the bipartisan infrastructure bill next month in exchange for their votes on the $3.5 trillion spending package we will take you live to washington and goldman sachs says get vaxxed or go home. the bank requiring vaccinations for employees and clients to enter its offices. it's wednesday, august 25th, 2021, just one more day until national dog day "squawk box" begins right now. ♪ >> good morning, welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc, i'm melissa lee along with joe kernen who barked. it was not a real dog. >> who barked like a dog. >> just like a dog beckyand andrew are off today, a check on u.s. equity futures at this hour, the s&p and nasdaq closing at record highs in

yesterday's session looking to extend those gains early on in the premarket. looking to add 2.5, dow up 13, dow looking to be higher by 18 treasury yields fairly stable this morning as are most asset classes after yesterday's run. ten-year note yielding 1.297%. shares of gamestop soared yesterday as some retail investors came back in full force despite an otherwise quiet market, the stock closing 27% higher with no obvious at list during the trading session it rose as much as 36.5% on heavy volume, more than 14 million shares changed hands, seven times more than a 30-day average. other meme stocks also popped, amc entertainment jumping 20%, clover health climbed nearly 10, bed bath & beyond rose more than 4% much more on the stock moves in just a few minutes you should have seen the twitter. i mean, in the reddit sort of amc -- #amc short squeeze was

trending. >> we had a little conversation yesterday about how to do this show, who to book, what we should do and talking about the overall market you can only do that so much. >> so many times. >> and i think maybe there's traders around that are like, you know, playing this overall market, yeah, let's go back to those meme stocks. i really think that might be it. let's find something somewhere that gets our blood running a little bit when you hit a new high every day it seems like, but it's tough to attribute it to anything, whether it's delta, whether it's jackson hole, whatever you want to talk about, but i think it's boredom i think it's boredom it's august so it doesn't take much to get these things started because, you know, it's probably a little liquid. i like this next story i have to ask eamon about it. >> i know you do. democrats reaching a deal to break the stalemate over the

$3.5 trillion budget resolution and the white house holding a cybersecurity meeting with a bunch it says here, a bunch -- a bunch of high profile corporate leaders. eamon javers has more on a busy day shaping up in washington it struck me that these tough guys, tough moderates in the democratic party that were holding their ground, eamon, they said, all right, all right, here is our deal, here is our deal, if you will pass our $1.2 trillion, if you promise, okay, go ahead and do the $3.5 trillion and i thought 3.5 plus -- it just is -- i mean, we say these words so easily, eamon, but these are major, major commitments that have a lot of far-reaching consequences and, i don't know, i just accept anything now i just read it we will do the 3.5, just make sure you do our 1.2. >> remember when the obama era stimulus was measured in billions and now we are talking about trillions.

so there is some inflation going on in this world i don't know if its transitory or not, but that's the way it is in washington. look, the dilemma that nancy pelosi had yesterday was that she had these moderates who were saying we won't vote for the $3.5 trillion package which is desperately important to the progressives unless we get a vote first on the infrastructure package, which is also passed the senate, right? so they're saying we got a big win on infrastructure, roads, bridges and all the rest let's take that win, put it in the bank and then move on to the next thing, which we don't know what the fate of that is going to be. the progressives said, no, we want to use the leverage of the infrastructure which everybody wants to get the larger piece which we think we might have some more difficulty with. in the end what the moderates got and the way pelosi finessed this yesterday was she allowed them to have a commitment from her which she put out personally that they would have a vote on the infrastructure package by september 27th if they voted yesterday to move the budget

framework forward on the 3.5 the moderates did that is correct they voted enthusiastically with the speaker once she gave them that commitment and so that's the way you have it. it's the 3.5 advances in the procedural process, that's not by any means final, but it advances along the track and they get a commitment for september 27th vote on final passage of the overall infrastructure bill. so pelosi brought these two sort of sparring factions together and you can say that the moderates lost in this in the sense that they wanted the infrastructure bill first, they didn't get that, they did at least get something, they saved face and lived to fight another day. >> the far left -- the far left faction says we're still not going to vote for that 1.2 even if -- when that comes up on the 27th, the 3.5 is not going to be done. >> right. >> so they might say we're not going to do that and then it won't pass they'll fold.

>> that's a possibility, but, i mean, a lot of this is negotiating positions that everybody stakes out in the beginning and then you cave towards the middle but you stake out the most extreme positions so when you cave you cave less that's an old washington strategy, an old strategy in everything and that might be what's going on here in the end it is really hard to see that house democrats would vote to tank joe biden's most significant economic accomplishment so far. the idea that they want to go into a midterm election, to a presidential reelect eventually having tanked an infrastructure bill that just about everybody in the country wants, i don't think that's politically viable and i think that a lot of it is posturing, but that's just my analysis. >> that's a point republicans always make that say what you will about the democrats, they come together. they stick together. they are a united bloc a lot of times the republicans look around and wonder where is that ethic in their party?

>> i don't know, joe i mean, there is an old joke among capitol hill journalists which is that you can always get -- if you don't have a story, you can always run the head line democrats in disarray. >> i know that, but they always -- they stick together when the going gets tough. i mean, remember mccain, you remember romney, sasse, murkowski, there's always about ten of them that are not necessarily going to go with the party and then things don't happen for republicans anyway. >> yeah. >> because of this eamon, what about this cybersecurity meeting? >> this is going to be a huge meeting. we've got a graphic prepared for you. take a look at the ceos who will be there an enormous list of high-powered american ceos starting with tim cook of apple, satya nadella of microsoft, sundar pichai of alphabet jamie dimon, brian moinen hand, lynn good. dr. barrett at the end there from girls who code also

representing some of the nonprofit groups that will be there as well today. so the goal here is for the private sector and the white house to get their arms around exactly how the public private partnership is going to work going forward with this at that sit ak no, ma'am j that the hackers have been wreaking havoc with the u.s. economy. one of the big points they want to talk about is workforce development, white house officials talking to reporters yesterday said there are about 500,000 cybersecurity jobs across the country that are unfilled right now and that's a big problem. just basic hiring and the educational pipeline to get people into those cybersecurity jobs is an enormous challenge and that's one of the things that they want to work on. but the other thing, i think, you know, that officials were hinting about yesterday was they were pressed on this question of whether or not there would be any significant commitment announced or financial commitments announced by these companies today. white house says there will be concrete commitments coming out

of this meeting today. so this is an all-star group that controls a lot of money one of the things i will watch for later in the day is what kind of announcements we get out of these companies, how many dollars are they putting behind this what kind of changes to their practices and procedures are they going to announce today i expect there will be some announcement as we go through the day, joe. >> does bigger news preempt a lot of ransomware we don't here about? is it still happening week after week after week, eamon i know that is one of your interests. >> yeah, there are some ransomware attacks that have been happening, they've been relatively small past couple of weeks, it's been a lull, and do you know what experts tell me about that, is that the lull is because a lot of the hackers in russia go to the beach in august i kid you not. >> do they wear those skimpy little speedos regardless of what kind of body they have? >> they do they take the two weeks and take

the time off and go with their families and whatever else they do and they will be back this september. i think around back to school as well people are expecting a wave of cyber attacks because people will -- >> that's unbelievable. >> schools will be targeted. >> i don't know why i got a bad vision of "borat." >> your mind went to the skimpy bathing suits. >> on the russians they are wearing them. you know they are. you've seen them >> that's not what i thought of. i thought -- >> did you see "borat. >> i thought really, all the hackers are at the beach right now? >> wearing those speedos it's gross >> i'm not going to participate in this conversation anymore. >> that's fine you don't have to. >> nothing good will come of this at this point. >> i will take the heat. i always do. thanks, eamon. >> you bet >> we have such good viewers, you know i say bark like a dog,

that is the gofer movie. you got the gofer movie mixed up with "animal house." >> i got a lot of help on twitter with the -- >> you did >> otter and a flounder. >> otter is in a netflix, there is like 100 sale. >> coming up stocks trading at all time highs, now meme stocks are taking off again, we will dig into the moves next. later this morning house minority leader kevin mccarthy weighs in on the spending bills. but we need something better. that's easily adjustable has no penalties or advisory fee. and we can monitor to see that we're on track. like schwab intelligent income. schwab! introducing schwab intelligent income. a simple, modern way to pay yourself from your portfolio. oh, that's cool... i mean,

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broader markets ended on a high note yesterday, the nasdaq hitting a new record and closed above the 15,000 level for the first time, the s&p 500 also closed at a new high logging its 50th record close this year. the dow ended positive, though, not at a record and among the biggest gainers yesterday meme stocks, gamestop and amc popped, gaining more than 20%, while clover health, blackberry finished the day more than 9% higher let's bring in the chief investment strategist at i capital network and paul hickey from bespoke investment group. anastasia, jackson hole was looked previously as a big risk factor in the markets this week and yet now it's turning out that most expect nothing and that's why the markets are climbing >> that's right, melissa

i think the expectations for the fed to do anything at jackson hole have been lowered quite a bit and that was a big worry, right? if the fed was talking about tapering, maybe even tapering amidst the surging delta cases that was not going to be great for the market, but now the base case for everyone there's going to be a lot of talk among central bankers at jackson hole but no taper and not much action i think that's a positive for the market that's why you've seen the reopening trade come back in vogue in the last few days and particularly the energy shares i will point out energy is one sector that was a little bit nervous going into jackson hole. if you look at options pricing, that's where we saw some of the dislocations, but now as the fed is pushing back the taper hopefully until after the delta cases peak and drop, that means that we don't have to worry about materially a higher dollar and hopefully we will see payrolls come in still strong. once we have those two pieces of information i think that's when

the fed can ultimately taper back to energy, energy is one sector that is really kind of feeling the relief from this postponement this week. >> yeah, i mean, paul, do you think that the bounce back in energy can recapture the steep losses we saw in the month of july >> yeah, i do think so when you look at what's happened to oil in the last two weeks, you saw the seven day losing streak, a big bounce in the last two days, a sharp reversal after serious weakness and when you look at prior periods where you've seen that kind of a turn around in oil, the energy sector has tended to perform well going forward. i think within more dovish backdrop you have the fed started with kaplan last week when he suggested that he may have to reassess his view if the economy shows signs of slowing and then just the fact you can't really have the fed come out and say, you know, that the worst of covid or that covid is behind us in terms of its impact on the

