Billiondollar bracket offer a little bit later. Are you playing in this . Are we allowed to play . Yeah, we are allowed to play, i think. Because i signed up. Im in, baby. Youre in . You can sign up until the 20th. If i win the billion, im buying a massive evaluation. Ill pay you 100 times. I know some people and we can work something out. You and me. Well buy county carrie. I like that. The people of crimea vote to secede from ukraine and join russia. The u. S. Warns of sanctions and the markets move higher. The futures this morning at least here right now are indicated up by almost 100 points. S p futures are indicated up by better than 10 points above fair value. The major european averages at least in the early trading are also indicated higher. The biggest gains in france where the cac is up by. 70 . In russia, the benchmark index there is also trading higher up by 2. 5 . That may surprise people who have been expecting at least the moscow stocks to sell off. And certainly the ruble to drop a little bit, too. Well get more right now from the region, ian williams is joining us from crimea. Ian . Reporter good morning to you. Well, the Crimean Parliament voted a short while ago. In the wake of that vote to formally request moscow to join the russian federation. And that request could be heard as early as this coming friday. So really moscow is likely to fasttrack the annexation of this peninsula. Now the vote was overwhelming according to the Vote Committee here, 97 voting in favor of joining russia. We visited some polling stations yesterday where there was a loot of enthusiasm and big crowds, but also a significant minority here did largely boycott the poll being very worried about what the union with russia could bring in villages where they dominate and the polling stations were empty. But here, the news of the vote and the overwhelming vote in favor of russia triggered massive celebrations last night in the central Lennon Square with big concerts, people driving around waving russian flags. Now, of course, the action moves to moscow to see how quickly Vladimir Putin will respond to this. And, of course, the western capitals, which must now consider whether to impose sanctions as they have threatened. Back to you. Ian, thank you very much. Ian williams. Well get a check on the markets this morning. You saw the dow futures are a tick higher by triple digits at this point. If you look at whats been happening with the tenyear note, 2. 671 . You are still looking at a yield below 2. 7 . Thats where a lot of the panic has played out where you saw yields dropping as bond prices rose on some of these things. Gold was much higher last week. The russian stocks today up by better than 2. 5 we just saw, but they were down 4 last week. Maybe thats part of whats happening. The ruble is a little weaker this morning down about 0. 3 against the dollar. Well look at oil prices quickly, theres the ruble, yeah, okay. So the dollar ruble is showing a bit of a gain. Thats a drop of about. 30 for the ruble. Take a look at whats been happening with the dollar overall, heres wti crude which is sitting down 22 cents to 98. 67. The next that well look at is the dollar, i believe. Currencies are showing that the dollar is up across the board. Euros trading at 138. 91. The pound showing the dollar stronger and the dollar yen at 101. 76. And gold prices we talked about yesterday, which we talked about earlier this morning, if you were looking at gold prices last week, there was a steady climb as some concerns around the globe, you can see things barely budging this morning, 1,379. 10 and ounce. I did forget that i brought in gifts. The traditional st. Patricks day gift, russian rubles. Let me see. So here you go. These are from you. Thats 100 ruble. 30 to 1, 3. I have some swiss franks, ill trade you. I would rather have the franks. Ill give you swiss franks. I would rather have baltimore franks. Im hungry. This is 3 and change. Thank you. Give it to your kids to show them russian money. I have 5 in bitcoin, actually, in my email. Im very excited. Have you noticed the worst currencies in the world are still better looking than our money. We have the ugliest money. There you go. My gift to you. Thank you. I do like the new 100 bills, though. Go shopping. Thank you, brian. We have some Corporate News this morning. This deal was not transacted in either bitcoin nor in rubles. Vodafone reaching a deal to buy ono for 10 billion. That deal will boost the british tell con giant. Take a look at vodafone shares. This company has a lot of cash on hand now after that transaction earlier this year when it sold half of Verizon Wireless that it did not own. It is now trying to get some of that money back with some big deals. And chinese ecommerce giant alibaba picks wall street for its ipo ending months of speculation about where the company would go public. The win by new york seen as a loss for other markets, specifically hong kong. Alibaba is now in discussion with six banks to underwrite the deal that could be valued at 15 billion. Get this, analysts have put a staggering 140 billion valuation on alibaba. And this deal is huge for yahoo because they own 24 and japans softbank which controls 37 . Can we just do a little thing, can we put up shares of yahoo for a second . If you look at the Market Capital of yahoo it is now 37 billion. The valuation we are talking about is 140 billion. Most analysts i have seen now close to 153 billion. That means that basically yahoo was only valued, take alibaba out, it adds a couple billion bucks. I dont understand. Yahoo japan and now alibaba. So if you buy yahoo youre buying asia. Youre buying japan and now youre buying the stake in alibaba. Correct. Which our viewers probably dont know what alibaba is. I call it the amazon of china but thats incorrect. I want to buy 18 chainsaws made from a chinese manufacturer, whatever it is i met the founder years ago at tavern on the green when that existed in central park. Hes like, oh, i have this new company alibaba. I said, this is never going to work. Never been more wrong about anything. We saw him two weeks ago in new york. And he, well, anyway, the