Transcripts For CNBC Closing Bell 20240713

Activity as Economic Activity grinds to a halt here in the u. S. , the white house calling for half a trillion dollars in direct payments to taxpayers and says we could see bailouts for airlines, hotels, and cruise industries, all the sectors getting crushed in todays market and crude oil down a staggering 23 . Now trading just above 20 a barrel we have every angle covered for you. Bob pisani is on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Kayla is in washington with the response to lawmakers. And were covering the latest on the virus itself bob, first to you on another roller coaster ride today here at the Stock Exchange. We have a quiet morning i say relatively quiet, it was down 6 tach take a look at the s p i urge you to watch it emotionally. He said we need a 30spring break. This slow rollout of a shutdown is not working market dropped quickly to the lows of the day. We hit the Circuit Breaker at 12 50 eastern time, 15minute pause. We reopened. We have not dropped to the he second Circuit Breaker level, 13 . That would halt trading for an additional 15 minutes. After 3 25, no halt unless we drop 20 dow movers today, the big story, boeing, talk boeing. 60 billion for the whole Aerospace Industry cocacola got a downgrade on mandated closures for businesses all down 10 to 15 in the cause of boeing, even more than 20 . The reason the market is concerned, put up one board to demonstrate the concern. Its a very rare day when you see Corporate Bonds, that is the lqd. Etfs, crude and oil all down that signals the traders that people are taking down their positions in everything. And essentially going cash, called degrossing in the hedge fund term in the markets back to you. Bob, thank you. Looking at the foremananperff stocks versus breakdowns. Picking up with what bob is saying, lets take a look at the s p 500 and some of the levels that had cracked through you know, a few days ago, we keep looking at this 2018, december 2018 and 2151 as a close. I said look, looks like were getting too close to that hot stove not to touch it. We didnt just touch it. However, we watch the close. Maybe it is regaining. It is taking us back just about three years. This is first levels we got to where were trading in early 2017 that, by the way, is a typical bear market. Usually takes months, many months not three or four weeks but thats what we have done in just a few weeks right now is taking away three years worth of gains. Yes, look at these charts of the s p 500 against both the barclays aggregate, the overall bond market as well as that lqd. When they first started to decline in february, you saw bond values continue to go up. That has broken down you have this disorder in the markets where its no the just that the financial infrastructure and plumbing is very balky, the relationships have broken down and has a feedback infect. We have to reduce our positions. Thats what were seeing we need something to interrupt that feedback. Thank you very much, mike, for. That a reminder wof where we stand. Were down 2,000 points on the dow, 9 . Over 8 for the s p 500 as we stand. Now financials getting pummelled once again amid the coronavirus outbreak the sector underperforming the Broader Market over the course of the last month. Its down by 40 joining us now by phone for more is sandy weill, the former citigroup chairman and ceo good afternoon to you. Good tag. Good afternoon you to. Sandy, youve been through and experienced many economic and financial crisis through your career. Whats your judgement of how bad this current one is relative to some of the past ones . I think this one is very different than what weve had in the past people a lot of people are comparing it to what happened in 2008 which i think was caused a lot by bloated Balance Sheets and off Balance Sheet transactions by the financial industry so its really caused by a financial collapse now were fighting a virus that is turned out to be very, very deadly and we got to take incredible precaution and go and attack that virus so we win that war. And that is causing our government and state to close down places to have people shelter in place and ive been in our house here in sonoma, california, 13 days without seeing anybody from the outside except the people that my wife and not even our grandkids. And it is not much fun but its something that one thohas to do. I think we will beat this because now i think were really getting the opportunity to get the tests out there so well find out how many people really are carriers and what we have to do to conquer this thing which is going to be painful but hopefully painful for a short period of time i mean, sandy, you mentioned you think it is different from the 2008 crisis yet, financial stocks are down sharply. The kbw banks index is down double digit percentages to day. Its down about 50 from the high in january. Believe me, i know that personally i was going to say. What do you make of the level of selling in bank stocks there is the industry and hotel industries, for a lot of Small Businesses, for the Airline Industry and those industries have been basically a lot of them shut down 50 , 70 , close to 100 in cases which is really important that we do that. But i think our government seems to be, i think, on the right track and talking about getting money to people that are out of jobs and are laid off and cant go to work and trying to help the companies that not through any of their own doing are ending not able to fly or whatever so i think we really have to have a private partnership our Government Works with state and local and federal government, works with companies to get us through this crisis. I think the president the other day had people from the drugstore industry, the Hospital Industries together talking and i that i is fantastic. People related to that i think we have to do more of that we have to get what should they be doing specifically in terms of trying to get things moving again i think working together with the fed and occ where they agreed not to do any buybacks on their own Company Stock through this period. I think that sends the right message that they really concentrate on the strength of the Balance Sheet. The fact that they didnt have to go to the fed window but all the banks agreed to dothat the officers and directors of company cant buy their own stock in blakeout period that can run four to six weeks before theyre going to report earnings and that for most companies are going to report their earnings in the beginning of april through the month of april so theyre in blackout periods now. This is a very important time for ceos and leaders of industry to really show leadership. I think one way they can show leadership is that if they change these rules or have the treasury secretary for banks and the sec for others telling them that we dont need the rules of blackout periods during this specific time for individuals that work in companies i think actions always speak louder than words. I think that a ceo that is in there buying a lot of the stock like jamie did at a bad time and j. P. Morgan and everybody still remembers it or Charlie Schoff buying stock in wells fargo. That sends a good message. Liked to see that message coming if all of Corporate America. So somebody has to give them the ability to get out from under their blackout rules at this point in time. Sandy, its sarah one of the, you know, differences and similarities people are making with financial crisis back in 08, the fed and government was able to come in and really and one of the fears here is that the government is talking about trillion dollar stimulus and bailing out industries and there is so much uncertainty because of the nature of the crisis is health do you think there is anything they can do either the government and fed to make it better and to help markets function more properly and to get us out of this economic deep freeze i think that the best thing that they can do is have Congress Pass the legislation that the house has already passed so the president can sign it that they can get the stimulus bill and the bill to help industries that have been hurt not by their own doing but because of what we had to do to go fight this health crisis. And, you know, stop the talk and come up and do something this is a time where all of america should come together and really shine the light of how great this country is. And the only way were going to be able to do that is stop the bickering with each other and Work Together to i think if we did that, youd see the market youd see the markets do better, the banks will be able to perform their functions better. While we dont have enough beds if this thing comes down all at once, we have a lot of things that we can do i think were starting to do it. Theyre up both coasts and other things and i think that really two weeks after this week well have a good idea about how bad this virus is because well have done enough tests and well know more so we can go back to work again and hopefully use this crisis as a way to really encourage us to really get to work spending money on the infrastructure of this country both tech know logically as well as from the point of view of transportation, public transportation, highways, bridges and all these things we have not done over the many decades so that we a, will help the economy. It would make people feel better we would be putting our country in a better position to benefit over the next decades to come. Sandy, quickly before we let you go i know weve gone a bit longer than we said i wonder if you have any quick message of support for jamie diamond, your former protege who i know did you have a bit of a falling out with at one point in your career. He is frofrg home. Recovering from home. You know, i do. I sent a message to him on friday, you know, saying that im glad that hes home from the hospital im glad that hes recovering. We need his leadership the country needs his leadership so get better quick. And also, his birthday is three days before mine i wish him a happy burnlg dirthf which he wisheded me back one. Sandy, happy birthday to you as well. Im not sure what the date is. We appreciate you joining us thank you you remember next year, it is march 16th okay. Very good, sandy thank you so much, sandy weill i want to point out quickly in terms of the idea of seeing all ceos buy their own stock, there are a lot of factors at play charlie sharp at wells fargo, that one is down 5 . Kbw bank index is down 17 so maybe have a little bit of an impact there are a lot of factors at play right now lets get to washington now where kayla has the latest on efforts from lawmakers to steady the economy. What do we know now, kayla we know the senate is voting on the second stimulus package that will provide about 105 billion in paid sick leave to americans. The it prioritized the people that have to stay home because theyre sick or because their children are unable to go to school or to go today care so were expecting that vote to happen momentarily but it has been urged by the treasury secretary that lawmakers should pass this despite their objections so that they can move on to the broader stimulus bill at hand. That is the 1 trillion proposed injection into americans pocketbooks. Into the bottom lines of Small Businesses and into the Balance Sheets of these Hard Hit Industries Like Airlines some of the other distressed sectors. Additionally, that bill will provide for an estimated 300 billion in deferred tax payments and also provide the Congressional Authority for the administration to buy oil and put it into the Strategic Petroleum reserve to stabilize that market as well. I learned that the house and Senate Bipartisan leadership are working together with treasury to try to put together legislative text that would be easily passable by both chambers im told