visit national parks and forests. just a little sign things are trying, trying to get a little bit of normalcy in europe. stuart: got it. light at the end of the european tunnel at least in europe. my time is up. neil, it is now yours. neil: all right. stuart, thank you very, very much. we're following up on that. we're following up what is slip-sliding away with oil here. ronald reagan was president last time we had price this is low. what is fueling it is the fact even if they were to agree, namely saudi arabia and countries like russia, other countries within, outside of opec to cut 20 million barrels a day, they have calculated the loss in demand really equals more than 30 million barrels a day. so they're just you know, going against all odds and into the win. it doesn't really improve the picture for oil as it owe lapses that has hit some principle dow energy components, exxonmobil, chevron, two premier players

within the dow. take them out of the picture, things wouldn't be as bad as they are now. we're well off the earlier lows, down 400 points, down about 165 points but also fueling this, offsetting this if you will is talk of progress on that stimulus front. you remember where they were looking for republicans, another $250 billion for the paycheck protection program? well they ran into a buzzsaw of criticism from democrats that argued it was too tilted to business so they wanted to make assurances for health care workers, hospitals, that sort of thing. i stress that they have reached a broad parameters of a deal. it is not a deal until they both mutually agree. we're seeing progress on the front. that mitigated losses in the dow and offset the oil impact. edward lawrence joins us now from washington with how this is all progressing. hey, edward. reporter: neil, close, very close. that is how it is being described. as you said no deal, no ink to

paper as it were for this deal. republicans initially just wanted to change the number in the cares act to add more money to the payroll protection problem immediately. democrats wanted more things added into this. white house economic advisor larry kudlow saying basically democrats will get some of what they want. in order to get $300 billion in the payroll protection program this is some other things in it. $75 billion for hospitals, 10 to $15 billion for testing. house speaker nancy pelosi says she wants more direct aid to states and to expand the food stamp program. senior leadership, gop aid tells me those last two items will not be in a final bill that the senate considers this morning. house minority leader kevin mccarthy blasted pelosi. >> when we wanted to put the cares act together, she came in, held it up. now we had a small business program working. she now held up the money. there ishundred thousand small business applications in right

now trying to keep their doors open. last week we watched five million people, new numbers for unemployment. how many more millions of pelosi's layoffs will we have to endure before she will put people before politics? reporter: the house is scheduled to come bag as early as wednesday to consider legislation. the senate will be in session later today. no announcement officially related to this but going forward the aide tells me the sticking point is really the testing part of this, how much will be involved in it. what it will cover exactly. in addition, neil, i want to point out criticism for companies getting some of this stimulus money from the payroll protection program, specifically shake shack a huge company, allowed to get $10 million under the program. the company is giving back the money t does go back into the fund. a senior small business administration official telling me the money i going back into the fund but it will not be

given out again, because the fund is essentially closed. the only way to reopen the fund is for congress to with more money. neil. neil: ruth's chris steakhouse, not exactly a small business player. how did that happen? reporter: you know they fit, under the individual, for instance, shake shack, take that as an example. the individual locations do actually fit under that. so if you do loans, sort of compiling the individual locations it does count for that. restaurants also have some exemptions within the payroll protection program that allows them to apply for, bigger restaurants for whatever reason fit into that. they applied for it. pot little a's is another one. nationwide chain was able to get loans through this. another interesting question is, the fact that, shake shack and potbelly got share loans through jp chase, jpmorgan chase.

were they, questions i heard from small businesses who also applied with chase and are waiting for their application to go through when the program goes through, the other bigger companies put in front of them in order to get those loans? there is some question with this but overall the program considered a success, the small businesses that did get it. i had some folks i know who got it, very pleased they were able to keep in business with 20, 25 employees a lot of employees total were able to get paychecks through this. back to you. neil: i want to stress, i'm not minimizing the entire restaurant industry woes but this was earmarked for the small guys. there are technical rules around that and 500 total employee thing i get that. again it was not the way it was intended. that is at least a feeling. maybe why shake shack said let's walk away from this. edward lawrence, thank you very much. we're talking about oil prices slip-sliding away. when they touched around $10,

$10.50 a bear, that was the lowest since 1986. ronald reagan was president then this has spill over effect not only on exxon and chevron, not only energy related players, schlumberger, conocophillips, phillips 66, valero, devon energy, on and on it goes. chemical players and the rest that rely on this, those costs go down they might be beneficiaries but very few beneficiaries to be seen or had today. although i stress we're well off our lows. this seems to be even in the face of opec and opec ancillary players, the so-called plus players, acreeing to cut production by upwards to 20 million barrels a day. to phil flynn now. phil, the problem was even cutting 20 million barrels a day if it were ever past doesn't come close to the lost demand we're looking at, right? >> absolutely correct and the

thing you have to realize too, the contract we're looking at, the may contract that expires tomorrow, it is not coming fast enough. the opec production cuts have not even started. they don't start until may 1st. so if you're getting oil today there is no place to put it. that is why we're seeing this incredible sell off. we're going back to look in the history books this i today, neil, maybe 25, 50 years from now, as an example what can happen to a market when everything goes wrong. this is going to be the biggest sell off in crude oil history because one day move right now i think we're down over 44% in one day. and it is really combination of right now. delivery is coming due. nobody wants the oil. there is too much oil out there. so they can't give it away right now. that is why the prices are collapsing. neil: what was the significance today though, phil? we knew about the broad macro, you know, dismal realities but

what happened today? >> i think it was optimism that the opec production cuts where we would start to see some demand saved this market from this, this wash out. to be honest with you. if you go back, look even a couple months out, there is a lot of optimism that the oil prices are going to get better. we're going to see production fall at a record pace. we'll see people shut in wells here in the united states. so we know production is going to get worse. the big question is, when will demand come back? as you can see in the stock market, we're seeing a little bit of optimism, maybe demand will come back. some companies will get back to work slowly but surely. but it doesn't matter. if you have to deliver oil tomorrow, you're in trouble because all of those good things aren't going to happen fast enough to save the day at the last minute. neil: you know, it is an outside issue but it is intriguing to me

to know that gold is up today. it has had a very good year. it is up close to 20% on the year in the face of this rapid decline in oil prices. normally, not all the time you remind me they're kind of in tandem but they're not now. what do you make of that? >> no, they're not. i tell you, gold is in a situation where it is more and more going to become like a currency. what we're going to see because of historic quantitative easing around the globe, everybody will print money to save the economy, gold will be that safe haven. gold, you always have the balance, neil, as we talked about before, the balance of gold being a safe haven against a foreign currency, but also a commodity that can be impacted by a slowdown in demand. if the economy really pulls back, you don't get as much physical buying for gold. it is really a market that you really have to judge the mood on a day-to-day basis. but i'll tell you this, i mean, from a long-term perspective, gold looks very bullish at this

point. you have to go back to the last time we did as much quantitative easing during the financial crisis. you know gold prices initially collapsed, went down to $666 an ounce, only to turn around to go back to all-time highs in a couple of years because ultimately, when you print a lot of money which the world is doing right now, it will be very supportive for gold. on a day-to-day basis you will see some strong fluctuations but we'll probably see all-time highs in gold before this is all said and done. neil: all right. we'll watch it very closely, my friend. phil flynn follows this better than anybody i know. we have oil prices collapsing. gold going the other way. it is weird. what does mark cuban think of it, the dallas mavericks owner who says he doesn't think there is any rush to get basketball going anytime soon. wants to make people are safe first.

he joins us right now. always pleasure having you. thanks for joining us. >> always a pleasure, neil. neil: investor, you're a pretty good one, what do you think of the whole gold thing? before we get into the virus, is it a little unusual. do you buy what is happening here or not at all unusual. what do you think? >> i'm not a gold fan at all. i think it is more of a religion than investable asset. even though historically it is a store of value. this is the worst of the worst we've experienced in a long time, you don't see gold setting record highs. you don't see people hoarding it or anything in case something really goes bad. i'm just not a fan. neil: all right. let's talk a little bit about what the oil market is telling us. obviously investors are not buoyed or encouraged as they see big production cuts coming. even if they materialize they

will not be enough. is that telegraphing more than a slowdown or something even worse? we're under 10 bucks a barrel now. >> short term is hard to say. i was looking at short term oil futures they're still in the low 30s going out a year. we have to ask, the oil market telling us, even if we reopen up and allow some small businesses to get back to work, the demand going to be there? i mean, i think we really have to take into consideration that you know, we're going through a reset and things are going to be different. we can't expect them to be the way they were. neil: let's talk about the way they are right now, mark and you've been looking at the overall environment, as successful you have been in business and sports. you led the effort to say not until we have this thing under control and we're safe that we reopen and some other issues have been championing, given

progress we've seen in new york, even though death count was over 400 latest period, it is steadily declining. hospitalizations in new york, hardest hit state continue to go down. this is the 13th straight day they have. is that among the things you start to look at, getting more people in times square, start getting more people in the cities across the country but you need to see a lot more of it? >> yeah, absolutely. it is very encouraging. still too many people tragically dying but we're moving in the right direction. before you can expect businesses to open up, before you can expect people to go out on the streets in times square, we have to define the protocals that are required to keep them healthy. you know, our -- this is good thing other bad thing? what about small businesses? if you have a small restaurant, put aside social distancing. we all understand social stancing. what about the restrooms? how do you deal with that? what about all the touch points?

