tv Squawk Box CNBC April 23, 2021 6:00am-9:00am EDT
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good morning the tax plan rumor that shocked the markets. reports of a capital gains tax hike from the biden administration initially sent stocks sharply lower and recovered. we take you to washington for the latest. cryptocurrency in sell-off mode wiping out $2 billion in value from the crypto. intel under pressure the company sales stagnant despite the sky rocket market for chips. comments from the ceo pat gelsinger. it is friday, april 23rd, 2021 "squawk box" begins right now. ♪
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good morning welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin. it is friday the markets this morning a day after the tax hike rumor caught markets by surprise. dow and s&p and nasdaq fell by 1% after the media reports that president biden is seeking to fund education and other spending priorities with a tax hike that includes an increase on capital gains. from 20%, by the way, this is long-term, from 20% to nearly 40% for those earning more than $1 million we go to washington for the latest on the plan in a moment let's look at the selloff yesterday. markets digested the news and pushed ahead
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dow up 59 points s&p is up 10 and nasdaq up 22. the dow yesterday suffered the worst day we have seen since march 4th. it wasn't all bad news dow transports were weaker they set an intraday new high. the longest winning streak for the dow transports the longest winning streak ever. you are talking about the index that continues to push higher. keep an eye on the dow tra transports closed at 14,9 it20 the treasury markets 10-year is 1.549%. that's where we have been watching it all week andrew thank you, becky the price of bitcoin plunging. there may or may not be an
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obvious reason depending on if you want to tie it to the markets more broadly long-term capital gains could go up for a lot of bitcoin millionaires it has fallen below $49,000. $48,466 as we speak. off 8.5% yesterday wiping out $200 billion from the value of the cryptocurrency market in 24 hours it hit other currencies harder in the crypto market ethereum off 12% litecoin off 15% and i'll call it joe coin or as he calls it dogecoin, off 13%. joe? >> we also have pete rose. pete rose. i don't remember a part of my life when i didn't know and just
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have been in awe of pete rose. he'll be on later. bitcoin as a currency. a week ago, i was looking at beamers. the 5 series a couple weeks later now i'm at the volkswagen jetta. it's a good car. i'm worried if i wait until next week ford fiesta. a nice red with a sunroof. that's a problem, is it not? you cannot. >> yes >> this is why we said an asset. not a currency >> what happened to my 5 series beemer it's gone. let's get to washington and reports of a potential hike of the capital gains that sent a shock wave
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ylan mui has more. it will be hard for some people to totally push back on this we'll talk >> reporter: joe, i think the biden administration wants to do both the news that president biden plans to increase taxes to pay for the second fphase of the infrastructure plan raises heads on capitol hill. restoring a top tax rate of 39.6%. biden pledged to tax capital gains at that same rate as ordinary income for households making more than $1 million. wall street was spooked when he rolls out the american families plan next week coupled with the existing, but separate tax of 3.8% on investment income brings the capital gains total rate of 43.4%. the top republican in the house
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ways and means committee called this move an economic blunder. >> recently taxed capital gains less is unlike spending your money or putting aside for savings, this is riskier the rewards to the american economy into your future are higher >> reporter: so far, democrats have been unified on this idea a spokesperson for the ways and means chairman said he wants to make sure the wealthy are paying their fair share this is just the beginning of the dialogue back to you. >> love that fair share. love that. love that. i just like saying it. the fair share what makes a difference, ylan? yes? no a lot of people and you look at the stock market it is up in the last year. there are people who have very big gains. $1 million is a lot of money a small percentage of people i would think if it was not going to be retroactive, you
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could see a lot of people take profits. any idea the whole thing may be a long shot >> reporter: i don't know where they will land on that i think, joe, when you look at the way they would structure this, it is tying it to the top income tax rate. to me, it seems that would be hard to make that retroactive. you are trying to tax this year's income as well at a different rate that may be logistically difficult. there are a lot of details left to be figured out. i think the main point here is you have to think about what this is for. they are doing this partly because of the philosophical issue. they need a revenue to pay for the spending plan. this will be driven by how much money do they need to come up with in order to minimize or get rid of the deficit impact of what they will rollout in terms of spending.
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>> ylan, two questions one is a technical one because there seems to be lots of confusion of how yit works insofar as capital gains if the rate is moving to 39% or 43% this is the first situation where a certain total collective income, it seems like, that a new rate kicks in for part of your income, right those are two things that's not capital gains over $1 million. it is collective if you were to make -- i'm making this up $700,000 in ordinary income and then another let's say $500,000 in capital gains, it sounds like and you tell me, the first $300,000 are taxed at the old
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rate and the next $200,000 taxed at the higher rate we have never done taxes like that >> reporter: you are bringing up a good point, andrew i don't have clarity i asked that exact question myself i have not gotten a clearance on the $1 million threshold to the gain or apply to just income or just apply to combination of both right now, we're trying to figure out exactly the details of this. what i will say is that, you know, it is not president biden writing the law. it is congress we know the chairman of the senate and finance committee, only for tax legislation will come out with the plan for capital gains. we may see greater level of detail once congressional leaders start getting involved here right now, this is a blueprint for how congress could act and it is one they say is targeting
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the rich they are very clear about who they are going after here and why. >> ylan, let me add to that. a top tax rate of 39.6% for capital gains. the obama surcharge of 3.8% which gets you to 43%. in california, new york and new jersey, you are talking higher rates. robert frank said for california is 57.6% for new jersey, 54.1%. they have not rolled back any of the s.a.l.t. taxes to this point, all of those sort of middle of the road blue state democrats have gone along with with things. do you think that they would continue to go along with things if this is going to hit their constituents so hard we have josh gottheimer on later on we will talk to him about this
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what are you hearing about the rumblings on capitol hill about this >> reporter: i think there is a lot of consensus in the democratic party where the top rate should be and that capital gains should be treated as ordinary income. the s.a.l.t. debate is a separate question. to the point you have been making, the combined effective rate, would be extremely high. the other argument that the democrats make, there are other taxes that apply to ordinary income as well including the payroll tax. we are not adding that up in our calculation of how much a middle income earner might make investment incomes has been un unique it wasn't subject to other taxes. once you add in the obamacare surcharge, there is a penalty to investment income. there are other taxes taken out of ordinary income democrats argue. that is part of the problem. workers and investment have not
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been treated the same. >> i understand we need to pay for things se the senator is coming on the infrastructure plan from the republicans is $568 billion. that is less than the $2.3 trillion which is less than the $10 trillion that the far left would like to spend tilting and building windmills while china and india continue to pollute and use coal, you know, going gang busters when we want to spend $2 trillion and $3 trillion and pay for it by barely taxing people that have money -- anyway. that should be commentary down at the bottom. we haven't spent it yet. >> reporter: she wants to pay for her plan as well. >> i'll pay for half a trillion. it may be different to stop the hurricanes thank you, ylan. coming up, intel shares are falling. we dig through the company's report next and show you what
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new ceo pat gelsinger told jim cramer last night. and check this out this was the launch of the spacex rocket a few minutes ago. the falcon 9 rocket used from the first stage. a clue dragon spacecraft it will dock around 5:00 a.m. tomorrow with the international space station. "squawk box" is coming back. >> announcer: this cnbc program is sponsored by baird. visit bairddifference.com.
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intel shares are falling sales and earnings were essentially flat compared to the same period last year as demand for chips sky rocketed around the world. earnings and revenue beat estimates, but guidance fell short for the second quarter pat gelsinger announced intel would invest $20 billion in chip plants he addressed that last night with jim cramer on "mad money. >> announced a $20 billion factory expansion in arizona we are expecting to announce the next major location this year. we are investing and betting we said we are ready to go
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faster and bigger with further incentives by the government we're seeing great response. biden's job plan includes r & d and broadband and $50 billion for semiconductor manufacturing. >> gelsinger wasrned that the global chip shortage could last two years. joining us is the managing director of zuhu i want to talk about a ben franklin close listing the positives and negatives. you still have to buy, right there are positives. can you list the positives it looks like one, two, three, four, five what are the positives >> thanks, joe if you look at intel, especially being the leaders. they lost leadership and now with new management, hope they
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can get back you have the old guard back announcing last night. if you look at the enterprise, that is really what is grateful for them the enterprise down 50% with the covid shutdowns. you see enterprise coming back that should be nice for them they probably have a 90-person market share that would be the back half. i see tit is weak if you look at what it is doing, it is four-to-six weeks on orders intel is gaining with orders as the data center comes back and they reopen with the economy >> it takes time to build these.
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it costs a lot of money. a lot of capital intensive do you think they can do an operation warp speed or will it really take two years? >> it will take two years. the chip space, nothing happens fast it takes time to put up recruitment and qualification and rollouts i think it takes a lot of team two years is a pretty good timeframe. again, you know, they are entering a $100 billion foundry market th they are strong and facing a challenging road ahead the key is they are getting funding. there is a $50 billion aid bill in congress. they don't want to be hostage to
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a foundry. they want to have some control over technology with designs and more interaction that will allow for intel. that is good timing for announcing the fab and moving into that space. >> you mentioned domestic. that is part of building back better is there a domino effect to some extent, too, vijay shortage in one place -- the whole supply chain is disrupted. that is effecting a myriad of products from automobiles to a lot of things. it is a serious problem. demand indicates something positive about long term >> absolutely. you will detect the economy that is driving more demand on the data center side what you are seeing is simple things like processors
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you see lead times from 14 to 16 weeks. you look at pcs and nvidia lead times from 20 to 50 weeks. one year to get that if you look at micro controllers for auto and demand is picking up we had six months of shutdown in 2020 micro conductors are 25 weeks to 50 weeks almost a year. given the fab shutdown and the plants in texas. you are seeing the demand side up and down the supply chain and that extends to memory and other companies are taking orders with a three-month wait time as well. >> all right, vijay.
