Interest rates unchanged at its final policy meeting of the year. Last month, though, policymakers surprised the markets with a cut in the Interest Rate to a record low of 0. 25 . Well check in with Ross Westgate in just a few minutes. The dow and the s p are now on a fourday losing streak. This morning, futures are around the flat line. Down by about 2. 5 points for the dow, down by 0. 5 for the s p and the nasdaq is up by 4 points. November samestore sales will be coming in throughout the morning. Coscos comps rose by 2 during the month. That was short of what the street had been expecting. You had lower gasoline prices and weak foreign currencies. Both of those ended up hurting results. Aeropostale is reported a much bigger than expected loss for the faurourth quarter. Also take a look at apparel retailer guess. It is cutting its full year revenue forecast. The company says it expects a bigger fall in european sales in the Holiday Shopping quarter. Joe. So you showed that we showed the tree . Yes. Its spectacular. The tree, you know, i dont what i love are the popping lights that look all over the place, but make it look look its catching light and jumping. Im glad that you say what you like. Im not going to by bah humbug. You know how when the president comes to down and you have to go into new york or something its all about you. Its all about blockades. Do you know where that rtree is . I do. It goes from first to i know. I was on 59th and 5th yesterday and you could already feel the middle of the city, which is already a hellish nightmare of congestion and beeping horns and you are a grinch. Huh . You are a grinch. Im just saying when they light that tree it becomes ten times worse. Everyone has to see it. It looks the same as last year. You have to admit, when youre there and you bring the kids in dont urge people to go and see this spec tract lar. It just means there will be more people there clogging up the streets. I have to go in there tonight. Thats the problem. How do i even get you need i. D. To get past the blockade to get near 30 rock. Grinch. Am i a greasy pa ban ana pee . You are. Its beautiful. Its a huge pain. Anyway, in corporate news, apple dominating the headlines. The wall street journal reports apple and china mobile have signed a deal to distribute the iphone on the chinese carriers network. Were talking about a pretty big potential number of people, right . Its a lot of people. Chiev china said its going to award china mobile, China Telecom licenses to award 4g to customers. Biden is over there. Funny that it was biden because you know what joe is like. But he may not be the most tactful in diplomacy, but you know what . He knows how the game works. Hes always the one over here who comes around and says, i know how this works, we have to talk to both sides. So i think biden probably is the right guy to do it. Meantime, carl icahn stepped up pressure on apple. And in a tweet, he whew. Every waking thought that icahn has about apple we have to all right. He said hes filed a shareholder proposal with apple for a much smaller stock buyback than he previously advocated. Cnbc reports that icahns plan calls for a 50 billion buyback and he had originally been looking for 150 billion. This is a little bit of a stepdown. Yeah. But tim you know, weve had conversations with tim before. We know hes a viewer. He knows my efforts to get you away from the dinosaur with your keyboard. I know what im getting for christmas. Okay. Its the only thing ive asked for for christmas. Its working. This is the only thing ive asked for for christmas. Icahn at this point is almost like a like a fly buzzing around. And i can thats that is a complete recognition with this move. There was a longterm shareholder in apple who said what he did originally with that move for 150 billion is what gives activist investors a bad name. He said it was pushing it too far. The shareholder said, look, he wants to know what the company is going to do with the cash, too. They just didnt like the way it was pushed on. It was 150. Now he said maybe you could do 50. I dont know. Its obvious that he cannot strong arm tim cook to, you know, to say how high on the way up. Right. Lets talk about another story were going to be tracking today. Treasury secretary jack lew will delivers remarks on reform and the next steps that need to be taken. According to a preview of the speech, lew is expected to argue that the Financial System is close to accomplishing it goal posed by the dangers posed by giant banks. He will be calling on overseas regulators to make their seas tougher. In july, he talked about his goals for reform. Going forward, well measure our progress in weeks and months, not in years. And much of our remaining work will be completed in the next five months. Let me repeat, by the end of this year, the core elements of the dodd frank act will be substantially in place. I think theres a shared goal between what im saying and what many of these senators are saying, which is that its unacceptable to be in a place where too big to fail has not been ended. One of the things i guess i would say is that any efforts to delay or dilute the implementation of dodd frank, if we get to the end of this year and we cannot with an honest, straight face say that we have ended too big to fail, were going to have to look at other options. Steve is going to be joining us to talk about this in the next hour, steve liesman. In other washington news, the monitor thats overseeing the mortgage settle isment says three of the biggest lenders failed to meet some of the requirements for giving relief to struggling homeowners in that 25 billion settlement that was over for closure abuses. He concludes that bank of america, jpmorgan and citigroup all failed to meet seven of the 29 requirements tested in the first half of the year. The monitor says the banks though, have taken steps to correct the errors. Back to china, Chinas Central Bank is warning that central institutions should not trade in bitcoin. The Central Bank Says while the Digital Currency does not yesterday pose