changing work force and what life will be like beyond the pandemic if that ever happens. it is december 22, 2021. "squawk box" begins right now. yesterday was a big day for the markets. you saw things higher amid the decline. you've got the dow futures indicated up by 43 up 1.6%. indicated up 1.75% nasdaq down by 23 after being up by 2.4%. we'll see what happens as we get closer to thursday, which is the beginning of the holiday trading

week shortened trading. take a look at the treasury market >> president biden issuing a dire warning to those who remain unvaxed against covid-19 >> we should all be concerned against omicron but not panic. if you are fully vaccinated, especially with the booster, you are highly protected if you are unvaccinated, you are at higher risk of con

contracting covid-19 and beg hospital izized and dying. this is not march of 2020. 200 million people are fully vaccinated we are prepared, we know more. >> biden announced new initiatives to try to combat including 500 million free at-home tests. more testing sites and popup vaccine clinics. delta airlines is asking the cdc to cut the quarantine time for vaccinated people. current rules could negatively affect the airline operations. delta wants the quarantine time cut to five days from 10 days. the airline says current rules were made at the beginning of the pandemic before we had vaccines and treatments.

i'm with them but i'd think you'd want to test out of a quarantine jim was with them but still testing positive yesterday so that would have been five days if you are going to change the rules, which may very well be the right thing ultimately but the test component would matter the most if you were trying to limit the spread do we have 500 million tests ready to go? >> no. it is not coming until january it is coming too late, too little if you wanted to do what europe is doing for months now. if we wanted to do that in the united states, we had need 2.3 billion a month. >> you said vaccinate yourself

twice a week >> why doesn't he use the protection act and go to pfizer and say you need to make these drugs and therapeutics 10 million isn't going to cut it you'll need to order 100, 200 million doses. look, at the rate things are going, interestingly, it may well be that sadly, the health aspect are in a dire as what we saw previously it could burn through 50 millio

people who doesn't have it right now? every day it is really, really >> testing is serious. i sat two hours in the cold car for my kids. i stood in line two hours for them to get tested we get tested at work. there are cases going through all of the kids' schools right now. before we see my parents, which i want to see my mom and dad for christmas, before we do that, i want to get tested we were in line two hours. the guy behind me was at a party, found out someone had tested positive. he had been everywhere there is nowhere to get the testing done in this region at this point >> right i don't want to go stand in a line right now >> with a bunch of people who

think they have covid. if your family around you is triple vaxed, i don't know if you put yourself in that position with a bunch of people who think they have it didn't you hear, it went through a hotel wall somewhere it went across the hall. that was the only contact someone could have had i don't know ifs that true >> i agree with you, joe if you are going to be around people who are triple vaxed and not

immunocompromised. and for those not severely old for those of us lucky enough to still have grandparents around, it becomes an issue. becky and i can rap about this forever. even if you get results today, if the pcr test doesn't catch it, you really want to do rapid tests everyday leading up to an event the last second if you are totally committed to that position >> and if you are either going to be with the people who are severely old or immuno compromised. >> it is true. i will say it is impossible to get tests. you can get them right now on

walmart.com. walmart has done a better job than the federal government. >> you both have grandparents? >> my grandmother is 95. >> that's pretty cool. once your parents go, you are next i lost my parents but found some other parents. >> we sadly lost our grandmother but my wife still has her grandmother around going on 100 soon too, by the

way. announcing the broadway league hold in washington today, president biden set to convene his task force ahead of commerce, labor and transportation department. is expected for significant progress to alleviate bottleneck that the number of containers has dropped more than 50% we have those here. we have a lot of those here. which is nice.

i don't know if you are going to get your cabbage patch dolls or not. are they hot >> they are hot again. like ties come back. >> maybe i'll have one under the tree >> either that or coal tesla news high after trading. after musk says he's reached the goal of selling 10% of tesla shares after all was said and done, he increased his holding. he exercises options to buy 16.4 million shares. those options came and those by the way were granted back in 2012 talk among yourself. i got to call backin

do we want to talk about musk? we could go to elizabeth warren. by the way, joe, last time we talked, i was being defensive of elizabeth warren today, i'm more unhappy with the way warren is trying to raise money on the back and putting out lies with the taxes the way i find is marketedly frustrating. >> andrew, a lot of times i think you are dismissive of the things i say but i specifically say

politicians -- birds go the to fly, fish got to swim, politicians got to demogog >> i don't know what elizabeth warren paid in taxes i've seen like trump $5 grand on taxes. she's not paying $11 billion over his lifetime. is musk paying $11 billion make him a bad guy. aren't we thankful for elon musk a lot of folks that are like, let's thank him for paying his

taxes. that's the one part -- nobody sends me a thank you card when i pay my taxes >> can i come back in? i'm back i heard you guys starting to get along. >> we are kind of okay on this >> we are okay on this. >> i think everybody agrees warren is trying on this >> i'm not wrong saying there are flying fish and swimming birds. >> i am not surprised it has been ramped up

>> are we surprised? stop the presses they are raising money >> the argument in this particular case seems so wrong but. look, her argument is that she should be saying even more >> fair share. 12.5 billion seems fair >> when we return, the big story likely to drive today's trading. first, check out this morning's biggest pre-market winners and losers stay tuned here on cnbc.

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welcome back to "squawk box. you ask see the futures this morning. the dow extending those gains a little bit 53 points. s&p up three nasdaq down you said lately, santa has been delivering even

more coal. when i was a kid and a switch, it was bad now if you are getting it, your foot print and other stuff goe into it. getting cole is even a worse gift from santa. >> it sure is. good morning the coal point comes with a lot of the news we've had recently we think why we are in the races. we thought these dovish spend spending goals would go through all of these are back on the table. you have the omicron variant we are going to see what happens with the fiscal policy and how it affects the markets

this is a curve at the end of the year i'm really optimistic. i think it will come to 2022 for various reasons. >> if things change gradually. for the next couple of quarters, you think the tail winds will be on >> i don't think it will change up the fed is more hawkish. rate hikes will be slow and steady i don't think it will hit the top growth companies much. i bought amazon, microsof and google i think the future and the cloud will pushthings forward those

dreams in terms of return. i ask the question on weakness it was stephanie, i think. she said, no, i'd rather have more reasonable multiples with good growth prospects. you'd go back to the high fliers and they will fly again to new heights again? >>exactly.

they are indicating they are moving forward i'll go with apple too amazon might have a trillion dollar cloud business. >> unbelievable. they are telling me we got to go joe manchin must be giving out coal for christmas >> he might be kidding. love that man.

thank you. appreciate it. happy holidays >> happy, happy, happy new year. giving out the coal, you might be getting some. when we come back, we have an annual "squawk box" tradition. we'll check in with the u.s. air force commission tasked with tracking santa we'll lkta about how much more difficult this job has gotten. stay tuned to cnbc . maybe what your family needs is a vacation home slash vacation home. find yours on the vrbo app.

the recent boom in space tourism has the skies more crowded than ever

that doesn't detract this team from tracking santa on christmas eve. a public affairs officer at norad. also a member of the norad tracks santa team. this is the 66th year. i would imagine this job has gotten a lot more difficult because there is so much more stuff in the air including all of the stuff in space right now. how are you doing this how are you handling it? >> thank you for having me yes, the job of watching the united states and skies is a little bit tougher but we are able to keep up with it by working with our partners and allies around the world. with regards to tracking santa, it takes a lot of contributors to get that job done they are happy to do that every year how do you do this tracking through watching santa

as he goes around the globe. this is something kids have been curious about forever. >> right when children call in the ops center, we give them all the answers about how norad tracks santa. it starts with the first movements out of the north pole. tracking him and moving west, our satellites can watch the inferred signature from rudolph's red nose when he gets back into canada and the u.s., our fighter jets es court him back home to get ready for next year. >> how many people actually call in to the line still >> back in 2019, we had over

150,000 calls. the phone never stops ringing. >> what do kids say when they call in and how did this whole thing start, by the way? >> it started back in 1955 when there was a miss printed ad for a department store saying children could call. that actually lead to the conad, the continental air defense and the red phone the commander picked up and went along with it and so did his crew for the night. that's how it all began. >> we'll be watching we know you will be too. captain brown, thank you for joining us good luck to you and your staff handling these calls this year

thank you. happy holidays hope to see you tracking santa with us. >> merry christmases we will be >> haven't seen "christmas vacation" this year. that might be my favorite because of cousin eddie. they are at the table and clark says, santa has been spotted coming across the border cousin eddie looks at him and goes, are you serious, clark there's about 100 lines from that movie that i use. jelly of the month club. didn't get a bonus gift that keeps on giving. coming up, robert frank brings us the numbers first a look at yesterday's

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>> good morning. welcome back to "squawk box. let's check the futures right now. the dow looking to open higher nasdaq trending lower about 17 or 18 points we'll call it marginally in the green. maybe up a point more importantly because of the way things are going and how people are feeling we are at 1.475, joe have you refinanced? you thought about any of these things during this movement back and forth?

