good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" on cnbc. i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin. if you check out the u.s. equities, you'll see the trend we've been following dow futures indicated up by 31 points the s&p futures up by 13 the nasdaq up by 133 the dow was up for the week last week by 0.6% i think that was the fifth out of six weeks we've seen the dow closing higher the s&p was up a little bit more than the dow it was up by 2%. that's the third out of four weeks weave seen the s&p higher. then you had the nasdaq setting a new record high on friday.

it's been up significantly, too. last week was a big gainer, up by 4.2%. the russell 2000 setting a record high on friday. the russell 2000 has been up for 11 out of 12 weeks you have to keep your eye on the small cap stocks let's take a look at what's been happening with the treasury markets. as joe mentioned, this is the busiest week we'll be facing for earnings 13 dow components reporting this week along with 111 of the s&p 500 components right now it looks like the ten-year is yielding 1.08% those yields have come under a little pressure after moving significantly over the last couple of weeks. andrew >> great, becky. thank you for that we have new details as joe mentioned at the top released in the past hour. president biden's latest executive action the president will sign what's being called the buy america plan this is to direct agencies to strengthen requirements to they acquire goods and services from american businesses and workers.

we go to washington, d.c., with ka kayla. >> president biden has signed more than two dozen executive orders and this one strengthens rules on federal contracts to favor domestic manufacturers the administration says the effort will apply to some $600 billion in government business, refining what qualifies as american made and reducing the number of exceptions made through waivers. it creates a new role at the office of management and budget to oversee the effort and a website where small businesses can scope out contracts to see if they're, perhaps, better suited than a big company or overseas company that might already have a leading position for the bid. it's an issue that the trump administration targeted with executive action repeatedly, at least three times over the last four years and when asked how this specific order is different, biden administration officials said they're going to close loopholes left open by the trump orders even as those orders raised the

threshold for domestic content requirements canadian prime minister justin trudeau on a call with president biden raised concerns about about the impact on the bilateral trading relationship and the intertwined supply chains biden, according to it the canadian foreign affairs minister, said there would be no unintended consequences. over the weekend we saw biden hold calls with foreign leaders from the uk, france and mexico the readout said they discussed cooperation, multilateral agreement on a number of different issues and one also imagines they discussed the other order biden is expected to sign today, a reinstatement of travel restrictions on non-u.s. citizens coming into the united states from the uk, brazil and europe the trump administration had rescinded those to take effect this week. biden is putting them back on and adding some new restrictions for people travel ting through south africa

those four leaders you saw biden talk to over the weekend with the diagnosis of the leader of mexico last night, all of them have contracted covid over the course of this pandemic. >> kayla, thank you for that report it's a busy weekend. i think becky has a question for you. becky? >> i do, kayla just in terms of the big push in terms of the $1.9 trillion the biden administration is going to be asking for for covid relief and other things they put into that, the market's been looking at that expecting a big number to get passed but it sounds like there's big pullback not only from republicans but democrats i heard angus king asking questions, an independent from maine who usually caucuses with the democrats. the post had an interesting story over the weekend said the biden administration can either go big on this or go bipartisan. which way do you think the wind's blowing at this point

>> well, it seems, becky, like they're interested in going bipartisan, but where exactly that means the dollar figure lands is still unclear administration officials called the call yesterday with 16 bipartisan lawmakers constructive and productive and said it was an opportunity to really lay out their argument, which we've learned the $900 billion program passed at the end of last year, they see it more as a retro active type package addressing issues that have dcropped up over the last six months this new package is one dealing with issues going forward and future economic pain it doesn't sound like that argument really landed with lawmakers on the call yesterday. there were so many reports from law make ammers who were saying they raised questions. they didn't agree with the bryce tag or they didn't agree with the timing specifically. i know there were some lawmakers on the sunday shows raising questions about whether this was possible to jam through before the february 8th start of

president trump's impeachment trial. if it cannot be pushed through before february 8th, whether that means that it is a foregone conclusion that this it will not be a bipartisan package. at that point the partisan lines would be so fomented going into that trial, it might be impossible they said they're willing to cut things, willing to make edits during this package, the sausage-making process it's unclear how much they're willing to cut and what specifically lawmakers asked them to cut. >> thank you we'll be watching that very closely because, obviously, the market is, too we'll talk to you soon thanks on the planner, that's not one of the things on the planner. we have business-type things it's the busiest week of earnings season. more than 100 s&p 500 companies and 13 dow components all set to report tomorrow we hear from 3m, general electric, johnson &

johnson, microsoft and verizon we have boeing, facebook, tesla and apple. thursday, mcdonald's, comcast and visa on friday, eli lilly, caterpillar, honeywell and dhef ron. we'll case the case-shiller home price index tomorrow, durable goods on wednesday and the fed, the good old fed, love those guys and gals, kicks off a two-day meeting that will end with a news conference by jay powell on wednesday. thursday we'll get jobless claims and our first look at gdp in the fourth quarter. and this morning, china's president xi jinping will deliver the keynote address at the world economic forum the virtual meeting. i'm sitting here, it's warm, i don't have uncomfortable boots on it's virtual he's expected to present his view on china's role in the world. that speech starts at 7:00 p.m. eastern.

andrew, you got some virtual caviar or virtual vodka can? what have you got going? are you commemorating the day at all as davos man, or no? >> i don't know. i've logged in i'm logged in. i'll watch today i'm participating in something on wednesday, so i'm trying to experience davos through the ether. >> are you going to watch today? >> of course >> spann'c-span's still on over. you can find the beverly hillbill hillbillies, or "gunsmoke. you're going to watch. are you watching, becky? i guess the answer should be yes if you're serious about this >> look, i think xi jinping -- >> you're dancing, you're dancing. >> trying not to get dragged under the bus that you're trying to throw me under. i will admit there are a few

things that are a little better in this new world. just a few >> oh, yeah. naets a good one. >> being warm this week is one of them. >> that's a good way of putting it >> china's economy brought in more foreign direct investment than any other country last year knocking the united states from the top spot china inflows totaled $163 billion last year compared to $134 billion that was attracted by the united states >> and how about this, this is something. the super bowl is set. kansas city cruised to 38-24 win over the buffalo bills, looking to become the eighth team to win back-to-back championships in the nfc the tampa bay bucs held on to beat the packers 38-26. they'll be the first team in nfl history to play the super bowl in their home stadium. tom brady seeking another super bowl win and points books have

kansas city at 3.5-point favorite brady, what can you say? was it not belichick all this time was it not belichick that's not what did it >> to walk into a new team, to walk into a new team and take that team on the first year to the super bowl that's incredible. >> 43 years old. mahomes is 25. you know, the super bowl indicator, 2016, wrong 2017, wrong. 218, wrong 2019, wrong. >> i forget it, is the nfc or afc -- i thought it was one of the original >> the nfc or one of the original nfc teams had to win for the markets to go up if you go back 53 years it's still 75% accurate if you go back 20 years, it's worked nine times and it's been wrong 11 times it really doesn't matter a rat's who wins on this one

you know what, if it was rodgers versus mahomes, that would with be amazing because there's some g.o.a.t. conjecture about rodgers, too he had a lot more yards. >> look, brady being in this makes it really fun. not only to see him walk to a new team and do this, but to be an older guy and do that i root for the older guys now. >> older, 43 >> because i associate with them. >> what do you think of that, mac, 43? >> well, older than 25. >> older than 25 older than 25. i was going to say, you know, that mahomes was born when brady was throwing his super bowl touchdown. not quite. but we're not off by that much great games, though. great games yesterday, both of them i mean, not world economic forum type stuff, andrew, for you. >> pretty good come on. come on we've got a lot more coming up a little bit later today. we'll talk about the volatile bitcoin trade as it continues. we'll show you the bitcoin price

right now. we're at $33,120 potential regulatory hurdles continue and may remain ahead of us we'll talk about that. plus a huge lineup throughout the morning. congressman kevin brady is here to talk taxes and president biden's stimulus plan. we'll heard from lloyd blankfein, and andrew yang will be with us, candidate for mayor now of new york. "squawk" returns after thi

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enroll by december 15th. . welcome back to "squawk box" this morning janet yellen gave us some clues on how she might try to regulate bitcoin and cryptocurrency as treasury secretary at last week's confirmation hearing. >> cryptocurrencies are a particular concern i think many are used, at least in a transactions sense, maybe for illicit financing. and i think we really need to examine ways in which we can curtail their use and make sure that anti-money laundering doesn't occur through those channels >> in the past week bitcoin's price fell more than 7%. joining us to talk about it is

me melton, bitcoin chief operating officer. on one side you have janet yellen who seems to have a critical view of cripper to currency and bitcoin in particular, probably in line with steve u nuchin, the other secretary treasury was, and you have gary gainsler coming in to run the fcc, who taught cryptocurrency at m.i.t. >> gary and i testified in front of the house financial services committee about a year and a half ago on this very topic. i think he and i share similar views. bitcoin has been a part of the u.s. financial system for the last five years now. at our firm coinshares we've seen a lot of interest in bitcoin this year. we're really looking at three things sentiment is more positive than ever blackrock filed last week to add

bitcoin exposure to two of their funds. there are rumors that bridgewater might be publishing some research on bitcoin this week so, we're seeing a drastic shift in sentiment when it comes to asset managers market structure is changing the cme bitcoin futures hit their all-time high in open interest in december we're seeing record activity on that contract in january so, there's a lot of activity -- >> i heard you on all the advertisements on bitcoin. i'm not against bitcoin. you're advertising bitcoin and you're in the bitcoin business and you have good reason >> i'm on the regulations side i hear you bitcoin has been regulated it's regulated -- the markets are regulated by the f sttc bitcoin is part of the regulated market again, janet yellen's comments, if you look, she provided written responses to her testimony. in her written response, she was much more nuanced. bitcoin is rel regulated

it's a common misperception it's not. i want to dispel that myth more regulation is coming, more coordination between agencies is coming and i think that's all positive hopefully that answers the question >> unfortunately, it doesn't because i think the thing i'm trying to get at is whether you believe ultimately there is a way to actually have an anti-money laundering feature that works in and around bitcoin in the same way that our current monetary system is able to, or the banking system, rather, has that built into it. >> of course. >> i would argue to you that bitcoin is the opposite on purpose, and actually that it's almost impossible to get to that kind of standard do you disagree? >> i disagree. when you and i exchange a dollar, if i handed you a pile of dollar bills there's no ymklc on that. the bitcoin happens on ak