the senate can take up a vote on that as early as friday and aides i spoke to throughout the afternoon say even though the expectation was once they passed that bill, they would leave town there is a growing sense of urgency and growing sense that there is going to be a lot more money needed sarah . Thank you very much for that update lets turn to meg for another update this one is on the virus itself. So we are seeing new studies coming out fl trying to understand more about the virus, how long it can sustain itself in different circumstances a new report from the new england journal of medicine talks about how long it can remain stable in different circumstances. Including on surfaces. What it finds is that stable for several hours todays in arrow sols specifically aerosols up to three hours, copper up to four hours, cardboard, 24 hours and plastic and stainless steel up to two to three days a lot of people are going to focus on that aerosolized part, that means airborne. It can stay in the air for two hours after somebody coughs, for example, what theyre saying is that they have observed in an experimental situation that the virus can remain in aerosolized form for three hours and similar to the sars virus. In certain hospital procedures, the virus can become aerosolized so Health Care Workers have to protect themselves the take away from this is wipe down used services a lot, door knobs, counters, wash your hands. These are the take aways that were hearing from the studies thank you very much encourage everyone to check that out. Still ahead by the way, zoom shares are up 70 because of the Video Communications company is benefitting from a flood of Remote Working we will be joined by the ceo about how his company is helping employees connect and his big push to help students too. Hes been doing a lot on that front. Lets have a check in on the markets. Oil first of all which has tanked yet again today down some 17 . You see it briefly where it is closer to 20. Broader markets as we just showed you down 1700 points on the dow. We have a little improvement since the start of the show or 230 when the lows were found the low on the dow today was 22. 82 were now down 16. 83 sarah . Sandy weill sounded more cam and measured than say people were talking about bill ackman on cnbc earlier saying hell is coming, talking to the Trump Administration, shut down the economy. It is also sounding scary. Interesting to get the big names on with very different messages. Sandy weill thinking, okay, were going to get through this. This is short term we should see confidence from the government and from the bankers buying their stocks. I totally agree i think its important to note he sandy weill knows about the Banking System very well, clearly. You can argue all about his legacy but he certainly understands the Banking System i think thats what hes really addressing he also pointed out, he is staying at home, wife staying at home an grandchildren staying at home and we know the likely Economic Impact of that. That is the balance that you have at the moment Financial Assets are falling sharply. The question is if they fall too much and his assessment seems to be they have fallen too much well, speaking of falling hard, another brutal day for the Airline Stocks massive declines across the board here autos as well and the big three say they will shut down u. S. Operations phil lebeau with the latest. We dont need to emphasize what you are talking about it has been an ugly day for the airlines if luke at how much stocks are off from the 52week high, its anywhere from southwest which is, you know, basically down 40 all the way up to united, down 77 . That is off the 52week highs. Heres the problem with these guys theyre just not seeing in he demand out there jetblue out with the ceo writing it n. A note to employees. Demand is worsening. Those are his words. Also want to clarify that jetblue took out a 1 billion short Term Loan Facility they did that on friday. They drew it down on monday. But theyre keeping that money in cash to help the liquidity. Again, what youre seeing with jetblue is simply what were seeing with all of the airlines. They want to make sure they have as much liquidity as possible. Were showing you shares of boeing as you look at boeing, remember, theyre seeking a aid package out of washington for 60 billion. That money would not all be going to boeing and boeing alone. It goes for the entire Aviation Industry its in the whole aerospace ecosystem. Lets shift gears to the automakers gm, ford, and kia, theyre closing plants in north america. You look at the plants in the u. S. , theyre closed at least through march 30th you look at tesla, the stock is under pressure now this is a little bit unusual. What you have is the share of california and said this is not essential. It should not be operating yet, there are reports that parking lot is full and people are still going into work at tesla. We have reached out to the company. Unclear whether or not the freemont plant is open is it partially open exactly what is going on out there . Well give you are an answer as soon as we have one. Back to you. All right phil, keep us posted on that for more on the pain in airlines, lets bring in Helaine Becker covering the air monilin. Is this an industry that is going to be saved and if so, what do do you with the stocks trading sharply lower every day . Its been very stressful, indeed you know, the issue for the industry as phil pointed out and you pointed out is the fact that looking down and then none of the refunds and their continuing to grow and people are afraid to book tickets anything from washington is not going to the management teams. Its going to lindbergh the comment that the airlines will shut down if things continue in this vain, the reason they continue to fly is to support their jobs. Nobodys talking about furloughs. Nobody is talking about layoffs for flight attend ants, mechanics, pilots and theyre trying really hard to not get to that point but if you look at their cost structure, the number one expense any one of these companies has is labor and any money that they would get from washington would go to pay employees. So its not really a bailout or a savings per se as much as its helping them maintain employment of, you know, what we would all consider to be very good jobs. And so i think that from a stock perspective, every time i think we reached a floor, they go down a lot. I never would have expected united to be back to 20, american back to 10 and where these stocks are right now its really frightening. It must be frightening to be an employee of an airline and to fly, you know, half full planes which is kind of whats going on flights are anywhere from 25 to 60 full when normally they would be 85 full. What do people do with the stocks i mean, if this industry or certain players need some kind of government assistance, what is the chance that that is done in a way that equity holders still get to benefit to the upside as well is the equity here very, very hard to value at the moment . Its really hard. Delta said the march revenues are down 2 billion. A week ago, united said they thought they were down 70 in march. We saw the jetblue, they said they took in 4 million yesterday in a normal march day they do 22 million. So, you know, you just look at the demand destruction that is caused by everything thats been going on i kaep trying to say okay, we reached the floor and then there is more bad news and the stocks are down again right now, there is no one buying there is no one buying theyre not buying the stocks and theyre not certainly not buying Airline Tickets you know, the fares have come down a lot if, youre thinking about taking a vacation this summer, maybe book your trip now. Can y you can always change it without a penalty. Thank you so much for joining us we appreciate it hi, Julia Facebook is launching a new Coronavirus Information Center which it will rollout and the cdc along with links and coach and celebrities and politicians theyre working with the government to use Location Tracking data to combat coronavirus saying that he has not been contacted by the government about this. And facebook also announcing that it will give away its workplace this is an app that uses a slack it will give away free for governments and other nonprofit organizations. Facebook shares are down 5. 5 . Back over you to. Julia, thank you. 30 minutes left of trade earlier today famed investor big ackman send ag dire warning on cnbc saying that america will end as we know it amed this outbreak he said keep a close eye on hotel stocks like Hilton Hilton is the canary in the coal mine. This is a dominant Global Company that doesnt own many hotels it just collects royalties down from 120 to 50. Its going to zero along with every other Hotel Company in the world. You know, park hotels and resorts. Stocks down 33 to 4. This is the spinoff from hilton. Why is it down from 33 to 4 . Every hotel is going to be shut down in the country, every one joining us to discuss is scott wapner half the people think this is a bworrisome. Worried is the message you got from bill ackman today hes gone on twitter in the last 30 minutes or so to try to clarify a lull more about what he was trying to say suggesting that he still bullish on america he thinks that the market is going to do very well and have a massive rip from here because he thinks we will do what he is warning needs to be done and thats why he says hes buying names like hilton he already had a big position. He said its going to zero but i mean the caveat here is if and a lot of the consumer facing brands if, the Trump Administration and the president himself dont do what bill suggests need to be done take a look at what needs to happen for the next 3 30 days minimum that are going to be rolling issues throughout a whole number of sectors like the airlines, like the hotels, and like the restaurants i do want to stress, because i know really wants to get this point across i know it sounded to some alarmist ive gotten feedback from some who thought it was hysterical. He really wants to get the message across that he is super concerned that were not doing enough but he thinks we will and the stock market will have massive upside on the other side of this. Thats why he said he was buying names not only like hilton but starbucks all the way down he has a position in chipoltle its not like he is running for the hills. Its not like hes shorting the stocks and coming on and saying the world is going to hell in a handbasket he is a buyer. He thinks its one of the greatest buying opportunities hes seen in a long time much like bill miller told kelly. Its just, yes, it was a sobering, it was a scary interview with bill who clear sli concerned that were not doing enough im sure, bill scott, excuse me, im sure that he wasnt shorting the market and trying to talk it down i understand he wasnt hiding anything he was very open about his intentions to buy stocks in the fact that he thinks the market is go to going higher. But i do think there is a little butt bit of a conflict in what he was saying just as if he said company x stock is going go to the moon but by the way, im selling it the same suggests that im buying stocks but saying things that are going to push the market down to create better buying opportunities i dont think for any second that was calculated by him im not suggesting that. I do think that there is a bit of conflict there that we should point out to viewers in terms of the way that Market Dynamics works and the typical disclosures we make. I will say this at times like this and other times we bring on investors who are positive and negative. We dont decide based on their view at this particular or that particular time who gets to come on the air and voice their view. We put bullish people own. We put bearish people on at the time