Transcripts For CNBC Squawk 20240703

Dow was down 2. 25 . If you look at what has been happening with treasury yields, this is the question. Will the fed cut and by how much the question is when. The tenyear note at 4. 44. We have seen yields push up. I think traders are actually betting that two rate cuts are more likely this year. Just seeing that in the fed futures at this point. We get inflation data this week with the cpi. That is key. Last week, we were talking about the jobs report and people were saying the Inflation Numbers are more important. The jobs number is big. We will talk to Mohamed Elerian about the topic later. And breaking news. The Biden Administration announcing funding from the chips act. Taiwan semiconductor is giving 6 billion in grants and 5 billion this loans for the factory in phoenix and then a third was announced. Gina raimondo will be on squawk on the street to talk about the chips act and the award at 9 30 a. M. Eastern. That is good news for Taiwan Semiconductor and good news for america. Not as good news for folks like intel and others that wanted access to the chip awards. It is important we have production in the United States. The idea of it being in phoenix is huge. 80 of those chips produced in taiwan. That is a dicey situation. We saw how concerning it is to have too much of your supply chain located in one place in the pandemic. This will be a change that brings about needed production in the United States. A foreign ally, but competitor. Would you prefer to have it owned by an American Company . Do we have the resources to do it . Thats the issue. Thats part of the problem. Ultimately, would you prefer it be made by u. S. Suppliers . Yes. The important thing is it is produced here and they have the know how. Im sure there will be a lot of debate about the award. Treasury secretary janet yellen janet yewrapping up her whine. She spoke to cnbcs sara eisen. It shows the u. S. Is firing on all cylinders. Inflation is coming down. The job market is very strong. Growth is really a lot stronger than i would have expected at this stage. We had 3. 1 growth last year. Inflation is coming down. Labor supply is up. Comments on a strong economy. Sara will join us at 6 30 a. M. Eastern with more of the interview. Interested to hear what she has to say after all of this and the reports with the information from the press conference and how much tension and distrust there has been this weekend with the meetings. I dont know that is the case. She started the comments in the press conference with the idea that things have gotten better over the last year. It will be interesting to hear what sara thinks. I think what janet yellen is saying, im sure, she feels genuinely about that. The other reports and reporters who seem to be writing about this seem to think things have been more compliccomplicated. Talking about complicated. In brazil yesterday, the Supreme Court judge opened an inquiry into elon musk after the owner of x said he would reactivate accounts on the platform that the judge ordered blocked. Musk said he would lift all the judges restrictions because they were unconstitutional and called on the judge to resign. Neither side recalled the issues that were blocked. They are accusing fake news and hate helps ackmessages. Musk said this judge applied massive fines and threatened to arrest employees and cut our access to x in brazil. As a result, we will probably lose all revenue in brazil and have to shut our offices there. Principles matter more than profit. Musk vowed that x would publish all of the judges demands. I want to say one of the things that is interesting about this and i applaud him for doing this. However, you know, there have been times where he said we will follow the local law. Whatever the local law is, we will do. In america, we will fight for free speech, but in other countries, we will not fight for free speech. This question has come up time and time again. I asked him this question about china. If bad things are happening in china, will with you do something about it . The answer is we will follow the local law. He has a lot of business in ch china. Tesla. Tesla and other things. If the judge in china said we dont like what are you doing, it seems you would hear him say we will follow the local law. In brazil, where i imagine there is less business to be had, he is taking a principled stand. Thats all i have to say. Nothing else needs to be said. Probably right. The way of the world. In other musk news, the tesla ceo saying the company will reveal the robo taxi product on august 88th. He posted that tesla scrapped plans for the lowcost electric car. Musk accused reuters of lying without specifying details of the story. If you look at what the judge did, it is a problem. You could argue that maybe there was a case in the country where he believes the laws are in place to allow him to keep these people on the platform. The judge is making the wrong decision. Maybe, you know, i can go back and forth on this. Were still in musk land. In a. I. , investors close to musk are in talks to help xa. I. To raise 3 billion. Among the backers is gigafund and the board member of spacex. The reports were denied about raising additional money for xa. I. Take it for what it is. By the way, we will speak with ron baron. He will join us on thursday this week. We will talk about all of these issues with him at that point. Yeah. The faa is launching an investigation after the engine cowling cowling . Oh, cowling, the cover of the Southwest Airlines plane fell off during takeoff in denver and struck the wing flaps. The cowling is the protective cover, like the hood over the car. Workers can open it and work inside of it. The boeing 737800 plane returned to the airport for maintenance. Shares of southwest this morning are down 1 . Boeing shares are off 1 . United airlines is postponing the investor day amid the faa review of the compliance with the safety regulations after a series of incidents there. United said it would simply send the wrong message to the team to have an exciting investor day focused on financial results. Among the incidents in the last two months, the plane landed in oregon with the missing external panel, plane rolled off the houston runway into the grass and plane diverted after losing a tire in San Francisco. All of those occurred on boeing planes, but people are pointing to maintenance for those issues. The investigation is still ongoing. When. When we come can back, we will talk to tom lee about the fed and the outlook and much more. And later, snapchat is making changes after the back bla backlash on the report of teens mental health. That and much more when squawk box comes back. Announcer this cnbc program is sponsored by baird. Visit bairddifference. Com. grunting at morgan stanley, old school hard work meets bold new thinking. laughter at 88 years old, we still see the world with the wonder of new eyes, helping you discover untapped possibilities and relentlessly working with you to make them real. Old school grit. New world ideas. Morgan stanley. Youve got xfinity wifi at home. Take it on the go with Xfinity Mobile. Customers now get exclusive access to wifi speed up to a gig in millions of locations. Plus, buy one unlimited line and get one free. Thats like getting two unlimited lines for twenty dollars a month each for a year. So, ditch the other guys and switch today. Buy one line of unlimited, get one free for a year with Xfinity Mobile plus, save even more and get an eligible 5g phone on us visit xfinitymobile. Com today. Welcome back. The stock futures this morning are relatively muted to start the trading week. The dow futures off 35 points. Joining us to talk about what he is seeing in the markets now is tom lee. He is the Global Advisors managing partner and cnbc contributor. Tom, we are sitting very near alltime highs. Yet, it does feel like there is some nervous nness in the marke at this point. A lot of this is coming from hotter than expected Inflation Numbers and stronger than expected jobs reports and moving num manufacturing ism. That has people wondering if the fed will cut rates. Areunnerved by this . I think, becky, this wednesday will answer a lot of questions. You summed it up well. Can the fed be in the position to reduce real rates if we have good Economic Growth . This coming wednesday is the march cpi. It will be the first clean cpi report of the year. It wont have any residual se seasonality. We expect it to be a good report. Lower than expected inflation. It will help investors get to the place where we can have good growth in the economy and there is slack in the labor markets. Inflation is falling fast enough to cut rates this year. I know you have been telling people to buy on the dip. Not that there is much of a dip. Does it matter if the fed cuts rates . Earnings are strong enough. Is that enough to justify valuations at this point . I think the fed being supportive of the economy and managing the Business Cycle is the most important thing. In the last two years, the fed was fighting inflation and hawkish. That was tough for equities. If we are in a mode where the fed doesnt know how many cuts it needs to make, but supports the Business Cycle, that is good for stocks. You dont need three rate cuts. You could have a good scenario with the fed only cutting once. If the fed is in a position where they feel the need to raise Interest Rates, that is bad for stocks. Tom, hold on just a moment. We have breaking news. We would like to get your reaction. If you dont mind listening. We have news crossing this moment. Jamie dimons Jpmorgan Chase is publishing his annual letter to shareholders. We want to bring you the news in the letter. Highly watched letter annually. Dimon writes the following. He says despite the unsettling landscape, war in the middle east and ukraine, growing geopolitical tensions in it china and polar 00ed here in the United States, he believes it is resilient and the market is pricing in a 70 to 80 chance of soft landing. Dimon thinks the usual you is lower. Citing ongoing fiscal spending and remilitarization of the world and the global trade and the Green Economy. Another issue is artificial intelligence. Dimon writing the consequences will be extraordinary. He says Jpmorgan Chase has grown the a. I. Organization materially with more than 2,000 Machine Learning experts or data scientists on the payroll. Dimon issuing a warning. We may be entering the proper treacherous geopolitical eras since world war ii. He is concerned about the large deficit supported by kwaun tayl kwa quan quantative easing. He said this may be creating rfk to eclipse anything since world war ii. We should not take them lightly. It is interesting. Jamie dimon is somebody who has been fairly optimistic about the United States and the economy. His concern about the geopolitical events is one echoed by other people who are optimistic if you talk to Warren Buffett. The letter is optimistic. We just hit on what i would describe as the news piece in the tonally, he is talking about a. I. This is 20 years since the bank won the Jpmorgan Chase which put him in charge of the company. The largest bank in the country, market cap wise. It goes to other pieces to it. It is a worthy read. There are a few ceos who actually write their own letters without worrying about lawyers and other people going through it and reading it and telling them what they can and cant say and writing it for them. Jamie dimon, obviously, a huge one. Warren buffett, jeff bezos wrote a very straight forward letter that you could tell was written by him with their voices. Larry finks letter was up there with the parents at the top of the letter. Thats why these letters are so interesting. The tone in the markets is consistent for the last year. That is the important about the soft landing not necessarily being ascert certain as the mar expectation. Tom has been the bull. Tom, what do you think . Um, i think jamie is doing his shareholders justice because they want to hear from him about all of the concerns out there. I think he does a great job of detailing all of the things that can go wrong. At the end up of the day, when it comes to markets, i think markets tend to price concerns quickly. I think thats really the concern for the last two years. That hard landing. Now inflation pressure are easing at a time when consumers dont have a lot of leverage and 6 trillion of cash on the sidelines. Inflation, we dont know how quickly it will fall. Our bet is it will fall quickly. That means some of the concerns of hard landing is because of sticky inflation. We will have a good economy. Is this a twopronged outlook on the economy and the markets, tom . Is flag the one big issue . If wednesday proves it is a hotter than anticipated or expected cpi, would you change your ideas about what that means for both of those things for the year . Thats right. I think if inflation march is the first clean cpi report. We know they have come in soft and better than expected. If it is higher than expected, it raises the question that inflation is stubborn and getting from 3 to 2 is difficult. If it is a soft report and favored below 3 , that is the consensus. That will change minds that inflation may not be stubborn. You have been telling people to buy. You have been buying on any dips. Were not talking 5 drop, but 2 drop and you are buying into the market . Thats right. There are many reasons there is gas in the tank in the rally. Part of it is we think the Inflation Trajectory is on a glide path lower than consensus. The second is there is too much caution out there. When you look at prime brokerage borrowing, it is below october of 2021. There is still cash on the slide s sidelines. As long as investors are top calling and allooking at the wod as half empty, they can arrely the wall of worry. Tom, thats a bold call. This is a big deal. We are trying to be data dependent and figure out where inflation is headed. What makes you think the market is lower than necessary or some of those who are concerned about the market are raising issues . What do you look to in terms of your expectations and read on inflation . I think it really comes down to two basic frameworks. Number one is we look at year over year core cpi at 2. 