economy when a conference that was being held in the most lowest density areas of the country had to be switched from in person to all virtual it would not be the greatest of optics lastly we all focus so much on what is the fed going to say at the jackson hole conference every year and we get so worried about it, but if you look back since the financial crisis when we really started focusing on jackson hole, the performance of the market has really seen very little in the way of a hiccup after jackson hole with gains, you know, two-thirds of the time in the month after and much more consistency of gains in the three months after so i think it's -- you know, it's august, we are looking for something to focus on and jackson hole fills that void, but it's usually more bark than bite. >> sounds like you think the market participants are looking at it because we are bored out here anastasia that gets me to the question the monster moves we saw gamestop and amc in

yesterday's session, when you're talk being 28% higher in amc, gamestop up 30%, 20%, something like that these are big moves on heavy volume do you see that as any sort of barometer on market sentiment? >> melissa, i know we talked about how boring the market is but i think this suggests it's not that boring. i think there's plenty to do in the markets. first of all, the broad markets i think the outlook got more constructive in the last week because the fed is not going to derail the market amidst the surging delta variant. whether it's some of the meme stocks you were talking about, whether it's the action in cryptocurrencies and crypto assets tied to them, they're having a break out month and they are having a break out year not only in terms of growth, in terms of, you know, performance but also in terms of adoption. you look at other pockets of market that have dislocation like energy shares they're down 15% from their 52-week high so that's interesting to investors,

the same with the cruise lines and airlines and some of the other reopening trades so that's what investors are looking to pick up on the pull back not to mention clean energy, we are talking about $3.5 trillion in the infrastructure stimulus that's being talked b that's going to benefit the clean energy sector as well. i don't think it's all that boring and i find plenty of things to do in this market, some of its short term tactical trades like in energy and clean energy and some of those trades are longer term allocations that investors should consider to crypto assets. >> the interesting thing about the energy or the infrastructure bill or spending plan i should say is that it's spending over such a long amount of time that the boost to gdp isn't immediate, it's a gradual thing year on year over the course of years, paul. so i'm wondering do you think that there are, in fact, stock plays associated with the passage of this? >> you know, i think there's certain sectors as far as, you know, the bulk in materials, the martin marietta those stocks

tend to get a bounce when people are talking about it, but like you said this is a spread out over multiyears. what you want to focus on is there's a lot of liquidity in the market, it's not going anywhere in the near future here we're seeing this extreme tendency to buy the dips of the smallest of dips and when you have a more dovish fed out there and i think you're going to see more of the benefit towards the cyclicals and the reopening stocks i wouldn't necessarily focus on any specific plays for the infrastructure bill passing, like you said, it's spread out over multiple years, but the cyclicals and stocks focused more towards on reopening. the headlines are bad right now towards the covid and delta variant, butgoing into last fall when the cases were rising in the winter, when cases were hitting record highs, we were seeing the reopening stocks, that's when they were doing their best the weakness we have seen over the last several weeks in these stocks is what the market was telling us then was going to be

happening now. so now it's time to look forward and, you know, focus on where things are going we're going to see a gradual decline in this delta variant, we've already started to see fewer states report rising cases on a seven-day average. >> all right great to see you both. anastasia and paul >> thank you. coming up, the impact of the pandemic on student loans. that's next. and later we will get you ready for the fed's jackson hole summit economist judy shelton will join us in the 8:00 hour. tomorrow st. louis fed president james bullard will be our special guest. that summit -- as the summit begins it's 80 m. f:3a.or bullard "squawk box" will be right back.

the pandemic has disproportionately impacted black student loan borrowers, but some historically black colleges and universities are stepping in to help by using federal funding to help erase student debt senior personal financial correspondent sharon epperson has that story >> we were all surprised, we were like is this really is this really happening >> reporter: the undergrads at clark university were stunned when they heard their unpaid student balances had been wiped out. >> when i found out i was speechless we were all just talking about how it was such a blessing. >> reporter: the historically black university was one of the first in the nation to use federal pandemic relief aid to cancel student debt. >> we are committing $5 million assisting nearly 2,000 students

with account balances. >> reporter: george t. french jr. president of the university says the move will help boost enrollment and remove financial burdens that could prevent many students from graduating. >> we are reinventing the college experience so that our students can graduate nearly debt-free. >> reporter: cau and other schools have parked a movement that's currently sweeping across the u.s. more than 20 historically black colleges and universities have cleared all or part of money owed for tuition and fees. and experts say that number could grow >> i wouldn't be surprised if more institutions choose to utilize the funds to continue to positively impact their students because we're still in the grips of this pandemic. >> reporter: autumn, a junior and student government association president says she and her friends were relieved at the unexpected financial assistance >> a lot of students were

contemplating how they were going to start fresh, come up with thousands of dollars. with that announcement that definitely allowed some students to just breathe. >> i'm looking at all of these students who have no prior account balances and their heads are lifted and they are smiling as they begin a new year, it makes me feel tremendously gratified on the inside. >> reporter: clark, atlanta and many hcbus have seen an increase in alumni and private donations, too. they are trying to allow many to graduate with a clean slate. >> so the thrust of your piece was there are federal pandemic funds that could be used so what about working with lenders themselves to forgive loan debt? is that being done as well and then i have one more really good idea for you that i don't know if you thought about that's really going to be a game

changer. that many of these schools are doing are making sure that they are going back to the start of the pandemic and looking at students' account balances, canceling any unpaid balances for tuition fees, housing from the spring 2020 term all the way to the current semester. so when students see their current bill, the outstanding balance due is zero. so students who were planning to take out loans to pay those balances no longer have to do so. >> so what i'm talking about, sharon, is following the murder of george floyd, how many corporations stepped up and said we're going to do this, blah, blah you know, they gave numbers. numbers. numbers. at the time we said, okay, this is great, you know, talk is good where is it going to go? what are you going to do with it there was actually a stated problem with trying to figure out exactly where to spend this money. have you done any work on how much that they promised has actually been done, and why not this for if they are wondering where i can, you know, spend

some of this money effectively, why not this given what was pledged you could probably wipe out all the student debt for these hcbus. >> to be clear, many companies were already or at least some were already providing some student loan assistance to their employees. so employers are stepping in, the c.a.r.e.s. act also provided further opportunity for employers to offer employees educational assistance that includes paying, joe, up to $5,250 a year on student loan debt as a tax-free benefit to employees through 2025 about 8% of major companies even before the pandemic offered student loan repayment programs including companies like new york life and we have reported about this and you will find more information on cnbc.com cnbc.com/investinyou. >> we have records of all the companies who said how much they

were going to pledge. >> absolutely. >> it might be unsettling or disappointing. >> in terms of what's not deployed. >> yeah, not only not deployed did you not -- >> and where exactly it's going. >> they got to say it. >> got the headline. >> whether they actually made good on it i don't know >> thanks, sharon. >> for another day, sharon >> thanks, melissa, thanks, joe. coming up, house democrats clearing the way for trillions of dollars of spending as part of president biden's economic agenda the impacts for investors next. take a look at yesterday's s&p 500 winners and losers

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♪ after some gridlock delays, et cetera, the house passed the democrats' $3.5 trillion budget resolution to move it forward t clears the way for a vote on the trillion dollar bipartisan infrastructure plan by september 27th we'll see. here to weigh in on the latest

developments former u.s. congresswoman donna edwards, jim pethokoukis is also with us, aei fellow and cnbc contributor. donna, i will come to you in a second, but let me start with jim. do you think that this is now in motion and a done deal or still some heavy lifting to do in the senate or with, i don't know, with the far left in the house for democrats? where is the stumbling blocks now? >> i mean, i think the great philosopher jerry reed, we have a long way to go in a short time to get there they have a lot of -- still a lot of work to do, particularly on this reconciliation bill. they want to try to get this thing done in september. listen, just to compare, it took republicans two months to get that tax cut done back in 2017 and there was plenty of agreement. there's still a lot of hashing out that top line number hides the fact that all those individual programs, they still need to figure out, you know,

what they're going to spend, they are not going to be spending $3.5 trillion so there is a lot of work left to be done in a rather short amount of time >> congresswoman edwards, something that people are positing is that the far left of the party said that this is not going to be good enough. they want the reconciliation done before they go for the infrastructure deal. this kind of satisfies both sides, the journal called it a fig leaf for the moderates, like josh gottheimer, but do you think that they'll do -- on the 27th do you think they would do it if reconciliation isn't done? will they go along with it >> well, first of all, i think giving nancy pelosi is month in the house to really bring together all of the caucus i think is really an important timeline i mean, my experience is that once they have taken the vote on

the budget, it really becomes very, very difficult to kind of go backtrack on your vote having cast one vote before and i think that that is going to be important leverage i agree it actually was a fig leaf for moderates i think nancy pelosi, chuck schumer and the president are all still committed to doing both of these things at the same time that was the deal that was struck and i think progressives are going to hold to that and the leadership is going to hold to that and i don't see as much of a problem getting to whatever that number is because i think many of these issues, especially in legislative language, have been worked out but for the numbers. i mean, keep in mind this has been a work in progress not just for these last several weeks and days, but it's been a work in progress really for the last several years.