of market unrest. Yes, hes been negative. Those stories have been well documented over the last ten days the theyve been written about publicly and he stated so to other reporters how worried he was. He took to twitter this morning with, you know, tweets that he hasnt been active on twitter in a couple of years, he said he felt like this was the moment that he needed to get more public he knows that he has some sort of platform because of who he is and, you know, we saw those tweets and we thought it would be worth while getting his perspective on where he thought we were. Do we know how, you know, dire his prediction was going to be going into that or how scary some people would feel that his words would be absolutely not but its also worth hearing from different perspectives and i think its fine that you come on the air, you say you cant decide whether someone is too emotional to make their point of view. The bottom line is hes concerned. He news more needs to be done. He thinks it will. And he thinks the market is going to go up on the other side so while he suggested that things could get pretty ugly, he is a buyer of stocks i dont know what else to say. Absolutely. Absolutely, scott i think that is absolutely right. We have to bring all of these views to air and make sure we put all sides out as you just have for us. Scott wapner, thank you very much lets get back to check in on the markets. Were down 2,000 again on the dow. The bond market also seeing all sorts of extraordinary moves Rick Santelli hasmore on that from chicago rick extraordinary is a perfect work at 5 40 a. M. Eastern, were trading around 122 then we ease back a bit. 30 minutes ago, we shot up in yields we shot through that level we traded almost as high as 126 and here we are back at 116. Now im not saying its over in the grand scheme of things but that was definitely capitulation trade at least for today. All sovereigns are under pressure take a look at the tyvix. It has never been at these levels lets see where it closes. Two day of the dollar index. This thing is zooming. If you really want to see the world calm down bate, you need to see the dollar index calm down a bit dollar demand is giving us a dark view of the rest of the worlds inability to secure enough dollars for their liabilities. Back to you. Rick, and also creating a huge headache for the rest of the world who does not want their currency collapsing at this point just a quick question on bonds what are you hearing about these higher yields and the fact that whatever is coming out of washington is going to mean trillions and trillions of dollars in deficits and now thaur taki theyre taking a hard look and deci deciding whether this is a safe haven during rocky times i think i go more global with that i would go more global with it from the modern monetary theory perspective it isnt just the u. S. The u. S. Is the best shirt in the hamper by far. But there is a lot of dote go around i think the whole globe is getting a little nervous about that dont lose sightst fact that at least for now, a lot of the moves in the long end are about collateral when you see all the liquidation of leverage and showing up in the stock market, you need less good collateral. What has been the best collateral that was fully margin at the ecb french ten year, italian ten year the high quality stuff like our ten years, you dont need as much of fit youre liquidating all the positions that were set aside against your collateral. I think these moves havent run their course yet Rick Santelli, thanks for the color. Weve got under 30 minutes left of trade here. Take a look at the market. The sector heat map. Energy by far the worst performing sector right now in the market on that sharp more than 20 slide in crude oil. Communication Services Holding up the best only down 6 youve also got groups like Consumer Staples doing better. Some of the food stocks doing better today general mills, for instance. H ooch hormel holding up on the Consumer Staples still looking at a sharp drop for the overall average. The s p 500 was down at one point as much as 9. 8 . The dow wiping out all the gains since President Trump took office crazy stuff here are the key things that have driven that action were seeing so far today. The selling resuming, of course, on wall street as more governments impose tighter restriction onz activities Economic Activity grinds to a halt the white house calling for half a trillion in direct payments to taxpayers and says we could see bailouts for airlines, hotels, cruise industries. Those sectors getting crushed in the market today and crude is down a staggering 20 now trading just above 20 a barrel currently down 22 down at 22, down 18 just today. Lowest level in 17 years lets get the latest on the coronavirus with sue herrera back at headquarters. Thank you hello, everyone. Beer going to begin with the new cases this afternoon over 214,000 worldwide now that, is the death toll topped 8700 with italy close to overtaking china for the most deaths. One state governor in italy is calling on retired and private sector doctors to make themselves available to help Public Health services fight the virus. Traffic is piling up at border crossings in europe like this one between germany and poland at one point that traffic jam stretched for 31 miles as coronavirus restrictions are implemented. European Union Officials say there are still about 80,000 eu citizens around the world waiting to return. And in israel, police are wearing new uniforms for a new kind of policing teams of officers knocking on the doors of people in quarantine to make sure theyre following the rules when ch, of course, are meant to limit the outbreak youre up to date. I send it back downtown to you thank you so much, sue. As always, well see you again next hour. Lets send it over to mike taking a look at various safe haven assets mike times like these when almost every asset class was in liquidation in recent days, we redefined what the market perceives as a safe hafrn. This haven. This is pwalmart shares and the price of gold. They tracked one into the a rough way. Until recently, you can see walmart in white here is overtaken the gold price everything as rick was just saying, every other kind of asset is redeemed for dollars. If you look at the outperformers in terms of equities today, it is walmart, the necessity stocks only a handful of them some of the food stocks as well as target and amazon they outperformed as if not being outright higher. Look at a closer up view of the recent moves that we have seen we actually had a butt it of a r decline. The fed has room to cut. Its going go to zero. That was the trade for a little while. Now it has come roaring back it is a grab for dollars there is dollar funding pressures. All of these things are disorderly and showing stresses in various partsst market. Obviously, market is very much wishing for the fed to have a fix and overwhelming response in the Financial Market sued so we can keep thing mores lubricated than theyve been. Mike, the grab for dollars, i actually saw one currency strategist describe this as all currencies in the world behaving as emerging market currencies, maybe not quite the yen. But all of the others against the dollar were going to check in on the pound intraday this is a great example of how that is playing out and to date pound falling at 1. 5 is down 4 in the intraday chart. It took a big leg down in the middle of the session f we just go out, can you do a step chain to one year then, ten years, 20 years. The technical aspect of this chart starts to play in. Its dropped below support levels there you see on the one year chart, you go to the ten year chart, trying to find a foot now when youre in this sort of wild card dollar grab sen acenario. Thats why today you saw this sudden 4 or so move were back down to levels not seen in my lifetime. That chart doesnt go back far enough, 35year low. And so the pound in particular today suffering from the move that mike talked about and all currencies suffering from this pretty much otherthan the yen not quite as badly as the others its a shame we cant fly over to the uk it is a good time to shop there. Cheap flights it would be helpful for the economies to be able to zport a export and get more competitive. Unfortunately, the size and speed of the moves with an economy that is frozen in place and consumers not going out and spending, its not having that typical benefit. And its just acting as a tightening of Financial Markets. And another form of stress on top of an already sort of stress market and economy again, just shows, stocks are impossible for them to find a floor. You dont know what the e part of the price to earnings multiple is going to be and with a lot of the currencies, its hard tore anyone to know what is a reasonable level when you dont know what the growth rate is going to be so on and so forth and not trading on the fundamentals at the moment earlier, the Federal Reserve chairs penned an oped in the Financial Times. They must reduce long term damage from the coronavirus. Several strategies including buying corporate debt. Joining us to discuss is the former pimpco chief economists and senior fellow at Cornell University great to see you, paul i guess before we get to specific actions youd like to see from the fed and comments on the actions weve seen already, what is your take on the way were seeing as mike addressed and we just discussed the way were seeing safe havens like the treasury yields and dollar trade at the moment . I think what were seeing is truly an implosion of liquidity and the system it is reve prvery prop attic of needs to get done. I think ben and janet had an absolutely wonderful oped stressing the powers of the fed to provide liquidity so i would say amen to everything that they said. And i would actually go a step further. I think one of the things that is really missing right now within our architecture is the ability to look at the treasury and the fed as a consolidated Balance Sheet. We have this separation of church and state and deflationary shock so i would see and agree with where ben and janet are and say that we need to take steps which requires congressional action to essentially run treasury and the fed as a consolidated Balance Sheet. Are you wanting the fed to buy Corporate Bonds . What im getting at is the fact that the fed is not allowed to buy treasury issuance directly from if the treasury. They can only do it in the secondary market and theyre doing it and thats appropriate and so forth but essentially, the fed cannot be a direct lender to the treasury by buying new issued treasuries and even more important i think in these times is the fed is not allowed to grant treasury an overdraft line on treasuries Checking Account effectively at the fed and literally that can be changed with the stroke of a pen on a law and the fed could grant to treasury line of credit so as that the treasury could at congress direction pour money into the economy and turn it into helicopter money. So right now were one step away from helicopter money. Were seeing great cooperation between the fed and congress and the administration i think the next logical step should be for congress to allow the fed to give treasury a line of credit so as the treasury can spend money as they should including money into peoples pockets as being discussed in the next round of stimulus without strog having to go to t market and run an overdraft on their account at the fed that is my idea for the day. Paul, to what extent even if all of those policies aruf and a aruf in the right way, are they helping the bounce back when it comes to be a big bounceback j. P. Morgan came out, minus 14 q2. Then plus 8 for q3 and growing from there is first half of the year already pretty much written off in terms of a big, big decline in gdp are we already talking about finessing