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Markets Open After Bad Week; Obama's Speech; Sick Cruise Ship; U.S. Health Officials Inspect Sick Cruise Ship; Leno Opens Up about Conan Switch-Up; Creigh Deeds: "System Failed My Son"
Aired January 27, 2014 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The New York Stock Exchange.
So, Alison, the bell just running. What are traders saying to you?
ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: The bell is ringing now and it looks like we're going to start off with some red arrows, although it was expected we'd start off in the green. You know, one trader put it this way, what we saw happen on Friday was the market throwing a temper tantrum ahead of the Fed meeting that happens this week. Another said, look, this is a reality check of what's going on. So you're seeing investors hit the reset button now that the seems that the Fed is moving full steam ahead with cutting back on the trillions of dollars of stimulus it's pumped into the financial system over the past several years.
Now, that stimulus has been propping up markets, not just here, but for smaller players in the global economy like Argentina and Turkey. And now that the stimulus and the lower borrowing rates could be ending, what you're seeing happen with stocks is a readjustment of prices.
Also, the fourth quarter earnings season right now not really a real stunner for investors. And the thinking is if companies aren't doing well, they won't grow, they won't hire and they won't invest. Now, after stocks had made incredible gains, it is kind of hard to take when you see that 300 point selloff from the Dow. But the good news is, we are starting off with some green arrows today. A bit of recovery, Carol.
COSTELLO: That's good.
So, Christine, is this just a correction, you think?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: You can't go straight up forever. And yet, last year, markets went straight up, Carol. I mean for months now the smart insiders have been saying, this can't just keep moving higher and higher and higher. At some point there's going to be a piece of economic news or there's going to be an earnings report or there's going to be an emerging market trouble that's going to spook investors. I mean 30 percent higher last year for stocks. I mean it's incredible.
And when you look over the past five years, stocks have tripled over the past five years. It has been a bull market that has been, you know, four or five little pullbacks, but, you know, due for a pause that refreshes, as they say on Wall Street, or is it a start of something bigger? No one knows for sure. Stability today, though, is good news for us. We didn't want to see that stumble into the week with big losses. This is - this is good to see the stability here.
COSTELLO: Yes, I like seeing those plus signs. Alison Kosik, Christine Romans, many thanks to both of you.
ROMANS: You're welcome.
COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, President Obama readies for the State of the Union. And in a town often weighed down by gridlock, the president is vowing to take action. Brianna Keilar is at the White House this morning.
Good morning.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Carol.
We've learned President Obama will lay out his plan to tackle income inequality, even if he has to go it alone with executive actions and public/private partnerships. We'll have more on that after a break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: Tomorrow, President Obama will again push ahead with his plans to make 2014 a year of action with or without Congress when he delivers his fifth State of the Union Address. The economy is expected to be front and center. Officials telling CNN the president will outline new executive actions, including one focused on job training. And the speech comes as the president's numbers are rebounding slightly. And I mean slightly. A new CNN poll of polls shows the president's approval rating sits at 44 percent, up from 41 percent in November. A majority, however, still disapprove of how the president is handling his job.
CNN's senior White House correspondent Brianna Keilar has more on what we can expect to hear tomorrow night.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's crunch time for President Obama, making final edits on a speech he hopes will be the start of a turnaround.
DAN PFEIFFER, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISOR: I think the public ended 2013 very frustrated.
KEILAR: Obama's approval rating is slowly recovering, but he's still more unpopular than at any of his past State of the Union addresses, due in part to the botch rollout of his health care law. On Tuesday, he'll tout a new plan to narrow the gap between rich and poor, even if he has to go it alone.
PFEIFFER: He's not going to tell the American people that he's going to wait for Congress. He's is going to - he's going to move forward in areas like job training, education, manufacturing, on his own to try to restore opportunity for American families.
KEILAR: That means executive actions and public/private partnerships, trying to get something done in a key midterm election year facing an uncooperative Republican controlled House of Representatives.
PFEIFFER: He's (ph) supposed to be a year of action.
SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KENTUCKY: It sounds vaguely like a threat.
KEILAR: The go around Congress plan, already rejected by Republicans, who say Obama's abusing his executive power.
PAUL: I think it also has a certain amount of arrogance in the sense that one of the fundamental principles of our country, where the checks and balance is.
KEILAR: The one major legislative item Obama has his eye on is immigration reform despite House Republican opposition to a comprehensive plan. It was one of Obama's big agenda items in last year's State of the Union but it stalled, along with expanding background checks on gun sales and increasing the minimum wage, which he will push for again Tuesday night.
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Presidential power is something that is fought out every day and one speech isn't going to fundamentally change his position. But what he can do potentially is begin to lay out some themes and define the 2014 legislative and electoral battle.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KEILAR: As you know, Carol, part of the whole State of the Union process is the post-address road trip selling the sales pitch for what the president says in his address. And to that end, he will be going on that trip. He'll be visiting Maryland, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, as well as Tennessee.
COSTELLO: Interesting. I was going to say, Brianna, stay with us because I also want to bring in CNN national political reporter Peter Hamby.