4 is where it was at average before the pandemic. It is 3. 8 now. Of that, 1. 8 points is shelter and Auto Insurance. Shelter is statistically going to start to actually ease this year because of the catch up. Auto insurance is also statistically going to ease because it is a catch up. Core inflation without Auto Insurance and housing is below the fed target. The second issue is january and february tend to suffer from both statistical and rezsidual sea seasonality. That will disappear in march. We will get our answer on wednesday. I think it will look quite good. A lot anticipation. Thank you, tom. Thank you. Coming up on other side. South carolina sending cloaitli clark home without an ncaa title. We will talk College Hoops in an moment. L l later, we talk to Mohamed Elerian about his outlook for the fed. So much more on squawk box. We will head to china to get latest on Janet Yellens etg. Sara eisen is on the ground. We will talk to her in just moments as well. You know whats brilliant . Boring. Think about it. Boring is the unsung catalyst for bold. What straps bold to a rocket and hurtles it into space . Boring does. Great job astropersons. Over. Boring is the jumping off point for all the unboring things we do. Boring makes vacations happen, early retirements possible, and startups start up. Because its smart, dependable, and steady. All words you want from your bank. Taking chances is for skateboarding. And gas station sushi. Not banking. Thats why pnc bank strives to be boring with your money. The pragmatic, calculated kind of boring. Moving to boca . Boooring. That was a dolphin, right . Its simple really, for nearly 160 years, pnc bank has had one goal to be brilliantly boring with your money so you can be happily fulfilled with your life. Which is pretty unboring if you think about it. Thank you, boring. Good morning. Welcome back to squawk box. We are live from the Nasdaq Market site in times square. Dow futures off 20. Nasdaq off 10. We have a lot happening. Were going to be checking out where things stand in the treasury markets in a bit. You see it there. The futures overnight as you were watching the South Carolina Basketball Team capping the perfect season. Gamecocks defeating hawkeyes 8775 making history. Perfect season for them. In the meantime, Caitlin Clark ending her recordbreaking career without an ncaa title. She is the presumptive top pick in the wnba draft. An mak amazing conversation. And then in the mens, uconn is the favorite to repeat and champions. We have the founder of collect media with us. It is officially launching today covering the 500 billion collectible and memorabilia market. A longtime friend and former colleague of the show for a very long time. If fact, darren and i see each other. We run through each other at rutgers and northwestern games. I follow you closely on instagram. This is exciting. You have been a collector your entire life. You know everything about sports. This is a phenomenal run to watch what is happening to Womens Basketball thanks to Caitlin Clark. It is unbelievable. Even on the collectible side. Hyvee launched cereal with Caitlin Clark. It costs double frosted flakes. They were 50. 75,000 card. She has worn six jerseys all year. Our site has that today. One was given away. There has been a 500,000 offer for another one of them. We have never seen this in terms of the interest. Lets talk about collectibles. We have people talking about the sports aspect. You are launching a Media Company to coverage colle collectibles. It somethis something you have doing your life. It is legit. I have 20 of my money in collectibles. It is something that has tremendous arbitrage in it. It is nascent. Maybe it is the bottom of the third inning. All of the grading and things where people dont know what they he have and talking about it could be great for buyers and sellers. Why is this exploding like this . I think in covid, people found being alone and they found comfort in something that was back to their childhood. A nintendo game. Someone has it unused and it is graded and now worth 100,000. I had the ebay package. Dont use the ebay tape. The wife is upset about that showing up at the door. Thats what happened. Now people are like this is going to be a permanent part of my life because i can enjoy it and make money. Theres not a lot of things like that. Can i say i think you are probably right. Lets poke at that theory. During covid, we had a lot of extra cash. The markets took off. You saw the gamification of the markets. Is this a passing fad if people dont have as much spare cash sitting aside . Bad Business People are bad at business. There will be losers. You have to be smart about how you think about things. It is not just stop me. Im not stopping you. The question is this is not a fad, but interesting how the value goes up and down . Some do. It is not lineal with the distance of the time period of the moment. I was talking about the Michael Jordan rookie card i have which is 1986 that on the grading scale and time period. It has gone up and down in value. As high as 738,000 at psa10. Then 324. It goes down to 160,000. The last dance phenomenon. It depends. A lot of people play this game as if it is fantasy basketball. If luca doncic has a lot of points, my card goes up. There are a million factors. If young kids are collecting doncic and dont have the same wherewithal to resist change, that thing is going down and ill go down with the ship. I also happily own topps 19811981 lard larry bird and Magic Johnson on the same card. Younger people dont have the same appetite for dr. J. And Magic Johnson and larry bird. Or more people have found that card in the shoe box. I always Pay Attention to populations. Now these graders, not only are they grading it for you, but tell you how many. I know how many they have graded. There are 324 Michael Jordans that are psa near perfect. They graded 48,000 of the air jordans. Thats why i try to collect one of one. I have the best in the world of john hancock and thomas edison. It doesnt go down. Is that the best in the world . Show us what you got. This is the best. Is this the right camera . This is the best in the world alexander hamilton. A guy named mr. William bell got bad salt in the harbor. He said i dont want to pay taxes. Hamilton said he didnt have enough information to rule on it. This is graded . This is graded nine out of ten. It is from 1790. I have confirmation this is the highest grading. Im fascinated. This is one of the reasons why im starting this. There is such a pain point. During covid, i had people every day saying what do i have here . I dont have time. Let me teach you what you need to do. This is the thing i dont understand with the grading. You have a signature from steve jobs there. Yes. How do we know and im not truly questioning it, but how do we know this is steve jobs signature . How do the graders know i have this fabulous, i think, thing signed by the Chicago Bulls the second year they were champions. I know it is real, but i never got it graded. 19911992 season. How would anybody know . Is it really their signature or did the ball boys all go around and sign for everybody . This is the question. From 1987 to 1990, i wrote to Michael Jordan at chicago stadium. I got 14 signatures back. Three years ago, i sent to the graders. They came back secretarial. They burst my bubble. You have to rely on people. It is con jectureconjecture. You have to rely on people to say it is real. Do they get it wrong . Dw yes. I like they call it secretarial. That is a euphemism for not. Secretarial for how old i am. We have to go to break. We have Warren Buffett with eight bills signed. You have this. What is Warren Buffett worth . 6,000. I think we have the closeup picture. His woodrow wilson. The most amazing thing. It says loves mafth. Future stockbroker. His High School Yearbook . Yeah. They got that right. He got that right. Darren, it is amazing. You are right across the street. We hope to see more of you. I think this is really a burgb burgeoning industry. People can go to colle collect. Comnovell. Thank you. Coming up, more of our interview with treasury sara eisen is live in beijing this morning. We will talk to her next. Maybe t reaching a magic number. And more about discovering magic. Rich is being able to keep your loved ones close. And also send them away. Rich is living life your way. And having someone who can help you get there. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Encore energy, americas clean energy company, now in production in south texas. Energizing america with reliable and affordable uranium for Nuclear Energy fuel from our environmentally friendly extraction process. Encore energy. Welcome back to squawk box. Janet yellen is winding down her visit to china. We have sara eisen with the latest with her interview with janet yellen. Reporter sandrew, janet yellen is wrapping up four full days in china. She spent the first few days in the south in the manufacturing hub. Over the weekend and monday here in beijing where she met with government officials. Highest ranking official she met was with premier li. She met with local officials, including the mayor of beijing and she met with beijing students. A lot of respect with her warm welcome with her economics background. She delivered two tough messages. One was on the overcapacity concern that the u. S. Has that china is flooding the world with cheap exports of evs and solar panels that they are subsidizing and also on a matter of National Security where she warned china and other countries there will be consequences if they fuel russias war machine. I asked her if we are looking at sanctions for china coming. Heres what she said. Its not only chinese comp companies. We would keep any financial institution, particularly, that facilitated trade in dual use goods or strictly military goods in violation of our sanctions and aiding russias military and we would consider sanctioning. The president issued a recent executive order that would enable treasury to impose sanctions on Financial Institutions that are found to be doing this in the systematic way. Weve not used this tool yet, but it is one that would be available and would i try to make clear is that we stand ready to act if we see significant violations by Financial Institutions especially. In whchina . In other countries as well. What about the Chinese Government and its support of russia . Well, china is entitled to have a relationship with russia. What we have made clear is that it is unacceptable to us for china to support russia militarily and doesnt say that china cant have a relationship with russia. China and russia do a lot of trade and much of it is unproblematic. Anything that involves aiding ru russias military in the brutal war against ukraine is unacceptable to us and we have the ability to sanction it. Should American Companies be reducing their exposure to china on the manufacturing basis . Look, i think trade and investment between china and the United States is valuavaluable. Many American Companies are doing excellent business in china. They have been here for a long time. The same is true of Chinese Companies in the United States. This trade is beneficial. The great majority of it is uncontroversial. We should not do anything to impede that trading and investment relationship, but in the areas where we have National Security concerns as we have demonstrated, we stand ready to act to protect our National Security. That may mean export controls or our other interventions. We try to target those narrowly so that they dont very broad based impact on chinas economy as a whole. We feel strongly and have agreed with the chinese that we need a level playing field. Now, when we interfere when we have regulations that affect our trade in investment with china, if it is National Security or other reasons, we go through an open and transparent rule writing process. We put out proposed regulations and accept comments. The chinese have the opportunity to comment. We take the input and we write regulations and its very clear what were doing. In chinas case, often the support, we believe there, may be a lot of support in ways that are not transparent and that really is a meaningful difference. We are not trying to stifle trade and investment broadly speaking. I would not want to advise american firms dont do business in china. If im tim cook of apple and looking at the political concerns, wont that trump the economic relationship . The purpose of the dialogue that ive been involved with now for well over a year with our chinese counterparts is intended to make sure that does not happen. That we dont have an unintended escalation of tensions and we understand one anothers red lines. We avoid misunderstandings and we preserve economic interactions that are beneficial to both sides. We manage our relationship and we need to manage it responsibly so both sides can continue to benefit. You put a lot of work into this and you said in the conference this afternoon that the relationship is in a better place than it was a year ago. Deaffindefinitely. Do you worry about the relationship in one year from now if President Trump gets reelected . I dont want to get into politics. Im governed by the hatch act. Reporter she clearly would not go there on trump. It is something to think about as the former president has threatened as much as 60 tariffs against china. She did not go there in terms of threatening tariffs even on the overcapacity issue. She said they were on the table, but wasnt dangling that at all. If you hear her, she is not trying to decouple. I have to say, she is front page news. Today and every day this weekend, it is a huge deal over here. The coverage has been mostly