a threat to chinas Financial System, it does carry risks. Bitcoin market operators say the chinese nationals are measure participants and hold a large share of the total number of bitcoins in circulation. I dont know i wouldnt read anything into that they want the yuan, but they have a vested interest i think in wanting the yuan to eventually be the currency of record after the dollar. They also own a whole lot of dollars. Did you see what green span says . No. He called the bitcoin a bubble. There it is right now. Exuberance. It doesnt make sense. You have to have some reason for why it would go to this level. When you have former central bankers last week it was down . Yeah. But still, you look at the massivition flagz since it was introduced, it doesnt make a lot of sense to him. Yep when you have the chinese weighing out on these issues, its probably a reason for caution at the very least. Why dont we check on markets. As we showed you, the futures this morning are basically flat lining, waiting to pick up direction. Maybe well get that when we get toss jobless claims. Take a look at oil prices. At this point, youll see that oil is up again. Wow, up another 39 cents. 97. 59. The tenyear note this morning is yielding 2. 828 , pick up a little more steam in the yield as we got stronger than expected adp numbers. Not only this month, but the revision for last month. That has people wondering if fridays numbers are going to be a strong one. The biggest impact well have on the tenyear note well see what happens with fridays job numbers, as well. The dollar is up against the euro at 1. 3591. Gold prices, 1,233 an ounce. Yeah. It was like painting grass, watching grass be painted yesterday, wasnt it, with stocks. There was nothing happening. Flat lining by the close yesterday. Investors look ahead to the friday jobs report is probably keeping some people out of the market. Joining us now, allen gayle, senior director of Asset Allocation at ridgeworth capital. And steve corso, director of oh, no, no, youre not him. I just play him on tv. I thought you were one day. Jack markquell doesnt look anything like you. Cut water asset management, allen, we would be disappointed if we didnt see a repeat of the last jobs number on friday. Will we be disappointed or will it measure up . Well, good morning. I think that the data weve been getting between adp and well see what the jobless numbers look like, but it does suggest that were going to be stronger than consensus number when it comes out on friday. The implications for investors is is that going to heat up the talk at the upcoming fomc meeting about tapering . So i think that that is one of the reasons why were seeing the tenyear note start to move higher in here because that nervousness is going to push this yield curve steeper in our view. So will it be 200 . I think in our view, 200 is the psychological barrier. That if we see numbers north of 200, that thats going to make the Federal Reserve feel more comfortable, that the job growth is on a more sustainable basis and that theyre going to be able to start this tapering process. All right. So will it be 200 or above . My view is there is a good chance. Obviously, with the data collecting and post Government Shutdown, i think hazarding a guess on the precise number is difficult. What do you think, cliff . 282 today on the tenyear. Yeah. I think theres a shot. Our view is taking a step back is that the economy continues on this multi year check like recovery. And, you know, the economy has been flying on two engines, consumer and business. But i think two other two engines or twoengine planes . Four engines. On half. Yeah. Because you also have the government sector and exports minus imports. So those two have been saggy. In fact, one of those has been in reverse, the government sector. Thats going to be it based on neutral and were pretty bullish based on growth. Yeah. An engine flying in reverse. That says a lot, doesnt it . Its differing ages, i think. So the gdp number, does it get revised . The expectation is well see an upward revision. Im concerned about the quality of the upward revision, that its more from inventories than anything else. But, you know, from our perspective here in the ridgeworth allocation strategies, you know, were looking at valuations. Were looking at headwinds and tailwinds for the economy and were looking at favorable entry points. And the point with the data coming out today is i think its going to confirm our view that the economy is getting stronger, that the Global Expansion is gaining traction. And so thats one of the reasons that we remain overweight in equities in our funds. Okay. I shouldnt have twitter on when im sitting here. Youre looking at the same thing i am. Im laughing at a guy who is even worse than i am in terms of no, this guy is using curse words because he lives on east 56th. He says i dont even leave my apartment when that stupid f no, i cant read, and the cops already. Dummy, you should have known that you were living there for two months out of the year before you decided to live there. Oh, my gosh, i cant believe there are people near rockefeller center. Theres a lot more because everybody has to go and see that thing. You have to do it. You go through the crowds. If you cross the potomac, you cant even get near there. Im just sort of playing the grinch. I think it is beautiful and theres iceskating and all that stuff. We know you too well. Im not really a grinch. I like it when i dont want to be pigeon holed as the do they do anything in december . The real grinch, the fed. No, i do not the grinchess. Ive got her in there as the if we look at the baton pass between the two, i think yellen will be a little bit more of a drove. And i think notwithstanding what jobs might do tomorrow, whether they taper in january or march, i dont think if you take a step back its going to be a big deal. Timing is not going to be a big deal. Its coming. And i think a lot of it is built into the market. When we were all convinced as a market in september that this was absolutely going to happen, the tenyear was trading about a 2. 