Difficulties. We are kicking it off with what everyone is talking about, grimy crimea voting to separate from ukraine. According to elections officials, they voted yesterday, paving the way for annexation by russia. Despite the ukraine leaders calling the vote a legal officials said it fully met international norms. On the other side, ukraines acting foreign minister spoke exclusively about the motives behind this referendum. It is a part of a bigger scenario to make chaos, not only in crimea, but in the eastern ukraine. And it might be part of a bigger plan to connect russia through the ukraine mainland. Meanwhile, the e. U. Announcing sanctions against russia this morning. European finance meters were in brussels at a meeting. What they have not done, and this is interesting, if they have not announced any economic sanctions. There is no unanimity or appetite for economic sanctions against russia. Nor have they targeted any business leaders. There was talk in the lead up to todays action by the eu Foreign Ministers that they might go after the socalled oligarchs as well. But there was not a hint of that in there. This does give the European Union the ability to scale up the sanctions. The whole idea of this action from the European Union is to try to dissuade president putin from annexing crimea. The crimean have asked to be part of the russian federation. That has not happened, but may happen later this week. This is the diplomats, if you will, trying to get ahead of president putin, and discourage him from doing that. Compared to iran style sanctions, these are nothing. It is certainly the biggest, most serious sanctions that the European Union has ever used against russia. Close on the heels of the eu sanctions, president obama just issued an executive order authorizing sanctions against a number of russian government officials. The white house, the state department, the treasury department, all moving to punish russia for the referendum in crimea, for the russians unwillingness to back down in the ukraine. What the white house is announcing is an asset freeze and a visa ban on seven officials through the russian government. This is an expansion of what the president put in place after the initial action by the russians into crimea. Seven officials, including top advisers to president vladimir putin. Putin himself is not targeted with these asset freezes, or the visa bans, but this is hitting very close to home for him. It includes some of his top aides, top officials in the russian duma, and the deputy Prime Minister is on this list. In addition, there are four individuals being sanctioned under the previous executive order, people seen as directly involved in what is taking place in crimea, the current officials in charge of crimea. And we also have the former ukrainian president , Viktor Yanukovych on this list. In all, 11 people. Asset freezes by the United States as well as visa bans. What this executive order also does is that for the first time, it allows the expanded list of sanctions Going Forward should the u. S. Choose to turn up the pressure even further. The president gave an official statement on sanctions by the White House Briefing room earlier this morning. Here it is in the raw. We will continue to make clear to russia that their provocations will achieve nothing except to further isolate russia and diminishes standing in the world. The International Community will continue to stand together to oppose violations of ukrainian sovereignty. And further action will only deepen russias isolation and exact a greater toll on the russian economy. Going forward, we can calibrate our response based on whether russia chooses to escalate or to deescalate the situation. I believe there is a a path to to solve this diplomatically. That includes russia pulling its forces in crimea back to their bases, supporting the deployment of Additional International monitors in ukraine, and engaging in dialogue with ukrainian government, which has indicated it is open to pursuing constitutional reform as they move forward toward elections this spring. But throughout this process, we will stand firm in our unwavering support for ukraine. As i told the register last week, the United States stands with the people of ukraine and their right to determine their own destiny. We will keep working with congress and our International Partners to offer the ukraine economic support that it needs to weather this crisis and improve the daily lives of ukrainian people. As a go forward, well continue to look at the range of ways we can help our ukrainian friends achieve their universal rights and the security, prosperity, and dignity that they deserve. From ukraine to malaysia, and 25 countries now searching for missing flight 370. We have the very latest. We will also take you inside canadas bomb party a, making its trains right here in the u. S. Bombardier, making its trains right here in the u. S. And the blue angels were grounded in your go because of budget cuts, but the team has 68 more performances this year. Gentlemen, good to see you flying again. This is lunch money on Bloomberg Television, also streaming live on bloomberg. Com, your tablet, and your smart phone. Im adam johnson. It has been nine days since Malaysian Air flight 370 went missing. We are still no closer to understanding exactly what happened. Malaysia said it is exploring the possibility of pilot suicide after the Prime Ministers said this week and that the plane was intentionally diverted en route to beijing. He does not know yet if the pilot had personal or financial issues. The captain, his facebook and youtube show a man fascinated with aviation as well as handy with repairs. Theyre looking for any possible clues. They spoke to family members of the pilot and are examining the pilots flight simulator. Police have