Hour, if you take a look, youll see right now they are indicated higher. Theyll open up by about 32 points. Plus, take a look at oil pries this morning. Youll see at least right now theyre trading down slightly, down by about 42 cents. Youre looking at wti trading above 106. Right now, 106. 48. On todays agenda, the may consumer Housing Starts coming up and the fomc begins a twoday policy meeting. Andrew, over to you. Thank you, becky. I feel whippinded. People that have not done this dont realize the feeling that you can have. Where youre running and then you have to talk. Really bad idea. And i will say 90 seconds ago, none of us were on set. I always move a little slow. Its frightening, too, because you have to key breathing. Its a real panic. Thanks for putting that out there. We were laughing so hard. Anyway i was trying. I was trying to use the natural breaks. You can take your time coming back. Relax. Well continue that in just a second. Lets get you caught up with some of the corporate news. General motors recalling 3 million more cars for ignition switch problems. Gm saying the ignition can be jarred out of the run position. Power brakes, power steering and the air bags could be affected. The engineer who designed those defective switches also designed the switches on the latest batch. He might be the right guy to do it. He knows the pit falls, obviously. Knows what can go wrong and hell make sure that doesnt happen. The good news, he was fired after the earlier recall. Here we are. No, no, he was responsible oh, i see. He was responsible for the problem on both vehicles. Okay. I see. And these are recalled yeah. The guy from the first problem is behind the second problem. Also with apple, they reached an out of Court Settlement in an ebook price fixing lawsuit. That claim and settlement still needs court approval. Details have not been released as to what the terms of that settlement looks like. Bob dudley making an announcement in london today that coincided with the arrival of the chinese premier for a threeday visit. Lets now get to mcc with the latest situation in iraq. Michelle Caruso Cabrera joins us from the northern part of that country. Theres probably a delay, michelle, so ill just keep talking for a second. When i read it, it sounded to me like maybe some of these guys werent just for the embassy, but might be providing some type of advisory Logistical Support if there are drone strikes or something. Did i get that right or not . Its hard to tell. So the vast majority are for marines going to the embassy in baghdad and then to two consulates in the country, one where the Oil Production is and another consulate here in kurdistan in the northern party. But it did sound like there were support personnel advisory. Hard to tell, joe. And, you happen, its hard to make sense of it all in what we could call the fog of war here. Let me give you some of the other headlines. That is the first headline, up to 2735 troops are going to be deployed. The other headline is that nbc has confirmed that the u. S. And iran did discuss the situation in iraq and the margins of a meeting in vienna yesterday where the main event was supposed to away meeting about Irans Nuclear program. Now, they were quick to say the source said that theyre not talking about military coordination in any way, but both the iranians and the u. S. Are not happy with the sunni insurgency in the northwest of the country and they both find these two countries that are normally enemies on the same side of the issue in this particular case. There is fighting in bashir, which is south of kirkuk. The price of oil, hovering near highs, pulling back a little bit as we wait to see if any of the fighting gets further south where the vast majority of the production is. Bill dudley, the ceo of bp was on earlier today. Were going to play that sound bite in the next hour. We talked about production in the south. Bottom line is, he said it hasnt been affected. Our colleague, Richard Engle has gotten into pagd baghdad and he knows the city really well and he reports that the place is certainly empty. People have left. Theyre concerned about whether or not the militants are going to make it south. Theres an intense amount of security. As we think about richard being in baghdad and the war that the United States fought there and the invasion, we put together some statistics since the war, the invasion and the subsequent occupation from march 2003 to december 2011. Its believed nearly 134,000 iraqis died. 4,487 u. S. Soldiers were killed. The cost, 800 billion. But when you add in Everything Else, va costs that went along with it, youre easily somewhere between 1 trillion to 3 trillion. So numbers that you think as you look at iraq right now and whether its all of that effort, money, lives lost is just going to be a waste as we watch the country fall apart. Back to you. All right. The more we think about it, though, you just wonder if it was ever really right for we think of it as its only natural people want personal freedom and democracy and Everything Else. But you look at the hundreds and thousands of year old sectarian differences there and thats why we wonder if it was ever possible. Thats why someone wrote a book and said biden has been wrong on every Foreign Policy decision in the last ten years, but maybe he was radio about splitting it into three. And, you know, the boarders have changed so many times in the past couple of years, anyway, is it really that set in stone that theres no such thing as a kurdistan or a shiite area or a sunni area, michelle . Well, its interesting. When you look at the current boarders right now, they really stem from when this area sat in a room somewhere, looked at a map in europe and drew lines not relevant to the ethnicities that lived here, the languages spoken here. If a democracy had come along in a more wholistic way and if people had joined together in a more wholistic way, would you say a kurdistan . Would you see a sunni country or a shiite country signed back during world war i in secret . So, yeah. By the way, in