to run here so to speak and again, using the experience of the last few years as basis they are much, much more concerned about aborting the recovery early than they are letting it run up too high. >> recovery in quotation marks, really. lindsay are you a behind the curve or ahead of the curve fed person at this point? >> i think the fed is in terms of my opinion of where the fed is, i think they're right on mark. i think it's very justifiable that the fed is sitting on the sidelines at this point. looking at the labor market there's a tremendous amount of slack still out there. and i think the fed wants to make sure that the labor market is clearly on the mend before they're willing to move away from this accommodative stance. now that being said, i think the fed has a reason, very reasonable reason for moving away from quantitative easing. but again, in terms of the first fed rate hike i have to say that i'm looking out to the end of 2016, possibly early 2017 for the first fed rate hike. >> well -- >> your eyes are bugging out of

your brain. >> two things, first let me disagree although lindsey is sort of, let me disagree. the fed is not sitting on the sidelines, lindsey obviously knows this. we sort of overlook them winding down qe, as providing less accommodation. so they are doing something in the face of what's going on. >> sure, sure. >> they're not increasing rates. but i'm going to take the other side of that, lindsey, i don't see how they make it to 2017 if things continue along the path, a big if obviously, the path that we're seeing now, building inflationary pressures, however moderate they might be in a tightening labor market is going to necessitate some kind of tightening policy sometime in the middle to end of next year. >> i think you're right. if we continue to see inflationary pressures build but as of last week's ppi report i think that was more in line of what chair yellen is saying that the transitory or temporary inflation measures as a result of energy specifically are beginning to abate. if we continue to see that trend come into play, meaning declining head line inflationary

pressures that further justifies the fed sitting at these zero level interest rates for a prolonged period of time. and i think the fed's primary focus, even if we do begin to push back up to that 2% or even that 2.5% threshold, their focus is on the labor market, and with stagnant average hourly earnings and the composition of employment still very benign with temporary, part time, low wage jobs dominating the employment gains that we have seen, there's plenty of evidence to remain in this accommodative stance. >> john how much do you focus on what the fed's doing and what do you think is actually going to happen? >> i'm not an economist so i'm not going to try to pretend i am one, but i think the fed is doing the right thing by, you know, backing off quantitative easing. we see no pressure on wage rates in our environment, and we're investing $70 million and hiring 100 people in the u.s. but first investment we've made in five years in the u.s. for the u.s. market. >> how many people? >> over 100 people.

a big company -- >> if you don't mind me asking why do you see no wage pleasures in your particular business? is there a shortage of skilled labor? is there just so many workers you don't necessarily need to pay more to attract talent? >> we've got tremendous productivity over the past decade. so if you look at our productivity per person, it's up exponentially. you know, we do have an issue long-term of filling jobs as generations change and making sure we've got trained people. but, the supply and demand in the labor markets, because, again, the economy's been so weak -- >> what kind of jobs? >> you know -- >> these 100 people? >> these are $50,000 a year jobs. it's a good wage. but we're not -- >> are these on the floor? in an office? >> these are on the floor. expanding one of our businesses to make moor paper cups. because paper cup demand is growing in the u.s. but i think the point is, until we see a significant increase in demand, businesses like

international paper that serve a set of customer share in the u.s. aren't going to expand. because we don't need to. we've got plenty of capacity. >> gentlemen, and lindsey, thank you. and dan greenhaus, and lindsey pieza we should be excited about jackson hole. about -- >> no, we should not be excited about jackson hole. it is a big problem -- >> if we can't be, it's going to be hoard to convince our viewers to be excited. >> jackson hole used to be an exciting outlet for fed officials to announce new mon ta tear policies. >> now they have press conferences. they don't need jackson hole. that's the frob lem. >> i'm a skier -- >> thank you, guys. >> coming up next when we return, it's technology that's been used in movies like spider-man and the social network. now otoy is ready to take its 3-d graphics and realtime rendering to video games. we'll speak to the ceo about this disruptive technology and how it's being used throughout entertainment.

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and find out more about our two-year price guarantee. comcast business. built for business. welcome back to "squawk box" this morning. we have a head line for you. i want to call it like hotel wars. there should be a tv show called hotel wars. >> is this the guy from -- >> the sultan of brunei making a bid for new york's plaza hotel.