and coming out and stopping companies from going bust in the meantime actually, im not focused too much on whats going to happen after we conquer this virus. Remember, thats the key issue is nothing good is going to happen until we get clarity on the biological front and i think as ben and janet wrote, the key issue right now is to mitigate right now, no the in the third quarter, but to mitigate right now the damage that is unfolding wf this mandated shutdown of aggregate demand and essentially provide uncle sam and a broad sort of sense a consolidated treasury and fed, provide uncle sam being there to provide liquidity for people who essentially have great businesses but are going to go out of business if we dont have funds to them and equally important to the citizenry. I think the idea of doing a money drop is a great idea during these times i would just like to see it be a bona fide helicopter drop. Paul mccully, thanks for coming on and expressing your ideas. My pleasure nice to see you we have 12 minutes left in the trading day. Were now going straight into the closing bell markets, commercial free coverage going into the close. Mike is here to break down the crucial moments of the trading day as always. Today we have the Wealth Management josh brown as well. Lets start off with the uncertainty we see reflected in the markets right now. There is contentious debate about the coronavirus and where it is going globally bill miller sees the recent stock selloff as a buying opportunity. There have been four great buying opportunities in my adult lifetime the first was 1973 and 74 the second was in 1982 the third in 1987. And the fourth was in 2008 and 2009 this is the fifth one. I think is an exceptional buying opportunity. I dont mean to put all the money in at once but i do think layering it in right now is the way to go clear call there. Meantime, confusing messaging from pershing squares bill ackman if we continue the way we are operating, until a vaccine is manufactured, distributed and injected, well go through awe depression era period in the country and millions of people will die arent globe and as many as a million americans are going to die and it is just math. Mike, coming to you first as always clearly to what buill miller said there are a lot of stocks that are very cheap at the moment its very hard to not say there could be a better buying opportunity still to come in the weeks ahead. Right look, that is actually implis it in what bill was saying right there. He is talking about 1973 and 2008 and all these periods where that was not a moment that represented a buying opportunity. That was a phase and if you dont think that the s p 500 losing about a third of the value in a month is on the way to generating some kind of opportunity to own assets you couldnt be able to own at these prices, then youre not in the right business or dont have the mund set to be a long Term Investor the problem is there is not a lot of things to fix thing onz in terms of values in the short term and duration of this virtual shutdown, i think, is the key thing. Even i mean it is related to infection rates. What breaks along the way while we zhoushut down the xme what captivated all Financial Markets. Well what was your reaction, josh brown, to bill ackman that a nationwide shutdown would send the stock market soaring which i you this is what he said. Im going to tell you that watching mayor bill diblasio on msnbc say that things are moving very fast and then talking about the possibility of putting new york city on lockdown, that is not going to be greeted with a stock market rally, im sorry. That being said, the single most heartening thing that im seeing on my screen are stocks making 5 52week high this is week in various sectors. Everything from telehealth to cleaning supplies, a couple of utilities are on that list so there are reasons to say that investors are making decisions on buying and selling that are economic and not every trade you see going off is an etf or a panic or an algo so just looking at kroger and walmart and clorox and teledoc is up, zoom is up among both of those stocks, full disclosure. People are still making decisions about the future this is not a give up moment just yet zoom ceo coming up later on in the show. Meantime today, starbucks announcing a stock buyback restaurants continue to get hit hard kate rothers with the details. Star backs announcing a Buyback Program up to 40 million shares ahead of the Shareholder Meeting that took place today virtually. 90 of the stores in china reopened as it moves to a to go model in the u. S closing high volume stores in areas hard hit by covid19 the entire restaurant sector down along with some fast food names like wendys and Restaurant Brands international this comes as the National Restaurant association projects sales losses of up to 225 billion for the next three months they also talked about mass layoffs between five million and seven million jobs to come back to you. Kate rogers, thank you. Dont miss starbucks Ceo Kevin Johnson on mad money tonight at 6 00 p. M. Eesh time we have breaking news out of washington sayer yashgs the senate enough votes to pass the houses Coronavirus Relief bill. This is a bill that would provide paid sick leave and family leave for 40 million americans. It limits the number of people that can take this 12 weeks of paid family leave to those kids who are home because their schools are closed due to the coronavirus and it also exempts Small Businesses with fewer than 50 and Health Care Providers from actually extending the benefits to their employees. Treasury secretary said if any lawmakers have issues with the bill, take it up after this vote they need to move on to other stimulus the senate has taken that warning to heart guys okay. Thank you so much for. That the markets will be watching all the developments. Need to see some of those congressional acts pass in the weeks ahead. We should say by the way, the market is just improved a little bit in the course of the last 15 minutes. Were only down 6. 2 as we stand on the s p 500 the coronavirus is crippling the auto sector. The big three are going to be shutting down plants in north america and here in the u. S. That means there are 25 final assembly plants. Theyre shutting down tend of their second shifts tomorrow night. We already heard from ford and gm confirming what we reported earlier today. We have yet to hear fromfiat by the way, the plants are close tlo through march 30th when you and i go to a dealership to buy a vehicle, look how much it dropped down. 1 down tend of the month. Then it really accelerated the change between friday and sunday, down 20 friday and sunday, down 36 . One other stock to keep an eye oon, tes lafrme on is tesla. The sheriff out there said it is not an essential business. They would be violating a health order if people are still going to work. Great question we have reached out to tesla it appears as though it is open based on the number of cars that are in the parking lot and people going into the plant. But we have not heard yet back from tesla like all the stocks, guys, it is getting absolutely hammered to day now trading down just over 360 a share back to you. Phil, thank you so much for that mike, clearly the way these stocks are trading is in some level a bianary solution. For sure. We have a situation where the disadvantaged groups like the chain retailers and traditional auto stocks were already back on their heels. But its worth remembering krarz both the largest Manufacturing Sector in the country as well as the largest Retail Consumer category so all that stuff just pushes out a tremendous amount of Economic Activity. This is what the market has been trying to cope with here also, smaller points, we have a massive reduction in miles driven going on right now. That puts off the need for new vehicles and leases and things like that. Josh, how would you trade autos . I dont think you need to you know, this is one of those moments where its not necessary to think you have an answer for every problem that is happening in the markets or in the economy. So i think its very important that people dont become tourists all of a sudden and think that theyre going to be the person that gets into these at the very bottom there might not be one some of the companies, if theyre shutting production, there might not abe bottom for months there may be short sharp bear market rallies along the way shorts get out and people get excited. But as we have seen from what happened yesterday, we had a day like this last week, those moments are few. Im not sure there is a need to be looking at tesla and ford and saying, yeah this is the place how could you know all right weve got under four minutes left of trade. Mike, what are you seeing in terms of the market internals . Sayer yashgs were kind rah, of rewriting history in terms of the mega down side days. You look at the up versus down its another day with 95 or so volume is to the down side it is comprehensive. Lick dags an on going basis. Similarly, new highs, new lows if you recall, one day last week we had zero new highs. On the New York Stock Exchange, okay, today we have 16, 2,000 new lows all this stuff is really redefining what washed out means. Do want to point out the volatility undec volatility index it is not doing much it was already in the mid 70s or even above 80 as a close on the other day. Just for some reference, a 75 vix basically means an implied daily move of more than 4 in the s p 500 for a year so thats why even though the market is down a lot today, not a lot of registering in the vix itself because were already there handicapping this type of day to day action. Mike, is there an element that applies that if we start to endure more days tllike this wih all the volatility flashing red that the market can get used to them or do we need to see them come down . I dont think the market can get used to them at these levels it really does act as a trigger on kind of further rounds of deleveraging and reducing equity exposure unless we run out of that process as these sort of Systematic Strategies push the market in one direction or the other. I dont know that you can really get used to it but there is no doubt there is going to be a very long period some of what elevated volatility readings after this. These storms just dont pass they actually take time for that radiation of the boom to dissipate. Just over one minute left in the session. The s p 500 is down 6. 4 what is happening on the nasdaq . Even though the dow wiped out the gains since President Trumps presidency, forty tefour tech stocks remain up. It is down in 27 from the highs. Just last month walgreens, the fifth component that is in the dow, bucking the trend to dafrment the store says its going to be limiting hours now from 9 00 to 9 00 for the physical store to be able to clean them and to be able to restock although the drive throughs will be open 24 hours and take a look at the new lows to day sharp falls from just a month ago. Facebook off about 36 from the high sintas off 40 nxpi, 50 just a month ago, bob. Important thing here is the s p 500 is really rallying we moved almost 80 points in the s p 500 in the last few minutes. Maybe because the senate voted to pass the Coronavirus Relief plan and send it to President Trump. Well see. But were well off the highs the dow rallied 900 points in the last 20 minutes or so. Closing still down 1200 points welcome back, everyone the turbulent market ride continues. And im wilford frost lets just break down where we close for the session. We did improve as you can see there, a nice rally into the close so that we close down only 6. 3 on the dow. Only 4. 7 on the nasdaq. Only 5. 