the papers here every day, the map that they called the new iraq and the new iraq and the papers in kurdistan. All right, michelle, were going to continue this discussion. Joining us now, retired lieutenant jay garner, the interim administrator for post war iraq. In a nutshell, jay, is your take that we really cant help much here and that maybe iran has even a you know, a bigger interest in all of this and we should actually defer to iran on how to handle this . I think the only price we should support there is enough to support our people in the emp basy. The iranians cannot afford to have a sunni terrorist on their bord border. What we should be doing is guaranteeing the survival of kurdistan. Those are the people that i think the Bush Administration and cheney, when they said were going to be greeted with flowers, those are the people who i think initially we were trying to unencumber saddam husain. Did we not taken into account what the problems would be . The kurds have always been the most pro probably part of iran. Around 2004, we turned our back on the kurds and have not done anything to support them since then. Its a shame. That was part of the whole thing, and we didnt go into baghdad and we didnt finish and with the kurds, when you say fought with us, you meant on the same side and then we didnt provide the support after we left. They were our allies in 2003. So let me ask you kind of a political question. If the president had not removed all of our troops in 2011, there are going to be people that blame him for giving back all the gains that we made at great costs to our country. And would you say thats a false narrative because it was never going to last . Well, i think its more than that. I think you go back to 2003. If we had set them up in a federal system, can kurds are already in a federal system and had a shia federal system and a suni federal system, i think he would have been ethnically comfortable. Then we disbanded the army. Its impossible almost for us to stabilize a cup. Then we turn our back on the kurds. Around 2008 we turned our back on the sunnis. 2010 we supported maliki when we knew he was pro iranian. 2011 we pulled out of there without a staff of forces, didnt leave an adequate force there to accomplish anything that we needed to accomplish to take care of the gains that we had made. 2014 we again supported malachite after we supported him for four years purse cute the sunnis and the kurds and support the iran i cant knows. This has been a long time building. In late 2013, early 2014, we saw the black flags flying and did nothing about it. So this has been coming for a long time. But lieutenant, is there anything we could do to set democracy in motion or is that not possible . Yeah, i think theres a lot you can do. We were molding elections for the iraqs, having a democratic government and a very poor americans. Protective. Theyre modernized now because of all the weapons. Jay, one of the things we worried about is a terrorist enclave, you know, thats why we went there in the first place. So are you telling me that iran, even though they still call us the great satan, they might prevent that from happening because its in their own interests not to allow a terrorist haven to form in iraq . So we can let them make sure that theres not a terrorist Training Ground that would herd america to prevent that from happening . Well, i dont see how the iranians can allow a sunni terrorist organization to hold that part of iraq right on their border. I just dont see that the iranians will allow that to happen. And i certainly dont think that we should put any americans troops in there to try to defend malika or their government. Since ran i cant knows have put in troops to iraq, and all that has done away with the myth that there could ever be a multi religious or multi ethnic iraq. So i think what were seeing right now is the breakup of iraq. And what we need to do is make sure that part of iraq has great resources stay stable, stay safe and we should guarantee their production. Can i just ask, do the kurds still feel that way . Theyre less pro american than we used to be because we lied to them the last several years. Weve lied to them, both administrations. Shifting allegiance, the enemy of our enemy. We back both sides. Its like you need watering it down to keep everything straight. General, we appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Lets check on the markets this morning. Take a look at the futures. Youll see they are indicated slightly higher. At this point, it looks like the dow futures are up by about 33 points above fair value. S p up by 2 1 2. Still looking at incredibly High Oil Prices to where weve been over the last couple of years. Theyre down about 49 cents today for wti. 106. 41 a barrel. We have that fed meeting that kicks off today to determine interest rates. We have had a press conference with the announcement that comes out tomorrow. And the dollar this morning looks like it is stronger against the euro trading at 1. 3568. Its up against the yen, 101. 98. Gold prices with Everything Else thats happening are down by about 8. 1,266. 90 an ounce. All right. So you know that hockey is over. And the reds are five games below. 