Peter, the fireworks could actually begin after the president stops speaking with the GOOP response - well, actually, there are three GOP responses. Do we really need three?
PETER HAMBY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: There are three technically Republican responses, Carol, but there's only one official one. The sanctified Republican response is from Cathy McMorris Rodgers. She is a 44-year-old congresswoman from Washington state. She has - she's a mother of three. Kind of a fresh face for the Republican Party.
But, look, in this era of different media platforms and partisan fracturing, you have two other responses that we're going to be watching tomorrow night. One is from Mike Lee. This senator from Utah is sort of a Tea Party figure. The Tea Party Express, a political action committee, in 2011 started doing these Tea Party responses. So he's going to do that. And then Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator, is doing just his own Rand Paul response to the State of the Union. So we're going to be looking at that too. I talked to a poll advisor this morning who said one reason for this is frankly that they had so many interview requests after the State of the Union that this is a way to check a lot of boxes at once.
But, Carol, there's a little bit of danger here. Look, the truth is that there's not a ton of news that happen on State of the Union nights, you know, and so in a news vacuum any single gaffe or misstep that any of these folks do after the speech will be remembered in this era of, you know, viral content and Internet means. Remember, Marco Rubio's water sip last year. So, they'll have to be on guard tomorrow night. We'll be watching, Carol.
COSTELLO: I think that actually helped him. Remember Michele Bachmann's stare off into nowhere. I remember that too.
HAMBY: Well, that was in the Tea Party Express response back in 2011.
COSTELLO: Right, right, right.
Well, I'm just wondering if anyone will actually get to the response because, Brianna, I'm thinking that it will be difficult to get a mass number of people watching the president's State of the Union.
KEILAR: No, and that's really one of the big issues. This will be the president's sixth address, right? His fifth state of the union, but he gave an address as soon as he came in. And that's just sort of the name of the game. When you're into your sixth year of giving such a big speech, people just kind of aren't paying attention as much.
And you mentioned, Carol, his approval ratings. I think people at this point disapproving of President Obama more than they ever have at any other time where he's given a State of the Union Address. So it's going to be really tough for the president to grab that attention, but he's definitely going to do it. And I think one of the ways we've heard - and I think he's going to talk about trying to go around Congress and really talking more to the American people than Congress who will be before him, Carol.
COSTELLO: All right, Brianna Keilar, Peter Hamby, thanks for the insight this morning. We appreciate it.
And be sure to watch CNN's special coverage of the State of the Union. That starts tomorrow 7:00 Eastern on CNN.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM, it was supposed to be a dream vacation. Now passengers aboard a Royal Caribbean Cruise ship are heading home early after 600 passengers have come down with a mystery stomach ailment. So what caused it and how did it spread so fast?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COSTELLO: A dream vacation turns into quite the nightmare. More than 600 passengers are sickened after a mystery illness takes over a Royal Caribbean Cruise ship. This morning, the ship is heading home early and health officials are trying to figure out how that illness spread so fast. CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has more for you.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Another cruise ship cutting short its planned Caribbean Island hopping, a maritime version of the walk of shame. This one, Royal Caribbean's Explorer of the Seas, now heading back to home port after hundreds of passengers and crew members fell ill due to a fast spreading virus whose origins remain a mystery. One passenger, Arnee Dodd, said her gastrointestinal symptoms came on suddenly.
ARNEE DODD, EXPLORER OF THE SEAS CRUISE PASSENGER (voice-over): It was vomiting and diarrhea. It - it almost had no warning. And there was like high fever, chills, aches, dehydration.
COHEN: By the next morning, she says the infirmary was packed with sick passengers.
DODD: As soon as I got down there the nurse walked out and looked at everyone and said if you're not sick you have to leave right now because this is spreading faster than we can contain it.
COHEN: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating why so many passengers got sick but the typical cause is norovirus.
DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, VANDERBILT MEDICAL CENTER: You have all those people in a confined space over a long period of time. And this is an easily transmissible virus -- person to person.
COHEN: Unfortunately this cruise ship scenario has happened before.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were here with them two years ago -- the same thing. Ship was overrun with this sickness.
COHEN: Last year according to the CDC nine cruise ships reported illnesses among passengers, the year before that 16. Royal Caribbean said in a statement that once stopped the ship underwent an extensive and thorough sanitizing.
DODD: They were sanitizing the hallway, ceiling to floor nonstop for about 24 hours.
COHEN: And infected passengers and crew were advised to stay in their cabins until they were well for at least 24 hours.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COHEN: And you go on the CDC's Web site and see the scores that these different ships have gotten on their health inspections and "Explorer of the Seas" has done really well which kind of goes to show you that you can have a clean ship but if a sick person boards it you can still have a situation like this -- Carol.
COSTELLO: It's just awful. Elizabeth Cohen, many thanks.
A terminal illness leads to the adventure of a lifetime. All new in the next hour of NEWSROOM a former teacher's cross country journey. He's traveled 8,000 miles to follow up with former students. Why he says finding out he was going to die has helped him live. That's ahead in the next hour of NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: Checking our "Top Stories" at 51 minutes past the hour. A 19-year-old Russian man is being held at a Pennsylvania jail on a "weapons of mass destruction" charge. Altoona Police were investigating a reported pot growing operation when they found a homemade bomb and bomb making material. Police say the man first told them he was going to blow things up but then later said he intended to set the devices off in the field.
