good to be with you. in just a moment, the u.s. attorney's office in the southern district of new york will hold a news conference on the arrest and indictment of sam bankman-fried. he's accused of a whole lot including wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering and campaign finance violations. in layman's terms, prosecutors say he stole from and lied to his customers, misusing billions of their dollars, transferring their investments to pay the expenses and debts of his own crypto hedge fund while also using them to make his own investments. he was arrested yesterday in the bahamas 24 hours before he was supposed to appear in front of the house financial services committee to testify on

regulating crypto. this is obviously a pretty complicated story. so let's get into it with our very best. joining me now is tom winter and to explain ftx and crypto, cnbc's senior analyst, ron, and senior financial reporter, gretchen morganson. so, tom, walk us through the indictment. >> reporter: so basically what the u.s. attorney's office and the sec are alleging here today is that sam bankman-fried conducted what would be a classic fraud scheme of taking money from others and instead of putting it where they thought it was going to go, he used for it own private hedge fund called alameda. he along with several others who are nominated, but known to the grand jury, sort of raises the questions could we have other individuals charged. saying they put it into these

highly liquid assets in the course of their business and then as the company started to face a liquidity crisis as people started to realize there could be problems here as a rival firm said hey, we're going to liquidate our holdings in an ftx minted crypto currency employ, there became a run on the bank. customers wanting their money bank, thinking maybe tlfls a problem. once it started, it starved ftx of the necessary cash it needed to continue and that's where we are today with a bankruptcy filing and now with bankman-fried in handcuffs in the bahamas to be transferring here to the courthouse behind me or 500 pearl because he hasn't yet made it to new york today. he likely won't be here today, excuse me. programs tomorrow or later this week. but prosecutors effectively saying not only did he do that, but in the course of it, he used

his company, used himself to give money to other individuals to make political donations in their name disguising the fact the money came from ftx and bankman-fried. as garrett haake reported today, some of those politicians are in the process of returning the money or donate it to charity knowing full well now that their gotten gains and political coffers are apparently the result of fraud. >> all right, so sbf spoke with andrew ross sorkin a couple of weeks ago and he talked about how, the collapse, and how he didn't believe he was, he said he was at fault, but he said he didn't intend for this to happen. he wasn't knowingly at fault. let's play that sound. >> are you worried you might be detained if you step foot into the u.s.? >> i don't believe i would be,

but i haven't done a like, deep dive into that. at some point, it's something i have to think hard about. >> that was not the right sound. that was him not seeing this arrest coming, which is also interesting to talk about. but let's play the interview. >> i didn't ever try to commit fraud on anyone. i -- i was excited about the prospects of ftx a month ago. i didn't knowingly co-mingle funds. >> he didn't knowingly co-mingle funds. ron, talk to us about what the u.s. attorney is saying here. that he did knowingly co-mingle funds and not just him. they're implicating it seems some of his senior leadership. >> there are only two explanations. either they're criminals and they co-mingled funds and used them in ways that are forbidden by those who take custody of people's money or they're all

complete idiots and didn't realize what they were doing. now, it's possible it was a combination of the two, but there are reports suggesting there were some trap doors that allowed them to move money from ftx to alameda research without auditors knowing about it. that's something you would know about if you were an expert as he claimed to be. at the end of the day, i agree with mr. ray. this is a very simple, however complex it may seem, case of embezzlement, misappropriation of funds and other alleged wrong doings. in my history of covering events like that going back to 1986, this may be the greatest number of charges i've ever seen levelled at individual on wall street in the 39 years i've been doing this. >> eight charges. a lot of conspiracy to commit fraud. a lot of fraud.

