ban of president trump we'll talk about the future of social media it's thursday, january 14th, 2021, and "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box." this is cnbc i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin. and we're watching the u.s. equity futures this morning. things are indicated a little higher it was a mixed day yesterday the dow was down but only by about 8 points, and really, the markets have been kind of treading water we hit new highs last week, and we have been treading water, watching all of these events unfold in washington the major averages are a half percent off their all time highs, the dow is a gain of 103 points, and this morning, the futures are indicated up by 94 points, that tells you how closely these markets are kind of sitting around near those new

highs. s&p futures are indicates up by 5 1/2 points, the nasdaq is down by 23. if you're looking at the performances over the last seven sessions, the s&p has been up six of those sessions. over the last five days, the nasdaq has been after four of those sessions hat tip to peter for running these statistics for us. the s&p 17 points from the hie, and nasdaq, 79 or 80 points off. if we take a look at what's been happening with the treasury department, we have been watching that, yields push up, the ten year up 1%, this morning at 1.14%, higher yields once again. andrew. thanks, becky. let's get to some of those political stories that everybody is watching this morning the house of representatives voting to impeach president trump for the second time. the chamber charged him with high crimes and misdemeanors for inciting that insurrection at the capitol last week. all democrats and ten republicans backed the measure the senate will hold a trial but

it won't start until tuesday at the earliest meaning the impeachment proceedings will drag into president-elect biden's term the senate could vote to prevent trump from running again in 2024, and we're going to talk more about the impact on the biden agenda as a result of all of this in just a couple of minutes. meantime, washington is bracing for more protests in the days leading up to the inauguration president trump responding to those concerns yesterday in a video that was recorded without the press present to ask questions. here's what he had to say. >> no true supporter of mine could ever endor polse political violence no true supporter could ever disrespect law enforcement or our great american flag. no true supporter of mine could ever threaten or harass their fellow americans if you do any of these things, you are not supporting our movement you're attacking it. and you are attacking our

country. >> the president did not mention his impeachment in that video but we'll be talking a lot more about what's taking place in washington, and what it means to the market in just a moment. joe. an update now on the vaccine candidate from, in this case, johnson & johnson, according to trial data in the new england journal of medicine. the one dose covid vaccine is safe, and appears to generate a promising immune response, in both young and elderly volunteers, the most common side effects were the usual fever, fatigue, headache, muscle aches, pain at the injection site the company is expected to release results from its phase 3 trial of 45,000 people later this month unlike some of the previous ones, guys, the promising, i thought we -- you probably shouldn't necessarily go beyond that promising but we have no idea what's promising, did you see

the chinese, the vaccine candidate was 50% at best, so, you know, we assume that was -- >> that was my concern >> we assume 95%, if there's no reason to think it's 95%, i don't think, if you have the data promising, i would hope it's the same, right, but it's one dose. >> i would hope. look, there have been questions all along whether it would be as effective. i think it was miraculous that both moderna and pfizer's vaccine was 95% effective. that was not something that we had been anticipating. remember the hurdle that was set was like 50 to 60% that would be okay that would be acceptable to regulators to think that would good enough to have a vaccine. and by the way, that's the effectiveness level of the flu vaccine and that's what we live with all the time. this idea that we had 95%, and it was not only the first vaccine but the second vaccine candidate that hit that, it took so many questions off the table and took so many concerns, saying i want to get one vaccine over the other

if this is not as effect iive, puts all of that stuff on the market they're going to ramp up quickly. >> the onus is not just on the vaccine. it's on the response in the patient, and with varying strength of immune systems based on comorbidities or other treatments or age or any of the things that go into that, it's highly the antigen used as gottlieb talks about, the epitope of the spike protein, the ones used by moderna and pfizer, effective, a couple, i think, so that spike protein generates a great response but then the body of the person that gets it obviously has to have a pretty good immune system, but that's why 95 is great you know, the j and j is a little different i guess it's got that viral vector that some people thought might be better with the cellar response, not just antiresponse. the t cell response from getting a viral vector that you don't have with just the messenger

rna. anyway. >> there's two big advantages that we should point out it's only one shot versus the two, and it can be kept at regular refrigerated temperatures which makes it easy to transport, a big issue with the questions going around that. easier to distribute, easier to get into arms because it's only one shot, and easier to store. we'll see. obviously we're anxiously awaiting the phrase 3 trial data we should point out that new overnight, china reports the first covid-19 death since may the woman who died had a severe case of the coronavirus and had preexisting health conditions. authorities are trying to control a spike of cases just outsideover beijing. more than 22 million people have been ordered to remain inside their homes to combat the outbreak china's death toll is about 4,800 people according to johns hopkins. the united states reported more than 4,300 deaths on tuesday of this week, and the total u.s. death toll is approaching

385,000. guys, once again, just showing the difference in responses. 22 million people on lock down because of their outbreak, which is an incredibly small number when you compare to what we have seen here. different ways that our countries kind of look at things, and handle stuff like this. >> pretty amazing out of 2 billion people, a billion and a half people they can identify one person that died of covid. i don't know what the limits of resolution on the way they're looking at things are, but your point is well taken. those are good numbers if anything can be good related to covid yeah >> meantime, let's take a quick check on the bat stocks. this is baidu, alibaba and tencent, all rising after reuters said it would drop, weighed the alleged ties to chinese military against the potential economic impact of banning them the banned list reportedly still includes more than 30 companies,

including three large chinese telecoms and china's largest chip maker so we're going to watch this there's going to be the lot of people focused on what decisions we're making and what decisions we're not making meantime, when we come back on the other side of the break, could president trump's impeachment trial derail another round of stimulus. that's the question, and we're going to talk about risks to president-elect biden's legislative agenda, next, and a huge lineup this morning, quarterly results from blackrock and delta air lines, and bring cnbc interviews with the ceos, larry fink, and ed bastian "squawk" returns right after this

president-elect biden is expected to unveil a stimulus plan today ylan mui joins us with a look at his strategy to get it through congress good morning, ylan. >> good morning, joe there are really two ways he can do this. there's the old fashioned way with bipartisan support or by using something called budget reconciliation, and there are pros and cons to both. two sources are telling me biden's first choice is to go bipartisan he wants to win over at least ten republican senators so he can get the 60 votes that are necessary to pass a bill now, the downside to that is that it means he's going to have to compromise, especially on something like state and local aid, which was the big loss for democrats in the last package.

the up side, though, is that if they can get the deal, they can pass it much more quickly because budget reconciliation is a powerful but cumbersome tool the biggest benefit of that is they only need 51 votes to do it, and that's exactly how many democrats are going to have. the problem, though, is you can only use it for revenue and spending measures, and the conventional wisdom is that would rule out state and local aid, money for schools, and funding for the vaccine. you have to decide up front how big the package is going to be, and then fill in the details of the proposals later, and that can lead to some sort of funky policies like a 21% versus a 20% corporate tax rate or individual tax cuts that expire things that don't make sense the other issue, too, is that both chambers would have to vote on this twice. first on the price tag, and then on the actual legislation. so this is why the strategy that biden decides to pursue is going to be so important this is a prime example of how process can drive policy

guys >> okay. ylan, thank you for that we're going to continue this conversation joining us with how the impeachment proceedings could impact president-elect biden's economic agenda, i want to bring in dan clifton, head of policy research and strategist research partners good morning to you. >> good morning. >> in terms of how this moves forward in terms of how this impeachment continues to go, what do you think the demonstrable impact will be on taxes and more immediately the stimulus issues that ylan was talking about. >> ylan just had an incredible report on the complexity of getting this first fiscal policy through. and as you know, president-elect biden has a mandate to get covid under control and get the economy growing again, and most presidents come in, and they have a mandate to get that big fiscal policy bill usually about 1% of gdp, and it could turn out that we're going

to do five weeks of impeachment trial in the united states senate, which would clearly slow down the ability to do some package like this, whether that's going to be through reconciliation or regular order. the senate is a unanimous consent body, which means that if you're on impeachment, you can only do impeachment. that means that janet yellen won't be confirmed as treasury secretary, so there has to be a balancing act between how the democratic leadership wants to hold president trump accountable for the actions over the last few weeks, and the idea of getting a better economic environment for the new president while his political capitol is at the highest level. and so if you do -- there are different ways to do that but you have to be careful because the economy is the highest precedent. sorry to interrupt. >> my question to you is to the extent you want to do both, is there a way to walk and chew gum at the same time or is the process, so to speak, so impossible in this case? >> yeah, i don't want to say

anything is impossible what i would first say is that you can try and get a split from the parliamentarian which would allow you to do a half day of appointments and legislative business and a half day of impeachment. that may not be able to be possible so another option is to delay it by 100 days get your economic agenda through, your appointment, and then come back and do impeachment. if you look at the process that ylan played out, you want to be doing that on day one. joe biden has waited 44 years to be president, and really, i think, wants to hit the ground running on his economic packet for investors, a lot of the impeachment stuff is noise we have just passed a $900 billion stimulus. we have distributed $125 billion of tax refunds in 13 days. i don't think government has ever moved that fast, so the u.s. government is already relevering the consumer, that then creates the incentive for congress to come back and do

another packet e i think that's what investors are going to be focused on, and less so on the impeachment trial. the political and economic realities are a bit different. >> i think eric swalwell actually made some comments about the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time, and i think he's in a leadership position on the impeachment panel there, so he's weighing in that they can do both, and think about the other stuff he's got going on i mean, if he, you know, he's really busy, and if he's got, you know, that's all i wanted to do, andrew, just wanted to make a sort of a ironic comment, but anyway, they may try and do it because the guy -- do you understand, andrew >> i understand, unfortunately, too well dan, let me ask you this. >> yes >> you raised this prospect of somehow trying to delay or push an impeachment trial 100 days

out. it's actually a relatively unique idea because perhaps you could get some of the economic policies pushed forward in the books, and potentially if they're working, you could gain some support the question is would you have more lever age in terms of support or not from republicans do you think to impeach the president 100 days from now or less >> i want to be clear. we're all guessing, we have never seen a situation like that on one hand, after 100 days, it's like, okay, he's gone let's move on and the country can heal on the other side, you have seen the president's support really start to fall apart in the month of december, early january, and then obviously with the events of the capitol, and so it may make it more likely that some republicans would be willing to actually vote to convict once we get out 100 days from now. the key issue for the democrats is less about the conviction there will be a vote after the conviction that will require a

