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tv   Squawk Box  CNBC  May 28, 2021 6:00am-9:00am EDT

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movers, including the meme stocks with another bump. and in washington, president biden set to unveil a key pro pose al. it is friday, may 28th, 2021 "squawk box" starts right now. good morning welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin and santorri. joe is off today check out the equity futures big gains ahead of the long
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memorial day weekend dow futures up 185 points. this was after an update for the dow yesterday. boeing was stronger. the dow was up 140 points. s&p futures up this morning by 17 points. yesterday, they were up 5 points doesn't sound like a lot it pushed the index back to 4,200. nasdaq was down a few points yesterday. it is indicated up 55 points this morning guys, let's check out treasury yields first we do this every day they don't seem to be going a any anywhere the 10-year is the same range we have been in for the last couple months watching that closely as you talk about the budget from the biden administration with the increase of 25% in spending. trillions of dollars more. we will see where it goes with this i want to look at the "squawk stack. meme stocks. amc is the most heavily traded
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stock in the nasdaq and nync 698 million shares on the exchanges traded yesterday the number two most traded was ford 2 277million shares. that stock up 11% this morning wti is up $67.09 yesterday with the highest settlement since october of 2018 oil prices are up 5% for the week to date andrew, you have noticed the higher prices at the pump. they continue to climb according to aaa it looks like no relief in sight when you look at the base levels of wti coffee andrew put this in there you are concerned about higher coffee coffee hit the highest prices since november of 2016
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that is getting more expensive week to date is up 4%. month to date is up 10.5%. only place you see relief if you want to call it that, looking for silver linings lumber prices have been down 12.3% for the month to date. they are still up 50% for the year to date put that in context. i threw in the russell 2000. this is on pace for the longest winning streak since november the 2005 if the russell closes higher, it is eight months in a row mike, i don't know what you think of the small cap stocks. seeing a run recently. >> they are had a run. that index has gone sideways monthly gains have been in there since february or march. it has been digesting massive run in the fall. also it is not unrelated to the meme stock movement. a lot of stocks at the top of
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the russell 2000 got there because they went wild with retail speculators getting them there. i don't think it is about the economy, macro picture, ref reflation or the banks doing well as a quick note, becky amc trading over 6 million shares yesterday shares outstanding for amc is under 500 million. it traded it's entire share account. >> the entire float? >> yes and then some. we talk about the short sellers took losses. absolutely this is a short squeak fewer than 100 million shares. this is a self sustaining mania until it quits >> forget about diamond hands. these are hot hands sdp >> it is a stampede. we will see how much energy has
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left with the pre-holiday session. people are watching at home. in corporate headlines this morning, hp ink trading lower with the revenues and up beat forecast, hp says homeworkers are still buying pcs and printers analysts blaming the drop on the stock because pc sales peaked or others with the chip shortage. the stock is up 100% in the last year had to give some back there. let's talk tesla moving top safety endorsements from "consumer reports" and insurance institute for highway safety tesla would have to downgrade functionality in the cars temporarily. "consumer reports" tells cnbc it could return the top pick level
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if tesla restores the functionality. andrew.is nat fascinating the camera thing and sensors thing. i don't know what to think i know most of the engineers and sophisticated folks in the space believe you need the radar he has gone it alone and managed so far to do what he has done with cameras i know if you are trying to do the safest way, th
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president biden will release the first detailed budget of the administration and it is a biggie it will total $6 trillion. pushing federal spending to the highest sustained levels since world war ii as the economy recovers from the pandemic eamon javers joins us now with more on that story eamon, good morning. >> reporter: becky, we will get more details later in the day.
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our colleague ylan mui working the phones the $6 trillion number for fiscal year 2022 over the course of ten years, it is $5 trillion in additional spending over the course of the decade that is largely the american jobs and families plans. there is a $3.6 trillion number here that is the additional revenue over a decade. tax increases. higher tax rates on the rich and corporations interestingly, that assumes an increase in the capital gains rate to 39.6%. retroactive. that already occurred as of april. we will see if that flies or not. that deficit impact is $1.4 trillion over a decade they say the assumptions are the deficit will start to shrink in 2030 because spending increases are temporary and the tax hikes are permanent. the inflation number they have
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here, maxes out at 2.3% this is the biden administration saying it is not concerned about deficit or inflation right now it is willing to tolerate higher deficits in the short-term and bending the curve on them in the long run in order to do the spending the biden administration needs to do to put the u.s. economy on the solid footing and put the middle class back in a stronger position you can imagine republicans on capitol hill will have something to say about this. all of this has to get through congress before it is a done deal think of it as an initial proposal and not a final deal. >> eamon, we will talk more about the budget proposal. we are bringing in president
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trump's budget proposal writer. former u.s. congress member donna edwards is with us as well russ, i'll start with you. i'll let you critique it from the outset tell us your view and we'll come back at it >> i think my main reaction is this is the budget you write on the campaign trail or write for the democratic twitter base. this is not the budget you write when you are governing and in the face of inflation and your senior greybeards in the democratic party saying we have to stop spending this stimulus money. we have to start getting a handle on the reality of increased inflation. this budget makes no nod to that whatsoever it is also incomplete. it lacks many proposals that he ran on in the campaign from the standpoint of public option and student loan forgiveness
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it is an unaffordable budget from what we know and it lacks many of the spending programs that would make it even less affordable over the next several years. whereas, we were trying to balance the budget in 15 years this attempts to pay for the new spending with 15 years of $3 trillion of new taxes. it is not something that the american family will be able to absorb i think it will have a hard time on capitol hill. >> donna, respond to that. i'm curious. is thi negotiation? >> i think anytime the president submits a budget, it is the president's values we should not be surprised that this is the budget the president presented. it is reflected in the american jobs plan and reflected in the american family plan
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joe biden is committed to look out for the little guy that means higher income earners will foot a lot of the bill for the new spending and also over the decade in terms of their corporate tax rates and capital gains taxes and unrealized income i'm not surprised at all by what this budget might show because i think it reflects the joe biden that we know and the one he promised -- >> donna, does it even reflect the democratic party at this point? i think that's the question. >> look -- >> something on its face could be approved even by democrats? >> let's not separate democrats from joe biden joe biden is the democratic party. members of congress, democratic
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members largely support the agenda that the president has put forward. look, do i think this budget will go through some tweaks and alterations in the house, but most likely in the senate? absolutely i think the president said this is my starting point let's go from there. i don't think it is a really big surprise he said he wants the people at the highest income level to begin to pay their fair share and level out the tax code so the little guy doesn't have to foot so much of a percentage of their income as a bill i don't think he should be concerned about deficits, frankly. we have to dig ourselves out of the hole he has a projection to do that s>> russell, the way i look at it, this is biden kind of coming at this as the ultimate
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negotiator someone going through the senate for decades and knows how to get what he wants. if youput out an incredibly high marker, that automatically assumes when you reach compromise, it will be a big increase dpo do you think that is happening here >> there is a point of negotiating to the $6 trillion he put out with the three mansl plans he put on there that this assumes. this budget is mendant to show where we are headed in the next 10 to 15 years this is not doing the job. i think the fact it is coming on a friday before memorial day and is buried. that is an attempt to say we are not interested in having a debate about where we are financially as a country and, yes, interest rates have been
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low. they unkincreased substantially over the last few months this is an important debate to have and it is not just a negotiating standpoint this is flat out irresponsible >> speak to this issue you said you don't care about the debt i'm surprised by that. i consider you a relative centrist democrat who i think everybody at some level should think about debt and deficit it is possible to write them off completely, no >> i didn't say i didn't care about the debt and deficit what i said is this budget assumes that there's going to be some payback to draw down the deficit over this ten years. if you look at least what we know now about this budget proposal, it is designed to do
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exactly that no, we don't want spending just running away we want it targeted so middle income earners can begin to reap the benefits of the growing economy. i think the economy is strong and the stronger it gets, the more we're likely to pay that down >> okay. we will leave the conversation there. donna and russ, thank you. have a great long weekend. i appreciate it. >> thank you news alert on boeing wall street journal reporting the company halted delivery of the 787 dreamliners. st stock backing off 1% federal regulators are asking for more information about the quality lapses and this has been a bit of a delay in deliveries of the 787 boeing shares up 7% month to date and giving some of that back,
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becky. >> they were the biggest gainer yesterday. that is why the dow was up sharply. when come back, a big warning from microsoft today the tech giant says the solarwind hackers are at it an gwynn. as we head to break, the winners and losers ulta beauty is up 15%. stay tuned you are watching "squawk box" on sweetnorthernsaint cnbc ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪
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microsoft is warning about new hacking attempts by the group behind the solarwinds attack last year the company says russia based nobelium is targeting think tanks and non-profits. a quarter of the targets were involved in international development and humanitarian issues eamon javers covers all things cybersecurity for us eamon, this sounds targeted. >> reporter: it is really targeted, becky. according to the blog post from microsoft, they got into the usaid system for sending email alerts that is the government agency that sends foreign aid a lot of non-profits and ngos and foreign policy people and defense people are on the email list email that they sent out it looks like it is coming from
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usaid. it says special alerts president trump published new documents on election fraud. that is a baiting thing in email. why would donald trump send that months after he is no longer president of the united states you imagine the people who got this were curious why usaid would send that out and that link we were told by microsoft that 3,000 email addresses were targeted a lot stopped by spam filters. some of this did get through highly targeted. perhaps tailored to the individual people in many ways microsoft is saying this attack is still ongoing if you are out there and get an email that looks like it is from usaid and saying anything about donald trump and the election,
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do not click on the link the new york times reporting this is targeted at people who have been critical of vladimir putin and this is an intelligence gathering operation by the russian government inside the defense and foreign policy the world, becky >> can you give you one piece of advice, eamon? >> sure. >> get that email off your phone right now so you you don't hit download get rid of it. >> you don't want to butt dial the russians that would happen. >> exactly or butt dial the russians into your system. vladimir putin why foreign aid? why those areas? obviously people critical of vladimir putin you can understand why that would be, but why in this particular arena >> reporter: well, look. you are gathering foreign intelligence operations and information. you know, the bottom line is spies are sneaky
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they will find out ways to sneak into your systems and get the information they are looking for and usaid is an organization that everybody in the foreign policy and intellectual world is paying attention to and perhaps on the email distribution list they are getting things all the time this would pop up and say donald trump and election fraud you think why is that happening now given that president trump left office in january this is an ongoing attack. these emails are presumably going out this week. you imagine people are curious and clicking on it and bang. russians are in the system and gather the information theyare taking advantage of th vector in they know is happening and people's natural curiosity that is what they call a social engineering hack find the information that people won't be able to resist clicking on put it in front of them and tempt them a lot of people are falling for it and gotten into a lot of