activated bases, like bitcoin. they go through the same reporting procedures that any other bank or financial services firm does. i think, again, when concerns come to money laundering, regulated venues exist they are the on and off-ramps in the united states and they're regulated. cash has the same function we're not regulating cash. >> but here's the distinction. for me to carry $1 million of cash somewhere is a bit of -- would be a bit of a feat in that it has to physically be carried there. we're talking when you're trading bitcoin, we're talking about something that can be done obviously in not even half a second the real question, to me, the idea of comparing cash in this regard to bitcoin is an unfair issue. the other piece of it is, you do have these unregulatedwallets. that is the major difference

and it's unregulated at very, very high numbers, meaning you can transact millions of dollars at a time whereas if you were trying to do that with cash, it would actually be challenging, therefore, harder, and as a result, make it easier for regulators to get on top of it. >> look, if we look at financial fraud, the number one place financial fraud happens is within the banking sector. look at the settlements -- >> obviously -- hold on. the argument is happens with cash is ridiculous it is the biggest market so, let's put that to the side i won't even -- i can't even have that discussion in reality. what i'm looking at is a different question, which is - >> sure. >> go ahead. >> at the end of the day, if people have a specific need, if there's a need to move large amounts of money outside of the banking system, it doesn't matter if it's bitcoin or gift cards or fine art or collectible coins or watches, art, you name it people are going to find a way to do it bitcoin is just a tool like any

other asset we have. it is just a tool. there are a lot of people using it for legitimate purposes i do believe it's an asset class. when it comes to people using it for nefarious purposes, every financial market in the world, every asset in the world faces this challenge i struggle to see how bitcoin is fundamentally different. i do think we'll find solutions, so i'm optimistic. >> let me ask you a different question between bitcoin and ee they're yum, the winklevoss twins are out saying it does not have the same rise as bitcoin has there is a view potentially that actually regulators might be harsher on that because of the way a stable coin might work relative to bitcoin. i know we're getting into the weeds and some viewers may not follow along, but if you could help them and me understand it, that would be great. >> i'd love to when it comes to assets and investment, a lot of the interest we're seeing today when

it comes to institutional investors and large allocators it comes to bitcoin because that's the asset people understand the best. it's been around the longest, the a very deep, liquid market bitcoin markets are ten times as liquid as the etherium market the allocation we see is in bitcoin. but they are 15% of the overall cryptocurrency market cap compared to bitcoin's 65%. we've seen a material run-up when it comes to new applications and products and services being built, many are, in fact, being built on top of the etherium network, the blockchain we see increasing amount of interest in etherium the cme is offering their product on february 7th. i think that will be a key date to watch because that cash-settled contract is really the primary way through which u.s.st institutions are

accessing cryptocurrencies, which is why the bitcoin contract on the cme has been doing so well and hitting all-time highs month after month. i think etherium is in for changes for those that want to allocate in size >> thank you appreciate the conversation. >> thank you for having me >> talk to you soon. joe? >> thanks. i mean, marty byrd on "ozark," remember, he had all that cash in the wall. i mean, it took forever to put all that cash behind the molding on -- with bitcoin they could have a private wall, right >> exactly >> i don't know. i see the other side as well it's like, whoa, there's money larnding going on here for the last 3,000 years but bit -- anyway, spacex launching its ride-share mission, playing a taxi to give a lift to more than

100 satellites here's a look at the premarket winners and losers in the s&p 500. dana-farber cancer institute discovered the pd-l1 pathway. pd-l1. they changed how the world fights cancer. blocking the pd-l1 protein, lets the immune system attack, attack, attack cancer. pd-l1 transformed, revolutionized, immunotherapy. pd-l1 saved my life. saved my life. saved my life. what we do here at dana-faber, changes lives everywhere. everywhere. everywhere. everywhere. everywhere.

sm. facebook and amazon topped all other federal firms in federal lobby spending facebook spent about $20 million, up 18% from the year before while amazon spent about $18 million, up about 11% from 2019 big tech firmsz are facing

increasing pressure from politicians on both sides of the aisle as well as regulators. i thought those numbers, i don't know, i thought they were bigger, becky, but i guess if you spread that around, you might get somewhere with that. i guess in relation to what facebook and amazon could spend, they really wanted to get involved, they're not big numbers. >> right >> but $20 million here, $20 million, starts to add up. >> in the meantime, we spent three times that. >> right we should tell you about another story. spacex launching a record 143 satellites on a falcon 9 rocket. this is the first mission that has payloads from multiple customers on board they describe it as a ride-share mission. this is kind of like the uber of these satellite launches, i guess. andrew >> i don't know if you saw this, separately, that elon musk

planning to drill for natural gas. did you see this >> no, i didn't. >> the company - >> i saw him standing in a boring tunnel in las vegas >> but -- i thought it was fascinating. in texas on behalf of spacex, they're going to endeavor to start effectively drilling for oil, drilling for natural gas. it's almost ironic given the brand he's created in terms of what tesla represents and the batteries because, of course. >> and the solar power >> and the solar power so, on the other end, to get some natural gas to support the spacex program, they'll be drilling that to me was - >> in texas. >> when in texas, new headlines. another spac to tell you about this morning smartlock and building management maker latch planning to go public with innovation

acquisition ts innovation back ed by new york commercial real estate firm. the deal valuing latch $1.35 billion. shares doubled in premarket trading just this morning. rob spire and the latch founder will be joining us next hour to talk about that transaction. i think it's the first spac in the real estate world. so, we'll be discussing that and another spac in another day. becky? >> i was going to say that, spac, spac, spac, spac i don't think you can get through a block without talking about it that's where the money is these days we'll continue to talk about it here, too. when we come back, though, we'll talk about the growth versus value debate and where you should be putting your money to work. and later, dr. scott gottlieb will join us to give us an update on the vaccine rollout and what he's hearing from the states we'll talk to him about the uk variant that boris johnson said over the weekend, could, in fact, be more deadly than the original covid virus

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good morning u.s. equity futures are in the default mode up a little bit of the green it wasn't a great week last week, obviously. nasdaq looking strong this morning, up 133. dow jones up about 24. the s&p indicated up 14 or so. thanks, joe. despite growth in tech stocks driving the s&p 500's gains last week, our next guest advise says sticking with value stocks joining us, the bank of america securities head of equity and quantitative strategy. just looking through what we've seen, it's been a decent week, especially for the technology.

tech was up 4.2% last week it's really been on a tear what makes you think that's the place where things will continue >> well, so here's the thing i think what we saw last week was a very bizarre phenomenon. i couldn't tell you why. if you look at performance over the last five days, performance has decoupled from fundamentals. i think what was so unusual about last week, we saw a very unusual reaction to earnings where companies that beat earnings and raised their guidance for 2021 actually underperformed the market, which is really unusual. so what's happening right now and the leadership we saw last week was really nonfundamentally driven and was more driven by this last -- you want to put your money in tech stocks if we're not out of the woods on the economy. now, when you step back and think about it, i think this year is setting ourselves up for

a dramatic economic recovery, a pickup in inflation. nothing i'm saying sounds surprising to you, i'm sure. but i think what's really unusual about that is we're still seeing leadership in the market being driven by deflationary kind of defensive, secular growth beneficiaries i think from a psychological perspective what we're seeing right now kind of smacks of this tendency of investors to embrace the last leadership cycle even when we're about to embark upon a very different type of year. so, that's why i think to fade growth and buy value yeah, becky, go ahead. >> part of the reason you may have seen the market react that way is because we've been decoupled for a long time. we've been getting lousy earnings from a lot of companies but we brushed it off. we thought it's no big deal

because it's the pandemic and this will change maybe it's not a surprise for people to say, okay, show me the money. even if you beat, i'll still not impressed because i don't like what i'm hearing from you on the guidance or when we can get back to any sense of normal >> stick with tech stocks if you think we're never going to get back to normal, if we're never going to see the economy reopen. i think that's just a really dangerous bet to make right now. we have signs of an administration that's focus cussed on reinvigorating the economy, containing covid, making vaccines available to the general population some time by the end of the first half of this year. i think it's a dangerous bet to continue to play what's worked for the last ten years of no economicreinvig rags, reinflation, super low interest rates forever. that's the bet you're making when you biuy secular tech and

growth we have not a blue wave but blue ripple we have democratic control of the white house, which is different from four years ago when we had a republican sweep we have a reopening from a complete paralysis in the economy. i think it's just really hard to say, continue to think the s&p is going to be the best game in town and tech stocks are going to crush it. that to me seems kind of crazy right now. >> do you think these tech stocks, these other stocks that have kind of risen so much, do you think they're overvalued or do you think this is a case where those other stocks you're looking at, the ones that have been neglected, the value stocks are really undervalued at these levels which is it? >> when you look at it -- i think a little bit of both when you look at some of the more cyclical areas of the economy, like financials, like

select industrials or the more gdp sensitive areas of the market, they're treating it relatively cheap multiples on both value, on sales i think that they're not necessarily pricing in a strong earnings recovery. when you look at the other side of the market, i'm not saying mega cap tech is trading in the stratosphere but it's expensive. the value in growth is almost the same as we saw in 2000 i think what's interesting about what's going on today versus 2000 is we're seeing the same reluctance of investors to shed a theme that has worked so well for them and made them so much money as we move into a different type of environment. now, i think the important distinction here is the s&p 500 and nasdaq may not be your best benchmarks in the next 12 months i think that's where it gets really interesting if we have a value recovery, the s&p 500 could actually go down we could have a great economy,

great recovery in profits but. the s&p 500 might not be -- this continued stellar performer. now is the time to think about small caps, emerging markets, into the more cyclical areas of the world. i'm forecasting 3,800 on the s&p 500. that's target. i'm the low forecast on wall street there's tremendous bullishness on high cap tech. >> the small caps, you said small caps, time to move into it russell 2000 closed at record high on friday and it's been up 11 out of the last 12 weeks. even though it's come up so sharply, this is still the time you think to jump in there >> i do. because a quarter doesn't necessarily make a bubble. we've had a period of seven-plus years where large caps have outperformed small, the multiples on small caps are still very, very low we're trading at a deeper discount to large caps than we've seen historically. i think we've had a great quarter but that doesn't mean

it's over. it just means we're potentially at the beginnings of a longer lived small cap cycle. small caps tend to outperform for ten-year periods so one quarter, i don't think that's enough to make me bearish. >> thanks for joining us today good to see you. >> thanks, becky >> andrew? >> okay. coming up when we return, a bidding war over an atm operator we have the details on that next you have to hear it. later, don't miss our exclusive interview with former goldman sachs ceo lloyd blankfein. you can watch or listen to us live any time and you can do it right now even on the cnbc app

