♪ ♪ ♪ we will we will rock you >> welcome to "squawk alley." joining us henry, business insider founder, editor in chief, good to see you. >> great to be here. >> jon fortt and kayla tausche on a crazy morning full of news, bank earnings, retail news. is best buy getting hammered after the company lowers its outlook for 2015 thanks to slow demand and falling prices. the company did see holiday comps rise about 2.5% with big screen tvs and smartphones offsetting weakness in tablets. internet sales hurting big box

retailers and we've been having discussions about price parity between best buy and amazon, competitive market and hurts. >> it does. interesting thing to me out of what best buy had to say was kind of a sobering look at the rest of the year, saying that price pressures, would pressure their margins and they don't expect demand to be that strong, coming out of a holiday season where as you mentioned the comps were pretty good. how this follows through for a company like gopro that does so much business through the likes of a best buy, what kind of demand follow through do you see from them. we've seen that stock all over the place. we will look for guidance from companies like that. gives the fact that international markets have been so relatively weak and you've been looking for strength in domestic markets in america when you have a name likes best buy saying don't get your hopes up it has implications. >> an interesting nugget where the company said there's waning it interest in consumers buying extended warranties. used to have these products for

so much longer and you wanted to buy to protect against something going wrong in two or five years. is the product cycle going to change the revenue mix for some of the companies that rely op streams like -- >> that's a major source of profitability. the pricing on the gadgets being sold is cut throat but you can get a nice cut there. i think, though, in the preamble you nailed it. they're in a tough place. they're getting squeezed by the internet. amazon more volume, can sell at a lower price. if you want a lower price in the world you go to walmart. people that want help and get schmoozed about their products but that's a smaller segment of the market. >> one of the upgrades of amazon argued bezos is not relying on price as much as he is selection and convenience. maybe that would help margins across the board. clearly if it's not amazon it's going to be somebody, right? >> that would help but bezos' philosophy same as walmart, most companies try to raise prices

over time, amazon is committed to trying to lower prices as aggressively as it can. why walmart has been successful, it's the same thing, the whole mission lower prices. that just puts the squeeze on everybody else. this is a tough business to begin with. how many huge electronics retailers have we seen go belly up. >> best buy is going to well on the internet. on-line sales rose 13.5%. the question came up when we saw the nrf numbers this week which do not include on-line sales, is at what point does the data enter the 21st century and you start actually including on-line sales? at best buy they said more than half the inventory shipped from a store. is that not same-store sales? amazon doesn't have to report people who have been clicking on the same website for more than 14 months. >> the problem is, it's a scale business. look at the distribution infrastructure that amazon has built. best buy may be very good at it for a retailer that also has an incredibly tough physical store business to run and compete in,

they may be excellent at it, hard to see how they can ultimately compete with somebody just focused on that. >> normal disclaimer as well, bezos is an investor. >> i'm an investor in amazon, i love best buy, i don't wish evil on them. they're in a tough slot. >> next up not so fast for samsung and blackberry. what a story, blackberry shares soared after reuters reported samsung was in talks to buy the company for $7.5 billion. both companies quick to shoot the report down. blackberry denied the talks. samsung called the report groundless, sending shares of blackberry to the yawn side but not as much as they were before the whole news broke, john. >> yeah. >> what did you make of this? >> here's what i make of it. >> when you look at a potential acquisition of blackberry it would be more complicated than even your typical $7 billion plus acquisition because of who blackberry's clients are, governments, who would want to weigh in on that and because who the potential acquirers would be. there was buzz maybe lenovo was