friendly about the interactions and clearing key Economic Issues discussed as janet yellen visits. Andrew, she made a lot of time for important culture visits while here. She had a private tour last night of the forbidden city. Right near taiananmen square. She is all over social media. Her nickname here is yellen nainai. That means yellen grandma. She is really trying to keep the economics here separate over the confrontational National Security concerns. Sara, im curious on the ground. She did not want to step into the political realm, but what is your sense of the political realm with the politic during the election year. What do you think . Increasingly antiamerican sentiment. No question about it. That is the sense from talking to folks here. We pick it up on social media. We monitored it throughout her visit here. Even on the editorials and the state media and calling the criticism of overcapacity xenophobic. It was more on the politics over the u. S. And china. You know, they did in the conversations bring up the chinese issues and concerns with tiktok and legislation going through congress, andrew. The concern is that on the chinese part that the u. S. Is using National Security as a way to target Chinese Business and Chinese Companies from succeeding in places like the u. S. That is the view here. The u. S. Is going after and trying to block competition from chinese evs and chinese social media. They are doing it in the name of National Security. She took a lot of questions from the chinese side on that front. Thats what you get when you talk to people as well. It is political s. They are using the issues to demonize china. We hear it on both sides of the aisle. Sara, i have so many questions about evs and imports and exports. We will talk about that in the next hour. When we come back, snapchat is making changes to features after the backlash and some of it here on the broadcast from our own becky quick. Details straight ahead. A followup to a story we told you about last week, snapchat is adjusting a ranking feature for paid subscribers that shows just how close you are to your snapchat friends by displaying your position in what they call their solar system. This feature that basically says are you mercury . Because youre the person whos chatting back and forth and messaging back and forth the most with this person, or are you uranus because youre the planet that is out in the coldest regions of the solar system, youre not that actively eng engaged with them. It was criticized after the wall street journal reported on teens anxiety. Snapchat will turn it off by default and users will haveto opt into it if they choose to use it. Before this it was the default that kicked in. I dont think this is a huge response. I think this is a way to say youre doing something without really doing something. Its a popularity feature that makes all these kids feel bad about themselves. We have seen the research on teens and the depression levels. A lot of that tied back to social media. If you actually want to do something about it, you should change it so youre not ranking and making them lets face it i thought you were going to praise them for this. Turned off the default and made it so its not the default, but youve already got everybody keyed into it. Tell me that this is not a way to try and get kids to use the app more frequently. If you get to rank higher based on how often youre snapping back and forth with them, its like the complete gamification. Its a way to try and make sure you are keeping these kids using this app more and more frequently, which of course they want to do as a business but youre doing it at the expense of these teens health. Its a lousy. All these popularity features are lousy features and youre jerks for doing it. This is a way of doing it without doing it. Its not the default. Any of those kids you didnt introduce this to arent going to go in and flip the switch because theyre already using this. I would bet the majority of users do not use this, because its not the default wont be able to use it, they just wont do it. I doubt it. When we come back, veteran Media Executive tom rogers is sounding the alarm about the loss of local news stations as more and more people cut the cord. Weve got that story right after this break. Announcer executive edge is sponsored by at t business. Next level moments need the next level network. Copy that. Make a hard left down the alley. Networks got you covered. [please confirm requesting backup. ] changing route. Go. Roadblock ahead. Back up, back up. Reverse reverse next level moments, were 30 seconds out. Need the next level network. [north corridor, hurry ] coming through or 3, lets go. The network more businesses choose. Transplant received. At t business. I cant believe you corporate types are still at it. Just stop calling each other rock stars. And using workday to put finance and h. R. On one platform. Tim, you are a rock star. Using responsible ai doesnt make you a rock star. It kinda does. You are not rock stars. clears throat okay. Most of you are not rock stars. Oooh. Data driven insights, and large language models. Oh, thats so rock roll. It is, right. He gets it. Yeah. The transition from Traditional Television to streaming service has led to a major cord cutting across the country, but overshadowing the impact is the impact on local television stations and the decline in local news coverage. More and more of the closure of local newspapers as well. Joining us is tom rogers, news week editor at large, executive chairman, former nbc cable president , cnbc contributor, too many titles. He argues more action needs to be taken to ensure the survival of local news in the u. S. And thinks that streaming should be a part of it. Tom, you want to make the argument . Sure, thanks for having me, andrew. You and i have talked ad nauseam about the streaming wars and its impact on entertainment and sportds. Its impact on local stations doesnt get talked about very much, but when people cut the cord, they are effectively dropping their local stations and the local news that comes from that, and thats a serious issue, particularly in light of the fact that newspapers, local newspapers are dwindling in this country. Weve lost some 3,000 daily and weekly local newspapers in the last 20 years, and thats accelerating. Were losing about 2. 5 on average local papers a week now, and were down about 40 million homes in terms of local stations being able to be received in those homes. So a real issue here and when that happens, its not only that the audience is lost, but the payments from cable and satellite operators to those local stations is lost, and thats the real economic hit. So the question is what do we do about it . Right. I want to ask what to do about it. Heres the thing i cant figure out. Why does there seem to be a considerably smaller, if not infan decimal audience for local news in those markets . Obviously the markets are smaller than a national audience, but oddly enough, you have local folk who is dont seem to gravitate towards local news even when it is in front of them in this era. Why is that . Well, local news still has its audience. The people still connected to the cord tend to be oldest viewers, and as a result local news tends to have a somewhat older audience. But when it comes to local sports, when it comes to local weather, obviously all kinds of other local stories, thats the primary viewing audience. Its audience has been dwindling over time, but in terms of political candidates needing to reach a local audience during elections, being able to buy tame on those stations is still critical, and all kinds of local Public Affairs stories are still captured in those local stations, and youre right, aud audience has dwindled, but its still meaningful. Tom, for the cable rules, when i was an intern in congress i worked on the syndicated exclusivity laws which were these congressmen who were in local districts outside of big cities where they were mad that they werent getting coverage of the things they were doing back in their district, so they passed the syndicated exclusivity laws which forced these Cable Companies to do it. Do you anticipate washington could take a similar move with new media and try and say, hey, you have to have a space for local coverage . And again, it was politics because these congressional leaders were upset that they werent getting coverage for the things they were doing back this their districts. Right, well, the fcc really hasnt pressed this issue. Of course, broadcast stations are licensed by the fcc, and that gives them a license to broadcast over the air, which does reach an entire market, and before the cable era going back 40 years ago, everybody had antennas, and it was meaningful to have that over the air reach. With the cable era and people getting their local signals through cable and satellite, that changed. Whats really interesting and heres where the fcc could have some impact, antenna sales are back up, about 8 million over the air antennas were sold last year, and theyve changed. Theyve much smaller. Theyve much cheaper. They fit in a window, they cost on average about 25, and so the ability to recreate that over the air is possible. The issue is that you got to get the antennas out there, one, and two, very importantly you cant have the stations in never never land when it comes to people turning on their tv. They have to be in the same user interface as your netflix, as your disney plus. Theyve got to be sitting right there. The paramount pluses of the world, the peacocks of the world do make room within their apps for local station news coverage, but most people dont turn to those apps for that, and many, many households in any given local market dont have those apps. So the question is what could happen so that you get the antennas out there and the user interface could make room for theation stations in the same interface as netflix. The answer to that is a new alliance between Cable Operators and local stations, which traditionally theres been a lot of friction towards. Now cable is facing broadband competition, competition for its internet service, and it would be interesting in my mind, particularly comcast, the parent of this network and charter, which have come up with their own interface for viewers called zumo, and you can personalize what you get in that interface. If those Cable Companies were putting in the antennas as part of their Broadband Services, allowing ui to coexist for tv stations and in return local stations promote the Broadband Service now that theres that real competition Cable Operators are facing, and in return for that, getting a promotion fee of some kind for the advertising they do, which could in part replace the fees today that those local stations get from the cable satellite bundle. So i think it calls for really a new Industry Alliance of some kind for the common interests of cable local stations to try to solve this, something that the fcc just is not pressing. Its an important thought and we appreciate you bringing it to us this morning as always, we love talking to you, and im sure we will continue this dialogue and debate very, very soon. So thank you very, very much. Were going to continue the broadcast now. Weve surpassed or passed 7 00 p. M. , usually or 7 00 a. M. Rather, see what time it is here, on the east coast now, and we are going to reset here. You are watching of course squawk box here on cnbc. Im andrew ross sorkin, becky quick is here, joe is off this morning. U. S. Equity futures at this hour, 31 points up on the dow, nasdaq with an open 15 points higher. The s p 500 up about a point and a half. Take a look at treasuries. Were going to have a conversation with Mohamed Elerian about inflation and where things stand. The tenyear note sitting at 4. 448, the twoyear at 4. 780. Treasury secretary janet yellen sitting down with our sara eisen in an exclusive interview. Heres what she said about our nations economy and inflation. The fed hass indicated that they want to make sure that inflations really coming down and that theyre obviously considering rate cuts that would be appropriate when they reach that judgment. And with that generally good news on inflation, you know, lets look at the data. I believe inflation will continue to come down. Well get another read on inflation on wednesday when we get the cpi number. A lot of people including tom lee earlier this morning pointing out how important that number is going to be. We will have more of that interview with janet yellen at 8 20 a. M. Eastern time. The fed has lost sight of its overall strategies, instead turned into a play by play commentator. He expects the fed to cut rates twice this year. For more on that and his take on the treasury secretary sitting at the same chair that joe kernen sits but always this time i think with a different opinion. Mohamed elerian is here, president of Queens College at cambridge university. Playbyplay commentator, thats kind of harsh. Youre not usually like that. Well, its because of the amount of volatility in the marketplace. The fed should be the strategic anchor to this market and leave the play toplay commentary to others. What we found with 19 federal officials speaking, we have theyve become a playbyplay commentator, and we saw last week what that does to market. It imposes an unnecessary amount of volatility onto it. Thats because we feel like were at an Inflection Point, right . Its one thing for everybody to be talking when we kind of know the direction of things but i think everybodys looking for any cue anywhere to try and figure out what the fed will do next because its unclear. Yeah, theres a couple of things going on. One, i think the wholenotion of transparency is being implemented in the wrong way. Im all for transparency, but it has to be in a way that fulfills theobjectives of transparency but nobodys allowed to talk . Talk, but talk with a longer term view, dont talk on every single change, and