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welcome back, everybody. ncr is nearing a deal to buy cardtronics after outbidding a pair of investment firms that had earlier agreed to why the atm operator, according to a "wall street journal" report that says the deal would value card tronkices around $1.7 billion, or $39 a share. the investment firm apollo global management and hudson executive capital agreed to raise their prior offer of $35 a share. cardtronics is one of the largest atm operators in the world with 10,000 machines

joe. >> that really is an atm deal. remember the old days we used to talk about atm deals we made fun of it all the time it would be an transfer mode between two high-tech companies. we'd say there's an atm merger we would always make the joke about, you know, there's no tellers and -- so this really is an atm deal you're telling me. got it >> it is. >> okay. shares of amc entertainment rising this morning. it signed several finance deals allowing it to survive the pandemic's impact on movie theater attendance for longer without having to resort to bankruptcy i got a whole new -- guys, i got a whole new content stream i want everyone to know.

whole new. i'm going to tell you how it happened mcgregor versus -- >> what is that, apple tv? >> mcgregor, you had to sign up for espn plus and then you got a discount on the ufc fight where i was able to find a new way to lose money. >> you're watching that now? >> i did stayed up till 12:30 betting on conor mcgregor. >> it all comes back to draftkings. >> and i found a new way >> more action. >> i couldn't decide, should i lose money on british football or should i lose it on -- and i decided mixed martial arts might be -- what i'm getting to here, the stuff on espn plus is amazing. amazing features, stuff you can go -- i don't want to be pushing disney on anyone i don't really like them but i really like espn plus. i really like espn plus. i got it because of this fight that whole genre, the ufc, is that okay, sorkin?

you know how in football if there's helmet-to-helmet contact, the guy gets thrown out of the game. >> i don't know. >> the guy gets thrown out of the game for helmet-to-helmet contact. the whole point of mma is to give the other guy a concussion. it's weird it's weird it's kind of disturbing to see they can barely stand after they get just clocked. >> stick to espn plus. have you watched "the last d dance" yet you haven't done that, have you? >> the michael jordan? >> yes. >> of course of course. have you that's the shock. >> of course >> breaking covid news from merck, meg is with us. joining us - >> good morning. >> what are the details. >> well, so some good news and bad news for merck they were working both on vaccines and on therapeutics they're announcing this morning they are stopping work on those vaccine candidates but continuing the work on the two drug candidates they have in development. on the vaccine front, it's

because early results showed that the immune response generated by these vaccines was not at the level of what we have seen from other more advanced vaccines they are stopping work on those two early stage vaccine candidates for covid-19. but they are continuing the work on their drugs in development for covid,which arguably have generated more attention for merck. one of them is the one that they licensed from a company called ridgeback. it's a small molecule drug, an antiviral you can actually take by mouth, orally, like a pill. and that is one that people are very excited about they say they should have data in the first quarter and will share that if positive and so that is one people are really looking forward to hearing about. the other, of course, is a drug they just acquired for people with severe covid infections who are in the hospital. that one they already have a government contract for and ramping up production. they're continuing work on the

drugs, but because the vaccines were not measuring up in the early stage trials, they are discontinuing that work. back over to you. >> meg, give to us inquiring minds want to know what -- was it a spike protein and viral vector what was it that was different about the merck vaccine? it's not vaccine not messenger rna but should we worry about j&j? is it an adeno tell us. >> reporter: no, they used two different approaches both were viral vector vaccines. similar to the approach being used by johnson & johnson and astrazeneca but different viruses. exactly, there have a measles virus and a vsv which is the same approach they used for ee voel la. >> carrying the same spike protein? like gottleib said an epitope.

>> reporter: i do believe it was focusing on the spike protein but i don't have the details at my fingertips. >> becky >> hey, meg, let me just ask, when they say it was an inferior immune response, i guess that means it didn't get the same efficacy levels. we know the existing ones we've gotten from moderna and pfizer are incredibly effective at 95%. is there any way to figure out how effective it was was it even before that if it's not getting the same immune response when we first started trying to develop these, if you could get 50 to 60% effectiveness, that would be great news. have we changed our entire standards where something is 70% effective we're not as interested, when we have existing candidates that are 95% effective. that's what i'm wondering about j&j. it did inspire an immune

response from j &j it gets to the point where you have a lot that aren't as effective, is there a fight that breaks out over which one you get, how you go about that what can you tell us if anything >> those are such important. our standards have been raised being 95% efficacy, we're all spoiled and we want 95% efficacy for the next one expectations for johnson & johnson, could it be 80, could it be 90 the fda standard is the same, 50% efficacy in terms of what will get approved. i believe it's still the efficacy hurdle. however, what people will want once it gets out on market is a separate question. what merck was looking at here was the earlier stage immune response just what level of antibodies does the vaccine generate in the earlier trials we don't know what the levels were they haven't published them yet. they say they will what we've seen from the johnson

& johnson early trials is they did generate a higher level of antibodies comparable to the mrna they have confidence that they'll generate strong efficacy and protecting people from the disease. we should be seeing that within a week or two. for merck i guess the levels were not high enough, both compared with existing vaccines and also with natural infection and they say this just isn't worth pursuing for covid >> one more quick question i saw over the weekend a chart that showed there are, i think, 68 different vaccine candidates that are being tested at this point or that have already been approved around the globe. you never want to hear any vaccine candidate drop out but we should still recognize that there are lots of other vaccine candidates that are out there, right? >> there are a lot and of course we have focused on the ones that were under the operation warp speed umbrella because they were getting the funding and the

acceleration from the u.s. government behind j&j we were expecting astrazeneca for months, novovirus and anofi. those are the front-runner candidates there are also ones behind that that are focusing on different variants, could potentially cover or provide protection against all of the different variants they're farther off in development but there is a lot of innovation going on in vaccines and it's encouraging to know that. >> meg, thank you so much for the breaking news. we will talk to you later in the show, i believe. when we come back, much more "squawk box" still ahead we're going to talk to congressman kevin brady. we have former goldman sachs lloyd blankfein and mohamed el erian and andrew yang. we'll be right back.

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investors bracing for the busiest week of earnings season as the markets look for more fuel to hit fresh records. the head of the cdc issuing a stark warning on the federal government's grasp of the covid

vaccine rollout. dr. scott gottleib joins us to talk about the latest on the battle against the virus. and president biden's stimulus plan and focus for investors, ways and means committee ranking member kevin brady will join us the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning welcome to "squawk box" right here on cnbc i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick and joe kernen. u.s. equities things looking up in the green the dow -- well, actually now the dow has turned around. down 24 points i should say. the s&p 500 is up close to 9 points the nasdaq looking to open about 120 points higher. in the headlines this morning, the centers for disease control

signing an order today that's going to require passengers to wear masks on all airplanes, trains, ride share vehicles and other forms of public transit. they can remove masks for eating and drinking that's something that's been debated for quite some time. the senate will vote on janet yellen's nomination of head of the treasury gamestop surging the game video retailer stock is now worth 3.5 times more than it was when 2021 began. it's been the subject of war of words between short sellers and enthusiastic retail buyers i remember, joe and becky, when we used to talk about gamestop remember blockbuster people don't go into the stores. >> another knee jerk trade. >> we had that debate a year

ago. >> another knee jerk trade you would have lost your shirt another doing the opposite -- >> or your shorts. >> or your shorts. yeah >> that's what's happening >> because they used to go in and buy those physical games that you'd go home. >> yeah. >> we made the case that like at best buy, you can get a lot of advice from those nerdy guys in the gamestop they know games like nobody. you can have a question about how to get past something that you're stuck on on a game and they'd know how to do that or know where to go so that was one reason, but that wasn't what did it the pandemic and downloading games, i guess, is what did it amazing. 94 we were thinking it was a short at 20, right, headed to single digits >> i remember the conversation. >> humiliating. >> unfortunately all too well. >> the market is humiliating anyway what can you say besides anyway?

furthermore? i don't know i've got to come up with something. >> ahem. >> a cough >> president biden pushing for a $1.9 trillion relief package but may come up short. steve liesman joins us with some results from the latest all america cnbc fed survey. steve? am i -- >> you've got that wrong, joe. do you want to try again. >> is it just a cnbc fed survey? not all-american. >> bingo i would like some -- >> okay. i'm sorry. i put that in there. i thought it was so good. >> i know you go. >> go ahead. >> all america is our survey of national population. we surveyed wall street and they think president biden is asking for too much money but they're more upbeat on his impact on the stock market, economy and the fight against covid than they

were in december cnbc fed survey, 72% of the 32 respondents think it's too big relative to what's needed and they'll likely get 1.2 trillion from congress. a 53% think biden will have a positive impact. just 1/4 think it will be a negative impact. pointing to an array of policies in the new administration that would help the economy kathy bostjancic says faster vaccine diffusion, additional fiscal stimulus stemming and rebounding confidence should spark a mini-boom in activity starting this spring not everyone so bullish. barry knapp says the tax plan will get a 10% pull back in the s&p, half from higher tax rates reducing earnings and half from higher capital gains tax

reducing the market multiple 47% of respondents say biden will do a better job than former president trump handling the economy. that compares to 37% who think he will do a worse job 85% think biden will do a better job than trump handling the coronavirus outbreak a big part of the outlook. 53% on the issue of minimum wage the benefits of a $15 minimum outweigh the cost. 44% say the costs are too great. these results likely reflect a honeymoon period for the new president with his policies given the benefit of the doubt it will last, i think, joe, only if the economy and markets bring up results to match the optimism >> yeah. steve, i don't think we have time for cross talk. how many of these guys are academics and how many are them are real world types just wondering guys in your fed survey? >> we usually have about half -- no, they're all wall street --

they're wall street economists or fund managers or strategists. we don't have any academics. half economists and half -- >> really? >> yeah, they tend to skew very conservative i think our results on the minimum wage are conservative if you polled a broader array of economists i think it's 60 to 70% economists think higher minimum wage benefits outweigh the conservative they gave trump high marks on the economy as well. >> okay, steve thanks becky, i'm getting some advice from one of our producers do the leno -- do the, hey did you see this did you hear about this? i'm going to try that. >> i was thinking, you could do the anchorman thing and go, in other news >> i could do that.

