Of data on the docket. Building up to fridays jobs report, today we have december auto sales. Tomorrow, its ism nonmanufacturing and factory orders. Wednesday we get the adp. And well have International Trade and minutes from the last fmoc meeting. And thursday the initial claims and the friday payroll report. How are traders viewing 2015 . So far with a slant to rise 8. 2 this year. The big drivers they are looking at economic expansion and earnings growth. Oil prices dominating the market this morning with wti and brent losing half their value since mid2014 with prices falling to 5 1 2year lows this morning. Among the headlines, iraqs oil exports were at the highest level since 1980 last month. Also, we can tell you the new congress meets this week and the incoming chairman of the Senate Commerce and Transportation Committee says a gas tax is on the table with them not rising since 1993. I dont, joe, drive, but i think 18. 4 cents per gallon for unleaded. I think its 24. 4 for diesel. Senator john thune says this is to help with and existing shortfall with the existing plan expiring in may. Well see how that debate unfolds. They are arguing on how to do this by state. Well look at the stocks to watch this morning. Shares of cempra get a boost. The oral version of the lead antibiotic leading the main goal in a late stage trial. I was alerted to this by our interpret pharmaceutical reporter mike huckman on this being a big story today. Appreciate that headsup. And leaders of the American Airlines pilots union approved the carriers contract offer. Union members now must vote on it. If approved there will be a retroactive 23 wage hike. And Dreamworks Animation appointing new copresident s of feature Animation Studios chief creative officer is stepping down. A check on the markets as we told you what strategists expect this year but thats not the way the futures are headed. Right now the dow futures are down by just over 80 points. The s p futures look to open down 10. 5 points. And the nasdaq is down by close to 20 points. You have to believe a lot of that is concern on whats happening in europe right now with greece. If greece might actually end up being let go from the European Union. Thats something that has been talked about. Angela merkel making comments in suggesting that they might not be too upset with Something Like that happening and thats causing concern. Well take a look at what is happening in europe where a lot of this is playing out at this point. Right now the european markets are all indicating weaker. Greece down by 3. 7 . France is off by. 80 . The ftse in london down by. 70 . And the german dax down by. 50 . The nikkei was down a quarter percent. The hang seng down by. 50 . And the shanghai is down as well. Well take a look at where gold is trading this morning. Youll see at this hour it looks like gold is up 4. 20. 1,190 down. A piece in the journal has it very close in greece. I dont know what its going to be on the 27th. But more and more people are starting to sort of spin the cycle that it would not be that disruptive. You saw the draghi piece in the times. Such fundamental problems in parts of europe that they blame now a lot of it on the common currency that has not really worked out in terms of its been a six or sevenyear sort of twilight. And its been a stretch for reforms not being put in place, either. You are trying to put the changes in place but the reforms never came about. They are too important, not just the jergermans laying around in the sup all day long. They dont want to give them more money. If greece would exit they are never going to switch currencies. Lithuania, i dont know what their currency is i forget. They are going to switch. They are happy but just this tiny they want to be wow, we have euros now as part of the trading buck, but the big country like germany, to try to heard off the cats when you dont have a common fiscal authority, its almost impossible. And then countries that get the austerity from the bureaucrats in brussels and their people spend years trying to live up to the expectations of the bureaucrats, i dont know the whole thing could be a big Angela Merkel is suggesting we are in a better position to allow greece to exit. Spain has come back a long way. But as you mentioned, you look at italy and some of the situations they still have there was did you read the piece over the weekend that suggested, someone was saying this would be Lehman Brothers squared for the greeks. If hes on hes on. I like the equation that he sent us because he had the term i was going to talk about the markets and use some of his concerns. Because what went from all these positive things if you look more closely at what a lot of these things mean like the drop in oil prices you look at what that means when you take and connect all the dots or look at whats happening in china, driving by the huge ghost towers and stadiums where no one plays, its a lot to worry about in the year. Going from positivity to negativity. We are just starting. The beginning of the year dont we get to do that . Now we are wondering, what will 2015 bring . Because its weird because its arbitrary to just put a cutting point on 2014. You have to measure it from somewhere. Given whats happening with the euro below 1. 