Economic outlook grow. The two biggest drivers, strength in germany and france. Things are up slightly this morning in european trading. But there has been some interesting calls on this. And well talk more about what jim cramer had to say about europe a little bit later in the show too. An update from our colleagues in london in a few minutes. Jimmy saying europe is back. And thats a big story for u. S. Stocks. Corporate news, the former jpmorgan trader known as the london whale and regulators reached an agreement to avoid criminal prosecution. But two are expected to be charged as soon as today. The s. E. C. Is said to be in settlement talks with jpmorgan over disclosures of the trading losses. Number of activist investors in the news today. Lets start with carl icahn. Hes taking a large position in apple and says the stock could be worth as much as 700 a share. If ceo tim cook pushed for a larger stock buyback. In the tweet yesterday, icahn announced he has spoken to the apple boss, described the conversation as, quote, nice and said they plan to speak again shortly. In an interview in the wall street journal, icahn said he wants the buyback to happen right away while the shares are cheap. If youre tim cook or any ceo, usually you like to hear when new shareholders buy your stock, but when you hear carl icahn is buying your stock and then wants to have a teletone call with you, which apparently he had, how do you feel before that call after that. How do you deal with the phone call . It sounds like carl is walking into this one a little bit more of a lighter touch than some of the others we have seen in the past. Hes walking in and saying i would like to see a stock buyback. From what i hear from what i hear, just from what i hear, on background people familiar with the situation say, look, apple is in a similar position. They agree with a lot of what hes talk ing about. So they do have Common Ground there. So maybe treading lightly. One point, you tread lightly as in breaking bad, until not. You dont know me, tread lightly. How much cash is apple sitting on . Do you know the number . I dont know the number. Clearly over 100 billion, yeah. I would say if youre tim cook, sitting on that cash, you do not expect a call from a guy like carl icahn, youre not well served by your advisers. I agree. But you should be sitting there waiting for the call, you should be ready to defend your corporate decision to sit on that cash. 137. But they have defending this decision for thats what it was. For ieons. It is different when it is carl. More on bill ackman and his departure from the jcpenney board, big story for us yesterday. The wall street journal now reporting the retailers board told ackman that he breached his board room duties by disclosing information about the companys financial position, and searched for a new ceo. Interesting issue because he would have said that he was actually doing his duty because the board wasnt. But it is interesting. Anyway, ackman spoke to charlie rose last night about his resignation. I think the markets are better if directors are willing to take a stand and say, look, im concerned about steps the company is taking in its business. And thats what i did here. You want to be the champion of transparency. The champion of shareholder, you know, im a representative of the shareholders, i want to be a champion of company and the shareholders. When im concerned about the direction of the business, im not afraid to air the concerns. Im a very straightforward person. I say what i think. Look at shares of jcpenney. Sometimes rubs people the wrong way. Hes managed to do that over the past couple of weeks with the number of these situations. Just the idea that, yeah, if youre a director and disagree with the direction the board is taking, you should sit up and make your concerns clear. I guess there is a time for negotiations within a board room, a time for negotiations outside the board room. I wonder what the threshold is for all of this, saying forget it and taking your complaints private. This is the issue that Warren Buffett raised. It is an interesting thing we should ask a lot of guests as they come on. What is the threshold for saying it. Hes right in the contention that if the board is taking things in a direction, you completely disagree with, you should voice your concerns. I just dont know when it is disruptive and when it is actually helpful. Dont you have to think that ackmans decision to go public is strategic and not principle . Hes after maximizing his returns. He has to get to a point where maybe he cant help himself, maybe he cant keep his mouth shut. Strategic and principled can. Shares are 13. Now 12. Not like hes got a hes got to get them back to 25, so it is not a twoday issue. Not a fiveday issue. He stepped down from the bard, he cant sell his stake immediately because he knows insider information. My point is hes going public because he thinks it is the best route for achieving his tactically he must believe that. He must believe that. And not the champion of transparency kind of stuff. I think ackman would be quiet when it serves his principles, serves his returns, and he would be hes public when it serves his returns the other way. I dont think there is any principled aspect to it. I dont know if thats a problem if youre looking at somebody who is a major investor, 18 of the company, and cant get out in the next couple of months. I guess it depends how longterm of a he got to a place where it doesnt serve him anymore. One other piece of this, i think in his case he does always believe hes principled. Meaning it is to the extent he thinks it is his principle, the rest of the world may not think it that way, but he does. Is this different . Youve been doing this for a while. Ive been doing this for a while. I remember when they used to go public, it was through a very subtle leak to a reporter at the wall street journal. It wasnt this stuff of icahn versus ackman on cnbc. It wasnt this kind of stuff, a guy goes on charlie rose. There is a different kind of activism out there. Much more public, yes. It may be more public, but i think it is like, pulling