Youre looking at the cac, and the dax up as well. Lets take a look at crude before we get to merger monday or unmerger monday. The wti trading at 4 45. 63. Halliburton and baker hughes scrapping a deal, following opposition from european and u. S. Antitrust regulators. It would have combined the second and Third LargestOil Services Company and it raised concern it would result in higher prices. Last month, the Justice Department filed a law suit to stop the deal. And as a result, halliburtons going to pay baker hughes a 3. 5 billion breakup fee. I guess you could argue both sides of this, andrew. We know events, its already happening, 7 increase in the price of oil back to h45. The industry will come back, and at that time you have a powerful anticompetitive. Potentially. But in the meantime, it obviously made a lot of sense for both companies to try to pool their resources in such a tough period. And i just wonder, you know, its a fine line to draw, depending on whos president and whether they stack the deck to antiemergency antimerger. 36 billion in deals that have been scrapped, you look at pfizer and allergan. Clinton, it was said there was no teeth in antitrust and they let everything happen. Then theres been a lot it started in the 80s. Now its come back. Right. Do you think that this should have gone through . Or it shouldnt . I mean, in the world where you want us to remain competitive globally, im mo am not convinc. Like staples. Xm sirius, how long that took with pandora and all that other stuff . Really, we had to look that close at xm sirius . Regulators, if they didnt do anything, they wouldnt, you know, they couldnt even justify their jobs, right . I mean, theyre there to find things to block, are they not . Hopefully more than that. Hopefully theyre supposed to be doing we say the european regulators also agreed with this. Thats not a high bar for europe to decide. Its a lower bar. They dont even talk about how its going to influence consumers. They talk about whether there will be job losses. The this is still me. Im fine. Marissa meyer stands to make 55 million if she leaves the company. 55 plus . She had some restrictive stock that vested. So shes made some money already. I thought she had already taken whether she sold the restricted stock shed already made 100. Lets talk 155. Shes done very well for herself. Less so for everybody else. But fine for herself. Thats, you know, its a great country. Details coming in from yahoo, meyers entitled to severance benefits if she is terminated without cause or if theres a change in control. Yahoo is down 14 over the last year. Right now, lets get to becky quick in omaha with our news. Im really excited about warren. But when i saw it in the prompter that it was a buffet monday, i was looking around, and then i saw it was two ts. Looking for the food. And andrew came back, no sees candy, that would have melted. No dairy queen. Ill send him some dairy queen coupons. You just got an offer. Ill send some dairy queen coupons to joe. You might even share them with your kids. The last thing we talked about, you gave me that great offer where if i got every final four pick all the way to the very end that youd give me like 100,000, which is absolutely impossible. It would be easier to win, even if you put all the powerball lotteries together. Sore loser, sore loser. It was all in to the sweet 16, joe. And you are a sore loser. I am. I had three teams in the sweet 16 when it was all said and done. Thanks to warren. I had a lot of stuff to ask him, becky, but im going to let you spearhead this whole thing. Thanks so much for being here with us today. I enjoy it. Thank you. Youre coming off a big weekend, a long weekend, and this was the 51st shareholders meeting. Whats your take away from the meeting . What did you think about how things went . Everything went well. You know, we had this speeshment with yahoo, streaming it. Im a guy when the telephone rings, im not sure what to pick up. Im a little bit of a techno phon phobe. It worked like a charm and i thank yahoo for that. There were expectations that as a result, pour the first time people wouldnt have to be here that attendance would be down. You said it was down slightly. My best guess is that we had an alltime record last year, and it was up quite a bit last year, but i think we more or less matched the year before, so i would say we were down close to 10 , probably around 40,000 i think. We were in the mid40s last year. But it worked out well. And a number of our companies, sales records, even though the attendance was down. These are the companies that set up booths on the floor so that shareholders can come around . Or are you talking about that and the furniture mart. Were talking about both. Furniture mart on saturday hit 9. 3 million in one day. And when any kind of a store does 9. 3 million in a day, thats a lot of business. So that tells you a little bit about the people who were here. There were a lot of headlines that came out of the meeting, and id like to talk to you about some of those, but before we do, maybe we can talk about some of the headlines that joe and andrew were mentioning. We saw that the nikkei was down 3. 1 overnight. Thats in large part because the yen has soared. Its around 106 versus 111 when the bank of japan decided not to add to additional negative Interest Rates. And i just wonder what you think when you see moves like this, when you see Central Banks getting involved and currencies jumping around so rapidly. Makes me realize how little i know. But its not, its not a factor for burkshire. There was a period maybe close to ten years ago when we had some major currency revisions. Now we have exposure, we do business so much all over the world that i dont really know whether its good or bad for us. Because we have lost reserves for insurance that are payable, euros, pounds, yen, and we have some foreign currencies investments and we own stock in companies likie isbm and coke tt do business abroad. So ive given up when you talk about currencies to determine whether im richer or poorer. The point was made on twitter that a stronger yen is great news for