The iea also warning that weak demand raises the risk of social instability. But Goldman Sachs executive calls lower oil a blessing. There are a lot of positives to the economy from the Energy Situation to the resurgence of housing to the most important thing of having reversed all the leverage that was in the system and kind of reset the clock. So you can take something thats a blessing, lower price of oil which once you think of like a tax cut. Take a look at the price of crude. Youre looking at wti crude at 59. 33. What are you smiling about, joseph . How many times have you heard that Lower Oil Prices like a tax cut . I probably heard that a thousand times in my life. But i agree. But i dont know if thats the you know . I saw that yesterday, too, that he said that. I was like, thank you, but i knew that. Right . Like a tax cut. We know that. But its amazing how many people push back. There was even a guy tweeting this morning meaning yeah you pay 50 cents less for gas and lose thousands in your portfolio. But it gives it to the people who dont have portfolios. The people that arent losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in their portfolio in the stock market. People who need it the most. And that helps the consumer. And the consumer is twothirds of our economy. We should say the drop in oil prices has been putting pressure on stock markets today in europe and the United States. Take a look at whats happening with our futures this morning. They are indicated to open lower. It is all but certain this is going to end a sevenweek winning streak for the dow and s p 500. Check out dow down triple digits. Believe it or not, this isnt the worst weve seen this morning. Right now down by about 111 points below fair value. S p futures are off by 13 points and the nasdaq is down by 34. And a drop in Energy Stocks putting pressure on the european averages as well. Big declines there with the cac down 1. 6 . The ftse down 1. 5 . Only greece is seeing the slightest of rebounds after a really, really lousy week. Government shutdown been avoided. Maybe thats responsible for the market selloff today. The house passed a 1. 1 trillion spending bill. How long is that 1. 1 trillion, how quickly do we go through that . Couple of weeks . Maybe. I think were back up by january. Anyway, that will keep the government running through the end of the fiscal year in september. The bill got exactly one more vote than it needed to pass. The senate has to work through some procedural rules before it can give final approval to the bill. But it passed the twoday extension of current funding. Lets talk about the slide in oil and its potential impact with us. Not larry bird. Larry bosset. Im trying to figure out your comments because we talked off camera about the slide in oil prices. You said near term good, longterm not so good. Because putin invades poland or something . I think this. You know, there is a huge transfer to the consumer economy. Thats good obviously for all the reasons and all the statements have been made about it over the last couple days. But in the longer term, i hope it doesnt reduce production in the United States to make a big contribution. Some of the people track rg not going to be able to make money on it. I i dont want us to lose this Energy Independence were slowly gaining by virtue of this price. So on the other hand, the saudis can change this. They caused it by virtue of not cutting last time they met. They dont like iran, as you know. And theyd like to stick it to mr. Putin for awhile as well. If they dont like the price, they can curb production. So im more of the mind its a shorter term phenomena than some of the people are. Its funny everything is half full or half empty. To say, you know, thats what we were trying to do here was find a lot of oil. So then we find it and then the price naturally goes down. We should have known that was going to be one of the consequences. For the first time there was some people in the world in our continent who wanted high priced oil. It did a lot for the economy. Instead of a user we turned into a supplier. I think weve got an interesting thing going on in the economy. All the economic indices look positive in the United States. Not so much in the rest of the world. The Fourth Quarter is still 2. 5 . Next year is 3 . Thats hardly a blowout. And even in the robust jobs report of 321,000, if they had seasonally adjusted the way they did november 13, it would have been no one can explain why its so different. You get to a situation where i still think the economy is needs to be bolstered. While Everybody Knows that taxes and immigration are the big three for the Congress Next year, i think they can do some things to give more impetus to the economy. One would be to detoxify obamacare. Youre not going to repeal it as long as the president is in office. But you can get rid of the individual mandate. You can kill the health care tax. If you get rid of the mandate, it doesnt work. You can modify it opposed to get rid of it. But the way it is now, it kills Small Business. They got a medical device tax. If they just do those four things they could help Small Business. You know, we got the h 1 visa issue where we cap at 88,000 even though twice are applying for it. In other words, we dont bring talented people into the country. We dont pass trade pacts. This transpacific agreement has great potential. I think those things in addition to looking at the regulatory burdens of Small Business can help the smaller guys and also give impetus. You give every grand kid a gift . I do. The wife do that . Most of it. She lets me fill out the card and slip a little bit of green back in there. Youre lighter after how many grand kids . 