welcome back to "squawk on the street." checking out what is happening on the stocks overall. financials standing out to the upside today keep an eye on the financial stocks that does it for this hour let's send it down for the start of "squawk alley." guys, back to you. >> good morning. it is 11:00 a.m. here at equfax and 8:00 a.m. here on wall street "squawk alley" is live ♪

good morning welcome to "squawk alley." carlson his way to florida >> and that is our top story, of course, of the morning hurricane irma the national weather service downgrading the storm to category 4 earlier this morning, still packing devastating winds up to 156 miles per hour team coverage this morning with nbc meteorologist back at hq jackie is in ft. lauderdale. what can you tell us about the path of the storm? >> it's on track, continuing to move to the west-northwest at this point between the bahamas and cuba over the day to day and looks like it's on track to make a land fall in south florida early, early sunday morning. so we'll start by looking here off to my right. because not only do we have the

category four storm of irma, but we also have jose now category 4. so back to back category 4 storms in the atlantic at this point. but, of course, our main folk us is going to be irma. so if we look at the alerts that are going on throughout the area, it's going to be right around south florida, hurricane warnings already in effect closer to central florida. further north already into hurricane watches. rainfall is going to be a huge concern. storm surge is a huge concern. especially right around the florida keys and south florida and also winds are going to be a concern for the entire state that wind field, that's one of the most impressive things about the hurricane. now let's take a look at some of our top headlines in regards to the storm here you can see behind me that florida land fall is likely now for sunday morning storm surge up to 10 feet for parts of south florida and then structures near land fall could experience major to

historic damage. sarah? >> yeah, those manld torre evacuations i see as well throughout the state thank you so much. now let's send it to jackie for an update from ft. lauderdale. jackie >> good morning to you, sarah. manufacture the folks that i spoke to at this gas station which still happens to have supplies has said they are staying. they're just topping off their tanks and getting their last minute affairs in order before this storm makes impact potentially later tomorrow now this station started without 10,000 gallons this morning. they've sold through about half of their supply. and they're expecting to have gas throughout the evening tonight. but the manager said he'll stay open as long as he has gas to offer to people. i highlight the price here, 2.69 so let's call it 2.70. it's three cents higher than the national average the national average went up over $2.50 as a result of what we saw in texas with hurricane harvey there is potential that this storm could cause disruptions as well that will send the prices

potentially even higher. but why i note the price here is because we have heard reports of price gouging within the state and certainly at certain stations we've seen it higher than the $3 mark which is presumably fair game but some people are are saying that they have seen it even higher than that you have the mayor of ft. lauderdale and the governor of florida saying that is not allowed. and people should report it. look across the street there is a mobile station over there. it is all boarded up that is how most gas stations look right now i mentioned to my earlier hit that things were pretty orderly. i actually just witnessed my first semifight over gas somebody trying to get in front of the line. they do have an attendant here trying to keep everything in order. but what is interesting about the people that i spoke to, the ones that said they were staying is that they, most of them lived through andrew while it was a terrifying experience, they think that they can handle irma. and they're going to brace for it and see what happens so we'll have updates throughout the day. tensions definitely getting a

little bit more heated here, guys back to you. >> absolutely. jackie, thank you very much. >> joining us now on the phone from the coast guard briefing at the port of palm beach which is among the busiest ports in florida, we have the ports executive director thank you so much for calling in >> what can you tell buus about closing the port in florida? cancelling cargo shipments and cruise ships what's the sflan. >> what's the sflan. >> plan? >> we're under yankee. there is no other vessel that we allow to come into the port. any vessel making its way to here at this point is adviced to seek another destination we have been working on this since the day before yesterday i can honestly tell you that

conditions out here are very calm at this point a little cloudy. but that's just the storm, the quiet before the storm it's going to -- it looks like it's going to hit south florida and they're prepared, as prepared as we can be. >> how long do you expect the port to actually be shut down? >> i would imagine the port, if history serves us correctly, we will probably be closed until next tuesday >> okay. and what should we expect when it comes to disruptions? what is the most common thing that you bring in? it is commodities? what kind of products as we think about the supply chain across the country could be affected. >> this san interesting point. the port of palm beach, number one export commodity is food and food supplies. now keep in mind that this storm has already hit some of the islands that tropical shipping, our number one tenant services so they are as anxious as