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systems. >> thank you for the head's up, eamon. spies are going to spy good to see you. >> very sneaky see ya'. okay a lot coming up this morning retail investors are once again piling into amc and, yes, gamestop we will discuss it all as we head to break, a look at yesterday's s&p 500 winners & losers >> announcer: executive edge is sponsored by at&t business our people and network will help keep you connected let's take care of business. thi. oh, we can help with that. okay, imagine this... your mover, rob, he's on the scene and needs a plan with a mobile hotspot. we cut to downtown,
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retail investors may know something some don't they are piling into the amc and into gamestop as well. up 45% our next guest wrote about the retail trader and the power of
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investing. great to see you i'll start with the hardest question why or why now did anything happen? was this building? i guess we never know why viral memes become viral >> it has been viral amc and amc strong has been trending on twitter. lighting up on social media. the stock was up another 20% pre-market that is remarkable the stock hit a four-year high yesterday. it seems like many individual investors are targeting the pros still hoping to topple the short sellers. >> that certainly is the story line that seems to be a lot of the motivation or the rallying cry in terms of going after the professional short sellers if you look at the numbers, these stocks are not as heavily shorted as they were as gamestop was in january
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in other words, a lot of that is out there. it seems not necessarily in the short-term to matter the amc buyers were not victimizing the shorts more and more of the share count turned over yesterday. every short cut covered. >> it was the most actively traded stock in the market yesterday. short interest has come down a lot in the beginning of the year among retail investors i spoke to, many say they are going after their throats. as you pointed out, it can be tough to pinpoint a catalyst why something starts lighting up on social media. all we know is it certainly took off this week and individual investors don't look like dumb money anymore. >> i wonder when it comes to amc, let's take that up. it is still a movie theater
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company and burning enormous cash what is fascinating, the surge has enabled amc to issue new shares and raise capital the balance sheet looks better than before and the market cap is multiples a few years ago and the movie theater business was healthy. is there any fundamental story line behind this with gamestop, ryan cohn is going to transform this company and i don't know what this is doing for amc. >> i don't know. momentum is powerful it is the most powerful forces in markets over the past year and how amc was able to improve finances shows you how the surge in trading happened upon investors and they have had the power to transform business. it is not just amc to avert bankruptcy because of the retail trading. trading paved the way for gamestop to issue more shares. it is remarkable how the soaring
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share prices have allowed these companies to become more financially sound. >> no doubt. they have been able to shore up finances even if the business hasn't necessarily improved. i know the journal covered the fact that the speculators bought hertz after the declared bankruptcy and may have ended up in the money >> that is the biggest wins for investors this year. defying bankruptcy courts and investors saying stockholders will not get anything back the fascinating thing is some people did have non traditional ways of deciding to buy. one inn vvestor said he had an epiphany sitting in the car. he said god told me to put money into hertz >> unclear if that can be applied to long-term strategy.
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we will see if this continues to feed gunjin, thank you. good to see you. >> thank you for having me >> becky. thanks, mike when we come back, a southwest airline flight attendant lost two teeth after a passenger got angry over instructions to put up a tray table and started throwing punches we will talk to the national president of the flight attendants union about the rise of rowdy travelers and what should be done about it. as we head to break, check out the biggest movers salesforce is up 4.7% and followed by dow and p&g. stay tuned you are watching "squawk box" and this is cnbc ver just anothe. it's the big sale, or the big presentation. the day where everything goes right. or the one where nothing does. with comcast business
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and maybe something a little risqué. upgrade babies to ninjas. throw in a pompous pony. it practically wrote itself during my tummy time shots and massage. how about a strong female character? we've added a lady exec to the top floor. going up? wait a second. bosses wait for no one. ah grow up! -no! welcome back to "squawk box" this morning 100 years ago, the most affluent black communities was attacked by air and ground destroying an area in tulsa, oklahoma known as black wall street. the residents murdered and the housing razed. this is the worst violence in the nation's history and this is a subject of the documentary called "blood on
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wall street. here is bertha coombs with the preview. >> reporter: 1921, the green section of town nicknamed black wall street. >> these were mom and pop operations beauty salons and restaurants and grocery stores and haberdasheries >> reporter: tensions turned deadly when a white mob descended on the black business district every intent on destroying it. killing anyone who got in their way. >> in less than 24 hours, that mob turned 35 square blocks of unparalleled black prosperity into smoldering ashes. >> we saw coming up the walk four men with torches in their hands. when my mother saw them coming,
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she said you get up under the bed. they set our house on fire and went to the curtains and set the curtains on fire >> reporter: unfathomable damage 10,000 left homeless the oklahoma commission estimated between 200 and 300 people killed. a century later, generations still haunted by the physical and financial toll of the massacre left behind >> "blood on black wall street" airs on cnbc on sunday at 2:00 p.m. eastern be sure to watch it. it is an important piece we have more coming up on "squawk box" ahead i'll show you futures as we head to break right now this morning, it looks like we will open in the green with the dow up 76 points and
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nasdaq looking to open 52 points higher stay tuned we are back after this >> announcer: don't forget to subscribe to our podcast you get interviews and behind the scenes access. look for us on apple podcasts or the favorite podcast app and subscribe to squawk pod today.
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a few retailers to watch this morning ulta shares trading higher a blockbuster quarter more than doubling the wall street expectation for earnings the stock set to rise about 4% in pre-market. gap topping estimates with the
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guidance raising stock active wear sales. stock backing off in the pre-market and costco results beat the street the retailer says it is facing higher costs for employees and paper products and imported meats and cheese costco does not really pass along those price increases one for one. becky. that's right that's right you have the treasury hunt as travel rebounds, so does unruly behavior on planes. that includes an insurcident on southwest which resulted in losing two teeth by a flight attendant. a warning issued by passengers who don't behave >> we will not tolerate behavior that threatens the well being of the public or employees that bravely are on the frontlines to facilitate travel for
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individuals who want to reunite with friends and family. >> joining us now is sara nelson the international president of the association of flight attendants sara, good to see you this morning. thanks for being with us to talk about this i was stunned reading the initial coverage of what happened on that southwest flight then seeing some of the video that has been out on twitter this does not look like a provoked situation the passenger said she was doing this in self defense swinging and hitting hard and punching the flight attendants until someone else got involved. this is nuts what are you seeing right now in the air? >> it is complete nuts and a constant combative attitude. this is just something we have never seen before in aviation to this level already in the first five months of this year, we have more than 20 times the numbers of unruly passenger events we would have
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in a full year it has to stop there's -- it's no coincidence that the secretary is speaking out like that. we have been asking for that we have been asking for clear leadership from the government and our airlines and from everyone to understand what the rules are and the consequences are if you act are if you act out and really this is also a product of air travel not yet being rationalized, not yet being back to where it was we're at 60% demand of what we were prior to covid. we don't have business travelers back we don't have international travel back and this is an environment that we just have never seen before and we can't wait for it to be over >> what does the lower demand have to do with these incredible scenes that we're watching play out? are you suggesting that airlines are not as strict with things because they're not able to -- because they're afraid of scaring more passengers off? what are you talking about
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>> no, thank you for that, becky. i want to clear that up. we don't have as many airplanes in the air as we used to we've got 60% of the travel demand it's more about the fact that we don't have people on the planes who are used to flying, who know the program when you fly typically what flight attendants will do, when we see a conflict rise on the plane, we're trained to de-escalate, we look for our helpers. it's very difficult when you don't have people on the plane who are regularly flying, know the program, who are typical people that we would go to to help create peer pressure but also help to try to calm down these incidents. and so it's just a different environment with these planes and people ready to get out and also being told that everything that we are doing to try to keep people safe in this public health emergency is a political issue rather than a public health necessity they've been set up to believe that this is a combative space and most of these issues are
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over mask compliance >> wow what's the solution? i know that in some cases the flight attendants' union has asked for additional air marshals to be on board. what other measures could be taken? what would de-escalate the situations in the planes >> look, a lot of times these events are exacerbated by alcohol so we have been asking the government and the airlines to make sure that we're not selling alcohol right now because that's only adding to the problem that is very clearly out of control and we also would like to see more airplanes getting back up in the air and giving us a little space to deal with this people didn't necessarily like sitting right next to another person on the plane before we started giving each other a 6 foot berth here we are on the other side of coronavirus. people are ready -- not quite on the other side we're not through the pandemic yet. we continue to need to have all of the safety precautions in
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place to keep everyone safe and people sometimes when they're jammed into close space with all of this pent-up tension and then being told that we're at odds with each other, they're coming with combative attitude rather than just the desire to have a safe, uneventful flight. i do really want to be very clear though, we always remember and recognize the outliers and the bad incidents and it's still the vast majority of people who really do want to come to the door of the airplane and have a safe flight. i'll say that this new phenomenon in air is also a threat to our jobs because people start to think that this is the new norm for air travel, why would you want to do it? so we really have to get this under control because we need to keep people safe but also because we've got to get back to a place where air travel was before this pandemic started >> yeah. i mean, i think about it and when i have watched it and seen some of these things recently
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reminds you of road rage that's happened i don't know if it's society and part of this is taking this idea that you can be less civil with people i don't know how we get back to civility and how we get back to where you treat people how you want to be treated what have the airlines themselves done or said in terms of when you've asked for additional flights to be put in the air or when it comes down to the idea of not selling alcohol. that's got to be a bit of an issue when the airline companies are also trying to make money or at least stop losing as much money. >> yeah. alcohol sales are not huge right now. they just need to stop and they're starting to add the service back on board and it's got to stop until we get this under control. i think that we really need some government intervention here on that particular issue and maybe on some other modified food and beverage service issues so that we can not be adding to the problem, but i also really want to thank our airlines and i want to thank the federal government,
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faa administrator steve dickson has been spending every single day on this issue. the faa has been very clear about the fines that they have been issuing and the fact that you can face jail time i was on an event with fa a&t sa this week. we have that zero tolerance extended through september 13th. i appreciate you reporting on this we have to get the word out. there are real consequences if you're going to act out on a plane and you're going to be facing a federal penalty and fine when we communicate these consequences that does help deter people from acting out like this. we have to get the message across and help them understand this is not acceptable and the airlines have to work with us for all of the things we're asking for to try to calm this down and not be doing anything that's adding to it. >> sarah, i don't know if this would improve the situation or not, but when you get on an airplane, oftentimes -- not often, always the flight
