Headwinds out there, whether its gas prices, the payroll taxes, or whether disruptions. Lorwer income americans seem to be the most fragile, on tuesday Charles Holly said taxes are his shoppers number two concern, adding its the first time in a long time taxes were a top concern at all. Itg Investment Research chief economist steve blitz says this retail sales report illustrates two separate consumer groups. With higher income americans spending on autos and Building Supplies while lower income americans continue to be adversely impacted by higher payroll taxes, rising gas prices and delayed tax refund checks, a sentiment echoed by the National Retail federation. For nightly Business Report, im courtney reagan. As courtney just mentioned, consumers are spending on housing and garden supplies. Coming up, well take you behind the scenes of the home depot product walk. Its where Companies Showcase their hottest home items for this spring. Chief executives of some of americas Biggest Companies are optimistic about the u. S. Economy, expecting it to grow more than 2 this year. The Business Roundtable is out with its latest ceo Economic Outlook index. It rose to a score of 81 in march. Now, that was much higher than the previous reading of 65 back in december. Anything above the score of 50 indicates economic expansion. Another positive, the survey was taken even before the recent runup in the stock market. Now, 72 of those ceos surveyed expect their Company Sales to rise in the next six months. 38 plan to boost Capital Spending in that same period, but only 29 of them hire more workers over the next six months. If youre thinking of making new investments, heres your chance to get into the exclusive world of private equity. Carlisle group is letting in newer investors by sharply lowering the minimum amount of money needed to get in. While many investors love the idea of investing with the big boys, we are warned buyer beware. Admission into wall streets inner circle has long been expensive. If you didnt have millions of dollars in your bank account or 401 k , investing with top Money Managers would have been completely off limits. Not anymore. Top private equity firms have been lowering the barrier to entry, slowly introducing new funds open to everyday investors. The pitch, for future retirees, a more sophisticated approach, one beyond plain vanilla stocks and bonds and access to the complex, yet profitable investments of wall street. The carlisle group, one of the largest of these firms, is just the latest to make this offer. For those making more than 200,000 a year and with more than 50,000 to spare, carlisle will spread your money across its investments which rise when it takes over new companies. These deals for decades were the industrys bread and butter. And a quarterovers of nabisco or hilton pumping up their profits. Until it was time for the private equity firms to go public themselves, they needed more diverse revenue. Now carlisle, blackstone, kkr and apollo manage half a trillion dollars. But only a tiny fraction of that total are open to Retail Investors and most of them have Just Launched in recent months. Morningstar, which rates mutual funds, waits three years to evaluate a funds track record but for these funds in the short time they have been open, the s p 500 has proved a better investment. For nightly Business Report, im kayla touche. A lot of movement in technology. Blackberry again the most active stock as it booked an order of more than a million new z10 smartphones from an established partner company. Netflix was the biggest gainer of the day, up 12 , as it goes social, giving users a tool to tell their facebook friends what theyre watching, however dangerous that might be. And facebook itself was down more than 2 , as the ftc tells social Media Companies to make sure their ads on their screens are clear and truthful. Google announcing an executive change in its android division. Andy reuben is stepping down. Whos andy reuben . Hes the guy who developed the android operating system now used on roughly twothirds of all the worlds smartphones. Hes going to stay with google in a yet to be disclosed role. Shares were down, closing at 825 and change. Amazon is trying to get more consumers to buy its largescreen kindle so its cutting the price by 100, undercutting apples ipad. The kindle fire, the hd version, with wireless capability will now start at 399. Amazon shares gained slightly to 273. Well, a clear message to j. C. Penneys investors from the top management today. Their chief financial officer, ken hannah, told the conference hes not resigning and the same goes for ceo ron johnson. Hannah said, quote, were not going to run and hide. Jcp shares rose for a while but remained unchanged at 15. 65. Theyre down 20 so far this year. The securities and Exchange Commission is allowing four of the biggest banks, citigroup, jm morgan chase, bank of america and Morgan Stanley to block shareholder votes on potentially breaking up the companies. The shareholder proposals had been made by corporate watchdog groups affiliated with the aflcio and religious organizations. Heres how those banks did today. Three of them higher, Jpmorgan Chase down 12 cents. Nissan is recalling five 2013 models sold in the u. S. Because the front Passenger Air bag may not deploy properly because of faulty sensors. The models are the top selling altima, sentra, pathfinder, the leaf and the jx35. Nissan did not provide the number of vehicles affected, but said there have been no reports of injuries or crashes. Nissan shares, which do not trade heavily here in the u. S. , were up 1. 