matching your job description. visit indeed.com/hire and this is ready to go online. matchingany questions?ription. -yeah, i got one. how about the best network imaginable? let's invent that. we don't have time for lag or buffering. who doesn't want internet that helps a.i. do your homework even faster. come again. -sorry, what was that? the next generation 10g network, only from xfinity. good monday morning. i'm sara eisen with carl quintanilla. live for you on the floor of the new york stock exchange. setting the agenda today former federal reserve vice chair alan blinder b of a's head of commodity francisco blanch and jason trennert right now, markets today, pretty light volume as we are waiting for the slew of earnings

headed our way almost 180 s&p companies later in the week. not to mention some in data that toward the back half of the week that will be important for a fed decision that is seven trading sessions away. >> we'll get gdp first look, second quarter we'll get the pce, numbers on inflation. the market is baked in that the fed is going to raise interest rates in may even if gdp is soft, atlanta fed's at more than 2%. the consensus is around 2% economic growth. that's not something that would necessarily sway the fed the biggest question is going to be going into next week's meeting, what sort of tone they take will they back up the market's view they're one more and done will they be cautious about bank lending? we're in the early innings. >> in the meantime, some pmis have gotten april off on the right foot is the market a buy? what is the next event that will

meaningfully move the market that's the question we posed to mike santoli this morning. >> carl, look, typically boring markets are benign, usually the setup is you don't want to bet against it when you have that sideways movement. on the other hand, i think you can view it, to some degree, as the markets pause before an anticipated fed pause. it's really more a function of not people being confident or complacent, but being confused it's the old if you're not confused, you're not paying attention. why? you've seen some rolling over of a lot of the leading economic indicators but from a high level so the absolute level of output, the level of corporate revenues has not been all that bad, at least not bad enough to keep people really chased out of stocks more broadly. i do think there's going to be an issue that comes into play when it does come to metabolizing the fed outlook relative to what the economy is. we've been anticipating something like a recession for more than a year now i think at this point the not yet trade is still very much in

place. even as you see cyclical stocks underperform for a while right here i think credit markets are breaking the tie a little bit. credit markets seem like they're holding together relatively well i think the big question, too, as we go through earnings season is whether they can become the swing factor the decline in earnings forecast has been very orderly. i know mike wilson of morgan stanley saying it's going to have a sharp reckoning the first half of the year was supposed to be that. we were supposed to be dealing in the first and second quarter based on a lot of outlooks from last year with a severe retrenchment in earnings expectations hasn't come to pass quite yet. bulls will say, look, benign market right now, however valuation is not that compelling return of expectations means it's not that much of a rush to get in at these prices >> i just don't know, mike you don't want to ignore the inversion of the yield curve, which is a pretty reliable indicator for recession. you don't want to ignore leading economic indicators which has

been a very reliable indicator they're both indicating recession and yet we're not seeing it from companies, from the economic data. is it just continuing to be postponed, is that why the market's having trouble pricing it >> i think the market is not ignoring it, even if it's not panicking about it yes, i do think that's where we are. it's hard to see what the clinching argument is going to be on the recession/no recession call late cycle can remain late for some time. we remember that, even from 2018-2019. we had periods of inverted yield curves, periods of low unemployment and it took a while. and the stock market often doesn't know what to make of those periods. >> mike, appreciate that mike santoli this morning keeping us honest on the lull in this market. meantime, sentiment has been keeping the markets chugging on the hopes that a soft landing could play out we talk to the ceo of coke, james quincey about anhour ago about what he sees when it comes

to the consumer. >> there are pockets of the consumer in the u.s., in europe, that are clearly under pressure in terms of their purchasing power and starting to exhibit buying patterns typical of the early recessionary phases, whether that's trading the private label or putting off the purchase of large ticket items having that said, people who have the purchasing power or deciding to spend. >> our next guest says the odds of a recession are increasing. and that the market may be in for some tough sledding if the market deteriorating joining us, jason trennert is with us. good to see you, jt. we're in this period where the viewer hears, oh, when inflation crests, it's good for the market, but the big question is whether you finish that in recession or not, right? >> yeah. i think that's true. there are a lot of people i know, especially growth investors or bullish are almost praying for a financial crisis to get the fed to ease