interested and canada made it clear that probably wouldn't go. not clear that samsung would be that much better. probably a u.s. acquirer would be a little bit easier, like an ibm, but there aren't that many tech companies at scale who need the assets that blackberries has. you've got to imagine john chen is focused on keeping his nose to the grind stone making sure blackberry enterprise server 12 which needs to be a hit this year gets enough customers and then we'll see what happens once those things are taken care of. >> blackberry, another tough position, used to be mass market, they used to own a huge chunk of it. they have to go niche now and they have to figure out a portion of the market they can own. that is the only way they're going to survive. otherwise they have to be taken out. the only question is price. john makes a great argument why it's going to be tough. >> well we're in the middle innings according to john chen of blackberry's turnaround and jon fortt i'm wondering do you think that blackberry stands as a don't sell in general, see how the turnaround plays out or a

don't sell right now, let it play out, and then see how much the company is worth then? >> i think if you're looking from blackberry's perspective at the potential of selling, it's risky for them because it's not like they're this mass market brand that people are going to keep buying no matter what. they need to get traction with a number of i.t. professionals, companies that want to be confident they're still around. any kind of sense that they might be distracted or their products might not work because they're going through some complicated acquisition talks could be devastating to bez 12 getting adopted in 2015. their competitors would go after that. so entering into risky acquisition discussions that could fall apart could be devastating for that company. >> it does lends the feel if you're not apple, in some way you're flailing. i'm not saying that's a fair point of view but it's out there. >> there is probably a niche they can grab, but the most likely scenario is they are toast. they have to be cognizant of that. >> what is toast? >> just done.

>> liquidation. >> exactly. that's where their market position is. maybe they can figure out a way to get a niche but only point samsung offers 40% over the trading value which is a lot higher than people thought, far less likely -- >> less likely to be toast than a year ago that's why we're having this conversation. >> give it time. corporations are adopting apple, android we don't need a third system. >> you don't think this is an act of desperation for samsung to say this is the only really prospect for growth is to buy something some. >> i don't know that they're necessarily saying that. it would give samsung, take force operating system out of the market, more market share, access to parts of the market maybe you're not selling now. samsung is not in a desperate position at all. >> no, thanks to chips and the diversity of the business. >> and they still sell a lot of smartphones. >> we're sticking with hardware. xiaomi is going after apple with the latest product launch today and cnbc is live in beijing with a closer look.

eunice? >> hey, guys, xiaomi translates to little rice but the company does have big ambitions. third smartphone maker behind apple and how did it do that selling cheap phones but the smartphones are of decent quality. the company says it's going after the premium brands. today the ceo announced its latest phone, this is called the xiaomi note and they said that this phone is going to go directly head to head with apple's iphone 6 plus. now, the phone itself packs a lot of punch, a lot of new features, they say that it's going to have a 13 megapixel camera, 5.7 inch screen, another feature is going to be a high fi audio. another thing is just that generally they were saying this phone is going to be thinner, lighter, and just a bit shorter than the iphone 6 plus. the price is also attractive at

$371 for the base model. but for the pro version, which is seen as the higher end model, that's going to go for $532, which is cheaper than what the iphone 6 plus goes for here in china. but at the same time it's much more expensive than the phones that xiaomi is phone for here. it's another way we're seeing xiaomi really go ahead with apple and apple's second largest market. guys? >> eunice yoon, i believe you'll have one of xiaomi's top executives on our air tomorrow, we will wait for that, but we appreciate your reporting in the meantime. eunice yoon in beijing. jon fortt, they have the aura of apple or they're trying to create with the buzzing marketing events, former head of android and google running their global operations. do you think they're wedging themselves into the market in a big way? >> don't believe the hype. here's a company that makes pretty technology at close to

zero margin trying to sell services on top of that. they've seen some of this before. htc come out with good looking hardware have a pop and tail off. we see samsung sort of struggling with what happens when your hardware is popular for a while but don't have enough of a software mode. i think xiaomi even more so has some challenges if they try to expand internationally, apple is going to sue the pants off of this company. mark my words. it's not clear what they've got beyond copying other people that's going to actually give them life. >> shaking his head. >> i almost never disagree with jon. completely wrong in this case with xiaomi in china. >> sure, in china. >> his -- >> pretty large market. >> samsung was also big in china. >> absolutely. but people love this company. it's the same sort of cult atmosphere as apple has been able to create. they will be expanding outside. the risk you bring up is real. there will be a lot of litigation around it. but they're getting smarter. they obviously want to go

