Transcripts For CNBC Squawk Alley 20170606

Good tuesday morning. Welcome to squawk alley. Jon fortt, sara eisen and myself at post nine. Apples conference is usually focused on software but this year hardware is stealing the show. Josh lipton has that story from san francisco. Hey, josh. Reporter thats right. Apples ceo tim cook took the stage and unveiled home pod, a new smart speaker. We have such a great portable music experience but what about our homes . We think we can do a lot to make this experience much better. Just like we did with portable music, we want to reinvent home music. Reporter the smart speakers are integrated with siri, designed to work with apple music which we learned has 27 million paying subscribers and 349, home pod is pricier than rival devices from amazon and google. It ships in december. We also learned about new partnerships at last years code conference, remember, amazons jeff bezos said the two companies had not been able to negotiate acceptable terms but apple announcing that amazon, prime video is now coming to apple tv later this year. Good news for transparent and sneaky pete fans. This was a developer show so software did play a big role, including the unveiling of ios 11. Today we are going to take the worlds best and most advanced mobile operating system and turn it up to 11. Reporter highlights include a more intelligent siri, peertopeer payments within imessage and improved app store and maps. One last thing. Big tech from google to microsoft is investing in augmented reality. So is apple, which says that a. R. Is coming to ios devices with new tools for developers, apple is calling this the largest a. R. Platform in the world. Jon . Looks like it is. Thank you. Joining us now, early siri, uber and roku investor, Sean Caroline and with us at post nine, Foundation Capital general partner, steve asalo. Welcome to you both. Ios 11 has a number of tweaks in it, little bit of a change to the overall look of it. They are clearly trying to balance productivity especially on the ipad with simplicity. Think theyre getting it right . Its i think a classic apple announcement of a lot of things people have been expecting for some time. We celebrate drag and drop but thats a functionality we have been taking advantage of in our other interfaces for a long time. I appreciate they are bringing those features and functionality but i do think users are craving more, looking for more from apple, from these conferences, and specifically around productivity features, ways of interacting and communicating in more substantive ways. I was struck, for example, by some of the things they are doing around payments, the fact you are able to now not just connect with someone online and connect with them through Text Messages but also pay them on the fly. I think some of those things are chipping away but we are craving more. Well, between a. R. Kit, this augmented reality platform, apple announced, amazon video actually moving to apple finally and apples kind of peertopeer apple pay announcement, which did you think was the most significant . You know, i would actually say one of the ones you didnt mention. The Machine Learning library, i guess across the venture industry we are seeing stuff show up all over the place with basic a. I. Features and they are subtle. Its face recognition, image recognition, tagging, things like that but its making every experience a little bit better and they actually, im impressed with the amount of functionality they packed into that library. It runs on the phone so its very fast, responsive, doesnt still works when youre not online. I was impressed with that one. I think the a. R. Is a little bit novelty at this point. Until theres something thats in your glasses that you are wearing, holding up an ipad or a phone and looking at stuff, i never found to be too compelling of a use case aside from kind of a toy. Apple pay you didnt find that advancement in pokemon go to be amazing . I predicted that was a fad and i think it got a little bit bigger than i thought it would. But its still a game. Its not changing daily life which is the real advances. So when you look at core ml, what kinds of businesses, steve, do you think will be able to take the best advantage of that, as you look throughout your portfolio, the types of companies that are tapping into Machine Learning, does that excite you . So Machine Learning i think is absolutely a big piece of what apples investing in. They have some of the most talented hardware designers on the planet. Unlike maybe some of the companies they compete directly with, they build hardware which fundamentally, there are computing architectures that need to be built to support Machine Learning workloads. Im excited what they are doing there. To seans point from a minute ago, exposing those features and functionalities through apis will basically birth a whole bunch of interesting innovations. Like . There will be all sorts of applications related to sentiment analysis. How is it that people are feeling about the experiences they are having. Certainly recognition of whats in images. Today apple has a pretty lightweight way of telling whether you are in the photo or im in the photo and being able to sort of then find all the photos with you and me in it. The developers have been craving that functionality at the api level and apple is exposing that to