point that i was just going to make is that you have to imagine that everyone is courting him at this point to try to get a part of the ipo. Theres six potential underwriters trying to do this crazy thing. They are not claiming anyone is the lead underwriter. Well see if that happens in truth, but i think the larger question is what this means for yahoo in that do they sell their shares, how do you actually value yahoo . And if the price actually makes sense right now, its an indictment of yahoo itself. A yes for you, what are the Investment Banking capabilities of the Chinese National banks . China construction, i have no idea. They cant look, the thing could they do it . Well now they really cant do it because they are not doing it in china. No, but if you were going to underwrite, you want to be a partner in the asian markets. I dont know what their capabilities are. I dont know, but part of the issue is, now that hong kong is out of the game, but hong kong took itself out of the game eight months ago when we had this whole conversation. But they didnt they said they werent going to do it the way they wanted, so they alibaba wanted to control the company once it is public. Hong kong said no. And thats the end of that. If you are going to ask a girl out and you know shes going to say no, what do you tell your friends . I would never go out with her. Because you dont want to face the rejection. And part of me wonders thats what chinas game is. Hong kong, right, oh, were kind of taking ourselves out. If you got indication you are not going to win anyway, just act like you dont want it. No, these guys were going on a date. No, this was like the guy wanted the girl and the girl didnt want the guy. Thats what happened here. Im just telling you what happened here. Thats not the only chinarelated story. Social Media Company weibo is offering its shares also in the United States. Now weibo often called the twitter of china launched four years ago by a Parent Company as a Microblogging Service like twitter. Remember, twitter has been blocked in china since 2009. And the china news continues this morning. Twitters ceo Dick Costello is taking a strip to china and described as a personal tour to learn more about chinas Thriving Technology sector. They have 600 million Internet Users but they banned twitter in 2009. They are not expected to ask chinese authorities to lift the twitter ban. Twitter flatly rejected the possibility of opening an office in china any time soon. Shares, though, of twitter are on a wild ride over the past year. Now 52. 84. Still above the ipo, but down significantly from that high plus the 75 a share. In other Corporate News this morning, honda is recalling nearly 900,000 odyssey minivan that is could catch fire. The automaker says from 2005 to 2010 the odysseys that were built in alabama have a fuel pump part that could crack and cause a fuel leak increasing the risk of fire. The company says it has no reports of fires or injuries related to this problem at this point. Honda says the proper repair parts wont be available until the summer because they have so many that they are recalling. In the meantime, it will provide interim parts to customers who will be notified beginning in april. It is not just me. It happens, we can have fires in other places, too. No fire is related to this, but part of it is if you take it into the car wash, some of the chemicals could be acidic enough to create things, but no problem with me. I never go into the car wash. Did you see the musk statement from new jersey . They put out one of the great lette letters of all time. They feel like they were lied to under false pretenses so they feel like it was a bait and switch. This is not new jersey or other states against tesla. Tesla is the bad guy. If you are a gm dealer and you look at tesla selling cars like that, you are thinking, why am i buying 150 cars, carrying the inventory risk putting them on my lot, i will just do the tesla model. Create a showroom, you order it and test drive it. If you like it n a week it will be drivered to you. I think dealers are terrified, probably rightly so, that the tesla model may work but then what happens to the entire dealer model . It goes away. Why are we protecting the dealer model exactly . I dont want that we are protecting the dealer model. And the government is the states are going along with it in new jersey, texas, arizona. New york maybe. Why are we protecting the dealers . Im sure every dealer is who is protecting the dealers . This is somebody against tesla. Nobody is against tesla but the model they are trying to create. But the states have to offer licenses to have a dealership. You need to have a license. Geographic protection. Right. So the state is essentially protecting the dealership model. I understand what youre saying. It is not targeted at tesla but tesla is the only Company People view tesla as the bad guy for selling the electric car. Meaning that actually selling it directly is the better way, in this case theres going to be some real issues. The dealerships happen to have they imploy thousands and thousands of people. But they happen to be major donors to political members in the states. Im saying you understand why the dealers groups are coming out swinging against tesla. So now in new jersey, they are going to have showrooms. You talked about this last week. Galleries. Where you cant buy the car. And you cant ask on pricing, i believe. But can they have an ipad in the corner to go buy it there or do you have to go out of the building like a physical presence . You do it like a price is right. You give a number and they say higher or lower and you have to do it within 30 seconds. Yeah, i think they are taking it out, but there are some questions whether they will keep it. This is the alamo for tesla. New jersey is the alamo. If they feel on the legal challenge, every other state is going to come out to be emboldened by the new jersey decision. This is a huge deal in new jersey for tesla. I have not seen the entire statement put out, i saw snipits with it. Is it a long let her . It is a brilliant letter. If you didnt love