the other thing, this fed unfortunately has become excessively data dependent, and when you become excess i excessively data dependent, you should be swung around. Shouldnt you be dependent on the data . Shouldnt that be the whole game . High frequency data tends to be incredibly noisy. The image you have is of a roller coaster, the market, the data, the fed has two choices, get on the roller coaster or stay on the side and try to provide the anchor. Your argument is that they should do nothing right now and kind of wait it out and see where the data heads . If you take a strategic view of the economy, they should definitely cut twice. If you are overly data dependent, youre going to be taken to a place where you may end up not cutting, and thats going to be the difference. If you dont cut, that may unnecessarily undermine u. S. Economic let me read you, this is jamie dimons letter, it came out this morning. He says many Economic Indicators today continue to be good and possibly improving including inflation. When looking ahead to tomorrow, conditions that will affect the future should be considered. For example, there seems to be a large number of persistent inflationary pressures, which may likely continue all of the following factors appear to be inflationary. Ongoing fiscal spending, remilitarization of the world, restructure of global trade. Capital needs and the new Green Economy and possibly Higher Energy costs in the future, even though there currently is the oversupply of gas and plentiful Spare Capacity of oil due to the lack of needing investment in the energy infrastructure. What do you make of that . I think jamie dimon is absolutely right. I think that the last mile, socalled in the inflation battle is going to prove much more difficult than most Market Participants expect because of the reasons he cited. We live now in a world where the supply side is a problem, not the demand side. The big debate is does that mean the fed should pursue a 2 inflation regardless of the change in the global macro pair d paradigm or it should be tolerating slightly above 2 in order not to sacrifice the economy. You do no cuts, what happens to the economy . Ask by the way, theres the economy but then theres the impact that all of this Government Debt were going to have is going to ultimately have on the economy. Theres a huge structural reform issuewe dont talk about enough. We are too focused on the fed and our inflation. What im saying should the fed be even thinking about the fiscal issue, which is to say that the cost of our debt is going to become a problem very soon if it isnt already. If they start thinking about that, then theyre basically enabling the fiscal authorities to continue to do dbe doing tha they shouldnt be thinking about it, whether they do or not, i dont know. They shouldnt be thinking about it. What they should be thinking about is the dual mandate and what is the right inflation target or if you want to be sort of more diplomatic, when do you want to get to 2 . Do we kneneed to get to 2 quic or over the medium term. Whenever they talk about 2 , they says longer term b objective of. Larry summers has been critical too. He is saying they shouldnt do anything right now because we cant even decide on what a neutral rate is. I just heard him saying that if you dont know what the neutral rate is, thats like driving a car and not knowing what your speedometer says, you know. You just dont know how fast this economy should be running at this point, and thats a reason for doing nothing. Larry reacted quite violently to the comments of chair powell last week. Yeah. When chair powell said we dont know where our start is and larrys point, which is correct, well, you better have some view as to where our start is. Again, that is an illustration of a fed thats too data dependent, that is not looking at the strategic of course you have to have a view of where our start is. Thats so critical to your path. Mohammed. Were out of time. I would love to spend more time. Thank you for having me. Im digging that tie. I dont know why im digging that tie. Must be im sitting in joes seat. Thats why. Thanks. Were going to talk to commissioner about wnba about the prospects of Caitlin Clark. Squawk box will be right back. Dude, whatre you doing . Im protecting my car. Thats too much work. Weathertech is so much easier. Lasermeasured floorliners up here, seat protector and cargoliner back there. Nice out here, side window deflectors. And mud flaps. And the bumpstep, to keep the bumper dentfree. Cool its the best protection for your vehicle, new or preowned. Great. But where do i . Order. Weathertech. Com. Sfx bubblewrap bubble popped sound. What is cirkul . Cirkul is the fuel you need to take flight. Cirkul is the energy that gets you to the next level. Cirkul is what you hope for when life tosses lemons your way. Cirkul, available at walmart and drinkcirkul. Com. Welcome back to squawk box, Spirit Airlines announced it has reached an agreement with air bus to defer all aircraft on order that were scheduled to be delivered through next year at the end of 2026. The airline said the move will improve its Liquidity Position by 340 million oaf the next two years. Spirit also saying that it plans to furlough about 260 pilots due to quality issues with engines made by supplier pratt whitney. Another airline furloughing or putting some of its employees on hold during what has been a very challenging period for hthe airline industry. In this case its the engines. In the case of united, its boeing were seeing across the board. When we come back, what should be the bigger concern for the Energy Markets at this point . Rising mideast tensions or a supply shortage from production cuts. Dan yergen of s p global is going to break this down with us. Youre watching oil prices this morning. W wti is all the way up at 86. 21. Ers enn crsen thebe ainea ioil prices. Well talk with him about why. Squawk box will be right back. Announcer this cnbc program is sponsored by baird. Have the bairddifference. Com. Her uncles unhappy. Im sensing an underlying issue. Its tmobile. It started when we tried to get him under a new plan. But they they unexpectedly unraveled their price lock guarantee. Which has made him, a bit. Unruly. You called yourself the uncarrier. You sing about price lock on those commercials. the price lock, the price lock. so, if you could change the price, change the name its not a lock, i know a lock. So how can we undo the damage . We could all unsubscribe and switch to xfinity. Their connection is unreal. And we could all unexperience this whole session. My name okayis teresa barber. For. I was in the United States navy and i served overseas in the middle east and africa. Early on in my career i had a commander that taught our Suicide Prevention training on a friday afternoon and the very next day, he took his own life. 90 percent of suicide attempts involving a gun are fatal. You dont know how much somebody can hide whats going on in their head. Store your guns securely. Help stop suicide. Oil prices coming off their recent highs as tensions in the middle east have eased slightly around israel withdrew more forces from southern gaza. Geopolitical risks from the Energy Sector still remain and oil prices are elevated up by about 2 2 . Joining us is dan yergen, s p global vice chair and the author of the new map, energy, climate and the clash of nations. We are looking at a big increase in oil prices to the point where people are sitting up and paying attention. Its a tighter market and thats the fundamentals. On top of that is geopolitical risk. Theres an easing today because of israeli troops, but whats hanging over it is after the Israeli Attack on the consulate in syria that killed the Iranian Revolutionary guards, iran has said that theyre going to revenge. Hezbollah says its inevitable, so the question is is there going to be a more direct war between israel and iran . With oil prices at these levels, were already hearing from places Like Airlines where, yo you know, thats going to start eating into profits. What level do you look at oil prices and say, okay, this is a game changer for the markets. I think it is in the low 90s. If theres an expectation of higher prices, its also a problem for inflation in general, and its a real problem if youre an incumbent running for reelection. Excellent point, not much that can be done at this point, or is there . Not much. Theyve used the Strategic Petroleum reserve. Apparently from what weve read, the administration has asked the ukrainians not to continue to attack russian oil refineries. They dont want to see disruptions in the market. There do seem to be limited tools, and theres only so much a president can do. The administration is aware. The administration is very aware. Dan, lets talk about some of the things that came out, i had never seen one of the issues that you guys kind of got to the bottom of, this idea that electricity demand in the United States is rising far more rapidly than we can possibly keep up with it. Two years ago it was utilities thought they were dealing with flat demand, declining demand, and suddenly its turned around and one example is that if you go back a year and a half ago in the earnings calls of electric utilities we noticed there were like three mentions of data centers. Most recently there were 120 mentions, and it is electrification, even in northeast now, they said that the forecast from two years has now been doubled for what the br growth is. Thats a challenge of how do you build and what do you build . It takes years and years and years and years to build out additional production, additional output for electricity. Are we prepared for this . No, i dont think so. And theres permitting issues whether youre doing transmission lines, whether youre doing new plants. One thing this has given a boost to are the small reactors. That was the difference there. Where . They could be next to a data center. Data centers are what use the vast amount of electricity. How quickly could those be spun up though . What . Both from a regulatory perspective a physical, how quickly can you build them . Well, at this point, the nearest ones that i know about are by 2030 that they think they could do it. So there is absolutely that problem, and 2030 to get Regulatory Approval locally or federally, whats the other thing dow says theyll have one in operation in 2030, and one of the other things i noticed the sere ra week this year is the optimism around nuclear that we havent seen before. Is there still a not in my backyard issue with it, where it sounds like a great idea, build it somewhere else . There will be that question, and it goes back to what andrew said, clearly there will be permitting issues. The other thing is in terms of getting anything done in the United States, permitting is a really big problem. Dan, last week we talked a little bit about evs and the battle between evs and hybrids. Hybrids have been pretty fantastic because i think the difference is you have all the benefits of better fuel mileage, all of these things that are great for the economy i heard you last week talk about your personal experience of hybrids. I love it. Its great, i dont have to do anything differently. But its very different if you look at china, 35 of new cars are evs. Europe, 24 . Although in germany, take away the sub sidisubsidies, the sale down. U. S. Its about 10 . You had those 4,000 dealers who wrote to the white house saying put the brakes on evs. Whats happened is theyve become politicized. Evs are going to be part of the 2024 president ial campaign. Henry brlodget had been on twitter asking a similar question. Why are are there not more hybrids and why not sort of reverse the scheme so theres a little bit of hybrid at the you know, make basically an electric car with a tiny amount of hybrid, rather than a gas powered engine with a little bit of battery. It seems that most of the folks that are in this industry feel like its a simplicity thing, which is to say either youre all electric and if you want to add some distance, add an extra piece of battery or, be in the Combustion Engine business but to do both is more expensive, more complicated, et cetera. Is that true . It is true. A hybrid is a more complicated car because it has two engine systems and a couple of years ago, the embrace of evs by major Automobile Companies said theyre simpler to build, but they run into consumer resistance over them, and the system, we dont really have the charging system, and we dont have people were a consumer society. People are not ready. Its the amazon principle, give the customer what they want. The one company that stood out was toyota, who kept saying hybrids and everybody else was over there, and now theyve done well out of it. Dan, its always a pleasure to see you. Thank you for being in house with us. And let us know more about the electricity issues if you think were going to be able to meet demand. Yeah, well come back and talk about that. Okay, thanks, bye bye. Dom chu digging into some of the stocks on the move this morning and putting southwest and boeing after this weekends mishap. Well talk about that and so aerhiros as squawk box ll onft ts. The future is not just going to happen. You have to make it. And if you want a successful business, all it takes is an idea, and now becomes the future. A future where you grew a dream into a reality. Its waiting for you. Mere minutes away. The future is nothing but power and its all yours. The all new godaddy airo. Get your Business Online in minutes with the power of ai. Its time. Yes, the time has come for a fresh approach to dog food. Everyday, more dog people are deciding its time to quit the kibble and feed their dogs fresh food from the farmers dog. Made by vets and delivered right to your door precisely portioned for your dogs needs. Its an idea whose time has come. Welcome back to sqsquaw box. Im dominic chu, were going to start in the skies. Were checking on shares of Southwest