it's complicated because there's not a lot of knowledge of what crypto is. who is this guy? >> a guy who sort of exploded on the scene as a crypto genius. had a tremendous amount of media coverage and turns out was using a lot of these funds perhaps to promote himself, his firm, put the ftx logo on the miami heat arena. so sort of build up this image he had of being the real power house in this very new, exciting arena. so crypto is kind of a thing that people got ahold of and ran with and they saw people making a lot of money with it. they wanted to join in. >> and there were a lot of celebrities and super bowl ads hocking this stuff. >> correct. what really struck me, katy,

about this indictment and the sec case today is that this was a fraud from the beginning. sometimes when you have these case, you have people who set out to run an investment fund. they lose a lot of money then they say, oh, my gosh, i've got to plug the hole. how -- this was a fraud from the very beginning according to the prosecutors. >> ron, i've heard some compare him to bernie madoff. is that an adequate parallel. >> in some ways, it is. from what we understand in retrospect rarely ran a legitimate business and ultimately it was a classic ponzi scheme where the less money coming in was going out to fund his operations and there was a lot of trading activity that never took place. a lot of investment activity that never took place. that seems to be the case here. now, the difference between that bankman-fried used some of these funds for highly levered bets on

crypto currencies and may have lost a great deal of money in the process. it's about the same size. there are one million reported clients who may have as much as $50 billion in losses and bernie madoff was 65 billion. enron was 25 billion. so yeah, it ranks up there in the annals of wall street scandals in terms of size, scope. although not necessarily impact. the one thing about crypto is it's been relatively isolated from our financial system so it doesn't necessarily pose a risk to the entire system as other scandals in the past might have. >> if you were watching your screen and wondered why tom winter suddenly looked like ryan nobles, we switched them out. this guy was supposed to be on the hill today talking to the house finance committee about regulated crypto. this must have sent a big shock wave on capitol hill. >> maxine waters, who chairs the

committee he was supposed to testify in front of initially said she was surprised then said she's been on capitol hill long enough to know nothing surprises her, but there's no doubt that this house committee is frustrated. they had some very specific and tougher questions they wanted to ask him. the only thing they're left with is a leaked copy of his opening remarks. his, the testimony that he planned to give to the committee and this is an excerpt of it. he said quote, while ftx international had a team dedicated to financials and to many other areas of business, it did not have a team dedicated to risk management or to user position monitoring, which seems obvious now. but yeah. there's no doubt they are very frustrated. they were able to hear from the ceo of -- >> ryan, hold on a second because we just got word this news conference is starting. >> sec and cftc have been

working around the clock to figure out what happened and to begin the process of seeking justice. this morning, we unsealed an eight-count indictment charged bankman-fried with a series of interrelated fraud schemes that contributed to ftx's collapse. i authorized these charges last week, wednesday. a grand jury here in manhattan indicted him last week, friday. we obtained a warrant for his arrest and that was executed yesterday in the bahamas. let me be clear. my remarks today are going to be limited. that is by design. this investigation is very much ongoing and it is moving very quickly. but i also want to be clear about something else. while this is our first public announcement, it will not be our last. the indictment has eight counts but effectively it outlines four

different areas of misconduct. first, bankman-fried defrauded customers, the crypto currency exchange he founded. second, he defrauded lender, alameda research, his proprietary hedge fund. third, redefrauded investors in ftx and lastly, we allege that he violated campaign finance laws. now, let me say a little more about what we allege in the indictment. first, we charged that from 2019 until earlier this year, bankman-fried and his coconspirators stole billions from his customers. he used that money from his personal benefit including to make investments and to cover expenses and debts of his hedge fund, alameda research. secondly and relatedly, we charge that he lied to alameda's lenders about the source of the money he was using to pay those debts. third, we charge that earlier

this year in the midst of the crypto crisis, he lied to investors in ftx about the fact he had sent billions of dollars in customer money to alameda. and fourth, we charge he violated federal campaign finance laws by causing tens of millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions be made to candidates and communities associated with both democrats and republicans. these were disguised to look like they were coming from wealthy coconspirators when in fact the contributions were funded by alameda research with stolen customer money. in all of this dirty money was used in service of his desire to buy bipartisan influence and impact the direction of public policy in washington. to anyone who was watching this or hears a this prosecution, if you believe that you have been a victim of these schemes or you have information about the conduct that we've alleged in

our indictment that we've unsealed today, please let us know. to any person, entity, or political campaign that has received stolen customer money, we ask that you work with us to return that money to the innocent victims. and to anyone who participated in wrong doing at ftx or alameda and has not yet come forward, i would strongly encourage you to come see us before we come see you. now, let me say a word about our partners at the fbi, the sec, and the cftc. the women and men of the fbi are some of the finest public servants in this country. and they have been with us since day one in this investigation and there is no one, no one better to work with. i want to thank the brilliant lawyers at the sec and cftc. this investigation is complex and sprawling. we embrace that kind of challenge here in the southern

