good thursday morning. i'm morgan brennan with jon fortt and kelly evans coming to you live from separate locations as we put social distancing into practice here at cnbc as a precaution taking a look at the markets, major averages are higher, trying for their third straight day of gains

something we haven't seen for the dow and s&p in more than a ho month and a half to wilfred frost who has breaking news. >> hi, morgan. yes, james gorman the chairman and ceo of morgan stanley sent a note out to colleagues that were seen by myself and the content confirmed by a spokesperson at morgan stanley, in it he said, quote, 90% of our employees are working from home. as a result the normal bonds created by every day interactions with colleagues have been impacted and i'm hoping my perspective on the firm and crisis will be helpful and you have all seen the federal reserve actions are extraordinary but given the circumstances necessary markets cannot function without liquidity and they have taken real steps to address this critical issue he went on to say, slowly, governments across the world are putting aside their politics to arrive at blockbuster support

and stimulus packages. way too many people have lost their jobs overnight and it is central for government to act as aggressive as they can on the point of jobs as it relates to morgan stanley, he finished the note by saying, i'm sure some, if not many of you are worried about your jobs. while longer term we can't be sure how this will play out, but we want to commit there will not be any reduction in workforce at morgan stanley in 2020 he went on to thank his staff for working through this and expressed his pride in them. a commitment there will be no layoffs in 2020. interesting to see his commentary around the actions by governments and regulators describing them as critical and necessary at this time, guys >> take the good news where we can get it, wilf thank you for that update on morgan stanley coming on a day where we did get 3.3 million, a record, initial jobless claims for the week, a

number certainly in focus right now. want to get a take on the market from the cio of the l.a. county retirement association, jonathan grable, who is going to join us now. it's great to have you back on the last time we spoke to you is the beginning of the month and you had mentioned you're not making any radical changes to the portfolio amid the sell-off. it it was a couple weeks ago but feels a lifetime ago with what we've seen with the coronavirus outbreak and the moves in the markets. is that still how you're viewing the portfolio? >> good morning, morgan. first, i appreciate mr. gordon's comments and release because those are thoughtful and one of the things that many of your guests this morning have been talking about, all our hearts going out to those affected but i want to thank in l.a. county all our public health workers and first responders as it relates it to our portfolio, we are sticking to our investment release, our

ideals we continue to rebalance it's something that we have to instill in ourselves and had a board meeting this week where we spoke about it certainly is very challenging, but having strong principles are certainly -- these are the moments where we need to stick to them as opposed to allowing emotions to dominate our actions. >> what does rebalancing look like right now >> rebalancing, effectively, we do on a daily basis look at we have a target allocation where we divide assets into four categories of growth, real assets, credit and risk mitigating strategies and we compare where our balance is compared to what our target allocation is and with our available reserves, we look at rebalancing from the most overweights to the most underweight asset category and thus far, this month it's by and

large has been allocating out of risk mitigation strategies, things like grade bonds too equities now on many days it hasn't worked and it's very difficult for any investor to try to either top or bottom pick a market, but over time we believe that this is the winning strategy >> jonathan, it's kelly at headquarters you know, how much of a blow has the low rate environment been for trying to fund, you know, the retirement plans of l.a. county employees and, you know, how much do you realistically think investment returns can close at >> that is the question and it is something that investment team with sara and our board we spent an infinite amount of time discussing if you compare to -- it's quite topical, given the capital market environment we're in today, compared to the last major crisis in '08, compared to

2008, portfolios have become more complicated as a result of the extraordinary measures that the fed took post-grad financial crisis our portfolios are by and large more illiquid. our portfolios aren't the historical 60/40 portfolios. going forward i think our portfolios may change the next time plans go through our strategic allocation, may change once again to try to factor in the lessons learned from this crisis we won't know for some time, but i think there are areas that may benefit and we may need to increase our allocations to things such as infrastructure for example, it's become quite apparent our dependence over the last six weeks on broadband and internet connectivity and not just -- we've all been using and

