good morning stock futures under pressure after the dow plunged by 2%. the worst day since january. softbank shares soft despite the quarter. the company declines to extend buybacks andrew has an interview with ceo masayoshi son. and bitcoin falling sharply after elon musk said tesla would stop taking it as payment for cars citing environmental concerns. billionaire mark cuban says not so fast. details straight ahead it is thursday, may 13th, 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. the dow off 700 points yesterday for a loss of 2% the s&p was down 2.1%. if you were looking for relief this morning, forget about it for now. no relief in sight dow futures down 170 points. s&p futures are down by 12 nasdaq off by 32 by the way, guys, this is the worst week for stocks we have seen in six months by the way, it is only thursday morning. check this out looking at where we have been over the last six months keep this in perspective we are still up over the six-month pesriod dow and s&p are 4% from the

all-time high. nasdaq is over 8% from the record high. you need to look at where the stocks have moved and how far we have come to keeper spe perspece for the s&p 500, 32% of the s&p 500 individual stocks are 10% or more below the 52-week highs some of the high flyers that saw big gains that have been giving them back. worth pointing out it is not just the stock market paying attention. bonds sitting up and taking notice yesterday as we saw the inflation numbers coming in. the 10-year up at 1.7% we got the first knee jerk reaction we said no reaction in the bond market 1.7% remember friday of last week, we

saw the 10-year fall below 1.5%. that is a significant move we shook off the weaker jobs numbers. today at 8:30, we get two important numbers to pay attention to the first is producer prices yesterday was consumer prices with the big tick. the expectation with 0.3% increase in ppi. that number yesterday was hotter than anticipated we will see if it plays out with producers paying second number at 8:30 is the jobless claims weekly number we get after friday's big government report that showed weaker than expected job creation. two numbers to watch at 8:30 we will see how it plays out andrew >> thanks, becky let's give you an update on the cyber attack that shutdo the east coast fuel pipeline colonial pipeline has now restarted operations started at 5:00 p.m. yesterday

warned it would take several days at this point for the supply chain to return to normal the biden administration telling us it is temporarily easing what they are calling central old shipping requirements to allow foreign tankers to transport gas and diesel to fuel starved areas of the country we should see gas supplies remaining at reasonable levels the outage sparking panic at the pump we talked about that yesterday according to the latest gas buddy figures, 71% of gast stations in north carolina are out of fuel. 50% of stations in georgia are out of gas joe, you have the story that everyone is talking about right now. it involves cars, but not fuel maybe it does? you know what? you know how hard it is to get

lithium and rare metals? you power the grid with something. some coal. it's one of those stories that is amazing we'll talk about it now. what about those numbers i saw the states down along the east coast 50% had run out of gas that's messed up >> 74% in north carolina >> and north carolina. that can cause some of the scary situations which we saw play out fisticuffs and everything else hopefully next week, it will all be a distant memory. bitcoin falling sharply. people have different closes for what they he look at. i show it down 14% it was at 57,000 and it went as

low as 46,000. bouncing now you now to 49 plus. elon musk announced we are concerned about the rapidly increasingly use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining and transactions especially coal which is used to power the grid to electric cars. they intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining becomes more sustainable transitions to more sustainable energy we will talk to tom about how much bitcoin mining is already in renewable sources tesla is looking at our cryptocurrency that use less than 1% of bitcoin transaction

mark cuban said after the announcement that the team will continue to accept bitcoin and ether and dogecoin we know replacing gold as a store of value will help the environment which is a totally different take on everything my take on this, guys, elon's whole deal is climate change and responding to it and electric vehicles and austensibly around that his bread is buttered by electric cars and solving climate change whether you like rare earth mining which pollutes the earth or any other concerns.

just on a pr basis, it doesn't look good for him to be pushing bitcoin as the savior of climate change >> to me, the bigger question -- >> did he just figure this out >> that's what i don't understand he just figured this out he goes all the way to dogecoin. he goes out there and now -- they are not taking it off the balance sheet of the company he says that and the balance sheet of the company suddenly goes down 14%. i don't know >> this is less about elon and more about bitcoin and whether there are speculators here or gamblers here. you see somebody make comments and drives the price up or down rapidly. that tells you this is not a settled market >> it is not stable enough to beat currency to buy coins which we knew. >> the bigger question long term, to me, if you were a

bitcoin believer, you had to believe big institutions were going to buy bitcoin not just a retail audience if elon musk, who is mr. esg, saying it iis no good -- you ar right. this is not new information. i have written columns about bitcoin. i know we will have pomp on. you can compare it to gold and all sorts of things. i don't think there is a question in a million years that bitcoin is the most inefficient transaction tools available. full stop. period end of discussion. i don't think there is a debate about that i'm sure we will have people come on trying to tell us that having said that, how are big institutions going to buy it in the future, it is possible

that bitcoin is powered by solar and wind and all sorts of things maybe several years from now that will be the case. at least for now in the immediate future, if not for the next decade, it won't be >> nothing is powered by solar and wind right now >> and that's what i was going to say you look at the factories he is putting together in china and shanghai or in other places or in the united states part of what he would argue -- >> bitcoin for energy use. the world runs on fossil fuels >> no, no, no. the inefficiency of bitcoin as a transaction medium if you were going to start a trans transaction medium, this is the last one you start if you think about the energy it takes to move money >> if you try to do to work, the last thing you do is go in an internal combustion engine if

you believe this hype. when will that payoff? >> i knew we would get into a debate of climate change >> we just had it. when do we see the weapbenefits this when do we have hurricanes slow down 20 years 50 years when will we see that progress is it soon i hope it's soon >> i want to give you a st stat statistic. one bitcoin transaction has the same carbon footprint as 7 735,121,000 visa transactions or

55,000 youtube videos. >> you're good you are clean and go around and lecture in your jet on stopping this buy carbon offsets it's simple. simple it all works i want to talk software. we'll come back on the other side of this we have a big interview. softbank shares plunged overnight in tokyo despite a re recordly quarterly profit. i have an interview with masayoshi son. a huge lineup still to come. selloff from barry sternlicht. all that and more on ""squawk" i just a little bit. >> announcer: this cnbc program is sponsored by baird. visit bairddifference.com.

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welcome back to "squawk box. one year after posting an unprecedented loss back then softbank has made a comeback $46 billion in annual profit most ever for a japanese company ever and on par with berkshire and microsoft. investment stock fell overnight. i had an interview with

masayoshi son last night we spoke about the record results. >> just exactly months ago it was just the beginning of cov covid-19 people worried the world was worried. i was worried. we had to take cautious actions and we took a defensive mode we announced $45 billion of monetize which was in crisis mode we did a very strong move for the defensive mode we had enough cash and we with that cash, we kept on investing in the unique lone loans for ai. it was pretty good in the end.

>> if we had this conversation a year ago, did you ythink the returns would look as spectacular as they have >> no. it's been a good result. i had a long-time confidence, but unknown for the short-term it is great to have a great outcome. >> it is a remarkable outcome. one of the things you've talked about is the fact that you want to make sure this isn't a one-off outcome. this isn't something that just happens once and it's done the question is how do you look at a year like this and try to make it sustainable? >> well, you know, we had a good outcome because of many lucky

opportunities. i would echo the system so we can repeat about a year ago, we had maybe 100 companies in our group now we have 220 companies. so, between the funds, we had 14 ipos exit the last 12 months one year before that, we had eight. so, with this year, we will have so many more because we now have a bigger base of companies and the companies are getting more mature to get ready for ipo. so i want to create a ecosystem where we don't have just a few lucky shots.

we have multiple companies going for ipos >> given everything that happened in the last year, i asked masa son about the biggest lessons he learned and what he is expecting >> we had issues we had many bad investments we made i hope we have profitability in the next several quarters. so many regrets of bad investment, but actually more regrets and missing a great company investment so that is even bigger regret. >> who do you think you missed i know we had conversations before about jeff bezos and amazon and things like that.

is there more recent misses? are there companies you wished you invested in the last couple years? >> yeah, yeah, yeah. so airbnb and several other companies that we should have inve invested we were looking to invest and i was not smart enough >> when you look back and say airbnb i didn't see it. what do you see now that you should have seen and are there lessons in that? >> well, i saw they are a pretty good company a great business model i thought the price was a little too expensive. we were discussing to invest i was not smart enough to accept the price tag that they had a couple of years ago.

you know, loss of regret banging heads. >> how much do you think typically about as an investor, is it a price issue for you or just a company issue meaning you love the company and not that you'll pay any price, but because you have a long-term view, you know, you take the bet? >> most of the misses that we did is price issue we thought it was too expensive because as you can understand, most of the companies we invest this is a long view. you have to have a long view of how the company will go and you have to imagine. some time the result would be a bad result as we have experienced. sometimes you have to be patient

to rely on the positive side >> i was fascinated by that answer because i never heard him talk about missing airbnb or snowflake and missing because of the price. it is a view he is willing to take a bet irrespective of the price. when i spoke to masa son at the conference last year, all of japan's very good handling of the pandemic now the tables, of course, have turned japan is now envious of the united states and the vaccination rollout. i asked masa son about the olympics taking place this summer and frankly if they should happen. here is what he had to say >> i am very much afraid of having olympics. not just about japan, but for the many countries

they are having a big and tough situation. i don't know how they can support sending athletes >> masa son publicly saying effectively the olympics should not take place this summer in tokyo. we'll have more of that exclusive interview with masa son in the next hour with the tech giants and the latest conversation, guys, with jack ma you want to hear about that. joe. >> yes, we look forward to that. i like the background. for a second, i thought andrew got him out on his yacht then the water wasn't moving >> it is funny he popped up on the screen in the beginning. we had a small talk during the taping i said where are you i honestly thought he was on a boat i said what island are you on. he says, i'm just in my office

