Its the buzz story of the morning. Heres the question blowing up on social media. Take a look at this dress. What color do you see . Bring that closer. I saw gold and white. What do you see joe. Gold and white, yeah. If you think it is a simple answer just try polling your friends and family though. Some say gold and white. Others say black and blue. This whole thing started yesterday when a scottish musician posted a picture of the 77 dollar off the rack dress on tumblr and then it went viral. It broke the traffic records viewed 21 million times and counting. Celebrities sports stars and many others weighing in on social media as well. Kim kardashian tweeting what color is that dress, i see white and gold. Kanye sees black and blue. Who is color blind. Well tell you what taylor swift and others have to say later. Thats our lead. Thats interesting. Whaen when are we doing the llama story . Both of these stories make me think it scares me. That were talking about this too. Yeah. But first heres much lesser stories were watching this morning. The big test for the markets today is a growth read. And that is on second the second read on the 4th quarter gdp number. Remember when we were down toward the end . Due at 8 30 eastern. Also on the docket chicago pmi spending home sales and Consumer Sentiment and in europe germanys parliament approved the greek bailout extension that came after germanys finance minister urged approve that athens would not be allowed to blackmail its partners. Funding for the department of Homeland Security will expire at midnight tonight unless Congress Takes action. The senate is set to vote this morning. I dont know. I pig your it will get done. Dont you . Well i hope so. I hope that we dont see a situation where, in this time when were warning about potential dangers of the airlines and airports watching things like isis happen i hope this is something we take seriously. Lets get to this mornings top stocks to watch. Jcpenney shares under pressure after an unexpected loss for the Fourth Quarter and warned of margin improvements for the year. Its decline of more than 1. Thats a big drop. 11 drop for that stock and questions raised after people thinking that retailer was back on track. Also gap earnings beat the street. The Company Announcing a stock buy back and dividend hike but it does say that west coast port delays will hurt its profit for the year. Another retailer crocs. Shares dropping after a forecast of wider than expected decline if First Quarter sales and Weight Watchers looks to be a losing stock today. Subscribers dropping 15 in the quarter. The company is offering a disappointing forecast for this quarter as well. Also herbal life posting better than expected earnings but sales will drop this year. Its blaming currency related issues for the weaker forecast. Lets check on the markets this morning and see what we can expect. So far we have the dow jones indicated down about 8 or so. The s p 500 down 174. Everybody is watching the nasdaq as we slow in on an all time high. Interesting as apple is down. Its that announcement because apple hit 775 and you know we made the point no tree at least so far, except with the jack in the bean stalk, did that tree actually grow to the sky . It grew through the sky. It did . Usually trees dont go to the sky. Usually not but eventually somebody is going to have a billion dollar company. Trillion dollar market cap. Some day. Some day. It just depends on when. Yes. Nasdaq closed within 11 points of 15,000. Right. I started reading a book the other day and i looked at when it was written because they were talking about how rich this woman was. So rich. 17 million. She was like the richest person in the country. What year . 1959. Yeah money overtime. And i read it now im not saying 17 million isnt a lot of money. No, but inflation. But there are more than a few guys worth 17 billion and then putin is worth 100 billion. Were not for sure. Hes still not happy. Europe back on track. Europe. Then well get back to the gold dress. Europe you can see france trading higher but all those except for in grease up based on germany saying okay lets do it. But that situation isnt completely done yet. Lets take a look at asia. Mixed results there with the hang seng showing the most movement and its down. Check out oil. The 10 year note. We get used to it being around 2 or so. Same with the dollar which in term of the euro has stabilize although its still a pretty good time to visit the continent if you have plans to do so this summer at 112. Then the yellow medal. Precious yellow medal. Like the tech heavy nasdaq. Well take a quick look down 4. 4. 4. 50 so far this morning. I love hearing you use some of these phrases you hate. That way i can mail it in even more than normal. I can just have some i dont do that. We have crutches when youre waiting for boards to flip. Things you say to get yourself through it. Well at the end of the day. Its your single best idea. Whats the other one . Keep in mind. If i had to string them all together. Keep in mind, at the end of the day, and going forward, that all eyes will be on that was a good one. Thank you, someone gave me that. On the fed. All right. Lets talk more about some of the big news yesterday and the fall out from that. Everybody from broadband copro vieders to providers to content makers. Aman joins us from washington. Whats the latest. Yesterday we saw the fcc Vote Along Party Lines as expected 32 to pass the Net Neutrality rules. What that means is the Big Broadband providers are not going to be able to have differential pricing or tiered speeds. They want all access on the internet to be even for all websites out there. That gives them access to their customers. Its something that the Big Broadband providers including comcast fought against in a bruising lobbying battle that saw protesters show up at the head of the fccs house last year. Block his drive way and prevent him from getting to work. This thing took off on the internet. Internet commenters making millions of