district of new york. and we always want the cftc and sec by our side when we're toing that. finally, i want to thank the career prosecutors from my office handling this case. nicholas rose and danielle sassoon and their supervisors, scott hartman and matthew pedalski. i want to acknowledge the contributions and hard work of the prosecutors from our money laundering and transnational criminal enterprises unit including samuel raymond and their chiefs. and i want to acknowledge the contributions from the chief of our public corruption unit, rebecca donaldeski. this should be clear, but it's an all hands on deck investigation here and i couldn't be prouder of the team that i'm privileged to lead. and i want to ip viet up to the podium, fbi assistant director in charge, michael driscoll.

>> thank you, damian. so thank you all for joining us this afternoon for this important announcement. this case came together at great speed in such that it's only possible to be standing here today through tremendous cooperation from my people and agencies. as the indictment today alleges, bankman-fried knowingly defrauded customers of ftx through the misappropriation of customer deposits to pay expenses and debts of another company. he executed deliberate transactions designed to disguise the misuse of customer funds. he preyed on his customers, the victims of this case, abusing the trust placed not only in his company, but in himself as the lead of that company. we are determined to help the victims of this case get a sense of justice and we will continue to make every attempt to recover as much of their funds as possible. if you're willing to deceive

customers and attempt to hide your actions, we will be persistent in pursuing you and ensuring you are brought to justice. i want to thank damian williams and his team at the southern district for their cooperation and partnership on this case. i also want to thank our partners at the sec and cftc for their outstanding works. a word of thanks to dea's aviation division for their logistics and resource assistance over the past few days. our field offices in boston, miami, washington, d.c., and our office in bridgetown. fbi headquarters components that fed and worked on this case from criminal investigative decision, our serve team crisis incident response group and our international operations division and of course the special agents from our securities fraud squad as well as the money laundering squad. the justice department office of international affairs has been

an important partner in this and of course as damian noted before, his team in securities and commodities fraud, money landering and transnational criminal enterprise unit has been a true partner in this case. i also want to thank our international law enforcement partners. these kind of cases do not happen without that kind of coordination and i specifically want to note the assistance provided by the royal bahamas police force. and i want to be clear. this case is about fraud. fraud is fraud. it does not matter the complexity of the investment scheme. it does not matter the amount of money involved. if you mislead and deceive to take what does not belong to you, we will hold you accountable. and i'd like to thank everyone who's been working on this case for helping us adhere that principle today. thank you. >> good afternoon, everyone. i'm the director of the sec's division of enforcement.

today in a parallel civil complaint, the sec filed charges against sam bankman-fried alleging he orchestrated a year's long scheme to defraud equity investors in a company he cofounded and led as ceo until its collapse last month. as alleged in our complaint starting in 2019 and continuing through november of 2022, he raised more than $1.8 billion from equity investors on the basis of lies. you see, ftx operated behind a veneer of legitimacy that he created by among other things, repeatedly touting to investors ftx's topnotch automated risk controls that he claimed protected customer assets and by repeatedly claiming those assets were at all times safe, segregated and secure. but as we allege in our

complaint, that veneer wasn't just thin. it was also fraudulent. because in reality, from ftx's inception in 2019, bankman-fried began secretly diverting funds to alameda research and as alleged he misused those funds to make venture investments, lavish real estate purchases and large political donations. his claims about ftx's sophisticated risks controls and other customer protections were simply bogus. similarly, his representation staff investors and trading customers concerning alameda were also part of that carefully crafted vee near. he claimed alameda was just another customer with no special privileges at ftx, but in truth,

he directed that alameda be exempt from the measures he touted to investors and customers. he also provided alameda a virtually unlimited line of credit funded by ftx customers. and he also diverted billions of dollars in customer funds from ftx to alameda. his entire house of cards started to crumble as crypto asset prices plummeted in may of 2022. and as alameda's lenders demands repayment on millions in loans, but to continue propping up his empire, we allege he diverted billions more in customer assets to alameda. even as it was clear alameda and ftx could not make those customers whole. in fact, through the summer of 2022, he diverted hundreds of millions more in ftx customer funds to alameda which he used