focusing on applications like video conferencing that ride on top of it and telemedicine and distant learning, but we need to focus on the energy and the infrastructure, the data centers associated with it sara, we try every day to maximize long-term returns, manage risks and to make sure we have sufficient liquidity to meet those challenges and they certainly are challenges and with we have the best team we've ever had at la sierra and we were prepared to fight that as best we can. >> you at lacera are focused on being disciplined and thinking big picture and that's important for all investors right now. i wonder if you can go back to what you were saying about rebalancing and clarifying a bit. are you trying to rebalance every day, whether the market is

up or down, or taking breaks in between that based on the direction of the market? just want to get some clarity that, you know, when the market is diving or buying stocks, but when it's rising in these periods of extreme volatility you're selling them? >> we have two forms of rebalancing. i appreciate the question, jon both are systemic. one is done on a daily basis with -- we identify an amount of cash we keep in reserves for liquidity purposes and for that, you know, we're by and large targeting call it lacera's $55 billion pension plan, we call that a billion dollars any cash we have over that, we rebalance daily and put that in that which is most underweight as opposed to that which is most overweight

on a monthly basis we compare where our portfolio is once we close our monthly books and see which asset categories have potentially breached a limit or if there is no need. we have the systemic daily rebalancing and then we have our more -- our monthly rebalancing done more on a physical basis. >> jonathan, when you look across different asset classes and markets right now, what's worrying you what's concerning you? what would you be exiting as you do the daily rebalancing and towards the end of the month to close books? >> i think that it would be to say i know what's going to happen i feel like for the last decade -- and this may be a bad analogy because there's been so much talk about flattening curves -- but we've been riding on a train where there's a very regulated slope, you know, a

couple degrees plus or minus right now we're in an environment where we've gone from being on a train to a roller coaster and that roller coaster, unfortunately, is being built in real time in front of us fortunately at lacera we have our shoulder harness on and helmet, but i think it's a challenging environment and as i look at our portfolio, the teams here, we're doing it remotely obviously, but we have daily calls with our various business partners we're looking at all different types of asset categories. over the last couple of weeks there's been a lot of talk about liquidity problems and credit. certainly it's apparent where you look at the public markets and you see what's happening to those consumer focused sectors that there certainly have been challenges i think that what we're focused

on is once again trying to weather through the short term and hopefully be a solution provider because we have lots of liquidity where there may be dislocations in the market and we can help provide solutions and capital where others may need our capital i think that there are, once again, opportunities in areas such as infrastructure, i think we these to look at our investments in supply chain optimization where the supply chains have been optimized, for example, to an average state as opposed to a more extreme state such that we're in i think there would be a lot of investment opportunities and investors and companies try to figure out, you know, how to reoptimize supply chains and view them, you know, having -- where i have a mesh network, maybe our supply chains should be more of a mesh network as

opposed to point to point. >> i'm sure all of these are conversations that you're going to continue to have. thank you for joining us and giving us insights from the lacera point of view a lot of people with pensions and 401(k)s looking to hear what a cio like yourself is doing and how you're thinking about a portfolio. >> thanks. let's move on and talk about how technology is aiding in this fight against the virus. our next guest's company has released a series of apps designed to help local, state and federal agencies, as well as corporations, manage the coronavirus pandemic service now ceo bill mcdermott joins us now bill, good morning >> good morning, jon how are you? >> i'm doing fine, thanks for asking that's a question that means something different these days i hope you are doing well also i want to start off asking just what it is that service now is

doing with this? microsoft's ceo satya nadella, i know you know well, was talking about how the flexibility built into cloud infrastructure and cloud apps is really kind of a silver lightni silver lining in this because it is allowing digital help to get to places where it wouldn't have been able to get to in the past. >> absolutely. i would first like to extend our heartfelt wishes to all that have been affected by this terrible virus and the first responders, doctors, nurses, folks on the front line at the local grocery store and pharmaceutical store, thank you for all you're doing for the country and help people sustain themselves through this difficult time we have at service now invented four applications to really go after covid-19 with all we have. we call these the emergency