simple majority that will then bar donald trump from being able to vote, being able to run for president again. i think that's kind of the key angle that the democrats are pursuing, and it will be a constitutional challenge to that, so, you know, republicans will have to weigh that second component, too, as part of their vote you can only have that vote if you convict him on the impeachment charges themselves the other issue -- >> you mentioned -- go ahead no, go ahead >> go ahead. >> no, please. please >> i would just say, the budget process usually starts around march, that's where the big economic package would be developed, so that's where the infrastructure climate change, health care, education, and that process starts in march. even if you delay it by a hundred days, you get the emergency economic package through, but then you still have this kind of second consideration that you want to get done on the larger economic package so there's never going to be a good time to do this, and that's going to be the challenge for congress. >> that's what i was going to ask you real quick, you have the issue of fiscal stimulus, right

aheadove of us, staring us in t face, and the pledge to raise taxes on the wealthy and change the tax structure. is that something that you think he would try to do in the first hundred days, and as this pandemic continues to rage >> no, i don't believe that to be the case. i believe that the incoming biden administration wants an unpaid for fiscal stimulus that provides money to state and local governments, consumers and the unemployed where the tax increases are being looked at is the second larger economic package, which will be more structural in nature we're going to do a long-term highway bill we're going to do a long-term climate bill that should then be offset with tax increases on the hiring, and on corporations, that's where they're angle for that, and that's like mid year is when you're looking for it, but by then, you'll have most of the u.s. population vaccinated at that point, and you will have

the economy reopened and you'll have this other fiscal stimulus through, so they think that they could put those tax increases in place when the economy is on better footing and that's sort of their plan. i'm skeptical. i think we should still hold off on those tax increases but from their angle, they think they can get it through in july >> okay. dan, it's always good to talk to you. thank you for walking us through all of these various permutations, it will be a fascinating, i don't know if i should call it a chess match, more than that, but we'll see you and talk to you very very soon. >> thank you, andrew. meantime, let me throw it over to becky who i think has some news. we have earnings hitting the wire from blackrock, it looks like a big beat. earnings came in for the fourth quarter, $10.18, beating the consensus effort of $9.14, revenue coming in above the estimates, 4.4, $8 billion, versus the $4.3 billion the

street had been anticipating a beat on count both counts, a 20% gain for the fourth quarter earnings the numbers just hitting i haven't had a chance to go through them we will have much more on blackrock's fourth quarter, and taking a look back at 2020, when the ceo larry fink joins us in the next hour. he thought the markets would continue to climb despite the rising number of coronavirus cases. he was absolutely right. he thought investors were under invested at that point we're going to talk to him with what he sees with all of these headlines out of the capitol and the news on the covid front continuing to be concerning. we have the vaccine rolling out. we'll ask him about all of these issues it looks like blackrock shares are up by 1%, a gain of $27.26 when we come back, hot ipos to watch. affirm holdings surging in its debut yesterday. we're going to show you that stock move and get you ready for two big listings today larry fink will be joining us at

7:00 a.m. eastern time right now, as we head to a break check out the shares of intel. that stock surging 7% after the chip giant announced that it had ousted ceo bob swan. activist hedge fund third point has been calling for sweeping changes at the company, and they're getting it that stock is indicated up by about 2 1/2%, a gain of $1.41, intel shares trading at 15.36. "squawk box" will be right back. i feel like they might have a better finance system 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. ♪ch-ch-changes♪ finally moved in. it's a great old house. good bones, wraparound porch. the pipes are... making strange noises.

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guess what, it's that time again. yep, time for the executive edge welcome back to "squawk box," we're watching shares of affirm holdings, after yesterday's ipo,

the stock initially opened at just under $91 a share after its ipo priced at $49 a share. as you can see up another 8%, up over 105 andrew, you have some reporting on this other than it's up >> well, no, it was interesting because i talked to max levchin and talked to a lot of people around this offering, and you look at a stock price and that kind of rise after an offering, and you think to yourself, was this a success, was this a failure, did you leave money on the table, was this on purpose, what's the story here? and fascinating to me, and i think this is true of levchin, and i think it's true of a lot of ceos who have left money on the table, the view inside these companies when they're shown the various spreads and what could happen is they know, they actually know that the stock may go up 50%. it might go up 100%, and a lot

of them have been willing to say we're going to leave that on the table because we want to get a certain type of investor in, certain institutions who are going to be long-term investors in, and you know what, if we lose some money along the way on this quick rise, given how hot the market is now, we're willing to accept that we'll take that. that's okay. and i thought that was such an interesting, and maybe it's just a rationalization, but that's, i think, a lot about how some of these ceos who are involved in these ipos are thinking about it, and also thinking to themselves that it is a hot market and you know what, six months from now, nine months from now, 12 months from now, it's not clear where these stocks will really trade so they're actually happier. >> how many times can we have this conversation, though, and not say, so how much did they sell, how much does he have left, so now everything he has left is priced at $105 instead of where it would have been, so it's not as much about the initial amount of money you

would bring in how much did they sell, and how much is still left in the company. >> oh, sure. it's a small part of the company but i'm not sure -- >> now the company is valued at this level, what good is it if you raise it a pittance at the beginning, and the stock doesn't go up, and the stock doesn't double i don't know why you question whether money was left on the table when the entire company is valued at twice as much. >> clearly the reason you raise the question is because you say to yourself, you know, was this thing terribly miss priced and by default it has to be miss priced if it goes up 100% in 24 hours. the thing that's interesting to me is not that the company is worth that much more tomorrow, and therefore, the 90% that they still own hasn't been put into the market has gone up sure but the larger point is that what i'm suggesting to you is that some of these ceos are

saying to themselves, i know this market is hot it's actually too hot, and i want to get a certain type of investor who's going to stick with me for a very long time, and i don't want them to lose money so you know what, let's take it at a lower price because we may be back to a lower price later. that to me is the interesting moment at least for me personally. >> here's my question on that. >> i don't understand. >> if they're doing it, saying they're going to keep it and take it public at a lower level, are they giving certain institutions that they want to be long-term shareholders special dibs or they can buy it at the open like everybody else s >> they're allocating to certain institutional investors, they are saying we want you to be with us for years and years and years and years, and we're going to give you a price that we think is reasonable, that you think is reasonable, and you're not the hot money. there will be hedge funds and others that will make money along the way playing this

thing, we don't care about those folks. we care about these folks, and we are going to play what they are arguing is the long game, and that to me was an interesting thought process. on the flip side, to me, if you do leave the lot of money on the table and the economy goes down or your company gets challenged or what not, that also creates its own challenges because to some degree these are capital raising moments, opportunities to raise money, and you would arguably want to raise as much money as you could and 12 months from now you're struggling and you don't have that cash, that's its own program. >> 2%, 3%, think of yourself if andrew r. sorkin were going public, this is exactly the way you would want to do it, selling 2%, and you wanted your company itself to be worth. >> i'm not talking about their own -- >> you know what it reminds me of, it reminds me of the velvet rope where there's a line outside, and you get inside, and there's four people standing at

the bar. this was long ago when we used to be able to do that, you generate your own per soceived demand, and wow, look at this, a hot ipo, must be a great company, it's doubled, it went from a market cap of 20 billion to 40 billion and i only sold 2% everything i'm still holding, i don't know, it seems obvious think how bad it would be if it went down? >> i'm not suggesting it sthoul go down. >> you want to nail the supply-demand. >> we have seen that happen. >> in the old days, which was by the way 12 months ago, the way you would have justified or determined success on an ipo if you were a banker or a ceo is you would have said the stock went up 10 or 20%, and you would have said, that's fair, good for the company, gets publicity, looks like a successful company. >> it's also a reflection of the environment you're in too. >> when the stock goes up 100%,

these are days when you're trying to effectively raise money at a certain price, and so you do leave money for the company's coffers on the table, and that could be real. >> then you do another -- you add on -- >> not just about how much the investors are worth. >> add on offering at six months you're already at 100 bucks so you do an add-on offering and the lock up period expires and you get to sell more of your shares at some point, and it has to go down 50%. >> i like that andrew said in the old days, 12 months ago. >> and also you can't gauge. >> things have changed pretty radically. >> tesla is worth more than three walmarts, whatever it's worth, and bitcoin is at 40,000, you can't necessarily control what an ipo is going to do i mean, in the after market. it's crazy it makes me wonder, but coming up, we'll move on here coming up, we do those other

ipos, you know, and i got three dogs, i need to hear about the pet ipo. today's morning movers, futures coming up, you've got75 points down, don't miss cnbc acocrviews, larry fink from blkrk, delta air lines ceo, ed bastian, i thought we had his brother dave on. that's what we had in the run down executive edge is sponsored by at&t business, our people in network will help keep you connected. let's take care of business. they know exactly which parking lots have the strongest signal. i just don't have the bandwidth for more business. seriously, i don't have the bandwidth. glitchy video calls with regional offices? yeah, that's my thing. with at&t business, you do the things you love. our people and network will help do the things you don't. let's take care of business. at&t.

good morning, everybody, and welcome back to "squawk box. we have been watching the u.s. equity futures it's thursday morning, we're getting to the end of the week, finally. finally. it seems like forever. but you are looking at the dow futures up by about 73 points right now. s&p futures are up by about 4 points nasdaq's a little bit lower today, down by about 26. all three of the major averages are sitting near new highs these are the new highs we hit last week, we have been treading water as we watchthese events unfold in washington been watching a lot of activity in individual names too. for more on that, let's get over to dom chu, he has a look at

morning movers are there any themes that are driving things today >> there are themes driving things first of all, we have a three-day weekend coming up. to your point, some of the notable analyst calls, taking a look at beat up sectors, moving stocks in the pre-market on the thinner volumes. the upgrade, thematically come in for big oil companies, st chevron up about a percent by an upgrade to buy from hold by analysts at hbc, this is due in part of under performance as a catch up trade exxon a couple of big upgrades, chevron a couple of big upgrades next up, penn national gaming, down about 3% right now. analysts at loop capital downgrading the casino operator from a cell trading to a hold after a massive run in the stock. causing a bit of a decline this morning. and then we're going to end on a

bigger drop in shares of nordstrom. the luxury retail operator is down 5% plus analysts are downgrading it to a market perform on some valuation concerns now, remember yesterday, it reported some disappointing results for the holiday shopping season, so becky, thematically speaking, it's the oil one that catches my attention a lot more of those analystis saying big oil is a relative trade for the rest of the market back over to you guys. >> dom, thank you. good to see you. our next guest says that markets will eventually shift focus to the likely tax hikes from the biden administration and a 5 to 10% pullback is in the coming weeks is a real possibility. for more on that, and where yields might be headed, we're joined right now by gene todd, executive vice president at fiduciary trust company. and gene, i got to say, i don't know that that's a huge jump to make to say we're going to see a

