The New York Times has this fascinating new lengthy article about the famous sentencing of an infamous white-collar offender. The piece is headlined Judge Explains 150-Year Sentence for Madoff, and here is how it starts: With the sentencing of Bernard L. Madoff only a week away, Judge Denny Chin received a letter from Mr. Madoff’s lawyer asking for a prison term substantially below the 150-year maximum. The lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, listed several reasons, including Mr. Madoff’s confessing to his sons, knowing he would be turned in; his “full acceptance” of responsibility for his crimes; and his efforts to assist in the recovery of lost assets.
Bernard Madoff, Architect of Largest Ponzi Scheme in History, Is Dead at 82 His enormous fraud left behind a devastating human toll and paper losses totaling $64.8 billion. Bernie Madoff leaving a Manhattan court in January 2009. The victims of his fraud numbered in the thousands and were scattered from Palm Beach to the Persian Gulf.Credit.Hiroko Masuike/Getty Images April 14, 2021Updated 11:27 a.m. ET Bernard L. Madoff, the one-time senior statesman of Wall Street who in 2008 became the human face of an era of financial misdeeds and missteps for running the largest and possibly most devastating Ponzi scheme in financial history, died on Wednesday at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, N.C. He was 82.
Disgraced Ponzi scheme architect Bernie Madoff dies in prison at 82 reuters.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from reuters.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Bernie Madoff, architect of largest Ponzi scheme in history, is dead at 82 bdnews24.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bdnews24.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
It seems Donald Trump and Rudolph Giuliani s relationship is on the rocks. According to The Washington Post, the president has become upset with his longtime friend and personal attorney as he approaches the end of his presidency and faces an impeachment trial. White House insiders claim Trump has told aides not to pay Giuliani s legal fees and wants to personally approve any reimbursements for the expenses Giuliani incurred during his failed attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election on POTUS behalf. The New York Times also spoke to an official who confirmed that Trump was offended by Giuliani reportedly seeking $20,000 a day for his work in overturning the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election. Another adviser claimed White House officials have started to block calls from Giuliani to Trump.
Under Heavy Pressure, Trump Releases Video Condemning Capitol Siege The video was made public after President Trump was impeached a second time and after he told his supporters in the hours following the start of the riot last week that “we love you.” President Trump speaking during a video posted on the White House Twitter feed on Wednesday.Credit.Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse Getty Images Jan. 13, 2021 Under heavy pressure from his advisers, President Trump on Wednesday released a five-minute video recorded in the Oval Office condemning last week’s mob violence at the Capitol and urging his supporters to stand down from further rioting next week.
scheme run by his father. of course, bernard madoff was first arrested exactly two years ago today. he is currently serving a 150-year prison term and sits behind bars on this morning. cnbc s scott cohen is joining me live on the phone. we don t know exactly what happened but the timing is eerie to say the least. it was two years ago yesterday that bernie madoff confessed first to his sons andrew and bart. bernard madoff was arrested an the scandal exposed to the world. there isn t a statement this morning from mark madoff s attorney. confirming that mark madoff took his own life today saying this is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy. mark was an innocent victim of his father s man strus crimes who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo. we ll all deeply saddened by this shocking turn of events. that s been the stance of the madoff sons throughout. they were the ones who turned their father into the fbi after the confession. they ve always said that they were innocent victims in all of this and there was some estrangement between bernard madoff and his son, to say the least, as a result. we spoke to ira lee sorkin this morning, he had not yet heard the news and could only say to us this is a tragedy on multiple levels. scott, you were just there at the prison yesterday where bernard madoff is serving his time. what did you glean from that visit? we were there to mark the two-year anniversary. and one of the things that we did learn as a result of that was that bernard madoff is clearly still keeping track of all that s going on in the case including the investigation that was ongoing against his sons, his brother, his wife and his niece. those criminal investigations have not yet been concluded. there have been a number of civil lawsuits particularly against the sons alleging that they did indeed know what was going on. and madoff, bernard madoff is keeping close track of that from behind the prison walls. scott, i should also add here that from our colleague wnbc s john than dienst that mark madoff was discovered this morning by his father-in-law. he s never been charged with being involved in the actual swindling that his father was charged and ultimately convicted with, right? but he did stand to gain from the financial profits. well, certainly from the family wealth. the position of the madoff the rest of the madoff family has always been that the advisory business where bernard madoff was carrying out this fraud was separate and apart from the other businesses that andrew and mark were involved in, and so that they were deliberately kept out of what was going on. a lot of people found that clearly hard to believe. among them the bankruptcy trusty irving picard who has launched lawsuits up to today which was the deadline saying this the family members knew they were taking money, they were gaining a lot of money from the prose of the fraud and that they should be forced to give it back. but again mark madoff had always contended that he was an innocent victim here and was trying to get his professional life back on track. had recently started reportedly a research firm and no word on how that is affected by all of this. scott cohn, thank you very much for joining us for this breaking story. frigid weather and blizzard warnings out of the midwest today. snow is piling up big time in minneapolis. temperatures around 25 degrees colder than average across the northern plains. so for the national forecast, let s go to bill karins right now. good morning, bill. good morning to you, alex. not what we need. people want to get their trees, run their errands, do their shopping and they don t want to deal with a storm like this one. there s two sides to this storm. one, the snow, which you know the kids don t mind. and then the cold. i think the cold is going to be a bigger deal than the snow by the time we re all said and done. everyone on the east coast, enjoy your saturday. it s nice and dry. a little warmer. get your errands done outside because tomorrow looks to be rainy, then very cold monday, tuesday, wednesday. we have blizzard warnings, horrible conditions in areas of extreme eastern south dakota, southern minnesota, iowa. and eventually this will work its way into northern illinois and all through the state of wisconsin. around sioux falls and sioux city we re watching extremely heavy snow from minneapolis southwards. in wisconsin, it will be bad all day long. here is a close-up view. sioux falls. winds are gusting up to 30 miles an hour. heavy snow. that s moving towards minneapolis and the st. cloud area. everyone in central wisconsin could end up with the possibility of a foot of snow when all is said and done. so cold and the snow is light and fluffy, so it will be hard to measure anyway. in bismarck, minus 20 is the current wind chill. rapid city is around minus 7. look at omaha now down to minus 7. st. louis, kansas city, as the weekend moves on. this is in areas of the dakotas and minnesota. let s take you to scott williams who is in the heart of the storm in minneapolis. conditions are quickly getting worse, i imagine. the wind is also picking up. that will create near blizzard conditi conditions here for minneapolis. as you move south of the state, that is where we are finding some of the blizzard conditions already. the snow continues to fall. i have a ruler right here. i would say where i m at, about six inches of the snow has fallen. it is that light, airy snow. you pick it up, it just blows, it just drifts. that will create some problems on the roadways because as soon as they clear the snow, it comes back on the road. this is hennepin avenue here. but transit busing have been going by from time to time. earlier one got stuck in the snow and they had to bring some shovels out and plows to help that bus get on its way. but it s a triple threat here. we re looking at the cold, the wind and also the snow. back to you. all right. i guess i will take it then. i want to thank both bill karins and scott williams for updating. bill, you clearly have the cushier job today when you look at what scott has to deal with there. my goodness. good luck. a tax cut deal hanging in the balance on capitol hill. president obama is recruiting someone who has seen plenty of tough negotiations. bill clinton stopped by the briefing room yesterday to help the president sell his proposal. he s been out of office for a decade, of course, but to the former president, it was just like old times. whatever he asked me about my advice and whatever i say should become public only if he decides to make it public. he can say whatever he wants. here s what i ll say is i ve been keeping the first lady waiting for about half an hour. so i m going to take off. i don t want to make her mad. please go. you re in good hands. and gibbs will call last question. yeah, help me. thank you. that was something else. let s go right now to athena jones who is live at the white house with us. good saturday morning to you. good morning. this was so completely unexpected on a number of levels yanchtsz, it really was like old times. you saw president obama really yield the floor to former president clinton and the event lasted a little over half an hour. and it was really dominated by clinton. he gave an opening statement talking about the tax deal. mentioned a little bit on s.t.a.r.t. and how that treaty, the arms deal with russia needs to be passed, but he spent most of his time talking about the tax deal. if he was president, this is the kind of deal he would strike. and he said it would give people and businesses a psychological relief, allow them to know on january 1st their taxes wouldn t go up, they d have more money in their pockets. i m glad to be here because i think the president made a good decision and because i want my country to do well. the agreement taken as a whole is, i believe, the best bipartisan agreement we can reach to help the largest number of americans. so this was a culmination of a big week for the white house, a very busy week where every single day, they tried to come out and sell this deal. the deal was announced on monday, on tuesday, the president had a press conference where he urged people in his own party not to be such purists that they can t ever compromise to get something done. then every single day of the week, they had e-mail blasts going out, different officials coming out. it all culminated here yesterday with president clinton now. as you articulate all the different things the white house is trying to do, to get their message out there, to sell it, and have it be bought particularly by the democrats who they need on board here, how much do you think bill clinton s appearance there and endorsing the tax cut proposal is being about the best we re going to be able to get, how much do you think that did in terms of getting the work done for the white house? that s the big question. we have this vote that harry reid has scheduled for monday, this procedural vote in the senate to begin debate on the bill. then we ll begin to know whether this has worked. the senate will act first, then the house. but then they bring in president clinton and the messenger here is important. because he had to deal with a divided government after the 1994 midterms. and so he s someone who can really speak to the democrats and say, guys, this is the best we can do. we shouldn t wait. we know you want to keep fighting, but we ve got to compromise. there s no bipartisan agreement that s going to be perfect in the eye of bipartisans. next hour we ll talk with presidential biographer david maraniss. the american student convicted of a grisly murder is back in court making an emotional appeal. what amanda knox told the court in a live report from italy coming up. past and present. the president there, the impact of president clinton s appearance on the white house briefing room. is this a strategy that will work wonders or backfire for the current president? can you really think yourself thin? why thinking about some of your favorite foods can actually make you want to eat less. huh. we ll check that out. 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[ female announcer ] phillips colon health. affect wheat output in the u.s., the shipping industry in norway, and the rubber industry in south america? at t. rowe price, we understand the connections of a complex global economy. it s just one reason over 75% of our mutual funds beat their 10-year lipper average. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. request a prospectus or summary prospectus with investment objectives, risks, fees, expenses, and other information to read and consider carefully before investing. back to our breaking news. one of bernard madoff s sons has been found dead in an apparent suicide. 46-year-old mark madoff was found hanged in his new york city apartment this morning. he was under investigation but was not charged in the massive ponzi scheme run by his father. bernard madoff, of course, first arrested exactly two years ago today. he s currently serving a 150-year prison term. wnbc s glen zimmerman is joining me live near madoff s apartment in the soho area of new york. glen, good morning. i imagine quite the scene there that you re witnessing. reporter: a very large scene. please have been here since early this morning. they re guarding the door here on mercer street. nobody in, nobody out since we ve been here. and we ve been here since about i d say about 9:00 this morning. apparently the call came in about 7:30 this morning to police. it was apparently on the fourth floor where 46-year-old mark madoff was found dead. he apparently hung himself. we re getting that from several different police sources. now, according to the new york post, apparently his 2-year-old son, he s got two sons, his 2-year-old son may have been in the apartment at the time. this just adds to the tragedy that s been unfolding and affecting so many people over several years now. i mentioned years because it s been exactly two years to the day when bernie madoff was, in fact, arrested for what we now know to be operating the largest ponzi scheme in history. we re getting some word from a family s attorney who has called the death of mark madoff a terrible and unnecessary tragedy. he went on to say that mark madoff was an innocent victim of what he describes as his father s crime. that is coming from a family attorney. mark madoff never been charged with anything criminally. he was listed he was named in several different lawsuits including a lawsuit by irving picard, that s the trustee who is in charge of trying to get as much money for the victims of the madoff ponzi scheme. just days ago a lawsuit filed involving the grandchildren, specifically mark s children, who bernie madoff set up a trust fund to establish money for them. money was going to go to them and then recently there was that lawsuit filed. so there s been a lot of pressure, obviously, to get money, and this is just the latest really just a tragic, tragic situation. just no other way to describe it. yeah, all right. well, glenn zimmerman, thank you for being our on the scene reporter there. this breaking news. we ll continue following all the developments with your help, thanks, glenn. after a six-year battle with cancer elizabeth edwards will be laid to rest in north carolina. the author, political wife, lawyer and mother of four will be remembered as a public service at 1:00 p.m. eastern. michelle kosinski is live in raleigh for us. what can we expect today? reporter: hi, alex. the preparations are under way right now at the church where we expect so many people to attend. and when you talk to the people who knew elizabeth edwards best, the emotion is still very raw. so it will be a tough day to say good-bye and find a way to say it. many times her friends have told us they don t like to hear that she lost her battle with cancer because they like to say that she won in her goal to lead a great life. it s a struggle today. how to memorialize a life so complex punctuated by heart wrenching tragedy and good public work. at elizabeth edwards funeral her daughter cate, an attorney like her mother, will speak to the congregation that could number more than a thousand. is this a hardship for us? yes, another hurdle. reporter: elizabeth s story has always been tough to tell. you almost had to mention all she faced. the tragic death of her 16-year-old son wade, her battle with cancer and her husband s affair. reporter: but didn t want to define her by that. she forged her own path. and the public embraced elizabeth, who didn t try to be perfect but helped where she could. an advocate for health care reform and others fighting cancer. this isn t an issue that knows political boundaries. reporter: where questions might have been difficult to ask her, she was the one who openly described her feelings. here, two months ago. part of what i want to do is sort of reclaim my story. it belongs to me and to my children. and i wanted them to not think of me as victim. i don t want to be i m not a victim. reporter: one of her closest friends is trying to come up with the right words for her eulogy. glen berkenfield knew elizabeth since law school. i owe her this. and i feel that i owe her to do it with courage. and i hope i hope i succeed us because she would. here they are back then with john edwards who is not one of the speakers today but was wa elizabeth when she died at home with their children. they had been separated a year. john is having a very difficult time for all of the things that have happened. john loved her. john s loved her a long time. and he s lost her, too. reporter: it s nice for people to hear that before her death elizabeth edwards got the great news that her daughter cate recently became engaged. that certainly was a happy thought, we hope. thank you very much, michelle kosinski. we have live coverage of the funeral service here on msnbc saturday starting at 1:00 p.m. eastern time with the beginning of that service. think a single puff won t harm you? 