lower. >> is that the same as yours, jim? >> i'm with brenda she's smart. i'm with brenda. >> all right. >> pete? >> i'm going to give you billy, billy, chinese online entertainment. >> degas, lastly and quickly to you? >> yeah, chemed. >> good weekend, everybody "the exchange" is right now. >> hi, everybody welcome to "the exchange" on this friday. what do you do with bitcoin now? famed value investor bill miller joins us in just a moment for an exclusive interview. he's currently bitting on the cryptocurrency soaring to 40,000 today. the latest on all that more. an economic dud, what former fdic chair sheila baer says and why? what should the fed do instead

and the disconnect between soaring stocks and the individual investors should you pull back on risk or not? we'll explore all of that ahead today, but, first, let's get the latest market moves. dom chu with more on that. hi, dom. >> kell, we should at some point bull pack from record highs. the dow is modestly lower, but for the s&p 500, holding above the 3,800 market and for nasdaq modest gains both of these get gold stars because they hit record intraday highs in trading today one. other themes developing right now. look at the reflation or economically sensitive type of stocks hitting record highs. every one of these has hit a record high so far today target, speaking to the consumer perhaps, applied materials, a leading indicator for the semiconductor chip business. blackrock, the world's biggest asset manager up on the day and fan of theal on the industrial

side all high today perhaps a little bit of commentary where investors think the economically sensitive part of the market will go. still to the upside. see if it pulls back at some point and then you mentioned bitcoin. i don't know -- i don't even know what to say about it right now. 41,144 in coin metrix, up 6% been a fairly volatile trade intraday so far but still these moves higher at some point it will come down, but right now, kelly, for those people who follow statistics out there, it is now about three standard deviations above its 50-day average price for those that don't follow statistics, it means it's a very, very rare occurrence for it to go this high this quickly. the overall market cap for bitcoin now, over $1 trillion. this is something to watch, kell i'll send things back over to you. >> bitcoin and all the other cryptos. dom, thank you that's exactly where we'll pick things up right now, dom chu one big believer in bitcoin for years has been bill mill irv

miller value partners and in his latest newsletters he wrote warren buffett famously called bitcoin rat poison he may well be right, it could be rat poison but the rat could be cash. joining me now is bill miller, he's the chairman and chief executive officer at miller value partners bill, great to have you back welcome. >> thanks, kelly nice to be back. >> i in some ways think you kicked off this whole thing in early november had you were on this program we talked about a number of different things that day. i asked you about bitcoin because i know you've been a pull on it for some time and at the end of the interview when bitcoin was just under $15,000, i said to you of all the things that we've discussed what are you excited the most about, it is there technology that you're most excited about you said you're most excited about bitcoin. are you as excited with it at 41,000 as you were when it was under 15 >> oh, absolutely. one of the things that's interesting about bitcoin is that it gets less risky the

higher it goes so that's the opposite what have happens with most stocks, but because bitcoin is so early in the adoption cycle, then you can't -- even though the occ will allow all the big banks and investment banks to custody or to buy and sell bitcoin, you can't do that with any of them so they are permitted to but they haven't done it yet but basically they are concerned, but every day bitcoin is a supply/demand story. there's 900 new bitcoins created every day. it's estimated that paypal and square alone are buying -- their customers are buying all of those it, and bitcoin's total supply is growing less than 2% a year, and it's obvious by the price that the demand is growing much, much faster than that so as long as those -- that obtains, bitcoin is likely to go higher and perhaps considerably higher >> how much higher, bill, because one of the questions -- there's kind two sides of the same coin that people are asking right now. the ones who have been in bitcoin are saying, okay, you know, am i getting too greedy, is it time to sell and take a

little profit. the ones who haven't been are similarly asking do they wait for the inevitable pullback where three stan darnold deviation moves above normal and do they wait for the pullback if they want to buy some. what would your advice be? >> dom makes a good point, three standard deviations is fairly extreme. the issue though is when bitcoin hats moves as they did in 2017, you if to the levels of standard deviation because bitcoin tends to move in spurts by tend to be followed by corrections and there's been three corrections of 80% which is normal until this type of very early, early technology with a big total addressable market but for those people waiting for the pullback they got it in the first quarter. you could have bought it at 4,000, 2,000 in the first quarter but the nature of any correction is when things correct sharply the stock market went down 38% because of covid, and if people are waiting for a correction to buy, they weren't buying, they were selling and that's what typically happens,

