The crimean referendum, of course, is this weekend. The roadmap begins with continuing Global Concerns led by china and ukraine. Have the markets looking at a modestly higher open this after the major averages logged their worst day since february 3 period. General motors is firing back that air bag failure in recalled vehicles resulted in more than 300 deaths. Target admitting it did not take immediate action after Security Software originally alerted the company to malicious activity after the data breach. And Mark Zuckerberg calls president obama to complain about the governments surveillance programs. First up, though, thursday, the 13, was bad luck for the bulls as worries about a slowdown in china and rising tension between ukraine and russia helped spark a market selloff. All 30 components finishing in the red. And the s p has fallen to negative territory for the year and the nasdaq posting a decline for the fifth time in six sessions. The s p has only had a yeartodate gain nine days this entire year. And were in the red once again. Well, were taking our cue, i saw when i got up early it looked like europe was stabilizing, you know, our futures were up and things looked fine and then europe flips as the redder it gets worse and the next thing you know you have markets down 2 . Germany is down 0. 6 when i last looked and germany should be down the most but we also keep hearing if russia market keeps going down, that putin will rethink because hes a capitalist after all. Hes not acting very capitalistic and thats partly of what were worried about. So, ukraine continues to be a concern or even more so programs the primary concern for the market . Well, i think Nothing Happened in china last night. I think that china is just this ongoing deceleration theme, how theyre spending their money, theyre not obviously not buying a lot of stuff because we watch copper and coppers bad. I always come back to what happened in 39. In 1939. Well, thats because the europeans even when everyone thought the euro was going to break up. They heard about peace. They never want to go back to theres a plebiscite, they never want to go back to the free city of danzig. They regard what russia is doing is very similar to what hitler did. Not to analogize to hitler although Hillary Clinton basically said the same thing from last week. These people are not going to stand by, but what are they going to do . What did they do in 1938 . They said, okay, listen, czechoslovakia is all yours and then danzig, no, they stood up to that. The russian army is not going to roll through western europe. Thats my point, maybe we are overdoing it to a certain point the russian army is not going to roll through europe. Amassing Russian Troops ahead of this weekend is trying to demonstrate how easy it would be to move into ukraine if he wanted to. I just dont think that this is the next site. Not the crimean war either. But the europeans are uniquely worried about the 1932 to 1939 period. And how fascism came about and youll hear putins a fascist. And a much bigger trading partner with china than certainly we are. They are getting on both sides to some degree. Listen to Warren Buffett and he had more to say other than creighton is going to go all the way. He said, look, you have to stay the course and sometimes i find when i listen to him and he says stay the course, and you just kind of say, stay the course. I dont like arguing with him . Maybe the ibm buy wasnt so good, but this arguing with Warren Buffett thing, its just never gotten you anywhere. Buffett was asked, by the way, whether he sold any assets because of the ukraine and chinese concerns. Heres what he said on squawk not warranted in terms of the market. I didnt sell my farm yesterday. I didnt sell my property down there at nyu, so why should i sell my businesses . The most he said was getting out of catastrophic insurance because the rates are so low. Right. I know thats been the cat insurance. You have to do it in bonds. Hes talking about wells fargo. Lets use wells fargo as an example. The Interest Rates have done down. A lot of people are worried about mortgage originaloriginor. Hes taking a longerterm view and we cant do that, but maybe we can. Hedge funds want to sell, theyre worried. Maybe there is action because of the plebiscite, and you immediately think about the plebiscite that was supposed to happen and then there was vienna. And i only point this out because you dont want to be that historical when it comes to the stock markets. Europeans. Right. Its always september 1st of 1939 over there. I suppose. Although back then nobody actually had a nuclear weapon. No. Now france does. The uk does. And remember how chamberlin said ill go over there. They dont want to deal with putin. The hedge funds figure why dont we get sure. The worse that happens is nothing happens this weekend and ill cover on monday. Its an easy s p trade. Was there any s p stock up yesterday . There was the worst breadth sense the february 3rd low. Do we think that every company is really deeply hurt by what is happening . No. Someone was tweeting me, how about rite aid, do i buy rite aid . You dont sit there and say this is the time for rite aid but we might look back and say why didnt cramer say it isnt the time with rite aid . You are praying in the church of buffett this morning. Im just saying that everybody else is praying in the other church so maybe its time to go across the street. Makes sense for me. He hasnt sold his farm and the property by nyu. He likes to talk about them. March madness, win the bracket . Its exciting. Would you take the lump sum or the 25 what is it 25 million . Let me tell you the way i feel about it. When nova went down to seton hall and they were going to be first seed, my world turned upside down. And now se ba they should do 2 million its so hard to pick this year. Before we move on to gm and i want to. We talked a lot of geopolitics here. Its not our area of expertise necessarily. Lets assume the