utensils, reusing them. salt and pepper, washing your hands. dealing with does poseable masks. if -- disposable masks. what about retail clothing store, do you allow people to try things on or not? do you allow people to touch or feel the material? there are so many little things somebody needs to be addressing. once we get protocols in place, once we educate people about adhering to the protocals at small businesses then i think we're ready to started a venturing. i like what poland and european countries did. i have no problem if you're going to the forest or a big park where there is lots of room and easy to keep distance. that's fine we're already starting to see some of that at least in texas already but when it comes to shopping, when it comes to getting out, going to retail touch points we really have to be careful and really think through around i don't think we've done that yet. neil: you know, you had mentioned not too long ago, you

don't want the nba to rush its return. i get that. i see that. but if sports were to resume, gypping with baseball, they talked about doing it, largely in empty stadiums. anthony fauci said the only way he could even countenance a lot of these sports going back if they were doing it in empty stadiums and the like. how realistic is that, regardless of the sport? >> very. i mean i think exactly what is going to happen because we can take care of the health issues. plus remember for all professional sports, even collegiate sports television is a big component much our revenue stream. so i think, you know, makes a lot sense. for the reasons we talked about before, neil, we need sports. even though you may not be able to go to the arena, stadium or to watch the game, being able to experience it in person, watch it on television, will be a huge step forward to some level of normalcy for the entire country. neil: do you think there is a

disconnect, mark, between a lot of business tops? we want to get book to business, get back to work, protests in states, where there are crackdowns, a lot of people say have gone too, too far? there are a couple of different polls out what they have in common is the notion that most americans are so anxious about covid-19 itself. six out of 10 saying they would feel uncome fatherrable rushing this, right now. that doesn't jibe with similar rush of about a dozen states to quasireturn, not to business as usual but to more business. are we missing something? how do you look at it? >> yeah. i call it the child test. would you let your child go out to any one of these venues or stores? you know right now i wouldn't. they're couped up and mad at me because of it but that's the reality. again, we have not set in stone public health protocols. how do we want businesses that want to open back up?

what do we expect from them? i use the example we're trying to push forward masks. somebody goes into a restaurant and forced social distancing but they need a mask. what's the responsibility? do you treat it as hazardous material? how do you deal with the disposal of it? are people going to want, will a waiter or waitress want to pick that up? there are some examples of things that we haven't thought through yet. now once, if on a national basis because this is federal public health issue, on a national basis we put together a set of protocols on how businesses are, have to deal with all of these long list of issues. then we can start to understand what's involved. we can start opening up some of those doors. otherwise, to the 60%'s point there is nothing that will give us confidence, when we walk into a store, that things are okay. i mean look at grocery stores. when i go to the grocery store you know, there is one in, one out. one out, one in, right.

there is walking a line. people watching over you to make sure you keep your distance. people watching over touch points to make sure things are safe. they evolved to that point. we started to trust grocery stores and other smaller essential businesses. we need to standardize those things. then we have to ask the question, once they're standardized, what's the cost to small business? because you, it's a given that sales are going to be down, particularly at the retail level since so many people, so many more people are ordering online but cost of doing business is going to go up. will they be able to stay in business? that will impact the decision points. just rushing, let's do this, i get wanting to get out there. i want to get businesses open as quickly as possible, no doubt about it but we have to make sure we get this in place. that is one of the things on the council i'm on with the president, that is what i've been saying and feedback i've been giving to my contact there, we need these protocols so

businesses know what to do when they run into all these different experiences that will make cost them money and make safety protocals difficult to enforce. neil: real quickly, jeff buys soes, who also shares membership on that council where you and others are advising the president, he has said there has got to be a lot more testing before we even consider it, what do you think of that? >> i think it is going to be hard. there will have to be changes that take place before testing. first and foremost in order to test the law states it has got to be something that the health care provider and every time you do a test, that health care provider, particularly the new is a live -- saliva and brood test you have to change ppp that is a logjam. definitely testing will be needed. until okay to do self-administered test or we have standards. i harp back to standards, neil,

that is going to give us confidence in the things we do and we haven't seen that yet. that's what is missing. we can't rush to get out there. we have to do things that give people confidence they will be safe when they go out, businesses confidence that their employees will be safe when people come in. neil: you know what i'm impressed with, mark? you go to the grocery store and do the shopping and help out at home. that's pretty remarkable i thought you had a s.w.a.t. team of people handling that? >> why is that remarkable? neil: no, i'm just, you're last guy i thought would have said, should i get the eggs, should i get the butter. touche, touche. >> absolutely. my wife's favorite yogurt out of stock, i hate it as much as anybody else. what i really hate my wife made me sweep things up yesterday. that was toilet day. that was a real problem. neil: yikes!

billionaire of the people, mark cuban, thank you very much. don't forget, mark will be a very special guest star on the virtual town hall on the whole matter with charles payne on thursday. doesn't get better than that. with charles hosting it will never get better than that. don't forget to watch that this thursday on this fine network. as we're continuing to watch oil slip slide away going under $10, the big issue seems for markets, we get it, oil is just pathetic. we're moving on, focusing on the virus itself, the progress we're making, we're hearing good news. look at that now under nine dollars. a push in new york to get more sing done on the idea with the more testing, the hospitals for 13th straight day are going down, down, maybe new york will be ready in the middle of may to slowly unwind these provisions that have been in effect for so

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♪. neil: i want to look at something here. the price of a barrel of oil is around $8, $8. it is falling 56% today. lowest since the 1980s, mid 1980s, the administration of ronald reagan. what's fueling this, no pun intended is this fear no matter how much cutting opec and opec plus cutting countries do to cush production, it can't even match what has been a far more significant drop in demand. say you go by the latest promises, that's what they have been, promises to curb production by 20 million barrels a day, but demand is sapping

30 million barrels a day. you can do the math. a lot of people woke up looking at expiring contracts, and the like, you know what this doesn't jibe, it does not jibe. a barrel of oil under $8. who knows where it goes here. there is no sense of a floor. it buffetted energy issues like exxon mobile. you seen it with chevron a lot of drillers, a lot of folks, wildcatters, texas, elsewhere, oklahoma for whom that kind of a price doesn't justify continuing to do business. so for them, it is horrific news. for you prices at the pump, heating oil and the rest, that is good news. that is welcome news. but a lot of you very difficult to be out side of your home for extended period of time. you can't take advantage of that. so that is weighing on markets but not as much as you woo think. offsetting that is this talk of stimulus on the way. they might have ironed out the differences on the 250 billion-dollars aid package.

so that, the fact it will be a little more than 250 billion with some other enticements, pushed by democrats just to get this puppy through the door. the dow down about 202 points. also new york governor andrew cuomo telegraphing promising signs on hospitalizations which have been declining and even deaths which awful as they are when there are over 400 on a given day, they're down from 500 plus on the day before. trends close to 1000 a day, little more than a couple weeks ago. those are the type of developments that encourage anyone, democrat or republican alike, including joe borelli, new york city council minority whip, trump 2020 norco chairman. joe --. new york co-chairman.

we need a lot of progress on this front before i consider easing up on these. what do you think about that. >> he is not wrong. my hometown today, staten island, new york, will reach a milestone by the end of the day, .1 of staten island, new york will have dialed of coronavirus in just a month. any sort of loss of the scale on the magnitude of this problem despite the fact that the deaths are going down, i would err on the side of caution for all of our leaders. the mayor just announced we're going to cancel mass gatherer rings through june. i think that is the right call, whether we get back opening businesses by may 15th. neil: you know, i'm wondering eventually we'll reopen, you and i chatted about this, people would welcome that. some want it sooner rather than later, others seem to say, polls seem to indicate six out of 10 americans are very worried about

this thing, their own personal safety. so even they are putting business interests aside for foe time-being. once we're back, it will be staggered, i get that, how long do you think it will take to get everything kind of, you know, moving again? >> look, i don't know. i think, you know, a lot has to be said what will the new normal be. i took my family to the park yesterday, to the beach. we saw people we knew and even though you're allowed to be in those places we stood many, many feet apart. i think you will see that play out even when we start reopening businesses and more retail centers. i think health officials are right to continue some of the shutdown. but now we need to start talking about what will be the protocals that get put into place when you do in fact reopen certain types of businesses and public gathererring spaces? are masks the norm and requirements for months? is capacity going to be artificially lowered for months?

these are the questions that would go a long way informing the business community so they can make some sort of a calculated guesses as to whether they can return to profitability and how soon that would be. neil: all right. joe, thank you very, very much. good catching up with you. again way too early to joe's point. we're trying to monitor the new york governor about the testing part and improvement part here. as you know new york is among seven northeastern states saying we don't even entertain the idea of winding back provisions until at least may 15th. so a little more than three weeks away. stay with us, we have got oil continue to slip slide away. more after this. ♪. attention veterans with va loans.

