my favorite is three, rite-aid, alcatel, lucent.ruly written off and left for dead going into the year. rallied 308% for heaven's sake. nokia has risen 96%. these are total year makers if you're a portfolio manager, and a total testament of the importance to stay open minded but not pathetic of stocks and companies. unlike everyone else i know in this business, i am totally in favor of speculation, betting on names like these. you can put as much as 20% of mad money portfolio and others nonretirement money in stocks. they can give you spectacular returns to pick the right companies and they're the ones that, well, what is described as the right companies, ones that have changed management, changed culture, and fixed their balance sheets. recipe for success. this had been an entirely unusual year. the stocks were fannie mae and freddie mac all made you excellent money in to 2013 as congress told you that the stocks from freddie and fannie are worthless, and american airlines is a very rare instance of a company getting bought by u.s.

alcatel, lucent, and nokia were one-time dominance of cisco.argin private label margins and used ultralow interest rates to fix the balance sheet. nokia and alcatel and lucent available themselves to cheap financing. alcatel and lucent took some tough medicine while get that balance sheet fixed. nokia got out of the handset business and became a fabulous play on the infrastructure. both companies are winning back business that they used to lose as a matter of course to cisco. it wasn't supposed to be this way, people. these stocks weren't supposed to come back but they have and they have done so terrifically. the best news, massive so far, it looks like 2014 should be a darn good year, too. stay with cramer. [ male announcer ] the new new york is open. open to innovation. open to ambition. open to bold ideas. that's why new york has a new plan -- dozens of tax free zones all across the state. move here, expand here, or start a new business here and pay no taxes for ten years... we're new york. if there's something that creates more jobs, and gr

it's the good the bad in the very very radio lucent lee ugly the good colin powell you know that colin powell in a recent interview with the puget sound business journal former secretary of state endorsed a single payer health care system he said i'm not an expert in health care obamacare or affordable care act or choose to describe it but i do know this i have benefited from that kind of universal health care in my fifty five years of public life and i don't see why we can't do what europe is doing what and it is doing a career is doing what all of these other places are doing. a lot of things to criticize colin powell for the most obvious being his role in hustling the iraq war to the people but he said absolutely right when it comes to single payer health care obamacare is a good start there's only so much we can achieve while keeping our current privatized health insurance industry with. the bad meghan kelly some people say the kelly file host who is the rational person boxer called news for those people probably haven't seen what she said last night during an episode of her show d

. >> another stock you like thomas alcatel lucent.had a good year if you look at the stock price. the big talk is if it will hook up with the new nokia, the non- handset nokia, the mobile network. will that happen? >> there is a great chance it will. there's lots of self-help. >> it can compete with the likes of wah way -- huawei and others. pricing is better than it has been for a long while in the company is on some steady footing with some competent aggressive management. we think we make money where there's lots of change occurring bottom-up that people understand and i'll could tell, this is not the world's leading player in terms of returns but it's a company where there is significant scope for recovery and scope for profit leverage as the topline stabilizes. >> in a year when the review of the banks will take center stage , matthew how do you decipher which bank you favor amidst a whole load of banks within europe? >> there are a lot of banks that are still investable. they have shied away fearing the unknown. strongd a very p

alcatel lucent off 0.75% today. it has confirmed it's agreeing to sell lgs innovations for $200 million to an investor group. bae, down 4.75% today. but its loss could be dassault's gain. a day on losing out a deal for the fighter jets in brazil, they could be on course to clench a contract to provide aircraft to the uae. bae has confirmed it's no longer in the running for that. checking on the bond markets, u.s. treasury yields getting up to 2.95%. a little below that at the moment, just back down to 2792%. that will please mr. bernanke and the rest of the fed. on the currency market, the dollar is continuing to try and inch higher. right now, euro/dollar has been down to the low 1.36s. 1.3643. we did go lower after the s&p downgraded rating on the whole of the eu, the whole 28 countries that make up the european union saying that the long-term creditworthiness has declined. dollar/yen, 104.47. just below the fresh five-year high we hit in the session of 104.60. aussie/dollar, just off its 3 1/2 year low that we hi

. >> alcatel/lucent. >> i think they've been taking money from lucent. >> u.k. stop picking on b.p., let them buy some leases, let them go. >> comeco, six buy recommendations. >> eddie lambpert giving people funds. >> keep in mind g3 licensee. >> jcp is their best -- one of their biggest partners, izod. a lot of good things having for tirico. g3, underarmour, nike, that is hot area. people love sports apparel. >> on "mad money," we're speaking to ken austin. he's avion, the man behind it and we're going to canada and doing a little canadian club chaser to technic er tr to tequ. i'm going to ask him about mez-cal. >> if anyone knows tequila, it's cramer and we won't talk about how. >> and coming up, steve case and the ceo of harley davidson coming up with new bikes nicknamed the piglets. [ male announcer ] this store knows how to handle a saturday crowd. ♪ [ male announcer ] the parking lot helps by letting us know who's coming. the carts keep everyone on the right track. the power tools introduce themselves. all the bits and bulbs keep themselves stocked. and th

