at the time and david solomon have ideas to help small businesses they will join us in the 8:00 hour it is tuesday, december 15, 2020 i think it might be the eyes of december ♪ go big or go home >> good morning, i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin. let's take a look at the equity futures. yesterday at this time we saw green arrows too, the rally faded at least for the dow and s&p. yesterday the dow was down by about 184 points, the third out of four sessions that it closed lower. s&p was actually down for a fourth session in a row and that is the longest losing streak it has seen in about three months yesterday the nasdaq did end a

little higher. and this morning indicated up by another 51 points. s&p by about 21. and if you check out the treasury market, you will see that at least right now it looks like the ten year seems to be yields 0.9%. and the coronavirus death toll surpassed 300,000 yesterday, this as the first doses of the vaccine were administered another 425 locations will gain axle to the vaccine today. and today the fda is planning to release briefing documents that will give us a look at what a key panel thinks about that vaccine candidate. the advisory committee will then meet on thursday tody whether to recommend approval if all things go smoothly. moder moderna's vaccine could be approved for emergency use that could start on friday. u.s. officials planning to ship

just under 6 million doses of the moderna vaccine once it gains approval however not everyone is ready to signing up to get the vaccine including some on the front lines of the covid fight and for that, we bring in conteco contessa brewer. >> reporter: yeah, not everybody who can get the vaccine in coming weeks will want to. here in new york city, firefighters are on front line every day. the uniformed firefighters association surveyed its members and 55% said that they would not get the vaccine. and the city won't force them to >> we want them to make an informed choice. that is really what it comes down to, informed and educated choice and they have to do what is best for themselves >> reporter: on so the union says the challenge is communication and education. and at north well health where a

critical care nurse became the first person to get the shot, vaccinations are not monday m mandatory. and anyone who declines to be vaccinated for any reason has the right to do so, we leave in t -- we believe in the science, butit will be our employee he' right to choose whether to get vaccinated or not. and honesties and nursing homes often require their staff to get an am flu vaccine. the covid vaccine did not go through the same long rigorous testing process which may be one factor in what we're seeing in the widespread septembkepticism. 4 in 10 americans say that they are not likely to get the vaccine. >> and there is a debate over whether it will mandatory to get

on airplanes and maybe other hospitals requiring it and from your reporting, does it suggest that this is -- that this is the early decision which is to say for people early on, these next couple of months, do you think that it is voluntary and at some point it becomes required >> i think the answer to that is it depends you i tabut the experts at mars who aare advising their clooints that clients that there could be liability at stake for employers who twist the arms of their employees to get vaccinated because if things go wrong, there may be a suit to haunt the employers. and the other thing s, if you put certain people in line ahead of others and getting the vaccination, and it turns out that the people 3w40 w.h.o. are

who are not getting vaccinaterd in a protected class, race, gender, there could be leickoocy issues so a lot of of that gags thnavi to be done right now they are saying use coaxes, reward, a lot of education campaigns to try to get your employees to look out for themselves >>contessa, thank you. i do ultimately think that people will for better or worse require it, and i think that it is one thing to go to government, ask for stimulus money which we'll talk about, ask for liability protection when it comes to covid, and then not be on the front lines of advocating in a very meaningful way for people to be taking the vaccine. joe. an update on what you were

just talking about, the still lu stimulus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers unveiled their latest package. the first bill, $748 billion package includes additional unemployment benefits, rent relief, extension of the payroll protection program and the second contains the more controversial provisions, $160 billion covering that liability -- giving liability protection for employers and aid to state and local governments are in the second bill a vote is expected friday. and the deadline friday for funding extension of the ghoech government to avoid a shutdown so kind of coinciding with that. beck >> thanks. and the electoral college has formalized joe biden's victory in last month's presidential election the president-elect spoke in wilmington, delaware again declaring victory. >> with this battle for the soul of america, democracy prevailed.

we the people voted, faith in our institutions held, the integrity of our elections remains intact and now it is time to turn the page as we've done throughout our history. to unite, to heal -- >> shortly after the electoral vote was formalized, president trump announced that attorney general william barr would leave office on december 23. that shakeup follows weeks of public clashes between barr and the president. we are also learning more about the cyberattack of u.s. government agencies believed to have been backed by russia eamon javers is joining us with the latest this is not the usual security breach that we hear about. >> yeah, this is really something else it is clear now that this is a national security crisis for the united states in terms of the alleged russian hackers getting access to a host of federal government agencies and also private companies around the country. take a look at this list now of

what we know so far about which agencies have been hacked here including homeland security department, state department, national institutes of health, parts of the pentagon, that according to sources speaking to the "new york times" yesterday i spoke to a cybersecurity expert yesterday about this and he said that he is amazing at the scale of what he has seen from these russian hackers here's what he said. >> the russians have had this access going back to march so for nine months, they had an opportunity to access the networks of some of the largest agencies, the most important agencies in the u.s. government and global institutions as well, as well as big companies so i expect that we will hear more about some really heightened value targets >> so the company at the center of this is called solar winds and they manufacture i.t. network management software that is used as the backbone of a lot of companies and federal

government agencies. the guys in the i.t department know all about this, and it is common and once the hackers were able to get into the management software and install a back door that went undetected for month, then they were able to jump from there to other systems inside these agencies and inside these companies. it is not at all clear yet exactly what they got, but they have been in there for a long period of time now and presumably have had time to install other back doors so even as cybersecurity experts are cleaning up the initial routes in, it is not clear how many other back doors the hackers have been able to in-inside all the agencies and what we're trying to figure out now is exactly what was stolen and could be a matter of years before we understand the full skosh of this because what we're talking about is potentially hundreds of fortune 500 companies on top of the federal agencies that were

hacked as well so a really damaging intrusion here and officials are just starting to get their arms around the scope of all this. >> yeah, it is really something to behold. i guess the way this was happen, anytime that there was a software update sent out, that is how they were working their way in and it was fireeye that actually caught this when the traited their systems as well. so if we can't protect the very incredibly important and big institutions, what does that mean for the rest of us. >> right the scale of it is astonishing we saw yesterday solar winds, it was their product called orion that was the center of this, where the initial hack seems to have happened. solar winds said that they have notified 33,000 customers of this hack and they said that the people who had the vulnerability might have been a sub set of that, a number they called lower

than 18,000. but that is an enormous number of people who were potentially infiltrated. "new york times" reporting that the russians had access to so much material here that they seem to have only gone after the most high value material in terms of what they were actually trying to steal because they had so much access it almost would have been overwhelming the amount of data that they could have stolen as a result of this so we'll figure out what it was that the russians had access to. thevil visilver lining if there one, this is good old fashioned espionage. it does not seem to be an attempt to disrupt systems as agencies like treasury or commerce or any of the other federal agencies thatthey had access to. it seems like they were just trying to gather information about what the u.s. government and american companies were up to and it was fireeye that first discovered they had been hacked and realized the scale of this for the rest of the government and all these other companies.

>> maybe no surprise that it happened in march as the country was going into lockdown. i'm sure we'll be hearing more about this and coming up, results from cnbc's latest fed survey as the central bank kicks off its final meeting of the year. 23u futures are up a couple hundred points it is almost as if the buy on the rumor sell on the news is too powerful and the market tried to rally usually what happens, the vaccine finally comes, market has been up on awaiting of the vaccine. so where is the buy on the rumor and sell on the news it happened by the end of the day. and we have a huge lineup today, including a special event on small business at 8:00 a.m. with warren buffett, you're heard of him, and also david solomon. vref

him, and also david solomon. e hf him, and also david solomon.

today jay powell and the central bank are kicking off a two day meeting, the final one of 2020. ahead of that meeting, the officials struck a cautious tone about the economy, we saw that in the december beige book

steve liesman is joining us with the results. hey, steve >> good morning, joe big question for fed policy is how it deals with the surge in the virus near term, but the promises later from the vaccine. respond dents believe that the fed will tighten a bit sooner than sxektsded an expected and unlikely to provide additional relief. 46% believe that they will decrease asset purchases sometime this year and that the economy will be fully restored by the second quarter of 2022, a quarter earlier than in september. and now seeing hiking rates in december 2022. 55% saying that fed policy a appropriate right now for the barack obama of the vaccine. which 30% saying that it is too loose. and some believe that the fed needs to start talking now about

reversing the emergency 2020 policies. and the current rate of increase in cases just a tough three to six months until vaccines are widely distributed but being a kult laaccumulateda help in the strong recovery. and market expects them to explain what guides the asset purchases. and that is good because the market is kind of confused here, 59% saying that the fed is not clear what drives it, 32% say that they get it and stocks see a future of forever low rates. and the question is whether markets are prepared for some change next year and decline in the asset purchases. so a bit of a cake and eat it too trade going on right now

account account vaccine be that good and fed policy be that loose nextyear >> yep, and this is -- just so we know, how many of these two day meetings are there every year and was it just a normal year for that? >> eight >> and there were exactly eighth year and maybe some -- >> no, there were a couple -- they do some virtual stuff so they had i think one or are two -- >> it is not all virtual so they are meeting with masks >> yeah, i think that it is all virtual. but they did a couple extraordinary meetings this year >> i wonder -- be good if they didn't do extraordinary ones next year, but i have a feeling we may need a few, right these are extraordinary measures >> look, do you remember, you were there with me during that financial crisis, right? so bernanke the whole time was kind of looking over his shoulder we're doing this, but we're not

going to do this very long that was the kind of gist of all the extreme policies they put together powell has republicans and democrats all agreed that there is no political blow back on what they are doing. you have a massive pandemic all over so he hasn't had to do that. next year may be the year when powell will have to gently ease the economy -- or the markets and the economy out of this extraordinary policy i would think that you would have a very long tail on a taper where he will say we'll go down 120, 100, $20 billion a month. but that is a conversation the fed may begin today. may talk about more in earnest beginning of next year >> is there a word that is more extraordinary than extraordinary? do you have one? you should maybe look one up and we'll just give it more are meaning than extraordinary because we've needed that, i think. the entire year. >> you mean like the holy blank

measures, something like that? >> there is maven, tycoons, there is -- >> supercalifragilistic- expialidocious >> yeah, double secret extraordinary. something like -- yeah i don't know okay, steve. >> i'm running out of modifiers is what you're saying. >> but eight of them, so no wonder that we -- there is so much which assignment excitement every year that is ready made for you you have eight times a year you got to be ready to listen for two daysin the minute minutia.

