Morning. But those are pretty incredible images. Among our top business headlines were watching oil prices this morning. Crude down sharply after yesterdays gains of nearly 3 . We havent quite wiped out that gain but its still going to be driving the market today. Crude down about 2. 5 . Brent down close to 2 . Brent is slightly higher than crude but weve seen those levels reversing themselves. The move came after an unexpected rise in inventories reported by the American Petroleum institute. Well get the weekly report on inventories later this morning. As you know by now that can be market moving and city Energy Analyst telling cnbc that prices face further down side risk in the first half of 2016. That call based on expectations that opec will continue to try to pump the competition out of business. And thats what opec has been trying to do all along. The bidding war for pep boys appears to be over. Bridgestone saying it will not counter mondays offer from carl icahn. Offering to buy all of outstanding pep boys stock for 18. 50 a share in cash. Pep boys stock is down below the offer price. It traded through it in anticipation that bridgestone would come back and rival icahn bidding the price higher. It values the auto parts retailer and Service Center at 1 billion. And ride hailing app sidecar is putting its employees to work on new projects. It was a competitor to uber and lift with high profile backers. Sidecar said it had been outfunded by its competitors. It raised 39 million compared to lyfts 1 billion. It wont be a winner takes all market but a winner takes most. So maybe one, two, three. I think its an at t verizon story and thats the end. So its uber, lyft and then nobody. The networking effects of the way these businesses work you can have thousands of them. You cant even have five of them. Cant lose you. Only two. Two. Theres a lot of other things. I one arguing it. Im not saying you were. But theres people in the antitrust division that havent moved past the 1930s. Theres still a lot of companies trying to throw Business Models to see if it sticks and via which is 5 per ride. Uber raised 12 billion in financing. In actual cash. In actual cash. Its a real business isnt it . That is a real business. Did the light bulb just go on. At this moment . It takes a few stories. Do you think joe would take via . Would you share a car with somebody else . I dont think so. Youre opening yourself up to anyone else jumping into the car on your route with you between lets say 59th street and i dont think you have. Ive been on a bus. Yeah. Ive done that before. You dont use uber but you tell them where they want to be and then they say the car will come and pick you up quicker. And then decide what you want to do. I have experienced dropping the pin where ever you are and then the driver saying im over here do you want to just meet me here. My main thing is i dont want to get a flu shot from the uber driver. I dont want to open up my veins. We might still do that by the way. Im not doing that. I might do it. Would you eat lunch from an uber driver . That came out of an uber trunk . From chipotle . From depends on where its from. Not sushi probably. I have one more for you. We did amazon prime now yesterday. Where it shows up within an hour or two and they recommend a tip. How do you feel about that . I feel okay. You do, okay. I know how you feel about all tipping. You are the one dispatching that person in a fury. But ive never tipped the ups man. You never tipped a waiter or waitress. 20 across the board. This year i found in my newspaper that gets delivered every day to my apartment the envelope. The newspaper guys you have to give a tip to. Maybe i havent found it until now and i felt bad about it. The price of amazon prime now just went up as far as i can tell. I want you to get on to the next couple of stories because theres one coming up that i want to see here. We will he was governor for 8 years. I want to see if you can pronounce his name. Test of my own pronunciation. George pataky. Chinese central bank suspended foreign banks. The notice sent did not give a reason to the suspension. Including spot positions for the client. Seen as an effort to stabilize yuans exchange rate. Smaller new york governor announcing he is suspending his campaign. He made the announcement during a primetime tv ad on nbc news affiliates. That was the only component of it i didnt understand. Why would you spend money to tell people you are leaving. He had some left over dough. Never got any traction and hes a big security guy and even after that, it was 0 or 1 . Still a couple of guys like that. Couple of guys like that. What did you think of him . He was a fine governor. Tough to match mario for you. He was a good governor. Well go with kalobios. They filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. They fired the ceo earlier this month. And listed its assets and liables on the range between 1 and 10 million. Check on the markets this morning, giving back some again because were off of oil as we normally do but not much. We have a big up day and it looks big when you see 192 points but it only got us back about 17720 on the industrials. Remember the highs for the year were up in the 21 and changes. And right around the flat line. And actually showing strength today. Europe was down. France is now turned around and up a little bit. You can see that. Some mixed trading but mostly red arrows in europe and asia. Not a whole lot happening. The shanghai is actually up but just a quarter of a percent. Theres one of the problems tod today. Finally the ten year, i saw 230 print earlier but its 287 right now. The euro is back down about 109 earlier. Thats where it is today. 109. In the quarter. And finally gold. Well let you know if anything ever starts look at the last month or so its just flat lining right around the 1070 area. For more on the markets with two trading days left in the year. Lets bring in jack. Jack, youre one of the first guys on squawk box. Remember one of the first hosts. 