Good morning. Central banks on center stage. The boj announcing that its keeping policy unchanged. Up next, we have decisions from the ecb and the boe. Plus, were still trying to rise above. Well see. President obama and republican senators break bread and discuss solutions to the nations fiscal crisis. And another day and another record and close. The dow and the s p 500 are now starting squawk box. Its thursday, march 7th, 2013. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to squawk box here on cnbc. Im becky quick along with joe kernen. Andrew ross sorkin is in new york today covering the warden economic summit. Andrew has a number of great guests who are lined up with him. Well have more from him in just a moment. Also todays lineup. But fist, the mornings top stories. The bank of japan keeping Monetary Policy unchanged today. That is as expected. The bank of Japan Holding its fire to wait for new leaders who are expected to shift bolder measures. Policymakers are revived softens. And the yen has been well, its up just barely, 94. 13. At the top of the next hour, the bank of england will announce its policy decision. Opinions are split on whether the boe will unl veil another rouvend of bond buying. The ecb is expected to hold its Interest Rates at a record low 0. 75 and seek growth and Inflation Forecasts largely unchanged. President margo draghi will be holding his News Conference at 8 00 p. M. Eastern time. Anything that might give us a little bit of an indication. The euro this morning sitting at 1. 30. Lets head back over to new york and see what andrew has up his sleeve. Good morning, andrew. Hey, becky. Were here today to cover the warden economic summit. The slogan here today is bridging the device between business and public policy. Weve got a great for you today including Jeremy Siegel, one of our favorites, of course. Plus dealermaker kenny molus. He will be here to talk about all things m a. Given the report yesterday about dell and carl icahn, i have questions for him. And then we have a rare sitdown interview with alex gorski. Finally, we have legendary investor Michael Steinhart. Well bre bringing that to you throughout the program today, becky. And you were talking about dell. Were just getting a press release that dell has stood out regarding carl icahns move. Carl icahn age taken a pretty large stake in dell. At this point, dell is putting out a press release saying it received a letter from carl icahn urging dell pay 9 a shared dividend. If the agreed Going Private Transaction which was announced back on february 5th if the deal is voted down by shareholders. Evercore is actively solicited other offers and theyre going to go all the way till the process will run through march 22nd after which negotiations will continue if a potentially superior proposal emerges. Guys, here is the problem. Can you hear me . Yeah. Theres a problem with this, is that evercores only incentive to find a superior proposal in the tent they have to find somebody else to come in and buy the company. So the incentive structure in terms of how to think about this may not be as aligned as ld necessarily want. Thats really a cynical viewpoint, andrew. Im a little disappointed that you would put that forward. So if evercore doesnt get paid, if they get a higher offer, theyre going to be like, oh, maybe not. Theyre not going to listen or theory into the going to actively it doesnt change their but its not about the investment bank. Its about the shareholders at dell, right . No, no. Evercore gets paid if they niend a better deal from somebody else. So you need you dont have a constituency inside thats working necessarily to put a deal like that on the table and decide whatever carl icahn wants to do but if its really obvious that its way too low, then the market should someone should come in and say the money is here for the taking and im going to give a higher offer. Yeah. So i almost think it should work either way. Even michael dell doesnt know if hes going to be successful in making this a great company. Thats right. What would happen to the company im just reading through the rest of this carl icahn dollar. He said a 9 billion million. It comes from 4. 76 a share. And then he wants another and then 4 many 26 a share or 5. 25 billion in new debt. So this is really interesting. I think carl acahn must have taken their proposal and is using it as jujitsu against them saying this is worth well more than the 13 something you guys have proposed. But wa hes doing is saying, look, if youre going to lever it one let us lever it up. Exactly. But then then would be with this 9 dividend they take out of it, they would be taking all that cash that the company would be using to go to fix itself. If it were private. And tig it kind of right out of it. But it is more 22. 81 a share. Wow. This would by the big debate. And talk talk tt people in new york city about this. Are you on campus, andrew . No, we are not on campus. Were in new york city. Oh, you are, okay. For the warden deal. Yep. Okay. So youre near. I feel your presence. Youre close by. What did you think of the storm, the big storm . If they were going to name it using an s, they should have called it the sequester storm. Theres about three inches deep salt in our parking lot. I know. I got stuck in the salt. People were pushing. Andrew, you had to this is not your problem, anyway. You dont know what were talking about. Im just waiting for the Reynolds Wolf interview. That to me might be the highlight this morning. We have wolf reynolds. Yeah. He hasnt been around the last few days. He hasnt. Its been eric. Yeah. Aip eric probably wont snow. Hes working too hard, maybe. The nice suit and looking good was well, i think reynolds was out in this snow. All right. Who is your first guy up. Well Talk Health Care and everything else. President obama sat down for dinner with nearly 1 100 congressional leaders at the loemt last night. Im encouraged by the president s outreach. I hope it bears fruit. Okay. Succinct. I dont think rand paul was at dinner. Is he still talking about something . No, i was filibustering. I do have a mole in there. I hope its worthwhile whats going on. In the filibuster . No. Hopefully going to dinner. You