9 00. I knew that there would be trouble this morning. I got myself seated good. Well squeeze you for everything youre worth. We needed a big name. Big name. We got one. It day after for december 26. Youre too kind. Then here you are. Here he is. What did you get . Anything good . I have switch, lump of coal . Hes a hanukkah guy. A lump of coal yes, but a lump of coal at some point probably worth something. Tet rate were going. Thats right. Youre no tree . I want a tree, my wife says theyre too messy. The trees are messy. The needs needles you have the festivus pole. Grievances you better go, sorry. Lets do the main headlines this morning. Of course, theres only one main story this morning. Its a familiar one. The looming fiscal cliff. Aides for both parties now saying a partial agreement or patch probably the most that we can be expecting before january 1. I think were dealing now with whether or not we can put off the the increase in tax rates. Thats really all we can deal with now. The next session of the senate is now set for tomorrow. The house has nothing on its schedule for this week. Members have been told they could be called back within 48 hours notice. Meantime, and this i guess is also the big news, the white house saying the president s going to be flying back from vacation in hawaii today. A lot of people making something of that. I dont know what it means ultimately. Well, one thing it means a show of something. If i had to get back from hawaii at a minutes notice, you know what it would be. The president will have an easier time of it, i think. Right . I noticed a couple of news reports saying the cost of the lastminute flight is about 250 hes the president , hes allowed. Hes not going to be like in you know, transferring in San Francisco or l. A. Or something. And hoping that flight isnt i think he can just sort of the good news. He can probably work on the way back. Yeah. No at his desk or do what, you know, whatever. He may be able to play sports. Theres no Basketball Court on air force one. Right . Or putting green . No. But i think that they might have an xbox or something. Yeah, if we play virtual golf or hoops or something. All right. As for the markets, stocks turning in double digit gains in 2013. Nine of the 10 s p sectors looked in positive territory. Only utilities are going to finish in the red at this point. U. S. Equity futures this hour, not too bad. If the cliff was just, you know, end of the world i mean, we did make it through that. I guess people are optimistic that were all still here in the flesh. We dont know at this point whether the mayan me to youre the end of the world could have involved a zombie apocalypse. You wouldnt know at this point whether the first zombie was actually somewhere right now someone has to be the first zombie. Someone has to be the first one. Then it spreads slowly. And thats could have been like that. See, thats how i thought it would end if it ends. Not with a comment. But i did have a roll of quarters in my pockets, ready to go. Are zombies not immune to rolls of quarters . No, in case the guys outside the planet that runs into us it depends on what type of zombie you get. If you get the walking dead zombie, i think we could deal with. That theyre quite slow. Theyre not upstairs if you get the zombies from from im forgetting the name of the movie now i am legend. No. Ill think of the name. They run. Running zombies are worse. Especially if they go upstairs. And if you lock if theres like a chain link fence with a chain and a lock, they cant get through there. 29 days later. I havent seen it. Its scary. The zombies run, and they made a sequel, 28 weeks later. How long ten weeks . Well go to commercial. Stay with me. Asian stocks rising overnight. The nikkei nearing a 2012 high. Tell never hit an actual alltime high again. Anyway, among the catalysts, a new probusiness government preparing to assume leadership, incoming Prime Minister shinzo abe. What is it, 50,000 that it has to get to . 39,000 i believe is the peak. Whos counting, right . Thats a ways off. Yeah. Far away. Shinzo abe has been putting pressure on the bank of japan to raise its inflation target in hopes of extricating the country from two decades of deflation. I guess if you just raised the target that would help. Okay. It doesnt matter what your target is if you cant hit it. We found that out here. Meantime, in Europe Markets are closed for the boxing day holiday. Seems weird to do it just for a bunch of people to box up the gifts and return them. Its not a bad, i know. It is boxing. What kind of boxing are we boxer rebellion . Ive never understood boxing day. We have to look it up. I literally have no idea. Or its on google. No, is there anything on google that is different . Let me see. Just a regular is there their our way to figure out whats going on in the world . Yeah. Google, whatever it has. As for the broader markets, lets take a quick look at oil. Just been quiet. 89, sort of 85 to 90 for a while. Yeah, googles back at its normal look today. The ten year at 1. 777. The dollar which has been fun to watch, one of the areas where somethings happening. Euro back to 1. 32. And its been interesting to watch with the yen with all the comments coming out of it. And gold, im going to be right. Im going to be right. Didnt go look at that. Like nowhere near 2000. That was i had to make the prediction last year. The gold, everybody said it was going over 2,000. Everybody in the world a year ago thought it was going over 2,000. Did you bet on it . I didnt really boat. I was in print saying that gold would not go over 2,000 will it get there. If ben bernanke gets his way, it will get there. It went from 200 to 1,800 knowing what bernanke was going do. But youre right because its a beg thy neighbor. Everybody is printing at the core of what the fed is trying to do is phillips curvean in that theyre trying to trade shortterm gains in unemployment for modest upticks in inflation. If they get their way, presumably the gold bowls will come back out of the woodwork. If it goes from 200 to 1, 