2021 and "squawk box" begins right now. ♪ it's you and me baby head gains and i can't take it anymore ♪ ♪ head gains ♪ >> all right i get it i get it good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin and mike santoli. head games, i guess we're playing because of game stock, get it, a little bit of a stretch but i get it let's take a look at what's happening with the u.s. equity futures at this hour you're going to see right now after a mixed day yesterday, there are some slight give backs this morning dow futures down by 1% s&p futures off by about 5, and the nasdaq off by about 34 yesterday, the dow was down, but both the s&p 500 and the nasdaq rose to new highs. part of that because of what you

saw with technology. apple was one of the stocks that was up it gained 2.8% yesterday it of course hopelping the nasd hit a new high that's ahead of tomorrow's earnings report, and this goes a little bit, guys, to what jim cramer was talking about yesterday where you have these very high expectations heading into earnings which makes it tough for any of these stocks to trade higher after they hit or beat or exceed those expectations let's take a look at what's happening in the treasury market this morning you'll see at least at this point, treasuries, the yield on the ten-year picked up a little bit. back at 1.045%. andrew. >> meantime, let's get to washington the senate approved president biden's pick for treasury secretary, and kayla tausche is in washington this morning with the latest kayla. >> reporter: andrew, good morning, janet yellen becomes the first female treasury secretary in the 232-year history of the department.

the first in american history after sailing to senate approval yesterday, an 84-15 vote, which was a much stronger bipartisan showing than even her 2014 confirmation to the federal reserve chair. she will be the third biden administration cabinet official to be sworn in and a fourth could come later today with the noon vote on the nominee for secretary of state, tony blinken happening then, just about two hours before all 100 senators are expected to be sworn in for impeachment proceedings to begin last night, the house managers crossed the capitol to deliver that single article of impeachment, and interviews immediately following that, senate majority leader chuck schumer suggested the trial could be relatively quick, and president biden in brief remarks to cnn said he didn't believe the senate would have the votes to convict, even this time around and as those pretrial motions get underway, the white house is ramping up urgency for a covid relief deal, which biden said yesterday he still believes

could get those ten republican votes. >> and i don't expect we'll know whether we have an agreement, and to what extent the entire package will be able to pass or not pass until we get right down to the very end of this process, which will be probably in a couple of weeks, but the point is, this is just the process beginning. >> so a couple of weeks from now, well, that impeachment trial is set to begin february 8th and biden drew some parallels to the passage of the 2009 stimulus package he shepherded he signalled he is still open to negotiating this, including that controversial income threshold for those direct checks which a lot of lawmakers have raised concerns about and wanted to be changed. becky and andrew >> kayla, real quick, we started this segment talking about the historic nature of janet yellen's confirmation as the treasury secretary could you imagine her role as

also the chief negotiator when it comes to the stimulus, for example. historically, at least in the last administration, actually during many financial crises, the treasury secretary has played that role >> yeah, played that role for better or worse. that was something that secretary mnuchin was essentially deputized by president trump to do. i mean, the office of legislative affairs usually plays a pretty significant role in that effort, but i've heard a lot of lawmakers and aides raise concerns that while jaye powell for one as fed chair done a lot of reaching across the aisle, a lot of touching of gloves on capitol hill behind closed doors to explain his policies. janet yellen didn't do as much of that diplomacy when she was at the fed she might have a little bit of a deficit in that regard, and need to be building back up some of those relationships. that being said, i think her vote is a clear indication that she does have support from both sides of the aisle, but whether that means she'll be a successful negotiator in that

realm still remains to be seen all of that to be said, president biden himself served for more than three decades in the senate the administration maintains that he has been on the phone working some of those relationships with lawmakers to try to whip some of those votes himself, and do some of those negotiations, but they're still mum on exactly who he has been speaking to and exactly what progress has been made. >> kayla, heidi heitkamp, the former senator was on in the last hour, and she was talking about how she thinks those moderate voices are going to be very important, all the people who were on the call on sunday with the white house during the green bay packers game, talking about some of those issues i think the moderate voices are probably looking for the number of direct checks to be cut down, maybe be a little more targeted. you mentioned at the end that the push back is to get that number changed on who exactly is getting checks, and i wasn't clear what that meant. does that mean that they are pushing for those checks to go to more people or fewer people

>> well, first, thank you for bringing up the loss of my beloved packers one more time, becky, you had to do it. but i think that you're right about that some of the pushback is that under the proposal as it was written in the house, a family who is making more than $300,000 in some cases would still qualify for those checks, and they believe that if the country is going to be spending more money, printing more money, that that is simply not a family who is in need they want to have these qualifications be as stringent as possible, but part of the push and pull as we've seen through all of these negotiations is, okay, unemployment insurance is perhaps the most directway to get to people who have lost their jobs but there are some people who have lost hours, who are gig workers, who, you know, for a litany of other reasons have suffered an income loss that maybe aren't reflected in the traditional statistics and so

there are some lawmakers who want to be able to capture that population as well and they want to be able to get it out quickly if you do a stricter means test, it takes longer to find those people perhaps because there has been a stimulus passed, you can argue you have a little bit more of that time right now. president biden did suggest that he is open to making that threshold more restrictive he didn't specifically say what he thinks that number should be or how he would plan to do that. >> i mean, i think that's going to be the rub, the big tisissues the direct payments. that's the most popular thing you can do as a politician, tell everyone that you're going to give them money, and worry those who are fiscally conservative, wait a second, we shouldn't be giving money to people who don't need it. >> oh, for sure, but becky, i think it's also the presence of certain things like a $15 minimum wage, which was a -- >> that's never happening.

>> on the campaign trail that was mentioning over and over again, i mean, that was seen as a poison pill right out the gate, and one of the reasons why this was criticized as a democratic wish list right from the get go with that being said, the white house has responded to the criticism and said, look, we understand this is not the final proposal, essentially acknowledging that they inserted line items that were readily able to be cut perhaps for later passage that are not mandatory for this moment in time although, you know, they have argued, too, that for a lot of these minimum wage workers, they are people who are on the front lines who are not able to work from home, and shouldn't they deserve more money too there's certainly arguments made on both sides. >> i should say, not never happening, never happening in this first go around when you're trying to get the vaccinate pushed out that's probably going to be the biggest focus. it wouldn't surprise me to see this come back later, but it would surprise me.

>> really trying to make this a bipartisan effort, yeah, thank you. >> exactly thank you. google confirmed to cnbc last night that its political action committee will not fund members of congress who voted against accepting the presidential election results. after a review, the net pa board said it wouldn't contribute to those lawmakers this cycle other tech companies including amazon, facebook, and microsoft announced they would pause contributions from pacs in reaction to the capitol breach. coming up, we will dig into the short squeezes, and other speculative stampedes that sparked wild volatilely in certain stocks in yesterday's session. gamestop, amc entertainment, bed bath & beyond moving ahead this morning. check out the price of bitcoin, this has been all over the place, actually down more than $1,100 this morning. 3.4% just over $32,000 per bitcoin.

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all right. welcome back, everybody. yesterday might have been the

most glaring example yet of a short squeeze in the markets and high flying stockings separating from their fundamentals. check out a few of these 24 hour moves in gamestop, bed bath & beyond and national beverage corporation. short squeeze part of what's happening here, but doesn't explain the entire story some of these are story stocks is joining us to make sense of this, chris head of analysis at strategic partners, and before we jump into some of the specific names, what are you seeing technically in the markets. we have seen huge push ups, almost every day, we are seeing records by one index or another, today it's the s&p 500 and nasdaq what's happening overall >> i would say number one, this is a broad move, 90% of stocks are above their two day. that's a broad advance you don't get major tops from that we like how broad this is. are you vulnerable to a setback here, probably, we're overbought i look to about the 36/20 area

as good support. the second thing we're seeing, though, i think this is more important, we're starting to again see some leadership reversion. the things that haven't worked over three, four, five months, tech, faang, fak, are starting to reassert themselves here. i think that's a big theme through february, march, into spring >> starting to see that. let's talk about big moves we have seen and the names we mentioned, names like gamestop, what explains that is this a short squeeze, something else that's happening? >> it certainly has that speculative fever that would remind you of 99 or 2,000, i think yesterday the range on gamestop was 150%, the range on blackberry was similar, the range on express was very much up there as well i think the question we have to ask as analysts is this speculative fever isolated to these few stocks or is this something more symptomatic of a

problem. this is where i think we need to draw a really important distinction from today versus '99, 2000. when you were seeing the mania in '99, we have to remember. it was tech and nothing else tech was working at the exclusion of every other sector in every other group that's not the case today. there are isolated pockets of extremes, there's no doubt about that this is a broad move, and this is not just a handful of stocks driving the whole advance. i think when you look at this from a bigger picture. we have given people free money and free time, you're going to get stock prices up in that environment. is this reflective of that '99, 2000 type speculative. i don't think we're quite there just yet >> why i mean, what's the difference? because you start talking about it i think about the day traders at that point, which are the same thing as the robin hood traders now. people making fast trades may not know as much about a stock they see the momentum, the flow,

they like the story behind something and can understand that that sound an awful lot like what we saw in 1999. it's not as much the depth of the market right now >> yeah, i think one of the great stats, by the time you got to the march 2000, 30% of the stats are working. this market has a lot more depth behind it, a lot more breadth behind it. i'm not as concerned about these pockets. i think when you try to quantify sentiment, and we look at 7 sentiment indicators on a daily basis. only three of them i would describe as excessive here that's moving in the direction of sentiment getting too hot, but i do think what we're setting up here for is a market that's going to challenge the fed. if the fed is serious on the idea they're not going to raise rates until the unemployment rate is much lower or until 2023 or 2024, i have to wonder, is the market going to challenge that view. is the market going to say, chairman powell, you're not

going to raise rates until '24, what if ten-year yields are 175. it does seem like we're setting up for asset priced inflation where the market is destined to challenge the fed here. >> you mentioned we're seeing another round of this kind of reversion to former leadership we have had leadership get handed back and forth, and i know you have been looking at how things like financials and industrials really saw a tremendous burst of in-flows and excitement around those when they started to out perform for a few months how far does have to go. do you have a sense of whether those are quick pops or a longer term trend >> great question, and this is in many respects the exact opposite of what we saw last may, june, july. we saw it reversion trade 1.0 back then where you have flows into tech and stay-at-home and growth stocks that got very excessive and you had flows out