we're trying to tell people, after a series of hikes, the first ease is not particularly good for stocks, believe it or not. this is almost the eye of the storm between the last hike and the first ease the first ease lags associated with monetary policy are such that you're almost in monetary recession. i think a lot of indicators are suggesting that a recession is likely this year markets never bottomed before a recession. that's why we're trying to play the odds and be cautious. >> you think you would have said that if silicon valley, if the regionals hadn't been an be issue? >> listen. i think i would have but whatever your odds were for a recession before soil con valley, and for us, they were pretty high, but they've got to be higher now, right we're going to get a lot of -- we'll get a lot more data from more than just the big money center banks and see how that is clearly, willingness to lend has gone down. no two ways about it

for small companies, particularly small companies that do a lot of the hiring, they're very dependent upon bank lending. not necessarily wall street or private equity or venture capital. these other avenues that big companies have they're very dependent upon their local banker and the equity in their home. >> carl mentioned james quincey, and he was saying about recession, it's like waiting for gado since the fed tightened, people have been waiting for recession. you're not getting that from the color and commentary from the big companies. >> and the big dark that hasn't barked has been employment that's important because the fed, from its perspective, is very much of -- they spend a lot of time focusing on the labor markets and that's why it's also -- it's hard to see the fed easing until you see real weakness in the labor markets.

labor market at 3.5% is full employment by any normal standard or more than full employment this is a a little bit of the push and pull you have you might be okay right now, but you can't have it both ways. either the economy's okay and the fed's going to stay tight, or the economy's weakening, at which point the fed will start to ease but then have you to deal with the aftermath of a recession. >> you're in the recession camp and expect the market to sell off. so, what do you think breaks the strong employment? >> it's going to be earnings and margins. i think one of the things that's happening with earnings, if i may be so bold to suggest this is earnings look okay a little bit because of the money ill illusion, which is to say that inflation is higher. earnings are going to come in a bit higher because revenues are coming in a bit higher if you look at profit margins, margins have declined, almost 300 basis points from the peak already, and they have more to fall they're mean-reverting that's something i would say, sara, that ultimately when you get margin compression, that's

when people start to have to make hard choices, particularly as it relates to employment. no one wants to lay people off, but i think particularly in the technology sector, you're starting to see certain companies like meta lay off people for the second or third time, which is, i think, suggesting that there's, perhaps, more pain to come for companies that don't have very, very high profit margins like meta. >> some bulls might argue, well, what if wholesale inflation, for example, falls faster than consumer price and you do have a bit of a sweet spot where you can, you know, keep your margins elevated some would say price gouge. >> it's certainly possible i'm just playing the odds. i'm saying, the odds are if you have -- and sara mentioned these indicators before, but if you look at the yield curve, for instance, it's -- you never had, particularly new york fed's probability of recession, which is three month, ten year, this hasn't been that high since 1981 you've never gotten this high without a recession.

>> it's not close. >> right all these things - >> and m2. >> maybe you could pull -- you almost have to pull an inside straight here or something, you royal flush or whatever it is, you have to -- you have to get lucky. it's possible, but i think it's the odds don't favor, in my opinion, being particularly aggressive right now on the equity markets. >> none of those indicators tell you when. >> that's true >> how long have you been expecting a recession that has not materialized >> that's a fair point probably about six months. to be very -- we got cautious on the market last year at around -- in march but, frankly, we probably would -- we would certainly have expected to see weakness in employment before now. right now i would say you're just in the early -- you may or may not see it could be a rorschach test. you have -- the unemployment rate's very low. claims are starting to move a little higher. you don't have much to go on in that regard. >> right we'll see what claims do this week >> we'll see >> it's bumping up against that

250. it's getting interesting. >> claims to me, if we have a little more time, if my opinion, is probably the best single indicator out there, mainly because it's a count and you both know. if you look at the way economic statistics are created, they're highly processed there's a lot of revisions that go into it claims are among the cleanest numbers you can get. and we're watching them very closely. >> that's good jason, thank you great to see you. >> great to see you. still to come this hour, bank of america's head of commodities on why consumers and oil are taking a vacation. plus, two conflicting top picks in the media space more "squawk on the street" next ♪♪ choosing miracle-ear was a great decision.