kind of like that thing, what is that thing your aura. >> because i'm proud of myself, my aura is telling me i'm feeling good today >> we agreed about elizabeth warren that's what happens when we agree. a better feeling a good holiday feeling >> you think he agrees with you because he got a good night sleep. >> yesterday, i wasn't just disagreeing. mcdonalds has the best fries but wendy's has been doing better, plus, did you see some of the good tips order the mcdonalds fries

without salt then they have to make them new for you. you add the bloomberg force of salt he loves the whole thing been a record breaking year for options options. all of those had a record year you look at wracked up sales combined continuing to move on line with 92% of bids online the two most expensive work went for $103 million for a picasso

and another went at kristies nft sales topping the list at cristies that market didn't even exist before march the biggest growth in the luxury categories we are talking wine, watches nearly half the luxury bidders were new clients at sootheby's michael jordan sneakers going for $1.9 million you had an hermes kelly bag for $515,000 and a marie antoinette

bracelet and the combination of crypto going for $43 million all of these assets just keep going up >> i'm trying to figure out the value in any of them we have to get used to not meez youring any inherent value when someone points to a crypto and says take your pick. the nft, was it the best one it must have been the best one probably can't make another like that the was a collect of 101 bored aip. this was a collection of 101 originals. you got 101 of them for $21

million, then you can break them up >> what is the coolest one >> i like them all all of the bored apes. if i could afford one, i'd get one but i can't. >> there are ways you can copy them put the cigar on the other side of the mouth? that's one i don't understand. sneaky vampires i get. >> the pudgy penguins, we get those too. >> @joe squak. when we come back, the grey rethink inside the american work place and how the pandemic has changed more than you might

think. later, don't miss our exclusive interview with union square's danny yemer and the new york restaurant community this is cnbc at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner with access to financial advice, tools and a personalized plan that helps you build a future for those you love. vanguard. become an owner.

early audiences give "sing 2" an a+. vanguard. i counted nine smiles, two belly laughs and five chuckles. it's a heartwarming crowd-pleaser. woo! -i love you! i don't suppose any of you could tap dance, huh? ♪ come on, dance with me ♪ it's the holiday event you won't wanna miss. ♪ come on, dance with me ♪ ♪ i'm levitating ♪ ♪ i'm levitating ♪ [ groans ] i think she's trying to kill me. welcome back to "squawk box. more than 4 million americans quit their job in october.

my next guest says this is not a sign of the great resignation but rather the great rethink a strategist and polster so not the great resignation but you think something broader in fact >> we are reexamining who we are, what we are about, the priorities we want we are truly taking a broad look at our day-to-day lives and the corporate community needs to understand this. telling workers they have to go back to work when they don't want to work at work is a mistake and telling workers you have certain hours you have to do something when we haven't been doing those for the last 18 months and maybe six months longer we are even examining friendships and looking at who they vote for. more than half of americans

believe their live style needs to change. we've never had this in our lifetime i think this is really significant. a third of changing friendships, family relationships i think this is going to affect the economy, the way we live understanding the work place is a different ee squags than what it was 18 to 24 months ago >> i'll define something in a second there is a distinction that might be described as white color and blue color work. right now, a lot of white color people are working from home with the new flexibility they were able to do that. quote/unquote blue collar work doesn't have that. is that rethinking happening in the blue collar world in the same way >> absolutely. you've seen it in restaurants that have not been able to

reopen or open 70 to 80% capacity hotels that can't get the same work force inflation is hitting us and by the way, in many cases, employees deserved it. you can now get 25 to 30% more labor because the government is paying people to stay at home. these are significant. we are even changing what we think about the work ethic and that is all throughout the economy. so, yes, white collar, blue collar, 25 or 55, you are deciding what kind of life you want to live in 2022 and i don't think the corporate world is prepared for this. >> what do you mean by this? i think you are saying, there is a higher expectation for what you are doing in the work place. i would argue that that trecnd

has been going on for many years before the pandemic. my first job, i was essentially xeroxing and getting coffee and i was very happy today, if i were interviewing people for a job, and i said the job would be zxeroxing and getting coffee, they'd walk out. >> there is a difference between what you want and what you'll actually do. you are seeing this because of the number of people walking out of their work place. we asked 18 to 29 year olds what they thought about democracy we are going through a rethink politically. more global people think democracy is the answer than

american people. we asked them whether they believe the u.s. is the greatest threat to peace and democracy, more young americans blame america than globally. it is every aspect of our life and being is going through this reexamination. >> if you were a ceo of a food bank or institution of a culture and part of that is built-in side the office. you know a lot of ceos that have that view, what do you do? >> you have to compromise that view i'm saying to people because you've seen statements on your show they are screwed if they think they are going back to the way things were in 2022, that is not going to happen. they'll have to find hybrids and ways to have that office culture

two or three days a week because some people will not come back then there is the issue of child care because of inflation, they can't afford gas prices, how do you get to work as blue collar, if you've got two kids at home and you can't afford child care. there are three things of corporate leadership number one, you need to acknowledge stress of the work force, you need to talk about how they are doing things differently and making a better quality of life and work/life balance. number three, you have to keep politics out of it and reflect the day-to-day terms of the workforce. this is not the case in washington when you talk about the day-to-day life. >> always giving us a lot to think about with this new

rethink. happy holidays >> thank you as well to you. coming up, the nation's retailers with a final push into the holiday despite climate fears. first as we head to break, check out the cryptos this morning 389 on bitcoin stay tuned to "squawk box" on cnbc

it is the holiday season, that means lots of people are out shopping retailers are optimistic how they will close to out the holiday season, despite the spread of the omicron variant

and what that might mean our next guest says, it's not slowing, if anything, it's getting better with us is jan nipen with nipen world wide ceo let's talk about this we have seen things that leishman was showing and others that spending is slowing down. i don't know if people did their shopping early this year because they thought there was not going to be enough stuff on the shelves or that was the omicron variant. but are you hearing things are different than that. >> i was a little surprised. because i'm not hearing that from if rthe retailers all the e or the developers running malls. so when you have those conversations, they're saying, well with ethought we might see some impact of omicron we haven't seen it yet that was as late as yesterday. we are getting some reports back of slowing traffic some is saying traffic is holding up all the reports i get say traffic is holding up.

it's surprisingly holding up we know people bought early because of the supply issues we know some product is not in the stores and people are being very willing to buy something else instead and conversion is very, very strong. so if you go to the mall, you are buying something that's been true right across the board, it was true earlier in the season. it's gotten to be more true each day. it will right through the end. so i think we will finish strong here post-holiday as well because gift card sales are up 43% year over year those start happening now. >> just to be clear, what you are hearing is traffic numbers, but also spending numbers, steve was exclusively looking at spending numbers >> my belief is that the traffic is holding up well and spending is holding up well and that we haven't seen this drawback some people thought we might see. we did see a little dip

post-thanksgiving, post-cyber monday but it has come back we are seeing very strong conversion this week at the paul i think we will finish strong, my 12.35% number, 11.35% number of growth year over year are actually going to be good numbers,omicron. i thought that might destroy the back end here. it doesn't seem to be happening. unless omicron makes the difference, post-christmas sales will be very, very good a. lot of fresh products will show up all those gift cards have to get redeemed >> if terms of 11 and 12%. that's phenomenal growth we're talking high inflation numbers. much of that came from just an increase in prices how much of this is inflationary retailers have raised their prices how much is it you don't see the discounts in years passed and additional dollars being spent

because of demand? >> i'm using six percentage points of that being inflation if you say 12-and-a-half, you are talking 6-and-a-half adjusted if you go back to '04/'05, we had 6.2 growth those holiday seasons. they were strong seasons this would be the strongest number we've had comparable to non-inflationary times, it would be a very strong number. we're seeing really good numbers, the best since the year 2000 i think we will see us finish that way whatever that number is, i think it will be double digits and five or six percentage points have to be inflation the rest of it is real sales you're asking the right question, how much of that is pricing? and how much of that is truly inflation? well, we're seeing a little price bush u push. most of what you see is cost getting passed through supply chain costs, labor costs, everything is up the retailer fortunately this

year can pass it through i don't think it's price gouging. i think they're saying, wow, my costs are up a lot i have to hold that through for my gross margin. that's what's happening. we are probably going to see record gross margins because we have been able to pass them through. >> that is news for retail stocks, jan, merry christmas, i think we may see you before new years. i'll hold that thought until later. >> okay, two big hours ahead, this orning's top big stories, including the white house's man. dr. scott gottlieb is here, he has news for us. you are watching "squawk box" on cnbc

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futures pointing to a higher open after the dow rebound that comes after a three-day losing streak followed by omicron fears. the biden administration laying out a new series of steps to try and stem the spread of the omicron variant.

dr. scott gottlieb will join us to talk about this new plan. and it's been quite a rise for bitcoin and crypto currencies in 2021 what can investors expect in 2022 we have that playbook for you. the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc him i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick and joe kernon u.s. equity futures at this moment the dow looks like it will open higher, about 77 points higher actually the nasdaq and s&p 500 which has been marginally in the red looking marginally in the green. nasdaq up two points s&p 500 up six points.

