We saw weaker thereasury yields last week. The 10year treasury at 4. 7 . The 2year treasury at 5. 07. Meantime, israel and hamas denying reports of a ceasefire to allow Foreign National palestinians to cross the border to egypt from gaza. Today, the temporary border was an supposed to allow temporary aid to enter. It is unclear if the border will open. Last night, President Biden spoke on 60 minutes and warned of the mistake they would make of occupying gaza. We are going to do everything within our power to find those who are still alive and set them free. Everything in our power. Im not going to go into details of that. Were working like hell on it. Senator Chuck Schumer visiting israel over the weekend. He posted on x that the delegation was rushed to the shell toter to await out rocket fired. He plans to lead a Bipartisan Senate package for israel. Lets get back to the congress. The Senate Returns from the weeklong recess today, but without a House Speaker. No legislation can pass in congress and go to the president s desk. There is no movement on funding for ukraine, israel, taiwan or Border Security until the house elect elects a speaker. Opponents are setting the stage for another unpredictable floor vote this week. There were 55 republicans who said they would not vote for jim jordan. The question is whether or not they can get that passed when it is going to the floor. Who comes in . There have been reports that potentially patrick mchenry. Not as speaker, but give the speaker pro tem more powers. Democrats would go along with that to start moving legislation. Authorize it on a sixweek basis. That is not something the republicans are fond about at this point. This is the second week you are going into a house without a speaker and without a speaker, nothing gets done. Lets talk about rite aid. Filing for bankruptcy. The pharmacy chain is saddled with billions of dollars of debt and lawsuits. The company is saying it raised 3. 45 billion to fund the operations while in bankruptcy. Rite aid stores around the country closing, but it will continue to operate in stores and try to serve customers. Rite aid secured a restructuring deal with the major bond holders. Another tale of what happens when you get too much debt and on the wrong side. Shares of pfizer under pressure and slashing earnings guidance. It is failing covid demand. It expects sales to come in between 58 billion and 68 billion. Pfizer is warning dragging down industry peers moderna and novavax. Pfizer has an investor calling scheduled for 8 00 a. M. Today. Pfizer is off 2. 8 . Moderna and novavax down more. Moderna down 4. 3 . Novavax down 4 . And this is a story that people are paying attention to. Starboard value building a stake in news corp and looking for changes. That is according to the wall street journal. They are the target of this in some regards as being owned by news corp. It plans to push for a spinoff of the distal regital real esta division. Lets see if the myurdochs want do that. We will talk to ben smith in a few minutes about all this. Im sure he would say good luck. Good luck. No way are you giving it up. You knew that before you bought t the shares. Is it possible that news corp is under valued . Yes b yes, because the real estate piece doesnt make sense. 100 discount relative to the peers. No question. The question is would the murdochs be willing to give up dual class . Anybody they would give up real estate. If this is just enough to push that piece. Thats not going to get through the total mult iple change. I dont think. We will see. Hey, we want your votes. Murdoch family will say forget it. Taylor swifts eras tour concert film brought in 126 million. That fell short of the Box Office Analysts expected, but it was the biggest ever concert film released in the United States. It topped never say never which hauled in 73 million in 2011. According to movie data firm intelligence, the average ticket price was 20. 75. A whopping 60 of tickets were bought in advance compared to 40 presale rate for films and nearly 80 of the audience is female. Very hard for hollywood to model what this film will do the next week and week after. Films in week one is a big premiere and they model the dropoff over the next couple weeks. Apparently this film is very difficult for everybody to figure out because it is an amc project and it is a different issue. What you were talking about in making reservations for the seats. Does it hold over to the next week . Do you see it two or three times . You see it one time or two times or never . Is it the people who wanted to see it the first week missed the concert . It will be interesting to watch. It has been an interesting expe expe exexperience. It is a different experience. If you go to see one of the movies everybody is standing up and dwancing and singing. The interesting thing is they had so many events. Barbie and this. If you can create this event after event and that is what you need. This keeps them rolling this october for sure. Folks, when we he come back treasury secretary janet yellen is meeting with counterparts in l luxembourg this morning with wilfred frost. A blast from the past. How do you find happiness for all this . That is his expertise. We will talk to Arthur Brooks about all of those issues. You are watching squawk box and this is cnbc. Announcer this cnbc program is sponsored by truist securities. Experience. Expertise. Execution. When you think of investment risk, do you consider climate risk . Changing weather patterns are impacting the way we live and the value of businesses large and small. This can mean disruption to supply chains, changing demand for products and shifting regulation. What does this mean for your business, your clients, and your investments . Ice offers data and markets that can provide critical