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i was going to say, you are back to work? you must be running the entire firm is that not real >> that's virtual. that's right. >> come on let's see that i was thinking this guy is way up look at that >> not really. thanks, a lot. >> you could be in your basement or something >> absolutely. >> i want to go there. i want that office >> me, too >> thanks, vijay see you later. i want that, becky i'm at home. don't we all he's right when i come back -- when we come back, we while talk about ransomware attacks that have surged in the last year. the justice department formed a special task force to combat the extortion schemes.
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eaman javers has the latest on the apple data we'll talk about that next. and let's look at shares of sky work solutions the chipmaker announced it would buy the auto business of silicon labs for 2$2.75 billion. we'll be right back. >> announcer: this cnbc program is sponsored by ibm. the world is going hybrid with ibm. with a hyb you don't. that's why insurers are going hybrid with ibm. with watson on a hybrid cloud they can use ai to help predict client needs and get the data they need to quickly design coverage for each one. businesses that want personalization and speed are going with a smarter hybrid cloud using the technology and expertise of ibm. nice bumping into you. ♪ ♪ (upbeat music)
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spaces are more efficient, because he cloned himself. while his clone watches the phones, dave can work on his code. and lead his team. dave trusts his clone like he trusts himself. so, in summary, we're going to sell the company. who's in favor?... perfect. but if cloning isn't an option for you, just get posh. virtual receptionists who can answer and transfer your calls, because you can't be in two places at once. a ransomware game is holding apple's data hostage and has its
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sights sets on more companies, too. eamon javers has more. >> reporter: this is concerning, becky. this group was taunting tim cook earlier this week. demanding $50 million for the return the data from apple supplier the supplier of many other technology companies called quanto which trades out of taiwan the question is who is the evil doing this we talked to the experts to figure it out. our revil is a well known eastern european country or former soviet state no one knows who they are. one thing we know is something has changed here with this hacker group look at data from the incident response the hacker negotiating firm which goes in and negotiates with the bad guys for you when you have been hacked they targeted different industries
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take a look at the industries they usually hack. their analysis of revil. they tangled with them in the past professional services up 3 is% that they targeted over the past couple years health care. 19%. manufacturing, 16% big tech is out of the pattern here for this hacking group. take a look at the cost breakdown. again, this $50 million ran som is out of sync the average ransom paid lower than that. the negotiators at the response come in and negotiate that down. $129,000 is what is average payment. maximum is $3.1 million for revil. here is what it looked like when you get hacked a hostage note digitally on the system it looks like this
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your network has been infected this is the letter from revil to the good guys. we have your data. you have to pay up there is a warning you don't have time. they have a countdown clock on that we talked with of the incident response group he said even though these guys are smaller in their demands, they can be very, very aggressive particularly with the leadership of the companies here's what he said. >> if they don't hear from the victim after they hit them, they will resort to what you see in public shame calling them out. we also have seen them call the actual organization. call the ceo they have the email address or mobile phone and harass them >> reporter: what marc is saying, they will get the ceo's cell number. they have stolen the data. they know his or her personal cell they call them and taunt them in person over the phone. you can imagine the reaction that gets from ceos and the
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action that spurs on down the line in the company and consultants working on this. they try to negotiate the price down in this case, we don't have any news there is a second data dump revil threatened to dump more data from apple. they have not done that yet. the experts are looking on the dark web that could be an indication that negotiations are ongoing or the hacking group is waiting to see what response it gets from apple. these are well known bad guys upping their game from what we have seefn in the past. >> eamon, i think this is happening to small companies and non tech savvy companies we wouldn't know about this if it weren't for the hackers saying it. it is not like apple is coming out and saying it is happening is this happening to big companies more frequently?
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>> reporter: this company has set its sights on many more large brands we could see this coming up in other industries as well these guys have figured out a way in not clear what that way is and upping their game in the size of the companies and the huge demand for ransom. $50 million is a lot of money. not likely they will get that much, but this company may decide it has to pay. >> eamon javers in washington. fascinating story that so many are focused on these days. when we come back, ithe ceo of public.com is joining us. the gamification of trading and we will talk about the new tax rates as we head to a break. a look at yesterday's s&p 500
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welcome back to "squawk box. fears of higher capital gains spooking the markets in the last 24 hours what does it mean for the retail investor we have a great guest to talk about this and so much more. jannick malling. ceo of public.com. public.com out with an announcement this week we'll get to that in a minute. i want to ask you about this big tax story and try to understand
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from your perspective how you and your customers feel about it, jannick. >> andrew, great to be here. it is debated a lot within our app. i have seen a number of conversations around it already which signals it draws attention to what capital gains are which is something that retail investors are not -- historically educated around on public, you can guess, most of the members are not coming in at the income threshold of $1 million or more. they are investing with fractional shares. it is something we'll be watching closely especially as we evolve our product features to help our members. >> i'm particularly interested in how you would advocate for or against the tax in large part because one of the things i know public has tried to do is encourage long-term investing.
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as you know, this tax is going to hit those who would be involved in long-term investing. short-term investing is taxed at ordinary income rates. the issue is should there be a different rate for longer-term investing? >> i think, again, most of the members we have don't meet that income threshold you have to see whether it will impact the vast majority of our community. we have been trying, to your point, to draw more attention that long-term cap gains exist and it is something that a lot of people should take advantage of in our opinion. that's historically how we designed the product. >> i'm fascinated by your business you have really taken a different tact and almost marketed yourself as the
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anthithesis of robinhood trying to get away from the day trading that seems to represent at the moment. in particular, one of the most unique things you did was you decided not to accept payment for order flow anymore the citadels of the world and virtues of the world that execute the trades and paying people and had been paying you and pay currently to robinhood to make the trades free. you stopped doing that my question is, do you think your investors and customers are getting the same kind of execution in terms of on price they would have before >> so, i think a couple of things, right? in terms of price execution, what we have seen in the first couple months when you look at it holistically, it is comparable when you route directly to stages as routing to the market makers. there are a number of factors
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that go into execution quality as a retail brokerage, what we pay attention to is whether people get the price they actually see on the screen and by routing through exchanges or execution has become more than twice as fast, which results in greater price accuracy so, that's something that we have considered to be promising to be quite honest. >> so, then is it a lie? i think that is the real question is it a lie? is it a myth that somehow you will get better execution by going through a virtua or cit citadel? we have the ceos on and they made the argument of price over and over again >> price improvement is a relative thing, right? it is more nuance versus saying price improvement. it is relative to the national best data offer.
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that is what the price improvement i believe is measured against with those remarks. there is a lot of liquidity on etfs and odd lots and fractional shareholder available at better prices than the ebo. there is a lot more debate we had around that. it also has not taken into account a lot of the odd lot volume and fractional share volume that means it is the majority of the retail investor. >> not to go too far into the weeds on the issue do you believe ken griffin's argument doesn't hold water? is that what you are saying? >> we are seeing our execution is comparable. we were routing to market makers in the past. now routing exactly to exchanges. the overall price execution we are seeing two months into this is comparable for sure. >> what are you seeing among the
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customer base in terms of what they're doing online obviously the gamestop phenomenon and now with the other meme stocks. how much of that is what your customers are doing? how are they thinking of cryptocurrency and the like? >> so, i think during the gamestop incident, we saw a lot of people coming in. actually most are new to the market they come in and they want to invest, but just as importantly, they want to learn that's what a lot of this really comes back to in the end we've built in a different way at public. more focused around education and community and without risky products with marginal options trading. what is interesting to see is due to the aspect of the community and discovery, most of the people that joined us at the time are really sticking around and are actively learning about the markets and continuing to
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build out portfolios with less risky stocks and index funds which we think is promising. >> in terms of announcements, you made one this week tell buus about it. tell us about town hall. we try to do a town hall here every morning on "squawk box." >> look, obviously a rise. retail investors don't enjoy the benefits that institutional investors. having direct access to leaders of companies with retail participation at the all-time high, we thought it was about time to change that. we launched town hall which is a way for retail shareholders to ask questions to the ceos and executives live within our app starting with companies like lemonaid and bumble. >> and we have to run. the most important question i can ask you is you had the
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commercials running, possibly the best ad campaign i have seen in a long time, since the old etrade ads for babies. you hired michael bolton how did you find michael bolton? >> the funny thing is. we are seeing the spike of people transferring accounts after the gamestop ride. unknown to the people in the industry, there is a way to transfer your portfolio. we wanted to bring that up and that came up around valentine's day. our minds went to michael bolton we linked up with him to help people break up with the brokerage. he was a blast to work with. he got really into it. he got on the app and i think he had a good time. >> michael bolton is now a trader maybe an investor. jannick, great to see you. hope to have you back. >> thanks, andrew. >> you bet
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we have news of our own to bring you. our podcast squawk pod is webby nominated. the webby awards honors podcasts we are a finalist for the coverage in the wake of the civil rights protests in major cities across the country last year you can help us win a people's choice award if you go to webbyawards.com. look for us under podcasts to vote for the episode we'll tweet out the direct link. voting is open until thursday, may 6th. of course, we would love your support. when we come back, more on the spacex launch of the rocket with reused parts. and more on investing and how you can add more we are talking police lisa rich don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. power,
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and liftoff. >> endeavor launches once again. four astronauts from three countries now making their way to the one and only international space station. >> that was just about an hour ago as spacex launched four astronauts into space with the reused rocket booster and crew capsule. let's take a closer look at the business of space. an industry or next guest estimates is worth $370 billion. right now we welcome lisa rich founder of commercial space exploration and founding partner with hemisphere investors. they're partnering with spacex
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on a commercial space station. lisa, thanks for being here today. this is pretty complicated stuff but, boy, is it great to see a launch like we saw today. >> hi, becky it's another great day for the sp space sector. >> it's amazing and watching private industry getting into the space business and partnering with the government why don't you tell us about this project to work on a commercial space station. how does that work is there government support for this how are all of the pieces put together >> thanks. yeah it's fascinating to see the evolution of the sector. we've had government supporting the growth of it with starting with the crew for crew dragon for spacex or starting with cargo, rather, then having crew, which we see today and then allowing for private
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missions to the station. as we know, the international space station is reaching its end of life and it needs to be replaced so axiom space will be building the world's first commercial space station to take over as the only destination in space by building modules for the new space station on top of the existing space station so it's a modular bit piece by piece that will be built, and once the new space station exists, they will be in orbit. the government has funded this with funding and axiom has its own recent funding round which is quite exciting raising 130 million and having private astronauts secured for their first mission to the space station where they will host
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astronauts on the existing international space station for ten-day missions >> wow lisa, the reason this has always been in the realm of the government before is they were the only ones who ever had enough money the government has still put a lot of money to bear on this i know for crew dragon nasa gave spacex $3.1 billion for the crew dragon in the first six missions how much are they giving for the space station? how much needs to be raised privately? >> right well, what's -- the financial model starts with the ability to train astronauts and have private astronauts in the space station. so selling the seats for $55 million a ticket is helpful in that regard and as we see the development in stages, it becomes more manageable. but in terms of the dollars, there's the commercial lunar haloed services program.