strings quietly from, you know, if youre oz behind the curtain, i dont know if thats any different. It may be a different appeal. In terms of if i dont think it changes what they were doing before or now, just in terms of having a goal and trying to achieve that goal. Man a different way of doing it. I dont think it changes what theyre doing one way or the other. Everybody has an interest. Everybody has something we have a second piece on bill ackman we should talk about this morning. This one is the short bet. More ackman news. Doesnt end. Yesterday, i first reported that a former herbal life employee has been subpoenaed by the attorney general to produce documents regarding a 2011 safety concern about the companys nutritional shakes. The exemployee now seeking whistleblower status with the fcc, the employee first approached about the concerns, the fda in december, he then got in touch with ackman. Now, ackman is offering to pay the employees legal fees, which sort of makes everything complicates things when it comes to how everybody is looking at all these thing. I wish that wasnt on the table. The Health Concerns i think are real. Here is what it is. They do have an issue that happened in 2011. At the time, the company had found shards of metal detected in some of herbalifes nutritional shakes at the plant in california, the largest plant that produces their biggest product. Basically what happens is the powder flows through sifting screens, meant to keep contaminant out. Instead the screens were breaking and pieces of metal from the actual screens were finding their way into the powder. The problem apparently was resolved within several weeks. At least thats what herbalife says. They have acknowledged the incident in a statement yesterday and said only Safe Products were shipped to consumers. Ackman also talked about herbalife with charlie rose. If you look at our history over ten year, im not used to getting into disputes with people. We have been a very krublconstre shareholder of a meaningful number of companies over last ten years. Most of this comes from a battle with herbalife. In the case of herbalife, im not shareholder pushing to make it more valuable. Youre short on herbalife. Were short the stock. We believe herbalife is operating a scheme. We believe theyre transferring wealth from a very large number of low income hispanic individuals in this country and around the globe to a handful of wealthy people. Moral outrage. Certainly moral outrage. To make one quick point on the food safety issue. We did say that the company says that none of the product with these metal shards got out, and there is no evidence that it didnt. No evidence that it that it did. The real issue is how it was dealt with, traditionally a big food supplier, if metal gets in the food, they typically take that batch and destroy that batch. A number of intern documents including what this whistleblower apparently is saying is actually that thats not what happened in this case. In fact, they tried to remediate the product by running it through metal detectors and at one point had discussed buying xray machines to instead of just destroying. Instead of destroying the product. It is a cookies and cream product. They decided the machine wouldnt work because the tsa kind of style people would have to look through the stuff and would mix the cookies with the metal. So while the product may have never gotten out, it is one of those things where you may never know. You wonder about quality controls. Exactly. The same management today. Thats what this issue is all about. Which is very different from the ackman argument which is that it is a pyramid scheme. So there is a pyramid scheme issue and then this food safety issue. The food safety issue we think has been taken care of at minimum. We do have other investor news to talk about. David teppers appaloosa increased his stakes in citigroup, bank of america and good year. Hes now the largest shareholder in gt. Hes taken new stakes in carnival, hertz and Chicago Bridge and iron. Steve . Time for the Global Markets report. Carolin roth is standing by in london. I want to hear what she has to say. Does it feel like the recession is over over there . Are you partying . Are you out in the street . Whats going on . Were not popping the champagne bottles just yet. But you can definitely feel that europe is turning a corner and you know what, germany has been leading the way higher, Second Quarter gdp beating expect takings up by 0. 7 . Friends also doing extraordinary well up by 0. 5 in the Second Quarter. This is in fact, the strongest quarterly growth in two years. Overall, the eurozone gdp numbers up by 0. 3 , that also a tad better than forecast. Looking at the market reaction, though, thats an interesting one because we did see markets being pretty much flat throughout the session. Now they have just been turning higher over the last couple of minutes. We hit a session high, just a few minutes ago. Some people say, yes, this recovery may have already been baked into the cake. And thats why were seeing this reaction. The ftse 100 is flat after some under performance earlier. There are stocks trading today. The xetra dax is up by. 1 . The ibex still underperforming by a quarter of 1 . We have the boe minutes out from england, which showed an 8 to 1 split in voting for Forward Guidance. The all important Forward Guidance under mark carney. This is a setback for him, because we were expecting this unanimous vote. On the back of that, lets look how sterling dollar is performing. We did see this big jump earlier on in the session. Currently changing hands at 1. 5464. Thats a big jump that has come down a little bit. Euro dollar, it is down by around. 