open but bitcoin plunging after reaching a new high over the weekend of 34,000 and change president trump dialing up the pressure on a phone call with georgia secretary of state. take you live to washington for the fallout. and the u.s. failing to reach its vaccination goal so far. now officials are considering administering a half dose to speed up the rollout saying the responses -- it's monday, january 4th and "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross and we start this morning with u.s. equity futures last year, last trading session of the year, you actually saw the dow and s&p move to record closes while they are not resting on their laurels today

you can see major averages up pretty significantly dow futures up by 168 points s&p futures up close to 21 nasdaq up by 57. keeping track of what's happening with the treasury market we keep saying this is going to be the year we see higher treasury yields this morning looks like the ten year at 0.931% below 1% but challenging those levels funlly check out bitcoin this morning. plunging after it surged over 30,000 over the weekend. briefly actually reached a new high above 34,000 this morning pulling back down by 10% some big moves that happened but still trading above 30,000 down $3,400 to more than $30,211. andrew >> thanks, becky happy new year, everybody. remarkable, by the way, even on new year's eve to watch bitcoin move up to 30,000 and just on that rush we all saw yes, correction of sorts

we'll see where things lay meantime, just days ago of the georgia runoff election, president trump urging georgia's secretary of state to overturn the november election results that delivered the state to president-elect biden. eamon javers joins us with the story everybody is talking about this morning eamon? >> good morning, andrew. never seen anything like this in u.s. history a sitting president of the united states divided in twight defeated in the general election trying to urge them on the phone to overturn election results those state officials holding fast telling the president of the united states in the state of georgia he simply has his facts wrong and don't see any clear path to win the election there. remember, the georgia election has been certified, electoral college voted and this week congress certifies the election for joe biden. an extraordinary moment as the president is trying to pressure those georgia officials to overturn the existing results of

the election all of that caught on tape the "washington post" broke the story initially. nbc news has also obtained a tape of the phone call and here's what the president said. >> so, look, all i want to do is this i just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state, and flipping the state is a great testament to our country. >> all of that making for a chaotic start to what should be a dramatic week here in washington, andrew we've got both the president and the president-elect today. they'll be down in georgia campaigning. remember, there's that runoff election tomorrow. two republican senators on the ballot control of the united states senate on the ballot. enormous amounts of energy and fund-raising and attention have gone into that georgia runoff race and we'll see on tuesday whether republicans can control

the senate in the biden era or whether democrats will have an opportunity to nominate, move their nominations through a democratic senate and move their legislation through a democratic senate and then, of course, on wednesday january 6th, we're going to have the certification of the election results by congress the electoral college results officially counted in the house of chamber and seeing a fascinating moment now where a large group of republican snarts senators saying they're going to object to the electoral college vote certified by the states that's not expected to succeed it is expected to cause a significant delay depending how they execute the maneuver. these republican senators will protest the electoral college itself, and the election itself and say they don't think that the election in november was valid. interestingly, a number of republicans declining to go along with that effort, including mitch mcconnell, who urged his republican colleagues not to do that, and last night a

statement from tom cotton, a conservative senator, from arkansas, who has been a trump ally throughout. cotton saying the founding fathers envisioned a process in which the states control elections and congress should not overturn the electoral college, because that would effectively end presidential elections in this country. that would mean that congress would simply decide who gets to be the next president of the united states and it should be a state not a federal decision cotton said. dramatic week ahead, andrew, here in washington, d.c. >> eamon what do you think the implications are of the trump tape matched with these 11 republican senators? i think now arguably led by hawley or cruz to upend the certification. what does that mean, do you think, to this runoff in georgia, which is also important? >> well, i mean, in terms of the senators who are supporting this effort to object to the electoral college, they're sort of, put their marker down.

now, this tape gives them -- if they have any qualms about it, this cape gives them a political off ramp whoa that's not what i signed up for. i don't see that happening, but it's certainly a political possibility that you've got to look for here, and all of those senators are now going to be asked to defend the presidential contact on that tape and you haven't heard really any response from the presidential contact and the question is -- >> what do you think it does to the vote in georgia, to the vote, david perdue came out publicly i believe in soupport o this group, for example? >> yep if you look at what the president said on the tape about the vote in georgia, the president's talking about georgia republican voters, very much as his own people talking about republican voters angry at the republican establishment in georgia who are frustrated about the president's loss, and he seems to be indicating that he will wield those voters depending on how the georgia secretary of state rules in his own election. so the implication from the

president seemed to be, i'm going to tell those voters to sit on their hands here and not elect two more republicans, unless you move forward with what i'm asking in terms of finding, you know, magically 11,000-plus new votes. all eyes are really on the president today in georgia what is his message going to be to hard-core trump republicans in the state of georgia? is he going to tell themto vote tell them to sit at home tell them elections are rigged and unwinnable tell they are their republican leadership is unreliable the president is a real wild card given his mood, what he's been doing over the past couple of days just about anything is possible including the president sabotaging his own republican senate candidates in georgia. >> fascinating eamon javers, appreciate it. thank you very much. >> you bet. joe? >> already, andrew. >> how are you >> yep the u.s. is considering a major change to the rollout of the

vaccine to help speed it up. the pace of it the head of the "operation warp speed" moncef slaoui told cbs yesterday that they were considering giving two half volume doses of the moderna vaccine to some people people between ages 18 and 55. a half doses identical immune response. it's the fda's decision. dr. anthony fauci said stretching the vaccines is the right solution to the wrong problem. we have the vaccine, just not getting it into the people's arms fast enough. >> so what i'm saying right now you is that, a., we're not where we want to be. we've got to do much better, but, b., let's give it about a week or two into january to see if we can pickup momentum that was slowed down by the holiday season so, again, no excuses. we're not where we want to be but hopefully will pick up

momentum and get back to where we want to be with regard to getting it into people's arms. >> whenever wei talk about doses, pfizer doses, moderna dozes, always say, do this many people because divide it in two. you need two of them that's, suddenly it would be whatever the number of doses you have would be the number of people that you can do that would be, that would be -- really good. then i -- i wish we'd get it together state-wise and federal-wise. do you see israel? travel the peop half the people, vulnerable already got it i don't know may they god the massad or -- m >> it's crazy. a state issue. new york, about 10%. other places 10%. 15%. in terms of what's available, even i know people planning to fly to florida where, by the way, there is no the same kind of quote/unquote line. i believe if you've over 65 you

can go to a doctor and get it. get on a plane and get it in states they're not at restrictive about it, but it's unbelievable. >> and not at restrictive in florida but aren't doing -- all of these anecdotal stories about patients, not patients elderly people, people aged over 65 camping out overnight hoping they'd be able to get the vaccine and worrying they would be exposed to covid waiting in the lines so long. i wouldn't say we've done a great job of necessarily rolling this out anywhere. also talk how a lot of places it wasn't being administered own are the holidays, because they weren't working over those holidays crazy to think about, too. one thing i didn't understand, joe, with the half doses from moderna. two half dose shots instead of the first shot because the talk with the pfizer shot saying, just give them the first shot. don't worry about the second coming >> two halves. >> kind of advocated for >> the back end one, you want, too. 50% or 60% effective

first time i heard the half dose in those people was just effective. get it cleared up with dr. scott gottlieb at 7:30 a.m. eastern. i don't know time is going so quickly that i'm hoping that all of a sudden it's like, yeah. you want one i'm in the cramer camp i hope we have plenty. it's a new year, really? ing whoing at the markets. reminded me of the who song. meet the new boss, same at the old boss. >> yeah. >> liquidity seems to be very suspect. you know there's nothing going on you know no constitutional crisis or anything it's just up 180 points. hey! what's the big deal. you know >> here we go. >> until the markets -- in georgia, i can't imagine that if it was really going to be a double loss for republicans, it's hard -- there's going to

have to be some day of reckoning, i would think i don't know what to think maybe just wait and see. 180 points isn't that much on a percentage basis but a little surprising. >> you're working off of a record high that was set in the last trading day of the year on december 31st. >> right. >> so, yeah. interesting to watch not the futures i would have anticipated this morning given the news either, but we'll see anyway -- when we come back, we are kicking -- what's that, joe? >> i said, we will see we'll see. an interesting week. you know can always square away this week i don't want to get too out of my mind and i do look at the markets. tell me how seriously i should start wringing my hands at this point? hopefully it's settled this week and we'll move on and get back to business. get back to graphing the important things. >> we hope anyway, when we come back we are kicking off the new year with a warning for your portfolio about political risk futures are not seeing this,

this morning they're indicated up sharply as we just mentioned. dow futures up by about 183 points s&p futures up by 22 nasdaq up by 62. as we head to the break now, though, look at the "squawk" planner. jobs week. getting the adp jobs report wednesday. initial jobless on thursday and employment report friday and tomorrow, of course, is the georgia runoff election for two senate seats much more on that coming up at 6:30 meantime, earnings on the docket as well. thursday hearing from walgreens, crmion, constellation brands, bed bath & beyond. "squawk box" will be right back. when we started carvana, they told us that selling cars 100% online wouldn't work. but we went to work. building an experience that lets you shop over 17,000 cars from home.

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welcome back to "squawk box. a takeover deem announced in the health care sector price tag $95 per share. worth $2.2 billion in cash the deal combining two managed care specialists and two sides expecting to complete that deal in the second half of the year the deal represents nearly 15% premium from magellan shareholders over magellan's most recent closing price. becky? >> andrew, thanks. meantime futures get ting a sharper open dow up by about 187 points s&p up by 22 nasdaq up close to 60.