>> shifting gears. >> how many times does the average person say absolutely in the answer to a question have you noticed that? i see it now on some competing networks and i have to turn it off because it's not absolute. nothing is absolute and it's -- i don't know anyway -- >> same thing -- good question makes you feel good. >> i just said anyway again. how about take a listen? there are people that every sound bite they toss to say take a listen like -- anyway -- >> kicking into high gear here on "squawk box" this morning when we come back, smart luck company latch is going to a company spac we'll hear from the ceo after this break later kevin brady will join us to talk about the president's relief package, whether bipartisanship is still on the table and much more. before we head to a break though, let's get a check on the

markets this morning you'll see the dow has given back its earlier gains down by 31 points. s&p up by 8.5. and nasdaq is closing up 125 points this morning in the pre-market we'll be right back.

the slew of 2021 spacs going strong the cnbc spac 50 index tracks them by market cap including some that have declared a target investment and it goes up until the deal closes. this morning we have a new spac to add to the index, ai powered recommendation and recommendation platform taboola says it's listing on the nyse. joining us with more is adam cengola ceo of taboola why a spac the offering merger did not happen is this an answer with how to move forward given that that's off? >> so many questions good morning, joe. first of all, i'm ringing the bell for the open web. it's a big market. it's important we need the strong, diverse open web during this time i'm excited to go public the reason we went to the spac is we found a great partner that

was excited about our vision he's going to join the board we had together -- we raised some of the biggest names in wall street, fidelity, blackrod, head of sophia, baron. $1,000 in gross revenue, 375 million and $125 million in adjusted ebitda. we thought it was a good time to go public with a good partner. >> did the -- the conjecture was when you changed your revenue model to some extent that you lost a couple of big customers and you had an inability for new financing. does this answer the -- that problem of the ability to raise money, adam? frozen adam wow. when you ask a question that maybe doesn't want to hear and then they just sit there like

that, you never know you never know whether it's technical -- adam, you just -- your shot froze after i asked that question. i thought, wow, he's really mad. anyway, is that what happened? >> no, it's not. i'm never mad at you, joe. we had all the options in the world. our finances are strongest than ever we chose to go public and we got the excitement of the best investors on wall street. >> because we don't have a lot of time i want to ask you a question about whether you really are different in terms of not needing to worry about policing what happens in your course of doing business, and i'm talking about always seen with facebook and twitter and parler, et cetera, et cetera since a lot of your business is based on clicks that it helps for you to have controversial content that sort of breeds the same type of disinformation and

it's not in your best interests to try to police it. is that a fair criticism >> i don't think so. we spoke before as the leader in moderating the platform. our publisher partners when you see taboola is side by side with high quality premiere content. we have a public policy, we have a team of humans that reviews every single url we review half a million urls a week i think taboola is ahead of the game and has been consistent i think what we lack from the platforms is we don't always understand what they do, what they do. we can't really correlate today's action to any long-term policy with taboola everything is public we have a human team that's backed by ai and software. it can always expect to be

consistent. >> you think that the answer to this nagging question about how people like you or facebook or anyone handles what goes up and what doesn't, just to be consistent you don't have a problem with the private companies you can decide to publish something or not publish something. you're fine with it as long as it's consistent? >> no. i think what's important is you have a policy that can stand behind it and have a conversation with you. then we can talk about whether it's good or bad do we like someone's decision, do we not? this says this is what we believe in and this is how we intend to enforce it and that's a much bigger problem than any one decision that's why i focus on having the policy, metrics, having human beings reviewing a human created problem. i think taboola is the champion of the open webthat is not lik

consumer companies that have this identity crisis with the open web we're doing what needs to be done >> some mornings on our ticker it seems like every stock that goes by is a spac. what does that mean to you, adam, in terms of where we are in sentiment is this a little too overheated would you say? >> i think it's a bridge what's really important is can you be a great public company. on the other side of it, everyone looks the same. what's most important to the investment community is are you a great public company now can you be a great public company overtime how you go public is a very momentary decision from my perspective the spake was a great product because i could have a conversation with the ceo. from my perspective having joined the board and level of

intimacy, so i like that the most important is meet or target great company for partners, police, investors. >> andrew, i'd refer to you on the spac conflict of interest fee setup question do you have anything for adam on this are you mad about this one in any way or can you -- >> we've -- we've talked about the larger -- look, there's larger questions about what's going to happen to spac universe over time but we've known adam for a long timewe look forward to following his progress. >> thanks, adam. more spacs to do and so little time, adam. >> more spacs. >> we're going spac to spac in this case. spac to spac in this case we're going from latch, a smart lock company that's pushing broader into smart home systems it is going public through a spac today robert frank joins us with the details and a special guest.

robert. >> reporter: thank you, andrew the spac attack does continue. global real estate developer tischman spire will acquire latch at more than $1.5 billion. joining us now in a cnbc exclusive is rob speyer and luke scho schoenfelder, he's latch's ceo and founder. congratulations on the deal. i want to pick up where joe left off with this whole spac sentiment and valuations and what it says about the market today. there are now i guess nearly 300 spacs chasing $90 billion worth of deals what do you make of the valuations i guess latch in 2019 was valued at $400 million and after this deal it will be valued at 1.5 billion. do these valuations make sense

to you >> being a customer and investor in latch for years and our customers, the people who live in our building, they love the product. so we've rolled it out across our residential portfolio and we think we can be a thought partner, product incubator, help in the new markets like europe, new verticals like commercial office they're a great company and our customers want it and that's the bottom line. >> reporter: even before this spac and this deal, tishman speyer had invested in property. property investment is way behind when it comes to technology what do you think need improving in commercial and real estate and where do you see the property heading beyond latch? >> we've been a tech phobic, tech resistant industry for

decades and now our customers are demanding it they want us to make their lives easier, happier, more productive and it's going to be entrepreneurs like latch and companies like -- entrepreneurs like leuken and companies like latch that are leading the way they're providing products that our customers demand and as an industry, we need them as an r&d arm to help us achieve those ends. >> luke, i want to bring you in. if you look at revenue in 2020 was around 18 million. you had a loss of 61 million and yet the valuation of this company post deal will be $1.5 billion. what do you make of that valuation? does it make sense >> so when you look at our revenue profile, so many of our deals sort of follow the way that our customers like to purchase produrkts which is 18

to 24 years, we're there as a partner to develop the products that you're going to need 18 months from now and for the next ten years. if you look at our book revenue, we look at that as the indicator of our growth and our forward progress and the customer excitement around our products one out of ten apartments were built with our products. we're so excited so much more to come. >> reporter: just quickly in terms of what you do you started with a smart lock company. that's such a crowded space. now you're into operating systems and software what is the main product in the next three to five years >> we've had the same vision and the same focus our focus has always been to make building better places to live, work and visit we've never sold to consumers. we've always been focused on buildings and the people who

work there, the people who live there. that's been our focus from the very beginning with latch o.s. we've expanded far beyond temperature control, lighting control working with google masks there will be new models to serve the resident the average resident opens 4.6 times a day our app. we're really excited about it. we're very excited about continuing to serve a broader market here in north america and expanding new geographies and new verticals with the additional resources and the participation. >> this deal has been validated by some of the great tech investors in the world like d1, durable, fidelity, blackrock,

chamath and you couldn't have a better endorsement of a sass business than investors like that. >> reporter: yeah, no, i'd say you've got brookfield which is the largest real estate company also investing it is a good lineup. before you go, i want to ask you about the future of new york city rob, you are one of the biggest landlords in new york city luke, your company is based in new york city. you at one point advised the mayor with the real estate board of new york, what do you see is the future and what can hurt th recovery >> i'm a lifelong new yorker i grew up in the city of the '70s and '80s. i've seen us surmount some big challenges before and i have no doubt we're going to do it again. it's going to take a tremendous effort from the public and private sector we're going to have to look beyond our self-interests and

find common interests. i know we can do it. frankly the fact that companies like latch are born here and grown here is a greatest amount to the fact that the city has more talent and potential. >> rob and luke, thank you both for your time. congratulations on the deal. andrew, back to you. >> thank you, rob. appreciate it, very, very much. coming up when we return, so much more on stock the president is going to reinstate travel restrictions on them and the battle on covid-19. pfizer stock, pfizer will be shipping fewer vaccine viles to fulfill its commitment to the government the drug company successfully lobbied and convinced the fda to acknowledge they contained 6 instead of 5 as originally

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its seven session winning streak riding in pre-market trading after last week's 43% gain the communication maker resolved a patten dispute and royalty dispute with facebook. does that make you nostalgic, becky. when i say blackberry, what do you feel do your thumbs twitch? >> yes that was my same thing blackberry holy cow what >> your thumbs start going like this do you use the same -- do you do your iphone that way >> no. yeah, i type the same way with my iphone, badly. >> you don't dictate >> no. >> you can say some crazy stuff. >> especially you. >> i use siri all the time. >> really? they need to go back to the drawing board on ai. she comes up with stuff that -- siri comes up with stuff that wouldn't make sense --

>> enunciate. >> maybe i'm normal. american eagle outfitters was upgraded to outperform from sector perform at rbc capital which points to positive momentum at the apparel retailers airy division. express is jumping in pre-market trading following a 53% increase during friday's session. the apparel retailer earlier this month announced a deal to add $140 million in finance being. that's up a measly 80% today. >> that was good good enunciation when we return, the latest on vaccine distribution bottlenecks, new travel restrictions and much more so much news i'm going to talk about with d sttr.co gottleib, we'll be back with more on that. i feel like they might have a better finance system than we do. workday. how do they make better decisions faster? workday.

