Quarter gdp. Also up today, a lineup of heavy hitters on the closing bell. We have exclusive interviews with paul jacobs rob sands. Have you seen what constellation stock is doing today . Jumping. And we have commerce secretary penny prits zer and john legere. We will get get the real story. He was escorted out of an at t story. He says he was there to see the musical act. He loves macklemore. Sure he does. Microsoft taking a hit today. Allen mullally is taking himself out of the running to fill the ceo role at microsoft. Microsoft announcing it will now be february at the earliest when they announce who is going to be the new ceo. Who are the likely candidates and who is wall street rooting for . We have an in depth look at that very important story coming up in a little while. Were keeping a close eye on market this is hour as we head towards as were into the final hour of trading with the dow down 82 points. Thats half of 1 . We have the nasdaq actually the outperformer today. Only down by a quarter of a percent. And the s p 500 is only off a couple points. So really the weakness centered in the blue chips today. Lets talk about todays action in our the closing bell exchange. Kathy jones is back with us. Peter anderson from Congress Asset management keith fitzgerald, and Steve Liesman and Rick Santelli are with us as well. Steve, im going to start with you. Whats the headline out of the fed minutes . How does the fed view the economy right now . Pretty upbeat and this was before some of the better and upbeat data we have gotten since the fed meeting which was december 18th. As you know, bill, weve been reporting for many weeks that the gdp forecast for the Fourth Quarter have really risen in that period of time to more like a second half of 3. 5 versus second half closer to 2 . So the fed views the economy as viewed it as good during the meeting. Its gotten better yet. So the question is whether or not that means a faster tapering. And what i see when i look at those minutes, i think the center of the board remains for a measured cautious approach. Look, if things really do accelerate i think the fed will accelerate tapering. Kathy, here is what i want to know. Weve got this better batch of Economic Data about the best jobs report you could hope for, the fed minutes which are more upbeat. Why isnt the tenyear yield decisively above 3 today . Well i think a lot of this was discounted. Weve been talking about tapering since last oh march or april, and we finally got the announcement. So this just confirms that the central part of the fed, the doves, the moderates, the hawks all got together and agreed on it. I think theres a lot of questions about the sustainability of some of the better economic numbers that we have. So even though the market has already discounted the fed tapering, i think theres a lot of questions Going Forward as to how fast its going to be and if you pull forward the expectation for actually tightening i dont think thats going to happen very soon. Lets ask Rick Santelli. You had the tenyear note auction. Demand wasnt spectacular. What is going on with the long end of the yield curve . I would think it would be the analogy that work is somebody that eats ten big macs and then orders a diet coke. Thats why i dont think its so important yet personally, but it will be important. Remember, even though weve touched 3 intraday numerous times, it doesnt even look like were going to get our third crack at a close with a 3 handle, and i think thats significant. You know in the end i think what needs to happen is the markets need to all start to get on the same page. When we start knocking about another 35 or 40 billion off prven purchases and we work off the notion the fed has taken so many treasuries and Mortgage Securities out of the marketplace through their Balance Sheet, that we will whittle that equation so some of the strong data points are going to get a lot more horsepower kicking up those rates. Keith fitzgerald what about you . You say you think the fed is tapering into weakness. What do you mean by that . I think the fed is an illusion. We dont have free market discovery right now. Certainly not when it comes to prices. Im with rick until we get serious about this tapering we have no way of knowing whether the Economic Data is for real. What bothers me inside the fed particularly from todays minutes is theres still a lot of group think. Theres discussion and all kinds of things. But the one that got my attention is theyre debating the efficiency of future tapering moves or future stimulus. That to me says theres no plan b and they havent got a clue what theyre doing. That bothers me. Peter anderson what do you make of the feds strategy at this point . Is it appropriate given the numbers were getting on the economy right now . Well i think it is and i couldnt really disagree more with some of your prior commentators there. I think the minutes that i read today have been some of the best minutes i have ever read frankly. I think theyre quite clear. I think there is still dissension, but its healthy segmentation among the fed members. So i think were not going to be on auto easy either. I think whats going to happen is theyre going to taper very slowly and maybe even elastically. I think theyre quite intelligent around sips tiffnd sensitive to the fact this is the first baby step and lets see how the market reacts. If it over reacts we can always reverse our position. We dont have this cast in stone. Theres a lot of flexibility built in there. While i agree that theres, you know, disagreement about where exactly we are in this economic cycle, i think we should take a little breather and say, i think the fed is on that same page and theyre going to factor that in in the next meeting. I want to make sure i understand your criticisms correctly, keith. Youre bothered by the fact there are different camps that are debating the efficacy of qe. It strikes me thats exactly what you want policymakers to do. The other thing you and