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were you surprised by this tactic? will it work wonders or backfire for the president, the current one we re talking about? i think it s a good strategy. look, there s no doubt that bill clinton is in there saying, boys, here s how it s done. he s up there explaining everything about the tax bill. i think it s very helpful because to get all the top line democrats behind the president, i do think the optics were not good when barack obama, the president says, excuse me, i ve kept michelle waiting, i m going to get out of here. i think he probably would have been done better to introduce president clinton and then depart. but let me say this, i think the president s going to win this battle because he was given a very weak hand by his own congress which didn t get anything done in years and then he goes in and he cuts an excellent deal from the standpoint of the democratic party, comes out with half the pot and they re beating him up. but i think the congress is going to have no other choice, but the president s going to get what he wants but he does need some help to get over the hump. do you agree with that, peter? democrats that opposed his plan, will they now buy it? a lot of them will vote no. they re kind of committed to doing that. the crucial question here is will it work? most people say this probably will work. this will give confidence to the markets and the folks to hire. $2 trillion sitting on the sidelines. i ve got this tax break, i can hire, i can expand. that s the message you want to send out to people. look, a lot of us don t like a lot of the stuff that s in there. i don t think that we ought to go to $10 million to family for inheritance taxes. that s going to cost us serious money. i don t like the millionaire, billionaire tax break, but we ll live to play another day on that in a couple of years. so my attitude on this kind of thing is, you know, god save us from our friend s sometimes, yo know? we really have to bite our lower lips and move on. i think it will work. historically speaking, have you ever seen a president rely so heavily on his predecessor in a situation like this? you know, i really have not. i ll tell you historically, i do remember during the bay of pigs when that debacle occurred john f. kennedy went up to see dwight eisenhower at gettysburg, because eisenhower was the great victor of normandy, but i really can t think of any period like that. william howard taft was initially very dependent on the enormous popularity of teddy roosevelt. bill clinton was a young president. he s still basically in the late prime of life for a political leader. he s very popular inside the democratic party. and he s got a good, soothing, bedsign manner which some of the guys on the hill, who they re in a rant in the day care center up there in the house, and he can soothe those characters. so i think it s a very helpful thing to have him here. but more and more you ll notice presidents like clinton when he did nafta, he brings in all the republican secretaries of state and the former presidents and everybody that says we re behind you. that s being done more and more. and that s right. pat s point there, you know, alex, george h.w. bush came in the same situation on the nafta issue with president clinton, with a joke of now you see why he s president and supported him. this kind of helps, especially when you have some bipartisan support on this. i m wondering if you think that the optics that pat is referring to here. does it make the president, obama, weak to rely on clinton or strong because he s strong enough to call on someone of clinton s stature. i think more the latter than the former, alex. the other thing about this is everybody getting bill clinton. you know, they must have called for the last question about ten times in that press conference and he was just having a great time. you see his hands going out all over. the typical clinton. and so i think he speaks freely and easily and i think it was i think it does show that he s strong enough to, as they say, to share a podium. like a duck taking to water. i mean, it was like wait a minute, hang on, hang on, time warp. right. he was happy to be back. yes, he was. he didn t have to take the bullets, as he said. i don t have to take the slings and the arrows. don t go too far. we ll see you in a bit. thanks. also actors acting. we have that coming up. a project that had some of the biggest names in hollywood striking quite a pose. at 33 past the hour, welcome back. i m alex witt. we continue to follow this breaking news story, one of bernard madoff s sons was found dead today in his new york apart. we re talking about mark madoff whose attorney says that his client took his own life. he called the suicide an unnecessary tragedy and his client an innocent victim of his father s monstrous crime. right now i m joined here in studio by rick newman, chief business correspondent with u.s. news & world report. i know we booked you to do something else but given this news story. his sons who had been under investigation by the fbi and the irs but no charges have been filed against them. the cloud of suspicion. it is not relevant to the father s dealings, is it, or financially that they gained from it? it s a real mystery. because this as far as we know is basically a small family business. madoff s wife we know is somewhat involved and his sons worked very closely with him. given the depth of the deception, it s been hard to understand how they could not have known what madoff was up to, yet no charges have been brought, alex. i think it s just an enduring mystery. i m not sure if mark madoff s suicide will help unravel that or make it more mysterious, to tell you the truth. they re not facing criminal charges but fair facing a lawsuit from a court-appointed trustee trying to recover the money. so they accuse madoff of getting $66 million and with that money buying luxury homes in new york city, nantucket, connecticut and improperly accessing that money, right? that s right. and they ve already recovered a lot of other money from madoff s wife. so i think that extends to the two sons as well. let s keep in mind that there have been no criminal charges filed. that does not mean that there won t be. it s very plausible that the authorities, whether the fbi or another law enforcement agency are still gathering information and this may add to the information that they have on the family. here s what is particularly eerie. the day, december 12 or december 11th rather, will go down in history with the madoff family as being a terrible day. that s right. two years ago today is when we saw bernard madoff arrested. that s right. i m hesitant to psychoanalyze anybody from a distance, but maybe we ll find out more about what was going through his head. but keep in mind, whenever there s a suicide, i mean, there are extenuating circumstances that are very hard to imagine. who knows if the anniversary had anything to do with it or if it became coincidental. we ll get you back and talk about what we had you scheduled to talk about, and how much the tax cuts will cost and the true and false about that. sure thing. convicted murderer amanda knox is pleading for her prison sentence to be overturned today. she s fighting to overturn the conviction of the murder of her roommate. she gave an emotional plea in an italian courtroom in perugia. she says the court has made a huge mistake and that she s being failed by the justice system. nbc s keith miller has more from perugia. reporter: alex, this appeal is likely to grind on for some time, but for amanda knox, this is a whole new trial. and today before the judge and jury, she delivered what amounted to a declaration of her innocence. appearing pale, sullen, some withdrawn after more than three years in prison, she joined her defense team. then breaking with court procedure, she asked to speak. choking back tear, the 24-year-old student from seattle told the judges and jurors that she is scared. not scared of the truth, she said. but scared because i have already seen justice fail. nearby was knox s former italian boyfriend raffaele sollecito who was convicted along with knox and a third man of murder and violent sexual assault of knox s roommate, meredith keircher. bursting into tears, knox said her heart was broken. i have honored and thankful to have had a friend like her. today s court session was preliminary. a chance for the six jurors and appeals judge to go over the motivation for conviction. what they got instead was a passionate declaration of innocence. we are paying for a crime we did not commit, said knox, adding that no justice is served to meredith and her family if the wrong people are accused. it was a stirring courtroom performance. but winning a case on appeal is not easy. you know, the defense, to turn this case around, the defense has got to have an uphill battle. like in any criminal case, when you go and try to impugn the credibility of a police officer, you really have to have some strong evidence. the prosecution is also appealing. it argues the 26-year prison sentence handed down to knox is not harsh enough and is asking for life behind bars. knox is described by her attorneys as both dispirited and very, very sad. as she now approaches her fourth christmas behind bars. alex? all right, nbc s keith miller, thank you very much for that. it is a big sticking point for some democrats. the estate tax and how the wealthiest americans passed on asset to their family members. under the agreement hammered out by the white house and republicans, people will be able to pass on $5 million in assets tax free. above that, they d be taxed at a top rate of 35%. well, the democrats are pushing for a somewhat different approach. they favor the 2009 tax rates which carried a $3.5 million exemption and a top rate of 45%. congressman gregory meeks is a democrat from new york. he s a senior member of the house financial services committee. good morning representative meeks. good morning. you say this is a deal breaker for you. yeah. it s tough when you talk about deficits and we just turned down or at least the republicans turned down a $250 increase for seniors in these tough times but yet we can justify giving these to the richest 39,000 families of america at the same time you hear republicans talk a lot about the debt. and so this seems to break the debt ceiling and to me, it doesn t have to be. and most millionaires that i happen to have talked to who are around the floor other than those who are members of congress, they say, you know, we don t need the tax break. you heard bill clinton say he believes this is the best deal that we re going to be able to get. do you agree with that? we re still working. i think that we re still in the negotiating mode. i think the president president obama has done a good job. he understands and i understand that we ve got serious things to do but president obama was clear that he and most of us on the those of us on the democratic side are trying to make sure that we take care of the working class and the middle class, small businesses, and it seems clear that the senate and others are trying to take care of the most affluent of us. and we ve got to make sure that message is clear and we got to try to also make sure that we are conscious of what will take place in two years because, again, in two years, this tax cut will be due to expire and will the republicans again look to have it annul sod that it continues, which will then put us in a greater debt problem. those have to be addressed. and they haven t been addressed yet. i want to pick up on what you said about the message being clear. the fact that president obama had to bring out president clinton to sell this message not only potential toll the american people but to people just like you, members of his own party in a legislative chamber that s able to influence and get this thing done or not hold it up. do you think that may hurt him in the long run? no, that just shows that president obama, i think history s going to find that he was one of the greatest presidents. if you look at his accomplishments thus far, it s vast. and virtually every promise that he everything that he campaigned on he has worked at doing. he is not insecure. sometimes when people have other individuals that can be influential and helpful, that s their own insecurity. president obama is very secure in who he is and how he proceeds. how much do you think those sentiments that you have just said are echoed by your colleagues in the house, the democrats? you know what? i think that the president is well respected we the democrats in the house. the truth of the matter is if there s more friction it s between the house and the senate at times because oftentimes you know, the house will send a bill to the senate and we start calling the senate the biggest graveyard therein because the bills die. and the senate says they can t get certain things passed because they don t have the vote so then we have to compromise. the house also says to the senate now, look, we may not have the votes so consider what we re doing. this perception that the president s talking put something out there and nancy pelosi saying not so much. you say the battle is not between nancy pelosi and the president? i m saying that it s also sending a message to the senate. we ve got to work collectively together. i think that the president has said all along and the speaker has said all along, that by and large, the product that we have is something that is good for america. we have one area in particular, there s some others, in the caucus that don t agree with the extent of the tax cuts at all. that s the reasonable for some. but by and large, the most egregious problem that we have is the estate tax. very quickly, you ll get this done before the democrats lose the majority come the beginning of the year? i think it s important for the american people to get it done before the 1st of the year because the tax cuts expire the 1st of the year and individuals can be hurt at that time. representative gregory meeks thank you. good to be with you. it is all in your mind. not exactly what you might think. what can i get ya? i d like one of those desserts and some coffee. sure, decaf or regular? - regular. - cake or pie? 