response operations. we've built them all on our now platform, so from an emergency outreach, self-reporting, exposure management, it's a one-stop shop of covid-19 in a box and you see washington state as an example, health and human services, city of san francisco, and great companies like lowe's and hsbc adopting quickly. jon, what's happening is this, the value chains out there have split apart and innovators like service now have to come in now and reorient work flow in a way that enables business continuity and enables people to execute their mission, even in this most difficult time i'm proud to say that we have over 1,000 companies now, major companies, in the federal, state, local and also commercial entity realm using the now

platform all over the world. the adoption of this has been unlike anything that we have seen it's really exciting >> given that, what do you expect will be some of the longer term impacts and consequences of this i don't know what -- to what extent you're mainly seeing expansion in the use of your platform from existing customers to what extent people are able to get on it who have never been on it before and get trained and up to speed fast enough to get use out of it, but in terms of the uptake and the priority that people are going to place on software as a service and this method of getting resources what they need to be, what do you expect to happen >> jon, you remember well when we came out of the financial crisis in 2008, that is when cloud computing hit a new gear and that's when it became the

pervasive computing theme of the 21st century the elasticity of the cloud and ability to build applications quickly on a platform like service now, so you can be in service, in service to employees, in service to customers, and in service to keeping the operation going even through difficult times. if you think about digital transformation, it's a 7.4 trillion addressable market in the next four years. here's what i'm seeing i talk to ceos and heads of state every day. we're done with talking about, is it a good idea to digitally traps form n -- transform now the conversation is how quickly can you get me there i have to get there really fast. my prediction here, jon, is that companies that are digital, that can lead this digital transformation revolution, will prosper through this time because there are so many public

sector and private sector entity i -- entities that must change i do believe we are going into a totally new normal. not dissimilar, think about it, we're going to have to figure out whether it's three weeks from now or three months from now, how you're going to get back to work business continuity must continue think about all the processes that will have to change i like to think of this as a physical distancing, not a social distancing because our processes on zoom every day has us connected to the management team and the people throughout our company. while we are physically distant, we have socially kept the conversation going we're continuing to pursue our goals because that's what the world needs from service now >> bill, morgan here, it's interesting to hear you talk about the acceleration in terms of a digital transformation.

whether it's your enterprise i.t. clients, whether you have reached into customer service and human resources as well, givens the shift and the fact that so many companies, so many clients are looking to move and move quick -- more quickly, what are the biggest issues or the biggest asks that you're getting right now in the midst of this >> yeah. as an example, first you have to deal with the covid-19 crisis. where are the resources? when there is an incident, how do you quickly manage it how do you get the right people in the right place with the right tools and capabilities to resolve an issue if you're dealing with a state entity, for example, the federal government is funding very significant operations, but they also expect a digital work flow where you can account for the time ands the attendance of people that you've dedicated to certain protocols and missions this, of course, is being done now on the service now platform.

in the commercial sense, here's what we're seeing. i mean customers right now are basically saying how do i take care of my people. for example, i heard some very outstanding ceos saying, we're going to keep hiring or we're certainly not going to lay people off how do we get the tools to people to do the job remotely if how do we make that happen how do we make sure we're caring for the people how do we align them with the goals and the orientations of the company? how do we keep compliance and security at a high level even as they work from places like home or studio environments where they're not used to working? all of this has to be done utilizing a digital platform a totally new way of working here's a big thing, a really big thing, in the beginning everybody was saying we're going to work from home, close down operations and that was basically it what about the customer some is what we're learning about the customer is right now, they're not really interested in you

upselling them and cross-selling them in an engagement layer of crm. what they are interested in is business continuity. how will you service me even as we're in the midst of a crisis the idea of service management, of making sure you get the right assets in front of the right problems and you can resolve issues for customers, especially since they're no longer working in their offices for the most part, it has really reoriented the work flow of companies all overs the world and it's happened really quickly. >> bill, it's kelly at headquarters and great to see you again. >> thank you. >> i'm curious you alluded to this, you think working patterns are going to permanently change and if you're right there's huge implications from wework to commercial real estate to companies' bottom lines and how much they have to spend on offices going forward. what do you think we're going to be talking about in terms of head count reduction at a home office in the next five to ten

