Slide. The hang seng was up by 3 4 of a percentage point shanghai stocks closed down by 1 3 of a percentage point in japan, the nikkei higher once again. Another 100 points gain of half a percentage point. Trading at 21,255. In europe there is early trading taking place there are modest advances. It looks like the dax is the biggest gainer well continue to keep an eye on that. Were watching a developing story in the oil market. Crude and brent, they are moving higher on news that iraqi troops have seized parts of oil rich kurdistan. Theyre moving into parts of the city of kirkuk the u. S. Has supplied and trained Iraqi Federal forces and Kurdish Forces both have been fighting the Islamist State Group they are to if he cuss on the war with isis. One is missing, another five missing. Theyre trying to get to they were trying to get to a valve to cut off the flow of oil. Right now they are not ruling out the possibility that the oil is leaking into the lake the cause of the blast is unknown. Huge explosion. Huge explosion. People running out taking a video. They said it felt like a sonic boom when it exploded. Then we have the parlor games that is the fed. Fed chair janet yellen making the case for rate hikes. The comments are important well show you those in a second and talk about them. The other debate is that perhaps we could get her replacement, including her this week. Yellen said the ongoing strength in the u. S. Economy will warrant gradual rate increases she said inflation has been, quote, the biggest rise in the economy. This week in politics, tax reform and nafta negotiations both in focus. Kayla tausche has the latest out of washington. Good morning. Good morning, becky those will most likely come up at a meeting that President Trump is holding over lunch with Senate Majority leader mitch mcconnell. Hes one of the foremost figures in passing the president s agenda despite there being little to no love lost between them trumps ally steve bannon calling for war against mcconnells establishment. They say they will discuss Hurricane Relief and the Senate Budget deal a key marker in the sand for tax reform. The white houses council of economic advisers releasing a study defending its assertion that cutting the Corporate Tax rate would raise wages a cut to 20 would add up to 9,000 onto the higher average income of americans and up to 7,000 onto the median income. So that is certainly going to be a talking point this week. Look for that. Health care could appear back in the cross hairs because they dont want to fund low income people senator Lindsey Graham who gofd with the president this weekend said a deal in health care might still be possible. The president is not going to continue to throw good money after bad, give 7 million to Insurance Companies unless something changes in obamacare he talked to senator alexander hes encouraging him to get a bipartisan deal. Reporter got to be a good deal this could prove critical on the trade front. Vice president mike pence is meeting with the deputy Prime Minister to discuss a bilateral deal japans minister said it will keep a dialogue open so well see what happens there. Negotiations over nafta have been extended to tuesday one participant telling cnbc the u. S. Is taking a political rather than a plaque particular approach experts say if the u. S. Were to withdraw from the deal it would likely happen later in the process but then in this environment anything is possible and, becky, in the next couple of days well see if he made a compromise well keep butting heads to our neighbors to the north and south. Kayla, a lot of things going on all of these moving pieces at once all of this news that Susan Collins would like to vote on a budget because she would like to get to tax reform. If youre trying to figure out where the Republican Senators May go with tax reform, it sounds like she is in the yes column. Reporter she is in the yes column thats important, becky, because on friday she said she would be remaining in the yes column. Certainly that is a bolstering of the gop majority. She has been one of the toughest gets for votes on health care specifically, but on tax reform she was a maybe. People didnt know if she was going to remain in the senate. There is going to be some potential new difficulties in tax reform, senator joe corker, he could be a question mark when it comes to tax reform all right kayla, thank you very much journal lead editorial on nafta. Yes. Could be the worst economic blender since nixon. One dperd what they were talking about. If inflation is bad, you just say know no, it doesnt work neither do tricky dickey going all the way back to the worst economic blunders so the journal is not hard. 6. The nafta talks, country of or begin, 35 has to be put together then i saw they want made in america to be a huge portion of that 50 or is it higher . They have switched over from nafta content. To making it made in america. To a made in america. That is going to be the major Sticking Point i dont think its going to fly with canada and mexico. We have stuff to talk about on wall street tomorrow look for data on import prices, Industrial Production and Home Builders survey. Wednesday Housing Starts friday, existing home sales and more than 50 companies in the s p 500, 10 there are thousands of companies. If its 10 of the s p 500, that should be somewhere around 50. Get ready. Someone said that in my ear nine dow components thats almost 1 3. Youre fast at mondays, mondays, i dont miss a step. The list includes johnson johnson, verizon, Procter Gamble and General Electric. Stocks to watch today. Apple has been upgraded to overweight by sector weight. Key bank, the firms target price 