Watch Sales Decline; Pushing for Education

This morning on MONEY FOR BREAKFAST: President Obama on the stump for health care tiffany earring again and there’s a new target for the administration. We’re going to bring you the latest in just a moment.

Also the committee overseeing the $700 billion TARP program blasting the Treasury Department: the chair of the TARP’s Congressional Oversight panel, Elizabeth Warren, will tell us why she’s not happy with the Treasury and also her take on the state of the banking industry.

And some sad news breaking this morning as the matriarch of one of America’s most prominent families, Eunice Shriver, has died. We’re going to take a look back at her life as well as her legacy.

We’re serving up all these stories and much, much more here on MONEY FOR BREAKFAST.

Welcome everybody to MONEY FOR BREAKFAST. I’m Jenna Lee, in for Alexis Glick, who’s off this week.

We have two stories breaking this morning we want to get you started on. First of course, we have sources telling Fox Business GM’s major announcement scheduled for 8:00 a.m. Eastern time will focus on the new Chevy Volt as the car of the future for this company. This car supposedly will get 230 miles per gallon.

We’re going to have much more on this story throughout the morning, including live coverage as Heart tag charm Toggle bracelet Fritz Henderson’s press conference where we expect more details about this car and maybe a few others.

Also some sad news this morning this morning, but we also want to mention a celebration of a life; Eunice Shriver, the creator of the Special Olympics, the younger sister of President John Kennedy and mother of California’s first lady, Maria Shriver, has died after a series of strokes. We’re going to have much more on her life throughout the morning.

Also, later this hour, double dose of CEOs: we have David Cush, the CEO of the Virgin America who’s going to join us to talk about how that airline is taking a bigger claim in air travel over all; also the CEO of Chiquita Brands is going to join us as well to discuss the company’s latest earnings and also what lies ahead for them.

But before all that, let’s take a look at the markets and see where things are starting out for the second section of the week here. Start off — we start from a positive territory for part of the morning. It seems like we’ve lost some ground there but not by much.

We are in negative territory across the board, but we’ll see what actually is going to move this market on what has been kind of an interesting couple of weeks.

As always Fox Business is keeping tabs on the rising national debt. Our debt clock breaks down that cost to you, the individual, you see right there still above $38,000. That’s not — it’s kind of depressing actually.

To hopefully change things around, we have another dynamic duo coming in to tell us about the markets. Of charm bracelet Ashley is watching them from overseas. We have Connell here with pre-market news in the United States.

Connell, it looks like we were positive part of the morning for “FOX BUSINESS MORNING” and now not so much.

CONNELL MCSHANE, FBN CORRESPONDENT: Right, I know yes, so we’re following that in terms of how things are developing this morning. Yes, you’re right. It had been up, now down. So we’ll see where goes from there but nothing crazy in terms of movements that are coming out.

Now, I’m looking down to see some breaking news coming across here, I just want to bring the earnings in and as they come across. We have a few that we want to tell you about.

One that’s just come out as a matter of fact from the watch company, Fossil, so I may as well get that one at to you. That company as reported, 25 cents a share in earnings and also says it’s raising its ’09 earnings guidance, so it looks like a decent record at first glance from Fossil which was expected to report 20 cents a share. So if that’s a comparable number they are five cents better than forecast. Let’s see — revenue, $315.9 million is a little bit light. A little bit light, $321 million was the expectation for Fossil, a NASDAQ stock FOSL is the ticker on that. So keep an eye to that today.

We have also had some news in from CIT this morning which was interesting – - this did break in the last hour. If — they said if their tender offer is not successfully completed then they might end up filing for bankruptcy protection; Cit, leaving bankruptcy on the table in its announcement this morning. So we’re watching that one.

And then there’s Fluor, Fluor is the largest publicly-traded engineering company; it came out last night with earnings that were a couple of pennies better than expected. Also kept its full-year earnings guidance intact saying its backlog was on the rise despite a challenging economic environment.

Fluor, a stock to watch, FLR is that stock at the New York Stock Exchange. It is one that’s down 24 Tiffany 1837 cuff over that one year time span that you’re looking at but it’s up this year, you see it’s come well off its close; up almost 30 percent this year.

All right, so watch those stocks and then the General Motors story that Jenna mentioned at the top again, with the news coming out on that in the next hour officially from Fritz Henderson, the CEO — announcement on the Volts 230 miles per gallon is the expectation there as we have been reporting and we’ll have more details on that throughout the morning.

Again, Fritz Henderson in about an hours time from out in Michigan to make that announcement official.

Now, let’s head over to Ashley to get the latest on the European markets and how things are keeping up there this morning.