he's leaving, get secretary mnuchin. andrew, i've been kicking this back and forth katie couric had her colonoscopy live so would it help if people 00 tv got the vaccine? >> 100%. i think we should all do it together >> but i don't think that we can overcome the the stigma of jumping the line by getting it early. >> i agree i don't think that we should do it -- at the time that it is available to us, we should 100% do it on television. we should do it together to the extent that anybody cares whether we do it, but sure >> yeah, our tens of dozens of viewer, how many people are we going to sway. no, we have a lot. we have gazillions but no, bring it in. if you got an extra one, i'll do tomorrow but then we'd be jumping the line >> that is my point. the whole idea of forcing people to take this i think is a bad idea eventually you will get to that point, but right no there is not enough vaccine to go around. this is emergency use authorization. if somebody doesn't want to take it, fine step aside and let somebody behind you take it maybe you will feel more

comfortable down the road. >> i mean, it was funny enough remember when new york you weren't supposed to come in here and they called us essential employees, which is hilarious, but to try to sell that again for a -- i mean, somebody besides us could use the vaccine a lot more so i was thinking about that, because i would do it good it would but you can't jump the line >> i would do. but the pfizer ceo is stuck in this awful position where people are yelling at him because he is not taking it, that he should be taking it, but to prove that it is safe. but he also understands the backlash that he would get if he cut the line so a no-win scenario >> and i would do it on tv it is an arm shot, right >> yeah. >> i just want to agree with becky though, she made a very important point. i know i've been talking a lot about whether companies will ultimately mandate the vaccine

i think over the next several months you do want to gain trust with society i think that there could be an immediate backlash if people are required to do it today. having said that, i do hope that over the next several months, a, it works, b, people find that it is safe, that the side effects are minimal if there are side effects at all, and that at some point if there does seem to be resistance, but it is clear that it is safe, and there is, you know, tens of millions of people have taken it at that point, that companies codo step up because it is important not only for the health of society, but our economy. >> and that is a question to sometime later next year but i think you're right i think that it will be a question eventually, but right now, if you don't want to take it, i get it let somebody else take it. >> the first day in the uk, those two epipen situations. so they are saying that we may go slower just to make sure,

extra precaution for people with allergies. so i don't know. so we're not getting one but i would. someone asked. >> we'll be talking more about this and hopefully we will get it as soon as we can hopefully we'll all do it maybe together in person we'll see. but we'll talk a lot more throughout the program about that when we can back, google nixing the idea of work from home forever. they are unveiling a new hybrid work model and we'll show you how it is different from other big tech firms and speaking of working from home, we have the ceo of slack later today, he will join us at 8:40 a.m. eastern time, first time he has spoken in an interview publicly on television after the big sale to salesforce ♪

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welcome back alphabet ceo delaying employees return to offices to september 1. but is rejecting the idea of permanent work from home here is what is happening. after september, google will expect employees to report to work in person for at least three days a week, a nod to its request from workers for what they are talking about hybrid model. google expects workers to live within commuting distance of offices. other tech companies have said that employees can work to remotely it forever or at least the next decade allowing them to move to other regions if they want to. and if that is the approach, could remake so much of what we think of cities and the way we

live and the way we work so a lot of us i think are following what this all means. and when we come back, we'll continue to talk about what has been happening in the markets. in fact if you take a look at the future, you will see that the dow indicated up by about 171, green arrows across the board. yesterday thit we sat this time the same thing before closing down by more than 180 points s&p 500 futures up by about 21 and nasdaq which did end up by about half a% is indicated up by about 52 points. and later don't miss our interview with warren buffett and david solomon, they will tackle the dire struggle for thousands of small businesses in america.

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things are green across the board. joe. >> and joining us now with his read on the markets, luke ellis from the man group which has more than $113 billion under management and i asked a similar question yesterday to one of our guests, marc lasry, in that whether existing assets that you are trying to manage have been hurt by the pandemic or that it has created opportunities to make new investments. what have you been more concerned with or focusing on in the last six months? >> it is amazing when you look back at the year, sort of we've had all these extraordinary -- you were trying to get to bigger words. but extraordinary days but you when you look at the sum of the year, at the end of the year, it doesn't feel very different than where we were at

the beginning of the year when we were sitting there going there is not much alternative to equities, looks like they will go up again, looks like decent growth next year, look like bonds will go sideways, everybody is a bit bearish, but actually the fed will keep bond rates down and we've had this extraordinary year first half of the year was all about macro and the second half of the year and frankly i could tell you it was june 12th, it changesed from a macro market to a micro market, to a stock picking market and sort of the last six months have been great for stock picking. >> one point that you make, and maybe you can explain it, we have the ben figefit of hindsig now, but you said that it seemed irrational, but now looking back, the markets were being rational, it didn't seem like it at the time.

how so >> so look, we all got caught up in the degree motion emotion ofn and it was clearly dramatic. but what the fed did was to ensure that for large companies, and i know you have a segment coming later on, small companies and the small company world is where the pain has been, in large companies which is what makes up the stock market and obviously particularly tech, the t fed made sure and the government made sure that things weren't going to go bust, that they would have very easy access to money. and that suddenly made it about going from a question of who was going to survive this to being a question of what shape will people be when we come out and how many years of earnings have we lost. it looks like that -- amazing how these things happen when you don't need them. [ dog barking

>> i recognize that sound. >> amazing how it ham it happenh wrong moment >> you don't need a doorbell i don't need a doorbell. i just needed a paint job on the door from, you know, the scratches. do sports -- uh-oh >> sorry, somebody shut the dog out. >> that's okay do you think that sports comes back next year completely? i guess it is impossible to say, right? >> yeah, i mean, it is hard to say. but the reality is that the vaccine progress has been really good and so, you know, i think that the first quarter is going to be hard yards again but i think that the vaccine will be rolled out and i think that we'll be back to 80% of a

normal life by the summer. so if you have summer sports, yeah, i think that they will be there. and i think that maybe before. it is an interesting question whether by the time we make the fourth quarter and the winter sports kicking back in again, my guess is that you might have to haved had a vaccine to get in, but let's see. >> you don't accept something that we have here called football, you have a different kind of football is that rugby term >> it works for both american football and for rugby and we can debate who makes harder yards >> i just can't believe people don't wear equipment that is nutty watching those guys you know what, rugby players look like they have equipment on under their skin, which is a lot different than the way i look at it so at this point, the whole yield kifsh curve is so unattrae and it makes it hard to have noncorrelated assets if you are

uncomfortable with where equity prices are do you have any idea >> that is the big problem i think the classic 60/40 portfolio has become much risk years ago. beyonds are no longer giving you yield and they have not really gotten much of the protection left in them in the u.s. maybe you got one more that they can go lower. in europe, you evhave bonds tha didn't provide any protection. so i think that it is a problem. bonds are up nattractive and so basically clients are looking for as many different ideas as you can give them that are more interesting than bonds >> so as a strategy, how would you help you try to deliver lalpha for your clients you didn't want to -- with the markets where they are, you

might be delivering wrong kind of alpha if you are not careful. so you need a little bit of cushion there. i don't know where you get it now. >> yeah, and i think that it creates a good environment because we have so much going on at the company level that creates a good environment for stock picking and for credit picking. and you can make a real difference and that is where alpha comes from, through the picking process. so i think probably next year will be a good year for flows into -- [ inaudible ]. >> i think that we lost your audio towards the end there. i'm wondering if a cat could ever disrupt us. i don't think that it could. >> are you kidding i had to turn off my lights last week the cat turned off my lights >> but not the audio it would be tough for -- i guess you could have an out of control -- >> mine eats the microphone

sometimes. >> you know how in the old days a dog could never look at one of the small box tvs and see a dog, you know on a 70 inch screen, they fully can see -- it is so funny. >> i watched a dog doing exercises watching the tv. >> my dog runs around behind it, there is a room behind it, they are looking there, it is like what is happening! is there a dog they are smelling, there is nothing. it is so -- it is kind of heartbreaking but it is fun. and i would replay it a million times. anyway -- >> we're all a little bored these days new content. >> yeah, and they can definitely watch the tv and see the dogs in the commercials. did you know that, andrew, they can. i don't know if they can see the color. >> you know, we don't have a dog, my kids are begging for a dog. we'll have to break down and get a dog eventually >> they deserve a dog.

i don't know what the problem is with you are you allergic >> no, there are family dynamics will -- the question is who will walk the dog in our family we'll put it out there >> that is why you have a cat. >> that is the conundrum so we'll -- but i would love to have a dog >> cats do it themselves >> get a yard with a fence, you don't have to worry about it a lot more coming up eli lilly announcing financial results, we'll bring them to you after the break. more trouble for boeing, this time issues with the 787 dreamliner we have details on that next as well

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welcome back several significant announcements from eli lilly this morning it announced the acquisition of prevail therapeutics, a company specializing in gene therapy the surprise 0 1$.04 billion and also announced a dividends hike and it is raising full year earnings forecast, now expecting a profit much $76 per share. and also boeing now expanding inspections of its newly built 7878 dre dreamliner.

boeing now says that the problem on the dreamliner does -- doesn't impose an immediate safety hazard. ea so we'll watch that one as well. becky. thanks and when we come back, we'll speak to one small business owner who has been struggling during this pandemic she got a ppp loan that helped her tied things over, but we'll talk about what she is expecting in 2021. and later, we'll talk with wa n warren buffett and david solomon.