once things correct, those waiting for the correction to keep going lower hand when they miss it on the upside they are asking if they should buy it >> bill, so one of the ways in which you made this analogy for years now and why you think it's attractive, you've likened it to the market cap of gold that if people hold it akin to gold it has huge upside and we've seen this as well that people are putting their cash in and even jon najarian has been holding cash in becoin those two factors have been part of the argument, but i don't know if you saw last week jpmorgan, which a few weeks back had put out a note saying to your point, you know, that if institutional investors put just half a percent or less than that of their portfolios in bitcoin, we're talking about, you know, it doubling, and it has since they wrote that note the latest note, they say they are not so sure that further upside is sustainable. they say that it's more volatile

than gold. the it behaves differently you know, you can't just assume that all of these institutional players are going to pile in to that extent, so is that argument kind of running its course have we already seen most upside that's going to come from people and the huge big money players getting involved with bitcoin, or do you really think that it's sustainable much higher from here >> kelly, the fed has told you that they are going to pin interest rates at zero for the foreseeable future, and we just hit inflation expectations, the break-even inflation rate just across 2% which has happened only two quarters in the last ten year, and so if you look at that, if you hold your money in cash, it's a guaranteed loser by at least 2% a year, so taking some portion of the cash balances on people having their savings or that companies have on their balance sheets, especially the big cash rich companies, that seems to mow a

no-brainer if you put 1% or 2% of your cash into that. you can afford to lose that if bitcoin happens to be an ultimate failure i don't think it will, but nonetheless you can still afford it, but what you can't afford is have your cash balances eroded by 2% or more if the fed keeps its interest rates pinned to zero and as larry lindsey was talking about earlier, the wage inflation starts to heat up. i think it's more of a risk management strategy than anything else to have a little bit of money in bitcoin. very square put 50 million and mass mutual put us 50 million in and michael sailior at microstrategies has 1 billion, all the company's cash in bitcoin. that may be a bit extreme, but it's no more extreme than having all of your cash as a guaranteed loser. >> one more question on this it's a point my dad has made time and again when he says, listen, no way federal regular

haters will let this thing go and go and go and in the last point or so we've seenminor guidance coming out requiring many so of the providers like square to keep contact of both parties in a bitcoin transaction. your point is not bitcoin is valuable because it's being use the for nefarious processes, but is there a risk, regulatory issue here that there's no way that this thing can keep going and going without government pushback. >> there's concerns about the chinese and and what might happen to bitcoin. you can't cut the head off the snake here, it's decentralized if the u.s. government tries to put in -- the people who want to

own bitcoin would go to other markets overare more regulated and more opaque. you mention the series of guidelines that have come down from fincen. there's 5,000 comments posted on that and while negative for bitcoin the market isn't worried about it because the guidance came out two weeks ago and bitcoin has gone straight up since then and it may be the case that people in the bitcoin market, and i don't know what everybody is thinking to the extent that everybody tries to do something like this, it just makes it -- it just shows that it's more valuable it's something that what bitcoin is trying to protect you against the sorts of things that happened in venezuela or nigeria or argentina where the government wipes you out or confiscates your money or as frankly d. roosevelt did in 1933, '32 or '33 confiscate your gold i think it's something that you have to expect that it's going to be very, very volatile, and if you can't take the volatility you probably shouldn't open it

but the volatility is the price you pay for performance. >> so the final point on this, bill, is you've ruled out the prospects of a dope kegs saying we saw that in the first quarter of last year busy have to think about your investors every day do you say expieced and when it bill mueller selling out and under what conditions if we're not seeing them right now. >> first off, we have a 5% position nor the fund because it's very, very difficult to do that we're looking at the regulatory aspects of that and considering having the s.e.c. to go ahead and do that with our funds but that's part of the issue on bitcoin. bitcoin has got where it is with base chi -- it's very, very difficult for the average person to access through their normal channels which is why gray scale and people like that have done

so well in terms of a price targets i don't have a price target it i have price expectations which i think the bitcoin from here anyway should, you know, should probably be up 52 or 100% from here in the next 12 to 18 months, and if you're to ask me the over/under on that but i would definitely say it would much more likely be higher than lower but, again, i want to emphasize. you said you thought the big correction was over. i have no idea what the correction is going to be if there's a correction we had three 80% corrections if you can't take, that you probably should not own bitcoin. >> well, to your point if we're talking about that kind of upside that would be 60,000 to 80,000 over the next 12 to 18 months you're sticking with it. a perfect time to talk about it. so while you're here let me ask you if anything else is on par with becoin for 2021 but is