of cyclicals and financials and those type of groups, and that's set up for reversion into the spring and into the summer and the fall we're in the exact opposite condition right now. you have seen huge outflows from the qqq. you have seen huge inflows into stuff like financials and materials. this sets us up for that reversion trade 2 p.0 we saw netflix last week that, kicked this whole thing in gear. i'm not sure this is over yet. i think this persists through the weaker part of the calendar, which is really february, march. >> all right go ahead, mike >> i was going to say, chris, we were just showing that chart, showing that there has been a little bit of a loss of energy in this move we're clicking, you know, more with an upside bias for the s&p. it's not necessarily been as forceful does that mean we're just kind of wobbling ahead of something a little bit more of a pronounced pullback >> you know, mike, i think we're seeing the first hint of what i would describe as momentum

fatigue over the last week or two. you tend to get momentum contracting before you get big draw downs in stocks i suspect if we're going to get a correction of this market, and we will at some poeiano, it's a april, may june, story, not a february, march story. >> do you have any guesses on how deep we're kind of using the 2010 comparison as a pretty good road map, a year off a crisis, the move off the '09 low is remarkably similar to this move. you had about a 10% correction early in 2010 and a deeper, 17% correction in the summer and fall of 2010 you finished the year up about 13% in 2010, but it was a rocky road to get there. that's probably not the worst road map here. >> hey, chris, thank you good talking to you this morning. >> thank you, becky. take care. >> you too andrew. thanks, becky. a programming note, we're going talk a lot more about the short

squeeze with the ceo of robinhood, and that interview is coming up tomorrow right here on "squawk box. so much of the option trades, and short squeezes we're seeing taking place on the robinhood platform and being discussed of course in places like reddit as we head to a break, a look at the biggest premarket winners and losers in the s&p 500. we're back after this. these days, we want sophisticated but simple. cutting edge made user friendly. in other words, we want a hybrid. and so do retailers. which is why they're going hybrid, with ibm. a hybrid cloud approach with watson ai helps manage supply chains while predicting demands with ease. from retail to healthcare, businesses are going with a smarter hybrid cloud,

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welcome back, everybody. we've got some breaking news general electric just reporting its earnings, adjusted quarterly profit came in at $0.08 a share. if you're looking at the revenue number, revenue did beat the forecast, came in at $21.93 billion versus the $21.83 billion the street was anticipating and that stock is up by 4 1/4% organic orders down by 3%, industrial organic revenue down by about 14% they ended the fourth quarter with $37 billion of liquidity, and again, we'll have more on this coming up in just a little bit. miss by a penny on the bottom line but the top line was better than anticipated andrew >> interesting, i'm looking through some of this myself. meantime, now to the executive edge and the story that a lot of folks on wall street were talking about all last night and into this morning. leon black paid sex predator

jeffrey epstein $158 million for financial advice, but an outside law firm says that black wasn't involved with epstein's criminal activities leslie picker joins us with the latest leslie. hey, andrew, as a result, leon black is resigning as ceo of apollo. the news, of course, coincides with the findings of an outside review into his personal dealings with disgraced financier jeffrey epstein. the report was put together by a law firm deckert at black's request. it reaffirmed he wasn't involved in epstein's criminal activities as the firm had stated previously, but it showed that black paid epstein a whopping $158 million for services between 2012 and 2017, services that the report said included trust and estate planning, tax issues, advice about art, his private plane, yacht, f

philanthropy, and the operation of black's family office black intends to step down as apollo's ceo on his 70th birthday, but will remain chairman mark rowen will take the reins as ceo at that time. black is considered one of the founding fathers of private equity he started apollo three decades ago, grew it into a $400 billion alternative, and the epstein scandal weighed in now, shares of apollo gained amid the monday evening news that he was stepping down as ceo. guys >> leslie, there's so many elements that i have questions about. of course for many years, people tried to imagine where did jeffrey epstein's money come from, especially in these latter years, and it's now clear that that money came mostly, it appears, from leon black directly the big question i would ask you

actually is how you think this is going to change apollo? is this just a shuffling of the seats, if you will leon black is going to remain the chairman of the country, one of its largest shareholders tie to it as much as anybody, and it sounds in the report is there was a battle in the company in how quickly he was going to depart from the ceo seat josh harris pushing for him to do it immediately, and yet, this is now going to happen apparently about six months from now! right. so the times had some great reporting on this yesterday about how there was this internal battle. they believed that he wasn't stepping down soon enough. that july was taking too long, that it's about, you know, six months away before we'll really see any kind of change, but based on his statements and the company's statements, july is the time line that will happen as for what will change with apollo, the company has three

cofounders, mark rowen, josh harris, as you mentioned, as well as leon black leon black has been ceo for the duration of the form his face is associated with the firm, but really behind the scenes, josh harris does a lot of work, and mark rowen is really credited with building out the business, and building out apollo beyond its kind of private equity core. it's now, of course, in credit, insurance, a bunch of other businesses that have been very lucrative for the firm. >> we got to run the most critical thing i saw in that note is that he's pushing to change the governance structure from a control structure effectively to a one share, one vote structure. is that why the stock is moving? >> that is part of it, too also that would imply that they could be included in the s&p 500, which would be a benefit for them as well >> leslie picker, always good to see you. thanks for helping us out this morning. >> thank you >> becky >> thanks, andrew. still to come this morning a flood of those earnings that

are set to hit the tape. we've got ge that we'll dig through a little more deeply we are minutes away from reports from 3 m and johnson & johnson as well. later, bank of america ceo brian moynahan will join us to talk about the outlook for banking. it's a conversation you don't want to miss we'll be right back. i made a business out of my passion. i mean, who doesn't love obsessing over network security? all our techs are pros. they know exactly which parking lots have the strongest signal. i just don't have the bandwidth for more business. seriously, i don't have the bandwidth. glitchy video calls with regional offices? yeah, that's my thing. with at&t business, you do the things you love. our people and network will help do the things you don't. let's take care of business. at&t. your daily dashboard from fidelity --

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good morning, and welcome back to "squawk box. take a look at u.s. equity futures, the dow looking to open about 38 points higher, the nasdaq looking to open down, 23 points, and the s&p 500 off just marginally, we'll call it a little over a point right now. but we've got a number of companies reporting, and i know becky's got one, so i'm going to kick it over to her. becks? >> we have 3m that's coming in let's take a look at 3m shares, the company coming in with numbers that are better on the bottom and top line. they came in wan adjusted earnings number of $2.38 the street was looking for $2.15, so that is a pretty handy beat revenue came in at $8.6 billion versus the $8.4 billion that the street had been anticipating mike, i'm going to ask you if you can jump on this

i'm looking for thompson to try and get earnings per share numbers for the full year. i'll give you the guidance, and maybe you can tell me how that matches up with what's there, and for sales. for the full year, the company is says they're looking at $9.20, to $9.70 in terms of earnings for sales growth, 5 to 8% growth i don't know what the estimate is this machine is on the fritz right now, $9.20 to $9.70 for the full year. >> that's the consensus forecast for 2021 looks like $9.50 for the calendar year. it's essentially right in the range of what they were looking for before, so doesn't seem like, you know, really an alteration of guidance but certainly with, you know, kind of an endorsement of the consensus at this point. >> which, i mean, that in it itself is saying something it's been a long time since we have heard from companies that are willing to say here's what we think is going to happen in the next quarter, let alone for the rest of the year because things have been so difficult to kind of get your arms around

during this pandemic to see where things are headed. talking about a few comments from 3 m in terms of what the company saying they have helped the world manage through the pandemic. 3m makes things like the masks, the n95 masks that have been so hard to get ahold of they also say they have positioned themselves for growth in 2021, and that's going to be the story that i think a lot of investors start to look at not only was the company able to pivot and keep up with what was going on, are they able to make additional capitol expenditures to make sure they can grow one of the things 3m says they're doing is announcing a $100 million investment that is including in their 2021 capex guidance to further reduce water usage and improve water quality around our manufacturing site. the ceo does say that while economic uncertainty remains, they posted oerganic growth in all of their business groups and

geographic areas they saw their earnings per share and talked about how they distributed 2 billion respirators in 2020. i know you have been looking through the ge numbers as well. >> let's recap those numbers actually right now ge's numbers, we got a few minutes ago. becky brought them to you. adjusted quarterly profit at $0.08 per share. revenue did beat analysts forecasts. you're looking at that stock actually moving this morning up about 5% right now, and then j&j just out, reported adjusted quarterly earnings of $1.86 per share. a $0.04 above the estimate, so some good numbers appearing to come this across the board we want to bring in a couple of voices to discuss the numbers we're seeing joining is tiffany mcgee, pivotal adviser and ceo, mike santoli with us all morning. but tiffany, you're watching some of these numbers come in.