"the wall street journal" reporting an investment vehicle affiliated with brunei has offered to pay about $2 billion to acquire the plaza. london's governor -- grosvenor, rather, and the dream hotel in lower manhattan. the sultan and his luxury hotel operator have come under fire for harsh new laws enacted in the islamic country. the laws sparked that boycott of his global properties including the beverly hills hotel. and there's been a lot of news about that recently. >> for the first time -- i have stayed at the grosvenor house on hyde park. awesome. >> they redid it and now it's awesome. for awhile it wasn't so awesome. >> thank you. >> this is where kshs this is where i truly do -- >> yeah, yeah, yeah, for the context. because i at least have heard of this luxury hotel. i'm not totally up to date on it. >> the grosvenor house is now -- they redid it. >> to the standards that someone like you would expect? >> yes. now it's up to snuff. >> all right. a missive light field or a

star trek dubbed the hollowdeck was seen as science fiction at best but innovative cloud rendering company which has google's eric schmidt on the board is developing technology that offers us a window in any world. joining us to discuss is co-founder and ceo of otoy, it's like the future, it's like honest to go holograms where you can do 3-d window -- >> but it's cloud based. >> that's where it throws me. >> it comes from the cloud. but can show up on any device including devices on the market today such as mobile phones. google, samsung and others are investing in phone cases that could turn your phone into golgs that you could peer into like the old viewfinders, the old toys, and that's going to be -- >> anywhere? >> it's anywhere. you could be in your room. you could put these goggles on and be on the beach at, in jamaica. you could be next to the taj mahal.

it's a cube of light. so it's not like a 2-d image like on tv. this is something you can walk through and we're working on all the different senses, audio, touch -- >> the algorithms that must be involved with making it 3-d, it boggles the mind. but i immediately think of video game applications. the hollywood has been doing this in really expensive big budget movies for awhile but this brings it -- >> home. >> to a smartphone. an application that you can have on your smartphone? >> thaerkt. we are a visual effects company. that's where a lot of this technology came from. we've been doing gc for films. light stage won an academy award for benjamin button. so we've been scanning actors and objects holographically for a long time. that's the seeds that led to this technology where you can put that on the cloud and render it holographically and that holographic stream is very easy to decode while you're navigating through it on a mobile device. >> did you read up on this?

>> yeah, no it's amazing. so how far -- how many years is this away? >> years? no it's months away. >> months away? >> we're getting -- the mobile phones that are on the market today google just announced, google cardboard, it's not a joke. they're going to create cases for your phone that you can use to navigate through street view or google earth. the next step is how do you deliver an immersive 3-d video scream to that device? so we've come up with this technology that renders everything like it would be for a hollywood film but streams it as a holographic stream to something like google cardboard you could actually experience that. so this is not something that's years away it's really months away i think. >> and what about wearables? how does that change everything? is there going to be a time where everyone's wearing google glass or something like that and you're seeing this wherever you go? >> yeah, i think that -- google glass is really just sort of one end point. google cardboard is something that's more immersive. it takes you some place. it fully impercents you inside

the environment that we're projecting. and that's something that i think will catch on even faster than google glass because you don't really need to buy an extra device. this will work with your existing phone and it's very cheap. >> what's the revenue model? where's the money? >> when you start moving, we're already working with three major hollywood studios that are looking to take -- you've got blue rays and dvds that are declining in sales, and a lot of what makes those valuable would be extended content. if you could take the sets from these movies, actors, behind-the-scenes and turn that into some place you could visit and then stream that that's worth a lot. it's probably worth tens of billions of dollars where you consider that that's where everything is moving. it is going to be applied to both video games and linear entertainment i think. both of those combined -- >> in the short-term for you the revenue isn't hollywood? >> it's in hollywood and it's also broader market right? we think that there's a lot of content creators out there. our tools are web based you don't need an expensive computer to make holographic rules or immersion.

that's something you can do from a browser. it's more like a youtube cont t content. you can make these kinds of holographic scenes, and distribute that to anyone. it's a meritocracy, the better the experience the more people will use it. you can advertise it, of course you can sell it. so i think that yeah, it's broader than just hollywood. we'll start with the studios but then we want to see this expand to everyone. >> does the processing power matter? i mean if you think out two, three, four years from now, w t what -- what you know how realistic things will look? i know they look pretty realistic already but does it get even crazier? >> it does. it gets crazier because we can use the cloud -- >> cloud based rendering. >> i know. but there's a processing issue. >> i like the cloud based rendering idea that you don't the sky's the limit basically. >> yeah. >> infinite. >> today we can render just about anything in the cloud and deliver that experience as a hologram. three or four years from now, you'll be able to interact with that world and change that world in realtime. and that will be as cost effective as just streaming a static world that you can navigate through today.