we got demand surging for at-home testing kits, retailers are taking steps to keep their inventories in their stores. walmart, walgreen and cvs are limiting the amount they can buy. they are trying to secure more tests in what could become a global trend israel announced it will offer a fourth dose to people over 60-years-old it's the first country to do so. israel has banned travel to ten countries, including the united states in an effort to curb the spread of the omicron variant. israel has been a pre-cursor for many parts in the world. as we told you yesterday, the consumer electronics show will go only in january, but it will be lacking some big name companies. amazon, twitter, t-mobile and facebook meta saying they won't be sending teams due to the concern over the jump in covid cases. that's what we discussed just

yesterday, guys. you can put on a show, but if nobody comes to a show, how much of a show is that? >> it my body and i'll cry if i want to. >> sometimes i feel like that. no, no, no, we have lots of people, tens of dozens tense of dozens. we got stuff like this, strap yourselves in, mortgage application data just hitting the wires. diana olick has the numbers. good morning >> good morning some glad are you excited about this it was a mixed bag even though the average rate for it went mr from 3.2 still 41 basis points higher than the same week one year ago. so applications to refinance which of course are highly sensitive to weekly rate changes increase 2% from the previous week but were 42% lower year

over year. there is a shrinking number of borrowers, applications to buy a home fell 3%, we're 9% lower than a year ago. high demand is high, the number of homes actively listed, it fell to another record low so big surprise, the average purchase loan amount increased for the second straight week to $416,200, the second highest amount ever. because prices are so high and the bulk of sales are happening on the high end. mortgage rates climbed more yesterday. that is the general trend expected in the new year, joe. >> think about it, diana okay so we went into the pandemic, we decided we got to figure out what's that mean? people moving out of the cities, people moving to the suburbs all right. we're reopening. what's that mean it looks like new york is coming back

wait a second, the pandemic is back can we make any determinations it's really about demos, the millennial's >> it's a big difference, the big difference is -- the big difference is that last year we had more than a dozen record lows on the 30-year fix so that helped all those people move out to the suburbs and buy the bigger homes as they wanted to as i said, we are considerably higher in mortgage rates and prices, 15-to-20% higher, for new construction and existing homes. i don't know that you are going to see quite the amount of sales that you saw last year as you see in the next year because of those factors. >> long term, nobody's, you see the population is not growing? i don't know why that's slowing down, but there are demographic trends favoring. >> russell, i'm seeing big growth in the single family rent am market. that's where they are putting money, single family rentals

>> it's hard to see the key drivers, what we think might be a driver doesn'tage it that much interesting to watch all right. thanks, do you inna. i want to get you back outside in that halloween, i always look forward to that, with that one shot will we see that again >> cold. >> it's too cold >> maybe next year maybe next year. >> all right thanks all right. let's get the latest on the battle over the president's build back better plan eamon javers joins us from washington this is an on again/off again, on again/off again thing that the president brought up yesterday talking covid. >> reporter: and the president made it seem it was on again after it was off again that's been the saga there was some question last night about whether senator joe manchin would join this emergency conference call senate democrats held with their own caucus last night to discuss a path forward we are told that manchin did, in

fact, join that conference calm. even though he's been at odds with fell le democrats since he threatened to remove his support on the build back better plan. on that calm, chuck schumer said that we're not giving up on this build back better plan he vowed to bring that to the floor and the senate next year schumer citing goldman sachs and moody's talking about a downgraded gdp expectation if there is no build back better plan next year, saying we have to do this for the economy meanwhile as that's happening and there are all these tensions between the democrats and senator manchin. we see mitch mcconnell the republican leader offering up quotes to the media saying look, we'd be happy to have joe manchin as a member of the republican conference if he wants to come over here and join us that could be awkward. it could be awkward with the republicans because manchin

voted to impeach president trump. that has become a litmus test issue on that side of the aisle. mcconnell making a bid for manchin just yesterday meanwhile, the president we talked about, asked about all of this yesterday here's how he expressed his optimism when he was talking to reporters. take a listen. >> reporter: do you believe josh manchin and how do you rebuild trust to advance your legislation? >> you know i told you before, you heard me say this before, some people think maybe i'm ought irish, i hold a judge. i want to get things done. i think there is a possibility for build back better. >> reporter: did senator manchin break your commitment to you >> senator manchin and i will get something done >> biden saying he is not going to hold a grudge, despite democrats hold a judge democrats patching things up yesterday and into the night last night and expressing some

optimism they can get things done it's not clear at all what the final deal that could pass in both houses actually looks like. back over to you. >> eamon, those questions asked, of the president get right to the heart of the problem how do you go along and get joe manchin to come along with it without infuriating the progressives and seeing them pick up and walk away? that has the tight rope walk through all of this. >> the question for the progressives, becky, is, if there is anything on the table that you like, why wouldn't you take it at this point? you are staring down the barrel of getting nothing if manchin offers up some compromise 30, 40, 50, 60% of what you want, why wound take any of those offerss at this point? >> right, they wouldn't have to this point that was the case. you had the entire block of progressives who voted no on the house bill to get it to this point. the question is this drama that

was watched play after this point with manchin saying, forget it, i can't support this and walk away. does that up the ante and pressure to say we swrould not would rather have nothing on the table. >> they can think if that's the best politics than doing something. you go back to de couple the so-called hard infrastructure from this soft infrastructure, soft policy stuff, things like the child tax credit progressives were upset with that decision. they led let's not more ahead with this hard infrastructure, that will decrease our leverage. >> you would have even nothing. >> that's right. >> if you haven't separated those two. >> the question is how much nothing do they want >> how much of nothing do you want >> right >> right eamon, thanks. it will be fun to watch. >> you bet >> we'll see you later

coming up in just a moment, a battle to prevent age-related diseases, we will speak to the ceo of big pharma about the mission to slow the rate of aging. that story next. before we head to break, les t t'gethe check on the markets. "squawk" is returning in just a moment

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box. the latest trendin biotech is longevity. they have raised billions in pursuit of anti-aging technology here is one of the entrepreneurs hoping to get an age-related disease. the co-founder of biopharma, good morning to you. >> good morning, andrew. >> i don't know, i would like to live for a very, very, very long time i'd like to live in a healthy way for a very, very long time where do you think we are now and what do you think realistically we've got in the offing in the next say decade? >> yeah. i think this whole longevity feel, this sort of taking the bio tech world is taking the world by storm a lot of times when i hear people talk about the excitement behind this space, oh, we will make a magic pill that makes us live to 200 or something like that that's not where the science is right now. but what makes longevity so exciting is it offers the solution to what is currently the biggest problem in all of medicine today that is that the drugs that we

have to treat the diseases of aging, like cancer and alzheimer's disease, they suck right now. they all involve waiting for us to get sick. they try to untangle that complex disease with one drug. and so in this longevity space, what scientists have done, is they've discovered these drivers of aging right. changes to our cells that happen years or decades before we get sick that will give us the opportunity to go after these disease proactively, preventing us from ever getting sick, instead of reactively. i think that will be the most paradigm in healthcare that happens this century. >> james, what's different about now? the reason i'm asking the question is, for years as you know, there have been folks pedaling all sorts of claims about longevity. we are at a moment where there is a lot of lick quiddity in the markets. one of those spaces is this area around longevity but is there something different happening in the world of science? >> yeah. i would say that there is a few

sort of trends that are kind of converging there, we probably don't have time to get into all of them. but if i were to punch through the three big ones is the biotech space in general will continue to be a great spot for investment we're in the world of covid. we spent all of 2020 reading about clinical trials on the front page of every knew we're learning of new greek letters like omicron, the biotech space on the fundamental level is benefiting from the skwengs of the human genome that happened 20 years ago, just now we are able to make drugs smarter and faster than before because it takes decades to go from that initial set of discoveries to drugs. the second big trend that i think is really the why now for this space is that a decade ago, we just didn't understand what was changing in ourselves to drive these disease of aging and because of you know the step-by-step progress that's

been made across academia, we now have this list, testing 13 different drivers of aging and targeting drugs, those drivers, the cellular changes that happen this is creating you know this space as a real thing for the first time and that's really the thing that's happening >> james, up to you, stem cell ph.d. so we can talk about that, this one thing. >> sure. >> it's a little in the weeds, but how do we focus on extending the life of the organism rather than extending the life of the cell because you know what happens when you extend the life of the cell, that's not good for anybody. so the telemed, there is those ideas. then you will breed cancer so how do you theoretically if you make a cell immortal, that's like the last thing you want it to do. how do you focus on the organism itself in extending the life

there rather than the individual cell in. >> yeah. i would love to talk to you guys for half an hour about this. but the short version is that if you target each and any of these drivers of aging in an intelligent way, what you get is not just an extension of the vel cellular life span, which is what you see when you give them unlimited t limiters, it causes cancer as you pointed out. if you fix the damage that's building up, you actually can change the what we call health span, the time spent in good health of an entire organism the field has been able to do that with more than 75 different interventions, you target one driver of aging and the whole organism lives longer and healthier. so for each of the interventions that we do let's take t limiters little by little as we get older. we figure out a way, we are generating ourselves on a