know, its not the house. I dont know how this works. If you get some senators to start thinking, yeah, maybe we want to i believe the plan is the president is supposed to be meeting with some house members. Do you know what they want to do . In general, theres another 600 billion around in ten years with the revenue. But they dont want to they want tax reform to happen at the same time which might even lower rates. And it doesnt seem like the two sides are gsh if we keep them high and marginal rates state where they, that defeated the purposes. Maybe they do it gokt to entitlement tough. I dont know. Its a big underfunded issue, but i dont think what gets us back on track, Corporate Tax reform, individual tax reform. But thats not saying that youre not concerned about the deficit. Thats nothing compared to the entitlement. How do you deal with our future growth would go a long way towards dealing with all of our future promises. Although that would certainly politic avenue a lot of republicans, i guess. But you suddenly might have a 3 or 4 economy which makes us better able to deal with the then theres a lot of fractured parties and theres a lot ooh different opinions down there. Trying to build consensus around anything will be tricky. The house yesterday passed a measure to Fund Government programs until the end of the fiscal year. On september 30th. That is what worries me is that the market will keep hitting new highs, the fed will be pumping, the light goes on and we dont do anything until september 30th. Are they going to even do a budget . I hear thats going to be introduced raets. Lets talk about some corporate new, as well. The faa is reportedly poised to approve within days a plan to allow boeing to begin flight tests of the 787 with a battery fix. This is obviously a critical step towards returning the ground at aircraft service. And i dont know if you remember, bob dole talked about some as one of the defense stocks he likes. Wrp talking about this a couple weeks ago. Time warner is announcing plans to spin off its magazine groups. Off to reviews that. How often do you write it . Its every cycle or every other cycle. Its every three weeks. I think you should write it every week, dont you have extra time with your baby and everything. Yeah, a lot of extra time. Youre like mickenson sometimes, arent you someone all work and no if i gets writers block, he might come at us with an ax. Do you remember that, andrew sn . That scares me. Yanl you dont get writers block. It is a scary thing. It is. I want to see that in your column sometime. When does the column come out . Monday. Tuesday. Oh, you write it monday for tuesday. All work and no play jut all the way down, just like in the shining. R. The process request they thought they had the deal with meredith. They thought it would all work out. Time warner would have kept the four big ones, which would have been time, fortune, Sports Illustrated and money. They thought they had this deal, but at the end, we hear that time warner decided they didnt want to keep any of the publication, but the Meredith Family didnt want to lose considerabling interest by taking on the the question is what happens to those . How much debt did that level there . When you look at what is happening to print broadly, people didnt thit was going to impact magazines yet. And it really is. And you see what news corp. Has sdon with its newspapers and usz what time is doing with its magazines. I just wonder how much you have to endow each of these companies about because they were indebt. Its a sad commentary on where all of these publications ultimately land and weight means to the future of media. Well, the digital revolution marching on more quickly than people had anticipated. The internet disrupts all of these things. We talked about the app that you used to read a lot of these magazines. The content is still desired. Its a question of how much money you get, too. Lets take a look at the futures this morning. Yesterday, the market did inch higher at another record level, as joe mentioned. 1496 is where the dow actually closed. Futures are indicated higher once again this morning. Fp futures up about 1. 25 points. In europe, sul see some modest green arrows. In asia overnight, the nikkei edged up higher by 0. 3 . Shanghai composite up 1 . Oil prices are up, but only slightly. If they fall below this region 960 2 960 267. The dollar, after what would he have heard today. Well watch closely to see how they impact the forex markets. Gold prices up by about 5. 90. Were going to take, it says here a quick break now, but i would bet you its the same as its a standard break . Theyre all quick. Thats a break from quarterback quarterback. When we return, the battle for dell who shorted the d. C. Maker into the deal. To provide companies with services. Like helping hr departments manage benefits and pensions for over 11 million employees. Reducing document costs by up to 30 . And processing 421 billion dollars in accounts payables each year. Helping thousands of companies simplify how work gets done. Hows that for an encore . With xerox, youre ready for real business. Welcome back, everyone. In our headlines this morning, a television consultant is suing al gore, claiming that the former Vice President and others at current tv stole his idea to sell the struggling network to al jazeera. The struggman is suing for more 5 million. In january, al jazeera announced it would pay 500 million for current tv. Lets get the National Forecast from the weather channels alex ross. Not eric. Nor reynolds. And why dont you take a shot at whether or not were going to get knit snow here, alex. You know what . I think you guys will get a bit here mixing in with some rain. I think the bigger totals will be to your north getting up into massachusetts. Lets getting tighter here with our storm system here. And you can see were seeing snow showers showing up on the radar. From and around the boston area, hartford starting to report that. Its trying to speak down into the new york city area, certainly across long island seeing some of that snow with flurries here trying to sneak into the city. North we head and more snow, boston seeing that at the airport right now. Light snow