there anything that relates to the fed and inflation and other things and as we said we see bitcoin go up today. can can you stick to growth. the can you look to -- kind of calk through now you would positions. >> i think the grows names or faang names valued the market and then growth came back online again so since -- just in the first couple of months am sobbies were flat north next six months and the other big fang stocks have basically gone situations in a value rotation it should

last 12 months but gambling the big growth names will go down and i think i market is, bottoming out because the defligsary risks that we've seen and the risks are to the inflation side meaning risks will be higher than people will expect placing power will be greater that many people expect and that's the regulars pea for the -- for the expect pan puck market that you've brnl. >> i can imagine energy, if banks, that sort of innings this what are their plays >> out performers has -- there's a deepening curve. this is quite unusual because i've hated energy for most of my

career the only time we went big into energy was 1982 which was some time ago, but i think right now, i think right now that the price expectations or just say the valuation expectations built into energy stocks today are such that there are some opportunities there, and, again, owning an energy stock now, the worst performing group for the last ten years, owning energy stocks right now does provide you some protection on the inflation side, and it also should -- you know, it should also help on the side in growth is big and the saudis cook a cut to their priss >> you know, there's just of other names. there's -- there was aticover approach yesterday why a french

company and the pap -- and i would hope that the ceo on the board would reneck and i bomb expect hem to do so. and the people expected to be a secular decliner we expect it to be at worst flat in terms of revenues, but mike thinks that they can actually grow, and if they can grow, then it's a $70 name again. that's a name where it would have to be much, much higher for us to be interested in selling out. that's one, and then adt, a longtime favorite. adt has gone nowhere it same in at 14 and at 8 right now. i think it's a great, great company. i mentioned to sdwref bezos a couple years they should buy adt, and cooing israel has come. >> it's the largest company.

it's a very interestingmented business and low risk in the adt today and two other xmps this is it a -- the theede is up 150% in the last couple of day that's the onlied 3 printing technology and there-of-this was started by a bunch of m.i.t. scientists and this over the next several years, several months and years will be great and then lastly online purchasing of used cars has about a 1% market slayer hand a company called vroom and it was started behind the management. and so we think that this one can go grow, and there's

thousands of automakers out there that they can take share from. >> bill, two final questions the first one is if you're a big older of alibaba, and if so david faber has had to come out with reporting about the fact that he's not disappointing but he's just lying low. do you still have exposure and would you maintain it here >> oh, yeah. we think that that's giving you a buying opportunity in alibaba. the chinese government doesn't want alibaba to faith. they just want to make sure that jack ma or whoever is running these companies kind of, you know, follows the party line on things and -- and jack ma was very critical of the regulatory system in china, and it was no surprise that they are coming down on him, but -- but, you know, that stock trades now around 17 times their fiscal 2022 earnings which is

extraordinarily low for a company of that scope and etch roark not just in china but globally i think it's attractive. in you observe -- what's the impact on cash flow over the next couple of year, and we see very little on that. >> interesting, interesting, because that one has also been on skid. because you've talked for years. i did ter maybe -- i've never heard tesla one that you're necessarily look to. the do you have any thoughts on why its price action is so eerily similar to bitcoin or what is going on with that stock? >> with tesla or -- well, yeah, sure we actually looked at tesla before people knew about it, and that was up with of the big investing minister takes

because, you know, i think it was trading on the original stock at around $25, and -- and then it went to $28 it i said four-game it. it's too expensive so right now what happened with tesla is that everybody strs it the giant disrupter and to date anyway non-of the major competitors have come out with a buyer that anybody wants to by so if you look at the global market his price -- the price is not out of whack if they get 50%, 75% of the market eventually down the roofltd right now it's going up because it's going up, and, you know, at many so point -- i mean, the market right now for companies that are the true disrupters, the market doesn't care about value air, and so people just want to go to the company that's perceived to be the leading disrupter, and tesla is that if i were elon musk and i would -- i had a market value of what tes are a's market cap is

