Recently at costco. Especially when you look relative to other retailers. This is something we have been seeing. Comparable sales up six percent. Especially impressive given what we have seen in the First Quarter given so many retailer said weekly results were due to the weather. Sams club is comparable sales, down half percent. Walmart down 2 10 of one percent. Among the big discount retailers, this is the only one that has seen an increase in comparable sales. Not only an increase, but a big increase. On the other hand, shareholders meet did meet estimates. It seems like a combination of different factors. Higher preopening expenses for some of its stores, accelerated some of its store openings. Fewer shares in the quarter contributed to some of it as well. Membership fee income, which may have been due large part to courtesy currency headwind. Areall, we see the shares down 7 10 of one percent. Commentary i have seen has not been that negative, saying essentially weak numbers are in line and we have to look at costco relative to peers. Ander income consumer, those folks want to save money still. They are still under pressure to keep prices low. They had a good report. They did. It is all relative. For abercrombie, it is better relative to peers and expectations. Not fantastic, but better than folks were looking for. Overall sales are down one percent. Analysts were looking for a job close to 1. 6 . Abercrombie is really trying to get a better mix, a more fashionable mix, of merchandise in their stores. That seems to be bearing fruit. It also has to do with discounting, a lot of emoting. Offering sales with a lot of items. That puts pressure on asset companies. Got traffic, but it may have come at a little bit of a price. Qwest thank you. Our senior markets correspondent on the retailers. In washington, pressure grows on eric shinseki. A shutdown after the release of a scathing report detailing delays in care at the v8 medical centers. The waiting list. Has more. Democrats have now called for go. Sex for him to some claim the whistleblowers to parers were not up and they were hiding the list of official participants at the v8 the v. A. Er medical center. Politics here, the Senate Passes only iraq war veteran. Report is thehis final straw and there is no repe final straw and there is no way for shinseki, a vietnam veteran himself, to leave the department. Left veterans at risk of being lost or never having received care. The report centered in phoenix and found 700 veterans were left off an official weight less to prop up the performance. The most recognized member of Congress Agrees shinseki needs to go. Numerous inquiries from the senator and me that it is time for secretary shinseki to step down. He does not voluntarily, then i call on the president of the United States of the United States to relieve him of his duties and fire him. Mccain had been waiting for his report to decide on assessment of shinseki. Shinseki responded as well in a statement. He called the report here and to thele department of Veterans Affairs he promised to implement the changes called for in the interim report. But this is a tremendous amount of vertical political pressure. He survived six years so far in the obama administration. What has the white house reaction been . The report was they were troubled by the report, but so far, it deems the president is sticking with eric shinseki. He defended him last week, you will record recall. Eric is still there, but this report and any more revelations to come it is important to not the onlyis place there were problems. A systemic problem nationwide. You. Thank our chief washington correspondent. It may be early in the morning boost thebut how to size of your economy . In europe, they are doing it by drugs and sex. I have to say it that way. How are they doing it . This stuff happens. People pay money for it. It is part of the economy. It will not show up in our numbers at 8 30, but by the end of the year, they will start calculating drugs, smuggling, and other things. As part of their domestic product. Some of these things are legal in some of those companies. They will give a boost to the eu because it is fun to buy a tax on the side. It also gives a boost to each country. They have a restrictive gdp rules. If you have a larger gdp, you have more debt and less pressure for spending cuts and less austerity. The problem is, how do you count this stuff . Up with a good way. They also have to figure out how on reportinghe economies. Stuff that might be legal but does not get reported. Experts say it could make hundreds of billions a difference. Overall in the economy, maybe not that much, about 3 10 of one percentage point or so. But it is still worth doing, they feel, once they get some sort of method of doing it. Qwest what about in the u. S. . It has never been seriously discussed here because they cannot figure out an accurate way to get the data. You can imagine army of bureaucrats at times square. How much, baby, each month. The unreported economy, about a half trillion dollars a year because they know that happens. Is stillrts say it undercounted and a could be as high as 2 trillion. Theyll be the next move, if they could figure out the method to get it. Qwest thank you so much. Thank you so much. Moving and shaking this hour, former nba officer grant hill and the microsoft ceo both had to buy the l. A. Clippers from don serling. Don sterling. Offered 1. 