for venture investments and for loans to himself and other ftx executives. all the while he continued to make misleading statements about the financial condition and risk management. even in november 2022 faced with billions of dollars in customer withdrawal requests that ftx could not fulfill, he mislead investors from whom he sought still more money to plug the multibillion dollar holes he created. his brazen scheme finally came to an end when ftx, alameda, and their tangled web filed for bankruptcy in november. that collapse has had far reaching consequences for customers, investors and counterparties. and our investigation into those consequences, those individuals and entities involved remains ongoing. but one immediate take away from

this announcement should be that noncomplaint trading platforms pose dramatic risks. among other things, they don't provide them with the same level of disclosures and protections against fraud and conflicts of interest. that's what traditional u.s. registered securities exchanges provide. so it's imperative that non-compliant platforms come into compliance, but as chair gensler has made clear, the runway is getting shorter for them to come in and register if us and for those who do not, the enforcement division stands ready to take action. i'd like to recognize the incredible team from our cyber unit and across our division responsible for today's action. sue, ivan schneider, david brown, pash, amy hartman, david hirsch, amy burkhart and david dadio will lead the litigation

against bankman-fried. finally, i want to commend our partners here at the southern district of new york under the leadership of damian williams and our partners at the fbi and cftc. another strong example of the collaboration you see before you this afternoon. with that, back to u.s. attorney williams. thank you. >> like to welcome gretchen lowe from the cftc. >> good afternoon. i'm acting director of the cftc. thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today. today, the cftc filed a complaint against sam bankman-fried charging a fraudulent scheme they expect the launch of ftx.com change in may 2019. the complaint specifically

charges defendants with fraud by misappropriation of customer funds as well as false statements to the public, customers, investors, and congress about the handling and security of those funds. as alleged, there are over 8 billion in customer losses we've ascertained as of today. >> all right. quite a lot there. the investigation is complex and sprawling. fraud is fraud. if you lie to take what does not belong to you, we will come after you. we will recover as much of the customer's funds as possible. so much there in that news conference. ron, they're really trying to paint sbf as a master mind who knew who he was doing from the very start, that let greed in the way and not only did he put an end to his own hedge fund, but bought himself lavish properties in the bahamas.

>> there's in shortage of video of this rather large compound in which he and nine other individuals lived. the criminal and civil charges being levelled against him are almost extraordinary. we do have some precedent for this, but it really is a case where again as attorney williams said, fraud is fraud. there is no way around this. i think it would be impossible to imagine a scenario under which when the ceo of the company now who's overseeing the bankruptcy said they used quick books for financial accounting, slack for communications. they had virtually no financial controls over these transactions. that he was just some unwitting individual who lost track of what was going on with billions at stake. >> how is regulation on this? >> crypto is not a regulated

industry at the moment and crypto has fought very hard so that it would not be a regulated industry. there's a battle among people, is it a security? if so, then it's covered by the securities and exchange commission. >> they're alleging fraud. >> they're alleging he defrauded investors. so we had very big, powerful, supposedly smart institutional investors who put money into ftx. >> how was he able to pull the wool over their eyes? these smart people who know what they're investing in? supposed to to be smarter than the rest of us. >> that's a good question. it is so much egg on their face. we've got venture capitalists, very well-known, billions of dollars under management who were apparently hoodwinked by this guy. you've seen him in the t-shirt and shorts. how persuasive is he?