i would buy general motors global balancing and dap at all that's ago and mary berra's investment strategy is perhaps better than anybody's out there. strategically, that would rake whole lot of sense >> that's fascinating. before we go markets are taking a leg lower and democratic senator manchin says he opposed $2,000 stimulus checks so we don't know what the fate yet of that relief package will be. do you think that any of these are buying opportunities i mean, for stocks broadly haven't asked you. gold, i think our quite bullish on, and is that predicate asked on more stimulus coming from d.c. this year >> i would just say that i do think gold is attractive here, but anybody who owns gold and does not own at least half as

much bitcoin as they own gold i think is making a big misic it a. i think senator manchin's comment here is real struggles aren't heard that before people are worried that the senate will be controlled by the democrats which it will be mathematically but the key will be people like senator manchin from west virginia and senator collins, the moderates, and nothing will get passed if they can't get the moderates or the republican party to go along with it, so that to me is a sign that if he's interested -- not interested in a $2,000 stimulus package right now, i'm pretty sure he's not interested in a capital gains tax rate that's equal to the ordinary income ramt which is part of the democratic platform so i would -- i would be encouraged with that with respect to the types of things that can be done legislatively. it will will have to be partisan and can't be radical and will tilt to the center left but that's okay.

the. >> and that's good for stocks presumably then? >> oh, yeah,antsth absolutely. i would not own bonds here when basically we've got $18 trillion of global bonds and inflation rates are headed higher. that -- that's not a recipe for a successful investment. >> bill, it's been great to have you today. thank you so much. >> thanks, kell, and we'll sigh in several months, right, back on the air. >> yes thank you. >> going to be a dramatic weekend over here. bill miller of miller partners joining me. the latest out of washington as i mentioned headlines on top of what's already been a dramatic week. the president already back on twitter acknowledging for the first time that a new administration will be inaugurated jan 20, all of this as several of his cabinet members have resigned and we're expected to hear from the president-elect in the next few moments. kayla tausche is here for us kayla. >> reporter: the question is how many longer the president's term will last and if president trump's term will go all the way

until january 20th house democrats are on a call that's ongoing right now discussing next steps for a possible second impeachment of the president with that process potentially beginning as soon as monday, according to nbc news. speaker nancy pelosi is telling colleagues that she is expected to speak with president-elect joe biden later today to discuss the option which house democratic leadership had said in recent days was sort of a backup option if vice president pence did not remove trump from office himself through the 25th amendment. some republicans who voted against trump's raft impeachment have suggested they could support it this time but others like west virginia moderate, a democrat, have raised doubts it would succeed this time. three sources familiar with the matter tell me secretaries nufn and pompeo with among cabinet secretaries who separately explored the possibility of the 25th amendment in recent days, but it was seen as too lengthy and uncertain a process to succeed, and so the conclusion

was to let the clock run out on trump's presidency and hope that family members could convince him of a detente meantime, speaker please issued a statement saying today she spoke with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff about the remaining days of trump's presidency and wanted to prevent trump from initiating military hostilities or accessing is the launch codes for a potential nuclear strike kelly? >> kayla, so many different developments want to mention this one that "the washington post" is reporting and his potential opposition to $2,000 direct stimulus checks. we heard thoughts from bill miller and others. i mean, manchin is probability significant player now who has to take the pulse of his constituents and decide which way he's going to go on all of these big agenda items >> reporter: well, manchin is one of the most closely watched members in the senate, and even more show now than -- than ever.

people on capitol hill are joking that he is the new majority leader, not senator chuck schumer because it is the moderate caucus that will be able to determine which policies succeed and which fail manchin is in a difficult spot here he's elected as a democrat but west virginia was the second widest margin of victory for trump, the widest mar gyp of victory in 2016 and the second widest in 2020 so clearly there's a very conservative constituency in the state even though he was elected as a democrat, but his views will be extremely closely watched and that's another reap why his views on impeachment and the pulse he's taking of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle is seen as a bellwether here >> markets are selling off off on that as well and maybe taking some of the breathing odds out of the markets. despite all the recent it

your royal, the markets do continue to claim. and more encouraging vaccine news around the globe as deaths in the -

welcome back to "the exchange." it's been a quick check of

markets. at session lows after the comments that "the washington post" attributes to joe manchin saying he would potentially oppose $2,000 stimulus checks. you can see in the sector's discretionary is leading the way with a 1% gain and tech is slightly positive but on the flip side industrials, financials and materials are your biggest decliners here are many so of the video movers check out u.s. steel which is jumping on a double upguide from deutsche bank from buy to sell the firm says its position is thanks to elevated steel prices. the markets have come to the choice and u.s. is up 30% this year trash or treasure. there's a failed streaming startup quibbe an another day and all-time high for tesla. analysts out with a note