5 today. Well, the big news today, of course, is that the Catholic Church has elected a new pope. Argentinas jorge bergoglio, the first pontiff from outside europe in more than a thousand years. He will be known as pope francis i. The crowd in st. Peters square rejoiced as he was introduced to the world for the first time. An electrifying moment. Not only will he be the spiritual leader of the worlds one billion or so roman catholic, he will also have to lead in a lot of other ways. Mary thompson is here to explain. What will pope francis i have to bring to the table in terms of management skills, the skills of a ceo . Thats right. You know, i spoke to dr. James oro oroerk at the university of notre dame and he said there are four things he must have. First of all, a strategic vision. What does he need to change within the papacy. Second of all and probably most important is he needs teambuilding skills. Anyone will tell you if they spent time at the vatican, its not the friendliest place. There are a lot of people that are very ambitious, they have their own agenda, one they sometimes put ahead of the holy see. So he needs to build a team and say were here to do this for the people, for the vatican, put aside your individual ambitions and lets go ahead. Thirdly, he needs Strong Financial skills. Its odd, would you need a pope with an mba . Maybe not an mba but certainly interest and acumen about financial matters. And lastly, the professor said he needs charismatic empathy. He has to tell his followers why they should follow him. Why he has a path to a better life. Harvard Business School has a new ceo Training Program with michael porter, he might want to check that out. But in terms of looking at the vatican and what hes overseeing, we know its a huge empire but what are the Business Units so to speak . From a financial stand point he does handle the daytoday Financial Operations of the vatican and most importantly the vatican bank which has had its shares of problems. You might recall a couple of years ago they fired the president of the bank, accused him of gross negligence. Pope benedict started reforms a number of people hope will continue under pope francis. He brought in a new president and also you need to get the vatican bank up to European Union banking standards and thats a goal that they want the vatican to stay on track of. Very quickly, do we know much of anything about him as a manager and administrator . Not that i know so far about pope francis i, but he did run ian archdiocese and not a small one in buenos aires. Yes. Mary thompson, thank you very much. Moving from the vatican to washington, security is always an issue. Today president obama sat down with some top ceos to talk about Cyber Attacks. Well have the latest on that meeting and also explore the biggest threat to our cyber safety. But first, lets look at how stocks fared around the globe. A federal judge is ordering apples ceo, tim cook, to testify in the governments antitrust case against the company. The lawsuit, which was filed last april, claims apple conspired with several Book Publishers to hike ebook prices. Apple has denied the charges. Senate democrats released a federal Budget Proposal that includes nearly a trillion dollars in tax hikes and almost another trillion dollars in spending cuts over the next decade. That is in sharp contrast to the House Republican budget unveiled just yesterday outlining more than 4. 5 trillion in total spending cuts and no tax increases. Meantime, president obama went to the hill today to meet with House Republicans, hoping to sell his proposal to strike a socalled grand bargain of tax increases and entitlement cuts. But when the president releases his own budget plan in april. Also in the spotlight in washington today, president Obama Meeting with some top ceos to talk about the threat of Cyber Attacks and the huge economic losses that come from computer hacking. The president said hes taking Cyber Security seriously, so seriously that he met with those Business Leaders in the situation room at the white house. Eamon joins us from the white house with more. Hi, you guys. Well, it was about a dozen ceos here at the white house. The white house itself has been a little cagey about the list of ceos who attended this meeting. We staked them out and didnt see a whole lot on their way in or way out, but were told jamie dimon was here, also Rex Tillerson was expected to attend and a long list of other top Business Ceos from a range of industries. Clearly this was a meeting that the president said was important for his agenda, and we talked with david coty, the ceo of honeywell on his way out. He explained that a lot of the ceos were really behind what the president had to say today. This is a scary area. When i think about any single thing that i worry about the most when it comes to what could happen that i just dont know about, that kind of unknown threat that could just really cause pain, Cyber Security is it. So im fully supportive and so is every ceo who was in that room. Fully supportive, but what he also said in that interview was that he wants a light touch from government in terms of regulations and requirements on Cyber Security for companies. Now, thats something that weve heard from other ceos as well. Clearly theres a