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it's a $2.6 billion program over the next ten years and we've seen companies benefitting for that for the landers so far that we're planning to have on the moon so that's helpful. then they're having a $400 million program they announced recently to have what we call free flyers, which would be other space platforms to have other destinations in space. so all of this support helps the space economy and what we're seeing today, the consistency of starting with the spacex launches and having the cargo delivered to the iss, what you're seeing is consistency and reliability and reusability. and all of these things are factors for building what i would say are the roads and bridges to space, commercial space. the government wants to buy
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services and so if you can buy services to resupplied missions to the space station, if you can buy the service of sending astronauts to the space station and then sending an orbital mission to the moon which they will do with starships, this is the opening to the access to space. >> yeah. yeah lisa, it's exciting stuff and it is inspiring stuff we'd love to have you back another time thank you for being with us this morning. >> thank you, becky. >> take care coming up when we return, baseball great pete rose is going to join us to talk baseball, sports gambling, yeah, and the return of las vegas. that and so much more. plus, what's next for the s. amp l.t. tax two house members are funding the s.a.l.t. tax in congress you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc
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the proposal a live report straight ahead. bitcoin falling below 49,000 wiping out $200 million in market value we'll take a look at what else 1 moving in the market straight ahead. pete rose getting back into baseball this time he is pinch-hitting for betters. he joins us live second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. a wild ride yesterday amid reports that president biden is going to be proposing some new tax laws that affect capital gains for those making over $1 million. looking at the dow it looks like it would open up 71 points
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higher nasdaq also up 26 points s&p 500 back up 10 points right now. >> a lot of people saying, don't sell and reports showing even as capital gains have increased, the stock market has risen as a result in the 1980s president ragan raised capital gains taxes from 20 to 28% and the market rose anyway. new reports president biden will seek an increase in capital gains causing some concern with investors. ylan mui is here good morning again >> reporter: becky, president biden is planning to announce new taxes on the wealthy next week to pay for sweeping investment in child care and
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education or what the white house is calling human capital during his campaign biden said he would top it back up to 39.6%. importantly for investors he said he wanted to tax capital gains as ordinary income at that higher rate for households making $1 million. with that alone, that would almost double the current rate on investment income add in the existing but separate tax of 3.78%, the total rate would be 43.4% >> raising the capital gains is another economic blunder by the biden administration this will punish americans who are investing in local businesses or in the u.s. economy. eye. >> but the chairman said he and president biden are on the same
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page he said the system is broken if we don't fix it, we're never going to raise the revenue needed to make critical investments in middle class families joe, this is for you he said the wealthy can afford to pay their fair share. back over to you guys. >> i love that top 10% pay 70% right now. already very progressive i don't know.
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there are different ways of trying to cap the wealthy and the money they have. stuck at 39.6. if doing something with capital gains, definitely hurt capital formation or, i don't know, there's a lot of different studies that have been done that you can look at. if it would be better to raise, you know, individual rates, you need to figure that out. i guess it's going to happen one way or another because we can't just deficit spend forever we have to obviously pay some things >> yeah. it's a little bit on the democratic side. >> we don't necessarily want to -- that's why the corporate taxes, i don't think that's the right way to do it i would rather do individuals. once you decide to do individuals, i don't know what
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the best way to do it is in terms of not having unintended consequences for business, capital formation and everything else i don't know we will be talking about this long after i'm gone and probably we're all gone here's what -- thanks, ylan. here's what's making headlines at this hour johnson & johnson covid-19 vaccine remains on pause in the u.s. after several cases of blood clots in people who received the doses cdc's advisory committee on immunization practices is set to meet today and discuss whether or not to lift the pause. intel shares are falling sales and earnings were essentially flat compared to the same period last year even as demand for micro chips skyrocketed around the world shortages. >> earnings and revenue both beat estimates but guidance for the second quarter fell short as the company spends to build some additional manufacturing capability which we talked
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about. takes time toy maker mattel saw a rise, 22%. aqueous which is kind of interesting. they're not motorized, are they, sorkin you need gravity hot wheels are just hot wheels, right? they've got that weight. you put them on. they have the potential energy, turn it into kinetic energy. >> there's cool tracks all kinds of cool tracks and we have a bunch of them it's not just the cars themselves. >> but it's kind of an old-fashioned -- you know, there's a lot -- >> barbie's old-fashioned too and it's a big seller. >> you've been on a computer game where you drive a formula one car. seems like it might be more fun. i don't want to put down hot
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wheels >> we had a huge hot wheels tournament last week about who could race them the fastest. it was a big tournament between everybody. >> oh -- >> speaking about when i was a kid. we've got to get to pete rose. i do not know pete but i get a warm feeling it's a sick feeling. i get a warm, nostalgic -- when he came up to the plate, you almost were sure he was going to get a single or something even better let's go let's go. >> this is it. when we come back, we've got major league baseball legend pete rose getting back into the game but this time for betters the all-time leader for hits, games played and at-bats will be joining us to talk about that and much more. before we head to break, american express just reporting. earnings per share coming in at $2.74. that beat the 1.61 the street was looking for by a long shot the stock is off by .8 of a
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andrew cuomo signed the 2021 state budget legislation that includes online sports betting joining us now, pete rose. major league baseball's all-time hits leader, cincinnati reds great. three-time world series champion former mvp winner of two gold gloves. new ambassador of upicktrade pete, it's almost impossible to get 200 hits in a year and to play for i don't know how many -- play for 21 years, you get 4100 hits. you may be more singles than anyone -- you may be the greatest baseball player of all time and a switch hitter good to have you on. >> why, thank you. >> we talked on break. you know i'm from cincinnati real quickly, you are charlie hustle i read a story there was an error, you got to first. this was one of the first times
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you were up to bat you scored on error. i'm going to run every single time there's a life lesson. >> i think i learned how to run every play at bull face park when i was a kid that's where i played my little league baseball. river road it's called bull face park that's where i played when i was a kid and that's the way my dad always taught me to play but a lot of us back in those days played hard because it's really the only thing we had in the summertime was to play baseball at bull face park. >> i can't believe -- obviously all your experience with gambling and everything that happened, hall of fame, all of that, it now is being viewed in a new light. i bet on the reds yesterday and i lost i had the over but i bet on the reds they lost 14-9 or something to the diamondbacks
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now you're going to be a person that helps people pick baseball games on upick can you believe that we've come full circle? the world is insane? >> it's a lot easier for me to sit -- i watch games -- two or three games a day anyway i live in las vegas and it's easier for me to use my expertise to help guys pick games as opposed to betting on games. you know, i'll tell you who i like and why i like them and i think i can be pretty successful at it. you need a lot of luck there's a lot of strange things that happen at sporting events, and i'm looking forward to trying to help guys who want to win some money and baseball was getting smart because football was making money on gambling basketball was making money in gambling hockey was starting to make money in gambling so baseball, you know, they're in bed with the gamblers now, which is not a bad thing. if people are going to bet, help them out where they can win. it's all legal
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that's the important thing about what i do. >> it's just -- it's very crazy that it is becoming ubiquitous i do 3, $4 i do parlays am i wrong to do that? >> you're never wrong. parlays are hard to hit, you know that. but the payoff is great if you do hit a parlay. i'm not going to try to get somebody to pick a five-team parlay or a four-team parlay i might try to get them to bet a two-team parlay. that's a lot easier to do than a four or five teamer but the payoff is really good if you can pick a four or five teamer >> let's say you're going to give someone advice on a major league baseball game, you look at the pitcher do you look at how they performed in the past? >> no, i like -- >> you see who's playing >> i look at how the pitcher's performing right now is the team playing good right
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now? if it's a road team, are they playing good on the road is it a more superior home team? what players are apt to make a difference to the team if your star player's out, you're not going to score as many runs. you're not going to score as many runs, the opposition has a chance of winning. you have to be real particular with who's playing in the game, who may be playing that's hurt, those kind of things it's all about injury. you know, picking baseball games i think is all about injury and all about pitchers okay are your best pitchers pitching. are your pitchers good on the road are they better at home? are these teams better on the road who's hot right now, who's not baseball seems to carry trends the trends usually, you know, stay intact for days at a time that's what you've got to watch. >> pick trade -- >> even the good teams. >> youpicktrade.com.