Airlines and boeing. Theyre in focus, and theyre moving lower by roughly 1 or so. Just around 10,000 shares of premarket trading volume. Boeing by a similar percentage amount on 15,000 shares. Now, this is after anengine cover fell off a Southwest Airlines boeing 737,800 model plane on sunday during a takeoff from Denver International airport. The federal Aviation Administration said that the plane was headed to houston and returned safely to the gate. Southwest says it is investigating the aircraft and the faa has also opened its own investigation into the matter. So those shares in focus right now, down roughly a percent each. A couple of notable analyst calls this morning, one helping to move shares of taketwo interactive, just around 5,000 shares of svolume. Behind block buster titles like grand theft auto to a buy raying to a neutral. T they think theres a compelling risk reward setup in the shares given expectation around the release of the newest grand theft auto 6 franchise as well as stabilization in its mobile gaming portfolio. Bjs wholesale, roughly 2,000 shares of volume. Analysts at goldman have upgraded from a buy to a neutral. They raised the target price to 87 bucks. They think theres a case for upside Revenue Growth given trends in grocery and better Consumer Trends as well. An attractive Value Proposition that could drive more market share gains for the wholesale club. Keep an eye on bjs. For more on those and other analyst calls, head to cnbc. Com pro. Subscribers can get more in eppth analysis on calls. Ke it right here, weve got more squawk box coming right back after this break. sirens [due at target in 5 ] copy that. Make a hard left down the alley. Networks got you covered. [please confirm requesting backup. ] changing route. Go. Roadblock ahead. Back up, back up. Reverse reverse next level moments, were 30 seconds out. Need the next level network. [north corridor, hurry ] coming through or 3, lets go. The network more businesses choose. Transplant received. At t business. Welcome back to squawk box, insider sales of stocks reached its highest level in three years during the First Quarter of this year. I want to bring in robert frank whos going to tell us who is cashing out some of their holdings and maybe whether those of us should have been cashing out some of their holdings follow on. Given what markets have been doing lately, maybe, yeah, so usually the big selling is in the fourth quarter. But this years First Quarter saw more selling than any quarter since 2021. Total insider sales including prescheduled trades nearing 25 billion in the fist qrst qur according to smart insider. The selling is more than double the same quarter last year, and most of the sales were in tech. Jeff bezos accounted for about a third of that, unloading 8. 5 8. 5 billion worth of shares in february. Amazons Ceo Andy Jassy cashing in 21 million of shares. Thats equal to what he sold in 2022 and 23 combined. Mark zuckerberg, who by the way is now the third richest person in the world, he just passed elon musk, he sold shares for the First Time Since 2021 cashing in 135 million wot of shares. Peter thiel, also selling for the first time in three years, he sold 175 million of palantir. Snowflakes Frank Slootman cashed in 69 million just before he announced his departure. Insider sales dont necessarily mean a top for the stocks, but studies do show they tend to have pretty good timing. They sell near the peaks. If you take bezos out of it. Hes such an outlier. If you take bezos out, it was still the best quarter since the First Quarter of 2021. It was still a lot of selling. And i dont think its necessarily predictive. I think there was so much pentup demand because 2022 and 2023 were so bad in the markets. In bezos case and probably in andy jassys case, hes trying to finance blue origin. Yeah and this year in particular is a super important year for blue origin in terms of what theyre trying to do this fall. If they get this thing in the air, this is going to be the next competitor to spacex. He needs capital in a way most people dont, and selling in 2023 or 22 would have not been the most brilliant idea to begin with. Jassy isnt trying to get a spaceship into space, but nonetheless, sell last year or the year before wouldnt have been such a brilliant idea either. Bezos typically sells between a billion and 2 billion a year. So if you consider that 2022 he sold nothing, 2023 he sold nothing, thats 3 to 4 billion. Its still more, and theres still a big question, theres speculation he wants to buy that rocket launch company. That would be a lot less than 8 billion. He sold it very quickly. He had a year to sell that stock. He sold it in less than two weeks, and we still dont know. He just bought a 90 million property in miami. Thats a little part of it. It is interesting. What do you think describes i mean, we were sitting at these same levels at the end of last year. Is any of this tax related if you wait until the calendar flips . Theres a lot of speculation that the selling right now is for people to pay their taxes in april. I dont know that, you know, when youre talking about 8 billion. Now maybe the others could be taxable later or just basic Financial Planning when they havent gotten rid of shares for a long time. Robert frank, thank you. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. When wie come back, Steve Liesman has more on the hawk versus dove dynamic inside the central bank. And is there a disconnect between consumers and the nations Economic Data. More on this hot button issue that could loom large during this years esenalacpridti re. Squawk box will be right back. He stops . For the championship [crowds cheering] nice shot, marcus sweet, turn simulation off. Tssk, tssk, not so fast. What, why . Did you forget marcus . Forget what . Your chem exam . Uggh . Flashcard time the atomic weight of boron. The future isnt scary, not investing in it is. 100 innovative companies, one etf. Before investing, carefully read and consider Fund Investment objectives, risks, charges expenses and more prospectus at invesco. Com. Encore energy, americas clean energy company, now in production in south texas. Energizing america with reliable and affordable uranium for Nuclear Energy fuel from our environmentally friendly extraction process. Encore energy. Your record label is taking off. But so is your sound engineer. You need to hire. I need indeed. Indeed you do. Indeed instant match instantly delivers quality candidates matching your job description. Visit indeed. Com hire this looks like an actual farm. It looks cute on the app. [farm animal sounds] meanwhile, at a vrbo. When other Vacation Rentals arent what theyre cracked up to be, try one where you know what youll get. There are some Big Questions around the feds Interest Rate path. We are at a bit of an Inflection Point right now. Our senior economics reporter Steve Liesman has been parsing the words in all the fed speak, and he finds a hawkish wing that is actually developing at the fed. St steve, this is pretty interesting. Theres been some movement in the market as a result. The fed has been unusually unanimous when it comes to cutting the zero in the face of the pandemic and then hiking it over 5 to battle inflation. Now some divisions are showing when it comes to the issue of cutting Interest Rates with a new hawkish wing expressing more skepticism than others about reducing rates and expressing greater risk about the inflation outlook. Some of the headlines from last week, Neel Kashkari saying if inflation stalls maybe no cuts at all this year. Others have hinted at it, but kashkari saying when you call the quiet part out loud. Of course Christopher Waller seems on board with cutting rates this year, but hes much more cautious saying that it may be prudent to hold longer at these higher rates than previously thought. There are others as well that have been kind of in this mode here, Neel Kashkari, waller, lorie logan from dallas saying you have meaningful risk to continue inflation progress. Bowman, the fed governor and Raphael Bostic on our air talking about this issue of one cut and probably as late as the fourth quarter. All right, wheres the chair . Kind of in the middle, maybe leaning a little bit dovish. He says it will be appropriate to lower rates at some time this years still seems to be holding along with daly from San Francisco and messater from cleveland. All this hawkish resonating with markets. The problem this morning of a june rate cut falling to below 50 for the first time here, its down from 65 before that strong friday jobs report. July increasingly at play, now at 68 from 80 . Still the odds on bet, but weve seen all the volatility around this jpmorgan economists on friday night, they shifted their call for the first cut, guys, to july from june. This is in motion this week with inflation coming. Im as much interested in the ppi on thursday as i am with the cpi, and of course we have the minutes to the fed meeting along with other Economic Data and andrew, of course lots and lots and lots of fed speak. Thank you, stooeve. Were going to continue this debate and dialogue. Our next guest latest article, and we talked about it on this broadcast last week underscores a massive disconnect between consumers and the state of the economy. The article was called whats wrong with the economy . Its you, not the data. It appeared in the wall street journal and is written by our friend greg ip of the wall street journals Deputy Editor and chief economic commentator caused quite the debate at this table and around the country, greg. Thanks for joining us. Lets talk about this disconnect because you argue in your piece that you look at the poll numbers in terms of how people feel about the economy and even the trends and what they think is happening and say that the data just doesnt support it. Yeah, this is one i think is really quite striking, andrew, is that like across a variety of questions inflations data economy, your own finances, what people say seems to be significantly at odds with what we know is going on. Now, in that particular piece, i really seized on the fact that people were asked where did inflation go in the last 12 months, and they said it got worse even though as you and i know that the measured inflation rate actually got a lot lower. The point here isnt lets quibble about what people mean by inflation, its that when people are asked almost anything about the economy, they react in a very sort of visceral way that everything is lousy, even though theres a fair bit of evidence that bit by bit things are getting better. Its the aim with their finances. We know the stock market is up a lot, but the average vanguard account was up 20 in 2023, and yet by a net fairly large margin, more people say their investments got worse than better. I mean, the fact that this negativism is so fascinating, obviously if youre joe biden a little troubling. Greg, after you wrote that piece, joe and i got into a little back and forth about it, and he made the following argument by the way, we got some viewers as well sending in emails about it, and they say this. If you look at the last three and a half years and the total inflationary effect during that period and how inflation outpaced wages in a meaningful way that that accounts for why these feelings persist and that even if folks say to themselves, well, inflation is coming, quote, down, its not deflationary, so prices are still going up. Theyre just not going up at the same pace, and if you add that in relative to where their wages were, relative to where their even their 401 k accounts were, they dont feel good, and they say stop telling me how im supposed to feel. Well, i didnt tell anybody how to feel in that particular piece. What imtrying to do here is sort of contrast what the facts tell us as an economic matter versus what people feel. And i think youre absolutely right. Theres a lot of folks when they hear the word inflation, are not thinking about the 12 month rate of change in the Consumer Price index, theyre thinking about the last few years. The overall atmosphere, the vibes if you will, im paying way more for groceries, way more for gasoline. Maybe my paycheck is ahead of inflation now, but for a couple of years they were not. Those are legitimate points. What is fascinating is were trying to get in some of these polling questions how things are changing at the margin, obviously thats what you care about in a lot of cases. And we have been asking about people, how are things getting this the last year, and like this show and many others, youll have economists talking about an amazing jobs report, wow a solid inflation report, things are really good. Its just not penetrating peoples moods, and its almost like people are primed to hear, to filter every question they hear and every time the topic of the economy comes up through this pervasive prior feeling of things are just really bad. The other thing thats really interesting, if you contrast how people ask about the country with how they feel about their local state they get very different answers. In our poll, how is the economy doing, by two to one ratio, they said its doing terribly. How is your state doing, almost by the same ratio they say its doing really well. A sense that even though things around them seem to be pretty okay, in fact, in some cases pretty good, they think the country is going in a bad direction. And to me that speaks to a broader sense of pessimism that is rooted not in what we think is going on in the hard and core Economic Data right now or 401 k s. Is that rooted in misinformation then . I want to bring in steve. I was going to go exactly where greg just went, andrew, which is this notion of what people are saying about their personal lives versus what theyre saying about the broader economy, and i think one wayto sort of square this paradox that greg is bringing up is were seeing some improvement in our data. This is a poll that came before the wall street