>> i think if you think that's what a brilliant coder looks like. i mean, this is the, you know, the image that's painted of him in silicon valley, that they don't have to wear a suit and tie to be convincing. in fact the guy who looks like he's been sitting in front of a computer all day. >> more compelling. >> he doesn't need to worry about all the other stuff. >> except that you want to be sure he has the back up, the procedures and policies in place to make sure the money you're giving him is going to the right place and from the outset, it did not. >> ron, give me an explainer on what ftx was. this company, that exchange billed according to sbf, as the safest place to put your money. the safest place to invest your crypto. >> and this goes back to your earlier question of gretchen about regulation.

these exchanges, these crypto currency exchanges are not regulated any way, shape, or form. not even like the new york stock exchange or other traditional exchanges in the u.s. or elsewhere. self-regulated in the sense you understand how you run an exchange that handles other people's money. this was a crypto currency trading platform. there's no insurance behind it. no guarantees of getting your money back. it's supposed to be outside the control of sovereign governments. they're trying to create new currencies not influenced by government policies and that was the allure to some people who wanted to get involved, that they're getting into the system where they're creating currencies that can supplant the u.s. dollar not affects by other central bank decisions. it's a solution in search of a

problem and a lot of smart people came up with ideas about how it might work yet at the end of the day, most of what we've seen so far has been just a collection of illegitimate transactions, fraud, money laundering, dark money, and the like. it really, in my mind, has been one of the most losery and although complex sounding scandals we've seen in the history of financial markets. >> so what's the future of crypto? >> i think it's dead. i think there might be underlying block chain technology that can make transactions more efficient. >> ryan, i want to ask you about the regulation side of this. are we going to see congress try to get involved? >> i don't think there's any doubt that this scandal has created a sense of urgency on capitol hill that we didn't have before. you know, for a long time,

lawmakers on both sides were kind of trading back ideas but there never seemed to be that level of necessity there appears to be now given everything that's happened with this particular scandal. we should keep in mind that even though republicans tend to be more in favor of deregulated systems and democrats are more in favor of regulated systems, you know, the idea of crypto currency as a legitimate form of banking and financial transaction is something that has supporters on both the right and the left. congressman richie torres of new york, for instance, is a progressive democrat and he was out this morning saying that we should not view the ftx scandal as something that should rain on all of crypto's parade. you know, just by what ron and others are saying. this is going to be something that's going to be heavily debated. part of why members of congress are so frustrated they didn't have the answer to ask him questions today. the purpose of this hearing was

not to unpack the scandal. it was to talk about the future of regulating crypto currency as form of currency. so this is no doubt going to speed that process up and there of course is this is part of the indictment. you know, there is millions of dollars flooding in to the campaign coffers of both republicans and democrats from people who have interests in crypto currency so this is an issue that's not going away. >> he donated a lot to democrats. beto o'rourke says he's giving back the $1 million that was given to him or he's already given it back. charity donations for others that got that money coming from dick durbin, 2900. kirsten gillibrand, 16,600. john hoven, 11,600. so trying to do something with that money that was ill gotten. all right. ryan, ron, gretchen, thank you so much for being here and for helping us understand it.

appreciate it. we're going to move to another story off the hill. yesterday, we wondered who else was going to get invited to the dance. nevada got a special council subpoena asking for communications to and from 19 donald trump associates including a number of his outside attorneys. the list which was provided to nbc by a source familiar, reads like a who's who of the 2020 election aftermath. among them, jenna ellis, rudy giuliani, sydney powell, lynn wood, bernie carrick. and thousands of mark meadows text messages show that 34 lawmakers engaged with him about overturning the election results. joining me now, ken dilanian, garrett haake and ashley parker. ashley is also an msnbc

political analyst. garrett, can i start with you a little bit of breaking news though. from chairwoman maloney and the national archives. >> she is asking the national archives to do its own search according to the "washington post." of some of these trump related properties where we learned just in the last week or so that additional classified material had been found. remember that was turned up in a search ordered by donald trump's own attorneys trying to make sure they were in compliance. here you've got maloney and perhaps one of her last acts at the top of the oversight committee before it hands over to republican control in january asking for this additional search for national archives and that's not the only breaking news we're getting at this moment. the chairman of the january 6th committee is telling reporters that big hearing we were looking for, the business meeting on the 21st in which they were going to unveil their report on all

things january 6th, they're moving it up to monday. that's going to happen monday now. so perhaps closer to being done with their end of semester homework if you will than we anticipated. >> monday, monday, monday. i will be at work so you'll be seeing me, i'm sure. same with you, garrett. ashley parker, this is just another step from the house to say to donald trump, we don't believe you. >> that's right. and there's ample evidence for them not to believe him. not just his four years in the white house where he lied, mislead, spun, said things that weren't true, but then all of these investigations. there have been sort of revelation after revelation after revelation that the president and his team were not taking this as seriously as they should have. were not being as forthcoming as they should have and one thing that's interesting is the president seems to have taken the free wheeling chaotic style