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neil: all right. it is official, germany the first major western country to open back for business but not entirely open back. angela merkel was among the first to say we'll be doing this in steps. right now this includes most but not all retailers and for limited hours, distancing rules will remain in effect. it applies to all aspects of german life including soccer fields. you can go resume playing soccer but better not be in any crowds doing it. she will stagger that in to see how people are responding. her response will be very different than mayors and governors in this country, who,

for example, they opened beaches, throngs packed them. something tells me she would not go for that. jackie deangelis has more what those states and my municipalits could look at here, jackie. reporter: i don't think she would go for that. everyone in the united states is looking to get back to business. different states are having different conversations about. this is right time? do we do it slowly? restrictions are being eased some places. even hard-hit areas. east coast, for example, new york joins connecticut and new jersey opening up marinas, boat yards, boat launches for recreational use, stressing importance of social distancing out in public in these places. new york also updated guidance for golf courses. public and private courses can be open, no carts, caddies, walking only. controversial decision in florida, the governor giving municipalities green light to get beaches open.

restricted hours for walking, biking, hiking, swimming, taking care of pets. we'll see if people abide by the rules. that will be a big part. in texas, stores operate through retail to go. that will be this friday. you can make deliveries to the customer cars. you can take it to homes and other locations. parks will open in that state today. in colorado the governor hinting state opens some parts of the on monday. what that state order will look like we're not sure yet. idaho, michigan, they want up in some capacity by may 1st. could be a little aggressive n maryland, for example, the barbershops are still closed, neil. they say if you're essential worker, someone on the front lines you can make arrangements to get a haircut. these are real life issues people are facing. at the same time they're itching, ready to go. people are protesting they want

to get out there to take care of their families. still many questions, will warmer weather help us. if we get more testing you find out you're immune, are you immune to getting reinfected? this virus we don't know enough about to really answer those questions. a lot of folks saying, slow and steady. that is the way to do it, neil. neil: all right. thank you very much, jackie, on all of that. you might notice in lower right portion of the screen here, we've seen a very, very big slide in oil prices now at under $8 a barrel. liz peek, i wanted to first address that with you, when we come back, we'll take a break i guess. so we'll take a break. when we come back liz peek will be here to address this. just to update you, we want to keep this up there because that is a very significant development here. it will mean a lot cheaper gas and related prices for you. for the guys that churn this stuff out, a whole host of companies, drillers, wildcatters, they're getting hit on the chin here and there

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neil: looking at oil again, these are not typos folks.

a barrel of oil trading at $7.86. you remember oil inflation adjusted $100 a barrel? that was then, this is now. could be catalyst of expiring contracts and the like. what is fascinating about this, some people like to look at this, so it is going telegraphing, not a shock to you, could it be telegraphing down the road. liz peek what is the heck is going on? >> in the oil business what is going on nobody wants a extra barrel of production for months. we've seen extra to cut back worldwide supply. it is insufficient, particularly kneel, neil, when the con is so depressed globally. the reality there was too much oil around for years. it was basically controlled, the saudis and opec managed crisis pretty well.

but now we see what happens when there is really almost no storage left. that is really what has been happening this past month. what countries should be doing, like the united states and china is stockpiling oil, buy it at incredible price. futures contract is about to expire. that put extra pressure. oil doesn't have much value when there is too much of it and you have to pay to store it. that is the thing. holding it is not free. people don't understand there is a cost to that extra barrel. so right now, it is in freefall. it won't last. it never does. oil is self-correcting commodity to some degree. maybe not under this world wide shut down, and but it will come back. neil: liz we have audio troubles apparently. we'll try to fix it. what liz was saying for those

with difficult, this could be a short term phenomenon here. i should hasten to add, futures contracts going from october to november, seeing oil 30 to 33-dollar a barrel range. that is where it was before i stepped up to do the show. it is forecasting a turn around. whether that holds is anyone's guess. charlie gasparino on this. i do want to touch this with you, if you don't mind that could be indication of people looking at the at least the near-term picture as not very promising. we know this global halt in activity is a good reflection of that. >> yeah. neil: maybe it is a halt or a slowdown that takes a while to unwind. what do you think? >> well, two years ago, two years ago, feels like two years ago, two weeks ago on your show, neil, i reported that what i was hearing from my wall street sources, people in the restructuring business, they're obviously looking to restructure some shale oil companies that

may go bankrupt amid this pandemic recession. what they were tell me and what i said on cavuto was simply this, the real price of oil was six to $10 a barrel. it was not what was stated in the futures contract which was $20 a barrel. the real price of oil reflects the real economy. as you get the contract, it is up tomorrow, the futures contract, that reality gets priced into the contract. what those other traders are saying on the contracts that are longer dated, with all the fed stimulus it's a bet. remember there is another side of the bet. someone is betting the opposite, taking other side of the contract, with all the stimulus in there the economy will come back. as the economy comes back, oil prices will rebound off the lows what is now and be in the 30s. remember that is a bet as well but this current contract, we reported it first because it was being priced into the real economy is saying right now, the real economy is in a very steep

recession. we may get out of it as some people are predicting on those longer dated contracts but right now we're in a pickle. again those longer-dated contracts are pricing in stimulus measures by the fed, which are as you know, pretty intense. $10 trillion in low interest rates, you name it. they're doing everything. anyway, back to my, i want to get to this story, this story, is fascinating. lydia moynihan broke it today, this morning on fox business. that's my producer. michael milkin is getting into the game. there is no smarter guy in terms of market and economy michael milken of drexel. runs milken institute. a major philanthropist. he is worried about the economy going forward. that he is worried economy cannot really open without mower americans getting tests. what he is trying to do, lydia

got confirmation from people at milken, she heard about the podcast was given. frank luntz was the moderator. frank luntz the pollster. michael milken said he was trying to get jeff bezos of amazon.com to begin shipping free of charge, using his vast networks these coronavirus kits so we can get some handle on this. it is pretty amazing. we have not heard from amazon whether they will do it or not. milken understands amazon's reach. it has a nationwide reach. just about everybody has it. if you ever distribute it will not be through the u.s. post office. if you distribute it efficiently these tests needed to get the economy back, a lot of people say, a lot of smart people including mr. milken you will have to do it through a distribution network that hits many americans. that is amazon. we got this confirmed from milken. he clearly broached the idea to amazon. we don't know how mr. bezos will react. they have not gotten back to us. it is a fascinating story.

lydia broke it at foxbusiness.com. it seems to be one of the things if you talk to anybody about getting economy going, neil, guesting us reopened again, it is having some sort of a test that works and a lot of americans take. back to you. neil: all right. charlie, thank you very much. i want to go back to oil. charles live around i were going back and forth, it has slipped under $6 a barrel. market watch put together vulnerable oil companies and their, you know, debt levels. obviously the higher debt level, the lower your making money in the oil market, the more vulnerable you are. among them, apache, which is down 67%. that is the net debt to equity. we also got gulfport energy, 76%, net debt to equity. consolidated energy, negative 64%, again net debt to equity. the reason why i go through these, it goes through a lot

more companies as well, about three dozen, oil drilling, wildcat players and the rest, that are all vulnerable because if your money, your currency is what you make off oil, right now you're not making squat off it, in fact you're losing your shirt on it, you have oil prices collapsing to the degree they have and are, you're getting $5.58 a barrel and that is falling like a hot knife then -- feasible is it for you to survive the environment? the bigger you are the more you can. it is very tough for some of the smaller players because they have a lot of debt and a lot of expenses, drilling for this stuff does not come cheap. forget about the fact it is way, way below the level you need just to break even. it is at levels right now that can just break you to the bank. jackie deangelis has been following this phenomenon because it is accelerating, isn't it, jackie? reporter: it is, neil and that

is frankly scary. you think about the companies, you're essentially hitting on the central point bankruptcies will come as a result of oil prices looking like this. the one thing i say this is the expiring month. storage costs are very high. nobody will try to buy this and store it. that is why this is tanking as charlie pointed out. the futures shows the price is little higher but still not high enough for these companies to make money. maybe conocos, chevrons of the world can somehow deal with five dollar a barrel of oil, smaller players, shale guys, they absolutely cannot. even the bigger guys look for $30, $40 to break even. those are after costs come down majorly with fracking, technology, all things we've done in the oil patch. this is really historic when you look at this price. i covered the price decline when we were over 100 and we came down to about 25 because of the shale boom here in this country. and i never really thought i would see this quite this low

again. but the bankruptcy issues are going to be the problem in the energy patch. this is really a harbinger, a sign of charlie said, what the economy looks like right now, what investors think the economy looks like in terms of demand. the rough patch that we're going to be in here. to see crude oil trading $5.05. if we break five at this point, we just did, it is really remarkable. neil: it is right. you know, jackie, what is interesting too and again i'm very glad you pointed out this is the nearest term contract, the may 2020 contract, that is being pounced on because forward-looking contracts going out into late summer, early fall, i believe, october and november, still had oil priced at around high 20s, early 30s, with the belief being as people come back to work it's going to rebound but the lower this goes, the tougher it gets for a rebound. so it's a double-edged sword for

