joining us now is jack welch, executive chairman of the jack welch management institute and a member 's strategic and policy forum. jack, like so many of us, you're at home sometimes, watching cable, i know. you know, typically you're watching "squawk box" but you watch everything. so my first question is going to be what have you wanted to say as you've been watching everything that's happened in the past week or two, have you been wanting to yell anything back at the tv? or do you feel strongly? where are we? you can talk about the market. you can talk about the administration. you can talk about the democrats. you can talk about anything you want. >> my view is polarized. i mean, i look at the president, and i give him an "a" on policy. i give him an "a" on appointments. i love the people he's picked. at every, betsy devos, scott pruitt, the military side, rex tillerson. i love those people. i think they're great. so i give him an "a" there. i give him an "a" on the morale of the business community and the morale in the country, the spirit in the country. the consumer service. the

. >> the jack welch approach to being number one or number two, and if not, why are you there? >> the best people come to a firm like that. we are able to make things happen from that position of strength. >> you are not thinking about expanding it to any other businesses? >> no, we're not. >> within those lines that you are currently in? >> strengthen, strengthen, strengthen. >> the quantitative strategies have been remarkably successful for hedge funds. two that come to mind are sigma.sance and t- will they be a bigger part of your business? >> they are a big part of our business and has been for a long time. their ability to synthesize that amount of data and information to create pretty did -- predictive forecasts is beneficial to our organization. finally assets have dollarsed at 1 trillion after the fallout from bill gross's exit. many roman has been in the job for six months. he says it is important to look forward, and not backward as it grows. in an interview with john micklethwait, roman made the case for why they still have an advantage. >> fixed income indices turn

erik: jack welch, the approach to being number one or number two, then why are you there. mr.riffin: counterparties come to a firm that looks like that. we are able to make things happen from that position of strength. erik: so you are not thinking about or interested into expanding into other businesses? mr. griffin: distinctive different from our current lines? no, we are not. strengthen, strengthen, strengthen. erik: the quantitative strategies have been remarkably successful for other hedge funds, more than a couple. the two that come to mind are renaissance into sigma. will that become a bigger part of your business? mr. griffin: it has been a big part of our business for a long time. both those firms are extraordinarily good at what they do, and the ability to synthesize fast amounts of data to create predictive forecasts of securities crisis is important to our entire business. ♪ erik: that was ken griffin, ceo of citadel. attempt coke, assets have stabilized at $1.5 trillion after the outflows that followed bill gross's exit. the new ceo says it is important look forwa

." >>> and according to jack welch, giving the president high grades for policy.ow grades for communicating's what the president needs to do to get his house in order and agenda back on track, next. >>> good day, everybody and welcome to the second hour of "power lunch." i'm tyler mathisen. here is what is on the menu. no lunch, continuing to watch a major sell-off for stocks. dow down about 290 points. nasdaq off about 2% on pace now to be the biggest sell-off since last september. the markets fearing the newest revelations about president trump, that they might derail or at least delay his tax cutting agenda and more. even some republicans calling for a big investigation now. is his management style just not right for the oval office? and gold and oil both moving higher today as the dollar moves lower. is that where you should put your money now? we'll talk to goldman's top commodities person. "power lunch," hour number two, part deus, begins now. >>> as you know, a sell-off on wall street. get a closer look at what is moving. a lot of it on the dow at least dri

the one thing i was talking with jack welch this morning when jack welch -- we both admit, i mean, remember our companies have had to guide down numbers because of the dollar. so when you see a weak dollar, you should not just say, oh, no. because it was the strong dollar that was the problem. so when you think about apple, apple there's a couple notes out today saying things are good. i know we'll get to faber report in a moment. maybe they don't have to guide down. coca-cola. they have hedged against the euro, but i'm saying the big international companies, they have been waiting for the dollar to roll over. so when you hear the dollar rolling over, don't panic. now, the one thing that's been broken is that we used to say with a weak dollar oil should go up. oil is holding in. but that's a supply issue. you know, i'm trying to find a place to put oil. if you have a place to put it, there's no place. natural gas -- >> our house is off limits. david's is too. >> you can't fill your basement with oil? >> i prefer not to. >> beware that a weak dollar it's kind of what these guys wanted. now,