welcome back a bipartisan group in congress yesterday released a released a $908 billion legislation package for a coronavirus relief bill. that proposal includes about $300 billion to support small businesses, which a group that has been exceptionally hard hit by the pandemic. small business owners have waited months for additional stimulus joining us right now is carla walker miller, the ceo of walker miller energy services, also a 2014 graduate of goldman sachs 10,000 small business program in detroit. goldman ceo david solomon and warren buffet are going to be joining us to talk about it. we want to hear what you have been up against. thank you for being here today it's good to see you. >> thank you for having me. >> talk about your company it was founded in 2000

what do you all do >> we're an energy services efficiency company my team goes into thousands of homes every year and installs energy efficiency devices. we install l.e.d. lighting, low flow shower heads and smart thermostats and we help families learn how to save energy, which of course helps them to save money. >> you are a growing business, and that's a little bit of an understatement i know since 2014 your revenue has been up about 7 fold, which is kind of amazing how are you doing that what have you been working at? how have you been getting into additional homes >> i can attribute much of the growth to loan that i got from a cdfi affiliated with goldman sachs 10,000 small businesses. my growth has been because i've had the wherewithal to invest in my company and to hire and recruit and train and advertise. and we have moved from just

michigan to we're now in four states since 2015. >> you've also grown in terms of employees. i think you had 28 employees back in 2014 you've got about 115 now >> we have 115, and we're hiring so we have really grown and we have also been able to expand the number of people and the types of people, energy efficiency services is not particularly diverse, and we have been able to introduce so many black and brown people into our organization where we are woefully under represented so it has been a blessing. >> let's talk about what's happened this year this year, your revenue was down by about 20%, but you did get a loan from the ppp, what did that allow you to do? >> it allowed us to survive. allowed us to retain our team members, and we were able to keep every single team member without decreasing a salary, without a decrease in benefits,

and it has made everything possible we were afforded the ability to anchor their families. that ppp loan allows us also to position ourselves not just to survive through the end of the year but to be able to be ready when the economy reopens and our growth trajectory can continue >> what is the situation for you right now. i mean 20% down in revenue this year what was that at the beginning of the pandemic in march what's it look like now. how does the economy look from where you sit? >> at the beginning of the pandemic in march, we went through a period where we had zero revenues. we were in a total shut down since the restart, we have actually expedited our activity because we -- everyone knew that unfortunately the pandemic was going to restart the in falin t. we actually hired between march and now so we could meet our

energy savings goals and serve our customers. right now, not only is our revenue down one of the things that people forget is that it cost us more to do business the pivot that everyone refers to was actually reinvesting in training, in computers, in sanitation processes, in safety so that we could recover, so when we came back we were operating very very safely so this pivot that we keep talking about has been just a series of day-to-day decisions based on what is happening on the ground and what is happening with your families, what is happening with the regulations in the city and the state and the stay safe orders, we respond every single day, using the best information we have at the time to continue to operate. >> you know, i think that's one of the hallmarks of really great entrepreneurs. i know a lot of small business

owners doing the same thing it's kind of a hustle to make sure you're keeping up with the changes that are out there it does sound like you're in a position to really grow once we get through this what is it that you could use right now, that you need or do you think you're in a pretty good position right now? >> even businesses like mine who we think have the wherewithal to sustain over the next few months still need support because we don't know what the next few months are actually going to bring. we look at our bank accounts we look at our cash flow the most important thing for me right now is to continue to be able to pay my team, no matter what happens with the economy. so the projection of what that looks like over the next three to six months when we're back, hopefully at full operation, we evaluate it every single day we anchor the families that work for us we anchor our communities, so our survival, the survival of small businesses, period, is paramount. >> carla, how does this compare

to the 2008 great recession? i know that was another situation where you all pivoted, you went from energy distribution and transmission to energy efficiency. how do these two sort of typhoons compare >> it's interesting that you ask because my experience, the trauma that i experienced during the recession actually helped prepare me for this, for what we're going through right now, just basically surviving that, and after the recession is when i went into the energy efficiency business, and also when i went into the goldman sachs program and learned so much about a relationship that has helped me survive this that relationship is the relationship with my banker, and i always say the worst time to meet a banker is when you need money. so cultivating a relationship so he knew who i was, so when the ppp opportunity came by, we were totally prepared for it and were able to submit our application the first day. and one of the few businesses,

small businesses that actually participated in the first tranche of the loan, and it saved my company and it saved the families that are so important to our success >> carla, i want to thank you for being with us today. congratulations on the progress you have made to this foipoint,d we wish you the best of luck. >> thank you so much >> thank you and folks, just about in an hour from now, don't miss warren buffet and david solomon, they will be joining us to continue the conversation about the state of small business in america. and in addition, to buffet and solomon, we have more big guests coming up, including microsoft president brad smith with green bay packers president mark murphy. also slack ceo swatert butterfield all on the docket this morning we're coming right back.

the u.s. vaccination program against covid-19 kicking into high gear as more locations get their hands on the breakthrough treatment. we are expecting news from moderna on their vaccine sometime today we have the details straight ahead. futures this morning pointing to a higher open on wall street after yesterday's rally sputtered out.

we've got what you need to watch in today's session that's coming up. plus, small businesses struggling to survive. warren buffet and goldman sachs ceo david solomon, join us to discuss. the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now ♪ good morning, welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick and joe kernen. take a look at u.s. equity futures this morning about 2 1/2 hours before the markets expected to open up right now about 164 points higher s&p 500 up about 21 points, nasdaq up about 52 points but it's been a bit of a wild ride these days so we will see where things land at the open, and we will see where things land at the close. >> yep the first shots of pfizer's covid-19 vaccine being administered to health care

workers, marking a pivotal moment in the country's long march to bring the virus under control. today, we're expecting news on moderna's vaccine, and its attempt to get emergency use application. i'm glad they didn't tell us it was going to be at least a year, meg, back in february or march, i guess, right bu, but it's goig to be over that at this point. but it would have been harder if we knew that maybe progress, progress, tell us meg. >> progress, we saw the first americans getting their shots to protect themselves from covid-19 health care workers who have been on the front lines fighting this pandemic received these vaccinations 500,000 doses rolled out from pfizer's facility. there were 145 shipments that went out, and 425 more are coming today to states

66 tomorrow, and this starts all over again for a total of about 3 million total this week of the pfizer biontech vaccine. now we are hearing of some delays for some states, some local reporting in marren county, california, the bay area, for example, they said they had a delay of a couple of days broo baton rouge, louisiana, said they had a delay from operation warp speed, at 11:30 when they had the briefing, 55 locations of 145 received their shipments and they expected every place that was expecting monday delivery to get them by 2:00 p.m. local. we will be waiting to hear updates on how those are going general gus perna was asked what could cause delays in the rollouts address mix up, if you abbreviated, things as severe as transportation accidents, obviously. they are trying to keep an eye out for and plan for, and of course these incoming storms we're going to get, guys there's going to be a lot of snow in the northeast tomorrow, and they are keeping an eye on

that, and trying to plan for it. so at the same time that these shots are rolling out across the u.s. moderna is gearing up to do what pfizer did with the fda this morning, and it could be within 45 minutes, we're going to get the briefing documents from the fda on moderna's vaccine. that will tell us what the fda is thinking about with the safety and efficacy with the shots, and we will be digging through the documents and bringing those important things. that's ahead of the thursday advisory committee where the same committee that voted on the pfizer shot will vote on the moderna shot, and if the fda follows the same pattern, we could see emergency authorization for the second vaccine as soon as friday night. that would trigger the shipment of 6 million doses to 3,000 locations of the moderna vaccine which would be joining the pfizer shot making its way around the country, guys, so more and more people getting access to this vaccine, and over the weekend, guys, interestingly, the cdc is going to meet, that advisory committee, on saturday to vote on the moderna vaccine if it

gets emergency use authorization, and then sunday they're going to vote on the next priority groups after health care workers and long-term care facility residents, who should be next at the very top of who gets this vaccine, guys. >> nothing you describe there is that troubling in terms of -- the daunting part is over, in terms of getting the vaccine ready, and you know, mix ups here, mix ups, and got cold transport, we got to worry about that we're going to talk to scott gottlieb about it, but it's out and people are getting it, and every day that goes by more people have gotten by it, and te passes quickly, and it's all good let me ask about moderna versus pfizer because it's both messenger rna, i assume lipid delivery that you have talked about. even with the generic, you have to prove e equivalequivalent, t

different epitope, but you wouldn't think there's much difference that would cause, this panel are the same people, so it's very similar to pfizer, is it not, in almost all mechanisms and delivery and everything else? >> very similar, joe, so based on of course that same messenger rna technology, and the efficacy rates that we saw in the trial is incredibly similar, 95% for pfizer, 94.1% for moderna. one difference we saw was in the rate of grade three adverse events those are the ones that are so severe in terms of fatigue, and headache, it affects your ability to do your daily activities the next day. you did see slightly higher rates in moderna's shot than in pfizer's shot, so that is one difference another one is the storage temperatures moderna's vaccine does not have to be kept at minus 94 degrees

fahrenheit i think it's minus 4 degrees that makes the shipping a lot simpler and different for this vaccine, but, you know, it will be very interesting also to see what this committee says and what the fda says about allergic reactions because of course the pfizer shot rolled out first in the uk, and we saw those health care workers who had those severe reactions from allergies to the shot. what will we do about moderna's when we don't know because we didn't see that in the trials. how will they consider that and the risk there a lot of interesting things to watch this morning. >> dr. gottlieb wants to talk about the cold supply, the logistical process it sounds daunting but it can be thawed for five days in a regular refrigerator it's not nearly as troublesome as maybe we have come to believe. i think he wants to make that point. so as i say, people are, you know, it's out it's out, and i'm just going to look at that as a, you know,

just be very hopeful about it. thanks, meg, thanks for all of those details as usual becky. thanks, joe. when we come back, microsoft and the green bay packers teaming up to form a new leak it's called the equity leak. don't worry, it's not football microsoft's not going to be fielding a team on this. this is a partnership to benefit black and latino entrepreneurs we will hear from microsoft president brad smith and green bay packers ceo mark murphy. then coming up at 8:00 a.m. senior time. our special interview with warren buffet and goldman sachs ceo david solomon. >> and you're going to see green arrows across the board. dow futures up by 183 points, s&p up by close to 25. naaqp by about 70. "squawk box" will be right back.

welcome back, everybody. a couple of corporate stories for you this morning maybe three. eli lilly is striking a deal to buy prevail therapeutics a company that specializes in gene therapy. they will pay $22.50 a share in cash, and pay up to $4 a share in the future depending on approval for products in prevail's pipeline lilly announced a 15% dividend hike and raised its forecast that's pretty good news.

the street is bidding eli lilly by 2.2%. prevail up by almost 585%. and the nikkei asia news service says apple is ramping up iphone production by 30% during the first half of 2021 compared to the same period this year. and germany's adidas says it is considering the sale of its reebok brand it bought rebook 14 years ago to gain more ground in the u.s. market and challenge rival nike, but that plan has not lived up to expectations. andrew >> i had a pair of reeboks back in the day you remember the pump ones, you could pump from the tongue i don't know if people remember that anyway, when we return on the other side of this break we've got some big news. blade just announcing it is going public via a spac and the company's ceo is going to join usft t bak aerhere to discuss it all. another big spac deal. we're right after this things are a little different this school year