some are clear beats some are at least flat but maybe in this market, it's all good? >> yeah. so good morning, guys, thanks for having me. a couple of things, and i have literally been listening to you, so i haven't had time to process much numbers but seems to be good news for j&j. so we're, you know, looking for, again, kind of coming off this really crazy interesting 2020, right, where it's really kind of hard to measure things at the intersection of like this global pandemic, this economic shut down, and kind of, you know, i like to describe it as tech with it foot on the gas pedal staples like j &j, we expected them to do well. sound like they did, so that's what we're going to continue to just kind of like view we're also looking at can't wait for starbucks later on really like the story of

starbucks, and how they were, you know, really kind of strong going into this pandemic with a really strong user interface in terms of their mobile app, strong customer loyalty program, they're able to get so much data from those customer loyalty programs, to really kind of drive their marketing strategy and sales strategy we're looking at things like that, companies that are using technology to really make their business effective >> ticffany, when you look at where the market is right now. what do you think is baked into the cake when it comes to stimulus, and how critical is that to some of your own thesis around companies like starbucks? >> yeah, so you know, we kind of have these two stories going on. we've got, you know, wall street, and main street. right now, you know, main street is suffering, and we, you know, we definitely need that stimulus package, a really robust stimulus package because

ultimately consumer spending is a big driver of gdp. we totally understand that we're also, we really looked at, yo you know, in this kind of time of crisis, in 2020, what companies were able to really really do well, and you know, we think about technology from a very broad perspective, not just your usual suspects like the microsofts and apples of the world. we're looking at a company like starbucks, i'm going to bring up st starbucks again, that are utilizing technology, stimulus, kind of circling back around to your question, you know, consumers are still going to spend on things like coffee, and they are right? and consumers are really going to spend, you know, the -- the opportunities are really with these companies who have pulled ahead of the pack, found a way to still make it in this time of, you know, really economic kind of crisis during 2020

i also put chipotle and wing stop in those categories, especially with the restaurant industry where so many companies, the u.s. restaurant industry lost about 150 billion, so there's kind of like this space for these larger companies who are really, you know, shining to take some of that market share, and we're going to see that, i think, in some of these other industries as well >> hey, mike, jump in here because i know you have been looking through some of the numbers. you know, on our screen right here, we're showing ge up obviously 5% this morning. 3m over 2% things are moving here. >> that actually has not been the predominant pattern in the early run. you see a lot of seldom news on good numbers the difference being 3m, and ge both had their stocks settle back a fair bit. i don't think expectations were particularly huge. something like ge, you can look

at these results and say they spent 2020, and came out of the year, you know, really having a done a lot of, you know, the tough stuff in materials of getting the balance sheet in order, husbanding these cash flows, and you know, in a better position if the world is going to be faster growing in 2021 i think that's probably the reaction right there i think with 3m, there's still a little bit of suspicion as to whether the execution is following through with that company. i also think it was good enough according to some of the top line, you know, in the consumer and health care areas as well as on cash flow, i think that it's getting a little bit of a cinch. again, everything is about the set up, so these stocks definitely had pulled back along with some of the other cyclicals in the last couple of weeks. >> mike, tiffany, thank you both appreciate it very much. and mike, you're a guest and host i'm going to kick it back to you, to preview what's to come. >> coming up, much more on this busy earnings morning. we'll talk much more about the j&j numbers, and a first in cnbc

interview with the company's cfo, that is straight ahead. and a reminder, you can watch or listen to us live anytime on the cnbc app.

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. welcome back, everybody. watching the u.s. equity futures this morning, things were flat when we started the morning but you're already seeing pretty big

gains in the dow, and that's because we have gotten better than anticipated earnings results. 3m may be the big mover, up by more than 2.3% certainly helping things out nasdaq is under water. it's down by about 9 points. the makeover for the $20 bill is back on. president biden is moving forward with the 5-year-old plan to place abolitionist harriet tubman on that bill, replacing former president andrew jackson. white house press secretary jen psaki confirmed they are moving forward with the change, that the country's money should reflect the history and diversity of our country >> thanks, becky i still don't understand, you know, i remember when they first announced it, they said it was like a multiyear, if not decade long project, and you remember steven mnuchin said that it was another ten years out. why does it take so long i mean, i understand it could

take a year or two to replate the bills, and what's required with that, but i don't get the lengthy period >> i mean they talk about how engineered these bills are. >> what do you say. >> they talk about how highly engineered the currency is in terms of antifraud, but i don't know why the image should matter that much. >> right meanwhile. >> nothing moves quickly in government that much i have learned. >> that is very true johnson & johnson cfo is going to be joining us to talk about his country's quarterly results and the progress of their covid vaccine. >> and we're going to be hearing from blackrock ceo larry fink out with the letter, often considered the most influential letter in corporate america. we'll talk all about it. stay tuned "squawk box" returns in a moment

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johnson & johnson releasing quarterly results. meg tirrell is here with the numbers and the special interview. meg, take it away. >> reporter: becky, thank so much j&j had $1.86 a share. joining us to discuss this, the rest of the year and the upcoming vaccine news, joseph wolff, j and j's chief financial officer. great to see you you had a beat it looked like it was mainly driven by the pharmaceuticals

unit tell us about it >> good morning meg. pleasure to be here with you 2020 was certainly an exciting year on many fronts, one that we'll never forget as alex gorsky our ceo said many times to the audience at jonsso and johnson, we were built to symbolize what our associates did to address the pandemic. we did beat with the pharmaceutical medical lines came in and we saw a higher case count. hospitalizations are down so that bodes very well corn summer group improved the margin profile we're very excited for 2021. in our guidance we have significantly raised our revenue projections growing around 10%

and then our earnings per share is anticipated to grow about 18% in the coming year what was significant in 2020, what i'm particularly proud of, is we were able to invest more in r&d than we did in 2019 about 800 million more investment so we very much despite all of the turbulence that happened in 2020 and all the short-term uncertainty, we continued to remain focused on the long term. >> you mentioned positive news in hospitalizations. they are still at the absolutely crazy record levels. how do you model for what the pandemic looks like throughout 2021 and perhaps the variants with people quite worried they could affect hospitalizations even more? >> that's a great question, meg. what i would say is we do anticipate a gradual improvement throughout the year as we've come to see in 2020. you know, great health is important to have a great

economy. as there is more vaccine availability out there, as we work our way through the pandemic, we expect a stablizing and consistent growth rate our pharmaceutical unit had elevated performance in 2020 because as you may recall they expanded script development. tylenol and listerine were significant in the first quarter of 2020. we'll see a little bit of abnormality in terms of the smoothness of growth medical devices we expect to continue improvement with with a big second quarter given some of the impacts that we were experiencing in the second quarter of 2020. got to give a lot of credit to the health care providers, health care systems. they are much more adept than the early days of the pandemic in terms of being able to treat covid patients but treat other patients who are in need of very, very important procedures.

>> you mentioned increasing vaccine availabilities being key to helping the recovery. you guys are correctly involved in that. we are expecting phase three data imminently. i want to ask you about supply there was a story in "the new york times" saying j&j lagged the production targets for the vaccine. we had mark mcclellan on the smith show last week who said you guys are still targeting 100 million doses available by april. is that right? is there any production lag? >> yeah. meg, with the trial itself, right, we plan to report out by early next week in terms of our results. as you know, it's a very robust 45,000 person study across eight countries, three different cont continents we do have some of these new strains potentially captured in our data as we had sites in south africa as well as brazil we'll let the scientists do their work there in terms of supply, we're very confident and on track to meet

our commitments which is 100 million doses to the u.s. by the end of june. 200 million doses by the end of the year to the e.u. with shipments starting in april and also to developing countries as well, about 200 million doses this year that we'll begin shipping in the second half. our plans are right on track our supply chain has done a great job in terms of improving our capacity >> joe, come on. give us something. tell us this is going to be effective somewhere north of 70%. give us something on this. we're all waiting to hear this and have so many high hopes riding on this vaccine. >> becky, i'd love to tell you that you wouldn't want to hear it from the finance guy we're optimistic we're proceeding again, we think we're going to have a very robust dataset in terms of the 45,000 person study. it's going to be very inclusive in terms of having certain ethnicities, blacks, hispanic as

well as the elderly as part of our population and, again, because it's so diverse in terms of the geographic representation that could provide a lot of insights we'll wait for the doctor to give you what's hopefully good news in a few days here. >> i apologize for asking you a question that you know i should ask the doctor you mentioned south africa was one of the sites where you're running a trial. i wonder given there is a strain that has been shown to evade the current vaccines at least to some extent. 6 fold lower neutralizing tighters, are you going to be separating out in the data h how well your vaccine works in different geographies? >> you know, meg, i will defer to dr. stoffels but i think that is a very logical conclusion,

you may see geographic differences. the data will be finalized here, it's really in the final stages. they're going through not only the analysis but sequencing as well that should be very informative for the johnson & johnson vaccines and hopefully other vaccines as well. >> we'll be on the lookout for the results and we'll see you soon thank you. >> thank you, meg. >> becky, back to you. meg, thank you crossing our fingers we want this news. we want it fast. we want it to be as good as we hope it's going to be. crossing our fingers. when we come back, we have two more big interviews still this morning we're going to be hearing from black rock ceo larry fink who is publishing his annual letter to ceos today later, brian moynihan on the future of banking. "squawk box" will be right back.

good morning ready or not, here comes a flood of results a letter to ceos, larry fink penning his annual note always closely followed the blackrock ceo tells us about it in a "squawk box" exclusive plus, a mega mansion up for

sale the most expensive home ever sold for auction the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick and mike santoli. joe is off today futures on this tuesday morning as we get a flood of earnings reports coming in. the dow looks like it would open higher, 64 points higher the s&p 500 up 2 points. the nasdaq though in the red looking to open down about 6 points right about now becky? >> andrew, we've got some breaking news on regeneron i want to get back over to meg tirrell. she has details on that. meg? >> reporter: hey, becky. we know regeneron has this

antibody drug. just like lilly, they were testing this antibody in prevention people who live with somebody who's been diagnosed with covid. they are releasing these prevention results right now on their antibody cocktail, combination of two they say in this analysis of 400 people in the trial, they were able to prevent 100% of symptomatic infections prevent everybody from getting the disease in people who live with somebody with covid and we're able to cut down by asymptomatic infection or transmission by half the numbers on the disease part are pretty small eight people in the placebo group got sick, zero in the drug group got sick out of 223 in placebo and 123 in the drug group. overall, positive data the way they see this potentially being used, it's essentially like a vaccination except the protection is given immediately with these

antibodies you can go in where there's an outbreak, draw a ring around contacts of somebody with the disease and try to stop the transmission that way. so we'll have to see, guys, how the biden administration is looking at using these drugs signals from the cdc director and others think they're too hard to administer regeneron saying here the cocktail may be able to break a chain by providing immediate passive immunity to those at high risk in contrast to vaccines which take weeks. we are seeing new news from eli lilly this morning on a cocktail of two antibodies that it has for covid. it has a single antibody that's authorized now this is providing more data in the treatment setting of the cocktail a flood of news. we'll have to see how the biden administration thinks about using these as the trump administration purchased millions of doses. we've seen them hard to administer andrew >> regeneron, meg, the tricky part with that is it needs to be

administered by infusion and that's always tricky trying to find out where you're going to get somebody who gets to do those things same story with littllly. what about its antiviral >> reporter: becky, i'm so glad you mentioned that for the treatment setting these are both iv infused drugs. you have to go somewhere and get the infusion they are looking at trying to figure out home infusion in the regeneron trial, it was given as a subcutaneous injection. a shot you don't have to sit in an infusion center for hours to get this done. they were able to figure this out. still not a pill or nasal spray which is easier, but it is easier than iv ip fusion >> that's a big deal especially if you don't have to go into a hospital and sit there exposing yourself to covid on a greater level than you might be at home. meg, thank you take a look at that stock up 1.1% eli lilly.