visited the home of the copilot. The pilot and copilot did not ask to fly together on the flight. At this point, malaysia has enlisted 25 agents trying to surge from australia to india. It is almost hard to fathom. Just look at the size, the sheer scale of what they are having to contend with. The north all the way to the waters of australia in the south. This total area, now according to the u. K. Doing the math, 28,000 square miles. That is more than doubled the size of the african continent. Needle in a haystack comes springing to mind. Also, a number of countries, 20 26 now involved. Youve got russia helping, and france in particular helping. It is very important because of the french experience in 2009 with air France Flight 447. It took two years to find that flight. And we have 400 to 500 taiwanese fishing boats also helping. It is all hands on deck. Incredible. The ukraine also taking a serious stance, especially given to people who had been flying illegally. How hard is it to doctor a stolen passport . It is easier than you might think. That will change over the next several years from a White House Security advisor. Richard falkenrath explains why. To get from one country to another, you need one. Not surprisingly, terrorists, criminals, and fugitives have been trying to get their hands on stolen passports for a long time. In 1980, it was establish the basic standard for all passports currently in circulation. They have four main features. In the upper righthand corner, a unique identifying number. In the middle, some basic data about the Person Holding a passport. At the bottom, the same data in machinereadable form. And most importantly on the left, a standard picture. In the old days, it was fairly easy for a criminal to travel on a stolen passport as long as he or she fit the basic description of the person stolen from. The most important thing was to replace the photograph. And since on old photographs it merely consisted of a physical photograph covered by lamination, all they had to do was cut the photograph out, replace it, and they could travel. After 9 11, it became clear that the International Community needed a better passport. Starting in august, 2000 seven, every passport issued by the u. S. Is a modern epassport. This new passport has a number of features that make fraud almost impossible. First, notice the photograph. Its now on the first page of the document, and it is literally embed it into the page itself. If you cut it out, it will be easy to detect by an official. Secondly, every page of the document has sophisticated and distinctive watermarking, making it almost impossible to doctor. Third, embedded in the cover of the passport is an rfid chip that contains all of the information of the passport, as well as a digital picture that matches the passports first page. Epassports should be fully phased in among all developed countries by 2018. By then, traveling on a stolen passport will require a lot more than a scalpel, a new photograph, and some lamination. Chinas Biggest Tech Company wants an ipo right here in the u. S. , not in china. We will explain why. And bringing the hightech in, the super friendly flans for new yorks underground park known as the low line. This is lunch money on Bloomberg Television. We are also streaming live on bloomberg. Com, your tablet, and smartphone. Im adam johnson. An ipo . A big offering is in the works. It could be the biggest since facebook two years ago. Alibaba is in the process of what may be the biggest ipo in two years. The company is choosing to list here in the u. S. Rather than hong kong. We are talking a valuation of 200 billion dollars, according to mcquarrie. The secondbiggest Company Behind google, if it does get that valuation. This is not ali baba and the shareholders who could get rich off of this thing. The story is really about the banks. Reportedly, ali baba is working with goldman, jpmorgan, but its with, morgan stanley, credit suisse, morgan stanley, and deutsche bank. Millions in fees. Exactly what is ali baba . It is the blank of china. It is the google of china, the amazon of china, the paypal of china. In many ways it is the twitter of china. They have a big collection of ecommerce websites. 28 partner companies. Their payment unit alone is 800 million registered users. They dominate the postal service. 70 of chinese packages are reportedly mailed from ali baba. It really is china. And it wants to ipo here. The founder, jack mark, what do we know about him jack ma, what do we know about him . He started as a teacher and he kind of some of onto the internet while helping as a translator, helping some Business People get a deal done. He learned english while listening to voice of america. He does mass weddings for his employees once a year. He is an interesting character. And he has an interesting view toward corporate governance. At one point, he tried to take the business out of ali baba when yahoo was trying to threaten to sell their stake in ali baba. It had everyone screaming about corporate governance. Obviously, scoring a big potential victory over hong kong, and this speaks volumes on the side of chinas ecommerce machine. This is a bloomberg contributor, david kirkpatrick, on surveillance this morning. The chinese internet, it is increasingly the most important part of the chinese economy. The reason this giant ipo, its just that in the rest of the internet world it is where ecommerce is shifting and this is the leading commercial company on the internet in china. In terms of why it is in the United States, a lot of that has to do with governance and whether ali baba will be allowed to have multiple tier stock structure. In many companies, a small number people control the companies paid overtime. The New York Stock Exchange has no trouble with that. Hong kong does. Ali baba is partially located in hong kong, so it is all the more humiliating for hong kong. But also they are saying, we want a slice of the u. S. Market and steal some customers from Companies Like amazon. I dont think they need to list here in order to say that. In reality, every one of these Chinese Companies has global visions in the moment at the moment. . 