anybody can live like that. in new york, it's about what you do outside, not inside. maria: you got to get out of that apartment. >> rent control. >> what would fit perfectly is that chair that i sat on the first half of the show that kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller. plea : >> y: you were getting lowerthe. i'm privileged to be with you all. "varney & co." begins right now. ashley webster in for stu today. ashley: good morning, everyone. i'm ashley webster in for stuart varney. the fed raises rates 75 basis points for the third consecutive time. powell says a soft landing will be "very challenging". no kidding. that led to a selloff yesterday afternoon and this morning things at least for now looking a little more calm. the dow, s&p and nasdaq slightly higher.

here we go with the treasury yields and the ten year well above 3.5% at 3.57. the two year topping 4.1% earlier, that is the highest in 15 years down 4.06. onto politics now. the economy topping the list of concerns for voters on numerous polls but many democrats are focusing on abortion. will the strategy work in november? we'll get into that story. protests are erupting in russia following putin's call to mobilize more troops and there's been over 1400 antiwar protesters detained in russia, not to mention flights out of there are selling out. the homeless crisis in los angeles is escalating at a rapid pace. a homeless man is caught on camera hurling f feces at a business owner and that owner is here and calling out officials for ignoring the crisis. what a story. we've got a big show as always. molly high hemmingway, molly,

brett, and katie among others will be here. it is thursday, september 22, the first day of fall. "varney & co." about to begin. varney: ♪ ashley: it's a rather damp first day of fall in the northeast. a little dampness on the streets of sixth avenue in midtown but let's get started why don't we with the fed. jerome powell announcing another 75 basis point rate hike. it was expected but good morning, lauren. take me through it all. lauren: ashley, good morning. three in a row of 75 basis points and the fed signaled another 125 this year. jay powell was pretty blunt about the pain this would inflict on the economy.

>> what we hear from people when we meet with them is that they really are suffering from inflation. if we want to set ourselves up really light the way to another period of very strong labor market, we have got to get inflation behind us. i wish there were a painless way to do that, there isn't. lauren: they were late to do it and goldman sachs and barkly see it moving again in november by 75 and 50 in december so what does that do? it takes the fed funds rate to around 4.5% this year. takes edp down to just 0.2% and inflation for the pce index stays elevated over 5%. that's the definition of stagflation. little growth, high inflation. ashley: yeah, that is exactly a frightening word. ask japan. they were in stagflation for decades. thank you, lauren very much. guess who's with us for the hour

today. we're very honored. dan ives is here. good morning, dan. my question to you, you're the tech guru, is there any area of safety during this very volatile time? >> yeah, look, enterprise software, specifically cybersecurity, those will be pockets of strength because even though we're seeing a slower growth environment, names like microsoft, oracle, sales force, cybersecurity names like palo alto, z scale and others, you're not really going to see a deceleration of growth. those are pockets of safety names to play some of the storms we're seeing. i do believe you look onto the other side of the dark storm, those are the names. risk reward is massively compelling and that's how we'd navigate the storm. ashley: what about names like apple? they just released their iphone 14. i mean, at the price they're at, is it a good deal? high interest rates hurts

corporate profits but it's a different animal. it's at 153 right now, dan. is that a good price to get in? >> apple is our favorite tech name because i continue to view it and i can just from our tracks in asia, iphone 14 demands by what we're seeing in terms of the macro and fed, it's ahead of iphone 13 by anywhere from 7 to 10%. that's important because this is a rocket that can navigate this because of the demands. it is unique, and i view this at 153, i think this is going to be a $200 stock again looking in the section six to twelve months and that looks to be a compelling name to own despite many yelling fire in a crowd theater here. ashley: yeah, it's a remarkable company. dan, thank you very much. stay there. we've got you for the hour. let's check out meta and google. lauren, they're laying off more staff, is that right? lauren: no, it's not a layoff. it's a reorganization, ashley.

