Good afternoon. Stocks steady despite jobs and gdp data financials and tech the best performers and telecom and energy the biggest laggards. Bob evans farms soaring, beating Sales Estimates and raising outlook and chicos taking a hit. Comp store sales also missing the mark. Lets get you caught up on latest headlines on har vixt the governmentrun u. S. Flood Insurance Program now says it has already received 35,000 claims, as of noon today and as of midnight, dumped 21 trillion gallons of rain, and its enough to fill half of lake tahoe. And the storm is hitting louisiana now. The state bracing for tornadoes and flooding weve got you covered. Lets go to Team Coverage on the ground in texas. Brian sullivan live in pasadena with the latest on the refineries Contessa Brewer still in houston where businesses are continuing to get back to business. Lets start with you. All right, sara, thank you very much. We want to look at these refineries and show them to you. Right along the buffalo bayou, this is the ship channel river that goes through houston. Sort of a bad news, good news story here the bad news is that harvey is not done harvey is still active it just swung east obviousry a lot of people being hit. They are under water and struggling from a financial perspective, you have 1. 4 Million Barrels a day of Refining Capacity there the biggest refinery in america shut down this morning exxonmobil, total and valero all shuttered, taking more Refining Capacity offline. Here closer to houston, a bit of a different story. Thats the petro pasadena facility behind us, 100,000 barrels a day. Currently offline. This water guys is about 9 feet higher than it should be and you can see that water went in see where those sort of sleds or whatever they are called, theres water in that and there should not be water in that. There should be a wall that you see here but the water has overtopped the wall. That is one of the refineries shut down here i guess the good news is the water is and contessa as hey better view, its beginning to recede down. You can clearly see the High Water Mark and unfortunately the High Water Mark is marked by a lot of garbage the water here slowed down but i think this is probably representative of a lot of the cleanup that is to come, this is just one small sliver. Well come back in a few minutes and talk about the Chemical Plants, not just oil and gas. Thank you very much for that. Now to Contessa Brewer in houston where some businesses are starting to reopen contessa reporter yeah, and the businesses that are reopening are seeing a lot of people lining up for their services were at the walmart now south of houston, a packed parking lot here, steady line of traffic then look at the line of customers waiting out in the hot sun, waiting to get inside first day of sunshine so probably a lot of people are grateful for this opportunity to be out in it and feeling it. If we go inside, the First Department customers are hitting, grocery of course, as we walk inside youll see here theres lots of choices for fresh fruit, even though the supply chain has been all but shut down for days on end. Then look over here, pallets of water. What weve been told by walmart, more than 1,000 trucks have been sent out through the Distribution Centers, more than 900 of those with bottled water alone for walmart and sams clubs and lots of shelters including the convention center. We talked to the manager about how hes going to provide the supplies that the things people need in this neighborhood so badly are here for them when they get inside the store. Our bread vendors might be coming from a different location our milk vendors might be having a different roult to get in. They are working diligently to get supplies and keep them safe at the same time. The manager told me an Amazing Store rix the associates and customers were here and started to evacuate as flood water around the neighborhood started to rise. Then some of them got stuck here about ten people, associates and customers spent the storm, rode out the storm inside the walmart and yes, they opened up boxes of air mattresses and used them here and they were able to get them out the people who were here working today, some of them have lost their own homes and lost cars. I talked to a lady who saw the water rising and was scared for her safety but ready to get back to work. An amazing situation here and were seeing it repeated at businesses all around this area. Its certainly impressive the store is very well stocked not having trouble with supply chains at this point it doesnt look like at least. Reporter he says that they do have trouble with the supply chains in that theyve got the trucks to Distribution Centers and still closed because of flooding and when they have the trucks they have to make sure that one the roads are passable to get to the places they need to be and two that the stores are still open if they send those trucks there again, the big one is they are not only supply gs the stores, walmart and sams club but also the area shelters as well, big ones and smaller ones. All right, thanks, contessa now to the economy, news that were growing at the strongest clip in over two years steve has the details. This is not unrelated to the harvey story because this is it will work into it theres some excitement that we may have shifted to a stronger growth path and with a still strong forecast for the Third Quarter. Heres the data, September Quarter gdp coming in at 3 , here are all of the components in how they were upwardly adjusted, 3. 3, consumer. Business investment, a nice showing there, 6. 9 . Thats almost 2 points better. Housing doing a little bit less bad, government coming in with a surprise negative there, downward rejustment of 21 behind the larger than expected upward revision to the second quarter, real gdp growth is a more positive feel about economic growth. Thats not an official economic term the cnbc rapid upbeat, running at 2. 