ASHLEY WEBSTER, FBN OVERSEAS MARKETS EDITOR: All right, thank you very much Connell.

Pretty much as you’ve been saying on the U.S. futures we’ve been actually playing it out here in Europe, starting slightly higher, it started to lose a little bit of oomph but it’s all been rather meandering and it should be pointed out that the trading volume extremely light as well.

But what we have, down a tenth of a percent now on the FTSE in London, up slightly about quarter of a percent on the CAC-40 in Paris and also down slightly about a quarter of a percent on the DAX index in Germany.

As for the stories today out of Europe, well, insurance buyout firm Resolution has agreed to buy Friends Provident here in the U.K. for $3.1 billion. Friends Provident by the way, founded a mere 177 years ago; has reported a 38 percent drop in first quarter or first half — I should say – - operating profit. And it also just recently announced a series of cost- cutting measures.

Resolution first tried to buy Friends last month and reportedly is planning to make three to four life insurance acquisitions and then merge them before selling the entire group within three years. At least that is the plan. Friends Provident stock now up two percent in London.

Meantime, Danskz Bankz, that’s Denmark’s largest bank says, it expects losses on bad loans to frank gehry high in the second half, after large impairment pushed into a worse than expected net loss in the last quarter, that net loss coming in at close to $158 million. That is worse than expected. Danskz Bankz stock now, is down two percent in Copenhagen.

It’s all rather uninspired perhaps but taking a breather, we’ll put it that way, Jenna.

Back to you in New York.

LEE: After the hangover yesterday, right Ashley, so…

WEBSTER: Exactly, most of Europe is on holiday anyway right now Jenna, so no surprise that the trading volumes are so light right now.

LEE: Well, it sounds appropriate for a holiday…

WEBSTER: Yes.

LEE: Ashley thank you very much, we’ll talk again soon in just a moment.

WEBSTER: You’re welcome.

LEE: President Obama is back on the offensive over health-care reform today. That president of course, hosting a Town Hall meeting in New Hampshire and he has a new tool to help tackle the opposition. It’s a Web site; it’s called “Reality Check.” And it offers Americans new information arguments for health-care reform and also encourages them to spread that information to friends and families through emails and social networking sites. It’s easy to navigate, it’s user-friendly.

But what about the information? We’re going to welcome in now Betsy McCaughey, she was a former New York Lieutenant Governor.

BETSY MCCAUGHEY, FORMER NEW YORK LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: Right.

LEE: And patient advocate as well and Fox News medical contributor Dr. Mark Seigel. So welcome to you both.

DR. MARK SEIGEL, FOX NEWS MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR: How are you doing?

LEE: Doctor, let’s start off with you. First of all, you’ve taken a look at the Web site, what do you think so far?

SEIGEL: It is pretty inaccurate and I think it’s disappointing to call it “reality check.” No apologies to Bill O’Reilly by the way I think he does a better job with reality check.

LEE: Do you think that was on purpose?

SEIGEL: I think that was on purpose.

But look, they use three terms that I want to talk about there. First of all, they talk about rationing. They are attacking the use of the term rationing.

But look, if they end up in a situation where they have passed this enormous bill with tremendous costs and then they decide they want to cut down on costs, they’re going to cut down on reimbursements and they will cut down on services; if you cut down on services, that leads to rationing.

That’s inevitable. Is not a dirty word, it’s in the ability when you try to control costs by decreasing services.

Second, the term euthanasia, well, it’s clear in the House bill that Betsy brought here today there’s a big section that I’ve read word by word — I’ve read this five, six times already. If they have advisory committees and they have counselors that meet with the elderly every five years, they say practicing physicians, but they have to go through a training and the goal is to decrease care, well, that can lead to euthanasia because the choices diminish that the elderly gets.

Same thing with the word government takeover; that’s a dirty word, government takeover, but that document has in it, health choices commissioner, health benefit advisory committee, comparative effectiveness committee, with all of these committees, that’s government takeover.

LEE: Ok, so let’s take in a moment here and Betsy, I’ll let you respond to that in just a second. But for those of you who haven’t gone on to the Web site yet, this is how it’s setup. There are a couple different topics that doctor was mentioning from Medicare to small businesses and the videos are there with Two Hearts triple bangle folks from the White House Economic Community for example that are giving three minute videos on explanations to that.

So that’s what the Web site is set up. But this is the alternative though. Betsy, I know you have your version but this is the alternative, right? This is the actual bill that’s on the Web site, that’s on the House Web site; one of the proposals, so if you’re an American you have this to look at or you have this Web site.