31. Youre feeling lighter after that. Its an expensive time of year. 31 . God bless you. Man, thats a lot of youre like santa. I guess maybe you should have thought about that. Thats way too late now. Well have much more with larry throughout the show including tax predictions for 2015 as well. Theres a lot of buzz surrounding the 75 billion diagnostic Lab Testing Industry specifically one company theranos. They claim they can inexpensively test for hundreds of medical conditions. Theres an article this week in the new yorker and it is by ken auletta. He investigates the controversy surrounding the secrecy behind their testing methods. He joins us to talk about. Also talk about some stuff going on in the media youve heard about sony and others. But were going to get to kens article first. Good morning to you. Morning, andrew. Congratulations on the piece. Tell us, ive now combed through this piece. What i cant figure out is whether im supposed to think in the end that theranos is on to something or they arent. It sounds like they are. It sounds like theres a lot of money behind something that could make this world cheaper and better. But theres folks on the other side who think its not as effective as theyre suggesting. Thats because they havent seen the machinery or the peer review articles attesting to whether the theranos needleless test works. The fact is walgreens has signed up. They now have it in 41 stores. They expect to have it in most of 8200 stores. Hospitals are signing up. Cleveland clinic soon to sign up. Its a real threat to the existing infrastructure of needle testing blood tests. But there are questions about it. But this young dropout from stanford, elizabeth holmes, who started the company, shes 30 years old. Company is valued at 9 billion. She owns half of it. She is a missionary. And she knows her medicine. And shes got a high powered board consisting of people like George Shultz and henry kissinger. So its a threat to the normal medical system. You dont believe what some of her rivals say. That is correct. I think shes the real deal. I think there are questions about it and i think the company is overly secretive. Theyre an 11yearold company and theyre acting like theyre in their first year. And they shouldnt. Some of the competitors say you cant properly test with that little amount of blood relative to the viles that we traditionally have been taking over the years. The finger prick actually damages tissue and capillaries and therefore its corrupted in the test. Thats something that has to be tested over a period of time whether thats true or not. But one of the basic facts here is that between 30 and 60 , she uses the higher number and one of her competitors use the lower number. Dont take the blood test. And a major reason they dont take the blood test is fear of needles. Not the only reason. Its inconvenient, its during work hours, and its expensive. But nevertheless, thats a big number. And if in fact it is based on a fear of needles, her lack of a needle test could get more people to test. I dont know as much about i, you know, looked at the notes but i havent read the entire article. So i understand intellectual property and that you dont want to let out any secrets, but this isnt just like some black box where you stick something in there. We must have some knowledge about the technique shes using. I would think you could take the results of her test and then compare to a larger more standardized test and see what its matching up. And what is different about her technique. You must have tom idea. How are they doing it . They are doing it thats one of the interesting questions here. Because when i asked her that question, please describe and i did it several times what happens in that machine. Ive seen the machinery that they use. But i cant explain the chemistry that they use. And i asked her to explain it, and thats where she lapses into this secret mode. Thats very strange. I mean, it could be a i mean, you can protect your intellectual property but you ought to be able to have some general description of what youre using. And is there data that shows that they come up 99 of the time with the same findings as a larger joe, she claims they do. Claims . The American College do three audits a year. And they wont release it. She claims it is proven to be thats the most interesting thing about the piece. Its very strange. I heen, i dont know. How does it work . You had had your blood taken . I had it done twice. You go to a window at the walgreens store and they ask you what blood test you want. You show them your i. D. And insurance card. You pick out the test you want or from the doctors note, you go into a Wellness Center and they warm your hand with plastic like a bandaid. Then they take something and do a finger prick on a finger. You hardly feel it. Its a pinch. Two drops of blood are scooped up, put into a refrigerator unit which are then taken to the lab. And the tests are done. But its literally two drops of blood. I could see id feel a lot better if it was one of the leaders in the business. Im sure well get to that point soon and it should be there. But its weird it happened this way with a dropout. Howd she develop this . There are a lot of people who wont get the test done, but would she say its better to do it on if youre not afraid of needles to do it the Old Fashioned way . No, she thinks she has developed a chemistry and the software to actually be more sophisticated in their tests. Whether thats true or not will be determined over a period of time. But she believes shes afraid of needles. Thats one of the impetuses behind this. But she believes her test is better. It has the potential one thing, ken. Its take an long time to come to the market, if you will. And i thought if this is a revolutionary technology, the big guys buying it. I understand, for example, from one contact i have that some of the big guys are not interested in buying it which causes some skepticism, it seems to me as to how real it is. Larry, i think shes not interested in selling it. Nonetheless there might have been overtures. Im sure there have been. But she saint moving on that. Shes raised 400 million. Shes cash positive, she claims. She wont reveal her revenues or profits. But the fact is theyre expanding and they havent reached out for more money to expand. So theyre obviously generating real income. They do a lot of test for Major Companies who are obviously very pleased because they continue to fund