>> jim, how will it work in that there's a lot of moderates in the democratic party in the senate and the house that aren't -- probably aren't happy about $3.5 trillion. the most well-known manchin and sinema what's going to happen between now and if this ever actually does pass in terms of the size what do you expect it to be to get manchin and sinema on board, or do they fold, too >> no, i don't think they're going to fold. listen, i think a lot of these goals, expectations setting on the left happened when they thought they were going to win a sweeping victory in november, they were going to, you know -- biden is going to win by ten points, they were going to have a huge senate majority, and those expectations have never fully ratcheted down i think they're going to start ratcheting down here pretty fast they are not going to get $3.5 trillion they're probably going to go something more -- at least i think a trillion dollar less

some things they want, less money is going to get spent on, like paid leave. other things aren't going to happen they are not going to have this big addition for dental and vision to medicare, this home health thing might not happen. so you're going to have a smaller bill that will be more paid for through tax increases, you know, cap gains, the individual rate, you know, corporate going up to 25 so it's going to be a smaller bill than what we're talking about because, frankly, these are very narrow majorities and that reality is going to set in. >> congresswoman edwards, was it just republicans, do you think, yesterday that when the president came out very late, obviously, to talk about afghanistan and some said that he waited until he could talk about this deal being done to talk about afghanistan, then he spent the first five, six minutes talking about building back better before he even got to afghanistan is it just republicans that had

a problem with that? did you think that was tone deaf yesterday? >> no, i don't think it was tone deaf at all. the president is where the american people are. the american people while they're concerned about afghanistan, they want to know what's going on in afghanistan, they also are concerned about their homes and about whether they can, you know, get a job, keep a job, and take care of their families, their children so i think the president was actually striking the tone that the american people want they want to see a president who is able to walk and chew gum at the same time. and this was really an important stepping stone to a final deal for the president and for democrats. i think it was important for him to acknowledge that and to acknowledge, frankly, the leadership of nancy pelosi which he did because she was really masterful in these last several days pulling this off. >> congresswoman, the poll -- >> i think americans are

horrified -- >> hold on jim, the "usa today" poll yesterday, congresswoman edwards, the suffolk poll 47% down from 55 so the american people are watching what's happening, are worried about americans left there, are worried about now a lot of afghans that we're not even going to try to get out at this point and he turned around and walked away again without any questions. you can't defy that 41% speaks to at least the feeling of some americans about, you know, the way this was handled >> no, i think that's true i think that's true. i don't mean to suggest that americans don't care about afghanistan, i'm just saying that they also care about their families and their homes but, look, there's no doubt that there has been chaos around afghanistan, it was important for the president to bring us up to date about what's going on there, there's going to be a

briefing, i guess, today with secretary of state tony blinken and that will be important because we will know the numbers coming out of afghanistan. and it's true, the president has taken a hit on afghanistan, on the way that covid is going. there is a lot of work to do, but it's recoverable if they are able to get all of this done. >> fingers crossed that -- what do you think, jimmy p. we're not out. there's a lot that's going to happen between now and august 31st and we all hope for the best, but there are americans at risk soldiers, everyone else and of course all of our -- the people that helped us in afghanistan. >> listen, it's not hard to imagine some pretty dire scenarios going forward and would that be bad for politics, sure, but the human cost. >> that, too, but would it, i don't know, make it more -- more

difficult to get some of this other stuff done i don't know i don't know you know better than i do. >> yeah. i mean, listen, a president with falling popularity ratings, that's not helpful when you want to spend trillions of dollars going forward in a short amount of time. this is not what they want >> okay. all right. thank you both congresswoman edward and -- just everybody called you jimmy p. because it's just easier thanks, jimmy p. coming up, two retail stocks dropping this moinrng despite posting strong quarterly results. we will tell you what is going on next. butter cup ice creame peat with real cocoa. well, that's the way the sandcastle crumbles. you can't beat turkey hill memories. [music plays.] ♪♪ ♪♪

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breaking news from johnson & johnson on vaccine boosters. meg tirrell joins us with more good morning, meg. >> good morning, joe johnson & johnson out with a press release saying that it has given a booster dose in a small trial six months after the first single shot of its vaccine and seeing that it produces what it calls a rapid and robust increase in spike binding antibodies they saw that they were nine-fold higher after this dose six months out than they were about 28 days after the first shot now, they're saying that this supports being able to boost the single-shot covid-19 vaccine and of course as we've been hearing all of this took about boosters eight months after the original vaccination series, that's been for the mrna vaccines. the cdc yesterday tweeting and reiterating what we've been hearing from u.s. health

officials that, quote, people who receive j&j will probably need a booster dose, but we've been waiting for more data on that interestingly, the johnson & johnson data show that their immune response is sustained out to eight months, but there's been a question about whether they would need to boost and this is some initial data suggesting that when they do, those at least spike binding antibodies are increased so, guys, there's going to be much more data we need to inform this entire process but a little bit of it coming out now from j&j and we are expecting more from their two-dose trial pretty soon, guys. >> sounds like a pretty good deal to me you know, meg? nine fold. you drop by walgreens, you know, you stop in there, doesn't even hurt i don't know what the -- remember when we wanted a vaccine and we didn't have it yet and we were like, you know, you get this thing and you don't -- you know, all bets are off if you get it. we've got these great vaccines

now and so you need a booster. what's the big deal? i got ten minutes on my way home to stop by, i think this is good news thank you, meg thank you, j&j what do you think, melissa, am i wrong? am i right or am i right >> i'm with you on this one, joe. >> no way. oh, my god. >> mark my words. >> oh, my god. meg, this is breaking news >> i agree with joe on one thing. >> this is breaking news meg, look how much we -- i don't know, we take it for granted i think we're jaded. how quickly we developed these and -- nine fold >> yeah, the boosters will likely help. i mean, joe, i think the whole idea here is we've been in a pandemic so we've been taking these vaccines and trying to get as much protection as we can as fast as we can and what it might turn out is that we should space the doses out farther, six months or a year, the way a lot of other vaccines are initially dozed and that's what we will end up finding, but because we have been in a pandemic and we needed as much protection as we

could get as soon as we could get we got all the doses at the beginning at least for two the-shot vaccines and now we are talking about boosting, but this will change as we get out of the pandemic phase as you've been pointing out we need to take the vaccines. i need more people to take them in order to get out of the pandemic phase. >> with full fda approval, meg, of the pfizer vaccine now it is possible to use that or off-label purposes which could include using it as a booster. we will probably hear about more and more people getting boosters now compared to before >> it's really interesting, mel. typically when something has full approval doctors do have discretion to use things off-label but the cdc and the fda really warned about that in this situation because these vaccines are under some special handling with the cdc, they said there could be sanctions for doctors that use them off-label. this is particularly in questions about using them for kids under 12 for whom they are not authorized at all. we already know a lot of folks have gone out and gotten booster

doses i think the cdc said about a million people had done that and it is under emergency use authorization for people who are immunocompromised but they are trying to wait until it goes through the regulatory process, the fda and the cdc, for everybody to be able to go and get their boosters eight months out. >> so much just hand ringing and nashing of teeth that's all we're talking about is vaccine hesitancy it's confounding versus the prospect of hospitalization. >> serious illness >> covid-19. it's weird when i heard nine fold, j&j, if i got j&j and somebody said we can do nine higher antibodies stop on your way home i don't understand the trepidation it's a lunatic the fringe. you know what i'm not going to say that not going to say that. not going to do it >> you just said it.

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time to check stocks staging a come back rally. we go to beijing for the very latest >> reporter: china is playing down some of the concerns about the regulatory crackdown to the

cyber watchdog saying that rules that are meant to protect china's i.t. infrastructure are not aimed at chinese companies that are looking to list overseas those comments came as state media have started quoting economists saying by saying beijing's economy goals is not regulated. they will donate their profit to chinese farm stories the tune of $1.5 billion state media has been arguing regulations are necessary for china to root out a lot of bad practices and also to reach common prosperity for all. so investors here have started to head around that china's priorities are clearly coming the for prosperity, global competitiveness and communist party control. so new guidance that we got this

week also reflected those goals for corporate bonds, for example, to rein in risks, housing, rules are out to address the wealth gap then in education that says classes will be added to the public cool curriculum as of september 1st. so those classes will run the gamut from first grade all the way through college. guys thank you. nothing. just continue with your pop culture education. somebody noticed that the. "groundhog day". >> okay. >> "groundhog day" >> noted the >> coming up, michael novogra the tz will be with us

check out this one the back down to 47. near 50. some of the gains over the past week as we head to break, here are futures at this came hour. you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc [music plays.] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

investors in a holding pattern as they gear up for the fed's meeting in jackson hole. plus stocks are on the move in a pre-market session get the jabber or get out. we'll talk about the move in mandating vaccines new data showing the crypto whales are back. we'll speak with mike novogratz about the move with bitcoin and much more as the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm joe kernen along with

melissa lee. becky and andrew are off today and tomorrow and friday. melissa, noted it's difficult for you and it's only going to get worse. i don't mean coming in to see me what is it 3:00 a.m. >> i got up at 3:20. >> you've done it twice. two more times by the end of the week you'l be -- u.s. equity futures are indicated higher after some new records yesterday in the s&p and the nasdaq the fault trade is definitely up it has nothing to do with the fed. people are buying rocks or even not real rocks >> interest rates. >> but there are no alternatives to a pet rock. there is no alternative to a digital rock the >> you love knocking the rock. >> i do.

i don't understand it. >> we had the conversation yesterday. >> i know we did i looked at it >> why find a rock worse any worth than buying something you can buy at walmart >> because it's something people hold dear. >> exactly here's what's making headlines walt disneyworld struck a deal with union workers which require them to be fully vaccinated by october 22nd one of the first such deals to be struck by a private union toll brothers bested from low overall housing inventory and low mortgage rates warby parker will go public through a direct listing the they plan to list on the new york stock exchange under the ticker wrby. the report on mortgage applications is out. let's get the details from diana

oleck. >> reporter: rates dropped for the first time in three weeks. it was enough to juice refinance applications by 1% for the week seasonally adjusted. applications for loan to buy a home rose 3% for the week but 16% lower than the same week a year ago the purchase index did hit its highest level since early july but buyers are hitting that affordability wall one bright note, average loan sizes for buyers fell slightly which could be a sign that first time buyers are being helped by the recent growth in supply of new and existing homes for sale. we saw really strong earnings from luxury builder toll brothers average price for a toll home $844,000 >> wow that's a high average.

