Transcripts For CNBC Squawk Box 20100318 : vimarsana.com

labor market. expected to fall by 7,000 to 4 55,000. nike checking in to earnings central after the bell last night, the footwear and apparel giant at $1.01. revenues came in above the $4.63 billion estimate. later we will check out the prospects for nike as one of its biggest stars get back to work. and even elin, when she has been photographed, she has like a what is that scarf called? a headband thingy. and you re wondering whether it s a yeah, i m not going to call it that. i know. is that a good thing? how many people it s on the cover of every magazine. there s the nike logo. the only thing that is a little weird is i guess it shows she s back and she s with him and supporting him but but she was wearing it when she wasn t. when she wasn t, too. hey, wait a second. stay or go? she stays she gets half, she goes she gets half. nike, it s millions and millions. it s a partnership. it s millions of dollars. nike is a huge part of his endorsement game. yeah, but the skeptics look at that and say, that s the only reason she s staying. she probably gets a lot of free clothes and a lot of them have nike logos on them. and i don t think they would be happy if she walked out wear an adidas hat. that would be a diss. i m for it. and we have seen that again and again and again. is there really any such thing as bad? no. and there really is no this octo mom, why is she a start? suleyman? no, kate. why is she is star? i ve never seen that show. why is the kardashians that is a show on e. she s known for her sex tape. kardashian? yes. oh, my god. i ve negative seen that. i don t want to live in this world. and snooki, makes $200 an episode? that contract was written a long time before the show was a hit. so that is kate kardashian. oh, i can see that. meantime, a judge is rejecting a proposal to ease stock handlings. the s.e.c. joined 12 firms in an effort to scrap key portions of a 2003 deal aimed at ending excuses on wall street. that is crazy. it s a little crazy when you have the regulators doing that. this is the lawyers. well, for years, the china wall was something that you expected to be implied. but it s never been perfect and it s almost impossible to outlaw it, anyway. and you need separate cafeterias. it s just that, no, you need a lawyer there. more reason to have more lawyers. some day, if we keep going the rate that we re going. on vote on the president s health care reform package could come this weekend. the outcome is still in doubt. dennis kucinich yesterday among those changing his mind from a no to a yes and a coalition of catholic nuns has sent a letter of support. the article in the journal says they re ten votes shy. there s a wide range of reasons people have been opposed to it. there s no liberal on the far left that s not going to vote for it. anthony weaner is a go. they have seen that how difficult even this is, that they re never pie in the sky is what they were thinking before. baby steps. this is the first of many, many, many adjustments. to making health care a true right. exactly. to making it the biggest entitlement that we ve ever had in achieving universal health care. he believes that costs will be something they tackle down the road, too? no. maybe they ll try, but it s going to be very, very painful to try and tackle costs. someone is going to have to say you don t have that procedure. pick your poison, and it s not going to be pleasant at all. it s coming up soon. there might be something other than just cosmetic surgery at that point. well, now we re getting to a subject you know something about. i was reading that today, something about an incision. and i go, ooh, just the word incision, doesn t it is in the? yeah. let s get a check on markets. seven straight up days for the dow. did you know for the month to date s&p is up almost 6%? wow. is that true? yeah. almost 5% year-to-date. are you nervous about 1250? you know, today is quadruple witching. tomorrow. nome, yeah. and i think the bullish stance is ready to spring, right? if we get over 1200, you re fought going to give me kudos? where were we when you first started talking about it? a long time ago. it was during one of the wall street journal, this thing is ready for a breather jim brown. gentlemen, d.s. browning. warning signs, warning, pros are starting to question and then they cite these guys. so we ll see what happens later on. also, the president signs the jobs bill at 11:20. you probably heard opec is keeping their oil prices unchanged, the famous quote that prices are beautiful. we are just a couple dollars away from the high of the year and we ll talk more about what gas is going to do. a lot of people are talking about $3 al gasoline later on. yields are down a little bit after the fed statement earlier in the week. the dollar, i guess a basket of currencies that was relatively week this morning, but gaining ground against the euro, down to 1.3684. gold has managed to firm a little bit after the fed statement. we want to get overseas and check in with saijal patel standing by in singapore. but first, to london with steve sedgwick. hey, steve. good morning. guess what, everyone? greece hasn t gone away. just because the european politicians say we were drawing a line under it, they expected the markets to take them at their word. thank goodness the markets can still make up their own minds. the european benchmark, of course, is the german bund. that is slightly over 3%. that is where they can raise their money in the government bond markets. the greeks are having to pay around double that. and the greek prime minister, george papandreou is complaining, he s saying, we re going to struggle to get our deficits down if you don t let us access money at the same level as the germans. the level of debt is absolutely nowhere near the levels the german are going. just to give you parameters, $387 billion worth of debt, that s equivalent to 103% of gdp. now, over in germany, they ve got 2.6 trillion worth of debt expected this year. that s not far behind the greeks. that s around about 83.5% and as such, people are concerned about the core as well as the periphery in the euro zone at the moment. that sent the euro doin as much as around about 0.5% at one stage today. but it does seem that the greeks are moaning about market rates and how they re going to serve. they say, look, we can t get the solution in europe. that aside, the market is pretty flat today. but it s so low at the moment, not expecting anything from the meds markets. now out to saijal for the asian rundown. we started with a mixed picture here, but then we got to the news about the greek debt problems and the fact that they might go to the imf. the euro s drop again didn t help the nikkei very much. big sell-off in those exporters there. hong kong also a little weak. shanghai composite down 0.1%. over in china, we saw weakness in the banking stocks. regulators there urging banks to watch their lending on the property sector. as for hong kong, we did see some gapes remain in some of those blue chip stocks. china mobile, in fact, an outperformer after it reported better than expected q4 results. really, once again, its hands on those apple products. it wants to start selling the ipad and iphone in china and is trying to negotiate that with apple. mean time, apc hasn t decided whether it s going to join in that plan. thank you, saijal. right now, let s turn our attention to the task force. joining us right now is yudi chang. also from ihs global insight, chief economist nair minute bare ra vash. you re still feeling bullish, correct? yes, overall, i am bullish. however, i don t think this up move is going to be very smooth. we will continue to see bumps and proouz bruises. but overall, i think markets are heading higher. where do you think the real energy is going to come? which sectors are going lead the way? there s a couple sectors i like going forward. technology continues to be a couple sectors we like. i think metals and mining is going to be a factor to look at. and also the financials, believe it or not, if the economy continues to recover. these are the sectors that we fed. is that exactly what you were expecting from them? when do you think we will start to see pressure for them to raise rates? the earliest they re going to raise rates will be at the november meeting. even then, it may not happen. this isn t the quintessential two steps forward, one step back recovery. a lot of the data is getting better. and inflation is not a problem. we think today s cpi, both the headline and the core. inflation is not a problem. recovery is still struggling a little bit, although gaining a little momentum. so why would they raise rates in this environment? housing, of course, is very fragile still. so nothing until november. i guess the big question is the jobless claims. what are you expecting on that number? as you know, after coming down dramatically from 650 to about 450, it backed up a little bit. and it sort of flattened out. so it s not making a lot of progress in the last few weeks. i think it will maybe be better today, but not a lot. we get to get below that threshold. yu-dee, two of the sectors you like, mining and metals have been picking up ground this week. mining and metals is lower because of the dollar and weakness. you think this is going to be a demand picture that drives this sect secreta secreta sector? a little bit of it. i think the nand for industrial metals will be there. however, precious metals, a dollar carry trade, still, that is a dollar that is higher. the dollar heads lower and they will see continued upward surge. so it s relate the industrial metals that you have the most confidence in? yes. also, yu-dee, the reason why things have been moving higher this week is because we ve been getting clarity on what we should expect from financial regulations. do you feel confident at this point that you have a good understanding of where washington is headed? absolutely not. the devil is pretty much in the details, right? it s not clear at all. i think the financials is pretty much a bottom picking a bet. if you look at this as they recover, they will probably have triple digit earnings. however, if one believes in the fact that we may get a late session dip in the economy, the financials is not a place to be. it s more of a speculative play. and nariman, we ve got inflation numbers out today. inflation basically is not a problem and probably won t be for at least a couple years. you know, with unemployment rates near 10%, we re not going to get wage inflation. with excess capacity rampant in the global economy, we re not going to get price inflation. so this is sort of a non-issue, something we don t have to were about for a while. nariman, yu-dee, thank you very much for joining us this morning. coming up, first telecom and now google may want to get inside your television. first, as we go to break, take a look at yesterday s winners & losers. thing as taking a chance? as having to decide to go for it? at the hartford, we help businesses of all kinds. feel confident doing what they do best. by protecting your business, your property, your people. you ve counted on us for 200 years. let s embrace tomorrow. and with the hartford behind you, achieve what s ahead of you. welcome back. jobless claims are lower this morning after seven straight up days for the dow. is google getting into television? there are reports the search engine giant is lining up partners like intel and sony in an effort to get into your living room. the effort is said to be in preliminary stages. google tells cnbc that it does not comment on rumor or speculation. but one more story, guys, that as one friend put it, pretty soon, you might be watching the internet rather than watching tv. i don t understand. do you see the same thing you see on the internet on your television screen or is this in terms of getting streaming video that s coming through? i don t get it. there are more things on heaven and earth ratio than there is play station three, which i got, you get a free netflix card. and then if you do it s got a dvd player, right? yeah, but you don t get the dvds. if you have wireless internet, you do something. i haven t figured out how to do it yet. oh, and you can download? that s pretty cool. yeah, if i could ever figure out how to do it. it s streaming and you can save movies on the play station three. it s daunting. the whole thing is daunting. but at google television well, you can download anything on the internet or but do i need google to do that? you need to search to find it, right? i don t know. you nooez need cisco, too, i think for rouding something somewhere. it s all pretty cool. it is, but it s daunting. it s hard enough to do little things. to just have the computer working is start your car in the morning. no. i can do that. you couldn t because it s on the left on my car. you would be confused for days. do you know why? you have to put it in first at the same time and i could leave you in the dust. burger king is upgraded from hold to buy. target was increased from 24 to 19. i see several positive developments emerging, including a bottoming and sales trend. improving macroeconomic backgrounds, breakfast may turn a corner, improved relations with their franchisees and it continues, burger king, to