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welcome back let's talk commodities, driven by fears over interest rates and a potential recession. the opec plus surprise, remember, oil output cut, not doing a whole lot with the bulls with crude trading below $80 a barrel our next guest sees a rebound in the cards, keeping an eye on rising demand for jet fuel and gasoline heading into the summer travel season. joining us now with his outlook, bank of america head of global commodities, francisco blanche i mentioned the vacation element of summer travel does that really drive oil prices

>> hi, sara. yes, absolutely. it's dependent on how much we move and coming into the summer we're going to see, i think, a bump for tourist season across europe, the u.s. and the newly restarting market of asia. i remember asia has been pretty much in partial lockdown for the last couple of years with china just reopening a few months ago. and we expect that combination to lead to strong demand for gasoline and jet fuel, and brent so oil -- wti crude oil back into the mid-80s by the summer >> people know it's a strong travel demand environment. they know about the chinese reopening. we have opec cutting into strong demand environment i'm wondering why oil prices aren't higher. >> i think we've hit a bit of an air pocket in terms of demand. we came out of the winter with a

pretty high temperatures remember, natural gas prices both crushed we've seen gas around $2 and as we come into the summer, we have seen the strength of the chinese economy. at bank of heg america we recently revised our china gdp growth forecast. now we're expecting gdp over 6%, which is well ahead of consensus at 5.3% for the current year we think not only will we see the strength of tourism travel but also much bigger china rebound driven by the consumer but also by increased investment fixed investment is going to pick up as a credit expansion. so, a number of factors we think we'll get demand to 1.5 to 2 million barrels a day in 2023.

that's the main basis. i think the european economy is a little better and while the u.s. is still heading into recession, but hasn't quite got on it yet. >> it's going to get interesting. potentially could be interesting, francisco in china, some of the drugmakers rallied this morning on concerns about renewed covid problems, covid was the number one searched term over the weekend while we're not talking public health here, but how much do you -- how solid do you think the recovery is over there do you think it could be given a second look depending on how the trends fare? >> sure, carl. it's always very hard to predict. we've had a recovery of fits and starts ourselves in both the u.s. and europe. so china could go through a similar phase. we saw a bigger wave of covid over the winter and to the extent -- to the extent there's

a resurgence, i think there will be some fears. generally what we've seen in countries nearby, china as soon as the routes reopen to thailand or some of the nearby places, korea, what have you, there's a huge pickup in activity. international travel in china is still about 50% of precovid levels domestic air travel is back to normal, more or less so, i think the trend suggests that we'll see a continuation, but, of course, as we've learned with covid, it's always hard to tell and china doesn't have the same kind of vaccines we've had in the western world. >> i guess the biggest risk to your forecast is u.s. and europe, developed world. in a more pronounced weakening of the economy that we've seen and are starting to see in some places, like manufacturing >> for sure. manufacturing is very weak i think services remain very robust and when we talk to

tourist operators coming into the summer, they tell us they're forecasting a great season they're getting great bookings and vapsed books i think if you look into the summer months in the west, i'm not that concerned about the slowdown impact on oil prices, but to your comment, we've seen a pullback in diesel demand because the purchase of goods is down quite a bit and exports are out of the country. countries like taiwan or even china or korea have actually recorded negative year-on-year performance. that's negative for diesel same for trucking demand in the u.s. but again, i still think consumers have money in their pocket i still think disposable income is growing job growth strong. and, again, people want to spend. i mean, we still have relatively

lax fiscal policies. we still have a world where inflation is eroding the value of those dollars that you have in the bank. it's a world where we've lived a tough kind of pandemic in the last few years, so we all want to be out, having fun. i think leisure is a huge driver of growth here that will support the market, at least through the next 18 months. >> do you not think they'll be able to, the biden administration, refill the strategic petroleum reserve in the profitable way they need to? >> you know, i'm not sure they want to. they've been making different kinds of comments about that so, certainly by setting a price range of 67 to $72 a barrel wti, they've kind of told the market that we are not very likely to spend a lot of time down there and certainly opec seems pretty determined as well to keep prices high. opec is telling us, you know,

