coming to the federal government for money because we are fighting a virus. it's not because of any fault of a ceo or an individual. rescuing the companies is rescuing jobs. maria: which is one reason the federal reserve has made extraordinary actions and that is why you are seeing a rally this morning in stocks. complete reversal of fortune. dow industrials up 500 at the start. let's get to "varney & company." stu? stuart: maria, good morning. good morning to you. good morning, everyone. the rescue package, let's deal with that first of all, that stalled. it was a tie vote, 47-47, five republican senators had to sit out the vote. they are in quarantine. the democrats don't like some aspects of the package. senator schumer says it favors corporations over individuals. that seemed like bad news for the market but then the fed came to the rescue. they have announced a new package of measures to support the economy.

that seems to have worked because the dow which had been limit down has now bounced back and at the opening bell, we may be up 400 points. the dow will be up significantly at the opening bell. same story with the s&p and also with the nasdaq. now, treasury secretary mnuchin, he says the federal reserve will have $4 trillion for loans to businesses. he says there's more where that came from and if congress doesn't get something going real fast, then they will go back to congress for more and he says the fed will provide any amount that is needed. that's what the fed is doing right now. that's the market. that's the fed. that's what's going on in congress. now look at the price of oil. that has been a problem for american energy producers and right now, we've got oil all the way down in the low 20s. that's a continuing problem for texas, north dakota and for the energy producers and these energy stocks. how about the price of gas?

that is absolutely tumbling. the national average all the way down to $2.12 a gallon. in oklahoma, the average price has plummeted, the national average is $2.13. in oklahoma, the average price is all the way down to $1.71. there are 21 states where the average is under $2 a gallon. that's a great benefit to consumers, but who's driving these days? now, there have been some dire predictions about the impact of this shutdown. a fed governor predicts a 30% unemployment rate and a 50% plunge in gdp in the second quarter. clearly, that is not going to help market sentiment later on today. coming up, 11:30 eastern time this morning, labor secretary eugene scalia, i will ask him about that prediction of 30% unemployment in the second quarter. the key question for all of us seems to be how long the lockdown or this shutdown of the economy will last.

dr. fauci suggested it would be a matter of days. secretary mnuchin says it will be 10 to 12 weeks. new york governor cuomo said it would be months. by the way, new york city has become the epicenter of the virus attack. as of yesterday, there were 10,000 cases in the city. let me show you overseas for a moment. china, south korea, taiwan appear to be coming out of it but europe is still in the middle of it. 2,000 deaths in italy and spain over the weekend and if germany, chancellor angela merkel is in quarantine, having come in contact with a doctor who tested positive. on our program today, we will be asking how you are coping with this lockdown. it's not an easy time, obviously. tens of millions of us will not leave our homes today and we will be struggling with children, schooling, elderly loved ones. it's a very difficult time. we will ask you how you're coping. yes, we look slightly different today. we are separating out.

susan li, lauren simonetti, ashley webster all join me from very different locations. we are keeping maximum distance between us. there you can see. good morning, everybody. let's get right to it. yeah, yeah, slight delay there. good morning, everybody. all right, let's start with your money. market watcher keith fitz gerald with us now. keith, the fed's taking action, congress will probably take action very soon. is that enough to put a floor underneath the market? >> you know, you sure hope so, stuart. i think the fed had some very key words in its announcement, any amount necessary. that tells me they are very serious about this. it's a good sign and a good time and being a positive guy that i am, i would like to believe this is the light at the end of the tunnel, not another train. stuart: well, they are going to throw the kitchen sink at it. that's bottom line here. mnuchin says look, to congress, i think it was mnuchin, treasury secretary mnuchin who said look,

there may be a phase four going forward, because if what they've got going now isn't enough, they will chuck some more at it later. as for the fed, they say look, whatever it takes. that's a great deal of money going to be injected into all sectors of the economy. that's a big deal, keith. >> it is. don't make a mistake, i'm not underplaying this at all. it's prudent, it's expedient, it's needed, it's timely. if i could put any other positive words on it, i would. my fear is that we have a number of covidiots going out to look at cherry blossoms, we have people at the beach in seattle, people who don't understand the gravity of the situation. that gives me concern this rally has staying power. stuart: you know what happened in miami, they were advertising sandbar parties. the mayor of miami got to hear about it and promptly closed the marinas, closed it all down and said you ain't going to do that

anymore. i think gradually, you see it on the left-hand side of the screen, that was a sandbar party before they shut these things down. i think the country is generally pretty angry about these folks, keith. >> oh, i would agree. being in seattle, they are all around us. we look off our property, we've got people that are congregating, gathering in the parks, walking along the trails. it's one thing to go out by yourself but you are going to get this thing potentially, then go home and infect your parents, grandparents, infants, elderly. i have nightmares about how my parents are dealing with it. they are in their late 70s and are nearby and i can't get to them. stuart: yeah. this is a question i'm going to ask all of our guests. how are you coping with this? keith, you start. >> well, i tell you what, we spend a lot of time in asia and the consternation is they appear to be coming out of it, we're not. the reason they are coming out of it is because when the government says sit still, they

actually listen. over here, we don't. we are coping by doing remote grocery operating. i'm recovering a lot of yard work i have been ignoring. we are discovering being a family again. there are some good things here. my boys have both grown into young, intelligent men that are a pleasure to have around the house. we are doing the best we can, like millions of americans. stuart: hold on, keith. i will turn to ashley webster. he's with us this morning. fed, major action to support the economy. go through it. ashley: whatever it takes, that harkens back to ecb president mario draghi who said exactly the same thing but the fed launching a slew of new programs, essentially asset purchases quote, in the amounts that are needed to support smooth market functioning, says the fed. it also includes a $300 billion lending program for main street businesses. also what they call a back loan facility. these terms starting to sound familiar from the financial

crisis. they will be also getting into commercial mortgage-backed securities, into the commercial sector of real estate for putting those also on their balance sheet. it really is whatever it takes moment. the fed in part saying while great uncertainty remains, it's clear our economy will face severe disruptions and we have to do whatever we have to do to keep this functioning. of course, this is on top of last week, $500 billion worth of treasuries, $200 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities. the fed literally opening the spigots wide open, saying whatever it takes. stuart: then we've got this $2 trillion package come down the pike from congress, which i presume they will do at some point, and if that's not enough, they will do a lot more later. let's turn to the supply of medical equipment. i had to start with these face masks. susan, come in, please. honeywell making these masks now? susan: well, president trump

enacted the defense production act, it looks like corporations like honeywell and 3m are helping to produce these n95 high end masks that a lot of health care workers need right now. they will create 500 jobs in rhode island as they build and start to manufacture these new masks. 3m says they are also turning on the presses, trying to get as many masks as possible and also hanes making undergarments, making masks as well. lot of corporates getting into this action. stuart: apple sending masks to health care workers? susan: that's right. tim cook says apple in discussion with the administration, as you heard president trump in that press briefing on saturday, saying we will donate two million masks. they are very good at sourcing, obviously, around the world since they have such a complex, large and global footprint when it comes to their supply chains. they said we found two million masks, we will donate it for the good of this country. stuart: i think it's worth pointing out, thanks, susan, it's worth pointing out that

although we've got a bounce here for apple, the stock is still only at $234 per share. not that long ago, it was about $100 north of there. that was four weeks ago, something like that. all right. lauren simonetti, come in, please. more states have issued a stay-at-home order? lauren: at least eight states saying self-isolate, stay at home. the latest is ohio and louisiana. louisiana goes into effect today. they have 837 cases of coronavirus there, 20 deaths. ohio, that goes into effect tomorrow, 351 infections, three deaths. all businesses in all of these eight states are closed unless they are deemed essential. will we see more states throughout the country issue the same orders in coming days? stuart: you think we will, lauren? lauren: yeah. i think it's going to be nationwide. i think it's going to be nationwide. it foaeels like that's where wee headed. if you want to stop the virus

you need to keep people in place. anywhere you turn, you see doctors, politicians, health care workers, stay at home so we can continue to work to make sure that people are safe. it's a life or death situation. stuart: lauren, before we move on, you have two young children. you are at home with them. how is it going? lauren: it's hard. it's hard. my little guy doesn't get it. he's 2. but my daughter understands what's going on. every time she wants to do something, you tell her as nicely as you can that she can't or it's closed or she can't see that friend. meanwhile, you are trying to entertain them. it's tough, because my husband is working from home. i do work at home although i come into the office every day. it's very challenging for parents out there. we go outside every day and increasingly more people are outside now. we do see our neighbors more. but you can tell when you are approaching people that people are respecting in many cases that six-feet distance and you go to say hi and some people just retreat and take their

children with them because they are nervous. stuart: yes. i see the same thing. i think i'm rather fortunate in that all my children are now grown and separated out. we are all separated in various parts of the country but it's a little easier for me than it would be for someone with young children or looking after directly elderly relatives. so that's me. that's lauren. we will go round the block in the future, see how everybody is coping with this thing which we are all in together. now, a key question, as we said, how long does this lockdown last? secretary -- treasury secretary mnuchin says these lockdowns could last 10 to 12 weeks. peter morici, you are an economist. what's the impact on the economy of a 10 to 12 week lockdown? >> i think it will be quite draconian. the issue that unemployment could surge ten percentage points, no problem at all. we could lose, you know, over the next two quarters, 20%, 25% of gdp easy, no problem at all.

we are really not at the precipice of 2008 but rather, 1929. if we don't get the stimulus package, don't get the kind of government response we need, then we are back in 1929 because this virus could drag out. now, if the virus ends and we are out of this in three weeks, we're fine. but mid-may, if this thing hasn't topped we are looking at a depression without the kind of actions secretary mnuchin is so wisely advocating. stuart: fed governor bullard is talking about a 30% unemeploymet rate if there's no action taken. that sounds extreme but is it? >> no, it's not extreme. it's possible. i think it's less possible than 20% but i think we need to understand that this is going to reach draconian levels. remember, if you shut all the restaurants in the country, they can't possibly meet their payrolls very easily for more than a few weeks. those are very thin margin

operations. another thing is that if this goes on for two quarters, a lot of those businesses are simply not coming back. will they be replaced in time by new ones? yes, but it would be a slow recovery. not at all v-shaped. if we have a long, dragged-out two quarter decline, we are not going to have this super-duper bounce we would like to have in the fourth quarter. stuart: all right, peter. we've got secretary mnuchin saying that look, if congress's $2 trillion package isn't enough, there will be more to come. the fed is doing everything it can, throwing the book at this problem, throwing the kitchen sink at it. if you combine congressional action with fed action and we get it all done and the money's there, does that put a floor under the economy? >> it puts a floor but not as high as you would like, simply because it's going to take a long time to get the checks out. you see, if you just simply send people checks, it's fairly easy but it still takes the irs three or four weeks. if you start means testing

everything and requiring people to do lots of calculations, then we are back to cash for clunkers. one of the problems is this obsession with equity on capitol hill, really is slowing the process down. you know, the obama stimulus was extremely impaired by the obama administration and congress trying to accomplish noble goals instead of just getting the economy back up again. but you know secretary mnuchin is dealing with what he's dealing with. i have seen estimates that say we need $1 trillion at the small business administration, not 350. i'm inclined to believe it's closer to a trillion than 350. stuart: okay. >> 350 is the amount of the bill. stuart: i got that. 350 is in the bill. trillion might be what we need. hold on, peter. i will get back to you shortly. joining me, republican senator mike braun, republican of indiana. the senator was stalled 47-47. five republican senators in

quarantine, couldn't vote, couldn't take part. do you think we are going to get this thing done today, the $2 trillion package? >> there was no need for that last night to be delayed. sadly, the way this place works, speaker pelosi and chuck schumer kind of hijacked the process because we have been working in task groups and the democratic senators have been in on all this stuff from the beginning and if you look at their members, we were all working together. it was ready to go. the urgency is here. the american public expected this morning that there would be something delivered and when it comes to the details, i'm a guy that likes the details to be in place, i have been here long enough, you're not going to get all those the way you like it and we do need to make a statement. we are covering small business, we are covering particular industries through no fault of their own, at least we will have access to liquidity through loans, not bailouts or grants.

and here, sadly, back on phase two, we had an unemployment insurance plus-up that's exactly what the democrats added from their point of view. we could have had that with phase two. we have accepted that. so we all figured we would have had it done this morning. i'm still hopeful here today at noon that they've got these details worked out and we can get the thing through, because the urgency is there. stuart: there is talk this morning that we, as in the authorities, are going to throw the kitchen sink at it, put everything into it. that would mean the fed doing whatever it takes, supplying whatever money it needs to supply, and congress eventually coming through, multi-trillion dollar packages. are you convinced that all of that will actually happen and happen soon? >> so the first thing, phase three needs to happen today. the liquidity portion for

businesses in general maintains those jobs and the companies that need it most will have access to it. but we've got the checks, we've got the plus-up on unemployment insurance and all along, i said small businesses and waged workers need to be the priority. that is there. i hear then we are trying to throw stuff in on infrastructure, on reforming social security, all the grab bag of stuff you normally have to contend with. i think that's shameful. we will do what it takes because we caused it, stu. this isn't like 2008 which was systemic. this is the classic race between flattening the curve and not flattening the economy. we are in day eight of those 15 days. i'm anxious to get to next monday, reassess, take everything we've learned from it and maybe modify where we need to but i really don't think we will get rid of the national anxiety until they see the curve

flatten on the disease itself. yes, people need to be doing what most americans are doing, social distance, if you can work from home, fine. that's working in places like indiana, where it's a more rural population anyway. this next week will tell a lot to whether we have to go in a draconian way further with what we have been doing, or where we might be able to adjust a little bit. stuart: a lot of people are kind of annoyed that the senate gym did not close down when everybody else's gym closed down. i'm not trying to take it out on you, senator, but lot of people are rather upset about that. >> well, those are just the things that happen when you are trying to get through this and yes, a fellow senator, senator paul, i mean, that's what happens. we should all be socially distancing, probably back in our home states and i think it's sad that the process has kind of been hijacked at the last moment

to where we should have had it done, we should have gotten back and we could have a crisis here that would cascade through the senate, i don't know what we would do. that's why i'm anxious to get it done here today and i think we've got one, two or three votes teed up at noon, is the best i understand, and if there were three of them, that could slam-dunk the process and we would get it done. stuart: okay. good stuff. senator braun, thanks for joining us on an important day. we appreciate it. quick reference to the dow industrials. we are still up but not as much as we were. we are going to throw the kitchen sink in terms of money and resources at this thing. now we are up 150 points. we had been up 500. come in now, dr. baker, pro health doctor. pro health opened a drive-through clinic, i believe, doctor, in jerricho, new york, i think. but you have to have an appointment to go, is that correct? >> yeah, good morning. that's correct.