a lot of u. S. Companies that are looking to export. Thats something that maybe we wouldnt have anticipated at this point, given the stance from the boj and our stance at the fed. Its one of the reasons i thought the fed would have trouble a year ago in terms of raising rates, because a stronger dollar hurts the exporters, and a weaker dollar, which means a stronger yen or whatever it may be, i mean, that helps, that helps exports, no question about it. We, like you said, you realize how much you dont know when you sigh cross currencies, theres just a million of them. You must have spent a lot of time thinking about what Central Banks are doing around the globe because it has a huge impact. Its a fascinating movie to watch. I dont try to make money off the movie, but what we have seen in the last seven years, and i think i have, very, very few people would have dreamt in 2009 that we would have this duration of low rates and have people still expecting low rates after the seven years or so were up. No, its a different world. And its certainly a different world when you have a lot of money in euros, as we do, and youre better off putting it under your mattress than in a bank. Theres nothing you can do about that with some of the Reinsurance Companies with the insurance companies, right . No, there might be two things we could do. I think they were talking about converting a lot of shortterm funds to actual currency. And sticking it in a vault, but we havent gotten there yet. There could be a point where youd really want to start withdrawing currency. That would be an interesting point, if currency in a bank is worth less than currency in your hands or a mattress, that could produce something in the way of behavior that nobodys ever anticipated. Youre talking about a potential run on banks, essentially . Well, if the deposits arent doing anything there, and, and they charge you for having them there. You know, i might contemplate taking them out. I dont know exact id have to hide them somewhere where my wife didnt now where they were. When you talk about that, you think about burkshires big position in some of the financials like a bank of america or wells fargo. Does that change your opinion or the financials . It makes, it squeezes their earnings, but we dont buy them based on what we think theyre going to earn next month or next year. Theyre actually earning pretty good money as it is. And reserve requirements are probably a more important factor almost than low rates, but no, its a factor in burkshires earning power. We have close to 60 billion thats out, invested in a quarter of a percent or less. You know, at one point, on 60 billion, 600 million a year. If we were getting 3 or 4 on that money, thats a couple billion dollars to us. You notice it. Do you still through the fed is doing the right thing by not raising rates. I think generally, theyve done the right thing. I think that our recovery since, since october of 2008, i think that policy in the United States by both the Bush Administration in the first few months and the Obama Administration subsequently, i think its been very good. People can always look back and say you know, if youd done this or that, but a lot of those t s thiss and thats, our country has recovered from what was a, it wasnt a normal recession like wed have post world war ii. So i really give a lot of credit to the people who were there earlier and that are there now to follow a very wise policy. So at the federal rae seserv you think think are right in that they at the are paying a lot more attention to whats happening outside of the United States to whats happening inside the United States. Effectively the rein for staying at lower rates is because of what the bank of japan and the ecb are doing. When you look at unemployment in this country, it is not something that would match up with what we are seeing, why we are seeing incredibly low Interest Rates. If things were different in europe and japan, we would be polling different policies here. How much different . I dont know. But you have to be affected if your account is held by what is happening in europe and japan. You do not, if we had rates that were dramatically higher than the japanese rates or the european rate, wed be in even more uncharted territory than we are now. Is that just a reflection of a new world order, of a more globalized world and were never going back to the way we used to look at things 20 or 30 years ago . I dont know. But weve always had to take into account major other countries or an entire continent in the case of europe. Weve had to take that into account, but its way more top of mind with the regulators and policymakers now than it would have been 15 or 20 years ago. Theyre more worried about they see things happen that they didnt think about happening and theyre more worried about having to do something that looks quite novel. So i would think that the fed, if they were plotting scenarios for having 4 rates here when there are negative rates somewhere or another they wouldnt know the answer, they wouldnt want to find out the answer, either. Lets talk about the economy here and the jobs outlook, because joe just pointed out, this friday is a jobs friday. Were going to get unemployment numbers again. Weve been doing fairly well if you believe the official numbers and see where things are headed. What do you think, just from your perch and what you can see of the economy . Well, you know, our employment goes up a little bit. All the time. Not in every area. Our employment in the railroad is down over 4,000 people. Because of efficiencies or because of the lower rail car loads . Just because of the fact theres not much traffic moving. And those cuts come pretty fast. I mean, when the trains quit moving or they dont have as many cars, youve got to make your adjustments quickly. So every railroad is down on employment and since were the largest in terms of revenue, we were, we probably were up at 48,000, and were probably somewhere around 43,000 now. But, most of our businesses would be expanding in numbers. To a modest degree. But a town like omaha has 3 unemployment. I mean, we are, this town is feeling its prosperous, generally, as it felt during any period in recent years. Beyond omaha, though, when we talked to you last week about the economy, things that you said werent very reassuring, that it does feel like a 0. 