>> he's great and humble and everything else. i make $46 billion in annual profit and i'm on a yacht and it is live and i'll talk to you i'll have some friends around behind me if you know what i'm talking about. it is going to be leo and others >> andrew, it is interesting what he said about the olympic p olympics it feels like the olympics are coming one way or the other. they figured out a safe bubble and they think they can keep everybody there and not letting them out you get the sense he is trying to push something that would change it? >> i get the sense if you look at the polling in tokyo right now, it is somewhere between 65%

and 80% of the citizens of japa don't want the olympics to take place this summer. it is so overwhelming how much the people in japan just think this is a terrible idea and to have what is the most influence and wealthiest man in japan coming on television saying we shouldn't do this could be a powerful statement to the government it is worth noting, the president of the ioc was supposed to make a trip to tokyo within last week and decided he could not go because of the challenges rates there are unfortunately very high. i think there will be a lot of questions over the next several weeks about which way this ultimately goes. clearly the ioc wants to do it prime minister of japan wants to do it. they are making plans. we will see what that ultimately

looks like in the end. >> not great hearing about the seven yankees that were all vaccinated. >> we have to have a conversation about that. >> j&j >> yeah. we have to have a conversation >> j&j was not 95% still. >> sure. to have seven people that almost makes no sense >> you bring people from all over the world and who knows what you are bringing in with variants i don't want to sound like an alarmist this is all uncharted. we're not done yet hopefully we're close. coming up, hertz global looking for the bankruptcy plan exit with a rare payout to shareholders. and details next of tesla backing out of bitcoin over environmental concerns

cryptocurrencies right now, as you can see, are showing pretty big losses today which came after losses yesterday we'll be right back. >> announcer: this cnbc program is sponsored by truist financial. bb & t and sun trust are now, it r truist better together.

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bankruptcy the trade over-the-counter yesterday with the gain of over 50% which brings the market cap to nearly $900 million you think of hertz, you think it should be worth more than that the company has all of the issues it selected a group of investment firms to hope to reorganize h and exit bankruptcy by june do you remember where that stock offering that was pulled was going to be? i can't remember it was higher than that. i don't think when we were talking about the stock offering we thought it was worth $5 at that point or $6 that's amazing you think shareholders get zero during bankruptcy. that is the whole -- that's why this is unique or unusual, i guess you say. shares of bumbleumble i thought it was bumbler >> no, bumble. >> shares of bumble are lower.

the company swung to a an profii the first quarter. sales doubled thanks to the uptick of users. revenue of $333 million. the company's ceo will be on tech check today at 11:30 a.m. eastern. becky. thanks, joe. when we come back, the potential impact of president biden's tax plan on your money that conversation is up next also, a lineup still to come this morning including mark lore. and pete buttigieg and the ceo of coupang >> announcer: executive edge is sponsored by at&t business our people and network will help keep you connected let's take care of business. hat.

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good morning checking the futures down 177 points yesterday. did you watch during the day

it was down 300 or 400 it is going down and coming back you know, as we went into the close, some of the worst levels we saw for the session we closed on a percentage basis. we're still at high levels at this point, these are not that worrisome at this point i guess these are the worst we have seen in a while becky, the nasdaq wouldn't have that far to go to be pretty anemic for the year as far as return >> the nasdaq has been the worst perf performer. the dow and s&p are 4% or little more than 4% from the all-time highs. nasdaq is more than 8% from the all-time high. it has had a rough year to date if you are watching these things and seeing what happens with it. that's the big question. is there more of a rotation out of growth? you know, i wouldn't say into things like the dow industrials when you look at the industrials

down, too. that's the big question. is this an overall selloff is there a transition that takes place? it is something to watch closely. if you get higher inflation numbers confirmed again and the producer prices today just like consumer prices yesterday, i think people would not be surprised to see this in the ppi today in a bigger than expected way. the consensus estimate is 0.3% if you see this show up in a bigger way to date, what does it mean for stocks overall? will it force the fed's hand at some point to be a little -- yeah they are -- the fed is not expected to raise rates until 2023 not this year. not next year. you have to wait a year and a half to get to that point. the fed could do a lot of other things sooner than raise rates to have an impact on the market. if they stop buying so much in the bond market or if they pulled back on any of the

quantitative easing measures that's what the market watchers are waiting for. >> the journal makes an interesting case and points out that year over year, we were in covid hell a year ago. the comparisons make it look like it is higher inflation. supply constraints and commodities are up colonial pipeline. all of these things could be seen as transitory then you throw in the actual money printing that we're talking about that druckenmiller was talking about. that is the long-term thing that is more than a couple of months. if you make the case that we really have hit an inflection point where we crossed the rubicon. that is one of the terms that druckenmiller used >> what is transitory? what is not?

once it gets worked in the consumer pricing and wages does it come back down >> that is why bitcoin is not correlated yesterday to the risk off trade. if it really is going to replace gold. >> was it that or elon >> he did that later with the cpi number like that. gold or gold equivalent. >> that chills the speculation and fervor around that i want to get to the next guest. this is really important tax day is around the corner monday, may 17th is coming as president biden is pushing on the tax plan, the next guest argues for closing loopholes he knows of what he speaks the former irs commissioner charles rosati he and four other commissioners wrote an op-ed titled "biden's

proposal would create a fairer tax system." charles, thank you for joining us today so many interesting things you brought up the thing i took away from this is a lot of revenue escaping because people are not following the law and the irs doesn't have the teeth to enforce the law >> that's right, becky thanks for having me on. you are right. there's enormous amount of money out there that is owed under the existing tax law that isn't being paid we estimated $574 billion in 2019 if you compare it, that is more than all of the income taxes paid by 135 million taxpayers. enormous number. my feeling is before we raise taxes on the people already paying, we collect the money from the people who aren't >> when you start hearing about what is fair that is what is fair

making sure people are actually paying what they should be paying right now how is this happening? are people cheating or just not paying taxes or finding other ways what is the source >> actually it is a long standing issue it has been really very, very simple when most people are paying what they owe because they get the report from their employer with a w-2 or bank with the interest and dividends. taxes on that income is paid at 95% to 99% accurately. where there is not reporting with business income, it is as low as 50% it is uneven that is what makes it particularly unfair. >> where is it not reported? what are you talking about in particular >> almost all income on businesses, independent businesses, run a business, own a business, it is up to you to put down receipts and income

whether you own it and put on the individual return or have something like a partnership that kind of income is supposed to be reported and some of it is there's no external third party reporting of it. the irs has very limited ability to check it. auditing only brings in 2% of the gap. >> partnerships in the s-1s have been on the rise many more created over the last 10 to 12 years >> longer than that. i looked back since the mid '80s if you looked at 1985, the total amount of business income in the pass-through, was a really tiny amount mostly small really tiny businesses compared to corporate income which is huge all of the big corporations, the income on the pass-throughs is equal to what all of the big corporations are it hasn't crept up no reporting there is really negligible

audits. >> they have been responsible for paying out the stimulus and keeping up with the affordable care act and all that. all while fewer and fewer employees and smaller budget how you do you fix it? >> okay. some of my colleagues that you mentioned who wrote the editorial, we developed a plan that we think could collect $1.4 trillion in four years from the tax gap. that is still 19%. three things you have to fill in the holes in the reporting. when there is no reporting, you know, the accuracy is very low secondly, you have to make investments with sustained funding. not immediate influx you can't build computer systems or hire people or fire them the next year. having some sustained funding

over a period of time. we estimate 6% a year. that is what would be required if you do that, over a ten-year period, you can close that tax gap. $1.4 trillion sounds like an enormous number. it is an enormous, but it is only 19% of the tax gap. that is equal to the biden plan for raising individual income taxes. this is a very important step to take no matter what else you do. >> charles, we are out of time i would love to have you back. i think this is really important. a plan that you and four other former irs commissioners put forward. it bears examining we love to have you back again thanks for your time >> thank you for having me, becky. >> okay. take care. andrew >> he is fabulous, by the way. what he is trying to do is amazing. we don't have enough time to talk about it. requires the banks to monitor people i know people have concerns

about what that means. it is interesting. coming up when we return, more on the bitcoin selloff and later, don't miss the interview you with transportation secretary pete buttigieg on the response of the cybersecurity attack on the colonial pipeline. we're back after this. >> announcer: currency check is sponsored by interactive brokers. the professionals gateway to the world's markets. ♪ ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ ♪

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coming up, elon musk puts his bitcoin plans in reverse now saying tesla will no longer deilpt bitcoin as payment. the tas on the market impact next oh yeah! honey, you still in bed? yep! bye! that's why we love skechers max cushioning footwear. they've maxed out the cushion for extreme comfort. it's like walking on clouds! big, comfy ones! oh yeah!

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in a turn of events, elon musk saying it will no longer accept bitcoin payments. bitcoin is trading under $50,000. joining us is anthony pompiano i guess bitcoin bulls like you were more than happy to accept elon's endorsements in terms of accepting it for payment, putting it on the balance sheet. what do you think now and what do you thi occurred to him thust suddenly because he knew all along all these things and suddenly he's on "saturday night live" one second, a couple of days later he drops this bombshell. what do you think is happening >> yeah. thanks for having me, guys i think we've got too kind of

stick to the facts i always say don't listen to what they're saying. elon musk is still long billions of dollars of bitcoin between tesla, spacex and he owns billions of dollars of bitcoin and he's not selling it because of the energy narrative. the second is the facts are overwhelming 75% of miners use some form of renewable engy and theean is the financial incentive is for miners to go around the world and find the cheapest power. that is their cheapest input they're financially incentivized to find this renewable power when you look at the comparisons of how muchcoal is used in bitcoin mining, it's dwarfed by things like the coal that is used in the banking system they'll say there's more electricity used by the bitcoin network than some countries. what people fail to say is that the american consumer, their use

of christmas lights consume more power in a given year than some cou country's electricity consumption. i think what we have to remember is the financial incentive is to adopt renewable power. there's been study after study after study done showing that is what miners are doing. this is going to be a launching pad for tesla to launch a renewable power mining rigor some sort of mining equipment. so i think that this is actually just part of a marketing ploy by tesla, draw attention to the issue and come up with a solution and kind of save the day but it's important to remember, elon musk did not sell any bitcoin because of this and i don't think that he's going to change his mind about the prospects of bitcoin, it's simply a way for them change that narrative >> you don't think this is bad pr, just in general for bitcoin bulls when someone like elon musk makes comments like this,