everybody else is to get the port open and resupplied by the water and food and anything humanitarian that could be shipped to these hard hit islands. that is just the port. keep in mind here at the surrounding areas may also be affected and we're just crossing our fingers and hoping that, you know, we're not going to be as hit as has been predicted. but again, we all know that by next week sometime >> i believe you also have rail right up to the port there are there any special preparations or considerations around being able to get trains in and out >> good point. the rail has ceased operations for now. our short line rail. that is the rail that services the mainline on to the port. we have not seen any activity. that might have been controlled up in jacksonville

they are not sending anything down we anticipate that will reopen again by next tuesday. i don't know productivity is really ceased. there is only a couple of us at the port and keep in mind we pull double duty it is here and also at home and my wife was not very happy to hear that i had to come in this morning. there is plenty to do at home as you can imagine. >> yes, we can imagine so if there are fuel shortages, i know jackie was just describing the fight scene at a gas station or supply shortages, is there an emergency situation where the port can open up to bring in supplies or you have been doing that in anticipation? >> the port does not have much of a fuel supply type of import. the one that actually -- i happen to have worked there that, is the adjoining port that

is our neighbor to the south that's the port of everglades. they are the main importer of petroleum, petroleum products. and those tenants at port everglades supply the entire turnpike all the way up to orlando. so once you close that port and once you close any port, you can quickly see how the supply line will stop. now there is always been a, shall we call it, a rush to see what can come in first would it be passengers they are out on a drus ship crur supplies like in this case fuel? >> yeah. all right. >> it is a problem >> and we understand that every cruise out of florida on friday is now canceled. so that's already happening. >> yes we just had -- i'm sorry

we just had our cruise vessel left here about 10:00 a.m. they're not -- they're going to be weathering the storm way out east of the bahamas i would imagine. and they're being close contact with us to let us -- to find out when the port will reopen. it may very well than they can come in on a particular day that it reopens and that may not coincide with their planned activities so they'll just remain at port it happened in the past. >> please keep us posted thank you for calling in to talk about some of our -- of your plans and best of luck to you and your employees and everyone else weathering the storm. >> absolutely. >> port of palm beach executive director thank you. >> and when we come back, it's one of the most serious, really the most serious hack attack in recent memory for consumers. 143 million accounts exposed as

equifax is the latest target for cyber crime. the fallout next plus, a rough week for media stocks as disney issues a dire warning on earnings. we're going to speak with the mayor of cincinnati on why he thinks his city is perfect fit for amazon hq. at fidelity, trades are now just $4.95. we cut the price of trades to give investors even more value. and at $4.95, you can trade with a clear advantage. fidelity, where smarter investors will always be. and at $4.95, you can trade with a clear advantage. becareally want to be there,

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theives gained access to the personal information of more than 140 million u.s. customers. social security numbers, birth dates, driver's license in some cases all at risk. company said they discovered the hack in late july, doesn't reveal it until yesterday. three executives who sold shares just days after the breech was discovered we are told were unaware of the event joining us now is mark tastoni from national security services and amen javers spends his time at the white house but has years of covering cybersecurity. are we overstating the horrific scale of this breech 143 million, that's two-thirds of at adultery population. that is nearly everybody at this point. >> good morning. thank you for having me on this is a sizable situation. we had larger numbers of records in the past. we may recall yahoo, i think they mentioned there were a billion. we had sizable breeches of pii

like the opm breach, but if you take the number of records up to 143 million and the data involved here this is a really substantial event. >> social security numbers, i mean all the key things that you need to start an account your long experience covering this kind of hack attack, who's doing it and why are they doing it they want to commit crimes or they doing it because they want to sell it on the internet >> largely, it is disorganized, loosely organized criminal gangs around the world and what you often see is the people who steal this data are not the same people who exploit it they steal it and sell it on the black market to other people who go and exploit it. i think the key thing is to look at there is a lot of money being stolen here. we have to look at who it is being stolen from. a consumers by and large are not bearing the brunt of the cyber fraud. they're making them whole on the losses