5 to 10% pullback in the coming weeks, especially when you consider how the markets continue to hit these new highs and almost nothing seems to slow them down: what is it that you think eventually changes the market's perspective and makes things come kind of back down to earth a little bit >> you're right. it's not a huge stretch. pullbacks, they happen regularly, on average, two to three times a year, so we like to tell clients to expect it and when they happen, it's scary. you know, doesn't feel very good to see the market down 5 or 10%. it happens rapidly, but it usually lasts about 30 days, and then the markets resume their upward trajectory, so, you know, what we think is that that's a possibility, and it's sooner rather than later. it's going to happen but we do think the markets are going to be up at the end of the year from the levels that they are now. it's not going to go up on a linear basis there will be bumps along the

way. and as i think as people start to focus on the increase in the treasury yields and what that means to valuations and eventually people will start to focus on tax increases the biden administration has got a lot of things to focus on initially. but make no mistake, tax increases are coming, probably not in 2021, but they'll st start -- there will start to be some discussion about that, and certainly that will be negative for the markets. >> here's what i wonder, we all know a pullback could come at any point but are you convinced enough that it's here that you would be telling people don't invest at these levels, wait for that pullback, wait until you see a 5% pullback or greater before you put any money into the market >> so if someone is sitting on cash and thinking about getting into the market, you need to layer that cash in don't put it all in today,

invest it over the next couple of months, three months, but individuals that are fully invested today, don't take it out. it's very important to stay disciplined, to be diversified, broadly diversified and as we always tell people, make sure that you rebalance, and when you rebalance, it forces you to certainly buy low and sell high. so that's the advice to clients at this point. >> but you basically think there is no alternative, like we have heard from a lot of people, that you have to be in the stock market >> yeah, so it's going to be about -- that's the point about being broadly diversified. what we have seen is these sector rotations happen so rapidly, they're very difficult to predict it was big tech, and then it was stay-at-home names, and then we saw value explode, and cyclicals, small cap, energies and financial are on fire. it's impossible to predict what sectors are going to take off

and when they're going to take off so to the point of staying broadly diversified so you can capture when certain areas take off is what's a prudent thing to do i think also, you know, our advice is stay focused on what's going on internationally, particularly the emerging markets. we think the biden administration is going to have much more favorable policies towards international markets. the dollar will continue to decline. that will be favorable for international, particularly emerging markets, and we're going to see a global reopening. it's not just a reopening in the united states. it's going to reopen all over the place. commodities are going to continue to go up. that's a positive for emerging markets. so don't give up on being globally diversified. >> gene, thank you very much,

good to see you. >> all right nice to see you, becky, thank you. >> andrew. coming up, thanks, becky, when we return, more developments in the policing of president trump's social media, and what twitter ceo jack dorsey has to say about that decision we'll talk about it straight ahead. coming up in the next hour you don't want to missurxc o elusive interview with blackrock ceo larry fink "squawk box" returns right after this

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coming up, jack dorsey speaking out about banning president trump after the president released a video bashing what he called an unprecedented assault on free speech much more on the social media crackdown. with congressmen from both sides t aleth'somg up next

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twitter ceo jack dorsey addressing the ban on president trump. he said he did not celebrate or feel pride in having to ban the president from twitter he said the decision came down to public safety and that offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real and he said the ban was a failure of twitter to promote healthy conversation that's a topic the president addressed in a video released earlier yesterday. >> i also want to say a few words about the unprecedented

assault on free speech we have seen in recent days. these are tense and difficult times. the efforts to censor, cancel and blacklist our fellow citizens are wrong and they are dangerous. what is needed now is for us to listen to one another, not to silence one another. >> for a look at this tech backlash against the president and the potential consequences, let's welcome congressman r ro khana of the 17th district of california heart of silicon valley. congressman james comer, the ranking member of the house oversight and reform committee from kentucky. thank you both for joining us. you intend to make the point again and again and again they are private companies, they can choose whatever they want. i will tell you, you're in

california and there's a washington post piece today switching gears from twitter to facebook where apparently facebook played a much more active role in what happened than it had been disclosed and i guess sharyl sandberg is deflecting gain as a lot was organized on facebook, not just on twitter what do you make of that >> i do think facebook and twitter should share blame any speech that promotes active violence, inciting violence, that shouldn't be on otherwise, i'm all for free speech conservative speech, liberal speech, all of it should be on i respect representative comer his speech should be on. >> congressman comer, just to play devil's advocate on this,

you might agree with this. i remember kathy griffin holding up a -- whatever her name is, a beheaded president trump i remember maxine waters talking about how to treat trump supporters i remember a lot of things that don't seem to be skelquelched i'm wondering if they tipped their hand with the whole laptop no coverage of that after covering the dossier for four years. is it being -- these guys are human and they probably have political predilections that we know of. now they're deciding what everyone gets to see or not see in the country that kind of smells bad, doesn't it >> it does smell bad, and they have not been consistent you're exactly right there are countless instances where they have allowed very controversial statements, false statements to be posted without going unchecked but now they

seem to be censors conservatives, president trump, ron paul, so many others they refuse to put the hunter biden story on their platform and they implied that wasn't true, now we all know that was true hunter biden has been under federal investigation for a few years. a lot of people in america are very upset with big tech and calling on congress to do something about it because at a time in america when we're deeply divided and half of america is strongly behind donald trump, they see that this is another instance of censoring conservative's free speech it's bad for business. i think it's unethical and it's something that we're going to have to address in congress in january, right now when we go back. >> congressman khanna, the market should cure this. nobody, conservatives, whoever feels slighted don't need to use

twitter, don't need to use facebook then twitter and facebook have to suffer the consequences of losing business or whatever. what about it was something like a parler or maybe they wanted to go there and it almost looks like a concerted movement all at the same time to put that company out of business, maybe for good reason because of all of the stuff that was on there if you were watching from the outside, you would say some of this looks like it's not fair. >> look, parler was being supported by apple, google, amazon for years there was no problem with right wing speech. there's no problem with speech that maybe even be false i actually as you know defended the idea that hunter biden stories, as false as they were, they should have been published. i'm not for censoring speech based on something being false or true, but violence is different. you had parler sites talking about assassinating leaders, not

just democrats, assassinating the vice president you had parler conversations about how they were going to plot to have more invasions on january 20th that is nonsense and that kind of violence doesn't help americans. >> congressman, i think on facebook a lot of the organizers, you know, are putting out information where to get buses, how to get to washington, d.c. there were all kinds of things, maybe not what you're talking about on parler, but does that mean facebook should be unable to operate anymore >> well, it's a different degree if you look at parler screen shots, and i believe parler should still be allowed to come back on if they just commit to saying that they're going to have a content moderation strategy to remove violence. the ceo of parler was on the switcher show saying he has no introspection. he doesn't think anything is wrong. he thinks the platform should be

totally unregulated and that's what's wrong. >> does the wild, wild west, congressman comer, and then there's some type of reasonable censor -- not censorship, but reasonable selection of what can appear or what shouldn't on a platform that you're running i don't envy them trying to look at every single thing that goes on on their platform, but if they're going to run it, they need to do that. >> exactly but what i'm asking for and what half of america is asking for is that they be consistent. when you ban the president of the united states but you continue to allow the ayatollah of iran on there, you allow communist china to allow their prop po began da on there, it's very inconsistent and it's really driving a wedge between a lot of americans at a time when they're looking on television and they see 15,000 troops all

around the united states capitol. just impeach the president for the sec time it's fueling conspiracy theories when we need to tone down the rhetoric and become united big tech is certainly fanning the flames unfortunately i agree they need to take down content that's controversial they should be consistent with conservatives and liberals. >> stay safe we're all thinking about this crazy environment we're in right now. i hope everything goes well for you gentlemen over the next month. over the next 50 years 850 80 years who knows. thanks, guys still to come this morning, we have two big interviews that you don't want to miss they're both coming up larry fink and ed bastian. we'll be right back.

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good morning welcome to quack box right here on cnbc. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick and joe kernen. nice to see everybody. we are about 2 1/2 hours before the market opens let's show you where the markets stand as of now. u.s. equity futures looking like -- dow up about -- looks like it would open up 91 points higher, s&p 500 up 7.5 points and nasdaq down about 4 points joe? >> thanks, andrew. here's what's making

headlines this hour. the house has voted to impeach president trump for the second time the vote when it was all said and done 232 to 197. all house democrats voted in favor along with ten republicans. a senate trial wouldn't begin until tuesday at the earliest, the day before president-elect biden will be inaugurated. johnson and johnson said the covid-19 vaccine candidate provides immune responses for just 71 days after a single dose others vaccines from pfizer and moderna require two doses. j and j findings are on track for a possible authorization after a phase 3 trial. shares of video game retailer gamestop are jumping again this morning after soaring 57% in yesterday's trading the stock began its climb earlier this week when chewy co-founder ryan cohen joined the

board. able lanalysts say that prompted a short squeeze which accelerated the games. blackrock, the world's largest asset manager is out with quarterly results this morning. they beat estimates both on the top and bottom lines by a pretty wide margin. joining us is blackrock ceo larry fink in a squawk exclusive. larry, great to see you. been a while since we've gotten to talk to you these numbers you've put out today are very strong. you came in with earnings of 10.18 versus 9 and you had organic growth of 5% what's fueling things? what drove this? >> first of all, happy new year, becky and to joe and to andrew i think it was consistent throughout the year. we've had unprecedented challenges in the global economy and we built blackrock over the

years with a foundation of always being a fiduciary and always being a voice of our clients. it continued to resonate with our clients worldwide. some of the examples of how it resonated has been the foundation of our platform we raised over $1 billion in the fourth quarter in 19 different countries. we raised $1 billion in 100 different products in the fourth quarter. and so you add all these activities throughout the year, you can see the breadth of the form across the board. clients worldwide are looking for a voice. they're looking for an organization that can help them decipher what's going on obviously we are seeing huge volatility in markets, huge volatility politically, economically we still have this k economy

where many businesses are flour flourishing and a major component of our society is doing quite poorly i think clients are looking for someone who can help them. it resonated all throughout the year and especially in the fourth quarter where we saw extended inflows in our platform we had in flows in equities, bonds and across the board that's where we really differentiated ourselves versus many peers >> larry, the markets -- the stock markets keep setting new highs and there's a lot of liquidity out there. how much of this do you think is the amount of liquidity that's kind of sloshing around that you're gaining off of and how much of it is that you're taking

