Great Balance Sheet. Mario, thank you. A lot of fun. We have to go. Well talk about hot dogs next time we see you. You bet. Make sure you join us tomorrow. Squawk on the street begins right now. Good thursday morning. Im melissa wlee wilee with jim and david faber. Lets get a check on u. S. Futures and how were setting up. Positive data out of china. China exports came in much stronger than expected. Jobless claims coming in 9,000 above consensus estimates. A higher open at this point, dow about 52 1 2, s p looking to open up 8. As for the picture in europe, of course all eyes are on the esc presser, ecb and bank of england leaving rates unchanged. The question is will draghi open the door for the possibility of a cut. So thats on our radar. Italy biggest gainer there up more than 1 . Our road map this morning starts in washington. Jack lew officially nominated as treasury chief. Lew is known for his role in the being acrimonious talks in 2011. What could it mean this time. Tiffany disappoints again with weaker holiday sales. There was weakness in the americas, strength in asia. So how much of a read through to the rest of retail is this Earnings Report . Nokia shares soaring this morning after a bullish outlook for the First Quarter. And herbal lifes big day to defend itself against bill ackmans damning allegations. Well have the latest and the ceo join us later in the show. Well, today president obama is set to nominate white house chief of staff jack lew as his next treasury secretary. Succeeding tim geithner. Lew has been budget director in both the obama and clinton administrations. He will pray a major role of course in negotiations over the debt ceiling and potential spending cuts. The president will make his announcement at 1 30 eastern. Its an event in the east room at the white house. I have to say off the bat just because hes a forest hills guy like me that i, you know, may be a little affinity, we grew up in the same town. That alone could be good. Different generation. Maybe a technocrat is whats necessary. No one tells me this guy is acrimonious. The talks may have been. But when were trying to figure out what to cut, maybe you just need a guy who knows his way around the budget as opposed to a Federal Reserve guy. I thought tim geithner did a great job, though, and i know i find myself in the minority on that, but he came to the rescue of the system in apparel husband time and i think he good a remarkable job. Jack lew is well respected by both sides of the aisle. And also portrayed as chief tormenter to the republicans. Bob woodward in his book quoted john boehner saying jack lew said no 999,000 times out of a million and then he corrected himself 999,999 out of a million. Could this be even more acrimonious. Just drawing the line to the markets and the Market Impact it if we see more being a crow money any on capitol hill, that could mean trouble. I dont see him grabbing a mike which is what i want. I think one of the things that really hurt this whole process is people coming in front of a microphone saying that the talks are bad. Leave it in the locker room. Especially if youre looking at it as an investor. What really 457ed in the Fourth Quarter. Owning stock, making decisions and someone would come on air and say this is a disaster, no way we could i just want quiet. Even if its no, no, no, i want quiet. Maybe this man, forest hills man forest hills high school, too. Queen, baby. Got to bring inthe hometown. Probably a mets fan like me, so he has that going for him, too. But that could be no, no, no. Obama in a tough place. Could you nominate a former banker . Unlikely. Could you nominate a ceo . I thought they could do dave cody. Theres a story in the New York Times about how everyone has a vested interest. I know dave cody personally and professionally. His vested interest in anyone who read his white paper is to cut trillions out of the budget so we do not become greece. And suddenly hes got hes going benefit personally . There are things that happen in the paper, im focused on the budget issue, too, but when a guy like dave cody takes a lot of time out of honeywell, working 18 hours a day, three hours in to the government to say listen the trillions we owe are bad. When you start going after guys like that in the press, why bother . Why have anyone spend anytime . I think he would have been a great treasury secretary. Hes a republican. This man is not a republican. Most definitely not. And of course that is the question as to whether theres really going to be an impetus to actually cut spending. From a very liberal man. Many would agree we need to do. In the Clinton White house, what was he like . Because clinton was remarkable in terms of remember, this is when we got the budget solved and our country was ascended. All those Capital Gains taxes that we had during that incredible run up, that was nice. That was great. We were very physical skally conservative country under bb rubin. We were. One can only hope or imagine or perhaps dream. Thats why i thought, look, i think youre right, the characterization of the book, not great in terms of the possibility that there would be a war, but the clinton period was a period where i think that what we did in this country was we did put some taxes through, we did make it so that we balanced the budget. And we did become as krepded. We would never be talking about these other countries as even being important we were so powerful. And even if there is a lot of acrimony, this is baked into the markets. He was leading candidate anyhow, so maybe thats doctor we have Goldman Sachs out saying the First Quarter will be rough, but the back half of the rear will be much better because of the acrimony widely anticipated anyhow. I think thats right. I think that byron spooked me when he was on squawk box saying the first half will be bad. And i tried to say is tiffany the bad. But then i listened to the presentation yesterday, quite positive. I know alcoa was not able to rally on the new, but it was quite positive. Striker, quite positive. So maybe were about to get the cascade of tiffany, maybe this is when its about to happen