andrew >> thanks, becky meantime, black rock ceo larry fink publishing his annual letter to ceos this morning.

his letter typically one of the most influential letters he's written a letter every year invariably it's changed the dialogue i would contend and say singularly in corporate america around so many issues. you'll remember a couple years ago he came out and said every company needs to have a purpose beyond a profit and then two years later the business roundtable all came together and made what was a momentous decision to effort this idea of capitalism last year larry fink came out on the climate, the first major investor in the country, if not the world, too do it that way. then you saw a slew of other companies given the influence and pressure he has on them, delta airline coming out with their own plan and so many others to me the most striking thing is

a lot of the sustainability and esg movements, there's been a lot of conversation that this was a top of the market marketing gimmick for a lot of companies and that in a financial crisis it would be the first thing to go, if you will, but oddly enough during this covid pandemic it appears actually that the opposite has happened there's actually more of an emphasis on climate, not just by companies but by investors you see them piling into the sustainability etfs, younger investors on robinhood tesla may be the exemplar. we'll talk with larry in a little bit about that letter and what he's calling for this year and how i would argue it may even change -- it may very well be the s&p 500, if you can believe this, becky, may not be the standard bearer in years i think there's a change afoot we'll talk about that. >> we'll see

el it's a big index what larry says matters because blackrock is the biggest holder in many of these companies that's why when larry writes these letters, he says these things, it does matter he gets to vote those shares and every proxy battle that comes up it's a very important voice and we'll be listening hearing a little bit more from larry fink coming up in a little bit. in the meantime, a busy day for earnings mike santoli has more on what we can look for and expect. >> let's set the scene with the s&p 500. still the market's benchmark two year what is interesting, it feels as if it's up more 2 1/2% is nothing to sneeze at not even a month into the year it makes it seem like it's more. this is unusually steady coming out of the end of october. one of the two year because i wanted to point out how we came

into 2020 in very similar fashion, the relentless grinding rally. started in the fall and continued up through late january. you started to see the first tremors of covid not saying we're going to match that pattern and we have a little bit of a give back. take a look at the types of stocks leading and lagging nasdaq 100 big megagap stocks and then since then have done really not that much. russell 2,000, even more storied stocks in there. they had liftoff starting around the election that's basically flattened out we see this spur higher. treasury yields have come off the highs. i think it's more to the benefit. they are going to be recording earnings in big numbers. we'll see if that is reinforced. did want to point out short selling victims i guess you'd

say. this is a short selling etf. one of the very few stock picking short selling etfs not necessarily singled them out but you see what's happened in the last two years this is really dramatic. a steep decline. they decide which stocks to short. not overall showing you how short sellers have done. it's very indicative of a market that has essentially depleted the energy behind betting against stocks, at least temporarily. con temporarily you can say nobody is beating it and it's a time for a rest. >> everybody knows stocks only go up, at least for now. mike, thank you. the fed's two-day meeting kicking off today. steve liesman returns. he's got more of the results of the cnbc fed survey including expectations when the central bank will begin to taper, if i dare ask that, steve i thought that was never happening. >> reporter: you're close to never, becky almost there

so as the fed sits today for the first meeting of the new year, they do so with markets pretty well convinced, like becky, that the fed's wide open monetary policy will continue for most of this year and some of it well into next year even while growth and inflation expected to pick up take a look at the if he had-spectations showing tapering of $120 billion a month will be announced in september that's the average person who expects a decrease this year and then reduced in november the economy should be fully restored in the second quarter of 2022. that's unchanged from the last survey but the first rate hike doesn't happen, you can go asleep and wake up in a year or so, the end of next year, december of 2022 the belief in tapering is not that overwhelming. 60% think there will be a reduction this year. 31% of 32 think it won't happen this year. 13% expect an increase in asset

purchases. what's the backdrop for all of this the yield on the 10-year bond expected to rise by 50 basis points inflation rise modestly around 2% in 2021 2 1/4. that is below the fed's actual goal they follow the pcb. respondents believe that most of the stock gains of this year already been chalked up. they look for 1.6% gain right here but nearly 8% growth in the s&p in 2022. put it all together. the market's dovish policy outlook, huge accomplishment for the powell fed success for the forward guidance strategy the only problem is the potential market impact if the fed needs to reverse course. you remember like i do, the fed would announce something and announce when it would end this idea of convincing the

market that the fed is open ended, this is an accomplishment for the powell fed. >> i remember the last time they tried to taper, the taper tantrum that the market threw. we'll see what happens with that >> yeah. absolutely >> thanks, steve andrew sure thanks, becky and steve. meantime when we come back, more details from larry fink's annual letter to ceos we'll break it down for you. plus a rundown of big earnings this morning check out the names we've heard from already, 3m, johnson & johnson and verizon already out this a.m you're looking at 3m stock moving higher, johnson & johnson moving higher as well. we'll talk about all of it when we come back after this.

all right. welcome back, everybody. earnings just out from dow component verizon. the company beating expectations by 4 cents with adjusted quarterly profit coming in at $1.21 a share. revenue beating the expectations verizon did add fewer than expected post paid phone subscribers. the stock down by 12 cents and the company is saying that on an adjusted basis it's looking for full year earnings of $5 to $5.15. that's better than the street

was expecting. street was at $4.98. cap ex spending 17.5 to $18 billion and that includes additional rollout of 5g the adjusted effective income tax rate they say they anticipate being 23 to 25% and that's pretty interesting because taxes is what we've been talking about. will there be higher corporate taxes. expectations if they raise taxes in washington, the first place that would be would be on companies. so to hear that these are their expectations for the year based on an effective tax rate of 23 to 25%, that's interesting hans vestberg is going to be coming up on "squawk alley" at 11 a.m. eastern. very interesting take a look at another dow component. american express, it earned $1.76 for the fourth quarter consensus was $1.31.

a slump in the travel and entertainment industry, you know that's been happening. that stock down by 1 1/3%. blackrock ceo larry fink publishing the annual letter we've been talking about this morning. i wrote about it in my deal book column this year larry fink calling on companies to disclose and report their path towards a net zero carbon footprint he defines this as limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees celsius among p premarkets he spoke about his call to action that he is now asking all companies, public and private, by the way, to pursue. listen to this >> the existential health risk of covid actually accelerated the existential risk of climate

change, and what we witnessed in 2020 was an acceleration of clients inquiry into investing in sustainability but more importantly we saw more than a doubling of investments, closer to $166 billion of investable dollars moved into sustainability and that's only going to accelerate as you know last year i talked about the tectonic shift in investing and it's accelerating. i do believe through better disclosure, better disclosure through tcfd and sasby we are going to have better data and through the better data we'll be able to analyze companies and see a remarkable difference between the companies who were moving forward as you asked in your framing of the question, yes, in this letter i ask companies to do more than report under tcfd and sasby. i ask them to report on the net

zero carbon footprint and how are they going to get that we asked them to describe that and discuss that in their annual reporting. >> now a large percentage, close to $4 trillion of blackrock's assets are in passive funds. blackrock putting its voting and i asked larry how this will play out. >> when you think about passive, we can't sell a company as long as they're in the index. the only responsibility we have to create long-term durable profitability is through our vote and i started talking about that ten years ago when we said, you know, our vote is going to be more important this is why we had our corporate stewardship team and believe having more engagement throughout the year with the clients or the companies we invest in on behalf of our clients. and so, yes, we are informing

companies as to how we are going to vote, but this is not a mystery to the companies who we are engaged with we believe this is how we are going to be able to create long-term durable profitability and build companies that will be stronger in the future >> you're building more and more though investment products, etfs, indexes that are based on the idea of sustainability effectively indexes that exclude certain companies. call them -- >> yes. >> -- potentially the new s&p 500s over time are you of the view that indexes like the s&p 500 will have less significance? >> great question. and the answer is yes, i do. i think through better reporting, better disclosure creates better data and better data will be able to create better algorithms and analysis

of each company. through that process we're going to be able to democratize how clients want to invest they can have better control of the portfolios they want to invest in. and we are seeing across the board more and more companies who are saying how can we create a more customized, personalized investment strategy? so they may be targeted off a certain index or that may be the manner in which they want to closely approximate, but we're able then to create these more customized portfolios that meet the needs or the desires of our client and this is where a great sum of the etf money in 2020 has been going to, more of these sustainable, customized portfolios where i think this is going,to me this is part of the tectonic shift. i believe more of the public

pension funds, who have been pretty loud. we have the technology. >> based on monday the $4 million larry fink and the s&p 50060 million companies. they are surprised by the

climate over the last year >> more and more people and more investors understand that we would finance it in2020 the flows in january. >> to be net zero.

the carbon offsets, things like that. they're being double counted i believe that's it. it's legitimate that it does improve. the skeptics push us further not against it total clarity.

they invest and where we invest. anything you can ever imagine. it's happening we are seeing an acceleration. obviously it will continue

we need a true carbon market we've had many meetings. in the world of finance, they are talking about it. >> we have a lot more of that. the esg plays. >> andrew, that whole question of esgs, figure out what it all means.

>> davos, the international business council i want to make sure when you push something with esg you think you're buying an esg company stock. maybe there are some clarifications as to exactly what that means. that can go a long way towards helping what larry wants it is something that is front of mind for a lot of these big ceos and something they've been working on over the past year even with the covid as you pointed out before. >> to some degree this is the future i do think there is an element, this is the future of investing. i don't know if we talked about it

hank paulsen joined tpg to start a climate fund. >> right. >> there is something happening here and i think we should focus on it probably more than we do i know there's lots of debates we've all had about climate on this program with various guests and others but clearly even if you look over the past year it's not just about doing good anymore, it's actually about performance and those stocks are outperforming. >> yeah. we'll talk more about this a little later this morning. also coming up though, a stock that elon musk tweeted about is now up 9% in the pre-market i'm sure all of those investors did lots of due diligence before they jumped in on it we're going to reveal the company behind the mystery chart after this break. by the way, check out bitcoin at this hour, too. you never know which direction it's headed. today it's down. you'll see right now bitcoin down 5.1%.

at 31,605. "squawk box" will be right back.

