trillions of dollars of spending on infrastructure, families and education. also a proposal on tax hike on corporations and the wealthy to pay for it we will show you what he said about wall street as well. apple and facebook shares jumping. we will bring you results from five more big companies in the next hour. plus, news breaking late last night cdc could allow cruise sailing to begin again in the u.s. by mid-july details straight ahead it's thursday, april 29th, 2021. "squawk box" begins right now. ♪ ♪ good morning welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc

i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin. we have watched the equity futures this morning which are indicating higher after the strong earnings news dow indicated up 42 points after the decline for the dow yesterday. that was because of amgen. it showed disappointing earnings that stock down 7.2% that is why the dow was the biggest decliner down days for the s&p and nasdaq they were down fractionally compared to the dow. you see nasdaq this morning indicated up 131 points because of the strength with the earnings why the tech names in particular s&p indicated up it is up 28 points we should look at treasury yields especially after hearing from the fed yesterday fed is dovish. the yield is sitting at 1.657% you got through the speech from the president and the fed and

jay powell's comments and now it is all about earnings. today is the busiest day of earnings for the markets that is why you will see the squawk stack lined up with the big names you can expect in the first hour of the show this morning. caterpillar is the first which is out at 6:30 eastern followed by merck 15 minutes later. mcdonald's, the third dow component out at 7:00. bristol myers due at 7:00 as well as comcast. you get a bunch of names airbus, altria and dominos and royal caribbean and lab corp lots of names. after the bell, we will give you big names. buckle up if you are ready for this or not. it's coming. this is the flood. it starts in less than half hour

time >> it better be good better have good numbers the ones we have seen so far are pretty good. how do you measure up? >> blockbusters. >> how do you measure up to apple? we will talk about that in a moment i want to talk about president biden's speech speaking to a joint session of congress with limited attendance due to the pandemic. he offered a $2 trillion plan. >> i'm not looking to punish anybody. i will not add a tax burden, additional tax burden, to the middle class in the country. they are already paying enough i believe what i propose is fair fiscally responsible it raises revenue to pay for the plans i propose and will create millions of jobs to grow the economy and enhance our

financial standing in the country. >> we're going to talk more about that speech at 6:30 with frank lunz joe, i know you are a drudge reader bi bidenhood, as in robin hood. >> i'm more of a wall street journal reader i like it. it is cradle-to-grave entitlement states even for the middle class. it is an interesting piece read that. the juxtaposition with the venture funds. i was reading about twhat they got out. and sequia capital i was looking at the big tech companies we have seen started

in europe in recent years. all of the successful vc investments in europe. i wonder if people think that through. you know what? cicero i'll not go into what cradle-to-grave entitlement states mean for entrepreneur ship we know the free market is dead. he has somehow made $500 million. a guy like him made $500 million using the free market system it doesn't work. that raised a few ew eyebrows? >> joe, i don't know where isla i land on this plan. i worry about the overheating of the economy with all of the spending is there a way to enhance the system and make it better for some of the lower and middle end. that that ultimately hurt the

entrepreneurship we are talking about? that's what i would like to see. >> the economist laid out a good argument for that. how they would change it the economist had a thoughtful article yesterday that laid out ways you could do that they made the point you can raise taxes and there are ways to do that corporate tax may be the most pa painful to the economy and hurt the most you are trying to help. the taxes in 2010 in review of the oecd and said that was the most painful to economic growth over time. there are studies that say if this plan is followed, you are looking at american economic growth by 1% by 2050 it will eat away at that there were proposals to go after tax avoidance. if you want to do carried t interest which makes sense and pass-through firms they made up about 50% of

american corporate revenue just by the year 2011 versus one-one one-fifth of that in 1980. the pass-through firms to say a way this is dividends and not income and not taxed fully on that has eroded what we are doing. >> you are making one of the most interesting points. the truth is where the real tax evasion is happening in america is not at the big boards of publicly traded companies. i don't call it tax avoidance, but tax evasion. >> maybe the irs would look into the rules differently if we beef them up. maybe they would say the paths to the corporations shouldn't exist. >> there would be questions of the pass-through corporations. the larger issue is you collect the $600 billion annually. there is so much leakage as a result of the process.

another pop topic for another d. >> tech companies and investors have done well during the pandemic there is a stigma now that the rich have gotten richer. everybody else is left behind. you just look at what amazon has done a way it gets bashed all of the companies to the left bash them and they should be celebrated for the jobs created and shareholder wealth we have it here. not some place we need to embrace and something we need to try to help. not something we need to push back against president biden keeps saying i'm not trying to hurt anybody he bashes wall street. well street financed a lot of it it is not perfect. times in recent years where it had to be socialized

that doesn't mean you throw out the system when it runs into problems you don't get more like europe you get less you know what? i've been avoiding a cruise update i know what you want you think i'm going talk about it "mission impossible 7" is filming. he apparently is still doing his own stunts he saved a cameraman on the moving train the climax of the movie is on a moving train and his cameraman was going to fall off it and tom saved him. we will not see that until may of 2022. this is about, i digress this is about cruise operators. cdc says cruise operators could start sailings -- i think

it is cruising do cruise ships sail andrew, the ones you take, do. the flowing sails and the crew is 70 crew members and 30 passengers is that about the size >> i've never been on one, joe >> anyway, okay. >> i hope i -- can i sit in the passenger seat of the porsche? is that okay >> i wasn't saying you were an elitist. i love my car. you do need to use gas in it that's the only shortcoming. sailing out in the united states by mid-july. in a letter, the cdc said cruise ships can proceed to passenger

sailings without test cruises if they attest 98% of the crew members and 95% of passengers are fully vaccinated quarantine restrictions will be relaxed. passengers can take a rapid test instead of the pcr test. they will be able to quarantine from home if they are within driving distance of the port very complicated you have to do all that to make it safe enough to go back in the water, as they say the gains they are seeing on the big cruise companies can we do back to talk about "mission impossible" yet >> no, not right now >> do you know his name in the movie? that was my question the other day. >> miles no, miles. >> ethan hunt. >> ethan

that's right i don't know why that baffled me we have bigger fish to fry they are good. especially when they rip their faces off. we have seen bigger fish to fry this morning tech stocks on the move. apple and facebook with incredible earns numbers both beat the street numbers that is the estimate the blowout quarter for apple is the strong iphone sales. let's bring in the managing partner serat. these companies sit back and ma marvel we look at the strong numbers. what did you think >> i think you are right, becky. if you look at facebook, talk about firing on all cylinders. not just pure facebook, but instagram as well.

you look deeper. they have talked a lot about commercialization and the ecommerce sites. that gavin e investors confidene you look at apple. every product line was double digit growth if you look at that and apple margins from 39% to 42.5%. these stocks not only are increasing market share and revenue, but margins are going up i think that is the one thing we were looking for can they sustain margins or sustain growth rates add to it, apple is adding increasing dividend and also buying back shares you checked every box on both those stocks and that is reflected in the market today. apple. the suppliers.

qualcomm with a blowout quarter. expectations were pretty low for qualcomm that stock is up 5%. they are firing not just on the chip side, but licensing side and expectation of another super cycle on 5g. we have a few things in place for companies with growth and investors can be happy with that >> in terms of apple, but not just stock buyback $90 billion in stock buyback a massive number then you look at what happened with china so many concerns that maybe china would not be as strong of a market with the tensions with the united states and china. that got blown out of the water. is there concern that could step back up? we talked a little bit about what biden said last night he had harsh words for china in that speech. there is an issue with china becoming a problem down the road or is apple maneuvering this

well >> that could be a concern down the road especially for apple. demand was strong for the quarter. you had good comps for last quarter. if we had geopolitical issues, we saw that. i talked about qualcomm. a couple of years ago, qualcomm had to pay a huge fine in china. apple's production line in china could be effected too. that is an uncertainty down the road tesla is dealing with that as wealth we have seen companies spread supply chains out of china not as fast as they want, but local sourced products will help multinational companies that are not just in one area >> sarat, do you own these two stocks both of them are up significantly this morning would you buy more at these levels >> i do own them

i would buy more facebook. not apple right now. for the reasons you said apple has done very well as a whole some of the parts of facebook is exciting about the company instagram has not been monetized. whatsapp has not been monetized. you look at the issues and the government overhang. facebook by itself, some of the parts and growth of each one as we are still in the early innings. it trades at 20 times cash flow with the double digit growth that is one i would add to it. >> sarat, today is a huge earns day. we have one coming up in 45 minutes. we will step away and check in with you later thanks for being with us. >> got it. thank you. we have a lot more coming up this morning president biden wasn't the only

keynote speaker yesterday. fed chair jay powell acknowledges the economic recovery, but now is not the time to taper. we have the big take aways from that in just a moment. take a quick look at stock futures this morning we have the dow looking like it will open at 159points higher. nasdaq 133 points higher s&p 500 up 130 points. we're back after this. >> announcer: this cnbc program is sponsored by baird. visit bairddifference.com. ♪ ♪

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welcome back moderna says the covid vaccine can remain stable at refrigerator temperatures for three months it is currently approved for 30 days at fridge temperatures and up to 7 days in the freezer. this storage temperature would make it easier to distribute the vaccine to doctors offices and other small setting. the company is increasing production target by 100 million doses this year. the ceo stephane bancel will join us in the 7:00 hour this would make it easier for other countries that don't have access to freezers and fridges here >> i thought it was deep freeze for some of them >> the super low levels. >> the original pfizer required.

the view was it required the deep freeze. now i think they figured out how to do it without that. let's talk about yesterday's session with fed share jay powell he acknowledged the economy is strengthening, but now is not the time to talk about tapering despite the pick up in inflationary pressure. steve liesman joins us it is great when they call on you, steve you know that? we love that >> i hope i fulfill all of your hopes and aspirations, andrew, with my question powell said it is not time to taper. we will talk about it. jay powell and the press conference upgraded the u.s. economy and downgraded the risk from the pandemic. no change coming any time soon to the easing monetary policy. powell said this >> it is not time yet.