be out of favor on wall street, even though it has the king. i wonder if they think breakfast is going to turn a corner because the unemployment number is expected to come down. maybe as more people get jobs? then they will go to burger king? well, they go and east breakfast. amd was removed, removed from the conviction/sell list. so that is a bullish call, i guess. the rating remains the sell, though, and the six-month target is 5 1/2 still. and energizer, upgraded from overweight to neutral at jpmorgan. the target goes to 70 been it will be 64. jpmorgan believes revenues at energizer could be above market expect ages and raise fiscal 10 and fiscal 11 where they had been. this shows i look like pirates of the caribbean. i saw that. i m pulling it off. you have your pirate shirt on. the puppy shirt. oh, leave me alone. i still don t have electricity. i m living out of the closet in a hotel. you don t have your electricity on? no. i didn t give them my address, as you suggested. i did not. the guys are working hard. i will give them the pse&g guys are working hard. corzine would have sent one of the 160,000 guys he hired to your house. i give them credit for it. there s trees down anywhere and everywhere. anyway, let s get to our national weather forecast. scott, we re hoping we can count on more sunshine over the next few days here, right? absolutely, indeed there, becky. if you enjoyed the weather with yesterday in new york city, pretty much carbon copy for today. we ll see a lot of sunshine. temperatures topping out in the upper 60s and lower 70s for the a good chunk of the northeast. we are watching two areas, one off the coastal sections in the northeast. this will eventually move across the country and bring rain back into the northeast and new england as we move into the latter part of the weekend. but right now, watching the rainfall around the outer banks of north carolina, temperatures are in the mid 40s here. and as we move into new york city, temperatures right now in the mid and upper 40s. so a comfortably cool start and then we ll see another mild day on tap here. case in point with the westerly wind here, temperatures topping out in the lower 70s, 72 degrees new york city and 71. look at the temperatures here as we move into the mid-atlantic and the northeast. as far as your travel concerns here, watching several of the hubs as we switch gears and focus in on some of the areas that we re watching here, salt lake city, moderate delays. miami, delays with scattered showers. 72 degrees will be the high there in florida. 70 is your high in boston. showery, though, as we move into coastal sections of the carolinas as we focus on the east coast here. as we move into the central part of the nation, houston, sunshine. 71 degrees. chicago, 65. but watching that developing storm system in the rockies. 2340u back to you. scott, thank you very much. when we return, we ll get to this morning s top stories plus the futures pits. squawk box will be back right after this. announcer: next week, squawk is in session with senator evan bahy. then st. louis fed head james bullard is here. jack is back, his thoughts on health care, the markets and keeping america agree great and senator john mccain as he faces the toughest re-election battle of his career. national car rental knows i m picky. so, at national, i go right past the counter. and you get to choose any car in the aisle. choose any car? you cannot be serious! okay. seriously, you choose. go national. go like a pro. good morning. welcome back to squawk box here on cnbc. i m joe kernen along with becky quick and carl quintanilla. we ll get quarterly earnings from fedex later this hour. consensus forecasts say that the company will report fiscal third quarter profit of 72 cents a share on revenue of about $8.4 billion. that is more optimistic than the most recent guidance given by fedex back in december when it said it would earn between 50 cents and 70 cents a share for the third quarter. u.s. regulators are report reportedly set to meet with private investigators next week. they want to review new rules. some investors say that the current rules are too stringent and some dampened private sector interest in that sector. it will be a busy day. markets this morning, though, equity futures a little softer after seven up days from the dow. and the dow is up 12 of the last 14. oil is awfully close to a high for the year, a couple dollars away. the 10-year note, yields come down a little bit after the fed meeting to 3.364. merkel is talking about how they needed an instrument to expel the euro zone if they don t play by the rules. and the pound is losing a dollar, up 10.1,123. zoe, it s good to see you. nice to see you, beck. we ve got squad ruinel openings coming up on friday. and i know that s been something that creates a lot of melt yumm on the floor. what are people thinking about as we head into that ex operation? usually we see volume leading up to it. so i would expect actually the volume to pick up today and taupe. i think your going to see people jockeying quite a bit. so those two things xwientd could make for some nice interday volatility the next couple of days. overall, volatility is low. if you look the last couple of years, it s very low historically. it s still mid range, so to speak. what is interesting, though, is we re startling to see range from the low side of the markets and we re starting to see the financials come a bit stronger here. and, you know, one of the things that we talked about for the last couple of years, we cannot go anywhere without the financials being strong and they really started to show some life after a year and a half of being beaten up. and with that, one of the things that we re seeing that i think is interesting is the retail traders rolling out of some of the different names, like retail and things like that and rolling into the financials such as wells fargo, citigroup, bank of america. so that is part of the reason. yesterday it was said the bankers should be standing up for those little staff punkers trying to write regulations. don t let those punks take advantage of you and stand up for yourself. this is what he said. he seems to think any financial reform is going to take at least a year before the house can catch up. i think it s part of it. there s such a highlight of health care right now, that it just seems like they re trying to stuff in the house and the senate they re trying to stuff so many things into the small bags, so to speak, that they have to focus on one or the other. health care seems to be at front and center right now. maybe if health care doesn t pass those same people lose a little bit of momentum and a little bit of credibility on the hill, that could weaken their chance for reform, financial reform, also. but going into the weekend, if people are trying to figure out what happens with health care, does that mean the bias is to the up side or to the down side? i would think that although superation tends to be to the up side, i think it could be to the down side as people try to flatten out. joe, thanks a lot. it s good talking to you. always a pleasure, beck. telephones are ricking off capital hill this morning. john harwood is our chief washington correspondent and he comes armed with his sweet 16, a list of four different brackets, congress people, right, john, with various reasons as to why they may or may not vote for the bill. yeah, carl. and admittedly, this is arbitrary. there s probably 40, 45 members of the house who are getting intensely lobbied by their leadership, by republican he, by outside interest groups, lots of tv ads beale put on the air, phone call campaigns, all that stuff. but for purposes of sort of explaining the structure of this vote, i wanted to talk a little bit about different groups of people who are relevant to the process. democrats have got about 200 votes in their pocket. but they need another 16. you have to get a majority of 216 to pass this thing. these 16 are the democrats best hopes? they are some of the best hopes. it s not an exclusive list. freshmen? sure. let s start with freshmen. you re talking about people who were swept in with barack obama. that means they feel a little bit of identity with them. on the other hand, 20308 was a great year for democrats and so some of these people, john boccieri in ohio, suzanne kosmas, harry at the ague of new mexico, you re talking about people who tend to be elected in districts that are pretty good for republicans. john mccain won some of these districts. and so the fact that they are in weak districts and they re shaky in their hold on their seat makes this a difficult vet for them. okay. now, let s talk about the flip side, some of the retirees. bart gordon of tennessee, john cantor of tennessee, brian buried of these are people who are leavin for higher office, they don t have the pressure of future campaign ads against them, but they voted against the bill the first time. can they switch some of these votes to yes? democratic leadership is counting on them being able to do that. and you ve got your blue dogs, the fiscally conservative types, people like jason altmeyer of pennsylvania. you re talking there about guys who said the house bill, overed 1 trillion. too expensive for my blood. and jason altmier told me a few weeks ago, i don t want a bill with a bunch of tax increase is in it. well, the senate bill does have tax increases, but it costs less money than the house bill. they need sdwruft a few. they might be able to get them. then you ve got the veteran members who have been playing for this democratic team for a long time. and the democratic team is one that will lose credibility across the board. white house, congress, all across pennsylvania avenue if they re not able to pass this thing. and so there s a lot of pressure on people like marci kaptor. we all know that that hands out a lot of money. people like marci get money for their districts through that money. if you let down your team on this, there may be consequences to pay. there is a lot of overlap on these members with the aboard issue. democrats are hoping that that can assure that this is something they can live with. is kucinich s change of mind a precursors to others, as well. i think it may be a straw in the wind for those like john boccieri. on abortion, there s a bit of a debate going on between the vote counters. some people in the white house think there might be a had a a dozen democrats who want to vote against this bill because of the abortion language that s weaker in the senate. other people think there are fewer votes that will go south on them because of the abortion language and this is one of those things where until you have the vote, you may not know how some of these people are going to come down. but i will say, across the board among democratic leadership and people in the house, they are convinced they are going to get to 216 over the weekend. and so when your previous guest was talking about the risk of health care going down and the market implications on that, if i was a market participant, i would not bet a nickel on health care going down because i believe that they are going to have those votes lined up by sunday. yeah. and already we re beginning to read about whether or not the supreme court would want to take a crack at this, the constitutionality of the d rule, the no compensation. and then the health care wars are being delivereded today. if it passes, we re in for decades on a measure passing with no bipartisan support. that s possible. and, of course, people have said for a long time that it s better when you have major social legislation in this country to have a consensus in the country across party lines to have a sustainable basis for governing. however, we have a different political system than we had when medicare and social security passed. we ve got parties that are more internally cohesive and you simply don t have the same kind of liberal republicans and conservative democrats that made that possible. so this may be the only way you can get big social legislation passed right now. barack obama came into office with two choices for achieving change. one was messy, ugly, difficult, deal making, partisan. that s the one he chose. the other was completely impossible and that s the bipartisan rule. will they take the vote if they re not sure they have the count? yes. they won t be rock solid sure, but i think they re going to be confident that they ve got it. as i mentioned, becky, the credibility of everyone who operates under the democratic brand is going to take a huge hit if this thing goes down. stakes are really high. you ve already got the guy who has taken on julius, who says his life will be devoted to repealing this. the governor of illinois? you ve already got people that i m in this race now to repeal this bill if it passes. well, joe, you ve got a lot of republicans now running for office who have a base that is outraged by this bill, that is fired up and they re speaking to that sentiment. but we ll see. once this thing passes, assuming that it does, we ll see whether that enthusiasm lasts beyond the midterm elections. you know, there are a lot of republicans who very much don t believe in the structure of the social security system as it now exists, but you don t see a lot of energy exerted