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have you got to join >> you pick a few. >> pick eight, nine, ten games concentrating on two or three games. it really was fast pro hockey neem there. so there's a lot of sports going on and i follow all the sports because they start getting sports out here at 9:00 in the morning. you know, like right now, it's 4:15 where i am. it's probably 7:15 where you are. this is the latest -- maybe the earliest interview i ever did in my life, right now >> you played with -- i was going over some of the people you played -- when i try to --
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when i mentioned the big red machine, i can't believe all of those people were on the same team joe, ken griffey before ken griffey jr. was ken griffey jr who was your favorite teammate who do you think added to you most johnny bench who do you think >> joe morgan was back-to-back mvp. my friend tony perez knocked in almost 1700 runs johnny was the greatest catcher ever so we had a -- we had a latino hall-of-famer, a black hall-of-famer and a whitehall of famer. i played with schmidt. i played with carleton >> don't bring that up don't bring that up. you came back though you were dead to me for a while but you -- the phillies. that was -- that killed -- i heard a lot but -- >> i played with frank robinson. >> i mentioned him and crossly tommy harper, billy mccool
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>> yeah, gander, gordie coleman, johnny temple. >> we're sounding like a couple of geezers now let me ask you something -- >> i am a geezer i don't know about you it's okay to be a geezer it beats the alternative. >> i'm a geezer in training. what about -- what about social justice and what -- and athletes, what they're doing these days, pete it's good, right >> i'm not in the athletes corners trying to be an expert on the things that are going on off the field. i think everybody has expertise. i think you should stay in your expertise. if you're talking about the things off the field, let the politicians handle it. let the government handle it let the police handle it you know, lebron seems to be real spoken out on everything that's going on. he's a great basketball player i would prefer if lebron would
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just play the game of baseball -- or basketball the way he plays it, entertain us as good as he can because he's like the next michael jordan. i don't -- i really don't care about athletes' views on things they haven't followed their whole life, you know what i mean stay out of -- >> i don't know if you've got a twitter account but you may have said enough already -- you may get hurt a little bit here on twitter for that times are changing, pete i -- you know, whatever we need to do to get to where we want to be as a society -- >> yeah. haters will hate me. >> -- i think we need to do that michael jordan said everybody buys sneakers. i don't want to say something where half the people in the world aren't going to buy sneakers i'd like to have you back. i know bench i met bench. i never got to know you and i appreciate having you on today it's been a big thrill for me. >> i appreciate the opportunity. everybody has -- everybody has
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an opinion and some people will state it, other people won't. >> that's right. >> i like to stay out of other people's business. >> well -- >> but i will talk about gambling and baseball because baseball loves gambling now because they're bringing in a lot of dollars. >> it's going to be good for baseball it's going to be good across the board i think. >> i agree. >> i get engaged in games. i hadn't watched nba games in a few years. every time i get a chance i watch one now. i'm enjoying it. $3 gets me on the edge of my seat thank you, pete rose awesome having you on today. >> thank you. >> i need help with baseball it's so hard it's so hard >> hang in there hang in there. >> see you later, my friend. thanks andrew >> that was a great conversation, joe. i just -- i have to say, i was fascinated hanging on every word. coming up when we return,
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the spac attack seems to have ended for now. we're going to look at what brought the space to a grinding halt right after the break time now for today's aflac trivia question. in the tv series "seinfeld" cramer held one job in one episode before he was fired. where did he work? the answer when cnbc's "squawk box" continues ain show! aflac! what a day of upsets. ha ha. jill is certainly upset with that unexpected bill from her back surgery. aflac! let's see that one more time. ♪ ♪ (bleep) (wincing) oooh, right in the wallet! ouch! aflac! aflac would have paid jill cash directly to help with expenses health insurance doesn't cover. hold on, i think she's trying to give us a side-eye... because she can't turn her head! (laugh) get help with expenses health insurance doesn't cover. get to know us at aflac.com
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the answer, h&h bagels welcome back to "squawk" this morning spacs have fallen off a cliff really after a burst of activity in the first quarter issuance has ground to a virtual halt leslie picker has more on what is behind the downturn leslie. >> reporter: andrew, that's right. the market for special purpose acquisition companies or spacs has become a little less
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special. the number of spac debuts have plummeted. there are a mere 6 spac listings in the second quarter. by this point in the first quarter there were already 55. according to a goldman sachs report spacs that have listed have largely under performed. you can see the spac index down about 17% in just two months the s&p 500 is up. they have sold $265 million worth of spac shares over the last 30 days alone what's behind the recent souring on spacs, andrew number one, retail investors are putting less money to work there with in flows from individual investors down according to b of a. spacs have sold off with other growth pockets in the market
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lastly, perhaps most notably, the sec has put out several statements recently involving financial projections that counting concerns related to spacs that have put a halt on this market. guys >> so how much of it is an issue that's just simply confronting new spacs coming to market and how much is this confronting an issue of those spacs that are already in market but are still looking for acquisition targets and looking to effectively create a despaccing moment and what does that suggest right now? >> reporter: so i think it's a little bit of both what the sec has basically done is they have changed the treatment of warrants,which ar part of the deal sweetener that spacs give to investors in order to basically compensate them for holding cash for so long before they find an acquisition they're changing the treatment causing warrants to be listed as liabilities as opposed to equity instruments. all of that creates a pause
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where the accountants have to sit back with the boards and figure out how to basically restate their financials so they're in compliance with the sec. that's the main reason we're seeing a pause amidst all of this, there was a backlog in february. sources saying there were still a very, very healthy pipeline through march even of spacs looking to debut now we have $130 billion worth of capital also seeking targets. so it's just a huge mess you've got the accountants trying to scramble and figure out how to make this in compliance with the sec. you have all of this capital chasing a small amount of deals. in the meantime you have peek who still want to do spacs, still want to take advantage of this but they want to do so in a way that's in compliance with the recent rules and regulations. >> the music's playing but the other issue i see coming up on this is not just the warrants but making it harder to make the acquisition because of some of the disclosure rules that it appears -- >> right. >> -- the sec is going to be
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pushing on it changes a little bit of the archetype and how long you might have to hold in all of it, which i would argue may be better for all investors longer term. >> right. >> nonetheless, putting a lot of pressure on this market right now. great to see you. >> yeah, those financial proje projections. >> you bet talk now a little bit. a quick note, exciting note actually our podcast, "squawk pod" now webby nominated. for 25 years webby honoring people in digital media. if you love "squawk pod" like we do, we hope you'll help us win it's called the people's voice award at the webby's you can vote until thursday, may 6th and it's an episode that was an important one right after george floyd died last year. we're going to be back right
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and welcome back to "squawk box. i am dominic chu with your market minute. we'll have a couple of earnings movers american express are close to 3% 10,000 shares of volume. they're hosting better than expected profits on revenues that just fell shy of analyst consensus estimates. amex did say it's seeing uptick across travel and entertainment spending which is helping it feel more confident about the continued recovery in domestic consumer travel. off 3% in the pre-market trade shares of honeywell down 1.5%. they beat consensus estimates for both profits and revenues. results at honeywell's aerospace division did fall below expectations safety and productivity, building materials did do better and we'll end on an analyst call
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involving kraft heinz. the food processing giant not getting any help from analysts over at piper sandler which did downgrade it from neutral to overweight they cited among other things, the recent rally in the stock already and pressures from higher input costs, andrew three red ones in the pre-market this morning back over to you. >> thanks, dom meantime, new this morning, jpmorgan apologizing for its role in the funding failure of the soccer super league. we clearly misjudged how this view would be viewed by the wider football community and how it might affect them in the future we will learn from this. we talked about the super league on monday and again on tuesday that league would have up ended much of the soccer leagues in -- throughout europe and it was ended effectively after a lot of local unrest from both fans but also political leaders and
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president macron of france, boris johnson in the u.k. and elsewhere. becky? >> shorter life span than you hoped. here today, gone tomorrow. when we come back, president biden preparing to roll out massive tax hikes potentially doubling capital gains on the wealthy and many business owners we'll talk to two lawmakers after this break about that. "squawk box" will be right back. i invested in invesco qqq a fund that invests in the innovators of the nasdaq 100 like you become an agent of innovation with invesco qqq
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reports of a possible hike in the capital gains tax to the highest in u.s. history striking fears in the markets robert frank has more on possible investment impact when you pick the tax beat, did you know something, robert you're like a growth stock you're like a minion do you not go anywhere you are the key man life insurance dude of cnbc right now covering taxes >> reporter: look, i know for our audience and most audiences, you know, taxes matter so i've been following those -- >> good place to be right now,
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robert >> reporter: look, this tax is the most important for investors, which is why we saw the market reaction yesterday. 43.4% total rate would be the highest capital gains rate in u.s. history and the highest in the world. biden's proposal to raise that top rate for capital gains from 23.8% to43.4% when you include that obamacare surtax would make the first time capital is taxed higher than ordinary income. so who is most affected? it only applies to those with income over $1 million that's about the top 1.5%, but that group gets about half of their income from capital gains and capital gains income is easily shifted so the tax foundation says that on its own this tax hike would actually reduce government revenue by $123 billion over ten years. because business owners and investors would sell in advance of any increase to avoid that
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higher rate, basically you would get a huge avoidance before that tax. now the combined state and federal rates would be a record in especially high tax states. california, wealthy tech founders or investors who sell stock would pay a combined rate of 56.7% new jersey would be 54.1% and in new york city, the top combined tax rate on capital gains would be 58.2% guys >> could you -- >> robert, thank you very much >> sorry, beck can i just ask >> go ahead. >> it makes a difference can you do it retroactive? if not, people are going to sell >> yeah, it is so rare on a state or federal level for any tax legislation to be retroactive because it's not just hard politically, it's hard logistically yes, we will get a rush to the
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exits for stocks, for assets, for small businesses, for anyone that has an asset that has appreciated in value by the way, if this is coupled with an elimination in the step up in basis that anyone who has a lifetime gain in any asset or stock will want to sell this beforehand that's why you'll get a big jump in revenues beforehand and a big drop afterward >> we keep saying it's only a million and more income. people that don't make a million and hold stocks, if all those other people with big positions are selling, their stocks are going to go down, too, becky, i think, right i don't know >> yeah. >> we'll have a job. >> retroactively can be done it was done in new jersey last year on wealthy people there they raised the income taxes at the end of the year, made it retroactive all the way to january 1st. we've seen it happen especially if you're saying that if we don't make it retroactive people are going to find ways to avoid that tax, you can
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absolutely see that happening. robert, thank you. joining us right now with more about the capital gains and their referentially formed bipartisan s.a.l.t. caucus is josh gottheimer and nicole daliatakis josh is a democrat, nicole is a republican they've come together on this issue that's pretty important to both of those states you both heard what robert laid out. in your state, josh, 54.1% that wealthy residents would be paying on their capital gains. nicole for you in new york city, 58.2%. how do you feel about that, josh >> not good. i mean, i think having seen the actual proposals yet, hearing some early signs of numbers, but i'll tell you these numbers are too high as we've talked about before, becky, given how high taxes are and how hard we've been hit post what they did to gut s.a.l.t. in
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states like mine and nicole's, it's just brutal we need to look at ways to make it more affordable we're losing people and jobs in my state s.a.l.t. is an issue that hit the middle class very hard in my district given the fact in bergen county the average property tax is $15,000. other states like alabama it's $500 so you understand why states like ours have been hit so hard and people and families hit so hard the idea of raising taxes more doesn't make any sense to me. >> josh, there's a thin majority in the house would you vote for this proposal, to take those higher taxes like we're hearing, if this is just the proposal, this is just a proposal, but would you vote for this? would you vote for this if s.a.l.t. was not reinstated? >> what i've said pretty clearly, if they change the tax code i'm losing my district. it raises taxes in my district and does not include any
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s.a.l.t., i'll be against it i have to see this proposal. i try to see a proposal before i comment fully but i'll tell you these kinds of numbers and the numbers reported out would affect my state and would have a huge effect to jobs and families in my state and is very, very concerning >> nicole, let me ask you the same obviously you're not going to vote for this. you're with the republicans. it only matters if you get a big chunk of the moderate democrats who vote against this, but your governor has been pretty clear, governor cuomo, that he expects you all to deliver on this he wants you to go to -- back to washington and fight to have s.a.l.t. reinstated but he's doing this at the same time that he's raising taxes on those very same new yorkers what do you say? >> that's the hypocrisy. we certainly want to see the s.a.l.t. restored. it is incredibly important for those who live in staten island and southern brooklyn.