amazing to think that refinancing can still tick higher seems like everybody and their brother have refinanced. if you think of the mortgage rate you had to replace it, it's staggering >> reporter: there are still a fair number of people who could benefit from a reif finance even though we saw, i think it was 13 record lows last year. that's because mortgage lending is a little bit easier this year than last year some people who could have bested but didn't qualify for a refi last year are qualifying this year. so that pool of refinanciers are coming into the market >> thanks. steve is saying yes, yes did you see his name up there. johnson & johnson says its study data shows a booster shot will provide significant benefits for people who received a single

dose kind of interesting. 28 days in measuring the antibodies if you get this booster, nine times. nine times is better than one time for antibodies against covid. so it seems pretty simple that it works pretty well >> yeah. they correlate with protection once they give boosters six months after the original single shot of the j&j vaccine you get nine fold increase in spike-binding antibodies we understand the paper will be submitted. we'll get to see it at some point. typically what we look for are neutralizing antibodies. that was not included in this press release. there are more details we need to truly understand this picture as well as the fact that j&j has shown its neutralizing antibody

sponsors, t-cell response remains stable out to eight months as u.s. officials are talking about booster doses what they are showing is giving a booster dose perhaps fairly obviously does increase antibody levels. as we await more details for this it does come as u.s. officials say people should get the boosters eight months after their original series and people who got the j&j shot will need a booster too but we need more data so we're starting to see that data come in from j&j. guys i wonder if we're ever going to do any actual trials on moderna and then got a j&j booster. i could see some benefit to that a different vector for how you deliver the antigen to get the immune system to respond

do you think they will do those studies, meg >> yeah. they are already doing them. we've seen some results from europe that does show that exact thing that if you mix the astrazeneca vaccine and moderna vaccine you get a better response than either of those vaccines by themselves here in the united states they have been looking at boosting all the different vaccines with the moderna vaccine. i believe they are expanding that to other vaccines as a booster as well. that's an nih trial. we don't know when we'll see those results but it's a key question as they tell everybody to go out and get a booster shot eight months after your first one. do you get the same one, does that matter? we don't have the answers to those things and they want data before they make those recommendations. >> probably a good idea when you think about it okay all right. thanks, meg. appreciate it. >> coming up, nasdaq hitting a

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couple of stocks on the move nordstrom falling despite second quarter revenue that beat expectations 35% grows margins beat estimate on lower markdowns but we're looking at an 11% decline. urban outfitters also fell they beat estimates of 77 cents and beat same store sales driven by doubledigit growth and online steals. that stock positive over the past week. joining us now to discuss all that is an investment strategist at hightower and cnbc contributor. great to see you >> good morning. >> good morning. >> i want to talk about nordstrom because the headline number was staggering when it crossed yesterday. sales were up 101% but the asterisk is that it's still down 6% compared to the second quarter of 2019. so how do you view a stock like a nordstrom which is facing all

sorts of issues like other retailers are like supply chain issues it's this notion of comp that didn't quite the stack up to pre-pandemic levels. >> yeah. that's right that's why the stock is down high expectations headed in after kohl's, macy's, urban, all posted better than expected numbers versus 2019. so for nordstrom to be down versus these other names to be up, i mean urban was up 20% from '19 and the other two companies, kohl's and macy's up 2 the% from '19 levels i think also the margin numbers, operating margins were much below plan and that's disappointing the. on top of that the stock is up so it's not cheap. >> is retail where you want to be you mentioned some retail hers had stellar reports and then you lump in best buy that just showed a consumer with an appetite for all things technology even still this far

into the pandemic. i'm wondering where you want to put your money >> yeah. look the consumer is just fine anybody that says the consumer is hurting or rolling over i just don't agree with. look at home depot and their reports. look at lowe's and their report. tjx was stellar and they had the best margins since the second quarter of 2016 on top of huge top line numbers and they talked about pricing power and taking market share so i think there's a best buy, there's a tjx and then -- by the way both of them are very cheap. and they haven't done as well as some of these other names. so i think you want to pick your spots. but i think the consumer is just fine >> the vicious snap back rally in chinese technical stock

d they got slaughtered i think what's happened in the last couple of days, sort of interesting. we've seen another rotation. remember we talked about how 2021 is the year of rotation january. through may value versus growth. may to end of july growth over value. now in the last couple of days we've seen a return to the cyclicals and re-opening, more value versus growth and risk on feel which is why think the mean stocks have done well. that has to do with delta. in the uk we've seen a rollover in delta case. same with india. in the u.s. the rate increases and rate of hospitalizations are slowing which is a good sign china actually re-opened their ports. seems china might have a control on their delta situation you add up china also opening up

macaw and then you have all these re-openings down 20%, 30%, 40%, i feel you can see a bounce back and that includes mean and the chinese tech stocks. >> okay. you brought the mean stocks up so risk, this line of risk that for the overall markets as we seem to melt up? >> well, i think there are opportunities in the market, melissa. i say opportunities because i think, you know, you look at tech stocks in general and they are at all time highs. they are not cheap certainly want to own some tech stocks because of the growth and the markets that they offer. i get it at the same time i got wyn resorts down, las vegas sands down, caterpillar down 13% from its highs. i think re-opening, the cyclicals, more the value side of the market offer better opportunities at this point.

is that mean names i don't play in that it's too volatile. i understand why if you thought risk on was back why they would work >> how do you view fts in the category of finding risk returning to the market the growth trade back on >> yeah. i mean it's the same thing, right? it's the mean stores it's the chinese stores it's the high volatile stocks. you can play in those names and that's what i call it playing not investing. you know me i focus on fundamentals i focus on valuations. i focus on where there's the opportunities. hard for me to go in that market in that area >> great to see you. thanks coming up, goldman sachs joining a list of companies that will mandate covid vaccine for staff and visitors at all their offices across the u.s we'll speak with mark weinberger

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>> announcer: now the answer to today's aflac trivia question. which country produces the most coffee the answer, brazil in 2020 the country produced 7.8 billion pounds, and has held the position of number one for more than 150 years still to come, goldman sachs announcing it will allow only vaccinated people to enter their building starting next month we'll talk about vaccine mandates with mark weinberger. take a look at the biggest winners of the s&p 500 this morning. morning. "squawk box" will be right back. and earn cash back rewards, all in one app. at's how you get your money right with sofi. and earn cash back rewards, jerry is here! j! mate, how are ya!? it's so good to see you. good to see all of you, yeah! why is jerry so... popular?

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a lot going on in d.c. this morning. budget deals, big cyber security meeting at the white house, later today. eamon javers is covering it all this morning he joins us now with more, and i don't know the there's things happening across over in other parts of the world too that we're keeping a close eye on and keeping our fingers crossed as well. >> reporter: yeah. absolutely, joe. let's start with the big budget deal that we saw yesterday because this was a dicey one for

nancy pelosi the speaker of the house. she had this moderate faction demanding an immediate vote on the infrastructure bill which has passed in the senate in the house they said let's just pass this thing and take a big win here liberal/progressive faction didn't want to do that because they want to use the infrastructure bill that's already passed as a leverage to get a vote on the $3.5 trillion package that they say is important for human infrastructure, including a whole rack of thing on climate change, education, child care and the like the dilemma for nancy pelosi was she had to appease both factions and figure out a way to give both side a win. in the end she gained the moderate as commitment that she will have a vote on the infrastructure bill by september 27th that was enough to bring them on board. so they voted for the budget framework that passed yesterday. she got all the votes she he needed the budget framework launching that $3.5 trillion package

passed yesterday she has a commit pept she will have that vote on the infrastructure package overall on september 27th. so that sort is the way she threaded that. she had to give the commitment to get votes and that's way washington works sometimes both packages on track for passage presumably in late september. we'll wait and see definitely not a done deal as you say over at the white house today an enormous meeting on cyber security. this is focused on the public/private partnership and enormous number of ceos will be at the white house or attending this event today starting with apple's tim cook and amazon, alphabet, jpmorgan, and dr. barrett will be there talking about how to work together between the private-sector and the government and ending this rash of cyber attacks we've seen

across the country over the past year or so a couple of thing they will focus on infrastructure in terms of cyber security but workforce development. white house officials think there's about 500,000 jobs in cyber security that are vacant right now and they would like to work with the private-sector in order to see how they can fill those. they are also expecting some concrete commitments here. white house officials teasing that idea that these companies will make specific commitments and announce those later today we don't know what they are or the dollar figures watch for that news later on today as these companies will make some relatively large announcements about what they will be doing on cyber security. the question is can the government and private-sector work together? can they do anything to turn the tide of cyber attacks that's been hitting the country we don't know how this will go but they are talking face-to-face today and we'll see where it goes. >> yeah. my mind is working so you got cyber security -- you

know that. cyber security is important. it could be -- >> right >> a horrific outcome if you don't have it. but then i think of actual global security in terms of what we're seeing right now and the possibility of isis and al qaeda and terrorists it's that security and then there's real security. the there's cyber security and they are both real security but you know what i'm talking about. i'm talking about things bringing buildings down instead of bringing something else then i think of, what did you call it, human infrastructure. yesterday i was groping with that i came up with spirit wall infrastructure, metaphysical infrastructure not in the physical world. and human infrastructure is important. but if a bridge collapses then you really get -- they remind me of the same thing. so we'll focus on cyber security and human infrastructure and maybe some other things that we

need to focus on too thank you. did they flash my commentary usually they don't -- they had that ready to go a few times, years ago. just leave it up like the bug >> exactly >> like the bug. >> yeah. leave joe's commentary up. >> you see what i'm saying cyber security scares the hell out of me, but then i think about -- >> cyber security -- >> could lead to some horrible -- >> -- to physical infrastructure >> i'm worried about the prospects for our standing in the world and everything else given this total debacle goldman sachs the latest firm requiring vaccinations for all people, employees and clients entering their office. "wall street journal" or wall street giant has a growing list of companies mandating vaccines.