we have said we would let the public know when it is time to have that conversation we would do that in advance of the decision to taper asset purchases. we will do so. in the meantime, we are monitoring progress toward our goals. >> still fed observers on the street are talking about tapering and look to be centered on the timeline for the fed to act. the loose timeline from the fed survey and comments after the meeting. june or july, the fed will tell us it is discussing tapering, perhaps. september or october, fed would announce it will taper in january, a lot of consensus, the fed would begin to reduce the $120 billion in asset purchase purchases. on that schedule, the fed is still buying powell insists on the high

inflation numbers are tempetemporary. cnbc has been tracking the numbers straight from the web on a weekly basis look price inflation data running at the annual rate of 3.6% in the second half of april highest going back to september of 2011. driven by high fuel costs. these are the kind of hot inflation numbers the fed is promising to look through as it promises unchanged rates for the rest of the year that is how marketing are betting, andrew. >> steve, we talk about this often. how do you think he is thinking about the biden hood spending plan how do you think they calculate in terms of that going forward >> it is a great question, andrew it is hard to know about every specific part what have biden is proposing. there is a lot to it

i think there are two ways to separate it out. we talked about this yesterday a bit. i think the fed has to incorporate straight deficit spending into its calculation. obviously, powell has been steadfast in saying they take fiscal policy as it comes. they don't steer it either way that is on the one hand. when the fiscal side or the washington congress and president do deficit spending, that is an increase in spending. the economy has inflationary effects. what biden is proposing and we can go back and forth on the op-ed. he says he is paying for it. on the one hand, the fed would see them taking money out of the economy and putting it back in over here. there may be an aggregate impact, but ultimately, that ends up being somewhat neutral for fed policy depending on what it does to potential gdp growth.

early child care growth hurt or help the economy or greater health care hurt or help the economy or a greater cost from raising corporate taxes? >> what is the liesman view of the world on that score? >> i think he is going pretty far. i think there is an argument to do some of the things more from the government, but i think it is a big change and potential shock to the economy from doing so much as once. i like to see some of these things provided in greater amounts. i would like to see less of it overall over time rolled out. >> steve liesman always good to see you thank you, sir becky. thanks, andrew when we come back, we will talk about amazon giving employees a raise a day ahead of the quarterly report we have the details on that after this. still to come this morning, a busy lineup of earnings.

we while hear from caterpillar and merck and mcdonald's and comcast all within the next hour "squawk box" will be right back. confidence is at the heart of everything we do at carrier. our systems fill buildings and homes with healthy, clean air. we detect and put out fires, and help people stay safe and secure inside. our innovations keep foods and lifesaving medicines cold and fresh until they reach those who need them. at carrier, we create solutions to help you build a brighter future...

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amazon is giving a raise to hourly employees the company said that more than half a million workers would see pay increases of 50 cents to $3 an hour. amazon starts wages at $15 an hour it has been hiring at a rapid clip every quarter there is a huge increase of employees. that company is due to report quarterly results today at

closing bell walmart is the biggest private employer outside the federal government they have 1.2 million employees. that number could have climbed up over time it is amazing with amazon and how quickly they are adding employees, too >> it is a record pace we have another story. i don't know i've been fascinating by it. i was on the phone talking about it yesterday verizon with a sale of assets. including yahoo! and aol they are looking to exit what has been an unsuccessful bet on digital media. the assets could be worth $4 billion. it acquired yahoo! in 2017 paying $9 billion for the pair of them. run by tim armstrong at the time it sold tumblr and huff news

division a couple of suitors are looking into that. curious to see if any strategic takes a look i think yahoo! finance has some value. there is a question of what the rest of it is worth. guys, we have numbers out from caterpillar we have been waiting for it. joe, you said it earlier are we going to see the huge beats we have seen so far? that is the case with cater caterpillar. adjusted earns of $2.87 a share. the street was looking for $1.94. that's a huge beat on the bottom line $11.9 billion in revenue big beat on the top and bottom line profit margins were up significantly. operating profit margin 15.3% for the first quarter compared to 13.2% from a year ago just looking through the

numbers. the chairman and ceo saying that they are proud of the global team strong performance. they are encouraged by improving conditions in the end markets. and they are managing supply chain risks. that is strong news from the company. stock is up 1.1% because it takes a lot to impress the street these days. expectations has been high caterpillar is doing well. it is indicated up another $2.69 this morning on this news. >> merck is out early, too, becky. i can look at adjusted $1.40. the current estimate is $1.63. i want to see what is in involved in that the estimate right now is 6.56

i'm not understanding the number of $1.40 versus the $1.63 estimate there might be -- it says here the profit falls on a covid-19 hit. 1% drop in quarterly profit. drop in doctor offices because of the surge of covid cases for merck. at this point, i have some revenue numbers as well. are you seeing this, becky are you looking at this? >> i'm looking right now key truda sales up 19% to $3.9 billion. it is getting more widely used and more types of cancer animal health sales is another place they were looking at closely. animal health sales up 17% to $1.4 billion you talked about the visits to

the doctors' office. i know the street had been aware of and they were anticipating numbers could come back as people get back to work and doctors' offices i don't see the apples-to-apples comparison. >> i don't know if the stock moved. i'm in the sure that is real i'm not sure it necessarily reacts to $1.40 to $1.63 the full guidance, it doesn't matter which quarter you get it in if you hit the full year numbers and the bracket that the company gave does include the estimates. >> right right. >> down from last year there's adjusted numbers and the reported numbers which the adjusted numbers are higher in this case. reported number was $1.25. for the full year, 5.05 to 5.25.

that is not what the street follows with the estimates the adjusted numbers is $6.56 for the year they are talking 6.48 to 6.68. we will see what it has traded down 13 cents. coming up, president biden arguing his case for trillions of dollars in spending and proposing a tax hike on the wealthy to pay for it. we will show you what he said about wall streenet xt >> announcer: executive edge is sponsored by at&t business our people and network will help keep you connected let's take care of business. th. okay, imagine this... your mover, rob, he's on the scene and needs a plan with a mobile hotspot. we cut to downtown, your sales rep lisa has to send some files, asap! so basically i can pick the right plan for each employee...

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good morning welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc equity futures right now dow powering higher. nasdaq up 140 points we are getting remarkable earnings results in this morning as well as last night. we'll talk more about that in a minute. in president biden's address to congress, he had a message to

wall street. >> the american jobs plan is a blue-collar blueprint to build america. that's what it is. and recognizes something i've always said. this chamber in this other good guys and women on wall street wall street didn't build this country. the middle class built this country. unions built the middle class. >> joining us to discuss this and other key moments is political strategist frank luntz. frank, i love to hear your perspective, but more importantly, what the american public thinks about what they heard last evening >> i was watching him with a group of 15 students from across the country from usc

university of southern california they personalized it they have studied the words. for the first time on "squawk box" the language was pedestrian it wasn't great. it wasn't horrible wasn't memorable he emphasized again and again jobs that's the word we heard again jobs, jobs 60% of americans would rather have a career. only 35% would rather have a job. that tells you where it is targeted he also talked about blue collar which is one aspect of the middle class this is the most class-oriented speech i heard in a long time. it harkens back to barack obama ten years ago. it is very much in the speech that indicates the era of big government is back even though we discussed how he articulates it, if you start to

tally up the amount of money being spent, it is significant in the end, the public hates more than anything else, not tax incr increase, i want to be clear it is not the tax increase, but the waste, fraud and abuse and in some cases corruption that ko comes when you spend this much money with little accountability or transparency. i did not hear accountability or transparency or oversight. that should have wall street nervous. >> what is the perception of the line we showed before wall street wall street didn't build it. does that play broadly >> yes, it does. the public is hostile to wall street the public is hostile to the top 1% they have been taught over the last 20 years that the top 1% did not get it in a legitimate way. they have been taught the

economy is rigged and people at the top have an advantage. wall street looks at this. anytime you explain it as wall street, that phrase turns off tens of millions of americans that are more supportive of main street right now, in april of 2021, the public is probably never been in my lifetime as pro-small business as they are right now as anti-wall street as they are right now. >> i want to show you another bite right now of president biden saying he would increase deficits to pay for the largest jobs plan since world war ii here is what he said >> it is time for corporate america and the wealthiest 1% of america to pay for their fair share. sometimes i have arguments with my friends in the democratic party. i think you should be able to become a billionaire and m milli millionaire. pay your fair share. we will reform the corporate

taxes to pay their fair share. their businesses will benefit as well >> i assuming based on the conversation we had, that is a line that works. >> yes, it does. as a communication analyst, pay your fair share absolutely works. as an american who spends a lot of time with the public from coast-to-coast, it is a line that scares the hell out of me every time you say the american people are not pairying their fi share, you are creating re resentment and hate. what is fair share it is a great conversation it is a great debate no one defined it at the top 1%. the top 1% pay 30% in taxes. is that the fair share what percentage should the top 1% what percentage should corporations pay when you ask these questions as

we have been doing over the last mon month, six weeks, they say no american should pay no more than one-third of their income, not half we know the wealthy pay much more than that >> frank >> go ahead. >> frank, just listening to you talk about jobs, jobs, jobs. it is all about jobs do you have a feeling that prior to the pandemic that whatever was in place was generating a pretty good job environment overall? overall unemployment minority unemployment? we were even starting to see organically, low-wage earners get raises more than any time in the past tempern years?

then the pandemic hit and a lot of people are out of work. 10 million jobs are still lost we need to create jobs the overall structure in place and talking about corporate taxation was generating benefits or something was maybe the technology or the new economy -- whatever you want to say -- it was working. now do we need to spend trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars pretending something was broken in the overall system >> let's be clear in the public perspective. a clear majority of independents and republicans support the spending measures until they hear what is in them overall, they want the money in the economy because they believe it will benefit. when you add the tax burden that will be applied to pay for this, the support drops considerably it is still a majority when they find out what's actually in it, the dietails, th

waste, fraud and corruption. the lobbyists are having a field day in washington. then you start to see opposition not only grow, but become more than a majority. i think if you look, our job is to look into the future. if the republicans win control of the house, which is a possibility 18 months from now, if they win control of the house, they will look tonight as the reason why if you spend this much money without the words accountability, responsibility, oversight, transparency, those aspects, you will have a lot of waste, fraud and this is a very important speech. policies are very clear. we are spending a lot of money in years to follow >> okay. frank luntz, great to get your perspective. appreciate it. >> thank you

becky. >> still to docome, we have more big reports. including mcdonald's and our parent company comcast we will get reaction and comments straight ahead. >> announcer: currency check is sponsored by interactive brokers. the professionals gateway to the markets.

coming up, reaction to today's big earnings report. a look at caterpillar and merck. merck is now responding to the mess on the bottom line and is down about 3 1/3%. we'll have more on that. age before beauty? why not both? visibly diminish wrinkled skin in... crepe corrector lotion... only from gold bond.