years? >> kelly, 43% of the companies today actually don't even have a work from home policy. think about that now after this crisis, i can assure you they'll need one and the boards of directors will expect that they have one. if you remember the post-9/11 era, it was unbelievable to think that people would be standing in line to get x-rayed with their luggage before getting on a flight. as i think about this new environment, think about the procedures and the protocols that we have to now impart on the workforce to make sure that they're healthy when they come into these buildings and they actually go to work. we'll actually have to have quick analysis for example, you can do an ear temperature check to make sure someone's temperature isn't high when they're going into the workplace to keep people safe. that's a protocol. that's a new process i expect that things like that will definitely happen

i also expect that workers will work more from home, that people will be more agile and flexible in how they work and the tools and the platforms of digital have to be enabled to make that happen here it is people that are digitally transforming now you have to go faster people that haven't actually embarked upon this journey, you need to do it now because now is when your people will expect you to build a culture that enables them to prosper in any working environment and i have to believe we're in a new norm. if it's not covid-19, it's going to be something else workforces have to be prepared to handle anything we have to be an all-weather worker force to win. >> all right bill mcdermott of service now, talking about how technology not only is going to help us in this crisis, but how we're all going

to change the way we use technology as a result, thank you for being with us and to continue along this theme our next guest is donating service and it is a service that i think of as keeping track of the vital signs of a network and a company organization's digital assets, donating those services free to health companies in need during the coronavirus crisis, jennifer joins us now good morning >> good morning. nice to see you. >> yeah. great to see you right now we are relying to such a great extent on our networks for connectivity and communication and collaboration and checking on loved ones to make sure they are safe and health care is relying on this as well. explain to viewers what it is you're donating and what the results have been so far >> jon, first of all, i just want to say our hearts go out to

everybody who is affected by covid-19 and we very much appreciate all the front line responders that are going to work and putting themselves at risk in order to serve the population in need we recognize that things are changing day to day and that creates a lot of need for our customers to respond very quickly to those changes we're somewhat fortunate that pager duty is a cloud company by origin and most of our employees are used to some form of working from home. when we sent our employees home march 9th, we really didn't skip a beat developers if particular are used to working in remote distributed teams and they do that by leveraging the cloud native environments that support them to continue to build code, ship and deploy applications and technology, and also to your point, understand, recognize and detect signals that mission critical operations may or may

not be working the way they're supposed to be when we realized what was happening with the crisis, we immediately made free licenses available to health care companies. in particular we have health care companies managing a number of different use cases, including just trying to identify workers who are available to come into work, much less matching the need to the human capacity to serve those medical or health care challenges we've also made our starter licenses available for free to support small and medium businesses as well as businesses that have not really started the digital transformation process because you can imagine whether you're a travel company or an educator or a retailer, you're suddenly under a surge of demand that is unprecedented and despite what's going on in the economic environment or with regard to the crisis, you need to be able to meet the needs of those consumers coming to you

looking for help in the moment it's very hard to do that -- sorry, go ahead. >> i just -- along the lines of what you're saying, i wonder, you've got such a broad view into so many different types of organizations an the stress that they are seeing on their systems. can you give us a sense of what kinds of resources are being strained and the kinds of response that your customers are needing to make in order to keep things running >> yes that's a great question. just over the last several days and weeks, we've been tracking the number of incidents that are customers are experiencing as compared to previous daily norms and what we're seeing in industries like on-line learning more than 11 times the number of incidents than they're used to in collaboration services like zoom, for instance, more than nine times the number of typical incidents. travel and retail, interestingly enough, are experiencing three

to five times the number of incidents. this is because customers are coming on-line to get information and try to change their reservation to get refunds or access to critical grocery services, medicines they need. my daughter is schooling from home remote learning through video and so there are a lot of consumers that are learning a new way of learning as well as work and that's putting a tremendous amount of load on these companies that are really stepping up on behalf of all of us in these difficult times. >> yeah. i mean while i'm downstairs streaming live on cnbc, my kids are upstairs doing work on-line as well trying to do on-line school, so we're right there with you if i recall apple is also a customer and i think about how apple's physical retail stores outside of china still now closed indefinitely and customers must be hitting the