of his white house and transformed that or brought that down to mar-a-lago for his post presidency, but on steroids. so there's even more supply cants and sycophants and less people willing to tell them hard truths and that's how you have a situation like this, which is now multiple investigations from the department of justice, from congress, other entities into the president. his behavior and his businesses. >> there's also news that a lot of republicans, majority of republicans, don't want to see him running again. evidence that maybe all of these scandals have finally eaten away at his support. >> yeah. that's right. and what you see is there's a few moments now they say if you ran, they would still vote for him, but what you see in these moments is a softening in republican support. the first time we saw that was after january 6th and these are republicans who would say i liked a lot of his policies. his appointments to the supreme court, but they do not like the

behavior. they do not like the lying. the mayhem. the chaos. they do not like the dishonesty. they did not like when he was president. having to come down to the breakfast table and explain to their 10-year-old daughter what the president meant when he said something offensive. this is just more fodder for that, which is certain to turn off some republican voters especially when the 2024 field is shaping up to be quite crowded it seems despite trump announcing so early. >> thank you very much. ken, let's focus in on the special counsel for a second. arizona, wisconsin, georgia, michigan, pennsylvania, and now nevada. getting a subpoena from the special counsel and the list of people they want to hear from again it's a who's who as to who feels involved trying to overturn the 2020 election. what can you read into that?

>> they're looking for communications between that list of people and these state and local officials who were being pressured. these were swing states after all, to change results or come up with fake slates of electors and presumably, the doj already had communications from those individuals. so it's very clear here the justice department is being incredibly thorough and trying to vacuum up as many communications as it can and these are some of the first subpoenas with jack smith's name on them. special counsel jack smith, who remains in the netherlands, but the investigation is chugging along while he's recuperating from his bicycle accident and leg injury. look, particularly i think what's interesting is georgia because it hadn't really be clear the justice department was vigorously investigating the efforts to overturn the election in georgia in light of the state

investigation down there. some of the best evidence exists if the georgia context including the famous tape recorded conversation between the president and brad raffensperger. target of one of these subpoenas, where the president asked him to find the exact number of votes he needed to win the election. a lot of people are wondering what the is doj doing with that and now it's clear they are including that as part of their far reaching investigation as to whether any laws were broken to try to over turn the results of the election. >> i know i'm not the only one when you show pictures of jack smith, from the most recent photos with the gray beard looking very much like somebody who is investigating war crimes and maybe this photo or the other one where he's clean shaven. it's a bit of a jarring jump. on other note, ken, can you talk about these mark meadows text messages? any reason to believe these lawmakers that we've seen new messages from have reason to be

concerned about this doj themselves? >> well, look, it's not illegal for lawmakers to pass on whacky conspiracy theories to mark meadows or for him to pass those on to the justice department, but there was such a massive effort here to co-author power. we saw that where the justice department officials talked about what was happening in the inner sanctum. at some point, it starts to look like a conspiracy. if i remember any of these lawmakers whose text messages were in this batch, i would not been comfortable. >> indeed. thank you very much. coming up, a shake up at twitter. who got canceled last night. first though, where you'll save and where you'll spend. the latest inflation numbers came out overnight. what the white house says is encouraging. what the white house says is

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i was born on the south side of chicago. it has been a long road, but now i'm working for schwab. i love to help people understand the world through their lens and invest accordingly. you can call us christmas eve at four o'clock in the morning. we're gonna always make sure that you have all of the financial tools and support to secure your financial future. that means a lot for my community and for every community.

televisions and toys are going down. used car prices fell for the fifth month in a row.

