that's 11% or thereabouts. that's the important thing to think about in a trade like this. >> i want to go to the man who dared to have a bearish case on apple. would you agree with this case on priceline? >> i am getting a little exhausted trying to take contrarian dues and the high flyers. in a lot of ways, you are really trading against a sort of mania here. to me i think the only way to do it as we said in that previous discussion is to define the risk and do it through options. i don't love paying $18 for a put spread, but there is few ways to express this view without really threading the needle. if you have to do it, this is a good way to do it. >> i don't know about that. carter calls the move back above the trend line wear and tear and i call it the pause that refreshes. i don't want to catch the first 10% of any move and that's what mike is trying to do. he is trying to catch the first 10% back down. i'm not a big fan. >> the important thing is in general most people have longer term investments and a

what do you think should be done thereabout? is that appropriate? >> i'll respond to the question, about germany. as carlo showed in the slide's opening, there's relatively small adjustment plans in germany in both 2012 and 2013. in fact, in both your slower adjustments than we initially expected. this is fine, because it reflects to some extent the overperformance that occurred in previous years. carlo talked about how countries with fiscal space could choose to go a little bit slower in their adjustment plans to address downside risks. and certainly germany is in a relatively strong fiscal position or would have the opportunity to do that. at the same time we should recognize there's not much adjustment to begin with. under germany's rule, there is limited scope to go more slowly in adjustment in any case. germany is a kaunt country that should allow this. if growth turns out to be slower we think germany should tolerate a slightly slower deficit as a result of the impact of slower growth. in the event, much sharper decline in growth, clearly for

he emerged in 1968 or thereabouts in our office of the caravele where we were discussing ways to avoidosing money on the expense account. how about charging for two days when you cross the international dateline? that led to talk of different calendars and eventually captain julian calendar was born. it was a great source. he could not be taken to a restaurant because he couldn't be seen in public. talk about spooks, huh? he had to be entertained lavishly in private quarters where no receipts were available. first, we had to get him on the board, right? when saigon bureau chief david miller went to tokyo, i cabled him, but not directly, through new york. advising him that we had entertained the captain in the usual fashion last night, and he was now en route to tokyo on another secret mission. i suggested miller treat him properly. captain calendar roamed the world's hot spots like that for three decades. the middle east, belfast, the gulf, even india and pakistan. the first years were lonely. he needed a companion. so mrs. greg calendar appeared. some of us sprung for the wedding in c

the post election period, the lame duck or the first couple of months or thereabouts of january are periods of just enormous - i remember during the first, a debt ceiling problem in '95, that really had a potential of being a crisis, and then the government shutdown. we had to go in day after day afr day and try to figure out how to negotiate. i think it's going to be more intense because the stakes are so enormous. in a broad sense, i think there are three possible outcomes. i may not have gotten to all of them. but three strikes, one is, i think there's a realistic chance this could happen. that the party also decide to work together in some fashion that then produces a constructive and serious response to our fiscal challenges. i don't know what odds to put on that, but i think there is a realistic chance and the polls show that there's an 84% disapproval rating in congress, and the rest are undecided maybe the electoral officials will recalculate and say maybe we better be more serious about governance. i think that's a real possibility. the other possibility. take the tax cuts, extend

very strange when very dark we'll explain what really caused the capital scar is to go green or thereabouts for an hour on first. very strange russian and look a void didn't kill former security officer alexander litvinenko according to british lie detector expert the u.k.'s prime suspect passed a polygraph test conducted by the country specialist for a documentary london correspondent laura smith looks into how it might change the murder acquiring. stephen did you do anything that led to the death of alexander litvinenko no. were you involved in alexandria listening cause death you know. you have never had any dealings with borneo no another step towards proving his innocence in a test administered by british experts andrei lugovoy passes the lie detector polygraph science says he didn't kill alexander litvinenko in london in two thousand and six when i get a result on my mind it's the right result if or not i don't give a result it's inconclusive why would my guns one hundred percent and if it was admissible in court i would be very pleased to get called a skeptic might say that as a form