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they have seen their taxes increased by mayor de blasio well over 50%. it is critically important but not a license for our mayor and our governor to continue raising taxes. and that is the concern here new york city is the only municipality in the state of new york that does not have a property tax cap as a state legislator i've been pushing and pushing for that as a member of congress what i can do is provide relief to that middle class by reinstating s.a.l.t. it is important. $26 billion over new york pays to the federal government more than it gets back. the average state gets back about $1.21. we get back 90 cents for every dollar we give the federal government it is critically important i am concerned about the tax increases that you mentioned it stymied investment at a time we need private sector investment to get america back on track so we don't want to discourage that that's something we have to be looking at and be thoughtful about as well.
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>> nicole, most pundits will tell you they don't think it's very likely that the s.a.l.t. cap tax will be changed, that it will be lifted what some people have put forward is the idea of a compromise why not double the baseline. would you be in favor of something like that? >> look, i'm going to keep an open mind going forward. quite frankly, i think the s.a.l.t. should have been restored in the pandemic relief package if they were going to give new york $50 billion both combined to the city and the state, would have made more sense to give aportion of that money directly back to the taxpayers. sadly that didn't come to fruition, although multiple members had talked about it. going forward, we just have to see how we can work together i think it's a great start that we find bipartisan support for s.a.l.t. you do see democrats holding out saying they're not going to support any type of package without s.a.l.t. in it with the margin of five votes, that is the slimmest majority
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democrats have had since world war ii it gives us the opportunity to work in a bipartisan fashion i hope this is the beginning of the conversation >> josh, let's go back to that point because we know that the white house has reached out to the senate and to the republicans there for their ideas on some sort of bipartisanship have you had talks with the white house about this where do things stand? to this point, i mean, we've said that president biden was going to be moderate, he was going to be bipartisan we haven't seen any signs of that just yet. have you >> sure. i was there -- i co-chair a group called the problem solvers caucus a group of us were at the white house just last week talking about transportation, infrastructure, looking for ideas where we can find a bipartisan path forward. i'm actually in maryland today, annapolis, with governors and senators and members of congress problem solvers working on a bipartisan deal. i think we need to find one and i think it's there
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we have to keep working toward it i know the white house is eager for us to do the same. nicole made a very important point. there is bipartisanship to be had here we're working together on s.a.l.t. there are 32 members of this new s.a.l.t. caucus. people from across the country not everyone the same ideologically but we agree double taxation is wrong we've gotten whacked the red states, moocher states have us pay their bills. you can't just turn around and hit us with more taxes we need actual tax cuts for our family and hard-working middle class families otherwise we keep losing people and nicole has the same issue people keep moving out new jersey is the number one out migration state for the last three years since they gutted s.a.l.t. this is a critical moment for us at the same time i believe we can bring democrats and republicans together around infrastructure, around transportation and get a deal
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done it's going to take us to continually focus on it and work together >> you said you're in maryland today. you're traveling, josh >> i am. it's not that far of a travel but it's on my way home. >> no, that's not your bedroom, right? that's a relief. >> no. i love the wallpaper in this hotel room yeah no, we're going back to the capital in a minute, back down and get to work. becky, i could find that if you want. >> that's good to hear no that was a relief when i heard you were traveling good to hear we all know too much about each other working from home. anyway, josh, nicole, i want to thank you both please give us updates on what's happening here we're very eager to hear about it it does matter to our viewers. >> thanks so much. coming up, the oscars are this weekend, but might not even know it because the buzz is so
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far from what it's been in the past we're going to take a look at how the pandemic has shifted hollywood and what it could mean for advertisers to investors as we head to break, a look at this week's sectors and losers the world's first fully autonomous vehicle is almost at the finish line what a ride! i invested in invesco qqq
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new overnight. disney sold out of ad inventory for sunday night's oscars. ad rates continue to rise even as viewership expected to continue its decline we have the media reporter, sarah fischer, axios media reporter as well ed, let me start with you. what are we expecting? the oscars almost every year the ratings have continued to decline whampt does it say about the movie business long term at this point >> you know, the movie business has become sort of like this, you know, extreme thing, right you've got sort of big blockbuster sort of comic movies on one end and then, you know, small movies at the other. there's no more middle we're not seeing much of the sort of tom hanks, what you call middle brow type movie that does well at the box office even the product itself is so extreme, and i think it's reflected in the awards season in terms of what's been winning
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over the last few years. >> right. >> the mainstream just kind of tunes out of that a bit. >> sarah, what is going on i don't know if you saw bill mahr a week or two ago where he said, look, every movie that's nominated for an oscar makes you depressed. and typically it would be considered small sler movies what is happening? >> think about something like a "die hard" got pushed later into 2021 because the movie studios wanted to make sure they could actually make some theater revenue. when you push the theaters out of awards season what you're left with is a bunch of dramas they're super compelling i encourage people to see them "nomad land" and "minari," they are super depressing people want to see their favorite actors, favorite themes and story lines, sequels they want to see that stuff being represented. that's going to cause them to
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tune in. it wouldn't shock me if viewership plummets. people don't have awareness of what's being nominated this year. >> this is not just a problem this year. this is not a pandemic issue, this is a problem that's been going on, frankly, for a decade, ed i can't -- i don't really understand what's going on in terms of the academy, in terms of how it thinks about these films. also, i'm assuming, it effectively devalues, you know, what a win really looks like in terms of how much -- i mean, used to be the oscars were used to market films. that's what part of what was happening here and that boost doesn't seem to happen anymore >> the boost doesn't happen anymore, you're right. they're still essential to the economics of hollywood in terms of attracting creators to studios. netflix spends a lot of money now marketing its movies to -- for oscar nominations, right they know that, you know,
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people -- they're not going to want to work with netflix no matter how much they're paying them if they're not going to back their projects for the awards they want the awards even if you aren't watching the awards ceremonies the oscar telecast, it's not just a pandemic thing. for years the audience is declining. it peaked at 60 million viewers. last year was 23, 24 million when "parasite" won which was a very interesting year in terms of it's a foreign film that won best picture and that rarely happens with the oscars. again, it speaks to what hollywood wants, economics of hollywood. in terms of a country, in terms of where it's at, it's been such -- the country's so fractured. >> right >> the other thing i found is when people -- all the political speech that happens in these awards, sort of acceptances, people tune out. in a dye 1ivided country, any
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political speech turns people away as well. >> sarah, how much though is this a function frankly of netflix? we were showing a screen of all of the films nominated from netflix this year. the economics for a netflix film is so different than the old economics insofar as they don't necessarily need to reach a massive audience they just need to reach enough of an audience, each film, to make sure that you stay subscribing. and what does that do to fracturing effectively the sort of common experience that we've all lived these past generations? >> yeah. it's a great point it goes back to what ed was saying at the beginning where it carves out the middle ground of movies now you have a situation where you have a bunch of sort of the low barrel netflix type of films that get put out on streaming services to get people not to churn and then you have the high impact stuff typically action and adventure films that you go to theaters to see with a ton of money behind to see because they're
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cinematic. the fallout of that in between, sorry if you hear sirens of the background of my window, means that you're not going to have as many indie films and dramas in theaters anymore. >> sarah, we hope everybody's either okay or if you need bail money for a little bit later, you know the phone number to call ed, thank you. appreciate it. >> sorkin, you saw "nomad land". >> great film. great film >> all i was saying was it's what a film should do. >> takes you on a journey. like a real and emotional journe comg up, this guy we'll be back.
