vivus's treatment was initially rejected in july. and that's tonight's "market focus." >> susie: boeing could feel some turbulence tomorrow from the world trade organization. it's expected to rule that huge subsidies paid to boeing from nasa and the pentagon since the early 1990s are illegal. the international trade group has made seven similar rulings on tax breaks given to boeing. the panel is expected to do it again in a 1,500 page report released tomorrow. the timing is crucial. boeing and airbus are competing for a deal worth up to $50 billion to sell an aerial refueling tanker to the u.s. air force. >> tom: as we saw with the august retail sales results, consumers turned out for back- to-school shopping, drawn by last minute discounts. now, retailers are gearing up for their most important season of the year. tonight's "word on the street" is "holiday." gregg greenberg is a reporter at thestreet.com. he joins us from the nasdaq. >> tom: welcome back to n.b.r., gregg, nice to see you. >> always great to be here. >> tom: what kin

vivus' treatment was rejected by the panel in july, but it has no partner. that stock was up almost 11%. and that is tonight's "market focus." >> tom: while the job market may be weak, a record number of older americans are working. last month, more than 28 million americans 55 years old and over had jobs. this goes for c.e.o.'s too. warren buffett just turned 80, and continues running berkshire hathaway. the average age of people who sit on a fortune 500 corporate board of directors is 63.5, according to the corporate library. bob damon is president of north america for executive recruiting firm korn ferry. bob, welcome to nightly business report. >> tom, thank you very much. good to be here. >> tom: so are older c.e.o.s more in demand these days? >> yeah, tom, we've seen a market increase in the demand for what we like to call seasoned c.e.o.s. in fact, there's a kind of a saying in the boardroom today that 60 is the new 50. >> tom: fair enough. and three factors have been driving this, according to your research. the complexity of the business, things are

vivus' medicine has already been turned down. its stock was off 1%. and that's tonight's market focus. >> tom: the christmas video game selling season got underway this week. in one day, microsoft's latest version of "halo" did $200 million in sales, some at gamestop retail stores. we spoke with gamestop's president tony bartel about the store's holiday outlook, including its new push this year into digital downloads. >> definitely we see this as fully incremental. that we've never done this before. so it's a new program that we rolled out. and again what we saw when we rolled this out is we saw a triplinging of the attach rate of digital content. which manys that when there is a game available that has digital content on it, if we don't have this and people just have to use points to go in and find it in xbox live and pay for it that way, we see that there is a much smallary attach rate. whereas when we point it out and our associates are able to sell it with a lot of enthusiasm, they've probably played a lot of these, we see a tripling of that rate.

in stocks, vivus's new weight loss drug is going better than expected. >>> carnival cruise lines aren a bigger than expected boost in quarterly sales, but shares in adobe are tumbling. that's it from cnbc, first in business worldwide. now, back to "hardball." >>> quite frankly, i'm exhausted. exhausted of defending you, y r your -- >> velma hart gave voice to the frustrations of many middle class americans. she's the national finance director and cfo for a veteran's organization. she served in the army reserve for almost a decade. welcome. >> thank you so much. >> what you did i thought yesterday was speak clearly about american life. when you talked about how you used to have to have hot dogs and beans as the main dinner because it was inexpensive and you fear you may have to go back to that and one kid heading to college, i think you captured the reality of a lot of americans. >> appreciate you saying that because that's my reality. i'm worried. i shouldn't be. i should have confidence in our leaders, but i'm getting a little anxious and the other thing i'm concerned about is a lot