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[ male announcer ] there s aflac and there s everything else. visit aflac.com for an agent or quote. aflac! developing right now, you re taking a look at minneapolis minnesota, part of up town there. blizzard conditions are developing in south dakota, iowa and across minnesota. in fact more than a foot of snow could fall. winds are gusting to 15 miles an hour. we re keeping a close eye on that for you here at msnbc. some of hollywood s biggest stars are participating in a new film project. like nothing you ve seen. 14 actors acting features james franco, javier bardem. each actor is featured in the short clip set to music. here s one featuring natalie portman. joining me live now, film critic with the new york times. tony, good morning. good morning. looking at the blond version of natalie portman, quite glam and luxe like that. how did the idea come about to do something like this? the magazine has always done a special oscar issue that features a portfolio of some of the best performances of the year. and so this year we were kind of doing the same thing, figuring out who were the most interesting and charismatic performers of the year and getting a photographer to photograph them. we also had the idea of doing something new with the video component on the website. we ve had interviews with them before and stuff like this. this time we thought what if they would actually act? i mean, they re actors, they re performers, what if we could get them to make a minute-long performance. acting, emotion. were they told what to do? some brought their own ideas and their own stuff. some took suggestions. it really varied, you know. and they came up with some really amazing stuff. look at this one right now. this is a great one. this is crazy. he s performing a love scene with himself. i don t mean to spoil it. but he s charming and seducing the very handsome fellow who he s looking at who happens to also be him and it s hilarious. there s no dialogue. there s no script, there s no story. there s music composed matt damon is just ticked off. matt damon is yelling at the new york times and saying this words that are not perhaps suitable to be printed in the new york times if you read his lips closely. but they re playing an emotion. they re trying to evoke something classic and primal and elemental about movies. did you have to twist any arms to get them to agree to this project? and they were happy to do it. they were very good sports about it and really kind of brought a lot of energy and imagination and talent to these this one michael douglas. this is haunting. he is. i mean, look at the way first of all, how long ago were these filmed? because we know that he is hoping for a good report on the status of his cancer that he s been battling come january when he gets a final report and he s feeling better. was this recent? yes, this is quite recent. this is within the last couple of months. what s he doing? like studying his fingers. he s just sitting there quiet. what s interesting is the way that they move, too. he really just does one move which is he turns to the camera and looks just sort of fixes his eyes and makes eye contact with you. haunting is the word on that one. the process of doing this, do you know if it took a gazillion takes or did they just start honing in their craft and doing it. i think they were pretty quick. i think they knew what they wanted to do. they were you know, they re professionals. tilda swinton there. till da swinton is evoking a scene from the great film the passion of joan of arc and that was her idea. she sort of had the definite notion is that s what she wanted to do. yeah, and they re beautiful. and the photographer who did both the stills and the film, the norwegian fashion photographer just i think, you know, i think they re wonderful. they are. well, folks can see them. the new york times magazine and it s pretty incredible. tony scott, a.o. scott as most people know you, but i got you as tony, thanks for coming in. thanks. if you want to shed a few pounds this holiday season, just think yourself thin. weight loss is possible just by changing your mind-set which allows you to control how much food you eat. the rekret is visualization. imagine yourself eating that food that you crave 30 times. and apparently you are going to want it less or better yet, not at all. oh, my gosh! oh, my gosh! [ male announcer ] you know her. we know diamonds. together we ll make her holiday. that s why only zales is the diamond store. where you ll get an extra 10% off storewide now thru sunday. smokers may want to think twice before lighting up. a new report from the surgeon general says there is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke. report stresses the damage from cigarette smoke even second hand smoke is immediate. and that more than 7,000 chemicals from a single puff can damage organs. i m joined by dr. scott frank, an expert on smoking and behavior at medicine. what is the significance of this report? do you think this information is going to give lifelong smokers reason to think twice about lighting up? the hope is that it will cause people to think twice about initiating the process of tobacco use. those who are lifelong smokers are already addicted to the drug nicotine and to tobacco and, therefore, they re less likely to be inflinsed by this than those who might be thinking about trying cigarettes. doctor, one puff of smoke, according to this study, can cause damage. can you take us through the toll that one puff of a cigarette will take on your body? i think that the issue with one puff is that it immediately affects the endothelial line of blood vessels which is the coating of the blood vessels that keep them healthy. and immediately has an impact on dna of the blood cells. wow. then impact on dna in the blood cells is what has the potential to lead to cancer. and dr. frank, given that we ve known about the perils of smoking for decades now, tell us about the timing of the report of the surgeon general. why released now? it offers us a new breath of energy in tobacco reduction. there are a lot of people who really feel like tobacco s been done. everybody s already talked about that. we re finished talking about it. but there are a number of new threats within tobacco, particularly from my perspective, the increasing use of cigars in addition to cigarettes that expose people to tobacco products in ways that really continue to impair the health of the nation. dr., very quickly, are cigars included in this study as well since you brought them up? this focuses on cigarettes but extends to other products as well. we see in a county like ours in the greater cleveland area, that the use of cigars has exceeded cigarettes among adolescent smokers, and that in and of itself represents a new concern for us. absolutely. dr. scott frank, thank you for speaking with us. thank you. we ll have more breaking news, the death of one of madoff s sons. 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and it is 4:00 on wall street. you know where your money is. hi, everybody. welcome back to the closing bell. i m maria bartiromo on the floor of the new york stock exchange. here s what we re following on the close tonight. stocks closed moderately high or wall street. strong retail sales today setting the tone along with consumer sentiment improvementing. president obama praising the house for passing a massive financial reform bill. we have the details. pay czar kenneth feinberg telling us why some exemptions have been made as he moves to limit the pay packages of hundreds of executives. onto the auto sector. a look at how we finished the day on wall street. the dow jones industrial average not at highs first day but close to it. up 67 points at 10472 this friday night on wall street. s&p 500 picked up four points but nasdaq, close but no cigar. in the red for the day. down half of a point at 2190. take a look at the other major averages tonight. we are looking at after the bell tonight, we re looking for new investment ideas. we broke down three stocks on the nasdaq that could be poised to rally and rally big. plus, we ll tell you how you can ride the tech wave in china by targeting certain etfs that could pay off down the road. and then is america facing a confidence crisis. we examine some of the prizing results in our exclusive wealth in america survey. it s all coming up on closing bell. those stories just a head on the program. first, we get all of the action on wall street with bob pisani on the eye of the floor of of the nyse. and november retail sales better than expected. the rally moves up and the stocks don t fall down! i m excited about it. take a look at the dollar index because it may not know the start of a long-term trend but certainly got a lot of notice on the street today. staying at its highs all throughout the day. any other day in the last few months, what would you have seen? commodity stocks falling down. and most of the rest of the market weak as well. didn t happen here today. look at alcoa, i m not picking on alcoait s just one of many commodity stockings on the upside. alcoa s particularly strong here today and also some of the big names, for example, like some of the iron ore stocks, all moving to the upside. there s alcoa here and you can see no falling down on the day with the dollar high. alcoa near the highs of the day. how about the retail sales numbers? better than expected. why was it better know that the comp store sales numbers? because it included cyber-monday and some of the electronics retailers that are out there, there is best buy and radioshack having a pretty good day overall. a good week here. best buy, by the way reporting their earnings next week. other big names in the retail space, nordstrom s at a new high. they had very good brand loyalteer, high cost-cutting throughout the year. that stock s doing very well. macy s had a great week, up about 6%. even tiffany s was up 2% here today. how about the airlines stocks, all of them had a terrific week overall. we had very strong commentary in some the airlines during the week here companies like amr, u.s. air, delta all had positive comments. look at these moves, you re not seeing a typo there, 14% up in delta. when was the last time that you had seen an airline up in the double-digit areas? a little bit of problems elsewhere, we are moves down in home builders. can t get any traction. hovnanian is one example. down almost 10% just this week and a rough week for ipos. kar auction services, kar, a car auction company went public today. where did the price come in? $12. it traded below $12 at the open. but you could see it sort of flat lined right at $12. for the week, maria. the dow jones industrial average up about 3/4 of a point there. the nasdaq to the downside. the s&p 500 on the flat side. we ve been sitting right near 52 week highs for several weeks now. getting tough getting over that 1100 level. good stuff, bob. see you later. and go right to the source now to the nasdaq and see how things settled out there. brian shactman with all highlights. we lagged down on the s&p 500 today. if we take a looking at the intraday chart it s interest nag we went negative around midday and we crawled back actually into a positive territory around 3:30 p.m. eastern time. but then we just couldn t close the deal here. finished down just a fraction. the worst of the names that stayed on much to things all day long, oracle, ebay, yahoo! to name a few. the news out of oracle the the wall street journal saying they re going to fight eu in terms of their objections to the java deal and yahoo! got a nice deal from that kaufman s buy. in terms of the chip sector a real drag from the national semis in their guidance. i will bring up intel and marvell. they were down for a good portion of the entire day. and some other names in the red and i want to talk about google for a second because the headlines are very interesting. even though the stock was down a little bit today, one, is the company comes out and says they might be profiting off of youtube very soon. also, they customized their home page in south korea to that local audience and if it does well, it couou be reproduced in other countries around the world. they only have about a 2% market snare south korea burks keep a close eye on how that does if they gain share, it will be repeated. i also want to talk about video game software, npd, the research group came outane said across the board all video game element and including consoles sales down 7.6% year over year in november, and in terms of the software, down 3.1%. they were expecting a gain. the reason why activision/blizzard did well and electronics arts didn t is because they the call of duty, modern warfare did so well, and if they did well, the numbers were still down and then you know that ea sports struggled and i just want to talk on starbucks quickly here as well because they tell the tale when it comes to the flow of prices here. starbucks touched a 52-week high and then pulled back, went negative. and then tried to call claw back and finish back here in the highs. so, maria, we had even though it wasn t a huge day in terms of where we finished, there was a fair amount of intraday movement. 2249 was that 52-week high. brian, thanks very much. more on today s market action right now with only a few weeks left in 09, will the run in equities continue? david kelly, chief market strategy wist jpmorgan funds. and doug sandler, co-funder river investment group. gintelmen, good to have you on the program. welcome. david kelly, what kind of a year-end are you expecting for stocks? it should be up. i hate to try to thyme over a few week bus what we re seeing is a strengthening story on the u.s. economy. right now looks to me that we could see 5% gdp growth in real terms for the fourth quarter. wow. that s some excellent numbers this week. the trade numbers, the retail sales numbers and also the inventory numbers. the first month in 14 months where inventories actually grew in the united states. go from inventories slumping to growing, that adds to the economic growth. so it looks like the economy s accelerating here. on the verge of producing some jobs in the next few months. that ll make it more self-sustaining expansion and i think that that should push stocks higher. doug, do you agree if. yeah, i agree that things are getting better. i think that the market also though is asking for companies that aren t just you know getting away from the worst-case scenario. that s what kind of drove the market in the last six months. i think in the end what you need now is a company to show some growth and i think that by that token, you re seeing sectors like health care and technology continue rising up while some of the other sectors that simply bounce because they weren t going bankrupt or being nationalized like the banks. those are starting to show leadership to the downside. so i think that market is in transition but we think ultimately higher to the end of the year and maybe through 2010. were you surprised that today we actually saw stocks rise as well as the dollar rise? you typically don t see that kind of a change on the same day. they re typically moving in opposite directions. certainly departure from the latest trend. i think that could continue for a while. i think a dollar strengthening isn t necessarily a bad thing for u.s. stocks, provided it just doesn t run away. david kelly, let s talk a little bit investing in this environment. i do want to be exposed to those vehicles that closely tied to an economy that is perhaps growing 5%, as you said, economic-sensitive stocks. where do you want to invest here? yeah that s been working all year, but i think that you stwik that trend. i think that you can stick with technology, materials, consumer discretionary stuff. if this economy and the global economy come back a little faster than people think, i think those sectors will do well. and just in this dollar issue, i think what s anyone going on for the last few months is people are move into the dollar when they are scared and moving out of the dollar when they are more comfortable. it s bane safe haven and this inverse relationship with the stock market but as the global economy moves from sort of fear of a recession or a double-dip recession as it moves to more of a normal expansionary mode i think that linkage, that negative linkage between the dollar and stocks will probably break down anyway. all right leave it there. gentlemen, appreciate your time. have a good weekend. take a look at the other business headlines. by a vote of 223 to 202 the house of representatives today approving the biggest changes in financial regulations since the 30s. the bill creating an interagency council to control systemic risk in the economy and establishes a financial consumer watch dog. next, stop the senate with extensive debate expected. we are on it. the obama administration s pay czar will limit cash compensation for dozens of executives at companies that got the biggest bailouts. details coming up along with our interview with kenneth feinberg. and then unexpected retail sales and along with improved consumer sentiment raising hopes for the economy. coming up a host of surprising results from our exclusive welt in america survey. and then is there a real concern of crisis facing america today coming up next. and later, three stocks ready to move on the nasdaq. we re digging through the numbers. we ve found a trio of names. you ll want to know about. somewhere in america, there s a home by the sea powered by the wind on the plains. there s a hospital where technology has a healing touch. there s a factory giving old industries new life. and there s a train that got a whole city moving again. somewhere in america, the toughest questions are answered every day. because somewhere in america, 69,000 people spend every day answering them. siemens. answers. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx welcome back. today investors saw some positive readings on retail sales, business inventories and consumer sentiment but are americans really optimistic about the future? our latest cnbc with the wealth in america report offers some surprising results about what folks are saying right now about their own situation. cnbc s steve liesman with these results. reporter: yeah, they re pretty sobering, maria. some slight gains but cnbc wealth in america survey finding that americans are still downbeat on the economy and are not confident things will improve much in the future. and they also have little faith in our economic leadership. get to that in just a second. 800 respondents finds 93% of the public rating the economy some improvement there in those ratings at poor. 10 percentage drop this those. a very slight increase from 4% to 7% in those saying that the economy s excellent or good. but 52% of the public pessimistic about the current state of the economy and for the same percentage of a year ago think that the economy will remain the same and only a small gain from 39% to 43% in the percentage that the economy will improve. a big reason for the pessimism is the wage outlook. americans look for their wages to rise just 1.3% over the next year. the smallest amount in the three-year life of our survey. all of this economic pessimism has a political fallout. and our survey picked up trouble for everyone in washington, just 24% of americans expressed confidence in the fed. 19% have faith in the treasury. that s just barely above trust in the federal emergency management agency. 17% have confidence in health companies. and only 1 in 10 americans say they trust wall street. by contrast you could see there 77% of americans say they re confident in the american military. the keys to the survey, jobs, wage gains in increases in home prices. the survey did show americans expect their home prices to decline by just 0.3%, that compares to 1.6% a year ago. the survey suggests improvement there will lead to better attitudes on the economy and even increased spending. maria? ah, really amazing numbers. steve, stick with us as we bring in a pair of cnbc contributors here. get their take on it. tony fratto is with us managing director at hamilton place strategies and former white house deputy press secretary greg valier is with us. chief strategist. why are people so negative, tony? look, obviously in an economic downturn you re going to have people s confidence in the future and outlook for their present-dayu know, personal finances, you know it will cause tension cause tension in their family and it puts them at risk. but you know i think if you look at what a lot of the conversation has been coming from washington over the past year or so, you know there have been some missteps. a little bit of overpromising on the stimulus package. you know a lot of people in washington expecting to see results quickly. we haven t seen them quickly. you know the bashing of wall street that we ve seen from all quarters in washington has led to a dimuneition of confidence if n those situations. it s a pox on everyone snous washington. that s both parties. it s obviously wall street. i don t think it s going to go away anytime soon. i would argue it started with weapons of mass destruction. there weren t any weapons of mass destruction. and since then it s been one thing after another. i think that stimulus package was very poorly handled. why they loaded it up with garbage in the house, that just gave the radio talk show hosts fodder. and i think from there on, it just got worse and worse. yeah, they set up the president to fail with that stimulus, throwing all of it stuff in there. didn t it? steve yeah, go ahead steve. what s really interesting is people are downbeat on the economy. they re not happy about where things are right now and where things are going but they don t want washington to do anything more about it. yeah. when we asked people what they want done with the extra money from the t.a.r.p.? they said 56 to 33, pay down the deficit. well even when we asked people, hey, will you pay down the deficit even if it means the economy will recover later? they said, yes, pay down the deficit. so really it s a lack of confidence in washington and how they ve spent the money. that s a great, great point, steve. thank you for making that. because people, aid has become our national conversation. obviously it was part of the international conversation and now average joes are talking about the deficit and it s important to them. and although you would have to make the point that the treasury 10-point yield is 3.5. soy not in the interest rates at least right now. no but what they do see are these massive numbers that we ve never seen before. we ve never seen deficits measured in trillions before. i also think for a lot of americans, maria, seems to be a dissidence of what s going on in washington, in terms of how it affects their daily lives. the biggest concern that we see in all of the local polling or all of the polling right now is a concern about the economy and jobs. when the conversation in washington is about a massive spending bill on health care that s going to change 1/6 of the economy and climate change, these aren t the things that are foremost on most american s minds. there s a disconnect. there is a disconnect. yep, steve? could i ask tony a question. if you were sitting in the treasure before when you report in white house and you saw this 22% of americans have no support in either party, that 30% approve of the economic handling by the democrats and the republicans, how much would you be sweating at that point? and what would you be doing in terms of changing your policies now to do what you just said, which is respond to the conversation going on main street as opposed to the conversation in washington? steve, i think that s a great point. and i think that the administrations has tried do that over the last week or so with the jobs summit and the president out speaking about the jobs and the economy, as specific as specifically as he can. in fact here, added to it his afghanistan speech talking about domestic economy. so i think that they understand that there is a disconnect in how they re communicating with the american people, and that s one way that they re trying to do it. but i think they re playing catch-up right now also. and for a large portion of the electorate out there, you know the independent voters that swing very big in a lot of elections, it s possibleta they may have lost them already on this question. do you think that we re going to see a reaction on election day. oh sure. do you think that we ll see an impact on the leadership in washington? we could ask jon corzine. we ve already seen one impact. you think that it continues? i think that it continues. i would say this though, maria, bernanke didn t get high scores in this poll. either did geithner. i think it would be a miscarriage of time magazine s person of the year is not ben bernanke. i think he s had that great a year. well, you know me, i ve always been very strong on the work that ben has done. i think there s been some legitimate criticism of the fed, both in terms of the lead-up on the financial crisis and maybe on interest rate policy, policy-to-policy rate over the years but ben s done an incredible job in the past 18 months and bringing us out of this financial crisis. what about steve s other quo policy? you said that the administration has tried to respond by doing the job summit at a minimum getting the topics that people care about in their faces. but what about actually changing policies? making the deficit reduction more of a priority? pulling in spending, perhaps not allowing the bush tax cuts to expire? do you think that we ll see any of that? i think that we re going to see the administration talk about deficits and they re going to have to come forward with a budget in february that shows a credible path to deficit to reduction. it s not, you know i think they re recognizing that it resonates with the american people. it s resonating as an issue in conditions, and it s also resonating as an international issue in global bond markets. so they re going to have to present that credible deficit reduction path. real quickly, i think one of the problems is this enormous disconnect between us, wall street, washington and the rest of the country. it looks like we re going to have a fourth quarter gdp number well over 4%. that s not appreciated by the public. yeah and earlier our guest said 5%. could be. which is really extraordinary. gentlemen, thank you for your insights. steve liesman, as always, great work. appreciate it. see you later. later on in the cloib closi bell why our latest wealth of america report is raising glimmer of hope on the consumer front. look for new names to your portfolio? we ve gate trio of nasdaq names that could be poised to pop in the fire future. but first, pay czar, ken feinberg will give us his take on the plans to rein in corporate pay. that interview coming up. you all want to run your businesses more efficiently, so we ve brought in a team of experts to help. one suggestion is to make your shipping more efficient with priority mail flat rate boxes from the postal service. shipping s a hassle! weighing every box. actually, with flat rate boxes you don t need to weigh anything under 70 pounds. if it fits, it ships for a low flat rate. call or go online for a free flat rate box shipping kit that includes free boxes and our helpful shipping guide. do it today, and we ll ship it all right to your door for free. ok, but i ship all over the country. you can ship anywhere in the country for a low flat rate. ship international, too. and remember flat rate boxes come in four sizes and shipping starts at just $4.95. call or go online for a free shipping kit with a full supply of free boxes, plus the shipping guide. act now, and you ll get them all delivered right to your business free of charge. priority mail flat rate boxes only from the postal service. a simpler way to ship. call or go online now to get started. welcome back. let s take a look at the other stories that we re following on the closing bell ticker tonight. dow component united technologies. the biggest gain in the blue chip index. earnings will rise 10% next year. strength across all of the company s businesses. take a look at utx tonight, up 2%. a $1.47 higher. also a bright economic outlook for alcoa. jpmorgan raising profit forecasts for alcoa and other metal, mining companies on the expectations that hire prices continuing next year. heavy volume $1.11 higher. oil prices drop below $70 a barrel and the u.s. and japan make progress on an open-skies agreement. you heard earlier from bertha that the entire airline group higher today. delta hot, 15% high or delta air lines. well, pay czar kenneth feinberg unveiling compensation plans for the second tier of executives at companies under his watch. mary thompson sat down with his him and she has all of the details. mary? reporter: maria, earlier today at the treasury department, i m standing right outside it right now here in washington, d.c. feinberg laid out the compensation structures for the 26 to 100 top executivas at four companies under his watch. the quick and dirtot plan, here it is. basically, these executive s total compensation will be made up of about 55% stock. that can t be redeemed at least three years. the cash portion will be about 45% of total compensation. and the cash portion can t exceed $500,000. at least in most cases. less than a dozen executives were granted dispennation and given more cash as part of their total compensation and we asked feinberg why these exceptions were made? because these individual companies came to me and said, mr. feinberg, under the law we must remain competitive with our competition and wanted to repay the taxpayer. we ask for a limited exemption in order to make sure that we can keep, keep people on board at our company. reporter: now, maria, stock bonuses for these executives will come from a fixed pool of money. an amount to be decide by the companies and then approved by the pay czar. the amount will be determined by either let s say a company s earnings or its revenues. those details are still being work out between the two side. the four companies required to adhere to to this plan. some say may be trying to repay t.a.r.p. too quickly in order to defree of these pay restrictions. though, feinberg told us he doesn t feel it s been harmful. in terms of what i m doing, i don t believe that any of the decisions that i ve made with respect to citi or any of the other top companies under my jurisdiction have injured their ability to compete in the marketplace. it s a delicate balance. reporter: as for another company under his watch, feinberg says he is open to boosting a cash salary cap imposed on compensation for the new gm ceo. this is what he had to say about that. i have made it very clear that if a new ceo is coming in laterally to general motors, we will have to take a long look at the type of compensation package that will be necessary to make sure that gm is competitive. reporter: now if you want to see more of my interview with mr. feinberg it will be available on cnbc.com. maria, back to you. mary, thanks so much. mary thompson. great stuff there. just ahead three nasdaq stocks poised to move up. deeming numbers of which names could be a good bet for your portfolio. take a look at the business headlines at this hour. the dow closes with a gain of 6/10 of a percent today with the help of strong retail sales in november which set the tone in the market early on. despite a two-month high for the dollar. senate majority leader harry reid saying that china s policy has been destroying the world economy for too many years. in the letter to the president of china he calls for a significant reevaluation of the occurrence nechina. lawyer for former enron ceo jeffrey skilling filed a brief to the supreme court ahead of oral arguments next week. making it illegal for executives to deprive shareholders of their honest services. well today markss one-year anniversary of the arrest of convicted ponzi schemer bernie madoff in which what has been dubbed the skachlt century. one year later the ripple effects are still being felt across wall street. scott cohn with the look at the year that was and beyond. reporter: it s amazing that it s been a year, isn t it. unbelievable. and beyond is the operative phrase today, maria, because on this one-year anniversary we re learn in fact madoff criminal investigation has been just ratcheted up big time. the justice department signalling in court papers filed a short time ago that it is looking at criminal charges against madoff s feeder funds, in the people who run them in particular, three funds run by beverly hills investor stanley chase, who already faces civil fraud charges from the securities and exchange commission. that word comes one year to the day after we first learned about the scam of the century in bernie madoff became a household name. so to a slightly lesser extent it is his wife ruth who so far has been charged and nor are the madoff s two sons and peter who all worked in the business. madoff s attorney is sorkin and while he does not represent the family members, he told us it is unlikely they will be charged. you know somebody asked me the other day, well, why hasn t ruth madoff and peter madoff and his boys been charged? and the short answer is that the u.s. attorney s office and the s.e.c., particularly the u.s. attorney s office, they ve been investigating this for a year now and have not brought charges, which leads me to conclude that either they, as mr. madoff said, they didn t do anything wrong or that the u.s. attorney has decided that they didn t do anything wrong. what was floating around initially was, everybody s involved. how could they not be involved? you know these conspiracy theories that everybody s involved. the investigation, as i understand it, is still continuing. and