And spain and france. Strong gains across europe. And look at crude, which is set for weekly gains, up by 1. 25 on the week. Showing just about that gain today. We got surprising inventory builds yesterday. Traders seem to be taking in stride. The u. S. Treasury department issuing final rules to crack down on those tax inversions. Thats when a company is acquired by a smaller foreign business in a low tax country to avoid paying the higher u. S. Corporate tax rate. The new rules crack down on earnings stripping when the u. S. Subsidiary avoids taxes on domestic operations by sending them overseas as tax deductible payments. Got that . Sara eisen does. This is clearly becoming a signature issue for the treasury secretary, for this administration. And what he issued yesterday were new rules to crack down on tax avoiding companies. This earnings stripping strategy, its a common practice by inverted companies, they use the u. S. Subsidiary to issue loans from the Foreign Company that are tax deductible and avoids paying the u. S. 35 Corporate Tax rate. I sat down with jack lew, his main message is we listened to the opposition, the Business Community, were watering them down a bit but still going hard after tax avoidance. I think theres a lot of frustration into the United States and around the world in tax systems that just dont seem fair. Weve been saying it for a long time. Weve taken action. In taking this action today weve shown were taking tough action to stop the egregious behavior but also listening and responding to reasonable concerns. Well be back with more of the interview. We talked about why he cant go after just Corporate Taxes which is the real problem. And many other issues. Okay. Sara, stick with us or come back in a bit. We do have breaking news now concerning senator Elizabeth Warren and the s. E. C. Eamon javers has that story. Reporter good morning. Senator Elizabeth Warren just released a tough letter to president obama calling for the removal of s. E. C. Chair Mary Jo White. Senator warren saying shes frustrated with whites agenda and upsay tet with the failure pass a spending disclosure rule which would say what the companies are doing with their money politically. She writes this brazen conduct is merely the most recent and prominent example of chair white undermining your administrations priorities and ignoring the s. E. C. s core mission of investor protection. What she wants in the letter is for the president to exercise unilateral authority to remove Mary Jo White as s. E. C. Chair and elevate another commissioner to commissioner in order to move forward on this agenda. Its extremely unlikely that president obama would make such a dramatic move just before a Major National election. Also extremely unlikely he would do it before the end of his term. You can look at this as sort of working the refs here by Elizabeth Warren ahead of a possible Clinton Administration. The idea that there are only three commissioners of the s. E. C. Now there are supposed to be five. There are two vacancies. Mary jo whites term is up in 2019. You can imagine Elizabeth Warren wants somebody else on the s. E. C. , maybe two other people on the s. E. C. Who align with her views about how this ought to be handled. And she would like the Clinton Administration to start paying attention to that if they do get into office. This is a slot across the bow potentially from Elizabeth Warren signaling what kind of role she intends to play if Hillary Clinton gets elected in november. I dont understand these publicity stunts. Either shes in with Hillary Clinton and she can call her on the phone and say whoever is the next person, do this. Why does she do it this way . Theres no chance in the world were talking about get your watch out. Three months. I dont understand this. I get what she wants to do. Who is she playing to . Two things. Theres no base to play to in this particular instance, right . Theres always a base to play to you have to right. Theres two reasons to do this. One, yes, Elizabeth Warren, assuming Hillary Clinton is elected, Elizabeth Warren could call president clinton and ask her to do this or that. But you also have to rally the base. Sending this letter in public shows the base that you are doing what you told them you were going to do, so that benefits Elizabeth Warren. Its not just the two women here involved, its all of their staffs, the vaes infrastructure of the government. And shes riding high after the wells fargo thing. We had john stumpf resigning after Elizabeth Warren dressed him down in the senate. Thats viewed among the base of democrats as credit to Elizabeth Warren. Shes using that momentum. She called on Mary Jo White and the s. E. C. To investigate mr. Str stumpf and wells fargo. We had her on yesterday, she was circumspect on whether she would or would not look at whats going on there. She played a lawyerly role there. Clearly ms. Warren wants the okay to go aggressively after wells fargo. She does not think the s. E. C. Has been aggressive enough across the board, particularly on this political spending issue. Thats one that will resonate with democratic voters right now who are frustrated with all the secret money out there in politics. They would like to force corporations to have to say what theyre doing with their money in terms of politics. They think thats only fair. Thats an issue that Elizabeth Warren thinks she has traction on. Thats why she is sending this letter. You said her term ends