comments at the fcc about their views on Net Neutrality. Yesterday it passed 32 and now its going to be up to the courts. Listen to one of the commissioners on the fcc that voted against this yesterday. Spoke out strongly against it. Said its going to lead to more regulation and more taxation and its going to break up some of the freedoms that we enjoy on the internet. Here he is. Theyre already lawyering up to seek a judicial review of these new rules and given the many glaring legal flaws theyll have plenty. But if this order manages to survive judicial review these will be the consequences. Higher broadband prices slower broadband speeds less deployments, less innovation and viewer occasions for american consumers. Also in the no camp yesterday was verizon which won the internet for the moment yesterday in a lot of viral things on the internet yesterday but verizon putting out this press release objecting to what they call 1930s style rules. What did they do . Put out the press release in morris code to emphasize their point and if that wasnt enough they translated the morris code into legible english but in an Old Fashioned typewriter font as if it was delivered by a fax machine. So everybody is making the point in the most creative way they can here. Including some protestors that showed up yesterday wearing costumes and banging drums and all of that kind of thing. This one not your typical regulatory procedure. A lot of attention on it. The verizon thing was funny. I saw it yesterday but it made me realize that a lot of people blamed verizon for this from the beginning because of the rules set up to ensure Net Neutrality. Verizon took them to court over this and got the rule overturned which lead us to title two as many see as a much bigger problem. Just the whole regulation. Is verizon playing the same card . I heard that the lawyer that originally did all of this for verizon is no longer there. Has taken leave or been asked to leave potentially. Are they still going at this the wrong way . Just in terms of the style of the way theyre going after it theyre mimicking some of the things theyre seeing from the protestors but ultimately what happened here i think is a populous move. Swamped the fcc in terms of their ability to deal with this in the traditional inside the belt way washington fashion. A lot of folks say that tom wheeler would not have landed where he landed yesterday if it was not for the millions of comments out there and then the prodding he got from president obama in november who came out and said he wanted these socalled title 2 regulatory authorities applied to a Net Neutrality. So clearly there was a swing here and part of what it has to do with becky is the fact that voters out there, internet users, they know the content providers. They know netflix and twitter and love these brands they spend so much time with. They dont know and love the cable providers, the comcast, the Time Warner Cables and verizons of the world as well. When they do have dealings with them its in the form of a bill. In terms of the people looking at this debate theyre leaning toward those they dont interact with on a daytoday basis. They did the poll yesterday. I watched the way it was explained on national newschannels and even the way it was explained the way it was framed was just beyond belief. I had to change the channel but the way it was explained was that the big guys like netflix and others theyre not going to be able to pay more money to get faster lanes now. Were all going to have access the way it was explained was so naive and sophomore pedestrian. And when you present it that way people say i want Net Neutrality but when you look at the actual specifics it is just part of the general decline in i dont know, and its easy for you to say it was populous i have something right here that the dnc or somebody sent out, dnc email, great news look at this becky, the fcc just approved president obamas plan to ensure free and open internet. And thats not the way you said well the agency voted. It passed . Really . They were appointees of ball balm that are democrats. It passed on a totally Party Line Vote and tom wheeler the chairman of the fcc im with you on this. I know you are. Im not yelling at you. I have been talking about this for too many days i know. The chairman of the fcc yesterday was asked directly whether or not president obamas intervention in this debate back in november effected where the fcc lands. Almost all observers assume that it did. Of course it did. But chairman wheeler said yesterday that the fcc is an independent agency and simply voted the way it voted attend of its own process. Horse feathers. Bull feathers. Anyway. I have been talking about it too long. The journal has a great op ad. Lets call it obama net. Welcome to 1930. Im not going to read the New York Times for you. Im not even going to read it. Everything in this country is now im going to read it to you later. This is how you torture joe. Read him the New York Times editorial page. In the old days here are the center lines and here is where people were on the two sides of a lot of issues and now its like this. Im not sure how we got here. Do you disagree with my general point that consumers out there look at the content brands the netflix and twitter they use. The big bad monopoly guys. No do you agree they develop a relationship with those brands that they dont have the internet backbone providers because theyre part of their lives all day. My whole life is spent trying to understand how the profit incentive actually drives innovation and how its not selfinterest. I know adam smith thought of it in 1776 but people still dont understand it and the idea you got verizon or comcast or at t these profit mongers are spending billions of dollars building out pipes. You need a return on invest. Its not a dirty word to say you need a return on investment to justify spending and building out the infrastructure and when you cant get it because the government takes it for granted that youre going to