20, oil breaking under 50. Nineyear low for the euro. I mean things that make you start to wonder and reassessing value. And the oil prices too, there are major parts of the world that were addicted to 100 oil. Everything they do is based on that. And it may stay here for a while. We may have broken the back of the opec cartel. But you said thats a great thing. It is for consumers. But heres what happens, those economies slow down. Our dollar gets even stronger. I said that a couple months ago and you said who cares about those economies. I didnt really say that andrew. And i dont think you said that either. The dollar gets stronger and its harder to export. Sooner or later we import some of this inflation maybe, and the slowdown that so many of these developing countries need. And they were using our qe. And the qe3 ship has sailed. You are wearing the tie. Qe3 and it looks like its sailed. We would never wear this because it has color. Yours are like do you ever see your ties, if you ever took a the festival and you spray the thing going like that if you spray every single color, thats what comes out. I wear i wear the classic, this is is a maroon tie. It is like a mud. I would wear that tie. No you wouldnt. Lets ring in you know the dating fans why dating bengals fans is a good idea . Why . Because they never expect to get a ring. The bengals will never win. Someone sent that to me on twitter. Who . They want you off the bandwagon. You add mitted you were drawn in to watch it again. I left and never came back. It was just it was right to what i knew would happen. However, you were rooting for the steelers. Yeah a little bit. But i was rooting for the steelers to undercut some of the other people that love the steelers. And it worked. Im angry at them in the first place. And it worked. It did. Investors have plenty of key data to look at. The fed minutes in the first friday jobs report of 2015. Come on, is it time for another jobs report . Joining us is lou this morning. And on the economy, we have Steven Wright global chief strategist at citi private bank. Lou, are you just being a guy that thinks absentment and consensus, we are going to do 8. 2 in the bag. Does that make you nervous every one of these guys never right is coming up with 8. 2 . 8. 2 on the stock market . S p, yes. Its all right. I dont know what youre supposed to do at the beginning of the year. Last year i said the market would move 12 and i was right it moved 12 . I dont want to listen to the other people then. You tell me what it is going to do this year. Except that i thought it was going to move 12 lower. Okay. And this year im going with 12 again but not going to make a decision on which way until later in the year. Maybe december. Smart. But i think that theres the litany of things you just went through are very important for the market overall because that sort of sentiment and whether it goes into the bond market or stock market will be determined by a lot of the things you said. And i think the fed and the Housing Market reacts to the fed is howto be the most important thing for where the s p ends up this year. My estimate for going down 12 for the s p was because i thought that during the taper of the qe that the markets would act as they did when qe ended for both one and two of the strategies. When in other words the s p went down at the end of qe 1 and 2. And the yields on the tenyear went down when qe ended. So this year when the taper began, the tenyear yield fell from the beginning of the year and continued to fall throughout the end of the year. The s p after a stumble in the early year had a steady gape but then in midseptember, the day after the fed made it clear that qe was dead and gone after october, the market had a 10 decline or just about a 10 decline in a few weeks. And on october 15th, the s p was flat on the year. So i think that i think that how the market reacts to the fed in con junction with the other things going on is one of the keys. Steven you have written like a thesis on the asymetric look of things but this will sum it up. Acute negative effects are some, but kind of a widespread event for a lot of other people. You cant just look at the net effects being positive for the u. S. Economy in isolation and see to ignore the big risk things. We are going to have sovereign debt stress. We are going to have tremendous problems of the marginal producers. This is hair whole life as the oil price. For others we all drive cheaper. We all transport things around but we were okay with 100 oil. It is net stimulus but expect a lot of volatility out of this with a long tail effect from the variety of things in the latter. Im positive on the u. S. Outlook and the u. S. Economy in the current year but i think economists probably underestimated how strong of a positive effect it had. The positive spillover of growth is oil booming in this case. Purchasing power for americans benefits when the dollar strengthens. But it seems like all multinationals get hurt by that. If we have a nineyear high on the dollar and we are still at zero, does that nineyear high anticipate where the yields are going up or does the dollar get stronger as yields go up . It has further to go. Cant that eventually hurt . Well, eventually it will hurt, but you look at the ranges the u. S. Traded regulated dollar fell eight of ten years in the last decade. You look at a lot of relationships in the markets to be extremes. The u. S. Tenyear notes four times the level of german tenyear yields. When you look at currencies and the we are at low levels. But it is a record low spread to germany. These sorts of things actually do matter. Surprisingly with as low as the yields are right now. And there are strong inflows from the rest of the world saying, this is not a 2 yield for me. This is a 9 return in my currency. So this is important. What you mentioned about the overseas earnings it is important that we always see the up flows into our marketplace that we see the dollar strengthening drawing investors into the assets they have. Thats large cap u. S. Equities amazingly attractive around the rest of the world. Lou, i was thinking 20 with the market this year and not say up or down. But even there you could be wrong if its not that big as far as magnitude. You have picked the perfect number because 12 it will probably be one or the other and it will be up or down. I guess you could be wrong if it stays where it is too, right . You are very sly. You are a genius. Do you think even the people that we ask they know we have to give them a number but no one really believes this and its just we all just sort of discount even the sort of whole mechanism of trying to do it on january 5th or something . It is a fools game isnt it . To say what the market is going to do. It always has been for me. And i just theres too many variables. You can say, well, these are my best guesses on how the dollar is going to go on how the consumers going to be et cetera. Then you plug it into a spreadsheet and say, oh