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attendants welcome people over the loud speaker, go truehroughe safety procedures and all of the measures should they explicitly be saying what the fines are, what's illegal, nothing will be tolerated? does that make the experience better does that provoke violence does it make it worse? i don't know the answer, but there's part of me that thinks if -- i -- probably wouldn't be a great experience to hear, but if it was said at the beginning of every single flight, it might change the dynamic no >> andrew, you are correct, that we need to have more messaging, constant messaging, but it's really important to have that throughout the airport so you have psas running over the loud speakers or on the screens at the gates, announcements being made at the gates. it's very helpful when the flight deck will make those announcements, an announcement from the captain with that kind of message and giving this message everywhere and having it saturated throughout the travel
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experience is really very helpful. you're on to something there and you're also onto the fact that it's very helpful when flight attendants are not necessarily the ones to be communicating the rules in a stern way but to be able to give instruction to people in the cabin and to be able to use all of our skills and all of our different tactics to de-escalate we would really like to see that on the front end, saturate it throughout the entire travel experience when people check in, get their ticket, buy their ticket, an acknowledgment of these things messaging in the gate jetways as they are boarding the plane. the more messaging we can have around this, the better. >> okay. sara, thank you. always good to see you appreciate it. have a great long weekend. >> you, too. >> it's going to be busy in the skies this weekend. >> it's going to be busy i'm going to be on call. >> very, very busy when we come back on the other side of this break, the labor secretary is going to be joining
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us we're going to talk about president biden's $6 trillion budget proposal set to be ayveiled today st tuned, you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc
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futures ahead. breakdown of what's moving the markets are straight ahead president biden set to propose the biggest government spending in decades labor secretary marty walsh joins us for a news making interview. plus, light shed's rich greenfield with the move on amc shares tune out the reddit crack. the second hour of "squawk box." good morning, welcome back to "squawk box. and becky quick and mike santoli is joining us to hang out. joe is off today futures at this hour, three hours to show you before the opening bell looks like things are going to open higher. 189 points higher.
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up a little over 18 points nasdaq going to open a little over 66 points higher right about now. >> thanks, andrew. a news alert on boeing the jet maker has halted deliveries of the 787 dream liners according to the wall street journal people familiar with the matter say that regulators want more information about boeing's proposals to address previously identified quality lapses. it isn't clear how long this latest delay might last but dreamliner deliveries have been suspended for five months before they resumed back in late march. you can see boeing shares off by 1 1/4% today the stock has had a little bit of a runup over the last month especially for the year up 65%. before it declined, it was up by 7% andrew >> thanks, becky meantime, president biden getting ready to unveil his proposed $6 trillion budget later this morning his plan would reshape the economy with expected spending in education, health care, social services and
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infrastructure which is an investment in the american worker joining us is labor secretary marty walsh. good morning to you, mr. secretary. we appreciate you being with us. want to talk about this plan and really want to talk about whether you think that this plan is just the beginning of a massive negotiation and where it really ends because we've already heard from the other side of the aisle and they're not happy. of course, there are questions even within the democratic party whether there's going to be agreement. >> first of all, thank you for having me this morning and, secondly, it's unfortunately that we have sides here. this proposed budget by the president is an investment in the american people, investment in the american economy and it's about the future of america. president biden's economic plans have been working up to this point. we've seen some growth in jobs, people coming back to work we've seen people being
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vaccinated we've seen our economy beginning to move. these are investments the president is proposing that's going to continue to move our country forward. >> mr. secretary, how do you think about the issue of debt and deficits in this day and age? i know that there are remarkably low interest rates today, but we've started to see them creep up and i think that there's concern that they could continue to creep up. if they do, the costs could be dear >> you know, i think the president has talked about tackling the deficit he's talked about it when you go about the american jobs plan he's the first president in quite a while now to actually be talking about taking on the debt i think it's important that as we think about spending, we think about building the infrastructure here in this country, when i say infrastructure i don't mean roads and business, i mean the care economy, job force training, work force development. the president also wants to tackle the debt. he doesn't want to add more debt
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to it. what he's talking about now is moving forward, laying down infrastructure and taking on the debt that's important to think that's fiscally responsible, the president is doing it and i hope that everyone understands, when i say everyone, i'm talking about the legislative body, they understand the importance of being able to do both, making investments in the future of america and tackle the debt so the future of america is paying that down. >> hold on you believe that this budget tackles the debt how so >> in the president's plan for the american jobs plan he talks about raising the corporate tax rate that would pay for the jobs plan and take care of deficit >> i think there's a question about how much the government is currently spending and how much we will spend. let me just ask you about the current state of affairs, which is to say there is going to be some unspent money as a function
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of the rescue package and a view that that should be effectively pulled forward into something like this or even into the infrastructure plan. do you think that's the appropriate way to do it >> i think obviously everything is a negotiation we're not spending money what we need to do is pay down some debt with that money or we can pay it forward and move forward here again, not all of the -- assuming not all of the american infrastructure plan will be spent. many won't spend it all and that money should go back and we should be having the conversations. that's part of the legislative process. >> do you think that should change the dynamic of, for example, the tax plan? that's where this gets interesting. you say, well, maybe i'll actually have more money than i thought i'd have then you say to yourself, maybe i don't need to tax everybody the same way that i needed to if
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i needed more money or no? >> i think it's too early to tell i think it's too early to tell how much will be left over we won't know that for quite some time. the money is in some places getting down to states and getting down to cities and then coming up with a spending plan on how to make those spending plans in those cities and towns. it's too early to say that i think as far as what the president rolled out the other day, these are major areas that need investments in the country that haven't been touched in a long time and the president is doing that to continue to move our economy forward. >> let me ask you a labor question since that's what you spend most of your time thinking about these days there is a lot of emotion, if not anecdotal evidence from restauranteurs and other small business owners that say i can't get enough employees back. i can't get them back. i can't get them back because the unemployment insurance benefits are too high. do you buy that? >> you know, i think there's lots of factors were some people
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might not be going back to work. i don't buy the factor that because somebody is getting $300 money additional of 8 million people in america that's not the rational of them going back to work the month of april more people were looking for work and more than the previous month. i think we're seeing the cdc with changes in guidelines on masks, i think what we'll see is lots more americans going back to work. industries are beginning to open up people are starting to go out. we still have to keep our eye on the coronavirus and continue to encourage people to get vaccinated and take care of their personal health and take care of the people around them, but i think as we continue through the end of the spring here into early summer, hopeful we're going to have very -- as long as the virus works with us, the virus can't work with us but as long as we continue to bring the virus down, we'll have very different conversations in this country about people getting back to work already the president in the last three months, the president has averaged -- the country's
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averaged about 500,000 new jobs a month here in the united states. >> mr. secretary, the president did kind of set out a principle about the goal of full employment and what it should mean basically saying instead of employees having to kind of shop around for work at low pay, he wants companies to be competing for workers. in other words, to kind of shift the balance of leverage towards workers and run the economy hot that way is that something that you feel -- i mean, it seems like a sea change from the way the economy's operating for better or worse for decades at this point. is that something you feel you're getting push back on from companies? do you feel that's something that's already underway? >> you know, i think the fact that we're coming out of a pandemic a year ago this time, many cities or states shut down or coming out of the first wave of the coronavirus and then we've had a couple of increases in the virus after september and
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into the holiday season, but i think that the president -- when the president talks about his building back better, he's talking about raising wages, trying to get more people into the middle class, opportunities into the middle class. it does go back to the american jobs plan. it does go back to the american families plan. i think we can expect overnight businesses to start paying their employees higher wages immediately. i think we'd like to see that and give people opportunities to be able to earn more money and be able to make a better living for themselves and their families that's what the fundamental issue the president is talking about when he talks about build back better. i think some restaurants and some businesses, they're going to start to see lots of people coming back. these restaurants, a lot of them are closed for the last year they haven't been full economy i'm a former mayor i want to see people going i want to be on the show talking about our unemployment
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historically low, jobs, job creation, work force development. that's what i want to be talking about here, but we still have a little ways to go here with the pandemic we're still living with the pandemic >> mr. secretary i want to ask you about gig workers because there's been lots of questions about what kind of benefits gig workers should receive and the like and yet one of the fascinating features of our economy right now is actually there are not enough gig workers for the likes of the ubers, the doordashs and the lyfts because of how tight the market is. the question is whether the market will sort this out itself >> this market will sort itself out in general with workers. we're not going to see, again, the people that have lost their jobs during the pandemic, these folks want to get back to work these industries want to hire people we want to get people back in. over the last couple of weeks i spent some time talking to those
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companies you just mentioned as well as workers and people in those industries that talk about how do we advance and move american workers forward we need to get people back to work that's the main thing here. >> but does that change the dynamic in terms of what the administration may want to pursue in terms of benefits or not for quote, unquote, gig workers. if the market is so tight does that mean the market unto itself is working >> i don't necessarily believe the market being tight i think we're talking about a situation as if we're not dealing with a pandemic in a lot of these conversations and we are doing the pandemic. we have lack of child care kids learning hybrid we still very much have a pandemic here. i don't think we can look at this recovery as we did in the early 2000s, 2008, 9 and '10 this is a very different situation we're dealing with the president has been very
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focused along with his team and department of labor, commerce and the rest of us have been worried about. this has been 100 years we've had to rebound from an economic so called crisis this wasn't a recession, this wasn't a depression, this was a pandemic that hit the country. we are coming out of this, and as we're moving forward here adjusting to make sure we're able to rebound and recover 100%. >> fair enough mr. secretary, we appreciate you being with us. hope you come on back. hope you have a great long weekend. >> thank you very much >> if you're working in the white house these days, i don't know if anybody gets a long weekend. >> not the federal government. thank you. when we come back, we'll talk about on march 10th when analyst rich greenfield initiated coverage of amc with a sell rating and a 1 cent price target since then he's been getting some flak on social media. oh, yeah, and the stock's trading above $30. he will join us in just a bit to
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talk about the stock and the investor drama, what he thinks is really happening here. before we head to the break though, let's get a check on the markets this morning green arrows across the board. dow indicated up more than 180 points this morning. s&p up by 17 nasdaq up by 60 points all before this long holiday weekend. "squawk box" will be right back. your calls and assist your clients. you can't be in two places at once. let posh answer. posh virtual receptionists.