and we should look out. Lets talk about tiffany. Down premarket. Saying holiday same store sales were unchanged from a year ago. Below its own expectations, though. Tiffany also sees earnings for the year ending january 31st at the low end of Company Forecasts because of what it calls uncertainty about general Market Conditions in all of its major markets. Tiffany says it is planning sales growth conservatively for 2013 and expects Earnings Growth of 6 to 9 . Just the latest today at that time point in a chain that started the last Holiday Season a year ago and some might say this is a tiffany specific story. Dont have the right mix of merchandise. Not doing well this silver sales. How many times to we have to sit here and listen where a lot of jewelers doing incredibly well and have them hear that its the high he said this week. The high end is so weak, why did an upgrade yesterday. At a certain point we have to say tiffany doesnt have the right merchandise. Maybe theyre the gm of jewelry. Ive heard this said. They havent innovated enough . They want to keep the older, but have the younger. Its a complicated business. You have to figure out the demographic. I wonder whether tiffany hasnt been left behind. So this glad in some way the high end is weak across the board as perhaps they would have you believe, you dont i struggle with that. Lbmh, all of the high end brand names have been doing quite fine and even the european stocks have been reaching record highs. Its not like theyre being held back. Kors is doing quite nicely. Bmw, those are more expensive cars. I know you were talking about some car thing yesterday sfwlt google self driving car. In about 15 years youll be in one. 1. 8 million vehicles sold, up 10 . Bmws are expensive driving machines. Tiffanys expensive is jewelry. Bmw, i think they speak to a broad audience worldwide. That is not the high end doing badly. An important number for bmw. Lets talk about a company that is doing fairly well and thats nokia. Shares up sharply. Company says Fourth Quarter outlook for devices and service exceeds previous expectations. Thats thanks to risk sales of its new smartphone leanup. Of course yesterday the stock in part was suffering because of the idea apple would compete with it at the lower end. I believe they were not scheduled to announce earnings. Preliminary results. But sending the stock up sharply. Looks better than anticipated. Dont want to put too great a halo around this thing. I dont know. I read the release and theyve had tremendous success with the new phone. It does make people feel maybe apple was not so foolish as to try to capture the low end which is nokias low end smartphone. Windows phone did quite nicely, total shipments 6. 6 million, the first increase in smartphone shipments for nokia that theyve seen in a year. Theyre saying First Quarter might be troubling because seasonality issues and also the competitive environment. Obviously a lot of phones coming out at ces and across the spectrum. But lets be clear. A lot of work hard for nokia. 0 gain is not necessarily the start of a turnaround per se at this company. And Morgan Stanley, if youre thinking about buy microsoft, windows 8 disappointing. I do like to a lot of people call in on mad money, they want to talk about low dollar stocks. Clearwire. Nokia. Supervalu, all big wins. Typically speculation speculation is really bad, we have to be involved with pfizer, you know, you should be in merck. The percentage wins here are staggering and a lot of people hit it big. By the way, sirius worked out, too. At the same time when you have a low priced stock like that, there is a great deal of risk and i know you point that out many times. I wont enmention many of these until they pierce that 3 level. But i was skeptical and this is one of those rare times where skepticism for supervalu, skepticism for clearwire because it was at a dollar not take long ago and it turns out theyre a very valuable company. Get back to nokia in a sense, spectrum extraordinarily valuable. Well see how that situation unfolds. I think it has a lot of twists and turns to come in terms of what dish is trying to do here. Perhaps forge some sort of negotiated settlement with sprints. But again spectrum so important because of the prevalence of devices like the lumia and everything else. You have to be there to compete. David, you have been at the forefront of people who are on tv explaining dont forget the debt side, dont forget the bonds. What i find remarkable is supervalu, the credit side got very bad. Equity side reflected the credit side and then now suddenly i would have thought the way to buy the company was the debt. It was. And the debt has been an incredible performer. So it is important and especially Companies Like this where you have 3 stock prices, you can have a much larger position so to speak on the debt side if it is very levered. The job cuts worked. Occasionally you have to throw your hands upnd say, wow, a lot of money can be made even just picking stocks that you thought were dead. Absolutely. Up next, well dig deeper. Yeah, you couldnt imagine we couldnt digfully dealership, did you . But we will. Herballive meets with shareholders today and in a live interview, Michael Johnson will defend his company, fire back at big being a man. Thats latest in the program. Another look at futures. You can see we are looking not too bad. At farmers, we make you smarter about insurance. Because what you dont know can hurt you. What if you didnt know that boxes by the curb. Make you a target for thieves . Or that dog bites account for a third of all home liability claims . What if you didnt know that one in seven drivers is uninsured . And that grease fires have to be smothered . The more you know, the better you can plan for whats ahead. Get smarter about your insurance. We are farmers bum pa dum, bum bum bum bum herbalife executives are holding a meeting with investors to make a case for the company and rebut accusations that its a pyramid scheme. Herbalifes president appeared on squawk box and explained what its company will tell shareholders today. What well hear is that big being