500. You watched it . I think i have caught the world cup oh, my gosh, i have been waiting for this day. Its finally like ive got a surprise. The guy hits the ball and you like it . I have a surprise especially for us because there is a match between the u. S. And ghana starting at 6 00 p. M. Eastern time. I was messaging my associates here. If you didnt tune in from the beginning, you missed the first goal of the match right away. Then fast forward to the to the 81st minute of play when i was talking to dean with showing this and then he said oh, no, and i had it on delay. So i didnt know why he said oh, no. But ghana blasted the equalizer. What a goal it was. He kicked it to the right of the goalie. And then a very intense couple of minutes, which included a header. The first time a substitute has ever scored, it was the 86th minute. They added five minutes, soot last five minutes, between 90 minutes and 95 minutes was nail biting time. And actually, i was watching and my phone went off and i looked at it. It was from cbs sports and it said u. S. Wins. And i still had four minutes. Anyway, in what has been called the group of deaths for opponents i am so glad that youre into this now. People said at the time when it was tie, dont blow it because it looks like ghana was going photo win for a while because you still get one point. Now, yesterday, you only people you know are the people that you saw at the safari enclave. Here is my friend. Remember i said i had a friend from ghana and you made fun of me. You didnt believe it. Thats this morning. That is justice. He agreed to pose with you even after ghana loss lost . He gave me tons of grooe grief in 2010, tons of grief in 2006. I get my coffee there every morning. So we posed with the daily news to show you. That was this morning. Not going to stop. That is proof of life. And just to show you that we, over time, our families have been together, but my daughter did a big report on ghana maus because of justice who told us all about the most democratic place thats justice daughter. Thats the project. Yes. And youll see where this is, andr andrew. You can go from new york city over here to ghana and there was accra. You go straight to where you have 20 people waiting on you and youve got the elephants drinking water. But that is so, you see . I like it. Good for pup. You see my my video . And the Bike Exchange they Exchange Gifts and Everything Else and shes a great basketball player and goes to a Charter School and gets straight as. There you go. Good. So there. What do you say when i told you i had my friend from ghana now. Do you believe me now . You didnt believe me. You made a joke. You see, now you know. This is true. Youre not outing me. Proof of life. Yes. Next. Up, coming up, this mornings executive edge, taking on robo callers, those annoying callers keep coming at dinner dinnertime. And cnbc is getting ready to roll out the disrupter list. Well focus on the top ten coming up at 6 30 eastern time. Welcome back, everybody. Right now, its time for the executive edge. Kidding, kidding. A new report today on the state of charitable giving. Americans gave an estimate of 335 billion to charity last year. That was up 3 from 2012. There were signs of donations to institutions like universities, hospitals and the arts are very healthy. Theyve been driven by cash from wealthy ben factors. Meantime, giving to church and social organizations, that is flat. The concern with this, guys, is it sounds like we are get intoog this wealth argument in the middle of charitable giving, too. Thats what it is, though. Im going to be boring here. Its an inequality and i always get tagged as being the or is it a story of declining Church Attendance . On the religious piece that could be. But i thought the larger take away was when you looked at universities and hospitals which are getting the most money and the biggest dollars that that was coming from the high end, so what do you do about the middle piece . I think Church Giving and religious giving made up Something Like 31 . It was the only section that was down. The social Services Group were up, too, but up by less than the arts and some of the other University Institutions and hospitals. A lot of wealthy donors stopped giving to universities and hospitals and the arts in particular after the crisis, the financial crisis back in 2008 because they wanted to make sure they were giving to social services to make sure they were helping care of the homeless and the hungry. So i read through the whole story, and it didnt have the breakdown of the overtone of the piece and the overtone of the numbers was trying to suggest again, i wanted to see all of the numbers. I wanted to his the breakdown from 2007 on. Because they did make the point that some of the wealthy donors stopped giving to the arts and other areas. I dont know if this is a oneyear trend and if you looked at it over five or ten years how that would even out. But it doesnt surprise me to hear Church Giving is down because Church Attendance is down. The whole inequality thing that we always talk about, andrew, and the inequality of income, the most charitable people i know are some of the richest people. And they made it, most of them are selfmade. Then theyve created enormous wealth and give so much away that would not be there. There would not be a Langone Medical Center if it were not for langone. I agree. We have to admit we dont want the high end to accrue wealth rike that because theyre incredibly philanthropic. It would be better if we took the low end and brought it up. Otherwise, how could you do that . How can you cap income at 500,000 and pay 80 taxes on anything above that . That is redistribution and it doesnt allow for Wealth Creation and it would be counterproductive to trying to help everyone rise, rise up. And that is why i was actually thinking about this last night, that you asked me how do i come up with this stuff . I think all day long about things to talk to you about. And i think youre thinking about your column or something. But i think youre thinking about on the one hand, you think about income equality and on the other, you think about like a 1 er or vacation or something. Thats what i right . No, no, no. What was that place . Thats darchbt argume differ argument. What is your argument . I say its misframed so we need to lift the bottom half up. Thats clear. And the middle class up. But to address a problem however, i think that people generally likely want the markets to be credible and fair. People want the system to feel fair. And unfortunately when it comes to taxes and other things, people you dont think we have an aggressive tax system here . One thing i will say, guidguideys one piece that struck out in this, people who make 100,000 or less are giving major portions of their income back. Much more opinion. 3. 3 versus 2. 5 for people who are in the middle. Neither one of those is very h