them for the first time. I think we will see that really bear out. Also with respect to gaming, this is what struck me perhaps more under the covers, many folks were not noticing, in fact, a year ago no one was really talking about it. Metal 2 will be a disruptive thing, the partnerships they announced with epic and valve to expose High Performance functionality developers. Thats when really cool stuff happens at the app layer. Im excited about it. You pointed out people craving more than apples delivering. Cook made the point again yesterday that they are not interested in being early or being first. You think that will change over time . Well, they have always been the best follower. We always sort of give them credit for saying hey, they Just Announced something really new but then we look and say these intel processors were in ibm laptops a year ago. Then we celebrate drag and drop as i mentioned earlier. Apple has always been really good at this notion of following with a better product. They werent the first smart phone, they werent the first mp3 player but they clearly own those markets today. Whats interesting is whats going to happen with this battle for the home. Its clear that amazon wants it. They want to sort of own it through the lens of commerce. Google cares about it with respect to information. Apple i think really wants to own it with respect to entertainment and digital media. Thats why this device they launched yesterday could be very interesting. Its priced higher than any other device competitively but it also will deliver much more. I think thats where the apple strategy of delivering a better product later might actually bear out. Do you agree, sean . Where would you rank apple in the ai race that we have going on right now . Yeah. Im going to have to respectfully disagree with my good buddy in san francisco. I think at 349, its just priced out of the market. If you say okay, whats the most important experience to own in the home, i really believe its this Voice Assistant. Obviously we were the very First Investors in siri and the idea that over time, you are going to communicate with something thats going to give you answers back, theres a long road map to get to the point where it speaks to you like an expert, but at 349 thats not going to penetrate. I think its going after the sonos home speaker market. In the Voice Assistant battle which is a really fascinating one, that strategy is not positioning them well to win. I think the two leading horses in that race for the consumer angle at least is amazon with the echo, i think they will ship probably 20 million this year growing over like six million last year. Google home is not super pervasive product but if you think of who has the most voice queries right now, google, i think its 20 of google queries are coming in over voice. Google obviously is used for search on every phone so they are the ones to beat. Im surprised you would say its too expensive. This is a company thats selling 400 head phones, 700 phones. You dont think they can sell a 350 speaker. Interesting. Got to leave it there. Thanks so much. Steves new book is the way to design. We are following an incident that took place a short time ago at the Notre Dame Cathedral in paris. The Police Officer shot a man who tried to assault him with a hammer, injuring him. Some preliminary indications were that this was not terror related but nonetheless, french counterterrorism officials are investigating. Europe was already having a negative morning on their equity markets. The French Market is currently down three kwars of a percent. A lot more on apples latest device lineup and a closer look at the new home pod. The president fired up on twitter as meets with gop leadership. We will talk about that. And later, a new report says chicagos taxi business on the verge of collapse. Guess who its blaming for the downturn . Hey, the future, whats her problem . Apparently, i kept her up all night. She said the future freaks her out. How come no one likes me, jim . Intel does just think of everything intels doing right now with artificial intelligence. And pretty soon ai is going to help executives like her see trends to stay ahead of her competition. No more sleepless nights. Were going to be friends im sorry about this. Dont be embarrassed of me, jim. Im getting excited about this we know the future. Were going to be friends because were building it. [ eerie musthe mummy. T ] has returned. You wish to see. What i have seen . You will. When. I. Kill you. [ explosions ] [ intense music ] the mummy. Rated pg13. Taking a look at stocks at this hour, another session of minor declines on major averages. The nasdaq has been going back and forth around the unchanged line. The dow is down 26. S p down about two tenths of a percent. Do have positive bright spots, like technology, telecom, utilities and energy. Consumer discretionary, financials and health care bringing up the rear. This is the second day in a row we are seeing stocks pull back a bit from record highs. Well be right back. [vo] when it comes to investing, looking from a fresh perspective can make all the difference. It can provide what we call an unlock a realization that often reveals a better path forward. At wells fargo, its our expertise in finding this kind of insight that has lead us to become one of the largest investment and Wealth Management firms in the country. Discover how we can help find your unlock. We rbut we are not victims. Ack. We are survivors. We are survivors. We are survivors. And now we take brilinta. For people whove been hospitalized for a heart attack. We take brilinta with a baby aspirin. No more than one hundred milligrams. As it affects how well brilinta works. 