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- [announcer] maya swears by grammarly business, because it keeps her work on brand and error free, fast, and easy. and we know clear and concise marketing leads to a killer performance. - steady beat to rising revenues, right, maya? (microphone whooshing) - [announcer] learn more at grammarly.com/business. good morning fears of capital gains taxes hitting wall street. major averages stumble hard on news president biden wants to hike rates on the rich the gop out with a counter offer on infrastructure. group of senate republicans unveiling their plan to prepare the nation's roads and bridges it spans much less than president biden wants to
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we're going to speak with the leader of the gop effort senator shelley moore capito liftoff. elon musk's spacex blasting four nasa astronauts into orbits. launching two historic firsts at once all the details ahead as the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin u.s. equity futures slightly positive up 25 points. major averages dropped sharply during trading yesterday on reports president biden wants to raise capital gains taxes on the rich to help pay for the second phase of his infrastructure plan rates could rise to morethan
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4 43%. that's not all in. d depending which state you're in. cryptocurrencies have sold off but rebounded a little since that news came out still seems to be -- i don't know, they wouldn't call them non-correlated bitcoin below 49,000 now back above 50,000. we'll talk about capital gains i can guarantee you. treasury yields, well behaved. below 1.6. 1.547. becky? >> thanks, joe let's get you caught up on some stories that investors are likely to be talking about today. spacex launching a crew of four astronauts into orbit and a reused dragon capsule on top of a reused falcon 9 rocket both of those are first for elon musk's space company which tries to recycle equipment to save huge amounts ofmoney liftoff took place at 5:49 a.m.
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eastern time from nasa's kennedy space center in florida. it's spacex's second launch. the dragon capsule is set to dock with the international space station early tomorrow morning. the crew will then spend about six months on board. also some earnings to tell you about this morning two dow components out with numbers. first up, american express beating analyst profit estimates for the latest quarter but falling short on the top line. a amex's bottom line the macro environment improved down 3.8% earnings out this morning from honeywell as well. the industrial giant beating earnings per share aerospace sales declined but honeywell saw strength in safety and productivity businesses. that stock down by 1.8%. andrew >> thanks, becky we mentioned futures are pointing a bit higher this morning but the dow and s&p 500 are both on pace to break a month-long winning streak. we've witnessed a dramatic
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slowdown of spacs. proposed capital gains tax hikes are hitting cryptocurrencies hard what should investors do with a situation like this? is there a black swan involved joining us is scientific advisor black swan author nassim taleb i want to start with taxes capital gains tax as proposed. what do you think the genuine impact would be on investments given that i know you spend a lot of time thinking about the nuance of these issues >> the first statement i would make biden wants to punish or extract money from the very rich, this would fail principally because you can always defer your profits and
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eventually make money. so the very rich have access to -- you punish the bottom rich >> so when you talk about punishing the nominally rich the super wealthy will just take loans and other things against their assets so they won't have to sell them >> sure. >> go ahead. >> i realized very early on a lot of the trades, if you can
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afford an exlemt lawyer and access to investment bank, you will do well in life they will be immune to the tax hikes for four years or maybe eight years. >> nassim, i'm going to make you policy maker for the day then. here's my question for you we can debate whether there's a need for more revenue. i'll make the argument there is a need for more revenue. the question is how do you raise more revenue in an efficient manner that doesn't upset, effectively, the most efficient way to allocate capital? >> so this is outside my expertise, as you know, it takes me 20, 25 years about a problem before i speak about it. i would say one thing, that a lot of these tax games or
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attempts to regulate governments have a neutral effect. raise the tax rate, revenues stay the same. so i can't really comment outside my area, but as far as market risks and stuff like that, i think it's rather neutral. we already have problems outside these tax changes. we have problems in markets. we're sitting on dynamite. we don't know it will take 30 years or take two months before we feel the effect we have generated a lot of deficits and we're continuing on that path. none of them are resolved by a tax hike on a capital gains tax hike or any other tax hike >> you've long been a believer that debt matters.
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i know there's another set of economists that is increasingly saying debt doesn't matter but to the degree that it dose and given how you're seeing the markets today and the economy playing out, we know the conventional wisdom is the music is going to play people believe the music is going to play for another couple of years do you >> we don't know the problem with all of these is they don't realize the uncertainty of the market behavior with the crash of '87, with the crash a few years later, i see that in 2008 they show up and the markets start realizing there's something wrong. so you really don't know how long, it will be an hour, maybe, as i said, 30 years.
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i remember 25 years ago people predicting a crash of the bond market, rise in interest rate. nothing happened doesn't mean it canned happen tomorrow you have to structure your port portfolio. >> i want to talk about how to do that in a second. one of the things people are doing in terms of structuring their portfolio, people have been buying up cryptocurrencies, maybe not in the last week or two but clearly over the past several months i have seen you take to twitter and call this everything from a failed currency to an open ponzi scheme >> it has characteristics of an open ponzi everybody knows it's a ponzi there's no connection between inflation and bitcoin, none, okay i mean, you can have hyper inflation and it can go to zero. there's no link between them
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it's a beautifully set up crypto graphic system it's well made but there's absolutely no reason it should be linked to anything economic if you want to hedge against inflation, buy a piece of land, grow, i don't know, olives on it, you know you can have olive oil for bitcoin, there's no connection of course, the best strategy for investors is to own things that produce yields in the future in other words, you can fall back on real dollars coming out of a company plus with their risk edge. there is no other alternative. and these gimmicks, of course, you have bitcoin today, you may have another one tomorrow. they come and go and there is, you know, no systematic link between them and the claims they made i thought bitcoin was going to be a currency in the sense that something to transact with it proved to be too volatile
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it turned into speculative tool. it's incompatible with the original aim to replace a dollar you don't replace a currency with something that's so volatile that you can't really commit to a transaction. >> but what about the view that it's an asset, that it's a commodity, it's a digital gold i ask, by the way, because i've been skeptical virtually the entire time as well and yet, you know, i look at the screen, you can look at the screen and we can both say at least at the moment we've been quite wrong. >> there's a difference between a currency, okay, and a currency commands price stability that's what the federal reserve's mission is something that rises in price. i was fooled by it initially i thought it was going to be a currency something that moved 5% a day,
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20% in a month up or down cannot be a currency. it's something else. like tulips. they can rise. >> let's say it's something else let's say it's not a currency. maybe it isn't a currency, but the question is does it have value? i think you bought into it originally and actually sold out, right >> yeah. of course. when i realize -- i mean, i bought into it thinking, you know, not -- not willing to have capital conversations so much as wanting to have an alternative to the fiat currency issued by central governments. then i realized it was not a currency without government, it was pure speculation nothing. you can create another game and call it currency >> you don't think there's ever -- is there ever a point where it could reach mass adoption and could get to some level of stability that you think it could be used as a currency as you see adoption of venmos, paypals, other wallets and maybe
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a much more sort of global usage that that dynamic would be made? that's the argument on the currency side of it. >> okay. so the fact that someone accepts bitcoin as a form of payment is very different from tweaking it as a currency. you have to commit to a fixed price in bitcoin in other words, i have a contract with you. i'm renting your apartment i'm paying you in bitcoin, okay? you take the bitcoin risk, okay? i haven't seen transactions. there may be some i'm not aware of where the price is fixed in bitcoin, not in dollars, translated into bitcoin. so if you want to wire money, there are more effective ways to do so. if you want to use a currency, use apple stock. that's a currency, okay? you can convert it and pay with apple stock. probably would be much less volatile than bitcoin. >> joe -- go ahead >> big problem
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you're facing problem. we have a lot of uncertainty, okay and you want to build a portfolio that is immune to such classes of risk, okay? how do you do it you must own assets because there is a risk of inflation and you must be hedged against large deviation of these assets versus sustained risk or classes of risk mitigation, you know, but you can do it right. that's the only way i can see it yes? >> real quick because we have to go for the average investor out there who may not have access to all of the derivatives and other instruments you do in terms of hedging that risk, what's the one thick you would do >> stay out of bitcoin buy stocks that are stable and buy things you understand. buy things you can eat eventually >> call it a day that's the hedge
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that's the hedge nassim, it's good to see you we'll have you back. we'll see where bitcoin is it's been fascinating. >> the price does not matter it can go to a million and it won't change the argument. you see? >> okay. good to see you. joe? joe is saying you can buy bmw or a volkswagen. >> ford fiesta all i heard there was the currency argument. i don't know what happens when you get closer and closer to 21 million. if it gets more stable i didn't hear any refutation of the gold -- of the store of value argument but i'm -- i'm staying out of it. coming up, cdc advisers meet today on johnson & johnson's coronavirus vaccine. we may see shots resume soon after. dr. scott gottleib will join us in a few minutes to talk about j&j's paused vaccine rollout those very rare blood clot
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instances that we've seen and what the experts can say today as we head to break, here's a few of this morning's top business headlines intel shares are lower in pre-market trading despite first quarter better than expected results on both the revenue and bottom line. investors may be focusing on the lighter than expected full year sales forecast from the company even though it raised that forecast from the guidance it had previously given on the flip side, mattel is surging this morning after reporting quarterly numbers. the toy maker saw record 47% year-over-year sales growth. revenue well above expectations. it was barbies, hot wheels cars. mattel's adjusted loss was only 10 cents a share even though people were expecting 35 cents stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc
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it's moving day. and while her friends are doing the heavy lifting, jess is busy moving her xfinity internet and tv services. it only takes about a minute. wait, a minute? but what have you been doing for the last two hours? ...delegating? oh, good one. move your xfinity services without breaking a sweat. xfinity makes moving easy. go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today. time for sectornomics. dom chu. >> becky, there's been a lot of attention focused on real estate after under performing the last 12 months the real estate sector, which is one of the
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smallest in the s&p 500, is now the third best performing sector so far in 2021 take a look at that. take a look. one of the big reasons why investors have looked to real estate in the past was because of dividend payments many do pay out sized dividends versus other parts of the market where are the biggest dividend yields at a time when people look towards capital appreciation in places like cryptocurrency it may not be as sexy. simon property group, big mall owner. realty income, 4%. regency, 3.8% as well. these are the biggest dividend yields within theoverall s&p 500 sector if you are looking for which stocks analysts see as having the most capital appreciation up side, check out these names.