187 a share the iphone maker is in what theyre calling the early stages of a more aggressive Market Segmentation tesla has fired hundreds of workers after they conducted an annual Performance Review. San jose mercury reporting that they fired engineers, factory workers. It comes as the ceo says the company is facing, quote, bottlenecks in the production of the new model 3. The question is will this make it easier or harder. Barrons, positive share and its a better deal than alibaba barrons suggesting j. D. Could be a better buy a lot happening in the stock market and the bond market lets get back to those. Ed campbell and sri kumar. Dr. Doom you have taken the place of a lot of the old dr. Doom. No, im very bullish on bonds. Bullish on bonds which means, you know, that maybe the overall Global Economy is i willusery. Im going to read a comment from ed the reason why the market and other new highs doesnt trade where its indicated this morning, but the Global Economy firing on all cylinders with growth more synchronized and robust due to better growth . Japan, europe. Why are we below 233. We are below 230 today because the growth is really with the amount of liquidity you have the wait of the longitudinal growth we do have better growth than we have had in a decade, youre saying thats not true that its really liquidity is the growth not good is it tepid growth the pickup in Economic Growth is real. In other words, the numbers are higher in 2017 than they were 2016, but it is coming largely from what is happening from europe to turn it around chinas growth has held down the Global Growth is good, but if you look at the Imf World Bank meeting late last week, i was there in washington, and the imf has a lot of notes of caution. The global tensions increasing and it wants easy Monetary Policy to a lot of this is inconsistent, ed, because the lead story in the journal is that its a weird inflation fear fear of low inflation when in my entire life all ive ever been afraid of, we were talking about wage price controls, all ive been afraid of is south american style hyper inflation, so it says leaders of the World Central Bank could prolong it. We have all of this growth things are better than theyve been in a while. You see the stock market in the United States going up and up and up why cant central bankers assume that inflation will take care of itself and realize staying where they are right now is almost looking in the rearview mirror. I think the feds should hike and will hike. Should they be targeting raising inflation instead of just keeping a currency stable i think the 2 inflation target is the right one. If anything, theyve under shot the target. They havent lower than 2. If its 2 , yeah. How could they have been any easier how could they have gotten it any higher than that theyve pulled out all the stops. You worry about japan, right . I dont know. People are still the macro bullard, all of these guys are turning dovish again they may be doing mark granite, too right they might be doing something wrong. Lets just enjoy what we have here. Okay. All right. Strong growth with zero Interest Rates. You better hope i dont think they mistreated the legislation. Its been cut back substantially since 2009 wages are not increasing people are accepting jobs at lower wages. None of that is inflationary if you want future excuses, i can give uber prices, artificial intelligence, driverless cars. Those are possible excuses in the future the reality is Monetary Policy is responsible for the lower inflation. The bank of japans assets hasnt done anything to inflation. Things are different. I think wage pressures are definitely building. We saw the average Hourly Earnings number in the most recent report pick up to 2. 9 theres some reason to think that that number is suspect because of issues related to the hurricane but, i mean, if you look at people who have been continuously employed in the labor market, you know, those wage numbers are growing at Something Like 3 to 4 so weve got this compositional issue where people are dropping out of the labor market, the older boomer retirees. I think thats masking a situation where wage pressures are starting. Is yellen back in is that what you said . Why is she back in no, no, i think were back i think gary is theres nothing new about yellen john taylor. John taylors there, then theres a conversation about whether janet yellen is back in. But we could be within about a week or two. I will say, by the way, i used to think and we talked about it, that kevin walsh was very hawkish. Given the op eds we read, i think hes been hawkish but in a different way. Thats right. Not inflation based. Not clear he would raise rates. I think his commentary was much more around financial crisis and getting ahead of that having said that, how do you get ahead of it . You have to raise the rates. In may 2008 he stayed with the policy that ben bernanke had and the reason which is often given is im a member of the board. I have to support the chairman, which is not the way you should be paid to do. You should have an independent view. With the exception of yellen being reappointed, the best outcome for it is powell more of a friend of dereg gu zblags if at 9 00 this morning powell was announced the markets would what they would go up. Respond positively. If it was warsh it would what . It would be a bit of an adjustment. Higher or lower lower if its warsh or taylor, you would have a market selloff. The question is do you want a quick market selloff and then a takeoff of the economy or do you want to push it up and then have a much sharper crash later on . Trump says hes goings to have four. I saw that. Can you imagine that if that