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President trump going to capitol hill today to meet with gop law makers on mog hving his policy agenda forward. Joining us this morning to talk about the future of policy under this white house, walter isaacson, president and ceo of the aspen institute. Good to see you. Good morning. Good to be back with you. Hows everything . Happens on a day where we get survey results from the business roundtable. According to jamie dimon, the urgency of tax reform cannot be understated. How much how receptive is the hill to that . You know, it would seem you would want to focus an agenda on infrastructure and tax reform. At the moment they have gotten themselves very clogged up, when i say they, the white house, pushing Health Care Reform. I dont think the senate is going to be able to do Health Care Reform before the summer. That clogs everything up. You have two very important things that were key to the trump agenda really improving infrastructure which he sort of made a big deal of yesterday, but then didnt send anything up to the hill. Likewise, tax reform. He says his bill is doing fine but he actually hasnt written a bill or sent it up to the hill. We got a lot of cars kind of backing up on the freeway, feels like. You mentioned health care, infrastructure, tax reform. You think theres a method to this madness or is this a lack of discipline showing through . I think its a lack of discipline. I tried to figure out what is the method here of clogging things up, not sending up a tax reform bill. Not even deciding on some of the basics like a border adjustment tax and sort of allowing the dispute over border adjustment tax within your own administration to play out in public. Maybe you can figure out some method to that, but i dont see the method. We got a couple of ceos left to counsel, bob iger and elon musk. Today the journal oped page is rather critical of the president whand what they would argue are selfdefeating tweets. David axelrod will be a critic but today called him the incredible shrinking president. People should read that wall street journal editorial. We arent talking with the wall street journal editorial page of a place thats been thats some liberal establishment media and its such a sensible editorial. It basically says why do you keep shooting yourself in the foot when you should be keeping your eye on what at least to me, im not president , but would seem to be your two most important priorities which is figure out a tax reform bill and send it up to the hill and figure out infrastructure so you can get the economy growing at 4 , not 2 or 2. 5 . But walt, he Needs Congress to do that. By all indications, the Republican Party is backing it in matter when we are saying about the wall street Journal Editorial Board or what criticism hes getting. As long as Republican Leadership is on board, is it wrong for investors to still hold out hope for some of these legislative items . On board for what . I havent seen that Mitch Mcconnell has either scheduled the Health Care Reform and most republicans, not most but a lot of republican senators keep saying its not going to happen and its dead, including richard burr, very conservative, and likewise, i dont see a move to pass a tax reform bill yet. Maybe you are seeing something im not. But i think if you talk to Mitch Mcconnell and other leaders, especially in the senate, they seem to be scratching their heads and theyre not barreling ahead with Health Care Reform. I guess i just mean they are being awfully quiet when it comes to the scandal du jour. The journal going after some comments on the travel ban and paris climate accord. They havent broken with him on these controversial issues. If i were on the hill i would say why dont we take the focus off of tweeting about travel bans and frankly, take the focus off of the russia fbi comey investigation. I dont quite know why trump keeps tweeting about those things instead of going out and trying to sell either infrastructure, tax reform or affordable care, health care or you know, one of his big agenda items. Yeah, youre right. They have been quite silent about things like the russia investigation or the tweets about travel bans, but that doesnt mean they are moving forward with a tax reform bill, as far as i can tell. Obviously its going to be hard to ignore comey on thursday. We have some of the broadcast networks are going to break in live for coverage. People are making comparisons to the watergate hearings and all of that. What is the smartest path for the white house on thursday . Is it to have infrastructure speeches in the rust belt like they have planned . Yes. Thats exactly what i would be doing. I would be going to the rust belt, i would be talking about everything from the need for high speed rail, highways, air Traffic Control next generation, that sort of thing, because thats the type of thing that has always, if you talk about making america great, whether it was eisenhower in the 1950s with nasa and the interstate Highway