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they are interesting becky, these three stock companies have one thing in common, they all have real estate interests geared towards technology and communication services sba communications and american tower own cell phone towers and wireless infrastructure and equinix is a big co-location provider becky, i'll send things back over to you. >> thanks, dom we'll check back in with you later. shelley moore capito joins us to talk about the gop's counter offer to the democrats and president biden but next, what's at stake when top advisers to the cdc meet today to deliberate on the still paused j&j vaccine don't go anywhere. "squawk box" will be right back.
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>> reporter: hey, joe. this meeting gets underway at 11 a.m. goes until 5:00. we expect to hear whether this group of advisers to the cdc has collected more reports of these very rare blood clots that present with low platelet counts we will review all of that evidence the risk benefit evidence. we just saw european regulators go through this process with what they've seen from the united states, the eight cases that have been identified so far out of more than 8 million people who have received the j&j vaccine. what european regulators concluded is there should be a warning added to this vaccine so doctors and people who received the vaccine know about it and know how to treat it correctly they didn't see that there were enough -- there was enough known about the risks of the vaccine to restrict it by age, for example. that is the expectations from the committee of advisers.
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ipsos axios survey shows that has been very effective. 91% of americans in this poll this week are aware of the pause of the j&j vaccine 88% agree it was the right thing to do. in terms of affecting vaccine hesitancy, that's something people have been very worried about. this same poll shows the same number of people who say they don't want to get a vaccine are saying it now as before the pause. about 20%. that's really remained steady since january, guys. we'll be listening to hear if there are a lot more cases of this identified but it doesn't sound like it's going in that direction. becky? >> hey, meg, just very quickly on that poll askingamericans about a vaccine, it wasn't specific, right? it didn't ask if you'd get a pfizer or a j&j or a moderna vaccine, just that you'd get a vaccine. is there any way to tell whether people are concerned about a j&j vaccine. we talked about the benefits and the reason they might want to get the j&j is there's only one shot you don't have to go back for a
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second shot. >> reporter: yeah, anecdotally we have heard from some folks, of course something like this would spook some people. there are some people who do want that one-shot vaccine that hear one in a million risk and can take that into consideration. there's a lot of brand recognition for johnson & johnson. we've been talking with local leaders who hope to see this on pause because they see this as a useful tool for getting to certain populations that would benefit from just one shot >> meg, thank you. good to see you. joining us right now to talk more about what to expect from today's meeting on the j&j vaccine as well as the record number of cases out of india and a new covid variant we just heard about in texas is dr. scott gottleib he's the former fda commissioner and cnbc contributor he serves on the boards of pfizer and illumina. scott, we've been talking to you all week you anticipate the cdc will lift that pause with this meeting
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today, correct >> that's right. well, look, the cdc is just going to issue a recommendation. ultimately the pause is a regulatory action that will be taken by the fda the fda issued the recommendation that people pause. ultimately they'll issue a new recommendation, maybe update the label on the vaccine dc is going to opine on that decision, offer some insights. i would expect cdc to opine favorably and say the fda should lift the pause on the vaccine. it doesn't appear there are a lot more cases that have been surfaced the european union went ahead saying there were additional warnings you have to believe the eu had access with the data that's currently available. we weren't sure how many cases there were in the intervening two weeks when they've done a pretty exhaustive analysis looking for additional cases, it appears there surfaced this appears to be a rare side effect i would expect cdc to issue a statement that we resume today. >> one thing we haven't talked about this morning is a new
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report about a new variant that surfaced at texas a&m university in a lab there this variant is supposedly more dangerous especially under people, too, and it lasts longer how concerned are you about this >> well, look, there's a lot we don't know about it. i don't think we can draw conclusions based on the analysis that came out of texasnd i did read the report. there's a lot of variants that we're not detecting. it takes a lot of introductions for a variant to start circulating at a level that will create a wrinkle to the epidemic we do know there are a number of mutations that are surfacing the l 452 r mutation we found in the los angeles variant that seem to make the virus more contagious and in some cases seem to make the vaccines perhaps a little less effective and seem to increase the propensity for people to get reinfected that's all speculative we're not sure
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we should have better evidence but we don't at this point the bottom line is there's a lot of these mutations circulating and it takts thes the time and e is going to emerge, we'll see it coming we'll be able to take steps to try to mitigate it >> i guess the thing that i've kind of keyed into on that was the idea that it's more dangerous to younger people. we haven't been in quite as much of a rush for the vaccine for younger people because it wasn't as dangerous in general to younger people, but pfizer i think put those results in to -- for ages 12 to 15-year-old, the phase 3 study they've done to that to the fda. i want to say it was a month ago. how long before you start getting approval for younger people for these vaccines? >> look, the fda said they're going to try to work through the application officially on the 12 to 15. that was the application put in with the fda requesting emergency use authorization.
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it's hard to say any one strain is more dangerous. we know that these strains that are more contagious or perhaps more virulent don't spare children b 117, for example, appears to be more contagious in adults it appears to be more contagious in children. we should expect that they have different characteristics are probably going to affect children in the same proportion. children overall appear to be at less risk from coronavirus they're hopefully going to be at less risk from variants. that doesn't mean they'll be at more risk. so we need to keep an eye on these variants as they emerge. it does appear b 117 is becoming the predominant strain that will hopefully crowd out 1351, the south african variant, the brazilian variant. we're not seeing those take off. the incidence of p1 hasn't taken off like other markets that's probably because of the vaccination rates and because b
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11 1 117 to some extent is crowding it out >> kids that are younger than age 16, it does seem like they've had the results longer than they did for the initial studies to get eua approval for adults. >> they've had it about the same time they've had it about a month now, maybe a little less i don't want to comment about the potential timing of an authorization given that i'm on the board. i expect them to authorize the vaccine in younger populations in terms of urgency, the goal is they're going to have it done in time for the school year perhaps done in time for the camp season but i think when you talk to public health authorities at the federal level and state level, they want the vaccine available to children. >> dr. gottleib, thank you great to see you have a good weekend. >> thanks a lot. >> andrew? coming up, thanks, becky, when we return, inside the gop's
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counter offer to president biden's multi-trillion dollar infrastructure we have the woman leading the charge from the right. shelley moore capito we'll ask her what she thinks of those reports that the president wants to hike capital gains taxes in a big way on the wealthy. we'll have that conversation coming up right after this you're watching "squawk" on cnbc [music: “you're the best” by joe esposito] [music: “you're the best” by joe esposito] [triumphantly yells] [ding] don't get mad. get e*trade and take charge of your finances today.
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well comeback, everybody berkshire hathaway will have their annual shareholder meeting saturday, may 1st. it will be a virtual presentation warren buffet and monger will be together berkshire shareholders, you can't be at the meeting in person it's not too late to get questions in send them to berkshirequestions @cnbc.com i'll read through them and we'll ask as many as we can get through. berkshirequestions @cnbc.com this is interesting this time around because with the one exception of when warren buffet came on with us with david solomon, he really hasn't spoken since last year's annual meeting. there's been a lot that's
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happened since then. >> oh, man bogless the mind >> understatement of the year? >> yeah. bogless the mind talk about gamestop, reddit. just start there and go -- and there's about a couple,000 other things that should be interesting just the overall -- mmt. we are fully engaged inflation. all of the esg stuff i think what's happened last year is going to be a huge issue, be asking about that. crypto, right? >> well, we know what they -- they make nassim look bullish on bitcoin. >> crypto, right >> rat shih tzu. >> rat poison and then rat
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poison squared we'll get a chance to ask them these are questions coming from shareholders we don't get to make up the list going through the question the one i've seen most frequently come up so far has been inflation. >> yeah. market -- you know, he -- we know what he says when you ask him about the market i wouldn't tell you about it today or tomorrow but i can tell you that -- >> right >> we know the way -- but it is -- i mean, it's up 90% since we talked to him on the nasdaq, anyway, isn't it probably we couldn't ask him anything during david solomon coming up, sh -- coming up, can president biden find common ground with the gop on infrastructure we'll see whether pigs can fly i don't think they can we're going to ask someone who just helped come up with a republican counter offer shelley moore capito she'll lay out her counter offer for roads, bridges, broadband and more when "squawk box" returns.