to try and repeal it. all right. thanks, john. comments, questions about you see you say here on squawk, e-mail us. next, some information on his identity in prison. he pushes that photographer. and he hangs out with the mafia guys for protection. and he s in with some other white collar pharmaceutical scammer-type guys. i don t know. it s always next on stb southbound. welcome back, everybody. u.s. equity futures a little below fair value this morning. down by just about 9 or 10 points. of course, we get some inflation numbers later this morning. cpi coming out at 8:30 as are those weekly jobless claims. that can have an impact on the market, as well. in the meantime, a federal grand jury in new york indicting two more people accused of developing and maintaining programs that were used in madoff s fraudulent investment advisory business. they ve been charged with conspiracy and falsifying reports. plus there are reports today that madoff was boating back in december. there were reports that surfaced at the time and they had, no, he got weak headed. that is why he was in the reasonable. madoff received a broken nose and broken remembers. back in december, there were rumors of an assault. it was said that the rumors were false. i like boat of these quotes. both tin mates like him and respect him because of the sheer size of the scam. that didn t stop his ribs from being fractured. maybe it was a relative that lost some money. or maybe he s trying to help someone else off and no one even knows. right now, it s time for a check on the news outside the world of business. monica is here. wow, it s early in the morning for that term. even at 6:00 we were talking about a few terms. you ve got a lot of nerves with what you show on that morning chuck show. you had rahm emanuel naked the entire time last week. you had nakedness throughout this show for five days, from what i heard. don t get high and mighty with us, little lady. let s continue your discussion on health care reform, shall we? we have an interesting legal twist out of idaho. they re now the first stooit state to require their attorney general to sue the government if the health care bill passes. over its mandate requiring residents buy health insurance. similar legislation being considered in 37 other states. over at walmart, executives, they re embarrassed to say the least after a shocking racial incident at one of its stores in southern new jersey on sunday. customers heard a public announcement ordering that, quote, all black customers leave the store. authorities say it s unclear who made that announcement. and there s no place like home for the holidays. thousands liked the streets. in fact, half a million, they re saying, lined the streets of dublin for the extraordinary worried st. patrick s day parade. and the irish, who thank their lucky stars for the nearly $80 million boost to the country s struggling economy. no surprise, actually, all the kids were out having fun there in dublin, but almost all of the members of the government, of the administration there were out traveling to foreign countries. they re facing a terrible recession and they re trying to create another resurgence there. what was it, the celtic tiger? yes. and we had some of them in washington with the president yesterday. the tea shock, theater. we spoke to the guy in charge of bringing investments in yesterday, too. tomorrow is st. joseph s day. yeah. in makeup they were telling me about that. sounds good. can we go out and grab a pint for st. joseph s day? absolutely. you should have been over here this morning, monica. what question do we have to wear? red. i did see later in the morning yesterday a series of clips, joe, where there was some drinking happening, dancing and drinking. that was three years ago. three or four years ago. okay. see you, monica. bye, guys. that brad guy. when we come back, we ll go to chairs and squawk on the street is catching our attention this morning. in the next hour, the prognosis for health care reform. two sides of the aisle and two very different stories. all right. welcome back, everybody. we re in the chairs this morning. one thing that jumped out the me this morning comes from politico s money morning report they send out. it s a newsletter that comes out before our show every morning. they must be up at midnight reading this stuff. today they talk about house minority leader boehner talking to a group of bankers yesterday at the government relations summit making comments on financial regulatory reform. you may have thought with dodd bringing this legislation we were getting closer to some sort of an end result. he doesn t think so. he told these bankers odds are we ll still be talking about these very same issues a year from now because even if the senate passes a financial reform bill, you have to reconcile it with the house version. he thinks that will take another year. listen to what he told the bankers. don t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves. the more regulations you have to comply with the more cost you have and less amount you will have to make loans to customers. i want to see how that plays. two years since bear stearns. we can t afford to have that exist. i m with boehner. to which degree are republicans in a box. if they re against financial reform, are they with the banks? are we asking for this to happen all over again? you have to do it right like health care? when? five years from now? ten years from now. if you like fannie and freddie you ll love chris dodd s latest reform making many more companies too big to fail and lead to greater financial consolidation. it would allow regulators to take down healthy companies. it is hotel california like the guy said yesterday. you will see you re going to have a guy that represents a republicans. you ll have guys say that the government being in every detail of a private industry looking at every single thing going on is not good. you ll have republicans saying that. i m not surprised by that. they were trying to curb the rules with analysts. there needs to be fingers in. they say the s.e.c. dropped the ball with the lehman situation. we ll hear this played out every single day. what was the other thing boehner said? he worked in the bar and you have to deal with every a.h. that comes walks in and it is perfect for working on the hill. are any that aren t? it s unanimous when they walk in on the beltway. when we come back, more of this morning s top stories. plus, we have former omb director jim nussle. throughout our lives, we encounter new opportunities. at the hartford, we help you pursue them with confidence. by preparing you for tomorrow. while protecting what you have today. you ve counted on us for 200 years. let s embrace tomorrow. and with the hartford behind you, achieve what s ahead of you. lucky seven. the dow on its longest winning streak since august. key earnings from fed ex and inflation data and jobless claims will be the focus with dow and s&p sitting at near 18-month highs. how reliable is your car? jd power out with its survey of the most dependable. we have the results. joe will be happy to hear this. what are you doing? squawk is in session. we hear from both sides of the aisle on health care. allyson schwartz and mike pence join us for a debate on whether the president s bill can cure our health care problems as the second hour of squawk begins right now. good morning, everybody. welcome back to squawk box here on cnbc. i m becky quick along with joe kernen and carl quintanilla. is oil still cheap above $80 a barrel? we ll talk about whether it s near a peak or if we re headed back into triple digit territory. at the bottom of the hour, a health care debate you don t want to miss. both sides of the aisle on the issue and when a vote may come and at 7:45 eastern today, reaction to fed ex earnings which will be out this morning. in studio for the remainor of the show is jim nussle. former office of management and budget director now chairman of the nussle group. good to have you here. we ll run through numbers. before we get to that let s look at the morning s top headlines. futures below fair value but not at their worst levels of the morning down by just about 7.5 point below fair value. data coming up at 8:30 when we get weekly jobless claims and the cpi report. google working with intel and sony to get into your living room television set. this venture is in preliminary stages including software to help consumers navigate web based software on television. damages against a company can be tripled if harm is caused by fraudulent activities. the complaint is drawing reports that toyota knew about the acceleration problems for years. that means lawsuits once estimated to cost $2 billion could now cost close to $10 billion. nike reporting earnings of 1.01 a share compared to estimates of 89 cents. revenue coming in at 4.73 versus estimates of $4.6 billion. nike also says that worldwide future orders are up by 9%. jp morgan releasing reliability study. the automaker that tops the chart this year does not surprise me. phil lebeau joins us from chicago. the morning one of my taillights are out, phil. who does top? call the folks at jd power and tell them you have a problem with the result. if you have been living under a rock and don t realize that joe loves porsche, look at the top five results for dependable models. round of applause. porsche number one. becky says you know how italians are with their cars. they make a solid car with the porsche. i didn t realize it was german. i m not as fascinated with porsche as you are. it s the opposite. becky there is room for more under the rock. opposite of an italian car. there s the top five. porsche at the top of the list followed by lincoln. a tie for third with buick and lexus and mercury at the bottom. when you talk about porsche, it should not be a surprise when you go back three years ago back after they did a lot of refinements, they topped the initial quality report. it had the fewest problems in the study and this is all due to the improvements done with the 911 and boxer. what about lincoln surging to second in this is a tribute to the refinement they made when it comes to fit and product development when they said we ll make this a world class brand and they improved substantially. we talked about toyota a little bit in the headlines there. toyota slipping to number six in dependability study. keep in mind even though this slipped down to sixth from fourth, it still reported fewer problems than in 2009. one interesting note, j.d. power s dependability study was done with 50,000 owners of toyota vehicles before the slew of recalls started last fall. a lot of people who may have received recall notices, they had not received those yet when they answered this survey. toyota and lexus owners still report fewer, far fewer problems than the industry average. there you have it. this is a closely followed study. 50,000 people fill out a survey on their 3-year-old models saying this is what works and what doesn t. many times it s chronic problems they complain about but in the case of porsche, they are not complaining about those. far fewer we should say. goes into the shop to get snow tires on and snow tires off. i was going to ask but that driving in. i think it s time. check out the block. behind the wheel.cnbc.com. i think other stuff is more interesting. buick is there. buick has consistently been near the top of the list. it doesn t get the recognition it deserves. the situation with buick is similar to what we see with lincoln. these are two brands a lot of people dismiss and say they want to be upper scale but they re really not going to compete with luxury brands. time and again when these surveys come out buick and lincoln are near the top of the list. what is an auto reporter drive? what do you drive? a smart car. what do i drive? yeah. a car. i drive an accura. you can convert him like you re trying to convert me. i have been. you are not making the switch now that you have twins. no way. you re german at least. italian notwithstanding. phil lebeau with good information. with us for the next couple hours, jim nussle. great to see you. welcome back. you have a great point in your notes and that is you got a lot of big clients and they re all asking how do we operate in this what do we do now? it s hard to make a decision on just about anything until we get past health care. all of the oxygen in washington has been sucked out of the air while everyone is waiting for health care. this has been going on since august. i think so much has been waiting on the sidelines. so much policy. energy policy is probably one of the ones that people have been talking about the most. we need an energy strategy. all sorts of challenges out there. all of the energy clients, all of the energy folks are waiting for health care to be done so that the democrats and the congress can turn their attention to something else besides health care going into the rest of this year. your thoughts on what might happen this week? i ve been wrong all year as you know. i predicted this would pass last august. in a way it did. yeah but in a way it may still continue to be one of those challenges even if it passes this week because as you saw both in the interviews that you ve done as well as others, republicans are going to continue