It has nice pretty mountains. Very strange place. Anyway, senator greg is here with us for the rest of the show. Were going to get caught up with him in a moment. Among our top stories this morning, fed chair janet yellen returning to capitol hill this time to return to the House Financial Services committee. She told the senate panel waiting too long to raise Interest Rates would be unwise. We have eight meetings a year and it means that at some meetings we would, if things remain on course, increase our target for the federal funds rate and not act at others. And precisely when we would take an action, whether its march or may or june right. I know people are focused on that. I cant tell you exactly. They are. They are. Just so you know, they are. I cant tell you which meeting it would be. I would say every meeting was live. That was their goal to make sure they know every meeting is live. Every meeting could potentially lead to a rate hike. Lets check out the market reaction. The s p hitting its 15th record close since the u. S. Election yesterday. No concerns at least when it comes to stocks. Take a look at u. S. Equity futures at this hour. You can see this morning things are indicated up once again. Like every day a new record. Dont chase it. Every day a new record. S p futures indicated up by a point. Dow futures up 32 points. Nasdaq up by 1. 5. If you check out overnight in asia youll see that stocks in japan were up by 1 . The hang seng was up by 1. 25 . Shanghai composite slightly weaker. This morning at the early going in europe there are green arrows across the board. Modest advances for these markets. Said without a hint of irony. If you wait too long there could be a problem. Said without not even i dont think it even occurred that people might think theyve waited too long. All righty. Dont chase the rally camp, do you remember the s p number where we pegged for the latest dont chase the rally . No, what was it . 2360. Were at 2368. 12. 9. In the two days since that weve got 21 points so far. Is that about 1 so far. Yes. Little less. Well never remember. And then well never remember and then well dowhen were a couple hundred points higher well do another story, dont chase the rally. But we never did the story, chase the rally. But, joe, historically weve been there are hold backs. There are in life. Andrew, since the beginning of this move every day youve asked. Its gone too far already. Nothings happened yet. So youre off by 3500 points already. Admit now there may be a pull back but you missed the 3500 points. Absolutely. Okay, good. I mean, you can always say theres going to be a pull back, but if the pull back doesnt get down to the point where you were calling for the first pull back, then what good was it, right . This is true. Okay. Invest some money. Get some experience investing some money. Lets talk to you about some of the big stories were watching this morning. On todays agenda, january retail krals and cpi are out at 8 30 eastern time. Thats followed by Industrial Production at 9 15. And we mentioned fed chair yellen back on capitol hill. Well be hearing from three other top fed officials today. As for earnings, heres whats on the docket. Pepsico expected to report at 6 30 a. M. Eastern time. Well bring you that. Were also looking for groupon and soda stream. After the close you look for numbers from cisco, cvs, kraft and heinz. Then japans softbank buying fortress for 3. 3 billion in cash. They will operate within softbank as an independent business headquarter. In december you might remember that President Trump met with softbanks president who said he plans on investing 50 billion in the United States. Its not clear if this is part of that plan. All of a sudden he has 170 billion in assets because hes raised 100 billion on sprints and other things. What happened to fortress . Thats a big premium. It is a big premium. What were the problems . There were a lot of problems. For years. There was a guy who left. There have been a lot of problems. A penny problem. Unclear what he wants to do given hes usually about technology. This is a very unusual purchase for him. By the way, we dont talk about it enough but in this 100 billion fund, you know who hes really a front to some degree for saudi arabia. So 45 billion of the money is saudi money, which i find fascinating given all the conversations we have about make america great, whos investing. If you really understand where the money is, you follow the money, its not like american money, its not some other its saudi money. Maybe thats fine, im just wanted to point it out. Its worth knowing. Our whole relationship with saudi arabia as we get completely worried about other countries, the other countries are failed states that were talking about with immigration. People have pointed out, all 19 of the 19 of them were from saudi arabia, the 9 11 guys. They can freely move in and out and we go to these other places. We have a weird frenemy relationship. I think it may have something to do with oil perhaps, but it is. I mean, it is true. So youre worried that so its being shuttled im not worried. Its oil money coming through him. You dauldcalled it a front. That implies most people dont know where its coming from. Most of the conversation is now Everybody Knows because you just said it on squawk box. So this is going to explode. Go viral. What about a column . Could be. Whats today. That was yesterday. Did you write one yesterday . I did. What was it about . Steve schwartz. About the changing face of wealth in america and houten years ago it was like a five alarm fire that he had a Birthday Party. Yes. And yesterday nobody cared. Was it one was in new york not about the age of trump or anyways. One was in palm beach, the other one was in new york city, right . You could crack it up to that. Where the media is. This one costs more, didnt it . Supposedly. Who was the musical entertainment last time . Rod stewart. On the 60th. Okay. And gwen stefani on the 70th. I dont begrudge the man at all. You what . I dont begrudge the man at all. Hes done a remarkable job. Hes done good. Blackstone is hitting, he gives away a lot of money. Have your cake. Im sure he will. Its his money. An effect. If you remember, you were watching it at the time. After that Birthday Party there was the blackstone bill. Their hair was on fire. They couldnt believe anyone was spending this kind of money. My hair didnt get on fire. Im pretty calm of it. Im sort of the antithesis of that. Are you having Sports Illustrated models on . Im the antithesis. Im the balance. The sexy. You are calm. You are a calming influence and we appreciate that. Folks, there were a slew of 13f filings released yesterday. Those are the sec filings that offer insight into what the worlds most powerful investors bought. Berkshire hathaway making moves. It raised its stakes in appleby 42 million shares. It now reports owning 57. 