America in retreat. Russia takes over. Markets dont care. Stocks look slightly higher again this morning. But watch out, housing. A few minutes from now, well get the latest news on Mortgage Rates, new loans, refis, home sales, theyre already hurting. Yeah, Varney Company about to begin. Wait until you hear this. Russia president putin criticizing president obama and did it in the new york time. Quoting now, millions around the world increasingly see america not as a model of democracy, but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together with the slogan either with us or against us. He goes on, its alarming that other countries is common place with the united states. And i would disagree on the mark president obama made on exceptionalism. Remember, please, all of this was kicked off by a wisecrack made by secretary of state kerry just last week. Is there anything at this point that his government could do or offer that would stop an attack . Sure. He could turn over every sick single bit of his chemical weapons to the International Community. Turn it over, all of it without delay and allow a full and total accounting for that, but he isnt about to do it and it cant be done, obviously. Stuart todays thursday. That was monday. It started with that one off the cuff comment from secretary kerry and now Russias Putin is lecturing us, dictating u. S. Foreign policy. As weve seen frequently, the market really does not care about all of that. Money has no morality. The dow has showed a triple digit gain in each of the last three trading sessions and by the way, theyre not going to be in retreat today. I repeat, money as no morality. There are big investors making big moves. Carl icahn says that apple stock is cheap and did you see this . I make it appearance on jon stewarts daily show. Later, you will see the whole thing. [ male announcer ] at his current pace, bob will retire when hes 153, which would be fine if bob were a vampire. 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Its despicable. One, was that guy in a cow su suit . I dont really understand financial news. Stuart clearly, jon, thats true. And here he is in the flesh, cow jacket and all, scott shellady. Youve had your 15 seconds of second tier fame there. And i want to know why gold is down 32 bucks an ounce right now. I think the market is full of it, but welcome up to the fact at that we might be actually in a disinflationary environment or even inflationary. Anded fed is worried about that and disinflationary. Stuart the bell is ringing, were about to start the trading session this thursday morning. Remember, please, the dow has gone up what, 400 odd points in the last three trading sessions and were opening just a little higher today. Look at the level. 15,327. Got to get to apple. Most people yawned when apple unveiled two new iphones and the stock sold off big time. Now, billionaire carl icahn says hes going to go bargain hunting, has that moved the stock higher at all, nicole . A big move,. 2 ,. 1 . Its interesting, well see what ensues from this, but the question is why apple didnt announce something pertaining to china mobile. Thats what everybody was really waiting for and the other thing that the analysts are saying, why so many of them have now cut apple, they think that the cheaper model is not cheap enough to gain traction. Stuart im surprised, a guy with icahns money says its a bargain, im going to buy. Nicole right . Its up a buck, thats nothing after a drop like that. Nicole maybe people are just sort of going back to the dell thing, taking a breather. Stuart youre right, nicole. Thanks a lot. Dow industrial is 10 points higher in the early going. And were talking about mobile, and shares are up higher, look at facebook as 45. 31. Another big name, walmart, they say that shoppers are poised for buying, that would be thanksgiving, and christmas. And michelle, i dont want you to talk about walmart, but the top guy there is talking about pretty strong Consumer Spending. How do you see it . Well, you know, weve seen in the aggregate Consumer Spending running 2, 2 1 2 , if you adjust for inflation. Thats decent. We may get periods where we see better Consumer Spending and honestly, weve seen lackluster numbers in recent months so maybe theres gearing up or saving up for a nice strong holiday season. That would be encouraging. But i just dont see the impetus for consumers to be, you know, to start spending on a sustained basis, a lot more aggressively than they are now. I wanted to ask you about this. We reported yesterday. Weve got government numbers that came out on monday. And the treasury took in an extra 284 billion dollars so far this fiscal year. And the president wants a trillion more over the next ten years. Now, its my opinion that when you take that kind of money, over a quarter trillion dollars, you take it out of the economy and you give it to the government, that doesnt encourage growth. Whats your view on that . Well, thats, you know, i of course, stuart, i tend to align with that. Id rather have money in the hands of the private sector, and that well spend it more efficiently. The with unthing though, i will say and of course, all of those numbers over a 10year horizon, you know how much you can take that, and of course, one of the things i will say, talking about the strength in those revenue numbers this year, unfortunately, i think a lot of that was people pulling income forward, you know, a lot of the revenues were coming in from the income and a lot of them took ahead of the tax increases and theres hope that the deficit will keep coming down and revenue will stay strong. I think theres a little disappointment on that slot. I think again, that people adjust their behavior if the government is taking more money from them and i think theyll change their behavior and to some extent. Thats like the revenue weve seen in the last year showed. Stuart youve got that one dead right. I dont know why youre smiling, but youve got it right. And we beat the theme on these things. We think its a brilliant idea, most of us. Stuart thats right, a quick one at the end. Whats your forecast for growth in the American Economy this year . You know, same as it was in the sense of what weve seen as expansion. I think were looking for 2 , its only a little bit, about the same. I think the same as we saw last year, i think the second half is similar to the first. Its positives and negatives and as i said, theres just nothing that i think gets this economy at a faster growth trajectory. No impetus for a sustained move to the growth and thats why it feels kind of exactly. Were not growing as quickly as we could. I dont see the prospects forat. Where is Ronald Reagan when you need him. Im hold enough to remember him, youre not. Michelle, thanks very much indeed. Take care. Stuart you remember the fiasco about seethrough yoga pants. Strong sales and profits reported at lululemon. Im taking a peek at the stock and its down. Why is that, nicole . They have given a forecast. The competition is intense Going Forward. So theyve cut their numbers Going Forward and the stock is recovering some of the losses already. Its down 