2 on the s p 500 all sectors though in the s p 500 were negative. The outperformers in a relative sense wrr communications services, health care, and staples. Down around 3 underperformers were energy down 14 and financials down 9 still to come today, zoom video ceo will join us chts his companys stock surged amid the coronavirus outbreak well discuss with him how much of an uptick theyre seeing in business and what theyre doing to help during these times like helping schools, for example joining us is jeff brown and our chief market strategist. But first, mike, to you. As always, zeebt little rally into the close but again, the way were seeing markets at the moment a rally but still down over 5 on the s p 500. Yeah. There is a high burden off proof for any one daus action for really registering a significant or something you can extrapolate and count against the idea for weeks now of saying this day means x for tomorrow but some folks are probably going to make a Little Something out of the fact that the s p 500 did go below those former lows in december 2018 the market is screaming out for policy action that might get traction again, remains to be seen. Josh, what is it . What are you watching for as an investor that might get you interested i hate disagreeing with michael santoli. He is truly one of the smartest market commentators of all time. I agree with almost everything that he said i do not think sentiment i dont think sentiment matters anymore. I think all of those investors, you can throw them out because we are now combining three things in our minds. Are we going to get snik are people we care about going to get sick are there fwgoing to be deaths our extended friend groups and family and security and safety. You have people without paychecks for a moshgs a million people, like, there are people in my town that are buying shot guns i dont that i is a function of what stock prices are doing. Thats a whole different level of fear. The third thing is a lot of the moves we are seeing are based on people taking money out of market that think think they need to live on. 35 of the treasury market is owned by foreigners. And those people dont need yield right now. They need dollars. They need, like cash in hand so i dont think that the sentiment stuff is going to matter im going to tell what you i want to see. Im not a medical expert but i know what the market will rally on it wants to hear about promising treatment, not vaccines. We understand this is way off. It wants to hear about recovered people President Trump should ask tom hafrp hanks to go on prime Time Television and talk about his experience being released from the hospital were not hearing enough about recovered cases. Every day we hear about body counts that will put a floor on the market when people are not terrified of all health, security, and their money. Daufd vid, we saw significan down grades in j. P. Morgans estimates today for gdp growth they said minus 14 in q2 where do you stand on things tlik and whether the market is going to be able to bottom until we see gdp pick up again i think we have to step back in the market and ask a couple of questions, especially over the last couple days bonds and stocks both going down doesnt happen that often. And one of the reasons that it could be is something weve been writing about in our notes lately, jeffries the risk parody un fers iverse coming unglued at the zero bound f you dont have the treasuries to hedge you anymore, then you cant hold theequities in a risk parody trade. Thats been a big trade. Its been one of bridgewaters trades for many, many decades. When you get to zero, the stocks cant rally. Theyre at zero. So the holders of stocks that were insured with the bond portfolios dont have the insurance anymore and they become just naked holders of stocks and i think what were seeing a fair amount of liquidation in that strategy in particular which is a very large strategy, something i built my career around at xwef riz as well so weve been highlighting to our clients over the last few weeks that this becomes a much more trouble some strategy as we get towards zero and seeing that, the action in gold also i think tells you something about the strategy because a big part of some of the more complicated strategies is they have a lot of inflation hedges they tend to buy gold and tips both are very, very weak even if the face of safe haven buying in gold or some inflaction expectations because of what were hearing on budgetary expansion. I think there is a bit of a technicality here in the market. Im not trying to minimize the virus. I do think, you know, it could be just like josh said, really, really bad that is almost foolish to me you have to wait for policy responses. Its not right. Its not relevant. I think were getting them. But as josh said, its not that relevant if people around you are dying, youre going to get out of stocks i think the other part of the risk parody thing really exacerbates some of the price actionhere im not one of the guys buying guns. I bought bagels to day we talk to investors in the medical profession we talk to investors that own Small Business thats are immediately impacted and one of the best things that were hearing from people is that they understand this isnt the new reality for the rest of our lives. The uncertainty of whether or not this is the new reality for eight weeks or four months, that is the part that is making it the hardest on people. Unfortunately, no one really has the answer if the epidemiologists are hedging, then why would any investor feel like they know better than anyone else. This is what i want you to focus on i dont understand what i see amazon red this sun wf the companies thats going to get this economy through this and like dont im not looking at the price right this second when you see the name in red and you havent taken a the lot of risk and you have assets or already made panic sales 5,000 points ago, to me, it just seems obvious that you should be willing to say okay, i get it. Everythings terrible. But we dont stop ordering packages from amazon and bezos is ready to hire another 100,000 people for logistics, warehouses and delivery that is something that is like constructive to think about. It doesnt mean youre going to buy it youre going to be green ten minutes later. Amazon closed up to day it has been hit with the Broader Market im like using that as a im using that as emblematic as the type of companies. Fast food, i think whenever the general Market Recovery begins, people are going to realize that fast food became the new moms cooking. And every drive through i see everywhere i go, im not going far these days, there are lines. Lets not think every stock is hilton or u. S. Airways that dispersion is happening my favorite chart that im following, im following as a ratio chart is boeing divided by clorox that is a sign that people are making forward looking decisions not just rond omly throwing sell orders into the market its been another roller coaster rude on wall street. Bob not a lot of bifurcation. Once again, the consumer names did better than usual. Boeing is the big focus. It was down another 20 . We highlighted they were seeking access to 60 billion in public and private liquidity for the whole Aerospace Industry boeings market cap is not that far from 60 billion American Express is essentially closing near a four year low there is an intraday chart home depot held up exceptionally the last few days. Really until this week it is also sitting at a two year low right now. Goldman sachs and most of the banks have all been down multiyear lows and in Goldman Sachs case, its a four year low. Most of the other Consumer Companies helt held up well. Coke was downgraded at Morgan Stanley because of the government mandated closures of certain stores they thought that would impact them coke did not outperform today. Back to you. Forgive us with that delay. Were working with this social distance i want to come back to starbucks. We have a little squeeze before the close. The we mentioned story that theyre initiating a appreciate buyback. I think its somewhat ludicrous to be initiating a new buyback on stock when there is so much unpredictability about how long the Current Crisis could last. Im sure people can argue the stock is incredibly weak but to that i would say that the ceo or the board are not expert investors. I dont know if you have any view on that and whether people should be using in i spare cash for buying back the stock at this time. So we learned one very important thing about stock buyback officials the last month. And its something that no one should ever forget stock buybacks in general have proven themselves to be the most pro cyclical way for companies to return capital to shareholders i dont mean that as a compliment okay. Heres the opportunity and, of course, this is the moment where most of them are husbanding their cash for an emergency, especially the banks. They want to be liquid for loans, et cetera i think its rational for them to pull back from buybacks im just saying they are not the same as dividends. I think Companies Cut their dividends with much more his tansy than they halt Buyback Programs so in a crisis, we learned or many people knew this and reminded buybacks are not going to save stock prices will starbucks look to be wise three months from now . Maybe. Or if they announce 10,000 layoffs, people are going to be throwing tomatoes. In the case of starbucks, maybe a better use of cash i love this i dont hate it, im a shareholder. Very tone death either way the industry is asking for money. This is an industry that spent a lot of the Free Cash Flow over the years buying back the shares and the political ramifications of that are going to start to heat up. You have people already like Elizabeth Warren saying if were doing bailouts, there are going to be heavy Strings Attached its all about the workers aand theyre not going to be allowed to buy back the stock. You heard sandy say the bankers should be doing it on the other, it seems really politically no the so palatable when the whole focus of industries should be about preserving Workers Compensation and jobs this is a very important difference what sandy weill said he said he supported the companies stopping buying back the stock as related to the banks but would like to see the ceos personally use their cash to buy stocks. Thats a huge difference right theyre not going to pay workers. Right with starbucks, its a difference even from the american from the various Airlines Points you maud which are absolutely on point and have that huge political difference in terms of if they get bailed out or not starbucks, the only argument can you styou can say is that the stock is weak. We learned that companies dont judge if their stock is very cheap or not very well over the last three years, if you look at the s p 500, anyone thats bought back stock timed it badly we have fallen from then but the ceos dont have a track record of showing they can time when to buy or to catch a falling knife nor do investors i find it incredibly surprising that they choose to do this not to mention all the political ramifications. They should be spending the money making sure all their employees can have test its they need them, for example. Well continue to have that debate josh brown, thank you. David, good to see you too good to see you zoochl video fueled selloff on waugs businesses, governments, schools, you name it ash the world are working from home leading to a surge in zooms Communications Platform usage. Joining us now in an exclusive interview is zoom video ceo eric yuan give us a sense of what your business has been like just over the last few weeks thank you so all of the positive days, the last several weeks, i can see that our usage, our usage is unprecedented. So every day we break records. A lot of the companies, they count on zoom to support their employees and working from home. You have been able to keep up with the cable companies, more cloud space from the