the u.s. attorney s office, if they had sufficient evidence to bring charges, i have no doubt that they would have brought charges. bernie madoff of course is in prison in north carolina where sorkin says he is doing okay under the circumstances. madoff s chief financial officer and his outside auditor have both pleaded guilty and are cooperating with authorities. and you can see our entire interview with ira lee sorkin, very interesting stuff. how he first learned about the scandal and cnbc.com and a special rebroadcast of our cnbc documentary scam of the century: bernie madoff s crime & punishment. tonight at 10:00 p.m. to mark this anniversary. terrific interview with mr. sorkin. it may be tough for retailers once again this year but there are also glimmers of hope on the horizon. just ahead some surprising results from our latest wealth in america survey that you cannot afford to miss. we ll be right back. this week s money & money report i m julia boorstin. new box office record. $10 billion in u.s. ticket sales in year. disney s rolling out the princess and the frog to over 3,000 theaters this year. paired with new princes to draw kids through the holidays. adults will be lurched to the theater by invictus. this is our destiny. launched tuesday, vevo, universal music, sony and emi and youtube teeming up to offer music videos on the new site hoping to generate new ad revenue from this hullulike option. facebook unveiling new privacy settings askiths 350 million users to decide whether to make their information and comments public. like twitter updates. so they could be included in realtime search results. (announcer) we call it the american renewal. because we believe in the strength of american businesses. ge capital understands what small businesses need to grow and create jobs. today, over 300,000 businesses rely on ge capital for the critical financing they need to help get our economy back on track. the american renewal is happening. right now. well, we re in the homestretch here. the holiday shopping season heading into the homestretch, and there may be a glimmer of hope on the consumer front this year. jane wells with more now on the results of our latest cnbc wealth in the america survey. jane in. reporter: maria, this survey is the most bullish yet on holiday consumer sentiment. as people told us they plan to increase their spending this year, 10.5% from last year to just under $780. but inside that number is a tale of two income levels. those making at least $100 grande year are no scrounges. planning to increase spending 54% to almost $1,900. while the scratchetcratchettes $100. last year, 46% of those with incomes topping $100,000 plan to spend at least a grand on the holiday. number has now grown to 53%. and for the first time highly educate and high-income earners say the internet is their number one destination for shopping this year, with 35% of professional managers shopping there, 36% of those with post-graduate degrees and 36% of those making more than $100,000. says the next way for this next group of shopping online is using mobile devices. if you think about those h h high-technology adapters or people who adapt technology quickly i think that they tend to more often be in the wealthy income brackets. finally for the first time people with children plan to spend less for the holidays than people without kids. the survey shows 57% of parents plan to cut spending on gifts confirmed only 44% of those without children. says parents may be concerned with long-term expenses with children and focused on saving and paying down debt. maria, my kids just want cash which make my shopping very easy this year. i bet. jane, thank you. a lot of people out there would like that. well, the travel industry s on edge this holiday season because of those cuts in consumer spending mentioned by jane, from veil resorts, for example. veil is looking better than last. but will enough vacationers hit the slopes this winter to maintain earnings momentum. joining me to talk about flais veil resort s ceo rob katz. mr. katz good to have you on the program. nice to be here, maria. thank you for joining us. what are you expecting from the holidays and into 2010. i think that we re really expecting that the economy s picked up a bit, certainly from last year and so people have more confidence as your last segment just noted and we are expecting people to come in greater numbers and spend a little bit more. we re also seeing that the luxury segment, as was just mentioned, probably picking up quicker than the lower parts of the income demographic. so that s what we re expecting as well. now you have got advanced lodging bookings down 13% this year, right? and what do you attribute the decline at this moment to? well, one of the things that we attribute it to is if you looked at our booking curve, the lowest performing month right now is april and then it gets better in the march, much better february and then better in december. last year at that time before the economic crash happened you had a lot of people who had already booked vacations in march. this year, people are really booking no more than like a month ahead and so that s shortening of the booking curve has created that downward trend in bookings as of today. i see. so it s really a change in behavior, the way that people are booking their trips? yeah, that s really what we re seeing. one of the good news pieces for good news for us is season past sales were up about 10% this year. that represents about 1/3 of our lift ticket revenue. these are people who have already committed to come out and ski with us for the winter. that s up pretty big and while they may have not booked a hotel yet they ve made their decision to come out and visit with us and we think that s a great sign. what about discounts, have you started to offer discounts, ski and vacation packages? absolutely. i think this is actually going to be one of the best travel years because the economy s a little better, the stock market s up, but discounts and the deals are still there. this is probably going to be one of the first years that we have, packages and promotion, not only on lift tickets but on ski school, food during the holidays. we typically don t offer that but through this entire year i would encourage people to take a look because some of the best bargains that you could find. i see. so what kind of bargains should people expect? well, i think it s it depends on what you re looking for. we re offering pretty good deals that could get up to 40%, 50% off if you do a lodging and lift ticket package. a number of promise of keystone mountains one of our resorts in colorado about $100 a day to actually stay and go on the mountain and ski. and again that s much, much lower than we ve ever seen before. i see. when do you see a return of normalcy to the travel industry? i mean clearly this is cyclical. you are seeing stabilization. when would you expect things to really go back to the way it was a couple of years ago? well, i think what s going to happen is and we re starting to see little pieces of evidence of this, when people pick up the phone to make their travel reservations and all of a sudden they can t find a room or the location they want or they can t get the date that they want and then all of a sudden they will start book a little bit earlier, they ll be willing to pay a little bit more and we re starting to see evidences of that in particularly in vail and beaver creek this year where a number of our lodges are starting to get full over the holiday period. and as that starts to continue, i think that you ll see that across the travel industry, consumer behavior will start to shift again. i see. and so are you expecting this change in behavior, though, in terms of booking trips later and looking for value to be a mentality for some time to come even when we do see business returning? yeah, i think what you re going to see certainly through this holiday or winter season, i think travel s going to stay with a real focus on bargains. i think waiting till the last minute may not be the best strategy this year, like it was last year. because again more people are picking up the phone and calling. i think as we get into next season and into the end of 2010 and 2011, i think that you may see that trend start to shift again. mr. katz, great to have you on the program. we look forward to hearing all about it next time. thanks very much. great to be here. happy holidays. robert katz the ceo of vail resorts. up next three stock, in the nasdaq that are poised to pop. tell you which names they could be when we come right back. and then cashing in on china, we ll look at the ways that you can ride the global wave and make money by investing in chinese technology companies. yes, you re lovely. what do you think? hey, why don t we use our points from chase sapphire and take a break? we can t. sure, we can. the points don t expire. there is nothing for me. there s no travel restrictions. we could leave tomorrow. we can t use them for a vacation. you can use the points for just about anything. i know. the way you look tonight chase what matters. get your new chase sapphire card at chase.com/sapphire. with annuities from fidelity. turn your savings into income guaranteed, and get a retirement paycheck for life guaranteed. call. to get started, and learn how to secure retirement income that won t go down guaranteed. call fidelity at. for details about guaranteed income for life, and change the way you think about your retirement savings. welcome back. now, three nasdaq stocks with the potential to pop over 40% in the next six to 12 month. we went through the nasdaq 100 looking for the stocks now tradingalt biggest discounts to analyst price targets. here s what what we found. number one, aluminum. closing price, 2709. the stock was trading in the low 40s as recently as october. it is now at 2713 as you can see there. one year, 27%. number two, foster wheeler, the construction services company. now the average analyst forecast calls for 43% advance in this stock. projected gain as you see 43%. it s already rallied from the 52-week low of around $13. now sitting at $28 a share. number activision blizzard, it is 42.9% below the average analysts price target. as you can see, the projected gain, 43%. this stock is off of its 52-week high of $13.14 a share. now at $10.74. you can research these stocks and thousands more at cnbc.com, the site is also listing an entire group of the 20 stocks in the s&p 500 with the biggest potential to drop. you ll want to check out that list as well. well, the international monetary fund expects china to claim the world s highest gdp growth this year and next year, driving the growth the big increase in the country s technology demands. some $54 billion of china s $585 billion sometime muss package was set aside for technology advancements. and they are hoping to tap in to the sector. we re joined in our etf tracker segment by the head of claymore securities. thank you for being here. thank you for having me. let s talk about the etf and the potential in the technology sector. it s interesting when you look at china, the technology companies in china have done about 2 1/2 times better in terms of performance here in 2009 than the u.s. technology market. so, it s a very dynamic area. certainly a lot of volatility. but when you look at some of the leading technology companies around the world, they re based in china, whether it s baidoo, for example, the google of china, very excited, but it s hard to access the companies and we ve brought it here for the investors to do it here in the u.s. i see. do you think that the technology sector is going to lead to new innovation in china? we were just in singapore recently and a lot of people on the ground are talking about, sure, china is the manufacturer of products for the world, but soon, and this is when america needs to worry, it s also going to become a leader in design and innovation as well. that s right. in the u.s. we talk about don t fight the fed when we invest. in china you say don t fight the state council, and the state council really wants china to be a leader for the next 100 years and they ll do it with technology. that s why the third largest package in their stimulus was for technology advancement earlier this year, that s why they have protectionist measures, not letting many companies outside of china tap that robust consumer market for technological devices. so, i think going forward, you know, china is going to continue to be a big player and don t fight that state council, maria. how does your new china eft capture that potential? there are 34 companies either listed in hong kong or traded here in the u.s. or in adr-gdr format and eft owns those broad-based applications. so, you own the market. you don t have to take business-specific risks on one company, for example. i see. okay. why invest in this eft and not directly in stocks? you must some of the names in it must be baidoo, sohoo, a lot of the leading technology companies, so why not just go specific on those names? sure, well, it s a lot easier to be in the right sector than the right stock, and many investors have tried to pick the right stock and been disappointed, we think a sector approach is a way to tap the china trend. i see. this is your fourth china eft, what more do you have in the pipeline? we have several more, a consumer eft and an industrial eft, we ve had success with the only chinese real estate eft, and the largest eft of the year launched was by us the first all-chinese eft, yao. we believe this is the china century, we ll take advantage of it with exchange-traded funds. what about the idea that we re not actually getting the right numbers out of china? do we believe it is actually 8%? and how do we know that? where s the evidence? sure. well, certainly some of the evidence comes in the amount of demand that s happening in china. you can t fake the amount of building. you can t fake the amount of of people moving from rural areas to urban areas. the amount of devices that are being manufactured and consumed there. so, the basis of where these numbers come from seems to match where these numbers are. but, certainly, there s going to be challenges going forward and volatility in the chinese markets. there s issues such as their currency valuations that are going to be dealt with, and we think for the long term, investors need to have exposure to china, but certainly in any short-term situation, there s a lot of volatility involved. well, always volatility involved, i guess, but you want to make sure that you re investing at the right time as well. do you think this market has gotten ahead of itself? why would i want to be investing now after a huge run-up that we ve seen in china already? right, we ve certainly seen a large run-up in china. a lot of that we think is due to the stimulus package. certainly if investors are looking for the long term, china s great. for the short term, they may want to take more of a hedge position. the nice thing about exchange-traded funds, you can set buy, sell, and limit orders. some etfs you even have options that you can use to hedge. that s a unique advantage perhaps instead of just buying a mutual fund that focuses in on china. great stuff here. we appreciate it. thank you so much. thanks, maria. thanks for joining us, and good luck with the fund. no doubt we see a lot of interest in the china story. we ll see you soon. thank you. let s go over to the nasdaq market site and melissa lee is live with a preview of what s coming up at the top of the hour. hi there, maria. we ll talk about the best industrial plays. they were the leader in the market. we ve also go the latest on dvd kiosk wars, the president of the red buff coming up on the cnbc exclusive, and we ve got the best buys for next week, that s when we get you the best advice. thank you, melissa. to pursue the life you want, you need a financial advocate who knows where you want to go. a merrill lynch financial advisor, now with access to the resources of bank of america, can help you diversify, rebalance, imagine, and believe. this restaurant wanted to add onto their benefits package to help attract new employees, they knew exactly who to have at the table. find out more at aflacforbusiness.com aflac! before we go, let s take a look at the day on wall street. it was a mixed market though mostly higher. the dow jones industrial average picked. 65 points to finish the day and the week at 10,471. nasdaq was under some selling pressure. it moved around back and forth pretty much all day and ended negative a fraction at 2190. and the s&p 500 up tonight about four points. you did have strength in the oil group even though oil prices were lower, as were, by the way, gold prices after the big run-up in gold recentpy. the standard & poors up. and have a fantastic weekend. i ll see you monday. fast money is up next. good night.