international. and they're building great products at a much lower price and ultimately that is problematic at the very least for apple within china but ultimately probably around the world as well. >> think they're being underestimated by a u.s. audience. >> i don't think the u.s. audience appreciates it yet. >> we have gadget snobs at business insider. they've used the xiaomi phones and they love them and they're great and much cheaper and people love this company in china. the same around apple people will defend it to the death. >> people loved samsung in china two years ago, love is not enough. they need innovation that they can own over there. >> they are doing that. high quality at a much lower price. >> i haven't seen it. high quality at a lower price is not innovation. >> you don't think there's a litigious risk they copy something too closely and come back to another company's turf. >> all smartphones look the same now. apple had a huge edge for a while, now okay, 5.7 inch screen

all look nice, have metal, everybody will have them. sue each other all the time but in the meantime somebody is going to be gaining lots and lots of park share and could be xiaomi if they go for it. >> a lot of responses on twitter. >> let me guess, he's an idiot. >> always good seeing you. thank you so much. >> great to be here. >> we want to check in on the markets right now. major averages still in the red today. right now dow is down by 22 points. 1740 4 is the level. nasdaq down by a half of 1% and s&p above 2,000, 2006 the level we're seeing. we did see a huge contraction in philly fed just above the flat line. less than half of what wall street had been expecting for activity. but we're also seeing the market move on the back of switzerland's central bank announcing it will no longer keep its currency art if ficially cheap for the sake of its own exporters. the swiss national bank has

intervened to keep the euro artificially high but today it is backing off, taking the swiss franc off the euro peg and more on swits zaerland during the european close later this hour. wild swings in the foreign exchange market on that. >> absolutely. when we come back, call it the cyber security brain trust. samsung, mcafee, palo alto networks teaming up to fight cyber crime. all will join us in a cnbc exclusive later on. after transparent cleaned up at the golden globes does amazon have more hits on its hands. a batch of pilots hitting amazon prime this week. facebook ceo mark zuckerberg taking a swipe at google at a q&a session. find out what he said later on this hour. dow down 94, up 90, right now down 34. a lot of back and forth today. "squawk alley" continues in a moment. your back. your friends have your back. your dog's definitely got your back. but who's got your back when you need legal help?

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jd.com. it is pilot season at amazon, first for 2015, the netflix rival debuting 13 tv pilots including the one you're watching now. a comedy about a form supermodel. the pilots follow amazon as big win at the golden globes for transparent. which are the most promising pilots? jason lynch is a contributor where he covers web and television content. good to see you again. >> good morning. >> have you watched a lot of television. you basically say there are four pilots or shows you shouldn't miss. which are they? >> there are four.

amazon has 13 that they've debuted. too much for anybody to watch. these are the four i feel have the most promise to be picked up and have interesting seasons. the first is "mad dogs" which is produced from shawn ryan who did "the shield" about a group of four 40-something friends who get together in belize, lulls you into almost this transbecause it looks beautiful, by the end pulls the rug out from under you and there's a huge twist and out of all of them, that's the one i want to get picked up so i see what's going to be up next. >> interesting. in addition to one called "the man in the high castle" "the new yorker presents" and "salem rogers" how would you pit them against anything on broadcast or cable television? >> what's interesting about these four in general is that i feel like all of might offer something you don't see anywhere else on tv and that still seems to be amazon's m.o., that's the

case with "transparent" one of the reason people went to that not only because it was brilliant but that's not a show you can find anywhere else. i feel that's still amazon's niche and how amazon will get more viewers is by offering programming you can't see anywhere else. these four qualify. >> wired suggests that "the man in the high castle" is the only one we really need to pay attention to in the bunch. is there one in particular you see standing head and shoulders above the rest? >> "mad dogs" and then "man in the high castle" and what's interesting about that is it's based on a philly story from 1962 about the alternate world in which the allied forces dwell lost world war ii and what our world would be like there and there's this striking imagery throughout it. you see the u.s. flag where there's a swastika instead of where the stars are, and that's absolutely something you won't see anywhere else on tv and it is really, really interesting