reported numbers that beat estimates, microsoft is trading higher at this hour with a gain of 1.7% or thereabouts. >> that is not the pattern that we've seen over the last couple of days. >> and i was just saying earlier, pc shipments were up 2%. that was a hopeful sign. that is what made me hopeful. we saw disk drive makers. pc shipment is important for disk drive as well as microsoft. >> let's do that. let's go to jon fortt who is standing by. have you got anything for us? >> i sure do, bill. a plethora. guidance is going to be revised lower. that's a full year. but let's go through segment by segment. the windows division did better than some analysts i thought, trending $4.62 billion in revenue. server and tools, 4.57. business division, 5.81. entertainment division, 1.862. that's lower than most people i had seen expected. the margins, as we were talking about an hour ago, are lower. so entertainment coming in low actually benefits the bottom line a bit online at $707 million which is pretty strong as well. overall, probably the thing that stands out is that the windows division did a little

he felt thereabout at the core in that way. you know, morally i guess.-span: strom thurmond, was the governor of the state? when did he switch parties? >> guest: after the civil rights bill. ill see you later on of course at the 60 republican convention next to richard nixon. c-span: one of the things in the first clip that we saw with reference to 60 million people were listening. i know that was on television, the very few people could even see that. how important his radio in the states? >> guest: is the medium. every 60 million maybe 182 million other in the country. that is a pretty good size. when you consider the political convention, that's a pretty good group of people. when it first are they early on that it must've been 60 million. the tv was on the east coast sort of close circuit was to a few stations in d.c. the president watched it on tv. i very not work in the east coast with it. the tv was really nowhere else. the radio was -- c-span: he was running for the senate. just go yes, he declared in the spring. c-span: i will say this next clip

we'll see you about 2:15 or thereabouts. sue, to you. >> don't blink. big stories don't stop today. gary is joining me. he got the interview of the day, i would say the interview of the year with goldman sachs' ceo lloyd blankfein. good to see you. >> thank you. >> nicely done, my dear. >> means a lot from you. >> you cover a lot of topics, certainly. >> we do. >> but one of the keys i think had to do with risk and regulation. everybody wants to know whether there's a future for the investment banks. and you asked him about that. >> let's take a listen to what lloyd had to say in terms of the regulatory environment and how he sees it right now. let's take a listen to that. >> as the market gets safer because certain of these adjustments, there will be no greater beneficiary of that than the firms that manage themselves well. the biggest threat to goldman sachs, ever, the existential threat was the poor performance and bad risk managing practices of some of our competitors with whom we had relationships. >> do you yea with him? >> i do. if you go back to 2008, it was really poor risk

. >> you've got 70% of companies or thereabouts that have beaten, yet the market seems to be slow toct to that. >> once again, we look at the technicals, let's take a look at the charts. interestingly enough, our systematic trend following models have been following the up trend in the s&p for some time now, and i think if you look at recent weeks, we've been really trapped in a channel here between 1592 and 1390. with bernanke talking about the quantitative easing, we flirted with that level. the market is now trying to attack the 1390 level again. we could get through there. the next level will be 1400 and then we'll attack the highs again at 1420. we're only 2.5% away from new highs. >> somewhat head-scratching news in gold. after the fed statement it sort of floated out in the bernanke conference. what is gold here? >> a lot of the markets have reduced their positions, our market has covered their long and instituted a small short position. if you look at the charts, we've been in an up trend for a career and a half now, and we still have that. our models are watching the short-t

stocks trading at 3480 level or thereabo thereabouts. it's well above open interest. volumes are not terribly heavy but it's strong and they are pushing the stock to the upside. >> all right. after the best first quarter for stocks since '98 as we head to break, let's look at how the second quarter has begun. highs of the day. s&p 500 good for almost 12 points. almost 1% today. look at the xlf. banks are strong. strong last quarter as well. best performing sector with banks for first quarter. next on the halftime report, conflicting data out of china. which should you believe? john rutledge gets to the bottom of the great china debate and how to trade it when we come back. sometimes investing opportunities are hard to spot. you have to dig a little. fidelity's etf market tracker shows you the big picture on how different asset classes are performing, and it lets you go in for a closer look at areas within a class or sector that may be bucking a larger trend. i'm stephen hett of fidelity investments. the etf market tracker is one more innovative reason serious investor

least the economy the last few years but as frank notes the central theme, the president's team thereaboutg mitt romney is going back to george w. bush. in that sense does it work? >> we did the same campaign for arnold schwarzenegger a few years ago and ran all the footage backwards and it was very successful then. i am not sure it will be successful now. he left out two things. i love the film. i think it is beautifully made, frank and jim do wonderful work. a friend of mine this morning said why didn't they run a debt ticker across the top? there is the missing piece. yes, he's had accomplishments. has he bankrupted the company and forced us into class warfare while he was doing it? >> i want you to listen and go back. this is an obama ad from 2008 and the president himself acknowledges the circumstances. first, let's listen. >> we are one people. we are one nation. together we will begin the next great chapter in the american story with words that will ring from coast-to-coast, from sea to shining sea, yes, we can. >> you see the power there, frank and fred at the aspirational, very in

