tom: brian levitt, brief mr. tague this morning. nd going to continue when they do u.s. transactions? brian: there is come and a lot of money is not only looking for higher yield but potential growth in the united states. the united states remains an attractive place to be invested, but that is not mean the u.s. is the only game in town. expectations are higher in the u.s., and there are attractive valuations around the world. help me -- there are 25 or 28 boring toothpaste companies. how do deals get done? are you out with incense, smoke and mirrors, to make this happen? got a robuste valuation for your own stock, your ability to pay a higher valuation for someone else is going to go up. the cost of money is very low. that drives your acquisition ant down for your we seen environment today where right now a strong dollar is clearly helping deals get done and -- in a cross-border context. we're looking at record levels of m&a activity at the first part of this year. peter, how do quantify and qualify the mood in the united states at

let's bring in portfolio manager of morgan stanley and brian levitt with oppenheimer. maybe being on this side of the camera, we've been up for so long that we tend to be reacting very strongly, shall i say, to a two or three-point deceleration in the dow. is 2% down the new 10% down? >> yeah, no -- >> this is your chance to blame the media, brian. >> i don't think we should be overreacting to it. you asked about the dow. i would say with the s&p 500 there's a greater than 5% correction in every single year over the last 30-something years. i think with the exception of 1995. corrections happen. i think what is surprising is that everybody is reacting as if we didn't know that the realities of governing were difficult. i mean, there was a reasonable base case optimism to be made in the aftermath of the election, but we always knew this wasn't going to be easy. health care bills don't get written in 17 days. ronald reagan won re-election 49 states to one and we didn't get tax reform until 1986. these things take time. any disruption should be taken with a grain of salt

joining us right now to talk about the markets, the economy, and the fed is brian levitt, oppenheimer' senior investment strategist, and steven desanctis. what do you think? we're looking at a situation where the market has figured out, 100% chance of a rate hike coming. if this number is disappointing today, you still think we'll get that rate hike? >> i think we will. i think the number would have to be particularly disappointing. i think it would have to be disastrous which is unlikely to happen after the adp report we saw. the fed is looking at having a little bit of a window. the dollar has been relatively stable, although, going up, credit spreads have behaved. we want to watch the shape of the yield curve. the yield curve did flatten a little bit in the last couple of days. we should watch that, but they've got a window right now to raise rates and they're going to go ahead in march. >> steven, we know that the fed is looking at this very closely, not just at the headline number, but also the wage inflation number that's down as well. you expect the same thing, they'll raise re