web, the retail stores on-line, to try to get service for equipment that they need as well are you seeing that kind of shift in customers as well that have physical locations, but also have digital services where the types of digital assets that they need are changing as the customer traffic is changing from physical to digital >> we are. we're seeing this massive acceleration almost immediate spontaneous digital transformation and we see use cases of all like, for instance, as retail stores are being closed and transitioned to 100% on-line, those store workers need to quickly understand what deliveries were expected or what is the level of inventory, who is coming by to pick up shipments or get services and they're using pager duty to track and orchestrate the work around some of that. the shift from digital to virtual has been happening

it's never happened this fast and on quite the critical mass scale that we're seeing recently, but that doesn't mean that customer expectations have changed. the pressure and the stress on our customers and in these consumer facing industries to still deliver a great experience so that they will build customer loyalty and come out of this environment stronger with those relationships really intact, super important. one of the things that makes that challenging, people behind the scenes that have managed all the complexity that have served those customer experience they are working in their homes with potentially three kids trying do on-line learning and the dog running around, et cetera, and one of the other things we've done is provided free licenses to health companies move to distributed working faster pager duty was built for distributed work, as opposed to

people sitting in a building, pager duty can detect an issue, orchestrate and route that set of issues to the right team of people no matter where they are or what time of day or night it is and it happens in seconds, meaning it enables that team to respond quickly no matter where they're working from >> yes it's a company that we have been tracking as a public company pager duty coming up on a year now. i remember sitting down with you at the stock exchange where the floor is now closed but work goes on thankfully jennifer, ceo of pager duty. thank you for being with us. i want to note all of the major indices are at or near session highs, session highs looks like on the dow right now, but the nasdaq and s&p also higher s&p by just over 4%, 4.3%. the nasdaq higher by 3.75%. >> the dow up more than 100 points over to meg tirrell who has a

look at the latest efforts to flatten the coronavirus curve. >> good morning. while efforts might be working in certain parts of the country they are saying without a coordinated national strategy the country is not going to see its curve flatten or efforts to do so could be slowed. to check this out graphs two counties experiencing different things right now one is westchester which we know was the site of one of the earliest outbreaks in the united states that's on the left new daily cases. governor cuomo saying yesterday, good news, those look like they're ticking lower. on the right or leans parish where new orleans is, that is starting to tick up at an alarming rate. louisiana has now put into place a stay at home order for the entire state that happened later than we've seen in other states this is a chart from evercorps along with updated data we've added to it, showing statewide stay at home orders. some states have it at the local level like texas and florida and

you are starting to see cases tick up in those places as well. public health experts saying without a wider coverage of an order like this, we're just going to see travel in between places with new outbreaks. dr. anthony fauci pointing out travel from new york to florida, they are seeing more cases approaching 2,000 and the state department of health breaks out cases by residents and nonresidents about 110 people have tested positive in florida who don't live there the government saying that people who are traveling out of new york city now should quarantine for 14 days however, that is not a national policy that is a recommendation public health experts are worried as long as we have the mish-mash of policies we're not going to be able to flatten the curve as a country, guys back over to you >> it's not good to see that the numbers are increasing in our

parts of the country somebody broadcasting live from westchester county, certainly hopeful we continue to see a decline here at least and prove as a case study for other parts of the country meg tirrell on the latest on the curve. an update on the coronavirus head lines, the latest headlines in general though, we go to frank holland at hshg q. up with of europe's largest banks paused previously announced layoffs to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak hsbc planned to cut about 35,000 jobs as part of its restructuring. thailand is hunkering down as the country enters its first day in a national state of emergency. bus passengers are getting their temperatures taken and checkpoints enforcing travel restrictions an the military has been called out to make sure the new rules are being followed thailand has reported about 1,000 cases and four deaths from the outbreak. duke university found the way to ease the shortage of respirators, to decontaminate

n-95 respirators to be reused. it uses a mist of hydrogen peroxide to sterilize without damaging them. the method has been adopted from technology used to decontaminate research labs. it's being used at duke university hospitals and another story of ingenuity involving chocolate. a tennessee chocolate company turned to baking bread the founder came up with the idea after discovering a bread shortage at local stores she says baking bread was vital to keeping her employees working. as always, for more coronavirus coverage, head to cnbc.com >> i've had chocolate bread, but we'll take any kind right now. >> anything. >> frank, thanks. after the break an fcc commissioner on broadband, 5g and what this agency is doing to keep americans connected in the wake of the virus. the dow up about 1,000 points. ayitus the future to improve today.