and i do hope that they pick that one up. >> jason, this has been criticized as a strategy that's more quantity over quality. how would you describe it? >> yeah. it can be. in one way it's great because the transparency. you're seeing everything that's possibly in contention. but there's a lot to go through and because of the way the process works and how long the production schedule is, if something gets picked up it takes a full year in some cases to complete all the production on the episode so it will actually air. we have -- this is the fourth line of amazon's pilots. we still have shows that were picked up from the second round of amazon's pilots almost a full year ago that still haven't aired. you have this glut where people liked pilots a year ago, they have now seen as many as 20 since then, and they may have forgotten about these pilots that they liked a year ago when they finally make it on to air with full seasons. >> barry diller on "squawk box" this morning talking about amazon's tolerance for low ratings and what that means for

programmers everywhere. take a listen to this. >> amazon only wants to get more people to sign up to prime and if they sign up to prime they get a whole slew of things, some of which is fresh new individvi that's a model no one has ever heard of. by the way, they don't care, i presume, they couldn't care less how many viewers they get, probably would like to have some, but the issue for them will be do they think it enhances and increases the subscribers to prime into their ecosystem. so you can't compete with that. >> now i know jon fortt disagrees with that point of view. what do you think? >> well that's absolutely true. roy price, head of amazon studios, has told me that same thing. prime, the whole purpose of these tv shows are to drive people to prime, to get people to subscribe and keep their subscriptions going when that year lapses. so for them, for amazon, they see tv as a side benefit to the prime service in way to get their customers engaged.

and the fact that they have these great shows winning awards and getting buzz is almost a side benefit to them. this is about driving people to sign up for amazon prime. >> interesting to watch. >> the reason why i disagree. >> yeah. >> quickly is prime is not an end in itself. whether it comes to shipping goods or digital video. amazon wants people in prime so they buy profitable stuff after that. they want people to buy movies, buy tv shows, buy games after they have that prime membership, otherwise it just costs them money. >> great to see you. see you next time. >> great to see you too. >> take care of. >> when we come back surprising news out of switzerland rocking markets across the globe. you're looking at a chart of the euro against the franc. the euro weakening by 13%. european markets set to close in a few minutes. what impact could we see here at home. we will have answers and the close coming up next on "squawk alley." .

markets trending down across the board close to session lows as we've been in the red and green all morning long. let's bring in chief market strategist over at bahozo securities. >> good morning. >> a lot of people bemoaning the threats to high yield, the threats to hedge funds as a result of lower oil prices. you still argue consistently almost uniformly when oil drops like it has, stocks tept to do well over the medium term. explain that. >> absolutely. if you go dating back to the early 1980s look at periods of time where oil prices have declined over a six-month period of the 30% or more the stock market has gone up between 25 and 30%. in fact, 50s% decline similar to what we've seen, we've gone up every single occasion on average 29%. so it's been unequivocally bullish from a matt matcle standpoint and market standpoint. fundamentally it's positive for

interest rates, positive for monetary policy, it's positive for the economy, not so positive for earnings. we're going to see a bit of a hit on overall earnings but i think that's been largely factored in. from a fundamental perspective there's no question this is a positive development. >> one thing that's been hard to estimate about earnings is the type of currency headwinds a lot of multinational companies have seen. citigroup, $450 million hit to revenues because it's op pritting as a global company, trying to hedge as best it can but so much activity you can't foresee. i'm wondering what you think the head winds and how you would quantify them for the big companies where there is increasing volatilitvolatility. >> multinational companies have a bit of a problem. many do hedge their currency risks and net impact is not likely to be very big. aggregated up for the overall s&p it typically doesn't work out to be more than a percentage