it can't be good. >> i actually think it's very good it's the streisand effect. remember when everyone was yelling and screaming about robinhood and downloads were exploding for robinhood. the exact thing is happening for bitcoin. all the mainstream media, twitterverse are doing is marketing bitcoin. they're waking the world up to what is bitcoin. people will go and sign up for accounts across all of the crypto exchanges and they'll start buying bitcoin for the first time because they see it in the news. i think while the intuitive thought track is that stuff like this is bad, what you see in the data across these exchanges and across the kind of signups is actually it leads to many more people coming in and buying the asset. as you saw when the price started to crash, it was down about 70% yesterday. it did dip another 3, 4%, whatever it was, but we're still sitting around 950 billion, $1 trillion there's really heavy buying that you can see in the on chain metrics. when it dips to that level,

there's a ton of people, both institutional and retail buying up bitcoin i don't foresee we're going to see much lower levels than that. >> hey, sorkin here. i don't dispute the idea that in the future we could get more renewable energy used to produce and mine and transact in bitcoin. there's no question that that is possible, but it's still at least several years out if not longer i think if you look at the cambridge study and you can google it, it's the most comprehensive study that's been done on this topic while there are lots of people who are using some form of renewable energy, a lot of it, if not a majority of it, is not. so the question is if you're an esg investor, if you're blackrock, one of the big institutions talking about bitcoin constantly, there's a sense that they might jump into these waters almost immediately. the question is whether you think they hold off even temporarily as a function of -- if elon musk doesn't want to

touch it in this case, i recognize he still owns it, but is not advocating for it in the same way, it becomes a lot harder for larry fink to. >> larry fink better drop dollars then because the dollar is way worse for the environment than bitcoin that would be a ridiculous argument to make what i think ends up happening again, the cambridge study, i've seen it, i've read it, i'm sure they're fine people but there's all sorts of data put out where literally the lower bound of their estimation -- i'm sorry, the upper bound is 11 or 12 times higher than the lower bound. maybe it's a little bit, maybe it's a lot it's not very clear. when you start to look at things like what's actually happening with the miners themselves, two of the largest provinces in china, the metrics have done great research on this they're almost 100% hydro. what you see again is on the ground reality is that two of the largess are almost 100% hydro we're also seeing a big, big

shift into the united states and canada where there's a much greener grid if you look at folks like great american mining and the team there, what they're doing, they're going to one of the worse things that happens in the environment and gas flaring. they're capturing it and making it carbon neutral. it's not a story of what's going to happen. 75% of minors today, this isn't a thing in the future, today use some form of renewable power and in many cases it's like 40 to 50% i think some of the studies show that 100% of the power used by 40 to 50% of the miners is it renewable today. i understand people want to kind of talk about this esg is kind of top of mind for folks but again the data just doesn't back up the narrative. i think what you're starting to see now is this is actually going to shift wait a second, what is all of the energy consumption for all of these goods mark cuban talked about coal and the banking system bitcoin is the most efficient monetary system we have.

just as stanley druckenmiller believes the economy is in trouble, it's another data point that shows that bitcoin is superior. >> anthony, thanks. >> thanks for having me, guys. >> we'll see you "squawk box" will be right back.

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inflation fears fueling the selloff. the futures this morning pointing to a lower open in what's already been the worst week for stocks in over six months market heavy weight barry sternlicht will join us with his take on what's driving this move with inflation in focus, it's the perfect time to speak to jets co-founder mark lorie about the state of the consumer and the future of retail and facebook under fire. a number of attorneys general putting pressure on the company to abandon plans to build instagram for kids we're going to break down both sides of this controversy. 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, joe kernen take a look at equity futures. we'll see how inflation moves people around. right now everything is looking down about 155 points down on the dow. nasdaq off 33 points, s&p 500 off about 12 points. we should say on that number we're going to get at 8:30, the consensus forecast calling for .3% rise and .4 in the ex food and energy rate. apple now below the 200 day moving average level this is the first time in more than a year. you can take a look at that chart. amazon also below its 200 day moving average level alphabet hasn't closed this low

since 2015 it's concerns about inflation and the fed's monetary policy are mounting on wall street joining us in an exclusive interview to discuss the markets and the economy, barry sternlicht, chairman and ceo of sternlicht capital barry is a long-time market watcher and real estate maven and everything else. i don't know if you saw druckenmiller speaking earlier the injectors are swirling they're spending too much money and eventually there's going to be fiscal and monetary and eventually there's going to be some type of reckoning where are you on this? >> good morning, joe good morning, everyone we're definitely -- i saw stan on tuesday i guess it was. scary stuff, but i kind of agree with him he's wildly bullish. i did call a beat in march and i thought we would get through this and the markets would rally and they did

i'm equally negative today the one thing holding stocks up is the pure weight of all the money printed around the world and very little places to put it the speculative fever funded by the stimulus packages is real, comes in waves, leaves in waves. under the trump administration in december we had a $900 billion stimulus and then three months later the democrats who ran on helping america did a $1.9 trillion stimulus so $2.6 trillion and right now americans are sitting on like 6 trillion of savings which is like 2 trillion, 1.5 trillion more than normal and it's created all kinds of weird, perverse outcomes. i flew over long beach, california, you can see 700 container ships trying to get stuff into the port as americans are on a massive spending spree. sales are up more than -- year over year more than pre-pandemic people are spending all this money but they're not spending

it, they're speculating on it. as you saw with the jobs number, people are not coming back to work because they have a pretty good life at home now making the equivalent of $40,000 a year all of the unemployment in the united states is in the service industry mine, hospitality and tourism and retail those are the low wage earners, service jobs, those are the people collecting the unemployment benefits not coming back to work so the miss on the jobs payroll noum was real, it was big. we see it. we have a hotel here in florida. we can't find housekeepers we're running 85% occupancy with housekeepers for 55% job fair after job fair and people are not coming out. we're still increasing wages and they stay home some people don't have to pay their rents. so if you go to the stores and harbor shops, you go to the design district in miami, there are lines out the stores the crowd is unusual it's not the crowd you normally

see there. i think there's no question that janet yellen and her peers should get out of the ivory tower. you're seeing unbelievable shortages in the u.s. economy from chicken rings to sheetrock to curtain wall to couches that everyone's ordering on pottery barn and west elm that they can't get because they're all coming from china. what we did is write a giant stimulus package and now we're shopping or buying anything from off shore. we're not doing anything to fix the long-term issues in the u.s. economy. our trade deficit is $75 trillion last month, a record, because we're buying everything. the government is giving us this money, we're buying it off shore. i think stanley is right we fundamentally have a huge issue right now. i think the corrections in the market, i listen to jim cramer quite a bit, he talks about multiples of revenue which makes me nauseous. when you can't value a company you talk about multiples of

revenue. that's if they have the same intellectual property, the same industry, the same market share, the same addressable customer bases and, you know, they're not all going straight up. and i think the discount rates the market was using on many of these companies are kind of wrong. i think the market is seeing -- you know, you're seeing the corrections come in. i do think the fed, you know, interest rates are being suppressed by the government, which is basically what stan said and we have to get off of this sugar cane and fluffernutter economy and get back to the meat and potatoes economy. people coming back to work taking the jobs available. record job openings. 8 million job openings something is wrong it's very obvious people are not coming back to work, even though we want them to come back to work in fact, again, in our hotels we have to run our hotels at 85% occupancy even though we have

demand to be full because we can't find people to service the guests the guest experience is terrible there is a fundamental people. the political class is kind of all screwed up and you have some very worrisome things like increase in long-term capital gains taxes. do they want to encourage people to day trade, buy gamestop and dog coin or dogecoin it's a worthless coin or do they want to have a long-term investment it's interesting to see manufacturing jobs drop. manufacturing jobs we're short-term to begin with we want to make a country that's more short-term oriented by raising long-term capital gains taxes to ordinary rates? the idea is preposterous >> barry, do you think -- so you describe that wages are going up, that benefits are causing people to ask for more money, to come back to work maybe and

maybe they're hesitant because they're still fearful of covid that seems transitory. some of these other issues, supply issues, the difficult comps from last year in terms of prices being depressed so we see the inflation there, that could be transitory. in your view are we already seeing monetary effects that -- from the fed and from fiscal spending or is it -- is the inflation now just something because of these one offs that are going to ease? do you think we've already done too much in terms of spending and we're starting to see milton friedman type monetary inflation? >> well, i think the democrats, you know, trump ran a 3.8% unemployment rate over a trillion dollar deficit. shockingly the interest rates fell the democrats picked that up and said we can spend all the money we want with no consequence.

i think that's not true. they ran on the stimulus package, they passed it in march. you knew the pandemic at that point was going to pass in the summer, that we haved immunity, steep slopes of vaccinations and they still did what they call the c.a.r.e.s. act. this should be the throw money away act because we really had to help people who didn't have a job and not those who should have been coming back to work. so i think, yes, we've probably created a flood gate here. there's so much money printing and they have more coming at us under great jargon names you have put so much pressure on interest rates and it could really slow the economy. you have some fundamental problems, right? the supply issues are probably long dated the housing market is in an unsustainable euphoric increase in prices. i think -- i do think -- i think there's some long-term issues. we do have short-term issues i talk about in travel you have

the bubble from the summer you'll have this spending wave i do think after labor day people get back to work and we want inflation of wages. we want people to make more money, but in our case in our hotels we're offering $16 an hour and full benefits and they won't come off their couch which i think is -- it's not bad staying home you can be with your kids and 30% of some of our places in south florida are not paying rent. >> do you think the fed is going to be forced to go higher sooner >> they dug a deep trench for themselves but i think they will have to reverse course. >> how soon? >> pretty soon in two months. >> raise rates or taper or something? >> taper slow purchasing and i think if they don't, i think this little crazy wave of inflation could get out of hand and, i mean, americans have this cash and they're not going to take it back from them there's probably more aid coming they introduced a bill to help the hotel workers. it's a year and a half too late.