>> when we are singularity comes, when we've downloaded our brains onto hardware, we will be traveling -- >> in his world. >> on holograms through cloud based rendering and we'll never leave -- right can i do that? >> some people will want that. so, yeah. not everyone. but some. >> take out an avatar. i've got a couple picked out. >> who did you pick out? >> i don't know. big handsome -- like that guy that was flipping the houses. i might come back as him. >> brad pitt? >> yeah, someone -- so total coincidence that -- who -- what -- your best friends with roddenberry's son and you're doing a holodeck that's just weird right? >> we've been best friends since we were 12 years old. >> is the co-creator of star trek. >> everybody knows gene roddenberry. >> he invested in the company. and he's investing in many things. he wants to build all the star trek technology he funds to fund that there's the x prize and he said our goal and here's this

money build something kohl jules and i said holodeck and here we are. >> is bones any of his relatives involved or -- >> he's the last one. >> shatner's hair involved? no? okay. thank you. >> jules. >> jules. >> coming up, they like things big in texas. and the new carlos jr. burger says it's just that as you can see right here in this commercial. that's supposed to be, of course, about aburger. the coo of cke restaurants talks the fast food economy in just a bit. we'll keep running that for awhile. >> you're talking awfully fast for the first time ever. i don't know why -- >> rushing through this. >> we could check out the futures -- >> get to the end quick enough. >> but why. but why?

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welcome back. the ice bucket challenge showing no signs of slowing down since july 29th the social media driven craze has raised more than $13 million for the als association. among the business celebrities that accepted the challenge over the weekend, jeff bezos and bill gates. and ear getting word this morning. the ice bucket campaign apparently now hitting china. our colleagues in beijing tell

us that chinese i.t. entrepreneurs have been dousing themselves with cold water since the weekend. >> back here in the states, another celebrity challenge, this time for beyonce. a texas tech football coach cliff kingsbury nominating the green bee -- brought out his entire football team to help him with the challenge. he also nominated former red raiders manny ramirez, it's a dominated here which is weird, louis vazquez, and wes well kerr. wes walker it says here as his team dumped ice water on his head beyonce's drunk in love started to play. >> you see it's a great hbo commercial for the new jay-z, beyonce concert that's coming up called bang bang, and if you understand what may be happening in their marriage, it's a whole -- >> i want to ask you about that. >> i don't know but it's fascinating. >> there's been rumors. then it seems like it is going

okay. >> i don't know. >> it's none of our business anyway, right? >> i'm not sure. can the ceo of cke restaurant owner of carl's junior and the red burrito is going to be here to talk about the glut in casual fast food dining. always an excuse for images like that. but next, air travel in 25 years. what will change? phil lebeau is here. we can -- i mean, i don't know if you're as exciting as anyway. phil? >> andrew, 25 years from now no crying kids are allowed on planes. you won't believe it. we've got the whole story coming up. "squawk box" returns. so what ya got on deck? skyfall. lean in, then some pinterest, you? twitter. minecraft and then some hunger games. boom. wow, you guys are all set, huh? oh yeah, new amazon fire phone. it comes with amazon prime -

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning. let's take a look at some stocks that are on the move this morning. first the story we broke earlier this morning. dollar general starting a possible bidding war for family dollar. it's offering to buy its rival for $78.50 per share in cash. that's about 9.7 billion dollars total. family dollar already has an agreement in place to be bought by dollar tree for $74.50 per

share. you're looking at family dollar now over the original price, so the expectation is there will be a higher bid to come. we will see. also in a public group said to be in consultation with its banks ahead of a meeting with activist investor elliot management. "the wall street journal" reporting the ad agency is working on possible responses to elliot which now holds a 6.7 stake and is said to have called for a sale of that company. and credit suisse issued an outperform rating on seaworld entertainment. that stock has been battered recently in the wake of the black fish documentary and disappointing attendance. credit suisse says the stock is likely near a bottom. >> so many people complain about the flying experience these days, i mean, take your pick. small seats, screaming brats in first class. >> it's old. it's old. they put it in the prompter. but we've done it enough at this