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a group of senate republicans unveiling a counter proposal to president biden's $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan this is a five year, $568 billion package. puts money towards roads, bridges, broadband, public transit, but it does leave out things that senators don't -- these senators don't consider infrastructure, like an
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expansion of medicaid. it's funded with user fees and redirected federal dollars instead of depending on tax increases. joining us to talk about this and also reports that president biden wants to hike capital gains taxes on the wealthy, wes virginia senator shelley moore capito welcome. >> thanks. >> first thing i'd ask, you're at 5, 5 and change, 568. the administration, president biden at 2.3 trillion. even if it was the biden that we saw at the inauguration, let's say it was that biden, remember that biden, very unifying, lots of bipartisan -- if it was that biden, what would you really have to do to compromise would you have to go to 1.5 realistically? with the biden we actually have you'd have to go to 2.3. >> well, here's what i think the
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distinction is here. first of all, the president himself has had republicans down to the white house and also asked, well, what is your plan and so what we did was we defined infrastructure as you mentioned. we took from the president's plan and other ideas physical core infrastructure. so i think if you take an apples to apples comparison of the president's plan and our plan, we're really not -- he's not up into the $2 trillion when you are looking at physical core infrastructure he's shy of 1 trillion so i think that's where our starting point is, where we sit down, define the infrastructure and then see if we missed something, where we need to, you know, compromise and how we can move forward i think that there's a real hunger in the country and also in the congress for us to be able to work something out that we've been able to work out over decades and that is infrastructure and surface transportation >> the other -- >> so i think -- yeah, sorry. >> senator, i was wondering do you ever feel like you're going
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through the motions. that sounds great. really >> it does. >> how much of your -- of the job right now is just going through the motions? they're going to do reconciliation they're going to do what they want to do how much of it is, i don't know, just going through the motions >> here's how i look at that i said, yes, they can go ahead and ram the 2.2 trillion or something close to that, do it by reconciliation and shut the door on republicans. why haven't they started to do that there have been signals from other senators and from the president himself that he really does want to negotiate so i'm going to go with that but i did mention earlier that i'm not interested in being window dressing and just make it look like we're trying to work but if we as republicans don't come out for the principles and the concepts that we believe in, then we don't have a leg to stand on here when the door gets shut on us so, you know, lessons learned maybe. >> you've got the other issue is
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that the bird bath is going to probably mean that there's -- you know, there's certain things that aren't going to be able to be in reconciliation maybe that could be something, but i've asked republicans what are they willing to give in return for something and they don't want to give anything. are you okay with 25%? we'll get to the latest news on taxes in a second, but would you go to 25% on corporations instead of where it is at 21 compromise from 28? >> no. i think the plan we put forward doesn't require any taxes raised we do rely on user fees and we do repurpose covid dollars, billions, hundredsof billions of dollars that are not even going to be spent until the off years. give some states and locals flexibility with their covid dollars, too no, i'm not interested in raising the corporate tax because i think as we saw prepandemic, all of the results raising wages in my state of
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west virginia, more people working, more variety and diversity in the work force, all of those good things i'm not interested in going back to that. i voted for that tax cut bill and i stand by the results, but i think we can get there on infrastructure without having to go if that's what they want to do, they can do that through reconciliation and try to find their 50 votes. >> right yeah we know you're from west virginia i'm sorry about that it's like that other guy it's like, you know, you get so much -- it's so important. you've got to -- >> right as it should be. as it should be. >> senator, what about the -- i don't know whether it's going to happen, but the rumors that we heard, capital gains going to 43% on people that make more than $1 million a year that's a non-starter for you and most republicans as well, i guess. >> honestly, when i tuned in to the show really early this morning and i heard this, i hadn't heard it last night, i thought it was ground hog day.
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is there not a tax that's not going to be raised in enormous amounts to fulfill the green new deal and other promises that were made during the campaign? i mean, i don't see why the thirst for raising taxes is so incredibly large when we see what impacts that's going to have on our economy, on our job creation and all of that why don't we move forward and try to live within our means and provide sustainability in terms of our work force and predictability in terms of the tax structure. i can't support that i seriously think -- i seriously when i woke up this morning, i go, what another huge raise in taxes? we haven't even, you know, finished with the first one he put forward. >> senator. >> yes. >> question for you, relates to all of this, which is to say we talk about it and we've been talking about it for the past couple of weeks actually
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there is an enormous amount of money that is likely owed to the government that effectively is being evaded there are some studies that suggest on the order of $600 billion annually there is money that is owed to the government, effectively taxpayers are genuinely evading. and they're evading it because we aren't necessarily funding the irs properly and they don't have the systems to properly collect it my question to you is at least in my view we could actually have a very different conversation about whether we need to raise taxes or not if we just collected the money that we need to in the beginning would you be prepared to do that >> well, a couple things i think knock burns the average taxpayer more to think somebody's not paying their fair share. we know that's happening i was actually the appropriator for the irs on the -- the chair of that subcommittee in appropriations, and their computer systems, you are absolutely right are so
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outdated, it's astonishing, really, when you start to learn about it so i think we need to modernize the systems. i think we need to come up with to make sure people are paying their fair share it's something i'm willing to look at, yes i don't want to get into a situation where we're -- you know, we're over funding the irs to the point where certain segments of our population are being pursued to pay their taxes and certain other parts of our population are not, whether for political, religious, whatever reasons. so i think we have to be careful there, but i do think you're pointing to a disparate we have within the government and that is to get everybody to pay their fair share and to collect the uncollected taxes. it is astonishing the amounts that you see >> if you had to do something, senator, we've got to go, but if you had to do something would you just raise the marginal rate on wealthy people, make it more progressive? do you think that would harm
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things less than a capital gains move or corporate tax? >> you know, i mean, i think at this point my position is i'd rather not raise taxes on anybody. i'd rather try to keep growing the economy, move out of the pandemic i mean, our communities are flush with money, flush with money and we need to make sure that they're spending make sure they're spending this money in an efficient and useful way. that's my main concern right now. and let's see if we can pull this infrastructure package together i know you said it, what, pie in the sky, i'm still going with it i'm an optimist. >> going through the motions. >> i just want to congratulate you. it's pretty incredibleconcept to put infrastructure back into an infrastructure bill, so i do want to compliment you on that, senator. >> thank you >> senator, thank you. >> andrew? >> thanks, joe great conversation. we want to get over to cnbc headquarters and jim cramer's take i want to get your take on taxes
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and what you think it will do to the market one way or the other. how do you think about it? >> i don't think it will do much i think it's a very small group of people who get it, if all they decide to do and could be retroactive, is sell, it could be an opportunity. i agree with the senator, i don't like the mercurial and capricious way that this is presented, what, suddenly wake up, there's like at 2:00, there's a story on bloomberg that says, i mean, is it amateur hour that's not how you do it and i find these kind of jarring things the president has to learn that it matters he still seem, he's not passive with wall street >> and i've gone back and forth on it, and i've felt in many ways the same way you did and i recognize that he's been telegraphing this kind of move during his campaign, pretty directly, i think the real question i'd ask at this point is you know, just as a betting
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man, whether you think that washington and our political leaders are actually going to pass a law like this. >> no, i think republicans will take it. there will be enough democrats to stop it i think that's good. when i was paired with larry kudlow here at the network, larry was vociferous and good friends with george w. bush that the capital gains had to be cut, and i said listen, it's got to be the dividend that has to be cut because capital gains frankly, i didn't like that there should be two different tax system, ordinary income, and then, which is, of course, where people are working, and then capital gains which for stocks, but i did want to encourage people to own stocks which is why i thought, and not rent, which is why i thought the capital gains were not as good as cutting the dividend tax. andrew, i think if it's limited to just the richest, everybody wants to be rich, so it's going to be hated. the reddit crowd will hate it, right? they all want to be rich the robinhood crowd will hate it i think that really matters.
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>> the truth is, did you see, he made the point of the day, i think, which is the truth, the wealthiest in the country actually won't pay them anyway because there will be the takeout loans, take out loans against money they currently have or use other diferivatives effectively so they won't be paying the tax so the people who ultimately pay the tax, i don't want to say in the middle, but the higher end of the middle but not clearly at the high, high end. >> they don't have access to all of the different loopholes >> right. >> i think you raised the point which a lot of us feel, would you please overfund the irs. i'm being audited from 2015. and i don't know, i mean i hope it goes okay i think that they have every right to audit everybody but one thing that iscertain, they don't have enough people to audit nearly as many as they should. >> right. >> nowhere near. and that's the money that we need, because these people get out of paying. >> exactly
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exactly. >> there is real evasion and if we just collected that money on to itself, it might change even the dialogue and the discussion about everything else >> and that's why i support you for president, in 2026 >> jim cramer, we will see you -- >> no? >> i can't, what's the words, deny it now but i could change later. i don't think i want to -- >> general sherman, if nominated you will run >> we will see you in a couple of minutes only if joe will vote for me coming up, top stocks, on the move, as we make our way toward the friday morning opening bl.el stay tuned you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc which saved investors over $1.5 billion last year. that's decision tech. only from fidelity.
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it's just a little more than a half hour to go until the opening bell on wall street. dom chu is here with the top pre-market movers. >> becky, what we've got, a look back at what happened for this week, because we've seen some interesting things develop here, becky, we talked about the real estate sector earlier on this hour, about how it's been an outperformer, it maintains that leadership position over the last one week period as well real estate and health care, the two best performing sectors over the last week, meanwhile energy again, continues that decline that we've seen, although it's
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still yes, very much outperforming the market one other place where people are kind of focusing in on tax conversations whether or not there could be capital gains tax hikes down the line, a possibility or not are some of the biggest gainers this year, l brands, kind of mixed so far but these three stocks are the biggest performing positive performers in the s&p 500 so far in 2021, a lot of traders are looking at where the gains are with regard to that tax conversation one other place to watch, 47,500-ish thereabouts. that was the intra-period low, 47,500, again, that was the low for bitcoin price, remember, the highs that we hit here were closer to around 63,300 on this metric of pricing, so again, bitcoin prices, a key focus, watch them on stock, becky, and those that have bitcoin on the balance sheet, tesla, square, micro strategy, blockchain and
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others, keep an eye on those stocks and other, i'll send things back to you. >> have a great weekend, dom. >> you too, becky. >> by the way, thanks, one more stock on the move, parent snap chat, break-even quarter compared to forecast with a loss of 6 cents a share revenue from estimates up 66% from a year earlier and the company reported daily active users of 280 million they also saw average revenue per user of $2.74. both those metrics were better than expected. and that stock is up by about 5.8% this morning. joe? >> thanks. dow is now down. final market check, 39 points or so down. we'll see what happens throughout the rest of the day i don't know how they can gauge the effects of this, you know, it affects just the wealthy as we heard jim say, but i would think, if it was retroactive, you would have to see some impact on the averages, i would just, you know, as we just saw
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dom look at some of the biggest gainers. >> retroactive, it's too late. >> that's what i mean. if it's not retroactive, yeah. >> you know what, either way, you're going to see a massive sell-off at the end of this year almost no matter what. i would think so. >> either way. >> all right >> "squawk on the street" is next have a great weekend ♪ i feel so close to you right now. ♪ so close to you ♪ good friday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer and david faber futures are mixed. stock mace try to reclaim a little bit after the reports of capital gains taxes startled markets yesterday. plenty of earnings watch watching j&j's decision. and the road map begins with tax fear, and stocks are set for a muted open after concerns about a capital gains tax hike did fuel the sell-off. crypto crumble $200li
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