just like you learn, don't fight the fed, now don't fight us either that's what we've heard from opec so, i mean, it's a little bit of a dangerous game to get short oil. and i think that's why opec has come out with this very aggressive move to take 1.6 million barrels a day, which by historical standards is a very large cut on top of the cut they employmented last year so, i do think -- i do think that they'll be successful as supporting prices. of course, unless we have a complete meltdown in the u.s. or in the european economy, which is not our baseline. you know, we're looking for relatively soft slowdown or, you know, technical recession in the case of the u.s. we're not looking for complete meltdown in economic activity. i think opec needs to bring inventories down that's what they're trying to do come to the end of the year. price exceeded that and if we

get the china rebound we are expecting, you get above $90 a barrel into the second half of the year again, we have more strategic capacity and that tempers the upside by virtue of what opec is doing. we won't see 130, 150, which people feared only a few months ago. >> still, pretty bullish case laid out francisco, appreciate your time. thank you. >> thank you still to come this hour, former fed vice chair alan blinder is with us why he says america may need a nonlegislative solution to the debt ceiling we'll get his take as well as how high rates here may go we're watching c3.ai, stock down after being downgraded to underperform at wolf the firm citing concerns about slowing revenue growth and sees 30% downside

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welcome back trading in europe coming to a close in a few moments mixed picture for stocks earnings season fully under way. european equities are on a big hot streak lately with major indexes in france, spain and italy trading at or near 52-week highs. one big mover dutch health tech philips electronics and lvmh, the parent company of brands like tiffany, dior, becoming the first european company to surpass a $500 billion market cap. of course, run by the world's richest man. lvmh feeds into it major european etfs up 15% to 20% so far this year and stock

looking relatively cheap on a pe basis, compared to the united states this hour european central bank board member telling politico that it's clear that further rate hikes are needed and that a 50-basis-point hike is not off the table in may that's the problem the more robust everything looks, especially stocks for financial conditions, the more leeway is gives the european central bank, the fed and others to keep raising rates. >> we did get this one boe official over the weekend say we may be in the case of overtightening she called it the milton friedman fool in the shower who was waiting for the water to get hot and ends up getting scalded because you turn the hot up too much. >> too much too long that's the fear and that's the pushback against the central bank look at the forward looking indicators i will say there was one data point out from germany, business sentiment. it came in still high. lower than expected but a boost from march so you're not seeing any terrible signs of recession there either, despite how many

predictions have there been of recession. there it was supposed to be worse and even sooner with the energy crunch. they've managed to show resilience. >> record gas storage. we are red for the moment. let's get a news update with our bertha coombs. >> hey, carl, here's what's happening at this hour president biden's domestic policy adviser is stepping down. rice, best known for her foreign policy experience had been a surprise choice for the role biden credited her efforts in achieving key administration goals in health care and gun safety, student loans and policing kim potter, the former minnesota officer who fatally shot daunte wright was released from prison in the early morning hours out of, quote, an abundance of caution potter was convicted of first and second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to two years in jail in february 2022. prosecutors had pushed for a

longer sentence. a protest was planned in carol county, kentucky, after the county's sheriff's office said they hired myles cosgrove, the louisville officer who shot breonna taylor in 2020 back over to you now sara >> bertha, thank you. after the break, goldman sachs names its top pick in the media space. we have that call next as bed bath & beyond winds down operations, who are the potential biggest beneficiaries? e re" merit ckwhen "squawk on thstetcos ghba

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about two hours into trading. let's get post to post with our bob pisani and see what's moving today. >> a lot of people unhappy with the relatively calm trading action you just have to look where the action is. it's in defensive names. we talked about consumer staples, clorox, hershey at new highs. hca had great earnings on friday it's been a great performer. this is another new high all right, they do urgent care, they do hospitals, a lot of facilities you go in and do

medical checkups in. maybe it's not terribly exciting, it's not tech, but it's consistent performer. that's a new high. speaking of a new high, this is an historic high, merck. merck, of course, is a dow deponent the problem with merck, it's a very low volatility stock, low beta beta of about 30 it means if the s&p is up 1%, merck would only be up about a third of a percent it doesn't move much on a daily basis so people don't notice the movement of it it's been a huge, steady performer for the last several months again, this is a new high. another one sneaking up, and it's been very iffy, either side of positive or negative, but exxonmobil is slowly creeping up it's up about 6% it's been far stronger than most other energy stocks in general and it's right near a new high about 1% and greg is the specialist, one of the big guys down here for