joining now to talk about potential headwinds and tailwinds for the markets as we kick off the trading year, chief investme investment, and from macro economics. welcome to you both. i have to say i'm surprised to see this much strength in futures this morning maybe i shouldn't be, given momentum we faced last year, but what do you think's happening this morning why are we trading up even off record levels set on the last trading day last year? >> ah, i suppose it's just follow-through momentum and pmi numbers overnight were particularly good. a number of places in asia, taiwan, for example. one of my tailwinds from beginning of the year global manufacturing and trade recovery not just from the pandemic but also from the trump trade war, which was the first period where global trade shrank and when global growth was positive since china was integrated into that

globe supply chain that recovery's been particularly robust and as i said, saw it in taiwan but in places like switzerland, sweden, open export dependent economies. that would probably be the cu excuse like you guys i'm a bit surprised because i think there is serious political risk this week the georgia betting markets moved decidedly against the republicans holding. i just don't buy into this scenario that we do more fiscal stimulus now and don't raise taxes until 2022 or late 2021 at the earliest i think what's more likely is that the democrats push for additional stimulus, don't get any republican support therefore, they'll need reconciliation to do it. in order to do reconciliation you need offsetting revenues, which would mean tax hikes get pulled forward to me a real buyers' remorse scenario risk if republicans

lose both of those seats, that we have the first significant move of the year is lower. so that looms pretty large here for me this week in particular. >> kate wh, what do you think? the scenario tuesday is anybody's point, to this point, barry's point, moved towards democrats overnight. >> i think in the long term that works out to be noise. it's -- for the markets, i don't think it's really a very big deal in the long term. i think it will be what it will be remember, short-term price movements are random completely random. so -- markets go up. they go down. i think in the long term the fundamentals are what will matter. >> but to barry's point. if both of those senate seats are taken by the democrats, how easy do you think it will be for the democrats to move ahead with

things they said they've want to do, including raising revenue? which means higher taxes. >> well, certainly, it will be easier correct? i think obama after the great recession had a, a full ability in terms of the congress to enact his agenda i think he's in, for two years had ability to enact his agenda. i think moderately positive for joe biden. he's inheriting this great pandemic he needs at least two years to be able to enact his agenda. then divided government will step in and improve things. >> what do you think happens in the two years that you're giving him to enact his agenda? things that don't matter in the market >> oh, absolutely. i think those thing doss matter in the market. i think the two things i'm looking for is an efficient rollout of the vaccine and an

improved public policy response to the pandemic. the u.s. has not won any i wards f -- awards for its response to the pandemic if we need this tragedy to be a one or two-year tragedy, we need a new strategy or it could end up being a sue nam tsunami big picture what i'm worried about. >> look forward to the big picture, which we're looking at at this point. what are we facing for 2021, 2020, how do you think the recovery plays out >> i think it's going to go generally well first point to make, even a little more short term is i think we're going to get a much better than expected employment report on friday looks to me transient continuing

claims from both the regular state programs and the emergency pandemic programs which extended to independent contractors, that resumed its down trend shortly after thanksgiving so the market seems to think we've had a bigpause in the labor market recovery, and it doesn't look like that to me at all. i do think we have these three very significant tailwinds that will be a plus for the market. one is the global trade and manufacturing recovery i just mentioned. pardon me. the second is a really robust recovery in capital spending, which was hit by the same factors. the trump trade war impaired business confidence. that's coming back all capital spending plans rebounding and inflation, just a general permanent prices in services as the vaccines are rolled out and the service sector starts to recover those three tailwinds are going to be fairly serious drivers of performance in the stock market

and should help cyclicals generally financials industrials, materials, and i like the health care sector as well emerging, as andrew just mentioned, may be driven by the same technology that things accelerate in that sector. lots of good, positive momentum actors with, you know, the first path at least of the year. so i'm generally bullish, but i'm concerned about this tax hike scenario, which for me is a, not a short-term noise. it's a big deal. >> yeah. barry and kate, thank you both for being with us this morning and we'll continue to follow this and see what happens on tuesday, too joe? >> thanks, beck. coming up, carl icahn cutting a stake in one of his best-known positions tell you when one next as we head to break, tesla higher, higher, after reporting delivery numbers over the weekend falling shy of a

testament of a half million. darn close maybe that wasn't a high when it was added to the s&p like everyone said than i think i got something. work... hey, rob, you're on mute. hello. [all] hey... there he is. workday, the finance, hr, and planning system for a changing world. ♪ch-ch-changes ♪ does it worry you to be alone? ♪ ♪ how do i feel at the end of the day, ♪ ♪ are you sad because you're on your own? ♪ ♪ i get by with a little help from my friends, ♪ ♪ oh, gonna try with a little help from my friends. ♪

this morning carl icahn selling half of his stake in herbal life and giving up stakes on the board pap short campaign, a massive short campaign from bill ackman back in 2013. ackman unwound that position unsuccessfully in 2018 and herbal life said icahn sold about 600 million dollars of his 16% stake back to the company in

recent days. remaining stake is now about 6%. still worth, though, about $400 million. the "wall street journal" estimating icahn made well over a billion dollars alone on that herbal life investment so -- not a bad deal on his side and we'll all remember the, the shouting match in the middle of the day on cnbc between him and bill ackman in the middle of that contest, and i think it's fair to say that carl in the end won. >> yeah. mutually exclusive, the two arguments. although i never really -- >> yes. >> i liked their candy bars, okay, but -- i don't know if there's really -- kind of like -- i don't want to get into it. i mean, is there anything there, andrew is it -- what's the deal >> i always thought, bill, you know, sympathetic to the bill argument the bill argument requiring the government effectively to try to up end the company always unclear whether they would and they haven't. >> icahn is pretty -- i mean,

you can't question the way he used to go with his gut on all things and he actually, remember the pharmaceutical company had "squawk box" on in the background and heard what was it, mylan and king and heard and like what? that moron when he decided he would scuttle that i mean, he -- i don't know -- and remember imclone what a genius. b biogen unbelievable this one, i almost looked up carl, god bless him. he nooeeds it anymore? he's over 80 i don't know i don't know what goes into his decisions at this point, on his stakes, because, you know, i don't know i might start raising some -- hopefully he lives to 105, but -- >> the tax rate's lower in new york lower in florida, i mean

he did make the move in the last year so maybe he -- you know -- talked to, a lot of people do end of year selling to capture the rate >> i was going to say. if you worry about what happens with the senate race, if barry's point about this whole thing, worry what happens with the senate race and worrienew high y you have to wonder if some people doing this a while, were selling and taking gains they've made so they could pay lower capital gains on it? >> you just heard again, okay, higher tax rates, but massive stimulus, if they got both houses so -- this market you can -- there's so many different ways to say it's up again, and got a lot -- i think there's a lot of patina and liquidity. mgm resorts and then online gaming which, you know, it's on fire. really is. seeking to buy british gaming

company entain owner of the british owned ladbrooke's. received the $11 billion takeover proposal but significantly undervalues the company and entain previously rebuffed a $10 billion offer the "wall street journal" reports that the mgm's bid has the financial backing from its largest shareholder iac. which has been pushing to expand mgm's online gambling business. andrew >> okay. thanks, joe. a lot more coming up this morning. the balance of the senate of course now hanging on tomorrow's runoff election in georgia we'll tell you what the outcome to mean. president-elect biden's first 100 days in office, that straight ahead as we head to break, check out shares of samsung electronics gaining smg january 13th earlier than the typical february release "squawk" returns with that and more in just a moment.

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good morning as we've been reporting the u.s. equity futures are beginning the year a lot like we saw the last couple of weeks of 2020. the dow indicated up 186 points. triple-digit gain starting things off nasdaq indicated up almost 61 points and the s&p indicated up 21 and change. andrew >> thanks, joe. meantime over 3 million georgians have already voted in georgia's two runoff senate elections and it comes down to tomorrow joining us now to discuss more on all of this is ed mills political analyst. good morning to you. ed, it's fascinating to see what's happening even over this past weekend between the trump tapes that came out between this move by hawley and ted cruz, on the other end, to object to the certification on wednesday, and i wonder whether you think any

of it is going to impact the runoff tomorrow, because the markets don't seem to think so. >> yeah, andrew. it's a great question. i do think there is a ton of prospers here. what's going to happen is when we think this election we are then going to apply a lot of revisionist in terms whether or not something had a big impact or not i do think that we've been conditioned throughout kind of our political history to say, this one small event is going to result in this election outcome. i think the last several years have proven that we often times put too much emphasis on that, but i do think republicans are nervous on the discussion about the $2,000 check the discussion of voter fraud. is that going to give advantage to the democrats is that going to take out some of the enthusiasm among trump supporters who do not think that the two republican senators in

georgia have done enough for the president in is that going to tilt balance of the senate very important things that could easily tip the election tomorrow one direction or the other. >> are you at all surprised, though, that the markets seem to be shrugging off of this off i mean is it -- i imagine that you think a republican win is baked into the market. at least that's what i would think relative to how much the market has moved, and -- and the issue of taxes, which is clearly, you know -- hanging out there, if, in fact, the democrats were to win? >> yeah. no i think almost every client that i speak to believes that there is going to be at least one republican victory i reminded them that, that is far from certain i've never been more uncertain about an election outcome as this one i had one client tem he thought there was about a 2% chance democrats could sweep. certainly very different from the way in which we see this election i do think that there is

conversations about, if democrats win that they will lead with fiscal support, that there is no alternative to this market that any tax changes would be phased in for a 2022 event or beyond i do think that's a little bit of wishful thinking. i do believe that if democrats have both of these seats that tax changes are absolutely on the table this year through budget reconciliation and there would be a market reaction i think that that market reaction will have an opportunity to buy the diff in some areas but i think other areas where they'll be kind of that rotation trade to some of the kind of value stocks that you saw at, you know, perform late last year so i do think that this is a more nuanced conversation than one outcome good, one outcome bad, but i do think that the market has not fully priced in the potential of a democratic sweep tomorrow. >> okay.

price that in right now? just so we know what you think the up side and down side world looks like if i told you that both of those -- both of those slots go to democrats, the market goes -- where? also given your stimulus and other, and other implications on the table. >> yeah, andrew. i'd say if the democrats win both of those seats, i would be most interested in consumer, you know, cyclical names if we get that next $2,000 check, consumer will do really well i'd focus on financials. i think a focus on yield curve increases, inflation concerns. also focused on industrials, because we would see a lot of chatter about the potential for an infrastructure bill where i'll be concerned, high fliers in the next couple of years in technology. probably a tax-driven reaction in the next couple of days

on the flip side, if republicans retain at least one seat, i do think that is removing one of the biggest overhangs, and it could be the reason for the next leg higher so i think what a lot of investors have said is that there's been so many things coming out of washington, d.c. in the last year that could have kept them on the sidelines, but this market keeps on going higher so they're watching this closely, but are not changing their entire portfolio based upon this, because regardless of what happens, the fed is still supporting this market we have janet yellen set to become treasury secretary and a lot of money will come into the market and into this economy -- >> how much of it could be that -- the complacency is that you saw the narrow majority that democrats now have in the house. that sent a message to people. and, you know, you've also seen guys like senator manchin say, no, i'm not going for that

how likely would it be with the pandemic still raging and an economy still weak, maybe biden doesn't put his foot on the accelerator, on the lurch to the left and the market's assuming that's not in the cards no matter what happens tomorrow >> joe, that's an important point and i hear a lot from clients that they don't think that democrats would be able to get much substance done, even if they have 50/50 in the senate. what i remind folks, it's all about budget reconciliation. that's a simple majority vote in the senate those were signature achievements done in the george w. bush administration, the trump and obama administration using budget reconciliation nap would be done later this year, and any changes would take place starting on january 1st. stuff that has already happened. you might be already locked in to the tax code this year. you might just not know it depending upon the outcome of this election, and they're not going to have a vote just on

taxes. this would be the entire democratic agenda. i think that's a word they would use to describe this, a fairness agenda, and that would include a significant change to capital gains for the highest earners in this country changes to dividend rates to individual rates also funding a number of priorities, democrats want to fund such as child care, paid sick leave. you go down the list to student loan debt relief so there would be a lot of big changes that can be done through budget reconciliation that would be a near guarantee, and i do think even in a 50/50 senate you absolutely get that. >> okay. >> appreciate it very, very much see what happens tomorrow. >> thank you. >> sure we'll talk to you a lot more about all of it becky? thanks same kearns that barry pointed out this morning. anyway, when we come back it's the first trading day of the new year getting up to speed how to

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welcome back, everybody. google employees announced formation of a union calmed the alphabet workers union open to all employees and contractors.

it's not known whether they'll seek formal recognition by alphabet but it's a bit of a coming of age story. you think of alphabet think of google and all the perks they hand away at that place. now forming a union. >> yep yep. we'll see how that works out see what, what happens i don't -- it's certainly not popular at this point, for any company to even imply that there's going to be any type of pushback what do you think, sorkin? how's this going to work good for google? >> i wish i knew i wish i knew. this one i will not prognosticate on, because i think you can throw coins in the air. not sure where they'd land. >> all righty. coming up, about new year -- usually means resolutions. i kind of forgot you know it was, like, too late

at the top of many people's lists, leftovers, like pecan pie leftovers. if i was going to not eat any dessert, it was already -- you know, maybe next year. but we are committed to health and we're going to talk to the ceo of ww international, yes, known at weight watchers about meeting wellness goals and they always have me lead this interview go figure. that's next. ♪ ♪ 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.

