so certainly an improvement and had its part in the right place, the telecom act, but it was somewhat behind the technology. the regulations are said to favor new entrants, the new entrants came in, invested a lot of money, they all failed, and now it is completely irrelevant. 15 years later, 17 years later, it is pretty much completely irrelevant, but that is due to the march of technology more than anything else, at least in my view. >> professor noll? >> i basically agree with the assessment. at the time it was passed, it is ridiculously complex. it was not a good piece of legislation. we complained about poor judge greene with his lack of sophistication and some of the decisions he made. well, i will take judge greene over congress any day. the act is not very well crafted. nonetheless, the beauty of telecommunications is nobody has it, not the fcc, not congress, not the court has ever made a bad enough decision to stop the march of technology and the places it is taking us. so in retrospect, the 1996 act is the single most negative feature is that caused an enormous amount of res

he's out the rest telecom all this for us now how i see so and so give us the details what is the situation right now sell. well certainly today actually of these two men have their houses right of rated of course this is alexander private top of who is the c.e.o. of ross telecom and the largest minority shareholder of the company a constantino affair of now specifically there in connection to this two hundred twenty five million dollar embezzlement scam what happened is back in two thousand and seven a fund called the marshall fund basically invested in this company called agro prom and they were going to purchase these milk dairy facilities that produce. formula for children and what happened is to secure that loan from. the bank they took the collateral and they under took under-valued collateral and they grossly overvalued it and used it to secure this loan well in two thousand and seven that company went bankrupt or they defaulted on their loan and it's believed that. that basically this this fund was on both sides of the transaction thus the embezzlement side of things now the t.b.'s

when the telecom act that was passed by congress in '96 i think it was, the fcc set up regulations to try to bring this type of competition in. although by that time you could see, i think you could see that cellular was going to be very important. and somewhere probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars, probably much more than that, probably in the tens of billions of dollars was invested if what was called the competitive wire line business. and that just completely failed, you know? when the tech bust came in 2000, those companies dropped like flies, and the investment basically turned out to be worthless. so, you know, not only did a lot of people in the industry not see it, a lot of people were investing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, and they didn't see it coming either. but i would like to actually bring up one thing that i don't think that the old at&t gets enough credit for, and this actually worries me. if you go back to the cell phone or the tablets or whatever, i see there are three enabling technologies for those, and they really have changed the world

. >> host: back to the telecom industry. the remote control. the process on the remote control is fascinating to me. could you go over that? what was the -- a thousand -- >> guest: glasgow, kentucky, got their names from scott land and they're known for being tight with a buck. they had a cable charger, it was five dollars a month. they built a municipal system, cut prices dramatically, still make money on the system, and they cut the price of a remote to less than a dollar. even at a dollar they make tremendous money. you can buy a remote -- you look carefully at the cable bill, lot of of these bills is line after line of details to get you to not note what's going on. your probably paying 75-cents a month. they buy these things for a couple dollars and they don't ask you to bring it back. >> host: not worth the trip. >> guest: so, $5 a month is indicative, that's price gouging. that's charging a rate of return that is thousands of percent over time, and you can do that if you're a monopoly, and to be a monopoly insuring most cases, especially

and president and ceo of the windsupreme corporation. tell us what u.s. telecom is and who you represent. >> guest: we remit the tornado - telephone companies in the united states from at and t to the shallest, and we put together ideas to take care of our consumers in a better way. >> host: how many are there here in the united states now? >> guest: there's thousands of telephone companies in the u.s. still. there's been consolidation, but there's a lot of small telephone companies. we have from verizon to small companies that are co-ops involved in the united states telephone association today. still, many different business issues as a part of that. we all try to work together to refuel solve common issues. that's what the whole purpose of the association is. >> host: we want to get into the policy issues in a minute, but first of all, what is windstream p >> guest: it's a wonderful company. i may be biased in that review, but we're mainly focused in rural america providing local tfn service, triple play, if you will, voice, broadband, very rural stretching fr

the windstream corporation. mr. gardner, first of all, tell us what u.s. telecom is and what you represent. >> guest: well, we represent the telephone companies in the united states of america from the very biggest -- seizen, at&t -- to some of the very smallest. and what we try to do is really get together as a group, put together ideas so that we can really take care of our consumers in a better way. >> host: so when you talk about the small telephone companies, how many are there out here in the united states now? >> guest: there's thousands of telephone companies in the u.s. still, and so there's been plenty of consolidation, but there's still a lot of very small telephone companies. we have from verizon to small companies that are co-ops even involved in united states telephone association today. so still many different business issues as a part of that. we all try to work together to really solve common issues. that's what the whole purpose of the association is. >> host: and we want to get into some of those policy issues in just a minute, but first of all,