to try to repeal this. it will be the stuff of the campaign as well as their policy prognosis and i think democrats are most likely going to continue to have to struggle with a lot of the fine tuning over health care because not all of what they were able to get done or get into this is done as part of this package. not to mention constitutionality issues and state s ability or willingness to fight it on a local level. they re lining up to sue. they can t afford it. that s the challenge. it s more than just the mandate. the reason they re standing in line to sue is because their budgets are completely out of whack. we have three or four of them ready to declare bankruptcy if there was such a thing to states and they can t afford it. that s why they re lining up. do things get easier if it passes or doesn t pass. if it doesn t pass, financial regulation, for example, stands a much tougher time of becoming law. i think financial regulation unfortunately because of the path that dodd has taken most likely now will fall by the wayside at least until the commission reports later on this year. you mean by stopping negotiations he was having with corker? i think that pretty much tolls the end for financial regulation this year. i really do. i think it may in fact wait until a commission report to get the juice back into this momentum that it needs in order to have any kind of why did he do that? i thought it was because he wanted to bring a vote and quickly get it off the table. did he miscalculated? he was running out of time. he himself felt as though this was his last opportunity to do anything. to make it his? and make it his which is what he wanted to do. he s a hostage to the timing of health care, too. no question. the entire process is held hostage to the timing of health care. we ll talk to shelby at 8:00 and you do not think republicans will want to deal? i don t think so. until the commission comes back and until the presidential commission comes back with a report, i don t think the momentum will be back into this legislation. all right. jim will be with us for the rest of the show. we have much more to talk about. if you have any comments or questions joe has one. please try to refrain from showing your cnbc pro-obama roots. joe was blatant this morning. i got to watch that. glad it wasn t directed to me. i have to watch that. are you apologizing? i am. i was too liberal this morning. i m sorry. if you have any other comments you want to share with us, go ahead and send them in. we don t respond to all of them our address is squawk@cnbc.com. at $80, is oil still cheap? we ll talk about what it could mean for the summer driving season. announcer: time for today s aflac trivia question. what famous sauce was created for king george iv by his chef henderson william brand? the answer when cnbc s squawk box continues. at no cost to your company insurance. with aflac, your employees pay only for the coverage they want or need. and, the cost to you - nothing at all. if all you know about us is. aflac! .then you don t know quack. to find out why more businesses provide aflac, visit getquack.com well, look who s here. it s ellen. hey, mayor white. how you doing? great. come on in. would you like to see our new police department? yeah, all right. this way. and here it is. completely networked. so, anything happening, suz? she s all good. oh, my gosh. is that my car? [ whirring ] [ female announcer ] the new community. see it. live it. share it. on the human network. cisco. announcer: now the answer to today s aflac trivia question. what famous sauce was created for king george iv by his chef? the answer, a-1 steak sauce. futures you are just below fair value this morning. not down by a heck of a lot. down 6.5 for dow futures seven days in a row of market gains. we ll see what happens with today s action. the fdic will meet on monday with private equity executives and advisers to review laws put in place last year. the rules require private equity to hold more company tal than bank buyers which has dampened interest in doing deals in that sector. executives are not expecting any major changes. rules were put in place to keep private equity guys from flipping banks making sure they would stay for at least five years. stock market s 18-month highs notwithstanding our guests say best investment opportunities to be in agriculture and energy. joining us on oil this morning, ed and james. guys, good morning to you both. we want to begin with you, steven. this great quote by the oil minister of saudi arabia. good demand. reliable surprise. beautiful prices. we re very happy. how happy is opec and do they deserve to be this happy judging from what s about to happen? absolutely. right now you have to remember this time a year ago oil was below $40 a barrel so we doubled inside of one year and i was in vienna last year for the meeting and i tell you, the mood was glum at this time a year ago. i don t think anybody over there expected to see oil this high this soon a year ago. they were absolutely lly ecsta right now. at $80 a barrel the oil companies won t make money trying to refine that oil. prices are fundamentally disconnected. we re high and we re probably going higher. how much higher? is that because we re going into summer? the refineries are shutting down. they are going into maintenance season getting ready to ramp up for summer gasoline production. we re at a time of the year when we have existing product that puts a bit into the price. we re seeing rising prices in crude oil and not rising price in gasoline or in diesel which is the stuff you and i buy. by in large, this is how we know the market is fundamentally disconnected because gasoline at the pump does not reflect how high crude oil is right now. that means one of two things. either crude oil has to fall between now and the fourth of july or we need to see a significant rally in pump prices between now and july. if we keep hearing about refining capacity coming down, does that mean that crude may stay here but gasoline will rise? is $3 gasoline by the fourth of july a likelihood? i think plus $3 on a national average is a done deal at this point at these crude oil prices. that doesn t mean the oil companies are going to make money because there are two schools of thought out there. one is that there is already an over capacity of refining abilities in the united states and further refineries need to be shut down. we ve already seen a significant shutdown in refineries from delaware to new jersey up through montreal. these refiners have been shut down for good. there s estimates that another 1 to 2 million barrels a day refining capacity has to be shut down so bottom line is crude oil prices can remain high. the probability and poker odds suggest there s a very good likelihood we ll see $95 oil. i can t argue against it. therefore, i m a bullish agonistic. the market does what it will do. exactly. james, people are obviously probably frustrated and in some ways with the market and lack of volatility that we see lately. we have three big soft picks. orange juice, cocoa and sugar. tell us why. we think commodities will do well in 2010. the landscape seems quite bullish with u.s. interest rates pegged at zero, the brick nations going 6% to 10% and commodities space should do quite well. how to select the best performers this year, we would look at copper, silver, lead, zinc space as luxury right now. we could go to soft commodities. cocoa, sugar and orange juice have bullish fundamentals. the pullback in sugar prices recently, they look like great places to buy right now. why not as excited about the hard commodities given the fact the fed is at least for now said rates are going to stay low. we could count on maybe some more dollar weakness and the global economy as you suggested already appears to be getting better and not worse. it is getting better. however. infrastructure spending, copper, lead, zinc, in china, do they need to erect another building and build another city? a lot of these cities are vacant right now and looking for people to move into them. the consumer, the middle class, which is absolutely booming in india and china and brazil, let s buy in advance of what they re going to buy on the way home from work each day. cocoa, sugar, these products are going to be very well in large demand in coming year or two and i want to buy what the consumers there are going to buy in the next several years. does the crazy winter weather we just lived through have an effect on any of those markets? orange juice for sure. we had just a great freeze in late 2009 and 2010. the orange crop in florida is the smallest in 20 years. orange juice will increase another 20 cents to 30 cents a pound. bring 20s when you go to buy orange juice this summer. i would say so, yes. thanks. where is march madness? stocks are rising but slowly and on low volume. we ll see if today s economic data might spark volatile action and volume when squawk box comes right back. hey can i play with the toys ? sure, but let me get a little information first. for broccoli, say one. for toys, say two. toys ! the system can t process your response at this time. what ? please call back between 8 and 5 central standard time. he s in control. goodbye. even kids know it s wrong to give someone the run around. at ally bank you never have to deal with an endless automated system. you can talk to a real person 24/7. it s just the right thing to do. welcome back. jobless claims and inflation data due out later this morning just over an hour from now. right now we ll find out what the traders are watching. john is standing by watching futures this morning. it looks like future are under a slight bit of pressure after seven days in a row of gains. what s really driving things this morning? an early trade here continues to be this back and forth between german and greek officials and that situation remains fluid in imf intervention and participation by imf have risen. traders will be keenly watching the core cpi data specifically the owners equivalent rent and rent subcomponents. they make up over 50% of the core cpi data. in the month of january they were down a significant .5% suggesting that there s an intensifying disinflation within the housing sector. if you look at the new home sales data we ve seen in the last couple months, there seems to be a lack of pricing power in the housing market. that could become an epicenter for further deflationary pressures. futures have traded well this week. treasury curve had a strong flattening bias led by price performance on the back end of the curve. today the chatter will be what goes on with the rent subcomponents of the cpi data. housing pie ining picture is employment picture. we ll see a number around 455,000. these numbers important for the march nonfarm payroll report. the key with jobs is stripping out the noise that will come along with census hires we see in the coming months. job growth and job creation is key. president obama may be signing a jobs bill later this morning. there may be mood for bullishness or at least an increase in optimism regarding jobs but we ll need to look at jobs number and strip out census hiring for a better read of true job hiring. good to talk to youyou. we would love to hear from you at squawk@cnbc.com. health care heats up on the hill. representatives from both sides of the aisle will join us ahead of a possible vote this weekend. welcome back to squawk box, everybody. still on things we need to squawk about this morning, fed ex delivering its quarterly results. we ll have numbers and street reaction as soon as they hit. also coming up at the top of the hour, senator richard shelby sounding off on chris dodd s legislation to overhaul regulation in the financial industry. march madness kicking off later this morning. we hope your pool sheets are filled out. first, let s look at what s making headlines this morning. let s get a check on the markets. i love it when the prompter rolls. futures negative on the dow after seven straight up days. do you know how many points we are away from pre-lehman levels? you ve been doing this a lot. a fact to use at the beginning of these things. have you been studying? 700 points. 