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it happens every january, right? people pledge a commitment to a healthier lifestyle,

resolutions, et cetera our next guest helps its members keep their health and wellness goals. joining us is mindy grossman, ceo of ww international. if i cholesterol over comes out of control because you know what i eat. i tell my wife -- >> i can't even imagine. good morning, happy new year. >> hard boiled eggs or zero. actually i can't wait for becky to be back in studio she loves when i eat a hard boiled egg right next to her first thing in the morning she loves that didn't you just -- before the pandemic, before the transition to more face-to-face stuff at weight watchers, that must have made it tough once the pandemic hit. how has business been? >> you know, joe, we entered 2020 with unbelievable momentum, you know, on the heels of launching my ww, we were on tour and clearly when everything shut

down, what happened was the team did an amazing job of pivoting and really moving all our things to virtual what's really important is the work that they have done over the past year around innovation, partnerships, milestones, and what we're seeing coming into 2021 so we just announced this morning the launch of d-360, digital 360, our first new membership vertical in recent history, and it really is around content, coaching, community, and we've seen incredible engagement november 16th we launched my ww plus our first innovation in a nonfood program innovation year all around acute personalization and be able to have an

assessment to be matched to a program for you. and we also recently announced new partnerships, so sierra and now james corden and we hit another milestone being named bestdiet and best diet for weight loss by "u.s. news & world report." so it really is a testament to all of the innovation that the teams have been working on around our digital transformation and that's what we're seeing coming into 2021. >> mindy, some companies that were forced to go more digital and online more quickly, you saw their stocks benefit it has been tough for weight watchers i think stock was down for 2020. anyway, was it a difficult transition to go more online, more digital was it rolled out quickly enough is there more work to do >> actually, joe, i was on a

year ago for the first time i used the word radical reappraisal and what the pandemic has done is actually acted as the accelerant to what we were already doing and how we were meeting people where they are. clearly there was noise around workshop transitions, but how we're entering 2021 with the work that we've done is really, again, a testament to what our digital transformation has been over that period of time. >> you go -- will you go back to emphasizing the in-person workshops if we get back to normal after the vaccine or are you permanently in a more online stance, would you say? >> i would answer that question differently. we have now verticals between digital, d-360, our virtual and physical workshops where we can have them open and where people

choose to go and our one-on-one coach, which that platform is relaunching in 2021 at an even heightened capability. so it really is giving people what they need and that's more important now than ever. everyone is doing that radical reappraisal of themselves and we need to meet them where they are and give them choices that are going to work for them and now with the personalization capabilities that we have powered by a.i., machine learning, et cetera, we can match you with a program that is specific to you and is going to be able to give you a more holistic approach to wellness and ultimately greater weight loss, but built on every single pillar even if you look at 2020 and what we were able to do in launching sleep, in launching other capabilities and now with my ww plus, everything is more

personalized that's what people want and that's what they're reacting to. >> it should be a population that needs weight watchers more than ever after this i know for most people, not mentioning any names, but the pandemic has added some weight to the general population. >> but it was critical before and it's even more so now. >> definitely. >> people realize that their health is the most important thing and especially now that we've experienced covid. >> well, we hope to see you again and update us. i'm going to -- i love eating those -- you gave me carte blanche on the hard boiled eggs. i eat them whenever i want. >> you have carte blanche on a lot of things. >> i need to know those things because then i don't have to stop eating. anyway, thanks, mindy. >> great to see you. >> good to see you >> thanks, joe a lot more to come on "squawk box," the latest out of

ceteington on the georgia sena ra and the stimulus. we'll get you up to date with the ceo of axios straight ahead. two big hours of "squawk" ahead. change is all around us. shaped by technology and human ingenuity, we can make it work for you and your business.

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a new year but many of the same big stories the rollout of covid vaccines and how important that is to reopening the global economy political drama. president trump is turning up the heat on georgia in a telephone call to the state's top election officials this all comes just days before two key senate runoffs there. and tesla racing to new highs. we'll talk deliveries and ask what elon musk has up its sleeve next as the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick and joe kern en happy new year once again. take a look at u.s. equity futures at this hour they're looking up 2021 looking to restart the year somewhat where we were at the end of the year in the green,

which is the dow up about 165 points, nasdaq looking to open about 60 points higher, s&p 500 looking to open 20 points higher let's get you to some of the headlines taking place this hour airline passenger levels hit their highest levels since last march. that's despite warnings against unnecessary travel amid fears of worsening the covid-19 pandemic. the tsa saying it screened 1.2 million passengers alone on saturday meanwhile we got two takeover deals in the news this morning a health insurer has announced a deal to buy magellan health for $2.2 billion in total. and then telenon is buying a company for $8 billion and samsung plans to introduce its smartest new phones or new smartphones on january 19th.

it's sending out invitations for a virtual event where it's expected to unveil it's new galaxy smartphones so this is a pull forward to january surprising some folks this morning. joe. >> thanks, andrew. new this morning, google employees have announced the formation of a union, called the alphabet workers union it will be open to all employees and contractors. they announced it in a "new york times" op-ed that said for too long thousands have had workplace concerns dismissed by executives and it's not yet known whether the group will seek formal recognition by alphabet or try to get majority support among the company's workforce. becky. >> thanks, joe the other thing story we are watching, the push to speed up the rollout of covid vaccines. meg tirrell joins us with the vaccination numbers and the comments from the operation warp speed chief on a possible change meg, good morning.

>> good morning, becky today marks three weeks since the pfizer vaccine began making its way into the arms of health care workers across the country, so today we are going to see a number of those folks get their second shot. but this comes amid a rollout that has been much slower than many hoepped. according to the cdc, 4 million have been administered out of 13 million distributed. we expectthey'll get to the 20 million distributed this week that they had planned initially to have be administered in december so running a bit behind schedule cdc is starting to provide state-by-state data. we see who is doing better than others those in yellow have vaccinated more of their population which makes sense, but if you look at the overall numbers of vaccines administered, california, texas, new york, florida, they're doing the most with the most number of

people in terms of countries, the united states is behind. israel has now vaccinated more than 10% of its population bahrain, which also started earlier, almost 4% the uk and the u.s. are under 2% but those numbers should be updated soon and we should learn more about that. but falling behind a little bit there. then as you mentioned, those comments from operation warp speed talking about the potential for administering a half dose of moderna's vaccine in order to increase the supply. this is based on data showing that the immune response at least in people under 55 was the same for the 50 microgram dose as the 100 microgram dose. so these things are getting discussed. but the first thing that needs to be solved is actually getting the shots into arms. guys. >> yeah. meg, when you say that 13 million doses have been distributed and about a third of

them -- or a third of them have actually made their way into people's arms, that tells you something. there are breakdowns that last -- not the last mile but the last inch, like trying to get it into somebody's arm how is that going to get fixed >> there are expectations that this week and over the coming weeks in january we should be seeing that start to speed up. nancy messon nier said there are things that caused a rocky start. these are complex vaccines they have to be thawed and done carefully and this is done over the holidays you think the holidays don't matter in the middle of a pandemic but it might have slowed things down so the expectation is we should start to see those numbers get higher in this week and the coming weeks the other part is there are long-term care facilities being brought onboard. more of these folks in nursing homes are starting to get their shots. >> meg, i can ask gottlieb this

later, but you may know. if you have antibody or should you find out if you have antibodies and if you do, do you still get the vaccine? would it be better if somebody got it first that didn't have ae antibodies the side effects appear manageable, except for some of the antidotes. but if you have antibodies, are you better to get the vaccine? >> well, it is recommended that even if you have had prior infection you get vaccinated there was discussion from the cdc advisory committee if you had recent infection do you want to wait a bit in order to get vaccinated, specifically because of those issues. you probably have immunity, should somebody else take your place in line, things like that. for the antibody drugs themselves from regeneron and eli lilly, there is a recommendation that if you've

been administered those drugs you wait 90 days to be vaccinated because those antibodies could interfere with how well the vaccine works those are all important considerations but in the trials they did include people with prior infection and they recommend everybody get a vaccine who can. >> there are some asymptomatic case -- i'd like to know i've been out and about and heard certain people say, yeah, i had antibodies, i had no idea. i'm ready for the vaccine, obviously, but i might think if i've already got them, i might wait and see, i don't know it might be better just to get it maybe i'll ask gottlieb. >> probably, because he is a doctor >> all right thank you, meg coming up, georgia -- wait, does georgia have some elections? okay georgia holding two key senate runoffs this week. the results have big implications for washington and wall street.

we'll talk to jim vandehei next. stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc save hundreds on your wireless bill