technically there 2019. I imagine if donald trump were to win, she would go much sooner than that you think in a Clinton Administration she goes much sooner than that, too . Basically when the president turns over, it turns over. Elizabeth warren saying what we would like is those two vacancies on the s. E. C. Right now, theres only three out of the five commissioners now saying that we would like two commissioners that side with us on these issues to be nominated. Possibly one of those to be elevated to chair you can see a couple scenarios. One where Mary Jo White says im retiring and moving on. One where she says i will stick out my term but the new president clinton elevates somebody else to be s. E. C. Chair who would be much tougher on wall street. Democrats are skeptical that Hillary Clinton is tough enough on wall street. They think she gave those secret speeches to wall street, shes in cahoots with them on some level. This is a shot from the left reminding the incoming potentially clinton people what they need to do to appease the left. Eamon javers, thanks. A busy day for Economic Data. The september Producer Price index and retail sales around 8 30 eastern time. At 10 00, be on the lookout for business inventories and Consumer Sentiment data. We will hear from lots of Federal Reserve officials. Two key ones, boston fed president , Eric Rosengren and janet yellen. Both will be at the boston feds 60th annual economic conference. Rosengren a voting fomc member. Before the speech, Steve Liesman interviews him on 7 30 a. M. Eastern. Rosengren dissented at the december fed meeting in favor of a hike. It will be interesting to hear from him, hear him elaborate. Fed chair janet yellen speaks at 1 30 eastern. Her comments will be live on cnbc. Its the official start of earnings season. We expect results from Jpmorgan Chase in about a half hours time, 6 45 eastern. Then at 8 00, citigroup and wells fargo are expected to hit the tape. Keep watching squak for full coverage of those results and the Market Reaction. A bit of other corporate news, verizon indicating it may try to renegotiate its 4. 8 billion proposed merger with yahoo in light of the data breach. It was reasonable to believe that the breach is a material event that would allow the terms of the takeover to be reviewed, thats according to their couns counsel. Two weeks ago we asked the same question, and he demured, tap danced a bit. A little buyers remorse . I dont know about buyers remorse, just maybe a lower price. Just a lower price. Want a lower price. If you can get a lower price. Why pay 5 when you can pay 3. 5 or 4. A buck saved is a buck made. Opportunistic for them. As we mentioned earlier, treasury releasing final rules in its crackdown on Corporate Tax inversions. Sara eisen spoke with treasury secretary jack lew and joins us again at the table. You guys had a wideranging conversation. The inversion rules are what the Business Community had been expecting for a few months now. And theyve gotten used to it jack lew and this administration cracking down on corporate inversions. The rules announced back in april led to the collapse of what would have been a record pharmaceutical deal between allergan and pfizer, now the Treasury Department is piling on restricting one taxsaving tactic known as earnings stripping. The upshot is the Treasury Department listened for months to businesses and law americas, their concerns about this rule and now its softening its stance. I sat down with jack lew last night to discuss what this new rule means. Liste listen. Theres an important final rule that were putting out today. It takes the earnings strippings rules part of the announcement we made in the third round of administrative actions on inversions, and it makes them final. You know, it is an important statement that the tax avoidance used to support inversions will be stopped. And, you know, tax avoidance thats egregious will be stopped. How much corporate backlash was there to the original rules . The original rule was put out in a form that was quite broad. We knew there would be concerns about unintended consequences. Happily a lot of concerns came with proposed solutions. We had hundreds of comments, but mostly concentrated on six issues. You could look at those six issues in depth and come up with solutions between some exemptions and some fine tuning to take care of the unintended consequences. I think the purpose of this rule is to really demonstrate that while we need tax reform legislation to really fix our tax code and stop the push that is driving inversions and to make it by law impossible to invert or strip earnings, we need to also in the meantime use the administrative tools we have to stop the erosion of our tax base, Corporate Tax base. I know you encountered concerns from republican lawmakers, members of the house weighs and Means Committee warned that the rules would have a significant adverse impact on the American Economy discouraging investment and hurting american jobs and workers, and urged you not to pass this prematurely. I think when people study what the final rule does, theyll see we addressed a lot of the concerns raised about normal Business Practices that are not designed around tax planning strategies, which weve tried to address. To the extent that, you know, companies are using the tax code to avoid paying taxes unfairly, earnings stripping is used to that. Donald trump proposed cutting the Corporate Income tax to 15 10 for those