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box. some more news this morning, air travel company blade, the helicopter company going public through a spac, merging with experience investment corporation, a blank check company in a deal expected to close in the first half of next year it's going to trade on the nasdaq, under the ticker, blde and the equity value of the transaction, $825 million. blade is also going to get another $125 million from notable investors, including david geffe, barly diller, robert pitman, and involved in the pipe behind this as well joining us in an exclusive interview, blade founder and ceo, rob wiesenthal. we have been watching since you founded this company, and here we are at a time when spacs are seems in vogue, and you're now

selling the company into the spac. >> yes, it's been an incredible six-year run, and, you know, we named the company blade urbaneer mobility for a reason. it's clear what's been happening in terms of ground mobility, this radical transformation in terms of software and battery technology is going into the air, and we're not talking about years away, we're talking about 18 to 24 months. one company just announced they're starting to sell seats for 24 months from now in singapore. it really is coming, and we have the technology, the infrastructure, the brands and over 200,000 users to make this transition from a model using helicopters and get people into, truly the micro processer of aviation, people are going to be excited. >> speak to that, when it comes to the valuation of $825 million right now, the market, investors have to be betting on that what does the world look like,

and how should investors think about valuing all of this. >> we should look at it in terms of the overall addressable market morgan stanley says over the next five years, this market is going to be $150 billion market. 650 billion within ten years and, you know, what's important here, carbon emission zero, it's electric they have redundancy, enhanced safety, but most importantly, they do not make noise and such as you probably know, heliports, no one is making new ones because noise and pollution is a real concern once we get to the point that it's deployed and starting in other companies like singapore and asia in coming months, but once it comes here to the u.s., you'll see vertiports being built, and we have been building strategic infrastructure over the past six years three in indian, eleven terminals in the united states,

and once we get to the point that the new technology is adopted it will be better for communities and it will offer a price competitive way of traveling and we know congestion is just getting worse. and there are basically three choices. we make the roads wider, underground, in the air and we're betting on the air >> rob, what's the defensive mote, though, for blade. what's to say that another company can't start up given that you're an asset like model, you have discussed, you effectively have contractors who are out there flying these helicopters who actually own the helicopters, what's to say that i can't contract with them >> you could, but in most of these heli ports you will not have a terminal. most are exclusive you need to process passengers you need health and safety checks, security, manage baggage, and also move, as we have done before in conventional

roto craft as we do right now, mu hundreds of people in a couple of hours flights going potentially every 15 minutes in certain cities this is a $16 billion market there's room for lots of people. >> in terms, though, of how big a market this is, i know the numbers you cited for morgan stanley, this at the moment has typically been considered a 1% business this blade got started effectively ferrying people from new york city out to the hamptons, people going to nantucket, things like that. what do you think this looks like over the next five years? has the price point come down? or do you think in this sort of work from home, people being outside of cities, there's a different commute strategy what does that look like to you? >> look, blade is now six years old, we named the company blade urban for a reason this has always been the path that we have been going on to.

this move to new technology that is currently on the ground and going to the air this will be -- this technology is cheaper, less expensive for the consumer, will be carbon neutral, actually carbon, have no carbon emissions and be quiet, and that cost will be reduced to the consumer. will it be for everybody, but no, i think what's important is these are not flying taxis there will be multiple people on these aircraft you know, safely distanced, safe distance from the pilot, and the cost, you know, will come down we're already at $95, having shattered the uber black price barrier, to the airport for five-minute flight to the airport in the new york city area that saves two hours in traffic. >> let's talk about the structure of this spac because one of the things that's unique about it is the pipe these are the investors who are getting in right now including some investors who had been involved before who are rolling in, and it sounds like putting

more money in that includes the barry dillers of the world, the david zaslovs of the world robert pitman. interesting to me was seeing chamath in this. typically he acts as the sponsor of big spacs, in this case, he's an investor. how did that happen? >> i have had a long relationship with his partner, ian osborn, and i think that it is an incredible company what is interesting is historically, chamath and ian had been investing in spacs and there were questions by you and others about are they only investing this for the promote, and that's just not the case they are looking at a lot of companies, and they are investing at a $10 level, you know, frankly, you know, without warrants, locked up to the end of the deal because they believe in blade and i can't tell you how humbled

i am by the people who participated in this pipe. this pipe was originally $100 million, two times over subscribed we have fully committed capital at $125 million with some of the best names in the industry, so we're really pleased. >> literally as you have been on the air here in just this morning, you're looking at this about 17% up right now you know, we keep talking about ipos and whether companies are actually getting the right value. do you look at that? you have money in this continuing of course, so this is a good thing for you how do you look at the process and a lot of people talk about whether the ipo process is broken, and some of the valuations on spacs, i don't want to say are broken, but there's sometimes some misalignments. >> well, i think what's interesting here is that, you know, if you look at our partner, ksl, they have always been in aviation, and in fact,

they own 17 fbos which are terminals in airports which will allow us in the future, and hopefully the near futures to have staging areas, allow them to have lower repositioning costs, charging areas in important cities, places like west chester and palm springs and sarasota, florida. picking the right partner was very important and it's also important to note, as much as we all talk about these promotes, you know, the valuations reflect that, so in other words, when an investor is evaluating a spac, that is pro forma for any promote that may come in to play i think what's important from an issuer, and from a company or an entrepreneur, a new company, is really the ability to sell to investors that potential the company has a company that emits a transformation, and right now, there truly is an incredible transformation in terms of

mobility on the ground, and it's going into the air you had yesterday, i believe, you know, you had tpg on the phone with coulter i know he invested, created a company for electric charging in europe, and he said, you know, i'm not sure which of these car companies are going to be the winner, but i know they're all going to be charged. blade is really an index play. billions imported in by manufacturers like our investor, air bus, boeing and other companies. we don't know who's going to win but we know there's going to be a service layer. we know they're going to need terminals and booking. >> rob, we congratulation you on the transaction. it's been great following your progress, and look forward to following more of it thank you, rob talk to you soon. >> thank you so much take care, andrew. i don't think we're ever going to have a jet, sorkin, but i think we could buy one of those flying drones we could ride on the back of or something.

>> we'll get a copter. a squawk copter. >> an evital, they got solar panels, the sun goes down. i don't know microsoft and the green bay packers teaming up to form the equity league. it's a partnership to benefit black and latino entrepreneurs, we're going to hear from microsoft president brad smith, and green bay croeo and david solomon on saving america's small businesses. >> and chewy looking to make the pet lover's experience even better a lot of people want a go fund me account to get andrew a dog, a very big dog that story and more when we return

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[ dogs barking to jingle bells ] >> welcome back to "squawk box," a look at the christmas tree

my kids want us to get a dog i think that's what's going on here i don't know what's happening with this sound effects. meantime, chewy cfo, you know what, it's not about me getting a dog. it's about chewy i'm such an idiot. right? joe's like -- >> the lightbulb goes off. >> chewy, jesus. >> the song is really about you, you think the song is about you. >> you need some coffee. chewy. >> you probably think this song is about you >> sorkin, do all of these people on twitter -- do they just want to -- >> it's because i was just on twitter with joe trying to set up a go fund me page for my dog, not for my dog, my kids' dog anyway, let's talk about what chewy is doing something. >> do they want to get you a puppy to please your children or because you're going to have to walk it every damn morning, and

i think it's the latter. one lady said get you a border collie because they're bonkers then i saw a mastiff someone wants to get you because it looks like a land manatee. >> i think we're like a golden retriever or chocolate lab kind of family. that's what i think we are >> i don't know. >> maybe with a doodle in there. maybe with a doodle. i have one son who might have to be doodled up. we'll have to see. >> they're very smart. the best dog is a german shepherd, but i don't think you want to do that to a dog in the city don't do it. >> it's maybe unfair we should say, though, that the online pet retailer, back to chewy, currently offers about 6,500 items on its web site for pet owners chewy has been adding users at a

rapid pace. >> the pet company >> i know, which might in part have to do with the increased pet ownership in recent months thanks to the pandemic chewy's stock is up 193% over the past 52 weeks. back to you, joseph. >> when we return, microsoft president -- and you haven't shown that beautiful little cat. it's still a kitten, right, becky, you had her in your lap >> yeah, it's only four months old, he's only four months old but he hangs with me until everybody else wakes up and then he goes out. >> brad smith and the green bay packers president, next. we live in a world of fees.

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signs of hope, today, vaccinations underway, optimism on the rise. expert insight on the markets, the economy and new opportunities on the path forward. "squawk on the street" 9:00 a.m. eastern, watch or listen live on the cnbc app welcome back, everybody. our next guests are partnering to launch an investment initiative to benefit black and latino entrepreneurs right now, let's welcome microsoft president brad smith and mark murphy, who's the president and ceo of the green bay packers and gentlemen, welcome to both of you i want to talk about this new initiative that you have it's a new league that you're forming called the equity league, and brad, why don't you explain what it is. >> i think the credit goes to

mark it was his idea to build on a partnership that the packers and microsoft created a couple of years ago, called title town tech it's a venture fund, an incubator for start ups, located next door to lambeau field in green bay. it's got $25 million of capital behind it already, but the big step today is the creation of what is being called the equity league it brings together not just the packers and microsoft but the milwaukee brewers, milwaukee bucs, and it will focus on providing investment capital to black and latinx entrepreneurs the interesting thing today is that only 2% of venture capital goes to latinx founders. only 1% goes to black founders, this is an opportunity to start to change that >> mark, this was your brain child. why did you think this was necessary? why now? >> well, i don't think i can take all the credit. i have to give a lot of credit

to craig, who is manager director of titletown tech, and he had identified through, as brad i was describing, title town tech, that there were a number of these companies that were led by blacks and hispanics, and just didn't quite fight into, for one reason or another, and he just identified that there was a real, obviously he saw the need, and he thought we could address it. the other thing i would say, becky, this is something professional sports and society has been dealing with a long time, and i think particularly for us in the nfl, you know, it goes back to the colin kaepernick kneeling, and you know, i think, you know, obviously these are huge societal issues. we wanted to bring attention to them and i think what really kind of pushed us past just protests and bringing attention was what happened this summer here in wisconsin with the shooting of jacob blake. i think all three of our

professional teams were impacted by it. i think the bucs actually, you know, refused or cancelled a playoff game our players cancelled practice and so the more we started thinking about it, we really, let's do something about this rather than just talk about it and that was kind of the, i would say the start or the seed for the equity league, and you know, obviously microsoft has been tremendous, the partnership we have had with them, and this is as brad said, this is an extension of what we started about a year and a half ago with title contact, and we're really excited about the impact that this can have. >> hey, mark, when i first heard about title town tech, i have to say i thought it was a little bit of strange bed fellows to have the green bay packers together with microsoft. how did you guys meet? how did this come together to begin with is this >> well, i'll let brad talk about it a little bit. we're very fortunate microsoft has a great

relationship with the league thach they do an awful lot on the field with technology, but, you know, brad, brad has roots in wisconsin. he's from just south of green bay, and appleton, and you know, we're just very fortunate to have a company like microsoft and a leader like brad to see the need, and you know, i think the fact that brad quite honestly is a packer fan, was helpful as well. but, he has to be careful living in seattle, talking about that >> that's right, becky i mean, in 2017, we created a program called tech spark, and the purpose of it is to invest in six mostly less urban communities around the united states to really partner with the local communities to really understand better how we could put technology to work you know, to serve the economic needs of people outside the major urban areas, and so we looked around, and one of the places we considered a few years ago was green bay in appleton.

