Washington worries the manager of the Biggest Hedge Fund wrote a post saying im watching how conflict is being handled as a guide, im not encouraged the bridgewater founder was initially confident that President Trump could stimulate growth tru throuhrough tax refo dered deregulation well hear more from ray dalio next month when he joins the delivering alpha conference. A los angeles jury ordering Johnson Johnson to pay 417 million to a woman who claimed that the talc in the baby powder caused ovarian cancer. J j says it will appeal the ruling its the largest yet in lawsuits saying the company failed toed a quickly warn consumers about the cancer risk of its talcbased products Johnson Johnson faces 5,000 cases nationwide long long ago, the ceo of i think it was after ralph larsen i had read about this probably ten years ago. 5, 10 years ago. Sometimes the shape of a carcinogen im not slaying talc is a carcinogen there was scuttlebutt about this, at least ten years ago i have not touched it since. Most baby powder, they changed it its cornstarch. Just as a ive always been kind of thinking, you know i read some stuff yesterday that says this is junk science this jury this is one of these things, they have no idea about the science. Im sure Johnson Johnson think about how much baby powder they sell im sure they will dispute the science. I will tell you ten years ago, i have not touched that. I have not used any you can use cornstarch cornstarch is not talc if i see it in a locker room, theres other products that contain talc i never thought about it. Its the way i think of klee next versus tissue its just talc powder. Baby powder most of the time now is not talc. Its cornstarch. Good to know. 400 million thats a lot. You wonder whether that gets reduced. Its not like this is something that was postulated in the last week or so. I can remember ten years ago, wow, the shape of a molecule can ef fefk effect jim mattis making an unannounced visit to iraq. Mattis arrived at baghdad a few hours ago. His visit comes as the iraqi army tries to take tal afar from isis control. Shares of bht billiton swinging to a sixmonth high the company is raising its dividend bhp announced plans to exit the u. S. Shale business following months of pressure by Elliott Management. And then tronc i look forward to stories about this company, which i guess is like the stub of tribune. Sorkin, you know which company the news papaper business also a video game called tron i think also a movie called tron tronc. Whatever shaking up the newsroom at the los angeles times. The company has named ross levinson, remember that guy, as the papers new publisher. Previously ran fox sper actiint media. In the running to be Marissa Mayer at the time. Not exactly be here to have that role before she got that role. No relationship no. Ross is a family name for him. I know. Its actually a last name. My mothers maiden name, if i say it, then you can steal my credit cards i always thought you were David Schwimmer on friends. Wasnt he born before frien frien friends . No, its my generation. Are ytronc you remember t great seinfeld episode with the bar mitt zvamitzvah . Im a man i dont remember that. I dont either. Tronc replaced the times editor and other newsroom managers thats when you become a man, right . Bar mitzvahd. Yes he figured its time. Elaine is there, chasing the bar mitzvah kid. Taking it literally yeah. I dont remember this did you see any you saw them, you just have no institutional memory in one year, out the other. Like our conversations just nod, everything happened on seinfeld that could happen in life you could benefit from listening i should go back. No just in general. Macys naming a you knew this was happening today. I did. Hal lawton will report directly to jeff gennett, macys is forming a single unit, eliminating about 100 jobs here we go that gentleman there will be on courtney is bringing him on. Shes the retail reporter an exclusive interview at 8 00 a. M. On squawk box. As wilfred would say squawk box. Wanted to check out shares of ukbased Provident Financial the stock slammed after the company cut its dividend, issued a profit warning and disclosed it is being investigated by the Financial Conduct Authority over credit card replay plans Debt Collection rates plummeted from 90 to 50 after it switched from contracted collectors to fulltime employees. President trump committing to an openended conflict in afghanistan during last nights prime time address eamon javers joins us now with more eamon, good morning. Good morning. The president spoke at ft. Myer virginia last night in order to at the nation on the monthslong developed plan for the war in afghanistan. The president ing ing5 presiden s is a change of stance from him he said things look different when youre in the oval office as opposed to running as a candidate. He dismissed the bush era idea of nation building and said the United States is moving away from that. Heres what he said. We are a partner and a friend, but we will not dictate to the Afghan People how to live or govern their own complex society. We are not nation building again. We are killing terrorists. Reporter the president putting that simply. He also was opposed, he said, to the obama era or implicitly opposed to the obama era efforts to withdraw from afghanistan and from iraq. Saying that the time had come to simply double down on the objective there. Heres what he said about withdrawing. The vacuum we created by leaving too soon gave safe haven for isis to spread, to grow, recruit and launch attacks we cannot repeat in afghanistan the mistake our leaders made in iraq one of the other mistakes that the president singled out last night was the idea of trusting the pakistani government too much. He said the pakistanis have worked at the site of the United States he honored that sacrifice,but