journal poll, our all america poll. We have the highest in two years saying about their home values increasing, we have the highest in three years on the outlook for the stock market. Pretty good average outlook for wages, and the lowest in 2000. Now, all of these things are relatively low on the pessimism scale, but theyre relatively high coming out of the pandemic. The other thing we are showing in the polls, greg, for what its worstth is a pretty good sense of job security. When we ask about the national economy, things are down, but theyre up from where they were, the percent who are optimistic now and for the future is up to 21 . Low by longterm standards, and the percent that are pessimistic now and for the future has come down, but again, its relatively low by longterm standards. Greg, what do you think . You know, do you remember the famous disconnect where people would be asked what do you think of congress . We think its doing a terrible job. What do you think of your congressman . I think he or she is doing a great job. That was sort of understandable because people hated the political system, even though they had no particular beef with the person representing them. I feel like how people feel about the political system is now pervasive about how they feel about the Economic System as well that theyre down on things like the border. Theyre down on things like, you know, covid i think had a terrible effect on peoples overall sense of security and stability. I think they look at the election, they dont like the choices ahead of them. They hear the international scene, whether its in the middle east or ukraine and so forth, and the whole world just feels like its going in the wrong direction. What i do sort of find interesting, though, is that if you look at some of the surveys, like the university of michigan or the one that steve just talked about, and you focus your question specifically on the economic area, youll sometimes get a more positive response than if you pframe them as part of a political poll. It almost feels like if you frame the discussion in terms of your pure numbers, you get a different answer than if you frame it in terms of the Overall National scythes geist. The big problem is republicans are really down on the economy and democrats are not as up on the economy under biden as republicans were under trump. So biden has to get the democrats republicans were under trump. Okay, i want to have you both of you guys back. We aint over. Lot more to discuss. Greg, thank you. Steve, thank you. All right, thanks. When we come back, propelling womens sports to the next level. Ask ask topped Caitlin Clarks iowa hawk yoois in the ncaa womens game last night. Some of the biggest stars in that game are heading to the pros. Adventures. gasp you need weathertech. [hot dog splat. ] laser measured floorliners front and rear. [drink slurp and splat. ] scream seat protector to save the seats. [honk ] theyre all yours were here hey, i knew you were comin. So i weatherteched the car can we get ice cream . We can now. Kid proof your vehicle with American Made products at weathertech. Com. I wanna hold you forever hey little bear bear. Im gonna love you forever cmon, bear. You dont. You dont have to worry. Be by your side. Ill be there. With my arms wrapped around. My name is oluseyi be by your side. Ill be there. And some of my favorite moments throughout my life are watching sports with my dad. Now, i work at comcast as part of the team that created our ai highlights technology, which uses ai to detect the major plays in a sports game. Giving millions of fans, like my dad and me, new ways of catching up on their favorite sport. South carolina became the tenth undefeated champion in Womens College basketball history defeating the Caitlin Clarkled iowa team. Joining us now to talk about march madness, the Caitlin Clark effect. Kathy, thank you for being with us this morning. The viewership around whats been happening with the ncaa but walls the wnba has been pretty phenomenal. Last night dawn staley the South Carolina coach had this to say about krk krk. I want to personally thank Caitlin Clark for lifting up our sport. When she wa. Our draft, becky, is a week from today. I agree with the sentiment, its the confluence of a lot of positive things coming together on the business side and the basketball side and the rise of womens sport its caitlin and others. Angel reese, the big rivalry coming out of last years championship. Ge gener generanational talent. Our asset values are going up. First womens property to raise 75 million in capital. This confluence of this coming together and caitlin and Paige Bueckers on friday night and then yesterday with undefeated South Carolina iowa. I know one thing coming out of business, you need three things in sports, names, household rivalries. And if you build it they will come. Viewership beforethis last year for the wnba was up 23 , your attendance was up as well. What do you anticipate . Is this a straight shot up, going to be hurdles along the way . Certainly the 15 million that watched friday night was amazing. A huge game of consequences, the final four. Most watched regular season in 21 years lastyear. Our playoffs were great. Super teams. We have these rivalries. Again, 40game regular season starting in may, but you know caitlin brings with her a huge fan base. Just all these Kamilla Cardoso the most outstanding player yesterday in the finals, all these players are coming in with big viewership and followship. Commissioner, lets talk about media rights, you extended the prime video deal with amazon, twoyear extension. 2025 becomes a big year in terms of how much money you capitalize with all of the networks. What kind of percentage change do you think youll be able to extract, if you will. We hope to double our rights fees. In womens sports rights fees have been undervalued. We this opportunity where the media landscape is changing so much, so, yes, we have prime video, again, we have espn and cbs, we do an over the air deal for friday night a pointment viewing. Were really excited to get out in the marketplace. How important is that money . Some owners say, right now the players during the regular season, for example, fly on commercial planes, they would love to be able to charter planes, they cant afford to charter planes because the amount of money doesnt make sense, when you look at 2025 is that seminole moment thats going to change the entire game. I do. Were setting this league up with the next media deal but for the next 30. The history of mens sports do we have our bird magic moment that nba did, its media rights that funds a lot of what happens in mens sports as well as corporate partnerships, weve been doing great with corporate partnerships, but again, this is a longterm economic model. I mean, if you look at just how much you can pay your players right now, 300,000 versus the 5 million being offered to play threeonthree series thats a crazy disparity, you keep them and hope that publicity gets to the point where you can pay them some pretty big salary. Reporter absolutely, there are a lot of opportunities beyond the base pay, League Marketing deals, Team Marketing deals and nil, Womens College basketball players have national brand. Caitlin has signed additional deals to come into the pros, because now you have a Global Platform not just a local platform. I feel confident for the stars theyll make a lot of money in the wnba. We love the story lines. Commission e, thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you so much, becky. By the way, shell be the firstever changemakers in new york city on april 18th she and many others will share how theyre reshaping business and redefining leadership. Scan the qr code to learn more or visit cnbcevents. Com changemakers. Coming up, eclipse fever, happening today, the nation preparing for the celestial event. Well talk to a former nasa astronaut about the th opaf totality and more when squawk box returns. Get your special glasses. The future is not just going to happen. You have to make it. And if you want a successful business, all it takes is an idea, and now becomes the future where you grew a dream into a reality. The all new godaddy airo. Put your Business Online in minutes with the power of ai. Encore energy, americas clean energy company, now in production in south texas. Energizing america with reliable and affordable uranium for Nuclear Energy fuel from our environmentally friendly extraction process. Encore energy. New projects means new project managers. You need to hire. I need indeed. Indeed you do. When you sponsor a job, you immediately get your shortlist of quality candidates, whose resumes on indeed match your job criteria. Visit indeed. Com hire and get started today. Good morning. Stocks relatively flat to kick off the trading week, but well get you ready for some big catalysts, including key inflation data and the kick off of earnings season and treasury secretary yellen speaking out about u. S. china relations, highlights from the cnbc exclusive interview and todays Solar Eclipse. The final hour of squawk box begins right now. Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to squawk box. Right here on cnbc. Im biggy quick alongside with joe ross sorkin. Its a monday morning. Youll see the dow has turned around, up ten points earlier this morning. Nasdaq is off by about five. This comes after the dows worst week weve seen in a year after last week. Treasury yields have been higher and right now it looks like the ten year is at 4. 59. The tenyear is 4. 445. The twoyear is sitting at 4. 78. The Biden Administration has awarded Taiwan Semiconductors 11 billion in terms of loan. Spirit airlines is delaying airbus orders that were scheduled for delivery in 2025 and 2026, moving them back to the years 2030 and 2031, it says the move will improve its Liquidity Position over the next two years. Mark zucker begg has passed elon musk on the list of worlds richest people. That move coming as meta stock is trading at record highs. Meantime, new this morning, jamie di many, on publishing his annual to shareholders. He writes the following, despite the sun elting landscape, the war in the middle east, the u. S. Economy, quote, continues to be resilient with consumers still spending. Says, the market seems to be pricing in 70 to 80 of a soft landing. But he thinks the odds are lower. Persistent inflationary pressures including ongoing fis kale spending, remilitarization of the world, global trade restructuring and issued a warning, we may be entering one of the most treacherous geopolitical eras since world war ii. Concerned about the large deficits supported by quantitative easing. Mike santoli joins us now. Good morning. Good morning, andrew. Lot of those issues that jamie just detailed here, has the markets attention, resulted in last week in a little bit of wobble, what happened before that 2 decline last week five months of not even a 2 drop, low volatility rally really getting support if it had a 20day average. You see here we did dip below it, with fridays little bump higher on the good jobs numbers we did surmount it again, whether we have a little bit of the makings of a more of a reset, i thought around 50 50 which we got to here in february, into march, was kind of where this rally was heading. Its outperformed a loft those targets todate. Take a look at theleadership changes, its been a broadening market away from the growth stocks, energy is now on a year to year basis eclipsing technology. Its very telling. We have this reflationary. Its risen outside of this box that i would say its been in since december. Nothing so critical about these levels right here, you see two months that we spent above 4. 40 or so, that was back in the fall, when the market was having a pretty significant correction, the stock market was, lot of concern about treasury supply and thats why the cpi number, ppi has outside significance because of how bond markets are postured head of it. Mike, thank you for helping us to figure out where things are heading. Appreciate it. For more on the markets as investors eagerly anticipate that cpi number well get later this week. We want to bring in the president of ardeni research, you have such a good sense of how markets are trending, what the psychology of markets are, you said a couple of things recently that gave me pause, just this idea that maybe you think things have run to an extent, with the stock market now, you have some concerns about the bond market, lay out what youre thinking and how youre feeling. I think in the nearterm here, we have to focus on whats happening in the commodity markets. The price has dropped above 80 a barrel. Now its back below 90. It could head up to 100 a barrel if the situation in the middle east continues to deteriorate. So ive been focusing on the geopolitical concerns, which have not been getting better, theyve been getting worse, obviously increasing risks of a direct confrontation between the israel and iran and if that were to happen the price of oil could very rapidly get up to 100 a barrel the shortterm inflationary consequences i think would force the fed to basically concede there wont be any ratecutting this year and the concerns about a wage price spiral might be back. With regards to the market as you said, becky, i think were at 21 forward p. E. , the market goes up on earnings and i do think the outlook for earnings is actually pretty good but this straightup move based on valuation might be behind us for a little while. Its interesting, even though if the fed doesnt cut rates as long as we dont see a huge spike in inflation, maybe companies can make up. Youre weighing the risks and bala balances. Becky, ive been looking at previous decades for analogies and im still thinking this will turn out to be the roaring 2020s, kind of similar to 1920s tremendous productivity growth and tremendous prosperity. But it didnt end well. But for a time it was a good time. We got another five