the washington journal is reporting that facebook is re-oranging departments so they can -- reorganizing departments to cut depar costs by 10%. they have a month to find another job internally. it's called perking tour -- purgatory, and if they don't find another job, that's their official layoff. google is canceling most of their projects affecting staff in their area 120 r&d division and they're encouraged to apply for a new job internally as well. ashley: okay, we get the message there. dan, how should investors interpret these layups? is it the reality given the economic situation? >> hurricane-like head winds especially in social media and you see that with facebook, meta and you can change your name but doesn't change the nature of what they're seeing from a growth trend perspective, and i

believe here, i think google is much more what i'd view for a name and there's numbers cuts aand she had questions and answers and moving to the meta verse and they can call it whatever they want. you'll see pain ahead in the valley and front and center starting with the social media players and have an uphill climb here in the backdrop. ashley: hurricane force head winds is pretty much spot on. all right. next one for you, lauren. elon musk ripping into former labor secretary robert reich. what happened in lauren: robert hike is a professor at berkeley. it explains a lot. he says billions are not self-made and goes onto slam elon musk because well, he came from privilege. didn't you know that. his dad owned an emerald mine in south africa. elon says that's not true. he took out $100,000 in debt, worked his way through college

and tweeted back calling him an idiot. he also slammed b basos, rise, d jenner for getting help. even if they have supportive families and sometimes in the case of kylie jenner with families with money, it doesn't mean they didn't work hard. ashley: that's right. they created companies and created thousands of jobs and remarkable profits. dan, who's side are you on on this one? >> it just keeps coming down to innovation. musk is not the richest person in the world by accident. it just speaks to what we're seeing to bifurcation and that's going to be the push/pull that we see. but tesla, it's hard to argue with the success that musk has had. ashley: it certainly is.

all right, dan, thank you. now this, a new poll shows top concern for inflation especially among republicans and independents. molly hemmingway is here. molly, good morning to you. economic issues topping the list of voter concerns on many polls but democrats focusing on the abortion rights. is that a winning strategy or is that the only strategy they think they have for the midterms? >> exactly. democrats control every part of the federal government and the policies they have instituted do not give them a lot to run on. we have staggering cost of living that people are enduring, we have an open border, which is accompanying a human righteds crisis. we have various other problems with inflation and energy prices, and we also are being stumbled into a potentially nuclear conflict in europe. i can see why they want to talk about anybody else, but it only works in so far as republicans don't point out the extremism of

democrat positions, which they've not been doing and most of the civilized world begins on protecting the unborn life around second trimester. that's a very popular position. now in america we can begin to do that. democrats official position is no protection for unborn life at any stage of pregnancy. that's a very extreme position that most americans don't -- the vast majority of americans don't hold, but republicans need to point that out since many people in the media don't know. ashley: i've got very little time but i wanted to get into this very different story. a man in north dakota walking free after admitting he ran down a teenager and killed him with his car after a political argument. mollie, where's the outrage about this story? >> it's unbelievable. if a republican had done this to a democrat teenager, it would lead every single news story. he claims he did that because he was echoing that biden rhetoric of republican extremism and a lot of politicians are amping that up and it's a dangerous situation.

a teenager lost his life, and this is something that should be getting a lot more attention and more importantly people need to stop demonizing and going to war against the entire republican party. ashley: exactly. mollie, thank you so much for your time this morning. thank you. let's check the futures. very moderately higher but we'll take that after yesterday and nasdaq and s&p flightily lower. essentially flat. the white house says they're not going to reach out to republican governors for busing migrants to democrat-run cities. listen to this. >> i don't know why we would reach out to a governor or governors who are clearly playing a political game. it is something that they're doing not to find a solution, but to literally put people's lives at risk. ashley: wasn't the white house putting migrants lives at risk during the secret middle of the

night flights? then there's this, a headline from fortune magazine saying people should be happy about inflation. how could high inflation possibly be good? we'll get into it. ♪

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♪ ashley: what a great picture. you're looking at a shot of ft. walton beach in desitin next to the panhandle where it's 88 degrees.

not bad at 9:00 in the morning on the first day of fall. i'll take it. if you like the music we play on the show, follow us on spotify. search "varney & co." or as always scan the qr code on your screen right now. there you go. take a look at futures quickly. very muted response but after yesterday we'll take it. the dow, s&p, and nasdaq all very slightly lower ahead of the opening bell. the federal reserve hiked rates by another 75 basis points and now chairman jerome powell is warning of more pain to come. great. edward lawrence is at the white house this morning. edward, what does mr. powell mean when he says we should expect more pain to come? >> i asked him specifically about that, and he told me that he was talking about higher interest rates for credit cards, higher interest rates for mortgages and auto loans and housing inflation. the federal reserve believes there'll be a severe slow down of the economy finishing the

