did it have dotcoms? >> his characters are often consumed with power struggles making them blind to the greater threats to their kingdom did. found. >> we have things going on our world right now like climate change that's, you know, ultimately a threat to the entire world. >> the author who first wrote for television decades agoing talks about the script feedback he received back then. >> would you please cut these 107 characters down to 6? and, you know, this giant battle you have at the evened with 100,000 me. >> could you make that a dual between a hero and a villain. >> he teamed up with two fans of his work to create his latestbook which doc youths history of the fictional world. >> they displayed from the first an obsessive knowledge if to my world would to the extents i have often said they know it better than i do. we spoke to him as the world of ice and fire was being published. >> you started writing it in 1991. it got published in 1996. it took 20 years from the time you started writing until

shoppers dancing in the aisles for the first dotcom boom, but was it a biased? >>ust? ♪ >> i'm cory johnson. this is "bloomberg west." fundraising led by the venture capital firm -- but with competition from tech giant like amazon and google and the ghost solve grocery store deliveries past, what makes instacart different? we find out. >> grocery shopping is getting an overhaul. a number of companies are going into the business, notably instacart. i decided to try. >> a little overdressed. >> i can handle that. >> the app is the simple part. pull, select your groceries, hit order. behind the scenes, it is complicated. they partner with stores like all foods and costco. they stroll he aisles, poke the produce, scan each item as they go. they ensure they get the right stuff. they make money by charging fort dollarso -- $4 to $6 per quarter and sometimes charging more if they actually went to the store. dotcom history is littered with the wreckage of failed delivery concepts, but this uber-like model may give them a better ending. thank you very much. all right, so i have

before, they are the poster child for me for the dotcom era.t went to nothing because it was this huge infrastructure play. yours is different. >> very different. we do not have the infrastructure that webvan had. smartphones are prevalent now. people can make orders via smartphone, ipad. and the shoppers use the smartphones. to do grocery shopping for the customers. that is a big change. >> i cannot tell you how many venture capitalists have set in that chair and said, i am sick of hearing about the uber of that and this. but this is really an uber-like model. where both the consumer and the provider is using the same technology. >> right, and is very convenient for the customer to place the order from the local stores that they know in their neighborhood and have it pulled by one of our personal shoppers who is doing this as a job. supplemental to something else they are doing on the side. >> where the interesting things going through the experience in the store, certain items did not scan correctly or some were not available in the size requ

implosion.e dotcom there was a lot of interest in seeing it go away, not just because of the financialsh but because it was threatening to industries. i was betting they were all wrong. i was betting the bubble had been a stock market phenomena, not a technology hoax. the internet had just started, it was as big as everyone thought and it was real. i moved here in the greatest of all -- the worst of all times. cky as an editor for 18 months. thing, it was a great time to hire talent. all the smart people had come during the bubble. they were available. once i did start to get traction, my -- >> what do you prefer, being a journalist or ceo? >> running a magazine come we shipped a product every month. websites, web stories. a team of about the same size. took ideas and package them into a product. it is more similar than you think. the difference that our factories were printing and now they make drones. >> what is the myth of chris anderson and the reality? >> i'm lucky to be at the right place at the right time. i failed out of college. didn't do particularly well in school. no partic

did it have dotcoms? >> his characters are often consumed with power struggles making them blind to the greater

>> super depressing. 2001, a year after the dotcom implosion. everyone was like, it was a hoax.re was a lot of interest in seeing it go away, not just because it led to the financial crash, but also it was very threatening to existing industries. i was betting they were all wrong. i was betting the bubble had been a stock market phenomena, not an underlying technology hoax. the internet had just started, it was going to be as big as everyone said, may be delayed by a year or two, and it was real. i moved here in the worst of all times. three great things happen when you take over the worst of all times. i was sucky as an editor for 18 months. but because even the good editors couldn't get any traction, my failures were covered. the second thing, it was a great time to hire talent. all the smart people had come to the silicon valley during the bubble. as the media had vaporized, they were available. the third thing is, once i did start to get traction, my year on year comparables looked awesome. >> what do you prefer, being a journalist or ceo? >> they are quite similar. running

did it have dotcoms? >> his characters are often consumed with power struggles making them blind to the greater

did it have dotcoms? >> his characters are often consumed with power struggles making them blind to the greater