otherwise there would be pan nick the streets if you saw store yifz millions of americans seeing the bank accounts dranld a drained and that sort of thing the banks and companies are paying a huge cost here. i think the way to look at this is in retail they have an expression called shrinkage. the amount stolen through fraud and other things that goes on. they try to contain it they can never quite end it. i think what you're seeing is cyber theives applying shrinkage to the entire economy. who has the incentive to do something about that >> mark, one of the most outrageous things about this entire story and situation is that three senior executives at equifax three days after the breach was discovered sold stocks in nonscheduled sales one of those was the chief financial officer and they're now saying these executives didn't know about the breach how is that possible >> arguably the biggest breach that we've seen and the cfo doesn't know and sells stock

what does that say about equifax? >> it's hard to speculate. that's the story they're providing right now. and as you know, they'll be plenty of oversight and forensics to determine whether that was actually the case or not. i think the key thing here regardless w regardless of whether stock is sold or what happened, we have to start looking at the data bases, the pii and personal health information type data bases as national assets and critical fr critical infratruck stur a critical infrastructure. this is a real valuable asset. there is a market for this information. and it's sticky. this isn't about somebody trying to file a fraudulent tax return next year or next week this could have decades of impact given the kinds of information that is here >> well, that's comforting how do you protect your

finances how do you protect yourself from identity theft what are the steps that consumers are to say >> it's really difficult you have limited control over the data bases which are held in the cloud some where you don't have any idea where that is. if you look at the numbers, the total numbers of people affected by hacks over these massive breaches we're talking about exceeds the u.s. population many fold this is already affecting just about every american out there if you have a problem in which the solution to the problem cost more money than the problem itself, what do companies end up doing? too often you see companies decide they're going to live with the cost of this as a cost of doing business rather than the huge cost of taking their business off the internet and resecuring all the servers, doing the things you have to do to reinvent this entire process from the ground up which will be vastly more experiencive >> yeah. well, they're seeing it in the stock price today, for sure. all right. mark, amen, thank you. >> we want to go to your

question i think it is super crucial. what is the passing of information within equifax that could allow him to sell the stock at such a bad moment corporate governance is going to be questioned for sure >> all right thanks don't forget, coming up on october 4th, the cybersecurity summit presented by cnbc and aspen institute, executives perfect facebook, uber, palo alto networks and many more. something tells me this is going to the top of that agenda. still to come, a media meltdown. comcast, cbs, diz necessity and more feeling the pain from increased competition. warning on results for most of them

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founder of inside.com joins us now to talk about that let's start with you, barton i mean there are lots of different reasons for the stocks shifting around. comcast mentioned competition, price competition from the likes of directv, disney mentioned the storm and effects on parks and other things but what is the main driver in the core media business right now? it used to be about marrying content and distribution what it is now that's going to either sink the companies or get them out of this mess? >> i think it thooz do with investor skiddishness in the future i think what these companies need to do is paint a compelling picture of their ability to transition to a world that i think everyone believes generationally we're going to where the consumer will be signing up for apps to get the entertainment that they want as opposed to signing up for a big

bund f bundle from a big cable company. i don't think investors are confident that guys have the answer they need to get that confidence for the stocks to work better. >> you are feeling my nor company after you hear eger talk about the disney app he is cutting certain partnerships out, taking more of it in house. is that right kind of move >> absolutely, bob eger is taking the medicine. sometimes you take the medicine, it doesn't taste good going down it will make you feel better in 18 months, 24 months that's what will happen with disney disney owns the greatest properties in the world. we know they own pixar, marvel the collection of disney characters, star wars. these things make billions of dollars a year disney currently makes six times as much as netflix and netflix as you know i love netflix, great company, but disney has to go all in and have a disney app and they have to be bold

they have to do things like when you're watching the end of a star wars film or the end of a marvel film, they need to start acquiring customers for their disney flicks app. if we just call it disney flix app. if they said at the end of every film put in guardians into your phone and we'll unlock for you an extra 10 minutes of stingers or an episode of micro episode which is spiderman homecoming and the next avengers, you see three out of four of five people leaving a movie theater take out the phone and want to see that exceptional content. there's a reason why netflix is buying from disney disney needs to sell direct. he did the right thing >> so barton, so is this a scale play then that's going to get these companies out of it using everything they've got, the parks, distribution, the content itself, things perhaps that netflix doesn't have