year at 0.2% at gdp growth and federal reserve seeing an increase in inflation this year moving forward to the end of the year so i asked the chairman this : >> you had said that americans and businesses need to feel economic pain as we go forward. how long from here should americans be prepared for that economic pain? >> how long? i mean, it really depends on how long it takes for wages and more than that, prices to come down for inflation to come down. so what you see in our projections today is that inflation moves down, you know, significantly over the course of next year and then more the next year after that. >> he's eluding to possibly two more years of economic pain and they want 4.1 federal fund rate at the end of this year and a 75 basis point hike again and a last one of a 50 basis point

meeting in december. there's likely one more rate hike in the federal reserve's basket there likely in january. this is the pain along with the lag it takes for all this to work to get inflation down. now, the fed thinks that they will get their inflation back to 2% target in the end of 2025. ashley. ashley: that's a long way off. all right, edward. thank you very much. guess what, do we have our laugher? we need an economist. we've been trying to get art laugher, our good friend in nashville. his camera is not working. we can't get him. back to the marks. hang in there, art. we're trying to connect. as we mentioned before, the dow, the very picture of flat unchanged and s&p down one tenth of a percent and nasdaq down about a quarter of a percent. this is after the big selloff yesterday. what is the key support level on the s&p 500? is it 3600 as some are now arming?

we'll have to wait and see. edward lawrence told us the economic pain being forecast by jerome powell at the fed could last some time and the fed thinking they won't get to that 2% level until the end of 2025. we're just in the fall of 2022. that tells you where we're at. we'll move on and continue to try and get art if we can. let's move on. big market -- skip talking to me in my ear. go to lauren and talk about the markets. lauren: hi, ashley. ashley: thank you, lauren, for bailing us out. the tin can and string doesn't go all the way to nashville. lauren: it might. just get in my ear if we get him and dan too. this is jay powell's last roll of the dice, if you will. the fed clearly got the inflation story wrong and they're late to respond and now you see their aggressive response. we've said for weeks on this show, maybe the fed talks like a hawk and acts like a dove.

but the acts like a dove hasn't happened just yet and maybe it starts to happen somewhere, sometime next year but how bad is the economy going to get before that happens? ashley: that's a very good question. guess what, lauren, we have laugher on the phone. art, he's here. thank you for joining us. there you are. we see a picture of you even. how about that. we put more money in the meter and that's what it needed. all right, art, do you see the fed being able to navigate a soft landing or is that off the table now because they are being very, very aggressive? >> you know, i don't think they're being very, very aggressive, but i don't see a soft landing. we are in secular decline, ashley, and that's really what you're seeing right now. you saw what the atlanta fed, how they revised the gdp for the third quarter and first in the second quarters. all of that's coming in negatively for them and stock

prices falling sharply and the core inflation rate has not gone down yet. in fact, last month was the highest month i think of all. all of this tells me that they're not succeeding in bring inflation down, at least not yet, and the economy is responding very negatively to what they've already done, even though it's nothing really. ashley: we have a bit of frustration that wants to spend like a drunken sailor. it doesn't make sense. >> well, that's the cause. that's why this is all happening. now, you've got the fed doing stuff that would in due course bring that inflation. but then you've got the other side of the thing, you know, inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. the too much money one the fed will get that under control but the too few goods is not goating under control because every time the administration spends, it creates additional demand for goods and services and encourages people to leave the labor force to good production to go down. you've got production of goods going down and you've got money

coming down and you've got a long term real problem, ashley, they should coordinate and work together, but they're not. ashley: they are not indeed. art, we're already out of time. so glad we hung in there and got you on the air. great to see you. thank you very much. let's check the futures -- >> i hope my face doesn't scare anyone. ashley: no, not at all, you handsome devil. the dow, s&p, and nasdaq all down just before the opening bell, which is next. ♪

ashley: all right. let's get to those futures, slightly lower ahead of the opening bell. dr barton is here. i know you're with stuart on this. you think that people should -- there's nothing wrong with embracing the one year treasury yield, 4.1 or something percent. not bad if you keep it in your pocket for a year. >> yes, and the good thing there, ashley, stuart has been talking about that two year and

showing everyone what a good deal that might be going out and i said, well, what about the one year? you get lower duration risk and we don't have that exposure to price for half the time and the interest rate's been higher till yesterday afternoon. now they're about on parody. so a really good deal for a short term place to park money. ashley: dr, we heard from jerome powell, again, very hawkish. the markets sold off even though everyone was expecting a 75 basis point hike, but where do we go from here? we know what the fed is saying. they just will do anything to squash inflation, even more economic pain and tipping us into a recession. what's your thoughts? >> i believe one of the things that the fed has done here, ashley, in raising up that terminal interest rate