confessing, quote, we've been on the wrong side of tesla for over a year now tess has has added a gm's worth of market cap and nez la is now bigger or as i just mentions here we should -- bejust spoke to bill who said he thought at this point it's la shut buy gm and take advantage of its local manufacturing base let's get to sue herera for a nbc news update. >> hi, kell el good to see you. hello, everyone. lawyer sydney powell, a key player in the effort to reverse joe biden's election 11:00 sued by dominion investigate systems for defamation the company wants damages of more than $1.3 billion accusing powell of falsely claiming that

diminron rigged the election, had bribed georgia officials and was createded in venezuela to rig elections for hugo chavez. the fbi has released this photo of a possible suspect and is offering a reward of up to $50 for information leading to the person or people responsible for leaving two pipe bombs at the republican and democratic national committee headquarters on wednesday officials say the devices were found before they exploded but could have caused great harm and on the tenth anniversary of the shootings that killed six and wounded 13 others including representative gabby giffords bells rang out in tucson to honor those victims. and a color guard escort as well kelly, you are up to date. i will accepted it back to you >> all right sue, thank you very much we have more breaking news coming in now. kayla tausche rejoins us with that kayla?

>> reporter: kelly, one of the many jarring images from wednesday's seige of the capitol included a man sitting at the desk of house speaker nancy pelosi with his feet up on the desk and we now just learned that his named is richard barnett. he was seen in that photo and he's just been arrested in arkansas by authorities and charged wentering and remaining on restricted grounds with violent entry and with theft of public property. we're awaiting more details, but we learned from a pelosi aide earlier today there was a laptop stolen from a conference room adjacent to her office that was used mostly for presentations. it's unclear if that is the property that is referenced in these charges, but it's certainly something of concern on capitol hill and richard par net of arkansas has been arrested for slept entry, as you see, in that picture kelly, back to you >> kayla, thank you. kayla tausche. coming up, the fed went into uncharted territory last year.

did it help to prop up the markets? we'll have that answer next. don't go anywhere.

welcome back we've got the jobs report this morning.

showed the economy lost 140,000 jobs in december that's the first monthly decline since april as surge willing virus cases and fresh restrictions took a toll on the recovery, but we did see some positive signs as well job gains were revised upward for october and november, nearly offsetting the december losses and wages were surprisingly strong here to help us make sense of the data and the state of th economy is michelle my yes, head of u.s. economics head of global research the wage number was pretty strong, that's like 10% annualized. >> yeah, it was exceptionally stopping, the wage number but we have to be real careful reading too much into that a lot has to do with compositional shifts in the labor market so when you think about where job cuts were concentrated it was highly in leisure and hospitality which tend to have lower paid workers, and the fact that those individuals fell out of the labor marketnumbers means that overall wage growth from a compositional perspective look stronger. unfortunately, we don't have a really god sense right now of

wage growth. we haven't over the last several months ever since covid hit and probably won't for some time going forward until we've had a more complete healing in the labor market. >> but are you generally in the camp, michelle, that thinks that's wage pressures will surprise later this year because we'll go to maybe 3% wayne lo gains but if we don't and they stay elevated, that's going to be a very different policy response from the fed. >> the economics would suggest that the wage pressure should certainly moderate just from the fact that the unemployment rate is still elevated. it's come down, but it's still high above where you should in terms of full employment, so all that should lead to downward pressure on wages which we'll find out after we've returned to some sort of equilibrium in terms of the composition of the labor market so i would be in that camp as well that you're going to see somewhat slow wage growth that said, to your point, kelly, if there is a surprise, if pages

end up, you know, remaining elevated or actually accelerate from here, that would then fuel the inflation narrative which is already moving through markets >> and we've seen a number of different places raising their gdp forecasts considerably over the past week since the democrats took georgia, and it looks like -- i'm seeing estimates on a offered $1 trillion of stimulus being priced in gdp estimates of 6 president 5% growth this year. i don't know if that got brought to a screeching halt after the comments by senator manchin saying he's not on board with $2,000 stimulus checks there will may be more push lachs to some of the bigger numbers than we thought. how do you guys put that all together and anything how much physical at all stimulus is coming down the prescribing.