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welcome back the senate is talking about sweeping legislation 54 billion to increase computer chips currently in short supply. the chip shortages are a primary focus of computer makers dell and hp inc have better than expected revenue there is a surge in demand chip shortages will impact pc supplies this year. "consumer reports" has pulled the topic rating for tesla's model 3. that follows the decision to remove a radar decision. the insurance institute for highway safety is making a similar move removing the top safety pick designation although it says it will evaluate tesla's updated system. when we return we'll talk to rich greenfield of lightshed
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partners in the runup on amc he has a sell rating and a price target of a penny for it he's been under fire on social media. you can see what the stock has done since that call back on march 10th he joins us after the break. later, new jersey governor phil murphy on the reopening of the garden state what a day of upsets. ha ha. jill is certainly upset with that unexpected bill from her back surgery. aflac! let's see that one more time. ♪ ♪ (bleep) (wincing) oooh, right in the wallet! ouch! aflac! aflac would have paid jill cash directly to help with expenses health insurance doesn't cover. hold on, i think she's trying to give us a side-eye... because she can't turn her head! (laugh) get help with expenses health insurance doesn't cover. get to know us at aflac.com i'm dad's greatest sandcastle - and greatest memory! but even i'm not as memorable as eating turkey hill chocolate peanut butter cup ice cream with real cocoa. well, that's the way the sandcastle crumbles.
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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning amc soaring up another 23% this morning. the next guest is critical of the stock. he had no chose but to temporarily lock his social media accounts joining us is rich greenfield, amc has been on a tear we'll talk about your personal experience in a moment, but let's just speak to what's happening here because the thing that is baffling to me in many respects is this is seen as a reddit wall street bets game but it's happening as a function of big institutional investors. >> it's actually i think a false narrative. this has nothing to do with the short squeeze anymore.
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look at yesterday, 688 million shares traded yesterday. there's only 450 million shares outstanding. this is not a short squeeze. this is not big institutions, hedge funds being squeezed if hedge funds wanted to get out of their entire position if they were short, they could do it in minutes. this has nothing to do with a short squeeze. sort of the funny part about this is there's this sort of army of retail investors that keeps talking about we're going to buy, hold, never sell yet there's this greater fool theory like somebody's selling because 688 million shares traded yesterday. so retail is selling to retail at ever higher prices so some of them are obviously making tremendous amounts of money as they get more and more people to buy at inflated prices look, andrew, all that really matters here long term, this company is never going to make cash again they will never generate cash with their current capital structure. it traded at 7 times ebitda
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prepandemic. it's now trading at 25 times ebitda right now and it's in worse position today with the changed industry today this just defies all logic i get it, people can buy this stock and keep sending it higher like they're showing even in the premarket today, but ultimately this company doesn't make money, the debt investors in this stock, this debt trades at 70 cents on a dollar for a reason there's a good chance this company goes bankrupt. the debt investors know that the equity investors at least at the moment don't care. >> they don't care, but if they were to care, what would you think fair value for this company would be >> fair value is what your future cash flows are. this company can't generate cash flow you look at what it's sort of earned historically. the change of the industry, interest expense and capital expenditures, it will never generate cash again. this company is headed for bankruptcy the only choice it has if it
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issues hundreds of millions of shares, now it's already issued several hundred million shares over the last year if it issues hundreds of millions of shares at these inflated prices, it could actually stave off bankruptcy. it wouldn't be anywhere near what it's worth today. >> that's what i was going to ask you, rich. if you were the ceo and the company's general counsel or outside counsel would you advise the company to raise money >> well, sure. i mean, think about it silver lake, think about the team over there. i'm sure you've talked to them, andrew they sold at $10 wanda, which was the owner of this company originally, they sold all of their shares like all of the smart money that's had access to the board and all of the information, they've all sold at dramatically lower prices the fact that the company isn't issuing stock at these prices is crazy. i mean, they should be paying down their debt right now because the underlying economics of their business -- i mean, think about it
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cinemark, same business, roughly the same earnings prepandemic. 2019, very similar earnings, cinemark trades at, you know, a fraction 1/3 of where this company trades like it just doesn't make any logical sense that cinemark trades with a better capital structure and generates less at 1/3 that amc trades at. it just defies logic but, look, i think at the end of the day -- >> hey, rich -- >> go ahead. sorry. >> i was going to say, you're saying what people who know these businesses the best, what people who have followed the stock market for decades have all been saying at this point. i guess the question becomes what happens to change this sort of alice in wonderland world at this point what actually happens to make the music stop >> i don't know.
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you've got a ceo in adam aaron who's acting like p.t. barnum. there's that saying there's a sucker born every inute. >> i'm not just talking amc, i'm talking more broadly >> look, we've seen this in fugo and other shares i can't speak to gme i don't know that business well enough there is this excitement to buy stocks regardless of valuation, regardless of future earnings. all i can say is ultimately the business is under a lot of pressure i mean, look at your parent company comcast and universal shifting "boss baby" directly to peacock. they're not alone. mgm just got bought by amazon and is clearlygoing to put mor movies directly on to amazon streaming. the industry is fundamentally changing there is this narrative that you have to buy amc stock to prevent the short sellers from driving it into bankruptcy short selling doesn't make companies go bankrupt. bankrupt companies don't very
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often go away. they restructure, fix their debt structure and reemerge there's just a lot of false narratives being sent around the biggest one is where we started, becky this idea that this is a short squeeze. there is nothing to do with a short squeeze here this is literally retail in a feeding frenzy buying it from each other with one retail investor selling it at ever higher prices to another retail investor that's what's actually going on if you really look through it. and i just think at the end of the day it's sort of just -- again, the -- where the -- where this ends is when there just runs out of money to keep buying it people stop buying it at these higher prices, it's going to crack. >> rich, and there's -- you don't buy into any of the narrative that as the world returns in a post covid world these seats are sold out, packed every night, every day, 100% capacity as if it's travel that's not on your -- not in the
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cards to you >> let's just say it is. let's just honestly say it is. do you think it's going to be that way for all of 2022 every week, andrew, you're going to the movies. the first thing after being trapped inside for the year, the number one activity you have, not going to a concert, not going out to dinner with friends, the number one is going to be crowding into a movie theater? movie theater has been in a secular decline. more and more people were choosing not to go into a theater. this company was troubled pre-pandemic is there a surge in the first few weeks when we can fully go this weekend i'm sure there's a lot of excitement to go see some of the big movies opening up this weekend that's not the question. the question is what will earnings look like in 2022 and beyond and this company is not going to earn what it used to earn >> rich, just tell us about your
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personal experience though apart from this or maybe not apart because it's very related to this, which is you have been just attacked viciously online as a result of some of the things you're saying right now. >> i think that's what's surprising i love having sort of very honest and financial debates i've certainly been wrong on stocks we've talked about places we've been wrong on cnbc i'm happy to have a debate with anyone i think the level of filth and harassment that's been thrown at us on social media, it got to the point where we had to lock our twitter account and sort of let it cool off. it's just too upsetting to see what's been done there is this sort of mob like behavior of at least some of these retail investors obviously i can't speak to all of them. i see what's been thrown at me having to block thousands and thousands of people over the last week, it's just sort of depressing that this isn't
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about -- this is sort of the new get rich quick scheme and anything in the way is attacked. i think that's what -- that's what's disappointing from a human behavior standpoint. >> rich, we hope things on that front get better and we do look forward to seeing what does happen in the movie theater business and whether people end up at the movies this weekend and what ends up with amc stocks good to see you. have a great weekend >> thanks for having me. >> thank you. when we come back on "squawk," new jersey governor phil murphy is going to be joining us to talk about the reopening of the garden state and give us an update on its vaccine rollout. stay tedun you're watching "squawk" on cnbc ♪ buttercup, baby ♪ ♪ just to let me down ♪ ♪ (let me down) ♪ ♪ and mess me around ♪ ♪ and then worst of all ♪ ♪ (worst of all) ♪ ♪ you never call, baby ♪ ♪ when you... ♪ ♪ say you will... ♪ carl. what have you done? think anyone will notice? yes.