Program and the Scientific Research that went into creating the microchip transistor. I would be trying to sell infrastructure. It would be a bad idea and you kind of see signs its starting to happen, for them to be tweeting and yelling and trying to say comey is not believable or something. Comey may not be somebody you think has all the wisdom he should have had in the past but hes always been honest. In fact, hes always been too honest which is whats gotten him in trouble. I think attacking comeys honesty is the worst idea. Sticking to the plan of going out and selling an infrastructure bill would be in my mind, the best plan. Got to come on soon and talk da vinci. You know, leonardo would have had this thing nailed by now. He was a sensible sort and also kind of playful. But he would have liked twitter. I know that. Yes. Available for preorder now on amazon. Im looking at it. Wow. Thank you, carl. Thank you very much, sir. See you soon. Walter isaacson. For the latest episode of binge we sat down with alan alda from m. A. S. H. And louis c. K. He has a new book about communication and we talked about his biggest hit and network television. If you were shopping m. A. S. H. Today would you take it to the networks, cable, the web . Thats a good question. Probably would only be shown on the web because then you could do it with the real language that people would use and people really torn to pieces. When we first did the First Episode they said dont go into the operating room, keep it funny. We had to put a red light in torthe operating room so you couldnt see blood in the First Episode. After that we had more power. My next question was what would m. A. S. H. On cable be like. The notion of it having wider rules, language yeah. It would have more a little bit more. There was a lot of reality, but it would have a little more space to get some of the grittier reality. It was amazing we got some in the old days but you would have more now. What an illustration of how streaming and cable, for hbo back 25 years ago but especially now, streaming broke all the rules. Allows creators to break all the rules. Louis c. K. Breaking rules with his direct distribution model for products. I think its so interesting that amazon is moving to apples platform. To me thats capitulation by amazon. They were saying hey, if you are going to force us to pay a toll to get into the app store and these other places, we will withhold ourselves from your platform. Apple tv has proven to be such an essential platform for premium streaming and viewing, they couldnt leave it to netflix and the others. Even horace and pete which was originally direct to consumer, 5 an episode, eventually he loses money, hasnt said how much, then sells it to hulu. Now its all available on hulu. Theres a bit of debate around that apple amazon announcement. What did you think about that . The fact apple didnt announce anything new on media yesterday at the conference except for the prime tv was going to be on apple tv . This is more for developers but this really shows i think apples premium power and leverage in streaming. Nobody is talking about amazon fire tv sticks that much anymore. By the way, for more binge go to cnbc. Com binge. Apple throwing its hat into the home speaker wars with the home pod. We will talk to joanna stern from wall street journal. She got her hands on the product yesterday. T least analyze custor traffic . Can we push the offer online . Legacy technology can handcuff any company. But yes is here. Youre saying the new app will go live monday . Yeah. With help from hpe, we can finally work the way we want to. With the right mix of hybrid it, everything computes. Its your glass of willpower that helps keep cravings. Far, far away. Feel less hungry with the natural fiber in clinically. Proven meta appetite control. From metamucil. Im sue herera. Whats your cnbc news update. Paris police say they have shot a man outside the Notre Dame Cathedral ach he tried to attack an officer using a hammer. The attacker was injured and is being hospitalized. Paris Police Telling nbc news it is being treated as a terrorist incident. British police arresting a 27yearold man in east london this morning. They also searched another address in the area. They arrested 12 people on sunday in connection with the london terror attack but later said all had been released without being charged. Secretary of state Rex Tillerson receiving a traditional welcome at the start of his First Official trip to new zealand. Later he met with the Prime Minister bill english and said President Trump told him to improve ties with russia. The president has been very clear with me that russia is an important Global Player and today our relationships with russia are at a very low point and they have been deteriorating, so the president asked me to begin a reengagement process with russia. Back downtown to squawk alley. Now we go to seema mody with the european close. The defensive tone in todays market is certainly notable. We are looking at european stocks in the red with two big events in europe coming up, the uk election and ecj meeting two days away. Bings among the big losers among expectations Monetary Policy will stand pat. Its the shift in language that will likely be key on thursday. European bond yields falling across the board. There is this flight to safety in germany and france as you