so it probably won't -- it will die in congress but i think the political class has to pay attention to the business community and the economy and not do jargon about, you know, helping the world. let's ve theveryone should be happy act who would be against that. that's not what we need precise laser like legislation to help the industries in need and promote the business investments we want. i think -- i think this is -- it is a bottleneck. i mean, we'll get shipping lanes back eventually people will start plucking chicken wings and i'll be able to get the curtain that i need for my hotel that we're building in nashville some day, but -- some day -- fundamentally we've changed the economy. there's been enormous wealth

generation across the board including those we want to help and the under served, but europe is closed. europe -- when europe opens, hold on to your chair. i was on the coast of europe recently and it is closed tight. it is like new york city last march and april. i mean, it's closed. so when 330 million europeans start doing things again, i mean, it's going to be tough it's going to put more pressure on all of these prices it's now cheaper to build with steel than with lumber that is a first because lumber prices have risen so far so fast so it is -- we've created an odd looking set of circumstances here and the political class isn't helping anything. >> hey, barry, you are normally a really chill guy this is about the most rattled i think i've ever heard you. is that a fair assessment? are you more worried about things than you've just about ever been? >> yeah, i guess -- i guess, you know, the only thing holding

stocks up is -- i mean, stocks aren't that expensive. you have to look at the s&p 500 and 10 stocks are 25% of it. the faang stocks aren't very expe expensive. it's not the googles, apples, facebooks that are expensive, it's all of this newly born tech wrecks everybody wants to buy peloton it's 150 times ebitda or shopify which is 350 times ebitda. these are great companies, they're just not worth this. tesla. tesla cannot be worth more than all of the car manufacturers in the world. at the end of the day, it's a great car company. three of them. volkswagen, audi are coming on really hard. countries are not going to give up their auto industry to tesla. china will never let tesla dominate china's auto industry just irresponsible they're telling people things, justifying valuations when

anyone who took grade school finance would tell you the stocks are tremendously over valued the s&p 500 is not over valued but i don't think rates should be here. rates should be higher, like stan said. i don't like manipulated markets and now the u.s. government is manipulating markets without -- janet yellen could say she doesn't think the stimulus package kept people from taking jobs, that's just not right. and i would hope they talk to the business owners of the country. look at all of the surveys of business owners and they're hurting the very people they want to help they're not -- inflation will mean that they can't buy fresh vegetables, they'll buy frozen vegetables inflation hurts the poor more than the wealthy it's not going to change how i eat but it's really bad for the country. it's just not sustainable. and it's not about redistribution, it's about creating a country's economy that invests in the right things and has a national -- we need a

long-term plan, not a short-term plan government should help us do that. >> speaking about that, we've had a lot of political discussions with you over time so i'm not going to blame you for what's happening, but certainly you might be complicit. what do you make of the infrastructure that's being proposed and what's being called in infrastructure and what do you make of the way it's going to be paid for in terms of taxes are you down with all of this? >> so i think we can -- should have done it under the trump administration arguably the obama administration america's infrastructure needs inimprovement. >> you're talking infrastructure. >> bridges, roads, tunnels, airports the things that make businesses hum. that's a fraction of what they proposed these are grab bags. we're not a rich country we have a $27 trillion deficit rising every day we have to be much more careful

about how we spend money and spend it on things that must get fixed. the funding, i think it's a democratic problem if they can't get it done, they'll say the republicans didn't vote for the infrastructure plan and the republicans are trying to trim it back and then they'll take the corporate rate income tax increase and throw it into individual increase. we know corporate rates. i don't think they should have been 21. 25 is fine or you could have phased it in i think individual tax rates can go back to where they were, 39 1/2, that's fine. 40% i don't think anyone complains. what we complain about is how they spend their money we'd line up to give them money to improve education, to improve our infrastructure, to help those in need, to help health care in an efficient way the problem with the obama health care program is it didn't help the cost of the health care

we had to address the cost he only got halfway through it i don't think any of my affluent friends would have any problem at all they shouldn't have health care that's three times the health care in sweden, canada, the u.k. with worse outcomes. the system has to be fixed a businessman running the united states would start with a zero cost budget and then we'd say these are the things we have to get done we're going to allocate our scarce resources towards these things but we seem to think we can do everything for everyone and print money forever. i feel like we're heading for the republic we're debasing the currency and as stan talked about, the u.s. dollar could come under attack as the reserve currency. it will take a lot chinese are not interested in having the u.s. stay as the reserve currency they don't even know what short term investment is they asked us for a 100 year pro form ma on a deal we were doing?

it's not worth the ink it's printed on they have a long-term strategic plan and we're worried about next week. >> i know andrew wants in, but you've got three teslas. does that offset the gulf streams and the yachts or are you -- >> i don't have a yacht, joe. >> in terms of your influence on climate change are you still overdoing it or do you think tesla's offset that? that's not really a question andrew, you have a question for barry? >> well, it may very well relate to that in a certain way because the big news of the morning is elon musk's decision around tesla to not accept bitcoin for payment. you're in miami, i think, which is now trying to become the crypto capital of america. do you have any new views on crypto and bitcoin and the like especially given your views about what's about to happen to the dollar it sounds like? >> it's not about to happen so it's a long-term issue for the

dollar look, i think -- i think the digital currencies are real. i'm not sure as stan said which one will win i mean, bitcoin is the dumb gold, the dumb coin but it's the first. it's never been hacked i actually own it. i've recently taken some profits because of the specter of increased capital gains taxes and i thought it would be good to take some money off the table. the utility coins, all of the other coins some will be very valuable i'm not sure they deserve market caps that they have, but some of them -- this is -- and somebody explained this to me it's very relevant it's like the iphone you couldn't have had uber you needed the iphone to do your uber app now that you have this digital ledger, you'll have all of these ecosystems built off of this digital ledger that is a game changer it will smooth out payments in finance. there will be less receivables and title. title should go the way of the dodo bird.

you don't have a title insurance. it's that property you can trade it without a lawyer you can have a registration of property so the future is -- of digital will be real i think bitcoin -- i think the markets are hugely speculative at this point. >> you just said something also that struck me which is you were selling some to take some gains in part because of what you think are going to be impending tax changes and higher costs does that mean that you're thinking as this year progresses not just to do that for bitcoin but for all of the assets you have, not all of them? how are you thinking about that? what do you think that's going to do to the market this fall? >> yeah. i think the question everybody wants to know is what will be the date of the capital gains tax change if you look at tesla's performance last year, 700, 800%, whatever it was, all the other, snowflakes, people take profits and try to lock in

capital gains. i have not heard anybody definitively know when capital gains tax will go up if it goes up 26, 28%, i don't think that's a big deal. i think if you take it up to the way they were talking to take it up, and the only person standing in the way of completely new tax cut is the republicans did this. they actually did the tax cut in reconciliation without a single democratic vote. they can't complain the democrats are going to do the exact same thing joe manchin is the most important person in the united states right now he's the only person that will stand in front of the far left wave that is trying to recreate america while they can i think what you'll see -- i mean, the average impact is japan's property market. if you remember when the capital gains taxes go up, we won't sell and so people will -- there will be less things for sale. we'll keep refinancing our assets the government will get less receipts, not more it will discourage people selling. >> okay. >> we've created a crazy market

in japan. >> barry, it's fascinating and it sounds like people may sell in advance of that we will see. looking forward to seeing you again very, very soon. becky? >> when we come back, we've got your morning headlines plus much more of andrew's exclusive interview with soft bank's massa son. red arrows once again even after the declines for the first three days of this week. nasdaq is green. dow futures down another 125 poents after losing almost 700 points yesterday s&p futures down by 2. "squawk box" will be right back. with a hybrid, you can do both. that's why manufacturers are going hybrid with ibm. with watson on a hybrid cloud factories can use ai to automate the little things so they can focus on the next big thing.

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which country is the largest beef producer? the u.s. in 2020 the world produced 20% of the world's beef. welcome back to "squawk box. $46 billion in annual profits ever for a japanese company, softbank apple, microsoft and app if a bet. spoke with massa about the results about whether he had any regrets about actually trying to

raise cash given how well he did and whether he still thinks cash is king. >> we've continued more investment into unicorns i still want to, you know, continue to invest so cash is always nice to have. we have enough cash of our own so we don't need to raise external investors through our vision fund. our own cash is sufficient now >> one of softbank's strategies was to invest in some very liquid companies, typically things he hasn't done before amazon and facebook. i asked masa son what led him to do this. >> we had enough liquidity we did not have enough investment and we have excess

cash, better than sitting in the bank we should utilize so i have been a big believer and i am still a big believer of those high tech big names going to continue to grow so just excess cash management >> do you have any concern -- one of the big questions in the united states is whether these companies are going to get broken up by regulators because they become so big and there are smaller companies, maybe even some in your own portfolio that have said some of these bigger companies have made it very difficult for them to grow and the like do you agree with that >> well, no, not that much those big companies of course have to be, a, within reasonable range, but they are, you know,

reasonable companies in my view. and the more start up companies as they ir own opportunities without making complaints. >> so you're -- i mean, the reason i ask is there's some companies that say, look, it's unfair for, you know, apple to charge 30% in its app store. it's unfair for amazon to be competing with us on one end but also selling our product on the other. >> well, if they are happy they should do it themselves. if they are happy, they should join they don't have to so i think it's not that bad but, you know, of course as a big, big

platform as a big platform they should always listen to the other participants if they want to have a longer term, even bigger growth. >> so that's actually very interesting. if you were apple what would you do they are a big platform. they have a lot of developers on the platform some developers are upset about how things are going >> apple is good friend of mine so i've got nothing to say. >> i know, i know. >> we have lots of business with them but, look, seriously, they have created a great platform and, you know, they are pretty open to -- about their policies there are opportunities with android and so on so -- but if they have anything to say, they