at the moment our income growth is 4.6% which is strong but we have a weak response in q1 if another round of stimulus is passed and i think it's leaning in that direction the dollar amount we'll still find out. there's obviously quite a lot of negotiation that has to go through before we can get that stimulus through the door again especially after 900 billion was just passed but if we get another round in february or early march that will then boost growth at the start of the year and provide an even bigger buffer to the consumer and also remember right now that there's a lot of money already out there. there's over $1 trillion what have we would consider excess savings. that's already outstanding now there's distributional issues with that much. a lot that have is kind of unintentional saving the people who probably need the money the most are not necessarily the ones sitting on piles of cash so more stimulus will help, but there's already a lot of money out there so you have to think very carefully about the multipliers with every additional round of

stimulus how much it will then boost the economy. it will highly depend on how that stimulus is designed and how able it is to be targeted to the people >> exactly whether it's checks or different kinds of investments, we eeoc state and local aid, a lot still to be decided. michelle, thanks so much for joining us today it's great to have you. >> you've got it, kelly. thank you. >> michelle meyer with bank of america. despite all the d.c. chaos and the back and forth the stock market continues to tick higher. sharon epperson with a look at the disconnect and what should individual investors be doing? >> the pandemic and the political fallout over what happened at the u.s. capitol cannot keep the stock market down in fact some investors, particularly new investors, may be wondering how they can actually invest here with this disconnect as they are looking at their portfolios. for the most part average

investors appear to be following major market participants. you know, about 68% of the stock market is made up of institutional investors. whether that's banks or institutional advisers or pension funds, and the rest is individual investors and many of those investors are investing in target date funds or using robo advisers dan egan, the direct orf behavioral finance at betterment says that may help to take some of the emotions out of investing, and though you have to remember, that before making an impulsive mood, always ask yourselves these questions >> are you excited is your heart beating a little bit fast do you feel a little bit of adrenaline nobody makes good financial decisions in that setting. nobody will make a smart long-term decision based on short-term anxiety the first is a real cooling off period saying i'm really worried about this i'm unlikely to make a smart decision for the next few years today. >> now, one of the things that you can do proactively right now

instead of trying to time when to get in or out of the market is to choose investments that are socially responsible investments, and in that way egan says you can have a portfolio that really reflects your own views and your own values kelly? >> sharon, are there other moves you should make with your investments right now? >> well, you know, that tried and true stay the course, maybe you don't exactly want to do that right now what you want to do is review your asset allocation and make sure that it lines with whatever your financial goals are and your investment goals as well as your time horizon and your risk tolerance are. you also want to keep in mind that now might be the right time to rebalance your portfolio. you've seen some strong gains. maybe it's time to trim some of that strength and add to the weakness and to some of those underperformers that will fulfill eventually your investment goals, and then also consider boosting that savings, that savings for the safety buffer that will allow you to take more risk with your investments and also be able to sleep at night

kell >> that's the most important thing. sharon, thanks so much good to see you, our sharon epperson. >> read more about this on cnbc.com/investinyou coming up, former fdic chair sheila baer said efforts to boost the economy were a dud that's next. and a selloff an all three indices on headlines that democratic senator joe manchin opposes $2,000 direct checks the nasdaq have joined the other two in negative territory. the dow is down 246. we're back in a moment

a new piece in "the wall street journal" criticizes the fed's corporate debt relief this year saying most companies benefiting from the fed's bond-buying didn't need the cash to begin with and didn't spend it well either, going as far to say that the fed's corporate

credit facility should be left to die for more i'm joined by one of the authors of this peace. the head of the fdic chair during the financial crisis. great to have you back. >> thanks. >> i think a lot of people would say they are wary of the fed doing this, you know, as a normal matter of business going forward but that it would have made sense in response to the pandemic why do you disagree? >> well, i was actually initially supportive, and i assume their focus would be on the primary credit market and how allowing large companies who are impacted by the pandemic access credit markets to continue operations. that's not really what happened. the bulk of the intervention was in the secondary market. it was really more of a bailout of investors and underwriters and a boondoggle for a lot of companies issuing a lot of debt which they probably didn't need, and we've got unprecedented levels of corporate leverage

now. the original idea was to support these companies as employers to continue operations and that's really not what happened the fed didn't put any strings -- any conditions on this assistance. there were massive -- have been massive layoffs and a lot of companies benefiting from it each while some of them are paying dividend. there were no restrictions on shareholder distributions or using this money for executive compensation as well, so, no, i don't think -- i don't see the evidence there that it really trickled down to main street it was a huge boon to corporate debt markets, and it also has resulted in a lot of misallocation of capital i think these low interest rates had already highly favored large companies over small companies growth companies over value companies that just intensified with the anointments of these unprecedented facilities they were well-intentioned sounded like a good idea but it did not work out that way and it should be allowed to die.