can see here but same goes for the uk, where polls show a tightening race ahead of thursdays election. Lets move back to stocks, though. Roe roche, a Clinical Trial showing only a modest benefit to women taking a combination of their cancer drug. Shares down nearly 6 . Shares of burberry also moving lower, being downgraded by hsbc to reduce from hold. The firm citing longterm visibility issues on sales as well as weakness in america. Analysts pointing out burberry does 30 of its wholesale sales in the united states. Hsbc also pointing out valuation as a concern. Shares are up almost 60 over the past 12 months and trading at 23 times forwardlooking earnings. Seema, thanks. Apple developer conference yielding a slew of announcements this week from a developer kit for augmented reality to the home pod, apples answer to amazons echo. Joanna stern is the wall street Journal Personal Technology columnist. Scott stein, you were at the conference yesterday. I guess the first question is, is the audio worth 349 . Its really hard to tell in a room like that. In their demo it sounded better than the sonus play 3 and amazon echo and it did seem to follow you around. It will not fill 360 degrees but it was just a music demo so there was no demonstration of any siri function, no smart connectivity, and entering the space now, thats a big question. How does that compare to amazon echo. It looked like a play just as a music device for your home. Could be that they just couldnt train the speaker to everybodys voice to talk to siri or it could be they are positioning this as a musiccentric device on purpose. Which do you think it is . There was a lot of focus on music yesterday but they did talk about how its going to do a lot of the same things as the amazon echo does, setting timers, setting alarms, being able to give you podcasts, news, that kind of thing. My big worry is that siri just isnt as ready for prime time as alexa has been in the home. Really, if you ask anyone, they will give you more complaints about siri, they will have more negative things to say about siri than positive things. I think thats something apple has to really get right. I think thats part of the december time frame. December is a pretty far time away. Scott, did you get the sense that developers were particularly impressed with these announcements and the possibilities to make money off of them . Im not sure the home pod fits into that exactly but you were in the room. Yeah. Developers didnt get a chance to really listen to home pod so they were curious and i think it probably wasnt the thing developers were most after. Maybe it was a. R. Or some other things. Yeah, i think home pods kind of a mystery because how it connects to everything via home kit, how siri can tap into other apps wasnt really described or run down and a lot of the features were connecting to apple functions. There should be opportunities but i dont know. I think thats a big play why apple is doing this. If you look at alexa right now or look at the echo, there are no Apple Services that work on there. You can barely add something to your calendar there or you cant send an email from there. So the home pod is apples way of getting you into an ecosystem in the home now and its going to be a big question if they will open that up. Are we going to be able to listen to spotify instead of music . Remains to be seen. That was my sort of leads to my next area of questions. In terms of who is now on defense after yesterday, is it hp on pcs, is it square on mobile pay, is it sonos, alexa, google on the home pod . Who got set back on their heels yesterday . Well, i think maybe on the tablet front it will be interesting to see if the ipad can step up and become something thats more usable as a computer. I think all the computer updates apple had that imac pro is further down the line and a lot of others are spec bumps versus anything new. A. R. Is interesting. That was something where they are entering a landscape that hasnt been nailed down yet. As far as the home stuff, it sounds right now like its pushing more into the music space, like sonos. I dont know how much much a threat it will be to something thats super open like alexa, because that is the question, how well will it tap into other things. It has air play 2 home pod but will it play all services, will it be open to all players and thats something amazon is really open to and google is opening up to as well. Why is it a problem that all the Digital Assistants have female voices and are seemingly female . Im so happy you asked about that. Actually i thought one of the biggest pieces of news yesterday was that siri is getting a new voice. That will be the new voice on the home pod but also in ios 11. Again, apple is the only or basically the only of the assistants or siri is the only of the assistants that have male and female voices. Of course, it defaults to female but you can go into settings and change it to male. I think this is really important because we are growing up, our kids are growing up, we are all now growing up around assistants. Why are they all female . Why are we sort of commanding these objects to do things and expecting them to be female . What about the male assistants in our life . Men are as capable of telling us the time or telling us the weather as females are. I see. So its an empowerment thing. I think cara swisher told you