should continue to discuss >> and of course alibaba's one of masa son's greatest investment i asked softbank ceo whether he's talked to his old friend jack ma who's been caught up in controversies and conspiracies whether the chinese government has effectively pushed him out of that company. >> i talk. we have hobbies that we have a common interest and he's good friend of mine, you know, talking almost every week. >> there's been a lot of concern about him. should we be concerned about him? >> no, i don't think so. he's healthy he's having, you know, good life and i think he's retired from

the day-to-day operations. he's still a big shareholder so of course i think he still loves the company but the day-to-day operations are being done by daniel and management and employees. >> right >> so it's -- it's continuing to grow. >> and we're going to have a lot more of that exclusive interview with masa son. right now we want to get over to dom chu with a look at some of the big movers beyond bitcoin. dom? >> we're going to talk a little bit about the bitcoin ecosystem. let's talk about the move we're seeing in the premarket for nasdaq futures we are seeing it tick higher we're moving towards session highs for the nasdaq composite, at least the nasdaq 100 futures market for the composite index, 47% gain we have seen pull backs in the

course of the last year that have been somewhat similar to and a little bit larger than what we're seeing right now but from the highs that we're seeing, we're down 8% from the record levels. keep that in mind. the big tech trade you were talking about big tech earlier on with masa son apple, nvidia are two ones that are trying to get a littlebit of a bounce after selloff pressure semiconductor hit hard also zoom video, docusign, those particular ones also catching a little bit of a bid there, too then we're going to talk a little bit more about the bitcoin ecosystem. talk about tesla which is seeing a bid 1.7% coinbase global, still 2% square and riot blockchain down 6% and bitcoin is tied to tesla maybe not taking it into the future. back over to you >> you're a rock, dom.

i feel better just having you there. i don't know i don't know what it is. >> i'm here to comfort you >> thank you, dom chu. >> yeah. >> still to come on "squawk box," marc lore joins us to talk about where he finds the next boom and the impact of reopening. may is asian-american and pacific islander heritage month. we've been spotlighting cnbc contributors, business leaders and on air anchors here's cnbc's hugh stein. >> i think being an outsider gives you perspectives being the only asian-american person in the room you develop a little bit of a chip on your shoulders you want to out work your competitors. this is rocket fuel for career success.

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welcome back, everybody. e. commerce was hit hard yesterday. joining us on this and much more is marc lore the founder of jet.com and the former ecommerce ceo this is great to see you here. this is your first interview since you stepped down from walmart. great to have you. >> great to be here, becky nice to see you. >> i have so many things i want to talk to you i know we'll never have enough time to get to all of them i want to ask you about ecommerce, where we stand. especially what we've seen, the selloffs and these names i don't know if you were listening to barry stern liblgt. when he looks at companies like shopify, he's surprised by how far these companies have run, how far the stock prices have run. he's worried what do you think of this as

somebody who knows ecommerce. >> covid pulled up ecommerce by a couple of years. things did run up like he said now it's selling off a bit i think long term ecommerce still has a long way to go it's still early feeling bullish still. >> when i look at what you're doing, there are so many interesting things let's start off with the new capital venture plan that you have with a-rod. this is something where you each put $50 million or $50 million total of your own money into this you're hoping to have 300 to $500 million that then you can go out and put into companies but you're looking at this a little bit more differently as somebody who's a serial entrepreneur you're taking bigger stakes in the companies that you do take stakes in. what's your theory behind this vc fund? >> it's called vcp it stands for vision capital people if you get those three things right, you can make big things happen and a lot of times as a

entrepreneur you have a really big vision and the capital early stages is you get a few hundred thousand, a million or two, you get to another round and prove out. there's lots of pain along the way having to raise incremental rounds of financing. this is -- we're going to do it a little bit different we're basically going to either come up with the idea our self, the vision, or find a great founder with a vision and give them 10 million seed capital up front and go after a big market in a really big way fast that will enable them to hire a better team. early on you can't afford to hire an executive team in this case you can the plan is to go big quick and follow the $10 million round out with 50 or $10 million series a and go after big opportunities that's something that doesn't exist in the market and we're excited about. we're making a number of investments, like you said, 50

million. i think we're at the beginning stages of a couple of megatrends in retail. one being conversational commerce we use text and voice to do shopping and the other is social commerce alex and i invested in a company now with two amazing founders. it connects instagram followers to brands to bring great products to those platforms. really excited about that. >> the venture capital that you're talking about, doing this and investing big, doesn't exist and probably for a reason. it means you better be right with every one of the bullets that you shoot because you're taking a big chunk of your capital and putting it in. now with you're putting in $10 million and taking a 40% stake what makes you so sure thi 10 mh

the seed and v rod following up with 50 million, it's self-fulfilling. you have the capital and if you have a vision and the timing is right, it will all come together owning 40 to 80% of a company means that you don't really need as many hits one big hit at a 40% stake pays for everything else. so i do like the ideas of these concentrated bets rather than sprinkling dollars around. we have the ability to influence and be a leader in the space that the company's in given the capital and types of people we're able to bring in >> now with sounds an awful lot like this idea of having influencers actually selling product through that, having content together with sales, retail sales sounds an awful lot like what walmart's been doing with this tie up with ticktock was that your idea you're still an adviser?

>> that wasn't my idea but i was helping doug and team think through that i think social commerce is going to be a big part of the future of retail for sure and the ability to buy directly from influencer videos right off the platform makes it really seamless >> it's kind of what alibaba does, too. is this what you think the new wave is going to be? >> i do. conversational commerce as well. the ability to use voice and text to get whatever you want. 20 years the idea of going to a search engine and typing in toaster and getting responses, that's going to be something we're going to laugh at in 20 years. it's going to take time. we're early stages but i think conversational commerce is today where ecommerce was back in sort of the late '90s >> marc, why did you leave walmart? you're head of all of the

ecommerce there. what made you decide to go out on your own? >> i'm a serial entrepreneur when i was young i wanted to be a farmer because they build stuff from nothing i was at walmart for 4 1/2 years. i thinkwe put e. commerce in a good place it's a great team there, strategy, vision is sound. felt like it was the right time to go out and start creating new things >> hey, marc, there was a report last week from "business insider" that had found a document that was used, a walmart document for advertisers, they were -- it was an rfp and it was talking about some of the challenges that walmart's now facing against amazon and instacart on the side it was a walmart document that effectively they felt they were

way, way behind and it was getting worse, not better. >> yeah. i find that hard to believe. walmart is really well positioned given that there are 47 million stores. groceries in almost everyone of those stores it's fresh great prices we're able to get it to customers fast and, you know, now with covid starting to, you know, go away, i think this whole idea of delivering directly into people's homes, into the refrigerator is going to come back in a big way. walmart is positioned better than anyone to take advantage of that so i think -- i feel good about where they are. >> why would walmart be telling the advertising agencies -- i think we just lost -- might have just lost marc i didn't think the question was that hard. i think we lost marc hopefully we'll get him back hey, marc. are you back >> yeah. >> so apparently wall mark was

effectively telling these ad agencies you need to figure out a better advertising campaign for us because we're worried about losing market share especially on groceries to the instacarts and the amazons i recognize you think they're well positioned, but clearly even internally there's anxiety about this >> i think it's a really important part of the strategy it's very competitive. it makes sense you'd want to step up your game. i don't have the details i'm not close to it at all they're well positioned. it's an important part of the strategy and wouldn't bet against walmart in this area >> hey, marc, it's good to see you. love to hear more about some of the new ventures you're working on too come on back soon. >> okay. sounds good. good talking to you, becky take care. >> take care andrew >> thanks, becky. quick note, we want to note what's going on with the futures

right now because literally as marc has been speaking, they have staged a huge turn around the dow is down 92 points. nasdaq up 66 points and the s&p 500 up 2.5 points. we'll have a lot more on that move ahead of the 8:30 ppi data which is ahead all of that and more in just a moment [music: “you're the be” joe esposito] [music: “you're the best” by joe esposito] [triumphantly yells] [ding] don't get mad. get e*trade and take charge of your finances today. so it's another day. don't get mad. yeah- that's what most people think. but in business it's never just another day. every day is the day. there's the day your store has its biggest sale. the day you have a make or break presentation.

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44 attorneys general this week called on facebook to abandon its plans to create a version of instagram for kids

under 13 responsible leadership or government overreach jon fortt is here to weigh in. good morning, jon. >> good morning, joe this is responsible leadership somebody had to speak up about social media's impact on young kids it's not like they went on a rant they made a reasonable argument based on research. the correlation of the rise in teen smartphone use and the rise in mental distress teen suicide and self-harm are on the rise especially among young girls. part of the issue is unhealthy self images. why is this something ags should weigh in on. they're the top law enforcement officers in their state. the responsibilities include public safety. this is a public safety issue for kids as the research shows you can argue this is a lot like flavored vape pods which are banned in many states for reasons. the flavors appeal to kids the tobacco is harmful and the nicotine is addictive.

we don't need pre-teens hooked on instagram. >> i don't think there's another hand the guy in "the fugitive." you can't possibly have reasons on the other hand. there's no way >> well, joe, on the other hand, this whole thing sounds an awful lot like a system other than capitalism, doesn't it i mean, cops pressuring business not for breaking the law but for violating societal expectations. my son's 13 next month. no phone, has zero social media accounts he doesn't care. why? we've made sure he has good friends in real life ags should not be silicon valley product manager. they're law enforcement not cultural norm enforcement. you know how this should work? if research shows exposing kids to certain social media is harmful, make a law. lawmakers not ags should get together and craft fair

enforceable rules. then the ags can enforce that law. otherwise it's a slippery slope. google has youtube kids. there's been a history of creepy content and radicalization the cops leave them alone but instagram kids is a problem before they launch it? i don't think so, joe. >> pick on the ags i get that point maybe it's not that government regulation is bad, it's just do it in the right way with actual legislation instead of letting the ags -- you know what else you said, jon, it's a parents' responsibility, like you did, to monitor these things i don't see that coming. that's always such a hard thing. it's easy to say but it's just hard to get done we'd be doing better with schools, education and everything else if we had more parental involvement it's tough. >> joe, government's got a role there, too, in setting standards even within the educational environment. i remember in the '80s, arnold schwarzenegger and ragan were

trying to get us fit and there is time in the day for that. there can be time in the day for influencing the way we use the tools at our disposal especially if there's research showing health effect. we have to go back to the constitution and how this society is supposed to be structured there's a certain group of people that makes laws, it's not judges and cops. >> i'm glad we thought of all of this before we opened up the flood gates for the social media, jon what could go wrong? that was a good one today, jon thanks >> sure. >> see ya. >> yeah. just let our kids be lab rats, right? when we come back, another big hour of "squawk box. we'll talk to pete buttigieg bom kim and rick rieder and we have masa son. stay tuned, "squawk box" will be right back

