Joe, Becky, and Andrew squawk their Top 10 bands
Talking Squawk, the official "Squawk Box" blog, provides tidbits, insights and some sarcastic reflections on the WEEK THAT WAS and the WEEK TO COME from the notepad of the show's senior executive producer.
Top 10 bands and artists of all time
Tom Lee of JPMorgan guest-hosted Tuesday after being out all night after an Eagles concert. This led to an all-show conversation about which bands are the best of all time. (Keep reading, if you want his take on stocks.)
This sparked a lively debate among the anchors and the viewers on Twitter with only one concrete conclusion emerging: The only right answer is your own!
(My No. 1, of course, is Kansas! @kansasband on Twitter. Have I mentioned that Kansas drummer Phil Ehart is the official percussionist of Squawk Box? I have? OK, fine but I'll mention it again anyway!)
So we asked co-hosts Joe Kernen, Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin to forget history, forget geography and give us their list of 10 favorite bands/artists of all time! Don't number them. Just give us the ones you couldn't live without if you were being sent to a desert island forever.
The only unanimous choice from all three was "Steve Liesman & the Mooncussers" (we just said that to make @SteveLiesman feel good). So we'll take that as a given, and now give you everybody's list No 2. through 11 (in no particular order).
Joe's list: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, Gary Burton, Kenny Chesney, The Smiths, Neil Young, Blind Faith, Steely Dan and Anita Baker
Becky's list: John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, Willie Nelson, Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, David Allen Coe, Jack Johnson, Bob Marley, Bonnie Raitt and Cat Stevens
Andrew's list: Bob Dylan, R.E.M., The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Dave Matthews, Frank Sinatra, Jay-Z and Eminem
Then the fever started spreading and others wanted in on the act.
Gary Kaminsky—vice chairman of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management and one-time CNBCer—sent us his top 10 list: Fleetwood Mac, U2, Earth Wind and Fire, Bruce Springsteen, Gap Band, Doobie Brothers, Phish, Eagles (like Tom Lee), The Rolling Stones and Parliament-Funkadelic.
OK, you want mine? No? Too bad! Here's my list: (the aforementioned) Kansas, Megadeth, DIO, Queensryche, Asia, Cinderella, RATT, Dokken, Stryper, Van Halen, Iron Maiden, King's X, Def Leppard and Ozzy Osborne (Oops, did I just name 14? Oh well, having your own blog has its perks!)
So what's your top 10 musical artists of all time? Go to our Facebook page ("Like us" if you haven't already) and give us your list in the comments of our Talking Squawk post. Maybe we'll put a few on the blog weekly for a while (or until the end of time because this is the type of question on which everybody has an opinion!)
Get Summers in the chair ...
Former Treasury Larry Summers stopped by this week (in a somewhat unplanned appearance), but we love it when big-wigs just sit down at our cameras and say, "Let's do it"!
His take on the Fed? They need to focus on spurring growth. He stayed with us for 15 minutes so we broke up the interview into several parts below:
Old school multimedia
Barry Diller is the definition of a media mogul. He was CEO of Paramount Pictures when that studio made classics like the "Indiana Jones" series, "Saturday Night Fever," and "Beverly Hills Cop," along with TV shows such as "Taxi," "Laverne & Shirley" and "Cheers."
Then he went to Fox and green-lit "The Simpsons," among other things. Then it was on to Silver King Broadcasting (which got him involved with the Home Shopping Network). He purchased USA Network from the Bronfman family. He became chairman of Expedia and the chairman of IAC Interactive, which owns companies like Service-Magic, match.com, CitySearch, Connected Ventures and Vimeo.
He's certainly seen and done it all now that he mixed it up on the dais with Andrew at The New York Times DealBook Conference at the media powerhouse's Midtown Manhattan headquarters.
Andrew and Barry went back and forth about JPMorgan's preliminary $13 million settlement with the government and whether or not he thought Jamie Dimon did the right thing.
"What I want to know about the $13 billion is where is it actually going?" Diller said.
Watch a clip of the interview here.
Now to Tom Lee … Market Master!
We have chronicled Tom Lee's recent bullish market prediction in this blog over the past year and how frankly, he's been right on.
But with the S&P 500 up 24 percent this year and within a whisper of his end-of-the-year target, is now the time to get cautious?
Phil McConkey on NFL bullying
We had former New York Giants Super Bowl-winning wide receiver Phil McConkey on the show this week for Veteran's Day (Phil runs an investment firm that hires vets).
While we had him, we also asked McConkey about his experiences in an NFL locker room and his observations about the Richie Incognito bullying scandal, which has rocked the Miami Dolphins.
He found it hard to believe that a big lineman can be bullied. Read and watch his comments here.
Bitcoins and the Winklevoss twins
OK, disclosure. I just don't get bitcoins. It's a digital, virtual, futuristic, imaginary currency? "Does not compute … does not compute!"
But the Winklevosses (yes Tyler and Cameron—the duo made famous from the Facebook movie "The Social Network") are betting it will compute for a whole lot of people. And they came on with Andrew from the DealBook conference to try to explain it (I still don't think we get it) by comparing bitcons to gold!