insight. Manage your climate risk with ice. This is Spring Semester at over 13,000 us school districts, which have become top targets for Ransomware Attacks. But theres never been a reported Ransomware Attack on a chromebook. Which is why thousands of schools like the fairfieldsuisun Unified School District switched to google tools for education. So they can focus on teaching and 22,000 students can focus on learning, knowing that their data is secure. treasury secretary janet yellen is meeting with her european counterparts as the Global Finance chiefs deal with higher rates and continued inflation and geopolitical t tensions in the middle east. Wilfred frost sat down with her for a con kconversation. Wilf, we missed you. Tell wus what you learned. Reporter great to hear your voice, voice. Thank you for having me back. Yellen is at the Foreign Affairs forum in luxembourg behind me. I asked about any conditions attached to the crisis in israel and gaza. She is clear about that. She said america stands behind israel period. I went on and asked about whether this unfolding situation in the middle east is impacting the Global Economy. I think its too early to speculate when whether or not there will be significant consequences. I think, importantly, it depends on whether the hostilities extend beyond israel and gaza and that is certainly an outcome we would like to avoid. And you and the Treasury Department are preparing for an eventuality and what it might do to the Global Economy if the conflict broadens out in that way . It is very early days and we are monitoring the situation at this point. Reporter of course, given the u. S. Is already supporting another war which is of ukraine and russia, i asked if america could afford to support two as once. Her answer was absolutely. She was confident about the situation in the u. S. Economy. The American Economy is doing extremely well. Inflation has been high and it has been a concern to households. It has come down considerably at the same time where with we have about the strongest labor market we have seen in 50 years with 3. 8 unemployment. We have seen a burgeoning of investment, especially in manufacturing and Industrial Renaissance in the United States. We are creating good jobs, especially for people who have dont have a College Education and have been left out of really economic progress in the United States. So, the United States economy is in a good place. Reporter now becky and andrew, i heard you speaking about the situation in the house of representatives at the top of the show. As it relates to that and getting support through congress, she said i believe there is strong Bipartisan Coalition in congress in favor of support for ukraine. It is a top priority for President Biden when the speaker is back in place. She said it is in the u. S. National interest to help ukraine. Guys. She has the immediate concerns about what happens in israel and ukraine. She has to think about what happens if the house is not able to get some budget passed. We are looking at a potential Government Shutdown in a matter of a months time. At this point, they cant get the republicans in the house to elect a speaker. Reporter she blamed that on the republicans, as you might expect, given the current news and being here in europe and i did not push on that over Kevin Mccarthy losing his position. On a more optimistic concern as it relates to the Global Economy, i asked if she felt the floor was in or the bottom was in as it relates to the strains with the relationship with u. S. And china. She said perhaps. She went on to say that we have certainly improved our communication. She spoke warmly of the conversation with the governor of the central bank of china last week. The tone was more constructive. Wilf, we miss you. We have not seen you back here e time. Reporter i would love that. My best to all of you back there at cnbc. See you soon. Join us now is the multiasset cio at neuberg. Last week was an up week for the s p and nasdaq. People might be priced by that given the Global Political back drop. The bigger issue is rates. That is the shortterm motivator for what is happening with the markets. Where do you think rates are headed next and as a result equities . The thing about rates is the fed is most likely done, but we are in this environment of higher for longer and the market is starting to price that in. We would say the tenyear treasury is 4. 50 and 5 on the yield. We are potentially going to see more steepening of the yield curve with the price. This has to do with the notion of fiscal dominance. We are running a 5 to 6 budget deficit even in the environment where secretary yellen points out that the overall economy is good. The unemployment is good and inflation is coming down. It will be stickier than what the fed or other forecasters expect. That could lead to not just higher for longer, but more of a premium and steeper curve. That will challenge investors as we go into 2024 in terms of equity earnings and economic growth. I know it is still about a month off before you are going to have to face another issue with the government being shutdown, but how much does that weigh on what you are thinking about when it comes to the markets, erik . I just wrote a blog that is being published this morning of the challenges of geopolitical risk in portfolio construction for the long term. Our take is it is hard to trade around specific events. The tragedy that were seeing in the middle east would have led us to believe the markets would have acted differently. Oil prices are down as you said with yesterday being an up week for equities. It is hard to, you know, forecast and trade specific events. Humility is a key word for investors right now. This is part of the broader trend of deglobalization and increasing