point. >> you drove to connecticut, right? >> yeah. >> so there weren't any -- just your own in this case. they're okay, though, right? >> there i am. >> you say it gets old. it never gets old for people. the real question is -- there we go, the real question would it be even different 25 years from now. phil lebeau joins us with a look at how things will change. i don't know if you ever did weigh in on toddlers in first class. >> i know where he's coming from. i mean if you're on a long flight, nothing's worse. nothing's worse. >> but do you think they should be in steerage or the wheel well? >> nobody thinks that it's fun but you can't legislate it out. there's no way of getting around it. >> used to be you could send kids through the postal service, through the mail. >> in my day that's what we did. >> we have pictures of that. would you go back to that? >> no, i would not go back to that. andrew flies a lot. i fly a lot. we don't fly as much as you. the bottom line is expect more congestion in the future. and if you are somebody who does a lot of traveling, the bottom line is you're going to see a

lot more people who are flying in the future. look at this, 25 years from now, the number of people flying, even 2032, not even 25 years it's going to basically double up to 6.7 billion people worldwide annually are expected to be flying by 2032. what can you expect when you're flying 25 years from now? well airlines will be offering more connectivity. we're already seeing it. but it's really going to take hold over the next several years and you can imagine 25 years from now you'll be able to really keep in touch with people when you're flying. you're going to be bidding on open seats. this i think is something that we'll start to see within the next five years. you get on a plane there might be a seat available in business class they'll say take out your phones put on your bids if you want to move up here. and finally airlines will be offering a la carte pricing so you can customize the type of service you want in your seat. >> anybody will be able to walk anywhere. and again, you can be in that big seat and have nothing more than the seat and the seat belt that goes with it.

you can be in a tiny seat and have a five course meal and priority boarding. it really allows the traveler to have complete control over crafting the flight journey that she or he wants and fits their budget and needs. >> so what type of planes will we be flying on? this is animation from airbus in terms of what they envoice the future to look like. we'll see more light in planes. bigger windows, will continue to get bigger in the future and the cabins will have more humidity. that's what we started to see with the dreamliner so it's not as dry as stuffy. but one thing won't change, yes, you will still have irritating people on your flights. >> my dream flight in 25 years would have special seats, unlimited cocktails, and just be, you know, you'd have capability to find a place to relax, have quiet time. >> in 25 years my dream flight would not have kids.

pretty much. screaming kids. >> my dream flight in 25 years would not have crying babies. >> now look. that was not -- that was not there for to bring this thing up. but it is a complaint of people who fly. and we've all been there. i've flown with kids. i know what it's like when your kid has a meltdown on a plane. there's nothing you can do. but it is a source of irritation. >> i got a handful of questions. the first is, nobody has talked about whether the planes are going to go faster than they do now. >> no. >> because that's all i really care about. >> will they go a little faster? yes. but the bottom line is airlines have made it clear they will choose fuel efficiency over speed any time. >> i'm a little bit surprised that's that where you're going. >> you want to be downloaded onto a -- >> i want to live forever. but my point is, you saw how many planes we're going to sell to china. as middle classes around the globe come up to where they have more leisure time and what

they're going to want to do is travel but it's always going to be fossil fuels. always. i can't see any way -- >> there's a lot of research that's being done to move away from that. but what -- >> to what? it's not going to be natural gas. >> biofuels. >> biofuels is still fossil fuel based. >> generally speaking. >> it's not going to be wind, renewable, solar -- >> it can't be solar or -- >> the carbon foot print is here to stay. >> it's a matter of how much more efficient -- >> and the bloombergs of the world there's only one guy on the plane as they worry about global warming. >> they bring their staff on the planes. >> planes on these long haul flights eventually you're going to go into that lower atmosphere hopefully that can cut down the flight time between new york and tokyo by an hour -- >> lower or higher? >> higher atmosphere. >> we will go faster. and you know that people do want to -- >> what about autopiloted planes? i mean, where there's no pilot on the plane. >> that's won't happen. >> that won't happen?