>> i think that what jason just outlined i'd love to see disney doing. that they're not doing that. now what they announced is a subscription offer that is interesting but not whole on i think they have a billion dollars worth of content that they're kind of put into the disney app they're doing some, you know, ancillary sports content on to an espn app. that is not big enough i think netflix is spending $6 billion. amazon is spending $4 billion. facebook is going to spend a billion. this say big time game and they need to lean in with everything they've got to become a subscriber acquisition company which they have never been historically i think jason is right, that's what they need to do >> that was my question to you, jason. do they have the core competency to achieve all those things to go into what is a very different line of business for them? >> yeah. >> this all starts at the top. the person at the top has to make a decision that this is a priority and i think you're seeing bob eger saying, listen, we're going

to take the hard medicine. we're not giving the ip away anymore. we helped build netflix and we're not going to build any more here is another one you might like how about everybody goes to the parks who is a subscriber automatically gets upgraded to fast pass? and you use the same disney app to get ahead of the line you get to go to the front of the line once or twice depending on how many of the disney flix apps you have. you have to take bold action when you're up against an insanely bold competitor disney can do it and bob eger now i believe bob eger has it in his head that his whole legacy is going to get torn down as espn absolutely craters and he needs to start doing very unique ip that occurs after you're watching tv, while you're at the parks and when you're at a disney store if you buy some, you know, product at a disney store, it should come with six months of free disney flicks he has to --

>> you're just full of free marketing ideas, jason >> i'm here. call me. >> yes they might just. >> bob eyeinger is writiger is n much it's the number one free download on apple, zelle, the go-to app for rescue effort as irma bears down on florida we're going to speak with the founder and ceo when squawkal qui returns. not rebalancing your portfolio. pursuing your passion,

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good morning once again, everyone i'm sue herrera. here is your cnbc news update at this hour. the winds dropping slightly to 150 miles per hour as a category four storm as it heads for south florida landing sunday morning president trump urging people to be safe, tweeting this morning to get out of its way if possible the national hurricane center projecting storm surges up to 10 feet along both florida coasts irma brushed the northern coast of cube yachlt high tides and rough waves flooding inland and cuba evacuated tourists yesterday in anticipation of irma's destructive passage the death toll from mexico's 8.1 magnitude quake that hit off the southern coast of mexico rising to 32 hundreds of people fled on to the streets of mexico city 650 miles away after that quake caused buildings to sway violently. and the uss ronald reagan

leaving the base port in japan for what the military says is a regular patrol of the western pacific. this includes the sea of japan where tensions remain very high between the u.s. and north korea. that is the news update this hour i'll send it back down to you, sarah. >> sue, thank you. and i will send it to seema mody for the european close >> a mixed session to end a relatively flat week for stocks. european banks under a lot of pressure down 2% for the week led by deutsche bank. the euro off the best levels of the session after hitting a fresh 2 1/2 year high, close to 1.21 hsbc out with a note saying it believes the rally in the euro is largely complete and will fluctuate around the 120 level over the next year on the economic front, french industrial production rose less than expect dmd july imports of germany surged. take a look at miners under pressure on news that chinese exports slowed in august to a

rate of 5.5% you see the companies all down about 3% meantime, glencore and katar agreed to selt bulk of the nearly 20% stake in russian state controlled oil giant to a chinese energy company a deal worth about a $9 billion deal in the retail space, deutsche bank reduced the target on marks & spencer. they have a hold rating on the stock. down about 2%. and wee finished with a look at how european insurers have faired over this week. you can see it's been a very tough week swiss reed is down 4%. and axa is also in the red next week we have a norway election and the bank ofening glanld also meeting. >> lots of potential catalysts thank you. it's not just florida bracing for irma, georgia is also in the path of what is now a category four hurricane our diana olick is in savannah

diana? >> report of savannah is a lot bigger deal than you might think. this is the fourth largest shipping container facility in all of north america, second largest on the east coast. second only to new york and new jersey and after hurricane matthew, it took two months to catch up fully with commerce and get fully operational again. so you can imagine they're battening down the hatches here, tying down 24 cranes you can imagine how much time that takes and loading up the very last ships to get them out to sea before the storm hits. you can see that this port is seriously the economic engin of manchester city of the state of georgia. >> we're a gateway to the southeast. all the states in the southeast, we're servicing through imported and exported goods very important total of impact of about $84 billion a year for this southeast trade does not happen without this port. >> some of those trade customers you might be talking about, no