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for his dog. i'm guessing that means the helmet that marvin the martian, the cartoon with the guy with that yeah, he's right you can get just about anything on etsy. what i want, i'm in the market for statler and waldorf. >> the muppet show. >> that was wonderful. >> bravo. >> that have been knitted with them of the bernie gloves and bernie jacket. that's perfect that's what i'm in the market for. >> you know, it's easy to look at this action and kind of be

scolding does it matter if etsy was trading at 95 or 195 which is the difference between the premarket price? i think first of all this is always going on on wall street, stray tips people chasing it. >> mike, i feel like there's so much more of it these days there's 15 stocks a day you can look at and say, oh, my gosh, it's up x percent because of this, y percent because of that. that feels a lot more like 1999, maybe 2000. >> it's victimless we'll talk about it more still to come on "squawk box," we'll take a look at stocks after reporting results. equity futures still looking at a positive open. then mega mansion listed for 160 million, nowup witnoh reserve robert frank joins us with the details.

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joining us to take a look at today's big earnings results, joe taranova and joannefeeney at advisers capitol management good morning to you both

joe, so far we've heard from be, 3m, j&j, verizon, american express. anything you would hone in on as far as a macro tale or how the market is responding >> good morning, mike. the industrial sector is a sector we want to be focused on. the critical word is visibility. you have the return of visibility once again restoring guidance whether it's ge, raytheon or 3m 3m talking about the manufacturing visibility raytheon talking about the free flow and ge with the offset. the setup for industrial had been a negative one. the second worst performing sector year to date. coming off last week's very sobering reminder that the economy has a long way to go and healing from united airlines, this is a nice, positive offset.

that would be the sector to focus on. >> joanne, all the companies we named, they stretch back to the 19th century we'll be hearing from the big nasdaq names, microsoft, apple it will be a big debate as far as whether or not we are in a growth market or maybe more cyclical how would you strike that balance right now? >> you know, good morning, mike. there's certainly going to be an opportunity for the more cyclical companies to outperform one of the mistakes that got them through 2021 -- sorry, through 2020 is going to work for 2021 i do think we're going to see an opportunity with economic recovery coming in the second half for some of the more cyclical companies to do well, whether that be the banks, energy, or some of the consumer cyclicals like a t.j. max.

we would argue in a customized portfolio like we build for clients or the individual stocks also include some of the most important tech names, maybe not the most popular but we do think microsoft is a good stock to keep in portfolios we like apple. we think the 5g cycle that is just beginning is going to grow over the next several years. for microsoft, they've done well obviously as behavior changed during covid and we think they have a long runway ahead of them to continue to build their server-related business, pcs are continuing to do well. that cloud business is going to continue to do well. don't overlook smaller tech names which we think continue to do well even if you have a rotation towards more of the smart cyclicals. smaller companies like encino, zebra that i've talked about that has leveraged amazon but so much more.

we do think this is going to be a freely asymmetrica performance some of the high flyers may not do as well don't run away from tech because everyone is talking about sector rotation find your spots. >> joe, we were showing apple's chart. it kind of went sideways since the beginning of september and now it's kind of had this burst higher again it does tend to go in streaks. what does it tell you about what the setup looks like for eventually getting apple's numbers? >> new all-time high the setup is a high expectation one. as a shareholder for apple i'm a little concerned by that i agree microsoft is going to be very critical this week. microsoft was up 8% in the last five days. it's kind of where do you set the expectations coming into earnings and we've witnessed over the last ten days that for the faang names, megacap

technology the bar has been raised higher. if you're a shareholder, you have to be somewhat concerned about that. >> all right we will see if these guys can move up. joe and joanne, thank you very much for your time this morning. appreciate it. when we come back, a mega mansion for sale -- woops hold on asecond. i know when we come back, we're going to talk about a mega mansion that goes up for sale. it is likely to be the most expensive home ever sold at auction. we'll talk about that and check out some pictures of it here take a look at the futures after hearing from dow components american express, 3m, johnson & johnson and verizon this morning. we started things out with the dow in negative territory, not down by much relatively flat. now up by 76 points. and some strong stock reactions too. s&p 500 now indicated up by 5. nasdaq up by 4 "squawk box" will be right back.

sales are down from last quarter but we are hoping things will pick up by q3. yeah...uh... doug? sorry about that. umm... what...its...um... you alright? [sigh]

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to each other, and to other agencies. that's why at&t built firstnet with and for first responders the emergency response network authorized by congress. firstnet. because putting them first is our job. welcome back to "squawk box. a mega mansion that once listed

for $160 million is up for auction. who else would have the story than the one and only robert frank. good morning, robert. >> good morning, andrew. bidding starts this morning on what will likely become the most expensive home ever sold at auction. it's called villa forenze in beverly park the gated community that's home to guys like sylvester stallone, eddie murphy and mark walhberg it was listed two years ago at $160 million now it will go under the hammer at no reserve to the highest bidder through concierge auctions and hilton and hyland the seller of this home is the aircraft leasing tycoon who built this home in the 1990s it's over 9 acres, 20,000 square feet of living space great for social distancing. it's got three guest homes, a tennis court and a motor court for 30 cars. now the l.a. luxury market has seen record prices and demand during this pandemic

david geppens sold his home to jeff bezos for 165 million that was the highest price ever in california. jeffrey katzenberg got 125 million for his beverly hills compound more than 200 homes sold for more than $10 million. no comment on why the home is being sold maybe he's moving to florida or maybe he's downsizing. andrew >> downsizing. that's a possibility do we know what the taxes are and the maintenance? that's what i -- you know, that's what i'm always looking for in this kind of situation. >> i think when you're looking at a house that listed for $160 million, taxes and maintenance are probably not a big concern, but it's a huge property no property in beverly park has ever traded for more than $40 million so it will be really interesting to see what value is put on this and it will sell to the highest bidder no matter

what that bid is by february 2nd. what's fun also is you can watch these bids online so we'll watch it from you from now to february 2nd and see where the bids are coming in. >> i'm just wondering what the pool guy charges it looks like there's a couple of them. >> yeah, it's a good sized pool, tennis court it's got walking trails. it added multiple lots over the years. it's a huge property you're going to need a staff for this house and, yeah, i'm sure the taxes are crazy. >> i can't even guess. i can't even guess we'll have to ask one of our other guests maybe for them to take a gander at what the maintenance fees are robert, thanks for bringing us that fun story i kind of want to go -- i'm not going to bid i'm obviously not in a position to bid but i kind of want to watch the bidding. thanks becky? >> i'm going to bid. it says no reserves.

any bid. you could bid $1,000 and still get in on this you couldn't r wouldn't win but you could be in it. >> when we come back, big tech under the biden administration we're going to talk about that sector and what investors can expect on regulation in the meantime, check out shares on twitter. the social media company permanently suspended the couldn't of my pillow ceo mike lindell after they said he had repeated spreading o misinformation more information on twitter and the turn they're trying to take. we'll get to that next the stock is up by 1 point be point 1% we'll talk about it all coming up after this break. strengthening client confidence in you. before investing consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. go to flexshares.com for a prospectus containing this information. read it carefully. competition beat us, again. how? they have a better finance system than we do.

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the biden administration more than likely to look a the more regulation for big tech the biden administration has a lot on its plate obviously big tech in the foe cows how far down the line is that going to be? what do you think? >> regulatory analysts don't see something passing whether it's a section 230 amendment or national privacy law in the first two years of this administration the reason being is there's still so much gridlock still so much tension. there are things that are more

pressing the biden administration is turning around trump era moves we've seen executive orders in the past week. what i would expect is for congress to tackle two big issues as i mentioned, national privacy law is something i know is going to be talked about this cycle as well as section 230 reform although i think that's less likely to be put into concrete action. >> especially when you look at the troubles they're having thinking of how much of a relief bill they're passing things you can do on a bipartisan nature and things you can't do on a bipartisan nature are going to start piling up sarah, this morning we were talking about how twitter has removed the my pillow guy forever from its platform at this point we know about president trump and the removal there. they are moving further and further down this road of admitting they're not just a bulletin board they are a publishing company at

this point there's a new acquisition they came up with today, a company called review. what does all of this tell you >> well, it means that twitter is leaning into its responsibility for the content that's on its platform what that means from a regulatory perspective, it will put itself under the fire of conservatives on capitol hill. every time twitter, facebook, any of these platforms take action on somebody who is a far right conservative or trump ally, conservatives come out and decry censorship that will make it a lot harder for tech companies to get along with the new congress but, two, quite honestly for some new bill to pass. if they are focused on censorship and democrats are focused on content moderation, it will be hard for them to meet somewhere in the middle. honestly, the real loser is the american people and people around the world we know that there's a lot of misinformation on these platforms. the tech companies want to do something about it

everyone wants it to get ta tackled. this question of censorship is going to plague reform for a long time. >> wait a minute, you sound like there's a method to the madness. you think they are intentionally pushing the conversation or they're doing what they think is right and as a result it's going to leave a more divided congress >> the latter, exactly they're doing what they think is right so they're a safe platform the conservatives don't see it that way they see it as being censored. any time they feel they are being censored they'll go after the 230 law. that will make it hard for a bill to get passed >> the truth is though, these companies are acting more and more like publishers is there a point that they are going to be more legally liable for anything that winds up on their platform if they're taking down some things they consider misinformation but not others, how does that open their

liability? >> well, i think the first thing you're going to see, becky, there's conversations right now with the biden administration about whether or not white supremacy and domestic extremism is going to be something we consider illegal right now it's really hard for big tech companies to take action on that kind of speech without being deemed as censors. but if that type of speech is deemed illegal, then they can sake action on it and it's hard to deal with it. the same way they tackle isis content or foreign terrorism i think the big content is how are they going to lean into accountability you've seen facebook, twitter, google setting up ad libraries, starting to give more researchers access to their data i think that's going to help ease congress's concerns around section 230 reform if they get more access to data and transparency of course, becky, there's a question around privacy.