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welcome back to "squawk box. i'm dominic chu with your market minute the dow, the s&p 500 have had a decent week. it's been churning some water here a little bit. the dow industrials currently 2% away from record high levels the s&p 500 about 1% away and the nasdaq still roughly 3% below the record high. keep an eye on those particular moves. they could be within striking
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distance today the sectors that have outperformed the utilities. it's sensitive the stocks come lowering back with a vengeance yesterday, $12 billion valuation. just to kind of get the respect. game stock up big. the day trading type stocks. that is the bankrupt $6.04.
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it's down as low as roughly 40 cents. the activity when it comes to frenzies and internet messages the stocks keep it here we'll have more on it. in business, it's never just another day. it's the big sale, or the big presentation. the day where everything goes right.
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equity futures pointing higher 4238 b of a securities. >> you were saying for a bit now that you thought the s&p 500, the broad indexes might struggle to make further progress.
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>> i think you want to stick with the idea you don't fight the fed. what does the fed want right now? the fed wants inflation. my favorite way to hedge against inflation is buying energy energy is the sector that has basically been purged from portfolios over the last ten years. it has, you know, basically some of the lowest valuations we've seen it is most correlated with inflationary trends and what we're hearing from the fed is that what we're seeing right now might be transitory, i think we could be in for a longer, slower reflationary cycle let's think about the big risk to energy. it's the idea we want to kind of transition to this carbon neutral, carbon net zero world well, along the way there we still need to keep the lights on, keep the factories running right now i think the demand versus supply story for energy is really, really bullish.
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i would stick with that sector the other sector i think is kind of a sleeper and hasn't really done as well as one might expect is health care think about it, health care has underperformed the market since the onset of the pandemic last year despite the fact that we've had, you know, a health care crisis u.s. health care companies literally saved the world and yet the sector has underperformed so i think health care really to me is an interesting example of the new growth sector. so, you know, rather than buying overweight kind of crowded tech stocks that are trading at much higher multiples, i would go for health care companies that have the potential to see bigger spend from government, from consumer, from corporates as we emerge from this health care crisis so i think those are two sectors that make a lot of sense in this environment. they're not necessarily the same type of sector one is reflationary and the
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other is more growth and secular, but i think they both could do well at this point. they're both value, which i like as you know. >> right absolutely it's a good reminder that, in fact, the fed's stated policy right now is to generate more inflation and so you -- >> yes. >> -- probably should take them at their word to the extent they can accomplish that. what do you think the implications are more broadly for equities, valuations and things like that. >> so if you think about inflation, it's not necessarily anathma to stocks. unless we get to the 19750s like inflation where you get inflation choking off growth, i think we could be in for strong gains in pockets of the equity market where you don't want to be, this is a little counter intuitive, you don't want to be in consumer discretionary stocks what we found is labor inflation, while you would think it would be good, people spend money they're making at the
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stores, in fact consumer discretionary is one of the most labor intensive sectors and margins are hurt by rising wages. so i think that's one area you want to avoid and then, you know, when you think about where to go in an inflationary cycle, small caps generally outperform large caps which is quite interesting small caps have more of a tether to gdp growth and cyclicality than larger companies which are more tied with local so i would watch margins. i would stick with equities and shift my focus to reflation plays. you know, in this environment i also think that dividend growth offers something kind of rare, which is inflation protected yield. so if you think about bonds, bonds are literally fixed income the yield doesn't increase but stocks offer growing income where earnings are nominal
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the dividend stocks in the s&p 500 to me look great you can talk about a lot of different ways to play this, but i think banks, financials, industrials, you know, even energy companies, i think these are areas where you could start to see some cash return acceleration. >> yeah. you sort of conspicuously are not saying that the old favorites that led the market up into late last year, the faang tech kind of consensus secular growth stocks are looking great right now, though there have been some indicators suggesting that they are less crowded, that is, a lot of hedge funds have kind of light jened up in them n there have been outflows are we still waiting to see them go further out of favor? how do you think they play here? >> i think what's really remarkable is though we have seen outflows from tech and it goes into value or sectors, we're still in a world where the
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average hedge fund manager is over weight tech and underweight financials and energy. we haven't necessarily seen that really aggressive selling that would tell us that having this is endless faang stocks are 30% overweight in the average portfolio i still think this is an environment where, yeah, we've seen a little bit of selling but we're nowhere near the levels of capitulation in tech. >> yeah. it took a long time to get that way. probably the unwind is not going to be quick. >> exactly. >> great to talk to you. thanks for coming in. >> great talking to you. thanks so much the mask mandate in new jersey mostly going away starting today we'll speak to new jersey governor phil murphy on what's quk x"ilrerne.arden stat "sawbo wl tu with cutting-edge tech, world-class interiors, mercedes-benz suvs.
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the garden state is loosening mask restrictions for being just in time for maine for day and the weekend. it's effective today new jersey will no longer require people to wear masks joining us right now is squawk newsmaker, new jersey governor phil murphy. n thanks for having me >> you have received a lot of
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crit criticism. >> we weren't ready to put it simply on may 13th when the cdc made their move. by the way, at that moment they said states could choose to be stricter in their policies we chose that. we're the densest state and every day if it's going in the right direction you get better health metrics and in this case every single day you can buy -- you get more people vaccinated in those two weeks that we've been able to hold off on have been really meaningful and we
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feel comfortable we can lift the mask mandate >> what number has been most important for you. >> it's really both. >> the rate of transmission. the hospitalizations continue to drop folks getting sick in the hospitals continue to drop sadly, people are still dying but that as we know is a lagging indicator. at the same time we're putting 20 to 30,000 shots into arms over the two weeks that's several hundred thousand folks. would some have been vaccinated? probably >> how much push back have you gotten >> from the get-go there's probably a group that's wanted
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to be open full bore for 15 months but over these two weeks, folks have continued in jersey to do the right thing. by the millions. and proprietors by the tens of thousands. there is an issue at a certain point. if you're as densely packed in a region as we are and you're across the hudson from new york city or across the delaware from philadelphia, at a certain point folks will change their habits they've got different standards than you have. so that's a reality that we were dealing with but folks have overwhelmingly done the right thing in jersey from the get-go. >> does that mean you felt pressure to open because new york and connecticut and pennsylvania have opened up and maybe you'll lose some business to people who will travel across state lines to eat and things like that? that went into your anything. >> yeah, to some extent, but only if we're satisfied with the health metrics and the vaccination rates. those are the two most important trends we're looking at. but we also want to be fair to
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our restauranteurs and bars and small businesses who, by the way, have been crushed over 15 months and we just think this is the right moment it's memorial day weekend. we've got the jersey shore, which is an american gem and we feel we can safely take this step and we're really excited to do so. >> once these restrictions lift it's kind of hard to imagine them going back. is there any scenario in which you would reinstate some of these restrictions >> i mean, there has to be, and we have to remember that the virus dictates the terms here and not us so you have to leave that option on the table i will say i'm proud to say that i think new jersey is the only state in america throughout this entire pandemic that did not lurch forward and then backward on some step of reopening. and our strong hope is that we will not have to do it in this case >> what will school look like in
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the fall schools have said for the rest of the year. >> probably until early fall >> it's open monday through friday it's staff if i had to sit here today, to the very point you have made all of our kids are eligible for vaccines my gut tells me that we open the school year with masking the protocols. they're safe, they work. over time we can pull that back.
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>> senator, the president is from the details of that federal budget to levels that we haven't seen in the past. the taxes, one of the considerations what i'm guessing is that the salt addictions will not be part of this budget. >> so i haven't had a chance to review the budget proposal, but i do think we're seeing over the past 15 months a reminder when
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government works well, it is an existential player, whether that's in a pandemic or in this case in a recovery after the pandemic and i think president biden and team are doing a great job on both fronts. the s.a.l.t. deduction hurts new jersey let there be no doubt about it the cap of $10,000 on state and local tax deduction is wrong it was instituted in the prior administration it was directed at states like ours i think frankly it has a political agenda associated with it and we're going to keep fighting, whether it's across the aisle or within our own party because it unfairly hurts states like new jersey and we'll continue to fight. by the way, interest's a myth out there, i think, that it only hurts wealthy homeowners folks who think that have not come to new jersey these are overwhelmingly middle class homeowners and we're going to keep fighting for them. >> new jersey is the highest tax
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state in the nation and over the lifetime of -- according to a recent study, over someone's lifetime a new jersey resident will pay more taxes than someone from any other state and by a large margin it was more than $100,000 more than the next runner up. north of $900,000 in taxes paid on average over a new jersey resident's lifetime. what can you do about that >> well, listen. we do a lot of things about it, becky. one is to get a fairer deal in what we pay and send down to washington versus what we get back as we've just discussed we are one of the biggest export states of tax dollars in the nation we have an enormous amount of property tax relief in our budget we inherited a property tax crisis but i'm happy to say on the one hand that of the five lowest property tax increases in the history of our state, three of them are our first three years in office. having said that, those are the
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three lowest increases we want to get property taxes going down this is a state where the number one public education system in america, one of the top health care systems, location second to none, extraordinary quality of life you get a lot back in jersey, but we want to make sure at the same time people have a fair deal and especially in our relationship with our tax dollars going down to washington >> you raised taxes on the wealthiest new jerseyians last year and made it retroactive it was a big tax bill for a lot of people. what have you seen in terms of residents leaving the state. we've seen a lot of people who have left during the pandemic. not just new jersey, new york too. with these additional increases on wealthy individuals, what have you seen in terms of that demographic leaving the state.
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they make a decision based on where they're going to live based on income tax, rather. where folks do make their decisions on back to your prior question is on any wealth tax and in our case property tax property tax relief is a huge agenda item for us again, if you factor in this deduction cap on state and local taxes, that hurts. that hurts a lot of middle class homeowners so we're going to deep fighting for that we'll deliver as much property tax relief in our budget within the state as we can. >> governor, thank you for your time this morning. we appreciate it.