prediction when they're not quite so hawkish as you say, the markets will have ups along with the downs, and i think we're in for a rocky patch into the end of the year of up and down volatility in the markets. we just have to embrace it. >> we do. buckle up. why do you like ibm in particular? >> there's a couple of things i really like about ibm. one of them is just something that everyone can see if you look at it on a chart, it has had very much smaller pullbacks and ibm is the fifth largest company in the world in cloud revenue and they're moving strongly into that area and oh, yeah, by the way, a 5.28%

dividend. one of the largest dividend stocks in the s&p so it is another good place to put some money that's not too rocky as we ride this out. >> very good. dr, thank yous for joining us this morning. ashley: we lost 500+ points on the dow yesterday and s&p and nasdaq down 1.7%. can we stop some of the bleeding today in the opening bell is now up and running. here we go on the first full day of fall. take a look. big board and dow 30 stocks starting to get the trades registered. the dow up a whopping 1.6%, essentially flat. more red than green. chevron sales force at the top taking a look at s&p 500 down two tenths of a percent and down at 37.82. take a look at -- 3782 and the

nasdaq down a bit more. down nearly half a percent at 49 points so take a look at big tech names. apple and amazon lower as is microsoft, meta, alphabet slightly higher at $99.57. shift to apple, dan. we talked about this and i want to get into it a bit more. what do you make of the demand for the new iphone 14? it's not cheap but consumers are happy to pay the price. >> the big number is 240 million. because 240 million of a billion iphone us users have not upgradd in over 38 months. there's a lot of pent-up demand and strong activity and verizon, t across the board and then just comes down to this is a strong chip in terms of e16 and you continue to see the price points

staying flat and demand is increasing and if apple can navigate this, this will be a telltale sign and they're putting an iron fence around their install base and it's shown in iphone 14. ashley: yeah, it's remarkable. dan, thank you. i want to take a look at sales force now if we can. we'll have a look at that. they're looking to make their spending "more efficient". one way of putting it. good morning, susan. what does more efficient look like? >> yeah, so well more efficient of course means that they're trying to change their business around. we've talked about what's that and what's the like and at the dream force event taking place in san francisco and they've increased their operating margins guidance for 2026. 26% up from the 20% from 2023. when you sound optimistic like this and putting all the new technology to work as they are at dream force in san francisco, the market reacts positively and that's what you're seeing right

now. ashley: very quickly, dan. thoughts on sales force? up today. what do you think? >> it's all about margins and susan hit on that and margins increase and stocks oversold and this continues to be more of fever cloudal worth to navigate the storm. they did a great job in dream force. >> yep. ashley: very good. let's take a look at olive garden. they reported before the bell, sales were up and, susan, the obvious question, why is the stock down? >> sales came in a bit light and they've been talking about operating margins, profitability trying to deal and cope with high inflation like every other company is trying to do. so i think that's the problem right now is that they came in a bit light, also operating margins might be squeezed with a higher cost and labor during food and that's the play on the bottom line there. ashley: okay. let's move onto the next one.

what do we have? we have tesla maybe or am i jumping ahead. >> we have 1.1 million vehicles being recalled and some going back to 2017 and the problem is with the windows and power windows, which might pose as an injury risk if they don't react as quick and driving obstruction on the road. i would love to hear what dan thinks about elon musk in his deposition next week in delaware in the twitter battle. that courtroom show down for $44 billion. >> yeah, that game of thrones is going to start october 17 and, susan, as well, this is really just going to be the star, sharpen the knives, musk verse twitter and there's a lot for musk to lose. we believe if he does not negotiate with twitter ahead of

that in terms of lower price, high 40s, $50 for twitter, he'll likely end up owning twitter at a current price. that's really right now going -- this could make the johnny depp trial look like peanuts relative to what we'll see. >> that's exciting. ashley: i like game of thrones anyway. costco and fedex reporting after the bell today. >> for fedex, they preannounced; right. you kind of already know what the numbers will be. what we're looking for is more clarity on strategy and cost cutting and they said they'd fly fewer planes and close more than 90 stores. many are thinking is this just a fedex problem and not industry wide? you had ups reaffirming their financial targets for the year. so is this a fedex issue since they're the only ones right now in the industry that is cutting their own forecast. for costco, we know it's a strong discounting retail environment.