got too many business ventures. >> you've upgraded from me to jack welch tomorrow.was thinking about something earlier. how many of these brands are out there? >> it's a $1 trillion plus market of food and beverages. >> you can always launch something to take market share away from the established. >> go to the stores today. we know that protein is king. we know that sugar is public enemy number one and everything in the store today is fundamentally wrong. everything is high sugar, everybody is high carbs and low protein. what people are looking for doesn't actually exist as much in stores as it should. that's why it's getting changed up. pepsi, for example, 2025 they want 2/3 of the beverage portfolio to have less than 100 calories per 12 ounce serving of added sugar. >> what's a big consumer products company develop their own brands. what is it about having an entrepreneur doing it and you investing into it as opposed to a big company knowing what they need in their own portfolio? >> three things. one, entrepreneurs generally are a source of original ideas, better

so much i had taken for granted until i joined what my friend jack welch called the zipper club. band of brothers and sisters with the big scar on their chest. i had taken that for granted like i did breathing for granted and moving through life for granted. yes, living for granted. it's trite to say now, disease of any sort brings you back to earth. maybe because it reminds you of the relatively short time we have on earth. an earth that moves on even when we stop. but sometimes stops to check in even when we hurt. that is where a lot of you came in. folks in this room came in. i will never ever forget all of the cards and letters, the packages -- great packages -- and the kind words from so many of you. yeah, even liberals. people i never met, but whose decency and simple decency i will never forget. i remember hearing from a man about my age who said that he too had just gone through open heart surgery. he wrote, cavuto, i'm looking forward to your first day back. responding to those viewers that will no doubt say they were surprised you even had a heart. laugh at them, he sai

neil: that is jack welch, telling me, peter. get caught up, revenues are there down the road. i don't know if they pay for themselves but economic activity will change the perspective. giving coming from slow growth rates. you get more bang than you traditionally would for the buck, going 2%, to 3% growth, is a 50% leap in economic activity? >> you hit on it. one of the things you got to believe. we talked with great excitement about the trillion dollar infrastructure we'll spend in the next 10 years. might be interesting to contrast that with china. last year, china spent a trillion dollars. year before that, a trillion dollars. year before that a trillion dollars. so they are making a bet, every year, in fact for next 15 years, they will spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure. why? they believe if you spend it the economy will grow. you can't spend it and put 14 anchors on it to prevent the boat from sailing. that is one of the problems we're having right now. neil: only thing that i worry, inget angry emails from people,

and the great jack welch will join us.ive us his insights on everything from what's going on in dc and the impact on the markets. big show ahead at 6:00 a.m. we'll see wilfred of course later on. >> you will, indeed. looking forward to that. "squawk box" starts in about seven minutes time. futures down just over 100 points. 110 points the decline for the dow at the moment. with us is michael purves. thanks for being here. today is the first time we've seen equity markets react to the political developments. is that a concern for you? >> i'll be intrigued to see the pace of how the new cycle unfolds. we'll have an overlapping news cycle coming out of washington, d.c. there's so many different issues. i'm not sure it's a recipe for the vix to shoot up to 25 or 30 soon. if you go back to the 1963/'64 time period, you had all sorts of the political events, including the assassination of a president. volatility didn't move that much during that period. for much of 1963/'64, volatility levels were almost half of what they were r