a lot of these certainly debt-laden players to survive to survive very long at those levels, no? reporter: that is the thing. they will have to weather the storm. that is the hard part. some companies will not be able to do it. we hope by the third quarter, the fourth quarter, if the models seem correct when it comes to the vie us demand will start to come back, people get back to work. find semblance of a new normal. that may not be the case. some companies may not be able to survive that long. even if futures consider the you talk about, correctly forecasting price of oil between 25 and 30. big guys, small guys that can endure it, they will hurt there. even if people come back to work, will they continue in the normal activities the way they once would? if people go to work and go home because they're still scared to interact, engage and be out in the world in a real way, driving around, you know, taking their

trips, you're still going to see prices on the low side. demand will just not be there. that is also why i think you have the opec plus fall apart at the last meeting before they tried to kind of bring things back together because it became an environment where all bets were off, right? russia makes its bread and butter through its oil. saudi arabia makes its bread and butter through its oil. this country does now also. you have big three powers vying for a piece of pie rapidly deteriorating in front of your eyes. neil: indeed it is. jackie, thank you very, very much. the dow itself is weathering these blows. it is down about 229 points. oil is a key component in two very big players obviously, exxonmobil and chevron. i don't know if you were to take them out of the equation how much better the dow would be doing but i suspect significantly better. phil flynn follows oil industry

closely. just since you and i talked at the beginning of this show, phil, we lost four dollars a barrel. i understand expiring contracts. you highlighted that the fact that contracts further out are a lot higher but what do you make of this sort of falling knife issue here? >> you know this is a squeeze play in reverse. usually we talk about squeeze play when a lot of people are caught at the last minute on the wrong side of the market, it usually drives prices higher. i think we have a situation where a lot people were betting oil prices couldn't go below $20 a barrel. they bet they couldn't go below $15 a barrel. they bet they couldn't go below five dollars a barrel. guess what? they did. so you have a situation where everything could go wrong for the bulls in this may contract is. and there is a lot of concern that there is a lot of people

with the contracts that expire tomorrow that are long, have to sell this or have to take delivery. the thing is, nobody wants to take delivery right now. number one, there is no place to put it. number two refiners have enough oil because they're running at low levels because nobody is driving, nobody is flying. you have a situation where all people are long. my phone is off the hook right now. looking for people to find a place to store the oil. this is probably a price level we may never seen again, or not see for 10 or 20 years. sew wherever this ends up in the next 24 to 48 hours this could be very historic low. it remind me neil, of there was no demand anywhere in the globe, we had too much supply, prices went down to $10 a barrel. what happens, that's a big sea

change for the industry. you will see things happen that can change that dynamic pretty dramatically. i think jackie was talking about bankruptcies. there's probably 100 firms right now that this price selloff may put them over the edge. it's going to force producers to stop producing. they're going to have to shut the well. they have no choice. when they go to bankers for money to continue to operate, the money's not going to be there. you will see probably the biggest contraction in u.s. energy production in history. the reason why i can say that pretty confidently is because we are producing more oil than we ever were in history just a few months ago. so we could probably see u.s. production fall by two, three, maybe even four million barrels a day and at some point, that loss of production will bring the prices back up when the demand starts to come back. neil: if prices are this low, couldn't we just over stuff the strategic petroleum reserve,

open up even another one, fill it up at these cheap prices, take advantage of it later, or am i being too simplistic? >> no, you're absolutely right. in fact, the trump administration right now is doing exactly that. there's a bid right now by the stra teetegic petroleum reserve buy about 20 million barrels of oil. they also have the capacity to go up to about 78 million barrels. but the problem is once you run out of that capacity, they can expand that capacity a little bit but it's going to take time. this is all a timing issue. because most people believe that a few months from now or a year from now when the economy starts to come back, demand's going to come back but nobody knows how quickly. what they do know, it's not going to happen in the next 24 to 48 hours. so yes, the u.s. can step up their purchases from the strategic petroleum reserve. i think they are already doing that. but i will tell you this, to expand that strategic reserve right now, it's going to take

money and time and i don't know if they are going to be able to do it to save the market in the short term or save a lot of producers. neil: all right. phil, thank you. no doubt we will be going back to you, my friend. a good read of all of this. i want to bring ken langone into this, co-founder of home depot and many, many others. very, very generous on the front with langone medical center which is helping in the coronavirus fight and that is putting it mildly. ken, always good to have you. first on the oil situation here, this has some sticky details to do with contracts expiring, i get that and all, but for a lot of oil guys, this is going to be a severe pinch. what do you make of it? >> well, first of all, thank you for having me on your show. secondly, let me plead guilty. i'm not anywhere near knowledgeable on oil or the petroleum industry. this to me is a pretty simple thing. tomorrow somebody is getting

delivery of oil and they got no place to put it. that simple. this is what we are talking about. so the people that bought the contracts are now going to get delive delivery. problem, where do they put it. your previous guest made it clear, you can't build facilities fast enough to do it. look, we are learning one thing not only about oil but about the world. we are all interconnected one way or the other. in a certain sense, that's wonderful because that means we all need each other. on the other hand, it means also you got to like what the other guy's doing because if you don't, it may affect you. the most important thing right now, everything is going to get going again, is how fast are we going to end this pandemic. how fast do we reach a point where people can feel comfortable they can go out, go to work, not maybe like they did before, not ride subways where they were packed. i mean, there's going to be things we are going to do differently going forward. that's just the way it has to be.

i think most importantly of all, the greatest thing is delivery of quality health care in america, thank god, is phenomenal and we are proving that right now. you look at where we were a month ago and look at where we are today. we have an abundance of ventilators, an abundance of masks. this is all, by the way, thank god, the private sector in america. these are the companies that politicians like to beat up on. but guess what, if we didn't have them, i don't know where america would be today. you look at the masks, look at the ventilators, look at the test kits. you can write down, look at the manufacture of protective gowns, it's absolutely a wonderful, wonderful thing to see. and frankly, we all should feel very good about the fact we've got these people in our midst. so i'm tending to dwell on the positive because i think first of all, it's more fun but secondly, it gives you some hope that tomorrow is going to be

better than today. and it will be. and it will be. by the way, i see you've got pictures up there -- neil: what do -- yeah. what do the doctors and medical experts at langone center tell you? >> we are moving in the right direction. we are moving in the right direction. we would like it to move faster but the important thing is, it appears that the threat has abated. in that regard, i think you got to feel good. now, the hope is over a reasonable period of time, reasonable period of time, the next couple of weeks, we will begin to see the downslope. the tragedy is all these lives we've lost. to me, the message out of that is look at what america is putting itself through because we value every single human being's life. every single one. some people are going to look

back and say they did all this, 42,000 people, 50,000 people, whatever the number's going to be, yes, we did it. because we value life in america. life is precious. it's inherent in our values, inherent in our ethos, inherent in everything we do. that's good. this is going to be a tough time coming out of this. it's a tough time now and it's going to be tough coming out of it. but i have no doubt america will rise to the occasion. neil: on that front, do you worry -- i'm sorry, ken -- do you worry on that front with these polls that show 6 out of 10 americans fear we could be unwinding these lockdown provisions too soon? they are worried about that. what do you say? >> i'm worried, too. i'm worried, too. on the other hand, we've got very solid professional people like dr. fauci, like the -- by the way, computer technology today, a.i. is going to be of enormous benefit to the decision we make. why? because we are going to have

more than just guesswork. you look at dr. birx and dr. fauci and all these people at the cdc and you got to have confidence. at some point, we are going to go out, we are going to try to begin the process of restoring normalcy to our lives, such as normalcy will be defined but what are we going to see happen? number one, we are learning that there are a lot of people that do their work without going to work. first thing i would say to those companies, you decide which people in your organization can stay home and you say to them all right, in the first wave, you stay home, you can do what you have to do. people that are essential to their presence being where they work, then you got to make provisions. there's going to be masks, going to be tests, going to be degrees of separation, but it will work. look, every time this great nation has confronted a challenge, we whipped it. we whipped it. this will be no exception. and i can tell you right now

what's going on at our place at nyu langone, by the way, we're no exception. new york presbyterian, northwell, montefiore, mt. sinai, all of us, all of us, we are showing the world just how good we are and how much we care. and i think, neil, at the end of the day we will look back and say thank god we have america and thank god we're american. i am very optimistic. i don't like what we're going through, i wish we weren't going through it, but here we are, and we have to deal with it and we are dealing with it. i mean, just look, two weeks ago, i was going nuts that we weren't going to have masks and boy, oh, boy, did the american industry crank, we have masks. we weren't going to have ventilators. the governor of new york state said he was afraid we would be should be 40,000 ventilatorvent. new york state is shipping ventilators to vermont or massachusetts, one of the new england states.