8 for the Third Quarter and better Growth Numbers come along with good jobs numbers we got this morning jobs are a jumping 237, much better than the forecast out there july adp up by 23,000, good showing in the good sector with construction and manufacturing both doing well. Im not seeing much change in the nonfarm payroll estimates, 179,000. A major cloud is the impact of Hurricane Harvey and its the bun one economist cited for not raising forecast today jp morgan calling it wake of the flood and saying net impact on q3 and q4 should be positive but very small were not changing our forecast. Heres how these things work growth impacts goes negative at the beginning then positive on the outside on the back side of it along with reconstruction. And netnet. Netnet gdp does no measure happiness. It could be slightly positive but one would not to go through hurricanes to get a net positive. That requires the the reconstruction to be funded. If it doesnt fall on Insurance Companies we will need the expectation there will be federal, private sector as well along with the insurance money. Good jobs too though, reconstruction. Heres my worry about this. I know these are early days to worry. We have an existing deficit of construction workers were going to need another boatload of these construction workers in order to rebuild parts of the fourth largest city in the United States. Lets talk about the issue of the cost of the storm and enormous cost of harvey, on the news line is chuck watson, director of research and development. Good to have you here, mr. Watson looking at estimates on costs. On monday you were at 30 billion. Tuesday at 40 billion today between 48 and 48 and billion, is that because of the flooding its the flooding theres a separate issue the computer models we normally use to do estimates for hurricanes dont really work that well for thiskind of storm. This is more like a big broad flooding low Pressure Type thing and over such a large area that a lot of the normal assumptions that you build into the system start to break down. Another big issue is theres a lot of human decisions and factors that go into this in the early stages we dont noef the controlled releases from the reservoirs, depending on what decision the court engineers make on that it would be a 1 billion impact, 2 billion impact or if they do nothing in the same sales, its a 10 billion impact thats why we earned up with these wide ranges of estimates. Wilfred hit on an issue that will become very big what percentage of those losses or costs do you think are actually going to be uninsured because so much of the impact comes from flooding, which historically, Flood Insurance penetration rates for maybe 15 at best. Exactly for a typical hurricane, you get between 30 and 40 coverage by private insurance. For this storm our current estimate is around the even 20 range, maybe even under that a little bit its going to be a huge hit to the flood Insurance Program. But were currently saving as much as 70 to 75 of the losses will not be insured. One thing i know firsthand from the whole sandy episode we had here, is that the cost of flooding are not immediately apparent you can come in and look at your ground floor which was flooded and think it looks okay, you take off a little bit of that walling and you find out the whole ground floor has to be redone sometimes you dont get to that point until a month or two later and figure all of that stuff out. Exactly and the public infrastructure, thats a huge hit here because even things like trivial stuff like street signs and traffic lights and Flood Control structures, a lot of times you dont realize and South Carolina we had bad flooding two years ago and some of the roads didnt realize had been undermined until several months until they had inspectors go by and then the truck is driving along and drops into a sinkhole. Those are the kinds of impacts from flooreding you dont ee sean dont know about until somebody trips then you get into mold and secondary imparts, thats another reason why our numbers are going up the longer an area is inundated, the more chance there is for these things getting undermined or hidden damage doesnt show up until later. Almost too hard to contemplate how far the effects go the other thing that makes this a little unusual, chuck, and different in terms of determining the Economic Cost is this storm has struck the Energy Capital of the country, refineries are shut down so are oil and production Gas Production facilities and pipelines. How do you factor that the short answer is you throw a dart at the wall the longer answer is you try to figure out whether the damage is disruption or actual damage. A lot of what were seeing is disruption workforce came in, done precautionary shut down. Assuming theres little to no physical needs at the refinery, they spin back up in the next couple of weeks to do that and a month, three months later you resume production and youve caught up with your backlog. Those are complex pieces of equipment. If you break something, theres very few companies that are involved in going in and doing these kind of repairs. A specialized piece of equipment is knocked out of commission and youre talking months of down time the ripple effects could be quite substantial. Now, were not seeing that yet but its definitely a possibility. Chuck, thanks so much for your expertise. We appreciate it. Okay. You too, steve, youre insightful too. Thank you very much. Dont forget to watch steves interview tomorrow at 11 30 a. M. Eastern time here on cnbc. Promises to be insightful. Especially after the president s tax