we ve got to go. erin, you re back at 2:00 on street signs . i m back monday morning at 9:00. the call is next. i ll see you monday, too, mark. welcome to the call in for melissa francis and trish regan. stocks high or strong retail sales and we ll discuss what it means for the economy as well as your stock investments. big day on the day. i m larry kudlow, and we ll continue our exclusive coverage of our national wealth in america survey. steve liesman looks at the upcoming holiday shopping season. who s buying and who s not? kent feinberg to set executive payrolls for t.a.r.p. recipients. we ll have it for you as soon as it is released. this is the call on cnbc. larry is absolutely reveling today because we had a whole bunch of positive economic data helping to push stocks higher at the moment. november retail sales rising a better than expected-1.3% in the month of november, strength in building material and garden supply and clothing not so hot, but we did have a lot of good headlines there. consumer sentiment improving, but limiting gains and we re seeing strength in the u.s. dollar. take a look at the boards. s&p 500, up by half a percent right now. over to the dow jones industrial average, united technologies helping to lead that index higher and higher by half a percent and on the nasdaq we re at 2195, up by 0.2%. the u.s. dollar index, in fact, had a one-month high, higher by .75%. we re seeing oil trade lower by half a percent right now. let s check in with bob pisani standing by at the new york stock exchange. hello, bob. hello, melissa. a very interesting phenomenon. take a look at the dollar index. melissa s right, the dollar was stronger all day and we had two to one advancing in the declining stocks and that s the commodities and commodity stocks and not as much as it used to and that s very interesting here. there s the dollar index at a new high here for the morning here, but for the commodity stocks, how about the big names? you know the big name, the alcoa and the u.s. steels and they re to the upside. folks, a couple of weeks ago these would have all been to the downside. i m not sure this would be a change of events here and this hasn t happened in a while. we talked about the retail sales numbers. have you noticed in the last couple of days, why are they so strong because the weather s been so lousy the last couple of days. november retail sales is better than expected. why are they better when the same-store sales numbers weren t that hot. they include walmart and gas stations and gas prices were higher and that helped overall. jc peby is on the upside and kohl s is on the upside. not new high, but all are doing well. apparel stores are doing pretty well on top of that. j. crew, there s a new high. limited, gap, that s not a new high, but they re doing well on top of that. assorted companies like best buy, there s a new high for best buy, we don t have one for lowe s, it s just short of one, but it could do that in the next day or so. how about lilly here? lilly had the analyst meeting yesterday and were talking about 2010 earnings about in line with analyst expectations, but that s not good enough here. that stock has been down for several days in a row and down again here today. mike huckman pointed out to me that there are six sell ratings on the stock and that s pretty rare for a pharmaceutical company. let s go over to brian shackman standing by at the nasdaq marketsite. we weakened .1%, and we re up 0.1%, we were above 2200 at one point. let s talk about gaming, okay? mpd comes out and says basically overall video game sales year over year down 7.6% in november. when you just look at software it s down 3.1%. they are expecting it to be up. so it was a big disappointment, this including with a call to action and incredible sales for activision. maybe that s why it is up 0.8 and if they sold that many and they re still down, that can t be good for ea sports. apple is counter suing nokia for patent infringement. it s a little bit of a cat fight, down 0.4%. yahoo!, up 6% on an upgrade from kauffman to a buy. here are some of the laggards for the big names. research in motion down 1.3% and amazon and cisco also weak as well. i want to talk quickly about urban outfitters. they say comp sales up year over year. goldman sachs did their own checks and they agree. the stock is up 1.5% and i want to talk about starbucks because we talk about retail and retail in general is strong and starbucks hit the 52-week high and has since turned slightly negative. thank you very much. as we ve opinion reporting, retail sales for november up 1.3%. that s the largest jump since august. consumer sentiment improving december. more signs of economic recovery. we got strong business inventories for october, the first time inventories have been up in i don t know how long. august 2008. possibly since the war of 1812, business sales are also strong and also on the inflation front, import prices up and that had been rising nine of the past ten months or eight of the past nine months. here to discuss all this is richard takay, jim o sullivan, chief economist at m.f. global and cnbc s rick santelli. jim, let me go to you first, these look like very positive numbers and it looks like gdp will be up a lot in the fourth quarter and what s your take and what about the jobs impact of all these numbers, too. let me throw that into the mix, jim. they re positive numbers as far as retail sales go, consumer spending will not look great for the quarter because of the payback part cash for clunkers and 2% space for consumer spending. ex-autos is on track for three to a 3.5% pace. you ll get a positive from inventories as well. certainly, it s going to be a better gdp number in the fourth quarter than the third quarter. i still have 3% in the third quarter and there are some upside risk here. larry kudlow is a very excitable gentleman who gets very excited about positive economic data, but put it into perspective for us based on the positive data we got today, will we start seeing revisions, actual revisions high tore gdp higher to gdp expectations? larry s enthusiasm is well placed in this. i think consumer spending around 2% in the fourth quarter are real, and again, if you do make the adjustment that jim talked about, acknowledging that cash for churchingers pulled auto sales into q3 it would be closer to 2.5% or better. that s not a bad number. reports of the consumers demise have been greatly exaggerated and if we get gdp as i expect, somewhere in the vicinity of 3.5%, job gains will be just around the corner. richard, thank you for that. when you re in town i ll buy dinner at a restaurant of your choice, my friend and it would be my great pleasure. i thought that was the understanding. rick santelli, let me go to you. i want to link this to bond, rick. you had a slope 30-year auction yesterday that you reported on over 4.5%, i don t know where the ten year is trading, but you will tell us, and i want to throw into the mix, even though the federal reserve keeps telling us the declining dollar until the last few weeks was not inflationary, import prices are up big today. 1.7%. the last three month, 11.4% at an annual rate. rick santelli, besides the better growth numbers are we seeing a whiff of inflation and what s the bond market impact? well, you know, i think ultimately it s going show up. of course, it will be predicated on when the consumer hits the ground and when the liquidity moves off excess reserve piles, but you re right, the curve steepness whether you re talking a 450, 430 or an 83 two-year or a 357.10 minus two-year, these are steep levels and a steep yield curve certainly makes the banks a lot of free money and it also could be a dollar friendly because the market s snugging up for future concerns on its own and one point about retail sales. i agree it s a good number, but you ve got to present both sides and put up this screen in the u.s. census bureau s own text on the release of that number did point out that total sales from the september through november 09 period were down 2.9% from the same period a year ago. i think you have to always put all of the facts on the table. what about total retail, let me counter that and let me will challenge you, my friend. total retail sales up 1.9% on a 12-month change and, look, the stuff that goes into gdp. let me bring in our two comments. jim o sullivan, you talk about this and excluding autos, gas, and building materials and this is what thieves directly into gdp and that s up half a percent in november and .3 in october and you re up 5.6% in an annual rate in the last three months. i m not saying it s a gigantic boom and you have to be looking at 2%, 2.5% than the last quarter and that s better than what you or i thought a month ago. if i can jump in here, ex-autos it looks like 3, 3.5 yet the total will be weaker. if i can make a point on inflation, those numbers were dominated by commodity prices. there s been a boost in commodity prices recently and if you report, it s a good number. we re down 0.1% on the month and they re negative year over year and inflation expectations in the michigan survey today actually took a big drop and outside of the jump in oil prices which doesn t seem to be continuing in the last few weeks, there isn t inflation in these numbers. jim, my friend, outside of food and energy that means i can t eat and i can t drive my car. yes, but we learned from the last couple of years that the underlying trend not really dictated by energy prices. we had a period when energy prices were soaring for a couple of years and never fed through to the underlying trend in core and here we have the core numbers slowing. so the poll of respondents will have a better insight into what makes this five years down the road than the steepness of the yield curve. the fed looks at everything and they certainly put a lot of emphasis on the michigan number and they look at the break evens and the bond market. they take account of main street as well as wall street. want to ask rich dekaser, we haven t seen this steepness since the early 90s, it s signalled economic expansion and it signalled a great time to pile into the stock market, but this time it s different. we re seeing the dollar break higher and you re seeing the convergence of these two trends, regarding the difference between certain elements of inflation and others and commodity prices are clearly on a rise import prices and clearly on a rise. if you look, however, at the most important indicators of inflation, wage and salary gain, they re dead and frankly your own survey sheds a lot of light on that. inflationary expectations as being one of its key metrics to hire a prospect for interest rates. your own survey shows over 07% of concern americans expect no increase or decline in compensation going forward and the average increases are around 1%. just over is%, i think. that tells me inflationary expectations are very muted. you can t have it both ways and on the one hand you say how consumer spending will be so terrific and to combat the notion, you don t believe oil and food is important. you then bring into the effect that they re not making any money so it doesn t grab. pick one side or the other. there s a difference between not making any money and not expecting to make new money. where ate new consumer spending going to come from. have you looked at consumer credit in the last six months? it is down a record amount in both rick santelli, don t forget, the household net worth survey did very well in the report yet and that s a terrific question, but last question. what does the fed funds futures market suggesting because i have this sense. call it the inner kudlow that the federal reserve, despite what they ve been saying, are going to have to force they re going to be forced to snuggle up their balance sheet and raise their target rate sooner rather than later. it s the inner kudlow. where is the fed funds futures rate. the fed funds can in the distant months paint that picture, but we ve learned in many times in the past the distant months earned a big handicapper for the actual meeting. so you have to look at spread relationships and they re skewed. many traders acknowledge that skew, but many believe that the reason the curve is steep, the fed will be very stubborn. remember, there s an election in 2010 and you connect the dots. thank you, gentlemen. terrific stuff. we ll see if the inner kudlow is corrupt. the inner fed and the swiss national bank stopped buying bonds. the swissies and they re sound money guys. something to watch. coming up, full market reaction to today s stronger than expected consumer and retail data and how you should be investing right now. but first, surprising details from our brand new wealth in america report. are consumers staging a comeback? find out straight ahead only here on the call. shares of united technologies are higher this morning. this after the diversified manufacturer said it expects profits to rise about 10% next year. so look at utx up 2%. nice-looking rally. mess ila, over to you. thank you very much, larry. we continue with our full-day coverage of the cnbc wealth in america report and the national survey conducted by the leading polling tomorrow. it is a representative snapshot of america s views on the markets and the economy and the retail season. in this hour on the call steve liesman takes a look at the upcoming holiday shopping season. who is going buy and who is not going to buy. any surprises here, steve? very surprising results and we re at odds with all of the other surveys out there and i stand before you with our data and i have to go through what it is. our wealth in america survey remains sour on the economy and they plan to spend more in this holiday than they have in the last eight years. a poll of 800 americans finding that americans plan to spend $778 up 10.5% and that s 78 on average and it s almost entirely driven by the wealthy. we ll come back to this screen in just a second. cnbc, most of the surveys show americans plan to spend less this year, but our survey has outperformed the national retail federation and discovered the past ten years including when our call for $704 within $1 of the actual reported by the nrf and now let s go back to this idea. the survey finds it will be a christmas worth of a dickens novel when it comes to rich and poor and the holiday spending plans. those incomes are greater than 100,000 and plan to spend, you can see here up 54%. i m seeing a lot of pent-up demand inside this number. what you ll find, they plan to decrease their spending by 15% at $285. the difference between these two and the