many years overseeing exxonmobil back to you. >> bob pisani. a time to look at notes catching our notice and goldman taking a look at streaming profits with headwinds across the board. they maintain warner broez as their top pick wells sees disney as the best opportunity in media they think the company's dtc efforts could bring in $100 billion by 2025, driven in large part by leveraging hulu and espn our own julia boorstin joins us with that. i think the wells note took disney to $147, something like that, julia? >> yeah. it's so interesting to look at the comparison of the different media giants i just have to pull up, carl, the one-year chart for these different stocks i think one reason we're hearing such optimism from goldman sachs about discovery is they underperformed the rest of the players. over the past 12 months they're

still down 35% despite its gains year-to-date i think there's a sense that the stock may still be undervalued also a sense that now over a year into the merger of warner media and discovery, that now david zazlov is in control and has the ability to play offense, when it comes to franchise management and building out more content around some of those key most valuable brands the company owns, such as some dc comics brands that's something disney has done a very good job at the key for disney is maybe monetizing its streaming subscribers better there is some commentary in the wells note that disney could raise prices to see options and grow margins that way. >> i know, obviously, investors are super focused on this, the pricing and the strategy around streaming. there's also linear tv advertising, which i'm sure has weighed on these stocks. i thought it was interesting, i don't know if you saw, the coke ceo told us that he was ramping

ad spend and marketing spend during this kind of uncertain environment. i do wonder what the expectations are for earnings this season and for the rest of the year there >> yeah, there's a lot of concern there's going to be an advertising pullback we have the up-front ad sales period coming up the week of may 15th for the big media giants. that's always a time when all of the media players try to lock in a big portion of their ad sales for the rest of the year i have heard, sara, a lot of players, maybe some big players such as coke, see this opportunity when everyone else is pulling back to gain market share. it sounds like that's what coca-cola is trying to do there. i think there's this question of how much some players pull back, how much there's a shift over to the digital ad space because there might be a little more control, ability to target or even pull back moment taert because you could sort of flip the digital advertising on and off with the press of a button and maybe more of the ad spend on television is locked in more long term.

i do think there's this question of whether we do see some players use this as an opportunity to gain market share. >> also i've heard from some consumer companies, julia, like coke, where they're not buying annually for the whole year where they normally would because it's harder to plan and more on a short-term basis to figure out what the market looks like and what the return is on that ad investment. >> we may see a further shift away from this long-term planning, locking in big ad buys over the next year and more towards what they call the scatter market, more of a last-minute buying type situation. where they have more reactivity to what's going on in the market >> yeah. the industry, the industry thank you, julia julia boorstin turn to the bed bath & beyond bankrupt. wall street laying out its list of winners from the downfall pepper sandler sees gains for target and walmart, pointing to its investments in in-store pickup and e-commerce. oppenheimer turning to former home good competitors, wayfair,

williams-sonoma and even lovesac. how much is at stake from the -- they had a few hundred stores. >> absolutely. they had 900 plus stores at one point. to be fair, they've been donating share for some time it makes sense you would see share go to amazon, target, walmart, some big players that picked up some share from toys "r" us as well williams sonoma, i know they're pointing to williams sonoma and lovesac. i think more to tj maxx, home goods and they're going to benefit from the real estate portfolio, actually. some of those bed bath & beyond locations are in big anchor strip malls and that's where you ee off-price players picking up share like burlington, tj maxx, marshall's, they have a good home section they're donating a lot, right?