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go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today. we have some breaking news from cbs the company is pushing back on the narrative that governors have been laying out there the reason they're not getting the vaccine out is because companies like cvs and walgreens

have fallen behind that's what we've heard from governor phil murphy he's completed and is on track with the vaccine doses that it was contracted to give they have delivered the doses. they expect that to be complete in four weeks. there's a comment from the incoming ceo karen lynch who says we've administered nearly 2 million shots to one of our most vulnerable populations to on site and in many cases room-to-room visits. it hasn't been easy. a lot of this is happening when you deal with the vulnerable populations and you have to go into the care facilities and go room by room the federal pharmacy partnership divided long-term care facilities into two categories cvs points out the first was skilled living and

assisted living. they give a time line for when this all happened and in some cases, in fact, for illinois excluding chicago and wisconsin, that date is just today. this is cvs pushing back saying it's the fault of the big boxes with cvs and walgreens why you're not seeing a faster rollout of the vaccines in some states joining us right now to talk about this and much more is former fda commissioner, dr. scott gottleib he currently serves on boards.

it's pretty confusing stuff. >> one of the challenges were when the vaccines were done, they had to have consent many patients don't have capacity to give consent you have to go to family members and that takes time. that can take weeks to get consents in place. pharmacies know they can't keep going to the nursing homes they can't come back for individual patients given the difficult logistics. they took literally weeks to get these consents in place in nursing homes.

quite frankly this is something the government could have worked on in advance. what the government will say is that, well, we didn't have an approved fact sheet from fda, how can we consent patients until the consents were approved there were ways to get them place prior to the approval of the vaccines that you could have been using to consent the patients it took literally three, four weeks to get in place in most of the institutions they couldn't go in day one. that was a real challenge. that could have been solved for. it wasn't. that's part of the delay here. >> part of the delay is also that there were vaccines that have been waiting on shelves for those people for it. the vaccines weren't given to other candidates who could get them immediately i don't know if this is the state government's fault, the fault of the federal government for not having a better plan in action but it definitely explains some of the delays to this point

>> that's right. this was a relatively small population 3 million, 4 million people when you look at all of the long term care facilities. they were vaccinating staff. they did keep a lot of those vaccines on shelves waiting to get into the facilities. the challenge was the logistics. there's a lot of facilities. there's 40,000 different facilities we think of large nursing homes. there's a lot of small nursing homes where there might be five or ten patients and they had to get into the different facilities the big bottleneck was getting the consents in place. that was a paperwork challenge that could have been foreseen. there were people in the government who raised that to the leadership at hhs to solve that in advance so they could start vaccinating earlier. that has to be baked in here as well the good news is they've worked through that population or most of it. patients will hopefully start to vaccinate from being vaccinated. >> you've got your new op ed out in "the wall street journal.

send out the search party for the new covid strains. boris johnson saying maybe it is more virulent and questions about whether the south african strains or other strains can be treated as effectively with the vaccines we have at this point what's your point in terms of looking for the new strains? >> right we're not good at doing good g genomic sequencing we're probably missing the real prevalence of these strains. i don't think they're highly prevalent. there may be localized hot spots. we're sequencing .3% of all of the covid samples, the positive samples. in the u.k. they're sequencing 10%. they were able to detect this much earlier we're doing a scatter shot sample of different covid

infections to look for the strains. with the b117, the u.k. variant, we're sequencing an enriched sample we're looking for people with an s gene dropout on their pcr test those patients are more likely to have the variant. 1/3 of the patients with that finding on their pcr test do have b117. when we sequence to look for b117, we're sequencing a highly enriched sample. we're finding it with the south african variant and the close cousin from brazil, no way to tell who has it it's a random sample if you think there's over 1 million, 1.5 million infections a week and we're sequencing maybe 2, 3,000 cases every week, 50 cases, 60 cases in a state, if there's a localized hot spot in orlando, you sequence 60 cases in florida, what's the likelihood you'll pick up 5%

prevalence of one of the new variants it's low we could be missing it i don't think it's widespread. to say that the south african and brazilian variants aren't here in the united states already, i don't think that's the case i think they're here and we're not detecting it >> scott, wanted to get your thoughts and hope you'd comment on the news that we learned over the weekend, pfizer lobbied successfully effectively to ship less viles of the vaccine in part because as you know they discovered that instead of having enough vaccine for five there was actually six in each vile they went to the government and said, actually, therefore, we're going to ship you less and if you want more, we're effectively going to charge you more -- if you want more. this was a mistake on pfizer's part why wouldn't they say we'll do this maybe ongoing in the future but this is actually retroactive and i think that there's a lot of americans that look to this

news and scratch their head about what's going on here >> well, it's not retroactive. it's only prospective and i would challenge the word lobbied. the company knew there were six doses in the viles in the summertime studies were done using the doses as a five dose vile. the decision was made to file as a five dose vile with the expectation that the company would come back and file supplements to demonstrate it's a six dose vile. in fact they worked with regulators to file the supplements. it's been approved in israel, switzerland, the u.k. and the e.u. fda was last now it's approved as a six-dose vile in the united states. this is only on a go forward basis that when the viles get shift they will be accommodated as a six dose vile the bottom line is this is a very scarce resource

we need to make sure every dose gets used. the only way to market this as a vile that has six doses and provide the proper equipment to extract that sixth dose which in fact pfizer is doing they'll only count this as a six dose vile where they provide the viles. if we hadn't done this, i think we'd be having the exact opposite conversation. i think that article could be written in the exact opposition direction, why are you shipping to japan, canada, israel viles saying they're six doses final point i'll make on this, andrew, pfizer can supply 120 million doses now in the first quarter. previously it was 100. of that additional 20 million doses they'll be able to provide going forward, about 2/3 are accounted for because we're now saying counting the five dose viles as six dose viles and make sure people can extract that 1/3 is new manufacturing there's actually additional

manufacturing that pfizer is bringing online to bring new supply they're going to provide 120 million doses. you said retrospectively it's not retrospective anyone who is able to extract the sixth dose on a vile shipped over the last two months, that's going to count as a five dose vile and the sixth dose won't be charged for. at some point the change will be made we're two months into this shipping a vile that has six doses in it as a five-dose vile. at some point you had to make the change to account properly for the doses. >> scott, people -- we don't want a more virulent strain, whenever we hear of one, the news turns out and goes, uh-oh, this is really, really bad i want to focus on this. the old strain was 10 deaths per 10,000 this is 13 deaths per 10,000 are you comfortable that the limits of resolution of testing and the way things are done that we are actually able to

definitively identify three more people that are dead due to this more virulent strain is it reliable do you believe it? number two, when would you really put up the alarm bells for a more virulent strain i don't know if that qualifies as a much more deadly strain i'm scared to death, that's a terrible term to use, i'd be really worried if it went from .1% to .15 or something like that where it was much more virulent is this something to be really concerned about? and not just about increased spread but increased virulence at this point? >> look, i think if the data that came out from the u.k. i think on thursday or friday is true, it's very concerning in terms of increased pathogenicity of this strain it's one study and i think it's very hard to draw a conclusion on the one study the one thing that was unsettling all along, i know --

i'm fortunate to not know enough to really understand this very well, but i know enough to understand why they were claiming this was more contagious and all the theories that were being put forward on why this might be more contagious you could postulate would make this more dangerous it binds to the ace 2 receptor that doesn't sound good if it's binding more tightly to your cells and your lungs another was you were shedding more virus because you had higher viral loads in your upper airway that doesn't sound good. another was that you had higher viral loads for a long period of time earlier in the course of your infection we know if you have higher viral loads that might be making you more sick as well. all of the theories put forward on why this would be more contagious seem to make it potentially more pathogenic. it's if you were to say well it survives better in the air

somehow it's amassed a different kind of coating and it could be surviveable as an aerosol rather than droplet that wasn't one of the theories being put forward. it was always a little bit unsettling that doesn't mean it's dangerous, but the theories why it's more contagious suggest that's why it's more dangerous >> dr. gottleib, thank you for the deep dive on so many different topics of course there's more questions that we have, but we'll have you back soon. thank you very much. >> thanks a lot.

when we return, congressman kevin brady is going to join us to discuss the president's tax plan, covid relief bill and so much more. then in the next hour former goldman sachs lloyd blankfein and mohamed el erian and former presidential candidate, now new york mayoral canditeda andrew yang joins us. "squawk box" continues with all of that and much more.

quick check on the markets, the dow was almost down triple digits down 99 points the nasdaq and s&p continue to be in the green, at least at this point joining us now texas congressman kevin brady. ranking member of the ways and means committee. it's good to see you, congressman. so much to do. so little time what would you suggest to the president that he focus on starting today in terms of your purview? where should he go >> yeah, good morning, joe good to see you. obviously the focus right -- there's only two

one is defeating this virus, focusing on the production distribution vaccine and the second is rebuilding this economy. to do that the focus has to be on helping main street businesses survive and getting the jobless, temporarily jobless, you know, back into the work force that has to be the focus i do object to many of the provisions in president biden's proposed covid relief. i don't think it will have any significant effect on the economy. certainly not going to do much to help main street survive. >> what are you hearing about some of the other promises president biden made about ending the trump tax cuts, raising taxes -- capital gains taxes? what's the time line for that that you're hearing right now? >> yeah, joe i don't know i do think it's instructive that on his very first two days he

followed through on his commitments to end the keystone xl pipeline. that will cost about 10,000 blue collar jobs. his announcement on suspending the oil and gas leasing on federal lands if made permanent will be a loss of about 1 million jobs over the next couple of years. he has followed through on that. so i assume he's going to follow through on his pledge to repeal the tax cuts and jobs act, raise those business taxes and of course obviously that's going to have a significant impact in a bad way on our economy >> there is some scuttlebutt that maybe it's only a partial roll back of some provisions of that 2017 law. does that mean that there's room for compromise with republicans? what would republicans want to agree to the roll back of some of the tax cuts? >> well, i'll tell you, just making those tax cuts permanent

for families, small businesses and companies will create 1 million jobs president biden wants to raise taxes on businesses, especially corporations, you need to understand we lowered that rate to be competitive, to bring jobs and manufacturing back to the u.s. ten countries have already lowered their corporate tax rates since we did so if the president thinks the rest of the world is sitting around while we try to become competitive, they aren't and i think it's a major mistake to raise those rates, either at the local level on small businesses, on corporations. i think discouraging investment in technology and production and raising cap gains, we can -- this will be controversial in good economic times. it makes no sense trying to recover from this pandemic. >> do you think that -- when are

we starting the trial? february 8th is that really going to happen how far do you expect it to go do you think it's helpful? >> yeah. no idea on the timetable i think the first impeachment, this is a gigantic waste of time we need to be focused on covid, on rebuilding the economy. i do think there is bipartisan room here, especially on the economy, certainly driving lower taxes and investment i think we could be working together on making america medically independent from china on crucial medicines, medical supplies, ingredients, technology there are real tax incentives we've introduced that can help anchor that production and create uncertainty and a ton of jobs i'm hopeful there's bipartisan work we can do there >> congressman, we haven't had

the opportunity to talk since the attack on the capitol and i wanted to ask you because you were one of the 126 congressmen that joined that amicus brief in the supreme court to overturn the election you didn't vote after the attack, you were sick. what have you voted to continue to overturn the election given the attack >> well, no, and i've put out a statement. i was diagnosed with covid the night before, could not vote i put out a statement as voting began for my alphabetical group that i would honor the constitution and accept those electoral votes and i do think you have mischaracterized the amicus brief in a significant way. nonetheless, i believed it was unconstitutional when democrats tried this twice with president bush and again in president trump. in my view it was

unconstitutional again so i would have voted to accept those states electoral sites. >> do you have any second thoughts about challenging the results though >> in the courts of course not. >> in the courts >> the texas brief basically said the states had the right to choose their electors and run their elections. it is all state's rights the lawsuit asked are those states following those own election laws. i think that's the right way to pursue these issues in the courts, rule of law. i think our democracy can handle lawsuits i think the insurrection though i think was completely unacceptable and i think there's -- everyone ought to be held accountable here and we need answers on how to prevent it in the future. >> congressman, considering we're still basking in the glow of the unity and the inauguration speech and all, do you expect there to be cooperation between the two sides or do you think the minute

one side doesn't get what it wants, that it might go for the filibuster to get rid of it? >> well, i hope there is cooperation. look, the culture i put work in the ways and means is wake up every day working hard to stop bad ideas. there are lots of them in washington work equally hard to find common ground i'm going to take that same approach with this president i am going to fight the bad ideas. we need to work together where we can unity doesn't mean thinking as one brain, it is just a commitment to debating these things civilly, trying to find that common ground look, i'm hopeful we can do that >> really? okay >> yeah. >> good. okay all right. i believe you. hope you're right. thank you, congressman thank you. >> thank you, joe. >> good to be with you today thanks, andrew. >> coming up when we return, a lot more on the markets. show you the futures on this monday morning in about an hour and a half to go before the open there, but the dow looks like it

will open off 150 points nasdaq opening higher. 120 points higher. big hour of squawk ahead former goldman sachs lloyd blankfein, mohamed el erian will join us on the markets and new dr yg.ity mayoral candidate anewan "squawk box" returns after this.