Cloud Companies more borkers you have been able to match the demand when it comes to working from home, the Service Reliability is extremely important. Essentially, you have to be your i. T. You dont have i. T. Team so it is reliability first of all, we have very good architecture and we have more band wwidth fo sure were working hard to make sure our service is always up to support our customers. So, eric, how do you think about the long run here . How do you make sure that people stay with you and this is not a temporary thing . Thats a good question. The new reality is uncertainty so we just announce how long, you know, they can do. This but were ready and make sure to support the businesses and those users that come looking from home. Hopefully this can end very, very soon. But problem bhi take a little bit longer time. Eric, clear think is benefiting your business but youre also taking the moment to help others. Tell us about some of those initiatives like Offering Services to schools and so on and so forth yes this is very important for the schools. In the case they are the future. We have done all we can to see kids in schools. We offer the free zoom access to all the k12 kids and offer more to other countries as well i think we support the community and society. Because our common value is care we do all we can to help what are you finding in terms of what is working for some companies and in Certain Industries and how theyre using your products more effectively than others . For knew, its no different you know, the service is reliability. It is important. Were learning im working from home now. Im using any phone. Why go to zoom and also im learning i have so many things, more meetings compared to working at office again, it is something new and almost everybody theyre going to do adapt to this for a while. Work from home eric, do you have any idea of whether or not once people have tried your product or other Video Conferencing products that are out there, whether that was sort of the key thing to sort of get them into doing that as opposed to traveling so much in the past. In a family, everybody realized that they have a meeting. You have an employee, theyre going to go back and work from home that is reliability. That is very, very important and in the past, we had a lot of users that can work from home. I think after this is over, im pretty sure a lot of users probably still want to use zoom at home. Are you able to do that do you have the right bandwidth . Are there any big technical problems what happens if there is traffic, can we survive . Were very paranoid before so far, so good. And again, we keep our eye on that this is unprecedented. None knows, you know, that this could be 100 times we have no idea. But our team is working very, very hard to do all we can to serve the customers. You would like to see any of the Tech Companies in this moment of search demand or is that just to meet your own demand for actual paying customers or the way that youre helping schools and others you have been provideded enough technological help from your cloud and Cable Partners absolutely. Amazon, oracle, microsoft, google i think is also across at t. And theyre all helping us were all working together when it odometers crisis like this were all working together. We working together to serve customers and make sure theyre part of society. Eric, were all trying to were trying to wonder how long this crisis is going to go on and when Different Countries and different regions will improve. Have you seen a change in behavior in places like china, korea, singapore, hong kong had a that had bera recently in the terms of number of infections and deaths have you seen an initial spike in customer use that has come down or any other data points you can point to several weeks this has created. This is huge after that, we see the usage from europe, from here and japan and also it is really hard i saw it flat now. We can see that for now, i see europe and here and also the use is very, very high. I have seen every day is tough people are using that. Eric yuan, zoom ceo thank you so much for joining us my pleasure thank you. Joining us via zoom ville video. Lets have a look at how we finished the day on wall street. Down sharply it is quite significantly off the lows the dow closed down 1300 points. 900 points or so off its lows. Still down 6. 3 . S p 500 down 5. 2 . Nasdaq down 4. 7 the russell, the smaller index was down 10 , continued its recent underperformance for the week and the month as well ending almost half of how much we were down early her, almost down 10 . Lets go back to mike santoli. Thank you i trust josh brown is watching im going to show that in fact i agree with him about longer Term Investor sentiment not yet being at extreme pessimism. So this is the percentage of people Investors Intelligence advisors thatsay they are bearish on the market. You actually see it is lower than in 2016 it is around where it fwhaz 2018 this is the Global Financial crisis that is really entrenched bear market that is a little bit different here is the early 2000s bear market this agrees with the idea that longer term psychological measures are not yet saying people have surrendered. More bulls than bears in this latest week. Well see what next week looks like there is a pylon to the down side any other slightly upbeat news is perhaps going to create a little selling exhaustion. A nuance picture of sentiment right now. I wanted to ask you what were you looking for. Whether it is policy agreement like kayla is reporting coming out of washington, whether it is fed action, whether it is virus numbers or any glimmer of hope in terms of peaking in Different Countries around the world what has been the sensitivity swing factor i think its going to have to be, first of all, the precondition has to be a vastly oversold, sold out market where people feel like there is no way that we can know where the bottom is and nakt it looks like it is nothing but bad news to come that i think combined with whatever fed action is going to get the rest of the Capital Markets operating in a better, you know in, better form, in other words, no to the have the dislocations in pockets of i will liquidity and the mortage market, Corporate Bonds, areas where they really got locked up. That to me is taken as a green light in the short term for stocks to perhaps find their footing. And then anything that gives us any information about the duration of the enforced economic clampdown, i think is the next thing that were going to look for in the slightly longer term basis. Its not so much whats going on right now but what gdp is going to look like or weekly jobless claims, its much more about is this a one month, five month, six month issue . Thats where were focused all right mike, thank you. Lets get the latest on the coronavirus and expectations about how the epidemic could play out here in the u. S meg has new details for us meg . Hi, sayer yachrah. Analysts are trying to figure out the epidemiology of the virus. Check out these charts interest rbc. This is looking at global total cases versus chinas cases china being in the red there and what it shows is when the lockdowns began in china in wuhan and then in the greater province, it was 25 days later from the quarantines being put in place that we started to see the flattening of the curve. That, of course, is what everybody is talking about and trying to slow the new infections now if you look to italy, some disturbi disturbing statistics coming out of italy they match that compared with the percentage of patient thats got untensive care as they found more patients being diagnosed with the disease, more patients overwhelming the icus there. That mortality rate in the blue started to spike you can really see that inverse correlation which makes sense. Now if you look to the united states, theyre taking all that data and trying to punch in the numbers of the u. S. Icu capacity and how fast the disease is spreading here they modelled four different scenarios of how stringent the measures are that the u. S. Is taking here in terms of social distancing now the orange is the best Case Scenario under that scenario, by early sap when they say that our icu capacity could get overwhelmed and start to be in a situation like italy where the mortality rate spikes. That is at case numbers of around 30,500. If we take more stringent measures like we saw in china and were starting to see italy and other countries take, they say we can get closer to green line which is a flat the curve this all depends on the success of our social distancing meg, thanks so much do stay with us. We want to make clear on the italy mortality rates. Not only was it the blue line, it is also the left axies labels 5 not the right y axis labels which may have suggest aid 15 mortality rate thankfully it is rising. Lets bring in our doctor, an emergency physician from George Washington university. She serves on baltimores Health Commission great to see you again thank you for joining us always important to kick it off with this. What is the latest key advice to our viewers . What should people be making sure theyre doing at the most the most important thing that everybody should be doing is stay home. Stay home. Cut out anything that nonessential stay with your family unit and the graph thats meg just showed explains exactly why. Because health care is a limited resource and were getting to the point where if there is even a moderate outbreak, were not going to have nearly the supply of health care services. So we need continue to crease that supply but what people can do every single day is to reduce the demand for that health care. So dont go to the er unless you really need it all of us have a role to play in reducing the spread of coronavirus. So that we can try to flat ten that curve and prevent the escalation of our cases. Stay home, dont trans mitt the virus to others. That is the single most important thing that everybody can do right now and dont i totally get the point you dont want people to unnecessary gloi into Health Care Units and make their pressure on them worse and spread the disease worse what is the key factor people should look out for themselves if they are self isolating to when you crossed that line and you should be going to hospital . The key is to think about whether you would have gone to the er if it were not for coronavirus. My colleagues in emergency medicine are telling me how the hospitals are overwhelms with people who want to know if they have covid19. I understand the worry the problem is that the er is not the place that you go to find out because youre going to overburden the Health Care System and your also going to be exposing yourself and other people unnecessarily so if you would have gone otherwise, because youre so short of breath, chest pain, very other concerning symptoms go, to the er, call ahead so they can prepare for the visit but if you would have otherwise not gone, accept for your concern for coronavirus, dont go stay home. Call your doctor so, doctor, as can you see, many of us are home, working from home. There have been pretty strict and pretty robust measures put in place across the country. How do we know if we are flat eni enning the curve and whether were doing it in a timely manner thats such a great question. The issue is that we just dont know because we dont have the testing. We still have vastly underestimating the number of people who currently have coronavirus. The numbers are problem bhi much higher than what were finding out right now. And so first of all, we dont really know whats going on now. But i think we should also think about how we just cant measure our own counter factual. The best Case Scenario is that we look back in months to come and say oh, thats great that we implement the the measures just in time. Because not that