ratio is the widest in our three years of doing this surv survey. here s who you want to get a present from this year, someone with more than $50,000 in the market, who lives in the northeast with an income greater than $75,000 and who thinks his or her home sxrauls wages will increase next year. if you re on the receiving end of that i think you ll get a nice gift, melissa. i sure hope so. she s got them lined up. these people are ready, all lined up. steve, though, is that really a surprise that consumers who think they re going to make more money next year who have a job, who have a home? who think the value of their home will go up are going to give nice gifts? i mean no, i would be surprised if i got a gift from any of them. that is correct. all of these thins, the perceptions about wages and perceptions about home values, especially are interesting when it comes to people s views on the economy and in general, if they think their home price is going to rise they tend to have better views on the economy. so that just tells me, my friend, how dumb it is to start raising taxes on upper income people or anybody else for the bush tax cuts, for the health care bill. i mean, why not leave well enough alone, you have a bit of positive movement, yes and it is always driven. why don t we pose that to our guest because we want to bring in rich dekaser and we will ask him that very question because that is a good point brought up by mr. kudlow. mr. dekaser. say there are increased taxes and whatever format they are and it does impact the perception of wealth that the consumer has. in your view, is that a huge problem? no, i don t think so and let me explain why. timing here is a critical issue. i think larry is absolutely right and steve made the excellent point that at this phase of the business cycle, high income groups suffer high unemployment and suffer wealth and reserve and they carry the ball and that s what the survey tells us and that s not surprising. the tax cuts that we re talking about or the reversal of the bush tax cuts is a year off. so i think if we look forward to the environment that we ll be at at the dawn of 2011 and at that point we d be better positioned to sort of take those tax increases without taking the goose that s laying the goldening a out of the economy. we should see a transition to more of a broadly based consumer economy and one less reliant on the cohorts. one can hope, but i don t think this is a barn burner, by the way, because a barn burner would be 7% or 8% economic growth coming off the very deep recession we just suffered. i think this is good, great, good, but not barn burner, and i m just saying as you go through the next year i ll go to steve liesman on this. it hangs over the economy and steve, let me ask you if your survey picks up this. some of the gigantic job losses were suffered in manufacturing, right? think autos and of course, homes. think construction, and that s kind of upper middle, i don t know, 50 to $75,000, $80,000 a year. does the survey tell us about those folks spending habits because i worry about those folks. they got slammed in this jobs recession. the 50 to 75 group is actually planning very modest gains in spending this year. in addition, the blue collar workers are also planning very modest games when it comes to holiday spending. i will say one thing. i wonder out there if there s a stock play in all this when it comes to the higher income or higher luxury retailers, larry, if perhaps people ought to be prepared for the possible upside risk that s out there that consumers end up doing better than is expected right now on the street. we ve seen it in the stock, steve. the retail index has been double the gainer of the markets. thank you very much, steve liesman and it s a bigger overhang in my view. the goldman sachs report that was out a weak ago. peak unemployment and second quarter 2011 and 10.8%. that s pessimistic. deutsche bank is looking for 300,000 monthly job gains in the first quarter. he was right on the button with the 10.2%. interesting you ve got that voice. now more on retail, consumers, how it s impacting stocks today and whether it s time to position for a stronger-than-expected spending rebound. ken fine bigger will release new guidance on banking pay and we ll bring you the details live from the treasury department. first on cnbc, we re first in business worldwide. welcome to the now network, population 49 million. right now 1.2 million people are on sprint mobile broadband. 31 are streaming a sales conference from the road. 154 are tracking shipments on a train. 33 are iming on a ferry. and 1300 are secretly checking email on a vacation. that s happening now. america s most dependable 3g network. bringing you the first and only wireless 4g network. right now get a free 3g/4g device for your laptop. sprint. the now network. deaf, hard-of-hearing and people with speech disabilities access www.sprintrelay.com take a look at shares of boeing on the rise today. it said late yesterday that its 787 dream liner could start test flying as early as next tuesday. it should be bogged down by two years of delay and higher than three-quarters of 1%. larry? so what does the strong november retail sales numbers mean for the stock market? let s ask john fisher, portfolio manager fifth third asset management and scott redler from t3 light.com. let s start with you. you have stronger than expected retail sales. are these actionable stock market events for you? it shows that the retail investors not dead. it shows the retailer is spending money and they re doing it much smarter. they re up considering how they re up yesterday. which is the relationship as a trader that you have to watch. the dollar s been up and maybe that s showing positive signs that we can move ahead into year end. if you take a look at retail over the past two months. it s been outperforming gains of the s&p 500 by two times. at this point, having the retailers taking into consideration this better than expected retail sales numbers. it isn t the tradeoff at this point. they ve been the leading sub sectors in the market. at this point the retailers have been for the most part been putting up negative same-store sales and earnings growth has come off of easy comps but better than low expectations and when you look at 2010 for the stocks that continue to work in 2010 you need to find companies that will put up positive comps and can drive positive traffic growth, and i think you re going to see a big bifur kaying in the retail sector between the few retailers that can do that and the majority that are not going to be able to do that. so i would expect retailers for the most part to underperform the market next year. scott, can i come back to you on the dollar point. i think it is so important and interesting. better economy, good for the dollar. i know we re bad, but they seem to be worse. better economy, we re closer to fed tightening whatever that may be. here, scott, can stocks keep tral rallying with the stronger dollar. what s your take? the relation to this year has been reasoning dollar, strong stock markets so going into year end, traders are watching to see how the new relationship shows its face. so as we get a stronger dollar today and you see a market up and it s showing us signs that there could be a shift. scott, you know, you are an optimist here because if you look at the intraday we re at session highs right now just as the markets are pretty much at session lows. that relationship so far is still intact in today s session. . the market had a three-day move and we re in the mid to upper range of this channel. maybe we d be down 100 points. so i m being a little optimistic. it is year end and i still think portfolio managers have to markup their stocks and as long as the s&p stays above the 1090. i still think we have an end of the year move and we have to watch the 77 level and see what happens there. if the dollar backs off and the market can catapult higher because we didn t pull inasmuch as others would have thought. john, i want you to weigh in. melissa lee has completely deflated that the strong dollar can be consist went rising stock prices. for today. let s be clear, historically they move in tandem, but lately they have not. that has not worked. john fisher, where do you come out on this because these two is one of the actionable events. if we re in a stronger dollar trend, okay, what do you think, my friend. i agree with the assessment that if the dollar isn t a true trend of strengthening that the dollar will strengthen. is it a sustainable trend or is this just a bounce in a falling trend of the dollar, and i think all you re seeing right now is that the dollar s bouncing off of a trend of the dollar getting weaker and the dollar continuing to depreciate and get weaker, that will be prsh out stock market. scott are you a bull or bear right now? the treader is getting crowded to the down side. everyone wants to be short the dollar. the question is can it be sustained into the new year. one week does not make a new trend and that s how short everyone was. we ll be looking to see if the dollar can hold 75, 50 going into next year and we don t retrace more than 50% of the move. right now the market has to figure it out and let s not get ahead of ourselves and just watch the action and be prepared for a plan if the dollar does remain strong or if it was just an oversold bounce. thanks so much, scott and tom. in the meantime we ll go to mary thompson. she has details from ken feinberg. they just held a briefing about the compensation structure he s approved for the top 26 executives in four companies under his jurisdiction. the portion of the cash salaries of these executives compensation is limb ied to $500,000 although exceptions are allowed. he said less than a dozen exceptions have been granted so far and mostly for competitive reasons both administration officials and outside consultants arguing these people needed to have more in-cash salary in order to keep them at the companies. one of these persons is making over $1 million in cash, the rest 100,000 to $500,000 in cash as part of the total compensation. cash in most cases will be limited to 45% of an individual s total compensation and the other paid must be given in company stocks. all cash guarantees have been rejected and incentives. the bonuses basically that these people are going to be receiving are coming from a fixed pool. the fixed pool derived from something that the pay czar s negotiating with the companies. for example, it will come from the company s certain percentage of the company s revenue or earnings. the incentives, again will only be paid out to these individuals if goals are met. one thing i want to note, this plan for the 26 to 100 executives only applies to four companies. citigroup, gm, gmac, chrysler and chrysler financial were exempt because none of the executives in that group earns more than $500,000. the cash portion of this plan only applies to late december and not all of 2009. however, the bonuses and any extra pay is going to come under the jurisdiction of the plan that feinberg unveiled today. speaking about a couple of more recent developments, feinberg called the bank of america s t.a.r.p. repayment excellent and he said he would reconsider the pay limb they he put on gm, while it s looking for a new ceo, remember it s it was $950,000 cash. he said he would reconsider that because gm needs to remain competitive. he called negotiations constructive and cordial and he was noting that goldman s new constructive or compensation plan unveiled for the top 30 executives and that reflects the impact his rulings have had on the financial services industry. back to you. thank you very much, mary thompson. ken feinberg just releasing the limitations and the rules regarding the companies he oversees. we ll have instant reaction and analysis of this on the other side of this break. stay tuned. would you like a pony ? yeah ! ( cluck, cluck, cluck ) oh, wowww ! that s fun ! you didn t say i could have a real one. well, you didn t ask. even kids know when it s wrong to hold out on somebody. why don t banks ? we re ally, a new bank that alerts you when your money could be working harder and earning more. it s just the right thing to do. welcome back to the call. let s get instant reaction to the feinberg guidelines released moments ago. lillian robinson and robin miller, professor at the school of business at carnegie mellon. professor, let s start it out with you, what do you make of the guidelines with a $500,000 pay gap to the 100 highest paid executives. mr. feinberg is still too concerned about the level of pay which is something that the market does very well. on the other hand, mr. feinberg doesn t seem to be that concerned about all the money thatat payers have put into these companies. he should be more concerned about aligning incentives so that those taxpayers get their t.a.r.p. money back. james, let s pick it up. what s your take on this. in particular, i want to ask you, how long should this go on? is there still t.a.r.p.? i guess it will go on for a while? is that the deal? robert miller s incentive effect will done to cause deterioration in those companies. is it a downward spiral picture? i ll tell you, larry the best thing about these rules is it s so bad they re forcing them to pay the t.a.r.p. money back as fast as possible, but it s ridiculous this idea that employee stock ownership is a cure-all. people have a short-term memory. remember the companies that were really big on employee stock ownership like bear stearns and lehman brothers. in 2007, bear stearns was one-third owned by their employees and lehman had announced at the end of 2007 that the top five executives would get 75% of their pay in stock. sounds familiar, right? in effect, that s a very important point. robert miller, in effect, nobody s really proven, no one has linked clearly the so-called compensation battle with the risk problems in the marketplace. no one has really proven that long-term stock ownership is a solution. where did all of this stuff come from? this is like a government gain. it s never been proven, has it? no. it has never been proven at all. there are competing theories as to why we re in the situation that we re in. wah we do know, however, is successful companies when we re talking about top 500 companies they pay about they pay less than half their compensation in terms of cash and bonus. most of the compensation comes in terms of stock and stock options. remember that we re not talking about stock and stock options to everybody here. we re talking about stock and stock options