years left to go ed. Absolutely, so theres room to grow, on the shortterm basis im worried about the 1970s, two spikes in the price of oil that was persistent and forced the fed to raise rates. Small chance of that happening. Its a geopoliticallyrelated risk. It looked to be the case over the past several weeks, if you ask me to put probabilities on it, 60 likelihood its going to be the roaring 2020s. Now, you mentioned jamie di many, on, he seems to be talking about the 1930s, lot of decades we can look back to. Bottom line youd tell people dont necessarily add to your holds here but i wouldnt sell out. Thats correct. I think theres going to be some profittaking here. Okay. Ed, appreciate your time. Appreciate your thoughtfulness. Thank you. Well see you again soon. When we come back, a large swath of the u. S. Is going to be experiencing a total eclipse of the sun, just a little today, heres where everyone thinks theyre going to be, well talk to an astronaut and columbia professor in just a moment about what you need to know about all of it. Were coming back. The road to opportunity. Is often the road overlooked. At enterprise mobility, we guide companies to unique solutions, from our team of mobility experts. Because we believe the more ways we all have to move forward the further we all go. Welcome back. Eclipsemania is peaking across the u. S. This afternoon, Solar Eclipse has sun gazers flooding towns. Companies jumping on the bandwagon we clipsthemed goods. Want to bring in a former astronaut whos a columbia professor, hes in arkansas the place for maximum viewing, i dont know if you can still get a flight there in time right now, but mike its great to see you this morning. My pleasure. Do the news you can use, for everyone whos thinking theyre going to leave the office, go outside this afternoon, maybe if theyre at school theyre going to leave school, maybe if theyre working from home, leave their house, how you can do this safely and how you cant. Andrew, thats a good point, everyone should be looking up today at the right time, find out where the eclipse is going to be taking place even if youre not in the path of totality, its still a pretty cool thing to see, you want to be careful, never looking into the sun without the correct eye protection its rally important today. Unless youre in the total path of totality, only for those moments when its in total eclipse is taking place is it safe to look up, any time the sun is visible you dont want to be looking up because you can damage your eyes. Get the right kind of glasses to view the eclipse. Got the right glasses it appears, becky. You cant see anything in these things. Thats right. If you cant get access to these glasses by the way ard to get at this point, you know they sold out in many places, if you go on amazon theyll deliver to you on thursday of this week which is not helpful, i think warby parker is still giving some for free. You can make a pinhole camera, when i was a kid a long time ago we were encouraged to make these pinhole cameras, taking a piece of cardboard, getting a pinhole in it and projecting it on to Something Else and youll be able to watch it. Another safe way to view it. Get your hands on the right eye protection, the correct glasses, thats even better. How long is this path of totality lasts when you do see it . What should people be looking for . By the way, there are parts of the country that are experience it theyre not going to see it because the weather is no good. All true statements with the weather in particular but as far here in russellville, were going to have over four minutes of totality. Before that an hour of the moon moving into position to start blocking the sun, taking chunks of it as it goes which is really cool, after the four minutes of totality and darkness its going to start keep moving in its path and you want the eye protection to see it. If youre not on the path of totality youll see the moon kind of move and block part of the sun and then recede again. Its something thats really cool to watch but you need good weather. Hopefully wherever you are youll have a clear sky this is a crucial point, i should tell you the sorkin boys in my household have asked me to ask you this question and i think theres a safety issue involved, they all want to film it on their phones, so the question is, how can you do that and do that safely and be able to actually see whats going on the screen of your phones to the extent youre going to film it and wear the glasses at the same time. Give us some instructions for those youre now an influencer yourself online. Here we go. Andrew, for your boys and everybody, my advice is to enjoy the eclipse safely with the glasses and let the professionals film it, thats just my advice, if you want to film get the right filters, there are filters you can somehow get, maybe its too late to get those, you need the right filters in order to do that safely. It will break the lens . I dont know what it would do to the camera but i do know theyre selling crow could get filters so that you can use them with your camera and phone. Ive always heard you can hold up the lenses to the camera lens to your phone lens and that might work. That may be worth a try. Id be careful. My opinion with these things you want to experience it. Theres going to be a really great images and filming of this stuff. I would film the reactions of your friends, the people around you, what they think and what theyre doing. Thats my advice. Okay. Mike, thank you for psa. Becky was doing a psa with the glasses. She cant read from here. Hes right. My brother who was at the last one they all traveled to see this Lunar Eclipse and it was cloudy and couldnt see it. Rob put on the show. Anyway, when we come back, treasury secretary yellen in an exclusive interview in china. Thats next. Upbeat music upbeat music you founded your Kayak Company because you love the ocean not spreadsheets. You need to hire. I need indeed. Indeed you do. Indeed instant match instantly delivers quality candidates matching your job description. Visit indeed. Com hire treasury secretary janet yellen wrapping up a trip to china earlier this morning, she spoke to sarah eisen in a cnbc exclusive interview. Sarah, weve been talking all morning long about the potential geopolitical risks to the market. Certainly the relationship between china and the United States is incredibly important in all of this, too. Reporter yeah, good evening from beijing, becky, one of the most important bilateral economic relationship between the u. S. And china and secretary yellens visit here was a bit of a diplomatic balancing act between opening the lines of communication even more and restoring the relationship which she said she did at the same time delivering a tough message on the economy, about things that the u. S. Disagree with, and the primary one was this issue of overcapacity, or dumping subsidies by the Chinese Government to chinese industry ev, solar panel, lithium ion panel they flood the world with cheap exports and threaten u. S. Companies. I asked her how that message was received. I do think they understand where were coming from and they have agreed to continue in an intensive dialogue on this issue, i think they understand its important and they do have tools they could use perhaps would take a while to have an effect. Export restrictions . Not so much as export restrictions but their maco policy. The amount of local government subsidies to firms in these industries. Whats at take economically because, dont we need green technology, we need evs, we need solar panels, a big push by the Biden Administration, what are you afraid of . We do. Theres going to be growing and we expect a Global Economy where the demand will be increasing and theres nothing wrong with investing in these industries and developing capacity. Because we do it. The Inflation Reduction Act. We do it, too. We want to make sure that were not driven out of businesses. We have opportunities in industries that will be important. If they dont shift, are we looking at potential tariffs on these products . Well, i wouldnt rule anything out at this point. We need to keep everything on the table. Want to work with the chinese to see if we can find a solution. We are engaging in a fouryear review of section 301 tariffs thats not complete, so i cant speak to what will come of it. The tariffs imposed during the trump administration, are they still very concerned about that . Usually they raise the issue of the 301 tariffs, theyve said for a long time they would like to see them reduced. Of course they were put in place because there were findings of unfair trade practices against the United States. And vice premier, my counterpart and i have agreed that, while trade and investment between our two countries is beneficial and desirable it needs to be on a level playing field. So were rally raising this issue in that context. I think we also feel especially after the pandemic that the resilience of our supply chains is something we need to take more pay more attention to and being overly dependent on any single country for a very important good in your economy can lead to a dangerous fragility in supply chains and in some cases of these clean energy goods, electric batteries, minerals that go into them, solar panels, weve been very, very heavily dependent on china and thats another reason why we and other countries want to are some domestic capacity. You mentioned other countries but china has been flooding europe for instance with cheaper evs, can you blame europe which doesnt have as much growth now as the u. S. . I mean, europe and china have close trade ties, europe benefits from exports to china but on the other hand the car industry is very important in countries like germany. Europe doesnt want to see these industries destroyed. Theyre an important source of jobs and very valuable ones. We have tariffs. We havent seen chinese evs in the u. S. , should they be allowed to sell their evs in the United States in. I mean, theyre allowed to sell their evs in the United States, we dont have rules against it. Again, in that area as well were trying to foster a domestic industry, were certainly open to imports including those from china, no rule against china selling evs in the United States. But we have higher tariffs on them than europe . We do have tariffs on them, i believe, but you know this is for us an important industry. Reporter secretary yellen, theyre saying she expects them to reduce the subsidies to the Chinese Companies for things like evs and solar panels. You know she said it was well received and they heard the message, but the commentary out of state media was very critical of this issue of overcapacity in part they wrote, it smacks at creating a pretext for rolling out more protectionist policies to shield u. S. Companies. When it comes to secretary yellen, i have to say she was very well received, we monitored some of the trends on social media and they were all following her visit very carefully. She ate at a cantonese restaurant. There was a hashtag there. Has more than 23 million views. They were impressed with her chopsticks, that hashtag 7 to 8 million views right now. They enjoy her personally and she did make a number of stops to important cultural visits on this trip. But overall, pretty antiamerican sentiment if you monitor official statements from the government and state media. Sara, one thing that struck me how you started off that interview, talking about evs and the subsidies that shes kind of pushing the americans that we dont want to see evs and other things flooding the world market, weve gotten the same pushback in this country from our european allies with the Inflation Reduction Act or the chips act right now, money dole out this morning for the chips act. Its a fair point. Its hard to criticize industrial policies so much when were doing it with the chips sector and also trying to encourage building of Green Products here at home or back at the United States. I think what the treasury would argue on that front is, you need supply meet to demand and the criticism around china is the fact theyre pushing out exports on the world stage driven by these heavy subsidies and therefore reducing competition from industries in europe and in the u. S. For these strategic industries, so its all about the exports, much like they did with steel, which pressured prices and really hurt the domestic Steel Industry and put a lot of those companies out of business, i think thats the real focus and concern. But no question, were doing some of that at home. Yeah, sara, thank you very much. Excellent job with all of this coverage. When we return, representative Josh Gottheimer just back from a middle east trip, well hear about the efforts to release hostages. Will the worlds tech giants be able to keep up. grandpa vo im the richest guy in the world. Hi baby woman 1 vo i have inherited the best traditions. woman 2 vo i have a great boss. Its me. man 1 vo i have people, people i can count on. man 2 vo i have time to give grandma vo and a million stories to share. grandpa vo if thats not rich, i dont know what is. vo the key to being rich is knowing what counts. Encore energy, americas clean energy company, now in production in south texas. Energizing america with reliable and affordable uranium for Nuclear Energy fuel from our environmentally friendly extraction process. Encore energy. [birds chirping] tosca, act ii vissi darte by maria callas orchestra del teatro alla scala, milano nyash by jaden holder she got that dress with the extra money she saved using our Brand New Grocery outlet app. Its been really fun seeing what everyones doing with the extra money they save. Nice shirt. Just got back from vacation. A butler . Super nice guy. I got to start using the app. Welcome back to squawk box here on cnbc. Take a look at futures were up who points on the dow. Nasdaq looking to open 22 points higher and s p 500, 5. 