mark was very gracious we arrived in green bay. he spent time showing us around lambeau field. we sat down and talked, and we said, gee, could we do something together, and you're right, we are sort of strange bed fellows, but we bring different things, different areas of expertise, and i think we've also found that we certainly have a common culture, a real focus on the community, and one of the interesting things that both the packers and microsoft did in 2018 is we each committed to put $5 million to start the title town tech venture fund, and we each committed that we would plow back into philanthropy all of our returns from these investments. so i think that says something about where we're both coming from and what we're both trying to accomplish. >> yeah, the other thing i would add, becky, the other thing i would add, and i don't know if

you're familiar with lambeau field or the packers ownership structure but we're a community-owned team, so for us, giving back to the community is really at our core and one of the ways, you know, and this started -- the concept started four or five years ago, developing land around lambeau field, and the concept was what we call now title town, and it's a mixed use district, and it's a development adjacent to lambeau field, and we have got the hotel. it's kind of unique in the fact that no other, no private developer, we've got a football field right in the middle of it. a sledding hit, a skating trail, but one of the best things we did was partnered with microsoft, and of all the things that we have done in our title town development, i think the one that will have the biggest impact on this community is title town tech, and through that, the equity league

initiative >> brad, you talked a little bit about how when it comes to these entrepreneurs, venture capital backed entrepreneurs that 1% are founded by black people. less than 2% are founded by latino people. i think a big problem of that is because so few of those minorities are representative when it comes to the venture capital funds. how do you find these companies, how do you change that dynamic and make this something that spins off from here so that problem is addressed down the road >> i think one of the fascinating things is that, you know, there's talent everywhere. you just have to look. and as you know, you know, for decades we went through the same cycle. we still are in it for women, and their opportunities in tech. you start by making something a priority you start by putting energy behind it. frankly, you start by sending out the message that if you are a black or latino founder and you are looking for venture

capital, come talk to us, and i hope that's the message that people will hear across the united states today. and as with all things, you start small, you take the first step that's usually the hardest and it grows from there. and this is so clearly, i think, an idea whose time has come. it should have come a long time ago, and this kind of unique partnership, i think, can really accelerate what's needed >> gentlemen, i want to thank you both for your time today we appreciate it, and we will check back in with you to see how the progress is being made >> thank you >> yeah, thank you >> great meanwhile, coming up, the death toll in america, tough segue, topping 300,000 as vaccines roll out. the latest on the battle against covid-19 with dr. scott gottlieb coming up. but he's got some positive news this morning. and later, our special interview with warren buffet and

goldman chs saceo david solomon on saving america's small businesses that's straight ahead. we're coming right back. in a land not so far away,

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click, call, or visit an xfinity store today. well, another day, another major departure from california. this time, it's oracle cofounder, larry ellison, he is the latest high profile silicon valley executive to move out of the state. ellison says he's moved to hawaii and will be working remotely oracle itself has announced a

move out of california, relocating the company's headquarters to austin, texas. tesla's elon musk said last week that he had moved from california to texas, and you have to wonder, at what point this really starts to impact california's revenue when we come back, dr. scott gottlieb will join us. we'll be talking to him about what he's seeing with the numbers with covid, and good news as well. and 8:00 a.m. eastern time, our special interview with warren buffet and goldman sachs ceo david solomon on saving america's small businesses we'll be right back. before we talk about tax-smart investing, what's new?

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more shipments of the vaccine for covid arriving across the country today joining us now is dr. scott gottlieb, he's a former fda commissioner and a cnbc contributor. he also sits on the boards of illumina and pfizer. today moderna, we're going to talk about what you want to focus on, and that is that maybe we can, to allay our fears to some extent about the cold supply and how difficult that is, you know, to do effectively, doctor, because we have had a lot of concern, but you make some great points that it's manageable, and these companies know how to do this. what about moderna, there's news coming out

do you expect moderna to go as smoothly as you saw with pfizer, last week, and that will open up even more supply >> yeah, i wouldn't expect any surprises in the package i hear the package is just becoming available from fda, the briefing documents they're going to make available to their advisories are becoming public i wouldn't expect surprises in the documents. the data looked clean. i would expect this to go fairly smoothly for the company. >> so we will be, you know, scouring exactly what was said but i'm sure it's very similar to the documents that we saw before, the panel meeting for pfizer that came out, probably very similar to that >> yeah, the top line looks similar. >> yeah, go ahead. >> a couple of things to focus on so the top line read of it right now looks encouraging. i haven't had a chance to go through it you know, looking at the side effect profile is important but i wouldn't expect it to be materially different also looking at how this vaccine is going to be stored.

it's unclear whether or not it needs to remain frozen until it's administered. that's going to be an important question for pharmacies that administer this vaccine as well. whether or not they can thaw it out and put it in a refrigerator for a number of days or do they have to keep it frozen, albeit at a warmer temperature, so it's not kept as cold as the pfizer vaccine but if it still needs to be kept frozen until the point of delivery, that's going to be something that the pharmacies have to bake into their plans. >> you point out even the pfizer vaccine, so if it's thawed, it can still be in a normal refrigerator for five days once it arrives. i don't know if people realize that >> right >> go ahead. >> right so with the pfizer vaccine, so people have talked about the minus 70, the pfizer vaccine needs to be shipped at minus 70. i'm on the board of pfizer pfizer built a special box that can keep this vaccine at minus 70 packed in dry ice up to ten days it's tracked by gps, it has temperature monitors in it

it can be self-contained in that box up to ten days when it arrives, you have three options if you're a pharmacy you can keep it in the box until you're ready to administer it. you can open the box, and if you repack the box every five days for dry ice, you can keep it in the box up to five days, and put it in an ultra low temperature freezer for up to six months the other option is that you can thaw it out. once you thaw out the vaccine, you can keep it in a normal refrigerator up to five days the reason that's important, if you're cvs or walgreens, for example, and you're vaccinating in a nursing home, what they're likely to do is thaw it out in the morning, put in igloo boxes, normal refrigerated boxes, give it to the nurses and the nurses will go to the nursing homes and vaccinate, you know, people in those homes. it avoids having to keep it frozen until the point of administration the fact that you can keep it in normal refrigeration up to five days, and so that is a key feature. that's something i think to look

for in a moderna vaccine, how it's going to be administered, whether it needs to be kept frozen until the administration or thawed out and kept in refrigeration. they did have data showing stability in normal refrigeration. whether or not that's going to get into the label at the time of the initial authorization, i think that's an open question. >> doctor, do you attribute some of the recent spikes to thanksgiving i mean, is there clear evidence that we're paying the price for gatherings, then and will christmas be similar. the vaccine can't save us yet from gatherings at christmas, and having a spike from that can it >> the vaccine won't be widely distributed enough the vaccine should start to reduce death from covid, because a lot of those deaths are occurring in nursing homes if we're able to get into the nursing homes, we'll start to see hopefully a reduction in the velocity of deaths from covid. it's going to take time to get

through the nursing homes. it will take about three weeks to vaccinate all the nurses homes in the country, about 45,000 the first week they will spend in the skilled nursing facilities and they're not going to start in earnest until december 21st or december 28th want those are the two dates that i plan to go into those facilities they'll do a couple of nursing homes this week, some in ohio and connecticut, but the bulk of the nursing homes won't start until the 21st we are seeing spikes, probably not as significant as we feared. what we're seeing is the rate of exponential growth is slowing around the country we're seeing cases probably start to peak, so the rate of transfer is probably below one in the midwest and west. unfortunately the east coast and the west coast are slower to become epidemic and so they're about three weeks behind in the midwest and west right now, so they're going to peak later. around the country, we are seeing slower. some cases are likely to peak in

the first week in january. deaths will peak about three weeks after that, and so will maximum strain on the health care system. the health care system isn't going to feel the full brunt of this until probably late january. >> there's no denying, these are tough facts, all of these things vaccine is out, but we still have a ways to go. can you update me on the flu season is there no flu season, and luckily there's not, right >> that's the good news. flu instance is way down, and that's going to help alleviate some burden on hospitals we have up to 800,000 hospitalizations over the course of a typical flu season at the end end. this is going to alleviate some burden on hospitals, maybe the lot of burden. what we're finding is the mitigation steps we're taking, while they're effective against covid, they are really effective against flu, and they were in fact designed for flu. they came out of the 2005 pandemic flu plan, so distancing, mask wearing, hand washing seems to be very

effective at reducing flu instances. we saw that around the world, and here in the united states as well >> thanks, doctor. we're going to leave it there. we appreciate it once again toss it over to you, beck. thanks, joe. when we come back, our special interview with berkshire hathaway ceo warren buffet, and goldman sachs ceo david solomon on saving america's small businesses that's straight ahead. also, take a quick look at the futures as we head to that break. you're going to see the dow indicated up by about 167 points, s&p futures up by 24, the nasdaq up by 77. "squawk box" will be right back. the usual gifts are just not going to cut it.

we have to find something else. good luck! what does that mean? we are doomed. [ laughter ] that's it... i figured it out! we're going to give togetherness. that sounds dumb. we're going to take all those family moments and package them. hmm. [ laughing ] that works.