segmentation and this is going to lead to more likely higher inflation and headwinds to growth and greater volatility. That is the real message in terms of building and making portfolios more robust in the environment. That means buy on the pullback . There is that. Be prepared for volatility when you build your portfolio. Bonds can now hedge against certain shocks. Growth shocks in particular with the yields. Bonds can be an important diversifier. You think bonds or Higher Quality bonds in the 2 to 7 yield curve is attractive. Corporate bonds . Corporate bonds and treasuries. With yields where they are and the yield curve is moving. The broader indication over bonds to help helpdge the exposure. For those investors who can lock up capital, those are attractive opportunities in private markets because of other investors pulling back from the capital standpoint and doing less in the areas of private credit and other private markets. Being able to be a liquidity provider and soclve problems is an attractive opportunity. Erik, thank you. My pleasure. Coming up on the other side of the break, we will talk about starboard taking aim at news corp and pushing for the end of the dual class structure to give that family control. Ben smith will join us. And later, Dennis Lockhart will join us on ato wh texpect from the feds next meeting. All that and more as we roll on. Ai has the power to automate, but if its using untrusted data can you trust the results . Your business doesnt just need ai, it needs the right ai for your business. Introducing watsonx a platform designed to multiply output by tailoring ai to your needs. When you watsonx your business, you can train, tune and deploy ai, all with your trusted data. Lets create the right ai for your business with watsonx. Ibm. Lets create. Im hearing different ways for me to screen for colon cancer. Its time to use my voice, ive got a choice, more than one answer. I sat down with my doc. We had a talk. Knew just what to say. I asked for cologuard and did it my way. Cologuard is a oneofa kind way to screen for colon cancer thats effective and noninvasive. Its for people 45 plus at average risk, not high risk. False positive and negative results may occur. Ask your provider for cologuard. I did it my way the big news in merger world and news world and media orld. Activist targeting news corp. According to the wall street journal, which is owned by news corp. Starboard is planning to push for changes and doing away with the news corp dual class structure. With us is ben smith of semafor. Editor in chief and media denzian and other things. Ben, does this make sense to you . Is there any chance in a million years the murdochs will say to the activists, great, come on in . It doesnt make sense. The murdochs control the company. Act activists usually stay out of Companies Like that. There are broad criticisms of the news corp and operations and the belief that the wall street journal which is the jewel in its crown could be better run and more valuable. It is not really clear what starboard can do to get the attention of the myurdochmurdoc. Ben, this is a multiple story. You look at the wall street journal and news corp and look at the New York Times and there is a massive delta, of course, i write for the New York Times if you dont know. The point is one of the things that starboard is looking at is maybe they capture the higher multiple if they didnt have the real estate business and if they were somehow different. The question is wdoes somehow different look like and how important is the real estate business . There is a fair amount of debate about the real estate business. The journal looked at selling part of it last year. News corp did and it did not succeed. There is a Digital Real Estate of realtor. Com. A big part of the business. Absolutely. Then theres dow jones. The journal and other stuff. We dont know what the journals numbers are. It is assumed the most valuable part of the business. It is not clear from the outside how it is going over there because it is within dow jones. This is an activist who has been very aggressive in the past and famous for taking over the olive garden Parent Company after the huge Public Campaign after an the pasta not being salty enough. Theres an idea. Use a salt shaker. There is a path to control here. What do you think they are really after . One of the observations i made to becky is this is a Public Campaign around the real estate piece. If you just spin that piece off and capture a higher multiple. Maybe that is one or two turns. Maybe. That is the most logical answer and most entertaining answer is in the background is a huge succession family drama and the wing of the family that would like control and circling. You have to wonder if they are talking to James Murdoch or gotten his advice of how he would like to structure the com company. I reached out to a spokesperson last night who did not get back to me on that. That is certainly in the background. Lets take the background and make it the foreground. The problem is, of course, it doesnt come to the foreground until there would be a momentous event and im not sure, you know if rupert is not calling the shots, it seems lachlan is rupert is happy with lachlan at the head of this thing. The question is if he wants to do this. Obviously, lots of speculation if he likes any of the businesses. I think theres rupert is in his 90s. Lachlan spends a lot of time in australia. There are not people subject to it at all. Media reporters have spent careers of what happens after rupert passes away. There are a lot of questions of how handson he was and abilities to run the company. Maybe he is the new ceo and could take dra matic steps. Ben, just think of Rupert Murdoch being told what to do. If he sells the real estate, he would say forget