if they give up too much data people might say, hey, is my data safe with these platforms if they're sharing it with everybody? >> yeah. definitely some shifting landscape here sarah, thanks for walking us through that good to see you. >> good to see you thank you. andrew >> coming up on the other side of the break, becky, when we come back, another big hour straight ahead you don't want to miss our interview with nec director brian deese the nuances of where the debate lands. plus, it's not in switzerland but davos is still meeting virtually. bank of america's ceo brian moynanih will join us. "squawk box" returns right after this hip hop group tag team to help you plan dessert? ♪ french vanilla! rocky road! ♪ ♪ chocolate, peanut butter, cookie dough! ♪ ♪ scoop! there it is! ♪

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. good morning busiest week of earnings season kicks into high gear quarterly reports rolling in from dow components american express, 3m, johnson & johnson and verizon. all of those numbers just ahead. president biden moving ahead with manufacturing by steering the government towards more made in america products.

more national economic council director brian deese to weigh in the president's covid relief plan a ceo doubleheader in the next 60 minutes. we'll hear from blackrock's larry fink and brian moynihan. the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, everybody. welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin and mike santoli. joe's out today. we've been watching the u.s. equity futures and as the earnings keep rolling in we've heard from four dow components already this morning you'll see the picture has improved, at least for the dow futures. dow indicated up close to 100 points that's after we've gotten better than expected numbers. the biggest mover is 3m which

beat on the top and bottom line. you're going to see the s&p has improved, too. the nasdaq is down by 2 points we should point out that both the nasdaq and s&p 500 set record levels once again yesterday. take a look at what's happening in the treasury market the ten year is yielding right about 1.048% right now andrew >> that's exactly right. meantime, two important pieces of news coming out this morning on the fight against the coronavirus and for that we're going to go forward to meg tirrell with all the details meg? >> reporter: hey, andrew we got two pieces of information about these antibody drugs being developed by regeneron and eli lilly this morning on the regeneron, it was results in a prevention study using the antibody cocktail to give it to people who live with somebody who's been diagnosed with covid to prevent them there getting sick and they found they could

they prevented 100% of symptomatic infections and cut down asymptomatic or essentially transmission by half eli lilly presented more data on its antibody cocktail. they have one single antibody on the market now experimental trials they've got a cocktail and they're waiting for clearance from the fda on the cocktail they show a 70% reduction with a treatment of high-risk patients in a risk of hospitalization or death. we know the drugs have been very hard to administer out on the market for people who recently have been diagnosed with covid-19. both companies are working on ways to make them easy to administer for regeneron, it tested this this as a shot, a subcutaneous injection. eli lilly said it was working to reduce iv infusion time to as little as 15 minutes from an hour they're trying to make them easier to help in the fight in the pandemic guys >> meg, i know the important

thing is getting this as soon as possible because these are drugs or cocktails that cut on the replication of the virus once the virus has replicated and it's all through your system, it's a lot tougher, not as effective to this point that has meant giving them to people when they are very early on diagnosed with this there is a problem with testing in some cases and getting back an effective return on some of these things some of the talks they're having are about giving them to people who have yet to be diagnosed, too. taking care of anybody who might have been exposed. >> reporter: yeah. that is what we've been hearing from this data from regeneron, people who live with somebody who has been diagnosed with covid. eli lilly had those in nursing homes last week. even as the country is desperately trying to get vaccines out there to the most vulnerable people, they see a role for their drugs for folks who haven't been vaccinated, perhaps can't get vaccinated they can provide the passive

immunity and give it away to those folks. it takes coordination. so far what we've been hearing from the biden administration has not been a huge focus because they are so complicated. i'll be looking forward this week to hearing from the biden administration directly on the covid plans and whether they have any plans for the medicines. >> a shot would go a long way in improving that the transfusion process has been messy. a shot would go a long way, even better if they get to an oral dosage, a bill that you would take trying to get people to take these things and in an environment where you don't feel like you're getting exposed to covid by doing it, too >> reporter: definitely. these can't be orally administered because of the way the drugs work there are pills that are being developed by merck and we should hear data on that this quarter. >> meg, thanks so much good to see you this morning in the meantime, earnings coming in from a number of dow components plus a slew of other big companies this morning

dom chu's been running through the numbers on all of these. he joins us with the highlights. dom, good morning. >> becky, let's talk about the three dow components day two of the busiest earnings week we'll start with johnson & johnson speaking of covid-19 it's up nearly 2% onroughly 10 shares reported profits and revenues at top average analyst estimates powered by 16% growth in the drug unit. it expects to release key details about the covid vaccine candidate study sometime soon. watch the johnson & johnson shares next up you have dow component 3m up around a percent or so pre-market roughly 10,000 shares of volume. the company is best known for projects known from post-it notes, scotch tape, auto filters and surgical facemasks revenues helped by among other things more demand for ppe,

personal protective equipment. those shares up 1.5% then we'll end on another dow component, american express lower by 1.5%. roughly 15% pre-market volume. reported better than expected profits. revenues in line with estimates. amex says card member spending, this is interesting, has continued to recover and non-travel and entertainment spending are right now exceeding pre-covid levels for the second straight quarter so it looks like the boost in online shopping, helping to offset black r lack of demand for travel-related spending, mike, is one of the interesting trends in consumer spending back over to you >> arguably the one thing that really matters for american express in the coming years. dom, thank you very much coming up in just the next few minutes, national economic council director brian deese we will hear from two wall street power players black rock ceo larry fink and

bank of america ceo brian moynihan one of the big earnings movers, verizon. beat estimates on both the top and bottom line for the latest quarter but saw smaller than expected increase in paying phone subscribers. stock down 1%. don't miss an interview with hans vestberg on "squawk alley." stay tuned, "squawk box" will be right back ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

welcome back to "squawk box. president biden moving to put the power of federal government behind buying u.s. products. signing a new buy american executive order. took place yesterday joining us to tell us what it could mean for the country, realistically for manufacturers and to talk a little bit, maybe more than a little bit over the next round of coronavirus aide and stimulus, brian deese is with us. good morning, brian. thank you for joining us as we try to unpack and understand what's happening here. let's start with the state of the american rescue plan, if we could, and these stimulus measures i ask in part because it appears there's a bipartisan group of

senators that are troubled by the amount of money going out, the idea of $1400 reaching some people at a certain income, 16 of them joined a phone call with you on sunday. what happened on that call >> well, look, happy to be here. good to see you. you know, i -- it was a good call it was a constructive conversation and this is part of the process. the president put forward a plan we're now engaging with members of congress from both parties to consult with them, to make the case on the provisions included and this is all part of the process. i think if you look at the american rescue plan in total, what you see is an effort that is actually what we need to get shots in people's arms, get schools open, get relief to families in businesses and in a way that is targeted to those who need it most but we're looking for people's input. we're having the conversation and we're going to move this forward. >> is there a way to do a more

targeted effort in terms of getting that $1400 just to the people who need it most? >> well, look, i made two points the first is if you look at the provisions of the american rescue plan, very targeted hunger, homelessness, unemployment insurance certainly we welcome the focus on targeting including from republican members and those provisions should have broad bipartisan support when it comes to the checks, we put forward a proposal that to your point about bipartisanship passed the house with 275 votes. 44 republicans voted for it. certainly if there are ways to make that provision and other provisions more effective, that's something we're open to, that we'll have conversations about. if you look in the aggregate, this is an approach that is very much targeted at those workers and those businesses that are struggling the most in this eco economy. >> how concerned are you that some of the stimulus money, at least in the past and perhaps in the future, will end up frankly

in the stock market? there are anecdotal reports over and over again, in fact arguments about why the stock market has moved the way it has because stimulus money has been thrown into the markets. >> i would step back here and look at what's actually in the rescue plan. the first big piece of this is to underwrite a national vaccine and vaccination and covid effort about getting shots into people's arms, getting testing ramped up and getting schools back open. that's money that's going to support concrete efforts that we know we need and they're long overdue and are key to our economic recovery. supports to states and local governments so they can avoid laying off teachers, firefighters, cops those are resources that will go into the economy and support and stabilize as we're able to get this virus under control other elements like unemployment insurance we see those who are unemployed are looking to deploy the resources

to keep themselves afloat and their families afloat. with respect to the checks, again, if you look at this, you know, 2/3 of the benefit of the checks that have gone out have gone to families with less than $90,000 in income. those are resources that families are looking, again, to bridge savings if they've lost a job, if they haven't lost a job and they have extra expenses so we think that this is a sensible approach and calibrated to the moment that we are in right now where the risk of not acting, the risk of inaction at this precarious moment in the economy outweighs the risk of sitting back and waiting and seeing as the virus accelerates and as the economy moves downward. >> brian, what is the most important focus for this administration is it going to be to get a big bill with all of the things you laid out or is it going to be to get a bipartisan bill? >> you heard from the president yesterday. we are at a moment where we need decisive action. we need to move quickly and we

need to move comprehensively we've learned over the last ten months what happens if you address this crisis piecemeal. we need to move comprehensively and quickly. that's our iffocus. >> it sounds like big. if you have to choose between the two, that means big and budget reconciliation? >> look, we need to do what it takes to solve this crisis we can't get schools open if we can't get control of the virus we can't get control of the virus unless we invest we can't get people back to work unless we get the schools open we need to tackle this comprehensively. we're very open to people's input and ideas. that's the process that's happening right now. we do need to move with speed here so we don't find ourselves a month or two or three from now in a place where the virus isn't getting under control, the economy is in a worse place and we're asking ourselves why we

didn't act. >> brian, perhaps a philosophical question that will turn practical later this year how are you thinking about raising taxes, both on the corporate side and on the individual side? perhaps even considering the s.a.l.t. deduction later this year as well >> look, i think the president was pretty clear about his approach to taxes in the campaign and it continues to be his approach today, which is if you look at the -- both on the corporate and the individual side, there's important reforms that we could do that would help make sure that the higher income americans as well as corporations are paying a higher rate and a larger amount in taxes but done so in a way that could actually increase our own domestic competitiveness andre andrew, you mentioned the executive order the president signed yesterday about buy america and make it in america we are very focused on how we

can increase the domestic industrialness one of the ways is to encourage greater domestic investment. we believe we can do that while raising revenue in the aggregate. that's the core of the president's plan. >> brian, i know we've got to let you go one question one of the critiques of the buy america plan is that it may increase the costs for certain products and perhaps certain technologies won't be available to us. what do you say to that? >> look, we've seen in this crisis the costs to our economy of having vulnerable supply chains and having an economy that is overly reliant on countries that don't share our interests when it comes to critical materials, whether that's ppe or whether that's semiconductors investing in our own industrial competitiveness, in the resilience of our supply chains will pay dividends economically. this approach to buy america is a key component to that but it's one piece of a larger approach

that we're going to put forward about how to increase our own resilience and our own industrial competitiveness that is absolutely going to pay dividends for our economy going forward. >> brian deese, we appreciate you joining us this morning. we hope to continue this conversation with you. thanks >> absolutely. thank you. >> you bet. becky? >> thanks, andrew. up next this morning, larry fink's esg message for corporate america. we've got more from a special interview with blackrock ceo when "squawk box" returns.