good morning a huge week for the markets. it begins with the nasdaq futures pointing higher and dow futures pointing lower it's actually the busiest week for fourth quarter earnings, we'll hear from apple, microsoft, facebook, tesla before friday. in the meantime, washington starting to pick sides over president biden's $2 trillion relief plan. lloyd blankfein will join us to talk about that and much more. and if you can fix it here, you can fix it anywhere. new york city mayoral candidate andrew yang joins us with his ideas to streamline the vaccination process in the big apple. final hour of "squawk box" begins right now ♪ ♪

good morning and welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc. i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin u.s. equity futures have passed the triple digit mark on the way down down about 132 points now. s&p 500 up 3 and change. nasdaq indicated up 128 points treasury yields this morning, quick look at those on the ten year ten year 1.06. let's go to our first biggest this hour. some familiar fault lines emerging in washington over pro president biden's covid relief proposal on a call with lawmakers yesterday. administration officials tried to head off republican concerns that the plan was too expensive. democrats and republicans agreed that vaccine distributions should be a priority joining us to talk about covid relief, impact on the economy and much more, former goldman sachs ceo lloyd blankfein.

always a pleasure to see you. >> hello, sir. how are you? >> i'm great thanks for joining us this morning. how are you viewing the world right at this point in time? we've had the inauguration we're hearing about another perhaps as much as 2 trillion that we're going to try to handle covid with. that adds to what we're seeing already in terms of death in the country and the fed, the spigots are open how are you feeling about things right now? >> about things. at the world in general, every day i get up, the last few darks get up and one of the major risk factors in my life is eliminated which is the chaos in washington so whether i like all the policies or not, it's just the level of risk has gone down so i like that aspect as far as what i think what you're really asking is on the economy and at this point you'd have to say in the near term there's a big -- there's a strong tailwind of very low

rates with the fed saying that they're not even going to think about thinking about raising rates again and, you know, in general it's just a very, very strong tailwind at this point. 0 interest rates or low interest rates for a very long time is something -- again, don't fight the old saw, don't fight the fed. that's not the only thing going on there is a vaccine there will be an end to the current crisis there's a lot of pent-up demand and enthusiasm that's going to govern the strength i'd say we're looking at a 6% potentially even higher growth for this year with a lot of things that can go wrong and unusually a lot of things that can go better than expected as well. >> i think you're like a lot of people, lloyd, in terms of the 1.9 trillion that we're looking at number one, there are needs.

it's urgent. we need to do it number two, there's nothing wrong with examining it and trying to avoid wasting money. is there anything else that needs to be said on that >> you know, the thing that needs to be said is let's remember what we're trying to accomplish here. i'm all for it and let's get it out, there's a huge amount of suffering in this world. it's a bifurcated world where some people are able to cope quite well in this crisis environment and for some people it's devastation we need something quickly, but you shouldn't be loading it up with things that are very unappealing to the other side of the aisle because then it will be held up i know over the past couple of days the minimum wage has been discussed on your show and that. something -- i could see a lot of reasons for doing that as a matter of policy, but i wouldn't burden this bill with extraneous things unrelated to just injecting money where it was needed in the economy and then to your point also is that we shouldn't overdo it --

necessarily over to it i'm not sitting there with the figures in the same way, but any layman can see that things that aren't directly related to covid relief you can leave for policy and we can afford to have a debate over those items. >> also, let's put tax hikes in the minimum wage debate sort of together because i know, you know, you probably see benefits in both, but number one with minimum wage it's a regional issue. who knows whether a blanket or -- >> it's complicated. it's a regional issue. there are kids in high school flipping hamburgers somewhere. some people still flip, not just robots flip hamburgers it's a complicated issue the kind of survival income isn't the same in every part of the country but at the same time i think that people who work 40 hours a week should be able to support themselves without government subsidies and food

stamps. >> government is subsidizing these companies that don't pay but you point out at the same time it will put a lot of small businesses that are already teetering, they will probably at this point the scales in terms of solvency. >> it's a complicated thing that's hard to sort out. the business can only survive by paying the workers less than they need to survive if they're surviving because of government programs, maybe they're not productive businesses, not profitable, maybe they should go under in any case, this is not that moment for that kind of conversation i mean, i could do both sides of the argument probably i kind of -- i don't mind the minimum wage if it's targeted and if it adjusts to things like somebody's age or somebody -- or regional differences, but, again, it's not that moment and so you're going to get a political situation where one side of the aisle will choose the other over recalcitrants. the net is it will take longer than it needs to unless somebody says let's do what we need to

do. >> how about tax hikes how do we do those when do we do those? >> you know, we need to pay for it, but i'm not sure i would do -- i'm not dying to do that in the middle of -- under these recessionary circumstances where you have the fed trying to inflate the economy and you have a spending bill coming down the pike in order to make sure that we don't back bend into a bad economic situation i'm not sure this is the exact moment, but it has to occur at some point we know some things for some people it won't make much of a difference and it could be done. so i'd say inevitably it's baked into the cake. it feels inevitable. again, the left side of the aisle is chomping at the bit to do it. i would try to be a little bit disciplined and maybe put it off later in the year when the recovery is very well established and we know what the

sentiment is going to be on the other side of the vaccination program and immunity for the herd. >> hey, lloyd, it's andrew i have a couple of questions for you. >> hi, andrew. >> about some phenomenon taking place on wall street, your old haunting ground. i want to start with spacs every morning we talk about spacs, transaction related to a spac want to get your thoughts on what it means, whether you think this is a mania and is going to end badly or whether this is going to end much better i think we're all trying to wrap our hands around it. >> what could possibly go wrong? my old life i'm always looking at what the down side scenario is i always found it useful to think, gee, let's say it did go wrong, what happened that made it go wrong? and see with the spac -- oblly there are -- you can't make a commodity free like money and expect it to be allocated

efficiently. you need some sort of scarcity and shortage so people are disciplined about how they do it the world is awash in liquidity. i'm sure the art market is bulging and spacs -- bitcoin, spacs, another example of that in the case of spacs, it's -- you know, in the case of spacs, here's the phenomenon. getting companies public but you're getting them public in a two-step process where one of the elements of an ipo is dropping out that is the discipline of ipo diligence plus underwriter liability. when this initial spac goes public you're doing -- you're scrutinizing a shell company, possibly the reputation of the sponsor. when that company then despacs and mergers, it's a merger

it's not an ipo that carries with it a lot of diligence obligations and it's not the same kind of liabilityfor an underwriter. there is no underwriter of that. people talk about well it's more sophisticated. we understand when something goes wrong there's no hindsight and something is more sophisticated. these things, there are going to be things that are going to go wrong, things won't work out well there's other could he lateral issues is anyone incentived to drive down what they're acquiring because the spac sponsors may be insented to get a deal done and not drive the price as hard as they would the company that's going public wants to drive it and then in the absence of diligence, that's going to be what happened. if a few of these go bad or they were over paid and some people made a lot of money and investors lost money, people are going to say you achieved the economic equivalence of an ipo

but where was the process and diligence that we see with a rigorous ipo process that drops out i'm not saying they're all bad or any of the ones you bring up are bad. some of these won't work my advice to people who are doing this now would be really, really diligence really, really document. again, in hindsight if something goes bad down the road people will look back and show trials to follow. >> lloyd, you also mentioned the other main phenomenon on wall street which is bitcoin. it's going mainstream. you have big firms getting involved in ways they didn't have your views evolved or changed around the future of bitcoin and crypto >> look, i've always been -- i'm not -- it could work it could work but really at the end of the day, you know, currency is supposed to accomplish a couple of things.

it's supposed to be a medium of exchange and a store of value. it's a store of value that can move 10% in a day that if you lose the code or you lose the slip of paper, it's lost forever or if somebody takes it from you, how will you know so it's -- you know, the store of value element is a little bit tough and as a medium of exchange, here's a problem you don't know whether or not you're paying the north koreans, al qaeda, or the revolutionary guard. at the end of the day if it ever got big enough to besubstantia and a real medium of exchange, how could the regulators so focused as they are on antimoney laundering, by the way for good reason going back to, you know, 9/11 when we found out following the money is the way you can anticipate and maybe prevent certain crimes of courts, everybody talks about the illicit use of bitcoin

if you cannot monitor who's getting paid in the financial system, do we want that to work out well over the long snerm like a lot of things, this could be workable but it will undermine the freedom and liberty and lack of transparency that people like about it in the first place. so that's the conundrum that bitcoin will have to deal itself out. if i were a regulator, i'd be kind of hyperventilating at the success of it at the moment and i'd be arming myself to deal with it. >> hey, lloyd, i wonder if we could talk about the big banks for a moment they've certainly enjoyed some gains over the last month or two. part of that may be because the yields have pushed up, some because the banks can buy back big shares a lot of it is because the democrats are going to be spending up a lot of money to prop up the economy and fewer loans coming to the banks. put on your risk assessment hat