disney, walmart and facebook joining us now talking about companies mandating vaccines is mark weinberger, and 300,000 employees. i would have been so nervous also hired 65,000 new employees a year, i guess at some point, mark, it's like you do your best and come what may because it's never going to be, you know, never going to be easy or smooth here's one of the things i don't understand about the vaccine now we got the fda approval. so you figure it will be easier. but then you say to remind what i said on "squawk" before, employers have an oversize role to play in making sure their employees get vaccinated, but making it a condition of employment is a big step and should be the last resort. what are you talking about begging. beg, beg, beg? short of making it a requirement

how do you get it done >> well, joe, that's impressive. thank you for digging up my old quote. >> is that a bad one for you do you still agree with that sentiment? very difficult to actually do the mandate for employees. >> i think making it a condition of employment is always difficult. hardest thing to do. we'll fire you the if you don't under take this activity it led to lots of things that are illegal that you get fired for, based on vaccinations or anything like that now i will say this, joe, in the last few months or so you've seen a huge movement in business moving towards mandating because the delta virus has become so pr proli ferate and we've steen ris of the virus but anybody who comes in and says, every employer should mandate because if you don't mandate it's irresponsible

doesn't understand the nuances and risks and everybody who comes in and says employer should absolutely not mandate, it's your right not to get it don't understand the risk or nuances. every business is different. even the mandates are different. some are for certain offices some are for if you come in to the office you need the vaccine. depends on the demographics of your business, the business you're in, your industry, where you're located i think companies ought to be given he leeway to make their own decisions based on what the workforce wants and needs and how from text them >> you know, we're going to the through this no one has done this before, pandemic, obviously. but we got a new, i don't know, we got to think through this vaccinated break the through problem and it's thrown a wrench in the works completely because now vaccinated people can be not only, can catch it but then they

can have a high viral load and not know it. employers get everyone vaccinated, everyone is in there, but some of them may still have it. they give it to someone else to takes it the home their kids who are not vaccinated so what do you do about that do we have to wait until children are vaccinated before we can finally take off the mask and finally stop social distancing and finally get back to a normal environment, mark or are we back to square one? >> well, this is why the government and most ceos i know are urging all their employees to get vaccinated. we have the herd immunity. we'll be back to a safer environment to operate in. that's why some moved to mandates those who have, have every incentive in the book. >> okay, you're vaccinated but can you still get it you can still give it to somebody else who is vaccinated and they can take it home to somebody who is not vaccinated the. then you shouldn't bring people

back if you can, or at least liable for mandating for people to come back even if they can get the vaccine. it can break through, give it to somebody else, bring it home and give it to their kid >> in your conclusion no one will leave their home for any reason which we won't get to every employer has to manage the risk and there will be increased risk no matter what you do because the environment we're in -- we're looking at the workforce, who they serve, how they have their customers and the service providers and keeping their employees and clients safe we want to mandate over half employees polled want to have a mandate but remember 30% or more absolutely do not want a mandate under any circumstance the issue is, even if you want a mandate, which a lot of employers do, you can't afford to lose those employees who are often at the lower end of the pay scale and the front line

workers who don't want to get the vaccine. these employers, as we said at the outset, is in a very difficult situation and have to make the best decision they can based on the information they have >> that's my next question and would we be in a different situation in terms of whether to mandate if the labor market were not so tight, if it were not so hard to find workers, if there wasn't labor shortages across industries would it be a different story? would employers have more power to say i will just airbase mandate. >> certainly possible, melissa honestly, again, i think that it would be really great if they could just convince their employees why it's so important to them and their children and friends and everybody else to get it doesn't seem to be working as fast as we hoped so maybe that's the case issue one is not having enough workers as you suggested but also those workers who are most impacted are the ones most impacted economically by the

whole pandemic situation it's the lower income and the minorities who are least willing to get the vaccine and so that would really have a disproportionate hit on not only number of employees but diversity across the board >> all through this pandemic we've tried to balance, you know, being as safe as possible with not really, you know, going so far overboard that what you're doing is actually worse than if you hadn't done it in the first place and i wonder right now with these breakthroughs and what we're talking about, even though maybe they are not as common and a lot of times you're not hospitalized, worse case scenario is taking off do we go back to people who are vaccinated need to wear masks when they come back to the office is that what we need to do here we are again, wearing masks and social distancing for double vaccinated people just to make sure that really rare occurrence

doesn't happen >> well, to your point, joe, i mean i guess it depends on whether you're sitting right next to someone maybe or you have your own office or in the health industry or food industry where you're working with the public you know, i think it's going to be fact sensitive whether you have to wear masks for sure as long as we have this spike we'll wear masks in public places like airports and public transportation longer than we want >> that's one of the problems. it doesn't change anything so whether i need to be careful it does take the worse case scenario off the table then you got kids who aren't vaccinated maybe that's the next step that really is the game changer where across the board you have the worse case scenario taken off the table. then you got to go back to, take the mask off maybe at that point. >> well, we all want the mask off. nobody wants to wear those

you're right if we manage to get down to maybe a flu-like system versus going to the hospital people would be willing to take more risk instead of risk of dying or going into severe cardiac arrest >> i don't envy you -- i envy you because these aren't decisions you need to be quite as involved any more you can just come on "squawk box" which is awesome for you and for us >> getting to talk to you is always great, joe. i still love it. the boards i am, j&j big announcement today staying involved in the issues but you're right i don't have all the responsibility >> sort of sarcastic >> i think so. >> 50% sarcastic or how much >> no, all true, joe i love talking to you. great to see you i miss becky and andrew. this is great. >> all right it was great talking to you too, mark >> thanks, joe

>> you're welcome. thank you. >> big sporting goods out with quarterly earnings let's get to bertha coombs >> reporter: blow-out quarter for dick's reporting earnings of $5.08 a share nearly double the estimate on the top line a record 3.27 billion in sales lacking a very strong quarter and 45% from 2019. 30% of that was driven by digital sales. evidently they are not seeing the kind of supply chain disruptions some retailers are talking about, the company is raising its full year outlook for the second time this year and ending the quarter with 2.4 billion in cash on its balance sheet. significantly raising its capital allocation declaring a special dividend of 5.50 per share boosting its regular dividend by 20% and doubling its stock buy backs to a minimum of $400 million shares up 8.3% in response to

that report, melissa in the conference call later on this morning. >> keep us posted. thank you. coming up, mike novogratz on the market and the crypto market. minority leader kevin mccarthy joins us to discuss the fate of the infrastructure bill and the president's agenda

welcome back to "squawk box" the. futures right now have turned negative now red across the board, ever so slightly as you can see in the nasdaq and s&p. that would be three points off the new high 3.1 points off the new high, i guess. just needs to get above where it was yesterday. shares of gamestop sold as retail investors came back the stock closing 27% higher joining the trading session rose as much as 3.5%. seven times more than the 30 day average. other mean stocks also moved, amc entertainment jumped, clov

health and bed, bath & beyond. >> crypto whales jumping in today analysis shows those holding $50 million or more of crypto have been buying since the end of june mike novogratz will be up to discuss that and much more what will he be wearing. "squawk box" coming right back great. the storm alert... dad. and the subtle but effective ding. that's why we created low cash mode. the financial watch out that gives you the options and time needed to help you avoid overdraft fees. it's one way we're making a difference. because we believe how you handle overdrafts should be in your control, not just your banks. low cash mode on virtual wallet from pnc bank.

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bitcoin giving back some of its gains. bitcoin holding steady at 47,000 joining us now is mike novogratz. great to have you with us. a little disappointing, right, joe. >> glasses match his shirt >> mike, for crypto it seems momentum begets momentum are we in that stretch right now? where are we >> listen, four weeks ago we were down to 30,000 bitcoin. almost pretty depressed. what happened? a lot of things. i think a, market went down but can go up. but you had amazon, walmart put up help wanted signs for crypto engineers the. two biggest retail companies in the world saying we got to be a part of this movement.

visa yesterday, pretty much saying hey, digital assets will be a big part of our business. loud and clear that's their message it's a big part of our business. so i think you're seeing kind of total buy in that we'll rebuild a lot of financial infrastructure in broad chain basis. that plus, you know, when the government tries to jam in crypto regulation, actually was successful into the infrastructure bill, in one weekend people heard crypto community roar washington woke up and said who are these people and why are they so passionate there's 60 million american voters that love crypto. so i think he they literally in one weekend we became an industry in d.c.'s eyes. you put it all together and we've had a huge shift

look prices will probably stabilize here a little bit and consolidate. they won't keep going up forever. my guess is fourth quarter the s&p have a good quarter and crypto has a good quarter. usually the winners of the year when they are that much ahead just drive on. >> what's your take on what's going on in the market given crypt jobs visa buying i don't know if this is symbolic or if this is an actual move into nfts. but some are saying and i'm quoting brian kelly who is a huge crypto advocate on "fast money" that there's some aspects of nft market. could there be regulation, is there fraud here, was happening? >> of course there's fraud there was a piece of nft art which is algorythmic art.

it's the most beautiful nft i've seen that's a quick move. so i think you're seeing -- i think 15% total art sales this year are nfts. that seems a lot given, you know, the thing that the market didn't exist four months ago so, yeah, probably frothy prices doesn't mean by any stretch this isn't a real industry. right? people get too excited at the very beginning when jay-z had his crypto avatar, one of the kings of culture say i'll use an nft as my avatar it should have told everybody to buy crypto. this is a shift in culture and i think it's a big, big deal >> if part of the nft craze is

fueled, is there froth that comes out? >> listen. there's a recognition that things will be built on watch chains it's a theory of what we call level one protocols. all have really jumped in the last four weeks. in fact a lot of them lagged as people tried to figure out in the long run which one wins. etherium is the leader it's hard to predict where prices go when you have a paradigm shift the paradigm shift is up until recently people are like what's this crypto stuff. now you have walmart, visa, everybody saying oh, i got to participate. so i think there's really an important time in this space and

i think pries are recognizing that >> so, mike, quick question. a lot of people say this 3.5 trillion is like burmese wish list of things to do you've been on before. i think you're totally with bernie i'm just wondering, if you could be honest, do you really think we should do all that or do you think, wow, my crypto is going to go nuts because we're going to debase the currency and spend so much money and destroy fiat currency and i'm going to be richer than i am now with these insane proposals which is it or is it both? >> listen i think you're right the government, the fed treasury is playing a really, really dangerous game here buying $120 billion in security as month and moan tieding our debt. do i think our priorities of our

government need to shift some? yeah we have a rich-poor gap that's gotten too wide so i would shift priorities but i wouldn't be blowing out deficits i don't think we will in the long run this afghanistan, you know, stumble, debacle, depending what you want to call it, will probably strengthen the republicans hand in the final debate on where this number comes in >> i see what you're saying. i argued a lot of times in the past -- you know me. i think the organic growth from the private-sector is what grows the pie and if you mess that up you're cutting off your nose to spite your face. i think the fed has been so active in our lives because a lot of these policies aren't getting back to what was successful in the past, deregulation, letting the private-sector work. so that's why i say you want to

