SOTS 2nd Hour: Alphabet Record Highs, Musk's Chip Ambitions, & LIVE: Former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew 11/24/25

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Sara Eisen (1:06)

Good Monday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber. We are live as always from Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Today, Alphabet piling on more gains, opening at a record high as a key figure in tech gets bullish about Gemini 3 Those details ahead. Plus, former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is with us as recession talk bubbles back up and investors look for signs from a divided Fed. And we will talk more about Bitcoin's volatile weekend as prices stay firmly below $90,000 a coin, below $86,000 right now. But guys, just wanted to start on a new economic forecast and inflation outlook from NABE. This is the National Association of Business Economists. So professional forecasters on their outlook for the economy, it improves a little bit from the last forecast, which was in October. They now think 2.9% is what we're gonna see in terms of inflation. And that's really what we want to focus on today. The 2.9% inflation forecast, they think it's gonna calm down to 2.6% in 2026 So easing slowly back down and it's not as high of a peak as they projected back in October. Inflation was the hot subject of debate this weekend. The Treasury Secretary was on NBC's Meet the Press, pushing back against this idea that the administration is causing inflation. Listen.

Scott Bessent (2:32)

Inflation hasn't gone up. And Kristen, the one thing that we're not gonna do is do what the Biden administration did and tell the American people they don't know how they feel. They are traumatized and over the Biden inflation, we have slowed inflation and we are working very hard to bring it down.

Sara Eisen (2:53)

All right, so what's the latest on inflation? Just look at a CPI chart.

And you can see, you can see where it peaked during the Biden administration, when it went right up after COVID and how it's come down, but how it has also remained sticky, which is why the administration is facing questions like this. The last read we got, and remember, it's been all messed up because of the shutdown, is 3%. That was the September number on inflation. It was a little bit elevated. We aren't gonna get October inflation now. We'll get some figures that will go into the November inflation report, but that's not until the middle of December. So the best guess, Carl, is that inflation has come certainly way down off the peak. The administration is right about that, but there are sticky parts of it. Many of it is in services. It's not necessarily even tied to tariffs, as the Treasury Secretary said, but some of it is in the food prices, and that's why they've made moves to roll those back on tariffs.

Carl Quintanilla (3:44)

Yeah, I mean, I don't know what's to be argued about. It was 2.3, and then it was 2.5, and then it was 2.7, and then it was 3

Sara Eisen (3:52)

But you have to, I mean, base effects matter here too, right? The year-on-year, you're talking about the rates of inflation.

Carl Quintanilla (3:57)

The year-on-year annual CPI is up 70 basis points from the spring. That's all.

Sara Eisen (4:03)

Right. But I'm saying that part of... Yeah, we just showed it. So part of that is the base effects. But I think what the administration is pushing back on is it's not tariffs. If you look at where the bulk of the inflation is still, it's in home prices. It's in services prices.

They brought oil prices down, and that's certainly helpful. But this is the debate at the Fed. This is why they can't decide whether they should be cutting rates still in December. Do we fight the last battle of sticky inflation? Or do we worry about the unemployment rate, which is at the highest level since September 2021?

Carl Quintanilla (4:36)