1 . It is interesting, isnt it, given the eurozone is leading the recession while, again, many people say this has already been priced into the currency here. Back over to you. Carolin, thank you for that. Back here at home, we have a little bit of news, political news, the ballot now set for new jerseys special election for u. S. Senate. And hes somebody who come on the show quite often, often enough. Newark mayor cory booker won the democratic primary last night, easily defeating three opponents. Now going to face republican steve logan who won his partys primary. Both men going to be seeking to fill the remaining 15 months of frank lautenbergs term in office. He died back in june. John harwood joins us this morning from washington with a little bit more on this. Maybe some other thoughts. What does this mean . Nothing . Zero . Yeah, because we knew that cory booker was going to win this primary. We know hes going to win the general election. Hes going to win it so easily, that Chris Christie didnt want to be on the same ballot with cory booker when Chris Christie himself is running for reelection. He will also win. But there is no mystery about this. This is a state that is very democratic. You would have to have some sort of republican star like Chris Christie himself to challenge somebody like booker. And so this is a seat the democrats are going to get back. And then were going to have a fight over, you know, a half dozen or few more seats to see whether republicans can pick up the six they need to win a majority in the senate. Another washington question for you, the president apparently next week after his vacation, i dont know if hes going on hes on vacation, i dont know if hes going back to vacation later, but apparently hes going to do two more economic speeches. What is that about . Not only two more, hes going to continue doing a long series of speeches to try to advance his priorities. He sketched this out before he went to marthas vineyard, long before, really, and said essentially that at a time when congress is not cooperating with his priorities, he is going to go to the American People, sketch out what they are, try to win arguments, maybe you get a little headway with republicans in advance of the fall battles we have got over the continuing resolution, keeping government open over the sequester, over the debt limit, but hes really, even looking to the longer term and hoping to shape the priorities of the American People and politicians down the road for more spending on his priorities, infrastructure, job training, education, all the things that he makes the argument are necessary to build a prosperity from the middle class out. What do you know about this . The wall street journal story, now into the yellen summers debate, that says the following. Surprised and irritated to see Senate Democrats touting a preferred candidate for Federal Reserve chairman. White house officials have moved behind the scenes to quash the campaign and are insisting that obama not be pressured as he mulls to nominate. The president does not like people trashing those he is seriously considering for big jobs. He plainly likes Larry Summers. There has been a campaign against summers within the senate. You had a significant block of Senate Democrats who were signing their names to a letter, essentially endorsing yellen. Democratic senators have publicly raised questions about whether Larry Summers would fit in that job. And the president doesnt like being hemmed in. We have seen this at his press conferences. Saw it when he went to the hill and talked to democrats and defended pretty forcefully Larry Summers as somebody who had helped him a good bit, who has a lot to offer. He has been summers has been believed to be the frontrunner for the job. Dont know to what extent that is still the case. But the president doesnt like to be dictated in these sort of scolded his democratic colleagues. We have been looking at this, this opposition in the senate and other places that have been brought up. We have been looking at that as kind of, well, maybe that would make the president step back. Does it make it more likely he would nominate summers. He doesnt like being told what to do . He didnt like that when susan rice was getting pressured by republicans over benghazi, when in the end, he did not nominate. Thats my point. Thats my point. That he forcefully defended her. He said the attacks were out of bounds, like hes done for Larry Summers. But he ultimately decided discretion was the better part of valor. He went to john kerry. He may do the same thing this time. Larry summers could be confirmed by the democratic senate. I think there is no doubt about that. But so could janet yellen and the president has so much political capital, he has to decide how to spend it. John, isnt there some history of the president coming back from vacation and making appointments . Is there any chance at all we get a name after this vacation . You mean, like next week . I guess. I think very low probability of that. I think the president has indicated it is going to be this fall and i would expect it to come september, october. John, the view from washington. Thank you for that. You bet. Appreciate it. Some question if this comes before or after the next fed meeting, which is the 18th, is when the decision comes out. September 18th . Yes, speculation, that, let bernanke get through the last meeting and then nominate his replacement. Coke launching an ad campaign aimed at convincing consumers diet soda is safe. Why jim cramer says now is the time to buy on the european story. First, as we head to break, lets check on the National Forecast with the weather channels alex wallace. Good morning, alex. Good morning to you. Much better morning across the northeast where we have been dealing with some wet weather move through yesterday. Now what is left of it moving out over the open waters. So the cold front that blasted through, well out to the east. Thats allowing for cooler, more falllike conditions to set up. So High Pressure is building in. Well see a lot of sunshine through the latter part of the week. And very, very comfortable conditions out there. Some of the best weather we have seen in some time. Temperatures from the midwest, northeast, even into the south going to be cooling down quite a bit. Numbers anywhere from 10 to 15 degrees below our average. While all that is going on. We have some storms to deal with, well deal with the threat for severe storms out across parts of the front range. We do include denver, the mile high city, threats out there for the day d