Or not . And more private Companies Say their businesses with the government are already forcing them to layoff and furlough workers due to the Government Shutdown and the warnings are getting more dire about what we might see next week. All of that straight ahead. Tyler is out this week. Bill griffeth is joining me today. Hello, sue. Coming up, john harwood is speaking to the president exclusively in a couple hours. We will air on my show at 4 00 eastern time on closing bell just under three hours from now. John at white house to give us a preview on whats on your agenda. A lot of people are talking. There is a lot of conversation going on. The president s been meeting with bank cease, jamie dimon, lloyd plablankfein, people like that, members of congress, top four leaders in both parties coming in later this afternoon and appears that were beginning to get in a zone where there will actually be a negotiation. The house moving today to pass some rifle shot narrow spending bills. Senate will bat those down but harry reid in his News Conference was saying its time to extend government funding, at least for a while, and then get into a budget negotiation. Heres harry reid. They sent us here to get things done, not to play these silly games. Heres what i propose. Hes sitting on a bill that would reopen the government right now. This bill woulds pass in a matter of minutes. If he would just let democrats and republicans vote. He doesnt have to he doesnt even to vote for it. Let him vote against it. The let the house work its will. Once we reopen the government we appoint conferries to work out longterm fiscal challenges. Both sides have priorities that we want to move forward. This is still the posturing stage. The speaker or the leader is saying something that Speaker Boehner is not going to do, but at least the posturing is about where the eventual compromise might come and thats one of the things im going to explore with the president , what kind of negotiation is he envisioning by inviting the leaders to the white house and how quickly might it happen . So were still at the posturing stage as you say. Youre not expecting much of substance to come out of that meeting after your interview at 5 30 . I think the ship turns slowly, bill, and i think no, i dont expect a breakthrough at this meeting. I expect the shutdown will go on for a while. Republican leadership aide told me yesterday it will be at least a week, but there are signs that the agenda of disagreement is shifting toward grounds where potential agreement could be found. I think its likely to come closer to that october 17th date when the treasury says were going to hit the u. S. Debt limit. I still think theres a strong commitment by both parties not to breach that debt limit. Well see if they can get it done. Ive been overly optimistic before. It does feel that the ship, though it turns slowly, is turning in the right direction right now. Meantime stoxz are lower, bonds trading higher in terms of price. Thanks very much. We look forward to your interview coming up at 4 00 eastern time today. More on blackberry right now. Heres dominic chu with that. Thats right. Again, sources according to dow jones say blackberry has drawn interest from the likes of serburus capital. At least one other interested party. Also going on to say that the companys founder is still working on his own bid for the company possibly. Thats according to dow jones sources. You can see blackberry shares spiking now to session highs on this, but still, well below that 9 per share bid that fairfax financial which is blackberrys biggest shareholder has for the firm. So again, more news as it becomes available. Right now looks like at least theres interest drumming up for the likes of blackberry. Back over to you. Sure does with better than 2 gain on the trading session. Thank you very much. During the shutdown, government workers arent the only ones being shut out. Some workers who do government business are also being furloughed and the longer the shutdown goes the worse it will get. Abdul is the ceo of one federal solution a Staffing Company that does a lot of government work. Hes already furloughing employees. Nice to have you here. Thank you for having me. Tell me how many people youve had to furlough at this point . We had it to furlough about 90 of our current staff. We have about 115 people. Huge majority of our team has been notified as well. 90 , 90, did i hear that correct . Is that correct. All right. How long do you think this is going to go on and will you have to furlough everyone if it goes on much longer . Hopefully it doesnt go on too much longer. A Small Business, a lot of our overhead staff is tied to the contracts we support. By these people being put on furlough it affects our overhead team as well. Hopefully it doesnt last as long as it seems as its going to last, but it can be resolved quickly. Before i ask you the next question, what is this going to do to your bottom line . It definitely will affect our revenue overall, but more than that, its affecting the people that works for one federal solution. Are you hearing from your peer group, other Contracting Solutions firms that theyre doing the same thing or are you being proactive . Some of the companies we work with on a daily basis are also doing the same thing as well, notifying their staff and employees. Just depends on the contracts that theyre supporting. At this time, some of them are and, you know, depends on the contract that is being supported if you have to furlough your people. So depends on if your people are Mission Essential or nonmission esessional. How frustrated are you with congress . I think i know what message you would like to give to congress but it tell them what you think . Im frustrated. Small businesses are the backbone of america. Rather than the fingerpointing figure out a way to resolve this issue to get people back to work and Companies Back in business. At the end of the day, people working and companies being able to generate revenue to keep america growing. Mr. Baytops, best of luck. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much. All right. To robert frank he has a market plash. Thanks. Response from sothebys on the letter from dan lobe that broke earlier. Saying, quote, rather than debating incendiary and baseless comments we are focused on serving our clients and they say we will comment on the communications of third point at the appropriate time. This, of course, follows that letter from third point from dan lobe this morning where he says that the ceo of sothebys should step down. This letter contained accusation there was a lunch and a dinner at a restaurant where the management spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on fine wine and food, basically calling for a new direction and new leadership there. So sothebys just saying these are baseless and incendiary comments and will say more later. Back to you. Robert frank, thank you very much. Stocks lower today. The dow was down about 140 points at its low, now down 66. S p, nasdaq also lower right now. Cnbc contributor jeff killberg is with us here. John harwoods interview at 4 00. Time with the president. The exclusive you will see on closing bell. What do you guys on the Trading Floor want to hear . We are laser focused on this, bill. We are really seeing all right. Some of the ceos have been meeting with the president are speaking to the press at the white house. Heres Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and Brian Moynihan from bank of america. To fail on its obligations to repay its debt. Whats at stake . How bad mine how at risk are we . F really hurt the economy . No debate the seriousness of the u. S. Not paying its debts whether Social Security checks, Small Business loans, whatever all the way up to the treasury notes and bills is the most serious thing we have and we witnessed that august 11 and you saw the ramifytations, slow down in the economy and were facing that again. I think everybody understands it. Whats the path to get it. Thats a political question. We spent the meeting talking about what we see in the economy and would see it affected by that and serious repercussions. Theres precedent for Government Shutdown. Theres no precedent for default. With the most important economy in the world, with the reserve currency of the world, payments have to go out to people if money doesnt flow in, then money doesnt flow out so we really havent seen this before and im not anxious to be a part of the process that witnesses it. Did the president ask you to do anything . Did he ask you to help lobby . Did he ask you to [ inaudible ] congress. The point is just to make it clear, we represent, you know, one, two american households in our company, lloyd represents a lots of companies. Making people clear we understand the seriousness of the situation and get through it. Its the political process work but people have to understand if it doesnt work. I want to make clear, this wasnt a conversation about the issues underlying the political debate. This was an issue on process and the democratic process in a way and whether or not this particular resort was appropriate resort. Again, were here as representatives of the Financial System and so we are we are in a position to really know early what the consequences are. None of us can be sure of it because its unprecedented. This was a conversation that that we listened but we also contributed to exactly how bad it would be. So you understand that theres a fight going on here in washington. You think the fight should be on a Different Ground and republicans should not be, as the president said, holding the country hostage because they want to change the president S Health Care plan . We would like to see the fight not be on this ground and theres not a question of agreeing with the president or agreeing with the republicans. And again, you can look at the membership of our group and youll find people on all points of the political spectrum. Its just making sure that we understand the consequences, the longterm consequences of a shutdown, were in the shortterm consequences of a shutdown, but the kug quenshes of a debt ceiling and we all agree those are extremely adverse and though we havent witnessed the extent yet and we wanted to people wanted to tell us about it and by the way, in our meetings, were also meeting with the republican with leaders of the republican party, not just with leaders of the democratic party. What you telling them . Thank you very much. All right. Lloyd blankfein and Brian Moynihan among the ceos that met with the white house earlier today. Jeff killberg, you can step in front of the camera. What do you want to hear from washington and how are you trying to trade this market right now . Theyre talking process. Theyre talking about the impact its going to have as the days go on here, but you got to trade the market in the meantime. We do. One thing, bill, were looking for is demeanor for the last couple weeks is not negotiating. Thats been clear. If we see some type of compromising tone come out of him, thats promising. I think the markets will rejoice, youll see a relief rally. Right now so