we shouldn't take anything for granted. but what is clear is my economic plan is working and we're just getting start. >> president biden was celebrating the morning. inflation is slowing according to the latest report. measures 7.1% last month. that is high, but not nearly as high as it has been. also a better number than most predicted. we've also been watching wall street react to it. the dow immediately ticked up at news of a positive report and you can see it is still up at the moment. the fed is also talking about another interest rate hike. joining me now is brian chung. so given that inflation is cooling, spending power is high, any reason to believe this administration might be able to achieve a soft landing without dipping into a recession? >> you might have to ask me that

a year if now because it's going to take a while to bear out because inflation is still at 7.1% and yes, that's encouraging, but it's still very far away from where economists would like to see it. they see a healthy level of inflation at about 2%. they've been raising rates by .75 points in the last four meetings. that they'll go to about a half a percentage point at their meeting tomorrow. that could set up the fed to do a quarter point increase the beginning of next year and maybe stop entirery as they watch to see the bite of these increases which operate on a lag, impact the economy through 2023. >> so keep your hat on.

if you're thinking about buying a house. mortgage rates could come down in a little while. thank you very much. joining me now is business insider columnist, lynnette. gas prices are what did this. down significantly. >> gas prices are down. used car prices. car prices in general. it looks like some of the supply chain stuff from the pandemic is starting to ease. toys. one thing we get from china, asia. those, that whole backlog, that's kind of, that's gone. >> and their covid policy's changing, which should potentially mean that maybe there's not going to be as many shutdowns. >> china has a battle with covid to deal with. they have, they are going to learn a lot of hard lessons that we learned that we haven't been zero covid policy. so while a lot of people are bullish on china, there's a lot of wrinkles to iron out.

but one thing china being a state will do is keep energy prices down and commodity prices down because they're a big consumer of that. >> big things that's still a major problem is groceries. a head of lettuce, romaine lettuce typically sales for 20 to $30. right now, costs $100. you know this if your going to the grocery store and you're trying to buy groceries for your family. they cost a whole lot more. >> down to my head to my legs. we have a ways to go. the white house has said that it's going to try on the supply side. the fed is working on the demand side and so far, what we've seen is some success. i don't know, it could turn around. i don't think so though because now the white house is saying this stuff because it's seeing a trend over the last month, two months, three months, where it

can say confidently, yes, we probably peaked and we're heading downward. >> i want to talk about twitter. twitter has canceled one of their advisory boards. what's going on? >> elon musk didn't share power and he doesn't take advice so i'm not surprised he's not taking advice from the advisory board. the boards of his company in general are just kind of orne mental. he makes the decisions himself. and so to me, it was only a matter of time before that was gone. what does it mean for twitter? >> twitter will be an extension of elon just like tesla has always been an extension of elon. one time in tesla, he walked into the factory and didn't like all the yellow caution lines so he had everybody like paint over those lines because he doesn't like the color yellow. it is very red queen in alison

wonderland kind of way to rule your companies and that's just how he does things. >> advisers, advertisers going back to twitter, is there any sense he's going to be able to lure them back? >> i don't think so. if you're looking for stability in twitter, you're going to be looking for a very long time. and part of the reason that i think one thing that shows that very directly is the tesla stock. i think tesla stock is down 55% this year. >> are his other companies at risk? >> of course. especially tesla, which is the most liquid. >> some of the biggest government contracts there is. on spacex. is there concern within the government about dealing with somebody who's acting this erratically on twitter? >> they should be. i'm not a politics reporter. i don't know. i don't report that. but elon, the more in trouble he is with twitter, the more he's

going to need cash. of course, tesla is the main target for that kind of situation. but if say he might need to pay attention to the rockets he's sending into space. he's a little distracted right now. >> i know you want to talk about ftx. >> years ago, i wrote a piece saying it's for control criminal, scammers. the reason it's such a disaster is because there's no oversight. i don't think people realize how much the feds check in on our banking system, our financialwork. yes, we saw the great financial crisis of 2008. that made a lot of people cynical, but the answer is not less oversight. there's no backing. there's no way to save you if you lose your money in crypto. so go with god. the next few months should be rough. >> thank you for coming on and

talking about three separate items on our news agenda. i appreciate it. you are a jack of all trades. and jennifer granholm announced that scientists found the holy grail of clean energy. here's nbc's tom costello. >> researchers at the national lab in california have used lasers to produce a nuclear fusion reaction that creates energy. a huge breakthrough in producing an endless supply of clean, cheap power without radio active waste or fossil fuel emissions. governments have spent billions of dollars chasing the fusion dream. trying to replicate how the sun produces energy. while it's unlikely fusion could be used in cars, scientists say once fully developed, it could power entire cities and the batteries inside our cars. but that could take a decade or more. >> if we had fusion, we could