think maybe there's a better time to buy than right here where the stock is trading around 30 or thereabouts> yeah. nine times x cash is not expensive alt all. and 2.5% yield. maybe under 30 i would be buying it if it gets there. >> what about stephanie's point that maybe there's a better place to buy than right here? i guess you can't be too picky. >> she as a great point. the stock up big. it's outperformed indexes. certainly done well relative to oracle or some of the other names year-to-date. i think the point is when you look at 2007, look at 2009 and look at the stock chart. and we've put this in our marketing material when we see investors. the stock runs up until the launch. and it goes straight up. and then it starts to sell off. so i still think at 11 times -- and stephanie said nine times x cash. it's one of the cheapest names in our group. we think they're going to re-accelerate their operating margin, which the street doesn't really believe is going to happen given the investments in some of the other businesses. i think the setup is still -- it's not amazing on the stock given

. >> i think apple comes back down and tests that $578 level or thereabouts before it goes back to work. and i think it's a screaming buy when it gets back down there again. >> i think collectively, we all have talked about not buying apple here above $610, when the earnings came out. i think now when you look at apple, to jon's point, you're going to get down to the price gap level at around $567, $568. that gives you an incredibly low point of reference to measure your risk and get long against that level. and i would expect a lot of folks on the institutional side will make that trade. >> grasso, since we're talking levels, give us the levels you're watching for the overall market. we are in the final trading day of the month of april, as we attempt to answer the questions of whether it's going to be another sell in may kind of month. >> look at friday's high, friday's low. 1406 on the s&p, cash was its high, 1397 was its low. we're right around there, 1396. you've got to give it a little bit of a margin of error. if we break down, go down to the 50-day moving average, let's call it

people say has a better tasting burger with mcdonald's stock price look at wendy's down 60% or thereabouts. >> 73% over the past five years and mcdonald's up

they're looking for what, $348 a share or thereabouts out of goldman next week? i think they beat that number based on what we here today. >> compensation numbers for goldman sachs, lloyd blankfein are out today showing a drop in 2011, but there is another interesting number spent on mr. blankfein that we're focused on today and kate kelly has some interesting news she's uncovered there. kate? >> thanks so much, scott. essentially, one thing that caught me oy in money proxy filing i read through this morning is that security costs for lloyd blankfein essentially doubled year over year. for the year that just past, the company spent about $258,000 on security for mr. blankfein, compared to $128,676 the year before, so about twice the cost. that's separate from a cost of a car or other perks he gets. if you compare to jpmorgan, which you guys were just talking about, costs were essentially flat year over year. what's going on with goldman is interesting. i'm told at least in part, this is die to occupy wall street and other perceived security threats that increased

>> 3.5%, thereabouts. you need 3 1/2% growth as opposed to the 2.2 we've got if you want to hold the unemployment rate dead stable. the wildcard is this the number of people in the workforce. if you got millions of them, dropping out, as we have in the last three years, then the unemployment rate comes down. if millions more drop out in year, the rate will come down some more. if that working population stays stable, and the economy slows, doesn't get anywhere near three 1/2% that rate will go up. bill: stuart, thank you. see you five minutes, fbn okay. got to turn that number, huh? turn at that beat around as we say around here. martha: turn that beat around what we say all the time around here. a tough number if the economy is slowing down we have another problem on our hands because it is supposed to be heading in the other direction. here are other stories we're following for you. there are fireworks in the john edwards trial. the prosecution questioning now their key witness in all of this. bill: also

president obama on the road spending the night in bolder colorado, or thereabouts before he goes offthe university of iowa today, and here in studio with us, they showed up against today. our team peter ogburn. >> don't sound so excited. dan, they showed up again. >> dan henning hello. hello. hello. good morning. >> cyprian boulding the man behind the cameras. >> he is waving. >> i waf backve back through the door there. >> good to be here. >> president obama rock and roll had a lot of fun with the students in north carolina and at the university of colorado and talking about student loans, which we will spend a lot of time on this morning. he also taped the jimmy fallon show for last night fallon has this slow jamming the news. >> it's usually hilarious. >> brian gives a straight news story and jimmy fallon gives the slow jazz. >> and the whole time it's going on, his backing band, the roots are playing slow smooth jazz. >> so he said yesterday, told the crowd he wanted to slow jam the news and lo and behold. >> i am present barack obama, and i, too, want to slow jam the news. >> al