4 million shares which would make berkshire stake worth more than 7. 7 billion. That makes buffets firm one of the biggest ten apple investors. Also reporting a 9. 3 billion airlines stake. We knew about these investments we knew it made these investments but these are much bigger. They increased them dramatically. At this point he owns american, 9 , delta 8 , southwest, 7 . United 9. 1 . That makes him the number one or number two owner in those airlines. The congress glom mer rate talking about theirs. Buffet says hes not going to be speaking about any of these issues until he sits down with us on squawk box. That is coming up on february 27th. That will be three hours. The live ask warren show. Its not too early to send in some of the questions you might have for warren buffet on twitter or facebook. If you do that use the hashtag askwarren. Well ask him about the annual report that comes out on that saturday. Hell sit down with us for three hours. Hell talk more in depth about all of these moves. He put in 12 billion. The other headline that i saw was it looked like he was getting out of walmart. That i dont know as much about. It looked like that stake was sold down. What that says about retail. We keep talking about retail in this country. Also all the retail ceos meeting with trump today. Yeah, exactly. Pretty interesting dynamic. Joe is looking up the Sports Illustrated cover. No, im not. Thats my twitter feed. Thats the New York Post twitter feed. I didnt do that. If someone sees that on my screen theyre going to think i youre preparing for the interview. No, im not. That came up. Im he sorry, my friend. Whats happening there . Am i on there, too . Yes. Split screen between you and sporSports Illustrated model. Theres angela merkel. No one can accuse me of everything. Two out of three germans want merkel out. Thats a new poll. New report from the New York Times last night says that trump aides made contact with senior russian officials during the 2016 campaign. Eamon javers joins us now with more. The third paragraph was weird though, wasnt it, eamon. It was like no signs of any cooperation. They killed them to have to put that as the third paragraph, but at this point im not sure what its manafort once again. Is it mostly maafort . Reporter it is, joe. When you see this story, savvy readers meade to read what theyre saying and not saying. This is the headline here in the New York Times this morning. This is going to be driving a lot of conversation. The headline, trump aides had contact with russian intelligence. Let me bring you a couple. Key points from the article this morning. Theyre saying that the trump aides and associates had repeated contacts with senior russian intelligence officials. Theyre saying the contact occurred in the year before the election at a time that donald trump was speaking glowingly of vladimir putin. To your point, joe, theyre also saying there is no evidence so far that trump aides colluded with russians of hacking for russian interference. That is an absolutely key caveat. Theyre saying the fbi has closely examined Trump Associates including Paul Manafort and roger stone and mike flynn who resigned earlier at the white house. Heres what Paul Manafort had to say. He said, this is absurd. I have no idea what this is referring to. I have never knowingly spoken to russian intelligence officers. So, joe, to your point, theres a lot to sift through here, but this is the kind of story that will dominate the conversation in washington today. And i can bring you a couple of the other things that are happening in washington today as well. Andrew, you mentioned the retail ceos coming to town. We have a list of some of the ceos here, some of the companies that we expect to be at the white house today. Jcpenney, gap, best buy, target and some others. We havent gotten an official list. Is walmart not on the list . Well, we dont know. We dont know whos coming and whos not coming. Of course, the subtext of this and the thing that a lot of people in washington will be looking for is this comes a week after you saw high white house aide Kellyanne Conway getting in trouble for recommending ivanka trumps products or Retail Products and we saw the president tweeting about nordstroms decision guessing nordstrom is not included. My question is will any of the companies that pulled ivanka trumps products from their stores be invited to the white house today . A lot of people will be sifting through that as well to determine whether or not the white house is playing favorites or not playing am with this. Doug was at the meeting a week or two ago when eamon and i were together at the white house. Surprising not to see them. Or maybe hes already got his i dont know if right. I think these guys cant make the pilgrimage every week. Reporter i dont know about that, andrew. Weve seen a couple of the ceos come in. Elon musk has been there four or five times. Some ceos are making repeated visits. Its in their interest to do that. Eamon, i think eric schmidt went four or five times. In fact, i think he punched a time clock during the eight years of the obama administration, right . Reporter like an absolute regular. 