market share, taking people who would have gone to other platforms before >> well, i've said all along we are winning more share wallet and more clients are looking to us to provide that holistic comprehensive portfolio solution i think that's one of the major things driving blackrock as a result we are picking up market share there is a lot of liquidity. the central banks are providing liquidity. the stimulus fiscal policy checks are providing liquidity and through all of that we are seeing that moanney, we have record amounts of cash sitting on the sideline. it's more than that. we are seeing more and more investors ill prepared for the elongation of their liabilities. the persistent low interest rates are extending the value of their payments to their

participants and so we are persistently seeing investors worldwide under invested, not over invested in long-term assets the best source of long-term assets are equities and many asset categories in the private area and that's another area that's driving it if you can forecast that we are going to have low interest rates for one or two or three more years, these liabilities just extend and you can either have a mismatch between your liabilities or assets or you're going to have to put that money to work in a longer dated asset. that's what we're persistently seeing i think i said that at the end of the third quarter, that we're going to continue to see that ra rally. i think we're going to continue to see the market to be strong into 2021, probably not as strong as what we saw, you know, in the fourth quarter and the third quarter last year, but we can see light at the end of the

tunnel i believe by june, july in many parts of the developed world we have the possibilities of herd immunity when we have herd immunity through vaccinations, we are going to see the industries that are still struggling, the industries around the aggregation and congregation of human beings, such as culture, such as business conferences, sporting events and importantly restaurants and importantly travel that's when you're going to start seeing in the -- most certainly by the fourth quarter but maybe in the third quarter a real extended economic rally in terms of the overall economies and i think this is one of the things that the markets see. the markets when they believe that we can get to those points, the market starts focusing on that and that's why we've seen the rally in the fourth quarter

with the knowledge about the vaccinations and how effective the vaccinations are and we're getting closer to the potential herd immunity statistics that allow us to live more freely before that obviously we are seeing rising death rates, rising infection rates so we're going to have to balance that out. i personally believe the first quarter is probably going to be weaker than we probably thought just a month ago because of the rising infection rates and because of the -- and the deaths associated with that, but at the same time we can see government, especially our government now, truly focusing on the supply chain and distribution chain of getting the vaccinations to more and more people and hopefully by may and june the majority of our population can have that vaccination, will have herd immunity >> larry, you put out a statement last week about the

events in washington, d.c., but we haven't gotten a chance to talk to you. this is our first time to do that i'd be eager to hear your thoughts you're somebody who knows political leaders very well, not only in washington but around the world. i wonder what you think about what happened last week and what's happened since. >> as i said last week, the riots on the capitol was an assault on our democracy it was an assault on the democratic foundations of what this country represents. and i think it's going to leave a real mark, such as we only have these type of marks every ten years or so where i think we saw a universal coming together and so, you know, i'm an optimist in trying to find positive when we see something so horrific, but i believe -- i

think this is what we saw and the anguish that so many people had, and i heard from so many people all walks of life, different -- from different political views, this was an assault. this is not who we are, and i believe we can find better ways of coming together and i do believe this is going to be one of the most important components for the new administration coming in, to try to find ways of bringing -- bringing more harmony and more importantly or just as importantly, making sure that we begin a true multi-lateralism back into the world again so it can bring down not only the tension here in the united states but bringing down the global tensions that have persisted for some time. >> what does that mean in terms of the impeachment that we saw yesterday that took place in the house that was voted on in the

house? do you think that that's something the senate should pick up or do you think that's going to get in the way of all the things you just talked about >> it really depends on the outcome of the senate and how they are -- and what happens in the first few days i believe if it can be a little bit more bipartisan, then it will -- we still can find more ways of coming together. if it's one party and only one party in the senate, then it's going to be harder and more delayed. i applaud president-elect biden and he is trying to be above the fray he's consistent in talking about the economy, the vaccinations and rebuilding america again because of the pandemic so we'll all have to watch and see related to how the senate plays this out it's very important to see that there is -- there is bipartisanship and there was some form of bipartisanship even

in the house let's be clear, in the past processes of impeachment they're generally one party votes and the fact that we saw even 10 representatives as a part of that, that is an indication of the seriousness of the potential crimes or the perceived crimes so i'm going to be anxiously waiting to see how the senate resolves this, and i would hope one way or another we could move forward fast and that the new administration and all of america can move forward in a more parbipartisan way excuse me. >> we knew what you meant on that larry, what do you think in terms of what you've done with your own pac you've said you're not going to be giving money to any politicians at this point. what are you watching to see how long before you change your mind on that what would make you do that?

are you going to go back to giving to everybody equally after this what are you watching? >> well, first of all, we don't have a large pac relative to other companies and industries, but we do have a pac i asked to freeze all activities related to our pac to ensure that wherever -- whatever we do and however we go forward, that it's consistent with our principles, it's consistent with how we think about stakeholders and stakeholder capitalism and that we have a policy that we could easily communicate to all and what is the outcome of that policy, and i would hope in the next 30 days or less that we will have -- that we will have a resolution within the organization as to what will be our policy going forward unfortunately we just had an election the demands on pac money are very small at this point in

time we have time to make the appropriate decisions that meets the principles of blackrock's employee base, that we are achieving the principles of our other stakeholders, our clients and making sure that we're living with purpose with all our communities where we work and so i think it's an appropriate time to pause, to reflect on what are we trying to do with this money and then we will move forward with a policy. >> larry, would you consider just ending the pac in its entirety similar to what swchare schwab has done. ibm has not had a pac in its entire history, given the credibility it creates for the companies and the politicians taking the money >> andrew, very good question. that is one of the possibilities that certainly will be discussed. that -- that very well could be

an outcome that we -- that may be our new policy, but it's not just my decision we have a whole organization and team that focuses on the public policy issues, but that's certainly one of the outcomes that's on the table. >> all right and, larry, you know, given you talk about purpose and values, how do you think that other companies should think about doing business effectively with companies and leaders that were supportive not just of the president but of the, dare i say stop the steal campaign and helping to incite some of the events that took place last week i'm thinking, for example, of ice, owner of new york stock exchange, obviously kelly loeffler is the wife of the ceo of that company. he gave over $10 million to support her and her election in

georgia. steve schwarzman, former partner of yours has been very outspoken in favor of president trump throughout the -- of course he's stepped back from that more recently how do you think the company should think about that given that so many -- in terms of pacs right now are trying to distance themselves from these same people. >> good question, andrew as you know, in my ceo letter i talk about corporate purpose i believe companies that have a strong, well-articulated purpose are the best performing companies. management and the board of those companies need to determine what is going to be their corporate purpose and through better disclosure, as i asked in my 2020 letter to address things like sasby and tcfd, we're going to have better transparency on how all companies are acting and our corporate stewardship

team will be addressing some of these issues and they are going to have to ask those type of questions that you just raised, andrew i believe every company has the right to choose their own specific purpose we have a right as a shareholder to determine do we believe that purpose and how they're articulating and their values and principles, are they consistent in building long-term value for us, their shareholders and we will be judgmental as to how these companies are performing going forward and i do believe that through better transparency across all our companies we are going to have a better mechanism to review and to judge how each company lives their corporate purpose. >> larry, let's get back to the markets. you think that the markets will continue to be strong through the rest of this year, but let's

talk a little bit about why. what are the reasons pointing to that and do you think the market gets concerned at some point if higher tax rates kick in, particularly for corporations? >> i think the second half of the -- of 2021 will be much stronger than the first half because, as i said, the potential for herd immunity with vaccinations being disseminated throughout our economy is going to be a powerful component for forward growth two, as i said, we see if we have felt there is a need to invest in the greater long-term. those are two important foundations for growth

in terms of new incoming administration and corporate tax rates, i don't believe it would be that difficult for corporations, at least large corporations, to have higher tax rates, let's say 27% so far less than where we were prior to the trump tax cut of -- from 35 to 21 but i would want to know just as importantly where that money is going. if that money from a rising corporate tax rate, at least at the large companies, and i'm going to get into that in a minute, if that money is used for large-scale infrastructure, that will create a huge amount of jobs, that will also stimulate the economy in very large ways if a corporate tax cut is only used to temporarily bridge

americans who are unemployed, that money is -- that only has a short-term consequence so what we want to see if, indeed, there is a large corporate tax increase, that that money is used for a long-term purpose, and i can't think of another greater need for america right now to rebuild our failing infrastructure i can't think of another more important thing if you think about the inequalities that have been created during -- because of covid and the steep recession and this k economy, i can't -- you know, we need to find ways of making the economy broader and i think through a large-scale infrastructure bill we can broaden the economy, broaden the economy for more the last point i would like to say is i would hope that the new administration would focus on

ways of lowering corporate taxes for the small and medium businesses, the ones who are most harmed. maybe they lower the corporate tax rate for the first million dollars, first half million dollars of revenues or income, whatever the measurement will be redefine ways to restimulate small to medium businesses by raising the taxes post a certain threshold, i think we could balance the economy better and i'm really interested in finding ways of rebuilding small and medium businesses in america through a lower tax rate for them and i don't believe it will be that harmful. if firms like blackrock had a tax rate from 21 to 27, 26 in that area, i don't think that will change our dimensions at all and it will improve the foundation of america. >> that's a really interesting idea and not one that i've heard

elsewhere. hopefully it will get some traction larry, want to thank you for joining us on what i know is a very busy morning for you with earnings we see blackrock shares up by 1.4% but it's good to see you and we'll talk soon. >> great seeing all of you stay safe. >> you, too. take care. coming up, taking vaccines into the digital age a look for the push for digital certificates that show that you've been vainedccat that story is coming up. "squawk box" coming right back

big lineup coming your way this morning delta ceo ed bastian is going to join us with a progress report on business during the pandemic. the company is out with fourth quarter results. dr. scott gottleib on the expansion in other states and lazard's peter orszag. time now for today's aflac trivia question. what two major league baseball teams are part of a publicly traded company the answer when cnbc's "squawk box" continues reak this down for me? coach saban... i crutched out to the mailbox and there it was - a medical bill for twelve-hundred dollars. i had no idea i'd have to pay that. that's right. it's hard to know exactly what your health insurance is going to cover, so you gotta protect your blind side. aflac! aflac pays you money directly to help