7 . So, number one, they did recoup with some sales and theyre doing better, however, theyre also noting that recall tangover from the too sheer pants, the seethrough pants. Nobody wants seethrough pants. They had bleeding shirts, that the color was coming off, ink, whatever, the dye was coming up. So, theyve had issues and the Biggest Issue of all, who is going to be the ceo. You have a current ceo who is going to step down when a successor is named and thats a wild card. Stuart ive just been told they lost 40 to 50 Million Dollars on the recall of those too sheer seethrough pants. Thats an awful lot of money. I mean, thats part of the reason here. All right, nicole, thank you very much indeed. And several issues to go through with our special person, liz macdonald. More signs our real estate economy may be stalling. And rising Mortgage Rates. Thats a fine weve got a housing problem on our hands here as we were expecting it to recover. Liz, whats new on housing . What were seeing is likely increase in Mortgage Rates, and freddie mac was reporting at 10 00. Stuart 24 minutes. Its trending now probably 4. 7 and that means refinancings have been going down and reporting how citigroup is laying off mortgage unit workers and other big banks. When refinancing goes down, thats a bad indicator for Gross Domestic Product and Consumer Spending goes down. When people cant refinance their mortgages to cheaper rates, they dont have the pocket book power that they have prior to that. Stuart okay. I want to ask you about the numbers that we got at 8 30 this morning. Unemployment jobless claims, i was watching the tape. Here it comes. 2 and what was it, 292,000, whoa, what a fabulous number, whoop dedoo, down 31,000 from the week before. Yes. Stuart and then. Whamo, we found out that two states likely were left out. So dont get out the hats and horns yet. This almost a year to the day what happened in october of 2012 when one big state was left out, california because it didnt have basically the people to process the jobs claims. Im thinking, too, we had a big Labor Day Weekend so maybe, you know, the fact that two states are out. Didnt have time to process it. Stuart it was a fiasco. Expect a big revision next week higher. Stuart what about the people who saw that wonderful number, made a trade. No kidding. Stuart and ten seconds later pull it back, somebody lost on this. Somebody lost, rights. Stuart and yahoo s chief, maris sa mayer, she could face jail time if she released information that she released to the nsa. She says she wants to work in the system. The bottom line, google, facebook and yahoo can be suing the federal government to let the users know the number of nsa numbers, its a big deal for the Business Models of the cant because the users and customers feel threatened by this. Stuart one last one for you. Youve covered the entire blog. Aflcio calling obama care, disruptive to Union Health Care plans, they want big changes, liz. This is a big deal. Aflcio now coming around. And the fact that the aflcio is doing this shows that the Obama Care Health reform weakens the unions power to recruit. If the Health Benefits are hurt, then their recruiting power goes down. Basically they dont like the cadillac tax. They dont like the delay in the employer mandate or the fact that the workers could be solved on to health care exchanges. They want all of the changes put in and thats what theyre now demanding. Richard trumka fighting hard to keep the unions inhouse on board and now hes even turning against health reform, because essentially, why do you need unions to do collective bargaining if your Health Benefits are coming up. Stuart im reading it, the white house is calling up labor unions, but they did it anyway, they called it highly disruptive. I think thats a big deal. It is a big deal. 110 days to obama care. And the unions have been the president s most loyal base. Theyve campaigned for him and health reform. Stuart quick update on the market. We were up in three sessions and now down just 6. Look were at 15,320 as we speak. Russian put president Vladimir Putin taking the upper hand and even invoking gods name. Strong words from the former kgb guy. More in a moment. 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Stuart senator, you cant be pleased whats going on here because putin seems to be pushing us around. Well, i dont think hes what hes doing is hes getting air time. You know, between snowden and syria hes finding the air time he wants and the ability to interject himself in americas politics. He hasnt been on the stage in a long time and hes liking it. Its important for us, the president said that diplomacy is something hes willing to work at. But the fact is, is russias got to come to the table with true diplomacy. Stuart but if they dont and syrians dont hand over their chemical weapons, can you see america attacking, really . Well, lets face it. He talks big in the first part of this oped how the u. N. Came about and how its supposed to be a concensus. And yet, you know, at the end he tries to label the rebels with the application of the sarin gas. None of studies, none of the inspections have led to any of that, anything close to that. Mostly, where theyre leading is the fact that, you know, the gas and other arsenals have been stored by the Syrian Government and again, without russia and china, where would syria be. So if he really thinks that diplomacy is the way to do it then he needs to come to the table at the place where that happens and that is working with other u. N. Nations to figure out how do we do something about it . Thats russia. Thats russias input here. What about americas . Were taking a back seat here. Were being dictated to. Know the in one oped. I think the president said, you know, if you all want diplomacy, ive told you what i think we need to do. Were seeing innocent people being gassed, over 500 children. 900 adults . He started talking how russia was an ally with the u. S. In against the nazis. These people, weve seen people murdered, killed. Stuart america is now in a position of negotiating with assad, negotiating within the United Nations over this terrible chemical weapons attack, were negotiating with the people who we were going to mabel topple from power a few weeks ago and now negotiating with them. Keeping assad in power. Democrats surely cannot be happy with the performance of president obama in this Foreign Policy arena . Well, lets face it, i mean, president obama said, im really im ready to do something about this. Im do you believe it . Senator, do you believe it . I think he would love to have the support of the congress to do it and do you think hell get it . Do you think hell do it. And get the opportunity. And all putin wants to do is get us off of our game. You know, weve got auto manufacturing jobs increasing, natural gas, oil and gas jobs increasing in the country and an opportunity to put our economy back on track and he simply wants to get us off our game. Stuart last one, senator, do you think americas standing in the world is where it was . I think globally, all nations are at a point where they really need to focus on coming toget