For final Senate Passage next week. Some people say it is not much of a deal. Today in the u. S. , late today at 8 30 a. M. , we get pti numbers. Santacon in 300 cities and 44 countries. Kids, teens ive seen people in their 20s dress up as santa and get their party on. Get drunk. An estimated 30,000 participated last year. Snow is expected tomorrow in new york city. I think people who participate in santacon wont mind the snow. Lets do a data check. Im going to go through this quickly. After threenced ugly days. Yield moves higher. Indivisibility of 3 . Weaker euro, weaker yen. Onto the next screen. Currency movements. Vix elevated. This is that risk on the economy doing better. Deal as welly a big go into the weekend. Weaker currencies, dramatically weaker Australian Dollar. Really on the support of the Australian Dollar hanging on by a thread. What a night beginning with the twitter block story, the north korean story. We need to get too busy front page. Lets start with north korea because the countries executed a senior official. The country executed the uncle of the leader kim jongun after military trial convicted him of trying to overthrow the regime. He was seeking a Foreign Investment and he was overseeing special Economic Zones near the border with china, looking to open up the economy, perhaps. Ill of this news through concern and condemnation from all of this news through concern and condemnation. Did, is not about what he but how they reacted. The factors in this happen is making other countries uncomfortable. This is a decade issue. The execution was swift and furious. I urge everyone to read the language of the english to korean statement. He was worse than a dog. You perpetrated thrice cursed ax. Curse acts. Aboutalso want to talk our second frontpage story, on the cover of the wall street journal and covered in bloomberg as well. Big changes. Aking restructuring industry relationships by scaling back with some wall street banks. They could also be changing the firms name, getting away from steven a cohen, perhaps. Hold on. A name change doesnt necessarily do it, but i dont think it is sac changing its relationship with the street. They were able to get prime brokerage, great financing. Now that steve cohen is returning billions to investors, changing to a Family Office, if youre goldman or deutsche bank, why are you going to offer them Premium Services . Youre definitely not giving rangers tickets anymore. He was the oned who interfaced with the street and left. The firm is changing. 1. 8 billion dollars in fines, you have a problem. Isfinal frontpage story proof that washington can get its act together. The house passed a budget. Margin. Y pretty wide the senate is up next week and will vote on using the 63 billion dollars in spending cuts and looks like we could avoid another Government Shutdown until october 2015, although, the lawmakers who negotiated this are not exactly excited. They have been talking it down from day one. There it is. It is a budget deal for the moment. That is the front page this morning. We have the perfect guest host to speak about this effort in washington for former Senior Adviser to the president , manager of the president s most successful 2008 campaign, david plus. I have to go to the y now . Did not happen before. What has changed in the air in washington . Is hard to believe were not going to have a Christmas Season affected by washington. I think it was a result of the shutdown. Both sides needed to prove washington could function. It is a small deal, but a big change of operating. It because of the calendar and we are closer to the first tuesday of november next year . Maybe. The hatred to washington a stronger than ive ever seen. These guys and women which you run your campaign different in 2008 if the hatred is like it is now . It was about the economy, about iraq. Now it is about basic functions. To people at home, they will be breathing a sigh of relief. At least washington is not going to create harm. That is all theyre asking for. What do they do next . Today tackle a different subject or do they tackle something silly like banning cell phone use on airplanes . That is a great question. I dont think we know. It could be they say, this is it. Were going to go into the election year. If they were choosing a lead, they would choose Immigration Reform and a bigger budget deal. David, i guess i refuse to congratulate washington. This deal is so small, not touching anything that counts, it is like scarlet and i congratulate and our sonss for not punching each other in the face. Ofi would like to thank both you for wearing the same color. It is not the same color. It is a small thing. Im not willing to say this is great, im so glad to see that agreed on a deal. Would you really call this a deal . Well, and lets government function, which is a big deal. But you are right, they should not get an allowance for this, they should just be allowed out of their room. That is what voters think, just stop it. There were things that both parties did not like. All they can do right now is walk a be steps and hopefully they will do more. Want to switch gears. Second term, has been rough for the president , for the white house. Are the people you know what the white house simply worn out . Fatigue . Inistration i dont think it is fatigue. It is been something every month whether it is in sa, syria,. I think it is very important that the budget has settled and story begins to fade a little they have an opportunity to lean into the economy they havent been able to do in 2013. Do we need more fresh blood in the west wing . Is coming back. By your time. Bite your tongue. This is not because people are tired. Connor this is just fans events landed on the desk and added to them. Thereve been execution issues. How are you going to make sure you have confidence Going Forward . This law needs to be executed well for years. If you had been there, none of this wouldve happened. But google may take on intel, one of its biggest rivals. Considering making