little bit of a point of tension from the companys perspective over how much authority the white house and the u. S. Government is going to have over Cyber Security issues. You know, eamon, weve been getting warnings about Cyber Attacks ever since 9 11 and yet were still talking about it, we are still vulnerable. Why do you think that businesses and the government have been dragging their feet to fix this problem . Did you get any sense of that from talking to people today . Well, theres two real reasons for that. The first one is its just very hard to tell who is actually doing these Cyber Attacks, tracing them back to their source can be infuriatingly complicated. Also when you do trace it back to its source, often its offshore in a remote location. In some cases its a unit of the Chinese Government sponsoring these attacks. That makes it very difficult in terms of geographic location and also diplomatically with foreign governments and foreign intelligence services. It gets very, very complicated and thats part of the reason why this is so difficult. All right, thanks a lot. Our next guest says Cyber Attacks are a war on american businesses and consumers. This is the ceo of risk control strategies, a new York Security Firm that advises companies how to protect their businesses against Cyber Attacks. Welcome, good to have you with us. Thank you. I wonder whether cyber aatacs are becoming much more frequent or are we just hearing more about them . This is something thats been going on many years. Its starting to come more and more into the press, but its certainly not a new concern to us whatsoever. But are there more of them . Are you detecting more of them . Are more of your clients say were getting hacked or worried about getting hacked . I can say without question over the last several years weve seen an exponential increase in attempted hacks as well as successful hacks into our corporate as well as our private clients. And the interesting part about it is, though, the Business Model associated with this is so strong that it attracts the major organized crime groups, such as those out of the eastern bloc and those coming from various parts of china. Paul, you heard our report and you heard the reaction from the ceo of honeybewell. How do we fix this problem . Is it going to come from the private sector, from government or from both working together . I think its got to come from both. When we look at government, we have to look at our infrastructure and what we have to do to make that strauonger. Its no great secret that its weak and vulnerable. I commend the president by stepping up and doing the right thing and bringing a group of leaders in to discuss that, but it cant stay there. Its got to start there and build from there. The government will have to do their part to protect our infrastructure and what we have as a country. Corporate america is going to have to step up and make sure that they begin to holistically develop their vulnerables and make a plan. It is pretty easy to see how this is a major threat with critical systems. But round third base and bring it home for me as a consumer, as an individual investor, as a person living in this country. What is the risk to me . How am i going to feel it . Thats a great question. Think about it this way. When we look at the individual itself, youve got to take a look at who the perpetrators are and whos actually focusing on the potential target. So from the general consumer, the one thing we need to recognize more than anything else is that we cannot simply just send our proprietary, our Financial Information over the internet without a decent level of protection. Hence, the recommendation there, the solutions that more people are moving towards is attaching a small encrypted box, firewall to their existing router so when they are communicating proprietary information thats communicated safely and securely. When you take a look at the collateral effect to the consumer today for Corporate America not doing what they should, on the small ending youre talking about losing your personal identifying information all the way up to your Financial Information and lets put it this way, when something is gone and your identity or that information is stolen, its stolen forever. What about the cloud . A lot of people feel like if everything is backed up on the cloud and they have password protection, that theyre okay. Right. If you speak to any real Cyber Security expert, theyre going to tell you that the cloud is just another example of putting information in a place you cant completely control. The part that we really need to identify here is that whenever we have a Human Element, a Human Element that controls the gate to that data, we have to make sure that the individual is intact. We have to make sure anywhere elsewhere you dont have complete and total control over whos accessing that information is subject to breach. Thats the part that i have never been enamored with the cloud. Thats kind of my feeling too, paul. If its out there, its out there. Thats the way ive felt. Paul, thank you very much for being with us. And coming up on the program, as we head into spring, what some important ceos think will get consumers to spend. But first we look at where currency closed today. And on our radar for tomorrow, were going to get a measure of the health of the labor market when we see the weekly jobless claims numbers. Well also hear from treasury secretary jack