it was the combination of the dotcom implosion and then 2008. people said, this market is rigged. i'm never going to be in it again. they're gone. there are people who are getting antsy to get in because of the interest rates keeping people from putting a lot of money -- they are interested in something else. i think we still have a very large group of cynics out there. >> michael, let me ask you, mike hinted at this. but you have the federal reserve out there. they are likely to raise rates this year. how does that change the scenario? will the stock market be able to handle higher rates? >> that's the biggest question for 2015. will we be able to higher the rates if the fed doesn't blink and does what they say they will do. when we had our almost 10% decline in october, jim came out and said, maybe the fed needs to do more. boom, stocks went a lot higher. warren buffett says american investors are funny. they hate stocks when they are cheap and love them when at the are expensive. in 2009 when we were below 7000 i tell people they should buy stock and they looked at me like i wa

the market hasn't seen this kind of seed money since the dotcom boom when the big money tech names wereeb fan. it's a 60% jump from last year with software and biotech companies getting the biggest chunk of that funding >> some dads working at intel can now spend eight weeks bonding with their babies. the company is calling the new paid time off a bonding leave program. intel says the policy reinforces the company's commitment to an inclusive workforce. the new plan is in addition to the company's existing pregnancy leave program that allows new mops up to 13 weeks off at full pay. >> well, we are getting a first look at the dramatic moment a spacex craft made a crash landing on saturday. watch. well, this is a vine. the company released today showing the attempted falcon x landing. spacex gave the landing a 50/50 shot before the launch. elon musk compared landing the craft with trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a rainstorm. spacex gives it another go january 29th. >> then there's this is story. nasa located a mysterious spacecraft today that went missi

for a lot of us we come off a period where we're haunted by the dotcom excesses and too many companiest went public and shouldn't have. should there be more out there in this environment putting out a shingle, taking a risk and coming down here? >> if you're a fast casual restaurant chain that makes burgers, now is your time because it's not just shake shack, it's zoe's and there seems to be a lot of appetite for growth friendly -- this is a company whose market value shot over $1 billion and it has 63 locations just on the future growth prospects and expansion. so investors are certainly hungry, to pun intended for that kind of story. >> remember we talked about this a couple weeks ago. everyone saved money on gas prices and they spent it on fast food. that was the big growth -- >> you did point that out. >> we predicted this big pop. each franchise is worth $27 million. you would never pay for a mcdonald's or any franchise $27 million to open one location. so it's really frothy. >> look at the size of the deal though. you can speak to this for such a small deal. >> i don't think ther

35 miles per hour,in increased almost 20% since the last study in 2009 the highest jump since the dotcom boom in the late '90s. drivers we talked to were not surprised. >> you try to get there in 10 15 minutes, like to get to your kids from the day care or trying to get them at school and getting there with traffic, we're talking like an hour. >> reporter: the mtc's top ten hot spots starts here the eastbound interstate 80 commute from u.s. 101 in san francisco to yerba buena island the lower deck of the bay bridge. the average speed at the peak of the commute is 4 miles per hour and the mtc says their data shows the traditional commuter hours have expanded. >> beginning at 1:30 in the afternoon and continue until 8:30 at night. that's seven hours. >> reporter: number two is this stretch of 880 from around hayward to the south bay. >> use technology to really track where our congestion hot spots are, and then to look at what can we do to improve those. >> reporter: now coming up at 6:00 we'll take a closer look at some of the possible solutions. live in san jose robert handa, nbc bay are

we're co-founders at eat a bit dotcom.ast year 70 billion dollars worth of take-out and delivery food orders were placed at independent restaurants in the u.s. only 3% of those orders were electronic. most food orders are still placed on the telephone. the reason is nobody's come up with a truly universal way to place electronic food orders. imagine if those phone call was replaced with today's most popular form of communication, text messages. >> we've patented an intelligence device that automatically takes food orders for restaurants chatting oefker text message. the device then prints the order inside the restaurant, on paper, in standard format. in our hometown of charleston south carolina we've printed over 10,000 of these orders in the last year. making money leasing these devices directly to the restaurant. stewart and i spend almost $100,000 of our money to get where we are today. we're asking for $500,000 to take it nationwide. >> congratulations. give you these to you. on a scale of one to ten how well they did

