Plus, the story that everyone is talking about this morning, the ravens holding on to beat the 49ers in the super bowl after the lights went out for 45 minutes at the superdome. Were going to try to keep the lights on. Squawk box begins right now. If you like it then you should have put a ring on it if you like it then you should have put a ring on it good morning, everybody. Im becky quick along with Andrew Ross Sorkin. Joe kernen is on vacation today so were joined by Steve Liesman. Were happy to have him here. Our top story this morning, the market. We have assembled a trio of wall streets most respected voices to join us for the next hour. We have a lot to talk about this morning. Plus, there is that issue of the lights going out at the super dole last night. Officials say an abnormality in the power system triggered an automatic shutdown forcing backup systems to kick in. But they werent sure what caused that initial problem. 34 minutes that the lights were out. Brian shactman will join us in just a minute for the full story. This was a super bowl to remember for a lot of reasons, not the least of which the lights going out like that. Lets get out to the headlines. The dow and the s p 500 closing friday at their highest level since 2007. The major averages posting a fifth straight week of gains. U. S. Equity futures this morning, you can see, are lighter, down by about 33 points for those dow futures. S p futures are off by about 4 1 2. But, again, the dow above 14,000 for the First Time Since october 2007 on friday. Oil analysts are saying that trading could be choppy in the Energy Markets today amid growing tensions in the middle east. Yesterday, israel hinted that its air force may have been behind the air strike. On a missile site in syria in order tody stroi weapons it believes were headed for lebanon. You can see right now, crude oil prices down by about 11 . 96. 85. And, steve, ill send it over to you. Well talk to boeing about compensation for the grounding of the dreamliner. It estimates it will cost nearly 8el million through tend of march. Barclays finance director chris lucas and the banks top legal expert are set to retire. The departures add to change at the top as the financial giant struggles to put disasters behind it. Resimple in moment will officially become blackberry today. The rim name doesnt completely disappear until Shareholders Approve the change at the annual meeting which usually takes place in july, andrew. If you went to sleep after halftime at the super bowl last night, you missed a lot and i mean a lot because i thought this game was kind of over. Thats why you went to bed . I didnt go to bed. I stayed up. I went to bed, but you definitely went to bed. Let me come down here. We were watching twitter and put it back on. Social media in this instance was tan fastic. My name is Brian Shactman. Ive been employed at cnbc since june 2007. And tell us about what the heck happened last night. Youre the guy who came here just before the crash. Now youre covering sports and the lights went out the. Correct. Wa do you plan to do next sthp. Angela lansberrys murder she wrote. Lisp, if the outcome was different, the conversation would have been much different today. But the game basically looked like a route. Joe flacco had three first half touchdowns. They were up, 286 after the kickoff return to begin the second half. And then the lights went out. Now, i just i dont know if we have the element or not. We have a full screen of what entergy, well take a look at some of the highlights first. Im not sure. Were a little late on that. But the lights go out. The way the company is explaining it is that the power was going into the superdome, and this is a statement here. A piece of equipment that is designed to monitor Electrical Load, okay, sensed an abnormality and the Circuit Breaker kicked in and thats what happened. It took 34 minutes to get the game back up and running and then, when it did, it was a different game. Yeah. This is really i mean, i know the statements there do you have any idea, like, whose fault it was at this point . I think clearly entergy says its not their fault. And there are unconfirmed reports of a fire within an elevator within the superdome. Theres been denials of that and whether that might have triggered it. And some say beyonce sucked up so much energy that there was a problem. But basically, there was some sort of power surge and an automatic breakerer kicked in. When that happens, it takes time to restart because the generators kick in and you have to transform back to electrical. So it took 4 the minutes and the game was totally different. Was there a sense of calm during the darkness . Thats another great issue. Everyone pretty much stayed in these seats and tweeted. My favorite tweet, by the way, was in hindsight, maybe installing the clapper was a bad idea. And maybe, you know, when jim was behind as a kid, he smacked out the lights. I saved and rete teetweeted a bf Different Things on it. And well get into ads later, oro did you can even dunk in the dark. They had it out there immediately. And you saw the audi one where they said this was a mercedes problem . And the bottom line is, San Francisco made it all the way back, had basically first and goal to take the lead and did not score. If San Francisco had won the game, this would be a much different conversation. Did you have any idea there was an animated conversation between harbaugh, the ravens coach, and some official. Yes. And he was really rangely about something. Any idea what he was angry about . The niners harbaugh was not happy about a potential holding call. When the lights came back up, then part of the biggest problem was they couldnt get communication, right, from the coaches . Right. They had the electricity on the sideline theres certain electricity was up and is running and certain electricity wasnt. They can talk directly to the quarterback inside the huddle and all of those things. You talk about the