biggy. just amazon, walmart, target, caterpillar, home depot. some of the names that come in and out of this port every day the base of gulf stream air is based here in savannah, georgia. another major company. they told us that they ceased all operations on thursday got as many of their jets out of the way as they possibly could ahead of this storm and everything else basically tied down here they are again loading up the containers as quick will he as they can to get them out and ceasing operations at midnight tonight. nothing else moves after that back to you >> big impact in the southeast thank you. and as florida braces for that same hurricane irma and texas continues to recover from harvey, one walkie-talkie app has spiked to the top of the download charts. let's bring in bill moore, sounder of zellow, a free push to talk app. bill, good morning so are most people downloading this actually from the affected

area or are they getting into groups to hear what phlegm are talking about? >> it's both there are about 100 million registered users we're adding a million a day most of the million over the past few days, per day, have been -- they really map against the predicted path of the irma so people are using it they heard it was very successful with harvey and getting set up as an emergency communications tool. >> so bill, talk business model. how do you make money? is it advertising? something else you add features for pay later on what >> yeah, we don't monday ties the app at all they use a version called zello work and they use it to replay two-way radio. it's very popular with dispatch driver use cases, large companies like wire freight, they have 13,000 drivers use it every day or retail. we just won a big deal with fast retailing, restoration hardware uses it. and hospitality is the third big

sector most of the major hotel chains have properties that use it on a broad scale. >> i assume you need wi fi to use it, right? it's an app over the internet. how often do you lose wi fi in i storms how big of a risk is that? >> in a storm you'll be on cell more than wi fi. i did some work because there's been some worries that zello won't work without a network that is true if there is no network, there is no electronic communication, period zello is popular because it works on terrible networks, 2g networks and unreliable networks the work i did looked at harvey, 3% of the cell towers went down n sand yishgs it was quite a bit higher as the cell networks are maturing, it's pretty rare there is no cell coverage available. >> and why would people want to use it is it to communicate with each other? are they listening for police

reports? what is the use case >> yeah, there is a couple friends and family stay connected. that's the case of a crisis or not. and so can you communicate either one-on-one with another contact or a group of people in a channel. a channel would be public or private. in the case of harvey and disasters in the past, it's been very effective with channel that's have large number of users for coordinating rescue events. >> so if i'm using it, i'm on a roof i keep it open and i'm listening or you can distribute it information to ten people at once all in your family? i'm trying -- what do i do with it >> if you're on a roof and you need a helicopter, you would find a channel and hopefully already noef a channel, press and hold the button and say hey, here's where i am.

i need some help and then responders monitoring the channel or dispatchers are going to help coordinate and get the right response to you. now zello is not, you know, 911. it's not an official government solution but it's been very effective where armies of volunteers have come together and brought resources to bear to help solve the problem. >> bill, just finally, i got deja vu here 15 years ago push to talk was huge before the smart phone nextel made the bones on that part of the reason sprint wanted them. is there some reason why this should come back and become a part of our every day tech diet? do you think push and talk is coming back? >> well, absolutely. it's live voice. it's really been squeezed out. most of the really all of the social media you know about is -- the pictures or they're texts. we most naturally communicate with our voice it carries a lot of emotion. it is trustworthy.

it's a wonderful way to stay in touch. it's the strong basis for social media. and zello really is that voice centered social media in a big scale around the globe >> yeah, things that were once hardware are now apps. great to see it going to this use in emergency situation thanks, bill from zello. >> thank you >> all right still to come. cities are lining up to become the new home of amazon's second headquarters we'll speak with the mayor of cincinnati, why he thinks his city is the perfect fit. first though, what are you watching, rick >> i'm watching the eurooccur sin fly. i'm watching rates come down i keep thinking that back in the 70s and 80s, the auto industry used to have genuine imitation leather that wasn't leather. so do we have genuine imitation growth around the globe? that's what we're going to tk ouafr e eak.al

stunning information on equifax, the firm that just suffered one of the worst hacks ever and reporting on the prospect for promised tax reform this year we're also tracking hurricane irm yachlt the record breaking storm getting set to slam into