its only its own chips. Google believes it may be able to design a better chip to manage the interactions between hardware and software. Microsoft is considering qualcomm slammer to man for top spot. He has emerged as a candidate. This is according to people familiar with the matter. He is the chief operating officer of qualcomm. There are several external candidates as potential successors as well. Peugeot shares slide. The stock fell more than 10 on word that General Motors would sell at seven percent holding. They teamed up last year to save money, but have struggled to meet goals of the partnership. That is todays company news. We will have more on that microsoft story when we come back. We are going to be talking about some competition for alamo lally , another name and a half of that top job. This is bloomberg surveillance. Stay with Bloomberg Television all day. ,tephen miller, aig chairman the king of rightsizing. Market makers. Were not talking steve miller band, but steve miller the turnaround kid. If you look at what this guy has done with aig, it will be great to get im never ready with anything with you. I love steve miller band. Before tom keeps singing we are talking about how there is a new contender for the microsoft ceo role. We have all heard alamo lally Alan Mulallys name thrown around. But what about qualcomm. Steve ballmer, the current ceo, recently cited qualcomm and apple and samsung has taken advantage of the shift to mobile. Mobile is where microsoft is lagging behind and needs to make up a lot of lost ground. He is on a list of several antedates under serious consideration. What did you specifically do at qualcomm . He is the number 2, 44, joined the company as an engineer. 44 . He is a baby. His current boss over at qualcomm is 52. He is the son of one of qualcomm s founders, so he probably isnt going to step aside anytime soon. Reading between the words come he cant have to think, in order to move up, this guy has to move companies. What was the response to the sell side . They have moved on in terms of who is going to be the next ceo to what the next ceos challenge will be. Just noted that microsoft sold 3. 5 billion euros of bonds last week. He said this is tied in with the next announcement of the ceo. Whoever the next ceo will be, there will either do a big buyback or perhaps a onetime dividend to coincide with that. This story was interesting and has become fastening. Youre talking about pedigree of executives. We have David Plouffe with us. Out of kansasly as an engineer, particularly in aerospace. He moves to autos. Can he go to tech . Scarlet introduces us to a prodigious tech. This is a guy with serious engineering. Do you need leadership or tech savvy . Im asking david. Do you need more narrow abilities as an executive or do you want to go bigger, broader and delegate out those miller narrow skills . Full disclosure, i do some work for microsoft. You need a leader. This is almost like the vatican. Theres a lot of interest in this election. Everybody will be waiting for the white smoke. Even our interest in the economy in the direction, the mobile challenge, rising competitors. There is great interest. My bias is, you need a leader. The leader doesnt mean anything without a strong senior team. But a leader who knows the business. If youre qualcomm and 70 walks in who knows out of your corporate leader but doesnt know the first thing about your business, who walks in and they are corporate leader but as another first thing about your business. You need to bring everyone along internally and externally. You made a good point. The distinction is more about age. Mulally is 68. There is a big gap. Some people are not ruling out alan mulally entirely. The star has faded a little bit as a candidate. Come on. They point out there is one option which would play a role. He takes the job for a couple of years and helps groom an internal candidate. We know the head of the Cloud Services division of microsoft has said he would stay regardless of who gets i would say this has become fascinating. This is interesting, but now this is really, really interesting about how a company goes about this. It talks about the direction the company would go. But theres a huge difference between a 68yearold and 44 yearold, i would argue that. 68 is the new 44. Look at martha stewart. Really. Look at you, tom keene. I am talking to van buren later in the hour. And you say 68 is the new 44 . I love you. David, this comes down to the plethora of great managers. Plethora . Yes, it is like efficacy. If youre to say, come to the white house and work. How do you get someone to change their life and go to a company . Think theres financial considerations, but it comes down to is it something that speaks to me . Is their passion . Are there good people . Youre nothing without good senior people. You have got to have confidence there are good senior people or you will fail. All of a sudden, this is way cool. There is a timeline in place. Microsoft wants to appoint someone this makes me want to ask about the president and the white house, the administration being so insular, not reaching out. Obama might be a great leader and a smart guy, but one of the biggest criticisms around him right now as he doesnt necessarily have a team with the chops to are helping him. Luckily, we are out of time. I disagree strongly and we can talk about it. David plouffe with us this hour. We will talk about your president. And speaking of management, on the cover of the new Bloomberg Businessweek the first female ceo of General Motors. That is out on store shelves today. This is bloomberg surveillance. Happy friday the 13th. Kick it off, americans are confused about it going. Just 42 of people polled by bloomberg could correctly identify bitcoin as a virtual currency. 6 said it was an xbox game. Another 16 thought it was an iphone app. 46 had no idea what bitcoin was. Hopefully, matt miller was not in that survey saying that. In a world of regulated currencies, Goldman Sachs is breaking ranks and predicting a drop in the dollar. Sing the greenback will weaken next year and fall to 1. 