also said too often theyve been a safe hiven for terrorists. That will change the president changing himself from a candidate who opposed the afghan war and said he would bring the troops home to a candidate who is now signing up for an open ended xlitment mco troops in afghanistan. No number on troops or strategy the United States would adopt. The president saying he doesnt want to telegraph his moves to the enemy. Thank you, eamon. Tough, tough i dont know the answer but this would not be the first time weve been somewhere for decades, i guess, its going to be this is americas longest war. 16 year years, three president s. Its intractable. Its unsolvable almost the whole region needs to come into 2the 21st century the president mentioned india last night he talked about the corruption in afghanistan the idea that the Afghan Government needs to step up. These are things that american president s have said for years he also said that he wants to take some of the limits off of american troops and allow decisionmaking to be down at the local level. Those are relatively minor changes, though, to what the Obama Administration and the Push Administration before that had been doing in after. The question is will this bring different results than what has been done before youre right. Intractable as the president said last night, the alternative is to allow a power vacuum you could see the spread of Something Like isis like we saw in iraq. The president decided that was untenable and the status quo was a better choice. Eamon, two other notes on the business side of the world maybe social media side of the world. Curious about the reaction that folks in the white house had f they had one at all yesterday, to lloyd lankfeins tweet abou the eclipse. Yeah. Perhaps other things eclipsing the eclipse. Yeah. Lloyd blank fifein tweeting this eclipse was not the only thing casting a shadow across the nation we survived the eclipse, we will survive Everything Else. The white house had no comment for lloyd blankfein. No word on whether that was intend for the president or gary cohn theres the tweet. Was he sending a shot across the bow . I dont know er gary cohn signaled he will stay following last week ben white making the point this morning in Morning Money that perhaps janet yellen stays. Do you think thats what chance thats possible the president is very wary of any aides who take on outside significance we saw gary cohn last week be couched as the person who if he left, the markets would crash. Does the president recent sa gary cohn has that influence or perceived influence in the markets is an open question. The president also good at determining what his aides want most in the world. Sometimes if that aid is not in favor, he will deny certain things in thiscatio case gary cohn seeo want to be fed chair that was not unanimous. We had mark grant on yesterday who rolled his eyes. That was a yale management professor. So, you know about the market crashing ludicrous there was a lot of speculation about that last week you guys are the market experts. Drudge ran with it. For some reason they put on clickbait or something they put on the most incendiary headline they find, add up the clicks, and valuations are you think drudge does that . Imagine the drudge report eamon, while we have you. One other commotion going on on social media this revolving around an Instagram Post dont know if you saw this from Steve Mnuchins wife a picture of her getting off one of the planes, clearly owned by the government, someone had a sub tweet, relatively nasty to her. She looked she was wearing tom ford clothes, looked glamorous. She wrote back, have you given more to the economy than me and my husband either as an individual earner in taxes or selfsacrifice to your country im sure we paid more taxes towards our day trip than you do im sure the amount we sacrifice is more than the amount you would sacrifice if the choice is yours. A lot of back and forth about that. Rich people talking about how much they pay in taxes, hashtaging their expensive clothing in Instagram Posts is it not go over well with a large section of the country we have not seen a response from treasury or the white house on that this highlights the idea of how big of a leap this is into public life. When you do that as an individual, its one thing its another thing when do you that as a representative of United States government thanks for bringing us back to the sensitive stuff thanks, eamon. For more on the president s commitments to afghanistan, less bring in james garfano, Heritage FoundationNational Security and Foreign Policy vice president. My first question is generals know probably better than anyone else what the strategy should be in an area like afghanistan. Dont generals maybe by definition take a more aggressive stance . If the people that are there as generals say this does it mean its the right thing is it possible its not the right thing . You need to extricate yourself yeah. Ive only been in the military 25 years, and tracking this war for 15 years generals know a lot about military strategy. So we should just focus on the military strategy for a second where they know what the last administration did was stupid. First obama wanted to walk away, i cant do that. I did that in iraq, it was horrible so the idea is well build up the afghan army, let them fight and then walk away so we built up this afghan army, sent them out into the field because obama canwanted to see levels go down, kept putting down lower and lower troop levels the armies are out there fighting, taking casualties and theyre not capable of sustaining themselves. Were not giving them the assistance that allows them to do that. The military strategy, this didnt come across in the speech, the president made that decision weeks ago he basically decentralized the Military