. >> and she came from lucent. person tried and true. she is from michigan.family there who have grown up in the same world. that is a world where being a plant manager is as big a job that someone in the town can have. -- how toissa mayer say that? mayeron meyer -- marissa was hugely qualified. carly fiorina and morrison meyer -- marissa mayer is that mary barra is a car gal. there was a comment that there are no car guys running the detroit 3 right now. they all came up through finance. even sergio marchionne started out at beloit. and ford, alan mulally is an engineer but from boeing. he said there are no car guys but there is going to be a car gal. he was basically saying she is it. >> half the cars in the united states archer than by women, so they do have some insight. -- half the cars inc. of the united states are driven by women. you were there during the bailout. this happened right after the government finally sold its shares in general motors. >> what a great way for gm to celebrate that it is free at last from government ownership. it is a bold mo

we want to thank lucent technologies. we want to thank cisco. i mean, m.i.t.m. [ applause ] ♪ ♪ you love, who you love who you love ♪ ♪ you love, who you love who you love ♪ ♪ my girl, she ain't the one that i saw coming ♪ ♪ and sometimes i don't know which way to go ♪ ♪ and i tried to run before but i'm not running anymore ♪ ♪ 'cause i've fought against it hard enough to know ♪ ♪ that you love, who you love who you love ♪ ♪ you love, who you love who you love ♪ ♪ you love, who you love who you love ♪ ♪ oh, you can't make yourself stop dreaming ♪ ♪ who you're dreaming of if it's who you love ♪ ♪ then it's who you love ♪ ♪ my boy, he ain't the one that i saw coming ♪ ♪ and some have said his heart's too hot to hold ♪ ♪ and it takes a little time ♪ but you should see him when he shines ♪ ♪ 'cause you never wanna let that feeling go ♪ ♪ when you love, who you love who you love ♪ ♪ you love, who you love who you love ♪ ♪ yeah, you love, who you love who you love ♪ ♪ oh, you can't make yourself stop dreaming ♪ ♪ who you're dreaming of if it's who you love ♪ ♪ then

and looks back to that example and that famous part where tip o'neill turn all of his lucent technologies'll fight tooth and nail but not obstrujectobject. >> every time boehner leaves the north lawn of the white house by the time he gets in his car i have this sense, don't you guys, his chief of staff is on the phone you can't make that deal with the president. you're in trouble. eric is going crazy up here. the tea party nuts are going crazy. by the time he gets back to the capital the diesel a kabosh. >> so sam stein let me bring you in and chris is going to be talking to the president in front of a group that's increasingly skeptical. we hear about this harvard study but that's far from the only poll that's come out recently. it shows young voters are critical of the president the most recent pew poll shows the president has a 36% approval rating among young voters, 54% disapproval rating. quinnipiac poll shows they trust republicans by a 10% margin and health care by a 5% margin. how things have changed in a year. >> it's been a really bad year for this white house. and it extends ba

remember when lucent would trade in the 80s.t that, brazilian contract they didn't get. >> this is a cross-border deal from some time ago, on the brink of bankruptcy really and it's survived. >> and now it's thriving. i'm sure will say they got in this order because they don't have an nsa that snoops and china doesn't like -- >> china has its own waah way. so don't know why they wouldn't go that way. >> nokia also? >> remember when nokia wasn't just a river in finland, it was a great company. nokia. rbc says buy it. monetizing to intellectual property. i wanted to mention this because of the contact between nokia and blackberry. nokia sold to microsoft, sold to you, steve and then began to spend that money, fix their balance sheet first, that's a common theme and then came up with some products that are winning and their intellectual property is being monetized. blackberry, maybe they should have sold the handset business to somebody and monetized the intellectual property. they failed to do that. that's why blackberry going lik

. >> i do believe cisco is losing share to juniper, to lucent european companies, the china don't mindhallenged company right now and other people are taking share. i think that's okay to say. it's not necessarily wrong. at one point nortell was taking share and fell apart. >> nortel fell apart, that's putting it mildly. there was fraud, there was competition from wahway, concerns about espionage. let's go to the bond pit and check in with rick santelli. mr. santelli. >> if we look at a chart of the 10-year, a little volatility on the ppi data, which was very benign. the long and short of it is we're down a couple of beeps on a 10 versus yesterday, basically unchanged on the week. but if you look at the middle part of the curve around the five-year, it's unchanged on the day and up several basis points on the week. as you look at a longer term chart of 10s, you can clearly see a defined direction. if you look at the spread over a couple days, it's easing off a bit. if you looked at 5s and 30s, you'd see the same thing. that ladder is hovering over a month tight in terms of the tighteni

. >> nokia and lucent back from the dead. those were split repeatedly. those were like 7-for-1 splits. >> except you didn't get the 7. >> when we come back, is discovery looking to by scripps networks? later we'll take you to an event where spotify is set to reveal their biggest changes of the year. again, boehner talking at 10:00 a.m. on the budget. more "squawk on the street" from post 9 in a moment. ♪ thanks to you i'm much obliged ♪ from garage to global. on the ground, in the air, even into space. we repaid every dollar america lent us. and gave america back a profit. we're here to keep our promises. to help you realize a better tomorrow. from the families of aig, happy holidays. >>> we'll see how much they're going to be pup the answer a lot. a number of stories out this morning, late yesterday beginning with i think it was variety.com saying that -- citing the source that discovery is considering -- a lot of conversations overall. it's not a very large premium, would want to use largely its own stock, which is a very high multiple stock versus scr