for us the market is looking at whether or not they'll raise the membership fees like sames club earlier this year. last time we saw this was 2017 and costco tended to raise their fees for membership every five to six years. people are wondering if it's a 10% increase or how much higher they'll go. ashley: it'll cost you more money for the hot dog. >> they're not raising prices on hot dogs and drinks, staying at $1.50. ashley: thank god. stu would have a fit. the dow is very muted this morning, down just 12 points or thereabout at 30,165. the dow winners six minutes into the session, sales force. we talked about them. chevron, caterpillar, merk and dow all modestly higher. s&p 500 winners, energy names. we've got freeport, sales force

again, valero energy all moving up 2 or more percent. the nasdaq winners there as well, alphabet up half a percent and russ stores up half a percent and cognizant tech solutions up sixth tenths a percent. ten year yield and see where that's sitting this morning and up a big 12 basis points at 3.65% right around there. that's not good for equities and gold up $10 at $1686 and take a look at bitcoin in the very volatile environment. it's up $850 and we're under 20,000 at just over 19,000 for bitcoin. taking a look at price of oil. up 3% or more at $8566 per barrel and natural gas down just a bit at $7.64. take a look at average price by

the way for a gallon of regular gas across the country. down $3.68. but in california, how much in california? $5.51. that hurts. all right. coming up, this is a horrible story. a homeless man caught on video throws feces at a business owner in los anless. that owner blasting city officials for not caring about the crisis. he'll be here to sound off later in the show. a federal judge struck down the administration's vaccine and mask mandate for the early education program head start. arizona attorney general led that charge and he's here next. ♪

ashley: quick look at markets about 12 minutes into the session and we're down again and the dow down a third of a percent and eighth tenths of a percent. drug cartels and foreign terrorist organizations and lauren: florida and roger marshal of kansas and they want to introduce legislation that would add four mexican drug cartels for federal list of tornado organizations and 68 groups on the list and none are drug cartels and to answer your question, this is what it means, ashley. it would be against the law for individuals to provide material support to the cartel to enter the u.s.. it would ban anyone that was a

member of the cartel or had connections to them and it would freeze their assets and block any transaction relating to the assets. texas governor abbott signed an executive organization labeling the cartels as terrorist organizations because he sees the hundreds of millions of doses of lethal fentanyl that come across the southern border not only in texas and arizona and quite frankly, ashley, throughout the united states. it's at the point where dug users are actively seeking out fentanyl because you can't find heroin as easily. imagine that? ashley: absolutely awful. i can't. all right, lauren, thank you very much. federal judge has struck down president biden's vaccine and mask mandates for the head start federal preschool programs. arizona attorney general helped lead the charge against this and joins us now. great to see you, sir. obviously this was a big win for you.

>> it was a big win for the rule of law and the institution. thank you for having me on, ashley, and look, one of my colleagues jeff landry down in louisiana helped lead this charge. i was proud to be part of that coalition because it is so important to continue to pushback against the overreach in the unconstitutional mandates that are coming from the biden administration. i mean, literally it seems like every day there's some new unconstitutional action where he's doubling down and gambling with our individual rights and liberties and shredding the constitution in the process. ashley: while i have you here, attorney general, i wanted to talk about the issue of busing migrants to other cities across the country. arizona has been apart of that program but now those on the left are crying and screaming and saying this is putting the migrants lives at risk. hoppled you respond to that? >> anybody that knows about the

situation at the southern border appreciates one, that every state is now a border state and it really is the height of hypocrisy for all these liberal elites that didn't seem to have a problem with all the people illegally entering our country or a problem with fentanyl flooding our country and price of fentanyl pill falling from $20 to $5 and 50 migrants show up at martha's vineyard or new york and dc and now we have a problem? border states have been dealing with thornhill tore for a long time. for a long time and failure of the biden administration and it's absurd to think none had a problem when joe biden was doing midnight flights or sending out 50 and now there's a crisis. ashley: what's the most galling thing of that they're saying it's threatening migrant's lives but their very actions is threatening all of migrant's lives because they're