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well, that audio emerging yesterday of president trump urging the georgia secretary of state to re-examine the outcome of its presidential race and find enough votes to alter the biden victory and the runoff in the peach state will decide senate control joining us now is jim vandehei, the co-founder and ceo of axios. what are the latest either predicted betting sites or the latest poll averages indicating now, jim, for the runoff tomorrow, whatever you want to call them, special elections >> good morning and happy new year there's very little polling, any public polling, especially in these georgia special races so polling i don't think is a great indicator. i don't know if i evenlove the betting markets. what i really trust are the operatives on the ground republicans are a lot more worried today than they were three weeks ago and democrats on the other side feel a lot more optimistic the reason being is if you go back to those senate races the first time around and look at the presidential race, they were

razor thin and so it is authentically in georgia a toss-up state. and so mobilization of voters, being focused, having money, really matters on the margins. that's why democrats feel like they have been able to be more unified. they have been able to benefit from the fact donald trump doesn't accept the election results, has been critical of the leadership in the state of georgia. republicans who were close to him. there's a skepticism among republicans about voting in general nationally and in georgia. the worry for republicans is what if 100,000 of those people say the hell with it, i'm just not going to vote because i don't trust the process because the president is telling me that the whole thing is rigged and these voting machines can't be trusted. so my guess is we're not going to have a clue maybe for several days as they counting the votes, it will be that close. most races in recent history in georgia have been. but if you're reading the moves of the operatives on the ground, democrats feel a little bit

better than republicans. >> the trump effect is cutting both ways, which is kind of weird. because the republican voters aren't all the same, obviously some republican voters probably aren't happy with what the president has been doing, and then others could be disenfranchised because they don't think that these politicians have done enough to take president trump's side. so you could have 180-degree feelings in the same party with republicans down in georgia, neither one of them good for republicans unfortunately, or unfortunately for republicans. >> yeah, that's the point. you want republicans motivated, rallying to vote that they don't want two more democrats in the senate, giving joe biden a majority they probably would have won this had they been able to be unified and obviously they can still win it if they lose, it's going to be

because of those divisions you've got to look at states like georgia now as authentically 50-50 states places that either party could win. when you get it on the margins, then the mechanics of politics matter tremendously. that's when organization and get out the vote stuff, stuff that's boring and eye rolling matters tremendously and that's where it looks like democrats have been able to spend more time focused on that as opposed to getting tied up in a debate about whether or not the election results in georgia were valid the first time around. >> jim, i mentioned the betting sites because the individual races have narrowed and even slipped, depending on where you look i don't know if there's any volume, though but then you look at whether the senate stays republican and that's still 60/40 that it does so it's almost like each individual race predicted might indicate that the democrats have made ground, but i guess it's

the likelihood of taking both seats that is still hard for betting people to embrace at this point it's still 60/40 that is stays republican how is that if they're down in both races >> the math doesn't work on that one because if they lose both -- if democrats win both seats, they win control of the senate hard to see winning one, losing the other given that it's been so nationalized. look at the amount of money that democrats are raising in that state. something people haven't paid that much attention to you're raising $100 million in a couple of months, it's unheard of presidential candidates used to dream of raising that much money. now you're doing it in a couple of months. and it's because it's been so nationalized, because people see obviously the stakes of having mitch mcconnell as majority leader or not. and that has to be the fear for republicans. it's why mitch mcconnell is so spooled up about some of the things donald trump is doing because he understands that if

he doesn't have the power being majority leader to set the agenda that democrats will be able to do more than they otherwise could do so the stakes of this are really tremendous if the republican party is sitting here and has no control in the house, no control in the senate, lost the presidency, that's about the best possible position you could possibly imagine for the democratic party, even if conservatives still control the courts and have had a lot of success at the state level. the federal level is what democrats wanted going into the election if republicans don't get it right in the next 24 hours, that's what they're going to get. >> so, jim, at axios are you going to miss the pants on fire moments? here's the cover in "the new york times." carl bernstein said this one, now this one is so much worse than watergate carl had said -- i think that's like the 16th or 17th thing that's been worse than watergate that carl decided on of the and then in "the journal," it's been

all over trump they have been really negative on trump's efforts, but they -- i thought this was funny they say the last two elections have ruined americans' faith in the electoral process because in 2016 democrats abused the fbi for the collusion story and hillary still hasn't accepted trump's legitimacy so they go back, they say it's not just this time, it's last time are you going to miss all this it's only one more week of where you've got these things that are going to ending democracy as we know them theoretically. you've only got another week of that are you worried about axios? >> i think our health and our brains will benefit from thinking about things other than just politics moment by moment. >> i agree >> there's huge things happening in robotics and a.i., in china, in science >> biotech it's amazing, it's amazing you know what else, in streaming, in content. once a vaccine gets done, think

of the content we could all use a little bit of the -- really, it has been every week pants on fire every week, jim, for four years. not every week, every day just about. >> yes and i think that politics -- i think all of us will benefit before we did axios, we did politico i say now people need to pay attention less to politics i think we're all consuming way too much of it because there's big things that are happening underneath us that really do warrant a lot more public attention and a lot more debate. you talk about vaccine, you talk about distribution that goes to the technology that undergirds your government it goes to our capacity to be able to mobilize business, mobilize people when there are actual catastrophes or crises that crirequire smart people in positions of power to do the right thing. we haven't talked other than at a high level about what do you do with technology when you have companies that are bigger and more powerful than anything we

have ever imagined in the history of humanity yet there's not a lot of rules of the road put around them. how do you start to think about that as a country. how do you think about that through the lens of governance my hope is, my wish is those are the things people start to pay more attention to because i do think they will be much more important in shaping how you and i and our kids live 10, 20, 30 years from now >> you have you think eight points you think alabama should be an eight point favorite >> alabama -- i don't know, ohio state looked darn good. >> what about ohio state >> i could not believe what ohio state did to -- do you think it had anything to do with that swinney thing that they should be 11th? i bet you he wishes he hadn't said that. see, these are the things i want to move on to, jim, that's what

i said i know it's frivolous, but life is too short i can't take it. i can't take it. anyway -- >> all right, andrew. >> a lot more on "squawk" ahead. we'll talk to dr. scott gottlieb on what needs to be done to speed up the vaccination process in the united states first, as we head to break, some of the other headlines including roku in a deal to buy the rights ib quibi's content qui announcing in october that it was shutting down stay tuned, we'll tell you more about it you're watching "squawk" right here on cnbc

still to come on "squawk box" this morning, dr. scott d gottlieb will join us to answer our questions about the ccvaine rollout including the potential of giving half doses of the moderna shot in order to spread the number of doses out. stay tuned, we'll be right back. ♪

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning making headlines right now, the u.s. continuing to try to speed up the rollout of covid vaccines former fda commissioner dr. scott gottlieb will join us in just a minute to talk about the biggest issues but i want to start with steve liesman who's been looking at the importance

of the rollout to the broader economy. steve. >> yeah, good morning, andrew. our first look of the year at the cnbc rapid update for growth shows both the recent stimulus and the vaccine announcement boosting us through the spring but you can see through the first quarter some very interesting estimates here let's start off. the fourth quarter coming in very strong, near 4%, 4.8% right now, near 5% this first quarter, though, is interesting because that's where really the effects of the recent surge of the virus are going to be felt. i think at 2.7, 2.8 it's a pretty good win right there. i believe it to be really flattered by the coming stimulus here then you move on to the second quarter and the third quarter and you can see relative to the november forecast, 1.2% higher for the second quarter, half a point for the third quarter. i believe that's entirely the virus -- the vaccine taking effect right there and then our first look at the fourth quarter, pretty strong, 4.4% we'll look at the year in just a

second jpmorgan has been watching the consumer and they say like we saw early on in the pandemic, consumer spending appears to be ground zero for the effects of the recent surge in the new covid-19 cases we ended the year weak and are continuing weak on consumer spending, that's why the dip in the fourth quarter now let's look at the full year minus 3.1 for 2020 and then here's the full year for 2021. 4.2%, almost double the potential growth estimated to be so again, given the circumstances, i call that a pretty big win for the u.s. economy. the challenges ahead include getting the vaccine distributed and gaping consumer confidence the rule in 2020 is the same as 2021 covid policy is economic policy. andrew, i'm pretty sure it wasn't planned that dr. gottlieb is going to follow me, but that's how you've got to follow economic forecasters, ask the doctors what's going to happen >> okay. steve, thank you for that.

we will ask the doctor about what's going to happen right now and maybe we'll ask him a little about your reporting as well it's nice to see you, happy birthday new year. >> happy new year. >> joining us right now is former fda commissioner dr. scott gottlieb in his latest op-ed in "the wauwall street journal" he writes to speed up vaccinations, u.s. pharmacies should take a direct role in getting those shots into arms dr. gottlieb joins us with more. he serves on the boards of illumina and pfizer. doctor, meg tirrell joined us earlier and said something like 13 million doses have been distributed to the states but only something like 4.3 million of those doses have actually made it into patients' arms at this point what's the slowdown? what's holding things up >> right the best way to think about this in my view is 40 million doses were made available to my knowledge in the month of december

5 million doses were injected into people's arms for some reason somewhere there's 35 million doses sitting on a shelf for various reasons i think the reality is we created a system with a lot of rules, with a lot of friction, with a lot of top down controls. there's a computer system sitting in the federal government that can literally track every single dose of vaccine, how long it's been in refrigeration and who's eligible to receive it and who's eligible to provide it. when you implement that kind of control, that kind of top down control you create friction in the system and it will slow down delivery i think there's an imperative to get this vaccine in arms quickly. we need to give up some control to do that and expand eligibility quickly. if we find that the demand among the groups we want to give the vaccines to isn't as brisk as we had hoped, i think we have an imperative to try to expand eligibility into the groups where the demand is the greatest that group happens to be senior citizens i think if commensurate with trying to vaccinate these high priority groups, we should do that and have public health

departments focus on that. if we made the vaccine more generally available in walmart, walgreens, cvs, other pharmacies based on age, i think you'll finding a lot of the very motivated individuals to come out will be the senior citizens. right now every shot in the arm is a win we should try to get these out as quickly as possible and not let them sit and get stockpiled on shelves >> agree 100%. but if this is the federal government's rules and regulations slowing things down, i thought that these were only guidelines for the states, that the states could do what they wanted in fact in some cases they have already said anybody age 65 and up can get them in the case of florida. >> yeah. it's really both the federal government has imposed rules and then you see states imposing rules. in states like california and new york, they actually created requirements for new certifications and sanctions and even criminal penalties in some cases if people are vaccinated out of turn. that's going to just create more wariness among those providing

these vaccines and require more paperwork. it's going to slow things down you're right that states have some discretion to implement their own rules how they distribute these and you are seeing states starting to distribute them based on age like texas and florida even there they are distributing it through mass vaccination sites held at places like auditoriums or convention centers. i still think if we started to push more of this through the retail channel, places like walmart know how to create systems online, scheduling systems where people can go online and schedule an appointment. it's not perfect, it's not fair. a lot of senior citizens don't know how to go online and ait will create some unfairness in the system because some people will have easier access than others, but i don't think we'll fully eliminate some of those inconveniences at the outset while this is in shortage. there's about 30 million senior citizens right now over the age of 65, maybe 40 million at most who are motivated to get the vaccine. we could probably work off that entire population in the month