we pulled that up here and you see three distinct peaks. 1999 before the dotcom bubble burst, and beforeime mortgage crisis hit and actually late last year. that is gartman sees this as a bearish sign. he says this cannot be anything other than ominous. others disagree. the yellow line there shows the s&p 500. they overlaid it with the margin data and it is clearly a mover, mark. >> scarlet what is a better way of considering the record bar wing in stocks? >> an analyst at strategic is research partners says you can look at it as a percentage of total market valuation. that's one option. another one he pointed out, look at the year-over-year percent change in margin debt. we will pull this chart up. the show something a little bit different here. we still have the sites in 2000 and 2007. that matches up with our previous chart. if you look at the far right-hand side of this chart, you do not have a peek there. what it shows instead is a rollover. moderating growth. there is no design. it does show a slowdown in the growth of margin debt. perhaps that is not so ominous. >> scarlet, i am l

the inemployment number the lowest it's been since the dotcom boom and rates of hiring the fastest since the end of the depression. 252,000 jobs in december. unemployment rate falls 5.6%. you may recall november's numbers were blockbusters 321,000. economists announced they are revising the number up to 353,000. when we deep dive to the numbers, we see the jobs created are good jobs professional jobs. . one strange thing, hourly pay dropped slightly. that's hard to figure out. number one the jobs are fairly high end and when you lower the unemployment rate the competition for workers goes up. more than likely the person you are trying to hire already has a job and you have to pay her more to leave than if she were unemployed. we shouldn't see the hourly wage fall. people walking off their jobs in fast food. protesting wages. they want $15 an hour. the big question is whether low-skill and entry level workers may get too expensive, even at $10 an hour. we talked a long time about american factory workers. they have been losing jobs replaced by technology. unemployment went down. that's ro

but then in the early 2000s the dotcom bubble burst. at that point shareholders didn't have nearly the built-in gains that had been so typical just a couple of years earlier. with share mriss depressed u.s. corporations realized it was once again a good time to invert. so in the early 2000s there was another wave of inversions. this time congress worked to stem the tide to establish section 7874 of the u.s. tax code which imposed another significant hurdle for inversions. under section 7874 a u.s. corporation cannot engage in what is called a, quote, naked inversion, end quote, without being considered a u.s. corporation for tax purposes. and with the enactment of this provision, inversion slowed down once again. obviously, that decline was not permanent. if it had been, none of you would be attending this conference to talk about inversions. there were a number of factors that led to the most recent wave of invergs which recently peaked last year. one of these factors was likely the collapse in stock prices in 2008 and 2009. with this

this is the next dotcom boom. and as fast as it's growing, the barons have to grow faster. if you don't keep growing you'll be crushed. >>> welcome to colorado. >> jungle, baby. >> land of the legal weed. and home to america's latest billion-dollar industry, marijuana. this is part of history because what did the end of alcohol prohibition mean to that generation? dynasties, right? >> i took everything i had. 401, ira and dropped it into this. >> i feel like we're in a once in a lifetime position. every state is looking at this. >> the demand really is that much more than the supply. >> we grew closer to 1,000% last year. >> this year we're doing $12 million. >> i hate to fail. >> we want to be the costco of marijuana. >>> in this episode, you'll see a marijuana land rush when a new market opens up and the pot baron's race to stake their claims. is jamie, the newcomer, racing too fast for her own good? >> this has been the week from hell. >> can andy find the formula to keep medicine man on top? they're gunning to be the first tow open in aurora, there will be millions in c

but there's no guarantee that this is the next dotcom boom.ave to grow faster. if you don't keep growing you'll be crushed. >>> welcome to colorado. >> jungle, baby. >> land of the legal weed. and home to america's latest billion-dollar industry, marijuana. this is part of history because what did the end of alcohol prohibition mean to that generation? dynasties, right? >> i took everything i had. 401, ira and dropped it into this. >> i feel like we're in a once

. >> what was the dotcom name? >> audio cafe. >> what did it do? >> i really don't know. we went from this to that to the selling of digital hardware. i think it was a great time to just try something. it is different now. you can't do it. silicon valley is crawling with wannabe entrepreneurs. i had the head of intel's asian operation as the president of my board. i had other distinguished people in my board. it was a really exciting time. there was a funny story. we were destroyed by amazon. not the first or the last. the original focus was to sell audio equipment, hardware. in 1995. that is why it we got the investment of a company, an e-commerce platform. we raised money and it was very exciting. then three months before we launched, amazon, which at that point was an online bookstore, launched their electronics store. we were kind of automatically dead. later i was making a speech, and afterward i was in the men's bathroom, and i turned around and there was this very loud voice. a booming voice. it kept saying, cult of the amateur. it had been in the audience and of c