to the people who control what the company does, and those companies have long relied on this with three-to-five year vestity our plans. i want to broaden out this conversation. goldman sachs came out with a plan where it would award employees bonuses of stock. there are clawback provisions and mr. batson, is that the page that the government should be learning from? the best and breed bank out there, goldman sachss and how they re compensating their employees. i m sorry, melissa, but i don t think that is either. that s just a distraction to try to get people to think, oh, look, we re aligning our interests together. it s stock ownership, but stock ownership doesn t accomplish that. what we need here is transparency and how the overall packages are calculated. if you re going to pay me in stock, you ll pay me in gold boullioun. as long as it s got value that s where the problems are. we need to know how these numbers are determined and we need to get rid of the discretionary bonus system that causes cronyism and causes people to be afraid to speak up. if you have a trader whose boss will determine what is the level of his multimillion bonus, he will be less likely to challenge the securities that might not be marked in the illiquid securities portfolio. james, you re making some good points. i worked on wall street years ago, the old saw was you eat what you kill. i think that s how that work, but i don t know, you have to formalize that, but you do, you eat what you kill. you get paid for for it. we re trying to discourage risk taking. let s be more critical about this. let s not just say stock options and stock ownership and that will satisfy the public and we re doing something. no, let s get restrictions that show, for traders we need to measure risk tolerance and measure turnover. we need to have standards that people can look at so they know what they re working toward as well as the shareholders and the public know what they re being rewarded for doing. we ll leave it there. thank you, gentlemen, a appreciate your comments very, very much. one year after the bernie madoff arrest. that s right, bernie madoff a year ago. is your money safe? we ll discuss it all right here. plus shopping for profit. hsn is on a tear. the company s ceo, mindy grossman is up next in a cnbc exclusive interview only here on the call. when this shoe store added aflac to its employee benefits package at no direct cost to the company. it was a perfect fit. find out more at aflac!. .forbusiness.com but in business, only two matter: red and black. red, well, no one wants that. black on the other hand, has strength. black is always in style. it s what business looks best in. black is where growth and success happen, and it s easier to get there and stay there in ontario, canada, especially with our competitive tax rate. ontario, canada - the world works here. cartoons duringch hoops your big meeting, and breaking news when it breaks. watch real tv whenever you want. you don t need to get a phone. you need a phone that gets you. yes, you re lovely. what do you think? hey, why don t we use our points from chase sapphire and take a break? we can t. sure, we can. the points don t expire. there is nothing for me. there s no travel restrictions. we could leave tomorrow. we can t use them for a vacation. you can use the points for just about anything. i know. the way you look tonight chase what matters. get your new chase sapphire card at chase.com/sapphire. with annuities from fidelity. turn your savings into income guaranteed, and get a retirement paycheck for life guaranteed. call. to get started, and learn how to secure retirement income that won t go down guaranteed. call fidelity at. for details about guaranteed income for life, and change the way you think about your retirement savings. take a look at shares of yahoo!, this morning surging by 1%. kauffman brothers upgrading to a buy. the click through rates were higher than expected. so we re seeing that stock benefit today. larry? the click-through rates. i like that. one year ago today, bernie madoff became a household name arrested for running a massive ponzi scheme totaling up to $50 billion. the ripple effect of his action are still being felt worldwide. senior correspondent scott cohn joins us with more. hello, scotty. hi, larry. when federal agents arrested bernie madoff and handcuffed him to a chair one year ago today the world was already realing from an epic financial crisis. madoff s scam of the century would threaten to send the system completely over the edge. in addition to hitting thousands of victims it exposed a badly flawed regulatory system. authorities missed the scam for years, maybe decades. madoff s defense attorney has a unique perspective on that. ira lee sorkin was once an administrator for the sec. he says he is as amazed as anyone else that madoff got away with it for so long. yes. absolutely. i think i think that now, he did confess, he did admit in his plea that he lied to the sec in 2006. on the other hand, the sec had some red flags going back. they did do periodic examinations and they just they just didn t see it. yeah, that s an understatement. today, of course, bernie madoff is just a few months into his 150-year prison sentence at a federal correctional institution in butler north carolina where reportedly he s gained a certain stature among the inmates. are you still are you in contact with mr. madoff? yes. tell me about it, when was the last time you spoke with him? i m not going to go into when i last spoke to him, but he s okay. under the circumstances, recognizing the fact that he s not going to leave prison ever alive. he deeply regrets what happened. he feels a great deal of pain and anguish over the pain that he caused. has he said a couple of occasions both when he pleaded guilty and in sentencing, he got into this and he couldn t get out. that s the nature of the ponzi scheme. he could not get out. one year later bernie madoff is the only person in prison in the scandal. they are cooperating and two computer programmers at the tomorrow have been charged with fraud. you can read more about the scam of the century one year later and see more of the interview at cnbc.com. scott, thanks very much. so a year later, is your money safe or safer? can the sec prevent another madoff scheme from happening? here to discuss richard moore, former north carolina state treasurer and member of the new york stock exchange board of regulation. we also have paul atkins, former commissioner at the sec. mr. moore, begin with you. by the way you lived where bernie madoff is now house happened. yes, i bring you greetings from 30 miles from mr. madoff s new home, butler, north carolina. richard, look, all right. we know madoff is in jail next door to you, we know a couple of his top assistants for jail and the wife is still out there, the sons are still out there and some of these feeder fund guys are still out there. what s your take? has justice been served? let me start there. no, i think we ve got a long way to go on this and there are two separate issues. first of all, will we ever be safe from the bernie madoff-type ponzi schemes and i can tell you as a former white-collar federal prosecutor, your money will never be completely safe and unless you are an extremely sophisticated investor, you should always be wary of making a direct investment. most people no matter how much money they have make indirect investments and i do think there s been a huge change in the industry on the amount of due diligence that s done into hedge funds and other types of instruments, but the real issue as the sec is concerned is do we have this case spotted some real problems in the system, but are those problems cracks or are all those problems canyons? in a lot of instances those problems are canyons. mr. atkins, you re a former s earns c commissioner. do you believe that they are canyons in terms of problems and does the sec at this point in time, a year later, have the resources to avoid a future madoff-like ponzi scheme? well, actually, one thing i want to say to north carolinians on the show today. i m from willington, which is not too far away from down there, but anyway, to answer your question, i do think that there are lots of issues that need to be addressed at the sec still. they ve started to address some under the new chairmen. mary shapiro made changes in the senior staff, but i think the ultimate questions about organizational behavior and the silos that have been built up over the years at the sec really need to be addressed. richard moore, we come back to you. we re running out of time a little bit, but my pal tom kern, former new york prosecutor, smart, smart guy. he s telling me the irs is looking into the wife and the sons and maybe bringing criminal prosecution there. i m kind of still peeved that they got off so clean. do you have a thought on the irs role in this? might that be a sleeper prosecution? well, in white-collar prosecutions this thing has moved along pretty quickly. we re talking about a year later from the day mr. madoff was first interviewed and of course, he confessed and that s one of the reasons the case against him moved so quickly and it takes a long time to put together white collar cases and i would be shocked if we didn t see more indictments and/or police. thank you. thank you very much, mr. atkins and mr. moore. we appreciate your time. coming up next, a big bounce in business for the home shopping network. hsn ceo mindy grossman next in a cnbc exclusive interview right here on the call after retail numbers. stay with us. welcome back to the call. with your daily realty check i m diana ole nick washington. mortgage is back as the sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory laws. the house is set to vote on allowing bankruptcy courts to cut principal to prevent foreclosures. this passed the house once before, but has never made it through the senate. commercial mortgage-backed securities default for all property types rose in november. fitch ratings reports the hotel sector drug struggled the most. but it is not dead. j.p. morgan chase sold $7 billion by western trust. it is the third deal this month following a year-long drought. checkup next at 2:50 and until then go to the blog at realtycheck.cnbc.com. thank you very much, diana olick. we mark just two weeks left until christmas. overall holiday sales expected to rise modestly compared to last year. her hsn ink should be an understatement. check out shares skyrocketing 100% over the last year. mindy grossman ceo of hsn inc.. mindy, great to have you with us. hi, how are you? great, thanks. i understand you don t give out a forecast, but what are you seeing so far in the fourth quarter in terms of trends. as woe said in the end of the third quarter, we ve seen momentum continue to build into the fourth quarter, so we re very encouraged by what s happening and what we re seeing across all our product categories in spending. are you seeing, though, the amazon impact and what i mean by that is erosion of profit margins. amazon is waging an all-out good with the prices of electronics goods, dvds, et cetera. we re seeing the opposite. we took the approach of what we call more. there are a lot of retailers doing less for less to lure shoppers in. we said we ll give more value, more uniqueness and we re going to give more service to our customers to differentiate us in this market, and that has really been working. across all our categories. mindy, let s talk about categories. what s rocking? what are the biggest sales? is it jewelry, clothe, watches? what s really hot? so if you look at it across the board, continuing in technology. we fit netbooks very strong. we launched the beats by dr. dre headphones those are $300, very successful. but then crossover now, we re seeing strength in our jewelry and our apparel business. our jewelry business just in december to date is up 20%. but it s really unique and it s really special. it s not commodity. what are your margins like compared to last year. you know, our margins are solid in that our inventories, as you have seen throughout the year, are significantly down. if you look at this time last year when things slowed down, you needed to be somewhat more promotional to work through all of that product. we are very lean, turning quickly. so we feel good about where we re going to end. are your price points stable or are you still discounting, mindy? actually we re not really about discounting. if you think we re about great price value, in our model if you don t buy it now the price is going go up, not going to come down. some say price value is discounting. no price value means that when the customer gets that product home it s going to meet or exceed their expectations for what they feel is a fair price for a great product. so against a year ago, against a yore ago, what s your sale expectations through the holiday season? 5%? 10%, what? we don t give specific guidance, but i will say again we are very encouraged by the momentum that we ve seen from the third quarter into the fourth quarter, and as you saw from, you know, the information this morning, we believe there s more confidence in what the consumer is looking to spend, but i do think it s going to be about share, and i do think that we re gaining share in the marketplace from what we re seeing. all right, mindy. great to speak with you. mindy grossman, ceo of hsn inc. on a cnbc exclusive. that is it for candidate the call. i m melissa lee. i ll see you tonight in the kudlow report. 7:00 p.m. eastern and power lunch is up next.
We ll all deeply saddened by this shocking turn of events. that s been the stance of the madoff sons throughout. they were the ones who turned their father into the fbi after the confession. they ve always said that they were innocent victims in all of this and there was some estrangement between bernard madoff and his son, to say the least, as a result. we spoke to ira lee sorkin this morning, he had not yet heard the news and could only say to us this is a tragedy on multiple levels. scott, you were just there at the prison yesterday where bernard madoff is serving his time. what did you glean from that visit? we were there to mark the two-year anniversary. and one of the things that we did learn as a result of that was that bernard madoff is clearly still keeping track of all that s going on in the case including the investigation that was ongoing against his sons, his brother, his wife and his niece. those criminal investigations have not yet been concluded. there have been a number of civil lawsuits particularly against the sons alleging that