ron johnson, after 15 months as the ceo of jcpenney, one massive misunderstanding of penney customers, he is out. penney is not apple and he learned the hard way and lost his job. you know, what he did was he did away with sales and coupons, right? he redesigned the store experience. a new logo. he brought in ellen degeneres as a spokesperson. customers, jcpenney s loyal customers didn t get it. didn t get it at all. sales fell 28% last year, including a whopping 40% drop during christmas holiday season! jcpenney s board slashed his salary last week but it wasn t enough for some board members. ultimately they got their way, he lost his job. they re pushing the reset button at penney bringing in the old ceo mark ullman. wall street is not happy with that choice. i don t know what s worse, ron johnson is out stock rallies. then the old guy comes back, former leader comes back and the stock tanks. wall street saying really? here s something really interesting about the penney you know
it s 5:00 a.m. in the east. this is cnn breaking news. we begin this morning with breaking news. we have learned that president obama is holding a big event at the white house rose garden later today to resurrect the battle over the bush tax cuts. he will be surrounded by working class americans while he calls on congress to extend tax cuts for everyone, making $250,000 a year or less. republicans want the tax cuts extended for everyone, the wealthy included. the white house will be very busy framing the tax cut debate this week with events planned in new hampshire, nevada, colorado and florida. republicans as i mentioned want the tax cuts extended for all americans, even the wealthiest. at 7:00 eastern on starting point we ll talk about that position with tennessee republican congresswoman marsha blackburn. we have been warning you and now the time has come. hundreds of thousands of people are going to wake up this morning and computers will be dark. no web service.