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when you get the covid vaccine, you receive a piece of paper that shows you got the shot a coalition of health and technology leaders just announced an initiative to accelerate digital access to that information and it can help people get back to the office, attend events and travel bertha coombs joins us now with more i was thinking, hey, that's a good idea. i was thinking, bertha, hold on a second i've got to think it through you tell me. >> reporter: that's where we are right now. a lot of people are sort of wavering on it big tech and health care firms are launching a vaccine credential initiative to create a uniform standard for secure proof of vaccination right now this is what you get when you get the jab, a traditional cdc certificate on paper which frankly isn't that hard to forge. nonprofits mitr and the commons project have partnered with microsoft, salesforce, oracle,

electronic records giants he can pick and chain health care which is being acquired by unitedhealth mayo clinic part of this the first health care system to sign on. they want to make the vaccination record available with a qr code that they can carry in a digital wallet or print out like a boarding pass people support the idea of this. access to a digital vaccine passport 34% strongly support they're split on whether americans should be required to show 26 somewhat in support and 9% somewhat when you travel you have to prove you're covid free with a

test in some cases in order to avoid having to quarantine this just could be what we're going to see in the future. >> yeah. unprecedented times. >> people are okay about it when i talk about travel but the area where it's going to be much more sort of a gray area is whether you should be required to show it to go back to work. you know, in some workplaces you do have to show you've had a test if you can go back into the office certainly we've seen requirements for nba people to get tested all the time, but as far as the vaccine, even hospitals aren't requiring it. they're hoping persuasion is what's going to get more buy-in. >> okay. bertha, thank you. this will be something to watch

and we're going to talk about it, i'm sure, more than just today. thanks becky? >> thanks, joe. still to come on "squawk box" this morning, the ceo of delta will join us to talk about the state of the business and the fourth quarter results. take a look at shares of delta. those numbers are just hitting the wires. you can see the stock is up by about 2.2% i haven't seen the earnings myself atk thoronight bacwi me th

delta airlines results not pretty this is an airlines, not maker of faucets that is to be expected, phil >> reporter: yeah, it's expected, joe. >> good. >> let's bring in ed bastian let's get straight to the meat of the matter. you'll see the numbers at the bottom, by the way, folks. delta reporting a slightly wider than expected loss, $2.53 a share. cash burn at $12 million a day in the fourth quarter. ed, thank you for joining us

this morning give me some perspective on how bad it is right now in terms of the revenue environment and overall getting people back in the air right now. >> well, thanks, phil. good to talk to you this morning. we are thrilled to close the books on 2020 and put this year behind us. it's been by far the most difficult year in our industry's history, our company's history really proud of our people though they fought hard taking great care of customers and each other through the pandemic and putting us in what i consider to be in a really good position to help lead the industry into recovery as the world acts to contain the virus over the coming year demand is slow, as you guys were talking about. it's very, very slow, but it's steady steadily improving we think about the year, second quarter was the peak of the bottom of the revenue decline. we were only at 10% the second

quarter, third quarter 20% the fourth quarter we just reported we're at 30% and we expect the first quarter we're currently in, 40%. slow steady improvements but we really, really need the vaccine development to move at a much faster pace for us to hit the recovery targets we all want to see. >> ed, you're expecting to burn between 10 and $15 million a day in the first quarter and then potentially get to break even by the springtime, end of the second quarter are you still optimistic that can happen, that you can turn a profit starting in the second half of this year? >> i am, phil. when you think about where we've come on cash burn in the fourth quarter, our cash burn was $12 million a day. still a lot but it was half than the third quarter, 24 million and only 10% from the first quarter which was $100 million

we have a ways to go in terms of improving costs and reducing expenses more of the world will have confidence getting back out not just to travel but public life in general it's totally depend dent on the vaccine. back half of the year as we continue to look for herd immunity, i know mr. fink is anticipating that by the summer, we are hoping for that same outcome, we can be profitable. absolutely >> ed, the faa is out with a new directive. came out yesterday basically zero tolerance if you were an unruly customer, they're not going to talk to you. you're getting booted and they're going to prosecute you right away they're seeing a disturbing increase in the number of incidents with unruly passengers on airplanes, at gates in airports what are your crews seeing right now? how worried are you about what they're seeing >> we're all on high alert based

on the events over the last couple of weeks up in washington we are doing an awful lot in terms of gathering the information, talking to all of the intelligence agencies, both federal and local, as well as faa and tsa as well. we've increased the amount of security, both in the airports and in the sky, seen and unseen, and we're going to be taking some additional measures here in the coming days as we look to the week ahead >> can you tell us what those additional measures are? >> well, one thing we're going to do is we're going to not allow anyone to check a firearm into any of the metro dc airports starting this weekend and carrying it through the next week unless you are law enforcement and you're authorized to be carrying one. >> ed, i know you've seen a lot in your career how worried are you about what you're seeing with the behavior of the passengers right now? >> 99.999% of our passengers are

really great and doing a good job. i don't want to overreact. i think this is a moment hopefully in time with the outcry around the election results. i was pleased to see the president's comments last night calling for calm, calling for order setting a proper tone and hopefully that will help, coupled with all the additional security, not just that the airline industry is taking, federal officials are taking around dc as well. >> ed, given the fact that we have international travelers coming into the u.s., they're now going to have to show a positive -- or a negative covid-19 test, all of this raises the question on the international travel front are you worried that we are going to see any rebound there pushed even further out into this year? we're talking about way further in the back half of this year that there may be a resistance by travelers to get back overseas >> listen, phil, i think and

i've been a proponent of testing all along. we've been a leader in testing this entire pandemic we started testing our employees in the summer and continue to do it extensively throughout the pandemic we have quarantine tested flights open to europe we've worked closely with the cdc. i think testing is the only way we're going to open up international borders at scale it will cause some hiccups, no question about it. some of the international flying in mexico and the caribbean where there may not be testing resources available and those markets have been doing quite well it's the best part of our international business right now. testing in the long term is what we need to reopen borders. it will eventually lead to vaccines being deployed and then hopefully we'll get to a point a year or so from now where the virus is in a full containment mode and we can start to travel the way we used to at scale internationally. >> and the middle seats stay

blocked at least through the end of march, right? >> they do we have not made a decision as to whether we're going to extend or not we're going to look at demapped and make that decision. >> ed bastian, ceo of delta airlines joining us from the flight museum there at the delta headquarters in atlanta. thank you, ed, for joining us today. bottom line is this, the numbers in the fourth quarter not pretty for delta and they won't be for any airlines, but it's the focus where they are right now and whether or not they can get back to break even by the end of the second quarter guys, back to you. >> phil, thank you obviously so much of it riding on how the vaccine rollout continues. hopefully things step up from this point hopefully we can work out some of the kinks we've seen, but i think so many businesses are kind of counting on that great to see you thank you for bringing us that interview with ed bastian. when we come back, the ipo parade rolls on as importantmark and petco become the latest

companies to exceed expectations we'll tell you what investors need to know. check out shares of affirm the stock initially opening at just under $91 a share after the ipo priced at $41 a piece. now it's up 5.5% at 102102.51 "squawk box" will be right back.

. affirm surging in its wall street debut the stock just about doubling during yesterday's session next up, poshmark, petco and platica. leslie picker joins us now with more on the ipo frenzy we were hoping some things would change from 2020 this has not changed

this is more of what we've seen. >> reporter: oh, yeah. poshmark an online thrift shop getting not so flashy deal petco, the 55-year-old pet supplies retailer priced its shares at $18 last night that's $1 above its range and platika, a mobile game developer set to price its shares tonight. even bigger than payments company affirm which nearly doubled in its first day after raising a billion plus deal. this is a sharp departure from the norm the first two weeks of the year are sleepy in the ipo market, advisers, issuers often take some time to reboot after the

holiday season, get their house in order before they start launching the deals. we pulled some data and found this is the busiest start to a year ever, and by a long shot with 21 deals raising a combined $5.5 billion that really blows out of the water any other year the first two weeks of the year in terms of ipos. so much of this, as you mentioned, joe, is a carryover from 2020's pipeline, one which broke records on several front trading from poshmark and petco today and playtika, those will all help determine the types of deals investors have appetite for and how wide that ipo window remains. guys >> it's an interesting situation. leslie, curious just about the pricing issues and whether -- i don't know if you heard our conversation in the last hour based on the conversations i was having with folks around the hoop about whether these valuations, a, make sense and whether the companies are leaving money on the table as a

fiduciary for the company, whether they're making the right determination given that i think what you're seeing is them say we're willing to leave money on the table because we want certain types of investors maybe that's the right choice, maybe it's the wrong choice. what do you think? >> reporter: so that's interesting. i think that's still going to be a conversation for 2021. that's another holdover for 2020 you saw actual action on this front. roadblocks had a tender offering as part of their ipo once they saw the offerings of doordash and others, they punted it to 20216789 they pick their investors and they will comeou in a few weeks or so and they'll do a direct listing where they can find a more efficient, quote, unquote, market price for their stock. that's one way of doing it the sec approved the nyse rules. i think we'll continue to see innovation on that front

>> okay. leslie picker, appreciate it talk to you soon. when we come back, a lot more jon fort is going to be back with us, arguing as you know, both sides of president trump's ban on social media and whether or not its long overdue rule enforcement of suppressing free speech meantime, check out shares of snap after permanently banning the pridt'esens snap chat account. it took the position in terms of public safety. squawk continues after this. ♪ when disaster strikes to one, we all get together and support each other. that's the nature of humanity. ♪ it has encouraged other people to take the time for each other. ♪

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welcome back to "squawk box. president trump lass been banned from at this timer and facebook indefinitely his youtube account has been suspended from uploading new content. the question of course is is this long overdue rule enforcement or is big tech choking free speech. john fortt breaks it down in on the other hand jon? >> andrew, big tech is absolutely choking free speech social media platforms have become one of the most essential platforms for media. one in five adults gets political news primarily from the media. a study last year show half get news there at least sometimes. facebook, youtube, twitter, the platforms that just muzzled the president are the most popular these private companies have become the public square and they're trying to determine what ideas get heard if there's ever

a moment for regulators to step in and stop this social media power grab, it's now there's more at stake than the politics of the moment this republic's life blood is the free flow of ideas we can't be distracted by short-term industries and abandon principles. >> what about the idea the president was trying to use social media to disrupt the democratic process >> well, on the other hand, rules matter and the most important set of rules here, the u.s. constitution. the first amendment begins, congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble now of course social meade kblat form should be policing the lies and incitements that led to the insurrection last week if congress were to put in place rules requiring the platform to publish speech that led to violence, that would be the real violation of first amendment

bottom line, the bedrock of our system is the constitutional process. under three co-equal branches of government the executive branch tried to use a social media mob that tried to cancel out another branch social media companies cut the microphone is it disturbing that they have the power to cut mikes sure it's more disturbing that lies spread so they had no choice. >> you know i like to ask this do you both sides. where do you really land on this >> where i really land, andrew, there's no partisanship when it comes to the constitution and the constitutional process, right? that's why we can have a free press. that's why we have all of this this is our country we're talking about and the constitutional process is what

came under threat from a mob, right, earlier this month. if the social media companies needed to take emergency action to deal with that leading up to the inauguration, to me it's completely understandable, especially given all the exceptions that they gave donald trump up to this point but really this just underscores the importance of rules, whether you're talking about the private companies having them and being transparent about them or following the rules that allow us to have this democracy in this process >> and, jon, what do you think about making it permanent? i'll ask you a sort of interesting business question. i was talking to somebody in the social media marketing universe yesterday who was saying the value of the president's followers, the number of followers, the tens of millions of followers that effectively are now wiped away, that that actually has real dollar value to him that's been taken away.