if jack welch were sitting in this chair he would say good employees are people that are valuable to him, he would wait a while before he would make a decision to let people go. i don't see it as a long period of time but maybe it is. >> if somebody comes and gives you that type of urgency, he could be compromised by russia and there is no curtailment of his activities. palestinian was right by the president he's side and the president in very, very sen sensitive meetings. you're making an assumption i can't make which is the president knew and asked for some kind of due process. all we know is mcgann knew. why do you have any confidence this went up to the president and they made a call? >> i honestly don't know if it did or didn't. what i do know is the president's personality about leadership and loyalty, how he thinks about his people and what he cares about. and what i love about the president he really cares about people first more than he cares about that sort of nonsense that goes on in the political arena. also, i think -- >> loyal to a fault here? this isn't, we don't like

the jack welch approach to being number one or number two and if not -- ken: then why are you there.are able to make things happen from that position of strength. not thinkingare about expanding into any other businesses? ken: the business line, within those business lines, strengthen, strengthen, straighten. the quantitative strategist -- quantitative strategies have been successful for a couple of hedge funds. will that become a bigger part of your business? part ofhas been a big our business for a long time. those firms are extremely good at what you do. the ability to synthesize vast amounts of data to create a forecast of securities prices. some people believe that artificial intelligence and machine learning are going to displace human beings in investing and asset management. what conclusions have you drawn about ai and machine learning? i think those observations come from principally those who don't use machine learning or ai. those of us who are practitioners in the industry no machine learning is really powerful when you have a very large data set. aree the patterns consis

because you talk about pay for performance and you've got a guy like say let's say just for example jack welch a company goes from $9 billion in revenues to $300 -- whatever it was during his tenure. shareholders are enriched. the employees are added. overall and there's a marketplace. where a ceo maybe his -- for his services, he does well one place. you see he's got this abilities. and the marketplace dictates like an athlete or like an actress that makes $20 million in a movie, richard, and i don't know if you -- that's three -- an actress makes 350 times what the gaffer with the microphone makes, and yet, you know, you don't hear the same type of grousing about -- or a guy with a good football, a lefty that's got a split finger fastball makes $20 million in a year. it seems like if you're good at something the market dictates you make a lot of money. >> -- people that you talked about -- nice speech but it doesn't work. for every one of those ceos that you talked about, there are 300 or 400 that have had poor performance. and second of all the system is rigged. here's how it works. each ye

i think the last one i could think of was jack welch getting silas kath cart of illinois tool.o stepped off the board hackette to run their new division and now hackett is put in charge of the whole operation. it's quite a bit. i think he's not known as being a big external communicator. mark was so gilded and gifted at that. i think it's going to be a bit of a stretch. and they're retooling their marketing operation the same time, and of course there are ripple effects in terms of who's in charge of what for operations with farley taking over marketing which i don't know how strong a move that will be. hopefully it will work out pretty well, and i, i, i, i just think that this is -- you look at companies, you know, think of names, allen coleman at dupont, claus kleinfeld of alcoa, mark fields, you could put together an incredible roster of industrial strength that's just been really undermined by this kind of short-termism. >> okay. jeff, thank you for your time today. it's good talking to you. >> sure. >> when we come back, charting the markets. we will talk technicals, ctig'

welch sexually assaulted a child in 1996. if convicted he could face live in prison. a man accused of car jacking a woman in fairfax county. john russell alluded them for more than two hours. russell car jacked a woman at the bp station at telegraph road and east drive. former episcopal bishop convicted in raised tonight deadly dui crash in 2014 was denied parole keavment heather cook pled guilty to vehicular manslaughter leaving the scene of an accident driving under the in r incident entexing while driving. she is serving a seven year sentence. >> the driver of the train derailment will not face charges. eighteen people were killed, more than 200 others were injured. there is noúevidy at the time of the crash. d.c. is the place to be. destination d.c. says a record number of people visited the nation's capital h this knows, maybe we've already had 20 million people so far this year. they stopped by and they spent about $7.3 billion on retail, dining and entertainment. >> after a batch of botched tests, the results of the retests are in. matt. >>reporter: yeah, tony you'll remember so many people were concerned after they