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cat perfect pillar and mirme mirmerc merck just announced their earnings we thought they would benefit from reopening and you said merck would be a miss. at least it's going to be tough to beat given they weren't involved in the vaccine race now we know some of their drugs were hurt by people not visiting doctors' offices what do you make of those two? >> yeah, so, you know, cat

pipter pillar is a strong beat. they benefit from infrastructure spending and the reopening is getting back to business the stock is up 27% this year but i think it has good room to run in terms of where we're going, where spending is going in terms of merck, i expected to see a miss last quarter was a miss. as we said, a lot of patients aren't going to hospitals and doctor's offices although they saw good growth in key true da, they need help. merck is a slow and steady long-term play i'm not allergic to the stock after the earnings announcement. they had bad news. they had two vaccine failures. one antiagain failure basically that they pulled from the trial. i think with the continued growth of guardasil they have room to run.

the macro story is there it's defensive like in nature. lots of aging baby boomers they have to get out of covid. they didn't benefit from the vaccine and whatnot. once the world opens up, patients get back to doctors, they'll benefit there. >> did you notice in the last two that we just talked about, sarat, since we spoke with you >> i think to add to a couple of things on the merck side, you're seeing that across pharma anyone not involved in pharma, that's bristol and if you are looking out a year, two years the opportunity, this is kind of where people talk about value, this is that barbell approach. if you want the facebooks and the apples, the googles that grow really fast but here's the other side of it that when comps come back a year from now, you'll see growth from these type of stocks i'll throw other companies in

there, cvs as well all of these companies that have had their products pushed forward and you're not going to get it in terms of infrastructure, i'm see more money thrown into the cats, the deeres, industrial stocks a lot of my reflecting it, they're not cheap in any way they're momentum stocks. they will do well at least for the next three or four quarters. >> we haven't got a lot of time, sylvia you think amazon is going to be big and twitter, too >> yeah. i think amazon is going to be huge i think amazon is going to be one of those absolute crush numbers like apple and google. i don't think the pandemics are going to change people's habits. they're going to see growth in aws. hiring more workers to keep up with demand. i think that stock absolutely crushes it so remain absolutely bullish there. twitter too, i think they lost users last quarter

i think they'll pick up on some of that after the privacy efforts and hopefully monetize on some advertising there. i like both of those names going into earnings. >> thanks for the quick analysis, sylvia, sarat sethi. thank you both andrew. coming up when we return, mow dern ma saying its vaccine can be stored at rriraefgeted temperatures for longer. the ceo will join us next on cnbc ♪ i wish that i knew what i know now ♪ ♪ when i was younger ♪ you need a financial plan that fits the way you want to live in retirement. a plan that can help grow and protect your money. now or in the future. with an annuity in your plan to help cover essential expenses, you can live the retirement you want. the right financial professional

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apple and facebook, we'll break down the numbers and talk big tech straight ahead. plus, a number of big earnings this morning, too we've heard from caterpillar and merck. mcdonald's and comcast hitting tape we have the numbers and market reaction for you plus, moderna announcing a supply deal and new data on just how long the data can be stored. it's good news we'll be hearing from the ceo stefan bancel who joins us the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick and joe kernen. the u.s. equity markets at this hour get more and more earnings pouring in dow up 178 points. nasdaq looking to open up 136

points higher. s&p looking to open up 30 points higher mcdonald's earnings are just out. get straight over to kate rogers with those numbers good morning. >> reporter: hey, andrew, good morning to you a strong first quarter for mcdonald's eps coming in at $1.92 adjusted. that is an 11 cent beat. revenues 5.12 billion higher than what was projected. sales increasing 13.6% as business lacked the lows of 2020 that was much higher than the 10.2% expected the company all benefits from average check growth and double digit positive comps a crawl all dayparts things like limited time offering of spicy chicken nuggets and three crispy chicken sandwiches and delivery also boosted sales in the quarter same store sales 7.5% overall. that's higher than the 4.9%

expected international expected 0.6% and 6.4% in international developmental license markets and corporate markets. covid-19 restrictions still impacting some markets china, japan, u.k., australia and canada saw a strong business in a statement the ceo said we are maximizing marketing in a culturally relevant way committed to the great tasting customer favorites on our core menu and doubling down on digital delivery and drive through like so many other companies to create a faster and easier customer experience joe, going to send it back over to you. >> okay. thank you very much, kate. comcast results are out. adjusted earnings coming in at 76 cents a share that was well above the consensus estimate of 59 cents revenue also beat forecasts and, guys, we report comcast every quarter. obviously it's a parent company.

normally the earnings per share, a lot of times it's free cash flow and ebitda. many, many times the strength in broadband offsets any weakness that you see in some of the other businesses, whether it's theme parks, whether it's, you know, not making movies during the pandemic, but in this case that's a much i was surprised

how many there were. >> 42 million signups today across the united states the company is saying that's because of domestic streaming rights to the wwe network and the office. you can't look at it any other way than a reopening

stock. this is like perfect for jon fort on the other hand, it's been unbelievable in terms of broad br brand. it has enough buried operations where it's both, it's both a pandemic, a stay at home and reopening stock. how you balance it out, what's much more important, it looks good theme parks. >> it is a reopening stock the question is, what do you think, there's probably 4 to 5 bucks in the reopen if you get to the reopen, right those are the numbers. you're going to hit that the question is, is it already built in it was a great hedge i would say this was a great hedge during the pandemic. more than anything else.

>> i'm surprised. >> it didn't matter. we didn't need to shoot on the set. >> live throughout the theme parks breaking even is pretty significant that's of course excluding the beijing reopening costs. the revenue was down 33% so to be able to kind of take that as a non-loss, that's interesting. >> almost 2% if anything was -- the thing people look for is the churn, things like that that's out the front and the company says we're not chasing people that are low margin or customers that are low margin business, we're letting them go and we'll look elsewhere

you can see how important stream being is to almost any company like a comcast as traditional cable goes that way and everybody like discovery, disney or any of them, that's not a surprise where you're seeing a lot of resources what would it be called? we do -- i don't know. we have a streaming. have you guys got any ideas for that i guess i shouldn't even bring that up. >> thinking about it. >> squawk streaming. >> squawk streaming. >> absolutely. >> 24 hour a day network. >> you did your thing and i did mine, there would be no -- you know, we could just go our separate ways and not constantly have to be accommodating each other. becky, it could be becky, joe, andrew. >> hold on, you've been accommodating all this time? >> i try i try. maybe more recently, i think

>> i'm trying. i'm trying >> we're all fine. >> let me tell you about some other big earnings stories this morning. we've got to recap some of the numbers we've gotten this morning. if you haven't seen it this morning, merck shares are under pressure stock is down by 1.8%. this comes after the drug company missed on both the bottom and top lines for the first quarter. looking at the adjusted earnings number it came in at $1.40. merck's results were hit by a drop in visits to the doctor's offices because of a resurgence in covid-19 cases at the beginning of the year. that's something the street has been watching very closely it's been watching through on a lot of these lines and right now you can just see it's under pressure, like i said, down by 1.8% on the other side of things you have caterpillar the shares are higher. adjusted first quarter earnings came in at 2.87 cents a share. the street was only looking for $1.94. there was demand for heavy equipment picking up after last

summer's slump revenue number came in much closer to expected revenue was 11.9 billion that stock is up by 2.3%. >> thanks, beck. coming up, moderna expanding its manufacturing goals for covid-19 vaccine we'll hear from moderna ceo stefan bancel. we'll check on the markets we have the dow up but the nasdaq really moving higher on the results. e 6 points thdow is a much bigger percentage "squawk box" will be right back.

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your connection doesn't. so how do i do this? you don't do this. we do this, together. bounce forward, with comcast business. breaking news from moderna let's get to meg tirrell and a special guest. good morning, meg. >> reporter: good morning, joe that special guest is stefan bancel upon the news the company is making investments to increase the supply of the covid-19 vaccine this year and next year, stefan, welcome this morning great to see you increasing to 800 doses. next year increasing up to 3 billion doses. what do these investments say about what you're hearing from governments around the world about the potential demand for your vaccine into 2022 and even beyond that?