of january if we wanted to and that would be relatively easy to vaccinate those individuals because we know they want it going into nursing homes, vaccinating staff, which should have been a manageable task and a task where you saw a lot of demand, we're finding only 50% in in cases, some cases lower if you talk to the governors of the staff inside nursing homes, which should be a group that time the vaccines are actually taking it. so as we work into these other groups during the month of january, that cdc has delineated i suspect the demand isn't going to be as brisk that's why i think it's a good approach for governors to side by side also make more general availability through the retail channel because if they find that the demand isn't as brisk in these prioritized groups, they can push more of the vaccine out through that retail channel. >> scott, i was concerned but i'm questioning how concerned you are about the number of people that don't appear to want to take the vaccine, whether you think that's a vaccine hesitancy

early on, meaning that they just want to wait a month or two to see other people take it, or whether you think it's something else and the other thing i'm concerned about is whether you think some of these vaccines will go to waste if they're not used within the period of time, whether they can stay as cold as they need to be throughout >> well, let's break down the flu vaccine. each year 150 million people get vaccinated for flu that's after a very hard push. people get vaccinated for work and we make it convenient for people 60 million are under the age of 15, so we take them off the table. that leaves 90 million people. that's your low-hanging fruit, people who would get a covid vaccine. some portion are very motivated to get the vaccine some portion get the flou evacuati vaccine because it's convenient or they're required to at work there's about 50 million americans over the age of 65 i think that group will be very motivated to get the vaccine some portion of the group

younger than that will be motivated to get the vaccine beyond that we'll have to really try to encourage people and educate people but i think given the fact that we're in the throes of the worst part of this epidemic and we know getting vaccines in arms can be a partial backstop against spread, the imperative should be getting the vaccine in arms at highest risk of having a bad outcome and at highest risk of contracting covid and spreading covid but there's some virtue in getting vaccines in arms you're creating more dead ends for the virus. if we have a group of americans that would want it badly and would take it quickly and happens to be at the highest risk of a bad covid outcome and i'm thinking in particular about senior citizens in this country, i would just give it to them i would make it generally available to them to the extent possible while focus on the p prioritized groups we shouldn't be spending three weeks trying to push the vaccine into arms where you have some reluctance where those vaccines are sitting on a shelf

one final point, there's 35 million vaccines sitting on a shelf right now. we know 50 million vaccines will become available in the month of january so we're stockpiling maybe as many as two vaccines a day on top of the 35 million the federal government is applauding themselves because they managed to vaccinate half a million people a day in the last three days you're still building up an inventory and substantial inventory so we are way behind. >> how come all these shots are sitting on the shelf somewhere anything was talking about 13 million that have been distributed to the states. what happened to the other 20 million you're talking about >> well, the federal government held on to more than half of all the doses. they held on to one dose for every dose they administered because they want they want to stockpile the second doses and then held on to another 5% that they're calling a safety stock i'm not quite sure exactly how it's going to be used. i come back to what we talked about in the past couple of weeks. i don't think you need to be stockpiling all these doses. i think people should be getting the second dose, they should be

getting the second dose largely on time. but we can be pushing out more first doses now and using the future supply that's coming on the market in the month of january to administer some of those second doses so you need to stockpile something if you want to make sure there's a smooth transition to the second doses but putting away 50% of all the doses i think is denying more people access to a vaccine. now, that said, maybe one of the reasons they stockpiled so much vaccine is because they knew they couldn't distribute it because they managed to cut it in half and only distributed 45% of what they had and couldn't even administer that so had they distributed more vaccine to the states, it's not like it would have been administered anyway under the current system >> scott, really quickly, this idea that we're hearing now that they'd be giving half doses for moderna and it would still be just as effective to people 18 to 55? >> yeah, i mean there's some data to suggest that moncef was on tv talking about that he's talking about a younger

cohort people develop a more robust immune reaction. they may move to that. i don't have a lot of insight into the data that moderna has just top line data around that i'm sure fda and moncef have access to more bottom line data. that would certainly extending the supply remember, there's an extra dose in the vials of the pfizer vaccine as well so there's more supply on the market we talk about 200 million doses. the pfizer, you can get six, maybe seven doses out of each vial and cut the moderna in half for the younger cohort, that's significantly more doses than just the 200 million that we talk about that's going to be available in the first half of the year >> doctor, i don't want to dissuade people from taking the vaccine, but i do want to ask you because there's a lot of anti-vax movement online and elsewhere, people raising concerns and questions and pointing out and highlighting examples, at least anecdotally of circumstances where there was an adverse reaction, especially

in a number of older people that ended up having heart attacks or other things, including death. and so the question i want to just ask you is how to think about those issues in most cases the doctors have suggested they're not connected, but of course, you know, you're seeing these news stories pop up and people are passing them around >> well, look, one of the challenges is when you vaccinate large groups of people, things happen to people if you're going to vaccinate 40,000, 50,000 people, people have heart attacks, people get into car accidents, people have, you know, other illnesses all the time and sometimes something happens in proximity to a vaccination and you think there's a causal relationship and in fact there isn't. that's why it's important to investigate all of these instance decidences very thorouy i saw this all the time when i was at the fda where there was an event that happened in proximity to the administration of some regulated product, but there wasn't a causal

relationship bad things just happen unfortunately to people. when you start to get into these kinds of numbers, you start to accrue those kinds of coincidental events. a lot of people now have been vaccinated with this vaccine there's a lot of longer term follow-updata available and it's consistent with what was observed in the clinical trials but that information will continue to be gather in the post market. >> dr. gottlieb, thank you as always, good to see you. when we come back, tesla races into the new year with record dloieliveries and a recod high stock price we'll talk about its prospects for 2020 than we do. workday. how do they make better decisions faster? workday. got to do something. workday! i think i got something. work... hey, rob, you're on mute. hello. [all] hey... there he is. workday, the finance, hr, and planning system for a changing world.

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beautiful shot of the capitol right there. mean meantime, tesla out with q4 numbers putting the company just shy of elon musk's goal of half a million vehicles sold in 2020. i want to get over to phil lebeau who joins with us that story over the weekend phil. >> hi, andrew, happy new year. when you look at tesla's total sales for all of 2020, yes, technically did they not hit their target of a half million vehicles, yes, but they were only 450 vehicles shortcoming in

at 495,550 vehicles delivered last year. in terms of the fourth quarter, it was really about model 3 and model y. mainly when you're looking at that, 90% of those sales, model 3, model y, the vast majority of those being model 3. by the way, this was a record quarter for deliveries for tesla. elon musk tweeting out so proud of the tesla team for achieving this milestone at the start of tesla, i thought we had optimistically a 10% chance of surviving at all well, they have not only survived, they have thrived. take a look at shares of tesla, now trading at an all-time high indicating being up to $721 a share. this morning premarket guys, the question now becomes what happens for the delivery guidance for 2021? we will likely get that in three or four weeks when the company reports its q4 financial results. that's when they typically say,

look, this is what we're expecting to deliver this year just for a point of reference, i know the consensus is 780,000 vehicles out there, but that's a very wide range of estimates in terms of what goes into that consensus. i've heard people say 900,000. i've heard people say maybe they can scratch a million vehicles delivered this year. take that with a grain of salt but no doubt the stock will be moving higher today. >> and what do you think is going to happen at the ending of this -- well, there's so many questions. the stock -- i don't know what to say about the stock. >> right. >> but if you were to look out 12 months from now in terms of number of vehicles produced and sold, what do you think that number looks like? >> well, the good news for them is they have now begun production of the model y in china. and the model y is expected to do very well in china. the model 3 has done well there. you also have the gigafactory in germany that should be coming online a little later this year. at the very ending of this year,

just a few models, nothing measurable, coming out of the gigafactory in texas at least that's what they're targeting at this point. i would not be surprised if they get well over 800,000 vehicles, dlo close to 900,000 vehicles. they are both targeted at the sweet spot of the market right now.

to be quite honest with you, the market cap tranches, they have broken through what they needed to hit in terms of the initial, but you're right, there is a revenue component that needs to be met keep in mind they have had four profitable quarters in a row and the revenue has been growing theoretically you should see that revenue continue to grow given the fact that the sales volume is expected to be maybe over 800,000 or 900,000 vehicles this year. >> okay. phil, great to see you, happy new year we'll continue this conversation right now. mark fields is joining us, former ford motor company ceo is now a cnbc contributor mark, happy birthday nnew year s well i don't know if you remember, it was less than a year ago that elon musk took to twitter and said that he thought the stock price of tesla was a little too high, do you remember that so the question i'd ask you, is the stock price a little too

high or are you finding a way to support and get behind it? >> happy new year, andrew. listen, when you look at tesla stock, it doesn't trade on fundamental valuation metrics. it trades on its growth story. it trades on retail investor enthusiasm of the future that elon musk has described for everybody, and that's what they're buying into. and the price, when you look at the market cap, it is really driven primarily by investors' thought that tesla can continue to grow robustly and that's why, you know, as phil said they grew about 35% last year. the challenge for this year given the market cap and the run-up in the stock is how do they continue that growth going forward? that is fundamental to the business and that's why you see tesla do so many things, particularly in the last couple of weeks of last year to encourage deliveries, whether

it's some self-driving availability for customers or delivering, you know, vehicles to customers and if they don't want to take it in the last week they actually move to the next customer so growth is absolutely important to support that market cap going forward. >> mark, what does the landscape look like as you see it in 2021 and 2022 in terms of ev competitors and some of the other big names, of course, coming out with competition? is it competition? >> yeah, for the first time tesla is going to be facing real competition in the marketplace as you look at this year, 2021, you're going to see electric vehicle volumes across the world, obviously china sells a lot of them given the government regulations, europe is next and then comes the u.s but here in the u.s., you're going to see a lot of new introductions. you're going to see ford coming out with their terrific mach e coming into the marketplace.

you have vw introducing their id 4 which is a model y competitor here in the u.s. and in europe you've got some trucks, luxury trucks coming to compete with the cyber truck. so, you know, there's real competition for the first time in tesla's life that they're going to have to face and their challenge, as you know, andrew, is they don't make money on the base business of selling, designing and manufacturing vehicles they make it on the regulatory credits, they make it on other services, whether it's insurance or selling things like full service driving. they absolutely need to make sure they improve their margins on their vehicles. they're going to have to do that in a market that's a lot more competitive this year, both here in the u.s. but also in europe and china. >> let's talk about two things there. you talked about the regulatory credits which are a key component of their profitability or at least has been thus far. what does that look like in