cellular level without happening to increase the risk of cancer like solving those problems, which wasn't possible ten years ago when they were discovered, it is possible now it's a part of this paradigm shift that's happening >> that's exciting i would certainly like brain cells will last a lot longer i was thinking hair cells, follicles, is there anyway to extend indefinitely? >> it's something when people think about aging, they think hair grey and hair loss. >> that's probably commercially near term something. i want to get back to andrew he wanted to talk serious things >> okay. >> send me info on the hair cell. >> no, keep going on the hair. >> the fascinating thing about hair really quickly is that hair loss and like age-related diseases aren't actually linked. so the things that cause us to age and get more likely to be sick aren't the same things that are kind of the causes of hair

loss so they're very, very different topics we don't work an awful lot on hair loss for that reason. we are much more interested in preventing cancer than the hair loss, if there was a good opportunity, you'd probably jump on it. >> so, james, as you know, there is a lot of investor who's are watching us talking right now, they're thinking to themselves, i imagine, okay. what's the implication of this in the context of investing in the space are you in yourself, but also all of the derivative implications if people are living longer in terms of actual years or living better what does that actually mean i don't know how you want to take that, i think it would be valuable to think about those two issues. >> absolutely. so i think the top line here from an investor standpoint is that i watched this field not take off from nearly a decade because investors rightly said you can't just take a brand-new drug and run a trial for aging,

it would just be way too expensive and tike too long the cool thing about the beings is that we don't actually have a problem around that, our drugs might eventually be used to slow aging and make people live longer we're excited about that today we're using treatments like muscular dystrophy or cancer that's how the trillion dollar far na industry works. you take the drug and run trials the cool thing about cam bringbrcambriian will build on top of pharma to prevent diseases of aging, make people live longer, the longevity is a cherry on top of an already delicious biotech sundae, maybe delicious and ingestible biotech sundae. as far as the social implications and societal implications for what happens

here, i think we could talk about the philosophy of this for a while. but at the end of the day, if we had a 'illpill that we could tao lower the risk of alzheimer's, bone weakness, getting a heart attack at the same, i think most people would do it you can make an architect as our population gets older and more frail, keeping people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, healthy and productive should be one of our greatest societal goals. that's what i think this field will enable. >> two more final questions. one is a practical one, david sinclair an expert in this field for quite a long time, he takes metaformin to lower glucose. he believes that is a major trigger and important thing. he thinks everybody should be taking that. what do you think? >> yeah, so david is a friend and i think really a visionary in this field. i think that the evidence behind

using metformin of an early version of a drug to slow ageing is pretty dam strong we will see political results. it will be one of the first drugs tested in trials to slow aging. i think for people who are i am not giving medical advice, i think a lot of people in this field, especially those above 45/50 are taking the drugs because they see the anecdotal evidence we think will be played out in clinical trials there are other drugs sort of these imperfect drugs for slowing aging, but happen to be approved and safe. the next generation of drugs have been specifically designed to slow aging by bio tech companies will blow drugs like metformin and efficacy out of the water. >> can i have a glass of red wine every night and say, wow, this is for to help with aging,

veritrol >> in order to get enough to actually get the benefits of slowing aging, you have to drink about 100 liters of wine a day >> all right >> if you are up for it. i'd say go for it. >> 100 liters. yeah >> interestingly, there are some compounds, in particular, red wines from southern france and sardinia, for example, that have these compounds polyfe knnols >> 100 liters isn't too much, joe. >> james, we could do, as you can see, we could have this conversation forever, hopefully, we will continue it and do it again soon we wish you a happy holidays >> in like six months. a christmas cookie is taking a week off my life

>> [ inaudible don't worry. oh all right. we were saying hair loss has high testosterone, don't worry, you guys are safe. when we come back, bolstering covid, dr. scott gottlieb will tell us the white house's latest effort as omicron cases surge st. the winners on the nasdaq. "squawk" will be right back. time now for today's aflac trivia question. what company announced they will pay you $20 not to make cheesecake for christmas the answer when cnbc "squawk box" continues box" continues >>

but health insurance and aflac...is money. ♪ must be the money ♪ and i know how coach prime feels about money. -aflaaaac. -♪ a>hhhh ♪ now that is what this jacket needs. ♪ must be the money ♪ get help with the expenses health insurance doesn't cover. at aaflac.com

. now the answer to today's aflac trivia question. what company announced they will pay you $20 not to make cheesecake for christmas the answer, kraft heinz. the owner of philadelphia cream cheese announced the marketing move amid a shortage of cream

cheese. check it out this is the first text message ever tent reading merry christmas. it was sold yesterday for $121,000 as a non-fundable token at a paris auction house the text sent december 3rd 1992 was across the rotaphone, september the sms from the computer to a manager and received it on the 4 pound orbital telephone, similar to a deck phone but cordless with a hands him. it remind me the one michael douglashad back in the day >> on wall street. >> you can still say that without triggering somebody. what's that? >> oh, merry christmas

still to come, president biden -- the world we live in. president biden battles the spread of omicron. i will talk to dr. scott gottlieb for the latest next surging cases, close some of new york's favorite restaurants, we will talk to dan meyer on the impact of the industry stay tuned you are watchingsqwkox "ua b" on cnbc >> >

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. president biden outlining the administration's plan of the omicron variant. yesterday it provides 3500 million free at-home tests, more testing sites and pop-up clinics. joining us is dr. scott gottlieb, who serves on the boards of pfizer and illumina. dr. gottlieb, we were talking about this, this morning amongst ourselves, greater tests is a great idea this won't come until january. that seems a bit late. 500 million may sound like a lot of tests if we want to test everybody every week which is what europe has been doing a while, we need 3.2 billion tests a month.

maybe it seems too little too late >> it's late for some parts of the company, some will be get out by mid-january others will be heating up. we should have been doing this all along and get more at-home tests available and giving them away to consumers, allowing them to come into a drug store, by four tests for $5, limiting the number of sales and making sure they got into the hands of consumers. that's what others are doing, subsidizing them directly. the other thing we need to focus on is getting the monoclonal drugs and also a second generation drug that lily has out to the marketplace doctors have become accustomed to prescribing these as mid-sin now the ones they have been using don't work anymore the first generation from lily and regeneron do not appear to be effective against omicron to be usable.

lily has 200,000 doses, it's awaiting marketing approval. it can be granted an emergency use to get it out in the market for high risk patients doctors have become using these. if they don't have these tools, that can be very difficult >> here's my frustration with this we're almost two years in you think that we would get better about predicting what we need next, making sure we are looking ahead, speeding up the process for all of these things, recognizing we are still in the pandemic and operating as such it doesn't look like we've gotten that much better, have we literally, i waited two hours outside in a parking lot last night to get a pcr test. if not for me, for my kids >> these are the same discussions we were having in 2020 i remember writing up the need to scale up, here we are again and also with testing, trying to

get the rapid tests out to consumers, which we know helps we don't have the tools we v. we know what we need to do. there is no excuse for it. >> hey, we've heard from delta, the ceo there saying that they would really like to see the requirement for people who are fully vaccinated who test positive for covid assuming this being omicron, i guess, because it's more mild if they don't have symptoms, for them to go back to work sooner, five days instead of ten because they need people to help and get through i know dr. fauci has talked about cutting the quarantine time for medical professionals, healthcare officials because the need in the system delta saying they need it too. is this a good idea or not >> look, a lot of doctors are doing this in their routine clinical practice. if are you asymptomatic if you test negative on the antigen test it should be used to tell

whether you are infectious or not. coupled with someone who is vaccinated a lot of doctors are using five days as the period in which people can re-enter work so i think it's a prudent thing to be looking at, especially for the healthcare system. if you apply it medically, you should look at it across the board. this is in a setting of vaccinated individuals, typically it resolves the infection sooner >> one second. i'm sorry. my guess is that would mean as they suggested that people have to be fully masked and wearing real masks if they are coming back in, in an environment like that, right? >> right now, no people are being told they can come back into an environment five days after the resolution of symptoms, people fully vaccinated, especially after they test negative on an antigen test i know that's going on in the real world that's the kind of advice some people are giving patients right now. so if the federal government

stepped in and changed the warranty rules some people can't do that, in settings where they have discretion, people have been doing that so this would conform with what medical practice is gearing towards. >> i have a couple questions the first is about a tweet that you sent out, just about an hour ago, noting that there are new covid hospitalizations in london and new york versus new cases and what the big take away there is i know we've thought that omicron is supposed to be more mild is this the issue of now how many people have it so we will get a bicker number? do we think this is delta living alongside omicron? what do you think is happening >> reporter: well, delta is living alongside omicron right now. we haven't teased out which of the hospitalizations are omicron verse dversus delta that may shift in the future