this was the zenith of the dotcom boom. they said you know what? this year there will be as many first timer super bowl advertisered as there were in the year 2000. what that says about our bubble only time will tell. >> i have one of those puppets somewhere. what do you think i can get for it on ebay? >> not much. >> come on. >> one share of pets.com. how about that? >> oh, yeah. well that will get me nowhere fast. >> there will soon be new life for fans. foodies were sad when the restaurant closed. it was replaced by opa, a greek place, and now, lou's will live again, but this time in the form of a place called lou's beach shack, a little more chalsh. the former owner says he plans to open that new lou's in the popular san pedro square market downtown. he says it should be open by spring. >> the option to use e-cigarettes on b.a.r.t. trains may soon be snuffed out. b.a.r.t. board members will consider banning electronic cigarettes for all b.a.r.t. trains and b.a.r.t. property. b.a.r.t.'s ban would follow the lead set by several other bay area cit

. >> what was the dotcom name? >> audio cafe. >> what did it do? >> that was a good question. we went from eight to eight, from b2b, from sea to sea. i really don't know. we went from this to that to the selling of digital hardware. i think it was a great time to just try something. it is different now. you can't do it. silicon valley is crawling with wannabe entrepreneurs. everywhere you go, you shake a tree and they fall down. but where i was going, no one really do about it. i went from being someone with very little ceo skills to being the head of intel's asian operation as the president of my board. i had other distinguished people in my board. it was a really exciting time. there was a funny story. i will tell you the funny story about audio cafe. we were destroyed by amazon. not the first or the last. the original focus was to sell audio equipment, hardware. this was in about 21995 or 1996. that is why we got the investment of a company. and in-commerce platform. we were getting a launch. we raised money and it was very exciting. than three months before we launched, am

did it have dotcoms?> his characters are often consumed with power struggles making them blind to the greater

but there's no guarantee that this is the next dotcom boom. have to grow faster. if you don't keep growing you'll be crushed >>> thp sunday, the coming battle. president obama prepares to take on the new republican congress. >> we will take this fight to the president on the strongest possible ground with new majorities that the american people elected. >> on the brink of full control, republicans are scrambling as a party leader admits to addressing a white supremacist group and puts the party in damage control on the eve of their takeover. >>> 2014 was supposed to be the year u.s. military left iraq and afghan stistan for good. bu

if you really step back from what happened, you had ebay come out of the original dotcom crash as theo and they were very profitable, they were continuing to grow. in hindsight they weren't investing nearly enough. they shouldn't have let themselves be as profitable as they were. they should have invested aggressively. amazon, famously unprofitable, was investing aggressively in infrastructure for commerce in the front end where it's helpful to go there and figure out what you want. ultimately that won. it just took a long time. i think in ebay's market, marketplace business, that is what the business case study will include. they had a wonderfully light business, but eventually didn't invest enough and now they're in a position where as you said, they have to chop it up and sell off the parts. >> speaking of icahn we did mention him. the activist investor will join scott wapner this afternoon begins at 12:30 eastern time. henry, i ayssume you have four r five parties to go to. >> it's six tonight. it is the super bowl of schmoozing here. i can't describe it. 18 hours a day. >> and we

that was characterized by great wealth, kind of like the dotcom people of our era but the money came from mining, railroads, smelting, and the rise of the modern corporation. all those businesses yielded enormous wealth. at the same time, there was mass immigration to the area. a time when new york was unified by its boroughs and total population of 3.5 million people. with all that mixture of people coming from lower classes rising upper classes, there was a desire to set oneself apart from the teeming masses. this percentage of people decided to move up to fit avenue -- 5th avenue and hire great american architects to design their home and fashion are close. and live their own beautiful life. >> our contemporary public is absolutely memorized -- mesmerized by those who are rich and famous and beautiful. most of the materials in this gallery were owned by individuals who everybody emulated in their day. from our perspective we in our egocentric matter think that we have invented the cult of celebrity and glamour. i think it is important to know that we did not do it. there was an ec