good morning and welcome back to "squawk box. i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin the u.s. equity futures are about where they were when we started the show, and getting back what we gave back yesterday. basically down 180 yesterday, up 170 on the dow becky. >> joe, thanks we're going to get right to our big guests this hour and a special conversation on small business the pandemic has taken a particularly tough toll on these economic engines of communities across the country, and joining us right now to talk about

potential solutions, berkshire hathaway chairman and ceo warren buffet, he joins us on the "squawk" news line, and also david solomon, the chairman and ceo of goldman sachs goldman is announcing a $250 million donation to establish the next generation of the 10,000 small businesses program. gentlemen, i want to thank you both for being here, and warren, we'll start with you you have not spoken publicly since the last annual meeting back in may for berkshire hathaway you weren't planning on speaking publicly again until the next one this coming may. why are you taking time today to talk about this issue right now? >> well, i think it's so important that small businesses, which have become collateral damage in a war that our country needed to fight, but we, in effect, voluntarily had an

induced shut down of parts of the economy, and it hit many types of small businesses very very hard, and we made some provision for that, in march in terms of the c.a.r.e.s act but then nobody really knew how long the, you know, this self-inflicted recession would last with this particular effect on small businesses, so we need another injection to complete the job, and congress is, you know, debating that right now, and i just hope very much that they extend the ppp plan on a large scale to let the people who may see the light at the end

of the tunnel get to the end of the tunnel so it's very timely. it's very important, and i do think congress will do something, and i hope they step up very soon because every day is important >> might make people wonder what big business leaders are stepping out and speaking on behalf of some of those small businesses what is it that concerns you about this why is this an issue you're really putting yourself out there with >> well, big businesses generally have done very well. they were travel and entertainment related, they still have difficulties, but the fed did a terrific job they saved us from something that could have been a lot worse in 2008 and 2009 when they acted in march, so large companies who, in the middle of march, early march, were going to have

no access to capital, the markets just opened wide and the corporate issuance was huge, but the small businesses received some help, but it's not getting them to the end of the tunnel. and, you know, you see a situation, just take food manufacturers, the big ones, have done terrifically people haven't quit eating, you know, and the large grocery chains have done very well margins, sales have been good. but if you had to get your food in a small restaurant or medium sized restaurant, and social distancing was required and everything, you just killed the economics for somebody that may have been working for decades with their family to build a business and reinvested the earnings in improving their

establishment, and then through no fault of their own an edict comes along that kills all of their dreams, and it would be so foolish to not follow through on this and enable those people to get back to where they could do the kind of business they were doing before you know, it's an economic war, and certain, you know, when we went into world war ii, a lot of industries were shut down, and everything went over to the fence production well, we have shut down a lot of people in this particular induced recession, and others are prospering, and i think that the country owes it to the, you know, really millions of small business people. and i've met a lot of these

people through the goldman sachs program. just renewed ppp and get us to the end of the tunnel. >> the goldman sachs, 10,000 small business program started a decade ago, and i know you were involved from the very beginning with that, going to some of these graduations and speaking to these classes, you turned down graduation speech requests all the time for all kinds of universities, why has this been one that you have said yes to? why have you had such an involvement and interest in these small businesses, warren >> well, i graduated from two universities i didn't attend either one of the graduations, and i have been invited to come back a number of times to address groups. i have never done them but the small business program, which has been a huge success, and due to goldman sachs, it's

just something special i went to the first graduation at laguardia community college about ten years ago, and there were probably three or 400 people in an auditorium, and there were less than 30 graduates. i think maybe there was 27 or something like that, but these people who were working 50 or 60 hour jobs on top of that, you know, worked nights on the curriculum, attended classes on saturday, they learned all kinds of skills that were helpful to them, probably a lot of them better than what i learned in business school myself but they sacrificed and in that crowd, there would be mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, in-laws, all of those people who had helped, and then, you know, i don't know what percent of the 300 were crying, but i was one of them, and it was just amazing to see, and,

you know, out of that program where we had that first class there, i've been to new orleans, i've been to chicago i've been to detroit, i've been to baltimore then back to laguardia again every time i've seen the graduates, i mean, my batteries get charged. it's just a remarkable group these are people that, well, you had one on earlier today that i watched, carla but they have plugged away against odds that i never faced, you know, and they learn things in the curriculum like negotiations well, you know, how many business schools really teach negotiations or, and a lot of us learn about that through our parents. but, you know, if you haven't been in the game or haven't had friends in the game or relatives, you start out with an enormous disadvantage, if you don't know something about a subject like that. well, this group earned about

one item like that after another. michael porter helped in terms of developing the curriculum, and i've just watched them grow and prosper, and lives get changed by it. 97% of the people that started the school finished up with it you know, you've got 10,800 or so alumni now, and the numbers grows by the week. and these people are successful. you know, i put my money on the woman you had earlier, carla walker-miller, i put my money on her anytime, but they do need help, and she needs help and she'll make the most of that help and i will guarantee you she'll be a discuss and employ even more people in the future, lots more people than she does now, and of course you have already heard, i think she went up 700% or something like that,

over recent years, so -- but they need help now you know, if the government comes along and takes your land because it's for the greater good, you know, under imminent domain, they take it and it is for the use of the people, but the landowner gets paid, and they have taken to fight the g epidemic, they have taken away the livelihoods from really millions of people at the end, those people aren't prepared to finance a year or year and a half hiatus in their business, and the u.s. government and all the rest of us i think we owe them a continuation of the ppp program. and incidentally, you know, there will be fraud connected with it. you know, you try to do something huge like that, so you'll read stories about people

who, you know, some people, not small business people so much at all, but you read about a few big places where they have taken advantage of it, but that happens in wartime i mean, don't let that turn you away from something where millions of people are being helped and there's a few cheats involved i do believe in prosecuting the cheats, though, very strongly. >> hey, david, i was at that first graduation ten years ago, too, and i remember thinking at the time that you guys would never get to 10,000 small businesses that was a big number. you are past 10,000 small businesses now, and that's incredibly impressive. david, just wonder what you're hearing from those businesses at this point i know you've conducted a survey to hear how they're faring >> so i appreciate, becky, and i appreciate you having this and i want to thank warren for all of his support of the program, mike bloomberg, mary berra, others that are part of

the advisory board that have helped i think one of the things we learned over the last ten years as we really executed on the program is you build this community, and these small business owners are all ek connected. they learn from each other, and they have a voice. something that's interesting, we have created 10,000 small businesses voices where we have gone out and surveyed these small business owners to try to get a sense of how they're being impacted directly, and one of the things i would say is we all talk a lot about small businesses, but really getting down in the field and really seeing, you saw carla walker-miller this morning i have had the opportunity, warren referenced it, to travel around the country over the last decade and meet so many people that look just like carla, and really hear their struggles and their needs, and during this pandemic, they really have needs. 90% of them have exhausted their ppp funding at this point. more than half of them have had to lay off employees, and really constrain their businesses, and

as you heard from carla, you know, these small businesses really support our communities they support families. they're really a foundation of our economy, and if we lose these small businesses, as a society, we lose big, and so it's really important that we listen to their voices and we try to continue to do what we can do to support it, and so, you know, we are excited to continue the program, as you highlighted, becky, we're committing another $250 million to re-up and try to get another 10,000 small businesses through the program, and we're excited about the prospect of that, and right now that support i think is very necessary. >> very necessary, why, david? what are you actually hearing from the businesses in terms of how difficult things are >> we're hearing these businesses have cut, nearly 50% of them have cut compensation. 50% or slightly more than 50% of business owners are not taking compensation themselves so they can continue to support others this is a huge employment engine

for our economy, and they're suffering right now. their businesses have been hurt. i think warren highlighted appropriately the steps that the fed and treasury took to put liquidity into markets has certainly helped large businesses by and large. they're obviously sectors that have been hurt, but small businesses don't have that access they need capital, they need liquidity to bridge them they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. i'm quite optimistic with what we're seeing with respect to the vaccine, and we will get through this at the moment, while you can see the finish line, i think a lot of small businesses need help getting across the finish line, and that's what we're hearing directly from them through 10,000 voices. >> warren, i know you're only going to be able to talk about small business today i wonder, as we watch congress kind of going back and forth with the bipartisan bill, having some really difficult sticking points that they're kind of getting caught on at the moment, what would your message be in terms of timeliness? does it matter if it happens now? does it matter if it happens at the beginning of next year

>> it's got to happen soon you know, they're both going down you know, you need help. and a great many of them need now, as david said, 52% of them are not taking anything out of their business at berkshire, we bought a few small businesses we bought from doris christopher 40 years, well, we bought it 20 years ago, but 40 years ago she borrowed $2,500 on a life insurance policy she had two little girls, and that company now has 100,000 people, you know, working for it mrs. b. at the furniture market, she came over, arrived from russia, couldn't speak english or read it and arrived in seattle in 1915 and that company employs, she started with $2,500 also, and that company now

employs, you know, probably 10,000 people, and so it's the seed corn of the america of, you know, 2030 and 2040, and we artificially, for good reason, look, we took out that section, that supply, you know, that particularly restaurants or gyms or, you know, brick and mortar retail, and we are in the process of dashing the dreams that will turn in many cases, turn into the voice of tens of thousands of people later on, and those people are not in a position to say, well, you know, i'll just take another $25,000, or whoever it may be and start all over again

they have put everything they've got into the businesses they're in, and congress, well, congress should actment i me i mean, if you're going to act a month from now, why kill off another x percent of the people that are potential successes pr certain political differences. we know it's a good idea we have already done it, but what we didn't know is exactly how long the pandemic would last, and how long people would have lingering fears and so on about going into restaurants or whatever it may be or gyms, but we know it's going to come back. so let's get people across the bridge >> hey, warren, i want to thank you for your time today. we appreciate your calling in. and we hope to talk to you again

soon. >> okay. do everything you can to urge your congressmen and senators to get this one done. that way they can come home for christmas, and thanks, becky. >> thanks, warren. we appreciate it in the meantime, david solomon is going to stay with us, talk a little bit more about markets, wall street, the economy and much more, and david, why don't we start with the markets because we continue to see these records that have been set on a very consistent basis from the major averages 2020 is kind of stunk, have you been surprised by the market's performance? sgli >> i think the market, becky, is looking forward at this point. as i said a couple of moments ago, there's a lot of optimism appropriately that we're going to get the pandemic behind us in 2021 there's certainly been a meaningful recovery in the economy. there's still a ways to go i think we have replaced about 75% of the economic output that we lost when we shut down the economy in march and april and so i do think we see the light

at the end of the tunnel i think what the market is doing is pulling the sense of optimism through. one of the things that's interesting is why this conversation that we have had this morning is so important, big businesses are recovering. they're making progress. we almost have a barbell situation, and small businesses and other parts of the economy are definitely struggling and while the market moves forward, we've got to make sure we're taking care of these other areas where things are going to be a little tougher you can't turn a light switch on and off, when you think about the service economy which so many of these small businesses really affect. even as we make progress with the vaccine and get to a better place economically, you can't flip the switch on and have jobs come back and take time to rebuild. i think the market is looking forward appropriately. i do think we've got a lot of uncertainties still as to how we navigate the next few months i heard dr. gottlieb on before, as he was going through a