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we've got a big final hour pete buttigieg coupang's bom kim, rick reader and soft bank's masa son

nasdaq and s&p futures positive. dow futures are well off their lows, joe. it has been quite a roller coaster of a morning. >> it has been definitely some buyers did come in let's get right to our first interview of the hour. president biden signing an executive order aimed at strengthening u.s. cyber defenses the move comes as the hack and shut down colonial pipeline comes back online. the president is expected to speak this morning about the nearly week-long cyber security incident joining us now, transportation secretary pete buttigieg ile looked at the number of states and number of gas stations out of gas. if i were transportation secretary, i might have left this week. this is -- you know, i -- we got hacked by some russian darkside. you didn't tell me this could be part of the job. are you going to hang in there >> you know, some days you know

exactly what to expect at work and then a lot of days something happens that make you realize you're really going to be earning your paycheck that day i'll tell you the whole of government approach from the beginning the president directed every department, including mine, to do everything we could to respond to this incident has really paid off. obviously we still have a lot of issues persisting during that interim period while we get the pipeline back up and running so our effort has been to look at every mode of transportation, see what we can do on the surface side and the maritime and make it part of the solution. >> it's not even a supply issue, is it? spr type stuff it's distribution. can you mobilize some trucks i mean, what is going on behind the scenes just to try to alleviate the near-term issues down in some of the states where seriously there are some bad lines and some bad things going

on >> yeah. to some extent you can part of what we've been doing is creating the flexibility and supporting states in creating the flexibility to allow more to happen with trucks i'll give you an example it turns out the physical capacity of a tank truck if you fill it up all the way puts it over the weight limits that you would ordinarily have, for good reason, on federal highways and on our roads temporary wavers of those weight limits are allowing more volume to be carried in tank trucks and a lot of states have availed themselves of that flexibility ever since we were able to make a determination that that was legal because of some existing disaster declarations. you do things with hours of service regulations that can be waived for similar reasons, just to get more of that product moving meanwhile, with our pipeline and hazardous material safety administration, we were able to provide some flexibility in terms of the qualification of

inspectors and workers out making sure the manual restarts are happening and getting the pipeline going the bottom line is we need this pipeline back up and running and really welcome the announcement in the news that that was happening beginning early evening yesterday. >> i don't expect you to solve all of our cyber crime vulnerabilities as transportation secretary, but that is an issue here. it's not just -- it's not just pipe lines, it's everything. and i'm sure you can have some input but have we not been vigilant enough overall with the possibility of ransom wear and cyber attacks across the board through our economy in what we need to do >> i think for many americans this has been a wake-up call on how actors anywhere in the world could impact us right here at home and when you look at our policy framework, our laws, a lot of

them were not written for the cyber era. that's one of the reasons the president's executive order is coming at a very important time and part of the bigger picture where we really need to make sure that we are harder targets for these kinds of cyber actions. the other thing i the united states a lot of our critical infrastructure is operated by private actors this was a cyber attack on another company operating or municipal or other local government units the federal government does not actually own and operate all or even most of our critical infrastructure in this country what that means is we're only as strong as our weakest link so we've got to make sure every private sector player, every city or town that's running a water utility, certainly anybody who's involved in the national air space to ports when it comes to the transportation piece that i work with, everybody has to be as strong as possible and a step

ahead rather than playing catch up. >> did you ever hear the expr expression, all politics are local, mr. secretary so you're the transportation secretary now so we're proposing a usage for the term infrastructure that republicans would say includes every wish list from the democratic party going back 50 years. as a transportation secretary, don't you now, and be honest with me, do you now just wish that we had looked directly at what your domain is, roads, bridges, airports, throw in, you know, some internet and wi-fi. let's do 7, 800 billion, do it with republicans, get it done, give me my infrastructure, transportation, and do not try to do everything at once tell me that you believe that, but i know you won't >> i mean, look, as the org

chart goes, i'm the roads and bridges guy, the transportation part is the piece that i work on when i think about why roads and bridges matter, the fundamental reason they matter is they make it possible for americans to live lives of their choosing whether there is a good road will determine if you can go to work or school i think the same is true of the broader forms of infrastructure we're talking about. they're all part of the foundation that make it possible for us to live well. i don't want to get bogged down in a semantic or fill low sophic argument of what to call something. >> mr. secretary -- >> these are things the american people want. >> mr. buttigieg, you might as well tell me, you know, you need those roads to drive to free college and free child care and therefore i want to build them i mean, come on. come on. >> well, no. >> you can't -- >> all of this together -- >> you can't do all of it at

once. >> the org chart of the federal government or you can organize it around what the lives of the human beings in this country are like. >> you can make that jump to everything under the sub as infrastructure we should spend $100 trillion and give everything to everyone because that's what their life is you can't do -- we don't have the money. we don't have the wherewithal. >> we do have the money, that's the thing. we abundantly do have the money because the bill is paid for, right? and the real question is can we afford not to do this? now, look, we're going to negotiate this obviously there are differences of opinion we're having good conversations across the aisle that are continuing today over the parts we can agree on and maybe other parts that are going to be tougher to get bipartisan agreement on that's a natural part of the give and take. i think the most important thing is we not be focusing on the shape of the org chart of the different departments and the shape of the categories on somebody's concept of what infrastructure is. i think we should be concentrating on how we deliver

good policies that make the moment better. the fact that we have helps to explain why the jobs plan has been so popular, not just as a hole but in the individual pieces because the american people want this this is just a democrat set of things that we care about. these are things the american people want us to do, expect us to do and now it's our turn to deliver. >> secretary buttigieg, this is something that corporate america is watching so closely the ransom wear attacks have been pretty secretive in the past senator warren is trying to make sure these things get reported it has been reported colonial has not and will not pay the ransom do you know if that's true >> i can't speak to those details, but, again, this is a reminder that the choices of private actors are criticall important here now there's been tremendous communication, not just with our pipeline administration within the department of transportation

but with the white house and the administration as a whole with colonial to make sure we support them and help them get up and running. but i think right now we're making sure gas gets to where it needs and getting back to normal in the after action report we're going to have to be asking ourselves questions what can we do not just to respond but to move forward >> any -- i mean, this is not a transportation specific issue, but you did talk about some of the popularity of the programs do you think at this point that weak jobs number on friday, is it multi-faceted what happened there or do you think maybe we've made it too easy to not go back to work at this point which makes it very difficult for businesses to rebound because they literally would have people tell us again and again and again they can't get workers in, even offering $18 an hour for some of these jobs.

do you think that that's an example of over reach that we need could be careful of we want to be frugal when we spend it. >> i want to remind everybody, we are millions of jobs short still of where we were before this pandemic hit, right it's not as if we're just sort of done, washed our hands and say, okay, no problem. we've got a lot of work to do, a steep climb to fully bring this economy back there are a lot of things that are overlapping that seem to be impacting the availability of labor. remember, a lot of folks don't have their shots yet, haven't been fully vaccinated. there are a lot of issues with just schools not yet being open and a lot of other things impacting people's ability to return to the work force and when we see any given month, i think certainly for the rest of this year, when we see numbers come in that are different from expec

expectations, you should remember that we're coming off perhaps the most colossal economic shock of our lifetimes and there are going to be a lot of dramatic dynamics going on that shape where we are. what we know is that if we do this kind of work, not just in the short term but when we're talking about the jobs plan, if we do the kind of work that makes the american economy more resilient and makes american families stronger and better off, that's going to prepare us for whatever shots history may throw our way in the years and decades to come. i want to emphasize in addition to the work that we've done to try to make sure the economy in the moment is doing well and better that has led to things like the incredible increase in jobs growth in this administration compared to what was waiting for us, on top of all of that, we have to have a long-term vision. >> that's what i wanted to get to i know how you feel about this, but just wondering whether -- is there the slightest bit of irony that you're going to be so concerned with making sure that

pipe lines that transport fossil fuels are up, ready, viable and transporting those climate killers, the climate killing fossil fuel, you're going to have to do this for years, at least for your term. as long as you're transportation secretary, would you concede that you're going to need to have these pipe lines running a viable oil and gas industry to keep prices low for the economy and to do all the things we do in terms of the economy and transportation we need fossil fuel. you can't transition tomorrow as much as you'd like to. >> of course we can't transition tomorrow none of this happens overnight look, with our pipelines and hazardous materials safety administration, our department is overseeing over 2 million miles of pipeline in this country that we need to be safe, operational, effective we have to do two things at once we have to manage what we have,

the cars, the pipe lines, the systems that we have today and we also have to recognize that the solution for the american people is not pickle what we have and make sure it stays the same forever but to prepare for a future that is going to bring a lot of change and where we can either be ahead of that change or play catchup. our country has been increasingly playing catchup we're ready for america to lead and that's where the president wants us to be. >> secretary buttigieg, the markets have turned positive they were starting to. they were starting to. they were coming back from big negatives, they're in the green. i think it's the soothing tone of your voice. you don't come -- see, you're covering everything. not just transportation. now you could be treasury secretary theoretically with the way this happened. i know you don't want to take secretary yellen's job. >> i wouldn't dare we have a fantastic treasury secretary. i'm going to stay in my lane. >> we're going to say good-bye now the dow is down again. secretary buttigieg, thank you

thanks for being here this morning. hope to see you again. >> thank you coming up on the other side of this break, we've got breaking inflation data. we will bring it to you. plus all things masa son on tech stocks, bitcoin and more then we have an exclusive interview with the ceo of coupang. south korea's answer to amazon the futures staging a turn around, check t atouwh's happening in the markets we're back after this.