. >>> outpacing the dotcom boom. >>> and we're kicking off the hour with a tech and media round tableet as the third hour of "squawk box" begins right now. >>> welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc, first in business worldwide. i'm becky quick along with brian sullivan. joe and andrew are both off today. brian's here. we're having fun. it is resolution time. >> thank you. >> yeah. we are. it's resolution time. according to a study by the university of scranton weight loss is the most common new year's resolution. i could have guessed that myself. of the 45% of americans who make resolutions, only about 8% succeed. my fitness pal is a new app that aims to help people keep those resolutions. the ceo will join us at 8:40 a.m. eastern time to explain how it works. if you've already broken your new year's resolution, i know it's only the second but you could have. share your shame with us. tweet us the resolution and how you broke it. maybe a timetable of when you broke it too. you can tweet it to @squawkcnbc. >>> the major averages closing out 2014 with gains and with multi-year winni

they are succeeding in ways a lot of dotcom businesses fail. where over $1 billion of capital expenditures went to nothing. it was a publicly traded company, heavily backed by goldman sachs. anthony noto, now the ceo of twitter, the opportunity was so great. >> kazaa, you could order a $.75 snicker bar and they would deliver for no charge. that is the difference. they do charge you to do that. >> what i understand is instacart is already profitable and growing at a fast pace. we will have a deeper dive and talk to the general manager of instacart. you will see me donning the green t-shirt and making the delivery. >> looking forward to it. making the right decisions. >> i try. >> see you later. we are getting some tips from the rap dress queen herself. stephanie ruhle sat down with fashion designer diane von furstenberg. i'm surprised you are not wearing one of her dresses. >> diane has thrust herself into the next generation. she just wrapped up her first reality show where she chose a brand ambassador. she's tapping into a new generation. she

opened in the tweens and closed in the '40s and reminds me of the dotcom bust, are we in that situationa huge offering. when it comes to ipos and how much money they were raising and initially the forecast was low and they expanded the numbers of shares to offer but it does speak to something very important. their target market for that for their customers, it's not a high end restaurant. it's a lower end restaurant. food is great. that's where restaurants are going these days. heavy turnover. low cost. they'll do very well. that's where people are tending to eat more than these higher end restaurants. it says something about our economy. >> there's a lot to be said about the economy as you look at the polls in terms of the number of people in america who think the economy is getting worse versus getting better. getting better now 53% said getting worse 36%. 9% staying the same. i'm interested here as things are looking -- the president used these poll numbers and low gas prices and market going up saying we're going to return to what he calls middle class economics which is code for ta

it remind me a little bit of in the dotcom area everybody had to have an internet prens.sence. what will move the needle do you any in china. >> china's already moving. we have four ships home ported in change high. we're profitable in china. we've signed a second memo of understanding with a major entity in china, the merchant group. we're excited about it. we're successful there today. we're the largest in china. looking forward to additional growth. but we're also looking forward to growth in europe and the united states and continued growth in the caribbean. so, we're excited about the cruise business. as you know simon, we were up 25% in our eps, 14 over 13 and our guidance to be up another 25% in '15 over '14. we're headed fast and hard towards double digit return of investor capital in the next three to four years. >> as far as sunday seahawks or patriots? >> well the seattle seahawks princess cruise lines the official cruise line of the seattle saw hawks. we have to be biased since princess is one of our brands. but we love our -- those who cruise from the northeast pat

this feels like the debates we were having back in the '90s during the dotcom boom. i'm not saying that's the case here, but off booming ipo with people wonder wrg is the money right now. another bombshell from the president's tax plan. president obama wants to challenge college -- change i should say college savings plans known as 529s so the gains would be taxed as regular income. right now they are taxed-free as you know as long as the money is used for a child's college education. the president says these plans only help rich people not the middle class and we will put it to the test coming up on today's "closing bell." >> this was all part of the state of the union. making free community college. we have heard jeb bush and others say it is hypocritical to do that while taxes 529s. here is where we stand. down triple digits on the session. the dow is off 93 points. the s&p is giving up about 8 or nearly half a percent there as well. the nasdaq interestingly is managing to stay in the green but only by about five points at the moment. >> let's talk about -- we hav

we point to where the market was, for example, in the dotcom era and say it can get there.kay. but comparing markets to all-time euphoric tops as a rationale for investing risk always worries me. >> what about pointing out the inflation adjusted the s&p isn't where it was years ago. same thing. >> that's comparing it to a blowoff top. why wouldn't you want to compare it to something near bottom? >> if all you want to be is short, why didn't you put all your money in the short euro a year and a half ago? >> because i wasn't smart enough to think of that. we're not currency traders. >> you look at the income statement balance sheet to decide what's happening. >> yeah. hopefully. >> so even to talk about you as a top down or a macro guy, it's certainly better when the whole macro thing is going to hell for you. >> we're stock pickers. and we came across our -- >> stock panders. >> pickers, joe. we came across china because of our work in the mining sector in '09. so it really depends on what we're seeing in the companies out there and that's where we think we hopefully can get