this goes to some of the issues we've talked about about how much value you should have in terms of advertisers taking advantage of your information, everything else, but you build up a user base, i'm trying to be agnostic about this. you build that user base and you lose it and maybe you lose it because you broke the rules. >> forever is a long time. i think if they ban him orever it goes against at least the principles that they've been talking about up to this point of open communication. it would be really interesting to hear what their rationale is for that do they have the right to do that as private platforms, yeah, they probably do. other innovators have the right to build up platforms with different rules. we'll see if parler's able to build up something that takes moderation seriously and there will be competition, we hope >> okay. jon fortt, great to see you. a longer conversation. come back.

i have a million things i want to ask you talk to you soon >> sure. >> becky thanks, guys when we come back, dr. scott gottleib will join us for the latest vaccine headlines, including the news from johnson & johnson. that's right after this. plus, a slew of bank earnings are due tomorrow. we'll get a read from mike mayo. these days, we want sophisticated but simple. cutting edge made user friendly. in other words, we want a hybrid. and so do retailers. which is why they're going hybrid, with ibm. a hybrid cloud approach with watson ai helps manage supply chains while predicting demands with ease. from retail to healthcare, businesses are going with a smarter hybrid cloud,

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good morning, president trump impeached for a second time following last week's riot at the capitol markets relatively calm as we move towards a senate trial. coming later today, details on president-elect joe biden's stimulus plans what's likely to make it through congress and how will that process unfold and early data showing johnson & johnson's covid vaccine grants a long lasting immune response we'll get more from dr. scott gottleib the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin u.s. equity futures are up closing fractionally lower on

the dow. up almost 90 points on the dow jones. the nasdaq indicating up 7 s&p 500 up 641 that happens a lot, becky. >> that does remember the low after 2008 was 6.66 for the s&p, too. anyway, the house voting to impeach president trump for an historic second time following last week's deadly riot at the capitol. 10 house republicans joined with the house democrats on the charge trump incited an insurrection president has only been impeached four times in history, two belong to president trump. in a video statement taped without any press present, trump appealed to his supporters not to have anymore violence senate majority leader mitch

mcconnell said the soonest a trial would begin would be next tuesday, a day before biden is sworn in in a statement biden says he hopes the senate can work on the important business of the nation in addition to their impeachment duties this all comes, of course, as the social media fallout for president trump grows. snap chat parent snap says it will permanently terminate trump's account next wednesday the move was made with public safety in mind as well as trump's quote, attempts to spread misinformation, hate speech and incite violence, which are clear violations of our guidelines snap shares down by about 18 cents. andrew >> thanks, becky. meantime, johnson & johnson's experimental one shot covid vaccine triggers a long-lasting immune response according to an early safety study. meg tirrell joins us with the details. meg. >> reporter: good morning, andrew we got these last night. they are not the much-anticipated phase three results on the one shot vaccine

but these are the one, two results showing the antibody levels they are encouraging neutralizing antibodies 90% of participants after a month after two months that was at 100% that stayed out to 71 days that's the duration of the length we know now for the antibodies they were the same across all age groups people over 65 generated the same immune response as younger people side effects, fatigue, headache, injection site pain and fever. i talked with dr. paul stoffels from j&j, he said if antibodies are the driver, we should see a higher level of efficacy the question is are antibodies what provides the driver j&j is one shot, of course that's very different from what's out there it can be stored for three months in the refrigerator which will make it a lot easier in the administration process but,

guys, there's always a down side we heard from "the new york times" yesterday that there may be production issues for johnson & johnson and we heard from operation warp speed that if the vaccine gets through the fda by the end of february, they expect to have under 10 million doses available. they should have more being made in march and many more being made in april. so we're going to have to wait for the phase 3. that's only a couple weeks away. guys, back to you. >> okay. meg, thank you for that report joining us right now to help break some of this down, former fda commissioner dr. scott gottleib currently serves on the boards of i will lumen na and pfizer. he's a cnbc contributor. as you read the results i'm curious what your first read on them was and how you think they do compare to the pfizer and moderna vaccine? >> yeah, they're very good results. these results were out in a pre-print server it had longer term follow-up so we got a look at more data in

this publication that came out last night some of the things that looked encouraging are the antibody levels kept going up and they followed them out 71 days and the antibody levels kept going up this is fairly consistent with the mrna vaccine this looks like a good profile for the vaccine. this could be potentially a one dose vaccine that remains to be seen. they're testing it as a one dose and they're testing two doses. the open question is whether or not older individuals who are less likely to mount a robust immune response to any vaccine will require two doses to get a full immune response to the vaccine. we don't know the answer it's possible. all in all this is a good result it's an indication we'll have a third entrant. j&j will be able to manufacture this at scale. this is a good entrant into the field. >> do you think this will be as popular in the united states as it may be in other developing countries that may have an

easier time or may need to have the j&j vaccine in terms of the ability to get out there without the refrigeration in terms of pfizer and moderna what may be a distinction between efficacy >> we don't know if there's a distinction between efficacy right now. this is sort of comparable it doesn't need to be right on the dot in terms of what the mrna vaccine is. this comes in 85, 90% effective, even 80% effective, i think that's within the range of where the other vaccines are, this could be popular it could be stored in doctor's offices more easily. as you push vaccines out into the primary care settings and away from the mass distribution sites this will be an attractive vaccine to use in more austere settings >> right doctor, as more and more people in the united states are getting access to the vaccine, one of the questions that keeps coming up is whether they need to continue to wear a mask and whether if they take it they

could continue to spread it, remain effectively contagious even though they may not have the symptoms themselves. i know we don't have hard data on that yet but, doctor, let me just ask, what's your best guess at this point on that specific point? >> one last point on the j&j vaccine. the rationale in using the viral vector to develop a vaccine was the it will elicit an antibody response and they do seem to elicit the immune response they may do it as well that's another thing we can't fully measure that's hanging out there. it could make the vaccine attractive i'm sorry, i forgot your question the presumption is when you look for a vaccine -- >> it goes to the question of whether you could take the vaccine to be asymptomatic, you

wouldn't get any of the symptoms but yet still be able to effectively shed at the same time >> right so this is where most people are right now. most people -- this is all, you know, a hypothesis we haven't demonstrated this yet. when you look at a vaccine 90, 95% effective, you tend to believe some of that efficacy is being driven not only by a reduction in covid disease, signs and symptoms of covid infection, but it's preventing some people from getting infected in the first place. when we looked at the primate studies, the monkeys developed what we call nonsterilizing mucosal immunity they had cells at the level of their respiratory tissue many people do believe, and i'm optimistic, that the vaccine is going to reduce transmission it will make people less likely to transmit the virus. not 100% but it will reduce it that needs to be demonstrated. there's trials underway

demonstrating that there was trials with the moderna vaccine that was shared publicly that did suggest it reduced transmission we have the first data suggesting these mrna vaccines reduce transmission. if it's operative for the moderna vaccine it's operative for the pfizer vaccine that data ultimately is going to be revealed. one of the things pfizer is doing and moderna is looking at this, looking at antibodies among people who are vaccinated to see if they develop antibodies to other parts of the coronavirus besides the part that the vaccine was trying to stim stimulate, particularly what we call the nucleotapsin protein if you don't see anyone with antibodies to this protein, it's a pretty good indication that the vaccine was protecting against infection. we should have that data soon, within a matter of weeks. >> it's complicated when you talk about being infected with

the coronavirus and actually having covid-19 so that's how we have to parse all of this stuff, but if you have an antibody that's directed at the spike protein, either the antibodies are killing the virus or at least preventing replication, which would mean the viral load that you have in your bloodstream is probably much lower than it would have been if you didn't have the vaccine, makes it much less likely that you're going to shed any virus it's common sense most likely if you're preventing infections of people it will be much harder for that individual to be the link in the chain to another spreading event, right i mean, we should be optimistic? >> yeah. >> i know we need to keep -- with the qualifiers, but the vaccine is not a vaccine against covid -- against immune cells that over react. it's not that. it's a vaccine against the spike protein of the virus >> right. >> either it's killing the virus or preventing it from

replicating which makes it much less likely you will transmit it, right? >> joe, i think that's why most people are optimistic, including myself we're hopeful the data will demonstrate that this is a critical question. this will get to the issue that andrew raised about how important of a public health tool this is, how good of a public health tool this is reducing infecttivity. if you get vaccinated, do you need to wear a mask? how careful do you need to be? that's a critical public health question we will have to rely on real world evidence there was data out of israel that suggested patients who were vaccinated were less likely to become infected with the virus they were doing pcr testing on them that's the first bit of real world evidence looking at a population that's been vaccinated, seeing how they performed relative to people unvaccinated that's the kind of evidence ultimately we have to rely on.