>> or people piloting it from the ground? >> i don't think that will ever happen. >> the second passenger. >> look jim mcnerney he has basically said if we want to we can make a plane take off and land on our own without somebody in the cockpit. do you want that? >> -- really invested in landing the plane safely? don't you think that helps -- >> not disagreeing. i'm just wondering. my other question is you showed this terrific image of a plane that looked like it had sort of a glass shell where you could almost like sun yourself out there. is that realistic at all? >> it's not realistic. but it is realistic that you'll see more light being let into planes. the bigger windows on the dreamliner i think you know there's some talk that you could see those get larger in the future as well. people want more light. >> miles are going to be good -- >> yes they will be. that's the holy grail. you know that. >> my question was actually, seeing the recent article, on the big plane that airbus staked its future on -- >> airbus. >> yeah, airbus. staked its future on should we

really be going to them for a prediction of the future when they so badly predicted what the near-term future -- >> i'm going to get fabrice to come on and you can pick away on him. is it going to work? is there a time and place for that thing? >> for the a380. >> for leading, unloading, the one with how many people? >> with more than 500 people going from mumbai to london? yes, between huge markets there is a small not a huge need -- >> we can't put it to bed that boeing that that strategy is better than airbus'. >> i think it's been borne out the point to point airbus has basically said that already. what airbus is looking for now is a good way to get out of the a380 problem without drawing too much attention to it. >> that's what i mean we go to them for a look at the future. >> it was cool animation. tv. wins out every time. >> 25 years from now does china make their own airplanes?

>> yes, they're already doing it. you'll see the first of those in the next five or six years. will they be a big threat to airbus and boeing? no. but down the road they're smart. they're going to learn from this. >> all right, phil, thank you. >> see you guys. >> okay. up next, is hannah ferguson helping carl's jr. sell more burgers? the ceo of cke restaurants, owners of carl's junior and hardee's the green burrito will join us and later did you know that more than 95% of all products shipped in the u.s. are shipped in brown boxes? yes, you knew that. we've said it about six times today. international paper makes a third of them. more than a third. right? yeah, i guess a third. a big business and a good indicator of the state of the economy. john faraci will give us his assessment in a bit.

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welcome back to "squawk box." 85 points of upward momentum seen at the open on the dow. and making headlines a study conducted for bankrate.com finds that a third of americans have nothing saved for retirement. perhaps most trouble being, if you look at those 65 and older, 14% have no nest egg whatsoever. the two most cited reasons for why not, cost of living, and day-to-day expenses. same thing, aren't they? day-to-day expenses. >> pretty much. let's talk about fast food this morning. competition among fast food and casual restaurants is heating up

on friday we asked tim love from cnbc's restaurant start-up about the challenges of expanding a restaurant brand but diluting the customer experience. well that was a shot of bill gates. we're going to try to get you tim love in a minute. i don't know 23 we're going to get him in the control room. but if we don't, which we're not apparently, we're going to now get to our guest this morning, someone who works in the restaurant business. we've been showing a different video all morning, the ceo of cke restaurants which owns popular burger chains carl's jr. and hardee's. we have been running those commercials that you've been running. racy commercials. do you get any pushback on those commercials? >> we get some. we don't get as much as we used to. when we did the first one back in 2005-2006 we got some putschback. not so much anymore. people are used to it and other people have copied it. >> tell us about the business,

you know, we've been looking at what's happened to mcdonald's over the past couple of quarters and they've struggled. i'm curious what you're seeing from your vantage point. >> our sales have actually been very good this summer. the burger that we're promoting in that ad with hannah ferguson and paris hilton has been a very good seller for us, black angus brief, brief brisket, barbecue sauce, fresh baked bun, onion straws and cheese. i think it's one of the most successful limited time offers we've had and certainly one of my favorite burgers that we've ever done. it's been very successful. mcdonald's is really in a different position than we are. they market to women, kids and families with very inexpensive food. we focus on more premium products, higher end, and our marketing focus is young hung dry guys and the women that love them. so we're in a different spot than they are. >> this interview is very distracting because we have the commercial going while you're speaking. you probably can't see it. >> nobody listens to me when