Holding Penalty at the end, theres a lot of story lines when they had first and goal, San Francisco thought that there was a penalty against them and jim harbaugh complained about that and John Harbaugh was mad because his team was winning by a ton. Some people think cbs should have been more regressive reporting wise demanding answers from the nfl. And my only response to that would be well, the announcers couldnt talk. The sideline reporters had to take over. I think Keith Obermann tweeted when steve tasker was introducing 60 minutes, he got his first start when he was a breaking News Reporter on the sidelines t super bowl. It ended up being an incredible super bowl because of this. But if San Francisco had won, i think it would have been an absolute firestorm because if they would have lost the game, they lost momentum during the blackout . Who is responsible for the superdo superdome . Theres an acronym for it, and obviously were still developing into this, but theres a Management Company and i dont know all the details. But it seems pretty clear from all the reporting that entergy, theyre not responsible for it. I looked at the premarket trade. I didnt think there was much action on it, becky. Of course, we always look at that. It was an incredible theme. I get to sit in your seat a lot and people ask you for an opinion on something and youre a reporter, you want to stay down the middle. Was it a holding call . I think that come on. Come on. If i was going to give it an opinion, i think it was an okay call at that point. They called a bunch of plays. Kaepernick, one of the most incredible athletes ive ever seen, he doesnt like to get hit. Maybe he should have tried to dance a little bit. If youre going to hang your hat on a call, i think youre looking at the wrong place. Youll be back, right . I have ads. A ton of opinions on ads. Wait a minute, you dont have an opinion about the game and you have an opinion on ads . When youre trained not to have one and then youre asked to give one, its not always an easy answer. President obama sat down to do an interview that aired before the big game last night. Among the most interesting parts for the business community, his thoughts on taxes and specifically carried interest. I dont think the issue right now is raising rates. There is no doubt we need additional revenue coupled with smart spending reductions in order to bring down our deficit. We can do it in a gradual way so it doesnt have a huge impact. The average person doesnt have access to carried Interest Income where they end up paying a much lower rate on billions of dollars that theyve earned. He also has some interesting views on football, but we can talk about that later. Our guest host this morning, Rebecca Patterson and barry knapp, our allstar cast. Thank you for being here. We can talk football, but we should probably talk markets and the rally on friday. Ed, i was reading your notes last night that were in a go goldie locks period. Shes back. Shes sort of a home body. Shes not really a party girl. I dont know if she was watching the super bowl or not. But the fact is, for the past three years, weve had all sorts of scenarios to worry about. Really dooms day scenarios. And it seems that just since the beginning of the year, everybody has sort of calmed down a bit and weve had a pretty significant relief rally, which is really what this bull market has been about all along. The unemployment numbers come in basically as expected. Yeah. In the old world, that would be disappointing to people. Sure. The increase on the Unemployment Rate might have been the most bullish part of that report because that just means the fed is going to continue on its course of trying to get 6. 5 not that were betting on that element. Its the combo. Its the growth is improving, but slowly enough that the fed is still there not taking the punch bowl away. Thats the dream equity. And friday was a dream scenario for economic data. There was so much good news that came out on friday, the market just because of opportunity to have a power. But how long is this lasting . Not long. Not long at all. And i think, you know, youve hit on a little bit of the issues so far. The title of our note this week is taxes arent transitory. So people looked at the gdp report and said, oh, the parts of the report that were weak were transitory and the parts that were strong, thats something to be encouraged by. We actually think the opposite. So defense spending dragged down the report. Thats not getting any better. The sequestration will likely go through. Inventory rebuild, i think that that is premature to expect that. Theres still excess inventories in autos, like trucks, for example, and then global trade, which looks considerably fairly weak and will probably stay weak. Whereas the parts of the report that were viewed as strong, Capital Spending but most importantly consumption are likely to be very weak in the first half of the year. We just raised taxes by 200 billion. You hear the president , he wants more tax hikes, he wants more spending cuts. We think Capital Spending will get better through the course of the year. But what we heard through Corporate America is that the near term outlook is still pretty soft. Theres parts of the report that people took encouragement from are going to get worse during the first half of the year and that were not going to necessarily print another zero on gdp. Everyone sees the markets rocketing on friday who called their brokers to receive either at 4 00 on friday or was thinking of calling their broker saying, you know what . I have this extra cash lying around. We should get in before this train completely loses. Did the train leave the station . I think the brokers are calling their acts down saying, you know, youve been putting all those money on bonds. Maybe its to him to put some in equities. Or youve been sitting in cash for the last three years. You need to put some of that money to work. But are they too late . But you shouldnt let being too late stop you from doing something. Take a baby step, at least. It sounds like you two are in a different they put the bulls together today, i think. So, look, we have a bullish outlook. Lets get rebecca to respond. Is the consumer going to be weaker . Is Capital Spending going be weaker . And do you expect these big defense cuts to be well, i think the sequestration is something we have to watch. Steve, you would know this better than i do. 0. 