rick are both saying that i dont get is you both dont believe that the market is a forward discounting mechanism, which is that the market right now the feds Balance Sheet is a forward discounting let me finish the thought. They are not discounting the idea that there will be future reductions in qe and thats not what were seeing in todays rates. Steve, do you see when the highs in the stock market were in 08 . How is that for a forward predicting mechanism . Im saying the market doesnt get it right all the time. Nobody who this is probably the second time in five years then. Well all im saying is that in general the idea that the market right now is not discounting future cuts strikes me as being the wrong way to think about what markets believe right now. Jump in keith. Anytime. I tell you what theyre not discounting forward thinking. What theyre doing is the certainty of risk. They dont want to let go of the fact that the fed may have it wrong. And traders, you got to remember, are not academics. Theyre responsible for trillions of dollars every day and they make it or they lose it every single day. They dont want to be on the wrong side of that trade quite literally, pardon the pun. So i think todays fed minutes point out, yes, theres dissession, yes, theres discussion thats great, but were saddled with whatever yellin comes up with like it or not because there is no actual open disagreement when the vote comes youre always saddled with what the fed came up when they set Interest Rates. No question but the fed doesnt set Interest Rates. The fed sets a target. The market sets Interest Rates. Dont forget that. Yeah but it curiously always set it exactly where the fed wanted it. No, we dont. The market takes it where it needs to go. Let me ask you this if i could add one thing, i think the fed also is looking i think the fed we cannot deny the fact that even though the fed will not say this publicly, they are looking at the markets, and i think once they make their statements they go right back to a monitor and see how the markets are reacting. It would be foolish theyre looking at a market like i would look at somebodys brain with a scalpel in my hand. Im with you, rick. How about the fact that theres a great deal of uncertainty you know we get one quarter of good Economic Data and everybody tries to extrapolate it five years into the future. When you look at those gdp numbers, for example, from Third Quarter, the real final sales were really quite soft and there was quite a big buildup in inventories. Even the trade numbers reflected weakness to a large extent in imports. Some of that is energy prices. We dont have a huge liftoff right now, and i think that that tempers some of the increase in rates that weve seen at the long end of the yield curve. I want to disagree with that since i disagree with almost everybody else on the panel, i might as well make it a strong sweep. We got two quarters of strong growth. You did 4. 1 in the Third Quarter. It looks like you will do somewhere close to 3 in the Fourth Quarter. That gives you 4 and 3 is what . 3. 5 average. If you summarize the economy what grade would you give it . B, b plus right now. Then why are we talking about emergency jobless claims benefits extended . I cant connect those dots either. Because you still have 1. 3 million americans, you have three people looking for every job thats available. You still have this they just want to pay these people off. I think its more of a human rights thing or a moral thing than it is an economic think as a reason for extending benefits. What weve gotten from the jobs numbers, the adp this morning within the last hour i reported nfib, best Small Business growth since february 06. I think you might be on the cusp of a change in the job market in america right now. Perhaps we might be but i also think that we will all agree that the picture is not that clear yet. And even the fed has said that. One of the confounding aspects that theyre frustrated about is the jobs picture and pricing power. They think the actions they have taken should be reflected in the market more strongly and theyre not. And i think its those issue that is cause this kind of spirited discussion thats helpful for the market to be forward looking and to price that into yields. Kathy, what kind of jobs number, what kind of payrolls growth figure on friday would it take to make the bond market sit up and think maybe this is for real . I think if we were well above 250 or Something Like that 275. I think the market has already discounted 200plus but, you know, then again adp isnt always a perfect predictor of the monthly jobs numbers and were going to have some odd weather effects this time or its a possibility we have some odd weather effects. In other words, 200,000 may not be good enough for the market . I think the market has discounted 200,000. You need 250 to 200,000 to stay up with growth. What youre talking about at 250, 275 is a rounding error. We need to see 300, 350, 400 jobs to know this is serious and we havent seen that yet. Thats getting ahead of ourselves. We need to see that consistently over time not just one shot deal. Labor force is different than it was in the late 90s. So 200,000 means more than it might have in the past. I want to agree with what kelly just said. Kelly, i agree with that. Wow. Lets stop now while were in agreement. That was fun, gang. Good conversation. Thank you so much. Have a good one. As we head toward the close, 50 minutes left in the trading session, we are down today. Maybe this is the kind of action we should have expected when you do get stronger Economic Data meaning the fed is going to have to taper a little more aggressively, meaning the bond market will see higher yields and prices are lower. The dow is down 86 points. I misspoke earlier when i said the nasdaq is down a quarter of 1 . It is actually higher. Were up eight points or 0. 