just for clarity, we have two open today in jerricho and little west new york and starting tomorrow, we will have sites open in manhattan, the upper east side and downtown gramercy as well as long island in riverhead and brooklyn. we will have them in several boroughs throughout long island. the ones that are opening starting this week, you do not have to be a pro health patient. it's anybody who matches the stringent criteria for testing by phone, we will direct there. the ones that are open on long island are for pro health patients by appointment. stuart: okay. what kind of reception did you have at the ones that are open? were they jammed? >> that's correct. it was rather overwhelming. that's why we are scaling them. stuart: what kind of test do you administer? >> we generally do whatever test is necessary based on the clinical assessment but most of the patients end up getting

covid testing, strep testing, flu testing, as you probably know the symptoms are vague enough that they overlap with a lot of other common diseases you and i have gotten in previous times, so it's important to know what you have or don't, because it directs therapy, quarantine and everything in between, just fluids and rest in some cases all the way to antibiotics or quarantine. we do some really tight screening by phone because we definitely don't want to overtest to preserve or supply which we have done very well at pro health and in order to continue to maintain that, we only test those that need to, where the result would alter medical management. stuart: dr. baker, thank you very much indeed for joining us. we appreciate your effort on this. i'm sure we will be back to you at some point, se he how the testing process is going. thank you, sir. come in, dr. marc seek wiiegel. doctor, governor cuomo is

talking about a 40% to 80% infection rate in new york city. is that a legitimate expectation? that sounds like an awfully high number. >> that number and the way -- he's been doing a great job but with that number he's scaring people and i don't think people understand the public health of this. i think the better way to put that is over time, i'm talking years here, if this virus stays imbedded in the community, people are going to get exposed to it. a new study out of "science" from the united kingdom shows that 86% of the cases of covid-19 are undetected. that means they are mild. there's another study that shows that it may change your sense of smell and your sense of taste. another study shows that 50% of the time it's diarrhea that you get. no one is even looking for those symptoms. 86% of the time, don't know you have it, you may have a mild case, you may spread it, someone else may be asymptomatic. over time, we are going to be exposed to it. that's not the same thing as the

way he said it. i would like to put it a little differently. that's all. stuart: okay. hold on for a second. i want to show you, i want to play the clip of governor cuomo kind of laying down the law to those who are not observing social distancing. roll tape, please. >> you would think there was nothing going on in parts of new york city. you would think it was just a bright, sunny saturday. i don't know what i'm saying that people don't get. this is not life as usual. none of this is life as usual. it's insensitive, it's arrogant, it's self-destructive, it's disrespectful to other people, and it has to stop, and it has to stop now. this is not a joke and i am not kidding. stuart: doctor, i don't think

he's scaring people. i think he's laying down the law. >> there, i like him. there, when he's not trying to be a physician, he's very effective. that's exactly how he should talk. it was extremely well delivered and articulate and effective and leadership. by the way, i can't find anybody in new york, i mean, to me, but his point is right. there are pockets of people that are ignoring this and that actually interferes with the public health goal here, which is simply to decrease the amount of virus that's spreading around. if people are separated, they can't spread virus. if nobody is coughing and sneezing on you, you can't get the virus from them. if you're not sharing surfaces with someone who is sick, you can't get the virus. so this social distancing the governor is talking about is crucial right now and i really like the way he delivered that. stuart: real fast, how long do you think it takes to bend the curve? that means you no longer have more and more new cases, you're having fewer and fewer new cases, how long before we arrive at that point nationwide?

>> well, stuart, since we are going to be testing 75,000 people a day by next week and because we are developing more and more faster ways of doing that, you showed one way from your previous guest, he's got a great thing going, but also doctors are going to be able to do it in a doctor's office, we have a way to self-administer it now, we have rapid throughput screening with roche and thermofisher. you will see cases going up for awhile that may be cases that were already there that we hadn't diagnosed so the answer to your direct question is because of the case increases that we see from better testing, it's going to take a few weeks before we start to see a flattening of the curve. i think all of these measures will work but it will take a few weeks. stuart: a few weeks. okay. doctor, we hear you. now, viewers, if you look at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, you will see the dow turned negative. we just popped back up again to positive. but this comes even though we've got the fed throwing the kitchen sink at this problem in the

credit markets. edward lawrence, you have more news from fed? reporter: more announcements from the fed. they are making a rule change that allows banks to use that buffer zone. this is money beyond the excess reserve that's required, it's a buffer that banks keep to lend out. this rule will allow banks to take some of that money and lend to people if there's a credit crunch which we have seen recently, so they can lend to small businesses, to homeowners, to large businesses, but they can use now that buffer zone and that's the rule change that the fed is making. one more point, before we got into all of this, the february numbers according to the chicago federal reserve, their national activity index, had actually ticked up saying the economy was getting stronger in february. that's before the virus impact. so now the fundamentals of the economy that shows are there, so hopefully on the other side, the thinking is if we can get through this, the fundamentals will still be there. stu? stuart: edward, before you leave us, the market's about to open.

i do want to ask you if it's correct to say that the federal reserve said they will have any amount needed, whatever it takes, any amount needed, they will supply it. reporter: that's exactly right. in fact, they are buying now $75 billion a day of treasuries and $50 billion a day of mortgage-backed securities. they are really throwing everything they have and whatever it takes seems to be the philosophy now in the federal reserve. stuart: is this a bigger fed operation than we saw in 2008? reporter: it is getting there. we are starting to get there with the massive amount of quantitative easing. over 2008, you were talking about years they were doing quantitative easing. in the beginning part, this is faster, moving faster quicker to a bigger portion but we are not to the totality yet of the years they did the quantitative easing. stuart: edward, thank you very much indeed. stick around. we need a lot more news from you

and the fed. we have 90 seconds to go before the market opens. let me bring in scott martin, kingsview wealth management guy. i'm disappointed, scott. i thought when the fed came out and threw the book at this thing, that might rescue the day but at the moment, we are down on the dow. give me 30 seconds on what's the problem. on the phone: yes. 45 minutes to an hour is an eternity in this market so i guess we should be happy there finally was a little bit of market response to some positive news from the fed. the reality is this. we are in a massively volatile environment. there's a lot of computers playing ping-pong with each other, lot of algorithms that are trading this news. i wouldn't be totally discouraged. let's see how the day trades out, see if congress gets their you-know-what together and puts a package on the floor for a good vote this time. that's what i think the market will eventually respond positively to. stuart: i thought there might be some positive response to china,

south korea, taiwan, who appear to be coming out of this thing, they are on the other side of it, and people are going back to work. i thought that might give our market a shot in the arm but apparently not. >> not yet. i think there's a worry what's going to happen in the good old u.s. of a and i believe there needs to be more drastic measures taken. i think that's what the market frankly wants to see. as we pointed out all morning, the fact the markets have not reacted to this stimulus yet, they have not reacted very well to fed intervention yet, we lose a few percent a day, the market wants to see some drastic action, some end of period type of thing that will help with this containment and that's what i believe the market will have relief in seeing. stuart: i thought we had been promised that dramatic action but the dow has opened with a 300 point loss. at the moment we are down 350. back to 18,800 which by the way, is almost exactly where the dow was when president trump was

elected in november of 2016. so all the gain is officially gone at this point. in the very early going, i can see the dow off, what, 1.7%. the s&p is down .48%. sorry, the nasdaq is down .33%. we are down across the board here. not such a great loss for the nasdaq. i guess the technology companies are doing quite well. here's what i want to see. i want on the left-hand side of the screen, i want to see maximum scroll through all different groups of stocks. i want to see the airlines, big tech, the cruise travel companies. let's see them all. see how we have opened up on this monday which i think really is the second week of the large-scale lockdowns we have been having across the country. airlines, brief small pop up for american, united and delta. that's because this rescue package for the airlines, it's actually stalled in congress. but we are promised some kind of

action. i think there's disagreement about whether the government should take an equity stake in the airlines. after all, if you are giving them money or loaning them money, you are helping them, do you want something in return. i think the democrats want an equity stake. the republicans do not. let's see how that works out. right now we have delta, jetblue, southwest down, american and united ever so slightly higher. next group of stocks, please. what have we got now? the dow is up 380 points. next group is the cruise lines. i don't expect much of a bounce there and there is none. they are down a bit more. carnival down 11%, norwegian at 8%, royal caribbean at 23. they are so far down, they face such a traumatic public relations problem, i don't think we spend much time on cruise lines in the future. hotels, hyatt is down a little. hilton is up a little. marriott down a point.

susan, did you want to come in on this? susan: i want to come in on the market dynamics we saw on friday. there were some indicators that pointed to maybe selling exhaustion has already kicked in since we looked at the down volume, 63% on friday, compared to the 90% decliners we saw over the past eight trading sessions. there had been talk that maybe the selling is done. despite the fact you had the fed saying we will do whatever it takes, you still have these declines. i think there's still a lot of hesitation until we get some sort of stimulus package through the senate later today, hopefully, fingers crossed. stuart: yes indeed. walmart, $113 a share. last week i saw it at a high of $123. i don't know why walmart's come down a little bit. maybe it's the stalling of getting money into people's hands. the grocers, walmart down, kroger's 1.5%. bj's, costco, $290 a share. they have held up well. walmart's held up well although

walmart was at that high last week, down ten bucks as of this morning, this monday morning, i should say. the dow at the moment is down 167 points. there's no stability here. we are settled around the 19,000 level. that is purely temporary. this market's going to go up and down. follow the news from washington closely. they need another vote on this package, this $2 trillion package. they are negotiating ferociously about it. i think the market wants to hear that that $2 trillion package is secure and then maybe there will be another one on the far side. the market's not responded that well to the fed taking action early this morning. scott martin, tell me more here. did you like anything at all at these levels? >> i'm still a little nervous, and gladly so because i believe it's going to get us and our clients some appropriate value for things, especially some of these stocks like you mentioned that are in tech land that don't

have a ton of retail exposure. you look at the microsofts of the world and they are exploding on obviously skype as we are here as well but also in the cloud. there are certain things some of these tech companies might actually come out looking really good from. but let me just throw in one quick thing about congress that you mentioned. i believe the market is definitely waiting for a good vote on this stimulus package. don't forget, back in 2008, we had similar take-aways from this stimulus package, the t.a.r.p. relief program that was supposed to come out with respect to congress not being able to pass it the first time around, and an old counterpart of ours, nancy pelosi, was somebody who stood in the way of that first vote in 2008 when we couldn't get our stuff together then. funny how she's coming back around now to put a little bit of stalemate in place. hopefully they can get that fixed and the market will like that. stuart: keith, are you a little disappointed with the market action this morning, after what the fed's been doing and the promises coming out of congress? little disappointed, maybe?

>> actually, no, stuart. here's why. market bottoms are a process, not a moment in time. all the things you and scott have been talking about are absolutely spot-on. the market wants certainty, and they want to know that people are not going to get more infected. as testing comes in, those things begin to build a base. so the fact that we even caught a bid this morning, even if it was only for about 45 minutes on this news, is to me a very positive development. stuart: susan, have you got anything to add to this? susan: i just wanted to talk about the "60 minutes" piece. i don't know if you watched it with neal kashkari who basically indicated the fed was going to do whatever it takes. in fact, back in 2008 they thought they were slow in the response to the financial crisis. indications were you are going to get more shock and awe this morning. they have delivered. i think it's up to the senate to deliver that $1.4 trillion stimulus plan. don't forget, you remember 2008,

remember t.a.r.p. and that $700 billion buyout package or that package that they wanted to help the auto makers and other companies with? that also failed in the first vote in government as well. so you think they would have learned from that time around when they saw the market response to the first round of failures in voting that in. stuart: okay, susan, thanks very much. i'm looking at kroger right now. up a fraction, it's at $31. one of the grocers that is doing reasonably well. ashley, have you got anything for me? ashley: just looking at the market reaction, it's interesting what keith fitz was just saying there. i think it's not liquidity that's hurting the economy here, anywhere else in the world, it's the complete throwing out the window of any demand. i don't know what low to zero interest rates and all this money will do until this radical shutdown, people not even leaving their homes, is over. i think the market is looking at this and saying this is all wonderful, this is all great,

but what timeline will we have before any kind of demand comes back. stuart: all right. ashley, thanks very much. we are looking at big tech right now. i'm seeing, can you go back to big tech, please? lot of people have got money in big tech. i would like to hear that. all right. we've got facebook at $148. microsoft at $135. i'm looking at alphabet google just over $1,000, $1045. apple, look at that. apple is down to $222. that's tough because four weeks ago, we were at $330 i think it was. so big tech continues to come down and right now, we've got another selloff for the dow. we are off 500 points and falling as we speak. remember, the news background here is that the fed has taken action, they are going to throw whatever it takes into the market, as much money as it takes to spit out there and congress is working on this $2

trillion package, it's been held up. we are assured they are going to get it done at some point soon. then they might do another package after that, despite all of that, we are falling. the market is down 500 points. keith fitz, can you explain what's internal in the market that's pushing things down despite all this money that's being pushed into the economy? >> yes, stuart, this is all about the computers this morning. what happens is you get a difference between what's called the cash price and the futures prices, that increases an arbitrage opportunity meaning you can buy a bottle of soda $2 over here, sell it for $3 over there, the computer says we will buy or sell, in this case, sell. when the herd behavior starts, the computers pile on, they start more stuff faster. that's all that's happening. stuart: all right. we are going to keep on running through these things, left-hand side of the screen. the credit cards are up there right now. they are taking it down again. look at that.

credit card down 5% on mastercard, visa is down 6%. american express is down nearly 2%. i guess this is the suppression of demand, the suppression of spending. if more and more of us are being locked down in our houses, you're not spending money, you're not going to restaurants, not going to stores. the credit card companies are not in trouble, but they are taking it on the chin. the market is down nearly 570 points. we will take a brief break.

stuart: if you're just joining us, let me tell you exactly what's happened so far this monday morning. we opened with a gain, it didn't last long, now we're down nearly 500 points despite what might have been considered a positive news background.