repatriating overseas profits. That would discourage inversions. Our proposal for Business Tax Reform would reduce the business tax rate, Corporate Tax rate to 28 . We did that by eliminating loopholes and deductions. I dont think we ought to be losing revenue when we lower the business tax rate. If there are more loopholes and deductions that could be eliminated you could perhaps bring the rate down more. It becomes a tradeoff as to when are you taking away provisions that do real good. The challenge on International Earnings is to get to a political space where he can can work on a bipartisan basis to legislate. I talked to a lot of republicans and democrats who want to do something about it. And if we could have a men mum tax on foreign earnings and decide what that rate should be in a negotiation, it would be a good thing. It would stop this problem, stop things like the action in europe reaching into our tax base to address something. It cant get done. Not with this congress and this administration. I think it can get done. I think that European Commissions action put a bright light on the fact that if congress doesnt act, others will start doing things that we think are unfair. We agree with the europeans that its wrong for companies to be able to avoid taxes almost completely. What we dont agree with is the u. S. Tax base should be, you know, used by another taxing authority, another government authority. I think the political situation in the new year is going to be an opportunity to deal with this. One thing we said in Business Tax Reform is you should do two things at once, tax the incomes overseas but you cant use that to cut tax rates, its a onetime tax, use the money to pay for infrastructure. A lot of people want to invest in infrastructure, and a lot of people think we should do something about the fact we have income going untaxed. I hope theres a moment when that conversation with come together at the beginning of the next year. Some optimism there about Corporate Tax reform, an important issue for business. Expect business and gop lawmakers to push back on these new rules, even though the treasury is saying we listened and we actually limited the scope of them and watered them down a bit as to not impact businesses that are not trying to avoid taxes, which was the original complaint about this rule. So, if we were to look at any deals currently pending on deck, do any of them get pushed off as a function of this . Not clear that they do. Certainly nothing like we saw in april with pfizer and allergan getting pushed off. That is the point, to discourage deals. I asked whether that breakup of that pharma deal was one of his biggest achievements, he said were not trying to break up deals but trying to claim whats ours, u. S. Profits. I thought that was an important point he made, that the European Commission going after apple 14 billion is a symbol if we dont get Corporate Tax reform done, other foreign governments will come after u. S. Profits. Lobbyists criticized this as a rush review, to try to put some rules on paper before the administration ends so they cant be accused of having fallen asleep at the switch on this issue. Do you think it was rushed . Did you ask him how thorough he felt the job was . They first put out the rules in april. They took the last several months to meet with the house weighs and Means Committee, other business groups, organization for International Investment was involved and critical of the rules. They say they took their time. Why theyre putting it out three weeks before an election, they have to. The treasury and the administration is using their own authority to interpret the tax code to do things where congress is not. Its a huge frustration of treasury secretary lew. Was he pointing to the possibility of some move in the new year, new administration, which ever, to bring back foreignheld profits and use and tax them at some rate . Yes. And the other part of the bargain would be that money raised from those taxes would be used on infrastructure . Thats his model. That feels like the kernel of a deal to me. It does. Except for president obama did with the help of treasury secretary lew, put such an idea in his last budget and it went nowhere because of the environment in congress right now. Paul ryan was quick to come out and call it envy economics. Its a question of whether they can do a deal that doesnt include other tax deals, its always so complicated. Yes, theres bipartisan support to build infrastructure now with the republican president ial nominee, donald trump, calling for infrastructure building and to bring that money back from overseas. You would think there could be some deal. Even s p weighed in on the issue and said tie the portions of overseas cash that 2. 5 trill yoctrillion overseas, tie it to where 15 would have to go into infrastructure building. You asked him about wells fargo. Wells fargo, Deutsche Bank, the british pound. We covered a lot. It will all come out later in squawk box. Sara eisen, thanks. See you in a bit. When we return, markets in focus. U. S. Equity futures, the dow would open up about 73 points higher about now. S p looking to open up about 8poi8 points higher and the nasdaq about 15 points. Back in a moment. Welcome back to squawk box. Markets will need a bounce to turn positive for the week. If not, thats two down weeks in a row. Investors will watch key Economic Data including september retail sales at k 30 plus 8 30, plus lots of earn