>> scott, just to emphasize that point. i think these are all valid questions right now because there are people who are starting to get vaccinated you start to wonder, can my parents come over and see the grandkids or do i have to worry about them exposing snem is it safe not to wear a mask at work? is it safe to give hugs and be close to people? another question, this is all for public information at this point as people are doing this i was reading through some of the information about the j&j vaccine. it seemed like it was effective, i think they said 57 days after you received the shot it looked like there was an effective level of the antibodies that were there i guess that raises the question again for people who are starting to get these shots, you're not safe the minute you get the shot, it takes time for any of these vaccines to build up in the bloodstream. when can you go back to life if you have gotten one of the moderna and pfizer shots and can we expect that same expectation for the j&j shot

>> i think for an older individual who's vulnerable to this virus, certainly wait for the second shot. wait for a period of time after the second shot until you're likely to have full protective immunity i don't think people should feel completely secure after the first shot it's not a binary answer to the question about can you relax some of the precautions. it's going to depend on what the prevalence is, what the overall environment is i think an environment like where we are now wherein effection is everywhere, if you are a vulnerable individual, even if you have had the second shot, it's still very prudent to continue to wear a mask and take precautions. that doesn't mean you have to hibernate and avoid seeing family maybe you can lean forward in that regard but wear a mask, be more careful in those environments i think when we get into a lower prevalent environment the questions will be more operative if you have a population that is vaccinated that's where we can relax, in the summer and spring if the new

variants don't get a foothold and change our trajectory. in terms of the immunity the vaccine is providing looking out 50 days, 70 days, those were the intervals measured the full antibody response you would expect or hope for didn't fully kick in until around after two months those levels were continuing to build but we don't know what it looks like 90 days, 120 days, 6 months that's the data we're ultimately going to generate in a post market how durable is the immunity. pfizer will have data looking out a longer time. we'll have better information around what the durability of these vaccines is as well. >> okay. doctor, thank you as always for helping break all of this down for us it is -- you're doing a public service so thank you becky? >> thank you. >> thanks, andrew. when we come back, president-elect joe biden

expected to lay out his economic stimulus priorities later in the day. ahead of that, we're going to speak with former office of management and budget director peter ors zog. stay tuned

president-elect biden expected to unveil new stimulus information. good morning, ylan >> there are two options biden has to push his economic agenda through capitol hill the first is old-fashioned bipartisanship two sources tell me that is going to be his starting point, at least for the covid relief deal he wants to work with republicans to get 60 votes, state and local aid and funding for the vaccine. then there's budget reconciliation this could be a backup if democrats and republicans can't reach a compromise or if democrats want to go after even bigger legislation later this is a special process that allows them to pass a bill with

just 51 votes, which conveniently is how many they're going to have, but it also comes with some strings attached namely that it can only be used for revenue and spending measures and conventional wisdom holds that that means it couldn't be used to send money to state and local governments or even to the cdc you also have to commit to an amount and size of the package up front and kind of hope all of the details work out later both chambers would have to vote on this twice, first on the price tag and then on the actual legislation. this tool has been used to pass some big sweeping bills like the tax cut and jobs act, the affordable care act and both of the bush tax cuts. this is a very powerful process but, guys, it can be a very polarizing one back to you. >> for sure. thanks, ylan let's talk more about the economic stimulus in the next

group. joining us is peter orszag nobel prize winning economist, it's something smart people should discuss so i think i'm out, peter we will get to that. did stiglitz propose not accepting any euros ever again in any country was that part of -- is that part of what he decided >> well, one of the interesting parts of this was the sort of slightly odd couple dimension of bringing bob rubin and joe stiglitz together. >> matter, antimatter. cats and dogs. peter, can we start talking about the stimulus and how that works? >> sure. >> how they did it will it be $2,000? in your treatise you talk about low interest rates giving us a wrong idea about things and i think one of those things is

that we can do this forever and i don't know, 2,000 for everybody seems like we're making that even a heavier lift in the future in terms of dealing with it. >> first, we need to see what the biden team comes forward with, which will really help to frame this debate. just picking up on the discussion that was immediately preceding us, whether the administration asks congress to use reconciliation is going to be a key part of this. i suspect that given the 60 vote alternative they're going to wind up having to use re reconc reconciliation, but we will have to see i hope if they do, this is an opportunity for us to finally do this right, which is also part of our -- the paper out today, which is if you're going to put in place some support for the economy, whether it's unemployment insurance, state and local fiscal relief, whatever it is that you do, the design is important. it would be better if it stays in place as long as the economy

is weak and then it goes away automatically as the economy strengthens. we continually think that we can just kind of fix problems one off and then we're surprised you have to come back and do it again. it's better to make things like that a bit more automatic. if the economy remains weak, unemployment should remain robust as the economy strengthens, we should move forward. >> we had ideas about infrastructure earlier and how effective that might be. if we're going to spend a bunch of money, maybe that will bear some long-term benefits rather than short-term benefits in terms of employment and everything else. how big would you do that right now? what would -- would rubin and stiglitz agree on the size of that and the way to approach that, peter? >> yeah. i think the way is important

one thing that has happened over the past couple decades is infrastructure spending has actually become pro cyclical that is it falls during recessions, which is exactly the opposite of what we would want during the recession that's the perfect time to go build stuff because if you think about it the opportunity cost of the resources that you use to go do that are lower when they don't have as many alternative purposes during a recession. we also get the benefit of the kick to demand that comes from the infrastructure spending. to have infrastructure spending decline during recessions is actually the opposite of what we want and that's nother part of this policy brief that's out today. we talk about designing a program that tries to offset that so that you boost infrastructure spending when the economy is weak, that's exactly the right time to be doing it. we don't speak about the non-stuff. >> going a little bit more about what is it moral hazard we get

from thinking we're never going to have to pay interest on anything ever again. >> yeah. >> is that the problem >> look, i think people are taking the wrong lesson from the era of low interest rates. what we're now -- the fiscal debate has now shifted to low rates are here forever instead it should shift to, huh, we did not anticipate that these rates would continue to decline and remain low for so long maybe we're not that good at figuring out when things like that happen and take that into account at the beginning so we were surprised by how much conviction is being put forward, you know, absolute certainty that low rates will remain here forever. we're not saying they won't, we're saying let's prepare for a scenario in which we're wrong again because that's certainly plausible. there are a lot of forces that affect both long and shorlt-term rates, both nominal and

inflation adjusted anyone that thinks they know with 100% certainty that low rates are here for a long, extended period of time, i suggest a lot of caution that's part also of what we attempt to do in the policy brief. we talk about lengthening the maturity of u.s. treasuries now, in part to reflect the fact that rates are low. you might think they might go even lower, but just as an insurance policy, it seems like a reasonable thing to kind of lock in the low rates now by extending out how long treasury is borrowing for >> peter, everything you're saying sounds incredibly reasonable, it's just that you've lived in washington you know how things work there once you insert politics into it, reasonable ideas get twisted and get hard to kind of get passed and get through i know that the democrats can fall back on budget reconciliation if they can't get the 60 votes for the bipartisan way of doing this, but that's

assuming that you take every single one of the democratic votes. they need 51 to get that passed. that's exactly what they have with the vice president breaking a tiebreaker joe manchin has said things. again, how do you keep that coalition together are there things that you think need to be done to try to coalesce around that is this going to be bipartisan in nature even if it's only democrats signing off? >> one way of thinking about this odd couple perspective is joe and bob represent different parts of the policy spectrum and they were able to agree with me on a bunch of important stuff, and we're hoping that that signals that there will be an ability for people from different political perspectives to come together in a substantive way. on the progressive and more centrist wings of the democratic party, there's a little bit in what we're putting together for

everyone there's more automatic stabilizers that will boost the economy. there's also attention to some of our long-term programs, for example, social security, medicare, medicaid in which we talk about trying to have those programs more automatically indexed to their underlying drivers. for example, for social security it's life expectancy. >> i'm sorry to interrupt you. we have to get out in 25 seconds. >> okay. >> were you in the middle of those two? if you were in the middle, just stiglitz -- >> joe, i'm an investment banker now. it's all about bringing people together >> do you own or rent? i think you're heading back down to dc? do you own or rent >> i'm staying in new york thank you for having me. >> i don't think i believe you thank you, peter. 27:25. breaking jobless claims numbers. stay typed

welcome back to "squawk box. rick santelli here live at cme hq awaiting the most recent reads on initial continuing claims initial claims, 965,000. that is a big jump, well above expectations asterisk the first couple weeks of any new year have lots of seasonalities. i'm not talking about the already seasonal adjustment process, just seasonalities.

when you add in the bill that was signed, stimulus in december by, i don't know, the former president? i don't know, he was impeached anyway, what we see is implementation there also puts some funk in the numbers but nonetheless, it's a big jump there's a rather large jump in continuing claims. we're expecting potentially to have our first breach, first continuing claims number under 5 million. that isn't the case. 5 5,271,000. that follows 5,272,000 those numbers are trickling in they're higher than expectations when it comes to prices, import and export, these are december looks. we are expecting up .7, imports up .9. up .4 x petroleum. year over year, whether in any country you look at with covid, there's pricing issues between the short term and the long term when you take the long view,

it's down .3 now let's switch gears and look at export prices up 1.1% on a month over month, year over year up .2 you see that dynamic there as well how have markets responded at 110 in a 10 year, now we're at 109 we settle at 108 we're a little higher. do remember that we had 120 billion in supply, and you can view the rise in rates is potentially a huge concession to those investors that think, you know, it's not going to keep moving up in yield, down in price consistently without a break. they seem to have called it rather well. becky, back to you >> rick, the export and import prices, much bigger jump than anticipated. is that the type of thing people would sit up and pay attention to two reports, three reports? what's the kind of breaking point? >> you know, i think that

there's going to be more room on the pricing runway, especially when you try to divide between import/export prices with various economies healing and dealing with covid hot spots in different ways i do think over time they will be more meaningful i also think over time there may be some changes in relationship between how trade and covid and these prices all move after we get more vaccinations, more inoculations bringing some of the hot spots down a bit. >> rick, thanks. good to see you. steve liesman joins us right now with more on what's been happening with this data >> stephen:, let's jump back to the jobless claims a bigger number than had been anticipated. >> yeah. and i think there's a couple things going on. pretty much laid them out. first of all, you have some seasonality i'm sure after the holidays is a big thing, but you also have these new programs that were put in place and we don't know the extent to which the passage of the new relief

bill may have prompted some people to come on and reapply for benefits that's going to be a part of it. but certainly the biggest part has to be the idea that you have a renewed surge in the virus, renewed lockdowns. i think this is a good moment here to pivot towards fed policy and what the fed is looking at everybody screaming the vaccine is coming. i think the fed is looking at this and says, you know what, there's a lot of things going on in the economy now and for the next several months until the positive effects of the vaccine take effect. and the concern i think is people losing their jobs, unemployment, businesses closing down that creates a scarring effect that's going to have an impact on the ability of the economy to grow do you know the road no matter how many people get the vaccine. so numbers like this and obviously we had the negative number, the decline in december. december payrolls and concerns about january and february i don't know, into march is

probably the time when you maybe start to see some of the uptick from the vaccine that's three months. three months when we get numbers like this, it will be challenging and raise questions and that's why the fed i think will stand pat we'll listen to powell at 12:30 this afternoon will be doing a q&a. >> that's why you'll see the additional stimulus efforts as well steve, thank you good to see you. >> yeah. sure when we come back, what investors need to be looking for when the big banks start reporting quarterly results tomorrow stay tuned "squawk box" will be right back.

coming up, get ready get ready for earnings season. the big banks kick things off tomorrow morning zach mayo, two gentlemen -- no, it's mike mayo he's an analyst. top analyst. he's going to tell us who is poised for some good results and maybe some that won't be so good and what investors should be watching first, as we head to break, check out the shares of gme gamestop yesterday alone they were up close to 60% quk x"n atinyou're wchg "sawbo ocnbc