much uncertainty, Lloyd Blankfein touched the point, we dont know. As the process goes on, uncertainty will happen. The markets are not panicking by any means. We saw the russell 2,000, alltime highs yesterday. So far. But do bshs we all remember august 11, 2011, when we had the first debate going on and the market saw unprecedented volatility. Why arent we doing that yet or is that still to come. I think thats still to come and if we see his demeanor change today thats a reason to get long. We like getting long the etf, spy, qqqs. If he comes out with the hard nose resiliency, you can see the market come off and short those markets via the etfs, rwm, the russell 2000. Looking forward to harwood. All traders will have their eyes glued on that interview. Thats coming up at 4 00 on cnbc. Obama care is up and running as of yesterday. Sort of. Lot of glitches. The government website saw an overload. How big are the problems and are they being worked out . Bertha coombs will be here with the latest coming up next on power lunch. Stay tuned. Welcome back to power lunch. I im dominic chu. We begin with the company that owns the empire state building. 71. 5 million shares priced at 13 bucks the low end of its ipo expectations. The stock is trading up near session highs. Real estate Brokerage Firm remax selling 10 million shares at 22 bucks apiece above their expe expected price range and those shares at session highs as well. And burlington stores, this one is a big one, the parent of Burlington Coat factory saw its shares surge over 40 at one point after pricing 13 million shares at 17 bucks apiece. That, too, was above its expected range. See there trading at its session highs. Bill, back over to you. Thank you. Obama care is here and so are the glitches. Bertha coombs with what is easily the most popular website on the internet right now, and its both a blessing and curse. It may be just because the panda cam is down at the zoo so everybody is going to health care. Com. There it is. Earlier this morning, 15 minutes to get past what was we were calling the patients page where it was saying there we go, took us 15 minutes to get past this page. A few minutes ago it was going faster. But even once you get passed the patients page once they still filling to get their application, theyre still finding problems. No dropedowns. But a source familiar with what is going on says its not a glitch, it really is about the volume. They are working on adding capacity. But let us tell you why. Within the first 24 hours they had 4. 7 million unique visitors visit healthcare. Gov with the fact that people are having trouble getting on. They took 190,000 calls through their call center and conducted more than 100,000 web chats. In new york state they are still trying to get that capacity up. They took the website down overnight to add capacity but its slow again because of overwhelming demand. Maryland which was offline, unable to come up until about noon still experiencing a lot of issues. We havent gotten any numbers. They had about 100,000 unique visitors. There are some working. Kentucky much smaller state certainly than a lot of a these others. Much smaller exchange nonetheless and kentucky says theyve had 88,000 unique visitors to ky connect in the first 24 hours. 7500 applications were begun, more than half of those were completed and they actually enrolled 1800 individuals and families yesterday. Now the feds are not talking about enrollment numbers and seem to be holding that back but some of these states where theyre doing well are out there saying hey, its working. If there was any question that theres demand for this kind of health coverage, theres the evidence right there. There is. But the other question is, why didnt they build enough capacity for this demand . They certainly set the bar low on expectations but apparently they themselves didnt expect this much demand so early. Very interesting. See how long it takes to get the glitches worked out. Not glitches. Volume. Volume. All about the volume. Thank you. Health care will be a big topic of conversation with John Harwoods exclusive interview with the president coming up today at 4 00 p. M. Eastern time right here on cnbc on closing bell. Looking forward to that. We are bill, thanks. Three of microsofts top shareholders want bill gates out as chairman. Would the tech giant be better off without him and Steve Ballmer who is already leaving . The power pitch. How startup rock bot is trying to reinvent the jukebox. Coming up, power pitch. Startups give us their 60second pitch. Im garret dodd the cofounder of rockbot. And we give you insight into the fast paced world of venture capital. How many subscribers do you have on a monthly basis . I want to know how you treat the Music Community . Do these founders have what it takes . Are you in or are you out on rock bot . Stay tuned to find out. At a ford dealer with a little q and a for fiona. Tell me fiona, whos having a big tire event . Your ford dealer. Who has 11 major brands to choose from . Your ford dealer. Whos offering a rebate . Your ford dealer. Who has the low price tire guarantee, affording peace of mind to anyone who might be in the market for a new set of tires . Your ford dealer. Im beginning to sense a pattern. Get up to 140 in mailin rebates when you buy four select tires with the Ford Service Credit card. Whered you get that sweater vest . Your ford dealer. [ bell ringing, applause ] five tech stocks with more than a 10 . Change in aftermarket trading. All the tech stocks with a market cap. 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