5 gdp economy to you. And that doesnt sound all that optimistic, at least for the near term. Were not looking at a world, though, where i think you expect the u. S. Economy to grow at. 5 . And theres one thing that many people dont understand about the gdp figures. Maybe i dont understand it, but my understanding is that theyre sequential figures. So you take the change from one quarter to another and multiply by four. So if youre off a tenet on t ee seasonal adjustment it becomes a. 4 figure. So gdp figures are inherently a little more suspect in terms of being precise than, than yearoveryear figures. But that doesnt, that doesnt negate the fact that the businesses, the business is slow. Its not negative, but its slow. And i just talked to a guy about furniture. He was at the furniture store, and hes affected by whats going on in the oil business. And our we have 130,000 tank cars. They dont all carry crude oil. But we had huge backlogs on those. Now were getting them back. Our re lealeasing rate has dro. Which brings us to the high oil prices. I hate to say that 45 is a high rate. But swings like that, is it damaging to the economy to see a big drop in a very quick succession and then a very quick pickup. Although were back to just 45 again. Is it bad for the economy to see these swings . Would it be better to have a more stable price . The whole economy, were oil importer. Mmhm. If the price of oil is less, its beneficial to us, but it hurts all kinds of industry, lots of people and lots of specific geographies. But if the price of bananas drops, the price of coffee drops, its net good for the United States, although it has plenty of pockets of places where it hurts people who are in those businessesen but anything youre a net importer of, youre better off getting cheap. All right. Were going to take a quick break. I would send it back to the guys. But joe, and andrew, when we come back, well have a lot more to talk about with warren, maybe some of his top holdings like American Express, ibm, cocacola. Well get into those things. Coming up at 8 00 a. M. , charl monger and bill gates. Thank you. Well continue in just a minute. But when we come back, we have the top stories, including the look of a man who is claiming to be creator of bitcoin. Before we head to a break, lets take a look at currency markets. Were not going to know you the price of bitcoin just yet. Skauk box returns in just a moment show me top new artist. Ah, ha ha. Show me top male artist. My whole belieber fan group. Its not a competition, but if it was i won. Xfinity x1 lets you access the greatest library of Billboard Music awards moments, simply by using your voice. The Billboard Music awards, live sunday may 22nd, 8 5 pacific, only on abc. Welcome back to squawk box. Puerto rico will not make a debt payment today. The move comes after island officials were unable to negotiate a settlement that would have avoided the default. Puerto ricos governor says his government couldnt make todays payment without sacrificing basic necessities like keeping schools open and Public Hospitals open. Okay, new this morning, the mystery may be over. An australian entrepreneur named craig wright says he is the creator of bitcoin. He provided technical proof to back up the claim that he is the creator. In an interview with the bbc, he said the medias hunt for the bitcoin creator had hurt people he cared about, and thats why he came forward. I want to work. I want to keep doing what im doing, and thats what im going to do. And i dont work and invent and write papers and code by coming in front of tvs. I dont want money. I dont want fame, i dont want adoration. I just want to be left alone. Wright staid if he waid if h awards he would not accept one cent. He will never do her to intanot interview again he says. There have been articles about him for quite some time that he was potentially the guy, but nobody really knew. There were emails that people found. Remember when news week ran that cover story. Yeah. The reporter. You remember that. Got it wrong. It was somebody in japan. Somebody who says he doesnt want adoration, is he worried hes going to be adored . Theres a community in the Tech Community who think this is brilliant. I dont think either one of us really want adoration, as much as it tries to head our way, we push it off. We do, right . In general, we dont want that. Coming up, leave it there, leave it where you are, viewers. Thats just a weird thing to say. I dont want adoration. I dont want adores. I bet you got some this weekend. You had to put your hand up. Coming up, the white house. But its close. This lady told me about what goes on i always say, you cant walk a minute out there. Becky, too. Goodness gracious. Oh, really . Burkshire, yes. Kendall jenner or was it kylie jenner . Theyre everywhere. My wife was there this year, and she says theres only two places this happens. Welcome back to squawk box. First in business worldwide, u. S. Equity futures at this hour, a bit of a mixed picture. But well call the dow up 17 points. And the s p looking to open up about 2 pointispoints. Lets get back to becky in omaha with our newsmaker. We are with Warren Buffett, the chairman and ceo of Berkshire Hathaway. About who,040,000 people were h for about six hours, you guys were on stage taking questions, a long time i remember because i did have to go to the bathroom. Lets talk about some of the issues that came up at the Shareholder Meeting. There were some issues about the top holdings. People are always curious to hear more. One of the questions was about American Express, whether the company is going to be valuable. There are all kinds of changes happening in this industry. And i just wonder what you think about American Express, if you still have the same level of confidence in it. Well, i do, but theres no question that the whole area of payments is subject to attack by all kinds of peop