80. We were around there today. A lot of it is built in already. What do you think about bitcoin . I saw you rolling your eyes a bit. I had a great discussion the other day on this. Fiat currency is not really backed by anything. I think its in a speculative phase. Who knows what anything is worth. I always go back to gordon gekko. Perception is reality. This feels very much like a speculative pop. Especially sipts theres such low pairier to entry. You could have many knockoffs. I think it has that pattern where people were getting in just to get in. Here is another one. Joe, couldnt be more right about the tree blockades. It took me 30 minutes to walk five blocks last night. I got stuck in traffic yesterday around 3 00. Long before the tree thing started. But then again, i live far away. Well, there it is. And they have a big party last night. Did you see some of that . Vans and all that. People are saying it was a that i complain the whole time i was at the macys day parade. No, i did not. It was freezing, though. My toes were anyway, allen, thank you. Cliff, thank you. Did Michigan State lose . Im not up on that, either. Apparently the tar heels beat Michigan State. Im hearing that. To not mention that is supposedly bad, too, because Michigan State was number one. Its a little early for college, isnt it . Because its march is when we really start paying close attention. Are you going to do it this year . You suck at it, but are you going to do it this year, march madness . Oh, you know what . I come in yeah, i do kind of stink. Never mine, i cant even pretend. Im going to do it, but i dont know that much about basketball. So i think if you do know a lot about basketball, i dont know that it helps. There are so many surprises. They lost over the weekend to an average team, didnt they . Who . Yeah, they lost to university of alabama birmingham. And i saw the coach was, like, mad walking around. Okay. Whatever he said to them worked. Yeah. They beat Michigan State. All right. When we come back this morning, microsoft is moving to assure International Business customers about spying. For once, news about the art world. Normal rockwells saying grace sold at auction for morp than 46 million. Sothebys says that its a new auction record for an american painting. First, as we head to a break, take a from alex wallace from the weather channel. Things are going to get messy for us. Things arent looking too bad for us. Southern plains in texas, a few light showers. We anticipate as more moisture comes in, this cold air mass, that wintry mix, icing potential, snow, even into tomorrow well be dealing with this from Oklahoma City to dallas and spreading over towards the mississippi and ohio river valleys. The noefl forecast calls for some of the higher totals to be anywhere from 5 to 8 inches. Southern parts of missouri into sections of indiana as well as illinois out there for us. It looks like indianapolis could see anywhere from 3 to 5 inches of snow. But the greater concern will be the icing. You could see more than a quarter inch of ice in the zone of purple from dallas to paducah and kentucky. That ice could cause big problems, not just for roadway travels, but it will start to weigh down on those tree limbs, branches break and Power Outages could become a problem. This is going to be the zone we watch through friday big time icing potential. Thats your national forecast. Squawk box, more of that next. Every day were working to be an Even Better Company and to keep our commitments. And weve made a big commitment to america. Bp supports nearly 250,000 jobs here. Through all of our energy operations, we invest more in the u. S. Than any other place in the world. In fact, weve invested over 55 billion here in the last five years making bp americas Largest Energy investor. Our commitment has never been stronger. Right now, its time for the executive edge. This is our daily focus on giving Business Leaders a leg up. Microsoft moves to assure International Business customers on spying. The Technology Giant says it has never turned over any data like this under the Foreign Intelligence Service act and cannot believe the authorities are entitled to the information if it is stored abroad. Theyre going to be encryptel a lot more information. Theres the story about how authorities were getting around it by tapping into the weak links. I know google and yahoo have recently moved up to encrypt that data. I read this and microsoft, i think they need to come down on the side of their xhrs versus the government, but i wonder how really serious they are. The government has put th in. But i think everything here is things you have to say to be politically correct. I dont even know if the customers over there are seriously squawking that much or whether they would actually like when cisco seemed to indicate that it had been part of their weak forecast, when an analyst actually asked on a call, was it material . No, no, its not material. If its not material, youre sort of still spinning. Until it actually becomes something you can say, yes, heres numbers, it is material. You say look, its start to go rear up and we worry that it is going to become material. The latest thing, we were looking at billions of cell phones. When you say the word billions of cell phone locations, theyre not looking at any of them individually. Unless its something that a red flag goes up theyre taking all this information. But its meta data and theyre looking for data going between people looking to do some harm. But they certainly made it look like some companies cooperated. Microsoft has to say we were shocked, shocked that there was spying going on. Although some of these Technology Companies have fought the government and said no, we dont want to cooperate. How did they do . Try fighting the government. But at the same time, they have to come down on the side of their customers. Read a lot between the lines. This is me . This is you. Fine if you want to do it and ill just respond. What . Go ahead. No, i want you to respond. Security expe