this is what its going to be on the year. Or you wait to see a general Opinion Survey and go with that. Even a lot of times that is what happens. Even if someone spotted you, ill give you what the multiple will be and you figure out the earnings. Or if they give you the earnings and you figure out the multiple you still couldnt do it. Okay. What we are seeing today, we had a lot of positive stuff happen in november and december. And january should be interesting because we kind of predicting this could happen. We are down 80 today . January should be interesting. The thing that merkel said greece may or may not be in the euro at some point in the future, thats similar to what she said back in late 2011. And thats important since the odds of the euro membership, being as it is in the future the odds of that changing are not zero. Thats very important because if one country leaves there could be an advantage to early movers and somebody else may follow. At least there could be the expectation someone follows. Okay. You guys are im riding on what you said because its the new year you are the first guys predicting. Oh, january 2nd we did. But this is the first with all of us together. So essentially it didnt happen before. Lou, steven, thank you. Still to come in this hour well get a live report from the midwest where residents are preparing for the arctic blast. Strong winter storms expected across the country today. Plus, ben white is joining us onset with his stories to watch this year including the early jockeying for the white house. Jeb bush will be in greenwich later this week. And this is a sad and strange story, a Hedge Fund Founder killed in his new york city apartment. Well have the details that when we return in just a moment. E financial noise financial noise financial noise financial noise welcome back to squawk box. We are watching the arctic blast that is underway and well go to mike seidel from the Weather Channel channel. Reporter it is cold in International Falls with their temperature at 28 below. The windchill 50 below zero. Two arctic air masses coming across the canadian u. S. Border this week to impact everybody east of the rockies except for florida and the immediate gulf coast. They wont get as cold as last month. This includes the northeast in a couple days but it is the windchill. You have to layer up wear the hats and gloves and cover the extremities. In the summertime we talk about frying an egg on the sidewalk in midtown manhattan. How about this . I cracked an egg on a piece of paper at 10 below zero theres your frozen egg this morning for breakfast in minneapolis st. Paul. How about that . Along with the call, we have a clipper to bring a swath of snow to bring it across iowa and chicago. They get three to four inches tonight and some of the snow will linger to the east coast, new york and philadelphia tomorrow. A little bit there, an inch or less but the bottom line is the next flee three to four days bundle up it is january, after all. It took five minutes to freeze to the paper . Reporter about five minutes, yes. Go back in the truck to get somewhat warm. Reporter im going to save this for kernan. Im back on eggs in a big way. Eggs are the perfect food. Protein. If you can just deal with the its the cholesterol issues. Which dont have a problem with but you dont want to create it. Just eat the egg whites. I like the yolk. You dont do hardboiled, do you . Im on a new kick. Almonds and not kale but green things. What is it january 5th . Yeah. Yep. We are all on the bandwagon for a few days. The Huffington Post i have to check once in a while, five foods you cant eat if you have a belly. Im going through they dont let you get to it ever. I know how to buy insurance policy and know how to buy a ford escort. I click i dont know what to click on and never found it. I never found the five foods that youre not allowed to eat. I can imagine. They are bread, pasta. Alcohol is not good. Alcohol is not good. Candy. Anything white. Chocolate can be good because it is a healthy fat. It can be but only dark chocolate. If the weather has you stuck inside Mark Zuckerberg suggests you read a book. Move over oprahs book club. The facebook founder is creating a yearend book page encouraging friends to read a book every week in to 20 15. Hes focusing on learning different cultures. His first book is the end in power. The title First Published in 2013. And it was out of stock on amazon yesterday. How did you like that pronounce area . I give you credit. I would just say the name of the book. Youre right, you would have. Youre on your own finding the author. 2016 and the race for the white house kicking into high gear. Everyone is talking about the potential for another bush versus clinton election. So what can we expect from the economic platforms in the two frontrunners . Ben white is here happy new year. Happy new year to you. We mentioned in the tease that jeb bush is coming up north if the weather doesnt get to him first. Hes coming to greenwich. The homeland of the bush clan. Then clinton is doing a little work in the midwest this week. Yes. The potential for a matchup is there, although jeb bush will have a lot harder time getting the republican nomination than Hillary Clinton will in getting the democratic. The wall street journal which you pick up this morning says Iowa Democratic leaders are troubled by the prospect Hillary Clinton could win the states 2016 president ial caucus without a serious challenge. They are desiring a more liberal candidate or a more robust debate. Even though the wisdom is shes it, there seems to be a sense people want somebody else instead. I think as far as independents go they think its i think they are worried it is more of the same with obamas policies. If she moves left shes in a real tough spot. Hell have to move left. But i think independents think shes too liberal and the Democratic Base think shes too wall street. Thats very true. The iowa thing is she had trouble in iowa the last time around and they like to see a contest. They would like to see Elizabeth Warren or something in the caucuses to make it a real debate. And they want a d