>> i wonder if we're looking too closely at this here because most of the people who have cited the importance of the corporate bond-buying are doing so as itrelates to the entire recovery i mean, a lot of people really pin the whole recovery to that moment when the fed said we're going to go beyond just the usual tool kit to this additional measure because it was really a psychological tell to everybody that will do whatever it takes, you know, the famous mario draghi line you know, does it miss the forest through the trees here? >> yeah. well, it certainly -- certainly wall street celebrate it it was great for the corporate debt markets i don't have any quibble with that, but is that what we want to use monetary policy for, so government interkengss through monetary authority or fiscal authority should be geared towards main street and labor markets and helps people who can't help themselves. yeah, it was a huge boon to wall street, and -- and widely

celebrated i'm sure and initially it seemed like a good idea yeah, i think it's been overdone again, if there is evidence that this had trickled down into real job growth, that would be different but we're seeing, you know, a weak unemployment tridob growth but we're seeing a weak job report today, there's a huge disconnect between wall street and main street. we keep rye lelying on monetary policy to lead to recovery monetary theories are simply not equipped to get the help to main street had has to come from fiscal intervention people worry about consolidation, bing companig co getting even biggers and now this extension of quantitative easing and corporate debt purchases i do think the fed's

well-intenwell-i well-intention well-intentioned, stand down, back off corporate america doesn't need any more help from you and i'm hoping joe biden and janet yellen will be focused on main street when they get into office >> thank you very much for joining us mortgage forbearance numbers had been looking up. we will dig into the latest findings and what it means for housing market for just a minute but first stocks are dropping. om the flip side of the coin fr when we saw when there were expectations of big stimulus coming and now pushing back on that to some extent. we're back in a moment here on "the exchange. california phones offers free specialized phones... like cordless phones,

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improvement is weakening again diana olick joins us from washington with more diana? >> it's a real mixed bag on the mortgage bailout new numbers out today show as of this week just over 5% of all mortgages or 2.74 million are in government or private sector covid-related mortgage bailouts. these plans allow born orowers hold off paying their mortgage for up to a year the mortgage bailout is offered in three-month increments. borrowers have to reapply every three months so while it's good news that so many people came out, the concern is that this is actually the smallest improvement at the end of a quarter since the bailout started in april to compare, at the start of july, after the first quarter, the numbers came down 9% and at the start of october

after the second quarter, they fell by 18%. so this 3% drop now is far short of the improvement we had been seeing and all this is happening as we head toward the one-year mark when the plan expires for those who started in april so, kelly, it's really not looking as good as we had hoped. >> diana, does that one-year mark trigger foreclosure is that the next shoe to drop? >> well, in a is the next shoe to drop and it's going to mean that the banks are either going to have to do mortgage modification programs, which they are already doing for some people or there's going to have to be that conversation of the plan is done, the bailout is over, can you sell the home perhaps instead of going into foreclosure. the difference between what we saw in the financial crisis and now is that we have a very strong housing market, a lot of demand for homes and very low supplies a person who is in trouble could potentially easily sell their home and pocket extra money

rather than go into foreclosure but those in dire circumstances, they may be headed that way. >> thank you diana, appreciate it speaking of the market, it has been a negative session here after headlines earlier this hour from joe manchester ciman. and billionaire commeralci real estate investor rick caruso will join us with his thoughts and reactions. i'll join tyler mathisen after this quick break don't go anywhere. humana medicare advantage plan. call the number on your screen now and speak to a licensed humana sales agent to see if you qualify. learn about plans that could give you more healthcare benefits than you have today. depending on the plan you choose, you could have your doctor, hospital and

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good afternoon, everyone welcome to "power lunch. long with kelly evans, i'm tyler malts mathisen and the 2,000 stimulus checks has hit a major speed bump it's an individual senator details on that. and shares of tesla at an all-time high. is there anything, anything that can stop the rally and don't look now but bitcoin