point. more importantly it's never really given much of an impact on the overall equity market. it's not a reason to pause. if you look at what's happened in interest rates here over the last six months, long dated government bonds have fallen 90 basis points. the relative valuation between long dated governments and the stock market, it's at the most compelling levels since mid-2013. when stock prices were substantially lower. if you move away from some of the problems that are relatively small in nature in terms of its overall impact and look at the core factors that move the equity market, interest rates, the economy, what you're finding is basically very, very positive. and so i tend to become more optimistic given what we've seen here in the last couple months. >> and is there anything regarding the historical picture with regard to the velocity of oil's decline or the run we've had for the past five years, that makes you think this year's performance might be more at

risk? >> well, in order -- history does show quite clearly that it would take a recession. if these things are foreshadowing a recession, which i don't think they are, you do have a problem. typically what happens during a recession, just as it happened back in 2008, steep decline in oil prices, a company by recession, over the course of the next year, however, the stock market tended to recover and recovered quite substantially. there are many other occasions, a few other occasions actually, where, you know, these types of interest rate declines have foreshadowed a recession in the economy and that's had a bit of a negative impact. here quite clearly if you look at the employment numbers the retail sales numbers were not that bad, you know, initial employment picture, wealth picture, income, everything in this country seems to indicate the economy is doing just fine and no big impact. the european impact is likely to have an impact on multinational

companies which are expected to show, you know, year over year earnings increases only in the vicinity of 2 to 3% in the current quarter. >> thanks so much. >> we're about to get the european close. let's bring in simon hobbs looking at a green map, very different than the chart of the euro we were looking at. >> kayla f you live long enough you see anything. take a look at that chart. it's a lot of green. most european stocks on average up 2.5%. but a big red hole in the middle. look at this, switzerland, zurich down 18.5%. astounding news they should abandon the peg on the swiss franc. this is one of the g-10 currencies. you'll rarely see moves like this in your lifetime. this is a five-year chart of how the riedswiss franc has traded euro terms. for three years the swiss national bank kept the euro and franc at 1.20, a deal struck

with the markets. they sold the swiss francs into the markets buying euros to support the euros for the sake of the exporters and today they've abandoned that mainly because we think you have this avalanche of cheap euros coming, the swiss national bank's way from the european central bank if they decide to embark on sovereign ke, hundreds of billions of euros that will be printed and washed out like tidal waves. what's the swiss national bank going to do? support the vulgs of those? no. today they threw in the towel. angry people around europe they've broken their promise but they had no choice is the analysis because the sheer volume of what was happening not least with europe but the russians would have broken it sooner rather than later. as far as the stock market is concerned across europe, $100 billion worth of equity value has been wiped out in zurich today on the top swiss plays but for the rest of europe, initially, you see this is the

stock, 600, initially concern then euphoria and began to trade more positively because they realized it's an indication say some that the european central bank will launch qe for sovereign debt possibly next thursday. who knows. in the meantime let me show you pictures of one of the most hated men in europe today. this is a swiss national bank governor thomas jordan, a webcast from zurich suggesting the decision to abandon the peg was well considered. he is meeting with a lot of derision from professionals around europe today not least because many people in central and eastern europe have got their mortgages denominated in swiss francs. here more about that on an individual level moving forward. this is how some of those swiss bell wetters. ubs a note out, as far as swatch was concerned, not just swatch watches but they make other big brand name watches they could be affected by 200 basis points on profits from a 10% pov in the

currency which we've had. roche, the luxury -- richemonth. i would say one thing to you, it this is also an indication of the odd nature of today. you will see that these are very heavily down. is is actually -- these blue chips denominated in local currency terms, it if you're looking at the adrs across europe today because they're denominated in dollars, you will have made an awful lot of money because swiss franc has come back. the currency play the individual stock level is huge. confusing a lot of people as they look at their screens. back to you. >> thank you. by the way we'll talk more about this with imf managing director christine lagarde. st. lou steve liesman has that at 12:15 eastern time. cyber attacks a huge problem and private companies are banding together to do something about it, the cyber threat alliance that includes execs from companies like mcafee, symantec and palo alto. they will join us in a cnbc