florida. we'll give you the very latest when we see you at the top of the hour on "halftime. we'll see new 15 minutes >> we'll be watching now let's get to the cme group rick santelli has the santelli exchange >> thanks, jon i've been watching the euro for quite a while. watching the big rise. it overtook 120. maybe will take an overtake 125. but one thing is for sure after yesterday's ecb meeting, that many around the globe don't understand why the euro is moving higher when quantity take theive quantitative easing may get tapered off. we'll know more information in october. one thing that did come out, a story being passed around, ecb policymakers agreed on stimulus cut at meeting say sources basically what that says is that they are going to do what the fed did. they're going to start removing stimulus most likely in the form after

dressing quantitative easing prv purchases, the size and details are on the light side. that would make sense. now when we talk about growth and the reason this is so important is my initial tease general imitation leather, we're always striving to make something man made like nature's original when it come to growth, the growth is real you know, you buy stocks in europe you cash a check you get your money it's real. the question isn't quite exactly a good transition from genuine imitation leather. but it's not far off because even though the growth is real, it's sustainability had a is where the question marks are. how much does the big thumb on the scale create growth and how can that growth survive if and when they stop the policies? now let's take a macro view. before i go to the white board,

look at a really great chart this chart starts in the summer of 2011. it's the euro versus the dollar. we're going to learn something from that chart. here's my rendition of that chart. i'm going to go pretty quickly here there are two circles here these are the most important parts of the chart this is october. october 2014 this is when qe in europe was announced. here's when it actually occurred march of 2015. this is key. so keep in mind the euro currency starts to move up from a very significant bottom. july 2012 right around 120.60. this was when mario draghi said i'm going to do whatever it takes. now is it possible that much of this move even until at announcement is here is that people in the know in other words, if we're doing quantitative easing, the currency is going down the point is if they're going to stop, maybe this runup like this is many people in the

marketplace getting in front of it we won't know. but one thing i can tell you for sure, i have my doubts whether they can deliver so if this move in part, there is a lot of channels here, is because the expectation of no or less qe, there may be a great trade. there i'm not sure he has the courage that our fed seems to v we'll know more in a couple of weeks in the september meeting sarah, back to you >> a good chart. thank you, rick. and the dow is still up about 35 points let's send it out to dom for a quick market flash. >> so sayer yashgs the best foremaning sector in the s & p financials are leading the stock higher irma is downgraded to a category 4 storm. our meteorologiest czys we're just a hair away from being upgraded possibly back to a category 5 if you look at shares of xl group, chubb, they're the best performers in the sector the stocks have taken very large hits over the last couple weeks. so perhaps some short covering or shorter term bounce traders will be using manufacture the stocks as

sentiment gauges for the effects of irma as we watch the storm in the corner of our screen >> we'll continue to keep an eye on it. financials is it ril down 3% for the week dom, thank you still to come, amazon, we know they're looking for a city to build the second headquarters the cincinnati mayor making his pitch to us next "sawaly"s ckn moment eather emergency... extreme risk of burst pipes and water damage... soon, insurance companies won't pay for damages. that is, not if they can help prevent damages from happening in the first place. at cognizant, we're turning the industry known for processing claims into one focused on prevention with predictive analytics, helping them proactively protect the things that matter most. get ready, because we're helping leading companies see it- and see it through-with digital. wherwhere we always welcome you, that's texas.exas.

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amazon is looking for a city with over a million people, an international airport, and mass transit to build their second headquarters well, our next guest is from a city that fits the bill and is already home to retail giants kroger, p&g, macy's, and more. joining us now is john cranley, the mayor of cincinnati. welcome, mayor cranley >> it's great to be with you >> thank you for coming on to talk about this. so tell us a little bit about what you're working on, as far as a pitch i don't think a lot of people know that cincinnati and the surrounding areas with northern kentucky has, what, more than 2 million people now >> absolutely. and first of all, we've already won one of the pitches from amazon.com they recently announced 2,700 new jobs in northern kentucky right across the river, part of our region, our economic region. our region has led economic growth three years in a row in the midwest. we have 1.3 million people talented workers, and our cost of living is 50% of the east and the west coast so people can have a good wage

and a great lifestyle, if they move here. and amazon has already picked the cincinnati area for 2,700 distribution jobs. >> so what are you thinking in terms of how you're crafting this package is entice amazon for headquarters they're talking about as many as 50,000 people at their headquarters what kind of tax incentives do you start put into that package, from a city and state level? >> well, just in the last four years, we've won 7,500 new jobs, just in the city alone, not counting the 2,700 jobs of amazon in northern kentucky. so 10,000 total. and we will be very aggressive on tax neve incentives to lands incredible opportunity we have more than fortune 500 companies headquartered here in cincinnati on a per capita basis than any city in america, including the companies that you mentioned in the intro, procter & gamble, kroger so the synergies that can exist for amazon here are incredible we have 60,000 consumer markets jobs that service p&g and kroger