from your previous life. what do you think when you look at the banks in terms of where the risks are and whether you see continued gains there? >> well, i think that banks have been kind of -- they check the number of boxes now. they're kind of a value trade in the market because they didn't really participate a lot in the big boom that's happened so far. it's a bit of a kind of recovery trait for sure as the consumer -- as the consumer comes back in a big way, which it will on the other side of the pandemic i think the -- i think in the absence of big problems and big losses, i think there will be a natural tendency for those stocks to escalate in line with -- in line with the others. you know, banks make a lot of money and trade on relatively low multiples. a lot of times when people are worried about the solvency,

banks trade -- people look at banks and talk about ratio of value to book or value to tangible book. that's a kind of concept that's relevant if you're not sure that the company's going to survive and you have to kind of liquidate the balance sheet and see what you have left to distribute to shareholders on an ongoing business it should be price earnings and what is the earnings sfleem banks have a substantial earnings stream. if you look to the other side, there's no reason to think tha will decline it will go up. the expectation is there are other things that are helpful, better performance, less defaults, steeper yield curve as things tend to normalize it's not so much, gee, i'm so, so -- it's really great, although there are good aspects to the upcoming environment, it's just the absence of the reasons that cause banks to lag are kind of dissipating. so they'll rejoin the rest of

civilization >> what's coming back and what isn't? are the big cities coming back is business travel on the airlines coming back is -- are people going to go back into work or is it going to stay remote? how long is it going to take you've got 30 seconds. >> it's all speculation. we all lived our lives in recent -- we have a ziet guise and how we grew up is how we expect the world to be there's no reason for that to be 100 years ago there were no aggregation in the city. we were an agricultural economy and things have changed. i think it will not change as much as the wildest forecasts but it won't be the same because people have had -- you know, a lot of this crisis has accelerated -- has brought the future in closer faster than it otherwise would have one of those elements is in work, in zooming once upon a time, you know, we would have had to have traveled and done this call from the same room and clearly we don't have to do that

why would we do that when we can do that? there will be elements of it that we'll miss and try to capture. how do you indoctrinate, train new people, incultureate and how do you train a new culture remember when they came out with cd -- music changed to, you know, cds. everyone said it doesn't have the resonance or the richness of long playing records that scratched and broke. guess what it turns out it was good enough and who -- other than, you know, kind of eccentrics and nostalgic people, who's buying vinyl life moves on. there will be an adjustment that has to be made we can be future lists and try to guess at it, but something we're going to find out soon enough the future is on us. >> there's a lot of market caps in place and if that's true, there's going to be a day of reckoning for a lot of things,

lloyd. >> yes, there will be. but, you know, we're going to look back and markets are never easy we're going to look at this period and two comments. one is a real dichotomy between the real suffering in the kind of political system and the buoyancy of the markets and people are going to spend a lot of dissertations written about that >> so you don't own any bitcoin, do you >> you know something, i don't but if i acquire some, forget everything i just told you >> okay, lloyd do what i say, not what i do all right. thanks a lot it's always great. miss you in davos this year. that was always a highlight when you would come on the set. >> you see what happened i didn't go, they canceled the whole thing. >> exactly right as they should have. thanks we'll see you. >> all right be well. >> you too

beck >> and his witt. when we come back, our special interview with pormer presidential candidate and now new york city mayoral candidate andrew yang. first though as we head to a break, let's get you caught up on a few of this morning's headlines. we heard this morning that merck is discontinuing work on two early stage covid-19 vaccine candidates the company did not see an immune response by other successful vaccines. it will continue its work on this president biden will be imposing travel bans on most non-u.s. citizens recently in south africa the president will reinstate curbs on passengers from united kingdom, much of ireland, the u.k. and brazil. those had been earlier rescinded by the outgoing trump administration but now those travel rtronesictis will be

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coming up, what you need to watch this week in the markets with stocks near all-time highs

and earnings season about to scale up allianz advisor mohamed el erian will join us stay tuned, "squawk box" will be back right after this.

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welcome back, everybody. we're going to get a good picture of corporate earnings as reports start rolling in from companies including johnson & johnson, apple, tesla, facebook and mcdonald's

very heavy earnings this week. 13 dow components. also the fed's top policy making committee is going to be meeting with the coronavirus still hammering the economy. joining us to talk about all of this is mohamed el erian mohamed, you've got a column out where you take a look at what the fed is likely to do and what they should be doing and it's not one and the same what do you think the concerns are about the fed's policy >> i think the concern is that the fed will remain ultra dovish because the short-term outlook has become dimmer even though the longer term outlook has become brighter. classic central bank tlas concerned about the lags in the future will be starting to signal a tapering but this it fed is not going to do that.

this fed will remain pedal to the medal as long as it can at the risk of creating more financial bubbles. >> if the fed were to indicate that it might at some time in the not too distant future start to think about potentially tapering, i would imagine there would be a taper tantrum from the markets and the markets might drop as quickly as they've risen? >> yes it's a classic parenting problem. take away the candy and you'll get a tantrum, but keep on supplying candy, it doesn't make the things any easier. that's why i've been on this issue for a few years now, becky. it's pretty clear that if you continue ample and predict ably quit at this injections, that's all the market's going to care about. in the process you're going to decouple from the fundamentals

at some point you've got to really hope that the fundamentals can improve to validate the marketplace otherwise you will have a big tantrum as you point out >> as you mentioned, you think that there are bubbles forming all over the place you want to point to a few of them >> they're all over. you just talked about spacs and you read that. look what amc has been able to raise. $1 billion of capitol at a time when the outlook is pretty grim because of what's going on i can point to segment after segment where there's enormous fraught but for good reason. remember this notion of a rational bubble. it is bubblish but it's rational there's so much liquidity that it just keeps pushing up prices over and over again. >> you know, we've heard a very similar theme from lloyd blankfein just now and we've heard it from a lot of the smart investors we've heard from,

mohamed. you've been echoing this for a while. things look bubbling but it doesn't look like there's any alternative. is that kind of what you think too? even though you know there's potential for a bad outcome, you don't know when that's going to be >> you've heard me pronounce over and over again that the path of least resistance for the risk markets is higher it doesn't mean it's about fundamentals, you have to respect the technicals they have to do so with a technical mind set understanding that that's one massive liquidity wave and it can break. so keep that in your mind. be careful about how much liquidity you're giving up be careful about how far you venture from your natural habitat because these things can turn around but for now you heard me say this over and over again. when i look at all the reasons how thisly kwitd at this bubble

can break, they're all flashing yellow but none are flashing red. so i really understand why the path of least resistance will be higher look at today. the market going out today whether bad news over the week end and this morning is good news or bad news for markets we know it's bad news for fundamentals is it good news or bad news for the market. >> thank you for the surfing lesson riding the waive of liqu liquidity. >> mohamed, was it the patriots that you hated or just -- do you hate tom brady or was it the patriots >> no, i am happy to see tom brady doing well i kept emailing my friends in boston, how are you feeling. >> it wasn't anything else.

>> you love seeing this. that's evil. that's good. it must hurt belichick, that must -- anyway, i'm not taking any satisfaction. thanks we've got to go. breaking news from moderna meg tirrell joins us with the headlines and a special guest. hi, meg. >> reporter: hi, joe moderna has looked at its vaccine's effectiveness against the new variants we've been hearing about, b117 and b1351 and found against the b117 u.k. variant, no discernible difference against the south african one, as we have been hearing from experts like dr. fauci, there is an impact on the neutralization of that variant with the vaccine declined by six fold that sounds scary. moderna is saying they still think the antibody levels are high enough to work well against that variant nonetheless, they are testing a booster shot of the current vaccine as well as working on a

vaccine that could address this variant and moving that into early trials now joining us to tell us more about this is moderna's ceo stefan bancel. you were the first company to say you were working on a new vaccine version to tell us about the variants tell us what you found and the decision to do this. >> good morning, meg thank you for having us back so, indeed, we announced this morning that we posted last night a manuscript between the nih team and looking at both new v cases. b 117 strength in the u.k., we see the same level of antibody

as we saw in the strain that has been showing up in the u.s. leading to fda authorization very high efficacy we feel very good about that strain as you know, the cdc will see it as the dominant strain in the u.s. by march. the south african strain, a high level of antibodies, higher with convalescent serum it is lower than the traditional strain and b117 so we believe a vaccine would be protective in the short term what is unknowable right now is what will happen in six months, in 12 months we have a weaker immune system and immunity might go down because of that unknown moderna always wants to stay at the forefront of the fight of covid-19 we decided to take into

an abundance of caution new vaccine called mrna 1273.351 that we'll be testing very quickly. our goal will be good alignment with the fda, goal will be to run a quickboost, a single dos into potentially phase 1 study that has something less than the u.s. one year anniversary look at the antibody and we'll do that for mrna 1273, the current authorized product and for mrna 1273.351 for the new strain then we'll extend that to phase 3 to boost the phase 3 participant against single dose to get that data like this in the fall, there is a need because of waning immunity, to

put it on the market we cannot fall behind the virus. we just want to be cautious, not for now but for our future. >> what is your expectation of what the regulatory pathway for that new vaccine would look like do you anticipate we should have the core re lates of protection and the t cell you have to get to be protected or do you think you need to run efficacy studies out there in the world against covid? >> i want to speak cautiously because it is not my decision it is fda decision. it's perhaps similar to seasonal flu. running neutralizing antibody is going to be required, most probably in a smaller sample set than the phase 3 and there will not be need for an efficacy study. this has to be confirmed by the

regulators if you think of the mrna platform, this uses the same chemistry for the mrna and the same manufacturing process so the products are very similar, just a few mutation change like the natural virus b1351. >> stefan, just from a consumer's perspective, i know people who have gotten the shots already who feel like they're invulnerable to anything they feel like they can go out and reclaim their lives like they had if the new variants become more of a strain that is more popular here in the united states, if you get more of those things, what would you be telling people to do? if they're older, if they've gotten the vaccines already, should they be cautious about getting back into the general public should they still be wearing masks? should they be doing social

distancing >> good question, becky. the first part is quite some time because we don't know how well yet it will protect the person to person even once vaccine they need to protect themselves and protect others vaccine has very high efficacy most probably you'd get no disease if you get reinfected or infected for the first time. what is unknown is if you can infect somebody else who might not have been protected. we need to take protections and what we will move to is a world like flu where over time most people are immunized and over time as the strain mutates, people mutating, this is an anomaly based virus. so we should all understand that this virus will keep mutating.