and he was raised money to promote what the telecom industry one. ot what the public wanted to put the system and glasgow in the red. losing money. but only because the cost of litigation. when the case came before a well-known real conservative judge, he listened to the industry lawyer, and he leaned down from the bench and said solar cells like you just don't want any competition. since then, glasgow has modernize its system twice. municipal system. it charges much lower rates than the surrounding monopoly provided the same thing as happened in lafayette, louisiana, and chattanooga just a facet internet in america. just as over 100 shares ago there were communities were wall street said we're not going to wire you for electricity. we're not going to do it. so the town and create their own municipal systems, and overall people get municipal electricity pay about one-third less. they have fewer outages, better service. and by the way, even the big systems like the "los angeles times" waterpower, sacramento, these big systems pay salaries to their top

of talking which will be in the studio about obviously means it's business time telecom in the spotlight today for all the wrong reasons but you go exactly the see had his home spy investigates is. a conspiracy that's going on going to have all the details in the business both think of the teasy for now also the fact that the london matches encouraging russian oligarchs to get themselves that to do with all the legality said the cleaners would like the money for cleaning. it was got a version of the stuff you got that as well but it's all he's a color so we know that's a very exciting stuff all of that is coming up in the business but it's. just off of the pike. wealthy british style science and sometimes. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy which makes cars or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on our. kids in sorrow. and hope for escape. barely surviving longing for a godsend. they live in a search for gold. why doesn't it bring them wealth. war criminals we have. groups. all. right you know.

i think people looking at the telecom space this quarter definite need to realize that. >> reporter: in all, the storm knocked out a quarter of the cell towers in its path, n according to the federal government. but crews are working to restore power. yesterday, only a fifth were out of service by this aernoon, only 15% of cell towers were down. crews from all companies have gotten creative in their efforts to restore service. companies are deploying generator-powereismakeshift cell towers to hard-hit areas and opening device-chweging stations for people without power. a.t.t. and t-mobile are alsong allowing customers in hard-hit areas to use each other's networks until service is back to normal. here's some other reliefor nsumers in the haest-hit areas. some companies are also esuspending late fees and continuing service to those who haven't paid their bills. sylvia hall, "n.b.r.," washington. >> tom: the continued slow improvement of the job market didn't help stock prices today with the major indices losing ground. nde indexaw a small pop at the opening ll, but couldn't maintain it

originally started even before nine eleven they were soliciting this kind of information from the telecoms. the c.e.o. of qwest testified the cords were his it's court documents show that he was approached in february of two thousand and one to produce to provide customer data to the government so they could do analysis of calling communities and things like that so to me it seemed that that was the an indication that the intent was to have a view inside the united states all along and be able to see what people were doing inside this country. so that was their intent from the beginning in my view. and it's gone beyond spying on cell phones listening into our conversations they can actually access more information than ever before part of that is our fault as a fair because we do trust technology so much i'm speaking of course about the cloud american say store so much of their information in the cloud and they don't realize how much can be tapped how long that information is stored for and what that information in the end can be used for so can you talk about some of the things that meric

of the wind stream corporation. tell us what us telecom is and who you represent. >> we represent the telephone companies in the united states from the biggest to the smaller. we try to get together as a group and put together ideas so we can take care of our consumers in a better way. >> when you talk about the small telephone companies how many are there in the united states now? >> there are thousands of telephone companies in the united states still. there's been plenty of consolidation but there are still many companies. from verizon and our co-ops in the association today. so still many different business issues as a part of that. we all try to work together to solve common issues. that's what the whole purpose of the association is. >> we want to get into some of those policy issues in just a minute but what is wind stream? >> wind stream is a wonderful company. i may be buy ased in that review. we are in the triple play if you will, voice brond band, we are rural. we have stretch from new mexico all the way to up state new york ser

eighteen months now although they've been largely unreported by the international media covered on the telecom bar who worked in the court told us how her findings. alone we have found out that actually the situation is much more spending months ago it's really the terrier a thousand we're talking about at least twenty four people being killed after they were being dependent from firing issued its reports last year a ban on not protest at the end to october and only a week ago there were a vocation of national took thirty one opposition activists were also talking about continuous harassment or human rights and one of them is now being the president of the famed center for human rights that was sometimes these some are two three years increased merrily for having exercised its right to freedom of expression and we consider him to be a prisoner of conscience and we are talking about hundreds of hands and hundreds of allegations of torture that that happened especially since the beginning of two thousand and eleven until now international community has not enough pressure on the man to ensure th