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welcome back to "squawk box. i'm kate rogers with news on mcdonald's announcing it's raising hourly wages at the company owned locations it's looking to bring on 10,000 workers in three months at 650 stores the wage increase is an average of 10% it will also shift entry-level crew wages to at least 11 to $17 per hour and the starting range for shift managers to at least 15 to $20 an hour based on location increases have already begun and will be rolled out in the next few months impacting more than 36,000 employees

once complete, the average wage at u.s. company owned stores will be just over $13 an hour. based on the trajectory of the current marketplace, mcdonald's expects average hourly wages at company owned stores to increase to $15 an hour in a phased market by market approach. some will have or will hit the level by 2021. average hourly wages are expected to reach $15 an hour by 2024 the company adds that periodic adjustments will be assessed and support needs of current employees. this is now the second increased announcement this week chipotle hiking wages monday in this very competitive market the national federation of independent business says 40% of businesses have jobs they n'cat fill "squawk box" will have much more after this break

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gentleman shares of coupang dropping in the first quarter since going public they posted a 70% rise in year-over-year gross profit. 21% growth in the total active customers. joining us right now in an exclusive interview, coupang's ceobom kim great to see you

your first update since the ipo. at the same time you've had great sales, great growth but i think there are questions on the profit side given the losses >> you know, i think, andrew, we're in a fortunate position to be able to invest with a decades long time frame. we have a huge opportunity in front of us. our investors and employees are aligned on that front. what gives us confidence to continue to invest at this stage of our growth cycle is that the operating leverage in our business continues to improve. and we're in the position we're in now, the momentum you just cited, 74% year over year growth in q1 is really driven by accelerating adoption and spend growth of our customers. we're in the position we're in now because we've built things that matter to customers and made investment decisions with a

long-term time frame and we'll continue to do that. >> so did analysts just get this wrong? the reason i say you reported a 68 cent -- 68 cents a share adjusted loss, which was larger than what they were expecting which was a 16 cent a share adjusted loss. >> yeah. we've never -- we -- our orientation is to always work backwards from the value that we're going to create for our customers in a much longer time frame. the company should be weighed ultimately by the value it creates for our customers which in turn will create long-term cash flows for our shareholders. >> on the date of the ipo i asked and i think it's tough for you to answer, but in terms of profitability, to the extent that that's going to be a metric, and i think it's a fair metric to ask about, what do you think the fair time line is for

profitability? >> when there are attractive investment opportunities and the investors are aligned with seizing those attractive opportunities. i don't think -- i think the long-term investors, employees and certainly customers are -- find it acceptable to trade short-term profit, to reinvest those gross profit dollars that you just mentioned that increase 70% into long-term opportunities, long-term values. structural advantages. structural efficiencies. when you run out of attractive opportunities to invest, you should, of course, not, you know, waste gross profit dollars, but i think we continue to attract opportunities before us we see it in the momentum. you see how early we are even our oldest, most -- our most mature cohorts are still increasing in spend. our most mature categories are

still gaining share online as i mentioned, the operating leverage are showing great momentum and continuing to improve. so i think all the signs are there and we've been fortunate historically to have long-term investors that have been encouraging us to operate with that time frame. we've continued to be in that fortunate of a position. >> bom, you know this very well. coupang is softbank's golden goose. the $2.7 billion investment in your company now worth north of $20 million. i talked to masa son about your outlook. listen to what he had to say >> i think the company's going to be very successful. has big growth, big profitability metrics, unit

economics. everything is fantastic. so i think the company will continue to grow it's better service than any other ecommerce in the western world in terms of many aspects >> so you can take that as a nice endorsement, bom, but my question to you is we often compare your business to amazon, and as you know, jeff bezos had a remark annual runway talk about a runway in terms of shareholders giving him time to get to profitability one of the things that happened along the way, he will be the first to say this, he will say, look, i lucked out by landing on aws and that super charged our ability to grow, our ability to create profits, our ability to create cash that we could reinvest in the business do you think you need to create some other vehicle beyond the classic business that's right in front of us right now? >> i don't -- not from a

profitability perspective. i think amazon is a company we've admired. they've built a lot of shareholder value not only in aws but other parts of our business we continue to invest not only in our core services but also in new extensions you know, fresh, for example, and eats fresh in q1 was 2.5 times larger than it was in q1 of the previous year. that's because we're delivering nationwide, dawn and same-day deliveries that's from the largest selection of fresh at the lowest prices seconds before midnight and getting it before 7 a.m. and getting that in eco bags that our network picks up for reuse we estimate that just while we're on the topic of eco bags we're stinlting the first quarter alone we saved customers over 8,000 tons of packaging waste because of our innovations in boxes delivery. it's now removed the box

packaging from over 75% of shipments that we process and eco bags that we pick up for reuse in our network if we continue to build services that provide customers more convenience -- >> right >> -- eliminate more of that convenience task, the tradeoffs you make when you shop online and create structural efficiencies that we can share and part back with the customers, we believe we have the makings of a business that should generate not only strong customer value but strong shareholder value as well. >> fair enough bom, it's great to see you we wish you lots of luck with it we hope you come on back and follow your progress. >> thank you very much, andrew thank you for having me. >> looking forward to seeing you again. you bet. i'm going to send it over to joe because we're seconds away from the ppi data i know everybody is looking for it >> we are just 30 seconds away well, now 25

initial jobless claims, ppi, a bunch of stuff is coming if we try to keep being accurate, that's all we're going to be able to talk about is time futures are positive across the board. pretty interesting there's the dow, you see it there down but fair value it is up rick santelli standing by at the cme has got these numbers. pretty key yesterday maybe again today, rick. >> yeah, no, the cpi were big deals. of course the producer price index a little further up the chain. sometimes not as market moving but today could be the exception. double the head line expectation of .3 we end up up .6. up .6. and we need to consider that the all-time high for this headline number was just at the beginning of this year up 1.3. that was january so even though .6 of 1% is less than the 1% last time or the 1.3 in january, the .5 in february,

these are still lofty. you can see a little stubborn. .7 when you strip out the all important food and energy. and when you take the month-over-month view and include trade, also up .7. all of these are basically close to double the expectations, joe. now let's go year over year. this is where the fun begins if you look at year-over-year headline, it is up 6.2 up 6.2 now if we look at the all-time high for that, the all-time high is, what, 4.5? okay that was september of 2011 so that really is huge that is a huge number. if we look at all of the year-over-year numbers, 4.1 is the energy year over year. so ex1 food and energy 4.6 is ex food, energy and trade. the high for that was 4.5. we're looking at some big

year-over-year numbers for the same dynamics as yesterday what are the dynamics? comparing year-over-year baseline very small. initial claims, 473,000. 473,000. we continue to make strides with low numbers. this is a post covid low last week's though, which moved under 5, moved back over 5 507,000 now. and continuing claims, 3,655,000. 3,655,000. it isn't quite the lowest. the lowe's still 3,652,000 that was for the second but -- the second week in april, yes, that's when it was so these are good numbers but they're just not as good last week not only were continuing claims a subtle revision to a bit under 3.7 million to exactly 3.7 million what's the aftermath 1.68, 1.69 on a 10-year.

gps on a 10-year 1.74 is the high yield post covid close. joe, i enjoyed your talk with buttigieg. smart, young man i wish you would have got more into the notion though that isn't what's going on with colonial pipeline just a dress rehearsal for what our transportation secretary's hopes are? get rid of all of the fossil fuels. you didn't see too keen on keystone i know they will end truly it is a bit ironic all of the nervousness over no gasoline when that seemed to be a campaign promise in the future just with a different access no gasoline! >> yeah, exactly i'll ask him that. are you trying to fix something that's delivering climate killing fossil fuels to gas guzzling cars around the country. are you sure you're okay with that but, you know, he answers everything and i'm like, wow

this guy's got an answer he's good. >> rick, here's my question to you. you're an inflation watcher. i don't know if i call you an inflation hawk i might call you a fed hawk to some extent. with what we're seeing, i asked this question earlier. there are covid effects. you know, people don't want to come back. you have to pay them more. people get to watch netflix, hanging out at home. supply issues with commodities and things like that and it's causing that. there's also a lot of money printing and a lot of proposed spending by the government do you think right now anything we're seeing in these hotter numbers actually is coming from the latter issues that i raised, less transitory issues, or do you think we're still just seeing the effects of what we can go through on a daily basis that would be -- do you think we're already seeing that we've crossed over and printed too much and spent too much and proposed spending too much

do you think it's already coming home to roost or this is just other stuff? >> see, i personally do believe that a chunk of that is my opinion. if i point to the facts and facts are this, that we listen to mr. druckenmiller talk about mon advertising the debt what monetizing the debt is, it's a little different than qe. it's qe with a long time horizon meaning that instead of issuing debt that you ultimately will pay back and the interest payments are going to go to real customers, okay? that isn't monetizing the debt that's just creating a lot of debt when you monetize the debt what ends up happening is that you -- you've never paid it back. in other words, the fed could keep this on the balance sheet forever and take the interest payments and send them back to the government let me think think back to the credit crisis. did we ever really get the balance sheet back down to where it was precredit crisis? no then we went into this, covid issue, i understand it just

happened, it wasn't like somebody made a mistake. >> yeah. >> so what we saw is we ramped it up again. to answer your question, yes yes. i think we have a ferrari economy that isn't firing on all cylinders yet. what we end up doing is put all of these truckloads of you hauls on -- u-hauls of debt. liesman, are you there when you lose steve i think, you know, then we've got problems. i thought i heard you kind of leaning towards wanting to taper, steve do you think it's time don't you? >> joe, i've been saying for a long time what we're doing and i think the reason is twofold. one, they lost their rationale they started off saying they were doing it for market functioning. they made sense. then they kind of pivoted to the economy. and when we do our survey, this is what informs my opinion a