1700 times. Yeah. Something like that. Depends what youre getting. Reporter depends on whats at stake for your company and industry. Eamon, let me ask you quickly about the russia scenario. Regardless of whats found, my guess is because of this storm thats been created over all of this, this is going to make it a little more difficult for the white house to negotiate with russia to get to the point of being able to lift any of the sanctions that have been some of the early talk just from the optics alone it would make that much more complicated. It put sand in the gears in terms of foreign poi si, in terms of dealing with russia and their domestic agenda. The more you have republicans on capitol hill spending time working on this issue, that sucks the oxygen out of some of the other things that the Trump Administration wants to do. We do know that intelligence committees up on capitol hill say theyre going to be investigating all of this. They want to know more answers about the mike flynn situation. You can imagine this would dominate the conversation throughout the day today. All of that is going to require attention and time by the Trump Administration including the white house council, don mcgan, the president , reince priebus. That takes mind share away from some of the other things they want to do. True, but then again there has never been oxygen for the first month not being taken out of what was going on on a daily basis. Thats what weve been hearing all along that, oh, my god, he had this message and instead hes focusing on this message. He was doing this but now this is theyre just powering through. They just i dont know whether theyre as worried about the perception as people that are watching or deciding. They seem to just its like water off a ducks back. They just keep moving forward. Well see whether or not they can get this tax bill moved this year. That is a big lift. Theyre talking about something on a scale that we havent seen since 1986. Thats a big lift in a normal year, in a normal political dynamic. Right. We dont have that now. Republicans have the votes on the hill. You might see republicans on the hill sort of go independent of the Trump White House and start pushing their own stuff in the expectation that trump but i wouldnt extrapolate mccain and Lindsey Graham and what they say. Theres a collective eye roll with most of the rest of the republicans, ill ask senator greg about it. Mccain has a problem. Lindsey graham, maybe hes mad. When trump said when you get over 1 of the primary vote, then talk to me. I think theyve both got like a reporter look, those are the high profile sort of republican opponents. Marco rubio i saw on the schedule is expected to have dinner with the president at the white house. Well wait and see what that is all about. Look, when you go through the republican conference, look, ive talked to republicans who are very pro trump, very pro trump agenda. They want to build a wall with mexico. They scratch their heads on how he makes decisions. No doubt. Why he says what he says, the tweets. So there is a feeling of a slight shallowness of support even among the republicans who support what he wants to do and what he campaigned on. Look at the primary. The entire year and a half of primary there was head scratching the entire year and a half. Right. Were you a republican . Certainly. Thanks, eamon. Reporter you bet. Our guest former u. S. Senator and governor from New Hampshire, judd greg. Mrs. Greg, the first she looks to you for all things. She thinks you can be a she thinks you can be a little more faithful. She often holds you up as an example. Go out and mow the lawn, joe would mow the lawn. She needs to spend some more time with joe. Id at least make sure that the lawn was mowed. Thats a different thats a difference. I have someone handle it. Theres an inside and theres an outside washington. I mean, eamon, i have tremendous respect for. Everybody in washington is in a thither about the fact that this president is chaotic in his style and his white house is chaotic. This flynn thing is very bad. Outside of washington most folks are saying, ill give him some running room. We sent him there to shake things up. But you cant shake things up substantively unless you can pass coalitions in congress because policy that is instituted regulatorily is not going to last very long as president obamas finding out. Real policy change comes from legislative change and in my opinion legislative change cant be accomplished, even though the republicans have control the senate and house, without some bipartisan participation. Right now thats nonexistent. I mean, i do think that some of the blame for the chaos right now in washington has to be put at the feet of the democratic leadership in the senate which has essentially refused to give the president his cabinet. I never voted against a cabinet nominee of president clintons or president i felt they had the right to their own cabinet. When you as a cabinet member walk into an agency, youve got nothing. You dont even have a pencil holder so you need people around you. They have enough with their own party to push through all these nominations and forget what the democrats theyre being slowed up by the Senate Leadership on the democratic side. They can slow it down. The senate is all about slowing things down, and they have. They have every right to be critical and ask the right questions about ethics. The labor secretary has an issue there, nominee, but as a very practical matter, they should be approving these folks so that you can get a government going because this is not appropriate for our nation not to have a functioning government. You think its unfair to say that there are more ethical questions around some of the cabinet members than historically . No. Every cabinet has had some ethical issues come up. I remember tom daschle was one of the best Senate Leaders and he had issues and he had to resign but the people who are being slow walked, i think slow walked on ethics issues, being slow walked for political reasons. Theres an intensity within their base. Thats what it is. There are the base wants to resist for four years. Right. And thats this is part of it. And if you dont resist youre going