Richard "Effing" Bernstein
He was born without a middle name. So Joe gave him "Effing." OK, that's pretty funny so I should just stop this post right here and let everybody just enjoy it.
But there are so many killjoys out there, and as a TV producer, I am also always trying to widen the tent to let everybody in.
So with that in mind—and just in case you are one of those killjoy, boring, econonerds who has no sense of humor and actually cares about where the market and economy are going—I'll post you the "effing" link just to cover my butt and keep you humorless drones quiet. (Wow, I really channeled my inner "Santelli" there!)
Olstein on alert!
Way back in 1999, Bob Olstein of the Olstein Financial Alert Fund told Mark Haines right on the Squawk set to be wary of Lucent Technologies. (Bob, who loves to crunch the numbers on balance sheets, saw things in Lucent's accounts receivable column that just didn't make sense.) At the time, the company was the country's most widely held stock and Wall Street darling.
Six months later, CEO Richard McGinn announced that Lucent would have to take a huge accounting charge. That was the peak. The stock then started its fast and furious slide from $90 a share to almost zero, before the 2006 merger with Alcatel. To this day, it's one of the greatest warning flag calls in the history of "Squawk Box."
This week, Bob came back waving that red flag again. He doesn't like this social media boom but also warns about some established household names in tech. Check it out and take notes!
BRICs and MINTs
Former Goldman Sachs Asset Management Chairman Jim O'Neil is the Squawk Market Master who coined the term "BRIC," which refers to the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. He came on the show Thursday and talked about the "new" China.
He's also focused on his latest acronym, "MINT," which stands for the economies of Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey. On Squawk and in an op-ed, he said that they all have favorable demographics for at least the next 20 years and that their prospects are interesting.
Cramer clip
Upset with Cisco? If you want to see upset, check out Jim's rant on Squawk the morning after the company's conference call Wednesday evening. Classic Cramer!
Earnings on tap
- Monday: Brocade Communications, Tyson Foods, Urban Outfitters
- Tuesday: Best Buy, Campbell Soup, Home Depot, Medtronic, TJX Companies
- Wednesday: ADT, Deere & Co., Lowe's Companies, J.C. Penney, Staples
- Thursday: Abercrombie & Fitch, Autodesk, Bon-Ton Stores, Dollar Tree, GameStop, Gap, Intuit, Pandora Media, Target
- Friday: Foot Locker, PetSmart
Tweets of note
Rebecca Steckelman wrote: "Look what I just found #Longesttaglineever pic.twitter.com/Az5bMxYhal"
Rebecca (we call her "Becca") is a Squawk alumni producer.
The picture she posted is of the show's fifth anniversary mug (1999) with the longest anniversary celebration tagline in cable TV history. It almost didn't fit on the mug!
"From Wall Street to Main Street, Five years of turning Wall Street Inside Out!"
It's the "War and Peace" of show taglines. What idiot approved that? Oh, wait, maybe that was me.
Must follow them @
@BillRancic ... He visited Squawk on Monday to announce the four finalists of his Small Business Big Game competition. Go to smallbusinessbiggame.com to vote. The winner gets a 30-second commercial in the Super Bowl.
@JohnLeFante ... Yes, he's our amazing audio engineer on Squawk. Somehow we missed him last week when in celebration of the Twitter IPO we published every Twitter handle we could find that was even remotely associated with this program, except his.
Inverted roller coasters!
Cedar Fair, a major competitor to Six Flags, runs amusement parks, and roller coasters are its specialty. In fact, the CEO came on the show this week to talk about their latest plan to build the longest inverted roller coaster in the world. (Warning, don't click on this link if you get motion sickness.) By the way, Cedar Fair has the coolest ticker symbol ever: FUN.
Overheard on the set
Anchor 1: "I don't know about Rogaine? I'm worried about side effects."
Anchor 2: "I have looked into this extensively. It's no problem up top. You have to suffer a little short-term pain for some long-term gain. But it does regrow hair."
Anchor 1: "I don't think you are worried about the same side effects I am."
Anchor 3: "Yuck!"
Word Jumble
Joe and Becky love to play the Word Jumble in the paper. Joe won three times this week. Beck won once. As always, let's give them a couple of bonus words. Joe's word is AENBCO. Becky's word is SHUATI. Find the answers at the end of the blog.
Mark your calendar (or set your DVR)
- Monday Guest Host: Walter Isaacson (Aspen Institute; author of "Steve Jobs")
- Tuesday Guest Host: It's a secret (even from me)
- Wednesday Guest Host: Roger Altman (Evercore Partners)
- Thursday Guest Host: Bill Gerber (TD Ameritrade CFO)
- Friday Guests Host: Thomas Fanning (Southern Co. CEO)
Next week's economic calendar
- Tuesday: Employment Cost Index (Q3)
- Wednesday: Retail Sales (Oct.) and Consumer Price Index (Oct.)
- Thursday: Weekly Jobless Claims and Producer Price Index (Oct.)
The Corny-Sappy Motivational Business-Based Inspirational Quote
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
—Napoleon Bonaparte
—By CNBC's Matthew Quayle. Follow him on Twitter @matthew_quayle.
*Joe's Jumble bonus word answer: AENBCO=Beacon
*Becky's Jumble bonus word answer: SHUATI=Hiatus