the other thing we need the look at is not only hospitalizations but length of stay, how many are hospitalized in total inni aggregate and icu admissions so we need to watch that closely. we've seen a small uptick in hospitalizations, it's not clear whether that's the result of the delta summit a lot of cities have it including new york and london, or it's a leading indicator of omicron infections winding up in the hospital i would say we have way more omicron infection than we are measuring. if you actually look at this on the estimate of the true numbers relative to cases ending up in the hospital the fraction may be smaller than pathways of infection. we're missing a lot of infections, they're mild or subclinical. we have evidence from south africa a lot are turning over a dosage on an antigen test, if they don't feel sick, it's not getting captured by the system so there is way more infection happening, particularly in the tri-state region than we are

measuring right now. >> are you a believer that omicron is crowding out delta and that it effectively takes it over and effectively pushes it out for good or not? >> yeah. look, delta infections will probably start to go down. but the question is whether omicron is truly crowding out dell that meaning it's providing baseline immunity preventeding people from getting a delta infection. delta on the whole is left contagious and people are taking more precautions in terms of daily reaction there is a thesis that omicron bone crowd out delta, the two could co-circulate omicron will sweep through but on the back end of this, delta will remain the more persistent pathogen. is omicron more innately transmissible or traveling more naturally, because it has

immuno-- >> pfizer which you are on the board of has the single therapeutic i think at this point that people are more optimistic about the united states only has on order 10 million doses of this should the u.s. government go to pfizer and say perhaps using the defense production act, we need to you make 150 million doses of this we need to have this on offer and we need to force to you do it and we need to force you to do it at a lower price point? >> well, pfizer is committed to making 80 million doses next year so you understand the situation, this is a protease inhibitor the single dose is six-to-nine months, that's typical across the board. when you get the starting materials and start manufacturing to the point you have a pill is at least six months to nine months. you will not get it down much more than that the only reason we have the

doses, pfizer and the doses coming online. in july we voted and hit a billion dollars to start the manufacturing of this drug at risk so we started making the drug before we knew if it was going to work. that's the six month time line back in july, we started that process, now we have doses coming onto the market as a result of that, if you want to put more resources into the manufacturer, this drug today, you get more doses, you are looking-at-least six months until they come off the production line. pfizer is substantially ramping up the infrastructure that produces drugs >> you probably saw the comments from bill gates, i guess what is the probability that he's right that we're entering the worst part of the pandemic because it's so contagious that would assume the mild cases we are seeing are in people that have already had vaccinations and if it was up vaccinated, it could be as deadly as delta?

in your view, could the omicron wave be the worst part of the pandemic >> look, we have a piece of evidence right now in the data out of south africa. they were probably dike knowsing one in 20 to one in 30 cases perhaps, because there were so much mild infection probably in that environment that's my hunch. and we didn't see extreme death and hospitalization that we've seen in past waves yoipths just vaccinations. i think the vaccines are providing a level of infection it's prior immunity, exposure to this infection probably 80% of the public in the united states at least has some form of immunity. that will provide baseline protection against severe disease. there are vulnerable people with baseline immunity will have bad outcomes and people still that don't have baseline immunity, particularly young children, most of the population has some level of immunity. that will protect them from the worst outcome. >> do you think it's productive to make comment?

here i thought it was climate change is -- i thought you can learn a lot from writing some code apparently about vaccines, about climate change, about everything do you opine like that blah blah blah blah blah out there and throw that out there >> look, i just don't agree with it when i look another what's happening with others -- >> it's ticked up. that's horrific thought compared to what we went through in terms of 800,000 deaths and everything else, at this point there is no reason to think that about omicron, unless i'm not sure why you would deposit that >> look, london will be predictive to the experience in the united states. we have a similar complement of immunity to london but you know so far you have haven't seen the spikes in people being hospitalized in icu admissions you are starting to sew an uptick some is delta, they were having a delta wave the places i worry the most that are pressed by delta that have

rising flu incidents that describes a lot in new england and upstate new york it describes the great lakes region if you look at the south, so far very little flu and they haven't had a lot of dell that they had cleared their delta wave, they have hospital capacity to deal with this. not every part of the country has that capacity. that's where you need to be focused and worried. >> doctor, finally, israel announcing it is pursuing a fourth dose of the vaccine for those over 60-years-old, do you think that's something we should be doing in the united states? >> look, israel is at least five months out from beginning their booster campaign they have a lot of elderly individual probably coming up on six months i do believe this will end up being an annual vaccine. i don't think the immunity this confers will be durable. there will be a baseline of cellular immunity that lasts a long time. in terms of any infection against mild disease

i this i to sustain that, this will be an annual vaccination. israel, probably you do it every six months until they get out of the pandemic phase of this i suspect they will refer to annual >> should the united states do th that >> we're not in the same position most people that had their boosters had it in the last two or three months. we are still in the middle of a pandemic people will have to value. certainly for immunocompromise markets, they're doing that. people are compromised >> dr. gottlieb, thank you merry christmas if we don't see you before >> thanks a lot. >> when we come back, we will take a look at crypto in the coming year. right now, though, as we head to break, let's take a look at blackberry revenue topping the forecast boosted by a strong demand for cyber security

the shares are lower as black berry projects more cyber security revenue will be coming in below what the street is expecting. the stock is off b5 nty ces right now. we'll be right back after a quick break.

we're going to take a look next at what investors and digital rrcycuen can do in 2022. "squawk box" will be right back. ♪ ♪ ♪ digital transformation has failed to take off. because it hasn't removed the endless mundane work we all hate. ♪ ♪ ♪

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it's been a wild ride for crypto this year and every other year investors are wondering what 2022 brings. investors may have in 2022, the sleep from your eyes, kate, good morning. >> good morning, joe, good to see you. crypto is about a lot more than bitcoin going into next year i have been talking to the top ceos and investors in the space. regulation is the big thing they're watching there is a focus on building applications on top of block chain. some call that web 3, they're looking at bitcoin adoption and a brain drain as they call it from big tech. this year laid the groundwork, especially with some recent hearings expect treasury to pay more attention to stable coin in financial stability around those crypt special bills aed a push

for a spot some expect attention like meta and some of the more native crypto start-ups trying to build decentralized versions of the social networks and their own metaverse and they're evolving beyond art like club memberships and assets within video games. heading into next year, there are still questions over which blockchain developers will choose to build on it's been etherium so far. some challengers are becoming viable options as well for bitcoin, keep an eye on sovereign adoption after el salvador's more, there is cross-border payments as well and institutional adoption about that brain drain, industry ceos tell me they see floods of job applications from tech companies and wall street. joe. now ahead in crypto markets,

meldom demeres, the chief strategy officer there is always nuance i'm trying to figure this out. it's at 49,000, wow, up 66% from january. nice down 30% from november for people who bought. so, it totally depends on where you entered. right? that is volatility, which may subside in 2022. i guess. >> absolutely. first of all, joe, we got to talk about your chart. we need to update this going into next year, as indicate sas kr kaid kait said, there are several that made their way into the top 10 we are seeing a big shift in the blockchain people are building on going back to bitcoin, bitcoin

has executive inflows in structured product, reaching an all time high in these products and last week with that volatility, we saw for the first time ever over outflows, this week, we are back to seeing inflows. volatility has been the name of the game this year if we zoom out and look at bitcoin and the crypto asset class overall. what we've seen is two key trends, one, we started the year under a trillion in market cap, ran up to 3.5. we are now about 3.5 trillion market cap that's a pretty big sector for crypto currencies, it's a third the size of gold in the market the second thing we've seen is increased financialization we have institutions that shunned bitcoin in 2017, 2018, now openly coming out building bitcoin products, building crypto investment products and innovating crypto markets. >> what do bitcoin bulls want?

do they want an asset that can go from 49 to 100,000. what if it stayed at 49,000 for all of 2022 which would make you can use it in a utility for transactions, it would finally become the currency people have been talking about for years and years. do we want it to doubleagain o a stable price where you can feel comfortable if actually using it >> here's an interesting trend, joe. even though the price of bitcoin has gone up dramatically this year, transactions on the bitcoin network have come down significantly. we have to remember transactions are not directly correlated to price. the function is demand on the bitcoin network. in addition, we've seen pa lot of bitcoin transaction activity shifting from the bitcoin layer to layer two network called lightning. that makes payments much lower costs. i think again the ability for bitcoin to be used as a utility,

a medium of exchange than a stored value is not necessarily directly correlated. >> okay. we didn't do that and anyone watching it looks like the shot froze, no way to get out anyway, thank you, "squawk box" is coming right back is coming right back >> gold bond. champion your skin.