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>> good to see you, becky. thanks for having me >> you, too. when we come back. dr. scott gottleib will join us, this time from the new york stock exchange where he is ringing the opening bell this morning. later texas governor greg abbott talks the loan star ste'ats recovery and reopening "squawk box" will be right back. from the world's number 1 selling nerve care company. as we age, natural changes to our nerves occur which can lead to occasional discomfort. nervive contains b complex vitamins that nourish nerves, build nerve insulation and enhance nerve communication. and, alpha-lipoic acid, which relieves occasional nerve aches, weakness and discomfort. live your life with less nerve discomfort with nervive nerve relief.
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good morning it's the final trading day of may and stocks are poised to jump we're looking at futures that are green across the board nevertheless, the nasdaq is on pace to break a six month streak shares are soaring this morning. it's like something out of a movie. amc stock is up. unofficial start of summer is here and u.s. covid cases have been cut in half over the last month. this hour we're going to speak with former fda commissioner dr. scott gottleib and texas governor greg abbott about america's reopening. the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now.
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good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin and mike santoli. joe is off today watching the u.s. equity futures and on this last trading day before a long weekend you're going to see green arrows across the board. dow futures up by 166. they've been up by as much as 200 this morning s&p up by 15 nasdaq up by 57. andrew >> thank you, becks. we are just under 30 minutes away now from the latest read on inflation. we're going to be getting the fed's preferred gauge at 8:30 even time. ahead of that mike has been taking a look at treasuries and inflation link stock sectors mike >> they've kind of been in a holding pattern. uncommonly steady and kind of calm markets we have going into this number. take a look at the 10-year treasury yield what you see here is familiar on a lot of these charts. huge surge up into february, march area and then a little bit
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off the highs but really range bound and staying above this floor. you know, we have not really cracked below 1.5% so it seems like it's maintaining the up trend but just sort of digesting it and going sideways take a look at sectors of the market that are part of this reflation theme, this idea that we have reviving growth and upward buys to inflation the materials sector, banks, russell 2000 you see the same thing, very aggressive gains fall into the early part of this year and flattening out the banks are closer and you do have materials which look a little bit stronger have just recently more flattened out. also very heavy flows into materials. the overall s&p 500 not terribly different. we do have a slight up side bias over the last few weeks although for six weeks we've been in this mode here in this trading range. 4238 is the interday record high we closed yesterday at 4200. indicated up 15. something to watch as we hit the end of the month preholiday
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trading. it's a little bit of a levitation thing low volume we'll see if that plays out, andrew. >> before we go, i want to talk a little bit about today's inflation data and whether you think it plays into a bigger debate on inflation and fed policy itself. >> it certainly plays into the debate it's expected to be a relatively hot number it follows the cpi which was similarly on the high side the problem is when the fed is saying that they expect this inflationary burst to be temporary and dissipate and one off factors and bottlenecks and commodity prices and comparisons to last year's low numbers, nothing about the april data we're going to get today is going to settle that argument as to whether it's temporary, transitory or in fact if it's going to be more enduring. i do think if it's wide of the markit's going to have some kind of a market you have yields rushing up aggressively you have all of the reflationary
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sectors move into march and thereabouts and then it's calmed down we seem to have come a little bit away of worrying from inflation. we'll see if today's number has anything that changes that particular picture. >> mike, i've got two others for you. >> okay. >> where are we on amc at this moment this morning? because it's just one of these stocks that's been on such a tear. >> yeah. >> and seems -- it seems irrational, but i don't want to -- i don't want to tell the audience it's irrational i don't know well, i don't know, i want to say it's irrational. i don't know what to say here. >> what it is, andrew, it's extra rational it's not driven by rational forces maybe down the road it's not necessarily counter to rationality because momentum is a move it's a buying stampede absolutely tremendous volume in stock options yesterday in amc that does have a self-feeding kind of dynamic in the short term it's not really about the
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transformation of this company it's not really about the movie theater business getting great down the road but it is taking on a bit of a life of its own. it's become a little bit of a crusade. we do have options expiring today. sometimes that is sort of a short-term crescendo in activity when things might burn themselves out it's not principally a short squeeze as we and rich greenfield were talking about earlier even though that's part of the backdrop. >> do you think there's any comparison to hertz in this? is there an analogy to draw? >> yes. >> i think there's an analogy in the sense you have a company familiar to everybody, a brand that is ubiquitous we think it's too big to go away the stock price initially extremely low. the idea that you have a
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reopening that's going to come as an excuse for things getting better and just kind of creating the raw material for a viral social meme that just did explode. and those two things are similar. i worry that the lesson of hertz where equity holders are going to get some value out, which is unusual at some bankruptcy, may not be the one that's valuable going down the road to have learned. it's not the typical case. the enterprise value if you can count all of the debt, it's $20 billion. it's multiples of what this company was when the movie theater business was good. >> mike, thank you for that. we're out of time. we should mention bitcoin down about 8% we should talk about that at some point let me send it over to becky right now. becks? >> i know, it's fluctuated so much recently. down 7 or 8% doesn't necessarily catch our attention these days. in the meantime though, covid cases are down the vaccination numbers are still growing and memorial day weekend is here. are we out of the woods for the
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summer meg tirrell joins us with a look at what the experts are saying now. meg, good morning. >> good morning, becky let's take a look at where we are right now. it's in a much different situation than we were last year we're in a period of what experts are calling exponential decay when it comes to case numbers in the united states we're averaging 22,000 just more than that. every day in the u.s. hospitalizations have come down and deaths that weird spike due to some data issues. essentially on an average of reporting less than 500 deaths every day here in the u.s. we know holiday weekends have been historically bad. memorial day last year in particular was tied to the beginning of a lot of the summer spikes look at this coverage about memorial day last year from california to across the country as lockdowns also were lifted. that was the beginning of a spike that really started about three weeks later. we saw cases go up by three times over the following month after that period of time.
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when askedabout the risk of memorial day weekend, so many people are vaccinated. here's what she said yesterday at an event about that >> i worry that people -- we have seen more cases after holidays, but we've never done this where 50% of the country has been vaccinated or 50% of adults have been vaccinated. what i would do is say if you are vaccinated, go, enjoy your memorial day weekend >> reporter: dr. walensky said if you are not vaccinated, you are not considered protected the pockets with the lighter colors have lower vaccination rates. texas doesn't break out county level data epidemiologists like johns hopkins caitlyn rivers and harvard's bill hannah are telling us in pockets where there are fewer vaccinated people there could be real risk of surges and canyon rivers
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points out memorial day is typically celebrated outside and that adds a level of safety. becky? >> meg, thank you. dr. scott gottleib is ringing the opening bell of the new york stock exchange today to celebrate new york's reopening it's a thank you to him and other front line workers who stepped up during the pandemic and helped guide us to figure out what we should be doing along the way. dr. gottleib joins us right now. of course, he is the former fda commissioner and cnbc contributor who serves on the boards of pfizer and illumina. scott, it has been a long journey. where do you think we are right now? is it really going to be a summer where we can open up and feel much more comfortable about things >> i think that's right. i think we're looking at summers where tension levels are low, it's going to continue to decline. we might not get below 10,000 cases a day because we're doing so much testing. there's going to be outbreaks in places like summer camps and elsewhere. still picking up cases the overall vulnerability is to
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decline. i think it's going to be a very good summer. the risk as we get into probably the winter i think we can get it. >> places like summer camps. they have not been vaccinated and will not be vaccinated this summer what sort of guidelines will you give for that. obviously for kids it does pose a lower risk there are populations within that that have heightened risk as well. what do you do >> yeah. kids are at lower risk overall so the infection poses less risk to kids to start you need to be mindful of situations where you have super spreading events so when you congregate people in environments where there's poor air circulation, you need to be mindful. you could see a situation where
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kids aren't wearing masks outside. i don't think kids should be wearing masks outside. i think the risks of wearing a mask and heat exposure are worse than any safety they'll have indoors i can see a situation where you take precautions with children you're taking precautions with hand washing the combination of things you can continue to do in that setting without imposing too much burden, that 34i9 at this gates a lot of the risk. >> go into a lunchroom, you're going to take your mask off. you've got to eat. >> you've got to eat you can space people apart take certain precautions we've seen businesses, restaurants do that successfully for the most part through the crisis there are ways to reduce risk and improve air quality and air flow summer camps, places like that need to be mindful of the
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precautions they could be taking >> we talked earlier about how the fda and johnson & johnson are expected to announce that they've cleared up those problems in that baltimore plant where there were manufacturing issues that had taken place before i think it means that maybe an additional 60 million doses of the vaccine could come online rather quickly but when i look around, it seems like we're running out of arms to put these shots into. they've got lotteries to try to convince people to come back and get vaccinated i'm getting emails every day from cvs or local health care providers, come on in, no wait times. no reservation required and we'll do this for free where do we stand just in terms of demand? >> well, demand is waning. we don't have a supply issue here in the united states. the j&j is a differentiated product. one dose injection it offers certain advantages in some settings. the approval game is back on track and being able to distribute j&j globally.
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demand is slowing but there are still people left who want to be vaccinated i think we're getting into the more flatter part of the demand curve, if you will, where you have people who have longer consideration periods. people who are a little bit reluctant to get the vaccine or people who want to get the vaccine but for whom it's still inconvenient we need to look at it and the population that remains unvaccinated one of the things i finds that motivates people who remain unvaccinated, it can reduce their infection for trachbs mitmitt i transmitting the virus the vaccine could substantially reduce their risk of spreading the vaccine to others, that's a different kind of motivation we need to talk more about the full contours of what the vaccine is delivering. a lot of people will be motivated by different reasons to get vaccinated. >> when you look across everything that we're doing right now, from the private sector, from the government level, from just people at home, where are your biggest concerns
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at this point? are you really feeling like we can almost declare mission accomplished >> i don't think we should declare mission accomplished i think we should declare near-term victory. we have done enough to give ourselves the opportunity to enjoy the summer and be at low risk this summer i think this is going to be a risk as we get into the fall and more likely the winter we could see new variants. get in place better surveillance and sequencing where we can spot the variants i think we need to continue to chip away at the rate of unvaccinated americans there's more work to do. we could probably get to 75% of americans vaccinated perhaps by the fall maybe a little bit higher than that still work to do and, you know, i think that right now we're on a pretty good track doing the right things >> scott, want to thank you. you've been with us just about every step of the way since this started over 14 months ago looking forward to watching you ringing the opening bell today we will talk to you again next week >> thanks a lot.