. >> the kind of technology you've got, if i'm an internet service provider on the telecom company, i'm interested in what traffic is coming across my network. if i was say a government in china or iran i might be interested to see what is sending what kind of messages. so your technology works. it can be used for good or for censorship, for shutting down opponents. how do you make sure that that doesn't happen? >> well, we're an honest company. that's what i can say around that. we don't specifically market or sell the product around the more devious aspects. again, our providers are so worried about managing the traffic in the network and trying to keep their subscribers which they can do with our equipment via personalized services for the gaming public. they can tailor services around that as an example. so our customers are really focussed on that. clearly, other things can be done with the data that we provide. but that's always been true of all internet technologies. it has always been there. while we provide a little more detail on it and certainly more color, we like to think,

the necessity to get that kind of equipment in there to restore the grid, the water system, for the telecom it is something we are still struggling with and we are working with on a daily basis. >> thank you, mr. brig. >> every exercise i've been involved with, managing information and communication is easily no. 1 or 2 on the list. in the heat of an event, information is flowing in, there's usually no shortage of information rtion it's translating that to something credible that is the challenge. usually 50 percent of that information is wrong and untimely. before a unified command is established and you have various city departments or regional groups that are working together before the unified command has been established, coordinating field work in 4 counties is usually awkward. until that central message gets pushed down and all the groups are rowing together, the field, when you are dealing with the geegraphy we are dealing with in the bay area, that field coordination is always difficult in the first few hours. >> thank you. mr. angelus. >> verizon wireless, every time we get involv

one of the issues people thought in the telecom circles if mitt romney were to win, some folks think perhaps an fcc run by republicans, a justice department run by republicans might decide differently in some mergers and acquisitions, there'd be more her -- mergers in the wireless industry. does that concern you? do you think there'd be less competition if there was more consolidation in the wireless industry? >> guest: i think there are two things in play here, number one, in terms of how the fcc operates day-to-day, that will not change. in terms of the way we evaluate mergers, digest information, the way in which staff processes information, that part will not change. i say, as you mentioned, whoever's named head of the doj, justice department, whoever either remains or is named head of the fcc, of course, will take on, um, would have a lot of the same principles and, um, you know, characteristics as the president. so in terms of how are things evaluated, that may or may not fluctuate, you know, fending on what happens -- depending on what happens on tuesday. but the way the fcc g

the stock. dan talks about telecom equipment. i think most of the stocks are commodity-type stocks like. >> rks dsu. i would rather go with our old standby, qualcomm. i would rather go with sky works, who reported a disappointing quarter, but still has tremendous growth as they pick up market share. why are they building up market share? they're building up usage of mobile pads, smartphones. >> joe tera nova has been putting things to work in apple. you're looking to tech, just not microsoft. >> i'm not looking to microsoft, i'm not looking to intel, i'm not looking to hewlett-packard. we've talked about that over the last couple of months. that story has passed, this is about sky works, sandisk, apple, sirius. and i think the question for investors on a tape today that has reversed and moved a little bit higher, if you are looking for stabilization or a trough in the marketplace in technology itself, you're not going to look at these old technology names, you want to look at these newer technology names. >> to your point about th

the telecom equipment maker comes out with numbers. e thing is just a big disappointment reared their group certainly is a temperamental one. you can see just from the telecom equipment maker they are posting a second straight quarterly loss. we have seen operators cutting back on spending. we have seen their loss widening which is not good news for alcatel or their shareholders. this is one we will continue to follow. as we noted, a down day for alcatel. back to you. ashley: thank you. tracy: just four days until the election. the candidates and their team are out in full force. how does today's jobs report affect their strategies click select we will break through their spend. ashley: good luck with that. take a look at how the dollar is faring. up against the euro and the pound. look at the japanese yen, down again. we will be right back. ♪ tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 this morning, i'm going to trade in hong kong. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 after that, it's on germany. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 then tonight, i'm trading 9500 miles away in japan. tdd#:

bond market for the new telecom companies but it certainly did not involve the banking system that's that's the first thing second prior to nine hundred ninety eight the valuations were not excessive for new companies they were well within historic norms it was in one thousand nine hundred ninety eight the bubble took off if you take ninety ninety eight through two thousand out of the numbers and just go back to the midnight the ninety's you're operating in a in a world of reasonable valuations where investors did well buying into new companies and then what is the role of a v.c. is now because you touched on him briefly and you mention there consultation and your from this world you've worked on and this area for years why are the dollars falling why are the consolidation is happening what impact does it have on innovation right now well you can do a causal chain that the dollars going into venture capital are declining and i want to come back to the quantities involved the dollars are declining because the venture capital returns have declined the venture capital returns have decli

the second page very quickly. utilities, telecomthose sectors hit by the devastation of sandy are the ones that have been suffering the most at this point. peter costa, do we suddenly get a logjam lifted once we have results of the election out of the way? we're in a wait and see mode right now. >> you know, you go back in time and you look at other elections. there wasn't a log jam lifted from any of the other elections. we don't really have a consensus -- when you're going through an election there's always a clear favorite. i don't think either candidate -- whoever wins, i don't think it's going to make that much difference as far as the economy. i think the economy makes the economy move, not the president. >> and the little book "still saves your assets," i'm sure you can get it on amazon. >> it's hard to read it in the candlelight at my house. >> you are concerned about job growth and earnings growth. >> jobs growth, earnings growth. i think the reaction on the election -- between the election and year-end, the market has only

david: and why the telecoms? >> i think because we're going to see at least five years in which he would call the smart phone economy or the apple economy. the big beneficiaries are the telephone companies that we pay. if you have philippine telecom, as well as verizon and at&t. and that is perfect for people who are interested in saving. david: thank you for coming in, happy election day. says he is apprehensive about the market right now despite the big rally. that does not mean there isn't money to be made. he will give us his moneymakers and tell us the one thing that would actually make him more bullish than he is. and look at the performance of the s&p sectors since the inauguration, which is pretty much at the bottom of the market crash and recession. here is the performance as of yesterday's close. consumer discretionary really outperforming. up more than 126% in the past three and a half years. you see us, at the start of the day. on the company phone list that's a few names longer. you see us bank on sta

. >> back to the telecom industry, the remote controls, prophets on the remote control is fascinating what is the process? a thousand? >> is just off the wall. draws its name from scotland and of course discuss earthiness, that they had a monopoly cable provider whose church incredible prices. and he was sitting on the sofa, the couch potato was $5 a month. they built the municipal system. they will to cut prices dramatically and still make money on the system and that cut the price of the remotes to less than a dollar. you can buy a remote -- if you look at line after line of details to not notice it's really going on, you probably think 75 cents a month if they buy these things for a couple dollars and a factor in determining your cable box -- >> if that were the true tiered >> battery. five dollars a month is indicative of charging a rate of return of a thousand% over time. can do that if you're monopoly. to be a monopoly in most cases it's because the government is to be a monopoly. >> is it still there? >> guest: would have been a serious effort by the private company and newt gi

politics and trying to work together to push for a deal on the deficit. >>> and competition in the telecomn us on the push to expand broadband service and the direction of the commission in president obama's second term. >>> plus the road to recovery from superstorm sandy. congressman frank pallone on what it will take to rebuild the backbone of new jersey's tourism industry, the jersey shore. the third hour of "squawk box" begins right now. >>> welcome back to "squawk box" on cnbc, first in business worldwi worldwide. i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin. in our top stories, president obama is set to address the issue spooking the markets this week, the face kaiscal cliff. he'll make an appearance at the white house at 1:00 p.m. eastern time. you'll see coverage live on cnbc. in the meantime we're watching shares of jcpenney. the retailer came in with a loss of 93 cents a share when you exclude certain items, wider than the street's expectations of a loss of seven cents a share. revenue came in at $2.93 billion, compares to a consensus of $2.73 billion, but every n

be looking at the two biggest dividend payers inside the dow, which happen to be the rivals in the telecomd verizon. i'm going to start with you, erin. you've been an advocate of dividend payers for quite a while now. does the president's re-election have you rethinking that play before the end of the year? >> no, there are four reasons why we don't think it's going to make a huge impact on companies for the fore coming future. one, it's going to be muted, particularly with the house still being republican. we don't think it's going to be as bad as people expect. the most important is historically when dividends were lowered back in 2003, we didn't really see any changes in the number of companies offering dividends and the amounts. so we expect that lack of change to also happen this time. also, not all investors are tax sensitive. >> right. so you're hanging in there with those dividend payers like an at&t or verizon? >> yeah, there's a lot of money out there that isn't tax sense tiff. we still believe the lack of volatility with your dividend is worth it. >> all right. rich, how do the