lew in his first on the job interview. And samsung expected to unveil its new galaxy 4 phone. That is all tomorrow. Well, spring officially begins one week from today. The heart of the real estate spring selling season and a chance for many of us to plan some home repairs and lawn cleanups. The nations largest doityourself chain, home depot, is getting ready too. Brian sullivan takes us to the companys annual new product walk in las vegas to show us what companies are banking on this spring. The Home Improvement business is massive, with some estimates of how much consumers spent on their homes last year peaking as high as 300 billion. After years of sluggish growth, thanks in large part to a major housing downturn, that figure looks poised to go even higher. Home improvement spending will increase by another 4 this year and an Industry Group projects spending will balloon to 345 billion over the next five. So what is driving all that growth . Housing we think is getting better. You can see it in terms of household formation, housing turnover, new home starts. There are a lot of data that says housing is actually improving. So as home prices increase, theyre more likely to do projects in their house because they know theyre going to get the value out that they put in. Home depot takes the job of getting all its employees ready for the Spring Season seriously. Over the next two days, 3100 store and district managers for home depot will gather here at the companys annual product walk. The goal, make sure the managers and employees know everything about the products theyre selling. And there are lots of products. Everything from toilets to tile cutters, with more than 600 exhibitors spread out over 400,000 square feet of display space, about four times the size of the average home depot store. But there have been some signs that the redhot market is starting to cool down. According to the latest remodeling index, the number of Building Permits fell by 6 in december from the previous year. If you take out the rebuilding efforts in the northeast following superstorm sandy, that drop would have been even bigger. Some of the industrys Major Players have taken notice. I think your pointing about the consumer is certainly one that has not played out yet but possibly could, just in terms of, you know, less disposable income. And when it comes to a more cautious consumer, even the queen of home and garden can be humbled. I think the consumer is coming back. Im an optimist. I certainly hope that the turnaround is occurring and with the stock market doing so well, i think it would be a great thing. For nightly Business Report, im Brian Sullivan in las vegas. I dont know about anybody else but i can speak for my husband. Hes going to contributing not just to home depot but the u. S. Economy. Hes out there buying and spending . I say go and get a hose and he comes back with 500 of stuff. Ive got to meet him because i do the same thing. Im really looking forward this weekend to planting some grass seed. Isnt it kind of early . Its okay, it will come up. So i look forward to spending some time at home depot. Nine days in a row of gains for the dow and a new pope in rome. Whether youre catholic or not, it is an electrifying moment to see all of those people gathered there in vatican square rejoicing over a new leader. It was pouring rain. Everybody was waiting to find out who this was going to be. I think from what mary was telling us, he sounds like hes at a Crucial Point for the vatican and it will be very interesting to watch what he does. The pope was announced about 2 00 p. M. Eastern time and i bet they all went out and had a very nice dinner for us. Thats it for us, nightly Business Report and we want to remind you this is the time of year your Public Television station seeks your support. On behalf of your Public Television station, thank you very much for your support. Good night, everybody. We hope to see you right back here tomorrow night. For over 65 years, saladmaster has been designing cookware products to enhance nutrition retention and to promote good health for people around the world. More information about the saladmaster Healthy Solutions cooking system is available at saladmaster. Com. Explore new worlds and new ideas through programs like this, made available for everyone through contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Alzheimers now affects half of us by age 85. My family tree is riddled with dementia and specifically alzheimers disease. I dont want to get it. What can i do . The doctor says, sit down. There is a gene. Theres not much you can do about it. But let me tell you something. There is a lot that you can do. You can keep your brain in good working order. You can maintain these connections. The beginnings of memory loss could be at work right now, and you want to derail that process before it derails you. There are three steps, and in this program, were going to take them one by one. Its easy. Its vitally important. [applause] hello and welcome. Let me ask, what matters most to you . Whats most important in your life . Im guessing its not your car, your clothing, or your house. What would you say is the most important thing in your life . Your health . Your family . Your loved ones . Well, what if it were to happen that you lost everything and everyone who is most important to you . Not that theyre gone or that youre gone, but that your connection with them is broken forever