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i'm excited for that screen shot of scott up there in the bell when we come back, we're going to wrap up a busy month for tech and media with investor alan patricof who will injo us live stay tuned, you're watching "squawk" right here on cnbc. dave can work on his code. and lead his team. dave trusts his clone like he trusts himself. so, in summary, we're going to sell the company. who's in favor?... perfect. but if cloning isn't an option for you, just get posh. virtual receptionists who can answer and transfer your calls, because you can't be in two places at once.
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welcome back to "squawk box. want to show you what's going on with bitcoin this morning. now down 6%. off a little bit more this morning as well. it's coming as we've seen a big trade on things like other -- i don't want to say bitcoin is a meme stock it's not a stock at all but we're seeing what's happening with amc, we're seeing what's happening with gamestop this week we've also heard from ark invest's founder who had bullish comments about bitcoin we heard from people like ray dalio who said they own a little bit and we've seen bitcoin trade down just a bit this week as well there's also another big conference, coinbase or -- that conference that took place this
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week and there's another crypto conference happening next week so we'll see what happens to the trade. mike, what do you think? what do you think is going on here is it weird to you >> i don't know if it's weird. it looks like there was a little bit of, you know, kind of this peak of enthusiasm if you look at a typical chart pattern it looks like it's kind of broken in the sense it's going to be hard to go right back up to the highs but it does -- it is interesting the inner play with the meme stocks. it's hard to know if the fact that crypto became a little tougher and stopped going up and has caused the more aggressive thrill seeking money to go elsewhere or if it's coincidence. also keep in mind, the weekend sometimes gets a little bit weird with crypto. >> yeah. >> it trades 24/7. you don't have the futures trading. it's a little less liquid. last weekend is when you saw a lot of swings in that area >> we'll see we'll see.
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>> keep watching. >> great weekend, for sure. coming up, a real-time progress report on how businesses are handling reopening with texas governor greg abbott. next we'll talk with veteran vc player alan patricof about the biggest tech stocks and paimct stories impacting your portfolio. stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc (♪ ♪) whether it's a technology first, (♪ ♪) a fashion first,
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there's always a lot going on we have the nexus of media and the digital economy. what do you make of the amazon, mgm deal, warner media, discovery merger and what it says for what scale means, bigger players getting even bigger you know, the value of content, scarcity value, all of that. >> this shows how important content is particularly for the new streaming world. i think both moves are very
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intelligent. discovery, at&t spinning this off and putting it together with discovery is a very smart move i think that david will do a hell of a good job with it i hope jason stays with it in terms of the amazon deal it fits perfectly besides kwierg half a bond, they have a big pipeline coming out. incredible library for video and for old movies there is a possibility of someone else making the decision. >> soon perhaps that will be the case what does it mean for you if you're evaluating younger
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companies that are looking to target these areas does it mean that you have to rethink the opportunities here just because these players are so big and dominant? is it sending you in different directions >> content has always been a key factor i mean, we as investors, we've invested axios, we've been involved in media over the last 10, 15 years i've personally been spending a lot of time in audio in the last two or three years it got sold interestingly to amazon two or three months ago it was a very smart move on their part of getting content in the audio field. i think podcasts are really growing very, very fast. we have six or seven other tech companies in the area that are all elements of the technology
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that people need to rely on to build their audio and it goes even beyond podcasts and people have time to listen and don't necessarily have time to keep their eyeballs pinned on the screen i know you and the rest of the television media would love to see that, but i think it's actually a great time for resurgence of media. >> kind of a similar question with regards to the apple/epic games case we don't know how it's going to play out just the fact that apple is going to enforce its policies from what it takes from app developers and really also how hard it is to get scale as a new app developer in their ecosystem or any other one, what does that mean for some of the other companies you're looking at or the other ones you've already invested in? >> i think epic is taking a lead
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and bearing the burden of fighting a fight that almost every company using the apple store would like to see resolved in a favorable basis epic is saying i don't want to pay 30% for first year users and 15% afterwards and since apple obviously, the iphone controls so many of the eyeballs in this country, a lesser amount abroad, still a hell of a lot more, people are using that medium and i think they want to have flexibility and they're asking -- they're using this old antitrust thesis, i think it's called essential facility which says -- which is true. apple is a toll booth. it's a monopoly. they're granted 2. that doesn't give a lot of alternatives for people who want
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to set up their own payment media and use their own techniques epic is fighting the battle. the judge has now concluded the case and we'll get a decision in a few months of course, you can be sure it's going to be appealed for a year or two, then it's going to go from appeals court to supreme court. it's going to unfortunately take a long time to resolve unless apple and epic get together. i think there's more at stake than just epic's deal with apple is going to reflect on everyone else using the apple store. >> i mean, do you see companies, startups that basically have -- are not viable because of that 30% take i wonder how it's playing out in terms of the survival of the fittest mode for new games, new apps of any sort >> i don't think people can say -- obviously there are thousands if not millions of
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apps are going through apple and are surviving, but i think people are saying it's just not fair to have control by one particular medium that they have no choice. i mean, it relates back to the old days of the original antitrust problems with the railroads and with the oil business when you have one company controlling people's destiny, no one likes to be in that position they want to have flexibility and i think that this epic fight is epic. it's really going to test the waters as to what control one company has. listen, we're facing the exact same thing with google and facebook and their monopolies stick -- excuse me, i should sa potentially monopolies tick measures france is settling with google
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on some things the whole situation may resolve in europe. >> alan, appreciate your thoughts here. we have to run for now we'll talk to you again soon. >> thanks. >> all right becky. rick santelli is standing by at the cme in chicago. he has breaking economic data. rick, the numbers please >> yes a litany of numbers. let's start out with personal income for the month of april, shall we we're expecting a big drop because it was so huge last month but not the case it's a big drop minus 13.1 the whisper number was actually bigger the reason, last month was revised from 21.1 to only up 20.9 so basically you need to kind of average those two together this was highly expected also remember when the income checks went out in many ways from the government on the spending side, expecting up half of 1%. exactly as it arrived. last month also a revision from 4.2 to 4.7 now let's go over some very important issues
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the personal consumption expenditure deflator month over month. year over year up 3.6. this is a little hotter than expected the interesting part about that is up 3.6 is the highest level since 2008 since 2008 if we go to the pce core deflator month over month, 3.1 year over year you're going back well before 2007 that's the only data i have up to on this one it wasn't even up to 3% yet. the year over year numbers we know are going to be hot because we're comparing year over year to very depressed levels last year on any pricing activity due to covid inventories, on wholesale inventories, up .8 as expected preliminary april and on retail inventories, down 1.6% this obviously is a problem. think about all those widgets we need to replace and all the glitches arriving there.
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finally very quickly, advanced trade balance. we normally don't cover it it changes a lot it was important our last look at minus 90 was the biggest ever, the most negative ever. it's eased back minus 85.2 that's a deficit 84.3 is where it came in the year that's what we're comping to after all of that, we're still hovering below 161 on tens 181 on supply settles. next week we have the three-day weekend and early closures today. suffice it to say no matter which direction you look, kicking the tires on the fed as to how they're going to teal with contentious potential pricing issues, whether they're transient or not the market is going to continue to see hot numbers in the here and now. that's what we need to pay closest attention to andrew, becky, back to you >> i'll take it, rick. have a great weekend and thank you for the numbers, sir when we come back, we are live with texas governor greg
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abbott we're going to ask him about small businesses getting back on their feet in the loan star state and why he decided to ditch federal unemployment funds. stay tuned you're watching "squawk box" right here on cnbc [ footsteps] [ suspenseful music ] ♪♪ hey, you wanna get out of here? ah ha. we've got you. during expedia travel week, save 20% or more on thousands of hotels.
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$6 trillion. that reflects about $4 trillion for items that biden has already put forward including infrastructure, child care and public education the budget is essentially just the white house wish list. republicans are unlikely to embrace it but it could serve as something as a starting point be for congressional negotiations also shares of boelg falling in the premarket. the company has halted deliveries of the 787 dream liners federal regulators want more information about boeing's proposed solutions about the previously identified control issues two big earnings issues. dow component after it beat quarterly analyst impressions strengthened the customer 360
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platform alta beauty more than doubling and revenue beating forecasts as well alta raised the full year guidance that stock up by 4 3/4%. salesforce up by 5.4%. mike >> thanks, becky coming up, jim cramer's first take on a pretty wild week for the markets. check out shares of amc and gamestop that's where all of the wildness is they've been on that crazy morning as the meme trade. gamestop up 1% amc looking gh bhiery 11%. stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc doug? sorry about that. umm... what...its...um... you alright? [sigh] [ding] never settle with power e*trade. it has powerful, easy-to-use tools to help you find opportunities, 24/7 support when you need answers plus some of the lowest options and futures contract prices around. don't get mad. get e*trade and start trading today.