utilities, the reits and the telecom stocks are the weakest sectors.ome are arguing that president obama would raise taxes on dividend payers more than under mr. romney -- or governor romney. that's an interpretation. the problem i have with these interpretations is they don't usually stack up to make an argument. dollar index has been up four days in a row. if an obama victory was more likely, and for example, easing was more likely, you'd think the dollar index would be down. i have a little problem with interpretation. my thought here is the fiscal cliff issues. i think they're going to get resolved quicker than people think. i think they'll extend the tax cuts into next year, through next year. that's my bet. i think you're going to see a rally going into the end of the year in the stock market. the one thing, dear heavens, let's not have, is an election where we don't have a clear victor for weeks and weeks on end. >> i think that could be very damaging. >> remember the hanging chads? >> oh, please. absolutely. >> i was here on the floor and the s

. >> reporter: but johnston's favorite examples come from the telecom industry. >> this is my latest monthly verizon wireless bill. one of my favorites is access charge, f.c.c. access charge. >> reporter: right, i never figured out what that was. >> well, it sounds like the f.c.c., the federal communications commission is charging you a fee. no, the government doesn't get a penny of that, that's the charge for connecting to long distance. >> reporter: connecting to long distance lines that have been up for decades but that companies like verizon charge for access to. but that's far from the only non-obvious item on the bill. fed universal service charge, regulatory charge, administrative charge, gross receipts surcharge, then there's a safety commission surcharge so many of the amounts are small enough that you go, "well, i'm not going to complain about a 59-cent federal access surcharge." >> but here's a little thing to think about that. if you could get everybody in america to pay you one penny a day. at the end of the year you'd have $1.1 billion. if you can get a dime you're going

. >> host: back to the telecom industry there were remote control profits that were fascinating to me. would you go over that? >> guest: in kentuckians they go the same from scotland and the your famous from being very tight. they had a monopoly cable provider charging them with incredible prices and if you had a little quicker to change channels while you were sitting on the sofa, the couch potato, it was $5 a month. they were able to cut the prices dramatically and still make money on the system and they cut it to less than a dollar even that the dollar they make tremendous money you can buy a remote if you look carefully at your cable bill you'll notice its line after line of the tools to sort of get you to not really notice what is going on you probably pay 75 cents a month they buy these things for a couple hours and the fact that they are worth nothing when you turn on your cable box. >> host: not worth the trip. >> guest: $5 a month is indicative of the price. its thousands of% over time and you can do that if you are a monopoly and to be a monopoly in most cases especially in

talk a little bit about the telecom industry. has it hit the telecom industry next?had story about scaling back of expenditures and at&t announced they were going to spend $14 billion. >> they are dealing with the continued extraordinary explosion in the information age and techor and continue to make investments to capitalize and deliver on the promise which is one of the reasons why we're so focused and concerned about the fiscal cliff because anything that puts at risk the chance of returning to recession, having the return of unemployment at 9% to 10% or cutting into the discretionary income of the american household is something that significantly impacts our businesses. >> michael you're a washington guy, handicap it. we've had lots of people give us their over/under on what happens. january 1st where are we? >> i believe they can get something done. i have no idea what the something is. i think only john boehner and the president of the united states right now have the most information about how that will unfold but you know what? the night of the election eve

here's the telecom index. lowest level since going back to june. another 1%. if you take a look at the utility index, this has been cratering partly on the concerns about hurricane sandy because some of the northeast utilities have been hit. this is the low for the year in the utilities. this has been hit by the dividend concerns. even the ret, their lowest levels since june. there's the direct effect on the market of fiscal cliff concerns. >> you've got that right. thanks, bob. see you in a bit. >>> record fine for bp announced. now trans ocean, one of its own, bertha coombs back in headquarters. >> they're the operator of the rig winning a reversal decision in favor of maersk drilling in a patent legislation in the appeals court. the federal court reviews the motion. b.p., a record $4 billion fine pleading guilty to 14 criminal charges involving the mcconda well explosion. >> thank you very much for that. unbelievable story. when we come back, big opportunities and big data. zachary bogue happens to be married to yahoo! ceo marissa meyer. why he cease this a