5 or maybe more from the sequestration this year, 100 billion, 120 billion, if it goes through as is. But to barrys part, were probably going to get more with the budget process later this spring in terms of obama was talking about closing loopholes, there will be more avenue a fiscal hit from that. On the consumer, i think we have to wait and see. I mean, i was encouraged friday, i think it was, the final january confidence print, Consumer Confidence print went up. And that to me was kind of a, hmm, scratch my head moment because its the consumers feeling, the payroll tax hit, how come confidence is still going up . Its not actually going up. If you look at that income report, their income expectations dropped like a stone. And the same thing happened on tuesday where incomes in that 25 to 50 category that got hit by that payroll tax reversal, those parts went down sharply. So there is a cash flow element to this. And if somehow the u. S. Consumer shrugged off a 200 billion tax hike, we would be the first case in the last ten years. You always have to balance that. You correct lid pinpointed where the negatives are, but the Housing Market is definitely improving and the consumer, if the stock market its sort of a admittedly, iepts a secular argument here, but if the stock market keeps moving higher here whats the point . Whats the limit of it all . When 13 one thing that encouraged me from the report was this. We made a big deal, and i think rightly so, we had a lot of executives here ahead of the fiscal cliff debate saying its hurting our confidence and our ability to hire. What did we find out . We found out there was a step change in private sector hiring from a threemonth average of 185,000 to a threemonth average of 220,000. Im saying despite that it went you up. Im thinking that if you remove that uncertainty, that lock of confidence in the future, that maybe you get even better results and that ive been stunned by what ceos have been saying in this earnings season. Ive been stunned by how cautious they are, how uncertain they are. But the reports have been okay. Thats the thing. But the tone of what they say they see happening in the second half has concerned me. Ive been surprised. Its surprised me to hear that much caution out of people who in the past traditionally have been more optimistic. Were coming off the weakest Capital Spending outside the recession in 20 years. We have a bounce in the Fourth Quarter. It may have been front loading ahead of the expectation that we would end the accelerated depreciation. That may have boosted it a lot bit. We think that will get better through the course of the year. What we heard is they guided expectations down, not up. Additionally, on the labor front, we had two months in a row of the Household Survey being quite soft. Now, Household Surveys obviously far more volatile than the establishment survey. But it does tend to lead a little bit when you combine that with the jobs plentiful jobs hard to get element. 1. 2 million in the last two months in the household service. Its huge. On unemployment. So the fact that there was giveback this time around there it is theres so much nose in that employment report, i tend to focus on wages and aggregate hours to work. And it rose 0. 3 in january to alltime record high. It is highly correlated with wages and salaries. Incomes are increasing. Total hours worked series was only up 0. 1 . Im saying wages and total aggregate hours. And im looking at the trend and the trend has been its not exactly straight up, but its been very strong. Wa gets me more, the watch that was similar to last year this time around was gasoline prices. We had seen them come down so much between september and december and theyre starting to creep back up. We saw the same pattern in q1 last year. That might be too much for the consumer to bear. If that keeps going, that would make me a little bit more nervous. Guys, were going to continue this conversation. Ed, rebecca and barry are all staying with us. Well talk about the key events this week that could make or break the story for the bulls, continue this debate that were having right now. Before we get to that, though, attention, parents, kids and happy meal lovers everywhere. Get this. Mcdonalds says that it is offering its first new happy meal andre in a decade. Fish mcbites. I would i would like those. I think i would, too. They would be widely available this week through march to coincide with lent. So its perfect. On fridays, get a happy meal. Well be right back. I love making money. I try to be smart with my investments. I also try to keep my costs down. Whats your plan . Ishares. Low cost and tax efficient. Find out why nine out of ten large professional investors choose ishares for their etfs. Ishares by blackrock. Call 1800ishares for a prospectus which includes investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Risk includes possible loss of principal. Welcome back to squawk box. On friday, the dow finally crossing back above 14,000 for the first time in, oh, more than five years, october 2007, you can see right now those equity futures are indicated slightly weaker this morning. Dow futures down by about 30 points and the s p futures are down by about four points. Anything could happen this morning and you are talking about five weeks of incredible gains for these markets. In our headlines this morning, the United States and mexico have reached a tentative agreement on cross border trade and tomatoes. The deal narrowly ave