point is, look what we have done in two and a half short weeks. that didn't just happen. that was managed well and here we are. so look, keep the faith, have patience, and understand that you are going to make concessions that you have to make now based on what happened and you know, it's no different, neil. look at 9/11. what happened after 9/11? all of a sudden you are taking your shoes off when you go on an airplane, you are walking through metal detectors. i remember before 9/11, i could go into any building in new york, go into the elevator, go where i wanted. today, every single building in new york, you are obligated to show your identification. we adjusted to it and we will adjust to this. but don't give up on america. we are and we always will be the greatest nation on earth. i just wish frankly, this is the last thing i'll say, i wish the

media could make a little more effort to show us the wonderful heroic stories like the people that drive ambulances, people that drive trucks. if you recall, mayor deblasio was talking about rationing of food in new york. didn't happen. why? because industry cranked up, truck drivers showed up, we got the goods to where they are and here we are. so let's build on what made us great. neil: let me ask you, thoeshughn that point, you mentioned anthony fauci earlier. he had said there's really no recovery if the virus isn't under control. he didn't specify what barometers he would be using to describe under control. some say a decline in new cases and more testing available. what do you hear from your own folks and elsewhere, what would you like to see? on the phone: i'll tell you what we would like to see. we would like to see if cases keep coming, they are at a

manageable level and that's exactly what's going to happen. two weeks ago it was terrible, we were going to be swamped, we were going to be drowned with all these cases. guess what, we are at a point now where we are starting to see discharges equal admits. that's the name of it. that to me is the most important thing of all. by the way, last night, they had the number of deaths at a higher number than your screen shows, 40,702. last night it was 41,000 something. i don't know which number is right. the point is, we have had a dramatic falling off so the name of the game is to make sure that the system can manage the inflow which is dictated by your availability of beds. i can tell you right now, we now have available beds at nyu. we didnhave available beds in i in acute care and by the way, a lot of people are going home. so look, but i'm a perennial

optimist. give me a picture, i'm going to try to find something in that picture that makes me feel good. maybe i'm pollyanna. i could well be. i'm 84, you know, things start to happen to your mind. i hope it hasn't happened yet but maybe. the point is, look at how far we have come in 30 short days. we are going to get back. we are going to have -- by the way, we are all going to make sacrifices, all of us. i don't want to get specific but there's a million different things we are going to have to do differently, including how do we get back some semblance of balance in the federal financial situation. we can't keep printing paper like this without some consequence, and the consequence has to be accommodation of throttling back and perhaps, perhaps adjusting, raising taxes. that may be in the picture. i don't know. i'm not smart enough to know that. all i'm saying is don't give up on america.

we are the greatest country on earth. we always will be. we are at our very best, at our very best when we have our backs to the wall. neil: when you talk about all the stimulus that's been going on, republicans and democrats are doing it to try to get us out of this, it's trillions of dollars, you talked about that having to be addressed down the road but you are open to higher taxes to do it. that might be unavoidable, right? on the phone: yes, absolutely. look, let me give you a for instance. give you an easy one. what the hell am i doing getting social security every month? this is wrong. take it away from me. they haven't got the guts to do it. well, maybe this will give them the courage to say we have to have a hard look at entitlements and question who should have it and who shouldn't. there's a big difference in america today than what it was in the '30s when social security came in. it's changed.

it's changed dramatically and we need to change with it. so there's a good example. i can go on down the list of all -- a lot of these frankly, a lot of these tax benefits that different organizations get, i'm not talking about charities, i'm talking about investment operations, we have to have a hard look and say wait a minute, this is not right. it's wrong anyway but right now it's a good way to start getting out of our problem and do two things at one time. fix something that shouldn't be and also help something that need to be fixed. we are going to get through this. we are going to get through it fine. but it's going to be with pain. it's going to be with sacrifice on all of our parts. thank god, thank god we have the capacity to make those sacrifices and more importantly, thank god we live in a country where eventually we sort things out. my only thought would be neil, please, the media, start writing some nice stories. start writing some stories about people feeling good about what they're seeing.

every day i'm hearing stories about our doctors and nurses and our patient care technicians and our culinary people and building services people and the bus drivers and truck drivers and the people on the farms and people in the factories. boy, oh, boy, thank god we've got a lot of reasons to say thank god. neil: well, i didn't know, ken, you were 84. i thought you were much older than that. >> guess what? i'm 84. and i need more sleep and i don't have the energy level i i don'ted used to have. i feel pretty good but it ain't what it was. thanks for having me on your show. neil: good luck coming out of your shell. ken langone, best of the best. >> do me a favor, find some great stories. take care. neil: we do, every single show. america together, we feature that. some remarkable people of all

stripes trying to get through this and providing a great example, as are you. thank you very, very much. let's go to blake burman on fast-moving developments including stimulus that might be coming. we don't know. that might be an offset for what's happening certainly on the oil front. what's the latest you are hearing from washington, what the president is planning? reporter: how am i supposed to follow ken langone like that? what a great interview to hear from him as well. as for what we are hearing here in washington, speaking with several people today, both in the white house and up on capitol hill, as it relates to this next batch of funding that could be coming down the line, i'm hearing they do not have a deal just yet, but they are very very close. they are just sort of working on some of the final details, some of the final disagreements as well. here's what's in that package that should be coming at some point here soon. $310 billion for the paycheck -- payroll protection program, ppp. while the deal also includes $50 billion for the small business

association, emergency injury disaster loan program, $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for covid testing. as it relates to the ppp, the small business loan program, larry kudlow said this morning they are expecting that money to fly. >> the first one went like hotcakes so the second one could go like hotcakes, too. reporter: that first batch, $349 billion, went in 12 days. the white house isn't shutting the door on the possibility of a third batch as well should this $310 billion go quick, too. >> hopefully it will be sometime soon that governors all across the country will see this virus as mostly gone and they can throw the switch and turn their economies on, but if that doesn't happen, then i could expect given the success of this program that people would renew it again. reporter: potentially renew it

again. over the weekend, governors all across the country continued to push for more testing capabilities ain order to reope their local economies. the president taking to twitter today to say the following in part, writing earlier today quote, states not the federal government should be doing the testing. middle portion of the tweet here, the president says but we will work with the governors and get it done. back to this relief package that is still being negotiated, the $25 billion for testing, i'm told that one of the issues they were focusing on even late month the evening last night was this idea of testing. i'm told that republicans want to see it work so that there's public/private partnerships or that's where their compass is pointing. they want more public/private involvement whereas democrats, it's been described to me, want this more centralized meaning they want the federal government to be able to have more of their hands on the process. neil? neil: blake, thank you very, very much. you were just as effective as ken langone, young man.

thank you very, very much. blake following all that in washington. by the way, take a look at the lower right portion of your screen. you are not imagining that. it's not flipped around. the decline versus the price. the decline really is over $14 a barrel. the figure on a barrel of crude oil is now, wow, just got under $4 a barrel. you immediately see that and say how soon will i see that show up at the pump. i know cynically people say it takes a long time to see the decrease. it can't help but register at the pump soon. patrick dehaan, first, what do you make of today? is it an anomaly, contract driven event, but even allowing for that it's a little over the top or should i say over the bottom. what do you make of it? on the phone: yeah, it is. i think there's fair points on all fronts. i think it is overdone, obviously when you see something collapsing by as much as it is, you look at the amount of

contracts being traded and of course, it's far fewer in comparison to the june contract which comes into play here very shortly. but i mean, there's something to be side on waid on why prices a down so much. look at the numbers from oklahoma, the storage for that nymex delivery point and we are ten million barrels higher in oil storage, just jumped five million barrels in the last week and very quickly, that 75 million barrel or so capacity could be tested given the fact demand has been just completely and utterly destroyed for gasoline, for distillate, for jet fuel. this is truly unprecedented. neil: a lot of people immediately right now want to know how soon will i see it at the pump. obviously there are a lot of factors that go into seeing it at the pump, sometimes longer than usual, but how do you see this playing out? >> well, you know, what i'm looking at is a huge disconnect right now between may and june's

contracts, obviously. the june contract or i should say the may contract which expires tomorrow is obviously the headline getter at 4.04 on the low side and june's contract which will take over is at about $ $22.25 a barrel. we may see movement with june to come down a little bit. it's tough to know how much of this is physically, you know, taking delivery of this or if this is closing out the month or long, moves on longs that are trapped. for motorists it probably won't amount to a whole lot given the fact stations are still reluctant to pass along lower prices given that they have lost 50% to 70% of their traffic. neil: you know, i see it popping up in the price for regular unleaded gas. that's what we are showing now, the average, about $1.81 a gallon versus $2.17 a month ago. and a lot higher a few months ago. i don't see it in the upgrade in

fuels, though, either in the supremes or high test or whathave you. they stubbornly remain high. you know far better than i how much they have down but they seem to come down a lot more slowly than on the regular front. educate me on this. >> well, good point there. a lot of stations have moved to these l.e.d. pricing signs in the last say ten years and they have removed midgrade and premium from them. so on one mannehand, you are le competitive because these grades of fuel are not priced as regular, not as prominently priced as regular but the other thing is stations are moving a lot less volume and most of these cases, i would suspect that premium and they probably bought at quite a bit higher price than they are selling it for, so in a lot of cases, you just don't move premium. they haven't necessarily filled up maybe some stations haven't filled up with lower premium prices yet. but you know, you do see that. neil: so you have endured my

idiotic questions. one more for you and it concerns people who look at what's happening on the gas front and say you know, do i really need the high test, do i really need the high end gas, when i can see this huge disparity with the regular stuff. what do you tell them? on the phone: yeah, especially in an area like here in chicago where it's $1.20 in some cases more for premium. unless your car or motorcycle requires it, requires it, you know, to splurge on premium is a complete waste of money. your car doesn't have any emotions, it doesn't really benefit a whole lot from really no benefit if your car doesn't require it. it's just a slightly improved anti-knock index that you are filling up with and your car, if it runs on regular, if it requires regular, well, premium is not doing anything. you are not getting more horse power. neil: all right. patrick, you are an encyclopedia, young man. thank you very much for helping us out on this.