many people died but we also have to think about what is the cost of inaction if we do not act now . What would it look like in our country and how many lives could we have saved . Meg, what do you hear from the experts on this point about whether were doing enough in terms of shutting the economy and places down and keeping people away from each other and whether we did it in time . The jury is out about whether we did it in time. Most people think that we could be doing more, we need to make sure that people are really staying home that rules and guidelines are extremely clear. They say its bad when its unclear about why you should be going outside or whether you should be around other people. So when it could be very clear that people should be staying inside is dr. Wen is making clear right now, they say that is really important. I havent heard anybody say were doing too much at this point. One thing i have heard people say is a concern is that you just cant sustain this forever, or for incredibly long periods of time. Were hearing from the government 15 days to slow the spread i do wonder, dr. Wen, do you think sa days is long enough how long did we sustain this and how long do we need to to make sure we really make a dent we just dont know. Its really hard because we dont have real time ability to measure whats going on now. But i also want to warn against chasing numbers. We should be looking ahead what is going on is that weve been reacting to what is happening. And its not even a accurate picture. Weve been reacting to what is happening instead of anticipating what is ahead so i dont think that 15 days is long enough. I do think that we should reevaluate at 15 days and see what happens after that. We have restrictions in place for a reason but people are not taking it seriously. Parents are still getting kids together for play dates. That shouldnt happen. I mean that completely negate the point of school closing. So Stay Together as a family unit dont go out this is not a snow day dont treat it like its a snow day. This is time for us to hunker. Recognizing its a major sacrifice and major change, but it is what we have to do doctor wen, thank you for joining us meg, thank you as well. Well, bill ackman joined scott wapner earlier today he painted a dire picture of what would happen, what could happen with the coronavirus outbreak he called on President Trump to shut down the u. S. For the next 30 days. If we continue the way were operating, until a vaccine is manufactured, distributed and injected, we will go through a depression era period in the country and millions of people will die around the globe and as many as a million americans. And its just math. He joins us now a response from the white house. Thats right. I asked the white house for reaction to his suggestion that we simply shut down the u. S. Economy for 30 days. The reaction was this. As president trum said, were going to ensure that we take care of all americans including affected industries and Small Businesses and that we emerge from this challenge stronger wane a more prosperous and growing economy. So that is the reaction from the white house. I think thats a relatively long and polite way of telling mr. Ackman theyre not going to follow his recommendation heres the white house expressing some conference that its going tibl to take care of all americans here, sarah. Thank you sorry i misread, this is another error on my part on the split screen go for it, scott my bad, sarah. Its all good we can keep eamon with us. This is how television is done right now, wil okay so thats the white houses response which doesnt really answer the question, frankly, of what theyre thinking about in terms of the word may be draconian measures maybe needed to deal with the outbreak of the virus as bill ackman suggested to day i have no idea i havent spoke within him the mere fact that theyre asked about it today by eamon and thinking about it, maybe hes thinking the message is heard if nothing else inside the white house. I want to note one more time as i did earlier. He thinks the administration will do what is needed whether its exactly what he recommends or not and that we will come out better on the other side of all of this. Maybe he can didnt have a lot of strict measures and a lot of the industries he talked about and stocks he mentioned specifically in his words, his words, could go to zero. But at the same point, he was buying stocks. And he was saying that he felt this was a great buying opportunity as bill miller said. Where are bill ackmans recommendations in terms of dealing with the virus coming from did he study a pandemic in history . Was he looking at the china response just curious what the background here was i dont know. I dont know its a fair question its a question thats been on twitter throughout the bulk of the afternoon. He is using the numbers that he is, if he is not a doctor and he hasnt studied pandemics like scientists, have et cetera, i get the question i get why youre asking t. Its been out there in the ether throughout the afternoon i truly dont know i think he is just alarmed by what he has seen and he was early because hes been negative on this a good while, you know, he and i had a conversation not that long ago on the phone, well, you know, not days, but, you know, more than a week ago he was negative. There was a published report saying as much this is not like this just popped out of the blue and was a reaction to a stock market that was tanking. Hes been warning about this before the bulk of the stock market crash even hamd so i can tell you at the bare minimum, hes been thinking about this for a long time he just decided to go public with it today. I think he didnt think that the response to it rose to the measure of his alrm if you arm o what i mean. We discussed last hour my take on whether there was a conflict in what he was saying i guess the only other point i would raise, which you have already done is his case, am i right in saying this, his case is were doomed unless the government takes this extraordinary action that he is a nonexpert on Public Policy is suggesting that is why he is buying but if they dont take that action, then the buying hes doing would be a mistake and, again, what i would say on that is if im one of his investors, then that sounds like gambling to me, not investing. He is basically going long stock market at the low levels based on the hope that the government will take a wild card action that is pretty bianary. Is bill miller doing anything different . He mentioned yeah. Bill miller was saying, look, the banks are very, very cheap they may go down from here as they did in 2008 and other times. But over the long term, it may prove a buying opportunity f im right in understanding what was said as you understand it, bill ackman is saying the world is going to end unless we have a binary action from the government im willing to buy stocks at these low levels, part of which i talked to help lower in the last hour or however long the interview was and if that doesnt happen, then well i made a mistake. I think anybody that comes on the air and says its time to buy the stocks, it makes no sense. The market is going too far. Its overdone. Whatever words you want to use to describe this crash in stocks that we all witnessed, underlying factor regard lsz of what industry almost that youre talking about at this point is predicated on the fact that is a massive bailout and stimulus, whatever waunt to call it, system laus lsu from washington. The virus is not going to be as bad and as long as worst of projections are. And that at the end of this, whenever that is, there is going to be a massive jump back in Economic Activity. Nobody is saying its time to buy stocks now and not thinking about the positive of this thinking it is shorter rather than longer or suggesting they buy stocks now at all. Also a very fair point, scott. I dont disagree with that assessment of it as well scott, thank you very much certainly the interview that got everyone talking today scotts interview with bill ackman is all on cnbc. Com. The Senate Passed a house bill the first relief effort from congress but there are much larger efforts on deck. We have the latest hey, kayla the house, senate, and treasury are now all working to turn that 1 trillion stimulus proposal into legislation that could see a vote as soon as friday Senate Majority leader said on the senate floor just a few moments ago that the senators needed to stay close as they look to work out a solution on this in the next few hours this is the senate today passing a bill provided paid family and sick leave to 40 million americans on the sidelines of the economy because of the coronavirus. Aides say despite expectations that they are keeping the option open they will be needed that is currently being earmarked. There are nurses for their views on the coronavirus response. He also consulted physicians and airline ceos early in the day. Didnt take any questions from reporters. Tomorrow at 11 00 a. M. On the fda we could get news about the availability of new commercial tests. The feds and theyre in the wrong place. I was really looking forward to talking to you because were on the front lines in terms of Fire Fighting that Financial Times article. As just heard kayla is trying to figure this out right now. Yeah. If youre going to bail out and address the core problem, the core problem in 2008 was mortgages. We addressed the symptoms, the stress in the banksing sector. And now i see that the same dynamic is somewhat because this is the core problem here is lack of cash flow into businesses who have been hit hard and the need to self quarantine and social isolation. We need to get liquidity to businesses large and small to avert layoffs because thats the problem. People are losing their jobs now. And getting them health shurn insurance and Unemployment Benefits is great. Forgive me. We need to forestall the layoffs to begin with. There is breaking news from where im sitting, the New York Stock Exchange i may not be sitting here for longer theyre going to suspend trading on the floor, equities and options Trading Floors themselves will shut as of monday 23. They will continue electronic trading which accounts for a large portion of the trading anyway even on a day when everyone is bustling here over 80 of the trading theyll be moving everything to electronic what do you make of that sorry for one moment let necessime go to mike santol. This is debated back and forth for a long time. They finally made that decision. Everything will be electronic from mondays open. Yeah. Of course, important to point out as you did that essentially the kind of central processing is electronic already. Obviously, there are floor functions right here there was an attempt to kind of stay open as to help with some of the more manual things that go on here just as a gesture to say we can keep going on the floor. So i do think that it also is in line with what most businesses are doing on an on going basis deciding the broader approach should be in terms of limiting groups of people in one place. I think that fits in with that trend. Guys, stacy cunningham, the president of the New York Stock Exchange was on two days ago i asked her about it she came on right after President Trump put out the new cdc recommendation thats people should not gather in groups of ten people or more so with a few hundred traders, i said would you close the floor the most important point she would underscore is cloedzing the floor is not closing the market there have been plenty of calls out there close the market you know, try to stem the bleeding and let people take care no she wanted to make the point that the market stays open people can realize they can access their money and they can trade and kit go down and kit cd it can go up closing the floor is healthy it the