guys last week robots dont have a gender. Thats what she said. I see two sides of this. On the one hand, yes, you are ordering siri around. Thats a problem. On the other hand, siri and alexa know everything. My kids are like ask siri, ask siri. Im not sure which message they get from that. That we can order her around or shes a genius. Valid points on each end. I would like if it had a more generic sounding voice, something that was robotic. Something friendly and robotic. Kind of like a pixar character. You are not clearly identifying either way and you are talking to, yeah, talking to a thing versus thinking of it along gender lines. Really quick. I actually did a piece on this sure. Really quick, early commercial applications for a. R. Where do you think we will see it first . Well i think sorry. Joanna, go ahead. I think education is a huge one. We saw a couple of games yesterday but i think that really sort of segues into the education or the child or gamelike space. I also think they mentioned ikea on the stage. I think thats sort of the idea of using our space around us. And you mentioned before who is going to be the greatest sort of threat. I think actually microsoft. Microsoft is putting a lot of work right now into its a. R. Technology. I think apple is about to really step up its game at least right now on the app side. I think theres a really good chance we see a head set at some point. I agree on that Home Improvement point. Apps like houzz will have a field day with this a. R. Kit. Thanks to your insights. When we come back we will talk to the ceo of Ride Sharing Service via and get his take on the chicago cab crisis and the new announcement with new york yellow cabs. First, rick santelli, what are you watching today . We had a jolt today. It topped six million, six million job openings. There used to be a commercial wheres the beef . After that jolt, i have one question. Wheres the growth . We will talk about that after the break. At fidelity, trades are now just 4. 95. We cut the price of trades to give investors even more value. And at 4. 95, you can trade with a clear advantage. Fidelity, where smarter investors will always be. Coming up on halftime we debate the drop in bond yields and how long stocks can hold on. Also, analysts who downgraded apple ahead of the development conference, was that call flat wrong . And investing in americas infrastructure. Thats straight ahead at noon. See you in about 15 minutes. Sounds good. See you then, scott. Via announcing a new partnership with taxi app curb to offer new yorkers a chance to share yellow cab rides while splitting the fares. This as the Chicago Cab Drivers Union is out with a new report today showing yellow cab revenue has declined nearly 40 over the last three years, losing share to ride hailing apps. We are joint by daniel remote. Are you trying to save the cab industry with this partnership with curb, via and new york city taxis . You know, we are pretty agnostic regarding the forhire vehicle segment, the black car drivers or taxi industry. We arent trying to save anybody in particular. What we are trying to do is live up to our mission which is to create a better transportation system, better Transit System throughout the city. We have 13,500 yellow taxis in the city. They have four seats each. More than 50,000 seats we can fill. In reality, way fewer than that, of those sats are filled at any one time. Using our technology, we will be able to fill a lot more of these seats, reduce congestion, reduce emissions and provide another option for our users. The question is maybe they trying to save themselves here and instead of fighting the Ride Sharing Companies like uber and lyft which have taken market share, they are joining. Is that whats happening . Yeah. Why are cabs losing share. Multiple reasons. One is they are very constrained by regulation to charge you the meter. Their fares have been higher than what uber, lyft, certainly via is able to charge. By partnering with us, they are able to provide consumers with an option to share the ride so you have two people in a cab. The cost of the ride can go down by as much as 40 . That means the fare is much cheaper. Consumers are very costsensitive to this sort of service. If a lot more people start using cabs revenues can come back up and they can recover. Uber is the market leader. They are losing a ton of money. A lot of it because of their marketing costs. How is your model different . Are you able, you think, to get profitability more quickly by being more localized and by hey, getting a whole bunch of cabs on your platform at once instead of recruiting drivers one by one . The cab piece is new and certainly will help us just get access to thousands of drivers all at once which could be very helpful. I think for us, the model is very different. We spend very little on advertising. 