again, oil now flirting in and out of $3 a barrel. every time i look at that i say man, what the heck. maybe this is a short-lived affair, we have been looking at this, too. kevin brady, our stocks editor here, walking encyclopedia, reminds me it seems to be localized to that contract. the farther out you go into june, july, the summer, up and up you go. maybe this is a unique anomaly. again, unique though it might be, it is head-scratching and head-turning the likes of which i don't ever remember anything like it. a fall of 82% in price in a single session. we are watching that very very closely. also watching what will happen when america does get back to work, albeit slowly. as we told you, about a dozen states right now have eased in easing restrictions, if you will, to sort of get people back out on the beaches, get people out if you want to hunt and fish in minnesota, you can now.

some are even re-opening shops and stores, albeit for limited hours, you know, everyone paying attention to distancing rules. so there is that idea that slowly but surely, they will get back. what will they get back to? when everybody is back, when a lot of these are unwound, a lot of companies have to plan for that future. in the case of amazon, general motors, you have seen it with walmart, a host of others, costco, where they are testing workers and also providing everything they can for those workers from face masks, gloves, you name it, this is a big, big trend right now and ashley webster has been following it. ashley, to ken langone's point, we will get back to business but it will not be business as usual, will it? ashley: no, it won't. at least certainly in the short or medium term, neil. we are seeing a lot more companies now look at what they call thermal camera testing. gm, tyson foods, intel, using these machines that measure

elevated body temperature, ebt. i used to see them being used in airports and train terminals, even a concert. it's now reported that amazon is getting into this big-time. they set up hardware for cameras in at least six warehouses. the question is what's so great about these things. well, the cameras can speed up testing of workers, they measure how much heat people emit relative to their surroundings. if you are feeling not so great and you have a fever, these cameras will pick it up. anyone flagged by a camera will be given a second test through those forehead temperatures as a second measure to see if indeed you do have some sort of fever. we also reached out, by the way, to smithfield. this is the company that's been forced to shut down a number of its meat processing plants in recent days and weeks because of the virus outbreak, and they told us in part, they say we

have implemented thermal scanning technology in all facilities including distribution centers. we are using three types of thermal scanning technology based on the size of the facility. so we are seeing this more and more. but of course, this also comes in addition, neil, to increased safety measures as always, keeping that physical distance, wearing the face masks, making the gloves available, readily available hand sanitizer, all of this part of getting back to work. but these thermal cameras are said to be faster, quicker and in some cases, some claim they are even more accurate than the forehead thermometers. so there you have it. i guess it's going to be the new normal as this technology starts to get picked up more and more. in fact, we reached out to some of the auto makers and ford told us they are already using thermal cameras in all their locations that are still open.

get used to it. it's going to be here for awhile. neil: ashley webster, thank you very, very much. i want to follow up that with the "wall street journal" jillian melchior. per ashley's argument, it's going to be a very different, changed world. i want to get into a number of items but first and foremost with what is happening on this getting back to work notion. apparently the oil markets are one thing and now as we slip-slide to $2.66 a barrel, part of it is expiration of contract, i get that, but do you think any of this is a reflection on the comeback could take awhile, that this world slowdown, stop-down as some might say, isn't a short-lived event. it will linger a while. what do you think? >> yeah, i think that's most likely going to be the case. i mean, we were hoping to see more of a v-shaped recovery. it's looking like this will be a u-shaped recovery and it's going to be something that takes a long time.

i'm worried particularly for some of the small businesses that have been shut down, whether they are going to be able to come back at all. yeah, it's a dark economic picture, i think. neil: you know, again, looking at a contract in oil, whatever the other data has been, very weak, we expected that, more states are coming back today, germany entered back with easing up on some of its sheltering provisions not in one fell swoop, they will be careful about it, ditto with china, much of asia. i'm wondering how long this unwinding process takes, especially when you hear 6 out of 10 americans who are concerned even now we are rushing it. what do you make of that? >> boy, i wish i had the answer to how long this is going to last. i don't. i think that there is still so much that we don't know about coronavirus. from really basic facts to

whether you become immune, how long that immunity lasts. what the actual mortality rate is. there's just a lot we don't know about that and it's making it very difficult for politicians to make decisions but also for businesses to make decisions about what they should order, about what life getting back to work will look like. it's just dealing with a lot of unknowns right now. i think the only one certain thing is that the workplace we return to is not going to resemble the workplace that we left. neil: yeah. if you think about it, in so many buildings, people are crowded together and they're certainly not six feet apart. maybe they make allowances, make it three feet apart but even there, that would be a tough one to adhere to. the reason i mention it is the cdc is reporting its count of about 646,625 cases of new coronavirus cases as of now versus the previous day, 720,630

cases. so an uptick in cases. now, that is something you don't want to see. you want to see if there are new cases, they are declining or the rate of increase is declining or hopefully in the case of hospitalizations, outright declining. so this would seem to indicate we're not out of the woods yet or contemplate even drifting out of the woods, huh? >> yeah. and that's a real possibility that as we ease up on some of these rules, start returning people to work, that you are going to see cases go up. it's possible this isn't going to look like a single peak, it's fwo going to look like a couple of them clustered together. again, i will just say i think it's really concerning that we don't have widespread testing, we don't have good statistics on a lot of these things and it's so important for the data to be driving our decision making. i would really focus on getting some better data, randomized testing would probably be helpful. we are seeing that study out of

stanford shows us all kinds of things we didn't know before. until we have a little bit more knowledge, i think it's difficult to make any predictions. neil: thank you very, very much. i know we were scheduled to talk about other developments but this news and these latest developments not only on the energy front but on the latest cdc figures warrant maybe go in that direction. i want to show you what you are seeing in the lower right portion of your screen. you might look at that smaller number up top, 2.39, as the decline today and the bottom number is the actual price of oil. it's actually the reverse. the decline is close to 16 bucks a barrel. the cost of that barrel is $2.39. it is the biggest plunge we have seen in history. at these levels, the lowest close in oil if it were to hold going back to 1983. when ronald reagan was president, two years into his administration and what you might recall from that period,

i'm old enough to remember it, is that collapse in prices after prices were so high, remember the late '70s when we had a second oil crisis and all, this reverberated the other way around where a lot of texas wildcatters went out of business because the price had collapsed so low it wasn't worth the stake in business or even affording to stay in business. that is the concern right now on the oil front that a lot of these players, leaving aside some of the big boys like exxonmobil and chevron, two principal energy components within the dow, i'm talking about the energy players like slchlumberger and marathon oil and halliburton and phillips, apache, diamondback, talking about valero energy, talking about at least seven etfs and mutual funds directly pegged to the oil industry and to even foreign oil, british petroleum, for example, british prices like brent, north sea crude also

getting hit hard but nothing like this. that is something that is very very unusual and has walloped the entire sector of the market. oil is so cheap they really don't know what to do with it. some talked about beefing up our strategic petroleum reserve but where do you put it when we tapped that puppy out. but it is an unusual dilemma for americans who would normally welcome the low gas prices that will no doubt come with this. for how long is anyone's guess. but it is a reminder how sometimes you get what you wish for and then some. now look at that, $1.85 a barrel. karl rove on these fast-moving historical developments. we are getting very darned close at this point, little over a buck a barrel. normally i'm tapping your brain about political insight but you are a good read of market history and texas history and oil and how it hit that state back in the early '80s. we are revisiting that. what do you think? >> yeah, no, permian basin has

been in trouble for a lot of the year already and lot of last year and this can't help at all. we will see a lot of small producers, independents, go out of business. a lot of their vendors will be in difficulty. now, of course, this is exaggerated, as you say. we got two issues here. we got the close of the monthly contracts, then we also have storage problems as well as the overlooming problem of demand. some of this will go away when the may contracts kick in and some of it will, you know, go away with the recovery as it starts to ramp up and people get in their cars again. but there's a fundamental problem of lots of production in the world and prices down as a result. neil: i'm wondering, you're right, forward-looking contracts i know we are getting a little wonky here, they are much higher, although they have come down, too, not as startling as this. i'm wondering if this all feeds a narrative that somehow that we