20 years ago. Here you are. You vn changed a bit. Come a long way. All the way to executive Vice President and not just any investment officer. Youre the chief investment officer. Am i right . My neck on the line. Well get to john in second for the quick backdrop. I get jack is intact but after this past year nothing to write home about. Same thing next year or better . Its still stretched. Theres a lot of High Expectations and the economy needs to come through and fulfill the expectations. If analysts are correct and Fourth Quarter comes in as they expect that will represent three consecutive quarters of profit declines. Id like to see the economy pick up. Id love to see more evidence that Energy Prices stabilize at the very least. And i think against that backdrop we can muddle along. Trade higher a little bit. I think one of the best things for next year is that the highest, largest cap, highest quality stocks are trading at same valuation as everybody else. So could be an interesting time to maybe upgrade and actually go into dividend shares as slight defense mechanism. When i think about the economy and the fed and i look at the Unemployment Rate and gdp its a very sort of mixed picture that i dont know if its very typical historically to see something where even though employment were at 5 right now. In the 8 years of clinton it was 5. 3 or 5. 4 and we thought that was great. During the 8 years of bush it was about the same and we thought of that as pretty good. So here we are below that as far as unemployment and were worried about whether this economy can take another quarter point increase or another two or three next year. I think the concern in many quarters and youre right know. Its very atypical at this point in the cycle. The concern is theres been a lot of debt issuance taken on and it appears that if Income Growth isnt that strong then youre going to get squeezed and thats the tension thats in the marketplace right now is that the income of Profit Growth may not be so significant as to offset the rising impact of Interest Rates. I dont know. Is there something about that employment number, john, that you really feel is misleading . Is it the Participation Rate or the number of part time people or what is it . Traditionally labor force Participation Rates pick up as the economy begins to grow. Thats not happened this time. You have lower Participation Rates for males and females and its both and i think theres an underlying change in the u. S. Economy thats all to the value of looking at the u3 or the Unemployment Rate that gets the most publicity. Can you tell jack anything positive about the underlying economy in terms of what it will do to corporate profits. It wants to do better than the past year. Is there any reason to think that could happen given the economic backdrop. Yes. I think if we could get Commodity Prices to stabilize, one of the huge factors bringing price appreciation down as i said commodities were starting to see wages rise. If we can start to see Household Income rise that could be a positive. Perhaps they overall we do have very strong Balance Sheets. They still have a fair amount of dry powder on the Balance Sheet side to continue to keep their income statements propped up. They had a lot of cash for awhile. Maybe they start investing for the longterm. Do you think we have sort of gotten away from supply Side Solutions . I saw an article that china looked around and said we have to go from we have to get away from an economy so well be more supply side. That seems to work in terms of spurring the economy. Theyre all over economics in china and the only place were questioning whether it works is here at this point. We have been lulled into this notion that it doesnt work. I think part of it, joe, is really just the recognition of available growth. I think if organic growth now is our potential growth rate is say 2. 5 . Our labor force is growing at. 5 . You know, if you squeeze a little bit you can get produ productivity up to 2 . And organic growth rates have come down. The problem is policy makers, management, shareholders are in denial and in order to grow faster than whats organically available to you, you have to do it by increasing your market share. Well, if youre a country, how do you do that . Lower their currency and steal share from your neighbors. If youre a company you can buy back shares. Look at earnings per share growth is double net Income Growth over the last ten years and of course theres buyouts to grow your top line so i think part of is it yeah supply side isnt working because there isnt enough organic growth available at the moment. And part of it is just this recognition. We cant take a 2. 5 donkey and somehow beat it into a 4 horse. We cant do 4 if we beat something. I still think were at 3 potential economy, arent we . This is america. Yeah, you can get the 3 . You focus on the supply side is right joe in the sense that if you listen to the underlying discussions a lot of it is labor force Participation Rates. Thats the supply side of labor. Thats a supply side on capital. So those respond to incentives and that gets to the hard portion. What is the incentives you need to get people more anticipating in the labor force. What are you going to do about tax rates or subsidies . What are you going to do about capital . Capital isnt going to invest unless it expects rate of return. So the supply side does matter. We dont call it that but its there. We hear from people that, those are zombie ideas. We hear that thats what drove us into the ditch and were not going to let these folks not going to let these folks get the keys back but we tried redistribution for 7 years now and all its done is redistribute more wealth to the wealthy. So i dont know. Maybe we need to im going to get you on this eventually. Im going to get you with me on this. Youre going to be with me on this. John and jack. Thank you both. Happy new year. Im asking questions of our guests. Hoping it seeps in. Just hoping that youre listening. Osmosis. You were glad that Airline Tickets went down. They did. Theres