drop fossil fuels immediately and forever. >> immediately and forever. joining me now is distinguished professor of sustainability at the university of california at berkeley and daniel hammond. so, is this true? immediately and forever if we're able to commercialize this? >> well, as soon as we commercialize it, but there's a lot of roads between here and there. the landmark achievement. to actually produce fusion and to get significantly more energy out. this is really the holy grail on the science side. now we've got to move into the energy and materials side. >> so it was a big effort to do this with some pretty high powered lasers and they were only able to do, explain it to me, but as i understand it, only able to do it once in this setting and in order to actually power an energy grid, you need it to be ongoing and continuous, right? >> you're exactly right, but this is the key thing.

it was only designed to be a one-time shot and the way this particular fusion was achieved was by having a pencil eraser sized gold foil cylinder with the hydrogen inside, two isotopes of hydrogen. so they focused the lasers. they received a burst of x-rays and that generated enough energy density that the hydrogen atoms began to then fuse. and that process done once is the breakthrough that no one's been able to achieve. not through this laser method or the other method, which is a magnetic bottle that holds the plasma in place. so now that we've done it, now the question is do you inject a whole series of these pellets one after another and i'm expecting in the coming months, there will be announcements from the other side. from the magnetic bottle community. so it's a really exciting science on a very clear path now

to energy production. >> so we've done it once and the question is when can we do it a lot of times. do you have a guesstimation for a timeline on when this could be deployed functionally in our energy grid as electricity? >> well, this is still the science and i know everyone wants to jump to when will there be a fusion powered plant nearby. when you do one pellet, now we'll do a series. they're ramping up to do that hopefully this coming year, but we'll see what happens. then it's really a story of material science and the development of the hardware so you can do it continually and then you have this clean energy supply with unlimited fuel but there's a lot of engineering steps on the way to get there. >> give me a good guess. a decade, 50 years, 100 years?

>> it's certainly not 50 years and certainly not 100 years. a decade is going to be if what granholm said this morning. this is a triumph of 60 years of big science research done in national laboratory with big teams and the excitement here is that now that this has happened under and administration that's invested heavily in science, reon shoring technology here, this is the ideal moment to really excite that next generation of engineers, scientists, people looking at the social justice side of clean energy. that's really what we're trying to build and that's why it's so exciting to see this now. so i would say a decade is a good number and if everything falls right, we'll see. >> i know climate reporters and scientists are being cautious here saying while this is wonderful, the timeline that it

would need to be implemented is just not short enough to start rolling back some of the problems we're facing with climate change. >> well, that's also right. we really need to decarbonize our economy. not just in the u.s., but around the world, but 2050. and it would take a huge series of engineering investments and successes to get fusion operational in large scale before then, but i like to say that in 2070 when unfortunately i fear i'll be gone, that i think the world will be 70% or so powered by fusion energy. but half of it will be 93 million miles away. meaning solar power, which is fusion energy. and the other half surface of the earth. so it's a big engineering road and we can't take our attention away. but this gives us a huge partner on the way. >> daniel, really exciting stuff.

thank you so much for coming on and talking to us about it. i do appreciate it. and we want to underscore a little news that garrett haake broke earlier in this hour. an update to the schedule for the committee. bennie thompson just announced the panel will meet for the last time on december 19th for the final approval of their report. it will be released on december 21st. that is going to do it for me. today. hallie jackson picks up our coverage next. today. hallie jackson picks up our coverage next. a pfizer vaccine! so am i. because i'm at risk for pneumococcal pneumonia. i'm asking about prevnar 20® because there's a chance pneumococcal pneumonia could put me in the hospital. if you're 19 or older, with certain chronic conditions like copd, asthma, diabetes, or heart disease or are 65 or older, you may be at increased risk for pneumococcal pneumonia. prevnar 20® is approved in adults to help prevent infections from 20 strains of the bacteria that cause pneumococcal pneumonia. in just one dose. don't get prevnar 20® if you've had a severe

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