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welcome back. president obama has unveiled a new cyber security legislative package, the package would protect companies that share cyber threat information in a bid against cyber crime. joining us now are mark mclaughlin, ceo of palo alto

networks, chris young, senior vice president of mcafee, intel security, michael brown, ceo of symantec, and ken xie of fortinet. quite the panel on cyber security. you guys have become the founding members of the cyber threat alliance, which you announced in the fall. so let me ask you specifically about that. this alliance is -- involves sharing information that should make it easier to tell who the bad guys are, what the newest threats are, signals of fresh breaches. you said that that information sharing would be in place by the end of last year. you had a few weeks. what have you learned now that you've been sharing information that you wouldn't have known otherwise? mark mclaughlin, starting with you? >> sure. >> thanks for having us here today. it is working. the idea here was four leading companies, all very much

involved in the battle for cyber security, a bunch of presidents and ceos who have known each other quite some time coming together to say in the cyber security bat physical we can share threat intelligence information we would usually consider competitive to our companies that's going to be to the good of our customers because the more information we have, think of it like crowd sourcing for intelligence information, the stronger offering to ours customers will be and that's a big way we can get ahead in the cyber security battle. we've been doing it now a number of months, working very well and we look forward to the continuation of this and growing the alliance. >> michael, what have you been able to turn up ins terms of threats and be as specific as you can be, that you wouldn't have been able to otherwise? s has this been preventative? have you been able to see breaches that took place that might have taken longer otherwise? >> without talking about specific customers, we are in this alliance, sharing some different types of information than the industry has shared

before. bot net command and control, mobile malware samples and also indicators of compromise that we haven't looked at before as an industry. so we believe our ability to see more, analyze more, will help us more quickly stop attacks that are happening. >> chris, one of the bedrock principles of this is group, you don't share information that could identify customers, but i want to push back on that concept a bit, just because when somebody physically breaks in to a building, an office, there's a police report, the community knows about it, the information spreads pretty quickly. do we need to get there with cyber security where there's not so much protection of i don't want anybody to know i was breached? >> i think the customer, the opportunity here is to share the right information so we can quickly help customers get to a known good state. and sometimes that means protecting the privacy of

customers or their specific information, but as it makes sense to open things up to be more visible we will do that and as you can see in some of the reporting happening right now in the public domain, that's happening. so there's a good partnership that happens between companies like ours and customers who are dealing with challenges like breaches, where we protect the right level of information but make certain things public if we need help. the ability to come together and share, you know, iocs or specific malware samples unique in the industry, i think is going to help us sh rirink the e that our customers need to defend themselves and get to a known state after they've been attacked. >> ken xie, give me your sense of the president's cyber security package we're about to hear more about? is that going to be a significant improvement over what we have here? how long before we see the impact of that, if so? >> each are a leading company

target position differently. that's where we try to cooperate together, share information, the same thing, they have their position, their resource. i think the more we cooperate on the defense side on protecting the customer the better. we definitely are aware of the new initiative and do our part starting the alliance and working together almost a year now. >> mark mclaughlin, give me your take, post-sony hack, what kind of attention has your company and product gotten and do you feel based on your data and the alliance's data, first of all, that you can say definitively whether north korea was behind the attack regardless of what the government has said, based on the data you have, which is a lot richer in the alliance, can you say you believe it's north korea? >> i think it's a general

matter, probably all of us are seeing with the increased level of attention on these attacks that are highly publicized from a security perspective the things we're doing together just more important because one of the ways to thwart those attacks is to share information and in the case of sony whether it's north korea or not there's an ongoing criminal investigation led by the fbi there. there's been attribution by the government that's the case. i think it's best, you know, to ask them what they think about where the attack -- >> they've said what they think. but you have the great data from your alliance. i'm wondering if you can say based on the signatures, based on the information that you see traveling across networks, whether your information says the same thing? >> i think our information would generally show that there are certain countrieses that are more capable of launching attacks and have a per clivty to do that for whatever reasons. north korea is one of them. russia another one. china one. these are fairly well publicized over who has the capability sets and desire to dos those things.

