apple, google, procter & gamble and wells fargo. >> concerns about china grow deeper. imports and factory output were disappointing. could it mean more stimulus is on the way? >> the u.s. treasury slashing its stake in aig, becoming a minority shareholder for the first time since the financial crisis again. what it means for you, the taxpayer, in just a moment. we have to start with the markets, coming off a week in which the s&p 500 settled at its highest level since january 2008, the s&p and nasdaq posting their best weekly gains in three months. and the dow logging its best week since july 27th. friday's weaker than expected jobs report. >> you have to have the federal reserve say, we'll have your back. it may be announcing something that i think has eluded us so far. i've not heard anything new and interesting. we have rates pretty low in this country. and then the german supreme court, this is a complete black box. who knows? >> i wonder how much people are going to choose to focus here, the institutions, the hedge fund managers, it's conference season, we're back to work. i wonder if that kind of stuff becomes so murky and difficult to analyze, maybe you just push it off as we seem to with europe overall. draghi saying good things. >> so you push off potentially the meeting out of the german constitutional court because it's too much of a black box perhaps? maybe you go back to focusing on those individuals. what was startling about last week's action, we saw enormous gains. best performers of the week, jpmorgan up sizable amounts as well. and this week, we have the barclays financial services giving their presentations today and over the next few days. maybe it's the time to turn back to fundamentals. >> i always struggle over the idea of what is the genesis of a particular bank rally? we didn't get anything that i felt was just so eye-opening last week that you had to own the stocks. regional downgrades today. bank of america, i think, has back the stock to watch. the two i'm focused on, bank of america for the banks and alcoa, both of these had a great week. these are obviously red hot stocks for the dow jones average. these are two worth focusing on. they've been down on their luck. >> aren't both of these stimulus stocks? >> very much so. >> stocks that have seen gains born on the back of a central bank put. >> you need alcoa because china is overproducing dramatically. why? they're worried about a revolution. they're making 5 million tons too much, literally keeping their smelters open just to keep people employed. and bank of america, i struggle about why it should turn other than the fact that it's just very low. >> but that's not really a reason to own it. a reason to trade it, i guess. >> might be in the context of a procter & gamble hitting an all-time high on friday. those are the ones people wanted to own for safety. maybe that trade is done. and you have to go somewhere where there's more upside. >> i think that a lot of the chatter about procter & gamble is that mr. mcdonald has been able to engineer a turn. talked about affirmation of erngz last week. >> you haven't gone after him in least a few weeks. >> maybe engineering a turnaround. >> is he going to declare victory and leave those shares. >> there's signs on the wall. as unilever goes down -- don't forget, this is a quintessential weak dollar stock, too. but i'm getting a sense that procter is -- >> you mentioned signs on the wall. he is still on the wall. >> of shame. >> it's subject to improvement in fundamentals. >> very fair of you. >> barclays is having its financial services conference. jessica reeves cohen has been an analyst for a long time. from merrill lynch. they're out in l.a., a lot of people still going. you'll be hearing a lot. maybe running in anticipation of this. but the media stocks, time warner, viacom, disney. >> disney is just firing on all cylinders, including fantasy. not that fantasy can move the needle. >> talking about eight multiples on ebitda, but 15 to 17 times earnings is not cheap. but they have a strong cash yield. talking about the likes of a time warner. and everyone's talking about affiliate revenues being up sharply, as much as 7%, 8%. we'll keep an eye on those names this week as we enter conference system. >> data points, data points, data points. people get very excited right now about stocks. start looking at 2013. one of the things i find amazing is these are the conferences we say, next year's going to be incredible. a lot of companies guided for 1.23 on the fxe and the euro. and we're well above that. numbers may not come down this point. >> the slowdown in china in the spotlight, new data showing chinese imports fell unexpectedly in august by 2.6%. exports grew less than expected. the shanghai composite went higher overnight. some companies are talking about the impact of the stimulus announced last week, specifically the infrastructure stimulus. caterpillar's president was talking to dow jones and said it could really help them compete against the smaller chinese equipment makers. >> copper doing a tad better. the iron ore stocks, total battlegrounds. the stocks have held in. baltic freight, very big negative. the import numbers, not so great. here's the way i look at china. i've seen it periodically happen in america. guys who make your estimates in china, will you take them down? the idea that every number is disappointing is ludicrous. your work is ludicrous, it's shoddy. these chinese numbers are insane that the estimates come out. take them down to the magic 7% -- disappointing, disappointing, disappointing. i think the rigor of the estimates is at stake. >> maybe it's incredibly difficult to figure anything out in china. when i try and report on it from here, it's virtually impossible. people i know have spend decades in that country and still can't quite figure out how it all works in the sense of the culture and the mindset of the people. i don't know. to me, china is just unknowable to a certain extent. >> more so than the german supreme court? >> it makes it quite difficult. >> it's difficult, but these guys are wrong every time. what's so difficult, it's going to 7%. it was at 9%. all the numbers point to 7%. take your numbers to the equivalent of 7%. >> "the new york times" has a big story about chengdu and the fact that some cranes are oer s operating at night -- >> the crane at night metric. i haven't brought that one out since we used the chinese square footage cost versus manhattan. >> that worked out. if you knew -- >> it did work out. >> as a contrary indicator for -- i don't know. maybe cranes at night is the way to go. >> it doesn't -- doesn't it not matter at the end -- if we continue to get disappointing data points out of china, it's going to continue to stoke the expectations of stimulus and the stock market there will go higher. what's bad there is good just as much as what was bad here at one point was good because it was seen