>> good morning, meg one is the science and variants. what we're seeing in south africa and the tragedy in india with this new variant, we think that the virus is going to help people we have said boosting is going to be important. we have not one, not two but three boosting strategy. we might need a fourth one i think the science is very clear to us which is we're not done with this virus even though we are optimistic in the u.s as we are going into the southern hemisphere, they are getting their fall and their winter there are so many people living in small density houses and a

lot of people are compromised, hiv positive they are going to come back and they are involved in australia they predict that, you know, in a year's time, 9 months to a year's time you might have 20, 30% efficacy much less with a familiar base so on the one hand there's science and on the other hand is developments in the last 30 days i got numerous quotes per day from people around the world saying you can look at the different options available to us. look at high efficacy, good profile. look at manufacturing ability to scale and deliver and we look at speed to chase the variants. we believe this is the best technology so based on those things, we say we need to get ready because we need to be ready for next year

to stop this virus we are making investments in the u.s. and outside the u.s. to be able to deliver 3 billion dose in 2021. >> you mentioned the situation in india and, in fact, perhaps even needing to develop another booster candidate targeted towards the variant you're seeing circulating there are you saying that what you've seen so far indicates perhaps there could be less efficacy from the current vaccine in india where that variant is circulating and also are you close to striking any deals with indian states? we understand from reuters reporting that the indian government may not be making purchases from the federal level but from the state level are you close to striking any agreements to supply your vaccine to india? >> so two things on the science, we don't have the data yet on 617. what we all know is what are mutations presented in p. 1 and b. 351 in south africa

the other one, too the question is going to be similar to south africa or worse or better. we will know soon jefrmt as soon as we know we will communicate about it right away. if we believe we need to chase this one, too, we will start a new program. moderna is known for b. 351 for south africa we need the boost in the fall and every day matters. we might be a little bit behind and you can combine it that's another thing that's already powerful we have up to 6 and so if we need to start first by either a first booster that is the one south african variant and then multiple after, south africa plus india if necessary, we will do that.

>> do you think it will be similar with moderna if we have to do this a year from now with different variants would you ever foresee there could be some horrific outcome with your vaccine to a different variant we don't know about? would it need to be tested for safety every time or are you confident that the original testing that we did would hold up for new vaccines? >> that's a great question, joe. what we have seen so far, as you know, this is not the first vaccine in the community the 10th vaccine and we have a few more since then. we so far have seen when you reboost people no issue that we did not anticipate, very similar safety profile

as you recall, the amount that we inject in you is totally destroyed, it's gone 48 hours after injection. this has been proven and published. the nucleus doesn't touch your dna. it's gone into the cells there is no reason to believe there will be issues the safety at that data base in the real world you see data coming from the cdc showing that the vaccines have issues over time we see safety data coming from the cdc. we report any side effect that is reported back to the fda as we should so we have no reason to believe there will be an issue down the road. >> hey, stefan, i know about three weeks ago pfizer submitted its data to the fda for approval for its vaccine for kids aged 12 to 15.

can you just give us an update on where you stand in terms of vaccines for kids? >> yes, becky. two different strategy as you know the teenager study as we've stated now has been fully enrolled for quite a while we expect really any day/week the data given the experience we already have with over vaccine into very young, we believe that the vaccine will work very well and we have similar safety profile and so as soon as we have the data, we file it to the fda in the current eua to get 12 to 17 years old. then the kids study is ongoing we are very fortunate that many people around the country volunteered very quickly my team estimates one of the fastest if not the fastest kids study enrollment they've ever seen it's really wonderful to see people wanting to help and contribute to science. so as we said, this is going to

be mostly done at the end of the year for data to young children 6 months to 11 years of age because we have to go down in age slowly for their safety and because we start at a much lower dose because their body mass is much smaller than an adult and recalculating it >> stefan, a brief one for you before we let you go you also announced today you have data suggesting your vaccine can be stored at a regular fridge temperature for up to three months for a month now. do you expect the fda will be able to grant authorization for your storage in that way how much easier will that make distribution in the u.s. and around the world >> it's a great question so, actually, when we launched it -- meg, sorry when we launched it we had storage at friction price. we've extended it to 2 months and now to 3 months. if you think about it, the best amount profiled on the market in

terms of storage we're going to share, of course, as we always do the data with the fda. they can make their own determination if it gets to the label. we think it's a big deal because from 2 months to 3 months it increases. when you think about it the operational amount, it allows to get into more gp's offices, pharmacies so we think both in the u.s. with this machine developing very well is important if you think about the increase in capacity we are doing now, it's really developing well. people need only one boost moving forward in the u.s. once we have enough most people will be vaccinated very soon. that will be very important in increasing both doses. >> stefan bancel, we appreciate you being with us. see you again soon. >> thank you. >> thanks, meg. when we come back, a strong quarter for apple with double digit growth in every product category but can it keep up the

momentum for the rest of the year that's the question. the company also dealing with the same microchip shortage that has plagued other companies. the stock this morning is up about 3% right now at $137.60. we will talk all things apple right after the break. time now for today's aflac trivia question. what two major railroads merged to form csx? the answer when cnbc's "squawk box" continues go aflac!!! what the heck, troy - that's not your kid! the aflac duck is just covering for sophie. same way he got me money to help cover her hospital bill when my health insurance didn't pay for all of it. but this isn't fair! that's exactly what i said! but then i learned health insurance isn't even supposed to cover everything. wait...for real? for real real. luckily i had aflac. aflac!!! get help with expenses health insurance doesn't cover. go aflac! !mm-hm! get to know us at aflac.com.

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now the apes to today's aflac trivia question. what two major railroads merged to form csx? the answer, chessie system and seaboard railroad system. shares of apple are higher this morning after a pretty unbelievable earnings report from the company last night. joining us right now to dig through itis will power. he's senior analyst at robert w. baird. also juanc.mohan gentlemen, i have to ask you about this i'm confused reading through the notes on this.

you're looking at reiterating your neutral rating and will you're looking at this as an outperform a lot of good news in this i see you moved up in the price target you're keeping your neutral rating how does that kind of work out >> yeah, becky look, i mean, unquestionably this was a stellar quarter it was way above anyone's expectations on the buy side even the highest expectations i was talking to institutional investors at they came in at 89 million no blemish on the quarter. that said, last quarter, the december quarter was an equally stellar quarter. it was an entire blowout and the stock underperformed the broader market by 15 points. so i think we have to decouple what the fundamentals are doing right now versus what we expect the fundamentals will do in the future what we're concerned about really is the fact that when you put up these sort of numbers which is great for now, you really are going to comp those

next year. if you look at fiscal 22 and fiscal 23, we're down or flat in those two years. it's very hard to justify a higher multiple. although we took our price target up, we took our multiples down there's other risks that people balance because, look, we have the antitrust risk that runs and the google accessing payments which is a high margin business. you have the potential headwind and we don't know this yet for a fact about taxes and then you have these really tough comps. the growth that we saw in the qua quarter, $51 billion, $21 billion was the iphone when you put that together you have to acknowledge it was a fantastic quarter and the numbers you're hosting are unbelievable at the same time, what does this mean for the future and that's where we see challenges? >> well, you've got an outperform rating so make your

case for why this is such a great buy. >> we're taking a longer term view on this we think at the end of the day like we're seeing in the past quarter, it will continue to grow into the valuation. this wasn't just an iphone quarter, it was superlative among superlatives you have ipad and mac that are enjoying resurgence. you have additional growth opportunities there. i think part of the bet overtime is this is a company that indeed continues to innovate, drive new product categories air tag. around updated apple tvs and into the living room in a bigger way. longer term you look at opportunities around health care, autonomous vehicles, augmented reality. that's what investors are playing for. the options on some of the new categories to help augment strong growth. we continue to like the setup

and grow for valuation >> wamsy, is the key to your neutral rating that you think there are other places you would rather put your money? what stocks do you like better >> yeah. i think if you have seen what has happened with the value pack, apple underperformed the broader market by 15 percentage points at the same time i have other companies that have done exceedingly well if you look at cva technologies, the chart is up and to the right at the same time massive outperformer you look at hpe, net app there is a case to be made that there are laggards that have not benefitted from the pandemic which will benefit from a reopening. at the same time it's not that we dislike the fundamentals of apple, we think the risk/reward is much more balanced. we see equal amounts of up side and down side. it's very hard to recommend a stock when you feel there could be potentially a lot further up side in a cyclical with the economy and enterprise spending

is going to open up versus the comps on the ipad, the mac, services business which hugely benefitted from a time where people were sitting at home and on their devices for an entire six or nine months of last year and going to start to comp that shortly. >> right hey, will, i know that you like apple as a longer term play. do you worry at all about what happens, let's say in the third and fourth quarters of this year as maybe some of this was pulled forward or do you think that's not going to be an issue >> sure, there's questions there. one, you raise a fair point on behalf of comps. the last two quarters it's going to be tough to replicate from that standpoint. on the other hand, i think the key here, becky, this is truly a work from anywhere pandemic. i don't see that changing even as we look at the back half of this year into 2022. the other element here is i think a lot of folks thought there was a super cycle and it

would be over in 12 months i think the reality is this is a multi-year cycle on the iphone and the benefits that 5g helps deliver. the 5g has only been rolled out in a select number of countries around the globe, really u.s., china and europe we start over there. the key has always been with apple is continued product innovation and the ability to unlock value in the future by the category as i said earlier, that's one of the big bets >> all right will, wamsy, thank you guys both for being here both of you think the stock is going to be up by more than 15% from here. that's one argument you should pay attention to, too. joe, we'll send it over to you. >> thanks, becky. let's get you caught up on some other stories that investors will be watching today. ebay shares fell, sneakers, luxury watches and trading cards. this is something to think about. the company's current quarter

forecast disappointed the street saying that sales, they were boosted because of pandemic and government stimulus checks are going to be ending soon. coming to an end and they won't be doing as well who else do we need to think about in that context that won't be on that gravy train anymore. ford shares also under pressure the car maker's earnings of 89 cents a share beat estimates at 21 cents the company maintained its full year profit guidance which includes a negative impact of about $2.5 billion due to, yeah, global chip shortage stay tuned "squawk box" is coming right back

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welcome back to "squawk box. i'm dominic chu with your market minute today could end up becoming the busiest day of earnings season we are expecting more than 50 s&p 500 companies reporting throughout the course of the day before the bell and after today's close. let's run up a few of them for you. cat pillar shares up by 1.5% we're not far away from record highs after almost doubling. caterpillar reports profit and sales both come in better than estimates driven by end user for

construction machinery around the world especially in asia they've also made some interesting comments that they may not be able to satisfy all of that consumer demand because of the global computer chip shortage watch those. also watch shares of kraft heinz up in the premarket trade fractionally speaking. this is the salty food, snack food, processed food giant up 1% it's up 33%. a lot more folks staying at home using their products, eating their oscar myer hot dogs. kraft heinz using their products we're going to end on another one here mcdonald's shares. profits top estimates. comparable store sales restaurants open at least a year saw north of 13.5% growth. it's back up to prepandemic levels mcdonald's shares not far off down fractionally in the premarket trade. coming up on "squawk box," facebook's big beat.

mark zuckerberg outlining the ecommerce strategy we'll talk about that financial company's -- social media company's strategy shares up 7% premarket "squawk box" will be right back. actively managing investments in the world's public and private markets. outscale, with the resources to serve 1,500 clients in 52 countries. and outlast, with long-term conviction that looks beyond today's volatility. join the pursuit of outperformance at pgim. the investment management business of prudential. ♪ ♪ i had the nightmare again maxine. the world was out of wonka bars... relax. you just need digital workflows. they help keep everyone supplied and happy, proactively. let's workflow it.