we've got the fed taking action, injecting a great deal of money into the financial system. we've got congress promising a $2 trillion package. it is stalled at the moment but they promised to get something done. after that, maybe there will be a phase four. that's what we're hearing. but we've also got some dire predictions about the future. mr. bullard, one of the fed governors, is talking about a 30% unemployment rate in the second quarter and maybe a 50% cut in gdp in the second quarter. that's depression scenarios. we also have the treasury secretary mnuchin saying this lockdown where you've got to stay in your house, lock down the economy, don't go to work, that could last 10 to 12 weeks. i think all of that is a profound negative despite the positives of what the government is going to do about it. scott martin, come back in again. am i reading this correctly that negative and the dire

predictions outweigh the good news of government action? >> they certainly do at this point, stuart. but here's the thing. the market is starting to digest those things, it's starting to figure out that those are realistic cases potentially, the 10 to 12 weeks period that mr. mnuchin said. the market is starting to realize that. i will tell you something. over the commercial break i was trying to find just something to hold on to the positive here and guess what, there are things. if you look at the bond market today, look at corporate bonds, look at high yield bonds, look at the muni market, look at mortgage-backed securities. those are areas, stuart, that have been behaving very very terribly in the last few weeks. they are being shored up today. they are performing okay, they are hanging in there, they are not being excessively volatile. there are spreads which is the difference between something that somebody will offer the price to you and something that somebody is willing to pay, those spreads are very tight today. that is a good sign that the bond market is trading very

healthily today. we need that to happen if equities are going to rally. so far today, given all the equity volatility, bonds look okay. stuart: all right. keith fitz, you come back in again. same question. is the bad news, these bad predictions about the future, outweighing the possible good news of fed action and congressional action? >> i think so, stuart. you know, this market is all about psychology. i think back to something that my great grandfather said at the end of world war i. i wasn't around then obviously but he was a fighter pilot. he said look, you just do what you have to do. you band together. the human spirit is resilient. we are tough, a lot smarter than everybody thinks. you've just got to start taking one step ahead and next thing you know, you will arrive at your destination. i remember those words, he's long since gone but that's how i choose to view today. i think the bond markets are an important indicator. the market is starting to sort this out. we learned to live with worse. we invent things and get through it. i think that will happen. it will suck in the meantime but

we will get there. stuart: all right. let me bring in matt shea, national retail federation president and ceo. matt, welcome to the program on a very difficult day for both the country and for the retail business. now, we heard a lot about how there would be 10,000 to 12,000 bricks and mortar stores closing this year. i put it to you, it's going to be a lot more than that, that this will be the end of the day, by the end of the year, a really big shrinkage in bricks and mortar retailing in this country. you're not going to go against me on this one, are you? >> well, stuart, i think the answer is if, if we fail to act, then we are going to have some pretty dire outcomes. that's been pointed out by economists, business leaders, retail industry leaders, many of the folks we have spoken to. but if we do the right thing now and give a bridge to these companies who, through no fault of their own are in these horrific, horrific positions and

they've got people they are going to have to lay off, they will have obligations they can't meet so remember, this is not like 2008 and '09 where there's some bad behavior and we have to rescue companies. these are businesses that were otherwise solvent, operating very efficiently, in many cases. all we need is a bridge. we need to get from here to the other side of this period of disruption. when we get there, we need to be ready to turn the economy on and put america back to work. the retail industry wants to do that. we can't do it without this bridge. stuart: are you going to recommend help, government help, for some retailers and not for others? because that would mean the government picks winners. you don't want that. >> no, stuart, i think we all have a philosophy that picking winners and losers is not a good thing in this market economy. we don't want the government to do that. i think if you look at the pieces of the senate proposal that leader mcconnell put out yesterday and that secretary mnuchin has been working on with

his team that's currently under discussion now, you see help in a couple areas. certainly you see it for consumers, who are the drivers of this economy. you see it for small businesses who create the vast majority of jobs in this economy. and in other distressed industries, the exchange stabilization fund, that money that is available to the treasury to use to create loans through the federal reserve and through the regional banks to provide liquidity to these businesses, that's incredibly important to many of the industries that are the major job creators in this country. so we think the combination of those three things as promised, we know it's under discussion but we are hopeful they will move quickly this morning. stuart: is it enough? this congressional package is $2 trillion. there may be more to come after that. is it enough? i ask the question because you've got these dire predictions about a depression scenario coming up. >> well, stuart, i think the failure here would be to aim too low. so obviously, there's a much

greater penalty on missing below the mark than overshooting the mark. there's nothing wrong with doing too much because we know what the scenarios look like potentially if we don't do enough now. so that's why we are encouraged that we have seen the senate leadership and the four major leaders on both sides of capitol hill working together to come up with something that's truly big that takes care of employees, that provides for payroll opportunities to keep those people attached to the work force which is absolutely critical, help small businesses and then creates an opportunity for these other businesses that don't fit in those categories of either small, independent or one of the regulated industries to take advantage of that equity fund that's going to be stood up by treasury through the fed, that exchange stabilization fund. but we need to do it quickly and i just heard in the last few minutes that the leadership is coming back together, that people's passions have cooled a bit overnight so maybe things are looking a little better they will get something moving here

quickly today. that's what we all need to see, as your previous guest said. we need to start taking steps forward and this would be a major step forward as we begin this recovery. stuart: can't wait. let's see if they can get it done. matt shan, thank you very much for joining us. we will see you again soon. all right. now, the markets, we are down 285 points on the dow industrials, down on the nasdaq and down on the s&p. despite what looks like promising news as the news backdrop, it's not that good on wall street. we are still looking for that point where we can bounce off. apparently not there yet. the dow is below 19,000. jeff hoffman is with us, global entrepreneurship network. jeff, look, we are trying to look beyond this. we are trying to figure out how things will look when we get through this. i put it to you that business travel is not going to recover to its old levels.

i think we are all getting used to elle the conferenteleconfere. we don't need to jump on a plane and fly to california. what do you say? >> i think that's absolutely true. so many businesses that never tried teleworking and never used a lot of this technology to do business without traveling are being forced to invest in and educate their work force on this technology to try working at home and they are finding out it's pretty efficient. i don't know if travel ever gets back to the level it was before this. stuart: travel in general, is that, what about leisure travel? what about that? >> well, leisure travel will. i don't think, i mean, you were showing stories earlier of people that are still on the beaches celebrating their spring break, out in the streets in new york, i don't think we are going to stop people as soon as they can from being back out and about. i think the cruise industry, like you said, has a big optics problem. it's going to take awhile for them to recover. i think leisure travel in

general, it will come back. it will come back as soon as people feel safe traveling again. stuart: am i right in saying that i can actually book a very very cheap vacation for the end of this year or early next year? can i do that? >> you can. and you can book one right now. it's really interesting that people today, the reason people aren't flying, i flew yesterday, airport, completely empty, airplane with 12 people on it. the fares are $38 around the country. the reason people aren't flying today, of course, is they are saying they don't want to be around other people but what i think is interesting is everybody is complaining about how crowded walmart, costco and the grocery store are. they are in a store where people are touching everything on the shelf, picking it up, putting it down and interacting with that. meanwhile, the airplane which is scrubbed down between every single flight and completely empty, there are $30 fares now, stuart.

so i think that you can book your vacation for the future. the problem of course is two things. people don't know when this is all going to end and when they can book. like you said, they could book for the end of the year. the other problem is, a lot of people out there aren't sure when they are going to be able to afford a vacation again. there's 57 million people in this country self-employed. that's a third of the working people and they are not included in the stimulus package that's in congress right now. those people are asking themselves how am i going to survive this? i'm not going to get any of that aid and if my business doesn't survive, they will not be thinking about a vacation any time soon. stuart: yeah, no industries have been hit more than the travel industry and that is a fact. thanks for joining us, sir. we will be seeing you again, i'm sure. come in, susan. i'm interested in boeing. you have news on them, please? susan: take a look at this outperformance in a down market. we are up 5% and this might help your portfolio, as you know. i would call it a bold upgrade

from goldman sachs, saying buy the stock because look, it's at $100. they have enough liquidity, they will not face a liquidity crunch which i found very surprising, and also, they will benefit from a travel boom once the coronavirus lifts. so are we going to get back to $300 level, maybe not. but i think there are calls out there still looking for 150, the most bearish analyst in terms of price targets. stuart: okay. that's boeing for you. yes, you are quite right, i do own a small sliver of it. i have lost my shirt. while we still have you before the end of the hour, i know that you are pretty much confined to staying at home. how are you coping with it? susan: well, i think i'm doing better than most, because first of all, i don't have children, i don't have a family to look over and if i did, i probably would feel a lot more stress. but when i look around my neighborhood and i live in the west village which has a lot of millenials and generation zers, there are still a lot of people walking around in that neighborhood despite the fact you heard from andrew cuomo and also the white house saying stay

inside. there have been lineups, i noticed, at a lot of grocery stores yesterday before the stay-at-home order went into effect in new york state. for the most part i would say streets have never been this empty in new york city. not hurricane sandy and 9/11, i assume it wasn't as maybe aementsas empty as this. you remember. stuart: i was in new york city very i was on sixth avenue and i couldn't see a car in either direction. there were virtually no people to be seen. i have never ever, seen new york city like that before. i'm coping okay with this homebound stuff because, all my children are grown, all my family is separated out. i'm not looking after elderly relatives but i'm getting a little stir crazy. i'm beginning to read books again which is something i should do more of. come on in lauren, please. you're having trouble at home with the two young kids and

everything but tell me about ge. lauren: ge aviation is caughting workforce in the unit by 10%. falling demand from the airlines is the reason. they predict some workers employed still in that unit won't have work for three months. so as we're looking for a timetable, when are we through this, that is one prediction from ge aviation. they canceled raises for workers. the ceo of the unit is take nothing salary. ge shares down 1%. stuart: ge back to $6 a share once again. ashley, if you're there. ashley: yes. stuart: same questions i asked everybody else. how are you coping being confined to your home? ashley: i went up to connecticut this weekend to see my wife who is in the connecticut countryside a little safer up there we're staying with friend, thank you, steven and susan.

i came back on the train yesterday. the trains are running helping essential people get to where they need to go. there were three people on the entire train that went into grand central. i got to new york yesterday, walking back to the apartment in midtown, there were quite a few people on the street. families were out with kids on their bikes. i thought this was really odd. central park, especially walking around the reservoir, still busy out there. people getting out, walking dogs, running, everything else. a theme around europe. parks are crowded. authorities are upset. in europe they're issuing fines to get people to go back inside. stuart: i've got a nice story about a third grade teacher on cape cod. all the children of course are out of school. they're all at home. they can't have playdates. the teacher, this is a third grade teacher, went to all of the houses of her children that were in her class and left a

chalk message on the driveway for each and every child. i thought that was a really nice move. it is exactly the kind of thing that reassures young children. really don't know what on earth is going on in circumstance like this. we thought bring you something nice from cape cod earlier over the weekend. you have it. coming up to the top of the hour. we'll reset for you. we have 15 seconds to go. then i'll tell you exactly where we are, where we're coming from as we enter the second hour of "varney & company" coming to you from remote locations. there you go, 10:00 on the button. markets have been open thirty minutes. we've been all over the place, up, down 500, now we're down about 180 points. that is true of the other markets as well except the nasdaq which has been firmer than the s&p and the dow. earlier this morning the federal reserve announcing a major expansion of its operations, its

lending facilities. they're trying to flood the credit market with money, cash, get money out there. that did not have major impact on the market over the long run. the market went up when we got the news. now it has come back down again. on capitol hill the senate failed to pass the stimulus package. the democrats largely blocked it, saying it helped corporations more than individuals. it was a tie vote, 47-47. five republican senators were in quarantine and could not take part in the vote. how about that? at noon today, the senate will meet over phase three stimulus package. that is the one they couldn't get -- passed last night. there will be more procedural motions at 12 noon. the market clearly wants that to happen, when it happens, maybe we'll see a bounce, who knows. right now we're waiting for it. at 5:30 eastern, later on today, we'll hear from the president. white house virus task force will hold another briefing. that is later on this afternoon.

coming up at 11:30 eastern on this program, labor secretary eugene scalia. i will ask him about the 30% unemployment prediction which we got from a fed governor in the second quarter, 30% unemployment. what does the labor secretary say about that? right now, the market is down but ed yardeni is with us, yardeni research founder. ed, welcome back to the program. good to see you. >> thank you very much. stuart: i'm assuming we will get this 2 trillion-dollar package. we've already gotten action from the fed. what effect, do you think will have on the market? will it put a floor underneath it, maybe? >> this reminds me of 2008 all over again, right? we had tarp one back then. we had several hundred billion dollars that were used to stimulate the economy. congress failed in the first round to get it done. the market took a huge dive. the market is, is waiting for, i

think the market would have taken a huge dive today because congress did not pass the bill. as you said the fed came in with qe to infiniti and beyond. that helped stablize the markets. stuart: we have a timeline problem, when will it be over? secretary mnuchin said 10 to 12 weeks of lockdown, severe restrictions on your activity. don't go out. governor cuomo said it is months. if it does go on that long, i can't imagine anything but serious damage to the economy and the market. what say you? >> right. i think if, if the first forecast is correct, we're talking about weeks, rather than months, weeks, i think we can tolerate. i think we won't do permanent damage to the economy, but months we're talking about very significant damage to the economy. a lot of social upset, chaos in

some areas. and, tremendous political partisanship. as we're seeing now. one of the reasons they can't seem to get this two trillion dollars through congress is because one side says it's too much weighted towards companies and the other side said no, it is fair. so congress is a problem but look, congress or the fed cannot make this virus go away. it is really i call it the great virus crisis. it is combination of a health crisis, economic crisis, financial crisis. first and foremost we have to get through the health crisis before anything else can be fixed. stuart: what do you think the economy looks like when this is all over? i don't know when it is going to be all over, when it is, what does the economy look like? >> well, you know, i would like to believe that, that the

scenarios where the virus problem abates by the summer and that we start to become more normal if you will by the economy around the summer. so i think we could have a very sharp, severe recession in second and third quarters. forecasts are all over the place. you can't put estimates on any of this. right now i'm looking for like a 10 to 15% drop at annual rate during the second quarter, maybe half that in the third quarter. then a really quite significant rebound. i mean, one thing is for sure. as we'll all get cabin fever. once we feel that it's safe to go back to work for the restaurants, for the malls, on the airlines, i think there is going to be a tremendous pent-up demand that will really take the economy going on sharp rebound basis. i don't know whether that will

have enough sustainability to continue the v-shaped recovery. unfortunately that is the optimist take scenario. the pessimistic scenario this thing could last for months, we do a lot of structural damage. that's a tough call, what you know, how we kind of clean up the mess and recover from that. stuart: ed, you talked about cabin fever. i'm asking all of my guests today who are confined to home how are you coping with it? >> well, my company, yardeni research, upgraded virtually since 2007. we're all used to working from home and communicating with each other. a lot of my accounts now are being forced to do the same and i'm doing fine. we're doing fine. we've actually got quite a few people here. i have a few kids and, so, we're doing fine but you know, the cabin fever already setting in. it has, we have only been in it

for a few days really. stuart: yeah. how will we feel after a few weeks? i shudder do think. ed yardeni. thank you as always. we got a problem surfacing, problem with electronic trading. i don't think that is going to help the market but susan, tell me all about it please. susan: as you know the new york stock exchange has gone to full electronic trading this week. today, because of the coronavirus was found, a few cases found at the new york stock exchange but some of the regular nyse traders are sending me some notes, sending complaints about the system right now. they're not seeing a fair and orderly market with lack of liquidity. the market-maker, modern day system, they're using, it is not being backed by liquidity backed by order books of traders. because of that they are not seeing fair and orderly trades, matching bids and sells together