encouraging them to take very dangerous journeys to come into the country illegally in many cases. >> yeah, the biden administration de-criminalized and actually incentivized people to break the law to come here illegally. look, i'm a first generation american. i know why people want to come here but what joe biden and the democrats have done, they're shredding the rule of law and constitution and undermining the very reason why people want to come here in the first place. i think the democrats are making a major mistake because if they think the people coming into the country want more socialism and more oppression, they're not going to vote for the democrats. fundamentally, we as a country need to understand that this isn't really even about immigration. it's about empowering the cartels and when you see what the cartels, what they're charging people and exploit people and raping young women and girls, say to yourself shame on the democrats that all the sudden now think somehow it's a problem when someone's going from phoenix to chicago and i

get it, you know, chicago because of mayor lightfoot is becoming not the city that it wasn't was let's say, but that's not the problem. the people are being exploited and the cartel are making money, and america is less safe because of joe biden and the democrats. ashley: i think we'll leave it there but point made. attorney general of ads, thank , thank you for joining us this morning. coming up, dr. anthony fauci facing backlash about comments he made on draconian lockdowns. >> tough do something that's rather draconian and sometimes when you do draconian things, it has collateral, negative consequences. ashley: you think? dr. fauci knew his lockdowns were bad for kids but pushed them anyway. katie pavlich calls it dis-pickable and she'll -- de-pickable and she'll be here later in the show. white house anowed at bill

malugan about the border coverage. is that because they're worried about going into the midterms? we'll talk about it next. ♪

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watch me. ashley: now this, the price of one way flights out of russia are apparently skyrocketing after vladamir putin called up 300,000 reservists. how much for a ticket, lauren? lauren: one way? as high as $900. look at this. more in some instances. here's the problem, there's an eu flight embargo on russia so there's very little inventory. where can you go? serbia, turkey and take a look at russian rail websites, they crashed at one point yesterday because of overwhelming demand because some russians want to get out. let's bottom line it. there's not much internal support for the war in ukraine. there's also reports that russia is trying to recruit prisoners to fight in ukraine and arrested over 800 citizens in 37 cities

for antiwar protests yesterday, ashley. ashley: very interesting developments. all right, lauren, thank you. i want to bring in now brett who is in ukraine right now. brett, great to see you. what are you seeing there first off? what's the mood on the street there? >> hey, thanks, nice to see you, ashley, and glad to be back. i mean, the mood is all talking about the mobilization and that's the reality of it and the reality of the russian military and russian people not wanting it at all, and we're seeing signs of that just like you talked about. within 24 hours, one-way flights out of russia were totally sold out and their citizens were getting out before they can get drafted and it's a clear indicator the people don't want it, the russians have been in retreat in ukraine and putin doesn't want to admit it but they're suffering from a lack of power in the country to mount an effective counter attack and there's questions even if they mobilize the 300,000 troops, how will they supply them and provide them weaponry and

there's the same issue also within ukraine. there's many people that want to fight but it's a supply issue. the botto bottom line is putin continues to spread lies. he's backed himself into a corner and telling his citizens they've only lost about 5,000 troops in ukraine since the war began and on the other hand he says he needs to mobilize and replenish the front lines with up to 300,000 soldiers so we know he's lost closer to 60,000. in the end here, it's -- i don't often agree with administration and their rhetoric and actions but when president biden says this war started and was manifested by the madness of one man, vladamir putin, he's right. russia was not attacked and looking in the eyes of ukrainians that have lost everything in the regions and they've seen their lives destroyed for nothing other than the arrogance of one man, you know you're on the side of good. ashley: very quickly, brett, putin backed into a corner now kind of making a nuclear threat. i mean, how dangerous is he

right now? >> well, he said very many times that he's going to win the war at any cost. i've said that before and he'll stop at nothing to protect his legacy and what he associates in his head as a win and what classifies that, only he knows. do i believe he'll employ tactical nukes? no, i don't believe that. i believe we'd seek chemical attacks before that and we have to recognize the reality that russia is a nuclear power. putin backed himself into a corner and countries build nuclear weapons for deterrents and situations when they feel backed into a corner. ashley: brett, we have to leave it there. brett, stay safe. brett velicovich in ukraine and we thank you and dan ives for joining us this hour. still ahead, many people including california congresswoman kim. the 10:00 hour of "varney & co." is next.

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ashley: it is the first day of fall, midtown manhattan, partly cloudy skies in new york city, it is 10:00 houston time, i'm ashley webster in for stuart varney, picking up where