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welcome back we are going to talk facebook in just a minute. a couple of guests guys, i asked tepper yesterday, has it been several months is it over can we talk with andrew and becky just a second? it's been several months what should we do when i asked him, he didn't answer me he just did answer me. now if i were dishonest i would do this before going to break and say i'm going to hit tepper's comments after we come back from break. >> that would be a good tease. >> that would be a good tease because the only thing he sent back to me was it's draft day. i don't know whether that means beer or whether that means -- >> no, that means the nfl. >> or bottled beer or -- is it nfl draft? >> you've got nothing? >> i got that. >> that means he's got his eyes on something else and he's not answering you. >> there are more important things in the world than the money. >> he's dodging you.

draft dodge. >> he did say a couple of other things it's all off the record it will be interesting one of these days. let's get to our guests. facebook is one of the big -- but i couldn't do that with the tease say i'll have something because it would be dishonest, really, to try to do that. the company saw, facebook did, quarterly sales benefitting from a digital ad spending and monthly active users jump but the company said growth could jump joining us is sarah fischer, rich greenfield of light shed partners rich, i'll get to you in a second rich, last time you were on someone was bummed you didn't have your gamer stuff on i can't remember what the -- isn't it interesting that's what people notice? none of the great stuff you say, they notice that. >> joe, i'm just glad you enjoyed calling my agent >> i do. i do and i watch lupin, too don't you love all of the scenes from paris

greatest place let me ask you this question, rich if these companies did so well during the pandemic, why shouldn't we think that comps are going to be harder after the pandemic and people say because they've made these strides and they've gotten up to here and they're going to stay here and go up from there is that what's going to happen >> look, you have a fundamental change in behavior people have shifted. they're going to go back and buy stuff in stores and go to retail stores, but there's been a fundamental change in behavior i don't think it ever goes back. i think consumers have learned and shifted a good portion of their spending and adoption. wonder ecommerce >> the efa and apple it's so much greater than anyone anticipated. the power, if you are trying to use products off shelves or cars off lots, there is simply no

better way than marketing on facebook and that's what this quarter demonstrates it's just an incredibly powerful and valuable company. >> sarah, you combined what rich is saying with the consolidation of power now it's advertising, not just thought and everything else that we see with social media when do regulators look at -- isn't this another reason for regulators to sit up and take notice isn't that the real issue with some of these companies is what's washington planning for them and i'm not sure i believe the biden administration would be any worse than maybe a republican administration because, i mean, these are -- they make old names, don't they, the companies? are they really going to do something to them? >> i mean, they're really hard looking into this. it's one of the biggest threats for a company like facebook is that if some of these investigations end in settlement, the provisions in the settlement is going to make it a lot harder for states to provide new companies which is

going to make it a lot harder to grow businesses and innovate in the short term, i agree with rich i don't think anything will stop the companies from continuing to grow i think the pandemic habits will stay and it's not just ecommerce but people want to promote advertising. i do think some action is going to take place on these companies. probably going to end up in large settlement do i think it will kill facebook's business? no, but it will prevent growth for sure >> i'm glad to have you here, rich you've scared me in the past i've looked at other career possibilities because of cord cutting because you scared me so much the comcast numbers, can streaming -- can streaming make up for that? did you miss that? that maybe that will be the missing addition that any company that's dependent on traditional cable is going to get into streaming and it could actually -- it could end up with even more money, more revenue.

>> discovery reported yesterday they had 15 million subscribers now to discovery plus around the world. >> comcast, right? >> yeah. comcast hasn't yet reported numbers for a number of actual subscribers, they just keep talking in terms of registrations, fairly meaningless number the reality is i think what comcast is trying to figure out is how much do they lean in? you saw them do the wwe deal i think what we've learned from disney, the biggest take away from disney over the last 18 months is that streaming takes an incredible amount of spending to be successful you've seen warner brothers put their first run movies on the hbo max. i think this is a game where the question is going to be to comcast, specifically to nbc universal, how much capital are they going to put into streaming. if they want to be really powerful where they dominate time spent, there are a few companies, netflix, amazon, disney, disney+, hulu, youtube

are really the dominant players in connected tv streaming time spent. if comcast and peacock want to be in that category, they can. i don't think the average consumer really knows what peacock is yet >> so, sarah, we've got -- we're not done with the big -- i love these -- i'm thinking about it in light of the way we're told from the seven parts, the political spectrum we're told about amazon and what a horrible company in terms of lobbying, tax breaks and all of this stuff i think about it and i'm excited about amazon's number. they're going to be powerful, are they not who's left now are analysts bringing the numbers up now because of what we've already seen everybody's crushing it. >> yeah. we got an early indicator from snap chat that the ad market was healthy, being revised

that was good and played out to google's earnings be, now on facebook i suspect you'll see a similar thing with amazon. cloud business will be healthy of course, the other one that's going to be happening next week is twitter and i expect them to have healthy advertising revenues, too. i expect it to be a great q1 around the board the thing to watch, you've mentioned it already this conversation, one, what is the impact of apple's idfa abstracting feature on all of these. i actually think it might not be as bad as everyone was forecasting. facebook has been demonizing apple on all of these calls for many quarters. yesterday sheryl sandberg was, yeah, we'll plug their api into our api and it will be fine. i think it might not be as bad as everybody was freaking out over you mentioned is it possible you can continue growth off of such high comps from last year? facebook is going to prove that it is possible i think a lot of these pandemic behaviors are here to stay,

there's no reason to think they can't continue to shine. >> the thing that's really important for everyone watching to think about is no consumer wants bad ads. people want ads that are actually value add i don't see a whole lot of consumers going i hate the ads on instagram i want them to feel more like tv or radio where they're not targeted to me people buy information off of instagram because the ads are so good that's what sort of gets missed in the conversation. consumers want privacy respected but they don't want bad ads they want good ads of things they want to buy. that's what facebook has been delivering. >> rich, anything else across the board, documentaries, drama, anything else? you gacve a call to my agent. >> you're watching luke now. >> sarah, you got anything >> wanda vision. >> that was good i liked that

>> all about wanda vision. >> all right i've got to do this. starving for -- that's another benefit of finally coming out of this pandemic. we need content. let's go let's get back filming mi 7 is coming thank you both thank you, sarah thank you rich. coming up when we return, another company taking on social media base camp. banning political and social use from the platforms is it practical management or muzzling employees we'll hear both sides of the argument from jon fort after the break. check out some of the names reporting. we're hearing from comcast our parent company, mcdonald's, merck, caterpillar mcdonald's and merck down. we'll break the results down after this but, my home of my dreams needed some work. sofi was the first lender that even offered a personal loan, and i didn't even know that was an option. the personal loan let us renovate

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but is it secure? sure it's secure. and even if the power goes down, your connection doesn't. so how do i do this? you don't do this. we do this, together. bounce forward, with comcast business. another tech company taking heat as basecamp signed a discussion of political and social issues on their work platform mon self made this move. are they trying to muzzle the employees. jon fort weighs in with on the other hand jon? >> andrew, it's just gotten to be too much. now social justice is important. political involvement, important, but when i'm at work i want to focus on the work. i shouldn't have to weigh in on a slack debate about this person's pet issue, worry about whether it looks weird that i didn't give a thumbs up on teams to that person's politically charged message.

basecamp is doing the right thing. technology is part of the problem. tech has blurred the lines between work and home. that's mostly a good thing it's kept many of us productive and employed at work it's been blurring the lines between the personal and the professional and that's a bad thing. it used to be if you were going to get sucked into an uncomfortable conversation with co-workers, you could see it coming you knew to stay away from the water cooler if bob was there or avoid drinks if pat was in a mood now the water cooler comes to you. it's always 5:00 for pat the water cooler is on facebook, the bar is on twitter. co-workers can be joined there if they want to. >> so this is really about separating the professional and the personal in your mind? >> well, on the other hand, this smells like another excuse by people in power to avoid talking about the hard stuff, stuff we should be talking about at work, like this basecamp situation i think a lot of us can agree

that work message systems aren't the best place for partisan politics i don't need to know what my people thought of biden's speech and tim scott but the basecamp mess started because of the basecamp culture management didn't like the way the conversation was evolving. here's the problem with banning conversations about politics in the workplace. every day intentionally or not we bring our culture and our politics to the workplace. sometimes it's the elephant in the room what we need, corporate cultures and leaders strong enough to handle difficult conversations leaders wise enough to know which forums work for tough issues and which don't look, i learned in college that arguments on message boards never end well that hasn't changed. the individuation hasn't changed. >> can we stop talking about this there was one sentence in there i was struck by that effectively

said from base camp, you shouldn't feel complicit if you're not participating in the conversation and you shouldn't be worried you're going to become a target if you become part of the conversation and i know a lot of people who have that view. >> here i think is the underlying issue these are about work cultures and trust and actually knowing your co-workers. when we're in these distributed environments, so many companies growing during this period have new employees who have never met each other, never met people there long term. you can't have hard conversations over zoom. the body language, the other context, it's just not there these are the difficulties. >> before you go, you're our man on all things tech give me your take on apple and some of these other stocks where we've heardthese blowout earnings >> on apple? >> sustainable >> return of the mac with the m1 it quite possibly is

if they get that chip right, get developers through wwd krf to directly develop for that chip it will give them an outsized advantage. now it becomes about software. they've executed on the hardware we can see that in these results. >> jon, always great to see you and to get both sides of this argument because there are two sides to all of it. >> at least. >> good to see you you bet. at least becky. thank you. i'll take the first side of his argument this time around about banning political commentary at our workplace. good luck with that. when we come back, we'll dig through this week's slew of earnings with ann winblad. we'll talk with judy shelton stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc front desk. yes, hello... i'm so... please hold. ♪ those days are done. ♪