800, its anticipated. How much did that suit cost . Not very much. Ties a different story. Not 1,800 . No, not 1,800. You should be able to buy a suit for an ounce of gold. Thats always been the i was not aware of the suittogold ratio. Suittogold ratio. You never, never been your suits youve always need good five or six troy ounces to buy you buy a brioni suit, can you pay in gold bars . Thats how i usually do. It. Real quick, boxing day according to wikipedia, traditionally the day following christmas when servants and tradesmen would receive gifts from their supervisors. This was an old english tradition apparently when servants would wait on their masters on Christmas Day, the servants of the wealthy were allowed the next day to visit their families. The employers would give each servant a box to take home containing gifts and bonuses. And sometimes leftover food from Christmas Day. Kidding. Sounds like the type of holiday we shouldnt have anymore. Probably not. Are you all caught up on downtown abbey . No. Halfway through season two. Do not tell me the rest lord granthem looks like hes about to give a gift to one of the maids, if you know what im talking about. Where that came from i have no idea. Just out of nowhere. Boom. Just last night telling us about that. About that . No. How the show has veered into into soap opera no, more as the world turns. You know, matthew, someone tripped and he immediately stood up and caught her. He was he had soap opera paralysis. The other guy had soap opera amnesia. And soap opera burns. Theres its a beautifully beautifully shot. It doesnt look like as the world turns. Im not a fan were all fans of susan lucci here because we had her on the program. Lets talk about Retail Shopping business and something other than our favorite tv shows. Numbers starting to come in on holiday shopping. So far, the results should admit are less than stellar. Mastercard advisers spending pulse saying that holiday sales increased. 7 , thats it. Analysts had expected sales to grow 3 to 4 . Among the reasons cited for the weaker numbers, Superstorm Sandy and consumer nervousness about tax hikes due to the fiscal cliff. Weve had lots of conversation about whether not fiscal cliff would impact consumer sentiment. And apparently now its actually hitting people in the wallet. Lets talk about whats on the economic agenda today. One very important report to watch, standard and poors releasing the case schiller index on october home sales at 9 00 eastern. Its a busy week for housing data. Tomorrow were going to be getting the Commerce Department which releases new home sales for november. Then on friday, the National Association of realtors, not realtors yeah. Releases its spending. Its pending home sales index for november. In other housing news, the Obama Administration is considering expanding its mortgage Refinancing Program to include borrowers whose mortgages are not backed by the government and who owe more than their homes are worth. The journal reports one proposal being considered would also transfer potentially riskier loans that are held by private investors into fannie and freddie and transferring billions of dollars of mortgages to the governmentbacked Mortgage Companies would require congressional authorization and temporarily change the charters of fannie and freddie. Does that sound like something a kid i dont know if its good or not. All the stuff thats not covered now. You need yeah put it into fannie and freddie again. Expand their Balance Sheets. I dont know. You have a view . How much was the tie . I dont want to say. Really . Was this a christmas tie, holiday tie . No. Getting back to your question go ahead. Fannie and freddie. Look at that beautiful tie. Punting. Hes stalling is what hes doing. This is were a threehour show. Take your time. No. Come up with something. Yeah, clearly this i have to look more to the program. But you know, theres Something Like 11 million homes that are under water. And clearly you even though you call yourself a libertarian, youre ready to do things like this. I am ready to wind down. I think its pretty clear i thought you were ready to wind it back up no. You dont want to do i work through what i like to call factbased prism, i. E. Reality. There are a number of developed economies, canada being the closest, that have similar homeownership rates in the United States and dont have nearly the level of government intervention, whether its the mortgage interest principle, freddie and fanny. I think pretty clearly you dont want to rip the bandaid off so to speak, but a tenyear winddown two of programs that are largely speaking generally unnecessary is probably not the worst idea in the world. And theres nothing to say that if you close disruptions you cant slow down the process. You cant ramp it back up. You cant adjust the program, you cant reinstate one. Clearly what weve been doing is not necessarily a working to what about the you dont know about continuing. Should we have been doing a lot more for mortgage reifinancing o try does it to the extent that youre going is it less than the time that we have this problem, or does it make it longer to the extent that youre going to have government involvement into the economy, then earlier on in this recovery than it number one area that you could have tackled rather than health care or any other area would have been and possibly should have been the amount of mortgage debt outstanding. Mortgage jet represents the vast majority of Household Debt outstanding, and if the debt overhang, if deleveraging, if the whole idea was the prominent and primary concern that the economy was slow, well going directly after that. For instance, the joke i like to tell in meetings that gets everybody riled up, the president proposed this 450 billion jobs program. Obviously went nowhere. In theory if you really wanted to stimulate the economy, take the 500 billion or so and randomly pay off peoples mortgages. Rather than the slow shift of private sector debt to Public Sector debt. Just do it in one fell swoop. People that that were