. good morning the bulls look to continue their charge into the end of this holiday short trading week futures point to a higher open

on wall street meg tirrell will join us with the latest vaccine and boosters to case counts and the search for tests. breaking economic news, an advisory all as the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now. >> good morning, welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc. live from somewhere i'm joe kernon along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin u.s. equity futures this hour indicated up 44 points, nasdaq, where are we nasdaq down 20 s&p up one and a quarter

treasuries about 1.5 this morning. let's round it up. it's not it's 1.4 3/4 are we going to hit the year, guys, of the -- are we going to hit a year where it's not going above 1.6, 1.7 >> good question maybe he is listening. maybe he will tell you have i'm mad at him >> why >> i don't know. he spreads, waters his plants. i get it sometimes other people get it sometimes. i like loyalty >> true blue >> yeah. yeah i mean. >> that otohelp the ideas from coming back. >> he's a florida guy. >> you've just increased your odds of him. in corporate news, car max shares rising after the auto retailer posted better-than-expected revenue dealer sales beating estimates we should check out tesla

shares, they're higher, too, the ceo saying he has that goal of unloading 10% of his shares. over that time, musk has increased his holdings in tesla because of the exercising of the options, remember, he had a $6 and change strike price on, tesla at $974 today. an analyst called to watch a well, cater piller outperformed at bernstein, the firm argues about a machinery upgrade cycle are overdone that stock up 1.8%. andrew >> thanks, becky now, let's talk about the fight against covid and bring in mech tier rem, who will join us with the latest headlines. so much going on, meg. >> there really is, andrew i was looking at the case number this is morning. on the seven-day average, they jumped another 10,000 on average every day now tong more than that per day rising more than

1,300. there is a lot happening around the world on covid let's talk about israel saying yesterday they plan to start giving fourth doses to people over 60 and healthcare workers essentially to the vulnerable. a study coming out of south african is getting a lot of attention points to less severity so fewer people are going to the hospital with omicron, however, they do find if people are hospitalized, there are similar rates of bad outcomes as other variants also, we are waiting potentially as soon as today to see the fda clear the two anti-viral drugs for covid from pfizer and merck. we've seen reporting from our own david faber suggesting that can happen suggesting it will be this week. we will see if that happenings of course this comes as the anti-body drug has been wiped out because they don't work as well or at all against omicron, there is one that holds up meanwhile, health officials and experts still digesting the

biden speech from yesterday, the president outlined focusing on soaring up capacity at hospitals, provide more access to free testing. of course, a lot won't happen until january. here's the message president biden had for this omicron wait and what we're heading into. >> we should all be concerned about omicron not panicked if you are fully vaccinated and especially if you got your booster shot, you are highly protected. if you are unvaccinated, you are at a higher risk of getting severely ill from covid-19, getting hospitalized or dying. the best thing to do is get fully vaccinated and get your booster shot and know this is not march of 2020. >> so really this message that we're not in march of 2020 and especially this potential imminent approval of these anti-viral drugs couldn't underscore that more

guys >> what do you think of the messaging of what president biden said there there is clearly these vaccines are doing a great job of keeping people from hopefully going to the hospital and having a severe outcome like death but they're not keeping people from getting it and getting infected and i think that there is a little of a miscommunication even about that. you heard it out of the white house, even what he said then. do you think they have to shift on the communications side >> yeah, potential lip there has been some reporting about the messaging plan within the white house suggest they are going to be focusing more on preventing hospitalizations than on preventing cases with the vaccines there has also been a lot of criticism of the shaming of the unvaccinated, essentially, saying that is not a way to convince people to go out and get a vaccine if they haven't already. so a lot of people in the public health world are saying there are better ways of trying to convince people than that. but this really has been sort of

the double down focus of the president and his team over the last couple weeks. >> meg tirrell, thank you. appreciate it. with the latest on the battle over the build back better plan, eamon javers joins us now from washington hello again eamon. >> hello again, joe. look, you know, things have got son tense between senator manchin and his fellow democrats. there was real speculation in washington that manchin wouldn't attend this emergency call among democrats last night in fact, though, he did join that calm. he was talking to his colleagues so we know at least he participated there chuck schumer, the majority leader told his fellow democrats on that call last night, we are not giving up on build back better, despite joe manchin pulling his support from the current version of that schumer making the argument in stark economic terms and pointing to goldman sachs and moody's

analysis suggesting the gdp forecast would have to be ratcheted back if there is no build back better program. all of that happening as mitch mcconnell the republican leader is sort of playing footsie with manchin here saying, we'd love to have you on our side, switch parties, drop the democrats, come over to the republican's side that is viewed as highly unlikely one reason is manchin gets a lot of benefit from being the 50th democratic senator and the swing vote there he has a lot of power over how things shake out he would not necessarily on the republican side of the aisle lots to think about. schumer saying they are definitely going forward with some kind of build back better program in the new year. the president expressing optimistic about that yesterday as well. they're in patch up and make good mode. republicans liking what they think thus far, joe. >> how long will it be the 50th, the important 50th another year

>> well, until 2022, right there is another mid-term coming if he gets a year as the 50th, depending on what he wants to do >> bananas last longer >> that's right. >> here's the other thing, david, if bernie, already we've heard from bernie and his cronies. they already negotiated down to get to that 5 trillion, which they call 1 and 3/4 trillion they were at 20. they generously came down to 5 so if you go to a true 3/4 which will cut out everything in it at least 3/4 into it what progressives will say okay, we'll do that? they're mad that they passed a bipartisan infor bill that most people think might have been a good thing now they're furious that they've got duped into passing that without getting the virtual. >> the reason is because that was their leverage

right? >> right >> the progressives knew that that bipartisan infrastructure bill so-called hard infrastructure roads, bridges, all that was super popular across the aisle they could use that as leverage to get the other thingsthey wanted in a large package. they gave it up agreeing to pass it separately. they were frustrated at that time now they're frustrated again it comes back to this, joe if you want to pass vast swing legislation on capitol hill, you need vast sweeping majorities. those guys don't have it >> elect more senators. >> the answer is go elect more senators >> good luck >> they haven't been able to do that >> they've shown their hand. do you think their chances are good for electing more this next time around? i don't. what do i know in. >> not in 2022 where the president's poll numbers where are they are things change. >> so quickly. >> give a couple years >> you can't count on anything anymore eamon, just death and

taxes. >> all right see you later, thanks, eamon okay, coming up after the break, we will talk to famed restaurant owner/operator danny meyer how the wave of covid cases is hitting his industry hard and what he is doing about it some news about to be broken here in a moment check out this morning's pre-market winners and losers. stay tuned you are watching "squawk box" on cnbc cnbc >> new gold bond pure moisture lotion. 24-hour hydration. no parabens, dyes, or fragrances. gold bond. champion your skin.

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we got to stop meeting on this particular topic one of these days that will be a good thing. back in august you will remember that we broke the news that union scare hospitality group was going to trying to approach the safety aspect of what was going on by requiring proof of vaccination for both our staff members and for our guests and that has gone really, really well 100% of our staff members are fully vaccinated as are our guests however, we now know since august the meaning and the definition of being fully vaccinated includes being boosted. and so beginning immediately, we are going to be requiring that 100% of our staff members have a third shot a booster within 30 days of their eligibility and to give our guests a little bit more time beginning in mid-january, we'll be requiring that when guests want to dine at any of our hospitality new restaurants, they, too, will be required to show proof of being

fully vaccinated including a booster. that has helped a lot. throughout this entire wave that we're now going through, while we've absolutely seen a ton of break through cases throughout new york city and our restaurants, happily, so far, not one of the cases that our staff members have encountered have been more than mild symptoms and, in fact, a much swifter recovery so that's what we're trying to do right now >> danny, walk us through the sort of mental process and conversations internally you had about getting there. are you clearly moving ahead of many, i mean, look, there are laces in europe and others talk what fully vaccinated means and some states may ultimately get there as well. you are obviously moving a bit faster what was the thought process >> the thought process the really hard time was back in the summer when we tried to make

what at that point was a tough decision to require 100% of our staff members to be vaccinated you got to keep in mind, back this past summer, we estimated around 60-to-65% of our staff members said ushg were vaccinated so we knew we had a pretty big lift we provided 45 days. we had counseling, bilink gual counseling we were able bring almost everybody over the finish line there were a few holdouts. we told them, by the way, if you change your minds, we will hire you back we had a couple of those now at this point the science has changed. so we now know fully vaccinated requires boosters. we didn't have eligibility for booster shots in august. things have moved so rapidly it's truly an easier decision. what's been tougher has been watching this crushing wave of

omicron sweeping through new york city and certainly the country. hospitality is a team sport. it's kind of like putting on a play on broadway or playing a basketball game. if you can't feel the whole healthy team, will you haveto hit pause. so we've made that decision as well we'll see how that goes. we hope it's a really, really swift pause. >> what percentage of your employees have come down with omicron? i ask because i think are you on this pause right now there are a lot of restaurant owners that are thinking, do i pause for a week do i pause for two weeks do i have so many employees that have it today that actually hopefully god willing that it's a mild case. on the other side, they'll be very happy to be back to work. >> i don't have any idea what percentage of our employees have tested positive. let me try to put something in perspective for you. this has so many up to do with what you were talking with

dr. gottlieb earlier f. we had had one case, positive back in 2020 or early 2021 before people were vaccinated, we may well have had to shut down the restaurant because anybody who had been in contact with that person would have to be quarantined. that's how far we've come. we didn't have vaccinations. we didn't having a says to testing. we certainly didn't have boosters in fact, a year ago today, new york city was actually shut down by both the state and the city i cannot say enough about how hard the city has worked and how hard the state has worked to keep new york opened right now i think that's a great thing so, here's the thing, though the reason that we're hitting pause on a small number of our restaurants right now is that if we cannot in a very, very healthy way feel the entire team if you have one manager out, two managers out i hate to continue to make sports analogies here, but i'm a