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to help protect your data from new threats, anywhere you work. anywhere? ring the bell thrice, we're going back to the office! for technology that moves you forward, trust hp and it orchestration by cdw. oo. good morning futures pointing to a higher open among the biggest drivers, earnings including blockbuster numbers from apple and facebook. the next test, economic data two key reports this hour, weekly jobless claims and a first read on q1 gdp plus, president biden said wall street didn't build this country. this morning investors are reacting to the economic plan 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 watching three big stories this hour impacting the market and your money ylan mui has your talk no politics. andrew, we're done >> good luck with that. >> josh lipton -- >> the sound of silence. >> totally nonpartisan mike santoli on the nonpartisan moves in the broader markets we begin with ylan in washington good morning, ylan. >> reporter: good morning, joe the pandemic was still front and center whether it was the masks, socially distanced seating or

the limited attendance president biden tried to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel he used the word jobs 46 times he said america can outcome peat china with an economy that focuses on work and not wealth. >> sometimes i have arguments with my friends in the democratic party i think you should be able to become a billionaire and millionaire but pay your fair share. >> reporter: biden ad libbed that line. he was talking about paying for $4 billion of sweeping infrastructure those are nominally bipartisan issues biden did throw a bone to republicans last night going off script once again to applaud the gop's infrastructure proposal. >> i wanted to lay out before the congress my plan before we got into the deep discussions.

i'd like to meet those who have ideas that are different, that think are better i welcome those ideas, but the rest of the world is not waiting for us i just want to be clear, from my perspective, doing nothing is not an option. biden ended with a call for unity and they're blaming him for driving the country apart. i'll send it back up north to josh lipton. >> apple reporting and simply smashing the streets estimate. revenue surging 54% to a better than expected 89.6 much stronger than estimated the company increased the dividend by 7% and boosted the share buyback program by another $90 billion. ceo tim cook saying the iphone grew 66%

he said it was driven by strong demand for the iphone 12 family. the iphone 12 is the most popular iphone we've had extremely strong results in iphone 12 pro and pro 12 max the carriers are super charging demand in the u.s. another standout, the mac clearly. revenue jumping 70%. there are a lot of new mac fans out there who have seen strong first-time buyers on the mac he says it runs south of 50% in china it's even higher, more around 2/3 there are challenges like so many companies, apple dealing with this historic chip shortage it is seeing supply constraints that will affect ipad and mac sales during the current quarter. some investors have to think is this sustainable mike, over to you. >> thank you very much apple a big part of what we're seeing this morning in the

markets. take a look at the s&p 500 it's now looking like it's going to break out above 4200 for the first time here is a one-year chart one of the themes we've been pointing to is how the market has been hugging the upper edge of this trend line in fact, it looks a lot like it did back in july when it was doing that as well what do we see after huge blockbuster tech earnings in july lots of excitement and this sort of surge in acceleration into and through august and peaking on september 2nd not saying we're in for the same thing but we have a similar setup where the market has no give take a look at the nasdaq composite. not yet making new highs as you see february was sort of the peak for a lot of the growth excitement that's what that peak in the summer looked like on the nasdaq you also have this idea here that we had these localized corrections. the broad market did not have a serious pull back.

the nasdaq did, however, have more than a 10% pull back. maybe that was enough to relieve the pressure on the overall market we saw what apple did after the stock going sideways take a look at apple compared to amazon this goes back to the september 2nd date very, very, very close in terms of patterns, cadences and all the rest of it apple going to break higher. amazon reporting tonight very similar sideways after a huge gain that excitement came as apple announced stocks it's a silly reason to buy the stock. if you bought apple at the peak when they announced the stocks and executed it, you kind of had dead money for many months it's all good news right now stocks are probably the least of it, becky. >> mike, thanks. it's great to see you. thanks also to josh and ylan let's dive right into this though the big tech reporting quarterly

results this week. those companies represent 18% of the s&p 500. joining us to talk more about it is ann winblad ann, let's kind of run through this bit by bit. they all had big beats but not all of the stocks reacted the same let's start off with apple since josh just kind of ran through the numbers. really impressive on just about every metric you could look at here what's your take away as an owner of the shares? >> i'm very impressed with apple's earnings people talk about the mac, that's really important for their base that they're going to build their software revenue on. an important number for apple really is the growth in their services business. that's a very high margin business it's not dependent on chips, it's dependent on software apple again will be competing

with the hearts and minds of those very scarce developers that both microsoft and google want as well >> the one concerning point was the chirp shortage we've thought of them as untouchable. >> i think the dchip shortage is macro for the economy. ford's earnings announcement we heard it as well we really do have a strong dependence upon strong chip supply so, yes, it's a very big concern for all of these companies. for microsoft, for their hardware as well for amazon, for anyone who's building devices >> what do you do as an

investor, because it affects everybody, it's a non-issue. you won't sell out of one stock and buy into another >> that's what i would assume. you have to look at the longer term issues of who's going to earn the hearts and minds of developers, consumers. that's where if you look at microsoft, this is a company very less dependent on chips even though they do produce hardware, it's really a software empire google as well, that is a company as well that is a software empire. so those companies to me are really dependent upon the growth of the enterprise and the enterprise looks like it will be in growth mode for quite some time >> facebook shares this morning up by almost 8% after their incredibly strong numbers too. i know this is not a stock you hold anymore are you looking kind of longingly at it when you see numbers like this coming in? >> not really. i think what we saw in all of these companies is it's a look back on numbers.

it's in the winter shortage of the pandemic it's in the middle of a new surge of advertising revenues. facebook is an advertising driven company it shouldn't be pointed out that zuckerberg talked about advertising and how they are changing that model and how they are more dependent on newer models of advertising including how advertising work on commerce that is yet to be determined and if you take the long view here with privacy concerns we've talked about before, especially those set down by apple and soon by google, facebook continually looks like a wall garden and they have to be successful with other advertising strategies to be a long-term stock to own. >> any of these companies, what

they are is a long-term impact when you look at the other companies, let's say microsoft or google, microsoft had really strong numbers but the stock actually sold off, which was kind of confusing trying to figure out why were you disappointed? >> yeah. i had no idea why the stock sold off. it's probably just a buying opportunity for everyone we have a company in microsoft that is executing amazingly, as is google, as is facebook and as is likely will be amazon if you look at the tailwinds that microsoft has, we, as i've mentioned before on calls with you, we're only about 30% into the cloud world that we all know in the future. we have enterprises as google said on their call accelerating their enterprise efforts and microsoft said the same. microsoft has 300,000 partners worldwide and those partners are

revenue drivers for them and only less than 1/3 of those partners are now cloud first that means there's a lot of momentum there microsoft has 65 million developers on gethub microsoft is only recently acquiring new companies and they have a treasury which allows them to acquire a lot of new companies in the future as well. so if you look at microsoft, it's a pure software play. it's a high margin play. it is really right at the beginning of the huge growth opportunity. this speaks to the opportunity for google and their cloud and also their cloud growth. it speaks to amazon and their development growth i don't understand why people sold microsoft i think it is the stock to own long term. >> and, finally, amazon shares we're going to be hearing from that company after the bell

today. what are you anticipating? what would you like to hear from the company? what would concern you >> i think we'll hear accelerated advertising revenue from them as well. i think we'll hear huge numbers on the commerce platform and we'll likely hear large numbers on aws as well what would concern me about amazon i guess some of the discussions about executives leaving the company and really a broader turnover of management what does a new company look like without jeff bezos at the helm we won't see that for a few quarters i expect we'll hear stellar news from amazon. >> ann, it's always great to see you. appreciate your time and we will check back in with you soon.

>> thanks. >> take care andrew >> okay. thanks, becky. coming up when we return, a flood of quarterly results this morning. we'll bring you those numbers that you need to know. check out the biggest pre-market s&p movers stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc ready to shine from the inside out? try nature's bounty hair, skin and nails gummies. the number one brand to support beautiful hair, glowing skin, and healthy nails. and try advanced, now with two times more biotin. confidence is at the heart of everything we do at carrier. our systems fill buildings and homes with healthy, clean air. we detect and put out fires, and help people stay safe and secure inside. our innovations keep foods and lifesaving medicines cold and fresh until they reach those who need them.

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your connection doesn't. so how do i do this? you don't do this. we do this, together. bounce forward, with comcast business. quick recap of some of this morning's big earnings reports comcast getting a boost. earnings and revenue topping esti estimates. up wlm 3%. merck shares under pressure. bristol-myers also seeing its stock decline. earnings and revenue missed the mark and cancer drug sales fell shy of estimates caterpillar, the latest numbers were above wall street expectations the economic recovery with demand for the equipment cat ceo will join jim cramer on

"mad money" tonight. i like that name, don't you? you said it earlier. i don't know, i like it. jim umpleby. i like it. not sure why who's this it's me. coming up, president biden's message to wall street jason trennert joins us. first though, our podcast, if you don't know, has been nominated for a webby award by spider man himself and you can help us win. vote now at webbyawards.com. "squawk box" coming right back [ humming ] alexa? play "ooh la la." [ "ooh la la" by cherie playing ] the moxie showerhead speaker.