we'll take a look at the competitive landscape in the telecom industry and what it means for consumers. also can the u.s. housing market continue along the long an winding road to recovery? we'll cross over to new york for analysis ahead of today's case shiller index. and some investors are make money out of art. . we'll speak with a columbian artist about making a political statement using bank notes. >>> bank of canada governor mark carney says he's honored to accept the role as head of the bank of england. george osbourne made the announcement in parliament describing carney, who is also head of the financial stability board, as the outstanding banker of his generation. >> i can tell parliament and the public that the next governor of the bank of england is to be mark carney. he's currently governor of the central bank of canada and chair of the world's financial stability board. he is the best, most experienced and most qualified person in the world it to be the next governor of england. >> most qualified person in the world. pretty high praise. carney will also serve a five year t

drama story strolling one of rush's telephone operators what's the drummer yeah well it's most telecom the state long company the c has had his house round signed by investigators who are following that story we're also going to be talking about the fact that russian oligarchs like to go to london courts to deal with drama you can see the signs of the ruble signs going off the oil is there i'm sure there's a lot of noise like that so they're quite happy about it also it's all coming up in the business program after the break ok. wealthy british style. press from time to. market why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our. mobile before. give him a note so we have a lot of groups of the colors of the sluices all our views in the right enough to my mind it was like when you had that knowledge that wasn't. the smadi when i was fifteen yes you can live there when a you certainly can't do it through the barrel of a gun only effective social changes can

just could have to i'm not the political advisor his advisor in telecom the deputy secretary of i counsel that's right ok sorry as i said the very lives now engaged in the it brought it is that it is now engaged in yet another. all out war against the palestinians on one hand the liberal mind says that the best is not the man of peace and we should get rid of him. is that i let x. be as a so this is an attack against the palestinians and they do it on the issue and the palestinians who have in the coming hours or so is to store unity because this is a war against them this is indeed the order decided. to hold the dignity of the palestinian leadership and its intention to go to the general assembly that's right of course resort offensive against gaza four years ago operation cast lead it was called by the israelis didn't exactly achieve much apart from the deaths of many civilians a lot of destruction what do you think israel is going to chief this time round. i honestly don't know as you indeed said last time there was one thousand five hundred palestinians killed there were about the des

the telecom tower arm of india phone giant is set to raise $825 million next month. the firm will sell shares at a discount to global appears. analysts say it will likely benefit from a revival in risk appetite. meanwhile in japan, the promise of a leadership change has triggered big surge of foreign investor interest in the market. the details from the nikkei. >> foreign investors bought $7 billion more in shares than they sold last week in the japanese stock market. that's the highest net level purchase in 20 months. the nikkei 225 climbed 4% last week alone after noda said he was dissolving the lower house secretary the stage for election on december 16th. this week tokyo equities continued the positive momentum. markets are factoring in further ease aing if the opposition ldp party wins in the polls. foreign investors expect wen will help ease the negative impact of a strong yen on japanese exporters. no surprise then why stocks like cannon gained 7% last week. but there are also worries from market watchers that japan's recent rally may be driven mostly by short

the company that succeeded lucent at one point the largest telecom manufacturer in the world.d of this because right now they're trying to arrange a lifeline loan from goldman sachs, shore up its balance sheet, keep it alive. something that caused the stock to jump 8% on friday before settling back down today to $1 and change. at one time alcatel lucent strode across the earth. this equipment maker including the bell labs division of at&t, unbelievable, the brains. all the switching, all the fiber, all the copper. the greatest install base in the world. the best international brand name. believe it or not, it could rival cisco, show up nortel every day of the week. remember them? you always knew it had the inside track on the verizon and at&t deals. at that point southwestern bell. as those companies grew and grew. patricia russo showed me lte in its infancy. next generation cell phone technology all to itself. alcatel lucent had more nobel laureates than any other company on earth. lucent seemed invincible. previous ceo inflated revenues. right about when the stock traded at

once again this has been true for weeks now, that sector the lowest of the day. telecomlowest since june. reits also the lowest since june. all these are big dividend payers. >> kenny pulcari is with us. you were telling me middle east is what people are talking about and what's going on in washington is what people are talking about, the dysfunction. >> the dysfunction in washington, whether it's the fiscal cliff or the inability for anyone to come to the table. this whole mortgage deduction thing and whether or not bernanke says housing is improving, maybe because we live in the northeast and so it is different. i'm not really sure where housing is improving. you're certainly not buying an $80,000 condo in new york or anywhere in the tri-state region. if you're talking about phoenix or nevada, that may be true. >> sales are improving. starts bottomed, construction industry is hiring more people. we're a long way from where we were in 2006 but there's definite signs of bottom coming off the market. >> i don't see it yet. >> the fed chairman said we weren't out of the wo