2 billion for the clippers and in the meantime, ballmer is said to have made a strong bid for the team. He is said to have promised he would not try to move quickly clippers from their home base in seattle. Almost 19worth billion. Also moving and shaking, the people behind apples acquisition. President. Enior vice apple agreed to buy it for 3 billion. They spoke about apples Upcoming Product in a conference near l. A. Qwest later this year, we have the best product i plan i have seen a apple in my 25 years at apple. Qwest the best roddick pipeline you have seen. The best Product Pipeline you have seen. Qwest that is right. That is right. That is a really strong statement you made a few minutes ago, for the rest of this year, you have the best Product Pipeline you have seen in 25 years. Imac,years, you did the ipod, iphone, ipad, macbook. They are widely recognized as good products. Qwest i agree. I believe the products we have got coming are great. Qwest coming up, be careful who you become friends with the states on social media. American lawmakers and defense contractors are finding out the hard way why. Plus, shelling out millions of a new tracking system for Young Athletes and concussions. Were just getting started. You are watching in the loop live on Bloomberg Television. A new report showed that iran created a phony News Organization to compete with facebook, twitter, and linkedin. 14 star general to share concert confidential information. Informed sources into their networks, in some case getting them to open an account that permitted iranians to scrape personal information about them. An incredible story. Jones, now is tiffany who issued that report. Who, our legal reporter, has done a lot of reporting on cyberattacks. Let me start with you on how ishares came about how you came about to detect that something was off with this organization. Ofst we are in the business cyber Threat Intelligence. It is what we do for our customers, both commercial and government clients. We are out there every day looking for cyber and skin nosh, cyber crime, threats around the globe. Tomie specifically how you found this organization and how did you find them to be a fake News Organization . Cyber Threat Intelligence team began to scour, looking at suspicious urls, fictitious learned, and we soon that it was in fact a thick vicious News Organization. With over a dozen fictitious personas that had been created as both journalists and other types of individuals having different types of jobs. What they did was go after highvalue targets. Military,ly, u. S. Government diplomatic individuals, diplomatic officials in other countries, as, u. K. , saudi arabia well as defense contractors in both the u. S. And israel. Qwest what kind of information were they looking for . They were trying to get close enough where they could eventually send some sort of malicious link, which would download software, allowing hackers to take control of accounts like email accounts, or to take fuller control over the computer so they could download documents. They were basically looking for anything they could get. Qwest tiffany, how did you trace them back to iran . There were a number of things we looked at. We looked at some of the malicious code we found and analyzed and found terms throughout the code. We also looked at working hours of the actors, what they posted and when, and learned that, when overlapping all the data, they were working working hours as well. In the story you wrote about know it was a secret website,ion and a fake but it was not exactly done very well. It was a messy job is that correct . The website looks pretty sharp. They put news on it every day that they essentially stole from other News Organizations and put under the names of their own journalist. When it came to personal interactions, when they try to connect through linkedin or facebook, grammar was off. They would misspell names sometimes on the website. They were look like done by proficient english speakers. That is one of the problems with being a cyber spy. When it comes to exchanging interactions, it does not necessarily look as clean as you would want it to. Qwest is this not part of irans plan to up their own game in cyber warfare . With css 2010 iran has consistently said and done things that suggest it wants to become much more proficient in Cyber Espionage and cyber warfare. In 2012 and 2013, we had a wave of attacks against u. S. Bank websites. Really sophisticated, which through the banks for a loop for a long time. This looks like another layer of in terms of the basic approach and tactics of the target, not that much different than what we have seen in china in terms of their espionage or the u. S. Doing know this is linked to the Ukrainian Government . We cannot be sure of that. When you look at the highvalue targets they were after, and you can infer the type of information they could be gleaning from those highvalue targets, pacific lee from defense contractors looking for military secrets, military blueprints on Weapons Systems and other things, if they were targeting people focused on nonproliferation and sanctions, you start to pull together a story around the types of information they would want to glean for strategic advantage. Qwest michael, have we gotten any response from the companies being targeted . Thee do not know specific specific victims. Facebook and linkedin have had to investigate themselves. Facebook has removed all of their profiles associated with this fake news orson News Organization. Linkedin said the account is not any longer active. Theyre not saying much more than that. They are seeing if they can strengthen security measures. Qwest thank you. Thank you. We will be back in two minutes. You are watching in the loop lowes quote live on Bloomberg Television. Good morning. It is 26 minutes past the hour. Bloomberg television is on the markets. Equity futures are slightly higher. Of stocksching a lot and economic data. We are watching shares of Abercrombie Fitch, losses are narrower than estimated. Shares are surging this morning. Sales missed estimates. In terms of data, jobless claims and