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the fcc is waiving rules to boost broadband for hospitals and schools during the coronavirus crisis now getting calls from senators to combat outbreak related robo calls related to the elderly jessica rosenworcel joins us now. commissioner, great to see you and we commend everything you are able to do to give people relief for a few months time, but let's start on some of the fraud going on out there because it is awful and horrifying and

people need to know what's going on what can you tell us >> yeah. listen, robocalls are a huge challenge. at the start of this administration we had about 2 billion robocalls a month. now we see between 5 and 6 billion a month. and the fact is that they're getting worse because a lot of them now involve scams regarding this crisis. we have got to bring the hammer down on them and we really have to do it fast. >> right some of the stories i've heard, include people calling, you know, older folks and saying, you know, i have your granddaughter and you have to send money because she might have coronavirus or -- and this is not related to the fcc, people going house to house, dressed in hazmat suits saying let us in we have to test if you have coronavirus and looting people's homes at least on part of it that you have jurisdiction over, what can you do like you said to bring the hammer down? >> yeah. we've got to move fast and we've got too coordinate with our colleagues at the federal trade commission that deal with cams

we've got to get it off the networks and then go after the fraudsters doing this. it is to the acceptable under any circumstances but chilling to think they take advantage of so many people >> it's great to have you on today. it wasn't that long ago that 5g auction that was being planned and under way for the fcc was getting an incredible amount of attention, whether from satellite operators or telcos or investors in some of those different companies. in the last 24 hours the fcc announced it's going to push back the auction by i believe about a month. when it comes to the adoption and rollout of 5g, given everything we're seeing around the crisis and, you know, shutdown essentially of the economy, is the timeline for the rollout of 5g now at risk? >> you know, such a good question 5g represents wireless in the future and when we get to the other side of this, it will still represent the future now the united states has been a little bit behind when it comes to auctioning off really golden

spectrum known as mid band airwaves for 5g and we had an auction that was supposed to start in june. we have now pushed that back to july in one way, you know, that's regrettable, but i think we'll have a better auction and a better 5g wireless future if we wait to hold that at the right time >> broadband of all kinds, 5g and wired broadband, so important right now. 5g for the future. wired broadband for right now for so many companies, you know, people working at home how are the broadband providers behaving right now what's your rate of complaints about them at a time when broadband is arguably more essential than its ever been. >> such a good point as a nation we're being told to go on-line like never before and the reality is that we need these networks to function we need them to be resilient work, school, our health care,

depends on them. i mean if anyone thought broadband was a luxury good before i think we're going to come out and say it's a necessity. one thing i would like to see the fcc do is produce data in fact, after major hurricanes and power outages we put off data about how our networks are operating an everyone working from home would benefit from having official statistics on that i hope i can convince my colleagues to start doing so soon. >> what do you say to those who point to this crisis as a reason to nationalize broadband in this country? >> well, i think what we're going to need is a policy to connect all. i mean we've got a digital divide in this country we've god kids who can't do their schoolwork because they don't have on-line access and fall into the homework gap we have folks that can't work at home because they've only got a mobile device with a data cap. we have to figure out how we have row boost broadband -- robust broadband connections for all.

that's going to have to be for or policymakers going forward in a way it hasn't been in the past. >> you mentioned the homework piece. you've been outspoken about what potentially the fcc could do to contribute to more connectivity for children to boost education, to boost homework initiatives, given the fact that there are so many schools and students from preschool to college right now operating on-line in terms of their studies, do you think this changes the conversation do you think this enables the fcc to do more in terms of that connectivity >> yeah, i hope so let's do something really bold we've got 45 states that have shut their schools we have 50 million kids who can't go to class and they're being pulled on-line millions can't get on-line because they don't have internet access at home so the fcc needs to be creative about its authority and we've got authority to connect schools with the program