95 of our riders have come through word of mouth. The service is extremely efficient. Its affordable, accessible for everyone. Its just a different way to sort of approach this sort of business. I got to ask, whats the variable that determines whether shared works in a community . Is it demographics, is it density of population . How do you know when a neighborhood will accept it and when theyre not . So fundamentally its density coupled with traffic speed. So if traffic is faster, imagine if via is like a dynamic bus. Thats how we think about it. Imagine if a bus is a line you have to walk to to get on that bus, vea is like a thick brush stroke. You can pick anybody up within the width of that brush stroke. The faster traffic moves the broader the brush stroke. We can make more efficient detours that dont take a lot of time. If traffic is really congested we have to stay in a narrower range, can pick up less people, are less efficient. We have a goal to reduce congestion. To some extent, slow traffic is our enemy. We are trying to reduce it. If we can get more people into the cabs that are driving around anyway, you have 13,000 cabs circling the city 24 7, if we can get more people into them we can hopefully reduce congestion, reduce the number of vehicles on the road. That helps. You would be an advocate, i saw stats this week, this is a new york central thing here but the new subway line has reduced the number of cars on lex and second, right . No question. Thats good for you. We see ourselves as a complement to the subway and bus system. If theres a trip you need to make that doesnt work for you for the bus or subway, the line doesnt quite get you where you need to go, you have to make a lot of changes, via is a great solution and the cost is very close. To be clear, you are in new york, d. C. , chicago. Thats it. Thats it right now. We also, just like with curb, we license our technology to them, we partner with them. We are licensing our technology all over the world. Our technology operates in paris, in england. We Just Launched today in austin, texas. Just through licensing. We arent operating ourselves. Are you taking advantage of some of the problems that uber, its been in the headlines a lot lately and mostly negative press around some of the cultural issues and management issues. How do you view that . We definitely see drivers are choosing to work with us because we just provide them a much better Work Environment than i think many Ride Sharing Companies. We try to treat our drivers with respect. We understand the core asset for the company, when you take via you dont meet me or any of the employees. You meet our driver. Your experience is governed by and other friends. Yes. This ride hailing thing started off as a premium experience, then seemed to go to convenience. It keeps going down market. Now we are kind of back in the cabs, talking about replacing buses. How far down market is this going to go . Well, i dont think we can replace certainly not the subway or all the buses. Those systems just move so many people. Theres no hope to move that many people in small vans or large suvs. The hope that is we can get rid of all the private cars. The only way to get rid of all the private cars to offer you a trip thats cheap enough, people dont replace their private car with a taxi or even with a lyft or uber but they do replace their private car once the costs of the ride goes down with Public Transit. In new york most people dont wo own a car bus the Public Transit is so good and so inexpensive. Daniel ramot, thanks for coming in and talking about the new deal. When we come back, elon musk and mary barra on the hot seat at their annual shareholders meetings today. Phil lebeau will have the latest when squawk alley comes back. [vo] when it comes to investing, looking from a fresh perspective can make all the difference. It can provide what we call an unlock a realization that often reveals a better path forward. At wells fargo, its our expertise in finding this kind of insight that has lead us to become one of the largest investment and Wealth Management firms in the country. Discover how we can help find your unlock. Welcome to holiday inn thank you wait, i have something for you making every stay a special stay. Holiday inn, smiles ahead. Whether for big meetings or little getaways, member always save more at holidayinn. Com [ eerie musthe mummy. T ] has returned. You wish to see. What i have seen . You will. When. I. Kill you. [ explosions ] [ intense music ] the mummy. Rated pg13. Dollars making fresh post election lows. Lets get to rick santelli. Get the santelli exchange. Good morning and thank you. You know, this morning when i brought out the data at 10 00 eastern, it was jolting. This series of number, only began in the year 2000. Weve never surpassed 6 million. Today, we did by about 44,000 if i recall. Unbelief unbelievabl unbelievable, but whats the jolt . When this is marketed as one of Janet Yellens favorite numbers. Far less traders use it in their strategy than other economic releases like the first friday of the month labor statistics employment report, but it is gaining traction. Its a bit more complicated. But just on the surface. All these job openings, but yet, as jolting as this was this morning, i dont see the growth materializing. Now, granted, we all know that right now, maybe and hours from now, were going to get more information on a lot of the things that happened during the and post crisis that are inhibiting growth. Maybe taxation and regular la s lacelations and all those things are being addressed, somewhat slowly. Today, i had a guest on who basically says along with many famous economists, that fx volatility is problematic for growth. As i looked over the months, trying to really dig down into this to find as Much Research as i can about fx volatility and things like productivity and growth, what i found