rush een army not going to roll through anything but if theres higher hostilities for a longer period of time, it would be a negative. The peace dividend and winding down our operations and, of course, the generals are saying that were the weakest since 1939 completely untrue. But i just think that, look, this is not an environment where you want to stick your neck out and say i want to be Long International stocks that have a lot of business in europe and china. But is that cvs, for instance . Is that cbs . You could mention lots of stocks and say is that dominion. Do you buy southern . Kinda. Yeah, buy aep. Its fine. By southern. Right. Those are really what you buy when uf think that there could be a march on kiev. But i think theres a lot more stocks to like than dislike but no one wants to hear that because the world is coming to an end. It only takes eight shuts on the electricity grid to wipe out the whole thing. Tesla hasnt reinvented wait until they can reinvent the grid. Wait until they can sell cars in new york. Lets get to General Motors, it is battling claims that the air bag failure in recalled vehicles resulted in 303 deaths. It was part of the ignition switch recall and gm said it was based on raw data from safety regulators without what they call rigorous analysis. The company is under heavy criticism for dragging its feet on taking action on the defective switches which it has apparently known about for upwards of ten years. Yeah. Stocks been getting hit. At a certain point. Clearly. My Charitable Trust owns it and i sit there and say is there a level, how about 4 . The headlines are so bad. And you got the mt. Everest chart, holy cow, head and shoulders. The government made a really good sale here. Government looking good. Tim masset, nice sale. You think he was talking to maybe the department of transportation . Department of transportation might be short the stock. Kind of like the fdic knew about fannie and freddie. And it might affect the restructuring to begin with. It could get very messy. One thing is for certain when you have a headline every day like this, a lot of people just say get me out of it. Thats been a mistake. But think how long it took for bp to get back to the gulf. Today four years. Four years later. And bp was at 70 and then it was at 60 and then 50 and how bad could it be and then 39 and the answer is the dividends in trouble. I understand. I dont think the dividend is in trouble at gm. Remember merck . 27 with vioxx. Right. By the way the ceos wife was taking vioxx, if it was so bad why was she taking it. They fought through it extremely well, it took a while. It took a while. I dont know if youve ever taken vioxx. You ever taken it . No. What a fabulous drug. Better than celebrex. Celebrex is in the news. Yeah, celebrex. Geez. I dont know. Speaking companies that have a legal trouble ahead, retailer target has acknowledged that its Security Software did warn it of potentially malicious activity during the december data breach but decided not to take action at that time. Earlier reports said the type of alert received by target is often received and may have been tough to single out as being particularly harmful. Big piece in business week last night. Basically said fireeye did their job beautifully. But target for whatever reason did not react. They got the initial notice, im trying to see here, on november 30. And then justice came along on december 12th and said, hey, you got a problem. Fireeye is really good. I was thinking that, well, did the question was did they have what did they know, when did they know it. Obviously this is going to be the big sea change. Reading the verifone Conference Call. And theyre talking about, look, we need to get a whole new generation. But it seems like all you really needed to do was bring in someone who understood and had to realize the threat assessment was the issue, the targets threat assessment of what fireeye said. But it is nice to know that theres someone who was able to at least read this. Yes. Fireeyes been on telling you, we can read this stuff. Weve been talking for some time now how general breaches whether they be data breaches of this type, designed to steal credit card numbers for profit or the chinese engaging in significant espionage to gain corporate secrets essentially, this is a boardlevel problem now. No doubt about it, throughout the s p. Right. And has to be a boardlevel issue at all times where when youre in there, theyve got to be saying to the ceo, where are we on all this stuff. How confident are you . What are the systems . What are the checks . Where are you . How are you going to know . How quickly can we get on top of something when we do learn about it . I was at a Board Meeting yesterday for the street. Which i found a long time ago. Someone set up a bogus Hr Department online and pretended to be the Hr Department of the street. We nailed them in time. But you are thinking this happened to be a small company. But can you imagine why did they target the street . They are probably targeting a lot of people. Setting up a bogus Hr Department. What are they doing . This money get your resume to somebody. Still one more i cant thats a good scam. They were skyping with people claiming it was the street. Im thinking holy cow. It was a boardlevel discussion. The bad guys are brilliant. And they just never stop. And to a large degree they are just getting started. I know. Because technology is coming their way. Yes, it is. Youre right, its a boardlevel discussion and everyone will have to have one, palo alto net has been my and Mark Zuckerberg sounded off about the nsa spy program and vents about it on facebook. Well tell you what he wrote coming up. And well take the pulse of the consumer with staples ceo tom stem berg, stronger online sales have been a blessing and a curse for the Office Supply chain. One more look at futures having trouble getting out of the red here. A lot more squawk on the street live from post nine in just a