shift priorities but i think that's self-defeating. priorities you want to shift to, they won't work. you know, out of every dollar you spend 60, 70 cents falls through the crack because the government is so ineffective and we end up in an entitlement state like europe and fed stays at zero and wealth inequality gets worse so guys like you keep get rich ericher and richer and the more we try to fix it the through government the worse it becomes for people. am i wrong >> you're not wrong in some ways your man trump was the guy that blew deficits up to such a degree >> reagan. trump was a vehicle to stop what we're seeing right now >> but trump was the guy, to be honest that, you know, came in and had a giant tax cut, blew out the deficit when we had a

strong economy >> mike, obama doubled the deficit of all his predecessors and cutting corporate taxes to get in line with the rest of the world. we had organic growth finally happening. >> we had 5% budget deficit when we had the greatest economy of all time that's not right we have to have close to balanced budget when you have the greatest economy of all time >> everybody has been profiting in terms of spending we got to get back to deciding what is it, because an entitlement state model in europe work for gdp growth over the last 50 years our gdp have been 40% or 50% higher because too much is spent -- there's no innovation. just depends on what kind of country you want >> i think we'll see a natural correction wages are going up and if you thought about the

rich-poor gap being twoo wide, wages are going up people are comfortable forget about $15 minimum wage, think about $25 minimum wage don't mandate it >> the market determines what wages are. i mean you're not going to fix things by man dating a higher wage bio bojangles wanted to pay more you never answered me on that. >> i'm a shareholder i'm an agitating shareholder >> you're not agitating very hard >> you would be surprised. >> okay. you're still stuck at 8 bucks. >> i have a market question. i need to interrupt this >> they told me to give you seven minutes. >> that's fine aside from your crypto portfolio what does the other side of your portfolio more equity or macro you have amc and gamestop up on

your screen. >> i do. first i would say almost be irresponsible to be a rich guy and be long assets and not have a big stake even if you lose money. every powerful needs that. short the front end, short the back end at one point we'll see a taper and the fed will stop buying 120 billion a month and we could have a big lower rates which could hurt i don't see a reason not to be long on stocks we had huge corporate buy backs. yes high valuations but until the money train stops stocks are going go higher so that broad portfolio makes long stocks short bonds seems to be a winner even if you don't think short bonds. mean stocks are interesting in the resilience they have there aren't many, we can tax this idea of value

and i think you're seeing that in these mean stocks communities are passionate, keep come back. it shocked me. >> mike, great to have you have you back. mike novogratz >> thank you coming up the house making some progress on the $3.5 trillion budget resolution we'll speak with kevin mccarthy in washington for the latest just be forewarned then later, economist judy shelton joins us ahead of the jackson hole summit. we get her take on the role of the feds "squawk box" will be right back.

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good morning ready to run the the s&p 500 now has its 50th close. futurespointing to a mix jackson hole summit, judy shell in -- shelton will join us republican house minority leader kevin mccarthy will respond as the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now.

good morning welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc who is coming up, mccarthy >> mccarthy. >> live from nasdaq market site we're in times square. i'm joe kernen along with melissa lee. becky and andrew are off today u.s. equity futures turned a little positive on the dow at least still negative noonds which closed at a new high yesterday and the s&p closed at a new high fresh off those levels treasury yields amazingly we say it every day without total shock that we're still at 1.3% nothing we can do to move yields higher no matter how much we spend or print or how things go. it's just stuck. you wonder about is it foreigners buying because it's still better than what they

have is at any time fed buying 120 billion? is it all those things >> a lot of it combined. >> should it be here or not be there? >> market says it should be here let's get right to today's top stories in our complete cnbc team coverage. mike santoli covering the markets. eamon javers on washington watch as biden prepares to host a cyber security and meg terrell is following johnson & johnson as they say covid vaccine booster shot generated a positive response. meg, kick it off >> reporter: j&j getting into the buster conversation after its single dose vaccine giving six months later a booster shot and saying that they saw a robust and rapid crease in antibody levels. nine fold higher at that six month market then 28 days after the first shot and looking at spike-binding antibodies here.

this comes as the cdc and other u.s. health officials have been talking about how the j&j shot will need a booster but we need more data. they said eight months after the first vaccination of the vaccines people will need boosters j&j jumping in here and prostrigd first of what's expected to be a lot more data to come. we're waiting to see the full papers in a poll out this morning showing that after the announcement from u.s. health officials that people in the u.s. will likely need boosters 77% of vaccinated americans saying that they are on board to get boost irshots. guys, we'll wait for more data from johnson & johnson but showing a booster in six months does increase those antibody levels >> thank you, meg. eamon javers on today's security summit >> reporter: you talk about this public/private partnership idea all the time in cyber security today the white house will try to put some meat on the bones of what that actually means, having

a massive meeting of titans of industry to discuss how they will find a way forward here with this wave of cyber attacks we've seen over the past year or sponsorship it's been pretty disastrous for industry and government they are going talk about workforce development. the white house says there's about 500,000 cyber security jobs that are vacant right now one of the keys is education and training trying to get people into those jobs in order to help protect the country. they are also going to expect some concrete commitment from the private-sector the white house is and we expect those announcements to be made throughout the day today so keep an eye out for press releases from these companies committing either big dollars or big initiatives to cyber security and we'll watch for all of that. take a look at the ceos who are participating in this. it's really an all-star cast of characters starting with apple's tim cook, microsoft, alphabet,

amazon, jpmorgan, bank of america, travellers, duke energy and dr. barrett of girls who code all will be participating in this event today. some real heavy hitters meeting with fortunate and white house leaders and we'll see whether they can get their arms around this problem that so far has really been unsolvable because there's really been no clear sense of who is responsible for what here in the cyber security realm and american companies have been taking it on the chin, guys >> costs money that's the bottom line cost of doing business >> right >> and have to come to grips with that. >> who pays for that >> they have to pay for that that's the way things work maybe put it -- >> there's some -- >> put it in spiritual

infrastructure >> does insurance companies pay for it >> no, once it happens, if you got insurance they pay but we need to toughen everything up and look at what needs to be done supposedly there are a lot of private companies that -- maybe not public -- but companies that have, that's their addressable market toughening up the i.t. of these companies. it's expensive, isn't it >> it is expensive so who wants to pay for that on the front fend you don't have any liability there. if you can say when you're attacked hey this wasan act of god we had no idea this was coming how could we have expected that. then companies can offload that cost and not pay it youp front ceos get paid looking at quarterly numbers. who is going to want to take a big investment in a given quarter. >> that's the issue. >> how do you incentivize that >> only take one really bad --

we had them already. >> yes >> thanks. now to the markets mike santoli joins us from nyse and we think the mean stocks moved because people are just bored with the overall markets, mike >> you think they moved because of overall boredom in the market >> i thought we had that discussion why do you think they moved? >> i don't know why they moved >> that's as good as anything. overall markets, mike. can you bring back sexy sydney don't think so >> listen i'll do my best in a minute here but i appreciate you not seizing on eamon javers's line speaking of hacks here's mike santoli with a look at markets. i think the mean stocks are relevant for a different reason. i'll get to that on the third screen first one is s&p here we are not quite two-thirds of the way of the year s&p 500 up a consistent angle.

chasing forecast earnings. volume has been light. a lot of stocks have been left behind about a third of the s&p still 10% down while the nasdaq crossed 15,000 the story this week really has been a firming up of the sentiment towards cyclical areas of the market. speaking of cyclicals and defenses it's notone or all. it has been many days and weeks. take a look at industrials against health care. this is since the start of this year basically in a dead heat yet for a while industrials like a lot of global recovery plays had built up a huge gain that then surrendered some of that. here you see equal weight industrial sector still has a 1 percentage point advantage over health care which has been much more consistent and recent outperformer the markets have been not just rotating but also kind of taking turns in terms of granting leadership and i do think

there's a quality bias here which helps both industrials and health care big companies because earnings acceleration will give way. take a look at risk appetite bellwethers that include the sport betting stocks the ipo index has picked up lately but really in the last six months has done nothing similar to the small caps. the russell 2000 the s&p has had that, you know, very consistent 30% annualized pace of gains which is extraordinary he especially with a 5% pull back the rest is milling around yes the mean stocks are part of this kind of risk seeking basket i think it's partly boredom. there's a lot of other mechanical recovery stories. there's a pretend short squeeze in those names and sometimes there's a reason on a given date where people decide to propagate the idea there's a reason for it that's what happened yesterday without getting into the hazy

details. that's one excuse for some of that action yesterday. >> how is the action in the pet rock nft market today, mike? is it a consolidating going higher can you believe we talk about that what does that stand for what does it say about everything else. is that on your radar? >> it is it is, but, you know, i think -- i can kind of set it aside to a large degree, if i call it consumption. if i call it -- this is just kind of a hobby. once we're starting to characterize it as an asset class that's where it gets squishy even though you can resell the stuff it's part of the environment that says look if somebody is paying six figures for, you know, the j peg to some image i can use on my screen for some reason why not buy a piece of a company like amc or gme which

while wildly overvalued is at least a real company >> mike, don't you think some day things moderate or pull back, don't you think we'll point back to these days and say we should have known >> sure. we absolutely will it could happen next week it could happen in three years. >> they don't do anything. we have judy shelton on later too. we'll talk about that. thanks mike. see you later. before judy shelton house minority leader kevin mccarthy on the budget battle in washington stay tune. you're watching quk x" o"sawbon cnbc