do it anyway. So im blue in the face already. Yeah and look thats the exact point that the carriers were making yesterday and through this whole debate. If we dont have the ability to make more money from these services were not going to invest in them. Exactly. And its not going to get any faster. Congratulations, mr. President. Congratulations wheeler. Maybe well have five years of totally slow growth. But thanks aman. Ill be okay. Its friday. Ill get through this. But ive watched a lot of things happen that i cant do anything about. All right as we mentioned were going to talk more about this decision and its ill pact on the tech sector and the internet providers. Dan is here on set with us and dan just looking through, sorry, joe, the New York Times didnt write an ad. I was hoping to taunt you through the morning with it. They did write little changes for internet users. What do you think this means . This is fantastic. This is going to be the best thing ever for telecom attorneys and lobbyiests. Its the telecom attorneys and lobbists act. When it was written i was an economist working on that subject and we worked for all the competitors. In the 96 act they did two thicks they didnt do here which is that they required unbundling of the network which spawned all of these competitors. There was 31 ipos most of which we were involved with and that was like back 20 years ago and all of those things are gone now. All the competitors. So the reality is all of this stuff is fantastic for lawyers and lobbists in washington but it means nothing. Theres nothing in those rules. We havent seen all the specifics. Devil is in the details. But i dont think anything changes. Your parent comcast when they bought your other parent nbc, they agreed to most of this already. Right. We made that point earlier that it was a solution to a nonkpis nonexistant problem. I dont think this changes anything. So the irony of this rule is it actually might pave the way for the merger with Time Warner Cable to go through. Because if your fear of a larger, bigger badder comcast, right is that we cant regulate them . Now we have regulation. So theres no legal reason to with hold the merger. But does it make that merger as lucrative as they thought it would be beforehand. Absolutely. Theres no regulation or unbundling. Theres no reason not to do it. This is the last chance robert has to buy new york and l. A. I think they still want to do it. The only thing that gives me pause is the politics. I can sit there and look at the rules, look at the laws look at the overlap in competition because comcast and Time Warner Cable dont actually compete on a local level but then the politics comes in. So the fact that ballobama did influence the shift to title 2 makes you say well does he actually have influence over the doj . If he wants to block this for this to be an issue you need the Mainstream Media to point that out and they wont do it. If bush did it on Republican Administration influenced an agency theyd be all over it. But the other thing is this is a 32 vote. So in two or three years but theres uncertainty now on how things work. You dont think at the margin there will be less investment. So the Telecom Companies knew this was coming. Two months ago. They didnt know until two months ago. They knew back in october when obama wrote the letter, right . Why . We thought it was independent. But when the auction closed they spent 44 billion. They wrote that check full knowing this was coming but youre right theres a lot of uncertainty. So youre sitting there and looking at comcast trading at 21 times earnings or 19 times earnings for Time Warner Cable or its flip flopped. Id rather say buy the guy thats just doing this whether there is title 2, apple. Apple is going to continue to innovate or continue to march to that trillion because on Earnings Growth alone, the buy backs in the stocks actually reduce the number of shares of the market cap gets shrunk but the reality is apple is going to innovate under any circumstance. Theyre operating in countries all over the world. In china. Talk about regulation. Theyre doing well in china. So i think apple still looks good. I think that, you know the comcast Time Warner Cable merger still has a chance of going through. The inner connection rates 100 million. Spending 3 billion a year on content. This is a rounding error. None of this matters. So you just have to take a step back. Dont get the politics. Look at the actual fundamentals. You need broadband in the home. There are two providers. Your Cable Company and your phone company, right . You need an ipad and iphone and you need a smart watch. You need cheap on demand television. So i think cable is probably still going to workout just fine. Apple is going to do great. Netflix is going to do great. This thing isnt going to matter at all. The government said it would be a light touch. Do they usually regulate things with a light touch . How do you know theres not price fixing down the road. Now youre worrying about problems that dont exist yet. If you get the ability i think wheeler should have come on tv and said read my lips. No rate regulation. What happens when everyone goes in to the guys sitting in their ivory towers now. Government officials. We we love when theyre the ones with the strings saying i need a waiver here and you see them twiddling their thumbs its going to be tons of that. Who sucks up to the regulators. Absolutely. My first point about the attorneys is your answer is buy apple . I dont really care im going to invest lets just buy apple. None of this matters for the country. You can still buy apple. Cable is going to do just fine too. I dont see how it matters. You can still recommend apple. It doesnt matter. Even though it slowed down innovation, theres a third as much investment in europe now. Everything is slower in europe now. Are you not a patriot . Ask john malone that. Hes investing like crazy in broadband networks. Hes an american and republican and everything is going well. They have much fa