10, which is another big one. They are another big one and they are expanding. Ali baba is a competitor to whom . It is not analogous to any American Company exactly. It is kind of a hybrid of amazon and ebay. It really is more of a an intermediary between buyers and sellers, be to be. B to b. Ali baba grew up as an agent for Foreign Companies wanting to source goods in china, and for Chinese Companies wanting to sell outside. Why would they come to american commerce . I dont get it. They have extraordinarily sophisticated systems, like any on scaling the internet and they can deploy them globally in ways others cant. They are trying to do in china what some are doing in countries like turkey, or southeast asia. Is jeff bezos quaking in his shoes . No, i dont think so. Amazon is not really going to be heard. Hurt. Ebay could conceivably be hurt, but i dont think they could they are quaking in their boots either. It is analogous to a business they have in china to my which is one of several businesses there. I dont think ali baba is going to start selling goods from americans to americans the way that ebay does. 200 million valuation possibly. What do you think about that . I think that is very high. But again, i think most internet valuations are high. Is it justified . The revenue does not seem to justify that to me, no. To companies that stand to benefit from the ali baba ipo, yahoo and softbank. Yahoo owns 24 and softbank owns 30 . Here is another possible ipo. Jimmy choo, the luxury shoemaker. There has been talk about a possible ipo. The shoe unit could be as high as 1. 7 billion. Those are expensive shoes. The ipo would be to pay for expansion in asia where sales are rising. Some high heels to high tops, march madness is here. Tips for making the ultimate ncaa bracket. That is coming up in sports. Plus, they weekends number one Box Office Last week. Weve got the numbers for you coming up. This is lunch money on bluebird television. Im adam johnson. Todays moving pictures now, where the video is the story. Protesters and National Guard clashed in caracas. The president had promised to use military force to liberate middleclass from the barricade. It turned out to be a large Scale Integration of Venezuelan Armed forces. A 6. 7 magnitude quake forced the evacuation of 100,000 people in chile, but only minor damage was reported and it Evacuation Order was lifted after three hours after the earthquake. And knocking out a top contender. He tripped and fell at the five mile mark. One less challenger for the winner. He went on to win the race, covering the 13 miles in one hour, 50 seconds. He also won the full marathon in new york this past november, you may recall. March madness has arrived. The ncaa mens basketball tournament begins this week. Warren buffett is betting 1 billion you cannot pick a perfect bracket. It is part of a promotion for quicken loans. To show you just how hard perfection really is, we put together a list of things that have better odds of actually happening. That is a lot of numbers. If you want shot at listening to but this challenge, you might want to listen to this math professor here. He and his College Students have crunched the numbers to help pick fans more accurate brackets. The first thing is, we use strength of schedule. We actually adapt methods used by bcs. It is a larger linear system that is 350 equations and 350 unknowns. The part that enables it to do better is we enable people to weigh factors that we that they believe are predictive. But this is how you got the genius 94 percentile statistic . The part that got that is to actually determine what part of the season and the time you think it is predicting. Momentum matters a lot. That is the idea. Cutler jersey . No, we dont do that. What is the where does math not help you . If you are trying to go for the billiondollar bracket and have it be perfect you are talking about Warren Buffetts 1 billion wager, right . Yes. And i will actually mentioned to my students that at certain places you will want to flip the results because there will be other information you can put into it, like the coach. Do the coaches matter . Is that part of your regression . We do not put that in, but that is something we are trying to put in this year. We have information that we share with people and then we have proprietary data. Im trying to my mind into economics as a princeton guy. You have 350 columns across and however many rows down, and you cross correlate all of that stuff. Yes. There are two versions of it. One of them is that way. How much are you worth to las vegas . A lot of people will bring that up. You dont even need to write a textbook. Bring down the house. [laughter] covering sports is Vernon Lundquist. He spoke with charlie rose about what he has learned in 30 years of calling ncaa tournament games. To me, there is an interesting paradox in what we do, what the analyst sitting next to me does, what my responsibilities are. We are storytellers. We are analysts. We give insight into what is happening in front of us. The bottom line is, you have a journalistic response billy as responsibility as well. And in sports, its not perfect. No, no, and we all know that. We are reminded of the daily. I sometimes joke on the two words student athlete. I swallow hard. Indeed. That is the sad side of both amateur sports and professional. It is sometimes difficult to draw the line. You can see all of charlie roses interview with Vernon Lundquist at 8 00 and 10 00