700 points. the transports are only 13% from all-time highs on the s&p. hello. we ll hear from fed ex. we ll hear from fed ex. joe will handle earnings because that s what you do. i will. if i must. you saw how much we all wanted to read headlines. we didn t know whose name would come up. california prius driver jim sikes has one party in his corner on the controversy over unintended acceleration. a california highway patrol reports supports the version given by sikes questioned by toyota and government officials. sikes did appear to be stomping heavily on the brakes while going up to 90 miles an hour on a freeway near san diego. there have been critics that said and even the company that said it wasn t possible the way the brakes and the accelerator were applied. can you replicate any of these problems? it sounded like there was a black box which said he stepped on it 250 times and i read stuff about his personal life that toyota must have gotten that he ran a swinging something or another and a guy you know a guy is going to pull he s running a swinging website. a couple other headlines, faber says that yields are overpriced. rise 20%. united airlines came up with a way to soften the blow to check bags. united will offer the service for travel through march 29th. you have to sign up by 5:00 eastern time tomorrow. it goes from your house? how does that work? i don t know. i don t get it. they come to your house? they charge you 25 bucks to even check a bag. that s a sore spot for you. the whole bag checking thing. i want it all lumped into the fee you pay up front. put it all in one place. i ll pay for it. put it in there. ceo bonuses taking a hit in 2009 as company boards get tougher on tying pay to performance. mary thompson joins us with more. when was the last time you were on our show? it s been a while. you missed me.noticed your abse. how was your st. patrick s day? tomorrow is st. joseph s day. he s patron saint of husbands. this is joseph of joseph and mary, right? i believe so. there are a lot of st. joseph s. you re irish, right? i am. did you i walked around and just from fumes emanating from the bars that was all i needed. i was saying in the makeup room green looks good on no one. especially pasty irish people. let s talk about bonuses. wall street bonuses may have rebounded this year but that wasn t the case across the country. in a new report the median together bonus payout for ceo fell 12.9% in 2009 to just over $812,000. with performance based bonuses or those based on factors like a firm s stock performance or cash flow falling 10.9% and discretionary cash bonuses down dropping 20.5%. they looked at proxies filed by 232 companies from june of last year through december 31st. all of these firms have revenue over a billion dollars and all this ceos on the job for more than three years. signing bonuses which may have skewed the data wasn t included. bonuses to tech ceos falling 53%. those running capital goods company dropping 41%. services ceos up 21%. that s because the median bonus was at zero. it came up $578,249 in 2009. now, what they didn t include in the report was dollar amounts of the median bonuses for other industries so we don t know which one was more generous to their top executives. one thing we do know from the report, boards were less generous as fewer ceos, only 54.5% received bonuses in 2009 and that s down from the 57% who received them in 2008. so it seems that boards are taking a close look at these factors, performance stock, performance cash flow, deciding whether discretionary bonuses are merited and a performance bonus which is the majority of the bonus, 80% reflects the fact that these ceos in companies didn t meet met ricrimetrics se. did they say whether they expect this relative stinginess to continue? i think what s happening is boards are putting more focus and they also included a number of exerts from proxies saying they are more focused on tieing a ceo s compensation to performance metrics. standing by them. standing by them and not saying this year we ll make it the exception. we ll see what happens when the companies really start to run and grow faster and you see ceo bonuses grow if there s an outcry against that as well. so far they appear to have listened to the public outcry and are tighter with the money. when we come back, health care heating up on the hill once again. representatives from both sides of the aisle will join us ahead of a possible weekend vote. we re waiting on fed ex to roll out its quarterly results and when they do, we ll get instant reaction. stick around. squawk box will be right back. announcer: next week squawk is in session with senator evan bayh and then to fed matters. st. louis fed head james bullard is here. jack is back. his thoughts on health care, the markets and keeping america great and senator john mccain as he faces the toughest re-election battle of his career. all next week on squawk box starting at 6:00 a.m. eastern. hi, may i help you? yes, i hear progressive has lots of discounts on car insurance. can i get in on that? are you a safe driver? yes. discount! do you own a home? yes. discount! are you going to buy online? yes! discount! isn t getting discounts great? yes! there s no discount for agreeing with me. yeah, i got carried away. happens to me all the time. helping you save money now, that s progressive. call or click today. the push for a vote on health care reform continues on capitol hill. joining us right now with more, representative allyson schwartz, a member of the ways and means committee and also congressman mike pence. thank you for joining us this morning. representative schwartz, will we see if democrats aren t convinced they have the number they need to get passed? i believe we ll see a vote this weekend. we want to be sure that final changes on health reform going forward are posted for 72 hours and all americans get to see if they want to. we re ready for a vote. we ve been debating this for a year and discussing details and looking at ourselves and with the american people. we feel a sense of urgency as we see the number of americans who are asking us and calling on us to find this truly american way to move forward on assuring accessibility and affordability for all americans. do you think you ll get the votes? you re about ten votes shy right now. we ll get the votes. congressman pence, what do you think? they don t have votes right now and the reason is that a growing majority of the american people have rejected this approach. i think the discredited senate bill and plan to pass that bill by some deeming procedure in the house without an up or down vote is going over like a lead balloon with the american people but the core of this bill mandating that every american purchase health insurance whether they want it or need it or not, hundreds of billions of dollars of job killing taxes during the worst recession in 25 years, a massive government run insurance exchange, this is just not the approach the american people want. we would love to see a showdown on this and opportunity to bring this bill down on the floor and my commitment to allyson and other democratic colleagues is if we can stop this bill, house republicans are ready to start over immediately on the kind of step by step reforms that senator ron wyden has proposed and other democrats endorsed that will bring down the cost of health insurance without growing the size of government. i doubt you will find anyone that says there s not something that needs to be done about health care reform but everyone has a different opinion on which side should be tackled first. do you get universal coverage or bending the cost curve and making sure there are ways to pay for this and i guess that s where most of the controversy comes in. congressman pence just said he would be willing to work starting over if this bill doesn t pass and focus on the cost side too. you said it very well actually. the fact is that the issue of access to affordable health insurance coverage is very important. people making sure they have the kind of protections. the cost side is very important, too. and containing costs is very important. if mike wanted to work with us, we wouldn t just say no. american families. costs are too high both for families and businesses and for the government. we know we need to take action. we ve been doing this for a long time. a lot of pieces do fit together. americans know that we can t say no. congresswoman schwartz, do you think this bill attacks the cost structure? i do. very seriously. it s paid for. reduces the deficit over ten years. even more so over 20. we re working hard to make sure and this bill does it, to bring down rising costs for families and because you see 40% increases and 50% increases that s not sustainable. that s where we are taking action. we have to take action to make sure that this is saving money for the budget as well. our guest host today is jim nussle. allyson and mike, how do you know the answer to the question of whether this reduces costs or reduces the deficit. the congressional budget office has not even had an opportunity to score this and it sounds like it may be difficult to get this scored in time for a vote so that you have the analysis in front of you to answer the question whether this reduces costs or reduces the deficit? number one, this whole business of fixing the senate bill by reconciliation is a canard. we can look at the house version of the bill. you can look at the senate bill. the cbo as you know actually said that individual premiums would go up under the bill tha s passed the house. the history is they always cost many times more than what people say they re going to cost. the american people are rejecting this approach because they know it will debt, grow deficit and not lower the cost of health insurance. let people by health insurance as cross state lines. what s wrong with that idea? as mike knows that s in the senate bill. it was in our bill as well so the fact is the congressional budget office which is independent has analyzed the house and senate bill to reduce the deficit. you have seen that, jim. we re voting on the senate bill. anyone that wants to look at that, they can. we re making changes because we thought there are not many of them but some changes in the senate bill but by in large what the senate bill does and the cbo has said that it is going to save money, reduce the deficit. it will contain the rising growth in costs for families and businesses and for our families and small businesses this will help them and make a positive difference in their lives and the cbo said it will save us money in deficit reduction. how can we if that s really a concern of the republicans, they would be voting for this very reasonable bill of the . we aired this with the american people. you were head of the budget committee. we saw rising debt as you know. we re all deeply concerned about that. taking action on health care is going to improve our economic competitiveness for our businesses because they can t wi withstand the rising costs and it will reduce the budget deficit. we ll move forward and keep working on this. we want to get it done. that s why we ll take action. congressman pence, you mentioned what you plan on doing if the bill does not pass. if the bill passes, then what? i i ve been ducking that question for a week. this is a government takeover of health care. there are massive consequences not just for one-sixth of the economy, this will affect 100% of the american people for generations to come and i believe i think there was a poll out yesterday, 48% of the american people say it s a bad idea. according to gallop three out of four americans say scrap the bill and don t start over or scrap the bill and start over. i don t know what about the phrase scrap the bill democrats in congress and the white house don t get. the american people want health care reform that lowers the cost of health insurance and not grows the size of government and mandate that every american purchase health insurance whether they want it or need it or not but they drive in this head long rush for this big government solution and i just really i m astounded by it. we re just going to continue to fight hard and against it. jump off that bridge when we get to it. it s unfortunate we haven t gotten cooperation from republicans we would have liked but the sense of urgency for american people who every day come to our offices whether republicans or democrats and ask us for action on these very critical elements of affordability, access and sense of security of having access to health care in this country. we should be able to figure this out. this is a public/private partnership with the american people and having all of us take responsibility and it will make a s positive difference. there s a bit of difference in opinions. we appreciate your time. let s look at fed ex which is so con founding to try to figure out why this stock would be moving lower. it happens a lot with fed ex and the number was 76 cents previously fedex said 50 to 70 as we mentioned earlier. estimate was 72 cents. that is above expectations. the company also is talking about increasing its full year guidance to 360 to 380 and estimate is 363. that doesn t look bad. previous guidance was 345 to 375. for fourth quarter the company is talking about 1.17 to 1.37 and the estimate right now on the board is 1.26. but for whatever reason, the stock it is volatile. it trades a lot in sort of c confounding ways. you never know where it will end the day after it reports earnings. it was $41 stock which is now $90 basically. it s 86. high is 92. low is 41. the revenue was also above expectations. the 8.7 million versus 8.32. shipments up 26%. yield on those shipments dropped 8% because of discounted pricing. it s about how much we knew they said 50 to 70. estimate was already above that. we knew people expected a beat. maybe it s not as much of a beat as people want. who knows. all right. we ll continue to keep an eye on the stock through the morning. when we come back, we ll have more reaction to the fed ex numbers. that s coming up at the top of the hour. also, senator chris dodd s financial regulatory reform bill under fire from republicans. we ll hear from banking committee ranking member senator richard shelby about what he would like to see in the bill. more squawk right after this. fedex four cents above expectations. joining us on the squawk newsline, we have