behind on their mortgages. Just random. Your mortgage could have gone to zero. My mortgage could have gone to zero. Some even people that didnt need help . You have to do it i mean randomly appear in in reality you would do it, only people under water. More rewarding to make it more tolerable, you do it randomly and get a sflus to the econostimulus to t. Its anathema to what i believe. In theory, if you wanted to stimulate the economy, earlier on that was the way to do it. Okay. Thats one way to do it. Well continue the conversation and more. Lets get you probably not. Lets talk about the corporate news. Samsung electronics is filing a complaint against erickson with the u. S. International trade commission. Samsung wants a u. S. Import ban and sale ban on some of the swedish companys products. Samsung is accusing erickson of breaching seven of its patents. And netflix customers can again stream video, hallelujah. Are you a netflix customer, anybody at the table . No, sounds like not. The service did go down midday on Christmas Eve and was out until yesterday on Christmas Day. Netflix blames problems with Amazon Web Services. Always basess on. The bezos. The company that provides online storage and computing. And this is interesting if you have been following the herbalife story. Theyre working with the law firmbyschiller, in connection with the fight with billackman. Shorting the company. Last week he revealed he had been shorting the stock. The wall street journal saying its not clear what counsel the corporate litigator could be offering herbalife, you can imaginin its going to get tough and aggressive. At some point weve got to talk about Julian Julian robertson on twitter. If well consider that a headline. If hes on twitter did you know about this . No. Theres a handle ive seen other people that its obviously not them this could be him, though. And theres a big debate. A raging debate going on line about whether Julian Robertson is actually tweeting or not. You have a view . I im going shy away from this conversation other than we need to find out, though. Other than to say its a raging debate. I emailed him. This Julian Robertson how do you know youre emailing the right one . Wow. Because i have emailed with him previously. So i believe its a verified address. I believe its a real address. The email address is real. The twitter thing im less he was actually emailing with Michelle Cabrera whats weird about his tweets . Hes tweeting. Hes tweeting it all. Hes big on apple. And he he said he went on, ill pick it up he doesnt have a social person like we have here telling me to tweet . He someone could be telling him he needs to tweet every day now. Correct. Might be him. He might have just started tweeting, right . He was using hash tags right away. I never used a hashing to. It seemed like he knew what he was doing. Robertson writes, refuses to retire, go to court, or abandon my tiger cubs. Author and husband who just misses his life partner. Salisbury, north carolina. You would think thats him. Has picture and everything there. You would. I mean, how could anybody know that about him or get his picture . Right. Yeah. That could easily do that, but it would be mean to talk about life partner. He says apple is the stock of 2013. One of his tweets. Mentions maria bartiromo, says did an interview with maria in late october talking administration, mit, and stocks. Great girl. He writes another tweet. Asked all night since joining here is bill ackman wrong with herbalalife, i believe he is. We should preface this by saying theres no hes communicating with Michelle Caruso cabrera at one point over twitter. Yeah. I dont know. Hes very active. It must have been a slow night in the robertson house. Total ruse, question mark, question mark. Just like your take on hlf cmcr to mention a few. Green mountain . Obviously. Who is he referring to . Someone may have said something. Like a reply. If hes using hashmarks, what do you use that for . Thats how you delineate a chain of a discussion. So everybody can use the same hash tag and see what other people are saying. No kidding. Thats why i always see those weird things at the end that make no sense. Yeah. Really . Like hash tag, what im talking about. Should i use that on all my tweets . Yeah. I dont hash tag, i dont understand twitter. If somebody wanted to respond, they would also say hash tag, i dont understand twitter. Anyone in the twitter universe you could click it and see everybody never mind. You lost me already. Were losing viewers by the minute. Yeah. Coming up, looking for alternative investments. Maybe Julian Robertson is why some traditional valuable wines were less than stellar bests last year. Plus, Christmas Day storms spreading snow and twisters across large parts of the country. Weve got a live report from alabama where some of the tornadoes hit. But next and first, we are going to head to this break. Small business ceo in her own words. Take a listen. My name is mary morales. I am the ceo of seychel embroidery in hollywood. We are the top embraider are. Our christmas sales have dropped. We are holding on to our money, were not spending as much as we did last year at christmas. We would love to see somebody that just forgets the democrat, forgets the republican, forgets about any party lines and just does what is right for the people. This is america. We dont let frequent heartburn come between us and what we love. So if youre one of them people who gets heartburn and then treats day after day. Block the acid with prilosec otc and dont get heartburn in the first place [ male announcer ] one pill each morning. 24 hours. Zero heartburn. And dont get heartburn in the first place excuse me, sir im gonna have to ask you to power down your little word game. I think your friends will understand. Oh no, its actually my geico app. See . I just uh paid my bill. Did you really . From the plane . Yeah, i can manage my policy, get roadside assistance, pretty much access geico 24 7. Sounds a little too good to be true sir. Ill believe that when pigs fly. Ok, did she seriousl