handful of statistics that show how difficult we have in the weeks ahead to navigate. we will get through this and then we'll continue to move forward in a constructive way with a pickup and demand, and i think the market is anticipating th that. >> i know you're in a quiet period and can't comment specifically on what happened with goldman sachs, jamie diamond said maybe the banks have over reserved being super cautious with this do you agree with that >> i don't have a general comment on reserves broadly, but i think the economic scenario that is unfolding is certainly at a base, a better scenario than what everybody anticipated back in march, april, may. and so if you think about that at a high level, and you think about the way, you know, people economically model and think about reserves, where certainly the base case is better than what people expected as we're into the depths of the pandemic at the beginning of this in the

spring. >> earlier we were talking about the developments of 2020, and looking for a new word other than extraordinary, and it also applied to what fed has orchestrated this year extraordinary doesn't really cover it we need a couple of extraordinary squared. not everything the fed does goes to where it's needed, i would imagine, and they said that's fine we'll overshoot, we'll do more than we need to. even if it's not all going to where it's filling a hole. you know, it's just additional money. given those ipos last week, and some of the froth that maybe we're seeing in certain areas, do you think that there's some asset inflation that there's going to be a wreckenireckoning some point because of all the cheap money? >> i think the cheap money has an impact, joe, there's no question that the fed actions and the monetary policy and the relief was very very necessary you heard warren say it earlier, i think, through the actions, we

certainly staved off something that could have been a lot worse, but there's a consequence to that, and there's no question na peop that people are on the risk curve and that's inflating asset prices people have benefitted from this some of what's going on when you translate to the ipo market is obviously directly related to that, and i think some of that is related to certain other phenomenons. one of the things that's interesting is there's a lot more retail participation in these ipos i think one of the things to contemplate or think about, joe, and you know, a all of us on this call remember well the period of 2000 and 2001, there are real differences, if you wanted to buy a stock back then, you had to go and open up a brokerage account. you had to sign papers directly. technology enables and makes it a lot easier and broadens participation. so there's a lot of retail participation in a bunch of ipos that's something to watch and be cautious about i think a bunch of these are great businesses obviously the market at the moment is pricing in, you know,

perfect execution and enormous growth for a very long period of time, and my guess is there will be a rebalancing over time for sure >> and david, related to that, you saw a firm postpone their ipo after the airbnb, which i know gold man advised on do you look at the airbnb ipo as a failing in so far as not being able to adequately or accurately forecast, you know, what the market looked like at that moment >> we are obviously involved in a number of ipos, andrew, and we're not advising people to hold off it's interesting there hasn't been a lot written about this the process in some of the recent ipos, including airbnb, we have developed much more transparent market information for the company where they can see realtime the demand coming

in, and they make decisions around this. one of the things that's not well understood is the companies themselves are choosing their investors in the context of this they have much better transparency than they would have had five or ten years ago about the choices they want to make around this but despite making those choices, if people are going to come into the after market and buy the stock and continue to run the stock price up, it's, you know, that's something thatthat is very hard to control and think about. a lot of these companies are taking a long-term approach, they want to build a shareholder base, and they are thoughtful about that they have better transparency, and they are highlighting small portions of the country, and they are trying to position for the long run so i think we're at a moment in time where there's a lot of euphoria i personally am concerned about that i don't think in the long run that's healthy i think it will rebalance over time as it always does, but i think there are a lot of great companies that really have

extraordinary growth prospects that are going to continue to come to market, and we're reaching a chris has holiday that will slow down, and any guess is it will pick up again in january. >> david, i want to thank you very much for your time. i wish we had more time to chat. i do realize you have a board meeting starting you have to run for that come back soon thank you for your time. we appreciate it. >> i really appreciate your having me. i think the discussion on small business is so important and we continue to be excited about 10,000 small businesses and i wish all three of you a wonderful holiday. i hope everybody stays safe and healthy. >> david, thank you, happy holidays to you, we'll talk soon. >> thank you very much. >> andrew. >> thanks, becky when we come back on the other side of this another big interview. slack ceo stew butterfield is going to join us his first televised interview since his sale to sales force. some of the news on the coronavirus vaccine, the fda publishing a briefing document on that company's shot, data

showing a favorable profile for the vaccine and it has no concerns that would preclude an emergency use authorization, we'll get an update from meg tirrell on all of that in just a coleup of minutes. don't go anywhere. "squawk" is coming back after this many experts predict the next gold rush is just beginning. so call us money reserve the only precious metals organization led by a former director of the united states mint as one of the largest us gold coin distributors in the country. us money reserve has proudly served hundreds of thousands of clients worldwide. there may have never been a better time to start diversifying your assets with physical gold and silver. and right now it's easy to get started. pick up the phone right now, call to receive the complete guide to protecting your hard earned assets. don't put it off another day. the call is free and you'll speak with one of the us money reserve account specialists who will get you your free information guide

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over a billion dollars in transactions and more than a half a million clients worldwide us money reserve is one of the most dependable gold distributors in america. welcome back to "squawk box" on cnbc. we are just seconds away from some new import price and manufacturing data

we do have some, about a minute and a half the futures up 186 points right now. we'll take a quick look at the ten-year the ten-year, which we are someday expecting a 1% yield we're at .9% we're still getting, i can't believe it, people are asking for the go fund me address, andrew they really do think that we're raising money about buying you a dog. someone, you know, when the control room has a chance -- >> a rescue dog. we should do a rescue dog. >> do a rescue dog because this is what we're expecting at some point, if it were to happen. people get very close to their dogs, and i don't know where they got that. was that a neighbor's dog or >> that's sweet. >> i mean, look. i've never seen -- >> nice photo shop, guys. >> joe, he came back >> there's the cat >> this is a nice day for "squawk box." >> this is cocoa >> it is

we love animals. >> we love our pets. >> all pets go to heaven, you know why because they're all perfect. >> they're awesome >> rick santelli is standing by. i had to use that, andrew. i love that look on your face. rick is at the cme in chicago. give us the numbers, please. >> all right yes, we are expecting read for december that's current and a bit of a dispoint a when i say we are under 5. expecting a number slightly over 6. that isn't exactly what we were hoping to see, and 4.9 actually is the weakest number going all the way back to august we have been high as high as 17 in september import prices month over month, these are november up 1/10, about 1/3 of what we were expecting if you look at petroleum, unchanged. i like to look at the year over year numbers, import prices, year over year, down 1%. that's actually close to

expectations and that marks the 10th import, negative number in a row. and if we look at export prices, we're expecting up 2/10 on the month over month basis, and i am sorry, but that number just doesn't seem to be showing up on my services. i do see minus 1.1 on the year over year export prices. 1 pn 1.1. that's down, and that's also the 10th negative year over year number in a row on export prices i think the reason year over year is the best is because we know we have gone through something intense in the form of covid. once we clear the hurdle on the look backs, year over year, and we start to see these numbers move into positive territory i think that will be a very good signal to pay attention to and finally, see, i had to tap dance just a little folks, export prices month over month, up 6/10, that's the only number in this whole series that has any horsepower to the up side is

the month over month export number three times what we were expect and if we consider the year over year numbers, i would pay closest attention in my opinion to the export number, maybe it will give us a better read on demand outside the u.s., which of course demand is pretty good, and china seems to be the best on the export side joe, back to you you have a pooch, don't you? >> yeah, i do. i got three of them. 2 1/2, i have a 16-year-old little malti i asked david solomon about the low rates, all the fed money doesn't go where it's directed, and i wonder, i know you watch it closely we'll keep an eye on it, right we needed it it seems like we might overshoot. i don't know where it manifests itself. >> it's hard to aim the liquidity at just the right plant that needs the drink the most that's correct >> exactly all right, rick. you got a dog?

>> actually i have about 14 pounds of dogs, but that does come out to four dogs. >> whoa. okay okay >> they're little. >> i gathered that >> coming up, they sound like they might be like hamsters. coming up with the covid vaccine rolling out, it's time to have an early conversation about getting back to the office, very early, even though some things probably have changed forever. just a few minutes, we're going to ask slack ceo stewart butterfield which ones and of course we'll dig into salesforce's $28 billion acquisition of slack a few headlines to catch you up on right as we head to break apple is planning to ramp up iphone production in 96 million for the first half of 2021 according to nikkei asia news service, citing salesforce that apple shared with suppliers. 30% increase over the same period in 2020 and the federal reserves open

market committee set to begin a two-day meeting. we will, tomorrow we'll get the latest policy statement and a news conference from fed chairman jerome powell we've got that going for us, which is nice. stay tun, u' wchg "squawk box" on cnbc

welcome back to "squawk box," earlier this morning the fda released a briefing document for thursday's big panel meeting on that vaccine. meg tirrell has been digging through the materials and joins us now meg. >> hey, andrew, there is a lot of information from the fda's analysis of the moderna vaccine. we are still digging through the 50-plus page document. here are a few key details to bring you. in terms of safety, they detail what the most common effects are, sort of the injection pain, fatigue, headache, and muscle aches and chills there are rare events, including swelling in the vaccination arm, and also bells palsy, that was something we saw with the pfizer vaccine, the temporary paralysis in the face. they saw two events of that among people on the vaccine, and it's too early for them to know if that's caused by the vaccine.

importantly they noted no anaphylactic or severe hyp hypersensitivity reactions to the vaccine, and of course that's important because we saw the reactions to the pfizer vaccine when it started getting rolled out in the uk that will be a key topic of information. now let's look at the efficacy we know that this vaccine is effective to the tune of about 95% in preventing symptomatic covid disease. the blue line is the people who did not get the vaccine, they were on placebo, the red line they got the vaccination, and you see the separation at about two weeks. this is probably not apples to apples with what we were looking at with pfizer's graph last week which was after just one dose. it appears that this includes both doses, but within the documents they do point out that protection starts to come after just one dose. but of course the regimen here is two to get that 95% efficacy. guys, another really interesting

thing we're learning from these documents not just from the fda but moderna actually submitted its own addendums is that there may be protection against infection with the virus not just symptomatic disease what they did is they swabbed for the virus when people came back for their second shot, basically 28 days later, and what they found is that 2/3 fewer swabs were positive in the vaccine group, compared to the placebo group at the pre-dose two time point, suggesting that some asymptomatic infections start to be prevented after the first dose so guys, some suggestion there that this vaccine prevents transmission and not just symptomatic disease, which is key for potentially getting to herd immunity. these are early data, and we need to see that borne out, and of course at the meeting on thursday, this will all be discussed with the outside a advisers to the fda and they will vote if this vaccine is safe and effective for people 18

years of age and older becky. >> that is great news, especially the idea that this could keep you from transmitting that virus to other people, too. we'll look forward to hearing more about that. when we come back, though, we're going to look back on a year when the definition of work changed and adoption of digital technologies jumped ahead by light years. slack ceo stewart butterfield will joining us and a postmortem on the deal elto sl his company to salesforce for nearly $28 million. stick around, we'll be back. ♪ ♪ digital transformation has failed to take off. because it hasn't removed the endless mundane work we all hate. ♪ ♪ automation can solve that

by taking on repetitive tasks for us. unleash your potential. uipath. reboot work.