lot. something like 68% say the economy doesn't need qe. powell has said just don't worry about it when we don't need this anymore, we'll take it back well, he didn't. i think -- i have -- make a strong argument about the idea of keeping rates low while we put people back to work. the qe seems to be creating a problem that doesn't need to be created. i think they could have eased that off i'll tell you the fed's point of view i understand why they're doing it they like this idea of a qe being a buffer the market saying, you know what, if they start to taper, that means rates are next. he's trying to taper tantrum i don't think there's a good reason to do that at all, joe. just real quick on the data if i might. it's all hot the question is some things are sort of hotter than others two areas i want to point out. remember yesterday, the 10%

month-to-month increase in airline fares, it's here in the ppi as well. transportation of private passengers is another ppi component up 7%. one kind of good thing here, joe, that i'm watching, the cost of private capital equipment for manufacturing indices went up 1.3% so maybe there's some business investment going on as we try to catch up with all of the demand out there on the good side it does seem like businesses are investing. that's certainly a sign of it. two good things in an otherwise hot and worrisome ppi this morning. >> great we're going to talk -- rieder knows a lot about this blackrock's rick rieder is going jn us "sawk box" will be right back. and unmatched overall value. together with a dedicated advisor, you'll make a plan that can adjust as your life changes, with access to tax-smart investing strategies that help you keep more of what you earn.

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welcome back, everybody. producer price data back in and it's hot rick rieder is chief investment officer of global fixed income at blackrock and heads the firm's global allocation team. he oversees $2 trillion, that's right, $2 trillion in fixed income assets. rick, how are you feeling after

these last couple of reports where they're a little hotter -- a lot hotter >> yeah, i mean, listen, i think we were on the show talking about we were keeping some powder dry around these markets. listening to what rick and steve were saying, i think policy -- we've talked about it on your show, i think we need to taper the amount of liquidity that's gone out of the system has been immense. what people don't talk about, it's not just the fed putting $120 million a month, it's the tga paydown. it's the fiscal. by the way, there's another 4 to 500 billion that's coming in over the next three months so there's a lot of liquidity. the fed can pull back and those numbers, we are over -- the question i get from clients every day are we over heating? there is some concern. i actually agree with what the fed says i think a lot of this is transitory used car prices, rental car prices, commodity acceleration when we look at our forecast a year or two hence, we do think

those will come down we think the base effects are driving some of it listen, i think -- >> wait a second >> go ahead. >> transitory, you think it will come down a year or two from now. you think we'll sit around and be watching higher inflation numbers for a year before the fed does anything? >> so i think the next few months you're still going to see this incredible price pressure because, you know, as i mentioned, one of my colleagues runs this, we run output gap we are closing the output gap. that's where you get to the accelerating price dynamic quite frankly, the fed usually moves before you close the output gap there's not enough inventory whether it's autos, houses, retail, commodities, there's not enough inventory you're seeing that play through the numbers. we're going to get capacity rebuild. i mean, the demand is outstripping supply in such radical fashion that, you know, that will start to mollify over the coming months as you get

into next year and so i think you're going to get some impressive inflation numbers over the next couple of months then you're going to start to ease off again listen, it's a question of what is the fed trying to create and there's no tangible benefit, i would argue, to most of the population to lift apparel prices, to lift airfare, used car prices by the way, look at checking account fees that are going up because the banks don't want the deposits that are coming in. i do think you get higher inflation. i think the fed is right in transitory i think steve liesman described it exactly right system doesn't need, it's not creating anymore jobs with this much liquidity into the system the system has plenty of liquidity. tapering is not that scary an event. we looked at with the tape perfect tantrums, if you look at what happened to employment, the stock market afterwards, markets digested and it's actually not that scary in fact, if you tapered by continuing to buy longer end

assets, longer end treasuries, you can keep long rates down which is much more important for mortgages, for corporate borrowing, et cetera i think they need to do an elegant form of tapering won't create any less jobs because we do that the markets, by the way, will realize it's the right transition >> so you think the fed is right in that the inflation is transitory but you think they should be acting to taper especially given the shortage right now? >> absolutely. i think a lot of the commentary is right some of this is a near-term deal when you accelerate vaccine, when you create this much fiscal stimulus on top of monetary stimulus, you get this explosive -- nobody in any generation has seen before let's take a step back and say, how much of this is just a reopening dynamic? now you take the other side of this, iwe should be in the same

emergency policy situation we were this policy was incredibly appropriate six months ago, nine months ago what the fed did a year ago give historic credit to what they did a year ago now we can move off of emergency conditions and start to evolve in a pragmatic way and markets will love that. >> rick, you said you've been keeping some dry powder, that's what you told us last time are you still doing that even when you see pull backs like we saw yesterday? is that not enough of a pull back for you >> it's a great question so cash is the best performing asset in these markets so holding on to high levels of cash, but i have to say that, yeah -- in fact, we're doing this we're starting to look at some of these valuations, even places that have gotten way too high. software we're actually looking at free cash flow generation

it's a wholesale get out of everything this is whether it's industrials, manufacturing companies, financials, europe, there's some interesting things to do. we're going to put a bit of money to work. we did a little bit of that yesterday, too early in parts of it, but, yeah, we're going to put a little bit of money in the market i still think you've got to be cautious until policy evolves. we're still going to stay with a decent sized cash position you're creating real opportunities when you get wholesale, people have to sell it's worth doing a little bit of business here. >> hey, rick, bitcoin, crypto at a firm that's spent a lot of time focused on esg, as you know, i wanted you to weigh in on elon musk's announcement last night that tesla won't be accepting bitcoin for its vehicles in part -- not in part but straight up because of the environmental impact and carbon footprint that it takes to transact and mine bitcoin.

>> listen, i mean, one of the challenges -- bitcoin is an interesting asset. it's one that has not reached maturity yet, not has reached the point of a full like what do you do in terms of asset allocation in different stocks, bonds, et cetera some of the volatility and hurdles to overcome. some of the hurdles, volatility, et cetera. bitcoin is an interesting asset. i think it's durable i think it will be part of the investment arena for years to come but some of these challenges and the volatility around the regulatory dynamics, fiat currency concerns with crypto, you know, part of what we've done, we've created a very small position but we wanted to put a toe in the market. these challenges are real. they will be overcome over time and the asset is durable it's just not there yet as a normal, stable asset. >> rick, it's always great to see you.

we'll get to that very soon because the markets are changing pretty rapidly >> thanks, becky >> andrew. coming up on the other side of this break, more of our exclusive interview with soft bank's masa son. you'll hear his take on tech stocks, bitcoin and more

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one year after impressive losses, softbank has mounted an impressive comeback. doordash in an exclusive interview, i asked the ceo masa son about the recent decline in tech stocks and what seems to be rotation away from some of the

high growth names. >> it's based on the people's view on the long-time interest, and it's not just changing the company's performance, the fundamentals is very strong, companies are all growing, the tech companies are all growing, they have a record high profit ability, and so on it's just that people's view on the long-term interest rate and just a cyclical thing. it's no fundamental change >> i asked massa what he thinks will happen with interest rates over time. >> i think as people see the market, the interest rate will go up.

i don't know how much it will go up but when the kind of moment happens, that's always the best time to make more investment, because you can buy cheaper. but we are at the beginning of the still technology revolution, especially the ai that we are in it's just the beginning. so i am very, very hopeful that we can make great investment in this kind of environment >> are you worried about inflation? are you seeing signs of fragility in this marketplace right now? >> well, i don't know, i don't know enough about inflation or interest rates and that's not my expertise. my expertise is technology. >> and you live in a country, by the way, that has has been

dealing with interest rates in a very unique way, and has been big implications over the years. are there lessons from that? >> well, as i said, i don't care about the interest rate myself it's just the rest of the market to worry about it. i'm a long-term investor >> a refreshing view he doesn't care about interest rates. when i spoke with masa son last fall, he said he sold bitcoin because he couldn't stand watch go up and down, i asked him if he changed his view. >> i don't have a view yet about the good or bad or hype or reasonable, i don't know but there are enough operations who is trading the cryptocurrency other many different brands, and so if there are a number of people

buying and selling, like gold, or diamonds, i shouldn't be criticizing any people's interest, as wel i don't know. i don't want criticize i am not an investor yet and once i voted myself to just to get to know, and i sold, but maybe i'm a dumb guy who did not understand and so i don't know. i'm open to any learning >> and you can catch all of the highlights from that interview with masa son on cnbc.com.

joe, over to you. >> and we will get to cnbc headquarters and jim cramer, and tonight on "mad money," jim will speak with the cfo of coin base and the ceos of doordash and sonos. philosophically, jim, ifo elon,l guy, no doubt a genius, but you go to put it on the balance sheet, and accept payment for, it and i'm going to tweet dogecoin to the moon, i'm going to go on "snl" and then talk about it, and then within less than a week, i'm taking it, not going to accept it anymore because there's bad energy things happening here. does that make you rethink anything in your view >> well, first, i would love to be able to know how many cars he really sold, using cryptocurrency, it would be a little more relevant and cogent,

the energy use i listened to pomp, i know about the energy use being very high, but energy use has been high, and i've not seen any oil companies yet capitalize off this, they talk about it, but they're not doing it no, i'm not saying disingenuous. i think he's arbitrary and capricious and he has every right to be because he created an amazing company. >> geniuses is required. >> ka appreciation -- capricious and arbitrary. >> exactly right. >> a wild session. "squawk" today, i laughed, i cried, see you tomorrow.

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good thursday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street," i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer and david faber. stocks looking for stabilization after three days down. futures off the morning lows even as wholesale inflation runs hot. up 0.6 colonial pipeline restart. our road map begins with whether it's time to buy the dip in tech, and wall street on track for the worst week in more than six months plus, the real inflation risks, are investor worries on point? or overblown