2021-22 to you and the secondary issue is, as you just said, from a margin perspective just on the manufacturing side, what can they do that they're not doing right now? >> well, on the regulatory side, the good news here in the u.s. is with the new administration coming in, the biden administration, you're probably going to see very early on some increase iie incentives for selg electric vehicles. that's going to help tesla but also some of the new competitors. if you go over to china, the other key market for tesla's success, the chinese government announced as of january 1st that they're actually reducing their electric vehicle incentives by 20% this year so that will put a little drag on the marketplace overall here in the u.s. it will be good news, a good backdrop for selling more electric vehicles in the case of margins, listen, tesla's challenge is they have to, what they call localize

their production, which they have done in china, for example, for the model 3. that's why they have been able to take like five price cuts in the last year. they're about almost fully localized there. so for them to continue to improve their margins, they have to approve their efficiency, their manufacturing efficiency they have to continue to innovate in batteries. as you know in september they had a battery day and they said they were going to significantly reduce the cost of their batteries. that is absolutely key to allowing them to improve their margins. >> fair enough mark, thank you so much for helping us through this. it's going to be -- continue to be perhaps we'll see whether it's the story of the year, but we'll be watching and i know we'll be talking to you a lot more about it. becky? >> thanks, andrew. t> coming up, a big week ahead onhe political front with potentially major implications for your money senator kevin cramer will join us next.

good morning let's pick up right where we left off futures pointing to gains across the board at the open, with new records for the dow and s&p 500 in the final session of last year. and president trump pressing

georgia's secretary of state to find him enough votes to swing the state's election results in his favor. the latest on that extraordinary audio tape and reaction coming up. and a wild morning for bitcoin. the cryptocurrency plunging double digits after hitting a record high over the holiday weekend. we'll ask bitcoin bull mike novagrass what's going on. the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc in the year 2021. ♪ in the year >> no, that was different. i'm joe kernen -- no, it wasn't three dog night. i'm going to find out. andrew ross sorkin is back

where were you are you okay you around you hunkering down >> i was around. i wish i could tell you i went to some exotic place but i was having the equivalent of what so many americans have, call it a staycation, i think, is the phrase. >> i'm disappointed. >> a pandemic staycation. >> my guess was st. bart's that's where all people like -- people that can go to st. bart's around new year's, don't they, for the time between christmas -- this is the first year you didn't go, i think, right? >> i have actually never been to st. bart's, but i'd like to go but yeah, we were -- we were hanging with the family at home. it was fun. >> we've got to go we're going to look at u.s. equity futures, but i had a total wi-fi meltdown last thursday when i was supposed to do "halftime report. my router melted down and was out for 48 hours

there was almost -- in my house there was almost -- i mean the amount of angst -- >> uprising. >> i found myself saying i wish they had never invented wi-fi. i do because when it was gone, life was so empty that we didn't really think we could make it. it was unbelievable. no netflix anyway, it's all fixed now futures are up about 143 points. but people had their hearts set on me doing "halftime report." but morgan brennan, i think, did a great job. bitcoin having a rough morning after hitting a record near $35,000 over the weekend it got down to $28,000 or $29,000 and change you can see a bounce back and is trading up about 31,000. but that thing looks like a -- you know, not all trees -- trees just don't grow straight to heaven, do they?

they went from 10,000 to 35,000. so to drop under 30, i'm not sure what it means i have no idea but given previous years, the high and low can be a factor of like three or four so i don't know what to expect in 2021. no idea, andrew. >> well, we'll talk to mike about that later this hour, absolutely but some of the stories that investors are talking about today besides bitcoin, the trump administration's covid vaccine czar saying that health officials are exploring the idea of giving a big group of americans half doses of moderna's vaccine to speed up widespread immunization. people 18 to 55 could be candidates for these half doses. he said the immune response is identical to a full dose regimen, but the fda would have the final say on the idea. not clear whether that would help given that part of the problem is that there are doses available and haven't been put

in people's arms yet meanwhile, britain has begun administering doses of astrazeneca's covid-19 vaccine it's the first country to give that shot, developed with oxford university the first was given to an 82-year-old dialysis patient. and tesla delivered a record number of vehicles in 2020 it missed its goal of half a million cars by just 450 cars. investors this morning don't seem to mind that. the stock rising in premarket. last year tesla delivered 367,000 vehicles becky? >> andrew, thank you let's get to that audio tape president trump trying to pressure georgia's republican secretary of state to find him enough votes to overturn the state's november election results. eamon javers joins us right now with the latest on that front. >> reporter: yeah, becky, we've never seen anything like this in u.s. history the election is over, the results have been certified, the

electoral college has voted, but the president of united states is continuing to try to find ways to overturn the election in november this time the president was on the phone with election officials in the state of georgia on saturday. that phone call tape obtained by "the washington post" and later by nbc news. in the call the president pressures the officials to find enough votes to change the results. at one point in a remarkable exchange, the local official push back on the presidentand try to persuade him that what he is seeing in terms of conspiracy theories on social media isn't reality. here's that exchange >> mr. president, the problem you have with social media, people can say anything. >> no, this isn't social -- this is trump media it's not social media. it's really not. it's not social media. i don'tcare about social -- i couldn't care less social media is big tech big tech is on your side i don't even know why you have a

side because you should want to have an accurate election. and you're a republican. >> we believe that we do have an accurate election. >> reporter: so state officials there holding their ground, saying they do believe they have an accurate election in the state of georgia now, that sets up what could be a dramatic week here in washington, d.c., with today the president-elect, joe biden, and the president of the united states, donald trump, are going to be campaigning in georgia for those two runoff seats in the senate remember, the balance of power in the senate is at stake on tuesday in the runoff election two incumbent republicans running for election there if democrats sweep, they could control the senate in the early part of joe biden's term as president of the united states so that is an enormous high stakes moment coming up on tuesday. and then on wednesday we have the certification of the election results by the electoral college. that coming as mike pence will be in the chair as vice president to certify his defeat for re-election as vice

president of the united states and presumably congress will move on past this point at which a number of republican senators have said they're going to object to the results of the electoral college. now, that effort expected to fail simply because at absolute base the effort to object to the electoral college results would require both the house and the senate to follow up on that objection. that's not likely to happen simply because democrats control the house of representatives so a dramatic week upcoming here in washington, becky >> eamon, thank you very much. for more on what this recording from president trump could mean for georgia's runoff elections tomorrow, we are joined right now by north dakota senator kevin cramer senator, we want to talk to you about the u.s. rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, but first we want to ask you about that audio from president trump i'm assuming you've heard it what do you think? >> yeah, becky, thank you and good morning i listened to all 62 minutes of it last night. it sounded very familiar to me

because i've had a lot of phone calls with the president and he is a strong dominating personality, as we know, and pretty much everybody else that's in the room or on the phone is much more timid that said, i frankly don't find the offense that a lot of people see in it when you listen to all 62 minutes he was going through some pretty basic math he believes, of course, that there was fraud in several fronts from 5,000 dead people voting, his claims, not mine 5,000 dead people voting, some people voting nice, people voting illegally and all that math adds up to more much than the margin that he lost by that was the context of the conversation i didn't get a sense that he was pressuring anybody but rather stating facts and talking about the math he needs to make up, if he was to overturn this election >> i heard where he suggested that there were 500 dead people that voted in fulton county and the push back from the republicans in the state said, no, there were two dead people that we found on the rolls

do you believe the math that he believes is there anything that you heard to this point that would cause you to vote against ratifying the electoral college results? >> that gets to the heart of what i think the problem is. the referee in this game is also the defendant in the sense that it was secretary of state. i don't know whether it was 2 or 5,000. but one of the issues that i thought was probably the most informative in this phone call was when the lawyers talked about the inability of one side, in this case the president's team, to have access to person-specific data that is something other than a name and a birth year. and that's what's publicly available, that's how they draw the conclusion there are 5,000 but if they don't get to see that data, then becky, it's why instant replay works so well in the nfl. it's not because the same referee looks under the hood, it's because they show it on the jumbotron. that's why a fumble has to be a fumble i think it's important that

there is a more transparent process. that said, i'm not prejudging it by any means and i do have concerns about congress overstepping its constitutional authorities in objecting to the electoral college. >> well, senator, we should focus on that. the referee in this case is a republican, the secretary of state. the constitution has it set up to the states control the elections. >> that's right. >> i should focus on the last part that you said you haven't seen anything that would cause you to vote against ratifying these results? >> what i have seen is there's a great distrust not just by donald trump, but by lots of people and polls show anywhere from 10% to 30% of democrats believe that the election was either rigged or that there was fraud. that has to be -- that has to be adjudicated in some public forum. courts have failed to take it up states are defending themselves, whether they're republican -- >> the courts have taken this up. >> no, the courts have largely

punted it away, becky. and that's still not satisfactory -- >> the courts have decided that they didn't want to overrule the votes of millions of voters. that's what the lawyers have asked them to do in many of these cases. >> but they have not had adequate hearings to demonstrate in a public arena their reasoning for that all of this needs to be settled to somebody's -- to the satisfaction of the voters of this country or there's always going to be distrust we went through an entire phony impeachment process, completely partisan in fact the evidence they used to impeach the president vicini vindicated the president we should have been fighting the coronavirus and that was perpetrated not just by the left but members of the media so i don't think the sky is falling. i think dealing with the electoral college, i come from a red, small state i don't want to have our votes overturned by members of congress from other places i don't see in the constitution where we have that authority quite honestly and i read it again this morning to be sure. but all of that said, i do think

there has to be some sort of a commission i'm working with colleagues to find a way ted cruz has one plan. i think there can be other plans, maybe more effective plans than the one he has. i think there has to be some sort of a commission, bipartisan, that looks at not just this election but at reforms going forward so we can avoid this in the future >> senator, you know, this issue of distrust, and when you do look at the polls i absolutely agree with you that there seems to be a level of distrust that is disturbing. having said that, you know, you can look at how we came to this moment and maybe you'll disagree with me. but i think you can look over and over again over the last several months the president even before the election was talking about election fraud, was talking about that possibility other members of the party talked about it repeatedly over and over and over and over again. the election then happens. the president then says there's election fraud, there's election fraud, there's election fraud.

the courts, by the way, disagree with him or don't take it up but don't take it up because they disagree with him to some extent i think you have to agree with that and now everybody stands around and says, well, everybody distrusts what happened because they think there's election fraud. it's a circular logic, no? >> it sounds a lot like the last four years when the battle cry of the left was russian collusion, russian collusion, russian collusion and 40 million dollars and two years of an independent council that a lot of republicans supported because they wanted to restore trust i'd just like to see some democrats say, yeah, let's help restore trust in this case and have the type of transparent public process that the american people can watch with some third parties. i don't -- again, i'm not a big advocate of overturning the electoral college. again, i don't even think we have that authority in the constitution of the united states for congress. but congress does have to do something because everyone else pretty much has balked including

state legislatures and courts. so this distrust isn't going to go away. at least the people i work for in north dakota, they don't take their cues from me, i try to take mine from them in this representative republic as long as it fits in the context of the constitution and my conscience. >> so question, senator, is there a way to separate out the issue of looking into election reforms and -- i'm not suggesting to punti it, but to separate it from this election itself or do you think that's impossible >> i think that's the perfect question. >> i think there's a distinction here. >> i think you're exactly right, andrew you've hit the nail on the head. i think that's what we ought to do and that's why there are a group of us working together to try to find a way to do exactly that the ted cruz plan is noble and i don't argue with his motives by any means, but i do worry that not separating those two clouds the issue and really doesn't do what we need to get done and that is have an independent commission or at least a bipartisan commission.