ian before this letter, you will realize him after. You realize the politics and realize why there were politics to begin with. The idea of protecting all of these dealerships originally was because there was a view that the big manufacturers were going to come in and try to cut them out. Thats what this was all about. So there was actually he was concerned when they did gm and restructured the entire thing. They went through this and decided which dealers have to stay. We had this fight, people forget, with sad you weturn, ac. There was a bit of a debate. In any event, its a story continuing. Well keep you uptodate on the latest. In the meantime, its a big week for janet yellen. She will give her first conference after the twoday fed meeting that kicks off tomorrow. The fed is expected to stay on course for the taper plan. Tomorrow the Consumer Price index will be released. On thursday jobless claims and existing home sales. But the big deal is going to be tuesday and then wednesday when we actually get that fed decision. Okay. That happens on your show. Yeah, it should be an interesting day on street signs, 2 00 eastern time. Im catching flak for not wearing green. Its only 6 15. You are going to start flaking now . Well, i dont get paid extra to come in on squawk box so my only pay is to tease street signs two or three times. We talked to the director of russian studies at the american enterprise, good morning to you. What a mess it appears to me that we have made, help us just play out what you think is going to happen right now in terms of what putins next steps are to the extent that he has some, and where do you think we are from the u. S. Perspective, do something or not about all of this . Well, i think putin has kind of two columns of numbers in his head constantly updating, the debit side and the credit side. Let me start with the credit side. I think he is trying to restore this influence inside the country because he defined the ukrainian revolution as the conflict between the west and russia only. That was his definition. So when the revolution seceded, he felt that he needed to recover to restore, he felt like he needed to respond. There are three actors hes aiming at, ukraine, of course, which he tries to contain and destabilize. The west, that he tries to prevent from proposing sanctions and intimidate, but most importantly the russian Political Base that hes bay playing to. So if he feels that crimea is enough, that hes done enough to recover the initiative to staunch the wound to narrow the damage, i think he may pause, at least. If he feels he needs to go further, i think they will start, you know, impercenting into ukraine in the mainland. So, if youre obama at this point, i mean, i shouldnt be editorializing, but i feel like we are in a box and i dont know how you get out of the box, do you have a way out of the box . Well, i think the administration sensibly offers a twotrack policy. On the one hand, i think they are going to impose sanctions in conjunction with the eu as early as a few hours from today. But at the same time they constantly offer russia a way out trying to say, okay, this is the sanctions we could impose more severe sanctions, but that the point this is where well stop, please lets negotiate. And more importantly, mr. Putin, please negotiate with the new government in kiev and see where that takes you. Is this a real election or do you think the whole thing was a its completely invalid. The opposition was not given any voice in the public media. People were intimidated. They had, like, i think seven or eight days to put the referendum together. Its totally bogus. Totally bogus. And when putin runs around saying this is like kosovo, you say what . Well, there are all kinds of complicated issues here, but essentially its under the guns of those unmarked black mask troops, thats a travesty. You came back in six months, what would the conversation be . The conversation will be that the russian ruble is down, that the russian economy in the stock market is severely down, but putin is holding firm buzz thats the only thing working for him and his regime right now inside the country. Well leave the conversation there. Doctor, thank you for joining us this morning. Appreciate your perspective. When we come back, march mad sps here. Time to fill out the brackets l. Any work get done once the games start later this week . Brian already filling out the brackets waiting for a billion bucks. Im hoping he wins. Also, guinness making a very controversial decision a day before todays big st. Patricks day celebration. Well tell you all about it and what they are not doing when squawk box returns. Opportunities arent always obvious. Sometimes they just drop in. Cme group can help you navigate risks and capture opportunities. We enable you to reach Global Markets and drive forward with broader possibilities. Cme group how the world advances. Welcome back. Time for the executive edge. Big companies have appeared to hand out smaller increases in compensation to their executives in 2013 than in 2012. Thats because of grant Stock Options according to an annual review of regulatory filings. Based on the information from 46 company that is filed annual compensation reports by march 11th, the medium increase for a ceo was 1 to 8. 64 million. Thats right, 1 small increase, but to 8. 64 million. That was a slower rate of increase than this group of 46 received for 2012 when the media ceo pay raise rose to 8. 53 million. The media compensation for ceos and fortune 500 companies received more in 2012. When was the last time you heard a ceo that had to negotiate with his board for his income . Well, i imagine thats sort of offtherecord type stuff, right . It doesnt happen, though. The Compensation Committee, right . The Compensation Committee just sets it. What gets me about this, and maybe im happy or sad, i dont know how to feel about this, but when i think of ceo compensation, and we talked about this before, the thing that always gets me in most up stances, take the ceo out, if you are going to hire somebody, theres a conversation about what is the least i can possibly pay you