reform speech. That will be a principal discussion of the speech. Its Warren Buffetts birthday and he spent it talking to cnbc and got a cake as part of it. Well share his thoughts on his major Stock Holdings and why he thinks it doesnt feel like a 3 economy even after that number day. Becky quick joins us with the details next Warren Buffett turns 87 years young today. He talked with becky quick about the impact of Hurricane Harvey to the stocks and the economy. Becky joins us with the highlights hey, becky hey, michelle, as you mentioned Hurricane Harvey has been with the nation and what buffett has been watching too. The personal devastation there is incredible. He also said when it comes to insurance losses, its going to be huge. Uninsured losses as well we threw a couple of numbers, we heard 10 to 20 billion in insured losses maybe up to 150 billion in uninsured losses and still early he said the numbers doesnt sound crazy to him berkshire has exposure to, primarily through geico. We probably have 500,000 or so cars in that area for geico, which would be 10 , probably 5 million cars in that area. We dont know at this point i wouldnt be surprised if we had 50,000 losses and most of them will be total losses now buffett says geico is in the process of trying to get tens of thousands of replacement vehicles into the area to make sure that people have a car theyve lost so much with their homes already. Its very important they have those cars and also in the process of moving big tankers of gasoline into the area as well because they say not only do you need a car but youve got to have a full tank of gasoline to go with it how an inyou asurer performs tes you whether they are doing their job or not theyll be measured by how they do in situations like this we also got the chance to talk with buffett about the gdp numbers earlier today. Second quarter revised gdp was revised up to 3 , and better than most were anticipating. I asked if this feels like a 3 economy to him no. Its been about 2 a year now for since the fall of 2009, you know, eight years. And been remarkably close to that most of the time. The way they report those quarterly numbers, they take the quarter and mul pli by four, not year over year it gets a little tricky that way if youre off by a tenth it makes it four tenths in the annual figure they report. With seasonal adjustments, you never want to take any quarter too seriously. I would guess were in a 2 growth economy now now the other big berkshire news overnight was that Berkshire Hathaway converted the warrants it held in bank of america in shares. As a result, they are the largest shareholder in bank of america. Buffett had signaled this was coming but this makes that news official being the largest shareholder thats something that buffett says isnt going to change at b of a any time soon. Were very happy, 700 million shares and i like the business and valuation and i like the management very much so that i think youll see that for a long time in our holdings. Wells fargo the other big bank, Berkshire Hathaway i should say, hes standing by that Company Despite the troubles that have emerged at wells fargo. Becky, it seems like as you said hes happy in terms of being shares of both of those banks, but more happy than bank of america than wells fargo. What did we learn about his holding in apple in apple, he talked about how he looks at this we kind of compared apple and ibm because last time we talked to him he told us he was selling shares of ibm. When he looks at apple versus ibm, has a easier time trying to do valuation on apple and understands it and likes it better as a result and he talked a little bit how berkshire increased shares one of his lieutenants eithered to or ted sold shares of apple he said he personally increased his holdings in berkshire of apple through that entire thing so berkshires holdings went up as a result. Todd and ted have 11 billion, he didnt say it was a loss of faith. But when they have 11 billion to play with and i say that in a very light tone only, only 11 billion to play with, buffett was buying those shares as either todd or ted was selling them. Thanks very much. Outstanding stuff. Thanks, will. Still ahead, Golden State Warrior kevin durant takes a shot at under armour what he said coming up on power lunch. Riiight. And that means. . Im the money you save for retirement. I help you get organized so your money could multiply. See . Got it. Whos he . Hes green money for spending today. You know, paying bills, maybe a little online shopping. Makes it easy to tell you apart. That, and i am better looking. I heard that. When its time to get organized for retirement, its time to get voya. Welcome back to power lunch, kevin durant taking a shot at underarmour saying Young Players dont like the companys shoes. The stock falling 3 yesterday down a bit more today. That was on top of the finish line disastrous guidance of the durant making those comments during a podcast went on to say that quote, nobody wants to play in under armo armours, the kids dont because they all play with nike. Steph curry is the face of under armour you know i have a lot to say because i cover these companies because the first thing is the sneaker wars, this was the wrong matchup now its adidas, Morgan Stanley came out and cut the price target of nike saying they have lost its core sneaker enthusiast customer to adidas, they havent been in the sneaker game since if he was going to trash talk, he should have trash talked somebody else. They all endorse positively their own company they have endorsement good whats the motivation . Is he doing this because he has a rivalry with curry to be fair, the question on this podcast had to do with University Athletics programs, including maryland, saying the quest