that the central bank would step in. >> after a while i get tired of the -- people disquoted. at a certain point, you have to say, maybe i'm misjudging here. i think china's exports are directly related to how bad europe is because china likes to dump -- oh, excuse me, china likes to trade a lot with europe. >> there may be sanctions coming from the eu -- i don't know. what's bad for china may also be bad for all of us and the rest of the world. >> that's true. >> you're not using a counterintuitive bad/good analysis. >> if it's 5% or 6% gdp growth. it is the second largest economy in the world and we can keep hoping on stimulus just like we are here in this country. but if you went into the year expecting 9% or 10% gdp, you end up with close to half of that. that can't be good. >> no. but remember what's at stake there. it's execution per share. you miss the numbers, people have been executed. executed per share versus earnings per share is a very interesting ratio. tends to focus the mind -- >> let's move on to aig. the treasury announcing it's selling more shares than aig in a move that will make the government a minority shareholder on the insurer for the first time since the bailout began four years ago. treasury will sell $18 billion worth of shares. aig will buy back about $5 billion of that amount. we started talking about this last week when we learned that aig was selling $2 billion worth of its stake in aia, its asian -- the asian company that it used to control, instead of the full amount which might have been $7.6 billion. so aig announced a $5 billion buyback. we thought perhaps the government would come in with maybe $10 billion in stock for the market s. half sold to aig, half into investors. they came with a much bigger number. when you add the green shoe, it's over $21 billion in stock. even taking out the aig buyback, they've got to find a home for a lot of stock. but they probably will. >> benmosche has often intimated to me he's not in contact with the government about these deals. >> do you buy that? the treasury is going to swoop in and announce a sale without consulting or letting bob benmosche know? >> a classmate of mind and old friend from law school has also said they don't talk. and these are guys -- these are high-level guys who know that everything they say will eventually come up in some sort of e-mail. so i believe it. but at the same time, the government has been very shrewd about aig. maybe not gm. but they've been very shrewd. >> they're going to make money. $32 billion is the number i'm hearing. >> not higher? >> you're talking about a lot of stock. maybe it will be higher. they are taking it down from 53% government ownership to if they do succeed in selling all of it, 15%. it fades as a concern for investors, the overhang that they've been living with for years kind of goes away. 15% holder is not that enormous. clearly. >> i think this is a very big transaction in terms of the whole notion of how the financials are going to do. we want to see travelers up. have you noticed metlife? a lot of these insurance companies doing quite well. in the context of this financial ra rally, the stealth rally that's fooled people because this has been a red hot group and no one's getting behind it. >> is there a shift of funds from the other insurers out there doing so well into an aig now that the overhang of the government's sale is pretty much dissipated? >> i think there's a chance. aig's always been a peculiar animal. people used to thing it was a derivative play. it's a blockling and tackling insurance company now. and they've been doing it very aggressively and very well. i keep thinking that sale of the aia was so small because the company is doing so well. >> maybe the market was expecting a bigger sale, they wanted to perhaps wait it out. perhaps when the government comes with the last 15%, they can step up and buy a lot of it back at aig. >> it is going to determine today's action, i think. >> you do? >> i do. if you follow aig and that deal goes to a premium, we are going to have a game-on on the financial rally again. >> the timing is interesting. >> i was going to raise that issue. >> perhaps one of the last of the bright spots. there are a lot of them in terms of profitability for the government. gm were under water at this point, alleli financial and the fannie and freddie which no one seems to talk about and what we're going to do. >> the republicans come in, i think they shut them down. >> well, paulson was the one who did it in the first place. came in on the conservatorship. a lot has gotten better in terms of those investments. not necessarily fannie and freddie. >> right. but this is something that the administration will be able to point to and say, we made money for you, the taxpayer, etch though they had -- it was a black eye for some -- remember in '09, when there were all those bonuses being paid and people were really saying, how could these executives bring home big bonuses when this is a bailout. we own this company as a taxpayer. >> i think behind the scenes, obama has been very reluctant to take any credit on this. what it identifies with is first you have to say, we did a bailout and then you say the bailout worked. and the bailout means that executives made a lot of money. i have pounded the administration to talk about this as being something that come on "mad money" and say, this has been a good deal. and behind the scenes what they're saying is, look, what you want to do is exactly the opposite of what president obama wants to do, which is say, hey, listen, this was great news for the taxpayer. and romney gets so say, how good was it -- g gives romney the chance to wash the bankers. >> four years ago f you had told me aig which was on the way to receiving $182 billion in u.s. government aid would ever, ever see this day, i would have -- there's no way. no way. >> that's a great point. we keep forgetting what it looked like in the darkest hours. and this just seemed like we're writing a check to -- a black hole check. >> $182 billion and you're going to see your money? >> and everybody got off, too. one of the things that's infuriated the american people is no one's paid for what happened here. there were executives at aig who literally got a pass, meaning the government actually announced, we're not going after you. anybody who knows the defense prosecution game always says the government leaves it open, except for aig where they said they would not go after aig. what a free pass, huh? coming up, a live interview with the president of the america's mark fields. what it all means for the automaker's future and let's take another look at the futures as we head to this, the first session of the trading week. looking to lose about three on the s&p 500. stay tuned. much more "squawk on the street" straight ahead. are we there yet? are we there yet? are we there yet? 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