We will discuss the markets in full detail in just a moment. Also want to let you know we are waiting on the president to make those comments from the white house on those new regulations regarding tax inversions, ones that have seemingly put that pfizer and allergan transaction, 160 billion transaction, in jeopardy at this hour. We will follow that story. We will take you live to the white house and we will discuss the broader ramifications of it as well. But lets begin with the markets. Stephanie, you do have the market. The dow heading for its worst twoday decline since february. Brent and wti are rolling over today. Is that what the rally hinges on . Well, i think we are waiting for earnings. Its always a tricky time between earnings because then we get so absorbed in the macro. Im actually looking at the dollar, looking like its peaked. Oil looks like its in a training range. Its not collapsing, its kind of stabilizing and in a range. Interest rates are low so i think thats a good fundamental backdrop. Whats confusing is the fed. The fed was confusing. The data, the macro data has been mixed although the ism services was pretty good today. Theres a lot of moving parts. Lets wait to see what the companies have to say. You can take issue with part of that and say maybe the dollar which is moving higher, by the way, has hit its floor. Maybe its about to go the other direction and thats whats scaring investors, too. I think its in a range. Listen, friday we were 2072 on the s p. We are getting a natural correction right now. The environment has not changed very much. Theres a lot of uncertainty, whats the fed going to do. Pricing in a december rate hike is the right thing. There are some things in april thats going to keep the s p from rolling down further. 2001 is the line i would look at from a technical busineasis. It comes down to earnings. Maybe we have marked down the contraction in earnings enough where we can get a lift once they come out on april 11. Whats going on today in the market . Is it in part the slide we talk about in oil . Is it a little bit of strength in the dollar . Is it the market getting a little spooked by the government and these new tax inversion regulations . Which have all but crushed the pfizer allergan deal . If you put all this together, absolutely. Theres a reason for a little bit of pause. Joe brings up the fact we just ran up to the new highs and all the rest of that. You look at all of that and the low volume and the fact volatility has absolutely collapsed and now today its up about 10 , still extremely low, though, in the mid 15s. When you look at volumes, yesterday, for instance, under 13 million total option contracts. The volumes over the last couple weeks has been extraordinarily low and thats got to be concerning but you brought up a really good point as well. Oil. It doesnt affect the market every single day if it goes down, the market does this and that, but when you look at what oil has done from 40 and now you see it easing back and easing back and easing back. Sooner or later that becomes a little bit of weight once again unless it finds a range. Is the rally in jeopardy now . I think you will get the pullback. If you look at the s p 15 times earnings, thats fairly valued. We got a great bounce from the bottom but thats when we had a fear of recession. Recession fear now has dissipated. What we are looking at, what are earnings going to say. Are they going to say we will be flat to down or are we actually going to get confidence from companies saying guess what, the consumer is buying, we have solid balance sheet. I think the other thing key to watch is the ipo market. We start seeing that open up, you will have a lot more confidence. Peebople are waiting for tha. We have a guest coming on later who will discuss that very topic. One of the biggest drags on the dow is disney today on news the companys Succession Plan has been thrown into question with the sudden departure of bob igers heir apparent. One close watcher thinks he knows a perfect replacement. A year ago when i wrote a column which now seems premature praising him for his Succession Plan, Sheryl Sandberg was the name, what about her, shes perfect, we love her, shes a woman, shes digital, shes young, she knows the consumer base. Yes, shes on the dream list. No doubt about it. Interesting thought. But dream list and nightmare scenario. No one expected this. Its a very big surprise. He was very well regarded. No one really knows what the story is behind it. What does it do to the story . I think as iger continues to run the show and if he extends which people are expecting its probably status quo but it doesnt change the fundamentals. The fundamentals are kind of challenging right now for their espn business, the subs and it may not be slowing as much as people think but its still slowing. I think they have issues in terms of theme parks up against very tough compares. Same with the film business. Its not a disaster but it trades at a premium to the group. I think thats a little too rich. Cut to the chase. You wouldnt own it . No. Theres other things i would own in this space. Whos on the other side of that . I on it. As a matter of fact, i said last time when it got under the 100 level i would consider adding to it because the reaction today, this move we are seeing today isnt about the fundamental story. I dont necessarily disagree with you on the fundamental story. But there are already questions about the fundamental story. There are. Which is why espn has been at the top. Its been hovering around 100. The reason you see the move today is absolutely about the Succession Plan and thats concerning for people. It really shouldnt be, quite frankly, because he was 2018, my perception would be they push it to 2020 potentially and start going through the types of candidates they really want in place. Doug croits is an analyst, he was surprised like everybody else with this announcement. He joins us for our interview. Welcome. Good to see you