now we just have to figure out how we can do it so the same schools can loan out things like wi-fi hot spots to the students who can't get on-line. it could be the difference between keeping up in class and falling behind so now is the time to do something audacious and make that happen and i hope we can fix the homework gap and working with congress and my colleagues we'll be able to do so i'm ready to go and try to fix it >> commissioner, i love that idea about putting out data on how networks are behaving during crises like this i hope that, you know, chairman pie and others in a bipartisan sort of way latch on to that because data is how we figure out and assess what needs to happen but i also wonder to what degree broadband ought to be included when we talk about infrastructure in this country, especially given what you just said about children learning in school and also applies to people work from home as sort of

a critical resource that perhaps could be available that's going to take money, though, to invest in extending broadband capabilities to just about every home, right? >> yeah. but this is just like electrification was about a century ago. you know, we figured out how to wire the countryside so our farms could have lights and refrigeration. we figured out how to make sure every city dweller had access too. we have instead of an electrification divide we have a digital divide it's in urban and rural america. we've got to get everyone on-line. that has to be a national objective because if we want our economy to grow, we're going to need everyone to be digitally capable and it starts with this infrastructure i think it's worth the money, worth the time and probably the most important investment we can make now in our future >> all right jessica, thanks so much for joining us good to see you today. we appreciate it. >> thanks. and up next, pseg ceo ralph izzo will join us, dealing with

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energy grid, pseg chairman and ceo ralph izzo joins us now. thanks for being with us i think about major disasters, natural disasters like hurricanes and utilities are very much on the front lines, first responders in the case of this outbreak we're not talking about actual downed power lines or power outages, but in terms of the response, in terms of the fact that pseg is one of those deemed critical infrastructure necessities, how are you responding >> well, thanks for having me on i'm happy to answer that but before i do, i just want to first of all express my sympathies to anyone who has been affected by the virus and my thanks to the health care community that is out there on the front lines now as well as our own employees who are making sure the electricity and natural gas there is for those health care providers to do their jobs. as you said, we're used to major events but there are two very

distinctly different aspects associated with the pandemic number one is in a storm, after it's over, you have a period of damage assessment where you can understand the scale of the challenge in front of you. this one is a bit more open-ended we really don't know the extent of the challenge ahead of us secondly, throughout our industry, no matter how large the storm, we're always able to help each other. there's always some remote location that wasn't affected by the storm that can send employees over to assist the utility. in this case the entire industry is preparing for the potential of 20 to 40% absenteeism we're not able to help each other quite the same way we have in the past. >> interesting you know, i think about just here in the new york metro area the fact that you have the shelter in orders in place, so many people working from home, operating from home, their kids home, and then on the flip side so many businesses currently closed, events that have been canceled, how does that play out

in terms of the electrical grid right now and what does that mean in terms of energy usage overall? >> so overall energy usage is down that's been a shift away interest our commercial customers, much more to our residential customers, but the grid is in good shape from the point of view of being a slightly bigger challenge is making sure our supply chain is available to us in terms of personal protective equipment because we have employees going into customer homes. we have employees trying to practice a safe distance who have to come in closer contact with others. it's something we're focused on in terms of our supply chain >> i wanted to spend a bit more time there with so much equipment shut down, it would seem the demand for power might be less overall.

talk about the kinds of challenges that you are facing what you would need should we have extreme weather in this area at the same time as we have this crisis going on >> there you said a critical issue. we're beginning to plan for that right now given the fact we're in a shoulder month, it's not too cold, it's not too warm. the greater con strantstraints employees working from home or being able to report to a location we'll have all of that in place as we start to get into the warmer months where more volatile w volatile weather is not only possible but more than likely. once you have major storm season, we'll be stressing the system further we're making sure we have all of

our equipment in place we're making sure we have as much testing in place as we can in terms of being a toible to rr people to work as soon as they are able to. the challenges to come, if this pandemic continues for foreseeable future which it's to be the case will manifest themselves in the storm season >> so, in terms of the company's own work force whether it's control room operators that have a specialized skill set, some of those workers out in field, how are you mitigating the risks and looking to keep them safe while they continue to be able to do their jobs >> it varies from work type to work type. in the case of various control centers we have broken ourselves into teams we make sure that different shifts are constantly working together so we don't mix and match people on different teams. if we do have an exposure in one