2 . It may be bitter cold around the country, but we have the names of five stocks that have been cold in their own way. Maybe they will soon help to heat up your portfolio. Wearable technology has been one of the major themes at the Consumer Electronics show at las vegas especially for fitness. Qualcomms ceo tells us about his move into that space and just how profitable he thinks these products can be. And could a growing scandal for Chris Christie threaten his president ial hopes . Well get into that next. Keep it right here. Youre watching cnbc, first in business worldwide. [ male announcer ] the new new york is open. Open to innovation. Open to ambition. Open to bold ideas. Thats why new york has a new plan dozens of tax free zones all across the state. Move here, expand here, or start a new business here and pay no taxes for ten years. Were new york. If theres something that creates more jobs, and grows more businesses. Were open to it. Start a taxfree business at startupny. Com. Welcome back. You know qualcomm for its chip sets for mobile phones. This week at the Consumer Electronics show the companys focus seems to be less about chips. Lets head to ces where jon fortt is standing by the chairman and soon to be former ceo paul jacobs. Still ceo today. Paul, thanks for being with us. Tell me about that decision. We know microsoft was coming after your deputies and youre planning to do a lot more Technology Work as you hand over the ceo reins. I wanted to make sure we managed the transition had a great transition between steve to me i mean me to steve, sorry, and also i wanted to go focus in on a lot more technology. Its really my passion, kind of thinking about what the future is going to be working on the vision for the company, trying to drive the industry. As ceo theres a lot of daytoday stuff you have to do. I wanted also to make sure that the Management Team stayed together kept the band together, and were doing pretty well right now with this team. I think it was really important to keep steve here and driving this thing. Im expecting to hear more cowbell in the future from you guys. Lets talk about some of the things youre exhibiting here the future stuff youre going to be paying a lot more attention to. Technology you have for linking a lot of Different Things together. I want to ask about the business side of this. Intels new ceo says theres going to be an order of magnitude more devices but theyre going to be lower margin. Do you see it the same way . Is that going to impact your business that way . Theres huge volume so people are talking about 20 billion, 30 billion, 50 billion connected devices. Some of them are going to be a lot less expensive because you will sprinkle them all over the place but theres also high value ones too. We see a mixture of these and we will address the high end and the low end of the market. I think really its going to be about also making your device more capable because our idea of this digital sixth sense where you walk why your phone into the environment and the environment talks back to you and tells what you content and services. We have a smart home demonstration where theres an air conditioner thats connected and when i walk out of the room the air conditioner is on. It sends an alert to my talk smart watch and tells me did you mean to leave that on or do you want to turn that off and i can turn it off right from my watch. That kind of stuff. Yeah got you. Paul, hi, its kelly here. There are reports about some potential shortages for products like your talk watch that involves the chassis maybe impacting other players in the space. Can you talk a little bit about any constraints youre running into and what it tells you about demand for the talk watch and about other the ability for other makers to get into this space . So its not that big of an issue for us because we were always planning to make the talk a limited edition item. We werent going to build more than a few tens of thousands of them because we really wanted to show off a few technologies. Our display technology our Wireless Charging technology and then we also have some head sets that do stereo bluetooth with no wires. So, yeah, i think as people mr. These products sometimes there are shortages and theres new technologies that go into them. What you were talking about is the case some people were having issues with. For us its really not an issue. Lets talk cars a bit. Are you going to join the open Automotive Alliance . Youre talking about with yeah, we support an dried and you know how we are. Were verying a nos stick. We tried to be the switzerland of the stre. We already were the biggest guys in android right now. It makes sense for us to do that. Paul, this is bill. Youre not abandoning smartphones. We know that but lets face it thats your bread and butter. It has been will be for a long time. Give us a sense all this Wearable Technology that were hearing about at ces and that youre going to focus on as you step aside to think about the future of technology realistically how much of that Wearable Technology will contribute to your growth down the road . Oh i think its going to definitely contribute to the growth not just for the devices and the displays but it also drives new functionality in the phones. So these ideas of having sensors that are always on. We have these things now with phones that sit and listen so when you Say Something they turn on. But were also going to leave that on so it can sense if youre in the same room or the same car as your friend allow you to automatic link up either to the car or to each other, exchange content and things like that. So its going to drive new functionality. New radio interfaces, new software, new applications. Its a wholistic thicke stkistic thing. We say how do we build a whole ecosystem and work with partners like the air conditioner manufacturer. I get that. Its all very gee whiz kind of stuff. Im impressed, but the question is about growth and it depends on who is making those products and the adoption and the marketing. I mean are we setting ourselves up with all these