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welcome back, everybody. asset management titan blackrock posting fourth quarter results above the street's expectations earlier this morning ceo larry fink joichd us in the last hour. >> worldwide looking for a voice, an organization that can help them decipher what is going on obviously we are seeing huge volatility in markets, huge

volatility politically, economically i think clients throughout the world are looking for someone who can help them and it resonated throughout the year and we saw extended in flows in our platform. >> big bank earnings are set to ramp up tomorrow with reports from citi, jpmorgan and wells fargo. joining us is mike mayo. what did you think of blackrock's numbers and what larry fink had to say? >> larry think is absolutely correct. the advice business is booming the pandemic has created winners and losers among a variety of parties, different industries, different countries. they need advice there's private equity dollars looking to come in and make investments. there's new products out there in terms of the proliferation of

spacs and ipos we've been favoring goldman sachs on this advice wave. >> you said that there was a hat trick that took place over the last three months that has made you much more optimistic about the stocks over the next three years. what was the hat trick and what's it mean >> a hat trick is when you score three goals in hockey or soccer. >> i know what a hat trick is. i know that part >> but there's been three positive events, each one in their own right would be a game changer. to get all three at the same time is like a one out of 500 occurrence the first was pfizer monday, november 9th with the vaccine development. you saw the j&j news, that's more positive. that helps to reduce the credit losses at banks. the second would be fed friday or december 18th and that's when banks were permitted to resume share buybacks which start after they report earnings, and the third would be georgia tuesday

or last week when the democrats retook government which means more spending, reflation trade is back on, a steepening yield curve and that helps to reduce the pressure on banks net interest margins it all adds up to our theme for the year which is on the road again. banks are on the road again to the pre-pandemic returns and valuations that they had a couple years ago >> are you changing your ratings, your price targets for any of these banks based on that or do you think there's potential for up side? >> well, back in march and april we upgraded two of the six largest banks and so we recently increased our three-year price targets on a citi, bank america and jpmorgan bank america is our best for the year we have 50% up side on average for those three over the next three years in a low rate

environment. if we get to a more normal rate environment, we see bank of america, citi and jpmorgan doubling we see more up side. the push back is while the bank stocks have performed well they've recaptured half of the underperformance since pfizer monday, since november 9th they've under performed the market as a whole by 19 percentage points versus the past year. we still see up side >> mike, you're always pretty colorful i liked one of the things you put in the note. people want to date the bank stocks but they need to be in a more serious relationship. they need to marry up. why is that? >> you don't have to be married but it doesn't have to be a one date situation either. before the pandemic they were on the road to record efficiency, annuity like earnings and buying back stock they were bond proxies we think once banks show they're

resilient enough to come through the recession not only without issuing equity, with bity bette market share, that's a blue sky scenario that's not in our numbers. there is a lot of under appreciated improvement that wasn't appreciated before the pandemic and after the pandemic you get the combination of resiliency, annuity like earnings, better efficiency. the pandemic has changed customer behavior in a matter of months, what would have taken years. that allows banks to become more efficient by more digital banking. there's all sorts of -- there's a peace dividend in act one and act two you have the efficiency story. we're on the road towards the record efficiency where banks were headed pre-pandemic. >> quickly, we've got to run

if there are any risks to the scenario, what do you think they are? >> look, covid, covid, covid these are sobering times credit losses are going higher it will take a while for the vaccines to be implemented we think the credit losses will be a lot less than many had expected by the way, banks set up reserves pre-vaccine we think there's reserve releases we could be wrong. we could have higher losses than expected and that's the biggest issue for banks today and always the biggest issue for banks. >> mike, thank you i'm sure we'll be talking to you over the next week or so as we get the earnings in. >> sounds good thanks, becky. >> see ya. coming up, jim cramer's first take on the trading day, unless you haven't seen his twitter account because his first take is usually about 1:30 a.m. should investors brace for a pull back in the coming weeks? we have market commentaryo y u can't afford to miss when "squawk box" comes right back.

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i know you said this is when we have to start paying attention and getting into earnings season and you heard what mike was saying, the potential upside and what should we look at tomorrow when we see the numbers rolling in. >> i think we have to consider revenue growth looking for revenue growth for a long time for these companies. they haven't given any most of it has been expense control. when we start seeing trading business being up, some of the things we saw from blackbox, and similarly, with money coming in, active trading, and people really work, i like mike's call on goldman sachs, i think jpmorgan could be fine, i think the star of the show could be wells fargo because it was so bad and charlie sharp is so good, i like what he said, the only problem is, when you take a stock like goldman, remember after they report, they can open the window and the stock is up very, very big and there tends to be some selling and that depresses the stock as people think things aren't so good. i think it will be good. they're cheap. >> they are. in terms of what you saw with

blackrock, that was pretty interesting, the organic growth on assets and some other areas like the fees that they're able to see, and just the amount of liquidity that's sloshing around, larry said that they're able to win market share but there's a lot of money out there flowing into this stuff. >> is it ever. poshmark today, petco, probably, 15 times over subscriber for heaven's sake. but some of these firms have been kicking around forever and suddenly we love it? remember blackrock, and pmc, sold, was that ever a great shape, but blackrock is people loving the market and people sitting home and being interested in the market the market has made a move here that is breath taking, because people like stocks they enjoy stocks. they want to make more money than they did in index funds it's a rather remarkable change. and larry's right. >> larry was right in october when he told us that he thought that the market would continue to climb, even though we would continue to see the covid numbers going up and all kinds

of problems with that. he still thinks that you're looking at a market what is going to continue to be strong through the rest of this year. what do you think of that? >> i think he is totally spot on larry looks at fund flow, the best call of everybody in really the world, and one of the things that i think people, it is a very self fulfilling, i'd say virtuous circle developing here, whether it with be the spacs where if you buy them, 10, 11, you're almost always making money, i wouldn't say anything is guaranteed but it is pretty amazing. the offering, you're going to make money everyone think those all work. when you get into anything ev, that works there's so much that's working that you find people complaining about apple because it's not moving fast enough whoa, what a tough crowd >> you say all that, but you've seen these movies play out before everything is working and everything's pushing higher, and you can't help but wonder what changes the perspective, what

changes the momentum. >> sure, well, the insiders of these companies that have moved up, may i suggest that they're not immune, that this is when they should be ringing the register, being a little too complacent, that has historically hurt things and then finally, they just overwhelm us with deals and there's going to come a moment where there is a deal too far and we realize wow, we don't have enough money to be able to meet the demand for this, meet the supply here. that has not happened yet. we're nowhere near that. obviously people say if rates go up, then we're in trouble. rate, this little move in rates is being treated as one of the most, it is being seismic, it's not just, none of the home builders think it is, and they may be right, they made good calls this time, as opposed to 2007, 2008, we can party on. i just obviously, it's only history that dictates that parties don't last forever. >> cramer, no sleep until brooklyn, baby what about that? tell me that's not, those three aren't going to -- huh

>> i got the first part of the vaccine yesterday. they're nine blocks from me. i can't wait to go see them. i'm not going to change my loyalty. but wow, absolutely, it's exciting >> only an nba title will do now. i don't know about that, but wow. >> it reminds me of when the heat decided to win. it is really pretty great. i wish we could go see them. i think nash is a really great guy. people love him. >> unbelievable. >> the team is a real brooklyn team which is really kind of extraordinary. >> that is going to something. >> okay, guys. >> thank you >> joining us now, mona, the portfolio manager, senior u.s. investment strategist at elion global investors she looks excited. she looks excited about the prospects for the nets maybe not. you're more focused on business. i understand that. how is it, you just heard cramer talking about it and some references to larry's comment,

and i think they ring true with you with the spending under the biden administration could provide an additional lift for stocks >> yes, absolutely banks are excited about the market prospects the nets are a different story so certainly when we think about what's happened in the markets, really it's been pretty consistent in that the market has been looking towards the second half of 2021, and really for some time now, since the vaccines have been announced, in november and so what's been driving that, well, of course, we have the reopening story, with vaccines on the horizon, and perhaps some form of herd immunity and a real unleashing of pent-up demand by the consumer but this is being supported by not only low rates from the fed, and they're committed to zero, through 2021 at the least and the notes say 2023 and of course the georgia races really added a boost to not only the markets

but the value trade in particular we saw the advent or the prospect of stimulus, really have risen and with the biden administration today, but it's not only stimulus in the form of covid relief, we may also get further fiscal spending and the likelihood of more of that passing at least has now risen so this backdrop with reaccelerating growth in 2021, rates remaining low, and stimulus being added to the system, that's a recipe we think is pretty good for risk assets broadly. >> i've heard of positive, by other people, when we get to full reopening, and we maybe get a little of the re-nation going, that it may be, will it be over or will it just be a pause at that point >> you know, it's a great question and one we're hearing more and more also when does this stop? when does this re-flation trade, rotation trade, whatever you want to call it, really start to come to an end and we have two thoughts on that

one, it could be when we do start to see the whites of the eyes of inflation, and really inflation rates thus far have stayed well below and below the fed's 2% target for some time. really haven't crossed that 2% threshold over the last ten years, except for a handful of times so we haven't yet gotten sustained inflation but the ingredients are in place, you know, that growth rebounding, rates low, stimulus, all of that, could set up a perfect storm, for inflationary pressures to rise. and if the fed changes its tune, even in word, rather than action, that could create some turmoil for the market so you know, we don't expect that, certainly not from 2021, perhaps, as we're heading into 2022, we start seeing some of that, or maybe to the end of this year to some extent the other factor we're looking at when do growth rates really peak and we're certainly not there yet and we're waiting for this reopening to reopen in

ernest at some point we will see a slowing and that could be the inflection point, when the market turns as well so keep a lookout for those two factors. in the interim, we should look at any period of consolidation near term could be happening for the year ahead. >> we argue about inflation, about whether we actually did have some prior to covid-19, i mean we have the financial crisis, and people look at what technology has done, and the whole down-cost increases, and i would happy to not to end up like japan and if we could get a little traction with inflation and i don't think that necessarily would be a bad thing, just to show that we could do it and with all of this money, you would think so at some point, mona anyway, we have to say goodbye >> inflation for now >> thanks, joe have a great one. >> thank you, mona we hope to, well, we'll see you again soon.

okay, we're done, we'll take a quick look at the futures. 110. triple digits. we can't really discuss things on tv because you don't have time that's what i asked you, yesterday, but check that out, that morning show thing, because very few people have a morning show, and the one thing they get right on the morning show on apple, getting up at 3:30. we have that in common make sure you join us tomorrow. >> i've seen the propose i haven't seen the show, but i'll watch >> all right "squawk on the street" is next good thursday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street" i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer and david faber. jobless claims do spike, 965,000. our road map begins with impeachmen