and the previous email is on the day or thereabouts when the european intervention notice was put. saying that our case was strong with respect to our briefing. >> the gift of the email 01664, page 23, this is a call with mr. cable's main adviser, really along the lines, if i could paraphrase it that they didn't want the meeting at that stage between news corps and mr. cable. you can see they also wanted to be able to say take an independent view and be in touch in coming weeks and provide you with any evidence or material you would like him to read. and see -- i have scheduled this. mr. cable was taking an appropriate line, wasn't he, in terms of wishing to have a meeting and take an independent review, would you agree? >> no. i think it would be entirely appropriate and to have a meeting with mr. cable and his advisers to be able to lay out some of the issues as we saw them and to be able to lay out the rationale for the transaction and analysis of the plurality and competition concerns. it's self-evident in what emerged over the next 12 months, namely i guess it was in december

and i would note that the previous e-mail i think is on the day or thereabouts when the european intervention notice was put. >> saying that our case with strong with respect to our brief. >> the gist of the e-mail 01664, page 23, this is a call with mr. cable's main adviser, really along the lines, paraphrased, that they didn't want a meeting at that stage between news corp.'s to cable. you can see they also wanted to be able to say it was an independent view, -- we would like things to be. then we can see that the bottom i also have schedule with others on this. mr. cable was taking an appropriate line, wasn't he, in terms of not wishing to have a meeting? he wanted to have an independent view, would you agree? >> now, i actually think it would been entirely appropriate, and the reason i thought it, driving meeting with mr. cable and his advisers to be able to lay out some of the issues, as we saw them, and to be able to lay out both the rationale for the transaction and also our analysis of the relevant around and competition concerns. it's self evident in what emerged over the next 12 mon

are holding, of course spanish sovereign debt which if you have it fully at value don't want to thereabouton the dow but weighing heavily. tech is lower. google down 3%. we spoke about the likes of jpmorgan and wells fargo. let's check the breadth of the move as we head into the weekend. almost 5-1. and at the nasdaq, again 4-1. >> let's get the traders take on the markets here and checking with john, senior vice president, interest rate products at r.j. o'brien. what's your interpret jaguars of today because there's a period of time we thought we were decoupled from europe. we're following the european markets into the close. weakness in the euro. weakness in u.s. stocks. >> right. i think going into the afternoon session most of the economic data behind us, the focus is on europe. there's a little bit of concern regarding the sovereign debt issuance counter next week in europe which is why the traders are defensive. we need weakness in equities probably in relation to what's going on in europe. it's short covering going into the weekend. main focus next week will be the auction cycling i

. >> well he knew i was coming and he was supposed to thereabout. >> he was where? he was playing golf. >> but he was in tucson. >> he was in tucson. and dan had teed up for me. two hours later he showed up off the golf course and he saw me and he basically said oh, good grief you've been waiting here. we spent over seven hours over dinner and breakfast talking about vehicles. >> a lifetime for richard. >> unbelievable. it was like sitting with yoda, the master. >> explain that. that's what we've been talking about all morning. is there a lesson. if you're a viewer and don't know richard or have an opportunity to learn at his feet is there a great lesson about the way he thinks about investments that can be applied in the real world? >> there are many. start with he's an investor not an asset manager. so his first comment, i heard david bonderman say it earlier why would you giveaway 80% of profits of your best idea. you can always find capital. wait until you have a great idea and you have total conviction. second comment is you should have enough conviction to put

and i would note that the previous e-mail i think is on the day or thereabouts when the european intervention notice was put. >> saying that our case with strong with respect to our brief. >> the gist of the e-mail 01664, page 23, this is a call with mr. cable's main adviser, really along the lines, paraphrased, that they didn't want a meeting at that stage between news corp.'s to cable. you can see they also wanted to be able to say it was an independent view, -- we would like things to be. then we can see that the bottom i also have schedule with others on this. mr. cable was taking an appropriate line, wasn't he, in terms of not wishing to have a meeting? he wanted to have an independent view, would you agree? >> now, i actually think it would been entirely appropriate, and the reason i thought it, driving meeting with mr. cable and his advisers to be able to lay out some of the issues, as we saw them, and to be able to lay out both the rationale for the transaction and also our analysis of the relevant around and competition concerns. it's self evident in what emerged over the next 12 mon