happens . Canada looking for Supreme Court nominations. I think given how divided the country is yeah. It would be bad it would be very complicated. Very complicated. My okay. Polite way of putting it do you think hes going to be there to make the appointment . Most are still hanging their hat on it. I dont know. Can i ask you one question in i have one more question did you read mark penn did you read what he said . Read the editorial mark penn, hillarys guy. Right. If you take 100 million in facebook, youre out of your then he makes all of these cases. There were debates, there was this even lost him as support hes a tech guy now that was not the point i was making you completely perverted what i was saying. I know. Look at his op ed. Do you like it tow . Go ahead. Coming up when we return, a new report President Trump when you started to say that, what op ed did you read . Thats rede tmp psintru says the next drug czar responsible for the opioid addiction people dont invest in stocks and bonds. They dont invest in alternatives or municipal strategies. What people really invest in is what they hope to get out of life. But helping them get there means you cant approach investing from just one point of view. Because its only when you collaborate and crosspollinate many points of view that Something Wonderful can happen. Those people might just get what they want out of life. Or they could get even more. Becareally want to be there, but you cant. At cognizant, were helping todays leading Media Companies create more immersive ways to experience entertainment with new Digital Systems and technologies. Get ready, because were helping leading companies see it and see it throughwith digital. Swho live within five miles of custyour business . 54, like these two. And that guy. Or maybe you want to reach women, ages 18 to 34, who are interested in fitness. Namaste. Whichever audience youre looking for, well find them were the finders. We work here at comcast spotlight, and we have the best tools for getting your advertising message out there. Anywhere, any way your audience watches. Consider them found. Welcome back to squawk box. The deas ability to go after drug dealers was weakened. For more i want to bring in lenny bernstein. Good morning to you, lenny we watched the 60 minutes piece last night its an important piece. How did you get on to this originally originally about 18 months or so ago i was asked to try to explain to our readers how so many hundreds of millions of pills could spill out of the supply chain and onto the street i started calling around and ended up finally making contact with joseph renezicci who had recently retired as the head of the dea office that controlled and regulated the control of those pills. Lenny, it seemed to me that there were a lot of problems to this crisis and blame to go around where do you raise the largest blame and in terms of where this goes from here i dont know where exactly to lay the largest blame. It is theres no dispute that congressman tom moreno, President Trumps nominee for drug czar carried a bill for two years that weakened and hobbled the Drug Enforcement agency in its efforts against large drug distributors that senator orrin hatch finalized the negotiations and that the drug industry with its lobbyists was influential in accomplishing that where does it go from here is anyones guess this law is clearly weakening the dea in that respect, possibly someone might want to bring it up and see if it could be repealed. And then we have morenos nomination coming up before the end of the year that would give him control over the nations drug control policy. What was the Trump Administrations response to all of this, to your report . The Trump Administration didnt speak to us very much because all of this happened under the Obama Administrations watch. At one point we thought we might speak to attorney general Jeff Sessions but that didnt happen. So most of our reporting was being done among the Obama Administration. That ruins everything, lenny. Let me ask you then about the drug industrys response the drug industry spoke to us mostly through the lobby for the giant companies that bring drugs from the manufacturers down to the street they werent really willing to do a sitdown interview or on camera interview with 60 minutes. They did give us a number of points that we reflected in the piece. They pointed out, for example, that doctors are responsible for starting the Opioid Crisis and i think theres general agreement that over prescribing is the start of the Opioid Crisis and they made other points, but they didnt really want to respond directly to some of the allegations we raised in the story. Watching it, lenny, it was kind of interesting to watch because your main whistleblower had some personality they talk about his anger and the righteous indignation of the legislators, they seem to be hanging their hat on the getting pain medication to people that really, really need it they were actually able to act like what are you saying that theres something about this law thats based on or this saying that were doing it for these untoward reasons like lobbying, money, for the drug distributors i mean, they felt really good about what they were doing it seemed like. So it was strange, wasnt it i didnt you know, i didnt i started saying how can this be and then i ended up thinking maybe its more nuanced than i thought. Joseph cop and joe treats the Large Companies as the regulatees and hes the regulator. He warned them over and over and over again that they were allowing these pills to spill onto the street. Finally he came in and sanctioned them. Now does the law help anyone get drugs who wasnt able t