cvre point out retail vacancy rates are 29.8%, which is the lowest since they've been tracking since 2005. burlington said some of the most productive store locations are those that picked up retailers that closed stores like toys "r" us, circuit city or sports authority. >> was there any thinking there would be -- that once again, private equity would come and lever a retailer up and try to make a go of it? maybe the office discussion that we're in right now just made that untenable. >> i think bed bath & beyond has been struggling for a long time in different ways. i'm not sure a big equity name was looking at buying it in whole. maybe some of the assets buy, buy baby has been in play and may still be the intellectual property might be valuable to a player, those banner names that we're all familiar with. is the operations of bed bath & beyond something anybody wants to get their hands around and fix? i don't think so they were slow to the game in

store pickup and e of my commerce the playbook from target didn't play out very well at bed bath & beyond it was too much, too fast. like ron johnson at jcpenney the ideas weren't necessarily too bad but it was too much at once you were capturing a new customer while confusing the current one. >> horrible mismanagement is what i've heard from the suppliers. i guess it could still be sold in bankruptcy. >> or pieces certainly could be sold that intellectual property or maybe just one of the banners like buy, buy baby it sold off things like christmas tree shop during the transformation it doesn't look like it did two years ago. it's very different. >> i loved buy, buy baby that was a critical store. >> right they sent out an email sort of talking about registries being protected. those coupons, not going to be able to use coupons after wednesday. be careful, everybody. >> thanks. good to have you back. we are seeing a decline in

shares of fox. let's get back to julia bowith e news on that. >> announcing it and tucker carlson, one of its marquee hosts are parting ways they announced that mr. carlson's last program was friday, april 21st fox news tonight will air live at 8:00 p.m. starting this evening with an interim show with rotating fox personalities until a new host is named. we see that stock down because he's been such an essential part of the -- of that network. he started at fox news channel in may 2009. we see the stock is now down about 3.5% back over to you >> julia, thanks very much when we come back, former fed vice chair alan blinder is with us. says the president doesn't need congress to avoid a debt ceiling crisis he'll join us to explain watch shares of first republic as well, leading the s&p for most of the morning so far ahead 'rba itwnit.togh wee ckn o. imagine, a car that goes as far as it does fast.

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welcome back the debt ceiling back in the spotlight this week. a vote is expected on house speaker kevin mccarthy's proposal to raise the limit in exchange for spending cuts as lawmakers race against the clock, the debt ceiling drama is making its way to the markets. our next guest writing in a new op-ed for "the wall street journal," biden doesn't need congress to avoid a debt ceiling crisis here to discuss is former federal reserve vice chair alan

blinder. isn't this why the short-term bond market is starting to get nervous, alan, because they do need -- he does need congress to raise the debt ceiling >> it is certainly -- the debt ceiling is why the market is getting nervous, the treasury market, understandably so. and as you know, all kinds of exotic, sometimes wild suggestions have been made to avoid what shouldn't be a problem at all i mean, the best is for congress just to raise the national debt ceiling as they've done in times in the past. the sense of my piece in "the wall street journal" was, if worse comes to worse, and it would be worse, the president will be faced with two conflicting laws and have to presumably obey one and disobey the other. >> so talk about the laws and how he could potentially get this done. i know you're not a constitutional lawyer, but clearly as an economist, it's front and center.

>> absolutely. so, the one law, the obvious law, the budget, which is usually more than one law, specifies amounts of spending and taxation and implies a certain deficit for this year as it does for any year that's one law, which congress has already passed, obligating the federal government to meet certain -- a whole list of obligations. the other is the national debt ceiling, which as you know, has already been breached and treasury secretary yellen has been applying ceiling wax and band-aids to try to put off the day of reckoning eventually she's going to run out of tricks up her sleeve and the day of wreckening will be here hopefully congress will have fixed it by then i hope so. it's not something i would normally advocate that the president violate a law. when there are two lays, one says yes, one says no, you don't have much choice >> do you think broadening the

scope like this, you may be well within the guard lines of the constitution, is dangerous because it is just sort of -- its fulmination, it will anger the other side more? >> could be. i think there's one sentence in the piece that says it's going to enrage the maga crowd, which they're always enraged, which they always are. i don't put this idea forward lightly. and i raise in the piece a number of obviously better suggestions such as just raise the national debt ceiling or what the house used to do, which is deem the national debt ceiling raised to finance whatever budget they've just passed that was very sensible they haven't done that for a while. they could go back to that so, there are lots of better ways out, absolutely but, you know, we have a rather strange house of representatives right now, let's put it that way. >> pimco is out again today,