Point of that so they already started to expand whats called the advise and assist mission its not the number of troops but what theyre doing where theyre helping the afghans is in fire support, logistical support, and in medical support and evacuation what that allows the afghans to do then, theyre the ones fighting this war. Theyll be able to better hold terrain awayfrom the taliban and we can do that in a sustained way over time with joust burning through the Afghan Military thats a huge change its a big, big change thats just the military piece of it. Trump had to go back and know that all of his comments about afghanistan and in the past were going to be dredged up because this was 180 degrees from what he used to think should he get credit for listening to generals . I think other president s may get more generals if they have to add more troops, add more troops that hasnt been the tact the last eight years i give trump credit ive only been following him since hez first day on the campaign trail the fundamental principle of his Foreign Policy is america first. We donen dont want afghanistan a platform for terrorism is there a strategy that will do that this administration looked at everything, from everything including pulling the plug, walking away to doing this then president said what is the best thing for the American People andici iic and picked tht course you wont be the last word we have today on this we appreciate your insight on it thank you. You bet. When we come back, markets in focus well talk strategy, earnings, data and the fed look at u. S. Equity futures. Looking to open up and pop on the open dow up by 55 points higher. Later, macys stock has been under pressure down 50 year to date. The Company Announcing its hired a new president from ebay. That ceo will join us at 8 00 a. M. Eastern time. Hey, ive got the trend analysis. Hey. Hi. Hi. You guys going to the Company Picnic this weekend . Picnics are delightful. Oh, wish we could. But were stuck here catching up on claims. But we just compared historical claims to coverages. But we have those new audits. My natural language api can help us score those by noon. Great. See you guys there. We would not miss it. Watson, you gotta learn how to take a hint. I love to learn. Welcome back to squawk box. Lets talk about the broader markets. Here for that is lindsay belle and michael tyler. Good to have you here. Thanks for having us. Ray dalio, linked in post, hes worried about the markets to me you see a rally in commodities, you think thats portending good things for the economy. Hes nervous where do you fall on the issue i think theres good reason to be optimistic now on the economy and on the markets i think the rally in commodities is telling you something its telling you that asia in particular is doing reasonably well thats drawing demand. Global growth is on the upswing. I think that plus a slightly weaker dollar is enough to continue drawing u. S. Economies to do well lindsay i would say we are longterm optimistic on the market but were august going into september, the two most volatile and worst performing months for the s p 500. I can see where some concerns come from we have some big issues coming to the forefront we have budget talks, tax reform that will be on the table. Could create a lot of volatility his linkedin post is about geopolitics, which thus far has not derailed the market at all you sound like its the classic its been a long time since we had correction, reversion would mean at some point it will happen exactly geopolitics is always something hard to anticipate the fundamentals are there some of the major things when we enter bear markets you usually see inversion of the yield curve. We have a lot of positive Economic Data points you know the copper roof thing, right yeah. Every bull market has a copper roof. Thats what you were eluding to right . Which is not doesnt make sense, because if things are percolating, you know, as far as Global Growth goes, should be good for the market. It seems to indicate youre getting to the end of a cycle if every bull market has a copper roof it doesnt seem like theres inflation that will result from commodity rises. You dont have it in the wage sector the wage sector is interesting. Though the reported wage numbers are 2. 5 , that doesnt include a lot of things like bonuses, commissions, so on it only includes salary and wages. If you look at tax data from payroll taxes, you find actually more like 6 wage growth, 6 total composition growth at the highend of the job market, there is a shortage, but at the lower end were not seeing it. I dont think the fed is noticing that. I do think an inverted yield curve is a concern the spread between the 5 and 30year treasuries is tight that gives them very little room to raise rates, other than the one time theyre promising so we could get an inverted yield curve . Its closer than people think. I think were two hikes away from that. The fed is and ought to be concerned about that thats why they want longer rates to rise well the only way to do that is get strong Economic Growth what about selling the stuff you own . Theyre not selling. Theyre letting maturities roll off. What is the duration of a 30year bond maturing . Zero unless they sell longterm instruments, which theyre not doing, you wont have a benefit to the longterm Interest Rate you said longterm optimistic, but shortterm you thought the market might struggle a bit in terms of a strategist, you tell your clients to do what it makes sense to get more defensive in the nearterm utilities are rallying we like that sector. Even though its really expensive. Its really expensive, that and Consumer Staples earnings have been good coming out of that group even though you have Competitive Pressures and lack of inflation. All right were more cautious. Considered a defensive s