. welcome back to "squawk box" this morning big letter out this morning from blackrock ceo larry fink publishing his annual letter to ceos often has a remarkable influence. i wrote my latest "new york times" deal book column about it this year fink is calling on companies to disclose and interestingly report their paths towards a net zero carbon footprint. in an interview i asked him how much leverage he thinks he has over corporate america with the $9 billion -- $9 trillion under management. >> i actually believe if they want to have the highest performing stock in their industry, i think what i am requesting them is what i see

from where our clients money's going. so if they don't choose to do this, i think you're going to start seeing some of these companies having lower performing companies and we're starting to see a big evidence, especially in 2020, in each industry we're seeing a wider range between price earnings ratios of the best companies who are more focused on stakeholder capitalism moving forward versus the other companies. in 2020, 81% of esg strategies outperform regular indexes which is telling me and reinforcing this concept of more money is moving there what i'm trying to do is inform management and boards that if you are going to have a high performing stock over a long period of time, you need to be doing this and blackrock is doing this ourselves on behalf of our shareholders we're doing this on behalf of our employees and our clients and so we're not telling them to

do anything. it is up to each company to describe what they are doing >> he's been right in that you can look at some of the big fossil fuel companies and how they have under performed over the past year. i asked larry how concerned he is that the public investors are taking -- or have too few opportunities, investment opportunities in esg-related companies. electric vehicle maker tesla would be one of the biggest and whether there's a bit of a bubble >> there's no question we have seen huge sums of money moving into this space and we're seeing some companies who were in the -- who are -- who are in that sustainability space where they are trading at very high pes, but on the other hand, andrew, tfor the world to reach this zero -- net zero carbon

world, we're going to have to invest estimates more than $50 trillion into new technologies so you're right, today there may be a smaller portfolio of companies today who are moving towards this, but as more and more money moves into this, it's going to be moving into new technologies, too, and through that new technology we're going to have a better opportunity to reach those targets. >> do you look at today and think there's any kind of, quote, esg bubble taking place >> well, a bubble means that it's going to burst any time soon, and the amount of money that we are seeing that's moving into this space is going to continue so for those who think we may have a bubble, there may be one or two stocks that we may have bubbles, but what i see is more and more companies and management teams are trying to move towards a space faster, not slower and so we'll know in the next five years, you know, there will

be some failures i'm not here to suggest that everything is going to be rising perfectly. like in everything else, when there's a new trend we have huge winners and then we have some losers we will have that in this space, too. >> right. >> when you think about some of the great technology companies, when i think about some of the technology companies over the last 20 years, some of them were trading at 100 plus pes and the earnings grew into those pes now they're trading at whatever today, 27.35 pes there are many companies and technologies that are trading at 100 plus pes i can think ofa lot of fintech companies that are trading at extraordinary pes. it's not that people are investing in those companies because they believe they're -- it's a sustainability play no, it's a societal play maybe, but some of those companies are

going to either have to earn into those -- grow into those earnings or they're going to fall >> in president biden's first days in office he rejoined the paris climate treaty and ordered states to reinstate agencies biden plans to replace the government's vehicle fleet with electric cars. i asked larry fink what he expects when it comes to the support of sustainability focused companies and what they may get from the government over the next four years. >> i'm so highly condition str -- constructed on the role of capitalism whether it was the vaccination we created in ten months and so many areas where capitalism has proven been a successful model i believe we're going to use this type of interest of

investing to make the carbon transition an opportunity, not a fear and i think with now president biden's new focus on sustainability is only going to accelerate this, but i want to be sure that we -- that we leaders in business find solutions. i never like having government making mandates of how we should be doing things. i do believe as we watch what's going on in europe we're going to see more and more companies mandate disclosure on zero net carbon i think many more countries are going to mandate disclosure under tcfd and that's what we're beginning to see i would much rather have us business do it ourselves and that's one of my big cries out

in this letter we need to do it ourselves before government does it for us. >> larry fink's letter always must reading in the corporate board room and i imagine over the next weeks and months. we will hear from lots of businesses that may very well be announcing plans to be net zero by 2050 and what it all means. mike >> all right, andrew well, they're coming up, now that we've gone in depth with larry fink on esg and stakeholder capitalism, we'll get into it with bank of america ceo brian moynihan another interview you can't afford to miss. a check on gamestop, continuing to watch this after yesterday's extremely volatile session. it saw the stock pop 140% and go negative for a bit right now the stock premarket traded up 16% at about $89 it's below where it opened yesterday. stay tuned, you're watching

"sawbo ocnquk x"n bc

still to come this morning, bank of america ceo brian moynihan will join us live to

talk about banks, markets and a new commitment to esg metrics with business giants from around the world. don't go anywhere. "squawk box" will be back after this quick break (vo) businesses are always making choices. here's a choice you don't have to make: the largest 5g network... award-winning customer satisfaction... or insanely great value. now, with t-mobile for business, there's no compromise. network. support. value. choose. all. three. t-mobile for business. ready when you are. competition beat us, again. how? they have a better finance system than we do. i feel like they might have a better finance system than we do. workday. how do they make better decisions faster? workday. got to do something. workday! i think i got something. work... hey, rob, you're on mute.

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this january we are not heading to the mountains of switzerland to cover the world

economic forum in davos. a virtual meeting. the davos agenda is still happening. the international business council announced an agreement among 60% of the companies to follow a metric. joining us is brian moynihan great to see you this is something i think we started talking about last year with you at davos and it's this idea behind esg, environmental social and governance. pretty amorphous and hard to pinpoint how did you get 60 companies to sign off and say this is what we think esg is and stands for? and tell us what those standards mean >> well, thank you, becky. good morning i know that you've had larry on earlier talking about this, but let's go back. you're right, we talked about it last year when we were at the wonderful base of the mountains. we've talked about it last september i was on with you. we talked about the announcement

of the paper what is it about it's about defining stakeholder capitalism it's defining how capitalism can measure itself and accountable to deliver on the sustainable development goals. about the brt statement. you have to have some metrics to measure. we tasked a group, the big four accounting firms and the teams at the wef and other companies to come up with 24 metrics announced last september in the 60 to 90 days since then, 60, now 62 companies this morning have signed on to disclose the metrics they include environmental matters, they include social matters, diversity, things like that, board governance those are all important things this is a way across industries you can measure the success of companies and continuing to do what society needs from us >> you know, larry just told us a little bit ago that this is something that he thinks is important because if it's not done, he thinks governments will

mandate it for them. do you share that concern, that if businesses don't step up and do it they'll be dictated about what happens along these lines >> that's not the concern. the question is you can't do this without capitalism. you hear lots of people talk about how do we define capitalism, how do we change it? does it do what we need to do? but the reality is if you think about the sustainable development goals, they take $6 trillion a year investment and if you take all the charity work, it's $1 trillion a year. it's spectacular you take what the governments can do, you take what the deficits are running especially after coronavirus, they don't have that much money put to work then you think about it and take all of the companies and all the money they spend on the supply chains and the money they spend on their teammates and advertising and understanding and think about what they bring to the table they bring trillions of dollars of investment. they bring tremendous ingenuity. if they commit to carbon

neutrality which many of the companies have and expose that, they bring tremendous demand and that's what capitalism can drive this yes, i don't -- i believe without capitalism this isn't going to happen. without the companies driving it, this isn't going to happen this is why the companies are putting it on the table. this is how to measure it. now you can tell if we're making progress >> the companies that you mentioned are not just bank of america but well-known names like dow, unilever, sony, paypal these are companies we all know. how much money are we talking at this point how much -- i mean, if you're really talking about capitalism and dollars, how big of a commitment is it between these 60 companies >> well, they have 4 trillion plus the market cap. several millions of employees. think about them saying we are going to run our companies consistent with delivering on the sdgs delivering for the shareholders and delivering for society it's not either/or, it's both. that is tremendous just in the case of our company, think about 53 billion, $55

billion expenses as we align those to what society needs in terms of how we spend on energy, how we spend on supply chains and goods that come into our company and how we run our company from operational basis, solar panels and branches all of these companies making those moves brings tremendous money to the task that otherwise wouldn't be available. the metrics hold us accountable for delivery >> hey, brian, let's talk a little bit about other things that you've been doing too at bank of america you first told us about some investments that you were making, again, this was a conversation that we had with you over six months ago. you talked about some of the diversity and inclusion investments you were making. i thinkthis was back in june o last year. at that point you said you were making a billion dollar, four-year commitment to advance racial equity. how is that going and what can you tell us about it >> becky, thank you. so given what happened in the united states, given the combination of the health care crisis which we've got to solve

and the racial and social justice crisis, we have been building a program about opportunity before that. we doubled the size of a billion dollars and started deploying. today will announce we've made another sort of update in that today we're going to announce we're making commitments to 40 funds of $150 million. all granular funds that invest in black, hispanic, women-owned businesses these are private equity funds that do 300, $500 million deal sizes, investment sizes that help the entrepreneurs be successful that is it caps the investments to be made in a minority depository institutions. we've announced we've got a total of 12. that caps the 25 commitments we've made to un strers cities, hbcus, community colleges around reskilling, community caps and caps the health care commitments we've made of 20 million masks given away to community centers to help keep populations as safe

as we can. the billion dollar program is out there rolling. the 40 funds will provide tremendous capital downstream. some are startups and have been down a while this is a major lift in capitol to provide capital to black and hispanic and women-owned businesses. >> what have you seen in terms of what you have already deployed can you give us an example or two of what this means on a very small scale for someone? >> sure. i'll give you the example. i was on with jim cramer we put on equity investment. he made an acquisition i think the populations were three and 5,000 persons. the bank needed to be bought by somebody local banks so they can be kept and run. those communities were 70% lmi that's what we're trying to do with the mbi investments help the mbis reach out further.