maybe it's congressional hearings themselves. but we have to get to it and we have to do it in a public manner and we have to take the time you know, i heard on that call where the secretary of state was talking about, well, we gave an hour and a half of our time. i thought that was quite arrogant to say the least. it's not your time, it's the people's time. an hour and a half isn't very much, it's very little we need to have a long, robust, transparent discovery process so that people "college football live" -- can feel comfortable with this. trying to find a way to accept rate these two issues is very important. >> ron johnson was with us last week and he has had hearings on this he said as of last week he hadn't seen evidence that would cause him to vote against it but was open to hearing more evidence how many congressional hearings do we need >> well, certainly more than one. ron is the only person in congress that's done his job with regard to this. he happens to chair the committee of jurisdiction, which obviously helps. i think you can have many more than a couple of hours worth

you have to have, again, the transparency of it much like a congressional hearing does, but you have to get to evidence based on an evidentiary standard one of the problems that one side of this issue has is that they don't have that per person data you have a birthday and a name -- but you don't have a social security number, nor should you but somebody has to have access to make sure it's not 5,000 dead people that voted versus 2 dead people that voted or 50,000 versus 500 or whatever the numbers might be that's really important to get people's confidence back but we can do all of that. whether it's in a congressional hearing, preferably in a courtroom, but it needs to be done in some way to restore this confidence that's missing now. >> senator, very quickly, let's talk about the pandemic rollout of these vaccines. what you've seen to this point we've seen fingers blame pointing back and forth, whether

at the federal level or the state level. how has the rollout gone in your state and what do we need to see more of? >> it shouldn't surprise anybody north dakota has gone quite well we've got good leadership with our governor and health care officials. they have taken the incredible work that operation warp speed -- by the way, no president in my lifetime could have done what donald trump did with regards to getting this vaccine -- multiple vaccines done before the end of last year but obviously the ball has been dropped at several state levels and local levels it's as if people didn't know it was coming, they were so ill prepared for it. that's a pretty serious problem in my view so i don't know whether -- some of the plans have been partial or half doses and all that, whether that works or not. that's above my pay grade. but the federal government clearly has exceeded the expectations of the vast majority of americans. maybe that's why the vast majority of states weren't well prepared because they didn't believe that it could be done.

>> senator cramer, we want to thank you for your time. obviously we have more to talk about and we'll have you back soon. >> thank you coming up, extreme volatility in bitcoin to start the year the first big spike, now a sell-off, about 8.5% you guys call that a crash i don't know billionaire investor michael novagrass will help us to explain the move i didn't say that. it's a sell-off. it's a pretty significant one, that's for sure. as we head to break, let's catch you up on a few of the morning's top stories, starting with health insurer centene is going to buy magellan health for $2.2 billion. teledyne technologies is buying clear systems for about $8 billion. investor carl icahn selling more than half of his stake in herbalife. and giving up his seat on

herbalife's board. icahn's stake dropped from 16% now to about 6%. "the wall street journal" says roku is in advanced talks to buy quibi's catalog as it winds down its oraonpetis. i don't know, does anyone wanting to watch those things? anyway, stay tuned you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc glowing skin, and healthy nails. and try advanced, now with two times more biotin.

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coming up, a bizarre story you'll want to hear about. a chinese billionaire suspected of being poisoned. the netflix series involving the creators of "game of thrones" is now up in the air as a result. plus, billionaire investor and crypto bull michael novagrass gives us his take. stay tuned for all of that and more you're watching "squawk" on cnbc

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now a story about a chinese billionaire that reads like a hollywood thriller but it's all real eunice yoon joins us now good morning, eunice, it's good to see you >> good evening, joe it's great to see you too. but the story is quite shocking, as you can imagine this is a 39-year-old gaming tycoon who died on christmas day after reportedly being poisoned by one of his deputies he founded a company called yuzu which is probably best known overseas for creating the smash hit online strategy game called "game of thrones, winter is coming." he also had other major plans.

he was working with netflix as well as the creators of "game of thrones" to adapt a very popular sci-fi novel here in china called three body problem to tv. his hope was believed to be to turn this novel and trilogy into a chinese version of "star wars." so the talk at this time is that the two had a major dispute. not only over pay but potentially over future films. and so the discussion in state media and on social media as well as with people who are close to lin is that a neurotoxin found in puffer fish was slimmed into lin's netmation. netflix has said they will not comment on the potential impact of the production.

but people close to the plans say that these type of productions usually take two to three years anyway, but they are a little bit concerned that there could be a scheduling delay. >> puffer fish i never thought i'd -- you would have a report where the two words would be mentioned maybe separately at some point but that's bizarre, eunice, in a nutshell i want to ask you about another billionaire, jack ma do we know where he is right now? people on twitter are like where's jack where's jack ma? >> yeah, a lot of people are asking where jack is because he has disappeared from view, from public view since october when, as we've been reporting quite a bit now, he was highly critical and quite vocal about the way he views the chinese regulators and how they have been approaching the fin tech industry. this happened right before the

ant ipo. since then he has been noticeably silent. the reason why the chatter has come up again today is he was supposed to be a judge on an african version of "shark tank." he created that show so everyone was expecting him to be there but instead alibaba subbed in a different executive. so it just has added to a lot of these questions as to whether or not he's been disappeared by the authorities or if he's on the run somewhere or perhaps he's just laying low. i spoke to a couple of people in the tech industry and they said that he was here in beijing relatively recently. so -- and most people think that he's probably just laying low and hoping things will cool down the main reason is that they think that his detention would really conflict with beijing's official line that it's very welcoming to entrepreneurs and wants more private businesses to

help promote china not only domestically but also overseas so that is kind of their main reason, but this is china and people do disappear here so nobody is ruling it out as a possibility. >> all right, eunice i don't think i've said happy new year to you. there's another new year coming february 12th. do you know what the next animal is on february 12th? you do i do we're going from -- >> tell me >> we're going from the rat, year of the rat to the year of the ox, in case you're wondering. now you know. >> sounds good >> now you know. make some soup, ox tail soup anyway, thanks, eunice we will see you later, thank you. andrew >> okay, thanks, joe. when we come back, allianz

advisor on what he's watching this week, this month and this year in the market that's right after the break

welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc

we've got a news alert for you discovery's streaming service just launched in the united states with a wide array of distribution agreements. discovery plus is available on amazon fire tv, streaming devices, also roku, apple tv, google's chrome cast, xbox 1 and other platforms. it also has a distribution agreement right here in the u.s. with verizon the service featuring several dozen new titles and more than 50,000 episodes from current and past discovery shows the price is $4.99 with an ad-free version costing $6.99. you don't want to miss an interview with the ceo a little later this morning on "squawk alley. becky. >> thanks, andrew. we are coming into the new year riding a strong market rally. mike santoli joins us with what's happened in similar situations in the recent past. good morning, good to see you. >> good morning, becky it's been a broad, consistent rally, carried through to highs

in the fourth quarter. this is a five-year look at the s&p 500. what you have tended to see, and here's a good example, at the end of 2016 of course another post election you had a little bit of follow-through and a bit of an air pocket, not much to speak of there the more dramatic one, very strong surge into 2018, january 1st three weeks, big air pocket that kamd tcapped the market qu while. last year we were up 10% in the fourth quarter of 2019 you did see this nice rally coming into the year and it did also persist then you had turbulence in january well before the covid sell-off that's why people are starting to position for it or psychologically prepare for the sense that maybe we're due for something. doesn't mean it's going to happen take a look at the volatility index over two years it really has refused to settle down as much as you might think. remember fourth quarter of 2019 i talked about how we had a similar rally. look at how low the vix was. people were not hevegging very

much we have a massive shock that's only ten months or so in the rear-view mirror, less than ten months that takes time to wear off. people are hedging around the georgia runoff and this sense that people want to lock in some gains and take out some insurance. so i think there's room for this to go down but it's telling us there's a little more of an energy and adrenaline in the market keeping volatility levels higher both to the upside and the downside, becky. >> hey, mike, i don't know if this even makes sense in a year like this when we've thrown out all of the rule books and broken just about anything you've ever seen in the past, but there is that old thing that if -- how the first week of january goes, so goes the month of january, so goes the year. what should we take away from that, if anything, and what can we take away given how big of a run-up we saw just in december >> statistically robust to look at that. i think there's a little bit of a tilt toward the upside if you're higher in the first part

of january but the market generally goes up two-thirds of the time or something like that. so i don't think that's necessarily the case one interesting thing to watch here is the so-called january effect was mostly about small stocks beating large stocks in january and laggard stocks in the prior year outperforming the leaders of the prior year. we saw that. we saw a ton of that activity happen in the past couple of months so the big question is do we revert back to another way of going back to the old beaters or is it just going to be a little more of a muddle we'll have to watch and see if that factor interplay has changed this year because of what preceded it >> all right, thanks, mike joining us now, allianz advisor mohamed el-erian and he's also the president of queens college cambridge. you know, there's never enough time at the end for me to really get to the important stuff with you, mohamed, so let's -- i will get in trouble for this probably and we'll get to the markets in just a second. but gase is gone now

would you be interested? i mean you could come in here as the coach of the jets with your pockets. the whole payroll cap would mean nothing. you could bring -- you could field the best team ever, just yourself, if you were to take over are you interested in the jets position >> joe, happy new year. >> you too. >> and i'm glad the regular season is over look, if you want to talk football, it's not about the jets you should feel sorry for the giants my heart went out to them yesterday when i saw what was going on in the sunday night game so if you want to talk football we really should talk about giants fans. >> we can't go over every team, but eric bieniemy is on the list who do they go -- someone offensive, someone defensive. >> pick the coach of michigan. if you really want to shake the things up. >> oh, yeah. >> but if you want to talk

football and the jets, you need a reset of the whole organization, joe. >> all right i'm going to get -- probably going to hear immediately that i'm a horrible person. anyway, so here's my question to you about the markets, the economy and everything else. we have georgia tomorrow so it's unclear what happens you have always been a person that wished the fed could hand off the baton to the fiscal types and actually do something, whether it's infrastructure or not. we've still got this pandemic. we spent a lot of money already. what do you think we need right now from the biden administration and whatever the makeup of congress is? and do you think we'll get it or are we already out over our skis in terms of valuation? >> so what we need right now for the economy, i want to stress for the economy, is a broader policy response. and i think most economists agree on what we need and it hasn't been any different in the last couple of years what we need for the markets is