a mans claims represent a gross distortion of the reality, that herbalife is a great company, weve been this business for 32 years. We have tremendous science based products that are high in health and safety and a tremendous business opportunity. Were proud of where we are today and confident about our future. After the herbalife meeting ends, michael john so thson wil appear on skauk squawk on the treat. Must see tv. This story has legs. As an investment story, i can make an argument that perhaps were overdoing it a bit. But as a story, come on. The fact as of yesterday this new plot twist with dan taking on where he thought his friend, referring to him only, though, as the short seller. I thought that was a little hostile in his letter. Just adds another layer of intrigue. And significant money at stake for both hedge funds. And Herb Greenberg has been on this for a very long time. Michael johnson has come on my show at mod money. But he has a documentary thats fascinating. In terms of timely, ive never seen anything like it. It has been in the works for months. So check it out if you havent already. Called selling the dream. But in terms of twists and turns, there are also reports that carl icahn may be involved in the name. I got the call in, but well see what turns out. Fabulous interview this morning, andrew, becky, joe. And one of the things that i really wonder about, and it was brought up by andrew, they did pay off a noted but now imprisoned short seller. They did pay him 300,000 to foe away. And the president said, look, maybe that i had a dispute with michael saying, look, when your name is in question, it doesnt matter how much money you spend. You fight them in court, you spend millions of dollars. They paid 300,000 for a guy to go away. Never. Because when you do that, what that says is perhaps youre worried. It doesnt matter whether its a nuisance. Never ever back away from a fight about your reputation. Also its interesting to me, just to see how this is playing out. There was a day when i started certainly when hedge funds, nobody knew what they were doing, who was behind them. These things play out in the public realm now to such an extent. Not that dan loeb has come on, youre always but interesting how hedge funds have taken to a new level in terms of simple publicity. They come on air and bash the stock. Is that okay . They say i like the stock, it will go to 900 a share. Same exact thing. Just inkem wecumbent on the questioner to ask reasonable questions. When you sit down with herb who is the finest investigative business accounting guy ive ever seen in my life, he will tell you this could be like the not for profit schools if youre trying to figure out whether to be in herbalife. Over time being they just eroded and eroded because the Business Model was challenged. Long term, i dont want to be in the stock. Short term, its too hard. Well, it is the best way to get ahead of the curve on any trading day. Cramers mad dash coming up next. Find out what he has to say about stocks on his radar and lets take another look at futures. It does look like an up day here on wall street with the s p up about 8 at the open. [ male announcer ] dont just reject convention. Drown it out. Introducing the allnew 2013 lexus ls f sport. An entirely new pursuit. With multiple lacerations to the wing and a fractured beak. Surgery was successful, but he will be in a cast until it is fully healed, possibly several months. So, if the duck isnt able to work, how will he pay for his Living Expenses . Aflac. Like his rent and car payments . Aflac. What about gas and groceries . Aflac. Cell phone . Aflac, but i doubt hell be using his phone for quite a while cause like i said, he has a fractured beak. [ male announcer ] send the aflac duck a getwell card at getwellduck. Com. Im up next, but now im singing the heartburn blues. Hold on, prilosec isnt for fast relief. Cue up alkaseltzer. It stops heartburn fast. Oh what a relief it is [ male announcer ] how do you turn an entrepreneurs dream. Into a scooter that talks to the cloud . Or turn 30million artifacts. Into a hightech masterpiece . Whatever your business challenge, dell has the technology and services to help you solve it. Time for cramers mad dash. Lets talk supervalu. Important deal taking place for the company. Basics are youll get a 30 owner, 4 a share. That would be service also taking on albertsons. I was worried about the Balance Sheet and worried about the earnings. Still a risk, but it is a refi. This is essentially a way to refi the company, take out some of the risk that youre talking about. If there isnt a tender at 4, does the back end trade much lower . What im trying to do is protect people from paying 3. 50 if that turns out to be not a good price. People are trying ittofigure out itto to figur out 30 at 4. Lets not forget this company tried to sell itself for quite some time. Private equity overall very large. That has been the case in private equity. Theres been a multiple problem when it comes to private equity. Very high multiples. Not enough growth. Is there a larger conclusion to that supermarkets are still investable. It was successful in bringing in smart people. Will we see them in another form. They put themselves successful . Not a dress for success. All right. Lets talk about success for a second. Ford doubled its dividend. Ive been saying that al mulally stayed on in ordinary to turn it around. By the way, can i just say, thats called a reverse head and shoulders. Youre probably holding up a bottle of shampoo upside down. But this is a remarkable comeback story. Europe is turning around. Bank of america note today about tail winds and commodities. This stock is going i think to 1 18. That would be a success. A keen sense for the obvious. We have the opening bell coming up. Also ahead, facebook back above 30. How long will it be before the social network returns to its ipo price . Remember that. Opening bell and a lot most of squawk on the street ahead. What are you doing . Nothing. Are you stealing our Daughters School supplies and taking them to work . No, i was just looking for my stapler and my. This