will come out of this and the whole virus situation and getting back to work, i don't know how states, i know texas has been slowly inching back in that regard and plans to do so this week even more, we know what germany is doing, we know what other states besides texas are doing, so i have no doubt we will get back on that but i'm wondering if this calls into question the v-shaped recovery that a lot of people including the president want to see, that it could be a little different than that, it could take a little longer than that. what do you think? >> well, cheap oil prices will help the rest of the economy. won't help the oil producing states like louisiana, texas, oklahoma, new mexico, for example. and our drillers can't make money at $22 or $25 a barrel. they got to be $30 or $40 a barrel before they can begin making money. so even these future contracts are not going to be particularly attractive. as a result, states like texas which depend upon the oil

economy to help generate revenues are going to find themselves in a pickle next year. every state's going to be in a pickle when it comes to revenues but oil-producing states are going to be in even more greater difficulty given the low energy prices and impact on their budgets. but outside of texas, it may help in big industrial states, it may help in other parts of the country where energy production's not so critical part of the economy. florida, for example, another big mega-state in the southeast, may see its economy reverberate, recover faster than texas because they benefit from oil, lower oil prices whereas the texas economy doesn't. neil: you know, you are a great business guest, too, so hats off to you here. i'm wondering, saudi arabia and russia had this quasi-agreement to lead a 20 million barrel day cut in oil production. we know now with oil now just

around a buck a barrel, incredible as that seems, that they would have to cut a lot more than that to stem this tide, wouldn't they? >> they would. now, look, let's be honest. the saudis and the russians don't necessarily have the interests of the united states at heart. the fracking revolution has made us largely independent, it has depressed world prices for energy, it's made us a very competitive and important player on the international market. this is particularly damaging to russia. they got into this spat because, you know, opec is rusty and not able to enforce its agreements, but one side benefit to both, particularly to russia, was to diminish the power of the american fracking revolution in hope that they collapse a lot of firms and they can't come back robustly. i think that's unlikely to happen. i think the destruction of firms is going to provide resources for more nimble, better capitalized firms to move in. but let's realize, when the russians and germans -- excuse

me, russians and saudis got in this battle, it was not for the advantage of the united states. it was primarily for their own disagreements but both of them saw side benefit, the russians more than the saudis, to doing damage to the u.s. energy industry at the same time. neil: look who's damaged now. very good point. karl, thank you so much. very much appreciate it. karl rove here. as karl pointed out, i think it bears repeating, this is something that seems to be fairly localized to the may energy contract which expires tomorrow. for example, the next contract, the most active contract, that's where you have the most activity, is in the june contract and that is still at around $22 a barrel. so this is a bit of an anomaly but even there, the june contract and forward contracts going into the fall, they have all fallen on average, this isn't exact, 10% to 12% from levels on friday. but again, nothing like what's happening here at the now

soon-to-be expired may contract. again, that puppy's put to bed tomorrow. do we have mr. flynn with us? is he still with us? >> hey, neil, i'm here. neil: can you hear me, my friend? >> yes. neil: good. i didn't know if you were. apologies for that. what do you make of the contracts outside of this one expiring tomorrow, much higher although they too are dropping but nothing like the 91%, 92% we are seeing on this one. explain that to me. >> i think what's happening is there's no time for optimism within the next 24 hours in the fact that you can look a month down the road and say things will get better, opec cuts will start coming into play but that isn't going to help you 24 hours from now. what's even more disturbing if you are in this may contract is the tme group just issued a statement that said they will allow the may contract to trade negative. that is right.

this futures contract could trade below zero if this selloff continues. so don't think there's a bottom at zero. we could go negative a dollar and that's a perfect example of what happens when you have a lot of oil and no place to put it. neil: how does that happen? how do you close on a contract that trades negative? i heard of negative interest rates but not negative oil prices. explain how that goes. >> basically, what's going to happen is that you are going to pay somebody to take that oil off your hands. if you buy the prices at a negative price, you are going to get this oil and they are going to give you money to take it. that's a possibility. so if prices do go negative, there will be people that get oil and they will be paid to take it off your hands. now, it hasn't happened yet, but the way this market is free-falling right now and the fact that it has 24 hours to go,

it's entirely possible that we could see for the first time in history, see crude oil prices trade negative. now, we have had in the history, other markets, you know, we read about 50 years ago or 100 years ago, like the onion contract or the potato contract that traded below zero, but nothing like this in recent memory. to see something like this happen in the west texas intermediate contract which has been for many, many generations, you know, the bellwether of global oil prices, to close negative really shows you the state of this market, at least in the snapshot in time. neil: you know, you were among the first to say whatever promises some opec members and opec plus members were making to cut production, that no matter what they were kicking around, the 20 million barrel a day figure comes to mind, it wouldn't be enough to address what is even a bigger sink in

demand. i'm wondering what would be if they had to reorganize, get on the phone with them, have a virtual conference in this coronavirus age, what would they contemplate? >> i think right now, they would have to say saudi arabia for the last couple weeks that had been sending the most oil to our shores than they have for the last year, to say they are going to cut it off right now because this definitely seems to be a u.s. storage issue at this time. that would be about the only thing, and to pledge more production cuts. but what you are really going to have to see is the global economy start to come back. i think that's going to happen. but make no mistake about it, what you are seeing on the screen today, this is going to impact us not today, not tomorrow, but for generations to come. decisions that are going to be made because of this price crash about investment and oil going out five years, ten years in the future, it's going to come back to bite us. we have been through this before. you know, price crashes in the short run, it's like great, we

have low prices, but down the road, maybe three years down the road, five years down the road, it will lead to a price spike because you are going to see so much investment pull back from an industry that's probably going to need it when the economy comes back. neil: you know what's so weird about it, you think about it, as we look at these prices, now we are soaring, up to $2.30 a barrel, that you think about it, the whole coronavirus situation obviously ground economic activity to a halt, virtual halt in our country. we know about the 23 million americans who filed in the last month for jobless benefits, it's probably going to jump another five million this week. we know what's happening across the world, in europe where they stopped, they are in depression, a lot of countries there are in worlds of hurt, ditto in much of asia trying to climb out of this right now, easier said than done. japan on country-wide lockdown. so it's not surprising we would see something like this.

what concerns me going forward is obviously the attention front and center should be on getting a handle on this virus, having it under control as dr. fauci has said, and worrying about the economic stuff after that. but you got to worry about the economic stuff in the middle of all of that, because it's having a measurable impact as we speak, right? >> it really is. the concern is it's going to change the way we live for a long period of time. that this isn't going to end quickly and that's the biggest concern. i mean, the human toll obviously is first and foremost. you have to take care of that. having said that, the economic toll of course is a very important part of human wellbeing as well. people of course, if they get desperate, they are not making any money, that could have a negative toll on their health as well. so you have to balance that. but the one thing that i will say, i do feel very good of some

of the people that we have in the white house right now that are business people, that understand this, and i do think what the federal reserve has done to flood the market with money to make sure that the credit markets are up and running, to help out these small businesses, i think they are doing all the right things to make sure we come back bigger and stronger than we did before. i mean, this was nobody's fault. these businesses that are being put out of business, the people that are getting laid off, they had nothing to do with this. this was one of these acts of god, if you will, and i do think what the government is doing to take these extraordinary steps will bring us back. i'm optimistic we will come back a lot stronger than we ever have before. we will be more unified but you know, the next couple months, it's going to be a tough toll. i guess if you look at the oil curve down the road, at least the oil prices are somewhat optimistic things are going to get better. i am, too.

but the next 24 hours could get ugly and we could see that oil maybe even go negative. let's hope that doesn't happen. but it could. neil: they also, we know from market history, whether you are looking at stocks or even when you look at bonds, they can overshoot and maybe oversell in this particular case and to your point, phil, some of the forward contracts whether you are talking in june and into the fall, where they are measurably higher here, put another digit on those prices, they are at 20 something but again, way down from where we were. i'm also intrigued, looking at the dow, i don't have handy in front of me, if you were to take exxonmobil and chevron out of the picture, that those losses probably wouldn't be nearly as bad but they are part of that picture. i'm wondering how that is going to skew the data for the stock market, not only today but if this continues to be a concern for awhile. what do you think? >> well, i think the market is

realizing that you know, we are going to see some terrible earnings, we are going to be going through that, but i think the market, like i am, is a little bit optimistic that a lot of these sectors are going to be okay. there's going to be parts of the economy, you know, for example, the technology sector, that's still going to thrive during this environment. and in a capitalist society, when one area of the system goes down, sometimes it's an opportunity for other businesses. so i think the market's optimistic that with all the stimulus in the economy, we can weather the blow and it's going to create maybe even more innovation going forward, more new businesses. so i do think that the stock market thinks we are going to get through this. for exxonmobil and chevron, the big oil companies, in the past, when they have gone through this, the big ones usually get bigger. it's the small independent wildcatters that may be the

losers on this. we may lose some of those small independents which is a shame because really, when you look at the innovation in the u.s. energy industry, the shale revolution, it wasn't the exxonmobils and chevrons that really created the strategy. it was some of these young independent guys that created this revolution. it's a shame to see some of those small guys are going to get squeezed out. but that's the way it happens in the oil market when it's a boom-and-bust market, sometimes only the bigs survive. neil: that's exactly what happened in '82 and '83, right? a lot of the wildcatters in texas and elsewhere were driven out but if anything, the big guys got even bigger and that was the catalyst later on for exxon and even mobile coming together. now known as exxonmobil. history could be repeating itself here. any final thoughts on where we go from here? >> you know, i think the next 24 hours are going to be ugly.