>> chris young, running out of time, but want to ask you, is there a particular threat you see in 2015 that maybe the industry and public is not looking for that we should be vigilant about in 2015, chris? >> i think one of the most profound changes we're seeing is the tipping point where we used to think of sensitive information pretty much as social security numbers and credit cards but what we're seeing is any information in the light of day actually could be quite sensitive for organizations. they are thinking differently about how to protect their assets, their information, conversati conversations in e-mail between executives. we have a new way we need to be thinking about cyber security and that's one of the reasons why this alliance is really important. we really have to help our customers not only protect themselves, but shrink that time in which they can defend themselves if they find themselves in a breach situation and that's what i think is special about what we're doing here. >> i think most people, of course, hope that your alliance

is successful. mark mclaughlin of palo alto networks, chris young of intel mcafee, michael brown of symantec and ken xie fortinet, thanks for joining us. >> thank you. >> when we come back, six years ago today, everyone was glued to their television sets for one of the first times their twitter accounts, we're going to explain that in a moment. first rick santelli, what are you watching today? >> oh, boy. the aftermath of the surprise swiss moves, you know, there's a lot of issues that this calls back to the forefront. one of them is of course the multinationals were the strong dollar are going to have a real tough time. but i submit that after the break, you and i are going to take a journey into what i would like to call the fx counter factual zone.

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coming up christine lagarde joins us for an interview. her thoughts on the move out of switzerland and trading the swings in the currency market. apple downgraded the analyst who made that call and should you stay small, small caps underperforming large this year. small cap picks to buy from a top hedge fund manager all coming up on the "halftime report" top of the hour. >> thanks so much. historic day in the world of foreign exchange. rick santelli and the santelli exchange. >> hi, carl. the problem with much of what

goes on in the marketplace and there's usually valid research and discussion, most of it right here on cnbc, i'm biased but think it's true, but in the end, counter factuals are a tough zone to get in. case in point, we could go back to the credit crisis and say if we had done things differently, bailouts maybe less, maybe the impact to the economy would have been worse but for a shorter period of time, hit something like a concrete floor, easier to jump off than sand or aud le of water, but -- a puddle of water, we'll never know for sure. counter factual. the same applied to the fx markets. maybe it's easier and we can actually use a counterfactual to alter our thinking to some extent. the direction i'm going with this is, in the last couple weeks, one of the big themes, and i understand why, i get it, is that the strong dollar poses systemic risks. there's two issues there.

one, of course, is the cause or passive versus active, but ultimately i contend it really isn't a strong dollar story. we have the best economy in -- on a curve graded type situation, but ultimately really, the active force of what's going on is economies like europe and japan and some of the new people on the bandwagon that, of course, were -- have one trick pony economies tied to energy, you see the australian or canadian dollar, these moves are substantial and, of course, a good chunk of the earnings in our equity markets are derived from multinationals, but the counterfactual is this, if by manipulating currencies lower, zones like the eurozone do support their export markets and their economies are better off for it, it's hard to calibrate what's actually worse. so fine, multinational are

faexed and whatever that cost is, say that cost is x but the counter factual is any type of help that the soft currency affords their export economy might have a cost that is higher than x. so what sounds sim ple when it comes out of our research isn't as necessarily as simple as the real world turns out to be and i think the swiss are going to bring all these discussions forth again but the real question is, are the swiss right in their interpretation of what's going to happen on the 22nd and who do they need to be benchmarked against? the investors and traders. i still contend that the january 22nd deliverance of some sort of ecb quantitative easing might disappointment investors and surprise the swiss bankers. >> rick santelli in chicago, thank you very much. video making a push in its battle with youtube. the content deal that company signed up next. .