the revisions of firstquarter gdp will be out in just a few moments. A look at Bloomberg Top headlines. The world bank of scotland agreed to sell its Minority Stake for 167 million. The buyer is an Investor Group led by street partners. Regulators have been pushing rbs to boost capital. Another breakthrough for bitcoin. Bit television has agreed to let subscribers pay their bills with bitcoin. That will start in the Third Quarter. Another missed major toward him and for tiger woods. He will miss next months u. S. Open while he recovers from back surgery. He has not played on the toward this early in march. In washington, the beat of the minimum wage from continues. Today, seattle will take the first step to increase its wage to 16 an hour. Yang yang has been following the minimum wage. I know you were also at mcdonalds during that fight at the Shareholders Meeting for higher wages. Tell us the significance here in seattle and have a came to this. Class i was in chicago. The minimum wage fight all across the country. It is a big day for seattle and for the workers. The minimum Wage Committee has a plan for 12 00 p. M. Eastern and what they are considering is raising the minimum wage to 15 an hour, up from the Washington State minimum of 9. 32 an hour. To be phased in over seven years, at which point the wage will be ingested adjusted for inflation. There is not much suspense on the outcome. The mystery is what will happen next year it the university of washington estimates that in seattle, 102,000 workers, about a third of the population, makes 15 or less. The wage increase would put about half 1 billion of extra spending money into seattles worker pockets. That comes at a cost to businesses. It is hard to predict exactly what will happen. Seattle will serve as an experiment for that that many will be watching. This comes as michigan, a republicanled state, just the other day passed a law increasing its minimum wage from 7. 40 an hour. A lot of momentum on the minimum wage fight. Qwest clearly, a lot of momentum. An hour. Ries for 15 hypothetically, what with the impact be if the federal minimum wage was increased . Qwest that is the big question. I am happy you used the term hypothetically because the chances of this happening are slim. Even the chances of the proposed 10. 10 an hour do not luck promising. Americans. 3 million earned exactly the federal minimum wage of 7. 25 an hour. Because the figure is so unlikely, we do not have that much data or that many predictions on the impact area on the 10. 10 an hour proposal by the white house and senate, using data from the Current Population survey, it is calculated we have. 1. 3 million workers right now making less than 10. 10 10. 10 an hour. That is 23 Million People directly affected. 9 Million People would be indirectly affected. Aroundwho make on or 10. 10 now, they could see a bump in their pay. That brings the total to 30. 3 Million People and an average of 2400 in additional annual income. That comes out to a whopping billion dollars in total wage increases, which translates to a cost of business is paying the wages. Happening anytime soon, at least not in 2014. Qwest thank you for that report. Thank you for that report. Firstquarter gdp revised slightly lower than what was reported. Down one percent. The prior number was a decline of 0. 5 . Personal consumption pretty much stayed in line with estimates of 3. 1 growth. 300 thousand. Economists had expected economists at 318,000 claims. Take on these numbers. Class it is interesting. The numbers do not look all that bad. First, consumption is higher than the initial report. Business not as bad as the original estimate. , not ase spend money on bad. We saw a big decline in inventories. Away in the gone First Quarter, they probably have to be rebuilt area things do not look as at as they might otherwise have been. Exports, trade contribution, not as bad as well. Tell only one cents of a percent. Not as big a move as people anticipated. The headline number looks bad for the economy, but the underlying data points suggest the Second Quarter could be better. Almost as much as four percent growth so far in the Second Quarter. Qwest thank you. Mike on the economic numbers. We are taking you inside pepsico tonight for an exclusive look at how the beverage and snacks innovate, including with my interview. First, we have a preview for you. Here is a look and i pepsico by the numbers. To pepsico than pepsi. They each pull in more than 1 billion in sales for year. The name ford with pepsi cola when it was first created in North Carolina by a in 1898. T in 1940, they made history with the First Ever National advertisement to have a jingle, a catchy little ditty. You can remember the pepsi challenge . How about the super bowl ads . From Michael Jackson to be on say, pop stars and pepsico together at halftime. War. Is still a soda you need to look at pepsicos food business, which counts about half of its nearly revenue. Everyones favored chris b smack, fritos corn chips started a Small Business selling chips out of the back of a ford. For ruffles, chinos, doritos, crackerjack, and much more. A 100 emerged with 35yearold Quaker Oats Company to increase food imprints in a major way. It gave them gatorade. That is about time ingenuity got a promotion. Since 2007, she has been the chairman and ceo for a grand total of 20 years with pepsi. She is a global powerhouse all her own. Speaking about food, i want to tell you about breaking news that is happen now. Tyson foods made a bit of its own for hill shyer brands, a 6. 8 billion offer, and allcash proposal to buy hill shyer brand. A 35 premium to shareholders just two days after you heard we woke up in the week. Clearly, there will be a bidding war here for the company. For more on the whole Food