i think the way the market's acting right now, we could get very close to zero on this. i don't think we are going to turn negative but if we do take a picture of it, we will probably never see it again. i think we are in the process of bottoming. it may be ugly tr, it's not goi to be pretty but i think we are getting close to the low. that's easy to say when it gets near to zero, right? neil: all right, my friend. thank you very, very much. you knock it out of the park. phil flynn who early on was talking about the coronavirus when we got the first hints of it and the slowdown that would happen. it would have an immediate impact on oil and energy prices. indeed it has. i don't know whether he was in the camp that would get to a buck a barrel on oil but i hasten to add for a lot of you looking at this, you are not seeing it in reverse. it's not a drop of 1 scombooe.1 final figure of $17.11. it is a drop of more than 70 bucks a barrel to a figure of

$1.20. the lowest it has ever been, ever. the flipside of this is it's going to lead to lower gas prices or that is the hope. there's no way of ascertaining that. the big impact on the dow is not as pronounced as you would think because these energy components are so disproportionately weighted. not just the s&p 500 but certainly the dow. take them out of the equation we are doing well. for example, amazon is at an all time high. netflix at an all time high. the nasdaq is advancing right now. putting this in perspective, this issue and concern about a slowdown is localized really to energy. i'm not saying that the 11 sectors that make up the s&p 500 that we follow closely, last time i checked they were all, they were all down, but again, much of this is driven by what's happening on the oil front, because when it comes to technology, when it comes to facebook, when it comes to amazon, to a lesser degree apple which is in and out of positive territory here but down today,

they are doing okay. the nasdaq just turned a little bit negative, to make a liar out of me. but that is where we stand. i want to go, who do we have next? the heritage foundation energy economist? nick, help me with this and what phil was saying about the uniqueness of the situation. i don't want to dismiss it or minimize it, but it does seem focused on this one expiring may contract that i guess goes into history tomorrow. i'm not minimizing what's happening on future contracts after that, where we are also down but not nearly like this. what do you make of all of that? do we not have nick? can you hear me? okay. i apologize for that. let me go back, if we can, to what's happening right now within the s&p 500 and some of the sectors you have heard me allude to. the energy sector is down the

most of the s&p 500 sectors we follow. real estate is taking it on the chin, the second most impacted. the industrials followed by the financials, materials, even information technology, though not as much. anything technology-wise is doing surprisingly well here. but again, as i said, much of this is driven on these concerns of this global slowdown you hear much about, the fact that it takes a little while to see that come out here. but this is an extreme, to charles payne on all of that. charles, you know, when i look at these oil prices, i think now that we are under a buck a barrel, in and out of that, what the heck, right? charles: you know, it's so weird, though, because just ten minutes ago, they came to my house and they towed away my brand new lincoln navigator. we haven't driven it. my wife went out to start it today, it didn't work. i think that says it all. we are not driving, we are not flying. there's no need for oil in the

midst of an oil glut, a crazy oil war between saudi arabia and russia, and this is what you get. now, listen, sometimes you and i talk, i always talk about the market intimidating the federal reserve and by the way, the president of the united states. there are ways of the market going down hard and sharp that forces the hand of these major entities. i think oil is doing that today. it's saying to opec, ten million is a drop in the bucket, try 20. try 30. try something a lot more drastic. the texas rail commission are going to meet. they may have to do something in texas state-specific to stop this -- all of the excess oil out there. even the white house, which has toyed around with the idea of maybe doing something beyond the strategic petroleum reserve, maybe tariffs on saudi arabian oil, maybe paying oil producers not to produce, the oil market is forcing the hand today of these major global entities and i think in the next 24 hours someone's going to blink. neil: you know, what it will also force is another group, who

would have thought the oil industry would need a bailout or federal support. i'm not talking about the big, big boys but i am talking maybe, by the way, it could be them, but we have a long line of industries and sectors that could legitimately claim this isn't our fault. forget about the mom and pop concerns which you have never forgotten which i always love about you, but all the other sectors, airline industry, talking about the casino industry, even any of the hospitality players and all. each and all directly hit by this and each and all with a fairly legitimate claim to make we want in on this relief as well. but where does this end? charles: well, it's not going to end with the oil industry because not only will they make those same claims, they will also say we are more strategically important for america than any of those other industries and by the way, look at the list of companies that have gotten money already. the top three are airlines, $5 billion, $6 billion. so the oil industry's going to

say you need us because of energy independence, you need us because you don't like funneling money to the middle east and you need us because the best-paying jobs, some of the best-paying jobs in the last ten years have all been associated with constructing these big giant, you know, the ability for the oil industry, the fracking miracle, to come to life and to sustain itself. so if all these other industries have gotten money or are on the cusp of getting money, put oil at the front of the queue. neil: you know, you have your own show to worry about in just a few minutes, but i'm wondering, you mentioned your lincoln navigator. those type of gas-guzzling vehicles, they are beautiful vehicles, don't get me wrong, maybe given prices this low and the comeback with low interest rates, gas prices and all, that the demand is there for just that sort of thing and this is on the flipside good news. how do you play that? charles: you know, you are absolutely right. you know, in fact, there was one

contract in canada in oil that went negative so that would be like going to the gas station, filling it up and getting an extra lincoln navigator to go. you know, listen, the unfortunate part of this, of course, is that we need to have these jobs, we need some pricing power in oil. it does no one any good when it's down at these levels. there's going to be demand for the big trucks that are the ones that actually power the bottom line for our major automobile industry, but in the meantime, we've got to get oil up a little bit -- a lot more than where it is now, neil. neil: yeah. look at that. we are at 21 cents a barrel and go negative, as charles said. certainly we heard from phil flynn. nick is back with us, heritage foundation energy economist. are we good? can you hear us? >> yes, i can. neil: okay. great to have you. i can't believe these prices, and i'm looking at them, nick. you? on the phone: no, it's not something anyone could have ever

predicted, with such a dramatic demand side drop, the international energy agency predicts that demand will be down globally 30 million barrels per day than it was a year ago today. that's not something you can really plan for. some companies are hedged better than others but with such a dramatic demand side drop, even with the global deal of about a 10 million per day production cut, that's still neil: so they would need to cut by more like at least 30 million barrels a day to even attempt to address this, right? >> yes. make up for that demand side loss that ask essentially what you're trying to equate to, which doesn't seem in the realm of possibilities and with the amount of inventory quickly filling up, especially in the united states where a lot of the production is land-locked, that is why you're seeing a little bit of disparity between the

west texas intermediate prices and brent prices, there is a little more storage on tankers at sea but again that oil has nowhere to go because there is not a need for any new refining. we don't need refined petroleum products either. this glut is very real and it continues to send prices downward. without any type of demand-side recovery where people are driving more and traveling more, there is just nowhere for that oil to go. neil: you know, nick, we're very close, apparently the cme has already green lighted this can trade negative if that is the case, so be it. how does that work? how do we deal with negative energy contract rates? i know this is not in the forward contract, they're nowhere close to this, but how does that work? >> yeah.

it really boils down to near tomorrow storage capacity, where they're in a in it pickle to send their products, that will be the case. we've seen electricity prices run negative in the past and that likely could be the case here. hopefully if the economy starts to pick up at some point, this will be a very short-term problem f there is opportunities to slowly reopen areas in regional levels where where we feel confident to adequately protect public health and safety but at the same time slowly reopen parts of the country, maybe you would see demand pick up a little bit more. maybe you would see more resiliency in the oil and gas markets. obviously, this is going to be a challenge for the months to come. we're going to see bankruptcies and lay offs and consolidations

as we saw in 2015 and 2016 with consistently low prices. those prices essentially are cut in half. so it is going to be economic struggling times for the industry but at the same time we have seen them be resilient before and i'm confident we'll see them be resilient again. neil: all right. nick loris, thank you very much, my friend. very interesting read out of all of this. again, we just been focused on what has been going on with oil, what you're witnessing right now, my friend, is something we've never seen in american history. oil barely trading at any level at all. the may contract is now fetching 28 cents a barrel. go back to the energy crises of the '70s when it was well north of $100 a barrel. that is not inflation adjusted. that is where it was. here we go now. a reminder as well about countries like saudi arabia and russia were prepared to stick us

to the wall, to screw us, to try to hit other shale production. what happens, be careful what you wish for, because right now they have essentially screwed themselves. oil, at 46 cents a barrel. now, to charles payne. hey, charles. charles: neil, thank you again very much. good afternoon, everyone, i'm charles payne and this is "making money." at this moment major indices were chipping away after opening lower. following plunge of lower. at one point nasdaq was positive led by biotech and technology stocks. it gets back to zero demand, turning crude back lower and stocks are pulling back as well. message of the markets so far with this earnings season, own companies hiking their dividend. also own names with huge short positions. we'll name the names later in the show. plus protests erupting across the country, with reopening plans stalled on drawing boards,