thearanos. We should all read the story. Theres other news going on in an area you spent a large part of your career focusing. Which is entertainment and hollywood world. I want to talk about this massive hack attack at sony and now all the dirty laundry and nastiness thats been revealed this week unmasking hollywood to some extent. What do you think the real ripple effects are . Are heads going to roll as a result of this . I suspect they may, but one of the questions that needs to be asked here is we as journalists would not steal a document and publish it. It would be theft and we could consider it. These documents have been stolen yet were publishing the results of these private conversations. I think it really merits some discussion as to the ethical questions that are involved in that. So you wouldnt publish . Pardon . Would you publish . I would be i would think twice. I would want to have a long discussion with my staff if i were an editor whether to publish this stuff. We go through this when we talk about the private lives of public figures. We decided we werent going to publish it and then various websites start publishing. And we rush to replicate. And theyre setting a standard we shouldnt allow. Here it may be the same thing. You read these emails from amy pascal and rudin and others. Are we supposed to take away from all this . That theyre terribly indiscreet. Theyre very sorry they did it. But its i mean, any of our emails were looked at, we joke. If they saw the light of day, they might be embarrassing to us. Is there a legitimate business fallout, though were for sony or amy pascal . What happens here . First of all, youve got peoples Social Security numbers that are out there. Thats a big deal. But b, for the people negotiating with sony to see how what kind of money theyre making and what kind of money theyre setting aside, that becomes a real business changer for a lot of people in hollywood. And you think, therefore, if you are a star or a producer or a creator, you decide im not going to go with sony. Im going to go with somebody else . Because by the way, it may very well be that those numbers exist at other firms, we just dont know it. And those emails might exist in other places. But they may demand to know what those numbers are at these other studios. By the way, Angelina Jolie is not going to do work with scott rudin anymore, you can be sure of that. We will continue to do work with you. Always enjoy your work. And appreciate you being here. Thank you. Another country that could be saying no to uber. In case you didnt know it, today is National Ugly sweater day. Wed like you to tweet us the ugliness you are Walking Around in today. Where did they do this from . Gross, joe, you got the worst one. Im digging my sweater and my bow tie. Not so bad. Send us your pictures at squawk cnbc. Squawk box will be right back. , aluminum production in south africa, and the Aerospace Industry in the u. S. . At t. Rowe price, we understand the connections of a complex, global economy. Its just one reason over 70 of our mutual funds beat their 10year lipper average. T. Rowe price. Invest with confidence. Request a prospectus or summary prospectus with investment information, risks, fees and expenses to read and consider carefully before investing. I was thinking about htaking this speed test from comcast business. Oh yeah . If they cant give us faster internet or save us money, theyll give us 150 bucks. Sounds like a win win. Guys faster internet . I have never been on the internet and i am doing pretty well. Does he even work here . Dont listen to the naysayer. Take the comcast business speed test. Get faster speeds or more savings, or well give you 150. Comcast business. Built for business. Welcome back to squawk box. The futures now for awhile they were improving a little. It was 130 point ossen the dow down earlier. Its now down 94. The s p is called down 11 for implied open. And the nasdaqs been very volatile lately with 50point moves both ways. And its down 28 where its indicated this morning. The worlds also watching the price of crude dipping below the 60 mark today. This morning it was below 59. Right now above that at 59. 37. Is this is a good thing for the nation and the world . Bill richardson gets into the oil shock at 7 30 a. M. Eastern time. Squawk box will be right back. Take a deeeeep breath in. And. Exhale. Aflac and a gentle wavelike motion. Ahhhahhhhhh. Liberate your spine. Ahhhahhhhhh. Aflac and reach, toes blossoming. Not that great at yoga. Yeah, but when i slipped a disk he paid my claim in just four days. Ahh four days . Yep. See why speed matters, at aflac. Com. shouting location. Heres the location that matters the most. Here. Or here. Or here. Its wherever this is. To get customers to come here and stay here, youre going to need an app that connects to all your systems. So they can bank, shop, do what they need to do, and you gotta do it fast. Before the competition does. Its tough out here; you better be on the right cloud. Today theres a new way to work. And its made with ibm. Mheres our new trainer ensure active heart health. Heart im going to focus on the heart. I minimize my sodium and fat. Gotta keep it lean and mean. Pear uhoh. Heart i maximize good stuff like my potassium. And phytosterols, which may help lower cholesterol. Major im feeling energized already. Avo new delicious ensure active heart Health Supports your heart and body, so you stay active and strong. Ensure. Take life in. Welcome back, everybody. One country isnt jumping on the uber bandwagon. At least not yet. This is a company thats interested from china. Chinese internet giant baidu. It mirrors alibabas in a new round of funding. Currently that values the company at 41 billion. Coming up when we return, americas road to Energy Independence. But former new mexico governor is going to talk to us about the energy boom app and is the single serve wine business about to take off. Kevin oleary is going to tell us about his big investment in zipzi wine. When we come back. Financial noise financial noise financial noise financial noise nobo