don on the phone. it s hard to figure out a trade right after the report of the anything you see that s disappointing or not as optimistic as maybe expectations? well, no. what happens with fedex every single quarter is because it is such a broad name in the economy, because it s such a great indicator on what s happening overall, and it reports earnings when no one else is reporting, it s probably one of the most anticipated earnings releases out there. just about every fund or hedge fund out there is trying to bet will they beat or will they miss and so you often see a pattern in which the stock runs up into a good report and a good report is printed and the stock actually sells off or quite the opposite. they re going to miss, they re going to miss and they miss and stock goes up. right. i get deja vu four times a year all over again with fedex. i have given up trying to figure out early morning trading. down by the end of the day many times. i ve seen it down three or up three on the report by the end of the day and it s gotten back what it was lose organize gaing and it s back up by the other amount. don t lose sight of the fact that the stock rallied from under $80 a share to $87. as high as 89 yesterday. a 10% plus move in the stock just in the last couple weeks. it is anticipating a very solid report. this is a very solid beat. the company s guidance was 50 to 70 cents and they beat their own guidance by almost 10% as well as raised guidance. this is a beat and raise and you would expect stock to move up strongly on those reports. difficult for analyst but even for the company to put moving parties together to make a forecast in terms of visibility. you have the overall economy. you have oil prices. you have the consumer. so many things go into it. if they give a 2012 forecast, what good is that? exactly. you know, if you sit down and press management for a prediction of exactly what they re going to make in 2012 or 2013, they ll say rightfully so that you tell us what oil is going to be and you tell us what s going to happen with the dollar and what will happen with the world economy because this really is one of the enablers of global commerce on so many levels. tell us what u.s. gdp will be and we ll tell you what earnings will be. there s so many moving pieces. as you try to get a sense of what fred thinks, fred smith, i heard him say the recovery is on good track. i heard him come out and say it s on a good track but not what you would expect given where we are at this point in the cycle. what do you think his real thinking is regarding the broad economy? i know fred thinks in longer terms because that s his job is to think strabout where the comy needs to be in five years and ten years and how to position it to get there first. second, if you look at the freight vote right now, it s undeniable we re having a recovery. how big that recovery is going to be and what the duration and slope of that recovery is going to be, that s an interesting conversation but there s absolutely no freight mode out there that isn t signaling a recovery. some of them, international freight, they are signaling a significant recovery. appreciate your time this morning. hope to talk to you next time. more squawk after this message. senator chris dodd facing many of critics after revealing the financial reform bill. plenty of work before there will be complete bipartisan support for this. senator shelby will get the floor to take his shots at the bill. you shot a hole in my pants. breaking news on labor and inflation. investors find out how many people lined up for first-time jobless benefits and if prices are moving higher for consumers. all right. find out if the numbers will keep the bulls on the right path. march madness comes alive. 64 teams going for college basketball s biggest prize. we get the business game plan from the ncaa. get ready for tip-off. squawk begins right now. welcome back to squawk box, everybody. this is cnbc, first in business worldwide. i m becky quick along with joe kernen and carl quintanilla. in studio, jim nussle, chairman of the nussle group, we ll get his thoughts on different issues facing the nation today futures at this hour just below fair value. keeping an eye through the morning and at this point they turned around. data in less than a half hour s time. weekly j lliles lly jobless cla. we ll get cpi and jobless claims at 8:30 as somebody just said. i stole your line. i m sorry. fedex out with quarterly profit of 76 cents a share. that with a four cents ahead. there are heads that would roll on other shows if you stole a line. i won t mention any names. please do. revenue also beat consensus and as joe mentioned and we hear from don, our analyst in the last block, trades volatilely. nike checking in after the bell last night. they got $1.01 a share compared to estimates of 89 cents. revenue at 4.73 billion versus estimates of 4.6. worldwide futures orders up 9%. we ll check out prospects for nke as one of its biggest stars gets back to work. that s tiger woods. you read how choosing the masters shows that he s going to be well protected. he s comfortable. one of his favorite tournaments. first major. you remember when we first won and his dad was there. i love phil knight. i love nike. just let the world go crazy around him with sponsors running as quickly as they can. when your business is based on would would they cut him? they back him because he s a golfer. not because you don t have a sponsor as a great husband. even if they didn t like what was going on. i would like to be nike when masters is being played this year. i m sure they didn t like what was going on. not their choice. it s between the ropes. let s talk financial regulate-yeregulat regulato regulatory. a special government relations summit held today in d.c. hear is republican senator shelby. he joins us now before addressing the summit. we we talked to you not long ago. the door is always open with you, senator. where do you stand in terms of coming on board with this? the door is open but we re not sure how wide the door is open yet. we re analyzing the bill. it s 1,300 pages. there s a lot of work to be done. we re certainly not reaching any consensus yet or critical mass in a bipartisan way but i do leave the door open because i think conceptually and majority of republicans agree on a lot of the issues. we have to work out details. and some things certainly we ll disagree on but he s got the markup set for next week. i don t know what will happen in the committee. unless there are a lot of changes, there will be a lot of republican votes against the bill as it is. there s always hope we can put together a bipartisan substantive bill and that s why i leave the door open. i m not sure it s wide open yet. like so many things, this is you get it from both sides on this. the left says it doesn t go far enough and there are people on the right i m reading editorials today and last thing we need are provisions in the bill and it doesn t do what it s designed to do. congressman boehner says let s not give in. if you do it long enough, you could put this off for a year. well, i think this. if we can do a substantive good bill, we ought to do it. if we can t, we ought not do a bill at all. i agree with that. at this point it sounds like you think that 90% of it is what you re looking for substantive and you re arguing on the margins, is that true? well, no, that s not true. i said conceptually maybe. i used a figure 85%. 90%. we agree on things conceptually. that s conversation. when we get into the nitty-gritty and words and phrases, we re not sure. we have to work a lot of that out. otherwise we re far apart. there s no door open. i always leave the door open a little bit because there s always a chance once this bill hits the floor that we can work something out and we should if we can get a good bill. if we can t get a good bill, we should not move it. how committed are you, senator, to brokering a deal? is there a point where you will be okay with letting this go to the next stage? if we get a good bill, we ought to move. if we can t get a good move, we won t be far and should try to block it. is there a point where your patience runs out? well, our patience go up and down. my patience went up a little bit back in december and then went down in january and february. i say i m guarded right now because we don t know what tomorrow is going to bring. i think we ought to always in the senate keep the door open at least a little bit. john boehner spoke to the bankers yesterday. don t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves. basically telling the bankers, hey, these young punxsutawney on t the hill are fighting regulation you need to fight. do you agree with that sentiment? don t call people punks on the hill. we have great staff on the republican side and democratic side in the senate banking committee. we have great staff. we differ on issues but we won t let bankers write laws and regulation. they should have input into it because it does affect them but that s up to congress to do. senator, do you think you ve got anymore leverage because senator dodd is just so desperate to get this done this year? do you have anymore leverage you can bring to bear? it seems like republicans and democrats have 80% of this bill that they already agree on. it s that last 15% to 20% that seems to be the sticking point. well, i don t know if we have leverage. the election in massachusetts gave us a little hope when we got 41 votes in the senate but we have to stay together and what we re trying to do on the banking committee now, the committees are trying to get a good bill. if we can t get a good bill, we won t support it. we shouldn t support it. if we get a good bill, we should move on. there s a lot of slips between now and next week and the weeks ahead. is it possible can you tell me what needs to come out or what needs to go in to make this a good bill in your view? a lot of things. like what. a lot of things will be revised and proposed but we re working on a 1,300-page proposed piece of legislation and you ask me what needs to go in and out, i wouldn t try to legislate on tv. what s there that you definitely couldn t support? that s a deal breaker? what s in there? what needs to be added before you could be a supporter? well, number one, we have to have a good title dealing with too big to fail. we have to make sure we do not ever come back to where we were 18 months ago. i think that would be a killer for all of the republicans and i hope a lot of democrats. if we can t get a substantive title there that would prevent us from going where we were 18 months ago, that would be one. another one is consumer finance deal. i believe and i ve always advocated we re all consumers. on the other hand, the best thing i think going for banks is safety and soundness. if they don t have safety and soundness and they re not in business and they re not strong, they can t do anything for any consumer or anything else. so i believe that the prudential regulator, that s the fed, fdic, and so forth, should have some kind of coordination or say so in dealing with the consumer products. senator, the democrats some democrats feel pretty good because they figure if they can get the republicans into opposing this bill, that come election season they ll be able to argue that you guys are on the side of big banks and that three years after bear stearns, you will not have learned a thing. is that political vulnerability for real? do you believe in that? i don t believe that because first of all the republicans that i know and i know all of them on the banking committee, they re not pushing for wall street. they re working for the little people to create jobs, the small, medium sized banks to be healthy, to be viable, to help the economy. i don t believe that would be at all i think what s going to be a killer for the democrats down the road is health care and if they turn that upside down, i believe they re going to have trouble at the polls in november. speaking of which, if it passes, what does it mean for financial reform and if it fails, what does it mean? does it make it harder or easier? are you talking about the bill? if it passes, i think if it passes we ll have a good bill. we ll have a good regulatory system in place. we ll have in place a provision to make sure that nothing is too big to fail. that s a flawed concept and that s good. if they try to push a bill that we are all against that we think is weak and doesn t do the job, we ll be back where we were next year. we ll have another shot at it. my question was to what degree is financial regulation reform tied to health care. if health care passes, does your job get easier or harder? it could be harder because you could get polarization and that s part of the senate. all right. very good, senator. we appreciate your time. thank you. trying to figure out what s happening here. i think we got somewhere. appreciate it. what s coming up, becky? coming up, tiger woods return to golf. a boom for companies like nike. we ll run through the company s latest earnings and see what the street is saying about his return. breaking economic data that could move the markets. cpi and jobless claims at the bottom of the hour. squawk box will be right back. the futures just about in line with fair value. markets