the fed to continue with the pedal to the metal approach. i suspect that they will continue the one thing i would ask to mike santoli's really good analysis is that most people are waiting for a dip to buy so to the extent that we do get a dip, look for buyers to come quickly because it's so deeply engrained that there is no alternative to stocks right now. so as long as the fed remains supportive of markets, the path of least resistance is going to be going up, despite the economy struggling a lot, joe. >> what type of non-fed stuff would you like to see, and what do you think is possible and would you raise taxes, for example, given the opportunity with the kind of economy we have right now as a backdrop? >> so you need three things. one is you need to counter what is going to be intense downward pressure on productivity

we have higher concentration of companies, we have less globalization. all that is going to lower productivity we have massive gains that can be atrbtributed domestically. think about infrastructure what retraining and retooling can do, that's first second, on the fiscal side we've got to get better at supporting pro-growth initiatives and that's really critical it involves fiscal reform. not just whether you raise taxes, whether you cut taxes you need to reform the system. and thirdly, we need to be a global leader. there are things out there globally that can improve the outlook for everybody. all this is attainable it comes down to politics and georgia is important in this regard >> tell me how that's going -- how you expect that to play out and what do you mean it's important? >> so, you know, i'm not a political analyst. i suspect it's going to be close. it's important because you want

the administration to be able to move one way or the other. if we get a divided congress, which is what we are likely to get, then we're not going to see any major economic reform measures so that's the trade-off between on the one hand risking one party doing things you don't like versus risking paralysis. and that's what we're facing right now. >> yeah, but you're not ak nagni about which way we should reform the economy, mohamed. >> no. if i have my choice, i'd rather have a government able to get things done. is it going to be perfect? no. >> i'm not surprised at that rns answer, but i can tell you you're not going to find a whole lot of market types or free market types that would agree with you there and the market itself, you can see that people have said it has done well because of gridlock.

>> i know. >> the notion that you'd have a dem senate, a dem house and a dem president is horrifying to most investors so don't throw it out there. >> i know it's horrifying for many in the marketplace but we have to remember that you cannot disconnect the markets from the real economy forever if you do, there will be a significant backlash second, we cannot continue with worse inequality that will cause populism that will be problematic for the markets. >> what causes the inequality? does a fed at zero for ten years inflating asset values for people that own assets when we finally started getting some wage gains before the pandemic because of pro growth initiatives, how do you solve the income inequality? by redistribution, mohamed, or

sdj distribution or does that make it worse there's two ways of looking at it and there are disagreements obviously between how to approach it. >> joe, i think you and i would agree that we don't want the inequality of opportunity. >> right. >> the thing that worries me the most is the inequality of opportunity because that is very destructive to what america is. >> you have to decide whether the private sector is better at delivering equal opportunity or whether you think the government is somehow going to legislate equal opportunity. >> no, joe, we know the private sector is better. >> most people say the private sector, mohamed. >> i would say the private sector but enable the private sector by things the government can do like infrastructure, and retooling and retraining >> but you're not going to take the coaching job if offered. you're saying you're not interested >> no, but you should take it. you could make a difference,

joe. >> oh, yeah. no, no, i don't think -- you got to choose when you came to new york you chose the jets and the mets. figure that out. figure that out. not the giants i hope that's not indicative of your picks on the economy. becky. >> bye-bye, thank you. >> thanks. when we come back, the return of jim cramer, we'll get his first take on the markets in just a moment. and michael novogratz weighs in on bitcoin with 2021 just three days old so far. stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" and this is cnbc. a and all the ways schwab can help me invest. this is andy reminding me how i can keep my investing costs low and that there's no fee to work with him. here's me learning about schwab's satisfaction guarantee. accountability, i like it. so, yeah. andy and i made a good plan. find your own andy at schwab.

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welcome back, everybody. let's get over to jim cramer right now. jim, welcome back. it's good to see you, bud. >> how are you i'm obviously at home. it's a little different. trying to get organized, but it's great to talk to you guys

>> it's great to have you back you took off the right week, a quiet week you're back just in time for some chaos, although you'd never guess that by watching the futures this morning we've got some political uncertainty out there, some issues with the vaccine rollouts at this point. are you surprised to see the futures up or is this just a continuation of momentum and no surprise here? >> i was limpistening to mike santoli. january is usually an up month i obviously am concerned about what's going to go on in georgia, which could be a change in the way we view all of washington i thought that your interview with senator cramer was very interesting. i would come to the following conclusion about him i'm not related to him >> you just want to make that point clear? >> yeah. i just want to be sure i've met him long before he was

a senator. i checked the family tree. there is quintessentially no relation which, by the way, after that interview, i'm quite proud >> because you're concerned about what some senators are doing at this point to say they want to look back into this, they want to continue these claims of election fraud >> let's move on let's just kind of move on with democracy. the idea that senator cramer says there was no pressure, i think that even president trump would have to admit that there was tremendous pressure. so the disingenuous nature of these people is fine everyone -- there's nothing in the constitution which says you can't be disingenuous. i've studied the constitution. i really want to recommend that senator cramer do so it's a civics thing. it's a really good document. madison played a role, jefferson had a shot at it

it's very valuable and i would love to see it be reinstated among some of the people's minds who are in congress because this really is about the constitution and whoever won or lost, the constitution has really got this thing covered. it's a great document, works and when every judge punts, i don't think that's accurate. i think these judges are fulfilling their end of the constitution i wish i were being facetious, becky. i wish there was some way i could say the only reason i feel this way is because what i think should happen with biden i'm just stuck on this idea of the founding fathers, the federalist papers. a lot of what they were going on is about the idea that the people matter. now, they didn't matter as much then as they do now because of the way that the electoral college did. but i don't know, i think we've kind of got to move on i just think that the people have spoken. they get to speak again in another four years senator cramer is absolutely

entitled to his view even if he's completely utterly wrong. >> you know, the interesting thing is, he was trying to thread the needle, jim, and say that he doesn't think his vote should overturn this but there are 11 senators who have said, yes, they would like to go ahead and raise the objections i'm not sure where senator cramer comes down on that point. senators who are doing this and throwing it out. >> absolutely. every right to be, to really kind of represent the 74 million people who voted for trump but hehas no right to continue to act like there's no pressure. and that isn't a decision to overturn what happened in the election those were republicans that president trump was talking to look, i could just simply say here, let's throw out the darn election come on, i saw the tape. it's a redo. but constitutionkeeps getting in the way

you know, it's not like roger, lincoln backed it. lincoln was totally on board i am on board. i'm going with lincoln >> thank you, jim, we'll see you in just a few minutes. >> no problem. "squawk box" will be right back m plus saffron, to naturally boost your mood. stress comfort from nature's bounty.

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right now, though, trading down 7.5% and new record of about $35,000 per coin joining us right now to make some sense of what has been a wild ride in the dow digital field. happy new year to you, mike. help us understand what you think is happening here and less about the quick drop i'd love to hear your thoughts there. but maybe, also, the quick extension even when we think about what was going on new year's eve and getting to 30k. how much of that do you think is retail money and how much of that is institutional money? >> listen, i think one thing you learn is that bitcoin doesn't take holidays. you'd like to have a saturday or sunday off every once in a while but no rest for the bitcoiners

look we took out $20,000 which was a big deal two or three weeks ago which created this sense in the market. institutions are pouring in. i can't hire people fast enough to cover all the demand we have for different institutions that want to get involved and there's very little supply you have the amazing supply and balance. i think a lot of the weekend stuff with the retail bitcoiners trying to get in and front run the beginning of this year and you see it almost always the last year story gets played out in the first few weeks of january and see it in the currency market and got exaggerated in the crypto markets. up 40% in the last four days >> does that make sense to you >> it makes sense there is a mindshift that it is not an asset class. a lot of institutions are

saying, hey, what is the next point i can look at. if i missed bitcoin, what is the next one most people stay with bitcoin but that story is pushing things >> mike, here's my question. let's talk institutional investors. i agree with you the past run up in the last five, six days a retail run and not institutional run and maybe reflebtive of an expectation and you're very bullish and a lot of money on the line in bitcoin and this is your whole business. but you're talking institutions who say come 2021 they plan to put more money into bitcoin or put it in for the first time how are they having those conversations with you are they saying, look, we want to wait for a pull back? we want to come in at this price. what kind of real conversations are happening because at that institutional level, i have to imagine there should be some semblance of diligence, research about what they're doing besides just saying, hey, mike, buy it

at the market price today, please >> certainly what i know it will be supported. we had a parabolic move in the last week and a half so, correct. i don't know where the correction is going to come from we might have seen the high yesterday, the short-term high but whai know big institutions waiting to buy so, some guys want to get a little bit on the table now so they'll buy a little bit with the hope they'll scale down and other people are waiting patiently. used to be oh, we'll wait for 17,000 and now waiting for 24,000 you'll see big support in the low to mid 20s again, doesn't mean you're going to get there moves always correct at one point and there's a lot of friends. same thing in the u.s. stock market quite frankly >> mike, all this is uniquely

happening against the backdrop of more regulations when it comes to bitcoin and the treasury secretary before he leaves is trying to regulate how do you sort of square both of those items >> you know, for institutions that story is a good one, right. most of the regulation that has been thrown out both by secretary mnuchin and by the sec going after, you know, a ripple in xrp doesn't really pertain to bitcoin. the financial world more and stable coins and to replacing the dollar with the digital version of the dollar. bitcoin kind of gets a free pass so institutions like hearing that it is more institutional. that regulators are okay with it so, ironically, this is all pro-bitcoin but maybe negative in the crypto space. the theory beside it didn't care i thought this, the regulation

would have hurt the theory a little bit more because stable coins are built on top of the theory just that much momentum. i think what it tells you is chairman powell is dominating all markets all around the world. and as long as there's this idea that money is free forever and we're going to keep printing it every dream and every story can get extrapulated to crazy valuation. i mean, look at tesla. it's going to go up again and again. at one point gravity comes back but i don't know if gravity comes back until we get some shift in, you know, the fed and it doesn't seem like we're even close. >> we will, we will see whether the fed has created a new bubble or not mike, we appreciate it, as always we'll be keeping an eye on bitcoin and we'll talk more with you quite soon about bitcoin and whether it continues to rise or fall meantime, a quick file check on the markets right now. as we head into the first trading session of the new year.

the s&p 500 looking to open up about 15 points higher and the dow up 101 points and nasdaq up 58 points. make sure you join us tomorrow "squawk on the street" begins right now. good morning, happy new year, everybody. i'm david faber along with jim cramer, carl has the morning off. let's look at futures as we head to the first opening bell of 2021 the year's first trading session looking like those from last year we are looking for a higher open the road map does start with the record rally stocks, as i just said, pick up where they left off last year.