moment. Tall the building is, or how ornate the halls are. It doesnt matter if there are granite statues, or big mahogany desks. When working with an investment firm, whats really important is whether the people behind the desks actually stand behind what they say. Introducing the schwab accountability guarantee. If youre not happy with one of our participating Investment Advisory services, well refund your program fee from the previous quarter. Its no guarantee against loss and other fees and expenses may still apply. Chuck vo standing by your word, thats what matters the most. Feeling right got to shake it facebook ceo Mark Zuckerberg said he phoned the president to complain about the nsa spy program, its effect on the internet and the damage the government is creating for all of our future. In a Facebook Post yesterday he wrote, ive been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the u. S. Government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine were protecting you against criminals, not our own government. Strong words. A lot of discussion about just calling up the president. How you get that number and how you get the nerve to make the call. And then others saying, you know, facebook on privacy is kind of the kettle calling the the pot calling the kettle black to some degree. I would weigh in on that as well. I think often about i did a documentary many years ago called big brother big business for our network. That was in the infancy of the surveillance age if you will. And yet even there with facial recognition and a number of Different Things there were real questions about it and the data brokers such as axiom. Now, i mean, youre privacy, forget about it. We talked about it a number of times. I quoted Scott Mcneeley a few weeks ago on this very subject. But facebook knows, i mean, the amount of information that they have or amazon has or google has you go on and on for these and the ability to manipulate that information in a way that was not available to them even a few years ago were talking big data, were talking what they can do with it, is extraordinary. And so, sure, the nsa is worthy of criticism, but, man, you should be worried about what they all know about you, too. Thats an expectation of privacy, and i went to law school, the one thing i really studied. Theres an expectation of privacy for the country. Thats obviously out the window. We used to be, well, even crooks have privacy and now nobody does. Everything you email you should expect to see on the front page of the New York Times. Every time you give your credit card you should expect that someone can compromise you and i just find myself saying, okay, listen, this is now the new normal. You got to respect the fact that someone has there are people out there and companies out there and governments out there that know far more about us unless you want to be in a cash society. Facebook can figure out if youre a man or woman based on your cell phone. Every time you order something, i looked at salesforce. Com coming mark benioff and i called salesforce i just basically called the salesperson, say im interested. Every time i look i got a salesforce. Com ad comes up everywhere. You know they know more about me than i know about me. It will help them deliver ads to you that youll click on. Do we have anything to hide. I know thats not the issue either. Nixon often thought this was the right thing and now nixon would have the tools to really go to town. Oh, yeah. When we come back, well get cramers mad dash as we get closer to the opening bell. One more look at the premarket on this friday morning. Were back in a minute. No two people have the same financial goals. Pnc investments works with you to understand yours and helps plan for your retirement. Talk to a pnc investments Financial Advisor today. Story about a man a simple man a man with a dream to do the world some good we have eight minutes before the opening bell here on a friday. Of course, not a great week for the market thus far. No. If you are long at least stocks. What do we got for the mad dash . The key to the market is facetious something david and i used to talk about, alta salons, herb green is marveling heres a company that guided down somewhat substantially and you would expect any guidedown to continue this decline. No. Why . Because they said Comp Store Sales could be 5 to 7 up. When anybody sees aam could. Store that is above five they love the stock. So, this is this new world where we just are focused only on Comp Store Sales. Aeropostale, i all that aero post stale. Down 50 . What happens . The universe is saying if we can find retail growth well buy it. Williamssonoma but it broke down toward the end of the year. I know. Because they guided. It was 20 . This was a soft 20 and they guided to 15 and people are happy for 15 . Its regained its mantle. People will gravitate toward domestic retailers with a five plus comp because they have nothing to do with the ukraine and they have nothing to do with im sorry, ukraine. Get rid of the the. And you are looking to see theres going to be a Bristol Meyers cohort that is going to bottom here today i believe and might test bottom again on monday and theyre going to start coming to the domestic retailers with a good numbers because they can isolate them from china and the ukraine. Watch that action happen late this afternoon maybe again on monday if theres nothing more than sanctions put on china, sanctions meaning typically meaningless. Yep. Thats what people are gravitating toward. You want to see what will bounce. Domestic retail with good numbers and drug stocks. Well keep an eye on activism, pepsi, ebay, sothebies. The fights keep going on. Nasty, theyre not nice anymore, david. Keep your decorum activists. And kyle bass will join us to talk about a Mortgage Servicing company that he loves a lot. Opening bell coming up after this. Is. Are you still sleeping . Just wanted to check and make sure that we were on schedule. The First Tec