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good guys and women on wall street, but wall street didn't build this country the middle class built the country and unions built the middle class >> that was president biden speaking to congress last evening making the case for his americans family plan. the plan to pay for it by hiking taxes. joining us right now is jason trennert, founder of stragis, a baird company. what's your immediate reaction we can talk about how you think the market is ultimately going to react >> i have to say, andrew, as you might suspect, i'm not a big fan of it's really $4 trillion if you talk about the american family plan as well as the infrastructure plan. it's about 25% of gdp.

it seems to me you're getting pretty deep into the social engineering realm and there will be a cost for it one way or the other. part of it will be taxes it could be a continued weakening of the dollar and higher inflation i can't say i'm particularly thrilled about it. having said that, i also recognize that it's going to be watered down it's a very dynamic process and you have months to go from an investment perspective i'm not doing much in particular i still think we're pretty early cycle but i do worry that we're biting off more than we can chew as a country or i would say dubious long-term benefits. >> is that on the spending side, tax side maybe let's make some assumptions here i don't know where you stand on this the corporate tax rate which the

biden administration is calling for it to be 28%, i think the betting line, if you will, conventional wisdom is it's going to come down to something like 25% there will probably be a fight on some of the personal taxes and whatnot. i don't know if you think there is going to be a lot of movement there. >> the big change i think, andrew, on corporate tax rate is not the statutory rate which i would tend to agree. i think the betting line is 28% but it will probably be scaled back to 25%. the big changes that you're going back from -- that president trump moved it to a territorial system and you're moving it back to a worldwide system that's important for the corporations because they're going to wind up paying a lot more in taxes. technology, health care, biotechs we saw a lot of inversions four or five years ago. those are things unless you get the entire planet to agree on a

base tax rate for corporate taxes, it seems to me you're -- you know, there is going to be a bigger hit than just the increase in the statutory rate i would say as far as the capital gains tax rate, that also i think is going to be watered down simply because if you just look at history what happens is there's obviously kind of an optimal -- i think the optimal level is zero personally because they were taxed at the corporate level, but in terms of realizations in terms of getting money into the treasury department, you know, once you get over 28 the realizations tend to go down historically quite a bit. >> jason, how strong do you think the economy really is at this point you know, i look at the unemployment rate and actually i'm surprised at how good it is. i know people believe it's uneven, but 6% you look from 1948 to 2021, the average unemployment rate in america was 5.77%.

i would imagine in the next month or two we'll start to look lower than that. you know, it's interesting only because, look, the lowest rate we ever had in history was back in 1953, i think it was 2.5% we were at 3.5% before the pandemic began how do you think about all of that >> yeah. listen, i think there's no question in my opinion, andrew, the economy is going to boom over the next year or year and a half i mean, we're spending -- we're spending an awful lot of money we don't have. the 1.9 trillion that was passed in march, 1 trillion of that will be spent by september the trump tax cuts, just to put it into perspective, cost, you know, the federal government -- it would save, you know, the american people but $750 billion over ten years the numbers we're talking about

are stratospheric. there's no question in my mind you're going to get very big increases in employment over the next couple of months. economy is going to look terrific earnings are going to look terrific i am a little worried given some of the tax increases we're talking about that will sterilize some of the benefits from the taxes, but i'd also say there's always a cost, you know, spending money that you don't have it may not show up right away, but it could show up in the form of a weaker dollar, it could show up in the form of higher inflation. as an investor i'm not going to stand in front of the fact that the economy is going to rip. it seems to be way down at the end of the year. >> jason, always good to see you. by the way, we've got to run, but if you're right, what is the hedge? meaning is there any hedge that -- you're buying bitcoin? what are you doing >> no, i do -- i think there's a risk in bitcoin because of

regulatory i'm agnostic i don't want to get any hate mail i think there's a big regulatory risk there i do own a fair amount of commodities. i think gold, copper, lithium, cobalt, i think a lot of commodity plays are going to be good plays because i think the dollar is going to weaken. >> interesting jason. always good to see you hope to see you in person. >> i hope so. >> by the way, new york's opening 100% july 1st. the mayor just said it so we're looking forward to seeing you. becky? >> back in the office, too when we come back, breaking economic news on growth and jobs stay tuned, everybody. "squawk box" will be right back.

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rick santelli here with breaking news. current read on initial jobless claims, 553,000. of course, this is a smidge higher than 547,000 last week so it's not a new post covid low but there may be revision. they trickle in these days but it's awfully lateral basically the same, very similar. 3,660,000 is continuing claims

and that has a similar tail to it, that it is just a little bit below last week. indeed -- there's the revision they took my words right out of my mouth last week now revised to 3,651,000 which is a smidge lower than this week's 3 3,660,000. last week's 547 moves up to 566 on initial which does make this week now officially the post covid low at 553,000 maybe more important, gdp first look up 6.4% 6.4% that is a big number but it's not as big as not only expectations, which were a couple of tenths higher but whisper numbers as high as 7%. but it is still a solid number how solid is it? well, we have to go back to 7% read in q3 of 2003 to find a higher quarter read. and if we look at consumption,

wow, 10.7. astronomically large number, better than anticipated and, what, 4.5, 5 times bigger than the look at 2.3 from the last quarter. pricing index, wow, double our last look which was 2% now stands up 4.1. up 4.1 and that's well ahead of the 2.5% we were expocecting in core which is expected to be at 2.4% it came in at 2.3. housing market responding to all of this. 1.66 yields. the current high yield close from the covid is 1.74 so you can see we're snugging up to it. we haven't closed under 1.53 since that high. pull backs have been small discounting earnings with higher interest rates, that's something to ponder. becky, back to you >> rick, thanks very much. let's check in with steve liesman as well, get his take on some of these numbers. steve, what do you think

>> i think they're some amazing numbers inside here and the 6.4% i think is a downpayment on where we are now for the second quarter. i think everybody spins these ahead right away we're in double digits 10.5% was our latest wrap it up. personal consumption expenditures, consumer spending up nearly 11%, 10.7% good side up 24% services side a little bit, very muted. you'll get the goods sector going down and the other going up the reason we didn't get the whisper numbers, those numbers were strong. the reason we didn't get the whisper numbers rick was talking about was this decline in fixed investment down 5% and the nut on that, let me just take a quick look here, the structures down 5% and a big part of that you did have residential

booming, you had non-residential. you had -- sorry, was it equipment? no, no, equipment doing well, too. so there is some investment, some productivity enhancing invest am going on in the economy. you had government up 6% all of that is a downpayment before we settle down as the rebound takes hold and as the big amount of government spending from the biden administration probably left over from the trump administration works its way through the economy, becky >> productivity enhancement spending what is that, steve? is that automation is that stuff that gets rid of jobs or is it stuff that enhances jobs? >> you know, becky, this is a great and important question that i have plans to come back to in a more detailed way, but companies, think about your own company, becky, has spent an awful lot of money on an awful

lot of tech o you the there and what happens to that stuff later? goldman sachs did a brief report earlier this week, did a report that said there were three aspects, and i hope i can remember all of them, of what's going on right now that is going to lead to greater productivity to the economy and workplace digitization was one of them creative destruction was another one as well as moving a lot more stuff online there are shifts going on in this economy as a result of the pandemic, becky, that will outlast the pandemic and there is spending going on in the economy that i think is going to help us out later on in terms of all of the tech just look at apple's earnings. are people buying this stuff because it's useless or because it's did go to improve our profitability and productivity i think the latter is the case >> yeah. i'd agree with that. hey, rick, are you still there, too? >> i certainly am.

>> so tomorrow -- >> i'd like to weigh in? >> please to can. >> inflation is going to be key here it's not only inflation. of course inflation is important and the rate of change is what we -- the fed measures inflation as so prices double that process gives you inflation if they double and stick and go sideways at the elevated price, you have no inflation. but in terms of that productivity number, i really challenge that logic because as much as that goldman report may be right and as much as we move onto the digital world is more productive, there's two downers there. one downer is all the productivity we're gaining, they shift to individuals who end up with these key pad things with crazy questions and answers that takes forever. so they shift the time burden of productivity to you, the consumer the second thing that's even bigger is if the government is spending more tax dollars, that's going to kill productivity so even if what we're talking about enhances it, it's not going to leverage a

difference into positive territory. that's my read >> all right there's some debate that we can continue to play out rick, steve, good to see both of you. >> absolutely. >> we'll check in tomorrow for those inflation numbers, too. by the way, we want to tell you about a big show coming up tomb including leon cooperman. now he'll be joining "squawk box" to make his argument against a wealth tax we'll get to talk to him about that and much more we talked to elizabeth warren earlier this week. and then berkshire hathaway will be holding the annual shareholder meeting. they will be together in los angeles. they'll be taking questions for more than four hours or about four hours i think joined by vice chairman jane and greg able i'll be there, too going through any questions that you can send in. if you would like to get a question send it in to berkshirequestions @cnbc.com by the way, apple obviously a

big holding for berkshire, its biggest holding actually, berkshire owns 907.6 million shares that stock by up 3.32. that's a gain of $3.5 billion for berkshire and the value of the earnings there since last night. those are the types of gains you see with that. andrew >> wow. one-time fed nominee judy shelton will join us to talk about today's latest economic data and jay powell's comments plus, it is a fan favorite get ready for the annual "power lunch" stock draft it starts this afternoon at 2 p.m. eastern time. we have so many people on this list i know we have the radio here so i should be naming everybody, but i don't want to leave anybody out. it is a remarkable all-star team check it out, 2 p.m. today

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ah. okay. plan, pivot. how do you bounce back? you don't, you bounce forward, with serious and reliable internet. powered by the largest gig speed network in america. but is it secure? sure it's secure. and even if the power goes down, your connection doesn't. so how do i do this? you don't do this. we do this, together. bounce forward, with comcast business. breaking news out of the big apple this morning new york city has plans now to fully reopen, yes, fully reopen on july 1st. you know what's after that, july 4th. no restrictions on any businesses, that's the word from mayor bill de blasio this morning. speaking on msnbc, de blasio said people need to remain smart but with increasing vaccinations, life can return to normal look at times square this morning.