in order to execute some of these trades. you wonder if this has impact on the markets today, whether the nyse, new york stock exchange and nasdaq over there as well. stuart: okay. that could be a problem. the market doesn't like problems with electronic trading of any kind. maybe that's a factor in today's market declines. it is not a huge decline. we're down 200 points. susan, back to you on that a little bit later but right now i've got lauren. cvs, cvs hiring big time. lauren: i have some good news for you. we're all going to the grocery store and the pharmacy. cvs sees that. they're adding 50,000 workers. they're also paying workers 500-dollar bonuses if you're there in the store, cleaning it, stocking the shelves or pharmacist. some of the workers they're hiring will deliver items. they will do customer service. they will be furloughed workers from some big hotel chains like

marriott and hilton. these are the times that we're in. cvs is spending to that. stuart, can i say one other then? you said you don't have children at home but there is such an importance of grandparents these days. so many of us can't see grandparents. i can't see my parents right now or i shouldn't see them. my kids miss grandparents. they play a vital part of our lives. picking kids up from school, playing with them. they're not in contact with a lot of families right now. i think that is a loss for a lot of people. stuart: let me add one thing on that. i have five grandchildren on cape cod who i believe are watching me right now. that is how we keep in touch as a grandparent with his grandchildren. i have two grandchildren in australia and two grand children in new zealand. i regret to say they cannot watch me right now. but we'll work on it. all right. thanks, lauren. moving on to ash. secretary ben carson, what is

this, a national moratorium on evictions and foreclosures. tell me more. ashley: he is considering it. that does not exist right now. he says you know, look, he maintains confidence, says mr. carson in property owners to extend what he calls forebearance to tenants to avoid creating more problems nationwide. but he says if it were necessity, he certainly would advocate that. he says really don't think that will be a problem because everyone is in this. we're all in it together but of course that is to be seen, is it not? if you don't have the rent, can't make the payment, what happens? well, mr. carson, of course believes that human nature is good enough that people will be forgiven. i can say in the united kingdom people are in fact being forgiven on three months worth of rent. three months worth of mortgage payments if they have been directly affected by coronavirus, they're stuck at home with no paycheck that has not been the case yet in the united states but certainly the,

mr. carson says he is open to it. so we shall see. stuart: got it, ash. thanks very much indeed. look obviously we're dealing with the virus problem which has an economic problem and a market problem. we got all of that. there is another crisis, ashley, that is the price of oil. it has crashed. this morning we got the price down to $22 per barrel. everybody knows a driller or a fracker in the united states doesn't make any money at $22 a barrel. that is where it is right now. come in kt mcfarland, former trump deputy national security advisor. kt, it is saudis and russians who are doing this, deliberately opening the spigots to drive the price down to really hurt our frackers and our drillers. i have to say, kt, at the moment, the saud are winning, that accurate? >> absolutely. the saudis decided never let a good crisis go to waste.

the saudis have wanted to get rid of the american fracking industry, the last few years, particularly it is dominating the oil and natural gas market. what are the saudis trying doing? they're trying to pump more oil, push price of oil and gas down, frackers, most who are pretty leveraged anyway, they will go out of business. saudis think great, we'll grab market share right now. we have deeper pockets. we can push the oil price down, $10 a barrel. drive all the other guys out of business. they need it 40, $45 a barrel. the dust settles, the crisis is over, the frackers will be out of business. i think it is a short-sighted strategy for the saudis because when this is over, the frackers still have fantastic assets. maybe some frackers go out of business but somebody will buy it up. we'll go right back i think to where we were. a lot of dislocation in between but i think fracking is here to

stay. stuart: i hope it is. hold on, kt. i want to go to susan. kt is foreign policy expert. i will join you again in just a moment but susan, news on the 2020 tokyo olympics. susan: july may seem far off but for the very first time we heard from tokyo prime minister shinzo abe, possibly postponing the 2020 games. we know likes of canada saying they will not send their team unless the games are postponed for a year's time. great britain, joining in, norway and other countries. as for the u.s., president trump tweeting out he will leave it to shinzo abe of japan to decide. they will follow their lead. there is a lot of growing criticism and complaints coming from the olympic athlete community saying actually our preparations and our training has already been impacted by the coronavirus. so is this a fair competition for everybody at their peak in july? stuart: yeah. fair point, susan.

let's get back to kt. i remember the 1964 olympics in japan. it was share coming out basically after the second world war. if these current olympics, 2020 olympics in tokyo were to be canceled or postponed that would be a real blow for japan's image, wouldn't it? >> well everybody's image. look the olympics have gone on through crisis after crisis. they went on even during wars. this is a symbol to the world. if we cancel the olympics because of this virus, cancel it, three, four, five, six months out, i think its mistake. figure it out. who knows, we may have a cure by then. are there options we do other than everybody all in japan at the same time? somehow it seems to me like a psychologically, real succumbing to the forces of nature, succumbing to defeat. i think it sends a bad message to everybody, not just japan but

everybody in the world. stuart: do you feel however, at this point it is almost inevitable? >> no. i, no, i really don't. keep training. maybe there is a way of doing this virtually. maybe a way having people compete in their own homes, in their own countries. i just think that something could be done. other than to say, okay, we give up. we've been defeated by this worldwide pandemic. therefore we're all going to just go hide. somehow, at least for the american people, i think we've got it in us to figure out and innovate. for example, i was supposed to be on a book tour this week or next couple weeks for my new book. i'm trying to figure out if i can do a virtual book tour, using zoom technology having a q&a system? look what you're doing. you're remote broadcasting. there are ways we americans can come together and figure out our way through this, whether it is

as technology way, whether it is a medical way, whether it's creating vaccines or viruses. we're the most innovative people in the world. let's just get at it. as trump says we're now going to work public/private partnerships. we're just going to figure it ought all out. stuart: i hope we do. kt, you're important to being here. thank you, kt. >> okay. stuart: what i hear about zillow suspending home buying. lauren, tell me. lauren: they do home buying and selling in 24 markets. they're suspending all of it, stuart. they cite two reasons. they say inventory was 1800 homes. last year was 1000 homes nor than that if you're sitting home you're not thinking about putting home on market. who will come and see it? that is number one. the ceo wants to preserve capital right now. those are the two reasons, this will be tough for the housing market. zillow suspending all home

purchases in the 24 markets they operate in? stuart: actually, lauren, that follows on from purely an neck debt call things i've -- anecdotal things i heard in the real estate market. in some cases i know someone went to contract to buy a place, then put down the deposit, walking away from the deposit, they are really worried about the distant future. i think that is happening quite a lot. the zillow move follows in line with that. lauren: i can tell you opposite story of that. i know someone trying to buy a home is to this day are in bidding war with other people. for those desperate, want to move now, whatever visibility they want to see on the future, let's get in right now. i think my story is more the exception. what you said is more the norm. stuart: okay. got it. let's go to susan.

what's this about mcdonald's, making hand sanitizer? susan: yes, they're making hand sanitizer available in the restaurants which i think is necessary if you're dealing with food and restaurants and of course things that you consume. mcdonald's closing many dine-in sections. closing all play areas. increasing cleanings in high traffic areas this is the trend we've seen among the restaurant group. for instance, starbucks announcing only operate drive-through. you can't go into the stores and carry, take out, take away. pledging 30 days of worker pay which is important in the restaurant industry. given they will probably be hit very hard with a lot of layoffs with ordinances across many states to shut bars and restaurants for who knows how long. stuart: i was confusing mcdonald's with distillers. we ran a story on friday a lot of distillers are making hand sanitizers. i got confused there. i do apologize to everybody

concerned. thanks, susan. mcdonald's is down two bucks. 146 is your price right there. we have the dow industrials, well, if i ever used the word stablized, stop me. there is no such thing as stability in the market. it is down and up. right now the dow is down 270. the nasdaq is eking out a very small gain. the s&p 500 is on a drop of 1.4%. can you show me big techs, please? that is where so much of the action is. there is a great deal of liquidity in the big techs. they are so up these companies, buy and sell at a moment's notice. i see the nasdaq composite down a fraction. that implies to me technology is not doing as badly as other sections of the market. can you get that up, please? show me big techs, i want apple, microsoft and amazon, all the rest of them. yeah, you got it. there you have it, microsoft is up, look at that, it is up at

138. microsoft 138, how about that? amazon is up but 1854. amazon has done better than almost all other big techs in this downturn. facebook is back to 150 bucks. it is up about 27 cents. i've got google down significantly, a 35-dollar drop there, back to 1031. apple at $220 per share. apple, 220, down eight. i'm not sure if there is specific news on apple but that is certainly beaten, beaten way down. i keep saying this. four weeks ago apple was 330. now, late march, 220. change the subject and bring in dr. kevin tracy, feinstein institutes for medical research. doctor, your institute is launching three large clinical trials. i believe they are trials of regeneron and gilead sciences

treatments. three trials, am i right you're doing this in four days? that is seems remarkably fast, doctor? >> thank you, stuart, thanks for having me on. last week we recognized the need to provide therapies for our patients who were very sick in the hospital with covid-19. and we decided to identify potential drugs that were being developed by as you mentioned regeneron and gilead and stand up clinical trial operations so we would have something to offer our patients who are critically ill. so that is exactly what we did last week. i should say, stuart -- stuart: so you found patients, i'm saying, doctor, you found patients who are positive covid-19 and you're now trying them out on these drugs from regeneron and gilead sciences. now -- >> yes. stuart: you're doing this all together in four days. how long will it take before you

get any results from these trials? >> the trial results will be rolling. they will come in in the next weeks. before you start a trial like this the trial designers in collaboration with the clinicians and biostatisticians create statistical models where you stop and look at the data and make decisions. trials like this can show that there is a benefit possibly or it can actually show sometimes there is a toxicity and you don't know until you open the data and look at it. i should say the trials we're doing as part of the feinstein institutes are the home for research for northwell health. northwell health is the largest health care provider in new york city and state. we have 23 hospitals and hundreds of outpatient facilities. we have dozens upon dozens of patients across the range of disease severity, from mild disease to very serious disease. these first trials that we opened with regeneron and gilead

are for the sickest of the sick patients in the hospital already. stuart: okay, so if the trials are positive, if you find the drugs from regeneron and gilead are positive and they work, i mean, if, i know that's very, very big if, but you could, you could be in a position to say, this works, use it, right? >> that is, that is the hope and goal of the trial. it is very important to point out that these trials are carefully overseen by the fda a, by the corporate sponsors and by physicians an clinical trials doing the actual work and to promise an answer at this point is premature and any solution that's going to come for this illness for the patients mildly ill or critically ill will come from a tremendous collaboration between those three stakeholders and the patients. the fda guidelines for how to do these trials mandate as specific

amount of time and time matters. the statistical models mandate how the data can be looked at, how judgments can be made about success or not in the trials. all this will be playing out in weeks, not years. i think it is also important for people to understand that this is something we can do now for our patients who are very ill. what has to come next of course, is the development of a vaccine over the next year or two, which will prevent people who haven't become ill from getting ill. those are separate things. what i'm focusing on here with my colleagues now, identifying things we can do to treat people who are sick today. stuart: understood. dr. kevin tracy, much obliged coming on the show today. we appreciate the speed which you're acting here. dr. tracy, we appreciate it. come in dr. kolenko, corvis health ceo. you heard what dr. tracy had to

say. a you're smiling this is a good thing, isn't it? >> it is. we definitely need more trials like this. trials offer three things to patients. it offers emerging treatment which might help. the second it provides data, what is the proper dose, how long should the treatment be, what are the potential side-effects. third they provide people hope which all folks could use right now. stuart: as a doctor can you reliably speed up trials? >> you know, whenever you speed something up there is always risk there will be more problems. given this is a national emergency, in fact, global emergency, i think it is worth of the risk. as dr. tracy mentioned the trial is overseen by physicians, by the fda, by the manufacturers and every patient or their representative is giving consent. so no one is receiving those treatments without their consent. stuart: dough we now have a

full-court press from private enterprise to get a move on with this thing and is the fda to some degree relaxing the rules to make speed much more important and possible? >> i think the fda, fda is doing what it needs to do. i think we probably could bring more of the private sector in and work on more potential therapies because i would like to see these emerging treatments extended to patients who aren't critically ill. i had a videoconference with icu doctors in wuhan today and they were emphasizing once someone is to the point they're on a ventilator, already considerable lung damage has been done. if we push the treatments out to people who aren't as sick, that would be quite valuable. the issue, do we have enough of these treatments and can we persuade the fda is worth of the risk giving emerging treatments to people who are not critically ill? give an example, bayer donated three million doses of

chloroquine to the u.s. that is enough to treat 300,000 people given a five-day course. we need as a country making a decision who will have access to this medication. it is also important to know we have three emerging treatments that tackle the virus at different parts of its life cycle. chloroquine prevents the virus from getting into human sells. remdesivir prevents it from replicating, antibodies which is one dr. tracy is testing the storm that kills people in the very late phases of the disease. stuart: last one, doctor, i hear telemedicine is really taking off. is it widely available? >> it is. most people can get a telemedicine consult fore25 to $50. so it is available. there are limitations what can be done via telemedicine. these physicians are learning

how to properly diagnose and treat via telemedicine. it is a global effort. the world economic forum just today circulate ad list of companies globally that were providing telemedicine. there are hundreds on the list. stuart: doctor, if you would, one more if i may, we keep hearing about bending the curve, when the number of new cases stops rising, plateaus, starts to fall. can you give us a time frame when we might bend the curve? >> a lot of it is depends on how the social distancing was. china was able to bend the curve in about two months. hopefully we will as well. we'll need to watch italy very closely. they have been under lockdown in certain areas for about two weeks. we know it can be from seven to, 10, even 14 days when you're infected and when you get sick. of course it takes a certain number of days to get critically ill. we can expect hopefully in a

week or two to see a change in italy as well. stuart: may i ask if you're homebound? are you staying inside, staying at home, and if so, have you got cabin fever, if so, how are you dealing with it? >> so i only leave to go to the hospital or make essential trips but we have our groceries brought in. i actually often work from home. so it is not that much of an issue for me but what i am concerned about, my parents, who are in their 80s and trying to keep them protected. i think that is on a lot of people's minds, taking care of the seniors. stuart: dr. kate tulenko, thanks very much for joining us. appreciate it. thank you, ma'am. let's get back to our reporters who will tell us about various aspects of this virus impact. officers of all at&t waving fees, lauren. lauren: talk about cabin fever? you're watching things on phone.