today. You say no one saw this coming. What does it mean . Yeah. Its surprising and a little mystifying, frankly. Toms been a Senior Executive at disney for two decades. One would have thought that he was a pretty known quantity and they had evaluated him thoroughly and he was the heir apparent. Obviously seems like the board made a different decision. There are reports that they were concerned about his ability to handle the creative side of disney. But again, i kind of wonder if this might be a little bit of case of Familiarity Breeds contempt. Hes such a known quantity, it was probably easy to pick flaws with him potentially internally. Couldnt they have who are they going to find . Couldnt they have done that, though . Hes been there for 20 some odd years. They could have figured it out before they named him as the heir apparent, right . I tend to agree with that. Thats why this is so surprising. Okay. So if not him, who . What about Sheryl Sandberg . Well, you know, if its true that they are concerned about his ability to handle creative content, i dont know why you go out and hire Sheryl Sandberg. She runs a platform, web platform, not a content company. I think if you are looking for someone who runs a content company, you kind of have to stay in the media industry. Maybe you could define it a little more broadly than just traditional media but you really want someone in charge of a content business. I dont know that theres a really long list of candidates of people who could both handle a company the scope of disney and are good on the creative side. You might have mentioned peter churns name five years ago but hes 65. That date may have passed for him. There arent a lot of people that quickly come to mind. Is the stock investable today or not . Well, disney is always investable. Its one of the pillars of our economy. We have a market performer rating on it. I do echo the comments earlier that it is a little bit expensive for a company that sits in an industry that is facing some pretty significant secular head winds. But its a solid company. And yeah, bob iger will be here for another two years. People love bob iger. Part of the problem here, this is almost like trying to replace john wooden. Whoever comes in is probably going to be perceived unfavorably. You have a market perform. What if bob iger now says you know what, i will stay around until 2020, couple more years . Is that enough of a needle mover for you . I think it would reassure the Investment Community in the near term you are going to have a steady hand. It does sort of beg the question of whats the Succession Plan. It gives you a few more years to potentially develop people internally. But you know, the day is still coming when hell have to step down. Appreciate the time today very much. Doug, thanks. Thank you. Jimmy herick won a title with ucla, right . Yes. What about the concept that possibly this board knows exactly what they want . They want someone on the media side, someone outside of the company . Maybe they did not want tom. Maybe thats the reality. Clearly they didnt. First time since 1984 Michael Eisner wasnt so bad, was he . Maybe they do have a candidate on somebody mentioned on twitter, forgive me for not remembering who it was, im not trying to slight your great thought of what about if it is Sheryl Sandberg, do you go long disney, short facebook . Pair trade . No. Facebook have such a great bench. Shes wonderful there. Shes done a great, great job. If she goes to disney, yes, disney gets more interesting. You hold on to facebook no matter what. Coming up, we are awaiting president obama. He is set to speak on the economy and the Treasury Departments new proposed rules on tax inversions that have put that pfizer allergan transaction in serious jeopardy at this hour. Well take you to the white house live. What the new proposals could mean for allergans deal. And one wall street firm says its time to buy starbucks and wendys. They found out whos been hacking into our network. Who . Guess. I dont know, some kids in a basement . You watch too many movies. Who . A Small Business in china. A business . They work nine to five. They take lunch hours. Like a job . Like a job. We tracked them. How did we do that . We have some new guys defending our network. New guys . Well, theyre not that new. Theyve been defending things for a long time. [ digital typewriting ] its not just security. Its defense. Bae systems. Billions are spent to confuse and, dare i say it, flummox the american public. Save 16 on Car Insurance. Switch now. Well at compare. Com, we say enoughs enough. So we constantly scrutinize millions of rates. Answering the question once and for all, who has the lowest. Just go to compare. Com and get up to 50 free quotes. Choose the lowest, and hit purchase. So you can get back to whatever it is you civilians do when youre not thinking about Car Insurance. Compare. Com all right. Theres a live shot of the white house, where momentarily we do expect president obama to deliver those remarks on the economy. But most certainly, on these new regulations and rules proposed by the Treasury Department regarding Corporate Tax inversions. They have certainly put the pfizer allergan transaction in the crosshairs. 