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welcome back to box. making headlines in the u.s. department of energy is nearing a deal to purchase a supercomputer made with chips and nvidia according to our reuters report that says the nvidia machine will be a test machine readying its software for intel it was due to be delivered this year but production has been pushed back to next year intel spokesman said he mains committed to delivering a

computer in 2020 >> house speaker nancy pelosi and moderate democrats struck deal ending an impasse to advance that $3.5 trillion budget resolution and september up a september 27th vote on infrastructure for more let's welcome in kevin mccarthy, congressman from california i know how you feel about it and i know you think if you talk about, it's bernie's wish list and raise taxes, i know you think that that stuff needs to be said but we know you're going to say that. i don't know if i want to focus on that. i want to focus how you'll stop it and whether it's possible to stop it. what do you think? >> well i think prior to this i thought it was possible to stop it the we listened to ten democrats who said they would not move forward the budget without first voting on the transportation bill they stayed late into night. think about the timing when this took place we never should have been debating the budget at this

moment while afghanistan was falling, while americans are stuck there, while young afghans were falling and clinging to our airplanes this is what they were focused on this is what they had biden calling and twisting arms. at the end of the day there wasn't one democrat to stand up. it was nearly $5 trillion they voted for this week. so there's no longer a centrist democrat no long ear moderate democrat. every single democrat voted for this this has turned into a big government socialist party i tried to grasp the size of this >> are you for or against the deal that your colleagues in the senate signed on for are you for that infrastructure? >> no. i'm not. >> you can't stop that, right or you think you can stop it? >> i'm not sure. i don't know yet until the vote

takes place but now that they combined both of them together you're not voting now just for $1.2 trillion. remember what they promised us it will be paid for. it won't be paid for they said it's about infrastructure it's not just about infrastructure now it's tied if you vote for the 1.2 trillion you're voting for nearly $5 trillion that's the deal that the democrats just cust inside congress >> i just read something that to me was staggering but it is something that you're going to have to deal with and it was someone said i think what people like at joe "squawk" don't understand there's a whole generation of people who care less if growth is slower as long as social economic issues are being solved a few points lower in gdp in order to help the people that need it is a tradeoff that this generation would make. and i don't know whether -- i

don't know who to blame for that i don't know where to start on telling somebody that zbapd measure of individual's well being and it's all that really matters if our quality of life only goes up when we're able, you know, to succeed economically so i know it's a straw man argument but that's what you're dealing with and you're dealing with an entire party, democratic party that feels the same way. >> yeah. but now we're dealing with something much different anybody under the age of 50 has probably nerve felt inflation democrats thinking will spark greater inflation. if you think wages are going up it's not going up at the same rate that inflation is going up. people are feeling that. i mean, with all due respect joe biden said he's bringing america back he brought us back to the '70s he's begging opec to produce more oil we have thehostages in the midd

east we have inflation going up this is what their economic promise has been and now they are only going compound it and double down on it. >> congressman, do you think that -- you brought up afghanistan and it is on all of our minds and i asked someone earlier if there was a disconnect to really start with that and talk about it so much when this is happening, but for us, for cnbc viewers, do you think that if the president's poll numbers continue to drop, it's at 41% according to one poll yesterday, do you think that that will mean something in terms of his legislative agenda in getting it through congress or is it a foregone conclusion that the democrats have the ability to do that because they got the numbers? >> i'm not quite sure yet. one thing if i was a democrat is look at approval rating is dropping i have been in classified briefings where the president is

making decisions that are different than the information he's given he's making decisions to chart a path that's different than the advisors would tell him to and even some within his own viewers. your viewers should be concerned about. in a week when other people around the world like the parliament in the uk they weren't focused on spending they were focused on getting their allies out america was attacked and they believed with our character. they were begging this president to move the deadline from august 31st he told them no and yes to the taliban. there's no way we can get all the americans out by that deadline what does that say to russia, what does that say to china when it comes to taiwan what does it say to architecture al -- our allies around the world. this will harm us for the next two decades of our reputation that has just been tarnished

throughout of whether america stands with that so everybody should be concerned about that what's more concerning to me is that those lawmakers were called back for a special session in congress they have been out all summer. we only spent 90 minutes on that and got cut off and spent the entire time tied within the president twisting arms to pass the largest package and largest tax increase that will be involved with this since the '60s that was the focus of the majority party that controls the senate, the house and the presidency so i don't know how they sustain themselves >> do you have any doubt that the left flank will go for, if they have to pass the infrastructure bill fixes will they go for that to make sure -- do you know? >> i wish i had the ten democrats in my party. i've never seen a worse negotiation than that group.

nancy pelosi -- on the left -- i think the far left is going to win more the far left has been now able -- when they were afraid of passing a $1.2 trillion package they now got a $5 trillion package and tied it all together in one -- when it collides together it's the witching hour. they probably will get more. the far left is much stronger. watch corey bush, what aoc does. they hold this democratic party hostage to their socialist believes i believe at the end of the day they will ask for something greater. >> votes get done in september we'll have 5 trillion on the books in september you can't stop it? >> it will be over my dead body because i'll do everything in my power to stop it the damage that will do -- there's an opportunity >> how will you stop it? manchin and cinema, do you think

they are reliable >> they could slow it down what about the ten democrats in the house that just folded they folded means they won't get elected again. they just proved at the same time they were doing this and ignoring afghanistan they passed an election law bill that would ban the ability to show i.d.s. only shows they care about themselves if they watch about caring about themselves they don't get re-elected in passing the largest spending bill. >> thank you kevin mccarthy. good to see you. over my dead body. that's the headline. coming up breaking economic news durable goods order first we they'd break. check out this morning's biggest movers you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc

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coming up, breaking economic news durable reliable goods analysis straight ahead. the fed will be in focus with judy shelton she will join us to talk about this week as high stakes jackson

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welcome back to "squawk

box" making headlines this morning, m mortgages rates falling. average mortgage fixed-rate mortgage is 3.03%. number of loan applications were higher than the prior week the volume is still 16% lower than the same week one year ago seconds away from durable goods. rick santelli has the numbers. >> durable goods july preliminary very volatile series in a couple of weeks we'll see the final expecting a negative number down one tenth of 1% less negative than expected. looking for a number down three or four tenths ex-transportation we can see what a drag transportation was because it jumps up to up .7, better than one half percent expected let's get to the "moneyball"

ex-aircraft proxy for business spending unchanged. bit of a disappointment there. they were looking for up one half of 1% capital goods order, shipments not orders, is up 1% that's better than expected. but on the order side that really is a big disappointment that is the first time we haven't improved since february when we were down .3 of 1% there's revisions in the rear view mirror nothing substantial except capital goods order went up .7 to 1% the. that makes the sting of unchanged this time around from the preliminary july sting a little bit less. we see that yields are now up at 1.3%, almost at 1.31 the other day a high was on monday 1.28. so we have extended, but until

we get a close on a day and a week above a zone of 1.36 to 1.39 it's very hard for me to think that rates will have any huge moves to the upside even though on the intermediate and short term there's a bias towards more selling pushing rates more firmly to the upside the. melissa lee, back to you >> immediate reaction equity futures pretty quiet hovering near those record close. steve liesman joins us with more on this data steve? >> reporter: i think this is an interesting and good number, actually zero on the nondefense capital goods, proxy for business spending we talked a lot about the surging consumer spending. we haven't talked a lot about what's going on in the business investment side. it has been very strong. even with this zero number we're up 16.4% on new orders year-over-year, 14% on

shipments, all of that is good stuff for the overall growth numbers. but what's happening i think and i've been trying to understand what's going on at the corporate level here companies don't standstill in the face of a pandemic or rising prices. on the pandemic side i think there's been a lot of equipment spending to adjust to work at home and other things that companies have had to do on the inflation side i think the good news here is there's been investment in productivity enhancing machinery and equipment. in fact machinery new orders are up 2.9%. primary metals are up. good numbers showing that businesses are not standing still. and maybe laying the ground work, melissa, i think for some big stuff for the economy down the road when it comes to productivity wages have gone up there's a race going on. wages go up. what do companies do they try to find ways to offset those costs and one of the ways they do that is to buy machinery

and business investment to increase productivity. >> how do supply chain issue, steve, factor into this sort of data is there a notion that if there's a belief that it takes longer to get something you might place the order sooner so there's a pull forward >> reporter: that could well be. could be some pricing in here. but when i looked almost in anticipating of that question, melissa, when i look at the real spending inside of the gdp report which is inflation adjustment it's still strong when it comes to equipment structure, they are not building offices so much any more right now given the uncertainty there. but there is a good spending on equipment even when we adjust for inflation. >> rick you were just speculating. >> reporter: yeah. here's my problem. when we talk about certain things year-over-year like inflation we make a definite point to point out that last year had a lot of activity

we don't do the same thing with capital goods, air defense nonaircraft. for january, february, march, april some pretty big negative numbers. there's this year-over-year effect going on as well and i can't disagree that businesses don't just standstill but i think we're making a bit too much out of this wages moving up definitely and i agree with kevin mccarthy was up earlier, with regard to wages they certainly have gone up a bit and maybe they will have to go up more in the future to draw people back into the workforce, i don't know that's the issue at this point but certainly isn't keeping up with inflation so there's a lot of activity going on here. with the supply chain i can't imagine it isn't affecting durable good orders especially aircraft and auto side >> reporter: if i can respond to that >> sure.

>> reporter: just real quick i appreciate what rick is saying about base figures and a year ago. but the point is that this number especially the first in business worldwide proxy number is very volatile and yet it's really been up on a month to month basis, rick which is what was behind my point. i agree it's flatter year-over-year >> reporter: that's where you pointed to, though i can't read your mind >> reporter: what i didn't say -- we had a series of monthly gains, rick that suggested there's some momentum on the business side >> reporter: april was up almost 3% i'm with you businesses have done quite well. businesses have done quite well and i'm a little disappointed, actually that spending hasn't -- on the chinzy side here. >> reporter: there's another story out in the "journal," this idea of huge share issuance,

corporate debt issuance. some of that is going on in terms of internal financial, they are spending on internal financial stuff like buy backs some of this is ending up in business investment. that's another good sign out there. they are not taking down loans the banks aren't finding that many customers for loans but there is a lot of corporate activity going on because of high share prices leading to share issuance >> all right steve, rick, thanks. coming up, judy shelton sound off on the fed as bankers prepare to gather virtually for the annual jackson hole summit first as we headto break check out the shares of express, the retailer a rally after the company reported an unexpected profit. stay tune. you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc i had the nightmare again maxine.