some mutation will be irrelevant some mutation like those we have seen might be relevant and they're going to keep mutating i wouldn't be surprised if down the road there's a new generation out of the current 351 just like in south africa and then a mutation from that. it's just inevitable we need to stay cautious there is a time in late summer/fall where we can take the masks off because enough people have been vaccinated. we need to not leave our guard down which is why out of caution we need to be prepared for the new strain in case it is needed later. >> stefan, got about a million more questions for you but we have to leave it there for today. thank you for being with us. we appreciate it. >> thank you. >> andrew, sending it back to you. >> meg, thank you for bringing us that important interview. when we come back, another

wide-ranging conversation, this time with new york mayoral candidate andrew yang is going to join us right here on "squawk box. lots to talk about mirroring the national conversation on wages, fixing response to covid and bringing back the economy. stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" right here on cnbc.

welcome back to "squawk box. the original u.s. covid hot spot new york city currently a

microcosm of currently all of the hardship the disease has created, joblessness, businesses suffering and uneven rollout of the coronavirus vaccine and fears over new strains of the virus. joining us to talk about all of this is a man who wants to run new york city, mayoral candidate and democratic presidential candidate andrew yang is with us andrew, great to see you today help us with this. new york is a microcosm of the country. one of the things we're seeing is lots of people fleeing new york city. we're seeing them flee other high tax states like florida and california what would you do to both keep them from going and hopefully bring them back? >> well, you're 100% right that what's happening in new york city is emblematic in what other cities are dealing with taken to a higher extreme because new york is more densely populated, the costs are higher in more

neighborhoods. what we have to do is rebuild the value proposition that makes new york city the destination for business, culture, commerce and schools. that starts with the vaccine we need to improve the vaccine rollout. we're having appointments canceled >> but speak to the issue of taxes and the economy. you know, for many years i thought that people weren't that mobile, that people would stay in a place like new york city, people would stay in a place like san francisco because of the ecosystem. now you're seeing some of the wealthy iest new yorkers fleeig to places like miami in california, people flying and moving effectively to places like austin. what would you feel about that >> i talked to some of those

individuals and people who are running organizations, andrew, and the reason why they've been based in new york city for so long is because the talent is more densely concentrated here and they can build stronger organizations. what we have to do is make it so that those families that have made new york city their home have their schools open, they can enjoy all of the opportunities here that you have taken advantage of for so long it's all about the talent. if you feel you can move your organization to another place and have the same level of efficacy as an organization, that's the key differentiator. new york city has had the talent advantage for years and decades and that's what we have to preserve and in some cases recover. >> you understand the world of technology better than most, and i think it's clear that one of the lessons of this pandemic is we're all doing this remotely.

i actually am in new york city but i could be in hawaii interviewing you and potentially working with you, people live on slack today. doesn't that change this dynamic of talent in one city? >> there are some people like you and i who might be able to beam in from anywhere, but you have to think about the folks that are coming up within organizations, andrew. i've talked to ceos and they say and i know this because i've been here, too, it is very hard to build a culture over zoom you know, if you're someone like you who has been in the field for years or more, then you have a following, you can do your work from anywhere if you are trying to develop or climb or understand what the organization is about, you have to be around other people in that organization and that is what new york city has provided for so many organizations big and small for years and decades and that still is what new york city provides.

it's very, very hard to have a young person develop remotely from day one it's very difficult. >> andrew, it's becky. thank you for being with us today. i think one of the things andrew's getting at is this idea that taxes are so high already and they're going to grow. governor cuomo has already put forth a budget that would raise new york city taxes to 14.7% for the highest earners. that's the highest in the country. i know you have plans to do things to make sure you're giving checks to people on a regular basis in new york city i just wonder how you pay for that and how you deal with a tax structure that's already so stretched to the highest levels in the country >> well, i think you know i'm a numbers guy. there are opportunities to generate revenue in new york city so it shouldn't all be about increasing taxes but, again, it has to be about

reconstituting the value proposition because the fact is there are people who have been paying higher taxes in new york city for a long time it's not news to them that taxes are higher here, and there are many people who have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in different ways in new york city and need the city to come back so there are folks who are more mobile but there are folks who are very deeply entrenched here because of the vastness of the new york city economy, if new york were a country it would be the 11th biggest economy in the world. a lot of organizations are place based here that will be here for years to come. they're the ones trying to invest in the recovery >> but just to the tax piece because i think it is critical, you are -- new york's always had high taxes there's no question. people have been willing to pay those taxes for the benefits that the city provided now there are questions about

policing in the city, there are questions about safety in the city clearly in a post-pandemic world, the world's a feeder and all of the accoutrements that the city has provided for so many may not be as appealing i want to read you from -- this is from the wall street journal an op ed that said -- this is not me, this is the writer, even if i were indifferent to working the first eight months of the year for the government, that's the tax piece we're talking about, eight months at the highest tax rate,what about my employees and many talented and ambitious young people who are the future of new york how would they feel about building a business driving away the tax base and face declining public service this from ""the wall street journal."" >> again, people have been willing to pay a premium to be here in new york city because of the opportunities both to them individually and as people who are trying to grow businesses.

having run businesses myself, the key is talent. if you feel you can get the talent in an environment like new york city, you will pay a premium. we've seen over and over again that that pays off because we're in a very competitive economy where the winners tend to take in more of the value so if you think that being in i being in new york city is your recipe for success, then it's worth some extra money and so really the key is whether that recipe for success still holds and i'm convinced that it does as someone who's run organizations, it is very, very hard, again, to build up a culture with everyone in five different place over zoom. you can do that if people who are more experienced and have been there for a while but from day one, it is very, very hard. >> speak to me as if you're policing new york. if there are a number of businesses big and small who are calling for order and saying the next administration should be much more focused on law and order. at the same time, there are important protests taking place

in this country and in the city about black lives matter and the relationship between the public and the police does appear to be strained what do you do about it? >> you have to do both things at once, andrew, where you need to bring down the crime rate, let people know it is safe to walk the streets, and a lot of this is around foot traffic, and emptiness. we're missing 60 million tourists, over 10,000 small businesses have shut down, and that's leading to an atmosphere of lower safety. and at the same time, as you suggested, you need to change the culture of the nypd so that people don't fear civil rights abuses at the hands of police officers, tparticularly if you'e a person of color in this city, so these two things are not mutually ex exclusive. you can do them both i am going to suggest again that the key is the vaccine because if you reopening store front and more people walking the streets, then that's going to be a safer street. >> andrew yang, we appreciate you joining us this morning.

we hope to follow your progress and continue to have these conversations throughout the election period. talk to you soon >> thank you, andrew have a great day >> you bet you, too thanks. joe? >> thanks, andrew. coming up, jim cramer's first take on a jam packed week especially for enis.arng "squawk box" is coming right back s or what's trending. get real-time insights in your customized view of the market. it's smarter trading technology for smarter trading decisions. fidelity. ready to take your immune support to the next level? nature's bounty is here for you. the number one herbal supplement brand has everything you need to help keep your immune system strong. immune support comes naturally with nature's bounty.

let's get to cnbc headquarters jim kramer is standing by. jim, it is the biggest earnings week we've seen, it is going to be 13 dow components, s&p components, which trends might set the tone for the markets this week? >> i think that apple and tesla, i mean we already have kimberly clark, the overwhelming thought on wall street is that this is the week where we see all of the techs do well. no one is really talking about anything else but tech and i kind of have been keeping with what i'm seeing happening here, which is that people just say listen, i want to own microsoft, and i want to own it because it's going higher, because x box will be good i want to own apple because it

is a super cycle in the 12 i want to own tesla because it's a hoe lift ig situation where he might be coordinating -- holistic situation where he might be coordinating solar power. i don't see any negative people. there is nobody downgrading anything everyone is raising price targets ahead of those quarters. >> it sounds like you're concerned about, that they're setting themselves up for potentially disappointment. >> let's put it this way it would be far easier if these people did not talk and we just let the quarter goes, but by raising the expectations, they make it so that there could be some disappointment. >> okay. jim, thank you we'll see you in just a couple of minutes and hear more. we're a little more than half an hour away from the opening bell on wall street. do dom chu is up early and often. some of the biggest stocks on the move in the pre-market hey, dom. >> yes, so i have been up very

early this morning, but i've been watching all kinds of action let's start with shares of gamestop up a whopping 52%. 9 million shares of volume pre-market after a 50% rise in volume on friday after 192 million shares, it started a couple of weeks ago, some changes on the board and ryan cohen who founded chewy the pet food retailer and the cycling batter between short sellers and enthusiastically traders on reddit, and the stock was $20 two weeks ago and now pushing $97. shares of amc entertainment, up around 35% the movie theater operator got $917 million in a new round of financing, that staved off for now what investors are thinking about in terms of a possible bankruptcy the cash injection will allow it to keep ongoing operations as it works through the virus pandemic and then we'll end on ts

innovation acquisitions, perhaps better known by its ticker symbol, tsia, as many spacs are, this is the special purpose acquisition company, backed by real estate firm tishman spire and taking the software latch and the deal is $1.6 billion, and remember latch is best known for smart locks in buildings and home, tsia stock is up nearly 70% pre-market 4 million shares of volume, joe. so the spac rage continues a lot of big move ners the pre-market. back to you. >> all right, dom, big week for football, obviously, and some golf did you see that bob hope has now called the american express or something did you see that >> i did but the lpga, i thought was a much more dramatic finish there. >> and the senior tour, course, i know that course, got married on that course. >> i'm sure you have played all of those courses. >> i think you're right. just maybe not on the tour, but

pebble beach coming up, no amateurs, as you know. >> are you going to miss it? >> i'm going to miss it but i'm going to watch it because i will feel like i'm there, at such a great part of the world as you know unbelievable pristine. >> as a nor cal native, yes, i can say to myself, i will miss it as well but i will miss watching you and all of the other celebrities out there as well. >> and they're all going to be safe the gallery, we will be there, you know, they can breathe a sigh of relief, especially around the, to the left. horrible yank. anyway thanks, dom. >> you got it. >> one more stock to watch shares of bed, bath and beyond, soaring. and not pegged any news release. jim kraimer who we just spoke with, tweeting shorts on the run. we will keep an eye on that. let's get a final check of the market, down triple digits but not down 160, 170 anymore. down about 110 nasdaq continues strong. as jim pointed out it's not all about tech.

but it's just all about tech anyway as we move towards the end of the show, make sure you join us tomorrow, i'm going to work on that, andrew, actually, i might be out tomorrow. got some things to do. got some things to take care of. some fun becky, andrew. >> work are you going? >> school, starting again. got to help some people go back to school. "squawk on the street" is next good monday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer and david faber dow futures as you can see a little sluggish this morning as we kick off the busiest week of q4 earnings. and fed decision, vaccine rollout and more warnings of what goldman is saying are signs of bubble-like sentiment. 13 dow component, more than 100 s&p companies will report this week plus we do have more vaccine