at&t is waving overage fees back to last week, 13th of march and for last two months. they will not terminate your bill if you are affected by coronavirus or a residential or small business customer. you have a grace period. that is what at&t is doing. talk about t-mobile. starting tomorrow, the ad-free, premium youtube, you can get two months of that for free. and on wednesday they're launching a cheaper plan which is $15 a month. stuart: got it. almost all of it. susan, tell me about apple. we saw the stock go down to 220. maybe 222 now but it is way down. any reason for that? susan: 220 we drop below the trillion dollar club for apple. the first to reach that mark of all companies here in the u.s. in august of 2018. 220 hit that mark. i think it went below 220. it went below 218 at one point. that meant it lost its trillion

dollar market cap crown. making microsoft only four comma club left at this point. apple restarted the business in china. i have seen very yos all over the weekend, lineups in beijing apple stores as they open all 42 of them. apple is down 100 bucks. 110 bucks past three weeks, 22 trading sessions. they're probably most leveraged to china. they make more than 50% of the iphones, assemble them in the country. a fifth of sales coming from the country. they might be the first one to lead out of these losses. china is coming out of the coronavirus. looks like business is open. apple limiting customers to only buying one iphone on line until they get the production lines up and running just like old times. stuart: thank you, susan. clearly we are in an economic crisis. i think that is the right word to use. we're moving towards what is

likely to be a very severe recession at the least. next question, are we moving towards a financial crisis, a credit crunch? who better to bring in on that one that my old friend mark grant, riley fbr with us this morning on this monday. are we heading towards or are we in a financial crisis, mark? >> stuart, we're in, not heading towards, in a financial crisis. both equities and debt markets we've seen even aaa bonds for instance, clos that were rated aaa, at the end of december, they were 125 over treasurys. couple weeks ago they were 2.25, 2.50 over treasurys. now they are 550 to 570 over treasurys. we're seeing this all across the board. i can tell you with the number of big institutions that i do business with, that i speak with, it is a, are collecting cash just like individuals are.

when you get past that point, you can make some determination about when we're going to get towards the other side of this. you kind of leg in a little money here in either equities or debt but without any question, stuart, my mind, we're in a financial crisis is not comable to the 08-09 crisis, it is not comparable to the great depression. we've never seen a financial crisis caused by a medical crisis which is where we are now. stuart: will it, will it work when the fed buys various bonds, buys various securities, not equities i know that but in the credit market they're buying injecting a great deal of money, literally trillions of dollars in, will it work? >> let me answer it this way for you, stuart. when the ecb came in, did the same kind of thing, mario draghi's whatever it takes

comment it, was a huge move because we weren't in this financial crisis. the fed has come in, to their credit, i think rightly, number of people at the fed get my commentary out of the box every day. i think they have made the right decision. there are a couple of huge issues here. one is they're talking about a large amount of money. if you head up towards two trillion dollars, stuart that is 10% of the gdp of the entire united states of america. two, they're talking about buying corporate bond. they gave the criteria for them this morning. it will certainly help but the market is not responding well, which tells me there is still a lot of room here where people and institutions, insurance companies want to raise cash. three, they're getting to a very serious problem in number of industries. i had a chat on friday with a guy who runs investment fund of a largest insurance companies of the united states, a guy that was on the phone with us is on

the board of any number of national restaurant chains, he thinks that about half the restaurant chains in the united states are likely to have to reorganize, go bust. i see same issue in hotels. i see the same issue to some extent in airlines. certainly cruise lines. and then even property casualty companies which nobody's touched on that have business interruption insurance could end up in huge trouble. it is a help but it is certainly not going to fix anything in the short term in my opinion. stuart: the underlying problem is, surely, the government is ordering the shutdown of the economy. because of the virus, i got that, to fight the virus, you shut down the economy but that is the underlying problem, isn't it? and it doesn't go away until restrictions on freedom of movement, association, and work

are lifted? >> well they're unlikely to be lifted. friend of mine is the chief medical officer for operations at one of the most significant hospital groups in the country. i was talking with him yesterday. he said, mark, there is stuff in the wind, this is his opinion, there is stuff in the wind but there is nothing on the table. so you have got a medical crisis driving a financial crisis and there is only so much the government can do. you know, when you look at 09-09 crisis or even great depression or '87 financial crisis. the government could throw up money, fed can throw up money, they can do something. this is whole other issue we haven't had to deal with in our lifetimes and you have to take a very critical view. you have to be protective of your assets. you have got to see, if you know, the famous rothschild comment when there is blood on

the streets then you buy, you have to see if you have extra money, buy a closed end fund yielding 10% two weeks ago and is yielding 25% today, and it is paying monthly, well, you know, a little extra dough maybe makes some sense you have a timeline to do some of that. we're seeing a disruption. i know you concentrate more on the equity markets but there is equal disruption, stuart in the credit markets in what's kind of capital is available. stuart: yeah. solid analysis from my friend mark grant. thank you as always for being with us, mark. we'll see you again real soon. >> thank you, stuart. yes, sir. stuart: dow industrials down 300 points. you see the biotech stocks on the left there, all of them on the downside, not a huge drop but on the downside. eli lilly, what are they doing, lauren? lauren: all the attention right now is on treating, a test and a vaccine for coronavirus.

so all of their other trials, they are not accepting new patients, they're pausing some of them. so workers can work on treatments for coronavirus, the stock is up half of 1% today. i know you heard of this point much care test that will be shipping next week. it is from a california company. they will use that to start at hospitals. the reason they're going to be using that, you can know in 45 minutes if this person is in infected with the coronavirus. why that is good, a, you get information fast but we don't have the protective gear in hospitals. de blasio said in matter of 10 days we won't have the gear we need. hospitals can make sure they use the gear for when they really need it for patients who are indeed affected by coronavirus. stuart: got it. ha minute test, results in 45 minutes that would clearly help. thanks very much, lauren.

susan you've been talking about the possibility of olympics being postponed. susan: norway, slovenia, great britain, they might want to pull out of the 2020 tokyo olympics, postpone it to 2021 to make sure the coronavirus is contained and athletes have the proper time to prepare and get in peak form. more and more companies jumping on board. president trump saying not yet. i want to leave it up to tokyo prime minister and japan's prime minister, shinzo abe saying leave it up to them what they are doing and a lot of companies are siding with japan. stuart: it looks dicey. susan: can you imagine summer games in owed year of 2021? is it seems not be right to me. stuart: yes, it is classically

unusual situation but the blow, if the olympics were not to take place would be i think, very significant. it would bring home to us the significance of this virus around the world. ashley, come in please. you got news on. virus elsewhere in the world. what is your news, please? ashley: how on earth could you bring the world's best athletes together in one place to compete together any just think at this point it is fantasy to think this can go through. yes, it's sad but i think it is reality. that for sure. anything else going around world, president of tunisia, deemployed the army, military, to the streets, to make sure people respect the coronavirus lockdown. we also have hungary looking now for a total shutdown. also news out of the uk, that the uk may by the end of the week require a complete lockdown. these are very, very strong

measures. we have over 80 million people i believe in the u.s. now under a virtual lockdown but these are entire countries. we know italy has brought in military in the northern regions of that country to enforce the people to stay in their homes. be interesting to see whether we see more of that because, as we talked about earlier in the show, stu. there are people, especially the youngsters, i was reading in berlin, they had corona parties in parks in berlin this weekend. of course that was not what the authorities wanted. france is using drones to patrol streets and parks to see if anyone is congregating and then fining people. belgium fined more than 500 people this weekend for being in groups that were not authorized by the government. so it is a real battle to get people to adhere to these rules, stu. especially the youngsters. but i think, and hope, that it is starting to get through. stuart: well, let me pick up on that because the mayor of miami

just banned the, closed the marinas and he closed down boating, essentially because people were holding parties on sandbars around florida. he didn't like that. he shut that down. but ashley, do you think we'll reach the point, like in belgium, where people are fined for not adhering to the social distancing rules? ashley: yes. stuart: 500 people in belgium, can you see it happening here? ashley: the french fine is not cheap. it is about 300 u.s. dollars if not more if you flagrantly ignore the rules. i think if we continue to see people turn up in parks and throw parties and that kind of thing, i could see them actually facing some sort of a consequence. it is just selfish and it is uncalled for and they need to take the rules, seriously. if they don't, then there has to be some sort of a consequence. maybe fines is it. i'm not sure. stuart: we're going down that

road. we shall see. dow industrials down 240. nasdaq is little changed. s&p is down. i should not use the word stability because there is nothing stable about this market but we've been down about 200 points for the dow industrials for all of 15 minutes. that qualifies as a degree of stability. i want to bring in ohio congressman anthony gonzalez. mr. congressman, you i believe, want increased federal funding to boost unemployment insurance. i think that is where you're coming from. so you want the feds to pay what is often a state responsibility, correct? >> well there is both federal and state have a responsibility here. the way i think about this, we need to shore up the base of the american pyramid. that is working families, that is small business, those recently unemployed. goldman sachs projected over two million unemployment claims last week. if you do that on five-day

basis, that is 400,000 people a day. we need to do it and need to do it quickly. we cannot wait. we can't wait a single day. every day business owners are cutting employees left and right because they're trying to conserve cash. we have to move now. stuart: would raising the level of unemployment benefits, would that work? or would it be better to send checks out as as proposed a check in april, a check in may? or a payroll check holiday? you think unemployment insurance is best way to get more money to people quickly. >> i think it will be all of the above. what you said is on the table as part of the bill. unemployment insurance is targeted way, whatever we go to checks in the mail, whatever we end up distributing it, i'm fine with that as well. at the end of the day we have to shore up the base of the american pyramid. people are coming together. they are doing exactly what we

asked them to do. staying indoors, taking care of community. doing food pantries, doing everything they can. congress need to reflect that. the senate needs to get the bill done. we cannot wait. the american people are desperate for our help. every single second we wait, more people are getting laid off in droves. it is irresponsible. stuart: is there any doubt in your mind that by the end of say today, latest tomorrow, by end of tomorrow, we will have a 2 trillion-dollar rescue package through the senate, signed, sealed delivered? any doubt in your mind? >> yeah, because, what we saw last night. my hope is that they will put all the partisan differences aside and actually solve the problem but until we see it, i'm going to see it to believe it kind of guy. stuart: okay, congressman. i want to thank you very much for joining us. i have to move on real fast. i have with me rob seshin, ubs global management kind of guy.

rob are you there? i think you are. >> i am. stuart: okay. i am surprised with the fed taking quite dramatic action this morning and the promise of at least two trillion dollars worth of rescue plan imminent, i'm surprised that the market is down. what am i missing? >> i think you need corroboration on a number of fronts, stuart. there is a lot of green shoots to your point. the fed and treasury, there is the old adage, don't fight the fed and this is infinite program. this is as much as needed, as much as we've ever seen. so that is certainly a positive. and you have certain other positives in state and local governments. you know, the health care sector from an infrastructure standpoint, the pace to treatment standpoint is certainly all hands on deck. private sector trying to help. i think washington just from an

observation standpoint, they need to come together. we need to end some of the, we need to have some bipartisan support for this. i think once we get it, that might be the last thing to fall into place to allow markets to start to discount beyond what we're seeing and markets are a forward discounting mechanism so you get everything in place and i think the news flow starts to pivot, you're going to see the light at the end of the tunnel. you will start to see investors maybe finding a base here. i would argue, given what happened last night, that the markets are behaving remarkably well. stuart: so, if we get this thing done, the fed's acted, we get congress to act, you think there might be a bounce for this market? >> yeah, i think, a lot of it has to do with the slower move of uncertainty, or

desensitizization of the reality what is out there. those happen a lot. there is a first for everything and certainly the first medical crisis that is creating an economic fear-based run on the economy. and at some point the panic, i think we're there, the panic has become greater than the problem and i think investors did the natural thing. investors, every business, frankly did the natural thing. it's human nature to expect the worst, insulate themselves from that possibility, both personal and business. that is not irrational. that's why everything got so quickly priced in as, as, investors, people, an businesses came to the notion that we've got to prepare for this. so as professional investors we're trying to do is take advantage of what we can. and that is protect those that

need to play defense. that is take -- where appropriate, upgrade quality of people's portfolios, prepare for what we think is most likely outcome, which is social distancing and mobilization work and the case curve bends more quickly than everybody expects. that said, if this lasts too long and why we need decisive action, no economy can withstand a go to zero revenue environment for very long. what end up happening is the secondary effects of impacting your ability to produce gdp starts to set in. that can be scary. i'm more optimistic. i think we're, we should be looking for opportunities. stuart: okay. rob i have to cut you off there. i have to move on, rob, but i like the sound of what you're

saying, maybe we're going to bounce at some point, get things done. rob from ubs global management and we appreciate it. i have with me stacy cunningham, nyse president. stacy we're told there is a problem with electronic trading on the new york stock exchange because you have now gone away from floor traders. you've gone electronic. we're told electronic trading may be having a couple problems is that accurate. >> trading is operating normally here at the new york stock exchange today. so each much our market makers on the trading floor have the ability to open and close stocks remotely and they're doing that today here at the new york stock exchange. stuart: was there any hiccup to get things going? >> not that i'm aware of, no. everything continued to operate. stocks opened shortly after 9:30. we continue to operate electronically. most trade something done electronically each day. each of the market makers on the floor as well as our traders

have the ability to use algorithms to monitor their trading throughout the day and the human being is applying judgment to at just the algorithms as necessary. that is what is happening here at the new york stock exchange and trading is continuing normally. stuart: will you ever go back to floor traders? >> absolutely. the floor trading model provides another level of service to issuers and investors. much like businesses providing a scaled down model during this time of stress. that is what we're doing. as soon as we go back to full and complete offering, fill issue to the servicers, we'll do that. it reduces volatility in trading. it narrows the difference between the best prices in the market so that investors are getting better prices t saves them money each day. so we will do that when we can do it safely this is precaution we've taken in place, just to limit the overall spread of the virus as some of us are doing. stuart: okay. stacy cunningham at new york

stock exchange. thank you very much indeed for joining us. thank you. we're following a crackdown across many states, stay at home orders. ash, have we got another state ordering stay at home? ashley: yes we do, stu. the state of massachusetts announcing a stay at home order that will stay in effect through april 7th. so what is the date today? today is, let me see. it is march the 23rd. we're talking two weeks in the state of massachusetts. we're seeing this more and more, especially in states with more, you know, larger cities, more densely populated but that's the latest, massachusetts now, stay at home. stuart: it seems like, ash, i haven't kept track of every single state ordering stay at home, but it seems like spreading out to the almost the entire country? ashley: it is. there are states out there, montanas, north and south dakota

s, certainly on west coast, seeing knit california, new york, we're seeing it. but it is something picking up momentum across the country. in those places that already seen the virus expand at quite an alarming rate. stuart: i find it fascinating to see how people deal with it. we're in the very, very early stages being restricted to our own homes. i wonder how we'll feel, ash, in two weeks, three weeks if this continues. americans like to be out and about. you know, they do. ashley: yes, they are can-do people, very positive. want to take action. it will be incredibly frustrating. it is hard to keep your sanity, you know. you get a little bit of cabin fever. that is really an understatement. it is, it is frustrating and just imagine those people, stu, that are at home, and have no paycheck and have lost their job, wondering where that next paycheck is going to come from?