it's definitely on the rebound compared to what we used to show you for the last year. i got back here on april 20th so it's been almost a year. it was empty it's not anymore it's not anymore in fact, i don't know whether you guys know it, but i've got a kadri of new york's finest that i have stationed right here for me actually, they -- hi, guys no one is going to mess around with "squawk box" or me. they're here if you ever just notice them behind me, they're there a lot of the time. it's not really for me, but i -- we pretend it is with this -- those guys. so we are on the mend. we're on the rebound and it's all good and i love those guys and what they do keeping us all safe down here obviously they weren't -- you know, the pandemic was the big reason for the shutdown but these guys have been here doing

an amazing job for times square and all of new york city all right. we just got two economic reports in the headlines, weekly jobless claims declining by 13,000 to 553,000. you heard rick say hier twice, didn't he, at least, mack? i think we heard that. and the big one, a first read on first quarter gdp coming in at 6.4% the pce price index plus 3.5%. joining us former federal reserve board nominee judy shelton, she's the author of "money meltdown restoring order to the global currency system. judy, you've poured a lot of cold water on me here. i'm worried again. i'm worried again. we're back to thinking about the fed and what's happening you've made some really good points here and that is that instead of maybe enough individual thinking on the fed,

everybody's kind of in line and there's quite a bit of group think and that leads us to where the price discovery that we're supposed to have in the bond market is obscured by what the fed is doing, which we're kind of like flying blind and i've been saying that maybe rates have stayed low as inflationary expectations go up. i've been attributing that to maybe -- because it's transitory that might not be it it may be because it's being held down by the fed being so involved in every aspect of our lives. >> well, transitory is another one of those vague words that really doesn't have a lot of meaning behind it. i think the problem with the fed's massive intrusion into credit markets is that price discovery really has become obscured in a free market economy, and i think that's still a good thing, you use price signals to indicate the optimal use of

investment capital so you really risk the misallocation of capital and i think you get associated losses of productivity if markets can't decipher the best place to get the risk return tradeoff that makes the most sense. >> well, at this point, how dangerous do you think the situation is in terms of what we hear from the fed? what we hear from central bankers around the world how do you -- how do you check out of the roach motel, if you will, without paying >> well, what's really striking to me is that those questions aren't being asked or voiced by central bank officials themselves that's why i'm concerned about a certain uniformity of opinion or

group think. it turns out that during these extraordinary times when we're really experimenting with monetary policy we threw everything but the kitchen sink at it last march i think chair powell recently referred to that as done kirk. it was an emergency operation. we've had them many times a year not aye single time has a member of the board of governors registered a dissent in voting for the monetary policy action the governors always vote in lock step with the chair in a way there is a certain cl collegiality or gentlemanly. i don't want to say they don't want to send mixed signals to

markets. i don't think it's because they've always been right. we've seen even during the phase when the fed was raising rates from 2015 to 2018, only to take them back in 2019, if anything that was erratic monetary policy and the fed members now seem to look upon that as having waited too long to raise rates or having gone after it too aggressive it's comfortable to have consensus but it doesn't mean it's correct. >> i like the one sentence, it's a beauty >> what does any of that mean? it's all evasive words steeped in euphemisms designed to sound authoritative but lacking content in any value or meaning whatsoever >> well, to me this kind of

makes a mockery when fed officials use such ambiguous terms and refuse to be pinned down of the fed's oft expressed commitment or to refer to strong forward guidance, i don't know what that guidance is really aimed at, what it's seeking to accomplish certainly for average people does that mean 3 is okay, 4 is okay for some time is that a month, is that a quarter or years then the fed will say, no, no, no, we'll give signals well in advance. well, i just don't think that this presumed clarification in giving the fed's parameters really amounts to much and if they're going to keep it at the level of, well, we'll raise rates when we've seen

substantial progress towards our goals, then i think we see it's just a matter of their judgment and that's more meeting to meeting versus any kind of rule that would really be useful for people trying to anticipate future movements. >> so if there are significant policy mistakes that are being made or could be made, how would we see it? would it be in -- would it bei moral hazard or would it be in money going -- or with rates so low that it goes to places where it wouldn't go normally because it would be thought to be too risky or would it be 1970s type inflation that gets out of control before we realize it's even happening how do you see the -- not saying any of this will happen,but what are the biggest risks to a bad outcome from this policy -- these policies >> well, i think this is -- this is exactly why you want to have

diverse opinions on the federal reserve board. that's -- intellectual diversity is really the only kind that matters. you want people with maybe a slightly different framework for analysis because these federal open market committee meetings that are meetings that are aimed at providing the next monetary policy action, they're pretty tightly choreographed. that is, the research staff gives their economic outlook and the financial outlook and there's a discussion, but that's how you miss the clues to big events that maybe aren't within the status quo analysis. and i mean 2008, we had the global financial crisis, and somehow, the federal reserve came out of that seeming to have been a rescuer, but in fact, i think you could make the case of, well, what organization was

more responsible for appropriately calibrating the amount of money and credit out there to the needs of real productive economic activity so i don't think the fed should have it both ways that they can't be held responsible if things go wrong, and at the same time, want to have the power and the discretion to literally create trillions, i think people should be asking, or scrutinizing the excessive amounts of u.s. government debt that our central bank is buying. i think the fed should be concerned about widening any equality and its own role in causing that. >> do you have a strong view of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, given all of the things you just said >> i think that it is healthy to have competition in currency i think that we're looking at a

very interesting future competition. for me, it's less interesting to talk about central bank digital currencies i'm interested in the people who are more oriented toward the decentralization of monetary and financial power, who really want to return money to its basic function of being a reliable unit of account, a dependable store of value i'm not suggesting that the cryptocurrencies have attained that, because for the most part, when you want to buy something with them, you still have to translate them back into the local currency, and so their value seems to move, but i do appreciate the idea that you want a currency that means the same thing on both sides of a supply and demand transaction, between the producer and the consumer, and that is where price signals do their magic, if they are accurate, and they provide their signals to all

parties involved in the transaction. and so it's very interesting to see how this will shape up between sovereign-created currencies, and privately-created currencies, and you'll get back into the old argument, it's useful to work at monetary history between mondel and milton freedman and frederick hyatt who predicted decades ago that you would have private currencies that would compete and provide a better product than sovereign-provided currencies >> wow, i love those names we need to talk more about that. great having you on. i think it may be good you didn't get on -- i don't know if you would fit in there, judy, it might have been good for everybody involved plus, who needs that, right? >> yes >> you would have been obviously not quite as comfortable with the group think, i don't think so anyway, we love having you

on. >> thank you. >> and hopefully, they know what they're doing. i'll just leave it at that, i guess. >> let me say they're all very well-intentioned talented people. >> we now where well-intentioned sometimes leads. >> sometimes >> the path they pave. thank you. an. >> thank you. >> andrew? >> fascinating conversation. meantime, we will get over to cnbc headquarters and our good friend jim cramer, i have so many stocks i need to talk to you about, let's go straight at apple first, because i think, you know, there's a blowout but then of course, the question is how do you think about the stock going forward? you had a number of investors and analysts come out and say, look, we're going to up our numbers in one respect, but we're also going to maybe pull down the multiple. >> yes, i think that's -- well, that's very well stated and i think if it weren't from goldman sachs going from sell to hold, i think what you would see is rather muted stronger for longer, katy huberty line is probably pretty

much what people are thinking. i think it was all nonsense. i think it was an incredible quarter. i think the company is firing on all cylinders. the numbers in china were extraordinary. and the lack of enthusiasm for it is some sort of bizarre enui, that will certainly backfire on those who don't think it is going higher >> and more than half a dozen big companies that reported this morning, pick one more, just give us your take, what's your favorite of what's happened this morning. >> well, look, i am partial to caterpillar, because i keep thinking if you could do this well, in an environment where oil is still lower, if you do this will, in an environment where i got to believe that something happens good in washington, then you've got a stock that could go dramatically higher, i just think they're doing everything right, they're leaner and make a lot more money than they used to be, it is the story for the moment >> okay. jim cramer, we're going to see you in just a couple of minutes. looking forward to it. when we come back, we should tell you, we're not going to

come back yet, shy tell you, to see jim later, and later-later on "mad money," with an all-star packed lineup including the ceos of caterpillar, domino's and align. we'll be right back after this commercial real estate exchange. you see it. you want it. you ten-x it. it's that fast. if i could, i'd ten-x everything. like... uh... these salads. or these sandwiches... ten-x does the same thing, but with buildings. sweet. oh no, he wasn't... oh, actually... that looks pretty good. see it. want it. ten-x it. yum!

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welcome back to "squawk box. i'm dominic chu with a check on your market movers the pre-market earnings a huge catalyst so far. we will start with shares of comcast, the media and broadband internet giant and parent company of cnbc, up 3.5% in the pre-market trade right now better than expected results driven in part by an increase in the number of wireless subscribers and broadband subscribers as well. so those shares up in the pre-market trade and then we're going to look at shares of caterpillar which are up as well the construction and material giant is up about 2.5% right now, it posts better than expected profits and sales as well driven by end user demand for all of its construction equipment, especially demand from asia. it also did say that the computer chip shortage around the world could make it so that it won't meet end user demand in the full year for 2021 and those shares up, by the way a dow component and i know you talked about this, apple shares are higher, the biggest member of the s&p 500, a member of the dow jones industrial average, up nearly 3% right now, surely a market mover, it will affect all

of the indexes so keep an eye on those apple share, joe, andrew, back to you. >> thank you, dom, very much guys, what a journey i laughed. i cried. four stars two thumbs up. what else can we say that sums it up, doesn't it? tomorrow, even more. lee cooperman, right >> we'll get his response. >> elizabeth warren. >> and exxonmobil. >> yes >> okay. >> chevron >> there's a good reason to be here make sure you join us tomorrow "squawk on the street" is coming up right now good thursday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer, david faber is on assignment record highs at the open are in sight for the s&p and the nasdaq it's all about am, facebook, caterpillar and more, nyc announces a full reopening our road map begins with the busiest day for earnings