big hockey fan if you have one player in the penalty box, chances are decent you have a goal score. if you got two, chances are really good. if you got three in the penalty box, you might be best to cancel that game and wait until people can come back. the good news is i don't think it will take that long i hope i don't have to eat those words. i think as tough as it is to make that decision to pause during what should be the busiest two weeks of the year, that's a big deal. it's actually an easy decision >> two final questions you have been a leader on this, could you see a day to the extent that tests, rapid tests were cheap enough where either you would rapid test all of your employees every night and/or rapid test everybody that walks into the restaurant? is that a possibility if the price point was down to a buck or two and was either subsidized by the government or there was a massive production the price,

itself, came down? >> well, we're actually investigating that this very, very minute. we're accessing all kind of testing for our team we believe the minute anybody has a symptom, if they can do that for themselves at home or certainly at the restaurant, or we also have a telemed service we're working on with a company called radish which is outstanding. we think that will have a great deal of effectiveness in terms of stemming the wave >> and finally, i got to ask you this, i remember getting a slew of e-mails the last time we spoke. you are doing this for your restaurants, many in new york city and elsewhere, but it appears you are not doing this for a shake shack. can you explain the distinction there? >> this does not affect shake shack whatsoever shake shack is a completely separate company from union square hospitality i am proud to have founded the company. this has noto do with a few

restaurants in new york city by the way, a few remain opened and are not paused because they can field an entire team that's truly what this is about. >> keeping it light for a second we had the big french fry debate yesterday. some people sent in some pictures of shake shack fries julien fries, what you familiar with that? >> no, i'm not, pete that was an experiment gone haywire about eight years ago and our fans asked us to return to the kripgle cut fries, no more julien. >> what does crinkle cut do? we're trying to figure out why does that open up more surface area for salt or something, which would appeal to me >> you got it. it opens up a huge amount of surface area for people in love with cheese sauce, it catches every drip of veggies. >> danny, stop, stop, when you talk about -

>> i know these are your babies, so maybe you can't say this, we had sort of agreed on the air yesterday of all the french fries on a consistency basis that mcdonald's was the winner, just >> going down, danny, throwing it down. >> i just want to know, where does the mcdonald's fries stack up for you >> i haven't had one for so long to weigh in on it. >> that's mean that is. >> really? >> i haven't had one today >> i did have a shake shack french fry last night delivered to my home it came hot. i was really happy. >> i could eat there every day, danny, i could i could. but i probably shouldn't. >> we can have some delivered. >> a lot more fun to talk object about this >> i hear about it, sometimes i throw caution to the wind. i needed to ask you that yeah, more surface area. i like that.

>> we got to go, but here's the other question, on christmas day, turkey, no turkey people i think are moving away from turkey i hear, is that possible >> we have turkey that goes moo. >> cows. >> danny, we wish you ha ep holidays >> thank you all >> we will move to the other side >> we know how to do this and we will >> thank you appreciate it. >> thanks, danny when we come back, julia boorstin takes us inside the metaverse once again, she says consumers are trying to push into that virtual world, or not. ayst tuned you are watching "squawk box" and this is cnbc tools and a personalized plan that helps you build a future for those you love. vanguard. become an owner. huh. is that true? geico's been saving folks money for 85 years? yeah, that's right.

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we have been talking a lot about the metaverse, a true immersive world is years away, there are people that can be pushed into that virtual world julia boorstin joins us with part two of our series on the metaverse. take it away. >> becky, next year we're working for a few key things to happen first, new hardware is coming. meta is code named cambria, a higher end device, mixes virtual elements with the real world, the company behind pokemon go

speeds ahead to augmented reality glasses. apple is expected to introduce its headset by the end of the year now the other thing we are looking out for is inner operability, this is the possibility to bring your avatar from one platform to another this website ready player me already allows to you create an avatar this is the one i made of myself that works in multiple games we do expect more companies to follow it here, to allow you to bring yourself from one into another. third, we expect a lot more augmented reality next year. augmented reality without hardware on your phone or computer they developed live hologram video calls. they can be accessed on any web bruiser, computer or phone this technology' a volume metric video uses about 30 cameras to capture a person in three dimensional space. i spoke to a hologram of ai's

ceo through my phone, it felt hike he was in the room with me. >> what does it have to do with the metaverse? authenticity, it's one word, authenticity the question we have is, is the metaverse going to be fake people or real people? we think it will be real people. we think it's the authenticity in the metaverse >> that technology is increasingly can be used for watching concerts or live events at home. it will look like the performer is in your living room now the more technology for ar and vr the more we will see may have been brands, nike, gucci selling virtual goods and advertising, becky, they're already in these platforms >> yeah, the advertising and selling of virtual goods seems dumber than the more practical applications, where you can actually imagine a real work

need for it or a life need for some of these things him some of them look pretty cool. others i think, wow, this is gimmicky >> i mean i think it's totally fair i think what you have to look at is some of these are practical tools. yesterday i demonstrated the ability to have a meeting in meta's horizon worker, we just saw that the hologram technology, you are home wanting to watch your musical artists, you can look through your phone and see this person in your living room. enabling people to connect virtually. i think when it comes too these broondz, they want to go where consumers are. if they see kids are in road blocks or teenagers are there, they want to follow them there >> that's a fair point thanks for the rapid crash on allawi this stuff works. see you soon >> we are just seconds beyond

the third quarter gdp. futures right now it turns mix manied or flat, ten year note. let's go to rick we'll look at that, it's already out. rick, what was it? >> yes, it was actually up a couple of tenths our last look, third look at third quarter gdp up 2.3%. rather unusual, joe. 2.1 was our last look to see .2, that's a pretty big revision for the last look. it does help a bit if you look at personal consumption, it popped .3. a nice healthy move from 1.7 to 2.0. the money balls, the gdp price index, that is 6%. now we're expecting the number around 6%. here's where it gets interesting. if you look at the june read, it's 6.1% for last quarter okay that was the highest in 40 years. okay but 6% is .1 below that, very

close. if we look at the core personal consumption quarter over quarter, our last quarter, the second quarter, it was 6.1, that was a 38-year high this time 4.6. so it moderated a bit. there is still sticky and they're still high but they have come down from near four decade records if we look at interest rates, which is where you were going, we heard you earlier, 1.4 something. so we are below 1.5. i'm still looking for the possibilityof 1.6. even though we are closing in on the end of 2021. i think there is a little upside that will creep in the long end. i think steepening is on the way. it's coming rather slowly. joe. >> okay. i got to get to steve. rick, i'm wondering, will there ever come a time where options take us higher because we got so much to finance? what are we 29 trillion?

does that over happen? >> it will, no, it will never happen it's inevitable rates will go up it's man against mark, of course, central banks and women i'm referring to around the globe, they are making a difference many will say, hey, if there weren't central banks, you don't think interest rates will be 8 or 9%. the answer is no, global activity has been impacted somewhere between 1.47 and 2.7 is where the truth lies. i can't till exactly i think we under estimate how much influence central bank's quantitative easing put into the marketplace. your comment is the right comment. with this amount of debt financing about 42 cents of every dollar we spend, interest rates at some point are going to have to represent the true risk factors and credit issues associated with that dangerous approach to debt financing and the nation that is allowed to print the reserve currency at a

time where blockchain and bitcoins an crypto is all around us, we need to be very careful about how those two worlds intersect over the next several decades. >> all right thanks, rick now, steve leishman, we're going to you for more and it was supposed to get a data reaction. can you go back in time to when you saw those numbers hit and can you give us an honest, what was -- how did you react at that time because there was a couple -- thank you. which one? which one was it that got -- >> look, you know, give me a couple extra tenths gdp i'll take it given the numbers rick gave us on inflation we're growing a little above you know trend 2.3 is not too bad. i'll take it obviously, there was a swoon in the quarter. we had the delta wave come through. we're looking for better numbers in this quarter.

i haven't done a rapid update in a bit. will you notice, because we're getting a whole dump of data tomorrow can i do other data the government released yesterday, joe, which is really interesting, which is the census data, the lowest u.s. population growth that feed into this gdp population growth is one of the factors. that's how fast we can grow. take a look. 392,000 people added as the national increased the number of births over deaths 140,000 net migration, very low, the first time the net migration has gone higher than the national increase that we've seen over time and then take a look at the long-term chart, this is the lowest percentage growth that we've seen in a very long time you have to go back to get in the way back machine there, book to 1918, the outbreak of the spanish flu for a lower percentage we were already on the population growth coming down. joe, this raises all kind of

questions about the growth rate and our immigration policy how are we going to let more legal immigrants in and secure the border at the same time, raises questions for companies how do you solve the worker shortage it makes a premium on productivity a lot going on in these numbers. i think investors have to think about and follow the census data of what's happening to the u.s. population obviously, some we hope will be normalized over time this is what we got. >> i noticed, the pandemic, i don't know what else in terms of the population growth. i don't want to end up like some other places around the world. i don't know i would have more kid i think. probably not i love them so much, though. >> i am surprised, joe with all these people spending time at home that there wasn't better higher birth rates and all, apparently, everybody got sick of each other. >> exactly you spend that much time, it's like, get away, coming up, we bought the latest data on the

economy in the third quarter what's in store for the next year we'll talk about that next stay tuned you are watching "squawk box" on cnbc so we're giving every business, our best deals on every iphone - including the iphone 13 pro with 5g. that's the one with the amazing camera? yep! every business deserves it... like ones that re-opened! hi, we have an appointment. and every new business that just opened! like aromatherapy rugs! i'll take one in blue please! it's not complicated. at&t is giving new and existing customers our best deals on every iphone, including up to $1000 off the epic iphone 13 pro.