the pressure that involves, especially with family with kids. it is incredibly stressful. no end in sight for now. stuart: well-said. it is incredibly stressful. no job, no paycheck. the kids are at home. you're locked inside of your doors, that is not a very easy situation to be in. our hearts go out to everybody in this situation. there are probably 80 million americans who are in that situation. the number is growing. dow industrials down nearly 400 points. waiting i think for this huge rescue package to go through congress. it has been promised. it has not been delivered. when it is delivered, maybe we'll see a bounce but we're waiting for that rescue plan to come through. don blamer with us, former naval intelligence officer and bush administration official. the u.s. will deploy the hospital ships, one to california, one to new york. i understand the hospital ship

going to california is there, but what about the one that is coming to new york. is it going to take weeks to get here, don? >> good morning, stuart. both of these ships when they're sitting in harbor only staff about 65 to 70 personnel. the huge issue, yes there is some maintenance issues, but primary thing here is getting the 1200 medical personnel to the ships and own board. if you're going to do that, tough take those personnel away from military hospitals. to do that, then you're decreasing the ability of those hospitals to perform their normal routine jobs as well as dealing with the virus that requires mobilizing reservists and other personnel. you have a process that takes place. it is a very, you know, quick, response, as the president and administration has done but keep in mind this is not the only response. we're working with or they're working with, looking dormitories, hotels, how those support going along with the army corps of engineers. that is one step to gift

american people hope that this government is working. stuart: there is some talk of converting cruise ships to become hospital ships. anything on that? >> you know, that i haven't heard of much, stuart. right now i think what they want to do is what is land-based. the hospital ships are prequiped for trauma patients. you can move those immediate care, trauma cases from the hospitals, freeing up beds. i think the most easy thing to do, look at dormitories, hotels land based. easy access where medical supplies can be given to them, allow for the circumstances to stuart: so the help is on its way. don, thanks very much for joining us on an important subject. thank you, sir. now, the election, the campaign, the democrats' presidential campaign, very much sidelined by all of this. all attention of course is on the virus and the stay-at-home orders. but lauren, you've got a statement from senator klobuchar

today? lauren: her husband john has been diagnosed positive with coronavirus. here were his symptoms. he had a temperature, was coughing up blood. he does have pneumonia and is on oxygen but not a ventilator. as for amy klobuchar, she has not been with her husband for two weeks so she does not need to self-quarantine. they have been in different states. she will continue her work in the senate and that's where this is important, because she is working in the senate to get that fiscal stimulus, to get that money to the american people because we need it now, but the human side of this story is that she said look, i'm telling you this because we are all going through this. i'm going through this in my family, too. she can't be at her husband's bedside right now. stuart: did you say that it is her husband who is suffering mightily from the virus? lauren: her husband john is in the husband. he's tested positive for the coronavirus. when he found out, when he started feeling symptoms, he

immediately self-quarantined himself. then he got the test, tested positive, is in the hospital. stuart: okay. and his wife amy klobuchar is not going to be with him. she will be casting her vote in the senate, correct? lauren: correct. she has not been with him for that incubation period of up to 14 days so she doesn't have a need to self-quarantine herself because they haven't been around each other. stuart: i understand. okay. lauren, thanks very much indeed. steve d' angelo is with us, chairman of harborside, emeritus chairman. san francisco bay area briefly shut down cannabis dispensaries. you are involved in that. then they reopened. tell me the current situation. i think demand for weed is very strong. is it not? >> well, yes, it is. sales at our shops are up about 25%. that's common throughout the state.

cannabis dispensaries and the entire cannabis supply chain in california have now been declared essential businesses so we will be allowed to remain open normal hours, normal days. stuart: and am i right in saying that one day recently was your best day ever? >> we have been so busy trying to serve people, i'm not sure that i can confirm that for you. but i can tell you that there are a lot, there are millions of californians who depend on cannabis as a first line of medical defense. and it helps them avoid going to the doctor, to the pharmacy, to the hospital. so the cannabis is helping alleviate demand on the rest of the medical situation, in addition to providing some serenity, some calmness, some opportunity for reflection in these troubling times. stuart: are the stores open and if they are, are you observing

social distancing in some way? >> yes, we have curbside pickup available at all of our stores. we encourage patients to use that service and just go online, shop harborside.com and place an order. if they need to come into the shop, we are maintaining a limited capacity inside our stores so that we can keep the six and hopefully more than six-foot distance between all human beings. stuart: thanks very much for joining us. we appreciate it. we do. all right. it is precisely 11:00. 11:00 eastern, that is. we have our eyes on two things this morning. the markets, yes, of course, and capitol hill. congress is trying to work out that $2 trillion stimulus package. we are told that around noon, about an hour from now, they will vote to reconsider the legislation. it was stalled last night. they will reconsider it today. there is enormous hostility to

congress because they can't get this thing done and the market is way, way down. some senate republicans are under quarantine, five of them, to be precise. so now they barely have the majority. five senators quarantined, republicans can't vote, that affected the vote last night. it was a tie, 47-47. they will try again at noon today. let's see what happens. to the white house. we will hear from the president and the virus task force. that will be around 5:30 eastern time this afternoon. that will come to us directly from the white house. all right. now let's get to the markets. first of all, we will check the ten-year treasury yield. where is that as we speak? .71%. look at that move. down 14 basis points. that may not mean that much to those who are not in the bond market but to bond people, that is enormous. that is a vast flow of money into the safety of treasuries which raises the price and

lowers the yield. .71%. gold having a nice day. it is of course to some degree a flight to safety and it's up nearly 50 bucks an ounce this morning at $1538. the price of oil continues to be a real problem for our drillers and frackers. we are down in the low 20s right now, $22 to be precise. no sign of any gain, no sign of the saudis or russians will close the spigots, restricting supply. they are trying to beat our frackers and drillers and they are winning at the moment, because we are down at $22 a barrel. can't make a profit in america drilling at that price. by the way, at 11:30 eastern time, about a half hour from now, labor secretary eugene scalia will join us. i will ask him about the 30% unemployment prediction which came from a fed governor earlier today. 30% unemployment in the second quarter. what will the labor secretary have to say about that? now, more on this concept of

liquidity in the markets. what's the late news, susan? susan: i think we saw the federal reserve today saying no limits when it comes to quantitative easing and getting the printing presses going, meaning underwriting primary, secondary and even buying commercial mortgage bonds as well, something we didn't even see during 2008. is this enough to alleviate the markets, no, because we saw the fastest 30% decline in history, just 22 trading sessions was all it took and i think the markets right now are looking for something from washington, d.c. and the delay in the stimulus package is really hurting sentiment. they are looking for something closer to $2 trillion and i think the signal is being sent to d.c. to all the lawmakers, let's get this going. it has to be a two-pronged attack. it can't just be the federal reserve printing money. it has to also be fiscal stimulus in the form of forgiveness and loans and checks into the pockets of the average person. stuart: would you agree with this, the market down 500 points on the dow industrials, is sending a powerful message to

congress, get it done, because we on wall street are in trouble? susan: we saw this in 2008 with the first failure to pass t.a.r.p. and that $700 billion buy-back program, and this time around, you see the market reaction once again. there is no time at this point either to contain the coronavirus and backstop the economy. with massachusetts shutting down, that's 50% of the u.s. economy now in lockdown and yes, you are crushing the u.s. economy and declining the curve and the economy will be crushed without the help. stuart: well said. 50% of the u.s. population under some kind of lockdown stay-at-home order. that means delivery services, very very important. come in, please, lauren. you have news on the delivery service called waiter, i think. lauren: waiter is surging big-time. they do have a contact list, same day on-demand food delivery service and they are rolling this out to start in louisiana. as you know, that state with these lockdown orders as well,

837 infections in louisiana. if we put up the price of waiter, it's a cheap stock but a huge percentage price surge because they are responding to what people need. i need it now or as fast as possible and get it to me without touching me, quite frankly. stuart: exactly. without touching me. that's right. this day and age, that's exactly what it's all about. don't touch me, get away. all right. look who's here now. elizabeth macdonald, host of "the evening edit." welcome to the program this monday morning. i've got to say i'm surprised, we've got the fed throwing everything but the kitchen sink straight into the credit market. we've got congress promising a $2 trillion package and i have no doubt that it will be delivered. i'm sure it will be delivered. why is the market down so much? any good ideas? liz: i think it is because of the congressional response. i think there's disappointment in the markets, just talking to

the trading desks right now. three things need to work. it needs to be the federal reserve, the fiscal response and also when will we see the cases plateau and go down. right now, just one thing, the trading desk feels is working, the central bank response. you're right, they are throwing everything including the kitchen sink because they are just reading through what the special purpose vehicle, the off-balance sheet at the federal reserve. for the first time they are talking about investing in corporate bond etfs. exchange traded funds, the federal reserve could start taking positions in corporate bonds so that's an interesting development, too. there is news coming out of science. we are following the science here. we now are tracking more than 74 different drugs to test. there's rapid-speed calculations going on right now at the department of energy with the supercomputer summit, ibm. they are tracking now it looks

like two dozen are now under serious investigation. what they are doing is 200 quadrillion calculations per second on 8,000 drug compounds. that's good news to see what's happening there. i think what the markets are telling you right now is they want to see d.c. stop politicizing everything, stop the political attacks, think forward, go forward and get a solution out there. stuart: i think you're right. i think you're exactly right. get on with it, congress. what's holding you up. ashley, come in, please. you have news from new york governor cuomo, testing in new york state? ashley: part of his daily briefing to get us up to speed on what's going on in new york. he says they are testing more than 16,000 people per day in new york and will increase the number of testing sites so they hope to push that news higher. also, they say the number of cases, though, continues to rise. they have to reduce the rate of the spread, says the governor. he says there's a lack of intensive care beds, that is the greatest concern.

then he talked about he's also ordered hospitals to increase their capacity by 50%. that's going to be tough. he says there are a lack of supplies and he finds himself in bidding wars and the sharing of resources with other states. he says that should never happen. he's also invoking the federal government that he says has to move with the defense production act, in other words, in times almost at wartime, you have businesses change what they're doing and start producing those things that are most needed, i.e., clothing, masks, gloves, ventilators and so on. that's what he's saying. he says 1,000 federal beds will now be set up at the javitz center in new york city, the big convention center on the west side. it's a huge space. that will now have 1,000 beds inside. at the end of last week we also understood the national guard would be brought in to help with

that process. again, the cases continue to rise and trying desperately to get the word out, stay inside to help prevent that spread. stuart: pound the table, ash, because i think that's what a lot of people are saying. stay inside. do the right thing here. scott walker is with us, former wisconsin governor and young americas foundation guy. sir, you are asking the mortgage companies, mortgage lenders, to defer mortgage payments for up to six months. you are asking them to do this. is that correct? >> that's exactly right. first, i should just echo what you just said. most important thing we can do is stay at home. don't go out with others. we got to get the market on the right track. the best thing we can do long-term is make sure we lower the amount of people who are infected so stay at home. but after we win this war against the coronavirus, obviously the economy is going to be a major, major concern all

across the country, really around the world and for a lot of americans, their number one concern will be at that point once we get past this health and safety risk is how do i pay the bills. top of the list for most americans is their mortgage. mortgages can be deferred, historically for things like if someone is deployed in the military or maybe the death of head of household. i'm asking the banks, credit unions and mortgage bankers to announce publicly that they are going to allow deferrals of mortgages for up to six months. doesn't mean they write it off. it means they just add six months on to the end of that period. if you got a 15 year mortgage, you add six more months on the end but you just don't have to pay it for the next few months. stuart: that would mean they don't have money coming in for six months. what do they do about that? no money coming in, that's a problem, surely. do you expect the feds to come in and give them that money or -- >> i think a combination of things.

financial institutions have reserves and so i think it would be allowing that, people like myself that are able to make those payments can do so but in the past, historically we have done it in very narrow circumstances. i like the idea of up to six months. maybe it's not one of our banks, associated bank here in wisconsin announced deferrals of up to three months. i think that's a great start because there's going to be a lot of americans who just don't have any income coming in, at least for this month if not for the foreseeable future, and this would be a way, again, not to write the loan off but to defer those payments into the future. i think with the assets on hand and working with the fed, there's a way this can be done and it would add incredible peace of mind. it does not require a vote. it does not require action by the government. but it is something that could help the economy going and the money people do bring in to the economy, buying things at restaurants and small businesses and other places that will need

our help over the coming months. stuart: what response have you gotten to your appeal? >> well, the good news is we have already seen a number of financial institutions do this. in fact, once i started looking into this, we saw six banks in canada announce this, that they would do up to six months. i mentioned associated banks, one of the banks that already talked about it here in the state for at least three months. i would like to see other financial institutions stet p u and say we can defer this, we are in this together. this would be an incredible way of acquiring peace of mind for people, their friends and neighbors. stuart: would it be all mortgages or just those for low income people, high income people are excluded? would you discriminate there? >> right now, again, because this is not a government initiative, it would be up to the private sector, it would be up to those financial institutions but i would think at this point, it should be as widely cast as possible, because

you've got folks not only for an individual homeowner but say someone who owns a four-family apartment unit, if they had a deferral on their mortgage payment they could in turn defer payments that people owe for the rent so that would help renters, not just homeowners. there's a lot of ways that we can work together on this and show that the government alone doesn't have to be the answer to this. we can as a society find ways to be creative and help people, all people in this country, get through this together. stuart: yes, indeed. scott walker, governor, thanks for joining us, sir. see you again real soon. >> my pleasure. be safe. be well. stuart: yes, sir. i'll try. now, we've had a slew of announcements from all kinds of companies about how they are dealing with the economy and the virus and people not working. we have news now on hasbro. not sure what they're doing. lauren will tell us. lauren: they are looking at what they are seeing in china and in china, where they have gotten over coronavirus and the factories are mostly back up and

running, that's what hasbro is seeing. the ceo says their financial health is in good shape. they are still paying their dividend and the stock is up 12% right now. stuart: liz macdonald, if you're there, and i think you are there, i will see you any moment, there you go, okay. liz, is this not good news that china, taiwan and south korea appear to be coming out on the other side of this thing? that would seem to be promising at least. liz: yeah, that is good news, stuart. we are tracking that, too. china appears to be coming out of it. they have some -- if you can trust their data, right, they have some cases coming back. we are going to get through this. the u.s. will get through this. the question is how and at what cost. i will say this, that china right now, reports are coming in, china is preparing for a

potential resurgence so what they are doing is buying medical supplies, buying ventilators, preparing hospital beds in case it does come back. we know that when we are in the summer months, the southern hemisphere is in their winter months. so this truly is a global issue. we keep hearing from hospitals, i have throughout the weekend, that the health system in the united states was already under duress across the country and this is now exposing it. but there's a good upside to it, that if the u.s. can do rapid-fire testing like the fda is now talking about within 45 minutes, you can get a result, to separate those people out, and you find and you target where the hot zones are via things like apps that connect to thermometers that feed that information to hospitals and you do more rapid-fire response like that, we will get out of it