wait and see what happens with numbers that come out in 14 minute s time. cpi numbers and weekly jobless claims. we ll look at this in just a few moments. is google getting into television? there are reports that the search engine giant is lining up high profile partners names like intel and sony in an effort to get into your living room. the venture is said to be in preliminary stages right now including software to help users navigate web based offerings on television. nike reporting third quarter results after the bell yesterday beating estimates across the board sending shares up over 4% in after hours trading. we have leader of citigroup apparel and retailing teams. it s amazing. biggest apparel company on the planet, right? yes, it is. the guy isn t even that old. and every quarter i try to figure out how do you do 9% gains in future orders. i just don t know. is it geographic diversity? is it all over the world? is that how it continues to do this? there are a lot of opportunities nike has taken advantage of. what we saw with global futures yesterday was up 9% with currency and 6% ex-currency and we saw strength in emerging markets which includes brazil. china was up high single digits and we actually saw growth in north america for the first time in the past couple of quarters. so north america being 40% of their total futures number drove that positive growth we saw yesterday. do you still look to see innovation or is it all about marketing in different parts of the world? it s absolutely about innovation. i would think in north america and western europe it s more important than newer market they re getting into. the nike lunar guide is coming out this year. we ve been talking with managers of stores that can t say enough how much the lunar glide has done for the running business in terms of its just slightly different looking shoe and it s enough to get the consumer to buy it. slightly different looking. it s not functional? well, you know, it s functional but quite frankly 80% of the people buying sneakers are buying it for the look. not the function. unfortunately there s no shoe that can help you run. with my feet like a duck. yeah. it s not been innovating and necessarily any specific sport like moving into soccer more or whatever or golf even, it s just about whatever the current trend is in trying to capitalize on that and marketing the right way? i think nike is a leading innovateor. they ve had great ideas. nike plus concept where they incorporated the apple ipod into the running experience. they were the first to come out with nike air max 360. everything has been highly innovative and new ideas and i think that s what differentiates them from anyone else in the market and that s why over the last couple years despite the environment, we have seen growth out of this company because of the market share gain that they were able to get from the new ideas. can you shed color on what thinking might have been when the tiger news broke to what degree was there a debate about what to do or would they stick by him no matter what? i can t really say. publicly and they ve said on their conference calls that they were sticking with him and that s basically all we really know. one of the things that nike mentioned is that costs will go up by 20 points in the quarter because they re gearing up for the world cup. those are things they ll spend in term of advertising on the world cup but also store promotions. whenever there s a big event like beijing olympics or world cup which comes every four years, you do see a tick up in demand creation spending which is one-third of their total costs and generally overall on average demand creation is supposed to outpace revenue growth slightly. that s the company s guidance. when you do have a bigger event like the world cup, you do see a tick up in this creation demand spending to support the product they put out around the event and also the brand and how it plays into the event it itself. i haven t heard anything about management we had a period where they didn t know what to do but now it s been solid, right, for a couple years? in terms of management staying? yes. mark parker has been at the helm of the company for almost four years now. charlie denson has been at the company. they have been there over 25 years. a stable management team. we appreciate your time. thank you. thanks. get ready for the big day consumer prices and jobless claims on the way. we had ppi yesterday. and we ll get cpi. march madness comes to squawk box. we re going to go beyond the games with the business strategy of the ncaa tournament. squawk box will be back in a moment. we are moments away from the government s release of the consumer price index and jobless claims for this morning. we want to check with our cnbc contributors. good morning, guys. jim, we get the dow added to the club of indices that made new highs not year. are these levels significant and will we test them today? half of the people will look at the data coming out today and make a fundamental argument about the market and the others will stay dumb and long and make money until the market proves otherwise they re really dumb. you re the smart one. i m giving you this. i changed camps now. i m long now. i plan on staying. if they go below 1,150 level i ve been right in gold and emerging markets. look at that jacket you re wearing. you have no defense. i don t. that s from his high school prom. scott, we have jim going long. what does that mean? time to get out. it means sell. i was a guy who sold at 1,150 and missed the last percent and a half. i m not doing any better. there s lots going on today obviously. you guys are throwing the new kid in the deep end of the pool but it looks like cpi will moderate a little bit. looks like gasoline or energy prices in the weak rental market will keep a lid on prices. greece could be a problem. looks like what greece is doing is walking into the bank and putting the gun to their own head and they re giving the teller a note that says give me the money or i ll shoot. with going to imf instead of keeping it inside the eu, they re giving the eu an out saying you don t need our help so we re not going to help. we don t want to help. it s politically dangerous. lots going on. s&p is wildly overbought here. we ll have plenty to talk about. up 5% for the month. it s been over bought since 1,050. i ll stick with my story. stick around. we ll invite a few more people to the data party after the break. jobless claims and cpi in just a couple minutes. scott nations is here picking out the numbers here. jim at the cme. steve liesman and our guest host jim nussle. nice having you on duty today. it s not that hard, right? read the number and tell us what happens. let s get the number. cpi and jobless claims. i have done this once before. we should be good. cpi is up .1 as expected excludeing food and energy right on the money up .1. year over year is a bit lower than expected. 2.1 excludeing food and energy is lower than expected at 1.3. initial jobless claims almost right on the money. we were expecting 455. continuing claims is a bit higher than expected. we expected 4.522. we got 4.279 million. that s just about what it was expected. s&p just before the number. the ten-year, the ten-year rates are easing a fair amount here. the bonds are happy with this. the stock market doesn t particularly care. we have some more news throughout the week and i think that the stock market will be drug around in the low volume environment by the fact we have quadruple witch this week and big option open interest at the 1,150 and 1,175 strike. that will consume the rest of the week. well done. stay right there we ll bring in others for more reaction. jim, steve liesman and jim nussle. steve, i heard you talk about the housing component. back in january the housing component overall was down 0.3%. the owners equivalent rent can have a long discussion you don t want to have is how they calculate housing prices. the it was unchanged in the last month it was down. i will tell you looking at these numbers, i know the overall core number was unchanged but a lot of negatives i m looking at. minus sign for household furnishings. a minus sign for apparel. minus sign for recreation. minus sign for airline fares were which surging. there are guys that will look at this and see despite what top line says will see disinflationary pressures in here because of the waiting and housing is 40% of it so that s unchanged. a lot of things around the periphery. next month you get a snapback because gas and commodity prices in the headline but what economists are looking at to discern the trend from volatility is the underlying trend from price level and there s a lot of negatives in there. what jumps out at you from this data? obviously the inflationary pressures are something people look at and doesn t seem to be there. for me it s jobless claims. that to me will be the political barometer that this affects and not so much the economic barometer. the market wasn t surprised. i think in congress and political dynamic of more jobless claims is going to continue to drive the meter when it comes to why are we focused on raising taxes and why focused on health care. it ought to be jobs, jobs, jobs. but the president is going to try to sign something today to have some impact. i don t think it will have much. after health care one way or another, congress is going to turn to jobs. both because they have to economically but because they have to politically. jim, we talked a bit and scott touched on this point about what the market is going to be watching this week. we have the quadruple witching tomorrow which generally would put some upside bias for the market but then you ve also got the health care reform that people are going to be watching very closely. as we head into the weekend, which do you think wins out for the natural bias for the market? i think the second half of tomorrow it will be the expiration. you know, health care, i think, the market doesn t think i think the market is confused on health care. i don t know that they want to go one way or the other. it will sit back and react when that happens. claims number came out disappointing. clearly no job creation. you know i ll celebrate that. i ll stay long in the market. i think we re going to go higher because that s the path that we keep continuing on. i think that people should remember with volatility levels this low, it s probably better to stay long using the options than it is using anything else because you lower your risk on the downside. if s&p goes below the 1,150 level, you stop. the point i m trying to make is it doesn t matter. if s&p are at a critical mass point where they go up because they re going up and money on the sidelines and hedge fund managers who can t afford to miss the move any longer and that provides more fuel for the market to go up. that s what we ll start to experience now. scott, we have been watching this very quiet rally. seven sessions in a row the markets closed higher and yesterday they were at new highs on the s&p. this is a stealth sort of rally but enough to continue to fuel that? you know, the fact that we don t have any volume on this rally is really disappointing. it certainly does not confirm the followthrough. even though we broke through 50-day moving average to the upside and broke through 1,150 to the upside, one unfortunate piece of news from greece or euro zone could undo this. what are you talking about with greece? look at the spreads. they have all come in, haven t they? no. they blew out today because of the news that greece is likely to go to imf. it may be the size of riverside county or marin county or hazard county, georgia, it doesn t really matter because it moves the euro around and it s the dollar getting stronger particularly against the euro, that causes problems for the stock market. we certainly saw that during the heat of the worst part of the greek crisis. if that starts again, and you can say that greece is if it moves somewhere, i guess a contagion is what is scary, right? at some point the contagion has to put up or shut up. i don t mean to disparage greece but if they re the first cockroach that we see, you re right. there will be other problems and euro zone is not going to hasn t shown any interest in bailing their euro zone partners out. he called them a cockroach. that was the shoe to drop last night. the fact that the package is starting to unravel and the market is taking it in stride. we get good news and bad news. last night was bad news and there s no reaction. assuming we do get a health care vote on saturday or sunday, would you go long into the weekend? i m going to stay long into the weekend, i think, yeah. i ll pair back a bit if i get a move today but it s mildly scary. not a major thing. the journal makes the point this morning that market is rallied as we ve been talking about even as we ve counted the votes each and every morning for the past 15, 16 days. if they pass a health care bill that s completely unpopular and looks like huge spending, that s going to damage the dollar more and the dollar goes down and stock market goes up. if they don t pass it, it will be viewed as being more responsible and that could be a reason to buy the stock market. either way i think you could make a cohesive