5 highers. New jersey representative Josh Gottheimer has just returned from a trip to qatar, foca trip focused on bringing hostages home. Congressman, tell us where things stand, because this may be just about the most difficult situation around the globe with the exception of maybe ukraine at this point. Well, good morning. Thanks for having me. As we saw over the weekend, hopefully signs of progress in terms of getting the hostages freed, cia director was in the region, in egypt you had the qataris and the egyptians there as well, and of course the qataris in touch closely with hamas, so trying to figure out a way to get these hostages free a temporary pause in the fighting and more humanitarian aid which is key in the region. Longer term i hope with hamas which is a terrorist organization committed in clear in their commitment to attacking a second, third and fourth time and seeing the destruction of israel, youve got many issues at play here and part of my discussions with the negotiators in qatar and in egypt. Is there proof that there are still hostages who are alive, you know the condition of any of them, its been six months. One of the hostages is from new jersey, turned 20 a few months ago and theres no information which of course for all these hostages, there was a israeli hostage found dead and our prayers with his family and for all these families because not knowing the the red cross hasnt been allowed in, no one knows the conditions of these hostages and you cant imagine for a minute what theyre going through and thats why we have to do everything urgeurgently. Hamas could do this today if they wanted to do. If they wanted to. You think this is 24 hours a day theyre still working on these active negotiations, what do you think the sticking points are . Becky, i saw it in realtime, everyone is working around the clock to make this happen, part of this making sure the qataris are doing everything they can keeping the pressure on them and of course on all the parties involved. What do i think is going on, i think they take five steps forward, you know five steps back, they get close, part of the challenge we make sure is never sending a mixed signal and i think the u. N. Resolution did that and other comments sending to hamas that the United States doesnt stand with its key ally israel we have to be very careful about that could cause progress to head in the wrong direction you can really upend progress with sending the wrong situ signals. We got to get more humanitarian aid in the region. Israel opening up a crossing in the north and in the south. More humanitarian aid. The bottom line is, we need to get the hostages out, hamas has to be diminished or surrender as i think they should and i think there should be a lot of pressure on hamas to surrender. The bottom line is, we need to do everything we can to keep this spreading into a broader regional conflict. Hamas isnt going to be surrendering any time soon, so how dow you accomplish what the idf in israel want to do in terms of what they would describe external nating hamas and do that in a way at the same time that humanitarian efforts and others can be brought to bear so that palestinians are not going to be put in harms way at this point in this situation. And politically, im curious, if youd weigh in on whats clearly now a divide between the Biden Administration, parts of your party, parts of the rest of this country and the rest of this world as it relates to how israel has gone about it. A lot of important questions, andrew. Very tough challenge for all the parties right to execute and to make sure that you sufficiently crush a terrorist organization who said it would do it again and again. By the way, part of like the houthis they killed 40 americans, hamas and we still have five americans alive who are hostages. So, youre dealing, you know, a very difficult situation and we know that hamas uses innocent palestinians as human shields, so you got a lot of difficult factors but we have to do everything we can to protect innocent people and get aid in. This is not if i had the answers of how to execute it, if anybody did, it would have been done lready, i think, you know, israel and i think these are the conversations that are going on and a lot of them privately and some of them of course with public signals to do what they need to do carefully and, you know, i think if you are anyone trying to execute this war and stop terrorist organization from coming at you again in where a region iranianbacked proxies are firing at you and us it makes it incredibly difficult. We got to get to a pause. Get the hostages out. I think both parties are at the table trying to do this exactly right now. Congressman, thank you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. When we come back, the president ial election in the middle of the a. I. Evolution, one tech giant already taking steps to stem the tide of deep fakes and other altered media, enough to stop the flow of misinformation, a question well be discussing and debating when we come back. Ing each other rock stars. Youre a rock star. Were all rock stars. Oooo look look at my data driven insights, im a rock star. Great job putting finance and hr on one platform with workday. Thank you guys, can you keep it down. Im working. You people are guitar noises . Hand over the air guitar. Ive got another one. When it comes to investing, we live in uncertain times. Some assets can evaporate at the click of a button. Others can deflate with a single policy change. Savvy investors know that gold has stood the test of time as a reliable real asset. So how do you invest in gold . Sandstorm gold royalties is a publicly traded Company Offering a diversified portfolio of mining royalties in one simple investment. Learn more about a brighter way to invest in gold at sandstormgold. Com. 2024 first president ial election of the campaign of the a. I. Era, tech giant meta announced lit start labeling all manipulated media, our next guest start ed studying immediae ya. Joining us is a Drexel University professor, weve seen all the deep fakes, whether you think labeling them deep fakes or not real or generated by a. I. Is going to solve the misinformation problem. Clearly that wont solve the misinformation problem, though it think its a very important first step. Its current Generative Technology makes it really easy to make fake media thats realistic. A number of events in campaign ads, misinformation from other countries. Any measures to help inform the public about this is going to be good thing. That said, theres probably not going to be a failsafe technological solution, what we really need is a broader social solution, an educated public, and smart news consumers. Okay, well, with apologies, you know, those are hard to come by. Educated and very smart consumers who watch this broadcast, but i think theres a lot of troubling information that floats around the country and theres lot of folks who dont understand the difference or distinction. By the way, some people who dont want to understand the difference and distinction, when you say its the solution is social im not sure that you can impose that on a society or be able to create a solution like that. I agree. And thats why people like me are working on trying to build as many technical tools as we can to help protect against these types of misinformation threats. Its very like i mentioned before its very easy to make fake and misleading media. Through traditional tools like photoshop. Your normal person at a quick glance might believe that these things are real, i think what we need, again, are a continuation of developmental tools like this as well as the opportunity to talk to the public through programs like this where we can say, hey, when you see piece of media that doesnt seem quite right think about it a little bit. Lets talk about the psychological effects, folks who see things that are deep fakes and they know its a deep fake. Yet it actually has an impact on them nonetheless. Thats the piece i dont understand how youll get around. My expertise isnt on the psychological piece but more on the technical part. But i agree. We want to develop as many tools as we can to help inform information consumers about what theyre looking at, what theyre seeing and hearing, so they can make the most informed decisions about the information theyre consuming. That assumes, if youre exposed to something thats fake you know its fake and yet it actually still has an impact on you, has an impact on the discussion, it opens up the window to something that you might not have thought of. All of these things the labeling that you might do, the Technical Solutions that you might have as long as people are exposed to it it wont change the dynamic. Again im not an ek pert on the psychological part of this, it opens up a broader ethical that we need to consider. Were seeing the emergence of a new type of Information Security problem. In the past when we looking at problems, we said, i want to stop a bad guy from getting access to information on my computer orover hearing my phone calls, the protection against that, is network security. We know where information comes from. Now were in an era information is being generated by unknown or untrusted sources. We see it. It may have an effect. We need to rethink our models of how we deal with this both technical, social, legal and ethical. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, coming up, were counting down to the opening bell on wall street with another big week that includes more inflation data plus the kick off of earnings season. Right now the dow futures up close to 60 points, a turn to the Positive Side of things. S p futures up by 11. Nasdaq up by 55. Check out the rally in crypto this morning. Bitcoin now up 4 . 72,180. Squawk box will be right back. With our new Grocery Outlet app, you can see the stores inventory. So you guys really have mangoes in stock . Yup. What about frozen pizza . Here they are. Fresh salmon. Too easy. Coffee . Yup. Lets talk markets as we get ready for the opening bell on wall street, 35 minutes from now. Joe the director of trading and education for Charles Schwab, the retail customer, the Retail Investor these days and what are you seeing in terms of whats happening out there, in terms of what folks are buying and selling . So, we released our report on a monthly basis, we saw a pretty hefty bump, about 8 in february, meaning this, Investor Confidence is really starting to pick up. We saw that in march, fifth straight month of increases. It takes us back to levels we havent seen since may of 2022. A nice bump in the month, we saw buying kind of mostly centered in i. T. And youd definitely see that in nvidia, apple and tesla coming in terms of disc discretionary, the three buys we saw across those sectors. We were trying to make this morning, bitcoin up to 72,000 and sometimes people say, its a hedge on what the feds going to do, it looks like the fed isnt going to be lowering Interest Rates. Others say its actually a great sort of indicator of speculation of liquidity in the marketplace. Yeah, so, let me give you some stats from march, specifically around its bitcoin, if you look at our biggest sell was coinbase, bitcoin rallied as much as it did. We did see investors trim into that some of the strength. Ancillary plays around fintech as well. In terms of whether or not that shows investor enthusiasm or i think, you know, fomo the term that gets thrown around from time to time. I think what it shows, you know, investors are looking for other avenues to find some upside buys. Its something that, you know, when i see that it does tend to send up a little bit of a red flag, one of the things thats interesting that 8 increase were kind of below those mean stock levels of 75 or so. Yes, we did see a big bump but were not seeing the leverage plays that Charles Schwab that weve seen in past. David einhorn was on air last week, he made a good point is that really the rise of index funds has in his mind preverdicted the actual investing process, moved by indexes unto themselves. As someone who runs a firm like yours, Charles Schwab, what you think about that. For the average investor indexing makes sense just because of the amount of you know, just the amount of kind of study that has to go into finding stocks, but i will say this, we provide an incredible amount of education and opportunity for our investors to do that study, whether its through what we do with schwab coaching, those are webcasts that we do on a daily basis, now does it skew the values, i think what might skew it to a certain extent is the market cap and the big names at this point represent 25 of the s p 500, that might skew it. But i think for the average investor indexing still makes sense. Do you think its changed the dynamic, though, meaning theres not the true price discovery even these individual investors buying and selling its in such small proportion it doesnt make a difference . Yeah, no. I get that point. But what, you know, from what we see, we still look at the equity level. Were looking at what theyre doing with the individual exweties and what we see at that point, we see discernment, buying into weakness two of the names that were bought the most heavily in the last period were apple and tesla. Joe, want to thank you for joining us this morning. Appreciate it. Thank you. A final check on the markets as we wrap things up here, right now, green arrows again. Dow futures up by about 60 points. Nasdaq up by 53. Coming off a weaker week last week. Dow had its worst week last week. The ten year is yielding 4. 44. Well be back here tomorrow. Wearing our glasses later this afternoon. Well see you back here tomorrow. Right now its time for squawk on the street. Good monday morning. Welcome to squawk on the street. Futures are steady despite some rising treasury yields. Busy week in focus with cpi. Yellen in china. A total eclipse of the sun. Americas chip plays, taiwan semigetting a billiondollar investment from uncle