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>> for more on what to expect from the u.s. economy in 2022, we want to bring in cindy ed elberg and former ceo chief economist, douglas holtz-eakin who is american action former president and former vbo director wendy, you did point out the third quarter and gdp numbers are sort of backwards looking when you consider the chaos there. what did you take away from those numbers and is there anything useful you can kind of tune into? >> really, what i'm looking at is where i see momentum for the fourth quarter and the fourth quarter is on track to grow more than 7% at an annual rate with stronger housing starts, stronger exports, and a resumption in really strong growth in consumer goods, which has been a red hot sector and really the source of the inflationary pressure that beef seen. the composition of consumer spending has been crazy. look, there is a lot to like

about this recovery. we need consumer spending to pivot back to services and get the good sector of break we need to get people back to work both of those changes depend on getting the pandemic under control. the pandemic is everything >> that's the case we keep thinking we get things under control. it turns out there is another wave of this left to go. i feel we haven't prepared ourselves very well when you look at how hard it is to get testing right now. what do you think? >> i think that what we have learned is with each successive wave, we had less, we have, in fact, had advances on vaccines and boosters and therapeutics are coming online in testing we have doing an excellent job i think the testing is a year overdue. we should have had a large rapid testing. now it will take a lot of the fear people have out of participating in the economy that would balance consumer suspending you can do leisure hospitality

and other services we have a lot of work to do in the public health front. that is the key to not having the very strong conversations that derailed in 2022. >> doug, what do you think we are looking at what we should be considering for the first quarter? >> well, i think we'll come out of the -- i'm with wendy, the fourth quarter is real strong right now. i think we'll start the first quarter with something like five or six i am looking at 4-to-5% growth in 2022, the big risks come from making aggressive attempts to get inflation under control. >> you think it would be a mistake to try to get infliegs up to date control, why is that? >> the question is how fast can you do it? we can stop tomorrow if we want a big middle class increase and

put rates at 5%. no one s to deal with the downside of that it's very hard to judge because we don't really know what the supply side looks like, in particular, we don't know if 2.5 million women who dropped out of the labor force are coming back. if they do it's a lot more supply and room to maneuver. if they don't, things are tight right now. it will be much harder >> a big part of the inflation problem right now is the consumer is so strong. that's the good news of it, this weird conundrum to try to figure out. what is your thoughts? >> it's really following the composition of consumer spending in some months, it's been 20% higher than pre-pandemic levels. i don't know where we're putting them all where we've seen most of the inflationary pressure is in the goods sector we talk about supply chain constraints. the supply chain couldn't keep up with this level of goods

demand without a pandemic, ooep even without a pandemic, we'd see inflation. then later on top of that, the supply chain problems as a result of the pandemic as the recipe has been really strong inflation on the good sector the big unknown for me is when will consumer spending pivot back toward services within it does, what we're probably going to see is outright deflation in consumer good, which actually isn't all that unusual consumer goods as a sector often show deflation but we'll probably see big denationary numbers there, that will whipsaw the fan around as it tries to figure out what the signal is for the future >> that's the 60,000 question. thank you guys, both good to see you. >> good to see you coming up, the countdown to the opening bell as we head to break. check out this morning's biggest

winners and losers you are watching "squawk box" on cnbc

welcome back to "squawk box. we are now an hour into the opening bell and want to get a check with jim cramer. we want to talk stocks, we want to say you have at least gone

through this wave. i know you have tested positive a couple days ago. we talked about whether these quarantine rules should change. >> i think there is so much freelancing going hard for sunday dr. fauci gave me the go ahead we had this government led by the fda. they'd never speak as one. it causes usual confusion we've had, which shows why we're disfunctional, there are so many different companies. >> what are you looking at car max is moving and tesla is making move, i don't know if that's on the back of elon musk saying he is finished selling? >> i think that is but i'm excited about car max and another incredibly strong

quarter. when i look at tesla, that's the group that is the worst. i don't know, this is even during 2018 when they salvaged the market, we had a nice bounce the rally continues. i think it's fine. >> what else do you buy in the rally? who is the charitable trust doing? >> we actually bought some toils oils i thought that was good. we are taking a look at drugs. that's happening very soon and for those who are just joining, look, we feel very good about nvidia i know it sound tiresome two positive notes about apple what i'm trying to decide is how deeply do we want to be in the banks because they've come down a lot. and i also, you know what, when you see a note today like balkan

materials up, caterpillar, it reminds you that january is the month for cyclical's i like the andrew, i'm sanguine here i like cat. >> i like it going into the holidays with a little bit of optimism. >> i miss you, partner. >> i miss you. >> i never see you, i never -- >> we're going to hug it out was there a holiday party? this year? >> no, you're so good. i'll come up to the rooftop someday and say hi. >> we're going to hang we're going to hang. if you don't know already, you have to check out the investment club

sign up right now, or just point your phone at the screen it's that easy, and yes, it is absolutely wthor it. "squawk box" returns after this.

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box. the futures are now red. we've turned around. all the averages are now in the negative, nothing major at this point. joining us is j.j. kin han, and mimi duff. mimi, you've got a lot of experience in fixed income, which i think probably informs your ideas about the market in general. i would have to call you neutral, at best, at this point. is that fair to say on the equity markets, in that you think inflation will persist >> yeah. what we have taken a slightly more defensive positioning, we're long-term investors, so we are still invested, but much more defensively into yearend, where we expect volatility to persist a bit more we do think -- we can see the fed is pivoting toward a less

accommodative stance in going forward. >> joe, as a person who can really watch what retail investors are doing, you see similar things liquidity drives up, and everything is omicron related, so is this a time to take a step back and just watch, or what do you think people are going to do >> well, i think what most people are doing, joe, wisely is, to your point, cutting size. if they're getting involved, they're doing so iteratively but, you know, the rally usually goes on this monday and the seven trading days after that. i also think there's just a lot of confusion on what to do just look in real life where you were everyone being very careful

about the virus, but at the same time you have even the "wall street journal" reporting that united airlines travel will be up 5% in christmas over thanksgiving so, again, there's this dichotomy in everything. i think that's what we're experiencing in the market. >> so, mimi, you indicated you probably wouldn't necessarily be buying this dip. we're only 3% off highs. when would you buy it? and what would you buy at the time for long term >> we would be looking for more of a 10% type of correction. what we're seeing right now is just noise to get a bit more excited, and in terms of what -- we're continues into position for more persistent inflation. we like regional banks we like infrastructure equity. ked continue to like inflation-like bonds, any type of real assets that can weather a bit more inflation

>> in the banking sector to some extent -- >> exactly they should benefit also from higher rates i think you need to think about these rate hikes as more of a removal of emergency accomm accommodation. this is not a traditional cycle. we need to get back to a mutual place, given we're missing inflation from the topside now it's been a long time that the fed has dealt with that, and the unemployment rate mass some 4.3% already. >> did you see andrew on campus? was he a big man on campus do you remember him when he was not famous >> i'm not going to lie, i might be a little older than him, so -- [ laughter ] >> i assumed you were younger and maybe could give us some really good stories. in good stories, sorkin, that

you remember mimi at all >> i don't remember mimi, but she looks younger than i do, so go big red that's the only point. go big red. >> go big red. >> i figured i would ask how would you play it? is there a rush to do anything at this point? >> i think one of the things, what we're seeing is people talk about still playing technology, which in some ways i agreed with they're getting the -- they get the double good whammy, if you will, joe. people go to them in tomorrow of uncertainly, because they're blue chip, but get the growth overhang, if you will, to the up side so people view them as both security and growth stocks

it makes sense to me for stocks like that. you can't throw all technology together but one more thing, joe, wasn't andrew always a big man on campus >> always, always. >> j.j., thank you, sir. >> of course. >> i've got to find somebody who can fill us in on what was going on thank you, mimi and -- happy holidays to both let's get a final check on the markets as we hands thing off to "squawk on the street." you'll see some red arrows that kicked in after we got the gdp numbers. you're still taking a look at a down day for the market. this comes after a really big up day yesterday.

s&p futures down by about eight, the nasdaq off by about 42, the ten-year still remaining subornly beround 1.5%. guys, we will all be back here tomorrow make sure you join us. right now it's time for "squawk on the street. good wednesday morning, i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer and david faber. coming off the good bounce, as we watch a lot of omicron-related headlines. core pce doesn't moderate from the summertime highs omicron fears obviousl