was research was really limited to those underdeveloped countries having problems with Foreign Exchange volatility being channelled into productivity and growth. But when you think b about how big these models are and all the asupgss, i say now we have a euro we didnt have, we are splitting the globe and with the type of volatility we see in exchange rates, that makes business very tough. But under the guise of how much debt has been created and how much debt is owned by central banks, close to 20 trillion, the change politics, were trying to do Something Different because what we are doing isnt really getting us the growth and productivity. That involves politics and nobody likes to leave the mountain theyve taken over. Thats going to be hard. Lack of participation. Theres over is 100 million americans of working age that arent working, but im not sure if thats something we should look at as reason the jolts isnt jolting growth and productivity or if its more of a symptom, but no matter how you slice it, in the end, many of these die nynamics need to be considered, but its slow. The its going to take a long time. Suffice it to say for now, we have jolting job openings and we have sleepy productivity and gdp. Back to you. All right, thank you, rick santelli. Meanwhile, two big u. S. Automaker, at least in terms of stock market value, facing investors today. The details when squawk alley returns. If you have medicare parts a and b and want more coverage, guess what . You could apply for a Medicare Supplement Insurance Plan whenever you want. No enrollment window. No waiting to apply. That means now may be a great time to shop for an aarp Medicare Supplement Insurance Plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. Medicare doesnt cover everything. And like all standardized Medicare Supplement Insurance Plans, these help cover some of what medicare doesnt pay. So dont wait. Call now to request your free decision guide. It could help you find the aarp Medicare Supplement plan that works for you. These types of plans have no networks, so you get to choose any doctor who accepts medicare patients. Rates are competitive, and theyre the only plans of their kind endorsed by aarp. Remember these plans let you apply all year round. So call today. Because nows the perfect time to learn more. Go long. Gm and tesla both holding their annual Shareholder Meeting today. Morn, phil. If you take a look at shares of general motor, youll see the stock moving down despite the fact shareholders rejected green light capitals proposal to slit the shares into dual stocks. And also, the shareholders also reelected all of the Board Members rejected the three candidates put up by green light capital. Before the meeting, the ceo try ing to emphasize that general moto tors is diversifying and making the investment into vehicles that will be noticed by shareholders. When i look at all the assets we bring that investments weve made, the position we are today, i think as people understand that, that will allow us to dif wrennuate ourselves and demonstrate we will be a true leader in the new definition. Well, right now, investors when it comes to mobility, consider elon mus b k the leader to watch. When the meeting happens in california this morning, musk will get a number of questions, but really the wup people are going to be focused on the most, whats the stat of the model 3. Production is scheduled to begin in july or august with first deliveries by the end of f this year. As you look at shares of tesla, this is a company that last year, if you said to people, look, theyre going to have a market cap higher than gm and ford and potentially, guys, getting close to the point where if more than ford and Fiat Chrysler together, a lot of people would have scoffed. Not anymore. That meeting starting about 5 30 this afternoon eastern the time. Just amazing and shorts once again feeling the pain. Tesla went public at 17 in 2010. June of 2010. Its now up almost 2,000 as it hits this new high today. Unbelievable. It is. And one thing, guy, i was talk ing with a friend whos in the Financial Services industry and he said it best. He said i dont like the way this company is set up. What might happen in the fuf. But i wouldnt go shorting this stock if you paid me a million dollars. He may not like it, but hes like a lot of other, he is steering clear of it. Just got a price upgrade from consumer edge, which a lot of industry insiders look at, to 385 a share. Thank you, phil, the note says tesla leads the pack making electronic vehicles aspirational, now affordable. Now, if you paid me a million dollars, i could take half a million. Of course, we dont play the market. A couple of tech stocks could be moving on apple. Pandora, down 6. 5 on the home pod. Amd up about the same about. Their graphics in the i mac. Over to headquarters and the half. Welcome to the halftime report. Im scott wapner. Our top trade, rate shock. Why bond yields keep dropping and why some say stocks could be next. With us for the hour today also with us from chicago, cnbcs rick santelli. Lets begin with the market. Stocks are fighting back and fighting for positive territory today. It is bond yields though, which are grabbing our attention this hour, falling to their lowest level since after donald trump was elected president. The question is is, how concerned should you be . Doc, somethings got