welcome back to "squawk box. in the midst of a global pandemic, 2020 has had some megamergers and acquisitions one of the most consequential, salesforce buying slack for $28 billion, and spotlights how companies are trying to position themselves for a post-pandemic world where the nature of work may very well be very different. joining us is slack ceo stewart butterfield, i think this is the first time we have had a chance to talk on air since the big deal and really an opportunity for you to explain, i think, to the public and more about what really led to this if you continue to take us behind the scenes for our thinking for so long we have had conversations about what the company would look like five years from now, you'd say i want to be an independent company, what's the back story? >> i think the simple version of the back story is this is a

really unique combination, and we believe we can accomplish in the next five years, what might have taken us 20 years to do otherwise. that's the heart of it, and it's a pretty big milestone for us, we're excited, you know, i think it wasn't expected to the outside world. but we have a lot of momentum. we came out of this quarter and announced our results, salesforce announced the results. a little bit of this got lost. we added 12,000 new paid customers in that quarter. it's up 140% from a year ago, it matches the, you know, crazy surge that we saw during the early days of the pandemic, and that momentum is coming from product improvements and it's coming from slack connect, which allows two organizations to communicate across organizational boundaries. i think that's actually going to be key to the value unlock over the next few years salesforce is all about crm, customers, and slack connect is 95% customer vendor

relationships. >> stewart, what do you say to the critics who say that this is a defensive deal, defensive for slack in so far as microsoft and the teams product has outperformed in ways that i don't think anybody had anticipated even 18 months ago, and potentially eventual defensive for salesforce or argue that it's opportunistic for salesforce because they want to play very much and feel that they have to play against microsoft and that this gives them a leg up or at least an opportunity to compete in that way. >> i think this is 100% offense. and again, i think there's some really unique aspects to this particular combination we weren't looking to sell the company. i have a great relationship with my president and ceo of salesforce, we have known each other for a couple of decades at this point, and there's a way in which we see the world that i think very few people see it today. but everyone will see it later, and one way to say that is to

look at the engagement layer and, that's kind of a weird term, the place where the conversations are happening. the places where the decisions are being made, as the perfect place to bring together work flows across organizational boundaries, and salesforce has a broad suite but of course we have 2,400 apps in the app directory for slack. we have 700,000 custom integrations that were developed by customers these are unique little integrations, some of them very small, sending notifications of slack, and some sophisticated work flows that run entire businesses and that's something that i think we will see in increasing degree of sophistication in the messaging environments, and an increasing degree of work getting done where the decisions are made >> given the price tag for sales force, how do you think investors should measure success, meaning if they were to look three, even five years out from now, how do you think they should be able to say, okay,

this really worked or this really didn't? is it about uptake on slack and the actual economics of what slack is going to cost, does it become a free product within salesforce and you look at it from a market share perspective, or something else? >> when brett and i were talking, this will sound a little cheesy, maybe, we talked about the opportunity for something that's one plus one equals seven if you think back to the 90s and cisco acquiring small hardware start ups and plugging into their network of 20,000 salespeople and selling a lot more of that thing that's not it. we will do that zas well. we'll have distribution, and relationships across all industries, across all geographies, and so we'll sell more slack, but salesforce recently announced the plan to get to 50 billion in revenue, and i think we'll play an important part of that i think we'll also be an accelerate for the adoption of salesforce products.

not to make it free. the biggest teleco in north america is slack the ingrated health care system in the united states is in slack. the single largest government contractor in the united states is wall-to-wall on slack we win in media and technology famously, and we also win in retail, and apparel and industries people don't imagine seeing us. we have 142,000 customers, and there's going to be overlap with salesforce, and 100,000 plus of those customers which are smbs and outside of salesforce's purview, which we think there's an opportunity to bring them into the fold and connect them all together with slack connect. >> do you think that salesforce and slack combined are going to ultimately need some kind of video product on top of it, given that teams has a video product and others obviously have various video products? >> you know, dig this up, it

might be kind of fun, q3 of last year, we said we anticipate teams will get 50 million users in the next six months and about 100 million next year because that's over tmoving over the us they had skype for business. customer zoom, which has grown significantly faster than teams. we love it, maybe love it too much in this time period and we have no plans to compete there. what we are working on is something a little bit different which is tools to support asynchronous immediateu asynchronous ye asynchronous medium. you can along with the messaging int her inherent in slack, and data and applications from all different sources. i'll tell you, that is something we're speerpting wiexperimentinh internally, and i'm excited to get out, we could use an hour or

two of flexibility being chained to the screen for eight or more hours a day is starting to make people crazy. >> so is this like an industrialized enterprised version of marco polo what you're talking about, polo that you're talking about for those that know what marco polo is? >> many of the participants really had three minutes of participation or ten minutes of participation. that's what we needed to do before we had the technology to really support the conversation being kind of extended >> right >> it will make a really big difference as long as the pandemic goes on, the demand for flexibility is off the charts if you're a single parent, it is an impossible situation. people are missing child care, there is a lot less, you know, a lot fewer hours in the day they can be tied to one specific task >> right

final question, how are independent do you plan to be, eyes wide open as you walk into this merger, there is a lot of companies that go into these things thinking i'm going to be completely independent, you think about the founders of instagram, walked na facebook, they had an opportunity to be independent for a certain amount of time, but only so much time, at some point they started to get pushed into the fold in ways perhaps they didn't want to. how you thinking about that? >> that's a great question i'm going to continue to be the ceo of slack, an independent operating unit, we'll have our own website, we'll have 100,000 plus customers who probably will have no idea we were a part of salesforce five years out, hard to say, but i'm more tied to creating the outcome that we can -- we have the opportunity to create together as opposed to maintaining that independence. i will tell you if it has the impact of something like instagram, i think that will be fantastic. i don't know what the ratio is at this point, i feel like instagram is 50% or two-thirds

of the value >> stewart, congratulations on the deal we look forward to your progress with all of it hope you keep on coming back as the ceo of slack, now part of salesforce talk to you very soon. >> thank you >> thanks. becks? when we come back, we'll get jim cramer's first take on the markets as we get closer to the opening bell on wall street. stay tuned you're watin"sawbo this is cnbc

it is an economic war. and certain, you know, we went into world war ii, a lot of industries were shut down. and everything went over to the production we shut down a lot of people in this particular enthused recession and others are prospering >> berkshire hathaway chairman and ceo warren buffett, joining us earlier this hour, right here on "squawk box." let's get to cnbc headquarters and jim cramer and you can't overstate how important small businesses and i'm just hoping, jim, that the vaccine, if there is -- if we

get a bridge, with stimulus, we need that, but i'm hoping small business comes back bigger than ever once it is safe to go back. and you of all people, jim, you know, you can't make money on wall street unless you go against the crowd. why do you think there is going to be a glut you never explained that to me a glut in the -- you think we'll have enough vaccine before people really believe it >> yes, i have such conviction in j&j i think they're going to be terrific i think that pfizer is going to -- they can step up production a lot of people feel that they're exaggerating how much they can do. i don't buy that but j&j, i think, is stockpiling and is ready spent a lot of money that they don't necessarily are going to recoup because they're just a great company, joe they want to save as many lives as possible. that's their ethos i think they'll surprise us with a one-shot vaccine that is not -- does not require minus 94 and then we can go with what warren buffett was talking about. i was listening to warren

buffett, i had chills. maybe somebody from congress is listening to this man. it is not political. it is not political. it is about saving companies because of a war and if someone -- how could republicans and democrats somehow reject that man's view that man's view is powerful and correct and nonpolitical so my hope is that it resonates in washington. we -- you and i both know that's probably too polly annish, but we have to try >> yeah. i wish it didn't depend on them. and that's why i have such high hopes for the vaccine. but in the meantime, you know, let's hope for the best. now a two-step plan. one of them, they're sequestering the reliability and state and local stuff, jim maybe that -- you're shaking your head. maybe by friday. maybe by friday we see that. >> i would -- look, they have to listen to warren they have to play this tape over and over again and realize this is the most foremost, foremost thinker about finance since

bernard bruke, the war time consigliere for fdr. no doubt about it, buffett is right and people in washington should heed his call. >> and then, jobs get saved, and then they expand and then just like all the points you made >> start hiring again, like mrs. b. >> right i know you -- we got to get ready for your show, which is coming up in less than two minutes. we'll be tuned in for "squawk on the street." a little more than 30 minutes away, 32 minutes away from the opening bell on wall street. and the futures have been stuck there, just up about 170 points for most of the session. started strong yesterday on vaccine day v-day people were calling it ended down yesterday down about 180 points, though i think the nasdaq was up. you can see the dow jones indicated up as i said 170 nasdaq strong, up 94 s&p up 26. take a quick look at the

ten-year ten-year is -- hasn't done anything in, like, ten years no, that's not really true but it is still below 1. .908 we accomplished a lot today. i think. we had -- >> as every day. >> well, some more than others but, you know, warren buffett, i loved having david solomon on. that could be the silver lining. andrew, every kid needs a dog. you're a big kid and you have kids. three. that would benefit from the dog. i know you like your museums and your ordering food you can order out in the suburbs now with doordash. there is no benefit necessarily. just -- get a fence, couple of dogs, couple of dogs are you thinking about it? >> we're totally thinking -- who is walking the dog just tell me who is walking the

dog? >> you got viewers offering to come over and walk your dog. >> kitty, kitty, kitty. >> my kids are going to play this, they're going to see this. they're supposed to be at school now, but i'm sure they'll hear about this and we'll have a big dog conference at dinner tonight. >> dogs are great. cats are great join us tomorrow "squawk on the street" is next good tuesday morning welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer and david faber futures look to give back some of yesterday's late declines on hopes that the stimulus compromise may be getting somewhere. warren buffett hopes so. fda looks on track it approve mo dernia's vaccine this week the briefing docks on line the road map begins with an economic war that is warren buff aets call to action as new covid shutdowns near and congress debates new stimulus