40 against the euro, a level that hasnt been seen since late 2011. The wall street consensus is for a stronger dollar next year. On in says not so fast flight phone calls. Transportation officials are considering keeping the ban on inflight phone calls in place. The news came after the fcc voted to explore lifting the ban. The transportation overseas air travel circuits the last word on the matter. Those are your top headlines. I dont want anybody talking on my flight. But i would like law makers to focus on more important things right now. Thank you very much. The president is going to have to step in on this. Flight calls. He will be a former president at some point. No selfies on airplanes. Im going to stay with washington for my morning must read. Advisor talks about Hillary Clintons are full dance of sticking close to the president to secure the base, but also distancing herself from someone who is unpopular policies. He says even bill clinton may not be able to help her out there. Article question for our David Plouffe a critical question for our David Plouffe. Secretary clinton had her hands tied by white house. It was in controlled state and they learned that lesson and john kerry is more control now. Is that a true discussion . Know, in fact, he was picked because he was going to have to spend so much time on the economy that he needed the secretary of state with the footprint and ability to represent the country and execute business. And she did that. When he saw secretary clinton travel anywhere around the world, and such a major story. Inwho has the upper hand determining Foreign Affairs for the white house . It needs to be and should be a collaboration. It is a balance. But under the Obama White House every white house, there is more centralizing of control. The secretary of state, secretary of defense, these are people with huge ability to help shape but there is a stark contrast with the Bush Administration where it was run out of the white house. It was presumed john snow was circuit treasury. Do you believe your white house more delicatedriven delegatedriven . We had strong people. The planning, the policymaking organization is done in the white house. No question. But these are voices who were heard and ability to shift direction. But theres always tension between agencies and the white house. We talked about this earlier. Leon panetta. I said, has the president called you during this . He said, not once. Should obama be reaching out to the leon panettas of the world saying, help me out, brother . He talked to these people all the time. But where are we right now . Fixing health care is basically in the ministrations ability, they just need to get it done. Dealing with congress . Small deals should not be celebrated, but good we are able to at least not shut down. On insularity is one ive never bought, but i do think reaching out to business in particular is important about what we can do to help the economy. David plouffe with us this hour. Friday the 13. And we are going to talk about the Media Entertainment industry. They are poised for growth. What about dealmaking . Good morning. Bloomberg surveillance. What an uproar last night. Our twitter question of the day you can block someone you dont like. Stephanie ruhle can block tom keene so she can avoid it. They changed it from a block to a mute, where you could rush i could be an idiot and staff could mute me where she would not see it being an idiot but with the rest of the world . The rest of the worldwide. Thats not fair. , you and i last night witnessed this first hand. Night, they fully relented. This is the power of the new social media. Companies use to wait for the new cycle to make a decision. They had to react right away. I suppose this is done for advertising reasons. Facebook is facing some of the same issues. The damage control, crisis control is completely changed in 2013. So different from Johnson Johnson and tylenol of 20 or 30 years ago. But as it relates to twitter and blocking, you see more Public Service announcements about the dangers of bullying and you hear about kids and their need to learn to read. What do you think happens on twitter . Bullying. Unless you have the right to block people. Just a huge deal we see with the twitter vigilantes, to shutting them down. Trucks that is a great term. Where did you get that . It is aboute revenue. Stephanie is blocking an idiot, youre blocking an idiot. I am blocking the sponsored tweets. That is where twitter the company is an issue. You dont want perverts. It is the advertisers. They want the advertisers. Example, wanting to send me a tweet so i know they are smart and i can block them. That is what theyre worried about. Whats nice segue. Nice segue. Ey. A lot of headlines involved in media right now. Amc getting ready to go public. Longerndustry really no held back by uncertainty. According to a new report from ey, the top executives see stronger growth and rising m a activity. Young islly at ernst at the heart of discussion on how we watch tv, how we use our mobile devices, how we get our media. Versed question, are these executives that are feeling or countable about the future, are they doing so because economic environment has improved or is it because of change . Both. Thereve gone through such turbulence in terms of the whole stress of the 2008, 2009, 2010 timeframe moving into getting adaptive fuel to the business platform, a lot is taken place. Today theyre looking at stable for roughly economic growth, modest at best. Some uncertainty if you look from a political front. But an acceptance of their business platform. I think theres a higher degree of confidence moving forward, more offensive, if you will, that defense of. Yet when we look at the survey results, 74 of these media and entertainment executives expect hell volumes to improve. Yet only one quarter of them would pursue acquisitions. A i think the 74 is really reflection of the overa