faster. the federal reserve, we are hearing, and treasury department ballparking another four to six months. we need to be aware of that because then the flu season comes back on. that's why i'm interested in the drugs, i'm interested in the vaccine developments that are moving rapidly. military scientists around the world including many in ten countries are now on the stick here trying to move forward on this. they are not looking backwards at the old political fights. they are moving forward to get us in the end zone of this, and the hospitals keep saying in the u.s. we need beds, we need ventilators, we are hearing out of california they are talking about building tents on beaches in california and putting beds underneath those tents in california, on the beaches there, to just handle the flow of patients. so the news is changing rapidly. and stuart, you have been on it. this economy will change. newt gingrich has talked about our prior war response and targeting stimulus. there needs to be clarity out of

d.c., what targeted stimulus are you doing for drugs, vaccines and medical supplies. that's what the hospitals and first responders and health care want to hear. stuart: liz, i'm going to come back to you in a moment to ask you how you are dealing with cabin fever. get your answer prepared. let's go to ash. more news from governor cuomo on new york's cases? ashley: just to reemphasize, 16,000 people a day are being tested. that will be increased as they bring in more testing sites. he wants to -- he's talking about young people. yes, young people are contracting the virus and yes, they can transmit it. so that is an important message. he's also talking about how do we restart the economy, how do we pivot to economic vitality. he says we have to have a plan in place now because otherwise, it's going to be slow to get going again. there's a need for hospital

beds, dramatic need for hospital beds, so that's the message from governor cuomo today. by the way, another state has announced a stay-at-home policy, starting at 12:01 tonight, one minute past midnight, the state of michigan. governor gretchen whitmer saying that's the time when everyone should stay at home. they have had more than 1,000 cases in michigan, nine reported deaths. she says only essential workers should be leaving their homes as of midnight tonight, just after midnight tonight. stuart: so ashley, you brought us michigan and massachusetts announcing stay-at-home rules and before that, it was louisiana and ohio joining this club. ashley: correct. stuart: i think we are right in saying that now it's more than half the population under a stay-at-home order. okay. that's why, by the way, when we looked at the credit card companies, that's why they are all down because if you are staying at home, you're not

buying stuff. that takes a piece out of the visas and mastercards and american expresses of this world. mastercard down another 3%. visa is down 7%. even american express taking it down 4.8% lower. lawrence jones with us, fox news contributor. i'm going to call you the voice of the people for us today. have you got any good news? sit up straight, lad. you got any good news you can give us? >> well, i wish i had some good news. one thing i can say is the good news is that americans are coming together. we see what's happening, i have seen so many good stories of neighbors caring for the elderly or the poor or if you look in new york city in the bronx, the local businesses that are making sure the kids have free lunch in schools are now being provided by the private sector. so that's a good thing to see the private sector rally around this country. the bad news is that it doesn't

seem like our elected leaders, i'm not talking about the president, not talking about the governor, but members of congress, can come together to come up with a package for all of us. you know, they are the ones that told us to stay at home. so i think there's a lot of americans that are disgruntled not by their state leaders but our federal leaders that have decided to play partisan politics and not get something done. stuart: i really found it ridiculous that the vote last night was 47-47. five republican senators couldn't vote because they're in quarantine so you get this split vote, it doesn't go through, we are held up again and the dow is now down 600 points. there's a level of frustration here about a really dysfunctional political system. more than just congress, it's this toxic politics which should not be raising its head at this point. >> you know, i was talking to sources before this vote actually happened, and you know,

not to be partisan here, because the country is sick of this, but there are working groups of senators that were getting bipartisan legisla bipartisan legislation down and they agreed on it. nancy pelosi came in like the person, you know when you've had these group projects and everybody is putting skin in the game working hard and you always have that one member of the group that decides to come in late. the house was on recess last week. they weren't doing legislation. they weren't doing the hard work, sitting down negotiating bills. nancy pelosi comes out of vacation, they say they were talking with constituents but they encourage social distancing so i don't think they were talking with the constituents. they decide -- she decides to come and break up this group and now you have the same partisan politics that we hate. so i think there is some responsibility of her to get

this thing back on track. you know, we have known this institution, the senate, to be the adults in the room and each state has two senators. the big stuff always goes to the senate because they are supposed to be the adults. i would suggest to nancy pelosi to allow the senate to do their job and the house to fall in line. these are people that are working on this. they disagree on politics of today but they agree that we have to do something for the american people. you told them to go home. you told them they could not work. you told them they could not walk these streets. and there are real implications for that. so we can't wait two days or three days. we need something done today. that is what the american people are saying. stuart: we've got this long list now of states ordering people to stay at home. more than half the population is ordered to stay at home. treasury secretary mnuchin says this kind of lockdown situation

is going to go on for 10 to 12 weeks. how do you think the average american holed up in their homes with spouses, children, elderly relatives, how do you think we are going to hold up if it goes on that long? >> in the real world there's no way this goes well, stuart. cuomo, the governor of new york, says this could go up to nine months. i think when you have people that collect salaries no matter what, people that represent us in congress and governors and all that, sometimes they forget the real implications of average people. we are blessed in the news business because we still have to work and report on this stuff and we are still collecting a check right now. but the people that live in the communities that i report on every single day, they cannot survive. rent is due in a couple weeks. who's going to pay that? who's going to provide for these kids? i understand people are saying

savings. that's going to run out real quick. two months of savings, that's gone. what about the kids? in the schools, right, the -- there's no day care no more so the parents have to be home with the kids. i think we have to have this conversation about what is really essential. i have a big problem with government deciding what is essential. i would contend that providing for your family is essential. a lot of these jobs, we need. for them to decide and not get anything done i think is very problematic. i would argue that after this is said and done because i believe, you know, i'm a hopeful person and i believe in god, i believe that we will get through this, but the question many americans are going to be asking after we get through this, did we take the right steps, did we take this a little bit too far, and i think that's going to be some real questions about this. stuart: did we pay too high a

price. good question. before we leave you, lawrence, how are you holding up? give me 20 seconds on how cabin fever is affecting you. >> stuart, you know, i'm in good health and good spirits but i got to say, been in my apartment most of the day, i'm abiding by the rules they have set for us. it's not a pleasant situation but i will say this. i'm still collecting a check. i still have food on the table. a lot of americans are doing much worse than i am. so i'm not going to complain. stuart: yeah. i feel exactly the same way. i don't have to look after young children or elderly relatives. the check will still be coming at me. i'm doing okay. i should be thankful for that. lawrence jones, you are a good man. see you soon, brother. okay? susan, come in. wa i want more on apple. what's going on? susan: down close to 6% now. one of the main drags probably on the market and s&p 500 and

dow today. it looks like it just got a cut from an analyst, has some bearish views on apple. they cut their price target to $225 from $295. that's only ten bucks from these current levels. also, they are saying apple aha closed stores even beyond the lockdown areas. we know apple says they are shutting all stores outside of china until further notice. initially they penciled in march 27th for reopening but that has been put off given the different regions that are experiencing different shall we say cases when it comes to coronavirus. also, they say only 10% to 15% of phone sales come from online which is primarily where you have to go in order to buy an iphone. apple of course limiting customers to just one iphone per customer at this point. they are saying the flagship 5g iphone which was scheduled as they do each and every year in september, they launch a new phone, they say that now is in play and might not happen although i wouldn't put a lot of stock into that just yet, as we

know apple does this each and every year and it's still far away in september, right. we still have a few months to go. what i found interesting is that they haven't seen an uptick in apple services. we talked about these stay-at-home stocks that have been doing well, peloton, netflix, because when people are quarantined at home they have nothing else to do besides watch movies, download music, et cetera, et cetera. they haven't seen that big of an uptick when it comes to spending on apple services. now, for apple's part, as we heard, they are donating 2 million masks but also falling under that trillion dollar mark. at $214 it's below the four comma club. stuart: my goodness me, a cascade of bad news on apple. the stock is down to $214. who would have thought. more from you shortly. thank you very much. kim strassel is with us, "wall street journal" editorial board. welcome to the program. very good to see you. do you think partisanship has taken over? i'm looking at the stimulus

package. 47-47 vote last night, congress couldn't get it done, all kinds of pressure on them this morning, get it done. has partisan politics sort of sidelined this stimulus package? >> that is entirely what is going on, stuart. but i'm a big believer, look, i know the whole country, we are rallying around but sometimes you actually have to put blame where blame is due. you just had lawrence on, he was talking about his reporting. it's the same as mine. what happened here is that you did have mitch mcconnell doing the right thing. they had these working groups, democrats were working with republicans. their ideas were incorporated into this bill and there was broad consensus on all the main contours of this bill. then what happened. then suddenly the product got put out, you saw a revolt among the progressive left. nancy pelosi came off her vacation and suddenly she's decided this is an opportunity to demand an idealogical wish

list. that is really what's going on at the moment. it's not that there's disagreement on broad things that you have a very small faction of the democratic party now dictating orders and that's why things are not moving. stuart: what i find astonishing is the electoral process, the presidential election process, is completely sidelined. it gets no attention whatsoever. we are completely obsessed with the virus and the economy. i don't think that's going to change. what impact you think it's going to have on the presidential election? >> well, so far, i would argue that the biggest winner, if there is one politically from coronavirus, is joe biden, in that this kind of happened right as he was gaining some momentum. that has completely wiped away the ability of bernie sanders, his main rival, to really land any blows or get any attention. so he's coasting into these next races and he will probably be

able to wrap it up as a result, although you know, the interesting question to me, stuart, is that this is showing the importance of leadership and we're not really having any discussion out there right now about joe biden's view versus donald trump's. i mean, we will probably get back to that but for now, this entire thing is on hiatus. stuart: yes, exactly. that's the right word. hiatus. nothing's going on. kim strassel, "wall street journal" editorial board, thank you for joining us. always appreciate it. thank you very much. 11:30 eastern time. the dow industrials down nearly 800 points. let's bring in labor secretary eugene scalia. mr. secretary, welcome to the program. good to see you this morning. >> thanks for having me. stuart: we have this forecast of a 30% unemployment rate. it came from fed governor bullard. a 30% unemployment rate. how do you respond to that? >> well, look, we know that

there is going to be an increase in unemployment. we know that people are going to be put out of work in the near term. i wouldn't want to get into a guessing game about the particular number. it's going to go up. a couple points i would emphasize. one, we are coming into this from a very strong economic foundation. the numbers for january and february were so strong, 273,000 jobs, created both months. let's keep in mind we are coming in from a strong foundation. with a president who has shown an ability to help the private sector grow jobs. the second thing i would say -- stuart: i don't mean to interrupt you but look, we know the economy's strong in january and february. but i put it to you, sir, that the government is actually telling the economy to stop. the government is telling the economy to shut down. the shutdown has been extraordinarily rapid. have you got, at the labor department, what resources do

you have to deal with these tens of millions of people who will not have a paycheck next week or the week after? >> well, look, tens of millions might be overstating it, stuart. we know it's going to be a large number. we have been working on it hard. i about just will just reiterat into this from a strong economic position with a president who has shown an ability to know what the private sector means. the labor department has been focused on this from early on, for example, addressing the unemployment insurance system. we put out guidance to the states -- stuart: what can be done to the unemployment insurance system? i'm terribly sorry, mr. secretary, but what have you done for the unemployment system? >> listen and i will tell you. as i said, we put out guidance just a couple weeks ago explaining to the states the flexibility that they have to make unemployment insurance assistance available for example to people who have to take leave because they're sick, who have to take leave because their kids are ill. we have shown the states the

flexibility they have. we now have a billion dollars more as a result of the bill the president signed last week that's going to help the state insurance systems make money available. we are working with them on a constant basis to make the funds available. then of course we have what's going on on capitol hill right now. i have been involved in those discussions, spent a lot of the day friday with the senators, with secretary mnuchin, putting together what i think is a very robust unemployment insurance package. it's been tagged at about $250 billion. that's quite helpful. right now, again, it's been a strong economy, we have been running at about 2.5 billion a month in unemployment insurance assistance. that's about $30 billion a year. so $250 billion is a very large package but stuart, what i want to emphasize even more is the importance of keeping the private sector, keeping american businesses attached to their workers. we would rather have businesses

providing paychecks. there was a paid leave law enacted just last week, we are business busy implementing that. that gives between two and 12 weeks paid leave for workers who need to be out. but another important piece of this legislation on the hill is designed to give small business the support they need so their workers don't have to be on unemployment insurance. we want to keep them attached to their employer if we can so that when we beat this virus, we spring back very quickly to the kind of economy we are seeing before. stuart: as i see it, mr. secretary, the government wants to give money or loans to businesses if they do not lay people off, which means that government money goes to a business, they keep paying workers wages but it's actually the government that's paying

those wages. is that how it works? >> well, i haven't seen the details that are being hammered out most recently right now, but the basic idea here is we want to provide business short-term support so that we can keep the attachment of the worker to the business so that when the economy is ready to spring back, we've got that work force there. so yes, federal funds in terms of loans or other terms going to business so that they can support their workers in this absolutely unprecedented time. are these things that we would propose in ordinary circumstances, no. are these ordinary circumstances, no. they are like nothing we have seen since i think world war ii and another positive note i would say is not just the presidential leadership we are seeing as if in wartime but also the strength of our private sector and how american businesses even voluntarily are stepping forward to try to help the president, the states, the

governors deal with all this. stuart: mr. secretary, eugene scalia, thank you very much for joining us this morning. we appreciate it. a very, very difficult time. thank you very much. thank you. we like to keep you up to date with who has tested positive, who is being tested, states that are shutting down, saying stay at home. ash has news from minnesota's governor. ashley: yeah, who is self-quarantining. governor tim wolf saying this, in a tweet he said after learning that i had contact with someone who has covid-19, i plan to lead by example and work from home. i currently have no symptoms and will continue working tirelessly to combat the spread of the virus. there's a governor who has come in contact with someone who tested positive. he i ses self-quarantining. pakistan launching its army on to the streets to make sure people comply with the

nationwide restrictions caused boy t by the virus. then a report from reuters that hasn't been confirmed that says marathon galveston bay texas refinery has cut 1700 contract workers. the reason i bring that up, i think we will see a lot more of that with oil still stuck around the $22 a barrel. we will see an awful lot of people being laid off in the oil industry which is very sad. stuart: yes, it is. all right, ash, thank you very much indeed. we want to keep you up to speed on the medical side of this thing, the drug side of it. lauren, you have news from a french biotech company? lauren: on the testing, yes. the name of this company is novasys. they just received approval to use their testing in u.s. hospital and u.s. laboratories. that stock is up about 40% on the news. the vice president updated us yesterday that we have conducted 254,000 tests right here in the u.s. about 30,000 of them did test positive for coronavirus.