today on "squawk box" barry diller said it's not your mother's media any longer and vimeo, which is owned by him, has struck a partnership as it looks to shake up the world of on-line videos. julia boorstin joins us with a look. >> that's right, call la. digital video partnership designed to shake up youtube's stranglehold on stars.

vimeo has struck with content maker studios which disney purchased last year collaborating to fund content for vimeo on demand. maker creators will sell their content on vimeo before they make it available for free with ads on youtube. >> what vimeo is pioneering is the premium ad free experience for the creator and viewer. this is a massive market up until now has not been developed effectively. >> vimeo allows creators to charge as much as they want. for youtube's cutie pie with 34 million subscribers, vimeo would make him more money. he would only need a small percentage of his fans to pay $5 to rence or $10 to buy his videos to make as much from youtube where ad rates are often just $2 per thousand views. iac owned vimeo takes only a 10% of cut of video on demand fees while youtube takes roughly 45%

of ad revenue. ceo trainor says they are not mutually exclusive by die hard fans which pay to see something on vimeo first. >> for many creators, having an ad revenue stream alone leaves money on the table and we know that paid video is going to create new avenues for these creators to earn more revenue than they can with ad based systems alone. >> nows this comes two days after spike lee released his latest film on vimeo one month ahead of its planned theatrical release. he charged $10 to rent and $15 to buy it. we'll have to see if this maker partnership will lure other big names over to vimeo first. carl? >> yeah. turning into an interesting rivalry. thanks so much. we will throw back to a historic day from new york city and social media, twitter's miracle moment when "squawk alley" comes back. curling up in bed with a favorite book is nice. but i think women would rather curl up with their favorite man. but here's the thing: about half of men over 40

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okki ok ok wynn up by 17%. a report california was seeking to suspend its mortgage insurance license to do business in that state. >> thank you so much. throwback thursday and throwing back to the miracle on the hudson. six years ago today, january 15th, 2009, pilot charles sully sullenberger executed that emergency water landing of u.s. airways flight 1549 on the hudson river. it was a huge moment for twitter as user yoenis tweeted this photo, there's a plane in the hudson, i'm on the ferry going to pick up the people, crazy, the first image, widely shared and early glimpse of the power of twitter to break news. in fact, jack dorsey talked about that moment for the founders in which they realized just the strength of the tool they had created. >> yeah. it's amazing. so many moments now get captured on twitter and have since, but it was the first time we had really seen something like that up close. i was on the west coast looking

at twitter going, oh, my goodness, seriously. >> got mentioned in the s1, touted to investors as the way that the platform in an ideal scenario can be used for eyewitness on the ground reporting when major media can't get there. >> not helping the stock, down 4%, back to 38. a lot going on, we mentioned forrex, the banks, intel tonight, dow's best component of 2014, lot of pressure on them to deliver. >> lot of questions about what they will say about consumer pc demand given what we've heard about best buy this morning and comments on security and other areas outside of core pcs. >> the 10-year below 1.8 as we watch fixed income, lagarde coming up in a few moments here with steve liesman, going to be a key interview in light of what the swiss did. >> if investors in fixed income had to make a bet in early 015 where the 10-year would be very

few would have guessed here. >> stunning. by the way even though the range for the dow has been about 185 points the narrowest of the year, gives you a sense of how volatile things have been since january 1st. does it for "squawk alley." over to headquarters, melissa lee and the half. welcome to the "halftime report." i'm melissa lee in for scott. we are focused on the bomb shell abroad moves markets. the swiss bank shocking investors letting its currency soar. coming up in less than 15 minutes a can't miss interview with imf chief christine lagarde. steve liesman will ask her about the swiss move, health of europe, terror attack in pairs ris and more. it is an exclusive you will only see here on cnbc. so far, the follow through in the u.s. market is mixed. we have a down market across the board with the nasdaq suffering the most losses down by about 0.7% i should sa