that's running. >> probably can't see it. did she actually eat any of that hamburger, by the way? >> oh, yeah when you do these ads, they do eat them. but you go through about 50 burgers to film an ad like this. it's quite an experience. >> what's the price point on this burger, for example? >> this burger is around $4.25, $4.69. it depends. we don't control franchisee pricing. so it's a little different in company and franchise stories. but we offer it on a pattie that's almost a quarter of a pound. we also offer it on a one-third, and one-half pound version with blank angus beef. so there are three different price points. >> i'm looking at an op-ed piece that wow yeah if you haven't gotten pushback on the commercials, you must be getting a lot of flak for this. you're talking about stuff with the president, who, you know, has recently just in keeping with the last five years, said corporations have to stop complaining, ceos got to stop complaining, you didn't build that, blah, blah, blah.

anyway, you said here what the president fundamentally fails to grasp is that politicians in washington don't create jobs. or economic growth. america's businesses and hard-working taxpayers are the key to rebuilding a healthy economy. our free market has produced more wealth and distributed more broadly than any economy that's ever existed and it happened without government management and then you go on to point out some of the stuff that is, i don't think people really thought this through, the nlrb secretary of labor, they want to actually now get all the way up to general managers that are now working with performance-based bonuses, they want those guys just to be hourly employees, just put their time in and it has nothing to do with earned success or performance base. it seems like that is the zeitgeist from this administration. that we're moving towards. and they don't see any disconnect between that and the type of the results they're getting. >> well hopefully you won't get a lot of pushback in this country for saying the kinds of things that i said. i hope people will listen and

pay attention and kind of look at what's happening between the government and business. because, businesses do create the jobs. businesses do create the opportunities. businesses do allow you to lift yourself up to another level and if people have been successful. look i started with nothing. i had no family support through college or through law school. i worked my way up. i really appreciated the fact that i had the opportunity to do so. it wasn't something -- i didn't really expect anything from the government. and if people like myself, if we can't speak up and say what the opportunities that have been available historically in this country were, and how what's happening at the government level now is damaging and hurting people, who were like me. when i write these articles i don't write them for me. i've been successful. i'm fine. i write them for the millions of people like me who are down there and really don't have anything right now but would like to take advantage of the opportunities that may be available to them in this country. in their lives. the reason that their forbears came to this country. and i think that if we can't speak up on those issues who is

going to speak up? >> where did we lose sight and the private sector employment, the employment generated in the private sector, the payroll that come from those employees, it's those taxes that go to paying for the government employees. right? and for paying that inferring that government does. so i don't understand where did they lose sight of that that's where the ability to actually have a government comes from? not the other way around. that the government makes the infrastructure and gives them the opportunity to succeed here. that's not the way it works. the private sector allows for the governments existence. >> i think over time people forget. we had problems in the '30s we overcame those. business really came back. we had problems in the '70s "post" president reagan came in and the government got out of the way and business came back and grew. now we're in a position where we're not seeing the kind of growth we should be seeing. not seeing the kind of job creation we should be seeing.

you talk to any businessman or woman and they're going to tell you that the biggest problem they have right now is the government. so we need the government to move aside a little. >> let me ask you a question about many, if not most of your employees who work on the front line at your restaurants who i imagine are getting paid minimum wage or somewhere similar, you know, what do you say to them? how do you speak to them given that most of them, if this is the wage they're going to live on for the rest of their life and hopefully this is just a starting job but these days in this economy it seems to be very hard for just to be a starting job, it is not a truly livable wage? >> well, with we do have for high school and college age students we do have people that make minimum wage. and one of the reasons for that is we like to keep these entry level jobs open to people so they can get the kind of experience that they need to move on and do other things in their lives. we also offer up to $10,000 if you've been with us a year and you maintain a "c" average we'll

cover $10,000 of your college expense. so you can actually increase your minimum wage substantially by taking advantage of that offer. above college age, 22 to, we have employees in their 60s, very, very few, a very small percentage, 4% or 5% make minimum wage and those are people that are trying to supplement their income with part-time jobs or they're people that are retired and just want to get out in the community. so a very small number have those minimum wage jobs. and you can make -- we have general managers that make $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 a year between salary and bonus. so you can make a very good career for yourself in this industry. on the other hand, a lot 6 people use it as a stepping stone. to get an education, or to get the experience that you need and if we don't have those kinds of jobs available, you know, i used to work in a baskin-robbins. i got $1.25 an hour. i never thought i'd be able to support a family of four on it or that it was a career. some jobs rust judge going to be minimum wage jobs and we need to keep that in mind. >> thank you for bringing us the