another piece today. Its going to hit the revenue for the first time. What i want to finally get to with you is that the middle class was not an aberration in this country because of world war ii that there is american exceptionalism that comes from freedom in your personal life and markets and you embrace that and embrace our style of economics in this country. And there is a chance for another morning in america. I hope theres a chance for another morning in america. I want there to be. Do you look at new york. Its a shining city. Yes. It is. Youre with me on this. Im with you. Even though youre a millennial. Even though. When we come back the breakneck pace of auto sales in china and later a closer look at the hidden costs cutting into your retirement savings. Right now take a look back at this date in history. Its hard to find time to keep up on my shows. Thats why i switched from uverse to xfinity. Now i can download my dvr recordings and take them anywhere. Ready or not, here i come whispers now hideandseek time can also be catchuponmyshows time. Here i come cant find you anywhere dont settle for uverse. X1 from xfinity will change the way you experience tv. Rescuers have now found 8 surviving miners that were trapped after a mine collapse on christmas day. Infrared cameras detected the miners waving their hands and authorities are drawing up plans to rescue them. Rescuers drilled a relief hole and have delivered food and provisions to the 8 trapped men. One person was killed in the collapse and nine are missing. After years of strong double digit growth car sales in china might be hitting a major speed bump. Eunice has that story. He is on the front line in the battle for chinese car buyers. At her dealership the 25yearold sales agent is under pressure to move 12 cars by the end of the year. Its very difficult for us to sell cars. In the past customers would always come after us, she says. But now we have to chase the customers. She competes in the Worlds Largest auto market. For years sales of sedans and suvs have grown in the double digits but so far this year new car sales are up only 3. 9 as the economy weakens. The manager says potential buyers here have turned price sensitive. Its common practice in the car market today to sell cars below cost because otherwise you wont sell anything at all, he says. On average, were losing nearly 1,000 on each car we sell. The average discount at several dealers is now around 10 . He says many are trying to boost after sales and other services to make up for the profit short fall. Were driving along the famous car street. It spans about 3 kilometers long. People come here to get their cars fixed and serviced and buy new models and they have been up all over the country. This year business is way down. The government has cut taxes on certain models to boost demand. Even so, she still worries she may not be able to meet her sales target. If i fail, i wont even get paid a penny for the whole month. The witherring market is imposing huge pressure on our company and on us as well as the entire auto industry. Eunice yoon, cnbc. Thanks. Back here at home, much of the United States recovering from a week of storms and blizzards. And we have the latest forecast from the weather channel. You have a one day shot to see the sun in the southeast and now back to rain across the southeastern states but its got going to last that long. A nice dry stretch coming after we see the rain in new orleans, birmingham, atlanta, charlotte and rain through today getting up through the d. C. Area and new york city. Possible showers there. The west, the story is the chill. Los angeles only 64 degrees for the high. But the overnight lows dipping into the 30s get you. Overnight tonight 41 in downtown l. A. Look at the readings tonight in denver, 6, 14 in chicago. Through the midwest spreading into portions of the northeast and the southeast as we get you into the start of the new year. New years eve, rain through portions of the south. South texas into Southern California and georgia. New years day fairly quite weather with a little bit of lake effect snow in the northeast. Possible rain and possible wintery weather to watch. Thats a look at your top weather stories. Back to you. Thanks. Well bring you a live update from the flood zone in missouri in the next hour. Heres something for you. Mike tyson posted this video. Having fun on his daughters hover board until suddenly he wasnt on the hover board anymore. The former heavyweight champion is apparently okay after the fall. Its all here on video and hes not the first guy to fall off one of these things. Thats for sure. But hes one of the more coordinated people you would think. I would think. Ive tried to do the paddle board and who is more coordinated than i am and i had trouble. Paddle board. Stand up. Can you do that . Yeah. Thats not hard. I fell every other way i fell this way, that way. I fell on my chest. Where were the cameras. I lost a pair of sunglasses and people do it with good waves too. Theres still something for you to strive for. Im not going to try it again. I can only imagine wind surfing of course you saw john carey would be president today. Coming up outside of the world of business that have you no, would he . Anyway, buzzing, including an upset of College BasketballsTop Ranked Team msu but the main guy hurt his knee like a week ago. Suspensions ahead of tomorrows orange bowl on the clemson team and mail carriers busted for dumping the mail in their closet. Heres a look at yesterdays s p 500 winners and losers. All right. Just one more day before the big event tomorrow at noon. Where xavier takes on villanova. Meanwhile, the number one team, michigan state, going into iowa, underdogs. Theyre number one. Unranked iowa, underdogs because their best player is hurt and they went in and there was a notion that they might bget bea by iowa. And it did happen. Its a tough team, iowa. Youre playing at the home court and it happened so now oklahoma and kansas might be 12 by monday and theyre going to beat on monday. We knew it