and those kind of small businesses that feed up into the pipeline, like 8451 and others creates an entrepreneurial ecosystem that will just help the synergy of amazon move forward with all of their plans. >> i was just explaining to my colleague, jon fortt, maybe you can do a better job explaining to him what's going on downtown cincinnati he's always skeptical. he hasn't been there in like five years >> more like 15 to 20 years. this is different from distribution, though tech workers are going to have to want to go and want and live in cincinnati. some of them might be skeptical. how do you -- how do you deal with the education question? are there enough software engineers there already? do you have what it takes to attract and keep those sort of people wanting to live in that area >> absolutely. "the wall street journal" and "the new york times" did a 24 hours, 36 hours in cincinnati over the last three months and talked about cincinnati being the greatest renaissance

turnaround of any city in america. we have this incredible entrepreneurial ecosystem in an area called over the rind, which is historic buildings with, the largest italian-made architecture, structures in america. the large test number of them. and there is an incredible millennial scene of restaurants and bars and start-up businesses "forbes" magazine two years in a row has said that cincinnati is the number one city in america for someone with a college degree this city is booming and growing. and general electric put 2,500 jobs in our downtown just two years ago. because, in part, we had some of the best tax incentives available to attract ge. and we will be as competitive or more for amazon.com. >> tell me how those tax incentives work. do you have a frame work where you think about the number of jobs versus how much you're going to forego in tax revenue in billions? there were criticisms of how far wu wisconsin was willing to go to

get foxconn. how far are you willing to go? >> look, we want to win. amazon.com putting a major headquarter in cincinnati would be a game changer for us and we'll do whatever it takes to win that bid -- >> so would you say zero taxes great,taxes? >> well, first of all, the city and the state will work together on the income taxes that are applicable and we usually do a 50/50 split on job creation on that, for a period of years. but having said negotiable but remember, the government is not here -- i mean, we're here to serve the community and adding, you know, tens of thousands of jobs is going to have a spin-off benefit that is far greater than worrying about whether they pay the highest tax rate or not. so we will, on a creation basis, as competitive as any community in this country. and that's why we want general electric that's why we won amazon.com because we're a thriving city

that people see as a comeback city, that "forbes" magazine sees as a comeback city. >> so here's one question, mayor cranley. you mentioned kroger, biggest employer in cincinnati one of the biggest companies the stock is down 9% after another rough quarter. a lot of concerns there about new competition from amazon/whole foods wouldn't that be a slap in the face to bring in an amazon headquarters right into kroger territory? >> absolutely not. kroger is going to continue to thrive they've been through walmart, they've been through these challenges over a hundred years. jim collins lists them as one of the good-to-great companies in his famous book. kroger is going to come through under the leadership of rodney mcmullen and others. they're a great asset for our community and they've helped pay for the renaissance of our downtown, over the rind. and all of it -- competition's a good thing, but all of this is going to work together to the mutual benefit of both companies and to the city. and i promise you, kroger is going to come out on top, as they have when they faced

walmart and everything else, corporate restructuring in the late '80s. kroger is built to last, as jim collins would say. >> all right mr. mayor, thank you so much for joining us with a pitch for cincinnati he's even got a hashtag -- hq2 cinncy >> we're out of time >> go ahead, quick >> it's like the bachelor city edition. everyone wants the rose from amazon >> thank you, mayor cranley. "squawk alley" will be right back dad: molly! trash! ( ♪ ) whoo! ( ♪ ) mom: hey, molly? it's time to go!

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guys, in case you're wondering what the last thing mayor cranley of cincinnati wanted to tell us was to vote for p&g in their proxy battle. >> got to cheer the home team. >> that's it for "squawk alley." thank you to both of you and "the half" starts now at headquarters with scott wapner all right, guys. thanks so much welcome to the "halftime report." i'm scott wapner our top trade this hour is a big call on how far the s&p 500 could fall over the next 30 days a decline that would surely rattle investors but first, the storm that is rattling residents of florida. irma heading for what looks like a direct