argument for being long stocks. just wondering, it seems for the simpletons out there like me, you are long stocks because inflation is low. jobs are weak so you expect stimulus from the fed to continue and that makes you want to be in equities? from a fundamental standpoint, i think it s a liquidity trade. all of those factors mean it is game on for spending, for lower rates, for all of the stimulus that s there and liquidity has to go somewhere. you are squeezing people out of anything that s interest bearing because they are bearing no interest. the risk trade continues. so just so people understand what you re thinking here, if jobs return, you selleck wi equ in that case, right? right. that would be the top of this run here when we have return of job growth? could be. which is the point when fundamentalists would buy the market? technicians work better than fundamentalists over the long market. i like how you say that. they re just so dumb. i agree. i didn t say anybody was dumb. i want to understand the way it works. i don t think that way. dumb and long. dumb and rich. who cares. thanks a lot, guys. we ll see you later. jim is with us for the rest of the hour. catch scott on options action 5:30 p.m. on friday and fred smith of fedex on the wires global economic recovery is broadening. good. didn t he just say something different beginning of the week or last week? yeah. that things are still managing through some difficult time. if you re a manager, you need to manage your company and you need to say this is an important thing to have good management. it s still below fair value. coming up, march madness ready for tip-off. that means big business for college basketball. who would we put on the story? we ll go beyond the court. it s definitely fun and games but someone has to run the giant that the ncaa tournament has become. we ll talk to the man who works the numbers coming up next on squawk. well, look who s here. it s ellen. hey, mayor white. how you doing? great. come on in. would you like to see our new police department? yeah, all right. this way. and here it is. completely networked. so, anything happening, suz? she s all good. oh, my gosh. is that my car? [ whirring ] [ female announcer ] the new community. see it. live it. share it. on the human network. cisco. welcome back to squawk box. futures now up ten points above fair value on an uptick after the data we got at 8:30. and good feelings about this. just after noon eastern time march madness tips off as ncaa men s basketball tournament gets under way. darren joins us now with a look at the business behind the tournament. i tried to do the agent outfit today. an important day. from now until championship game in april, sports fans are definitely focused on ncaa tournament but our next guest is focused on it year-round. joining us from indianapolis, home of the ncaa and final four, the senior vice president of business and basketball strategies for ncaa. thanks for coming on cnbc this morning of all mornings. there are many things in sports that disappoint but this tournament is madness every year. at this point with the brackets set, what do you watch and hope for? it s a pleasure to be with you. it s just remarkable how many story lines there but it s what our student athlete are about. they have great story lines how they have come to our colleges and universities around the country and been able to balance the rigors of what happens on the court and in the classroom. it really is remarkable to be part of it and so it s the great story line of the individuals competing and others for the next several week. there s been talk to move this tournament from 64, 65 to 96 teams. everyone says that s about the money. what is it about and what are you thinking? it really is about what is the best opportunity for the association to be able to provide the opportunities through to our student athlete. we have at present the 65-team ncaa men s tournament and 32 tournament n.i.t. that we own and operate and 87 other championships that we run throughout the year and so the opportunity in the case of men s basketball to determine which model is most appropriate for the association, provide the best opportunities and best experiences for our student athletes is really where we re focused. is it about money? does it water it down? these are opportunities that exist now so certainly the money, the revenue portion of it, 96 cents of every dollar which goes through to our membership is a factor that we have to consider in the course of this but also what puts the best product out there for our student athletes and for our fans. we just put the numbers up there on the tv right so you see them now. the most recent cbs deal for the tournament began in 2003 and runs through the end of this year but there s a three-year option that the ncaa has to remain with cbs for another three years for a reported $2.13 billion. this deal each time it is up doubled every time. yesterday the tv rights could come down for everything. how much does the economy play into whether you decide to continue with the option or to open up the bidding to someone like espn? it really has to do with our broadcast partners. we have a great relationship with both cbs and with espn. we have current agreements with both. espn covers 22 of our championships. it s really how they view and value the property on a going forward basis as part of our discussions that will largely influence that. yesterday the secretary of education arne duncan said teams with less than 40% graduation rate should be banned from playing in the tournament. that would take out roughly a dozen teams this this year s tournament including kentucky, maryland and baylor. we know there s issues regarding how they calculate these graduation rates whether it is five years, whether people leave the team or not but what s your take on this idea? well, we share the common goal of trying to make sure that our student athletes are performing in the classroom and on the field. they are graduating at higher rates than students regular university students and so to put an arbitrary measure in place ignores that we have a focal point over the past several years and when you look at the dozen institutions that you re talking about, seven of them have ratings that would keep them from having a penalty under the system now. it s how you look at the numbers. we share the same goal of making sure we get that academic experience for our student athletes but it s really all about making sure we understand a common set of numbers. realize it s the bcs that runs the division i college football championships and you do basketball. this is so successful. what s the ncaa s take on college football championship playoff? well, we are our membership. we run one division i football championship now. the football championship series for our portion of our membership and really as our membership decides as it goes forward they always hope the ncaa understand and define what its role is so at this point in time we simply will follow our membership s direction on that topic. greg, thank you so much for joining us on this extremely busy day. the games tip-off at 12:20 eastern time today. by the way, we have michael jordan tomorrow on squawk box. the new owner of the charlotte bobcats. we ll talk to him and hear what he has to say about being an owner now. i like it. live? no. we have it taped. why does that ruin it? i wanted to talk to him. i wanted to ask all of the questions. obviously. and you will. i will ask all of the questions. one way to control it. thank you. we look forward to that interview tomorrow. when we come back, a final round with jim nussle and we re still waiting for the stock of the day. squawk box will be right back. welcome back. during the break, we re all sitting around here talking about health care with our guest host, jim nussle. a lot of the papers talked about the kucinich vote that they got yesterday and one other, perhaps. at that rate, do you think this thing will pass, but maybe not at the pace some people expect? yeah, i mean, they re giving away everything. that s what this is about. this is about power politics at this point in time. it has nothing to do with substance. it really won t even have to do i asked about the cbo score. they don t care about the deficit or how much it costs. at this point in time, it s about the brand of the democratic party and whether or not they have the ability to go into the election this year with any kind of message whatsoever, and they don t want the republicans to be able to say you just wasted two years of our time on health care reform and didn t even get it passed. so, i think that s what s going to happen. i mean, who has those water rights? this reminds me of chinatown. it s out in california and it s water rights someone wanted? who? this is through the department of the interior. so, the president s in the oval office listening and he can go to the department of the interior and of course, he can! and he s got folks outside the oval office, you know, ready to give out whatever deal, whatever challenge they need. so, that s what he s doing. the paper says that he s listening. well, those congressmen still have to get re-elected with that vote. they got the water rights now you re saying these things are worth the flack they re going to take? i m saying that s all that they have. if they can go back and say i got some water rights, i got something out of it the argument the president s making is that s got to be enough for you, a, and b, they know that if this passes, they believe they have the ability to spin it in a positive way. if it doesn t pass, they are susceptible to the line that you just wasted two years of our time when jobs are on the line. that s what i think they re looking at. it s almost inevitable, the momentum behind this push. kucinich was not a surprise. to me, that s not a surprise. really? no, no, no, me neither. he s not vulnerable. there are vulnerable members the ends justifies the means. totally. there are no means that are beyond that s right. this is all politics at this point. the business of politics is very ugly. not when it s 20% of the economy, but well, but it s down to that now. they just believe that their ability to keep the majority is based totally on this, one way or the other. and that s what this is about. so, they re going to give away everything they need to give away in order to get the vote. what do you think would stop it? i know it s a long-shot, but what do you think i think it s a vulnerable member who doesn t think water rights is enough, that going back and talking to angry people at town meetings is too much to bear for a few water rights or a bridge or a federal courthouse or a judgeship or whatever it might be. which is why they have to get this done before easter break which is why they have to get this done. the last backstop is easter. right now in fact, they put out a message yesterday saying you may have to stay through easter. well, that was not a message to the members. that was a message to their spouses and families, you know, get home, get them home, help put some pressure on them to help get this vote done. interesting. i heard we may not even see a formal signing because the president may not want to be seen signing the bill. well, yeah. if you don t have to vote for it and you don t have to read it, why would you have to sign it? this would be the ultimate constitutional challenge. the bill that it s the emperor s new clothes version of legislating it doesn t even have to exist now. we need it immediately, but nothing really happens for four years. right. up next, the stock of the day. will it be nike today, maybe fedex or another name? we ll find out what s on the move today. squawk box will be right back. welcome back to squawk box. it s time for the stock of the day. all right, quien mas market cap? nike e fedexo? i would think fedex, but i m thinking you re going to say the opposite. nike e travelers? nike? nike. twice the market cap of alcoa. new all-time high today, and it s going to be probably almost $29 billion market cap for nike, better-than-expected results, $1.01 versus a 99-cent estimate and phil knight talking about tiger as accenture was [ howling ] running for the hills. they have different audiences running for the hills. there was a blip on the golf career the marketing machines are not the same, right? they re trying to serve different markets. just got to stick with him from the start, going to stick with him. he s a good guy, is that what you re saying? no, i m saying he s a great golfer and that s why i know who he is. i don t know him for any other reason than he s a good golfer and i m not arguing that. we had this argument about public figures. although prices are firming, more commentary from fred smith. that s a good thing. and that rebounded little bit, fedex. jim, thanks a lot for coming in today. good to be with you again. jim nussle our guest host. and somebody s whistling the hustle. that s a song. the nussle. anyway, that does it for today. we hope you join us tomorrow. squawk on the street starts right now. live from the financial capital of the world, this is squawk on the street, the show you ve been waiting 22 hours for. good morning, everybody. i m mark haines. and i m erin burnett, front and