that's a very specific example he made another investment with it we are trying to provide capital. it's not like we don't do small businesses all over the country. sometimes there are places we don't reach as well. that's why we have 1.6 billion that's why we have 5% of the equity, 12 of them in importantly for growth capital, that's why we're committing to 40 funds of $150 million instead of talking about what we can do, we're trying to get the money out the door to help the institutions deploy the capital. >> yeah. i think often a very personalized basis it makes people understand what that means. brian, let's just talk a little bit about the pandemic, what we've seen over the course of this year and how the economy is fairing up it's been almost a year, just over a year since the first case of covid was here in america it was a very tumultuous year. what can you tell us about what the economy looks like at least from your seat right now

>> well, let's think about that. last year at this time we were over in davos and there was talk about this thing we were getting briefed on it for the first time really next week in last year's context yet it was not well known and it was completely unexpected then we went into march and april and you had the shutdowns. so the economy went down dr dramatically and started rising back up. as we look towards 2021, experts at bank of america, a top research firm, had the u.s. growing at nearly 5% gdp we have an economy the size it was in 2018 in the second quarter, projected to grow at 5% and the key to all of that is to continue to solve the health care crisis. no matter what people say, no matter what they're thinking about, if we get the vaccine out, if we continue to provide social distancing, masks, things like that, keep the case count to start to tip back down you'll see the economy back up. in the first three weeks of january at bank of america the spending that we have, it's $3

trillion a year in 2020. in 2021 for the first three weeks it has grown at 9% over the last year. in that roup, 9% over the year before the interesting thing, you can put a percent extra growth for some of the stimulus that got disbursed in the first part of the month. let's call it 7 or 8%. that growth rate is as strong as it's been so far this year, last year into this year. people are spending money. people are engaged in the economy differently than they could if we were completely open, people go to theaters and things like that, but they're spending money that's good news even the states like california which had a major shutdown and is changing is up 3% year over year other states are up 7, 8%. that's all good news the economy keeps moving forward. we feel very constructive about the consumer activity. >> what about savings? i know that grew pretty

substantially. what does that look like pretty recently >> it continues to grow. so if you look at the disbursement of the latest round of eip, the $600 payments that went to americans with incomes under $75,000, we've received about 11 million payments so far from the government into our customers' accounts. only about 28% of that has been spent. and so if you go back 10 million of those came in the first week of january it's been a few weeks. only about 28% being spent that percentage is lower than the eip payments of last year and so it means that customers who are working, et cetera, have the cash and the cash is being sort of saved. interestingly enough, the money that was spent is beingspent o discretionary retail which means it's being spent on more things, not just necessities of life but more discretionary which is good news for general economic activity let's not forget, we have an unemployment rate of 6% plus we have a group of people that need the support of the government,

need continued unemployment benefits, need these type of help to continue to make it to the other side of the river. meanwhile, the good news is 94% of the economy and the people working which is good news going the other way so that the difference between this time and maybe march and april last year we didn't know there was any light at the end of the tunnel now you're starting to see it. you're seeing an economy coming back now we've got work to do the good news is the savings rate will bode well. i think there's a fair amount of pent-up activity in people's accounts >> brian, that may be the most effective argument i've heard yet about the need for a targeted stimulus, not necessarily checks to just about everybody. what would you tell congress if they were to ask you what you thought the stimulus package should really look like? >> with the last stimulus and this stimulus i think we have to continue to focus on using the analogy of people crossing a bridge and a river a lot of people are across

we have to help the people that are not across restaurants, movie theaters, travel and entertainment they are not open yet. until they are, you have millions of people that can't work we need to do that on top of that i think we need to help the state and local municipalities last time we talked i used the reference of "hamilton" which took the debts that were incurred in the war, revolutionary war and brought them to the united states level. frankly, that's what we have to do again states can't afford to plug the hole in their budgets due to the covid-19 crisis. we need to help them with that and basically plug that hole for them so they can go on and do what they need to do as states i think whether it's schools, whether it's universities, whether it's nonprofits, performance venues and those things, targeted stimulus to help those enterprises being in great shape when we come out of these things as we move into the summer and fall is critically important. how big that is i'll leave to the political side that's where the focus ought to be how do we help the people who

haven't crossed the river get across the river. >> not necessarily checks to americans who still have their jobs, maybe haven't suffered any drop in their income >> i think the more targeted it is, the more effective it is and we can help people it's not that the $600 doesn't help people but we need to keep targeting to make sure it's affordable and make sure it has the most immediate impact. >> brian, have you thought about inflation in terms of what you anticipate we have seen higher prices for grains, for raw materials like in building and other places have you seen it show up in other places what's your outlook for it >> well, you know, this is a great debate going on in the markets and you saw rates lift up a little bit and come back down so i think right now it's premature to talk about that because at the end of the day we need to get this economy, which is about 90 some percent back to the way it is all the way back and growing again because if the u.s. economy doesn't grow, the rest of the world's in trouble because of the size, dimensions,

scope, scale and global impact of the economy i'm not sure the inflation right now is -- there's parts you can see there and prices and stuff like that, but i'm not sure it's the biggest worry. as we move through the year we have to be more careful and as we move into next year we have to be more careful so we don't stimulus in the economy that it has some of that impact. but right now it's not the issue at the moment. brian, thank you for your time this morning and also thank you for the work you're doing when it comes to trying to help out in some of the communities we appreciate it >> becky, thank you, and i encourage all your listeners to go look at the ibc and the world economic foreign metrics this is 62 companies making a big commitment i'd encourage people to look at it and for more companies to sign on. >> thank you brian, we'll talk to you again soon when we come back, jim cramer's first take on the trading day ahead.

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welcome back to "squawk box. let's get over to c nbc head quarters to hang out with our friend jim cramer. the earnings numbers, i don't know if you want to go there first, 3 m is interesting. ge is interesting. >> these are all stocks. we've been focussed on the news show, what's going on with the game stop. i you said that and it's filling papers when you see the big cap stocks put up the numbers and they're all coming on and telling you the story. j&j, 3m coming back. america is up ahead of time. let's not read into that i thought larry culp's ge number was terrific and larry fink was terrific and

brian moynihan the tenor is changing. business is the greatest force of social change larry fink might make it so you can't own oil stocks brian moynihan might make it unless you're doing something to help someone on the other side, you're not on our side >> thanks, jim the question is as an investor, how you should think about that. do you effectively say to yourself, i want to be out of the fossil fuel companies in their entirety >> yes >> yes that's it? you want to be out >> i'm listening to larry fink talking about what companies are doing to help the environment. how is it helpful to drill a hole in the ground and have methane come out how is that helpful? look, mike worth, chevron trying to to focus on that. the people at pioneer focusing on this, but unless they do

carbon capture and take out what they put in, we should not own them and that's what larry fink is saying the multiple is going to go down tell me, do you disagree with that >> i don't i actually think what's going to happen over the next several years is you're going to see some of the big fossil fuel companies and others sell off units that are perhaps, quote, unquote, the dirtiest, and there will be buyers on the other end. some of those people for better or worse will make a lot of money. they may not talk to their friends about it, but they'll make a lot of money playing them out for cash it's going to be interesting i think when it comes to the rerating and the multiple that's prescribed to the companies, there's no question that the environmentally focussed ones are going to do a lot better than the others? >> the ones that have charging stations and are endorsing green hydrogen fuel, i'll recommend them on the show they're the ones that are the future why doesn't bp have a green

hydrogen pump or royal station what's more important is the debate is happening. and the debate is actionable right now. >> jim, what do you make, though, and i thought this was the most fascinating thing larry fink said of the day, that over time indexes like the s&p 500 will go effectively out of favor for more customizable indexes based on this kind of data, and, therefore, we won't be showing on the screen necessarily an s&p 500 index. maybe we'll show a different index in the future. >> think about it. i offered a kind of offhand yes when you asked if these things would be out what did he say? he said yes. the s&p 500 will not be as relevant i mean, could you have been more definite that -- i mean, people should be listening to him and thinking do i want to own these stocks because they may go down because they won't be in the new index this is rev la tory. and it's, again, lapping now

it's not happening three years from now you can ask about whether some of them are phony. i think that's important but when you get people auditing whether people are phony, msnbc, auditing whether people are phony, all i can say is those not thinking about this in two years are going to say how did i own so many oils >> jim, it's great to see you. >> congratulations >> great to tet your first impressions? >> congratulations on that interview and on the brian moynihan interview it matters so much new world. embrace. >> thank you >> we'll see you and embrace you in just a couple minutes on "squawk on the street. meantime, we should mention shares of beyond meat soaring this morning the company forming a joint venture with pepsi to develop and sell drinks and snacks did i take that from you, mike if i did, i apologize.

it's a fascinating deal. they're going to make plant-based proteins and apparently the terms were not disclosed. you're looking at the stock. speak to it. the stock is up 30%. >> absolutely. so at least there's some fundamental news it's not just people stampeding into this one. i'll see how that one trades during the day the biggest earnings reports this morning starting with johnson & johnson. company beating wall street estimates on the top and bottom line for the forth quarter and an upbeat forecast the j&j ceo weighed in on the coronavirus vaccine supply which is crucial right now to slowing the spread of the virus. >> we're very confident and on track to meet all our commitments which could include 100 million doses to the u.s. by the end of june. our plans are on track our supply chain has done a great job in terms of improving our capacity >> the cfo said we should be getting clinical data from

johnson & johnson by next week >> that's what i'm waiting to hear about can't wait to hear they'll be able to ramp up a lot of production really quickly we need that third dose, and i think there's some other good news about additional vaccine ramping up from other companies too. all good news. wait and hear. anyway, thanks for joining us today, folks mike, it's good to have you here too. tomorrow we're right here. in the meantime, it's time for "squawk on the street. good tuesday morning welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer and david faber q 4 earnings heat up plenty of optimistic vaccine news road map begins with a focus on fundamentals dow components