but he said by the middle of this week, that backlog should be cleared, as there are more tests available. this french company is one of those tests. stuart: i want to bring in danielle dimartino booth, former dallas fed adviser. welcome to the program. good to have you back. we have news the fed is aggressively putting money into the system, buying some securities, that will be bonds, i understand. is it enough? will it work? will it stop us going into a credit crunch? >> we are about to find out. i think the fed should be initially pleased. the most liquid investment grade bond exchange traded fund that is ticker lqd that has been under severe strain over the past few woeeks has come roarin back. it was up 2% on friday and is up another 6%. i think the fed, if the fed was

trying to put a floor underneath the bonds that we would put in retirees' portfolios, investment grade, considered the opposite of dodgy credit, if you will, to use one of your terms, i think the fed has managed to put a floor underneath that particular sector. you know, it's hard to describe the magnitude of the fed purchases here. we are talking about $625 billion a week, they will be buying $75 billion in treasuries every day, $50 billion in mortgage-backed securities every day, and they expanded the type of collateral they will lend against, they expanded the type of bonds they will purchase as well. so this is, i have never seen anything like this and i lived throughout the financial crisis. this is a complete separate order of magnitude. stuart: yet we still don't have this rescue package from congress to help and support the economy. let me put it like this. if we did get that $2 trillion

package, and maybe more in the future, and the fed keeps buying as you say $625 billion worth of stuff a week, is that enough to put a floor under the economy? >> i would say we are in a whole different world of pain if that was not the case. because you are talking about a different world order. you are talking about a repricing the likes of which we have never seen before. one would think that because -- i think markets today are rightly angered and upset about the fact there is only so much that the fed can do. the fed cannot provide, as the labor secretary was just explaining, unemployment insurance or extended unemployment insurance. i have lost the number of fingers and toes of people i personally know who have lost their jobs. i'm not talking about firms that are going to take loans. i'm just talking about layoffs, period. so i think that now is the time to say if this is what the fed can do for the financial markets

and the banking system, this is what congress can do for everyday working men and women in america. stuart: a great deal depends on how long this stay-at-home movement lasts. the order to sort of lock down, stay in place, stay in your own home, don't go to work, shutting down the economy. treasury secretary mnuchin says this lockdown situation could go on 10 to 12 weeks. surely that would drive the economy into a depression, wouldn't it? >> that is the risk that we are looking at right now. that is why we have to wake up every day, say our prayers and applaud the health care workers who are out on the front lines and testing as quickly as humanly possible so that we can understand where the clusters in the country are and open up the rest of the business back -- the rest of the country for business. until we have seen, though, a flattening of the curve, to use a term that everybody is

throwing around, i think it's the safest thing to do to stay in this lockdown just so we don't take a chance of having an even greater spread that takes the economy down for even longer than say 10 to 12 weeks. stuart: okay. i'm looking at the market now. the dow, down 860 points and falling. is that entirely because congress hasn't yet gotten that $2 trillion package through? >> you know, i wouldn't speak in absolutes. that's not really my nature. i would say that that is certainly the main source of stress in the markets today. on a deeper level, though, if investors are concerned that the fed is still not doing enough, that there hasn't been sufficient price discovery given how much leverage has been built up in corporate america over the past decade to levels we have never seen in the history of the united states, then i would say we have a different problem on our hands. if the market still feels that

it needs to reprice credit and credit has been the main drag on the stock market thus far, so i think there are two different dynamics going on here but again, the main anchor, the main drag, it appears the dysfunction in washington, d.c. is very much still alive and well as opposed to bipartisanship. stuart: we are expecting some votes very soon in congress. let's see how that goes. now we are down 850. thank you very much for joining us. appreciate it. we told you earlier that angela merkel of germany, chancellor, had gone into self-quarantine. has she been tested, ash? what's the result? ashley: yes, she has. it's come back negative. that's the good news. although she will have further tests. she put herself in self-quarantine because she received a vaccination against pneumonia on friday and it turns out the doctor who gave her the shot was positive for covid-19.

she's carrying on her duties from home. german government continuing to operate as normal. the first test came back negative for angela merkel of germany. stuart: ash, before you go, would you repeat that news out of texas? what was it, 1500 contract workers laid off? ashley: 1700 contract workers at the marathon galveston bay, texas refinery. that's a lot of people. 1700 contract workers. i just have a feeling we will see these headlines more and more as the days go by and oil once again down -- oil has now dropped to $21.90. stuart: okay. ashley, i asked that question because our next guest is the republican senator from north dakota, kevin cramer, who joins us now. senator, we just heard this news about 1500 layoffs in galveston, marathon people. this is going to spread and north dakota is going to take a big hit. confirm that? >> no question about it, stuart.

it's already taken a big hit. we are seeing small employers and large laying off large numbers of people. we are seeing capx being greatly reduced by companies like continental resources and others. what you are seeing in galveston is interesting because this is demonstrating that the entire supply chain, entire value chain, is going to be affected. these are the economic phenomenons the democrats don't seem to understand. they see things like, you know, credit issues as though it's only about billionaires and millionaires and not about people that are working at these places. we have a real challenge on our hands, no question about it. stuart: are you pushing for federal aid for the frackers and drillers? >> well, what i want is i want federal aid to be industry-neutral. that way it's applicable. prohibit nobody and just make sure it gets to the underpinnings of our economy which certainly includes the energy sector and especially the frackers because even during the

obama very slow recovery, the bright spot was the fracking revolution in this country. but we also have other players working against us. former allies like saudi arabia, you know, regular allies like russia now involved in this price war. here's a country in saudi arabia where we have 2500 of our troops protecting their energy assets, we have multiple missile defense batteries that are being run by united states military people in their country, protecting them. i'm starting to wonder why would we protect that when they are basically waging war on our fracking industry and our shale revolution here in the united states. stuart: would you like to see the president get on the phone to the ruler of saudi arabia and say knock it off? >> yes, at the very least. that would be the kindest thing i hope he would say because i worry a little bit that the president rather likes these low gasoline prices. we talked about that. low gas prices are great if you are able to drive. but in the meantime we are

killing our own economy. he had to get on the phone and say we are pulling those 2500 troops out, we are going to take those patriot missile batteries out, we will take the -- we will stop escorting your oil ships in this treacherous waters in the middle east if you don't stop this nonsense and driving our industry out of business. i think he should have a very tough conversation with him and less diplomatic one. stuart: of course, there is the side of the coin that says look, this worldwide slowdown, recession, call it what you will, i'm told it's taken 20 million barrels of oil out of the equation. in other words, the world is using 20 million barrels of oil a day less. there's not much you can do about that. >> no, except what you wouldn't do is increase the supply when you have -- when you already have a demand squeeze. that's what the russians and saudis are doing. they are increasing supply into an already glutted supply, all the while this coronavirus is

reducing the demand. unfortunately, they are taking advantage of the coronavirus, i think, to drive their competitors out of business, including the united states. that's why m i'm so upset about it. as a member of the senate armed services committee, i have been aggressive along with other members of the committee and as an oil producing state senator, i'm obligated to do that. for the good of our country and our entire economy, this is not the time for price wars. this is the time to help stabilize the global economy. stuart: mr. senator, just a month ago we were calling the frackers and drillers of north dakota american heroes. they still are. we feel for them at this time. i want you to pass that along to your constituents. kevin cramer, north dakota republican. thank you very much for joining us. appreciate it. we are looking at individual companies and how they are responding to this real problem with the economy. macy's? susan: macy's has hit a record

low after they said they are not giving a forecast for 2020 until this coronavirus is contained. also halting their dividend as well. i see that it's down about 18.5%. macy's is not alone. other retailers have also pulled their forecasts as well for the year. that includes kohl's, l brands which owns victoria's secret, nordstrom's, jc penney just last week. outside of retailers, coca-cola has pulled their outlook for 2020. in terms of suspending the dividend, we have heard from boeing over the weekend saying they will give out no more dividends, halting any buy-backs and suspending pay for their ceo, david calhoun, until past 2020. we have also heard from at & t saying no more of that $4 billion buy-back in shares. this is just about cash preservation, because a lot of these companies, i think a lot of economists are anticipating a sharp economic downturn, especially in the second quarter of this year. morgan stanley saying minus 30% and goldman sachs says it will

contract about 24%. if that happens, that would be the biggest ever quarterly contraction since records have been kept going back to the 1940s. stuart: that's a very, very important point. it was goldman saying a few days ago minus 24% second quarter. now you've got somebody else saying it's minus 30% second quarter. ted gove fed governor bullard says it might be -- susan: bank of america says 25% in the second quarter. stuart: that's astonishing stuff. how do retailers hold up when you are talking about i hate to say the word collapse, but constriction of the economy like that? it's unthinkable, almost. susan, thanks very much indeed. let's go to lauren. news on what, olive garden's parent company? lauren: darden restaurants. they said their sales in the past week are down 60%. that's pretty unbelievable because you can still order from a restaurant. you just have to have it delivered or pick it up. you can't go into a restaurant

to eat there. they also say they are burning cash at a rate of $40 million to $50 million a week. how long can that trend go on? goldman sachs have their price target on the stock. you can see it's at $38 now. goldman is putting it at $50 which is nice but it was $114. the point is that the future is very murky when you hear a company as big as darden restaurants which owns olive garden and capital grill saying sales are down 60% and they say for each week that this situation of coronavirus is impacting how we live, profit could take a hit of six to eight cents per week. stuart: you have to ask, not talking about darden or the chains they control, but you have to ask how many of these chains will come back when this is all over, given the damage they have already suffered. i don't want you to speculate but i got a buck says that not all chains will be back.

what do you say? lauren: i think you are right. we are looking at a new economy, different economy, when we emerge from this. the companies that were likely healthier to begin with before coronavirus impacted us, are probably going to be the ones that can survive. we are going to be looking at a totally different landscape after this. stuart: i think you are absolutely right. thank you very much indeed. while we're looking at various industries, how they are going to come out of this and be affected by it, it's an opportune moment to bring in jerry howard, national association of home builders ceo. jerry is with us now. look, i would imagine that home builders will really take it on the chin as this economic slowdown bites. am i right? >> well, like everybody else, we are looking at a severe contraction in the second quarter. but we also think that as long as home building is allowed to

continue, we could hopefully get out when the time comes. let me make my point on that, stuart. we believe that if you consider home building to be a critical industry that is left open right now, it will help to provide an economic backstop. the home building sector is a customer of the energy sector, customer of the manufacturing sector, and it provides hourly wage earners almost security in their jobs, so many of our employees are hourly wage earners. we think that if we can get classified as an industry that needs to stay open, we can help minimize some of this damage and help us spring out. in the near term we have a problem like everybody else. stuart: look, i know this is not necessarily for the home builders but i'm hearing anecdotally about a lot of real estate deals where the buyer is just walking away. they go to contract, agreed on the price, made the down payment, and along comes the

virus problem and they walk away. this is anecdotal but i'm hearing it's happening a lot in the real estate industry. have you seen it? >> we have seen some of that, yes. i can't deny it. but we are also seeing people who want to close on their homes that are waiting for the financial institutions to modify their practices. for example, allowing electronic signatures as opposed to actual what we call wet signatures, allowing for inspections to take place virtually rather than have an inspector on a site. there are ways to do this. if we can, we can minimize the damage. stuart: jerry howard, thanks very much for joining us on an important day. always appreciate it. i want to get back to the markets. we are now down just over 4% on the dow jones industrial average. a similar loss on the other major indicators. susan, ash, lauren, is there something i'm missing here? was it something governor cuomo

said that hurt the market? susan, to you first. susan: well, the cases have gone up i think 38% overnight to 20,000 and i think there has to be a re-evaluation right now from the white house and the government about the cure being worse than the actual disease, when you crush the economy like this, more than 50% of the u.s. gdp, that includes the states you just mentioned, missouri has now joined massachusetts, new york, new jersey, connecticut, illinois, you name it, in keeping workers at home, that is going to have a major impact on the economy and is $2 trillion enough and how much can the printing presses go on at the federal reserve because eventually this deficit will also filter into the economy and that is a slowdown impact as well. stuart: yeah. okay. that straightened me up. that's a huge jump in cases in new york city. i think -- ashley: 20,000 across the state. that's 20,000, 20,875, here in the five boroughs of new york city it now stands at 12,305.

that's a huge increase for new york city. 12,000 out of the 20,000 statewide. liz: forgive me, if i could just jump in quick. if i could just jump in quick. you know, the point has been made in the hospitals that because we are doing more testing, more cases will come up. so what ash and susan are making important points here, that as more testing is under way, stuart, more cases will pop up. so when we see reporting done in media that it's doubling or tripling, it's because testing is going stuart: when you get those numbers it is still a shock. liz: right, exactly. lauren: stuart, the governor directed hospitals in new york state to increase their capacity by 50%. so when you see an, i count 10 states obviously new york being

biggest one impacted here, when you're begging citizens, shutting down an economy to say to people please stay at home so people can live, so the nurses, doctors, can treat people in the hospital, seeing it is so bad we need to increase capacity we don't have, that makes investors think, and people think, this is going to get as we test more, but it is going to get worse before it gets better. nobody knows how worse it will get. stuart: well-said. mark douglas with us? steel house ceo? we do. consumers spending more on alcohol and food. why am i not surprised? >> we basically at steel house, we have a billion dollars in revenue a week we see across all our customers. they're all e-commerce companies. we're seeing a number of categoriesries going up, number doing down. obvious ones are going down. we're seeing things like alcohol going up. home improvement i think is a bit unexpected.

it appears people are staying at home, some are doing work on the home. it is really interesting data we're seeing. stuart: also the travel industry, have they stopped marketing? i wouldn't be surprised? >> all of our travel customers -- monday of last week a week ago. but we're still seeing the travel sector is down 57% across our customers. consumers are still buying. they're still going, some hotels are being booked, some travel is occurring. the spend itself is completely down. so another interesting trend. stuart: what about overall ads on streaming services? i would imagine streaming has got to be doing well with everybody stuck at home? the ads have got to be doing well too? >> yeah. if you take travel out of our data, for our business, we actually are up in revenue week

over week. so we have customers, we have a lot of retailers, e-commerce retailers who are increasing spend. we also have customers, really interesting, they do a billion dollars a year in revenue. 900 million in stores. those stores are closed. so they're shift everything to e-commerce right now. for them, they're spending more on marketing this week. last week than they were the previous week. so there is a lot of reshuffling, a lot of rethinking how companies are doing business right now. stuart: yeah. everything is turned upside down, that is a fact. mark douglas, thank you very much indeed. lauren, do you have a something to add? lauren, roche, a swiss drugmaker gotten fda approval to have late-stage trial on one of their drugs to help with coronavirus. stuart: thank you, lauren. i have to got to wrap this up, say it has been an extraordinary day. we opened with this tied vote in the senate.

so we didn't get the stimulus package. then came the federal reserve pumping trillions of dollars into the economy. then came a market selloff. i think there is some frustration that we didn't get the rescue package there is also some negative news on apple which has driven the price of apple's stock way, way down. it is around $220 a share. i tell a lie. it is down to 214 right now. apple is the premier american company. no longer worth a trillion dollars, really taking it on the chin along with the rest of the country and the market. my time's up. neil, it its yours. neil: stuart, thank you, very, very much. just in case you're counting here, we're back to levels before the election of donald trump. not just before the inauguration of donald trump but before all the gains that have been realized since he was first elected to the presidency have been wiped out. we're in and out of these areas right now. but a