can do electronic trading and it will not disrupt the markets. It will not disrupt the message that americas markets are open for business right 100 this is, you know, as i said, sort of one aspect of what goes on in terms of, you know, cash Equities Trading in general in the u. S. Market. Lets remember, every stock trades everywhere. So clearly it can happen all electronic they did obviously try to take measures to preserve the floor open for a while and now that is going away bob pisani is here as well. He knows the Stock Exchange floor better than most whats your take the reason this happened is because there was a positive coronavirus test that was determined when they were doing the medical testing monday morning. They started to checking the temperatures here of people coming in if anybody had a high temperature, they were then given follow up tests and someone at least one person has test pod so they are closing floot are tonight at 5 30. Theyre going to perform a deep cleaning and, of course, you heard there closing here on the floor. But as sarah said, trading will continue electronically. The reason they have been reluctant to close the floor is very simple. Thats the different shator. The model here is humans add value. They add price improvement about 20 of the volume that New York Stock Exchange comes off the floor. Now in theory, the people who are Market Makers, designated Market Makers that are down here can continue to participate in electronic trading through their offices. They can still participate in all of that but there is still a community here that adds liquidity that is not there right now. And that was a concern and the differentiator is that model, those not on the floor. It is similar to nasdaq. Theyve been similar to nasdaq and theyll have the two models for decades and it is a very, very old war and an old game thats going on. Think of the New York Stock Exchange floor as a gigantic mall with a lot of restaurants and shops in it. The restaurants and shops are the individual Stock Brokerage firms that are down here, the Trading Floor brokers and if one of them you can reopen in two month, but several of the restaurants and the stores may not have the lick quidity to la that long and thats the concern and thats what took a while and at this point the Health Concerns overwhelmed the Financial Issues and its very obvious that they made right now the correct decision, guys. I want to come to you, if i may. Ive been speaking to the banks over the last couple of weeks and they all made very clear to me the work from home policies have accentuated the volatility issues were seeing at the moment in the market the New York Stock Exchange decision today slightly reminds me of that, of course, and its slightly different, but its certainly similar and reminds me of it. Do you think in light of that the regulators should be making further changes to try and enhance liquidity and one thing that comes to mind in particular is the volcker rule and the restrictions it has that make it harder for banks to make clear whether its Market Making versus trading do you think there should be temporary suspensions or sub rules of the volcker rule . Yeah, so i dont think theres much left of the volcker rule, frankly. I dont think it provides much of a constraint at all given the significant loosening thats occurred over the last couple of years. So i do think there is a case to be made for letting banks dip into their capital and liquidity buffer so the rules as theyre designed now is theres a minimum and a supplemental buffer you have and then theres something called the Counter Cyclical capital buffer that we never used in the u. S. To draw upon in situations like that, so the framework is already built in and i think its appropriate for banks to be dipping into those duffebuffers. Perhaps they shouldnt be doing dividends as well if theyll let those capital levels fall and become much more leveraged as they expand the Balance Sheet and they also should be doing everything they can to conserve capital including dividends and certainly executive bonuses, and i know thats not a happy thing for them to do, but were in a difficult situation. A lot of people are losing their ons and we need to know the banks are there and they need to conserve capital and that means giving us bonuses and buyback bonuses thats what it means sheila, you were talking about how to protection the american worker, when thinking about the bailouts and when thinking about the Airline Industry or cruise lines or hotels. Right. Is that is that feasible right now if we are in this for a long time, months . Into the summer or longer . I think its i think its very difficult and but people are losing their jobs already and at least provide some access to credit and liquidity directly into those businesses so they can hold on as long as they can, at least do parttime, keep paying the Health Insurance premiums i think those are very important things as well so, yeah, that is where ill be focusing the efforts and if people can stay employed at some level with the fed and the congress and the treasury, i really think thats where we should be focusing right now sheila, i had a question. You mentioned some of the changes they could make to the liquidity buffers to free up capital for the banks and to be able to lend more freely and realistically though, are banks going to lend to a company that they think has a chance of going bust do we not need to see a further step from that from treasury that allows a government underwriting oh, absolutely. I criticized the fed up until yesterday for not containing their support into the Financial System they opened up a couple of facilities yesterday the primary dealer facility which accepts broader or different types of collateral and then their commercial paper facility that nonfinancial entity can access and those things are important yeah, i think they should also be providing a facility for businesses of all sizes with, you know, with loans that can be guaranteed by the treasury i think they could do that and they can use the fed as the administrator and they would accept the loans as collateral and they would defougault againt loans and that is the kind of thing that is what theyre doing in england right now the larger businesses can borrow directly from the bank of england and the smaller ones are going through the banks, but yeah, some combination of liquidity with the fed by some backstop against losses would absolutely be a very useful thing for us to be doing right now. Sure, if these businesses are credit worthy, but theyre strapped theyre very strapped. The conversation has changed and mark cuban was on squawk box this morning and theyd been tweeting out how to do this thats politically palatable and can get the longterm problems in this economy and inequality and im wondering how on wall street the response is to that that during the financial crisis and in the postcrisis era it was criticism for bailing out shareholders and bankers and you know, not necessarily the workers and the people who hurt the most out of the recession. I do think the terms of this debate is not going to be should we backstop various industries should we help to do this period, but what the terms are going to be. I think one thing that will be difficult, ten years and 11 years later, i dont think there was a consensus as to what was done correctly or not done correctly. If you remember the t. A. R. P. Bill, every bank had to take some of the money if they said they needed it or not. It was driven out there and they tried to put limits on bonuses and things like that, but i dont think after the fact that we have everybody from those who say lehman was solvent and it wasnt a problem to, you know, everything should have failed, right . I dont think that we necessarily have settled upon the right answer well, i would agree with that, but i also think some common sense restrictions and Everyone Needs to sacrifice a bit here and i think businesses and not just banks and the businesses that should get federal support should suspend dividends and buybacks and should suspend executive bonuses and their employees are losing their jobs and were trying to prevent their loss of Health Insurance. Everybody can sacrifice a little on this, and i dont know. I dont want government assistance going to boost up bonuses or dividend increases or buybacks so i think those limitations are absolutely appropriate i wish Corporate America would say of course, were not going to do that, but we have bad lessons during 2008 and 2009 the banks that were bailed out were paying themselves huge bonuses by the end of 2009 it was a bad experience. It just makes people cynical its one of the reasons why we have so much political unrest now so we need those restrictions on the assistance, but the assistance needs to be provided sheila, thanks so much for joining us we appreciate it as always we will switch now stacy cunningham, the New York Stock Exchange president is joining us stacy, great to see you. Thanks for joining us. Tell us why you made this decision to shut the Trading Floor as of monday today, why now . It is important to highlight the distinction between shutting the markets and shutting the Trading Floor since a lot of people have been talking about both of those things so it is really important that the markets stay open. Investors need access to their money and closing the markets during periods of volatility doesnt address the underlying concerns that said, closing the Trading Floor is something that we can do if we think its the right thing to do for this Floor Community as well as their communities outside of the exchange we implemented a number of safety precautions over the last couple of weeks and this monday we began preemptive test of employees and screening of people coming into the building. If that screening warranted additional testing, we tested people and they were sent home and not given access to the building a couple of those test cases have come back positive while those people were not in the building this week and the building had been cleaned and addressed prior to the start of trading, on monday, i think its reflective of how quickly were seeing things, vo evolve and we operate electronically so we can focus our energy on making sure that people are focusing on health externally and making sure the communities are safe. How much trading takes place on sorry go ahead. I just want to follow up, stacy. Bob pisani just reported that there was a positive test from one of the traders on the floor and thats why you made the decision can you confirm that yeah, i was just highlighting we did have a positive test for screening. That was for people who had not been in the building this week at all and we did a deep sanitization of the building over the weekend so those tests were not like i said, those people had not been in the building this week there were two positive tests and neither one of those people were on the Trading Floor this week and following the cleaning that we did last weekend and its reflective of the fact that this is moving quickly and we wanted to make sure that Going Forward we are able to move to our electronic trading mode in an orderly fashion so given the community our member firms and all of the members of the New York Stock Exchange whether theyre located on the floor or off the floor have the ability to plan for an orderly shift to electronic trading on monday. Stacy, sorry to labor the point and i know we can move on to the future in a moment and the knowledge you had of when there was a case of a trade or the floor to making this decision was fairly quick, was it yeah. So weve been working with the medical crew internally to find out how the test results are coming back and we started to work through that today. And i hope, most importantly, as well that the two