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the reopening of the state's economy and the decision to opt out of further unemployment assistance next month, governor greg abbott. governor, we appreciate you joining us it is going to be a big weekend and hopefully a lot of folks are going to get out if not for the first time and it's fascinating and fabulous to see things get back in order. i want to talk about opting out of unemployment insurance and why you thought it was necessary. there does seem to be a petition going to your desk from a number of texans asking for it to be
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reinstated >> sure. andrew, listen, i'll be happy to answer that. let me set it up this way. if you recall the last time i was on the show with you i think you were raising concerns with the states about that time in early march. opening texas up 100% with no masks. since that time nothing but cases going down, hospital rates going down a day with zero deaths this engagement in the economy is not something new for memorial day it's something new going on for months now that is why i issued that order along with about 20 other states or so where we eliminated these unemployment benefits and there's math behind this reasoning. and that is according to the texas work force commission. we have more job openings than
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we have people on unemployment insurance and on top of that about 18% of the unemployment claims that have been filed have proven to be fraudulent. we have the numbers in our state for people to get back to work it is time for america to get back to work >> you mentioned an interesting statistic. 18%. people are trying to game the system >> well, it's part of it employers are trying to hire
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they cannot gain access to the employees to open up one of the biggest challenges we have is making sure that employers are going to be able to get the employees there >> i want to come back to the masking. not back to march. it was a decision to have schools in the state no masks >> no choice in the matter why not leave it to the schools to make that choice. >> there's two components to this the first is the calculation here was the same type of calculation that we made back in early march about opening up and removing masks, at that time not removing masks in the school setting. we knew when i issued my last order back in march what the math was it wouldn't compromise people. the same thing applies here for
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this reason. that is, there are so many people who are age 12 and above in our schools that have had covid, have had antibodies and have survived and many were asymptomatic also as you know, we now have the ability to provide immunization for them through pfizer and we have seen a great uptake by the students and once that announcement was made that no masks would be, quote, required in our schools, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of students as well as teachers. it's no longer required any student. they can continue to wear a mask if they feel like that is the safest thing for them to do. >> governor, i want to ask you about something else that's happening in the state you've attracted a lot of companies, not just before the pandemic and before.
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there are a number of companies that are raising concerns like the voting laws in the state and other issues and there's been a lot of folks, including yourself, critical of those companies. how do you see that debate in terms of the ability of companies to speak out publicly on political issues? >> well, if you recall, this kind of first arose in the aftermath of the situation in georgia with regard to the all-star game. but what we have in the state of texas and what we've found is there was some initial criticism that tamped down because what a lot of businesses learned, they didn't know all the facts. let me give you an example in texas the reason why we're doing election reforms is not because of anything that happened in the 2020 election and that is one thing, in harris county and some other areas in texas were challenges with mail in ballots let me give you the facts. the facts show there was a federal district judge in texas
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appointed by barack obama who issued a decision in a case when i was attorney general saying voter fraud occurs in abundance with regard to absentee balloting, it's mail in balloting in the state of texas. in addition to that, it was the obama and biden administration that came to texas and had an organized effort by the fbi, by the southern district attorney where they went through a process of going after what are called politicaros who were using cocaine to buy votes in the state of texas so we want to make sure that it's easy to vote but harder to cheat in ways in which federal judges in the state of texas have already said that it's easy to cheat >> governor, one final question. it relates again to a political issue to a large degree, but a social issue i've heard from business leaders in the state about it and you've seen a big debate about it even from the police in your state, which is the plan, and i believe
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it's going to your desk very soon, open carry for handguns. a lot of small businesses concerned about it, restaurants concerned about it as well as larger business leaders. then you have the former head of the houston police saying they don't believe that it is both necessary or safe. whatdo you think >> notably the former head of houston police who now is in miami who likes to weigh in on texas politics, which doesn't make any sense that point aside, here's the important thing, and that is there are now more than 20 states in the united states that had this permit list carrying program and if you look at the states where there's high gun crime, it's not in those 20 states that have open carries or permit list carry of guns. it's in places like chicago where they have the strictest gun laws in the united states. on top of that some other laws you probably don't know. before this law reaches my desk, texas has already had open carry permitless carry of long guns,
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which is rifles, ak 47s, whatever the case may be and it hasn't caused any problem. we also had a law in texas where during the time of a disaster people had the ability to carry without a permit and during those occasions there hasn't been any increase in gun crime so this really is not that big of a change in texas law and we had open carry campus carry of guns in the state of texas after those laws were signed into effect by me there was no increase in gun crime after that and so i think this may be some hand wringing about -- much ado about nothing. >> governor, it's a longer conversation we always enjoy speaking with you, getting your perspective on all of it. we'll help you come back and hope you have a great memorial weekend. >> listen, very importantly. everyone we should all celebrate memorial day weekend because of the sacrifice made by the men and women who wore the uniform and died so that we have the freedom to have the economic
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markets, the greatest economic markets in the world thank you to all men and women who have worn the uniform and sacrificed for our country. >> amen to that, governor. thank you for joining us meantime, want to get over to cnbc headquarters where head our friend jim cramer, got to get your take on the huge gains this week for amc and we have been discussing all morning the rationality or irrationality in all of it. >> i think we have to get away from that concept. i think there is a new concept and the concept is that stocks can be moved by regular people if they work en masse. and it's not just hedge funds that can move stocks and hedge funds can be beaten. hedge funds are the enemy here people who have worked at hedge funds, i did, 20 years ago, perceived to be the enemy. and this is a take back the particular stocks, without a
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real regard of why they should be this high now, i disagree with rich greenfield i mean at this point, if adam aron wanted to go do say a $2 billion convertible bond and pay down a lot of the expensive debt, it would be additive this is clearly a valuable property we are not going to stop going to the movies. he may be the, adam aron may be the only guy who makes it, and that would be an admirable position but this is really about the destruction of other people. and i know that there is, that rich people talk about, retail one buyer after another and that's true but a lot of the sellers walked away, they did the right thing, they knew these guys were coming, walked away and let them take it higher and that's what happened. >> how concerned or not should we be about the larger issue of the sort of speculative, what feels like speculative gambling versus actual investing at this point? >> i have lived through analysts who have come on air and talk about a thousand dollar stocks
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and the stocks are 200 and people saying certain stocks are worth five times and they're hedge fund guys or analysts. why are these people any different? they're just regular people. they have a hot price target a lot of people come on air, i have research in front of me, a lot of people have incredibly high price target, i think people have the right to have the price targets that they think are extreme, i don't know for instance what ryan cohen may do with gamestop, maybe he has a plan but do the regular people have a right to buy and price whatever they want for the merchandise, why not i have seen a lost craziness on hedge funds that have come on and analysts and some of the crazy extent that the market goes down big and didn't happen and we don't criticize them or question them and i am tired of questioning these people, i think these people have a right to take the stocks where they wants to and adam aron wants to
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take advantage of it and fix his balance sheet, terrific. if ryan cohen wants to raise $500 million to change the culture and do something different with gamestop, terrific if they believe in the beyond meat story as i do even though there's a lot of shorts i think that's great these people are doing exactly what so many people come on, particularly the hedge funds who come on air, and predict it, so i salute them for doing what they want to do. do i agree with them on everything do i agree with analysts who come on and recommend stocks but no, but analysts who come on our networks for 20 years without outrageous predictions and hedge funds have come on with outrageous predictions and they get away with it. >> jim, can i ask a question maybe i'm misunderstanding this. do you think there is a difference with what an analyst comes on even with what we describe as a crazy prediction, do you think that is an effort to manipulate the stock, and/or do you think that what's happening now is an effort to manipulate the stock >> look, andrew, that is the great question
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because what's happened is the s.e.c. has chosen not to recognize these people as a group and give them the same standards as if you and i were rich hedge funds and we decided to take a position we would have to file, and all sorts of things that we could be held in a proxy, as being part of a group, and until the s.e.c. decides, andrew, that this is not right, and certainly, within the s.e.c.'s purview, i think that they have every reason to do it, but i actually think that gary gensler may say he doesn't like this, and look, i'm not, i'm not saying look, i support, you know, united never be defeated, and that was a different era, but i do think unless the s.e.c. says these are a buying group and they have to follow different rules i think that they have ever right to be able to say what they want, even if you and i may think it may be cockymamy. and there are some who say the hell is coming and the grim
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reaper and i don't know and they meant really well, the grim reaper and then they bought stock. i think it is actually nefarious than what these guys are doing >> jim cramer. you had a hell of a week i mean you go look at the lineup of what was on your show this week >> very kind >> have a fabulous weekend my friend. >> i want you to have a great weekend. and you know, i just love working you with, okay >> the feeling is mutual >> jim, see you in a couple of minutes with the gang. and coming up right after this, top stocks for your radar, as we make our way towards the opening bell stay tuned you're watching "squawk" on cnbc
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a little more than half an hour to the opening bell on wall street dom chu is here with some of the top market movers get egg ready for the long weekend good morning. >> let's get through this and get off to the weekend hi hibbett, up almost 8%. a smaller dick's sporting goods, better than expected profits and
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better than expected sales customers continue to focus on outdoor activities those shares up big rightnow right now you have shares of apple which are stable pre-market a million shares of volume the biggest stock in the s&p 500. it's getting a rare downgrade to a sell rating from analysts at newstreet. they have attached a $90 price target and looking at a possible weakening of demand for the next version of the iphone. by the way around three quarters of analysts who cover apple have a buy rating on the stock. up about one quarter of one percent. and end on the stock of the morning, the meme side, amc entertainment, the theater operator is surging again, 12% upside, 26 million shares of trading volume, riding a four-day winning streak and looking to extend it at the internet meme and message boards have lit up with chatter, $12 billion in value and has surpassed the stock price it had back, becky, during the trading frenzy and short squeeze at the beginning of the year, up another 13% right now, becky
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i hope you have a great long weekend. >> thank you, you too,dom. let's take a look at the live shot of the nasdaq market site, and our gleaming set that is awaiting our return on tuesday. andrew, i will see you there on tuesday. >> in person. >> finally getting back. >> are we doing elbow bumps, hugs, kisses, what are we doing? >> elbow bumps we'll see you guys next weekend. have a great weekend right now, it's time for "squawk on the street" good friday morning. welc squawk on the street i'm carl quintanilla, with david faber and jim cramer our road map begins with the return of the meme

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