and wind, thats going to be a concern for us. Windy conditions through grout the day. Coast to 30 Miles Per Hour and thats helping to reduce that visibility down to quite a bit. So the forecast foor today, calling for a lot of snow across the east. Then overnight, more of the same out there. Rain and snow along the coastal areas, but mostly snow through the interior areas. Even into tomorrow, well be dealing with some of the snow in these spots. Through our saturday morning, the snow totals heading down towards new york city, we could be looking at 3 to 5 on the lower end of that scale is probably more likely with the higher totals to your north and east. We can be talking maybe a foot around the boston area for you. The threat will be the wind causing issues along the coast piling up water and potential flood issues to deal with in those spots. Guys. Alex, thanks. The dow is pushing farther today or could as far as the turchs are concerned. Into record territory. Joining us is Jim Oshaughnessy of oshaughnessy asset management. When we get into periods like this, you can almost watch it happen, jim, where people say it has to put back, it has to put back and we published a again yagz yam buying opportunity. Basically what we looked at was crickets. Why would anyone be buying the market here . We were basing it all on basically quantitative relationship peps the market in february 2009 had compounded it under 4 per year for the previous four years the and that hadnt happened since the early 1940s. The 12year is 1. 5 or something. Yeah. And its 1. 5 if youre not stripping inflation. If youre stripping inflation, youre losing money. So its all about over the years regression to a mean and its 82 to 2000 period. Yeah. We actually looked at that. Everyone says 7 after inflation or 10 before. The fact is, it really depends on where you start. So if you start in march of 2000, when youve got 13. 85 , all of the data says youre going to spend the next 20 years going down. Regressing to the 7 and usually whats below it. Thats exactly what happened. The good news from our perspective is we think were now on the other side of that equation. What if you start now . If you start now, we still believe were in a cycle. Were looked at the 50 worst tenyear periods back to 1871. What we found was, number one, february of 2009 was the second worst. The first worse was may of 1920. What was interesting was what happened three, five, seven and ten years later. In all of the observations that we had, there were no negative numbers. So right now were sort of in the middle of that virtuous circle. So youre getting more than 1. 5 if you were to start right now. Absolutely. Particularly if you focused on global high dividend stocks. Right now, its the worst environment for people looking for income. Theyre going to need income. And if theyre going to look to the treasury market, you know, were under two on the tenyear trishry. That doesnt take into account inflation. If we have inflation, youre basically buying something that is guaranteed to lose money. So, in fact, t bills, lets say you, you know, freaked out on january 1st, 2008, and put all of your money into tbills. Right now, youd have 90 cents as for inflation. Whereas if you put it into the high dividend global stocks, you would have about 13 after inflation. The fed is not alone, its a given that Central Banks are pumping money. Im not sure if it matters if its orchestrated by the fed, because they do create money that goes into the economy, that is going to eventually help with the Housing Market and help other things and so im not sure that its is it do you just say, well, you separate out the fed and the market should be much lower. I dont know whether nthat make sense. Well, also, look at where we were the last time we were at this level and look at where we are now. The earnings are vastly higher. One of the oldest maxims is never fight the fed. What the fed is doing right now is very, restraightforward. So move out the curb. Yes. If youre trying to be so art efficiently lee, but then studies say it could be maybe 50 or 70 points higher. The expected rate of return, which is the dividend yield plus the earninges yield on the s p 500 its about 8 . On the global high dividend stocks its 15 . Yeah. If youre just looking at numbers, what are you going to do . Youre going to say, oh, i love the tenyear treasury at under 2 . Or i want to go for something where i can get an expected rate of return of sa . Clearly, if youre rationale, youre going to go to the latter. Japan, mild deflation for ten years. If you didnt know better, you didnt know better. The kids have to live with their parents forever. You have to take out a mortgage. You dont have the money to be able to do anything. And plus, youve got the japanese who are invetbly conservative investors. They put their money in the postal accounts and they leave it there. So you have a very different system and a very different outlook on the part of japanese 9 is the recent high on the yen. Yeah. So were talking long, long ago. All right. Oshaughnessy, you were on like the first week of south carolina. Your hair wasnt gray, was it . Well, that was 13 years ago, joe. 17. It does happen. Yeah, you did. Why is everybody getting old except me . Except you. Its amazing. You obviously have a portrait of yourself somewhere in the closest. Yeah, well, you know, i sold my soul. When we come back, were going to check in with andrew in new york. First, though, as we head to a break, lets take a look at yesterdays winners and losers. Aw this is tragic man, investors just like you could lose tens of thousands of dollars on their 401 k to hidden fees. Thankfully etrade has low cost investments and no hidden fees. But, you know, if youre still bent on blowing this fat stack of cash, theres a couple of ways you could do it. Or just go to etrade and save it. Boom. Otherworldly things. But there are some things ive never seen before. This ge jet engine can understand 5,000 data samples per second. Which is good for business. Because planes use less fuel, spend less time on the ground and more time in the air. Suddenly, faraway places dont seem so. Far away. How did i know . Well, i didnt really. See, i figur