particular group, we still have another group that's able to carry the burden similarly in terms of our field crews. it's not at all unusual in the normal circumstances to have crews get mixed up between straight time and overtime we're not allowing that to happen if you're on a crew on stragight time, that bl twill be the samee that will work overif the job is incomplete our trading floor, which is always buying natural gas and various fuels to make sure our power plants are oerpperating plants are working remotely. where we can physically remove people, they are where we work together, we're trying to preserve a distance and making sure we don't mix and match folks. >> we have the ceos of service

now and pager duty on this hour talking about this crisis and how it might change the way customers think about technology deployment well into the future. the ceo of microsoft a couple of days ago making a similar point. can you see areas where you think you'll invest differently over the coming years because of this whether it is in a software as a service, whether it is in mobile technology, different types of tools to help your work force to be flexible in a crisis >> the answer to that is emphatically yes we're pretty sophisticated in terms of our abilities to communicate with our employees and diagnose the system the further upstream you go. further you move away from the customer new jersey has been particularly strong which is where the vast majority of our customers are. it's how smart are we at the

customer premise so we have the technology that can identify customer interruptions right down to the premise level. equal importance given the economic challenges we'll be experiencing if we haven't already, our abilities to caution the customer about the consumption rate and whether or not they are maybe using more than they might normally be accustomed to. >> thank you for joining us today. we appreciate it >> good luck to you. thank you. the dow jones average up about 1200 points. we heard moment ago from new york governor with the latest numbers out of the state and the hardest hit regions. let's listen in. >> 18,000. that's the break down number of positive cases total 37,000 new cases 6400 the curve continues to go up the spread across the state

continues, which is also what we expected just the way it spread all across the country we now just have several counties that don't have a single case. the overall number, 37,000 tested positive. 5,000 people hospitalized. this is the point, 37,000 tested positive 5,000 currently hospitalized 1200 icu patients, which is what we watch most carefully because those people who need ventilators. 1500 patients who were discharged after being hospitalized okay not to be redundant, people get sick 80% of the people don't go into the hospital they stay home or they don't stay home. they just self resolve some get sick and stay home. some check into the hospital now you're talking about 15 to

20%. of that, a percentage get treated and leave. of that, the smallest percentage get put on a ventilator. that's the 1290 icu patients. some get better and come off the ve ventilator some don't get better. stay on. when you're on for a prolonged period of time, the outcome is not positive the percentage of people who wind up in that situation, it starts with the 1290 icu patients those are the people who are put on a ventilator. that's of the 37,000 that tested positive we're talking about a very small population they are put on vent lailators. some recover and some don't. the most impacted states, new

york is still number one louisiana is a quote, unquote hot spot it has a cluster that's growing. the people in louisiana and in new orleans are in our thoughts and prayers. we know what they are going through. we feel for them we pray for them we know the difficulty they're under because we're dealing with the same type of situation our best to them any way we can help them, we stand ready. again, total perspective is the johns hopkins count that's gone from day one, 487,000. 21,000 deaths world wide my personal opinion, not facts, i give you the facts my two cents which is probably worth a penny and a half this is a life moment.

it's a moment -- >> new york governor cuomo going over the latest numbers in that state. noting there are now 37,258 active cases there's been 385 deaths. that's up by about 100 those continue to rise also going to check on the markets. we're near session highs on all of the major indices the dow is up about 5.5% that's 1150 plus points. 6% in the nasdaq >> i want to draw every one's attention to shares of henry shine which are up 8% the the company up nearly 12%. they said they developed a

12-minute test for antibodies in your blood system and may be used as a treatment. >> those are good signs of hope during a grim situation and with that, we will hand it over to scott wapner for the next hour appreciate it very much. thank you. our breaking news coverage continues. welcome to the halftime report front and center is your money, as always. stocks stage a strong gain today. could post their best week since the '30s if this keeps up. and a big if our investment committee is with us today good to have everybody with us today. with want to begin with moves in the market whether we think there's some staying power today. steve, you're joining us