160 billion was that deal which is now in some serious question. Meg terrell joins us from new york city with more. What do you make of this and what does it mean, do you think, for the sector you cover so closely . Well, its a fascinating turn of events. It really took everyone by surprise. The treasury has come out three times with rules trying to curb inversions and this third time seems like it may be the one to do it for this of the biggest inversions, this 160 billion pfizer allergan deal. People are saying this actually specifically targets this deal with one of the provisions set out. Lets look at what these new rules would bring to the table. There are two things here. One, people are calling quote unquote, threeyear lookback. Another thing called earnings stripping. Earnings stripping refers to shifting debt or assets after a deal in order to lower your tax rate. That one is onerous to some people. The threeyear rule is the one that affects fiezer and allergan. That requires a target company to own more than 30 of the combined inverted company in order for the American Company to take that foreign tax rate. This sounds very complicated but it all matters how big we can consider allergan to be compared with pfizer. In this lookback rule it would essentially say that two of the last big acquisitions allergan d did, those wouldnt be counted in allergans size versus pfizer. So it would have a much smaller base to compare take you live to the white house and president obama. As we learned last week, americas economy added 215,000 jobs in march. That means that our businesses extended the longest streak of private sector job creation on record. 73 straight months, 14. 4 million new jobs, unemployment about half of what it was six years ago. This progress is due directly to the grit and determination and hard work and the fundamental optimism of the american people. As i travel around the country, what always stands out is the fact that the overwhelming majority of folks work hard and they play by the rules, and they deserve to see their hard work rewarded. They also deserve to know that big corporations arent playing by a different set of rules, that the wealthiest among us arent able to game the system. Thats why i have been pushing for years to eliminate some of the injustices in our tax system so i am very pleased that the Treasury Department has taken new action to prevent more corporations from taking advantage of one of the most insidious tax loopholes out there in fleeing the country just to get out of paying their taxes. This got some attention in the Business Press yesterday, but i wanted to make sure that we highlighted the importance of treasurys action and why it did what it did. This directly goes at whats called corporate inversions. They are not new. Simply put in laymans terms its when big corporations acquire Small Companies and then change their address to another country on paper in order to get out of paying their fair share of taxes here at home. As a practical matter, they keep most of their actual business here in the United States, because they benefit from american infrastructure and technology and rule of law. They benefit from our research and development and our patents. They benefit from American Workers who are the best in the world. But they effectively renounce their citizenship, they declare that they are based somewhere else, thereby getting all the rewards of being an American Company without fulfilling the responsibilities to pay their taxes the way everybody else is supposed to pay them. When companies exploit loopholes like this, it makes it harder to invest in the things that are going to keep americas economy going strong for future generations. It sticks the rest of us with the tab and it makes hardworking americans feel like the deck is stacked against them. So this is something that i have been pushing for a long time, since i became president. We made our tax code fairer and have taken steps to make sure our tax laws are actually enforced, including leading efforts to crack down on offshore evasion. I will say that it gets tougher sometimes when the irs is starved for resources and squeezed by the congressional appropriation process so that there are not enough people to actually Pay Attention to what all the lawyers and accountants are doing all the time. But we have continued to emphasize the importance of basic tax enforcement. In the news over the last couple of days we have had another reminder in this big dump of data coming out of panama that tax avoidance is a big global problem. Its not unique to other countries because frankly, there are folks here in america who are taking advantage of the same stuff. A lot of its legal but thats exactly the problem. Its not that theyre breaking the laws. Its that the laws are so poorly designed that they allow people if they have got enough lawyers and accountants to wiggle out of responsibilities that ordinary citizens are having to abide by. Here in the United States, there are loopholes that only wealthy individuals and powerful corporations have access to. They have access to offshore accounts and they are gaming the system. Middle class families are not in the same position to do this. In fact, a lot of these loopholes come at the expense of middle class families, because that lost revenue has to be made up somewhere. Alternatively, it means that were not investing as much as we should in schools, in making college more affordable and putting people back to work, rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our infrastructure, creating more opportunities for our children. So this is important stuff. And these new actions by the Treasury Department build on steps that we have already taken to make the system fairer but i want to be clear. While the Treasury Department actions will make it more difficult and less lucrative for companies to exploit this particular corporate inversions loophole, only congress can close it for good. And only congress can make sure that all the other loopholes that are being taken advantage of are closed. I have often said the best way to end this kind of irresponsible behavior is with tax reform that lowers the Corporate Tax rate, closes wasteful loopholes, simplifies the tax code for everybody. In recent years i put forward plans repeatedly that would make our tax system more competitive for all businesses, including Small Businesses. So far, republicans in congress have yet to act. My hope is that they start getting serious about it. When politicians perpetuate a system that favors the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, its not surprising that people feel like they cant get ahead. Its not surprising that oftentimes it may produce a politics that is direc