they do a monday piece looking at washington. they say again this morning, alan, we do not think this is a repeat of 2011 republicans have a much smaller majority in the house than they did back then. polls show more americans favor a clean raise. does any of thatliate your worries? >> a little bit, but not much. i mean, i -- instead of visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, i'm seeing marjorie taylor greene, matt gaetz and a number of others who by their behavior seem to relish tearing the house down if i believe nobody in the house, almost no one in the house wanted to tear the house down, i feel a lot better about this we've gone to the wire on this a number of times in the past. but not over the cliff this house of representatives sadly, to me, looks different. >> so we know fed chair powell will be asked about it next week and we know he's going to -- what he's going to say about how important it is, but you were

inside the fed what does contingency planning look like at treasury and at the federal reserve for a technical default on u.s. debt >> i'm sure that chair powell does not want to talk about this. >> right that's why i'm asking you. >> right when i was -- i was going to say, when i was vice chair of the fed way, way back in the mid-'90s, there was a threat of default from the gingrich house of representatives it was not in the end -- it didn't in the end happen but we were laying in plans at the fed to keep an air soft treasury market running during what we figured would be a very short default period i still think that's true. if we have a default, it will be a short period and the fed can -- the fed has a big portfolio. the fed can buy and sell as necessary in the secondary market and can keep the treasury market functioning. it certainly doesn't want to do that and chair powell doesn't want to talk about it,

absolutely we were not talking about it then it can do it >> all right, alan thank you very much. >> you're very welcome. >> interesting take here alan blinder, former vice chair of the fed very big week of tech earnings ahead alphabet, microsoft, former vicr of the fed alphabet, microsoft, amazon all reporting. we will get you ready for those numbers when "squawk on the street" comes back in two. and actually improves memory. the secret is an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription. ♪

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as we said, a number of big tech names reporting this week the street is focused on cost k cutting, and we have more on what we might be hearing from the big guns this week, steve. >> these four mega caps, more than $5 trillion in market cap this week and not including apple next week. the big thing between all these names, cost cuts and layoffs and other moves like reducing office space. each of them have announced at least one round of huge job cuts and maybe more to come the goal is to improve profits instead of chasing growth on the revenue side like we have seen throughout the pandemic. and the street expect moderate growth, and the one exception, apple expected to see sales drop more than 4% after falling 5% in the december quarter here's what to pay attention to

each week. microsoft reports tomorrow, expect it to be in the high 30ish percent. that is a sign i.t. spending is slowing down among businesses. lately the stock's perception is it's moving behind microsoft meta reporting on wednesday. we know that's the poster child for efficiency with ceo mark zuckerberg hinting last week even more layoffs are on the table. the primary challenge for meta now, making money on its tiktok competitor, reels, which has not panned out we know consumers are trading down and looking for deals and that's something the ceo told andrew ross sorkin two weeks

ago. lots on the line this week, so we will pay attention to everything that happens. >> i feel like it also, steve, allows us to talk about the setup for so many of the stocks. for instance, meta, everybody loves it and they are bullish, and it makes the bar higher. they have not performed at one monolithic group, right? >> yeah, going back to appearing, which is facing these on the hardware side the consumer demand problems, and meta is telling a different story, they are cutting cost, and they don't talk about the metaverse anymore, and its a.i. and cost cutting they will still lose 12 or $13 billion on the metaverse stuff >> thank you we are keeping our eye on shares of fox. big downward move on that stock. news that tucker carlson will

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we'll close things out with a stock that has been buzzing all week long. shares of mcdonald's has hit an all-time high. in 12 of the 15 trading days in april, up more than tense% on the -- 10% on the year eps of 233, and they have refined menus, and refined recipes and the china reopening is a big part of it. >> the overall economic environment. if you look at the 52-week high

list today, it's mcdonald's. it's a lot of the staples, clorox, some of the mercks and lilies, those that do well during the low-growth periods, and that's what is working mcdonald's ceo's will be here to talk about the environment and what they are doing on the cost side as well welcome to the "halftime report." from center this hour, the state of stocks and what is next for your money as we kick off a critical week of numbers joining us today, bryn talkington and joe terranova and steve weiss. dow jones industrials down just a hair, and s&p down about 15, and the yield on the 10-year note sitting