conversation, and hannah ferguson. we appreciate it. coming up we're going to talk to jim cramer who is going to join us from the new york stock exchange. in the mean time check out the futures right now. we do have some green arrows. we'll be back in a moment. ♪ ♪ drivers want to go further with their electrical vehicles. but you can't take a trip from lisbon to stockholm if you can't re-charge along the way. the green emotion project, funded by the european commission is using the ibm cloud to make this possible by creating a single charging and billing network across 28 countries. so drivers can travel as far as they want to go. take your business further with the ibm cloud. the ibm cloud is the cloud for business.

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stock exchange. john faraci is here. looking at his business, everything moves for the boxes, 1% world. i don't know whether you know there's other things that can help you know juice that above 1% for gdp growth, but it's just not gang busters in his view, right, on, as it has been at certain times in the past? >> sure. i think you can explain away the first quarter, cold weather, lots of it the economy shrunk. it doesn't feel like a 4% gdp growth economy to us looking at our business. >> somewhere else to make up the shortfall. >> i've learned the best indicator, i've known john for a long time if john says it's around 1 pshgs there isn't some part of the economy growing 4 or 5, it's growing 1. it's the finest indicator. it's always been. i'm not going to trifle with it. >> we are probably in a better

position than most other places. >> right. >> and that's reflected in dollars and bonds and in equities, i general motors, right? >> yes. look, today we have talks, russia/ukraine. i think europe shot itself in the foot. they put the foot on the jugular, they'll slip back into recession. it's difficult to have worldwide growth if it's just the engine of the united states. . look i love to think we're big enough but we're just not. >> how do you play family dollar? >> dollar general is telling you, dollar general has so much more gain to happen that i think a lot of us were mystified. dollar general ceo wasn't sure where he wanted to go. you don't dollar general. i think that they get. i think dollar tree walks away. >> i like the eninvestment bank that came up with that idea. i thought of that idea, jim, dollars in the name. should we call it dollar,

dollar, dollar if they get together, or family general tree? >> i think that -- i think that -- as long as we leave tree off, we're okay. how about the fact that walmart -- walmart should bid. we would realize there's a pulse at walmart. not we're not sure. >> when was last time they did something? i don't remember. we'll see you in a couple of minutes. hi, john. >> hi, jim. >> anything that floats and new meaning for the term mobile home video. that's right after the break.

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning. video from the annual anything that floats regatta in the florida keys. amateur boat builders showing off their home made vessels. tick a look at some of this stuff. most creative a boat made out of two liter plastic bottles. is that what we're looking at? some boats unbelievable. check out this story, a house carried on a flatbed truck, got stuck on a louisiana bridge. the company -- the moving company miscalculated amount of room needed to clear the guardrail. traffic was stopped while the house was dislodged.

all right, john. we want to thank you for spending time with us and joining us today. we've talked about the state of the economy. talked about a couple of things that might help. when you say getting money into the hands of consumers, how do we do that? >> i think competitive tax reform for individuals. >> you weren't talking about minimum wage or something like that necessarily? >> no. i think the -- i think the longer-term structural solution is we've got to get more money into the hands of consumers, create consumer demand, that will create the job growth. i mean, both parties have different ways of -- >> like everything, you know, that's what we sit here arguing about. >> do you think anything's going to change in washington? >> i'm a realistic optimist. the realism -- the optimist in me says yes, the realism in me says maybe not for another election or two. >> we've got two coming up. one in november. see what happens there.

and then it's going to be -- it's going to be interesting. >> two more after that. >> yeah. all right. thank you, john faraci. >> thank you, john. >> a lot of fun. >> good to see you. >> thanks for joining us. to you as well. and good to see you. >> nice to see you. >> just the two of us. >> just the two of us this week. >> join us tomorrow. "squawk on the street" is next. ♪ good monday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm scott wapner with jim cramer live from the new york stock exchange. carl and david are off. road map starts with the dollar store dual. dollar general offing to guy family dollar for $10 million take on a competing offer from dollar tree. david fab already call in in moments. markets looking to heighten gain as tensions between russia and ukraine ease for this moment. robert