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>> only fan has reversed a decision to ban pornographic content. that decision prompted a great deal of user backlash. only fans said it wants to be a home for all creators. the ban on sexually explicit content was to go into the effect on september 1st.

>> i saw some people say oh, now you're banning it. that's how it got as popular as it was riding that and now -- i don't know. i don't know what it is. coun countdown -- i don't know what only fans is i know what porn is. countdown to the jackson hole summit now what porn? >> i know. >> you know when you see it. that was famous quote. >> yes exactly. >> you know when you see it. >> yes >> some people call small business porn. that's not nice. i know that when i see it. we're waiting for jackson hole anticipate what j. powell will say. the fed has become too prominent, too political and too powerful joining us now is judy shelton former nominee to the federal

reserve. judy, you got a pretty good prediction about what powell will say on friday, and basically nothing. >> well, i think he's going to be appropriately vague and perfectly noncommittal we'll hear a lot of same phrases we've been hearing for months about the fed using all of its tools to support the economy he'll say that at the fed they are seeing progress but he won't say whether that meets the fed's definition of substantial further progress so, overall, i think he'll hit all the bases. i think he'll not completely satisfy but mullify listeners on capitol hill and in the white house. >> that sounds pretty good doesn't matter anyway. that's where you would say it absolutely matters and this is no way to run a country or run

the fed. >> right i think it matters entirely too much to have markets be so substantially moved by the utterances of a handful of officials at the federal reserve for, i think, is no way to run monetary policy. i was in the room in may 2013 when ben bernanke who was chair of the fed was testifying before the joint economic committee and they were badgering him about when your going start cutting back on quantitative easing and he kept avoiding it, avoiding it and finally he said maybe not in the next couple of meetings but then after that. the room explode as reporters went to report that it could be september that the fed starts cutting back on its purchase of debt we had triple-digit begins that went negative japan's market fell 7%

came around to frankfurt and london and paris the next day. ultimately i think our markets lost 3% in four days the weird thing is by september the fed had pretty much chickened out, decided not to do that and by the end of the year the markets were just about where they had been. so i don't think financial gains should be won or lost by being able to interpret the nuances or look for hints at what fed officials are saying that doesn't work for the rest of the people in the economy who make their money producing thing or providing services. >> you probably don't have -- if i asked you about whether powell should be reappointed yo probably wouldn't say anything mean about that. wait a minute. i don't think he should have been appointed in the first place. i guess you don't think he should be reappointed. why? >> well, i think there were better choices in the first

place. i think john taylor, whom i work with at stanford university is not only a superb economist, but he believes that monetary policy should be more rules based and not just a matter of the discretionary judgment of a dozen people i think that john alison was considered he was interviewed for treasury secretary. he ran a regional bank very successfully he headed a think tank in washington >> what problem do you have with powell he had to navigate the fed through the pandemic and the stock market hit nasdaq hit another new high yesterday the recovery we've seen has been very fast snap back. there are certain sectors of the economic world that just give endless kudos to what j. powell has been able to do.icism to co

true, do bad things have to happen in the future for you to be proven right? >> no. my issue with powell would be that i don't think his aframewor is right he was appointed in february of 2018 he raised rates at the very next meeting in march and then again in june and then again in september and again in december. and it turn out the very next year he had to pull back three of those rate increases. so now he's saying i made a mistake. i shouldn't have done that we had record low unemployment particularly beneficial to low-income and minority workers. we had real gdp growth there were so many thing that made that economic nirvana, that

i don't want to make that mistake again. the irony is that there was one person blasting him in late 2018 and that was president trump saying you shouldn't be continuing to raise rates. well now things have changed in those days we had pro growth. we had a pro growth agenda that included cutting taxes on business, cutting back regulation we had energy reforms. those were the factors that were powering that excellent growth we now see that those are all like try to be reversed under the biden administration and yet powell is going ahead as if monetary policy, which had been erratic in 2018 and 2019 was the driving force and now we have inflation which we didn't have then so i think he has the wrong prescription because he drew the wrong analytical lessons >> should we assume asset inflation is at work with pet

rocks and nfts and some of the things that we're seeing in the fringe, the fringes of investing or speculating or whatever it that you attribute to that crypto you're favorable towards crypto. what about these nfts? >> well we know that tons of liquidity have been injected into the system and it's finding its way into those assets. you mentioned earlier that a lot of people are very happy with what the fed has done. i think some segments of our society have benefitted greatly but that's at the expense of the private-sector i think that the fed is exacerbating the wealth gap and it's great if you are a wealthy investor or big business or big government and you can borrow at virtually zero but for people who just have savings accounts, for people who work for a living and they don't, they don't make money by gaming financial markets it's

very unfair to them. >> "fast money," melissa >> judy had said all the liquidity that's what propelled the market no won, judy that investors hang on the fed's every word, right i mean that's the backdrop that they've created starting with the financial crisis as you had mentioned. is there a solution to this? it almost sounds like maybe is less transparency better >> well, monetary reform is impossible until it becomes inevitable i am watching the crypto currency movement. they show their power when that infrastructure bill was being worked out by congress and suddenly they saw that fairly obscure amendment through millions of americans who are putting their faith intern

currencies i think the fed needs to look at its long term impact on the economy and i think there's going to be a little bit of a showdown in whether the fed is providing a stable monetary platform so that private-sector initiative can flourish, and the the future problems that the fed needs to be focusing on now instead of the rest of us deciding whether a raised eyebrow means a taper could happen in october versus november. >> so judy, 5 -- if we add up -- some people think the 3.5 trillion is actually 5, and then we got the 1.2, that would be 6.2 to make all that work, do they need the fed to continue to be sort of a partner in making sure interest rates don't rise to do all these things, and does that, in your view, is that one of the risks that you worry about that the fed at this point is way too political and in bed -- and it

seems like it's -- the fed typically is in bed with the administration that's in power because the head of the fed wants to be reappointed, but is that happening again >> well, i think you have 400 ph.d. economists at the fed. i think chair powell should assign a couple of them to do a study on the impact of prolonged monetary accommodations on the growth of government there is no question that when the fed can bail out excess spending by purchasing debt -- and think how they do it they literally tap a keyboard. it's a digital blip. i don't think our founders ever an anticipated that government would be in a position to create the money, to create it. the 8 trillion the fed has in assets on its balance sheet was all created doing that

that is far too much power for a government agency run by unelected officials. >> just wondering the day of reckoning. was there a day of reckoning after the last time the feds stayed at the party too long in the financial crisis i don't know whether it's sort of a slow torture that dampens economic growth or prevents, i don't know, wages. i don't know how you would view what was supposedly a series of missteps last time i guess the initial crisis itself would have been a series of missteps. i'm wondering what it looks like if the chicken -- who comes home to roost i guess roosters roost when everything comes home, when the cows come home, what does it look like to you, judy we certainly are in overdrive in terms of if it this is a mistake we're doing it exponentially what's it look like?

>> well, i think what it looked like the last time in 2008 was a real threat to democratic capitalism you saw the tea party movement and the occupy wall street movement come together and saying the financial system doesn't work for us. it's rigged against us, and how the fed escaped blame i'm not sure but by the time it came around for bernanke to be renominated, then the attitude in washington was, well, now we're in such uncharted waters that for stability's sake, we have to keep him in there. and bernanke on his own behalf was saying we are engaging in quantitative easing. we're buying up all of these government debt assets, but we're going to sell them back. well that just never happens the problem with government is they love the prescription of

stimulus, but they never accept that it was meant to happen over a business psych and will there would be years of restraint to balance out the years when you were expanding the economy through manipulation of interest rates or through fiscal maneuvers. we only like the stimulus part, and in the end, i think financial instability is the ultimate threat and stagflation en route to that >> there is a -- i can't remember the name, starts with an h, but you do things during a crisis, and you never undo them. i think that's what you're describing they are a big part of our life, good old fed love them, talk about them every day. every utterance, everything that happens. they're part of our life speaking of which, james bullard is going to be on tomorrow at 8:30 he may have a different take on some of these things thank you very much for your time today, judy shelton.

>> let's get down to the new york stock exchange, chat with jim cramer there's so much to talk about this morning, jim. i mean, we got just a bomb of a report i mean, the reaction in the market to nordstrom is incredible, and then you got jpmorgan cutting into an underweight this morning saying things won't get any better for these $100,000 house hoholds? >> that was an amazing report and an incredible downgrade. what they're basically saying is it's just not coming back. this is sfwas good as it gets rack, was an incredible disappointment when math boss takes something to a sell, i think it becomes uninvestable i actually don't know what they would do i know na mthat macy's fell ver, very big i think there could be a macy's purgatory. that was a terrible call that

they had, and then of course they said that it was a good time so melissa, you know how painful that is to have a management say it's really great when we know it isn't >> yeah. you just wince. >> you wince >> take a look at your stock chart, for one reacting to your words in realtime. for every nordstrom you have a best buy >> best buy and you have a dick's, both of those are really fantastic. both of them thought ahead of time, have a lot of inventory, doing quite well, and i don't know -- listen, by the way to what you guys were saying about the fed. i'm going to come up with a different view i watch your show as much as i can when i'm doing mine. a lot of you guys talk about management and how they've been able to candle any situation do we really have to stay that those guys stocks are going up when your people so correctly articulate how strong certain management teams are >> yeah, i think that's all good

points, jim. we look forward to seeing you at 9:00 see you in a few minutes. >> thank you, melissa, great to talk to you. >> as we head to break, goldman sachs out with its a-list of its best stock ideas among those names, baker hughes, nrg energy, nextera. in our effort to build the world's safest cars. we've created crumple zones and autonomous braking. active lane keeping assist and blind spot assist. we've introduced airbags, side curtain airbags, and now the first-ever rear-mounted front-impact airbags. all in the hope that you never need any of it. ♪ ♪

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all right, make sure you join us tomorrow because -- >> it will be us. >> it will be us again tomorrow, i don't know, if you get up. it was hard today for her. "squawk on the street" is next >> good wednesday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with gjim cramer there's a lot to watch on vaccines, retail earnings, meme stocks and the white house summit on cyber security our road map begins with signs of a potential delta variant peak stocks are sitting at record