In Alaska, avalanche has cut off all 4,000 residents of the town of Valdez. And the only highway into the town is expected to stay closed for a week. A shelter has been set up for voluntary evacuations; food and fuel can be brought into the town by barge if needed.
Well here is something you don't see every day. On Sunday, two white doves were released from the Pope's official residence during a prayer of peace. That's when a seagull and large black crow swept in for the attack. This all happened as tens of thousands of people were watching and as two children stood by the Pope's side. We hope the doves got away. It doesn't look like it right?
Jay Leno finally opening up about the 2009 failed experiment of bringing in Conan O'Brien as host of "The Tonight Show" and moving Jay to 10:00. In an interview with "60 Minutes", Jay says he wasn't happy about how it all went down but it turns out, his wife was even more unhappy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAVIS LENO, JAY LENO'S WIFE: There was this perception that for some reason, Jay had decided to give up the show. It was like he gave the show to Conan and then he took it back. That was not what happened, ok?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Not. Jay says it was never his decision to leave or to push Conan out to come back. He just followed NBC's wishes.
Virginia State Senator, Creigh Deeds, is speaking out about the attack at the hands of his own son that left him physically scarred. And he is trying to change the way mentally ill patients are treated.
Two months ago, Deed's son stabbed him in the chest and head before taking his own life. Just hours earlier his son had been under a six- hour emergency custody order at a hospital. But he was later released because there were no beds available inside the psychiatric treatment center. Deeds told CBS's "60 Minutes" the system failed his son.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CREIGH DEEDS (D), VIRGINIA STATE SENATE: The whole afternoon, Gus didn't sit down. He paced the floor. He'd look at me, he'd smile. And just I had this sinking feeling that he wasn't going to be hospitalized.
SCOTT PELLEY, CBS NEWS: And if you didn't find a hospital bed in six hours, Gus was coming home?
DEEDS: He was coming home. And I was concerned that if he came home, there was -- there was going to be a crisis.
PELLEY: You were concerned that your son was suicidal. The clock has run out on the emergency room and he comes in and says, sorry, you've got to leave.
DEEDS: Well he said that Gus wasn't suicidal. I guess he made that evaluation.
PELLEY: Based on his evaluation.
DEEDS: His evaluation that Gus wasn't suicidal.
PELLEY: What did you say to him in leaving the emergency room?
DEEDS: I said the system failed my son tonight.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Deeds, a Democrat, has introduced legislation that would create a psychiatric bed registry and expand the time limit for emergency custody orders. He'll be talking with CNN's Anderson Cooper tonight on "AC 360" at 8:00 p.m. Eastern.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM the Broncos and the Seahawks land in the Super Bowl. Could the big game be the last for Peyton Manning -- Andy Scholes?
ANDY SCHOLES, BLEACHER REPORT: Yes Carol that's the big question. If the Broncos win will Peyton retire and go out on top. We'll hear Peyton's answer to that question after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: The Broncos and the Seahawks have arrived in New Jersey for Super Bowl week. Peyton Manning and his Denver teammates were the first to land. Now there has been some buzz over whether Manning could retire if the Broncos win on Sunday.
Andy Scholes is here with more on that. Good morning, Andy. SCHOLES: Hey, good morning, Carol. You know I think, win or lose, Peyton is definitely coming back. But there are a lot of people out there that say, hey, you know he is 37 years old. He is the oldest player in this year's Super Bowl, he has had all those neck surgeries. What better way to retire than to go out on top?
Now you know, Peyton he was asked about this yesterday. And he said he hasn't made plans past the Super Bowl. But he does feel like he has plenty of football left.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PEYTON MANNING, DENVER BRONCOS: I still enjoy playing football and I feel a little better than I thought I would at this point coming off that surgery.
As soon as I stop enjoying it, if I can't produce, if I can't help a team, that's when I'll stop playing. If that's next year, maybe it is. I certainly want to continue to keep playing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCHOLES: So the Seahawks also arrived in New Jersey last night and all eyes were on Richard Sherman. The Seahawks cornerback has been thrust into the spotlight after his epic rant after the NFC championship game. Sherman says all the craziness from that rant has actually helped his team prepare for the big game.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARD SHERMAN, SEATTLE SEAHAWKS: I definitely think it helped. Everybody getting a chance to see the camera, see the tons of media and the press conferences and things like that has helped everybody kind of evolve and get to the next level of understanding the media and what they want to give and the messages they want to put across.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Carol, the rant helping his team and his agent telling CNN that the rant has actually helped his endorsement deals. He said, interest in his client has been booming ever since the NFC championship game.
COSTELLO: Isn't that something? I just wonder how he will act during the Super Bowl. Do you think he will chance another outburst?
SCHOLES: He said if they win, he is not going to dial it back. He actually said -- he told Rachel Nichols, he's going to say, "I'm going to Disney World," like everybody else says.
COSTELLO: That's not taking any chances. Andy Scholes, thanks so much.
The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.
