betty: gentleness with more is our bloomberg news reporter who covers walmart, shannon pettypiece. annon: it is interesting that you mention the walton family. they are the largest owners of walmart and they are suffering big losses. the walton family is on the board. the son-in-law is the chairman of the board. the family is very involved in what is going on here, and you can assume they have signed off on everything happening with the company right now. a lot of these declines and earnings that we are going to be seeing the year, and with stagnant growth over the next couple of years is because the company is investing in employees by raising wages. it was a $9 million minimum this year, a $10 million -- $10 minimum next year. the company line is you have to spend money to make money. i'm sure it would be great if sales are growing fast enough to offset those costs, but they say they think this is the right thing to do, this is what they need to do to grow the company in the long-term, so they are going to do it. every other investor other than the walton's have to deal with it. b

here to talk more about the fallout is shannon pettypiece. e tag, is that more or less than many expected? shannon: people are just now getting used to the idea that retailers are going to have to start raising wages. thin marginsazor and the fact the retail sales are growing, the labor market is getting tighter. municipalities are increasing minimum wages, and we have a giant like walmart come on the scene raising their wages. it's becoming a fact of life, they're just going to have to raise wages more and more. scarlet: this time they raised it to $10. in the past they raised it to nine dollars and it wasn't as painful. walmart said it was raising his wages to nine dollars an hour. other retailers follow along, target and tj maxx said that we will also raise to nine dollars and hour. the average retail wage was around nine dollars and $.50. they were already paying in the nine dollars range. does the minimum, not the average. when they go up to $10 for that minimum, there aren't that many retailers that are paying a minimum of $10 an hour. i

shannon pettypiece of bloomberg news. still ahead, bill ackman defends his stake in valeant.ake a look of the activist world. big names backing up big losses. oflook at the performance activist investors. ♪ betty: live from bloomberg world headquarters you are watching bloomberg "markets." i am betty liu. brendan greeley has more from our news desk. willn: -- brendan: they correlate with local forces to fight islamic state militants. fewer than 60 americans will be involved. the president also authorize sending more warships to turkey. the rockets struck the syrian capital of damascus. that happened as diplomats met for a second day in vienna to try to end the syrian civil war. says the talks are only two and the conflict. they say it is up to the syrian people to decide the future of president al-assad, who is backed by russia. he is eager to finance. the senate gave approval today to effort a debt default. it lists budget caps, an extra spending.n in investigators trying to figure out why passenger jet caught fire as it prepared to take off from fort lauderdale, florida. th